Guild Wars 2

Great videos – lots of fun to watch!

I tried signet of illusions for a while in season 1. Maybe I should try again…

I have mistake in the build link. It’s supposed to use mercenary amulet for a mix of condi and power and still getting some survivability

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhNqBmpBEgilnj6sACgDDdxynDoeQP0FF-TJhHAB0XGYgnAQu7PAwJBAA

This build is condition-focused, but the damage split in a pvp match tends to be around 65% condition and 35% direct damage.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhNqBmpBEgilnj6sACgDreQP0FFdxynDA-TJhHABdXGI39HA4kAMwTAAA

Messiah has some nice videos with several variants on this build. Here’s a nice overview one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfPt-3SgV80&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z135ixhbosjcsxt0a22ldnpaptu0sdx1r

This is my overview on the build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOraxmAYfOs

I guess one other point from my perspective. I never played the bunker mesmer build, so I didn’t have to give that up either. It just didn’t seem that fun to me. So I was playing condi shatter builds all last season.

The downside of that decision is that a lot of players expected the bunker build last season, so there needed to be a little chat before each match (and I stopped playing at ruby tier because that chat was just not that much fun)

I tried condi mesmer builds when Maim the Disillusioned and Perplexity Runes came out. It didn’t work for because it was slow (I was mostly roaming in WvW) and I couldn’t really chase anyone down (both my slow movement speed and the slow running illusions).

When chronomancer came along, that solved the slow base movement speed and gave superspeed to illusions. I also solved the illusion-generation problem without needing Deceptive Evasion. And that opened up taking Inspiration as a defensive/support option (but it also gives you more phantasm generation which gives more shatters and faster phantasm cooldowns).

Now with Mercenary amulet, there’s a set of stats that gives enough condition damage plus survivability. And the extra power can be useful as well.

So, for me, everything basically just fell into place. I never really played much power shatter (my roamer was a phantasm build), so I didn’t have to “give up” that play style.

Thx for sharing – fun stuff to watch!

After the “big” balance patch, they mentioned there would be another balance patch on Feb 23 (think it got mentioned on one of the Friday live chats). So that was what caused this post.

As it turns out, they made two more tweaks (reducing bristleback spikes and reducing damage coefficient on chill for reaper) just recently. So… maybe… there could be more small balance tweaks during the season

We’ll see

I made the thread to suggest changes that I thought could be done by Feb 23. It was almost certainly too late when I made the thread to get those changes in, but they seemed like the kind of changes that can be done quickly with low risk.

I think one of the problems Anet has when they announce there will be a balance patch is that they create expectations from the player base. Everyone who sees their class as under-powered expects some improvements (or a few people who really want to avoid power creep suggest that the most powerful classes get reductions). So when a class doesn’t get any changes, it mostly doesn’t meet the expectations of the player base.

Most likely Anet is better off not pre-announcing there will be balance changes unless they have a clear list of things they can and will implement for each class.

The most interesting question now in my mind is whether Anet thinks they are better or worse off by doing some balance tweaks within a season.

Since you’re using traveler runes, I’m guessing you don’t use Chrono specialization.

If you take Chrono, you can take the “Time Catches Up” trait. This gives your illusions superspeed on shatter. So if you have decent condi duration and maim the disillusioned, you can basically send missiles after the kiters. They might dodge a couple, but eventually you can usually connect with one. That starts to eat some health and make sure they stay in combat.

Druids can run forever.

Hey Sticker – what kind of condi build are you trying to play? It took a bit of practice, but I really like double-scepter plus shield and sword offhands. It gives you a lot of blocks and pretty rapid illusion generation.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cnknBdqhNqBmpBEgilnj6sACgDDdxynDoeQP0FF-TJhHAB0XGYgnAAAnEgc3fAA

My average damage is much closer to 300K in total with the condi shatter build and mercenary amulet. Even in this fight, you have to take out 1.5 Svanirs worth of health from my totals. Being able to apply 861 condi’s is also an outlier. Most fights for me have about 400 – 600 condi’s applied.

I know OP asked about power shatter, but I just wanted to give some perspective.

