Guild Wars 2

I’m interested. I hope it won’t be a basic melee weapon like it is for Revenant.

I think it does (the ticks are too slow in my opinion.) They should either speed up the ticks or make it remove/rip 2 condis/boons per tick.

That and I feel like the new glamour trait isn’t really worth it.
I’m missing the old blind/confusion glamour builds.

I agree that light armor on human males looks meh compared to females.
I’m bad at mixing & matching myself (i think, honestly never really bothered with it) but I love he Trickster set.
One of the only light armor sets that looks good on males.

This is getting very annoying. Takes like 30 minutes & 100 tries to be able to log in… second day in a row.

First time i’ve been this annoyed with this game in a while.

I keep getting the same whenever I want to go to Heart of the mists. And sometimes on other maps too.
Since most of my characters are in the heart of the mists this is quite annoying.

Some servers just tend to die out (due to wvw guilds leaving, drama,…) making WvW not really pleasant for those who want to stick to that one server.

But sometimes there are a lot of people on a server (making it high/very highly populated) but not many people are actually doing WvW on those servers.

Since home server only really matter for WvW nowadays I thought it would be a good idea to price the server transfers depending on WvW population/rank.

Right now the servers are priced depending on server population.
It sucks when you see a high wvw ranked server having the same “population” & price as a low tiered server.

If the prices changed depending on wvw rank, more people, players will transfer to lower ranked servers because it’s cheaper. Instead of people paying the same price to get to a high ranked server.

Personally I would price it like this:
2000 gems : tier 1 server
1800 gems : tier 2 server
1600 gems : tier 3 server
And so on until tier 9

WvW population wouldn’t completely flip around but it would hopefully make the WvW population & experience more pleasant.

I haven’t played the other specs much but I get the feeling that with most other specs the whole “playstyle” changes.

While with chronomancer it feels like the playstyle stays more or less the same but just gets buffekitten

he only one who feels this way?

Robert Gee.9246:

I’d like to provide a little context for this discussion as I think it’s important to understand what led us to change this skill in the first place. I’m going to avoid talking about my personal opinion here as I’d like all the feedback from this BWE to be as unbiased as possible.

We discovered pretty early in testing the following problems with the first version:

1. Stun breaks were pretty much useless against this unless they also gave stability because the pulls were so close together that you still couldn’t escape. The pulls were also so close together that you couldn’t even dodge roll between them if you got caught by one of them.
2. The full duration of the disable ended up being around 5 seconds total, which might be okay for a single target skill, but was pretty out of line for a skill that could hit 5 targets.
3. The skill had a lot of different things going on and was difficult to parse for those who saw it for the first time.

The first two factors in combination created a very oppressive skill which had a very limited number of response options. The third issue wasn’t as important as the first two, but was indicative of the skill being overly-complex and needing some simplification.

I hope that helps. I’m looking forward to reading your feedback on the Chronomancer from the BWE!

Just wondering, wouldn’t it be possible to make this well 1,5 sec longer and have a +0,5 sec between every pul to give the enemy some chance to escape?

And while I agree that the “original” Gravity Well seemed too overpowered in my eyes, i can’t help but feel that the current one is way too underpowered.

I’ve been thinking of a way to buff it up without making it too overpowered.

First pulse: Pull
Second pulse: Pull
Third pulse: 1 second knockdown & damage.

Removing stability. 180 sec cd.

Like you said, this skill had a lot of things going for it (damage, stability, tons of CC)

Like this it would still offer a lot of CC but no more stability & less damage.
It would still be hard to counter (but hey elites should have a big impact on a fight.)

3 sec CC would make it on par with the Revenant’s Jade Wind duration wise. But with a smaller radius & a long cooldown.

I don’t think the Stability part fits with the whole “gravity” theme.

I agree that the original elite was kind of… op. But right now its too easy to get out of it and kind of pointles. Additionally it really lost the ‘gravity’ feel. Especially since no one gets caught in the float.

A better solution would have been:
First pulse: Pulls enemies inside & deal damage.
Second pulse: Immobilize & deal damage.
Third pulse: Float & deal damage.

Get rid of the stability: Didn’t suit the “gravity” part of the elite and its also a nerf.
Nerf cooldown to 180 sec.

