Guild Wars 2

I think MF is his goal for now, so let’s help him keep his MF and still survive in Orr. A monkey could survive without MF gear so no advice needed there.

imho, memser has it pretty easy with MF using certain builds like phantasm and staff (as the mez doesn’t get hit). Something like 10/0/0/30/30.

Staff and phantasms makes life easy in Orr. You could almost play naked and still survive with that build.

I found this which is close to what I have planned:

It says T4 but it looks similar to what I experienced in T3 on my guard. The triple-monitor setup makes it hard to read the event text in the center display.

No build details but he definitely has traited focus for reflect so 20 in vit line. No dodge clones that I could see so maybe no sharper images. Definitely no PU. Maybe a GS phantasm build?

Same problem on mesmer with any of the ‘bounce’ attacks (staff 1, GS 2, pistol 5). If an attack is mid-bounce, the stealth pops off immediately. Serious when you consider the bounce can go on for 1s or longer (with illusionary ellasticity).

Would be good to exit stealth on skill usage, but something a bit smarter so you don’t pop using a heal skill (although that could be considered a balancing change for stealth which I generally feel is a bit too powerful at the moment).

Those gates need to go for the primary reason that players use them for free travel to LA. While that in itself doesn’t sound bad, it mucks around with player queues and outmanned buffs for players that aren’t playing.

So add a gold sink to enter WvW, or remove the gates and make a “leave WvW” menu item similar to “leave the mists”.

This also helps reduce players that come to WvW to access the bank (via crafting station) or the vendors to pick up mining picks, etc.

Another solution: Just make a “free travel” button which takes you to LA.

Vol.5241:

There is no reliable way to farm T6. Just go farm gold in general and buy it.

This ultimately leads to inflation — if everyone has gold and nobody is filling the role of “supply”, prices will continue to rise.

There’s been a bit of a gold infusion in the last two weeks from the achievement chests. I expect prices to rise anyway in the short term.

Anyone complete a T4 trial solo with Mesmer?

I’m going to work at it tonight if time permits. I spent last night on guardian without success — but I was mostly running duo with a warrior (and the up-scaling is suppose to be horrendous). My Guardian didn’t feel like he was killing fast enough and I’m not really in the mood to switch from knights gear to zerks (which seems to be the popular consensus on guard).

I was leaning towards GS with a power heavy build and sharper images. The GS clones are bleed machines with high crit and will chase the plunders. Mobs tend to ignore the clones anyway so they might live to keep the bleeds up on the plunders. Throw in some stealth and maybe PU for stealth boons and I can see some possible success.

No clue until I try it — looking to see if anyone has had success with Mesmer and if so how. That would save me some time.

Carighan.6758:

juno, but how does that work given that the “strength” of a skill is context-sensitive? And the contexts are entirely different, given the classes and how they do battle?

In other words, Shadow Refuge as a 1-to-1 copy on a Mesmer would not (per-skill, not the class as a whole!) be balanced against Shadow Refuge on a Thief. The class-context is different, the usage is different, and the support-scaffolding is different.

That’s the very reason why classes should be compared, not abilities. Plus hey, huge radius + you’re not spawning a “Please stack AEs in this circle”-circle with MI. Shadow Refuge, awesome as it is is in PvE, is usually a deathtrap in WvW due to that circle. For all it’s downsides, MI is also lacking SR’s greatest weakness as a stealth skill.

I think all classes can find themselves in identical scenarios (i.e. wanting to party stealth in wvw for example).

The use of a skill relative to everything else inherent to the specific class is important, but I’m trying to simplify the discussion a bit (i.e. notice I didn’t mention any of the thief traits that benefit recipients of stealth). On the surface I think you can compare skills that perform identical tasks between classes.

The weaknesses of SR which you mention are part of the discussion “which is better MI or SR?”. They are definitely weaknesses but I’m don’t feel they outweigh the weaknesses of MI like (1) elite skill slot, (2) long cast time, (3) long recharge time, (4) short stealth duration.

