Guild Wars 2

Ansau.7326:

And the damage?

I wouldn’t consider any build that isn’t able to do, at least, continuosly +1000 numbers/player.

The glamours are for support, the weapon skills do strong cond dmg. Chaos storm hits for up to 5k per pulse, per player. Plus whatever burning, confusion, torment, and random conditions from CS or chaos armor. That does not include the damage from feedback which has insane potential in a zerg fight.

I actually found myself in a 1v2 against a necro and a thief yesterday and fared surprisingly well. I got the necro down twice but the thief rezzed in SR and unfortunately my CS was on CD, but my condis got up to 600-700 per tick damage. With weapon stacks on and some might this build is easily over 2k condi damage.

I’ve been running this just a few days but I’m having a blast! but I think it could be even better. If you have the time please read through and provide your feedback / suggested improvements

This is a mesmer build intended to single-handedly push a large battle into your team’s favor. The goal is to have the biggest impact in a large fight that one single mesmer can have.

ARMOR

Full dire armor (jatoro’s on TP) with undead runes. Dire trinkets with option to switch out for a couple shamans if you need more healing.

WEAPONS

Staff with sigil of corruption and scepter/torch with sigils of purity/energy

TRAITS

0
0
20 (IV, X)
30 (I, II, IX)
20 (V, VIII)

The traits are providing:

-Regen at 75% health and protection whenever you gain regen
-Increased toughness with staff and 20% reduced staff CD
-Glamour skills last 15% longer and recharge 20% faster and cause blind at their location
-When summoning a phantasm it has retaliation, gives AoE regen (prot also for you), and they do 15% more damage
-Confusion lasts 33% longer
-Shattering gives you might and always causes confusion
-Create feedback bubble when reviving

Glamours and condi dmg are the focus here.

UTILITIES
Null Field
Feedback
Veil
Time Warp

So when you’re about to engage a zerg, spam the front line with Null field, then feedback, then time warp on your backline DPS’ers, then chaos storm, then phantasms (staff 3, torch 5). What you just did in ~5 seconds is:

-2 AoE blinds to their front line
-AoE boon removal to their front line
-AoE cond removal to your front line
-FOUR ethereal fields to your front line (AoE chaos armor for every blast)
-AoE quickness to your backline DPS classes (eles, necros, rangers, mesmers)
-Protected your front from projectiles by reflecting them back for lots of damage
-Chaos storm hitting for 2-5k per pulse plus conditions (~1700 cond dmg with no weapon stacks or might).
-2 AoE regenerations from phantasms

If anyone goes down, revive!! This will create another feedback bubble due to medic’s feedback trait.

You are sitting at ~2.8k armor and ~22k health so you can stand up some damage pretty well. If you find your health dropping quickly you can staff 2, pull out a phantasm for regen and protection, swap weapons (getting 50% endurance from sigil) and dodge, and if you still need to buy time til heal use torch 4 to slink away. when torch 4 is up torch 5 is another phantasm to provide more regen / protection, and of course there is scepter 2 block and veil available with null field for more condi clearing. And every mesmer build has the “oh kitten!” button of F4. Also if you’re near water I suggest having DIFFERENT underwater skills equipped such as decoy, mass invis, phantasmal defender (defensive skills). So if you need to mass invis or decoy you can jump into water and use those skills without having to reset your utilities out of combat.

pretty good summary there Bonz. bump!

Theftwind.8976:

Being a HoD Mesmer is not quite so exciting. Since the enemy can easily discern that my mesmer is a bronze Legend they tend to want to run away from me unless they number 6 or more.

being HoD won’t be exciting until you once again someday fight a server with your coverage

we had a close match going until your morning guys turned everything paper. now the rest of the week is going to be one neverending karma train. meh

I think if we left passive condi removal alone but made active condi removal skills remove ALL conditions instead of just 1-2 at a time it would go a long way.

The reason they need to be all and not 1-2 is because the prioritizing is so bad. I don’t want to remove that one stack of vulnerability I want to remove the 15 bleeds that are melting my health!!!

Ynot.8397:

Solstice.1097:

are you sure I can just straight up “block” the condi bomb? I have tried many times. Also my mesmer distortion and warrior invulnerability only seems to apply to physical attacks. I am no expert but the point I’m getting at is it’s always been easier for me to mitigate damage from a zerker class than from a condi spec.