Any way you look at it, it feels like a tough challenge in a lot of pvp fights. I try to start by taking home, but if someone rushes it, it’s typically a long fight before I can cap it (or worst case – I lose). It feels rewarding when I can contribute to my team. I imagine if I was passably competent on some other profession, I could contribute more. But this is really the only class I play.

Cool – great fights. I love the explanations of what’s happening.

Did you stop using double-scepter with shield and sword offhand? I see you’re using staff here.

I’ve been using the condi build that Messiah has been showing in his videos.

I had a match on Niflhel tonight where I had a mix of team fights, a couple 1v1s, and a couple of Svanir kills (which I’m sure drive up the damage totals a lot – one was solo, one kill was with a teammate).

In total, I did about 334K condi damage (from 861 condis applied) and about 199K direct damage.

It is a fairly selfish build, but it still gave over 40K healing, 72 boons, and 86 condis removed from allies. I’ve never played a true support build, so I don’t know how that would compare.

While it’s always possible to find something to complain about, I just wanted to say I’ve had a couple of really fun pvp matches in the last couple of days. A couple of days ago, we lost on Foefire with a lord kill by the other team with one of their attackers down and a couple of us defending. Just a few more seconds holding out, and we would have won.

Tonight, I got matched up with a three-man guild team and one other solo player on Niflhel. The match was really even throughout. Along with another defender, we lost a team fight on our home point. It looked like were sure to lose, but our teammates came in and took back home. Still the score was about 483 to 480 for the opponents with none of them in sight and both sides ticking once per second. Svanir popped and a teammate and I rushed him. We won 515 to 493 with that kill.

There are lots of games that get lopsided quickly, but those close games where a couple of key moves wins it are the most fun part of the game for me.

Hopefully some other folks are having fun matches, and I hope that the season turns out to have a lot of fun matches.

Hi @YaYa – as it turns out, I’m actually old. Most likely, I’m more than twice as old as you. And I’ve managed software development for decades. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be wrong or naively hopeful about changes being made.

But I do have a perspective about building and maintaining complex software products. I understand a lot of the tradeoffs that happen as you’re trying to build, test and release something that has many different kinds of users and many different priorities.

And I fundamentally believe that I’m better off trying to offer constructive suggestions than just providing criticisms. When I talk to customers of my products, sometimes they take the road of being critical (yeah, my software has problems too – all software does). In the end, the only way I can help those customers is if we focus on what can be done.

So this post is about looking for little things that would at least show the spirit of trying to make improvements for the class while keeping the effort and risk of disrupting the balance low. And I think it’s awesome if you have some ideas that might help with that goal.

I think one meaningful boost is also fine. I guess the challenge is picking which one – maybe make alacrity a bit better?

I think trimming back on classes that clearly seem to be in the lead is also good. That probably wouldn’t be enough to get warrior more competitive, but it seems like it would help if there were clear tweaks to be made.

I’m only speaking from my perspective. I see some things that seem to be challenges, and I try to offer viewpoints and suggestions that might make them better.

I always find it odd that people will take the time to just say something is bad and not offer analysis and tangible suggestions. When someone who works for me behaves this way, I take the time to explain to them how they can be more effective. The forums don’t really have anyone to do that – I’m guessing it makes it a lot harder for Anet to get constructive ideas and useful suggestions here.

First, thanks very much to Anet, the shoutcasters, and the players. I enjoyed watching.

Second, these matches are much more fun to watch than the bunker matches early in the season.

Third, I really hope that the fundamental pvp game is not changed. It’s currently my favorite part of the game. I like the complexity and the pace. As an average pvp player, I feel like I can learn and get better for a long time in this game mode.

I think there might be some good parallels in thinking about how football (American rules) is televised to try to see how presenting GW2 pvp might work better for fans.

First of all, most football fans can’t tell you most of what’s happening on the field. In a given play, there are dozens of variables and there is action all over the field. As you learn more about the sport, you can recognize offensive and defensive formations and plays. And even though you can basically have a good chance of following the most important action by just watching the ball, you need replays and multiple camera angles to make sense of it. And what makes football so awesome as a TV viewer is that there is time in between plays where they can show you more detail on what really happened (and you can argue with a friend on whether it really was pass interference)

GW2 PVP doesn’t have basically any gaps. As a shoutcaster, it must be insanely difficult to pick the most entertaining and meaningful conflict to cover and be able to explain it clearly. As I listen, really the only things I can follow are who is being focused on, whether their health is low, and whether they have any heals/utilities on cooldown that might help them survive. The shoutcasters seem to do a pretty reasonable job of predicting if someone is going to to into downstate and whether they are likely to get rezzed.