To another poster’s comment regarding mesmer elites: The mesmer elites are pretty much awesome, so I wouldn’t complain. MI is good (and I slot it often, maybe even more than TW). I think MI should be buffed a bit to make it more deserving of its “elite” designation.

The class mechanic for thief is “stealing”… not “stealth”. Multiple classes have stealth available. There’s little reason for individual skills to be imbalanced between classes (note I didn’t say “unbalanced”).

This is a relative assessment, not an absolute. It’s OK for a thief to have more stealth skills than a mesmer or a ranger. However the effectiveness of a skill should be similar (effectiveness being the effect of the skill vs. tradeoffs of cooldown time, cast time, and elite status).

That being said, MI is definitely not as effective as shadow refuge. In nearly every regard it’s inferior. There’s no reason for that.

Don’t forget that -20% signet c/d will boost the SoR HPS by… yeah 20%.

GS with sigil of fire is the boss in a zerg. The GS also tags much more reliably than a staff (so more bags and karma).

I run GS/Staff when zerging. The staff is for buffs and situations where foes are in my face.

EM procs are capped at one every 5 seconds — it’s not that amazing and doesn’t improve much with symbols. You were probably proc’ing EM every 5s with or without symbols. I find 2H mastery much better than EM due to the 20% increase in skill usage (which is 20% more symbol action).

What better way to reward “playing the game” than by awarding a precursor in one of the achievement chests?

I know this is coming via scavenger hunt, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to tie it to achievement points (say 10,000 total — numbers aren’t important here, the idea is).

Why make this suggestion? Because I suspect the scavenger hunt will be extremely painful and I already play the game (and have achievement points to show for it). I will continue to play the game and accrue more achievement points. It seems to be a logic way to reward “playing”, rather than RNG luck, or a potentially grueling scavenger hunt.

NOTE: Precursor via the achievement panel reward system is actually coming via the scavenger hunt — that’s how you’ll pick your precursor for completing it, by selecting it as an achievement reward.

I think one of the arguments being made is that more precursors lead to more legendaries — and more legendaries means more consumption of materials like T6, lodestones, ectos, etc. Therefore the cost of precursors drops, but the cost of materials (and therefore legendaries themselves) increase.

Remember that “precursor” is not the same as “legendary” — and there’s nothing legendary about getting your precursor via RNG. Anyone who says otherwise is just fluffing themselves to feel skilled about a rather unskilled event.

GS is a fine weapon in skilled hands… anyone that says otherwise is simply not using their brain. The 1H sword is also an excellent weapon (again in skilled hands).

At 1200m the GS clearly out-DPSs the 1H sword (lol, it’s so silly I don’t know why I typed that in). At melee range the opposite is obviously true. This is more of a play style discussion, and not a “sword vs. GS” discussion.

As far as a ranged weapon goes, the mesmer GS is one of the best options in the game (if not the best).

feliscatus.1430:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

Yeah, have you guys actually played with this HORRIBLE new chaos armor? I was complaining too, until I tried it.

Yes I have — it’s very ineffective in WvW compared to what it use to be. It no longer punishes rapid attack classes like thieves and such.

All it does now is a little tickle. It doesn’t make anyone stop and say “woah chaos armor, I better not attack for 3 seconds…”.

PvE doesn’t matter for this nerf — that’s already easy mode.

The reason this is hazy for some folks is that you can convert in-game gold to gems. If that mechanism wasn’t in place, it would be a bit easier to grasp the “pay” in “pay2win”.

This is an example where ANet actually sold something that was not obtainable except through gems. That in itself should satisfy the “pay” part of the equation. Regardless of how you obtained your gems, it was in the cash shop.

The “win” is debatable. Up until this point, I think all buffs (minus the boosters) were obtainable in-game through other mechanisms. This is one of the first buffs that was not obtainable through another mechanism than the cash shop. We’re talking the recipe here, not the food item.

