Guild Wars 2

PowerBottom.5796:

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

Ah okay, then we’re both right. ^^’

I don’t get your pther point though, why would some skills have higher CD and some lower? stowing only works if you do it fast enough so the skill doesn’t have any effect. The Skills are then put on a flat 5s CD no matter what skill you’ve used.

What I wanted to change was that the 5s flat CD would be changed, so that when you cancel an animation (with esc, stowing or dodging) before it actually had any effect (either because you don’t want to get interrupted, because you wanna bait out dodges or because your opponent was dodging right when it would’ve hit), the flat CD would reflect the actual CD of the skill somehow. So stowing a skill with 50 seconds CD would have 5+20% of 50=5+10=15s CD after cancelling the skill. I guess it could also be just 10%, but there needs to be an increase depending on the CD of the skill you’ve cancelled.

I agree with you, but my problem is that for some skills, such as maul or mirror blade, this cooldown would be larger than the acutual skill’s cooldown. As such, it is never ever worth stowing them. I am not sure, however, if the solution is to handle stows differently or to increase the cooldown of these skills (and in turn increase their effects, i guess).

Sorel.4870:

Quadox.7834:

I would love to know how you came to that conclusion.

Nevermind, i actually don’t really wanna know at all, sorry.

(Basically wait at least for the stream to judge please).

He’s playing a chronomancer, that’s how.

“bow attacks seem like they won’t be able to deliver much pressure offensively”
Seems surprisingly unconnected to chronomancer if you ask me.

Sorel.4870:

Ithilwen.1529:

WAKE UP! NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO PLAY A HYPER REFLEX ELITIST BUILD. SORRY< BUT I"D LIKE SOME MORE “PASSIVE” PLAY OPTIONS..

I’M WELL NORTH OF 40 AND I DON’T HAVE A KID’S REACTION TIME.

Don’t worry. Rangers, necromancers, warriors and guardians will most likely remain slow, easy professions, no matter their specialization. The only build you’ll miss is clone-death mesmer.

Necros are on eof the hardest classes to play well at the moment. Not in 1v1s, but in teamfights where positioning is key.

Jasher.6580:

For some reason, with the changes to virtues the specialisation sounds super clunky and the bow attacks seem like they won’t be able to deliver much pressure offensively.

I would love to know how you came to that conclusion.

Nevermind, i actually don’t really wanna know at all, sorry.

(Basically wait at least for the stream to judge please).

Ithilwen.1529:

I think that in general ANET is changing too much too fast. They seem to be bent on promoting “active” play. The fact is though.. such play will strongly favor people with newish computers and nice internet connections.

No, I’m not all that good at timing exactly when to throw a block by an enemy’s attack animation. ANET I LIKE MY GUARDIANS, WHY ARE YOU MAKING CLASSES HARDER TO PLAY INSTEAD OF FIXING GLARING BALANCE ISSUES?

WAKE UP! NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO PLAY A HYPER REFLEX ELITIST BUILD. SORRY< BUT I"D LIKE SOME MORE “PASSIVE” PLAY OPTIONS..

I’M WELL NORTH OF 40 AND I DON’T HAVE A KID’S REACTION TIME.

LUCKY FOR YOU THE NORMAL GUARDIAN IS STILL LEFT, AS WELL AS MOST OF THE OTHER MORE PASSIVE BUILDS ON THE OTHER 7 PROFESSIONS.
Now, i personally love the dragon hunter. Sounds alot more active and skill-based than the guardian currently is! Love the direction the game is going so much.

MadVisions.4529:

you can predict instant damage skills coming and evade it. and yes its a gamble, then what?

“and yes its a gamble, then what?” i didn’t understand this part, but ill answer anyways.

No offense, but this logic is bad and only further promotes random dodging at intervals, trying to predict things. But the reality is that once people get better, they will just stand by, wait for the prediction and then proceed to smack you to bits when you have less cooldowns or endurance up. Instead, promoting skillful dodges and animation watching is a better path to a more competitive and fun game.

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

Sorel.4870:

It’s the other way around Quadox: it’s BECAUSE you can dodge that pvp players use these instacast or random skills. Most skills in the game can be dodged, but you choose not to use them in pvp. Why do you think that Churning Earth or Dragon Tooth are almost never used on elementalist?

