Guild Wars 2

I have zero problems with how Temporal Curtain works right now when I play on my Mesmer. For chasing players, it’s a ranged crippled (when they pass through it and the pull range is a 600 radius – plenty distance even with a 1 second activation timer.

But that doesn’t go without saying that 1 second is “too long” and would rather see a .75 second activation timer.

Interesting Mesmer setup.

What’s funny is that an ANet developer said they weren’t going to make any changes to the system because “a few weeks worth of data” isn’t enough for them to make a change…

They must not play WvW.

Worst idea ever.

I’ve been playing my low level mesmer (38) recently and have played quite a bit in WvW using a staff, sword/focus(or pistol in certain cases). So far, so good – decent low level support and damage. One thing I’ve noticed is that conditions just eat me alive, even when using Lemongrass and Null field. Grant it, I am only level 38 on this character, but how do mesmers deal with conditions?

I bet it was fun growing up with the OP and that he turned out to be a hoot to live with.

It hasn’t taught me anything knew. Run this dungeon with any comp with people who are competent and you’ll beat it.

That is some really low health you have there and no decent way of maintaining condition removal or condition reduction. I’d sacrifice some power for more vitality and go make Lemongrass for -40% condition reduction. Maybe even take Purity instead.

Against bad players, we can take on 3v1s and are op. Against good players, not in the slightest.

SM in EB right now made me finish my monthly Invader Kills in a matter of minutes.

Mini-necro bump; does your character need to be level 80 to get a precursor out of the rank chest?

Greatsword, Sword and Focus build
Primarily useful in WvW but also very fun in PvE for damage. In WvW, it does rely on having Lemongrass food up and I also use Smite Condition for condition removal. I switch that out depending on the group I’m in and the players we’re facing.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlUgqC33RNEf4Eh1DAeQ/VpIe3DTBGhPA-jEDBoLCyUgwkFAUBQJPoJQERjVNFRjVXDT5KIqXoqYR2UuIa1yAwMGA-w

People want all of the rewards without the risk.

You’re always going to get that with Scepter as that’s how most of the ranged travel time abilities work. And it would be ridiculously overpowered if it homed in on players. The only change I can even remotely on the table is making it pass through players (one player, let’s say).

Arken.3725:

The fact that it can still be strafe-dodged speaks volumes on why this skill is still busted. A 30% increase from a snails pace is still incredibly slow.

The vast majority of ranged travel time abilities can be strafe-dodged. If I recall, this change make the Orb on par with the rest of those abilities too.

Aza.2105:

phokus.8934:

Arken.3725:

Obtena has a point. I’ve been testing these changes and even the orb or wrath is still broken.

What exactly is still broken with Orb of Wrath with the new change to its speed?

That’s the thing, it seems like the exact same speed as before.

But it’s not. Fire an Orb at a distant mob and run to the mob. It’s pretty night and day.

Arken.3725:

Obtena has a point. I’ve been testing these changes and even the orb or wrath is still broken.

What exactly is still broken with Orb of Wrath with the new change to its speed?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/first#post2280967

In the patch notes. July 2nd.

I can certainly see it going to Mesmer’s and being tied to Scepter but the Thief change doesn’t make much sense. Depending on what type of number ticks we see with Torment, we may see a massive influx of Mesmers and Thieves.

I have never encountered anyone on the Guardian forums who didn’t spend the silver to retrait multiple times. Silver/Gold is ridiculously easy to obtain in this game so having this gold sink is needed. If anything, the price should be higher but for now, there’s no reason to complain about spending a few silver to retrait.

It wouldn’t surprise me that these are fake as with other games, when global trait changes occur, someone creates a fake and leaks it.

One growing abbreviation that I cannot stand and is just pure laziness is when people type, “ofc”. Short for, “of course”. That drives me absolutely banana sandwich.

After spending all of my gold to finish the T6 mats, I just need 150 more Globs of Ectos… and I only have 54s on me. Allllllmoooooosssttttttttttt.

From someone who lives in NA east coast, I just wish we had more NA coverage.

In WvW for the past three matchups I was using exclusively Hammer with Sword/Focus. We were always outnumbered so providing group support was more important to me. The more I played and used the Hammer, the more I realized what an efficient weapon it is at providing quick burst damage and have excellent control. RoW + JI is such an amazing combination at chasing down people and trapping players who try to kite; followed by MB and then other setup combos.

I found that Hammer in larger scale fights was better than the Greatsword but that doesn’t mean it is better overall. For the past week I’ve been trying some different tactics for smaller scale battles and have been using a shout build while utilizing Bane Signet. Binding Blade pull + Bane Signet activate is ~2-3 seconds of “down time” for a player where you can really add in a lot of damage. You lose the good control for hammer but make up with a lot of burst so make sure you have your cooldowns ready (F1, SY, Focus 5 primed) and you could down anyone rather quickly.

This is speaking strictly from my WvW perspective but in short, Hammer provides excellent support and control whereas Greatsword provides better damage potential from smaller fights. But don’t read into that saying that Hammer has bad damage output because it doesn’t. The only times I feel like I’m hitting someone with a wet noodle is when MB doesn’t crit.

