Guild Wars 2

Pushing Far

Pushing far is a strategy that does come with a lot of caveats. It can be enormously detrimental to your team if done wrong, but it is a powerful tool. If your team controls 2 points, never push far (with the exception of absolutely needing to push far in order to win, but that’s sorta a fringe case). Controlling 2 points is a dominant lead, and pushing far only spreads your team’s strength thinner than necessary. Always keep in mind what you’re trying to accomplish with pushing far.

Pushing far is a strategy designed to cause an unbalanced fight at mid, or unbalanced point distribution in the match. If far is undefended, then you can simply capture it rapidly to immediately give your team a point lead, whether or not they lose the fight at mid, and then you can rapidly rotate mid to provide additional support. However, if they have a player on far, you need to make a judgment call of whether pushing is a wise thing to do.

If you can rapidly kill the player (most builds except very tanky guards/warriors and minionmancer necros), do so, then decap the point. This generally creates the response of sending multiple people to that point in order to drive you off, and this is precisely the response you want. Once you are fighting a 2v1, control of the point becomes irrelevant. You aren’t trying to hold the point, you’re simply trying to waste 2 people’s time, and this allows you to use any and all defensive/evasive tricks that you have up your sleeve in order to survive. When you are able to control a 2v1 fight, that means your team is fighting a 4v3 on the other 2 points, and they will win. Sometimes with bad players you’ll even get a 3v1, which can be fun.

Overall, just remember that pushing far is a strategy with the goal of creating an imbalance. If they push a tank to the point that you can’t kill or force off the point, you need to change your strategy, because you’re no longer effectively creating an imbalance.

Rapid Rotation

The idea here is to always appear at a fight where you can be the deciding factor in whether it succeeds or fails, and this often requires a lot of mobility, and always requires a lot of map awareness. Keep an eye on your teammate’s health bars, and keep an eye on the minimap to determine where high concentrations of enemies are.

Showing up fashionably late to a fight allows you to pick and choose your targets to an extent. If there’s some engineer raining grenades on the fight, you can disrupt that. If there are a couple of boon spamming classes, a disenchanter can fix that, and thereby swing the fight to your advantage.

However, never forget that the dynamic of the game is constantly changing. While you’re winning the fight at mid, they might be pushing home, or they might have left their far point unguarded. Always know the status of all the points and players on your team, and once your presence isn’t strictly required to win a team fight, move rapidly to the next objective.

Communication

This isn’t a strategy so much as an overall guideline. I mentioned earlier that you need to be keeping an eye on all of your team’s health bars, their locations, and available enemy locations. Additionally, you often take charge of large objectives such as the hammer and treb. All of these combine to give you the best idea of what’s happening in the fight. You use this to your personal advantage, but always notify your teammates of what’s happening. Tell them when you see the enemy rotating, when you see them approaching points or leaving points unguarded. Keeping a constant stream of information to your team allows them to make the best and most informed decisions for their own personal playing, and that wins fights.

Be Flexible

While I had this at the beginning, it’s important enough to state again here. Flexibility is the key to victory. In order to effectively win all matches, you need to be able to mix and match strategies that fit the encounter. If your home point is getting pushed relentlessly, maybe it’s your job to stop that. If they’re leaving far unguarded, maybe you can take the time to decap, then rapidly go back and support a fight without full capping it. If they’ve stuck a minionmancer on far, and they haven’t left the circle the entire game, perhaps it’s wiser to just ignore that point exists and focus on your side and mid. Rapid adaptation is the key to success.

So over the past couple of months I’ve seen a lot of threads with various complaints about the Mesmer general performance in solo queue, or how it seems incredibly difficult to win anything in solo queue. After playing a good deal of solo queue myself, I’ve decided to write up a bit of a guide on how I succeed.

The Mindset

There’s a couple things that you need to remember when running solo queue, otherwise you’ll end up rage-quitting pretty quick.

Everyone is Equal
I know that sometimes it seems like you’re getting horrible teams every single time, and that makes it impossible to ever win, but that’s not the case. Overall, every person that plays in solo queue will get the same number of horrible teams. You’re no better or worse off than anyone else, and so that brings us to the next point.

