Guild Wars 2

I’m going to hope/wish that the trait triggers all ‘on death’ effects of clone upon shatter. If it is that I would be a very happy person indeed.

I run a power pu build. A avg thief is pretty easy because cripple just screws them up so much. A good thief is a battle of his cnd off my clone and my dodging. In most cases the one who gets over aggressive and misses a rotation dies. If I time it right and interrupt a stealth skill I win, that is pretty hard though.

Yep, just need skill. There are lots of ways to avoid damage all together you just need to learn to use them.

Thieves are hard to counter 1 v 1 in wvw. That is pretty much a given. Your avg player will get destroyed by any roamer the thing with thieves is that they kill you invis and in a blink , this leaves a bad taste in the losers mouth. Where if the avg player get destroyed by a roaming ele or warrior it still stings but they realize and SEE that they were out played as oppose to getting killed by a invisible guy in under 3 seconds.

Well there are so many stories but one come into my mind. There was a bug with chaos storm for about few hrs after a patch a while ago. Me and my friend happen to be playing before the bug was fixed. A zerg of about 20 players was roaming. I had my friend standing on the roof at the camp by bay. I would lure the zerg over and he jumped on them and killed 5 in a instant we did this for about 20 mins over and over. It was pretty funny.
The other story is the 1 long 1 v 1 v1 fight I had a long time ago. I get in 3 way fights often but very rarely when all 3 of us are decent players. That was one time where all 3 of us were roamers. The battle lasted a long time and we downed each other a lot . In the end 2 of us were down at the same time, I used my down skill to kill the other downed guy , rallied off him. The third guy was very low on health and all out of cool downs so I finished him of rather quickly. Basically I won because the game design was kitten .

This bring me to one of the biggest beefs I have with the game. The damage log is pure junk.

I used staff for a loooong time. The best part of staff is phase retreat. The worse part is it’s lack of damage. Combat is all about keep pressure on at all times. Staff is a wonderful defensive weapon but when you switch to it you are not pressing your opponent any more. In the end I stopped using it because of that.

Here are some of my preferred roaming spots .

EBG, Between SMC and Blue gate. You can sit outside the wall and kill people coming out all day.
EBG Between SMC and Green gate, stand on the little cliff and jump down on players running up the road to SMC
Area between the 2 bottom boarder camps on all 3 BL , got a lot of good 1 v 1 there. Bring your A game if you roam there.
Area between Bay and Garri on all 3 BL

Edit: Forgot to add the middle of the map in Edge of the mist. Esp if you are blue.

change conquest to death match. You get pts per kill rather than holding pts. I would bet you get a heck of lot more players back to spvp.

At some pt Anet need to face the music and admit spvp conquest mode is a total fail and introduce other game modes like players asked for since beta.

wvw is pretty empty lately. I took Garrison and Bay with 4 people this morning on SBI. We are not even a low tier match up. If I wanted I most likely could have taken hills too. The whole BL was a ghost town.

Just my 2 C about honour. Because this game doesn’t show names it is very hard to grow a roaming community like that of DAoC. If you know who the roamers are and can see them by name you have the ability to act a certain way. The problem with GW2 is that you have no idea who you are fighting , so if you pull off to honour a 1 v 1 the other person most of the time will keep attacking you anyway.

If they want to run they will. You happen to run a build that can do little to people when they decide to run. I use GS and trait for cripple , it helps a lot on stopping people from getting away. Still if an ele or warrior simple do not want to fight you there isn’t much you can do about it.

The problem is the game favour zergs. You can roam solo and small groups for sure. Here is the problem , the amount of people who roam is so small and most of us has been roaming since forever. The skill gap is huge for a new player to start roaming. If all you did was zerg and want to try roam solo , good luck, you’ll be eaten alive by every roamer out there.

CC is the only way. you try land a stun on him then just dps dump. It’s not likely to kill him same goes for good warriors. If they want to get away they will.

you should build for roam and what you like. in general all you need to be effective in zerg v zerg is a GS with fire sigil.
Condition spec with pu is a good starting pt because it offers you good defence as you learn. But as you get better you may find you prefer other play style like power build or shatter.

GS/S&T is the way to go. I don’t see how not having a long range weapon is good in anyway. Esp when you are trying to fight condi engis and necro .

There is no need for assist train in GW2 because everyone’s attack is AE so you just spam your skill and hit everything .
GW2 wvw is dumbed down so you can do it with little to no skill. Watch a DAoC rvr vid you’ll hear how much communication there is . The main assist is calling out targets, healers are calling for peels, CCs are calling out what they are CCing so no one breaks them. In GW2 you pretty much just hear the leader calling for stacking and combo fields.
DAoC wvw is a team effort where GW2 wvw is simply the leader of one blob vs the leader of another blob. The blob members are most effective when they don’t think at all and just do as they are told.

I agree , up-level arrow is just a giant kill me first sign.

waste of space. It’s not used by roamers because there are no one there to kill. Zergs don’t care because they have almost no effect on ppt game.

