Guild Wars 2

Konrow.5306:

Hello all, so I recently built myself a new PC. Games run great on it, including GW2 on high settings (30-60 fps) however my game still lags terribly. I have tried lower settings and everything, it seems to be a connection issue. My internet speed ranges from 5-10mbps most of the time, I’m using a TP link TL-WN951N wireless adapter. I have Windows 8.1. GW2 is installed on my SSD. I don’t know what other info I can give that may help, but any help is extremely welcome.

we need to know your system specs, what driver versions your running, and what ‘lag’ means to you. Also if you are over clocking.

Are you having low performance Lag, Skill Activation Lag, Loading/Zoning Lag…ect?

hrvipeto.2719:

Hey,
Was just wondering if there are any plans to develop a Mobile Authenticator Beta App for BB10 or .bar the one for Android so BB users can use it too?
Thanks

Blackberry/RIM is a dying company. I would be surprised if an auth app was ever created for this platform.

Vol.7601:

QuiroN.9758:

Don’t waste money. It’s the game. I upgraded from a Phenom4x to a 4th generation Haswell i7 4700k, and still have the same frame rates.

See that’s the thing I’m worried about. I would actually have to shell out close to $500 for a new CPU and mobo all just for this game (I run bf4 miraculously well).

If it doesn’t improve I’d rather spend that on gems :|

Though the guy below says his improved ;x

You are on a 2500K, you do NOT need to upgrade. Just invest the time into Overclocking. Just look for well written guides, and do it 5-10% at a time. If its unstable, your system will lock/BSOD and you will have to go into the BIOS and set a new clock.

There is really minimal risk as long as you watch the voltage setting you put for the CPU (I think 1.3v is near death for most i-series, I run my i5-4670k at 1.325 while pushing 5.1ghz and nothing has happened yet).

But again, search google for ‘stable 2500K Overclocks’

Vol.7601:

sirsquishy.8531:

If you OC that 2500K, you wont see ‘much’ of a gain different between the 3570 or the 4670.

Now if you move to an i7, you may see a 10-15% increase on the low end of the low FPS (Meaning, if you get 18-20fps in WvW with your current, on an i7 you should get 23-28FPS)

This game is HORRIBLE when it comes to the CPU. Even when you throw a very high end CPU at the game, it just doesnt do as well as it should.

Despite being an intermediate PC user, I have never overclocked and have failed at understanding it, so I’m just looking to sticking with stock settings (though I don’t mind paying the extra $20 for the ‘K’

If you never OC, then you are wasting money on the K version of that cpu. You should be able to push that CPU to 4.0ghz using the stock cooler, and increasing the voltage to 1.2~ (so some google searching for ‘stable overclocking’)

the key is to run Prim95 for 24-48 hours after overclocking to get a stable test going. And run Coretemp to make sure the CPU is not overheating (Mine runs 55c stock, 70c at 4.6ghz, and 75c-WaterCooled at 5.2ghz)

QuiroN.9758:

Using only the PCI-E slot for the video card (a Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 Dirt 3 Edition with unlocked shaders). Tested unlocked and with stock firmware. Nothing else connected on the other PCI-E ports. Anyway , gonna check that now.

I’d be using;

CPU-Z to verify Link speeds
GPU-Z to verify Utilization/Temps and Core/Memory Clocking
MSI-Afterburner to 2nd verify utilization, and Core/Memory Clocking

QuiroN.9758:

Don’t waste money. It’s the game. I upgraded from a Phenom4x to a 4th generation Haswell i7 4700k, and still have the same frame rates.

I did the same thing and saw a 200-300% performance gain.

went from a X4 830 with a HD5770 to whats in my signature.

werit.3704:

Hi, im going to be crazy whit this game, i have a fps problem, i have bough gw2 6 months ago, i have played for 1 month and one day my fps are collapsed, i have an ati raedon 7750, intel i3 550 3.20ghz, 6 gb ram and win 8 64 bit, i usually play the game whit rez 1600×900 all option at max whitout filter active, and i usually was around 35-40 fps, but one day i open the game and and the fps turns around 10-12 fps, even if i change the rez and the settings on low the game gains only 2-3 fps, i didn t find any solution so i decided to leave the game, 5 days ago, just to see if this problem was fixed i coming to play it again, until yesterday not one problem, the game was run very well, but today i have again the same problem, i have the latest catalyst 13.11 beta, i really dont know how solve it,
Anyway i m playng at other game in this moment and gw2 is the only one whit this problem,
Thank you for the answer.

