Guild Wars 2

Hackuuna.4085:

Curunen.8729:

Mantra of Recovery / Mender’s Purity is a noticable nerf.

The whole “heal more while below 50%” thing doesn’t make much sense for mantra as it is the kind of heal you want to keep topping yourself up with when you drop below 75% or so (assuming average health pool of ~18-20k). Mantra isn’t the sort of heal like Ether Feast where you let yourself drop low in order to make the most of the heal. It’s the more “spammable” heal where you want to keep topping yourself up and not let yourself drop too low if possible.

I strongly think the conditional under 50% normal healing and over 50% reduced healing should be reverted to a flat heal amount. Nevermind the nerf to Restorative Mantras which while it is good to be reliant on healing power, does reduce the effectiveness of heal on charge. And also nevermind the loss of extra toughness on charging mantras…

I am certainly feeling the reduced sustain in wvw.

Completely agree that the 50% requirement for the heal needs to be removed. Sustain is now gone and in it’s place is huge damage. Oddly enough Chrono is less appealing now since it has no real sustain/condi removal traits. It’s burst or die.

For WvW chrono still lets you get more healing out of restorative illusions though due to chronophantasma and by extension ether feast so chrono sustain hasn’t really been hit at all. Mantra mesmer has been absolutely gutted though for sustain but I guess we’re just supposed to burst and run now.

Rexx.1805:

They should have looked at the GMs in the Domination line since there’s nothing there for a DPS Mesmer.

My suggestion: Mental Anguish also affecting Phantasm attacks (even if PvE only). Or remove/rework Imagined Burden (that thing is Master Tier at best).

My suggestion would have been to make mental anguish a flat damage mod instead then added damage mods to the duelling line like the new GM. Reduce base damage of mind wrack if need be but right now mental anguish is only worth it if you want the boon removal of domination line. Duelling does far more than the power line for increasing damage now unless you need DE.

Offair.2563:

Poor zerglings.

Poor loot sticks.

If you put what server you’re on you might have some people offer to help you out on the server and show you the ropes.

Cyninja.2954:

So I’ve fiddled around a bit with power mesmer in open world. It is nice to not be a pure boon bot and actually show up on arc. The rotation is super simple (at least until qtfy comes out with a optimised build).

Mesmer seems to lend itsself to hybrid builds. We will have to wait and see how this works out.

28k on the golem is super easy to do. It’s almost only autoattack with occasional sword 2 and triggering MoP. So yes, it might pull some nice numbers on some bosses with low skill play.

I’m not going to be extatic yet, the numbers are okay compared to other classes old builds. Thief for example was buffed too and pulls way higher numbers. That’s just it, we are now on par with what other classes were at before. Still maybe Mirage will add onto this.

The damage is still mostly single target and if our phantasms die it breaks appart. So still situational. Might work nicely on raid bosses were people don’t have perfect rotation.

The mantra changes are nice.

To sum up, it’s nice to actually do something else in open world than twiddle my thumbs. No idea how long this novelity will last. It’s also worth mentioning that mesmer was one of the only classes which came out with almost only buffs from the rebalance just as an fyi to everyone who was constantly arguing mesmer was fine pre rebalance.

I give it 2 more days before the nerf cries become targeted at mesmer dps in PvP.

bubby.9342:

apharma.3741:

bubby.9342:

Yea with the amount of tickets(300) and ascended shards of glory , completing the full set takes 3 seasons if you start from 0 tickets so thats approx 10months or 1 year including off season times . It would be really nice if we could get league tickets by some other way atleast during off season because Wvw and Raid legendary armor is faster compared to this.

Not sure if WvW is faster unless literally going for the basic armour it costs 1500 tickets for the armour which is 9 weeks nearly, then you need 1095 tickets which is just over 6 weeks to upgrade each piece. So that’s about 45 weeks assuming you get all tickets in a week. However, no one in their right mind would upgrade just the T2 when the mist forged gets partical effects making it look borderline legendary so add another 10+ weeks for that.

https://m.imgur.com/a/EPxLr

Raids you need 12 weeks for the first set, 24 for the 2nd, that’s nearly half a year per set but here’s the kicker, you have to succeed or pay someone else to succeed for you. PvP and WvW you can lose everything, every fight, every match up, brain afk while playing and still get it. Seems like an ok trade off imo.

No its around 22 weeks for Wvw and i dint elaborate on the precursors yet thats another 1200 ascended shards of glory and almost 400g for grandmaster marks
Pvp is still the slowest way to get them which seems pretty unfair
In case of Wvw :
For full set, 6570 tickets not including precursor cost.
365 tickets max per week
= 18 weeks
Precursor cost via Ascended T2 armor = 1310 tickets
365 tickets max per week
= ~ 4 weeks
+ Legendary conversion cost of 18 weeks
~ 22 weeks*
Cost per Grandmaster is roughly 35 gold now.
20 needed for the full set = 700 gold to get full set 7 weeks faster than the below method.
Precursor cost via Exotic T2 armor to Mistforge Ascended Armor = 1310 tickets + 2620 tickets = 3930 ticktes
365 tickets max per week
= ~ 11 weeks
+ Legendary conversion cost of 18 weeks
~ 29 weeks*
Requires 1500-2000 WvW rank for the Mistforge version.

Oh didn’t see that they’d increased the tickets in WvW this patch, didn’t get to see the change as EU log in issues. 365 halves the time but you can’t just ignore the costs of the precursors when comparing as raids need 12 weeks to get a 2nd precursor set too.

You also can’t upgrade the exotic so I dunno why you’re including that. So that makes it about 4 weeks per legendary piece in WvW which is about 6 months.

For PvP there’s no real time gate on the precursor armour so you only need tickets for upgrading which is 50 tickets per piece, so that’s 2 per season. Seasons last 2 months with a 1 month break in the middle and each season gives 100 tickets. That means you take 6 months to upgrade 4 pieces and if you get all your tickets in the first week of your 3rd season you end up roughly at the same time.

However you can get as many precursor items as you want/need during that time so while yes it does indeed take longer to get the PvP legendary armour (a game mode that clearly doesn’t need it anyway) you are only time gated in upgrading to legendary. Many other modes you are time gated in getting both the legendary and precursor. Choose to take a week off from GW2 and it takes a week longer for WvW and PvE, PvP is far more flexible.

I certainly think WvW is out of line though as you can afk mostly and get all the rewards, all it takes is time but when you’re gold/platinum rank, coming first each skirmish and outnumbered its 15 pips/5mins. So you can farm those pips much easier now taking less time, even without outnumbered I can get 9-10 pips taking about 2 hours to finish a chest.

Levetty.1279:

When did we change the meaning of viable to be ‘useful in a few raid bosses, useless everywhere else?’

Well, it’s not going to be useful for a few, it’s going to be ok on half the bosses mostly. You could run it on all of wing 4 without too many issues, though other classes will be better on the invuln/teleport phases of Samarog and Deimos respectively but you bring more utility, notably CC, which can be useful especially with the last teleport. On a ranged build you’d probably do better than other classes if still doing the ranged strat on Deimos.

