Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the replies. Lots of opinions. Lots of confusion (for me, not the other players. )

Again, I have no illusions about a build that’s highly defensive also being highly offensive.

I do like the idea of a balance, which is part of why I was looking at carrion gear. Of course, there I give up something also. No free lunch.

I don’t plan to roam solo with this character. It’s intended to be used in a small group, and I’m okay with doing less damage than others. I just want to do as much damage as I can while also being tough and supportive.

Okay, but this isn’t going to be a high crit build either way. I like to have my cake and eat it too but realize I can’t make a build that’s both high defense and high offense.

I know perplexity runes are powerful, and considered them for my mesmer. They do seem to make a lot of sense here. I’m not sure how many interrupt-generating effects I have though. There’s BOB, shield #4, and if I use tool kit, the pull ability there. I guess also some other utilities but.. so few slots.

Good replies, thanks. Absolutely true that I need to take into account situations where running around spamming bombs won’t work. I was going at least partially off my experience last night, where I got into a few scrums between 5 or 10 of ours versus 5 or 10 of theirs.. and spamming bombs was actually pretty effective.

I guess my own lack of experience is showing here, so I should probably just stick with the “tried and true” conditions. I just kept thinking it was a waste that I was dropping so many bombs that did very light damage, but maybe I should be swapping weapons more.

Carpboy, was also thinking of your medic thread where I mentioned going carrion and you agreed that it would help with increasing bomb damage.

Another factor I was trying to take into account is that structures in WvW are immune to condition damage, though I suppose that nothing I do will matter much compared to one piece of siege equipment anyway.

How do you get 25 stacks of conditions, I mean, in realistic gameplay as opposed to theory? That seems pretty insane and yeah that would make a huge difference.

Right, that’s why I said it makes more sense taking into account other weapons. But I would only go P/P if I was doing conditions.. P/S seems to make more sense in general for a defensive build, no? The burn is strong up close but shield #4 is a nice skill to have.

I find confusion somewhat unreliable for damage. In PvE the monsters mostly attack really slowly, and in PvP/WvW it’s got a 50% debuff.

I ignored the non-damaging conditions because they work the same regardless of gear. As for the traits you mentioned: Sharpshooter and Incendiary Power are not relevant to a build with <10% crit chance, and Shrapnel is usually given up in favor of Forceful Explosives.

I realize that if I do the full rotation I can still apply a lot of condis… and maybe that’s the goal with a condi build. If I want to spam bombs to take advantage of elixir-infused bombs, power seems better.

(Note that I’m just trying to reason this out, not be argumentative. )

Thanks. Again, I realize that’s the traditional argument, but I can’t make sense of it given that, in a 30-second span, I’ll end up dropping maybe a handful of bombs that apply conditions, but 40 or 50 damage bombs. Even with no crits they just seem to do a LOT more damage. Oh, and the BOB is also direct damage only.

I did a bit of theorycrafting using one of the guide sites, and going from apothecary to cleric increases direct damage DPS by about 400, while only reducing condition DPS by 100. And that’s assuming zero crits. Even if you reduce that by 1/3 to take into account heavy armor, it’s still a lot higher.

So why does everyone go condi for bomb builds?

The only way I can see it making sense is if combined with regular weapon damage, which favors conditions. Is that why? Because for the bombs themselves, power seems clearly better.

Thanks for the reply.

All three actually. I’m tinkering in PvP since it’s easier to test there, but I play all three modes.

Not sure why defense points towards condition damage over power… there’s apothecary and there’s cleric. I realize to max power damage you need crits as well, but seems to me the bombs do a lot more net damage even without crits.

One thing I do wonder about is if I’m overestimating the damage I’ll do with bombs based on the tooltips, because they don’t take into account the defense of my opponents. That seems to not really apply to conditions.. though there, issues like -duration% food and cleansing come into play.

The main thing that is giving me pause about just going for condi is, well, there’s simply a lot more #1 bombs being put out than anything else because of the lack of cooldowns. If I’m going to spam them for healing it seems to make sense to get more damage out of them unless the conditions I get in other ways make up for it a lot more in ways I don’t understand.

As the title says, I’m still struggling with which way to go for what I hope will be a mostly bomb build, heavy on defense and healing. With some grenade spamming in there and otherwise either P/P or P/S for main weapon.

So basically, apothecary vs. cleric, pretty much.

