Guild Wars 2

It seems like TC is taking a couple of weeks off. Or maybe we were just putting forth extra effort before.

This has been the least fun I’ve had in WvW in weeks.

The way I do it is that I play with my main right up until a daily (or monthly) is about to tick, then I swap and finish it off with my alt. It’s slow, but it allows the alt to get the XP from finishing the task.

Another thing that helped me, Osicat said in another post that you should think about your damage as coming in waves every ten second. Burst, back off, Burst, back off …

Obviously you are fairly skilled if you were successful with the Warrior (considered, I believe) one of the worst classes for sPvP.

Have you tried other classes? You say that the D/D ele is only good in teams, my WvW experience suggests that this is not true.

My point is that if you are use to playing one of the bottom tier classes in sPvP, any top-tier class may feel OP.

I also think Mesmers have been over-nerfed recently. I don’t play sPvP but if they are good there, so what, there’s more to life and this game.

At level 40, I recommend starting to get use to clone generation through dodging and shatters.

I would spec 20 points into dueling for (IV) Blade Training and (X) Deceptive Evasion and 10 points in illusion (III) Compounding Power.

Your goal is to get clones and phantasms up as fast as possible and shatter as often as possible. A good way to initiate a fight is Greatsword 4 Phantasm, Greatsword 2, dodge, f1. Swap weapon, (assuming sword / pistol ) Pistol 4, dodge, sword 3, sword 3 (for swap), sword 2 (invulnerability), f2 or f3, retreat and restart.

This is a great video by Osicat which shows some different shatter setups.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Mestinon.9825:

After researching I found out that this is what a “unique” item means.

Next time do your research before your purchase, you’ll never have this problem again.

The problem is that you don’t know that you need to research anything until your already kittened.

It’s completely unreasonable to expect someone to look up what each word in a description means.

Ascended gear is far to time consuming to obtain, they could make the descriptions a little user friendly.

Desirable weapon skins were always suppose to be a grind / farmed. But the nice skins were not suppose to add any additional stats (and they don’t).

Ascended gear is the first addition that could be considered requiring farming.

You can get lucky, but I find more often you end up with runes that I worth less than the ones you threw in to begin with.

If you are only level 58, I’d just reroll.

The key to the RNG is the sense that “this time I’ll get lucky” Players who want a skin end up spending far more money (on average) to obtain the skin than they would if were straight up offered for sale.

Your build looks interesting. How important is Prismatic Understanding (Chaos, XII)? I’d love to find a way to get 5 points into illusions.

It would be very nice to get an update on this. Especially with the recent nerf’s causing everyone to respect. Is this a bug or a feature?

tolunart.2095:

.
Also, you are viewing it as a hole that needs to be filled (inferior stats) when I view it as a cherry on the sundae (bonus to level 80 gear). The glass is half full, man, you just can’t see it under half a glass of empty air.

Nice.

Actually the ascended gear has nothing to do with anything except that someone tried to compare obtaining ascended gear with obtaining COF gear and I pointed out that there are not the same because of the stat difference.

My point (and really my only point) is that I have a problem with the game providing incentives people to do stuff that is not fun. I think it’s problematic for the health of the game. I know my (RL – yes I have two) friends have quit because it it.

I think it’s something to consider and a reasonable topic to discuss. I find topics about game design, user engagement, and incentives to be very interesting.

tolunart.2095:

The thing you need to remember is, the average player doesn’t come here. My wife is the average player and she’s never read a single post here. She doesn’t care about these forums, or about anything the people here argue about. You don’t speak for them. You don’t understand them. And you don’t have very much in common with them.

I only claim to speak for myself and possible other’s like me. I would categorize myself as hardcore without time.

Amun Ra.6435:

I am married, work full time and only play about 10-12 hours a week. I finish my daily in about 45m or less and always finish my monthly, sure it may take the whole month sometimes. I just don’t see where the hate is coming from.

Are you frustrated that you can’t finish these sooner?

Aside from legendaries and and certain skins. There really isn’t much grind to this game. The montly/daily seem to be very casual friendly to me.

I think the main question (for me anyway) is do you enjoy doing them?

I’m also interested in how long someone plays before they “just happen.” A hour, two, four? A lot of people have much more time than I do.

I usually do my daily in about the same amount of time, it’s not difficult, but it’s not fun.

Something can be optional and still be bad for the game.

