Guild Wars 2

Carighan.6758:

The one thing I want changed with Scepter is that the auto-attack chain should not have a projectile. I should do the same swinging animation, but it should impact instantly (also producing no trail, so as to not give my position away).

In other words, a bit like Scepter for Necro works in that regard.

Well, it’d also work like the Guardian’s one, continue firing even when the first one hasn’t hit yet. But I somehow think, it doesn’t work with chains. And it’d probably be awkward with the third chain.

I’d say the current version might work, too. Just further increase the projectiles speed a bit and make it a projectile finisher (20%). Same with staff.

I suppose necros scepter is not reflectable, which impacts it’s effects quite a bit.

@Topic
Well, I’d like to see a small torment with the second hit of scepter chain, probably 3s. Adding it to Scepter #2-1 is just a bad idea. It requires an attack and close range. And close range torment is pointless anyways. Maybe add 2~3 stacks torment to scepters #2-2 as well ? So 5 stacks when blocked, 2~3 stacks when not blocked.

And I wouldn’t like confusion on scepter #3 replaced with torment either. Even if confusion sucks in PvE (seriously, buff it by 400%), it’s a core design of our class. But I think confusion and torment match very well. If you’re confused, you do nothing and run away, if you’re tormented you jump to your target, immobilize it and bash like hell. If you have both, you either stand around like a sitting duck, or you’ll get a penalty. So dractically lower scepter #3’s direct damage and add 1 stack of torment each hit (just like confusion).

That’s what the ingame’s option “Render Sampling” does …

Penguin.5197:

Nretep.2564:

Seriously … what is the point of an interrupt of you have to publicy announce it 1s before you pull it off?
Do other classes have to wait until they can interrupt ?

Yes they do. Other pulls like magnet pull and magnet bomb have a pretty long cast time.

There a huge difference in “long casttime” and “additional time after casting to do something”. Then they just had to increase Curtains casttime.
The point is that skills like magnet pull and magnet bomb don’t glow a full second before they pull you.

I rather press the button twice than holding it pressed. Keeps you from pressing other buttons during aiming.

And you can always overwrite runes with new ones.

What you want is a separating kit, not a salvage one. And there ain’t such a thing (yet).

As a Mesmer, I hate it.
Scepter Skill 2
for those who don’tknow it, it only inflicts torment on close range. And there, targets won’t follow you. Especially with a weapon which deals more damage in close range.

@OP
The very definition of conditions is that they bypass regular reductions. It’s not just doubt, that they’ll make toughness reduce condition damage, it’s the core of their design.

Since you seem to be focussed on PvP, be happy. The balancing team balances the game in YOUR favor, even if you are the minority. Conditions are fine in PvP. They deal ramped damage, which can be cut with any condition removal. The damage of conditions is pretty comparable with direct damage in PvP environments, no need to change its very core behaviour.

And no, all classes have condition removal, all classes have access to condition reduction foods and all classes can use anti-condition runes. Your problem is that YOU don’t want to put them into your slots because YOU don’t want it. And because YOU don’t focus your damage on conditions, anyone else has to suffer.

In PvE everything is different. Retaliation and confusion is 95% useless. Bleeding, Poison and Burning will NEVER catch up to direct damamge, even with high toughness targets. In fact, all conditions should be increased, especially confusion and retaliation.

what shimmerless said is not wrong, but not right either. Without healing power (exc from trait line) the restorative mantra heals about as much as a healing mantra charge. So assuming you’d constantly cast it (max H/S) it’d boost your heal rate by 50%. Which is quite alot with a 10s CD heal.

But yeah, the trait shines with Mantra of pain, and is like redundant with harmonious mantras (3 charges). Except that three charges leave you a bit more flexibility, but restorative mantras has a shorter rotation.

@OP
I don’t understand why you don’t use the +15% illusion damage when you already use Domination. I don’t understand why you want a direct damage build and go domination 30 instead of dueling 30.

