Guild Wars 2

Me and my friends had a small guild that we used for us. There is no way for the 5 of us to do this raid content (because that is essentially what this is) and the only alternative to getting the ascended items takes ages and costs a lot of gold. I don’t care if i can’t do the content but the barriers of obtaining the ascended really bothers me.

I bought this game because I didn’t want to do the gear treadmill thing. Because I have alts and other specs I already felt I was behind just getting the rings/back items/amulets, now I am even further behind and due to laurels it will be months before I can actually gear my few specs.

I hate this patch, so disappointed with Anet. I loved the dailies and cost of the one amulet it felt reasonable to get the items and accessible for all types of play. It was a bit long to get for my 3 characters/specs but it seemed reasonable. Adding more things I need with laurels and making them more expensive just a month after they were released is ridiculous.

So the game that was not supposed to be about grinding now has it taking about 4 months of playing every day to get a daily and lots of money to buy the 2 new pieces top gear (per character/spec). And the time needed to get each piece is just going up and up.

Remember the slippery slope argument everyone made when ascended came out, seems like it was fairly accurate.

Here I was thinking Anet wouldn’t be that dumb and this had to be wrong, they wouldn’t want ectos to skyrocket or make it so it is impractical to ever gear another spec or alt. Especially so soon after releasing the last piece of ascended, just barely got one necklace. But their replies seems like this is the plan. Seriously Anet getting tired of this.

I hope to god they don’t do the ectos + 40 laurel per piece. That is a ridiculous price, would make ectos skyrocket and the time commitment to gear one of my characters means I basically forget about ever gearing my alts or even other specs.

The laurel price would be bad enough but the ectos make it even worse.

Please, please, please for flashing blade! It would be such an amazing improvement.

Take what they said with a grain of salt. The interviewer asked about the possibility of dual pistol mesmers and the guy said if no one plays those we need to address it. Mesmers can’t dual wield pistols.

LordByron.8369:

some suggestions:
Ele suffers KD due to lack of stability

Focus 4/4 is great

Sword 3/3 => 2 does lot of damage.

If you say ele don t take damage for 5 seconds unless he hits buttons means you can kill the ele….

5 seconds are more than enough if he cannot heal.
As said Pistol 5 is great also if you don t like focus (that is the best weapon imho for pvp)

GS is useful against an ele running away…mostly because the facrt that RTL was bugged for a week fleeing for 1500 range, doen t mean it is actually 1500 range….i think they alreaduy fix it few days ago ( i could be wrong).

The discussion was based on a condition mesmer, not a power build, so no greatsword and sword 3 is another power weapon, which even if you run with it the lack of power and crit means it wont hit hard.

The 5 second issue is because a condition mesmer is based on confusion, which is what is giving you those 5 seconds, if you are not attacking the mesmer is not doing its condition damage so it is impossible to burst them down.

Again a good ele wont lose to a condition mesmer or thief.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I am a bit perplexed with the situation you have provided that it seems the mesmer in that fight is so bad and lame he deserves to lose in the fight rather than the ele winning indefinitely because of OPness and the mesmer can’t do anything about it.

I never said the ele would win, I said several times a good ele vs good condition mesmer will fight to a draw (a draw means neither one wins). And I just understand how eles work and how condition mesmers work and do fight clubs quite often which is what I am basing these opinions on.

And if you find something “lame” about what I said ask or explain what I am missing about the mesmers attacks, condition builds and tactics to beat a good ele with a condition mesmer. You listed a few abilities the mesmer has but how do you use those in a fight, how do they work with condition builds ect because I know the class well and don’t see how a condition build can beat a good ele.

Also Condition mesmers also rarely have access to a cripple so it is almost impossible to stop ride the lightening.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

If the ele decided to move into water to cleanse conditions, don’t you have any daze to at your disposal to prevent the ele from cleansing most if not all of the conditions you threw at him?

You can shatter for a daze, which means clones run at you slowly. A condition mesmer rarely uses pistol which has a stun. But even if you daze/stun it is 1 second long and confusion works off an ele pushing buttons, if you are dazed you are not pushing buttons and therefor not getting hurt. So the daze can actually lower the mesmers damage which is why condition builds don’t use it. Furthermore once the daze wears off an ele can cleanse and the 1 second didn’t mean much. Condition mesmers rarely have more than 2 conditions on an opponent (maybe 2-3 bleeds and confusion) and one cleanse clears all confusion.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

And Arcane Thievery is such a nice tool it can turn the tide of the battle when used in the right moment. The skill having 40 seconds of CD means that it is not meant to be spammed anyway knowing how powerful it can be when used right. And you didn’t mention Null Field…

I am not sure what you are talking about here. Most d/d eles don’t trait or build for heavy condition damage so I don’t see why the mesmers cleanse abilities matter much or why you are saying a class should respec and build around it? Could you explain. The condtions eles do are also easy to avoid large stacks.

And the comment about arcane thievery was odd to me since I haven’t seen any build or heard of many builds that use it. I agree it has a chance to turn the tide of some battles but since it is random 3 buffs/conditions it can also be useless. And I don’t get how it is so powerful against in an ele vs condition mesmer fight, removing buffs doesn’t help condition builds much.

