Guild Wars 2

Churros.7196:

Loki.4139:

Currently in our match up there’s been TONS of Ele’s, they take one person down then they run across the whole map then waypoint.

If you meant one d/d bunker ele running inside a group downing + stomping one person, that just means that group is a noob group. Lol… seriously go to spvp with a level 2 ele put soldiers gear on(that pretty much what 90% of d/d eles use in both spvp and wvw) and hit something. You will see that if you die to one d/d ele while in a group, you suck.

As a mesmer, this is what I do to D/D ele’s. Especially those ones that like to hide in the safety of their zerg

I’l have to take a look.

People play that which they can run around and kill with.

Your perceptions could also be skewed. Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting full teams of ele’s, or (in the past) whole thief gank squads. Of course it could just be the effects, like D/D eles riding lightning constantly into my FACE, and getting in the thick of it making the earth erupt etc. I prioritize my targets based on threats, and that which is easier to take down, so I notice thieves and eles more, but also might pass over a guardian in a group situation and leave him till the end.

That said, sometimes I have difficulty identifying what class a character is (buffs are the easiest give away, but sometimes there are none or I don’t have time to check). In this example those can fall into the “anonymous” box. Coincidently I never put mesmers, eles, thieves, necros, in this box. The point being that if certain classes are less likely to be identified in the battlefield, your perception becomes that they simply are not there.

From what I can tell, I do Encounter a fair number of eles, guardians, and thieves. Some mesmers but not so much. That said, I encounter all classes no matter what. What’s important is that they all go down the same.

waeren.9743:

There was quite a bit of reports on how this system was worse when it was tested in DEC. ANet implemented it anyway after silently removing the discussion about it.

I read along most of that thread as it updated. There were lots of negative comments, but far far far more positive ones.

muylaetrix.2096:

The new gear that one can buy with laurels. great, another way to get that shiny fractal equivalent gear that w3 players can only dream of. but oh woe, it doesn’t come at the cost of badges. as a mather of fact you need a new currency. you need to do dailies for this currency.

today it says :

5 veterans
15 attacks dodged
10 items crafted
20 gatherings
5 events

what a joke. 4 pve tasks and … one crafting ? nothing w3 related ? this clearly is not the gear they promised we would be able to get via w3 and it certainly is not a w3 based character progression system but a completely unconnected set of gear.

now that that misunderstanding is gone, i can only say i am looking forward to the w3 gear and char progression in february.

…We were told WvW gear was coming in Feb. So yes, clearly this isnt it. Why are you here stating as much?

PvE happens in due course of WvW, what are you on about. They’re all over the place. Not to mention in sieges. As for crafting: Each borderland has crafting stations. My gear I crafted for my WvW character was crafted. In fact “crafting” includes refining 15 pieces of material also. So you can turn 15 jute scraps into jute squares (or whatever) and you’re done. Holy hell man, I did this after selling and before banking my loot. It took all of 10 seconds.

Can we possibly cry about anything worse than this? You set the bar high, but I wont be surprised to see it surpassed.

Genesis.8572:

Spazza.6024:

Seriously SoR? Camping the TC entrance on SBI borderlands.. 1 treb, 1 cata, 2 ballista, 1 golem and 40+ people….are you serious.. I thought u had more class than this.

Are you guys really at the point you have to Grief us to have fun?

I just lost all respect I had for you guys.

About 20-40 people (varied over the hour) from SoR were griefing the TC entrance of EB a few days ago with about five ballistas. Eventually I went out naked without arms or armor just to dance in protest, and they found it more amusing to farm us. They would not even let me dance. I guess they really wanted those “honor” badges.

I found myself, with a large force, at the TC spawn a few days ago.

We’d taken back the tower, then routed the incoming TC forces back to the WP. There was nothing left to cap on the map, no one else to fight, nothing else to do. We’d already set up 5 superior pults to hit the tower so we turned them around. Someone set up a treb, another a cart, and since fighting is fun fun was had fighting.

