Guild Wars 2

First of all, the skill was fine prior to this little tinkering yall did which basically broke the skill. I didn’t use it for a stealth anyways but for the 2 blast finishers. Why did yall feel the need to fix something that wasn’t broken?

Now, the blast finisher is supposed to go off after 3 seconds. So here are some examples of when it works and when it does not work:

It works when:
1) You cast it in a combo field, the combo field doesn’t expire, and you stay in the combo field. This means you can’t move around outside of the combo field and very limited while inside the combo field, depending on the field. It also may work sometimes when you cast it in a combo field and the combo field doesn’t expire, and you walk out of it.
2) You cast a combo field on yourself after activating the skill and do not move. Works mostly if you do it JUST as it is ending. Less luck before hand.

It does not work when:
1) You cast the prestige, cast a combo field, walk into the combo field.
2) You cast the prestige, but the combo field ends before the 3 seconds are up.
3) You walk into any combo field you didn’t activate the skill on during the 3 seconds.
4) You walked out of a combo field that you cast it in and it expires.

Prior to yall tinkering with this skill to make it worse, we had 2 blast finishers and a channeled stealth, meaning people could knock us out of the stealth and we wouldn’t get the second blast finisher. We also could get all the “it does not work when” numbers 1-4 above as blast finisher activations.

Now, we don’t get any blast finisher most of the time unless the conditions are just right, but people can’t knock us out of stealth so easily. We also have a guaranteed flame blast because the skill goes off even if you get knocked around. We can also cast non-attacking abilities (such as clones, combo fields) during the stealth.

As a former torch user, I completely hate this new torch, and there is honestly no reason for me to use this weapon anymore. We also have no more blast finishers that are reliable on this profession. Who was using this for the stealth???

Change it back, or get it right! Let’s not make us wait a month or two or three for this to be fixed, because right now this ability is ruined.

Post on the thread in the bugs section and maybe it’ll be fixed faster.

Don’t expect everyone to read every one of your 1000000000 posts on this forum Pyro. Just because you post the most doesn’t mean that your opinion is more important.

Not everyone has to make a pro/con list to use a weapon. You black and white thinker you. Oh and while you were writing your paragraphs on this forum, I made $1000 today.

You do realize you can still be in college through any age and still have your ID at any age, right? Ha.

Please remove the engineer kabooms from my mesmer’s clone deaths. Thanks.

It is important that yall notice the phantasm isn’t working with traits while you’re working on this weapon!!!!

Embolism.8106:

Soyboy.3548:

Regarding the iMage, I haven’t ever traited this, but have yall ever used Illusionary Elasticity with the iMage? If so, wouldn’t that put 6 stacks of confusion on someone relatively often? More if you have 2 out of course and assuming the extra bounce goes to the same person.

This phantasm is like any other: summon it, let it attack once, then shatter it. For confusion builds, it ups the sources of confusion that you can rotate on a target to keep a constant stack on someone.

Illusionary Elasticity doesn’t work with iMage. Besides, I believe iMage has two bounces by default, but it does enemy-enemy-ally instead of enemy-ally-enemy.

Confusion builds never count on iMage as part of their Confusion repertoire. It is too slow, too short and too unreliable.

If +CondDuration works on Illusions the iMage may be viable. But it still needs a CD reduction.

Don’t tell me what my confusion build can rely on. Not everyone copypastas builds from the forums. My build uses the mage and it is nice for what it does. God. People are so controlling on this forum. Excuuuuse me! Other people who don’t post as much as you can have opinions too that are less vocal because we don’t sit around and read this forum all day.

Regarding the iMage, I haven’t ever traited this, but have yall ever used Illusionary Elasticity with the iMage? If so, wouldn’t that put 6 stacks of confusion on someone relatively often? More if you have 2 out of course and assuming the extra bounce goes to the same person.

This phantasm is like any other: summon it, let it attack once, then shatter it. For confusion builds, it ups the sources of confusion that you can rotate on a target to keep a constant stack on someone.

