Guild Wars 2

Yep. Fully agree with NICENIKESHOE. I main Mesmer and second Necromancer. While Necro can be strong in WvW roaming, you are not that mobile and can not escape dangerous situations. Mesmer just is more flexible and adaptable both in the very situation and in build variety.

Jedge.3619:

Shattered strength – increased to 2-3 stacks of might

Remember any1 when ppl complained about the might stacking of shatter builds when the game was young? They then nerfed our might stacking ability… and allowed others to go havoc with might stacking celestial builds…

Also remember, when they nerved confusion and confusion glamor builds? Because it was just too punishing… and then they introduced perplexity runes…

Over all the balance, I feel, is okay in this game. But some decisions I do not understand the slightest…

Then I will say good bye to my other 8 characters and only melee staff Revenant 24/7, no matter if it has any effect or not XD

Turret engi is a stationary build, that excels in its role in 1v1 or even 2v2 fights on the point. Introducing other PvP arenas with less point contesting, or even just bigger contesting zones, might be the answer. Then they’ll fill a certain functionality, but don’t dominate the game in the mid skill area (where probably most of the players can be categorized into).

Uh yeah. Melee staff would be cool: Martial Arts Powaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I usually run no condition cleanse on MtD shatter builds. And I usually roam in WvW with it. However, if I play against another condition heavy mesmer build, I am in trouble. The condi bursts of other professions can be easily avoided.

Yep… and I am still angry with ANet to have destroyed glamour confusion builds… It was soooooooooooooooooooooo cool.

The only thing I dislike in golems is their mobility. Mind you, walking siege is too mobile imho. But that’s just me.

However, I do not believe they are overpowered. If the enemy outnumbers you significantly then it doesn’t matter, if they golem rush you or not. Dropping 2-3 rams on your gate and melting it in seconds is hardly different from using 2-3 golems. A map wipe with conventional siege costs probably more supply (just guessing, didn’t do the math) and maybe more time. But it hardly will change the outcome I guess.

As for balanced or closely balanced map presence (and only then can we really talk about the effect of siege golems and proper counter play, due to the nature of having a balance in forces):
I can see the tactical value of golems in this scenario. They even enable small teams to punish the enemy for not scouting, as using one golem accompanied by some mesmers allows you to take a keep quickly, if there is no defender. If there is even one scout in that keep/tower, you are most likely screwed as the enemy zerg will just quickly run over you.

I don’t like the idea of it being not interruptable. It would mean that no counter play is allowed to a set of skills that can almost not be predicted and have no animation, once the mantra is charged. So you can’t react to them either. I like the name though

Why not like this?

Blurred Mantras
While channeling mantras, you gain distortion. Mantra channel time is reduced.
Distortion duration: 1s
Channel reduction: 3/4s (so Mantra channel is now 2s)
Internal cool down (upon triggering the trait): 15-20s
Note (most likely in Wiki): This trait synergizes with the trait Masterful Reflection.

EDIT:
But I also like the idea of stability upon channeling. Depending on impact of incoming stabi change and amount of stability granted this could be even used to share stability in WvW fights^^

I was thinking, that this would be awesome. A grandmaster trait in inspiration, that has the effect of granting you distortion when you channel a mantra. It could have an internal cool down to prevent “spamming” distortion with Mantra of Pain. And distortion might only last for 1 or 2 seconds, so not the whole channel is protected and allows a bit of counter play (aka, allow the opponent to interrupt your channel).

What do you think?

I am running these days a condi shatter build in WvW and I am having a blast, so I wanted to share it with you guys.

Last week I tried to create a build, that uses chaos armor as much as possible… but I ended up making a MtD shatter build: click me

This is how I am running in WvW scouting, roaming and killing stuff in no time.

I compared it to the build on metabattle.com and I must say I find the one metabattle very weak. I prefer sword even in a condition dmg build. Blurred Frenzy and iLeap (when it works) are just such powerful skills. And iLeap makes it so much easier to hit your shatters. I sometimes switch Cleansing Conflagration with Shattered Concentration, but I did not really notice a difference in performance other than the cool down reduction makes it often easier to escape danger.

Obviously this build is weak to condition builds (in theory). But most of the times, when I I fought another condition build, I wasn’t really in trouble. This build just has so much condition pressure, making it easier to out dps the enemy.

