Guild Wars 2

Use Flee and them Kick to an area where you can abuse LOS, then dodge twice (when enemies come) and that’s usually enough to not even be hit whilst in Moa form. Too many people simply panic and give up when Moa’d, which is exactly what the Mesmer is hoping for. Don’t do it.

Sounds like a far more balanced rune set now. Even with the 8 second ICD on the interrupt bonus, these runes have continued to be remarkably face-rollish in WvW. They would honestly be ridiculous in their current state in sPvP so this is definitely a positive change.

Without wishing to appear rude, your post is quite misinformed and you’ve made a strange generalisation. Saying “Most of the time it’s these same professions, Mesmers, Thieves, Warriors complaining about everyone using bunker condi builds.” is an erroneous statement to make. Complaints about condi bunkers are not class specific. It’s a whole community thing where many players consider the trade-off between survivability and dps in a condition build to be almost non-existent. Whereas the trade-off in direct damage builds is entirely there and entirely obvious.

Also, do you mean ‘Blurred Frenzy’ for Mesmers? It’s a self-route two and a half second evade on a base 12 second CD. Unless you route your opponent (with a super buggy immobilise skill) most people will simply walk out of it. It can be countered by using any defensive skill that procs an instant on-hit effect, for example an Ele can just use Shocking Aura and the Mesmer Blurred Frenzy will be interrupted. It’s also subject to retaliation damage.

The only invulnerability available to Mesmer is Distortion which is a shatter skill on a base 60 second CD with uptime entirely dependent on number of clones available when the skill is used. It’s a sacrifice of dps in order to obtain damage immunity for a few seconds. I consider it to be one of the best designed skills in the game.

Not sure this would really work. Could you imagine if you were running away from a zerg and a Mesmer used Mass Invis? It would be a massive hindrance to suddenly have your movement speed significantly decreased.

I think the problem with stealth at the moment is that it is too accommodating when launching an attack. The fact that you can only be Revealed if you actually land damage is testament to this. Nothing will ever be changed though. I don’t think Anet are interested in raising the skill cap for stealth use.

Twinny.9304:

Simonoly.4352:

Gandara is a bit mental at the moment. No idea what it’s going to be like when the seasons begin – but it might be the biggest cluster-kitty we’ve ever witnessed. Unfortunately the current matchup is a bit broken, because not only has Gandara had a mass of transfers, but Fort Ranik and Miller’s Sound have almost zero presence at certain times of the day. It’s all quite bizarre.

We sorta had that problem at beginning of last season, just before season we had transfers in and ended up with queues on most maps and when season hit, the pve population joined in too and guilds could get their full rosters onto the maps for raids and ended up not raiding. Stacking servers prime time hits guilds the hardest as they need the majority of their roster on “same” map to get a successful raid.

I think FSP learned from their mistakes last big recruitment we had and was careful on recruitment this time around. So I think we be ok this season, or atleast i hope we will lol.

Edit: Someone also question in another thread about wondering what Gandara’s night force is like compared to other servers. Answer to that is I’m guessing it’s pretty strong, for example if you get say on average 3-5 people from each guild that transferred in that play later than the rest of the guild that’s a lot of people to add to a night time zerg.

Not sure what night time is going to be like on Gandara. Could end up being just as ridiculous. I don’t think any NA guilds transferred to Gandara, so it might be relatively tame. There won’t be queues at least.

Berty put up a good recruitment thread, but in the end the free transfer status of Gandara is what really sealed the deal and is the main result of what we’re seeing now. I don’t blame anyone for taking advantage of the situation, but it’s just not really the sort of activity that lends itself well to community building. We’ll just have to see what happens when the seasons begin.

One thing we do know, is that Silver league will be a lot more competitive this time around. Gunnar’s, Piken, FSP and Gandara should have some good fun when they come up against each other.

Gandara is a bit mental at the moment. No idea what it’s going to be like when the seasons begin – but it might be the biggest cluster-kitty we’ve ever witnessed. Unfortunately the current matchup is a bit broken, because not only has Gandara had a mass of transfers, but Fort Ranik and Miller’s Sound have almost zero presence at certain times of the day. It’s all quite bizarre.

