Guild Wars 2

Teutos.8620:

Great suggestion. Love it. (But I’m not sure if that’s technically possible tho).

It should be, e.g. by applying modified Power Block code to the mantra skill if it isn’t on cooldown already. Then again, I can “fix” Temporal Curtain in pseudo-code, C++, Python or the Starcraft2 Editor in <2min each, so something must be deeply wrong with their code base and/or developer team (not exactly a new revelation though, is it?)

I vote for starting the cooldown when you first use a charge of that particular mantra. Would preserve all the QoL for PvE and rotating between fights in PvP, but softens the edge case of emptying 6 charges of each mantra into a single foe.

ASP.8093:

0. Ignore all the cries about MoR because pure condition builds deserve to have a spec that just wipes the floor with them (and because, let’s be honest, there’s practically no amount of cleansing that will actually nullify all of a good condition build’s output).

And there’s no spec that nullifies the entire output of a direct damage build unless it’s full glass and you count 100-0’ing as “nullification”. Not saying either MoR is OP, but your reasoning is sketchy.

Embolism.8106:

Temporal Curtain – I understand not being able to get Swiftness if you already have it is to prevent people stacking lots and lots of Swiftness, but it makes this skill incredibly clunky especially when using it for travel. Make it grant a unique buff (say Temporal Swiftness) to allies that grants 5s of Swiftness every 5s and lasts for 5s (so 10s of Swiftness total). Running over another (or the same) Curtain would refresh the buff. This would allow it to play nice with existing Swiftness without being abusable.

If they can do that they can make the buff apply 12s of swiftness once (on apply), and prevent itself from being reapplied the same way they currently handle swiftness. Veil can apply a non-boon effect as a “wall”, so they have no excuse.
Heck, in Starcraft2’s editor dummy buffs are the easiest “lazy fix” to just about anything.

“When you cast a glamour”

The initial creation of the glamour creates an AoE pulse which gives the buffs, as indicated by the added “ping” sound and purple shockwave effect.

Embolism.8106:

@Temporal Curtain: fair enough, I was thinking you might be able to stack more than that. Using Temporal with SoI is annoying however and something should be done.

Any arguments against a unique dummy buff apart from the inability to implement such a simple mechanic for 3 years?

Embolism.8106:

Mesmers do have other options for cleansing, not to mention in the current bugged form giving MP an ICD would only reduce the conditions cleansed per channel by 2 if using HM and none at all if not. As for HM’s damage buff, giving MP an ICD would only reduce the number of stacks you can get from MoR by 1. add another MoP and you’re good to go.

Right now MoR+HM alone gives 5 stacks, meaning you aren’t forced to take MoP in the first place if it’s only about burst reflect.

Embolism.8106:

@Temporal Curtain: I would’ve thought that allowing you to stack 5s of Swiftness over and over by stuttering over the Curtain would make it better for overworld travel, that’s the reason I suggested it. Sure you need to stick around the curtain for a few seconds but the Swiftness you get in the end would be much, much longer.

Do you have any idea how annoying that is? Guardian symbol is bad enough having to stand in it, but actively running backwards for a questionable movespeed gain? Even then I doubt getting more than 5-6 stacks is feasible without dodge rolls, meaning you’d have to do this every 25 seconds! Also consider the 5s of effectively standing still vs. the distance loss of only having ~60% swiftness uptime (before boon duration)

ResJudicator.7916:

…and I don’t think mesmer damage is a problem in PvE.

It is, but in the other direction :P Bad overall dps, insane spike against multi-hit projectiles (Lupi 1shot)

Choppy.4183:

Photoloss.4817:

…several valid points…

I’m with you on the scientific rigor, and the value of math when calculating build potential. But scientific rigor doesn’t preclude anecdotal evidence, as your own use of it shows. Not just in regards to The Pledge, but the 1-hour montage as well, which would be, unavoidably, a collection of anecdotal evidence.

Your standard of evidence seems unreasonably high, especially since it appears to be applied in only one direction. We’ve just had a big patch applied in a context where most people agree that (1) the game is difficult to balance across all classes, game modes, and levels within those modes , (2) the devs don’t really have a firm handle on how their game is played across all of those modes, and (3) they lack a test environment in which to evaluate the implications of their changes before they’re released into production (bugs aside).