Your 7750 and that i3 are going to be your bottle neck. You should be running the game with the following settings with that system;

All settings High, Except;

Anti-aliasing – None
Reflections – None OR Terrian & Sky
Textures – Medium
Rendering Sampling – Native
Shadows – Low or Medium
Shaders – Low or Medium (this is a limitation of your 7750)
Post-processing – None or Low
Character Model Limit – Low
Character Model Quality – Medium
Best Texture Filtering – unchecked
Effect LOD – Checked

QuiroN.9758:

I build my own gaming rigs since 286-386 cpu era. I’m a computer technician. The game started to give fps problems to people since one of the Guild Wars patches (google it) . I have tested and tried everything (the last resort was upgrading, thinking a got a CPU bottleneck. Even got an Intel CPU instead of a new AMD .The thing is, I own over 500 pc games. And the only one giving problems is Guild Wars 2. Yeah, I know, Guild Wars 2 is CPU intensive. And I have a HIGH end new CPU from the not so cheap Intel.

So make a guess why ARENA net made a STICKY FPS issue topic on this forum?

Cause the game is having fps issues.
Im not talking about 40 or 35 fps. Im talking about 7 to 15 fps max.

Which is unplayable.

Verify your PCI-E lane Link speeds for your GPU. I saw the EXACT same issue when I first built my current Desktop and had all 3 PCI-E Slots linked. My GPU was only linked at 8x ver1.1 (its a ver3.0 card and slot).

The GPU was 99%, and cpu was only ever hitting 34-45% utilization per core.

Once I removed my other 2 PCI-E cards, my GPU linked at 16x ver3.0 and my FPS went through the roof.

So please use CPU-Z to check your PCI-E link speeds.

Little update;

I put my HD7790 on 13.12 drivers. And immediately it will drop the Core down to 300Mhz (cState-0) and will not budge from that setting no matter the Stress on the GPU.

Installed MSI Afterburner, set the power slider to +4, and that releases the cStates Lock.

SO….Pulled my aging 650w PSU and put in a 780W, and put things back to defaults and it still worked. Cleared and Cleaned the Drivers, rebooted and tested with 13.4 13.9 and 13.12 are all working. Seems like it was a weakening PSU that was preventing the driver from pushing the higher cStates.

Seems like if the GPU cant pull a stable 38AMPS or so, it wont lock into higher cStats.

If you OC that 2500K, you wont see ‘much’ of a gain different between the 3570 or the 4670.

Now if you move to an i7, you may see a 10-15% increase on the low end of the low FPS (Meaning, if you get 18-20fps in WvW with your current, on an i7 you should get 23-28FPS)

This game is HORRIBLE when it comes to the CPU. Even when you throw a very high end CPU at the game, it just doesnt do as well as it should.

ProgramDATA is integrated into windows. Its where programs store their settings and Cache (when not writing to %appdata$).

I would not suggest moving it, instead just move your GW2 folder to whatever drive you want the core of the game to run from.

Xystus.3241:

I’m glad you found a work around.

However, it doesn’t make sense that ANET would “block ISPs” just for downloading the latest patch, but still allows authentication.

It could be the great firewall of china(Country based Source Blocking), or maybe a country is attacking Anet servers and their IPS is kicking off to block it. That would be the only ‘open’ blocks I can think off related to this comment.

Xymas.8102:

Update: onboard DVI and VGA ports are not working.

Many BIOS/EFI’s will auto disable onboard video when the PCI-E Video slot is populated with a graphics card. Just pull the card and it should enable it automatically. Otherwise jump into the BIOS/EFI and enable Surround (AMD) or Multi-Display(Intel).