Offers a lot more counterplay:
-Stability
-condi cleanse (getting rid of immobilize & dodge out)
-mobility skills like blink & lightning flash.
-Stunbreak.

Even if that would be too op, changing the immobilize to a chill would be a good thing too.

Please Anet consider buffing the skill with more CC to make it an actual reliable skill because right now its close to useless.

Embolism.8106:

With regards to Gravity Well, what if it also Chills enemies and drain their Endurance every pulse? That would make it much harder for them to get out without giving it a pulsing CC or Immobilise.

This would be very nice indeed. Endurance drain would be something unique as well.

I’d still prefer pulls but no stability & damage though.

Exciton.8942:

Gravity well is essentially trash now. Simply zoning out a small 240 radius area does not justify its 90sec cooldown and elite slot. Its pulsing effect is way too weak.

Do you seriously just place that well under allies’ feet for some stability? Or you place it under opponent’s feet for some minimum damage and they just walk out of it(it takes like 1 second to walk out of 240 circle, and the well takes 3 seconds to have its final effect).

It needs a cripple pulsing effect and a cd at 60sec to see any use.

This

They took away the one thing that made this elite appealing.
Stability? well that’s a nice little addition to the elite. Damage? There’s another damage well so the damage doesn’t make this well unique in any way.
And no one’s gnna just sit there waiting for the float.

The the CC was what made it great alltogether

To be honest I wouldn’t mind if they’d increase the cd to 180 sec and nerf the stability & damage as long as they kept the CC.
It was the unique & strong part about the elite.

Condi mesmer does a lot more damage when under pressure & has a lot more defense than shatter mesmer. While shatter mesmer does overall more “burst” damage.

That being said in PvP the enemies will often focus on other people (mesmers can kite well) so you won’t have that much pressure so you.

When ur not under pressure in teamfights as a condi mesmer your damage gets reduced by a lot from my experience. ALso in teamfights, 1 decent ele will aoe cleanse your condis, reducing your effectiveness by a lot as well.

For WvW solo roaming or duo roaming i think condi is better though. You’re better at dealing with outnumbered situations. Elementalists are still hard to kill (coz of condi cleanses) but after a while you should be able to wear them down. (Diamon skin eles are a real problem though.

To make it short:
PvP : power shatter
WvW: condi (condi shatter)

skcamow.3527:

Silverkey.2078:

The CC was obviously OP (people have rarely that much stability on them) but isn’t the point of an elite to be OP for a little while? I mean this lasted only 3s on 120s, it’s a very short game-changer…

Three would have likely been a wreck (maybe), but I think they could have at least kept an initial pull in there with the float to follow at the end.

I agree.
Elites should be game changers. They have a long cd for a reason.

How many pulls were there in the past? 3 pulls (one during each pulse) and a float?

I think either keeping that but removing stability & damage would be a nice way to change it. Just make it a CC bomb. nothign else.

Or like you said. Keep 1 pull & float. & keep stability & damage the way it is right now.

I think its pretty stupid that they did this to the ultimate. I’d rather have them remove or nerf the stability or damage on it because right after this… It’s really weak for an ultimate.

The interrupt gravity “black hole” kind off effect is what I liked about it.

It would have the perfect synergy with the Mistrust trait. Confusion for everyone. \o/

I think this trait does need a certain buff. But not in a way where it would benifit the already strong power shatter builds to make them more op.

for the atk speed to actually matter it should be more like 25%

If it wouldn’t be meant for aoe it wouldn’t have the aoe effect.
But yeah i can see it also being the condi power block.

Shatters are our aoe everything to be honest. I just don’t think our aoe confusion application is consistent enough in big groups.

EIther way, that wasn’t the issue. The problem is that no one is really using this trait. (and I partially blame Deceptive Evasion for that)

Honestly I can’t think of a way where this trait would be used a lot. (unless something huge happens to stability & condi cleanses to make them less available & the meta changes to a condi meta.)

orrr just give us Confusing Combatants, like they intended to.

To be honest. All i’d like to see is for mesmers to be able to run a build that does aoe confusion in PvP & WvW.

I fee like that was the goal of this trait, aoe confusion. But the way its applied makes this problematic.

I liked the confusion more in a way (i just love confusion) but i find teh burn more useful & more fitting for a torch.

