Guild Wars 2

Rika.7249:

I also would somehow like to see attacks immediately breaking stealth, regardless of whether they land or not.
Upon the very start of the animation, the thief should leave stealth and be visible to the enemy.
This would also make the skill requirement a bit higher. A miss is a lost backstab, compared to now, where you can just repeatedly attempt to backstab until you pull it off.

As far as I can remember, it was like that in Beta. Stealth broke upon taking actions, not landing damage.
Changed at release.
Stealth easy mode.
Thief easy mode.

coglin.1496:

First off, at least have the facts straight. The signets only activate every 10 seconds, not 5. Secondly, it only removes one of many conditions I add.

The facts are straight, those are from personal experience and can happen to anyone. Never talked about a 5sec activation, you misread the example.

I can simply toss out an super elixir, that I can keep up 100% of the time, and have the opportunity to remove any and all conditions instantly as the come, just by fighting like normal with my weapon, and get a heal tick to boot.

I beg to differ.
You realize the light field+projectile combo doesn’t work everytime the indication appears? it still has a 20% chance linked to the projectile. I mentionned it in one of my earlier posts I believe.

The options we have work great, can be very efficient and effective,

I don’t agree with that, that’s what we are all discussing in this topic.
“Efficient and effective” can be subjective appreciations related to your own experience, and can be subject to discussion, especially when you compare with other classes.
You can expose arguments of your own, but attacking me personally is not one.

Aristio.2784:

Prelude.3817:

-Snip-

I made a point to purposely leave out Null Field as it’s a pulse Condition Remover, and as such I would have to list Well of Power too. The ones I stated above are instant removers, with added bonuses. If you want to directly compare Guardian’s condition remover to our own, you also have to take into consideration that while their’s is a Stun Breaker, we also have a 20 second shorter recast on ours.

So let’s agree they’re at least equal utility wise. I was merely comparing those cause you did in the first place, it’s not the best example anyway since Guardians barely use it and have many other condition removal options, their healing signet being one good example.

Sure, our Med Kit is a bit of a hassle to deal with just for 1 Condition Removal (I wish it removed two), but as with anything, there is the pros and cons. One of the biggest pros I say about slotting the Med Kit for the Antidote is that we don’t blow our entire healing cooldown just for a Condition Remover.

I suppose you refer to Healing turret Engineer wise, or the multiple examples of condition removal heals I mentionned: well, if you have multiple conditions on you you surely will need to heal in the next few seconds, so it’s “2 birds in 1 stone” isn’t it?

I will too propose one of the biggest cons of Antidote. Too slow: you open med kit, you use the skill, you walk over the bottle. If you’re fast you can do it in 2 secs, presuming your enemy let you. For only one condition. Chances are you got beat up pretty hard during those 2 secs (some specs will kill you in 2 secs ><)

I also can’t help to bring up this specific point either:

No, mesmers don’t need 30 points into inspiration to get a decent condition remover, they only need one utility skill. But, contrary to Engineers, their utility slots don’t replace their secondary weapon set. Yeah, we basically have to replace 5 SKILLS FOR 1 CONDITION REMOVER.

Why do you first say that they only need one utility slot, when we get the same exact utility slot taken up for Elixir C? (On a 5 second short cooldown and don’t need any sort of target either) I was simply stating for a continuous, reliable, and short cooldown condition remover, both Mesmer and Engineer need to trait for it.

.

Answer to that is in the rest of the quote, i.e the importance of utility slots for Engineers. And for that precise example, I can add the secondary use of said slot, that I refer to in the next paragraph of my post.

I would also like to point out that while Elementalist can spec for a maximum of two Condition Removers on their Weapons (Scepter/Daggger or Scepter/Focus) only one of them is accessible reliably (Phoenix), while the secondary condition remover has to be actively swapped to for, (Cleansing Wave or Magnetic Wave), which in turn would swap them out of their most damaging attunement, locking them in said Element for at minimum, 10 seconds.

Well, it’s still better than slowly dying from conditions.
At least Eles have a built-in option, completly independant from the choice of utility skills.