But the speaker sound just means your HDMI drivers attached to the GPU are crashing as well, and taking down the Sound Bridge, which will play a ‘sound’ or ‘noise’ during the crash through the default system device. Nothing to worry about there.

But I would just consider getting a new GPU. You are just going to frustrate yourself trying to fix/solve the current issue when I know its just fried.

Flatley.1620:

Right. Some further findings.

I cranked everything to max – ultra shadows, highest animation, reflections all, etc. etc. Went into LA and managed 25 FPS.

Out in the open PvE world, I got a rather nice 209 FPS. Yeah, two hundred and nine.

Holy cuddly-kittens (just got two btw from a rescue centre – very cuddly and cute beyond belief but I digress ).

Which leads me to believe that an Intel/nVidea cpu/gpu tag team is the way to go.

What do you think?

Nvida or AMD for the GPU wont make ‘much’ of a difference. But, it’s all in that CPU :-)

I know the feeling, Full on ultra 25-30FPS in LA, and out in the open world 160-175, its rather nice :-)

Now, if we had a way to ‘better’ the zerg experience :-)

Coyy.3907:

To be totally honest, the OP is exactly the same as most of the people who come on spouting on how the problem “cannot possibly be MY hardware, It’s all Anets fault!!”

Yet how many of these disappear without a trace when advice has been given. You know for a fact what has been suggested has solved the problem but the lack of a response for 90% of these is a little disheartening to the people like yourselves who put time in to try helping others get this game working for them.

I know, but it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if he wasn’t all ’I’m a professional’ about his issue. I just hate that approach. Hell I’m a professional in I.T. as well (23years and counting) But I don’t use that to leverage when I have an issue that needs to be resolved.

If windows cannot fix itsself then its probably a damaged File system to start with.

First OP, you will want to boot to your Win7 Recovery CD/ISO and enter recovery mode and start command prompt. Issue the following Commands

chkdsk
chkdsk /p

if it finds errors let it fix them, this process can and will take an hour or longer

after that, Youll want to run SFC from the same command prompt window;

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=f:\ /offwindir=f:\windows

F: = your Windows Install drive. Running SFC this method will compare the Install vs the version on the ISO/DVD. If your DVD is NOT SP1 but you have SP1 Installed, it will be uninstalled and Windows will be reverted. This should fix any ‘windows’ base errors that are ‘unfixable’ from inside of windows.

If there is an infection getting in the way during the sfc from inside windows, chances are the infection will reapply after you boot into windows again, so download Avast!, Malwarebyes, HitmanPro, and Spybot and install and run them one at a time. Avast! is a AV/Malware program, and installs an active scanner, so make sure you remove whatever AV solution you currently use before installing this one.

Also download TDSSKiller and check for RootKits, as those are usually driver level and can cause many many different kinds of issues.

that is where you need to start, since you windows install is having issues on its own.

If running GW2 is crashing your PC and that turns it off, then it’s going to be heat related. Your PC should crash to a BSOD and not turn off if its not heat related (the ACPI BIOS is what tells your system to shut off to protect your GPU or CPU from thermal damage).

You will want/need to download Coretemp, GPU-Z and CPU-Z to verify the Temps and CPU status (CPU-Z) while under load. GPU-Z has a sensor tab that will tell you the Temp of your Video card.

If you would kindly run those applications with logging, and report back what the temps are when you crash we can tell you what needs to be done.

And it could be as simple as blowing out your air ducts on your Laptop, or as complex has tear your laptop apart, removing the heatsink/fan unit from the GPU/CPU and applying new thermal spread and clearing any collected Lint (that the can of Air cannot take care of) to fix this.

That is a really good system and will do you well.

I would say get Win7, as Win8 has alot to go before it’s suitable for daily use, IMHO. If you want to get Win8, make sure you download and install 8.1, as there have been alot of reported performance issues between 8 and the upgrade to 8.1 (kind of like a service pack install, but does alot to the system during the upgrade).

I have the same system (Except the GPU, which mines a HD7790) and I have ran it on both 8.1 and 7, and the performance is ‘about’ the same. I just prefer Win7 to 8 at this time.

