Guild Wars 2

Necro/Reaper is possibly the only well designed class in the game now (give or take a few silly skills/traits). It would be a sad day for it to be morphed into an obnoxious monstrosity like everything else.

The triple mega french server is a bit much really. They have so many more players and far greater coverage than both Gandara/Underworld and Desolation. I know there’s issues with needing to link same language servers but in this case it is actually making things worse in terms of addressing population issues.

Every time I see a Thief teleport away from a Dragonhunter into downed state I weep for the health of this game.

Oh this reminds me of the time I walked into a stack of DH traps in WvW whilst wearing full rabid and was instantly downed before any of the animations played – I didn’t even have a chance to smack a 1 second Distortion. There was absolutely no enemy players around so I just rallied myself and laughed. Although I died inside a little when I thought about the fact that Anet had created something where you could burst down players without actually being there. Very classy.

- Rewards are way better because they actually exist.
- Scoring is better in theory, but I think needs more time to see how things pan out in the long term.
- Population still problematic and I don’t think this will ever be solved until servers are dissolved.
- Upgrading in WvW is inferior to what it used to be because all player influence on structure upgrades has been removed, supply as a resource has been diminished and you cannot hold and upgrade a camp without owning neighbouring structures. Basically there’s less to actually do in WvW now.
- New map is a real mixed bag. The objectives are interesting enough in isolation (except Air Keep which still needs work) but there’s no cohesion to the objectives as a whole, so owning one objective has little to no tactical value for taking or holding the others. Plus the central map event has gone down the route of the old ABL orbs and has vanished.
- Combat in WvW is absolutely bonkers and utterly broken. Blobbing is the same but small group roaming is horrible and absolutely dominated by whatever specs have the most outrageous damage AND sustain at the same time. It used to be so much better and far more exciting.

Could just make it like Binding Blade and pull your target a short distance if they’re in an evade. Still get a form of CC but the target is given some reward for predicting the pull and using an evade. Stability and invulnerability are not ubiquitous enough for these to be the only ways to mitigate something like this. Maybe make it a 1/2 second cast time too if needed.

Sins.4782:

Just think, if this was on anything other than rev, both players blowing their highest damaging skills in a row on each other would have resulted in both taking huge damage.

This was my initial reaction.

Chronophantasma wouldn’t be a problem if shield 4 didn’t produce 2 phantasms. As it stands, when combined with Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma, Shield 4 contributes 6 illusions overall from one weapon skill before any other illusion generating skill has been used. It has double the potential illusion generation of all the Mesmer off-hand weapons. I would much rather see the phantasm from De Ja Vu removed and Chronophantasma left as it is.

^Inspiring Distortion has an ICD of 5 seconds thankfully. You won’t be seeing 5 seconds of pure invulnerability fortunately unless there’s five Mesmers just spreading it onto each other which would be hilarious to watch as they would be doing very little else – should probably give it a go for giggles. Thankfully Well of Precognition had it’s long invulnerability removed.

As most invulnerabilities are channeled, lock you out of your skills or remove a vital component of your bomb (Mesmer) I think the OP’s cryptic message might be referring to those invuln spots. Like others have said, this is likely to prevent you from completely spawn camping them.

Druid, Scrapper and Dragonhunter are the main three you should be considering for group roaming as they don’t really have any exploitable weaknesses. Both Druid and Scrapper have easy access to group stealth so you want at least one of those. All three can deliver lots of damage whilst focusing on their sustain or their attacks incorporate sustain (like Scrapper) which makes them very forgiving, but also a good choice for 2vX scenarios where you actually want to fight and win.

I do not recommend Daredevil for duo roaming. You will have some fights where a Daredevil can’t do anything and you will wish you were playing something else. Also don’t use Reaper because you will just be CC’d and focused. Herald is too risky because the first condi build that comes along will delete you. Berserker is a decent choice but it is a very limited class due to its simplistic design so is easily kited and avoided by competent players – something to bear in mind. As for Chrono and Tempest, they can be very effective in some duo combos but can have the same problem as Daredevil where there will be encounters where you simply can’t do anything, plus they can be kind of unforgiving, especially if you’re playing glassy.

