Guild Wars 2

I believe they list the alacrity gain from the shield phantasm at 1 sec duration as of now.

Really needs to be buffed

I think everyone will test shield one way or another, but most long-time mesmers are realists at this point after everything we’ve endured balance-wise.

I can agree with Pyro’s breakdown. OHs are usually picked for damage or survivability (pistol vs torch), and shield is like an in-between option. Depending on what you’re doing torch or pistol is going to be the better choice.

Personally I’d like to see some general number tweaks and Shield 5 speed being increased (it does feel too slow to me). Catching the return should be a little more profitable too (IMO).

Its a shame there is no Shield CDR trait, but it does grant alacrity (not enough IMO)

Plus slowed people are all the easier to interrupt! And interrupts inflict slow if you trait for it… and slow can up your crit chance… and critting can inflict slow!

My head hurts…

Does make me think you don’t need to stack precision if they keep the crit boost at 30% though, which is always nice.

IGN: Myrias Faust
Play: WvW/PvE/PvP
Server: Yak’s Bend (since forever)
Role: Scholar/Tester
Time: CST

It’s funny that I’ve played since beta and remember when this guild was made but never bothered to join… So cool to see a lot of the same users still posting!

How about just add blind on clone death (1 sec) to one of the current on death traits? That way having people kill your clones is a defensive manuever in addition to offensive. (I suppose cripple and confusion on death are also defensive, but picking up the confusion is hard point-wise and crippling can be worthless depending on the situation).

Confusion on interrupt would be nice, but it’d either be OP or worthless since having it stack with perplexity runes would be impossible to balance. It’d probably get nerfed to the ground and thus become worthless in either event since people really like complaining about confusion as we all know. Maybe add confusion to CI instead of cripple?

Personally I would rather see slight tweaking happen through a lot of our traits we currently have to open more builds than adding more traits. Less choices that are more meaningful is better than a ton of low-impact choices. Not that I don’t want choice, but adding too many options tends to not end well.

Precision is good if you have any points into dueling – keeping Vigor up 100% is important since Mesmers are fairly squishy, and even more so if you have DE.

Sharper Images is good as well, or if you are using any “on crit” sigils.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Actually sounds like a damage amp based around confusion, or potentially some sort of compounding debuff based on confusion stacks maybe?

Whenever you inflict confusion on someone, they also get a stack of bleed?
Other option would be cripple, but that sounds too strong to me.

Maim the Disillusioned sounds like a reverse Compounding Power – Targets do less damage based on the amount of illusions summoned on them.

This is 1 of 5 new grandmaster traits for Mesmer – so I wouldn’t read to into this, since everything can change with the other traits.

“We’re introducing forty new grandmaster traits: each trait line for each profession will have one new grandmaster trait to unlock with the trait-unlocking system we just discussed!”

Pretty sure this is a third grandmaster trait

Want. Now.

Lock-down speccing is going to be so hard to actually choose a build… good thing respeccing is going to be free! (ERMAHGEEEEERD)

Not going to lie, but reading that fist post by itself makes me think this is a troll post first… So I feel like Pyro’s response was warranted since there was no reference to PvE. I certainly would’ve said something similar had I been first response.

Simply put, be more specific in the OP =)

Honestly, no one can say “for sure” that any build will be fine post-patch until we know exactly what all changes. The only thing I would say to hold off on if possible is sigils – prices there can fluctuate alot, so I would hold off from big money purchases in that department.

All this said, the only thing we know that is changing stat-wise is a slight crit dmg nerf, and Osi’s gear setups have pretty low crit dmg amounts, so they’re about as “future-proof” as you can realistically be right now.

Runes of Air definitely worked on heal from mantra last time I was using them… Did that get nerfed? (if so that’s pretty dumb)

Also, iirc, the lightning strike got nerfed a while ago… so that plus the fact they don’t give you any extra survivability really keeps them from being utilized.

Used to be great, now they are sub-optimal

@ANdytheffboy: Bloodlust is likely to be hands-down better than Perception once all the crit dmg nerfs are out… Hard to say until we know the exact numbers, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the case.

Right now Perception is technically better unless you have Fury, in which case they are close to equal. (Phantasmal Fury makes Bloodlust very attractive)

If you can wait on a purchase, I’d advise it until we have actual numbers.

Curunen.8729:

Did that thread get deleted?

Looks to be that way….

If that temporal curtain change is true, why is everyone complaining about it? It said it stacks! I did read that right, no?