I’m positive.

my hope is renewed! until unblockable fear ruins it.

are you sure I can just straight up “block” the condi bomb? I have tried many times. Also my mesmer distortion and warrior invulnerability only seems to apply to physical attacks. I am no expert but the point I’m getting at is it’s always been easier for me to mitigate damage from a zerker class than from a condi spec.

Johje Holan.4607:

If the sticky situation is near a tower/keep door – Staff Ele. Mist Form, Vapor Form right back into the gate. Even if you get downed it doesn’t matter.

you can now be immobilized in mist form. it’s kittening stupid.

I think you are wrong on mitigation. most condi skills are unblockable and not affected but things like invulnerability or distortion or retalition or reflection. only thing that really works is perfectly timed dodge or getting out of range.

or ANY build there is nothing that hurts me more than a condi necro. I can fight 1v5 or 1v10 on mesmer and survive a very long time, but if there is even 1 necro in the group I’m kittened.

answer YES because I play WvW.

so if in 7 weeks I have to take 30 minutes of my time to do the 4 jumping puzzles real quick to get the loot I will.

everything else just happens naturally in playing wvw. the sentries, dolyaks, merc camps, ruins were too much, but hey I didn’t even do them and still got the meta so no problem.

Eloquence.5207:

I’m sure every profession has a method or two to disengage and escape. I know it still boils down to positioning.

By “sticky situations”, I mean scenarios where it is 1vX. Who has the highest chance of retreating, or scaring enemies away? Who can effectively deal with a havoc group raining down conditions and damage on you?

Guardian can survive the initial onslaught. You may stand your ground(no pun intended) and cleanse conditions. However, once the skills go on cooldown, it’s likely over. No foot speed to run away. The non-targeted leaping ability has 600 range only. You are likely to be kited in an attempt to fight back.

With Mesmers, things are easier especially with a PU build. Conditions will still screw you up if you don’t escape the combat zone soon enough.

Warriors are obviously juggernauts.

I’m not familiar with Engis, but I’ve tried to chase one down once. Who know how many boons he had up through the entire chase.

I’m not familiar with Eles either. They can play around with 20 skills, so there’s got to be something for every situation. Is this only the case for D/D Eles? I was hoping a caster.

sounds like mesmer is your best bet

Aten.8046:

phys.7689:

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Aten.8046:

Necromancer’s signet of spite (Inflict bleeding, blindness, crippled, poison, vulnerability, and weakness) aka one button to win, especially if u’re the victim and you’re outnumbered

I’m sorry I lol’d so hard at this…your freaking out about 2 stacks of bleed and a poison? GG man GG.

[sarcasm] So much dps AUTO WIN OP MLG!!!!!!! [/sarcasm]

the point is that it blocks effective condi removal by putting so many different conditions at once, just getting stacks is useless without filler condi to block removal

exactly! If at least the condi removal system were smart and gave priority to the most hurting condition, but no… I want to cleanse 8 stack of bleeding and instead it cleanses 1 of vulnerability…

Dee Jay.2460:

Aberrant.6749:

In a large groups conditions get removed very quickly. They usually wind up dealing quite a bit less damage than direct damage (as morrolan pointed out).

+40% duration food is countered with the -40% duration food

That’s a kittenty argument.

Since when is every food supposed to have a counter-food?

Is there a counter for any other counter-food out there?

Food is supposed to be a bonus, a buff according to your play-style. And as a bonus, the 40% Condition duration is overpowered compared to others.

Single Conditions aren’t really an issue imo, but Condition bombing is. And currently every skill in the game seems to add some sort of Condition, mostly more.

Agree. + Rare Veggie Pizza is around 8 silver nowadays, if u want to counter it with lemograss u have to spend almost 30 silver (1 silver /min, is the hotline of gw food!)
Ok u can use pultry and leek soup but is 36% reduction.

koi cake is like 1.4 silver and same thing as rare veggie.

1.4 silver countered by 30 silver.

and using koi cake is useful against every class, while the counter is only really useful against condi bulds.

depends on the situation. are you trying to get away? are you trying to stay inside a circle to prevent it from capping? are you causing a distraction for your teammates just trying to keep them busy?

Warriors and thieves are the best at simply getting away

Mesmers are the best at 1vX but not necessarily at preventing point capture due to stealth and distortion don’t claim a point.