Also, unless you are in this position:

Fate.5961:

Perhaps the time commitment issue doesn’t matter for some of the younger crowd or those with a very flexible schedule. However, I already have a boss and a domestic partner taking my time away from my free time. I really don’t need my (favorite?) gaming company to micromanage my life, either.

Then I don’t think you have a basis for comment. If you have enough time that you can run around for a couple of hours (or 6) a day and have dailies happen to you then you are not like the OP.

Also regarding RageQuits comment. The different between ascended gear and COF gear is that COF gear is cosmetic while ascended gear has better stats.

Therefore (just to spell it out) not having ascended gear is more punishing than not having COF gear.

Talloc.6835:

TooBz.3065:

Talloc.6835:

I would think that fun would be a reward in and of its self.

I am not capable of writing with sufficient precision to please everyone.

You’ve gotten sucked in to the concept that a MMO requires a definite reward or payoff for every single action done by players?

Nope. My point is that dailies require people with a short period of time to choose between doing things that are intrinsically rewarding (fun) or extrinsically rewarding (gear). In other words, either you play for fun or you play for the reward.

I think that is a bad system.

The reason that I think it’s a bad system is that people with a short period of time to play may choose the extrinsically rewarding path, do that for a while, realize the game is no longer intrinsically rewarding and quit. (As some of my friends have done – queue non-statistical evidence).

If instead, the game encourage participation in intrinsically rewarding activities, I think my friends may still be playing (queue comment about how people love gathering ore from nodes).

For me, the game is much more fun when I don’t worry about (or get) dalies. Because clarity is important here, I want to note that I don’t think the game was more fun when I didn’t get dalies. I think it was more fun when I don’t try.

But sooner or later I get sucked back into the negative spiral of logging on doing my dalies and then being out of time. It usually happens when normal play makes me almost get the daily. I think “hmm, all I have to do a run here and do that and I’ll get a laurel, that’s easy”

The next day I’m back to finishing dalies before doing fun things.

Talloc.6835:

I would think that fun would be a reward in and of its self.

I am not capable of writing with sufficient precision to please everyone.

Dailies are bad because people with a short period of time to play (say a half an hour) have to choose between having fun and getting a reward.

Further, having fixed rewards that you get for doing dailies (i.e.ascended gear) allows the GW2 team to have terrible drop rates.

Shatter-cat is perfect for that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-WvWvW-Pve-Shatter-Cat-Updated-24-4/

At level 40, I put 20 points into duelist (blade training and deceptive evasion)
5 points into illusion (always a must)
5 points into domination – keep adding points here so that at 45 you get the mental torment trait.

Start shattering clones for damage. With a mesmer you will always be playing keep away, so get use to it. Sometimes you want to dodge offensively to generate a clone.

At level 60 it was a lot of fun, I could handle multiple mobs.
I did (10/20/0/0/20) the illusion traits I used were compounding powder and illusionary elasticity.

I used a staff all the way to 80, but here is a good time to play with a greatsword.

from 60 on put 10 points into illusion and take illusionary persona, this allows shattering without clones.

Last 10 points into domination, at 80 you can respec into whatever you want to be.

Again, just my opinion,

At level 20, Mesmer play is all about kiting and staying alive. You want your clones to tank for you as much as possible. At level 20 lets say you have 9 trait points and 18 skill points. Personally, I would put 5 trait points into illusions and 4 into duelist. Your two utility skills. I would take decoy and mirror images.

Staff is fine, it’s what I used. Get a staff and a sword / pistol for offhand.

My general skill rotation was staff 1, staff 3, staff 1.

When the enemy gets close, staff 5 (chaos storm) followed by staff 2 (teleport out and get chaos armor).

Then I’d swap to my sword / pistol.
If the enemy was close, pistol 5 (which is an interrupt and a 1 sec stun but will bounce and aggro other enemies),
Pistol 4. (ranged phantasm, which will frequently be outside of any aoe)
Sword 2 is great because it does good damage and also grants temporary invincibility.
Sword 3 is a clone generator.

At level 40 the Mesmer becomes fun. 20 points in duelist gives deceptive evasion which pumps out clones when you dodge.

Khalic.3561:

Problem is that anything non-bunker is getting hit harder. There are other viable builds out there (I enjoy my glassy D/D), but they’re becoming harder to play with each patch. And they still aren’t adding anything to really compensate and encourage build variety.

I would really, really like to know what they devs intend for the class. Because as is, I’m pretty kitten confused.