I gladly trade half the initial application if I can just run through it 2-3 times to get the same swiftness up time + more.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

And the focus seems improved with this patch (though certainly not fixed), maybe I’ve been getting really lucky but iWarden has been noticeably more reliable. I love Sword/Sword to death, both for the aesthetics and the damage, and maybe I’ll rock Sword/Sword -Scepter/Focus one day soon but Focus is so much more flexible and allows for a whole world more creativity.

I’ve noticed the same thing – honestly I never felt like focus was as broken as the forums would lead you to believe. It does have its flaws now, but in some cases I’m sure its a focus-skill thing… Using it to greatest effect is still something that is pretty difficult to do correctly in PvP. Essentially 100% up time on Retal and warden cleansing conditions is glorious! :-)

20/20/30 may be the greatest spec load-out when it comes to PvP content… You just have so much versatility in traits that you can swap between power PU, Interrupt, and even condi PU on the fly. Gotta love it.

I will say that I find CI better in group situations – immobilize helps teammates by and far more than increased daze, since dodges are basically the only defense most people have versus focus fire.

Glad to see you still advocate focus – despite iWarden being unreliable it still has to very strong abilities that work for both offense and defense (pulls/swiftness/retal on #4, damage/projectile negation on #5). The other OHs don’t quite offer the versatility focus does…

A PU build with more focus on phantasms should be better off going with bloodlust due to fury already being present, I’d agree with that. Where do you get retaliation from – teammates?

I’ve been playing more interrupt-oriented over phantasm, so things are pretty different just from key traits like phantasmal fury and deceptive evasion.

Is there a reason you went with Bloodlust over Perception Sigil in this build? I’m not seeing any meaningful difference in effective power, but if you start adding Might stacks it looks like Perception is actually better than Bloodlust (still marginally).

With Bloodlust being 5 times the cost of Perception I’d suggest people go with perception over bloodlust if you don’t already have a bloodlust sigil (may be better post ferocity). Is anyone else seeing this? I might be making some errors.

rchu.8945:

hi Osicat,

thanks for the update, I think the toughest part is swap out the weapons (assume people who have legendary/ascended), I believe in the previous version of your build, theweapons were berserkers, now they are knights. I t

Ultimately, don’t focus on individual pieces – I generally look at the overall stats and try to reach a similar stat load-out.

For example, I had near-all berserker’s accessories, so I played on the builder and came up with this
With this I have ~200 less toughness, but slightly over 200 effective power just sitting around…. With buffs, my effective power is about 300 eff power higher.

It’s all in what you want… of course if you have all ascended already it’ll hurt regardless.

Hi Osicat, always a fan of your specs & gear choices.

Wanted to ask about your changes to HIdden Cat (4.0)… I see you added a TON of toughness to your build. Just want to know your reasoning. I imagine either:
-you needed the defense or
-you were overkill on offense, and adding defense just makes sense

The reason I ask is because I run a VERY similar gear set-up, but I’m still working on the ascended gear… feedback always helps make the smartest decision. Don’t want to craft a piece and figure out I needed something else!

My gear set-up: Build Here
Simply put, you have +214 armor, whereas I have +235 effective power (ish)… and the difference in effective power only goes up as you include things like might stacks, blood stacks, fury, etc.

Edit: added link and thoughts

Whether people back this or not depends on implementation: you don’t want to literally make if cheaper to use MF for a precursor.

That said, I wouldn’t be against a system similar to luck (increasingly harder to increase chance)… it’s main function would be to stop the occasional person who forged a LOT more than the precursor is worth.

I actually think this would be healthy for the market because more people would buy/sell rare/exotic weapons (people like visible progress)… More money would be drawn from the market via TP taxes.

The only reason ascended was implemented this way was because leveling a craft is a huge gold sink, and by making more people max it, they draw a ton of gold out of the market. Perhaps even more so was so that materials would actually be worth something (or because it would require more TP purchases to get the mats which = gold sink… who really knows).

They’ll probably implement other ways of getting ascended once a decent amount of gold has been drained. Or not. I don’t know….

Also, isn’t the actual difference in power between full ascended and exotic close to 10%? I know stats are 5% higher, but when you factor weapon damage and actual armor increase as well, it’s a decent bit higher. Oh, you also get infusions, so…. yeah, fully outfitted is a significant difference.

I’m confused, it sounds like someone bought this game hoping it’d be another MMO with vertical gear progression.

This game was shipped as a horizontal gear progression-based game (looks > stats). Whether they stuck to this or not with Ascended is up to debate… but the fact someone wants the power level between rarities to be raised is laughable.

