Guild Wars 2

First some amazing changes, then mesmer first?? Anet must have changed their mindset about mesmer ^^

Healing turret needs nerf yeah, i agree with all of it

Thats why 4 is prob good, from what we know so far. Might turn out different in practice.

Oh. my. God.

Is this a blogpost or a livestream????!!!

This is 99% the build i’ll be running once the patch hits.
The shatter-interrupt build. Most creative name ever by the way.

Staff/Greatsword
6/6/0/0/6

Air/fire on GS, Generosity/energy on Staff

Just nab all the good traits

Domination:
Confounding suggestions (amazing synergy with chaos storm)
Shattered concentration (Maybe furious interruption, depends)
Power Block (20 times better than mental torment for your information)

Duelling
Phantasmal Fury (Staff phantasm actually crits hard in relation to torch phant)
Blinding Dissipation (Amazing trait especially vs thief. Staff sucks vs theif so yeah)
Deceptive Evasion (Ehhh, do need to comment?)

Illusions
Compounding Power (Extra damage. The trait people used before power rangers)
Phantasmal Haste (Meh, much better for staff than for torch at least)
Master of Fragmentation (AOE diversion synergizes well with Staff and CS. Plus, reflect)

Nuff’ said. Play this or get left in the dust with your 2012 glamour build.

This is bad for eles indeed, but it is also absolutely needed. Arcane needs to not be 100% necessary. For sustain, look for example at soothing ice .

“Soothing Ice: Gain regeneration and Frost Aura when you are struck by a critical hit.”

Or geomancer’s defence: 20% damage reduction when closer than 600 range- absolutely crazy vs thief and mesmer for example.

Or elemental shielding for protection on aura application.

Again there are many ways try try replacing the sustain of arcana.

I agree, phantasmal haste and 2 condi traits doesn’t really fit in the shatter traitline. Especially not compared to this trait.

It should be 4% or 3% probably, but i’d rather see them nerf after testing as to not break mesmer instantly.

I am looking at the PvP side here. Many things you say are right, but i cannot agree that bolt to the heart kills all fresh air builds. Players like phantaram already used super speed with fresh air builds. Additionally, lightning rod + tempest defense might be a cool synergy, not sure.

Now i can understand why on first look mesmer and thief after patch sounds overpowered to some. But let’s take at look at what you gain and lose in a more specific manner, instead of only throwing accusations out!

Shatter Mesmer:

Proposed build:
6/6/0/0/6 sword/torch,gs
Confounding suggestions, Shattered Concentration, Mental Torment
Phantasmal fury, Blinding dissipation/evasive mirror, Deceptive evasion
Compounding Power, Phantasmal Haste, Master of Fragmentation

- You gain:

- 1 stun with F3. 1,25 sec daze with F3 instead of 1 sec. Doesn’t stack.

- 25% mind wrack damage. 50% when opponent is dazed / stunned.
This can be dodged when dazed, so the best way is to stun someone. Similar to “Unsuspecting Foe” warrior trait that gives +50% crit chance vs stunned foes with ALL attacks.

- Your phantasms have fury

- Blind when using shatter skill or reflect on successful evade (latter arguably op)

- 3% dmg per active illusion. (3 – 6% in a real game most of the time).

- Phantasmal Haste, phantasms attack 20% quicker. Not very useful on shatter build, die after 1 attack.

- AOE diversion (through master of fragmentation presumably).

- Baseline extra mirror blade bounce.

- Other buffs are forgettable, such as 3,5 secs confusion on shatter.

You lose:

Halting strike on shatter build, one of the main sources of damage.

Recharge shatter skills on 50% HP, one of the most important survival traits for sword mesmer.

You also gain some buff due to things being placed into categories. For example, ether feast and elites. This counts for all classes though, so i won’t include here.

D/P Thief

Proposed build:
6/0/6/0/6 Panic Strike (for now at least).

You gain: (over panic strike meta build):

- Executioner, 20% more damage when opponent is under 50% health.

- Stealth skills last 1 second longer

- Reduced damage in stealth 50%, works for teammates

- Stealth and blind when you stealth or regen on stealth

- Apply venoms to allies in an AOE. (Mainly basi)

-Venoms have 20% reduced cooldown*

You lose:

- Improvisation, recharge a random type of utility (trap, trick etc.) on steal.

Conclusion:

Thief i am too inexperienced on to say wether it is overpowered or not, but i certainly think it is a huge buff.