So what can realistically be done to make this work better for the viewer?

First, I think a little more can be done before and after the match. Before the gates open and the splits happen, someone could do some starting analysis to say what players are likely to go to what spots, why they would go there, and what kinds of early battles might happen to shape the way the game will go. After the match, it’s probably hard to do this quickly, but it would be cool to get a “match moment” video recap. This is like the replay in football. The analysts play back a meaningful fight in the match and they outline the moves that made it turn out that way. Could this be done at a detailed level in a reasonable amount of time? I’m not sure. It would be cool to get this even if it was only available as video days later.

Second, I wonder if there might be a relatively small amount of UI work to create a view that makes it a little easier to consume. One possibility is to pull the minimap, the kills summary, and any advertising over to a column on one side of the screen. Maybe this mini-map could be tweaked slightly to indicate percent capped on each point (so viewer could actually see the points getting capped or decapped from this mini-map). Possibly, you could add in a “big hits” indicator in this area as well that might show skills that had a huge impact (just name of the character, the skill and the output). I’m not sure how practical this all is both in terms of effort and in terms of making it easier for the viewer.

The reality is the things that make this game mode and GW2 combat fun for a lot of people also make it difficult to describe or to follow in realtime.

I tried to focus this post on changes that seem like they should be technically straightforward to implement (but you never know when there might be unexpected constraints in the code).

In the short term, I think there are only two interesting questions:
- What changes are possible and make sense for Feb 23?
- How much change should happen within a pvp season?

I actually think basically everyone is better off by allowing balance changes to continue during a season. Most likely, the best approach is where you have the biggest changes before the season, modest changes early in the season, and as few of changes as possible as the season comes to an end.

I watched a fair amount of the pvp finals. I think there was one mesmer playing.

That’s not the absolute picture of how good mesmers are now. I think there were no warriors, and even though I don’t play warrior, I hope they get more boosts than mesmer.

I’m guessing any changes that will happen on Feb 23 have already been done, so I’m probably too late with this list. On the other hand, I actually think more people would be happy with balance tweaks happening even if they came after the season started.

So this is my list of small and simple changes that I think would help mesmers without unbalancing things:

- Change F2 cooldown base time to 20 sec
- Increase illusion health (just remove pvp/wvw split from pve)
- Decrease shield cooldowns since alacrity is reduced (tides of time 40 to 36, echo of memory 30 to 26)
- Decrease non-elite well cooldowns all by 10%
- Decrease staff 4 cooldown from 35 to 30
- Decrease arcane thievery and mirror image cooldowns from 45 to 36 seconds

Those all look like adjustments that could be made very quickly, they aren’t massive shifts, and they will help make mesmers more effective with active use of skills.

Hmmm… I had basically decided that playing mesmer was going to make me unpopular enough on pvp ranked teams in the next season that I had started working on a crusader’s ranger alt.

Now it’s a bit unclear if crusader’s amulet will be available.

I guess if there were a couple tweaks on Feb 23 to make mesmer a little more viable (more illusion health, shorter f2 cooldown, shorter cooldown on chrono-specific skills like shield and wells given the loss of alacrity), I would be just as happy going back to mesmer

Otherwise, I’m stuck for right now trying to figure out what / if I have a build I want to play in this pvp season.

Eager to hear the final decisions on crusaders and any balance changes

I did a little testing. It works like Pyro said.

Whichever defender does the “illusion of defense” attack and procs the protection effect gets the damaged transferred to him.

The number of retaliation hits tends to be very close to the number of friendlies who are struck by the attack. Even when there’s an apparent cleave attack that seems like it hits 3 phantasms, I’ve never seen a case where you get 5 retaliation entries in the combat log (direct retaliation from all 3 phantasms, plus retaliation from transferred damage of two of the phantasms to the one who was giving the defense proc).

So nothing seems to be broken or over-powered. It is a bit tricky to test – at least the way I tried. Here’s some video

https://youtu.be/T3gLgQL5egI

Has anyone ever tested to see what happens if you have multiple illusionary defenders out at the same time?