A lot of condition mesmers run with null field and as you said it can strip boons if an ele is bad and stands in it, but a condition build isn’t helped by stripping boons much. Conditions aren’t reduced by protect so the only thing it helps is to lower the eles damage. And most good eles are smart and realize it is better to wait the or do something like begin channeling churning earth and teleport in when the field expires or is about to expire to avoid losing all their buff.

As for clones helping survivability, they are a minor distraction that can delay you for a second or two if paired with stealth once you learn how find the real mesmer. They only protect against bad players.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I can go on, but I just want to point out that saying mesmer conditions builds are terrible against eles just because of the scenarios you mentioned is a weak argument. But I am not saying certain ele builds don’t need some nerfing. A certain spec of ele is far too good and becomes very OP in the hands of a good player. Any viable spec for any class can be OP in the hands of the right player, anyway.

Okay if I am wrong please tell me what rotation or skill combo a condition mesmer uses to beat an ele? The situations I gave were based on the ways a condition mesmer can stack conditions and the type of conditions used. You said you can go on and I would love to know how to kill good ones on with a condition mesmer, because currently from what I know and have seen the bad ones are easy to down but good ones are basically immortal vs a condition mesmer/thief.

And for the record this post started because someone said condition builds counter d/d eles. I said I thought burst had a better chance because eles cure conditions easily, not me saying eles were OP.

Usually people put valks in gloves, boots, sholders, back item, amulet. Also all accessories/back item with +crit damage for the upgrade jewels for the best ratio. Knights in the other slots (chest, rings, legs ect).

The reason for this is that these slots have a better crit damage vs stats ratio. Which is easy to calculate.

Also as said about play around with buildcraft, it is handy.

LordByron.8369:

with your condition you can just put so many that ele can t do anything…
Also Moa…
And daze most of all, daze negates everything…….i personally saw how easy was for a condition msmer to kill D/D eles.

You steal boons and switch your conditions.

No one should ever have a problem with moa, just turn around push 5 and you are safe until it wears off. Very few mesmers that know how to play the class run with this.

And a mesmer can put on a lot of confusion to stop and elementalist but if they don’t attack confusion does 0 damage. If you wait 5 seconds or go to water all the conditions are gone and the mesmer has their burst on cool down. You can also dodge their shatters which has an extremely obvious animation. Then you attack, if you don’t burst them down before they get the cool downs up, which is where the mesmers CC helps, it will end in a draw, which is what I said happens a lot of times if there are two good players. Mesmers can not maintain large stacks of confusion, it isn’t possible and if you know how to dodge a shatter it is hard to ever get large stacks of confusion, and the little stacks a mesmer can stack can be removed easily by the d/d ele.

And you mentioned arcane theivery, that can steal a random 3 buffs and give you 3 conditions every 40 seconds. But other than might, those buffs wont help you kill any faster because the ele not having protect wont matter if you are a condition build and with might the ele can still negate the damage of confusion and shatters if you dodge. It can help a power spec, if you are lucky and steal protect but I mentioned that in my post.

Honestly a good ele should never die to a condition mesmer 1v1

LordByron.8369:

excuse me sir that is the point….
Bunker are the couter to burst…..

People seems cannot understand that.

I’ll go even deeper: condition builds are the counter to bunkers…

Wonder wich classes are considered D/D killers?
Necro
Mesmer condition
Thief condition
Eng condition

And i heard also some ranger trap builds that i don t know at all.

Who usually complains about D/D ele:
Mesmer shatter (glass cannon burst build)
Thief GC
War GC
(those should sum up 90% of complaints at least).

As someone who has both a power and condition based mesmer and thief I can tell you I usually have a much easier time killing a d/d ele with the burst builds, just hurt them until they go into and then leave water, then burst and try to remove protect, and keep cripple to slow ride the lightening if they go to air. It is hard and doesn’t always work if they are fast enough with mist but it can surprise them.

My condition builds can fight a good ele to a draw, but the damage is never high enough that the ele can’t bring themselves back up, because you usually only have basically a 9 second window to bring a d/d ele down (their entire health pool +heal +mist form) while dodging their CC and damage, watching your own health and trying to keep them from escaping with ride the lightening.

Against good players the condition mesmer is the hardest for this since confusion is so easy to negate if you pay attention. Against a bad player who just spams without paying attention to what I am doing or their condition bar they are the easiest to kill.

If the ele had no regen, or a personal heal and they stood in caltrops (sign of a bad player) I could stack enough bleeds on the rogue to get their entire health pool in 9 seconds, but the heal and regen means most live through the bleeds until water is back up, and good players don’t stand in caltrops so I don’t get to stack as many bleeds. However unlike the mesmer, the thief’s stealth and mobility mean that I almost never worry about them killing me either. So 1v1 I find it extremely hard to kill a good d/d ele with a condition build.

Necros do counter eles, but that is partially because of corrupt boon. Necros also apply more cripples and especially chills and apply a variety of conditions which makes them harder to cleanse the ones that are hurting.

