Guild Wars 2

Hello all, I would like to put a shout out on the official forums for anyone experiencing craaaazy lag. I would like to see if it’s just me or if it is server wide.

I have a nvidia gtx 860m graphics card, an i7 chip, 8gb of ram and im managing 8fps on the lowest graphics settings in GW2 atm, what is going on. Is my computer dying or is gw2 dying?

Is it all just me or am I going crazy, I only just got this computer last week because my last comp died.

The other thing to bear in mind is that alot of mesmer traits are changing and these changes will be coming into effect before the release of heart of thorns.

Hello all. I’m curious about the new grand master trait being added to our dueling trait-line, “Mistrust”. The skill fact currently reads: “When you interrupt a foe inflict confusion in an area around them”. An interrupt will apply 2x (6sec) confusion in an AOE around the target.The AOE confusion currently has a radius of 240 and a limit of 5 people. Also, the skill has no internal cool down.

My question is this, if one were to proc an AOE interrupt using chaos storm, mantra of distraction, or a traited diversion shatter would the effect chain with each simultaneous interrupt?

Example
Person A, B, C, D, E and F, are standing in a group. Persons A, B, and C are unlucky enough to be interrupted by mantra of distraction, thus leaving persons A, B, and C with 4 stacks of confusion and persons D, E and F with 6 stacks of confusion.

Persons A, B, and C do not directly apply confusion to themselves due to being interrupted but are affected by their compatriots being interrupted while the rest of the group is inflicted by all 6 confusion stacks.

Furthermore, does the trait apply confusion to the interrupted foe as well. It must do, otherwise it would be a useless skill in a 1v1 scenario.

Do you think this is what is meant by the skill fact and do you think this is how they intend for it to work?

Poliator.7021:

OP, if you encountered this Guild doing that kind of thing, you can do two things:

A. Go to Unranked Queue, which is unlikely you do, because you said you like to do your dailies quickly. Or,

B. Simply, go out of that map and search another hot-join server. There is hundrends of them and I don’t believe that a guild can cover them all. You simply have to go to the server list and search for one match you can enter: you don’t have to rely in the “Practice Match” button.

Sorry for you to get a guild group like that, trolls gonna troll. But I don’t think ANet can do anything about it, it’s the nature of hot-join.

About doing something while in Queue for Unranked and Ranked… they eliminated the possibility of hot-joins because a good amount of the 4vs5 were caused by loading times, crashes between loads, et cetera. So I think it’s unlikely to come, because the even *changed the name to Practice Arena, and not “Hot Join” *

Thanks for the advice. I was aware of the ability to change pvp servers but I wasn’t aware that I had to sift through the pvp server list just to actually be matched randomly with other people. I assumed that was part of their matchmaking process but I guess I was wrong.

Forgive me, I’m being sarcastic again (I really do appreciate your advice though, it’s very kind and well meaning)

My post really isn’t about complaining about guild groups in “practice matches” it’s about the matchup system. The fact that I encounter the same people across consecutive games is my point. A random practice pvp mode should employ some element of RNG not me sifting through a pvp server list like it were 1999. If they can successfully implement rng into many other aspect of the game why can’t they do the same for “practice matches”.

Either it’s chance that I see the same people and hotjoin matchups truly are random but just lacking in population or it is not random in which case it should be because that would make it more user friendly and less lists of “100s of pvp servers”. It’s 2015 yo and well past their honeymoon stage, I don’t want to have to click through “100s of pvp servers” some of which are empty, dueling servers or private arenas.

I guess my drunk self can’t have it all.

ps. The loading crash excuse is umm interesting. What is more important. Bore people to death while they wait in ranked/unranked queues or fix the issue with loading crashes.

So I know hotjoin is a hot mess usually but its a quick way for me to do my pvp dailies and try random-as builds just for funsies while wvw is slow and I’m inebriated

Tonight I witnessed something very strange that I don’t normally see too often in hotjoin (maybe it’s just me). A guild group trying to farm unorganized groups in hotjoin for 7-8 games now and counting………………………………………………………………………

Umm, okay cough [cough][POOR][cough] where is the skill in that? Fair enough though, if you need the practice but still, there’s a part of me that isn’t okay with that. Perhaps I’m just too uppity about that sort of thing but if I were in a guild that did that I would feel kind of…well you know…bad. Kind of defeats the purpose of hotjoin.

Anyway, this is my infantile attempt to complain about boohoo-anet-why-you-do-this. The ‘do-this’ in this case is why is it that when I’m drunk and want to play hotjoin I get paired with almost the exact teams and vs the exact same people. Is the population of the pvp community that likes to punish themselves by playing hotjoin that small?

Furthermore, while not inebriated, is it possible for people waiting in ranked and unranked queues to drop in and out of hotjoin games while they’re waiting and give them something to do? After all, wasn’t that the point hotjoin. With a name like Hot…Join it sound like it to me.

Finally, I would like to point the shame stick at any guild groups who prey on the likes of me who is preying on the likes of other people in hotjoin. You’re a fish too big for this tank so kindly f….go away.

Oh that’s right this is the internet so let me set up my cross first before I finish so that I can be crucified.

Edit: Upon closer inspection I was rambling a bit, highly sarcastic, and…other things. I would like to generally voice my opinion that Anet needs to make the distinction between the game PVP modes quite clear.

As mesmer is a class with multiple builds that utilize stealth what are your opinions on the new Dragon Hunter trap called “Light’s Judgment”. I will attach the image from dulfy below.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gw2-dragonhunter-trap-skills2.jpg

In it’s current iteration the unlucky foe who steps into this trap gets shot with a giant beam of light that applies:

• Instant 25 vulnerability that pulses every second for 10 seconds,
• 1000ish base damage every second, and
• 1 second of reveal pulsing every second for 10 seconds.

Perhaps they should change this specialization’s name from Dragon Hunter to Thief Hunter because in the stream it looked like once the trap is triggered the pulses follow you with a giant beam of light. 10 seconds of reveal on a thief…OUCH. Mesmer too, to a lesser extent though.

To me this skill seems more like it should be an elite skill because it seems so punishing, Basically the minute a thief or shatter mesmer walk into this trap against a medi style dragon hunter they’ve sealed their fate.