You first need to setup your desires with sense. Basically what you said, but “Damage, Criticals, Effective heal and/or defensive alternative, Reliably high vitality, (not necessary, but wanted) use of clones, Use of GREATSWORD + SWORD/FOCUS” is like you’d say “I want damage, survivability, tankability, healing, soloing, grouping, pve, dungeon, pvp, wvw”.

SORT OUT.

ANY survivability limits your damage. ANY healing ability lowers your damage. ANY healing ability lowers your toughness. You can’t have it all.

@OPs build

• Domination without Empowered illusion (+15% illusion damage) is a wierd power build, let’s say you want to use direct damage and not phantasms
• Harmonious Mantras kinda work with a direct damage build … but no Mantra of pain … wierd

It doesn’t match.

Maybe check my build (see my sig). It’s rather focussed on survivability than damage. High uptime of vigor, always ranged blink in slots, Restorative Mantras with Mantra of Pain, Reflecting Focus usually activated. But for damage you can wear your berserker build (I mixed knight and berserker for toughness). In my trinkets I also used some “unnamed” prefixed with knight-like stats but priority on precision. Precision not only increases damage, but also higher uptime of vigor. Another point of my damage abilities would be +30% damage with phantasms and +8% damage from charged mantras.

Personally I used Deceptive Evasion for a long time, but switched it due to lack of slots. It’s an awesome trait (so awesome, it’ll be nerfed one day), but since I usually don’t shatter, I prefer lower mantra CD (for healing) and more damage from mantra charges. You can use two of those three traits as you like.

If you want to alter my build, the only changeable things would be 10 points from domination and 5 points from inspiration. But since you want more damage, only 5 points from inspiration would be acceptable. They can be fit in chaos 5 or domination 15 (for stats)

As long as there’s Power/ Precision/ Critical Damage, there’ll never be an “overpowered” constellation.

Like minionmancer and illusions, the pet should stay out and damage.

But I’d like to see the four F keys blocked for all classes equally. Imagine a necro going into death shroud after downed …

In PvE I often swap traits on different bosses. Like more reflect or clone-on-dodge on/off.

But I’d be satisfied if at least underwater and land fights were separated. And I suppose different WvW builds wouldn’t be too difficult to implement either.

Make the curtain 400% higher and lower the inbetween CD to 0.6s

As the wiki said, that is unknown to players.

I’ve heard of two different possibilities (ignoring tick based duration stacking):

• Each condition ticks once a second. If the duration is x.9, it ticks x times, ignoring the .9.
• Once any tick based effect on the player starts, it starts a ticker. This ticker affects all tick-based effects. Meaning, you apply kitten bleed and 0.5s later kitten poison. The poison will then tick together with the bleeding at the time of 1s (instead of 1.5s). The ticker itsself continues until every tick-based effect is worn off. So in the example it’ll last 5.5s. During this time, it’ll tick at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, so in this case the poison ticks 0.5s sooner, but keep all the ticks. But due to placing of the timings fractional durations might lose one tick or gain an additional.

So, now for tick-based-duration-stacking effects (poison, burning, regeneration).
No clue here, but the second one of the above makes more sense here. You wouldn’t lose the 0.9s when overwriting the regeneration at time 5.9s.

Like PvE and PvP traits work now, it should be.

• PvE land
• PvE underwater
• PvP land
• PvP underwater
• WvW land
• WvW underwater

any trait and skill setup shouldn’t affect any other. No point in traiting the focus, wells, bows, staff aoes and such underwater.

ElixirGun’s PoisonBreath …

The poison is meant to reduce the targets heal. Better than Torment. And giving close range skills “Torment” is a bad design as well. If you’re close range, other melee characters don’t need to run towards you. If the other one is range, it doesn’t need to move anyways.

But the other point of Fumigate is the condition removal. It’s one of the game’s strongest ally-condition-removal, not a damage skill.

You can’t use the Grandmaster Manual, if you’ve not used the Master Manual.
You can’t use the Master Manual, if you’ve not used the Adept Manual.

Yet, I don’t know about your bug. Tried letting the master reset them (instead buying manuals)?

Yenn.9185:

If this is for PVE, no big deal. If for sPVP, it’s to give player time to dodge, whatnot. Without the 1s recharge mesmer can interupt/control players almost instantaneously.

