Guild Wars 2

I think that swapping Last Refuge and Infusion of Shadow without changing the IoS effect is good and wouldn’t make anything OP.

Right now, without that trait, you barely can enter in stealth reliably. It makes sense that a mandatory trait for stealth-oriented thieves is cheap to reach.

Then, the further you go into the Shadow Arts traitline, the better your stealth become.

5pt → viable stealth
15pt → longer lasting stealth
25pt → damage amplifier stealth

Sounds good to me.

As Anubarak pointed out, it helps also build variety in PvE without making it OP.
25/30/5/0/15 would be OP, but you don’t have enough traitpoints.

Swap Last Refuge with Infusion of Shadow.

Every Thief in this game will be happy: better build variety (no more forced to pick Infusion of Shadow and Shadow’s Embrace), no mandatory Last Refuge and a general utility trait is now minor.

Leuca.5732:

No, if that happens you’ll still have a problem with rangers having access to fields with such an easy blast finisher. GS already has two finishers. If the weapon functioned nearly as well as it was probably envisioned to, people probably wouldn’t even be discussing adding anything to Maul.

You’re bringing up another problem in this game, which is the ease of access to blast finishers. There are far too many and suggestions like this would serve to exacerbate the problem.

Rangers need more condition removal options; the fact that Healing Spring is one good option doesn’t mean it has too much.

Maul wouldn’t be an easy blast finisher. It is still locked to a 6s cooldown and melee range.
Cluster Bomb is an easy blast finisher.

Weapon sets with multiple combo finisher aren’t a problem either.
Just look at D/D on thief. Leap, whirl and projectile finishers on the same set.

RashanDale.3609:

You seem to overlook that it is a 66% chance ON CRIT. not just a 66% proc chance.
Axe#2 has a duration of 2 seconds, so with an internal cooldown of 1 second i shouldnt be able to get more than 2-3 bleeds with it.
That being said, when i tested this with high precision(87%) and Axe#2, i got 5-6 bleedstacks pretty often, so theres probably no cooldown. and if there is, it is A LOT lower than 1 second.

Gluttony is also not bad. It doesnt matter what the actual LF-numbers of skills are, 10% more LF means 10% more LF. it’s okay for a minor adept trait and not even close to being the worst in game.

My vote goes to:
-Parasitic bond:
On-Kill-traits are usually crap. they help you snowballing or when youve already won. completely useless in 1vs1s or bossfights without adds. i want something reliable instead.

-Protection of the horde:
probably the only minor trait that is bound to specific utilities. which is awful. and the effect is, as previously stated by a lot of ppl, is pretty low too.

-Warrior’s Might-on-ress-trait (dont know the name)

This topic isn’t about which minor trait is the worse, but which profession has the worse minor traits set and Necromancer is arguably the winner. Most of minor traits are useless or weak to the point of being unnoticeable.

I know that Gluttony and Barbed Precision aren’t the worse traits in the game, but they aren’t either that good.

Leuca.5732:

I guess I forgot to mention the fact that blast finishers are aoe heals, meaning it’s actually more than the number I gave you if there is at least one ally nearby. In a team fight, that can mean an additional 1320-5280 per finisher. If you get at least 2 finishers off on (as an example) you and two other people, your total health gain between you and those allies is 12840 before you factor in any regeneration they received or any finishers they used themselves. If you are getting all four of your teammates, that’s 18120 between all of you.

Healing Surge doesn’t remove conditions, doesn’t provide a field, and has an either-or option by getting less healing for maxing your adrenaline after usage, or healing before using it to get more health back.

Nerfing Healing Spring is the last thing rangers need because its ticking condition removal is crucial to holding points. (as well as being extremely helpful in PvE)

I’m just not seeing a good reason to nerf anything just to give GS a blast finisher it doesn’t need, when it still needs other improvements to basic function.

Healing Spring water field is too long, regardless the hypothetical buff on Maul, period. As you can see, it stops the Ranger to get more useful buffs just because of that water field. 8-10s is more reasonable to me.

If Rangers need more condition removals, it is a good thing to spread them among other utilities/skills/traits. Packing everything in a single skill has never been healthy for the game.

Leuca.5732:

Healing Spring+Maul+Swoop+Auto+Maul and leave field.

Let’s do some math with this relatively quick set of actions, with 0 healing power.

Healing Spring+3 finishers is 4920+(1320×3)=8880 health. If you are contesting a point it will be much more than this, and if the Engineer wants to stay off the point and use grenades, he’s losing the point.

