Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

• The change in essences, how big of an attack would that be? One shot? If they’re being thrown in is it just going to be a timer then? Will walls/wardens get rid of the projectile essences? I don’t know just sounds a little wonky.

I just didn’t like the current essence mechanic which more or less were an artificial HP buff to Alpha since you rarely actually kill the essence even with proper dps parties. The attack I had in mind would be a ~350 radius stomp (or leap, if players are ranging) that would stun or knock down everyone within that radius for like 3 to 4 seconds unless avoided with stability/block/dodge. Being stunned for that long probably will result in you eating at least one ice aoe or a dragon tooth, giving people an incentive to actually deal with the mechanic.

The attack from Alpha doesn’t have to be a stomp/leap as that may be difficult to code since there are 5 players and leap is single player targeted. The skill can behave like the necro axe 3, Unholy Feast, which is aoe “chomp” but instead of the chomp have alpha drop an ice comet on people’s heads to stun them.

Also, the reason for the tendrils actually throwing the crawling essence at alpha was to give those tendrils an actual use as well as giving control players something to do. Currently the tendrils are ignored because they only hurt zerks (small pbAoE dmg when they hit a glass cannon) and even then they don’t pose a thread because zerks stack up and tendrils are usually summoned not close enough to actually reach the players and those that do are melted with cleave. People will have few new options – go kill the tendrils (which are summoned once per 60 sec or so), kill the crawling essence (2 or 3 hits to kill), or simply give control chars an actual purpose where they can block/reflect the projectiles thrown at Alpha. If there is nobody to reflect/block then the stun/knockdown can be avoid with stability/aegis. I really hate it that current Alpha is more or less a dumb DPS race with occasional properly timed dodge and nothing else. I’m all in for giving support/control players something useful to do without making the encounter mechanics too annoying on the phiw’s.

Jerus.4350:

• Then kinda a question/request, the p1/p3 stomp seems to be a pretty subtle and hard to see animation, any tips frifox? if not could we have that taken a look at, just seems a pretty hard hit in melee range for such a hard to avoid attack. It’s probably timing wise not much different than Lupi, but Lupi is giant and I can clearly see his tell over all the effects, not so with the shorter Alpha.

Jerus.4350:

Ahh, is it not the same as some of his other moves though? Doesn’t he do that for Dragons tooth one which is delayed in p1. Then in P3 you have the other attacks which are often followed by the attack in question. I think i was mistaking the fist into the ground for a stomp, I’ll have to watch for the fist in the future. TBH I’ve just recently been trying to master that guy, typically we just burn through him so quickly we survive, but I’m no longer ok with just finding ways to survive, I want to perfect it

it’s the one that shoots a series of red circles out that instantly hurt and grow in size as they get further away from him.

The attack you’re describing is the Teeth of Mordremoth. The attack has very little time between the animation and it actually dealing damage when you are in melee, at range the delay is like 1s or 1.5s before you are hit. Dodging the teeth from animation tells is definitely doable but requires good reaction time and you actually paying attention to the boss. If you want to practice, pick p1, grab a ranged weapon, and go in solo. Start at 1,200 and move up closer once you can dodge the teeth reliably. Eventually you’ll get to a point where you can react to the tell in melee and avoid the dmg altogether. Personally, I just rely on knowing the pattern to alpha’s attacks and dodging in advance or, when I’m too lazy to remember the pattern just dodging as soon as I see him twerk his left arm. If you want, you can see this vid of me doing alpha in melee, it may help you see the attack animation better:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azu6QyF5zmY

Jerus.4350:

Getting rid of the CC locking that we can do to bypass his rush phases would be quite a headache as far as I’m concerned.

I want it to be rewarding to properly land an interrupt that stops him from getting the protective buff (edited OP to reflect that). I want to discourage people chaining their CCs (especially ones from consumables) to perma stun the boss.

Arenzo.3298:

considering how you have to deactivate the shields to attack the destroyer i dont think you should increas his health

Jerus.4350:

Destroyer: Why more HP? are you saying we should be forced to do at least 2 rounds? I’m not really opposed, but curious what your purpose is here.