But, do not expect high performance for WvWvW when there are 60+ players on the screen. with out spell effects rolling I get about 35FPS with Character limit set to Low, when the battle starts and spells are rolling it will be between 20-25 (depending on terrain). So that is what you should also expect. It’s even worse when I do the world Boss train (Full Map + All the NPCs + Terrain). And that’s with the CPU set to 4.6Ghz up from 3.2ghz.

One thing that people have not commented on here, the UP Playstyle is VERY timed and slow when compared to other Playstyles.

When you are playing as UP, you activate skills in succession slower and hold out longer.

It makes play styles of that mesmer alot easier to figure out, since you will be fighting them for a longer period of time (if you can mitigate that is).

But, Mesmers in general are pretty nasty to deal with. Add in UP, traited Healing (for Condition Removal) Arcane Thievery, 1-2 Blocks (Block+Parry), Conditions on Clone Death, and the ability to Burst (Mind Wrack, iBerserker…ect) it can be mind numbing to fight them.

I have trolled players via UP for hours before. Not many classes can do that.

Mirror;

Reflects Projectiles
Has 15Sec CD
Synergy with ‘On heal’ Runes
Synergy with Mender’s Purity (2 Condition Removal)

that is all :-)

10/20/30/10/0

Scept/Torch+Staff/GS (2 Sets of armor Rabid and Knights)

Scept/Torch is your main 1v1 and ‘Zerg’ Survival, GS is mainly for Zergs but also ok in small 1 vs 2/3 scenarios. I would use Staff over GS if not in a zerg encounter IMHO.

that is how I play :-)

Though, as of late I am thinking of switching it up to Scept/Torch Sword/Pistol

Content is referencing a propID that doesn’t exist propId=‘1600443319507255854’

Kinda shows that you got data missing in the game’s gw2.dat file. Run a repair and see if that helps (as suggested above)

Fermi.2409:

You said that a 4670k+mobo would run around $420. The CPU is only $220, so the mobo must be $200, unless you’re including some higher end air cooler in the $420.

That was a generalization. That is what I paid for my CPU+MB+Cooler. And its a good price to aim for (Taxes, Shipping…ect). If they can get it for less then they will be like ‘oh it wasn’t 420 it was 398’…But I think you get the drift here.

And we all know that the Stock Cooler is not that good for the K series when pushing the OC (Full load 80C with AS7). I had to get a new cooler so that my 4.6Ghz under full load was under 70C’s. So yea, I did account for that.

Does anyone know how to control the Cstats and force the GPU to be in a certain state?
I found a nice bug in the 13.9 and 13.12 drivers last night that when your CPU cant keep up the GPU will enter cState 0 (Max Power saving) until the CPU kicks in again.

This makes the GPU throttle at 50% of its highest possible utilization because its actually doing 100% 10% 100% 10% over and over again, until the CPU can spike back up to 80-82% Utilization (Example, Moving into LA where stuff is just slow, vs sitting in QD).

If I over clock to my 4.6Ghz then it doesn’t do it as often, If I roll back to 13.4 it doesn’t do it at all. It looks like AMD updated the power control DLLs in 13.9/13.12 for these new features and its screwing with performance. I think a work around would be to enforce cState 8 so that the Core wont get throttled down to 300 (from 1800).

Anyone have any ideas? Google searching has failed me on this search.

This OP makes me sick. He whines and complains about performance, and how its not anything to do with his setup. Yet when he reduces the Shaders ingame the issue goes away.

If the shaders in GW2 were at fault, then EVERYONE would have this issue. The fact here is that your HW, OS, or Driver are at fault.

So please, step down from your ’I’m a professional, I know better’ soap box and actually TRY fixing your issue instead of blaming your inadequacies on others.

And for the record, I started with the SSD because (even if its new) they have issues. I dont care that you have ‘top of the line’ for your hardware. The fact is, there is ALWAYS a 10% fail rate on SSDs with in the first 60days of getting them. And unless you do a proper IO test (IOMeter) you cannot detect or predict if your drive is in that 10%.

