Guild Wars 2

GW2’s mesmer takes a LOT of design features from the Allods online psionicist. The only real difference between the psi has a bigger focus on telekinetics, whereas mesmer only has a couple of weak telekinetics (illusory wave, into the void), and that mesmer can also fight in melee

The psion’s clone equivalent had a couple key differences.

Firstly it only worked on the victim, only the victim could see the illusory clone. Secondly, it rendered the ACTUAL psionic invisible to the victim. So it didn’t matter that the clone was an obvious deception; until he got rid of the clone he couldn’t physically target the real psi anyway.

GW2 seems to have copied some of the functionality (like the clone being inextricably tied to the victim, and dying when the victim dies), but not providing the same benefits (ie. the clone is visible to all and can be destroyed by all. The mesmer can still be directly targeted and the clones entirely ignored).

IMHO, they need to decide whether illusions exist purely kittenter fodder, or if they exist as decoys, and then focus on it.

If clones are shatter fodder then allow them to exist independently of a victim, they instead act as a swarm of weaponised mirror images that break easily.

If clones are decoys then make them serve better as such; perhaps have them serve as relays for the mesmer’s spellcasting so that his “spells” appear to come from the clones improving the deception

Rhaj.5261:

Yup, Everyone is playing easy mode mesmer, Just like theif.

What’s the easymode mesmer build? (So I can avoid it :p)

They’re talking about tagging mobs. Staves deal damage over time, even if you can melt a target in seconds, you probably won’t do enough because the target will die in a second or two, possibly even before you wobbly staff projectiles reach it. To mark your territory you need to slap it hard with some direct damage before it goes down.

Guardian fits the bill better. if only because from a roleplay perspective Asura are big on tech and magictech. A guardian is essentially a barrier knight, it makes sense that an asura fighting in melee would utilise kinetic barriers and fields to aid him instead of cough “brute strength” (lol)

You questions seems to have answered itself

I gave it many many goes at making insanely cute, and they just all seemed to come out looking like trolls xD – with wide unblinking soulless eyes of dooooom.

In the end I just settled on The Incredible Zizi, Conqueror of Worlds – or… just “Z” to her krewe who’re far to lazy to indulge her ego…

The Asura shall rule you all… or more specifically I will – I’d know, I’ve seen the future* >:D

But yeah, Melkathi says it best. In one of the developer blogs, the writers for them admit that while the Asura might come over as a little comical at time; anyone willing to play a 3ft tall midget with a Napoleon complex is probably already on board with you or they’d rolled something more serious

• Or one version of it

I just ran an experiment under controlled conditions in PvE, Vs a set of centaur weapon racks since world objects you always deal consistent damage to, no crits or other factors come into it.

The clones did indeed display damage fragmentation. Each individual clone detonated for one “hit” each, and the more clones detonated the less damage they did individually

Actually after read this thread, I was wandering around rata sum, and it occurred to me that the Asura cultural outfits and day clothes are barefoot – so, for whatever reason, Asura actually prefer to go around barefoot.

To quote my own character after shanking a bunny: “I’ve never felt better!”

Lewzephyr.5281:

But, it only makes sense. I focus fire on players who are in a downed state in WvW, why wouldn’t an NPC do the same.

Because foremost a game should be fun. The best way to make a game fun is to help the players feel like a boss, and the best way to achieve that is through a positive narrative of events.

This also means there are certain strategically logical things which only cause frustration and/or break the narrative.

1. Stun locking a player to death
2. Downing a player and IMMEDIATELY finishing him off with no way to make a final stand
3. Forcing a player to respawn and run back

The first two only generates frustration which can sour an encounter. Especially if the encounter ultimately results in a wipe. The latter causes serious narrative breaking. Games tell a story, but you cannot reconcile respawn mechanics and death with storytelling – not in the GW universe anyway.

In short, if you’re going to take a player out, make sure you leave the player with a good narrative, there’s nothing wrong with a player going down fighting. But nobody likes to be the red shirt on Star trek

Is it just me or is anyone else observing a much more aggressive mob spawning routine in the last patch?