I’m not quite sure why it was necessary to change this skill into one that didn’t work, but last patch it gave two blast finishers although it had a channeled stealth during which you could do nothing.

Now you can do not attacking actions during the stealth, get knocked around (as usual), but the blast finishers aren’t there at all.

So we went from 2 blast finishers to none. The whole point of the torch is that it is a support weapon for support builds. Now it does nothing supportive, and the phantasm it summons doesn’t benefit from condition damage or duration.

So now we have a weapon with no blast finisher and a phantasm that doesn’t get improved in builds that should improve it (condition/support builds).

Please hotfix this. I only get to play on weekends, but I didn’t play much this weekend because my build sucks in group play now. Yes, I used the torch in previous patches.

I’d be happy if yall quit. The game has been out for 6 months. Get a life. I don’t like being stomped by people who have time to form powerhouse teams. Go back to WoW with your demands. The people this game is marketed to is people like me who aren’t hardcore. You knew that upfront so stop griping.

Dude, it’s a casual video game. No one wanted premades anyways except kids who have nothing going on in their lives.

True, but once you have one, you can multiply them with the mats you have that you don’t want with arcane converters. Just look up the recipe you need on the wiki

I don’t think either of the two posters above understand my point. I LIKE the pink butterflies and glass-shattering effects that occur upon shattering.

I DO NOT LIKE the explosive booms that happen when clones are killed. They should still just shatter but give no shatter effects…or do something other than explode because they have no gunpowder!!!

Well I think that clones making engineer explosive noises when killed was meant to be a placeholder graphic/sound that stuck. There’s nothing explosive about a mesmer. Take the gunpowder out of the class please!!!

I still use it cuz it’s another ethereal field. That’s the point is you can do combos out of it…who cares about the extra perks of glamour skills.

You can combo field from it as it is an ethereal field…I assume it is a glamour…

These thieves seem to just pop up anytime I repair a treb and then harass me for as long as I stick around. Then they kill the treb again. It’s extremely annoying, and I can’t kill them period.

That makes no sense…come again?

Shanks R Us.2489:

Sorry, but you run out of tickets if you run paids all day.

LOL what about those of us who work 40 hrs a week, go to the gym, and have friends that don’t play video games? Guess we just have to deal with you people who play all day with no job or obligations.

This is ridiculous. How can a class stealth 80% of the time you are fighting it and then just throw poison and HIGH STACKS OF BLEED at you constantly? I can’t do kitten vs them. Yes, I pack 3 condition removal tools and it’s pointless because they aren’t even out of stealth long enough for me to do anything.

Mesmers can’t remove boons unless they use a sword and get the third chain off, which removes 1 boon; using utilities like null field, arcane thievery, or phantasmal disenchanter (lol); or putting 20 points into domination just for a trait that removes boons on shattering. If you run a confusion build, you PROBABLY don’t have that 20 point trait because you’d rather your glamours cause more confusion…
I’ve tried running support builds for boon removal and they suck. Classes that rely on boons (engineer, guardian, ele) can spam them so much you never get that stability off, which is the one we care about… They’d have to buff boon removal to make it a counter because 1 at a time isn’t enough against yall who spam boons on yourselves.

I like scepter/focus and sword/torch. It is an offensive support build with confusion and reflection (I do 20/0/0/20/30). I do not get illusionary persona. I take the glamour trait in dom 20, the confuse on blind, the glamours cause blind, confusion 33% longer, focus skills reflect, mender’s purity for a condition removal (I wish I could take the feedback bubble while reviving, but I need more condition removal). I use the reflect heal.

Those of you who think retaliation is worth anything on mesmer, it isn’t unless you run a defender for 2x the damage and stack power.