Every Match is Winnable

Now, this might not actually hold true, but it’s the assumption that you should operate under. I’ve won 4v5s, I’ve won matches with abysmal teammates, and I’ve come back from massive deficits. Never give up, never go into a match thinking anything except ‘How will I win this match’. This also translates well into the last point.

Every Loss is Your Personal Fault

Again, this probably doesn’t hold true, but it’s the most productive mindset to have. If you try and blame your losses on your teammates every time, you’ll never have the impetus to improve. Every time you lose, you should be thinking ‘what could I have done to win that match’, and every time you win, you should be thinking ‘what could I have done to win that match harder ’.

General Strategy for Matches

Solo queue is markedly different than team queue in quite a few ways, and this ends up resulting in some different strategies that come to the surface in order to play effectively.

In team queue, you are part of a whole, playing your piece in your team’s strategy and composition that allows you to win. In solo queue, you are 1 person. Your team is a loose coalition of people that are kinda working together. Instead of playing a specific role in your team, you need a different objective.

Play in such a way that leaves your team no option but to win

That might sound a bit like how you play in team queue, but it’s actually quite different. You’re not necessarily trying to work with your team, but instead you’re trying to work around your team, avoiding and ameliorating any shortcomings they have, and skewing the fight so that even the worst teams can’t help but win.

There are multiple ways of doing this, so I’ll explain a few, then explain the mindset behind them. First though, a brief note about adaptability.

Adaptability

Very rarely does any one tactic work beautifully the entire game. Being able to think and change your strategy on the fly is extremely important to playing effectively. You want to always be viewing your minimap, noting where your team is, where the enemy team is, and the status of any other objectives. This allows you to effectively determine where and how your push can be applied most effectively to swing the match. If something isn’t working right away, then change it up and keep moving.

Skyhammer

Skyhammer is awesome. It’s the perfect solo queue map, because nothing carries a team of uncarryable horrific players better than a giant death laser from the sky. Having absolute control over the hammer for the entire match almost guarantees a victory, so play to make that happen. If you can force the enemy team to send 2-3 people up to the hammer to stop you, you’ve done your job and skewed the game for your team, and if the enemy team decides that isn’t the trouble, you get to rain death on everyone.

Khylo

Similar to Skyhammer, Khylo has the trebuchet. While not quite as death-lasery as the hammer, the trebuchet is undoubtedly a weapon of mass destruction in tPvP. Absolute control over the trebuchet (coupled with effective use of it) will almost always guarantee a win. Portal is a must here, as you need to be able to repair the treb as soon as it is killed. Being able to effectively prevent most players from killing the treb easily is also important, although it will die eventually, and some builds can sorta instagib it (looking at you, firey gs elementalists…).

Temple of the Silent Storm

There’s a lot of goodies to control here in temple, and a lot of good ways to play. There are 2 notably powerful buffs: Tranquility and Silence. Effectively controlling those buffs not only provides a massive boost to your team, but also is a huge denial of points from the other team. On top of that, the map is pretty small, and so you can really scoot around using blink to get into and out of fights easily.

Those 3 maps are the only ones that really have strong mechanics that you can control to swing fights easily, but there are more ways to play that skew fights.

Lovely. Shall we make a new bug thread about it in the bug forum? I’m thinking 1 per week until it gets fixed.

The PvP in this game is not a truly competitive scene. It never will be.

Play the game because you have fun, no other reason.

I play mesmer in PvP because it’s fun, and that’s all I need.

@Me Games Ma: Those changes wouldn’t fix the problems with how the DE change would screw over shatter builds.

In PU condies, I normally go energy/energy+corruption, but I might start going double energy+doom. We will see.

On phantasm, almost definitely double energy+hydromancy for that lovely cc.

Just wanted to let everyone know that the guide has been successfully formatted and uploaded by Fay, and can be found here:

http://mesmerguides.com/supcutie.html

Endo Kazuki.2086:

I think it is fixed guys !!!!

Nifty. Tests to do:

• Does it work in the dredge fractal?
• Does it work in the final right of volcanic fractal?
• Will it still simply wander off if placed on the tree boss of the TA paths?

Did it get fixed? I can’t get ingame right now.