Mesmer gets some awesome stuff, which is to be expected since all classes get 4 more trait points. But mesmer also loses some important stuff, like halting strike and 50% recharge trait. Nothing which is blatantly op except for perhaps reflect on evade. I do not think anything else should be changed. (in terms of shatter at least).

Almost all classes get some good changes like engi in general, ele frost aura or the ranger that that gives protection when hit. An exception is probably the necro honestly. This in combination with the mesmer and thief buffs means that weakness and protection will be very important as a way to counter huge damage. This is awesome, since it might actually promote more skillfull application of these conditions/boons.

Also classes will be able to be much tankier. Think warrior shout with the new rousing resiliance. Or ele with 0/0/6/6/6.

Please tell me things that i have missed! ^^

Ít sounds op on paper, very good quickness uptime. But the thing is, mesmer doesn’t even benefit from quickness very much. Look at sword/torch gs mesmer for example.

The autos on both weapons are too weak to make use of quickness (unlike for example thief, warrior). Sword #2 gets worse in quickness (shorter evade). Sword #3 is instant. Torch #4 is instant. Torch 5# is useless.

Greatsword 2 makes good use of quickness. Gs #3 is already super short cast. Gs #4 only makes use of quickness on summon. Gs #5 is short cast.

Basically, because the phantasms don’t get the quickness, the only damage we do quicker is from mirror blade and arguably Gs#5 knock. Out utilities are also mostly instant (decoy, blink, portal). Indeed the skills that actually benefit from quickness are as follows: Gs #2, Gs #5, Daze mantra charge, Heal, Elite (not time warp).

Not op at all

A shame everyone will still have DE then :P (aside from pve)

The problem is that you (like many others) assume that engis always need to go with kits in their utilities. If you need mobility there are many options both in traits (mentioned above) and additionally in skills. If speedy kits would be made baseline, every single engineer to the end of time would use kits. Try swtiftness with elexir on a hgh build or something. This is similar to mesmers not having mobility without focus, which noone still uses.

So much this. Illusions line is supposed to specialize in shatters, but there is no shatter master trait. Instead we have 2 condi traits and 1 phantasm trait??? This is tge perfect place for illusionary invigoration.

Merge them, they are taking up unecessary spots

True, but wait and see when i try Harmonious mantras with mender’s purity. The true power of the inspiration line will show! But yeah inp grandmasters are the worst. MAYBE boonshare is decent, the other 2 traits are worthless.

Toeofdoom.6152:

I have a suspicion that theres a display bug on many of these recharge traits and that small numbers like 2% or 1.5% could mean 2 seconds and 1.5 seconds. In which case they’re amazing. So… dunno. We’ll see.

Seconds makes more sense in my opinion

Mantra
Some niche mantra build perhaps:
6/6/0/6/0 with Daze mantra, Portal , Dmg mantra(not sure), Heal mantra probably
CS – FI – Power Block
X – Evasive Mirror – Harmonious Mantras –
Mender’s Purity – Warden’s Feedback – X

Now, this is some weird stuff. Protective mantras is now baseline, so that’s fun.
CS is just good, especially with Daze Mantra. FI helps ALOT with channeling mantras, amazing synergy. Power Block might be interchangable with with Greatsword training, but i very much doubt it.

In duelling, i am still not sure about the first trait, but probably Phantasmal Fury or Pistol trait. Evasive mirror is probably better than Blinding Dissipation. This is not 100% of course. Harmonious mantras is fairly bad on its own, since DE is better for 90% of situations, but there is a nice synergy that i will get into now.

In inspiration, you take Mender’s purity. This trait has potentially become one of the best mesmer traits, and syngergizes with HM really well. It seems like every time you use a charge of your heal (which has 3 charges), you cast power cleanse as well. So, If you use a charge of your heal, you have used 2 mantras, technically. This means Harmonious mantras will activate 2 times, giving you 8% every time you use ONE charge of your heal. This in combination with the other mantras will grant you an almost permanent 5 HM stacks in combat, which means +20% damage. Very, very strong and can work well with for example new power block trait. The survivability in this build comes from the heal when you cast a mantra, which actually works in AOE (and heals for 2,5k +) I can see people using this to support allies like engis use healing turret for example.