While I agree a claim that something’s broken, unbalanced, etc. requires more evidence than one person saying so, or a single screen cap, the same standard should be required for claims to the contrary. That the game is balanced, especially after this patch, isn’t the default position here, and this sub-forum is full of evidence being discounted along the lines of predictable confirmation biases.

Requiring someone to painstakingly do a bunch of math, convince other people to test things out, collect hours of video and countless screenshots, etc. just to point out something’s wrong (or isn’t) without being completely dismissed is unreasonable.

Since you seem to misunderstand a bit, my point was that anecdotal evidence does have value, but not to the extent of demanding balance changes without any “hard facts” to back it up.
However, there is a massive chasm between “individual” anecdotes that may provide early clues to imbalances and large-scale statistics. A single thread of the form “this seems a little off, please look into it” is enough, the other half a dozen are a badly written waste of space.

My reasoning behind the high standard for evidence is a very simple empirical metric: developer time. Not changing anything doesn’t require any time investment, if you want anything changed devs will have to work on that instead of fixing bugs, long-standing design issues already known, or implementing new content. Making a change when you aren’t already fairly certain the outcome will be positive has a high chance of wasting even more time.
I am not claiming the game to be balanced, quite on the contrary, but I trust the devs even less with rash pub-talk motivated changes than with clear responses to hard math.

Choppy.4183:

For those of you discounting anecdotal evidence, what other evidence do you think anyone could bring to bear on any question of balance? It’s all that’s available to any of us.

Hard math and scientific rigor. Claims of permastealth or 1-shotting “full bunker” builds can be tested via calculations or controlled experiments. Given a proper overview of an all mesmer team comp you can start devising counters and test those, if they still fall short against equally skilled opponents balance probably is off. By then you should have a 1-hour non-montage video or dozens of screencaps showing you getting stomped, not a single scoreboard where you don’t even show your latest death in the combat log.

Statistics. Ignore any claims of being “unbiased”, but the sheer amount of data holds value in itself. Fact is, you can always draw a straight line through 2 points, even if the correct curve would be a wave or exponential.
To do proper comparisons you need more data points than parameters in your model, which considering the sheer number of skills and skill facts means random forum posts, even by dozens or hundreds of different players, are absolutely meaningless unless they gain additional importance due to e.g. coming from a top-class pro player or testing specific things.

As an example, consider The Pledge. A single anecdote of solo permastealth (with video evidence or something) is enough to warn people that something is wrong. Then you need several minutes of proper testing to find that the trait is applying a disproportionally strong cooldown reduction. All of this can be done by a single player in <30min if they’re dedicated.
Knowing this, however, invalidates gigabytes of game data, even from top pro’s, about the balance of PU and mesmer stealth in general, leaving only the cases where no traited torch was in play.
If no such “unsung hero” arises, that volume of data would still reveal a large disparity in effectiveness between those using traited torch and those who don’t, pointing the devs in the right direction, but only after a lengthy and painstaking analysis.

Hey, 2 of those mesmers have 0 points, less than you even! Mezmer UP, BUFF PLZ!1!

Mikkel.8427:

I think the staff auto is fine… popping 3 staff clones out and AFKing while you wait for Chaos storm to come off cooldown is already our best condition setup (a little hyperbolic, but thats how it feels). I’d perfer they improve our access to conditions across all weapons with some adjustments to our traits and shatters.

Are you talking PvP or PvE? For the latter it still underperforms (and technically 3 iDuelists should be more dps), for the former I suggested only giving significant increases to the mesmer’s autoattack, so you’re locked out of stealth shenanigans, charging mantras and other skill casts while reaping the benefits of such a buff.

I myself would much prefer MtD+CD to get un-nerfed for a while, if only to see how “broken” it can really get. Chaotic Dampening in particular sounds like a really nice design, since it’s easy to reap the maximum benefit in PvE while trying to do so in PvP would quickly get you killed, wasting your primary escape for CDR and following a very predictable rotation. We need more skills like that if they don’t want to implement actual splits between game modes.

