Guild Wars 2

butch.8136:

Holy kitten. Entitled egocentric irrational whiners.

No let’s do some logical thinking
New players receive – the base game, 5 character slots, and HoT
Old players receive – HoT

New players receive 50 dollars of content ( base game ) + HoT for 50 dollars

Old players receive 50 less dollars In content.

Old players have had a varying amount of time from 3.X to 0 years of gameplay.

This means some players who just bought an account get absolutely nothing and were just highway robbed. Old players just payed 50 dollars for 3-.6 years of gameplay.

Does 3.x – .6 years of gameplay justify complete loss of 50 dollars – no.

Therefore, because character slots are so incredibly easy to store in servers ( all it has to be is a value table) old players should gain equal character slots. They already highway Rob you for character slots because buying the base game is more efficient.

Regardless, Anet’s old policy of having each expansion completely separate from the base game ( gw1 ) where cantha and elona were $20 expansions that did not include the base game and did not force you to rebuy the base game worked fine for them and this way is just an attempt to squeeze money out of us veteran players or a failure of language, grammar, syntax and communication.

Community, write your solutions here. This way anet doesn’t even have to come up with the ideas.

shogei.8015:

OK. But a new player is getting 5 characters slots and the expansion at $50 while existing players get the expansion only. In other words, if I and my new player friend buy the game on the same day, he gets more than I do for the same price.

Exactly, which is why we shall write 1000 forum posts for every character slot new players get we don’t

So these necromancer skill changes are wacky. I can understand transforming consume conditions and plague into corruption skills but 10stacks of vulnerable whenever you use a heal is LoL. And the CD nerf is unprecedented. Necromancer lack survivability skills so a heal that leaves you open to burst is ludicrous ( and we still don’t know the other condition). Instead I would like the heal skill to apply poison because it is the opposite of healing but is not extremely detrimental because you have no other healing abilities outside of siphoning on necromancer. I don’t remember plague forms debuff but I will address that later.

Spectral walk – jumping from high places was so op right anet…. especially with the addition of gliders, right??? this class needed a bit of extra flavor and you just ruined it, also now how do you plan on using spectral walk while jumping , or teleporting back while falling. Neither of those can even be considered a bug. If you jump now the wording says you won’t be able to teleport back or start spectral walk. Your creating another bug like air immobilized right now ANet and it’s not worth it in any way.

Telekinesis.8312:

Mantra of Resolve - 20 second cooldown, 2 charges to cleanse i think 2 conditions from you and people around you

Nullfield - rips enemies boons and removes conditions off you and your allies

Phantasmal Disenchanter - Summon a phantasm that removes boons from foes and cures conditions on allies

Arcane Thievery - Send three conditions you have to your foe and steal three of their boons

Also dodging / evading skills that apply condis and running away from foes that are too tanky and condition heavy for you to beat

Fay.2357:

Vague Memory.2817:

Windwalker.7421:

Vague Memory.2817:

None of those solutions sound satisfactory to me. I think I’ll stick with Travelers. If the swiftness was every 10sec it would be perm swiftness and non-stacking, as it would run out as new swiftness was applied. There would be no overlap, bar outside sources.

If Swiftness was 10s base, then it would be 13s with 30% Swiftness duration granted from Pack or Air runes, plus whatever other sources of Boon duration you can muster.

That means every time SoI cycles it would cast another 13s Swiftness, and quickly add up to 2m or whatever the cap is. The only way to avoid that would be to break it the way they broke our Focus, making it not play nice with other Swiftness which IMO would be worse than the 5s base thing.

Perma Swiftness is stupid, perma-any-Boon is if you ask me, it defeats the purpose of boons. As Pyro said, 50% uptime is fine. It’s not wow, but it’ll do compared to our current choices. I would much rather run Pack or Air runes then Travelers any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Perma swiftness is just that, permanent, duration increases don’t make it even more permanent.

It may be fine for you guys but it isn’t for me. Some in the Mes community are very good at expecting little, and happy with getting less in return.

And some of us are very good at demanding ‘We want more more more!! Whatever you give us isn’t good enough!’

We got enormous access to cripple in the new traits. This allows us to have drastically better control over the mobility of fights we’re in. Combined with solid uptime ok swiftness, this makes Mesmer mobility in a fight pretty fantastic.

If you’re not in a fight, you’re not in combat. Quit being lazy, swap on a focus, press 4, and swap it back out. Congratulations! You’ve achieved 100% swiftness uptime by using 3 buttons!

Too bad crippled does not affect movement skills anymore so warriors/hs spamming thieves/ sd gs rangers / or anything else with more mobility skills than us will still escape fairly easy. Also that trait looks underwheling when compared to power block imo.

All they need to do is add an icd per target on gaining swiftness, which anet seemingly has the capability to do. Or make it like portal and have swiftness stacks, but that’s not nearly as much of an improvement.

MSFone.3026:

I’m sure this isn’t perfect, but at first read, this is kittening perfect.

I’m ecstatic. Inspiration is kittening rad, Illusion changes are rad. Look at the GM in inspiration Mental Defense, are you kittening serious? Summon phantasmal defender when you block or dodge? Wtf, that is a simultaneous buff to illusion generation and survivability, totally insanely awesome.