There’s quite a few ways of doing it really. Some people don’t even bother with MoD and just do ye olde Mirror Images, Blink, Mind Wrack with Mirror Blade. Often a Mirror Blade, Blink, Mind Wrack will kill a Thief or Ele outright in WvW.

Fun video. Hopefully Cake will go for a bit more variety in their future composition to spice things up a bit – Dragonhunter and Druid stacking is of course very effective (and rather broken) but it’s way cooler when you have a few more high risk dps classes amongst the midst spiking sidelines and generally being all flashy and cool

OriOri.8724:

Fay.2357:

OriOri.8724:

NYRKKIPAULA.8051:

Also some things like shattered strength was a minor trait and it gave 2 stacks of might per shatter.
Your phantasms could not be obstructed and thus could be summoned on walls in wvw for example.

That would be extremely useful in WvW. Its always annoying when I’m in a small group trying to take a tower and someone is up on the walls and all of my attacks are just obstructed and I have to sit and wait for us to get through the wall/gate to actually attack back.

I’m not ashamed to say that by “useful” you actually mean “totally broken”. iZerkers summon on target. This means that literally any siege within 1200 range of an outside wall would be destroyed in short order by gs mesmers spamming phantasms on them. There are a very limited number of spots inside most towers that are not within 1200 range of an outside wall. It really sucked.

Don’t let us tab target to siege that we can’t see then? I don’t understand why its ok for me to have to sit on the sidelines and watch other people get to hit the people on the walls with their weapon skills.

It was certainly a well needed change in the past as it was quite abusive (like Dragon’s tooth was for way longer and Life Transfer still is). However, I do agree that Mesmer is pretty pathetic at damaging enemies on walls. I remember the time I killed a Mesmer on my longbow Ranger because I was able to hit him/her from behind the safety of the lip of a wall whilst the Mesmer couldn’t pressure me at all outside of a Mind Stab.

Mesmer’s role in pressuring players on top of walls is pretty much the same as before HoT: Temporal Curtain things off the wall or into Necro Marks. However, Gravity Well provides a unique opportunity for some pretty potent CC. I often pull with Temporal Curtain into my own Gravity Well and have people spike the well. Works very well.

I tend to not get so emotionally attached to my time in WvW, so corpse jumping never really occurs as a thing to do. The other players may as well just be NPCs that I obliterated – it’s all the same to me.

When I see other people corpse jumping or doing other weird emotional things, I just raise my left Vulkan eyebrow and similarly move on.

Swagger.1459:

Simonoly.4352:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Ancestral Grace gets a nerf to its range or a CD increase. I suppose they could give it the RTL treatment and have its cooldown halved from 30 seconds if you proc the heal on a friendly target. It does feel overloaded and disruptive to the flow of combat for me to be able to have access to this so often.

The other thing I find quite abusive on my Druid is Celestial Shadow. By the time I’m done with my CA rotation I’ve pretty much reset a fight for myself anyway with a full heal, but to also get stealth and superspeed is a tad overkill especially applied to my party too. I think a reduction in the stealth duration and superspeed duration would be fair.

Edit- So you want Ranger going back to being free lunch so players don’t need to get better or put in the effort…

Shaves to a couple of things will certainly not make Druid a “free lunch”. CA is incredible for 1v1s, 1vXs, zergs, GvG and everything in between. Druid is not going anywhere.

In an alternate reality where none of the other elite specialisations and their respective meta builds exist I would absolutely agree. But in context of all the broken things in the game currently, Chronophantasma is as balanced as all the other nightmares that plague this game. Sad, but true.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Ancestral Grace gets a nerf to its range or a CD increase. I suppose they could give it the RTL treatment and have its cooldown halved from 30 seconds if you proc the heal on a friendly target. It does feel overloaded and disruptive to the flow of combat for me to be able to have access to this so often.

