Guild Wars 2

The crit damage change will have a fairly big impact on my phantasm build. I’m trying to decide if I should try to adjust by increasing damage or by increasing survivability (and just accept that it will take longer to kill someone). That decision mostly comes down to sigils and food because, right now, I don’t anticipate changing my build.

On sigils, I’m tempted to go energy and battle in both sets now. I would give up bloodlust stacks, so that would be yet more power loss.

I’ve been experimenting with life steal food, and I’m curious about trying to use this plus life steal sigils to see if I can simultaneously help damage a little and increase survivability a little.

I’m happy to see the bug fixes. I think that’s what mesmers needed the most. I’m a little disappointed that none of the new GM traits have really triggered any theorycrafting ideas for me – none of them seem interesting for builds I want to try right now (partially that’s because I’ve invested so much in creating all ascended gear and weapons towards a power-crit style). After the direct questions about scepter posted by the devs, I had hoped to see some change there.

I really only play WvW. Overall, I think I’ll be a bit weaker compared to where I was versus other classes. I think I’ll approach fights with Ele’s and Rangers a little more cautiously after this patch. I’m glad that my build hasn’t (apparently) been significantly nerfed. I kind of wish there was something more for me to try out than one or two new sigils. But I’m happy that the gear I spent so much time working on and the build I like now both seem like they are viable going forward.

Thx much – looks like the match ups in the next couple of weeks should be pretty interesting then

I’m having a lot of fun playing on NSP so far in the tournament. HOD has tremendously more players, so it seems clear that NSP and CD will be battling between 2nd and 3rd this week.

Here’s the question.

Given that HOD, Yaks, and FA look like they will each win their matchup this week, does a Swiss-style system mean that they will be matched against each other next week? And if NSP, BP and SBI all finish second, that will be the matchup for the following week?

Thx!

All my comments are only about WvW. For me, fighting a warrior has two phases.

The first phase is about generating enough damage and avoiding the big hits. I’m using a phantasm build, so my goal is to distribute my phantasms (duelists, berserkers and disenchanters) so that it’s hard for the warrior to kill them all with AOE. I’m also using dodge, blink, and stealth (decoy and mass invis) to keep distance. If I see a chance for interrupt with illusionary wave or magic bullet, I’ll use it. With some practice, you learn the tells of the big attacks and you can hopefully avoid them. Eventually, you’ll get to the second phase.

In the second phase, nearly every warrior that I meet in WvW decides to run. Ideally, you manage to create enough burst that they decide too late. If they have enough health, I can’t stop them from getting away. To chase, I’m wearing Travelers Runes and using blink. The cripple from the zerker can help though they will often clear. So I have the signet of ether, and that let’s me cast a zerker, use the heal, and cast another zerker. Magic bullet can be helpful for the stun as well. But if they have enough health, they will just keep running – and I can’t catch them.

In game, I just transferred over to NSP (need to find a new guild) and pretty much just play my Mesmer named Elbrin. I mostly do WvW and just try to keep improving my skills. Every now and then, I record some gameplay and set it to some 80’s music here. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqzNWP8L3BAAQXDbDdXF02Q

In real life, I lead the technology portion of a software company. So I have a lot of empathy for software developers. I also write a bit. I self-published a young adult fiction novel with one of my kids, and I’m (very slowly…) working on another one with our middle child.

Thanks much. It turns out I didn’t have free camera movement enabled… uggh…. so whenever I switched between left mouse button for looking and right mouse button for turning, my camera snapped forward again. Looks like I’ll still need lots of practice, but this is going to be better. Thx!

I do have a Logitech 8-button mouse. It really makes a big difference. My fingers are short enough that I really never use the F keys or the number keys because it’s just unreliable that I hit the right one in the heat of battle

I transferred over a week ago. NSP is great. There are good fights and good commanders every time I’ve logged in.

Really good people, and every kind of WvW you could want from big fights, to roaming and havoc squads, to clutch defenses.

This isn’t specifically a Mesmer topic, but there are lots of great players here.