For example, you might be fighting a group of enemies and a few more players enter the area just passing through, and suddenly half a dozen new mobs will spawn literally on top of you, and the non-DE mobs respawn too and you end up with an overwhelming wall of NPC’s appearing out of thin air to come show you just what they think of your phantasms. (Which is to say not much and they all beeline for the squishy mesmer ;p)

It’s both extremely jarring visually seeing centaurs, bears, ornery badgers etc appear out of thin air (Why can’t reinforcements spawn from concealed locations?), and also pretty ruinous to your groups survival – primarily because enemies have a habit of simultaneously launching their strongest attack on the nearest target which results in a mega damage spike worthy of a GW1 ranger spike team.

I’m positive that back in BWE I’d see mobs trekking for quite a distance to reach their objective, not spawning on-site.

Am I just paranoid or has there been a noticable change in the last few days?

Mesmer clones still show an NPC (white) rather than a player (blue) rez symbol over them, but it’s still awkward.

Worse is the downed clones can persist even after you rally. I’ve actually been downed and create a couple of clones, managed to rally myself only to see two of my team-mates still trying to revive my clone; only to get downed in the process xD

My favourite of all has to be male asura necromancer’s summoning quote, or one of them:
“I HAVE CREATED LIFE!… of a sort”

The people saying it’s fine seem to be talking purely from a PvP perspective. As i said before this is a game of two halves, and the PvE half is the more played half.

Downed skills need to be relevant in ALL scenarios. It’s ok for a weapon or utiltiy to be more useful in PvP or PvE, but a down skill has to be relevant to all scenarios and right now the engineer bar is fantastic in PvP, and almost useless in PvE. The number 3 is all well and good but honestly, who here ever survives long enough to deploy it?

On my mesmer or guardian I always survive long enough to use it and have a good shot at rallying. Engineer, unless i have the good fortune of being ignored by the mobs for a moment I’m dead 90% of the time.

Have you checked the advanced appearance options, where you can fine tune ear size/thickness/angle?

I always wondered how my charr friend is able to expertly relocate himself to a good safe spot miles away from the action when downed, yet i have trouble seeing much beyond my feet

Meh, I think it makes them stand out as different, which I think is probably the artists logic.

Take the Tau Empire in Warhammer 40,000. The Tau have 2 large toes and a smaller stabilising toe. But their troops wear bisected armour plates over the bulk of their feet which looks rather like a hoof. This has lead to a common misconception amongst players that tau have hooves.

Sometimes you have to make something REALLY obvious to get your message over or people misinterpret or overlook what they’re seeing

And this is why there are no strong green or blues in the asura skin palette

(the other obvious one being yoda)

I actually made my ears really small and cat-like, and when I enter combat the pricking up animation rounds them and I end up looking like a mouse >.<

http://i.imgur.com/X3VZs.jpg

My second Asura I when for something a bit thinner :P

Surely you must realise that size is inversely proportional to greatness. Concentrated magnificence as I’ve heard it stated. Our devices may be smaller, by they possess far superior quality.

cough

In jokes aside, no, Asuran skills like flamethrowers cover the same area as a charr or norn. This has some interesting psychological effects, for example a norn guardian’s symbol feels like a rather like fighting on a postage stamp. While from an Asuran perspective it feels like an arena

This is why I stopped playing an Asuran engineer.

Engineer is, contrary to what one might expect NOT BEFITTING an asura. Asura technology is all magic based, and all asuran magic users use gadgets. That elementalist (probably) isn’t naturally gifted with fire magic like some space elf, he has a thermomanipulator device and a focus in his staff.

Everything from their structures to their golems run on magic and follow laws psychics style. An asura who still insists on using fire, steam and clockwork to power his devices, would be like a soldier in a modern army bringing a bow and arrow with him – far from being cutting edge, it’d be quaint, cute and ineffectual by their standards ;0

It may be that Arenanet is going the same way with their lore, as Bethesda did with Elder Scrolls, or games Workshop did with Warhammer 40,000.