MtD is now Master level freeing up another GM in illusions? Incredibly awesome. Buff to scepter attack speed, also very awesome.

This is just so great, absolutely wonderful. I’m sure there are things to complain about if you try, but omfg hell yes cannot wait to play next week!!

It has the same icd as the utility skill.

Windwalker.7421:

Zoser.7245:

In an ideal scenario, after cast your 3 clones plus 5 seconds of each one AA, you will reach 24 stacks of might, but you are attacking only with clones that do poor physical damage.

…

And I don’t see people using only the gw and their clones in their rotations… Or maybe you already know that there are people for everyone : )

True you don’t see that now, but even with the “nerf” to the Dueling “Confusion-on-crit” trait the GS could potentially become a condition weapon. ;-) Those Clones could apply Bleeds and a little Confusion while stacking Might. Mirror Blade and other traits in Dom can supply Vulnerability and of course the rest of GS can dole out cripples like candy-canes at X-mas. How awesome is Cripple on iWave!? Or I guess AE Cripple on MS?

Especially for a Hybrid build I could see GS doing nasty things. Depending on what happens to Celestial, this could be our Celestial build?? (Dom/Duel/Chaos)

A Celestial PU hybrid with GS & Staff, Mimic, Decoy, Null Field, and traited Mass Invis with Mirror as the heal? Could be pretty neat. (Yeah not meta changing, but still interesting. )

I think any build that takes PU will get a LOT more out of X/torch than staff or gs.

Dondagora.9645:

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

StickerHappy.8052:

BB (ineptitude) is whack, competes with Malicious sorcery and incidentally scepter also has the block that will serve nice with BB.

Imagine: Going into the middle of a zerg fight and using Blurred Frenzy + Dodges. Basically 50~100% the zerg gets blinded + confused because the ICD is bound to specific foes, AKA no max target limit. Hells yes~

Yeap I agree, but it competes the spot with Malicious Sorcery! 15% attack speed would be nice with sigil of rage!

In PvP, I’ll probably be going MS too. But for WvW, we’ll be able to mimic our former glory of Glamour Bombing via Ineptitude is what I’m saying. Lots of tagging, lots of spam punishment. Thus condi mesmers in WvW zergs could be a cool thing along with Chronomancers now~

But… but…. necro spectral wall > than mesmer confusion…. just look at all those tags and bags ( video :P ( this is why I’m lvling my necromancer )

#/watch?v=ABCya_k0zLA

Edit: link to choxie’s video refuses to work

Gabriell.4856:

EremiteAngel.9765:

thief steal got buffed.

stolen plasma not nerfed either.

RIP mesmers?

but looking at your changes…are you now actually greater than thieves?

I main a thief for the past 3 years. After I saw the mesmer buffs, I’m dusting off my mesmer. Basically, phant and shatter will hit like a truck while having IP as base plus DE and PU. My build will be 6/6/6/0/0

There will be lots of viable mesmer builds now Robert is making up for the mesmer neglect we have had since launch.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Even though I don’t play mesmer and got no idea what those changes to you guys mean, I believe you guys.

the mesmer thread is overflowing with joy.
I’m happy for you mesmers. no longer going to get whipped by thieves.

All I can say is… with the way mesmers have had to work harder to get less for so long…. Now everyone will think mesmers are God.

jportell.2197:

Sadrien.3470:

jportell.2197:

Sadrien.3470:

jportell.2197:

SlimChance.6593:

I think a better question would be: “Is having IP baseline enough to live without DE?”

I’m kinda thinking that maybe illusions will be less necessary for shatter builds. I know it sounds weird. But really I think chronomancer can run a shatter build w/o the illusions tree.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense, no one has been planning to run illusions with power shatter since they anounced the changes and illusions offers no clone generation.

This comment was made before the ready up today.

the ready up today has absolutely nothing to do with it. They didn’t even show any mesmer changes on it.

If you look at the other threads they still released the fricking changes with the ready up! It’s one thing for pyro to be condescending toward people but he comes at it with a little more than just putting people down. You are bringing nothing other than a statement that was made with different information from what there is now.

The illusions traits still are not clone productive and not very different in any way outside of condi shatter. So I’m not sure why you think power shatter builds would go into illusions?

I did not mean to put you down I’m sorry if my wording sounded that way.

Sebrent.3625:

@Sadrien:
That largely depends on the skill level of the playerbase in question.

• At high levels, yes.
• At moderate levels, meh. Very build dependent in my opinion
• At low levels, heck no.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with the Thief class

• Thief has such a high skill ceiling that it is a blast to play as you rarely ever feel restricted by the class
• Thief has several non-telegraphed but high-damage abilities that I feel harm counterplay

Now, Ross has a point at the moderately competent thieves due to the non-telegraphed issue. If a Glassy Thief runs into a glassy anything, they do a single DPS combo and it’s a downed player. Sadly, this creates a low skill floor for Thieves which leads to aggravation from players as no one likes to see nothing but it take them down. It is why you don’t see nearly as much aggravation from players that get hit by a Warrior’s Eviscerate. Only the least mature players complain about that as the rest realize that “hey, I saw it coming and failed to do something about it”.

