Guild Wars 2

Chase.8415:

So there solution to balance was to increase the power of conditions AND add a new one? The problem is conditions, this will only make things worse. Every build will be forced to spam condition removal.

Part of me wants to agree with this… it’s exemplified in the phrase “condi bomb”, where conditions are just dumped en masse onto a player as a supplement for direct damage burst. You rarely see people use conditions tactically to counter a heal or cripple a melee skill; they’re applied so frequently that players more often saturate them and hope for the best. I’m not much a fan of the gameplay it encourages since it just ends up being a question of whether your condi removal numerically outweighs the condi application.

I don’t really care one way or the other about “evade” or endurance or invuln hate or whatever, but I will say the one class that absolutely does not need access to this kind of thing is Guards. They have more than enough for dealing with evade classes (and much else moreover) as it stands.

One little trick I discovered: if you equip Portal and drop the Portal Entre, you can swap out Portal on your util bar for any other skill and use it as much as you want, then swap Portal back in and set up a port without any issue.

In other words (an example):

- Drop Portal Entre
- Swap Portal out for Decoy
- Use Decoy
- Swap Decoy for Portal again (must be OOC)
- Drop Portal Exeunt

Supposedly in the beta clones used to deal damage and there was less of a distinction between clones and phants, so that could explain it a bit.

ninetales.5208:

Exactly. After playing LotRO for two years I can honestly say that GW2 is heaven compared to what that has become. Five hour weekly downtimes for one hotfix, Pay2Win buffs in the store, One pvp map for SIX years, a tyrannical dictatorship running their forums, and the same end-game content for the last two expansions. And its hardly F2P, you can’t get through to level cap without having to buy quests/maps etc. For VIP access you pay 10 bucks a month (and you have to be VIP to access the pvp zone).

Trust me, Anet have saved my life. I actually want to throw money at them.

Yeah, it’s kind of crazy seeing the things people get up in arms about in GW2 lol. I don’t know if maybe the only game they’d played was GW1 and it set their expectations, but GW2 is so mind-bogglingly more forgiving about general pay-to-win and RNG stuff it’s just no contest.

Coming here from STO it’s a complete world of difference.

Agreed OP, seems a bit odd considering pretty much everything else in the game doesn’t imitate the old server-wide node, every man for himself model. I don’t know why they chose these holos of all things to do a total 180 but it’s certainly rather lame.

Shorty.9873:

Monna blew it for me. I only had 80 or so gold. First 2 races took 2nd. was up over a gold and a half. Then monna lost 3 in a row and now im broke. Can’t play anymore races I was enjoying it. But I think the price could be a bit lower. Or give you an option to bet less for less return or something.

I have bet on Monna each race and this infuriating bird will not learn that coming in second place every time is not good enough. You hear that, Monna?! Second is another word for failure!

The MMO I came here from, people begged the devs to publish the odds on some of the lockboxes, sometimes because the boxes having no odds table was of questionable legality where many players lived. (Bear in mind that in that game, lockbox rewards conferred a huge in-game advantage)

It would be nice to see ANet break the mold I suppose.

I would like to add a surprising discovery I made while farming Lodestones in Malchor’s:

Earth Elementals can drop T6 Dust. I’d gotten around three or four T5 Dusts from them in about an hour’s worth of play, which was surprising enough, but when I saw the Crystalline drop I was baffled. I was in full DPS gear with about 45% MF from an Omnom Bar and a Sigil.

I doubt this would be a reliable farm as you’d need Melandru uncontested and I got as much T6 Dust within the hour as I did Lodestones (i.e. one), but there you go.

Coming from someone who crafts most of their own consumables, the price of Lemongrass has little if anything to do with demand. It’s expensive because Lemongrass itself is pretty rare (there’s only one map zone I know of in the entire game with a Lemongrass loot table, and that table has a lot of other entries competing for space).

It’s the same for Curry Butternut, which is expensive because Peppers were shifted off from Karma vendors and onto very (very) rare loot tables in low level Ascalon. Take a look at the price of Lemongrass and Chili Pepper and compare them to their recipes if you don’t believe me.

I also find it rather absurd that condi builds in WvW complain about Lemongrass when they’re usually running Veggie Pizza (+40% duration). If you’re trying to overclock your character with consumables and someone else is doing the same, then why the hypocrisy?

Handin.4032:

Just reading this thread reminds me so much of the older confusion threads, but kind of opposite. In the confusion threads, you had people saying “Nerf confusion, since the option not to attack is silly!”, and here you have people saying “If they have retal up, just don’t attack, it’s not OP”.