In particular, I’m wondering if damage is transferred to only one of them or gets split with both.

And I’m wondering how retaliation from persisting images works if you have multiple out.

Thx!

Thx! I’m looking forward to your video.

I included the team fight section mostly to show just how lost I can get in those battles. It’s a lot easier if a target gets called. Since I’m pretty much always playing solo queue, it varies a lot in terms of coordination.

If I feel like more of a liability than a help in a team fight, it really limits what I can do to help my team.

Messiah’s videos are better than mine, but I wanted to put in a couple of notes in the walkthrough of the build as well as show what gameplay looks like for me as a pretty average player.

Have fun!
https://youtu.be/VOraxmAYfOs

Very cool! You’re videos are really fun to watch.

The issue with revenant’s immobilizing you and no movement skills working happens to me too. I found the answer is to type /sit and that breaks it – very frustrating

I made an updated video with my (much less good) game play and explanation. I’m linking to all of your videos in the comments

Played around 8 – 10 games last night. UI said average queue time was 45 seconds the times I remembered to look. Had a couple of basically instant joins and a couple of queue times that went over 3 minutes (but none that went over 5 minutes that I recall)

Matches varied quite a bit from 500 vs 150 (both wins and losses) to ones that were closer. Definitely can get a lot of the same profession. I was a mesmer in a 3-mesmer match as well as getting paired with 3-thieves in one match.

Overall, seems like a good tradeoff for a (I think) mid-level player like me.

Your observations about the roles and fights you can play are really similar to mine.

If I get a point capped, I generally feel like I can defend it against one attacker. Necros and scrappers are hard to stay on the point long enough, but usually I can do it.

If I don’t get the point capped before the opponent comes (usually home), then necro, scrapper, ele, and druid can make it a real pain to get the thing capped.

If I come into the mid fight right after capping home, I can usually contribute a good amount before I get focused. But in any fight with more than two people, I feel like I really draw a lot of fire. It’s tough in pugs because I feel bad disengaging, but it’s probably the right thing to do.

It’s still a fun build for me in unranked solo queueing, but it’s hard to see why a team would choose to have this build.

Anyway, thanks again for the videos and notes!

Thx – another great video!

I really like how you explain what’s happening in the fights. I still need to work a lot on my awareness of the opponent.

Your prior video convinced me to take the phantasm retaliation trait and use Ether Feast as the heal. That’s been a really good change – thx!

Nice video!

I definitely spent a long time working trying out variations for the third utility slot and the rune set. I might go back and give tormenting runes another shot.

One thing I tried for a while is signet of midnight as a utility. The extra 20% condition duration is great once the opponents run out of condi cleanses. And a stun plus blind is a nice active skill.

Thanks for sharing the video – it’s very fun to watch!

Glad you’re having fun!

I’ve tried phantasmal disenchanter. It’s great for group support and nice to pull boons off the enemies. The cast time is just a little long for me. But I keep experimenting, so maybe I’ll come back to it.

Thx!

The dual-scepter idea has definitely been posted in builds previously. I just spent some time thinking about what I get out of staff, and decided I would rather have the scepter with the cooldowns on the 2 and 3 skills in combination with a different off-hand.

I’ve been experimenting with rune set and my third utility slot for a couple weeks (I started testing as soon as the Mercenary amulet was announced). For me, it was important to get damage up and still keep the inspiration line. Berserker runes and well of calamity seem like the best choices so far (the well helps make up for cover conditions I lost by dropping staff).

There may not be a role for a build like this on an organized team. It’s not the best bunker, it’s not the best burst to +1 a fight, and there are better support builds. But as a build to bring into a solo queue pvp match, I’ve been finding it fun.

Hopefully, it’s fun for others to try out as well.

I’ve been having fun with this hybrid damage build in pvp.

https://youtu.be/zDG08dgwRgs

Video contains:
- Build overview
- Team and solo fights
- Post-match statistics
- 80’s music…

Have fun!

Generally, I had been finding ele’s easier when playing condi shatter since the Tuesday patch. Last night, however, I ran into an ele where I really had trouble getting him down. I haven’t looked through the video yet to see the issue, but my guess is that I just didn’t queue up the cc to follow the direct damage push

For sure, playing a build that only has three primary conditions, it’s not a quick fight.