With these traits, your heal mantra will heal you three times, heal your allies when channeled for 2,5k +, remove 6 conditions in total for you and your allies, and give you 600 toughness while channeling. On top of that, it will be easy to channel because of furious interruption buff. All this on an incredibly short cooldown. The problem with this build is that all of the inspiration GM traits are kinda meh. Super speed on glamour is useless for this build, shatter condi remove is unneccessary. Therefore, you will need to use boonshare trait, which isn’t that good on paper, but if you get boons from your teammates you can send them back, effectively doubling the boons. Hard to say, but this could be nice.

General stuff:
There is the possiblility that evasive mirror is very overpowered, so it might be better to use over blinding dissipation in every build. It makes you almost invulnerable vs current engi meta build and good vs warrior, ranger, thief as well. This depends on if the trait gets changed and also depends on how the meta turns out. If we see melee burst warriors the blind trait will abviously be better vs that, for example.

The inspiration trait for boonsharing might also be better than it looks on paper.

There might be some other “broken” things like almost removing your weapon cooldowns by using combo finishers in glamours in conjunction with Chaotic Dampening to reduce Staff cooldowns massively. 5% reduction per second is nice, depending on how it works. 5% of the total cooldown or 5% of the current remaining cooldown? Finishers we have for this include: Sword #3, Staff #2, Sword #5, Torch #4.

Additionally, the pistol trait is interesting to say the least, with no internal cooldown you could reduce cooldown of pistol skills by 100% from 2 interrupts. So if you hit your pistol 5 bullet and interrupt with it, the cooldown is reduced by 50%?

These 2 things together could be interesting for some sort of Staff , Sword/pistol build.

So far, i feel Greatsword is still 90% necessary for power builds, but this doesn’t need to be the case. Read the cooldown speculation above for example. The question is if we can do enough damage with only the new traits (Mainly mental torment) without having zerker and mirror blade.

Now this is long asf and i have probably forgotten some interesting things, but that is what the comments are for i guess. That is, if anyone is extremely bored and reads all of this (won’t happen).

For reference: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33qrg0/specialization_ama_livestream_notes/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1weRTxaaGunZFEEKZg-zy4x2A50GFVqSNJ7YwMtWr-jw/edit?usp=sharing

Other Builds

Other builds might work as well. For example:
Boonshare
0/0/6/6/0
Master of Manipulation – Chaotic dampening – Bountiful dissilusionment
Vigorous revelation – Restorative illusions? – Illusionary inspiration

Last 6 points im not sure about. Maybe domination for signet recharge (signet of inspiration) or duelling for more vigor or illusions for might on shatter.

The problem is that our best boon traits; CI, Bountiful and PU are in the same spot. -.-
The point is to get vigor and protection mainly and give it to your teammates, but sadly mesmer has very limited fury uptime. Something you could do however is try mimic with this build ^^. What? It works well with MoM trait! Don’t give me that look.

Condition
0/6/6/0/6 scepter/pistol, staff
Duelist’s Discipline – Evasive mirror – DE
Master of Manipulation – Chaotic dampening – CI
X – Malicious sorcery – Maim

Interesting, but not sure it would work. Perhaps sword is better than scepter still, not sure. Very good reflect uptime which is needed for this wep set.

Phantasm
Just no please.

So, hype, basically. The mesmer buffs of which you all know about are incredibly powerful.

We have: 6/6/0/0/6 Shatter mesmer GS/sword
Confounding suggestions-Shattered Concentration-Mental Torment
Phantasmal Fury-Blinding Dissipation-Deceptive Evasion
X- Phantasmal Haste- Master of Fragmentation

Basically CS is now insane, and exactly how i’ve always wanted it with 100% chance. <3.
Shattered Concentration is good, but depending on how boon dependant the new meta will be, “Furious interruption” or even “Blurred inscriptions” might be better (if we get a signet buff).

“Phantasmal Fury” can be swapped with “Duelist’s Discipline” (Depending on how pistol turns out) or “Desperate Decoy”. The way to know if “Phantasmal Fury” is worth it basically depends on DPS calcs after patch since phantasm damage is now baseline.
Now, “Blinding dissipation”. I almost died when i saw this trait. This is so incredibly good, like just WOW. DE is obvious.

For illusions, I see people running either “The pledge” or “Compounding power” depending on if you use torch or another weapon and personal preference. (I’d go CP).
For master tier, none of the traits are very good for shatter build, but i guess phantasmal haste for the Zerker attacks and for quicker condition remove with Phantasmal Mage. Not amazing. Master of fragmentation is fairly obvious.

