Guild Wars 2

Xillllix.3485:

Quote from the review:
“There’s also a sprawling, beautiful new world-versus-world battleground called the Desert Borderlands that grants powerful bonuses for holding keeps, but two weeks on, there were never enough people playing it for me to truly see it in action. "

Even IGN recognizes the outdated WvW server system that leaves us with 3 empty copies of the new map (which we all agree is beautiful).

I think it’s about time Anet changes the server system or merge servers, something the community has been asking for years. There is just not enough people playing that mode to fill up half the 24 copies of this huge map.

Yes the new maps are incredibly empty, and yes they are Anet’s way of trolling players as to what their guild halls could have looked like with the new keeps, but if you want a positive review on IGN you need to pay them for it.

@Firebird

May I suggest a compromise and both you and PawPaw agree to delete Asurans from PvP as a show of good faith. Once we’ve removed the aids of near invisible Asuran animations, the world will be a better place and we can then negotiate which form of cancer to cure next. Loads to choose from in PvP right now.

nacario.9417:

infused heal isnt so strong if dmg is stopped during its 3 sec which lit the rev whiteblue, UA has its counters, pluss said power shiro herald (which OP doesnt point out as he doesnt understand what hes fighting) is weak to uptime condis.

Its a bit easier said than done to stop dps’ing. This skill is a copy-pasta Defiant Stance from warrior with the cast time removed. So any ground target stuff lingering damage or condi spike ticking etc can’t be stopped and as its instant cast the Rev is gonna get the heal off.

Evandriel.1239:

I’m not sure I gather why a class having a condition that doesn’t even do damage is that big of a deal. Especially since almost every class can remove conditions like crazy.

I’d be far more concerned if chill did damage, but as it is i’m not too concerned.

You seem pretty new to both the game and necro/reaper in general, so from the self-proclaimed friendliest mmo community let me say welcome to HoT.

Chill doing damage is possible since the expac:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deathly_Chill

Condi cleanse is now RNG. Necro/reaper can apply a lot of condis which actually makes it difficult to get the condi you want cleansed actually removed when you need it.

Its certainly not fun to go against a reaper, in fact reaper is probably sitting at the top of the food chain in 1v1 matchups in conquest currently. Its also very dangerous when +1’ing in team fights.

Every conquest build is built focusing on a boarderline or outright broken element which typically translates to unfun to play against; hence all of the posts similar to OP’s on the forums.

While I do enjoy the new spec’s and traits and the freshness they bring in something new to experiment and play with, I sorely miss one of the core design philosophies of the dev team in the past: “Hole in roles.” They certainly didn’t have that concept nailed across all classes at the time, but the goal was sound in principle: no single class should be able to do everything well. Its the weaknesses and trade-offs that come with being strong in another aspect that make the game more interesting. The strengths/weakness trade off creates space for situational counterplay or strategies to emerge. Alternatively, if builds that are good in all situations in conquest largely remove this type of minute-to-minute counterplay – and these are the types of builds that have been dominant for a long time now.

Anyway, imo, I’d like to see the dev’s take another pass at chill on the reaper. Chill increases cds on all skills, impairs movement and also does damage. Reaper can quickly apply very long duration chill which ticks for in that 600 – 900 range. Personally, I’d like to see the dev’s make a choice and either reduce the application and duration or reduce the damage component.

Trigr.6481:

In response to what you said about signet of illusions, did you bother to read what I said in the original post? You take signet of illusions for the following.

-Healing through restorative illusions
-Condition clear through restorative illusions
-Stability, might, fury, regen, resistance through bountiful disillusionment

except with signet of illusions you get those things twice as often

I understand what you were going for with the build concept. I’m referring to how it actually played for you in your video. You were only able to use it a few of times, and of those instances because of the spacing in your shatter rotation you ended up having shatters off cooldown or a couple of seconds away from coming off cooldown and still popped sig of illusions. Perhaps those are just mechanical issues but I’d add that the long cooldown and long cast time to try to cover diminish the impact of signet of illusions from the get go.

