Guild Wars 2

Well in PvE, you don’t want to use GS unless absolutely necessary because its sustained damage, even at max range is so low, and having to be at max range prevents you from recieving party buffs. The sword autoattack, even though weak comapared to other classes dps, does much more damage than a maxed range GS. With the Inspiration boon share trait, you’d have to be closer to the group for the signet to work I believe? It seems like a decent pug might stacking strat though, at least on the level of necro blood is power, and with PS warrior, the might could get even crazier.

The way I see it, is that this trait will be similar to how the ranger axe autoattack got buffed, but a bit stronger. It doesn’t give them much might at all really in normal fights, but due to traits and stuff, it really buffs their pet with might much more than it buffs them.

In WvW, it seems like it could be a lot more viable of a trait to have, if anything for the high cripple uptime more so than the might. The Inspiration synergy, like you said looks useful too.

I know you didn’t mention pvp, but I think it could be an interesting choice for a phantasm based mesmer build, since it would help keep cripple uptime, might for phantasms, and would let you rock out with more izerker uptime. Still, on any other build, I see power block, or mental torment even, far outclassing it.

Elementalist: “Please let us a play a build without water and arcane that doesn’t suck eggs”.
Engineer: “How DARE you touch my easy access perma-swiftness”
Guardian: “Playing super glass cannons is so much more fun than being a tank”
Necromancer: “Death Shroud is the most flawed concept to ever grace an MMO”
Also~ “Sadness now that we won’t have a decent heal skill anymore”
Ranger: “Playing glass Pew-Pew builds, even in melee range is WAY more fun than playing a conquest useful condition-evasion-regen tank”
Warrior: “Its so much fun never having to press 6. Oh and we want cleansing ire baseline”
Mesmer: “Just you wait till tuesday thieves, lets see how you deal with blind spam and stunlock. And NEEEEEERF consume plasma please”.
Thief: “If I make one mistake I die, its not like I have shadow refuge, shadow step, sword 2, shortbow 5, various backwards evades, or on demand stealth to make up for any of those mistakes”.

Jasher.6580:

Toxsa.2701:

What? Ele is already in the top tier. They actually receive quite some nice buffs too.
Why would it fall from High tier PVP?

Example:

Elementalist Now: 3. Elementalist After Patch: 5.

Every Other Class Now 2. Every Other Class After Patch: 8.

Before the patch Ele was stronger than every other class, AND THEY ARE GETTING BUFFED… OMG.

Yes but every other class got buffed way more which will ultimately put Elementalist at a huge disadvantage.

Orrrrrrr…. maybe it means that the other classes will be on a more even playing field with ele? I mean D/D celestial ele was really strong ever since celestial got buffed and the cleansing water icd got taken out. Even though it will be mostly the same as it is now, I think it would be strange to say that ele will fall out of favor simply because other classes are a bit more viable than before.

The main problem with ele’s visibility, in my opinion, is that people have gotten bored of it, because we’ve been using essentially the same build for 3 years. Still, its effective now, but many ele players have switched up the classes they play in tournaments just to deal with that boredom, and the rotation heavy playstyle doesn’t help with that.

The biggest buff to ele in my opinion is being able to take a full non arcane/water, traitline, and after asking some top ele players, they predict that fire will be ideal for celestial, and air for zerk, as earth is only good for raw bunkering, and things like warriors have and will continue to outclass ele in that role.

Still, I would argue that mesmer should replace elementalist in the title of this thread, simply because memser visibility in NA pvp has been very very slim. Even with portal, until this patch, thief has objectively outclassed mesmer altoghether. The elementalist has not had those problems with visibility. A shoutbow warrior may outclass a D/D elementalist in the bruiser/team support role, but it hasn’t really been enough to push it out of the meta all together.

So right now I have the peace-maker’s torch and pistol, and tbh, I hate them.

So does anyone have any good suggestions of not overly expensive torch and pistol skins that look relatively decent on an asuran mesmer. I have the overused bonneti’s rapier to pair it with, by the way if that matters to any real extent hahaha.

The tormented skins look really nice (I have the staff), but at around 200+ gold right now I’d prefer to aim for cheaper if possible.