You mean that 2s bleed from your pistol?
yeah, good luck stacking that. But that’s another topic.
You wanna use elixir U to “quickness stack”? well those stacks disappeared right in the middle of your quickness, and from 10+ stacks you should normally get, there’s only 5 on your target now. Talk about wasting cd’s.
Later in the fight, that 10sec poison/burn you had so much trouble applying, poof, gone after 2 ticks.
Those pestering stacks of mesmer confusion keeping you from attacking? poof, gone, never will go over 2-3 stacks.
Those 20+ sec of bleed from the thief Death Blossom? poof, gone after a few secs, without doing anything. 5 seconds later he comes back and stacks again? 5 seconds later those stacks are gone.

Basically it’s the effect of Cleaning Formula 409, without having to use elixirs and waste gcd’s and/or elixirs, without having to spec into elixirs, without having to slot elixirs in the first place.
Just. One. Little. Passive.

Aristio.2784:

What I’m getting from this thread is that people want an ability that completely shuts down or near shutdown of Condition Spam specs. They want the best condition removal abilities, without the need to spec into our condition removal tree. Think of it like this, as I’ll give a very simple example. Elementalist NEED to spec into Water Magic in order for them to shut down Condition Spammers much like we NEED to spec into Alchemy for that. The only other example I can think of is how Mesmers need 30 Inspiration in order to have a short reliable cooldown.

Well, I think you got the thread wrong then. The title seems pretty clear though.

No, elementalists don’t need to spec into water to have a reliable condition remover. They get one for each weapon.
No, mesmers don’t need 30 points into inspiration to get a decent condition remover, they only need one utility skill. But, contrary to Engineers, their utility slots don’t replace their secondary weapon set. Yeah, we basically have to replace 5 SKILLS FOR 1 CONDITION REMOVER.

Now, let’s look at the other callings’ “Elixir C” like abilities. Ones that are able to strip all conditions from you in a single key stroke.

*Mesmer. Arcane Thievery. 45 second cooldown. Sends all conditions to your opponent while absorbing all their boons.
*Necromancer. Signet of Plague. 60 second cooldown. Sends all your conditions to your opponent.
*Ranger. Signet of Renewal. 60 second cooldown. Your pet absorbs all conditions from you and nearby allies.
*Warrior. Signet of Stamina. 45 second cooldown. Cures all conditions.
*Guardian. Contemplation of Purity. 60 second cooldown. Converts all conditions into boons.
*Thief. No such skill.
*Elementalist. No such skill.

You forgot some.
Mesmer for example has Null Field, basically the same as Elixir C but AOE.

Plus you forgot to mention ALL THOSE SKILLS/UTILITIES have a secondary utility.
– Mesmer’s Thievery is also a boon stripper (“omagad a guardian booned to the bone” slurp)
– Necro’s signet is also a passive condition hoover: it transfers conditions from allies to you, making the active ability, the one you mention, a little more…OMAGAD.
But anyway, their main condition remover IS NOT THAT SIGNET. It’s their most popular heal, “Consume conditions”, 25 sec cd, removes all conditions and heals more for each condition removed.
You can’t get better any better than that at removing conditions T.T
– Ranger’s signet also has a passive condition removal every ten seconds. Plus it’s a stun break.
– Warrior’s signet also has a passive that increases endurance regen by 50%.
– Guardian’s is also a stun break. And most guardians will prefer Signet of resolve for his passive condition removal.

So you have all those “a la Elixir C” condition removers who are also useful when you don’t have conditions.
And you have elixir C: what does it do except remove conditions? the tool belt skill? Yipeee, a random 5sec boon every 30sec!
If AT LEAST Elixir C was a stun breaker…Nope, I have to sacrifice the 5 skills of a kit for a skill that does NOTHING BUT REMOVE CONDITIONS. Oh, the dilemna.

If you take a look at the list, you will see that nearly all the professions (6/8) have abilities that they can take into battle which removes all conditions on cooldowns ranging from 40 seconds to 60 seconds. They too need to spec into a tree in order to get reliable condition spec, they too need to bring other abilities that removes conditions from them. If we want to nullify other specs main way of dealing damage, we need to spec against that.

We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

Hmm, again, I can’t agree. Most classes have a very decent built-in condition remover.

