Guild Wars 2

I’m using a confusion build in pvp atm… I have to say confusion is very underwhelming especially when I have to combo feedback+iduelist+mbullet. iDuelist needs to be like 40% or 50% projectile finisher. Fortunately, when I get a decent amount of stacks, people kill themselves pretty nicely. That is if I have cover conditions…

Regarding torment…it’s nice but I will always hate how they killed confusion and pasted torment over it, like “Hurrah! we fixed mesmer conditions! Ok now shelf the mesmer.”

This thread makes it evident that there are problems between the mesmer and thief in the meta. Their roles (roamer, +1 fights, burster) are nearly identical but the thief 1-ups the mesmer in nearly every aspect. Additionally, their roles are very, very narrow leaving almost no room for build diversity. You don’t see any celestial or bunker builds cause other classes can do those builds 100x better. Since all the other role slots are taken, it’s not easy to make changes to either mesmer or thief without reducing their ability to accomplish their role. Just making it clear that both classes are in a pretty bad situation, quite possibly due to their very design (initiative, illusions, stealth, etc.).

In fact let me make it clearer that any significant nerfs to thief (in particular their active defenses) would basically put it right next to mesmer in that “requires massive skill to be barely playable” tier.

Elitist.8701:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

To be fair, Condition thieves are pretty strong attrition builds. They’re just no good in Conquest due to stealth giving up the capture point.

I wouldn’t say that they suck because they give up cap points. They suck because there’s nothing they can do that a necro can’t do better.

I do think that Thief is overpowered in the sense that it kills too many specs. But at the same time I don’t think there’s a way to nerf the class without killing it vs the current meta. The only way to fix it would be a complete rework.

This is pretty much it. The thief is designed in a way that if you significantly nerf either it’s offensive potential or active defenses it would kill the class not only in pvp but in every aspect of the game.
It sucks cause you can’t do much to the thief without further pigeon-holing it into it’s pvp role or killing it entirely.

I actually feel bad for thieves (and mesmers and necros) cause this is practically the only way a thief can be played. Because of how the class is designed and designed so differently from the other 7 professions it’s only niche is burst damage. Whether it’s condi burst or power burst damage. Plus, if you stripped away a thief’s active defense abilities (blind, stealh, evade, and teleport) they are basically a walking dummy.
Both thieves and mesmers are examples of kitten poor design because their roles in PvP are near identical but thief outshines the mesmer (and other classes) due to it’s completely different mechanics (initiative, no CDs, superior active defense).

Sixes.5824:

Kasteros.9847:

Sixes.5824:

So you purposefully dismiss some of the higher range AoE classes, and then complain you can’t deal with large numbers without them getting all kinds of cc on you …

Ok.

Emmmm what?! Ranger is a higher range AoE? He just have 1 AoE skill from LB and that is all lol While necro for example have tons of em Also i wrote that u can easly kil blob, but as long as long they don’t spam ccs just imagine, 10 lanes of warding when u push and whole group don;t hvae stabillity, same goes for statics etc. Also what does ranger have good if we compare it with necro? And read my comment again I wrote that only rnager is out, rest is good, but no1 want to play engi for example

Engi has high Aoe, like crazy high. And engi has incredible cc, both single target and AoE, add to that the 3 second invulnerability in a pinch, the fact that grenades have 1500 range and can lead targets and the magnet to start things off … if people don’t want to play them that’s their fault.

I would have thought all these supposed elite players would love to pick up one of the highest skill caps (having every attack be ground targeted with a lead time makes it a lot more skillful to land than a stability hammer train).

So I don’t feel too sorry for people whining about the fact that they lost their stability spam, which is not particularly skillful and shuts down all CC across the board for relatively little cost. Now they might have to actually learn to kite, because if you are using AoE at max range, pulling from stealth and backing off when the blob gets close, not only does half the blob do nothing (the melee, the thiefs etc) but almost no CC can reach you.

The mass of CC is a big issue when you run in head first and let the opponents pop all the short ranged CC (and there is lots of that). Instead, try not charging in using stability as a crutch.

There’s no stability spam whatsoever, unless your running some crazy comp with 5 guardians in a group which is next to useless.

Apparently you don’t know the distinction between soft and hard cc.

Stealth pulling has got to be the to most ridiculous idea I’ve seen to try and fish out a zerg. Gank compositions were made to take out overextenders and break down a backline but those worked on a small scale. For large scale blobs trying to pinch out a few people at time is likely going to have no effect. Also how many people play thief or engies in WvW lol! Not nearly enough.

Nike.2631:

Coldtart.4785:

There is no middle ground. Even if you have 25 stacks of stability, enough line spamming makes it no different to if you had zero.

