Guild Wars 2

I feel like something needs to change here…

It’s not that there aren’t good traits here, but it feels like they suffer from lack of synergy with a lot of builds, especially power builds. I am constantly flipping this trait, trying to find something that gives more than a small/situational benefit, and failing.

IMO the worst offenders are http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaotic_Revival and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliatory_Demise, both of which are lackluster and depend on you failing to play your class properly.
Putting two downed/rally traits in the same slot category is a design flaw IMO.

What is your favorite Chaos Adept trait and why?

Alissah.9281:

Oh, I may have understood the term “greatsword” wrong :P.

I assumed greatswords to be massive, and like twice as heavy as a longsword. Because of that assumption, I also assumed greatswords were absolutely useless in most situations, and reall clunky to use :P.

But I guess ‘greatsword’ is just another word, and has the same meaning as longsword. I still think most ‘greatswords’ in gw2 are kind of oversized, though. I feel silly for not realizing it’s the same thing xD.

There’s nothing wrong with Nebenhut, I actually used that exact site before, and tried it out, but I prefer other guard positions :P.

AFAIK “Greatsword” is a made-up word, or at least a word that did not exist before modern times. The correct (historical) term for a sword you need 2 hands to wield is Longsword.

D&D is a major offender in this case because it refers to 1-handed swords as longswords, and probably one of the main reasons people get medieval weapon technology terms mixed up.

I agree that it’s a bit weird how native Krytans have somehow become a minority in their own country over a few hundred years.
However, if you explore the original Kryta in GW1, it is not exactly a huge nation.
A lot of land was wilderness or smaller villages, and they had massive immigration from Ascalon during that time, combined with political instability, the White Mantle, civil war etc. etc.

I don’t see Ascalonians so much immagrating to Kryta as the two cultures simply merging at that point in history for various reasons. This explains why the Kryta (and Krytans) you remember from GW1 doesn’t really exist any longer.

Dusty Moon.4382:

If you read the developers blog for GW1, they said that the Butterfly Effect was part of the inspiration (heh).

Hmm. Devs oughta read more books. -_-

It IS kinda weird that not a single one of our elites has any relation to illusions whatsoever. They are completely disconnected from traits, other skills, even damage… it’s all utility skills.

8x 100% chance projectile finisher in 1-2 seconds would be crazy.
Now double or triple that.

The skill was bugged and it was fun while it lasted. Leave it at that.

What bugs me is the fact that it’s either use a utility slot for condi cleanse or use heal mantra/mirror + MP. Anything less than either of those doesn’t seem like enough, and there are so many good utilities I would rather have.

Well to keep things a bit in perspective, you are talking about a very rare drop from a time-limited event.
Not a lot of players have it, because having it is a sign of extreme luck/wealth/lots of time invested in the game. If you are a casual player, perhaps you should set your goals a bit lower? There are lots of nice rifle skins, and you can use any of them for the price of a transmutation crystal.

Well the Dueling trait sounds interesting… Distortion is very restricted, and 3s is the same power level as a 3-clone 60s CD shatter effect. I’m certainly going to have some fun with that in PvE, but given that our AoE is kinda limited, I can’t really imagine being able to chain it to any meaningful degree in WvW.

Without knowing the exact answer, I think class colors are mostly something carried over from GW1. Because of the dual class system and a huge skill pool in that game, color-coded skills made more sense back then than they do in GW2.

The warden is mentioned specifically as a repair, if it was not mentioned here the forums would now be full of rageposts about warden not getting fixed.

Regarding the sigils, I suppose it could refer to the fact that most mesmer use at least one 2-hander, since our 1-handed options are a little limited. But I agree it’s a bit weird since it’s not a class-specific addition.

I was going for a sort of 19th century military officer look.

Skins from top to bottom:

Mesmer starter mask (comedy)
Temple (Orr) karma shoulders
Named lv80 exotic chest (Zhed in this case)
Monument (HoM) gloves
Ascalon Catacombs leggings
Ascalaon Catacombs boots

Maybe Scepter/Torch – Staff, 20/20/30/0/0, PU, conditions. Dire/Rabid mix gear.
Heavy on defense and boons, makes mistakes less punishing and lets him get in/out of fights easier.
Reasonably simple to play. Just spam conditions, block big hits with scepter and stay hidden as much as possible.

It won’t net as many kills and has very little chase/kill potential, but he will have a better chance to learn how to use his class effectively because he won’t die as much.