I’ve been playing pretty much an all-ranged build (GS/Scepter+Pistol) in WvW for a while. So I like to kite when possible.

I’ve seen some notes from really good players who say they unbind the walk backwards key because they consider it to be crippling themselves. So I’ve been trying to work on a kiting fighting style with no walk backwards key.

I mostly use strafing or running at a diagonally, but I tend to lose sight of some of the battle. I have look-behind bound to a key, but it doesn’t get me the view I want. I can pan the camera with left-mouse button, but it feels a little awkward.

Anybody play something like this? Any tips?

P.S. Thanks for all the suggestions on stuff like this. Over the last year, I’ve gone from keyboard turning and clicking skills to a really specific set of keybinds based on input here and in the Mesmerized podcasts.

You can activate shatter skills with no illusions out, right?

I was pondering using the Chaos grandmaster trait in a couple of ways with a phantasm build.
– Pop F2 and maybe F3 before casting any phantasms
– Whenever you use F1, F2, or F3 to shatter – go ahead and use the other 2

It still feels like PU is better, but it might be interesting.

Plus, regen when you pop distortion isn’t bad

First, thanks to Anet for letting us know when the feature release is coming and a bit of what is in it. I’m excited by the idea of new traits. I’m hopeful that it leads to a lot of theorycrafting and build variety. And it’s amazing how quickly people jump to complain…

Suggestion one – For Anet, maybe it’s better to release all the info on a particular area in one shot (e.g. all the new traits at once, all the sigil changes at once, etc). This might cut down on some of the noise where players compare one specific item in one class to another class. Maybe…

Suggestion two – I think it would be helpful if players tried to separate their feedback into concept and implementation (some posts do this). So for example, do you think the concept that guardians have a different option for surviving conditions is a good concept. And then, do you think the implementation of adding 300 vitality as a trait in Honor is a good way to implement.

Anyway, I appreciate the effort I can see in the scope of these changes already. I’m sure more balancing will be needed when players get to try these out. And I’m looking forward to learning more.

In addition to Illusionary Wave which can interrupt more targets than Magic Bullet, the Mirror Blade clone is created right next to the target. So if you shatter that clone, it’s much easier to interrupt than with a clone that has to run.

In addition, the greatsword has vulnerability and cripple conditions which benefit nicely from condition duration.

My friend and I are transferring to NSP tonight!

Looking forward to helping out

Did NSP end up 15th in the overall rankings? That should make the transfer free as of Tuesday, right?

Looks like my friend and I will transfer over in a few days Thanks very much for all the helpful information.

More old-guy music and pretty average WvW roaming play.
http://youtu.be/fUNzDuVSjlU
I point out a couple things in the thief fight and make plenty of mistakes (can’t imagine why I don’t dodge more…)

Anyway, I hope it’s entertaining – have fun!

Would it be possible to let characters who logout from captain’s airship be able to log back in there? Currently, if you logout there, you get a jumpy login experience where it tries to log you back in there and then goes to the Gendarin loading screen.

I would have no problem if you were required to have the ticket in your inventory to be allowed to stay in the airship on login.

Thx!

Thx Pyro. And thanks for all the great testing – Anet should send you nice giant jungle gummy worm:)

It’s nice to see they are far enough along to be able to say things that definitely are fixed in the feature release.

That’s awesome. Thanks for everyone’s hard work in creating a well-organized and constructive thread and actually testing things out for Anet. As someone who works in software, I love it when customers are willing to collaborate on identifying a problem.

Is there a date for the feature release? I had heard March 18, and then I thought they said something on one of the Friday twitch sessions about March 18 being a maintenance release but not a feature release.

Thx again!

8/10

This is my fifth MMO with a lot of hours invested. It’s my favorite by far. That may color my opinion of living world.

I work in software development and product strategy. I’m very impressed with the ability to juggle activities of multiple teams and deliver in these short cycles. It’s pretty incredible to do all this while getting ready to enter a major new market (and it would be very tempting to limit investing in the current customer base given the revenue model).