That being said, random procs are more annoying than instacast skills, which can still be predicted, because players are easy to read. I think Ferocity should be buffed (as it stands, power is so much better than precision and ferocity it’s ridiculous), and air and fire sigils nerfed. I don’t ming geomancy sigil (it still requires positioning), but the poison duration on the doom sigil is really over the top. I think I play it on every build on which I can not consistently apply poison. It’s not healthy.

Of course people will use the most uncounterable things in pvp games. This is always the case, and does not mean they should remain. I would also be alright with geomancy if it actually required positioning like you say. Let’s take a guardian for example. They could teleport on you, spam weapon and use smite condition. Suddenly, you have done a massive amount of damage that is instant. Of course, people will say “but they used their utiliy to do it!”, but it doesn’t matter. It is still bad for the game’s competitiveness and skill level.

PowerBottom.5796:

…

I understand your concerns, but cancel casting should be rewarded, as it is currently one of the harder things you can do in this game. It was a central part of guild wars 1, as well. If any overpowered/abusable things appear after the patch, they can hopefully be fixed.

Now, in terms of doom sigil. You will find it extremely hard to predict and avoid it if they take geomancy with the doom sigil, which many do. In fact, you will find it impossible, since it is now instant. Also, doom can currently be used on basically any build, condition-focused or not. This is because it gives poison to professions or builds that are not designed to have it. Since poison reduces healing doom will always be a strong choice for ANY build.

Please listen to this ArenaNet! However, there a couple of points i would like to bring up in addition to this. Firstly, moving one of the traits back to masters would only make every ele in the game go arcane traitline, once again. This is not what build diversity is about.

Instead:

-Elemental Attunement baseline would be a tad too strong if you ask me. Instead, give ele a baseline selfish version of this trait, giving the boons only to you. Now you have the potential for a trait that goes like this: “Elemental attunement affects your allies”.

-While “buffing” the ele, be sure to not overbuff it in areas where it already shines. Ele is already amazing for small fights, 1v1s in particular. One way to do this is to increase the area of the heals slightly (320?). This would put ele more in line with warrior as a support, and at the same time not overbuff the profession in 1v1 situations.

-Following the previous point, another way to help ele support allies on level with other professions without buffing the profession in general too much, is to add support to the water line. Specifically an idea i had was to change the grandmaster minor in water to, in addition to increase heal for allies, also increase radius of heals (cleansing wave). So, like this: [Aquatic Benevolence: Healing done to allies is increased. Radius of cleansing wave also increases].

This way, you bring elementalist support options in line with other professions’ (mainly warrio at the moment) while not giving dps elementalists too much heals or support baseline.

ty /best chronomancer EU

Doesn’t work in this game. At least not anymore. Sure, you can dodge the usual pindown, pbs, burning speed, mirror blade, zerker, net shot and the like. But what about:

Air/fire sigils
Geo/doom swap
Steal, Backstab, Panic Strike
Overcharged shot, Incendiary powder
Guardian Scepter immob, Judge’s intervention, Smite condition, Passive Burn
Krait Rune #6 (currently even ignores evades iirc)

And many, many more. Point is, in a dodge based game, the ammount of instant damage that kills you is in my opinion over the top. The effect is that people can random dodge (especially tankier builds) and still survive just fine.

Arenanet! Please try to reduce or remove some of the instant undodgable damage in the game for HoT. We would see people who know how to dodge and Los survive longer while the rest can practice and become better. Some of these skills are fine as they are, such as backstab (meant to be stealthy), but most are simply impossible to react to and are still game-changingly strong. Some can’t even be random dodged, as they will simply propc again on the next attack (looking at you, panic strike). Say no to random dodges, please.

apharma.3741:

I’d buff Mesmer sword auto by 25% against targets with no boons and the final hit that already does more damage against boonless targets being 25% harder. I doubt this will be a problem in PvP.

Compounding power buffed to 5%.

Mantra trait being a 10% damage buff when you use a mantra, doesn’t stack and lasts 10s (think like arcane lightening but different)

That’s what I would do in the current PvE environment. We have no idea what HoT will be like though and all bosses might have fast refreshing boons (every 2s) which makes sword bad.

Fragility now pls.

Maybe a trait that makes phantasms deal no damage but you receive a 25% damage buff for 15s for each shattered phantasm. Again, no stacking. Just as a way to spice up the class to move away from phantasm damage. Though I figure this would be OTT in PvP and get wine.