Tommyknocker.6089:

PistolWhip.2697:

Tommyknocker.6089:

If you watch the live stream it is self evident the devs working on the engy are quite excited over the changes. What I didn’t know was just how coddled their community was.

2 hours in or not, could you at least feign interest in the necro changes Joshua? And If not could we get another necro designer (or at very least player) to sit in the other seat.

I understand the frustration, but Joshua Davis mains Engineer, it only makes sense would be giddy over the changes.

Oh I completely understand, but I would just like to see equal representation is all. When devs discuss and banter the ideas back and forth it can lead to more incite into what was changed and why. Although Robert Gee did a great job describing the changes having a necro player along for the ride would have not only given Joshua a break, but we might have had someone from our side of the coin voicing an opinion.

To be fair, Josh was probably tired and frustrated at the time when they recorded considering all they went through from even putting the 200 slides together to having the stream get kittened up to dealing withexpansion pre-purchase backlash.

It should be at least 600, at the very minimum to be GM worthy.

Yeah, all I really hope for, especially with sword, is ways to instantly gap close to enemies (like steal or judge’s intervention), some blocks/evasion, and all around good damage. If it has enough mobility, the sword may be able to synergize well with focus, and could possibly replace dagger on a lot of builds by providing a more elegant movement based playstyle rather than a raw bruiser style.

Please! The full SAB with all worlds levels and thuper skins is worth a full $60 dollars for me!

And release it on steam. Just cuz.

Jekkt.6045:

it’s not only about mobility of the sword but also if it can block or evade or offer any sort of damage mitigation or avoidance.

Yeah thats true, since the focus has a bit of that from the invuln and projectile hate, but I feel like blocks in earth and evades/movement in air and burst skills in fire, and maybe some defensive movement skill in water (like phase retreat), that would be enough to make me happy.

I’m extrememly impatient though considering they’ve taken a whole kittening month off from showing us elite specs when the expansion is supposed to come out relatively soon and they still have 6-8 (counting revenant legends) weeks worth of elite spec reveals to talk about, let alone more details for guild halls and “challenging group content”.

These will probably be addressed anyway, but whats your opinion on the viability of a sustain based role in conquest for the necromancer? With the improvements to blood magic, does a death/blood/SR set up have a chance? The main issue I see is that life blast is crap for siphoning, but with reaper it could work later on, especially with blighter’s boon, but you’d have to give up death or SR to make that work, which would be tough.

Also what your opinion on the future of the condition DPS necromancer in pvp? The celestial meta, especially shoutbow, has sort of pushed it out of the meta, but do you think it has any hope of being viable in the future? What will the “meta” be?

About th focus, if the sword for the ele elite spec has decent mobility options and good damage, I predict that focus could be taken over offhand dagger to provide better surviability, since if the sword’s DPS can outperform or justify dropping OH dagger, it will be a worthy choice.

Thats not really too on topic, I know, but as a focus fan I think it has potential! But anet REALLY has to hurry up and give us the remaining elite spec details, especially if this expansion is supposed to launch in the next 2 months.

ZoSo.4867:

MiniEquine.6014:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Don’t delete anything yet. Anet still has time to correct their silly mistake.

I don’t think you’ll need to worry about deleting them anymore

PS (please check your mail before deleting them!)

How so?

Sounds like Zoso just sent them enough gold to buy enough gems to buy a character slot. If that’s what they really did, that is awfully kind of them. Why this needs to be done though is a sign that Anet has not done a good job relaying to us why the expansion is going to cost the amount it does and does not come with a slot by default.

Exactly what happened! Didn’t have anything to buy with the gems from the ultimate edition and wanted to show people there is some good in this whole pre purchase debacle. Would be a real shame to lose all that progress on the characters, plus the Guild Wars community always looks out for each other!

Much thanks again

Yeah all is good now, my necromancer and ranger will both survive for many eons to come.

One of my guildmates uses a phantasm build right now with scepter/pistol and sword/sword, and he does surprisingly well with it, mainly as a side point 1v1er.

I think I’ll definitely consider running a phantasm build sometimes when I solo queue, probably with sword/pistol and GS.

Anyway thanks for the really informative thread! you rock!

Well since HoT won’t come with a free character slot, and I have two characters that I don’t play much due to the balance teams inability to make them at all viable, it is much more rational and efficient for me to delete one of these two unviable characters to make room for a revenant, than it is to even farm the gems for a new character slot.