It’s almost like what the people carrying CC abilities had to put up with for two years – even if you delivered 25 targeted CCs it was no different than if you’d fired 0.

The Wheel turns.

The wheel turns and we end up exchanging one problem for another problem. Since stab is useless in large scale fights better scrub your builds and go all-out-dps/CC.

Kasteros.9847:

blakdoxa.7520:

I’m not really advocating for a change but here to point some things out.

There are really only 3 professions that actually do the condi clearing in WvW. Shout guards or traited VoR, shout warriors and basically any staff ele. But since these classes make up a large part of the meta zerg/blobs condi aren’t much of an issue. Eles are backline so they won’t be hit by condis often or at all and the heavies are usually wearing trooper or hoelbrak along with minus condi duration food.

All of these combined together makes many conditions rather pointless for fights, though.

U probably don’t play in MT condis are pain in the kitten expecially chill, cripple, poison and immobilize. Without this food u will get perma immo etc. Also the ppl who clear condis: Warrior can clear 1 condi! with shout. Guards can clear…almost nothing without traits – thsi will be forcing em to play specific builds.

Before the stab change the group I was in would either leap over bombs or run to the either side of the bomb. Typically it’s not a good idea to run through a bomb area… Unless you’re running fat and can over cap the AoE limit of the skills tossed at you.

I see that Runeblade has filled his quota for today.

I’m not really advocating for a change but here to point some things out.

There are really only 3 professions that actually do the condi clearing in WvW. Shout guards or traited VoR, shout warriors and basically any staff ele. But since these classes make up a large part of the meta zerg/blobs condi aren’t much of an issue. Eles are backline so they won’t be hit by condis often or at all and the heavies are usually wearing trooper or hoelbrak along with minus condi duration food.

All of these combined together makes many conditions rather pointless for fights, though.

xDudisx.5914:

blakdoxa.7520:

xDudisx.5914:

blakdoxa.7520:

xDudisx.5914:

Pixelninja.6971:

xDudisx.5914:

The stab change is great. Guardians and warriors are still usefull.

Working as intended.

Yeah, right. Warriors are still good for Banners, to rez the Driver when he gets pin-sniped. Great gameplay, i can’t wait to get on and play my Banner-bot. \s

Why should i play Warrior, when i can play my Necro and melt faces. I can’t remember the last time i was hit by a Hammer-stun, seriously.

Still a usefull class for removing/converting conditions, aoe healing shouts, aoe fury, vigor, swiftness and might. Aoe ressing banner.

Hammer stun was almost useless before the stab change because everyone had almost perma stab.

If you want to play necro then just play necro.

Are you talking about in the context of guild raid vs blob? Cause your average pug could care less about running stab or even having a build setup for WvW. So you’re statement isn’t true at all.

The only people running WvW builds were the ones dedicated to having a role in raid groups whether they were small or large. So hammer stun certainly wasn’t useless and in fact worked incredibly well vs unorganized blobs.

Seriously, those supporting the new stab talk like they were in an organized group. I assure you talking and shouting out commands in map or team chat and running your PvE build doesn’t comes even close to the effort and dedication an actual WvW guild goes through to rip your unorganized shamble of a zerg to shreds.

I was talking about any fight where the enemy team has 2 guardian per party rotating Stand your Ground and having the extra stab from virtue. As you said the hammer stun worked well against unorganized group. A lot of things work well agaist unorganized groups, that should not even be consider for balance purposes.

You are making assumptions about players that you don’t even know…

When you say that most players don’t even have a wvw build, how can you prove that? I think pretty much everyone has an idea of what to run in a zerg. Similar to spvp, a lot of players know the meta builds. Those builds are simple and easily accessible for anyone that search a little bit. Even metabattle has a solid base.

The new stability is great to make CC more usefull and reduce a little bit the stack hammertrain blob mentality.

Many, many uplevels play WvW. They are also easy to spot by their plain looking gear. Due to the trait system it’s very likely they have few or no traits or even the necessary skills. People with 80s would typically play their 80s in WvW (the exception being eotm but not relevant) knowing that going into WvW unprepared means you’re a rally bot. This is especially prevalent for new players that have little idea what’s going on and just follow the pugmander.
Literally, a pug would have to join a serious WvW guild to understand what’s even going and eventually learn how to setup for a role in WvW play.

FYI, this stab changes is based entirely around the sPvP scene (small scale) so WvW isn’t considered anyways. WvW natual state is unbalanced or lopsided but we the players still try to go against the odds, don’t we? Unfortunately, the old stab gave organized player groups a fighting chance. Now the meta is all about landing the stuns and dropping nukes. Who’s ever foolish enough to push get wrecked so now we play this fishing-for-wipes game.

