Guild Wars 2

aophts.9862:

Ty for the responses and no, i was not offensive/aggressive at all, i don’t know why you said that, don’t try to create something that didn’t happened.
I can’t say troll without being censored? What kind of rule is that?

It’s a really stupid censorship, especially seeing as I actually posted a wall of text on things you should do/watch out for when it comes to mesmers. But I guess since I was responding to your post that was deleted, my entire response was also deleted.

Way to go moderators, you really deserve a pat on the back… -_-;

In addition to what the above two said, eles should be getting a new weapon based on what will add the most diversity to the class, not because one person likes the footprints from one specific weapon…….

First of all there is nothing unreliable about the “bug”. It works exactly the same way, every time. Arcane Wave is in no way more reliable than Arcane Brilliance. Just because something may be a bug does not mean it is unreliable. I think you may have the wrong idea about how coding works. There are bugs that only affect abilities in very certain situations, which can create unreliability, and then there are bugs that affect abilities in a very consistent manner. Arcane Brilliance is an example of the latter, and there is nothing unreliable about it.

Second, pressing escape does not stop your movement unless you are using autorun. If you are using autorun in a high pressure environment then you are already doing something wrong, so you can’t complain about it breaking up your flow. And even if you are using autorun, just hold W before you hit escape. It’s not hard, it’s not distracting, and complaining about it is just silly.

Third, complaining about the extra half second needed to press escape directly contradicts your later suggestion to make Arcane Brilliance a ground targeted skill. Even with Instant Ground Targeting enabled, you still need to take the extra half second to position your mouse properly before you can use the skill. Arcane Brilliance was originally a ground targeted skill when it was first released, and it was changed to a targeted skill due to the above issue, as well as underwater issues.

Fourth is the use of autotarget. In a PvE environment it doesn’t matter if you use autotarget, mainly because GW2 PvE is such a joke that it doesn’t really matter what you do with anything. Aside from high level fractals, all you need in PvE is a full set of zerker gear and party members who are not completely idiotic and you will roll through everything. Even high level fractals are not a huge deal as long as you have a beneficial group composition. I mean seriously, people solo entire fractals, they’re really not that challenging. Even though GW2 has PvE, the only truly competitive aspect of it is the PvP. Using autotarget in WvW or sPvP is a great way to screw yourself over. There are plenty of times where you need to use charges such as RtL without a target, and with autotarget on this becomes incredibly difficult to do.

From your words, it sounds like you mainly PvE. While there is absolutely in no way anything wrong with that (I love PvE), there is also no question that there are no high pressure scenarios in PvE if you have even the slightest idea what you’re doing. Everything is scripted and predictable, and bosses give you plenty of time and warning to do what you need to do. Like I said above, people can solo many dungeons and fractals, and the ones that can’t be soloed are only because they have mechanics that require multiple people, not because they are too difficult. Because of all of this, I really don’t understand how you can be complaining about such an insignificant little mechanic. There is no situation in PvE where a half second delay of hitting escape before hitting AB will cost you the fight (unless of course you spent the first second of a warning telegraph just standing there not paying attention).

Regardless, this is all a moot point. The skill is either bugged or it isn’t, it will either be changed or it won’t. Our little debate here is not going to do anything to change the course of the skill, and the OP’s question has already been answered. The rest of this is just a waste of energy between two people with differing ideals who don’t even know each other. Time to put this to rest, don’t you think?

Why would you want to restrict the skill to only ever blasting at your feet when you can currently blast at your feet OR under anyone you’re targeting? If it is bugged (which I doubt, seeing as it’s original design was to be used anywhere) then it’s a bug that makes the ability more versatile than it was meant to be, so why on earth are you calling for a fix?

It’s really not hard to just hit escape or click off your target before using the skill.

Also if you’re running around with autotarget on then you’re playing with your hands tied anyway so that’s your own fault.

Here’s the thing, as many people have said, condi ele is great the first time you fight someone because you will almost assuredly beat them through the advantage of surprise. However, after that initial fight any decent player will realize what you are running and will not let themselves be caught off guard again and you will have a significantly more difficult time beating them. Plus as has been said, the lack of mobility really drags it down, especially in WvW.

This build is in no way bad, and I applaud you for looking for new options instead of running cookie cutter builds.

It is not, however, even remotely close to a meta build. It does not have the mobility or reliability that a good WvW roamer needs. This build relies largely on the gimmick of surprise and once that is gone the only people you’re going to be winning against are people who do not play their class properly (as was evident in your video).

Fay.2357:

Majic.4801:

Staff and Trident clones still do plenty of damage and have bouncing attacks which stack conditions on enemies and buffs on allies. If you have three of either kind out, they will be causing all sorts of trouble.

I actually prefer them over phantasms for most PVE situations, not because phantasms are bad, but because clones are so much fun.

Staff, trident, and scepter clones still don’t do any damage, you’re wrong.

They do use an attack that innately stacks conditions, and those will do damage normally.

They’re attacks may not do direct damage, but due to the condition stacking, the clones do actually cause damage, so he wasn’t wrong. Nevertheless this entire topic is a digression from the OP’s question.

As to the OP, as many others have said, clones have never done any significant direct damage. I’m not sure what you thought was happening but you were probably mistaking clones with phantasms (which can hit like a truck).

Why does everyone keep assuming an Ele sword will just be a standard melee hack ‘n’ slash? Has no one seen the Revenant staff? Many new weapons are being designed as the opposite of their traditional roles, so why do people assume ANet is going to break this trend with the Ele?