There are many ways to deal with zergs Anet refuse to implement them because they want to encourage zerging.

yiishing.9057:

Forzani.2584:

oh I understand why it happens, it just feels very wrong to do it. Also when I watch 2 groups fight I find it amusing they both stack up…do their little blasts…then charge each other..pass through each other…then blob up again for heals. Rinse repeat. Like two Rams fighting or something….or like the movie Braveheart where the two blobs run at each other screaming and clash in the middle. The fights are completely different than daoc and just seem a little counter intuitive.

using game mechanics like combo fields + finishers, a group setup to spread the buffs equally and coordinated movement + the right skills at the right time feels wrong and counter intuitive? thats an interesting point of view

You don’t get it because you never played a good wvw game like DAoC. It is completely counter intuitive to ball up before a good fight. At tactic like balling does not exist in any other game or battle filed it is purely a result of the aoe limit and rally mechanic.

Edge of the mist.

Why don’t you use GS? GS is awesome for chasing down people. It has a huge range and phantasm apply cripple . If you take Dom trait that apply criple on clone death and use + cond duration food it will be very hard to get away from you unless you are fighting a warrior or Ele.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I’m really bad at sPvP too. I can’t imagine how sharpening up your 1v1 skills would benefit you in WvW unless your running roaming around looking for 1v1 fights. Which in case, why not go for sPvP instead? Doing that in WvW is usually followed by getting run over by a larger group.

You should roam with a good roamer and see what the best part of WvW is. There is no better feeling than winning a 1 v 3 . If you are good at 1 v 1 you will have 0 problem surfing a zerg. As for why not just spvp, solo roaming is much much harder than 5 v5 spvp and way more fun. Also as someone else pointed out spvp is more about bunkering and hold a point where roaming is all about killing and killing fast. I can’t really explain it without writing a book just follow a good roamer for 1/2 hr and you’ll see what I mean.

Really the best advice is don’t give up. I have fought 1 v 1 vs every class. In the hands of a good player every class is amazing, yes even rangers. Know that if you lose it’s on you to do better. Get a better build or play better. Chatting with players who beat me has been the best thing to improve my play. To that effect you’ll notice the good players will almost always willing to chat and give points. Once you get good pay it forward help out other players who are learning.

I use my great sword and laser beam people . if you really just want to tag you would use a staff as well. pop invis run to the side of a zerg, drop a chaos storm in their path and phase treat out. Then just laser beam people and pick up bags.

46k damage seem unreal. I think maybe you were hit by a npc in the edge of mists. Thieves can burst 10-20k warrior kill shot can get close to 20k if you have no toughness . Get some toughness gear and you should live through these bursts. There are counters to both you just have to learn what to do. i.e 1 well timed dodge.

The answer is YES. You need to use the filter to play matches that has 5 or less players on each side. Do this and it will make you better at WvW. But know that skills and gear in spvp are not the same as WvW so it’s not a direct transfer. For example thieves are a lot tougher in WvW than they are in spvp. But if you are starting out spvp is the best way to climb the learning curve.

Stealth is just too powerful. I would be happy not use pu if they changed the way stealth works. There are no counter to pu same as there are no counter to D/P stealth thief. The problem is stealth. I wouldn’t hold my breath on Anet nerf stealth since it has no impact in blob v blobs or spvp.

lets be honest, ppt means less than nothing at this point.
1. Winning gets you nothing
2. Winning ppt has more to do with coverage than how well you play
3. Ppt is determined by blobs which is boring and no fun

At the end of the day this is a game, people want to have fun. I for one rather kill stuff than pvd or spam my 2 buttons in a giant blob. if I wanted to follow orders all the time I would have joined the army.

lol, it’s true in every pvp game

It’s the best thing about staff . You can get into places that you shouldn’t. Also it’s a free leap away from people on a crazy short cool down.

I plan to roam it for a few days for sure. as is with everything we won’t know till we tried it.

thieves do more stealth in wvw because it works. In pvp you have to fight on a pt which more or less negates the power of stealth. Since you still take damage in stealth and you can’t hold a pt in stealth. So a stealth heavy thief is not much use to a team if you are trying to win a match.
In wvw it’s all about kills, there are plenty of room to move and no pt to hold. So you can’t really blame theives for using a potent skill to it’s max. Since the game is balanced around spvp stealth will never get nerfed so just deal with it is my advice.

Traveller runes make you move faster in Seige Golem , you can dodge inside a golem to get a bit of speed boost

conquest mode is boring period. That is why GW2 pvp is a ghost town.
Seriously how many people enjoy just standing on a pt and take a beating for 10 mins to win a match?

1. Try join a wvw guild
2. Find a zerg and follow it around for a few days
3. Start to stray from zerg as you get more and more comfortable

Know that zerg play and roaming are totally different
Be ready to make a lot of changes to your gear and spec as you wvw
Don’t get discouraged when you get killed. Know that you are doing well if you kill more than 1 person for every death, this isn’t pve you will not get a 1:1000 death to kill ratio.
Don’t take things too serious it’s just a game.