I think this skill is just as powerful, if not more so, than their elite skill and anet should balance it accordingly. But, I am willing to make a compromise if anet agrees to leave float on gravity well and they increase each gravity well’s pulsing damage to 2000. lol.

What are your thought people?

Thanks for the mature response.

Guardians havr better damage, better sustain and better support so stop comparing apples and oranges. Thats the translation I would go for.

Some people that have been complaining about the dragonhunter have been trying to compare it to mesmer and chronomancer buffs. Just don’t.

Mesmer has been one of the least played professions since the beginning of the game because all we bought to our teams were veil and reflects. We were a niche class with very buggy skills and our damage relied heavily on purple clones of ourselves that died in an instant at the mere whiff of an aoe.

In pve, mesmer is horrible irrespective of niche situations where our reflects are beneficial. In pvp, very few players have mastered the class competitively and the only reason teams would take a mesmer is for portal because theives are better at peeling and spiking and have better mobility than shatter mesmer.

In wvw we are only valued for our veil.

We are recieving a buff mostly but in most mesmers eyes we are finally being brought up to the same level as a lot of other classes. We are finally receiving the trait rework that anet promised 3 years ago.

Guardians have had their problems too but dont even begin to compare the two classes because guardians are always asked to the prom while mesmers are stuck dancing with their cousins.

If youre still cranky, come join the butterfly army.

Knighthonor.4061:

I dont care about the name. DragonKnight would been better but I give it a pass. My problem is TRAPS…..

We could have got more Spirits or something from Rangers, but no we get TRAPS,,, very unGuardian-like…..

Man imagine if we could summon Ghostly Knight Spirits that follow us into battle and protects us? That could have been so much cooler.

We could have got a:

*Wizard Ghost- that deals ranged damage and CC.

*Knight Ghost – that deals melee damage and provides reflection fields, taunts, and protection to allies.

*Monk Ghost – that deals ranged damage, but is converted into healing to nearby party members, and provides cleansing and Boons. (this could been our Heal skill)

with a cool Elite skill that mixes with the spiritual concept.

You already have skills and utilities that do all of the above. Why not use those.

Once people begin to realise they don’t actually have to take traps and they don’t actually have to use a longbow their attitudes might change. The virtue changes alone seem interesting.

TriggerSad.2597:

You know that the people that were cheering for and hoping for it, and the people not happy that they’re getting it aren’t the same people, right?

Hehe, I know. I was only trying to make the point that some people should wait until Friday before they let the crocodile tears flow.

cranos.5913:

Because after 3 years of playing, our class doesn’t change at all. We’ll still be playing the exact same builds as now with the exact same utilities. Sure, maybe lb is useful in pvp, but still with utilities we have already. Besides, “more condi” remains to be seen since traps are NOT a reliable source of dmg.

But we don’t know what the specialization actually looks like. Wait…. ARE YOU FROM THE FUTURE!!!?

Guardians before announcement:

“Wah, where is my condi?Wah, where is my long range weapon?”

Guardians after the announcement:

“Wah, condi, wah ranged weapon, wah, st00pid name”

You guys already have strong positions in pvp, pve, and wvw. Why aren’t you excited about getting specialisation skills that make your class more intricate and unique. Or would you prefer adding another 5 shouts to your utility bar?

Although we haven’t seen any of this in detail yet it seems as though you’re getting exactly what you’ve all been calling for, condi and more viable range.

Be happy. <- smile like this.

For anyone who is inspired to join the mesmer cause but not confident in their ability to run around in a zerg as a mesmer, an amazing player “Caos Danzante” took the time to make a series of training videos. He goes through the basics, positioning, skill usage and enemy movement awareness mainly from the perspective of a mesmer but not always.

Even if you consider yourself able to hold your own and support your team members it’s still nice to refresh your memory of the basics every now and again.

How To Play WvW as a Group

• Lesson 1 – What the hell is going on?
• Lesson 2 – Why do people die? Positioning
• Lesson 3 – Like gods walking among mere mortals
• Lesson 4 – Hit ’em where it hurts

Bear in mind that this is pre-stability changes.

Sebrent.3625:

Mass Invis has a base cooldown of 90s.
Mass Invis has a base duration of 5s and works on up to 10 targets.
With Prismatic Understanding, Mass Invis lasts 10s.

10 Mesmers can apply 100s of Mass Invis if all of them have Prismatic Understanding … which is 100s of boon [re-]application and stealth and gives 10s of leeway for recasting perma-stealth.

I was under the impression that the new PU 100% trait only affected the mesmer. I’m confused. I can’t wait for them to finish balancing everything and release the final traits for each class so we can get a better idea of what we’re working with.

So if everyone were to run sword/shield and the main focus of our strategy would be to cc the enemy to death we would really have to come together and train to sync and coordinate our CCs. This strategy won’t be as effective if everyone spams their cc’s whenever they feel like it or if we all just blow our cds at the same time.

One of the biggest mistakes I see from disorganized zergs following a pugmander is many players blow their most useful cool downs on the first push. Often against organized guild groups the first push will be a fake because they know all the players with itchy fingers will waste all their skills. Then the guild group pretends to retreat back, yolo puggies begin to chase and in an instant the guild group turns and these unfortunate players are caught out of position and dead.

It’s more efficient to use a limited but focused amount of cc to control an area to spike down stability stacks quicker and lockdown all the targets caught in the aoes followed closely by focused wells of calamity and gravity wells for further aoe damage and cc.

During a coordinated well of calamity + gravity well spike we could then safely begin to steam roll through all the (by then) low and downed enemies still caught in immobilizes and chills, auto-attacking through with sword and blurred frenzy and immobilizing targets that are trying to escape with the sword immobilize. It would be safe for us because many targets would be locked down and gravity well pulses stability. Then, when the enemy hammer train starts moving through to protect their remaining downed players we could simply portal out (or blink out if caught out of position).

If our coordination were really good, we could drop one portal at the beginning, charge and purposefully get caught in an initial static. Then the enemy commander calls “Yes! All damage here!” Necros drop their wells, eles drop their meteors and ice bows and just as the hammer train leaps in, we stun break and blink to their backline destroying all their squishy damage dealers, then portalling back to safety when the job is done. Perhaps this strategy might be too difficult to coordinate but wouldn’t it be grand.