With un-traited cd greatsword, you can use Maul x 3 and Swoop x 2, which is 6600 health at 0 healing power. That’s a ridiculous amount of healing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is still less than 0 Healing power Healing Surge max healing.

Blast finisher on Maul makes sense if Healing Spring duration is reduced.
To be honest, its duration is kinda ridiculous even without blast finisher on Maul.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Barbed precision is incredible good. If you can’t see that you gotta learn it better. It kicks kitten with Rabid build. And no it doesn’t have internal cooldown. It’s 2 sec bleed that very often proc. In good condition build that’s 2x 130 (at least, without might/corruption stacks) bleed damage. Just for triggering this effect ONCE. You can trigger it very often with scepter. with heavy duration bleed increase, it can become 3 secs i think. Or it became 2 because of heavy duration increase. Either way, it increases your damage a lot more then you think, or compared to other minor traits.

It has an internal cooldown.
Try it with Ghastly Claws, which has 8 hits.
That means that the average of bleeds per cast you are supposed to get considered the 66% proc rate should be 5-6. However, you barely apply two bleeds per cast, which makes sense only if Barbed Precision has a 1-sec internal cooldown.

Durzlla.6295:

The KD was buffed… It’s range was lowered to 300 making it nearly impossible to dodge without using an evade or block… And keep in mind different profs are balanced different, EX: an engi or ele have a lot of blasts but like no fields, a ranger could have BOTH a ton of fields AND a ton of blasts.

What?
Engineers and Elementalists have no fields?
What am I reading?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_engineer_combo_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_elementalist_combo_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_ranger_combo_skills

Don’t consider the underwater combo fields.

Having reduced effect on pet’s skill doesn’t matter if you can actually raise the skill cap of a profession which is now too simplistic and lacking of depth.

Dirame.8521:

sorrow.2364:

Necromancer, hands down.
None of them has a real use, except for Last Gasp.

I don’t know what you on about but I love Gluttony, Target the weak, Barbed Precision, Furious Demise, and Protection of the Horde. You won’t miss them until they are gone.

In PvE, Parasitic Bond really good as well.

Gluttony is worthless.
Most skills don’t hit the 1% LF mark, so its effect is unnoticeable in most cases. Only when gaining 10% LF it has some effect, but it is still an 1% LF gain.

Target the Weak is a damage booster in a condition traitline. You need 5 conditions on a target to gain a damage bonus equal to what other profession gain with less requirements (Bleeding only on warrior, any condition on Thief and Guardian, etc) and power oriented weapon sets aren’t capable to inflict more than 3 conditions, not even reliably.

Barbed Precision has always been kinda worthless. It’s 1 stack of bleeding for 2 seconds, probably with an internal cooldown. That means that it doesn’t even synergize with wells/locust/ghastly claws.

Furious Demise was once useful. Now there is Deathly Perception, making that trait not that worth picking anymore.

Protection of the Horde is underpowered. You can have a maximum of 7 minions (including Jagged Horror), which means 140 extra toughness. It doesn’t even match the toughness bonus Guardians give to themselves and the whole team via Strength in Numbers without the need to keep up your whole minion army.

showatt.9413:

I am by no means a programmer, so if my attempted answer is wrong, please forgive. With that disclaimer in mind, here is the potential answer to your question:

It is probable that pet skills exist on a different system to normal utility skill and weapon skills. If you were to make the pet skill replacing the utility skills it would be trying to blend two separate system together, which – while not impossible – will certainly be difficult and time consuming.

We are talking about revamping an existing system, which will need approval from the higher ups, game designers to actively troubleshoot said ideas, tooltip artist and typewriter to construct and document the changes, programmers attempting to bugproof (which won’t work flawlessly) before they make the changes, and bugfix after they’re done.

All of this will take time, resource and money, something they can’t probably afford right now with all the other changes and stuff they’ve got going on. The fact that this little change is fairly insignificant, and the effort to make this change outweigh the benefit by tenfold certainly doesn’t help.

There you have it.
Once again, I am by all means not a programmer, nor do i work for Anet, but this is probably the most probable reason I can think of coming from a game design/business point of view.

I’ll try to use logic to get to the conclusion that giving control of pet’s skill on demand isn’t hard to implement.

We all know that the F2 skill is controlled by the player and performed by the pet. This clearly means that they already know how to do this and have the code ready to add other F2-like skills (controlled by the player, performed by the pet).
It is just a matter of copy-paste the code behind the F2 skill to make other user-controlled pet skills.

