So I recently picked engi up. I main(ed) guard and got bored of him and then moved onto ele. Ele was boring except for fresh air, which just, at least in my opinion, didn’t cut it, but I ended up loving it. My search continued for a fresh air-like class/spec and then I just so happened to stumble on engi. I figured I’d try out engi and, again, I didn’t like any of the sustain/condi builds, but I did stumble on this. Mind you, I didn’t do any searching at metabattle, but I am pretty confident with my build. I’ve been playing it and it seems veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery fun and rather solid.
Here’s my build:
(Mind you, I’m asking for sPvP where I use marauder, and WvWvW roaming where I’m using the exact armor/weapon set)
I just felt like I’d drop by and ask for any tips that people running similar builds to mine would be willing to impart.
Well, necro downstate is fine if you consider the fact that they spend most of their time dead :P.
No, that just means guard has to camp long range with his bow.
No denying that its good, but the low base HP pool puts shelter leagues beyond litany.
Its a shame that shelter is still the better heal that, still, synergizes better with more important traits.
Quick, someone make a "Y’all got any more condis” meme and Photoshop mallyx’s head onto it.
Anet going e-sports but not actually building for it and throwing money at it thinking that is what they need instead of a solid game.
Whatupwiddat?
Downgrading shatters is what doesn’t make sense. What part of removing a mechanic with no skill or counterplay and replacing it with something else make no sense?
And substituting a mesmer’s stealth with other tools that only serve to synergize with their kitten nal even further isn’t enough of a trade off?
I’m sorry, I was under the impression that your excellent single target capabilities were what defined you. One could argue that stealth is part of that, but to go as far as to compare a mesmers stealth to a guardian’s blocks? Come on now.
I wanted to find this thread that literally went nuts with people going back and forth over stealth, but I couldn’t. I also don’t want to repeat what’s been said a million times, but I suppose I should summarize my qualms with it and it is…..
You can’t whiff a stealther. If you predict a possible burst and avoid it, they’re free to try again/restealth with ease. Mesmers, for instance, get to enjoy alot of short cast/instant cast spells that are already hard to dodge if the mesmer knows how to place it, which is made worse by the fact that you have no idea that its coming and the fact that the mesmer doesn’t exactly have to hug you for this damage to land.
Stealth is a problem, period. Not related to mesmer, but I believe mesmer has enough to be able to preform WITHOUT it. We could talk about stealth in general, but I believe its been talked to death.
The mantras are fine. Their mechanic is actually nice. Preparation for the fight. Stealth, on the other hand, tips it overboard.
Alot of people have stated on the forums and in game that mesmer’s strongest suit was lockdown and burst. Since they can burst from an upwards of 600+ range, they don’t need stealth. You either get the lockdown or the stealth, but none of the lockdown would make mesmer far too easy to avoid. Try playing mesmer with all of the stealth, but without mantra of distraction and CS.
So I decided NOT to state that this would be a suggestion regarding mesmers in the title because it would have people skip/troll this alot more than if it didn’t (or at least I hope).
Anyways, here goes.
My suggestion would be to completely remove stealth from mesmer. OK NOW HEAR ME OUT. My suggested tweaks would be as follows:
Lets start with the utilities/weapon skills:
The Prestige: Have it blind for 3 seconds. If the target misses an attack because of this blind, the mesmer gets 10 seconds of fury and the target takes 3 stacks of burn for 5 seconds.
Decoy: Have it go from a stealth to a dodge roll. This dodge roll also summons a clone that dazes if it is killed. If the clone is left alone, it’ll run forward after a set duration and shatter on its own dealing the equivalent of the mesmer shattering alone without burning mind wrack’s CD. I especially liked this one because the daze goes hand in hand with alot of traits as well, so proper use would be amazing for the player.
Mass Invisibility: Cut the cast time in half and have it apply 3 seconds of distortion to all allies effected by the skill.
As for traits related to stealth:
Desperate Decoy: Same as decoy.
The Pledge: Torch skills remove conditions. Torch skills have reduced recharge while the target is burning (5-10% CD reduction for every second of burning).
Prismatic Understanding: Here it is. The behemoth. The BMOC. Caused enough salt to turn your average human being’s blood stream into the dead sea. Replace stealth with distortion and bam, I think we’d be good.
Thoughts?
It isn’t a troll. I’ve already dropped my detailed opinion.
If mesmer is specialized to lock single targets down and burst, then remove all of their stealth. They can’t have it all.
I’m sure its been states a million times already, but what the hell.
Is it a bad thing that mesmer can pick up almost any combination of traits and work nicely? Of course not. Why would anyone argue such an absurd thing? What IS the bad thing is the insta stun and stealth. If you go zerker, its only natural that your damage is amazingly high (hint : no one worth their salt in PvP is complaining about damage). What IS bad is all of the instant cast stun and the incredibly high stealth uptime followed by the high damage. Some have argued that thief does/did the exact same thing, but here’s the issue…..
