Guild Wars 2

Since the devs that were once so open about their intentions and where they were with what completely shut up and started lie-ing to us (look at the ranger forums)
people have lost what adoring respect they once had for the game (so many people held it on a golden pedastol that it might be at all different than the last game they played).

The changes they want, the ones they think the game needs… with the devs only giving vague promises… people expect them to be working on those ‘dire’ needs the devs hint at and people post about and work solutions for exc… except that isn’t happening, at all, so people are freaking out.
No communication back.
People freak out more.

They are just starting to realize this dev team is extremely slow and quiet about fixing bugs and balancing… oh and just as ‘good’ at actually fixing them as any other out there…
Leaving the game for a few months (until it gets itself into shape) wasn’t most people’s desire or intention short of a catastrophe.

Casey.9687:

I wasn’t calling it a bug if you read my first post you can see what i clearly know it isnt. I was saying if they can fix traps just like that then why cant they fix something as simple as this, overnight.

Needing an overnight fix for it implies they did something wrong, added a bug to their patch, the lower attack speed wasn’t an unintentional nerf to dmg…
It wasn’t.
They knew what they were doing.
Anet knew what they were doing and quite obviously see the effects of it… yet this change is nothing they see as in need of a ‘fix’…

Even more simply, the easiest way for you to understand this, people were complaining their kitten off the day after it happened.
It was quite a show, and so it was obvious the patch notably lowered the attack and disproportionately the QZ attack speed.
(there were even videos and narrations showing the exact loss in attack speed)
If Anet had any intentions of reverting it, they would have then…
They aren’t acting coy about it, waiting for someone on the forums to say ‘its ok anet, we will forgive you if you revert it now’…
They made and stuck with a change to shortbow attack speed.

Forzani.2584:

It’s like dejavu all over again. Anyone who has played this type of game has seen this scenario repeat itself over and over.

Patch is on the way. Fanbase makes post after post of what they think is going to be changed and improved. Hype overdrive.
Patch is installed …and everyone is upset, underwhelmed and threatening to quit.

/rinse
/repeat

But GW2…

????
You do realize that the ranger forums did post like crazy and rage about it…
A month ago…

It’s not a bug, so it wasn’t reverted.

Cloud.7613:

This, every class apart from Ranger has been slowly improved, while the weakest from release was slowly getting worse. I had high hopes for this patch because for once, they actually where open with us and it becomes into a nerf instead. Good grief.

Lies.
Every class has been getting hit in some way lately.
We just were the worst off to start and had quite literally nothing buffed.

(read the patch notes… tank eles got hit hard, mesmer phantasms got hit, theif S/D got hit HARD, bunker guards got a few bugs fixed (nerfs) and protection nerfed… just off the top of my head)

Kurow.6973:

That’s the point. Other class’s damages (equivalent to Mug, and in some cases MORE) from their class specific skills are inherent…and does NOT require a trait to begin with. Steal/Mug is DODGE-ABLE, and BLOCK-ABLE!

Please, DON’T throw out random “facts” and numbers to try justify an invalid argument. Thanks!

PS: The main reason WvW damages are so high, is because of the difference between PvE and sPvP gear. The most important one being Critical Damage. You can have almost 2x the amount of CD in PvE than you can in sPvP gear.

Oh so the point is to have crazy powerful first tier traits that deal massive undodgeable dmg and can cause undodgeable stuns…
then numbers and facts are random and can be waved off with a few angry mutters.
Oh fun…
Guess you might just have a future in the dev business.
LOL

Wow…
This wasn’t talked about extensive 1~ month ago… and it had such an impact then…
Oh and of course, the devs have no idea what they are doing is doing until random people on the forums tell them that, you know, their nerf to attack speed…
wait for it…
NERFED ATTACK SPEED
OMG
DATZ CRAZY
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

xiv.7136:

5v5 hotjoin

pvp daily

small steps class balance changes

this is the right way to start

Yeup, then they release…
Oh wait its already been 2 months and they just got 5v5s down and are still wading threw class bugs/uselessness and their tourny system is trash…

I only care because the PvP puts a heavy weight on the spec itself and tournies are the only way to actually get a modicum of social interaction in the game (there is no synergy/group-anything in pug play, which sucks)
It kind of flaunts just how above/below par the spec you are playing is (in a somewhat evenly skilled matchup)

Dreleth.3647:

Still running S/D after nerfs and haven’t had any problems yet. You guys may be looking far too into the nerfs. If 35% of your wins in duels and games were determined by dancing dagger or cloak and dagger, you are clearly doing something wrong!