Personally I don’t like the idea of warhorn. I don’t like the idea of only getting two new skills, I don’t like the looks of warhorns in general, I don’t like the idea of having to replace the focus in PvE or the OH dagger in PvP, and in general I just want a new primary weapon. But that’s just my two cents.

Ele’s have really high sustained self heals. The best way to beat them is to burst them, because in a game of attrition, the ele’s have the advantage. A tanky necro using conditions is simply not going to have the burst required to kill an ele who knows what they’re doing. Guardians often suffer the same issues. Your best bet would be to wait until after they come out of Water attunement and lay into them as hard as possible.

Plus D/D is simply really strong right now.

Gotta love people who complain without even knowing what they are talking about…

In case it wasn’t made clear by the people above, here’s the difference between Superspeed and Swiftness:

- Superspeed makes you move at the maximum out of combat speed, regardless of Crippled/Chilled and combat status.
- Swiftness makes you move 33% faster, but when you are in combat you are capped at 125% movement speed, and you can still be affected by Crippled/Chilled.

Zephyr’s Boon has the same drawbacks as Swiftness.

If you honestly cannot see why Superspeed is vastly superior to Swiftness or Zephyr’s Boon then you really need to learn to play.

I like it a lot, although personally I would add just a splash of purple somewhere in your armor to match your weapons. But that’s just me.

Soooo jealous of your swords lol

Dunno why the first few comments are so negative…the Mesmer community is usually really awesome.

Edit
I totally agree with Qaelyn! When I think of Mesmers I either think of “ninja casters” like Marsares’ image or I think of “nobility casters” like GW1.

Like I said, just because a build exists does not mean it’s a good build. Also like I said, when you’re on your own or in a casual environment, play whatever you want. But when other people are relying on you or when you are playing in a competitive environment you are going to want to have every advantage you can, and bringing the right build is a huge part of that.

All very true of shatter specs, but the OP was asking for stealth builds. Shatter builds and stealth builds are mutually exclusive:

If you have 30 points in Chaos for PU then you either cannot get 30 Illusions for Illusionary Persona (incredibly important for shatter builds) or you cannot get 20 Dueling for Deceptive Evasion (also incredibly important for shatter builds).

Also don’t forget that traits which activate on clone death do not activate when a clone is shattered. Traits like Crippling/Debilitatin Dissipation only activate when another player kills your clones or you overwrite them by summoning a new clone.

By trying to combine a shatter build with a stealth build you lose core components of each and end up with a sub-par hybrid. If you’re just using it to have personal fun then that’s great but by no means is it competitive in any way, and using it any kind of group situation is just hurting your group. And considering the OP asked for a WvW build (which is by its nature a competitive environment), giving out sub-par build advice is kind of rude.

PU stealth based builds generally do not shatter at all (unless you need an interrupt or distortion). Instead it is best to let the phantasms DPS or clones apply conditions, and then have them be killed by other players or overwritten by summoning new illusions because each time an illusion dies it puts Cripple and either Bleed, Vuln, or Weakness on anyone near it.

Staff and full zerker? You going for some kind of shatter-hybrid?

There are two kinds of stealth Mesmers. Condition and hybrid PU (Prismatic Understanding, Chaos XII). Regardless of your build you will want to be using the torch (4s of stealth, Blind + Burn, and a blast finisher). Your other choice depends on your variant:

Condition PU will generally go with Staff + Scepter/Torch and Rabid gear.
Hybrid PU will generally go with Sword/Pistol + Sword/Torch and Zerker gear.

Both builds generally use the same 20/20/30/0/0 spec and most commonly use Rabid gear, though the individual traits change depending on your weapon choice.

These builds are highly trolol builds because you generally summon your staff clones or phantasms and then dance around in stealth while your illusions harass the opponent. Because of this PU Mesmers are really good at 1vX.

For a PU build Osicat just provided a shiny brand new video guide for the classic 20/20/30 PU:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLri428e498

TL;DR:
I would love a new melee weapon (definitely a hammer). However just because we don’t have hammers yet does not mean Engineers cannot be a melee class.

I’m laughing at all of the people who say that the Tool Kit and Bomb Kit don’t count because they are kits and not weapons. Let’s get a few things straight:

1. Kits are a powerful mechanic for Engineers, but that does NOT mean they were intended to be a NECESSARY mechanic for Engineers. That’s like saying Necros shouldn’t be able to have builds that don’t involve minions or that Warrior’s shouldn’t be able to have builds that don’t involve banners. Yes kits are very common and are used in MOST successful builds, but there are still builds out there that do not need kits to perform well.

2. Kits ARE weapons. Saying Tool Kit doesn’t count as a melee weapon is just plain silly.

3. While Engineers only have one “smack ’em up” weapon, we have plenty of “melee” weapons. Tool Kit and Bomb Kit require melee range. Flamethrower requires you to be just outside melee range, and Rifle performs best at close range.

4. It’s silly to complain about not having a melee build. Every ranged class in the game can perform just as well at ranged as they can in melee (except for Scope-traited Engis, GS Mesmers, and LB Rangers [but those latter two builds suck anyway so who cares]). You can complain about not having enough ranged options but you can’t really complain about not having enough melee options.

Honestly it’s embarrassing that this is still an issue.

Bill said that he wants hobosacks to be taken care of, and that was four months ago. All ANet has to do is add a toggle to allow hobosacks to be hidden or shown, much like back items.

That kind of coding is actually pretty simple and would take maybe an hour or two tops to pull off. Even if the devs only spent a few minutes on it each day there is no way it should be taking over four months to push this out.

