Guild Wars 2

“It’s a nice idea but I think you overestimate how much health the clones have (it’s not a lot). They’d pretty much absorb one or two shots before popping.”

Well the main purpose of this is that Mesmers would still have at least 1 actual functioning “target drop”. That’s my reasoning there.

“This is terrible. If I still had them targeted what’s to stop me from casting a spell on them?

Nothing, that’s what."
Dude, I’m saying it would work the same. You wouldn’t see them nor would your ability focus/home on them. It would function as it does now (at least by my design), only difference is you wouldn’t have to re-apply the target before you spells again home AFTER the stealth wears off. That’s it. The only difference.

uberkingkong.8041:

What would be the point of Mesmer’s clones if you always had the correct Mesmer targeted and never accidently click on the clone.

Also, if you do “previous target” shift tab you should be back on your previous target aka the person that went stealth.

Couple things here. 1 clones still produce chaos, just less so on 1v1 fights. In the midst of a larger fight where people are changing targets frequently, they still hold the same value. And as you stated, already a similar thing is in the game, it just doesn’t always function as well as one would hope (target last enemy).

Also, I thought of a cool thing to help mes a bit. What if decoy worked like this. “Creates a decoy clone in your place and you go into stealth. Any enemy’s targeting you will target the decoy.” Doesn’t have to be worded like that but you get the idea.

nakoda.4213:

stealth is explicitly an escape mechanism. “auto-retarget” makes that pointless.

period.

You do escape… For the period that it has intended. How would this be too much different than what “Target Last Target” does now, except provide a less clunky flow for combat.

Regardless this “mechanic” of defense only promotes clunky gameplay in a game with a non to sharp targeting system, and as said before IF these classes became too squishy they’d be buffed by a reasonable means. As it stands, a similar thing is already in effect as you can try to spam “attack last target” in 1v1 situations, its just again, a clunky unfun mechanic to have to deal with. In group fights stealth would have no less of an effect because likely the person would have changed targets once you disappeared anyways, so you wouldn’t have to even worry about being found immediately, nothing would change.

nakoda.4213:

when did I call stealth useless because it drops targeting? in fact, I said that the loss of targeting is the whole point of stealth, and that “keeping” or getting your target back “for free” would be tantamount to making stealth no different than a brief invulnerability…

Ive said it thrice now, and the post above me agrees.

You misread what I even said. And that “above agrees” doesn’t mean jack, there’s a lot of mixed feelings here, that’s what happens in a debate. Anyways what I said is: Saying that stealth would be useless if it LOSES dropping its target, as it, if the change went through you were calling it useless. Which you just said again. Read a little closer. And that’s false.

1. Stealth is the hiding… You find them when they’re no longer hidden. Running around untargeted isn’t not seeing them, it’s having to tab or click on them. Totally different.

2. It still has its purpose. You know… it’s intended purpose, to hide for the duration, not give a stealth and a broken/clunky mechanic defense of having to be reselected.

nakoda.4213:

if you could simply re-acquire your target without having to “search” for them after they have disappeared from your field of vision, then it wouldn’t be “stealth” it would be “invulnerability,” in effect.

the entire purpose of stealth is to make you lose your target and have to reacquire it, the effect of giving the thief time to plan attacks is the ancillary bonus to being able to “stealth.”

aoe still damage people in stealth, allowing people to lock targets through stealth elimites its function entirely.

Reaquiring a target is not a core mechanic of gameplay. Stealth does what its intended. It stops direct attacks, it allows hidden stomping/rezing, and breaks combos. Trying to say that stealth is useless because it loses target drop is the silliest thing I’ve heard. It is not invulnerability because it’s not supposed to be, it hides you, and not dropping the target would still do that, reaquiring target instantly AFTER THE EFFECT ENDS, sounds about how it should work.

“As long as thieves get a trait redesign, there weapons/attacks scale better with power and there health bumped to 15-18k.”

As I had said prior, if buffs had to happen to OFFSET the change (not make them OP in change of making them less clunky) I’m totally down for it.

“wouldn’t it defeat the purpose of stealth if you could maintain target lock through stealth?”