Guardian can prob tank/heal while holding a point (no stealth) the longest

D/D ele is a combination of the above. Good at running away, good at 1vX, good at holding points, but not the best at any.

here is the imbalance between condi and glass in a nutshell:

damage
condi and glass builds can output roughly equal DPS

mitigation
glass damage mitigated by by blocks, dodges, LOS blind, invulnerability i.e. endure pain
condi damage mitigated by condi removal skills. depends on class but fairly equal in mitigation options

survivability
condi builds have extremely high survivability
glass builds cannot
and here is the issue.

A full condi bomb build shouldn’t be able to also have 3k+ armor and 25k+ health and still be so effective

JahRo.6432:

VLK’s new pastime. Whoever this was, mad props for being a good sport!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7pGGbB1kZ0

lol you guys are such kittens but that was still funny

Finally we get to face HoD with a competent 3rd server. Loving how close this match is staying.

Arius.7031:

WZ, classiest guild NA as always. Camping Dh spawn with ballista and a mesmer zerg. Awesome (and annoying).

stay out of FC BL then

babazhook.6805:

What you may have heard is not always the case of what in fact happened.

The only night all 4 maps were queued were those first two weeks of league. A number of other servers had this problem in Bronze as was reflected on these boards when people claimed they could not get in due to the PVE masses seeking their achievements.

It was not just HOD that had those issues. Once those numbers tailed off as they did for all servers, the only time I ever had to queue by recollection was for EB. Reset night might have seen 3 of the 4 maps queued but I always managed to get in without a wait into at least one.

you must have got in before the queue. i saw HoD players quoted as late as week 5 stating “we queued all maps again guys great job”

Arius.7031:

How is HoD/FC’s population post season? People still showing up?

well its been 21 hours, reset seemed normal turnout but too soon to tell for the week

Closest 3-way match NA as of now. Had a blast in EB on reset! Lots of wiping zergs and getting wiped as well. I’m pretty sure all 3 servers had a queue for awhile.

because currently weight classes are basically ‘tiers’ and it would have to be the same match every week which isn’t enough ‘variety’

Preacher.9018:

I`d be happy if reward was a single thing unique to WvW – a cosmetic weapon/armor skin or something.

This much “rewards” as we got, i earn in evening playing WvW. Dolyak, tome of knowledge etc. are completely useless for not new players. Every single Living World event had better rewards.

So basically the only thing worthy of doing the achivement was title. I understand the idea of not having too great rewards so that it does not turn into necessary grind/transfer race – but this is just plain silly. All excitement of multiple months nullified in instant.

For those who say we should WvW for WvW sake – we do. But neverless its normal to be insulted and tricket when you open a christmas present and find a pair of socks after being told to behave and be a good boy for the months before Christmas so that Santa would come.

You should have been a good boy anyway without bribery

Theftwind.8976:

Tomes of Knowledge are 100% useless to me. I have 9 level 80’s and I am not going to buy a tenth slot for another character. What in the world am I going to do with 10 Tomes of Knowledge? I already have one in the vault collecting dust!

I can never remember, are those the level up ones? Use them as in-combat insta-heals >.<

And for the skill points use them to upgrade siege to superior and sell for profit, or craft things like vision of the mists for profit (last I did it made like 20g profit for 50 skill points)

Would you play WvW if there were no rewards other than enough money to repair armor, start upgrades, and buy siege?

If no then you’re also a PvE player and I’m sure you do just fine getting your rewards.

If yes then any reward is a bonus right?

Meglobob.8620:

Doing the achievements, mainly the dolyak/guards one probably took 40 hours for rewards that you could get in 1 hour doing dungeons, fractals, world bosses or champion train.

So any player who spent 40 hours doing those instead of WvW is 40 times richer in GW2.

Such a HUGE disparity in rewards.

Why is WvW not at all rewarding?

If you did dolyaks or sentries or merc camps I feel bad for you. I’m a WvW player so I only had to go out of my way for 30 minutes to do the puzzles to get my key. I skipped dolyaks, sentries, merc camps, and ruins and got my 15/19 and the key just fine.

Play WvW with no rewards and no one bats an eye

Play WvW and get a reward that isn’t big enough and everyone loses their minds.

From zero to something is a step in the right direction is it not? Should we not be encouraging Anet to keep going in that direction or should we bash them for even trying? Again, it doesn’t matter who is right, it matters which approach is more effective.