You can also use it offensively and defensively. Sometimes with 3 staff clones my foe takes quite a lot of damage so that I just finish them off with F3 shatter (to interrupt healing). And the 3s stun from signet of domination in the right moment can spell doom for anyone.

Well… there are new weapons coming for each specialization. So each class will get at least 1 new weapon. The question now is, will they stick to only one new weapon. That would most likely result in Mesmers only getting 2 new weapon skills (cuz of shield).

What I always wondered is, why do ppl rarely stick to havoc tactics? I mean outmaneuvering the enemy zerg by using multiple smaller havoc groups taking care of camps, dollies and just hitting a tower for a short time until enemy zerg arrives and then move on.

I saw that once being on FSP (we had strongest map presence at this time). Another server (forgot which one) sent small groups to our upgrading hills (which I was upgrading), killed siege, damaged walls, damaged gate. That went on for like 10-15 minutes and we were unable to fully repair the damage they did to us, because they kept cutting supplies and such. In the end we lost hills to a relatively small group, who just had to knock on the door to open it…

In my earlier days I was on FoW (bottom tier). One evening in EBG (with actually very good map presence of blue [us] and green [Surmia maybe? Not sure]) a friend and I were constantly cutting enemy supply and our server did relatively well. And then, the very moment we decided to hang out at spawn and talk about stuff we saw how our server collapsed with messages in the chat of being sieged everywhere.

Those are the things I am talking about. Everyone seems to wanna run with a big zerg and clash into each other. Yesterday evening we even lost Hills in one BL to a 4 man deso team, because there weren’t even a few other ppl from FSP ready to come to hills to defend with me (I actually didn’t see the final push due to a dc)…

People’s minds are so stuck in this zerg vs zerg GWEN setup. There are reasons and I fully agree. But to a certain extend there is a lack of creativity on the community’s side to break out of that and try other strategies…

I do know what you wanna say Mr. Negative^^

But your wording is a rhetorical extreme, that won’t really hold up as an analogy to WvW.

I play mostly WvW and some sPvP… and I see Mesmers all the time. I mean ALL THE TIME. It seems my experience is very different from others here, but having played all the professions to a certain extent (except engi) I not only enjoy Mesmer the most, but also think Mesmer has one of the greatest potential to completely wreck other players. I play not at the highest of skill levels, but I enjoy my game and my 2 Mesmers very much. And being a supposedly rarely played profession, makes me enjoy my relative uniqueness even more

This is something that surprises me so many times. I think there was one GamesCom, where they announced or at least talked about WvW. And announcing it as massively unbalanced server vs server PvP. This is what it was from the beginning.

In the early days I remember it was kinda fun to see mass fights happening, where you had almost battle real lines and 2 zergs were ranging each other until some ppl decided to charge. I remember specifically one zerg fight in EB where there was a forward and backwards movement of both armies as the front liners fell but new reinforcements came resupplying the armies. Everyone was a nub, everyone ran with whatever build they felt was good for them and it was a total mess. Ah, the glory of those “old days”^^

I also remember the first times a zerg, often guild groups, started stacking and rolling through armies of superior numbers but absolutely no organization. We (meaning my friends and I) called it turteling at this time. These days however, the people have evolved to a certain meta. Zergs are running the GWEN setups with some variations and small groups roaming/scouting around the main zerg and the optimal strategies are pretty much set in stone. Or so we think at least.

Strategies that probably were never intended by the devs. Strategies that simply evolved off a balancing that is done around sPvP. People had to deal with massive population imbalances, organized guilds versus semi organized Pug zergs and so on. Roaming was no difference. Builds exceeding in mobility and/or stealth are the masters of the roaming world putting professions, who do not achieve this, behind.

All of those things are well known, but I believe will never be remotely balanced. HoT may change the meta. But it will be perceived unbalanced again. And this is a design decision ANet took from the beginning. Changes mostly aimed at other game modes will impact on WvW and the quality of players and guilds will determine how well they will adept…

However, as Chaos Archangel.5071 in the mesmer forums once wrote: “Don’t let the Meta define you.” It can only be added: Define the meta instead!. This is what people should do. Breaking out of the GWEN Meta won’t be that easily possible, but it might still be possible. But especially the roaming Meta is something, that is constantly changing (at least for me it is). For instance roaming builds on Metabattle.com are imho insufficiant and there are better more effective builds. The freedom in WvW roaming builds is immense. And so might be the freedom in large scale combat… Evolution not always results in the optimal solution, it supports any solutions that somehow work, until they are pinned against each other and fight for survival. GWEN is the Meta we have, but maybe if someone at some point would have gone another route, we would have another Meta now, still believing it is the only one that works.