Confusion does the same thing and is much, much more powerful than retaliation. The key is to create chaos armors via combo fields, so you better have your bar filled with all glamour skills, including veil and time warp. Anytime someone hits you, they get confusion or blind (confusion traited) if you learn how to leap or prestige your combo fields OR whirl your combo fields with the warden. Veil is way better than decoy because it is an ethereal combo field and you can leap out of it with both you or your clone or both with chaos armor (or stealth your warden while he whirls confusion around). You can also grant aoe blast finishers with The Prestige (main use of it over damage or stealth , IMO, but it also is an aoe blind/confuse).

If you run sword with focus, you lack a lot of defense. Sword/torch is better IMO and you will always have access to confusions. I don’t think any of you are using combo fields… that’s why your confusion builds don’t work. Also, there is nothing wrong with the iMage in a condition damage build. It does similar to any other phantasm.

Of course, this build isn’t for everyone, especially if you are only capable of the attention spam of iDuelist —>magic bullet, leap-->swap, blade frenzy, diversion/mindwrack, mirror images diversion/mindwrack. People still get caught in that combo I guess…

As a mesmer (and that’s the only class I play), I’d be quite fine with them nerfing the most popular builds, which involve a staff and a sword/pistol shatter build with mirror images. It’s as predictable as the d/d elementalist combos.

Staff is too powerful. Chaos storm shouldn’t be able to interrupt that frequently aoe style AND the chaos armor gives 5 seconds of guaranteed protection, whereas all combo field chaos armors only give speed and regeneration (but they do give blind/confusion/cripple, as far as I know). The blink on such a short cooldown is over the top. It almost screws you if you don’t run the staff…

No, you don’t have protection 1/2 the time. I’m not putting 15 points into chaos just for a minor trait that gives me 3 seconds of protection if I bother to stand by a phantasm in pvp. That’s protection AT MOST 20% of the time, if you have a phantasm out and are always next to one.

I’d pay gems for them to change the shatter graphic/sound effect. It does not fit.

Divinity.8041:

You know for all the people who just flamed me for saying WoW is bad? Look at our player base, and look at their player base. And they actually PAY to play.

Our PvP base is getting smaller by the day, and the developers are not responding fast enough, and think players are going to stay in this game.

Sadly this game is on the cusp of being dead and to the point of no return.

*Again, like I said before, you all like to point your noses in the air and say “go back to WoW, I play GW2.” If you you are proud of being part of a dead community, more power to you brah.

You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody plays it, it is useless. This is what this game is becoming. It is just a shame that I have invested so much time :\

How can you tell the game is getting smaller by the day? Some of us don’t even get to log on until Saturday because we have a career, social life, and gym. What statistics are you using to make such an assumption?

I never understood why in beta the mesmer illusion graphics/sound were changed such that, when killed, make Engineer explosive noises. An illusionist is more majestic.

I would rather have different sound effects and please no more orange puffs of Engineer smoke with my magical glass shattering illusions. Why not make it magical glass shattering noises, or something with less gunpowder involved? I know yall can think of something better.

It’s called “Shattering” not “Exploding”!!!

I know yall have a good art team…so this needs a change. I sincerely thought it was a placeholder sound effect/visual effect when that change hit…and here we are in mid-February.

The OP basically wants a pvp system that this game completely tried to not follow on purpose. Those of us who read up on this game before we bought it know that the game will not go in that direction and like it because it helps those of us who are done with college and not sitting around playing video games for 6 hours a day and have jobs and social lives but can still have fun in pvp in a system that doesn’t require roles and still requires more skill than grinding for 3 weeks every patch just so you can keep up with the teenagers who don’t have jobs and don’t do extra curricular activities after school.

That said, if they did implement arena-style matches, I don’t think it would hurt anything other than the fact you would have to develop more social connections in the game, which again, is a hamper to those of us who do not have dedicated gaming friends. I also do not want to see any rewards that change the power of a character, and I also don’t want to see discrimination against new players because they don’t look decked out. I don’t care how long you have played—if you suck you suck, and if a new player is better than you and only rank 5, so be it.

Furthermore, I don’t like tiered pvp systems because it becomes a competitive match and less fun—people get yelled at on vent, etc. That’s not fun. I enjoy winning with casual people who play against casual people. I don’t like to be yelled at on my Saturday’s off work by some jerk 20 year old who has no job and plays all day. That will drive away this game’s market.