Side-note: I have the same dislike for some of Mesmer’s own “instant” abilities with no telegraph (ex: Mantra of Pain and Mantra of Distraction). I’m for things that promote counterplay and dislike things that harm it. I want good fights and being able to see my opponent’s skills and react while they do the same concerning my skills leads to much more fun fights in my opinion.

Instant abilities like f1 – f4? Not to mention every stun break In the game? All of these are instant but still have counter play. You can bait steal, dodge shatters or destroy the clone, bait out stun breaks with short cd control affects. In sorry but I have to disagree with you here, instant skills are a huge part of how this game achieves more active combat.

jportell.2197:

Sadrien.3470:

jportell.2197:

SlimChance.6593:

I think a better question would be: “Is having IP baseline enough to live without DE?”

I’m kinda thinking that maybe illusions will be less necessary for shatter builds. I know it sounds weird. But really I think chronomancer can run a shatter build w/o the illusions tree.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense, no one has been planning to run illusions with power shatter since they anounced the changes and illusions offers no clone generation.

This comment was made before the ready up today.

the ready up today has absolutely nothing to do with it. They didn’t even show any mesmer changes on it.

jportell.2197:

SlimChance.6593:

I think a better question would be: “Is having IP baseline enough to live without DE?”

I’m kinda thinking that maybe illusions will be less necessary for shatter builds. I know it sounds weird. But really I think chronomancer can run a shatter build w/o the illusions tree.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense, no one has been planning to run illusions with power shatter since they anounced the changes and illusions offers no clone generation.

Icebow is no longer being nerfed, hurray ! Now lets just hope tornado becomes instant like plague

Ross Biddle.2367:

Advent.6193:

EremiteAngel.9765:

Simonoly.4352:

Saves the Thief a bit of time (1 second to be exact) if he just wants to steal off you again without having to first consume the plasma already stolen. But this is dependent on a Thief saving his/her Consumer Plasma for….a rainy day? Never really happens as it’s such a powerful steal that you will want to use it immediately if just for the protection uptime and boon strip safety. Won’t be very noticeable therefore for the most part.

this 1 second unfortunately may decide the outcome of the fight
and this just makes it easier to play the thief which we shouldn’t encourage too much since they are OP when played by skilled players.

We can use the bolded argument for any profession in the game, honestly. Thief is a serious problem for Mesmers, sure … but a skilled Mesmer is probably the close second for classes called “OP” by their opponents.
Truth is, the QoL change on Steal is something Thieves should have had from word-freaking-go. Now, if we can just get a bleeding range indicator on Portals …

There are a lot of things all professions should have had from the “word-freaking-go”, and a lot of things Thieves in particular shouldn’t have had, but w/e. What should be highlighted is that the statement “OP when played by skilled players.” should be tweaked slightly to OP when played by a moderately competent gamer of any stripe – It doesn’t take an Expert Thief Main to capitalize on thief mechanics for maximum effect. Any halfway decent gamer can click on to them within an hour of playing the Thief class. That’s because the issue is tied to the design first and foremost.

Ross I’m pretty sure your exaggerating. Have you ever played thief ? It’s much, much harder to play than the majority of classes / builds that are in the meta (guardians, warriors, dd ele). Thief is not a faceroll class and rewards skillful play.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Sadrien.3470:

We should pretend to be mindless internet users and just reply #dodgeshatters and link vashury’s channel.

Maybe we should just follow what you suggest, since you formed such a brilliant argument on how those 2 traits work

#dodgeshatters #/watch?v=c3fUhFuUP-E 16:00
Edit: I can already tell my tactic / is being effective.

Now I just need to link vashury’s video. #done

Arantheal.7396:

sorry chief, but don’t over-exagerate things.
keeping vuln. up on 25 stacks requires continually spamming nades, nade barrage and jumpshot. the acid bomb / napalm tick helps with vuln., but when you then start on blasting napalm all the time with HT, Acid Bomb and FT #2, you start rotating so often that you overall vuln.-output goes way below 20 stacks, while you’ll never be able to blast more than 15-18 stacks might continually, not to mention that you’ll still need to do dps with keeping nades #2 + #4 & blunderbus on cd, so while trying to do everything at once, you start lacking performance in all aspects.
DPS + vuln works.
DPS + might-stacking (and some drive-by vuln.) works.
Vuln. + might stacking (and some drive-by dps) works.
Trying to achieve all three together in a stable rotation results in being mediocre in all of them.

Yes, we are very versatile, and can combo a few roles together in a single build, but we’re not able to do everything you listed on the same time, and looking specifically into each and every single one of these jobs, other classes will excel there…

thief brings highest boss-dps, ele brings highest dps in general.
2 Phalanx warris cap might with GS easily for the group
Guardians will cleanse more condis more often
thiefs are superior when it comes to stealth-skips
projectile reflect is more welcomed than destruction, and guardian has a way shorter cd on his reflects than us, along with a 100% reliability (unless you count fortified turrets, which tends to bug out lately, especially for rifle-turret, and forces you to go 6 into inventions, therefore either giving up on grenadier or mod. ammunition)
The only thing engi is best in is vuln. stacking, and if necro wouldn’t suffer from the lowest dps, they’d excel us in the aspects windup-time and reliability in upkeep.

