Guild Wars 2

The problem is that swiftness exists at all, and that people desire that degree of speed to get anywhere in WvW so that they can get to the actual fun part: fighting.

With just signit of midnight, the prestigue, and sceptre 2 I can pretty much shut down some bosses in dungeons etc.

I play full confusion, sceptre/torch blind- and ive been switching it up between staff and sword/pistol as a second lately.

I run confusion in WvW, sPvP, and PvE, factuals, dungeons etc. A mesmer is never going to replace a warrior or guardian in, say, a dungeon for DPS, so if that’s what you want roll a warrior. As far as CD goes I find I not only bring great utility to any party, but I’m also amazing for averting deaths or even whole wipes (blinds, stuns, dazes). But back to the damage, sceptre plays slow compared to a sword burst of CD’s, but if you’re used to it, and know what you’re doing, it’s certainly not weak. My confusion stacking adds massive damage to any boss/elite mob fight. If you know what you’re doing (it’s all ive done since release), it’s nothing to shake a stick at. Recently I’ve also been experimenting with getting 3 iMage’s up and just letting them go to town. It takes a while to stack them due to the long CD but the confusion ticks go wild. It made me understand why the CD was what it was.

There’s plenty of cynical, small minded, bandwagon players about who can tell you CD sucks, burst sucks, developers and their diversity sucks, but from what I’ve seen, played, and experienced there’s far more out there than a lot of people can give credit for.

I do have a problem with what you’re doing, only not the complaint you’ve been receiving.

What you SHOULD be doing is pitching your servers guilds and buyers vs your enemy servers buyers. Then create a bidding war and sell your prints to the highest bidder. The goal here is to make money, and you’re doing a sub-standard job of it :p

Note: Watch Lord of War with Nicholas Cage for more details

Power trait line increases condition duration, to it’s not wasted as such.

I find I spend more time fighting, and less time running, when I don’t die and stay close to the front lines.

I recommend more survivability. Failing that, friends to res you.

Any build is viable really. If you all look the same, the only thing you really have to do is decide on weapon sets. Though, considering the level of confusion that’ll be present, this may not matter all that much.

The fact that you all look the same should be enough. But you’d definitely benefit from at least one burst, one confusion, and bunkering.

Then just coordinate your utilities and elites. Play around, and if you use team speak etc, call what you’re doing until you all figure out how best to work your magic.

Once you’re in combat, and a thief goes stealth, clone creation on dodge. Leave the clones up. When the thiefs stealth ends your clones will react immediatly to the thief’s whereabouts. You can tab to find a culling thief, or even shatter at this point. Dodge roll is an obvious option, or phase retreat etc. Dodge rolling for clone creation might burn your energy though so keep that in mind.

I use confusion, so stealthing thieves who want to come at me even from stealth have that to deal with. For anyone who doesnt know, sceptre 3 is a channeled ranged attack, therefore once you start casting it, it will continue to his the thief even once he’s gone invis. Since you can anticipate a thief stealth pretty easily if you’ve been playing against them a while, it’s very easy to time a sceptre 3 hit (you can even start the channel way early as it has a nice, steady attack speed.

Plenty of other stuff you can do, this is just one approach.

More TW user psychology.

The player immediately thinks to move himself into the field. He’ll want to stay in their even if it might cost him a little. This can be used to your advantage if you’re anticipating it.

AoE is the obvious thing. It forces the TW user to do one of two things. Soak up the damage so he can continue to make use of the TW, or force him out of the area removing the effectiveness all altogether. All you have to do is have your AoE ready for when the time comes. That will mean patience, and discipline. If TW is an assured thing as the forums seem to be saying it is, you won’t be waiting long.

Krilce.7864:

Like haccks already said, that discussion was not about how TW is uncounterable, but how it, along with portal, makes mesmer a mandatory option in any team comp, which just kills customization and experimentation. Yes, there are other professions who can defend back point pretty well, but why would you take those if mesmer does is better than them, and he can basically be helping his team at the same time. There were quite good suggestions of making portal an elite skill. That would solve the problem.