Actually, what about staff autoattack? I rarely see any mention of it, but the burning took a major nerf. In particular, if the mesmer AA were buffed while the clone AA remained weaker it could be a substantial boost to PvE staff/condi play without breaking PvP nearly as badly as, say, entirely un-nerfing MtD+CD.

nearlight.3064:

I want the base heal to be nerfed but the scaling with healing power to be massively improved so glass cannon builds in pvp have less sustain, while builds focused for it, such as celestial or what have are still able to heal over 3K with it. Clestial can’t even heal 3k with it now.

Absolutely ruins it for PvE. Just ignore Healing Power until Anet launches a global rework.

Embolism.8106:

Mender’s Purity – Synergises rather too well with Mantra of Recovery, although without Harmonious Mantras it only triggers once (the first cast) per MoR channel… but if that gets fixed, this should have an ICD of 10s.

Bad for PvE, both for cleansing through some annoying pulses and stacking up damage modifiers from HM during burst reflect phases.

Embolism.8106:

Temporal Curtain – I understand not being able to get Swiftness if you already have it is to prevent people stacking lots and lots of Swiftness, but it makes this skill incredibly clunky especially when using it for travel. Reduce the duration of Swiftness from 12s to 5s and let it stack properly. If people want to stutter around in one spot for 5s to get lots of Swiftness, let them.

HECK NO! Completely ruins the skill for open world travel. Just give it a “purple rectangle” dummy buff that lasts 10s and prevents you from receiving further swiftness from curtains.

Also no word on how the entire Chaos line is next to worthless for PvE, Domination is one glorified damage modifier and neither phantasm survival nor shatter received significant updates.

As with all other threads: fix the global power creep FIRST, then start working on builds/traits if the FotM burst even still exists at that point. Start on CS because that’s worthless in PvE/bad in group PvP, then start trading burst vulnerability for continuous application.
Oh, and stop focusing on 1v1, both for mesmer design (Anet) and balance suggestions (everyone else)!

And why not nerf CS instead, which you say is crucial to dealing damage if they’re bad, and people agree could need toning down based on other builds too?
And, again, fix the dumb stat power creep via sPvP amulet changes before nerfing any individual class/build/trait.

Zenith.7301:

GS wouldn’t 1-shot anything.

I’m talking about buffing mesmer autoattacks to the level of a fire ball or long range shot for ranged weapons, and to the level of thief sword or guardian sword.

Basically about a 25ish % damage difference in autoattacks, you’re not doubling autoattack damage.

Ah okay, I thought you were speaking within the context of previous suggetions. A 25% buff plus some extra condi stacks on staff probably wouldn’t break much, especially if MW/PvP stats are reduced a bit to compensate.

You’re missing how all those specs replace existing abilities though. And how it interacts with all our existing toys, double Time Warp alone will probably be worth more than the entire Reaper spec.

The numbers will be off and it’ll be a waste of space in at least one game mode for at least half a year, but that’s Anet “balancing” for you. I doubt a Tempest or Dragonhugger could beat double TW+perma Alacrity for PvE group content.

Zenith.7301:

Confusion wouldn’t work, because it wouldn’t scale at all with a berserker gearset, making it an inferior skill in scaling compared to warrior/thief/guard/ele. Hybrid skills and weapons as a rule of thumb suck in PvE because they’re not receiving 100% stat benefit, and often for hybrid skills and weapons both the power and condi side coefficients are BAD.

Just look at ranger weapons for an example of hybrid crap gone wrong. Useless shortbow, terrible mainhand axe (power based, weak auto on a weapon with mostly condi skills). Greatsword had Maul with bleed and they had to change that finally to vulnerability.

And the problem is you can’t tie damage to cooldown skills. You need to buff the autoattacks, because the amount you’d need to buff a 20 sec cd skill to make up for the sustained DPS difference between a mesmer’s autoattack and a thief or warrior or ele’s autoattacks would make that 20 sec cd skill really, really spiky or borderline OP DoT.

The damage source mesmer needs buffing from needs to be a frequent enough damage source.

I like the cry of frustration idea for aoe, but I think they won’t even bother with such a change at this point given how they’re putting all the aoe eggs in the wells basket.