S/D rellies on dancing dagger for a fair deal of dps…
The sword spammable is nifty but won’t tend to take you home in good fights….

Its not getting any better if that’s what your after.
People were complaining that it was already a high barrier to entry, and yeah it just got a wee bit worse (tragically)

Because you know people like to have games they like get better and this one seems to be prone to ‘refuting the status quo’ in those regards.

Substance E.4852:

The problem is that the class still attracts masochists that take pride in being less effective in PvE and having 1:100 KDR’s in pvp so it will be a long time before the player numbers reflect actual performance.

There are charts, I saw one somewhere on this forum, ranger is the least played class in PvP by a longshot.

Maniac.5163:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBn32Fqm9w

When you show me your ranger doing this, I’ll agree I need to experiment more and we are on a level playing field.

OMG an ele doing good in a WvW skirmish… you must be so proud…
enough so, that you got lost on the forums?
There are threads for videos???

Division.9618:

How am i supposed to control ravens? Pull them back? I’m using a GS, which means i’m in melee range. The pets don’t respond well enough to dodge out of large AOE with me. Don’t forget, AOE isn’t just an ele dropping a giant fiery rock. A lot of melee weapons have AOE on their attacks that hit pets for full damage. Even if i dodge the pet will still take damage.

I haven’t used the pet allot, but in smaller fights it was living well enough, anything over a Xv2 and it started to fall apart but short of that it was holding out well enough.
Running SoH is usually what brings the dps.
I don’t think QZ is really all that important though :/
Lightning reflexes is tends to be good for the ranged weapon set.

Division.9618:

I tried to sick him on a guardians wisdom hammer, but the hammer was still around swinging away with no problem after a while. I had to switch to my inferior damage wolf all the time.

I tried to make a little burst with the 5 skill and the ravens f2, combined with “sick em”, but it almost never worked. The cast time on 5 is too long for it to be reliable, the burst damage is not that good, and the raven is dead most of the time anyway.

The changes to 4 are better, but it’s still not a very good skill. The knockback takes too long to pull off, and throw still roots you.

Sick em is bad.
Guardian hammers are unkillable.
(a tip though, only the third attack in their chain knocks back, that and they are REALLY kite-able)
Ravens you have to learn to control well, you don’t just send them out alone (short of because shear need) or leave them on targets. They’re assistant dps to typically use while the enemy is focused on you.

It is a tougher spec, all given, so yeah it won’t have near the ‘excellent’ factor that things like 100-blade warriors do or instagib thieves.
(since you don’t have to play as well to play them well)

Casey.9687:

i tried GS it still sucks….i was out damaging it with my shortbow. Rangers are completely useless in close combat against all other melee.

Then you are playing it like a warrior would axe/shield or their greatsword.
It works, just not super competitively.

Running ravens with the SoH and setting the pet on passive (so you can get the signet off on its spike easier) you can manage a fair deal.
Its a pretty decent setup, no one sees the bird spike coming and it hits for 7~k.
Greatsword isn’t the strength of the build though… its just the utility to screw up what they are doing, which combined with good endurance regen (and so dodging) can stop a number of spikes. But that means you have to have a decent head for animations since, yeah the specs survivability comes from actively stopping dmg not so much passively.
Again, greatsword isn’t your main weapon at least I’ve never managed to pull a spec off like that. Usually for a power-spike dps build longbow or shortbow is what you engage with then swap out of as need be.

Substance E.4852:

Warriors will beat you 100% of the time and most Guardians i have faced didn’t necessarily do more DPS than me but they did have a much higher amount of survivability and would ultimately outlast me until I finally died, gave up or their zerg swarmed me.

Meh, the block does wonders against their spike.
Its 2s knockdown burns threw the majority of frenzy. Dodging bull’s charge is still advised since with frenzy up, reacting is a kitten and if he uses whirwind off the bat instead… he’ll eat your block and still take you down 5~k life.
If you time the block well and dodge a few things of note, oh and land the bird spike you should manage well enough.

Its not actually a terrible matchup untill you get to a pretty high skilled bracket

Substance E.4852:

I’ve started doing this to get around WvW faster but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Without a doubt it does.

