Guild Wars 2

Manys lols had on EBG early this morning. Millers trebbing Wild Creek from SM and then as soon as the wall was down, they all rushed in and sort of died against just three of us. FSP came next and similarly died. Then Millers came again, shortly followed by FSP and we were just overwhelmed by reds and FSP ended up capping Wild Creek. All that trebbing by Millers, and then FSP took the tower. That group of Millers must have been kicking themselves this morning. At least you capped it a little bit later anyway ;-)

Also, Gandara garrison WP is still bugged and causes a CTD if used.

I always trait for Far Reaching Manipulations, so Blink and Arcane Thievery are usually enough to close the gap and rip swiftness so I can finish them off.

I also attached a Sigil of Ice to my Greatsword so if Blink and Arcane Thievery are on cooldown, Illusionary Beserker + a proc of Chilled can also help me stay in attack range with Spatial Surge.

I almost always have centaur runes on my armour, so sometimes just maintaining swiftness myself has been enough to keep me within attack range.

Stealth is the real issue here. Maybe Anet should change some current abilities so that they can apply Reveal to stealthed targets. For example, Mesmer Chaos Storm could have a 1 in 5 chance of procing Reveal on a stealthed target and the Engineer Mines could also have a chance of applying Reveal.

Or instead, Anet could even make it so that Light field combos hit stealthed targets, applying Reveal and forcing them out of stealth.

As duelling in WvW is pretty popular these days I think it would be nice to try and make it a little more significant to the overall aims of WvW. I propose a separate instance in each Borderland that acts as a duelling arena accessible from portals inside the 3 keeps. Servers nominate their best duelists to enter the arena and the winner of the duel can nab their server the orb of power for that borderland. Access to the Arena could be on a cooldown shared with the orb of power, so if you want to keep obtaining the orb of power over an extended period, you have to keep entering people for duels. If a duel cannot take place because there’s no entrant from either of the opposing servers then the orb of power remains in the arena until a duel can take place. Orbs are returned to the arena automatically when the arena is open for duelling again.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about the finer details of such a system, but it would allow orbs of power to be in WvW again and their acquisition based less on how many people you have and more on the skills of individuals on each server. So potentially a heavily outmanned server could keep getting the orb of power purely because they enter stronger duelists. If a server keeps losing its duels, then they could just decide to not enter anyone so the opposing server can’t keep obtaining the orb of power.

Thoughts? I’d really like to see Orbs of power back in game at some point.

I don’t think there’s enough mass suicide on Gandara. Maybe we should make a suicide-pact with FSP and MS? They’re fun so I’m sure they’ll be up for it.

Saint Scarlet.2906:

Gandalf has always had a big(in respect to the other servers i’ve faced) nightcrew, certainly bigger than Pikens(we manage 15 on a good night). I respect Gandalf a lot as they are one of the better servers to fight against, but guys please don’t deny you have the numbers at night that outstrips all but BB and T1/2 servers.
Sorry to drop in here, but i like following Gandalf’s fights. Hope you guys continue to have fun and hopefully we’ll see you soon Gandara!

Not anymore unfortunately. We spent most nights outmanned in both EB and very often our own borderlands when up against Riverside, Abaddon’s and even Aurora over the last few weeks. It was pretty frustrating. I don’t know if we can really keep up with their nightcrews anymore.

This week is completely different though. FSP and Miller’s have noticeably less people for much of the early morning, but I think this might be due to some Gandaran guilds being much more active this week. It’s the excitement of a new matchup I guess that brings in more players ready for something new. Hopefully they’ll stay around if we move up a tier so we can get more competitive with servers in the higher tiers again.

I’m already having a lot of fun with traps. Stealth traps are awesome for screwing with multi veil rushes and supply traps can buy you quite a bit of time if placed near the gates of one of your keeps/towers to prevent ram building. Plugging the holes in the outer walls of SM with supply traps is also pretty fun.