Seriously … what is the point of an interrupt of you have to publicy announce it 1s before you pull it off?
Do other classes have to wait until they can interrupt ?

zerorogue.9410:

Like said this is mainly a fix for WvW Mesmer’s would instantly pull unsuspecting players off walls and ledges many times to their deaths. A one second timer gives alert players a chance to dodge it.

In the level of pulling into the void is top tier by a mile. Name any other terrestrial skill that can pull a group of enemies instantly. I’m actually surprised they didn’t nerf it further.

Yeah … it’d be wierd if they’d give Mesmers one-stage skills. Even phantasms can be dodge on the cast or after you see them spawning. Just like any other profession …

Why don’t we make Thief glow brightly 1s before they stealth? And please, add this 1s to their activation time.
And if you’re at it, do the same for hundred blades, arrow barrage, all immobilization skills and all knockdown skills.

@OP
10s & +66% —> 16.6s

@defrule
only the tooltip rounds to the nearest quarter

16.6s —> 16 1/2s displayed

@Inculpatus
Protection is not a tickbased one. Regeneration, Bleeding, Poison and such act “each second” (or similar) which is a tick. And there it’s not known (by players) how exactly 6.5s bleedings work.

1. no. balancing wise.
2. dunno
3. what you think is assassins creed. “Realistic” thiefs are those without physical abilities, so they need to trick others and steal their money. No thief flashily robs you and runs up a wall.

TwiceDead.1963:

I just can’t fathom that the UI isn’t customizable! Every MMO I have played has had the option to customize your own UI, moving the sliders, and more importantly moving your skills around… Anet! What’s the deal?

You can’t easily do this with weapon skills. Not due to technical reasons, but progession ones.
ANet wanted us to learn the weapon skills in a specific order. Allowing to swap it, would ruin that purpose.

Yet, I’d also like to see an option to swap the weapon skills (for each weapon) once you learned all skills of all weapons.

Well, illusions got their HP buffed, trait realignment didn’t change anything.
Buff for shatter mesmers, “nerf” for non-shatter ones.

The distinction between “kill anything within 15s” or “kill somesome with exp within 15s” is pretty bad. If there’s something to rally with, you usually don’t need to ressurect them. If there’s nothing (single boss), the skill is useless. If there’re non-exp mobs, you kill them and THEN realize, it was useless, too.

PvP skill. Not advised to use in PvE.

Well,

• +25% CD on illusion → unfortunate, unnecessary
• + uber maxHP → awesome
• GS#3 → good
• Blurred Frenzy → meh
• 5 pts from illusions and 5 pts from chaos into domination (+15% dmg)

Phants come slower, but hit harder and often survive until their first attack. The chance of IC is sad, but the overall patch is somewhat acceptable. No big change for Mesmers, but most classes got buffed instead … we’re used to it.

bump again
new patch, no fix.

Framelimiter @60 does not necessarily prevent tearing like VSync. But most ppl prefer teared apart screen over a few more fps.

I always activate VSync at any game. But since I usually play window mode, it’s force on anyways.

RNJesuz.8905:

atm the priority is something like this:
revive>talk>interact>LOOT>AOELOOT

why is it not:
revive>talk>interact>AOELOOT>LOOT

Well, the “greater than” shows reversed direction. I’ll write the orders reversed (compared to yours).

The previous priority order was:

• Loot → Revive → Interact
  You couldn’t loot the fractals hammer with a dead person on it. ANet also annouced a change of order once and used the one I just said.

The new lost might be:

• Loot → Revive → Interact → AoE Loot
  This feels really, really awkward. So you can’t AoE loot if there was anything near you, even if it’s loot.