Lots of unhappy posts in the last day. Here’s the thing that’s better for me since the patch – nobody in pvp is expecting me to play a specific build.

I like working on builds, experimenting and playing with them. When there was a clearly best bunker mesmer build, it was a bummer to deal with people who only wanted that build. Last night, I tried out my hybrid build and nobody complained. In fact, one other mesmer was also trying a hybrid build. In half a dozen pvp matches, I had fun and never felt like there was some other profession that was completely overwhelming me.

I’m still trying variants, but this one tends to produce a very even split between condi and direct damage as well as being quite survivable (the real build uses mercenary amulet but it’s not in the build editor).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cn0nBlphNqBGqBEgiFnj6MAGgEDtxesEouQT0GF-TJhHABnt/Q3lBG4JAAwJBAA

I think it’s a totally normal question to ask as you get started in WvW. For sure, I spent a lot of my early WvW time learning how to take camps. With some of my old builds, taking a T3 camp solo was a very tedious thing.

This is an upgraded one that I did with a condi chrono build a while back. I don’t use this build any more, but you can see that with very high uptime on blocks and dire armor, you can kind of just sit there. Most likely this doesn’t work as well today after the alacrity change.

The patch notes say:
Mental Defense: The cooldown on this trait is no longer affected by Signet of the Ether.

I think the reason this trait was affected was that it was based on iDefender cooldown

Here’s my question:
- Is this trait’s cooldown still affected by Persistence of Memory or Illusionists Celerity?

Thanks very much for all the guidance!

I realize there often isn’t a single obvious answer for all these scenarios, but it really helps me to see the thinking everyone does when making these decisions.

Thx again!

I’d like some suggestions on how I should be thinking about some specific scenarios that happen a lot.

As background, I anticipate playing a hybrid condi/power mesmer once the Jan 26 patch goes live. I’ve been testing something similar for the last week, and I generally feel like I can take most professions 1v1 (though some fights can take quite a while in the current setting). I’m always solo queing, and I typically start by going to home.

If I’m on home and one opponent comes, I always stay and try to win the fight and the point. (I think this is always the best strategy, but I’m open to suggestions.)

If two opponents come, currently I try to stay and defend the point as long as possible. This almost a guaranteed death. How should I be thinking about this?

If three opponents come, should I always leave? In this situation, I can see how having portal would be a huge help. I basically never use portal today because it’s tricky to coordinate with a random group.

Last scenario – let’s say I try to hold out against a 1v2, but help doesn’t make it in time and I die. When I respawn, how should I decide where to go?

These all make sense to me.

For sure, there’s a difference in player skill between players who can choose which skill to use at which times and players who “budget” their key skills should be rewarded.

But it’s fun to use your skills. So if there are skills that you never take or rarely use because of the cooldowns, I think it makes more sense to trim down those times.

Yeah, I’ve been trying to play with Disenchanter for the last couple of weeks.

It’s tough in pvp. I really have to think about whether it’s worth trying to cast it which feels really odd for a utility slot.

I’ve been watching my “boons removed” stat in pvp matches since I started trying to use it. It’s quite rare that I get above 10 boons removed in a whole match.

I would happily take an additional second on the casting interval for disenchanter to use its attack in exchange for 0.5 second faster cast time.

We know about 5% increase to attack speed for this trait.

Here’s an idea for a small, but nice buff to add to this trait:

If your 6th pulse of Confusing Images hits, apply 5 seconds of poison.

The 20% cooldown is nice, but only affects two skills. The 20% attack speed is nice, but it’s a very small step up from 15%.

So maybe this is just the perfect malicious icing to add to the cake

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past.
>>> Typically roaming solo or with one to two others. Sometimes joining up with bigger groups. Mostly I took camps and fought other roamers – sometimes I would solo a tower. The nice thing was that there were always 7 potential “highly-accessible” camps to the way points (3 home bl, 2 on each of the other bl)

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all.
>>> I rarely play on EB

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
>>> Typically start on an enemy bl and just sweep the southern edge to do the dailies. Sometimes I join up with a bigger group. Occasionally, I’ll build a cata and solo one of the south towers.