This is the only part of the thread that truly bothers me. The exact same arguments were used against Confusion, and the same arguments in its defense are being duplicated wholesale right here. Someone even brought out, “Have situational awareness”! Oh lord.

Why on earth were these arguments no good for Confusion but perfectly reasonable in this case?

I should also add that items like consumables and crafted products suffer even worse from these shortages, because when an item is used in so many different recipes the value of the item itself fast eclipses the value of any one specific end product. This doubles up the price hike, since the value of dust itself keeps increasing and since there are less consumables on the market being crafted (with little incentive to craft them when dust is so valuable).

For those of us using Nourishments (all of which require dust at every grade up to and incl. 6) this is also rather taxing, I hope it gets attention soon.

I have to say, when I first read up a bit on the Clovers, I was prepared for a good reaming… and then I was rather underwhelmed. Two of the mats needed can be bought for karma and skill points, and one you get for free with your Daily. In the end it’s just an Ecto trade, and Ectos aren’t the most painful thing in the world to come by.

I really don’t think Clovers are all that bad but maybe it’s just me.

In my experience one of the requirements for Arcane to not bug out is for you to actually be physically facing your target. It’s kind of like Magic Bullet or Confusing Images.

If anyone has a small group going, I’d be happy to guest and help out with opening.

Zelulose.8695:

So I tested max toughness mesmer with heals and an idefender and he kills me before I really see him. Ask anet what to say to this video XD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k99BKVpBxXQ

This is why people complain. Imagine what he does to GC thief or any other non tank.

The game isn’t designed to be played with people standing around just facetanking damage. Standing still and trying to max out resistance is a fool’s errand, you’re gaming the mechanics in ways they weren’t intended to be used.

Wolf.5816:

-One of the most powerful conditions in PvP (confusion)

lol

Drek Thalon.5490:

Aoe stability and swiftness rip with invisibility reveal would be, without a doubt, overpowered. =/

Lets play devils advocate for a second here. Lets say thieves had an ability called:

“Gotcha Biitch!”

Removes Fury, Might, Swiftness, and why not Balance too.

How would you feel about this being implemented?

I don’t see the big deal? As a Mes I have a skill that’ll do that, it’s called Null Field. Or if I want I can swap the AoE out for Arcane Thievery and not only is it Unblockable but I’ll get the full boons myself (now admittedly Arcane is buggy at best). Larc Strike (Thief Sword #3) doesn’t even have a cooldown.

It’s ridiculously easy to get Might and Swiftness on most any class build, and it’s hardly the end of the world if you lose them either.

fadeaway.2807:

Am I missing something? You don’t have access to many dazes, was it realy worth focusing your traits and gear on them?

We have access to a lot of dazes, it’s just they seem to be so rarely used. MoD is super underrated, especially against classes that require windup (like Eles) to be effective. Even on a plain shatter you can use Diversion to great effect since it interrupts stomps.

Why do Physical skills (Kick, Stomp, Bolas) have such tremendous cooldowns compared to their effects?

Kick (small AoE knockback, very, very short range, low-to-moderate damage) is on a 20 second cooldown. Why? Shouldn’t it be something like 10-12, considering it’s just a kick with your foot that’ll at best act as an interrupt?

Stomp (moderate damage, small radius hard CC) clocks in at a whopping 60 seconds. This one is almost as absurd as Endure being a boosack-shattering 1:30 min CD

Bolas is at 20. Very long-lasting Immob so I can sort of see the reasoning but by the same token it has negligible damage and it’s a single-target util skill.

My feeling is that people so rarely take Physicals because aside from them struggling to compete with the necessary sustain/condi removal War utils, they have crazy-high cooldowns in comparison to their in-game effects. It doesn’t help that the only CDR trait is a Grandmaster in an otherwise-unappealing trait line.

It’d be nice if the tooltip for this were changed sometime soon since I remember first slotting this skill and being confused by its actual behavior.

Embolism.8106:

A few clarifications.

IE has always worked with iMage. It is only with Staff Clones that it doesn’t work.

Fury on yourself does not give your Illusions higher critical chance, and Might on your Illusions does not boost their damage. Only Might on yourself gives your Illusions higher damage, and only Fury on the Illusion gives it higher critical chance.

I have not checked this patch out myself yet, but if Clones are hogging all the bounces (negating IE’s double tap for your own WoC and wasting all the Might boons) then overall I’d say this patch is a nerf for condition Mesmers.

It could possibly work for phants since they’d benefit from Staff boons, but said boons aren’t exactly persistent so keeping them on at just the right time for their attack cycle would be a bit of a chore at best.