Then, because you insist your system is flawless – which is obviously is not, I just out right listed all possible causes to the issue you reported so YOU can create a check list and go through them.

That is all.

Fermi.2409:

No, going with a 4670k really is the best way to spend your money atm for sure. But why are you pretty much recommending that people spend $200 on a mobo? A decent Z87 board is only around $130-140.

I did not recommend any motherboard, just the Z87 Chipset…..

Fermi.2409:

sirsquishy.8531:

You can and should build your own. The 2 Main things to look for are a Z87 1150 Socket Motherboard, and the i5-4670K. Both will run about 420~ and be about 75% of the total cost of the PC.

Why are you overspending on a mobo by so much? At most mobo+CPU+212 EVO should be $400 all together.

Also, TC, that prebuilt really isn’t a bad deal at all.

@Avelos
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2mxLs

Comparable, and new.

K series on the CPU or not. I feel that a Socket 1150, on a Z series board is future proofing a new build ‘today’. Since Gen4 was just released, we will get 1-2 more gens on this socket before Intel releases a new socket Platform. That is better then the older 1155 socket that isn’t getting any new CPU upgrades (AFAIK) for that platform. The Z87 (or whatever chipset that enables OverClocking) will let the buyer today pickup a K unlocked CPU down the road for a better upgrade. This is Especially true as prices drop.

I only also recommended the 4670K because I personally experienced the upgrade to it, and IMHO its worth every penny you throw at it. Budget or not.

So take it to leave it, that is why I say that.

Graphical Camera Lag has always come down to the following in my experience;

1. Failing or severally Fragmented HDD (your on an SSD, but that doesnt mean the TRIM is working correctly)

2. Bad or over heating RAM (if the RAM is bottle necking, thats going to do lots of fun things)

3. Throttled CPU – again heat

4. Bad PSU (do you have a voltmeter to test the 12v and 5v rails to make sure they are giving the proper Amps? There is NO software that will give you this data)

5. Failing and over heating Video card(s) (as well as underpowered Video cards).

6. Bad driver’s, or bad driver installs.

If it was the game, there would be FAR more complaints about it. Sorry, but its something with your system. But, you can argue against that all you want.

However, GW2 is not coded correctly (IMHO) and will over exert pretty much every system beyond what it should for the quality the game puts out. That’s going to do lots of things to your HW that other games just won’t.

But, since your so dead on that it cannot be your system, you are going to need to open a ticket with NCSoft/ArenaNet to get this resolved. As then it must be something with the game, and then only a DEV will be able to patch the issue.

Then its not your system, its the game. and everyone else who is playing this game has the exact same issue as you.

Its not the patch as much as the CRAP laying on the ground and the new Graphics put up everywhere (AKA Xmas Decorations).

LA is the worse cause of the ‘dress up’ of the Mystic Forge. And From what I have seen those are all HQ res textures that cannot be ‘turned’ down (even the ‘glowing’ snow on the ground), and I feel that is the root cause of patch related issues. HQ high rez textures being forced.

Can’t help you if you dont wanna take a look at your system

It still sounds like a Disk related issue, since all the games data is loaded locally from a single GIANT .dat file then put into ram.

I would download Crystal Disk and just MAKE SURE there is no data in any of the SMART tables.

Other then that, check to see if your CPU is getting throttled to the high performance (if its not cooled correctly), you can use coretemp to verify the core based Temp readings with their respective Clock speeds (when the CPU gets throttled the Clock speeds will drop to 1100Mhz or lower until the temps fall into a Green Condition).

Also, when you see the camera spin lag, do you ever crash after a while?

Yanslana.5982:

To be honest… you guys lost me when you start throwing out parts names, so that reaffirmed staying away from buying the parts on my own…

I’m looking at this instead:

http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Holiday-Paladin-Speical

Any advice? :/

In that case I would hit up a local PC shop and give them the parts lists from here and say ‘build me this’ and I would not pay more then 125 for the assembly + Basic Windows install.

If the Execute Bit Disable protection is getting activated there will be a BIOS error/Message about it. And it should tell you what file/module it was activated against.

