Guild Wars 2

What I don’t understand is that Deso players dominate spvp but whenever you engage one in 1v1 fighting… they run away and come back with all their friends.

I am getting really tired of chasing Deso players all over the place… last night we were 2 players and we were fighting 3 Deso – 2 thieves and a warrior… I stomped both thieves and then spend 30 minutes chasing a warrior around the supply camp because he refused to fight… so I go and do something more interesting and he rez the two thieves and cap the camp in my absence…. I then bump into them again trying to ninja a tower with a ram… I kill both thieves yet again… and yet again, the warrior goes running about.

And this is not just a one off time…. this happens all the time. It just reinforces my complaint that spvp is about capping shrines and those who actually fight in spvp come last in the ratings. That is why Deso are good at spvp… they avoid fights and concentrate on capping the shrines.

To then try and use spvp as a reason why Deso are good is just pathetic… it actually just demonstrates that Deso can’t fight and won’t fight. Just keep running away. As a solo roamer, Deso are the most boring server to fight against.

yarrr!!!!

If SFR were double teaming Deso with BB… then explain to me how the other night… SFR lost home garrison to Deso because the commander wanted to take BB keep in ebg?

well I suppose according to the statistics we have focused Deso 55% and BB 45%… must be a case of double teaming… can’t deny that 5% extra focus on Deso. Although in fairness when Deso painted the map blue the other night it was because our commander wanted to take BB keep in ebg…. and when a competent commander took over they had no choice but to focus Deso because there was nothing else to focus on.

Gz Ravya… well deserved title – love your raids.

lol at some of the comments… titles like that are not earned in one week of fighting but years.

Here is a video of when Deso were more fun to fight with… at a time when Ravya was closer to the start of his title quest.

Happy times

Crad (FSP)
Stikko (Blacktide)
Rayva (SFR)
Tanked N Spanked (SFR)

Mesmers take one step closer to becoming the monks of GW2:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNAW7dl0npItlqxYNUrNyqxc6eOKKUFWpzI7AA-T1zDABM8EAIUJYDHIghPAB8pB5KlNAcBAwT3AxHAhiPIAYpUqS1fqTDBK7P88BEIAwBw7/m7dP44jP+4jPujP+4jP+4SBwk0I-w

Let’s face it with the exception of wvw… pvp is better in GW1 – you have random/team arenas which is a battle to the death… you have arenas where you cap shrines if that is your thing… you have hall of heroes… you have gvg… you have factions.

spvp is basically a watered down version of factions and by the time GW2 came out people in GW1 already knew that to win you just cap shrines – except in spvp it is literally more beneficial to avoid fighting. Every time I engage in fights or choose to defend a shrine I come bottom of the party in points… every time I spend more time capping than fighting I come top.

That is not pvp… that’s just a mini version of karma train/pvd.

Anet should introduce to GW2 some of the pvp from GW1… give us random arenas, give us gvg, and perhaps even introduce 1v1.

The more this game progresses the more convinced I am that Anet don’t know how to pvp. Even the changes made in WvW make things easier for the pve player. This whole shrine capping bloodlust thing to replace the lakes… when they introduced GW2 to the public one of the selling points was the dynamics of underwater combat that made the fighting space 3d instead of 2d. You had to look above and below you. It was brilliant… difficult at first to get the hang of it but it was new invigorating and it was fun. But Anet has all but eliminated it from pvp areas.

Sorry but you seriously cannot call spvp pvp when the dynamics for winning do not involve fighting your opponent and it is more advantageous to avoid fights.

I am unable to start a new thread and this one seems to be the closest to what I want to say…

OK… I’ve been doing quite a bit of sPvP the last couple of days and for Anet to say that WvW is pve while sPvP is pvp has to be a joke.

The only way to win in sPvP is not to kill players – in fact it is advisable to avoid as many fights as possible… you win by capping shrines… the more time spent fighting means the more time your foe has to cap more shrines than you. You can come out top of your party without engaging in a single fight.