Good suggestions, except for the phantasm dmg buff, that seems op op

Support looks ALOT vetter than before. Im not 100 % on the build yet, but we’re looking at 0/6/6/6/0 or something. Chaos and inspiration for boons and heals and condi remove, duelling because it is the best traitline for general purpose. Basically DE still necessary. However, with chronomancer who is to say that a chaos-insp-chronomancy build wont be viable.

Edit: harmonious mantras and mender’s purity synergy is sweet.

Qugi.2653:

Immensus.9732:

The only MMO out there with fun combat that cant get people interested in pvp. thats just sad. on a general note i do believe that this comes down to the fact of how badly you are getting rewarded in this game for doing pretty much anything especially PvP, gw2 has become nothing more than playing Dress up online.

I’d say a lot of lack of interest comes from the overall toxicity of the PvP community. We see posts about it here regularly. I’ve had countless conversations with guild members that said they tried PvP and got turned off because they were either insulted for not playing well or insulted for winning. It is often laughed off here as, "Well that’s PvP. " Until the PvP community starts policing itself instead of condoning bad mouthing new people trying to be a part of the community interest will indeed fade. .

I remember when i first started this game (not on release) people were so nice in pvp, complimenting eachother and helping newer players. A huge diffferece from what i see in queues today. Perhaps it is because people of so different skill level gets put with or against oneanother, but it still isnt hard to be respectful and nice to others.

Very very often i see top level players trashtalking worse players or flaming/raging. And it is still beyond me why they seem to expect everyone to be on their level. If you are playing in the go4 cups you shouldn’t expect people to be on your level. Period. I know matchmaking can be infuriating, but what happens is newer players get Flamed so they either leave the game or start to flame even newer players- which in turn repeats the cycle.

In the same way, dont’t get angry because people use weord or “bad” builds in your game. Condi mes, interrupt warrior, burn guardian, you name it. People (especially newer players) will experiment and try things. You did this, i did this, we have all done this. So be more positive and refrain from flaming newer / worse players.

I know mobas in general have “worse” communities than gw2 and are still more competitive than gw2, but there are many other reasons for this. For example ,mobas are way easier to watch and understand on streams. Also, more frequent balances (although i hear many dota players are angry at valve ATM). Additionally, people can easily know when they do well and what they can do better. They can look at their kill death ratio and be reasonably happy. This doesnt work in guild wars 2. It is a game about holding nodes, don’t blame them for camping one. Would you flame someone for playing on their lane in LoL or Dota? Exactly.

Every mesmer runs no condi remove, except for generosity sigil

It doesnt interrupt resses or stomps, but they cant start a res or stomp while in moa form.

T raw.4658:

In a legit 1v1 a mesmer has a very good chance to win. The age old thief counters mesmer comes from the thief focusing the mesmer in X v X battles. The current meta mesmer builds can’t deal with that.

Yet 1v1 it comes down to individual player skill more so than the mesmer community will let on.

Same thing with rangers as well. Rangers in today’s game should not be losing to thieves 1v1. When that happens it’s due to the ranger player being either extremely horrible or really stupid build.

This is wrong. Mesmer cannot win vs a decent thief unless on very specific points (mine on forerst). It does not matter if it is 1v1, XvX, whatever. This is mainly because the thief can go in and out and exhaust cooldowns like there’s no tomorrow. This is especilially true for SD thief. In terms of ranger vs thief, SD thif wins hands down, if there is any line of sight at all. Only d/p struggles vs ranger.

Concerning after the patch, sure mesmer is getting nice buffs, but i promise you, thieves will still own them. Actually, probably even harder than before due to the incredible thief buffs.

No, very unlikely

no, but i think attunement cooldowns for eles.

Lol the mesmer one is SOO much worse than shared anguish. SA is fine.

Menaka.5092:

Xaylin.1860:

Menaka.5092:

it’s very late, but…

• chronomancer spec has shield with an area effect that stuns and has access to ground-targeted AoE that inflicts slow and chill – and maybe more goodies in the traitline
• weakness on interrupt on domination spec
• PBAoE blind on shatter on dueling (iirc) spec
• chaos armor granting protection in chaos spec

All fancy and stuff, but…

• Slow and Chill have aren’t that effective against Thieves. Why? Because ANet.
• PB 2.0 is nice but interrupt builds aren’t that particularly good against Thieves.
• Blinds are nice. But we all know that Thieves will just stab a second time.
• S/D Thieves (or anyone with Trickery) will say ‘Thank you!’ for the extra Protection.