Nazer.7301:

teogeos.1364:

Nazer.7301:

Osicat?… No offense but this build has been around since the 2nd month of release.

http://galeri3.uludagsozluk.com/138/facepalm_227785.jpg

I was talking about the build, not the pro-tip guide. If I want pvp pro-tips I’ll go give countless a kitten.

http://galeri3.uludagsozluk.com/138/facepalm_227785.jpg

Carighan.6758:

This is a larger-than-Mesmer problem. Far larger.

Guardian spirit weapons, Engineer turrets, Ranger pets, Necro minions, they all share this problem.

And to be fair, I thought +5% damage and +5% crit inherited?

Only base stats inherit (with phantasms/clones, I don’t know about those other ones). That means no % damage, no crit chance (including fury), no slaying potions etc.

Xyonon.3987:

I see where this is going to. They once mentioned that they will rework the scepter aa since it feels terrible atm. They are slowly taking away the condition part of the traits combined with this aa. I guess this ends like:

• scepter 1 gains conditions
• scepter becomes a full condtition weapon
• main hand pistol replaces it as a power 1h ranged weapon

It looks pretty obvious to me.

First, they’ve straight up said that the scepter auto won’t be getting conditions (and I agree with this, too much condition spam already).

Additionally, you have them adding a new weapon (MH pistol). If that happens within the next year I’ll be surprised, so maybe ‘obvious’ as in an ultra-long term plan, but definitely not a viable balance solution.

I will say that I actually doubt they’d be able to make DE not trigger the dissipation traits. Maybe they could do it so that DE clones themselves won’t trigger the traits, but I honestly don’t think they’re good enough to code it properly such that a dodge roll causing an explosion won’t trigger the trait.

Dante.2510:

Thanks for your answer. Sadly, i think there isnt any tasty addiction to play with zerk meta.
OS something or to be oneshoted, thats is the question, pretty well sumed up but very low skills meta .

Something worth noting is that the build you’ve posted there, as valarauka explained, does nothing effectively. There are Mesmer builds that support well, or can stack conditions reasonably well, but your build can’t do either. Not only can’t it compete in a speed running zerker group, I wouldn’t want that in any group, as it would just be a pure dead weight on the party.

Jester.1236:

Debilitating dissipation, and all clone death traits were always supposed to be, if an enemy killed your clones. It was never meant as an ability to grant conditions by dodging. It was a neat unintended trick, that was never supposed to be that way, and there fixing it.

Ah, thanks for the clarification mr. Game developer.

Oh wait…

Dante.2510:

Heya !

Bored by the Mesmer Phantasm build, i would like to change my gaming style by going to a boons sharing and hybrid dps build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAW8fl4zCoXUTpGa9IipHBnvBckU4avWJFz2FC-jQCBYhCy0CAkFQkIwJqFRjtMsIasaZK16ZBSdDDA-e

Would like to have your thoughs about it, need to know if it will be very usefull in very high lvl fractal or if the kitten full berserker set is mandatory…

Thanks !

That’s a build I wouldn’t want on my team in a high level fractal, especially as a Mesmer.

You lack any access to reflects, which is really bad, and you’re close to 0 damage potential. You have low everything…power, precision, condition damage…

In high level fractals, the reasons that the zerker meta is a thing are exacerbated. Mobs hit so hard that any and all defense is completely useless. You will squish even if you’re full pvt with a defender out. This means that the only defense that matters is avoidance/ prevention with dodges and reflects. Additionally, the best defense is killing things faster. Your build fails to support in any relevant way for high level fractals.

It’s been bugged for quite a few months now. If I recall correctly, the devs said they knew about it, so it’ll probably be fixed in about a year.

Carighan.6758:

LumAnth.5124:

They most likely refer to “cheesing” game play as using DE to kill clones, in turn, procing the on death traits.

But instead of toning down the death traits, they nerf DE.

That’s because in that specific example, the problem is DE.
To validate this, spec a spec without DE, use on-death traits, and utilize them, including overwriting at 3 clones to proc on-death traits. Then compare the same again without those traits.

I used to have that (no DE but on-death-traits), and really, if it’s anything it’s underpowered.

It only becomes an issue when you add DE to the mix. Even when it comes to full-clones-overwriting.

You seem to be making this odd assumption that the devs are making this change for some coherent balance reason. I’d argue that you’re entirely wrong in that.

