Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed the focus pull skill to be bugged recently. When I use it, mobs will instead be thrown back to their original location, rather than pulled into the curtain’s location.

It can be very annoying to run a semicircle, hit pull, and watch the vet wolf you were trying to escape zoom right at you.

This severely hampers the group utility of a trait that requires 20 points to attain. I sincerely hope there will be a look at this.

Harpy hunters in this area used standard arrow attacks (the basic ranger bow set).

Every single one passes right over the curtain unless you’re standing even closer than what is necessary to activate combo finishers on it.

This needs to be fixed.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/guardian#7|0|3527|1311|12641|12643|3411|10|906|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|1389|2175|1396|30|866|2274|1400|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0

This calculator is lacking the second weapon set. That second weapon set is very important for understanding the flow of the build.

In leveling my mesmer since this patch*, every greatsword guardian i’ve seen has been either dead often or struggling. I also see fewer of them, and more rangers these days, as they seem to be able to put out the dps and support GS symbol builds used to be able to match.

Again, have still stuck with my vow, despite holiday discounts. not one dollar to the gem store until they revert the CD on SoW and fix the retaliation issue by making it give a different defensive boon.

*My mesmer, too, has been forced to “secondary” GS since BWE2, shameful that now GS is not viable and well-rounded for TWO professions now.

BTW anet.. it has now been nearly half a month since this change and in case you didn’t notice.. the outrage is NOT going away.

While levleing my mesmer (now forced to “secondary” the greatsword since BWE 2) since this patch, every greatsword guardian i’ve come across has been either dead or struggling. This is really sad. Im still sticking with what I said, not one gem, not one more dollar to ANet until they restore the viability of symbol-support to greatsword guardians.

It should work on flying foes. If it does not, that’s a bug.

I understand the concept of lobbing over the top, but if the curtain is not “high” enough to reflect projectiles shot at a 30 degree downward angle, something is wrong here. It pretty much neuters the group utility of the spell if there’s even a SLIGHT terrain variation.

Profession: Mesmer
Weapon: OH Focus
Skill: Temporal Curtain
Trait: Warden’s Feedback (focus skills reflect projectiles)

Bug: this does not work on flying foes

Tested repeatedly on harpy hunters in tanglerot hills. I tried various placements, and only managed to get one reflect out of 10 casts by standing nearly on top of it.

please fix this. it WAS one of few traits not bugged.

I’m fighting harpy hunters with “focus skills reflect projectiles”.

I drop temporal curtain.. their shots go RIGHT THROUGH IT.

mesmers don’t have enough bugs?

Agreed.. the mob tapping and DE system in this game needs work. I just spent 20 minutes actively participating in an event. doing moderate damage and peeling for a ranger specced heavily for damage on my mesmer.. what do i get for all of that.. bronze and a pittance for karma.

Agreed.. the mob tapping and DE system in this game needs work. I just spent 20 minutes actively participating in an event. doing moderate damage and peeling for a ranger specced heavily for damage on my mesmer.. what do i get for all of that.. bronze and a pittance for karma.WTH.

Tanglerot Hills: objective, free villages from harpies

Me (support build mesmer) and a random ranger specced pure damage.

Total harpies killed: 20
Total vets killed: 2

supplied knockbacks, snares, reflects, and combo fileds to the ranger, in addition to moderate damage and clone detonation.

Completion Medal: Bronze.

So the ONLY way to get proper achievement points is to spec glass cannon and say “F the group”?

WTF ANET I thought you were supposed to reward group contribution and punish tunnelling pew-pews into boss?

I agree with this only because the wider aoes are difficult to discern (the edges of the circle can be OUT OF FRAME!)

Why not just fix the tapping system.

Why should professions which are inherently back-loaded be rendered second-class to those which are front-loaded? and why should back-loaded classes have their fundamentals changed to front-loading to deal with a broken system.

the threshold for tapping should be made lower.

Health you GIVE when reviving someone who is down in-combat should apply as ‘tap damage’ to their target(s)

health and boons you give someone as support should apply as ‘tap damage’ to their targets.

