Guild Wars 2

Yeah it’s in ready up 35 on the gw2 YouTube channel, use the menu to start at Mesmer section and it goes over mimic changes there.

I do feel the skill is very situational and while double portal is nice I’m not really feeling it. If mimic set itself to the same cool down of the utility used (in other words that it mimics) that would be really nice. So portal would set mimic to a 72s CD but using it on something like blink would make it a 30s CD.

Kinda agree with the devs when they said they don’t really want too much retaliation on mesmers as they don’t think getting hit is something mesmers should want to do. I mean even thematically mesmers should be deceiving foes into hitting clones.

There are going to be some absolutely fantastic tanky and supportive builds possible now with inspiration. You can then choose to do moderate damage with phantasms or better yet make use of dire/rabid and choose ones of many ways to apply condition pressure.

I just wonder when they’re going to nerf fury, then move on to protection, then back on to the next highest combat boon.

I do hope they do a pass over at some point afterwards to see if classes are really suffering from this or not. I know I’m a bit wary of this on my ele as permanent vigor went a long way to having that dodge up when you needed it as opposed to becoming wallpaper paste.

Lionguard torch, because it looks like a sceptre ;-)

Windwalker.7421:

The old statement that your damage primarily comes from your Phantasms is simply wrong and outdated. The most effective way to play now will be to keep your Phantasms for ~2 attacks max, then shatter them for a big spike, and then resummon. This will be brutally effective…but will really no longer be a Phantasm build in the traditional sense.

We’re all going to be shattering, just like all Ele’s use Attunements, Guardians Virtues, and Warriors Bursting.

Perhaps in a PvP sense this is true, things will certainly be different in PvE where you’ll need to keep an eye on cool downs and shatter when you can resummon, as you’ll likely (in power builds) be taking compounding power over the phantasm recharge trait on shatter.

I think it’s more accurate to call phantasms the sustained damage. There are certainly more incentives to shatter now in all builds even phantasms, which is good and the number of phantasm recharge or resummoning that can be done is great.

My only concern is that people will see mesmers who were previously fighting with one hand tied behind their backs fighting with 2 hands and crying OP. Then the nerf hammer descends.

I have a nice shield which I’d love to use instead of the focus but sadly I don’t often.

However shield has its uses, shield of absorption is great in certain places, thinking of you fire shaman. The cool down reduction as base is a nice thing. The trait, sadly lacks a little something over picking communal defence and focus.

Perhaps if the shield trait made shield skills to apply 3-4s of resistance to allies you’d have your party defensive offhand. 4 makes you take less damage from direct and prevents condition attacks, 5 blocks projectiles and helps with conditions.

It’s also not the same or encroaching on stalwart defender so it’s something different for those who want the extra condi protection.

You cannot salvage runes from ascended, so non for me. I already have an lee with full ascended with strength runes, I will make no more ascended armour.

If it drops and its zerk, sure. If it’s anything else…no, perplexity and hoelbrak are already silly expensive.

What’s a Mesmer?

Ok before anyone thinks too much, I mean, except the creative part, what defines what a Mesmer is? What they excel at and the style of play. Are they booners? Do they brain afk most stuff? Are they gods of making people more frustrated than a 16 year old catholic boy who lives opposite a strip club?

P.S. Let me know if you want the post deleting so you can reserve 6 or so for builds.

I think buffing the super speed to 3s and keeping the resistance at 3s would be alright. I can see a 2 glamour build making use of this in WvW to really push through to a back line. Add in distortion on signet use and sharing and 2 mesmers can get melee right to the backline in WvW unscathed.

I hope they normalise null field and feedback to 30s cooldowns, 32s makes me nervous because I like how round 30 is. Veil becoming 60s would certainly be nice, maybe even a tad lower like 50s. I know it’s strong for WvW and the new PU trait makes it last longer but I would rather use portal and personal stealth in nearly all other circumstances than veil with an identical cool down to portal.