Just saying from a different perspective:

Things like these (Recipes, Skins, etc.) will always increase in value over time as less and less are in circulation…

That said, you have to look at The increase in worth of these types of items vs. The amount of time it takes to appreciate to said worth.

Ultimately, the amount they go up in value isn’t (usually) better than if you play the TP regularly. When you add in that they won’t go up in value indefinitely, it is usually best to sell things like this sooner than later.

If you don’t play the TP regularly, it could be nice to hold onto them as a low-risk investment… But don’t expect to make a fortune on them (vs regular TP players)

I’d like to chime in that lock-down builds can/should be considered a support build too… Being able to lock down targets AND stack vulnerability at the same time is great for small group applications.

A lock-down build can largely be made into a mantra build as long as you have 20 in Inspiration. HM could be considered better than CS in this instance too.

The best thing about a build like this (imo) is that you act as both offensive support and defensive support simultaneously.

Just my 2 cents!

(For reference, I would consider a 30/20/0/20/0 build as a start… I would stick with 30 in Dom, but others are quite liquid and could easily be changed to preference.)

@Smooth Penguin: Oh absolutely. I’m already wondering what they’ll do with gems & precious metals to make it worthwhile…

…But just because people speculated doesn’t make this situation any better overall, just better for some.
Personally, I’m only disappointed because there is a HUGE discrepancy between the different crafting materials at this point, and ArenaNet probably should have collected more data before making damask take 300 scraps per.

Doing that literally kills the dye market.

That said, they really should make the gemstore dyes account bound… but as for the unidentified dyes… don’t hold your breath.

^And that’s only farming for silk.

Now we got to get that linen, cotton, and wool too…

Not sure how they will stabilize linen. I should just level a bunch of alts to 60(?) and park them in JP’s just to get linen readily. =)

I like this idea, but I would like to add that for balance’s sake, that only 2-3 moves are available for each button. So for instance:

1. is auto attack X or auto attack Y
2. is ability W, ability V, or ability U
3. is ability T , ability S, or ability R

There needs to be some sort of limit to skill set-ups, because more variety just means more likelihood for an extremely overpowered setups to emerge that only undermines the amount of variety this change was trying to encourage.

Adding skills (that are actually useful) is a nightmare on profession balance, so I can certainly see why they haven’t done much in this regard in game yet. Its extremely hard to create a skill that isn’t too strong, too weak, or too boring.

What exactly are you asking for? Is this just (another) request for dyes to apply across all accounts, or is it some sort of “tracking” system for what dyes you have?

If english isn’t your first language I can certainly understand, I’m just not sure what your suggestion even is.

Prices for all of these should drop eventually, but the new equilibrium should be pretty high because people will eventually work on a 2nd set, 3rd set, etc. Obviously no one is gonna try for one anytime soon, but if it gets cheap enough they will.

When it takes 10,000+ scraps per armor set for scholars, I’m honestly curious how long it will take for the silk price to actually even out and drop. It’s got to be on the order of months.

Saying that it took 30 days to farm enough mats to craft 15 days worth of Ascended mats only proves that demand is grossly higher than supply.

Until people actually start farming the mats to keep up with the demand, the price will keep going up. Since farming cloth is less steady than for ore & wood, its hard to say when that will happen. Especially for the lower level cloth.

One of two things is going to happen:

1) Damask doesn’t turn a profit, and only the people that need damask craft it, so the price equalizes.
2) The price for the raw materials gets high enough that people can justify farming cloth just to sell on the TP – supply meets demand.

1. is pretty unlikely to happen, and for people to actively farm cloth… the price would have to be pretty high. Needless to say, I’m hoping for #3 -

3) ArenaNet reverts silk bolts to require 2 silk scraps, or reduces the amount of bolts needed per thread, or some combination.

Bravo sir, I tip my hat to you!

This is a huge (read: HUUUUUGGGEEEEE!!!!) issue I have with a lot of the population that plays MMOs.

People seem to forget that EVERY PERSON playing this game is, in fact, another human being who is just as capable at being good/bad at this game as you are.

It gets annoying how much ignorance goes around, and this includes attitudes towards other players and the game developers. Not that there isn’t cases where what people say isn’t true, but people need to be more empathetic and put more thought into situations than just spouting “BS!” or “Nerf!”.

@Romek: True and not true…

True in that less people needing damask will bring down the price.

Not true because the supply for the materials has to catch up with the demand. The materials will rise in price until they meet the cost for Damask. No one will know what that point is until we reach it, but it could be even higher than the current going price for Damask.