Edit: necros also stack bleeds higher and faster than the thief so a cleans doesn’t hurt as much. Both necros and thieves stack conditions much faster than the mesmer. A power necro with a dagger, two wells and corrupt boon can also bring down an ele very fast if they just left water.

Daecollo.9578:

Necromancers have probably twice the AOE Damage/Cripple (Along with Poison as well.). Except there arn’t as many of them.

Thieves do have spammable attacks, but the projectiles are VERY slow and avoidable, the poison arrow hits walls before it even hits the target due to its low arc you fire it from.

Thieves do have a wall, yes it does block projectiles, but if a thief uses such, he has to give up OTHER important utilities he needs, so almost no thief would ever have such on his or her hotbar.

Necros and staff eles have the best AOE I agree. Thieves still have the useful blast finisher and very strong AOE compared to most other class because they can spam the attack (engineers are the only other class that can do this and they have had grenades nerfed several times). And cluster bomb fired down from a wall is not that easy to dodge, and it hurts, which is great when defending doors in a siege. Again I was just pointing out that the thief does bring things to groups and to raids, like good aoe, blast combo, stealth res ect. when someone said the class was useless outside of damage.

As for your comment about sacrificing a utility spot for an anti projectile wall, that is true for every class with a utility ability that helps a group and is also true for people who spec their entire class around support, they give up stuff to help others and their raid. If a mesmer or guardian want their reflect wall they give up a utility, elementalists usually give up their preferred weapon for a time since few run with a focus.

And if you don’t switch your bar based on situations you are not adapting or utilizing the things your profession brings. On my thief I know I have swapped my speed signet several times to use that wall to protect siege equipment or a door. Of course you may have 3 abilities you use most often, but there are situations where other abilities help.

Edit: I also forgot our elite which is a projectile reflect and aoe damage ability, I would say that is also useful to groups. Some of the stolen abilities are also a bit useful although they are less predicable.

Daecollo.9578:

Thieves are one of the worst classes in WvWvW, they bring almost nothing into the fight and are horrible at siege and taking and holding points.

They do nothing to help the team and are pretty horrible in 1v1 if you have toughness.

The only thieves that are good in WvWvW are D/P thieves, and they don’t have cripple or chill or swiftness, or anything that can stop you from getting away from them, but most people stand and actually fight them, Just ignore them and take camps, you can’t cap when your stealthed, he will have to come out to stop you.

Thieves only have 2-3 builds, so they are extremely predictable, and all there attacks have an easy to understand rotation. They offer nothing in real-time group support.

Thieves in a siege can bring a wall that stops projectiles and combo field for blinds, a very useful aoe stealth which is great for resing, AOE cripple if they use caltrops, by far the best and most frequent access to a blast finisher of any class which is amazing useful and powerful in a group, and they are the only class with a spamable AOE attack which hurts (cluster bomb).

Do they have the best raid utility, no. But if you only see a thief as a single target damage dealer you are not using them to their full effect.

tagnut.8621:

So whats the problem ANET? Most thief players have been expecting to be nerfed down to normal for months and think its hilarious you haven’t done it yet?

Most of the thief players expected partially because Anet said months ago they were going to lower the damage on backstab, they just haven’t done that yet.

Harbinger.9645:

purpleskies.3274:

Also thieves really do need to be punished for a missed or blocked attack in stealth, that is just ridiculous that they get to try again if the person moved.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Missing an attack I disagree with from a logical standpoint since you haven’t actually hit anything you shouldn’t be revealed. Blocking on the other hand I totally agree with. If some one blocks your attack then they should know where you are.

From a logical standpoint if you are trying to hide around me in an open field you aren’t invisible :P But you could also word it as if they are flailing or stabbing you could hear/see them because they are no longer focused on being hidden.

And from a game point of view it is unfair that thieves aren’t punished when every other class gets their abilities on cool down in a similar situation, but a thief can just keep attacking until they make contact. It is an unfair advantage, making thieves even more forgiving and harder to counter.

Harbinger.9645:

Solori.6025:

They dont give me problems in spvp in small scale fights like 6v6 and under
Honestly they shouldnt be a problem for anyone in Spvp, unless your a newb running zerk builds cause you like to see l33t numbers.

With the culling, thieves for me in wvw have about 1.5 sec of extra stealth time.
In spvp i see them instantaneously.

This is probably due to everyone having generic colors and armor, and the maps are small without the extra mobs that need to be rendered.

In spvp thieves dont have random mobs to keep stealthing with CnD also, so their only form of escaping effectively is to use utilities like shadow step.
I would say shadow refuge but i have knocked too many thieves out of that circle to call it reliable.

Thank you. Exactly what I was expecting. Obviously you know how to play against a thief and for that I say thank you. If more people were to learn the mechanics there would be fewer arguments about thieves being OP. Hopefully they can fix the issues people have with thieves in WvW without following the direction of a lot of the misinformation floating around. I fear they will make this class unplayable in they make a mistake on any inbound fixes.