Are you kidding? For spvp the stab change is almost irrelevant. Most spvp fights consists of 1v1 or 2v2. Do you really thing players will waste 5+ CC to remove stab instead of just wait a few seconds and actually land the CC? Also in spvp some builds run 0 stab and the ones that have stab are on much higher cooldown/less abundant than in wvw where everyone has 2 shotu guardians giving aoe stab.

The only place where the new stab makes a difference is in a blob where you have too much aoe cc to remove the stacks.

For WvW, stab is no longer a reliable counter to CC spam. This is the problem as CC spamming isn’t going anywhere. If the old stab was a problem before then all anet has done is exchange one problem for another. It’s pretty plain it’s an issue that you even noted in your post (too much aoe cc) even though it’s directly proportional to how many eles and necros you have running in your blob. Still a blob that’s stacked with CC will just overwhelm with sheer force given a numbers advantage.

On a little tangent here, it’s quite possible eles will be nerfed down the road due to their pool of cc abilities.Also it is highly unlikely that a pug blob is going to run any sort of composition… I really don’t expect people to understand much about WvW builds and strategy till they get with an actual WvW guild.

Sixes.5824:

Coldtart.4785:

Stability can now be countered by the one mechanic it was made to counter. Explain how that is even remotely good.

That’s actually an inaccurate assessment. Stability still stops some amount of cc, it has just become a soft counter instead of a hard counter. Really CC can’t “counter” stability given that stability has no other effect. In fact using no cc at all would also “counter” stability by giving it no purpose.

As for the actual change, maybe people will make use of other mechanics a little more. Specifically I remember people complaining about the standoffs and thinking that a few engis or thieves can just yank people in for killing (stealth an engi, have them magnet someone, given the target can’t see the engi they have no real way of avoiding it).

In a 20v20 situation if you can just yank 5 people flat on their faces and slaughter them, you would just win right there. Against bigger, often disorganized, zergs pulling a few of them in will likely cause them to charge or try to save the dead, which again gives you a huge advantage. The stealth and magnet is a common spvp tactic, may be time for WvW groups to start using it.

That’s effectively ganking. Blob chipping sounds like a good idea… but also sounds terribly time consuming having to kill a few people at a time and plus if a zerg decides to swoop in they are going to drop their AoE all over you.

Stealth is one of the thief’s active defenses. If you remove stealth it would cripple the class’ build variety.
Do you really want to fight nothing but evade thieves? I’ve had to deal with that crap in spvp and it’s not easy to deal with at all.

Stealth is actually easily countered most applications last about 3-4 seconds so the window where they have to do something is pretty short otherwise they’ve wasted a initiative. The only exception is Shadow Refugee but usually bombing the area can make a thief run away or die.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Simply because they are not in your guild, does not mean they are incapable of basic coordination or orginization.

Basic organization wasn’t enough with the old stab but it works now that stab is pretty much nonexistent in large fights. Maybe blobs can have some semblance of organization now that fights have been made significantly easier.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Then you need better commanders if you have never heard of that happening. I feel bad for your server in that case.

Like I said I only see this this reasonably happening if you have a guild raid leading the pug blob. Though it will be quite obvious as you’ll see pugs running all over the place and a cluster of players stacked on the commander, showing this odd mix of organization and disorganization. Still only a small part of the zerg would have stab. I’ve seen it before where I’d drop a line and only the commander and his group would walk through and the pugs would be lying on their backs.

xDudisx.5914:

blakdoxa.7520:

xDudisx.5914:

Pixelninja.6971:

xDudisx.5914:

The stab change is great. Guardians and warriors are still usefull.

Working as intended.

Yeah, right. Warriors are still good for Banners, to rez the Driver when he gets pin-sniped. Great gameplay, i can’t wait to get on and play my Banner-bot. \s

Why should i play Warrior, when i can play my Necro and melt faces. I can’t remember the last time i was hit by a Hammer-stun, seriously.

Still a usefull class for removing/converting conditions, aoe healing shouts, aoe fury, vigor, swiftness and might. Aoe ressing banner.

Hammer stun was almost useless before the stab change because everyone had almost perma stab.

If you want to play necro then just play necro.

Are you talking about in the context of guild raid vs blob? Cause your average pug could care less about running stab or even having a build setup for WvW. So you’re statement isn’t true at all.

The only people running WvW builds were the ones dedicated to having a role in raid groups whether they were small or large. So hammer stun certainly wasn’t useless and in fact worked incredibly well vs unorganized blobs.

Seriously, those supporting the new stab talk like they were in an organized group. I assure you talking and shouting out commands in map or team chat and running your PvE build doesn’t comes even close to the effort and dedication an actual WvW guild goes through to rip your unorganized shamble of a zerg to shreds.