The other thing I find quite abusive on my Druid is Celestial Shadow. By the time I’m done with my CA rotation I’ve pretty much reset a fight for myself anyway with a full heal, but to also get stealth and superspeed is a tad overkill especially applied to my party too. I think a reduction in the stealth duration and superspeed duration would be fair.

It’s probably one of the most obnoxiously designed skills in the game. Coupled with traps and longbow it is extremely oppressive. I think Anet thought that the backside window would be enough counterplay but this just doesn’t work against anyone who isn’t a keyboard turner. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does receive some changes.

I still think one of the worst parts of DH is Spear of Justice. Upon playing around with it, it seems to actually pull people out of evade frames and it looks like you can activate the pull before the spear materialises on your target – bit like the old Into Void trick that was eventually nerfed. Seems a little off.

Most of my guild stopped playing WvW regularly in part due to how frustrating the game mode had become. I remember it was about a month after the June 2015 specialisation update when the majority left, unwilling to deal with the class imbalances introduced with the change. Then HoT hit and some of them attempted WvW again but then swiftly stopped because the elite specialisations and Revenants just turned WvW into an utter mess. Anet allowed the balance issues in WvW to get way out of hand and now it is a poorer experience because of it.

I mainly play less now because of how unsatisfying the combat has become. Direct damage is far too high in WvW and it’s all so incredibly easy to deliver this massive damage now whilst also having access to all the sustain you could ever need without having to really bother with toughness or vitality. Everything feels like both a chore and deeply unfair at the same time. Waiting 27 years for the immunities, blocks and evade spam of everything to end whilst also being able to immediately kill something with 2 hits is just such an unexciting gameplay experience.

Maybe Anet could have just differentiated between an illusion replacement and an illusion death? But oh well, we shall never know now.

I miss clone death because it was actually different. But if Anet would prefer for me to apply 20+ stacks of confusion and 10+ of torment instead of the minimal condition application of ye olde clone death, I guess I will just have to live with the pain

Current boon share definitely needs to be looked at in WvW although it’s a difficult problem to resolve because so many things contribute to it. It might just be easier to increase the relative effectiveness of AoE boon strip effects for WvW only. Null Field, Well of Corruption, Mine Field/Throw Mine removing 2 boons per pulse. Maybe some of the traits, but would need to be careful.

But it’s so much fun when I kill an Ele with just Mirror Blade and a 1 clone Mind Wrack. Or when my vault instantly kills an Ele. I remember when I killed an Ele with a single Basilisk + Unload the other week – that was amusing.

If we get some semblance of WvW balance we’ll actually have to work for our kills. Nobody wants that…you monster!

Kageseigi.2150:

phantom.1675:

Yeah, that’s the point. It’s an ELITE skill, what are you expecting?

As a Thief, I feel left out :-(

But we have Basilisk Venom which is one of the best elites in the game.

Ithilwen.1529:

Clone death isn’t a passive. It does no damage if the enemy avoids hitting it. It’s a punishment. Yes, I would like to see it back.

Unfortunately it is was considered passive to many because they had the mentality of “well I was going to cleave there anyway regardless of the existence of a traited clone, so it is passive because I never intended to adjust my actions, so the Mesmer was always going to apply conditions to me”.

I miss clone death too because it allowed Mesmers to interact with their class mechanics in a different fashion and it was a well needed punishment mechanic for a game that lacked complexity of design. I liked fighting it too because instead of having to dodge shatters you had to adjust your cleave and AoE usage – was nice to have to do different things to counter the same class. Now everything is shatter, build diversity is non-existent. and if you dodge a shatter you’ve countered Mesmer.

I’ve always quite liked how it can be used to cancel transformations. SoH has quite an obvious cast and pre-setup with CS so it’s just something you should think about when transforming on point with an enemy Mesmer is nearby. It certainly makes the game more interesting and oh my is this game in need of interesting things. Also, SoH is single target and a random evade frame, block or blind could nullify the entire thing so it requires some thoughtful use from the Mesmer to successfully counter a transformation in a team fight.

I don’t really see Toss Elixir X enough to really consider it problematic.