So making pet skills controlled by the player is clearly possible.

What about giving the option to let the player chose if they want to control the pet’s skills or not?
I think it is possible too.

We already know that it is both possible to let the AI control the skill performing and let the player control them.
So it is just a matter of which portion of code to execute according to a boolean value (want to control it or don’t want to control it). That’s an if clause.

jcbroe.4329:

Ranger; Opening Strike, Marksmanship; 5/15 (one is for player, the next for pet).
Instinctual Bond, Beastmastery; 5

I think he meant minor traits in general.
Ranger has some great minor traits.

Also, Opening Strike is underrated.
30 in Marksmanship with a longbow means 15 stacks of vulnerability almost permanently. That’s a 15% damage boost.

I dare you to find an useful minor trait for Necromancer that isn’t Last Gasp.

showatt.9413:

Engineer isn’t using an AI pet. You’re asking the ability to decide when your pet should deal a secondary damage (with effect), in addition to the f2 skill, while essentially keeping the pet’s ability to deal damage on their own. Not to mention you have two pets to switch between.

Surely you can see this is very different to weapon kit?

The buff is solely coming from the fact that the pet is controlled by player’s brain intead of AI, the effect is still the same.
Huge buff, uh?

Necromancer, hands down.
None of them has a real use, except for Last Gasp.

Requiem.8769:

Or you could have something similar to engineer kits.

Well, no.
Pet and the ranger are two different entities. I see no reason of not being able to use my skills just because I want to control the pet.

Since it has been discussed into the latest SotG about giving Rangers more control over their pets to raise the skill cap, but JSharp said that this would disorientate new players, I’ve came up with something which solves both the problems without being hard to implement, ruthlessly stolen from GW1.

The idea is to let the player choose which skill of the pet they want to have control over.

By default, every skill is controlled by the AI, but in the pet interface you can choose which skill you want to be controlled by the AI and which skill you want to control manually. The skill you choose to control manually cannot be casted by the AI, while the other ones can be casted both from the AI and the player.

I’ve made a fast draft showing what I intended UI-wise (obviously ANet UI designer can do better than me).

Adopting this solution, you archieve:

• Lower entry barrier: new players can completely forgot about their pets since it is controlled by the AI entirely, until they get used to the game and, step by step, start to manage one pet skill at time.
• Higher skill cap: controlling the pet skills properly need practice, since the player is forced to manage two entities with two different skill set and two different positions in the field, the ranger and the pet.
• Better build diversity: having access to skills that before were randomly casted by the AI means a lot. It increases the skill pool available to the ranger by an huge chunk.

Hope devs take the time to read this and add it into the game.
I think this solution will make every ranger player happy.

Supreme.7352:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors are not OP and definitely not out of control.

That pic means nothing. When I solo-queue I see a majority of players playing thieves. I wouldn’t say they’re that broken.

Never happened to me, while this is quite common with warriors.

Warriors are not OP and definitely not out of control.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Was referring more to the melee weapons as we’re comparing it to a melee weapon on the ranger. And the melee weapons don’t have such short cooldowns. Their cooldowns there are much longer at 30 and 45 seconds on dagger or 25 and 25 for focus.

And again, the ele doesn’t have that long-lasting of a water combo field so as to self-combo quite so well.

Nobody said it is a melee comparison.
Staff elementalist is all about water fields and blast finishers.

The only difference between melee and ranged is that on ranged you can blast finish also at a safe distance. Even better, then.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Solandri.9640:

You should check out Elementalists some time.

I play one too. *Points down to sig.* Ele’s easily have the next best water fields, but no other water field lasts as long as Healing Spring.

And yes, they can combo well in their own fields, but their blast finishers are on pretty long timers. No sub-10 second blast finishers.

False, on staff they have Eruption which is on 6s cooldown. It is the main blast finisher of staff eles. Scepter eles have 2 blast finishers on fire. One is at 6s cooldown, the other is at 20s cooldown.

Plus, arcane elementalists have a blast finisher on 10s cooldown when in earth.

I don’t really know why Maul only gives 3 stacks of 6s vulnerability.
It is only 3% damage increase at best, which doesn’t really make sense considering that the highest damage booster via trait for GS is only 5%.

I think that increasing the duration/stacks of Maul’s vulnerability won’t make it OP while pushing GS further into viability.