Substance E.4852:

If anything, I would add the idea of flipping the order of Monarch Flight and Hornet Sting as it would give the sword a gap closer and make it possible to use our hardest hitting sword skill on demand rather than have to fly backwards first as we already have a dodge in Serpent Strike and another in the dagger #4 skill.

Learn to unclick and turn around.
Its a hassle ><
but works

That’s the first thing I practiced when i picked up the weapon.
The ‘roll away’ is a makeshift gap closer, it just doesn’t hit at the end
Then you save the leap for if they get out of your reach again in the next 4~ seconds.
It works extremely well with a lil practice, I just rarely ever see anyone go for it.

Psisah.9140:

What do you guys think about the weapons?

I don’t like the setup of a number of the weapon’s abilities, but that is a topic that won’t get anywhere 2 months after launch, which I take isn’t what you want.
At best only a numeric tweaks, bug fixes and small buffs will happen. when it comes to that its pretty simple.

Longbow, after a projectile speed buff would need a few tweaks to dmg and possibly increased duration on each tick of the aoe cripple.
Greatsword, I like the individual abilities but hate how they work together so just won’t comment beyond maul should have been defensive or the stun should have been a mobility ability and auto attack dmg increased. Its at a terrible, uncohesive inbetween atm.
Offhand axe needs work. Period. Both abilities are terrible, Path of Scars needs a massive dmg buff. The whirl needs work, if I had to throw out examples it would be to either be able to move during it, it pulses weakness, gives you protection or it is much faster but deals the same net dmg because atm it is useless in PvP.
Offhand horn is allright. Its basically just some passive swiftness/fury/might. Effectively it works, those boons can get you places, but I hate how the weapon plays so I’ll just leave the point be since conforming to my tastes aren’t a necessary change.
Mainhand axe is fine. It deals its good condition dmg and gives a chill. I would like a tweak or 2 but that’s just a detail at this point.
One handed sword is fine after the spammable fix (I’ve heard complaints that you can’t dodge at times in the animation because of the leaping action). Other than that it is a relatively strong weapon.
Offhand torch is fine. It works well with sword by giving it a fire field to leap threw, the torch toss does a good 6s burn. Sword also stalls well giving you plenty of time to ration out these burns (even though it would be a dozen times better settup in a class with a 5s weapon swap CD instead of 10).
Offhand dagger is fine. It has an evade which works wonderfully with ranger (bad at dealing with immobilizes, but you can use this evade while immobilized). The cripple/bleed is fantastic for kiting (the class has a fair deal of endurance to dodge back if need be, the cripple lasts 6 freaking seconds).
Shortbow is fine. With a bump to projectile speed I’d call it good enough.

Shortbow and longbow though… if you wanted the weapons to be allot more interesting, I would have their spammable’s combo chance doubled or it being a countable the first in 3 shots combo’s, making combo fields allot more useful to them (turning shortbow/longbow spammable into less of a blind spam). That and spirits would make combo fields with their activated abilities.
I’d find that interesting, but at this point a bit beyond reason (since so much other stuff needs to be done first).

Sol.4310:

Spirits need a Major life buff, they die extremely fast to make them any use in pvp at all.

Ground targeted, a larger buff radius and MUCH shorter CD would do just as well
(that might be too big of a mix between turrets and phantasms though, lol)

If they want to stick with the whole fallowing deal (which odds say the do) then yeah, large buffs to survivability are pretty necessary.

BAEK.8561:

One thing I don’t understand is why Thieves get 25% movement speed buff with their signets, while Rangers only get 10% with ours. They’re both signets and thus should provide comparable effects. Buffing our Signet of the Hunt to match the one thieve’s have is probably one of the most needed changes to help with ranger’s mobility.

That’s the case of pretty much every signet.
SoS is just endure pain on a longer CD and needing a trait, a 3rd tier trait, to work…
Ranger signets need ALLOT of work to, well, work.
The passive healing one was good for a while, it actually was the only signet in the class I liked, it gave solid selfhealing (before it was nerfed) so grabbing it alone fit a few tank specs, then if you were more offensive you could get the trait to make it give you stability (another fantastic buff).
The CD was excessive but it still fit the mold for the special ranger “beastmaster’s signets” deal, unlike the 3 others…
Signet of the hunt is close, bird spikes are the only use for it atm…
(I’ve seen pretty consistent 8~k spikes from ravens because of it)
Rangers need attacks that actually hit hard for SoH to be worthwhile with the 3rd tier trait (even then it is exceedingly mediocre).
So yeah tweaks to how it improves dmg would seem pretty important.