Wing 2 only bandit trio will be a poor choice but you make up for that in some ways by trio not being especially hard and a bit more utility to breeze through Narella. The extra invulns, CC and condition cleansing will be great for Sloth and Matthias especially when most classes struggle to break 20k on Matthias and most people sit in the 12-17k mark which is attainable by simply having phantasms on Matthias.

Wing 1 and 3 are no go because cleave and multiple sub bosses but you can at least run a power mesmer in half the raids (no stacking) and not feel like you’re a burden.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6siame/power_mes_post_patch_285k/

Link above for anyone who’s interested.

bubby.9342:

Yea with the amount of tickets(300) and ascended shards of glory , completing the full set takes 3 seasons if you start from 0 tickets so thats approx 10months or 1 year including off season times . It would be really nice if we could get league tickets by some other way atleast during off season because Wvw and Raid legendary armor is faster compared to this.

Not sure if WvW is faster unless literally going for the basic armour it costs 1500 tickets for the armour which is 9 weeks nearly, then you need 1095 tickets which is just over 6 weeks to upgrade each piece. So that’s about 45 weeks assuming you get all tickets in a week. However, no one in their right mind would upgrade just the T2 when the mist forged gets partical effects making it look borderline legendary so add another 10+ weeks for that.

https://m.imgur.com/a/EPxLr

Raids you need 12 weeks for the first set, 24 for the 2nd, that’s nearly half a year per set but here’s the kicker, you have to succeed or pay someone else to succeed for you. PvP and WvW you can lose everything, every fight, every match up, brain afk while playing and still get it. Seems like an ok trade off imo.

In my opinion mirage will be better than chrono for power mesmer so start playing core mesmer. Chances are you will take stunbreak and cleanse on dodge with the protection and super speed after mirage cloak so I’d go duelling, insp and chaos to mimic it in some ways.

You lack the boon removal of domination but you get a more consistent damage increase from duelling by getting much more fury and the crit damage increase from the new GM. You want to be sitting at about 60% crit chance so with fury you get 80%, this means you get the bonus 15% damage increase on the mirror blade and mind wrack crits which most are likely to do.

Compare this to mental anguish and it’s no contest, superiority complex is a straight up better trait especially with the fury generation of duelling. Slot arcane thievery if you need it but I’m going to be running mirror with reduced cool down and cleanse on shatter so I shouldn’t have too much issues with conditions. Obviously torch offhand is great especially with PU but in a 1v1 sword might work well especially if you switch to CI in chaos.

Levetty.1279:

Some of the trait changes are nice, particulary Skirmishing but the Phantasmal trait and Mirage shows that Anet really has no idea what the problems of Mesmer in PvE is.

Looks like we might have a 30k dps power build now for raids but with all the same problems that the condi build has, so that will be used to dimiss are claims of broken mechanics.

Mantras still look terrible.

Overall, the elite specs and patch just seems to be Anet telling me to play my Ranger more.

To be honest all that is needed is for it to not be worse than other dps roles and/or to bring something useful as well. Emergency moa for breakbar or time warp is ok and some of the utilities like feedback or null field can be useful too.

If it does alright you might be able to run it on wing 2 and most of wing 4, trio will suck and wing 3 is pretty much a no go. It should be better than the condition build as the ramp up time will be lower and power naturally is more front loaded than conditions. We’ll see but I’m certainly going to use it on our wing 4 runs till I have to snooze at Deimos.

So from just sword phantasms and using MoP every 10s I was getting about 12.5k, now this would go up if you literally just spammed MoP on bosses where melee cleave isn’t always possible like cairn and Matthias. I think power mes will be the way forward for these bosses that are pretty heavy on mechanics and I believe it will be all sword phantasms, I just can’t get the warlocks to be that big an increase on the golem. Don’t know why as there are 8 conditions and each hitting for 20k but it just doesn’t work out any better for me.

This has always been present, just that they’re usually quite small and most people don’t pay attention.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

apharma.3741:

So now unless you need boon rip there’s no point running dom it seems, EU so haven’t been able to see in game but that GM duelling trait is a beast for high crit builds.

Yup I am wondering which trait line to give up for dueling in my WvW roaming fun.

Pretty much gonna be running duelling, insp and probably chaos for the extra stealth duration and low cool down mirror heal to counter headshot. I am tempted to run illusions instead of chaos though now it’s a flat 20% on the pledge, I guess I’ll just play around a bit but I see no reason for domination line atm as the GM duelling on paper looks to be the better damage buff.

So now unless you need boon rip there’s no point running dom it seems, EU so haven’t been able to see in game but that GM duelling trait is a beast for high crit builds.

I think the cleanse on super speed will be the first casualty outside of the blatantly obvious weavers prowess. Now the obvious would be to reduce it to 1 condition on a 3/4s or 1s CD but knowing ANet they will reduce super speed durations across the board with one with air becoming 2s.

TheBravery.9615:

apharma.3741:

TheBravery.9615:

Dawdler.8521:

TheBravery.9615:

I have no problem killing squirrels outside of a zerg, it becomes a problem when they can run back and fully resurrect that dead player as if nothing happened. How can you deal with a team that outnumbers you if they are capable of undoing any damage you do to their numbers?

But thats not true at all.

You got the server points for killing and preferably stomping him, did you not?

If you dont consider that as something, what did you except to get from killing him?

Server points are half of the picture, good luck defending objectives if there’s nothing you can do when outnumbered to fight a zerg.

The problem with the current system is that it rewards a server for having larger numbers. What I’m proposing is rewarding skilled play in a situation where it’s an uphill battle, slowly attrition the enemy zerg and drive them out.

You can drive away or stall most zergs for a while if you’re inside and had warning they were coming. 2-3 prebuilt super ACs (I wish players would stop building trash normals) will make them either waste time trying to remove them or make them reassess the situation. Throw disablers on any siege made and ballista/tree/cata them till more people make it over to pick off stragglers under AC fire.

The main issue is when a massive Zerg gets to an objective and the door or siege is down before anyone had time to react especially when they massively outnumber you.

If you play WvW, you know what it’s like disabling, repairing, and using siege to slow the inevitable capture of the objective you’re defending when you’re outnumbered. When the zerg outnumbers you, they can carry more supply on their persons, and end up draining your own supply especially when they use catas on two walls.

Come to think of it, my proposal is not enough to fix large number variances- but it’s still a step in the right direction.

This is an issue when you’re outnumbered and get no back up but this is a symptom of matchmaking not mechanics per say. Disabling requires either stealth or invuln to get off most of the time, though I do agree it’s almost impossible if the zerg hides under shield bubbles or has enough catas to have a permenant bubble.

However if you have a commander willing to port over when they’re first spotted near your spawn towers/keep the commander can make it there just as the enemy zerg is building and you’ll usually win with a few ACs.

However as I say, against a T3 especially with invuln walls you can repel an enemy with a few ACs and a willing commander. If you see the enemy zerg coming from a camp you can even supply trap ahead of them reducing their sups to almost nothing. My personal favourite thing to do is put them just off the path and bait the zerg into it as most EU zergs are stupidly hungry for even 1 kill, so it gets the bulk of the enemy.