Thieves have their abilities do lower damage in spvp and to re-state they don’t have random critters and mobs which gives them a big advantage in wvw. Just thought I would point that out.

Also thieves really do need to be punished for a missed or blocked attack in stealth, that is just ridiculous that they get to try again if the person moved.

Solori.6025:

Has you ever thought that some people that have a thief made one so they wouldnt be part of the masses of people that cry everytime they get BS combo’d and die?

Some people dont like to waste time and cry about another classes mechanics.
Instead some of us make the class that gives us trouble, learn it, and then get back on our main and counter it.

At least I want to believe people that want to be good at the game do….

Im all for a reasonable nerf to the theif ( key word reasonable) as well as fixes to mechanics like cnd on walls and objects, as is probably everyone.

Im not for neutering as class because people dont want to learn to play.

I made a thief for this reason and learned it is a very easy class to play that is very hard to counter. Personally I think they do need to be toned down, but I agree it needs to be reasonable.

Some reasonable changes I believe include:
- A slight decrease in burst so they can’t so easily kill people in a few seconds, so people have time to react. Personally I think the damage of steal and cloak and dagger need to be decreased and backstab stay the same, the other two are utility attacks giving shadow step and stealth, the damage should only be a nice bonus not a big part of the burst.
- Move Mug higher in the trait line.
- No more stealth on walls, clear exploit
- Stealth breaks on attack, even if your attack misses/is blocked/is dodged/target invulnerable. Currently the thief is the only one who is not punished for these things and it means they can keep spamming attacks if they missed, which makes them harder to counter.
- Possibly but I think this one is debatable: consider making it so you get revealed debuff when stealth ends, so it is a bit harder to chain stealths.

Thieves need their burst toned down a little, other than that they are counterable, even if it is not a fun fight in my opinion. As long as anyone with a medium health pool and armor can live with some health through the burst and recover I would be happy. So you don’t need to be full PVT bunker to survive. So lets say a full steal, C&D and BS did 12-13k damage like other classes burst not closer to 18-20k.

If warrior hit that hard, as the individual claimed (20k) that needs to be toned down as well, However I haven’t ever seen that vs anyone other than an up level.

Although I am not going into the power of a stealth spam bleed build, I have no idea how to fix them.

boondocksaint.6529:

Daokitten618:

Its easily countered. Make a warrior and run around the keep swinging at the air. If your adrenaline rises you’re onto something.

I would not say this is easily countered but nonetheless a good suggestion. +1

Easier solution, all melee attack chains progress when you hit someone who is stealthed. So if you run around hitting air and you see your melee chain move to the next stage you hit something.

And I am not a fan of thieves but it isn’t that bad to find a thief and mesmer hiding. They have to use some obvious animations to stealth that often. The tactic of killing a mesmer and having a thief exploit the wall then res is an issue though.

If you look Prayer to Dwayna heals about 2000 more health, scales better with healing power, casts slightly faster and has the same cool down, although it doesn’t have the block. I don’t think it is right that a racial heal seems so comparable and in a lot of situations better than a class heal.

It would be really nice to have it on a slightly shorter recast to make it a bit more balanced, maybe bring the recast down to 25 seconds.

Doomdesire.9365:

purpleskies.3274:

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

the problem is that anet has allowed perma stealth, the highest dps and the best mobility all on one class. it’s possible because culling allows permastealth without even speccing for it. that’s how he could take out those vet mobs and be perma stealthed. all we can do is to respectfully provide feedback.

Doesn’t have the highest dps. It has the highest burst(steal cnd bs) that has a 30s recharge rate. You can still cnd/bs but that wouldnt be the highest burst.

Who bursts more than a rogue using cnd and BS? I usually see a fully geared rogue hit me for 12-15k with those two alone with steal adding another 2.5-5k depending on crits. A kill shot does only about 12k to me and a shatter usually hits me for around 10-12k .

Rogues can do the BS and C&D every few seconds, and hit with BS more times if they use utilities and their heal, both warriors and mesmers have cool downs.

A full glass warrior can volley for 10K, then killshot for 12, or just switch to GS and whirling GS into them. Or you can run shield axe and evicerate. The axe autoattack is a nasty little bugger too. I’ve seen glass cannon guardians also down glass thieves(usually 10.8K-14K HP) in 3 seconds. Engi burst can also get nasty, although it might not hit more than thieves. Ele’s have 16K burst, but has a long CD. Mesmer’s also have some pretty insane shatter/furry builds that has low CDs.

Most classes can actually achieve the same amount of burst.

I disagree with the warrior due to huge channels so I wouldn’t call that burst. But I will give you if an ele uses all utilities they can burst as much as a thief who has their steal and utilities on CD. If steal is up I still haven’t seen any ele hit that hard.

The reason I would still say the thieves have the highest burst even with steal on cool down is because of the CD from other professions. The shortest recast out of those is the mesmer, who can burst every 10 seconds. The thief can do similar damage every 3 seconds with C&D and BS, ignoring heart seeker which hits very hard on low health targets. With initiative regen and no traits to add to regen or initiative pool, it means thieves can do their lower burst close to twice as often. Plus the thief can do additional backstabs if they use utilities and heals to enter stealth.