You see it as trolling, or some sort of dishonourable act. But people just want to fight, and the spawn is where the TC players choose to be to fight.

If nothing else you should never fault someone for playing to win. If shutting down the enemy at their spawn achieves that, then more power to them. If you want to limit yourself by self imposed rules about “honour” and the like then that’s on you. You’ve just forfeited the win to your enemy.

If I recall correctly, yes. They don’t share your vitality though.

Empowered Illusions: Illusions inflict 15% more damage.

So for clones, +15% of nothing is nothing.

However for phantasms, that’d mean +15% more damage on top of whatever it is they already do. Usually for traits that say “Your illusions” they also apply to “your phantasms”. Might be the case here. Might not.

The problem with traits that apply condition upon the illusion being killed is that the application of said conditions is dependant on the target attacking and killing your illusions.

Of course NPC’s will do this (sometimes for an entire fight, completely ignoring you), but depending on your weapon choice and trait lay out, this can mean wasted traits and skill point investment. Two considerations. Either A: Replace these traits and/or better invest the skill points, or B: create a build that allows you to effectivly apply the shatter at your whim and not wait for the NPC’s actions to dictate the conditions from killed shatters.

Two things that allow you to do this are A: Sceptre’s auto attack clone spawn. Note that NPC’s tend to auto target the most recently spawned “You” (i.e the newest illusion the moment the last explodes). Or B: spawn creation on dodge roll.

If you surround your target with with clones, then sceptre and/or dodge roll create dodging over them, you can add all those stacks of conditions to the mix (without reducing your 3 active clones).

Staff is a better direct application so I don’t expect you’ll change, but it’s still condition application food for thought.

Changes are days away. Flame on if you need to though.

As for drop rates – zerging is the worst way to farm badges. Small group capping is as fast, generates more encounters, encounters which resolve as quickly, and result in more badge drops. I always make sure to burst as much damage as I can on a kill before he dies. I get 1 or 2 badges every other kill.

That said, yes, bring on the loot changes including badge drop rates. (todays update should effect WvW aswell as PvE)

Confusion based phant with bleeds from illusions? Buff for my CD confusion build

Here you go

http://tinyurl.com/adb8us7

Not saying it’s the best. In fact it’s untested and kind of slapstick. It’s pretty much a duelist build. Sword/sword to utalise daze (sword 4 tapped twice), along with all your other daze skills (F3 and mantra of distraction). You’ve got good armor (and can have more depending on what you want from gear), good health, and hit really hard. The idea is to get your clones up and start dazing/interupting your target. Shattering is also a boon stipper. So pretty much this build is an ele killer. You’re not lost for condition damage either, so a switch to staff and some defensive play means you can harass your enemies further.

You don’t have to but you can utalise Mass invis for some mantra recharge time. Signit of Illusions will A: keep your illusions alive longer, and B: allow you to instantly recharge your F3 daze. That said, you can swap pretty much anything out you want.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Seven-Mirror-WvW-Mesmer-01-25-13/first

One option: if you read down the list of links there’s a “How to fight a D/D ele”. That’s a good place to start. As for your specefic build… the login server just went down so I’ll look into it.

Just logged in and saw this score update.

911: If this doesn’t tell us SBI is in trouble, nothing will :p

Weindrasi.3805:

uknortherner.2670:

Strange how my female friends don’t seem to have a problem with the skimpy armour in this game. Guess they’re just normal human beings rather than pseudo-intellectuals.

Skimpy female armor is OK, but ONLY if armor sets are the same for men and women. If the woman gets a metal bikini, the man should get a metal codpiece or a loincloth. As it is, it sends the message that women are only important if they are using their bodies to please men.

As has already been pointed out, the mass majority of armor available is modest, even within the light catagory. The evidence is there plane to see.