I also hope portal will get a range indicator, seriously, we need it as much as engi’s needed to get rid of them hobo sacks.

It’s 4% damage boost when you use the mantra, so power cleanse on mantra of resolve etc.

Easiest way to get that buff is to use mantra of pain and cast it 3 times before recharging 5s later in PvE. In PvP you’ll be looking at choosing it primarily for the extra charge and to possibly use the heal mantra with inspiration as said above in conjunction with possibly 1 other mantra.

It’s probably worth mentioning that the old empowering mantras buff was not that big a deal in DPS increase. From frifoxy’s light calculator it usually only made 500 DPS difference and that could be made up by taking compounding power, phantasmal strength or phantasmal haste (assuming you can keep them up) and freeing up utility slots.

However where it mattered the most was reflects as a 8-12% increase in damage reflected made a big difference. Now you can get it to 20% with MoP and another, possibly concentration or simply stay at about 12% with just using MoP every 8s (-cast time) for an ok boost with minimal trading off in utilities.

Telekinesis.8312:

with the changes to defiance, interrupts, dazes and stuns work on bosses in HOT, so you get the bonuses out of them after the defiance change goes live

From what others said about the new system (break bars) that’s a whopping great big nope train crashing through your hopes and dreams. With it also not limited to bosses any more either, there will be elites and vets with it too.

From the ambiguous and conflicting accounts, in order to proc your interrupt trait you need to use your hard CC when the enemy has made it’s break bar susceptible and to remove the last part of it while it’s also doing a skill or action.

Needless to say I would rather try and escort Serene in Dry Top with a zerg of bearbows than try and proc interrupt traits on bosses if it isn’t changed.

I had the same thing for the DPS variant but you can choose to use mantra of pain to get more damage and get 3 stacks of the mantra buff for trash. This gives you 2 utility slots for various things, I know not absolute max dps but I don’t think it’s worth trying to get the extra 8% on Mesmer damage for trash.

For bosses same as yours but if mantra of resolve or concentration not needed switch to pain. If neither needed and the group isn’t particularly great can always keep a 3 stack harmonious mantra buff with pain and use whatever is needed to get them through, defender if need be.

I really like the flexibility we get now as we get a lot more damage and can keep a moderate (improvement on old) mantra buff with just one mantra and refreshing when needed. Even though phantasms die so easily on bosses this may be enough to make mesmers dps not trash level.

Dastion.3106:

I think the only real annoying part is that our primary on demand Swiftness skill, temporal curtain, doesn’t play well with other sources of swiftness.

As far as I can figure out the reason it doesn’t stack is so people can’t just run through the curtain many times and get something like 2 minutes of swiftness.

I know, it sucks but I can see why it works how it works and that changing it is perhaps way more effort than it’s worth.

Hopefully it will be a PvP amulet nerf only. Celestial is already a poor choice in PvE and not really amazing in WvW either.

From what I can tell the condition change is needing about 700 condition damage to be better than current builds with no condition damage. Full celestial is 524 and would need 6 stacks of might or some kind of condition sigil to start making grounds there.

A 10% shave off celestial will just make it another stat few to anyone runs…you know just like how only 3 classes commonly run it at a high competition level. You know unless I missed the celestial thieves, guards, mesmers, rangers and necros.

Well if you’re talking about 8 (soon to be 9) classes and speed clears, well someone has to be first and someone has to be last. Generally there will be a 1-5 best classes and the other 7-3 (8-4 soon) will not be needed for the absolute fastest time possible.

Complaining about that is an insult to your own intelligence and that of everyone here.

What you should be looking at is the relative DPS difference between the classes and the utility they bring vs cost of the utility.

Generally I’m just going to wait and see how it plays out and for those that have a deeper knowledge of the games damage formulae and power coefficients to work out the DPS rankings.

Also bow down before your hammer guard overlords, carrying bad pugs with perma protection, healing and infinite light fields for that sweet retaliation my ele hates blasting. Good thing PS warrs are getting boosted to the point you’d have to be brain dead to not run it.

