Guild Wars 2

Sadrien.3470:

serenke.4806:

WvW has never been fun, or worth doing. But if you like roaming, it never went “out of favor”. Sure there are massive fights, but you can always roam…

In higher tier servers roaming has “fallen out of favor” because massive blobs of 80 stampeding around the map block out all the solo players and having few opponents makes this very boring for many people. It does not help that most opponents are incompetent and will run to the protection of 5-60 people or call for assistance at a glimpse of you in the distance, but there are lots of fun things to do in WvW, your statement was purely opinion with absolutely no factual base.

@OP For enjoyment in wvw you can, troll zergs and video it, stealth icebow massive blobs, make instant kill montages, make outnumbered commentaries, duel, roam with friends, troll more enemies, find glitches around wvw, cheat your way into objectives, experiment with builds, and make incompetent players QQ.

You may want to change that last part, I’m gonna take it when you say “cheat” your way into objectives you mean sneak in with an enemy, hide and flip the objective. No-one condones cheating in any way

Yeah RTL becoming 25s CD would help burst specs and properly being 1200 range should be the sweet spot.

Tornado is a good elite….except the part where you’re still super squishy and no long have your defensive skills. It’s a simple fix, give 800 armour and 1000 vitality while transformed. Well, something like that, balance the numbers but it needs more health and armour.

FGS is a tough one. I’d personally increase all damage on it by 50-100% except for the flame trail but then that doesn’t stack so not a problem anymore.

Glyph of elementals is very strong when used right, perhaps fire elemental could leave small lava fonts and earth elementals protection effect extended but otherwise is a decent elite.

Remember, earth elemental can tank Old Tom on level 50 fractals…nothing else can do that afaik.

It depends when you left.

I know some people who left maybe a few months after launch, they’ve come back and are having a blast as all the bugs and systems have changed.

I would say it’ll be worth coming back for the expansion, new WvW map and the expansion should increase populations across the board. I’m currently on a silver server and it’s nice here as I only get to play evenings and weekends where there’s always stuff going on and stuff for large and small groups.

As for PvE, if you haven’t played the living story season 2 that’s actually worth playing and sets up for the expansion. Also the soundtrack for it is very nice.

If you left after LA got nerfed then a few things have changed but nothing drastic except new player experience and not really in WvW. Again, the LS is worth checking out in that case and getting ready for the expansion.

If you left when the LS season 2 ended….yeah nothing’s really happened, wait till HoT expansion is released.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Sadrien.3470:

Daniel Handler.4816:

K comments.

They mention ferocity and a % increased in damage probably because the trait gives you enough ferocity for a 4% increase in crit damage. So each stack gives you 60 ferocity. Which also means it gives your phantasms 60 ferocity. This is a buff over the old trait.

Second lets take a look at what spamming mantra of pain produces.
qs stands for a quickened second.

0s,1 stack,
1s, 2stacks,
2s, 3stacks,
3s, 3 stacks, cooldown

5.75s, 4stacks, or 4.375qs, 4stacks
6.75s, 5stacks, or 5.375s, 5 stacks
7.75s, 5stacks, or 6.375s, 5 stacks
8.75s, 4 stacks, or 7.375s, 5 stacks, cooldown

11.5s, 3stacks, or 8.75qs, 5 stacks
12.5s, 4 stacks, or 9.75s, 5 stacks
13.5s, 5 stacks, or 10.75s 5 stacks
14.5s 4 stacks, or 11.75s, 5 stacks, cooldown

17.25s, 3stacks, or 13.125qs, 5 stacks
18.25s, 4 stacks, or 14.125s, 5 stacks
19.25, 5 stacks, or 15.125, 5 stacks
20.25, 4stacks, or 16.125, 5 stacks cooldown

You have three second cast windows for whatever stuff you want to do. And with quickness you can easily maintain a perma 20% boost to your crit damage. Which means a 20% boost to your phantasms crit damage as well.