In general, skills with long cooldowns encourage players to either sit on them waiting for that ‘perfect moment’ or to chose alternatives that can be used much more frequently during the course of a fight. Sig of Illusions certainly falls in this category.

Trigr.6481:

Please learn to read :/

In regards to portal, it’s hard to make portal effective when you’re not in ts with said people, regardless if those people are good at the game, so again your comment is flawed. For now on please try to think out your response.

I agree, and it goes back to my questioning if portal was the best choice for your utility bar on this build. I recognized that it can have its situational uses in low and mid tier soloq, but I’d suggest going more selfish with this utility choice as we both agree that its tough to use in soloq effectively at the best of times.

You’ve certainly built a tanky mesmer but a bunker in the current state of the game needs to bring more to the table than just tankiness. For this build to work you need to essentially get a free cap (or decap) to begin with, only get favourable 1v1’s and hope the teamfight doesn’t come to the node you are ‘bunkering’. All of these conditions can certainly be found in low to mid level soloq play and as you’ve noted, this build may likely find some traction in that type of play. Once players get a bit more familiar with the new specializations I think your build is going to struggle a bit as its offers next to zero counter pressure and is very low on team support when compared to other builds that compete for this space. For example, your 3-sig condi build wasn’t as good of a ‘bunker’ as this chrono build but it aleast offered some condi counter pressure on point giving you a chance to win some 1v1s matchups and take the node or force a retreat. With this build your goal is a stalemate and without knockbacks or dmg pressure – if you don’t already own the point or have it neut’ed you risk being neutralized yourself (i.e. of little use to your team) in the match.

With regards to the build itself, its similar to your prior builds in that you are often sitting on two dead utilities in sig of illusions (taken almost entirely for the passive) and portal. Take a look back on your vid, and especially with regards to portal, be critical on evaluating your own play to determine if its really the best choice for that third utility. Yes, you did use it a couple of times to port back to save a decap, but ask yourself why you were pushing over to a team fight in the first place. You don’t bring much at all in the way of group support or dmg and would be of little use to resolve those team fights. As far as bunkering goes often semi bunkers/bruisers can work well as players take turns on point so the whole team isn’t standing in the enemy cleave at one time. I can see the way you use portal to offer some value against low to mid level soloq teams that have low map awareness and/or communication and would esssentially let you push and decap an empty node for free. In those instances using the portal to cover your node would be useful, but I really think that is fairly corner case.

Anyway, just food for thought.

santenal.1054:

Why do I have to use the scrapper traitline if I want to use the hammer?

Its partially to encourage sales of the expac, and partially because the existing trait lines didn’t offer support for a hammer or gyros.

Voramoz.6790:

This game is not a first person shooter. SD has only ever worked “correctly” with targeted toolbelt skills. ANet refuses to fix non targeted toolbelts. I suspect SD would be more powerful and viable if they did. I think ANet is worried SD would become the new “explosives line incendiary powder” meta in all builds and every game type. But i think not because now the requirement to use all of the tools line changes things.

It used to work pre june 23 patch, but it was a bit awkward with some skills. If you used an untargeted skill, say you had target on an enemy and used Regenerating Mist, your character would complete the animation for Regen Mist and if you were still in range with the target in a 90° cone in front of you after if finished casting, SD would shoot out at the target. It was best used with instant cast skills, typically surprise shot, as the toolbet skill resolved instantly and SD shot out right behind the bullet projectile. Post june 23rd patch SD is just used for tasering the ground at your feet.

thatrobotguy.3690:

Kaizoku.1298:

In pve, function gyro is definitely good. Got so many challenges because of this tiny thing….. Also you will probably need it in raids, reviving at a pretty long range is good.

dunno what PvE you’ve been playing o_O i have yet to have the function gyro actually successfully revive anyone, and haven’t had many chances to use it either. It definitely needs more functionality (reviving dead players would be a good example of something it could do)

It only lasts for 10s once summoned, so you’re not going to do much ressing from dead with it as is. It would need the duration it lasts increased. One person ressing a dead state takes around 20s if you are out of combat and double that if you are in combat.