So don’t let the Meta define you… define the Meta instead.

My questions all aim to WvW:

• How does the dev team take balancing issues for WvW small scale and large scale combat into account? Or is the balancing still only done around 5v5 structured PvP combat scenarios?
• Did the designers think of ways to break the GWEN Meta (big zergs mostly consisting of Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist and Necromancers) in WvW?
• Will every profession be able to run a viable and competitive roaming build. Meaning: will every profession in principle be able to somehow escape from outnumbered/lost fights (as of now necromancers for instance have a very hard time doing this).
• Right now there are food buffs in the game, that offer +40% condition duration to any condition applied. Other more specific food buff offers only +15% duration to a certain condition (like burning). Will there be new specific food, that offers better bonuses to certain conditions to allow more build customization.
• Will there be more functionality added to the commander badge?

Hm… torment makes sense. As long as they don’t introduce a new condition I think this might be the most likely result.

Well, we will have the boon Resistance in HoT. It was a boon right?

So if it’s a boon, it can be corrupted. But into what will it be corrupted? A new condition to make other conditions stronger? Or into a condition out of the already existing ones?

Well it depends. If the center of the AC skills are limited to line of sight, half the AoE circle would lay outside the door and deal damage there. Also building ACs on the wall will still help ACing. I have no idea about the technical implementation of such a change, but I feel this could help solve the issue with zooming.

So basically they only need to limit the center of aim to LoS. It would allow you to shoot up walls, to shoot behind doors and such. But shooting inside a tower wouldn’t be possible any more. I know it is a bit weird, because why wouldn’t u be able to shoot over walls with arrows… but hey, why should it be limited to what you actually can see anyway?

@Ragnar.4257:
Roy said: “It’s coming out sooner than you may think”. However, it is not clear what he referred to in that moment. Did he talk about implementing stacking stability before HoT hits? Or did he talk about the information about the change (especially after Jon talked about letting the “staby cat out of the bag”). It seemed like they actually didn’t plan on telling people about it that early but figured in that moment, they blew it already by using stacking stability for everyone to see. I find it highly unlikely, yet it’s not impossible, that they will implement it earlier. However, you still don’t know how they do it. Will a 10s stability changed to 10 stacks for 1s or 2 stacks for 5s or entirely differently? And ultimately it will be tied into the new HoT game play anyway. So no idea what you point was.

@Jim Hunter.6821:
Yes, I agree with you there. Imo ANet has a history of overbuffing or overnerfing things. How they kitten d the Mesmer glamor confusion builds just to later introduce Perplexity runes is one example for absolutely unnecessary balance decisions. However, instead of focusing on the moments where balance was screwed up by ANet, lets focus on the over all quite balanced game they created. (and before someone cries out, yes that game is well balanced considering what tools you get in building your builds. Mass WvW battles are supposed to be unbalanced, that’s how the whole game mode was announced and everyone cheered) I for my part will simply wait how the changes and new professions/specializations play out. The thing is that ANet not only needs to wait out the learning curve for the seemingly overpowered builds, which may be countered after the meta “kicked in”, but they must also think of not scaring player off the game. So we might see some questionable balancing decisions. But it is yet too early to tell anyway.

How about just limiting ACs to line of sight (LoS calculation only done in horizontal plane). Like I can sometimes look around an object and place my blink there, but the blink doesn’t actually go there but stops at said corner. I use ACs rarely, so I don’t know if limiting to LoS would make them unusable.

But you prove my point. You are complaining about possibilities of a not yet fully revealed meta that will hit GW2 some time in the future. That is my issue with some ppl in this thread. Theorize and speculate about certain effects and changes in the meta? Yes, I have no issue with that. But some here go beyond that and just QQ about things, they yet don’t understand. The complaints could be accurate, no question there, but they could be also completely unfounded, if the expansion reveals significant changes in certain skills/traits/ability and what not.

Will stacking stabi be difficult to balance? Yes it will be. Does that mean that it won’t be balances? No it doesn’t. At least, we can not reliably predict that for we know nothing about additional changes.