Really don’t want to do the math for what this looks like under alacrity.

Regardless, unless my math is wrong, this looks like a pretty good trait.

The problem is that this trait is not skill and encourages the exact opposite of skill, spamming.

You do realise that spamming a mantra still requires skill if you want to do damage.

You have 3 second windows to cast other skills. You also have to have something like chronomancy for the quickness. So in those three seconds you also have to set up illusions to shatter. If at any point you mess up and use a skill while charging it will go on a 5 second cooldown and you will lose your 5 stack advantage. Your opponents/whatever you are fighting will not stand still.

What makes spamming and skill different?

Can I just say that none of that sounds fun, either in PvE or PvP. Isit worth pointing out that other classes don’t have to juggle tigers while jumping through fire hoops for anywhere near decent damage boosts.

Yeah gotta admit the healing seed change is very nice and the others seem nicely shaved down where they were perhaps stronger than needed. I do hope whirling axes doesn’t get reduced duration though and just reduced (heard it was no damage) damage.

An improved engineer steal and halving of consume ecto duration (with 1/2s cast instead of 1s) would be nice to see.

Anyone gonna take a (back)stab at guessing the revenant steal?

What I did was I put +10 agony infusions in my back and 2 rings along with a +5 in each which nets you 45 AR. With the rest of the trinkets that brings you to 60 which is enough to do all fractals except 50 which you need 70 AR for.

I find swapping around trinkets far easier than armour, especially when you may have or want different runes on the armour between classes.

It’s up to you to decide if making a full set of armour is worth while but I would always recommend making ascended weapons and getting ascended trinkets first.

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.

DeceiverX.8361:

Otherwise, it’s not unreasonable for a thief to have permanent uptime or close to permanent uptime on most of the boons except stability and aegis with existing builds and runes.

I guess that’s just where we differ in opinion then. I personally think it is too strong as no other class can maintain a permanent uptime on half those boons without a major commitment from traits and weapons.

I guess they suddenly got inspired to improve it.

Go assassins if you have the option of any stat combo and can choose it.

I will however say, having crafted a full set of light armour with strength runes, that it is not worth it and sticking to exotic is a better idea.

I say assassins because Mesmer is just about only really needed for reflects and in order to maximise that on the harder bosses etc you want over 100% crit chance, hence assassins.

Ok this is something that keeps happening. I start a fractal or a dungeon and on the final boss someone or myself gets disconnected or crashes.

Normally I stay on top of it if it’s someone in the party and I tell everyone to just stop and wait for a reconnect. However it doesn’t always happen and it’s not noticed till the boss is dead or you’re not able to pause long enough to allow someone to reconnect.

This usually means the disconnected player don’t get the final reward despite doing all (or most of) the work involved. Especially with fractals and dailies for killing the boss.

Is there any way to either get our rewards corrected when it happens or is Anet working on correcting this? It really isn’t making me want to keep playing when this happens.

I mean this just happened again to myself and I wasn’t even timed out from the party before getting in again, no daily, no boss chest, no nothing but a wasted hour.

Glamours have a bad trait atm, go for it.

Hmmm

I just had a thought, would “reset your phantasm cool downs on kill” be too OP? Grandmaster trait? Possibly illusions? Duelling or domination?

So Pyro, how would you improve it?

Yeah I read them and I do agree in some ways with things you put. I don’t mind water being support focused though. Especially as it’s a running theme of healing, whether to yourself or others.

I think the problem is more that the good damage traits are in water, bountiful power as a damage trait as proposed (2% per boons) is a great trait. Looking at trait lines that are about damage where are the strong attunement wide damage boosts?

Look at ferocious winds, can anyone honestly say that it belongs in air when swapping it with piercing shards would make a lot more sense?

Like I said previously, I think elementalist needs an overhaul, from weapons and utilities to traits.