I don’t think there is anything in pve to use a stomp on since the Scarlet invasion storyline. The ressing is going to be pretty situational in pve at best.

I’m pretty sure that up until this point, engie was the last class remaining without a trait related to reviving players so I guess this was Anet’s chance to set that straight. Its just too bad that two traits in the engie line are dedicated to reviving now: Function Gyro and Decisive Renown. This means that if you aren’t stomping or reviving with the gryo then you’ve got two (instead of just one) dead traits in the Scrapper line.

It’d be nice to see Decisive Renown combined with Function Gyro or reworked entirely.

Kain Francois.4328:

Stealth Gyro is OP. It’s 30s of stealth, as long as you don’t move out of range.

And no, enemies do not care about your gyro whatsoever. You can essentially stealth through an entire explorable zone, and enemies will be looking at the flowers instead.

My only complaint is it STILL doesn’t stick close enough.

Only gyros I’m not liking at Condi, Blast, and Whirl.

If you use it without swiftness on yourself and on level terrain so it doesn’t have pathing issues it’ll keep up.

If the gyros all had perma super speed they’d do better at keeping up, but that still doesn’t help the situational pathing issues.

ANort.1425:

How is Bulwark gyro underwhelming? The 600 radius makes it easy to stay in its effect during combat, and it has a ton of health so dying isn’t much of a concern. And the toolbelt is the best projectile reflect skill engi has.

Numerous things were recycled in creating these ‘new skills and traits’, and the bulwark gyro largely borrows from mesmers illusionary defender. And these types of skills that tank part of the damage for you do not have a ton of health. Keep in mind that is game is only balanced around pvp so if it had an actual ‘ton of health’ it would make the engie too tanky in smaller fights, so the health is balanced around that situation. In anywhere else in the game, because it is funneling damage from anyone in range it can be taking massive amounts of damage (eg. 5 allies in range get hit the gyro gobbles up 50% x kittens and is essentially tanking up to 2.5 times the damage from a single attack). A much better choice is to use player activated defense such as positioning, dodges, blocks, blinds, movement/evade abilities, invuln, etc etc to avoid getting hit in the first place.

Immensus.9732:

I found the healing gyro pretty useful in some occasions, but it still cant compare with the Healing Turret, Sneak Gyro can be good at WvW in some occasions too, but beyond that the rest are so underwhelming that it would be a waste using that utility slot for them instead of a Kit or Elixir.

Does anyone have good PvE build for gyros yet that is powerful and satisfying?

There may be some corner cases where the gyros could be useful in PvE, and that is in part to the recent changes Anet made with summons taking less damage from cleave attacks. However, once you play the game a bit more you’ll quickly come to realize that relying on AI, for anything, is very frustrating.

Its incredibly unfortunate that Anet chose to go with more AI, especially where engie already have turrets that are complete garbage (aside from the heal turret which is amazing).

Good stuff. You got any old turret engie vids to post as well?

Zodryn.4216:

As long as Anet reasonably balances the new elite specs with the old ones, HoT will not be pay to win. Please keep in mind it’s only been a few days since the expansion. Some things are clearly broken. The worst offenders should get nerfed, while underperforming base specs should ideally receive a boost. It seems like Anet really wanted the elite specs to be fun and viable, and that has come at the cost of older specs feeling lacking, but give it time. There have already been frequent changes, so I expect things will calm down shortly.

I r8 your click b8 title at 8/8 m8.

Set aside the need to monetize games, especially persistent games like mmos, for a moment. Evaluate pay to win on the concepts of a level playing field alone.