It is so funny to me, how people already know the impact of those changes. They seem to have a pretty good insight into all the changes of HoT. Can I get in on those information too? Also, where is the HoT build creator, so we can update metabattle.com with the new meta builds…

You guys are funny. Instead of complaining about things you know absolutely nothing about (unless you really know all the changes of HoT), you should wait and see. This goes beyond speculation, as some ppl seem to already call the game being ruined. (but what am I saying, WvW is dead for 2 years now, according to some of the loudest outcries in that forum here)

Also the lack of fantasy as to how we can adapt in WvW meta stuns me (get it? It “stuns” me^^). There are so many ways, of facing the changed meta. Did you guys ever think of stopping to stack all on commander tag and instead of developing other tactics? Blanked CCing to strip stab stacks won’t be possible on the whole army, if you stop stacking…

Well, actually there are dungeons where mesmers can be very helpfull. Portal, invisibility (if there is no thief around) and the possibility of 24/7 reflects make some dungeon content very easy But other than that… yeah… mesmer isn’t made for PvE.

This is how it is now, but do you know how it will be when the expansion hits?

I find the complaints funny. Speculation fine, I like to speculate. But saying it will kill open WvW fights is just… well overeager in the best case.

It will definitely change the meta. But without knowing how the specializations, the new class, the new boons, conditions and status effects are actually implemented makes predictions very hard.

Also, just a thought. If a class (like mesmer or necro, for the class theme) will get a good access to the slow status effect, then this could come in handy. Stability stacks in intensity making it vulnerable to multiple CCs, but making the enemy zerg slow, also slows their ability to through out multiple CCs one after the other… counter play and counter counter play^^

It depends. If the setup is smth like:

‘spawn A’—>keep—>tower—>choke<—tower<—keep<—‘spawn B’

then the tower will be open from one side and that would be basically the same situation as we have now. Allowing you to have multiple attack angles on fortifications on “your” side of the map

I agree with Johje Holan.4607: Speculation is fun. We are not concluding anything from our speculations about the actual expansion. But throwing around ideas is something I’d want as a developer from my player base. So I will speculate the hell out of that expansion (I just write a fraction of it down in the forum^^)

@Zetsumei.4975:
If this is the place, where you actually would fight… so do it. I didn’t imagine this “mountain path” as the main battle ground for raomers. I would put it into the game, to make it difficult to pass through to the other side. The aim is simply to prevent the Zerg from bypassing the fortified choke point, but still to allow “special operations” to get through. It would also be strategic point. A server would need to scout such mountain paths, otherwise “Hannibal might still cross the mountains with his elephants”.

I know. I just said that, because people claimed this perplexity build would be unbeatable^^

@Titus.2085:
I Just be aware that I was running with mostly berserker gear. So maybe with a more defensive gear you can compensate for the lack of utility. However, your damage will be lower too.

The good thing of the stun breaker mantra is, that it has more stun breaks and is also good for stomping with some secs of stability. However, it does not allow easy repositioning during the fight, what decoy and blink do allow and what makes mesmer strong in PvP.

I just tryed that build in WvW, but I dropped mental torment in favor of shattered concentration. It works good in team fights, if you aren’t focused and taking npc camps goes in no time. NPCs died after initial rotation with one phantasm and shatter already^^

However, mantra of pain is not that good imho. The damage is pretty lame, even with the mantra traits. You can use it in zerg fights, to tag many targets or to use it in combination with restorative mantras for the AoE heal. Other than that the mantra of pain I find really weak.

So over all I’d rate the build with a very high and quick dmg potential, especially if you set the damage up with vulnerability on your foe. But the defensive abilities of that build is very weak and I struggled even against scrub GS/Hammer warriors. Another moditation guardian just destroyed me. But any time I could surprise my target, I could destroy them quickly^^

This is how I would suggest this build for small groups in WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8fl0npIt1oxKNcrNipxgqyIdANkRpHZ8FA-T1SBwAcVq84CAYWJ4VlBdVSdT9HU6GWcQA0cEA4t/AgHAApAMXZE-w

EDIT:
I would suggest this build (with shattered concentration) for people who run in small groups in WvW. You offer AoE condi cleanse, AoE stabi (yes short duration, but still good for stomping), very good and easy to play dmg output, and boon strips. But, as mentioned, it has just a low defensive potential.

I agree with Ross here. I’d have done similar changes to get the most out of the mantras and traits. But I think 1v1s might be really hard with this build for the lack of defensive utility. If you can get the dmg down, then it should be fine. But look out for surprises. But for team fights your dmg and offensive utility with that mantra build could be devastating

As they announced objectives like towers and keeps will be placed at strategic points such as choke points. I imagine, if that would be really the case, that servers would siege up those towers and around the respective choke making it hard to impossible to go through there.