Necromancer doesn’t have the lowest dps. You have been mislead.

/cry I love map breakouts which do Mohamed to the game itself or other players experience. Especially on my own dedicated pvp map breakout server ( some dueling server without anyone on it :P). I recently figured out how to breakout of nifhel in a way I have never seen before and was unable to find on the internet because eod rocket boots. It does absolutely nothing to PvP balance because it’s long, difficult when being attacked, and useless In terms of points. In addition, leaping from cliff to cliff to save time or escape foes with rocket boots is a really fun feature of the engineer, and the difference gained by the velocity of one’s character as a projectile is marginal In the first place. Even if anet nerfs everything we will still find map breakouts, still troll people with leaps, and still not use rocket boots in competitive pvp. They are also removing counterplay to these leap skills as well as their power because of removing condition effects. These changes are terrible and / do not help anyone. They make this game less fun while expending valuable resources that should be going to use on fixing bugged skills!!!!!

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Both traits are good in making your subsequent shatters easier, but they can’t provide clones on demand. I know you spend endurance so it may not be on demand all the time but I can’t think of another way to say it

Illusionary reversion won’t work with sword associated power shatter because sword clones rarely survive longer than 10s (roughly that time for next mind wrack), better if you have GS, but again any unintended/intended cleaving within 10s will remove that clone. I can see this works with condi shatter because you’re not limited to mind wrack (and the time interval between CD), but you’ll want to take dueling for on crit minors anyway and mistrust is more situated towards multiple opponents.

Chronophantasma has a vital counterplay in shatter. Due to phantasms running towards target to deal shatter damage, you’re exposing your phantasm to “danger zone” that can easily be cleaved out. So again, probably won’t work so well if you have to wait 10s for your next mind wrack cycle.

We should pretend to be mindless internet users and just reply #dodgeshatters and link vashury’s channel.

"

….gear+maybe a util or two, so don’t worry about carrying a ton of random gearsets around." – Fay

You mean traits… otherwise your contradicting yourself.

Also: @ Fay If you "quit the game " and are the " ghost of pyro past" why are you so active in the forums and talk as if your an active player of gw2?

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

apharma.3741:

Yes, I have over 2k hours on ele, it’s my main and I do 50 on it. The trait is bad. You should be using blinds (sandstorm) on enemies and with 2 eles it’s easy to maintain. Even better if you have a thief but a guard has lots of blinds too.

Just a shame virtue of justice isn’t renewed on every kill.

Blinds > downed traits.

In before someone mentions gear, full zerk, using staff or D/F depending on the situation.

I pug lvl 20 and up fractals and I can tell you I have never seen pugs that are actually coordinated enough to blind bosses. Besides that does not change the fact that you can get a insane dps boost because of lavatomb if you choose when to go downed state.

It doesn’t exactly take coordination to blind enemies. It takes a single thief with black powder, or 2 eles using the glyph.

Well assume you have one ele (yourself), no thieves, a bad guardian, a warrior who you have to remind to carry banners, and a ranger who places frost spirit in every imaginable AoE. You are now the only source of blind in your party. You can blind for 10 out of 60s. As soon as that 10s period ends your group is forced ( oh no!) To dodgeroll. Now your guardian gets one shot and your warrior didn’t drop any banners so your dps is a lot lower. Let’s say this is all against the flame shaman in the grawl fractal. Now your stuck with a failed burn and surprise you have 20s of burning = More than your hp. Bad teams = downed state traits greaterthan 10% non downed state damage.

If my team was that bad, I’d leave and find a new one. Teams like that don’t become apparent halfway through a run, they become apparent in the first fight. I don’t like to waste time, and I have zero qualms about leaving a team of random internet strangers high and dry because they’re awful.

Your such a mean person :P

Edit : I find lots of bad pugs my favorite – tank war/ guard with no AR that dies after 5s using nomads / clerics gear.

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

apharma.3741:

Yes, I have over 2k hours on ele, it’s my main and I do 50 on it. The trait is bad. You should be using blinds (sandstorm) on enemies and with 2 eles it’s easy to maintain. Even better if you have a thief but a guard has lots of blinds too.

Just a shame virtue of justice isn’t renewed on every kill.

Blinds > downed traits.

In before someone mentions gear, full zerk, using staff or D/F depending on the situation.

I pug lvl 20 and up fractals and I can tell you I have never seen pugs that are actually coordinated enough to blind bosses. Besides that does not change the fact that you can get a insane dps boost because of lavatomb if you choose when to go downed state.

It doesn’t exactly take coordination to blind enemies. It takes a single thief with black powder, or 2 eles using the glyph.

Well assume you have one ele (yourself), no thieves, a bad guardian, a warrior who you have to remind to carry banners, and a ranger who places frost spirit in every imaginable AoE. You are now the only source of blind in your party. You can blind for 10 out of 60s. As soon as that 10s period ends your group is forced ( oh no!) To dodgeroll. Now your guardian gets one shot and your warrior didn’t drop any banners so your dps is a lot lower. Let’s say this is all against the flame shaman in the grawl fractal. Now your stuck with a failed burn and surprise you have 20s of burning = More than your hp. Bad teams = downed state traits greaterthan 10% non downed state damage.

apharma.3741:

Yes, I have over 2k hours on ele, it’s my main and I do 50 on it. The trait is bad. You should be using blinds (sandstorm) on enemies and with 2 eles it’s easy to maintain. Even better if you have a thief but a guard has lots of blinds too.