When Anet set out to design it’s armor they went to the community and asked them what they wanted. What we have is actually based on the average gamers input, not the choice selections of a small minded design team. Anet is a company, and GW2 a product. They have simply supplied their customers with what they wanted. GW2 is a fantasy setting, and the clothing design, and even character models are a part of that (You don’t see fat elves in Tolkeins LOTR, nor would you be perturbed by the fact they’re all slim). GW2 actualy does quite well. It caters to the “skimpy” and modest alike. It even gives both slender and fat models, including small and large breasts. The models and outfits you’re seeing on the average user out there are strictly the players choice. They could have chosen any of the available material, but obviously a lot of people like to choose “skimpy” stuff. Clearly they just don’t share your sensibilities.

As my friend say: GW2 has largely a male populated community. What you’re seeing is what they like. Men are hardwired to look, and not look away.

FYI I hear you. I’m a male gamer, and as much as I like to see hot outfits on hot woman, my own toon is a slightly below average height norn with the fit but non-muscular, lesser sized breasts. I’ve gravitated toward the lvl 80 exotic crafted light armor set as it’s feminin, stylish, and yet modest. Running around WvW, when I see some of the other armors, I often think to myself “Wow”, then using /say yell a hearty “Put some clothes on!”

Really I don’t mind, but given the context of battle it makes you pause to think, and in that I like to have a bit of fun. I just can’t bring myself to so blatantly sexualise it up as many others obviously do. If others want to then, now, there’s the debate.

Gaiawolf.8261:

@Ross Biddle:

Disdaining a weapon skill that is only really useful for champs and major bosses is not ignorance; it’s a valid complaint. Such niche usefulness is OK for a few utility skills at best (like Illusion of Life), but for a weapon skill it’s just bad design.

Which is fine it it were true. Keeping the iMage UP for trash mobs is what’s unlikely productive. That doesn’t detract from it’s initial 3 stacks + shatter though. If we’re looking at the trash mob though, regardless of build, whether you’re using an iMage, iZerker, or iDuelist, you’re going to take that trash mob out with the initial cast/attack + shatter anyway. So we’ve wandered into irrelevance as to an opposing argument now.

It’s ridiculously powerful against champs and major bosses. It only adds to the power of confusion in PvP situations. And it’s par for the course against regular mobs as with any weapon in the mesmers arsenal. If there’s a problem here it’s not that iMage falls into a nitch. Rather that players have a nitch approach to their play, and they cant squeeze the iMage into what alternative they’ve figured out.

Show me a build that can’t be written off with the word “nitch” and I’ll bake you a pie.

Decent utility but could use an addition.

In my early WvW days I tried this out. The problem I saw time and time again was that the targeted player/s were unaware of why they suddenly rallied. The “buff”/timer is little more than a tiny box on their screen, and in the frantic chaos of a battle such things easily go unseen. Temporarily revived players would assume they rallied, and continue to run around at the front lines or in danger unaware of their state. Fifteen seconds would allow a retreat, heal, and return to battle leading to an incap at the worst possible time.

My suggestion is upon the target having Illusion of Life cast on them, the buff Icon appear in the middle of their screen in large format, to then minimise down to their buff bar. Alternatively one of those yellow messages comes up on the screen telling them they’ve Illusion of Life has taken effect. In both cases this could also include the 15 second countdown clock. It’d let them know what’s happening, and add to the stress and urgency of what needs to be accomplished before IoL runs out.

Either way, attention needs to be brought to the player about what’s happening to make this skill effective.

In your comprehensive video when you got to Illusions of Life, you said that revived allies die if they don’t kill a target before IoL runs out. They don’t die, they get incapped again (I don’t know but I imagine this adds to their number of “downs” they’re allowed, so if they’re on their final down (red), they WILL die).

I used this in big battles early on in WvW. The trouble with it was that people don’t know they’re on a timer, so instead of falling back to safety (assuming they can’t/don’t incap), they go down again near the front lines and get taken out.

Time to simplify: Illusionary Persona is not OP, though it is awesome. 30 points worth of awesome which is a heavy cost.

Complicated thread summary: While relevant in some respects, thread got overcomplicated the moment it turned into Math Wars 2.

