Guild Wars 2

I don’t think anyone minds that eles never die. The problem is that they can kill you while doing it.

With great sustain comes great loss of DPS.

At least that’s how it should work. Tough or impossible to kill? No problem! Just remember that you won’t do much damage. Wanna be able to apply huge stacks of burning constantly for super high DPS? Hey, no issues – just realize that you’re going to be easy to kill.

The problem with eles is that they can do both of these. Either one is fine. Both together is not fine.

So far, I wasn’t convinced whether or not I wanted to purchase HoT. As a PvP only player, the PvE content meant exactly zero to me.

Now that changes. Thanks Anet!

Eurantien.4632:

Don’t you think you will only be paired up with people in the same tier, and mmr won’t factor in as much? That way losing a bunch means you won’t win any easier. You also will have a hard time getting to the top this way since near the top, losing drops you tiers.

Anet will never limit the pairing to the same tier. If you did, be prepared for wait times far far longer than what we have now. Already they didn’t want to create a solo q for fear of splitting the PvP population. Restricting matches to people of the same tier is tantamount to creating 20 different queues.

In other words, not going to happen.

Ristillath.6745:

340 ms ping FeelsBadMan

Will that have an impact on the speed of skill chaining?

For some reason I’m just not able to queue up my skills quickly enough. For example, if I want to lay down two wells and tainted shackles, I should be able to do all of these in under 1 second:

1. Well of suffering: 1/4 sec
2. Well of corruption: 1/4 sec
3. Tainted shackes: 1/4 sec

I should be able to execute this combo in less in a second.

Yet if I try and do it after landing dark pact which immobilizes for 3 seconds, I find that the immob has already run out by the time these three skills have finished activating.

1/4 of a second is a really really short time. It’s as good as instant. My reaction times are way less than that, so these skills should be executed almost as fast as I can think.

Yet, it doesn’t work that way. Any thoughts?

Also, do ping rates impact this? My ping rate is 340 ms.

butch.8136:

bhagwad.4281:

As long as team q has the same rewards as solo q, we’ll be fine. Otherwise, we’ll just end up reinforcing Anet’s partiality towards pre-mades.

Partiality towards premades? I don’t get that. How so?
Both soloq’ers and teamq’ers are kittened in the current system. You think people like to farm solo’s?

And like I’ve said before it is still a teammode/game. There should be partiality towards premades/teams (imo).

Playing as a team is not the same as playing vs premades. Soloers play in teams every time they get into a match. This thread is not about dueling. GW2 is very much a team game even with full solo teams.

As long as team q has the same rewards as solo q, we’ll be fine. Otherwise, we’ll just end up reinforcing Anet’s partiality towards pre-mades.

butch.8136:

philheat.3956:

I don’t there will be more full premade, i think there will be more duo/trio queue so soloqueue/duoqueue it’s necessary to full a team. The big problem is when you face an entire 5 man team against random composition. This is imho the biggest issue.

Only solo/duo and full team in other queue. Better rewards for full team queue (Guild LB’s seem to kinda adress this but I wouldn’t mind better league rewards too).

Trio/Four mans just need to advertise to get 1/2 more people to play the full team queue.

This is what I’d like to see. I’m afraid Anet won’t do it for population concerns especially for the team queue but I’d say go for it and take a risk for once.
I haven’t seen people advertise for premades in a long long while. This while GW2 pvp (conquest and stronghold) are obviously team based and that’s where it shines too.

I’d like separate queues too. But I disagree with better rewards for team q.

Oh. I’m in the US right now, and play on an EU server. I want to change, but don’t want to spend the money on doing so.

You know, that’s probably why I don’t like the current interrupt mesmer builds. In 3 years of play, I can honestly say that apart from channeled skills that last really long – like a necro’s life transfer – I’ve hardly ever interrupted anyone. By the time I activate the interrupt, the heal is already over

It’s also probably why I have trouble dodging insta bursts – not saying it’s impossible, but people usually always manage to get the first burst on me. So I often have to rely on preemptive dodging. I’ve learned to counter this by building tanky and forgiving builds. I never play glass cannon. Ever.

Wish Anet had free server transfers at least once a month or something.

I just checked my current ping is a flat 340 ms. Is this good or bad?

Anything that gives a feeling of progression in PvP is by default better than what we have now.

Federer and Nadal are two of the politest sportsmen I’ve ever seen.

Their tennis rivalry was the most legendary ever.

So no…you do not need to have trashtalk to give the audience a great time. What you do inside the court (or match) matters – not out of it.

This was indeed how I played mesmer before the patch. Stealth was just a quick breather – a second or two. A quick burst of confusion as the opponent realizes you’re not there and back again.