Just a shame virtue of justice isn’t renewed on every kill.

Blinds > downed traits.

In before someone mentions gear, full zerk, using staff or D/F depending on the situation.

I pug lvl 20 and up fractals and I can tell you I have never seen pugs that are actually coordinated enough to blind bosses. Besides that does not change the fact that you can get a insane dps boost because of lavatomb if you choose when to go downed state.

nearlight.3064:

castlemanic.3198:

nearlight.3064:

Despite not being the theorycrafter of this build, I can give you an answer. In any power based mesmer build for pvp you pretty much need the greatsword for its ranged burst damage. Without it, you’ll struggle to kill things fast enough and you won’t be able to catch up to enemies. Also the shield looks problematic in pvp because the cooldown times for its skills look to be a bit on the long side, while its phantasm doesn’t seem to be that strong in terms of raw damage.

ah, makes sense. thanks for the knowledge.

Yeah, in WvW roaming it was very much possible to drop the GS, since staff and sword together gave more combined survivability, and you don’t have the pressure of the clock in capping points to force you to go all in on bursting and locking down your targets to cap a point faster.

Gj with that answer, my answer was gonna be I like gs :p (jk).

katniss.6735:

I use FGS everyday. It’s the only elite I ever use. The damage is alright if you have crit damage on all your pieces, especially with fresh air. It makes it so no one can run away from you with 10%, cept maybe a warrior or thief.

Tornado is terrible since you can get condi bombed while in it, and the cd is way too long to use for applicable situations. The knockback doesn’t work that great either, just like gust.

I stopped using dagger/dagger so long ago it’s not even funny. The perks were all stripped from this, and it really has no place outside of organized spvp or gvgs imho. Probably one of the reasons I didn’t bother getting Incinerator also. I can, however, see it being a slightly improved weapon-set after trait patch with the chill on incoming crit.

I’m looking forward to the new trait system, but the condi changes look dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. As someone who only plays elementalist, I don’t like any condi spec for ele at all. It’s extremely slow application of damage that doesn’t last long enough. Only perplexity runes can possibly give it any playability from my perspective. Wtb a damage modifier to blinds. tia

Welcome to dd condi specs…. 5 stacks of burn on dragons breath anyone?

Timelord.8190:

D/D ele is now garbage, i hardly even play it anymore in WvW and i hardly see anyone else play it. So many undeserved nerfs.

LoL anyone who plays dd ele in apvp will tell you the exact opposite. Almost every team runs a dd ele because they are so strong.

My opinions:
WvW:
Icebow is our greatest weapon against ktrainers bots, anet should never take that away
Lightning hammer is the most unused utility only second too elemental glyphs and conjure earth shield…. needs a buff not a nerf.
Icebow has a small AoE so being able to land it should be rewarding

apharma.3741:

Sadrien.3470:

This is assuming the ele is not oneshot because he miss times a dodge and is not running the lava tomb trait ( in which case you can get higher damage when downed by 2x lavafont + 33% damage). It very much depends on the encounter, team, and eles skill lvl.

Eww lava tomb. That trait causes loads of problems, if you’re bad enough to need it, you’re the type that will need stealth rezzing….oh wait you’re not stealthed because of the bloomin trait doing damage.

I think we should perhaps wait and see what happens in the patch before we start asking Anet for a nerf to something very few people will be running. For all we know confusion on crit isn’t a thing anymore. I’d also wait until I see frifox’s maths as well as guangs.

Have you played high / lvl fractals on ele? Certain trash mobs chunk you for half your hp… single attacks from most bosses AoEs will down you, If your just playing to get money and not for speed runs you won’t be paying enough attention to stay alive all the time and intentionally going downed during a meteor can boost your dps by a huge amount in pug runs if you are paying attention.

Xandrian.8304:

Hmm, got Leaf of Kudzu from a lvl 60 something Risen Thrall during a personal story mission (back when mobs still dropped loot) and I recently got Storm from a Risen Krait I killed whilst waiting for Teq in Sparkfly.

Haha better than anything I ever got from tea himself….. better than anything I have ever had actually.

5k hours into the game, mostly pvp. The most expensive drop I ever got was in wvw a hoelbrak rune Zerker chestpiece worth like 12 gold….

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMEmALkA-Q~

nearlight.3064:

Korusef.3714:

Probably the best offensive PvP combo will be with Chrono as you will be able to preserve your phantasms after shatter for even more pressure on thieves

Eh I feel like quickness and slow will be more useful than chronophantasma.