I once reflected a kill shot back at a warrior asking for duels then getting his mate to +1 it in WvW. He stopped running the frenzy kill shot build after that.

If only most mesmers ran some form of decoy, off hand torch and/or mass invis and could manage to do repositioning and recharging a mantra at the same time. There’s also enough time to charge more than one mantra (if you did run such a build, not that I have seen many) when moving between points ;-)

But I feel it’s moving completely off topic to be honest. The base duration on the boons from consume ectoplasm is 10s for all but stability and retaliation which are 3 and 5 respectively. With a double bundle and 21.5s steal you’re looking at nearly 100% uptime of protection, regen, swiftness, fury and vigor, 2 aegis and 20s of a single stack of might.

Even without double bundle that’s nearly 50% uptime of some very powerful boons. Which is what I was saying originally before we got side tracked.

Putting aside your deliberate attempt to call me a passive PU Mesmer player.

When running zerk you need blink as a utility skill just as you won’t catch a thief without shadowstep, you won’t see a mesmer without blink. Second slot will usually be decoy as you again need the gtfo it provides. So that leaves you with one slot left. Usually you’ll want a condi cleanse if not playing with a known team.

Arcane thievery has a 45 second cool down, can miss and has a history of missing a lot. This in no way compares to the mantra. Even with the boon steal aspect.

Null field…really? Again, 40s cool down, while it can cleanse as much, the pulsing nature isn’t great. As for stripping boons off a thief, no good thief will ever be caught in it for long. Mantra is better for the Mesmer.

A thief would have to be picking their nose to have more than 1 boon removed via the sword auto as it happens on the 3rd strike of the chain. GS again 1 boon on mind stab. To remove all the boons or a large amount you’d need a 4 clone shatter with shattered concentration and a mind stab, preferably after stab and retal are gone. However chances are the thief would be running regardless of boons after being hit with that, if they were hit.

The only mesmer specs I know that can and do slot the 2 utilities you mentioned are ironically passive PU specs as they have the survivability to do so for them to work or not die if they don’t work very well.

Boon stripping has been outstripped (dat pun) by boon application and numeracy, there’s a reason most teams opted for an extra celementalist instead of boon strippers in the age of celementalist. Only ones I saw was the standard shatter mesmer and corrupt boon necros that could spike remove for burst, even then they couldn’t touch consume plasma and its numeracy of boons.

It depends on how chronomancy and wells play out. It could provide enough of a buff to mesmers in PvE that you can shatter phantasms and it won’t be a loss not picking up PH, compounding power and Illusionists Celerity.

The difference between warriors not using their class mechanic was that they had a trait that rewarded them for not using it, berserkers power. Now it’s changed to a buff on burst use which is good.

However mesmers don’t want to shatter in phantasm builds because they make up large portions of our damage which we lose if we shatter. Again chronophantasm addresses this slightly. We still don’t know if phantasms are summoned where they shatter, if so it makes them easy kills.

Also alacrity is in no way as good as any other trait if you want to keep phantasms up. It just doesn’t compare to illusionists celerity at all and it is nowhere near as strong as everyone is saying without prolonged stacking. I just don’t get why everyone is making a big deal of alacrity, it will generally make very little difference in most cases than picking up a different cool down reducing trait.

DeceiverX.8361:

The base durations on Ectoplasm are rather low but look so long because boon duration effects are overly-used and overpowered in general. Mesmers have the capacity to strip and steal these boons back as well.

I don’t find myself overly-worried with the nerfs, because I feel that stolen bundles are already very weak in PvP environments to the point where I almost always dump them, even while steal is on cooldown, due to the fact I’d rather see the timer and not be able to do anything than try and use a bad skill in a sub-optimal way. The only exception is the ranger’s spring because it’s basically the only way to deal with large amounts of conditions, which the incoming baseline change to spring looks like a buff IMHO, so I don’t see it as very damaging and it won’t really change much for me as I’ll most likely continue dropping the bundles until I steal off of a ranger, and then hang onto it as a means of a cleanse since our alternate options are just so bad.