PU has really cheapened the mesmer. We used to take pride in not being cheesy like the thief. Now I feel that mesmer stealth is much more cheesy than the thief with no tells (insta cast stealth) and long durations, blinds etc.

I used to carefully save my F4 invuln for stomping. Now bah – pressing any of the F skills gives you a blind and a guaranteed stomp against so many classes.

Time to face the truth – we are not the “skilled” class anymore.

Belial.9350:

Saiyan.1704:

I’m trying to understand the purpose of this thread.

Why would you 1v1 a punching bag that’s build around keeping a point?

Same logic may be applied to this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Who-can-hardcounter-eles-1v1-on-point/first#post5342188

The difference is that the cele can actually kill you.

Oh, the memories :‘( . We mesmers were really a unique class in GW1. Now…we’re just gankers. What a let down. What a diminished and crude way to go about things. And we used to be all about sophistication.

I remember starting a GW2 mesmer 3 years ago and thinking – wait a minute….we do direct damage? We hardly ever used to do that. Most of our damage in GW1 was conditional. Cry of Frustration – damage on interrupt. Illusion of Pain – need to reapply the hex otherwise the foe is healed. Aneuryism – damage depending on how much mana was remaining.

So when I first unleashed a phantasm that did direct damage with nothing conditional, I was like…huh? This has nothing to do with the GW1 sophisticated and subtle mesmer.

Belial.9350:

Just name one class that can SAFELY kill a bunker guard on point without losing it. Talking about same skill level. Because, you know, pretty much evey spec in the game has an hardcounter that is supposed to win a 1v1 on point while on the same skill level.

Name one class that can be killed by a bunker guardian on point!

Ugh. It uses PU.

In general right now, it’s only very bad manners for a pre-made to team up in unranked. No one can stop others from being a kitten though.

lloydst.6985:

You are already rewarded for winning you are already reawrded for either capping or decapping however you are not being rewarded for tanking they should fix that instead as too the whole MMR thing. It would be hard to implement the way the OP wants it since you have to take the reward tracks in account. But it isnt really a matter of MMR it more of how well you synergise/mean for your team i mean dont get me wrong 1v1’s are fun but you never see them in higher ranked matches hence personal skill is pretty much non existing at that level (still above the average player ofc)

It shouldn’t be hard to implement. We can have a base reward track progression with a multiplier (either linear or geometric) to take into account the MMR.

And of course, a solo q would ensure that we don’t run into premades. I don’t think any experienced player overemphasizes the importance of 1v1s anyway.

IDICERI.4268:

Maybe they will reward us with a chance to get precursor to the main precursors’ once HoT expansion releases. This way we can build up to the main precursor and then legendary.

Example of implementation:

Choose a precursor reward track: sword/greatsword/staff/dagger/etc… (Passive track – can only be filled by wins, you should be able to do other reward tracks )

50 ranked wins = tier 1 precursor
100 ranked wins = tier 2 precursor
200 ranked wins = tier 3 precursor
400 ranked wins = tier 4 precursor

These should also have the option to be upgraded with mats to the next tier.

This will make pvp alot more rewarding and probably give people more incentive to pvp not just a particular group with high mmr. Just an idea I had.

It doesn’t really address the problem of everyone getting the same rewards regardless of match difficulty via average MMRs.

kdaddy.5431:

^^^^^ This literally makes no sense. You sound like you have a bigger problem with anet MM system as to actually looking for a better reward system for higher quality of play.

Your literally punishing every person who 1 either cant get to that level of play, new players coming into pvp, and any person who doesnt want to team up with other players. Some people like to casually play pvp because they enjoy the game. I personally have done far more solo ques then team ques. I dont think anyone should be penalized since they dont run premade teams that synchronize skills for bursts or team condi cleansing.

I personally feel there needs to be more in game things that ag/esl is doing but they are outside sources that a majority of PvP players in the hotm dont even know about. What your arguing looks like now just you complaining about the MMS and rewards instead of seeing all sides from the original post.

So you’re saying if they also implemented solo q, you would be fine with higher MMR = higher rewards right?

I don’t mind this as long as you are forced into the match as soon as your queue pops. No hanging around for the boss to die and getting your chests etc.

kdaddy.5431:

with unranked/ranked spreading the players apart and not knowing what your own personal MMR is theres not way to know who should be getting better rewards. For instance what about the premade who has been sitting for 6 min to que and then 3 really good players are thrown against them and then the first 2 others who are average players. Is it fair for the average players to get less of a reward even though having to face better players?

So this happened to me about 2 weeks ago, i was queing in unranked and 2 games in a row i got to face 3/5 of the abjured with 2 solos and both times the team i was on was 2-1-1-1-1. They won 500-100 if we scored that much, i decided to que for ranked the next match and i faced APex Prime. Im not at there level, should i get less rewards for it?