Dan.2940:

Solstice.1097:

Do you want even more non-WvW players in WvW chasing rewards?

Do you play WvW for the rewards or for the game mode itself?

First we complain about too many PvE players chasing rewards and then we complain about not good enough rewards. There is no right answer and so we the WvW community look like a bunch of whiny jerks and then we wonder why Anet doesn’t want to give us more attention.

I agree the rewards are lame but I honestly can’t think of anything that would have made me excited that would NOT have also had a more detrimental effect in filling WvW with more rally-bait carrot-chasers.

My point is – no matter how correct or justified you are, know what you want to accomplish and be constructive towards it because right now we’re just solidifying our place on the back burner.

I think that people have every right to whine about the rewards right now. This was a 7 week meta achievement and we got a reward you can grind out in hours of playing… I play WvW for the game mode, but sometimes people need motivation to play, so many more people played WvW just for this reward and it was amazing! Now that people know the reward isn’t worth the time, it won’t be nearly as fun in season 2, when not even half of the population will be participating.. They screwed up once again on something that seems like such simple logic… I really want to know who brainstormed these rewards, because they seriously need to be talked to or fired. End of story.

I’m not sure if the intent of my post reached you. Yes they have every right to complain but how is that helping anything? Being negative is going to get us less Anet attention, not more.

I personally feel if you went out of your way to complete the WvW meta, aside from the JP’s which are short, then you aren’t really a serious WvW player.

I got 11/15 for playing WvW normally and then spent maybe 30 minutes doing the JPs. This means I got AP’s and several chests for what I would normally do, and the chest rewards are definitely worth the maybe 30 minutes out of my way that I had to go for the key.

Straegen.2938:

Should be a coupon in the chest that could be redeemed for an ascended back piece with any stat configuration. Would solve the missing WvW back piece issue and would make the WvW reward worthwhile.

It was stated that ascended mats can be used instead of mists essence from fractals, so ascended backpieces can be crafted without having to PvE. One stack of T6 mats, 50 ectos I believe, skill points, and ascended mats in the forge.

I can’t find the link now and not sure if this already happened or is still coming.

NargofWoV.4267:

Solstice.1097:

Well isn’t PvE where you farm rewards and WvW where you go to fight? Or am I missing the point of WvW?

There has been a big debate about how WvW’rs are having to farm for PvE mats.. is that fair?

I would think that whether ascended gear should be allowed in WvW is a completely separate topic.

Assuming it’s not considered an “exploit” you can use your level-up tome in combat for an instant full-heal. Might come in handy if you’re quick enough.

Well isn’t PvE where you farm rewards and WvW where you go to fight? Or am I missing the point of WvW?

lol don’t put FC and KN together or it gets censored.

Reverence.6915:

Solstice.1097:

Top tiers – “We can’t get into WvW due to long queues!!!”
Low tiers – “Help we need more players!!!”

Not quite true. First couple of weeks of this inaugural season of leagues saw pretty bad queues, but in T1 NA servers, queues died down completely by week 4. By this week, I’m already seeing outmanned buff very often during my timezone (oceanic).

Lower tier servers attract certain kinds of players, especially those that like small scale fights. Higher tier servers attract those that like larger scale battles. Honestly, if you’re there for fights and not PPT, then WvW is fine as it is.

Personally though, I don’t think I’d enjoy WvW in a lower population server. Not having anyone to play with would make the game very boring indeed. Heard from a recent transfer from Anvil Rock that Oceanic/SEA might have 4 people going around capping the entire map. That’s just not fun…

I can see that from an Oceanic/SEA perspective. The lack of night crew is mainly why they are bronze servers, but HoD, DH, kittenN usually have between 20-50 people on during that time, not 4 lol.

overall nothing here I couldn’t have farmed by myself in a few hours except the ore i don’t really need and the mini that I don’t care about.

Top tiers – “We can’t get into WvW due to long queues!!!”
Low tiers – “Help we need more players!!!”

Obvious solution is obvious.

We had a 1,000+ post CDI discussion on server population and different ideas that Anet could do, but why are we putting the responsibility all on Anet? We know they will never force transfers and so it is ultimately OUR responsibility to fix this problem.

Obvious solution is obvious.