Where lore is essentially “in-universe” and subject to all the misunderstandings, prejudices, and difference in perspective of the race that wrote it. All the lore we’ve seen to date is invariably homocentric, which’d explain many of the errors we see – like how the gods gifted magic to the sentient races, even though the Asura clearly demonstrate magic abides physical rules that can be turned into mechanical devices that anyone (or anything, including non-living golems, or structures) can utilise.

It’d also explain the tendency of the lore to favour the human’s 5/6 gods as an explanation for everything, when most the races don’t even accept humanities interpretation of the “gods”

I remember seeing them described in official blog notes as being “anthropomorphic manatees”, but, as correctly pointed out they lay eggs…

At the end of the day they are what they are. incidentally they equally remind me of pinipals (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pinipal), which are without question carnivorous or omnivorous

I havn’t seen rata pten, but if it’s on the surface like it sounds, then it wouldn’t be one of the original Asuran cities, which were deep underground.

But Mt Maelstrom is relatively close to Sparkfly Swamp, which was Asura controlled surface territory in GW1, it doesn’t seem unlikely the Asura may’ve built a surface city there which got over-run by dragon minions in the time intervening.

We’ve seen glimpses of the original Asuran cities in cut scenes and they have the same architecture as the surface ones (Angular, geometric shapes and patterns that vaguely appear mesoamerican)- we’ve also seen Mursaat architecture and this is entirely different (grown from mursaat “jade” crystals like their golems into large smooth crystalline surfaces, and appears to shimmer), if the Asura claimed any Mursaat structures they’ve long since torn down any of the original designs.

I used to swear by the pistol/shield when I was a newbie back in beta. But later realised how much more powerful blowtorch was and how I didn’t need THAT much control abilities.

Once I realised how power scales vs conditions, and how conditions can overflow in large group combat I switched to the rifle, and now run a rifle/gadget build. I can’t imagine anymore how I ever found pistol/shield useful given it’s woeful lack of actual attacks, combined with really long cooldowns on it’s CC’s

Because Charr are huge, they stand significantly taller than a human, comparable to a Norn.

But yeah, they are awkwardly large on the creation screen they could afford to zoom out a little so we get a better look at what we’re tweaking

You do realise that engineer’s main class mechanic is that kits, unlike weapon swaps, have no cooldown. Engineers are meant to swap kits at a moments notice to access their full repertoire of abilities.

You should be very well practiced at switching kits on the fly, if you find it “difficult” or “annoying” to switch to the desired kit after entering a new zone I’m wondering if you’re playing properly :/

Wolfheart: It’s strange because I’ve never seen damage pop up while throwing junk in PvE. I’ll look closer next time I get downed (Which isn’t too frequent thankfully).

As for the skills usefulness in PvP I won’t deny some of these skills are versatile – being able to grapple a guy into the horde during WvW is certain death for him (And a fast rez for you). But this is a game of two halves and the majority of players play PvE; and some like me ONLY play PvE.

While some builds may excel in one or the other, forcing a “team PvP orientated” skill bar on you in solo PvE is major design oversight. Give us the ability to swap downed sets then if that’s their intention.

Also, grapple is an interrupt, yes. A SINGLE TARGET, interrupt that will stop exactly one attack. Contrast to guardian’s AoE interrupt which interrupts and throws away ALL nearby enemies, or mesmer’s decoy which distracts ALL nearby enemies from attacking them for a short while.

The way you say “It’s also really useful if you are not soloing 100% of the time” almost makes it sound like players shouldn’t be soloing. When, the reality is, most of the time you do tend to be soloing and I don’t see why engineer downed skills should be single target focused, when all the other classes can fend off multiple enemies.

So I stand by my position – though perhaps reword it.