There’s a difference between having the ability to strip them and actually having the option. The only builds that generally use boon strip is a power shatter taking shattered concentration, which is 4 boons if Illusionary Persona is made baseline and you hit with 3 clones.

Most mesmers feel they need blink and decoy to survive so unless they stick arcane thievery or null field in their final utility they don’t have the option to steal it or strip it in a lot of cases.

Having said that, looking at the examples above it wouldn’t surprise me if it became 5s of all boons which as both a thief and Mesmer player I’d be happy with.

Karl McLain.5604:

apharma.3741:

Any idea on how much of a rework stolen bundles are getting?

In the 3 hour AMA when we got to thief there was mention of changes to the stolen items.

Can we expect the same items just rebalanced a bit to be more fair or are we talking almost completely different things in some cases?

Great question!

There will be a couple of changes to items stolen mainly from players (though these do exist in PvE as well). This is mostly out of necessity due to the changes with Improvisation and in how you’re able to use a stolen item multiple times. Some examples:
The necro fear skull is going from 3 seconds maximum, to 2 seconds maximum. The guardian mace daze will be reduced from 4 to 3 seconds for daze. The ranger’s Healing Seed will have a reduced duration (10s -> 5s), but pulse twice as fast (2s pulse -> 1s pulse).

Needless to say, it’s not the goal to remove viability of using a stolen item once. There’s just a few cases in which using the stolen bundle twice does just a little too much.

Thanks for the feedback and for keeping things civil, everyone.

-Karl

Thanks for the response, a lot of mesmers in particular were getting in a tizzy about 20s of (nearly) all boons for thieves if ecto is stolen.

The actually change is a good QoL improvement for thieves, thanks for the heads up and the improvement.

Karl McLain.5604:

apharma.3741:

Any idea on how much of a rework stolen bundles are getting?

In the 3 hour AMA when we got to thief there was mention of changes to the stolen items.

Can we expect the same items just rebalanced a bit to be more fair or are we talking almost completely different things in some cases?

Great question!

There will be a couple of changes to items stolen mainly from players (though these do exist in PvE as well). This is mostly out of necessity due to the changes with Improvisation and in how you’re able to use a stolen item multiple times. Some examples:
The necro fear skull is going from 3 seconds maximum, to 2 seconds maximum. The guardian mace daze will be reduced from 4 to 3 seconds for daze. The ranger’s Healing Seed will have a reduced duration (10s -> 5s), but pulse twice as fast (2s pulse -> 1s pulse).

Needless to say, it’s not the goal to remove viability of using a stolen item once. There’s just a few cases in which using the stolen bundle twice does just a little too much.

Thanks for the feedback and for keeping things civil, everyone.

-Karl

Just thought you guys might be interested in this.

Mattmatt.4962:

apharma.3741:

However, as I said, water is a support line, it does what it says on the tin extremely well.

Stop with this bullkitten for kitten sake, if you keep this stupid ide aof balance, you’ll never achieve to fix ele …..

If that’s how you’re going to respond to people then you will never get taken seriously by anyone let alone fix ele.

Having trait lines have a focus is not a problem. For example look at the healing power to ferocity trait in air. It looks silly being there, stick it in water and you have a damage increasing support focused trait.

Laraley.7695:

Sigh. No, water is not a support line when they moved damage modifiers there. Either they need to move them somewhere else or change the GM minor, pretty simple.

There are 3 damage traits, all are majors and are in adept, master and grandmaster. There are 3 specific support related majors, 2 grandmaster and 1 master. So it falls to the minors as to whether it is a support line and guess what? 3 for 3 are about healing your allies, 2 of which do affect yourself one doesn’t. Additionally many other traits are providing yourself (selfishly) with support or utility.

It also correlates with other professions support lines in position.

