Guild Wars 2

RevengeSeeker.7208:

In the end it it kind of reminds me of confused in pokemon from gen II, I use to have bitter berries on me like crazy because it was so annoying, you could gamble but really 1 turn was better than 4 turns of punching yourself in the face. Same thing all my builds for all my characters of some form of cleansing and I run with people who also have cleanses.

This thread got owned by a pokemon refrence

Endemonadia.8593:

Loco.4561:

I see so many complaints against confusion, it’s mind boggling that so many of you seem to struggle with this condition. I have NO problems handling confusion on ANY of my characters. It’s simple:

Pay attention to the conditions being applied to you
Don’t waste whatever cleanses you have IF you are fighting an opponent with a lot of condition damage
DON’T MINDLESSLY SPAM ABILITIES.

If a Mesmer (for example) dumps 7 stacks of confusion on I either cleanse or just wait it out. Don’t spam, don’t dodge roll. Just let them stand there looking at you. Confusion is awesome for catching people unawares, it punishes lazy players who feel they don’t need to watch what conditions are being applied.

Rather than calling for nerfs, learn about the condition being applied and counter by…well how can I put it…not being bad :p

Sadly its not this simple, and if u read the entire thread u will hear from extremely experienced PvPers why Confusion is OP and needs to be sorted out.

The fact that Confusion is nerfed by 50% in PvP shows that the devs know something is wrong. The question here is why its not nerfed in WvW also.

The opinion that players should simply ;pay attention really doesnt hold water. The entire Confusion mechanic is a very unskilled ability with massive yield on return. In Zerging it does the most damage by a mile over all other AoE.

Therefore, surely we should be rewarding players who must target individuals and time their attacks more than the simplest ability which u just dump onto a group of the enemy?

Turn up singletarget attacks and turndown AoE.

TLDR: this isnt a thread writtemn by QQers who cant handle Confusion, its written by peoploe who understand PvP fully whose opinion is that Confusion is OP and needs to be redesigned.

The thread does have a lot of experienced people coming to it, I agree. Many of those experienced players are pointing out how easy confusion is to counter. They’re also pointing out, rightfully so, that it’s a learn to play issue. That experience will go a long way in overcoming confusion builds. That confusion is a spec that sacrifices pretty much everything else. There’s also the fact that confusion is powerful against certain builds, and not others. High DPS, high toughness, low health pool players are easy pray. You know, the condition prone ones. Conditions are the intended counter to those guys, and there are tons of them running all over WvW. Funny that.

What I have seen a lot of from your so called “experienced pvp’rs” is the false claim that confusion has been nerfed in spvp. It’s repeated over and over despite people correcting the statement. Anyone half informed about confusion knows that confusion has been buffed in pve, and thus wvw.

Confusion, for the most part (if not entirely), is working as intended.

Troll thread.

We don’t make game changes based on players laughing at other players.

Confusion duration caps at 10 seconds, and that’s only if the mesmer builds for that much. Condition duration reduction food is just one of many options you could utilise. CD removals, or just not attacking. Hell, build for more HP’s and you wont have as much trouble.

Your main O kitten ue is condition removal priority. I wonder about this every day (as well as boon stealing). Do we have anything official which states what it is?

Confusion is hardly OP, nor are Mesmers stealth and confusion stacking ability any more “infinite” than any other classes anything.

I use 2x monk, 2x water, and you can have 2x speed (I use 2x strength) for boon duration, I dont have focus trait, do have blink trait.

Arganthium.5638:

Hey all. I just wanted to come here briefly to discuss the way that it seems like how many (most?) mesmers spawn their clones: via dodge rolling.

Now, while spawning an endless stream of clones is all well and good, one of the problems that I see a lot of mesmers have also involves their rolling. See, Dueling X is a bit of a double-edged sword: while it helps you pop out another illusion, what it also does is instantly reveal which of the mesmers that I’m looking at is the real one. Typically speaking, the instant I see that, what will happen is I’ll change targets and go straight for the mesmer, get them running away, and (assuming they don’t have stealth) I press a few buttons and down them fairly easily. Stealth, stomp, gg.

