Guild Wars 2

Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. PU is a way to strong trait imo. MtD was alright with 2 torment stacks.

If they should look at stuff, it should be PU. As it stands now, you are better off when hiding in stealth an letting your illusions do the work. The occasional shatter is okay as long as you get the clones back out there fast enough.

Rly, just fought several condi Roamers (including engies) in WvW on a condi Necro build… I won all fights… some even with super ease. One (semi)passive condition transfer and 2 active ones are enough to punish anyone for applying conditions to you.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

Shiki.7148:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

wolfyrik.2017:

Tim.6450:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m thinking Well of Blood will be the optimal choice in PvE due to the DPS boost from Vampiric Rituals and the cooldown reduction. That said, I hate the light field.

What about the SoV?

Bwahahahahahahahha!

Great one.

SoV

You kidder, you.

If you’re looking for DPS on a heal skill, it’s by far the strongest skill in the game for that purpose.

And with Signet mastery it gives you might and corrupts 2 boons too.

Pretty much. I tried SoV in PvE and I haven’t gone back to Consume Conditions since. Necros already struggle to push any major damage out compared to a half-decent Warrior or Mesmer who knows their full rotation, so basically having free might for using your heal or Locust is nice. Plus, SoS makes Blood Bond proc more often which is neato.

I might try Well of Blood as well, but I won’t kitten until I’ve fully tried out the changes.

Off-Topic: Mesmer rotations aren’t a thing.

Laraley.7695:

I’m more wondering why people hasn’t been complaining about mesmers that can stack up to 40 seconds of stealth, lol.

My Mesmer can stack up to 58s of stealth. In WvW roaming it is disgustingly amazing (from Mesmer PoV). In PvP though, having 58s chain stealth isn’t really going to help me…

However, most Mesmers I know are way more exited about Lock Down and Support options for Mesmer atm. There are already some ppl trying to do both in one build. Atm. while I think PU will be some way adapted in the future, I do not think it really is a big issue atm.

The Mantras are amazing now and imho the single most amazing change for Mesmers

Yep condis hurt. In my build there is no place for condi removal. But I am okay with it. I should have one weakness at least. And it’s not that they’ll be able to unload their condies easily on me^^

PU in combination with Torch Trait is disgusting. 58s of stealth:

Mimic→MI→Torch→Decoy→Decoy→Torch→Torch→Decoy→Torch→Torch

Last time torch just barely is enough. But it is:
10s+6s+6s+6s+6s+6s+6s+6s+6s=58s of chain stealth…

Cynz.9437:

- expression of “love” towards engis is encouraged

Please just don’t make it a “hate” event, just because the devs may stick with ridiculous balance changes.

fluxit.8247:

TyPin.9860:

fluxit.8247:

Here’s some food for thought though: http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku/v/6476506 skip ahead to 3:20:00 ish mark. One of the preview streamers tried a condition style mesmer. Although it was a terrible build and something he hashed together in about 30 seconds the condition output was still quite high when he shattered properly.

So?

EDIT: And next he shows a warrior. And he just destroys his sparring partner not even being anywhere near bothered by his attacks. And the damage output with that warrior is worlds stronger with several 4k instant hits in a short time. This video shows nothing and doesn’t provide any clue for anything.

Wow….just wow. Great replies so far guy. Just fantastic. :/

SO!?

This thread is about the mesmer community’s worries about our ability to stack conditions after the mtd nerf. This streamer used a less than optimal build against Koroshi, a very well known roaming streamer, and was able to stack enough conditions on him to down him a couple of times.

I’m making a very simple observation. Nothing more, nothing less. Thank you for your kind reply.

You show one example of one guy against another guy. This “plain observation” and the way you present it does nothing but support the bias against Mesmers. Even considering it’s nothing more then anecdotal evidence in video form. How can one conclude anything from this? And I already explained, how later he moved to warrior in the video and was way more successful with way less effort.