Players, unlike NPC’s, don’t enjoy dying. They’ll actively try to counter trying to kill them, in fact. You’re just going to have to work on your build, skills, and experience until you figure out how to take them down. Fast or slow, it doesn’t matter, just that they go down.

Cactus.2710:

I’ve said several times before here in these forums that it seems obvious to me that ANet has some of the <b>worst internal communication/coordination of any software company out there</b>, and in my opinion this is simply another example.

Opening with an extreme, an early indication to dismiss the rest of the post.

I’ll say it would be nice if the iMage shared your condition duration boosters.

That said I think a lot of the hate is generated out of ignorance. I think the major complaint is the lengthy cooldown on the summon, coupled with the slow phantasm attack rate. HOWEVER (<- big however) I believe this is due to a wonky scale in the balance/mechanics department. In a PvP situation you’re going to use it for the instant 3 stacks and + shatter (most likely). However if you actually sit down and get 3 iMage’s out on, say, a champion or major boss you’ll quickly see what a set of 3 iMages spamming their attack can do. With NPC’s that have crazy attack rates, with little to no effort you can have constant, instant stacks of confusion up. They make bleeds and burning damage look like confetti at a childs birthday party. The thing is, it takes a little bit to get your 3 iMages up, but once they’re up they’re away. The trouble is if you were to reduce the CD’s etc to a comfortable level for your average PvP’r, you’re looking at some serious balance issues. So WTF do you do with that?

As is, at least for me, my build, and what I do, it’s a powerful addition to the arsenal. So I have to conclude to your question that the number 1 reason for general iMage hate is ignorance. That said, there’s some valid concerns out there, but those have to be weighed by reality. iMage is powerful technically speaking, but the counter balance to that power is insanely bad mechanical setup.

iSmack.1768:

So can someone explain to me why they like WvW so much and what’s fun about it for them?

Enlighten me please.

WvW is fun for all the reasons you’ve failed to list which, pretty obviously, is due to your experience. If you can’t see and admit your own bias then that’s your first hurdle.

Does PvDoor with two rams and no resistance happen? Sure. Are there countless other scenarios where it doesn’t play out like that? Obviously you don’t know but you’d think a bit of rationality would offer some hints.

Is running with a zerg the only thing that is effective for the war effort? Is capping that camp only to have it recapped even relevant from your point of view?

Simple answer to your post is that there’s a lot more going on in WvW than you seem to realise. If it’s not your thing though just go back to PvE.

I for one enjoy defeating my enemy on the small, and large scale. However it is that that needs to happen. Play to win.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

All of the above responses have been very helpful, thank you!

I’ll definitely keep Mind Wrack in mind for my rotations, particularly when I have Sword Clones out.

-Would Retaliation on block (Dueling 3) actually even work? Does it proc with Aegis?
-Would The Prestige’s burn be effective with such a build?
-Would Cry of Frustration be effective at all?

- Blink vs Mirror Images has me torn. On one hand, Blink would be a good way to chase people down in combination with Illusionary Leap, but it’d be even more effective porting around while Stealth’d to be even more of a headache for allies. Seems a better defensive tool, but Mirror Images gives me a 2 sec Distortion if I need as well as an instant two clones to pump damage out. Seems like a damage vs defense decision, curious to know which one others would pick for this build.

Or if you’re me, Pretigue for stealth + blind + confuse, pop mirror image for full clone set + distraction/distortion, full heal (more clones = more win), blink while stealthed (but only really worth it if you are traited for 1200 range), and a decoy on backup to throw in the mix.

The oversight to this idea is that a thief ill just use his final or near final stealth to run away, reset the fight (and his stealth exhaustion) and return for the next attempt. So tied to exhaustion needs to be an increasing movement speed penalty. That way the longer he pushes it, and uses stealth,, the less likely he is to get away to reset the fight.

Oozo.7856:

Calae.1738:

AoE needs to be nerfed hard. Really hard.

