Guild Wars 2

Healing prism procs on many different types of healing BUT has a 10s cooldown. So no healing every 3s.

Hi
I just had a quick look and my first reaction is: why scepter? You do not have a condi build (and that would be a bad idea anyway in a zerg) and sword offer cleave and much more defenses.

My second point would be why precog? I don’t think the 3 aegis and little endurance are worth the CD.

Finally, I am not sure your build brings much to the table. You have no damage because of your gear (and because we are mesmers), you do not have any significant AOE healing nor condi cleanse. You pretty much JUST survive.

The only thing you bring are some staff boons and some alacrity, all of which you could easily bring by staying in the backline (since they are ranged skills) and gearing/building for higher damage.

Dadnir.5038:

From my point of view this concept may be attractive but fight to much with the core traits of the necromancer.

Yes, it is true that this was one of the main trouble I had. Though I think overall, I ended up fixing most issues.

Let’s be realist, the whole F key mechansim make useless traits that are specific to the Shroud#1 skill

Far from it. Being a multi hit attack, we actually get a lot of benefits from F1-traits. If all hits connect, each F1 attack would mean 6 might (Reaper’s Might), 6 vulnerabilities (Unyielding Blast) and/or 6 burning (Dhuumfire). This is a lot of benefits!

and It also nullify the life saving device that Unholy Sanctuary is (Death defiance would not insure that it work, it would just replace it making the trait, defacto, useless).

this one was the most difficult. But death defiance does not make it useless. If unholy sanctuary is not there to activate the shroud at the last second, death defiance will not heal you.

Beside you need to take one thing in consideration, The necromancer need a lot of HP to use it’s corruptions skill and sustain it’s “role” as a condi-sponge that draw condition from allies. (I wouldn’t mind if they were to delete totally this thing but it’s here and there is even a GM trait that is dedicated to it)

It’s a totally different role, so yes, some utilities won’t synergize as well, but for me that is the point of an elite spec.

Another point that hurt me is the fact that you say that the necromancer can’t burst. That is a false assomption. The necromancer don’t burst with it’s weapon but with it’s utility that’s the major difference between the necromancer and most of the other profession and this doesn’t make it worse at bursting.

That can be argued. Though you cannot disagree that necromancer overall is tailored for long fights: slowly filling death shroud, slowly building up might and vulnerability.

What the necromancer really need is not “burst” but “altruism”. The mindless dps statut of the necromancer is what hurt him the most in PvE. (Un)Fortunately, it’s irrelevant in PvP.

I would say burst and mobility is a big missing. As for altruism, I perfectly agree with you. However, I think this is something that needs to be fixed at the core level. For me necro is (or should be) altruistic by its “debuff”. So a necro won’t empower its allies, but will weaken the enemy, effectively increasing the damage dealt by ally. Vulnerability is a good example though unfortunately it has become trivial to max up on it in a group. I have suggested for some time to change “blood is power” to a unique debuff increasing the damage dealt to this enemy by 10% or so (essentially the same thing as classes like ranger with their frost spirit, but as a debuff and not a buff, which fits more the necro theme).

Zero Solstice.9754:

I’ll be honest with you, the concept looks very fun, but both offkey and too strong as it is on paper.

Thanks for taking your time going through this
I did spend some time trying to think this through, so many of the critics you give me are actually things I had thought of. So below are the reasonings to my choice.

In general, I just want to mention that the loss of death shroud has very strong consequences on the sustain of the class. Try to take a PvP fight as a necro without using your shroud, it would be difficult to win it!
This is why I think it is very hard to know how strong or not this elite spec would be, and why I may (or may not) have overturned some defensive elements.

For example, Necromancer as a class just doesn’t need to have stealth; it’s not in our flavor chart. However, there are fun ways we could create pseudo-stealtkitten to Necromancer’s flavor. For example, imagine if instead Death Veil put down a 900 radius smoke field. Instead of stealthing the Necro, the Necro turns into a shadow, which is still targettable and visible (kind of like the Strawberry Ghost food), however immune to all damage via evade for as long as they remain in the field and have not attacked a target. Opponents in the field may or may not get blinded, depends on how strong the concept is in action.

This creates a very Necromancer-style ability, in which the Necromancer is simply stronger than the opponent through area denial and the mitigation of the evade, however it gives Necro a pseudo-stealth capacity to attack an opponent precisely when they feel the timing is right.

I actually felt that stealth was not off-theme at all. As you said, being in the shadow. When designing death veil, I had in mind for example the reaper being invisible to all and appearing to you only when it is time to collect your soul.

But there are definitely many ways to play with the theme with a similar effect.

Another concept which could use help is Hellfire. In your tooltip, this appears to be a ranged ability with no windup, no projectile, and multiple strikes of increasing coefficients.
The thing to understand is that for abilities like these, to offset the extremely high damage potential of the ability, you need to make sure it has a “tell”, so that players can have time to react and counterplay such an important cooldown. Also, being that you want this spec to be for burst-style play, that means this ability should have low base values and high scaling. With that in mind, you really need to obey that balancing rule. It could be that you meant for the 1/2 second cast time to be preparing the ability, and the strikes come after, but that remains unclear. The AoE and fire field aspect of the skill also feel overtuned, as an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t really create a field, and an ability that tracks a target shouldn’t be able to cleave out the people next to him, especially if the actual target is dodging the ability, but those ideas are mostly just my opinion with no real backing.

I obviously was not clear enough in my description. The reason I settled for a short cast time is because the skill DOES NOT track the target. It appears at its feet and then stay there, so by simply stepping away, the enemy avoids the bulk of the damage.

As I said, many things may need tuning, but this is not as strong as you understood it.