I get where you’re coming from OP but I honestly just see this as another example of the confused tone that this game has. It so often flops between cartoon Disney “ding dong the witch is dead” and something resembling a more mature approach to fantasy. It does leave the story feeling a little bit disjointed at times.

Although I honestly don’t think Anet’s writing has done Brahm, Rox, Kasmeer and Jory much justice as characters. By the end of LS1 I consider them to be quite reactionary and rather unintelligent individuals. I’d rather it was just my character and Taimi in LS2. At least Taimi seemed interested in understanding Scarlet. All the other characters basically reacted like Power Rangers.

I have noticed the same thing on my Mesmer. I actually notice this mostly in PvE against certain mobs. It’s perfectly possible that some skills were updated to be unblockable. Whether or not this change was intended……who knows these days.

I am aware of this. It’s perfectly possible that some mob skills have been changed to now be unblockable. There’s a thread on the Warrior forum documenting the same thing.

Since about 2 or 3 weeks ago I’ve noticed that Illisionary Counter does not block various attacks now. I’m finding it difficult to nail down which specific attacks these are, but it often seems to happen at random.

One instance that I am certain of is the giant wurm north of Bay on a borderland map of WvW. I’ve been playing WvW for well over a year now and have always been able to block the rock that the wurm hurls at you. However, with the last living story update that no longer works and the rock goes through the block to cause immediate damage.

It would be nice if one of you nice red guys could confirm if any changes been made to Illusionary Counter or other active block skills to account for this? I’ve actually heard mention that other classes might be experiencing the same thing.

I think it would be quite interesting if Chilled did affect initiative regen in someway. I think this is the sort of change that would allow Elementalists to have more of a chance against any half competent Thief.

Removal of that ridiculous ICD on Blinding Befuddlement would be a good start. And then some duration or stack increases would be somewhat sufficient. Mesmers that dump longish CD utilities to utilise interesting secondary effects should be rewarded more than they currently are.

I was kind of hoping that Anet were going to add a +33% Confusion damage trait as a new Grandmaster for Mesmers and then confusion Mesmer would actually be feared once again. But Anet decided it would be best to give Thieves confusion instead. Yeaa….

Mogar.9216:

Simonoly.4352:

I like to play Greatsword/sword+torch shatter build if I’m zerging. I certainly do not get anything like the number of loot bags that a Guardian, Warrior, Necro and Ele might get, but I find that I can more or less move freely along the edges of a ZvZ picking off shortbow Thieves and poor staff Eles mid-meteor shower (actually very useful that one). I often use Illusionary Leap into a large group with Mirror Images to land a shatter spike, blinking away immediately after and using The Prestige to reset. I find it quite fun.

:) down a soft target, pop torch 4 then sword leap to his corpse and blurred frenzy + shatter followed by a decoy and blink out. It’s pretty funny when I pull it of in zergs.

Yeh, you basically have to pretend you’re a backstab Thief. It sure is lovely when you hit max targets with a full shatter combo

I understand that some of these are a little underwhelming, but it seems that many people are mistaking these new Grandmaster traits for the actual buffs that the Ranger class is due to receive. They are two different things, so it’s perfectly possible that some of these traits will be great after Ranger is properly buffed across the board.

Yep just found that exact email in my junk folder of an email address that is not linked to my GW2 account. Quite odd.

Wouldn’t it be better if it was “provides X amount of healing power to yourself and allies for 4 seconds on interrupt”? This way a Mesmer with this trait could actually provide decent support when in a party with classes that actually offer strong AoE heal options.

I like to play Greatsword/sword+torch shatter build if I’m zerging. I certainly do not get anything like the number of loot bags that a Guardian, Warrior, Necro and Ele might get, but I find that I can more or less move freely along the edges of a ZvZ picking off shortbow Thieves and poor staff Eles mid-meteor shower (actually very useful that one). I often use Illusionary Leap into a large group with Mirror Images to land a shatter spike, blinking away immediately after and using The Prestige to reset. I find it quite fun.

They’ve literally only revealed one of the five new traits for each new class. We have no idea how powerful or weak the other traits are going to be yet.

Also complaining about a trait that encourages the most underplayed and highest skill cap build that the Mesmer has, is a bit unreasonable. If a Mesmer times an interrupt to knock-out an important skill, that Mesmer deserves to be rewarded as much as possible.