Engineers downed skills need to be reworked so they have a fighting chance when faced by more than 1 enemy in a PvE situation, like most of the other classes

Jump shot on the engineers rifle and I’m told one of the hammer attacks on warrior both generate the bug almost every time they’re used. It gets old quickly :p

BAM “Wha, huh, hah, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” BAM “Wha, huh, hah, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Happens almost every time I use jump shot on my engineer’s rifle. makes it sound like I’m trying a half terrified, half ferocious battlecry.“Wah!, ha, hah… AAAAHHHGHHHHHH”

enemy is paralysed with uncertainty to whether he should be fleeing or chasing me

This bug isn’t unique to charr, my asura screams a lot. But that could just be because he’s small and brittle

I’m gonna bump this and i have to disagree with the people who insist this is the same way other classes work. And I can prove to you why.

Let’s compare number by number:

Skill 1: The direct attack
In all cases the direct attack is quite weak – but the engineer’s attack, “throw junk” causes a random condition, it’s entirely possible to spam this the entire duration you’re down and not cause a single hitpoint of damage – how can you rally if you cannot kill anyojne. i have had an enemy on 1% health, and i just kept landing chill/cripple/blind on him for the 20 seconds it took to bleed out.

Skill 2: The defensive skill
Mesmers turn invisible and teleport out of harms way leaving a decoy, Guardians can knock back all adjacent enemies, thieves I believe turn invisible. Engineer’s pull the enemy into melee with them – wait, i thought this was a defensive skill?, how is pulling an enemy into melee range meant to protect us, it’s only purpose seems to be to set up #3, or provide a single target, one shot interuppt. No skill should exist purely to set up another skill, especialy when that skill is…

Skill 3: The heavy hitter
The 3rd skill is very unique to the class. Mesmers summon a phantasm, guardians create a symbol of healing which can keep them alive or even revive them very quickly. Engineer’s heavy hitter is basiclly a duplicate of guardian’s #2 skill… yeah. our “best hope” is actually the same as another classes #2 downed skill. What the hell? – furthermore, if my observations are right, setting off your bomb belt actually damages you (unsurprisingly)

tl;dr.

Engineer’s skill bar consists of:

1. Slightly inconvenience enemies
2. Moderately inconvenience enemies, and die faster
3. Strongly inconvenience enemies, and kill yourself.
4. ????, PROFIT

Classes should enjoy at least a degree of parity, but a downed engineer’s hope of getting back up relies far FAR too much on blind luck; that they’ll roll a string of damage conditions on throw junk, or that enemies will ignore them long enough for #3 to charge up, at which point they can haul them in and explode them.

Once you roll another class, you realise just how woeful engineer’s downed state is for PvE – it absolutely has to change. For an engineer, being downed, is essentially game over. For any other class, being downed is where things start to get intresting…

Kirin.8465:

We may not be Guardians, but we’ve still got a lot to offer.

If you use lotus poison to spam AoE weaknesses you might be doing more damage mitigation than the resident guardian

(50% damage reduction, Vs 33% damage reduction + occasional Aegis + regen)

Better still that damage reduction modifier is independent of boon based damage reduction so it is a multiplier if both damage reduction methods are being used together. 50% x 33% = 33% of damage gets through, blinds/aegis/blocks not withstanding.

Ouspensky.5248:

Engineer doesn’t exactly have a melee option, thus balancing this out.

Not true.

Engineers have no melee weapon option in their weapon slot. But they have a melee weapon KIT (Toolkit, where they equip a wrench and gain a set of melee focused attack skills), they also have the bomb kit set, which is psuedo-melee (Dealling damage to adjacent targets using planted explosives rather than punching them) – bomb kit is in fact one of their most powerful kits.

In contrast, guardians have no means at all to launch long range attacks that are either on a) a long cooldown. or b) fire projectiles that meander along at a snails pace. as the Op has said.

Still I don’t have a good suggestion on how to resolve this guardians epitomise close quarters combat, having exceptional defensive and melee/close range damage – for that reason alone their long range capability should be the weakest of all the classes… finding that sweet spot where they are weak, but not kittened is the tricky bit.