I feel like chronophantasma really shines in phantasm builds, especially condi oriented ones which can take MtD and duelign for extremely high condi pressure.

nearlight.3064:

MSFone.3026:

I had the same question, as presumably power shatter post patch will have no additional condition dmg beyond base stats. I would guess you are right in the above. I think on the other hand that condi builds will be even stronger post patch, and most of those take staff. So really this will just make GS sw/t shatter even more preferred over double ranged. Since sw/t is already generally preferred, this actually won’t change things too much I think,

Good point. And yeah I still think condi will suck as long as the cele war/engi +dps guard comp dominates, and yeah I think it will be a slight disadvantage, but I’ll still take staff just to have an edge over dps guard/ cele war.

s/t is not preferred by most top players because of the current meta. cele engi has little condi clear so that point is completely false, msot dps guards are bad at cleasing condis even though they have plenty of condi clear because they use it to burst, too. Regardless staff does help against meditation guardians, chaos storm can have an extremely low cooldown if properly managing chaos armor, and grants protection on chaos armor are bot hon the way to CI which ( pre chronomancer atleast) will likely be the best choice for a purely damage oriented shatter build.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Fay.2357:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

142.5 × 80.81 × 1.25 = WAY TOO MUCH

Might want to check your math at this point.

My bad, misread the condition duration as confusion duration. 8.24 bleed/duelist * 3 duelsts = 24.72 bleeds total, 24.72*1.65 = 40.788 bleeds full total.

You got the confusion right at 15.3, so totals out to 55.

I’m also failing to see where you get the random 1.25 multiplier from at the end, so let me give you a corrected final value.

142.5*55 = 7837 dps.

Fun fact, if I use your numbers, I get 142.5*80*1.25 = 14250 dps.

Want to take a guess at what the dps for a warrior or ele in a dps group is?

…It’s around 14k.

Want to take a guess how realistic it will be to maintain 3 duelists in any scenario?

Absolutely unrealistic.

Want to take a guess at how dead the boss will be by the time you get 3 duelists up and fully ticking?

Very dead.

In summary

You mathed wrong, and even if you mathed right, your conclusion is hilariously wrong.

First off, the 1.25 is vuln.

Second, that 14k number is ONLY the condition damage from the Duelists. In case you forgot, you still deal direct damage.

this would also exclude the condi damage dealt by the mesmer, who is applying condis and direct damage him/her self assuming you did not calculate that in.

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

142.5 × 80.81 × 1.25 = WAY TOO MUCH

Might want to check your math at this point.

My bad, misread the condition duration as confusion duration. 8.24 bleed/duelist * 3 duelsts = 24.72 bleeds total, 24.72*1.65 = 40.788 bleeds full total.

You got the confusion right at 15.3, so totals out to 55.

I’m also failing to see where you get the random 1.25 multiplier from at the end, so let me give you a corrected final value.

142.5*55 = 7837 dps.

Fun fact, if I use your numbers, I get 142.5*80*1.25 = 14250 dps.

Want to take a guess at what the dps for a warrior or ele in a dps group is?

…It’s around 14k.

Want to take a guess how realistic it will be to maintain 3 duelists in any scenario?

Absolutely unrealistic.

Want to take a guess at how dead the boss will be by the time you get 3 duelists up and fully ticking?

Very dead.

In summary

You mathed wrong, and even if you mathed right, your conclusion is hilariously wrong.

Your hilariously wrong, you read the DnT forums page and they list around 14k ( they prove this with a lot of math and long calculations) as a maximum of 14k dps in the most optimal party for a period under 25s. Any higher and the dps degrades due lack of buffs or delay to rebuff and aside from this you don’t factor dps uptime ( you have to dodge roll or your dead and doing no damage at all).

Ok, but even if you knock it down to say 12k dps, which is the more average value, there’s still no way mesmer is realistically going to be cracking that. The duelists will take over 10 seconds each to actually arrive at maximum dps from the conditions, and by that time the boss is mostly dead. Add in an original 4 seconds of start-up time for the casting and it’s even worse.

On top of all that, bosses squish illusions instantly (as we all know). Maintaining 3 duelists up is something that can realistically be done on a very few bosses.

Sadrien.3470:

This is obviously a mistake on your part…… and mathed isn’t a word please don’t use such ridiculous slang when it isn’t even something people say.

No, you’re definitely mistaken here. I used the term, and that definitionally means that it’s good and proper english, because I am the quintessence of perfect grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

In a good team 12k is a more average number, that we can agree on. In a pug group eles normally get about 8 – 10k damage per second on staff unless stuck with a totally incompetent pug group, which happens often enough in fractals. This is assuming the ele is not oneshot because he miss times a dodge and is not running the lava tomb trait ( in which case you can get higher damage when downed by 2x lavafont + 33% damage). It very much depends on the encounter, team, and eles skill lvl.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Don’t forget iElasticity as baseline.

With the changes to confusion, I’m really interested to see the kind of damage a scepter/pistol + staff mesmer can pull out when you consider:

• Mistrust (3x AoE confusion on interrupt.)
• Pistol trait change (50% cd on interrupt. Phants bleed on crit. SEPARATE from sharper images)
• Perplex Runes (MORE confusion on interrupt)
• IP baseline (more damage from F2)
• Scepter trait (2x torment damage)

Ohhh man. Condi lockdown is looking like it’ll pump out some crazy damage.

I have my own theorectical condi builds that look extremely op right now but there will be even more condi cleanse after the changes….. in spvp where everyone grouped around point I doubt if you will even be able to apply a single stack of bleed against certain comps :C even mesmers get access to AoE cleanse from the inspiration line.
In WvW roaming I see huge potential for extremely powerful condi builds usign perplexity runes….. and there will be little counter play to them once confusion has flat damage.