I think as a strategy, focusing too much on stealth is not good. The only effective use of stealth I think would be if we find ourselves too scattered or in need of a reset, 2 mass invisibilities would allow us breathing room to gather back onto the driver. Stealthing in for the element of surprise is sometimes useful but a group that has their whits about them will just back away until we unstealth. A group that blindly charges into the enemy without knowing where they are would be killed just as easily without stealth IMO.

Now about damage: although some might worry about the damage coming from our wells, chaos storms and halting strike interrupts I think if it’s focused we won’t have to worry. I still think the backline would be most efficient with greatswords, traited into illusions for the phantasm distortion trait or just pure shatter. Currently in full zerker gear, with full might and Triumphant Distortion the Illusionary Berserker tears through the middle of zergs hitting 5-6 and i’ve even seen 7k damage. Just imagine if there were 4-5 illusionary berserkers training through the middle of a zerg.

But alas in group pvp it’s not always about individuals pumping out the best damage they can, but about coordinated damage spikes, focusing everyone’s damage in a single area so greatswords might not be needed. If we find our groups damage isn’t enough (although I doubt it) the previous paragraph might be something to think about.

Ross Biddle.2367:

That said it’ll require some unique commanding to be most effective. The CC is there, but applying enough damage pressure for downs, and subsequent pressure to kill those downs might be a challenge. Given the pirate ship meta, it’d be interesting to see how it goes.

With a 20 man guild raid it might be most effective to play in tandom to a regular force in a sort of hammer/anvil motif. That way a standard friendly force could push their melee train, and you could drop a guild sized CC effort to disrupt and hold the enemy in place. That’d also allow the mes team to use the melee as an object to kite around (would suck to get one pushed by a superior sized force).

If we were going to structure raid builds to mimic well established gvg roles we would need tanky frontliners with cc, support, cleave, and access to stability. I would imagine they’d need to take at least the healing mantra and stability mantra. Bountiful Disillusionment will be receiving a buff by giving us a boon + stability per shatter. Furthermore, 2 of the new wells provide stability to allies. Sword is good at cleave and shield would provide cc. You would just need some form of decent disengage. Blink? Staff Phase Retreat? Portal (Actually portal would be the most amazing disengage in the game for frontline)?

Edit: Now that I think about it, Bountiful Dissillusionment might actually be useful for once. With IP being baseline now, right before an engage, if 5 mesmers in one party hit F2, they each share 3 might stacks with their allies. That’s 15 might instantly plus stability. There are probably ways to improve that.

The midline could be full of cc/damage heavy chronomancers dropping wells and chaos storms perhaps they could use a mixture of shields and foci to pull targets and send out tides of time to give quickness to the frontline and cc enemies. . The backline could focus on focusing down people with greatswords and aoe cleaving large groups of people with a million illusionary berserkers with the distortion on summon trait. Then have a few roaming shatter/mesmers to gank.

I think mesmer is versitile enough to achieve this especially with the new trait system. BUT I don’t know how many members from OMFG would be able to join 20 seems very optimistic. I think any raid would mainly be the size of a havoc group where the focus is less on the gvg meta. An organised all mesmer havoc group could be very annoying for anybody to deal with.

@Fay: During the week, usually between 6pm-12pm (UTC +9:00) unless I’m busy. Guild raids usually start at 10-11 for me though.

This sounds like fun.

I’m currently on FA and am usually on during ocx and sea time. My current guild dx, although waning in numbers after our transfer from SoS a few months ago, usually raids nightly during sea time.

I dont have access to gw2 at the moment due to a broken computer but it should be fixed soon. I’d certainly be interested in joining an all mesmer raid although I am not a member of OMFG.

Yoroshiku.

Edit: Im also available to help train and give advice especially during ocx time when Im most bored and spend my time in pvp or roaming. My mesmer main’s in game name is Nero Vane.

Although the Chronomancer specialization line has not been fully released I’ve been trying to make sense of all these changes by thinking of their potential applications. And with the skills known to us so far the most obvious builds I can think of are lockdown builds.

With the upcoming mesmer changes and our new Chronomancer interrupt skills we should be able to cause never before seen amounts of chaos and grief among groups of clumped up enemies. Hopefully this can elevate us from our veilbot status in open world pvp.

So there are two lockdown variants that jump out at me straight away, one being power based and the other condi based.

Power Lockdown Carnage:

• Dominaton: [I] Confounding Suggestions, [VI] Furious Interruption, [IX] Power Block
• Chaos: [III]Master of Manipulation, [VI] Chaotic Dampening, [VII] Chaotic Interruption
• Chronomancy: ???
• Utilities Mirror, Blink, Arcane Thievery, Well of Calamity, Gravity Well
• Weapons: Sword/Shield, Staff
• Gear: Berserker

The general idea is to drop AOE CCs on groups of people from the mid-line because of your range or lack there of. I’ll briefly go through the idea behind the main skills.

I chose staff for chaos storm and chaos armor. The trait chaotic dampening reduces staff cool downs and increases our access to protection, this paired with alacrity should reduce the cool down of chaos storm by a decent amount. I chose shield for its AOE projectile stun and quickness but perhaps focus pulls would still be more desired. Sword is simply there for blurred frenzy’s defensive and offensive capabilities.

I chose Master of Manipulation (mainly for blink cd reduction) but also because of it’s new and improved mirror/reflect after cast. Mirror’s 20% cd reduction and its 4sec of reflect make it a much more interesting heal now when paired with MoM. Arcane Thievery could probably be swapped out for null field or mantra of resolve.

The most attractive part of this build is Gravity Well, Chaos Storm and Tides of Time. Each of these skills have the potential to proc Power Block (which now includes halting strike and weakness as well as increasing cool downs on interrupted skills), Furious Interruption (Quickness on self), Chaotic Interruption (Immobilize and other soft CCs as well kitten might and other boons).

With our ability to double cast (Continuum Shift) Chaos Storm, Gravity Well and Well of Calamity, our ability to tear away at multiple stability stacks while pumping out nasty interrupt procs would be valuable to any team.

It should also be said that gravity well currently counts of 4 ccs on 5 targets and grants stability to allies, and deals decent damage on the final pulse. While Robert Gee said the final cc (float) will most likely be nerfed before release it’s still a very useful skill. Personally I hope they don’t get rid of float because that would be so much fun.