No not at all, stealth is to be unseeable for sometime to set up tricks and it acts as a defense. Rogues in WoW are the main stealth class, and when they hit a target while stealthed they instantly leave stealth and if the person has no target it automatically targets them. (It auto targets something that hits you when you have no target) and they don’t have HALF the mid-combat stealth abilities as in GW2 and its still a very competitive class. It has its purpose as a defensive ability, it still works as a non-attackable stomp/rezer, and free casting time where you’re GENERALLY uninterruptable. And it also still gives you the opportunity to actually hide via objects in the game, so no it still greatly has its purpose attached. If that was the main purpose I’d see no reason why there aren’t skills that say “Cause enemy to deselect you.” You don’t see that because that’s not an intended combat mechanic, and it’s very clunky/annoying.

“Wouldn’t say no to the change personally, however in exchange I’d like for all ‘channeled’ abilities with long, aimed animations (Air #1 on S/X Ele, Life Siphon, etc.) to stop following targets through stealth.”

I’d prefer you guys had that anyways… Deal for me…

I’ve said it once but I guess I’ll say it again. Stop hiding behind a clunky mechanic guys, it’s keeping your classes down while making everyone call for nerfs on them all the time. Stealth would still do its intention, but you can go back to fighting when its done doing its intended purpose. If it hurt their survivability too bad they would likely be buffed by REASONABLE means, rather than crutching on a clunky mechanic. Its a better design regardless.

Also, to the person who said “Thief breaks into someone’s house. He can turn off the light and hide. He can punch you in the face then hide again. It is YOUR job to find him after he hid. It is not like you can spam your fists in the air and have a free detection of where the thief is. Use your common sense!”

Lets not bring real life into this, in real life they don’t go invisible, and if you did hit them by swinging in real life you’d likely be able to grapple them and try to take them down, and EVERYONE could hide in this scenario, so give everyone stealth? Logic fighting logic. This is a game, so stop with that silly crap.

Anyways… Also, yes WoW rogues can restealth like once or twice and even that was considered OP… Oh and they were both 3 min cooldowns and broke upon action. Yeah that’s not the same thing…

That’ suitable, if you’re wanting to make an escape, sure, make it so the target is dropped on stealthed targets further tahn 1500 away, that’d make sense. And people could use that as an advantage that requires skill/thought. (Don’t make it too close such as maybe even 1200 because you’d still have that issue a lot with the amount of thief TPs out there) I’m not sure much would change, then with that mechanic. People would just create TP/Stealth builds if they wanted to rely on that mechanic enough.

I don’t see how anyone can argue that “deselect mechanic” is a proper mechanic for a defense in combat. Subset that in other actual combat ways, it has nothing to do with firing off some braincells to “resume” a fight, let the thief fire off a few braincells in be unpredictable with their stealth, but keep combat fluid. Nonfluid combat is clunky and very unfun to fight. Despite you thinking you’re squishy, even if it IS true, just for your sake of argument, it shouldn’t be subset by a deselect mechanic as a base of survivability.

I have to agree with Altroll on this, Thieves if made correctly really aren’t squishy… And also, it’s complete stealth, if you’re standing in a spot that you can predictably be hit that’s generally a player issue. Most people who see a stealther go into hiding they will either attack around them, or attack in a path following the direction they started hiding in. Anything beyond that would be sheer luck and not very likely.

Not necessarily, if someone is hidden in team fights I’d venture to say unless under 20% hp people would still change targets rather than sit for 5-6 seconds waiting for you to be done shadow dancing and healing. At least that’d be my move. I think a lot less would change than you think, it’d just feel less clunky to play. You’re admitting you rely on the clunky mechanic of forced de-target in order to live. Maybe if that wasn’t a factor they could be improved in other ways to subset this change, if they found it neccessary.

Eh people don’t like AI movement too. People say that MM Necros aren’t viable, (pvp/tpvp) but I find huge success with a build I put together. 1v1 I only struggle with mass aoe like HB warriors/Elementalists, other than that people are often awed by how ridiculous it is. People will tell you x doesn’t work all the time, you just have to prove them wrong.

That’s about the same premise, only difference is that the UI would reflect that you had them targeted, so yes.