Sure, their function is quite niche at present, but I don’t think Anet wanted them to be game changers but simply a way to add an additional flavour to WvW for those of us who like new things. We’re having good fun experimenting with them on my server.

Since yesterday I’ve experienced many an occasion where my phantasms do not attack the gates of a keep/tower. They spawn fine, but then simply stand there not attacking. Of the 7 sets of gates I attacked this morning, my phantasms would not attack 5 of them. They simply stood there spawned on the other side of the gates doing nothing.

I’ve never really seen this before, so I don’t know if this is a new issue or not.

As far as I know, Dragon’s Tooth still does not have LOS restrictions.The best way to prevent it from destroying siege weapons is to run out of the attack range of Dragon’s Tooth, and then just make sure the Elementalist cannot target you before getting back on the ac.

I’d love to see Dragon’s Tooth changed so it has LOS restrictions (seems only fair) but casts much quicker.

I imagine it’s due to a combination of reasons mostly to do with their effectiveness as duelists.

But also, Mesmers are just a very fun class to play and I imagine many people find them thematically more interesting than the other classes available. I tried all the classes out back in August, and I was sold as soon as I saw Spatial Surge.

I’m still very much enjoying the buff to arrowcarts. Keeps and towers are still being flipped frequently on our tier and the only real difference I’ve noticed is how small groups of players can now effectively defend against a zerg that’s rushing the doors of a keep. Everything else seems to be the same.

I’d be happy if this buff wasn’t reverted really, but if it’s becoming a huge problem on the higher tiers then maybe it needs to be looked into.

Maureen Adaal.3412:

Simonoly.4352:

An unusually fruitful weekend for Gandara. Was fun holding out FSP Bay for most of the early morning but alas, all the superior arrowcarts and balistas couldn’t hold off the inevitable Saturday morning borderland blobette. We had it coming though. .

Indeed fun fight at FSP bay. Initially we were with 6-7 by the way. In the hour or so that it took to treb outer, get the mortars and the treb inner (with four trebs at the end) some more came, so eventually we probably outnumbered you, but we did the work for it.

PS: used the word blob, go wash your mouth :-)

Yeah I really enjoyed that we both had similar numbers for much of the time. But yeah we knew we’d out stayed our welcome when everyone else on FSP began to wake up. We probably could have destroyed a few of those trebs, but we were so unorganised. It was really frustrating and difficult getting people together.

Technically I said “blobette” but I’m going to go wash my mouth out anyway. Might start using the word ‘herd’ as a non-derogatory alternative.

I’ve had this happen to me loads over the last week. Died once because of it.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I effectively take fall damage twice, when I’m damaged the first time I land and then damaged after appearing to fall again.

It’s not a fun bug to experience in WvW.

An unusually fruitful weekend for Gandara. Was fun holding out FSP Bay for most of the early morning but alas, all the superior arrowcarts and balistas couldn’t hold off the inevitable Saturday morning borderland blobette. We had it coming though.

Wasn’t as fun fighting MS as there was simply too many of you guys running together for things to be competitive. Hopefully there won’t be so many of you online in the small hours of the morning next week, so we can have some decent battles.

That face cam. Glorious!

Interesting tactics, annoying a commander so much they just quit. Why nobody knocked you out of Shadow Refuge at all is beyond me though.

Vengeance is fine. Chances are, most Warriors who use Vengeance to get inside keeps/towers died on the other side anyway.

I do agree that Vapour Form is a little unfair though as it almost completely removes the risk of rushing enemies during a siege as a D/D Ele. I think the only way you can prevent Eles from vapour forming through a portal is to immobilise them as soon as they go down. Not seen this myself though.

However, Mist Form (the utility skill) should allow Eles to enter keep/tower as other classes have combinations of invulnerability/stealth/teleportation/block skills that can be used to get successfully through a portal.

“It’s just a jump to the left….with your hands on your hips….”