From everything that we’ve seen, the dev team doesn’t have the first clue of how to balance. This is shown by their total lack of progress since the beginning of the game. The current meta can only be positively described as ‘better than the condition meta’, but it’s absolutely worse than what came before that. This means that the balance team has not learned anything from their mistakes, they haven’t improved.

Now, if you look at the living world releases, they have improved immensely. Each release comes with more interesting mechanics, a better storyline, and so you can generally see a very definite amount of progress with each new release. WvW also has been progressing, with incoming account bound ranks, new map structures, EoTM, and generally better matchmaking.

Now, not only have the devs shown themselves to be incompetent from a balance perspective, but they’ve also shown themselves to be incompetent from a coding and QA perspective. How many Mesmer skills have they broken? How many are still broken? How long did it take them to fix the skills? I’m sure you can answer those questions yourself.

Now, on top of all that, they repeatedly show a distinct lack of understanding about the classes in this game and how they function, particularly Mesmer, but definitely not limited to. This comes from both a factual basis (Jon Peters not knowing clones can overwrite phantasms) and a more conceptual basis where none of the devs were able to articulate in any way approaching clear or concise the background or reasons for the DE change. Their changes more often feel like changes for the sake of changing, disregarding the actual effects that those changes will have.

Overall
I can absolutely draw the conclusion that the balance dev team is completely incompetent and has no idea what they’re doing. They deserve no benefit of the doubt. They deserve to be questioned and pressured at every turn on every questionable change they make, because past events say that they are not acting in a way that best serves this game.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Except any decent phantasm mesmer doesn’t want that either. Skill clones are an important part of a mesmer’s utility and versatility (see: leap/swap etc.). Basically the original point that the guy made was just kitten.

In this thread: People that think they understand mesmer mechanics.

islarose.7356:

PH Law.4063:

i dunno if i would consider DE a nerf or a bonus, when i go invisible and when i dodge my clones is like a breadcrumb (at times) but critical infusion is a unneeded nerf because it syncs so well with DE…i mean hey if you are trying to make all classes the same with perma vigor nerf then guardians need one as well because i dont see it being mentioned in the upcoming patches…point is with these nerfs i do expect dev to either rework our kit or at least rework Cry of Frustration…point is a lot of the mesmer builds works around these 2 traits…

Guardians got a vigor nerf as well. I think this livestream was a bad idea, seeing as they announced the nerfs, but had to stay tight lipped about additional (positive) balance changes. They did try to emphasize that nothing was set in stone, as well as the possibly beneficial impact of reworked runes, sigils and two slots on 2H weapons, but I think that is easily overlooked when class changes are being mentioned.

If you actually read this thread, you’d have noticed that nobody gives 2 kittens about the vigor nerf.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Are we talking PvE or PvP? I never used Deceptive Evasion in PvE, I don’t even care.

For PvP I guess it is a slight buff since GS clone bleed got a relative buff. Although it was never that great to begin with since the clones don’t get fury like the pistol phantasms do.

It is a critical nerf for shatter and clone-death mesmers in PvE and PvP. What buff do you see with the DE change for non-phantasm builds?

Well, shatter and clone death don’t really exist in PvE is the point he’s trying to make I think.

Soulseek.2867:

Will you be able to go Scepter/Pistol pve and autoattack without overwriting your three iDuelists? Also, If you summon a phantasm while having three clones, will it spawn ?

No, yes.

Neither of those two interactions involve deceptive evasion, why would they change?

Viking Jorun.5413:

As a thief main, it also decreases our initiative gain from 1/s down to 0.3/s, meaning that if you happen to chill a thief, you’ve got a good chance of winning the match. A lot of thieves have condition clear in stealth though, and the ones that don’t have multiple utilities which clear chilled, crippled, and immobilized. So while chilled can really mess a thief up, we’ve got plenty of ways to counter being chilled.

Ah, I didn’t even think about init gain, thanks for stopping by.

It only affects their heal and utilities in terms of skill cooldown, but it still decreases their movement speed, so reducing the range of heartseeker, etc.

Just tested. Old>New.