Erm, its a 2 second distort every 10 seconds with a class who can blink, stealth various ways and can dodge just like everyone else and use 2x sigils of energy, with clones that confuse you to knowing who the right target is. The toolkit they have is what makes it further OP. Itself, on say just about any other class it wouldn’t be so OP. Its the whole kit that makes it that way.

I’ve been hearing (still) a lot of issues with Mesmers, and to a far lesser stance thieves (who don’t particularly bother me at all). So I had an idea that would make it so you don’t have to change the core mechanics of either class or even nerf them, but people can fight them without the clunkiness.

Simply add a way to “hold target” while they’re invisible. This DOESN’T mean stealth is useless and you can’t see/attack them as per normal, everything would function the same, however now stealth would do what it’s intended to do (hide) without the frustration of having to spend much more time reselecting which ruins auto attack functionality, and makes AI clunky for pet classes. So in essence your screen will still have them targeted, but you can’t interact with them as you’d see in today’s gameplay, but when they re-appear they’d already be targeted if you had them targeted before they vanished.

Thoughts? Stealth would still be hiding and unable to use focus-attacks, it’d still be confusing, just a lot less frustrating and I think people would accept both classes a LOT more as just a class with a mechanic versus cheesy classes that rely on clunky mechanics to win.

Quake I’ve tried pming you ingame… You never respond. T_T

Based on what you said “minions, draining life” that’s literally what my build is, im sure later on it could work similarly in PVE, or at least as an MM its as good as its going to get, from what I hear MM doesn’t really shine in pve.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IhWpetmrG9eCQSR0UP9gbwDHSRuSD-T4AgzCtIcS5kzJjTyisFNCZFyugTBzCeFA

try out this build (runes/sigils are important, don’t change them) if you guys plan going full MM.

That is, of course, if you are referring to PVP.

Against all odds, even if people tell you it won’t work play my MM build, realize you love it… I’ll even give you a few tips.

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IhWpetmrG9eCQSR0UP9gbwDHSRuSD-T4AgzCtIcS5kzJjTyisFNCZFyugTBzCeFA
(if link doesn’t work just copy paste to browser)

Keep all pets up when able, as they’re a lot of your damage, and heal you when they attack. Allow them to do their job by focusing a lot on keeping yourself alive and CCing as much as possible. Try to avoid spamming ccs at once. Try to combo them such as Dark Pact immobilize then as it ends use your Bone Fiend’s immobilize, followed by a Flesh’s charge, then swap to axe/Focus to chill your enemy. If you have life force at this time you can even quickly hit f1, use 2 (for the chill and teleport to them), and then 3 to fear them and immediately leave, and swap back to dagger. By then you should be up for another Dark Pack.

You get dagger 2 for a nice drain to toss while they’re cced, and unless you’re AOE bombed minions recharge fast enough to not be a big deal. Your main source of damage surprisingly is actually the 3 forms of Leech (2 from Vampire runes, and 1 from each of your weapons on swaps. That said, swap often!)

Eh, just run MM, bunker MM (while not TECHNICALLY viable 5v5) works just fine for me and is incredibly fun. And it’s easy to do “okay” with, while requiring more skill than most to master, (dealing with dead minions)

Bump for great justice, I’d really just like some feedback on this, please.

Personally, I think stealth stomping is pretty kittenty… Get rid of that too :P

Updated initial post to be a little clearer.

Hopefully the backing here will force ANet to take a second look at it. I don’t mind a class counter (as an MM, anything with decent aoe such as Eles and mesmers alone) they don’t bother me. But a wall counter is just not fun play, it doesn’t trigger “thought” or “interesting gameplay” it should just disconnect you from the game and say “kitten you, MM”

I’m sure…. Because who wants nerfed

The initiative recharge rate thing sounds like a grand idea…

Well, that’s true. Moa is pretty kittening stupid. Not to mention, I don’t entirely get how it fits mesmers as they’re illusionists, not arcanists… :S It doesn’t turn me into an illusion of a bird, it just totally kittens me. XD Correct me if I’m wrong, but pretty sure it’s a bit out of place. Staff is kind of arcanist, but that deals with more of the illusion of the mind (chaos) and the group haste is more like the “illusion of time”, so that all is justifiable. Moa just doesn’t seem to fit in my book. And I hate it, the end.

