Guild Wars 2

Revenant was originally unable to weapon swap, which was changed in the beta phase thanks to player feedback. They probably only designed this 1 underwater weapon, because there wasn’t really supposed to be a second one at all, as you had a “complete” underwater set with spear.

The second slot is most likely still there because Revenant could potentially weapon swap (now), but simply has no weapon to swap to.

Playerbase complains that they want challenging open world PvE content.
Anet gives them TD (and VB) where you can’t straight up rum from point A to point B but actually have to think about what you’re doing.
Playerbase complains they can’t half afk through the content anymore.

I’d also like placeable adrenalin shrooms, so we can reset cooldowns between fights.

OriOri.8724:

• OH Sword (slightly modified, but a short evade frame would fit with sword overall, plus the leap would be a nice gap closer for MH sword as well)

It wouldn’t only be good as a gap closer but also as a small disengage, to then further space with sword 3, or a weapon switch to GS and a Illusionary Wave, followed up with a backdodge to then have a decent range to keep attacking with GS. Would really love to see this happen.

On the other side, I’m not sure if I’d like it if every phantasm attack would be used as the summon attack. I think the phantasm would kind of lose their identity. Atleast for me.

You could still use utility skills to gain participation in combat.

I don’t think the “double pay” for veterans is a problem at all.
Remember that the game is free to play and they only make money through the gemstore and exactly this expansion sells.
You pay once like every 2-3 years, then play for completly free and still get regular updates.
I think its perfectly fine. There are games out there like FF14 that charge you 13 bucks each month and still expect you to pay 30+ for the expansion on top of that.
Sometimes i feel like GW2 players are just way too spoiled with the convience they actually have.

@skcamow
I don’t think you’re reading this right then.

PoM right now does 1 sec per phantasm shattered which (with chronophantasma) results in 6 sec recharge reduce overall. It’s 6 × 1sec.
If you would apply the changes like i suggested, it wouldn’t work on the phantasm with chronophantasma buff, but would still give 2 secs on the second shatter. So 3 × 2secs.

@OriOri
Sorry, i think i might’ve worded my idea the wrong way.
What i meant was that you reset the skill back to 2 secs for core mes/chrono/mirage equally, but make the effect not trigger when shattering phantasms with the chronophantasma buff. That way you could keep it viable for chrono (so without nerfing chronophantasma) while also making it good for core mes/mirage.

PoM was nerfed to 1 sec recharge reduce with chrono, but i’d really like to see the skill changed back to 2 sec for core mes and especially mirage.

I know it was changed because of chronophantasma and rightfully so, but can’t we just put it back to 2 secs and make phantasms with the chronophantasma buff not counting for the recharge reduce?

I’d like to have an item that lets us salvage sigills to better ones.
Maybe 5 minor = 1 major and 5 major = 1 superior. That could also net you in some bonus rng gold.
Though I’m not sure how that would affect the economy.

+1, simply because this is the first dueling/wvw video i’ve seen that has no cancerous dubstep/techno music.

I don’t get why it wouldn’t make sense for the npc’s to have stronger skills.
Yes, they have 1 or 2 skills that are stronger than PC skills. But that’s really all they have.

Try to switch it around and imagine you’re the npc fighting the pc, with their 40+ skills, while all you can do is put down a stronger portal or similar. The npc’s have probably “trained” just this one skill their whole life, while the pc can kind of do anything, so it makes sense that they can do this one or two skills better than you.

DaShi.1368:

That’s if those leaks are real. I don’t know if anyone else noticed the dual wielding pistol mesmers in the last LS episode.

The way Mo talked about it in the developer AMA definitely makes it sound like they are real.

They could throw in some random glider/backpiece and sell it exklusivly with that pack for ~2k gems. I’m sure they’d make good money with that.

Yeah, thanks for the info!

I hope not, tbh. While i’m not generally against new races, i think this would be an effort barely worth it. They would have to put an insane amount of ressources and effort into creating a race that the minority of people would play, which otherwise could’ve been used on new content that’d be beneficial to everyone.