Overall this is a huge shame if it’s really true, I used iElasticity so that Staff had some sort of pressure damage. Even then it necessitated me shadowing my target up close in melee to get the extra bounce off.

Ansau.7326:

Rezzet.3614:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Yep, he’s a thief, how predictable. Nothing to see here folks, just another person with a poor understanding of Mesmer mechanics complaining about them.

stop defending broken mechanics we all know what makes the mesmer pull broken is the ability to pull people over walls and even through doors in some very rare cases .

same goes for the ones asking for fix the pull time is fine the way it pulls is what’s broken.

simple fix would be for it to “Respect” Line of Sights.

Nothing is broken, it’s just what is meant to be. Moving everyone around it. See this image http://i.imgur.com/U1iXF.jpg.
And by the way, other professions can also pull you from walls. If you don’t want to be pulled, then don’t go to the edge. Cause with itV you can only pull people from walls if they’re in the edges.

No one expects the Ele pull until it’s too late : 3

Xirin.8593:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

All WvW guilds: please replace your bunker Guardians with Thieves. Your success is guaranteed (disclaimer: success not guaranteed).

Most WvW guilds don’t run “bunker Guardians” (‘bunkering’ has a specific meaning which holds zero relevance to WvW), it’s a pretty poor attempt at a riposte anyway since Guards are taken in large part for their passives/boon-sharing.

Bringing down yaks without much fear of counterplay is definitely a bit gamey but to be honest it’s pretty low on the totem pole of things that need attention in WvW.

The only setup in the game with enormous access to stealth is D/P, and it’s balanced around sPvP where being able to reset or stay perma-stealthed is of little real value. The game modes should’ve been balanced separately from the start.

Defender is a very strong tool actually, it can’t be burned down easily the way other phants can.

In my experience the Might-stacking isn’t much of a big deal, it basically balances out against whichever sacrifice you’ve made to get it. For example if you go deep into crit and into SA you’ll lack Toughness and sustain and your Init will be hampered, while speccing into SA and whatever else means the Might only makes up for the lack of traited Power/crit.

What people don’t seem to grasp is that because of the existence of an open TP, making farming ‘easier’ will not improve their lot in the slightest. Unless you’re farming for a specific item (and let’s be honest, that’s pretty rare) it makes no difference how easy or hard it is to farm, because the market’ll adjust itself either way. When items are easy to farm, you’ll make less gold per hour and buy items at cheaper prices. When items are hard to farm, you’ll make more gold per hour and buy items at expensive prices. It’s a wash.

Contiguous.1345:

But..but.. the swords look RIDICULOUS.

With swords it’s not even limited to just the greatswords… one-handers look absurdly massive in most cases as well.

As Lalangamena said, flipping doesn’t raise prices; players do. The overwhelming majority of items will settle on a long-term pivot price and it’ll only deviate in fairly predictable cycles as stock is bought and sold over the course of a day.

A good tip if you think an item is overpriced is to wait a few hours and check again. Every item has a high and a low over the course of the day and some cycle pretty fast (Omnoms come to mind).

Think how anyone using a Scepter feels : (

Gaidax.7835:

Besides that, shatter specs usually come around with weaker phantasms to begin with, due to different weapons selection, for example the torch guy, that phantasm is worthless to begin with and GS isn’t amazing either with it’s issues.

I find that rather interesting considering every phant I’ve seen runs GS (in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen one without it).

As a side note if I saw a phant ever trying to non-defensively shatter on me I’d take that as an opening to end the game. You’re lacking far more shatter traits than vice versa (IP, Mental Torment, Precise Wrack, shatter CDR in general) to the point where your non-stealth defense rests on Distortion. That and the fact that clones are shatter fodder while phants are not.

My take on the whole IP issue is that it might’ve been arguable as to the value of the Dueling minor back before the last Confusion WvW patch, but I can’t really see it being worth it now.

There’s no “strongest weapon” really, Mes is far too circumstantial and you can’t compare it the way you would a Warrior. iWarden is a great example.

Specced out, phants will put out damage that can’t be matched by any weapon skill. This depends on the phants not being interfered with, though. A good rule of thumb is that we deal better damage in melee than at range.

Kenage Achalarus.4276:

Time warp skill cool down is not to bad compared to human elite skills. but its not a glammer and time warp can also kill you fast. if you have confusion on you and you are able to spam skills very rapitally you can down your self lol.

Quickness can be a bit weird in other ways, for example (most) leaps only travel half the distance under Quickness.