God forbid I make a revenant and it turns out I’d be better off with the character I’ve deleted, but I guess that will just have to be the risk I’ll have to take to even try the class out.

Lets see on my necromancer, I have max crafting for artificier and legendary that I’d just bank, but it will also be completely awful with a heal skill that now makes it easier to kill after using it! And lets not forgot about those OP siphoning skills and the new ability to make my downed friends (since having a necro on your team will get your friends downed) not bleed out! What great team support! I still have lich form though, but whats that? All engineers run AoE polymorph moa now? Oops, bye bye elite skill!

On my ranger, I don’t really have any crafting disciplines or anything, so I guess it would more convenient to kill this character off. Still, I’ll be sad that I won’t experience the new druid spec, or wonderful OP new traits like protective ward and that oh so nerfed posion master that no one ran before anyway!

My mesmer, ele, thief, and future revenant, and whoever I don’t kill will mourn the loss of the one that must die. However it is a sacrifice born out of self-interested economic rationality for the expansion.

Expansive.3716:

Laraley.7695:

Quadox.7834:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Are you saying that mesmers either weren’t part of the meta at all or are you saying that mesmers won’t be part of the meta? Because neither is true. They definitely weren’t as common as thieves, but they were still played way more than ranger or necro. At least on EU.

My comment was pointing out that most classes currently in the meta got buffed (Ele, Engi, Guard, Thief), and those that aren’t in the meta got nerfed (notably necro); I haven’t read up on the ranger/warrior changes yet. The exception to this is the mesmer, which was not meta and got a buff.

What are you smoking? Mesmers got the most buffs of all.

Engi ele thief got buffs. People overrate the mesmer changes by alot. Alot. Mesmer isnt even very good ATM and is used for portal and moa. The main reason mesmer can spike is because a thief stealths them. All in all, thief will hardcounter just as hard and ele and engi and thief got thr biggest buffs

Are you seriously telling me mesers didn’t get buffed? They got buffed the most along with engis.

The buffs to ele were medicore, I seriously don’t know what people are talking about. Either they do not understand the class and realize many buffs were to just replace nerfed things or the impossibility of taking some new traits.

Just stop with your obvious Mesmer slandering. The mesmer did not get “the most buffs” and it was/is not in a good position

I’m not trying to attack you, but you’re totally off base with your comments about the Mesmer. Unless you can provide substantial evidence that proves your point.

Also the only really prominent mesmers on EU are helseth and misha, so theres that too.

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Are you saying that mesmers either weren’t part of the meta at all or are you saying that mesmers won’t be part of the meta? Because neither is true. They definitely weren’t as common as thieves, but they were still played way more than ranger or necro. At least on EU.

My comment was pointing out that most classes currently in the meta got buffed (Ele, Engi, Guard, Thief), and those that aren’t in the meta got nerfed (notably necro); I haven’t read up on the ranger/warrior changes yet. The exception to this is the mesmer, which was not meta and got a buff.

What are you smoking? Mesmers got the most buffs of all.

Yeah man, reread my post o0

Oh yeah, I missed that. But still applies what I said before. At least on EU mesmers were seen quite often.

For the record, the only mesmer in NA thats even close to prominent in pvp these days is Supcutie, and I’m pretty sure he used to be a thief main and/or played many tournies in the past year as a thief.

I asked phantaram what he thought, and he said that he wouldn’t pick earth since it doesn’t give you any extra damage. He said for cele builds you’d want fire for the damage, burn uptime, and blinding ashes, and for zerker specs you’d want air for, well, obvious reasons.

It will be interesting to see what tempest and sword (if it is sword at all) will bring to the table.

Glenstorm.4059:

Wouldn’t the newly buffed One with Air help with mobility though? Especially combined with no CD on FA?

Well yeah I mean it will help, but that’s not enough to effective reposition or disengage. Super speed won’t help you when a thief can steal or shadow shot or shadow step to you instantly. Teleports and stealth are much better tools for this, and lightning flash will be limited in range compared to blink. Tempest could get stealth or mediations for all we know, which would go a long way to making some sort of burst spec actually good.