The confusion should be in addition to heavy direct damage so the skill stays relevant to condition builds (and MW replacing CoF for condi shatter), it’s entirely intended to be worthless in zerk gear. Hybrid seems rather UP anyway, so I doubt that’s a threat in any game mode right now. Obviously the “intended” balance would be for the skill to work well in all zerk.

Of course buffing autoattacks is an “easy way out” for PvE, but how much can you buff them? Imagine taking half our phantasm and MW damage and boosting all autoattacks proportionally, GS1 would 1shot glass from 1200 range…
Or we’re forced into sword/MoP, which is fun to use but boring as the only viable option.

Wells are bad because 1) they have “super-powerful group support” in addition to damage, 2) they also have long cooldowns so they’re not better than my CoF, 3) they require you to go Chrono, which means the entire class will fold over if wells are nerfed for PvP, Alacrity uptime is too low or the dps loss from even taking it is too high over core builds. And we lose our precious utility slots, when PvE mes would already like to trade 2 weapon skills for 1 extra utility in several cases.

I’m not denying a change would be better, but what should be changed that can’t be abused in PvP?

Your MW idea actually sounds good, how about this: MW gains the confusion from CoF but loses some direct damage. Maybe buff Mental Anguish a bit so all-out shatter is still viable.
Then rework Cof: now creates pulsing AoE fields around each destroyed illusion, causing heavy direct damage and pulsing confusion, bleed or torment. Still not good for “sustained dps”, but at >20s cd you can mix it in every time your phant cd’s are up for a huge spike, essentially our version of Meteor Shower. PvP counterplay would obviously be to walk out of the circles, if you facetank meteor+lava font you deserve to die too.
I’m still a little concerned about the point control capability, but we simply need more “heavy damage, but hard to land on a decent player” skills.

Best concept, implementation will be horribly bugged and will receive day1 nerfs due to PvP either way.

Eles I feel are mostly suffering due to Occam’s Razor: they have everything already, nothing epic left to add…

I’m all for reshuffling damage, but your suggestions on where to put it are bad. Giving it to clones would be absolutely terrible for anything besides those AoE-spammy bosses.
Shatters are problematic due to PvP burst, CoF also has a long cooldown. Plus our illusion generation isn’t that much better in PvE, especially against those bosses where phantasms actually die.

Blurred Frenzy and Confusing Images can also be used for PvP burst, as can Chaos Storm and GS.

So, I repeat, where do you want to put that damage without incurring PvP-motivated nerfs (again…) or gutting our theoretical maximum when phantasms don’t instantly go splat?

Loxsus.3841:

But what if you take the phantasms damage and cut it by, let’s say, half. Now, put that missing damage into your normal clones. Make them actually HIT for a little something. So having 2 clones and a phantasm up would be like having 1 and a half phantasms. Phantasms come with the benefit of some great utility skill so their still good but basically make phantasms AND clones do the same damage.

You realise getting 3 phantasms up in PvE takes about 5s, meaning such a change would be a huge, unnecessary nerf?

You only need 1 Perception sigil, on the weapon you expect to be wielding during most of your kills.
I tend to use GS for opening burst then camp MH sword, hence I put the sigil on the latter. If you want to camp GS and swap to scepter for burst stack up on GS.
If you haven’t bought everything yet consider Bloodlust over Perception since you already have a ton of crit chance anyway, unless you specifically want to maximise reflect damage. Also better for some open world content like renown hearts, Tequatl’s fingers and other non-critable targets.
If you tend to go down a lot use crit/weapon swap sigils instead of the stacking ones. None of them work really well with that build, Generosity could be nice for some personal condi cleanse, but it’s expensive. Avid dungeon runners will have Night/Slaying for most paths.

Silverkey.2078:

As for our DPS, illusion is usually the line which we give up (for reflects for example), we then loose 9% damage and 20% CD reduction and 20% phantasm haste. If we use shatters, the haste does not matter as much and alacrity + Persistence of Memory should be more than enough to have shorter phantasm CD.

PoM+IC would have the most synergy with the “phant-shatter-phant” spam style though.