Condi-Shutdown

• Dueling: [?] meh…Phantasmal Fury, [?] another meh, [VIII] Mistrust!!
• Chaos: [III]Master of Manipulation, [VI] Chaotic Dampening, [VII] Chaotic Interruption
• Chronomancy: ???
• Utilities Mirror, Blink, Arcane Thievery, Mantra of Distraction, Gravity Well
• Weapons: Sword/Shield, Staff
• Gear: Maximise Precision & Condition Damage so Rabid most likely. The key though is RUNES OF PERPLEXITY!

Use your imagination, increased condition duration on chaotic interruption can be pretty lethal, this combined with confusing combatants, mistrust and perplexity runes could be quite lethal to mindless 1-1-1-1ing zerglings. Although its potential to apply confusion probably won’t be as great and op as glamour builds of old.
______

So, do you think such builds might become more prevalent when HoT is released or is it too gimmicky to work?

I think a condirupt group support chronomancer could be fun and perhaps solo phantasm builds might favour the chronomancer but until they release the chronomancer trait line we wont know.

And others are right when they say that specializing into chronomancy means you will have to sacrifice some pretty important and useful mesmer abilities. I guess it depends on how useful you believe the f5 skill will be and wells.

Speaking of which, im a little disappointed that they decided to balance the f5 skill with a destructable node. They need to give this sucker a decent amount of health. If they dont, like all mesmer constructs, it will be destroyed by a single cleave wasting our cooldowns because theres an ele pressing air12345, fire12345, earth12345…etc.

A ranged 1 handed weapon would be cool and useful and fun. Your argument is about necessity. Is the need for ranged direct damage weapon fulfilled on mesmer? Yes.

My argument about other classes already fulfilling the role that you want your mesmer to play is not pointless. If mesmer could do everything then there would be no need for other classes.

Sword pistol is an effective weapon set because offhand pistol can unload a ton of bleed stacks, damage, and in the future will apply confusion and even more bleed stacks. And due to our light armour sword fulfils a defensive role, granting us invulnerability and the ability to trick our opponents with the sword swap skill if we find ourselves in melee range.

If we do get a specialization eventually that utilizes a mainhand pistol, and i think we will, most of our damage will still be coming from phantasms and shatters because thats what we do, that is mesmer. Therefore ofhand pistol will still be king.

Warrior has a bow too.

I get what youre saying and I know I sound like a troll but all your complaints are solved by using a warrior or a ranger.

If you want to range as a mesmer we have a greatsword and an offhand pistol that goes well with phantasm builds.

I think what you really want to say is ‘im sad because i didntget a main hand pistol’ which is fair enough. But why dont we just make 1 topic for everyone to complain about not getting a pistol, instead of ten.

This is mesmer. Dont play like a warrior and youll be fine. Further to max your shatter damage you need to be dodging in and out of melee range anyway.

If you want mesmer to play like a warrior then play a warrior.

New elder dragon confirmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxD-5z_xHBU

The only thing I have to say is SPLOOSH!

edit: and thank you anet.

double edit: I bought a better comp for HOT. (and skyforge….and because my old computer died. RIP. ) So don’t you dare kill my dream of a Dr. Who themed montage.

I would like to highlight a build that will annoy people to no end in wvw and will most likely result in a flood of complaints about mesmer and inadvertently the overzealous nerf-hammer.

I am running under the assumption that in this new specialization system we have the ability to choose 9 major traits but are limited to only 3 specialization lines. Also that you can only choose 1 of the 3 available traits in each tier (1 adept, 1 master, and 1 grandmaster trait). If I am wrong then my apologies.

The three lines this build specializes in are Dueling, Chaos, and Illusions.

Dueling:

• [III] Duelist’s Discipline: Pistol attacks from you and your illusions have a chance to cause bleeding (2x bleeding). Interrupting a foe recharges pistol skills (50% recharge)
• [IV] Blinding Dissipation: Blind foes around you when you use a shatter skill
• [IX] Deceptive Evasion: Need them clones for shatter builds.
• * A special shout out goes to the minor adept trait Sharper Images and the newly reworked minor grandmaster trait Confusing Combatants for increasing your confusion and bleed stacks per critical hit.

Chaos:

• [III] Master of Manipulation: When you use a manipulation skill gain mirror (i.e. reflect projectiles) for a short duration. Reduces the cooldown on manipulation skills.
• [IV] Mirror Anguish: Same as before.
• [VIII] Prismatic Understanding: In it’s current planned state it effectively doubles the duration of your stealth skills

Illusions:

• [III] The Pledge Torch Skills remove a condition on use. Torch Skills recharge faster in stealth (1%…… <_<’ ).
• [VI] Malicious Sorcery: Torment deals increased damage to moving foes (50% more). Reduces the recharge on scepter skills when you inflict confusion(2%).
• [IX] Maim the Disillusioned: Same as before. Alternatively, if you wanted to focus more on confusion you could take [VII] Blinding Befuddlement as it stands since you have multiple sources of blind.

Gear

• Gear would be rabid for simplicity’s sake.

Weapons

• Sword + Pistol x Scepter + Torch

Opinion
Even though some people argue that Maim would be good in conquest pvp the current meta of team-makeups doesn’t support this strategy. This of course isn’t counting solo queue or hotjoin. I sometimes use maim in pvp for funsies when im tired of dying on glkittenter mesmer, hehe. Where Maim works best in my opinion is in wvw solo/havoc group roaming (and I guess pve if you’re not into speed runs) because you are able to eat food to increase your condition duration mainly, but stealth increases your survivability by a lot.

When I run solo on my mesmer in wvw, I use a dire maim variant for it’s beefiness and it’s nasty condition damage. It allows you to take on 1 or more serious opponents. It still requires skill and timing like a glkittenter mesmer but is more forgiving due to your higher vitality and toughness. As it stands, maim is balanced but leaning towards the op end of the spectrum.

If I solo roam on a rabid maim pu mesmer in the future and Anet wants to give me twice as much stealth uptime and access to more bleeds and ways to apply confusion then I don’t mind. I won’t complain at all. And during the stream, the developer talking about mesmer made the comment about maim that they might consider buffing it in the future.

What I fear however is that a lot of other people will complain about these specs and the nerf hammer will smash kitten through our trait lines like before.