I was talking about any fight where the enemy team has 2 guardian per party rotating Stand your Ground and having the extra stab from virtue. As you said the hammer stun worked well against unorganized group. A lot of things work well agaist unorganized groups, that should not even be consider for balance purposes.

You are making assumptions about players that you don’t even know…

When you say that most players don’t even have a wvw build, how can you prove that? I think pretty much everyone has an idea of what to run in a zerg. Similar to spvp, a lot of players know the meta builds. Those builds are simple and easily accessible for anyone that search a little bit. Even metabattle has a solid base.

The new stability is great to make CC more usefull and reduce a little bit the stack hammertrain blob mentality.

Many, many uplevels play WvW. They are also easy to spot by their plain looking gear. Due to the trait system it’s very likely they have few or no traits or even the necessary skills. People with 80s would typically play their 80s in WvW (the exception being eotm but not relevant) knowing that going into WvW unprepared means you’re a rally bot. This is especially prevalent for new players that have little idea what’s going on and just follow the pugmander.
Literally, a pug would have to join a serious WvW guild to understand what’s even going and eventually learn how to setup for a role in WvW play.

FYI, this stab changes is based entirely around the sPvP scene (small scale) so WvW isn’t considered anyways. WvW natual state is unbalanced or lopsided but we the players still try to go against the odds, don’t we? Unfortunately, the old stab gave organized player groups a fighting chance. Now the meta is all about landing the stuns and dropping nukes. Who’s ever foolish enough to push get wrecked so now we play this fishing-for-wipes game.

xev.9476:

In t1 at least, people defend almost everything. To counter the amount of siege (and siege disablers) you need numbers – numbers counter defensive siege (more supply for counter-siege, more meteor showers, more aoe healing, etc.). Even if defenders can’t handle the attacking force alone, they buy more than enough time for the main zerg to come clean up the mess. Maybe what you’re suggesting works for lower tiers, but it’s inapplicable to t1.

Maybe anet is trying to break up the higher tier servers. T1 is practically heading towards a standstill where everyone is going to turtle up and not fight unless the odds are heavily weighed in one’s favor.

zinkz.7045:

It makes no difference because if the duration is the same when you rotate it (which isn’t hard, I’ve been in public zergs where the commander shouts “stab 1”, “stab 2”, it is hardly SC2 is it) then hard CC is still laughably ineffective, which is why stability was OP.

The changes may have gone too far the other way, but that does not alter that stability was way too powerful in WvW large groups before.

I have not even remotely heard of this happening with a pugmander unless a raiding guild picked up pugs to bolster themselves.

xDudisx.5914:

Pixelninja.6971:

xDudisx.5914:

The stab change is great. Guardians and warriors are still usefull.

Working as intended.

Yeah, right. Warriors are still good for Banners, to rez the Driver when he gets pin-sniped. Great gameplay, i can’t wait to get on and play my Banner-bot. \s

Why should i play Warrior, when i can play my Necro and melt faces. I can’t remember the last time i was hit by a Hammer-stun, seriously.

Still a usefull class for removing/converting conditions, aoe healing shouts, aoe fury, vigor, swiftness and might. Aoe ressing banner.

Hammer stun was almost useless before the stab change because everyone had almost perma stab.

If you want to play necro then just play necro.

Are you talking about in the context of guild raid vs blob? Cause your average pug could care less about running stab or even having a build setup for WvW. So you’re statement isn’t true at all.

The only people running WvW builds were the ones dedicated to having a role in raid groups whether they were small or large. So hammer stun certainly wasn’t useless and in fact worked incredibly well vs unorganized blobs.

Seriously, those supporting the new stab talk like they were in an organized group. I assure you talking and shouting out commands in map or team chat and running your PvE build doesn’t comes even close to the effort and dedication an actual WvW guild goes through to rip your unorganized shamble of a zerg to shreds.

Murksler.5261:

Will not happen. Bigger blob equals more materials equals more siege equals faster breaking trough gates/walls equals faster flipping from objects.
So if small groups try to capture an object they need time, in this time the big blob can flip objects faster and after that they can defend their objects one after one.

So after all, bigger blob will still be the best.

Exactly. This isn’t going to break the blobs up so the stab change makes blobs even harder to deal with than before.
What sucks even more is that it will be like this till we see what changes are in store for WvW once HoT is out.

They just need to increase the cooldown for Rapid Fire. That’s probably it or lower the cooldown for reflect utilities.
Or both.
I mean Wall of Reflection and Feedback are amazing against rangers but their range keeps you from getting to them and RF has a short cooldown, so one reflect on a long cooldown doesn’t work that well especially if the ranger has a brain enough to stop killing themselves.