It’s departure from ANet’s normal mode of operation up to this point. It’s not a clear cut pay2win, but definitely a step in that direction over previous content.

lol, the OP has not been back to defend this topic so I’d write it off as trolling.

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

After reading this, it seems you are really saying it’s a ‘nerf’. Opponents were scared of attacking when you had chaos armor pre-patch — and now post-patch they can simply ignore it as it’s only three condition applications (and similarly only 3 boons for the player with chaos armor).

umm… yeah I see that now too. Edited my original post. I was quoting from memory, and apparently I’m completely wrong.

Bifrost is my vote!

Getting a precursor from RNG is not “legendary”.

Imagine all the crying from the RNG supporters if you could only get a precursor by getting 10000 achievement points — omg we’d have to play the game!!!!

Bifrost would be my vote — too bad you’ll need 750 charged loadstones (more than 2000gp on the TP).

I’ve tried farming loadstones and I might get one drop in a two hour period… might.

Farming the specific mats seems worthless — better to farm the gold and just buy off of TP.

EDIT: nvm, I’m some sort of idiot — 750 not required.

World completion on my mesmer at 100%. Didn’t feel that bad at the time — especially since phantasms are like spammable minions.

My only complaint is the lack of swiftness without Centaur runes — it is painful traversing a map.

People keep saying Chaos Armor was “buffed” but they conveniently ignore the new 1 second ICD. The cooldown is a nerf that limits the buffs you receive.

Before you received 4 seconds of protection. Now you might receive 5 seconds IF you are incredibly lucky with RNG.

Yes I know that other players can now get protection from chaos armor — but we are not applying chaos armor to others — someone else is with a blast finisher. Teams are not relying on chaos armor (nor will they with the change) as a reliable source of protection. The protection is just a little bit of frosting on a well timed blast finisher. Remember that they may get 5s if RNG is incredibly fortunate for them. Your entire party is definitely not getting 5s each as the odds rapidly approach impossibility.

Also consider that the ICD greatly reduces the power of Chaos Armor in a focused-fire PvP situation. This is a nerf — you can argue it as a “fix” to match other auras, but the change still makes the skill less useful.

Yeah but it’s a pretty weak pro compared to the new cons.

At 1200 meters nothing beats the GS. You can even auto attack beyond 1200 by repeatedly jamming the #1 key. Add in a Sup Sigil of Fire and it’s pretty epic.

It’s pretty much mandatory when zerging in WvW for karma and kills. You need the insta-hit, 1200m laser to get your tags.

For 1v1, switch to your secondary weapon set. We have lots of great close-range options.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

juno.1840:

Yeah but you must get hit at least once to get your 33% chance. Then you must get hit a second time to negate the damage. So this is not a good representation of the new state of chaos armor.

So what if you need to get hit at least once. If you are using chaos armor, its because you expect to get hit. Otherwise you should be dodging/distorting/blurring/blinking/invis…. not chaos armoring.

Even so, it’s not 100% reduction. You got hit twice, negated once. All damage being equal you got 50% (but all damage is not equal so you may have negated 99% or 1% total over the two hits).

In addition, the chaos armor boon application is capped. So that in itself is a nerf. Your party is now capped at five boon applications MAX. That in itself is a nerf — and not made up for by the new possibility of a blind.

You can sugar coat it all you want — the change hurts.

Embolism.8106:

juno.1840:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So lets look at what it should be doing now and what it used to do.

Old: 100% chance of 33% reduction of dmg.
Now: 33% chance of a 100% reduction of dmg.

How do you get “33% chance of a 100% reduction of dmg” ?

Shouldn’t it be “33% chance of a 33% reduction of dmg” ?

33% chance to proc Blind, which 100% negates your opponent’s next attack if it hits?

Yeah but you must get hit at least once to get your 33% chance. Then you must get hit a second time to negate the damage. So this is not a good representation of the new state of chaos armor.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So lets look at what it should be doing now and what it used to do.