Cooking is already supplemented by a gathering tool…

A knife for skinning leather makes sense…. but cloth is hard as it comes from multiple sources (plants & animals)

My best guess is to have nodes in civilized locations (bandits, centaurs) that are piles of fabric that are harvested with a knife. Makes the most sense to me.

I’m a little concerned how using a knife to get cloth would work out. (skinning humanoids?) O_o

That said, they REALLY do need to open up a node system for cloth/leather. This is probably one of the best ways to do it, if not the best.

@Kalarchis: Absolutely – crafting is definitely useful when you play alts… I have done the same with the 2 level 30s I have to a certain extent (weapons).

That said, getting a crafting profession leveled takes money, and quite a lot of it (especially now). Even if you farm the mats, you are still technically paying to level because you lose the potential income of just selling those mats outright.

Simply put, the difference between buying gear on the TP and the value of the goods to make said piece is pretty minimal… add to that the cost of leveling the profession and you need to do a LOT of crafting to actually make a long-term profit. Some people are fine with that, but I can agree with people stating crafting in its current form is just a glorified gold sink.

These suggestions would just be a small perk for people that have a maxed profession. Like I stated, since these items are already in the game elsewhere, this won’t make crafting required… but gold sinks need a reward, and crafting right now honestly doesn’t have one.

(I don’t count legendary/ascended gear as rewards because the costs for these are oppressive outside of the cost to get crafting leveled… This is the difference between an item being a reward and crafting being a requirement for an item.)

Crafting needs a better reason to be leveled, and especially to have multiple professions leveled. Having cheaper ways to get already existing items is by far the best idea I can think of that doesn’t force it onto the entire population.

Some suggestions (all of which are ACCOUNT BOUND… That’s the point):

1) Craft-able infusions – There needs to be an alternate method to get infusions outside of laurels, and having it be via crafting would make crafting more desirable as well. I consider making it cheap to do, but also somewhat time gated in acquisition the best application. I would make the crafted infusions + 1, then have a similar process to the agony infusions to upgrade them. THIS METHOD WOULD NEED A CAP (+5 I’d assume). This further drags out the process and would keep laurel vendor infusions from being obsolete.

2) Account-bound Sigils/Runes – This one is a bit of a stretch (TP could potentially crash), but if there was a way to craft Sigils/Runes at a significant discount -even if time gated- it would encourage having multiple professions maxed. I like this one because there are a lot of Runes/Sigils, and they could be divided up among all the professions to make them equally useful. To reiterate – ACCOUNT BOUND.

3) Craft-able “Infusion slots” – Basically bring the back piece infusion process to other pieces of gear and make it a crafting thing. I don’t like this one, but it’s an option.

Simple benefits like these are what’s missing from crafting professions to make them more appealing to the average player. Right now there is only two reasons one needs to level a profession:
– Legendary Gift Crafting
– Ascended Gear Crafting
And if you aren’t pursuing either of these crafting is a significant gold sink with no upside. Not that they aren’t good things to have in crafting, but what is really needed is a way to save money by having crafting professions… Maxed crafting should be rewarded, not solely required.

Main hand focus would be amazing…

Dual Anomalies ftw!

I would have to agree that the amount of protection up time from PU is probably ever slightly too strong… I could see decreasing Prot to 2 sec per proc helping.

That said, I have never found PU to be oppressive…. and for this thread to really make any ground in terms of discussion someone needs to either:
a) show a video of them playing PU vs good people (and losing)
b) show a video of them playing vs a PU mesmer (and winning)

Just my 2 cents =)

You literally don’t get an increase in crit dmg % unless you get berserker pants (and that one only increases from 3% to 4%).

Google “dulfy GW2”: they have a breakdown of exotic stats vs ascended stats per piece.

(wasn’t sure if putting links is okay here, so I opt’ed not to. Hope you can find it alright)

Only pants has an actual increase in the crit dmg % when compared to exotics.

It’s one thing to like/prefer GvG, its another to dis people who don’t GvG when they are playing WvW.

Vice-versa, too. You’d think that it is impossible to like open-field fights and siege fights equally: have to choose one and forsake the other.

Snafu.7412:

Excuses…..excuses just means they don’t have the mettle to go up against other guilds with even numbers.

I like the generalization that everyone who doesn’t GvG is scared. Bet that gets the testosterone flowing.

Just to chime in: I like the idea of people organizing GvG in WvW, since there isn’t any support for that particular game play anywhere else… That said, this is still WvW, and no one has to support your desire if they don’t want to.

Its their choice to not GvG just as much as it is your choice to GvG.

(same goes for any particular facet of WvW: its the combined whole that keeps the game type interesting, not just one)