I will repeat it: This video you linked gives no actual information. It’s like I say: I managed to do 9000 Rytlocks. Without context, it doesn’t mean anything. And for you have not provided any context (nor does the video in a sufficient manner) I remain with:

So?

fluxit.8247:

Here’s some food for thought though: http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku/v/6476506 skip ahead to 3:20:00 ish mark. One of the preview streamers tried a condition style mesmer. Although it was a terrible build and something he hashed together in about 30 seconds the condition output was still quite high when he shattered properly.

So?

EDIT: And next he shows a warrior. And he just destroys his sparring partner not even being anywhere near bothered by his attacks. And the damage output with that warrior is worlds stronger with several 4k instant hits in a short time. This video shows nothing and doesn’t provide any clue for anything.

@quBit:
I know where your problem lies. You’re imagination of how a fight goes is way too idealized.

If you use F5 the fight might drag you away from the shard (loosing LoS might be already enough), where your chance to anticipate its destruction goes from seeing it to guessing it. You might have also tried to place the shard behind obstacles, for the enemy not to see it. But then you might not see it yourself, after you ran in the fight and another enemy player might find it and burst it down. Or the shard is within LoS, but the opponents burst comes too fast for you to react. Especially when multiple foes do a coordinated burst on it. There are many ways, how the shard destruction may surprise you.

Also, it may not always be possible to safe F4 for F5. Anything that is in cool down, before you trigger F5, will have essentially a prolonged cool down, that is equal to the time you are actively using the F5 effect. So imagine in a fight, you used F5, your shard got destroyed just after you use F4. F5 is now in a long cool down. To say, you wouldn’t need F4 another time during this cool down, is a bit unrealistic imo. Of course F4 has a shorter CD than F5. But still, unless you use F4 very early, it may simply not be ready the next time you need to F5. Imagine you are under huge pressure, while F5 is like 10 seconds away from being ready again. You tell me now, that you will, no matter what, safe F4 for those 10 seconds? Even though you might just die doing so…

We will see how it turns out in reality. Of course, if I run only into ideal stereotypical fight scenarios, it all may go in my favor. But arguing from ideal fight scenarios is not a very solid basis.

I see only two reasonable solutions for the corruption trait. Either drop the additional condition effect or reduce cool downs of condition skills by at least 50%.

quBit.6437:

it shouldn’t be harder than switching pets on ranger before it dies really, unless you have bad keybinds… what makes you believe that it would be so hard to anticipate? it’s not like youre gonna be out of sight of the shard, especially when your foe is attacking it.

What makes you think you always see it? What makes you think you always have F4 available?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

striker.3704:

A maintained 2 stacks of bleeding on yourself honestly isn’t that bad, idk why people say the skill is kill now because of it.

You have no condition cleanse or healing skills inside Plague, and even if you did, it would not be worth cleansing due to the short duration, pulsing nature of the bleeds.

Your typical condition build will have ~180 damage per bleed tick for 48 effective ticks (thanks to Barbed Precision), for a total of ~8640 damage that you dealt to yourself. This is without any extra bleed duration at all. Just adding a koi cake boosts the damage you deal to yourself to ~11,520. And this is before accounting for any Might!

Get it yet? It’s really, really kitten obvious if you run a couple numbers.

Then please run them appropriately. First: We need context. Are we talking about sPvP (which is the balance focus in PvP) or about WvW (which isn’t balance focus for anything). Then, we need to look at complete builds, not just one single skill.

If you do this, you will see, that depending on the used build in sPvP the damage is actually significantly lower. When using this kinda tanky terrormancer build the relevant traits are Barbed Precision (+20% bleed duration), Target the Weak (13% of Precision into Malice), Corrupter’s Fervor (up to -20% incoming Condition Damage). We’ll be using Rabid Gear, ’cuz we hate ourselves^^

Precision = 1845 = 1000 (base) + 845 (650*130%)
Condition Damage = 1452 = 0 (base) + 240 (Target the Weak) + 1212 (932*130%)

Bleed [1stack/s] = 138 = 2 + (0.3 * Level) + (0.075 * Condition Damage)
Self Bleed [1stack/s] = 110 = 138 – 20% (10 stacks of Corrupter’s Fervor)
Self Bleed from one second Plaque = 264 = 110 * 2 * 120% (Barbed Precision)
Self Bleed from 20 seconds Plaque = 5280 = 264 * 20

Of course this assumes you have Corrupter’s Fervor up all the time. Which I guess in a PvP match you will.