Old: 100% chance of 33% reduction of dmg.
Now: 33% chance of a 100% reduction of dmg.

How do you get “33% chance of a 100% reduction of dmg” ?

Shouldn’t it be “33% chance of a 33% reduction of dmg” ?

I love the GS — best 1200m ranged wep imho.

The GS is not a melee weapon — if you try to use it under 600m you need to rethink your strategy. Switch to your second weapon set in this range.

I run GS and Staff in WvW with a hybrid build and it works great. Although with the nerf to Chaos Armor I may drop staff.

It’s a hit in WvW when in fighting multiple foes. It’s also a hit when fighting a single foe with very fast attacks.

It essentially normalizes the condition/boon application to one per second each.

Will you feel it in PvE — doubtful because mobs don’t attack that oftent.
Will you feel it in PvP/WvW — absolutely

Given that Chaos Armor has a duration of 5s, you are capped at 5 boon applications. Some of which will expire before chaos armor completes.

This is a pretty substantial nerf to Chaos armor in PvP/WvW. Specifically when being focus-fired. Now you’ll get one boon a second.

However a thief can still “steal” from a mesmer and get every boon — great.

There’s also an achievement which hits you in the face every time you log in. If it wasn’t for the achievement, I think many players would not even consider obtaining a legendary. The effort and gold required is excessive for simply a BiS piece of gear that scales upward with future releases.

However GW has always been about skins (as it should be). However, I don’t like that achievements are associated with such skins.

I have to believe this is an easy fix, just not high on the priority list for ANet. I think it should be promoted to a higher priority so it gets into one of the builds this summer.

Mesmer is actually not very complex. It may seem complex at first, but overall it’s a very easy class to play.

The most challenging build to play imho is shatters with a 1H sword. It requires some skill to dance in-and-out, time the immobilize, and maximize the amount of shatters that hit. But even this becomes pretty easy with practice (it’s mostly memorizing skill patterns and watching you foe).

I would search for builds in the area you want to focus on (PvE, WvW, or PvP) and then give them a try in the mists. Hot-join PvP is a great way to evaluate your build and improve your play skills.

Lastly, it takes time to learn a profession. Don’t expect to be good at a new build until you’ve played it a while.

EDIT: You will learn stuff watching other people play in the videos and guides. I learned a trick using Staff-2 + Blink while stomping in WvW that I never would have thought of on my own.

Did the dungeon last night for the very first time. I thought it was well done.

We wiped on Frizz’s lab about 5 times before we nailed it.

Essentially it’s a DPS race because you can’t hope to out-live the rotating walls in phase 3 indefinitely. I think the pull makes it hard, but not overly challenging.

I enjoyed the lab fight the most in the entire dungeon. The final fight was fun too but it was not complicated, nor did it vary. The final fight is the same thing x4. After you survive the cannons once, doing it again and again is not as fun. The lab however changed with each wave — very cool.

EDIT: Also if you are one-shotted by the rotating walls you probably need to reexamine your build. We had a couple glassy toons in the party and touching the wall downed them. You need to be able to survive one screw up with your build.

Off-hand clone weapon is still bugged after 6/25 patch:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/BUG-Clone-Appearance/first#post2369737

I know this has been brought up before as it was mentioned in the bug thread. However this bug is more prominent now that torch+PU has been buffed:

Clones do not appear with off-hand weapon.

The reason this is more prominent with torch is that the torch is off-hand and it glows. It becomes rather simple to find the real mesmer in the clone mix, as you can see in this pic:

I’m glad more players are playing non-mesmer professions. That’s good and will keep us out of the spotlight for a little while.

Before it was all thieves, mesmers, and guardians.

But like someone else already said… who cares what profs are being played. It’s not a popularity contest.

There are other games that introduce time-based mechanics in open world combat. A simple example would be increased point acquisition during prime-time-hours for dolyak killing.

You don’t want to shutdown WvW during off hours, but instead make incentives to play during the more active hours of the day.