Wasbunny.6531:

I had to go back and watch the whole 20 seconds about this on the stream to try to decipher their rational behind this nerf (42 minutes in btw). This is what I could make out that they didn’t like about the trait:

• It proc’ed ‘on clone death’ traits
• It disrupted the flow of your clones (no idea what that means)
• It forced you to either ‘cheese it’ (again, no clue what this means) or
• It interrupts your game-play (still no idea what specific type of ‘game-play’ this inhibited, especially since on-clone death builds make this an integral part of their game-play)
• It feels broken (very subjective but ok)
• You have your clone, you’re attacking and you’re there and it’s changing all your positioning (???)
• It can replace Phantasms. No it can’t. (Yes it can.)

So to me the only thing that makes any sense is they feel the ‘on clone death’ traits are too powerful. Why they think this is anyone’s guess as they really didn’t say.

Lol. And these are our actual devs everyone. Seriously. These guys are in charge of balancing this game. sigh

Ghanto.9784:

frifox.5283:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Good to hear. Might want to try and convey the information a bit more clearly next time.

Oddly enough I found that he presented the change in the video quite clear. He did blurb out initially and made it look as if there will be no clone production if -any- clones are out but then he did clarify it quite specifically “if you’re full clones we are not going to create anymore”, aka if you got 3 illusions up then no clones will be spawned.

Because he said BOTH, so it wasn’t completely clear which statement was fact and which a mistake. He didn’t preface his second comment with something like, “What I said initially was a mistake” or “For the sake of clarification…” – it was just all thrown in there between some ramblings about “cheesing it.”

I was personally leaning toward the likelihood of the second statement being fact, as obviously most others were, but it’s good he chimed in here for the record.

Note that Josh (Grouch) the guy that responded here on the forums is not the wonderboy that garbled everything on the stream. That was Jon Peters.

This is not a new thing, and the mechanic is well understood. Back in the betas, you could walk back and forth over the line to get infinite swiftness easily. To prevent that, they made the line not apply swiftness if you already have the buff.

It’s a band-aid fix, but here in GW2 band-aid fixes are permanent

Thedenofsin.7340:

Grouch,

I have come to the conclusion that this recommended change was simply not well thought out. This is a nerf to all builds, and it is completely unnecessary to nerf all builds in this manner.

Here are the kinds of situations this change will negatively impact w/3 clone out:

1. Phantasmal Retreat – no longer creates a clone meat shield to soak the attack you are about to get
2. Thief jumps you – you no longer can dodge+daze
3. Someone is rezzing/stomping – you no longer can dodge+daze
4. You won’t be able to replace that iWarden that’s standing there and doing nothing with a useful Beserker or iSwordsman
5. Clones are 1000m away standing and doing nothing while you are getting attacked – you won’t be able to summon more clones to help

This idea will hurt all mesmer builds overall, and, to put it mildly, Mesmers aren’t all over the meta right now as it is.

This idea was not well thought out, and that’s the nicest thing I can say about it.

While I also think the change wasn’t well thought out, your points 1 and 4 are both factually inaccurate.

Iavra.8510:

Seeing that you don’t play for that long, according to your own post, perhaps i should clarify one thing to you:

ArenaNet hates mesmers.

Let me try to clarify further. They don’t hate mesmers, they simply don’t understand them. The changes they make are in the name of some arcane ‘balance’ that ultimately doesn’t work because they have no clue what they’re doing, and the changes to Mesmer are made from the perspective of people that don’t even begin to understand the class. They simply don’t understand.

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Basically, it means you can’t use the dodges to pop clones. You can still use weapon skills though, so you can get a high rate of clone poppage just as before.

Well no, you can’t. If I have N ways of generating clones and one is taken away, I don’t still have N ways of popping clones, I now have N-1 ways. That’s not the same as before.

And it so happens that DE has been a particularly fast way of generating clones and clone-deaths, much faster than most of the others you listed up-thread. So it’s even worse than that.

Pyroatheist.9031:

It will actually encourage conservation of dodges for more defense, instead of just recklessly dodging around for clone fodder.

What you describe in that derogatory tone is a perfectly valid means of generating offense in certain builds.

And it will make defense more tricky as well now. I’m used to the idea that if I have 3 illusions out, but I need to escape, I can count on a DE clone as a diversion. Now that will work sometimes, and not work sometimes. Can I adjust to the change? Sure. Is it a nerf? Definitely.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Overall, high skill users of clone death builds won’t see an impact in performance, just a style change. Low skill users will see lower performance, and that’s not really a bad thing.

You can use whatever “sour grapes” or “silver lining” rationalizations you want, but this is still most definitely a nerf.