What are your thoughts?

For those of you complaining about how much sense it makes for a turret to be affected by bleeds, poison, blind, etc. Ask yourself the same for mesmer clones which arent real flesh and bone and are mere figments of the imagination and have always been affected by conditions and crit damage.

So all I have to say to people who are against these changes is boohoo.

Jumping into shatter mesmer right away is a little difficult because positioning is very important. A PU power build might be better for you if you’re finding it hard to survive on a shatter mesmer.

I’m not sure what all the cool kids are running exactly when it comes to power PU. Maybe something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8alknpRtFrxUNcrNCrxY6YKJFSOQAlMjrB-TVBBABYp8DgLCAOq/I4+DnpEkQAC2CA-w

I do come across quite a few PU power builds in wvw. They don’t necessarily have the same spike damage as a shatter mesmer and they take a while to ramp up their damage but what you trade for spike damage is more survivability.

I feel like a lockdown mesmer is a good counter to necros (especially power necros). First of all you need to understand how a lockdown mesmer build works:

A lockdown mesmer’s damage bursts come from Halting Strikes, phantasms, and Mind Wrack. They also have the ability to almost instantly stack 25 stacks of vulnerability which further increases their damage.

Other essential traits a lockdown mesmer might take are Chaotic Interruption and Bountiful Interruption which immobilize and apply soft cc conditions to you and give the mesmer 5 stacks of might on interrupt. Occasionally you might come across some mesmers who run Confounding Suggestions which has a 50% chance to cause a simple daze to turn into a stun. Those builds usually have a lot of upfront power damage and their phantasms hit like a truck.

A lockdown mesmer’s weakness is usually condition damage and of course stability. Some lockdown mesmers use Shattered Concentration however which means even if you do manage to get stability they will probably keep shattering clones on you until it’s removed.

They are rather harmless (not including their phantasms) if they spam all their interrupts and they’re all on cd. Just try running away or bating out their interrupts. Also, don’t be foolish and spam channeled skills or skills that have a long cast time. And like when fighting most mesmers, avoid or cleave their phantasms.

*And also, FYI, this isn’t a cheese build. Lockdown builds require perfect timing and awareness. If a lockdown mesmer beats you, it’s because they outplayed you, not because of some faceroll 1111ing. *

For your refrence, here is a link to a thread in the mesmer forum that will give you more information about lockdown builds: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/The-Lockdown-Mesmer-Thread

Here is a link to a thread in the mesmer forum that has a list of many lockdown videos: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Videos-Lockdown-Mesmer-in-the-Mists

Here is one video in particular of 2 lockdown mesmers dueling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc9YefWH66M

My apologies, I offended your ego. But if you dont like my critique then I guess you werent looking for advice. Let me make this easy by no longer posting in this thread. I dont want to turn this into a contest.

This is what I personally run when running with my guild.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWl0npGtFrxMNUrRipxY6eiJnTVFpCokhMOA-TlBBwAYV+B4UAgT9nU6D6t/wZlgkCgJlRA-w

The goal of this build is to do damage yes, but more importantly cause choas, pull and interrupt people and generally be a giant nuisance, especially when they try to reset and pull out, to catch people out of position and lock down people before your driver goes in for a bomb. It constantly reaps 25 stacks of might almost instantly and thus can churn out some much bigger numbers than what I see in your video.

I’m not trying to suggest that my build is better, but just that it has a very clear focus. It’s a lockdown build. I hope it gives you some interesting ideas to play with some other traits.

Menaka.5092:

This is a variation of what I was playing before, with some different choices that I don’t agree with.

For the record there are very distinct differences between the modified build that I created and any of your four builds. For example, one difference is that I chose to use exotic gear (with ascended trinkets) as a more accurate representation of your actual stats. If you do actually have all of that ascended equipment along with all those infusions then you wasted a lot of time, money and laurels.

My modified build also has a focus: the focus being mantras. As I said in my previous post your build is trying to do TOO much. In fact, all of your builds are.
For instance:
- You want halting strike but you lack a lot of reliable interrupts.
- You want glamour mastery but all you have is veil. Why not take null field as well?
- You invest into mantra buffing traits but all you have is mantra of pain which you admittedly would rather not have in the first place. _
- _You want mender’s purity for condition removals but you use ether feast. This is okay, but think of it like this. You have been loaded up with soft control conditions like chill, blind, cripple and immobilize and you’re getting focused down by a thief or two in the backline. You blink but it was useless anyway, you are moving like a turtle and those thieves are running circles around you. You’re gonna have to blow your 20 second cd heal but oh kitten, the thieves interrupted you. DEAD. You have already invested into mantras, the mantra heal + menders purity is perfect for a quick uninterruptable top-up of health and condition removal, and the charge time is not a problem. You have plenty of time to charge your mantras when the driver calls for water/reset. _
- _You want triumphant distortion for its 1 second of invulnerability on yourself and your phantasm when you cast one. This is okay, but its not a game changing trait. Remember that there is a delay between when the phantasm spawns and when the phantasm attacks. Meaning your phantasm gets at most half a second of invulnerable damage time in before it becomes vulnerable to damage again. You phantasms do damage with or without this trait. The most important thing is WHERE you cast it.

So I watched your video and I didn’t see any 8ks from your berserker, lol. Your build is fine as a veil bot and your ranged damage is okay but a zerker necro and zerker ele would do mountains more damage than you’re currently doing.

Think about how much more damage you would bring to your guild group if you pulled targets together ready for a bomb so they don’t all escape out of your groups aoes and hammer train. Or imagine how many more bags your group would get if you immobilized and pulled targets as they were trying to retreat from your group. Imagine how much havoc you could cause if you focused your range pressure on the opposing team’s casters. Or imagine how useful a few timely reflects would be to mitigate ranged damage for a short time.

All I’m arguing is that, you are not important in a team fight. Its not about how much single target damage you alone can pump out. It’s about how you can support your group to improve everybody’s damage and or mitigate the damage everybody receives.

These are the reasons why I chose the traits and skills that I chose when I modified your build. I don’t care if you’re not impressed by my critique.

Fay.2357:

I’ve tried a lot of stuff that’s very similar to some of your iterations. All of my experiments ultimately end in more or less the same way though: frustrated at the complete and total lack of any reliable aoe pressure that has less than a 30 second cooldown.