And group Alacrity builds would fall off really quickly as groups get “slightly worse”. How many eles outside of world record speedruns will pay attention to your Alacrity+Quickness spike? How well can you rely on the rest of your group to not only use proper non-auto dps rotations, but also adjust them on the fly based on alacrity uptime?
Oh, and Necros would suffer even more because they don’t have cool dps weapon skills either…

I wouldn’t mind utility phantasms, but frankly there is no place to put all that damage. Clones are mutually exclusive to phantasms while still having the same “AI uptime” issue in PvP, and most of our other skills are autoattacks or utility. Autoattacking while our illusions plink away is what we’re doing already. And you want to tone down F1, not buff it further.

Also, even with 3 phantasms the damage is “meh” if you factor in the setup time and/or loss of our healing skill. Single target and dies with the enemy, can’t hold a candle to an ele.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

• Scholar runes outperform Eagle pretty solidly. Assassin’s is effective on mes because of reflects, but also because the precision gain is equal to the power loss. Eagle runes lose 3% damage on the damage mod, which is only useful for half a target’s life bar anyway. Scholar’s 10% can be kept up for 80-100% of most fights, and can be kept up more than half of nearly every fight.
• Mistrust sucks outside some very specific circumstances/builds. It’s certainly not worth taking over Deceptive Evasion.
• Malicious Sorcery is half-broken: it still gives 20% cdr, but it’s not actually increasing attack speed right now. So unless a particular scepter skill is important to your rotation, you’ll get more mileage out of Ineptitude or MoF (remember, don’t think of Ineptitude as a confusion source, think of it as a blind source!)

• Why, exactly, do you feel it necessary to run a scepter? If you’re fighting from range you’ll be spending most of your time in Greatsword anyway, and scepter provides very little relative benefit for a phantasm-based build, especially in pve.

Scholar is garbage if you can’t keep up your hp though, which seems likely for a new-ish player camping GS with signet heal. I think Eagle/Ogre/Pack are the substitutes for damage, Traveler/Centaur for movespeed (better for open world/Silverwastes, Pack also helps a bit)

Mistrust sucks, yes, but DE is worse for a PvE phantasm build. Stick to Mistrust if you have 0 mantras on your bar, otherwise HM wins hands down.

Ineptitude isn’t that good for blinds since mobs attack so slowly, or spam multi-hit attacks. Also the confusion DoT puts you in combat if you evade while OOC, which is insanely annoying for open world. Good for trash groups though.

Swap condi gear to zerker/assassin. Focus on 1 damage type, hybrid is next to useless due to multiplicative damage modifiers and GS is pretty bad for condi.

Switch Scepter to MH Sword and trait Fencer’s Finesse. Even if you stay at range, having 25% evade uptime as a fallback option is great, as is being able to clobber anything that does advance into melee instead of having to port away.

Mantra of Pain deals higher dps than any autoattack barring sword in a power spec. Trait Harmonious Mantras and replace your autoattack with MoP if you can afford the utility slot. Also hits 5 targets instead of 3 for GS (a paltry 1 for scepter…)

The might from Imagined Burden is terrible as other group members do it better and it only procs upon completion of the cast, so you lose out if you have to dodge, interrupt with one of your better skills, or learn to stow-cancel for increased dps (still run MoP if you have the utility slot to spare). You can keep the GS trait since there aren’t any substantially better options.

Malicious Sorcery is bugged and doesn’t increase attack speed. No real gain in switching the trait though, you can keep running scepter if you like the weapon. #3 does a ton of damage and should be your top priority after phantasm uptime.

Consider OH sword instead of pistol since you can’t trait the latter (and really should be running traited MH sword anyway), the block/line daze is better than the bullet and the phantasms also deals more dps. Switch to pistol if you know the target can regularly wipe iSwordsmen, but not iDuelists.

Don’t run those sigils, Energy is way expensive and you really don’t need the extra endurance as a mesmer. Use Force for extra damage. Accuracy doesn’t work on phantasms, you’ll have to use Perception instead (or Bloodlust). Consider a Sigil of Fire for your GS, it’s a dps loss but great for tagging open world events and so on.