This is why the rewards should stay the same, you dont know your MMR. You dont know your opponents MMR and you dont have any idea what the teams average MMR is. You cant kick and scream into the wind and expect to get something when the base things you need to decide this topic arent in place.

The fact that the MMR system doesn’t do a great job is no reason to not have higher rewards. In fact, having rewards will make the development team strive to improve their system.

For better or worse, MMR and matchmaking is what we have now. It might not operate perfectly or even well, but it’s Anet’s official stance that MMR is a measure of your skill – no matter how “off” that measurement might be. Whether MMRs are visible or not, the fact is that they exist and that Anet knows what those MMRs are.

They created the system which means that they think it’s good enough to put out in public. Which means they need to back that up with better rewards for higher MMR wins which they themselves have created.

I really wonder why people sell gold. I mean isn’t there already a gem => gold conversion system up in place? Just buy gems and get gold. Why would anyone want to go outside the system?

style.6173:

bhagwad.4281:

nearlight.3064:

Well since MMR is invisible, that would make it a really odd suggestion at all.

They can still program it in. They need not make MMR visible if they don’t want to. But we need some benefit of having more difficult match ups don’t we? The whole point of having rewards at all is to encourage people to do better. That’s why challenging content gives you better stuff. We need to correct this oversight in PvP.

No. The benefit of a higher MMR is to match with in games with similar players. That’s it. The value of being a better player, which is different than MMR, is to give you the chance to win in weekly cups / other tournaments.

Weekly cups/tournaments are not a good reason right now because nothing is automated. We need hundreds upon hundreds of tournaments happening everyday automatically without manual intervention for this to be a reasonable goal. Not some ad hoc stuff every week.

We all need some metric to measure how “good” someone is. For better or for worse, that metric right now is MMR. It used to be rank, which was redone. Flawed as it is, MMR formally depicts our skill at this point. It’s the best we have right now.

Matches with opponents who have a higher MMR are more difficult than random matches with random MMRs which will include lots of low skilled players. We need to be rewarded for having to play at a higher difficulty – it’s that simple.

GW2 is an MMO. Rewards for more difficult content is one of the cornerstones of an MMO experience.

nearlight.3064:

Well since MMR is invisible, that would make it a really odd suggestion at all.

They can still program it in. They need not make MMR visible if they don’t want to. But we need some benefit of having more difficult match ups don’t we? The whole point of having rewards at all is to encourage people to do better. That’s why challenging content gives you better stuff. We need to correct this oversight in PvP.

kdaddy.5431:

that would to everyone else. If you want tournaments or something else reward based for better game play then you can argue that. Saying that people should get better rewards for being better for no reason is silly. Both groups bad or good que for the same matches and should receive the same rewards.

They don’t queue for the same matches. Higher MMR players get more difficult match ups against more difficult players.

And you must be joking right? Better players should get better rewards! That is why harder content has higher rewards. And playing at a higher MMR means you’re matched against harder opponents. Ergo, you should get greater benefits.

This is why higher level fractals give increased rewards. If you just started giving out the same rewards to everyone regardless of difficulty of content…there’s no use.

Players with higher MMRs have harder matchups. Hence, we deserve greater rewards. Otherwise, just abandon matchmaking and let me farm lower ranked players for a win ratio of 85% instead of forcing it to 50% as it is now.

Iavra.8510:

How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?

He means that right now people don’t shatter because they don’t want to lose their phantasms, which are the main source of damage for phant builds. If only clones are out however, you wouldn’t feel bad about shattering.

It makes sense, though of course changing phants to a direct damage skill just throws out the whole concept of the mesmer itself…

Or

Discovered a code block with the comment

_For the lulz _

Has anyone wondered why courtyard gets selected more often than it should? I mean I know anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence at all, but wow. 4 times that map got chosen with just 1 vote.

I wonder if I should do a statistical analysis. But getting the requisite sample size would take too long.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if in the patch notes one day it reads:

“Fixed a bug in which courtyard got chosen more often than it should have”

or

“Fixed a bug in which developers were trolling the players”

I’ve been shouting myself hoarse for this for over a year now. The thing is, I don’t think Anet believes that we should have anything to show for our dedication to PvP. That’s they only reason why they removed the old ranking system which required real long term dedication.

Or maybe it was because people were crying about “elitism” or whatever.

Actually, I’d just settle for intermediate “Brawler” titles. Every 150 games you get the next title right up to 10,000 games won.

Poliator.7021:

bhagwad.4281:

Poliator.7021:

Aereniel.7356:

Hammerguard.9834:

If you think the pvp community is big enough to split with solo que then you’re crazy. The team and solo queues would surpass even 30 min.