And Warrior has condition removal with its heal (2 conditions)
And Thief has condition removal with its heal (burn+bleed+poison+stealth)
And Necro has condition removal with its heal (all of them, what the heck)
And Guardian has condition removal with its heal (passive, see above).
And Ranger has condition removal with its heal (Healing Spring), not the most popular but they have that All-In-One Active/passive Condition removal/stun break/Coffee Maker signet anyway (The one you mention)
And Elem has condition removal with its heal (Ether renewal), once again not the most popular, but they have at least one condition removal for each and every choice of weapon. Check it. (Phoenix, Healing Rain, Magnetic Wave…)

(I copy/pasted a lot there, I admit :p).
But we have one too! we have Med Kit “Drop Antidote”! (/sarcasm)

And I didn’t even mention traits. Do I need to in order to make a point?

P.S: The cake is a lie

Have you noticed that 5 seconds total invulnerability when a warrior pops Vengeance?

It looks the same as the invulnerability you have after you get downed, “Invulnerable” with red letters.
There’s nothing like that mentionned in the tooltip.

Looks like a bug, wasn’t like that in beta. Or is it intended?

Never pretented to be a pvp guru, just stating facts.
Arguing of the efficiency of Coated bullets in sPvP with someone with no apparent experience in the matter is pointless.

There’s no class specific pvp discussion unfortunatly, pvp and pve skills being the same, any skill discussion must be brought here.

As far as I know, coated bullets is not popular at all in sPvP. Never saw him once in builds used by fellow Engineers or sPvP streamers.

But as a weapon skill designed to apply conditions, not direct damage, you surely will all agree Coated bullet or not, Explosive shot condition application is weak.

Even for direct damage as far as I can compare with a piercing rifle Hip Shot, with a power/crit build, or a simple grenade spam.

With splash crits, all of your sigils as well as “on crit” damage traits take an AoE effect.

No they don’t, as mentionned before, they have internal cooldowns and can occur only once over a few seconds.

Slokidlol.6107:

Prelude.3817:

When we don’t know how the whole illusion thing works, Mesmers are OP.
When we understand it, they suck.

I think it has more to do with the mesmers you face:
When the mesmer sucks, you can easily spot the real one and torch him.
When the mesmer is good, “you’re already dead but you don’t know it yet”. Aoe or not, phantasm mesmer or not.

Bull, if the mesmer is good and you suckkitten yea you’re dead. If you are a lot better than the mesmer then yes you win. On equal footing you have a pretty good chance of winning if you can pay attention.

Hard to deal with =/= OP.

No, you’ve misunderstood.
It’s not about your skill against his. It’s only about the mesmer mastering his own class or not.
It’s about what the mesmer is able to do at top level.
If the mesmer knows his tools, you won’t even scratch him.

Hopefully those are rare.

When we don’t know how the whole illusion thing works, Mesmers are OP.
When we understand it, they suck.

I think it has more to do with the mesmers you face:
When the mesmer sucks, you can easily spot the real one and torch him.
When the mesmer is good, “you’re already dead but you don’t know it yet”. Aoe or not, phantasm mesmer or not.

Let me assure you. Tight packed enemies happens ALL the time. Illusions, turrets, pets. Standing on capture points. Standing together for combo fields, healing, etc.
What happens when someone tries to revive a target? They stand right on top of them.
And this is spvp.
WvW. flame rams, oil, choke points, capture points, arrow carts, ballista. Nothing BUT tight packed enemies. (quaggan/hylack packs)
Pve, again tight packed often. Guardians even have an aoe pull that makes pve runs just lawltastic.

Yeah, that’s why you were testing GRENADES for that, not a pewpew weak AA with the explosion radius of a hit box.

And come on! enemies reviving? You really wanna make me believe you’re gonna keep them from reviving with Explosive shot? Seriously.

And sorry to be the l2p guy here, but you just can’t take advices from a guy that posted a screenshot showing clearly he has never stepped a foot in sPvP.
And Hot-join IS NOT Structured PvP.

Warmage Timeraider.5861:

Bargraw.. Engineers relying on perma burning instead of bleed? … Even with full burning runes/traits and all.. Your bleeds will still do more overall dmg and your burning will surely not be perma since even duration stacked and traited you wont be able to keep it up that long (i do give the fact it has quite a duration then BUT.. 1 condition removal and say bye bye to ur dmg), while bleeding is being reapplied every shot.

Agreed, cause you have no easy way to apply long burns except for 1 long cooldown (Incendiary ammo, 60sec cd), or melee attacks (pistol Blowtorch, Fire bomb, Rocket Kick) which fail miserably with just the movement of the enemy.

