Guild Wars 2

I wish they use this mid-season gap to further improve on some underused traits and skills (I can think of at least 5 from each class). There should be plenty of time to achieve that in this “extended off-season”. But I’m already at a point where I don’t care much about it. You don’t get disappointed if you don’t expect much.

Thanks for the quick answer Pyro! And sorry for not clarify my questions. I thought you can only maintain roughly 80% uptime if only use 2 iAvengers (since they only give 3s alacrity every 7.6s CD), so I was wondering if those 3s alacrity from wells will be sufficient to cover the melee group throughout the fight?

I’m a bit sick lately so I don’t really feel like log into game and test this atm. Just curious, can you maintain perma quickness AND alacrity when running this?

Just slap on the build since its probably confusing when I explain it. But I drop time warp since it doesn’t seem necessary with well of action. And I wonder if I should slot improved alacrity since I might be a bit short on alacrity. Realistically I probably will keep 2 iAvengers at a time. Is that enough to assume full alacrity or should I swap WoA to WoR and swap gravity well with time warp?

P.S. signet of midnight is a must btw, I want to help tank some unavoidable damage like green AoE in VG.

My guildie is having similar issue with overriding, I was wondering about that. Theoretically it should only take 2 stacks at a time maximum, is it easy to reach cap because of it?

Amaimon.7823:

But I wanted to voice something else: Why is there an or/or situation?
I mean, for both camps it’s a win/lose or lose/win situation. Why where there not two queues to begin with. SoloQ for 1-2 sized parties, and Group Queus for 5 man parties.
That way both camps win.

I wondered the same thing.

Ofc people will always come up with a reason, such as “not enough in population to support both”, “abusing to get divisions” or blah blah blah.

Maybe some are quite reasonable, but regardless of the reasons, the consequence we have now is premades will all be flushed into unranked (or quit the game, play arena or twiddling thumb waiting for “community events”). Which will most likely make both sides having boring matches.

Yay I guess?

It is slightly time consuming to get gears for 100% boon duration (time-gated charged quartz) , but not dead expensive (other than bountiful utility ofc). You may also need to farm DS for leadership runes, but that rune set will most likely stay useful for a long period of time so its a time worth investing. Other than that, having platinum doubloon filled in some exotic accessories (yeah I know) should be easy to achieve 90-100% boon uptime.

From there it isn’t too complicated to maintain perma quickness just by yourself. Slot SoI and shield, run domination/inspiration and time warp or well of action, and you should be able to cycle through to achieve that. As for perma alacrity, just keep 3 iAvengers alive and you should be sweet.

Just to get this straight, since SoI only transfer one stack now does it prioritise the latest stack or highest duration stack? Or just completely random?

it is not impossible to split mode, since retaliation in WvW functions like PvP instead of PvE.

I think trouble is with the mentality rather than mechanics

1. Do fractal of the mist
2. Go to high level frac with social awkward instability
3. Spam UA
4. Everyone in your team will hate you

My guess is it’s coded to reposition player first then attack again, so there are some gaps between that and other channel multihit skills

I encountered 2 mesmer boonshare build few days ago and we got totally wrecked in the most team fights. We were more amazed than angry at them since you normally see those in WvW.

We do recover quickly though, if you have enough mobility you can cap sides and render their build useless. Or pick them off when the actual damage dealer (other 3) are outside of boonshare reach in other caps. The gimmick of this build is they have to move in two and yet they have much less survival/damage when there are only two of them.

Would’ve also be much easier if we have a well necro at hand tbh.

your last sentence is most likely true

It’s been a year and herald still has no glint skill underwater, really no excuse there.

Its still a thing in WvW small group roaming, where you can trait yourself to maximise your damage and leave condi cleansing etc to your allies (eg. druid).

In PvE, power is still the way to go since npc mechanics is working against our unique conditions (specifically torment and confusion), and any other condition becomes obsolete in group situations. That being said, even with full zerk mesmers tend to focus on group oriented traits/skills because we can’t really expect to do big damage personally.

I still don’t see the reason for not having solo ranked, team ranked and unranked triple Q.

If majority of populations are solo/duoQ, having a team ranked Q hardly impact on players in solo/duoQ, it’ll eliminate the possibility of roflstomping disorganised group while allowing teamQ players to fight against unknown foes. It also won’t suddenly dramatically increase solo/duoQ’s queuing time since, as many of you suggested, majority of ranked population we have now compose of solo/duoQ.