I think the combat tonics they’ve started to use are a good compromise. You can play as the races you want, without them having to put all that work into the “background”.

Are you sure though that they are even trying to make the core classes as strong as the elite’s? The name alone suggest that they were supposed to be this upgrade and adding a certain level of “prestige” to the class.

The way they talked about e-specs when they were announced sounded like they wanted to release multiple e-specs and then let people decide which “exklusive additional mechanic” they want to add to their character. The tradeoff for a thief to have a third dodge would be that they do not have access to the other elite mechanics for example.

If that’d be a good thing if it really turns out like that is up to debate i guess. But not like it’s gonna happen anytime soon anyway.

Celtus.8456:

Maybe more troubling for me is the absolute lack of direction with the game now. We really don’t get updates anymore of what is being worked on in any areas of the game in the long term. Yes, we get small “living story” patches, “new” competitive seasons with minor adjustments and balances, and rehashed festivals. We are all guessing there is an expansion pack coming, but it has been about 1.5 years since HoT, when will we hear about this? It has been over a year since Colin left, and I know Mike’s policy is not to talk until the product is ready. But how about talking at all? To not lose the interest of your consumers?

Basically this. I like the idea of not showing something too early and then let people wait for too long, but it’s really about time we get to see something. Just knowing for sure that something big is coming in the following weeks/months would certainly help the overall motivation of the playerbase.

You should probably watch it if you’re bored. It’s about a d/d thief, but hes not the star of the show.

I’ll admit that i havn’t played much pvp in the past few months xD I heard (for pvp atleast) that ele’s are kind of forced to play a support/healing builds and therefore often struggle with own dps, so i thought they dont really have a “viable” main dps build.
Sorry for my lack of knockledge on that one. :P

Made my day, thank you Bik.

So a friend of mine and myself went through the patch notes together and actually thought quite a few times “what if this is actually a new mechanic coming to the game?” and that anet might wanted to get some opinions on these things “masked” as just a joke.

“Elementalist:
Fire Attunement now sets the caster on fire until water attunement is cast.”
This could be a new elite mechanic for ele. They get a debuff that will deal permanent damage to them but in return do more damage or something similar. I think it would actually be good for ele’s as they could balance the damage out with healing while also getting a needed dps boost.

“Guardian:
Morality system added for guardians. Failing to remain virtuous will cause you to lose access to your Virtue skills.”
Also could be a new elite thing. You get new op virtues, the more of them you have on cooldown, the stronger the rest of them get. If you have all of them on cooldown, they are locked and can not be used again until you leave battle mode. Could be a good change to guard too, as it would encourage more thoughtful play instead of “burn all the cooldowns!”

“Mesmer:
The following mesmer weapons can now only be wielded in the off hand: sword, scepter, staff, and greatsword.”
The focus on all weapons being off-hand could be a teaser that the next weapon coming will be a main hand.

“Necromancer:
Minion skills now require corpses. Flesh Golem requires multiple corpses to cast.”
Also seems like a interesting elite idea for necro. You can resurrect a killed mob to fight by your side (not sure how it would work against players though). Maybe you could even go a step further and replace shroud with something like “corpse shell” that makes you basically invincible as long as you have active corpses and place corpse-related skills to F1-F4.

“Warrior:
Phalanx Strength now applies Fury, Regeneration, Protection, Aegis, Resistance, Vigor, Swiftness, Quickness, Alacrity, Spotter, Stealth, Super Speed, and Fire Attunement in addition to Might.”
Could be a teaser that they want to give warrior’s a more supporty role in the future.

Just a few thoughts that crossed our minds there. What would you think about the “new mechanics” if they would actually be confirmed to be a real thing?

Also cheers to the guys at anet that wrote the patch notes and hoped for someone to interpret too much into it. :P

I’d say precoc should be similar to recall, in that it has really good use for you and allies but doesn’t do that much against enemys. The “friendly” effect basically being the discussed one here.

