Guild Wars 2

1. Ranger (some serious overhaul of pet-ranger interaction needs to happen)
2. Elementalist (boost survivability of Staff, reduce RTL CD)
3. Mesmer (boost shatter, boost confusion application, lower CDs on many utilities, bug fix, bug fix, bug fix)

WvW perspective.

Immobilise stacking is actually ridiculous in all aspects of the game. I was immobilised by some Risen spiders during the new wurm event for around 8 seconds. My cleanses and heal had already been used up during the event and were on CD, so I couldn’t do anything and basically just died to some random Risen spiders that had nothing to do with the Wurm event. If immobilise didn’t stack and I wouldn’t have died so needlessly.

You can’t stack stun or daze, but apparently it’s okay for an arguably more powerful form of CC (cannot be broken with a stun breaker/ can be covered by other conditions to prevent removal) to do just that.

I honestly don’t get it.

My guess is that the first time you will load into Lion’s Arch you will be directed to a private instance where you witness the initial invasion of Lion’s Arch. After that LA will be made up of at least two strongholds (one at the Mystic Forge area and one around the fractals/Lionguard area) with maybe a few other outposts. None of the functionality of LA will be changed and LA will basically just resemble Orr for the next month or so. After that it will be the same old LA with the same central city functionality but much of the structures will be damaged.

However, if Anet completely change things up with LA I will be genuinely impressed.

As long as this isn’t accompanied with the same technical issues that ruined the Karka assault on LA, it should be a blast.

You would be best going with another Thief if it’s just a duo. Whenever you go into stealth, your partner will take all the focus which limits your ability to take on larger groups without having to essentially babysit the Mesmer. You could get the Mesmer to run a PU build, but the burst will be nothing compared to what another Thief can offer and you will still find yourself having to get the Mesmer up often. Your life will be easier if you’re with another Thief.

Thief duo all the way. You will have a lot of fun

Enemy NPCs are great in EotM and should stay how they are. However, I will agree that some of the passive region effects could do with some……rejigging.

But really, I would just like to see all the bugs ironed out before anything is changed for balancing purposes.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone complain about Illusionary Wave. I’m guessing you were knocked off a cliff in EotM? You can do the same thing with Banish you know.

All great suggestions. I particularly like the Confusing Enchantments one, although I’d like to see it apply confusion and an additional condition like Weakness instead. I quite like the idea of Mesmers being able to effectively stack AoE confusion and weakness. Would make glamour Mesmers quite useful for some zerg busting in WvW.

roamzero.9486:

selan.8354:

roamzero.9486:

Warrior/Dp Thief/Spite Necro come close but I dont think Ive played anything quite as brokenly OP as a PU Mesmer. The main culprits are the ability to stack the best boons (Aegis/Regen/Prot) plus the insane pressure of scepter #2 and the pistol phantasm..

insane pressure from scepter? since when? scepter is suuuper slow. pistol phantasm is great though but with the current bug mesmer is completely useles vs everything, so i guess your mesmer problem has been solved!

With decked out gear the torment on scepter #2 does over 12k damage, and can be easily applied (especially on an Asura) every 8s.

It’s entirely dependent on you attacking the Mesmer when he’s blocking and it’s also entirely dependent on the Mesmer landing the counter-attack. This is probably why it hits so hard. If you instantly cleanse the torment stack, much of a condi Mesmers dps is immediately nullified (especially if they’re not using pistol).

I find Impale to be a much deadlier skill. A 900 range projectile on a 15 second CD that causes 2-5 stacks of torment over 12 seconds (17 with just the food duration buff) that cannot be completely cleansed (torment does not stop stacking until the Warrior rips the sword out of you) is a horrible skill to be hit with. The Warrior can happily be in full dire too as they have a reliable bleed source outside of their on-crit trait, so it’s a pretty awful thing to fight.

I do agree that PU is too strong at the moment. But honestly, it won’t be nerfed as it has fairly little influence in sPvP. I think other classes are going to need some substantial nerfs, before PU becomes OP in sPvP.

