Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen this also. Twice. The thief doing this was from Henge of Denravi, but I couldn’t quite make out the guild tag. I did a “/bug” report the second time, so hopefully someone at a-net will have a look at this.

Here you go:
http://bit.ly/SsURtu

According to a red post in the WvW forum, Portal is getting a nerf soon:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvsW-is-unplayable-because-of-mesmer-portal-abuse

Too bad. It’s kind of fun to back-door an army into a tower if the opposing team doesn’t bother clear the place out.

The Sword+Pistol/Staff synergy doesn’t happen until level 40 when you pick up Sharper Images. Then your iDuelist becomes a bleed machine and you’ll actually benefit from the condition damage.

Until you hit 40, you can still run Sword+Pistol/Staff but gear for power instead. You’ll get more out of the Sword+Pistol combo and your iWarlock will hit like a truck.

Sigil of Earth does have cooldown, but its something much smaller, like 2-3s. Sigil of Rage is the one with the 45s cooldown. Both are very nice choices.

The other sigil I recommend is Battle. You’ll be doing a lot of weapon swapping, so this can give you a nice little boost to your power and condition damage.

The “on kill” sigils are pretty nice too if you’re able to stay alive consistently.

It’s been like this since beta.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/41186-which-if-any-sigils-affect-phantasms/

It’s a throw-back to Wastrel’s Worry and Wastrel’s Demise in Guild Wars 1. The idea is that you would combine it with the Confusion condition to create a “Catch-22” kind of situation. If they use a skill, they take damage from the confusion. If they don’t use a skill, then they take an extra 5% damage from your attacks.

Just a quick comment on the following line of code:

damageOutput = (power / this.powermultiplier) + (power / this.weaponmultiplier);

By the distributive property, this is equivalent to:
damageOutput = (1/this.powermultiplier + 1/ this.weaponmultiplier)*power

Since the “powermultiplier” and “weaponmultiplier” are both constants, this can be reduced to a single value. This value is what we commonly refer to as the “skill coefficient”. You might see a little variation in whether or not the “coefficient” includes weapon damage or target armor, depending on what is assumed to be “constant” in the analysis.

While it doesn’t really matter in a tiny piece of code like this, it’s a good programming practice to pay attention to what values are constant and what values are not. It opens up possible compile-time optimizations.

I’m glad to see you’re interested in learning how to program. It’s a fun and rewarding hobby. Keep at it, collect some data in game, and see if your predictions are accurate or not. I’ve also got a blog post I’m working on, a follow-up to my Sharper Images spreadsheet from beta, that examines the pay-offs for bleeding on crit. Stay tuned for it. I think you’ll find it interesting.

At lower levels you find lots of gear that only has a single stat on it, but at 80 you become limited to a handful of prefixes that determine the stats. So while you might not be able to directly convert your crit damage to power, we can still reverse engineer the stat weights from looking at the equipment.

There’s a nice equipment guide on GW2 Junkies that explains how this works:
http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/08/23/guide-weapon-and-armor-stats-explained/

By going off the trait line bonus and not the raw stats, you’re not making a valid comparison. That 10% critical damage is worth at least 100 Power in terms of itemization cost. If you want to make more accurate cost-benefit analysis, you should be comparing that 100 precision / 10% crit damage with 200 Power. That would put Blurred Frenzy at 2875 (by your own tool). Power wins.

Also, I’m pretty sure your damage is based the product of power and weapon damage rather than their sum.

Good catch!

Does this affect our clones too?

The problem with the pay-offs for Precision/Prowess is that you need a decent amount of Power (like 3500-4000) to start with. Then, as your crit damage/rate starts to go up, it makes Power even more attractive. You can easily verify this with a little calculus by taking the partial derivatives of the damage function.

Of course there’s going to be some Precision/Prowess on your gear, but there’s a difference between just going with that and actively seeking Precision/Prowess. The only time you’d prefer Precision to Power is if you have “on crit” effects as I said earlier. However, this is beyond the scope of your tool as it depends on variables like your attack rate and condition damage.

It’s significant enough to say the tool tip is wrong (which we knew), but the data set is way too small to make the claim that there’s diminishing returns as power goes up. The skill is random to begin with, so a variation of 10% would not be the least bit surprising to me.

There’s also things in your analysis that suggest problems with your math. You claim a p<.05 result, but didn’t even bother to report the standard deviations. You report some of your damage results to 6-7 significant digits, when there’s clearly not that much precision to the results. You don’t even mention if you assumed a normal or uniform distribution in your calculations.

First, I think a lot more people would download this if you made the source available. People can decompile java files anyway, and it’s not like you’re doing any ground breaking computer science here. It would also help if you cited your sources for the data/formulas you used.

Second, if all you’re concerned about is maximizing direct damage, just stack power. The pay-offs for power are way better than precision, unless you have some kind of “on crit” effects like an Earth Sigil or Sharper Images.

Third, some of the tool tips are inaccurate to start with so the results of this tool are off as a result. Take the tool tips with a grain of salt and test it out on the target dummies in the mists.

I’ve been finding out that a lot of our tool tips are inaccurate, so it doesn’t surprise me that Mind Wrack is off as well. However, I’m not convinced that there’s any diminishing returns on higher power. The results are “close enough” to the 100%/150%/200% that we’ve been seeing since BWE3.

You can find that old thread on GW2Guru here:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/43027-gigantic-consolidated-mesmer-changes-thread/page__st__90#entry1630406

capric.1896:

Because while the tooltip damages for all weapon phantasms are (erroneously) adjusted per weapon strength, the utility phantasms are not. None should be, since phantasms’ damage is completely unaffected by weapon strength.