Aeolus.3615:

^Touche, problem ic here is the classes that migh be even more powerfull with their CC (has they were already powerfull before change) and i dont see anet changing that, player will still blob now with more heavy CC classes or will behave like eotm avoid fighthing.
Imo nothing will change or will change for worse, Anet didnt adressed the real problem but i hope im wrong.

Chokolata.1870:

I think that the goal, considering the new borderland maps, is to force people to split up more and use terrain and siege weapons a lot more. How can you beat a zerg? terrain and bubble weapon + arrow carts.

Alright let me make my case here.

Blobs of 60+ are neigh unbeatable now due to the stab stripping. So think of the stab change as a new initiative to split one’s zerg and “divide and conquer” a map. Instead of going along with the “pirate ship” meta or ranged blob vs blob, you break into smaller groups and attack multiple objectives at once. The enemy blob can roam around and take back objectives over time but they will likely lose the PPT fight for the week, as the blob can only be in one place at a time. As blobs shrink and form smaller groups to take or take back objectives, the new stability change suddenly makes sense. The CC problem blobs have now doesn’t seem like such a problem if you’re having 5 or even 10 man battles.

Theoretically, the occurrence of open-field battles will largely diminish but more smaller scale battles will be taking place around the map and will be more focused around towers. Siege will also be important but as it is now it NEEDS to be toned down if the meta is going to shift from blobs to smaller groups.

If this is what anet was aiming for, I honestly don’t know how it’s going to be accomplished with pugs and many fighting guilds don’t like the idea of fighting PPT. I wish anet could be clear about their intentions and be vocal about their disdain for blobbing.

Reborn.2934:

the battle in gw2 designed for 5 vs 5 . see the skills limits and you can understand it easy .

gvg and wvw guilds was an unexpected gift for the game and anet is trying 2 years to kill it or to make it a niche extreme sport , with many ways and behaviors .

this is the definition of the “shooting in the leg” phrace meaning

P.S. i am not in any wvw or gvg guild now ( i was for a limit periods these 2 years in various wvw guilds , but my age can not afford the heat in these battles ) and i had fight them when they passed the limits in my server , but i recognize that this style of fight gives to the game something unique and it advertise the game and ofc … it doesn’t take anything !

Well it did occur to me that maybe the point of this change was to break up zergs and encourage smaller scale fights with this game being balanced around 5-man groups. Unfortunately wvw is unbalance simply because you can forgo that and run a 60+ blob and run from tower to tower.

Anet didn’t want to balance for zerging so they changed stab but running a blob doesn’t require stability at all. Stab was only important for open-field fights and pushing chokes. So the ability to engage in the open-field is crippled and now carries too much risk with varying outcomes solely dependent on your zerg size vs their zerg size.

To go back to my point on breaking up the zergs… Small man groups would go and capture objectives on their own to counter an enemy zerg’s effort to control the map. The new stab change makes sense for these small groups you see?

If this is what anet was trying to accomplish, changing things as they are now will be difficult as this is more focused towards PPT than fights.

A lot of guilds play WvW for the fights and when I was in my WvW guild that’s what we were all about. Seeking fights. Just making this change and implying people should be PPT-ing is going to draw a lot of ire (as it already has).

The pirate ship meta makes for terribly boring battles so it’s likely others will have to seek something else for their fights…

Blix.8021:

blakdoxa.7520:

Hexin.5603:

Memphisjz.1405:

…several 5-man teams trebbing from various locations, tactical siege play, a 10 man team ramming gate Y while another small team takes a necessary objective. For these smaller scaled fights, you should have enough stability stacks

Sadly it looks like this is the direction Anet wants to go. The uproar is because there are many guilds that patrol a map looking for enemies to battle. Because it’s fun to fight and test your mettle against opposing forces equal or larger in size, not utilizing siege play… just mano a mano. Not everyone enjoys the siege wars aspect. We all try to get what we like out of the game.

This is what I thought was the point of the change. You can break your zergs into smaller groups and take multiple objectives and have better smaller scale fights.

But why do that when you can run a 60+ zerg and karma train the map.

Or, you break your zerg into smaller groups and have to constantly run away from 60+ because you have no real way to beat them. Or they ignore you and you pve a tower, such fun.

Exactly.
But check this. If you know where the 60+ blob is you know where they aren’t. So you can 5-man or 10-man cap anywhere else. But you don’t run into fights and are basically playing PPT wars.

Sounds borning.

Arantheal.7396:

I don’t see why loosing a couple of gvg players would be an impact on the game.
They ate up slots on the maps, unless they were exclusively meeting in OS, so their home-servers can actually be happy to get more ppt willing players.
And since the meta shifted and they refuse to adapt, their outdated knowledge / skills are also not a big loss for the community-hivemind as well.
There was literally nothing of value lost.