So, here are a few tips I might have for mesmer players that are having difficulty with issues like this. If anybody else might like to add, that would be great.

-Don’t run Dueling X. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, IMO, Dueling X, when used right, is a great trait to have, so you might not want to give it up that easily.
-Have stealth. Once an enemy sees you, just Decoy or whatever, and, by the time you pop back out of stealth, it’ll be much more difficult for the enemy to see you again.
-Use illusions more like obstacles than as distractions. That way, it’s more difficult for the enemy to see you when you’re dodging or healing, and thus more difficult to discern what is an illusion and what is not.
-Blink. Doesn’t matter how- Staff #2, the Blink utility, Portal- whatever. Makes it much more difficult to see where you’ve gone if you blink away before they can catch you.
-If your enemy isn’t going to attack your illusions, then use them to your advantage. Either use phantasms as virtually permanent allies, bust your illusions at every chance you get, or whatever you have to do.

Anyways, there’s a small list that I’ve started right there. I’m sure many of you can add to it. I just wanted to bring attention to it, mostly because I’ve caught so many mesmers because they were dodge-rolling or healing at the wrong time, and I could tell what was an illusion and what wasn’t.

Here’s a pro tip for you, since you’re here.

You said you play a thief. Great, I already know what you’re going to do. For that reason I want you to know exactly which one I am so you will hone in on me and spam your attacks. We’ll get in real close to eachother, at which point I’ll drop a shatter on you. You’ll run your usual skill drill and rack up the confusion damage. Your life will melt, you’ll freak out and naturally do what all good thieves do and dive for the sanctuary of stealth. Whoops, those stacks of confusion are still there and when you come out of stealth you’re downed and ready for the stomp. Like all good thieves should be.

Aberrant.6749:

Blind/Block/Dodge/Invuln timing = no phantasm even appears… this means EVERY class can actually counter this build xD

This isn’t really that known though… and most people don’t know the proper timing.

Being Asura would help limit the visibility of the animations for those who do know.

This build was even stronger before the prot/regen/phant “attack” rules were changed… ahhh the good old days of rotfl I don’t even care if you hit me phant mesmer builds.

This is true. The sceptre 3 helps on openeing here as you can use it to burn target dodges, blocks, invulns, etc.

Amadeus.5687:

@Knight I’m sadly on the EU server’s, and they both play on NA server!

@Wookie, You would have to give up three of the following things: Blink, Stealth or Clone life (I assume it would be Blink and stealth), and while I do agree that I will be put on pressure at the start, I still sit in with 2x low CD easy to land burning Skills, with acces to a thid and a chance to get it on crits, I got 2 different skills to get 5 stacks of confusion on you with, which in WvW means total lockdown unless you got a removal for 10 seconds (one being on a 12 sec CD, the other 18)! Still not counting all the other crap I got! :P The point is, I I will be put on pressure, put if I just paly defensive at the start and don’t double stack my CD’s, then the match will turn easy for me when your two removal is gone! At least in WvW, sPvP have showed to be quite harder for me vs that kind of builds :P

Are you talking about Engineers Prybar? There are two problems I see vs this kind of phantasm build, and mesmers in general. With two blocks, engineers are super easy to counter as a mesmer. Hell, with the single block on the sceptre I’ve been able to easily counter Engineers. That aside, all your confusion dumps on this phantasm build are worthless, because he’s never in need to use his skills. Even if he HAS to, with all those HP’s it hardly matters to burn a few to some skills.

All that aside, something could be swapped out for arcane thievery which throws all those yummy stacks of confusion back onto the engineer. If that’s not enough, ether fest can be changed for mantra of recovery. Since there’s no need for the caster to attack, they can just spam mantra heals and recharges while the phantasms do their thing. Hell, put THAT aside, all the mesmer has to do is buddy up with his phantasms for regeneration. Better yet, add iDefender, and not only will he tank any damage the mesmer takes, but the iSwordsman will grant iDefender regeneration, creating a hell of a regenerative lockdown for the opponent to overcome.