That’s basically why I asked. The most recent nerfs have affected my vision of the class. I’m not saying the class doesn’t have effective builds (or won’t) just that I don’t really see what it’s suppose to be.

Limited time things gives the illusion of a dynamic world.

Although I do not know. I think the original idea of dynamic events were that they would make the world feel more alive. Like what you do has consequences. The problem is that the scope of the events are relatively small and repeat too often.

Temporary content is suppose to make the world feel like a real place.

I would rather see permanent content centered around the barren cities.

I recommend they change all food to melba toast.

Before this most recent nerfs my vision of the elementalist was that is was either a ranged AOE damage dealer (staff) or a highly mobile but lightly armored melee (d/d).

In the SOTG talk, the developers said that they wanted thieves to be the most mobile class (which interestingly enough is not done by making thieves more mobile but by reducing the mobility of the ele).

Personally, I had always though of thieves as a deception based character (along with mesmers).

So what is the role of the ele? Is it a boon factory, like the guardian?

Note: this is my opinion only.

What is your primary interest? If you are interested in running only one character I suggest you pick either a Mesmer or a Guardian. Both of these classes are good in all aspects of the game. (Open world PvE, Dungeons, WvW, and PvP)

Once you start a character, start killing stuff with the weapons they give you (opening up new weapon skills), do hearts, and do your story quest. Get map complete on your first zone. Do dynamic events.

At level 5 buy new weapons from the trading post. (Normally you can do it sooner, but low level weapons are ridiculously expensive.)

Gamblit.5041:

Arrow Cart
•New skill (slot 4): Toxic Unveiling Shot. Removes stealth and applies poison to targets.

First skill in a game to remove stealth?

I wonder if having stealth removed triggers reveal.

Delak.1064:

Disappointed in this patch, zero effort into fixing our useless traits. It’s unfortunate that they’re listening to people cry about our mobility instead of listening to the players that actually play the class and want a larger variety of builds.

ANET’s idea of balancing appears to simply be: kill off anything viable without adding anything to compensate for it. balancing needs to go both ways sometimes, and this is one of those instances.

Now we have to wait another month for more minimal buffs that still don’t fix our traitlines and probably rtl being killed further by decreasing the range to something like 600. Sorry I sound so negative in this post, but ANET has made it clear that they simply aren’t listening to numerous suggestions (most which say the same thing) made by players that actually play eles.

I’m fairly certain that’s why they have a suggestions forum. So they can isolate ideas from anyone who may see them.

Here are some random thoughts about leveling

There are two schools of thought about leveling a mesmer. It basically comes down to greatsword or staff. I used staff, others swear by greatsword. Try out both.

Expect to get a little frustrated until level 40. Mesmers get much better at 40.

As much as you can have 3 clones up at all times. At first, most of your clone generation is going to be from weapon skills (each weapon set has one clone and one phantasm skill) and utilities.

Sword #2 gives you a relatively long term invulnerability while dishing out decent damage.

I really liked the (pistol #5) duelist because the phantasm would rarely draw aggro, attacked from range, and would take down enemies while I kited.

Avoid mantras (for now, they are being buffed but I’m not sure they are worth it.)

Your first 5 trait points go into illusions.

Consider the next 10 in dueling for blade training, it’s a 20% cooldown trait at the adept level, which is terrific.

lettucemode.3789:

Thanks for the tips but I knew them already, I know how confusion works and how to avoid it. Also, kite from multiple, ranged phantasms on an open plain? Right.

And it didn’t expire after 3-5 seconds. More like 10. He had the bonus condition duration food (apple icon) on as well.

I think that confusion is fine in theory. But in practice the damage is simply too high (in WvW). In competitive games, if I have a counter (condition transfers and cleanses) to what someone is doing (confusion stacking), they should not be able to counter my counter by doing more of the original, countered thing. It basically makes the original thing the strongest tactic in the game, since you can beat all its counters by just doing more of it.

I would support reducing the nerf to maybe 30% and then take some time to see what state WvW glamour mesmers are in.

I’ve been running a glamour mesmer in WvW and I have very rarely seen numbers above 2000K for a tick, usually it’s in the 350ish range. I’m running full exotic rabid / carrior armor / trinkets and exotic rabid weapons.

I’m sure it’s because I suck as a mesmer, but I just don’t understand how people were getting these 4k numbers.