Get used to swapping your utilities a lot. Ether Signet->Mantra for sustain or more reflect damage, other mantras for situational utility, Null Field+iDisenchanter against boon spammers, stealth+portal for skipping.
Swap Time Warp to Moa for Frozen Maw to cancel that annoying transform XD

And most importantly, put up a disclaimer so the dungeon speedrunners won’t flame you for daring to run anything other than full zerk all melee copy-pasted off metabattle.
If you do care about max damage go read up that build, for casual runs look to Inspiration for a ton of group support options (AoE Distortion, boonshare on phant summon, boosted glamours, iWarden permareflect, 400hp/s AoE heal+perma regen…)

Silverkey.2078:

@Fay
With chronophantasm, we’ll have to see if shattering may start to make sense. It really depends how they finally implement it since in the stream they mentioned they were skeptic about it.
Pop up 3 phantasms, shatter for big damage + resynchronize them, shatter again after their burst and bring them all back from reduced CD + signet.

How much would you really gain, though? Even if the trait works well you’ll have to drop a line for Chrono, meaing either damage modifiers (Dom), more damage modifiers and trololol evade (Duel) or phantasm CDR (Illu), none of which sounds like a good trade unless we get crazy Alacrity uptime.
You also lose all group support options from Inspiration.

Tbh I’d like to see Domination reworked into a “PvP-only” trait line (interrupt+power shatter mostly) and the +%dmg traits folded into somewhere else, since that’s all we really use in PvE.

Right now I feel there are no really “underestimated” traits in PvE, we’re down to 2 cookie-cutter builds (reflect or no reflect), plus maybe cycling MoP+RM when carrying guildies. A ton of wasted potential everywhere, nothing actually worth using.

Silverkey.2078:

I think conditions are underestimated in PvE while they are really effective.

Somewhat effective, also bugged. (Sc+P…) Buff staff pls!

You’re missing the “PvP only” disclaimer…

Then again for PvE the only options are Persistence of Memory and whatever part of Inspiration you might consider “less popular”, and that only in non-speedrun settings. Medic’s Feedback, Restorative Mantras and all 3 GMs can be useful for casual runs/open world/SW, as can Blurred Inscriptions+Inspiring Distortion.

Rivindor.7258:

I don’t see a problem with Ice Bow. It allows the elementalist a way of gifting another profession who may not have the best of aoe the usage of ice storm and a few other abilities. I think it’s a unique way of supporting your party, and nerfing it because it is effective is just silly. It’s not OP, this is the elementalist we are talking about, that has the lowest base hp in the game. It’s designed to be able to nuke targets.

The “low hp” argument is a bit wonky for PvE though, since raw hp don’t save you for long. How do you weigh a 2s evade/invul vs. 20s Aegis vs. Death Shroud hp?
And even if somewhat justified, the exact numbers have to be right too. If ele has half the effective hp of another class, why should they have more than double the damage?

If something is way more effective than all other options that does justify a nerf, and if the class providing said “OP” skill still has very potent alternatives there is no need for “compensation” if/when that skill is nerfed.

How much of that applies to the concrete case of ice bow 4 on elementalists is up to debate, in my eyes it needs toning down a bit, but so do extreme cases of projectile reflection, phalanx and similar solo 25might providers, and possibly some ways of shutting down enemies (pulsing AoE blind etc., basically anywhere a single properly placed skillcast achieves more than a “decent” group without such a skill)

Nope, heal divided by cooldown. I assumed the other heals start cooling down immediately, so their numbers might be a bit lower in pratice (only a bit, Mirror would lose less than 10%)

Precharged mantra would net you 18320 hp in about 9s (Power Return cooldown…), but there is no point in calculating time averages for that without a specific build (stealth camping times etc.)

Ether Feast 374 hp/s (3 illusions)
Mirror 261 hp/s untraited, 326 traited
Signet 326 hp/s passive (3 illusions), 159 hp/s active untraited, 214 traited
Mantra 411 hp/s baseline, 615 RM, 616 HM, 820 RM+HM

Based on wiki values at 0 healing power. Note doubling the cooldown would absolutely gut the skill even if traited, and reaching the mantra hp/s means a raw statistical dps loss of ~10% even against traited Mirror (which is the nextmost spammy heal)

FrostSpectre.4198:

Problem in PvE: Mobs.

Since we all know what kind of foes are in Cursed Shore and everywhere else. None have attacks that can kill the player, force player to dodge or use other builds, than just Berserker DPS builds.