So either you siege their siege down or I hope you’d be able to bypass that choke point through a “dangerous mountain path”. I imagine this path be filled with a mix of jumping puzzle parts (like small pathways, cliffs to overcome and such but not too much) and environmental effects (snow storm and such with chill effect and a bit of dmg [also to siege and reducing carried supply]). You could also try to build bridges and pave the path for your server (but also for the others). However the environmental effects will destroy that paving eventually again (or other players will^^).

I really hope something like that will exist in the new WvW map. It would most certainly make roaming (what I do 95% of the time) more interesting

I didn’t read the whole thread tbh. So maybe this was said already. But I think a solution – to keep build variety (but it would make the balancing harder) – would be to tie utilities to Legends in a different way:

You’d choose a utility independent of the invoked Legend, but then the utility would be modified by that legend. For example:

Main utility effect: “Teleport to target.”
Modifier from Legend A: “cause chill”
Modifier from Legend B: “stun target”
Modifier from Legend C: “gain might”
Modifier from Legend D: “gain quickness”

I know the example is a bit lame, but I could imagine that principle being applied.

Ranger

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Trapper? Be a trapper, pelase. I like fighting condi rangers with the rune of the trapper. I don’t really know why. Other than that he is most likely long bow pew pew ranger.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  90%

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Rangers always were and still are easy picks. If they are trappers, the fight will be a bit more interesting and often results in a stale mate. It’s all about predicting their movement and not being to over eager to kill them (cuz that will get you killed most likely). Since I play lock down I haven’t met such a ranger though. My experience draws from fights, when I used the standard IP shatter build, but with Focus instead of torch. Long Bow rangers are somehow lame. Their rapid fire can be a thread… but often isn’t. Open terrain can be a bit problematic, but as soon as I can abuse LoS the fight is easy in my favor. Running from a long bow ranger in open terrain is almost impossible with my build. So I engage them before I know what their actual intend is.

Thief

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Don’t be P/D condi

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  around 0% against any decent P/D condi thief
  50% against anything else

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Anything not P/D condi: Fighting thieves is a lot about patience and mind games. Thieve is the profession I have the most experience with fighting. Sometimes they wanna open with a shadow refuge. Often easily dealt with blink and GS #5. Interrupts can easily fail against them. So I try to avoid shatter and interrupts and hope my phantasms can dps them down a bit. When he is at low health I chain CC him and game over. Shattering can sometimes be very affective and end the fight quickly, but for this the setup (might, vulnerability) and clone positioning must be very good.

Necromancer

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Wohooo. Easy target.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  >90%

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Necros have many skills with a long cast time, making it easy to interrupt them but also hard to choose, what to interrupt. Their HP and LF pool can make them very resilient and they can still surprise you with a dmg spike (condi and power all the same). Their threat potential rises exponentially with how close you are to them. In open field, if they see you coming and manage to get some dmg on you (especially when they load you with conditions, before you can actually threaten them) then the fight can be lost quickly. Chill and cripple make it hard to escape from a lost fight. So I am aggressive and use stealth and blink to reposition myself to avoid their damage. Interrupting the heal and chain CCing him on medium to low health wins the fight (Necromancers can still be very threatening on low life. I managed on my necromancer with health <20% to kill both of my opponents in a 1v2).

Warrior

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Booooooooooooooooooooooooooring. Hammer and GS? Yep: hammer and GS. Well, let the dance begin.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  60%

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Most warriors I meet run (literally run^^) GS/Hammer. Their ability to disengage and reangage is the actual thread. Even if you seem to win, they can slowly wear you down and make you blow cool downs. Then they turn on their Nikes and run. The thing is they just might come back a few seconds later and come at you again. Avoid hammer stuns and keep kiting them is the basic formula. If the warrior is not on this setup but has also a Axe/X weapons set, one has to look out for eviscerate. I lost recently very unfortunately against a warrior: I almost completely owned the fight and he was at <10% HP, I was at >80%. Until I failed to see his eviscerate coming (kitten little Asuras) and I went down.

WvW

• Name
  Si Lly (power based Mesmer), Ka Tess La Ve (condition based Mesmer)

• Played Mesmer Since
  pre release

• Favorite Alt? Why?
  Necromancer. I like the profession theme and I am still hoping that life siphoning will one day be viable

• Least Favorite Class to Play?
  Warrior. From a play style side it is the opposite of Mesmer.