TheBravery.9615:

Dawdler.8521:

TheBravery.9615:

I have no problem killing squirrels outside of a zerg, it becomes a problem when they can run back and fully resurrect that dead player as if nothing happened. How can you deal with a team that outnumbers you if they are capable of undoing any damage you do to their numbers?

But thats not true at all.

You got the server points for killing and preferably stomping him, did you not?

If you dont consider that as something, what did you except to get from killing him?

Server points are half of the picture, good luck defending objectives if there’s nothing you can do when outnumbered to fight a zerg.

The problem with the current system is that it rewards a server for having larger numbers. What I’m proposing is rewarding skilled play in a situation where it’s an uphill battle, slowly attrition the enemy zerg and drive them out.

You can drive away or stall most zergs for a while if you’re inside and had warning they were coming. 2-3 prebuilt super ACs (I wish players would stop building trash normals) will make them either waste time trying to remove them or make them reassess the situation. Throw disablers on any siege made and ballista/tree/cata them till more people make it over to pick off stragglers under AC fire.

The main issue is when a massive Zerg gets to an objective and the door or siege is down before anyone had time to react especially when they massively outnumber you.

My opinions:

I like freshly made pizza but sadly don’t have the time to make it fresh myself anymore.
Americans are really weird.
Intra solar system exploration would be nice to do.
I think cooking using good ingredients is much healthier for people in general.
There’s too many cars on the road atm.
Public services should be just that, public run and public owned.

Sorry just read the title and got carried away.

Mesmer:
Great team support, sucks more than a red light district after pay day for solo play. Lots of fun in WvW especially for power builds even if it’s not amazing.

Ele:
Great for PvE, good for WvW and PvP though shut down by current interrupt spam daredevils. This is in my opinion one of the best characters to have if you are good at it as you do loads of AoE damage in PvE and can adapt to many circumstances especially with legendary gear to stat swap as needed.

Warrior:
I find them too straight forward and boring a lot of the time but they are a staple part of PvE for buffs and decent in WvW/PvP when played well. Core warrior is very nicely balanced for WvW with risk/reward and clear counters that many classes should aspire to be like instead of the HoT creeped mess that many were for more than a year.

Another good class to look at is engineer, like ele it’s very adaptable to a lot of situations except healer. It’s more complex in some ways for the condition builds in PvE but it’s also amazing damage if you get the rotation down.

My recommendation is play ele, you will hate it at times but work through it and you see how amazing and versatile they can be. They’re also one of the few classes with a ranged ground targeted teleport skill which is invaluable.

akaCryptic.2389:

The skill required in the cele meta was not a result of cele stats themselves. It was because defensive skills were fewer along with cc. Key skills needed to be timed well to outplay. Now builds are so much more forgiving, and passives are stronger than they should be.

That said, bringing back cele may not be the worst idea for build diversity. The 3 stats amulets give 3000 in total so 400 or 430 per stat might be reasonable (excluding concentration and expertise). This might be too strong for some PoF hybrids that have good might generation. But then again, boon hate is increasing too.

The funny thing is celestial was 560 to 7 stats while current quad stat amulets have 560 to 2 stats and 1050 to another 2 stats. In terms of stat increases celestial was only 700 points ahead of these quad stat amulets now which have a total of 3220 points.

Reducing celestial stats to 400 would make it a bit of a poor amulet and would be strictly worse than all amulets in stat points but 450 puts celestial at 3150 stat points for a very well rounded amulet.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Seasniffer.1763:

This is a very nice change but what is ArenaNet going to do about the declining bee population?

Well I have 2 bee hives and I post a blog about my bee’s every two weeks on facebook in which a lot of Arenanet follows. Also we have a good 20 bee hives on the roof of our building so while we could be doing more but we are fighting that decline!

Was checking the thread for new information but I did not bee that coming.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

apharma.3741:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

The only elite spec that provides a meaningful amount of barrier is scourge. Your examples are likely impossible unless you’re being supported by one.

… then what about supported by 25 of them, which is the most likely scenario in WvW?

then 5 targets per cast mechanics screws you over as it does with any boons that are not spammable by pretty much everyone in yer comp in large numbers…..

I believe scourge has a trait or something where they get to summon a bigger soul thingy that affects upto 10 players so can extend the barrier coverage to 10.

Theres a lot of things changing in PoF like stances and mantras are getting a shake up which is likely to extend to core abilities too. From what I hear ele gets barrier soon on earth.

well 10 targets affected per cast only push out the issue into a problem of greater player numbers in the zerg – for as long as pretty much every player in you zerg can efficiently spam barriers I just can’t see it being anyhow gamebreaking for this aspect of the game.

on the other hand the smaller scale engagements can actually see a benefit from it where the number of combatants is small enought for a such supporting scourge or whoever with barriers to be abel to keep track of the movements of enemies to the point of being able to predict the spikes – in such case it could be actually used to nullify a decent portion of enemy spike damage which on teh othe hand could actually turn the tide

but in zergs? the best I can see they could try would be attempt of elevate as much barriers as possible when going into enemy zerg or when enemy zerg is going into you – and then unless meta shifted extremely from the last point I have participied in organised zergs it would not be really a tideshifting tool at all

I dunno how it’ll play out, we will have to wait and see to be honest, could make zergs tankier or it might be unworkable because the summon gets killed too easily. It might cost too much damage or utility to run, there’s a lot of speculation to be had. It may even provide little real benefit over current comps so many won’t run it because they don’t want to regear.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

The only elite spec that provides a meaningful amount of barrier is scourge. Your examples are likely impossible unless you’re being supported by one.

… then what about supported by 25 of them, which is the most likely scenario in WvW?

then 5 targets per cast mechanics screws you over as it does with any boons that are not spammable by pretty much everyone in yer comp in large numbers…..

I believe scourge has a trait or something where they get to summon a bigger soul thingy that affects upto 10 players so can extend the barrier coverage to 10.

Theres a lot of things changing in PoF like stances and mantras are getting a shake up which is likely to extend to core abilities too. From what I hear ele gets barrier soon on earth.

OriOri.8724:

Complaining? No. But look at the attacks again. As individual attacks, they aren’t near strong enough to warrant using a dodge to gain access to it. They just aren’t. Only when using clones to launch 3 or 4 ambush attacks at once are they worth that tradeoff

That’s the thing, you shouldn’t be using your dodge to ambush but instead using ambush when you dodge. From what I gather the dodge allows you to cast while in the evade frame which is extended to a full 1s. Most classes are vulnerable while attacking (yes I know some skills do damage while evading but not all) so while you dodge they will eat the ambush unless they’re quick on the dodge to interrupt.

Having even 2 clones out and yourself using these ambush attacks is going to hurt in a condi build, that’s 6 confusion and/or torment depending on the skill. This is more than cry of frustration will ever do. Even 1 clone and yourself will put 4 confusion and/or torment if it hits which is nothing to be sniffed at.