All you need is 1 commander and a bunch of lemmings following the commander closely. Everyone in the group is required to use weapon sets that deals AoE damage on the move. What this creates is a lawn mower. You know what a lawn mower is right? You know that device with rotating blades on 4 wheels that you push around that cuts grass? Yea that.

WvW is a pathetic zerg fest. A bunch of skilless lemmings spamming their auto attacks running around like a swarm of bees.

You are so wrong. The reason that it’s turning into a zergfest is because AoE is too weak not because it is too strong.

Let’s take the following situation:

A group of 5 engages a group of 20 in a close quarters fight. The group of 5 has all of their AoE spread out and mitigated by the 20 since there is a max of 5 hit per AoE. The group of 5 takes ALL of the AoE from the group of 20.

Now make a change. Raise the cap such that 15 people can take AOE damage. The inc damage to the group of 5 remains the same while the group of twenty now takes much more damage overall.

The current AoE code encourages people to zerg it up.

Are you really saying that changing aoe will cause players to not gather en’mass under a commanders banner?

Is that really what will change this behaviour?

Simple solution: Cap camps, and fight enemies, but leave all the keeps and towers alone?

Just wait, like everybody else, for the fix to come in.

Xavi.6591:

Shouldn’t the scepter clones also benefit from Sharper Images?

They do.

Decked.8274:

SteepledHat.1345:

It’s just a means by which to enable the weak and unskilled to hide together in a group. It’s why zergs are so prevalent.

This.

Alternativly: Zergs- a way for the powerful and skilled to come together in a group so they can laugh and/or ignore soloists, or pretty much over come anyone who likes to QQ over zergs.

..regardless of if you like zergs or not.

Papaj.9035:

And even if the Ele was REALLY good and managed to get the Thief/Warrior low, POOF! Vanish away/gap closer gap opener (sorry, I had to do it) and live to fight another day because poor play is NOT punished.

To be fair, it’s not poor play. It’s actually smart, albeit the best play/use of the skill given the situation. The mechanics might be bad, but that’s not the players error.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Sceptre #1: Yes, summon clone on mesmer, not target. Though there are benefits to summon on target. There’s just liabilities too.

Sceptre #2: No, don’t change it. It’s amazing at what it does. Channeled block = great counter to warrior/guardian/ele leaps/knockdowns etc etc etc. Also thief backstabs, scorpion whips, yadyada. Don’t want to wait? Hit it again for the blind and you’ll get the same effect, plus confusion if traited.

Sceptre #3: The duration is long but it’s just a matter of getting comfortable with the slower, draw out fight a sceptre provides (as opposed to a sword burst which is at the other end of the spectrum). The channel makes it a great stealth counter among other things. You can start it before a thief goes into stealth, and it’ll keep hitting after that. Also the faster the confusion stacks off it, the sooner the condition will fade. Longer attack time means stacks will draw out over more seconds overall. There are pro’s and con’s to slight variations either way with altering cast speed.

Powerful weapon in the right hands.

As i mentioned, i think that when we use blind from skill 2, it should spawn a clone at targets location so if we don’t need a block, we can at least spawn a clone to shatter or whatever. Because right now its almost like this weapon has no illusions at all and that is the only mesmer weapon without one.

I’m down with that.

Torch is awesome, but haters gonna hate.

Blind on stealth.

Stealth.

Confusion on blind if traited.

AoE fire blast with burning.

Phantasm that drops an instant 3 stacks of confusion, and grants retaliation.

Like anything, if you’re built for it, you can work wonders.

Dee Jay.2460:

Over the past weeks I’ve been pretty vocal about why I hate the revive mechanics in this game so much and finally I’ve found a great visual example.

The revive system essentially puts a cap on what even the most skilled player is able to achieve. Take this example of a P/D Thief trolling a small group of 6 players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYVUpNj2k_c

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

GW2 is the only MMO where you can go up against 6 players, kill 5 and still end up fighting against 6. No mechanic in this game allows a player, no matter how skilled, to overcome the ease of rezzing a dead player. Even after killing 5 players out of a group of 6, all he managed was to occupy 6 players for 7 minutes?