What matters is, that the numbers aren’t actually that high, as ppl claim them to be. The question is, does this change anything. And for WvW (which, I might remind you, is not the PvP balance focus) those numbers would be higher of course.

quBit.6437:

TyPin.9860:

The difference being, that the destruction of the shard/rift might not be anticipated by the Mesmer.

If you’re not completely horrible at the game, you will see it and f4 before that happens. Bad players should never be an argument for balance.

Yes yes, the we-only-assume-the-player-plays-perfectly-and-with-godly-forsight-argument. I also heard, if you’re not completely horrible, you always sheathes GS AA, you always anticipate Thief attacks, you always dodge in the right moment, no Power attack will hit you, you’ll never waste a shatter and so on…

It is not about actual bad play. You simply, so your already weak argument has any standing, disregard any difficulty associated with F5 as horrible play.

What about the Desperate Decoy and mimicking Decoy again? That allows for some more stealth, albeit be it less reliable.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Theres no reason to complain tbh. Good mesmers after these changes will basically become godmode, and every single build we have got buffed except clone death (Which i am glad is gone). The only problem is we didnt get DE and IP baseline to be even more OP then we already will be :P

The king of mesmers has spoken.
And seriously if he says so, then I truly am afraid for all the other classes.

I don’t think any of you common folks should disagree any futher.

Not my king. I have only one above me, and this is Lyssa. And if she taught one thing it is that predicting the future is a Fool’s errand.

I think the torch trait and PU needs some rethinking. Long duration stealth in combination with phantasm damage is a thing I am personally kinda scared of. Especially since you now can get a 2nd Decoy with Mimic.

This thread is a bit pointless. We have a bunch of builds, which only exist on paper. Some things may not fit in as expected, some traits may be weirdly implemented and thus behave differently and people have yet no practice/experience with the new skill system. You can crystal ball as much as you like, but I guess the majority of predictions will turn out wrong^^

Me Games Ma.8426:

Reborn D.2769:

If mimic works with elite :
Chronomancer > F5 > Moa > Mimic > Moa > F5 > Moa > Mimic > Moa :p

Op as hell!

Wrong. Mimic resets cd of the NEXT Skill used. Moa Mimic Moa wouldn’t work…

“This skill now causes the next utility slot skill you use within 10 seconds to recharge in 1 second. Increased recharge to 90 seconds.”

Still OP: Chronomancer > F5 > Mimic > Moa > Moa > F5 > Mimic > Moa > Moa

My guess:
If you mimic a mantra, it’s cool down will be set to 1s. Meaning, if you charge the Mantra, you have now a 1s delay, before you can use it. If you mimic a charge, it’s cool down will be 1s. Meaning it would actually only effect Power Block and Power Break.

Hm.. weird. I have never encountered such a bug myself. At least I can’t remember.

Well… I still could see that work. Assign a button on your mouse for “push to talk” for the voice to text application, and you won’t flood the channel. The accents and low quality mics are still a problem. But honestly, I have sometimes problems understanding my commanders in TS anyway because of the same issues… so no change there^^

@quBit:
Why do you argue a straw man now? I didn’t say anything about triggering F5 a 2nd time to return “on purpose”. I talked about the shard/rift being destroyed and therefore the Mesmer returns without him actually wanting that. Of course this comes all down to the actual situation and if he can anticipate it happening.

The portal comment was btw just to illustrate the effect. The difference being, that the destruction of the shard/rift might not be anticipated by the Mesmer. And even just forcefully repositioning the Mesmer can be enough to throw him/his team off.