Of course, Southsun Cove, Dry Top and Silverwastes are exceptions (Fractals are not, the foes there are the same old, higher difficulty lvls just adds enviromental effects to make it harder, than provide more capable foes), with foes that don’t let you just DPS them to death, instead force you to use other abilities, while in 1vs1.

That’s kind of a tradition with RPGs though, single equal-level mobs are fodder. 2-3 Risen can, in fact, kill you if you only attack in zerk gear without using active defenses. SW mobs are just as “easy” 1v1, merely more annoying, as they don’t actually harm you much while in their “anti-dps” phase. Veterans and above range from total jokes to outright lethal in all maps, heavily dependent on your skill level.

Sadly all of this affects condi vs. zerk in the wrong direction. The goal is to kill the enemy before they kill you. Defensive stats (rabid/dire condi) only multiply each other in terms of “effective hp”. Direct damage has 3 stats to multiply instead of 2, and all those + %dmg modifiers on top.
Hence, even if a rabid/dire condi build could reach its full dps as quickly as a zerker, the numerical combat effectiveness would, in fact, be lower. After the ramp-up this might be different for a “full condi” spec using condition damage + precision + condi duration gear, but alas that doesn’t exist.

Meh, I lose track anyway since half my damage comes from phantasms I don’t really keep an eye on, and the continuous stacking on channeled attacks like mesmer GS or flamethrower auto is total garbage.

With the “new” condition indicators I can at least see how much damage I’m doing per second, every second.

Crovax.7854:

The simple floaters just remove the icons displayed next to numbers, e.g. the little flame for burning or the green skull for poison.

Nope, just tested it to make sure. Each condition stack will show its own individual damage ticker, which produces a nice, constant cloud once you reach 20+ bleeds. Wouldn’t mind colors+icons as I already said, but it’s satisfying enough imo.

Err, have you tried out the “old-fashioned” damage floats? The new ones compound all stacks into a single 1-per-second ticker, previously each stack would tick independently on its own timer. You won’t see big numbers because you aren’t dealing big numbers, but seeing 20 different damage ticks float out from the enemy every second is pretty satisfying in my book.
Unless they removed that option with the patch, it’s called “use simple condition floats” or something.

Welcome to Bug Wars 2, seems you didn’t get the memo yet.

Yes, the golem buff functions on non-golem players, don’t bother reporting as every WvW player will have done so already.

starlinvf.1358:

The overall problem is Condi, as a damage source, is made for pressure and sustain. However, our active defenses are geared toward working in burst setups. Thats where direct damage builds tend to win out, as it allows players to unload damage and then switch to defensive, reposition, then execute another burst attack.

Condi skills all require the player to continually attack a target to keep the damage going, forcing them to stop if they want to dodge, heal, or activate utilities that have cast times. Combine that with ramp up time condi builds need to produce respectable damage, and its pretty easy understand why they “feel” so goofy in practice.

You’ll notice Condi setups are most effective on back line builds; as that position has enough breathing room to continuously attack and rotate modes. (Ele, Engi, etc)

Not really true, several zerk dps setups rely primarily on constant autoattack use for their dps. Necro dagger, mesmers have nothing else to do once 3 phantasms are up, engi needs to keep using some grenades all the time to stack vulnerability, hammer/1hand guard has several autoattacks in their rotation…

And then there’s condi burst skills like mesmer shatters, engi blowtorch, guard F1+"Ima spam torch skillz", ranger Sharpening Stone+Quickness, the list goes on.

As a mesmer condi still feels very underwhelming. Mainly because our “theme” conditions are simply inefficient in PvE and the numbers balanced around PvP. Ramp-up also is a major issue, getting 3 phantasms up for max crit bleeds takes forever, and staff feels even worse with the painfully slow projectiles.

Flamethrower engi also feels fairly underwhelming in terms of literally melting faces off. I feel most of my damage comes from 25might+Bunker Down, with burn an afterthought. On grenades you just mash buttons and stuff dies, zerk or condi doesn’t matter that much.

In terms of visuals, I would merely like the old damage floats to be enhanced with colors+icons, you can switch to the compound display for dps tests and otherwise enjoy your enemies leaking their hp all over the place :P

Mesmer always had tons of instant-cast skills and long cooldowns. Are you sure it’s not just the global power creep allowing one such “lucky” hit to end the battle before the opponent gets theirs?