Chorazin.4107:

Im with Helly on this, a full TB/Dire Condi reaper will make you look foolish on a Scrapper in short order. As will most heavy condi application classes.

Sure you can probably tank 2-3 power classes for a while and maybe do some damage in the interim. But if this is 2-3 heavy condi application classes as opposed to power dmg classes you will down within 10 seconds. Probably in stealth after Self Regulating Defense has triggered locking you out of your skills.

When I played in a roaming squad we dropped the scrappers in favour of other classes for a reason.

Name any other class that can fight 2-3 high condition players especially if they’re in TB? I think you can pretty much put it down to warrior (unless there’s corrupts), some mesmer builds with a lot of kiting and maybe kite-a-thon Druid. Best most classes can hope to do is CC and kill fast then back off for 30s while they get cool downs back or simply poke and leave.

I do agree a scrapper won’t beat them but if you’re even half the competent roamer you’d have us believe you wouldn’t engage multiple heavy condition players on your own. Even with support eles a full condition group, especially with corrupts is a pain to fight unless you have necro a pulling and transferring conditions all the time. As a power mesmer I tend to be wary of DH, thieves and I have to be very careful against a lot of builds atm because they either have much better sustain or can put out enough conditions that it will be a problem (read loss) if the fight lasts 30s.

Learn 2 autoproc

Mejiora.9584:

Dahir.4158:

With the vitality Weaver trait we can finally use different amulets that don’t rely on it. Viper, Berserker and all the others won’t be out of the question and this might be the first time we’ll have actual build diversity (amulet-wise) in a very long time.

Weaver still seems like it’ll be heavily reliant on Water traits though.

Yeah, the trait gives you 120 vitality if you wield a sword, and 5% of your power and condition dmg as vitality regardless of your weapon. AFAIR This amounts to around 1200 + 1500 ~ 2700 HP with the new griefing stats in PvP, so you’d end up just shy of 15k HP with no toughness. This is probably worth it for sword builds, but remember you’re giving up a trait slot for it

It’ll be good for those with condition damage and power stats but I really like the dual skills inflict weakness trait too. Weakness is just so good for defence against power and burst builds, very good for preventing dodge regent which if paired with decent chills can really make a huge difference in a protracted fight. As far as I can tell it has no ICD and when dual skills have about a 15-20s CD I can see high weakness uptime.

Helly.2597:

apharma.3741:

Helly.2597:

Tyaen.5148:

I’m biased since I’ve Engi mained since launch. Scrapper is what I currently roam with.

Power HgH build. Fairly meta with some minor tweaks. Mobility is the big weakness, and coordinated small groups using the chain root will get you every time, but for the most part it’s strong. Nothing can beat you 1v1 and only a couple of builds that can work you to a draw.

Nothing can beat power scrapper 1v1? You get torn a new one by condi reapers. The reapers don’t even need to be good really. I think that every major roaming spec that is run currently can play scrapper to at least a draw.

Only condi reapers really hurt scrapers because of all the corrupts, however even then there’s very little a reaper can do to prevent you getting away in stealth, that’s without mentioning purge gyro will keep you in the fight for a while. Scrapper is a great roamed capable of winning or drawing many fights against many builds but it truly shines when fights scale up and turn into small team fights.

If an engineer stealth gyros I just Condi bomb on that and the scrapper usually will die unless they’re just full on running at that point.
I disagree completely with the scale up comment. Scrappers do not support as well as eles or guards, don’t damage as much as reapers or warriors, don’t harass and Chase as well as thieves and Mesmer’s. They’re a bit of everything and weak against the meta specs for roaming currently. They tail off extremely hard.

Well tbh if the purge gyro has been used the scrapper should be on run or at least back off mode, part of knowing what fights to pick and not to pick.

I also fully disagree with your assumption about them not scaling up as well, they do a bit of everything but in marauder armour they’re still going to be pumping out pretty decent cleave and damage. They can get fast rez/stomps, stealth allies, cleanse them and heal them as well as reduce the damage they take while denying ranged pew pew for a while.

Sure they will never support (read heal) as well as an ele or a guard but they will do a lot more damage and provide other forms of support while not being mostly useless without other players around. Scrapper won’t do the same damage as reaper or warrior but it offers better support, stealth and see above. Scrapper will never chase as well as Mesmer or thief but then scrapper can stick in the thick of a fight much better and gives out much more support and help to allies if they need it.

That’s why I say it scales up to a small fight upto 10v10 well as it doesn’t suddenly become much harder to survive because of the AoE like mes/thief. It doesn’t rely on a team to do what it does like ele/guard support and doesn’t crumble under pressure like a reaper and less so warrior.

OriOri.8724:

@apharma – I guess we’re looking at it differently. This was billed as a DPS spec, no? Yet it pumps out primarily stacks of torment and confusion from what I have seen. Yes, the 1 scepter attack outputs 5 stacks of each, but compared to what some of these other specs are putting out that’s just downright pitiful. Holosmith’s third strike in the auto attack chain has a base damage of around 1,000 and you honestly think that a single ambush attack will keep up with specs like that? It won’t sadly. Either infinite horizon should be moved to minor, or every spec should be nerfed hard immediately.

Also, remember the tradeoff. I don’t know how abundant the mirrors are going to be yet, but without them we are using a dodge to pull off ambush attacks. So they aren’t exactly free, if there are no mirrors out, we have to actually use a dodge to pull them off, which means we have to decide between saving a dodge for a big attack or doing a bit of extra damage for 1, maybe 2, attacks.

I can’t honestly believe you’re complaining about having to make a tactical decision like that. Remember with infinite horizon your clones will automatically use the ambush skill so any that are littering around will automatically “burst” attack while you are evading an attack you want to dodge.

The GM trait choices come down to a condition damage increase for melee focused players, a condition/burst increase for those playing a clone heavy style or a quite frankly rediculously good survivability trait. All will have places I’m sure and none have to be universally amazing for every mode.

As for nerfing specs, I believe HoT elites are being toned down at the same time as PoF elites are coming out which is why there’s some more conservative skills, traits, cool downs and cast times. I’m not saying there aren’t discrepancies but that’s why we have beta weekends and balance patches.

Helly.2597:

Tyaen.5148:

I’m biased since I’ve Engi mained since launch. Scrapper is what I currently roam with.

Power HgH build. Fairly meta with some minor tweaks. Mobility is the big weakness, and coordinated small groups using the chain root will get you every time, but for the most part it’s strong. Nothing can beat you 1v1 and only a couple of builds that can work you to a draw.

Nothing can beat power scrapper 1v1? You get torn a new one by condi reapers. The reapers don’t even need to be good really. I think that every major roaming spec that is run currently can play scrapper to at least a draw.

Only condi reapers really hurt scrapers because of all the corrupts, however even then there’s very little a reaper can do to prevent you getting away in stealth, that’s without mentioning purge gyro will keep you in the fight for a while. Scrapper is a great roamed capable of winning or drawing many fights against many builds but it truly shines when fights scale up and turn into small team fights.

babazhook.6805:

apharma.3741:

babazhook.6805:

Nikkinella.8254:

I can kill them, that’s not the point. it isn’t fun to fight against someone that has to put in minimal effort to fight me. And that’s precisely what condi allows players to do in it’s current state. It allows players to punch above their weight limit and compete against people the would normally stand zero chance against and would most likely die in a millisecond when fighting against them.