But we will see, what happens. According to your argument, after HoT releases, all Mesmers (with expansion) will become Chornomancers, because they got more. We will see and I highly doubt it will come to this.

I personally am way more worried about PU Phantasm builds (also in combination with Chronomancy). When the Mesmer stays in hiding forever and the phantasms do their thing.

Good question. But I guess it will still work… well I hope so at least^^

It’s not about what I plan. It’s about what you want. You seemingly simply want your old build to work (which it still will in a sense). But it’s a new skill system, which will require ppl to rethink what they did so far. You are compensated in your approach for the loss of 2 traits with the choice of 6 others. All of which offer you good stuff, but you don’t seem to want to open your mind to the possibilities.

In the end it is all theoretical. I say the compensation is enough, you say it is not. We will see in the end, how things will work out.

Okay, I said nothing^^

Okay, so you lose one trait (well 2, because Debilitating Dissipation won’t exist any more), but you gain 6 traits compared to your old build that you can use freely now. And some of the traits you already had are even improved in the new system. I think that is more than compensating for the loss.

@quBit:
This is not true. Remember the PvP balance in GW2 is around 5v5 sPvP.

With F5 of the Chronomancer the opposing team can force him to the position of the shard/rift, he left behind, potentially forcing him into traps/marks/other AoE the opposing team has laid down. They can use the F5 of the Chronomancer to their advantage and spike him down, creating potentially a 5v4 situation to their advantage. This is alone is huge counterplay the skill offers.

Ever laid marks on a Mesmer portal and watch him die in panic, after he used it? I have and with the left behind shard/rift, this can happen the same way.

The previous trait applying confusion was, I believe, weaker than what we will get now. I’d say this is a definite buff. Also, did you have Confusing Combatants in your build before? Now you get it anyway, if you go Dueling.

Also, having now always one additional bounce is a serious buff too. There is no reason why any one would “need” the Chaotic Transference trait, just because you have high toughness.

The buffs we got, I’d say, easily compensate not having the condition damage increase. And now you simply have to choose when using staff: Do you want the active utility provided by the Staff trait or the more passive damage increase from Chaotic Transference. It’s a fair choice imo and follows the concept of purity of purpose.

One of my biggest problems in WvW was fighting P/D Condi thieves. But now, with the Mantra Trait + Mirror (4s Reflect?) does it mean they will potentially be defeating themselves?

Just a quick question: Does the ICD on Ineptitude apply to the whole trait or only to the blind effect?

Nalkahn I do understand the issue. I was also a bit bummed out by this. I sometimes was running something similar. But see it like that: Condition application got seriously buffed. First you have Confusion application as minor in Dueling and Illusionary Elasticity and Illusionary Persona made base line. Personally I think, Robert did this intentionally, being well aware of the potential synergy between the now two competing traits. But keep in mind the general buffs a condition Mesmer received, like explained above. Also the potential insane cool down decreases from the Staff trait makes it clear to me, that when I use staff in a condition build and I use the Chaos trait line, I will for sure always choose the Staff Trait over the Condition damage trait.

Also the Chaos trait line still offers very good condition duration bonus and on top you have signet of midnight, which now will give a super strong 20% condition duration increase.

EDIT:
Look at this build I quickly crafted:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VRZ-3l;0kUF21U7gW-71;9;4TUW;0138258256;4TwW6U;1jzyvjzyv2F

It does, what you which for and even more. The reason I went for travelers was the condi + boon duration. This build not only allows you to do big Staff AA damage in addition to clone damage, it also allows for a nice boon application increasing the already strong boon duration on the build even further.

Before you needed Domination, if you wanted suficiant condition duration bonuses, but now the Chaos line + Signet of Midnight allow for a very strong boon duration bonus on top of easy condition application and the possibility for strong strong shatters. Especially with Signet of domination and Mimic there is a chance for 6s stun… that is insane…

I think the question is not if we got more, but if we are more powerful, because we got more. I will go for now with your argument and ignore the only-off-hand-argument and say: Yes we got more, we got an addition, not a mere replace of our class mechanics.