I know condi is the meta, but I’ve realized in some preliminary gameplay testing that I just do a lot more of things that apply straight damage rather than condition damage. In particular, thanks to elixir-infused bombs, I spam bomb #1 a lot (since it has no CD) and it doesn’t apply conditions. Similar with grenades, where only 2 apply damaging conditions and they have relatively long CDs compared to the #1.

So it seems power might be the better way to go. But I feel like I must be missing something.

I do realize that the regular weapon skills may well favor condition over power.

Thoughts? Thanks.

I’ve now got my engineer up to almost level 70. It is so much fun in WvW, even underleveled and wearing green gear, that I honestly will probably relegate my mesmer to secondary status.

And I don’t even run in a zerg.

This is not a profession that needs massive nerfing.

renegade.4851:

• change the way DE works to where it only gimps clone on death builds (but I’m against this since I’m quite afraid there might be some coding mistake nerfing us unintentionally still)

Sorry but I don’t think “kitten his build but not mine” is a particularly far way of approaching this. A shatter build isn’t improper, immoral or fattening compared to a shatter build. They are just builds.

I could have sworn I looked at settler’s and it was different. Okay, now I feel like an idiot. Thanks.

Okay, so I just realized that this build uses a PvP Shaman’s Amulet that.. doesn’t seem to exist. Was it removed at some point? It’s still listed on the wiki.

Anyway, the whole build falls apart without it. Anyone got any other suggestions?

Thanks.

There’s nothing really wrong with PU mesmers either. It’s amazing how so many people can claim that something is “useless in PvP” and also that it needs to be nerfed, simultaneously. And they sure as heck are not overpowered in PvE or WvW either.

Thanks for the response on this, Roy, much appreciated.

But I’m still a bit lost. What is your intent with this change? The changes were presented without really properly explaining why this is being done. And it’s frankly a turnoff that you guys seem to have dismissed an entire build style as “cheese”, a term that suggests a subjective reaction rather than careful analysis.

Do you guys really think mesmers are overpowered compared to other classes? It seems hard to believe.

Just found this on a related thread in the Profession Balance forum.. FYI..

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Thanks for the feedback guys, there were some good points brought up here. This is why we wanted to discuss these future changes so that we had time to adjust to your feedback.

We’ll be discussing this change more internally. Most likely we will make some adjustments or look at other options such as replacing clones not triggering Debilitating Dissipation so it does not impact mesmer play as much which wasn’t our intent.

Hard to imagine that 1 second of distortion here or there is worth giving up PU for, not to mention that you have SO many traits and all your utility slots tied up trying to make the signets worthwhile. Admire the attempt to do something different but it doesn’t strike me as particularly practical.

Thanks………

Thanks, glad I’m thinking along the right lines at least.

Glue + bombs makes a lot of sense.

I can’t live without permanent 25% speed any more.

Thanks. Interesting that you use P/P rather than P/S like most defensive builds do.

Would you stick with Speedy Kits of possibly switch to Power Shoes now that it’s always active?

The grenades I’m only thinking about for their AOE damage ability for shooting down from walls or up onto walls.. but I guess that could be swapped in if necessary.

Was considering a mix between apothecary and carrion to get a good mix of healing power, toughness, vitality and condition damage with a bit of power tossed in. Think that would work?

Appreciate the reply.

Are these changes.. I’ll resist editorializing about them this once.. coming in on the 21st or somewhere down the line?

Thanks.

Hey Carpboy…

I noticed you replied on my thread but this build actually seems pretty close to what I’m looking for in terms of a tanky WvW build. I just might change the kits a tiny bit.

Are you still running it? What versions would you recommend now, or what changes since you last updated it?

I’m still quite torn on just how much to bump up healing power and how much it’s worth to give up to get it. And how do you think the condition and power-based versions compare right now?

Thanks!

I honestly don’t even care if they leave HS as it is if they fix the other problems. Warriors should have high sustain as they are a front-line class, but they should not also have massive condition application, condition removal, immunities and mobility.

The mobility is IMO the single biggest problem. It’s excessive and needs to be fixed. It’s not reasonable to give one class the highest sustain and nearly the best ability to chase and disengage whenever they want.

Harper.4173:

Explain to me again how warriors do too much for the ability it takes to play one?

I already did, several times. You ignored all those arguments, so it seems pointless to repeat them.

The fact that there’s one class that’s better than them in a few particular areas. It’s that the overall package is overpowered.

I main a mesmer and I agree that this should be changed. It’s overpowered when used this way.

I don’t really know if the whole “they mostly play warriors so they’re biased towards them” thing is fair. Seems like an assumption that then gets passed around as if it were fact.