If teams want to play it competitively, they queue for ranked teamQ and fight other unknown premades competitively. That is the very nature of group competition and they’re weighing their own risk of finding better opponents. Sure it feels bad to lose a fight after 30 min queue, but at least it provides a way for teams to improve as oppose to the poll we have now. The polls we have now will inevitably cause teams to continue stomping solo/duoQ players in unranked.

Now that you can queue in hotjoin/arenas/any places it also means teams can practice in pvt arenas while waiting for long queues. So having pvt arenas is hardly a reason to eliminate team ranked Q.

And no, if we have 3 separate queues players can hardly abuse “premade teams” to get their precious skritt shiny badges that, cough cough, everyone is jealous about. You’re contradicting yourselves when you suggest that along with teamQ having longer queue times, even if the team wins most of their matches.

If teams want to play casually or want quick match, unranked is still the way to go.

Having team ranked Q won’t be resource demanding either, since generating that algorithm is hardly more difficult than others and they already have the data from before.

All in all, there shouldn’t be any logical reasoning why various playerbase in this game should be mutually exclusive or eliminated altogether. The more option there is for players the better. I solo/duoQ in all the seasons I played and I’m against having this either/or mentality, because the implementation of teamQ and soloQ should be an opportunity to benefit everyone. So stop letting your own personal emotions get in the way and classify all those who want tripleQ as evil trolls that like to ruin other people’s fun. You’re only dumbing down the argument to pitiful child name callings.

philheat.3956:

They real problem is for people who like to play in 5 in ranked because is the only way they have to win and to climb divisions, chain stomping disorganized guys with random setup and random mmr.

If you like to play in 5 for fun and for guild missions unranked is the way
if you like to play in 5 for a competitive goal, skirmish in pvt arenas is the way.
if you like to improve yourself like a player, map awareness etc, solo or duo queue is the way.

Don’t know why so many passive aggressiveness and generalisation has been passed around here, OP is not asking for “solo/duoQ vs Premade”, he’s asking “why not both?”

Trial season for season 5 can’t exactly work as a reason for not having both though, you can also have 2 queues in trial season as well and it actually gives more teamQ perspective for those who play teamQ.

The thing is, GM trait is suppose to be a build defining trait, that’s one of the reasons why I dislike having weapon traits there. As it stands none of the mesmer GM weapon trait can define a new build, and even with scepter people may not choose malicious sorcery. I still remember when they first introduce us malicious sorcery scepter trait in sneak peek the added effect is “torment deals 50% more damage” rather than this 20% speed attack that only affect 2 out of 3 skills we got today.

Might on all GS attacks may work by easily maintaining 10-12 might, but personally I feel like you’re limiting your own potential to GS only. In the end mental anguish’s burst damage still win out since majority of GS’s sustain damage is limited to auto-attack in teamfight.

We need something innovative for GM traits, something that defines that whole traitline like the more recently introduced BD. It was a terrible mistake that they threw adept weapon traits to GM back in 23th June and slap some meaningless or counter-intuitive buffs.

• Why not have a teamQ and a solo/duoQ in season 5?
• Even if its only testing wouldn’t having 2 seperate Queues also reflect better and more realistic experience for season 6?
• If we actually conduct a poll after season 5 when there’s only solo/duoQ, who can accurately represent teamQ’s perspective in ranked?

These questions I mentioned are objective questions, I’m not even putting any emotion when asking them. So do spare me the “solo players had terrible past history when vs premade” argument.

Statistic 101: poll conductor can easily generate bias with careless phrasing, that is the true danger of using a survey to find out popular opinions, not to mention a close-ended question one.

This whole poll need adjustment and more clarification.

Has the population diminished so much that we only have either/or option? Sure teamQ will have longer queue time when we separate both but killing an option all together is totally excessive.

Lack of transparency between dev and community is one thing, now it seems more and more like complete miscommunication.

Statistic can be a real devil sometimes, and the only thing this poll’s wording will generate is segregating players and generate hostility between them, rather than coming to an understanding and resolution.

Deals 500 damage for each boon you strip in Imagined Burden (not GS limited), this should replace 2 stacks of might on GS auto and cripple on other weapon skills.