I can live with most melee pets missing against uncrippled targets.
Maybe that’s just because I run axe/dagger shortbow with traps so have the cripples/chills to ration out to help the guy out, that and in small fights my own dmg is hefty even without him.
Projectile speed is the #1 in my book, the class is outright bad at ranged combat because of it. There shouldn’t be a blanket blocking an entire style of play from a class with weapons set up for nothing else.

The problem for me in regards to pets is actually balance…
Canines are better than felines in near every way.
They deal about 90% of their dmg, have a 2s knockdown and a 5s cripple (so can land more of their kitten). They have 4~k more health and 700 more toughness. Their activated skills are better.
No reason to choose a feline in the slightest.
That’s a problem with a number of complete species’ of pets (boar, devourer, feline, and probably bears/drakes off the top of my head)

When I was running a pet n TPvP I could work with its survivability plenty well, i really couldn’t complain about it. I ran protect me and empathetic bond on the build to boot (canine pets), but I also wasn’t chasing larger fights, I could see how it would be EXTREMELY helpful in them though.
Less aoe dmg to pets I would see best to be a trait, at least that’s how I would do it given the chance. Something like a 2nd tier trait in the beastmastery tree or 15 point minor.
That’d give people who are aiming for those larger fights with their ranger a chance to pretty easily spec into it if need be.

Axe offhand needs a massive buff.
Both abilities are terrible in PvP, Path of Scar’s does roughly the spammables dmg, possibly twice. The aoe is standstill and bad dmg to boot.
Everything else you posted is great though

Axe/dagger doesn’t need anything, there are a number of tweaks I’d like to it but the weapon set works which means it is far far down the list of priorities for this class.

Arrys.7145:

I agree the maul damage increase is nice as well;) But the ability to block run into a whirling warrior to interupt is sweetness. And since I’ld migrated to a build using it love it.

I take it you mean axe offhand whirl (which is useless in PvP) not greatsword’s whirwind (which is amazing in PvP) because the greatsword’s ability evades the whole time which would mean you would block 1 hit then attempt to knockback, it would be evaded and you would eat 2 more hits all the while…

Corpus.5347:

Guys, it is rare for a representative of the company to give us any kind of information about what may be coming up as far as changes, tweaks , buffs and nerfs. This is why. People set expectations way to high and begin frothing at the mouth (or I guess the fingers) when what comes to pass falls shy of those expectations.

More information not less would have solved the problem.
They gave little to no idea of their intent and progress, leaving it up to hope and speculation.
Giving an idea of where they stand and where they are on achieving it would have stopped any shock by this patch.

Making people sit here waiting for something to happen, because they don’t like playing a class as is, then having implied some mysterious big change is coming addressing everything they see wrong with the class… which quite obviously builds up hope… only to be terribly let down, is the road to bad relations…
It doesn’t mean that there should be less communication, in actuallity it should be a yell out that there should be a lil more.
So many people latched on to this game before launch because the devs seemed willing to speak about what they were doing and why, that has quite literally in every sense disappeared.

If their changes make any lick of sense, intelligent forum go’ers will pick up on it, point it out and odds say if anything legitimate criticism will form, making forums more than a place to whine (but tragically I’m see’ing less people come here to actually promote any intelligent discussion… so it honestly might be a lil too late)

Lordryux.9785:

so ur basically saying glass cannon thiefs should instantly die with no survivability? hmm verry selfish thier while mesmers can pretty much be the same way uncatchable. and half of them are glass cannons too so that means ur saying they should instantly die aswell !

Your ability to infer is terrible.

Sylosi.6503:

Zosk.5609:

Probably twice as many as most games, how many designers do you think they need?

Given the snails speed at which they fix bugs / implement changes, clearly more, 2 guys on eight classes is much less than other games I’ve played, some have one person per class (Rift), granted there is much more to do per class in Rift, but still, others have two or three classes per person (LOTRO), I’d certainly expect more at this stage in the games life with all the bugs they have and the initial rounds of balancing to do.