The price is not so much the problem as the fact that almost everything is a consumable.
The most absurd part is that non-consumable items (like endless harvesting sickle or extra character slot) isn’t that much more expensive than something you can use once, on one armor piece, on one character.

If there is one thing I have learned from MMO’s it is to never make a male character with (too) long hair, because it will clip through every kitten armor in the game you can wear.

I think MoR is the best choice for WvW condition removal for reasons already mentioned: It doesn’t require any specific weapons or traits to be good and it’s probably the most reliable condition dump because it doesn’t require any specific positioning or timing. It will not be interrupted.

There are many good things to be said about torch, but 1 condition every 24s is nothing. Stealth + condition removal is a great tool in itself, but you can’t always count on the Prestige to snag something really bad like immobilize if you have a couple of conditions on you.
But MoR can be spammed for 4 condition removals in a very short time frame, something that can break you out of a situation that seemed like certain death (cripple+chill+immob i.e.) Sure, it blows all of your charges, but you are ready to charge again before the Prestige would be up, even traited.

Of course, nobody is saying you can’t run with both. I just don’t think torch really shines without PU, mostly because of the CD and the hard-to-time finisher.

From wikipedia:

The ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is (greek letters that forum can’t reproduce…) (psyche), which primarily means “soul” or “mind”.

The mesmer is an illusionist class that affects other peoples’ minds. Butterflies represent the pysche. The clouds of butterflies could literally be interpreted as your opponent’s mind exploding…

As for the colors, pink/purple was the color scheme assigned to Mesmer skills in GW1. Because that game had like 1000+ skills and two classes active at the same time, color coding was practical in terms of recognizing and using the right skills.
Now WHY they originally chose that color scheme for the Mesmer, I can’t say. Maybe it was one of the last classes developed, and the other base colors had already been assigned to other classes.

kylwilson.9137:

Straight male insecurity is always such a riot to watch. Love it.

Agreed. This thread is hilarious.

Enjoy broken TC forever :/

I agree the extra 1/4 second is weird, I don’t see any particular reason for it.

But yeah, the cooldown is the real deal-breaker. And the fact that Illusionary Invigoration does mostly the same with shorter CD. Perhaps if there were some more interesting Illusion Master traits, this signet would see more use.

Generally speaking, when I have 1 phantasm out I will shatter if I feel it will help me at that moment.
When I have 2 out, I will not shatter unless it is for a very specific reason (usually traited shatter effect or MW spike combined with something else).
I will usually shatter for damage or daze if I have 3 illusions out and have at least one phantasm ready to cast.
I generally never hesitate to shatter for Distortion if I get pinned down and can’t blink.

HS may be an overall DPS loss compared to other damage traits, but I think it adds a nice touch of pressure to an interrupt build. I love when Magic Bullet pings between a few people, crit them all and stack 15 might.

While every class suffers from useless GM trait syndrome, Thief is no worse off than others. How can you look at Hidden Killer and Executioner and dismiss both? Having both would be amazing, and you want none of them? :/
The mind boggles.

If anything, thief has a lot of crap Adept and Master traits. The GM ones are mostly good.

Warrior stability is all about sustain I guess. The durations are long but so are the cooldowns, and warriors have so many good traits that most will only have stability as utility. So once it’s gone, it’s gone for a long time. And Shattered Concentration on a warrior that just popped Fury Signet and Stability almost makes me feel sorry for them…

I had some reservations about MoS because of the short duration, but I’ve actually come to rely on the fact that it can break you out of multiple bad spots instead of just helping you once, then going on a long CD (and the CD isn’t even bad compared to most stability skills). Toss in the fact that up to 5 people share the benefit, and I believe it may be one of the most powerful “reversal” skills in the game.

I admit being a bit jealous of the engi shield. Having both a full block and a ranged reflect + swap skill on both skills in one weapon is awesome. So many uses, defensive and offensive.
It’s probably my favorite offhand in the game.

No thanks, I spent too much time collecting every single shade of purple and pink dye. :p

Cast time needs to be in line with weapon phantasms, so 1s should do it.
Defender needs more HP, just take away its damage, it’s pointless anyway.
Alternatively, he could give maybe 3s protection or 5s aegis to the mesmer when he dies (so OP with PU! Yeah well not everyone runs PU…)

Since we are talking about a back piece only, I would say Berserker. It’s a stat combo that’s not as easy to obtain on back pieces as others, so that alone makes it a valid choice for any power build.
Unless you plan to run conditions only, forever, a zerker backpiece will never be a bad choice.