In the end, I’d say kitten (as sess is filtered :/) the situation and switch to Hammer / GS accordingly.

JI + Ring of Warding, Save Yourselves, Shield of Wrath, F1 activate = lots of dead people. And finish anyone with ZD.

Ultimatum.2457:

CMF.5461:

Many still use it, the big down side is that boonhate/boonsteal gives more opportunities for other classes to use our boons against us. Maybe that is good since it levels the playing field a bit.

The other negative was the change to retaliation doing less damage in wvw and spvp, so the passive damage that it did was reduced.

You are not invincible with the healway build but you have to know when to get out and let heals tick. It buys you a lot of time, but you have to use that time to recover.

It is a sort of non-intuitive style of combat but very effective, albeit slower, way of fighting.

Was there anything changed in the final rendition that isn’t available in the build link?

Also, does it work in PVE?

Finally, why did the original author take it down?

You win fights through attrition so don’t expect to burst anyone down. It’s a pretty straightforward build that has been linked. It does work in PvE as support and your dodge rolls can heal for just under 2k.

He took it down because he couldn’t handle people messaging him when he was on and didn’t want to be in the lime light.

The last piece I need is Gift of Might and Magic – T6 mats.

Is playing the mystic forge game worth it or should I just suck it up and farm (farm mats / gold)?

Mesmer GS root ability is 1200 range, hits 5 targets, and strips off a boon. ZD is certainly good but it’s such a ridiculously easy ability to move out of range on. I’ll always be for the removal of rooted abilities as they don’t serve a big purpose [to me] in the fast paced combat.

I’d like ZD better if the range was upped to 900 and if Flashing Blade caused a 2s crippled along with blind.

Have them implement such a tool in the Mists only.

This is a heavy oceanic server so there’s not a whole lot of bodies in LA. The people who are in LA stand around RP their gear off, though.

Being in NA eastern time zone is fighting an uphill battle on SoS. Outmanned is nice and all but it seems as if we only get a handful of people fighting in EB.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Let’s try this again…

Attempt to contact an Officer from ESP in-game and in the meantime feel free to report them at Exploits@arena.net.

It is against ANet Policy to make any cheating/hacking accusations on the forums and you should know this by now

Thank you, Mr. Moderator. You could have just said that in the PM.

Hm, that’s rather interesting. I’ll have to check out the damage in the Mists. Thanks.

kiba.2768:

kiba.2768

i think scepter is the highest single target dps for a stationary target. otherwise the prize goes to 1hs

scepter is still the highest single target dmg for non moving targets.

You go from “thinking” to a bold claim with one post. Care to substantiate that statement?

Yamsandjams.3267:

I don’t agree with the removal of rooting on zealot’s defense though. People would use it primarily for escaping. That is, you’d have your back turned to a zerg, running back to your tower while not being affected by any projectiles for 3 seconds. If it couldn’t be used to attack people, then that would probably be fine (would work exactly like a shield block in that sense), but I don’t think they can remove the rooting without some other kind of tradeoff.

Zealot’s Defense is arguably the highest DPS ability to single targets that a Guardian has. I don’t see the concern of using it has an escape as it’s still susceptible to non-travel time abilities. Or it works in a frontal cone (if it doesn’t already). If I recall, Ranger greatsword 4 ability (counterattack, 15s cd), rooted them in place and they eventually lifted that. Sword has no cc associated with it so it’s really easy to get out of range and evade ZD. I’m just not seeing any negative impact of removing the root and turning it into a must have weapon.

There are only two changes I’d like to see:

1) Flashing Blade: can teleport without selecting a target
2) Zealot’s Defense: keep the mechanic but get rid of the root when activated

I went the Mystic Forge route and I wanted either Twilight or Sunrise. So I put in 4 80 exotic greatswords on my second attempt and received Dusk. You can control which type of legendary you get through the Mystic Forge but if you go out in the open world to loot one, it’ll be completely random.

Ezrael.6859:

Zealot’s Fire (thrown skill) has some accuracy issues, especially with the z-axis.
For example ~
If I’m on the center platform in the Clocktower and try to throw it at someone stood just below it won’t hit, same thing at mid point on Niflhel if you are on one of the rear platforms and try to throw it at someone on point, same thing at Henge or Mine etc.

Cleansing Flame – This skill has lower DPS than any weapon auto-attack, the condition cleansing is very situational with the 400 range frontal cone only affecting allies and not yourself.

- Change the channel timer to 3s from 4.25s (A 29.5% increase in DPS).
- Make the skill cleanse 1 condition from yourself and allies at the start of the channel.

I just happened to pickup a Torch in WvW and it’s been ages since I’ve last played it. So I went ahead, equipped it and it was nice to see the crit damage it deals. But as you stated, it’s really hard to hit targets going up the z-axis in this game; especially when I tried to hit people on towers. And I always wondered why Cleansing Flame never cleared conditions off yourself when Ray of Judgement does – although RoJ needs to hit a target to bounce back.

TwoBit.5903:

You’ve read it incorrectly as well.