Seriously… this is not pvp

most of the time I get white helmets and spikes from loot… no reward at all.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

Antitoxin Spray

You actually recommended using that heal.

/facepalm

considering the new meta since the patch is condi – with torment and poison being the main forms of condi… absolutely.

Traits

Domination: III Empowered Illusions; X Greatsword Training
Dueling: IV Blade Training; II Phantasmal Fury
Chaos: II Descent into Madness (You can choose something else if you wish but I find that this trait is very useful for the wvw map); VIII Bountiful Interruption; XII Prismatic Understanding

Weapons

Great Sword (+179 power, +128 Precision, +128 Ferocity): sigil 1 superior intelligence; sigil 2 superior torment

Sword (90 power, +64 Precision, +64 Ferocity); sigil superior intelligence
Pistol (90 power, +64 Precision, +64 Ferocity); sigil +30% stun duration

Armor and amulets – full berz
rune: Superior rune of Rage

Additional skills:
Antitoxin Spray
Decoy
Blink
Signet of Domination (this a free skill spot – I like this sigil for the stun and added dmg to torment but signal of inspiration works really well here too)
Mass Invisibility

hholls.3278:

To be fair the amount of terrible players on Sfrs was just laughable…It was like fighting Viz at their prime…… any even numbered fight they were either beaten or ran away

LMAO… this has to be the best troll comment on this thread.

Changing the topic ever so slightly… I was wondering if any Deso guilds would be willing to help me do the dungeon story lines to unlock them for spvp… just it is very difficult to find any pve on SFR… and as Deso is a pve server, I thought one of their guilds might be able to help me.

Which by the way, is why accusing SFR of buying servers is also laughable… the only cash we get is from wvw loot bags… which tbh since viz disappeared means lots of spikes and white helmets from Deso players. I have to admit I thought that pve dungeon/event players would drop better loot.

lol I love the deso qq… Since wednesday BB were closing the gap on deso… but instead of focusing on BB to come 2nd… Deso continued to focus on SFR… then they complain when we bite back. BB in the meanwhile from Thursday focused on Deso instead of SFR… so we didn’t really have to take stuff back from them.

Here is a classic situation from last week…. SFR defending bay against siN and Evil of BB… GoD of Deso comes from behind and attacks us instead of going for Hills which it is closer to their spawn point and owned by BB.

Deso raiders instead of taking BB camps or working the BB border spend hours hanging around our zergs and on SFR bl trying to pick off SFR players who become separated from the zerg whenever we engage siN or Evil.

Sorry, but SFR never double teamed with BB… we were having too much fun fighting siN. Deso lost because they chose to focus on having good fights with SFR instead of focusing on points by attacking BB. When the lead server is 20k+ ahead of you and continues to tick highest or 2nd highest… you are fighting for 2nd place – which means you need to target your rival for 2nd place not the server who has already won the week. Poor tactics and poor strategy for points is what lost it for Deso. Luckily, for Deso there are players who realise this was what happened… so maybe we get to fight you again soon.

oh and by the way… we have nowhere near 50 players on at night. It would be fun if we did. 25 max but most nights it is about 16.

the thing is if you take away both conditions and crit – what does the leave people who don’t play warrior?

Mesmers already had a condi nerf last year… it is becoming very difficult to play a mesmer with a viable build that is not just pure 100% support… we are fast heading in the direction of becoming the monks of GW2.

My builds now rely on runes and sigils to work… without them there is nothing to play with

I mean seriously… I don’t know why warriors are qqing about mesmers… we go down to one hit from a warrior, and two hits from a thief. We are the squishiest profession in the game now – even more squishy than a thief.

I agree I don’t think many will join… I wouldn’t if I was starting again with my current knowledge… I only stick with it because of the investment I have made into the character and I don’t have the time nor inclination to start a new character atm.