Also, most of the damage traits are very niche, you know this and I know this, let’s not kid ourselves. I do think some of them are in the wrong line though

What I think you should be asking for is just better traits in fire and air where they offer defence and offence not tied to attunements. Merging blinding ashes with burning precision would be a great start.

Changing ferocious winds to piercing shards would work brilliantly there and synergise well with the GM minor (though a reduction to 10% would be more appropriate). In fact just switch the 2 traits.

I never said I that, in fact you even quoted me saying

“Or feel they absolutely have to go into water for sustain, even if we currently feel the need to do that.”

I think the blinding ashes changes to 3s ICD is a step in the right direction when combo’d with burning precision which is not bound to an attunement I may add. However 2 traits for that…not sure if it’s worth it at all.

There are other things that do need changing and I certainly think Air magic needs a big improvement, especially the minor adept and some of the adept and master traits. I also think a balance pass should be taken at the ways elementalists survive or disengage.

However, as I said, water is a support line, it does what it says on the tin extremely well.

The problem I see is they can’t have it apply to the elementalist too. Already people complain elementalists have a lot of sustain and a trait like aquatic benevolence affecting the heals you receive also would be silly hard to balance.

As a trait I do feel it belongs as a minor (gawd knows I wouldn’t pick it as a major) and being in a support line I can’t say it’s out of place. Especially when the other two minors are pretty good of themselves (though lingering elements being needed for soothing mist) and it has some of the strongest support (major) traits in the game.

The last thing anyone wants is to see a signet of restoration nerf, sustain in general or feel they absolutely have to go into water for sustain, even if we currently feel the need to do that.

Water line is a support line. It has some selfish components for those that want that but the theme is still support. It’s in the minors all the way through.

Soothing mists: regenerate health for you and allies
Healing Ripple: heal nearby allies (and self) when attuning to water
Aquatic benevolence: outgoing healing effectiveness increased by 25%

Look at water skills on weapons, there’s ally support on all combos (even if some are kinda meh) and a lot of them are healing related.

I do however agree that traits being attunement specific isn’t that good but there are much less majors like that now. I do think elementalist needs a thorough overhaul from weapon skills to traits and a really good look at the way it all works.

However I cannot complain that water specialisation, in particular the minors are support orientated, especially as this is a design philosophy being extended to other classes.

I’m also talking about the proposed water spec not current water line.

Any idea on how much of a rework stolen bundles are getting?

In the 3 hour AMA when we got to thief there was mention of changes to the stolen items.

Can we expect the same items just rebalanced a bit to be more fair or are we talking almost completely different things in some cases?

I understand the OPs concerns. In the examples people are giving in order to teleport you need to use a utility usually or mash F1 so you can steal while casting assuming the cast time is long enough.

I do think it’s a good QoL change for thieves though I don’t like the no cost to cast and teleport aspect, especially if you think about using whirling axes, steal, then whirl again.

I do think necro skulls are gonna be annoying as makes it a lot easier to cast and port. It would be nice if Karl could let us know a bit more about the changes to stolen items like how much of a rework they are getting.

Oh wow, that’s about the time they come on too, ggnore hackers.

I would generally avoid the German, Spanish and French specific servers still. Most of the people on them can speak English even if they pretend not to but they joined those servers to speak their native language.

If you’re looking for a casual, prime time server with lots of roaming opportunities then something in bronze can be good, WSR is very friendly but you won’t find a whole lot of action outside of prime time.

For a more active WvW and zergy prime time try somewhere like Gunnars Hold or Aurora Glade (being the only 2 internationals in mid/upper silver).

For a Gold tier PPTfest and blobs with your blobs try SFR, Gandara, Deso.

When I’ve been on my guardian (I main ele) I make sure I’m at the front of the pack, right on the commander as much as possible. Often I end up being mistaken for the commander and focused. Do I whine? No. I think of it as a job well done.

Once again though, I question why you’re calling the commander good if he went and got himself focused and killed without leaving a contingency for if/when he died.