I agree that it’s worth seeing how this plays out. As others have said, it might encourage servers to actually fight over bloodlust now. I don’t think it’s mandatory enough for entire zergs to turn up every time their server doesn’t have it, but it could potentially get smaller dedicated groups to spend more time in the ruins.

I have experienced some oddities recently where certain players kept on rallying without something to rally them. We just assumed it was some sort of hack/exploit because it was the same person every time.

I’ve not experienced players negating the downed limit though. That sounds super frustrating.

Other than that, the downed/defeated state system works well in WvW now. Not being able to res fully dead players makes it easier to overcome larger groups now. Securing the stomp or preventing a res is an art in itself that adds depth to the game. There are some classes that are more capable of safe stomping during hectic battles and that’s what a well organised group should be utilising. Everyone can contribute to the prevention of a res too by nuking the downed person with AoE CC and damage – which is easier post HoT because we have access to so much damage now. My guild have ended fights against overwhelming odds purely via a targeted CC and damage spike on a downed person of importance in an enemy zerg.

LughLongArm.5460:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Staff 1 – good damage? Ok…

Yep, excellent damage, considering the speed, the piercing, being unreflectable ragne attack(beam). When you see this weapon being used as the main dmg dealer weapon for most roaming builds, it should light a bulb for you.

I agree. I think the damage numbers for staff are very bizarre indeed. I do so much damage just auto-attacking with staff whilst Vine Surge damage is negligible and Astral Wisp just reminds me of all those horrible projectile skills on Phantasmal Mage and Warlock on Mesmer. I’d like to see damage redistributed on staff to just make it more fun to use.

It works relatively well in WvW and the damage is obscene now that you can self-stack Might by using Unload over and over again. Bound + Black Powder allows you much more access to stealth too which only helps. However, your damage comes almost entirely from Unload, which is an initiative hungry skill, so as the poster mentions above, it’s not a great choice for your primary set but can be taken in place of shortbow…for fun. I do sometimes go P/P + shortbow, but I do take Impairing Daggers which offers more burst during initiative downtime.

Bit of a false equivalence. Stealth attacks are not really auto-attacks but are Thief specific modifiers that replace your auto-attack. They are more powerful than auto-attacks either by offering more damage as a burst or some form of CC. These equivalent skills on other classes are cooldown dependent so Thief is already winning in this regard because we only have a 1 second downtime between using these skills rather than being dependent on a bespoke cooldown. So not much point imposing a 1 second penalty to all auto-attacks from stealth when they’re not the same as stealth skills.

However, I think there is a scenario where spamming an auto-attack from stealth instead of using a stealth attack could be beneficial – basically when your target has very little health and a stealth attack is unneeded and a single part of your auto-chain would suffice in killing someone. At which point this is a mechanical change to Thief only. But at the same time in most scenarios it would be beneficial to use a higher damage skill such as Vault or Shadow shot instead of a stealth attack, so not exactly a high priority change.

It certainly does suffer against DH, Herald, Berserker and Scrapper that have such easy access to stability. But it’s worth a shot for those time where Tides of Time interrupts a cluster. It also works well with Mistrust builds after the sort-of-nerf/change to perplexity runes lowered the overall upfront dps from your initial interrupt.

With Sigil of Draining and a lucky crit from Power Block you can actually get interrupt damage comparable to Pulmonary Impact headshot spam

Wyrden.4713:

Are you talking about sigil of blood/leeching? I am using blood on my gs, i don’t really like leeching on neither gs nor my sword in case you mean those.

This one. Can pick them up from Heroics dude in WvW and it’s relatively cheap.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Draining

No ICD. 1K heal, 1.1K damage. Finding it to be rather superb – especially with shield, 5 target Diversion and Gravity Well. Some nice 5K heals at time

Have you thought about using Draining sigils? I honestly find them to be fantastic in WvW with a few 5K heals mid-fight from Tides of Time and Gravity Well alone.

It’s cool when you do you manage to find a decent small group fight these days, but holy kitten does it feel like you’re spending 90% of your time simply fighting the passive traits and other overtuned things on each class now.