Originally the boss had much higher health and toughness. People complained that the boss took ages to kill, which is most likely because of the technique pugs used to kill the boss, so robert hrouda lowered his hp and made him squishier. That “old” way to kill the boss involved 3 people constantly firing the lasers and 2 dps specs staying down and killing the boss every time the shield went down. This process made the encounter drag out for like 10 mins or even longer and after the change the encounter went much faster, which people found acceptable. Once players became better the boss resulted in pretty much a joke we know now yet his hp/toughness wasn’t brought back up. (ps: i’m certain on the hp increase but the toughness was vague and I interpreted his words as it was toned down around the same time too)

The goal with my suggestion was to reward parties that fully spec’ed into dps both in gear, build, and their skill rotation. I love it when you see the shield blinking yet everyone stays in and commits to killing the boss knowing that any moment they will all be knocked back into lava and may die. That feeling when you kill the boss right before the shield turns back on is the reward. However, if you are lazy and just yolo kill him as a dps spec you should be able to easily do it in 2 shields. It’s sad when people don’t get to experience the mechanic of jumping the red platforms (or using the stairs if you’re lazy) to get back up to the laser cannons, which is why I chose 2 shields.

Your average zerk pug (1 proper zerk, 3 zerk geared but bad builds, and 1 phiw casual) party pulls off about 30k DPS on the destroyer. With my suggested 5s longer shield downtime that will be 600k dmg in the first shield and then 1,500k after the 2nd one with commitment. Currently the Destroyer is 626k HP and I suggest increasing his HP to 1,000k. This means your average dps pug party will kill the boss in 2 shields with no problems. Proper organized zerk parties currently kill him in 11 to 14 seconds which is about 50k dps from the first hit. With my suggested 5s increase before shield engages (25s of total possible dps time), such party should land 1,250k dmg before being knocked into lava. This will allow people who put the time to setup their party comps for dps to still kill him in one shield with no change. 1,000k dmg in 25s is 40k dps which is very realistic for any decent zerk party comp. Even a mesmer can pull off 200k in 25sec so he won’t be weighing down the party, even without a timewarp.

Jerus.4350:

Alpha: Interesting suggestions.

• 7s recharge evade/dodge just sounds unfun. Mainly the dodge part, if he’d just move away sure. But if he’s getting evade frames that just seems kinda lame to punish groups with higher DPS, I can’t help but feel that I may be better off going with lower DPS options for a few members of the group to prevent triggering (water attuenment for healing, defender phantasm, maybe take some more defensive traits?)

It doesn’t have to be exactly 7s cd (can be 15s) or even give alpha evades but I did want Alpha to emulate how actual player would react to getting burned down too fast, which is dodge out or use some kind of defensive skill. Currently I fall asleep when fighting alpha – that is how faceroll he is. The goal with my suggestions was to eliminate the stack, smack, fall-asleep encounter as it is now. Alpha is 963k HP. Let’s take the last one as an example where he doesn’t escape and is killed 100% to 0% (1st one is only 480k hp). At 30k dps (typical zerk party) the encounter lasts right around 30 seconds (15s in case of 1st alpha). I figured having alpha dodge a few times throughout the encounter was quite reasonable.

Utomneian.9013:

OP, who uses condi builds in dungeons? zerker meta for life xD

This is my 2nd necro char, note the character name:
- http://i.imgur.com/uFJGCpv.jpg

:D

I have a good feeling you’ll run out of char space for the suggestions with only 3 available posts. We learned that the hard way in the old mesmer bugs thread so the new one that I’m maintaining I reserved 8 posts, and are already using almost all of them.

How about linking to dungeon specific threads from the main one?

Bugs

• Bjarl may get stuck on one of the floor tiles in the middle of the room resulting in his rush doing the animation but not actually moving him.
• Bjarl sometimes goes afk doesn’t initiate the rush skill on a targeted player.

Bjarl

• Allow him to throw his greatsword like warrior gs4 skill on people who range him.
• If someone successfully interrupts his thrust into ground that gives him the protective buff, make Bjarl become stunned for 5 or 10 second.
• Every CC applied to the boss adds a stack of xyz, when reaching 10 xyz stacks boss will gain stability and go berserk. When berserk he will throw his gs on a player that dealt the majority of those cc’s causing the gs to pin the player down to the ground. When Bjarl rushes to the pinned player he then rips the gs back out downing the player regardless of his defensive stats.

Subject Alpha

• Apply torment on people kiting from 900+ range every 15 sec. In path 2 people away from any danger and can simply RP walk out of the summoned dragons tooth. Need to increase difficulty for rangers to match p1 and p3.

Husk

• Prevent the bombs from instantly blowing up when tripping on a patch while being subverted. Give them animation of actually fumbling before blowing up.
• Lower the radius from which the patches can be cleaved.