As for traits, there are some pretty real issues:
Intimidation is too strong as an adept trait, and its effect is erroneous given that a large number of Necromancer CC is already unblockable, such as Wail of Doom, traited Reaper’s Mark, corrupting Stability with Corrupt Boon, and any combination of abilities with “Nothing Can Save You!”. Also, it doesn’t make sense to make fear unblockable, but not the actual ability that applies fear.

As you said, reaper already has many unblockable fears, which is partly why this trait is not that strong. But I agree that this trait mostly came from lack of idea.

Just one detail, “nothing can save you” is a reaper skill, meaning that as it is currently, it won’t be available to the next elite spec.

Shadow Fury scaling is too high for an adept trait.

This is a scaling to only one skill. I don’t know if this is really that strong…

Otherworldly Immunity seems too strong with your idea of stealth, but I think it could be workable after tweaking the durations with the above listed idea for Death Veil.

again, it applies to only one skill and is limited by its cooldown. I am not sure it is that strong. But as usual, I have no idea how this elite spec would fare overall.

Ghostly Avoidance doesn’t need to exist, since Necro already has Reaper’s Protection.

Seeing how little tankiness the elite spec would have without death shroud, we need some CC protection. Having a bit of overlap with another trait is not a problem since not everyone will run death magic. Also, it is quite a bit less obnoxious than a passive fear!

Unbound Soul vigor has too long of a duration, probably shoot for something like 6 seconds.

I did hesitate for this one. My main reason to go for this is that 10s is not much seeing as it only activates on entering shroud. Most of the traits of this type try to arrange for 50% vigor uptime “base”, and I figured 10s in shroud and 10s waiting for shroud will already mean 50%. Stay longer in shroud and you get less than 50%.

For mantras:
Mantra of Corruption is a little over the top when combined with a lot of the baseline Necromancer corruption that has been added in recent time.

I most probably agree with you. In one hand, I would love boons to have as much counterplay as conditions have since they are supposed to be alter egos. On the other hand, I know boon corruption already feels over the top. Maybe boon rip?

Blaze should be single target to make coefficient balancing easier, however the burn application being AoE could be something to play with.

I did hesitate for AOE vs single target. Overall, I see the warlock as a duelist/executioner, so single target makes more sense. I still went for AOE because I know mantra of pain (very similar utility) is AOE and still barely used…

Kodama.6453:

Seems very interesting. I would love to see torches for necromancers, I think the whole hellfire fits really well.

Just one point: your elite mantra is way too strong. It has 3 charges and it is insta cast, which means when your enemy is activating his healing skill you can activate the mantra in the last second. He wouldn’t receive any healing while his healing skill is on full recharge. Basically, you are shutting down the healing skill of any other player with this skill which is just a too huge advantage in pvp.

Please rethink this one.

I specifically wrote “external healing”, meaning healing from allies. I clearly agree denying full healing would be too strong, and I thought this would already be quite strong (but not OP) in a team fight. Maybe situational, but useful. And it would create a unique niche for the necro as an executioner.

Otherwise, glad you like some of the ideas.

New necromancer specialization: the warlock a dark mage with strong inner fire.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-ES-the-warlock-a-burst-and-DPS-spec/first#post6094838

The main aspect of this specialization is that the warlock shroud does not act as a second life bar but instead unlocks shroud skills on the F1 to F4 keys when activated (meaning your weapons and utilities are still available to you).

To make up for it, the warlock specialization include many mobility and active defenses skills and traits as well as burst damage.

This specialization is mostly played as a roamer/executioner role.

Hi all

Here is my contribution to the game of inventing new elite specs, with a very un-original name: the warlock.

Don’t phantasms get alacrity from our AOE alacrity (wells or shield) as long as no other target has priority?

I know it does not help at all in group environment, but it does at least boost our solo DPS.

In general, the problem of this game which makes it so hard to balance is the amount of negation there is. Invulnerabilities, evades, blocks, reflects, condi cleanse, resistance, etc… This allows some builds/classes to completely shut down some others.

A block should not remove all damage but simply reduce it (possibly by a lot but not fully) and the same for the other mechanics. That would make gw2 PvP much healthier…

Ario.8964:

Except while there is negation for power via blocks, evades, invuln, blind, protection, toughness, vitality, etc. There is no boon or negation to condi damage. That’s why people get upset by it is because if it’s on them (and it’s easy to stack past people’s condi clear limit) there’s nothing they can do to prevent the damage. At least that’s what I understand to be most people’s reason for disliking condi. I personally have no issue with the DoT type build or the condi playstyle but I do see where people’s arguments lie.

Nothing can be more wrong than this statement. Blocks, evades, invuln and blinds do counter condi damage the same way they counter power damage. Condi don’t just magically happen on you, you need to get hit by an attack to get them. And this attack can be countered the exact same way any attack does.

On top of that, resistance is a boon that completely negates condi damage. Finally, you can cleanse condi.

So overall, there are much more negation to condi damage than power damage. And THAT is actually the problem. Conditions cannot be balanced because there are too many ways to negate them. Power damage is usually mitigated (toughness/protection) while condi is simply negated (resistance, cleanse). So to be balanced with power considering how much they are negated, condi have to be stronger than power. Hence the answer to your second part.

DeathStorm is Unreal.5217:

Gear:

I’m aware that damage values are standardized, but is armor also standardized as well? Does what I have equipped not matter at all? I ask because it seems like my sustain is extremely low. I know I have to use my abilities appropriately in order to survive, but it still feels like I’m a complete glass cannon. For instance, two abilities from anyone is usually enough to kill me. Is this right? Is there something within my equipment that needs to change? I’m only level 14 overall so my gear is bad.

I remember reading that ascended gear is necessary for pvp and seeing in a video that it could be bought for free. But, I don’t see this free gear at any of the merchants and I have the full game purchased.