TL;DR version: A dedicated solo queue is a must-have part of a functional PvP game’s infra, along with a visible MMR and ladders & seasons. Not having one is an impediment to population growth.

I’ll play the role here as well then. First of all, not every game has visible MMR and that didn’t stop them from growing (but I agree completely about the need of Ladders and Seasons!)

I have my own thoughts about Solo Queue. It has good points and bad points.

• “Supposed” fairness (because everyone is Solo).
• Last one has to be backed by a strong Match making system.
• Last one depends heavily on the population pool playing at every moment.
• The depended fairness comes also from the game systems (lack of pings fault of ANet, lack of team chat communication fault of players).
• Splitting the Community.

Also, you have to question the players bias. I’m sure that in a hypotetical game with an infinite number of players of all skill levels, people would still complain about the lack of Solo Queue, even though the system will always pair 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, (infinite number of same skill players/SoloQueuing because the system is fair). System works completely fine, it’s fair, but the player will still complain because he’s biased.

“Oh, this is not SoloQ, it must be a premade or someone who was way lower than me/someone who was way stronger than me”. This good be the typical reasoning. With this I’m not telling that Guild Wars 2 matchmaking is perfect, but in my opinion the Guild Wars 2 playerbase is heavily biased.

Maybe this “false sense” of fairness that SoloQ can bring sPvP can be the solution to make population growth skyrocket. Or maybe it can decrease game quality and make people leave rather than keep playing. It’s not like SoloQ is a God or something like that. :P

Also, don’t missunderstand me, in the state of the game, Solo Queue would be better. But if there were seasons/ladders AND rewards, there would be a motivation for players to keep… playing the game. When those lack, SoloQ brings that motivation due to its “rougher” nature.

TL;DR: In my opinion SoloQ has both positive things and drawback things. It’s not a must, given certain infrastructures in-game.

But right now, people can easily see who’s in a team and who’s not. Just right click on their names in the “B” panel. If it says “Invite to party”, the player is solo. If it says “Join party”, the guy’s in a team.

So that takes out the question of “perceived” fairness. There’s no mistaking who’s in a team and who isn’t.

Yeah, you can do so. But… what is the difference between a premade and a solo? They may be just two guildmates chilling around in sPvP. No voice comm, or anything, just playing because they decided too.

Keep in mind as well that Matchmaking tries to do its job even-ing it out. If there is a premade and the overal MMR is of 5, then the premade should be one 4 and the other 6. Or maybe even 4 both of them. In the end, as I said, the system tries to even it out. (I say repeatedly “try” because this is not always the case).

Moreover, this problem is the most obvious in high MMR matches (because the high MMR player has to either play with lower MMR teammates or wait a long time in queue to get good players) and also with newcomers to sPvP, this last because the initial settled MMR is generally always higher than it should be for the newcomer’s skill, this leads the new player to be paired with more experienced players leading to either stomp or get stomped.

So… even the Solo Queue perceived fairness is lost if there’s not enough population/newcomers. When I had barely 600 total games played I got matched repeatedly with top teams players (and that wasn’t fun for me. I hadn’t the level to play against them).

I think this all hinges on the question of how large the PvP player base is. Obviously we have no statistics, but we can compare it to GW1 which had a solo Q and was easily one of the most popular game modes throughout its history.

I think GW2 has a larger player base than GW1. Not sure why I think this, but I feel it’s true. And Random Arenas (RAs) had very decent wait times. So I’m not sure why GW2 can’t do it if the population is more than that of GW1.

This entire argument of mine falls apart if GW2 is less popular than GW1. The only stats I can find are sales numbers. After 4 years, GW1 had sold 6 million units. And after only 6 months, GW2 had sold 3 million copies so I’m guessing that the GW2 population is far higher.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I think Pyro and sephiroth are on a different optimization wavelength.

Pyro is optimizing for superior play.
sephiroth is optimizing for WvW roaming success.

In Pyro’s perspective, the best thing to do is play like you’re facing a great player, and you’ll curbstomp the noobs as a side effect.

In sephiroth’s perspective, you’re actively targeting the largest group of WvW players and attempting to kill more of them.

The same thing happens in chess. There’s a couple early-game tricks that most kids learn early that let them checkmate an inexperienced opponent really fast. No good player would fall for the 4-move checkmate, and trying it on a good player is a good way to lose the game.
It’s not just a trick for total noobs, though! There’s a sequence called Légal’s Mate (named after Sire de Légal, who pulled it on one of the top 5 players in the world in the late 1900s), that sacrifices your queen early for a forced checkmate if the opponent takes the bait. I actually pulled it off in a tournament, once, against a player I shouldn’t have stood a chance against.
An opponent who fails to take the bait can easily take advantage of the situation to gain the advantage.