It amazes me how harsh people can be on something that was clearly a ton of effort and a huge amount of added value for the game as a whole – especially considering this is something that costs a one-time payment of $50.

I had fun. I played different segments to differing degrees. Sometimes I felt a little stressed when I decided that I had to get certain achievements. Especially toward the end, I really started looking forward to the next installment.

But mostly I’m really happy that the Anet team got up every day and worked hard to add something cool to the game. Thanks folks!

Thanks very much for the info. It’s really helpful. I should have added more to my question.

My friend and I aren’t transferring for the season – we’ve been looking to find a new permanent home for a while. If we go to a 13-15 server, I expect we’ll probably end up 7, 8 or 9 in the tournament (though it will fun to see if we can help our new home outperform). I’m hopeful that the Swiss-style tournament will mean we spend most of the season fighting servers near our level.

We’re actually looking for a server that’s competitive in their level in WvW and has good opportunities for roaming duo’s. We’re comfortable taking out camps and towers as a 2-man, so we don’t want to go to the very top tier. And we like to run into other roaming groups of 1 – 5.

The free transfer is really nice for us. I think it may cause a pretty big movement of experienced players in the 21-24 range up to the 13-15 range. Hopefully we’re able to help our new homes.

Looks like a friend and I will be moving to one of the servers ranked 13 – 15 on March 18. It seems likely those will be:
– Henge of Denravi
– Crystal Desert
– Northern Shiverpeaks

Can anyone give a quick comparison of the three? We spend most of our time in WvW, but play all aspects. Thx!

Well they took away the 100% condition proc on the duelist shot and put it back to 20% chance. It would be cool to get a little more here, but the range buff is quite nice.

I use it. The cast time is long, but once it’s up, it makes a big difference.

The only thing you might want to check when duoing with the thief is if the bounces hit your thief friend in stealth. That may give away the thief’s position to an enemy who is paying attention.

Thanks for the answers. I guess the only way to manipulate this is by line of site or pathing. I will have to try out the air summoning of iDuelist sometime

Thx much for linking that. Looks like that build should work fine paired with either shatter or phantasm Mesmer.

I tend to fight on the edge of a battle where possible, so it’s always going to be a little tricky to stay in sync with a partner who’s focused on getting into melee.

Just four fun fights – no amazing outnumbered battles

http://youtu.be/EvKm1QpmLCg

We were just testing out my friend’s upleveled guardian build as a duo with my phantasm Mesmer.

Sure – but it’s a duoing question. I’m looking for people who know the mechanics of both classes well, so they understand what I’m doing when I say that I’m doing a power phantasm build.

Since I know we have some very knowledgable and experienced players here, I’m hoping to find a couple who know both mesmers and guardians well.

But I’ll probably ask on guardian forum as well – thx!

I’m running a ranged power phantasm build (GS – Scp/Pis ) It uses PU just a bit (decoy and mass invis)

My friend is leveling up a guardian. Any suggestions on a build that’s ideal for him to pair with me? We do a lot of camps, occasionally we 2-man a tower, and fight other roamers.

Thx!

I duo a lot in WvW with a friend who is working on a guardian.

If I have a duelist out and close to the guardian when he does the F1 (virtue of justice), will the duelist cause burning on its next attack?

Thx!

One observation around pve and melee range – the Molten Alliance protectors seem to be designed to counter this. Maybe this mechanic has been in the game for a while, but I had never noticed it before. If you haven’t seen it, the protectors make a ring of fire on the ground. Everything inside that ring gets a fire shield that negates damage. You have to pull the mobs out of the ring to damage them.

So greatsword is handy for that. Maybe Anet will use this approach in other places to reduce the “stacking is the best tactic” advantage that melee has today

Changing scepter was one of the things the devs mentioned a few months back a possible goal to include in the balance patch. At the time, I think they mentioned wanting to keep in the nature of it being a “tricksy” weapon.

I think making the auto-attack go a bit faster would help a lot.

