Guild Wars 2

This depends largely on the server. Hell even from one borderland to the next on the same server you can tell a difference sometimes.

I get far more badges running catapult on defense during peak hours then I do attacking. Still if we have an attack squad roaming I’d much rather be with it then on defense. So it’s not a rewards issue. I could give a crap about rewards. I’m lvl 80 and have the gear I want. The rewards do nothing for me, I’m there for PvP.

That being said I also care about winning. So as much as I enjoy attack squads better then defense. When a keep is in trouble and our commanders call for the attack squad to come help defend, I have no problems answering the call.

Portal goes way beyond Fun unless you only PvE. I don’t ever want to git rid of it for WvW. The strategy it brings to the table is just huge and makes it so much fun for me to play. I’d rather give up TimeWarp then Portal if I had to choose.

Though honestly I don’t think portal needs to be figured into balancing at all. Once they fix the rendering problems then portal is “fixed” and it will still be very useful IMO.

What’s odd and I’ve noticed this against other servers. Is we seem to have one of the stronger day crews. Not to the point that HoD does during night time but our day time crew seems to be dominant more often then not on both T1 and T2 match ups. Peak time we hold our own well(at least we have been this week). If we just had a little bit more of a night crew we could actually give HoD a run for their money. It wouldn’t have to be at the extent that HoD does. Just enough to hold a keep/orb and a tower or two. Enough to keep HoD from ticking 600 ppt for several hours so our day crew can go to work with a foot hold and get some points back. Then it would be decided by who was able to bring it the best during peak hours.

Explicit.3489:

Chaos armor is key.

Dont use 4 as soon as you enter combat. Drop a 5, stand in it and hit 2. Free chaos armor. Then use 4 when its down. If you are running Null Field (you should be) your 2 should be up again. Drop the null field and hit 2 again. Chaos armor once more.

Also, stand in your chaos storms.

This.
Chaos Storm should be used defensively not offensively. Meaning don’t use it for an AoE with crap damage. Use it as an AoE Buff that also applies debuffs to enemies inside it. And use combo fields effectively, you should have plenty to keep Chaos Armor up most of the time.
Staff turns mesmers into tanks.

Creslin.1758:

Whiskyjumper.6190:

Creslin.1758

Agree.
If you play a mesmer well, you seriously feel like Neo when you are fighting. I was doing WvW yesterday, my team smaller fighting against a big zerg and it was awesome.
I got in range of the zerg, popped iZerker, mirror blade, switched to 1Hsword, popped iWarden, feedback the zerg. Then I dodge rolled in which spawned a clone, iLeap and swap, blurred frenzy, evade, mind wrack, , get rooted blink away, zerg on me so I pop mirror image, evade and immediately pop distortion. Got three seconds invuln from that and got away scot free.
No other class I have played has that awesome feeling where you can just run into a zerg like the matrix do a ton of damage and get out before they knew what hit them…maybe thief can, but I don’t think they would have the style that mesmer has.

Man you sure make it sound fun. I wish that I could pull off half of that. I love the Mesmer class. I think it’s my favorite, but I can’t play it very well. I keep finding myself thinking about quitting it but I really want to get good at it. I’m only around lvl 20 but I die rather quickly.

Well it took me until like level 70 to get there lol. Mesmer is one of the more difficult classes to master, and it really doesn’t come into its own until you get a lot of trait points.

Yeah to be honest I still feel like I am learning new tricks on a regular basis and I have been 80 for a while now and spend all my time in WvW. That is what I love about Mesmer. I consider myself a good Mesmer player and can hold my own very well but I have far from mastered it. There are so many intricate details and tricks that can change a fight it’s amazing.

Sure you can just drop a berserker and duelist and stand back and kite with GS 1 and do ok but that is far from all of the other power you have at your finger tips. All of the utility we provide in WvW is what makes Gw2 so fun for me. I can’t even bring myself to try to lvl and alt because I don’t want to step away from my Mesmer in the borderlands.