Regarding this topic, retaliation, confusion, blinding, aoe cc and reflection are all quite good counters for something like that. But other team won’t just be standing there either. They can also use aoe CC to prevent that. Or blinding to prevent being CCed, along with stability. There is quite a large number of things they can do to ensure they melt your face down in those 10 seconds.

Mesmer could pop Null Field at the same time, removing that confusion, but at the same time removing your retaliation, stability, and whatnot. Their necro could also use staff #4, and so on.

That a class is “mandatory” for success is not a valid argument. I also see no evidence to support the idea that experimentation and customization are put to death. This sounds like so much scrub talk. There will always be “best” builds and “best” tactics, but time will tell that these will actually be varied and changing. You should never fault a player or team for using what works, and what is believed to be the “best” approach.

You’re right that the enemy team wont be just standing there. Of course they’ll have their CC’s etc ready. It goes without saying that every side is trying to melt the other ones face. Not being rude but this isn’t really telling us anything. The question remains: What can be done to take advantage of an enemies TW? Is it really just a big win button? Or are there valid counters out there that people are not yet aware of?

Your null field comment is the most constructive. Yes, a mesmer could use this if they’ve slotted it, and players should be aware of that. So what should be done about this? Well plenty. More than I’ go into. An obvious thing is that null field is a field. It cant cover everywhere. Perhaps it can go over the capture point, but if you’re not in the capture point for its duration the mesmer has to make a choice. Does he put it on himself to remove his conditions, or does he put it on his enemy to remove his boons? Can his null field cover all of his enemies? What if they’re split on either side of him, his TW, and his friends? This is not a win button combo.

You forgot guardian

Plus it takes time to stack a good amount of confusion even for mesmers so the quickness would’ve done their damage already. Or if you mean chaos storm.[/quote]

At least 8 stacks of aoe confusion in a few seconds from a shattering mesmer. Not a lot of time.

Remember, this is all about playing to win. If TW is the tactic of the month, then it’s simply finding a tactic to counter it. When you know something is coming it’s very easy to overcome it. It’s the art of war. Prepare, and strike at the right moment.

Interesting, so the counter to time warp is confusion and retaliation. I wonder what class is best suited to provide both confusion and retaliation?

Sounds like a job for a mesmer.

[/quote]

Correct. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s also an amazing Ele bunker build out there that’d do as an effective job.

The psychology of an enemy within g time warp field is to press their advantage. For ranged users this means this will mean their projectiles will be going off like crazy. Reflection becomes your best friend in this moment as 100% of all those attacks will be returning to him. You should EXPECT this. TW is a tell. You know exactly what your enemy is going to do when it appears. So this means you have the advantage, so long as you prepare for it.
Either turn it against him, or shut him down during the time. Simple.

So I went and had a read of that QQ timewarp thread. It was a sad sorry thing, and I have to tell you, I saw a lot of talk of OP and “cheap”, yada yada yada. I hadn’t seen such a concentrated group of scrubs in a long time, but I’m also not surprised.

So let’s talk tactics. What you QQ’rs need is to break down what’s going on inside a timewarp, and come up with some actual valid counters to it. I’m not the master of all PvP combat, but a couple things are so stupidly obvious I shouldn’t have even needed to come here to say so.

Yes, running away is a valid tactic, like it or not. But let’s move beyond that.

Confusion: You can expect within a TW for your enemy to spam his skills. In fact he’ll be firing them off so quickly he probably won’t even stop to check what he’s doing. If he is, he might have rinsed through them so quickly it’ll be to late. Confusion will chop a person in half, even in sPvP. Look into it. It’s amazing.

Retaliation: Getting smashed by TW? Well, so can your enemy. Retaliation exists to punish your enemy for trying to punish you.