New people will emerge to continue abusing wvw for a game-mode that was never planned / supported in that manner, so you most likely don’t have to wait more than 2-3 weeks to turn on twitch for new streamers to entertain you, or annoy your current map-population by spectating directly and blocking slots on it.
Nothing really has changed.

I don’t think you understand where your WvW community is at. It’s not entirely in-game and it’s not the pugs you were running with mindlessly following the pugmander. Many servers have their on TS servers, their own server community sites and there’s even a generally WvW site that many dedicated WvW’ers go to check out the match up threads.

Do you participate in any of these? or are you just one of those people who say they are part of WvW community just cause they play in WvW, cause you’re missing out.

Hexin.5603:

Memphisjz.1405:

…several 5-man teams trebbing from various locations, tactical siege play, a 10 man team ramming gate Y while another small team takes a necessary objective. For these smaller scaled fights, you should have enough stability stacks

Sadly it looks like this is the direction Anet wants to go. The uproar is because there are many guilds that patrol a map looking for enemies to battle. Because it’s fun to fight and test your mettle against opposing forces equal or larger in size, not utilizing siege play… just mano a mano. Not everyone enjoys the siege wars aspect. We all try to get what we like out of the game.

This is what I thought was the point of the change. You can break your zergs into smaller groups and take multiple objectives and have better smaller scale fights.

But why do that when you can run a 60+ zerg and karma train the map.

Dear god… Quite a few people in this thread don’t understand encounters at all….

Stability is not an “I WIN” button. If you stab up and leap in to a bunch of red circles dropped by the enemy zerg it’s very likely you will be dead if you are coordinating with your allies.

And people calling for “Adapt or leave” clearly don’t understand something here. PEOPLE HAVE ADAPTED. Guilds have adapted. Does that mean they like the current WvW situation? Hell no.

To think that coordinated, teamplay would be stripped out of WvW is mind-boggling. Attempting to push into a zerg larger than YOURS would simply end up with your group being snared and wiped. So the best way to not wipe is to not engage.

Let me say that again. The best way to wipe is to NOT ENGAGE. The best thing you could do is lure a zerg to a tower you have siege’d up and wipe them there. So every server will turn into Yak’s Bend.

gavyne.6847:

I can’t say whether I prefer pre-stability changes or post-stability changes. But what I’ll say is that changes like these make the game interesting by forcing players to adapt, make changes to their spec, and likely play some other classes. People have cried about the lack of changes in WvW for a very long time. Here we get a change that forces people to look at battles a bit differently. We’re getting what we asked for, even if we didn’t ask specifically for changes to stability.

So, I like changes, I’ve embraced it. The commanders I see having issues are the ones still going “ok we’re rushing, 3, 2, 1….omg this hurts I need stability!@#” What many don’t realize is that stability changes affect everybody. So while you think guardians & warriors have it worse now upon initial charge, try being ranged and getting run over by a well flanked melee train on them. They’ll get rekt now more than ever, talk about being bounced and tossed about.

I’ve seen commanders that have adapted change their driving styles, and run more creative tactics than just “ok stack, and we push all the way 3, 2, 1”.

So your unorganized blob was hit by an organized guild. What’s the issue here?

If if was blob vs blob, you all would just be running through each other. This sort of head vs head smashing isn’t fun or interesting at all. People want there blobs to be organized but that’s not going to be even remotely possible with no in-game utilities for commanders or even with voice comms.

It’s not legitimately gambling cause “gambling” would mean that their is a chance to obtain nothing. Since you always receive something from a BLTC chest this questionable method of selling keys gets a free pass.

This obviously raise ethical questions because you’re buying a item for a chance to get something you may or may not want.

Better to take the easy route and save up gold for what you want and not waste your money.

Anchoku.8142:

Necromancer was intended to be a debuffing profession with an innate damage avoidance mechanic.

Both turned out to be too strong.

In response, Necro had both design features scaled back while other professions had condition application and cleansing buffed slightly. Overall, the effect of conditions on game play was capped and scaled back. Boons are in the same boat, now, with might and stability receiving adjustments.

Necromancer is without a solid role in most game modes because the balance team has not made any radical changes to the profession, opting, instead, to increase power output to compensate.

Another indicator is the coming short range great sword. The profession is clearly meant for close combat and continues to grow more similar to Guardian like a dark knight instead of a paladin. Necromancer is not very mage-like.

Developers are leaning toward taking some of the face roll out of professions.

This is probably true. Just take a look at the debacle that is mesmer.

@Cyninja
This is exactly it. The mesmer class had no direction from the start and patch after patch is making the class overlap more with the thief while definitely being inferior to the thief. I still don’t get why anet decided to pull away from the idea of the gw1 mesmer. Just taking a look over the gw1 mesmer skills you can see the overall idea.

