Guild Wars 2

@supergica:
My main is a mesmer and I use decoy all the time. It’s a great tool, I use it for distraction, to drop enemy target and make them wonder which clone is the real me. I use stealth about once per fight. A good thief on the other hand is literally invisible during the entire fight. I’m often completely unable to attack them because, you know, I can’t even cast a Phantasm without a target.

If a thief fix or stealth nerf will make my beloved Decoy useless – fine with me. This would be a small sacrifice for a better overall game balance.

@oZii:
I am fully aware that the stealth implementation in GW2 is a different approach than in other games. What I am trying to explain here is that other games made mistakes there and had a lot of trouble fixing/balancing it later. GW2 is repeating some of the same mistakes, and having a different approach on stealth doesn’t turn these mistakes into something good.

At least they should fix the stealth rendering flaw in the graphics engine. This makes things even worse.

Kelthien.8593:

A few questions I had about overall mechanics:
- Does vulnerability affect condition damage?
- What’s the average swing time on enemies in PvE? Would be great to know so we can compare Confusion’s damage in PvE with similar conditions like Bleeds (right now it seems balanced around a 3s swing time).
- Does Compounding Power affect condition damage?

- Vulnerablity does not affect condition damage.
- I dunno the exact swing time of mobs, but it’s way too slow for Confusion being worth it. That’s why Scepter is pretty worthless in PvE, it’s a PvP weapon (and even there it’s a weak weapon).
- I don’t know if Compounding Power affect condition damage, but I doubt it.
(edit: a quick test on dummy golems says no, it doesn’t affect it)

If you want it simple and straightforward, try this one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQFABGRQ9Q7AvvjkiWL1KpA3uQA

Equip: all Berserker stuff

It’s a 20/20/0/0/30 build with greatsword. Just press 2, 4, roll, shatter and repeat.

As secondary weapon set you could use sword/focus or sword/pistol to finish whatever is left after shatter.

I usually play a condition build but switch to this glass cannon shatter spec for farm events in Orr. Also great when you run with the WvW zerg and want to earn some loot. But be careful to stay within your zerg because you are really squishy with this build and wearing berserker equip.

The stealth implementation of GW2 has some major flaws.

First of all, stealth = invisibility in GW2. A thief can disappear right in front of you and you have no chance whatsoever to see him in stealth, even if you know where he is.

Example: When you are downed and the stealthed thief stands next to you, stomping you, it’s impossible to see him.

In other games you’d see stealthed enemies at close distance, and to enter stealth you need some distance to enemies or stealth doesn’t work. GW2 stealth has none of these limitations.

Stealth in other games wouldn’t work while you have DoTs (bleedings) ticking on you. Or at least it would instantly reveal you.

Also in other games, there is usually no way to re-enter stealth during a combat. GW2 doesn’t have limitations here, thieves literally step into and out of the shadows every second. Combined with the stealth rendering bug in the graphic engine, this is VERY bad.

Last but not least, GW2 stealth lacks a counter mechanism. Remember “True Sight” in DAoC? Again, it’s a different game, but when in DAoC the stealth classes became too strong and too many, they invented an ability to ruin their day: “True Sight” revealed all stealthed chars at once. This wouldn’t work for GW2 because stealth is not a perma-stealth ability here, but imagine some way to make it impossible for a thief to re-enter stealth. That would truly mess them up.

Right now the best we can do is stack Confusion on the thief and hope he hurts himself when he enters stealth, but I was thinking more of a specific stealth counter, some “anti-stealth” ability or debuff.

Embolism.8106:

In my condition damage build, Staff Clones deal ~700 damage from Burning and ~600 damage from Bleeding, and this is increased as they stack Might (and Fury) on you. My Warlock, on the other hand, deals ~600 damage and attacks once for every three Staff Clone attacks.

When I say condition builds I mean pure condition builds. If you have a significant Power investment then you’re a hybrid build. Unfortunately this cannot be completely avoided in WvW due to there being no Rabid jewelery.

I understand in sPvP environment the iWarlock is indeed useless because you can spec for a pure condition build and have really low power. I play mostly WvW and as you already mentioned, with the available equip there you have at least 1200 power (and a stack of might on top of that).

Too bad you can’t overwrite a iWarlock with a staff clone once you got three illusions out. And if you shatter, the already stacked bleedings stop doing damage (this is a bug). There is no proper way to get rid of the iWarlock once you casted it.

Embolism.8106:

My WoC Bleeding lasts for 7s despite having no +condition duration. Note that there is a bug with Chaotic Dampening that makes WoC’s tooltip show the wrong duration for Bleeding (it will say 5s but it really still lasts 7s).