Sure, it’s a nerf, but I gave up any thought of being able to influence the devs to make better decisions 2 or 3 months ago. Here is my philosophy.

GW2 has done a lot of things right, many that you don’t even notice until you go and play something else. WvW is fun, the PvE is fun if shallow, and PvP tournaments and matches are fun in a casual sense. I still do PvP because it’s fun to play, and winning is fun, and I generally win. I care much less about each upcoming balance patch because ultimately I’ll still probably be able to win and have fun no matter what the devs do.

If you try to take the pvp or balance in this game seriously, you’re going to have a bad time. If you simply treat it as a fun game, you’ll end up much happier.

In a way it’s a massive shame, since GW2 has so much potential that has been squandered by the incredibly incompetent dev team, but at the end of the day it’s just a game. I got my $60 worth, so I don’t regret buying the game.

Simplicity.7208:

Lol! PU mesmers will be so terrible after this patch. If you just don’t AoE or cleave, then they simply cannot damage you because none of their clones will ever proc their on death traits. You can literally beat a PU mesmer by auto attacking since their other sources of damage are abysmal at best. Maybe now we’ll see less cheese.

Or, you know, popping clones with skills like decoy, phase retreat, phantasmal warlock, phantasmal mage, scepter autoattack, scepter block, phantasmal disenchanter.

frifox.5283:

Still though, after hearing him talk about mesmer and how they work, the initial impression I got was that he does NOT play mesmer and does NOT understand how they work well enough to be in charge of balancing us. We’re doomed

He sounded like a warrior trying to pretend that he knew what he was talking about with regards to in-depth mesmer mechanics.

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

It was pretty obviously a poorly planned attempt at nerfing clone death builds. It won’t actually nerf them, but it might reduce the average wpf of them.

I’m confused as to why you say this isn’t a nerf to clone death builds, when every such build description I’ve read has said quite clearly that clone death from DE dodges is a noteworthy (if not major) source of damage.

I can see it being useful for builds that use a lot of phantasms, but seems detrimental to builds like the classic Blackwater that use clone death to stack conditions.

Basically, it means you can’t use the dodges to pop clones. You can still use weapon skills though, so you can get a high rate of clone poppage just as before. It will actually encourage conservation of dodges for more defense, instead of just recklessly dodging around for clone fodder.

Overall, high skill users of clone death builds won’t see an impact in performance, just a style change. Low skill users will see lower performance, and that’s not really a bad thing.

Handin.4032:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Can you clarify exactly why this was changed? From what was said in the livestream, it sounded like it was done to counter the infinite-clone condi clone death builds. But if that was the case, why not change the clone death traits instead?

It was pretty obviously a poorly planned attempt at nerfing clone death builds. It won’t actually nerf them, but it might reduce the average wpf of them.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Good to hear. Might want to try and convey the information a bit more clearly next time.

SnubFighter.7613:

Personal Thoughts(On your reactions):
I’m not saying people shouldn’t voice their concerns, but have some general respect. I understand that everyone wants the game to be enjoyable and perhaps the developers don’t all play or understand a specific class to the fullest. Do you think each of the developers has the time to play each class the same? How many hours have you put into mastering Mesmer? They have lives and they have to think and develop this game in the same amount of time that all of us fit our lives and work habits into. Would you really want people to disrespect you for what is likely a decision by a team as a whole? Would you listen to people that are disrespectful?

In order to PvP effectively, I know almost every single skill on every single class and how it works. I know all the class mechanics. I know how to counter them. I know these because I want to play well.

As balance devs, it is THEIR JOB to know what I know as a PvP player. That is what they do. They balance this game. How can they possibly hope to balance if their knowledge is not equal to that of PvPers?

Ghanto.9784:

an MMO that seems to have RvR as its main focus, rather than pvp e-sports.

Except GW2 has failed miserably at becoming e-sports too, so not sure where that leaves it.

cyyrix.6105:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Edit: I will say it does irk me that Jon Peters, the man responsible for a lot of the balance in this game, seems to lack a basic understanding of how Mesmer illusions work, when he falsely corrects another guy that said DE could overwrite phantasms.