Sounds like a bug that needs to be fixed.

I like iWarden as it is. Yall apparently don’t know it’s THE best supportive phantasm for combo fields. In pvp, you can cast it on someone and put a combo field under it. This must be harder than your memorized greatsword/pistol max dmg mind wrack stunlock combo.

It’s great that you get an amazing 2 seconds of protection up time from dumping 15 points into the Chaos tree, but I’m sure others like me don’t feel that’s a worthwhile allocation of points. I just am asking from the combo field application of chaos armor alone, is anyone getting protection from this chaos armor buff that does not include the 15 points in the Chaos tree?

I am thinking it could be an overlooked balance point of when mesmers were previously allowed a lot more up time of protection via regeneration from that trait; now, that trait has a cooldown but chaos armor still won’t apply protection when it should on being hit. It may also allow us to not have to run a staff if we want protection, because right now they seem to want everyone using a staff for pvp (due to the spammable blinks, spammable dazes, and protection with clones that do damage…they really overdid this weapon and it could use some nerfs). I think it would let this game’s hallmark of combo field integrative pvp actually shine through rather than just sitting around waiting for a regeneration boon to proc again, but I don’t know what they’re thinking. If you run a glamour mesmer build with confusion, you certainly don’t have oodles of survivability. Why would protection be over the top here?

Can you confirm it ever randomly gives protection if from a combo field? I cannot. All I seem to get is swiftness and regeneration…

I don’t see myself getting it even randomly from hits. That’s what it says it can do from the weapon version, but the combo field version seems weak as though it isn’t ever awarding protection.

From my perspective, you’re a vocal minority and only someone that would post this would be an elitest jerk. If you’re so good at this game, learn to play it. You’re asking to be able to stomp someone before 4 teammates can res him? HA

I personally don’t find regeneration or swiftness a big heck of a deal in most pvp fights, unless I am trying to get away or get to another point faster (usually not if I’m doing combo field/finishers). They don’t last long enough for regeneration to make a heck of a difference, and unless you have traits to get other perks when you get regeneration, this combo’s best part is just the animation of the purple bubble of ethereal “doesn’t do anything worthwhile but looks cool”

If you have been fighting against someone who gets chaos armor from a combo field (probably rare with all the staff mesmers around, but if you have, then answer), what conditions are you getting?

From my point of view, I’ll see confusion being given out, cripple too often, and rarely ever blind (maybe they hit too fast, so I miss it, or it’s just not applying at all).

From a buffs perspective, from what I understand, it gives us regeneration and swiftness…NOT PROTECTION, which is the whole point of calling something an armor…right? So for the 2 seconds of up time if I combo field/finish a chaos armor, I don’t even get a chance of having protection? Am I missing this? What are your thoughts and feelings?

I thought this was going to be a kinky thread.

It says it is a light field…yup checked in game. The only ethereals we have are chaos storm, feedback, null field, and time warp. Lights are temporal curtain and veil.

Anyhow, I haven’t read this whole thread and the ins-and outs because it is so lengthy, but I am wondering why the OP doesn’t value the blocks grant retaliation perk. You just equip Mimic and you get a ton of retaliation that way regardless of whether you use a scepter 2 or OH sword 4 (or chaos storm also gives a block) especially if someone is rapid firing at you. Mimic is basically permablock for 4 seconds and the number of blocks depends on number of hits taken…

Next, I was wondering why the Retaliation on Downed trait isn’t taken…It basically means people take damage if they try to finish you off without a stomp. In close fights that usually means you win.

No one thanked me or uploaded it into the wiki yet…I’m not sure how to do that…

Have you tried using Veil of Invis as an extra light curtain to pop off some extra retaliation/cleansing bolts? I was surprised not to see it in the build.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The build is decent in sPvP, provided you have a decent team for helping you out. It is abysmal at roaming, for obvious reasons, but is fantastic for turtleing on a point, although you can get overwhelmed in sPvP.