The 2 stacks of might is not worth it at all since cancel-attack can deal much more damage, and frankly every spec just laughs at cripple now.

On the other hand, boon strip damage thematically fits domination and can actually compete with other GM traits. It’ll provide sustained damage as oppose to power block and mental anguish. With the newly buffed MoD, mental anguish still provide better shatter burst and power block is still decent. What this trait provide is extra incentive for sword auto and GS 3 attacks, as well as other utilities that strip boon (which are highly underused in current meta btw).

Lastly, I doubt it’ll be OP. Power mesmer only has very limited counters and filled very niche roles due to how easily boons are farted out. Boon strip by itself make much less impact nowadays (even pre-HoT) and the main reason why necro still prevails is because of how easy it is for necro to turn boons against foes. The other strength of power shatter, damage, is also overshadowed by HoT power creep. Power mesmer used up a lot of CDs just to achieve the same damage that some other spec can do with few buttons. That’s why we see so many mesmers go into condi, its much safer and damage is much more accessible overtime.

Like I said, you have very little pressure to kill anyone with condi removal. That’s also assuming players will not cleave any illusions and will eat all your shatters, which is unlikely given current meta. Current meta mesmers have SoI which is one of the main reasons why their condi pressure overpowered opponent defenses. It is unlikely that you can achieve the same thing with no superspeed illusions, 1 immobilize and 1 mid range stun.

Do post a video of you using this build on active player of average level, arguing damage over golem or just stating you do “deal damage as meta” is very different from practical level. Until then, sure new players will survive more than 2s, but does nothing else while cap points continue to tick.

Good rotation video, I’m amazed by how much creativity there are. But pile up those “rotations” all you want, 4 of those 8 defensive skills you clicked never make into any current meta builds.

With a skill set like that you’ll only have enough pressure to kill those who just started PvP or those without any condi removal. So you can’t kill, you lose cap point in 5s, and you have none of the ports that you mentioned in your discussion……you’re not really setting a good backup foundation for your argument and you’re resorting your argument to name calling and strawmen argument.

Really can’t blame anyone who thinks you’re trolling

Ross Biddle.2367:

First: We acknowledge the problem-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

You saw right through me haha. Though throwing them away or consuming for no reason is just as sad as piling them up.

Thanks for the advice guys, I just need to remember key farm every week I think. Any idea on what ToK worth if I plan to sell them, or just free market/cheap price?

Totally agree, it is especially evident in raid where you try to maintain 100% uptime. The water sound is fine, the tinnitus high pitch sound is really unnecessary.

Please don’t move this to other forums, I believe this is more of an issue for PvPers than PvE (need 4+ days dailies to get one tome) and maybe WvW. I’ve got quite a lot of ToK stacked in bank and just wondering what’s the most efficient way to use them when you have full account, 9 classes at 80s and 1 class for opening bags. All guild upgrades involved in ToK is used and I’m sitting at 2k spirit shards where I doubt I’ll ever used up

What do you guys usually do in this situation? :P

dat moment when a random pug in fractal spawn 3 avengers within 10 seconds…

Reaper Alim.4176:

Man let me tell about these things called Daily Lobbies. They are the sizzness. For real man. All of the advancement with very very little amounts of the autism of normal queues. Go there to get your dailies done.

If you want to legitimately kill players. Sorry to say you only real out looks are WvW roaming or matches in the guild arenas.

Though I understand where you come from, map-specific achievements doesn’t work in hotjoin. Achievement hunters will not be stopped by daily lobbies, and they will afk if map choice is not in their favor.

What kdaddy said is a history process leading up to this mess. Many of those afking players are more achievement hunters than long-lasting pvpers, and with this frequency it is safe to say that you can’t simply replenish pvp players with achievements (something ANet need to understand). Diminishing population is not something that can be changed easily unless those in power stop covering their eyes and look at root of problems.

I feel like what mesmer really need is a decent dps melee weapon more than anything else though. While blur frenzy is good, sword delivers terrible dps due to how slow its auto chain is.

Condi melee? Maybe but given mesmer’s theme condi (confusion/torment) I doubt it’ll be a popular choice unless they somehow introduce a new useful condi for mesmer.

seeing how they bring back acro line for daredevil, maybe they can introduce hexes to GW2? I don’t really mind having a completely different playstyle though, afterall its specialisation.