Erasmus.1624:

So PvE absolutely requires instant and passive abilities? How terribly droll. Imagine, if you will, a game in which PvE and PvP were both relatively in tune with each other. Imagine—now say with me here—that instead of relying on braindead health sponges, PvE encounters derived threat levels from multiple mobs which attacked together and individually used variations of actual player abilities? What if PvE was just PvE-lite with the potential for new regular mob types to be made simply by just shuffling in new combinations of already existing player skills and then pasting the new move sets to desired new or already existing models? If only such a thing ever existed.

2 much brian neded 4 dis i pres 1 buton n pwn stuf!!1111

Don’t forget you can pick PS and executioner now along with SA full line AND all those tasty steal buffing traits in trickery.

I’m just glad the double bundle trait shares position with executioner.

Mattmatt.4962:

So according to you, the best buff ele received were a deserved nerf to the thief and a stat enhancement for a certain stuff (that everyone can enjoy). Definitely “ele” buff Kappa
If you buff/nerf ele by in fact not touching ele, that’s maybe the proof that ele is badly designed

Or that balance is about a classes interactions with traits, utilities, weapon skills and the way other classes affect such choices either positively or negatively.

Right now I can see even though necros got some really short ends of a lot of sticks they got a lot of condi transfer and boon corruption, could certainly be a headache to high boon classes like guardians, mesmers and that other light armour class I can’t quite remember.

Yep it should. Enjoy.

Dastion.3106:

With Harmonious Mantras + Mender’s Purity + Mantra of Recovery you could easily stack the harmonious mantras buff. If I’m not mistaken then that’s 2 stacks per heal.

Yes but then you have to give up domination (empowered illusions, fragility, blurred inscriptions) or illusions (compounding power, illusionists celerity, phantasmal haste) which arguably isn’t worth that 8% increase over using mantra of pain to keep up a 12% buff.

For PvE ofc, PvP will be very different.

Must say, I’m impressed, finally mesmers might see more play in dungeons other than portal h4x.

Fencer’s finesse is great, harmonious mantra is…meh but it’s a nice boost and better than the old old empowering mantras as I can keep a 12% damage boost up with a little effort and mantra of pain but go full on 20% for lupi with 2 mantras.

Looking forward to frifox’s analysis, from what I can see even with only 2 phantasms up at all times you’re doing close to guardian dps and can provide similar amounts of utility.

Tei.1704:

It’s funny that they remove it right when they made it useful. We could have had permanent super soothing mist, lingering +25 movement speed and/or 150 power. Lingering elements would be better than 10% boon duration actually.

Agreed. Also forgetting 5s of cannot be crit if you picked up the trait in earth too. Would make for a very bunker build with lingering elements, in fact it would make it possibly better than EA!

Generally I think the traits are pretty good, coulda done with more love for the glyphs, signets maybe a little love too. Will have to see how it all merges together, that 3 full trait lines is gonna be very strong for all.

DE is used for on demand clone production for 3 clone shatters. Unless the traits for gaining clones and phantasms back when shattering makes up for this then DE will still feel mandatory and you will still feel you need it for shatter builds.

Other builds like interrupt and phantasm builds can probably do with out DE. We’ll have to see what the new trait lines look like tonight (or afternoon for those in NA) and when it all rolls out.

I got most of the way through the thread till the mud slinging began.

I do think there’s maybe a few too many traits for steals, specifically on the act of stealing. I have no problem with each separately, they’re nice but all of them together is a lot on a fairly low cool down.

Perhaps moving one or two traits onto the use of a bundle item not be a bad idea. Like stealth after using a bundle instead of when stealing.

I think the underlying problems are more that traits interacting with other utilities and skills are lacking either due to nerfs or just needing a bit more improvement.

We’ll see later on today and when the patch hits. Going to be an interesting time for the next few days.

P.S. Initiative cost for steal is a bad idea, means many combos would not be possible without going into trickery which only compounds the problem.