However GW2 WvW is really setup to be a 24/7 activity so I doubt any meaningful “prime time” incentives could be implemented.

No, actually Necro is my least played profession (although the 6/25 patch seems to have made necros pretty happy which is good).

I was working on a tanky mesmer build that’s a hybrid between power and condition damage. Sort of the best-of-all-worlds.

In the short term I settled for Rabid Armor and Knights Jewelry. Unfortunately that’s too heavy on Precision and too weak on Power. But it was the best I could manage to achieve my goals.

I like the explode effect and it goes with the manifesto’s visually meaningful combat. Although I’m not sure how you’d treat an exploding clone different than a non-exploding one… I mean the goal is to get the real mesmer after all.

My real problem with the clones is lack of off-hand weapon. Especially when you are using a torch, it’s really easy to spot the real mesmer.

Shatter mesmers are based on shatters — not BF. The two are not related at all. You can just as easily shatter without a sword.

That’s the major problem most players have with your post Castervania. Shatters were the least impacted build in the entire Mesmer arsenal with the patch.

If the nerf to BF ruined your ability to do well in sPvP, then I think you have other problems unrelated to the nerf. Seriously.

A 1000 points of condition damage will approximately double the condition tick DPS. Some conditions will be a little higher (burning and torment) and others a little lower.

You should ask yourself what you give up going that deep into the condition damage stat. The most likely answer is “direct damage from lack of attack power”.

As a condition build you have to out-last your opponents as the condition damage is not bursty and can be easily thwarted by duration consumables, duration runes, and condition shedding skills.

Personally I don’t like going “all in” for conditions for that reason.

that’s very nice!

I still don’t think PU compares to the number of stealth bonuses a thief can get. A thief can also enter stealth at a much higher frequency than a memser, so their bonuses are more utilized. Example, they can regen and remove conditions by entering stealth.

Remember that “stealth” is not the thief mechanic — “stealing” is.

Lastly this is a grand master trait in a trait line that does not reward stealth in any other way. Putting 30 points into Chaos is not desirable for some builds.

I hope it does not get the nerf-bat because it’s actually a nice trait now (as in worth spending 30pts to get it). I think the “abuse” comes from the extreme builds where players stack tons of “boon duration” gear and food (and yeah 30 in Chaos gives +30% boon duration as well).

Maybe the “nerf” should be to remove certain food and rune items. Eliminate the “extremes” of the build spectrum so ANet doesn’t have to balance for them (because they don’t exist anymore).

Sounds like we’re not face-roll easy any more which is good. I’m tired of seeing all the mesmers in PvP and WvW. Maybe a higher skill floor will scare away the bandwagon players.

I would pick power in addition to condition damage because the direct damage with scepter is good (and therefore benefits from power). The scepter is not a “pure” condi-weapon and fits nicely with this build. It benefits from both condition and direct damage. The torch is similar. You can see some numbers here (assuming this is accurate):

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3A3Op-Hj3dOUkJRU0xvcng5ZWc/edit

Keep in mind that an increase in power will increase all direct damage by the same percentage. A 10% increase is a 10% increase in direct damage DPS — regardless of the weapon. BUT your point is valid in that 10% of a big number is more than 10% of a small number.

Since this build is meant to be a “Hybrid” it fits really well with scepter/torch.

Staff is not benefiting much at all from the power, although iWarlock would. That in itself is not a good enough reason. The staff is really a secondary weapon in this build brought for defense. I love using it in melee range.

I created this build because I want the best of both worlds, without committing completely down a single path of max direct damage or max condition damage.

From the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

So if a skill does damage, it will scale with power based upon the “skill-specific coefficient”. I haven’t been able to find these coefficients by skill (yet).

Based upon the equation, every skill you have that deals damage will benefit to some degree from power.

This is every skill on the scepter as well as torch 4, staff 1, and stakitten . I count six skills in total, not two.

In addition, phantasms also benefit directly from power — although I have to research that equation as well.