- punishing enemies for actions or inaction
- augmenting conditions with hexes
- resource management and drain

and what do you get in place? Some cheesy boon removal options, confusion, and the worst of all are our illusions.Every time I fight against another mesmer I can easily pick them out due to the boons, movements and bad acting. I don’t know who the devs thought these illusions were going to fool. We have far too many traits to try and make up for a mechanic that has weak damage and more easily tear-able than toilet paper.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul will make mesmer anything other than a design failure.

Anyone have their game crash when trying to leave a party?

Malediktus.3740:

T1 is the place to be if you dont enjoy looking 10min+ for a fight.

You can keep your 100+ ques. I’m on FA now and I just can’t even bother with it being so close to crossing over tiers.

GreyWraith.8394:

Flyphish.6398:

Step out of your zergs people…this is a great change. Learn to play a new style. Adapt. Try a new build. You know…think a little bit. Too many sheep.

Why do some people think playing in a large group = mindless? Sure there are disorganized pug zergs, but organized WvW raiding is far harder than roaming because getting 20+ good players organized and on the same page is harder than doing it with 5.

QFT.

I’m sure all of you are going to get your 60-80 man pugs into TS and not have even a semblance of “organized blob.” It would be nice if commanders received some additional utilities to actually kitten do there job. Otherwise, it’s way easier to run a smaller organized group.

So we are going to to trade one thing for another. Traded out stab supposed superiority for CC superiority. Basically back to the times where we had no stability boon.
Oh? We have two types of CC? Hard and soft? What soft CC still affected those with stab?
Huh?

I don’t get even attempting to defend this unless your server obviously has the numbers to push another server kitten in.

I think people here are getting mixed up between small blobs, large blobs and guild groups. The hammer trains obviously are the the blobs, as the guild groups ran GWEN or their own specific comps.
What you may see as a “blob” is actually a 4-group or 20-man guild group using voice comms with their raid leader giving out directions. With this change we don’t really have this any more as currently a 50-60 man unorganized blob will eat this guild group alive.

Here’s the thing. Most servers have an actual TS server or something similar. Do you even know how difficult it is to get pugs into TS? I’ve been across maybe 4 or so TS servers and there are hardly any pugs in the ebg room or otherwise to get this imaginary organized blob going. Maybe like 5-10 pugs out of 60+ will log into TS. Your dream of an organized blob is unrealistic unless you had a server force players into ONE fat wvw guild and enforced a “you must be in TS!!” policy for raiding. FYI, none of this is going to happen.

So what we’re left with small man guild group being thrown into the blender and unorganized blobbing is even further encouraged.

BUT HEY! You know those tools we were promised that one time! The ones that anet would provide so people would be able to communicate, set up events, etc so we could be ORGANIZED!!!111

…

Where are they? Do they matter now with the wvw community stretched so thin with server stacking, the megaserver fiasco, and the recent abandoning of world completion for wvw?

#wvwizded

Every time I leave a group the game crashes. I send the little error report after but dunno if it helps.

Anyone else having this issue as well?

Seems the cool thing to do since the stab change is zerg and focus people down 1 by 1 with hard and soft cc.

“1) Create new character, I choose Human.
2) Finish the very first intro mission.
3) See you have unlocked 80% of all the Hall of Monument achievements and got the GWAMM title.
For extra oddness, delete the character and repeat the steps, now you will have a Hall Of Monuments Portal Stone in your inventory.”

Just pulled this kitten from bug forums…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bugs-from-16th-Patch/page/2

Well there you have it gw1 players. A testament to your endurance and faith in Anet all of these years. Now every new, unlinked account will be walking around with gwamm titles.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?

PvE: Reliance on illusions and shattering really kitten us in this mode.

WvW: Again, illusions are our main crutch. Since illusions die very fast in zergs we basically have only 3 skills and utilities to work with. That leaves mesmer with clean up duty or roaming.

PvP: There’s only two ways to play in this mode an interrupt build or a burst build. Both of which have a severely encumbering skill cap, imo. Additionally, our active defenses are kitten poor. The mesmer stealth nerf took our unique stealth (our stealth didn’t stack but you also didn’t suffer revealed state) and put us in-line with thief stealth. Mesmers have very limited stealth options and we don’t even have any smoke fields or blast finishers, even if we had them. Honestly, they should removed stealth from mesmer instead of the crap we have now. So teleports and interrupts are all we can rely on. Unfortunately, teleports are getting nerfed. If you aren’t an interrupt build you’ll probably have 2-3 interrupts, including Diversion which is pretty sad since they nerfed if back in beta.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

I’d have to say mesmers excel in spvp but they don’t get very far unless you have a team set up to support YOU, the mesmer.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