He also said that they were waiting for the art designs to add icons for kits similar to Ele Attunements. How long does it take to draw 5 of those tiny icons? Heck I could whip those out in like 20 minutes. Or they could even just use the icon of the utility.

Honestly ANet’s biggest problem is the lack of communication between devs and players. Other games out there like Warframe have devs that post in weekly blogs everything that they are working towards so that players know exactly what’s up. You would think that with all of ANet’s resources their top devs could spare a few minutes each week (or even once a month!) to let us know what they are planning with their game. The 12/10 patch preview was a step in the right direction, but things like that are really rare.

Oh well, I’m sure this post will be ignored by the devs and/or flamed by ANet apologizers, so have at it I guess…

I don’t know why the wiki says 3s, but it is wrong.

This is a direct copy/paste from the June 25th patch notes (just like Brando said) where Dhuumfire was first added to the game.

Spite

• Signet Power: This trait has been merged with Signet Mastery.
• Signet Mastery: This trait now recharges signets 20% faster and grants 3 stacks of * might for 10 seconds on signet use.
• Axe Training: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.
• New Grandmaster trait—Dhuumfire: Players can inflict burning to opponents for 4 seconds on critical hit. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.

Unless ANet ninja nerfed it after June 25th and then ninja buffed it back to its original duration, it has always had a base 4s duration. The wiki is wrong.

In PvE the signet is awesome because Phantasms tend to not die very often and damage in general is pretty low, making the passive healing very nice.

In large scale WvW the signet is heavily inferior to Mirror because A. Your illusions tend to not last long in a zerg and B. 2s of Reflect while healing is just awesome in a zerg.

For roaming the signet is great if you are a PU build due to the extra healing you can get while stealthed and the fact that you almost always have 3 illusions up. Otherwise Ether Feast is probably still a little bit better.

I don’t sPvP much so I can’t really say how useful it is there.

It largely depends on what classes/builds you are fighting against.

The hybrid spec will do more damage to players with lower toughness and/or more condition removal. The blackwater spec will do more damage to players with higher toughness and/or less condition removal.

The blackwater build also has higher survivability due to multiple stealths (along with the defensive boons while stealthed), blocks, tougness, etc.

The blackwater build will also perform slightly better against multiple opponents due to clones applying conditions on death and WoC bouncing. However this is significantly more dependent upon your own personal skill rather than the spec.

My recommendation would be the blackwater build, but the hybrid spec will also work just as well in different situations.

LordByron.8369:

Its a blast >.> but its an horrible skill.

if you are in the midst of 5 targets with an ele you are possibly already dead…
If not You risk your target to block, being invul etc.

Its basically giving up a heal in Exchange for another blast finisher.

“…in the midst of…”?

Arcane Brilliance is a ground targeted skill with a 1200 range. No need to run into the middle of the fight to use it.

I agree with only having the gkick option in the Guild Window as well as giving it a confirmation.

Right clicking on a party portrait should only bring up options that you would want to frequently use. Unless you invite people into a party for the sole purpose of mass gkicking them then there is absolutely no need to have such a seldom used option in the right click menu.

I would love this option. Breaking stealth early (especially on a PU Mesmer where you want to stay in stealth as long as possible for boons) because of accidental autoattacks is incredibly annoying and can ruin strategies.

ANet please consider implementing a system like this!

1. Preface
I’m sure this has been suggested before but after looking through multiple pages of suggestions and not seeing anything similar I decided to make a new topic.
This is not meant to be a QQ about the grind for Legendary weapons.
This is not meant to be a “maek legendarees easier 2 get!!!1” thread.
This is meant to be a constructive discussion about how the acquisition of Legendaries could be made more interesting and rewarding.

2. The Problem
Right now there is nothing actually difficult about acquiring a Legendary weapon. It’s just a massive grindfest wherein all you have to do is commit a certain number of hours a day and you automatically get a Legendary after a certain amount of time.

Yawn…

Legendaries are Legendary weapons. They should be difficult to acquire, not simply take a long time to acquire.

3. Suggested Solution
Instead of making the Gifts for crafting Legendaries require exorbitant amounts of materials, gold, karma, etc., make them require unique achievements from each aspect of the game.

4. Example
Take Twilight for example (I choose Twilight because it is generally the most popular Legendary). This weapon currently requires:

There is absolulely nothing challenging about those requirements. It’s just a lot of mats/currency to farm. Instead consider the following with meta-style Achievements wherein you must complete x number of achievements within the category to earn the item:

These are just hastily thrown together ideas to get my point across. I’m not suggesting ANet use the above examples literally because I’m sure they have staff that can create far more interesting and balanced goals than I did.

I am sure that if ANet so drastically changed how Legendaries are acquired then people would complain for whatever reasons they may think they have (like “how come players get to have fun getting their Legendary when I had to grind my butt off to get mine! QQ!”). But honestly if we’re afraid of upsetting a small minority of the players then how will anything in the game ever be improved?

My revised requirements for Twilight were just a quick example of how ANet could make acquiring Legendaries feel like an actual hard-earned accomplishment instead of just feeling like a second job.

Put a stop to Grind Wars 2!

ANet has already stated that they do not want to do this because they want your build to feel like “a semi-permanent choice”.

As a slight modification though I would really like to be able to save build templates, but still be required to visit a trainer to reset our traits. This way we would have a system like GW1 wherein you could save different builds but could only switch them out when in a town. This would retain the semi-permanent feel of your build while alleviating the small annoyance of having to redo a build everytime you want to switch builds.

So I’ve seen some of the guides for condition PU builds advertising sigils such as Blood or Doom, but I was wondering; are the new sigils of Torment (30% chance on crit to cause AoE Torment for 8s, 7s CD) worth using in WvW?