Also, don’t argue any kind of balance based on duels, even in a mirror match of the supposed “duelist” class.

And against opponents of equal “effective skill” (not directly correlated to total playtime btw!) luck should be the only deciding factor in a fair fight.

Jace al Thor.6745:

So… What you’re saying is you can’t see the flying greatsword? Because it isn’t stealthed in any way.

You can’t see it if they blink to you while stealthed.

And if this is only about sPvP balance the first thing they should do is adjust amulet stats, since every class seems to have 2-3 build options which simply “deal too much damage”. And fix/revert The Pledge, it’s a bugged abomination.
Then, maybe, start looking into CS and PU, if they’re even still a problem.

Didn’t Kits have their own weapon strength of around 950 or so? I thought they only scaled to the rarity of the equipped weapon.

Add an opacity slider for the circles, iirc there already is an option to disable them entirely. That should satisfy the “immersion” crowd, and it should be easy to do.

Don’t bother with character telegraphs until all those annoying “impact effects” are gone. Even in a 5man dungeon you don’t see a thing if your party contains a guard+ele.

Xenon.4537:

1. Make bosses large enough to stand over players so that their body language may be seen even when crowded.

Please no, some bosses are Asuran, and them being taller than a max size Norn is just …wrong.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Someone did the math behind Mantra of Recovery, and you are correct that it totally blows away other healing skills in healing per second. It’s probably got too low of a cooldown.

Personally, I’m not fond of the channel time.

However that is actually a nice way of implementing implicit skill splits: in PvE mobs will almost never interrupt your channel, but you need that kind of healing output when enemies deal massive damage and can’t be bursted down.
In PvP you can’t do that, because you’ll be fodder for enemy interrupt specs, massively lowering the attainable hp/s. If there is any problem it’s how many recharges you can cover with MoC+MoD(PB on their interrupt)+PU stealth, and that “problem” isn’t unique to mantra channels.

The numbers might be a little off, but the theoretical hp/s should stay way above the other heals.

Morfedel.4165:

i hate to say this, but I wouldnt call it abusing the golem bluff… its the whole point of the event!

As long as they’re still in a golem, yes.

The grenades probably work like the engi ones: they are aimed at a random point inside the visible circle, and explode at the actual point of impact. Maybe they’re also semi-homing, haven’t bothered to test.

Projectiles are another related gripe: Slow projectiles with the telegraph circles, tracking vs. non-tracking, collision-checking projectiles, different height management, zigzagging collision-checking projectiles (hi Lupi ), getting hit if standing in the projectile source despite having reflect up (mainly cheap iWarden kills)
And ofc how there is no indicator what does and doesn’t count as a projectile, and which of them are unblockable/“unreflectable”.

Since the OP mentions PuGs and “long battles” I assumed they weren’t aiming for organised speedruns.
If you can spare the utility slot MoP actually is the best “ranged fallback” option, so if your group decides to range something MoP+Sw+2OH doesn’t cost you much in terms of dps and adds a lot of survivability through BF and Restorative Mantras if you need it.

In an actual speedrun most things will die before you can feasibly recharge the mantra anyway.

MoP deals higher dps than all non-Sword autoattacks, and outdamages even that if it hits the full 5 targets (not sure against 4 targets)
Harmonious Mantras stacks also increase your reflect damage iirc, which can easily outclass your “own” dps in certain encounters.

Finally, with Restorative Mantras traited cycling MoP gives ridiculous self-sustain with incidental group heal. Without 25might that might actually help in some cases, especially for annoying constant dps like the Imbued Shaman or Slick&Sparky.
Doing this in an organised group or next to a skilled ele/engi is a waste, but if you have one of those the boss should die before you can consider a 2nd recharge anyway.

It is worded as “when you cast a glamour”, and adds a fairly obvious animation on the initial cast. So, “working as intended”.

That this method of distribution is fairly worthless for anything beyond small-scale PvP is another matter.

Superspeed doesn’t play nice with duration runes, and you cover a LOT less distance while out of combat.

Because coding a dummy buff to serve as the exclusion rule was too much work…