Effect for you and allies: Gain 1 stacking buff with each pulse. If you stand inside the well when the final tick hits, you gain 1 sec blur for each stack you had.
Effect for enemys: Get 1-2 stacks of vulnerability per pulse.
As Precoc lets you “see the future” it should be an easy thing for you to hit them right where it hurts.

Idk, I’d argue that the enemy effect is not even needed and that the blur one is good enough, but we can dream right?

Carighan.6758:

I’d more or less inverse the effect I think, and align it to the ticking-(positive|negative)/final-(negative|positive) most of the other wells have:

Well of Precognition
Creates a well of temporal and spatial precognition. Allies within the well get a stacking effect for every second they stay inside. When the well ends, enemies inside are marked, and cannot hit allies with the well effect for the duration of that effect.
Ticking effect duration: 1s (this stacks, and only starts counting down once the well ends)
Enemy debuff duration: 3s

Meaning that it’s effectively 3s of invulnerability, but it comes out delayed any can be avoided if the enemy dodges/blocks the final effect.

If you get knockbacked/pulled out before the final tick you lose the stacking buff? So it’s kind of like a shadow refugee for mesmer’s? I really like this idea.

Yeah, the endurance regen on the final tick is really lackluster. The only type of content where you could realistically utilize the endurance regen would be in raiding, but no one would even think to run precoc simply because of how hard the other wells (and mesmer support skills in general) overshadow it.

I heard it got nerfed originally because it could almost guarantee revives/stomps in pvp. Now that they have the possibility to balance skills seperatly, i would really like them to reconsider buffing it again to its former self in atleast PvE. Or just close to it would be enough, like putting the 3 secs evade back in and leaving the endurance regen out.. which probably wouldn’t be noticed anyway. Not many people in open world care about wells and even if they magically happen to stand inside one, the chance that they will be in need of endurance and utilize it after gaining it (not standing around for the rest of the fight anyway) is way too small.

Yes you can use it on any class, it’s not locked for only the elite spec itself.

Agree with Mail. Props to Evan & the rest of the team for presenting us their ideas and discussing it with the us. I think its really benefical for both sides. If only we could have this dev-player-interaction for more upcoming changes to classes & stuff.

Too bad lethargy got cut. Here i was all hyped up about the slow traits in the chrono line might actually see some play. Is there any chance you would add a slow related sigill/rune in the future?

Are you sure though that the reveal on the summon attacks is intended and not bug? The iDisenchanter summon attack works exactly like the iMage and doesn’t reveal. Never did and still doesn’t.

I always thought the iDefender to be mesmers Spotter/Assassin’s Presence etc., even though it’s not a trait.

QoL for mesmers: Improve the illusion symbols. All that mesmer can see through them is that you have 3 illusion out at the moment. Not which one of them, not their health. In large scale meta events or even super fast paced pvp matches i often find myself searching for my phantasm’s to look which one’s still there and which needs to be resummoned. And if I found it, i still have to target it to see its health. The illusions being the core mechanic of mesmers this seems way too inconvenient.
Maybe add a weapon symbol in the dots depending on the illusion (for example a greatsword for berserker) and make the dot loose color depending on the illusions health.

I kind of have the feeling that we get a new unique thing with the next elite and I’d also say that the reveal is not too far off.
They said that they wanted to give rev alacrity for a longer time now (or make alacrity more accessible in general) but didn’t do it probably because they expected the saltwave of mesmers coming at them. But with them now giving alacrity out feels like they have something else in store for mesmer and therefore no need to keep it exklusive anymore. What if they even give alacrity out on purpose now so that people can’t cry about “omg mes got a unique buff again wth!”?
Idk, just a idea i had. Too optimistic?

They stated that they wanted to give iberzerker and iwarden this “special thing on summon” too, but weren’t satisfied with how it turned out and decided to postpone it to another balance patch. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long.