First of all S/F is much better than S/D because the OH dagger skills are too long of cooldown to be worth it for the extra spike damage, you need lightning flash to combo EQ and Fire Grab, so its dependent on that combo too. Focus is better because it gives active defenses so you can survive longer and stay roughly at a greater distance away.

Still its always been outclassed by thieves, mesmers, and medi guards. Mainly because those classes can kill a fresh air ele very easily, while guards get tons of CC, mesmers get portal/moa and thives get tons of CC and mobility. So basically fresh air has only really worked for zoose in the past, and only becuase the team he fought didn’t have as many of the direct counters, but in general, S/F’s poor mobility, utility aside from swirling wings, and reliance on hard to land fire bursts make it suboptimal.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Because they finally changed Mimic into something useful:

Mimic: Updated functionality of this skill. This skill now causes the next utility slot skill you use within 10 seconds to recharge in 1 second. Increased recharge to 90 seconds.

edit: Nike shoe was faster. How surprising.

That could work really well with feedback in PvE!

And in general, I know my guild’s pvp team definitely wants to run mesmer over thief now in our core comp. Partially because we have lots of great mesmers, but also because the burst, survivability, CC, and utility will be a fair bit better.

Darksteel.8412:

power is boring? lol…power spec are hands down unrivalled the least passive specs of all…viable or unviable but healing condi and cele specs are the passive aka boring ones….new to pvp?

They mean boring in terms of reliance on passive fire/air sigil procs to facilitate burst on skills like autoattacks that shouldn’t burst on most classes.

So I am not an engi, and I watched the developers dole out a huge amount of time and excitement about your changes, while being comparatively disinterested when talking about ranger balance. You guys are getting a lot of great things for this patch, so don’t let something like this ruin it for you, because its really not that big of deal.

If engineers get AoE Moa, then we should too. Just saying.

Laraley.7695:

But Arcana still only has two good major traits.

The revive speed trait could be decent in pvp, I mean some support staff eles run mercy runes just to be a tanky point holding rez bot.

jportell.2197:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

jportell.2197:

SlimChance.6593:

I think a better question would be: “Is having IP baseline enough to live without DE?”

I’m kinda thinking that maybe illusions will be less necessary for shatter builds. I know it sounds weird. But really I think chronomancer can run a shatter build w/o the illusions tree.

I’m pretty sure you’re right. Shatter Mesmer can now get some good options from either Inspiration (Condi cleanse + Heal shatter) or Chaos (Chaotic Interrupt, Stability+Boon on Shatter) too, not even considering the Chrono stuff and F5 shatter.

Master of Frag is the only reason to go into Illusions

And it is really just rolling precise wrack, confusing cry, imbued diversion, and masterful reflection all in one. I mean really the only big plus from that is imbued diversion. As far as reflects go, shield is going to be a lot better for reflects now. Imbued diversion is cool, but we found ways to be without this before since it competed for illusionary persona. Really the only thing I see a shatter mes losing out on by not going into illusions is Illusionists celerity, and shattered strength.

Doesn’t tides of time just destroy, not reflect projectiles?

And the scepter in pvp’s death sentence has been lifted as well! (if tempest sword doesn’t kill it instead)

denis.9487:

The suggestion was to appease that portion of the game. The balance would be across all game modes. Just lowering the damage from phantasms and increasing our (Mesmer) damage. Would also help because placing phantasms in pve to ramp up dps is slow. We would do the damage, and clones phantasms could be shattered.

but then shatter damage would have to be reduced to compensate, and thats probably not a good thing for pvp considering how the meta is either burst damage or be a celestial build facerolling on a point.

Its a fundamental tradeoff between sustained damage and burst damage, so by buffing mesmer sustained damage to appeal for PvE, you’d have to nerf its burst damage in pvp, which would greatly hurt it in that game mode. You could solve this by splitting damage between game modes, but that would still take a lot of resources for something anet views as relatively minor.

Congrats on your new legendary two headed chicken!

I think it looks cool together.

denis.9487:

Why I offered a suggestion to those in pve. Make our phantasms do far less damage and we pick up the slack. A simple fix. Then we can use our class mechanic and choose any trait line.

Hahahaha, have you looked at our devs? Thats far too much work for them. All thought to be fair the process of balancing 8-9 classes across all game modes is not an easy task whatsoever, but massive reworks that scrap fundamanental class mechanics for a base profession will never happen.

