Guild Wars 2

Arganthium: That looks like a great build, but not sure it’s really what I’m after.

Mabuse: I should have said that I’d die if I tried to duel a “regular” character with the sort of build I’m envisioning. Even with my limited experience I’ve been able to disengage and run successfully most of the time when I want to.

This is the sort of build I’ve been thinking of: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiP3ey5E+5EB3Dny0m6V4rdPiKWpKA-jEyAoLBRyCE9BI7VEN2yYR0YV6ER16FMPeR0qlCgJlRA-w

The character is built for speed, defense and group healing support (I may run in a small group on occasion). Fleet Shadow is extremely addictive and I can cover enormous distances very quickly when using it with Shadow Refuge, especially in combination with Heartseeker.

I fully admit that the build may be way overboard on the defense, but I figure if I get comfortable with it I can swap in some berserker trinkets for more offense when the time comes.

Or am I all wet?

Hard to provide much more specific advice without knowing what he’s playing. You said condi build but then mentioned GS, and the GS isn’t really a condi weapon.

In open roaming the usual advice is just to avoid mesmers as they can’t chase well and their goal often is to waste lots of your time. Killing the clones is generally pointless (and may be how you’re getting lots of conditions since a common trait makes them give conditions when killed).

Seems like a great guide and I’d love to read it if the “fancy for fancy’s sake” website it’s on would let me download it. :/

I actually wish this weren’t an issue because as much as I love asura I don’t want to play one for every char. :/ In fact for my ranger I may just leave this bit of “optimization” on the table and play a sylvari anyway.

It’s funny how people are different. I nearly always target with the keyboard so asura have no impact on my targeting. And I don’t find the low camera angle an issue either. Go figure.

I want to use my thief for scouting, recon, sentry and similar support tasks in WvW. (Weird, I know.) To do this I started by adapting a defensive condition PD+DD I had been using in PvP, with a 0/0/30/20/20 build, mostly dire gear and so forth. But I feel like it could be better.

My primary goal with this guy is to be able to move around fast, and escape if spotted. The secondary goal is to be strong enough to kill dolyaks and maybe, when I get better, flip a camp. Not looking to fight players with this at all, and fully expect that if I do get engaged by anything but a clueless uplevel, I’ll die.

Suggestions.. especially in terms of gear and utilities, most appreciated. (I think the traits are probably fairly solid, though happy to entertain ideas there too.)

keloorie.6085:

Thanks it’s really helpful
Another question if u dont mind :
what will you trying to avoid of , when you are playing a PU mesmer against a Necro?

PvP? WvW? What sort of playing are you doing here?

Not sure exactly what type of mesmer you played, but it sounds like probably a PU type (Prismatic Understanding, a grandmaster trait that extends stealth and applies boons). Here’s a post I made in a similar advice-request thread last week.

Note that if you are getting torment, it’s probably from hitting the mesmer with the scepter block up. If you see the arm raised, wait 2 seconds for it to come down — the torment is a killer. But overall, we should have fewer ways to deal with conditions than necros do.

Oh, if you see something called a “Phantasmal Disenchanter” being summoned — kill it immediately. If he’s using that and you aren’t nuking it, that’s probably a big part of the problem.

—

I don’t have much experience with guardian, but since I play a PU hybrid I can give you a few suggestions about the areas where I have trouble or perceive my own weaknesses to be, and places you should focus your attention.

1. Practice, practice, practice getting good at telling the real player from the clones. The real player will move erratically, toss his hands in the air to cast spells, and especially, dodge. Clones never dodge. If you get the mes down on health, also pay attention to health bars as clones usually have low health and so are usually either full or close to empty. If the player is using signets these also appear only when the player is targeted, though a lot of PU mesmers don’t use them.

2. Mesmers are weak to conditions in general and many PU mesmers only have condition removal on torch skills. Though I think applying conditions is not a guardian forte.

3. PU mesmers do a lot of their own damage via conditions. Stock up on condition removal, and you greatly remove their ability to do damage.