Personally hearing people throw insults back and forth, isn’t fun for me. If you want to brag about how you think you used a great strategy or had a great victory that is fine, just be respectful and don’t attack other players or get into fights with other people on the forums. Anet doesn’t/hasn’t lock a thread for someone saying Maguuma is awesome and we have used some great strategies. Again just show good sportsmanship.

I for one am so thankful Anet makes this a place where we can discuss the game without having to deal with racist/sexist/homophobic ect. comments and attacks on each other. I wish more gaming communities tried to do this because it’s getting to be a more common problem.

Personally I would like to know why some people from an opposing server are able to invite me into a group. I had one person spam this so I left it up for a minute, then log off their character quickly, guest to my server so they could see my name, just to insult me for winning a fight. It was sad and made me so glad I don’t have to deal with that very often. So thank you Anet!

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

the problem is that anet has allowed perma stealth, the highest dps and the best mobility all on one class. it’s possible because culling allows permastealth without even speccing for it. that’s how he could take out those vet mobs and be perma stealthed. all we can do is to respectfully provide feedback.

Doesn’t have the highest dps. It has the highest burst(steal cnd bs) that has a 30s recharge rate. You can still cnd/bs but that wouldnt be the highest burst.

Who bursts more than a rogue using cnd and BS? I usually see a fully geared rogue hit me for 12-15k with those two alone with steal adding another 2.5-5k depending on crits. A kill shot does only about 12k to me and a shatter usually hits me for around 10-12k .

Rogues can do the BS and C&D every few seconds, and hit with BS more times if they use utilities and their heal, both warriors and mesmers have cool downs.

5 seconds less on the heal and it would be great. I wish the guardian had at least one heal that came up faster than my racial heal at least.

Confusion was adjusted up for WvW and PvE not down for spvp. In Spvp it really is way too low.

And there is no way for a single cry of frustration to kill a good player, unless they have the minimum health pool, spam buttons constantly and don’t pay attention to conditions or what the mesmer is doing. But if they had all that they would not be a good player. A good player should never die to confusion.

And there are lots of ways to counter confusion, the same exact way you deal with conditions from other condition specs. Confusion only hurts as much as you let it. Some people bring condition removal (self, group or combo field) and/or stop attacking when confusion is high for the few seconds it lasts. It also helps to turn off auto attack when facing a confusion mesmer, I recommend a keybind for that. Outside of confusion they do almost no damage.

Iavra.8510:

Haven’t been able to really stack burn so far. Most of the time, i’m just doing 1s burns that add a bit of damage and are not worth any point in condition damage.

Eles are way better in stacking burns.

A guardian using their virtue will apply a 5 second burn (as a base, so with increased condition duration maxed it will apply for 10 seconds), and when the activate it allies get to apply the same burn which stacks the duration, adding an extra 5 seconds per person (more if allies have the increased duration), with I believe a maximum of 5 people, so that is a minimum of 25 seconds with one ability, a full group, and no condition duration increases. You can also use torch to add another 3-6 seconds base (according to the wiki it actually applies a base of 9 seconds, which again is higher if you have increased condition duration), and the ring to add another 5 -10 seconds each time a person walks in the field.

There is another skills that add to it as well and I know there are traits that help like burn on losing aegis but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.

Relentliss.2170:

Its a totally BS skill. Its essentially a DOT that ticks when you use an ability. Everyone has to use abilities or die. A dot that ticks for 1k+ is kittenly OP in any game. Its also kittenly easy to apply for the damage it does.

So you want to nerf bleeds as well I assume? If you get a burst of bleeds from a warrior rogue or necro they can do a minimum of over 1000 a second and higher burst stacks well over 2000 damage a second, for twice the duration of confusion (10 seconds) and those conditions hurt regardless, unlike confusion that you have the power to negate.

Burns also tick for close to a thousand with a condition build and guardians can stack those to tick for at least 20 seconds, more if they have any allies.

But if you cure conditions do no to little damage, unlike a power build where you take much higher burst with less ability to mitigate the damage.

Solori.6025:

O O i has a story..

I went into WvW and was fighting a ranger.
It one shot me and /laughed as it walked away..

See..

Storys are fun.

I like stories!

So this one time I went into WvW and saw two warriors who had hammers. They didn’t use hundred blades, not even once!

These two chained stuns and knockdowns and I didn’t get to attack them back

On top of that they kept hitting me while I was knocked downed or stunned, doing a few thousand per hit while keeping me from fighting back, which is unfair.

It hurt and made me sad.

Moral of the story nerf things that make me sad! As a side note learning to counter new things also makes me sad, so nerf that to!

Serious question, how do people complaining about confusion deal with a condition necro, rogue or even rarely warrior? And why are 10-20 bleeds doing 1200-2400 per tick (every 1 second) which can last for at least 10 seconds (twice that of confusion) much easier to deal with? Not even counting poisons which hurt and reduce healing and burning, both of which can be done in addition to bleeds? And unlike confusion there isn’t a hard counter of just stop spamming buttons?