Clones are an inherent defensive mechanic?

If you’ve been playing the game for more than a week you should be able to tell the real mesmer.

A much more accurate summation of their defenisve mechanic would be they’re access to multiple teleports, stealth, sword evades, and distortion, extreme active defense through being able to repositioning. Clones are just shatter fodder.

Other than that you’re ideas make sense, although your idea of reconciling two different playstyles seems to be the direction where the revenant is heading right now.

Honestly I think that a build with chronomancy over dueling could work well for lockdown, with a domination/chaos/chrono set up. You’d only really be missing out on pistol recharge (if you use pistol) and blinding shatter though, but CI and all the stuff from chrono could make up for it.

Yeah I agree with Chaos for sure. The wells and shield were built with teamfights in mind. Still I’d say my only major complaints about how chrono is turning out is that we’ve recieved far less new skills than all the other revealed elite specs (and likely the future ones too) and it will be tough to actually slot wells given how in mesmer pvp at competitve levels, blink and portal are absolute musts, and giving up decoy for well of calamity or alacrity would mean far less personal survivability and ability to disengage. The elite well would be a bit easier to slot, but still if you’re team has a power necro you’re going to want moa, and mass invis does provide excellent rez opportunities, so there’d still be a tough trade off.

I don’t think the shield will be popular on burst oriented builds. I still view staff/GS as the greatest option overall, mainly because the GS is needed for the damage and staff is oh so handy for phase retreat and chaos storm alone. With shield you need sword, which works okay, but it can only really be used in 1v1s against squishy non-melee classes and for trying to spike some one offpoint in a teamfight. It lets you do marginally better against thieves, but makes you weaker to DPS guard and warriors compared to staff. And even then most mesmers will still value the stealth from the torch over the massive AoE stun from the shield. The shield would help in teamfights, but it’d be detrimental over other options in smaller fights.

I kind of wish the chronomancer had reworked shatters to be ground targeted AoE damage spikes, or instant cast damage spikes on a single target, that would remove the need for the clones to run up to the enemy to expode. It’d probably be too OP with far less counterplay. Still they could have turned distortion into continuum split, and altered the other shatters in some way to be different and probably more effective (especially if we had more control over them in that way, it would be brutally strong), but I don’t know if they’d be able to find a way to make it work thematically.

Maris.3164:

Personally I usually swap if there’s another thief or a mesmer in my group. But…

A proper profession balance and build diversity would probably solve this. As it is, mesmer and thief both have only a couple of builds to choose from and most players choose the same build. For thief it’s berserker amulet or nothing, and the same for mesmer (unless condi). Both are extremely fragile professions that rely on killing their opponent before they are killed. Atm I’m worried about specializations mostly, wondering if the changes done will force us into only a few builds per class.

For mesmer it will be a lot better in my opinion, since with the illusions traits being baseline, and better lockdown traits, both shatter and lockdown will be effective but different types of burst builds that burst in different ways. The condition builds will be hugely buffed as well, although I’d stil probably only run them in solo queue.

Sebrent.3625:

Well, since talking about shatter, I assume we’re talking about 4 Dom, 4 Dueling, 6 Illusion.

In the new system, this will simply be Dom, Dueling, Illusion.

• Illusions will have Illusionary Elasticity by default (baseline) … frees up a trait
• Illusions will have Illusionary Persona by default (baseline) … frees up a trait
• Illusions will now inflict bleeding and confusion on crit … more conditions applied
• Vulnerability from staff clones (when they don’t inflict bleeding/burning) give you +% dmg versus the target … more direct damage done
• Phantasm damage increase by default (baseline) … more direct damage done

I think these things alone will help.
Your conditions do less damage, but you’re applying more conditions.
Your conditions do less damage but you’re doing more direct damage.
Your conditions do less damage, but you have some freed up traits to compensate with.

Yeah thats true. My anxiety has been mostly relieved for now. Before HoT comes out I might take chaos over illusions to see how a bridged lockdown/shatter build would work as well.

posthumecaver.6473:

I have no hope, look to the classes are in good place in GW2

Warrior, Thief, Guardians, Engis, …..they are all in good place in META and some developers sees them as their children.