Not meaning to be too pessimistic here. We don’t know about new traits yet and there also might be changes to existing skills. But so far I haven’t seen anyhting which makes me think that Thieves will have a hard time against it.

how are Slow and Chill not effective on thieves? :\
also, you seem to dismiss the fact that wells are a damage source that we can apply to either create an area that thieves will try to avoid or just to apply damage to them even if we cannot target them

Chill slows cooldowns, doesn’t work on thief. Slow should work okay.

Fay.2357:

skcamow.3527:

Going to experiment with more blind spiced builds as I have for some time. One thing I’ll look to exploit is the new shiny elite we’ll get, which is a dark field, our first. Too bad we don’t have more blasts, but I can see some nice team plays, opportunities with torch and our plentiful access to leaps.

120s cooldown makes it only ever a somewhat niche use. Handy when you use it certainly, but not something that could be relied on for much.

Think of the f5 though. If the f5 would have 60 sec cooldown (it won’t), the elite also has 60sec cooldown. Or use it 2 times in a row.

OP is correct. It would be more op to have them use their attacks one by one in a row

Max clone generation with duelling, chrono and illusions will be fun to try.

However, i think i might be trying Chaotic dampening and staff/sword build for fun, since the wells are all ethereal fields and therefore help chaotic dampening. Old school staff/sword ftw!

Eolirin.1830:

I’m pretty sure that won’t work. Cooldowns don’t tend to activate until after the skill animation completes, so you wouldn’t be able to Continuum Shift in the middle of an activation without it counting as being after the Continuum Shift. If you heal with a rift down, you’ll end up losing all of the healing you got, since your health resets to what it was when the rift initially went down.

Only things like the Heal Well, where the effect persists in the world, would let you do anything like this, and you’d still lose the initial portion of the heal when you Shifted.

Fairly certain this is correct

No utilities were gone

If they do this, Chronomancer will suck

tetrodoxin.2134:

The thing I’m most excited about is the reflect-on-dodge trait. 1.5 seconds may sound like it’s very short, but I’m pretty sure it can make a difference when fighting Rangers or other classes.

Concerning group/support reflects, yeah. There’s a good chance we will get a reflect-trait for shield.
Don’t get your hopes to high though. We still don’t know anything about the other specializations. Maybe the Guardian will become a Mirrormancer :0.

The reflect on dodge is crazy vs engineer rifle.

Domi duelling chronomancy for the best build

Yeah they are trying to make use of alacrity to make people able to keep phantasms up more despite shattering sometimes i think. This is good, because it actually might require some thought to when you shatter and how you manage alacrity. This in turn means that even phantasm build hopefully will take some effort to play instead of just spamming out all phantasms and waiting.

Can people please stop trying to break something they know nothing about? By going into Chronomancy over normal shatter build, you lose out on either DE, 50% mind wrack damage or the illusions line which gives both buffs to your shatters as well as 20% clone skill cd reduction- all amazing things for shatter builds. Who knows what the chronomancy line will give us instead, for all we know it might not fit at all.

Same goes for builds other than shatter of course.

Cleanse free, pretty much. However, generosity sigil works.

It’s not that broken, will only recharge skills you use during the duration of the f5

Meglobob.8620:

Enter the Chronomancer:-

•Chronomancers have access to an effect called Alacrity which reduces cooldowns. Only Chronomancers will have access to this effect (could this mean each Elite Specialisation will have access to a unique effect?)
•Chronomancer’s have access to a 5th Shatter skill: Continuum Split / Continuum Shift. Activating this the first time shatters all of your illusions and records your health, endurance, cooldowns (even elite skills) at the time of activation. After the duration – based off of the number of shattered illusions – is over, the Mesmer reverts to these values.
•The Off-hand Shield skills are called Echo of memory and Tides of Time. Tides of Time launches a wave, absorbing all projectiles, stunning foes and granting Quickness to allies. This wave then returns, applying the same effects. If you pass through the wall on the return trip, a portion of the cooldown is refunded.
•Chronomancers get 4 Time Wells. One well causes all attacks to become unblockable. After the Well ends, allies gain evade for a short time.