Especially off launch, this is when they get most of their dedicated fanbase…
They had an insanely large dedicated fanbase before release… all they had to do is deliver basics and listen to intelligent forum go’ers (there were tons of them floating around, more than any other game I’ve played)
If Anet just fools around off the bat like they are doing a large number of people are going to leave and never look back…

Devildoc.6721:

How the hell is shortbow #3 blatantly OP? It does like autoattack damage and the cripple lasts an instant. It’s an escape tool, nothing more.

It alone makes glass cannon thieves survivable (instant evade) and nigh uncatchable giving them as close to a free chance to pew away before spiking as possible.
For roamers that is godsend.

Kurow.6973:

It IS anti-burst.

C&D damage was drastically reduced.

Mug damage is fine as is. If Mug damage is reduced, a massive nerf on all other class’s class specific skills are required. If you can live with that and not qq, then sure…nerf Mug damage, but make sure to nerf all the other class’s class specific damage by the same amount, if not more.

Mug is a first tier trait.
Do you want to go over other first tier traits?
When it comes to dmg they tend to be situational 5-10% dmg buffs.
Yes 5-10% dmg buffs that aren’t up all the time…
Mug is a 33%~ dmg buff on spike.
That’s ridiculous.
That’s not even all of it.

Mug makes steal apply venoms.. like basilisk venom…
So causes undodgeable stuns or immobilizes…

All in a first tier trait…
So where would that re-balancing be again?

ocfallwind.4821:

I wouldn’t use the word “huge”. Just “neat” at best.

GS’s damage is more like a butter knife anyway. Well but I love the animations.

This.
The block is nifty, but the weapon still lacks any reason to be used over things like… warrior greatsword.

I like the tactic style of the ranger weapon, just it lacks a punch, defense or even good mobility…
2 CCs is nifty but not close to making a weapon worthwhile…

One gap closer on a 12s CD isn’t good mobility.
Axe/shield on the warrior class has as much if not more; debate-ably better defensiveness and a f*ton more dmg.

LaughingLoser.9806:

Stormleaf.1769:

People rage and whine about a “stealth nerf” without even pausing to think for a moment it might be a bug, it’s then confirmed as a bug that will be fixed the same night that it’s introduced, and people respond with yet more irrational insults. You just refuse to give ArenaNet even a drop of respect, don’t you?

Stop behaving like irrational brats just because you didn’t get every single buff you dreamed of in one patch. ArenaNet doesn’t deserve this kind of grief, regardless of what you all think.

^ This. I’m sure none of you have ever unintentionally oopsed anything up in your life.

Oh noes, by omitting every detail somebody can make it seem like complaining isn’t justified…
You do realize they did the same thing with shortbow and then called it intended?
They haven’t posted a single thing about where they see the ranger as and where they want it to be… leaving us entirely in the dark about the class.
Then when the patch came around, they focused their buffs on f*ing water combat and beating down the only viable spec..

Ok, ok roll back a month, they announced that they were delaying updates on only rangers because they wanted to test out the changes a bit longer, implying the changes were large in impact… few rangers were making it into tourny play and they were becoming less and less popular in it as people started getting strats down and whatnot, so it made sense.
The combination of no one having any idea where the devs thought the class was and general uselessness of the class left people looking towards a big change.
But when those changes came around to being perfected… they focused on buffing f*ing water combat…. ignoring quite literally next to every problem people have been posting about here since launch and, hopefully mistakenly, adding in a 100%-20% CD increase on all traps (nailing to the ground pretty much the only working ranger spec atm).

That is just terrible work.
Every part of that is just, utterly, terribly played out.

WAR grade.
And that’s far from a compliment.

BabelFish.7234:

True but damage+new ability+shadow step is what’s making the BS build overpowered. Sure a BS thief could use Infiltrator’s Signet but that means they’ll be required to have more skill in order to utilize their combo, they can’t queue up the combo and get a coffee.

Its not just more skill to pull it off.
Infiltrator’s signet requires a utility slot (pushing out a venom or quickness or assassin’s signet or another stealth).
Infiltrator’s signet doesn’t apply basilisk venom.
Infiltrator’s signet doesn’t deal up to 6k dmg.

It’d be a massive debuff to the spike spec.

They talked about toning down burst dps and giving them defensive abilities to compensate.
They did pretty much none of that short of buffing a few defensive abilities and beating on S/D.