4. Unless they take utilities for the purpose, mesmers are weak on stunbreaks. Nearly all PU mesmers run Decoy, but that’s just one break every 40/32 seconds. Stunning them breaks up their routine. I have a lot of difficulty against necros using fear, engineers that blow me up, (good) stunlock warriors, etc.

5. Most PU mesmers have poor mobility. If you aren’t fighting for a capture point, moving around a great deal will mess them up, as they can’t chase very far, most don’t have swiftness, and many phantasms get messed up if the opponent is moving quickly.

6. Sometimes you may be better off fighting on a cap point just to decap rather than capture. If you pressure a PU mesmer he will have to use stealth, and it’s pretty easy to get the point decapped as that takes only 5 seconds. Keep up the pressure and you may take the point without even killing your opponent.

7. Many PU mesmers are substantially tougher in a 1v1 than a 2v1. Bringing a friend even for part of the fight can make a big difference.

Hope that helps a bit.

It’s difficult enough for a lot of players to pick out the real mesmer. Doing this would be a major buff and in an area that most players would detest. It would ultimately likely lead to other changes we’d like even less (such as other ways of more easily telling clones apart).

Romek.4201:

this week i joined solo in teamQ…

Go solo into team queue and that’s the chance you take.

I do it sometimes, and I just accept that at least 1/3 of the time I’m going to get nuked, no matter what my team does.

Aw, asura are so cute.

And I actually get a kick out of something that looks like a little girl kicking others’ butts.

After much experimentation I’ve settled on a G600 for the right hand and G13 for the left.

The G13 will make you feel like a useless noob for a full week after you start using it. And then you’ll never put your fingers on the “WASD” keys again. (Okay, slight exaggeration, I sometimes prefer the keys over the thumbstick for detail work like jumping puzzles.)

Coulter.2315:

You’ve mistaken the benefit of playing Asura. Its not chosen because you are hard to target, its chosen because they cant see your attacks – not a defensive model choice but offensive.

Okay, but again, does that really matter for something like a ranger given that they mostly use a bow, which is fairly large, as opposed to hand gestures? I could be wrong as I haven’t played one before.

Interesting. I have several other asura and have never even used technobabble. Maybe it’s especially good for rangers in some way?

I had settled on sylvari but now you guys have me all confused!

Josh Davis.6015:

It would be in your benefit to salvage the items from the chests for luck.

The problem here is that salvaging items in PvP is a nuisance.

The kit has 15 charges, I have to waste glory on it, and I get asked an “are you sure” on every purchase.

Then, the kits themselves are incredibly stingy. I get as much luck from the chests gained in an hour of PvPing as I do from the items I salvage in 5 or 10 minutes in open world PvE. Why?

Thanks for all the replies, very interesting to read. In particular, some answers (and some quantities of answers) I wasn’t expecting.

Please keep it clean so it doesn’t get locked, there’s some good feedback here. (And yes, moving it to the PvP forum would be contrary to the whole point of the thread.)

leman.7682:

I will stop flaming in solo queue when Anet decides to fix the game and balance the cheese they created.

So you’re getting matched up with Arenanet employees in solo queue? Fascinating.

ArchonWing.9480:

Also, the Orr zones may start ramping up the difficulty a little at the end.

This is what I found. There’s a pretty big step up when you get to the level 60+ areas.

Thanks. Doesn’t sound like character size is that big of a deal and since I haven’t done a sylvari before I may just go with that.

Interesting, hadn’t really thought about it from that angle. Was thinking more about sPvP, where there are no racial elites, and more about the “tell” issue.

Do rangers have a lot of abilities with important “tells” where the size of the character would thus matter?

Quick background on me. Started playing in October, did mostly PvE, then discovered WvW. Loved the concept but had no experience with player-player combat and I’d panic every time enemies got near. So I decided to spend some time in PvP over the last two months to get more comfortable with fighting other players, and have learned to like it, at least to a certain extent.

Anyway, it seems a very small percentage of players use this part of the game, and PvPers are always arguing about why that is. Seems to me that it’s missing the point to have people who engage in an activity speculate about why those who don’t engage in it choose not to, rather than asking those people directly.