But I DO see the contrast between Jon Peters posting on the forums that they want warriors to be only slowly and carefully adjusted so as not to make them too weak, and the “la-de-da” attitude they seem to have towards basically ruining an entire mesmer build, and weakening many others.

It’s VERY disappointing. And sorry, but really makes me question the faith I’ve had up until now in Arenanet’s interest in class balance and ability to achieve it.

On a related note, can someone tell me how it’s “cheesy” to apply conditions to an opponent when a clone is summoned, destroying an older one, but it’s NOT cheesy that warriors have a weapon skill that applies a torment that basically can never be cleansed because it keeps reapplying itself and only has a 15s CD?

Harper.4173:

And it automatically has to be the players screaming warriors are OP And not the devs balancing the game who are right?

I’m assessing who’s right based on what I see when I play. What I see is far more than 12.5% of players on warriors, especially in WvW. What I see is those players having combinations of offensive and defensive abilities that outstrip what’s available to most other classes, which is a big part of why there are so many of them.

Harper.4173:

Also – Healing signet outheals other abilities PASSIVELY. You’re forgetting the trade-off that if you need a large amount of healing in a short amount of time to counter a burst you CANNOT do that. But of course selectively looking at the problem is your best way to go about it isn’kitten

In theory this is a reasonable trade-off. The problem is that warriors have so many tools at their disposal to negate the downside risk of a high-passive/low-active healing skill. If they’re getting nuked, they just pop a “you can’t hurt me for N seconds” ability, or simply run away — healing 400/s the whole time they run.

This is what people keep saying and keeps being ignored: it’s not the healing by itself, it’s the healing combined with the immunities, high armor, high health and high mobility.

Harper.4173:

The devs have not only announced a HS nerf but also said that OTHER changes that they couldn’t fit in the livestream are coming.

Right. Well, we’ll see what those are. We can only comment on what they’ve actually announced, and I’ll point out that “there’s more coming!” is a pretty standard and meaningless catchphrase.

Harper.4173:

People hate warriors and warrior players and are just malicious and biased against them – the fact that the complaints have started ALREADY proves that.

No, it doesn’t.

It proves that people believe that the announced change is insufficient and that more needs to be done to fix an overpowered class that can do too much for the ability it requires.

And that they are frustrated what they (correctly) perceive as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of Arenanet to accept that they’ve created a situation where one class dominates most of the others.

Kiriakulos.1690:

It’s always been solely based on sPvP.

Not entirely, but far, far too much given that:

1. 99% of players never set foot in there; and
2. sPvP has major flaws which are a good part of the reason for point #1.

Remember: clones doing damage when new clones are summoned is “cheesy”.

But a skill with a 15s CD that applies a stack of torment that basically cannot be cleansed because it keeps reapplying itself? Not “cheesy” at all.

Makes perfect sense.

Wasbunny.6531:

I respectfully take offence at having my Mesmer build and play-style called ‘cheesy’ by the devs when they talked about the upcoming changes to Deceptive Evasion.

Same. And as bad as the (IMO excessive) nerfings are, what’s even worse is how cavalier they seemed to be about the whole thing. I didn’t listen to it live, but I’ve read the transcribed comments, and they come across to me not as based on decisions soberly made after a great deal of thought and analysis. Rather, they decided something was “cheesy” — about as subjective and meaningless a term as exists in gaming — and burned it to the ground.

The changes are nerfs to nearly all mesmers, some more than others, and appear to have been done with little consideration to balance or secondary effects.

I’ve done my best in my time here at GW2 to stick up for the developers when I see what I feel is unwarranted criticism. But destroying builds because they are “cheesy” is not something I can rationally defend.

And removing entire playstyles from a class without providing new ones is bad design. Period, end of story.

I wouldn’t mind this nerf so much if it were combined with:

1. Some sort of buff in another area to compensate. Like, maybe, making mantras suck less.
2. Some of the desperately needed fixes to bugs that hamper mesmers.
3. Reasonable matching nerfs of similarly powerful abilities on other classes that are also things other classes don’t get. You know, like maybe the class that combines the highest armor, highest health pool and best healing skill with high offense, high mobility and a low skill floor.

I was also rubbed the wrong way by the whole tone of that presentation. It didn’t strike me as something carefully analyzed and thought out, but rather just “we don’t like it when mesmers can do X, so we nerfed it”. It could be that the analysis did happen behind the scenes, but it didn’t come across that way.