Meanwhile almost every other condition class will easily, quickly apply multiple durable stacks of bleeds and other conditions, wether it is from max range (necros, rangers), passively (through Mesmer illusions, and again, Ranger pets), or while evading attacks (thief Death Blossom, pistol stealth skill).

A funny as playing Inspector Gadget can be, Engineer has no efficient way to keep the pressure with conditions, except for its AA. And it’s weak.

Explosion procing on only final max range has no be remotely my experience. See screenshot. Every direct hit, procs explosion.
Also, adds a bit more then 300 damage don’t you think?

I stand corrected, you are right. I guess my dummies weren’t close enough when I tested it.

But you sir, have a lot of power to get such numbers.
Too much power for a pistol condition build.
Best I can do with Rampager’s amulet (the best mix of precision, condition damage and power), is 300 crit on the same dummies.

Oh I see you are rank 1. You probably didn’t change your amulet, did you?
Cause the problem with the pistol AA is also its efficiency in sPvP:

You will never get tight packs of enemies like in the dummy training field, nicely aligned for you to get the perfect explosion setup.
You may not be able to take the Coated bullet trait in the first place, there’s much more important to have.
You will not have a power amulet with a pistol equiped.
Your ennemies will have between 10 and 30k hp. How many explosions will you need to take them down?
You will experience ennemies taking you down with only their own auto attack.
That’s called being “#1 shot”.

You can experience that from yourself.

Imo you get more glory for zerging because of the bonus on kills:
You earn 5 game points for your team for every kill, and get yourself 5 glory.
Added to that you get 10 bonus glory for “Skirmishes” (outside a node), 10 bonus defending or attacking a node.

Simple solution: decrease kill glory bonus from 10 to 5.
Bam, one third of glory less for killing.

I you believe defending or attacking a node is relevant (which is not for zergs, they’ll just fight anywhere anyway), just decrease the kill bonus for skirmishes. That way playing objectives more than random killing is more rewarded.

Edit: you think bosses should be a team effort? Double their hp.
When you have used all your cooldowns to get the boss half hp, you’ll certainly hope for teamates to come and help.

Casia.4281:

Let me ask this.

Is explosive shot’s aoe not appling its bleed aoe with coated bullets a bug?
And if so, would you consider it weak if it did properly?

If its only “weak” because of a bug, then /bug it. Its not weak, its just not working properly.

Traited. it can apply 2s burn aoe on crit, 5s bleed aoe on crit, vulnerability on crit.
It multi-hits do aoe explosion on pierce. Hitting each target 2-3 times direct, and having a chance to apply those conditions each of those times.
Direct hits apply an additional 2s bleed of course. (vul on crit is probably not ideal though)

No, it’s not a bug. The skill was changed in Beta so that the bullet applies a bleed, not the explosion. Tooltip was not updated though.

And no, it can’t apply burn aoe on crit, Incendiary Powder has an icd of 2s. Same thing for Sigil of Earth.

No, as mentionned many times in similar posts, each bullet hit doesn’t explode, you get only one explosion at the end of range. At most you’ll hit targets twice, if they’re very, very, close to each other and at max range.
You can check that for yourself.

So the only thing you can expect from Coated bullet is some extra bleed/vulnerability from Firearms traits, and the extra 300 aoe damage.

A little weak imo from a third tier trait that works only on 2 of the pistol skills.

Forget the bandages, your allies will take them and leave you dead :p

It would be so simple to add a trait in Alchemy or Tools, like “remove a condition on kit swapping” with an icd of 10sec, or specific condition removing on dodge, like Elem and Thief have, or even remove a condition upon healing…

Yeah, well, Engineer was THE condition class in bwe: lots of easy applicable conditions, aoe bleed, etc. You wanted condition, call an Engi.
Then rifle got buffed (cause it was weak compared to condition pistol builds), and pistol got nerfed, cause yeah it was a lot of bleeds, and ppl complained about condition damage.

Now a necro can put like 10 stacks of bleed+snare+poison+weaken on an entire group.
Thief Death Blossom spec will put 20+ sec stacks of bleed, 3 by 3.
I got a 30 sec poison today in hot join, still wonder where it came from.

And I’ve got a 2sec bleed on my pistol.
Neat.

Kryank.8069:

Lols died from confusion, if the only thing that can be complained about is the downed state, then I guess they are not as OP as people say!!