If you look at the play styles and how they play etc you can see a similarity between these two and the two that got banned a few weeks ago.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the same people again but with different accounts.

Also JustDemons, not quite sure what you’re saying, a lot of people leave their corpses in keeps and towers when killed so they can see when the enemy is gone for people in hiding to come out or to push again.

I take it you mean 1% total dps increase factoring in that phantasms do about 50% of our damage.

However at 100% crit chance the old and new mantra trait are equal to each other (as percentage modifiers don’t affect phantasms) however with the new trait to get the equivalent of a 3 mantra buff you only need 1 mantra and to spam it like a new guild recruitment message. Also the buff kinda runs out and needs to be reapplied with the new one but mantra of pain can cover it easily.

I was thinking a few things.

20% non stacking ferocity for 5s.
Or
12% non stacking ferocity for 10s.
Or
4% stacking ferocity for 15-20s and upto 5 stacks.

Would you prefer it stay a flat damage buff?

I believe it was in the 3 hour ready up where they went over all the specialisation changes.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

Currently empowering mantras encourages players to sit on readied mantras. This is bad.

So Anet folded that in with the harmonious mantra trait and changed it to a 4% ferocity increase each time a mantra is used and stacks 5 times for a total of 20% ferocity boost.

In another thread people were discussing how it encourages mantra spamming. I also think it does this as well as trying to push menders purity on mesmers to get that buff.

So the purpose of this thread is to discuss if it should be a stacking bonus, a flat bonus and maybe get some realistic figures on how long and large the boost should be.

Also try to remember certain traits are getting made baseline like phantasmal strength, wastrels is becoming fragility which will in general be a 5% buff to builds that had it before.

P.S. 1 million ferocity while nice would be grossly overpowered, please keep it reasonable.

I think it’s a good QoL change and glad thieves do get that. Also remember that stolen items are being changed as certain ones were too strong (ecto) and others pretty weak (gunk) so ecto may not be stolen anymore or changed in functionality.

Funny thing.

I’ve had a bit of a play around with frifoxy’s damage calculator, the light one, and factoring phantasmal strength being made baseline, picking up phantasmal haste, compounding power and all it puts a 2 swordsman, 1 duelist build at about 13k dps.

If you factor it down to only 2 phantasms staying up we still do in the 10k range for dps. That’s also not factoring in wastrels being changed to fragility for an extra 5% and assuming we get 3 stacks of the harmonious mantra buff by spamming mantra of pain. Which is about what we currently get with empowering mantras while sitting on 3 and not using them.

You also get swordsman on a 12s cool down with duelist on a 16s cool down due to illusionists celerity. So…why do you want me to shatter again?

Also I will now say that while I don’t like the stacking nature of the new harmonious mantra trait it will make it a net gain for most PvE builds and give back some utility if you only want 3 stacks. So yes, I was wrong in saying it was worse.

By the way alacrity as described by the Dev in the PoI show was for every 3s of alacrity you increase the recharge by 1s. So you’re not getting a 7s cool down on mind wrack, it’s more like 8.5s and shattering cry of frustration outside of MtD condition build would probably be a large DPS loss even with chronophantasma.

Picking up chronomancy means not getting compounding power, illusionists celerity and phantasmal haste which is about 1.5k dps loss. The question then becomes is the ability to shatter and get the phantasms back going to equal that? I don’t think so if the respawn on the enemy and given mental torment will likely not be as good as it is currently shown.

The build I use from the many has blink, mantra of pain and either portal or veil with mass invis as elite. Conditions are sorted by mantra of recovery with menders purity to remove 2 conditions on heal skill use.

If you find yourself in a really tight spot with lots of conditions and no cleanses then you blink and play a little more defensive till mantra of recovery is recharged. You can spam mantra of pain for a 2.5k heal every 3s to get you through the worst of it if you use restorative mantras.