Yep this is a horrible bug and is making fighting Thieves in particular a little impossible right now. Hotfix desperately needed.

Yeah I feel like the whole lesbian thing was really forced too. That bit where Jory and Kasmeer tied my poor Sylvari Mesmer to a chair and then spent a good 2 hours screaming “WE’RE IN GAY LOVE.” into his poor vegetative face was a bit much. How dare you take me away from my champion farming to indulge in such graphic character development! Oh the Sylvarity!

This is obviously Anet spearheading the very real threat that is the “gay agenda” and someone should totally call the FRC and tell them that their made up term is a real thing!

nods head furiously like crazy person

Sound like you’ve had some rather lucky encounters in WvW. I mostly come up against Warriors, Guardians and more Warriors, even whilst roaming. I sometimes perceive that I’m seeing lots of Mesmers and Thieves (usually because they’re more memorable encounters), when really I’ve just spent most of my time wadding through hammer Warriors.

Hmm looks interesting, but what’s your plan damage wise? You don’t have any reliable hard hitting phantasms nor do you have sceptre for that lovely torment stack. I guess you will trying to keep up 3 staff clones and then cycle back to sword/torch for a shatter?

20/20/30 PU power/phantasm build using Greatsword and sword/torch is exactly what you’re looking for. Condi PU is also strong, but easily ignored by anyone who doesn’t want to fight you. You will have a lot more fun with a power PU build.

Yeh there is a 50+ AM zerg exploiting the kitten out of this right now. They are literally tearing down wooden gates in around 20 seconds without any siege using this exploit (Gunnar’s Hold aren’t really doing it that much and we’ve been stopping people from doing it on gandara). Their rate of Wxp gain is going to be much higher than normal. It was a ban-able offence to use an exploit to farm linen scraps, but it’s not a ban-able offence to use an exploit to farm Wxp? Double standards much? The Mesmer full damage trait bug was patched remarkably quickly, why was this exploit not also patched as quickly? This is quite unacceptable.

Oh Abbadabbadabbadons, what are ya like?!

That’s super duper broken though.

Well I generally think Thief is fine these days, but I understand what the OP is getting at.

If you backstab an opponent actively blocking, you can immediately just backstab again after the initial block as either damage has to land, or your stealth runs out (in which case you won’t be Revealed and therefore can immediately re-stealth which is fine). I’ve sometimes felt like active blocking should apply Revealed as it’s an example of definitive counter-play and should be rewarded more. I’m thinking about weapon skills like Illusionary Riposte, Counterattack and Counterblow. I don’t think missing a backstab or having a backstab evaded should apply Revealed though as I think that would be far too crippling, but an active block at the right moment could make attacking from stealth that bit more risky.

Experienced Thieves probably wouldn’t have a problem with stuff like this and it could open the Thief up to some buffs in other areas. However, it would make backstab builds slightly less forgiving against certain opponents, which might make the profession less accessible to some.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Considering that Evade frames do the exact same thing as Invulnerability frames, I don’t see why you suggest that Blurred Frenzy isn’t an invulnerability. No new conditions can be applied during either one and existing effects persist through their duration anyway.

Now, honestly speaking, I don’t mind Blurred Frenzy as-is. The Mesmer can’t move to follow you during it, nor can he move to avoid AoE’s you place to effect him when it ends.

An evade attack is still subject to retaliation damage and effects from auras whereas an invulnerable attack is not. It means that D/D Eles in particular have a nice counter to illusionary leap/blurred frenzy combos by using Shocking Aura.

Mesmer vigor uptime is being reduced by 50%. Deceptive Evasion is being left as it is because nerfing it is unneeded and would only hurt builds that are not an issue (namely shatter).

Also Blurred Frenzy grants 2 seconds of evasion not invulnerability and Thieves have amazing on demand measures for active evasion (hello shortbow 3, chaining stealth, blind fields, Sword 2, Shadow Return, Withdraw, stealth not dependent on cooldowns).