Consider the two scenarios that exist with the expansion:
1. A new profession was added: the revenant. You get the revenant, and the entire revenant including its specialization.
2. Specializations added to existing professions. Essentially an expansion to an otherwise complete character.

For the case of the revenant, assuming the designers have not intentionally created the profession to be more powerful than the others be default, the game is gaining another complete profession to add to the roster. And because the power level is appropriate the addition of the revenant is not a pay to win situation.

For the case of the specialization additions, this can fall into a pay to win situation quite easily. If you don’t have the specialization for your profession you don’t have a compete character and now you are not a level playing field with those that have the specialization. It really comes down to this (again not from a monetization perspective but from designing a fair competition):
- if specializations are too weak to matter then they are needless bloat that only add complexity and potentially trap choices to new players created a barrier to entry
- if specializations are of an appropriate power level then it can creates a two tiered system of complete characters (ie with the specialization choices and options) and those without (an incomplete character).

Note the above only really applies in the context of PvP as its the only part of the game that requires a level playing field to function.

Unfortunately, games as a business is much more complicated I’m sure and there is always going to be the need to monetize players bumping against creating a fair and competitive game.

Photinous.4628:

Why can’t we have this in both unranked and ranked? If you’re going to lock ranked queue, then at least let us have standard models in unranked.

The answer to your question is to follow the money.

This game was originally designed with the end game of ‘Fashion Wars 2’ and that created cash flow via the gem store. Anet was so terrified of letting players use standardized models that they chose to not include the standardized model in ranked for a very long time; they even when so far as to try to tell the masses that ‘we don’t have the tech’ even though transforms have existed in the game since day 1.

Its a weird situation where it takes cash flow to support the game, and while Anet has done a pretty good job of keeping the ‘pay to win’ out of the game, this interaction of selling digital dress up items trumping mechanics and ‘fair play’ in their pvp mode was unfortunate. Further to this, most players didn’t realize that there was an advantage of going with the smallest asuran character model (animations dont line up with hit boxes, much easier to hid cast animations, even difficult at times to determine front from back, etc) until it was too late. If you wanted to gain the same advantage you’d need to reroll a new character entirely, as there is not and won’t ever be an option to change your race (due to interaction with the personal story).

In the end Anet put in a standard character model setting that can be used in Rank and Custom Arenas, but that’s as far as I’m sure we’ll ever see them relent on this issue.

Anet, we need to talk about this relationship we have. I like to soloq, and you loooovveee to dump on soloq players. I can’t help but ask everytime I soloq if I’ve got Stockholm syndrome.

PVP improvement suggestion:
Please keep completely dumping on soloq players and make the matches as terrible as possible until I queue with players so I can dump on other soloq players. I feel for you guys and its high time you take the stick to the tiny PvP community and relentlessly beat us into playing it your way.

The 501-53 win on Kyhlo was against 4 players as the 5th even load in.

Cheers,
One of your players, fans and fecalpheliac. Just keep on dumping on me Anet.

The match making in PvP in this game is pretty awful for a couple of reasons including:
- incredibly small population to create teams from
- doesn’t work very well with soloq players in the same pool with semi and full pre-made teams coordinating in voice comms
- not all classes are even remotely close to similar value/contribution (i.e. makes class mixing/diversity even more important as some classes are just straight up better than others). There was a time when the pvp class design was ‘holes in roles’ so that not any one class could do it all well and hence needed to work with the team to cover their weaknesses, but this philosophy seems to have been tossed aside.

To avoid the match making affecting you too much I suggest playing a class that doesn’t require coordination or team work to be effective. Hint: It’s d/d ele.

I’m pretty sure its not considering duplicate classes per team right now, so strap in for a night of garbage soloq folks!
http://i.imgur.com/z3WQEXj.jpg

We’ll I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news: Evan Lesh hasn’t ‘randomly selected you’ to look up your games and then publicly shame you for any exaggeration and then disappear and let the posters continue to shame you for exaggerating your loses as well. So that’s nice, right? On the flip side here though, if you are telling the truth about all too common poor experience pvp offers to soloq’ers then no dev will acknowledge or respond here.