Does this now mean, that a Chronomancer, just because he has a button more, is more powerful aka overpowered? This, I think, cannot be answered to completion at this point but only speculated. While I think F5 is very powerful and allows for a very special kind of versatility, it doesn’t make Chronomancers more powerful per se. Especially because F5, depending on the HP of the shard/rift it leaves behind and the duration on F5, can be very tricky and possibly self defeating.

And this is the actual nature of it. F5 is not a simple shatter like any other. While you can in the worst case only waste the other shatters by triggering on completely inappropriate timings. F5 offers way more levels of counterplay and can potentially screw you totally up, even if your intended plan actually was good. You can, to a part, defeat yourself.

Do Chronomancers have more options than Core Chronomancers in a fight? Yep, but the potential counterplay and ways to screw it up makes it potentially a “zero-sum game” (yes, I know the term doesn’t actually really apply here, but you know what I mean).

Dawdler.8521:

Fay.2357:

Power damage and condition damage are both applied the exact same way: with ‘hits’ that can be dodged, blocked, or otherwise mitigated by active defense.

Condition damage happen when the condition is already on the player and is a function of time and stacks, not hitting the player. You are talking about condition application and no, its not mitigated in quite the same way direct damage is. In fact Anet has set up specific rules for it, the same skills that completely negate direct damage let conditions straight through. They also have this whole “unblockable” thing, incidently on alot of the CC/condition skills. Condition damage can currently only be mitigated by actually removing the condition.

But sure, I’m hilariously wrong. At least I’m hilariously something, that’s the best compliment I have heard in quite some time.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Are you kidding me?

First:
In order for a condition to do damage, it needs to be applied. So stopping the application stops the damage. Fay’s statement was completely correct. This works the same as stopping direct damage. Actually, there are through Resistance now even more common ways to stop conditions from taking effect on top of the fact that conditions do their damage over time and can be cleansed.

Second:
Please show me the over abundance of condition applying skills, that circumvent the defensive means, which usually work against power damage.

This discussion is as old as GW2 itself. And besides from roaming/small scale combat condition builds always performed worse in the WvW setup compared to tanky support or power builds.

My 5 cents:

1) How is the skill-cap for Mesmer?

Pretty high I’d say. That being said, it doesn’t mean that you need to be absolutely pro to be successful. But it means you will have to learn a bit and adapt, if you want to be successful with Mesmer. With many Mesmer builds, I believe, you’d be at a disadvantage against Elementalists and Engineers of the same skill level in a PvP conquest setup. However, in WvW roaming, except for the ability of D/D Elementalists to recover, the battle field is quite more even.

There are certain combos/techniques/tricks with Mesmer I’d suggest you to learn. There are some nice videos out in the internet like Shatter Tactics from Vash Bash

2) What is my role as Mesmer in WvW (zerg & small group) and PvE?

Mesmers are very good at roaming in WvW. Despite the lack of a good out of combat speed like perma swiftness, Mesmers still are quite mobile with Blink (shortcuts in some places in the borderlands) and you can compensate with [quite expensive] traveler runes. Mesmers excel in 1v1 open field combat and the biggest rivals are Thieves. But also Medi Guardians and Zerker Warriors can be quite deadly. Most Mesmer defenses are active, so you need to watch what your opponent is doing closely but winning feels rewarding.

In small roaming groups, especially power based Mesmer builds, are deadly. I personally felt the most joy when playing the standard 4/4/6 CI lockdown build in groups, solely with the purpose of adding CC to the mix. But the dmg output and survivability is very strong. All in all either roaming alone or with a small group is very fun with Mesmer and Mesmer brings much dmg and utility to group fights.