Edit: I do agree that cleansing should occur before any damage is taken.

lettucemode.3789:

So I was one of the people advocating that confusion is fine and that it didn’t need to be changed. Then I started running into a few confusion mesmers in WvW. And while confusion as a condition is fine, I’m not sure how you can justify the damage it did. The nerf was warranted.

Just yesterday I ran into such a mesmer. I’m a condition necromancer, so I have two different condition transfers and a cleanse on my heal. He had 25 stacks of his condition damage sigil and the food (but with the wrench icon) that increases your condition damage. We get to fighting.

A few seconds in, I get 8 stacks of confusion on me. I transfer them to him, but take 6k damage. The hell?

A bit later, 6 more stacks. Transfer again (which he dodged). 4k damage.

Switch to DS to tank a bit. Get loaded up again, go to heal. Take another 4k damage from confusion. -.-

Eventually I lost the fight. I was not spamming spells. I was not frantically clicking and trying to get huge numbers, as a necromancer I don’t have that luxury. I was not ignoring what conditions I had on me, as a condition necro it’s very important that I pay attention to that kind of thing. What I was doing was using my abilities smartly and at the correct times, and I still lost because of the ridiculous confusion damage (also he was a good player).

This is only one example of something that happened several times over.

This change does not break glamour builds – they are still strong in sPvP, and you can already get more condition damage in WvW than you can in sPvP. Just because something has been nerfed from god-tier doesn’t mean it falls down to useless-tier.

You should have waited 3-5 seconds for it to expire. Confusion ticks when you act and doesn’t last long. It also telegraphs like crazy (what other condition results in a purple “halo” around your characters head). In WvW if I get hit with confusion I just walk backwards into my zerg until it’s gone.

In a 1 on 1 battle, kite for a few seconds.

The only way you can get the sigil is to transmute the invader weapon.

In the last patch they made it so purchased weapons cannot be salvaged.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-March-26-2013/first

Looking at your build some more, do you already have this gear? If so don’t worry about this post (it’s a min/max thing)

If not you can get the same basic stats with more crit damage by swapping out the soldiers crests for exquisite ruby gems and swapping two of the rings for exotic soldiers rings. (the exotics are available for karma from the cathedral of silence. While you are there also pick up an exotic soldiers backpiece.)

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|1.1g.h2|c.1g.h2.a.1g.h4|1n.7e.1n.7e.1n.7e.1n.7e.1n.7e.1n.7e|1g.67.1c.67.1c.67.1g.67.1g.67.cg.67|k3a.k2a.0.p45.5|2e.1|31.3d.3c.3l.3q|e

The effectiveness of the build will depend a lot on whether they fix the Greatsword phantasm. I think they break it every other patch.

Entropy.4732:

I think Mesmers should just be a small, pink mouse that heals and buffs the enemy team. That’ll be balenced. And our elite skill will trigger invulnerability for new players for 5 minutes. On a 10 minute cool down.

I like it, but the cooldown is too long.

Our second elite skill should put us into a downed state giving credit to the least experienced player (range 1500).

Phira.3970:

Is CoF really inflating the economy or is there a better source of money than CoF? Who are the richest individuals in GW2? Doesn’t CoF put money into more of the average players rather than hardcore the TP flippers?

Flipping on the TP does not inject new money into the economy. Instead, it just transfers money from the impatient to the patient.

COF runs create new gold (from drops / rewards) which increases the money supply.

Yes, I use stealth all the time. With a sigil of paralyzation you can (or could and soon will be able to again) stun lock at least one enemy.

This is sometime’s useful, for example, against silver mobs in dungeons.

Could everyone, just for a kitten minute, stop yelling for Nerf’s all the time?

There’s a huge path launching tomorrow that will destroy many builds. At least wait and see how that plays out.

There is a group of trolls that just want everyone to press the 1 key and let the strongest warrior win.

Play a different game?

Vayne.8563:

Iruwen.3164:

I don’t really care about GW2 anymore, by now everbody should have noticed that they’re really lazy when it comes to fixes, always going the primrose path for little to no effort instead of doing things properly. Didn’t login for a while now, and after what I heard about the upcoming patch, I probably won’t return.

I must have a different definition of lazy than you do. Unless you mean by lazy that they’re not just making random changes based on what fans say, because that’s the surest road for an MMO to implode. Fans as a whole don’t know as much as they think they know about game design.