The point, though, is that against people below a certain skill level, the strategy is exceptionally effective.
If your goal is to kill the most people, then roflstomping 80%-90% of the WvW population at the expense of being stomped by the other 10%-20% might actually make sense.
We can add to that the fact that some proportion of the 10-20% would be able to beat sephiroth no matter what his build, so really he’s losing out on less than that.
Furthermore, some fraction of the 80-90% would have beat Sephiroth if he weren’t coming at them sideways like this, so in a way he’s trading wins against one population for wins against another.

I wonder, though, if that percent of players you might have otherwise beat would have been more important to beat? The better players are the more dangerous in general, and the more likely to cost your side something in the long run. Is your server better served by the noob-stomper build, or the competitive build?

In chess, we are always taught to “play the board and not the man”. However, it’s a fact that psychological cues play a huge role in real games. Lasker, one of the most dominant players of his time (granted, that was before chess theory was fully fleshed out and he never got to face Morphy, and there was more of the swashbuckling type of play) used to be famous for playing to his opponent’s psychological weakness, whereas other players like Fischer were all about the bare board situation.

The difference IMHO between chess and GW2 is adrenalin. Now I’m not saying there’s no adrenalin in a chess match. There have been times when I could swear I couldn’t feel my feet and I had to pretend to look bored and uninterested when I’ve just set a trap for my opponent, but in reality my hands were white. But at the end of the day, you have a lot of time to think (usually) and chess is all about the mind. You can control your phsyological reflexes with practice or by faking normalcy.

An MMO like GW2 however is all about reflexes, split second decision making…and also about lack of information. Until you engage a player, you have no idea what build they’re running, or whether they’re good or not. Very different from chess which is a game of perfect information and most of the time you have complete access to what the other guy’s style he likes, which openings, blah blah.

This makes it tough to apply the principles of chess to GW2. Yes, there are quite a lot of things we can learn from chess, but that’s because we can apply so much of chess to life in general. My own mentality of playing GW2 is low risk, attrition, and preparation. My chess style reflects this – I prefer safe openings, closed board positions, and if I have an advantage, I prefer to slowly grind the opponent down safely. Unlike others who in Foefire try and kill lord even when their team is winning, when they could simple play defensive and ride out their advantage.

But to the broader point, there are lots of chess moves that provide an opportunity for the other player to make a mistake without sacrificing your own position. The same could be true of GW2 play. Like throwing up a scepter #2 hoping your opponent will hit you, but you don’t really lose much if you plan to simply swap weapons next and you can always blind anyway if you don’t get struck. And because GW2 is so action packed and fast paced, even the best players make reflexive decisions that might not be logically the best.

Poliator.7021:

Aereniel.7356:

Hammerguard.9834:

If you think the pvp community is big enough to split with solo que then you’re crazy. The team and solo queues would surpass even 30 min.

TL;DR version: A dedicated solo queue is a must-have part of a functional PvP game’s infra, along with a visible MMR and ladders & seasons. Not having one is an impediment to population growth.

I’ll play the role here as well then. First of all, not every game has visible MMR and that didn’t stop them from growing (but I agree completely about the need of Ladders and Seasons!)

I have my own thoughts about Solo Queue. It has good points and bad points.

• “Supposed” fairness (because everyone is Solo).
• Last one has to be backed by a strong Match making system.
• Last one depends heavily on the population pool playing at every moment.
• The depended fairness comes also from the game systems (lack of pings fault of ANet, lack of team chat communication fault of players).
• Splitting the Community.

Also, you have to question the players bias. I’m sure that in a hypotetical game with an infinite number of players of all skill levels, people would still complain about the lack of Solo Queue, even though the system will always pair 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, (infinite number of same skill players/SoloQueuing because the system is fair). System works completely fine, it’s fair, but the player will still complain because he’s biased.

“Oh, this is not SoloQ, it must be a premade or someone who was way lower than me/someone who was way stronger than me”. This good be the typical reasoning. With this I’m not telling that Guild Wars 2 matchmaking is perfect, but in my opinion the Guild Wars 2 playerbase is heavily biased.

Maybe this “false sense” of fairness that SoloQ can bring sPvP can be the solution to make population growth skyrocket. Or maybe it can decrease game quality and make people leave rather than keep playing. It’s not like SoloQ is a God or something like that. :P

Also, don’t missunderstand me, in the state of the game, Solo Queue would be better. But if there were seasons/ladders AND rewards, there would be a motivation for players to keep… playing the game. When those lack, SoloQ brings that motivation due to its “rougher” nature.

TL;DR: In my opinion SoloQ has both positive things and drawback things. It’s not a must, given certain infrastructures in-game.