In bigger Zerg Mesmers fulfilled for a long time only utility bot (Portal, Null field, etc.). But these days I personally run in the zerg with my roaming shatter setup and land some nice ranged dmg spikes. Some also like to play some kind of interrupt/reflect setup in WvW zergs. But all in all in Zergs Mesmers are atm a bit lackluster imho. With Chronomancer that might very well change.

No idea about PvE except for some dungeons. Mesmer can contribute by building around reflections skills/traits making them very good dungeon mates for fractals but also for Arah for isntance.

3) Will latency affect my ability to play the class significantly?

Latency issues are the worst enemy of Mesmer. While everyone is affected by them to some extend, with Mesmer, who relies in precise positioning and timing, latency issues will destroy your tactics and your offense as well as defense will simply suck. That gets even worse, if you wanna play some kind of Lockdown or Interrupt build, which are probably the builds that rely the most in the whole of GW2 on exact timings. That being said, 250-300ms ping should still be okay.

@Daniel Handler:
The Revenant stuff sounds weird. But I cant really talk about something I have literally 0 experience with.

Back on topic. So what you’re saying is that traited steal (like in a panic strike thief) can actually “remove” Stability, Protection and Aegis on a ~20s CD. On top of it there is the daze effect (next to others, which I disregard for this point). I do indeed find that our of control.

Yes I would be glad to be able to save an ally from being stomped, but what about that guy, who saved his stabi and managed to down my ally without popping it. Boon removal is good and well, but this seems a bit too strong imo. Because, if the thief is not blinded, the daze is guaranteed in this case with only pressing one button.

Jski.6180:

TyPin.9860:

@Jski.6180:
As I said earlier: No1 asked for poison to do dmg to siege. And if there are ppl around, the burning would be cleansed immediately. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be possible to place siege, when there is a mortar firing onto that spot. So burning dealing damage to siege would only complement the mortar’s functionality.

The initial suggestion was not even that conditions are applied to siege. The initial suggestion was, that when attacking siege, a portion of condition damage would act as power damage.

And again, if the siege is surrounded by other players, they would immediately cleanse the condition, so it mainly effects situations, where the siege is abandoned or the attacker managed to defeat the user(s) of the siege engine.

Your comply missing my point if you have morders up you can perma clear a keeps doors it would be imposable to drop any siege and build it much less get in at all. If siege takes up a cleanse then it would need to count as a player or it will just count as an npc making is very hard to land condi removal.

Even with just the fire “buff” coming in is going to be it very hard to stay on a ram vs a keep who has morders if the ram dies to then the player on the morder no longer needs to use the stander attk skill just spam burning leaving no chose of (kill the player or kill the siege).

So you basically say the mortar would fulfill its designated task?

Not that I am one of the players constantly claiming Thief OPness and such, I have been one of those players claiming that thief is one of the easier classes to master. Now I played a Thief in some Practice matches… and it is not that easy, as I thought. I played a S/D build from metabattle and have to say, that I’d expected it going much smother. Funny was, that most other Thieves weren’t that problematic. But even fighting Mesmer… what I expected to be a cake walk, was not that simple. Granted most of them were lock down for some reason…

On the other hand, guardians I met weren’t that problematic either… but well, those were just practice matches. Anyway, there is actually more to Thief play than I had anticipated

Daniel Handler.4816:

I can’t see a situation where the traits you describe would be OP or out of control. Perhaps you could give an example?

Well, I tend to not use the word OP. It has been used so many times in so many situations… it lost meaning to me.

But out of control is the best description imho. One example on top of my head is a character with aegis and stability active. One would think, this character would be kinda save from CC. Now correct me, if I am wrong, but to my knowledge Aeiges and Stabi have a high priority on Bountiful Theft and the boon steal happens even before the actual stun effect of Slight of Hand. Resulting in stole Aegis and Stability and a daze for this character…

I do find that out of control. However, I will probably the next days play a thief. Talking about those traits sounds like fun for a thief. This way I will also see how reliable those traits actually are.