Is that what we have to accept as a success? Is that supposed to feel like a win?

Because it doesn’t to me and the fact that 3 players can resurrect even a defeated player in a matter of seconds has ruined any joy that I could have found in WvW.

The only error here is your thinking. You’re trying to implant your sense of what’s right and how things should be into a system where that has already been determined for you. Your arbitrary feelings about what should or should not be considered a win are irrelevant. Obviously anyone can make up their own rules regarding what’s a “win” any time they like, but that doesn’t dictate what objectively is so.

I’ll make it easy for you. 3 players can res a defeated player in a matter of seconds. That’s a game mechanic, and one you you have to deal with. Perhaps you didn’t notice, but the mechanics also have a feature that hard counters this. Opponents who repeat-down rally with fewer and fewer hp’s, making the following resses take longer, and eventually outright killing the opponent with no option of a res.

You Sir, are a scrub. You need to start playing to win, which is a mental game as much as a mechanical one. Whatever game you’re playing, or wanting to play, it’s not Guild Wars 2. When you’re ready to join us again, feel free.

As a general rule of thumb, look at the default distance of your mini map. If you run outside of your first placement on their, you’re boned.

The best thing to do is to try it out. Test it a lot. The terrain is always there, always the same. You’ll run the same paths more or less over and over. Use it and get an idea of where it can stretch to. More than anything though, place the first bit somewhere adventagous. Use LOS to effectively disapear from your enemy.

Sceptre #1: Yes, summon clone on mesmer, not target. Though there are benefits to summon on target. There’s just liabilities too.

Sceptre #2: No, don’t change it. It’s amazing at what it does. Channeled block = great counter to warrior/guardian/ele leaps/knockdowns etc etc etc. Also thief backstabs, scorpion whips, yadyada. Don’t want to wait? Hit it again for the blind and you’ll get the same effect, plus confusion if traited.

Sceptre #3: The duration is long but it’s just a matter of getting comfortable with the slower, draw out fight a sceptre provides (as opposed to a sword burst which is at the other end of the spectrum). The channel makes it a great stealth counter among other things. You can start it before a thief goes into stealth, and it’ll keep hitting after that. Also the faster the confusion stacks off it, the sooner the condition will fade. Longer attack time means stacks will draw out over more seconds overall. There are pro’s and con’s to slight variations either way with altering cast speed.

Powerful weapon in the right hands.

Reviving is a part of the game and you just have to learn to factor it in. It’s one of my favourite mechanics for various reasons.

One such reason is this: Often you’ll have a zerg force outside a keep, or a zerg v zerg going at it. You get those D/D eles who love to think they’re the shizit by pushing the boundaries hard, messing up, and dropping. They have mist form as their get out of jail free card, flee from downed into the “safety” of their zerg, and get a res so they can do a rinse repeat of their ever used ginger bread man tactics. That’s where I come in.

I keep an eye on these players. When they go down I start a pursuit and chase after their mist form. When I get within range, right in the middle of their zerg, I spawn 3 clones, drop a TW, shatter for distortion, stomp, and blink/prestige back to the safety of my lines.

I can only imagine these players going “OMG, WTF!” every time

Love downed/res.

The two things I’d of done if I were there.

1) Switch to focus (mesmer), walk to side of wall, use temporal curtain to yank some of them down. Gank them in the water.

2) Slot portal. Run, dodge, possibly stealth, blink along the wall behind them. Open portal. Flank the kitten out of them with the zerg.

AoE kill zones are a problem with a simple solution: Go around.

You got to give more info on what you want. DPS, Condition Damage, Bunker, Burst, etc

Stx.4857:

There really is no reason to nerf thieves right now. Once culling is fixed, I will feel extremely weak on my thief in wvw. My necro already feels like a beast, so I guess if they nerf thief burst without buffing our HP or sustained dps, Ill really have no reason to log on.