Destroyer

• Increase his health to 1,000k
• Increase the time before shield re-engages by 5s.
• Instead of using the stomp skill (as rare as it may be), give destroyer a skill which will punt a random player into lava.

Champion Crab

• Lower the damage dealt by the lava font, or at least delay the damage dealt to 0.75 sec after the lava font actually appears.

Reward

• The gold reward doesn’t match the amount of time it takes an average party to clear a path. It needs to be increased to 1.5g to 2g per path.

Bugs

• Imprisonment Crystal summoned by Alpha, if destroyed too quickly it bugs and disables the targeted person for 15 seconds. If killed in 1s or slower, it will properly releases the imprisoned player after crystal is gone.
• If you break LoS to Alpha as he’s doing the Imprisonment Crystal animation, the player will get disabled for 15s yet the crystal will not appear. Without a crystal to break the player has no way to escape. When the bug happens, even a teleport won’t help you – you will still be disabled after using Blink/Shadowstep/etc which otherwise with a crystal present would break you out of the lock.
• Sometimes crystal doesn’t get summoned at all, permanently locking the player down. Player is released only after using an emote: VIDEO
• 1st Alpha will go invlun if player is by the gate: VIDEO
• If mesmer drops temporal curtain to pull 1st Alpha to the wall and someone knocks/pushes alpha toward the same wall before the curtain pull is activated, Alpha will trip mid-push and not move/fly the full intended distance.
• Sometimes when pulling 1st Alpha with the temporal curtain, he will instantly port back to the starting position after getting pulled.
• Last Alpha in p1/p3 – Spire sometimes gets stuck right by the glassy wall or the boxes in the middle and stops the Exp reward from showing up after the Gold reward chest is granted.

Anti-stacking

• If a mob is being LoS’d, have him avoid hugging the wall when chasing the aggro’d person. Instead, have the mob make an arch around the corner and engage when LoS is achieved.
• If a boss is forcibly positioned against a wall/corner with whatever push/pull skill was available, have it immediately walk at least 300 distance away from it.

Anti-exploit

• 1st Alpha – the spot at the end of the tunnel that when crossed spawns the boss and makes him attackable, make it trigger only after a certain path has been actually selected.

Subject Alpha

• If Alpha is receiving 30k DPS or more for at least 3 seconds, have Alpha quickly move/dodge away from the stack toward the middle of the room. 10 sec CD on the dodge.
• Apply 3s fear on everyone within 200 radius of a player about to be crystalized, right as he is being crystalized.
• Allow people to evade the crystalizion with a dodge but not with an evade from a weapon/bundle skill. Or, possible make crystal summon as transparent/vague purple goo and then 1s after summon it solidifies freezing whoever is in it for 15s, unless countered with stability/invuln.
• Make Alpha Essence move slower and instead of healing the boss once they reach him have them trigger another effect. Each Essence can apply a stack and at 25 Alpha can initiate an unblockable pbAoE stomp like the one Evolved Destroyer does (but with much less wind-up time). Also, Instead of applying the stacks when reaching the boss you can have the tendrils pick essence up and throw them at Alpha to avoid essence getting destroyed when everyone is stacked and applying massive AoE dmg around the boss.

Champion Icebrood Wolf

• The wolf has no leap animation if the leap skill is used point blank. Make him actually jump for the skill.

Anti-exploit

• Have each major event require the previous event to be completed.

It means if he says it’ll be OP then most likely it will be OP. Not a fact but an opinion with high chance of being correct.

The more you play a class the better your understanding of the said class is. Helseth is pretty much an expert in mesmer business and experts tend to be dead on accurate with their evaluation and opinions.

Bait the leaps, count 10 bites, gtfo, laugh at pugs.

Got centaur runes failing to apply swiftness on video:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKlkzDId8I

Usagi.4835:

And I’ve yet to come across anyone who said that the scepter auto will be stronger than the staff auto.

Scepter auto will be stronger than staff auto.

:3

Fay.2357:

frifox.5283:

I just dropped about 150g on gear. This patch made my head spin with all the condition possibilities.

In PvE O.o?

Oh no I’m not THAT crazy, it’s mostly for WvW. Though with Illusionary Elasticity fixed I just may attempt to use it in solo pve again just to see how much better it became. 20+ bleed stacks and hefty amount of might from staff or even maybe scepter with 3 clones out while perma kiting a mob does sound quite appealing now.

I’m thinking of 0/4/5/0/4 with III/X – V/X – III/VII for a start.