It’s a hell of a build. Anyone competent in it knows how to make the most of it. Hell, I don’t even use it, encountered it once while doing duels, and figured it all out.

naphack.9346:

From my experience, the priority is like
-ranger pets: It will always cycle through ranger pets before targetting anything else
-bone minions: Second stop
-Phantasms: Next obvious target
-flesh golem and shadow fiends
-mesmer clones
-wildlife
-npcs
-walls
-water, empty air, the road, trees, rocks, …
-ranger pets on other maps
-phantasms on other maps
-satan himself
-players

That is the order and nothing can change it.

Yes but ironically it does manage to bypass guardian angels and go straight to their respective target player.

I can’t disagree with Pyroatheist more. Though despite the fighting style, I don’t think your trait line-up is optimal.

Take the aforementioned guardian problem for example. Yes, he stopped attacking and cleansed the confusion. But he took a ton of damage before that, and not only burned his cleanses but his heals as well. You did that with your sceptre/torch/utilities, but have the staff as part of your build for good reason. At that point, with the guardian on the back foot, a simple swap to it, putting up clones for bleeds/burning, with a chain of chaos armours, coupled with blind on confuse will quickly eat away at the guardians health pool. The problem in the video wasnt that the guardian was competent, rather that you weren’t. A little more experience and you’ll find your build can do what the naysayers say it cannot.

Ive been running sceptre/torch since release. Only character i’ve played. It busts noobs and competent players alike.

wish.3102:

The best counter is to split into groups of 9, and attack everything they own at the exact same time. I say 9 because this would allow you to drop 3 rams on every gate they have. But every group needs to drop its 3 rams and be using them at the exact same time, that way the massive zerg can only take out 2-3 groups and the others will take whatever theyre trying to take. This is of course assuming they own a lot of stuff.

I read your tag. You’re from JQ. If you’d ever played against your oceanic hour you’d laugh at how deeply ironic your suggestion is. I know I did.

Irony aside, so what? You take a couple points with 9 man groups, turn everything to paper, and suddenly there are less locations for the enemy server to need to defend. The 9 man groups will consolodate, and the enemy zerg will continue to roll around and roll over everything. While they do that, they’ll roll through all the paper caps just created.

How about an auto treb feature? You could set the power and have it auto repeat even if you hop off the treb. The treb will continue to fire at its current state until such time as it takes damage.

Might be crazy, but also might just work

I’ve been running player limit and detail on low, and never have any problems.

To the OP, is what you’re experiencing simply your PC taking its time to load the models, despite the fact that name plates are apparent (though blended in to all the rest, aka unnoticible)?

The OP is asking for advice but his argument actually shows a major inconsistency from the devs with regards to their mechanical philosophy. Time Warp/quickness aparently is OP and “abuse” due to it’s allowing for massive damage to be released in periods of time to small for players to even react. However, as we all know, thieves exceed this sort of damage without the need for quickness. Yet, one is nerfed, the other isn’t touched.

That aside, I havnt died to a thief in more months than I can remember. Toughness + mad sceptre skills + confusion = dead thief. Skill spamming is their own demise.

It’s been many many months since I died to a thief. Culling was no rescue.

Tyaen.5148:

Once again, good times in SoR BL.

And………….score update

Woo! I made it into your third image Which is quite a feat considering how many ally names are there without rendered avatars :p

Sure. Break out some Sun Tzu: don’t be where your enemy is. Side step them. Take an alternative exit out of your spawn and fight where they are not. If they want to defend that tower/camp/keep, they’ll have to abandon their siege.

This is a no brainer. Sun Tzu wrote it down anyway.

Considering various changes over various patches, confusion based skills have been buffed. I don’t know where the idea that confusion is overpowered has come from.

The trouble with any kind of nerf would be that for mesmers, particularly condition build mesmers, is that they’ll be left with nothing. As far as conditions go once you put away the staff mesmers have nothing left aside from confusion. Confusion itself has plenty of hard counters. Anet would be forced to do some major reworkings of the mechanics, not really nerf it.

This thread just seems like fear mongering.

This is easy.

Its all about the /laugh. Charr male is a strong contender, but so is Norn female.

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

Huh, I think it’s something wrong with the forums, if I copy paste the link it works just fine

go to tinyurl.com, you can shorten the link to make it clickable.

akunadin.5017:

BS, all same for me, glassviber and fastest/best internet connection+indeed a comp that make even 90% of the ppl cry.