That’s the part that’s bothering me. If phantasm damage is not based on weapon damage, like every other one of our weapon skills, then how exactly is it calculated? It doesn’t seem to stabilize when using steady weapons either. It’s almost like the phantasm comes equipped its own weapon. I can’t be the only one that’s curious about how this works. Am I?

capric.1896:

Well, regardless. If you want to calculate skill coefficients, the level 80 tooltip damage formula is this:
tooltip damage = (power)(average weapon strength)(coefficient)/2595

2595 also happens to be the armor of the heavy golems in the pvp lobby, so tooltip damages—again, when they are accurate—reflect how much damage you will do on average to the heavy golems.

That’s helpful information to know. It also seems like utility skills in general follow a different formula that’s independent of weapon damage. i.e. Mantra of Pain hits about the same with both normal and steady weapons.

The classes with the most finishers seem to have the least initiators and vice versa. Mesmer has a nice balance of both, and I’m okay with that.

If you invest enough into Chaos, or slot Signet of Midnight, you can get near perma-swiftness from Centaur runes and Mirror. IMO, MoR is really only worth it if you’re already speccing for mantras.

The downside to the Centaur runes is that the +15% bleed duration doesn’t apply to the bleeds from Sharper Images, which is really our main source of bleeding. This part of the set bonus kind of goes to waste.

In the worst case scenario, you can just switch to the focus when out of combat and switch back to your normal off-hand after casting the curtain.

Short answer:

It doesn’t matter. Pick your race based on aesthetics.

Long answer:

There are couple racial skills worth mentioning. Sylvari’s Grasping Roots can provide a more reliable root than the sword leap and Healing Seed complements the 15pt Chaos Trait if you can stand by it consistently. The Asura have Pain Inverter which might fit nicely into a Confusion build and Radiation Field applies Poison and Weakness which can complement a staff build nicely. In general, all races have some kind of condition inflicting racial skills that have some synergy with iWarlock’s bonus damage per condition.

The problem is that our profession’s utility and elite skills are just too awesome in comparison. Time Warp trumps every single racial elite you could choose from. Feedback and Null Field are also staples in any group setting, and I don’t go anywhere without at least one stun breaker. That simply doesn’t leave any room for racial skills on my bar.

I checked last night and the wiki numbers do reflect the tooltips with 916 power for the staff and greatsword. The only inconsistencies were with the offhand and utility phantasms. The tooltips change based on your weapon damage and power, so the numbers change depending on what weapon you have equipped because each weapon has a slightly different damage range.

What I’m actually looking for is the skill coefficients for the phantasms. The formula that’s been floating around since beta is: Base Damage = (Power)(Weapon Damage)(Skill Coefficient)/(Target’s Armor). If we could determine the skill coefficients for the phantasms, this would help answer questions about what stats to gear. Higher skill coefficients and low attack rates lend themselves to straight Power, while low skill coefficients and high attack rates lend themselves to Precision/Condition Damage with Sharper Images.

Hello fellow mesmers!

I’ve been doing some theory-crafting and am looking for some accurate data on our illusions. I recently collected the following information from the official wiki:

Most of the attack rates seem to be relatively close to the values reported by others, on these forums and elsewhere, but I have some serious doubts about the damage values. This is especially on the multi-hit phantasms, because the wiki isn’t consistent in how it handles multi-hit skills . For example, the wiki lists an x8 next to the damage for iDuelist, but doesn’t do this for the iWarden. If the damage is “per hit” then iDuelist is our best single target DPS by a long shot, but if 200 damage is cumulative then it’s the worst. It would be nice to get some fresh data to update the wiki with and clarify if the value is damage per hit or cumulative.

I’d also like to get some info on the clone attack rates and possibly damage. Currently the most recent data I’ve seen is from frzn at GW2Guru. The only problem is that he only measured a single attack cycle, which I think is too small of a data set to rely on.

I’m planning to run my own tests when I find the time, but I’d ask that you run some tests independently so we can compare results. Lets get that wiki updated so we can theory-craft with confidence!

I tend to run with Inspiration in PvE/WvW and Chaos in PvP. Illusionary Defenses and Mirror of Anguish in Chaos help me from getting spiked down by Wars/Thieves, while Medic’s and Warden’s Feedback are just too awesome in PvE/WvW to pass up.

I think the main issue is that there are a lot of mesmers flocking to the cookie-cutter 10/15/0/25/20 phantasm spec because they’re too lazy to think for themselves.

A general rule of thumb is that only sigils that modify your stats will affect your illusions. Something like Sigil of Battle which gives you Might will affect clones because it increases your Power/Condition Damage. However, something with an “on hit/crit” (i.e. Earth/Air/Water/etc.) effect will not affect illusions.

One word: Legendaries

The Legendary weapons require crafted items which are account bound. So to get one, you’ll need to level up at least 2 crafting professions to 400.

To find out which, see here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_weapon

Thanks for the response Mike!

If you queue for multiple WvW zones, do you get into the first available one? or do you have to wait for the last zone you queued for?

My guess is that it’s the latter. This is something that myself and some guild members have been testing since beta and the results have been inconclusive. It seems that we’re always put in the last one we queued for, but this could just be a streak of bad luck. Does anyone know for sure?

Trahearne got stuck outside of the crypt on this mission today, despite the patch notes saying this quest was fixed on the 8th. On the second time through, I deliberately avoided talking to Trahearne at all (looted extra carefully) and didn’t stray too far from the main road, and was able to complete the mission. This might be something worth trying if he won’t talk to the Pale Tree for you.