I just dropped about 150g on gear. This patch made my head spin with all the condition possibilities.

Crossplay.2067:

Wastrel’s Punishment – I can’t tell when this trait is working or even if it has any effect so it needs to be changed.

I have tested it and it does work. Anytime the enemy is not doing an attack animation I hit 5% harder.

Crossplay.2067:

Mimic – I’m of two minds. The change still seems pointless because of Arcane Thievery, however, if you combo this Mimic with Arcane Thievery and then hit Signet of Inspiration, that’s one hell of a support build!

My vision: zerging on a mes and see a necro pop his elite. Mimic, Arcane Thievery to double the duration… stability for days!

Phantasms gaining evade on summon… does that mean I will finally be able to summon wardens for arah p1 last boss??

Triumphant Distortion has a 10s icd. I really hope that doesn’t mean if I summon multiple phantasms at start and only the first one will get the evade buff… :/

Welp, this “bug” may not be limited to just ascended. I did a test to verify this guy’s theory:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2e870h/in_areas_lvl_79_and_lower_ascended_weapons_are_no/cjxc739?context=3

And, so far the results are pointing to it being true….

Tried to recreate a schoolgirl with a katana look:
- http://i.imgur.com/yPdXbS7.jpg
- http://i.imgur.com/jYZaPgx.jpg
- http://i.imgur.com/vYlDaj7.jpg

Close enough?

I see the light at the end of the bug tunnel, it’s faint but it’s there!

The stat increase from upgrading to ascended is too small to be a factor. For example, an ascended zerk sword will net you 4 more power, 0.1% more crit chance, and 0.2% more crit dmg compared to exotic.

Maybe make a video and just attach that?

So, found a way to jumping puzzle coe story to the end. Takes about 4 mins solo, or 7 min if i’m lazy and want to spawn the last WP in case people wipe on Kudu.

Eulolia.2467:

you get to a version of the Evolved Destroyer boss that doesn’t have its shield up. It just stands there and casts dragon’s tooth, has a fair bit of health so it’s a good boss for testing DPS on.

He’s 626,808 HP so it’s not too bad but isn’t exactly ideal for a test dummy. There are a few problems with him though. He is lvl 80 yet the instance is lvl 78 which may come to bite you when you start doing the spreadsheet theorycrafting since you’re no longer lvl 80 and many of your variables start being affected by scaling, which isn’t exactly certain atm. Also, since you are scaled down your ascended weapons lose their prestige and become equal to their exotic counterparts in weapon strength. Who knows what else may be bugged too…

He however is ideal dummy if you do want to explore how variables behave in underleveled environment, both you being non lvl 80 and the mob being higher lvl than you (ex: lupi).

Welp, the current meta build for the mesmer isn’t the one being pushed by the site. Disappoint

We all have that dream:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQkaxaAtnQ

Coulter.2315:

You’re talking nonsense if you think a warrior can reach never mind keep up 25 stacks of bleed in PvP, however giving staff clones a double hit which can proc Burning and have a 2nd chance at critting for Bleed will be OP.

I don’t do PvP, only PvE. Check out the video of one of my solos:
- https://youtube.com/watch?v=6hoZbQkK_7c

The times where I’m not dodging or kiting around – 25 bleeds, burning, and 5 stacks of torment. I tried achieving similar with a mesmer and couldn’t come even close. Fixing the trait to apply to clones will allow me to get closer but still nowhere as impressive as the warrior, even if I do somehow get my paper clones to stay alive and apply conditions throughout the whole fight. I tried. The best I could do was to rely on clone-death procs and just spam clones, which is even harder now with the fix where I can’t force clone deaths…

PS: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EJPpAGqjGp8

Warrior with just one sword mh – perma 25 stacks of bleed (with appropriate build/gear). Mesmer with 3 clones in with IE equipped currently (also min/maxed build & gear) – barely 15 perma stacks of bleeds. In no way Illusionary Elasticity will suddenly make staff be “OP”, just more viable as a primary condi weapon.

Is that like mating Lupi with Alpha?

Since devs patched one of the main map exits, I added 2 updated videos to compensate. There are more exits but I’ll keep those for the rainy day.

The map exits cannot be used to skip/glitch anything so don’t even bother. The only thing to gain are hours of fun exploring the unexplorable.

I also had some fun with the gs. How to make your blurred frenzy shoot out a gs:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFvrii8ul9U

Shatter is direct damage so it scales same as all other mesmer skills. When in WvW I doubt you’ll be at 25 might when shattering so I would suggest going with 100% Berserker gear for most optimal burst.