Also how important are rune of perplexity? I have traveler’s runes and am loathe to give up the OOC run speed for roaming in WvW, but on the other hand being able to stack up more Confusion also sounds really nice.

Anierna.6918:

I disagree. There are certain dungeon paths where you’ll definitely want a mesmer, and ones where you’ll definitely want an ele (which I enumerated in my last post). For other paths, where neither are necessary, I’ve found that groups usually prefer me to run ele over mesmer since ele has superior damage and might stacking. It’s the dungeons where you don’t need reflects (around half of them) where this usually happens. *

*My mes is in 10/30/0/20/10 sword/focus + offhand swap to sword, and my ele is S/D / S/F + LH w/ 30/10/10/20/0 or 0/20/25/25/0, depending on how much I’ll need to dodge [metas for both classes]. I always make sure groups know this before they choose if I go ele, mes, war, guard, or thief. Although, most groups want me to go war, so this question of ele vs. mes is a moot point. The general opinion is that every group needs at least 2 wars in it – so you’d be best off making a war. lol

The OP was asking specifically about Staff Ele, not the more viable LH variants. I stand by what I said.

Both Mesmer and Ele are completely viable in Dungeons and WvW.

That being said, Mesmer is in a bit of a better position right now:

PvE
-Mesmer/Guardian reflects make endgame PvE content much easier and while they are not required, you will have a vastly easier time getting a group as a Mesmer.
-Unfortunately right now the support role (which is primarily the role of a Staff Ele) is not in a strong position for PvE. There are certainly viable builds for using a staff in PvE content and you will not necessarily be a burden to your group for using them, but the hard truth is that your group would be better off not having a Staff Ele.

WvW
-The differences here are much less defined. Staff Support Eles are very powerful in organized groups for WvW and almost every guild wants at least a few of them. For zergs a Support Ele is less useful but a Berserker Staff Ele is still quite powerful. And for solo roaming you will have a very difficult (though not impossible) time with a Staff Ele.
-Mesmer on the other hand can be very capable in organized groups, zergs, and small groups/solo roaming. Mesmers bring different things to the table from Ele (namely Veil, Portal, and Feedback) but they are still very much desired for WvW.

Ultimately the choice is yours. While Mesmers are currently a little bit better(1) than Elementalists, that could all change in future updates.

When I say “better” I mean better at many aspects of the game. There are still things that Eles can do better than Mesmers (namely fire/water combo fields, might/fury stacking and raw DPS with LH, AoE damage, etc). But overall a Mesmer tends to have a bit of an edge for gameplay as a whole.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Traveler

Wish granted.

Sure it’s not pure +Cnd Dmg like you wanted, but Boon Duration, Condition Duration, and +30 to all stats works very well with just about every single build out there.

If you’re thinking of coming back and posting something like “well that rune dont have exactly what i wanted and so i do not accept it and must haz EXACTLY what i asked fer!!!!!1” Then just stop now. ANet has already provided Mesmers an option for 25% movement speed that compromises very little in the way of other stats.

This actually is a better alternative to having a runspeed Signet. If SoI were to be changed to include runspeed then it would also be nerfed to not provide as many buffs (if any). That would break some excellent builds. But instead, we get to have armor runes that not only synergize very well with SoI and condition builds, but also allow us to have 25% runspeed while remaining free to choose any 3 utilities we want (unlike other classes which can only have 2 utilities if they want the runspeed).

In the end, advantage Mesmer.

The niche for Ele (and the biggest reason ANet is having such a hard time balancing it) is versatility.

With access to 20 different abilities per weapon Eles are, in theory, able to seamlessly switch from good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities. Notice I say “good” here and not “excellent”. Eles were never meant to do as much damage as Thieves or Warriors, they were never supposed to be as defensive as Guardians, etc.

Instead Eles are supposed to be able to adapt to different situations and be a Jack of all Trades. Now whether or not ANet has succeeded in giving Eles the proper tools to be able to competently do this job depends on who you ask. Most players love to jump on the bandwagon that Eles are underpowered and not viable in many areas of the game. Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong and simply require a high level of skill to play (high skill level was also intentional by ANet).

I personally am a member of the latter belief in that when played properly an Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class. That’s just my opinion though.

I have to agree as well.

The whole point of the reduction to Attunement Swap CDs was so that Eles do not have to go as far into Arcana to have strong viable builds.

But putting Elemental Attunement so deep in the tree pretty much guarantees that every single build will need to go 30 Arcana to even stay on the same level as other classes.

And yes, I have carefully read over and taken into consideration the nerfs to other classes when formulating my opinion.

Love this idea!

Display Name: Prism.5649 (Planning on changing my Mesmer’s name soon so I won’t even bother listing it)
Server: Fort Aspenwood
Playstyle: Originally PvE but looking to get more into WvW
Role: Scholar
Playtime: Always evenings, sometimes mornings as well.

Dangerkips.6035:

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

This post made me cry a little bit.

You just said that because someone is not skilled enough to play the game it means that classes have balance issues. Go take a few minutes to think about that.

To those people who have been suckered in by easy games like WoW, SW:TOR, or most single player games, let me share a little secret with you:

When it comes to MMOs players are not supposed to be able to roll a character and immediately be great at everything in the game. If you want to do endgame/competitive content like solo WvW or Fractals then you absolutely need to learn how to properly play your class. If you don’t L2P then you absolutely deserve to die in competitive areas, period.

If you don’t want to L2P then that’s fine; videogames are meant to be fun so you should play the game how you want. But don’t expect to be able to properly participate in the more challenging content if you don’t know what you’re doing.