I don’t think that the evasion on Blurred Frenzy is going to be removed until Mesmers and Warriors have the exact same base health and armour. And will all know that’s definitely going to happen.

I don’t think this would be a good idea. It’s only skills like Rush that actually need addressing and given RTL style limitations, so it seems unreasonable to nerf everything else across the board.

I’m okay with Living Story stuff in WvW, but it needs to have more of an impact or bring with it new mechanics for WvWers to use. I liked some of the Tower of Nightmares stuff in WvW because it was quite funny luring people into those spore clouds for some fabulous ganking, but why wasn’t this expanded upon? If we destroyed one of those giant seedlings in WvW we should have been able to collect spores that we could load into catas, trebs or mortars, so we could use that new pollen debuff offensively. That would have been fun and would have changed up WvW slightly for the duration of that LS content.

Downed/defeated state mechanics only really seem to be an issue with zergs as you can infinitely res completely defeated players making it a bit of a nightmare for outnumbered defenders to really make a dent in the attackers. So I think disabling resurrection of defeated players whilst you are in combat would be an interesting change. I think many people also find it unpalatable that you can rally off of simply anything you happened to tag whilst spamming your auto-attack. I’d like that to be looked into also.

As someone who almost exclusively partakes in small group roaming, I have to say I think the downed state works quite well in adding a certain extra depth to each encounter by making you plan for stomping/res prevention instead of just having to burst down each opponent sequentially. So I wouldn’t like to see any dramatic changes that make the combat a simpler affair.

Xenon.4537:

Simonoly.4352:

Well seeing as this Wurm content is designed for large, organised multi-guild groups, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for it to be instanced. As far as I know, the group from Deso completed it by literally having to ferry people into one server, so that they knew that everyone there was a part of the organised raid.

I think having raid instances for these events will actually encourage more participation and formation of large focused guild groups, which is exactly what this content is for.

The way that Deso did it was pretty clever. All of the hardcore types that were on Teamspeak, were willing to listen, were willing to change gear and builds to adapt, etc. They all ran it for 30+ hours and failed because there is always that ~20% of the people who refuse to get on Teamspeak, refuse to change their gear, refuse to admit that their ranger running sentinels with a bear is a terrible build. That 20% is hurtting the rest of the group effort. So what did Deso do? They decided to take a 14 hour break, agreed through Teamspeak. They all left the casuals to fail for 14 hours. The casuals gave up or guested to different servers. Then after 14 hours the hardcores were all rested and refreshed. They logged back in and ferried each other back in, and defeated the wurm with much of the “fat” trimmed away from their group comp. Call it elitist if you want, but it got the job done. I really wish people would quit hating this idea of “elitism” and change their attitude. Stop being selfish, look at the game as a challenge to overcome. How do you overcome a challenge? You have to do what is necessary. If you have to change you build, DO IT. If you need to communicate with people better by using Teamspeak, DO IT. It’s not that difficult to adapt.

Edit: I would just like to reiterate, no one is forcing the casual player to fight the wurm. You don’t have to change your build, just go do something else with your build and leave the “… elitists…” alone. The problem is that Bloodtide Coast is an open world map, and the entire point of this thread is to discuss moving events like the wurm into an instance so that casuals don’t have to deal with “…elitism….” in their open world.

Eugh what a kittening load of hassle those Deso guys had to put up with. Back when Tequatl came out I was in a guild dedicated to taking him down. We had to do so many things to ensure that everyone participating was a part of the organised raid so we would actually succeed. It’s not that we didn’t want new players to get involved (anyone could join the guild) it’s that we only desired players who actually wanted to contribute to the raid by conscientiously gearing and playing in a way that would allow us to win. Although sometimes simply being on TS would be enough to ensure your contribution. After all, that’s what these sort of events are designed for.

Well seeing as this Wurm content is designed for large, organised multi-guild groups, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for it to be instanced. As far as I know, the group from Deso completed it by literally having to ferry people into one server, so that they knew that everyone there was a part of the organised raid.