Now the bad news: Anet it seems has taken the stance of by making things feel unfair and hence frustrating for those that want to soloq, they hope that you’ll take it upon yourself to team up with others to ‘level the playing field’ with your own premade (or semi-premade). In fact the soloq situation is very reminiscent of players using the smallest asuran character model to gain an advantage as it hides animations and also makes use of the miss-match between spell animations and area of effect zones and the actual hit range. It’s sort of a long story, but the gist of it that Anet chose to go on and on about not having the tech and that there was in fact no advantage or even disregard/deny a mis-match of animation and hit detection which left it up to each individual player to take it upon themselves and go and reroll the smallest asuran character model to ‘level the playing field’ for themself.

So with no response from Anet forthcoming anytime soon, its once again in your hands as a player to decide what you want to do. You can either:
-continue to soloq and will likely get matched against partial premades very often and occaisionally complete premades and will have a much larger chance of losing as its not a fair competition that in a game that is largely dependent on teamwork, map awareness and coordination that one team has players in comms and one team does not
- you can get at least one other player to queue with which can make a large difference in your matches and potentially let you farm other entire soloq teams
- come to realize that you’re here to play a game and if having a fair contest means that you have to find other players in your time zone and skill range just so you can queue with them when you get off work/school for a bit so you aren’t at a disadvantage to other pre and semi-premades, well then maybe PvP in this game isn’t really worth your time

So either play how you’d want (and unfortunately Anet has made it so that will often put you at a disadvantage in what’s supposed to be a fair and competitive contest of skill), or be more competitive and do what’s necessary to give yourself the best opportunity to win, or just walk away from PvP or play more casually until Anet makes some changes (unbelievably unlikely at this point and from what we’ve seen for the system going forward unfortunately).

Best of luck to you.

SlimChance.6593:

I’m sorry, but Daze does NOT allow the use of stun breakers. That’s why there are limits on the length of a daze.

Why can I grab Signet of Domination with a 3 second stun. Add Sigil of Paralyzation to increase that ~4 seconds, but the biggest Daze I can get is ~1.5 seconds?

Its because Daze prevents skill use. ALL skill use.

o.0

Go and test it out for yourself: you can stun break a daze.

Easiest way would be to find and aggro a moa and let it hit you with its 2s daze breath attack and try to use a stun break.

SlimChance.6593:

Remember that Daze prevents ALL skills from being used AND it does NOT STACK!. It’s different from other control effects like stun, knockdowns, fears, etc. Those control effects still allow the use of stun breakers.

Any hard CC can be stun broken. This includes not only daze, but you can even stun break out of the animation of being pulled, pushed, sunk, etc etc.

It’s a softer hard CC next to stun as it locks the target out of using their skills (aside from stun breaks and instant casts) but still allows them to move where as stun locks them out of skills and movement.

Alpha.1308:

Rainbow Eyelids.8461:

thats kittening stupid. its already not strong enough why make it not stack.

pfffffffahahahahaha
ahahahaha
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

however i do agree that heavily investing in the duration should actually apply it in full
but it’s no where near “not strong enough” with on-interrupt traits and the 5s cooldown on an instant daze
it’s like being a guild wars 1 Psychic Distraction mesmer all over again

The +daze duration is adding fractions of a second to the duration of those durations…

Confounding Suggestions is clunky for a couple of reasons:
- true to Anet form its RNG so you can’t chain it into a burst reliably as you don’t know if your going to stick them in place with the stun or they will still be able to dodge roll if only dazed
- doesn’t play well with chain dazing with Diversion or random procs from chaos storm as the daze and stun overwrite each other
- the duration bonus is laughably small and mesmers dont have any long duration daze skills to make a noticeable difference in the target daze duration (hence the OP asking if they even stack with Mes runes)

As for the runes, their are other much stronger choices that provide you with more stats and more reliable/powerful effects.