TL;DR
GW2 has casual gameplay for casual gamers and competitive gameplay for competitive players. If you don’t want to play competitively then don’t play competitive content.

P.S.
I am myself by no means a hardcore player or elitist; I die all the time in Fractals and WvW and I value having fun over getting the highest score. The only difference between me and players who complain about a class being OP or UP is that I’m not afraid to admit that my deaths are 90% my fault for not playing as well as I should have.

Taril.8619:

I’ve even designed a few scythes myself in order to try and see if one could theoretically be used as an actual weapon and came up with the idea of essentially a Battle Axe with a single double edged blade at the end using arcing horizontal swings (As opposed to Axes downward cleaves) as a way to hit an opponent in the sides and from behind (Where armour tends to be weaker – Hence vulnerability in my suggested attacks) would be a functional way to fight, as long as you can keep distance mind (Close range would get you slaughtered, but it’s similar for Battle Axes)

At the risk of turning this thread away from it’s original topic:

Your proposal of using a scythe to swing around and attack someone’s side or back is a good one at first glance, but you need to think further into it. If you don’t kill someone on your first strike then you need to get your weapon back, and if the blade is behind your enemy then you have two options: reverse your swing and bring the scythe outwards away from them or pull it directly towards you. There are huge problems with both of these techniques. The first leaves you completely open with no way to parry your opponent’s counterattack and the second drags your opponent into close range.

The problem with the scythe is not that the blade is at a bad angle for attacking; it is that the angle of the blade does not allow for flowing motions. Now you might say that a battleaxe suffers similar problems and you would be correct. The difference is the battleaxe always remains in front of you and can be retracted much more easily to be used defensively. A scythe does not share this advantage because of its inherent “hooking” tendencies that leave it in a very awkward, slow, and difficult to manage position.

A scythe may be an almost viable weapon in single combat (if no other alternative weapons are nearby) because you can make up for the bad weapon positioning with your own bodily movements, but in any sort of larger skirmish it can only be a detriment.

Taril.8619:

Some classes can use it purely as a focus for magic, using it natural arc as a basis for large area spells as opposed to a single target precision tool (Elementalist and to a lesser extent Necro)

I thought about this as well but the problem with Ele is that they already have exactly the type of weapon you describe with their staff. Giving them a scythe would mean ANet needs to completely redesign the staff and would be completely redundant. I’m not opposed to giving casters a scythe because as you said yourself there is nothing inherent about a scythe that makes it a dark and sinister weapon, but we still have to be careful about what role the scythe would fill for casters.

Taril.8619:

Some could use it as a way to reap peoples souls, damaging their very essence and taking command over Life of Death (Necro and Guardian – Guardians could take people’s souls to be redeemed, they could use the scythes power over life and death to engrave poweful supportive Symbols into the ground etc)

I like the idea of Guardians using the scythe as a more beneficial weapon, good point there. Giving a scythe to Warrs/Guards/Necros would be a viable number of professions so it’s definitely doable.

Guild Wars 2 – The Abomination [necromancer tank-build tutorial – Sheobix inspired]

Oyjord.2508:

Can someone kindly link me a “Power Build” and the weapons that might accompanying it?

Thanks again for the tips.

Have you taken a look at the Necro tutorials that are stickied at the top of the page? Generally anytime you want advice you should be checking the stickies before creating a new thread…

The Necro forum is actually really nice in that we have detailed guides at the top (some other professions are seriously lacking in mods stickying their guides).

TriskaiX.7014:

guardian is more a protector than a reaper so lore wise i do not think a murderous weapon like that is fitting, a warrior and thieve do come to mind

Rant about the lore of using a scythe:
lol @ scythes being murderous weapons…

If you want to talk about who should get a scythe lore-wise then only a Necromancer should be allowed to use one. Despite the Dervish from GW1, scythes are actually not weapons of martial combat because they are incredibly inefficient at actually attacking another foe. Scythes are tools for harvesting crops, and even when peasants would need to fight with scythes they would modify them so that the blade stuck straight up like a halberd.

The only reason the Scythe is so popular as a weapon is because of it’s lore as the weapon of the Grim Reaper. And even in this it was only meant to represent the Reaper’s role as a harvester of souls, not as an actual weapon used by the Reaper. So if you want to talk about which professions should get a Scythe based on lore then really only the Necro should.

Also don’t forget that:
1. There are staff skins out there that look like scythes.
2. The Necro staff autoattack puts a scythe graphic on any staff.
End rant about the lore of using a scythe

Now if you take lore out of the question, I do think it would be pretty cool to introduce scythes to the game because as long as you don’t think about the usefulness of the weapon too much it looks really awesome. Although we may need to wait until a new profession is introduced because at the moment I can really only see a Necro and Warr making use of the scythe. Maybe a Thief but it really would not fit a Thief’s quick and mobile playstyle. Perhaps one of the next professions will be a new heavy armor profession that could make good use of a scythe.

Aside from that, I like the OP’s point about a scythe being really good for generating life force, nice touch. =)

First of all GG for resurrecting a 4 month old topic…how long did it take you to dig through the forums to find this? …

EzRemake.1860:

I decided not to even try for a legendary, because like everyone else has stated, they don’t fit the theme of a Necromancer. Also, the Dagger seems pretty underwhelming in general. I mean, it’s just a flaming dagger… Not much original in that, might as well just get the CoF dagger.

Have you even seen the Incinerator? Its not a flaming dagger like the one from CoF. It’s a giant blowtorch that wraps your arm in flames, leaves trails of fire when you swing it, and causes you to leave behind fiery footprints. It may not be a Necro-style weapon but it’s still pretty awesome in general.