I think having raid instances for these events will actually encourage more participation and formation of large focused guild groups, which is exactly what this content is for.

Well actually, one thing I do like about PU power/phantasm builds in particular is that it does make the class much more accessible to new players (in WvW at least). A fellow guildy of mine recently got his Mesmer up to level 80 and went straight for PU with Greatsword, sword/torch in order to comfortably learn of the idiosyncrasies of the class without the risk of being popped by every Thief in the neighbourhood. It’s a good build for getting stuck in and immediately getting some success which should encourage people to stick with the class.

Well I don’t blame people for utilising builds that are far more accommodating than most as they’re just using what Anet provides. However, I’m not a big fan of PU and the playstyle it encourages, so I’m back to shatter and sc/p + staff condi build myself. I imagine many regular Mesmer players have already become bored with PU and are moving onto lockdown builds

If Anet removed immobilise stacking, they probably wouldn’t need to continue nerfing associated immobilise skills.

Immobilise was absolutely fine stacking just once before. Why fix that which was never broken?

Come on Anet, make less work for yourselves and just revert it back to one stack.

I’ve yet to be a part of a successful Marionette event, but I have to agree that it’s very good compared to Tequatl and the new Wurm boss. Everything just happens in a more logical fashion and there’s less artificial means for failure which just makes the whole event so much more fun. The fact that its success can very often fall down to the actions of just 1 or 2 individuals during phase 2 makes it extra epic. It’s also nice that a large group of people can get coordinated and separate without having to just stack and dps a massive health bar.

It’s probably the weirdest skill in the game, especially for WvW. It’s both OP and pointless at the same time. I’d be interested to hear Anet’s original reasoning for this skill. I always imagined it was to provide some sort of override ability to deal with tanky builds in sPvP or to allow the Mesmer to take control when outnumbered. Sure you could use it to cheese a 1v1, but why are you even 1v1ing if your goal is to not actually fight? Although in 1v1s it’s probably not even worth taking it for the cheese unless your opponent has a tiny amount of survivability.

I use it often in WvW for specific functions:

- Quickly and efficiently cleansing towers/keeps of Thieves and Mesmers.
- Overwriting other transformations (Plague form, Tornado)
- Reducing enemy numbers when outnumbered, usually specifically targeting an enemy who is most likely to cause problems (condi necro, Guardian).
- Stealthing into zergs, turning an enemy Commander into a Moa and then leaving, just because I can.

I suppose by slotting Moa you’re already gimping yourself a little by not using Timewarp or Mass invis which provide far more reliable functionality.

It’s a funny skill and can be really entertaining to use, but I wouldn’t exactly be upset if it suddenly vanished and was replaced with something else

selan.8354:

godofcows.2451:

i can see that training bikes want more wheels.

i smell a warrior!
but seriously if u have nothing constructive to say then just leave this discussion alone. this is about wvw mes not spvp mes first off and aldo we are talking about group fights,zergfights and not roaming. so your blind hate is very missplaced here.

Nah, I smell a Thief, or perhaps even a Ranger. Hmm probably a thief.

1) Anet need to remove the ICD on Blinding Befuddlement. Why was that ICD even introduced knowing that in the same update confusion damage was going to be reduced by 50%? It’s underpowered for a Master trait, even without the ICD.

2) Secondly, Phantasmal Berserker needs an invulnerability window on its initial attack so it does not instantly die during larger fights. I think this is really important.

3) Veil needs an adverse effect for enemies. I think it would be great if its offensive functionality was to apply revealed or a 1 second chill.

4) Last part of Mesmer scepter auto-attack chain (Ether Clone) should be renamed Ether Bomb and deal splash damage to hit up to 3 targets.

5) Mind Stab should be a blast finisher.

6) Mantra of Pain should hit up to 2 more enemies that are within a 180 radius of the Mesmer’s target for 50% of the damage taken by that target.

7) Moa Morph should be a ground-targetable AoE skill that morphs 5 targets…..heh only kidding

But loads of classes have obvious tells for certain attacks based on how powerful they are. If Warrior’s have more of these obvious tells it’s because Warriors have lots of powerful abilities and not necessarily because Warriors are specifically designed to have more obvious tells as a class theme.