Well, I think in this case Sadrien you should learn to solo as the other players are bad and are more of a liability than a help.

Also you can’t blind bosses (ok, 10% chance blind works but let’s not rely on that), personally I find renewing stamina in arcane just too good to give up with a bad group. Also D/F can stack a reasonable amount of might, has 2 projectile mitigate abilities, 1 invuln and if you pair it up with arcane shield you can carry bad groups quite well.

For bosses I don’t recommend going down as it kills you very fast if focused, so wouldn’t take lava tomb. For trash, LH, sandstorm, signet of air active, unsteady ground to just keep yourselves safe while you nuke is a much better approach. Arcane shield is a life saver, got me through the first 3 months of zerk ele, still does sometimes.

Yes, I have over 2k hours on ele, it’s my main and I do 50 on it. The trait is bad. You should be using blinds (sandstorm) on enemies and with 2 eles it’s easy to maintain. Even better if you have a thief but a guard has lots of blinds too.

Just a shame virtue of justice isn’t renewed on every kill.

Blinds > downed traits.

In before someone mentions gear, full zerk, using staff or D/F depending on the situation.

Sadrien.3470:

This is assuming the ele is not oneshot because he miss times a dodge and is not running the lava tomb trait ( in which case you can get higher damage when downed by 2x lavafont + 33% damage). It very much depends on the encounter, team, and eles skill lvl.

Eww lava tomb. That trait causes loads of problems, if you’re bad enough to need it, you’re the type that will need stealth rezzing….oh wait you’re not stealthed because of the bloomin trait doing damage.

I think we should perhaps wait and see what happens in the patch before we start asking Anet for a nerf to something very few people will be running. For all we know confusion on crit isn’t a thing anymore. I’d also wait until I see frifox’s maths as well as guangs.

Crafting I wouldn’t worry about for anything unless you’re making ascended like mentioned above.

I’d also say go for the weaponsmithing, artificing and huntsman first then go for something like tailoring. Ascended armour is only really worth it for lvl 50 fractals and even then not needed and you can’t retrieve runes from it.

I would always recommend crafting weapons first and making sure you have ascended trinkets, they make a big difference.

If all you want is exotics, well you don’t need to craft anything, just buy from the TP or with dungeon tokens.

I’m just waiting for the explanation to this.

2000 cdmg / 20 = +100 damage per tick, add 42.5 base = 142.5 per tick

Are you balancing the equation or finding the value of something because 2000/20 = 100 + 42.5 is just flat out wrong.

Yeah I know I’m being pedantic but seriously, learn to write maths.

Edit: Should be

Condition damage from stats = 2000/20 = 100 damage per tick.

Base condition damage is 42.5.

Damage per tick = 100 + 42.5 = 142.5.

Even that isn’t 100% right as it should state formula but it at least makes sense and can be followed.

I had a reply that disappeared into the mists because apparently Anet servers were inaccessible -.-

What this change does is change how much the low and high end of confusion differs by. At 1200 condition damage you’re going to get a guaranteed amount, whatever the target does. It also means that at low to moderate (1-5 stacks) it doesn’t completely shut you out of doing anything but running or cleansing (so long as you have one and it removes the confusion instead of the other 4 you probably have on you).

This would then allow for perplexity runes to bein PvP and possibly for confusion to become more commonly used. At the moment there’s only engineers and mesmers that I often see using confusion…oh and those P/D annoying thieves.

Looking at revenant I have some doubts about it, that ventari legend looks ok on paper but not a fan of the support. Also they didn’t show how it affects the different weapons like hammer if in Ventari mode.

Meh, staff ele still wrecks zergs if you have 2 good ones working together, more is just gravy. Would like to see a burst spec get a bit more love, RtL on a shorter cool down would really help that with a fresh air build, more gtfo is needed.

Anyone else play WvW and had to deal with perplexity mesmers keeping up 3-11 confusion on you a lot of the time? All I can say is it’s not fun, especially with all the torment added in too.