I run a lockdown burst damage build. works really well vs thieves. Esp after the last path most thieves are DD glass. Good thieves are still hard but that goes for good players of any class.

I ran without PU for a long time. About 1 month ago I gave in, it’s just too powerful not to use.

Bombsaway.7198:

Thanks guys. This has indeed been helpful. Mesmer is a class a bit harder to mess around with in sPvP and get the hang of how to beat.

Yep. It is the reacquisition which gets me too often and I do love my AE which does help quite a bit.

Mesmers really mess with me when the fight is not 1 v 1 and I have to pay attention not just to who is the Mesmer but say a thief trying to knife my back. I get that is part of the whole point of the Mesmer but these tips do help!

Mesmer/Thief is one of the best combo for 2 player in the game. Esp if both are the same race. It is a free ticket for the thief to dps as it is hard for people to keep track of all the clones and mesmer and still know when the thief pops out of stealth for a burst. I used to have a steady steam of thief friends who are more than happy to roam with me and together we’d get away with murder lol

Very well written. This should be a guild to all players not just mesmers. Too bad tpvp is so freaking boring based around pt control, otherwise I’d be playing it a lot more.

Know your range and know your timing. I see so many mesmer use it as initial burst. The problem is at the start of a fight people usually have their stun breaker , blink , inv etc etc up. When you open with this you will fail 9/10 times vs a good player. Trick is to use it as finisher , wait till your opponent has used all his get out of jail free cards then pop this on them.

Mogar.9216:

Condi Necro and Engis . Other than that good players of every class can beat me but it comes down to how well I play vs how well they play.

one thing about mesmers that is a bit different from other classes is that we have true variety of builds. But no matter the build the key is
1. know which one is the real mesmer.
2. keep pressure on the mesmer the whole fight.

edit: As an engi bait the mesmer close to you and drop your elite on him/her you should win most of the time. I never let let an engi get in 900 of me because I died so many times to that trick

Condi Necro and Engis . Other than that good players of every class can beat me but it comes down to how well I play vs how well they play.

one thing about mesmers that is a bit different from other classes is that we have true variety of builds. But no matter the build the key is
1. know which one is the real mesmer.
2. keep pressure on the mesmer the whole fight.

RedCobra.7693:

Mek.2947:

Nothing says you’re a scrub mesmer like using moa. It’s a one trick pony on a long cooldown, and like others have said there’s really no dignity in using it. Yes it effective when it’s off its long cooldown, but it also says, “I was about to get my kitten kicked by you so here’s my desperate ‘I win’ button.”

i came across a guild that had three mesmers in it that moa’d me 3 times, however they were so terribly nooby they still didnt end up killing me xD, but this is the problem i have with it, i can accept one time yeah i get utilities and what not to evade attacks but if you get moa’d again theyre on freaking cooldown and you have no endurance,

the game needs a debuff so you cant be moa’d twice in the space of say 30secs

lol you are making me feel bad, as we run 3 mesmers on lock down build. People get 3 stuns at the start of a fight , dead before they can do anything. If they manage to live through that we shot 3 magic bullet at them :P

Mass invis esp if you run a PU build of any kind. Stealth is by far the most op and broken skill in GW2 there is no reason not to use and abuse it.

yep pretty much what others said, play for fun. I lived in pvp for the first few month of this game but in the end I just don’t find bunkering fun so I just stopped doing pvp and tpvp. I was playing ele main back them and they were the best bunker back then still it’s just not fun.

Bsgapollo.5364:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

reikken.4961:

1076

I mostly take vitality instead. my defense is for burst resistance, not for sustain

Toughness gives burst resistance. Vitality gives sustain resistance.

Wrong, he was right.
Vitality is meant for surviving a single huge burst. toughness is for sustain over duration.

Toughness reduces base damage per attack. Most burst class burst you with crit damage . Crit damage is a X of the base damage. For example a thief who back stabs you with 100% crit chance and 100% crit damage mod would do about base * 2.5 damage. By reducing the base damage you reduce the size of that burst lot since toughness is factored in before crit damage X is applied . So toughness is indeed better for dealing with bursts.

magic fly.2041:

Thief is not really all that overpowered.
However it is not a L2P issue either. Please people, stop saying that. It is not true.

It is a frustration issue.
Fighting against someone whose blinds destroy any of the slower weaponsets, is constantly disappearing, deals damage quickly, teleports around, and can just disappear if the fight goes bad is downright annoying.
It doesn’t matter if the thief lives or dies, wins or loses, it is not fun in any way to be on the receiving end. All the nerfs in the world won’t stop people from saying thieves are OP, because how powerful the thief is, is simply not the problem at all. The fight needs to be fun for both players, not just one.

I agree 100%. Same goes for solo eles and warriors who can reset fights when they are losing. It has nothing to do with OPness or l2p, it’s entirely fun/frustration issue.

Somewhat off topic, by not having real healers and buffers this game forces blobs. With blobs you lose most of the tactic used in group combat, things like targeting, flanking, encircle . If they increased duration of ae buffs the zerg v zerg would be a lot better imo.