I strongly suggest against pairing power weapons with condition weapons.

i’d go with greatsword – sword/sword or greatsword – sword/focus or greatsword – sword/pistol if you’re going to focus on power.

I agree with people on the tapping issue.

In group events on my mesmer I find it VERY difficult to get a tap in because my damage is back-loaded, while most have a way to front-load it.

I have to gather clones for a shatter.. oops the mob is dead
I toss mirror blade and mind-stab.. not enough damage compared to guardian “spin 2 win”
I toss out phantasms.. Oops, they had to phone their girlfriends before they unload.. mob is dead and they’re going on vacation. (and now, since the change, they’re on cooldown!)

I’m not saying they should change the way our spells work, but they SHOULD change how loot tapping works to reflect the realities of back-loaded or condition-based professions/builds.

They should also give “tap credit” to people who help revive others who may have been downed by what they’re targeting. You helped someone kill something. You didn’t hit it yourself, but you’re just as responsible and deserve reward.

Greatsword traits with a new 20 second cooldown on symbol of wrath…

Used to be viable.. now?

Thanks ANet.. with every passing hour I move closer to a support ticket for refund.

The long and short of it is, ANet took aim with a nuke at “perma-retal” builds, missed wide, and instead annihilated Greatsword’s synergy with its PRIMARY TRAIT TREE as well as a completely unrelated and widely used greatsword/symbol support build.

My guardian is shelved until they remove retal and bring the symbol back down to a sane cooldown, and no money parts from my bank account for ANY reason until this happens.

With this change, they took aim with a nuke at perma-retaliation builds, and instead missed wide and destroyed greatsword’s synergy with its own primary trait line, and broke greatsword support builds in pve.

They could have removed retaliation from the symbol (maybe replaced it with anything else as a boon), left the cooldown as-is, and it would be better, but I’m shelving my guardian as of now. I don’t want to mess with other weapons, it’s an RPG and I should have my preferred RP weapon be viable. If I can’t, I’ll move to the next profession.

This is strike 2 for a-net. My mesmer greatsword is not scaling, and now this change to guardian greatsword. I will also be refraining from ANY monetary contributions to this game until such time as greatsword is made a coherent and useful weapon for offensive-support again.

Well… i agree it could go faster.

I also disagree with the complaints that the marks, etc look alike.

If anything, I’d like to see the marks look MORE alike. It will cause confusion and hesitation in pvp opponents… “will this circle mass-fear my team, or just inflict some bleeding our guardian could remove”?

Delryn.7235:

You missed the fact that staff #1 is the same as spectral grasp.

Then change spectral grasp, but staff one is RP-perfection for a necromancer.

Whatever they do, they should NOT change the graphic of staff 1.

It is by far the coolest graphic i’ve seen on any profession, makes me DROOL from an rp perspective.

shadow-scythe plus grasping hand of death just wins for this weapon.

Requiring an ability have a “selected target” in this game is, by the mechanics of this game “breaking” that ability.

Want to make it forward only? fair enough —- make about-face command work while moving, or jumping. (e.g. make about-face work PERIOD)

But ANet has zero credibility with me when they say certain abilities are “less equal then others” and require a selected target.

I’ve been “trying out” a good number of professions, and in the process have necro among my favored 4, but i’m interested in the most viable all-around builds in terms of conditions and control. (I was hoping for something equally viable in pve/pvp, but would settle for a build or 2 for each for which the same set of gear would work, plus or minus some pieces)

The main aim would be to out-survive and whittle down opponents in pvp, and offer as wide a support kit as possible in pve.

As to weapons I was considering scepter/horn and staff, but am wide open to suggestions.

Thoughts and advice are helpful, thanks.

Schakal.6091:

(Except where it refers to Greatsword Symbol builds, because 25% unmodified Symbol uptime is just useless compared to what you can get out of other weapons).

Which is what is really agonizing, because that’s exactly what I was going for after becoming peaved with lack-luster out-of-box support abilities on my GS mesmer.

As I move to various options getting into this game, ANet closes the door.

“Cry of Frustration” no longer simply applies to my mesmer’s hotbar.