Feels like you can’t fight at all most of the time as if you move you take loads of damage, if you try to defend you need to hope you have enough cleanses to get most of it. More often than not running is the best option, unless thief where you can avoid a lot of it by stealth.

As others have said, may be balanced in PvP but PvE it’s pretty bad and in WvW some builds that stack a lot of confusion are just not fun for the recipient. Especially when you add perplexity and the trait for longer confusion.

Xaylin.1860:

Looking forward to it especially when considering that we can now stack Confusion on crits.

Yeah enjoy it for the 24 hours it’s live for and then is massively nerfed into the land of so bad not even a necro goes there.

I don’t think it would be half as awesome as you think. You’d usually be getting pot luck as to what you blast and it’s not exactly something you’d be doing in dungeons.

Blasting is awesome and all but you wouldn’t want to use your shatters for it a lot of the time and I feel they could improve shatters in other ways which would be far more beneficial.

Mattmatt.4962:

They said they wanted to nerf FGS mobility niche, seems they managed. GG Anet, now we have 3elite with not a single use

At least it looks nice still, right?

Also who doesn’t like turning into a giant tornado and floating around being mostly less effective than if you weren’t transformed.

Fay.2357:

Xaylin.1860:

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

Yep, with luck all of the changes are going to result in a drastic nerf to the viability of celestial gear.

Fingers crossed!

You could still go Carrion, of course. But that would mean sacrificing crit chance – which some classes won’t like/can’t afford – and losing some survivability. Should be a fair trade off.

Carrion doesn’t have healing power, crit chance, crit power, toughness, etc etc. Celestial has too much of everything, and so it’s a problem.

In PvP. In PvE it’s junk and only really worthwhile in small scale WvW on some classes…maybe.

I think they really need to do something interesting with celestial, with the number of changes to might and now this I can see celestial getting thrown to the junk pile across all game modes.

You know, like the other half a dozen stat combos.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Fay.2357:

Daniel Handler.4816:

So that is again not a damage increase with no strings attached.

Yes it is, the build that I stated is the build that 99% of PvE warriors will be running, because it’s simply the best. It requires nothing other than they press weapon swap and autoattack to maintain the damage boost.

Daniel Handler.4816:

You would be lucky to find a thief in pvp that lets you hit him 10 times.

What? When did PvP come into this?

Daniel Handler.4816:

The warriors trait requires the addition of other traits to work. You can’t start combat with this damage buff, while a a Mesmer can easily precast mantras.

Or they could hit healing surge and then F1. Not that hard to do.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Again the mantra trait isn’t perfect, but this is a bad comparison. I would like them to clear up the tooltip on it though.

No, it’s a perfect comparison. The mantra trait requires the mesmer to bend over backwards to maintain some sort of (as of yet imprecisely worded) damage buff. The meta warrior build requires nothing more than autoattacking, weapon swapping, and pressing f1.

Mesmers get + 15% (30% increased phantasm damage) +10% +9% + 4%-20% Max 54% Min 38% With 0% of dps relying on your enemy at all.
Warriors get + 10% +20% + 1%-12% +3%-36%. Max 78% Min 33% With almost 50% of dps increase relying on your target having boons on them.

On creatures without boons on them we are doing more damage than warriors.
There are always strings attached..

You missed out the 10% while endurance is not full or if you’re running empowered and thus a PS warrior you’re picking up empower allies for +150 power passively to you and team.

With just arms and (going to show how nooby I am) the top line you can have a 40% damage boost up most of the time. 20% from using burst skills, 10% while endurance isn’t full and 10% to bleeding foes.

You can then choose tactics or discipline.

Tactics has empowered for 1% more damage per boon, empower allies for a flat 150 power boost and phalanx strength which makes might stacking so passive people will forget what blasts on fire fields do.

Discipline has mostly adrenaline builders to be honest, burst mastery allows for a 7% more damage burst, to swap weapons very fast and to use burst skills more often. Destruction of the empowered is hard to gauge as we don’t know if new enemies will have boons which would change things up a lot for many classes.