They’re immune when passive. Vulnerable on command. This problem deals with the core issues with AOE and poor AI (which I’m not confident that ANet will ever work out). It gives more control of the weapons to the player, and adds risk to using them as a tradeoff for using them (if they die, you get a very long cooldown). Traits and health can always be tweaked, but tweaking them doesn’t deal with the issue of their viability in the metagame. The actual functionality is what’s wrong with the weapons.

Goodness, seems that when I posted this, I sorely underestimated the average forum poster’s level of reading comprehension.

I made it quite clear on what your suggestion for spirit weapon was. Putting your condescending attitude to the side for a moment…

Your idea still lacks utter control of the weapons, albeit, more so than what we currently have. The full control you appear to be looking for is treating spirit weapons as pets. Activating whether or not they go immune to damage and breaks combat doesn’t really make much sense from a practical standpoint. It’s needlessly complicating a set of utilities whose purpose is to provide damage, cc, condition removal, and projectile absorption.

There’s an inherent problem when a set of utilities are not even looked at because they don’t compare to shouts or meditations. From traits, to health, to functionality all need to be looked at and not just some gimmicky concept of making them invulnerable and then making them aggressive. To even be considered in the guardian meta game, spirit weapons need more utility with them. I wouldn’t be against spirit weapons behaving like Ranger Spirit utilities. Adding more to what they do to groups would be a start.

I’d rather have the current spirit weapons than what you’re suggesting (longer cooldown for the sake of going invulnerable and not regaining health…) and get them back in the fight after they die to AOE in matter of 1-2 seconds. Kind of how the Necromancer healing minion works.

I’d say it’s due to these suggestions being so out of scope and not worth the time or effort to discuss. For example, numerous posts suggesting that we get a long bow because “scepter sucks.” What’s more likely to happen – a brand new weapon to the class or to fix a current weapon?

Ultimately it comes down to “what’s not broke, don’t fix” mentality. Guardians have a lot of good working for them and the majority of these suggestions I see are based on “it’d be cool if …” rather than discussing on how to make abilities/traits/etc. better and more meaningful.

TwoBit.5903:

Again, I think you’ve read the OP incorrectly.

Then clarify it for him if you think he’s reading it incorrectly.

The only real change I’m reading here is to make spirit weapons immune/passive on command. This suggestion doesn’t even hit the tip of the iceberg with what’s wrong with spirit weapons. Spirit weapons traits completely spread out and deep, health is still extremely low, abilities lackluster (other than shield), and sword damage is pitiful.

There really is no good reason to use spirit weapons at all and would require an overhaul (maybe similar to ranger spirits) to even make them worthwhile.

Uhh…. no on all of this.

I’d be all for having a passive movement speed increase on a signet. It’s a pain not having permanent swiftness and trying to keep up with your group in wvw as it seems as if everyone has a constant speed boost.

Sea of Sorrows for the oceanic player.

As a general fix, the movement slow down on Whirlwind needs to go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve leaped, WW and only got 1-2 hits off and then they run away. Our ranged to mobility is the worst I’ve seen in WvW that without a really coordinated group/effort, you can spend more time using a scepter than utilizing your greatsword/hammer.

If they really want us Guardians to be on the front line, they sure don’t give us a heck of a lot of options to hold people there and do damage (as Bash pointed out with CC’s from other classes).

The AI is still a little wonky at times and they still, even after the buffs, have way too little health. The damage is not quite as high as I’d like it but the gimmick comes from the use on each spirit weapon. Each having their special own ability but I feel as if the cooldowns are just a tad long. I haven’t played with SW extensively but these are just my expressions on the new “buffs” they’ve given them. Far reach from beta, that’s for sure…

In looking at the traits, you can invest into three lines (two out of the three semi deeply) which to me, makes these weapons as after thoughts on the class core.

This is an extremely alt friendly system. Laurels are account bound making it a prime definition of alt friendly. What you’re looking to do is get the best items available to all your characters in a short amount of time.

Another alternative would be to increase the ways of obtaining Laurels instead of tying them to dailies.

The standard: turn off all name plates other than players.

Mathias.9657:

Wolfheart.1938:

Mathias.9657:

hilariously enough it is usually the best DPS as well.

DPS rotations are boring and unnecessary. They don’t add anything fun or engaging to the gameplay. Why do you feel that having 4 (filler) skills that have to be used in a particular order to be of any use?

Synergy is more entertaining to me than sitting there having my auto attack do a rotation, and yes they have a built in rotation. It’s just less engaging.

There is never a be all end all rotation that you do every time. GW2 definitely has rotations they are just hidden well. Thief: autoattack until revealed done, stealth backstab repeat. Mes: get clones up, shatter. I could go on, but you get my point. I could even go so far as to point out the amazing builds like unicorn sin that just spams 3 and autoattack, 2 buttons not counting the occasional caltrops and dodge.

It surprises me (and it doesn’t) that the vast majority of players don’t use Combo Finishers when they’re available. They add a lot to the effectiveness of attacks and adds a different dynamic for each class/weapon.