Battleping/smoothping got all of it.

Game is faked Anet saks huge… 6 months of culling turns in to 6 months of skill lag now.
Out of frustration i even downloaded and played Age of Washu for 4 hours yesterday not becoue i liked it so much, simply becouse GW really gets on me nervers with all this bs atm.
Not even to mention indeed that i had to trasnfure from my home-server SFR becouse of a nother idiotic decision FREE transfure to a tier 1 server…GTFO wich gave me 4 hours qeu.

wtb elderscroll online (beta) fast faster fastest!!!

Your writing ability makes my eyes bleed. DX

You know you’ve played to much WvW when you’re driving home, a bit drowsy, and out of the corner of your eye on the roadside you think you see a downed Sylvari. So you take your foot off the accelerator and ask yourself, “Should I stop to res?” before realising you’re tired and loosing your mind.

gennyt.3428:

@ Thrumdi

I’m on Borlis Pass, the map chat alone makes it worth it lol but seriously the server really hangs in there and I’ve had a blast in the skirmishes and epic battles for the most part. I don’t think the less than desirable mechanics in WvWvW will make climbing the ranks any more worthwhile for many though. I mean, gain rank why? To do the same stuff that inevitably annoy and frustrate? Unfortunately for the insular little maps of WvW, it’s easy to not bother, the server loses face and not much else, it doesn’t affect the rest of the game at all and this is what’s concerning me.

@Baelnorn

I understand the gripe. I also understand that some things that might have looked good on paper didn’t translate well practically which is why it didn’t and will not stray far from traditional MMO mechanics regardless of the marketing. The high level cap at launch and the tiers of gear are a dead giveaway and I think that was a mistake because any other “progression” they add will just compound the grind. The WvWvW ranks so far seem lackluster, that is something that will happen as a by product of me having fun, the “having fun” part however, turns into a problem at times.

It’s funny because Korean players complain at the lack of grind.

WvW player participation as of the patch is as it was upon release. That’s not an impression, that’s a fact. As the devs put it, the “quality of life” of WVW has just had a major improvement.

With culling out of the way, and the wvw devs resources now opened, we will continue to see the appropriate developments to further improve WvW. Really there are three options for a reasonably minded person. WvW can get worse, it can stay exactly the same, or it can get better. Anet are dedicated to improving WvW, and as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Simple as that.

Two thoughts,

As to your question: Combine stealth with your blink. Run in one direction, enter stealth (decoy, veil, or torch 4), then turn around and blink in a different direction. Players have to weigh up their guess as to what you’re doing. Even if they stand still, they’re still wasting distance between where they are and the way you’re running.

Water can be your friend. Stay close to water and you can use that as an escape. A lot of classes suck in water. Mesmers, generally speaking, are not one of them.

Finally, WvW has a lot of open space. Consider where you are. Chances are there is no escape. Don’t waste time, hit points, and cd’s in a futile escape effort. Turn on your enemies, even if outnumbered, and at least try to kill one. Sometimes if a 5 man group wants to push the boundaries of reason and chase me down, I’ll turn on them hard. Overconfidence in an “easy victory” leads to poor play. As a mes I can down an opponent, summon some clones, pop a TW, distortion, and spike a guy out from under his buddies just to make a point.

Id say SoR had enough self confidence to be secure in whatever they can manage to do with their current skills and resources at any given time. You have to be realistic. SoR are.

Nikked.7365:

A Focus.

#15char

Rofl, yeah. Focus, focus trait, 30 in chaos for boon duration, boon duration food and runes, start running and keep running till you’ve hit every point.

Maybe a superior sigil of swiftness on your focus so you can run fast to the next target after killing your foe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Conflagration

Yes it removes 1, despite the description. Of course the english/gramor is correct in that sentence, so your complaint isn’t exactly legit. It could be made clearer however.

No idea why it hasnt removed your conditions. My experience has been that it works.

Condition duration is good, but if confusion is your main source there are two important considerations while building around that condition.
1) Unless otherwise changed, confusion duration caps at 10 seconds.
2) If you’re going to max out your confusion duration, it’s worth considering cost vs benefit considering players (and groups of players) have various forms of condition removal. Is it worth sacrificing other areas of your build for the 9th and 10th seconds of confusion which may be well cleansed by then? Maybe, maybe not.