So with S1 ending tonight, are we going to fix this? What’s stopping us? To upper tiers; is there some sort of myth that lower tiers are just some pugs running around playing PvE in the WvW maps? Anyone in bronze can speak up and tell you that is not the case. In fact, pound-for-pound, lower tiers tend to be the most loyal, dedicated, and battle-hardened of all. In lower tiers you know there is nobody in queue waiting to take your place and so your contributions really do matter.

I really would like to know are we planning on shaking things up or would we rather keep things as-is, and if so, why?

only allow rezzing dead players OOC and add a 30 second auto-WP timer that resets if someone starts rezzing you.

I’m going to throw out a guess of the rewards in the chest:

world XP consumable(s)
world XP booster(s)
50 badges of honor
5 gold
and maybe a black lion chest key or some laurels or something

I’m guessing since it is a meta achievement it will pop up like any other living story meta-achievement chest. Inside the pop-up chest will be a Season 1 Reward Chest that you take, then you have to open it with your key.

And if one of the rewards is a chest, then we will have a chest within a chest within a chest.

I don’t see anyone crying here. Did a lot of HoDs avoid trying for silver? Yes. Did I cry just now when I said that? No. NSP or IoJ would have been just as strong. If all you see are tears you might want to wipe your eyes.

On FC we had the toughest schedule of all and imo we did very well considering when leagues were announced on 9/6 we’d been in T8 for almost a full year with only 3 total wins in recorded history. GJ Fergs

Congrats HoD on the win. Congrats DH on the improvement during the season. Congrats AR on the rebound. Everyone else thanks for the good fights!

Bllade.1029:

kitten right we tanked. Many didn’t want to do it, but I sure as kitten did. If teh majority of our WvW population consisted of organized guilds and cooperative commanders, I would of been down for Silver.

But most of our force is composed of pugs, nothing wrong with that. However, when the going gets tough, they’re the first ones to leave. I like to look at this as an opportunity to get many people who have never dipped their feet into WvW a chance to pick it up and be interested without getting their kitten kicked in by a server that is way out of our league anyways.

Sound familiar?

You want to be mad at someone? Be mad at the way these leagues were structured and the way the match ups were pre chosen. That’s what you really should be mad about.

You did the same thing to some bronze servers, but it has to happen to somebody and can’t be mad at you for not wanting it to be you. I do applaud NSP though for pushing for silver I’m sure it’s been rough but I’ll bet they’ve learned a lot and next time we fight them it won’t be the same NSP we remember.

It’s probably just that ‘tank’ isn’t the right word. Let’s just say NSP tried a lot harder for silver than HoD did.

HoD did tank and for the most part admits it, not being ashamed of not wanting to fight in silver league. NSP started to tank for a couple days of their last pre-season match and it was causing server drama so they turned it around and player hard for 5 days to ensure they were in silver. Some accused KN of tanking but their fall was definitely not intentional or planned.

I won’t blame HoD for tanking because NSP or IoJ would also have gone undefeated. The issue here is that Anet didn’t lock in server rewards until the very last minute, which did not allow time for the rating system to adjust to all the transferring.

The solution for this is to announce the season well in advance and lock in the server rewards 3-4 weeks ahead of time, then add a pre-season meta achievement so people actually play during those 3-4 weeks instead of tank or manipulate ratings. These 3-4 weeks will allow ratings to become more accurate before the schedule is finalized.

I’m sure everyone who completed the meta will get a reward typical of a meta achievement. Whatever ‘bonus’ on top of that based on server rankings is a lose/lose. IF it’s too good it will encourage more transfers for S2 if it sucks people will cry in their cheerios.

Some of us may think we want a WXP line, but no special ‘abilities’ beyond the commander UI should be able to be earned alone. No special abilities should help in combat either (i.e. damage, healing, etc). There can be no incentive for players to run a tag other than the explicit purpose of leading other players. The only abilities that should be possible to obtain are non-combat abilities intended only for making it easier to gather information about your team and give accurate orders to who you want to give them to.

Seriously just forget “guild” tags. Just add the ability to select ANY friendly player and right click/follow. This adds a personal tag that only you can see on the player you selected. If a group wants to run tagless they can all select one player to follow. This can work in PvE and WvW from groups as small as 2 to X.

A small and easy change now is infinitely more welcome than waiting months or longer for a full overhaul, and there is no reason the two need be mutually exclusive.

I think it’s hilarious when emotes get someone worked up.

It’s a clear sign you don’t have enough RL problems to worry about and I’m jealous