I agree Mesmer is kind of slow but I think the trade off for everything else we have is worth it.

If we had the movement speed of a thief combined with everything else we have then we would be ridiculously OP in WvW and you’d see nothing but 200 Mesmers in the borderlands. As is not it’s getting bad enough that everyone thinks they need to roll a Mesmer all of a sudden because of Portal. The good thing is 75% of those people won’t be able to figure out how to play the class well enough to level so they will switch back to their other mains quickly.

As far as the Mesmer Focus off hand being the only thing people run with in WvW. Well that’s not just because of the speed buff. I run Centaur ruins(IMO a must have for Mesmers in WvW) so I don’t need the focus for speed. I still use is 90% of the time because everything else it does. Unless you are fighting 1v1 against another memser there is no other off hand to use in WvW.

Pull people off walls, interrupt people trying to finish a downed foe, interrupt people in general. Pull people off bridge, Trait for focus reflect, drop iWarden on siege or downed players. Focus #4 is probably my most used ability in WvW and I never need it for speed.

So from a WvW perspective, I have to give up something for my speed. The trade off is worth it IMO. If I didn’t have to give something up I’d be way OP and just get nerfed more then we are already going to.

Early on Mesmer can be kind of tough. I have a few other class that I’ve leveled to 20ish that were easier to start out. The only character I have past 20 is Mesmer which is lvl 80.

The great thing about Mesmer is there are a ton of options for builds. They all have different strengths ans weakness. Some aren’t great for solo PvE but can excel with a group. Some are much better for solo PvE. That goes for weapons too.

IMO the best solo PvE weapon you can use is Staff. Great survivability once you learn how to use combo fields to your advantage. Fairly decent DPS with some AoE potential for large pulls. Leveling up I was doing lvl 70-80 zones at lvl 64 to level faster and I was solo. I wasn’t have any problems. I could take on big groups of mobs with constant spawns, never letting me out of combat and have no problems.

Now at lvl 80 I can still do that easily in magic find gear(rares, not exotic, rares are dirt cheap). My WvW spec revolves around GS/Sword+Pistol. Using that same weapon loadout in PvE I can still do big groups but have to smarter about kiting and there is more risk. If I swap to a staff I can take on constant spawning groups with multiple veterans and never worry about death.

TL:DR – Can they PvE well? Yes very well, but you have to learn the ins and outs or you will get owned. If you don’t take the time to learn the class then you will rocked hard and post bitter BS on the forums like the poster above me. If you are like him and want an easy class that you can spam one button and never have to use any thought. Then don’t choose Mesmer. It’s not for everyone and that is another thing that is great about it. So many people that don’t know how to play them so we are rare.

Edit: Voodoo Tina ninja’d me. The person above I was speaking about is Sabbathius.

I don’t think you understand how portal works.

The Staff # 2 clones also stack conditions so they do dmg in a way.

SuburbanLion.8095:

According to a red post in the WvW forum, Portal is getting a nerf soon:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvsW-is-unplayable-because-of-mesmer-portal-abuse

Too bad. It’s kind of fun to back-door an army into a tower if the opposing team doesn’t bother clear the place out.

Interesting. I personally would like more clarity on the red post though.

When they say “Basically we like that Portal has this power, but it shouldn’t be able to bypass walls, etc.” I wonder what they mean by bypass walls because that can be taken two different ways.

Some people report that Mesmers are able to exploit by dropping a portal in a location to gain access to somewhere they didn’t already have access. So for example I stand outside a call and drop a portal so that it ports me to the top of the wall even though i was never there in the first place to create an entrance. I have never found a way to do this but I haven’t really tried either so it maybe possible.

The other way of reading that is placing a port on one side of a wall. Running around to the other side and then porting people “through” the wall. Example would be taking a keep. Knocking down the door, mesmer gets in. Defenders put the door back up. Mesmer drops a portal on one side of wall. Jumps down off the other and ports everyone in even though the door is now back up.