D/P is competitive for a number of reasons, the main ones are that you have very high stealth uptime without blowing utils (no need for x/D’s target) and more importantly an on-demand blind, an underrated condition as it’s effectively a sort of group Aegis. The daze is nothing to shrug at either.

My feeling when people say condis aren’t sticky is usually that they either a) don’t melee or b) they’ve never fought an Engie who knows what he’s doing. Condi bombs from well-played Necros can be scary as well.

I’m not sure why you’d mention Mesmer Confusion since it’s been no different in sPvP for months (and wasn’t affected by the recent patch).

Staff only seems so strong because it’s our sole defensive weapon (Focus and Torch have some good defensive aspects, but by that standard so does Sword). It has a number of disadvantages as well, I think it’s pretty well-balanced. The AA windup is fairly long and unique, CA has a moderate cooldown without traits, Phase Retreat always follows a predictable pattern, etc.

There’s no other class with a full weapon set (since Staff is a two-hander) that screams ‘defense’ the way our Staff does. Nothing else is as honed in on kiting, maneuverability and resilience; it’s almost purely defense in a way not shared by the rest of the game’s weapon sets. To a good player, that kind of knowledge is of immense benefit in a battle; you can use your knowledge of the Mesmer’s mindset when he switches to Staff against him.

I wouldn’t support any “reworking” of the sword that turned it into a ranged weapon. The idea of a melee mage is one I deeply love and it’s what attracted me to GW2 in the first place. I can’t imagine players tied to other classes would appreciate having their most-loved mechanics gutted out.

Psychogene.6780:

Wow, the over-reaction of some people …

I’ve only read some of the posts, but from what I gather no-one is asking for a full blown nerf to blurred frenzy. At the most, people are asking for a ‘slight’ cooldown adjustment. Yet the reaction from some of you guys are more like a rant then a logical debate.

Both sides of the coin do have valid points you know, whether people on the other side can see it or not. Personally I’d like to see a longer cooldown if blurred frenzy does not hit anything, but its not game-changing for me in any way. Even if they nerfed blurred frenzy, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for mesmers at all.

Anyway it’d be nice if a developer chimed in and told us why blurred frenzy is the way it is and if it is intended the way it is. It would settle this once and for all.

If Blurred (or whatever) got hit I doubt many of us who love what we do would stop playing Mes. Thieves seem to cope well with each passing nerf (though you don’t see much of Pistol Whip any more).

The thing is that I feel I’m in agreement with the other gentleman who suggested that this won’t be the last change. Already I’ve heard that we have too much Vigor, too much Protection (from the 15 point Regen trait), etc. All of these seem like scapegoats for either something completely apart from the Mesmer or just for everything the Mesmer is as a whole.

Bear in mind that if your full set of “minor tweaks” were implemented, Blurred would be a version of off-sword #4 with the same cooldown, more or less equal damage, no option to deflect the block into a daze and no clone generated on a successful block.

What sounds negligible can fast become drastic changes, the nature of the skill itself would be completely erased.

Blackhat.4016:

shimmerless.4560:

BlackBeard.2873:

For all the people fighting here, I think it might ease the pain a bit when people say “nerf” the skill, they don’t mean to drag it into the ground, stomp on it, and spit on the remains of the skill. They simply mean minor tweaks. In the example of blurred frenzy, that would be:
-12-15s cooldown (still often available) + more damage
-shorter distortion time
-tweak of distortion mechanic to make it a block rather than evade

All of these options can make the skill more balanced without doing something so silly as doubling the cooldown if your skill misses.

The “distortion” is two seconds long, I’m not sure how much lower you want it to go exactly.

One second.

The skill would be way more balanced then considering it only has a 10 sec CD. 10% invulnerability uptime by simply using one (!) skill still sounds pretty good to me. Maybe buff some weaker skills to compensate for that if the nerf hits Mesmers too hard.

One second would be “way more balanced” than two seconds? That seems awfully specific, why is getting rid of the last second so crucial?

BlackBeard.2873:

For all the people fighting here, I think it might ease the pain a bit when people say “nerf” the skill, they don’t mean to drag it into the ground, stomp on it, and spit on the remains of the skill. They simply mean minor tweaks. In the example of blurred frenzy, that would be:
-12-15s cooldown (still often available) + more damage
-shorter distortion time
-tweak of distortion mechanic to make it a block rather than evade

All of these options can make the skill more balanced without doing something so silly as doubling the cooldown if your skill misses.