Do Turrets and spirits die upon Moa? That argument of “not being able to use your utilities” is flawed in that; you can’t use your abilities when downed neither, but minions stay alive then too.

Yeah, good point, my MM build has a decent amount of CC. And to be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn’t have the issues I have with them catching the target with a shadow-leash effect and their AI/reaction time being enhanced. Most of my issues is trying to get them to join the fight when coming from a really far distance away.

I apologize about the boon thing, I read somewhere that they were not affected by boons, my current build doesn’t really use boons so its hard to test that myself. However, to add, I also think they should have an increased speed, and reaction time. They tend to have a HORRIBLE time keeping up on the most basic pvp enemies, let alone a thief… they basically stand around…

Hello everyone, huge fan of Minion masters here, especially since its the only Necromancer that makes me feel necromancer-like. While I don’t want them to be over powered I do think some things could use looking at to make them slightly more viable, and hopefully in group PvP too.

1. Have a hidden “shadow leash” type effect. This is to say, all minions are bound to their master by a shadow leash, and if they leave the leash range of 1550-2000, they would be shadow-stepped back to the master. This helps with control when traveling the map, and allow them to quickly catch up if you end up too far ahead of them ready for a new fight, rather than waiting on them to take their time getting to you. Perhaps have the leash effect shortened when not having dealt damage in the past 10 seconds so even if it takes a while for combat to officially “drop” your minions can catch up to you quicker.

2. (Removed, merged with 1.)

3. Change Shadow fiend to be a ranged minion that shoots a shadow orb that “explodes” on impact dealing AoE. This gives Minion masters (a very little) bonus to their aoe which they could use in pvp, and the shadow fiend won’t spend most of its time trying to catch up to the enemy and hopefully with stand further out of aoe, leading to at least 1 more efficient pet who doesn’t die by aoe in 4 seconds.

4. Change Shadow Fiend’s “on use” ability to swap places with the shadow fiend acting as a stun breaker, while still blinding the target after the swap finishes. It is different than the wurm as it still deals less damage directly, and doesn’t trigger an aoe poison.

5. Make Syphon health effects also heal all of your minions. This is a smaller buff to survivability than boons would be, and not very over powered, considering the heals aren’t very heavy.

6. Give minions an out of combat regen. The flesh golem can, its just kind of annoying, with them not being a duration pet, but actual pets until killed, I just think it’s the right way to go about it. If not this, allow is to unsummon them on demand so we can heal them ourselves even if we wait out the CD. Being forced to enter a fight with a 5% hp minion even if out of combat for 2 minutes is just frustrating.

7. Allow Syphon Health effects to scale with Healing Power. Simply enough I don’t like stuff that doesn’t scale at all.

That’s all, I don’t think its over the top, mostly quality of life things. What do you think?

Edit Cleared up some points that Bhawb pointed out to me, left my opinions on some things unchanged, just made my points a bit clearer.

I’m not sure why that’s such a big deal? Mesmers have it good enough in pvp, I think they can deal with horrible-AI minions while shattering you in the face.

Even that, I guess I’d be fine with, but that’s still not entirely true, I’m assuming you don’t play a minionmancer, but I’d love to atleast be able to resummons them.

I just don’t want all my pets killed. It says you cant use utilities, that’s fine, when you summon pets, they turn into other utilities. Not being able to use those when moaed, that’s totally cool with me. But them all just instantly getting wrecked? that’s broken as hell

I’ve asked if its a bug (no answer yet) but if not, I have to say Moa should by and large definitely NOT straight up kill all Necromancer pets. It goes from hardcounter to cement wall with a gun to your face. I could understand it disabling the minion command abilities, but killing them is a bit much, as it completely screws the entire build for 24+ seconds.