Doing things properly is another one of those vague terms used by people who feel they know better than the devs. They know properly but the devs don’t. Good. Enjoy your knowledge of proper.

Anyway, since you’re not playing the game and not interested, why bother posting?

They are (allegedly) going to cut confusion damage in half. Either this reduction is too large or the developers created a ridiculously overpowered skill to begin with. Either way, it doesn’t say much for their game design skills.

If I had to guess, this was a nerf to reduce confusion damage down to the nuisance level. It doesn’t actually affect gameplay, it just ticks an extra 100 points of damage here and there.

But why should there be nuisance skills at all? There’s no reason to totally kill a particular style of play or to render condition damage useless on a class. If they were going to kill confusion, they should have buffed some other more conventional condition (like bleeds).

McNuggetBandit.8376:

The only thing i can see with thier reasoning is initialy confusion in WvW and PvE was buffed by 50% to compesate for it being horrible in PvE (WvW and PvE were still linked back then)

They are no taking that 50% buff away which was what made it a reliable source of damage in the first place. In all honesty what it really needed in WvW was either a lower stack cap (say 7-10) or a reduction in damage by 25%-30% tops.

If the nerf comes as a 50% reduction i would expect to see some reworking in the next patch after this one to make it more viable again (especially seems there are traits built into mesmer that 100% let you make confusion your 1 source of damage) otherwise all mesmers not just glamours will suffer.

So don’t throw your rabid gear away yet have faith and if not just roll a 100 blades warrior and laugh it up with the boon hate on guardians

I wouldn’t count on it. They have a history of not walking back on changes. (I know there have been a few exceptions, so settle down people) .

lordkrall.7241:

So, because people jump on the bandwagon and buy gear for the Flavor of the Month build ArenaNet should not balance the game?

A rather high number of people most likely think before jumping on the whole “OMG THAT BUILD IS THE BEST I MUST USE IT!!!” thingy, and therefore don’t spend a huge amount of money on a overpowered build, since it is quite logical to assume that said build will be changed sooner or later.

I think its a completely reasonable complaint, especially with time gated ascended gear. If they nerf a class so a particular kind of soulbound gear is essentially useless to the class (ahem, condition damage on a mesmer) then we have a right to complain.

Thurfir.6381:

Hi everyone,

Besides the obvious confusion nerf, I’ve heard about some other frightening changes for other classes, like the new warrior trait allowing to deal more damage on people with boons. I never rolled a warrior so I can’t tell how powerful this actually is, but it ca potentially ruin even more the staff/condition builds and chaos armor. The more the warrior hits, the more boons on us, the more damage we take, bbye mesmer..

By the way, is there a complete list of the upcoming changes for all the classes?

Yeah, a warrior is getting a grandmaster trait that does an extra 3% for each boon on a character.

So many people ran the glamour spec not because it is so great on it’s own (it’s terrible in PvP and very difficult to use as a roamer), but because it is great in a zerg. it was one of the only builds that allowed mesmers to tag groups.

I’m very disappointed that Anet decided to go so far with this nerf.

Yeah, I think the glamour mesmer is going to be hurting.

Shootsfoot.9276:

clay.7849:

ArenaNet dug their own grave when they turned their backs on much of the GW1 community.

Back to that song, eh? ;-P

It is a classic.

In answer to the original question, ANet is trying to balance three very different things. PvE, WvW, and PvP are all very different animals.

A perfect example of this is the Warrior. The Warrior is very good in PvE, is ok in WvW, and is considered bottom tier in PvP. Should the warrior be nerfed, buffed, or left alone?

If ANet buffs the warrior to make them more viable in PvP, PvEer’s scream. It they are nerfed, PvPer’s scream.

I don’t think they should exclusively focus on any of them.

Jemmi.6058:

TooBz.3065:

I forgot about the WvW progression, and I mostly play WvW these days (lol). I guess it’s just not as important to me. (I also play many alts, so I don’t progress in ranks very fast — my choice so I’m not complaining, but it does make it seem less important that, say ascended accessories.)

Sure sure, but I could argue that removing culling is much more important than ascended gear Also, as you said, there is at least 1 way to achieve ascended gear in PvP. There is no 1 way to remove PvE culling

The culling fix was epic and did more to fix the WvWvW game than almost anything else could. I also think, at some level, PvP requires less attention than PvE because in PvP your average opponents behavior is constantly being updated and tweaked without intervention.

That said, a new map would be nice.