When i kill some annoying condi scrub that just facetanks and never dodges, just because their cheese build allows them to play poorly and not be punished for mistakes, while i have to play perfectly to kill them, its not the least bit fun. I don’t feel accomplished by killing them, i feel frustration that poor game mechanics can carry someone that hard who I know for a fact if they weren’t playing some tanky condi build, would have died in a split second against me making the same mistakes. Its a risk vs reward issue NOT a skill issue. Are you really that ignorant that you can’t comprehend that? Or are you just trying to troll me at this point?

It is not fun for you. It is fun for me. Tonight I decided to roam with my pure power thief using JUST trickster as a cleanse. Went for hours before finally dying and I died to power. Came close a few times to some of those necro Condition builds but managed to get out of harms way and heal with just a sliver of health remaining.

Those Condition builds were dropping to 3.5K kitten k shadowshots mixxed in with heartseekers and backstabs. I really could not care less that those I faced might have had an easier to play build.

There a reason people tire of trash mobs in PVE and want to fight the Bosses that are boosted with exponential health points and skills not available to any player. They want a bit of a challenge at times. Apparently there are those that do not care for such. To each their own.

When I play Golf against my Cousin I am given a handicap to make it a bit more competitive. She does not whine about it anymore than I whine when she shoots off the ladies tee. I enjoy at least trying to beat her even with my 15 stroke handicap and she finds it a bit more competitive to try and beat me by more then 15. I play maybe 3 times a year and she plays all the time . If I break 90 I am elated. It is a GAME. This is not a livelihood.

And no, there no build that can kill another in a millisecond.

Pfft, I decided to roam on power core mes with no cleanse, only things giving issues were outnumbered fights, took on a condi mes and condi scrapper at the same time!

The condition meta is lame especially on some builds which put out lots of conditions on most attacks but the power meta for some classes is also really lame which Nikkenella and Chorizon conveniently leave out. Power scrapper (note we don’t know what stats specifically, they could be half wanderer for all we know) is one of the safest builds out there with plenty of stealth, healing, boons and hard power mitigation. It’s as much a part of the problem as condi chrono but all of them die if they don’t know what they’re doing unless they run as soon as they mess up.

The condi builds are a problem because of dire/trailblazer not the builds entirely but then I also think there’s too much stealth carrying bad players.

I really do not think DIRE and TB the problem people make them out to be. I mean after all the guy claimed that were those builds NOT in that tanky armor he could kill them in a split second.

As I illustrated with the example of thief, there more then enough POWER damage available to kill someone in Dire. After all with the thief it is not the armor saving you in any case. it is the dodges and stealth and ports. Added to that, If I take a few cleanses I can mitigate as much damage and more coming from a condition build as someone can mitigate wearing dire to mitigate damage from a power build.

There’s a world of difference between these active defences used on a marauder build to a TB build. Marauder can die in 2 bursts, 1 if you’re a really high burst build like dom power shatter. The TB can tank it and escape with about 50% health while the glassier builds will be dead or so close an auto or even non invested condition damage will end them.

Many of these builds have the same active defences and similar traiting to the power variants while also possessing the higher health. They only usually trade burst spike damage for a higher sustained damage, exception to this is gank condi scrapper which spikes and runs usually.

sephiroth.4217:

apharma.3741:

sephiroth.4217:

How Is Elementalist going to Might stack on D/D with Weaver?

Start in fire and attune to earth to get earth 1+2 and fire 4+5.
When attunement swap is up cast ring of fire, switch to water.

You now have water 1+2 and earth 4+5, use your 2 earth blasts.

As soon as you can switch to fully water and use frozen burst. If you time it all right you should get 3 blasts inside ring of fire. You might even be able to get a dodge roll in earth into it all for another blast.

Thanks for thinking for me, bit different to my own rotation but if it’s still do-able then I’m happy…

Yeah that’s the thing about the new elite, it will require much more planning and thinking forward over the next 3-6s and the possibilities that can happen during that time frame and the skills you will need.

For a quick cheeky blast you can be water/fire, use ring of fire and attune fully to water to get your blast on 3 again. As far as I can tell it will activate healing ripple again and elemental attunement so you get an extra heal and cleanse possibly.

Levetty.1279:

apharma.3741:

I dunno, you’re seeing it as something we have to use, I see it as this is a bonus attack we get for simply dodging. Simply pressing the dodge button shouldn’t launch powerful attacks on its own which is what this trait will do for condi specs with 2 clones up + self.

Not sure if you’re reading the ambush attacks right, the sceptre one can put 5 torment and confusion on a target and the staff one can put 2 onto upto 5 people, just by dodging to activate. Extending that to even 1 clone will put a lot more condition pressure out and we don’t even know what the others do.

In a 1v1 even with 1 clone out infinite horizon adds a lot more damage and attacks other players have to avoid and there only so many dodges…unless you’re a kitten devil.

Except thats all the elite spec does, it doens’t add any other new powerful attacks and the weapon skills are crap. Without this GM trait all the Elite spec gives you is a worse dodge. I would have prefered new shatters and a powerful weapon but instead we got this gimmick that we need to use our GM to even get.

It does add new attacks, the ambush attacks you get when you dodge which are strong for a condition spec and they are baseline for picking the elite spec. There’s also other traits that add increased condition damage with vigor with vigor on shatter, super speed after dodge, some of the majors give clone production and mirage mirrors after a shatter for more evade uptime.

How the ambush attacks work I’ll want to see but if they are active as soon as you dodge to gain mirage cloak you should be able to activate it while in mirage cloak. This means you’ll be essentially unable to be stopped doing these attacks if you’re quick.

babazhook.6805:

Nikkinella.8254:

I can kill them, that’s not the point. it isn’t fun to fight against someone that has to put in minimal effort to fight me. And that’s precisely what condi allows players to do in it’s current state. It allows players to punch above their weight limit and compete against people the would normally stand zero chance against and would most likely die in a millisecond when fighting against them.

When i kill some annoying condi scrub that just facetanks and never dodges, just because their cheese build allows them to play poorly and not be punished for mistakes, while i have to play perfectly to kill them, its not the least bit fun. I don’t feel accomplished by killing them, i feel frustration that poor game mechanics can carry someone that hard who I know for a fact if they weren’t playing some tanky condi build, would have died in a split second against me making the same mistakes. Its a risk vs reward issue NOT a skill issue. Are you really that ignorant that you can’t comprehend that? Or are you just trying to troll me at this point?

It is not fun for you. It is fun for me. Tonight I decided to roam with my pure power thief using JUST trickster as a cleanse. Went for hours before finally dying and I died to power. Came close a few times to some of those necro Condition builds but managed to get out of harms way and heal with just a sliver of health remaining.