I didnt expect people to still be surprised by them giving away mesmer-stuff to other classes. They already did that before. Like giving defender phantas to necro and engi or giving thief mantra of distraction (+ Power Block traited effect on top of it). Im sure theres more stuff that elites have that were “inspired” by mesmer skills and im sure there will be more to come with future elite’s. Maybe we can atleast keep the illusion summoning for ourselves, but i highly doubt that one aswell. At this point I’m just waiting for something like “the ninja” as the new thief elite that can summon clones.

I understand that alacrity was too powerful of a buff to keep it for chrono alone and feel like it could also take some pressure of mesmers in future raids and give them the opportunitiy to play other builds, when there are other classes who can also use it. I think the alacrity on ventari is actually a really good improvement to the overall moveset of revenant (and Ventari). But the one thing that kind of bugs me: Ventari is core rev, while chronomancer is an elite. So in other words, revs will always have access to alacrity for themself and partymembers, no matter what elite they play, while mesmers have to be chrono to access it. Are you planning on giving alacrity to core mes/other mes elite’s aswell? Or are you maybe even trying to make alacrity a thing that every class will be able to use at some point? If so, you should maybe think about reworking the animation for it, as the violet flame thingy could look really out of place on some classes (maybe a unique flame for every class or idk).

I’m not sure about thief hard countering mesmer anymore. If you play the evades/blocks on chrono right, you can nullify most of their bursts and then counter hit them quite good. That is if you are in a 1v1 and have the time to focus the thief, otherwise he will probably just destroy you. But yeah, if the thief permanently ports 2000 range away and in again there’s really not much you can do. But i’d say that’s an issue with thief itself rather than any counter.

DH is kind of a double edged sword. Yes, the traps easily destroy your illusions but on the other hand the illusion triggering the traps take away the danger from you. Overall in a 1v1 against a DH i’d say the mesmer wins if he knows what hes doing. However, most of the time dealing with a DH takes way too long and you could do something much more important with that time.

The class mesmer counters the most is probably revenant, because some of their best dps skills (sword 2, 3) will split the damage depending on how many targets exist. They’re also especially vulnerable to condi builds because of their lack of condi cleanse (if they’re not running ventari/mallyx).

I’d love them to remove that aswell, however.. On the wiki page this is not listed as bug, only as anomaly. Meaning while it works different from other phantasm summoning skills, this is probably intended?

But wouldn’t that system be extremely exploidable? Like, all members besides the scriber/guildboss leave the guild for 5mins, they craft all the stuff/get all the upgrades and people join in again? I’m in a small guild aswell and we are kind of tired of this issue aswell. We just can’t afford the ~800-1000G you need for scribing. But I also don’t really see a way anet could change this to be equal for everyone.

Totally agree with Rabid and Ori here. The illusions you have out atm should be clearly distinguishable with the dots. The dots show you nearly nothing. In a large scale meta event im often struggling to identify the illusions in the crowd, just to know if it needs to be resummoned or not. So I’d also like to throw in the idea of not only giving them special colors (or similar details) depending on chronophantasma or not, but also give them like a different symbol in the dot, depending on the phantasm that is out atm. Like a mini gs in the dot for a berserker for example.

If you’re increasing the cooldown on Echo of Memory, atleast fix the phantasm spawn. I guess the reason for the increase is that it’s also spawning up to 2 phantasms, which can then be used with chronophantasm for RI/PoM etc. The thing with that is, in like 7/10 tries the phantasm doesn’t spawn anyway, because for whatever reason avenger spawn can be dodged, while all the others can’t. And people abuse that to no end. Being locked on a weaponset which has difficulty getting phantasms (or illusions in general) out is a death sentence in most scenarios (especially for power builds) and i’ve heard of many chrono’s who are not using shield for that reason alone.

They have already said that they have more elite specs planned. In fact, the whole traitsystem-change with the specializations was only done so that they could make and sell said elite specs.

As for new classes, i dont think we will ever see one. Rev was added because since launch we had 3 light armor, 3 medium armor and only 2 heavy armor classes and rev took care of that. Going forward i think they won’t add any new classes, only expand the existing ones with the elite specs.