That being said, that phantasm really does need a buff.
Compared to other classes that have access to burning, mesmers buring is some of the worst.

I don’ think 2 stacks is gnna do that much. I feel like the projectile speed & accuracy needs to be fixed (it’s way too easy to dodge it)

Then 2 stacks would be fine I think.

Hmm i’m excited for it coz i really love the theme. A time/illusion kind of mage… seems kitten amazing.

That being said, I do miss something though.
Most other specs we’ve seen so far seem to get a lot more new “toys” to play with. (not counting the new utilities coz i suppose every spec will get about the same amount.)

Dragon hunter gets their mechanic reworked & a 2handed weapon& same with reaper.
Tempest only has an offhand but ele has 4 attunements to swap between anyway so they have more new skills to play with too & they get their mechanic “reworked” (more like powered up but those are also new skills.)

Chronomancer… 2 offhand skills… and an extra F button. I like shield, I don’t mind getting just an offhand, but they should have done something else as well in my opinion. Reworking the current mechanic or at least changing it in a way would have been a nice thing I think.

I think this trait is fine as a grandmaster trait when it comes to the amount of confusion.

Its a trait where if u build around it it can do insane amounts of confusion.
Mesmers have multiple ways to interrupt multiple foes, GS 5, Pistol 5, Staff 5. When traited with Master of Fragmentation F3 can interrupt multiple foes as well.

There’s a few reasons why its never really used though. It’s not the amount of confusion thatt makes it unused, but it’s the placement of the trait & the way the confusion is applied.
Maybe Anet could make it so its actually usable in some situations.

1) It’s in the same tier as Deceptive Evasion. Which is hard/impossible to give up on in a lot of mesmer builds.

2) People need to be packed for that so its only useful in PvP Teamfights, Small scale group roaming & zerging.

And in all these situations there’s usually either: enough stability to prevent interrupts. OR enough condi cleanse to get rid of the confusion easily.

I really like the idea behind this trait. It would be great for condi mesmers to be able to do a nice amount of confusion to a lot of people at once.

Also, Imagine a Chronomancer with this trait. Using the elite… :x I don’t even want to imagine.

Tbh I think this was the only necessary nerf for mesmers out of the whole patch.

I think in WvW a PU/MtD Shatter build works really well. In WvW i wouldn’t reccommend it but its still pretty good.

In WvW I’d go with perplexity runes to make it a confusion based build

Personally I’d go with Dire armor instead of Rabid (unless PvP, then go Dire, maybe Carrion)
Its a shatter based build, not a clone build so you have no need for the crit chance & it makes surviving outnumbered situations a lot easier in WvW without sacrificing a lot of damage.

Build:
Dire armor (Rune of Perplexity)
Dire Staff & Scepter/Torch (Bursting & Energy Sigils)
Rabid/Dire Trinkes (can’t find Pure Dire trinkets. idk if they’re available)
Signet of Ether, Decoy, Blink, Mantra of Resolve (or arcane thievery if going with manipulation trait.) & Mass Invis.

Dueling: 2, 1 ,3
Chaos: 2, 2 (can go with 3 if u wanna be more survivable), 2
Illusions: 3, 3, 1 (i think 3 is also viable now that its fixed. haven’t tested enough to see what’s actually better.)

I also like Master of Fragmentation in Illusions coz of the cripple on F2. This build suffers from people running away. You are slow & have no CC to lock them in place & the cripple might help you sticking to them.

I haven’t really used the trait yet but has it really been fixed?

Also, I suppose the trait also affects the speed of Confusing Images?

One last question. Is it worth using over Ineptitude now?

Some bug fixes finally happened! However Duelist’s Dicipline is still bugged? Sure takes some time to fix a trait that worked just fine in the past.

The Mirror Blade nerf was something that had to happen at some point. I don’t see this as a bad thing. I just hope they keep it at this and don’t go any further in nerfing. Mesmer damage.

However one thing I really dislike is the Harmonious Mantras nerf. Mesmer damage is already one of the lowest in PvE. Why nerf it more? It had little to no impact on WvW or PvP. Looks like Anet just wants mesmer PvE damage to be kitten.

Glad to see Malicious Sorcery fixed though.

All I want is confusing combatants back. QQ And MtD reversed to the way it used to be.

I feel the same way. This is just stupid. Even in PvP or WvW Harmonious Mantras wasn’t that much of a deal so why nerf that?