Got confusion AND retaliation? Well guess what, TW is as much a problem as it is a solution. Your class/group loosing against a TW using mes/team? Build a better class. The options are there.

More ideas? I know they’re out there.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Advent.6193:

Hmmph. I’m surprised none of the anti-Mesmer QQ has been started about Mass Invisibility. Mobile AoE stealth + party DPS?

Because you don’t count as being on a point in stealth. And you need to capture points to win tournaments.

Say it’s the first team fight 4v4 on keep after the match starts. The team with the mesmer gets the point 100% because he uses time warp which either destroys the other team or forces them to retreat. And once you have keep you won’t lose it again with a bunker guard. THAT is why time warp needs nerfs.

So what you’re saying is, if two teams without TW contend for the Keep, and one has to win it, and there’s a bunker guardian on that team who will hold that point effectively determining the match, that TW is broken and needs to be removed?

Or is your argument a non sequitur and draw attention to either the bunker guardian and/or map design/ point scoring mechanics…

The TW “may” determine one fight. That fight <b>might</b> be “match changing”. It might be the best build within the team to have in the mix (there will always be some skill/s that are). None of this equates to what you’re trying to argue though.

In theory, yes. But what actually happens is B and C find A to strong, they cant contend, and have no fun in the face of wild imbalance. So B and C strike at eachother because there’s some “’sport” or “game” to it.

This is easy.

The Mesmer doesnt hold the shield. Instead the shield floats, or orbits the Mesmer.

Main hand Shield:

Shield attack 1:- A three chained melee ranged attack that equates to right swing, left swing, upper cut swing. Have attack two deal weakness or a cripple, and attack 3 deal 2 seconds of confusion or something. 200 range or there abouts (mesmer isnt holding it, but it’s not flying all over the place).

Shield attack 2:- AoE daze, steals a boon from every target it hits, deals a solid hit.

Shield attack 3:- Summons a phantasm that leaps 900 range and shield smashes the target to the ground for the uber stun.

You can come up with anything really.

Once, before WvW reset, SoR were down duelling this one guardian from an enemy server. He was full on bunker build, and of everybody who duelled him he never fell below 80% health. Two or three of our SoR guys managed a stalemate. It was crazy.

I stepped up to the plate and laid the kitten down. For the first time in all the matches, I saw the guardian withdraw. It was full on crazyness but I had him on 10% health at one point. Stuffed up though and lost. Afterwards the player contacted me via a group /invite (didnt know this was possible at the time), and shared some very kind words. I was also treated to a /salute (which nobody else got). This was a positive inter server communication.

Two days ago I had a thief come at me while out roaming in WvW. I did my usual drill, but also had a brainwave and did something a little different in the moment of contact. Thief went down, flawless victory, stomp, away I went. I got another group invite and it was the thief. They asked me about my build, which I shared, and explained a couple things. The thief then congratulated me on the kill, saying it was their first death that day. Another positive inter-server communication experience.

I think the thing is that, at least with the group invite feature, you don’t have to answer the invite. If you do answer the invite, and find something distasteful, you can actually leave the group without saying a word.

Unintended game-play is unintended game-play and should be corrected.

The argument “This is the only thing we have to do in an assault/siege” is a non sequitor. Your conclusion that the broken mechanic should stay does not follow from your argument. The correct conclusion that should be drawn is that, hey, we have nothing legitimate to do in a siege, so we need to focus on getting something legit for us to do (assuming that’s true).

This is a no brainer.

Both. Torch for general, open combat. Focus for pulls from walls/cliffs, running (as you’re doing), etc.

Israel.7056:

SteepledHat.1345:

You’re just realizing this now? Every change they’ve made seems to have been done at the behest of thieves, warriors, and guardians on the SPvP forum.

I had naively hoped that perhaps Anet wouldn’t behave like every other MMO company I’ve ever purchased a game from but it seems that, as it has been with every other game, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

So you set yourself up for dissapointment, and Anet are to blame?