If you’re scared of iZerker, the best you can do is learn to spot the cast animation and dodge it. The Mesmer holds the GS high up in the air with both arms right before the cast, it’s one of the more recognizable skills.
It’s also unblockable, so you WILL get hit and the phantasm will spawn and hurt you unless you either
a) stealth before the cast finishes
b) dodge it
c)obstruct LoS

Same goes for iDuelist really, but the animation is less obvious. If you can realiably deny a Mesmer phantasms, you are pretty much on top because you will almost always beat him at the stealth game.

Judging from recent updates, I would assume small group play in general (PvP, small group roaming in WvW), as well as offer more group benefits for a defensive/boon heavy mesmer. The main problem I have with mantras is that you can’t really make a focused build around them because their natures are either a) defensive or b) utility/debuff.
MoP is the only mantra that does damage and it’s not terribly impressive.

So in general, you are better off using no more than 2 mantras, maybe 3 if you use mantra heal. Loading your bar up with mantras generally means you have more downtime where you are not doing any damage directly, and mantras don’t really offer a lot of benefits when it comes to doing condition damage. Considering how many traits we have dealing with mantras, including 2 GM traits, I think their offensive options are too limited.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Past 2 mantras though, and you’re really pigeonholing yourself into long charge times and inability to effectively fight once your charges are gone.

MoD and Furious Interruption lets you do some quick recharges, but it’s hard to pull off reliably and it feels like you are only compensating for a weakness, not giving yourself an edge.

CD (Dom V) gives you a decent chance that the opponent will be crippled when they start running. Use your signet active to stun them, interrupt their heal if possible. Try to hit with as many bursts at the same time as possible (shatter, BF etc.) Maybe bring Blink and trait it for range so you have some sort of gap-closer.

But honestly, if people decide to run from a condition mesmer, and they have decent tools for running, they will usually get away.

What is the current cap of # of revivers? Perhaps lowering that would help with the worst revive-spam.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

If you want to search for Sigils, do this….

Type “sigil” into the search bar….
Select the Filter drop down….
Then, select either Masterwork, Rare, or Exotic.

The results will be limited to the selected rarity.

I just tried it, filtering for Rare, and it returned 59 items…..56 Sigils and 3 recipe sheets for Major Sigil of the Night.

Yeah that works, thanks. This was driving me nuts, the search field can’t handle multiple words unless they are exact, apparently.

Well the obvious answer is start from the top and focus either on direct damage or condition damage. That will make it easier to choose the right weapons and they do have synergy in that way even if some are bit random.

If you want to play shatter, you go full shatter (30 Illusions) for Illusionary Persona (You shatter too, causing the same effect as clones) and focus on direct damage because offensive shatters mostly means Mind Wrack. You use GS and Sword or maybe Swords with different offhands.
If you want to use conditions, you focus more on staff or scepter and probably the Chaos trait line, go 15-20 Dueling to get sharper images and maybe some Domination for torch trait, or condition duration or Inspiration for some defensive trait.

This is not to say you can’t do things differently, but it will make it easier to build something that works and then you can adjust it to your style after that.

Did I say blink removes conditions? No. I said it lets you move your character (by blinking) even when you are immobilized. Blink moves you, that’s what it does, primarily. The only way you cannot move with blink is if you are dazed, at least I can’t think of another reason.

Well overall I think you are spreading yourself a bit thin, trying to do too much at once. Hybrid damage builds are not hopeless, but they require a lot more planning and your traits seems to be a bit all over the place.
You have a clone death trait, a shatter trait, an interrupt trait and some phantasm traits, but you only have 2 phantasms: iZerker and Warden. When they go down, a lot of your damage and support goes away until you can cast them again and they have long-ish cooldowns.

This thread needs more norn.

Phantasm builds don’t work too well for WvW in general because they tend to die too fast, and lot of your potential is wasted that way. It’s not completely impossible and the smaller the fight the better I would assume, but once you hit a certain number of people, Illusions mostly turn into shatter fodder, distrations, defensive shatters or condition bombs.
The advantage of this is that you can pretty much always rely on somone triggering clone death traits.

I’ve seen it fail several times for no apparent reason. That, combined with the CD makes it rather unattractive to me.
Can it fail if you have no conditions?

Dat rage signet steal though…

GW2 has a reasonable high skill curve, if you are used to more traditional MMO’s.

Movement and mobility is very important, not so much in PvE, but PvE gives you plenty of opportunities to practice dodging and positioning in a relatively safe environment, take as much advantage of this as possible.