The first one makes sense to fix if that is what they are talking about. The second is strategy IMO and I hope they don’t “fix” it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a Mesmer and use Portal tactically a lot but I love that aspect of WvW and the added tactics it brings to WvW and keep defense.

It can be easily defended by AoE’ing the heck out of the very obvious portal on the ground and I’ve seen it used to both marvelous advantage and epic disaster. It’s not an immediate iWin button for a sieging offense if they don’t use it effectively it can be a good way to get your whole force slaughtered.

forice.3165:

Orikx.9671:

I do very little sPvP so I don’t know how much you have to do to get to rank 15 but I imaging it’s a fare share. So for the life of me I can’t figure out how you have PvP’d that much and still don’t know how to tell the Mesmer apart from the clones.

I do all my PvP in WvW where I sometimes face Multiple Mesmers and have no problem spotting the real Mesmer in the group.

Maybe it’s because I play one so I understand the mechanics. But as soon as they use anyone of their tricks I know exactly where to look them and have them targeted again and call target from my group mates. Try playing one for a little bit to get used to the mechanics maybe?

If you a part of a tourney party you should be used to learning how to spot the other classes mechanic and knowing how to counter them. It’s the same as learning to counter someones burst moves.

hey. everyone in my group was pretty strong and experienced and high rank. but still they complain about mesmer. they talk like mesmer is nightmare.
i think you never seen that they use stealth or they teleport back or they don’t move (or they keep running away and coming back)? i see many mesmers that dont move with many clones. they know how to use clones perfectly. it is overpowered skill in spvp. you can’t know which one is real. i played necromancer for almost 2 weeks without sleep. everyone complains about mesmer clones. they are too annoying. and when you fight against two mesmer, you can’t really know which one is real because they spawn many illusions and use stealth and teleport back and attack at once. you can see phantasms. but clones look same like real one. if real pro gamer uses this, you can’t even imagine how unfair things will happen.

it is not a trick because it looks exactly same like real one. you learn nothing from it because it is not a trick. they don’t use only clones. they move and run and use stealth or blink.

also i think blink is OP. you can run away perfectly. it is not a trick. it is overpowered skill. mesmer has many teleport skills. and you can spawn a clone and teleport to back. and he uses stealth or something. even if you know which one is real, you must fight against many illusions. it is not simple and easy like your opinion. it is impossible to know which one is real in fighting. he uses blink or stealth or something. and suddenly, i lose the real target(if you do ctrl+click on target, you can see the red thing. i mean the red thing is just gone.).

i think i found the reason why mesmer clones are OP.
red thing(ctrl+click) is gone when mesmer uses some skills or run away. and he comes back. i dont know which one is real.

Well then to be quiet honest. Not to sound rude but this is a L2P issue. If your entire group is having this problem then take the time to learn how to tell the real mesmer rather then sitting in your TS and whining about how they are OP.

As I said. I have 0 problem telling which is the real Mesmer when facing another Mesmer. Some are better then others at diversion but once you learn the mechanics of the different abilities you know where they are going to end up. Clones do little dmg and die in 1 shot to almost anything, it’s the Phantasms that do dmg and they are easy to spot. You mention Blink, blink doesn’t even leave a clone behind so if you have any awareness at all it’s easy to tell where they blinked to.

You honestly think I have never faced a Mesmer that has used Decoy or blink? What do you think is more likely, that I have never faced a Mesmer that has any clue how to use even the most basic of skills like decoy or that you have failed to take the time to learn your ooponet and instead came here to whine about it?

Yep that is exactly right.

As far as acquiring gear from WvW. If you are talking getting the exotics that you purchase with Honor badges. Well it takes a long time to gear out that way. You do get gear drops though that are level appropriate while in WvW. At 80 I just went and bought a full set of rares before I started working on exotics. A full set of rares cost like 2 gold, it was pretty cheap.

I purpose I get a pause button. I will bind the hotkey to the start button on my Nintendo game controller that I use to play the game.