You’ve misunderstood. Mesmer normal down state stopped bothering me the moment I noticed that red arrow over the real one.

Problem is, underwater you can’t stomp.
So you actually have to kill the mesmer again, right? Using skills right? so unless you can remove every stack of confusion the downed mesmer applies, you take confusion damage right?
And if it’s a condition mesmer…well that’s a lot of damage you can’t avoid taking. especially if the mesmer can buy time by blinking around, and, combined with the “Invicible, invincible, hit, invincible, invincible, hit” you get when you try to hit a player surfacing…

Just, good times.

I just experienced the underwater mesmer down state: just…lol
Same Clone/Blink kitten, plus the confusion stacks, but you can’t stomp oO
So I attacked the downed mesmer and died from confusion, while he had blinked 3/4 times.
Sooo broken.

2) Please change the maximum range the pet can move away from its owner.
The pets following you to the other end of the map, jeeez, so broken.

6) Stealth.
Too easy to get, too easy to use, not enough limitations.

I remember in Beta, you did anything in stealth, it got you out. You miss your backstab, well you’re screwed, you’re out of stealth and are Revealed. Learn to play.
Now it’s like: you missed your attack? no biggie, try again, you still have some stealth time. Here, have a cookie.

And when I look at the wiki definition of Stealth:“Stealth is broken when the user attacks…”
Well, no, the correct statement is when the user damages an enemy. Yep, you actually get out of stealth at the moment (well, not quite) the big fat white number shows up.
Basically you can do anything in stealth as long as you don’t do damage. Which includes indirect damage abilities:
Pop your Thieve’s Guild, your phantasms, swing your daggers into the air to look cool, whatever, doesn’t break.

GW2 introduced the Easy Stealth Mode. Grats.

And fix that kitten reveal delay: A thief being able to hit 3 times in stealth before I can actually see him—> B-R-O-K-E-N.

Yeah, why can’t I have fury AND retaliation on my phantasms? It’s so broken oO

Titus.9705:

A mesmer is my main, and I can guarantee you they’re not op, you just need help playing. Mesmers have a very steep learning curve so most mesmers are honestly quite bad anyways, so again you need to evaluate how you play.

On Moa Morph, it may be a little overwhelming in 1v1 but most mesmers won’t even use it in that case, and in larger engagements it really is perfectly fine.

A Mesmer is one of the class I enjoy playing the most, and I guarantee you it’s sooooo much better than most classes. You can learn to play it very well after only a few hours, figuring traits, skills, combos, playstyle, pretty obviously.
With good enemy players you’ll have to use a few cooldowns like stealth, blink, or moa if absolutly necessary, very good while stealthed.
But you’ll just chew most players in a few moves. Most classes can’t kill illusions as fast as you can spam them anyway.
Keep spamming!

Seriously, roll a mesmer, it’s soooo good.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Prelude.3817:

I got Moaed 4 times in a single match yesterday.
Killed a lot of phantasms, not so much Mesmers.
Lots of fun.
Mesmer sure is strangely popular nowadays.
Wonder why.

Bad PvP Players complaining, what’s new? There is this mechanic called “Dodge” and there is this thing called “movement”. Pay attention and you will have it much easier against mesmers

Pro Up and dominate in game or stay Bad and QQ on the forums, which choice will you make?

Ouch. Personal offense. I’m “bad”, you said it, must be true, even though you probably never met me. Sure.

Anyone has anything else constructive to say? Forums are craving for such interesting posts.

Anyway

I got Moaed 4 times in a single match yesterday.
Killed a lot of phantasms, not so much Mesmers.
Lots of fun.
Mesmer sure is strangely popular nowadays.
Wonder why.

Ok, compare with Necro then. Scepter: spam #1—→2 stacks of 4 sec bleed, 1 stack of poison. 900 range. similar speed. I remember necros killing my engi mostly spamming #1!

And even so, just from a pve perspective: I remember having to rely mostly on this skill for my first 5-10 lvls, before i got my hand on a decent rifle.
It-is-the-most-pathetic-auto-attack-ever.
Raaaah those first lvls were the hell, very slowly killing mobs while strafing around like a circus monkey. Oh the horror.