Your gear does not matter at all. The only thing which matters are those you can find in the PvP build tab. So all your gear stats are replaced completely with the “amulet” and the “rune” stats. Ele now plays with cleric. This is a very small amount of HP, and only works because of the large amount of healing you can get if you build appropriately.

General build:

I don’t see any D/D builds on metabattle. Is there a build you can recommend for me? Currently I’m most comfortable with fire and air. I know I’ll need to utilize all stances to be effective, but for the time being a solid build that favors those two stances would be appreciated.

To start with, I would really recommend using a more “meta” build. If you have HoT, this is the auramancer. If you have only the core game, it is D/D ele, but with celestial gone, D/D ele is worse than before, and with HoT, D/D ele was already outgunned. That is the sad state of PvP, you really need the expansion to have a shot.

That does not mean you can’t play core ele, but you will have harder time. You can probably find old D/D ele build templates, I can just tell you the traitlines are usually fire or earth and water+arcane. I think earth is a better choice than fire currently.

Mechanics:

I have seen builds that suggest procs that activate on weapon change. However, with D/D both weapons are always out? How does that work?

They activate on switching elements (be careful, most have an internal cooldown, so they won’t proc at every element swap).

Asrat.2645:

Hmmm. That is a little odd definition of support. So damage is support too because you can force enemies to disengage and not deal damage?
When i talk about support I mean: Boons, healing, aoe cleanse, ressing.
And all of this but cleansing does not really have a place at the necro.

You can see it that way, but effectively, if you decrease the damage of you enemy or increase the resistance of your allies, you are doing the exact same thing, so separating them does not make much sense. Damage is a very different thing on the other hand, though ultimately, anything that you do helps your team.

I also usually like to separate healing from other forms of support, simply because it depends on a different set of stats.

I don’t think the identity of the class should be expressed as a damage/condi/support-type pattern. I think all classes should be approximately equally strong in those terms as long as they build for it, but they should do it in a different way.

For example, I see guardian and necro as two opposite classes, but they should both be able to play a support build. Yet they would ideally do it in a very different way, with guardian providing boons, cleansing conditions etc… while the necro provides debuff to the enemy (conditions), remove their boons and add some control. Those two should be effectively as strong, and this can be seen in the way condis and boons mirror each other: blind and aegis, weakness and protection, vulnerability and might, etc…

We had a bit of that with bunker chronomancer, who provided a very different type of support to what auramancer (or the old bunker guard) provided (alacrity,control and quickness rez vs raw healing, auras and boons).

Good Tofu.9376:

Salamander.2504:

I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.

Not sure, if I remember correctly I saw just as many moaning threads then as I do now.

At this time, all classes had a spot on the meta, some with even more than one build (burn guard or bunker guard), only ranger was a bit weak and D/D ele a bit strong. I haven’t played the game since the beginning, but for me this was a very fun meta.

Now, with elite specs, the balance is much worse, and also, the build diversity is awful. Before HoT, I could play non-meta builds without being a burden for my team. Now, the gap between non-meta and meta has strongly increased, in great part because of the elite spec power creep.

People will always complain, and to be fair, the pre-HoT meta was not perfect. You still could not really play damage elementalist or bunker mesmer (yet), but it was a vastly better one than now.

Quadox.7834:

Power Shatter is terribad. You are a moabot and portalbot with nothing else to bring.

Basically, the way I interpret it, power shatter does not work compare to condi for many reasons, but at least those:

• You cannot play bruiser since we have very little sustained damage, you are forced to play marauder. On the other hand, condi shatter can spam clones and shatter to actually get decent damage and thus still work with the bruiser mercenary amulet. Also in general, because the way condi damage scales, mercenary has higher damage output that paladin.
• in the same principle, there are so many evades/blocks/invulnerabilities that one burst every 10s (or more) does not work (likely to be fully negated). Again, sustained damage is better.
• You currently need chronomancer for continuum split and inspiration to survive condis (playing without condi cleanse is simply not an option anymore), leaving only 1 line. Power needs domination to get some damage output while condi need illusion. The missing ingredient is dueling, especially for DE, but for condi shatter, this is not a problem since chronomancy allows you a lot of clones which is all you need (shatter spam). On the other hand power shatter requires on-demand clone instead of just clone spam, so dueling is still needed. Also, dueling brings great defensive tools (blind, vigor) that chrono does not bring and which are essential with a marauder amulet (not as much with a mercenary).
• in general, the roaming role is dead because of the overall tankiness of every build. You cannot burst someone down fast enough, so you just get into permanent team fights (or small skirmishes) which do not favor power shatter very much.

Azukas.1426:

Silverkey.2078:

You have a way to use “absolute” statements as if they were self-given. But they are not.

No the bunker build did not need to die. It needed a nerf, sure, but support builds should have a place in the game. I don’t enjoy a 5-bruiser team, I don’t find it fun. Yet that is what gw2 is converging to again. Everybody runs paladin or mercenary, everybody can heal, everybody can CC, everybody can damage, this is just ridiculous. I like playing support, which is why I ran bunker chrono since BWE1 (at a time where it was not nearly as effective as when finally released). But now, I just cannot justify playing the build because despite my attempts, it just does not provide enough support to justify using it.

The reason this build was “cancer” is because of the too high personal survivability and the too easy rez. The amulet change and the end of quickness rez already removed an important part of the usefulness of the build. Precog needed to be changed, but not the way it was done.

We don’t provide much on-demand healing, alacrity (and to a lesser extent quickness) was our saving grace, but they are a bit too weak right now (partly because they are hard to share properly).

I don’t want OP builds, I want build diversity. There are only 9 classes in this game, if they don’t provide some diversity, this makes the game rather poor.

1st: The overwhelming majority of players and dev team are on my side in regards to bunker mes. So yes it is an absolute and what I say is FACT. If it were not I’d be in the minority w/out dev support like you.