So, to those of you who don’t participate in sPvP: what are the major reasons why?

PvP is like this everywhere; GW2 is actually better than most.

The people are probably the #1 reason most players avoid it. Player-player combat attracts the aggressive and obnoxious crowd to begin with and tends to bring out the worst in people.

mahariel.4981:

However, since we’ve got it out in the open that my definition is reasonable, it was therefore fair of me to initiate a kick.

The one-liner definition of “experienced” you keep using isn’t consistent with all the implications of the term you keep describing. And the real problem is with the word “appropriately”, which you seem to think means “exactly as I think they should”.

And IMO it is never fair to kick someone from a group without explanation unless that individual is being abusive, has gone AFK for a long period of time, etc.

mahariel.4981:

It’s unfair on players like me who want actual experienced players to be subjected to bads like this who refuse to read my LFG properly.

It wasn’t for no reason that I suggested you shouldn’t even be using the LFG. What you’re doing right now is like a professional basketball player going down to the local Y, recruiting 4 guys to play with, and then constantly muttering that they’re not good enough. Maybe the problem isn’t with the 4 guys, but rather with your approach.

mahariel.4981:

Is “is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter and plays and gears appropriately” an extreme definition of “experienced”? Nobody is answering this, I keep getting told that my expectations are extreme, but the quote is exactly what my standards are when I make an “experienced only” lfg. Is it unfair? And if so, why?

There are several problems with your approach.

1. You conflate “experienced” with “efficient”. There are very experienced players in all games who choose to use methods other than what even they consider optimally efficient for a wide variety of reasons.

2. You’re unwilling to entertain the possibility that someone might have come up with a method that’s actually superior to yours. Most of the “way things are done” both in games and in real life start out with an idea that at first many think is weird and sometimes even stupid. Or as Bertrand Russell put it: “Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.”

3. You won’t take into account personal differences that can have a bigger impact than raw game abilities and figures. Someone who is comfortable with a particular way of doing things, even if it is nominally less efficient, can in some cases be better at it than an average person doing things the “right way”. There are examples across all fields of endeavor.

4. You have specific expectations and demands that you expect others to intuitively understand without communicating them. To you “experienced” means “doesn’t use a GS”, but that doesn’t mean it means the same thing to others. Or put another way, the word “appropriately” as you keep using it is extremely vague and entirely open to interpretation.

5. You’ve admitted that you’d boot someone from a party rather than communicate to them your expectations, which is churlish behavior.

Elxdark.9702:

My humble advice, choose whatever you want, while you’re good you will always have the advantage.

I’m not good.

Tman, thanks for the comment about the AP though I don’t worry about those too much either.

But my mesmer is human and I’m not going to change it.

I’m trying to decide if the advantage is enough to go asura for ranger or necro (because I already have several asura!)

That makes sense. :/

Do you think the same applies for classes such as necro or ranger?

It would seem to matter by class too though wouldn’kitten

Like a ranger, they seem to do a lot of damage with big bows, and their pets remain the same size, so it wouldn’t seem to matter as much?

Drudgen.6597:

If not whoever is 11+% slower can shut-it.

I’ve already “shut it” – as I said yesterday, it’s pointless to have a discussion with someone who has a “my way or the highway” approach to things.

Anyway, I never claimed to be an expert at running dungeons, and I have no interest in a kitten-waving contest involving stopwatches. I’m sure he’s a lot faster than I am, but that’s really besides the point.

That said, I’d be happy to run with folks here any time. (Well, as long as they don’t take themselves too bloody seriously, anyway.)

ETA: I usually rep OMFG on Sunday along with others. Join in!

Haven’t seen a thread on this here in a while so thought I’d toss it out before I build one.

Thematically the two obvious choices to me are norn and sylvari. I’ve never played a sylvari and so that’s my lean, though it’s obviously a cliche to some extent.