Yeah, you can drop chaos storm in a zerg and it’ll do some decent work…once every 35 seconds. Then you’re left with spamming iZerker and mind stab off cooldown. iZerker spins once then smushes, spins in a random direction, and requires a target to use. Mind stab really is still awful considering the cooldown and just doesn’t do much.

Then you’ve got glamours that you can toss down…which do some stuff I guess. Null field is nice of course, for what it does, and feedback can be great…but more often is worthless as most zergs are not projectile-heavy.

Ultimately I just end up with the distinct impression that I’d be contributing far more by spamming random buttons on a staff ele.

Lol, I know right. But to be fair we can provide
certain utilities that other classes cant which is why at least 1 mesmer is always welcome in any guild group but at the end of the day we serve as an extra utility bar for the driver basically.

We had a fun build before the glamour nerfs…but oh well. Lets not derail ops post with moaning though. Lets try to help him improve what he has and just work with what weve got.

I made modifications to your ‘fourth’ build to simplify and improve it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWl0npEtlpxYNUrNiphc6qRXSqAle0lFA-TlBBABRqEEgTBAOq/ki+guU+1z+DkCgJlRA-w

If you want to be able to bomb hard with your team you’re on the wrong class. You can provide heavy ranged spike damage on small groups, but you don’t have aoes like eles and necros.

Since you had already invested in mantras I changed triumphant distortion to harmonious mantras. I also changed your heal to the mantra heal because the mantra heal + harmonious mantras + menders purity + restorative mantras + protective mantras = super synergy, super condi removal, uninterruptable heals with power return and group heals whenever you charge a mantra.

I chose sword focus as your secondary weapon set because being in a guild group you need to think about how your skills not only meet your goals but the goals of your group. With sword you bring defensive capabilities for yourself and immobolize. Immobolize is really overpowered. Focus is also important for interrupting, displacing, pulling enemies. The focus phantasm should be used on downed enemies to put pressure on them and any of their rezzers and the focus pull on walls is an essential part of a ranged bomb.

For your main weapon set you can either use greatsword or staff. I prefer staff in groups because of it’s cover conditions, its low cooldown blink, its chaos armor and etherealfield. Most importantly, chaos storm + halting strike (+ idealy chaotic interruption) placed ontop of a clumped up group of casters will interrupt, damage and apply random conditions. Alternatively, you can place it on your melee train in a location they are about to leap to provide chaos armor to them if they leap or blast, short duration boons and annoyingness to the opposing side.

Furthermore, instead of empowered illusions and confounding suggestions (I think you just chose these because you want too much out of your build) I went further in the inspiration line to provide similar buffs and more. The minor grandmaster trait ‘Phantasmal Strength’ increases your phantasm’s damage by 15% anyway. As an added bonus you can then decrease the cooldown/add reflection to your focus and provide 2.5K heals every time you charge a mantra which should be a lot considering you want to use mantra of pain. Mantra of pain vitually has no cooldown, so the faster you spam it the more group heals you give when you need to charge it up again.

This version of your build I believe will provide what you wanted and even more.

Personally, as a mesmer who raids with a T2 guild almost every night, I prefer to go full zerker. You seem uncomfortable with that based on the gear that you chose, but really, blink + phase retreat + distortion + not getting out of position + your team you are way more survivable than most other caster classes.

Lets wait and see what they come up with before we cry wolf. Arent you at all curious?

The key word in all of the arguments in this thread is “viability”.

[Quote=Wikipedia]Viability is the ability of a thing (a living organism, an artificial system, an idea, etc.) to maintain itself or recover its potentialities.[/Quote]

In top level play, it has been decided by many teams that there are better options to take than a mesmer, and that mesmer’s spike damage, portal and boon removal utilities are useless when they are being focused down by a thief.

In anything else but tournaments, you can run whatever you want, you can kill whatever and whoever you want because the differences in balance and skill level vary so greatly. You can run your torment shatter build and kill plenty of people but if you can’t fill a role on your team that benefits not only yourself but your team members and do that role better than any other build or class, you are not viable.

In random pvp matches, you may destroy noobs with your torment builds or your bunker mesmer builds or your phantasm/condi hybrids but the match up is in your favour. Bring your current randomly put together hotjoin group up against a premade group (of similar skill level) running meta builds and you’ll get destroyed and if not probably fail to contribute by capturing and taking points from all those bunkers supporting each other and building up each other’s boons.

At the end of the day, there’s is nothing wrong with playing whatever build you want. You paid for the kitten game so play how you want. But don’t mistake the viability of a build with “I wrecked this guy in pvp once so therefore its a viable build”.

Anyway, this stuff doesn:t affect the majority of players because most of us are casual and play how we want to, but you can’t deny that if you got rid of at least half of our traits it wouldn’t make a difference to most poeple’s builds. You can’t deny that, so far, most of the changes they’ve made to mesmer have been changes that most people never asked for and that every time they make a change more bugs appear and more QOL issues resurface.

The devs have lost the trust of many hardcore mesmer fans. I believe in the back of our minds many of us are hopeful but due to nerf induced trauma we just want them to leave us alone.

This coupled with a non-user friendly and at times overcomplicated profession mechanic that pigeon-holes us into certain viable builds, our lack of effective aoe damage/support, an unclear and not so well defined role in teams and the general negativity of most mesmers on the forums and on sub-reddits makes Mesmer an unwelcoming class for some players.

I have only been playing gw2 for a year now but due to a surplass of free time I have read up a lot on the past. As a newer player, I am probably not as pessimistic as lot of people in this thread but throughout this year I have become increasingly frustrated and I can understand why older players are frustrated too.

My two favorite classes are Mesmer and Necro and I absolutely love trying to come up with my own builds. I look at the traitlines and I see a lot of interesting ideas that the devs have tried to implement but I try them out time and time again and they just suck. It’s a very disrespectful thing to say to the devs given the amount of time they put in making this game but I can’t phrase it any other way. My apologies.

I will not apologise for what I am about to say next however. In the coming 2 years there are a lot of newer and shinier MMOs coming out. Up until now GW2 has had the luxury of having no real competitors but that will soon change. No new chicken-nado finisher or golden pig on the gem store or tiny living story update is going to save you from this fact.