No they are not. Everybody agreed the build was OP, me first. Very few (if any) said the build should disappear.

2nd: Thank you for clearing it all up. You are upset because anet took away your God mode. I can understand your frustrations that you are going through. It gets better trust me. If you want to take this to PM so we don’t litter a thread with this I’m willing to help you.

Thanks for the condescending tone. I understand it, there are two categories of people in a debate, those who use facts and reasons, and those who use emotions.

In this case, I just want to note that you’re simply wrong.

I have been suggesting nerf to chronomancer since BWE3. That is when precog and continuous block were added to it. At this time, I already realized that being able to chain block, evades, blur etc… was stupid. I suggested among others a reduced block duration and reduced alacrity and that precog was probably too strong. While my analysis was not perfect at the time (since it was only after a short beta), I think the elements I called “too strong” were indeed too strong.

So I am obviously not the one who wants to play an OP profession.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/BWE3-Chronomancer-Feedback-Thread/page/4#post5575210

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

So would you like to try and explain how what they did to well of precognition was justfied?

Was precog too strong? Of course it was. Was the series of nerfs they slapped it with justified? Obviously not. The skill barely performs a function now, it’s incredibly weak.

You’ve also failed to justify the alacrity nerf. Alacrity was nerfed due to PvE considerations, not PvP. You may want to touch up on your history there.

Through all the nerfs our mesmers are still in the meta. A meta which is leaps and bounds better than that cancer we were forced to sit through last season.

There were no over nerfs to mesmers. The bunker build had to die. There was no other way, and the fact that anet kept us in the meta post mortem is a testament to how well thought out the nerf was. One could even argue that mesmer was so broken OP that even after a drubbing with the nerf bat we are still very strong.

Food for thought

You have a way to use “absolute” statements as if they were self-given. But they are not.

No the bunker build did not need to die. It needed a nerf, sure, but support builds should have a place in the game. I don’t enjoy a 5-bruiser team, I don’t find it fun. Yet that is what gw2 is converging to again. Everybody runs paladin or mercenary, everybody can heal, everybody can CC, everybody can damage, this is just ridiculous. I like playing support, which is why I ran bunker chrono since BWE1 (at a time where it was not nearly as effective as when finally released). But now, I just cannot justify playing the build because despite my attempts, it just does not provide enough support to justify using it.

The reason this build was “cancer” is because of the too high personal survivability and the too easy rez. The amulet change and the end of quickness rez already removed an important part of the usefulness of the build. Precog needed to be changed, but not the way it was done.

We don’t provide much on-demand healing, alacrity (and to a lesser extent quickness) was our saving grace, but they are a bit too weak right now (partly because they are hard to share properly).

I don’t want OP builds, I want build diversity. There are only 9 classes in this game, if they don’t provide some diversity, this makes the game rather poor.

Azukas.1426:

More teams ran mesmer than teams that did not. The best teams ran mesmer, and i’m willing to bet week 2 will see most teams copying the composition that the last NA game ran.

As a mesmer main I can honestly say Anet did a great job with my class in terms of nerfing/balancing. We remain in the meta and not super OP. We can contribute in all aspects of a match. We as a class are FINE and need nothing.

If you can’t see this then you should look at the 3 classes that are actually hurting at this time.

Yes sure, we are not in the worst place, like guardian, thief or warrior. But saying mesmer is fine and needs nothing is just a joke.

First, I haven’t enjoyed PvP as much as before since HoT. I just don’t enjoy the CC, condi, invulnerability, boon orgy, healing etc… which can be spammed every second. Those are not fun mechanics. All elite specs and a few core specs need a big nerf hammer to those stupidities.

Then, could a-net actually try to give the build diversity their system is made for? Why do we bother having 6 trait lines, 54 non-minor traits, about 50 skills, etc… per class if only one or 2 builds are viable? The gap in efficiency between meta and non-meta builds have just widened with the power creep. I don’t pretend that it is easy to balance everything so that all classes have access to a few meta or near-meta builds for all game modes, but I really feel that after 3-4 years, we should have reached this stage.

So for mesmer, I am not happy with having condi chrono as only option. I liked core-power shatter, I liked bunker chrono, I liked the old condi mesmer. I want to be able to play those without being a burden for my team. And this statement is valid for all classes, I like power reaper, I like bunker guard, yet I can’t play them.

This is an obvious result from HoT power creep. Core classes are designed to fulfill different roles, and elite specs were here to add diversity by allowing a new type of roll. But because the elite specs are so much stronger, all old builds are dead and you are now forced to play the elite specs, which are designed for a specific roll.

For example: guardian had offensive (condi or power) and support builds. DH was meant as a more selfish version and does not support condi as much: only power build left.

#RevertThePowerCreep

Eponet.4829:

Fay.2357:

apharma.3741:

Pretty much what Pyro and Silverkey said and I especially agree with Silverkey about F5.

I’d much rather see them remove F5 though as reducing an elite to <90s CD by picking Chrono not just feels required but it adds to the one trick pony.

Ah yes, the classic ‘lets eviscerate PvE mesmers because the PvP folks are getting antsy’ suggestion. I’ll pass on that one.

Stuff like this is the main reason that the devs (in truth) rarely pay attention to feedback from players. The balance devs aren’t experienced enough with the game to be able to separate the unbiased feedback from the biased feedback, but they are intelligent enough to realize that 99% of feedback given is myopically focused on one aspect of the game with zero consideration for anything else. Therefor, they make the judgement call that operating with zero feedback is better than operating with potentially awful feedback.

If continuum split is the only reason that Chronomancers are useful in PvE, maybe they’re too much of a one trick pony and need that power redistributed to other areas too.