The “distortion” is two seconds long, I’m not sure how much lower you want it to go exactly.

ninja.4139:

Varonth.5830:

• Slight cooldown increase (12-15s)

I think this is the fairest option, although some of the mesmers other skills still need to be buffed to compensate. Maybe another option would be to make the distortion for Blurred frenzy behave differently in that the user can be struck by unblockable attacks, or that the user takes zero damage during the duration. Either way, I’m content with the skill right now. Mesmers needs buffs and nerfs in other areas more (daze in the staff 5 skill is kittening bull kitten)

Varonth.5830:

• Move to Offhand-Sword #4
• Move Offhand-Sword #4 to Mainhand-Sword #2

I like this idea, but it would need a serious buff to not make sword mainhand worthless. Right now, it blocks and creates a clone. The clone creation takes about a second leaving you vulnerable to more attacks, which doesn’t really make sense since it’s supposed to be a defensive skill and one block is absolutely nothing. It is worthless offensively too since Mesmers already have plenty of ways to create more clones much faster than that can and without having to rely on the enemy triggering it for you.

Have you seen the cooldown on Staff #5?

Copenhagen.7015:

The problem is not Blurred Frenzy. It is the broken piece of crap that is Illusionary Leap. It’s nearly impossible to telegraph, and most of the time doesn’t leap, but just appears right in your face. UNAVOIDABLE. Shimmerless there is nothing distinctive about the animation, especially on Asura, which most Mesmers seem to run. How can Warrior leaps be so slow and obvious, but Illusionary Leap is a super speed run/leap that pops up next to you and says HI IMMOBILIZESHATTERRRRRRR.

Ha, well, I think a lot of Mesmers might agree with you that iLeap’s broken, but probably not in the same sense you’re implying…

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the instant iLeap you’re describing, but I suppose it’s possible. The thing with Asura I take as more an issue with Asura in PvP generally.

Lopez.7369:

People saying Swap is easy to detect are underestimating how disorienting it can be to deal with multiple illusions. The Swap flash in particular is very similar to shatter. Good players will still generally see it because of the initial Illusionary Leap cast, but calling it as obvious as Bull’s Charge is far-fetched.

One of the best ways to spot iLeap is to watch the actual Mesmer. He’ll stick his arm out in a very pointed manner (illusions will never do this), it’s quite the distinctive animation.

Psychogene.6780:

Blurred frenzy is one of those skills that is currently maximum reward for 0 risk. With its cooldown and the fact it can be so easily executed out of illusionary leap means pretty much every mesmer runs the sword as a weapon set.

Those 2 second of evasion has so much going for it you can pretty much spam this whenever its off cooldown and never get punished for it if you can dodge,teleport,stealth away. As an offensive tool, its more or less the mesmer’s version of 100 blades with a built in immunity button – this is probably a skill a warrior should have had rather then a mesmer, who really doesn’t need it due to the fact they practically have everything going for them in their favor.

My suggestion is to tone it down as a defensive tool, to stop people mindlessly spamming it to avoid damage. It should receive a penalty for this and rewarded if it hits. So something like this

‘Blurred Frenzy’, 10 sec cooldown -
If it strikes a foe, 10 sec cooldown. If it does not strike a foe or if your not hit in melee range, cooldown is 50% longer (15 secs).

So a nerf similar to ride the lightning for ele’s is how I can see this skill being more balanced. Also the shatter skills should be locked out while this move is being done.

I can guarantee you there are players in this game good enough to punish you extremely hard for spamming anything just because it’s off cooldown. They’ll dodge iLeap or MB and wait for the channel to end before smashing you in the face. And bar the fact that they’re both rooted channels 100b and BF have absolutely nothing in common. You can’t trait Blurred to proc Might on crit and the overall damage scaling between the two is worlds apart.

Personally I hope the RtL nerf gets reverted, it was a complete mistake and kitten a class hard for the sake of a few poorly-designed sPvP maps.

And ladies and gents, you don’t have to qualify everything you say with, “I play a Mesmer…” or “I’m a Mesmer player too, so […]”. If your opinions are sound and backed up by truth and knowledge, they’ll stand on their own.

Welcome Phelan!

“Telling the real Mesmer” mostly just comes down to experience. When I’m against another Mez I already know what all of his skills will do. For example, in a downed state the real one’s always the second to appear. When someone hits Staff #2 the clone is the one left in the place they just blinked backwards from.

Moreover you’ll find that clones just don’t behave like real players. They’ll never dodge. A Mez in another thread noted how you can run in circles and they’ll always follow you.

It really does just come down to experience and knowledge, which is why our most common ‘tricks’ become harder to pull off against more-experienced players.

Best of luck and hope you enjoy your time with our class, win or lose.