Gosh quite a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration here. It’s highly likely that this trait will have an ICD of some sort, so don’t worry yourself.

Also, since when has the Mesmer class had enough interrupt skills to be able to actually spam interrupts and win? A quick peruse over the possible weapon set combinations and utilities of a Mesmer on the wiki shows that this cannot be the case.

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can object to this. It’s a specialist Grandmaster trait that is seeing the class gradually taken back to its roots in a powerful and meaningful way. An exciting change for the class.

Oh sounds good. I only hope that the ICD isn’t as long as Furious Interruption.

You are correct yes. In some ways the scale of your reward will be serendipitous, in that if you happen to be on a server with the largest active WvW playerbase in your league/branch of the tournament you will get maximum rewards. It doesn’t matter if you all you did was qualify for the WvW reward chest and then never stepped back into WvW for the rest of the season – you will always get a better reward than say, a player in a dedicated WvW guild on a lower population server. This is why the current design of WvW is incompatible with a competitive reward based league/tournament.

Of course we have the tools available to us to pick out which servers will be victorious in advance, so a few gem purchases later and serendipity is made redundant. If you want the best reward you should transfer to a stacked server.

Personally, I’m not interested in weapon skins and rewards, but I am looking forward to having lots of new people to murder

Great idea. Levelling alts in WvW isn’t very fun or practical, so I think this would really improve the current system.

Well I might swap my scepter/pistol + staff build from a 0/30/25/0/15 to a 0/20/30/0/20 with Chaotic Interruption or just go 0/25/25/0/20 to keep Confusing Combatants. Should be interesting.

Chill is okay because as others have said it’s relatively rare and most of its direct application is confined to Elementalists and Necromancers which seems fitting for these classes.

However, you are correct with immobilise. In its current stackable form, Immobilise is far too strong. The fact that you can prevent its removal by simply smothering it with other condis makes it far more powerful than stun or daze. The way in which immobilise stacking works makes it very easy to still permanently root someone. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Immobilise stacking should be removed in the next feature patch. It’s detrimental for the game.

That Illusionary Elasticity change should be interesting, although it does have the potential to make staff clones a tad overpowered. Trident clones are capable of stacking up a ridiculous amount of bleeds very quickly with IE so it’s pretty devastating in a condition build. I’m just hoping that the slower projectile movement of Winds of Chaos + random condition application might somehow keep this in check.

I suppose it does improve Mesmer multi-target/AoE options which is always a plus for the class.

Oh we see plenty of Warrior/Guardian hammer trains in T5 too. You see the odd Necro or Ele accompanying them, but honestly they’re simply not needed these days. I’d love for the feature patch to in some way diminish the dominance of the hammer train, but realistically this is just not going to happen. Hammer trains will become even more of a curse when the leagues begin as it’s arguably the easiest and most efficient way to play as a group.

It gets a pass from me…but only just. The ending of LS1 has been marred with so many bugs and undeveloped mechanics that it’s hard to not be disappointed. However, I quite like the ending cinematic and what it revealed despite the fact that the interactions between Destiny’e Edge Mark II and Salad Fingers were a tad awful.

I do hope that the LS2 will take a different approach to content delivery. If it’s simply going to be more fortnightly zerging events tied to vanity gem store purchases then I honestly don’t think interest will last. I just don’t think the core concepts of much of LS1 were particularly enriching.

Highlights of LS1:

- The Origins of Madness: organised zerging done correctly.
- Bazaar of the Four Winds: beautiful new zone with a fun new mechanic added.
- Tower of Nightmares: the closest we’ve gotten to a large group dungeon.

Immobilise stacking should have never ever happened. A stackable source of CC that can be guaranteed to succeed due to its sharing of removal priority with every other condition in the game (unless you are playing a class with designated immobilise removal) is ridiculous. It’s preposterous how easy it is to permanently root people now. It was reduced to 3 stacks from 5, but honestly that makes no difference. As long as the first applied stack has finished its duration you can then re-apply another stack along with covering conditions to ruin people. I’ve exploited this before with my Mesmer using Chaotic Interruption, plus Illusionary leap on a Necromancer. It was pretty disgusting.

killahmayne.9518:

Yes we all love cheese and love to it eat it.