Exactly. I always try to take all game modes into consideration when I suggest something. So yes, I think CS is a terrible and unbalanceable idea, and that it should be reworked. At the same time, I think mesmer sustained damage needs to be buffed because it won’t break anything (power shatter mesmer is already dead anyway) but help in many areas. And with an increase sustained damage, a decrease in our utilities in PvE (currently boosted by CS) won’t eviscerate anything (outside of enemy mobs).

The lord is a nice mechanics but it should be a team effort. At least 2 people should go there, not just one random guy.

Giving a HP buff is not enough to prevent that, it would still be soloable. Some people suggested a better heal + a break bar (ideally a breakbar before he starts healing, and thus breaking it would deny the heal). I think that is exactly what is needed. Basically, one player would not have enough CC to break the bar nor enough damage to out-damage the healing.

Mogar.9216:

Silverkey.2078:

This post summarizes well the problem and the reason for those sudden loose streak:

Fay.2357:

Ultimately, experiences like this are the fault of Anet in their design of the league system.

GW2 is a casual game, and they almost always try to make new stuff palatable to causal players. The leagues are no exception, and the hybrid compromise between casual and competitive leaves everyone unhappy.

Amber through sapphire are all easily passed by even the worst players if they play enough games. This is the concession to casual players; being able to progress at least to ruby without having an ounce of skill.

However, ruby suddenly is having none of their kitten, and smacks down people that aren’t able to consistently pump out wins. This creates the massive wall that players like OP are crashing face-first into. Since everybody gets to ruby, there is no competition or challenge up to that point. Once you enter ruby, you’re suddenly exposed to the full and unmitigated challenge of having a massive range of skills all scrunched into one division.

If Anet had made every division equally difficult to progress through, you’d get a more even settling curve where some settled in emerald, some in sapphire, some in ruby, and some in diamond. If Anet had gone full casual and made it equally easy to progress through diamond, there would be no settling and everyone would end up at the top end. By making this compromise system, they’ve simply caused a massive traffic jam to occur in ruby that catches everyone up in it, regardless of skill level.

That is not really true. Fay’s post basically says anyone can get into Ruby. That is not true but lets just say that is.
So Ruby is amber + x number of games played. If that is the case then Ruby should sort out itself very quickly. The best players in Ruby should win streak to top and the bad ones stuck at lower tiers and the somewhat skilled in the middle. So if you are IN ruby already you should get to where you belong very quick and settle there with 50% win rate. The ONLY people who should hit a wall are the very worst players who just enter ruby and belong to the bottom 10% . The fact is people are hitting mmr wall at all tiers of ruby. A lot are hitting the wall at t5/6. That should not happen unless something else is screwed up.

Well his post is a simplification.

You start fighting ruby when you get to the last tiers of emerald and start fighting diamond at the last tiers of ruby, meaning that the wall can hit earlier. But the fact remains that you can pass a threshold (whether it is a “unlosable” tier or a division) on a lucky streak (which statistically are bound to happen) and then end up among people you are not meant to fight.

Because this analysis assumes a “rare” event (you on a lucky streak), there is enough occurrences to flame the forums, but not enough to establish a large population which would eventually push the better up and keep the worse down. So you end up a small number of overranked ruby among people actually belonging to ruby. The few overranked get consistently bad games, while the many well-ranked are still pretty much on a 50-50.

Overall, while his post is simplistic (on purpose I assume), the fact remains that the threshold while feeling very nice for the players at first, may actually contribute to giving him consistently bad matchmaking.

I agree with both those statements. What’s your point?

Currently, there is so much power creep that (nearly) all elite specs need nerf. Warrior may be the exception (yes daredevil needs a few nerfs too).

Then, all classes have a lot of untapped build diversity potential, and thus need buffs and often full rework of their least-used toolkits. For example:

• damage build for elementalist?
• support/bunker or roaming build for necromancers?
• bruiser build for mesmers?
• support/bunker or bruiser build for thief?
• support/bunker build for revenant?

Many of those builds can be made, but are somewhat weak or sometimes completely trash.

Fay.2357:

Ultimately, experiences like this are the fault of Anet in their design of the league system.

GW2 is a casual game, and they almost always try to make new stuff palatable to causal players. The leagues are no exception, and the hybrid compromise between casual and competitive leaves everyone unhappy.

Amber through sapphire are all easily passed by even the worst players if they play enough games. This is the concession to casual players; being able to progress at least to ruby without having an ounce of skill.

However, ruby suddenly is having none of their kitten, and smacks down people that aren’t able to consistently pump out wins. This creates the massive wall that players like OP are crashing face-first into. Since everybody gets to ruby, there is no competition or challenge up to that point. Once you enter ruby, you’re suddenly exposed to the full and unmitigated challenge of having a massive range of skills all scrunched into one division.

If Anet had made every division equally difficult to progress through, you’d get a more even settling curve where some settled in emerald, some in sapphire, some in ruby, and some in diamond. If Anet had gone full casual and made it equally easy to progress through diamond, there would be no settling and everyone would end up at the top end. By making this compromise system, they’ve simply caused a massive traffic jam to occur in ruby that catches everyone up in it, regardless of skill level.

I agree with the description, and I think it would help if you could already loose tiers in emerald. In a sense this just means the wall will come earlier, but this would be a much lower wall. From what Evan (I think) said, the average player will be between emerald and ruby, so the “slightly above average” would be already in ruby while only the “below average” are in emerald. Emerald would thus be reasonably even-matched for most players.

This post summarizes well the problem and the reason for those sudden loose streak:

Fay.2357:

Ultimately, experiences like this are the fault of Anet in their design of the league system.

GW2 is a casual game, and they almost always try to make new stuff palatable to causal players. The leagues are no exception, and the hybrid compromise between casual and competitive leaves everyone unhappy.

Amber through sapphire are all easily passed by even the worst players if they play enough games. This is the concession to casual players; being able to progress at least to ruby without having an ounce of skill.