Those Condition builds were dropping to 3.5K kitten k shadowshots mixxed in with heartseekers and backstabs. I really could not care less that those I faced might have had an easier to play build.

There a reason people tire of trash mobs in PVE and want to fight the Bosses that are boosted with exponential health points and skills not available to any player. They want a bit of a challenge at times. Apparently there are those that do not care for such. To each their own.

When I play Golf against my Cousin I am given a handicap to make it a bit more competitive. She does not whine about it anymore than I whine when she shoots off the ladies tee. I enjoy at least trying to beat her even with my 15 stroke handicap and she finds it a bit more competitive to try and beat me by more then 15. I play maybe 3 times a year and she plays all the time . If I break 90 I am elated. It is a GAME. This is not a livelihood.

And no, there no build that can kill another in a millisecond.

Pfft, I decided to roam on power core mes with no cleanse, only things giving issues were outnumbered fights, took on a condi mes and condi scrapper at the same time!

The condition meta is lame especially on some builds which put out lots of conditions on most attacks but the power meta for some classes is also really lame which Nikkenella and Chorizon conveniently leave out. Power scrapper (note we don’t know what stats specifically, they could be half wanderer for all we know) is one of the safest builds out there with plenty of stealth, healing, boons and hard power mitigation. It’s as much a part of the problem as condi chrono but all of them die if they don’t know what they’re doing unless they run as soon as they mess up.

The condi builds are a problem because of dire/trailblazer not the builds entirely but then I also think there’s too much stealth carrying bad players.

OriOri.8724:

apharma.3741:

OriOri.8724:

apharma.3741:

As far as I can tell sand shards has no ICD, start considering that and how many ways you can get mirage cloak (hint there’s another trait for this) and you can see some obvious synergy. The question for me is if these mirage cloaks you can pick up also make you evade attacks, if so you can have some high evade and damage uptime, slap some krait runes on and that’s 2×9s of bleed every time you evade or shatter.

4-6 bleeds will knock off half the opponents health and I’m not including the additional condition duration part which will become a free 20% duration almost. This is not a terrible trait at all.

That’s all fine and well, but you need the GM to apply mirage cloack to your clones presumably (there might be an inherent AoE application in a small radius around you, idk). And truthfully, those ambush attacks are really only good if you are throwing off 3 or 4 of them at once. So sharing mirage cloak with clones should be baseline

We don’t really know how good the attacks are and the ability to make clones do that attack sounds like an upgrade not something that should be baseline considering how strong it could be. I don’t want a repeat of HoT where things are just power crept and allowing crazy trait synergy.

Allowing these two traits in the same build would be insane, it would be the old roaming Mesmer on steroids, still might be even picking one of these traits.

We have tooltips for some of them, and they are fairly underwhelming when you can only use them 1 at a time (say, like, if your clones aren’t getting mirage cloak, so only you can perform the ambush attacks).

From what I have seen, it looks like the spec is designed around and balanced around your clones having access to mirage cloak as well, so if we have to trait just to give it to them, then its underwhelming imo. Though the mirrors might automatically grant cloak to the clones as well, which would be different.

I dunno, you’re seeing it as something we have to use, I see it as this is a bonus attack we get for simply dodging. Simply pressing the dodge button shouldn’t launch powerful attacks on its own which is what this trait will do for condi specs with 2 clones up + self.

Not sure if you’re reading the ambush attacks right, the sceptre one can put 5 torment and confusion on a target and the staff one can put 2 onto upto 5 people, just by dodging to activate. Extending that to even 1 clone will put a lot more condition pressure out and we don’t even know what the others do.

In a 1v1 even with 1 clone out infinite horizon adds a lot more damage and attacks other players have to avoid and there only so many dodges…unless you’re a kitten devil.

OriOri.8724:

apharma.3741:

As far as I can tell sand shards has no ICD, start considering that and how many ways you can get mirage cloak (hint there’s another trait for this) and you can see some obvious synergy. The question for me is if these mirage cloaks you can pick up also make you evade attacks, if so you can have some high evade and damage uptime, slap some krait runes on and that’s 2×9s of bleed every time you evade or shatter.

4-6 bleeds will knock off half the opponents health and I’m not including the additional condition duration part which will become a free 20% duration almost. This is not a terrible trait at all.

That’s all fine and well, but you need the GM to apply mirage cloack to your clones presumably (there might be an inherent AoE application in a small radius around you, idk). And truthfully, those ambush attacks are really only good if you are throwing off 3 or 4 of them at once. So sharing mirage cloak with clones should be baseline

We don’t really know how good the attacks are and the ability to make clones do that attack sounds like an upgrade not something that should be baseline considering how strong it could be. I don’t want a repeat of HoT where things are just power crept and allowing crazy trait synergy.

Allowing these two traits in the same build would be insane, it would be the old roaming Mesmer on steroids, still might be even picking one of these traits.

sephiroth.4217:

How Is Elementalist going to Might stack on D/D with Weaver?

Start in fire and attune to earth to get earth 1+2 and fire 4+5.
When attunement swap is up cast ring of fire, switch to water.

You now have water 1+2 and earth 4+5, use your 2 earth blasts.

As soon as you can switch to fully water and use frozen burst. If you time it all right you should get 3 blasts inside ring of fire. You might even be able to get a dodge roll in earth into it all for another blast.

Fay.2357:

Taltevus.3289:

Levetty.1279:

Carighan.6758:

Taltevus.3289:

Do you seriously believe that Elite Spec’s Mechanics are going to fly? Seriously ask yourselves.

Well… considering that there is another class which had this mechanic still launch and had it repeatedly buffed despite having a plethora of engage and escape options even outside of their ambush (and we don’t even get constant stealth), I’d say… yeah?

It’s a very normal thing to have?

I mean look at the skills found in the beta. They’re not that strong. At all.

What are you talking about dude, 600 damage unload! 600! You can get that up to 2400 if you build up your clones and waste a dodge! GG Pistol thief and longbow Ranger we the new pew pewers

I can see it now.
Power block->dodge-> ambush
Swap
Solarbeam -> power block -> dodge -> ambush

Stealth
Heal
swap

Storms of Chaos -> powerblock -> dodge -> ambush

Dead. lul. No shatter needed. It’s a contingency plan. a dodge left.

Can you imagine with Iduelist….I mean you can already do 30 bleed stacks. Can you kittenin imagine. LOL. The ambush would be unreal. I’m dying. Ahahaha.’

Theses dudes arguing like they’de live through ~60 bleed stacks. with ANY condi amulet. Ahahahha.
On top of burning torment poison vuln ok and the on demand stun to make sure it wont miss. sure.

You know I was cynical about this but I think the devs are just trolling. Gave me a good laugh at the thought.

Have you considered the possibility that your opponent might not just stand there and twiddle their thumbs while you happily whale on them?

Just throwing ideas out there, idk…

Well if he plays in NA….

As far as I can tell sand shards has no ICD, start considering that and how many ways you can get mirage cloak (hint there’s another trait for this) and you can see some obvious synergy. The question for me is if these mirage cloaks you can pick up also make you evade attacks, if so you can have some high evade and damage uptime, slap some krait runes on and that’s 2×9s of bleed every time you evade or shatter.