Next time try youtubing the Legendaries so you can see what they actually look like instead of some random screenshot. Screenshots are horrible for showing what Legendaries look like because the major things that separate them from other weapons are the particle effects (or projectile effects for ranged Legendaries). For example you can’t really capture the window-into-another-world effect that Sunrise/Twilight have with simple screenshots.

EzRemake.1860:

I decided to just go with the Ghastly Dagger, but didn’t find out it only glows at night until I actually got it. Such a stupid gimmick

This is why you look up what expensive weapons (dunno if I’d call an AC weapon expensive but anyways…) do before you buy them. All you would have had to do was type “/wiki ghastly dagger” in-game and you would have seen that it only glows at night. The NPC that sells the weapons also has them equipped so you can clearly see that they only glow at night. That being said I do think it’s pretty stupid that the weapons only glow at night.

As far as Legendaries for Necros go the Frostfang isn’t too bad. After all Grenth is the human God of death and ice, and the draconic/demonic look of Frostfang fits pretty well. And the Axe is a useful weapon for Power Necros.

EDIT
To all the people complaining about the stats on Legendaries: You do realize there is such a thing as a transmutation stone right? If you have the gold to afford a Legendary then you have the gold to buy enough gems for one stone. This means the stats on the Legendary are 100% irrelevant because you can change them to whatever you want.

Daemon.4295:

So… you’re saying that a condition build can in fact kill trash mobs more quickly than a power build with wells?

Absolutely.

Power builds can absolutely demolish a single target in the blink of an eye, there’s no doubt about that. But with Condition builds you can pull tons of mobs at once and kill them all quickly and easily. Condition builds are especially useful for DE’s where AoE is the most important type of DPS (and Epidemic is easily the king of AoE).

Even though Condition builds are rather weak against single mobs compared to Power builds, being able to take down 5+ mobs at the same time wins out in the end. That’s not to say that Power builds are not effective however, I myself switched out of Condition because I found it was not as fun on a personal level. I’ve been running a Dagger/Focus or Dagger/Warhorn (depending on the situation) and I’m loving it, but I do not kill mobs as quickly as I did with Conditions.

Noble.3647:

I have assigned at least 1 illusion to 2+ targets on numerous occasions

This only happens when the Illusion AI bugs out. It is not an intended mechanic. ANet has explicitly stated multiple times that Illusions are not meant to be able to target more than one mob/player, and when that mob/player dies the Illusion is supposed to die as well.

Also, Mesmer being my main, I can recount multiple times where I would summon an Illusion and it would just sit there doing nothing, or (as I mentioned before) it would attack some completely random target instead of the target it should have attacked.

These problems happen less frequently than they do with Minions, but that is because (as also mentioned before) the AI between the two is deliberately different. Illusions are only meant to attack one target and so their AI is a much more simplified code and so is less prone to bugs. This is why Illusions perform better than Minions.

Illusion AI is also broken…

Illusions will frequently attack mobs that the Mesmer did not summon them on, or they will run and shatter on a completely different mob. Case and point: I was fighting a Champ DE boss with my Mesmer, summoned 3 illusions on the boss, and yet when I told them to shatter one of them decided it would rather kill the bunny behind me (and no I wasn’t targeting the bunny when I summoned or shattered the clones, I’m not an idiot =p).

lettucemode.3789:

How much money do you have from other characters? Maxing a crafting skill will get you 10 levels no matter when you start, and if you follow guides around the internet you can do it for less than 5 gold per crafting skill.

Just to point out, you don’t get 10 levels from maxing a tradeskill. Its more like 13-15 depending on your crafting crits, and even if you are low on gold you should max Cooking as it only costs around 1g (make sure you’re buying mats at the appropriate time of day).

If you plan on crafting to level then make sure you go to an overflow server where you don’t have any WvW bonuses and obviously make sure you don’t have a crafting booster active. Crafting criticals increase your crafting experience and allow you to hit 400 crafting faster, but they do not increase your character experience.

For example when I had 18% crit from WvW and a crafting booster active I got 9 levels from 1-400 cooking, but when I did it again on a different character without any bonuses I got 14 levels. It costs more money to max a tradeskill without bonuses, but you arguably get more bang for your buck without crafting crits.

Aside from crafting the above posters are correct: Dailies, DE’s and especially your Personal Story are the best way to level. Condition builds are great for DE’s because of all the AoE (Signet of Spite + Epidemic is great in the earlier levels). But if you’re looking to change things up then Dagger power builds are really fun too.

Kasama.8941:

12 seconds of reliable swiftness, a few seconds of stealth, and one teleportation skill, is not extremely high mobility. That’s just false advertising. A Mesmer can escape situations where there’s a lot of chaos, or corners to hide behind, sure, but when foes are chasing you on open ground, you won’t get away.

You misunderstand. Mesmer has extremely high mobility in combat, which means we can be anywhere on the battlefield extremely quickly and we never need to be still during combat. I never meant we were good at running long distances.

Star Ace.5207:

I do have one concern, though. If I want to play with scepter, I feel underpowered. Whereas with many other classes, you can do well with any other weapon, by adapting your playstyle. Well, I am kiting and not playing like I would my favorite class, but I can’t damage certain enemies solo enough. It keeps regenerating, and I can’t outdamage it. And-this is key-I honestly don’t want to go with a “proven” build, but more with my own thing. I want to do well with scepter on PvE, even if I am not supposed to. Why? Because one can do well with other weapons in most professions as well.