However, ruby suddenly is having none of their kitten, and smacks down people that aren’t able to consistently pump out wins. This creates the massive wall that players like OP are crashing face-first into. Since everybody gets to ruby, there is no competition or challenge up to that point. Once you enter ruby, you’re suddenly exposed to the full and unmitigated challenge of having a massive range of skills all scrunched into one division.

If Anet had made every division equally difficult to progress through, you’d get a more even settling curve where some settled in emerald, some in sapphire, some in ruby, and some in diamond. If Anet had gone full casual and made it equally easy to progress through diamond, there would be no settling and everyone would end up at the top end. By making this compromise system, they’ve simply caused a massive traffic jam to occur in ruby that catches everyone up in it, regardless of skill level.

So two things to OP:

1. you are stuck in emerald means you are emerald level. There is nothing more to it. The amount of hours played or your success in lower divisions does not make you a good player. I main mesmer but I don’t consider myself a good player, and still I went up to diamond mostly soloq. Mesmer is currently in a so-so spot, but it still has great tools to carry a soloq game, like portal or moa. So if you can’t progress further, you have to look at your own rotations and fighting skills before accusing your team mates. And I don’t mean that as a negative comment: this is a great way to improve. For example, if you feel that you’re always outnumbered, don’t necessarily blame your team for not being around you; maybe blame yourself for putting yourself in this bad match up.

1. on the other hand, all your criticism against the balance is indeed justified. Yes, a-net has been giving out new tools like candies. If you compare new skills to already existing ones, it is hard not to see how much power creep HoT has brought:
2. compare infuse light to defiant stance. Yes they are very similar. But rev have another heal.
3. Surge of the Mists: yes, high damage, insane CC (9 knockbacks?), mobility and evade in one skill…
4. tempest: an elite specialization centered around giving more support and healing to elementalist… because that is exactly what they needed.
5. Sneak Gyro vs Shadow Refuge?

and in general, elite specs were supposed to add build diversity but instead reduced it by completely destroying the “decent” balance we had before.

Xyonon.3987:

Aslong as portal exists I doubt that Mes ever will leave the meta. I’m not a pro pvp player tough so tell me – if Moa really that big of a deal?

This meta, like the previous, is a meta of sustained team fights. Getting the first kill is very difficult, but then the fight can snowball.

Because of the amount of active defenses/sustain that some builds can get (tempest, scrapper, etc…) Moa can really make a large difference, and can allow this first kill.

So yes, moa is strong.

What is exactly the AI part in condi mesmer? It’s not like if our clones/phantasms did anything else than being shattered (or cleaved down before it happens). A condi mesmer cannot just leave his clones doing the work while afk, all the work is done by the mesmer itself.

Azukas.1426:

skcamow.3527:

No shocker about mesmer being in a pro league comp. Every pro league mesmer streamer (even non-mesmer mains) have been playing this spec for weeks. Expect to see a lot more of it until we get nerfed again.

After last balance patch all I read here was that the sky is falling to which I said no.

Feels good to be correct yet again j must say

People complained that mesmer got overnerfed. And it is the case:

• they nerfed alacrity: “AWtEW” out of the meta
• they nerfed chaos armor/“chaotic dampening” and “Bountiful Disillusionment”: the chaos line is out of the meta
• they nerfed temporal enchantement: out of the meta
• they nerfed quickness rez: “seize the moment” out of the meta
• they did not do anything to save power shatter: still out of the meta

The problem is that they had a chance to keep 3 mesmer builds alive (power, condi and bunker), but instead only kept condi which is anyway really just a portal/moa bot (since reaper is otherwise a better condi build in any possible ways).

In summary, a-net has build a system which could support a lot of build variation, but, as usual, is not able to balance so that those variations are reasonably similar in efficiency.

Over 450: 1
400 – 450: 1
300 – 400: 5
200 – 300: 1
100 – 200: 2
Less than 100: 0
Highest losing score was 495 (sad )

7/10 wins (just made it to diamond)

Do you mean WvW roaming?

If so, PU rabid or dire (dueling+chaos+ illusion) still works. Actually, in WvW roaming, chrono is not as mandatory as for other game modes (PvP, PvE, GvG).

I personally don’t like the treb in Kyhlo and it is the main reason I don’t like the map. It is no fun to use (I don’t play PvP to spam 2) and is not fun when used (for or against you) while fighting. Also because of the camera difficulties in mid and the fact that the shot is not always warned, it can take you by surprise and really mess with the fight. The only saving grace is the fact that you can destroy it.

I like svanir/chieftain or meditation secondary mechanics. I like lord, but I think it should not be soloable, it should require some team commitment. Essentially, I like if the mechanics can introduce a team dynamics at a specific moment in the game: a lord push is a great example of that, the treb/hammer is absolutely not.

I think I got OP’s point. This is basically the problem of necro. Necro simply eats open world PvE much easier than anything else. The reason is that while necro DPS in organized content is low, its self-reliance (self-might stack, self-vuln stack, high crit rate in shroud) and its “passive” tankiness is much higher than any other class. This means that in solo content, you can just go head-on a facetank everything while dealing the highest damage of all classes (I believe necro damage has one of the highest if not the highest damage of all when playing solo).

So yes, that makes necro the easiest class in open-world PvE, and this just shows how ill-balanced this class is.

Now that the challenger cup is done, when will season 2 start?

I would actually love the map to keep the water but remove the annoying pets. Water is what made this map so unique.

I don’t think much work would be needed to somewhat balance underwater combat (considering how few weapons and utility skills there are). But that is just not a priority for a-net, which I can understand.

Novamatrix.2569:

apharma.3741:

Pretty much what Pyro and Silverkey said and I especially agree with Silverkey about F5.