When you are trying out a new build, try the various skill combos out on PvE mobs first and try to find out if they do what you want them to do before you commit a lot of money and resources to a certain build (this is all mostly concerning endgame, up to lv80 it is reasonably safe and cheap to mess around with gear and builds).

Slot as many different traits as you can bothered to try out and find out if they work for you. The descriptions can sometimes be misleading or vague, so try everything out for yourself.

The Chaos trait line is somewhat defensive in nature, and offers some decent traits for condition (DoT) builds as well as giving you access to more and longer buffs. Inspiration offers a lot of group utility and various defensive and healing traits.

Staff is a weapon with many defense skills, and focuses mostly on condition damage. Scepter is also a good condition weapon, but it’s kind of in a weird place right now because of its auto-attack being bugged and not offering much in general.
Sword and Greatsword is mostly for power (direct) damage.
Torch is the only weapon with stealth and that makes it quite powerful. The Prestige is a weird skill, doing a lot of things in a short time, but it can be difficult to take advantage of all of them at once.
Focus is kind of a utility offhand, but the phantasm can do more damage than most if you time it just right. It’s hard to use, but fun.
It’s also most mesmers’ choice for a quick swiftness buff (swap to it, use skill, swap back) out of combat if nothing else is available.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I’m confused, why is it the only skill that doesn’t lose benefits, and why is daze an exception?

Blink is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but that statement makes little sense.

It’s a stunbreaker so stun won’t lock it. It retains full functionality when you are immobilized, where most movement skill (like leaps) will trigger but not move you. The only thing that can prevent you from blinking is daze because daze prevents you from using any skill.

Okay, let’s look at it from another angle: If SR was an elite, and balanced to elite status (more powerful, more utility, invisible field whatever you think would improve it), would you consider taking it over another elite and would the free utility slot offer anything interesting.

This is not about nerfing or buffing, it is about build diversity. A lot of thieves use SR because it offers a lot of things at once: Some healing, potentially long stealth, stealthing downed allies etc, but as mentioned it’s a bit low on the healing overall and needs a lot of trait points invested to make it really powerful. Making it elite would remove its dependency on the trait system and free up traits for more diversity, as well as put a bit less trait pressure on thieves not traiting heavy stealth.

BTW I think Portal should be an Elite, is has elite CD already anyway. It would also make mesmers think harder about elites because TW is amazing for everything but solo roaming.

My main concern is what is your primary source of damage? You have low power, low crit damage, low presicion, so you are not doing much direct damage and your clones are not applying bleed very often. A single clone will likely not apply more than one bleed before dying in many situations.

The way I see it, you are relying on confusion and scepter block (torment) to apply the main part of your damage. If the enemy can counter that with just a minor amount of condition cleanse, your DPS is almost negated. No matter how much survivability you have, most thieves will be able to burn you down quite quickly if you can not put any pressure on them.

As far as traits go, I’m not sure what you want IE for. It does not work on staff clones (possibly bug), so the only benefit is to your staff AA. Those 10 points could give you 30 Dueling and Chaos instead, opening up 2 extra GM traits, which is something to consider.

With the amount of clones you have, Ether Feast offers much more healing overall. Unless Mirror has some sort of trait or skill synergy, it doesn’t offer any substantial benefit over other heals. Remember, you have a rather large health pool with that gear and Mirror will only fill a tiny amount of it.

This has already been mentioned, but learn to love blink. AFAIK it is the only skill in the game that will never be locked out/lose benefits by anything except daze.
It is a ground target teleport.
It breaks stun.
It ignores immobilize and in fact any CC except daze (though it does not remove it).
It has 1200 range when traited (Dueling I).
Cannot be interrupted (no cast time).

Thanks for the input guys, I’m gonna go with GS – Sw/P and MoR/Centaur runes I think.

I still really like the idea of the focus and I’ll keep working with it but for this particular build, I feel I need too many mixed runes just to keep up swiftness.
Those 10 points in Inspiration could also be better spent I think.

Warrior is not the problem. Too much passive stacking of one type of effect is the problem. Especially when it doesn’t require you to plan what skills to use or in what order, because it all relies on traits and using the right food, right runes etc.