Just curious: This thread is a month old, are you Liaisons still tracking it and passing relevant info on to the Devs?

Have the Devs found it useful?

Dollyaks should be invulnerable to damage while defending players are in their sphere of influence. That way the fight is between the players first, and the Dollyak second.

Esrever.8613:

Anet doesn’t want people to be farming WvW maybe.

Or maybe organized efforts where 2 servers kill each other for drops.

And the difference between this and an organised guild vs PvE content is?

Or move the WP, as was brought up in this thread. I’ll go out on a limb and say there isnt a WvW player who hasnt gone to repair in SM and run into this same thing.

The repair NPC either needs to come down to the WP floor, or the WP needs to go up to the repair NPC (another design issue, unrelated but similar).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Location-of-repair-dude-in-SM

just get a big team of mesmers to time a scepter attack on another mes who fires reflect, then shatter the results.

Or is the correct answer: Roll a DDele/thief and speed around the map ready to gank unsuspecting solo travellers for your 50 badges an hour rate.

Best answer: Get in a group, run camp to camp flipping. Super will drop badges, and with a 5 man team you will be able to contend with just about any enemies you come across (avoiding their zerg, naturally.)

You’ve got the right idea. The main reason being that Mind Wrack multiplies its damage based on the number of clones “up”, therefore if some are running off of shatter 2 or 3, then when you fire shatter 1 it stacks all the clones on the field. If you have points in the Illusions line it doesn’t matter which shatter you use as they all inflict confusion.

How you generate your clones is a matter of weapons, traits, and situation.

Marsares.2053:

Has anyone found a good torch with Condition Damage, Toughness and – ideally – Precision on it? Should have an upgrade slot obviously. Struggling to find one anywhere.

Twilight Arbor gear.

Let’s not forget blinking within range of the spiking offender.

That said, to answer your question: Because that’s just another factor that plays into the thieves overall OP’ness, and other classes shouldn’t expect those kinds of standards?

Heh, that was fun :p

You can always run in WvW with a zerg for xp/levels. By the time you hit 80 you’ll have enough karma for a set of gear as an added bonus.

I use confuse on blind with sceptre/torch. It’s massive stacks and great controll if you make sure to hit with your blinds. The only concern I have about portal (which is good if you’re using it anyway) is the huge cool down. That’s a lot of traits for a 60 second cooldown.

Ok, if that’s what you wanna do go for it.

I just started spvp’ing two days ago. Been doing wvw since launch. I took my sceptre/torch confusion build into spvp despite concerns about hearing how weak the non-buffed confusion damage was. Man, did I cut people down left right and center

Sorry you couldn’t get it to work for you.

Tooltip is accurate for me, but Signit of Inspiration never gives the +% boon duration. I just figured it was another broken mesmer ability.

To the OP,

No. Might stacks haven’t broken the game at all. It’s a minor boost if anything, hardly worth the initial tears I saw. You’re right about the 25 stacks thing too. Initially I tried working stack building in to the shatter build, but all it did was mess up the meta play of combat. Eventually I shifted to taking what I could get, and maybe figuring out a momentary burst if it was advantageous.

Peetee.9406:

Swirling wind chains, golem bubble chains, treb vs treb action, while these tactics are logically sound and do help with tower captures they are extremely boring to me and take the ‘fun’ out of WvW.

All games are like this unfortunately, at the highest levels winning becomes more important than having fun. It’s really an awful way to play the game.

Here’s the difference between you as a player, and those with what you experienced. They’re playing the actual game, while you’re playing up some made up version with your own rules at play. You can talk about your own fun all day long, but the fact is that those in T1 running their crazy chains etc are playing to win. Winning is the goal. Winning in itself is fun. In fact, I have no doubt you enjoy whatever game it is you play. However they are playing on a level you don’t seem to grasp, and the fun they’re having, pulling off the things that they are, winning within the actual framework of the actual game, is a level of fun that cannot be obtained any other way. They’re playing to win, and having far more fun doing it than you will ever understand.