Agreed. It really shows a lack of understanding about mesmer mechanics. Roy was right about overwriting phantasms. Furthermore, Peters’ lack of differentiation between clones/phantasms/illusions is quite confusing. In fact the entire overview of the nerf just sounded like gibberish:

“You were either cheesing it, or you were having it disrupt the flow of your gameplay. And it wasn’t really serving a non-cheesing or non-feeling broken moment…and so, if you’re full clones, we’re not gonna create a new one.”

WAT?

Yeah, pretty much. I was just watching it and thinking “…the balance of this game is in the hands of this guy? GW2 is doomed.”

Edit: Bet ya a gold they don’t fix the warden either.

Ghanto.9784:

Exact quote from the livestream, for what it’s worth:

“…we’re making it so that Deceptive Evasion is only gonna create a clone when you don’t have clones out already.”

Which I take to mean if you have even ONE clone out already, it will not create another one. He doesn’t say anything about it creating a clone if you have less than three out.

Listen to what they say about 15s later.

“If you’re full clones, you’re not gonna create a new one”

Edit: I will say it does irk me that Jon Peters, the man responsible for a lot of the balance in this game, seems to lack a basic understanding of how Mesmer illusions work, when he falsely corrects another guy that said DE could overwrite phantasms.

Not that I actually thought the balance team was competent before, but it simply erodes any trust I had even more.

EverythingEnds.4261:

or any buff for Mesmer.

chuckles

Jackums.3496:

This is still a nerf in the respect that often you will have 3 illusions out, activate a shatter, and then evade to generate more whilst your previous 3 are running to their target.

I’m willing to bet that it will generate clones in that case. Even though those illusions show up in the dots, they don’t actually count towards your illusion count, which is why you can pump more than 6 illusions out at 1 time using shatters.

Handin.4032:

Their logic:
“Condi clone death is OP, so instead of nerfing the condi clone death, we’ll nerf the clone production. That makes the most sense”

I don’t think they realize this is also used for normal shatters (especially the distortion shatter). The same issue could have been solved by putting a 1-2s ICD on the condi clone death traits so you cant spam it, and it would have left the rest of the builds that use it for survival or shatters more useful. I just don’t think any of them play mesmer really…. All this is going to do is just make people run towards the PU builds for survival (since the damage output was nerfed TWICE: crit and clone death)

Or you could actually read/listen and realize that you’re 100% wrong.

skcamow.3527:

I think he also said that if any clones are out, no additional clones will be created on dodge. Meaning, DE only procs when you have 0 clones out. Can someone confirm this one?

That’s what he first said, but later clarified it.

For those not listening to the livestream…

Changes

Deceptive evasion is being changed so that it won’t create clones if you already have 3 illusions out.

This is a nerf to clone-death builds, but not too heavy. This will not affect shatter or phantasm builds.

We understand you’re streaming, but the forums aren’t your personal advertising station. Stop bumping please.

Qaelyn.7612:

I was going to say I only fear being outnumbered, but I’ve recently gotten absolutely demolished by a couple of necros who have taken me down so quickly I couldn’t even respond. I have no idea what they were doing (which is why I need to roll a necro) but it seemed to be heavy condition damage and also some direct damage.

Unfortunately WvW also really isn’t an even playing field. I don’t have ascended gear or WvW buffs, and that I’m sure plays a role. Plus I had the skills enabled that I use to help out in my havoc group, such as portal, rather than the ones I use for dueling classes like necros.

Still, I need to find ways to adapt to them.

The nice thing about wvw is that you can change your skills/food on the fly. I know that Kylia would actually run with 1 of his utility slots open, so he could rapidly select the right utility before entering a fight.

You can change your food at any time, no restrictions. If a fight with a condie necro is going bad, eat some lemongrass-poultry soup real quick. Once you have it under control, switch back to an offensive food.

You just need to remember that in WvW, you’re liable to be jumped on at any time from any direction, and keep your awareness at an appropriate level.

I’m nearly positive that new fields overwrite old ones. I’ll test today.

Valentine.9732:

Hey everyone! I’d love to join!
IGN: Wonderburger
Server: [EU] Ring of Fire
Playstyle: High level fractals and dungeons mostly, running a reflection/phantasm build.
Role: Scholar, but eager to pass along knowledge too!
Playtime: During the week from 6pm – whenever i fall asleep, any time during weekends.
Thanks!

You have full guilds.