Oh and don’t listen to all the tools that will say crap like no one should enter WvW until they are lvl 80. Those are generally the same tools that have a a ton of excuses for why they are getting beat all the time.

I run with assault squads frequently and we will sometimes have 1 or 2 people in their 30’s and we don’t have a problem. I’ll take a smart lvl 30 getting upscaled to lvl 80 then a stupid lvl 80 in full exotic gear any day.

To be honest I didn’t pay much attention to my stats when I entered WvW at lower lvls. So i can’t tell you exactly how much of a difference it would make. I would imagine very minimal though if your only upgrade is from a lvl 20 blue to a lvl 20 green. Even at lvl 80 the net difference is only about 10 total points(between a gree lvl 80 and blue lvl 80), something like 2-4 on each stat.

I do remember going into WvW when I was around lvl 50 with Power/Vit gear on and my HP was higher then when I went into the borderlands at lvl 80 with no Vit gear on so it takes your gear stats into account somehow.

Honestly I wouldn’t worry to much about gear though. I did a lot of WvW before lvl 30 and never felt like I was to weak to kill anyone.

I do very little sPvP so I don’t know how much you have to do to get to rank 15 but I imaging it’s a fare share. So for the life of me I can’t figure out how you have PvP’d that much and still don’t know how to tell the Mesmer apart from the clones.

I do all my PvP in WvW where I sometimes face Multiple Mesmers and have no problem spotting the real Mesmer in the group.

Maybe it’s because I play one so I understand the mechanics. But as soon as they use anyone of their tricks I know exactly where to look them and have them targeted again and call target from my group mates. Try playing one for a little bit to get used to the mechanics maybe?

If you a part of a tourney party you should be used to learning how to spot the other classes mechanic and knowing how to counter them. It’s the same as learning to counter someones burst moves.

Yeah I don’t think you can hit the keep lord of Garrison from there because he is in that big room.

I actually meant Tower Lord or whatever they are called at Cliffside because you can hit him easily with a treb from the cliff. I’ve seen him hit just never payed any attention to what happened after you hit him.

fractalKinesis.8569:

It does kind of suck that the home team can bomb both towers and Bay’s walls from their own safety net. However, there is a counter: effective siege placement, and hoping the guy on those trebs is just bad at games.

We had a hard time taking Cliffside tower last night, because there were two trebs, two catapults, and a bunch of dudes up there to man them. When we finally took it, I built my own trebuchet and blew them all away. Why? because the dudes on the other side were completely oblivious to my twenty-foot tall wooden monstrosity, and were busy trying to bomb people at the tower door.

GW2 was touted for its reliance on tactics and positioning. If someone is using a lazy tactic like the cliff trebs, use a better one.

Yeah I’m personally kind of on the fence about this tactic for the exact reasons you mentioned. The counter is using Siege to take it out. However since it’s so high up you have to be extremely close with your own siege to destroy it I think. Which basically means putting siege up at Cliff side. Anyone with have a brain should be able to destroy your build site long before you even get a chance to build the treb to counter it so it still gives the home team a huge advantage on a map where they already have the advantage of having a center spawn and basically their own supply camp up north.

Just out of curiosity does anyone know what happens if you hit the keep lord with the treb from there? Can you actually kill the keep lord w/o even having someone inside the keep or does there have to be someone in his room?

@Osiath.4823
I think you are confused about where blink is talking about. You seem to think he is talking about putting trebs in Garrison and using it to attack things. He is talking about putting trebs on the edge of Citadel just outside the Invulnerable area and using them to attack garrison. It basically makes it near impossible for anyone except the home team to defend the outer walls of Garison because they will constantly be taking down.

This has nothing to do with the home team getting spawned camped. I think the people using this argument are confused about how the borderlands maps are laid out.