As for the Tengu, im not blaming them for not adding new races. Think about it, they would have to add every armor in the game changed to fit on tengus, a complete new personal story, complete new “hometown”, about 3 complete new leveling maps etc. I would love to play as a tengu aswell, however i would be fine with just a tengu tonic (like the kodan one we got last patch).

I always thought leveling a mesmer is viewed as boring by many people because you dont unlock the interesting and fun-to-use-skills until really late into it. So naturally people would start out a mesmer, play it for maybe 1 or 2 hours, then be like “wow, this lame.” and switch to another class.

Sure, a build does not only revolve around the elite skill, but its certainly also a part of it. And what Ori is suggesting here is to optimize them, so they can be better integrated into builds. I really fail to see what’s wrong with that.

They are trying to increase difficulty on content more and more. And some people already cry because of that (“omg i have to make the elixir everyday? wth stupid!” or “did that mob just hit me for 5k? omg so broken!” or “that troll stuns me every 5secs thats ridiculous!”), which is just sad, but not the topic here. If you want to faceroll content really hard, you can play warrior or ranger, but i dont see how a (needed) change to elite cooldowns will make content so much easier to faceroll for us. Not to mention that some elites, like TW for example, have been nerfed (quickness capping at 5 stacks) by now anyway. You can’t tell me that the 180 sec CD on this skill is justified. And yes, im talking mainly about TW, because that is and probably always will be our “main” elite in pve (not for raids though, the quickness nerf kind of killed it).

I get what you mean. Some people might not like to hear this, but if anet really does not want to decrease cooldown on the elite’s with CS in mind.. maybe the best way to solve this problem would be to make CS not affect elite’s anymore and then decrease the elites CD by ALOT (like your suggestions). It might be a kind of painful change for chrono but a healthy one for core mes and upcoming elite’s. Otherwise we will have core mes and all following elite’s suffering forever, just because of chrono (which might not even be played by many people anymore then). Thoughts?

I never understood the range thing on the GS AA. I mean for a ranger for example it makes sense, since you are trying to keep distance. But mesmer are kind of always swooping in and out and you can barely make effective use of it .
What also always bothered me about the GS auto was that clones using it had basically zero use. Sword removes boons and stacks vulnerability, scepter pain, Staff does various stuff. But GS just does nothing besides poking the enemy with like 10 damage. Imagined Burden gives it the might stacking but idk i’d like to have something not locked behind a trait.

I’d say they are keeping the cooldowns intentionally that high, because we can use them every 76 secs with CS (and Illusions). Taking perma alacrity into account we have 56 effective seconds. While we have the potential to basically use the elites 2 times in a row, we’d then not have it ready for the following CS’, making you really think if it’s worth it.
That being said, i definitely agree with some of the elites being incredible.. meh.. in PvE. Especially SoH is pretty underwhelming. But I guess the only hope we really have is to wait for the new elite spec and see if they make any changes to core mesmer to motivate people to leave chrono. I really hope they take a look at the elite’s cooldown again.. using TW without CS/Alacrity (so on the full 180 sec CD) is just painful to imagine.

Couldn’t they just made downed allies not affected by it anymore, similar to how they removed slow/quickness from affecting stomping? A 3 sec evade for the mesmer only shouldn’t be that big of a deal, since we could also just use F4 for invul, right?

To me it feels like they’re trying to make the current elite spec’s look more and more unappealing so people will be more interested in buying the new expansion. So i’m not expecting any changes to WoP until a few months after the new expac is released, if at all.

Interesting though, if the leaks are true and the new elite will be centered around blurring you and allies, maybe they felt like WoP was to much in “its territory”?

Definitely agree with the OP’s suggestion. Let Phantasms retarget if the initial target is killed and only despawn once you leave combat (or there’s nothing to retarget nearby). It’s hella annoying. You have one of these events where hordes of weak enemys spawn and you dont even want to summon any illusions, cause they will just despawn instantly and go on 20-30 sek Cooldown. If the Game indirectly discourages you to use what makes the class special.. well something is wrong there.