But right now, people can easily see who’s in a team and who’s not. Just right click on their names in the “B” panel. If it says “Invite to party”, the player is solo. If it says “Join party”, the guy’s in a team.

So that takes out the question of “perceived” fairness. There’s no mistaking who’s in a team and who isn’t.

No idea why. I always hit the button out of habit – it costs me nothing!

Hammerguard.9834:

If you think the pvp community is big enough to split with solo que then you’re crazy. The team and solo queues would surpass even 30 min.

That would mean that GW2 has less of a PvP population than GW1. Which I don’t think is true.

Tao.1234:

MMO games aren’t Single Player games.

A solo PvP player doesn’t mean single player. Solo players team up with random strangers on the Internet, making it a multiplayer game.

Tired of the “MMO isn’t a single player” argument. It’s made by those who don’t understand what solo pvp means. Team =/= premade.

Is there any reason why higher MMR matches (and therefore higher skilled and more difficult) don’t give better track progression than lower ones?

Necrotize.2974:

bhagwad.4281:

Necrotize.2974:

bhagwad.4281:

Ithilwen.1529:

The statement that Mesmer was never underpowered goes against years of forum posts. I’m sorry, that assertion is just plain wrong. That’s pure sophism.

I own at least one 80 in every class and that’s after deleting several ’toons.

In truth I find D/D ele very difficult to play and exhausting. The work required to keep that lovely boon stack is real.

The ele should be rewarded for good game play if they can do it.

As to Mesmer being “grossly overpowered” I’ll return to you what you said to me about longbow rangers pre – patch; “Learn To Play.”

Mesmer was not underpowered. I’ve been a mes player for 3 years and I was just fine thank you very much.

When the enemy team could run a single thief to effectively take your mesmer out of the game in 20 seconds, I think that’d qualify as underpowered. Many of the most well-known competitive mesmer players even admitted to this.

That’s because the standard mesmer was the power shatter glass cannon. Remember, the “meta” only takes into consideration organized premades. However, the reality is that only a tiny minority of games are 5-man pre-mades with comms. In such a makeup, members rely on other team mates to make up for their weaknesses.

The real PvP consists of teams made up of solo players. Once we accept that reality, a lot more builds open up and are extremely viable. And in that environment, there were plenty of nice mesmer builds that did quite well against thieves.

Yes, but seeing as Anet has made it fairly clear they wish to move into Esports territory, it makes sense they would want to balance around more competitive play. I’m also curious where you’re getting these numbers to compare. You seem to be suggesting that Hotjoin/solo que is the only real test of the state of PvP and that it greatly outnumbers those who do organized pvp. Judging from how often people complained about getting set up against organized/guild teams or even just organized duos when they solo que I’d say that number isn’t as small as you’re suggesting. Not to mention, balancing around organized teams is a whole lot more reliable than balancing around 1v1s and matches pitting uncoordinated teams of greatly varying skill levels against each other.

I think we can all agree to leave hotjoin out of the equation altogether. Solo’ing in ranked or unranked is a very different thing from hotjoin. It requires teamplay, but doesn’t require you to be in a team, if you know what I mean.

Also, the ideal of the MMR is to pit teams against equal skill levels. And of course there are complaints about facing premades, but you really must understand that soloers greatly outnumber organized teams. Even duo queues that I sometimes see are self confessed strangers who happen to pair up for whatever reasons.

Guys who form premades at a set time and use voice comms – they’re there of course and no one likes to play against them, and naturally we come to the forums to ask them not to come to unranked and stick to ranked…but they are still a small number compared to soloers.

I know Anet has “e-sports” ambitions no matter how misplaced. I also know that Anet claims to want to balance around organized 5v5s, but past patches have shown that they care quite a bit about the solo experience. Many builds that were not particularly effective in organized tournaments were nerfed because the rest of us didn’t like them.

Anet can’t completely ignore its solo base. And by solo base, I don’t mean hotjoin. GW2 is still a team game. But the game is set up in such a way that even strangers can act as a team. Obviously not as much as dedicated premades, but it’s enough.

Necrotize.2974:

bhagwad.4281:

Ithilwen.1529:

The statement that Mesmer was never underpowered goes against years of forum posts. I’m sorry, that assertion is just plain wrong. That’s pure sophism.

I own at least one 80 in every class and that’s after deleting several ’toons.

In truth I find D/D ele very difficult to play and exhausting. The work required to keep that lovely boon stack is real.

The ele should be rewarded for good game play if they can do it.

As to Mesmer being “grossly overpowered” I’ll return to you what you said to me about longbow rangers pre – patch; “Learn To Play.”

Mesmer was not underpowered. I’ve been a mes player for 3 years and I was just fine thank you very much.