I do agree that it would be cool if Mesmer clones had some additional animations whilst moving to their target to shatter. But I think that sort of thing would be low down on Anet’s balance list as Mesmer shatters are neither here nor there these days.

Yes please. Immobilise never ever needed to stack. It’s already more powerful than every other form of cc because it can be buried under other conditions and therefore not guaranteed to be removed when cleansing unless you’re fortunate to be a class that has a cleanse specifically targeting immobilise.

It sure would be nice if the mobility of Warrior Greatsword was brought in line with the rest of the game. If I see a GS Warrior in WvW they might as well just be a PU Mesmer or a D/P Thief, as they’re going to be ignored just as much.

The Warrior class is in an amazing place these days, so I think now would be a great time to change Greatsword mobility so it’s not quite as disruptive to the flow of combat.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Thanks for the feedback guys, there were some good points brought up here. This is why we wanted to discuss these future changes so that we had time to adjust to your feedback.

We’ll be discussing this change more internally. Most likely we will make some adjustments or look at other options such as replacing clones not triggering Debilitating Dissipation so it does not impact mesmer play as much which wasn’t our intent.

That’s great to hear. But it would be nice if you didn’t completely remove the active functionality of clone death traits. I honestly think the strength of Debilitating Dissipation is being over inflated here. You honestly just need to allow clone death effects to be blocked and evaded

I died whilst walking down some stairs in Bay once. I laughed so hard.

Wasbunny.6531:

I respectfully take offence at having my Mesmer build and play-style called ‘cheesy’ by the devs when they talked about the upcoming changes to Deceptive Evasion.

So much this. How is an active override of a passive trait considered cheesy in anyway? I love my clone death build (scepter/pistol + staff) and how I have to keep track of which clone will pop when I dodge. Scepter auto-attack chain is just too slow to allow me to actively utilise clone death traits. So sacrificing a dodge in order to proc a clone is an interesting way to play. It allows me to be more reactive instead of relying on Phase Retreat. With the nerf to Mesmer vigor generation it would have been even more interesting as endurance recovery will be much slower making the decision to burn a dodge more difficult. But now we will never know

I honestly think the nerf to vigor on Mesmer is enough.

Yes I would actually like to know why this change is occurring. Did they actually say in the live stream? I’ve heard people mention some dev comment about Mesmers “cheesing” something with DE, but that means nothing to me.

Otherwise I’m going to have to go with Kai’s explanation.

Edit: Found a list of possible answers on another thread. Now I’m actually convinced the balance team do not understand Mesmer functionality.

Anet could add silk and leather nodes if they really wanted to. Could simply have ‘rubbish piles and/or ’misplaced supply crates’ scattered across each zone containing zone appropriate materials, allowing Ascended armour crafters to go out into the game world and start gathering resources with certainty in the same way they could with ascended weapons.

But dodge rolling to pop a clone was one of the coolest parts of clone death builds. I’ve been running a 10/25/25/0/10 build for a while now and sacrificing a dodge in order to proc Crippling Dissipation on an opponent that was about to flee was a really interesting way to play. It’s a shame that this change will essentially reduce the flexibility of my build.

However, I will be interested to see how this change will push me to play differently. I can already see how this could reduce general survivability for anyone using DE and make Mesmers using this trait easier for the average player to target and predict.

Jitters.9401:

Want to fix stealth for Mesmer? Give their stealth a reveal. On my thief I use 2 and only two stealths, which are abilities and have reveal. On my mesmer I have 3 different stealth abilities and no reveal. With all the dodging and clones I have the stealth just makes me impossible to kill unless I get jumped by three or more enemies.

The only skill that allows Mesmers to stealth when revealed is Decoy (intended). Every other stealth skill will give the Mesmer the revealed debuff if you attack from stealth. If you’re not getting revealed when using stealth as a Mesmer it’s probably because you’re using it almost completely defensively, whereas for a Thief you’re going to want to utilise stealth attacks and will therefore get Revealed more often.