• What is your favorite class to fight? Why?
  Thieves. It’s an uphill battle with the most common builds. And I wanna be able to win those battles^^

• What is your least favorite class to fight?
  Engineer. Turrets, bombs, knockbacks, more turrets, more bombs and more knockbacks. Pinned down? Uh let me be invulnerable or block everything… or well… I just stealth, cuz I got that too. Uh… I seem to lose… let me just quickly jump outa here. That is more annoying than thief disengages.

• What is your favorite Mesmer spec? What is your role with this spec?
  Lock down builds of any kind. Mostly power based CS or CI. I roam, take camps and dollies and scout. If outnumbered in my attempts I switch to power PU.

• What other class is your favorite duo partner?
  S/D thief. Just makes life easier, to have them on your side

• If you could give Mesmer a buff, what would it be?
  A way to rely less on clones.

• How do you feel about… Elementalist / Engineer / Guardian / Mesmer / Ranger / Thief / Necro / Warrior?

Elementalist

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Does he have a staff? If not, fight might take a while.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  >90% staff ele
  50% everything else

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Staff eles are easy fudder. No real strategy needed except ovoid to stand in their AoE. For D/D (I rarely meet anything else in WvW) the fights can end very quickly with a lucky shatter or the fight take ages. If I fail a good early shatter, my interrupts remain unused for a while to wait out stability and try to bait cool downs. If I survived that long, than I chain CC the ele and it’s over.

Engineer

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  <30%

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  No idea. I seem to be at a loss against engineers in WvW. It depends very much on their skill lvl, less on mine. Interrupts can be devastating against them, but I seem to have problems to figure out their rotations for proper lock down and burst setup. However, I meet them rarely and I have not that much experience fighting them. One time though I managed to interrupt the engie’s heal, and supply drop 2 times in a very short time… I destroyed that guy^^ But that was more luck than actually skill^^

Guardian

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Hopefully he is a Medi Guard. Everything else just is no threat.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  80%

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  Wait and kite their bursts (medi Guard) and after they blew a lot of their cool downs – they tend to do that very fast, they are very aggressive – they are easy fodder. Sometimes they manage to heal up and come at you again. That can happen very sudden. If one is on the lookout for that and avoid it, the fight is won.

Mesmer

• What is the first thing you think when facing them?
  Hopefully no condi PU or Phantasm build.

• What do you think your odds of winning are?
  <10% PU condi
  80% everything else

• What is the ideal strategy against these class?
  PU condi: Exploit LoS and run, just get the kitten outa there or bring a friend.
  Everything else: Fighting shatter mesmers is all about avoiding their bursts. Luckily many shatter mesmers I fight are kinda predictable. If I don’t pay attention though, the fight can be lost very quickly. Phantasm builds are quite the challenge. It is similar to Pu condi, but less impossible. Interrupts come down to their heal and MI. Also killing the phantasms is often a must. Other lock down builds can go either way. I figured that good lock down mesmers play very adaptive. So it is a question of who adapts better. I had this one fight with another lock down mesmer in BL once. Took us about 10 mins. Sadly in the end I lost, but I learned a lot in this fight. Also, many of my interrupts were blown into nothing that fight…

flow.6043:

TyPin.9860:

On my mesmer, I can’t remember the last time, when I lost to any necro condition dmg build…

Write me in game next time FSP plays against Kodash. I’m always looking for a challenge.

kk^^

On my mesmer, I can’t remember the last time, when I lost to any necro condition dmg build… (I find the power once more threatening, for their damage bursts are less predictable imo). But maybe that’s because I play power lock down, so that necro can’t really do much anyway^^

The title sounds cooler that what I am actually talking about^^

But, well: Yesterday I was roaming around on my necromancer (didn’t touch her for ages… well that sounded funny). And I came across a battle around garrison. Two guild groups of our server against Gandara blob (no idea if actually also guilds or pug zerg). However, my role was pretty cool, I thought. West wall of garry was down and the zergs were clashing. I was in “save distance” just hitting some targets, fearing something off the cliff and using plague when it was off CD.

The rest of the time I was resurrecting dead players (well, I am a necromancer at least^^). It kinda felt awesome. Like I was a battle medic caring for the wounded (well in this case dead) and sending them off back into battle.