When the enemy team could run a single thief to effectively take your mesmer out of the game in 20 seconds, I think that’d qualify as underpowered. Many of the most well-known competitive mesmer players even admitted to this.

That’s because the standard mesmer was the power shatter glass cannon. Remember, the “meta” only takes into consideration organized premades. However, the reality is that only a tiny minority of games are 5-man pre-mades with comms. In such a makeup, members rely on other team mates to make up for their weaknesses.

The real PvP consists of teams made up of solo players. Once we accept that reality, a lot more builds open up and are extremely viable. And in that environment, there were plenty of nice mesmer builds that did quite well against thieves.

Ithilwen.1529:

The statement that Mesmer was never underpowered goes against years of forum posts. I’m sorry, that assertion is just plain wrong. That’s pure sophism.

I own at least one 80 in every class and that’s after deleting several ’toons.

In truth I find D/D ele very difficult to play and exhausting. The work required to keep that lovely boon stack is real.

The ele should be rewarded for good game play if they can do it.

As to Mesmer being “grossly overpowered” I’ll return to you what you said to me about longbow rangers pre – patch; “Learn To Play.”

Mesmer was not underpowered. I’ve been a mes player for 3 years and I was just fine thank you very much.

napooz.1986:

About every match I am in has players who do not even try to stand on point and giving free captures to other team while pew pewing from max range an enemy team player that is capturing the point, thus giving pretty much free cap to them. Not just that, they don’t also try to decap the point afterwards, nor trying to disengage and going to be more useful somewhere else. Surprisingly though this is balanced as these brainless players seem to be in both teams usually…

When your whole team goes to close point just to get farmed there. Respawn and go back, respawn etc… Match lost. They also won’t wait for regroup 5 seconds, they have to go die one by one.

Players who never look at their minimap. It is not even unusual to see 1 downed enemy and 3 of your team members finishing that one and wasting time there, when only one player is needed to finish him. It is even better when your fourth member also goes there just to see there is nothing left for him.

Regarding to minimap, in the temple of silent storm I may ping on map the stillness and tranquility before they spawn. Some of my team members are around but just ignore it. The other team gets them, gg

In all fairness, the minimap doesn’t always allow you to get a count of how many players are on a point. The icons overlap and there might be a red player underneath three blue mesmers and you’ll never even know.

Second, often it makes sense for two players to finish necros, warriors, and engis at the same time because of their defensive moves, thereby guaranteeing a stomp.

Third, if I see all my team mates dying on a point, the last thing I want to do is to go join them. Reaching a point will take me 10-20 seconds and the fight will most likely all be over and the only benefit will be feeding the opposing team another body. This is why most successful rotations are based on anticipation instead of responding to calls for help. The speed with which fights are decided makes it very risky to go help out a 1v2 situation.

I agree about the standing off point and fighting. Just today I fought a mesmer as a necro who took a long time to kill me, kept stealthing for obscene periods, and letting the point tick in my favor all the while porting around outside the cap point. Then he leaves to kill our lord while the point is still in our favor and again I delay him from killing the lord for a really long time (no hurry for me – close was capped anyway) and yes – he downs me finally because as a necro I can’t keep up with constant ports and bursts from stealth, but it was a wonderful trade off. He wasted tons of time, close was in our favor and in the meantime help arrived and we also saved the lord.

Finally, he sends a message saying “Won all 1v1 fights”. Lol, ok!

flow.6043:

Dirame.8521:

Nepu.2918:

Dirame.8521:

counter to Rampage

how exactly do you do that?

Corrupt Boon, DS 3, Plague Signet (with SoS trait of course), Staff 5. They’ll step out of their Rampage right after the 3rd fear.

It’s quite common for warriors to activate Berserker Stance before they go into Rampage, so in that case all of your corruptions don’t do anything.

Also, even if they aren’t immune to conditions, you still have to actually land Corrupt Boon. Not only is this hard enough on its own but sometimes you have no chance of casting it at all because 0.5 sec cast time is simply too long if the warrior also has quickness. Plus, there are 3 low cd stuns on Rampage, corrupting stability with a 40 sec cd skill isn’t really a good trade-off, especially when those stacks of stability keep refreshing every 3 sec.

@Plague: this is not a counter to Rampage. All you’re doing here is sacrifice your own elite so you die less quickly.

The only thing that can be done against Rampage is run away (which necros can’t do) or kill it with focus fire (which usually takes at least 3 people).

With plague, I won’t die “less quickly”. I won’t die at all. Even if the warr has berserker’s stance, I have additional 2788 toughness and 1852 vitality. When berserker’s runs out, the warrior is blinded every second. And is literally impossible for a rampager to kill you when in plague if Berserker’s is not on. Perma blind + weakness.