I’ll go ahead and be short about this. The rework needs to be done, no questions asked. I still don’t understand why Anet decided to drift from hexes and replace them with this sub par mechanic of illusions. The mesmer shouldn’t be a pet class at all.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

I’m pretty sure Anet has looked over the festering wound that is the mesmer and has looked into the abyss that is the mesmer forums. Them knowing “what’s really going on” and still beating this class with a spiked club on HoT release would make me quit. I don’t think there’s a thing that could make me come back to playing mesmer cause I’d probably have to wait 2 -3 years for an actual rework to take place.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

Oh man, nothing rings in my head more than the nerf to Prismatic Understanding by adding might and swiftness to the pool of boons you could receive in stealth. Before that there was the scepter/confusion nerf that left scepter in a void for ages. Another thing that got me was the reflect nerf making some projectiles un-reflectable. I mean what’s the point of even carrying reflect skills if they are half-baked? Here’s another, switching out Deceptive Evasion for Sharper Images in the master minor slot in Dueling. Pretty much made DE mandatory for a lot of builds. Anet just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to mesmer…. Nothing short of a complete rework of mesmer will get me to believe in Anet a little bit more.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

Like I’ve been saying throughout the post… They need to revisit the idea or the concept of the mesmer and possibly give it the same treatment as the thief and revenant… Meh… it’s probably unreasonable…

I like posts I’m seeing about the Charr in this thread.
Charr are probably the most beast-like species I’ve seen out of any of the mmo games. In fact gw2 does a lot of good in regards to their beast races, tengu, hylek, grawl and skritt.
I’d like to play more Charr characters but the clipping and armor model stretching kills me…

Fought a hammer/gs warrior in pvp yesterday on my engy… Needless to say, the high risk/high reward play is DEFINITELY viable…

Mrbig.8019:

This is a good change if they don’t make the game glitchy like it was last time they tried.

It’s not like it’s the most important thing to fix in the game, but removes some cheese from thief.

Next step is to fix all the restant cheese ( double procs, double weap swaps, cele, trickery steal) so i can start playing this game again.

So basically remove thief from the game. I mean this is how the class is designed to play. It’s a burst class and that’s pretty much all it will ever be. Same with mesmer.
Both mesmer and thief are burst classes either through condi or power so removing their gimmicks basically cripples them. Scratch that… they were crippled to begin with…

Lol if you brought the trinity into the game you’d probably have to get rid of engineer, mesmer and necromancer. You know, since their only options would be turrets, utility and conditions. :P

Aomine.5012:

I find it funny that people kept saying their mesmer/ thief will be destroyed, but truth is very VERY FEW of the player-base can really utilize this advantage like some of the top streamers do. All they can do is use it as an exploit in Kyhlo map to fast travel all parts of map. They don’t use it like some of the most skillful and knowledgable thieves and mesmers, to use all those small ledges to avoid damage.

This “fix” will affect way less than people try to make it be because they don’t even play like those top streamers to begin with. The only difference will probably be just Kyhlo, where people learn those cheap spots to fast travel the ledges.

Then this can be interpreted as punishing people that know how to play their class if most the “teleport” population don’t even utilize the spots.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

Mesmer is viable in certain scenarios but not really optimal for team setup in a place like the WTS. Basically, mesmer has a role but the thief has a similar role and can do it a lot better.

Wow the thread seems pretty divided… But I’m siding with those saying the mes is in bad shape. I mean our options is either burst or go home… I guess people have to go pick on odd ball of the class to get nerfed down into near oblivion.

I bet the mesmer shield will be just about as useful as the guardian’s shield. I’m absolutely certain it will 100% turn out this way.

Probably due to the stability and pvp telport changes..

I think people need to understand thieves and mesmers situations a little better. Basically, their meta is composed of one-trick pony a.k.a. gimmick builds. Their only outlets are condi burst or power burst. Stealth and teleport skills/utilities are there to only bolster what little sustain they have really.

Once anet realizes the pvp populations for mesmer and thief have dropped off there’s no saving them having to wait 6 months a balance patch.

Even though both class can be annoying, honestly, their gimmicks are the only thing keeping them in the current meta.

Junkpile.7439:

Maybe remove stability. It’s kind of useless boon anyways if you know how to play.

Nice thing to say if you play the backline, otherwise carrying trip-stunbreakers won’t save your hide.

Seriously, there should be more discussion about the potential repercussions of this change… Get ready for the new CC/Immob meta.

Someone made an interesting point about thieves and mesmers. Their builds consist of primarily all-out-power or all-out-condi. If you gut the zerker gear their dps will drop into the abyss and they’ll be relegated to being condi-cancer.

Some of you guys need to stop looking through your little window view of things and step outside to how a change could potentially make these two obsolete.