You have an overly high opinion of other class’s weapons. Weapons are not meant to be usable in all situations. The Scepter is a great weapon, but like many weapons it is only useful in certain situations. In this case the Scepter is mainly useful in PvP Condition/Shatter builds. Mesmers are not alone in this, other professions have weapons that are sub-par in PvE as well. That being said, the Scepter is definitely at the top of the list of weapons that need to be adjusted.

Kasama.8941:

In other words, it feels as if I must follow a “proven template” of playstyle to do well at PvE, and I would love to play Mesmer “my way”, so to speak. I am already level 43, but seem to be stuck soloing a regenerating Veteran at the moment. O.o And yes, I love the Mesmer concept, so I would want to see it work (I am certainly not deleting it, since it’s one of my “main classes” since headstart-I just didn’t play it much since I made it.) Is it possible that weapons are not currently balanced, or MUST I use the “proven” traits to do well?

As I said, Mesmer is a much more skill-based profession than others. You absolutely can use non-mainstream builds and still be effective, but only if you are skilled at playing the profession. Being “already level 43” really does not mean anything as you don’t even have access to half your traits. Traits can change the entire game, so of course without them you are going to feel underpowered.

Kasama.8941:

In short, I am wondering if it’s really possible to do well in PvE with ANY sort of weapon/build, other than the usually recommended ones. Learn to play isn’t the same as doing what everybody else does, right? And this is mean’t to offend anyone, because I do like the Profession (I certainly don’t think it’s underpowered), but it can be frustrating at times, if I want to deviate a little from what everybody else does.

It is possible to do well solo with any weapon/build, but when you get into Dungeons, and more importantly Fractals, then min/maxing your effectiveness by using the most powerful builds becomes vastly more important. This is true of any profession in any MMO game. If that’s not something that interests you then stick to solo play. Also there is a difference between learning to play and using the right build. Just because you have the same build as someone as else does not mean you will perform as well as them. Likewise a skilled player can be effective even with a terrible build.

Also, how can you feel like you’re being pigeonholed into a specific build when there are so many viable Mesmer builds out there? Just take a look at the sticky at the top of these forums for a big list of many of the viable builds. There’s a build for every aspect of the Mesmer, so if none of those are fun for you then maybe Mesmer is not the right profession for you.

All in all, 99% of the problems with the Mesmer can be overcome by playing smart and knowing the ins and outs of your profession.

Esplen.3940:

I’ve been playing a mesmer for nearly 800 hours and I can easily say: No.

Anyone who believes the Mesmer is a poor profession in WvW/PvE very simply does not know how to play as one. Having a high playtime does not mean someone is a skilled player and it does not mean someone is qualified to give a proper, unbiased judgment.

Mesmer right now is incredibly useful in Fractals (I say Fractals because Dungeons are so faceroll easy that a permanently Moa’d player can be useful in them) due to high damage, extremely high mobility, the most powerful Armor skill in the game (Chaos Armor dominates and can be given to everyone in the group with Ethereal Field + Blast Finisher), and the ability to reflect projectiles.

In WvW Osicat already showed you proof that Mesmers are beasts. To anyone who believes Mesmers are bad at escaping…Torch #4, Decoy, Mass Invis, Focus #4, Blink, Shatter #3, we have plenty of tools to gtfo so I can’t really see how people think we’re bad at escaping.

What people need to realize is that the skill level needed to be effective is not balanced across the professions. Warriors can run into combat, close their eyes and bang their keyboard and still do decent damage. Mesmers, Thieves, Engineers, and to an extent Eles need to actually learn how to play the game in order to be effective.

TL;DR
So if you’re having trouble with the Mesmer or believe it to be underpowered then (and I hate saying this but in this case it’s true) there is a very simple case of Learn2Play.

Pinch, you only think larger groups dilute personal roles because you are looking at the later raids in WoW. I invite you to go check out Vanilla/early BC raids and even more importantly EQ/EQ2 raids (even some Rift dungeons/raids have proper mechanics).

These games had proper raids, not the garbage that is in place today. In these raids each player would have specific mechanic-related jobs (not just tank/heal/DPS) where the failure of one player would result in a wipe.

Proper raids would be something more along the lines of:
Strategy > Personal Skill = Group Coordination > Gear

With raids such as these, larger groups absolutely allow for more customization of mechanics because there are more players to be given specific roles.

The problem with GW2 right now is that, as I mentioned, the only true mechanic is getting out of red circles. Sure there are optimal strategies to defeat dungeon encounters, but straight up zerging a boss with players who know how to dodge roll will win the day 9 times out of 10.

DeathPanel.8362:

To tell you the actual rates would be to tell you how to hit exploit code, which would be against the rules.

This made me giggle a little bit…

—

Anyway, to add futher confirmation to the above posters, there is no downtime between characters. You can do the same path on all your characters one after another and not hit DR.

I’ve tested this on up to 5 characters consecutively in AC, 3 characters in CoF, and 2 in Arah and have received full rewards on each run.

Pinch.4273:

The game does not need party sizes larger than 5 to have dungeons with mechanics and fights that require group-oriented strategy.

You are absolutely right, and if ANet released properly challenging dungeons I would be okay with that. Larger groups simply allow for more in-depth/creative mechanics and higher levels of teamplay. On the flip side they would be much harder to design and balance so it’s a tricky tradeoff.

This is the biggest problem with GW2, and is why so many people consider PvE to be “unfinished”.