Virtsuoso.9761:

Vodka.3958:

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Sunspots.9861:

Blackgate won last week. I don’t think they have anything left to prove.

Considering they won during a week where JQ got sabotaged hard I think they have a lot to prove.

Anyway awesome week of fighting guys

I am just happy that SoR has a chance of breaking BG’s undefeated streak against them

Keep up the awesome fights everyone!!

Blackgate got sabotaged harder but we didn’t say anything in the forums about it. Yeah nice job to SoR for beating Blackgates 13-0 streak against them, let’s see if they can do it 12 more times!

Can’t be sabotaged when you lose your keeps and the sieges get destroyed, just saying. Winning ONCE does not prove anything either.

Let’s take a closer look at that statement “Winning once does not prove anything”.

So what can we deduce?

-BG can be beaten by SoR
-BG has been beaten by SoR
-BG is not undefeated by SoR
-BG can be defeated 13 times in a row (theoretically possible)
-Winning, does in fact, prove many things
-Scrub talk comes out in place of accepting hard truths.

You could split the xp, but you’re still going to get larger groups forming over smaller. Why? Because, as you said, there’s the chance of success factor. Sure being solo or in a smaller group might be more rewarding if you win, but it all comes down to “if you win”. You’ll get your wXP, it’ll come in and build up. But it isnt going to build up if all you do is die to superior numbers (we can assume skill level on havok/roamin groups are the same). People want to win their fights. They want to keep going without having to respawn. Full force zergs just provide more across all areas of reward not to do it.

The entire reward system needs to be restructured if you hope to change zerg culture.

Seresh.8045:

when you’re walking home from the shops with your wife and find yourself circle strafing her and watching out for incoming trying to gank your supply yak.

also….when you refer to your wife as your supply yak….that didn’t end well

lol, best one ever.

I learnt a long time ago that when you find the perfect class, making an alt is pointless. It’s just going to take time away from the perfect class, and you’ll only feel dissatisfied you’re not busting out your mesmer styles.

If you want a reason to play another alt though, that’s a different story. Perhaps you have a friend who’s just starting playing, and you can play with them, starting a fresh character and leveling that way. That way you’re not playing to play an alt, you’re playing to play with your friend.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Also, some of us still remember the original zerker, before they really screwed it up the first time. They still haven’t gotten it back to its initial form.

I.e. it was powerful initially while completely bugged on the OP side. Then the fix harmed it the other way, and since then unless it’s as powerful, or more powerful than it’s OP bugged form, players will hate it and say its rubbish forever more.

And yet I still see iZerker users tear groups of players apart in WvW all the time…

Here’s a nice feature:

Last night I targeted a player in WvW running toward a gate. Started Sceptre 3, hit him a couple times, he got inside, and the chain continued through the gate (hitting the gate), hitting his allies beyond, and downing him.

Oh yeah

possibly lag, more likely it’s that you’re getting caught on terrain.

Played SoR BL, JQ Bl, and EB, all fielding capped sized forces. Had zero skill lag. Was awesome.

I did notice that a lot of Australians (on TS) were complaining about skill lag. Made me wonder if it was something to do with their ISP (which is renound in Aus for it’s horrible quality and standard of service).

Been meaning to do this for a while.

You know you’ve played to much Mesmer when:

-you develop a tick so that in everyday life you make a mental check to see if you have three clones up before taking action with a task. Even with the most basic, mundane, daily activities…

Just have titles appear (under names) on whoever you have selected at the time. That way you can only ever see one title on the screen no matter how many players are around.

In fact this would even help with identifying your target in a crowd a little more.

I ran it once upon a time. Sure, it works.

I like torch more.

In fact, I ran sceptre/torch, sword/pistol. It made dueling, chasing down, and stopping runners infinitely easier. Im using sceptre/torch staff.

lol, roll a warrior. What a laugh.