Does anyone know if this mess is coming this Tuesday or if it’s somewhere down the line? I thought the latter but wasn’t sure.

Kargath.6598:

This thread consists of people who dont play warriors and are complaining because they get killed in spvp or wvw.

It has a lot of different people. What most have in common is that they can see the elephant in the living room: warriors are overpowered compared to other classes in most contexts, and Arenanet for whatever reason seems to have no problem with this.

Kargath.6598:

if you cant out dmg 400 a second you arent doin a dmg spec you are bunker and in that case I AM SORRY DID YOU WANT TO BUNKER AND DO MAD DEEPS?

This argument is constantly repeated and is a fallacy. The issue isn’t that people can’t do 400 DPS… the issue is that:

1. Warriors get to basically subtract 400 DPS off of everything done by everyone in all situations.
2. Their ability to do this is passive and automatic.
3. It exceeds the healing ability of other classes that arguably need healing more.
4. They combine this OP healing with some of the best immunity abilities, a high health pool, high armor and high mobility, which makes many of them nearly impossible to kill, even when outnumbered.

I’m sure that these points will continue to be ignored in favor of “ermagawd, can’t u do 400 deeps?!?!!” but that won’t make them go away.

Kargath.6598:

it takes no skill really?

Well, not no skill, but certainly a lot less than other classes. Even the more honest warrior-defenders admit that.

tom.7468:

They are nerfing healing signet happy? You may stop the QQ now the skill will be nerfed. Sooner or later you must admit you are a terrible player if you cant outdps it.

I’ve noticed that nearly all of the posts laying out the case for why the warrior is overpowered make reasonable arguments, generally supported with facts. And the posts defending the warrior status quo look like, well, the above.

I’m sure that has nothing to do with the relative skill levels required to play the respective classes.

Okay but there isn’t any particular synergy there that I’m missing? You get stacks from Enhance Performance and sigils and other places, but not in combination or anything?

I just played with the trait that gives 3 grenades and it is much fun. So much so that I’m even reconsidering my defensive build idea.

But in order to do a lot of damage with grenades do you really need more of a power/crit build? I know they apply conditions as well, but the low-CD #1 seems to be pretty straight power.

Okay just played around a bit (still just level 60). Enhance Performance seems cool but has a 10s cooldown so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be getting huge might stacks? Also unsure on med kit versus turret if using med kit items doesn’t cause a proc-on-heal (which it appears is the case). Is the point just to separate the heal from activation of might?

Thanks.

As soon as I see someone use the word “baddie” or “bad” as a noun, I know it’s not worth taking anything they write seriously.

The facts are that a disproportionate percentage of players run warriors, and it’s not because they enjoy the challenge. They’ve put pretty much the best of everything in one place, and then they pretend there’s “class balance” as if nobody can see how ridiculous the current situation is.

My class’s weakness is not being warrior.

Axyl.9408:

Those threads are a jumbled mess of everyone saying, “No, you’re wrong, THIS how it will work!”

And so you think your thread will be different somehow?

Axyl.9408:

And I still don’t understand why we think we should be the only ones with a super powerful 5 point trait they’ve already fixed across the board.

Have they? I don’t know all the other classes entirely. But there’s supposed to be pros and cons for different professions. We are, to my knowledge, also the only class that has no non-annoying option for permanent run speed boost, so is that also getting harmonized? I doubt it.

I was very interested in thieves at around the time the Dec. 10 patch came out and spent a lot of time on that forum. They were vocal, and almost completely ignored.

While Arenanet does a basically overall good job with this game, they, like other developers, are mostly going to just do what they want to do. Our choices are to roll with the punches or leave, pretty much.

You could try reading the existing threads.

Harper.4173:

If a LOT of damage is put on a HS warrior over a SHORT period of time he has no healing solution – his passive regen is too little AND the active heal isn’t going to help him out – so it IS a counter.

But if you put a lot of damage on anyone in a short period of time they are going to die. It’s just harder to do with warriors because they have by far the greatest combination of HP, healing and mobility. They start out with a huge HP pool, their healing is passive, automatic, and enormous, and if things are going badly they just escape and heal even more while you chase them. That’s what people are complaining about (and Arenanet is ignoring).

Harper.4173:

If you’re thinking that the only way to counter a heal is to stop the opponent from healing i think you’re referring to INTERRUPTING a heal.

It’s not the only way, but it’s a way that’s used on pretty much every other class to which warriors are largely immune.