WTH ANet? are you on a personal crusade to kill of the specs i’m after? I did the condition thing for years in other MMOs, I dont want to go back to necro if I can avoid it.

Drop retaliation and replace it with aegis, restore the cooldown to SoW.

There
— a more balanced defense put in place of retaliation
— Symbol support builds and GS related traits get restored.

The shatter build being mentioned by kanto has an achilles heel:

if you encounter more than one ranged in the packs you deal with, or any mobs which cause even moderate numbers of conditions, you will go down, FAST, due to having no points in inspiriation.

there’s a reason 10(x)/20/x/20(x)/x build with the focus trait is so heavily favored

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

plasmacutter.2709:

The fact is phantasms now have cooldowns that exceed those of necro minions.

They should have the HP and aoe resistance to last just as long, and they should no longer be trivial to kill.

They aren’t necro minions. Mesmers aren’t necros. Adapt or roll necro.

No, they’re not necro minions. They’re much weaker than necro minions. Most of the time their attacks don’t get a chance to fire before they die.

And that’s the point.

They started with CD’s low enough for it not to matter. Now the cds for mesmer phantasms are just as high as necro minions, but necro minions provide more synergy, more power, more utility, and live longer.

It’s outrageous.

As for the arguments for clones.. i’ve tossed a mirror blade as an opener and had the mobs run right for me anyway.

Aggro is not a fixed construct in this game.

Yes, i know to shatter the moment illusions cap out and the phantasm is done unloading its first round, but half the time phantasms dont GET to unload their first round because they’re that fragile.

They should have enough resilience to unload their first round.. and if I choose to use phantasms to whittle my foes, they should have the resilience, barring someone focusing on actively killing them, to stay alive longer than an auto-attack or aoe. Blood fiend now has a lower cd than half the phantasms in our arsenal!

has anyone tested the numbers WITH healing power on gear?

The fact is phantasms now have cooldowns that exceed those of necro minions.

They should have the HP and aoe resistance to last just as long, and they should no longer be trivial to kill.

I’d still like to just be able to unlock other race’s cultural armors.

I want to equip asura armor on my human toons.

Or ANet could put up a public test realm and get community feedback on changes before hastily implementing them.

Since the 10/7 greatsword change, guardians have given ANet at least 6 MUCH BETTER ideas on how to prevent massive retaliation uptime WITHOUT utterly destroying the viability of symbol-based builds, and without gutting greatsword to an “auto-attack-only” weapon.

No, I understand why it was done. It was to prevent mindless phantasm & run spam, and to make shattering more frequent, but now that necros can summon several of their minions faster than mesmers can summon phantasms, it’s important that those phantasms remain viable and active on the field long enough to be useful.

Its what has caused mesmers to have such lack-luster PVE and WvWvW performance while being overpowered in spvp.

The phantasms need enough HP and aoe resistance to survive a considerable period against the direct attacks and aoe of normal pve mobs, and in aoe in WvWvW situations, after which phantasm damage vs shatter damage can be balanced in a way which will not produce such a massive disconnect between various levels of player participation.

Clones are another story, as they can be produced at ridiculous speeds, but now we’re seeing phantasm cooldowns hit 20 seconds. It’s unacceptable that they can be breathed on by someone’s non-combat-mini-pet and die (in pve, phantasms literally die before they get in ONE full attack), leaving you without a major component of your damage for 20 full seconds. With their current level of hp, and complete lack of aoe resistance, this nerf (for pvp’s sake) has utterly demolished what little viability phantasm-based mesmers had in pve.

Until phantasms are fixed to be durable enough, I see staff in particular being hung up on the walls and left to collect dust. 50% of posts on mesmer forums are essentially saying “it was good while it lasted, this toon is now my alt”.

Everyone in the old systems complained about one thing:
There were scrubs who could sit there in fire, window-lick, pad damage meters without regard to group utility, and get their loot.

This game’s entire dungeon encounter system is designed to make situational-awareness and group-support THE PARAMOUNT FACTOR in overcoming encounters.

Granted, it still needs tuning (I think aoes need to be either damage-nerfed or made smaller so you can gtfo faster), but I like the system thus far, even though I’m also taking my knocks getting used to it.