Arms has a decent amount of adrenaline builders in the traits you’d take because there’s nothing better and allows for you to cause vulnerability on crits.

So warriors can get 10%10%20%+1-12% very easily with vuln stacking and 150 more power as well as keeping the whole party at 25 might.

Mesmers get (totals) 15% (phantasms at 30% as Phant Str is base) 4.5%5%+1-20%. However they do cause vuln, phantasmal haste is a dps boost and it’s hard to factor in mental torment too if used at the end.

That’s without mentioning all the caveats like needing close to 100% crit chance, needing to spam mantras, need to keep 3 phantasms alive in an AoE heavy environment. If the mantra trait was a little (or a lot) easier to maintain 20% ferocity then it would make mesmers a lot more competitive in PvE, even if you only keep 2 phantasms up most of the time.

I think it’s a good change. Against some classes that are brain dead boring, lose conditions very easily and have auto heals or a condition remove and heal confusion will do very little. Conversely against classes who have high skill usage because that’s how they’re balanced it was very punishing.

Hopefully this will see it levelled out a bit. I feel it should punish you for running around auto attacking like a mad man. However it shouldn’t lock you out of playing or defending yourself if you have 5 stacks or more like it sometimes can do.

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

My response to this thread is below, not my words though but I feel they are the expert.

Ithilwen.1529:

This shows basic laziness and a very low level of respect…

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

For solo GS camping builds, sure. But 3 points in discipline has been a staple for warrior builds for a long time. 33% chance on crit for vulnerability vs 14 stack spike… and just the utility of having a short CD on weapon swap. I’m sure warriors will run both depending on group comps or enemies that require more dodging/blocks. Either way, adrenaline is still stupid easy for them to maintain.

No, that was for a might stacking PS build for teams. For a solo selfish build you can drop phalanx strength and go into discipline and oh look a few more damage modifiers and adrenaline builders as Pyro said above.

It’s also worth reminding, before people were limited by how many traits they could pick up, soon it’s 3 entire lines which now allows for some support builds to do more damage.

TooBz.3065:

apharma.3741:

Check this out http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet/

It compares the damage increase going from zerker exotic to zerker ascended.

Spoilers: Armour is only a 1.8% increase.

Those calculations are accurate, but really only completely applicable in the dungeon environment. Which, if all you care about is PVE provides a perfectly valid basis for comparison.

For example, the spreadsheet assumes that you have 25 stacks of might and permanent fury. Both of which diminish the impact of ascended stat increases. It also assumes you trait into the power and precision lines, which also decrease the damage differential between exotic and ascended gear.

The original post is talking about dungeons and fractals specifically. 25 might (in HoT) will be essentially reduced to get a warrior with enough brainpower to wipe drool from their own gaping maw from their 1337 hundred blades damage. Stats will soon be removed from traits so picking (or not picking) those trait lines will not have an impact either.

Actually given the traits presented most warriors will run arms for the vuln and 10% modifier. The adepts are pretty bad so you pick berserkers power, more fury, also gain adrenaline in combat. Can I get a woop? No? Ok next one.

Grandmasters in arms, you can take 100% crit chance on burst skills, however you might already be at 90-100% crit chance….so why not pick up furious which gives you more adrenaline.

Warriors will be swimming in adrenaline if the trait changes go ahead as is. Sure might take them a few seconds to build up that buff but once it’s going, it’s just the icing on a delicious cake.

Edit: oh, oh, oh don’t forget they can fit all this in WITH phalanx strength which they previously had to give up. Also 150 power to all allies…and 1% more damage per boon.

Meanwhile the Mesmer is tripping up on fire ring 3 and lost an arm to the chainsaws s/he was juggling, which the undead shark moat promptly hovered above the water and ate.

If you like the play style go ahead and learn it. If you don’t then skip it and go play another “meta” class/build you prefere.