One “tricksy” thing I think you could do with the auto-attack is a little mini-teleport. Suppose that the last clone gets created pretty close to the caster, and when it gets created the caster and the clone swap spots. It’s not a huge change, and you still have to wait a fair amount of time before you get through the whole clone chain. But it would break targeting on you, and it does seem tricksy.

I think I would vote for not changing the greatsword. Possibly the only change to make would be to add a blast finisher to #3.

I think each skill has nice capabilities that can be applied well, and you have decisions with the skills. Do you try to line up targets for the piercing damage on the auto-attack? Do you try to catch the bounce on Mirror Blade or use it to hit something else? As someone pointed out, skill #3 is the one you can use to guess where the thief is.

Illusionary Wave is tricky because, I’m typically using it for the interrupt in PVE. I want to stop a skill, and I want the might stacks from bountiful interruption. I know that it works against a lot of the “stack many enemies and spin around with a sword” strategy that is common in PVE, so I try to push the enemies into walls when possible. When I’m playing with my warrior friend, I try to use voice chat to let him know the push is coming. But I’m sure it’s annoying for most players when their target moves. Still, I wouldn’t want to change it.

I’m using duelist, berserker and disenchanter. Each one seems to have rules about where they appear when cast, but I’m not sure how much I can influence it.

They all seem to never be summoned on a direct line between me and my target. The duelists seem to appear directly right or left of me or possibly on a 45-degree angle right or left of the line between me and my target (and perhaps a distance of about 200 away from me).

Zerker and disenchanter seem like they also appear somewhat to one side or another.

Is there anything I can do that controls this specifically? I’m asking in particular to try to spread out the placement so that they are less susceptible to AOE. Sometimes I will cast a phantasm, use the signet and cast a phantasm again, and I’m trying to figure out what creates the best separation. Thx!

I’m hoping they don’t change travelers at all. They seem to follow the pattern Anet is shooting for where benefits increase through to the 6th rune.

I suspect the reason they don’t want a lot of 2/2/2 is just to make it easier for new players learning the game. When I started playing, I remember it being confusing enough to get the concept of runes and increasing effects from them. Plus it gives you something that you can “achieve” when you get all six – for new players, it can be a real stretch to get six runes of the same type if they are expensive.

Couple other things that you might want to add

The duelist has a kind of nice pause after you cast and before it shoots. So if you’re starting a fight, you can put out the duelist and swap weapon sets before it starts the fight (and you don’t get the cooldown for weapon swapping). You can do this with lots of phantasms, but, especially if you’re traited for range, you often will not get attacked when you’re putting down the duelist. So it’s just a touch easier to stay out of combat and get the second phantasm up and still be able to swap back.

On the pure fun side, you can really see the health bar drop if the duelist unloads and all the bullets crit. Since I often play with scepter – pistol, I will frequently put out the duelist and then start confusing images. If all of that hits, it can be several thousand damage in about three seconds.

Thanks much for the help. We’ll hopefully sort it out soon!

If you are using the healing signet (which I’m trying hard to make work), you can get a very nice burst with duelist – heal – duelist (especially if you put out one other phantasm).

I think for damage, you have to look at your assumptions about what’s really going to happen in the fight. In my build, I expect the duelist to do 4000 – 5000 if all 8 shots hit. Then I expect about 2000 more damage from 6 bleed stacks (approx. 75% crit chance) if the stacks are allowed to go to completion. The swordsman can exceed this over time, but you have to assume that both of them last for the same duration. I find the duelist (especially traited) can stand outside of a lot of the AOE.

Magic bullet is nice for me because (again traited), it has a long range (so you can stop runners). It bounces between targets (so, I think… it can hit a stealthed target).

Basically, my build is designed for fighting from range, so pistol seems like the best choice. (And would probably be the better choice than scepter if it ever became a main-hand option.)

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, I may be generous when I call us average players. This is definitely not a video like Osi’s or Joe’s where my jaw hits the floor, and I just tell myself that I have a lot to learn.