Again, I think ANet has some issues to work through in terms of providing greater opportunity and “wiggle room” for people to exercise their ability to avoid area damage, and I also think there’s still an issue with bosses “playing favorites” on who to pound relentlessly, but other than that, I find most encounters engaging, challenging, rewarding of group-contribution, and punishing of glass-cannoned stupidity.

So now we have nearly DOUBLED cooldown on pretty much every phantasm (necro minions are on shorter CD’s), can we get enough HP and AOE resistance on them so that:

A – they provide adequate utility in PVE, stop dying in a single auto-attack to npcs, and stop dying to a single aoe from bosses which spam aoe to high heaven?

B – in pvp people have to actually pay them more than cursory attention to kill them?

Is it not a LITTLE unfair that the weakest of necro minions is upwards of 20-fold more durable and helpful to them?

“The Scepter getting a Symbol”
That would be a massive buff. It would synergize well, but would require a CD increase or a damage nerf.

Responses to scepter damage mentioned in this forum are incredulous. Why compensate a damage increase to a weapon considered weak with a nerf?

I also think the subtext of this entire thread is troubling. Guardians are supposed to be warrior-zealots, but we’re talking essentially about “fixing this trait line for a post-greatsword world” .. e.g. — retiring greatsword to irrelevance rather than holding ANet accountable and demanding they make it useful.

I think of retaliation like confusion… it’s a situational boon, an quite frankly it, along with confusion should either be made:

A – briefer, more active, and of high enough consequence to force players to pay attention and behave differently when its up (force an opponent to choose a different path or hesitate— punish players for zerging)

OR

B – it should be removed from the game, and the cooldown/damage adjusted on all other weapon and utility skills to account for the lost damage and defense. (e.g. you can use damaging attacks a bit more often, and you could DOUBLE dodge regen to make defense more active)

The GreatSword complaint comes from the fact that GreatSword was THE go-to weapon of choice for symbol based builds if you wanted to do viable damage, and is now useless.

Guardian damage from most weapons was weak to begin with, so now you have one of few relatively high damage options left removed from the table.

The stated reason for this was retaliation, but other builds provide higher levels of retaliation uptime, so this change doesn’t fix this, but what it does do is make an entire trait-line pretty lack-luster, make greatsword primarily auto-attack (even with weapon switching), and severely hinder symbol-based builds which have nothing to do with abusing retaliation.

At risk of bringing up “the giant”, i’m reminded of the proposed lifetap changes to “the mmo which shall not be named’s warlocks”. At least then, blizz actually tested this on the ptr, and ADMITTED AND REVERTED THEIR MISTAKE when it was apparent how thoroughly it would be breaking things.

The fact ANet has yet to reply to ANY of the threads in this community following the outcry from this patch is scandalous.

If the game fizzles like so many others have, it will be on their heads.

I love GS in general as an RPG weapon. GS should be the go-to weapon for hard-hitting offensive burst, but Guardian is now the second profession to have this weapon rendered incoherent and annoying to use.

Its damage, which was not considered OP, was nerfed by 25% overall by this, in addition to the utterly destroyed symbol trait synergy and the new “boring” playstyle. GS now leaves you auto-attacking and vulnerable with no damage compensation.

I STRONGLY suggest reverting the cooldown change, replacing retal from this symbol with might, and adjusting base damage for scaling considerations. This would leave the playstyle and synergy in-tact for GS and symbol lovers without leading to retal issues.

It reminds me very much of the way GS for mesmer has “devolved” over the course of the betas and into live. In beta it had a very clear purpose: single target kiting and power-based burst. It then “devolved” into half-kittened aoe, sub-par damage, and half-kittned kiting tools (e.g. no focus, a secondary weapon at best).

I like greatsword as a concept in rpgs, but I also dislike the concept of warriors. If I don’t see a viable greatsword build from mesmer or guardian, I will quickly lose interest in this game.