FYI – not all mesmer interrupt skills are dazes…

It might be similar to the napalm specialist trait works on engi: the +33% burn duration does apply and stack with other burn duration trait/sigils/runes, but it doesn’t update the mouse-over condi duration tool tip on the hero panel.

You’ll need to record and count frames to verify if they stack or not.

Photinous.4628:

Honestly, how do mesmers survive in pug matches when there is an opposing good thief? Of course no pug team will peel for the mesmer. I feel like any time there is a good thief around, the game is basically a 5v4 since it only takes seconds for a thief to kill me. Maybe it’s a l2p issue, but please help me out if it is.

There is a lot of good resources out there on the interwebs that can help you to not only improve on mesmer in pvp, but you overall pvp skill. Unfortunately, you aren’t going to get much in the way of good advice on mesmer on this forum as its been over-run by a couple of very vocal players that are going to upsell you over and over on condi shatter, pu builds, and lockdown. While these builds do have their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, overall they are not the best fit for pvp at this time. Perhaps, in the future those builds may find their place or even become dominate, but until then you are best to stick with the strongest build currently (goes for any class you play) to remove that hurdle from the equation.

Start here for builds: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
- not only for your build, but look up others that you are going to be fighting against to get a brief overview of your opponents strengths and weaknesses as well
- also note that their are two types of thieves you will be facing: predominantly d/p which packs big burst damage, and the s/d thief which applies sustained pressure

Watch and seek to emulate the best players
- Helseth streams pretty steady. Check him out here: http://www.twitch.tv/thelordhelseth
- not only will you see how he mechanically plays (he talks the entire time about what skill he’s dodging, what cd’s he’s baiting or baited, how he’s gonna burst this etc etc) but also how he strategically plays. To be effective as a roamer you want to be at the right place at the right time, so watch what fights he engages and which he bails out of, which fights he +1s, where does he position in team fights etc etc. There is lots to to learn from watching his stream. It’s also very applicable to your situation as Helseth predominantly does soloq.
- Another option is SupCutie http://www.twitch.tv/hansawesome (plays thief and mes)

Up your mechanics game
- the two best ways to do this are
a) to play loads of games on mesmer on a single build as well as duel against specific classes over and over until you learn what their common skill rotations are, get a rough feel for their cooldowns, what animation/tells to look for, what their weaknesses and strengths are. If you are going to duel someone to improve against that class, preferentially find someone who you can get in comms and talk with so you can quickly learn from you mistakes and get feedback/tips AND find the best person on that class you can find who will duel you.
b) multi-class and log time on the class and build you are having trouble facing. If you are struggling against a d/p thief log some hours in pvp on one. learn the skils, the cooldowns, when you are weak or what you are weak against, so when you face this build again on your mesmer you want to try to engage on terms where your mesmer has the best chance for success. Success may be surprise bursting from stealth on the thief, using your teams AoE spray to peel for yourself, use of terrain that cannot be blinked to buy time for your cds and/or kite, etc.

Some good resources to check out as a start:
Good pvp guides and general info – http://qqmore.net/
Helseth’s guide to kiting – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkkgL1cPJYM
Backpack’s guides to pvp on his youtube channel
- Beginner tutorial – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaGUfkL5kWw
- How to teamfight – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z-k9OMpJOY
- Rotations – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPb2jY19oU
SupCutie’s pvp shatter guide (old but still pretty good info) – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Supcutie-s-Comprehensive-PvP-Shatter-Guide/first

In close, again I want to reiterate, you are best to head elsewhere to educate yourself when it comes to mesmer pvp play. I strongly recommend checking out good players actually playing pvp. These forums are not a good place to get tips or advice related to mesmer pvp play unfortunately.