If i hear a single person complaining that this is op i will hunt them down personally >:)

Holy shieetttttttttttt, so good. I forgive anet for turret engi and power ranger if this turns out good. I can’t even express how awesome this sounds.

I agree with some things, but they did actually give mesmers buff in some ways they needed. More specifically, AOE blind and weakness is good vs thieves.

Edit: Also protection

Strill.2591:

So in the Specialization video the devs mention that they replaced the godawful Wastrel’s Punishment (+5% damage vs enemies not using a skill), with a new trait that gives +10% to vulnerable enemies.

Now get this: They said that because the damage boost is now tied to a condition, they were able to boost it from 5% to 10%. Does that seem like the words of a lunatic to anyone else? What planet must they be from to think that vulnerability is LESS common than enemies who aren’t using skills? I just absolutely cannot wrap my head around what goes through the devs’ minds with these ridiculous changes.

I makes no sense, but i think they might have just said it wrong and didn’t bother to correct, since most people understand. I will translate for you: “Wastrel’s Punishment is a kittening terribad trait so we buffed it to be more like every other profession’s grandmaster minors”.

Jasher.6580:

Ithilwen.1529:

You just opposed the current round of buffs to Mesmer. You’re claiming Mesmer will be OP, ante facto. That’s in effect a call for a nerf.

Agreed. But that is the first time I’ve ever said something like that. Your original statement said that I make a habit of calling for nerfs for Mesmers which is a big fat lie.

I genuinely feel however that these changes will buff Shatter which will make it too strong. That is my opinion.

The areas where Mesmers needed buffs BADLY, we aren’t getting it which is extremely disappointing. As a matter of fact, these changes will nerf existing builds like Countless’ tripple signet build.

With an organized group and a Thief roaming combo, yes I think these changes are going to be OP. I would be lying if I said otherwise.

I am going to play the hell out of it though… but the tears are going to flow and in true ArenaNet fashion they are going to drop a sledgehammer and it is going to tick me off.

I rather them tweak things now than knee-jerk later and overdo things like they always do.

Again you need to consider other classes will get huge buffs as well. Mesmers will have a hard time even surviving vs thief

Jasher.6580:

Yes they need buffing. But they are buffing the wrong thing. They need to buff diversity. If these changes go through we are going to be OP guaranteed.

I play Mesmer as my main.

You say that by looking at the mesmer changes, but if you would actually look at the other changes as well (thief especially), you would see why mesmer isn’t op, rather it is necro and maybe ele who are UP. (post patch of course).

Concerning new mender’s purity, i guess it will technically use 2 mantras every time you use heal mantra, procing new harmonious mantras twice? Am i right?

I just want to say thank you to Anet for this trait. This is probably the most fun trait they have added since release imo. So good.

Meh next you will want mesmer builds that use phantasmal utilities and stånd and spam skills off cooldown.

Xyonon.3987:

it’s not about the cdr – it’s about the gs. in pve gs is garbage due to the low damage and being forced to be max range. and for pvp the other 2 traits are simply amazing compared to the gs trait. there is no need for this trait to be a GMT. better replace it with something USEFUL – fuse it with the sword trait for example!

That is an interesting idea question is IF it is too strong on GS sword shatter

D/P doesnt have instant ports except for steal. This is of course excepting shadow step util since mesmer also has an instant port utility.

And i am 99% sure there will be More dp thieves post patch. We will habdle them ok, but panic strike + executioner in combo with shadow arts/acro is painful

Chaos armor is strong in zerk builds. Prot and such is always good. Also things like cripple on enemy is important when for example running away from projectile user

This MUST be a troll. Good one though, i am laughing hard

Regarding thieves, sure they will still counter us, but we have chaos storm/armor with the new chaotic dampening. Also, we have weakness on interrupt. Interrupt D/P heartseeker (or anything), GG. S/D thief won’t be a thing anymore, and this is actually a good thing for mesmer.

Sebrent.3625:

What if you also took Null Field and Feedback. That’s 2 more Chaos Armors. We may also get access to another via the Shield.

• X+Shield
• throw down shield ability that has an Ethereal Combo Field
• swap to Staff
• Phase Retreat.

too many cds

BlackBeard.2873:

If you thought Panic Strike was dumb before…just wait until guardians have it too!

Hooray for proc wars!!!

This. Now we have to predict guard f1 and dodge it. Either that or die.