Those are the experiences that make GW2 and WvW fun for me…

Sorry for the non relevant information^^

Carry on

Hey fellow necromancers,

I have recently returned to some Necromancer play. Mostly for roaming in WvW. Now currently I use Nightmare runes, but I am considering Perplexity. But before I do the investment (don’t have enough atm anyway), I’d like to know, if it’s worth it. I mean I feel overpowered already in most 1v1 situations and have won a fair deal of 1v2 fights (or made the ones hunting me flee^^). Camps flip fairly quickly and easily and everything is going quite well.

I use the following builds (don’t have a preference yet):

• Terrormancer, mostly stolen from Metabattle.com^^
• Pyromancer

The empty slot is flexible, often I just use for comfort reasons Signet of the Locust. Now would those builds really profit from Perplexity? I was also thinking that Balthazar runes might be good for the pyromancer build…

Since the launch of GW2 this has been an issue in WvW, especially for roaming players. The moment a dolly is being speed buffed client and server information desynchronize, unless you witnessed the speed buff process from the beginning.

It is a problem, if you want to take out a dolly, that is being speed buffed. Because the attacker has wrong information of the dollies location, one is not sure, where to actually attack. If you manage to CC the dolly (soft CC such as fear seems to work, as well as dazes and stuns), the dolly jumps from the attackers perspective to its correct (server side) position.

When the dolly is escorted by a group of player, one needs to take it out and get out of there immediately. This is but not possible in most cases when the dolly is displaced. Please fix it.

Yeah I actually forgot to make a report in the bug section… cuz I was a bit kittened.

However, I made so many bug reports over the time about this issue… they know about it, I am quite sure. But it’s not their main focus I guess. The most ppl in WvW are zerglings, be it a open pug zerg or a closed guild raid. So they run over the dolly in no time, not caring that it is actually displaced.

But I will add a report in the bug section too.

Sry, but I am a bit kittened atm.

The following issue was a problem 2 years ago and is still now. I was trying today to stop the opponent from upgrading a tower. Being outnumbered in this attempt 5 to 1 was already an uphill battle. But in addition I had to guess where the dolly was, which they were escorting, because client and server weren’t synchronized. Something that happens often, when players speed buff a dolly.

Odd enough, after I managed to hit the dolly with fear, it seams to synchronize everything again and the dolly teleported from my PoV to it’s actual position.

I am very dissapointed, that this is still an issue. Makes roaming and actually trying to fight for objectives in such situations much more frustrating. So much for the support of strategic gameplay…

I fought him again. This time it didn’t happen. Was probably just a glitch^^

Thx for the responses though

Just had a fight with a P/D condi thief. I know that this fight is a uphill battle for my power lock down mesmer build. But the thing is, that I could not see him beyond the initial seconds before he cloaked the first time. I could select him when he attacked and had some chances finding him, because I saw where the bullets came from. But he was invisible (meaning the character model was not visible to me) almost all the time unless I managed a lucky interrupt.

Wasn’t aware of smth like that still happening. It felt like the culling issues from the early GW2 days. But I thought they got rid of it. So what was it then?

Introduction:
I was thinking that introducing a mission based reward system might make WvW more rewarding (for everyone), more strategic and might attract new players to WvW. It would also give players in blow out matches still things to do and to receive rewards. This mission system is tied in with the WvW events, that exist now. Please keep in mind that this is just a first draft. Keep your mind open to the possibilities it might offer. But of course I also welcome constructive criticism

Basic idea:
In WvW players can sign up for missions in spawn. Those missions are constantly offered and work like map wide events once you signed up. The other WvW events still exist and are tied into this mission system. Signing up and fulfilling the mission objectives offers you immediate rewards. But the missions are tied into a bigger picture that might also allow you to help your server succeed. They also offer a structure for new players, so they know what to do.

• Signing up:
  A player needs to sign up for a mission in order to be rewarded. You can only sign up for one particular mission. A visible counter keeps track of how many people signed up for the different missions. Someone not signing up for a mission would have the same WvW experience as now.

• Rewards:
  Signed up for a mission you will receive rewards by performing the according tasks. There are reward tracks for the different mission types (similar to PvP reward tracks). Mission types are explained below. However you can only contribute to the reward track associated with your current mission. The rewards include different currencies (karma, gold, WvW badges, specific mission badges). Progressing in a certain reward track offers achievement points and eventually a mission specific title you can show off. Mission badges can also be turned in to receive mission specific skins, equipment and such. Maybe eventually there could be a mastery system tied in with the different mission types to help you specialize in what you are actually doing.