Good luck to you out there fella. Cya in queue.

I agree with you in that it would work best to have full teams dump into a match up pool with other full teams, but I don’t think the community is even remotely close to the population needed to make that work.

I thought that for the most part soloq worked for what it was: I could hop in game and go against other soloq players and would at least be on a level playing field in terms of group coordination (i.e. both sides only had their individual map awareness, the odd minimal typed msg and/or pings/lines). If I had wanted to experience what soloQ has now become back then, I could always enter into teamQ as a team of one. I believe that in most PvP experiences players want to feel that they are on a level playing field from the start of the game and that unlevel playing field moments generated during the coarse of the match (via rotating mostly) is acceptable. One team starting with even a minor advantage such as a couple of players in communication with one another creates an unlevel playing field right from the get go. It sours the competitive experience as being a test of skill.

For example, consider if the Blue team got a small bonus to damage (or health, or armor or, etc etc) and the Red team did not. Even though it could be an arbitrarily small bonus, it would be an unlevel playing field environment and players would likely, and rightfully so, complain about this unfair buff just for randomly getting assigned to Blue team. Its the same situation here with having players in comms versus all soloQ’ers, but its made much more complex by trying to determine how much of an advantage players in comms provides. I don’t believe this is something that Justin or anyone for that matter has any chance of adequately compensating for in the match making algorithm, so I’m hoping that the PvP team goes back to how the queuing structure used to operate.

As a side note, it seems like it was too convenient for players like me to continue to soloQ and never really feel the need to transition over to teamQ and hence Anet has taken the stance of using the stick and not the carrot with this new system to push players to transition. That’s to say: if I don’t enjoy being at a disadvantage that is intrinsic to soloQ’ing in the same pool as partied up players, then the onus is on me as a player to also queue with as a party (in comms). In my opinion this is a poor basis for the designers to take as they are in essence wanting me to get mad enough to make a team? It’s a bit like the asuran thing all over again: you are mad at your opponent having a slight to moderate advantage by playing the smallest sized asuran making it difficult to see animations? Well our designer hands are tied (even though they were not). We can’t do anything for you and the onus is on you as a player to reroll and also make the smallest size asuran to level out the playing field.

Anyway, to each their own. gl out their Sorel; maybe see you in queue if you hail from NA.

I’d like to be able to soloQ again and meet other soloQ’ers. I don’t think that I’m alone here in that running up against premades or semi-premades isn’t really that fun. Even a couple in comms is a significant advantage. I don’t think any algorithm adjustments can be adequate to compensate for the ‘coordination factor’ of a party in comms.

Is there going to be any love for us soloQ’ers or is it a suck it up or move on situation?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Right now you can already use Stolen > Steal > Stolen with infiltrators signet and in some cases you don’t even need the signet and can still do it.

Correct, but no one does this because it isn’t worth the price of using infiltrators sig. With the changes coming, we will likely see thieves opening with the steal skill as well as they dont have to burn a stunbreak and passive ini regen to gain the benefit of doing so. Thieves don’t need more love in when it comes to fight opening burst+CC potential.

If you can hold out, I suggest waiting to at least see how stats are going to change in the upcoming patch.

Keep in mind:
- stats are being removed from trait lines and perhaps pushed into gear
- ascended crafting, specifically jewel crafting, will likely open the door better options for max-min and stat tuning
- Anet seems to have found a work around the all zerk or gtfo meta in pve: upscaled pve mobs (mechanically it reduces your chance to crit) with high armor. Combine this with the upcoming changes to conditions (higher stacks, and stacking versus duration extension – examples we’ve seen so far include poison and burning stacks) and conditions or hybrid power-condi like sinister will likely be a thing.
-related to the above point, Anet is going to be adding xbox achievements to encourage players to grind fractals as well as other beaten to death content add masteries for fractals; perhaps there may be other changes as well. Anet supposedly hired a raid designer back in the fall of 2014. I suspect that they were to support the HoT expansion content and likely dungeons and fractals will remain kicked to the curb and forgotten, but time will tell.
- ascended armor’s value is the infusion slot and the extra 100 base armor overall – the stat point boost is very very small when compared to exotic armor

HoT is likely coming in the fall of this year based on what NCSoft is telling investors, so if you can hold out that long it may end up saving you a fair bit of gold or $$ if you are a credit card hero.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Its really not that big of a deal. Just a quality change and barely a buff. It should’ve already been like this IMO.