And now look to the classes it has problems
Necro, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer,….

unless every class is designed from a developer who really enjoy and play the class, I guess this picture will stay.

Well I assume you’re talking about pvp, so I have to point out that the comparison of the elementalist to the necromancer, ranger, and mesmer is entirely problematic. I have experience on all 4 of those classes that you viewed as non-meta, and I can tell you that the ele is miles ahead of them in pvp viability right now.

Sure, the ele has its problems, being bound to arcane, water, and celestial, but at least those are actual ways to address the ele’s problems. Necromancers have no group support and no way to survive focus fire on their own. The only reason that power necro is a thing in pvp right now at all is simply all due to noscoc sticking with the class and the lack of competitiveness on NA. Mesmers are entirely outclassed by thieves for a burst role, but survive on some teams simply due to portal being strong, but if you don’t want portal, you don’t want a mesmer. Rangers are limited by having their burst build too map dependent (it works on legacy but not forest) and their 1v1 condition/tank builds aren’t effective because they can’t kill things 1v1 fast enough to justify bringing them, because people will rotate to nullify that advantage. There are so so few necromancers, mesmers, and rangers in pvp right now. For necromancers, theres nos, xerrex, and OP necro, for mesmer theres pretty much only supcutie on NA, and helseth and misha on EU, for ranger, I can only think of genyen and eurantien. For Ele, theres phantaram (even if he doesn’t play it as much right now), denshee, eternya, shaku, honey, readymade, zoose, and many more minor ones on various teams.

Anyway my point is that your comparison of ele to those woefully neglected classes is a bad comparison to me. Still, I understand that you recognize that the ele is flawed, but those flaws don’t mean something can’t be meta, since there are ways of fixing those flaws. Ele can do survivability because of the boon uptime and the heals it can trait for. Warrior would be weak to conditions if it didn’t have the warhorn trait or cleansing ire, but its still meta and a highly visible proffession because it can deal with that weakness so well. Necro, Mesmer, and Ranger can’t deal with those weaknesses as well for reasons that are obvious after spending so little time in pvp with them.

Finally, I know that there is considerable anxiety in this thread because you know how the Elementalist can easily be nerfed again like it was in 2013, if the changes don’t allow for eles to maintain sustain, or allow for viable burst builds. I just think its a bad comparison, when elementalist has been pretty viable in high pvp for a while, excluding 2013, whereas the other 3 classes you said were as flawed did not have enough viability. The mesmer may see viability as the proposed trait reworks and its elite spec are giving it great tools and baseline traits to make its burst and control much stronger, while enhancing survivability through more access to blind and slow even. The necromancer is riding on the existence of a viable sustain build through changes to siphoning and blood magic and healing in death shroud, the old condition builds are dead for the time being as long as shoutbows exist. The ranger is simply hoping that its elite spec will give it the tools needed to have better support now that spirits are pretty much botched, while slavaging the broken pet mechanic.

And finally the ele is just hoping that they won’t lose their jack of all trades status with the changes to the trait lines, boon duration, celestial, and condition damage scaling, and that lesser used weapons are given a new lease on life. Still I wish the best for the ele, I just wish more for the mesmer, necro, and ranger than the ele at this point seeing what they’ve had to endure the past 3 years.

Exedore.6320:

Elementalist was the most complete from the first preview. The others should be further along with the preview tomorrow.

I hope they’re not just further along, but nearly finished altogether aside from slight tweaks. I want this update out as soon as the possibly can.

Mesmers are pretty much getting everything they’ve ever wanted baseline for the next patch compared to all the other classes so I honestly don’t think we need anything else baseline.

IP and Ielast being baseline means we don’t need illusions to have an effective build anymore. For other classes, it was more minor things, like focused ritual for necromancer and blasting staff for elementalist. Both of those were minor traits easy enough to just allocate the min points you needed to get it, meanwhile we’re getting a GM and master trait baseline, that we previously needed to allocate much more trait points for.

So to be quite honest, I really think it would be selfish at this point to ask for anything else to be baseline.

Well it can;t really take hardcounters into consideration because what build diversity exists may cause different builds on the same class to not have the same hard counter. Ex. Thief hardcounters power shatter mesmer, but typically loses to condition shatter mesmer, or medi guard hard counters mesmer with sw/torch but not staff.