Now, in my opinion many of these major traits are subpar, BUT, the real reason why you want the illusions traitline is because of the amazingly good minor traits, IC and Shattered stength (buffed). Also, i think Illusion traitline will reduce cooldown on shatter skills.

This, at the moment, feels like a really fun build.

6/6/6 Lockdown/interrupt GS/Staff
CS – FI – Power Block
X- Blinding Dissipation- DE
Master of manipulation- Chaotic Dampening – CI

So, here we have an interrupt build that might be used beside shatter. The problem with this build instead of shatter is basically like in game at the moment. Because of the lack of shatter cooldown reduction and the like, it does too little damage to kill bruisers like shout war/ cele ele.
Even though IP is baseline, the problem persists. The defense is amazing, it has weakness and protection, but still does much less damage.
BUT, we need to remember that the meta will change. And like others have called as well (Helseth’s reddit, par example), celes won’t be able to stay alive in this meta. This is because of various reasons like no stat lock and thief getting massive buffs. This has the effect that people need to go for more damage/burst builds. And luckily, this might be were interrupt mesmer can really shine. Weakness, multiple immobs, protection- while at the same time easily doing enough damage to kill. Very nice.

Now, in terms of the traits:
CS i’ve already talked about. FI is much much stronger now, and will work well with ressing, stomping, and channeling Daze mantra quicker. Still not 100% sure this is worth yet, but probably (depends on freq. of stability in new meta). Power Block is now incredible as well. That 15 seconds skill lockdown works well vs all heals (Consume condi, healing turret, ranger heals, mesmer heal, new specialization heals, revenant heals), banners, crates, pindowns, rapid fires, burning speeds, mirror blades, and more. Weakness works well vs thief even though we can’t lock down their skills.

First trait in duelling i am unsure of, probably phantasmal fury it is also possible pistol will be good in new meta, but i think staff will be better. This depends on classes and maps though.

In Chaos line:
Master of manipulation is interesting, and can be very useful when for example blink bursting a ranger or an engi. Also good vs warrior. I like that we have gotten more reflects by the way! Chaotic dampening is just amazing in general. Protection will be very strong if the new meta goes more Zerker- oriented which it looks like so far. CI is obvious, one of the best traits on mesmer now since we have Bountiful interruption in it. In my opinion just better than stability trait pretty much always.

It is very very weird, especially since the AOE Moa is only half of the skill o.0

How about this:
“Moa morph now transforms your target into a phantasm that will fight for you, 10 seconds”

Please make it happen

Hmmm i like the idea to make DE compete vs a phantasm GM, as to improve mesmer in PvE, at the very least!

In terms of mesmer you still have shatter, interrupt and condi. The rest were mostly passive builds that ilike to see gone. If your active build got ruined, sad to hear! After all, they said that “we are going to keep as many builds as we can”. I think we will manage though, since elite specilization will offer other playstyles. =)

2/4/6/0/6 CI + shatter

DE would remove phantasm builds.

Well when the game allows support even on zerk builds (see dps guard) then there is no reason to not use it. A team playing zerker builds perfectly wins over anything else. In most games you can’t have damage spike, condition removal, teamsupport, blocks, teleport and heals on the same build (looking at you dps guard!)

Very nice, everyone get your necros

Last i used it i couldnt use it behind me. Also, it would be obstructed randomly (does it still?).

Please do not implement this improv suggestion. It should be changed, but your idea is absolutely crazy

Chaith.8256:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Chaith.8256:

Siva Mira.3546:

Before it was Pistol’s AA hits like wet noddle and Riffle wasn’t a thing. But it is all in the past now. So what is the excuse of this OP trait?

I think it should either:
1- Redesign it like they did with Dhuumfire.
2- The laziest way, Limit IP to Pistol only like how Glacial Heart works.
3- The boriest way, nerf the Trait and improve Pistol’s AA.

Well something you should consider is that a Rifle user’s IP does at most half as much damage over time as a Pistol user’s IP.

Chill of Death, Air, Fire, Incendiary Powder, Glacial Heart, Halting Strike, as much as many wish they weren’t, they’re all intended game mechanics.

Whoa whoa whoa, what’s wrong with Halting Strike? Requires narrowly timed skill to land, is limited to the number of interrupt skills the mesmer has, and is easily countered by stability (among other things). If there are tears being shed out there because of halting strike they’re purely tears of being outplayed.

Not sure why it was lumped in there with all those passives.