There seems to be a general hatred of condition removal by some people on this thread because you might get the wrong condition or it doesn’t work with your spec, or your class isn’t great at it ect. So how do you deal with these attacks and not die, especially from classes that can maintain these easily or spread them like a necro? And why don’t the counters to these conditions work for confusion?

Oozo.7856:

Zauric.2981:

I’m surprised people skipped the QQ about LoD hammer warriors and went straight for confusion mesmers.

They are fine IMO, one of the few viable zerg builds mesmers have, and in small scale fights I fine them much less dangerous than physical damage shatter mesmers. Even if they get 10 stacks of confusion on you they have zero means of damage, so if you can’t remove the confusion then it is still fairly trivial to ride out the damage until your cooldowns come up.

Stuns are far easier to counter since there are a ton of stun removals in the game along with the ultimate denier – stability. And, of course, what people have been ignoring is that it’s not what the confusion mesmer is doing to you it’s what the other people are doing to you while you are shut out of using both offensive and (more importantly) defensive abilities.

I’m not sure how many of you people do 5v5 or 10v10 but doing five seconds of nothing for any stretch of time is a death sentence.

There are more condition removal skills in the game than stun breakers… plus food/runes/ sigils/specs/combo fields…

And in a 5v5 or 10v10 if you don’t bring a support guardian or necro or elementalist or even an engineer to support and remove conditions and/or you don’t know how to use combo fields and/or your people don’t bring a cleans you deserve to die to any confusion mesmer or condition necro. And a necro is much harder to cleans than 1 stack of confusion. And if you can’t stop for a few seconds and hide to heal behind your allies, you need a better group with more CC.

I really don’t understand how the people complaining about confusion deal with condition builds from other classes, because every complaint about confusion can be said about any other condition spec that can stack conditions high (necro, thief ect.)

silvershadez.8421:

Also the elementalist argument is invalid. We all know Eles have an ridiculous amount of condition cleansers. I personally play condition engineer and lately alot of condition necromancer and i have a hard time with eles too, even without confusion. Try to argue about this with another prof viewpoint. Alot of profs have less to almost no conditionremovals if they don’t heavily trait for it. And since we can get some ridiculous high condition duration in WvW mesmers can maintain 5+ stacks of confusion all the time.

-A guardian can easily cure conditions from their heal and weapons as well and has many light combo fields which cure (combo fields are powerful but few people use them).
-A necro can cure conditions or send them to an opponent or convert them into buffs. Their heal is better with more conditions.
-An engineer can use elixir gun which has the 5 ability which cures conditions, toss elixir r, elixir c to convert conditions and toss elixir c to cure, antidotes from med kit or healing turret. Super elixir, toss elixir r and u also make light fields which cure conditions. They also can use elixir gun to cure allies, and their toss skills listed cure allies as well.

On top of that 1 of any of the 4 can cure an allies easily as well, if you work together.

Untraited the ele/engineer/necro/guardian have the best and most access to cures. If you trait these become even better at curing but untraited they are very strong already. The other professions have access to cures but are a bit more limited outside of specing, eating or gearing, which is a weakness of the more offensive classes of mesmer/thief/ranger/warrior. But even those all have utilities that can cure and some even have condition removal built into their heals.

There is also food, runes and sigils that reduce condition duration/transfer conditions/remove conditions which everyone has access to.

Oozo.7856:

Or I’m giving my honest opinion on balance? I have not lost a 1v1 against a confusion-based build recently (not to say that I wouldn’t). That is not surprising since I don’t really 1v1 that much as Guardian is really not the best class for roaming around while alone and I’m not built for 1v1s (however it does hold up well against most power builds).

I know the damage that a high condition damage mesmer can do from being hit with multiple stacks, testing with a friend, and by watching movies. I think it’s too hard of a shutdown.

I also believe that there are certain power builds that do too much damage. Interestingly enough it’s the same exact reason why I feel that confusion is out line: formulas based on PvE and not PvP with food, oil, and stacks amplifying the disparity.

I really can’t give my opinion on guardian healing since I don’t run it personally and I’ve never run across a guardian that had healing that felt over-the-top ridiculous to me. I’m sure they exist though.

So you are basing your opinion of theoretical damage and videos where people show only their best fights don’t show or tell you about the weaknesses of a build? For example yes confusion can do high damage but you have the power to make it do 0, putting the control of the fight in your hands. A well played guardian or d/d ele shouldn’t ever die to a confusion mesmer 1v1.

It is always a good idea to try fighting against the build at least few times or trying to counter a build before you say it should be nerfed (because in theory you think it is too powerful). Or even better try out the spec which is the best way to learn the specs weaknesses. There has been a lot of good advice in this thread, so it might be a good idea to try that first then make an informed opinion.

I have a low level elementalist but I play against them all the time on my other mains, and I have no idea why people complain so much about eles. They are strong for sure, and maybe need some tweeks but they really aren’t that bad.

*This is all based on WvW, I have no idea on sPvP

In coordinated groups a hammer warrior is very powerful, you can lock down a huge amount of the enemy team and keep them from rezing, it is especially powerful when chained with other warriors. They also are great for manning siege which is obviously very important.