I think as a business you probably realized this when you decided to push pvp tournaments, release into the chinese market, make an expansion, and float your ideas about class specializations to keep the children quiet for now. But I tell you what, Skyforge is looking mighty interesting to me and so does Everquest Next.

But until then, mesmer will always forever be my favorite. I have a thing for saving wounded animals. :P

One of the only reasons mesmer is taken by a few top tier pvp teams is because of portal. Otherwise thieves can do anything we can if you want a ganker. Or instead, why not take another cele ele to bunker down the points.

I dont believe mesmer is in that bad of a state. There are definately frustrations I have and many traits I would change.

Personally, I think some of the mesmer traits, skills, and so called buffs have me scratching my head and that anet really didnt have a clear vision for mesmer upon creation. This coupled with all the nerfs weve recieved to useful skills I think the mesmer traitlines have become a little confused.

Take for instance the glamour bomb nerf. One of our few reliable sources of condition damage was confusion. But not only did they nerf confusion but they nerfed skills like blinding glamours and befuddlement and leave that other glamour trait as a master trait in domination effectivley making it useless. Then they added maim the disillusioned because they realized they screwed up then they made further buffs to it making torment one of our only reliable conditions.

Now about thieves and mesmers. I where people get frustrated by thieves, I know I do, is when they come in out of nowhere while youre in the middle of fighting someone else, and 1-1-1 you to death in a few hits. If youre lucky and you havent blown all your cooldowns you might be able to get away but you gotta be quick. I know its frustrating but thats what thieves do. Thats their job, to make a fight uneven and end it quickly.

There are a couple of things that other people have mentioned that could be toned down on thieves like the duration of stolen items. Furthermore, shadow stepping through walls, uh uh… that downright kittenes me off. You get punished for good positioning and trying to line of sight them. They used to be able to do it at clock tower from the bottom floor, not sure if they still can. But the other day i was fighting a sd thief on skyhammer at point A and he shadow stepped through the wall by using steal on me. I still beat him but its the principle. Also, Their spammable shortbow blinks make it very difficult for a caster class who needs to reposition or get out of there by blinking to higher ground. Oh, and 1 more q.q, that trait or skill that sd thieves use to spam dazes, putting your skills on a short cd. Sometimes I think they make a better lockdown mesmer than a lockdown mesmer.

+1( ^-^)????.:*:?’°?

As a mesmer when you stealth you either get the kittenens our of there or go back in harder. As a thief when you stealth you have time to smell the roses and when the time is right 111111 your opponent to death.

Class Mechanic
Now, about our unique class mechanic: I think illusions are too intertwined into our traitlines for them to remove clones and phantasms completely. I also noticed in the HoT release trailer that when the mesmer casts its big timey purple spell thingy it doesn’t look like the shield was used at all. This makes me think it was a utility skill. Furthermore, there is a second animation where the mesmer moves her arm, the field shatters and explodes and butterflies float up from the mesmer.

So I suggest like others have, that we will have the ability to shatter “time-fields” and “glamour skills”. I think we will get some sort of resourcee that we have to manage similar to lifeforce or initiative which are tied to our f1-f4/5 skills. This resource will be represented by a new bar called the metronome bar. It ranges in colour from red to green. Each F1-4\5 skill that we use has an energy-resource cost but is spammable like certain revanant skills and thief skills.

When out of combat, the bar will be fully charged and in the green giving Chronomancers a permanent 25% movement buff without swiftness. As you use your skills, the bar will deplete and recharge depending on what you do in combat. The more of the class recource you use the slower you become until you end up moving 25% slower. The punishment for depleting your resoucre is applying slow to yourself and not being able to use your f skills.

F1 Skill Ether Nightmare Shatter a glamour or time field, causing it to explode and do damage to five targets.

F2 Skill Blackhole Shatter a glamour or time field, causing nearby opponents to be sucked in towards the centre and applying 3 stacks of confusion and 3 stacks of torment.

F3 Skill ? Time and glamour fields apply 2 seconds of resistence and protection to allies who enter or exit their area. This skill is an upkeep skill and needs to be toggled on or off.

F4 Skill Panic The next skill your opponent uses will daze 5 of their allies within a 250 radius. (Similar to the GW1 skill) If the opponent doesn’t use a skill, within 3 seconds, they will be stunned. Gain time energy for every person that is interrupted.

F5 Skills Where’s the rabbit You and all your illusions blink to random locations around the target each gaining 2 seconds of distortion. Your illusions apply slow and taunt to the target. (This is your mesmer panic button skill and would cost a large amount of energy and have a cd unlike your other skills).

Utility Skill 1 Time is up Create a time field that slows 5 targets inside. Ethereal Field.

Utility Skill 2 Dimensional Shift Randomly applies chill, immobilize and blind to enemies in the field and randomly applies swiftness, regeneration, and stability (2 sec) to allies. This field will pulse out from the player using new HoT tricks. (The shatter effect for this field appears in a 600 radius around the mesmer if used)

Utility Skill 3 “I am Chaos” You become invulnerable for 3 seconds and grant chaos armor to 5 allies after the channel. (Stun-break)

New Utility 5 skill Quasar You become a blinding ball of light, pulsing short duration slow and blindness on enemies in the target area (think plague form) In this form, you become the time field and are able to shatter yourself. All clones are destroyed when you enter this form and this form only lasts for the same duration as plague form or until you shatter yourself.

Finally, time warp will be made into a time or glamour field.

So…those are my ideas. I hope Anet doesn’t screw it up. I’m really looking forward to the idea of a chronomancer. I especially like the potential of making all kinds of bad time puns.

Here are some of my ideas for skills and traits

Heal – Masochist 1-2000 HP initial self-heal followed by a 3 second period where all damage incurred is converted to HP (similar to the warrior heal) Oh, and you get stability during the heal or if not a lower cooldown than ether feast.

Grandmaster Trait 1 Blackout When you successfully block an attack, all your opponent’s skills go on a 3-5 second cd (30 second internal cd)

Grandmaster Trait 2 Dance of the Sloth Apply 2 seconds of slow on crit. 50% chance 10sec icd.

Grandmaster Minor Trait Light-footed Gain 1.5 seconds of quickness on dodge (Hey, if rev gets 2 seconds of stability on dodge we should get quickness which would make us monstrous stompers).