People will tell you all sorts of stuff like it’s not viable any more, nerfed to oblivion etc but unless you’re playing at WTS level there are much much much bigger things that will affect your game than that.

I think people are concentrating on the details and not respecting the idea and spirit of various mechanics. Invulnerability zones are generally to prevent spawn camping and to give a heavily battered team a chance to break out.

Looking at the waypoint changes you can see Anet is trying to promote more back and forth, especially making it hard to get a WP in a keep close to the starting area.

Rezzing through walls, well, it’s more of a thin walls thing. I don’t see it in WvW unless someone gets stuck in it in which case…lol stuck. There’s ways to deal with that and it’s more of a pain.

Fay.2357:

apharma.3741:

As far as I can tell off what was shown warriors get that trait but there’s only 2 other sensible damage traits if grabbing phalanx strength. 10% more damage to bleeding foes and 10% more damage when endurance is not full.

Course they also have empowered (1% per boon) and empower allies in tactics line so that’s an increase too and probably more so than picking up destruction of the empowered in PvE.

My warrior is screaming “yes, yes, yes” to this as no longer will it suffer all the drawbacks going PS. My ele is also happy as I no longer have to deal with light fields and people stealing my lightening hammer….seriously, I will look for you, I will find you and I will keel you if you steal my lightening hammer >:(

Yeah, realistically I’ve been selling warriors short.

Warriors actually get a permanent 20% damage boost by pressing f1, a permanent 10% boost by dodging now and then, a permanent 10% boost if anyone in the party applies bleeding….and permanent 25 stacks of might to the entire party by doing (/gasp)…nothing other than normal attack rotations.

You forgot the “camp great sword for the rest of eternity” part too.

But then what damage boosts do mesmers get? 10% to vulnerable foes instead of wastrels. 15% phantasm damage and another 15% added baseline, hard to say what that is equal to. I consider the baseline adjustment to make us competitive and the 15% can be considered about a 7.5% increase. Compounding power being a 9% under the right conditions too.

There’s also other things like phantasmal haste and phantasmal fury which are both damage increases just not immediately obvious.

There’s definitely scope for a 20% ferocity boost if it applies to phantasms and the mesmer especially as a % damage would likely only affect the Mesmer. It would also help to minimise PvP overpowered accusations being ferocity and I really don’t think mesmer needs that much more burst especially given the new mental torment trait.

I can see a trait of +20% ferocity for 5s when using a mantra that doesn’t stack being useful in many areas. Not just PvE but it would certainly help there the most. Also means you’re not likely to spend half the time casting mantras. Could also be a contender for DE in some builds.

I was kinda hoping people would be able to come up with numbers, saying about whether they would prefere stacking, not stacking and duration of buff. While also giving reasons for it.

As far as I can tell off what was shown warriors get that trait but there’s only 2 other sensible damage traits if grabbing phalanx strength. 10% more damage to bleeding foes and 10% more damage when endurance is not full.

Course they also have empowered (1% per boon) and empower allies in tactics line so that’s an increase too and probably more so than picking up destruction of the empowered in PvE.

My warrior is screaming “yes, yes, yes” to this as no longer will it suffer all the drawbacks going PS. My ele is also happy as I no longer have to deal with light fields and people stealing my lightening hammer….seriously, I will look for you, I will find you and I will keel you if you steal my lightening hammer >:(

Ross Biddle.2367:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Zenith.7301:

apharma.3741:

Zenith.7301:

Thief with runes of vampirism and new trait update that allows them to take up most of shadow arts without the damage loss that they would have seen right now is just going to be dumb.

Expect the nerf pleas to get a lot louder.

Most people in spvp are playing against thieves who right now can’t afford shadow arts, but they will afford it come the trait revamp, and it helps them far more than the mesmer changes help the mesmer in this particular match up.

Currently most thieves take SA for the condi removal, granted they can’t afford the rest and keep low cool down steal (though skipping sleight of hand only increases the cool down by 6.5s) or give up other things.