Fay.2357:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

142.5 × 80.81 × 1.25 = WAY TOO MUCH

Might want to check your math at this point.

My bad, misread the condition duration as confusion duration. 8.24 bleed/duelist * 3 duelsts = 24.72 bleeds total, 24.72*1.65 = 40.788 bleeds full total.

You got the confusion right at 15.3, so totals out to 55.

I’m also failing to see where you get the random 1.25 multiplier from at the end, so let me give you a corrected final value.

142.5*55 = 7837 dps.

Fun fact, if I use your numbers, I get 142.5*80*1.25 = 14250 dps.

Want to take a guess at what the dps for a warrior or ele in a dps group is?

…It’s around 14k.

Want to take a guess how realistic it will be to maintain 3 duelists in any scenario?

Absolutely unrealistic.

Want to take a guess at how dead the boss will be by the time you get 3 duelists up and fully ticking?

Very dead.

In summary

You mathed wrong, and even if you mathed right, your conclusion is hilariously wrong.

Your hilariously wrong, you read the DnT forums page and they list around 14k ( they prove this with a lot of math and long calculations) as a maximum of 14k dps in the most optimal party for a period under 25s. Any higher and the dps degrades due lack of buffs or delay to rebuff and aside from this you don’t factor dps uptime ( you have to dodge roll or your dead and doing no damage at all). This is obviously a mistake on your part…… and mathed isn’t a word please don’t use such ridiculous slang when it isn’t even something people say.

lujate.5432:

Right now, turret Engi’s & D/D Ele’s are the biggest PITA.

Staff & Sc/P
0/4/6/04

L2P :P turrets melt to condis now so it shouldn’t be hard (post turret nerf), d/d eles can out sustain condi pressure for a long time if played properly.

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Actually there are more than that ( a couple), and though they are few, using these tactics against them is rewarding and skillful compared to raw dps icebow / spamming.
And pls. Mesmer dps is low already in pretty much all content with any AoEs because our phantasms die after the first attack and you can’t always reflect bosses attacks. I’m not saying you should run condi gear the entire time but there are scenarios it is legitimately better to swap to condi gear by a long ways.

Not really. In a good party, you’re moving rapidly. The time it takes you to swap to condie gear from normal gear and respec into a condie build from a normal build will very likely be almost as long as it takes to kill the entire boss, longer in a very good party.

Subject alpha dies in literally 10 seconds tops in a good dps party. That inquest guy in something similar.

I can swap as we approach the boss / eliminating the time your factoring in almost completely if not so. Regardless in pug fractals / dungeons the dps is never that high (unless you get really lucky). I have to remind warriors to run banners…………………………………….
Since your sinister there are very few build changes you take for most swaps, you trait dps for the most part. Mesmer is a little hard but the changes aren’t too much, just swap in a scepter and take Illusions line adding 3 traits. If anet ever decides to add a build book this will become instant.

You also tend to site subject Alpha and this asuran as if they are the only people in the world this can work on ( not true, maybe I shall compile a list).

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Actually there are more than that ( a couple), and though they are few, using these tactics against them is rewarding and skillful compared to raw dps icebow / spamming.
And pls. Mesmer dps is low already in pretty much all content with any AoEs because our phantasms die after the first attack and you can’t always reflect bosses attacks. I’m not saying you should run condi gear the entire time but there are scenarios it is legitimately better to swap to condi gear by a long ways ( I keep both sets in my inventory for this reason, when I do pve). I run with pugs, so the dps on Zerker is never optimal anyways and the confusion burst does get way higher. I’m pretty sure anet considers all of these bosses a bug…

Windwalker.7421:

messiah.1908:

for now it sound like they split the confusion into bleeding which does constant dmg and confusion which proc dmg when using attack skill. while lowering both dmg.
thus ending in nerfing more confusion dmg

This is also my only concern with the change. I agree it was weak in PvE and mostly weak in PvP, but why then is it (from the looks of it anyway) getting a change that results in overall parity at best!? They should simply tack the DoT onto the current Confusion without nerfing the on-action part, because that part was already too weak and durations on Confusion are generally too short to be compared to the other DoT Conditions.

Look everyone now already complains that Condie builds are useless due to all the passive & AoE cleanses out there, and adding yet another DoT is not exactly helping things. Confusion now gets cleared incidentally, and will just the same after the patch, however at least now it’ll tick 1-2 decent spike damage ticks while very likely under the new system you may also only get 1-2 DoT ticks and drastically reduced on-action tick(s).

I just hope the net result was carefully calculated there, and not just balanced via “shooting from the hip.” Confusion is barely viable at the moment, mostly unviable in fact, so the net result should be a significant boost. I don’t see another DoT that gets cleared LONG before it ever ticks out as a boost. Confusion is the only real burst Condition that can compete with DD burst, and after the patch from the looks of Dragon Hunters (chuckle) it’ll be stacked Burns that will provide the biggest burst.

Too bad for us since our ability to stack Burn is very limited.