On a more brighter note… with a couple of tweaks… my old build is back in business again – So now I am perfectly happy once more. I have a build that works for solo roaming, a new build for zergs, and a new build plus my old one for spvp.

I will still moan about things not doing what they are supposed to and for traits and skills that don’t work properly – I will also continue to moan that the mesmer needs some love. But for the meanwhile I am happy to be doing my favourite part of the game once more – I had horrible visions of perma karma train.

maxinion.8396:

@Nymph: Empowering Mantras gives you bonus per Mantra, not per Mantra charge. The maximum damage you can get is +16% if you’re using all Mantras.

That’s very confusing then because it says ‘Gain increased damage for each readied mantra’

I took the concept of ‘readied’ as meaning charge not equipped mantra. But looking it up on wiki – you are correct. Makes it a pointless addition to my build then… PU would work better for me than an additional 8% damage… I could then place my traits elsewhere to support my build better rather than supporting 2 mantras that take a bit of management.

it is the chance of hitting critical that has changed. You have less chance of letting all that ferocity do its job.

You now have to trade off whether you want to increase your chances of critical with precision or if you want to have a lot of damage with ferocity – assassin armor vs berz armor.

Take my old roaming build from wvw – I used a GS and sword/pistol – I relied on being able to do a lot of damage quickly then dodge out of the way kiting while cool downs expire using my GS and invisibility to keep foe(s) at range… then leap back in with sword and pistol for another fast burst of damage. Attached to my sword was a sigil of torment that activated aoe torment upon critical. With only a 52% chance of achieving critical and then only a 50% chance of torment being activated… it kind of made the sigil of torment (something that was/is quite expensive to purchase) useless – like wise any other sigils that rely on critical being achieved.

Now I’ve managed to get around some of these headaches by using mantras and sigils of intelligence – but I have had to sacrifice other sigils that I had and move them around a bit to make them work. So before my GS had hobbling to stop people running away all the time… now it has sigil of intelligence for 3×100% crit, and I bought some gems to salvage my torment sigil and I place it on my GS instead of my sword. My sword now has the same sigil of intelligence 3×100% crit – so I have 6×100% crit chance from switching my weapons (9s cool down and you only have a limited time to use the crit hits). My pistol still has increased stun because that is its primary function – magic bullet (best way to kill most things).

I am using mantras atm which are difficult but give some awesome damage but I probably could get away with my old build with just the sigil changes… tbh not really given it a try yet. Been too focused on trying out the new traits and coming up with viable builds using them.

To be honest… there are many things I really hate about the patch – like the fact that it destroyed my brilliant build. Things are definitely a lot harder for the mesmer outside of spvp.

I have managed to make some compensations but I’ve had to trade off a lot in order to make them. I now have three viable builds…. the first is a tank which relies on condition and retaliation for damage which makes it very difficult to work out how much damage you are doing in the game. Judging from my loot when I am in or out of a party… I would say that I am not doing enough damage to get any loot when I am out of a party but in a zerg and a party – the build works lovely in terms of survivability and would make commanding as a mesmer a lot more viable than in the past.

My second build is a mantra build – keep 6 stacks at the start of an attack – which gives an added 24% to damage… using two signets of superior intelligence – first weapon switch giving 3x 100% crit hit and then switch back weapons for another 3×100% crit hit. – the damage is insane but then there is 9 second cool down on the crit. and you have to get used to how mantras work in terms of healing which is a pain. Plus you are really glass canon and you’ve had to trade off PU and some of your escape skills for the additional damage. One hit from a warrior and you are toast… two hits from a thief and you are down – so you really need to be on your toes with this build. Not sure whether it is practical or not for WvW – certainly not practical for pve and spvp. Basically, there are better professions out there for roaming and small party skirmishes than the mesmer.