/dance

Traps sound like they could be really fun. I like the idea of setting up stealth traps around a tower/keep under siege to prevent stealthed targets from sneaking in. The supply traps sounds even better for the exact same scenario, preventing people from sneaking supplies into a keep/tower under siege.

I’m really up for anything that significantly changes the way I have to play and forces me to be more thoughtful about how I play with my characters in WvW.

I’m quite enjoying the buff to arrowcarts. It’s forced myself and the small groups I play with in WvW to implement new tactics to overcome something that’s actually quite dangerous now. The buff probably is a bit too strong, but I’m liking how things have been changed up suddenly. Maybe the damage increase shouldn’t be applied to siege weapons?

As frustrating as the stealth mechanics are in this game, you just have to accept that this is what Anet intended for the Thief class. Personally, I still think stealth needs some work to enrich the mechanic so it’s more fun for people to deal with, but I don’t see any dramatic changes incoming.

Stealth stomp is fine though. Other classes can stomp you whilst invulnerable, so at least with a stealth stomp there’s a chance of interruption.

Don’t think I’ve ever died from confusion. There’s so much space in WvW (compared to sPvP), that if you are hit with a 8-10 stack on confusion in a 1v1 you can basically just run in the opposite direction or kite around a big old rock whilst the glamour Mesmer twiddles his or her thumbs. It’s such as easy build to counter, especially if you’re also a Mesmer and have Arcane Thievery at the ready ;-)

I was a bit disappointed with the nerf, because I think the all out confusion/glamour Mesmer was just a cool build. It was the high risk, high reward of condition damage and it was just funny seeing zergoids smack themselves in the face with their weapons until downed. Although when I played a glamour mesmer 4 or 5 months ago, I remember only very rarely getting enough confusion procs off to down someone in a zerg before all of the confusion was cleansed by AoE condition removal. Was still very fun to play.

Hopefully, now that confusion has been nerfed, Anet will rethink the way scepter, torch and staff work. They all have their uses, but as condition weapons they’re extremely unreliable. It’ so frustrating when say, Winds of Chaos manages to proc only vulnerability 3 or 4 times in a row, or the fact that you have to constantly micromanage the use of Ether Bolt to make sure you don’t over write staff clones etc. And Phantasmal Mage is in serious need of some boosting too. It would just be nice to not be funnelled down the shatter/phantasm route in order to be competitive with this class.

Raising the AoE cap or indeed removing it will discourage stacking, but won’t have a great deal of effect on the initial formation of a zerg. There will always be safety and efficiency in numbers, so it’s only normal that large groups form.

Confusion should and always will do more damage than burn cumulatively, simply because its damage can be completely mitigated by opponent inactivity. Burn, poison and bleeding however, will always tick no matter what you do, until they wear off or you cleanse yourself. Therefore I don’t really understand how this study is relevant to the issues brought up with the recent confusion nerf. It wasn’t that people were worried that confusion would be too weak in the context of other conditions, but that confusion would be too weak in the context of WvW and the Mesmer class in particular. Whether or not that is the case, well, we’ll just have to wait and see whilst we get used to the new changes.

Despite my reservations, I think the you’ve written a really nice post and many will benefit from seeing the new numbers.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Simonoly.4352:

otherwise you’d have a decent AoE available every 4-5 seconds.

Soooo, we’d be on par with every other class in the game is what you’re saying?

Hah, indeed. Actually, considering it would be a PBAoE sourced from your target that could only hit 2 or 3 times between charges, the original recharge time would probably be fine.

I’m thinking……burning, bleeding and agony….

This would immediately make Mantra of Stability and Mantra of Distraction much more exciting skills to use. Being able to break stun on friendly targets and apply a 1 second daze AoE (with a 15 second cooldown) would be really awesome.