The only reason to do dungeons is to change your armor or weapon appearances. I would also say that the other reason for doing dungeons is for the challenge of actually doing them, but I can’t even say dungeons are challenging without laughing. Fractals are the only things that are really enjoyable at endgame, but they’re still so riddled with bugs (understandable this early on) and they get so repetitive that they don’t really solve the problem of endgame PvE. They’re a step in the right direction, but we’re not quite there yet.

What GW2 really needs is 10 player Fractals with actual mechanics that do not just involve staying out of red circles. Many people around here hate on raids from other games because of blah-blah-gear-grind, but the fact of the matter is that raids in other games such as EQ2, vanilla WoW, Rift, etc. are fun because they are actually challenging and require teamwork, not just because of the big numbers on the gear. Raids also present long term progression. Unlike dungeons or Fractals where you can complete everything in about an hour, properly formed raids can take anywhere from weeks to months to progress through.

Now many people will look at that statement and find the obvious two problems: 1. Fractals supposedly present long term progression because you can keep leveling up, and 2. People can finish entire raids in one night on other games.
These points are silly when you think about them though. Fractals do not really progress because you are just doing the same content over and over with each level being a bit more difficult than the last (which is basically a grind). And also, the people who steamroll raids in one night in other games can only do so because they outgear the content, which obviously would not happen in GW2 because there is no gear progression.

ANet had a nice idea with giving players the top line gear without the need to grind for it, but they seem to have forgotten that giving the player everything they want very quickly creates boredom.

That being said, there is no subscription for this game and the PvP is actually very well done and is continuously challenging. So until PvE is expanded we have the option of either stepping into WvW/sPvP or just finding another game to play. Obviously these are not great options and ANet really needs to get to work on PvE, but nevertheless there’s your answer.

I’ve noticed this as well. I can be fighting two enemies side by side (with me too far away for WoC to bounce back to me) and only one enemy will take damage/receive conditions. The same happens whether or not I solo the enemies or have 3 clones out.

I have also noticed that with Illusions VII, Illusionary Elasticity, if WoC bounces back to me it will continue bouncing to a different enemy as intended.

Definitely sounds like a bug to me.

Ranger is fine in PvE. There are minor things that need to be changed and of course the glaring problem of pets being incredibly squishy and next to useless in fractals needs attention, but on the whole Rangers are in a good place for PvE. You will never rival a Warrior, but then again few classes do. You are still 100% viable if you are skilled enough.

99% of the complaints you see on the forums are PvP based, wherein Rangers are noticeably behind the other classes.

And where does it say that fire rates need to be the same across the board?

If your concern is about balancing the professions, then you need to look much farther than just how fast each profession auto attacks. You need to take into account:

- Base damage of the skill
- Power coefficient of the skill
- Possible conditions and/or other special effects of the skill
- Whether the skill is part of a chain, and if so what the damages and coefficients and conditions are of the chain skills

Then you need to take into account all the rest of the profession’s abilities, including the other four weapon skills and what they’re damage, coefficients, etc. are, as well as traits and utilities. And then you need to take into account what the weapon is designed to be used for, because not all weapons were designed to be used in all situations (Ranger Longbow in melee range is going to be bad no matter how fast it shoots). Just because a profession has a weak auto attack does not mean they don’t make up for it with the rest of their skills. In fact some professions are specifically balanced around having mediocre auto attacks (Only Fire auto attack of Staff Ele is truly useful by itself, but the Staff more than makes up for this lack with the other abilities from each Attunement).

All in all, weapon activation time is an extremely minor aspect of what makes a weapon balanced or not. Ranger Longbow for example is better than Shortbow with the right gear, traits, and situation, even though it has what you amusingly believe to be a “broken” fire rate.

This being said, I’m still not sure the Longbow is balanced in it’s other skills. The only time a Longbow really overtakes a Shortbow is with 100% crit chance, huge crit damage, and maximum range. As I said above every weapon has a situation that it was designed for, but to me the Longbow’s ideal situation seems far too specific with not enough leeway to make it a balanced weapon.

TL;DR
Weapon auto attack does not determine the overall usefulness of the weapon. High DPS auto attack can make a weapon powerful, but low DPS auto attack does not necessarily make it useless. You need to look beyond the #1 skill before you start making silly whining posts.

Welcome to theorycrafting.

Not sure if trolling…but just in case:

And where does it say that fire rates need to be the same across the board?

If your concern is about balancing the professions, then you need to look much farther than just how fast each profession auto attacks. You need to take into account the following factors:

- Base damage of the skill
- Power coefficient of the skill
- Possible conditions and/or other special effects of the skill
- Whether the skill is part of a chain, and if so what the damages and coefficients and conditions are of the chain skills

Then you need to take into account all the rest of the profession’s abilities, including the other four weapon skills and what they’re damage, coefficients, etc. are, as well as traits and utilities. And then you need to take into account what the weapon is designed to be used for, because not all weapons were designed to be used in all situations (Ranger Longbow in melee range is going to be bad no matter how fast it shoots). Just because one profession has a weak auto attack does not mean they don’t make up for it with the rest of their skills. In fact some professions are specifically balanced around having mediocre auto attacks (Only Fire auto attack of Staff Ele is truly useful by itself, but the Staff more than makes up for this lack with the other abilities from each Attunement).

All in all, weapon activation time is an extremely minor aspect of what makes a weapon balanced or not. Ranger Longbow for example is better than Shortbow with the right gear, traits, and situation, even though it has what you amusingly believe to be a “broken” fire rate.

You mention that “…everyone in the world seems to oblivious to it [weapon fire rate].”, but in truth it’s not that everyone is oblivious, it’s that everyone understands that balancing weapons and professions involves so much more than simply comparing attack speed.

Welcome to theorycrafting.