They don’t want confusion stacking mesmers blowing up bosses in fractals Right now it’s a good idea to keep some sinister gear with you for bosses with high attack rates as an engi, mesmer because there are bosses that can be blown up in mere seconds by well timed confusion stacks. And anet want to make it passive and useless, just like applying cripple to a leaping target, or skillfully timing swiftness leaps with rocket boots for tricks in certain areas. These 2 changes kill it for me. All the other changes are good.

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases ( sometimes a lot more) and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

DrixTrix.7168:

well thanks all for the replies, as for when i left it was during LS S2 i liked the story but honestly just got a bit well probobly burned out and a bit frustrated of no PvP ladder.

i have fully updated and already want to buy some of the new armour from the gem store…lol well ill give it a shot i think im going to level up my ranger, i always wanted to know what they where like at 80, and wait until HoT full details to see if / when i pick it up and play the mesmer again.

and nice to see you still around Fay, seeing as you used to (or still are?) a somewhat expert or adopter of the mantra builds, how are they now?

also any of the old guard came back? ChaosArchangel, Osicat, Pyroatheist ? not sure if chaos ever left tbh, but id say those where the golden days of my GW2 play time, trying to hunt them out (and you lol.

Mesmer is getting huge buffs within this month (hopefully Tuesday). After the specialization changes.

DrixTrix.7168:

new or revamped builds, argh man that means lots of testing just for the hell of it.

and wait what, pyro is fay, fay is pyro? or i’ve missed the irony/joke here? lol. – either way this may sound dim chukkles

ok just done some ransom PvP, i got about 8 chests….like WHAT?! i need to catch up on some more patch notes, and clear up my inventory god kitten its messy.

on that is there anything i REALLY should keep?

p.s. i missed my mesmer just had some super-fun in pvp, looks like ill pick it up agai slowly after all at least until i decide about HoT

and the mists seemed to be packed solid….i dont remember it being that busy. cool.

Most people afk there after the bank / tp / laurel vendor were added.

Pvp chest can drop ascended so near throw them away!!! (Rare chance of ascended armor, I finally got some good condi armor because of it).

Emtiarbi.3281:

The traits seems so interesting, here is a support build i made

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMCrAP4BJw~

Pros
- Boon Sharing
- Healing on Mantras
- Lots of Reflections
- Confusion Presure with clones
- I think is easy to scape if the enemy try to focus you, using stealth and blink out of combat.
- I could change evasive mirror on dueling with blinding dissipation so i can shatter a lot and blind enemies arround me if they try to focus me, as now we will have IP baseline.

I’m not good at pointing at cons, this is mostly for SPvP Mesmer Support using Celestial Amulet maybe?
I would use Staff and Scepter/Focus (or maybe Sword/Focus?). Also Mantra of Recovery, Decoy, Blink and Mantra of Pain or Null Field. Elite would be Moa or Mass Invi.

Thoughs?

Your builds lacks boon sharing or AoE vigor / heals. It’s not so much normal support as a glamour / pvp reflect build imo . This does not mean it won’t work.

My thoughts :

Taking CI gives much more support through cc and boon on shatters has more boon juggling capabilities (tons of safe stomps and AoE support).
Taking illusionary inspiration will grant all your boons to your allies whenever you use a phantasm skill, this is very strong, where as the glamour GM feels mediocre.

BlackBeard.2873:

Earth:

Stone flesh – Personally, I would get rid of lingering elements, and just make stone-flesh linger like soothing mist does naturally. Alternatively, make it a smaller toughness boost but aoe.

Earth’s Embrace – needs to proc above 25% health (as you will frequently just go from above 25% to dead).

Serrated stones – have crits apply bleeds. Elementalists need a way to apply bleeds outside of earth if they are going to be locked out of earth for so long.

Strength of stone – conversion traits are boring. This would be cooler if it converted vulnerability into bleeds or something of that nature.

Rock solid – This could be 10 stacks for 2s (essentially what it was originally) and it would still be ok. Just increase the stacks above 1.

Diamond skin – This has been discussed many times, but I hate this trait. It either hard-counters people, or is worthless. I understand this can, in-theory, be useful for burst builds so to remove counter-pressure options, but that doesn’t work for ele like it does for thief b/c its much harder to get the jump on someone when you are visible as you slowly work your way to within 900 range. Instead, I would love if this had per-attunement resistances to give more interesting counter-play.

Water:
Piercing shards – if this is not going to linger in any way, it needs to go. Even if I wanted a max-dps build, I wouldn’t take this. This needs to impact other attunements if they want a dps-oriented trait here.

Stop, drop, and roll – nobody will take this over soothing ice (unless that CD is really long). This would be AMAZING as an adept in fire so that there were some viable condi-clear options outside of water.

Aquatic benevolence – if this is going to be minor, it has to have some positive benefit for the ele.

Powerful aura – I agree completely it should reduce aura CD’s by 20% (even though that only impacts a maximum of 2 skills). Alternatively, could increase base duration a bit (but frost aura is already pretty long).

Bountiful power – I’m not really sure why they have so many dps traits in water, but this could see USE in pve and high-dps builds. I would prefer a trait that made chill do damage so that condi ele could get some more pressure. Honestly, THIS trait belongs in arcana, tbh, not water.

Agreed, chill doing condi damage would be much better.