My third build is the basic shatter torment which just owns spvp atm – so much so that I can see the nerf coming soon. The build does not really work in wvw but I’ve yet to test it with proper armor, runes and sigs – because basically we are looking at close to 100g to re-equip and I don’t have that cash just now. Perhaps properly equipped then it might work in wvw small group skirmishes.

What this means… is my game play has been narrowed to zerg fighting in wvw and spvp. A patch that was supposed to widen the range of builds has actually narrowed them and has basically left the mesmer in a very poor state outside of spvp. Sure we can survive but we can’t do much in the way of damage. The only viable build I can see for a pve mesmer is inspiration support – which is something Anet said at the very start it did not want (support only professions). For a wvw mesmer it is a tank with veil, portal and nullfield (the Sacrx definition of a mesmer) – great for karma train and scouting. As I said though, I have yet to try the proper spvp torment build in wvw and have only been able to use an estimation with different runes and sigils.

The biggest pain though is that each of these 3 different builds require their own set of armor, runes, sigils and weapons. It is a complete outfit, trait, and skill change. There is no in between… each is very specific in its function and requires very specific armor and weapon sets to function – in other words sigils and runes are what make the build viable not skills and player skill. Plus you have to remember what the build was each time you switch functionality.

The patch makes a joke of balance

I really do not understand the Anet mentality…

As a mesmer this is what I have found these last couple of days:

spvp – I am like a God… I don’t need any skill whatsoever… I barely need to look at the screen anymore… but it will get nerfed and that will leave me with almost nothing worthwhile left.

wvw – I can now tank – wow – as long as I stay with a zerg and I am in a party that can do damage, I won’t die as long as we are killing people. Great for commanding as a mesmer now. Absolutely sucks if you are not in a party and if you are not in a karma train. Almost zero immediate damage… which means no loot. But RIP solo roaming and there are better professions out there for small group camp capping and skirmishes. On my own or in a small group without the kill ratio of a karma train… I go down in one or two hits even with the tough armor.

pve – same as wvw – must be in a party if you want loot because you can’t produce enough damage before someone else kills the foe. Trouble is… who wants a mesmer in their party who is not really doing anything? At least in pve we can all be Sacrx mesmers – veil, nullfield and portal. The only thing that a mesmer really has to offer for a pve party is inspiration support which I might like to remind Anet… is exactly what you promised you would not do… are mesmers really to become the new monks of pve when most classes can already take care of themselves?

So my question is… does anyone from Anet play a mesmer outside of spvp?

Sure we got a great buff with shatter torment from spvp… but we got hammered in wvw and pve and seriously… with lots of posts like this thread… how long before it gets nerfed? Then what do we have?

this is a no brainer… torment shatter mesmer is easily the best build for spvp – I come out top of my party every time by a long way and just destroy other mesmers not using the same build. It requires zero skill… you just keep making clones and shattering them straight away – I barely need to look at my foes – the closer they are together the better for me. A child could run it and win.

4/4/x/x/6

gvg shouldn’t be happening in wvw proper anymore… go to the obsidian sanctum jumping puzzle and to the left if you follow the passage there is a proper arena where you can do gvg without any bloodlust influence and where people can watch from the sidelines… plus any guild is going to be able to stamp out any solo/small group jp trouble makers.

lol I bet if Anet did allow friendly fire… the pugs would win.

this is going to kill small guilds who pvx… it is going to make guild recruitment much more difficult for guilds that do pvx but have a wvw focus.

It is also going to damage server pride. Some servers are like big guilds in themselves, or contain communities of multiple guilds working together in harmony as one.

If they were going to bring down the walls between NA and EU then I would possibly be more in favour… the separation destroyed my GW1 guild.

It is a bit silly that nothing appears to be getting done about this problem… even a quick note from the forum moderators letting us know that Anet was aware and dealing with the problem would be appreciated.