I’d much rather see them remove F5 though as reducing an elite to <90s CD by picking Chrono not just feels required but it adds to the one trick pony.

No one is forcing you to use F5. If you don’t wanna be a one trick pony, go play mesmer without using the chrono trait line. I mean…. thats what was added in HoT. EVERY class got a special traitline and skill. they wont remove it because it was intended to be.
There’s literally dozens of neat things you can do using the F5 skill so if you dont like it, or understand how to use it properly, dont play it. k thanks bye

This is a very nice suggestion, but it won’t prevent a-net from balancing all our elites around F5. With all the shouts for nerf to Moa, and given the history of a-net, I would not be surprised if Moa duration get reduced. And this would be an uncalled nerf to core mesmer while the real problem is F5.

Alekt.5803:

People laughing, I don’t get you. We have this OP proposing an alternative way to nerf moa instead of directly nerfing. What’s up with you, people?

Certain cooldowns on the Moa form are too long. Those were never intended for double moa mechanics.

To be fair, the problem here is the DOUBLE moa. Moa is balanced for its cooldown. If well coordinated, it can change the dynamic of a fight, but it is on a long CD. With F5, and “Illusion” traited, you get it for less than half the CD, you can’t expect that to be balanced.

redcomyn.4651:

Fay.2357:

I’m going to go ahead and say that you’re lying. I have literally never advocated a nerf to Mesmer in PvE, so your statement is categorically false.

On top of that, I can fully and completely justify any nerfs I have advocated for. I don’t randomly run around the forums screaming ‘Nerf!’ I suggest that something needs a nerf, I suggest a viable method of nerfing it, and I explain the logic behind why that method will accomplish the stated goal without causing undo harm to other situations.

I challenge you to find any examples contrary to what I’ve just stated. Go on, I’ll wait.

I am not saying you randomly call for nerfs. I am sure that the ones you have asked for were all well thought out and probably justified…for pvp. They were not required or necessary for pve. Of course pvp needs class balancing, but pve doesn’t. Every class needs to feel powerful in pve. Mesmer doesn’t. Yeah, the mechanics are fun but the damage sucks, in pve.

You know, this tension between pve’ers and pvp’ers is really simple to solve. The only problem is that Anet has refused to do it. To save a little work, they are willing to live with the constant tension and bitterness and anger between the 2 different populations. This anger poisons, not just the forums, but also the game. I think this is a mistake. I think it will eventually kill the game because most people don’t like that kind of atmosphere.

I think that it is fairly simple to balance PvE and PvP without split. Basically, everything works in open world, and classes are not really compared together. You only need to be competitive in instanced content, and there, essentially only damage (and offensive support) counts. And this is usually very easy to estimate mathematically.

Since PvP also requires survivability and people can avoid attacks, it is very easy to just tweak the survivability, the “ease of avoidance” and the utility of skills/traits to make sure everything is fine for PvP.

So I don’t think splitting PvP and PvE is the answer to anything. The problem currently is that a-net most likely does not consider balance that important and therefore, the balance team is very reduced and distracted by other tasks. This is just short-term thinking: you don’t make money from balance in short term (but you lose players because of bad balance in the long term).

You’re right, let’s buff Moa. Let’s make Moa as good as scrapper hammer, with evades, blocks, multiple leap finishers, CC, boons and high damage. And then change Moa to target allies because everybody will want to be a Moa!

I don’t hate mesmer. I know we are one of the most despised professions, people just don’t know how to fight mesmers, and this leads to a lot of calls for nerf. 75% of my time in gw2 is on my mesmer, 75% of my PvP games are as mesmer. I don’t have any interest in asking for nerf.

But I love balance and build diversity. I would love a gw2 where every profession is equally viable (meaning that your own proficiency will always be more important than the class you choose) and can play different roles and playstyles (like bunker chrono vs shatter mesmer) while still feeling unique (a bunker guard and a bunker mesmer should play and support differently).

Currently, mesmer is viable in PvP only because of our elites, portal and continuum split. This prevents build diversity. Same thing in PvE, where we are viable only as a quickness and alacrity bot.

So I ask for nerfs to remedy that. Continuum split (CS) is a main offender for me, I think 10s Moa is fine, it really does not do that much considering that the moa skills are quite good. So Moa is balanced for its CD. Same thing with gravity well, it is a strong skill but nothing to complain about. Now double gravity well means 6s of AOE CC (+ some decent damage) that many builds just cannot easily counter, continuum split Moa means more than halved cooldown. You just cannot balance that. And people are complaining so much about Moa that a-net may very well nerf it. This means that Moa will become a bad skill, only balanced because of CS.

An example: post 23 june patch, mesmers were a bit too good. And many here in the forums suggested a few “well placed” nerfs, including for example confounding suggestion (ooh, another CS :p ) since we felt that these were the main problems. Instead, mantras got demolished and we lost a bounce in mirror blade. GG

Other example, during HoT beta, I suggested a reduction of the block duration of shield and of well of precog because already then I felt bunker chrono was too good. Well… we got those as well as a generalized slaughter of so many things uncalled for to overcompensate for a build that made pro league unwatchable.

So yes, I and many other mesmer often ask for nerfs, and if a-net listened to those, mesmer would probably be in a better spot right now.

As Fay is saying. Right now for example, people will tell you mesmer is strong in PvP because it is picked by many competitive teams. The problem is that it is picked only for portal and moa, it is not really good on its own.

Asking for nerfing portal and moa (actually instead of moa, I’d rather nerf continuum split) is a way for us to get buffs in other areas.

Exedore.6320:

@OP

1. You seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking skill splits will magically solve everything balance issue; they won’t. The same devs doing balance now will just have to balance more skills. And many of the skills which are changed were too good in multiple formats to one degree or another and ended up being overnerfed. That’s not to say skill splits should be ignored, but they should be used sparingly.