Thieves are forced into melee range. This makes playing thief very tricky. This is why guardians generally destroy thieves. This is why one wrong move vs a warrior or necro counts as instant death. Mesmer though? Mesmers only counter was thief before the patch. Now? Mesmers don’t have to worry about that anymore because while they’ve been buffed, thieves have taken a smidge of nerfing as well. You have no idea how many times I’d stun break out of a mesmers stun>burst combo, wait for their sword2 to end and burst back only to be stunned as soon as they finish, have them stealth again, recharge their mantra and do it all over again. Its too much. Mesmer has decent direct damage mitigation (always has), decent nobility (always has), top tier burst (always has), but now has powerful single target CC coupled with stupid stealth.
If you basically want a summary of what the complaints are all about, its complaints on the following:
-Prismatic understanding.
-Confounding suggestions.
-Mantra of distraction.
Some would like to add power block, but I think that trait is fine in general. As you said, trait synergy has blown up for mesmers. If that’s the case, taking a hit with those two traits shouldn’t hurt you that much….right? Unless, of course, you recognize the fact that mesmer has, indeed, been pigeonholed into using these two lines for the best effect possible, and are afraid that there’s a genuine chance that anet would make it so that you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too.
Its worth playing if you’re patient in learning your class. As some have mentioned, June 23rd brought about the apocalypse and we’re just crawling out of our vaults and watching what has become of the landscape after that bomb has been dropped.
You can almost tell when henry is the OP just by reading the title. Henry, add some links to proper discussions pertaining to each class’ current state and then we could call this a solid thread.
Perhaps give guard some base CC? Make it passively boost mobility and provide a knockdown on active.
Thing is, it would be terribly over powered. Think about being able to take FMW AND RF at the same time without any downside? There needs to be a tradeoff and FMW is fine.
This sounds interesting if you’d remove the invuln and give it another effect aside from the virtue recharge.
As we have it now, we have a offensive, defensive, and supportive virtues. My guess would be making focus passively grant a 15 (25 when traited)% mobility boost and have the active grant swiftness for 15 seconds as well as the virtue recharge.
Thoughts?
I have the suspicion, that some people are defending Diamond Skin in its current state, because of a general dislike for conditions. Imagine if there was a trait to give immunity to hard CC and physical damage when your health is above 90%. Would that be an okay thing?
Also, currently it is no issue to design a 5man power damage team. Imagine a 5 man condi damage team. It would already be disadvantageous in the current meta, but would be utter useless against one ele with diamond skin.
Personally I’d like to see gradual change. On high HP diamond skin would offer a high condition duration reduction (100% reduction for instance, so that it can only be overcome by condition duration bonus traits/gear) and the lower the ele’s HP are, the less this duration reduction would be. But it would be gradual. Like 20% lower reduction each 10% of HP, starting with 100% condi reduction on 100% HP and dropping to 80% condi reduction at 90%HP and so on. (maybe the numbers need tweaking^^)
Try it in reverse and it’ll sound really interesting.
Also, sagat and a few others have already suggested the best possible tweak guys, there doesn’t seem to be much point to arguing further.
If you can predict a direct burst, why can’t you predict a condi burst? You don’t even have to dodge it. Just flip on earth as soon as you see the animation (guard torch toss, pin down, etc) and presto, resistance. You’re completely immune to a whole form of damage and you expect there to be little downside? Earth, on its own, provides protection (toughness boost, damage reduction, etc) and if you’re running arcana, you just grabbed some prot to boot, so you can’t say that earth can’t be used for defense without stone heart. When guardians use shelter or renewed focus, they have 0 DPS. Do you see them complaining? When the stealth classes spam stealth, their DPS is 0. Do you see them complaining. There is literally nothing in the game that even comes close to the type of defense diamond skin provides and when coupled with cele d/d, you’re practically a god.
You down the Ele, he runs off to heal up. He ran off and you’re now OOC, so you’ve just been healed up too. Get to work smashing w.e is between you and your goal. Ele comes back sooner than you expected? Down them again, only they’ve got less downstate HP to work with and really, you should’ve pulled the fight away from the door if you didn’t want them constantly running off after a hard earned kill.
I mean, eles can run off, but necros can straight instagib you from downstate. How about getting into a downed fight with a ranger or warrior? Everyone has their perks lol.
I’ll agree that having diamond skin work while attuned to earth, like stone heart, would be a better suggestions. They’re both incredibly powerful traits that, alone, shut out a ton of builds, but one requires camping an attunement (which is a fair sacrifice, considering eles are constantly swapping atunements), while the other one just works as long as you’re playing as you should be playing (dodging, blocking, etc).
Fair enough. I guess my problem was trying to experiment before I fully understood the class.
First off, I picked up the glyph of elemental power for the access to chill (along with the weakness/cripple), which is also the reason why I picked up the svanir runes. I got CES for all of the added defensive attributes (along with the invuln). All the chill, coupled with the super speed trait made for some really easy kiting and if kitten got hairy, I’d have a lot of defenses to fall back on. Problem is that I’m trying to go for more control over DPS and I refuse to try lockdown mesmer because of mesmers generally cheesy state at the moment.