Today, I twice chased a flying warrior out of a t3 tower. Any GM want to check the footage… it was Cragtop on SFR border land… 2nd April from some time between 14:12 to 14:14:10 – I used the LFG complaint to report him. You should be able to see me trying to build an arrow cart (sylvari mesmer)… then a warrior flies into the lord room. They don’t do anything other than contest the tower… but had I not been there ready to engage… would it have been capped or not?

I sometimes tag up as a mesmer but only for ninja type stuff… in open battles it becomes difficult for people to follow you. It is not impossible but it is a lot more difficult than other classes.

The new changes should produce distortion type builds that should make commanding as a mesmer a lot more viable. At the moment, I act more as an emergency commander should the main commander get downed or dc.

7/10 It is a clever name but I think suited more to an elementalist than an engineer but I can see where you are coming from.

In GW1 my ranger’s name was Nymph of Meliai… I wanted the name to evolve rather than just use the same name… so changed it to Nymeria Meliae – mesmer

The Meliai or Meliae are ancient Greek wood nymphs of the Ash tree.

Why were the Sylvari under-represented in the quest to reclaim LA? Why were we portrayed as the ‘bad guys’ and not represented amongst the ‘good guys’?

On that note… we should’ve been allowed to join Scarlet.

lol… lol… lol

What I would really like to see is Sylvari revenge against the Asuran…

AkiraZero.8514:

Ideally there should be an in game report button for hackers that immediately brings attention to a developer or some kind of in game moderator in order for them to jump right into game and fix it.

Right now even if you get the attention of someone on FB or Twitter your directed to send in a report ticket, which doesn’t solve the problem we are all having to put up with.

This is exactly what I am arguing and campaigning for… but it also needs to allow us to report downed players… at the moment you can’t report dead players.

Anet… then need to take action asap to ban these people using this exploit/hack.

It is not rocket science… its an easy fix for the reporting. They just need to admit that it is happening and be seen to be doing something about it instead of trying to hide it.

I don’t think Anet learned any lessons from last time despite what they said. They should’ve banned transfers one week after announcing the tournament and full month before the tournament started.

Either that or make entering wvw during the tournament dependent on the amount of time a player already spends there… despite mostly being a roamer which means lower ranked than the zerg players, they could even set up the que dependent on what rank a player is… that way those who always play wvw are not punished by being denied access to their game content during the tournament.

I know a lot of EU players on TC.

depends what you want to play but Warrior is the most OP class in wvw

Mesmer/Ele/Warrior + thief

1) SFR
2) Riverside (just because Anet will not disqualify them)
3) JS
4) Viz
5) Elona Reach
6) Kodash
7) Desolation
8) Baruch Bay
9) AR

they should’ve banned people transferring one month before the tournament started.

I think there is room for both the small scale skirmish and that huge zerg fights… I actually like both.

The problem I find is that the servers find it difficult to cope sometimes with the big fights and the whole karma train experience.

There are no servers playing WvW as it is intended to be played… I am not sure how you would fix that in GW2… but my suggestion would be to take WvW and make it into a new game outside of GW lore. Add a gvg similar to GW1 in its placement for GW2 fans but have WvW a completely new game.

Then you could change the dynamics of the game to match historical accurate battle situations. Different design of keeps, weapons, siege, and classes. The theory being that if things were historically accurate to warfare battles, then the dynamics would be reflected in the game play… so you would have the big battles, the big sieges between opposing armies… but you would also have room for the small skirmishes, the scouting, the defense and supply mechanics etc.

Also being a new game, it is more likely that it would then gain more attention from the developers than at present.

There is so much potential for the wvw game dynamic that goes untapped.

I play a mesmer on Seafarer’s Rest… I don’t see as much rubber banding during the times I play (10am-3pm and midnight-5am GMT) – sometimes the commanders tag on the map will bounce about a bit.

There are two problems I notice… myself and others disconnecting – often in the middle of a cap after the foes are dead.