4-6 bleeds will knock off half the opponents health and I’m not including the additional condition duration part which will become a free 20% duration almost. This is not a terrible trait at all.

Satenia.9025:

Vova.2640:

Satenia.9025:

PvP rewards you for losing, simple as that. You can lose each and every game and still get the legendary armor, it’ll just take longer. Same for WvW, which is THE game-mode with the lowest skill-ceiling of them all: Hide within the zerg and auto-attack, that’s about it. And yet again, you get rewarded for losing. Personally, I couldn’t care less if the game mode has been neglected in the past or if it takes XY time spent to get the legendary armor there, neither of this is any justification for shoving these players endgame rewards up theirs for literally zero effort other than “being there”.

Don’t make me laugh.
While I can agree with you that the avg. wvw player skill is pretty low, it still takes as much as skill as 90% of all other pve activities. Same concept for both activities really. Run around and kill stuff. And it’s really saddening that Anet encourages this sort behaviour for wvw too……. but w.e.

Anyway, there are plenty of wvw players who far more skilled than others and to be honest, the skill-ceiling for wvw is far far far higher than it will ever be in pve, raids or w.e pve activity.

One thing is fighting vs an AI, like you do in raids. All you need to do is learn the skills of the boss and you’re set. Easy.
A whole different thing is to fight vs other(good) players who will actually counter your stuff and can actively change strategy during fights.

Don’t talk down on wvw players until you actually try to see what skill in wvw means.

Well, I’ve played WvW back when there were still tournaments, maybe you’ve heard of them. I actively play sPvP. I actively play raids. As such, I consider myself qualified enough to comment.

Just to be clear about this, I’m not suggesting that there cannot be good players in WvW (or anywhere else for that matter), I’m saying that with the current reward tracks and all, it’s not required. You are literally rewarded for failure. Let’s not mention the ridiculous “outnumbered” on top of that.

PvE/raids requires nothing short of success. With the weekly lockouts per boss, you cannot simply grind it. You don’t get rewarded simply for “being there”. You don’t get rewarded based on “time spent”.

Does the WvW community really aim to be playing that one game mode where you get everything (including legendaries) shoved up your backside for simple time-investment? This is now literally going to be that one game mode where everyone can come leech for free. In the end, it’s the “skilled players” and their efforts you were talking about who get devalued together with the legendary items. Enjoy!

I do agree with your sentiments however there’s just no way to reward the individuals that work overtime to harass the enemy server at times pulling and getting blobs to chase 10 of them around because they’re actually a massive threat. That’s the real issue and tying rewards to achievements or 1st place encourages really bad behaviour like ignoring playing the game in favour of grabbing achievements or server stacking.

When my guild is running 5-6 of us we are more of a threat than 20+ guilds as we will attack T3 towers and keeps from obscure locations after sneaking there. If we get a good amount of damage done we will keep it drained of sups and get walls low for a bigger group while we go and take a T3 tower. There’s no way to reward that kind of gameplay, even tying rewards to flipping T3 we get a lot of mismatched coverage where one server will paper most things and the others hunker down in the keep to hold the WP.

I don’t suppose there’s any more info on the gifts required?

At the moment making the gifts for warbringer is not bad for the 1 item but extremely expensive if you roll it out for 6+ pieces of armour.

1000 badges
500 proofs of heroics
750 memories of battle
350 skirmish tickets
4 gifts of battle
Vision crystals and a legendary spike that are hardly worth anything.

That’s without mentioning the gift of fortune and unless you change gifts of craftsmanship so you can reuse the gift of prosperity it works out pretty expensive against raid armour. A lot of players will be put off by this and if you keep the gaining of gifts of craftsmanship as it currently is it will put off a lot of players too.

Seiyaryu.9382:

So I had a thought, would this new element swapping still count for traits like “sunspot” or “healing ripple”, I mean if i was water/fire and swapped to water/water would I get another burst of “healing ripple”?

You are attuned for traits sake by the element on your 1 and 2 skills. If you look at the previews when they’re in water/fire they have the water attunement buff.

Yes if you go into water and go fully into water you get 2x healing ripple as far as I can tell, same for a lot of the other minors. Part of me hopes the no ICD on a lot of these traits was taken into consideration.

Zintrothen.1056:

I really hope there’s a way to quickly and easily access skills 1-2 and 4-5 of any attunement while being attuned to another one. For example, I want to be able to get earth 4-5 with water 1-2 and then, let’s say, reverse that with ease and of course with a CD. I don’t want to have to cycle through my attunements in a specific way to achieve this result. That would add too much restriction to the spec’s playstyle.

You just press earth and it will flip them.

So you were in earth and went to water giving you 1+2 in water and 4+5 in earth, pressing earth will flip it making 1+2 earth and putting water onto 4+5. If you want to flip it again go to water and it will return you to water 1+2 and earth 4+5.

Also from what I saw the elite reduces the recharge on attunement swap while giving you huge bonuses in them. Wiki (yes it’s updated with what little we know) says it makes the attunement recharge 2s, that’s very short.

Junkpile.7439:

Vanilla scepter/dagger is good solo roamer. Just need to much more skilled than enemies, but in WvW it shouldn’t be hard.

I agree, zerk staff is also amazing vs potatoes.

Sigmoid.7082:

OriOri.8724:

@Sigmoid – Like apharma said, its way overtuned. This was a problem with HoT where skills were doing too many things at once, and now its just worse in PoF so far. It shouldn’t be boon corrupting or damaging enemies. It should only be porting allies, and the barrier it gives them should be much lower as well.

That would actually allow them to increase the range of it as well. This is just kitten design.

Maybe they actually want the range of it to be short and havig a range that’s roughly 10x shorter is what allows them to design it to have other features that fit the design of the spec. It’s not supposed to be a carbon copy of the ability but on another class. Looking at the skill in a vacuum is also not a good idea.

The range is not 10x less it’s 4-5x less as portal is 5000 range (6000 in PvP because /shrug) so I don’t think you can justify how much it does, barrier, damage, corruption and shorter cool down from what we’ve seen. However I do agree we need to actually play it so we know how it works before screaming fowl.

It does an aweful lot for a single skill depending on how it was traited. If the corrupt and cool down reduction are from a trait then that would be fine, it needs investment but if this is mostly baseline it does 3 things all at the same time which is why everyone hated HoT.

Anyway this is definitely one of the skills I’ll be playing with to see the limitations of it and just how it works, same with deadeye and just how stupid this will be with SA sniping.

Zintrothen.1056:

Ithilwen.1529:

Azukas.1426:

Ithilwen.1529:

I predict that there will be loud calls for Mesmer nerfs within hours of release. We’re likely to see some of the same kind of harsh dialing down that Chrono got.

That’s not because the spec will be OP. It’s because it might be deceptive enough to fool some players.

Some months down the road, any new mechanic Mirage introduces may be shared with 1 or more other classes.

I’m actually pretty depressed about this even though I’m over the moon about returning to Elona.