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you?
>>> The only thing that’s really changed is the need for enough CC when soloing the towers. The big thing is that it feels a lot less common to run into other roamers on the south edge of the bl. So there seem to be fewer 1v1, 2v2, 1v2 kinds of fights.

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
>>> Camps are about the same. Towers depend a lot on upgrade level. It’s actually easier to take a tower with minimal walls now – particularly because, many times, there are no defenders.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved?
>>> I think it’s a little better because of the resource nodes in camps and towers

If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards?
>>> Chrono elite is great for roaming – built-in run speed

Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
>>> In it’s current state? Not much. The reward chests with the experience boosts are nice because I use them in pvp

How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
>>> I’ve mostly moved away from long sessions. The infrequency of player combat makes it less exciting. It feels like it takes a long time to get to the north part of the map, so I rarely go. Over the last couple of months, I’ve switched so that the majority of my playing time is in pvp.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
>>> It feels like having more people on each BL would be the biggest thing. The other thing is that north-south travel feels really slow. Maybe I just haven’t spent enough time finding the best paths, but it feels like it’s often not worth the journey.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
>>> In theory, the oasis events really focus action in the middle periodically which could be balanced by coordinated teams working around the edges. In practice, I think I would tell a new WvW player to go to EB to start

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
>>> If you’re just trying to do dailies, run along the south edge. If you’re looking for fights, try the middle during oasis event or, probably better, go to EB

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
>>> Enemy bl

@Pepsi I wouldn’t worry about lack of experience. Or even worry that much about making something viable – at least to start. I don’t think about this as making builds for other people – make something that you like.

I played a power-focused phantasm WvW roamer build for many months. It wasn’t a common build and certainly not the “best”, but it was fun.

The build editor lets you explore a lot of ideas, and you can test them in pvp unranked pretty easily.

You can start from almost any place. The easiest thing to do is start from an existing build like you find on metabattle or maybe one you see posted on the forums here and then see how you might change it. But you can definitely build one up from scratch.

When I’m making builds for myself, I have a list of things I try to check. Sometimes that list forces the build into certain directions.

So for example, I tend to get myself into a little too much trouble sometimes. My roaming time in WvW has trained me into thinking I can take a 1v2. So until I get that out of my head, I need my build to have decent defense. Decent defense for me means I have to have some toughness, I need good condition clearing, and I have to have a couple stunbreaks. So that tells me a lot right there.

You might find that it just isn’t that enjoyable to play without the ability to produce a big damage spike. In that case, you need a way to get power, precision and ferocity up.

Anyway, here’s my checklist for stuff I can’t live without in a build:
- Reasonable toughness
- Reasonable health pool (but can live with low health with good healing and high toughness)
- Minimum one stunbreak, ideally 2 (one of these is always Blink)
- Lots of condition clearing ability
- Out of combat movement speed (this means taking the Chrono specialization or else certain runes or signet of inspiration)
- Some way to create offensive pressure in a short period (so in power builds, this means a way to burst the attacks – in the condi builds I’m trying right now, it’s a combination of ability to stack condis plus some lockdown pressure)

For me, this set of constraints is leading me to builds that use Chronomancer and Inspiration specializations (Inspiration gives a lot of condition clears and extra healing). So if you get a build defined that far, you can start looking for synergies and experimenting with little tweaks where you swap in a different utility or weapon or sigil for a while and see how it goes.

Anyway, I hope you give it a try. Have fun!

Thinking about builds and testing them is actually the most fun part of the game for me.

So I’m always theorycrafting. Right now, I’m just experimenting based on the information we do have (and thus my post about what I’m currently planning on for pvp when the Jan 26 update comes). It’s possible there will be other updates, and I’ll need to change my ideas. But that’s the fun part for me.

I made a post earlier about how I enjoyed this pvp season, so I thought I would follow up quickly with how it’s gone from there.

Like I said before, I played maybe 100 unranked pvp games in the four months leading up to the tournament. Then I decided to try some ranked matches. There were ups and downs, but it was mostly very fun and I made it to ruby.

But I realized once I got into ruby, it wasn’t as much fun. My skills and knowledge weren’t up to where many other ruby players were, and people got really bummed about losing pips. Also, in ruby, people really expected everyone to be playing a meta build (which I don’t) So I switched back to playing unranked.