I miss the good old days where you couldn’t have everything in a single build and group fights were so much more cerebral because you had to actively fill in the gaps to get a functioning group.

Dislike playing as and fighting against Staff Druid. I think it’s because the relative effort you have to put in to kill the Druid compared to what the Druid has to do is enormous. I just can’t bear to use staff in any of my builds anymore.

Also dislike fighting and playing as D/P thieves because it really is overtuned. So much damage just from basically auto-attacking and shadow shotting. Just nothing like the class I once enjoyed.

Like playing as and fighting against interrupt Mesmer because it’s one of the last things in the game that feels like it requires some effort from the player. When I win on an interrupt build I actually feel like it’s because of something I did rather than just because of certain traits I happen to have. Fighting against a decent interrupt Mesmer is a joy because it takes some decent knowledge (at least for GW2) to know what types of interrupts should be used and what key skills must be interrupted to succeed.

Not really. Conditions can potentially do more damage if not cleared, but the upfront damage of many power bursts is far higher. I whacked a Warrior with a 15K shatter this week. I killed an Ele with a single Vault doing 12K damage.

It’s only 6 seconds now. Press 5 then double dodge and it will be over. It’s even easier to deal with in WvW because there’s much more space for you to flee to for LOS.

That does look boring and forcing a stalemate is equally boring. I think I fought something similar on my interrupt Mesmer and, once we realised that the fight wasn’t going anywhere, we just used tonics and jumped around in circles – GW2 in a nutshell post HoT.

Maybe it’s another NA Vs EU difference. Every Thief I have come across in my current matchup is D/P and the duelling areas are at about 70% Daredevil. Mesmers are almost extinct although I did see a condi Mesmer yesterday but it died to all the D/P Thieves in seconds.

D/P is THE roaming spec now on EU at least because it’s very easy to achieve some massive damage numbers with just shadow shot and auto-attacks alone whilst also being able to escape almost any encounter…unless there’s an enemy Thief.

Don’t see the SPvP meta hybrid build in WvW much. It is terrible at chasing people down which is what a lot of WvW revolves around due to the large spaces involved. In fact, I hardly ever see other Mesmers anymore. It’s simply not as competitive as D/P Thieves for quickly annihilating targets whilst also having the means to leave ANY fight. Why even bother playing that hyrbid build when WvW damage numbers are so high that you could just obliterate anything with a stealth opener on Thief? Which is what I do.

I’ve never seen it in a 1v1 duelling environment either because nobody really runs condi for duels as it trivialises the whole thing to just a matter of how much condi clear people are running, and therefore a reduced display of player skill.

apharma.3741:

Lol had a Druid complaining at me for kiting around rocks in WvW this evening on my power shatter Mesmer. Guy was sword/axe – staff spamming stealth almost every 5s and when not stealthed using the many evades he has whiles healing all my burst that I could land. Then changes to signet of the wild and strength of the pack when he realises I’m running power block.

Kept whispering me making out I was rubbish, lol. People actually are getting carried hard by many builds especially HoT specs. Think I’m going to return to my routes and play base Mesmer for a bit.

That Druid was probably just upset that you refused to stand still and allow it to carry on auto-attacking with staff. Because that’s exactly what you do with Druid staff – auto-attack over and over again and wait for Bristleback rapid fire to come off cooldown. It’s so dull that I just can’t use it on my Ranger anymore.

Unless you’re running some far out whacky anti-meta build chances are you’re being carried by the build you’re using regardless of its damage type or role. That’s just what the game has been like ever since HoT and, to a certain extent, the specialisation system was introduced.

Link.1049:

Simonoly.4352:

Jeknar.6184:

Simonoly.4352:

Yes my Thief is really struggling in WvW now. My Unloads only do 12-13K each against other squishes. My AoE damage with an evade skill, Vault, only seems to do 14K damage. My dagger auto-attack chain only does 7K damage in around 1.5 seconds. My unblockable distance closer, Shadow Shot, does just 6K per use. It’s a good thing that I can’t use these skills more than once in quick succession!