I generally save blink for getting out of tight spots if I have nothing else or to get onto a high ledge where I will be safe for a while.

Thanks for linking your thread Caos, couldn’t find it myself.

I’ve tried your builds in the pug zerg, they do pretty well there too and help tagging really well. I definitely feel more use running a build like yours than the roaming power shatter.

The difference between a thiefs steal and ele attunement swap is it doesn’t gut half of if not more of your dps for using it. Well unless you’re a staff ele going out of fire in PvE.

I have no problem with being encouraged to use class mechanics, I like that. However it still doesn’t change a thing in PvE. If phantasms do more damage than a shatter and you have no clones or poor clone generation (which current phantasm builds do as no DE and only sword 2) then you’re not going to want to shatter.

The only way they would make a shatter build work in PvE is if they specifically said in mental torment: Does 200% more damage to NPCs. Anet doesn’t want to do stuff like this so it won’t happen.

Also before some smart alec turns round and says the meta will change for PvE, I don’t see anything the will change it except for open world and that’s already a “play how you like” type of place given how brain dead easy it is.

I suggest those people here arguing about Mao check out the latest Go4GW2 stream on twitch. The EU matches feature some great moa uses. Not a lich in sight but it shows why people use moa. To take someone’s skills out of the fight. Be it a Rez banner, burst capability, support, whatever. The moa-lich interaction is no different when you look at it like this.

It’s also worth pointing out that if the mesmer feels they have to save moa for lich, then your other fights and team members can feel pretty safe and use their skills with impunity. If they get moa’d you can trump the enemy team by liching up. It works both ways.

Also about that mantra trait. A stacking buff means we want to spam it to keep the buff as high as possible but all mantras have high recharge time so we would end up spending most of our time casting unless we burst use mantras and charge between fights.

They said they thought it was wrong not using mantras and I agree but this is arguably just as bad. I don’t want a trait that encourages you to spam it with no care for when you’re using it.

Possible fix: Make it a sizeable NON STACKING buff on mantra use. Being ferocity I’m ok with as it promotes high risk via zerker/sins stats. With it competing with DE I don’t think it will be too much of a problem in PvP so something like the following

+15% ferocity for 8s after using a mantra. Does not stack.

It would also give a nice sustainable and reliable damage boost to interrupt mesmers as they won’t be picking up mental torment and don’t want to be spamming mantras for the boost.

P.S. Mostly talking about PvE unless specifying not to break PvP balance.

I sorta agree with the OP in some ways.

Looking at the new traits in design and not just numbers domination is going to be required for PvE. Duelling is going to also be required for the mantra trait, blade training and phantasm all fury.

So then what’s left? You won’t go chaos unless you’re being a special snowflake.

Illusions looks good for illusionists celerity, phantasmal haste, compounding power but then you’re not wanting to shatter phantasms unless your cool downs are up.

Chronomancer gives you wells, danger time and chronophantasma but that’s it and you miss out on some nice phantasm damage increasing from illusions. You also must choose between quickness on shatter and phantasm resummon on shatter.

Inspiration looks ok for support, Menders purity will mean taking the mantra heal can proc the harmonious mantra trait with on charge (but you miss out on the signet heal which imo is better), you get wardens feedback and then whichever support thing you want from the GM. Illusionary inspiration would be good without an ICD, terrible with a long ICD.

Outside of mental torment I can’t see a reason to shatter and even then it’s no more than now unless you pick chronomancer for your third trait set which imo unless they make wells do A LOT of damage will be lacking.

I can see the old builds we used in there but the power has gone up a little but the main weaknesses are still there. That is damage is shifted heavily onto phantasms and they die very easily with Mesmer doing very poor damage without them.

Coupled to that is that the new pistol trait is flat out bad in PvE and is competing with phantasmal fury. The mantra buff feels more bursty and rely on spamming mantras while having a high crit chance. That’s without mentioning the number of “on shatter” traits you’re not picking because you don’t want to shatter. It’s not because those aren’t good traits (although most are very support or PvP centric), it’s that shattering is a bad idea.