Mug still does up to 6k dmg and applies basilisk venom leaving the instagib spike completely intact, shortbow #3 is still blatantly OP, nothing really changed in the spec short of not being top tier pew-pewers from off BO to boot…

They said they knew d/d-shortbow was over the top yet didn’t actually fix the issues about it in question…

Yeup…
And I thought that was going to be the next big thing…

They destroyed dancing dagger…
I’m sorry for you :‘(
Genuinely, I play a ranger and I still say that…
A bounce or 20% less dmg and a shorter cripple would have easily been enough.. and you know, a hit to some of the other crazy abilities (thieves guild, steal, shortbow’s #3)

THEY kittenING DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH MUG.
The 6k instant tier one trait that applies basilisk venom (instant stun break or die) still lives…
What the kitten.

ykon.8214:

So After the bug fix :

“Ranger Traps: These skills now state the correct duration of 30 seconds.”

And i thought they were content with just betch slapping all our weapons into oblivion…

Irie.7149:

Question I really want to ask about the traps is… what exactly will the bug fix be?

1. The bug was actually the cooldown, and fix will restore it back to normal?
2. Are the cooldowns actually intended to be longer, but they bugged up the two trap traits so the bug fix will so that Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise will work as intended? i.e. still longer cooldowns…

Some of you are saying yay, they admitted that its a bug, now stop whining. But those are two very different things and we do’t know which one they will fix…

Yeaah in the patch notes they didn’t even say they were touching anything related to traps…

What gets me is, how did the bug even come to happen then???
Such a joke…

fishergrip.4082:

If that’s true, that single nerf is 100x worse than any buffs we got.

You mean like how they made the useless greatsword deal a lil more dmg on a terrible ability??
Or making spirits, those things where half the traits don’t work, yet die all the time, proc a lil more??
Oh oh or that time that they fixed the sounds on healing spring??
Or that time they said they fixed lick wounds over a month ago??
(seriously I can’t find anything I would call a buff to the class)

And I thought I would get a chance to dump LoL for a bit since it is a terrible game to start out in…
Guess not…

If this is for PvP….
Yay now we have more gear no one cares about because of terrible auto-dyeing…

Glad they are having fun being symbolic
(useless stuff for a class that is, well, you get the picture…)

><
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Ironically in the patch they were addressing the ranger’s problems…
Not a good sign after the whole shortbow auto attack debacle, showing that they can and will stealth nerf necessary things to the majority of ranger specs…

TeHjAcKaL.2975:

So like…. the 3 major issues werent fixed yet…
1Longbows still suck, damage and projectile speed, short bow.. lol what a joke
2Pets who do half of a rangers damage, cannot hit moving targets
3Spirits… cannot survive in an instance without getting oneshot

but hey if i ever need to combo finish an enemy underwater ill be sure to thank you Anet, we rangers obviously havent mentioned the things we want fixing 1000 times that makes 1000000 times more sense
projectile speed
skill damage
spirit health
pet autoattack
plain and simple

I can live with the pet auto attack deal, you have to coordinate your cripples and chills for the guy.
To boot there are ranged pets, that and birds can hit moving targets while dealing good dmg all the while.
Everything else is pretty on target though…

YumCHA.8706:

Just please fix the projectiles for bows. That’s all I ask. The current mechanics is utterly depressing.

Yeup… the terrible projectile speed is devastating… the class is outright bad at sitting to the side and sniping away into combat because of nothing but the fact half their shots just miss targets not even dodging…

So much for updating, really, anything…

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Bonfire’s AoE doubles in size with offhand training.

O.o
That’s interesting.
It would have been lovely if the tooltip actually said that.

If you run sword, torch is viable only because of the fire field to leap threw.
Otherwise it is just subpar to dagger in pretty much every way.

Ninjah.6298:

Torch. Bonfire > All

Good in noob PvP because they don’t expect it.

Oh noes a static 4~ft fire aoe..
Seriously though, if the radius wasn’t so laughably small it would be a good skill… but it isn’t…

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Batlav.6318:

yeah i have trouble with them also
last time i was into fight with one droped his hp and puff invisible with 10 clones around
not impossible to kill em but it’s hard 1v1

When he goes invisible he is most likely trying to get close to you so he can hit you with his version of pistol whip, or to let clones shatter you, or just to blend in with clones, or hell, all of the above. Just kite backwards when he goes invis and wait for him to surface.