Tarkan.5609:

Out of control? Strong yeah but i wouldnt say so
You mesmers currently have a GM trait that pretty much improve your class mechanic by 1/3 – you need to spend 6 trait points but only chose one trait for that

something thats way more out of control is the shadow arts line imo but thats a different topic

Interestingly even ANet seem to agree that Illusionary Persona should be baseline. It still think is nothing compared to the effects of how some steal traits work currently.

Personally I have not so many issues with shadow arts trait line. Is it annoying to fight a thief, who uses shadow arts? Yes, I hate it. Is it out of control? Nope, I don’t think so. And I main a Mesmer, who has almost no means to attack something that is in stealth.

Tarkan.5609:

the thing is – in order to get a fully buffed steal we need to spend 8, for improvisation even 10 trait points
thats 300 useless condi dmg and 8/10 trait points less to spend somewhere else

for 8/10 trait points only put into steal (even 2 minors of them are steal only minors) you would kinda expect/want it to be strong right?
the amount of trait points make trickery thieves extremely relying on hitting their steal

But also 300 usefull power and condi duration for a panic strike thieve. However, such arguments won’t be of any importance any more in the future. Of course we can’t really know, how the balance will or will not shift with the whole new balance changes.

Already the combo of boon steal, that prioritizes stability and daze is in itself a huge deal. Alone this, combined with the CD reduction makes steal hugely potent in a unique way and imho is kinda out of control. On the other hand, the synergy those traits provide seems so elegant, that maybe it is the wrong approach to look at thief traits, but at the traits of the other professions… well, we will see how things turn out with the balance patch.

I personally, when I realize it’s a 4v5 in favor of my team, go back/close to spawn and just stand there and wait until it’s a 5v5 again. And I have asked opponents to do the same. Some did, some did not. It is an issue that could be fixed by the community.

That being said, we all know it’s not going to be fixed by the community. There should be something in place, for this issue. For instance the game could track, if players are leaving the match (for whatever reason) when being behind in points. If after some instances there is a certain correlation between being behind and leaving the match, the game could adjust. I am not sure, what kind of adjustment/punishment would be appropriate, but technically it should be possible.

It wouldn’t help in the very situation, but this mechanism, once it is applied, may just prevent people from following that practice.

Yeah, there were similar suggestion ages ago in the WvW subforum. I would also handle it like Sunshine. Display only the base damage of torment and confusion and ignore vulnerability stacks. It must just clearly be communicated that this indicator is just that, an indicator. Maybe one could also go with an average number between standing and moving torment and attacking (one attack per second) and not attacking confusion.

Hell, I would be ready to do the busy work and analyze footage sent to me after the update and determine the average effect of those 3 “float” conditions.

@Jski.6180:
As I said earlier: No1 asked for poison to do dmg to siege. And if there are ppl around, the burning would be cleansed immediately. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be possible to place siege, when there is a mortar firing onto that spot. So burning dealing damage to siege would only complement the mortar’s functionality.

The initial suggestion was not even that conditions are applied to siege. The initial suggestion was, that when attacking siege, a portion of condition damage would act as power damage.

And again, if the siege is surrounded by other players, they would immediately cleanse the condition, so it mainly effects situations, where the siege is abandoned or the attacker managed to defeat the user(s) of the siege engine.

@Sir Vincent III:
Reread your previous post please. You constantly refer back to my initial suggestion after you okayed my message of not advocating this change any more. This is why I reminded you of it again.

However, I had no other suggestion for a balance change yet.

@maddoctor:
Everything you listed is nothing in the lines of teleport+dmg+poison+weakness+gaining boons+dace+boon steal (including prioritized stability, which is stolen before daze effect, if I am not mistaken)+random skill type recharge+immobilize+gaining consume plasma (for instance when stealing from Mesmers) in one. There are more traits, but all effects listed above can be found in a single build.