Not sure about the other mantras though. A Mantra of Resolve AoE is already covered by Null Field and a Mantra of Recovery AoE is kind of already covered by the Restorative Mantras trait. Not that I would complain if they did receive some AoE ;-)

Not sure about Mantra of Pain. Mesmers don’t have a massive choice of AoE attacks, so it might be a cool way for Mesmers to get more DPS in large WvW zergathons. But they would probably need to increase the cooldown from the current 1 second, otherwise you’d have a decent AoE available every 4-5 seconds.

I was expecting a slight damage reduction for confusion, but 50% is a bit ridiculous. Battles in WvW and sPvP are very different, therefore the two should not share the same constraints. I’m genuinely surprised that the nerf was so harsh bearing in mind that all other sources of condition damage for Mesmers are so thematically chaotic (outside of sharper images). Surely it would have made more sense to just reduce the stacks that the Engineer could apply as it’s already pretty easy to stack bleeds and keep burn and poison ticks going on that class (I love my condition Engi) and then leave confusion doing the same damage?

In WvW, if I’m roaming I usually have Mantra of Resolve purely to help me escape quickly from immobilisation which is often the reason I get shut down and consumed by a zerg if they come after me. If I’m in a group, I go for Arcane Thievery for the boon stripping support (especially as there’s so many Guardians and Eles around). If I’m incorporated into the zerg, Null Field all the way.

I find Mesmers to be one of the easiest classes to stomp. Most Mesmers will use Deception as soon as I go for the stomp, so I just cancel out and move to the real Mesmer (indicated by the red triangle above the nameplate) and stomp away. Mesmers can’t push you away with any of their skills. Mind Blast will only become an issue if you decide it’s a good idea to auto-attack the Mesmer when downed, and phantasmal Rogue is on cooldown immediately after a Mesmer goes down, so the chances of them getting one out are slim to none. I imagine Phantasmal Rogue has to do lots of damage because it’s a single target attack, unlike the AoE interrupts/damage that other classes might have.

Jscull.2514:

What youre saying is a good team of players cannot kill people, and actually gain grown on the enemy in that fight. Thats bullcrap, and part of the reason this mechanic is the worst in mmo history.

Precisely. A good team of players need to devise suitable tactics to overcome greater numbers. A good team needs to think holistically in WvW in order to succeed. You can gain ground sure, but not by just killing each person one by one, you need to gain ground by implementing superior tactics and responding correctly to your enemies tactics.

I like that you can revive defeated players. It means you can’t just systematically remove enemies one by one during large battles. If they are a force of 30 and you are a force of 10, you need to either rally more troops or find some other way to overcome the larger enemy force. You have to tackle groups of enemies as a whole instead of just bursting down each person in sequence.

Naffy.1493:

Issues.5789:

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

This 100%.

Apparently you can immobilise Eles when they use Vapour Form, but I’ve never been able to successfully do it myself. It’s the only part of the downed system that I find questionable as it undermines the risk factor attached to running out of a tower or keep when it is under siege.

KISS you big meanies! You went and turned everything red in EB

You could have at least allowed the 5 of us there to retake Langor so we could have engaged in some jolly tower defence. But no, within seconds of putting up a few rams you were right on top of us, tickling and cuddling away. Now, I do enjoy a good tickle fight, but there were far too many of you and I don’t think I can handle 8 ticklers at the same time. I for one, am all tickled out.

I generally find it’s harder to see the casting animations on Asuran Mesmers than it is on other classes. This basically means I’m less likely to dodge certain attacks that I normally would when fighting Mesmers of another race. So yes, I suppose there is a slight advantage really. I’ve spoken to a few people who told me they intentionally chose the smallest Asura model for their Mesmer to make things harder for their opponents. But whether or not they found they had more success as an Asura, I don’t know.

I don’t think it’s that much of an issue to get worked up about, but I imagine it would be more of an issue if sPvP ever had any e-sport aspirations.

Like most classes, I’m sure there are a few builds available to the Mesmer or certain skills that could do with some tweaking to bring them in line with everything else. But, as a whole, the class is pretty well balanced now. The only time I considered Mesmers to be too strong was when phantasms didn’t have LOS restrictions as this simply didn’t follow in-game logic and was unfair (a bit like Dragon Tooth is right now).