Harper.4173:

You’re misunderstanding me – warriors in most places except high-end PVP and PVE are SIMPLE. They’re easy to pick up and play.

And why should a class that is admittedly easy to play also be the most powerful in the game?

Thanks Dulfy, I saw your notes and similarly thought the comment was, at best, incredibly vague.

So basically they are nerfing a mesmer build style they apparently don’t even know exists. After about a decade playing MMOs I’m over being surprised, and can only “LOL”.

Harper.4173:

The skillful counter to HS is BURST DAMAGE.

That’s not a counter to a healing skill. Damage is what everyone is always trying to do; countering a heal means stopping the opponent from healing back that damage.

Harper.4173:

Regarding the prevalence of warriors – warrior popularity is an issue here. Warriors will always be popular even if they are balanced. Because they are EASY and FUN to play unlike other classes.

They are seen as “easy” and “fun” because being overpowered makes things easy, and because winning is fun. So you’re actually confirming the complaints here.

Duplicate message, sorry.

Pyroatheist.9031:

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.

Yep. I swore to myself that, after ruining my last couple of games for myself to some extent by getting too wrapped up in arguing about this stuff, that I wouldn’t do it this time. So I just try to accept that there are always going to be stupid things that make no sense, and balance problems that never get addressed, and stubborn developers who don’t know their own game as well as many of their players yet won’t listen to those players.

On the whole, IMO the dev team here is pretty good. Sure, they do things that make no sense, but overall things work fairly well. And they do at least talk to us, which I appreciate. (Of course, putting up with Warner Brothers / Turbine for two years will tend to lower one’s expectations a fair bit.)

The only thing that really burns my kitten, to be honest, is the rather blatant favoritism towards warriors as a class, and the annoying way that the dev team acts like if they pretend there’s no elephant in the living room that nobody else will notice it.

ETA: You mentioned PvP, and that IMO is the one area of the game that’s a rather complete mess and isn’t really excusable. They simply have not put forth a reasonable effort to fix the problems there, and after a couple of months of playing it regularly, I’m now basically at the point where it’s more fun for me to log off than to play this game’s PvP. I’m not alone in that, I think, which is why the whole area is so desolate, even though it could be dramatically improved with even a nominal effort.

I’m really not one in general to make overall criticisms of the dev team, because on the whole I think they do a pretty good job.

But the bias towards warriors over all other classes is becoming the elephant in the living room. The proposed nerf to HS is a joke, and it appears no other substantive changes are being made to address their insane immunities and mobility.

I go into WvW and for a game with 8 professions, it seems like 1/4 to 1/3 of the players are on warriors. That’s balance?

Very disappointing.

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.

Bombsaway.7198:

Med kit is reaaaaaaly simple. Your F1 is your primary heal and when you or a groupie needs a small heal, you drop a kit and run over it.

But the key is that you can swap into med kit and then grenades or bombs very very quickly. That counts as a “proc on heal” ability. So outside internal refresh timers, you can maximize the number of stacks of might you get in combat from:
1) swapping kits (sigil of battle)
2) proc on heal (altruism and enhanced power)

Lots of might there!

Condition damage quickly gets to about 1500 with a few might stacks and you heal really well.

Thanks. So you can basically “spam swap” between the med kit and the other kits to stack might? Interesting. Do you not actually use the med kit abilities then, just the one on the tool belt?

Also a question on gear for that build. Bear in mind I’m not suggesting I know better than you, just theorycrafting here.

Seems to me healing power doesn’t really scale all that well for the healing ability, and the condition damage (before might) is fairly low. As a test, I swapped all that apothecary gear for dire.

What the build editor suggests is that this reduces healing by 15%, but in exchange you get 23% more condition damage and 33% more vitality (about 5.5k, a very nice chunk). The only thing that I can see that takes a major hit is the elixir-infused bombs, which drops by 33% itself.

What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks for the other replies too, I will check out those builds as well.. but Bombsaway’s build is probably the one I’ll try first as it has most of what I want including running the same 3 kits I usually do. Though I might find myself swapping in the tool kit for that nice pull ability at times.

That’s a few months old, still current? Do you run it yourself?

Thanks.

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.

I think I’m comfortable enough now with the class that I’m ready to give PvP a shot with it. Any suggestions for one of those nice “unkillable” bunker builds I’ve heard so much about? Thanks.

(If you’re going to post something like “don’t play that, you’re just making PvP worse for everyone” or similar, don’t bother. I’m here to have fun and move up the leaderboard, not to save the world.)