Man, when thieves actually get some true buffs people are going to be flipping kittens across the world. Poor kittens.

Part of the issue here is in that steal is an instant cast. So now some of the steals are made better as you can pre-cast them use with steal. Anet will need to dial back the potency of the steal skills to account for them being practically being guaranteed to connect. I’m incredibly skeptical of Anet getting this right because they’re in a position where steal skill+steal+steal skill chaining (possibly with double use of the stolen skill w/ no mention of cd timers as of yet…) could be incredibly strong and if they make the stolen skill weaks to account for that, then using it without chaining will likely be very very weak.

Consider the necro steal for a moment it would be in an ideal case 2 casts of up to 600 range AoE fear, steal, 2 casts of AoE fear. In an ideal case you could fear a necro for up to 12s. So will Anet not be using any CC on pvp stolen skills then know that a thief could get up to 4 uses? Doesn’t leave much room to work for the balance team – and its due to them setting up the mechanics to have such an extreme best case usage scenario and in the case of the thief steal even without the double use trait its very very strong.

To those that are defending this as ‘its a quality of life thing; now the thief can see their steal timer’, I ask why you aren’t up in arms that exactly zero other cycled skills aren’t receiving the same quality of life change? You are cool that portal will not be seeing the same love and requires you to keep track of the cd (and estimate the skill range as a bonus)? This change on thief isn’t about quality of life, its about Anet wanting players to use the stolen skills more and not realizing that the reason thieves dump the stolen skill so often is NOT that the stolen skills in pvp are weak/bad, but that steal is already an incredibly strong with a ton trait support in useful trait lines (instant cast gap closer, poison, heals, strips boons with stab priority, buffs thief with might fury swiftness and vigor, and dazes).

In general, thief is already getting some very good buffs if you look at the trait changes for them. Aside from the feline grace change thief is looking like its going to be an ever stronger one man wrecking crew that it already is.

witcher.3197:

Lucky.9421:

I was using this one but I am wondering if it is up to date/good.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Condi_Shatter

Speaking as one of the admins of the PvP section I’m extremely unhappy about that build passing trial. It is utter garbage, completely useless, but official forum people reallied and flooded it with positive votes. This is one of the reasons why build testing is on a halt now until a better system is in place. It’s the only build out of the ~40 for conquest I can’t vouch for at all.

Mesmer is a hard class, for beginners I’d recommend the clone death one but this won’t really teach you how to play mesmer. Maybe you’re better off playing power shatter from the very beginning – won’t be easy and will take some practice but it’s worth it

QFT

Unfortunately you’re input isn’t really going to be accepted or welcomed on this board. This board is the land where rationalizing and up selling mostly trash and mediocre at best builds and play reign supreme here.

At least OP has put a bit of time in on warrior and will be suspicious of how effective a condi shatter mesmer would be in the current scene. Go with your gut OP: condi mes is garbage.

okay, now back to our regular posts on amazing tales of interrupts and torment stacking.

I agree with OP here, this skill should be doing more damage and also have a trait that provides an untelegraphed proc to it as well. I’m thinking something fun with zero counter play; something like Chill of Death.

TBH power ranger needs to be in pvp as its too difficult for new players to do this type of damage in melee range where its dangerous. No sense getting in close to land that backstab when you can do it safely from orbit. Keep pew pew my friends.