Unless all you do is kite and your fighting a melee nonshatter mesmer (EXTREMELY RARE) few mesmers will use stealth to run up to you let alone to blurred frenzy, at best its stall/kite or use a heal skill while phantasms tick away on the enemy, not many high dps mesmers have an on demand stealth (decoy). If they do though at best its to give them a nice chance to pop that one clone that can be swapped to for an immobilize before shattering or if they’re desperate hit with that 2s stun -> the same and some auto attacks.

Mesmers don’t blurred frenzy from stealth and the only invis that effects clones, so helps shatter, is an elite skill (so not only obvious but rare), to boot shatter specced mesmers have a trait that makes the shatter effect on himself so you know exactly when he starts the shatter so can dodge into the rest of the clones (short of being surrounded by sword clones, a terrible place to ever be against a shatter mes though btw). Without the immobilize blurred frenzy is a terrible offensive ability, anyone can just walk threw the mes or away and only take 1/3 of its dmg at best while the mesmer wastes its distortion (which would have worked a dozen times better as a counter to an enemies spike)

But yeah there isn’t much to do about invisibility besides pick away at phantasms or sword clones in the mean time and watch for any clones that come out of stealth running directly at you (the sword swap->imob clone) oh and i randomly dodge if I know their moa form is up.
Unlike a thief, mesmer stealth really isn’t that big of a deal (short of taking phantasm’s dmg or being melee and so it helps the mes kite).

Good reflexes and sword or dagger offhand with shortbow beats spike dps mesmers.
You can evade even when immobilized and all their notable dmg is dodgeable or killable.
You have to have good reflexes though.
I have to say it again because it is EXTREMELY important, dodging shatters=win.

When I was running tournies (a few weeks before paid tournies came out but we were winning 90+% of the tournies) I was in part our designated mesmer roflestomper and I did my job kitten well.
(as a condi-trap ranger)

If you want the utter unrushed win, you just dodge the deulist/berserker’s first volley then catch it in a fire trap every time or a weapon swap (geomancy sigil) or at worst sick a pet on it. Most of the time you can still scrape the mesmer with either aoe for some continued pressure.
Then all you have to do is watch for the clone that they can tele-swap with and kite/kill it (if he has 2-3 sword clones out) or just keep an on weapon evade up.

Canines kitten them over, few pay attention to the 2s knockdown or aoe fear/root giving me free wins left and right.

Eventually you’ll start learning things like fighting a good shatter mes that gets 3 sword clones up is a big no no… he will shatter and you will have little time to respond, none if he immobilizes you. That and mesmers that aim for that, the 3 sword clones, have kitten for dodging after that spike since they blew near all their endurance on making clones…
Just watch out for condi mesmers, those are the ones you have to watch out for.
Dodge the deulists first volley and sick a pet on him or kill him some way asap, short of that and the clones causing confusion to anyone near them when they die their, dmg is mediocre. But they can evade/cleanse/distortion for days.

Oh and throwing traps on the mesmer portals make good times

Unspecified.9142:

There is also the trait to have your pet take conditions from you but then you’re just killing your pet which isn’t always great. Finally there is Shake It Off with the brown bear but you have to be really close to the bear for it to work.

My pet rarely die.
I run canines and protect me along with empathetic bond.

Empathetic bond is the best cleanse in game.
Full cleanse every 10s.
You can even count it down in your head.

Play it while you can, I’m not sure it will live in its current state past the 15th…

And I’m pretty sure healing spring is 2 conditions every 3s.

Bear pet is bad in sPvP.
Melandru is bugged? even if it isn’t, with rounding being what it is, it is only a 0-25% decrease in duration…
The weapon sigil is only good in conjunction with decently good cleansing since it picks a random one off at a random time roughly 13~ seconds apart.

GlockworK.2954:

Quick fix:

You can’t cast Steal when channeling an ability.

Done.

What other first tier trait do you know that does up to 6k dmg?
Most are typically 5% situational dmg buffs, this is a 33%+ bonus to a spike.

CriSPeH.8512:

Also if you can set your keys up to do an;
You will instead launch yourself foward, which can be usefull for getting away, diving into water or just to surpise the hell out of people when you go launching at their screen.

Helplessly…
Yeah they’d be surprised… that people are now literally throwing free kills at them
:P

Its a terrible skill that leaves you completely vulnerable (yes ranged attacks still hit you just fine) while knocking yourself down… (basically setting up that stun/imob you broke out of again)
Short of using it on a smoke field its just bad.