Rootkits are notorious for the EX detection, so i would start with a full TDSSKiller Scan to rule that out.

But updating drivers and going though and removing software/drivers that are not in use is a good thing to do as well.

Doesn’t mean the SSD isn’t faulty. Camera Lag could be many things, but the most common is Disk issue (Ie Failing Controller).

when you turn your view 360degrees does it ever clear up or does it always have the same lag?

looks like file corruption. What are your system specs?

could be the SSD. When you move, objects that are not rendered yet need to be rendered and fetched from the datafile (if parts are not already in memory).

I would verify that your SSD is in good health and go from there.

Windowed Fullscreen is probably whats doing it. That and the best texture filtering.

whatever is running on your desktop will get rendered on top of the game while its playing (such as Flash in Webpages). So if your going to run windowed-fullscreen MAKE SURE all graphically intensive applications are closed (such as HD content on netflix) as that will cause your system to CRAWL.

that computer is soo over priced for whats in it.

You can and should build your own. The 2 Main things to look for are a Z87 1150 Socket Motherboard, and the i5-4670K. Both will run about 420~ and be about 75% of the total cost of the PC.

Next will be a simple case, and a Power supply. The Power supply needs to be atleast 600W incase you decide to over clock your PC to get the most out of it.

Memory is not expensive anymore, I would suggest 8GB (2×4GB Kit) CL9 DDR3 1333Mhz, Runs for 56~

Then comes your Hard disk. You can get a inexpensive HDD for about 50 bucks that has anywhere from 1TB of storage to 2.5TB of storage (depending on HDD Class, connection type, IE SataIII, and Platter Density). If you want more performance you can get a 120G SSD for about 100 Bucks now. But that 120G of storage will go fast, so I always suggest pairing the SSD with a HDD for additional storage (Video/Music/…ect).

Your video card can be anything that is a Class 2 or above (Medium+). I would suggest a HD7790, as they are about 100 Bucks if you look around and do extremely well with this game. You can spend more or less depending on other GPU options you are looking for. The Nvidia vs AMD battle is NOT like the Intel vs AMD battle. Some have better luck with AMD over Nvidia(myself) and vise versa. Either way you go for the Graphics Card will have the same or near same results. But, I would not spend more then 150 on a GPU for this game, as the Game runs 80% on CPU power alone.

Then you have your OS and Optical Drive. You will need an OS, you can get Win8 for 119 on newegg, if you buy Hardware you can get a Win8 OEM install for about 80 (you have to look for the OEM system builder deals, usually teamed with Motherboard purchases). If you already have a RETAIL version of Windows you can reuse it. If your Version is OEM you cannot, as its tied to the hardware that it came with (IE motherboard). The Optical Drive is 100% optial IMHO. You can install Win7Win8 via USB now as long as you have another PC to build the Install Stick with, and almost everything is streamed or downloaded for applications now. So you can save 30-120(DVD vs BluRay) by not buying one.

When it all said and done, with discounts and such, you should be looking at the above system for UNDER 700 shipped. And its alot better then what you originally Linked.

akasunsasori.5967:

could you tell me how to overclock it??

Since every chip is different I cannot. You will need to do that research yourself. And there are risks with over clocking, esp if your cooling solution for the CPU is not that good.

akasunsasori.5967:

yeah i was getting the lowest fps here… i need to get a better processor then :/ thanks everyone for your help..

What you should look into is overclocking that FX. I am not sure of that 8320 is unlocked, but if its not maybe look into a 8150 or 8350 then push it to 4.xGhz.

That will be the best you can do with the AM3+ Platform for GW2.

eh, that FX is holding you back. You will need to adjust your settings to really push 1080p.

also are you only testing your FPS in LA looking at the fountain? Right now that is the worst possible place to test that.

Edit* Your in ORR, also a bad place to test FPS. ORR, LA, and WvW are the worst places for this game’s performance. Even my i5 has issues there.

That is not the point we are missing, that is what you are able to do with your hardware.

But I’m telling you what you should change to maintain that extra 10FPS.