Stacking that much condi pressure with just dodges is broken

And so, it begins.

Trust me, condi Mirage will be one of the most broken specs come release. That is, unless we can beg hard enough for anet to nerf them. Everyone will be running the stun break on dodge because who the kitten wouldn’t take that? Like seriously, who thought that was a good idea? It’s bad enough we have thieves who can break all movement impairing conditions on dodge, but now mesmers will be able to break stuns and remove a condi. At least Mirages don’t get a third dodge bar and a few skills that refresh your endurance. That’s the only thing so far that is keeping that trait in check. Maybe an internal CD will also help, but I don’t like internal CDs, so I won’t be happy until the whole trait is reworked.

I think some of the mirage traits as you say add way too much survivability to it however one thing I’d like to point out at the current point of writing is that it’s much more dependant on clones.

There’s a world of difference between phantasms/phantasm spam combined with shattering to clone spam and clone retention. Most clones have about 5k health which means team fights will be a complete no go for mirage. Additionally most power builds will cleave through them in 1-2 attacks without much effort, all the footage we’ve seen so far has been ideal circumstances (3 clones on a golem) where they aren’t being actively fought.

I have some concerns about the traits and how much survivability it’s packing into the trait line however I’m also acutely aware that clones die so easily that AoE and cleave could potentially render the spec completely neutralised.

Now is also a good time to point out to many in this thread that there seems to be much more cast times on skills. Much of the skills I saw from guardians had good support it seems but come with a 3/4s+ cast time increasing the amount of time to react and interrupt. A lot of skills that I’ve seen also have pretty decent cool downs, I don’t remember seeing anything that was a big effect on a 4-6s cool down. I really hope this is a trend seen throughout the new expansion where there’s more costs to big effects unlike in HoT where many strong skills not only had low cast times but also low cool downs.

Sigmoid.7082:

apharma.3741:

Sigmoid.7082:

OriOri.8724:

https://i.redd.it/uwg4kdtj7cdz.jpg

Based on that image, Scourge’s portal will last for 20 seconds as opposed to our 10 seconds, will give allies that use it a HUGE barrier of around 1,300, as well as convert boons on any enemies that are near it when its placed, as well as it actually dealing damage.

This is kitten. This isn’t sharing portal with another class, this is flat out giving portal 2.0 to another class and not giving mesmer anything in return for it. I mean hell, our own portal isn’t even updated to match this. Not to mention a 28 kittening second CD on this, instead of the 72 seconds on portal for mesmers.

It would be fine if other classes were given portal. Its kitten that they are given something that is way better than portal is. Especially for a PvP environment this is kitten.

What the skill actually does is it’s a ground targeted teleport with a short range that creates a portal between the two points that you and your allies can move through to gain barrier and reposition. It’s also 28s with the trait..it’s 35s without.

You can’t cast and wait a minute before dropping it somewhere useful. You can’t move huge distances with it. Presumably you can’t skip certain terrain with it since it’s a teleport/shadow step. It also has a 0.75s cast time so can be interrupted.

It won’t be anywhere near as versitile or strong as portal. Simmer down.

I hope it’s not limited to shadowstep/teleport rules as that’s one of the main and only advantages of portals. Still it does feel very much overburdened with goodies for what it is, boon corruption, barrier for allies, escape for allies or a jump in to attack/burst down then leave.

I will definitely wait to see how it plays out but it could stand to lose the boon corruption and/or damage and stay a very useful utility skill bringing an alternative to portal and map control.

Still I’m really excited to see a portal like mechanic on another class, necro no less which has needed some support for a while now.

Watching peachys video the range is small and it vanishes if you move to far away from the portals location. It won’t really be a huge alternative.

It can also be seen that’s it’s ground targeted. Pretty much every ground targeted teleport in the game requires a valid path so I don’t see why it won’t have the same limitation.

It’s closer to lightning flash/infaltraitors strike / judges intervention type skills than anything else.

Yes that’s what has me worried as that will severely limit its usefulness especially as a mini portal. We will have to wait and see how it is when we get to play the beta.

Jski.6180:

So play core ele? The point of the elite spec is to give up something for something new. Tempest did not realty have this but weaver seems to have this to a point.

My thoughts exactly.

@waisenpai, there’s a trait for stab on stance so you will be less vulnerable to CC (not a stun break but we can’t have everything) and I’m thinking with modest boon duration you can get that stab to be 6s+ in duration. The only issue for me is that barrier doesn’t seem like it will reduce damage enough to simply rely on the heal skill and some skills like cleansing wave and dodge in water. I’ll wait and see how the new barrier mechanic works and stance charges but I have a feeling we’re a long way from dropping water trait line without some changes to the heal stance.

I’ve been looking at the healing stance and as far as I can see unless it scales at a 1:2 ratio with healing power it’s almost strictly worse than every ele heal currently.

Sigmoid.7082:

OriOri.8724:

https://i.redd.it/uwg4kdtj7cdz.jpg

Based on that image, Scourge’s portal will last for 20 seconds as opposed to our 10 seconds, will give allies that use it a HUGE barrier of around 1,300, as well as convert boons on any enemies that are near it when its placed, as well as it actually dealing damage.

This is kitten. This isn’t sharing portal with another class, this is flat out giving portal 2.0 to another class and not giving mesmer anything in return for it. I mean hell, our own portal isn’t even updated to match this. Not to mention a 28 kittening second CD on this, instead of the 72 seconds on portal for mesmers.

It would be fine if other classes were given portal. Its kitten that they are given something that is way better than portal is. Especially for a PvP environment this is kitten.

What the skill actually does is it’s a ground targeted teleport with a short range that creates a portal between the two points that you and your allies can move through to gain barrier and reposition. It’s also 28s with the trait..it’s 35s without.

You can’t cast and wait a minute before dropping it somewhere useful. You can’t move huge distances with it. Presumably you can’t skip certain terrain with it since it’s a teleport/shadow step. It also has a 0.75s cast time so can be interrupted.

It won’t be anywhere near as versitile or strong as portal. Simmer down.

I hope it’s not limited to shadowstep/teleport rules as that’s one of the main and only advantages of portals. Still it does feel very much overburdened with goodies for what it is, boon corruption, barrier for allies, escape for allies or a jump in to attack/burst down then leave.

I will definitely wait to see how it plays out but it could stand to lose the boon corruption and/or damage and stay a very useful utility skill bringing an alternative to portal and map control.

Still I’m really excited to see a portal like mechanic on another class, necro no less which has needed some support for a while now.

Looking at the firebrand mantras they also have a really long recharge, the heal mantra is 30s CD! The heals from it also aren’t that good either especially compared to mantra of recovery, we’ll see how it is in the beta but if it doesn’t gain charges or the CD recharges while it’s channeled then it’s going to be a worse heal than anything else guards have. Not by a little but by a mile and I am even counting racial heals and that weird meditation heal.

Good, if more classes get portal maybe Mesmer can be properly balanced without having to be balanced around the whole portal/moa thing. Maybe when Mesmer isn’t used because a better option with portal exists ANet might actually do something about the core class.