That’s funny because the typical thief players response to any player of another class who talks about not logging in is: “LOL, seeya!”

Oh geeze, I had a closer look.

How do you use your weapons? I see you took both staff and sceptre cooldowns. You could just take chaotic dampening and Malicious sorcery. The reason being that, if you use your staff and do your thing with that, then change to your secondary weapon setup for a burst of CD’s (maybe for their features, or because you need the CD’s to come back up on your staff), you can do that then change back to staff (allowing the slightly longer CD’s on your second set to cool down.) If you can play this way you can free up those 10 trait points and make better use of them elsewhere.

I would change confusing cry for either Master of misdirectoin (Staff skills and your CD damage will give you some decent confusion in the mix) or compounding power (for when you have your three clones up spamming away with their attacks. Retaliation is power based, and you have SQUAT.

Take 10 out of inspiration and put them atleast 5 into chaos for +5% toughness to condition damage. You could put the other 5 in there too and take something Debilitating dispensation (for more conditions), or master of manipulation (brings arcane thievery from 45 secs to 36, or if you traited blink 24s instead of 30s). Although if you switched arcane thievery for null field you’ll get the benefit of another glamour, which already have reduced time from your traits, you still get the CD removal, and you can just go with debilitating dispensation (almost makes the decision for you).

I love mirror images, but if you wanted to go glamor crazy, you could take veil and add in the Prismatic understanding for your 30 point chaos trait. That’ll allow you to hide for a while (run over veil twice for the extra long stealth time). Otherwise there’s always portal. Drop both reletavily close to eachother, and portal back and forth as your enemy runs to and fro stacking up confusion.

Ok, glitches aside….

In sPvP it allows for a mesmer to cover two points at once. He can cap, drop portal, leave for the next position, and when the location comes under threat portal back etc.

In WvW you can portal your team inside a keep, or move a major flank right onto an enemies front line in the blink of an eye. In WvW we have culling issues, and that has resulted in what’s been called “portal bombing”. Players will portal in and not appear on their enemies screen, leading to wipes before they even render.

General gameplay will allow me, as a mes, to drop a portal and charge off to fight some random/s. If the fight doesnt go in my favor I can drop my portal and escape to safety. This is a legit use. The others are too but due to various issues, they’ve altered aspects of gameplay in various unsettling ways :/

Meowwilson.5106:

here is my bunker build.
(need to copy and paste for some reason.. i get “bad link”….)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAW7flwzaqXVzmGZ9IhJF9G5nUwcpj6x2te1B;T4Ag2Cro+y8l4L7TuvkftWYww5j9HPGmfA
it plays a lot into blindness and confusion.. but when i face ele’s or gaurdians it seems useless but they still cannot kill me. any other class it seems to kill very fast… perhaps because it is a unique mesmer build like yours.
i have tons of fun with it. yours also looks fun..might need to try it outthat health regen is crazy, i used to run with dwayna runes but never did the traits you do. dropped them for nightmare runes for that extra damage on classes that cannot cure conditions.
anyway.. if you have something to improve on or comment about on my build i would love to hear it.

I run sceptre/torch, blind on confuse (not glamors), and also find D/D ele’s tough, and some guardians tough. You seem to run staff/ illusions conditions as your main so maybe this wont help, but what I found is that I have to slow the fight right down, take my time, watch for their queues to avoid their big hits, and retaliate when the time is right. Just keep looking for them in fights and try to figure out their moments of weakness. The thing with those two classes is that they can also take it slow, and fire off their attacks when they’re good and ready. So you need to time your stacks of confusion to take the best advantage of those situations. Stick it out on that massive armor bonus you have, bait them, then smash em.

A thief is complaining because there’s a single class that, while in downed state, has a good chance of countering your otherwise unstoppable stealth stomp?

It counters every other class exactly the same. It doesn’t single out the thief class in any way. Surely there’s something more productive you can complain about as a thief. Like thief’s shockingly bad burst damage, lack of mobility, or weak stealth….