It would be easier to limit the reflects per skill. 20 projectiles per feedback/wall/etc sounds fair. Anything above 20 will get absorbed instead. When you bomb lupi on the wall I counted around 60 or 70 reflected projectiles. Normal feedback does about 15 to 20 so the limit will not stop passing p2 with one feedback but will stop those insta kill anomalies.

Yeah, that’s the same conclusion I came to from my tests. One thing I’m still not 100% sure is whether its ascended getting scaling down to exotic, or exotic scaling up to ascended weapon strength. Or both scaling to somewhere in the middle.

Silberfisch.3046

I’ll never understand why people call a creative use of environment “exploit” by definition. Some may be. But definitively not all.

If it’s not an exploit then it’s not fun by default.

Exotic sword: 952.5 × 1.1 = 1,048
Ascended sword: 1,000 × 1.05 = 1,050

Ascended has more raw stats too so imo there isn’t much to debate (for lvl 80 at least).

My own stupidity. See an attack incoming, stare at it like a moron and eat it like a champ… way too many times than I’d like to admit. ;/

It’s actually the exact opposite. Precision > Power up to 100% crit. When fully buffed, Assassins will out dps Berserker both in direct damage and reflects. Berserker is better than assassins only when you have no offensive buffs like might/fury/banners/etc.

A video I made a while back with some of the outfits:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V8u2qbVrM0

Since then I’ve gotten a few more…

You know, this gave me an idea…

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ne2Tiv7N70&t=241

Misaka Mikoto.4513:

Recently tried all mesmer run with random NA PuGs. Quite fun!
Hardest part for p1 was the first alpha fight.

Oddly enough, I find the trash around him much more scary. I’ve lost count how many times I died to those pieces of kitten.

English?

Purple Miku.7032

ferocity + strength runes nerf + bloodlust nerfed + warriors getting nerfed, etc.

It’s ok, after around the 6th or 7th nerf patch you pretty much get used to it.

I’m not arguing for or against the possible nerf, all I need to confirm is how ANet intends the functionality to be. And yes, I’m aware that the buff icon is different than “Stealth”.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Is the decoy #41 really a bug? I think I remember the devs mentioning that decoy ignoring the revealed debuff is on purpose (cause, it’s not stealth, it’s decoy).

any source for this?

A “feature” similar to how untraited warden blocks unblockable projectiles. Added it as #41.

You have the power to enforce it, kick the offenders.

4/6/0/0/4 has 5% less terminal dps than 6/4/0/0/4. However, it shines better at the start where mesmer isn’t attacking and not taking advantage of the Wastrel’s Punishment and Mantra bonuses. 4/6/0/0/4 will get you to 350k only 1s slower than 6/4/0/0/4.

4/6/0/0/4 It is pretty much a variation of 2/4/0/0/4 where you give up reflect traits to buff your power/prec/ferocity. It’s the build I used in this VIDEO, it’s good if you absolutely hate mantras or are kiting a lot. Everywhere else I’d still recommend 6/4/0/0/4, which has 5.3% more direct dps and 9.2% more Feedback dmg thanks to the damage multipliers.

4/6/0/0/4 is equal to 6/4/0/0/4 only when you have 0 mantras.

Renny.6571:

Here’s a couple that always bugged me. (get it? TEEHEE)

Magic Bullet goes on a 3 sec cd if used right after a dodge roll where landing would require the skill to auto-face.

Video

Swap (and similarly Decoy) cancels the current channel, despite being instant. Unsure if it’s intended behavior, but it sucks nonetheless.

Video

Regarding Magic Bullet, I remade the video to include example of it going on short CD if you click it after simply stopping walking, not even dodging. Added it as #40.

The Sw3/Decoy breaking the channel I wouldn’t consider a bug but rather a QoL issue, so I added it to that section instead. That’s how the skills behaved since launch and you could justify the behavior with some logic, but it’s definitely not the most preferred way.

Also, moved Power Block to QoL section because it’s not exactly a bug but is definitely a problem for us.

Sw/Sw + Sw/P is top dps. Sw/Sw + Sw/F is top practical dps. GS is ok for pve, but not for dungeons.

6/4/0/0/4 for all of the above. 6/4/0/4/0 for focus reflects. 2/4/0/4/4 for all around balanced dps/utility build. There is no real need to run any other build apart from those 3 except from some fringe niche encounters.

Sticky thread: How To Mesmer in Dungeons