Warriors are not the best roaming class if you want to leave the raid/groups. Mesmers, eles and thieves have that territory. A guardian and power necro is also good for roaming but lacks some of the escape skills of the other three so they run the risk of dying if they get outnumbered.

Confusion is fine if you bring condition removal and remove the 1 stack, or transfer conditions to your enemy and get them with it, or you disengage for a few seconds (less if you use food or runes), or use combo fields (I am amazed how few people do this), or don’t walk in and out of the mesmers fields and stack the confusion, or have a team member who draws or cures conditions, or bring food that cures conditions. Most confusion mesmers do almost no damage other than confusion and it isn’t hard to remove one condition.

If you approach a condition build the same way you approach a glass cannon spec they are extremely powerful, but if you are prepared and know what you are doing, it really isn’t that hard to deal with.

If it is proccing on dodge role, which I haven’t see then yes that should be fixed.

If you just want to run with a zerg and get bags all three are relatively easy and good. I would caution about the mesmer though since they have the least AOE’s of the three cloth classes they are less likely to get tags so less bags, but they do provide valuable support skills like portal and time warp.

And a staff ele who is in a raid isn’t hard to play, they just have more abilities. But in the middle of a raid basically all classes are easy, unless you are doing very coordinated attacks.

Oglaf.1074:

Warriors are not beasts in teamfights. We’re next to useless in WvW. There is no justification taking a Warrior over a Thief. Or Mesmer. Or Elementalist. That unholy trinity rules WvW.

You clearly do not understand the power of a hammer warrior, or man a lot of siege.

Zephyrus.9680:

Escher.5342:

Zephyrus.9680:

All they need is add a hit-effect when you’re hitting stealth characters.

Apart from that, recent culling changes greatly improved combat vs theves since stealth essentially doesn’t cull now except in massive zergs.

That said, killing theves is quick and easy from my warrior with on-demand 10-15k killshot (10k with a tanky build) while from my tanky S/D thief which sacrifices all burst, I can’t really do anything to d/d eles, tanky guardians, and certain mesmer builds.

Just a heads up, if your hitting a thief while they’re stealthed pay attention to the animations, you’ll know when you’re doing damage.

Interesting and useful to know. I never really paid attention to the attack animations before. Thanks for that tip.

Another easy way is if you are using a melee attack with a chain, like most auto attacks, the chain progresses when you hit a player in stealth. So if you watch know when you are hitting them.

transtemporal.2158:

Hepan.2709:

As for culling: yes, big issue. yes, fix asap (tho that last patch just made it worse), but you can target somebody under the effect of culling.

As I said in an earlier post, the difference between thieves in spvp and wvw is night and day. In spvp thieves actually appear for the full 3 seconds of reveal. This changes the game as far as fighting thieves and makes it much more fair. In WvW, it’s just a joke.

Thieves also have reduced damage in Spvp, plus they don’t get food or crystals. Less damage + no culling = more manageable.

Shaojack.3871:

purpleskies.3274:

I really hate the thieves burst, even speced and geared defensively they can kill you with an opener in about 1.5 seconds, which is ridiculous. In a perfect situation (I’m not fighting someone else, nothing is on CD ect) I can counter them, but things are rarely perfect in WvW.

I for one would really like the damage of C&D and mug reduced (or at least put trait in a higher tier for specing).
I also think it is ridiculous that a missed, blinded, ect attack doesn’t break stealth. If you missed you should have to pay for the mistake, not be given a second chance.

I don’t agree really, they can kill glass characters with burst.
My guardian since he hit level 80, i cannot remember ever losing a 1v1 fight to thief.
Warrior can be trickier, however I just WAY more hp and some more armor and I hit hard as hell too.
I feel the most annoying part about fighting thieves and even some mesmers is the constant target breaking that happens. I don’t mind some but the rate it’s done is just maddening sometimes =P

I have a thief, and I know how to counter them. But they can still kill me almost instantly if I have anything on cool down or if I am fighting someone else, even if I am at full health. Nothing should kill you that fast.

And there are numerous examples given since release of people dying to a thief in the steal-Cd-Bs combo, including guardians. If you go full bunker plate class, you won’t necessarily die to the opening, (on guardian especially if you have aegis up).

I am fine with them having burst. BS I think is fine, which hits for 8-10k plus keeping lets say 1.5k on both mug and C&D, so hitting for 11-13k opening. That is still very strong burst, which can be repeated a few times with utilities and CD but makes it a bit more manageable for the other person to recover if they know what they are doing.

Also as I said punish thieves for missing in stealth. If you didn’t hit you should still be revealed.

I really hate the thieves burst, even speced and geared defensively they can kill you with an opener in about 1.5 seconds, which is ridiculous. In a perfect situation (I’m not fighting someone else, nothing is on CD ect) I can counter them, but things are rarely perfect in WvW.

I for one would really like the damage of C&D and mug reduced (or at least put the trait in a higher tier for specing).
I also think it is ridiculous that a missed, blinded, ect attack doesn’t break stealth. If you missed you should have to pay for the mistake, not be given a second chance.