It was a fun fight for my friend and I because it was a little chaotic and, in the end, it was a “success”. The opponents make a lot of critical errors. My apologies if you were one of the opponents – this isn’t to make fun of you – I have died hundreds of times worse than what happened to you here.

Lord Jim, you are totally correct. My point was that PU does not determine the fate of this battle. That trait barely affects the outcome – stealth makes a difference in getting away for sure – but not the PU trait.

I see tons of failures in my game play when I watch the video. The Disenchanter cast is one. Forgetting to use consumables is another. Here’s a handful of the other goofs:
- I don’t notice the Engi early enough. I only know he’s there because my friend tells me.
- I lose track of the Mesmer. Correspondingly, I eat the full Blurred Frenzy (I do manage to blink away from the Mind Wrack and decoy to reposition)
- We attack the warrior when he’s using his “walking dead” downed skill. I thought he rallied from killing something, but I just missed the giant red icon
- I fail to use the scepter block a couple times
- I run over the mines from the dead engi by the gate (twice!)
- We fight at the gate and don’t move back into the camp even though we’ve just flipped it. Then we wait too long to disengage. Then we go different directions when we disengage (and we don’t tell the necro – sorry about that Professor – I can’t type in chat during that time and we weren’t on voice together)
- I actually break off before I get the rez done on the warrior and have to come back…

I think we could have held that camp if we had just pulled back and fought better. We probably could have even circled back after the rez and at least put up a good fight. As it turns out, my friend and I were actually trying to do a bunch of fights and then stop to talk about them. So we had been taking a break after each fight to review the video while the fight was still fresh in our heads. So we probably ran away too early… but that’s why

Thx again – I love the feedback. I know I can get a lot better. My main point is that PU is not “god mode” for average players like me.

Thanks for the helpful answers I got to my last question about what level NA server to try for WvW roaming. Since I do a lot of my playing with a longtime friend, I thought I would record a quick video of the kind of WvW fights that seem most fun for us. (The opponents here are a bit low on armor and health, but the general level of challenge is about right.) You can see we do some things well and have plenty of room to improve. So we would ideally want WvW with plenty of 2v2 and 2v3 fights.

If you have a couple minutes to look at this, I’d love feedback on what tier these kinds of fights can happen in. My instinct is definitely not tier 1 and maybe not tier 2. But it seems like we need to decide pretty soon now. Thx!

Hi Redg – the quality on my first one was pretty bad as well. For this one, I recorded in Fraps and then I did an HD output in Sony Vegas studio at 60 frames per second. That made a 1GB file for the five minutes, but the quality is much better.

Osi – thx – I laughed when I went back and saw that. That’s a bunch of crit chance and crit damage lost. My friend and I were doing fights and then stopping to review the video. So before this fight, we had been spending about 20 minutes talking about staying on our targets and communicating with each other about the fight. So my food/oil ran out, and I just forgot to use it… That’s one of the best things about recording video – I can go back and see what I did wrong.

A warrior friend and I try to take a camp while enemies keep coming in. I hope you find it entertaining. My apologies to the necro for our bailout…

Besides just wanting to share what was a fun fight for me, I thought it might be helpful to show because I’m running a PU build (phantasm based with decoy and mass invis as the only stealth skills). This is totally different than PU condi builds.

Given all the PU conversation, I think this video is helpful in illustrating a few points:
- the stealth skills are probably the bigger impact than the PU trait – but I think they are supposed to feel impactful – they are an elite skill and a utility
- most of the outcome of these fights comes from the lack of armor and health of the opponents (and the fact that they come one or two at a time) than what PU does
- I would rate our skill level as average (my warrior friend plays less than I do, but I see many places where I’m screwing up and a few where I’m doing something helpful) – so PU isn’t letting us just passively wipe out the opponents
- PU does get me a couple of blocks in five minutes of fighting

Will be interesting to see the final notes, but some early thoughts:

- One goal was clearly to weaken the Blackwater build and the 25% torment reduction plus no more on-death effects from clone replacement does that – it was probably necessary due to the level of outcry

- Like Bunda, I’m a little bummed that apparently scepter is getting any improvement – I’m not really crushed by the torment change, but I was hoping it would get a little love

- The PU change probably falls in the same “response to outcry” kind of issue – I actually think I like it better now. If I hit Decoy when I’m getting hammered, I know I’ll have aegis.