Also my dodge rolls seem to do just 5K AoE and my Impairing Daggers with Mug combo only seems to do 8K damage as an opener – it’s horrible. Also, my Basilisk that I was already using also happens to be applied to people around me with absolutely no investment. I can also chain multiple dodge sources with a bit of stealth to exit almost any encounter. It’s absolutely miserable and impossible to play!

This sarcasm is killing me, stop!

Sorry I had a whole weekend where I couldn’t be sarcastic to anyone around me, so I just had to let it out in this post.

On a non-sarcastic note, I’m curious as to what kind of build you’re running, as running a glassy dps build the only time I’m pulling numbers around 10k is if I get a backstab in on a tower supervisor with several stacks of might.

Mixture of zerk and marauder with strength runes. I’m leaning more towards S/P this week with shortbow of course. Pistol Whip does a decent 10K damage if the whole thing lands. Same old Daredevil, Trickery, Deadly Arts setup. My highest Vault damage this week was 12.3K which isn’t too bad but I think I can better!

My chosen wildcard utility of the week is…Scorpion Wire – it’s a very satisfying skill to land!

Jeknar.6184:

Simonoly.4352:

Yes my Thief is really struggling in WvW now. My Unloads only do 12-13K each against other squishes. My AoE damage with an evade skill, Vault, only seems to do 14K damage. My dagger auto-attack chain only does 7K damage in around 1.5 seconds. My unblockable distance closer, Shadow Shot, does just 6K per use. It’s a good thing that I can’t use these skills more than once in quick succession!

Also my dodge rolls seem to do just 5K AoE and my Impairing Daggers with Mug combo only seems to do 8K damage as an opener – it’s horrible. Also, my Basilisk that I was already using also happens to be applied to people around me with absolutely no investment. I can also chain multiple dodge sources with a bit of stealth to exit almost any encounter. It’s absolutely miserable and impossible to play!

This sarcasm is killing me, stop!

Sorry I had a whole weekend where I couldn’t be sarcastic to anyone around me, so I just had to let it out in this post.

Yes my Thief is really struggling in WvW now. My Unloads only do 12-13K each against other squishes. My AoE damage with an evade skill, Vault, only seems to do 14K damage. My dagger auto-attack chain only does 7K damage in around 1.5 seconds. My unblockable distance closer, Shadow Shot, does just 6K per use. It’s a good thing that I can’t use these skills more than once in quick succession!

Also my dodge rolls seem to do just 5K AoE and my Impairing Daggers with Mug combo only seems to do 8K damage as an opener – it’s horrible. Also, my Basilisk that I was already using also happens to be applied to people around me with absolutely no investment. I can also chain multiple dodge sources with a bit of stealth to exit almost any encounter. It’s absolutely miserable and impossible to play!

This is exactly what I thought we would see with the introduction of Taunt. Seems like a no-brainer to have a skill that makes an opponent target a clone instead and your suggestion to merge Mirror Images with Decoy is great.

Bless you OP. You are adorable!

I think it’s a good change that really should have been in place since release. It always felt a little odd how I could just keep using backstab until it landed – although this was more of an issue pre-HoT when rotating backstabs was an actual viable playstyle.. I’ve managed to cope with having everything go on full cooldown if I attempt a burst from stealth with my shatter Mes, so I think a 1 second cooldown between backstab attempts is perfectly manageable.

I hope you enjoy being hit by five 1.5 second unblockable stuns applied by any damage skill whenever a Thief is in the area! Have fun!

Disappointing to not see any meaningful changes to Mesmer traits, but the changes to a lot of the skills sound great really. My two builds have been buffed in rather significant ways so I will be able to get more out those builds than before.

It was the right time to bring back that Mirror Blade bounce. I did feel it was too strong after the specialisation patch so wasn’t particularly surprised to see it nerfed. But now, it’s just a drop in the ocean of the craziness that HoT introduced and power Mes needs help, so it was the right thing to do.