So I suggest a version which needs a bit of code (acceptable amount, I think). You’d probably need to add another option into the dropdown called “always try to AoE loot” to preserve the current function and the following:

• Loot (+) → Revive → Interact → AoE Loot

This looks the same, but you’d need to add the AoE looting function into the normal loot function (copy of function or another parameter). So anytime you loot from a corpse close to you, you’ll automatically try to AoE loot. But if there’s no loot close, but a plant, you’ll harvest. If there’s loot on a downed buddy, you’ll (AoE) loot first – like before and currently – and then revive. If there’s no loot near a downed buddy, you’ll revive first – like before and right now. Only if there’s nothing close to you, the AoE loot will search in your far area.

And if you’re at it, use different colors for “loot”/“AoE loot”, “revive” and “any other interact”.

Thanks

They just should increase the duration to 20s. Don’t allow rallying. After duration the player gets downed again. Dunno about the downed penalty. And allow it to b used on NPCs.

Carighan.6758:

Nah my favourite would be to remove the projectile entirely. And all other information as to where I am.

I wave the Scepter (still with the purple glowie on the scepter), enemy is hit (instantly) by an attack which makes purple glass shards fly off from their head.

In essence, it’d be a hitscan weapon. :P

Like Necros Scepter … which got buffed that patch.
Just replace the bleeding (hits #1-1 and #1-2) with 0.75s confusion. And leave third one as it is.

@ANet
Please increase the Retaliation duration to at least 10s, when you disable its refreshing. 5s is not acceptable.

I actually think the change in blurred frenzy is acceptable in terms of balancing. But the increased cooldown wasn’t necessary. Especially since increased increased our illusion skills’ CDs by 25%, too -.-

Automatic recharging would need a completely new system. Like … no manual charging. Remember the Mantra’s CD, add 5+ seconds to it, half the sum and that’d be an passive recharge of one mantra charge. Ofc this would need to be tested throughly. But you’d need to change “all” mantra related traits then, increase the CD between charges, change the complate skillsystem to add this functionaly and add a visual indication for charge timers … lots of work, which might even totally fail in the end.

But to leave the current system as it is (next to somehow give us at least a single step towards “stability while charging” (stability, aegis, defiant, distorsion, dodge, weaponswap … anything)) a single “make single charges rechargable with a reasonable channel and CD” functionality might work.

Ditch the “two charges per cast”, make it “single charge per cast”. 1.5s per charge. Keep the CD of charges (HealingMantraCharge and MoPCharge is another issue). Half the CD of castings. Adding another charge needs to be rightclicked manually (due to lack of controls). And you wouldn’t have to change much. I’d even ditch all my shatter skills to get mantral shortcuts there (and at least get max 3 charges).

Carighan.6758:

I’d really love to nerf some traits or outright change them (too many traits affecting the same few things, really), but in turn increase base power substantially. Would make lowbie Mesmer less painful to play, too.

Unfortunately you can’t do both at the same time (balancing-wise). And you can’t “passively” increase the skills first, too. So the only way while not overpowering the mesmer is to nerf them to ants and then very, very slowly make them to humans again.

you don’t need to spam tab with guardian staff #1. Just face where mobs are and spam #1. But you can also set down swiftness symbol, it damages, too.
Another way are melee weapons or GS #2.

That awkward moment when you have two charges but try to only use one so you get the +4% damage from Empowering Mantras (Dueling XI). And then you’re stuck with the OPs issue. You’re stuck with one charge. If you use it, you’ll lose the +4% damage; if you preserve it, you’ll face a “long” CD soon.

The solution would either to make mantras one charge only (as Carig said) or somehow let us gain the second charge back …

Yeah, ANet said they don’t want to make pure role classes (like tank, healer, supporter, desupporter and such), so they made

Berserker
and
Hybrid

for all classes.

@OP
Warriors.

they’re clunky in PvP; and ANet balances classes for PvP, not PvE.

@Mesmers
they’re far from best. They’re just decent supporters. A PvE group of Mesmers would be worse than one of rangers or engineers.

what Esplen said (and the wiki states) is right.

If you go to SouthsunCove with a lvl2 character, you get like 8 exp per kill. If you use +10 exp food, you still get 8 exp (or rounding up to 9?), not 18.

Just a minor tool-tip issue.

@Interrupt builds
well, the previous leaked notes seemed more favorable. Right now I still think that it’s not worth for a build.