Only 2 changes really need to happen for Mesmer stealth in particular:

1) Remove protection from Prismatic Understanding

2) Summoning a phantasm from stealth applies the Revealed debuff.

However, there’s really no point rebalancing stealth in this game until Anet address the far more pressing issue of condition spam.

I love that it’s essentially an open world PvP sandbox where anything goes. It’s fun to make up random builds that couldn’t exist in sPvP and test them against the herds.

I think the reason nobody brought PU up so quickly is because its impact in WvW is almost completely irrelevant outside of organised 1v1s. There’s plenty of builds/traits across all classes you wouldn’t use in a serious organised 1v1. Just add PU to that list.

However, if Anet really needed to spend time balancing PU Mesmers, I would of course suggest addressing the trait alone and not touching anything else. I suppose you could swap the protection for swiftness. Allows PU Mesmers to keep the chance to proc Aegis and gain a free block in stealth but reduces the amount of protection gained along with Illusionary Membrane whilst giving Mesmers another source of swiftness (which is always a treat). I suppose it would be less cheesy for 1v1s although I still wouldn’t use it myself.

RedCobra.7693:

ive grown tired of this debate the game isnt balanced for 1v1 there we go thread over go home

Yep its kind of derailed into another “list all the features of a class out of context in order to make that class sound god-like”. The Thief forum used to get hit with those all the time. Exhausting to read.

Cush.4063:

I did not provide false information at all. What are you talking about? Lol. You just admitted it and thieves guild? Really? An “elite” yes an elite that no thief ever uses with a 180 sec CD. Please. Stop trolling

You said that killing phantasms applies conditions if the Mesmer has traited for on-death traits. That is false information.

You never see a Thief using Thieves guild? Where have you been man? Either way, the Thieves will still attack you whilst a Thief moves around in stealth. It’s the same principle.

Cush.4063:

1. Phantasms do a kitten ton of damage.
2. Phantasms have more health than clones so they are harder to kill
3. With 3 phantasms up and being in stealth that is massive damage
4. Killing them put conditions on yourself if traited
5. All mesmers stealth abilities are not on long cool downs
6. With mesmers in stealth with multipe phantasms up they can do more damage than thieves without being revealed.
7. I have more hours on my mesmer than any other class so don’t tell me I don’t play mesmer and that’s why I’m hating on it.
8. I’m not hating on mesmers but just putting down invalid arguments from the mesmers in this forum and i just hate when people defend their class with false info
8. The targetting system is fine. That’s the main point of stealth and clones, to trick you into targetting the clone instead of the player not knowing which is which.
9. I feel that that should be the only reason to be able to use stealth, as a defensive mechanic to make someone think that a clone is the player and not to hide in stealth while having only phantasms up noobing the enemy.

Thanks!

4. Clone death traits do not affect phantasms. They will only have retaliation for 5 seconds if a phantasm build.

6. Thieves can do the same thing with Thieves guild and spike you for scary damage with backstab. Phantasms have attack cooldowns and won’t constantly attack when the Mesmer is in stealth. Swings and roundabouts when comparing Thief and Mesmer stealth.

8. You’ve also provided false information.

Torment block is crazy strong. If anything it could do with a duration decrease.

Also, the last thing we want in this game is more ways to auto-attack damaging conditions.

LordByron.8369:

Jackums.3496:

Simonoly.4352:

Mesmer access to stealth is the same now as it was at release.

false
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prismatic_Understanding

Prismatic Understanding has existed since release. The only thing Anet did was add boons.

My point still stands.

It’s probably unpopular because it’s so uninteresting. Grinding for materials/paying extortionate prices on the TP and then basically just staring at that horrible crafting bar as it fills, is hardly a very enriching activity. I really thought GW2 was going to do something a bit different and special with crafting, but it’s all rather unfulfilling.

It worries me that so much of the endgame is currently tied to one of the dullest parts of the game.