Master Trait 1 Spatial Rift When an illusion is destroyed cause the opponent who destroyed it to be displaced, blinking them to a random location similar to the current mesmer downed skill’s function and range. This skill doesn’t affect a target with stability.

Shield Skill 1 Bide Your Time Block and store 30% of the damage inflicted upon you for 3 seconds. (This skill would bring back the old mimic animation and sound effects)
-secondary skill effect: fire the stored energy at a target as a projectile.

Shield Skill 2 Phantasmal Bomber Cause a phantasm to spawn above your opponent and crash down with its shield, knocking down 5 targets. The phantasm will repeat this until it is destroyed and this skill counts as a blast finisher which enables us to combo nicely with our ethereal fields.

(Continued in Next Post)

Leodon.1564:

Random matches played this week as phantasm spec

http://youtu.be/ASwRYKPzYmw
http://youtu.be/OA1KzbV_leQ
http://youtu.be/DoLC1HAkUks
http://youtu.be/lHjNx1_Shgc

You killed me in the first match. I was the annoying mesmer with the mantra heals. To my defense i was experimenting and blobblobblob. Lol.

If you want to change the way confusion works my suggestion would be to make it impair movements or skills. For example, make their movement commands go in reverse or change the order of their skills on their skill bar for the duration of confusion.

I particularly like the idea of changing the order of your opponents skills for its rage inducing, rotation interrupting potential. It would be hilarious to watch them kitten around for a moment until they realise they have confusion on them.

My mains are mesmer and necro but I tested this out on my uplevel ele in hotjoin. I used firey greatsword to escape when things got hairy and I tried it with celestial and rabid. Its a lot of fun and quite easy. I have to work really hard to make my mesmer feel easy and fun.

Thanks for the build but since im new to ele please explain why you chose celestial? Without water fields to blast and cleanse what is the point of that healing power?

I think we might be dealing with a 6/6/?/?/? build if they’re using a pistol and they have good nuking ability.

I run this lockdown-style dueling build in wvw:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8al0npGtNqxMNcrNipxcqqIdANMQpHZ8FA-TFCBABH/AAeZ/hKV/5MlgYp8jgjAAAXEg80NQKgIGaB-w

Most people don’t expect you to hit so hard, especially your interrupts. It’s especially good against rangers and engies.

trooper.2650:

All of what you say it’s fine… in theory. In practice, iswordman dies quickly by aoe, leaving you with one, max two hits. His leap does not put him far away enough to avoid aoes since most (if not all) are larger than what he can leap. It would be nice if it could leap (or I should say teleport) back right next to you, where it spawned. That would actually make sense.

All in all it isn’t bad if you pair it with CS+blade training trait but it’s just a bit meh if used on its own

Dont all phantasms die quickly though, especially in aoes?

Sword off-hand is quite common in pve, so I think maybe the o.p. wants to talk about sword off-hand in pvp and wvw.

I think before we start talking down sword off-hand like it’s a bad weapon we need to understand some things about it.

1. It has a cooldown of 20 seconds which can become 12 seconds by investing 3 points into illusions and 2 points into dueling.
_*Off-hand pistol has an equivalent cooldown, but requires an additional 2 points into the dueling trait-line to bring the cooldown down to 12 seconds. Furthermore, choosing “duelist’s discipline” means you have to forgo “deceptive evasion” in a lot of builds. _

2. The phantasmal swordsman has the quickest rate of attack of all damage phantasms. It executes its illusionary sword attack every 4 seconds. Going 4 deep in the illusions trait-line allows you to equip “phantasmal haste” which brings the phantasmal swordsman’s attack to 3.2 seconds.

3. The phantasmal swordsman’s attack is a leap finisher, applying the leap finisher effect to the mesmer upon summoning (even if the mesmer is not in the field) as well as the phantasm itself after every attack.

4. Phantasmal swordsman has the high single hit damage (probably the highest dps given its quick attack rate) of any attacking phantasm.
*Note, other phantasms achieve their damage through multiple hits and have slower rates of attack.

5. Illusionary Riposte has the same base damage as phantasmal swordsman, meaning when it crits, like the swordman, it literally hits like a truck. Furthermore, it spawns an illusion which is useful for shattering.

6. Counter Blade (the daze projectile) pierces and can daze up to 5 targets at once. I personally find that most players don’t expect this interrupt skill because sword off-hand is quite uncommon in player vs player matchups.

As far as your arguments are concerned as to why the off-hand sword is bad, I have to unequivocally disagree. Most of the arguments you proposed have been disproved by the above information (which I pulled from the wiki). The other arguments which pertain to pathing issues and moving targets apply to ALL phantasms or (minions).

To finish, I don’t think off-hand sword is bad. I actually like it. It’s unique, and you look like bad kitten as a magician class wielding two swords. It isn’t weak, it’s quite strong actually and I think buffing it would make it even stronger.

Leodon.1564:

I’ve heard that you can interrupt a thief’s Blinding Power + Heartseeker combo but I’m not sure at what point to try and interrupt it. I’ve tried timing Mantra daze right after BP and also when seeing the HS animation but it seems to make no difference as the thief usually goes into stealth anyways. How do you all do it?

Also, what things do you try and interrupt for Engineers? It seems almost all of their abilities are instant cast and I can’t seem to find anything good to try and interrupt.

This is correct. As mantra of distraction is an instant cast skill its very easy to interrupt skills with longer cast animations like heals and yes, heartseeker. When they drop their smoke field they will use heartseeker when they have the initiative. Heartseeker stealths at the end if the animation so when the flip in the air you have plenty of time to interrupt.

Engies, the best thibgs to interrupt are their heal chains and their supply crate elites. They all have obvious animatons.

If phantasms are still available for the chronomancer i think a cool one for shield would be a phantasm that spawns above the target, crashing to the ground and knocking down 5 players. This process would repeat every 8-10 seconds until its destroyed. This could combo well with the timebomb skill shown in the trailer.

To mitigate OPness the spawn animation would be obvious like a portal or something, the phantasm’s health would be one of the lowest and the internal cooldown of the skill would be similar to warrior’s backbreaker hammer skill (30 seconds).

I call it the Phantasmal Bomber

Sorry ladies I meant heartseeker. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.