However in WvW, may be not so much. I just would like to generate a conversation about it with a few questions.

1) How do you personally define “cheese” or what are the characteristics of a build that make it “cheese”?
2) How do you feel about people using these so called “cheese builds” while roaming?
3) How do you usually deal with encountering these “cheese builds”?
4) Which builds do you consider to be the most “cheese” in roaming/WvW/dueling?
5) Do you believe “cheese” is the product of game mechanics and/or class imbalances?
6) Any other comments, suggestions, changes you would make?

I will give my answer if this topic generates enough conversation.

1) Any build that is highly accommodating for mistakes and/or can be played on auto-pilot with tons of passives. Anything that requires almost no real effort.
2) I hold no ill will for someone using a max strength build to ensure success. Some people just want to win, so it’s sensible for them to play max cheese.
3) I either ignore them or just use Moa Morph.
4) God where to begin, err: PU Mesmer, D/P Thief, perplex full dire Engi, Dhuumfire condi Necro, hambow Warrior, S/S LB condi Warrior, P/D perplex Thief, phantasm Mesmer. There are other builds that are almost cheese, I call these milky builds.
5) For some cheese builds it’s usually just one or two skills or traits that put these builds into the ridiculous territory. With PU Mesmers it’s just the PU trait itself that elevates the build to craziness. However, some of the cheese just comes from the fundamental design of the class, i.e. phantasm Mesmer.
6) Roaming cheese is annoying, but nothing is as bad as the almighty cheese that is the Warrior/Guardian hammer train. I find that much more detrimental to the game mode than a PU Mesmer trolling other roamers.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

We had 20 at blue, 23 at green and 17 at red, 6 minutes in and red was at 90% health left. I don’t think this event scales at all.

At that point everyone went to blue to fail on purpose for the chest.

Had the exact same experience with red. 35 of us all full on dpsing the thing for the entire duration of the event with very few people ever being downed (was impressed with how responsive the group was) but we only managed to get the thing down to 50% health. Do we have to have 50 people to even have a chance of doing this now?

Err did they also reduce the damage that the Knights take from direct attacks? I’m in full zerks and I was doing pitiful amounts of damage compared to before.

I was with a group of 35 trying to take down the Red Knight and we couldn’t even get it past 50% health despite everyone playing consistently well and everyone always having the buff.

What’s going on?

Both Scepter auto-attack and Confusing Images could do with some cast time reductions and/or after-cast adjustments. I also feel like Confusing Images and Illusionary Counter should have their cooldowns swapped, bearing in mind how powerful that torment stack is compared to a super-duper obvious channelled pink beam that will rarely be able to land all 5 stacks in most encounters.

Sounds good to me. It would certainly improve the flow of combat for Mesmers using these phantasms. At least Disenchanter should be lowered to 1 second.

I did a full run and got loot from all 3 Knights. However, when I did the event again straight away after, I received no chests from killing any of the knights. Are the rewards daily or something?

Well PU does apply to Mass Invis at least, but yes I think turning Time Warp into a glamour would be really quite interesting. From an sPvP/WvW viewpoint I think it would open up some cool builds with more Mesmers going deep into Inspiration to bolster their unique supportive role. Maybe the CD reduction would be significant enough to gently edge Mesmers back into some sort of important meta role in sPvP? Maybe this would be enough to revive something resembling the glamour builds of yesteryear?

I don’t really have much of an opinion in regards to PvE. Surely a slightly longer lasting Time Warp on a shorter CD is of benefit to everyone in PvE?

Kim.4152:

Nesukia.7561:

This topic.

WOW.

See this is why I wish I had a time machine so I could zip forward to a place where this nonsense doesn’t happen anymore. Ah well, it’ll come so long as we keep working for it.

Stopped taking it seriously the second the word “agenda” came up. Honestly, was this topic just a troll attempt? Keep this topic respectful, eh mods? Sorry, but this topic didn’t start from a place of respect for all human beings and it ain’t gonna get there.

Your last sentence bears repeating over and over because it encapsulates what is wrong with this topic and the subsequent discussions.

Yes I was slightly bemused by the acceptance of the OPs claims as if they were legitimate concerns. I could happily debunk and tear the OP to pieces, but I don’t think that’s what Anet want from the thread, so I shall abstain.