Then there’s the asura. The small size seems to be generally accepted as giving an advantage in terms of hiding in clutter and disguising skill tells in PvP. But it’s unclear how much advantage there is. And specifically, I’m not sure how much it matters for a ranger, since I haven’t played one.

Your thoughts?

(Note that I absolutely do not care about armor styles or other appearance stuff whatsoever.)

Jasher.6580:

I play a Human, I’ve never had issues playing against an Asura. Ever.

I can’t recall having issues myself either. Maybe because I use the keyboard for targeting?

But there does seem to be something at play here. And really, none of us has any way of knowing if we wouldn’t pick up a tell or something more easily on a larger character even if it doesn’t seem that playing against the asura is a problem.

Kinda sucks that I have to choose between flavor and effectiveness.

Though I guess I could just decide that playing a norn is more of a challenge.

I can surely see how it frustrates people. But bear in mind also that:

- It’s only 10 seconds.
- It can (and is) blocked and evaded.
- It has a long 180 second cooldown that can’t be reduced.
- It takes the place of two very good alternatives: Mass Invis and Time Warp.
- You aren’t disabled while it is active. Practice the moa skills; the mesmer NPC in the PvP lobby loves to cast it.

It’s funny that so many people are saying that this isn’t that big of a deal, but a Google search turned up a thread from the summer with tons of people complaining about watching a tourney where the vast majority of players were using exclusively asura.

So is the advantage real? Or is everyone just doing what everyone else does?

The other class I was considering was ranger as I want to try that out too. Am I right in thinking the small size issue is far less significant for a class oriented around pets? Or does the spirit build make asura better there too?

You had a guardian play an entire match without even getting 1 point so he’d get rewards? That pretty much tells me all I need to know about the opponents you faced. Unless he joined near the end, in which case you had a 5v4 for most of the match.

I main a mesmer and usually find that if I have more than 1 other on my team, we lose.

In fact, most teams I am on with 3 or more of the same class lose – except for warrior.

Well it does seem that the more clutter, the more likely an asura is to get lost in the crowd. That said, I don’t want every char I build to be asura, cute as I find them. Consensus seems to be that the difference isn’t huge so maybe I’ll give a charr a try.

Thanks for the feedback.

Try this: http://www.mesmerguides.com/builds.html

I think the one you want is at the bottom.

I was just in WvW (on my underleveled engi, not my main) and was with a small zerg when some of us got feared over a cliff, including me and the commander. We were there about 1/3 of the way down and really no way to get out aside from WPing. (I thought it was kind of a clever use of fear actually.)

15 seconds later I’m wondering what we should do and a mesmer portal appears.

My question would be.. are you sure you really want to do the big zerg fight at all? The night before I went with my mesmer in a small havoc group and it was a heck of a lot of fun.

Mike.4830:

Seeing as i am R5 Solo q on one account and r50 solo Q on this acc…

(Snip remainder of laughable bragging about prowess in a video game.. we’re all so, so impressed.)

Now all you need to do is get on the leaderboard that measures how to interact with other human beings in a reasonable manner.

Ever consider that what works at the higher ranks of the solo queue might not work for more average players?

Simple really. All else being equal, would you rather face a charr necro (or whatever) or an asura one? Or does it truly not matter?

Curious what people think, esp for different classes.

I want to make one of each class and from a thematic standpoint have always planned to use a variety of different races for them. But when I started PvP I noticed the large number of asura everywhere; someone told me it’s because it makes it harder to see their “tells”. It does make sense and now I find myself always wondering if I should make an asura for each new character.

I do like asura but I have a lot of them already. I’m thinking about a necro now which was going to be a charr (since I’ve never made one before) but I keep wondering if an asura be more effective.

How important do you see this issue being – either for a necro in particular, or in general?

I usually make female characters. Female charr are.. I don’t know, there’s something odd about them. I could make a male charr but there are so many of them already.

Interested in feedback from anyone else on the practical side of the decision.

mahariel.4981:

You’ve got a definition of “experienced” that implies specific characteristics of a build that you expect others to magically know, and you’d consider someone applying to your group without meeting your predefined requirements – even if they actually are experienced but just play differently – an act of “griefing”.