The other issue is skills… sometimes you can be pressing the same skill over and over again until eventually it fires… the casting times stated on skills rarely if ever equate to the actual cast time… related to this, I find that there is often a massive delay on some skills doing what they are supposed to do – so much of a delay that sometimes the effects don’t actually fire and you are left thinking the skill is broken… the two biggest examples of this that stand out for me, are speed boost from chaos storm and the added boons from using veil.

It is incredibly frustrating when you are fighting 1v1 with somebody and the only reason they win is because you are only playing with half a skill bar… keeping in mind that each misfired skill is also wasting time from pressing a skill that actually fires. Or you go to interrupt a warrior and they interrupt you first despite your skills supposedly having faster fire times. I hate losing because of skill problems… I don’t mind losing to skilled players.

There is nothing breaking the rules in my post… it is a normal request not calling anyone cheats by name or accusing any server.

The Inevitable Backlash – Gives you Hell

I try and mix it up for people – a variety of music tastes… although my preference is metal, I actually find Savant pretty good for playing wvw. However, I try and add a few fun songs in there to keep it amusing.

How does Anet perceive WvW?

When it comes to skill balances etc. is it classed as pve or is it classed as pvp?

the 1:1 ratio would be fine… but I as a mesmer, I am actually quite powerful in downstate… I think some other classes are too… and I think Umut is confusing a downstate skill with a full rally.

Also in 1v1 fights, I often make use of the wildlife to rally in fights that I know I have a chance of dieing… when all my skills are on recharge, I start to hit wildlife because I know I can rally from it should I be taken down – the trick is to get wildlife to a point that is easy to finish in downed state without killing them before going down.

Similarly, if I am fighting two or more foes at the same time, I will put someone into down state, get ganked in the process, then kill that person while I am in downstate to rally before finishing off the person/people who ganked me.

I think rallying is a key component of the game and you need to know how to use it rather than qq about it all the time. The wildlife on wvw map is there to be used… I use it for all sorts of things… nothing better than fighting 5+ people solo and using the wolves to help you win. I once had a fight with 2 vs 16, and used the wildlife to rally until we had killed all 16.

Don’t know who they are or what server but tried to make a guild with the same name as ‘The Border Reivers’ and got told it was already in existence – can’t think of a better name for a wvw guild.

from what I hear… teso is no better than wvw – same problems.

I think the biggest problem is that most people don’t know how to play wvw… and many of those who do know, have no desire to play it.

atheria.2837:

I totally disagree.

We need those stations in there… my gosh…

Why? Just move them to the waiting area of spvp if needs must. There is zero point to them being in wvw.

Perhaps replace them with bank and guild bank… that’s what I use them the most for – but there is no need to be crafting inside wvw.

if you shatter using diversion and distortion – then shatter mesmer starts to look quite good with the new changes.

the game has been in need of a rebalance for some time… personally, I don’t think the upcoming changes are going to rebalance the game.

This is what they need to consider

1) Each class must be able to have at least 4 viable (meta) builds – 2 for solo fighting, and 2 for fighting in a zerg – but those who like to stray from the meta should be able to produce other viable builds – in other words, there should be a minimum of 4 viable builds – but they should not be exclusive.

2) Each class must have a nemesis. Every skill must be countered by another skill on another class. No one skill should be immune to a viable counter skill.

3) The max damage of any one class must be able to reduce the max protection of any class by 25%.

Keeping those three rules in mind… should produce a more balanced and fun game.

As predicted… the battle for LA has drove people into WvW home borderlands to use the crafters – being more conveniently situated and easier to access than the pve map.

I admit, I use these crafters when clearing out the loot when my bags are full – but really there is no need for them to be in WvW at all.

What happens is we have a lot of players with no intention of playing WvW taking up valuable spots on the map and preventing WvW players from playing the game as intended.

So please… just remove the crafters from WvW altogether… they are not needed and prevent WvW play.

it was broken… you think I come on here complaining for nothing?
Swap is still broken though.