@Protective mantras
the only one which might make it in my build … lol … sry … seriously … give us 400 toughness on any cast or give us aegis/ distorsion. Or allow us to dodge while casting mantras.

@AoE condi removal on shatter
I’d really like to try it. But I have to keep restorative mantras, and then I lack usefulness in the adept master slot. I mean … Get +20% phan HP for reflecting focus ? no.

@Shatters in general
As I see the current trend in mesmers, more than 50% don’t like to shatter at all. Either keep phants for damage, illusions for diversion or other things. Shattering is barely worth the costs. And I’m not different here. It basically makes the F-Keys useless on my mesmers, except for making my illusions go away (in jade maw or CoE abdomination).
Then ANet thought … instead of making shatters more attractive, let’s better nerf any non-shatter build, maybe this will make them more attractive.

@Illusion Celerity
Yes, I always thought it was misplaced there. No other class (?) had one of their main traits in a 5 point position. But well, most of them had it in a 10 point position. Thanks for making mesmers an exception and putting it 20 points further away. I guess I’ll go for 10 in power then. Since … most don’t like shatters.

I’d really like to see an “attractiveness graph” showing which classes’ trait lines is the least used. For mesmer it should be like … 80% of the mesmers don’t go beyond 5pts in illusions and 90% not beyond 0 pts in chaos. Better nerf those 5 pts … oh, already done; then better nerf the remaining 3 lines.

well,

for the 1., try healing mantra. Even untraited it gives you more heal per second.

3. try to initiate fights with illusions. With the GS, I prefer to initiate with long range #2 and then #4.

4. chaos armor sucks in PvE. you even said that mesmers live by not being damaged. CA triggers when being hit.

5. This shouldn’t be used while training your mesmer. You’ll learn to use them later on (80+). Don’t try to force the sword on yourself, if you don’t like it. But be sure to test it once in a while – especially after you’re fully equipped.

6. This is the most important one. !Keep your range! You can try putting blink in your skillslots and teleport away in tight sitations. It’s better than decoy or massInvis.

Carighan.6758:

The fixed signet makes the Phantasmal Defender a free +16,5k HP buff to someone nearby. If you don’t want to use that, fine. But it’s too strong to not use for dungeons in all realistic cases.

free ? it consumes 2/3 of your utility slots …

Carighan.6758:

The new trait notes says “gives Might” not “gives 5 stacks of Might”. Sorry, but it was highly unrealistic after all.

Yeah, they made interrupting a bit more attractive, but I don’t see it as niche build yet … The trait CDs and the lack of interrupt skills don’t make up.

Mungrul.9358:

Nretep, I think you may be wrong on reverting items back to their original skin. I think it may be entirely possible.
My reason for thinking this is that if I’m vendoring stuff and click on the “Sell” tab, the preview icons for transmuted gear in my inventory revert to the original preview icons.
And I have armour sets I’ve transmuted multiple times.

read my posting again … and no I did not edit it (unlike this now …)

Additionally:
Be sure you don’t have any overwriting options in your NV driver.

Astral Projections.7320:

Idk. Would the game have to remember the original items it came from? And what if you transmuted an item more than once? Would you get a chance to select from a list of all the skins you used? Would you also then get access to the previous item’s stats?

Interesting questions

But for the first one, yes. Transmutet items know where the skins come from and where the stats come from. If you have the chatlog activated, you see destroyed items listed by their original name. But the upgradeslot should be overwritten (but known for dungeon armors).

But this wouldn’t work for multiple instances of transmutations, indeed. “Untransmuting” is not just hardly possible, but also pointless and unnecessary. For most items you can preserve the skin by using white items, but this is “unfortunately” not possible with backpieces. The OP will have to live with it, and either overwrite, or get the stats again and hope for an “unsoulbound” item in the future.

You better make an alt for WvW. Running both in the same build will only add defiencies in both. We all hope for teritary builds on a single character (well, more like 6 builds for underwater fights).

My general opinion:
You seem to mix conditions and direct damage too much and should either focus on one weaponset or not get any weapon traits.