Still It’d be nice to not have stacked teams, esepcially as a mesmer player that can’t really hold a point to begin with, having multiple mesmers means we have to kill things as fast as possible to compensate.

There are some rangers in higher tier pvp, look at Genyen or Eurantien.

And.. in the earlier metas of the game there were spirit rangers on everyteam, lets not forget.

Anyway as I understand, one of the bigger issues with power ranger, is that the terrain of the map determines its usefulness. Like its much better on legacy than forest due to having more space to snipe. Additionally it falls from the same problem of being easy to burst back if it can’t find a good position, and it really only has the signet and the GS block to be withstand being targeted by any dps class, while thieves and even mesmers have way better ways to disengage or reposition.

The often tankier condition builds have always been strong side point 1v1 builds, but this game is about much more than that, and right now condition builds can’t end a 1v1 fast enough to justify bringing them over a more dps oriented class.

The traits for chronomancer are more than fine because it opens up the chance for viability of established playstyles that were heavily flawed.

Right now, the mesmer has 1 top tier viable pvp build, and its hardly ever run these days because it has its own problems, and it takes too much work to play compared to other meta builds. Builds that are good in theory, but never seen at all at the tournament level, include lockdown, phantasm, and condition shatter. Looking specifically at lockdown, we see that the reason its not viable now is because it lacks both damage on its own, and low cooldowns for burst spikes (from the current illusions cooldowns for phantasms and shatters) that really make it a poor choice. Chronomancy gives it the ability to manage cooldowns with alacrity, and the incentive to use shatters to gain that alacrity, as well as access to slow, quickness, or whatever, so it will have the spike damage and cooldown management to be a viable build.

So really, I guess the chronomancer doesn’t truly open up grand new playstyles for the mesmer, it just fixes the ones that were sub-par before as well as bringing the more effective ones up to new heights. And I can guarantee that the time travel mechanic will be a difficult concept to master that will push the skill cap of the mesmer to new heights.

Finally, wells, and the shield even are essentially the wet dream of the WvW veilbots. Now they too can have AoE damage and lootbags to their hearts content. While the mesmer has a lot of competition for util slots, the wells could also be really effective in conquest, the same way that it is for power necro wells right now.

Exedore.6320:

nearlight.3064:

The fall damage traits are still there though.

Yes, but they now activate on events in addition to fall damage, such as being CC’ed. They were incomplete in the original preview.

okay, that wasn’t clear in your original post.

Shadow.1345:

Exedore.6320:

Saying the current system has more choice is subscribing to an illusion; at least half the trait selections are never worth taking, and others are overshadowed. The “low-hanging fruit” problem with powerful adept and master traits also hinders balance and variety.

The new system has a few goals:

• Give each trait line a cohesive playstyle improvement and theme. They tend to be along the lines of a class mechanic, power damage, condi damage, self-survival, group support. When you choose a trait line, you’ll have a good idea of what it should be doing.
• Provide meaningful choices at each level. Currently, there are very few true choices at any trait level. You always have the clear best choice or one of two. By making traits which do similar things compete against each other, ANet can add more variety; players can’t just take every damage trait.
• Improve balance. In the current system, each trait doesn’t just compete with its peers; it competes with every trait in the line and every other trait for that profession. That’s too much to balance and you’ll always have bad traits if you’re trying to keep things interesting.

Exactly. By scaling down and combining some traits they are getting rid of those choices that were garbage(like the falling damage ones) as well as allowing for more traits because you don’t have to take 2, 3 or more traits that synergize across one or more trait lines.

The fall damage traits are still there though.

I’d also say that one of the biggest improvements is merging similar traits together. For example, necromancer staff needed 4 traits to fully power up the marks of the weapons in terms of damage, cooldown, lf generation, and radius. The damage trait got cut (since marks are kitten for power damage) and the lf gen and cooldown traits got merged, so now you don’t have to give up half your build just to make one weapon more functional.

On other classes they’re doing that a lot with traits that effect utility skills, and most of the weapon cooldown traits are being changed to promote active play rather than a flat cooldown reducation (look at duelists discipline or the pledge in the mesmer line).