Warrior’s heal signet + dogged march + melandru runes + less condi time food is a response to massive condi stacking.
The problem here is that conditions is not only damage, and this sort of setup not only make warriors harder to damage with conditions, it also makes them harder to control with conditions (cripple, immob etc.) A warrior is very hard to deal with if you cannot prevent them from being in your face all the time and that’s fair.
But IMO, the effort of keeping the warrior at a distance far outweights the actual player effort the warrior has to put into never being controlled/pressured by conditions. And trying to facetank a warrior will always fail, as it should be.

I feel the boonspam/passive effect stacking is generally out of control, and relies more on building for as many passive benefits as possible than actively considering what boons are best used at what times. Pretty much the same problem conditions have had for a while.

Dee Jay.2460:

Shadow Refuge is actually one of the few excellently designed skills on the Thief class.

• It’s generally useful and one of our most popular utilities.
• It offers unique group utility no other class can offer.
• It has a useful combo-field effect.
• It’s fairly well telegraphed.
• It offers ample counter-play opportunities in the form of AoE or CC.

These are all signs of a well-designed skill.

And regarding the healing…..it’s only really good when you’re specced into Shadow Rejuvenation. Without it it barely heals at all.

By well telegraphed, I assume you mean the actual field and not the skill cast, because interupting a 1/4s cast skill is not really something most humans can pull off reliably.

Anyway, the point of making it elite was also to make it more powerful (i.e. more healing, maybe condi removal) and give it more general appeal as a last resort tool for thieves not traiting deep stealth. As it stands now, it is primarily a way to obtain very long stealth as well as ofc a combo field with all the advantages that offers.

Just as suggestion.

Xavi.6591:

I would like to see Mesmer Confusion buffed (un-nerfed!) to make it more viable. Mesmer’s were (supposed to be) the confusion class before the confusion nerf.

TBH, I’m glad mesmer is more than just “the confusion class”, but I too would like to see confusion-focused builds become viable again. (Broken) Perplexity runes is just a sad reminder how bad this condition is when compared to bleed, a condition that most classes can build to spam endlessly. Confusion is tricky to apply and manage effectively, and the reward you get is half the DPS of a bleed spammer.

I always felt this skill was a bit… problematic.
AoE pulsing stealth field + healing is a pretty powerful tool.
On the other hand, it puts up a giant sign saying “enemy AoE here plz!”

Plopping down fields and then dancing around inside them is generally not what the thief excels at IMO. Thieves need room to work, they need to dodge or avoid as many spikes as possible beacuse they have low health and medium armor. You can’t afford to get pinned down, but that’s exactly what SR does.

So… I thought maybe SR would be better as an elite (maybe 90s CD) with an instant effect (or a non-visible field), making it more of a pop&run skill like BP, or at least less obvious.

Ross Biddle.2367:

MoP is effective, but you have to look at the broader picture. Mantras strength is that they can be cast at any time, even while doing other things. So it finds its place right at home during a burst. On it’s own it’ll look lackluster, but if you’re a glass cannon shatter mesmer, when busting our your combo and landing a sword 2, you can fire off your two or three MoP’s to spike your damage even higher.

Mantra of Concentration is more like one approach to mesmering. The stability is short, and on its face doesn’t seem like much. But the mantra is also a stun breaker which adds a bit more depth to it considering its taking up a space on the Mesmer util bar.

Okay, maybe I will give MoP another chance. But it’s just so…. un-spammable. No matter how I look at it, I can’t really get over the fact that it does less damage than AA’s do in the same amount of time. It’s not unblockable or anything, in fact it has no interesting component whatsoever on its own. It’s just raw damage, and not very much of it. Maybe I’m just spoiled with unblockable phantasms and Huge spike/evade moves like BF.
MoP seems a little out of place among other mesmer skills, having no secondary function or twist like most of our skills do. The biggest advantage I can find with the skill is that you can sorta spam Restorative Mantras with it.
In a group context, other mantras seem to offer so much more with their AoE effects.
I will likely go for Stability or Distraction (potentially lots of vuln), unless there is a better argument for MoP than “slightly more spike damage that can be combined with channeling”.

quercus.9261:

To the op: you gotta go GS. Focus is only good for attacking keeps and dropping ppl off cliffs in EOTM. Go 20 20 0 0 30 shatter and mix in some soldiers.

I tend to agree with the GS, but I don’t see the point of 30 Illusions. This isn’t meant to be a glassy shatter build, most of the time there will not be time for shatters/target will be too far away and moving further/clones will die to AoE.
This is not a dueling/solo roaming build where I can pick a spot and set up clones and expect enemies to stick around to take Mind Wracks to the face. Mobility and speed are the main focii.