- I like the temporal curtain change – particularly if nothing has changed about Travelers runes

- I’m once again tempted to try using Arcane Thievery

- I think Anet could generate a tremendous amount of goodwill if they got in one or two key bug fixes on this (like iWarden)

PU stands for the prismatic understanding trait that is at the grandmaster level in the chaos line. It extends stealth duration by one second and it grants one of three boons for every second you are in stealth.

Generally the complaining you see about it is from other players who feel it is overpowered. The complaints typically come down to three underlying reasons:
- they just don’t like stealth and complain about any use of stealth (and probably complain about thieves as well)
- they don’t like a particular build that uses the PU trait called the Blackwater build – this build has weaknesses if you bother to learn about it (including just running away) but when people mindlessly attack the clones in this build, they will lose
- they don’t like that one of the possible boons under stealth is aegis – so the Mesmer coming out of stealth will typically get a free block on the first attack

I think that’s a pretty fair synopsis

Thx much – very helpful.

I guess the immobilize was expiring as I blinked. It’s good to know that it’s not actually removed.

The question about picking a spot is whether you generally have a priority like:
- First choice is blink behind any current opponent
- Second choice is blink left or right
- Etc

In my limited use in fights so far, I’ve kind of just aimed for the nearest open spot that I think is somewhere close to 900 away and yet still in range because I’m usually using it when things are hectic. But maybe I should be trying to use it more strategically

I tried blink early (before the ground-targeted skill changes), and I have just recently started experimenting with it again.

I wanted to ask if there were any tips or suggestions particularly around these areas:
- How blink interacts with other skills (e.g. channeled casts, blocks, stomping, etc)?
- How you choose the target spot when you’re in the middle of a fight (any rules of thumb)?
- It seems like blink effectively removes the immobilized condition. Is that right? (I tried testing with a tar elemental)
- How you can tell if you’re going to end up on top of a ledge or at the base? Or any other rules of thumb around positioning the target (like line of site rules)
- I’m doing a phantasm build that focuses on fighting from range. For such a build, do you think the trait that gives faster recharge (24 second cooldown) on Blink is more valuable than the 3% per illusion damage reduction trait?

Any other fun tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated – thx!

Thx much for the answers

Trying to mix in the interrupts is definitely forcing me to look for more tells

I’m looking at adding mantra interrupts to my build (Mantra of Distraction). Thanks for any help on these.

What happens if you activate the mantra when:
- the opponent is blocking
- the opponent has aegis on
- the opponent is evading (e.g. blurred frenzy)
- the opponent has just gone into stealth (assuming you lose target – does it pick a new target if auto-target is on)
- the opponent is dodging
- you are in the middle of a dodge

I’m assuming you can’t activate if stunned, dazed or feared.

I have tested that you don’t need to be facing the target.

Thanks much!

These are probably easy…

- What happens if one Mesmer does scepter block while another Mesmer is attacking him with blurred frenzy?

- What happens if the unblockable mirror blade is thrown at someone with aegis up?

- How long do you have to wait after mirror blade hits to use distortion and have it work? (E.g. do you have to wait for the “illusion dot” to show on your UI) Does the blade keep bouncing if you F3 immediately after the first hit?

- Are there any skills with cast times with which you cannot use a mantra concurrently?

Prior to the change a couple weeks ago where illusions self-destructed when opponents went into stealth, it seemed like I could put phantasms on a gate and they would keep attacking. This was nice especially when trying to take a tower with two or three people because I could use the ram while the phantasms helped a little.

Now it seems less predictable if the illusions will attack at all, will attack only once, or will attack and keep attacking. Anyone having similar issues? I haven’t done a systematic test to try to prove out the issue. For sure it’s better now than when the change happened a couple weeks ago. But it would be nice to know how it’s expected to work now.