In tPvP, however, the build performs fantastically, and the only major issue I have encountered is that a knockback engie will slowly take a point from me over the course of a few minutes, but that is easily solved with a bit of team support.

I tried a confusion/retaliation build as well as a bunker build on my mesmer and got laughed (they had time to type at me too….)at as the guardian/engineer just promenades in, knocks you off the point, out damages you, out heals you, and eventually takes the point. If you get the interrupts/knockback/pulls in your build, you’re not as tanky either…and you won’t be doing damage. I find it a futile build in any sort of spvp or tpvp unless you just like to stubbornly survive without having any contribution to your team…

The only way you could possibly make it work is if you are so A+ at GW2 that you know how to time stability charges from mantra of concentration to counter the knockbacks. Good luck with that.

It used to be really good when it would help stack confusion since it is a whirl finisher and can be spawned and then throw a combo field over it: eg Warden + Feedback/Nullfield/Temporal Curtain/Chaos Storm/Time Warp OR some other profession’s combo fields can be used. They nerfed it to max at 3 stacks, which is a load of crock. You used to be able to stack confusion (or any condition) to like 15 constantly anytime you could combo field with it. Now it seems to be limited to 3.

I quit playing for about 2 months during this period.
Notice interesting opponents with similar names. You think they are multiboxing or a bunch guys with too much time on their hands?

Thanks to Cynntastic for Moa Morphing me.

Skill 1: Bite: Bite your foe. 1/4 sec animation, Range 130
Skill 2: Chomp: Chomp your foe. 1/2 sec animation, 4 sec cd. Range 250
Skill 3: Frenzy: Attack nearby foes. 3 sec animation, 5 sec cd. Range 150. (I believe it roots? confirmation?)
Skill 4: Spit: Spit at your foe to confuse them [sic grammar error, not them, him or her, or make foes plural :P]. 1 and 1/4 sec animation, 15 sec cd. Range 900. (projectile? confirmation? Can it miss?)
Skill 5: Flee: Flee from your enemies. 2 sec animation, 15 sec cd.

—My contribution to the GW2 community, Alfred Borden/Soyboy. Someone else is welcome to add it to the wiki.

Honestly this game marketed itself as anti-holy trinity. There shouldn’t be roles.

If the mesmer is using portal, they likely won’t have condition removal skills, stun breaker, or offensive/defense utility (clone generators). Exploit that and just kill the mesmer or learn how to knock back when you see a portal open. It takes a second before the F key is allowed to be used.

no they don’t seem to stack well.

I’m about to log on. Msg me if you wanna do this :P

Agree that it is a bit longer and extremely difficult to land compared to other abilities. This is probably because ArenaNet perceives it’s a very powerful boon removal skill or because they think it’s more powerful than it is. My personal opinion is they think the latter. Mesmer can rip off 3 boons immediately, plus each clone can rip off another boon if traited, and the mesmer could run null field in addition or illusionary disenchanter. Unfortunately if anyone else has actually used a build with all this boon removal utility (I have), you suck because you lack the ability to actually use these skills due to dying to other things.

Vors.9560:

I think that Guild Wars 2 has an opportunity to become very successful by supporting new pvp features mixed in with the regular PVE updates. I do support the idea that we need new, fun, modes and maps to play.

If the idea that “PVP just doesn’t make enough money to get developer attention” was real, then I would recommend that the PVP crowd be given an opportunity to show their support for the game via the introduction of cosmetic microtransactions for pvp.

For example: Cosmetic weapons and armor, premium announcer voices for spvp, variety in the skins for the spvp NPCs such as the Blue Lords and the guards, emotes that enable 1v1 duels in Heart of the Mists, and variations on these ideas for the new game modes beyond the simple 3-point conquest maps we have today.

This is quite a good idea for them to read. If they enabled dueling for a microtransaction, that would be some big bucks…You like money right ArenaNet?