I don’t really understand how the inclusion of two lesbian relationships in two different parts of the game could ever be considered some sort of social agenda. Seems like a real stretch to me.

I personally quite like that the Anet writing team are obviously comfortable with the reality of multiple sexualities and can therefore happily write them into their stories.

Why did the NPCs not want to know what Scarlett had unleashed? Us the players of course know what has happened because of the cutscene, but none of the NPCs will.

It just came across as rather moronic that they didn’t care about what was coming. Frustrating to watch to be honest.

Straegen.2938:

If only thieves had that ability! They can remove 1 every 3 seconds but under any kind of control pressure that does not keep up.

Whoops! You are most correct. I obviously need to spend more time in Shadow Arts.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I will also add I would trade my PU and mesmer defensive line traits for my thieves defensive line traits….THEN THERE WOULD BE CRYING, of that I have no doubt.

Could you imagine if Mesmers could remove a condition for every second in stealth? Oh god the horror! Makes me feel all queazy just thinking about it.

In the context of Mesmer build repertoire, PU is very very strong. Compared to shatter, lockdown and even traditional phantasm builds, PU builds are easy to master and are very effective (especially power variants).

However, compared to other classes and builds that exist in the game, the relative strength of PU is grossly over-exaggerated. PU condi Mesmers in particular are weak sauce compared to perplex Engis, S/S Warrior and P/D Thief. Condi PU Mesmer is so easy to ignore that its just kind of sad when they keep chasing you.

If your build is very much designed to be anti-Thief, I would definitely recommend using Greatsword with your sword/torch. Spatial Surge and Mirror Blade are great skills to consistently keep pressure on a Thief that is kiting you and Illusionary Wave will allow you to knock a Thief out of Shadow Refuge. Also I’d swap out Mirror Images for Blink. You need something to put some distance between you and a Thief if you’re caught off guard.

Come to WvW OP. We can crit with Life Blasts for upwards of 7K per hit if glassy enough. Very funny indeed.

Not sure how you got hit 6 times in such a short space of time though. Sounds like you were just in a sticky situation.

I think it’s generally disliked because power PU builds in particular combine passive external dps sources AND stealth – both of which are generally frowned upon by the community.

I personally just don’t like how PU has narrowed build diversity and how it creates a false representation of the overall strength of the class, when really Mesmers need some serious help, especially in sPvP. I also dislike how PU is going to lead to nerfs of other traits (that were never an issue before) to balance the many builds that use it.

Use Flee to get to a position where you can abuse LOS and then dodge twice when you are followed. Usually works for me.

Moa Morph is a weird Elite though. I imagine it was designed to force a tanky individual off a point, but it’s rarely used for this. I see it used often to control the petting zoo antics of MM Necros, but apparently that’s a bug, so it’s probably just going to slip off into obscurity again.

The GW2 community is fine. There’s probably many confounding variables attributable to your lack of support. Seems unfair to condemn a community just from this.

I think the vulnerability application keeps condi builds in check whilst also adding utility for power builds. It would probably make staff clones too strong in condi builds if they were always able to apply bleed or burning.

The cutscene was fun and Lion’s Arch looks awesome all smashed up, but I’m really not a fan of the event design. It just comes across as a glorified champion farm and there’s nothing particularly enriching about that. Feels like a step back after the Marionette events. I imagine it’s great for loot kittens, but I personally just find it banal.

Hopefully the final LS update provides something a bit more cerebral.

Any update on a fix for this one Kirk? I know this is a known bug, but any sort of information regarding the progress of this bug fix would be much appreciated by the community as a whole.

Regards.

Well I usually just take Chaotic Dampening and Illusionists Celerity to fully trait Phase Retreat in my scepter/pistol + staff condi build for WvW. That 6 second Phase Retreat is pretty darn useful for kiting and it’s much more fun to use active evasion instead of sitting in stealth all day.

As for the issues of PU, well I would certainly like to see it nerfed a little as I’m slightly worried that its presence is going to lead to other traits being nerfed unnecessarily. However, as all balance changes are based around sPvP, I honestly don’t think PU is going to receive any changes until Thieves are rebalanced once again.