With the trait changes they can’t just pick up that one trait. So now they’re going to have to pick the traits that make stealth so powerful. I mean it’s one of the only dependable condition removals they have. I know about shadow step but it is a very long cool down just for a cleanse, especially as it’s one of if not the only stun break they use.

Also we’re going to see mug, panic strikes and executioner all in the same line, all available at the same time, well under current previews.

Yeah, my problem with that condi removal trait it’s a stealth bug. It’s supposed to remove a condi for every 3 seconds in stealth, but right now it also removes a condition upon stealth application. And now they’re gonna be able to pick up the rest of SA, which is immensely powerful.

Thieves get pretty much everything at a cheaper opportunity cost. Lower cooldowns, more condensed effects and traits.

Their traitlines are rather cleaned up, their minors are all particularly strong, and their initiative mechanic is a boon without real drawbacks.

You cannot say the same of many classes. Including the mesmer.

That is the not the problem tho. the -50% damage trait is. Oh guess what? It is a Minor.

Well, that trait isn’t ingame yet thankfully. The condie removal one is.

But every thief swears they’re not OP and have only been nerfed. They do this till they’re blue in the face. Are you suggesting fourty-thousand thieves could be wrong? :o

Yeah the -50% damage in stealth would be quite a QQstorm if it hits as a minor.

I don’t think thieves are OP, you pin it down and it dies as fast as a mesmer if not quicker. The problem is stuff like “blockblockblockblockblockblockblockblock doublesigilprocOMFG1337skillzbackstab”

Someone suggested in the thief forums for a reveal on block or miss from stealth and I gotta say it would probably solve a lot of problems. 2s reveal sounds nice considering the cost of rest earthing. <- wtf, rest earthing, ggnore iPad auto correct, re-stealthing.

The inclusion of a few more revealing traps or skills wouldn’t be bad either just to allow some counter to stealth. Thieves are also getting a major rework of these high dodge uptime builds so they actually have to use skill and not spam dodges.

Zenith.7301:

Thief with runes of vampirism and new trait update that allows them to take up most of shadow arts without the damage loss that they would have seen right now is just going to be dumb.

Expect the nerf pleas to get a lot louder.

Most people in spvp are playing against thieves who right now can’t afford shadow arts, but they will afford it come the trait revamp, and it helps them far more than the mesmer changes help the mesmer in this particular match up.

Currently most thieves take SA for the condi removal, granted they can’t afford the rest and keep low cool down steal (though skipping sleight of hand only increases the cool down by 6.5s) or give up other things.

With the trait changes they can’t just pick up that one trait. So now they’re going to have to pick the traits that make stealth so powerful. I mean it’s one of the only dependable condition removals they have. I know about shadow step but it is a very long cool down just for a cleanse, especially as it’s one of if not the only stun break they use.

Also we’re going to see mug, panic strikes and executioner all in the same line, all available at the same time, well under current previews.

Yoseue.4251:

Carighan.6758:

keenlam.4753:

If mob still get CC’d when breakbar is active, then whats the point of breakbar? Isn’t it supposed to act like defiant and absorb the CC effect?
On the other hand, if mob cannot be CC’d when breakbar is active, then its not possible to interrupt.

From what I understand, it reduces the bar only.
Then once the bar is depleted – by various forms of CC – then CC will take hold if used after that.

I played around with on-interrupt traits in Stronghold against heroes and it only reduces the bar without proccing and CCing, but if you manage to deplete the bar when the hero uses a skill it actually interrupts and procs your traits (of course as it is an interrupt). Very situational and hard to achieve.

Ah that means it’s high skill and exactly how it’s intended, all is well with the world fingers in ears lalalala.

Ok last bit is a bit mean but yeah, sorry but it was bad enough trying to land CC on a 40+ stack defiance let alone land interrupts where you not only have to rely on the window of opportunity being open but the enemy to get around to…oh it got point blank shot out of range.

Could have been hiding behind one of the pillars. I know I do that a lot as my ele to LoS other players when ranging in and needing to keep it contested.