CodeHavoc.7926:

Dirame.8521:

Nepu.2918:

Dirame.8521:

counter to Rampage

how exactly do you do that?

Corrupt Boon, DS 3, Plague Signet (with SoS trait of course), Staff 5. They’ll step out of their Rampage right after the 3rd fear.

Or just drop well of darkness

Or Plague Form.

I think I’ll address the question of playstyles and mindset and try and show why I don’t think a phantasm build is compatible with shatters.

The Shatter Mindset/Playstyle

The primary theme of a traditional shatter build is high risk/high reward. Them bursts can down an enemy in seconds, and lots of people like to see high numbers and ending a fight quickly.

But – it’s also obviously risky. The mesmer is the only class (and I’ve had debates on this before, but I stick to my guns), whose class mechanics F1-F4 impose a cost on the mesmer by sacrificing all their illusions. Clones…ok – they’re fodder anyway and besides, we create clones in the normal course of gameplay. Dodging, weapon skills etc.

But phantasms…those guys are not so disposable. We have dedicated weapon slots for them. And I’m a big favorite of the Chaos line with Illusions meaning I get protection for 3 seconds every 15 secs and perma regeneration.

Shatter mesmers also don’t hold points. Their playstyle relies on setting up their big gamble burst and they like to stealth (though the recent patch has made setting it up much easier – hence the lowered viability of phantasms).

In any case, a shatter mesmer doesn’t really rely on phantasms for their burst. Additional damage is welcome of course, but they’re disposable.

So far so good.

The Phantasm Mindset

This is the complete opposite mindset of a shatter mesmer. Where a shatter mesmer wants to end fights quickly and bursts down with periods of vulnerability in between, the phantasm mesmer has a slow build up with pressure constantly increasing. Unlike a shatter mesmer, a phantasm mes becomes more dangerous the longer the fight goes on.

The most vulnerable period for a (traditional) phant mes is the opening stages of the fight where no damage dealers have been summoned yet. Blinds in this stage are particularly deadly and I used to always run power cleanse on my bar only for blinds so I could cast my phantasms. Especially in the middle of a cast.

Unlike a shatter mesmer, phantasm mes is not glass. Damage doesn’t come in intense bursts, but a sustained stream that builds over time. This theme is also has a healthy mix of condi damage because of sharper images (and one day…hopefully…duelist’s). I used to like the Chaos line for the 10% toughness into condi damage for this very reason.

It’s also why I preferred the iWarden with reflects. Fast bleed stacks, safety from projectiles, and it’s also a psychological barrier making people step away. Each moment I am still alive makes my threat bigger. Positioning of the phantasms is obviously important. The iDuelist needs to be spawned a bit away and his damage+bleeds ultimately take their toll over time.

The scepter helped me put some toment stacks and I used veil to do pull people into my warden, disrupt their attacks, reflect, and take pressure off me.

All in all the playstyle is very clear. Phantasms are the slow build up and shatters are the bursters. For this reason, I used a cele ammy – I needed all the stats. Power, condi, healing, crits etc. Shatters on the other hand can do just fine being glassy.

I cannot reconcile these two playstyles by shattering my phantasms. As soon as I shatter my phantasms, I’m left with nothing. The last patch killed the whole concept of slowly building up damage over time. As @Chaos said, you have to shatter even in phantasm builds…and that, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t appeal to me.

To me, a shatter is a sacrifice of long term phantasms for short term gain. From a psychological point of view, that makes me uncomfortable. I am inherently averse to risk. It’s not my playstyle. For 3 years now, I’ve been able to play a phantasm mesmer that matched my slow buildup kind of playstyle meant to hold points. This recent patch has not left me that option anymore.

Honestly, I would just settle for infinite ranks. Give us something to keep working towards!

We definitely need exclusive PvP rewards. If more people raised hell over it, perhaps Anet would listen…

Unfortunately, the track doesn’t give enough geodes for one full Ambrite weapon – you need 425 (t4) to purchase the recipe. One track will give you around 350 maybe. So you’ll slowly start falling behind. A time will come when you’ll have all the insects, but nowhere near enough geodes to craft them.

At this point, you’ll either be forced to go to dry top and farm events during t4+ sandstorms, or keep repeating the Maguuma tracks and wasting the insects you get at the end.

It’s really lame I know. We shouldn’t be forced to do PvE content.

I like how many people are calling the ex-mantra recharge mechanic “QoL”. I’m sure! Why not right? Something that provides waaay more than it’s supposed to is called “OP” not a “QoL” issue.

I’m really glad to see so many mesmers here supporting skillful play. That’s what we’ve gotten used to over the years. The last patch kind of made me lose hope seeing so many people thrilled with background recharges and CS 100% stun, but the comments here are refereshing.