If they want us to shatter then make Master of Fragmentation a non stacking damage buff after shattering (say 20%) for mesmer for 10s. However such a trait to be worth making a shatter build for PvE would be grossly OP in PvP.

Malediktus.3740:

apharma.3741:

If commander gets buffs can the squishies get a defiance bar too as we will then get more focus? Then the rest of the melee train starts getting focused so they will need +100 toughness for each alive party member.

Being commander sniped sucks, try to get a second in command to take over or use it to your advantage by getting people to follow someone else and you lead a feint.

TLDR: Man up and deal with it.

What will servers with only like 1-2 good commanders per time zone do? There are very few good pug commanders nowadays who can take over on the fly.
Average and bad commanders would make no difference if the good commander died already.

I would question why you’re calling a commander good if he got himself killed and didn’t organise delegating commanding if/when he died.

Anet isn’t removing progress made by vet players so they’re not shafting them with the change.

Anet is removing the gold sinks so now vet and committed players won’t be as poor.

Anet are trying to encourage more people into WvW by making it more casual friendly (note, casual is what this MMO is advertised as) and inviting.

Auto upgrades mean no longer will a new player start an upgrade and drain sups annoying vet players.

Now onto the real meat.

Vet players are in some part responsible for the current state of WvW, server stacking, tier manipulation in NA, raging at newer players, not being friendly and welcoming. Sure some make an effort to be warm and inviting but a lot more do not and a lot of “vet players” are remarkably silent if asked in chat anything.

By the way if you’re complaining about no longer being able to solo stuff, welcome to MMOs where you’re generally supposed to team up to do stuff.

P.S. All this complaining and on the very same forum page is a Dev actively wanting to join different servers and engage with vet players and experience the fun of WvW. Admittedly not in a work fashion but it will spill over on the ideas table when changes are suggested.

If commander gets buffs can the squishies get a defiance bar too as we will then get more focus? Then the rest of the melee train starts getting focused so they will need +100 toughness for each alive party member.

Being commander sniped sucks, try to get a second in command to take over or use it to your advantage by getting people to follow someone else and you lead a feint.

TLDR: Man up and deal with it.

Caos Danzante has a very nice thread somewhere of about 7 or 8 builds he’s made and tried for zerging. I gotta say it’s effective. You can spike people down, heal allies and interrupt and punish regroups with it as well as bringing portal/veil.

+1 for pressing a big dumb iWin button to sometimes turn you into a big dumb bird.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I don’t understand why they don’t just simplify the mind numbing experience PvE is anyway. Remove shatters and phantasms (or keep them there if you like, its no matter) and just buff sword auto attacks in line with all other classes AA auto’s. Then between attacks you just time your dodges/blocks/invulns to avoid enemy attacks before continuing AA’ing again.

That’s essentially what it boils down to for other classes, right?

You mean, something like this?

apharma.3741:

-20% CD, Sword skills do 50% more damage to boonless targets.

And yes, it is painfully obvious I’m thinking of PvE but hey, it’ll take a lot of skill getting that damage buff going in PvP.

P.s. Before someone cries OP, you will still do a lot less than the normal auto attack from other classes.

Now I was talking about the sword trait but there is an argument for just making sword do 50-100% more damage to targets without a boon as base across all attacks. With the current 3rd hit doing base damage halfway between it’s current 2 damage stipulations.

As for the topic. I really think mesmers if current numbers don’t change are getting burst, more burst, extra burst, all the burst. They’re not seeing sustain improvements really outside of the resume on phantasms on shatter, though I class that as a side order of burst.

Look at the first idea for the new mantra damage trait. A stacking ferocity (percentage so only affects Mesmer, not phantasms) buff when you use a mantra for 8s. It smells to high heaven of burst and is arguably worse than the current damage trait for PvE.