Pyroatheist.9031:

@Embolism: Normally, I frown upon theorycrafting based on the lowest common denominator. The thing is, as I said, this is a zerg busting tool. Zergs are the very embodiment of the lowest denominator. You can very well assume that they will be spamming buttons like there’s no tomorrow with 0 regard to any confusion on them because that’s exactly what they do.

Eh, assumptions lead to defeat. Never underestimate a “zerg”. They could, in fact, be a highly organised and fully aware guild. Any halfway experienced WvW player knows that giant mesmer glamour field effects on the battlefield means either confusion, reflection, or both. One of the big downsides to glamour confusion builds.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Velkyn.5168:

I have a question – why exactly is rabid gear (prec/tough/cond) better than carrion (pow/vita/cond)?

I’ve also recently switched to a glamour build ankittenrying to collect proper gear for that build now, and these two condi damage stat combos confuse me because both seem to have a rather “useless” stat each.. conditions can’t crit from what I understand.

I suppose I do want both vitaliy and toughness? Or really just toughness and not so much vitality and that’s the reason for rabid gear?

It sorta depends on what you’re trying to do. If you are going for absolute pure condition damage, then rabid is better, because tuning crystals scale at 6% per toughness and 4% per vitality.

Other than that, carrion is actually a bit better for overall damage, since it does add power. It really depends on your personal preference. As I mentioned, I’m using carrion weapons and rabid everything else, it really doesn’t make an enormous difference.

Precision provides crits, and on crit effects, which is offers more application in various forms. Just another consideration.

Pyroatheist.9031:

For a glamour build, as you’ll discover if you look at Kylias builds, you actually want runes of the nightmare, for increased condition duration. In my build, I actually went full on into it with 30/0/0/10/30 for 1700 cd and confusion stacks that last 10+ seconds. All of my armor and trinkets are rabid.

As for an offhand, torch is ok, but you’re going to want to be sitting at or near 1200 range most of the time. Focus is far better for ranged combat, the curtain detonation can pull people through your fields, and the warden spin can apply even more confusion.

Confusion caps at 10 seconds, so you could possibly afford to drop some of that domination.

Yes, I like guardians. Any class/build who can get in the face of the enemy, and hold their attention works amazingly well with confusion. The right guardian works wonders.

Digs.8435:

If you drop a field directly on yourself before the end it will blast. Lay a field down and then walk into before the end = no blast. Or if you can manage to start the prestige in a field and remain there until the it finishes you’ll get the blast. Current functionality is horrible. Torch used to be my off-hand of choice.

Ok, this went a long way to answering the question. Though I disagree with that second to last sentence. :p

So, does this mean no more lynching?

Paradopx.3804:

Hey dark don’t worry about these haters, it’s fun to slam the scrubs out of existence. I’m just hoping that the new system will allow people to see which one of the 80’s are bads from the get go. There is plenty of 80s that are just complete trash, following around commander icons, fighting only when it is uneven numbers, and most if not all of them think “man, i’m good” so don’t let these haters hate. You were laughing at a good moment, not bragging that you were the best right? I mean you even kept it short and sweet with ‘good time’ LOL. http://www.youtube.com/user/glant2005?feature=mhee is my youtube channel check out my gw2 vids, i plan on finally coming back after my long break to wreck some tier 1. Finally some patch love coming this way, funny screens +)

You’re talking like a scrub yourself.

Rabid.

You can get 4 pieces from karma NPC’s. Or you can get all 6 from TA, and one other dungeon. The karma pieces are the fastest way, then get 2x TA pieces and transmute them if you want to keep a set for looks.

Chrysicola jewelery if you want to craft/buy, and later you can get rabid infusion items. Rings from Fractals, amulet from laurels, earrings from laurels and guild commendations. Rabid Backpieces can come from fractals, and you can forge an infused backpiece too.

I’m not sure my experience lines up with some of what has been said. For example, since I main offhand torch, I can drop into prestige at the end of all my skills going onto cooldown, swap to staff, and drop a chaos storm. I assume this takes longer than one second to do (3 seconds means plenty of time to pull it off no troubles), at which point the AoE chaos armor procs. Just, for whatever reason, seemingly not all the time…

So yes, others are having problem with the blast finisher proccing, but the reasons why, and when, are still obscure.