Mission Types:
There are missions of different types (just suggestions, other types of missions may fit better):

• Disruption:
  Kill hostile dollies, hostile players carrying supply and capture camps, that would not supply one of your own fortification. The more supply the dolly, the player or the camp had, the bigger the reward. Also the upgrade tier of the camp is taken into consideration.

• Conquest:
  Capture towers and keeps. The rewards are tied with the actual tier of the tower and the time the enemy held it until capture.

• Maintaining Infrastructure:
  Capture camps, that would supply your own fortification, and hold them. The reward scales now with the actual thread to the camp (takes number of attackers into consideration and number of defenders), the time it was under your ownership and it’s upgrade level. Escort event for dollies will be back. But offer only a reward, if the dolly was actually attacked by players.

• Maintaining Fortification:
  Basically the same as Maintaining Infrastructure, just it applies to fortifications. Includes also dolly defending.

Mission Commander:
A commander can apply for mission commander. He would be listed in a UI panel in the game and players can vote for him or against him to be Mission Commander. Upon receiving a certain number of votes (or maybe a ratio of positive to negative votes?) the commander will become a mission commander. The mission commander with more votes (or better vote ration) is ranked higher.

• Mission Commander Tag:
  The Mission Commander receives a different shaped commander tag than the normal commander tag. It also offers several colours to choose from.

• Mission Commander Function:
  But more importantly he can prioritise certain mission types and even certain locations associated with the missions. That would be visible for the players. Doing so offers players more rewards in fulfilling those prioritised tasks. Higher ranked Mission Commanders decide in case several commanders want to prioritise different tasks.

hm… I got Time Warp and Signet of Illusion…

here’s my build: quickness + quickness mixed with quickness

So… I got time warp. There are not really any traits for that, so I thought adept the theme of time warp. Make things quicker. And so I did. Used all quickness stuff I could find. It’s a CI lock down condition damage build. It uses Signet of Illusions to give your phantasms more health and to offer the chance to dace shortly one after another with Diversion. Interrupting a target will give you 5 might and additional boon, root the target and add another soft CC condition and give you quickness. This way the channel of scepter AA works faster. So this is how I’d “justify” this build:

The theoretical rotation: Pistol 4 —> 5 (or 5 —> 4) to hit with dualist and dace the target. Followed by quickness powered illusion summoning and tormenting with scepter 1. Alternatively you could also quickly pop signet of the eather and add another dualist^^ If you’re low on health (you’ll get quickness from rune) you can blurred frenzy and AA with 1H-sword to trigger sigil of blood.

The sigil cool down helps for quick summoning of 2 phantasms if needed and to power the shatter cool down reduction with Sigil of Illusions. So you have an additional daze at hand. Also sigil of Domination CD is reduced^^

Obviously this was carefully crafted as a support build. Alone you’d be a quick target

I am almost exclusively playing mesmer on an almost full glass cannon setup (mix of zerker and assains and some toughness trinkets). I frequently pick up ice bow from our eles. It never occurred that I got killed by retaliation (of course my health pool is higher, but it never came down to even 50% HP). You could say I didn’t hit well enough, that they didn’t buff themselves well or they were boon striped. After all my sample is smaller compared to an ele. However, from what I experienced and from what eles told me, it seems a very rare situation. More a text book example, that is theoretically possible, if all conditions are well met. This rarely occurs actually.

Should the game now be changed because of a situation that is very rare? Even if it happened once and you had to pop mist form once to avoid retaliation. It would be extremely unique that the same situation occurs again. So no, you don’t need to nuke in synergy with mist form cool down. If you’re afraid though now, then I think their tactic actually worked to make you uneasy in using your skills. It is a form of soft CC after all, leaving you the choice of taking the consequences or not…

cillard.3986:

Aeolus.3615:

i guess OP died thinking his zerker could AOE bag farm with 1 skill, nowadays this seams obvious by gw2 standards.

That isn’t a fair comment to some class/builds that have no choice but to AoE.

For example, I have seen ele’s not even running a piece of zerker gear blow themselves up or be forced to mist form with a single meteor shower or ice bow 4. I’ve also see it happen on a single static field drop with LR when not even trying to dps.

/shrug

So it is avoidable. I think it’s an issue of adapting tactics.

What about butterflies? A guardian doesn’t have butterflies^^