BigTeeHunter.4913:

@Vayyy
Stability can be converted to fear, stealth can be aoe knockback’d, quickness just needs quicker reactions.
Also, you’ve said that theif and mesmer can avoid their first stomp, which is untrue. The only class in the game that can 100% avoid the initial stomp from any class, is elementalist.

Having boons stripped while stomping from things like ‘corrupt boons’ and ‘null field’ isn’t common at all.
Quickness resurrects people exceedingly fast and finishes people in a number of cases before a rez can get off.
Mesmers always avoid the first stomp because of stealth.
Thieves avoid about 90% of the first stomps.

Not every class has to do everything the same well.
I could care less about the lil specifics of the downed state, you typically only go there after kittening up and it rarely tends to change the course of a fight.
(short of a warrior living for 11~ seconds to vengeance, but meh I think its kinda nifty having some threat from it on occasion)

TGSlasher.1458:

Suicide button would prevent the enemy from downing you and just chilaxin beside your downed state, holding you out of the fight for 20 seconds till you die or try to heal (which they interrupt).

That would be pretty powerful in competitive play.
But terrible in pug.
Allot of people in tournies wait for the rez timer to just pass before finishing someone off (so its the longest respawn possible).

Meh downed state is fine, I like the idea.
Having people be able to heal others to a degree though would have been wonderful

Rant:
This game has a nifty concept for healing but doesn’t pull it off in any way better than any other MMO.

I’m feeling a bit bold so I’ll take it broader than that for the hell of it.
So look at healing, they tossed the trinity which had the whole idea of ‘dedicated healers’ and instead gave everyone a bit of healing. It gives a new playstyle, paths uncharted, yada yada… but in this whole ‘recreating a system’ Anet neglected to touch on the point why people choose to play an MMO… the brilliance of the idea of no trinity would have extended to bringing people to work together more with less hassle, not less with more… everyone would be, to a degree, a healer so have to allocate their heals between themself and others, everyone would be in part a dps so be to some degree an offensive threat, everyone would have their ways of mitigating dmg done to themself and others...
But Anet didn’t do that… they made everyone strikingly standalone, they turned everyone into their own trinity and to boot SPvP into a game of splitting up instead of sticking together…

This is an MMO, and at very least I play MMOs to fight with other people, bond with them threw combat, exc. and the combat Anet setup doesn’t promote that short of the top few percent of players, at best.
Making a game really friendly to those 10~ quality teams in the entire NA server set is great but it should be something to do in addition to or at very least focused on after a solid pug base for the game is setup or else few to no one would care about that Esport quality play…

samo.1054:

People will get bored of TDM even faster than conquest. Afterall 8v8 hotjoin atm works exactly as TDM would, so…

I’d beg to differ.
More structure in pug matches can only help…
I’m not a fan of team death match but this 3 point conquest is terrible to pug.
People randomly go to random places leaving it as more of a free for all than anything… and I for one play team PvP games to, you know, play with other people…
More structure can only help that…
I really can’t get into this pug PvP like in any other game I’ve played, sure the higher end tourny groups and deuls are entertaining enough… but they tend to be few and far between.
Good combat mechanics, mediocre->bad everything else.
GW2 in a nutshell.

And yes, giving more maps can only help if they do it right… forcing everyone to cycle threw every map, even threw the ones they hate, is just bad.
They would have to redo the whole SPvP server system to actually give more than utter random pugging.
End of story.

An example of that would be to add tags to servers to guide people into the one they want [for certain ranks/skill, only certain maps, only certain classes, for duels, for scrims, exc.]

DiogoSilva.7089:

garethh.3518:

That’s a lie.
I’ve seen plenty of effective offensive guardians/eles….
The meta just doesn’t really fit what they do though.

As an elementalist player, I would like to understand this. Condition damage is strong, and I suppose the current meta doesn’t encourage much that playstyle. Burst elementalists are pretty much a worse thief at everything: less damage, easier-to-avoid attacks, no stealth, lesser margin for error, less defense (aka = they die even faster). Spike elementalists don’t exist, because they must interrupt their own spikes to defend themselves in power builds or else they die. Which means there’s no spiking at all.

Aah, pure burst dps they are mediocre.
But so is near every class compared to the thief (besides probly warrior).

Offensive, that’s what I said, offensively, they do fine enough.
One of the few specs I have trouble with in deuls are well played s/d eles… and I was beating the vast, vast majority of people in deuls.