I’m curious, is chaotic persistence in Chaos really noticeable? Even in raid situations where you have lots of boons, this trait got completely overshadowed by revenant’s passive toggle facet of nature.

If not noticeable then they really need to set higher reward when it requires players to meet certain conditions.

I agree, I do wonder how DH will play out in courtyard though. Had seen some interesting DH builds in stronghold but that’s about it, conquest basically amplified DH’s effectiveness.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Because that totally works when a DH JI and drops ToF on top of you…. or if it’s an empty point and there happens to be prepaid traps that you didn’t know about, and so on.

Curse you bloody conquest!

I think you guys are a bit harsh, he’s talking about open world/personal stories.

OP if your mind is set on the premise (no berserker gear) then nothing or no one can really stop you, especially if you’re running open world/personal stories. Don’t mind their phrasing though, people here are only trying to help by providing optimal options. Personally I know people who doesn’t like berserker gear and went for knight due to potato internet or other more personal reasons, so to be honest there is no shame in that.

If this is because you lack powerful blood for crafting then assassins is a relatively cheaper option.

You can’t have all I guess, invocation provided significant damage boost throughout the match but you don’t get the benefit of retribution. Indeed it is disheartening to see the player you downed got res up, but it just so happen that DH’s knockbacks and traps counter anyone who doesn’t have good stability uptime.

I don’t think the problem is with ANet catering ESL, sometimes it can be the opposite since HoT specs provide a lot more tools to general population (so less team coordination is needed to play at decent level), be that CC, stability or whatnot.

EDIT: tbh look at how far we’ve gone in this power creep, we have so much CC and stability at the same time that you get countered even when only running stun breaks.

More like stability has been thrown around like candy that you can’t reliably interrupt their process. Both protective reviver and SnR are major traits that come with an opportunity cost, when you think about it they should have bonus effect on ressing. In the past team bunker/support would need to reserve their stability when an ally is calling out that he’s going down (particularly obvious in WvW small group roaming or teamQ), now everyone just spam everything.

Also if you’re running rev or some burst spec, cleaving downed people has about the same speed as stomping one. So it helps with stopping people from ressing players while hurting their team and buying yourself time to interrupt them.

http://dulfy.net/2016/07/26/gw2-out-of-the-shadows-developer-ama-on-reddit/#PvP

Just for your reference, they’ll only intervene if its something so game-changing that requires hotfix.

can you link it? It sounds like a rather old balance philosophy since they stated no balance will happen during seasons ever since League release.

Just curious, have they ever use the term rework? It kind of implied incompetence in previous balancing…

Interrupt mesmer build only works in very niche occasions due to how much pulsing stability most HoT specs have and innate blocks/evades that most HoT skills have. So yeah you shine for 10s in a fight and other times you stand off point waiting for opponent’s stability to wear off.

Power shatter still works given enough practice (and outplay tbh given how predictable it can become), but there’re really very little reasons to bring interrupt mesmer despite its usefulness pre-HoT. I said this as a player that loves interrupt build and played it for more than a year. And no I’m not talking about lockdown build where you hit mantra to daze/stun without reading opponent movements just to set up bursts. I’m talking about the actual “interrupt” interrupt build.

style got it, they specifically stated that the pvp balance team only has roles in amulet and MMR changes. Skill balance is a whole new team that manages WvW/PvE/PvP. In their AMA they also stated no large changes will be make even after they did PvE/PvP split, and the latest patch is about the scale of changes we should expect.

Who’s in this Skill Balance team? How are they going to achieve balance that way? We can only guess.

Australian player here experiencing same thing, had tried 2 ISPs and both has same problem

Anyone wanna guess what’s their next move? My money is on elemental blast if on cap point, warding rift and then chaotic release lol

If we want to talk something serious though…..it’s true that they’re blowing all high damage CDs, but any other class have to blow their even higher CD defenses as well or suffer 50-70% hp damage. Just imagine what the necro will be like after the end of that rotation.

There’s simply no way to interrupt most of their chains due to innate evades. Yes I know a few 1/4s window frame just before they start but that fact that those frames are “pre-skill animations” mean it’ll require something like thief steal or mesmer power lock to reliably stop them. Kiting won’t work either due to distance 240+ coverage in all their skills.