This is very bad for A-Net because i am their consumer archetype:
An MMO vet with tons of disposable income and little time to farm gold (this means GEM SALES DOWN THE TOITIE IF I LEAVE)

Well, It seems ANet has a thing against greatswords being interesting weapons. I want to use greatsword, it’s just what I want to do, but I now have 2 different professions for which greatsword is CRAP.

ANet – This is Driving Me away from your game. I am your target audience.. a financially independent gamer with cash to burn on micro-transactions and not enough time to farm gold, and you are sucking the fun out of everything I even CONSIDER trying out.

I play GS mesmer and have been underwhelmed with the weapon, went back and tracked the changes since the first BWE and quite frankly I’m seeing a very disturbing parallel here. (it went from a solid single-target ranged weapon to an incoherent pile of incongruous tools)

I was going to swap to my guardian due to this lackluster performance for GS on my mesmer, and now I find out while I was away at work they came in and made it useless for guardian too. (I WANTED TO RUN GS SYMBOL SUPPORT)

Saw patch notes on skill challenges, went back to gendarren fields to see warmaster yulia.

She’s still missing, and the event still reads “in progress”.

Gendarren fields progress bar, 98%, this event is preventing me gaining experience and rewards.

Cost me 1.1 silver, I’m not happy.

I’m seeing it with pretty much all my clones after logging in post-patch.

They die (either killed or they disappear), and their spectral weapons are left floating where they were.

Given that some professions actually leave weapons laying around that players can use from their spells, I think this is a somewhat confusing state of affairs to people not used to grouping with a mesmer.

It would be rather cool from a group utility perspective if you actually did offer that as a trait in illusions, though.

ARGH, those extra traits, are handy, but they are NOT a prerequisite nor is any level 80’s in non level 80 content. Not only is that kind of bad thought pattern leading to the “we only want 80’s for exp content” when it’s only friggin cm and ac explorable.
But it’s just totally blown out of proportion

I agree with you in principal, but that was in response to someone saying a clothie at 35 can TANK.

Without all the trait lines filled, no, they cant, and trying to is folley. Thus, if you don’t have a sidekicked-85 as your tank, they better be wearing heavy armor in AC or CM explore or they’ll be crushed like a roach in a dance hall.

I don’t think it’s the dungeons that are broken but the professions.

Some professions get good kit out the door to handle support, others tanking, others damage, but until they reach 80 there’s no way to fill out the remaining roles.

My mesmer simply does not have the traits at 35 for instance to tank an AC explore mode. The defensive weapon cooldowns are too long to be chained together, the caps on traits-per-line prevent the stacking of enough toughness to make up the heavy vs light armor gap seen on warriors/guardians, and condition removal skills are still many levels further up the trait lines.

People saying “anyone can build for any role” are not taking into account the max level for these explore modes are not 80, so anyone running these at “even level” are going to be missing chunks of their slot skills and have far fewer traits invested.

The trinity may not be there, but you still are profession-bound on certain roles.

Leashing seems to be a bit over-aggressive in this game. I play a mesmer, and we’re pretty much forced to kite due to squishiness and profession mechanics, and i can’t tell you how many times i’ve had something at 20% only to watch it run away and reset.

broken for 20 days… not a good record a-net.

Gearclaw is missing north of smokestead.. had to look it up bc the NPC is missing.

This seems to be a disease spreading across tyria… npcs for skill points going AWOL. I assume they’re all at the crow’s nest inn in lions arch laughing at us.. or they’re picketing and want better wages.

my mesmer’s heals are not channeled.. i only get the hp after the cast completes. If I dodge before it completes, I get no hp. I should not be penalized in being denied the ability to heal for being intelligent enough to dodge something that’d shoot through the hp i’d gain from a heal.

Echelon.5384:

I don’t think you should be able to have your heal cast mid dodge but I don’t think it should give it an interrupt cd if you do. If you were able to dodge roll mid heal cast no one would ever be able to interrupt it.

This is the key right there. If you’re casting something and are intelligent enough to dodge out of something nasty, you should not be penalized with an interrupt cd. It should be immediately available once you’re done dodging.

Don’t call the white gear vendors useless.

Those pieces of white gear have a skin which can be used for mogging.