Then they’re not experienced.

And that’s why I said there’s nothing to discuss with people who think that their way is the only way to do anything. You keep calling it an “ad hominem” but you’re basically agreeing with me that you consider “experienced” to be “does things the way I do them”. I don’t agree with that definition, nor I expect do most people, and so there’s really nothing to talk about.

mahariel.4981:

I can’t have an (albeit one-sided) argument or debate in this forum without having insults thrown at me.

Funny because I can’t recall ever getting into an exchange like this one here before. If it happens to you regularly, you might want to reflect on why that is.

You’ve got a definition of “experienced” that implies specific characteristics of a build that you expect others to magically know, and you’d consider someone applying to your group without meeting your predefined requirements – even if they actually are experienced but just play differently – an act of “griefing”.

That’s a level of self-absorption that precludes any sort of reasonable discussion.

I wrote what I did because I literally laughed at your reply – it’s kind of amazing that you can’t see how wrapped up you are in your own view of things to the point where you’re incapable of entertaining the idea that others might see things differently.

redslion.9675:

However what IMHO the OP is saying is that you should not push far when you just won mid and home, because you’ll end up being ganked by the enemies respowning and stopping by far.

That makes sense.

Ironically I just ran a couple of solo queue matches just now, first time in about a week. One of my teammates wanted to challenge the far point right at the start. I suggested that it might be more wise to wait until later but he really wanted me to. I ended up holding their point for around a third of the game. (We won easily but likely would have regardless.)

mahariel.4981:

What? Someone griefing my lfg means I’m using ad hominems?

LOL, I give up.

Yes, I knew what you meant, I was just turning it around to the parties I feel really are responsible.

There’s nothing for Arenanet to “learn” here. It’s an American company and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to hold a contest because foreign nations make it too much of a headache to allow their citizens to participate.

I think all “do this not that” strategizing for PvP is pointless, because the right approach depends on what the other team is doing as well.

In particular, the approach described here makes sense only if this all important condition holds: “your team controls two points”. I can’t recall the last time I was in a solo queue match where we were able to control both near and mid consistently.

The other guys are trying to do that also, right? So if you can it generally means your team is stronger and you’re likely to win either way.

Here’s what I usually see happen in solo queue matches where people don’t want the far point challenged. We take near, and let’s say we take mid. The other team then comes to challenge mid and control of it bounces back and forth for a while.

Then, they realize that we aren’t going to challenge their home point, so they leave it unattended and send 1 or 2 guys to attack our home point. We then no longer have firm control over it either (because most of our guys are at mid) while they get a free point every 2 seconds because we’re trying to focus only on 2 nodes. And we lose.

It is for this reason that I usually do try to decap the far point regularly if I feel it can be done effectively. (Even though I get screamed at just as much as the OP does in trying to suggest the opposite method.)

Adapting is key. There’s nothing more frustrating than being in a game where the other team puts 3 heavy armor grunts at mid and your teammates insist on beating themselves to death trying to take it while far sits unattended or with one guy on it, all because someone declared “near/mid” at the start as if it were a magic formula.

Yeah the asura would be a practical choice. I do like them but I have 3 or 4 already.

Charr was actually going to be my selection for this character. I like to have a theme behind each one and had a concept that fit a charr necro. Plus I’ve never played one before.

Only thing is that I do like to PvP and so the asura advantages are worthwhile. And I don’t care much about armor appearance while I’m not a big fan of all the grunting and growling charr do.

Hey all,

Relatively new player here (about two months). I’ve decided I want to roll a necro because they look cool and because I want to learn how all the classes work.

Is there any reason to choose or not choose a particular race for a necro?

I often tend towards asura both because they’re cute and because they seem to give an advantage in PvP play due to them being harder to see and thus it harder to read their “tells”. But I’m not sure if this is an issue with necro or not, thus this thread.

Also, does being smaller make it harder to pick a necro out from a clump of minions?

Thanks.