Looks like Anet wants mesmer damage to be kitten in PvE…

I’m glad they fixed some bugs. I don’t mind the slight reduced burst for shatter mesmers but I have 2 problems with this.

1) Harmonious Mantras nerf: This was reall unnecessary in my opinion. It didn’t make mesmers OP at all. It just made mesmers more valuable in PvE. Its not like this trait made Mesmer DPS OP. Yet every other class in the game still has more dps than mesmers & no nerfs for those?

2) Duelist’s Dicipline: Still not fixed…

Since i’m not a pro zerger or anything i don’t really know how the zerg meta is like or how condis are in zergs right now.
Are condis useless coz of condi cleanses or are they usable?

I’ve been thinking of trying a condi/confusion interrupt/shatter build for zergs using dire armor & perplexity runes.
Using Mistrust, Chaotic Interruption & Master of Fragmentation traits.

Just wondering how this would go since there’s usually quite some stability in zergs as well.

I’m on 7065 hours right on my mesmer. But I’m quite sure about 3k hours are “afk” hours.
Even though I know the class well i don’t think i’m that great of a mesmer.

I think Time Warp is fine the way it is really. However, I think the glamour trait should affect time warp’s cooldown as well. Would be fair in my opinion and not OP at all. 144 sec (or something) is still a lot.

When looking at Feel My Wrath however… 30 sec? (untraited) That’s kind of too crazy. Sure it doesn’t add slow but 5 sec of quickness & fury is still great. It’s even more stupid coz a party of 5 guards can pretty much keep it up permanently. I feel like this skill needs to have its cooldown doubled. 60 sec for such a strong skill seems great.

Still far less than Time Warp but then again Time Warp is stronger.

Elite skills should be those types of skills u keep in mind & use them when they’re most useful to turn the tide of a fight. And not spam them in every single fight.

I really like this idea. As long as Anet doesn’t nerf that damage into the ground this should be a nice idea.

Even though I liked the new mechanic idea, (Its something i had in mind in the past as well. “I wish I could swap positions with my clone without anyone noticing.”) I don’t agree that stealth isn’t mesmer like.

I feel like Revenant does slightly more damage in a condi/hybrid build. (still bad though)

And no kitten they’re gnna be bad, no one will know how to play it.
Yeah their dps sucks Support & tanky skills aren’t really useful for dungeons.

But kicking someone for being a Revenant? That’s just stupid.
It’s a beta. Players are meant to TEST them in whatever content they want (wvw, pvp, pve)

If they wanna do a dungeon to test (what they’re supposed to do). Deal with it.

What would this be used for outside of PvE?

Only thing its good at is 1v1 fights in PvP & WvW roaming.

In teamfights in PvP its kind of subpar. No real utility or aoe damage. It doesn’t really burst a target down fast either.

In WvW zergs or teamfights… Its kind of obvious its not going to do much.

I know new offhand sword is stronger & don’t get me wrong. love phantasm builds and all… But sadly I don’t see the use of this other than PvE & 1v1 Fights. :/

Unless i’m missing something important ofc.

The might stacking might be useful but I wouldn’t recommend it in PvE.
Not sure about PvP. I think its quite good if you go for support in WvW though.

I only use my gs for certain boss fights and stuff like that.

@ Ansau Like i said in the first post, nevermind teh armor & stats. But yeah I agree. I’ve always felt glamour being sub optimal. People move, hard to keep everyone in that one place for your glamours to work properly (at least from my experience.)
And I should really try out this traited mantra heal. Seems quite strong.

I just don’t like mesmer damage in zergs. I feel like if I want damage i might as well play another class. Mesmer is better at other things in my opinion.

@ Kelthien & expandas. Ty i’ll try out both. I’m liking the mantra heal so far.

I actually use Shatters now in PvE but just for the F3 interrupt and F4 distort.
F1 to finish off short fights against trash.

But still. I’d love our class mechanic to give benifits to phantasm builds as well.
Our class mechanic isn’t ONLY shattering. It’s also being able to have clones & phantasms that deal damage.
Shatters are only a half of our mechanic but right now it feels Anet wants to push us into shattering too much.

I like a passive but skillfull playstyle. In a way i like the passive playstyle of condi mesmer builds but its not really skillful.