Wiredgunslinger.5480:

And you can do the exact same with your North supply camp which I have seen happen a lot.

This is a non sequitor.

The OP is right. The safety zoning just needs to be adjusted. Only, posting it here will only help to inform the whole community, you should have emailed Anet :p

I threw this together taking your basic build, and mixing it up.

http://tinyurl.com/cg387wl

Adaneshade.2409:

Just let em run? Kill the next guy, they’re no longer a threat to you. Most fights vs GC builds are so one sided in favor of the tank it’s a laugh.

This sums it up basically, and I’ll draw attention back to the altering of perceptions.

What is the goal? This should be thought about generally. If the goal of the inquiry is a 1v1 matchup to spike the other guy, then your complaints have some standing. However in WvW there are many more meta objectives. Routing an enemy force is a victory, even if you don’t kill them all. Sending a thief or DDele fleeing might not result in a loot bag, but the fight is effectively won. If you set out to kill them and failed, then feel free to count it as a personal loss. If, however, you were on your way to a tower objective, or were contesting for a camp, or maybe just getting some of your travelling buddies who’re prone to thieves or eles down to the real fight by interupting their activities, it’s a different story. The game mechanics don’t directly reward these victories, and maybe that should be a consideration for the devs, but they can hold rewards in themselves to the meta objectives. You read on the forums often how much thief players like to log in their thieves to troll people. It’s not said enough, but it’s equally enjoyable to troll these same thieves in game to the point that they have to WP away because you’ve shut them out of their entire game. Of course if you just built right, you can just kill them outright instead.

Adaneshade.2409:

Burst classes are so squishy, you really have zero trouble killing them in full out tank builds. They negate none of your damage so you still hit like a truck vs them. The more people start building tank the more likely people will cease to spec bursty simply because tank trumps burst in pvp.

This may completely change the game as we know it as people become more knowledgeable about what a PvP build actually is (hint it isn’t glass cannon).

It’s the three B’s. Burst, Balanced, Bunker.

Burst has the raw sudden damage to take out burst and balanced with relative ease, but not bunker.

Balanced is susceptible to Burst, but has the sustained damage and raw staying power to whittle down a Bunker.

Bunker is impervious to Burst, and can hit them like a truck (thanks Adaneshade for the imagery) despite their lower damage output, but cant handle a Balanced toughness while the same Balanced whittles them down.

That’s the theory anyway. The trick is finding the builds that accomplish this, and the devs balancing the mechanics accordingly.

So there’s been a lot of hate flying around recently (or for all time?) about the thief class, their burst, and other class features that don’t help the issue. While there may be some legitimate concerns there, not everything that’s offered is on the level. The fact is that there are plenty of players who’ve worked out builds that counter burst (note: not thieves, but the burst aspect of the game). One problem I see is that in PvE, what’s generally most effective is high DPS, so people spec for it. It moves you through the game of predictable NPC enemies quicker, and you have every responsibility to capitalise on that. However we have to ask the question: where do WvW players come from? Well, PvE zones of course.

So players enter WvW with the builds they’ve been using, that they like, and that work in PvE. They even have a good margin of success in WvW (I mean, there’s so many other squishy players around). What gets overlooked is the counter build to burst (and subsequently most thieves, the best burst around in case you missed that). The truth is there needs to be a change in perspective. From what I’ve seen, players come expecting what works against mobs to work everywhere else. The expectation is that the fight should be over in a very quick time frame, or else. Reality can be a hard pill to swallow. Ultimately what’s causing people to rage against GW2 isn’t the thief with his high burst, or the player behind the thief who thinks doing what he’s doing is some sort of success in life. It’s the players false perception about his build and the game in general that’s tripping him up.