Sooo…we got a skill doing a very weak, very narrow aoe, which has the shortest bleed duration of the whole game, and only affecting a single target.
Did I forget anything? oO

Last time i tried, fumigate didn’t remove any conditions at all. I remember fighting a necro back then, it was ridiculous. Just tried it again on the class dummies, still no effect whatsoever on hit.

Combo projectile finishers, in the case of the Elixir gun, Tranquilizer Dart, will grant you a 20% chance to remove a condition from yourself as long as your projectile goes through the combo field created by Super Elixir.

Be careful though, the little “combo/heart” indicator doesn’t mean you are actually removing conditions, it only indicates you have fulfilled the combo requirements.
In beta, projectiles had a 100% combo chance. They just forgot to remove the “combo/heart” proc for every projectile instead of only showing it when the effect actually occurs.

I tell you once again, you’re lucky if you get 2 actual condition removals out of it.

Pistol skill #1 “Explosive Shot” doesn’t trigger aoe bleed on explosion as indicated on the tooltip.
Instead, explosion damages multiple adjacent targets, but only triggers bleeding on one.

That may be related to a bug combining this skill with the flamethrower tool belt skill “Incendiary Ammo: Burn foe with your next 3 attacks”.
Attacking 3 times a target, with the buff on and Explosive Shot, will only trigger the burning effect once, even on a single isolated target. Also, the buff will be removed after only 2 attacks.

It seems the game considers Explosive Shot to be 2 attacks at once?

Oh god, I just found a bug while testing this kitten trait: Explosion doesn’t trigger bleed anymore, with or without the trait. Just tested on a pack of dummies, only ONE target gets the bleed.
I WANT MY BLEEDS BACK NAOW

/sarcasm on
Woooooot! I can do 300 more damage with Piercing bullet!! (If, as mentionned above, my target is directly next to a wall, and I’m shooting from the right angle, and i crit, and my target has poor armor)

Engi pistol autoshot is so awesome
/sarcasm off

Me don’t have Dual Pistol. Me got shield. Me don’t have burn. Me want more bleeds. MORE BLEEEEEEEDS.

Edit: oh and I want engineer to learn to actually hit with poison dart too. Engi needs shooting lessons.

Supposedly the pistol aoe effect compensates for the duration…
I would gladly trade one for the other, most procs have icd’s anyway, aoe doesn’t matter.

Other classes condition builds can #1 spam kill. Why can’t we?
MORE DOTS PLEASE.

Every good sPvP/tPvP player knows that condition removal is the Engineer weakness.
Which makes it the favourite prey of Necros (Raaaaaah, necrooooooos!!!!!!!!), just face a good one once to realize it.
I suspect some posters defending the contrary to be Necros themselves who don’t want to lose their free Engi kill :p

Yes, our condition removal options are thin, and a lot of them are weak, removing one condition at a time in an active way (meaning you have to use a slooooooow skill cast to activate most of them, like Elixirs), or just plain bugged (yes, healing turret works every other time.
Or like some of you suggested invest a whole utility slot just for that, when you know how a single utility slot is important for an Engi.
I’ve tried that:

- Elixir gun is weak, sorry to say that.
No decent spec will incorporate it in an efficient way. Very very low damage, poor condition application, Fumigate condition removal is bugged, the only thing useful could be the super elixir.
But since the projectile combo activation nerf, you’re lucky if you can get 2 condition removals out of its full length.
Too much of a cost for such poor results. This particular kit needs complete tweaking.

- Same goes for Elixir C. One Single utility slot for the sole purpose of condition removal.
We already don’t have weapon swap, if you want a stun breaker, it pigeonholes you into a single kit spec (Med kit doesn’t count, nooooo :p). We don’t want that.
Plus the tool belt skill is weak, it works only for one condition.

We used to have Alchemy 15 points “transmute”: Nerfed to the half (used to be 6% chance ><, in a word it used to work!), like everything a little good about Engi.

Yes, when you play other classes you realize how easy condition removal is for some. Thieves main heal, warriors main heal, Mesmers have 2 or 3 very efficient utility skills, Guardian can have 2 easy-to-get passives every 10sec and a few actives, Rangers are a little weak too, but they have a nice signet passive/active/stun break all-in-once, and I won’t even dare talking about Necros.

But I always believed that Anet gave each class a weakness in their balancing process (like the poor mobility of Necros, the low vitality of thieves, Mesmers I’m still looking for it :p), and condition removal is the Engi one.

I may be wrong though.