In general, I’m having a lot of fun in unranked. There are huge ranges of skill and knowledge, but generally nobody takes it too seriously. There are times after a string of lopsided matches (either wins or losses), where I wish there were closer fights. But I’m having fun testing different build ideas and learning more about the maps and the rotations.

I was in an unranked match today with two other mesmers. One other teammate was concerned that we were all bunkers. As it turned out, none of us were. And our team managed to win a pretty close match by finding a good split with only about 100 points to go. It was really fun to be able to play how I wanted with people who were playing how they wanted to play – and to find a way to be successful doing it.

One final footnote – after a bunch of time primarily in pvp, I went back to my previous favorite game mode – roaming in wvw. In general, the fights there were just not very interesting compared to pvp.

Anyway, the point is that I hope some people are having fun just playing to compete against other players without worrying too much about the leagues. When the league restarts in February, I plan to play ranked again. But I’ll stop again if it reaches a point where it’s not fun. I’m not sure the game has the population to support it, but what would be perfect for me is a mode like “ranked but no pips at stake” where people could get matched with players of similar skill, but it would be more relaxed like unranked.

I’ve been testing a build like this for several days now (actually using Rabid amulet).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAre7cn0nBlphVoBGqBEgiFnjCtx2nE4MAGgEruQT0GF-TJhHABAcSAeZ/huLDMwTAAA

On January 26, the plan is to use the new Mercenary amulet with this build.

Basically, it’s a condi-shatter build, but it gets some nice benefits from the power part of Mercenary. It’s quite good against condi classes. It’s rare that I take more than 25K condi damage in a whole pvp match (I’m doing all my testing in unranked – your mileage may vary).

The blocks are really fun for me. They give defense, damage and illusion generation all in one skill. I don’t really know how many attacks are unblockable. I’m learning quite a bit about that… the hard way… lol. I actually need to use my dodges more because I tend to focus on the blocks.

A constant mainhand scepter means the #2 block is rarely more than 5 seconds away and all attacks are 20% faster (so kind of a mini-quickness). The 3 skill comes back soon enough that I don’t mind whatever I would lose from a weapon swap. With 15% quickness, the 3 skill feels totally different than without it. The change to 20% hopefully will make it even smoother.

I find I generally have enough illusions. So I don’t think deceptive evasion and energy sigils are really required. It’s clearly not as bursty as a power build, but when you mix in gravity well with continuum shift, you can definitely pressure people. With a rabid amulet, diamond skin eles are hard. Hopefully this is better with mercenary amulet (though the low variety of condis this build produces means the new diamond skin will be tough).

Here’s a really short video with one fight against a thief just to show possible damage (but with rabid in this build). https://youtu.be/qyGdakxBYzI (Yeah, I know, it’s an unranked fight, the thief hits every block, I never dodge – it’s just to give you a sense of the possible damage).

In test unranked pvp fights, it tends with rabid, it tends to do between 100K and 200K condi damage and around 50K direct damage (that should go up nicely with Mercenary) in the match. It gives out a decent amount of healing and condi removal, so it’s not all selfish.

I’d love to get some feedback and see if anyone else is trying something similar.

Thx!

Sorry, I mean Restorative Mantras trait – the one that heals AoE when you finish charging a mantra

Just to give this some context, what I was trying to do was see if one of Pyro’s old PVE concepts could possibly fit into the new, more lethal pvp.

I have a condi shatter build I’ve been playing that I like. It has mantra for healing and harmonious mantras trait. So with the new mercenary amulet, I was wondering if mantra of pain might be something I could fit into my rotation and get a decent damage return on and another heal that was frequently available (but probably too slow to cast)

Anyway, thx again for the help

Thx Alpha. I’ve been trying to measure using the 15% currently, but I don’t have an easy way to go precisely through the videos I’ve been recording to test.

I know most people are bummed about the announcements, but the 15% attack speed buff on malicious sorcery is pretty useful for me. The scepter performs so much nicer as a weapon and getting faster casts on other skills really helps.

Since the build I’m working on right now is already in the inspiration line and using the mantra heal, I’ve been trying to work out whether adding one more mantra might help. A 2.2 second recharge on the mantra is still a long time though…