Uncheck ‘Best Texture Filtering’
Lower Character Limit to Medium or Low

Those 2 will increase your performance.

I run 3x 21" LCDs at 1600×900 (5040×900 in Eyefinity). The performance drop is about 45% on average. So when going to that higher 1080p res, expect that much.

juno.1840:

I’m running a power based PU build with 0/20/30/10/10 distribution. Weps are GS and Sword/Torch. I’m using the Manipulation traits in order to improve Blink and Arcane Thievery. In addition it has -3% dmg taken per illusion and +3% damage dealt per illusion. Finally dodge clones because we can’t run without it, as well as Mender’s Purity to remove some conditions.

I run PVT armor, Zerk trinkets, and Assassins weps in order to achieve 3200 Attack Power, 40% crit chance, +60% crit dmg, 2500 armor, and 18.5k health.

I’m enjoying it a lot in WvW (runes are centaur along with Mirror in order to achieve near 100% swiftness and have condition removal on 15s c/d).

I ran that same build for a long time. and its very effective!

But then I wanted to see higher ticks on Dots, so moved into Rabid Gear and dropped my Attack down to 2800 and my condition up to 1100. then swapped Sword for Scepter. And Ill switch out GS and Staff depending on if im roaming(camp Flipping) or working on towers/keeps.

Just something about watching those 5 Stacks of Torment tick away at 6.8k per moment on your target :-)

But I kept the same trait build out that you are running.

Sword/Torch has its uses, but limited when talking about ranged. For one the iLeap only has a range of 900. If you are stuned or dazed and trying to chase, your target will get out of that range very quickly. BF is awesome in itsself and I use that ALOT when camp flipping, But most players will dodge out of it. SO you only get 1-2 really good hits in before the rest of the duration is wasted.

Scepter/Torch is where its at IMHO. The Block has so much control its not even funny, and its on a really short cool down. If you trait the Block to throw up Retaliation its even more fun (Thieve killer IMHO), you get a 900 range attack on #1 that throws a clone (you can dodge to burst that to throw up Conditions, or Shatter to remove Boons), And the 5 Confusion stacks are kinda nice too. When I see a player that face rolls the keyboard, I will just throw confusion up then block and they will down themselves :-)

Curunen.8729:

Hard to pick out any as useless – different situations suit different skills better, nevermind what can be achieved through traits and creative gameplay.

Illusion of Life is a kittene to justify though – if I had to pick out one skill I see no value in over everything else, it would be this. Cooldown is ridiculous, and better support options are available.

But in other cases, for example untraited feedback vs a melee warrior has almost no value other than a combo field, but in a large crowd with many projectiles flying around it suddenly gains hugely in value – just need to swap out skills regularly depending on situation.

Having said all that, the two wonderful crutches that are blink and decoy almost never leave my skill bar – blink only leaves when underwater.

A group of 5 Mesmers, each using Veil and Mass-invisibility. You now have 45seconds of stealth, with only a down time of 40seconds, for your 5man group.

Separately MI and Veil look boring, but the synergy for stealth movement is unparalleled.

There is ALOT of synergy with the Mesmer’s skills/traits. You just gotta look at them subjectively.

juno.1840:

For me in WvW: Mirror + Runes of the Centaur + Mender’s Purity

I tried the signet in PvE and it’s ok but meshes poorly with Mender’s Purity.

yea pretty much :-)

The new heal needs to have a base of 30seconds, traited down to 24~, then I think it would be more attractive for WvW/PvP.

I like how you can trait the new signet heal to remove 3 conditions, and have a 20% reduced Cooldown (28sec) if you wanted to. IMHO that feels a little over the top for the other features we get with it (Passive heal, Phantasm refresh)….ect.

extractor is a complete waste, other then Accessories (back items) You can transmute said item to a white item for the cost of a transmutation Crystal, then move that item over to an Alt. Then Transmute it again.

a 5 pack of crystals is 200Gems. 1 of those extractors are 325 gems.

and all items that the extractor create are still soulbound, so its not like you can unskin an item and list the Skin on the TP.