Enemy borderlands you have a corner spawn point, you are invulnerable here, that you can be pushed back to and own 0 keeps.
Home borderlands you have the center big citadel, you are invulnerable here, that is worth 0 points but allows you easier access to all sides of the map. Making it easier to mobilize troops. What is happening is the siege is being built on the edge of that center citadel and being used to bomb Garrison which is just down the hill. The siege can’t be built inside an invulnerable area so they build it just outside but it’s on a ledge that attackers can’t get too.

My clones that are a waste allowed me to solo a lvl 74 champion while I was lvl 68 or 69 last night. Clones are fine you just have to know how to use them.

Aero.4829:

Like the trading post going down and every item resetting…?

^^ This happened. Some of the more rare stuff were already starting to go back up this morning but cheaper stuff haven’t gone up much yet.

I haven’t noticed this myself. Though It would be very frustrating to be in the middle of a fight and have a clone spawn, only to one shot a rabbit and then disappear.

It works the opposite in PvP because an enemy can try to finish your clone instead of you. Giving you precious moments to rally, attack or revive. IMO if it is going to work that way for enemies then it should work the same for allies.

Coordination is key, and yes I have been on the receiving end of having my ally revive my clone instead of me.

Well based on your build I would say focus on Power/Crit because you’re heavily spec’d for DPS. However I would argue that your build isn’t going to be great for WvW.

You’re build is based on Phantasms but you don’t have a lot of ways to summon them and the ones you do have are all melee range so they will get destroyed very fast in WvW no matter how much +HP you give them.

Don’t get me wrong both Berserker and Warden can be awesome WvW situations especially for taking down siege but they are going to die fast and applying bleeds when you have no condition dmg and can’t bleed a ram won’t be great.

Personally for WvW I don’t like glass cannon builds. Though we can put out respectable DPS our strength in WvW is our utility and you can’t do that when dead. Plus I tend to like to run in a small skirmish force and having lots of toughness/vit can help you survive being greatly outnumbered until backup can arrive.

In large battles if you get caught out of position tough/vit combined with smart use of decoy, blink, temporal curtain can get you to safety so you can continue to provide pressure rather then get downed and wait for a revive or run back. A person with 2K tough will not die just as fast as a glass cannon in a zerg. I’m currently only lvl 56 and I’ve survived things because of tough/Vit that there is no way I should have so I can just imagine how much tougher I will be when I have access to lvl 80 gear stats. Thats time that I was able to draw attention away from my team from getting killed and continue to apply DPS. A dead Mesmer provides 0 DPS.

A lot depends on what you are wanting to do. If you plan to only run with the zerg then you can get by fine with a glass cannon build. If you plan to skirmish or solo flip control points you want a survival build so you can fight the 3 or 4 guys that beat you to the control point and are attacking it.

Pixie.2740:

I did see some dude were trying to scalping the market.
Think about it, how is it possible a normal player could use up to 40 same type of sigils?
If you are wondering how do I see that data, well, in sell your stuff tab, TP will tell you X ordered by Y buyer.

I think AN should limit buyer buy no more than X amount of same items per order if this item is not crafting material.

You either don’t know what market manipulation is or this is a troll.

Buying 40 of a specific item on a global economy wouldn’t even begin to put a scratch in the economy enough to manipulate anything.

Manipulation on a global economy with a 15% sales tax is near impossible because the amount of capital you would need to move it even short term.

Obviously some items move faster then others but even the rarest of items wouldn’t get moved by buying 40.

Syn.3459:

MONEY SINK

i don’t see why people are always wondering about things like this, they NEED this in place to stop an influx of gold

This.

Games have to have lots of money sicks or the inflation goes crazy and then it’s impossible to buy anything without hundreds or thousands of gold. Repair costs and WP’s is not enough of a money sick unless they made repair costs higher.

When selling things take into account the 15% cost and if it’s not worth it’s a loss then don’t sell it or vendor it.

I make most of my money from playing the Trade Post and there is still tons of profit to be had. If an item isn’t profitable move on. It’s no different then if someone is controlling that item to make it unprofitable for others trying to get in on it.