Oh right, marauder amulet.
Hey guys. I’m new to Ele and really interested in fresh air. So I’ve been fighting recently and find that its nearly impossible to down a lot of people (mesmers being the main culprit). I’ve been hoping that you guys could possibly lay down some tips for me.
My build is as follows (sorry for not using the calc, I’m on my phone):
Air 222
Earth 133
Water 232
Svanir runes
Hydromancy and chilling sigils
Glyph heal
Arcane shield, glyph of elemental power, conjure earth shield
Glyph elite
Thanks in advance guys
The toughness is nothing special, but %damage reductions are always amazing. I really wish they’d spread this and/or resistance around to other classes more.
Definitely. The thief should be benefit the most from unfair advantages, not the guy who commands the very ground you stand on or the air that you’re breathing. I mean, what the hell is a spell caster even o.e?
Jokes aside, every class benefits differently from their downstate so you’re going to have to deal with it.
High level play is high level play. Proper burst timing, proper dodge timing, proper rotations, etx. People say that it’s tournament level play, but there are a lot of bad teams out there, but you’re bound to find a bunch of people playing at a higher level of skill during tournaments.
Ooooo, interesting. Doesn’t seem too powerful and would actually make auramancer interesting.
Charge the door and spam heroes.
You see, the problem is that everyone is so accustomed to reading QQ on these forums as of late that even simply stating something like that puts the supporters of the defensive.
You got +1d by a DPS and expect NOT to die? Getting +1d is quite literally the job of every dpser.
You should be invincible if you stat full defense? Sir, I’m sorry, but the system wouldn’t allow for that. It’d be interesting to see a tdm where tank guardians/warriors with tons of taunt basically force people to focus them, but being unable to push you off point at all or needing the ENTIRE team to take you out is ridiculous. By your reasoning, full DPS characters should one shot the entire team all the time.
We don’t need any immovable objects.
We don’t need any unstoppable forces.
Also, Turai’s carapace skill stacks very nicely with a crap load of guardian traits.
If someone equips zerker with a power rune and uses their elite, I’m kinda expecting that damage. Mesmer does as much in the same amount of time without their elite or any telegraphs from 1200 range (although they will port into you at the last second to benefit from IP). Thief does it. Hell, my guardian does it as well on a much shorter CD than rampage (the usual chains of light >sow > JI > ww + smite condition, not including BB and the symbol because I prefer saving BB to secure a second ww and because the symbol just screams SPAM YOUR DODGE/TELEPORT).
I don’t play warrior and I see no issue with this.
You get to steal their mist powers and perma stealth until you attack.
Roll through fire for those OP heals eh?
Necro 100% pick? In what world? Also, passive heals are OP? My friend, this is a serious l2p issue. You might wanna consult someone for some advice.
Because you can chill, dodge their gap closer and use a teleport/apply swiftness and open the gap right up? Because everyone, save for thief, with their one million gap closers, and mesmers, who don’t need to close gaps, have around one gap closer per weapon? Seriously, it isn’t that hard to kite a melee target as a range (I find no issue as a fresh air).
Brother, I have no idea what game you’re playing, but perma sustain builds no longer exist. What’s really kicking your kitten is the incredible burn damage that can be applied, but that isn’t an Ele specific issue.
Do people not want to win because of the joy of competition anymore? Like, anyone anywhere? Always with needing rewards (material or recognition) to be incentivized to partake in the thrill of a competitive activity.
Cue the self righteous dude who feels he should tell other people why they should play and which motives are “better” than others.
He never said his motives were better.
You play this game for fun. Competition (read real competition between two equal sides) is fun. The cash should be the cherry on top for the people who attempt to go pro.
Also, I agree with the rest of the suggestions here. We need more frequent PvP ladder systems with more PvP specific cosmetics. Honestly, at this point, I don’t know what anet is doing. All the players are asking for is quite literally balance and cosmetics. These used to be the only two things GW2 had. Now it doesn’t even have that lol.
They bring ONE mesmer and suddenly the class needs a nerf xD? We can’t count helseth’s squad either, since the man is an amazing mesmer with or without buffs.
And also RIP any sustain they ever had because of going full burn, some of you make it sound like guards can spam aegis, blind, blocks in every single build while also exaggerating in having always regeneration.
Uhhh, every basic guardian build has shelter and a focus. Because most burn guards stat radiance, they also have that signature VoJ blind that, now, no other non-radiance guardian can get. Since your basic burn build is also traited into virtues, they get a healthy amount of boons on the side as well. Even if they drop smite condi for purging flames, they still have four meditation skills to heal off of and cleanse all of the conditions at a decent pace. As it stands, the only thing separating a burn guard from a d/d Ele is the difference in sustain, but the difference in damage is also the same.