Problem with talking about steal is also that it is (partly) an all or nothing skill. Meaning if you missed it, you’d need to recharge the whole thing with only triggering some of the effects... but well even then it allows you to get a couple of boons and a random skill type recharge. And it’s on a low enough cool down, that you can actually soon try again...

As I have said before, while the issues of steal are not found in steal alone, it has disproportional more benefits than there are ways to play against it.

@Jski:
Attacking the user of a siege engine and attacking the siege engine are essentially two different things. First, it is anyway more likely, when players are around, that the condition will get cleared very fast anyway. The more enemies involved, the more likely this is. Even the mortar burning can cleansed with one cleanse.

On the other hand, if you catch a siege weapon unmanned, for what reason ever, as a condi user, it will take till the end of time and beyond to kill that siege engine. This is the actual issue. And let me remind you that in this thread was only asked to either let burning effect siege weapons or that a portion of condition damage is dealt as direct damage to siege.

@briggah:
Well, you want real life consequences for those players (loosing access to a service they paid for), so you have to bear real life comparisons. Especially when the comparisons are essentially what you ask for in different words. You are dismissing comparisons for the reason of them being comparisons and not on the basis of the actual content. Seems like a purely rhetorical move here

If ANet would act, as you ask, many more people would receive bans. Fighting in invincible spots in WvW (not sure if they are still there) is one example. Even if it happens by accident (unlikely, but still possible). According to you, they should be banned, cuz they used an exploit.

Most likely no one really cares. The issues of this thread have been around since pre release and the consequences are minimal to non existent. This is why neither ANet nor many players care about this specific exploit. As a company, one has to be careful, how one handles things like bans (be it permanent or temporary), because it is possibly damaging to your game population.

But well, black and white politics have been of so much success in the past.

@Sir Vincent III:
As I said, I am not any longer advocating my initial suggestion. You needn’t come back to it again. The issue is basically that steal (especially when heavily traited) has too many advantages and too less counter play. The problem doesn’t lie in steal being a non telegraphed teleport. The telegraph idea was just there to allow more counter play.

The problem may indeed lay in the traits that modify steal. Compared to other class mechanics heavily traited steal offers too many benefits for too less counter play imho.

Yeah I am strongly in favor of allowing burning to deal dmg to siege. Maybe also let chill slow down the cool down of siege skills. But I personally would leave it at that. That bleeding or poison doesn’t dmg siege seems kinda intuitive to me.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TyPin.9860:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TyPin.9860:

Almost every other class Mechanic is in some way “telegraphed”.

I don’t see Guardian’s shadowstep (Judge’s Intervntion) being telegraphed.

Marked the important detail there for you to better see

My point is; why start with Thieves if you can start with Guardians and Elementalist?

Their shadow step deals damage without the need to trait…Thieves requires to take Mug to deal damage — not to mention, their shadowstep damage can crit while Mug cannot.

You said “almost” but you never mention which shadowstep is being telegraph if not all of them.

First, I understand the problems with my suggestion and that it would destroy many combos. So I am not arguing in favor of it now. However, just mentioning only the Thief mechanic, does it inherently mean I find other class mechanic unproblematic? No it doesn’t. It only means I focused for this thread, in this forum on the thief mechanic. The assumption, I would need to mention all issues I have, when just focusing on one issue, is ridiculous. I mentioned in a side node though that the issue was not exclusive for Thieves. However, our both arguments are different in nature too. You focus seemingly on all damaging teleports, while I focus on non telegraphed class mechanics.

Also, I have rarely issues with untraited steal. But traited steal is definitely stronger than any other teleport you find in the game. And it should, it is the class mechanic after all. Nonetheless is the relation between strengths and means of counter play in the case of traited thief steal way way in favor of strength, more than any other class mechanic, I might add. Well this unique ratio in favor of strengths is also the case when comparing steal with any other teleport. However, comparing a class mechanic to a mere utility skill might undervalue the class mechanic. And this is where I was getting at. I did not compare it to other teleports, because steal should be stronger than them, especially if you focus your build around that said class mechanic.