- Anet already said they were thinking of giving another class portal. Although I don’t like the give it to all classes to make things balanced philosophy, I do understand why they have that idea given the use of portal in WvW. Plus it could help buff another class like engineer.
- The comment about mind wrack is just silly, clones die fast in raids, it is very obvious and easy to dodge, it doesn’t work in a siege, and has a small area of effect. Other classes bring much larger and stronger AOE’s than mind wrack to a raid (esp. necro, ele and engineer).
- The pull is easy to dodge and wont pull you past a lip. If the LOS wasn’t so weird for towers, other pulls would be improved, although curtain will still have the advantage of multiple pulls.

As people said above, a mesmer is very useful, but so are well speced guardians, warriors, elementalists, necros and thieves. Rangers and engineers need a slight buff but even they have their uses in WvW.

I personally like the Laurel system. I would prefer you have a choice of doing 4/X dailies so you could fit it to what you like doing, but other than that I think it is a good system.

If you want AOEs and numbers in a zerg that would be elementalist or necro.

LordByron.8369:

its not mobile?
sword 3,3 is mobile enough for me…..
staff is very mobile too.

You just have to try different weapons to see…..
Also deceptive evasion is mesmer’s evasive arcana it just doesn t need combos but does interesting things…

It just require a different tactic but mesmer is what ele should ve been.
Its just an ele without ele downsides and with less people crying about it not being fotm…..

Mesmers have downsides. For one they are not mobile, they are the class with the least access to swiftness, no speed boost signets, and no weapon abilities that take them over large distances like thief short bow, warrior/ranger charges, ride the lightening ect.

They have some nice in combat short range teleports like staff and sword three but a mesmer should never escape from a fight (unless they use portal which is a very long CD), compared to RTL which works like a charm when you need to get away. Furthermore a mesmer shouldn’t be able to catch most classes if they run.

That doesn’t even touch on the healing, curing, buffing, versatility, and AOE’s an ele has on a mesmer. Mesmer’s are a good class but they aren’t just ele’s without downsides, both are good but different classes.

Ragnar.4257:

They’re definitely not a weak class, and if played well can be amazing, but equally they have plenty of counters if people would only learn them. If you’re roaming and you encounter a thief, they’ll most likely stealth at about 800-1000 range. Wait 2 seconds, throw up a block/invul, let them waste their steal/CnD, use any single immobilize/knockdown, and congrats, you’ve just beaten about 90% of the thieves in WvW by using a grand total of 2 moves.

I play a thief and know how to counter them, but if I am distracted (say fighting someone else), or have taken any damage, or didn’t see them coming (it is impossible to see all around you at all times), or have my abilities on cool down, or get CC’d by a thief’s ally, or make one mistake I am dead almost instantly with about 1.5 seconds to react or recover (based on videos). Outside of a couple of classes, even investing into defensive specs and gear wont help much, as many testimonies and videos will attest. The burst is just OP currently in WvW.

And if you don’t have any of those disadvantageous and you know how to counter a thief, a good thief knows how to reset fights.

Ragnar.4257:

And if they’re in the 10% of good players who really know how to play, why shouldn’t they be able to beat you just because they’re thief?

I disagree the 10% you spoke of should win just by nature of being good at play a thief. That almost makes the case that the class is too powerful when you say a good thief should win for sure.

I don’t want thieves nerfed to the ground, but they need to be adjusted. I am not sure how to do this, because the initiative system gives them a huge advantage in flexibility and that combined with all the other advantages of a thief like the best mobility, easy access to stealth, the best burst ect. makes them too powerful.

I think the real question needs to be, why can’t the butterfly wielding mesmer’s use this bow! Imagine 3 clones shooting an army of rainbow unicorns and then shattering into a field of pink butterflies! Flee from the ultimate power!

*As an aside I think I liked the bow a little bit more prior to the unicorns, when it just shot rainbows but nothing against its current state.

I have an ele and mesmer and both are really good for WvW, but they play very differently. I know it is obvious advice but since both are very good and useful it might be better to go to heart of the mists and see which one you enjoy more (ele has a lot of bar swapping which is fun some times, but some people are not huge fans). I have no idea about necros.

But if you just want some of my views:
Ele:
- very mobile
- Kills a bit slower when roaming since they usually need to spec for survivability
- great healing and can fight against lots of people when roaming
- amazing aoe in a siege with staff
- lots of control skills
- up close fighting when roaming
- more adaptable because of attunements

Mesmer
- can do good damage and works better at range, for small fights, than ele
- lots of support abilities if you spec less offensively
- very slow
- portal and TW which are very powerful in raids
- Much worse AOE than a staff ele or necro. Needs to spec and build to get any decent AOE

I just looked and they updated the patch notes to include unannounced changes to the elementalist and ranger, but still did not comment on the changes to mesmer. So they either want to keep it hidden, or they forgot and haven’t read the mesmer forums, neither of which I like.

+1 I would like the standard stat combos they have for exotics. I really wish there was a knights version of the jewelery