Sorry if this is just a rage rant, but this is terrible. Is Moa supposed to kill all necro pets? Its an entire SUPER hardcounter that imo should not be… I could get not being able to use their specials but it should not instantly kill every one of them… that’s ridiculous…

I realized the sigil thing, I now just use 5% dmg sigils, not sure if I’ll be changing them any more, the Blood Fiend, I’m currently sticking with because if he’s low hp I’ll just use him so I can start his CD, in many fights so far it just hasn’t been an issue to be honest, but I’ll keep an eye on it. I tried swapping the weapons, I liked having swiftness on my main damage weapon, and prefer to have the strong chill on my defensive set. It could potentially work, but it just feels better to me this way. But yes, for sure fix your sigils if you follow this build!

I’m not here to say I’m some godly Necromancer, because I’m absolutely not. But, I will say in smaller scale pvp, I have had a great deal of success with this build, and its just overall very fun. So to that, I think its worth at least trying out and let me know what you think. I’ll do my best to give a general rundown of the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHhhu1IhWpetmrG9eCQSR0UP9gbwDHSRuSD-T4AgzCtIcS5kzJjTSnsONCZFy+jTBzPeFA
(if it doesn’t work, copy and paste into browser)

It’s basically a bunker build, and uses minions for damage. Dagger+Focus is used for immobilizing/chilling the enemy while draining life, thus is your more defensive set, then axe/warhorn gives your swiftness and keeps snares out while dealing decent damage. Use your minion abilities frequently to keep pressure up and to avoid more damage via pet blind, and pet CCs.

Try to not mash all buttons at once, however for optimum use when fighting an enemy (especially melee) try to use your dagger immobilize (Dark Pact), as it runs off use your bone fiend’s immobilize, then follow it with the flesh beast’s charge. All in all with the amount of damage your minions are doing, with them also siphoning health do you and survival tools, you’ll find it’s very resilient and quite effective. Just try it out sometime. Let me know what you think.

Just so I can try it in tPVP, what rune names, sigils, (amulet/rings for a general idea to chose what amulet to go with) and utilities/pet?

Any builds anyone would like to share? Come on, just post all builds in here so people have a go-to place to try things out.

Hey, I’m kind of just returning to GW2 after a break but I’ve been enjoying ranger a lot. Can anyone give me some high-tier tPVP builds that are decent with survivability, along with the complimenting runes, sigils and amulets? I’d appreciate it. Maybe even a small description, and I’ll test them out myself.

Yeah, they wanted to remove some pigeon hole effects, this would be one way. Maybe to keep it consistant allow banners to have a condition removal effect as well, since they wanted to help banners out too. This way the support warriors can be better versus conditions while burst warriors stay bursty but without the condition removal (thus avoiding making them over powered)

Runes aside it’s just a dev-known issue, plus there are several areas warriors could improve on and this would help that. Group synergy being one as well. And it makes them more interesting. Also, my current runes are pretty vital to my build (s/tPvP)

Since Shouting heals is a more support-based trait, why not give shouting heals condition removal on top of the heal?

- It adds support
- Helps with warriors massive weakness to conditions
- Doesn’t really benefit or at least wont strongly benefit bullrush frenzy combos (making them an unstoppable beast as they said was a concern)
- And it livens the trait up a bit, what do you guys think? They’re all on 20+ second cooldown as well, so its quick condition removal with a decent cool down or spread out condition removal.

I like it. Anyone else?

Lady Sara Goldheart.2764:

ronpierce.2760:

I will agree that stand still casting is frustrating. GW2 is good in that field, however the few “stand still” casts in GW2 are melee, which is a pretty big no-no. Even if its because otherwise they’d be considered “OP”, then just tune them down a bit, being stuck in place as a melee at will let alone being kited is never a ‘fun’ idea.

Talking about warrior’s 100b, it may need either team support as in cc or good preparation. I think warriors in the competitive scene on NA partly even used Throw Bolas.
The warrior is a team-dependant class on highest level.
But I agree changing the mechanic and toning dmg down would be a refreshing change.

It can work, not saying warriors are useless for it, it just feeks too gimmicky, especially as its honestly one of the most effective ways to play a pvp warrior, but comes down to a frenzy combo, or a lot of support.

I will agree that stand still casting is frustrating. GW2 is good in that field, however the few “stand still” casts in GW2 are melee, which is a pretty big no-no. Even if its because otherwise they’d be considered “OP”, then just tune them down a bit, being stuck in place as a melee at will let alone being kited is never a ‘fun’ idea.