The solution? Education. I wanted to ask if there’s anyone out there who can offer their tried and tested builds, Bunker, or Balanced, that work at countering Burst. The question shouldn’t be “Why isn’t my build working against X?” But rather, “What build will work against X?”

I’ve got my own (Balanced build I’ve come to realise), but to kick off I’ll throw this link in which my buddy gave me. Anyone got any more?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-TANKCAT-build-Prybar-some-faces

For that marginal situation of sending illusions through aoe: that only really applies to you if you’re some squishy long ranged mesmer. If you’re built of nails you’ll be shattering immediatly on ground zero in the thick of the zerg. Extra illusion hp is throwing the passive away.

Bananasmile.4126:

OK, from now on I will facepalm everyone who says thieves are overpowered without showing proof. You guys are officially scrubs in my book that got their kitten handed to them and now runs to forums. A good player will never become a victim to any of these things people keep QQ’ing about. I’ll do this game service, I would love to kill you until you quit the game. I hope we have more logical people join this game, people who present with clear evidence and not just one instance with god knows if it’s even true. GG. I’ll have fun making you rage quit. XOXO.

A member of the play to win mentality, good for you.

In response to you then, I’ve only played mesmer since release. I’m not afraid of thieves. I’ve figured out how to beat them. I think a lot of that is tied to the mesmer class though. All that aside, I’ll support those who are anti-thief in it’s current form. Are they invincible? No. Can the mechanics use some adjustment? Yes. Unless you’re suggesting the class is perfect in it’s current form?

Just make those core thief attacks channelled. Then, if used from stealth, they appear the moment they click the CD (as opposed to when they deal damage).

That’d make people happy. Other than thieves of course….

Still, they get to keep their numbers AND stealth.

Two important responses:
1) The trial was better. Yes there were still issues, but gameplay was improved overall. WvW is about the engagements, and the trial increased engagement quality. Any real major issues related to mass zerg vs zerg. Funnily enough this rewarded, and encouraged smaller forces and skirmishing. Never the less, you could still see, target, and fight something in a zerg. You might have just had to stand back for 10 seconds to let the majority show up.

2) I’d like to hear if anyone else has experienced this but I feel that thief stealth/culling related issues were reduced under the trial. They happened less frequently, and the culling duration after a stealth when it did happen was dramatically lessened.

Two good reasons to switch to the trial version for the time being.

Nueshak.2437:

Ross Biddle.2367:

GS love their range. Blink in real close, mirror image, spawn some clones, and shatter up some hefty confusion. Goodbye power/crit/glass build.

A sound strat if you were fighting anyone other than a mesmer. I think we can all agree we tend to be the smarter fighters in this game because our class is like driving a high performance sports car with stick shift. Those who master it end up really looking great, those who don’t will grind the gears.

We are very mindful of what stacks on us at what time. I have no problem stopping my attack for 6 seconds and letting confusion wear off.

Your response makes sense if the confusion mesmer only has mind wrack for shatter confuse, and/or a sceptre. My build keeps those 6 stacks of confusion (or more, realistically) constantly. Also if you dont put all your eggs in one basket, you can deal good damage AND have powerful CD. So stopping to wait for the confusion to end is… well a dead end.

The gist of the response is, for a GS mes keep the close quarters pressure on.

Here’s a better measure:

Apply your 20% reductaion to the class base illusion recharge, then keep the trait the same (reducing illusion summoning CD’s by 20%), if people would still take the 20% reduction for 5 points, then no it shouldn’t be changed. Obviously it’s worth the cost, and you’re going to have to bite the bullet and accept the cost for the benefit.

GS love their range. Blink in real close, mirror image, spawn some clones, and shatter up some hefty confusion. Goodbye power/crit/glass build.

Sounds like they’re playing to win.

It sounds like you have a suboptimal confusion build. Make all shatters deal confusion, and increase your confusion duration for starters. Then all you need to do is keep constant stacks of confusion on your target (or learn to mass stack for uber hits).

Confusion is great in PvP and PvE.