Noooooooooo! The dreaded morning RS golem rush. Curse you and your mechanical friends!

I’m finding there’s definitely less d/d gc Thieves now, as I imagine the removal of culling + increase on reveal has made those builds very high risk indeed (which seems fitting). I mostly come up against less glassy, more balanced Thief builds now in WvW, which I find quite a bit more fun to play against.

It’s completely situational. For example, if you’re doing the Aquatic Ruins Fractal, Arcane Thievery + Signet of Inspiration is a must when fighting the giant jellyfish. 25 stacks of might for you and your party is a nice little boost ;-)

General PvE (and WvW), I find myself slotting Blink (traited for increased range) for getting around, with decoy for another stun break and Mantra of Resolve for condition cleanse. If doing a dungeon I usually swap Blink for Illusion of Life and Mantra of Resolve for Null Field.

I’d say Elementalists are probably one of the stronger classes for WvW right now. D/D eles are amazing roamers with fantastic mobility, able to heal through a lot of attacks. Staff eles can rid tower walls of siege with meteor showers and eles with Focus can use Swirling Winds to block treb shots. Also, you can vapour form into a tower/keep when downed, so you can run out, smack the kitten out of any rams/catas and then use vapour form to guarantee you don’t get killed unless someone was able to immobilise you at the right moment (happens very rarely). None of this is OP as such (although using vapour form to get back inside a keep is of questionable game design), but it’s definitely a good class to pick if you want to be useful just about everywhere in WvW.

Maskaganda.2043:

Simonoly.4352:

I must be the only person that thinks it’s fair that confusion ticks on a traited dodge.

depends on the trait. unavoidable minor traits shouldn’t punish players, even more if they are activated on health percentage.

I was dueling a thief with my engie a few days ago. He said, as many thieves tend to say, he was undefeated in duels. He tried and tried and tried and kept dieing to me. the funny thing is he was dieing to confusion even without using skills, I would prybar him at 30%ish for about 2k damage, the auto-blinding powder at 25% hp minor trait would kick in and finish him off for another 3k confusion hit.
so a prybar at 26% health is a guaranteed 5k damage on a medium armor target with a 25% hp proc they can’t even trait away from (unless, obviously, they choose another trait line). this happens to engineers and to a lesser extent guardians too.

I take a huge advantage of it but I don’t see it as being fair. confusion shouldn’t kick in when using minor traits.

I completely forgot about auto-survival traits like Last Refuge. Hmm, I agree that you shouldn’t take confusion damage from those skills, because you have no control over their activation if you happen to get a great big stack of confusion on you. I just want confusion to be punishment for active decisions made during a fight.

It must have been quite a funny fight for you though :-)

Never a day goes by when I’m not porting people in the EB JP with my Mesmer. I really don’t mind doing it and get a kitten ton of siege donations from people who are only there for the badges for legendaries. Plus it’s fun defending non-PvPers from the JP gank squads.

I must be the only person that thinks it’s fair that confusion ticks on a traited dodge. After all, they’re still skills and the idea of the glamour Mesmer is to punish you for skill usage that could potentially damage the Mesmer or buff/heal you.

If confusion is posing so much of an issue for people, then maybe the damage should just be reduced so the mechanics and theme of confusion isn’t undermined by some drastic change to its function. It doesn’t need to be as weak as it was in its original state (i.e. what it’s still like in sPvP) because the battles in WvW are generally much much larger with condition cleansing going off all over the place, not to mention the huge open spaces people have to kite, back-off and wait out the condition damage. The dynamics of WvW PvP encounters are very different to sPvP and this should be reflected in what ever changes occur.