2. Agree, but you have to consider the reason a profession or build is forced out. Right now, it’s a few OP builds forcing everything else out. Buffing builds which are no longer in the meta but were competitive pre-HoT just turns PvP into a mess of power creep.

3. Not sure why Proleague implemented this rule, but the anti-stacking rule is treating the symptom – a handful of OP builds – not the cause. Once balance is in a better state, build stacking won’t be an issue.

4. Agree about not reinventing the wheel. However, ANet should want to make more options viable. It just shouldn’t come at the cost of what is already acceptably balanced.

5. Disagree. You need to balance reasonably well for all skill levels. If low and mid tiers are dominated by brainless builds (e.g. turret engi), changes need to be made. Otherwise, the PvP playerbase evaporates. Top tier should be the focus for fine tuning, however.

6. Disagree to an extent. You need some way to attract players who otherwise wouldn’t play PvP. Plentiful rewards for long-term and skillful play also need to exist, though.

7. Agree about the downtime. The purpose of the one month wait was for balance to settle. But if nothing is done about awful balance at the end of that month (just before ranked play resumes), why bother waiting? Keep the gap between seasons to 1 or 2 weeks max. That’s enough to squash bugs and do some maintenance.

8. Agree. Mystic Forge please.

9. Not sure how often people use these anymore. But if there was any easy way to stop team swapping for wins or team stacking, it would help a lot. Maybe only allow players to join the losing side if team size is even.

10. Agree that better dialogue needs to happen surrounding balance. It seems that every three months, we get changes thrown at us, some of which makes little to no sense. Maybe give us a few weeks preview instead of a few days so that players can weigh in suggested changes? Also, acknowledging our complaints would help quell the constant anger.

A lot of my disagreement is because the OP is viewing PvP as only for PvPers. You can’t do that. A community which doesn’t grow and recruit new members will quickly wither and die. In order to keep an active, strong community, you need to embrace all skill levels and varieties (casual, hardcore, PvE, etc) of players.

+1

I agree. Currently, continuum split is the only reason left why chronomancer is too strong compared to core mesmer. So rework it, maybe by preventing elite skills? or change it so that it only reduces cooldown used by 20s? I don’t know. Then try to improve the rest of the chronomancer line to make it still worth using.

Also as you say, if one cannot use elites, it makes it more skillful, since there will be more choice of what skill to use it on.

One thing to mention though: this is a good idea only if all other elite specs get nerfed massively to core spec level.

style.6173:

Fivedawgs.4267:

Lmao, I hope you are joking. The Engi from Rank 55 was the Mvp last season, dude totally carried his team. I can’t belive you actually think revs are #4. Dude, scrapper are stronger than revs in this meta.

lolololol. Yeah, because in the season 1 championships every team ran 2 engi. Oh wait. At least watch the matches if you are going to criticize.

It’s ok if you didn’t watch the matches, but don’t pretend like you did.

Besides, why are you so intent on arguing the rankings? The top 4 all need to be looked at.

I agree that rev is OP, and if it wasn’t for the class stacking rule, there would still be 2 revs per team while most likely only 1 scrapper. However, this is just because revs have more team-fighting pressure, so they stack better than scrapper. At the end, both classes have too much sustain for the amulet they are running. They can both fight 2v1 for a long time and that should not happen with berserker/marauder.

Feel free to make your own list for rev if you want, that does not change the fact that scrapper needs a nerf.

Berserker already has a new mechanic. Maybe it’s an idea for a second elite spec though.

About the balance problem of warrior, I don’t think the problem is the warrior or berserker class being too weak but every other elite specs being too strong. Bring everyone back to core spec level, and warrior will have its place again.

chaoslordlol.3165:

Thanks for advice mate. But got a question there why chrono spec / shield over a sword offhand and a focus? Just curious.

Shield is currently our best off-hand. It has strong CC (2 AOE stuns), decent damage (shield 5 is actually fairly strong), and good defense (shield 4 double block).

On the other hand, sword off-hand and focus are two of our weakest weapons, imho. Torch is good for stealth and pistol does bring decent damaging pressure (in particular if you take duelist’ discipline in your condi build).

She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lyssa

From what I understand, in guild wars 1, there was a clear link between professions and gods.

Also this discussion is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3d7dkp/do_you_think_profession_lore_needs_to_be_brought/

I would say: condi mesmer is a weak build only viable thanks to portal and moa. The condi pressure does not matter as much as your staying alive to use your portal and moa.

Am I too negative?

Alex Shatter.7956:

DeathReign.7821:

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Lyssa is a patron to all mesmers, whether or not they worship her :P

I think the only “Lyssa-ness” that would be involved with the spec would maybe be naming traits. Char players would just have to accept that.

Besides, it’s a human female meta

Let’s be honest, when charr mesmers appeared, the whole guild wars profession lore went to the drain.

As far as I’m concerned, my Norn mesmer has a deep connection with raven, but she does not deny the existence of the human gods and knows the magic she wields is linked to Lyssa.

As far as the concept goes, I agree with MailMail. You cannot do that without reworking all illusions, especially phantasms. In your idea, phantasms spawn, do 1 attack, then disappear. What about iDisenchanter? If he attacks only once, this means only 2 boons and conditions removed… iDefender? Only 5s of damage reduction? Maybe the phantasm skill could instead add a skill to the Mimic? So when casting iDefender, now the damage is instead taken by the Mimic. Casting pBerserker? The mimic now has the Whirlwind Attack in its skill rotation… something like that. Just an idea.

Before I went to suggest the full phantasm rework in my signature, I thought about the “phantasm attack only once” idea, but it wasn’t satisfying.

I think we all agree that if the whole phantasm concept is not reworked in the core class, it would be great to have an elite spec which does it and increase our sustained damage. But not sure what is the best way to achieve that.