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- I cant find a use for Mirror Images beyond shatter fodder.
- Does anyone EVER use Mirror?

Mirror Images will break a stun, and is great for 3 clone generation not just for shatters, but also for a full strength heal (3x clones = best). In fact 3 clones for any shatter IS not only good, but important much of the time. It’s a get out of jail free card combo utility.

Signit of domination: Bonus CD damage is bonus CD damage, if you’re running a CD build it’s all good. The active is a stun (better than your daze), and nothing to shake a stick at.

I’m currently running Signit of Midnight: I swear the passive does not work for me for some reason, but if you trait confusion on blind then you get an instant aoe blind confusion bomb to throw out in the middle of a WvW zerg. Someone mentioned cooldown as being a problem but honestly, I never notice it.
Coupled with the other blind skills, you can also shut someone down in a 1v1.

I ran illusion of life in my early days of WvW, but the targets never know what’s going on. If you want to res someone, TW is far superior.

Phantasmal defender: Ive seen this used well in a sPvP phantasm build.

One suggestion I thought up was that there’s increasing penalties to stealth, and movement speed the longer a thief remains in combat. So his first few stealthing’s are free, but after that with compounding interest the cooldown before being able to stealth again increases exponentially (note: not skill CD’s, just any stealth effect attached).

The next problem is that the thief can use his “lol, im gonna stealth now and run away” trick, reset the fight (and the stealthing penalty) and come back. So to counter this, the longer the thief stays in the fight, using his stealth, and increasing his stealth cooldown, the more movement speed penalty he takes to a maximum effect (-33% for arguments sake). So he can pop his last stealth and make a run for it, but he’s not going to get far and can be chased down reasonably well.

That way thieves get to have their cake, but other players get to eat it too.

One suggestion I thought up was that there’s increasing penalties to stealth, and movement speed the longer a thief remains in combat. So his first few stealthing’s are free, but after that with compounding interest the cooldown before being able to stealth again increases exponentially (note: not skill CD’s, just any stealth effect attached).

The next problem is that the thief can use his “lol, im gonna stealth now and run away” trick, reset the fight (and the stealthing penalty) and come back. So to counter this, the longer the thief stays in the fight, using his stealth, and increasing his stealth cooldown, the more movement speed penalty he takes to a maximum effect (-33% for arguments sake). So he can pop his last stealth and make a run for it, but he’s not going to get far and can be chased down reasonably well.

That way thieves get to have their cake, but other players get to eat it too.

Zephyrus.9680:

+1 to OP.

I’ve noticed even fighting 1v1 there’s always (or usually?) like 1 second of ‘culling’ when coming out of stealth where they basically get the first couple hits in before even appearing and it’s not that culling from large numbers of players on the screen.

Last night on my thief I took down 2 ballistas from full in the middle of about 6 people spamming all over. Took 5+ mins and I didn’t die. On the way out, a couple of them left, I killed 2 of the people (probably 1v3 don’t remember), and escaped with my life. Perhaps a little luck too but this shouldn’t really be possible to get away with, with that many people doing all they could to stop me. And this was not the numbers where true culling happens.

With my build now (not D/D), 1v2s are generally not difficult and 1v3s (lvl 80s) are very possible (depends on classes), given enough time.

Blind, block, and dodge rolls are soft counters that can prolong a fight but some harder counters are needed to stealth. Like a conditional mechanic that would bring them out of stealth (say if they took 20% of their total hp in that instance of being hidden).

At least disable the initial cast of Shadow Step while CCed because that just seems like a game breaking escape skill to me.

TL;DR: Reworking the stealth/escape mechanics on theif are needed. More lazy damage nerfs are NOT needed.

IMO.

How about a stealth CD with a compounding factor. So the more times a thief goes into stealth during a single battle, the greater the stealth cooldown is each time after going back into stealth. To remove the “drop your balls and flee” BS, tie in a speed movement penalty (think of it as fatigue) that’ll mess with their run speed which would allow them to abuse fleeing to reset the fight (and the compounding stealth cooldown).