Healing turret also have a condition remover with its second skill…removes ALL conditions (when it works, seems bugged atm :p), on a 60sec cd.

Very, very useful in sPvP, one of the only efficient condition remover Engi has, without sacrificing a skill slot or having to get multiple weak traits.

I’d really like that to change btw: Engi is weak, extremely weak to conditions.
Must be our class “weakness”.

Oh, I just tested it, “Illusionists celerity” also affects both illusion related down state abilities. Wouldn’t be fun if it didn’t :p.

You are of course aware, that about 75% of a Mesmers damage is through his Phantasms, right?

Exactly my point, Mesmer main damage source/defense mechanism can be increased by a mere third
(115% damage with 20% more uptime, yeah, around a third more efficiency) by investing only 15 points:
This is cheap, too cheap. Those traits should be moved to higher tiers, like many other first tier traits have been in beta.

I’ll do more testing when i get back. But the weapon specific traits, (reduce skill from specific weapon type by 20%) does not stack with Illusionists celerity. so you can only have a 20% reduced cooldown.

The Tooltip, as for many skills among all classes, are not correctly updated by those cd reductions.
Trust the recharge timer, even if it doesn’t show decimals.
Most obvious and dreadful example is for “Illusionary Duelist”: CD is reduced from 15 to 9 seconds if traited for both Illusion and pistol cd reduction (Timer will show 8 sec on use).
Other examples for greatsword, timer for Mirror Blade shows around 4.5 sec, and Phantasmal Berserker shows 11 sec.
Works for the sword “Illusionary Leap” too, it does spawn a clone after all.

I personnally have played my share of the Mesmer to understand his mechanisms and discover his flaws. What I have mostly found are broken mechanisms and totally unbalanced skills.
Moa comes to mind first of course, but also the fact that phantasm summoning skills can’t be obstructed nor avoided, unlike any other target dependant skill in the game.
You can basicly spam phantasms on a target from behind an obstacle as long as it’s in range, making it impossible for enemies to hide from you, or making it very easy for you to deal damage unseen. Very unfair mechanism imo, easily exploitable in combat.

What I really wonder is if it’s a bug, on purpose, or a blatant misconception of the class.

A few theorycrafting tips for those who defend mesmers:

- Invest 5 points, only 5 yes, into the Illusions trait line (the bottom one) to get “Illusionists celerity”:
——>20% decreased cd on ALL ILLUSION SKILLS.
That includes every weapon skill that creates clones, phantasms,
plus a few Utility skills like Decoy (their main stealth).
Yep, only 5 points. Plus you can cumulate with any weapon specialization, for an additionnal 20%.
That is around 40% cd reduction on any skill creating clones or phantasms.
That’s pretty short in the end, for abilities that are already on a relatively short cd.

- Get gready and get 10 points (yep, only 10) in Domination, the first line, for “Empowered Illusions”:
—→15% damage increase for illusions. Same, affects clones & phantasms.
Clones will barely scratch you anyway, but phantasms…
Not to mention illusions scale with power/crit, so…

In the end as a mesmer you can invest only 15 points to increase your
clone spamming/phantasm damage capability by…A LOT!!!

I’d really like to hear the other “pet classes” opinion on such powerful, cheap investment, traits.

Confirm the above
Plus I noticed a few more:
– The Tools line trait VIII “Power Wrench” doesn’t decrease the cooldown of the Tool Kit skills “Gear Shield” and “Magnet”: tooltip shows the correct decreased recharge, but after use the recharge timer shows the base undecreased number.

- The Flame Thrower kit tool belt skill “Incendiary Ammo” bugs with the pistol skill “Explosive Shot”: the pistol skill will consume all 3 incendiary procs at the first attack, even if used on a single isolated target (no aoe effect), but without adding them all, thus wasting 2 procs.

– Tool Belt recharge rate % bonus seems miscalculated. An example: 30 points in Tools should decrease the recharge rate by 30%. A 20 seconds recharge should then become 14 seconds (Med Kit tool belt skill “bandage self” for example). Recharge timer after use will show 15 seconds (a little more even). It seems the percentage is calculated multiplicatively instead of additionally.
If so, every profession with the same bonus “% per point spent” might have the same issue (Warriors for example might have a slight unexpected damage bonus on their burst skills).
If intended, it’s just…confusing .

Much more to come ^^