My mistake, I was unspecific.

To clarify this:
- the bleed from WoC lasts 7 seconds
- the bleed from a crit (with Sigil of Earth in weapon) lasts 5 seconds

I do a single hit with staff (hitting ESC key after) and if I’m lucky I get 2 bleeds on the target. One ticks for 5 seconds and the other ticks 7 seconds.

edit:
Further testing tells me that both the WoC bleed and the Sigil of Earth bleed are affected by increased condition duration.

Embolism.8106:

For condition Staff builds there is no reason to conjure a Warlock other than Shatter fodder: it does pitiful damage compared to a Staff Clone and doesn’t give you any boons.

Depends on your power and also on the duration of the fight.

A bleed from a staff clone does about 500 damage in a condition build. A single shot from a (weak) iWarlock does about 1000 damage or 1500 on a crit. So the staff clone needs multiple crits/procs and more time to do the same amount of damage. In a longer fight the staff clone will be ahead of course.

The iDuelist on the other hand will cause about 6 bleeds on the target, that’s about 3000 damage on top of the iDuelists direct damage. In this build, the iDuelist is MUCH better than iWarlock and also better than staff clones.

btw, anyone else having trouble finding proper equip WITHOUT power? In a condition based build I have almost no use for power, but I’m still sitting at about 1300 power. Wish I had only the 900 base power and 400 more in other stats, but that seems to be impossible. For example, there is no rare/exotic jewelry with prec/tough/cond.

Supersun.4603:

(Also, if you didn’t catch it, Condition mesmer is absolutely brutal underwater with trident clones. Being able to keep up 7-8 stacks of confusion on the opponent at all times is just broken)

That’s true, a condition mesmer under water with trident clones is a brutal force.

I wonder why the trident clones use a different version of trident autoattack. My own trident autoattacks don’t cause confusion, theirs does.

Unfortunately the illusionary anchor is bugged. It reflects projectiles and thus you might end up confusing yourself, but only a little bit for a little time

Embolism.8106:

I think the only buff the Staff needs is with regards to Staff Clones: increase the duration of their Bleeding to 7s (right now it’s 5s) like the player version, make it a real projectile instead of a ground-hugger, make conditions/boons inflicted by Illusions be affected by +condition/boon duration, etc.

The player version of bleed only has 7 sec. duration if you have increased bleed/condition duration from somewhere (usually that comes from spec points in the Domination line).

Nevertheless, I agree the conditions/boons inflicted by Illusions should be affected by +condition/boon duration. (which currently does not)

Surbrus.6942:

Stealth stomp/revive.

This!

Finishing downed enemies is such a hassle in WvW and sPvP, but with stealth it’s much easier.

Ianervan.3415:

I know Decoy drops target.

That doesn’t make this skill any less broken. I’m not even going to debate about “how to counter broken skills”. I can’t believe how selfish people are. You can’t even accept that the skill is broken just because you play a Mesmer.

/sign

Sure they can use Decoy or whatever to drop your target, but that’s not the solution. They are already hiding behind a wall, inside a tower. That should be enough to be safe.

The skill is simply bugged because it doesn’t check the line of sight. That has to be fixed asap.

Running around with my mesmer having GS equipped in WvW feels like cheating. You know why every mesmer and their mother has GS equipped in WvW. You almost never see any other weapon on a mesmer, except focus for speed. But they all fight with GS.

Some old-school MMO-gamers might remember DAoC when the new classes necromancer and animist where introduced to the game with the Shrouded Isles expansion. Both classes were bugged the same way, they could nuke through keep walls. This exploit instantly ruined the entire realm vs. realm fight. I’m glad they fixed it back then.

My quick test results (on dummy golems in mists):

Sigil of Earth works fine on GS.

You get up to 2 bleeds per time. With increased bleed/condition duration you get sometimes 3 bleeds, but only for a short period.

Internal cooldown seems to be 2 seconds. I’d say 40% crit chance is enough to make full use of the bleed procs. Higher crit chance would of course crit more often but the internal cooldown will render the additional crit-procs useless.

Both Clones and Phantasms cause bleed on crit.

Phantasms that hit multiple times (e.g. the rapid firing Duelist, the whirling Warden) can apply multiple bleeds.

Unfortunately there is a bug related with crit-bleeds:
When you shatter your illusions, all the bleeds they have caused will stop doing damage! They are still shown as a bleed stack icon on the mob/enemy, but they wont do anymore damage. So if you want to deal damage with crit bleeds, avoid using shatter abilities.