Personally, I don’t really care for a change, and actually think it will encourage less build diversity as confusion is the only skill that Mesmers can successfully stack outside of Sharper Images (good luck keeping those phantasms up). But then, I’m just one guy, and if everyone else is finding it too much for them then fair enough and let’s get rebalancing…

@Yuujin – Me thinks you stopped watching the video half way through then. Sure, he made tons of mistakes, but he used the exact same insta-gib melty Thief burst that so many people complain about. My comment wasn’t on his performance, only that he portrays quite often the exact thing that people point out and then scream for nerfs. If this video was ever an attempt to portray the Thief as balanced to those who have already decided the Thief is OP, then it’s not really going to help the cause. But actually it looks like the OP was just having some fun kittening around, so none of this analysis even matters.

Hmm you kind of started out showing that even GC Thieves have a hard time chipping away at the tankiest of Guardians, but then the rest of the video was just you melting everything you touched with the exact combo that so many scream about in these forums. So I guess what your video shows more than anything is: Toughness saves lives (as does situational awareness).

I like the bit with the anime though. Abstract enough to make me raise my ‘What the kitten?!’ eyebrow ;-/

The wall ate you. We tried to rescue you by hitting you with our weapons, but you died
:-(

I mourned your death by sending in a bug report…

What nerfs to the Thief was the OP referring to? I think the only thing Anet mentioned recently was reducing the damage of Mug to bring it in line with other traits available for such a small point cost. Although personally, I don’t think reducing the damage is what’s needed so much as simply changing how mug works with the steal mechanic.

I think generally, d/d Eles, shatter Mesmers and d/d Thieves are on Anets radar for rebalancing. Not necessarily nerfing, but definitely rebalancing.

Not the most interesting week in WvW, but the large coverage BB had this week meant there was plenty of people to fight. Shame it’s been a little imbalanced (at least in the early hours of the morning) with AG numbers too low and BB numbers too high with Gandara kind of middling to low also. I enjoyed bunkering down in our garrison or EB keep to hold off the BB tidal wave though. It’s just a shame we haven’t had enough people to defend all fronts from superior numbers. I think BB will probably find more competition in the early hours of the morning when they move up a tier.

Hmm in response to the OPs original request that confusion be prioritised when cleansing multiple conditions, I think this would only be beneficial if you’re fighting just a glamour mesmer who is also hitting you with random conditions using Staff skills. However, in most situations, you’re getting hit by conditions from multiple sources and whilst confusion can be mitigated by just backing off for a bit, burning, poison and bleeding will continue to chip away at you, unless you cleanse condition and can be far more dangerous and easily applied to you by other classes.

I used to play as a glamour mesmer, but the risks and limitations of relying on confusion damage almost exclusively (stacking other conditions is unreliable) were a pain in the kitten at times. Getting confusion stacks from feedback + null field was easy as pie, but getting a full cry of frustration + confusing images off was a nightmare unless you’re in a 1v1 and they don’t dodge at all. Also, you’re so reliant on an enemy being ridiculously unaware and spamming auto-attack that when someone just runs away there is so little you can do.

I’m not sure if this is intended or not, but I just killed a Thief on the other side of a tower door in WvW (he wasn’t standing right up against the door) by spawning Phantasms on him. I’ve never come across this before and found the LOS restrictions for illusions to be quite tight. Is there a certain combination of circumstances that can allow this to happen? In a similar vein to Dragon’s Tooth, it doesn’t seem very fair that I was able to do this.

akunadin.5017:

Totally agree,
but dont get ur hopes up. A-net and like every game were there is pvp, allways lissen to pve whiners playing (wot they call) pvp. And they wana keep the downstate trukitten me

So with other words…No, it will never be removed:(

Sounds to me like someone needs to get better at GW2 and not whatever game they’ve invented in their head. I don’t think making crazy sweeping statements about Anet and anyone who chooses to mostly PvE is really going to help your cause either.

You are right though, it will never be removed…

I only listen to the blue dorito man or woman if they’ve genuinely got some good tactics to offer. Otherwise, you’re just a guy who’s 100g poorer than me.