• Put 10 points from illusions to domination to get more direct damage from phantasms. +15% damage > -15% recharge. Illusions usually too squishy to rely on their survivability.
• Don’t get Scepter + Pistol traits if you don’t intend to use them 80+% of your playtime. There are wonderful other traits in the same slots.
• You infusions are all mixed. Decide on Power/ Prec or Malice. Prec for damage and bleed, power for damage.
• Are you constantly running around with T6 prec food ?
• Do you need dodge food as mesmer ?

As for your equip, it’s too mixed.

As a mantra-using mesmer,

please allow us to swap active weaponsets while casting. Sure, you may leave the “cancel when skill switched out” in, so you can’t cast a weaponskill and switch the weapon out. But it’s too awkward when using heal, utility or elite skills, especially on design choice of long casting times.

My two cents
Nretep

When I said that “mesmer is weak in PvE”, I was talking about its solo abilities. Like Thief, they’re meant to kill/ disable in PvP games, and those abilities suck in PvE. Interrupt, Confusion, Stunning, TargetBound skills (illusions), Stealth and High Single Dmg Burst abilities show you that they’re rather meant to be used in 1v1 than in PvE.

Mesmers do great in PvE due to party skills, not because themselves. A party with 5 Mesmers surely would be aweful.

That’s why I compared them to Rangers, Necros (, dmg Eles) and Thiefs with almost zero party support – at least the way they’re usually played. Mesmers damage is comparable with those. But compared to those mesmer have high survivability and party support.

[ Edit ]
@Bright
I don’t consider CoF p1 speedruns as “normal gameplay” or even “normal PvE”. It’s something that needs to be removed from GW2.

Ranger is not weak in PvE, nor is warrior.

The weak ones in PvE are Mesmer and Thief. Simply because they’re strong in PvP. Once you buff them for PvE (imagine confusion buff for mesmers), they’d be overpowered in PvP. The developers still fear the distinction of skills/ traits in PvE, WvW and PvP. They try to balance in general and set their limits on PvP. So instead of buffing confusion in PvP and “balancing” it for PvP, they just nerfed it in PvP.

Yes, one of the most desired party constellation is 4 Warrior + 1 Mesmer/ Guardian. That is because Warriors deal most damage and the mesmer can support them (Mainly TimeWarp) or the Guardian buff them and keep them alive. Rangers are good in long range, but melee is always stronger (as it should be).

In most MMORPGs, Thiefs and Rangers are not really party gamers, but loners. But in GW2, rangers are fine. The loners are Necros and Thiefs. And those are the two classes I like the least in my parties. Third least would be (dmg) elementalist. Those three deal average damage with low surviability and about zero party support.

But generally I agree, to “completely” distinct skills and traits in PvE, PvP and WvW and each underwater.

Basically what Esplen said:

• Frame Limiter and/or VSync
• Render Sampling: Native (as you have)
• Shadows one or two steps down from max – it really changes things while still looking good
• LoD Distance: didn’t exactly know what it does (level of detail in distance), but Esplen’s reply seems reasonable
• Reflections: lower them. Want the grass or earth reflect the sun ? I hate this option in most games.
• Depth Blur: off – unnecessary and looking bad.

castlemanic.3198:

Mind (no pun intended) sending me a pm on how to make the mesmer more healer like? i’ve been trying (and failing) to make my mesmer like that.

Inspiration X + Mantra of Pain

castlemanic.3198:

Also no to dedicated healer classes. This game was marketed as not having the holy trinity, dedicated healers are an aspect of the holy trinity. This game was literally made to get away from the holy trinity.

Well, then they should ditch all prefixes and make (even berserker) to celestial – putting points into all stats. Ditch traits’ stat points.

Currently the only pure build is berserker. Even if you set a Guardian, Elementalist, Engineer or Mesmer to heal/ support, they’d still be hybrides. And this is something that shouldn’t be the case. “Be Berserker or hybrid”.

They’d first have to make an item which makes “soulbound” to “accountbound – soulbound on use” or further, than making an item which “untransmutes” AND reverts the bounding.