Please tell me more about how that Chaos Storm daze was timed or you planned on the illusions staggering the daze to interrupt subsequent casts. :o

Walk out of Chaos storm / dodge. Watch for shatter daze and don’t cast skills while the 3 clones are walking to you, like i do vs interrupt mesmer.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_Utopia#Features
Planned profession, got cancelled. That’s one reason it is a strong possibility.

It is weird that you say it happened constantly, since the chance for that should be incredibly low.

Stop bringing up backstab, it has no relevance in this conversation. This is for all skills in stealth. sb auto is one good example.. ranger stealth auto is another.

Definately go focus. Better reflects and better teamfight since it is aoe. Also, do not give up DE. Debilitating dissipation is also the better choice compared to something like illusionary defence, like muuuch better. Something i would like to see is this build without pDefender. Null field, portal, something else, all good contenders. Also, try to get keybinds for utilities and heal and elite! Otherwise good job.

There is a bug where distortion activation is delayed if you don’t have IP traited. That’s the only thing i can think of, anyway.

For some reason they just stopped doing large profession changes back then.
Edit: exception is of course new GM taits.

Maybe change conditions to account for time, at least for duration stacking conditions. For example, “burn for 60 seconds” instead of “burn for 63 ticks” or whatever.

These are good buffs, also removing RNG would be a good buff. Still, i think that the real best way to enable som build diversity with mes is to make some DE/ IP baseline. Anything else would require reworks that won’t happen.

I support these changes, but also nerfs on other professions.

Careful, last time i made this suggestion 10+ people here on forums REALLY did not like it, for some reason.

ukuni.8745:

honestly the only reason thief is in the state it is is because of its mobility, whats the point of having another zerker class if i cant move around quickly enough, i can guarantee my zerker engineer will do more damage and have a bigger impact on a fight then a thief but then again im not at far point yet decapping it and by the time i got there i didn’t get that burst on the enemy in mid and rotated out to help home or what ever else that needs doing.

Also the engi zerk dies about 1000 times easier.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Quadox.7834:

thieves want more build versatility when they already rival war in best mobility. ok?

fixed*

Its still a poor statement.

What i’m saying is, maybe thieves that want a better chance in actual fights should not use shortbow, which is a weapon that gives mobility. I know shortbow probably is the best in fights as well at the moment, so what might really be needed are changes to some of the other (non meta) weapons of the thief to make them more attractive in place of shortbow. As long as thieves run shortbow with a targeted teleport built into a weapon, they should be “weaker” in fights.

thieves want more fight presence when they already have the best mobility. ok?

Some things you can do i try to get used to instant cast aoes. It really helps for blink and gs#3. Also, when a necro is in death shroud it is often a good idea to run / kite away to drain it. ^^ just some general stuff.

Of course mesmer can get to top spots on LB. Just play alot. But i agree balance > leaderboard.

Yes fire/air removal might be enough for thief. Otherwise some slight nerf in trickery. Most of thief traitlines are actually quite well balanced and all are used in different scenarios, but trickery is pretty much always used.

Please stop saying lb ranger is fine because “ranger is the weakest class” or “ranger is not in the meta”. There are many many reasons for this that i won’t go into, but for now i will just state my opinion. Longbow on ranger is op / badly designed BUT the rest of ranger power based weapons are subpar. Look at people even using sword / dagger on power builds, even though they are condition weapons. Both GS, axe and warhorn need buffs, whereas longbow probably needs a slight nerf. At the moment there is very little reward for being in melee range (risk vs reward).

PS. there are of course other issues such as bad traits and etc…

I don’t have lag personally, but i hear many people do.

Khisanth.2948:

Josh Davis.6015:

Try turning the camera collision detection down a bit.

Would that be left or right?

Left

Ravenmoon.5318:

Its funny because people have been saying this phrase “the last chance left” for about 2 years now

Even though I don’t agree with many of the changes ANet is making, I do see reason behind most of them and why they are doing it. Also its their game, not yours. They get the say in how their competitive scene looks like, not you.

When the game launched some 2.5 years ago everybody was spamming greatsword frenzy warriors.

Do not turn blind eye on what they’ve achieved so far. Don’t be that naive.

My advice … learn to be flexible. Gw2, as all other MMOs is “work in progress”. Strong classes today will be afterthought tomorrow because of some balance patch. Learn to adapt or you’ll always be miserable.

This guy is right let’s not give any more feedback or critisism instead let us just watch as Anet does their job and buffs underpowered air/fire and celestial amulet. It’s their game, so why bother right?
/obvious sarcasm is obvious.