Only way to avoid damage is dodge or blow your defensive CDs like stealth, evade or blocks. This is one of the main reason why revenant stands at the pinnacle of power roaming specs: the distance coverage and defensive aspects allows them to execute rotations safely. It’s not a sin that rev bears alone though, many HoT specs are like that, promoting players hitting same rotations without much considerations of it missing or interrupted.

If we want to break down the skills you mentioned

• Blurred frenzy root mesmer on the ground, easiest thing to kite in game.
• Obsidian flesh is on 40s CD.
• Rocket charge can be interrupted midway just before each strike landing. Shock shield damage got 50% base damage gutted (and power coefficient took another 50%) so it tickles anyone that isn’t thief.
• Many thief attacks evade while dealing high damage? Are you talking about the dead S/D build or hideous staff build that basically mean suicide dive in teamfights? Vault can also be interrupted just before landing.
• Signet of stone is on 64 or 80s CD.
• Shield of courage is on 65s CD and even with renewed focus its still considerably high
• Whirlwind attack can be kited to reduce significant damage. Endure/defy pain are on 60s CD as well.
  You might notice I also mentioned interrupt frames on some evading skills, the fact that they’re open to interrupt “midway” or “before landing” means you can time it much easier than rev’s pre-skill animations.

Now compare all those skills to the rev rotations we seen in OP’s funny video, all their rotations will be back in 20s.

Just extending from what Gator said, you wouldn’t happen to be in OCX are you OP? Me and my guildies from OCX are having same issue, experiencing 1 frame per 5-10s lag spikes while my guildies from other regions are fine. Generally ping is around 200-250 for us but when lag spike strikes (instances, wvw, pve, pvp whatever) it can go up to 1500-2000 ping.

I even swap to my phone’s internet to test out (which normally is same ping if not better due to flatmates), which uses different ISP yet I still experience such lag. I think its a problem when connecting nodes from country to country.

Dat moment when your temporal curtain landed on an ambient creature or some random npc walks into it, I don’t know if I should be amazed by my aiming skill or my stupidity haha.

The overall stats speak for themselves. You can tally up qq posts all you want on this forum yet its merely a subset of GW2 community.

Their safe approach only gets them 4000 twitch viewer on average for a $200,000 dollars tournament. Some sort of breakthrough is needed.

Deathmatch game mode is fine, courtyard as a tight map that promotes spamming AoE is not. Also based your argument on forum qq posts is not logical, people don’t usually come to forum to show gratitude, let along GW2 ones. Yet queue time for stronghold is fine, indicating there are certain amounts of playerbase there.

I feel like we need 2 more non-conquest maps then put them together with stronghold and courtyard queue, that’d provide alternative game mode that many players have been asking for. Keep on dwelling on conquest only feels like another form of content drought. Essentially you’re still doing the same thing just a little different side objectives, and meta is unlikely to be different no matter how many conquest maps you pump out.

I’d say do a 50%-50% split on damage to player and phantasm respectively, then mesmer can retain certain aspect of unique class mechanic while not overly reliant on illusion damage.

Stability was nerf few years ago from stacking duration (which CC can’t remove it) to stacks (CC can remove stacks).

I agree CC is over the top right now, but increasing stability is just another extreme in this power creep game. At current rate there isn’t much viable interrupt build due to how many pulsing stability or passive stability there are. Those pulsing/passive stability only promote safely spamming skills without reading opponent.

I remember the glorious days when you can proc fear with illusions, that’s what I call mesmerize

If I recall correctly you can also summon golem hoards with it? Been a while, or its just me and guildie joking back then?

If you can’t explain every detail then unfortunately you can’t give a balance idea. That’s the very reason why comparing two skills cross class is a terrible idea.

Again, you’re looking it like its an FPS. Balance is never about putting two objects on a scale or a set numeric IQ test in MMORPG, where you say one skill is superior than other because its heavier.

You need to considers every single aspects of characters, from simple base stats difference and synergy between skills, to more sophisticated things like class mechanics and roles in a teamfight. What you do is comparing apples with oranges and say orange is absolutely better because it has more vitamin C. Your example only serves this by dumbing the dynamic aspects of balance down to narrow minded Yes/No questions. Comparing two skills from different class only stops you from looking at the bigger picture, because the very nature of MMORPG focuses on class differences and how classes can compensate each other’s weakness and strength.