Their goal is to make each specialization feel like you’re specializing in a different type of thing. The choices between the traits by this system are made more impactful as each trait in each slot should ideally give you a different playstyle to achieve a similar goal, and the GM traits are accordingly buffed to be more build defining.

For example if you’re a condition necro, in the GM slot of curses, there are no power traits in that slot because they wanted curses to be the place where necromancers go to specialize in condition damage, not power. Additionally the three traits in the GM slot all give very different ways to play a condition build. Lingering curses is a slower, attrition based choice in which conditions gradually overwhelm the enemy through tremendous amounts of condition duration, while terror is more for burst condition application, and parasitic contagion (15% of condition damage ticks heal you) is for a sustain focused condition build.

The only problem is that not all slots in all specializations are as finely tuned to offer different utilitiy and different playstyles as well as this specific example. For example, in arcana for elementalist, not that elemental attunement will be moved, I seriously doubt anyone would take elemental surge over evasive arcana.

Give me a blood magic sustain build that is viable at tournament levels and I’ll be happy. But that will be the only way I’ll be happy.

All to be fair though, I know with the necromancer line they took most of the power traits out of curses because they wanted it to feel like a more condition focused line. Again, the developer’s want specialization in a particular area to occur. The only reason that master of fragmentation is even there is most likely because they couldn’t think of anything else.

I do agree that the line should be looked at, since right now if you go into at all, you’re going to only take the pledge, malicious sorcery, and maim the disillusioned, for a condition build the other choices really aren’t even a contest. For a power build though you’re wasting your time there. The thing is that Chaos and Chronomancy offer way more potential for a power shatter build at the moment, meaning that you really don’t have a reason to go into illusions for a power shatter build. That may be difficult for some of you to grasp, that we no longer need illusions in every single shatter build, but I think its a good thing.

I do agree that phantasmal haste, and maybe compounding power, should be moved to be a some trait in GM, purely for PvE builds (as long as it doesn’t compete with glamour or focus traits). If they’rre going to make illusions a condition based specialization, then they need to go all the way while making each choice benefit a dinstict and different playstyle from one another. The necromancer cureses GM example is having terror, parasitic contagion, and lingering curses share a slot. All of them offer fundamentally different ways to create a condition build that aren’t comparable in just raw power alone because they provide condition damage in vastly different ways.

So therefor master of fragmentation needs to be buffed enough to provide a different sort of condition mesmer build, and blinding befuddlement needs to not suck.

Master of fragmentation merges all the old shatter traits, like imbued diversión and precise wracking into one. Still I don’t think it’s working going into when you can get chaotic interruption from chaos or seize the moment or lost time from chrono.

Well when HoT comes out most shatter power builds will probably go dom/duel/chrono uses alacrity to manage shatter cooldowns since the shatter improving GM trait in illusions won’t be needed since mental torment is in dom.

Still, you must know that the point of these specializations is to specialize in an area. Now illusions will truly be what it is, a specialize for condition damage, that uses shatter to condi bomb. Since the 15% illusion recharge, IP, and Ielast, will be baseline (they were the old reasons to even go into illusion at all for shatter) you’d only want to go into illusions for a condition build.

Xillllix.3485:

Timelord.8190:

D/D ele is now garbage, i hardly even play it anymore in WvW and i hardly see anyone else play it. So many undeserved nerfs.

As someone who was used to play d/d in the good old WvW days I find d/d today to be completely unrewarding if not borderline unplayable in large scale fights. Sad because it’s an entire play style that has disappeared because of unjustifiable nerfs.

Can you still run D/D as gank squad with thieves/mesmers in GvGs and organized guild WvWing?

Staff ele in PvE=2222222222222222 in fire with some 1s and 5s occasionally mixed in.

Yeah, my issue with the weapon is that it always felt too slow to really do anything. I felt like I mostly just used staff marks and fear spam to do anything. I think the single target condition pressure of the scepter is just a bit to low to really be considered pressure, and overall its just clunky to use.

Compared to the mesmer scepter, which also has a clunky auto, it just pales a bit in comparison, since mesmer scepter just has so much more pressure through torment alone.

So yeah, I’d totally support necromancer scepter buffs, then maybe we can see the condimancer niche in the pvp meta return a bit, but that sort of depends more on shoutbows place in the meta tbh.