Yeah I realize mesmer damage is bad in zergs, no way to reliably do damage. That’s why I wanted to focus on utlity/support.

I do realize people want mesmers to use glamours and honestly I kind of want to run glamours but I find the glamour trait underwhelming. so I just use veil, feedback & time warp (don’t even use null field anymore as its really slow.) but use the traits i listed before.

What does your build look like misterdevious?

I’m just recently getting into WvW but from what i’ve experienced so far mesmer doesn’t really do damage in zergs. Phantasms & clones die immediatly so shatter is pretty pointless and doesn’t do much damage so i’ve been thinking about running a support build.

I was thinking about a glamour/boonshare build but I don’t think the glamour trait is really worth it.

I’ve also found a nice way to give aoe distortion to the zerg with Illusionary Inspiration, Blurred Inscriptions & Inspiring Distortion.

This is what I got so far. http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VS;4k2l-1673VV71;9;4SVW;0246057136;41KVF4;1JH8_JH8_90FW0-wP;3293949596979FVWMs3F0z
(nevermind armor, stats & runes.)

Would this work properly or anyone knows how to improve it.
Or would a diffirent build be better to support zergs?

It’s stupid.

Some obvious mesmer bugs didn’t get fixed. While multiple other classes had fixes.
No burning nerf, Feel my Wrath still on stupid cooldown.
Well at least we didn’t get nerfed…

Now we wait a day or 2 for some emergency patch coz shatter mesmer does 1% more damage than intended. Lets nerf it by 25%

Torch one is great in a PU build. Other than that its kinda kittenty.
Staff one is useless now.

I like the conditional CD reduction traits but they have to be stronger when used right. & useless when you mess up.

To be honest, after playing around a bit in WvW I’m not sure if Chaos (PU) is worth taking over Dueling.

The only important traits in those trait lines are PU & DE. Not sure which is better.

Looks ok. Would like a suggestion to bring back Confusing Combatants though.

Thanks. It will take a bit getting used to power again since i’ve been playing around with a MtD condi build in PvP.

Would you recommend assassin or zerker for mesmer in WvW?

I haven’t done any sort of WvW in a while but i’m trying to get into it.

Anyone knows some good mesmer zerg & roaming builds?
For roaming i prefer PU. But that’s just personal preference.

And is it better to go power or condition for roaming?

To be fair, they’ve been stupid with mesmer nerfs anyway. Condi mesmer wasn’t even as op as whatever other classes condi builds and yet they nerf the mesmer condi build?
These mesmer nerfs made no sense at all. They just should have nerfed burning damage.

And other classes already did condi better than mesmer even before MtD got nerfed.
Mesmer desperately needs the Confusing Combatants trait back OR have the MtD nerf reverted to what it used to be. (I believe having both at once might be op, but then again, i’m not sure.)

Conditions NEED to be strong in my opinion coz it’s already easy enough to get rid of them compared to power damage. But right now Burning is just so strong it makes mesmers look weak.

Yeah mesmer needs a huge condi buff to be viable in PvE.
And yeah mesmer’s signature condition is confusion but even mesmer has a hard time applying confusion consistently…

I really have no idea why they replaced Confusing Combatants… that was like the one great trait for us to apply confusion consistently. But no anet replaced a perfectly fine trait with something that’s borderline useless?

Please. mesmers need more & stronger application of torment & confusion. Oh right they nerfed MtD as well.

Then why don’t they nerf other classes condions who have stronger condi specs than mesmer anyway?

And yeah sure mesmers can kite for days but in PvP when enemies don’t want to fight you, you have nothing to make them fight you because you don’t have the condi bomb. And in PvE kiting doesn’t do much. In PvE its all about how much damage you can do. And sadly mesmer doesn’t really do a lot of condi dps.

I really hope Anet sees this & buffs condi mesmers a bit while nerfing burning damage to balance those 2 out.

To be fair I think we’ve spent long enough testing things to at least see that condi mesmers are worse than ele, guard, engi & necro condi specs.

If anet really wants to make conditions viable for PvE for mesmer they have to give mesmers more than what we have right now.

Sword/Sword & GS or Staff.
Not really in a Specific build but those weapons are the most fun to play with imo.
The scepter is awesome too. but mainly coz of the block & confusion.