5 stacks for 12 seconds seems more reasonable to me.

I’ve been using GS+LB 20/30/20/0/0 with Moment of Clarity and Soldier Amulet + Berserker Jewel, having quite good effectiveness, offering also rewards to skilled play.

Pretty balanced build.
It has control, decent damage, decent survivability and ok mobility.

evilapprentice.6379:

Why not just “Swap” the abilities in spirit?

Dagger Wave – 6 init, range 600 – Throw a multitude of daggers are your opponent, causing vulnerability, weakness or cripple (one, randomly) on critical hits (does direct damage)

Death Blossom – 4 init, range 130 – Leap into the air and spin about, shooting everyone around you and causing them to bleed (same functionality as current DB)

Not perfect, but should be easy(ish) to implement and would make both sets at least marginally better.

Well, adding a condition application to a skill is insanely easy to implement.

Also, I don’t feel that melee on pistols and ranged on daggers as dual skills (the most build-defining skill) is a good idea. It doesn’t fit their design.

There is something which really doesn’t work about those sets. That thing is the dual skill.

In real life, if you are running a condition build, then you want to use D/D but only for the dual skill, since the other ones are useless to you (probably only CnD is an exception, but it is useful in every build). If you’re running a power build, then you will rarely use #3 skill because the damage is really poor.

Same applies to the dual skill of P/P, it just looks like they misplaced them.

So, my idea is to increase the damage of Death Blossom and make it stacks vulnerability instead of bleeding, then add a short bleed/torment to unload on every pistol hit (3s, maybe).

Ta dan. D/D, P/P and condition builds are now viable.

Shalla.3967:

Most of the skills you suggested seem to be weapon based ones.

Tip: Instead of thinking of all the possible skills a certain class can use when trying to avoid an attack, focus on the weapon they’re holding and the fight’s scenario.

For example, it’s pretty easy to see a big hammer on a guardian’s hand when he swaps weapon, so you know Banish is gonna come at some point, so your best bet is to avoid melee range/attacking from the front and dodge when he gets close/turns to face you. I don’t think Banish is that badly telegraphed though.

You can also anticipate a mesmer’s shatter by the number of illusions up, the fact that these have to run towards you to shatter and, if the player is using a sword, the little Illusionary Leap’s icon below their health bar, since most shatter bursts include a Leap into Frenzy set up.

Hope that helps.

It is not that easy to read Banish.
If you compare it to Mighty Blow, which is by far less dangerous, Banish is horribly telegraphed, especially when the Guardian is an asura with tiny arms and tiny hammer.

Mesmer shatter is not easy to anticipate. Most shatter mesmer run sword, which means that clones are running sword too. Clones with sword will run towards you for the whole match, regardless if the mesmer is shattering or not.

Winds.3087:

You compare that huge purple aura around mesmer when he’s casting moa with necromancer’s mark animations? That’s… weird, to say the least.

The purple aura is nothing different from the huge amount of purple animations Mesmer normally has. Then the purple aura is tied to the character model, which means that it is pretty much unreadable on asuras (90% of the PvP population, then).

Oxygen.5918:

As for moa, it has the same animation as mass invis.

Not really.
Mass Invisibility is much much easier to read as you clearly see the mesmer raising his weapon to the sky for a considerable amount of time when casting that skill. Moa, on the other hand, has no evocative movement.

I’d like to sum up here a list of skills that, according to their effects, need a better visual clue in order to be avoided and predicted more easily.

If you think I’ve missed any skill, please answer this topic and I’ll add it.

Warrior
- Skull Crack: his effect is devastating and the animation is pretty much non-existing.

Guardian
- Banish: this skill has a potentially lethal effect, but its animation is pretty hard to read, expecially on Asuras.

Engineer
- Healing Turret: this healing skill is pretty much impossible to properly read and interrupt, considering also how strong its effect is.

Ranger
//

Thief
- Mace Head Crack: similiar to Skull Crack
- Larcenous Strike: it is just the average sword hit. Considering how strong its effect is, I think it needs a better visual clue.

Mesmer
- Moa Morph: this skill is extremely strong and its visual clue is too anonymous to be properly recognized.
- Shatter: their effects are extremely strong, but still there is no clue of them being used, allowing little to no prediction at all (excluding lucky dodge, of course).

Elementalist
//

Necromancer
- Marks: they are too easy to land and really hard to read. I think they need a better visual clue, something like Doom.

Mesmers and Eles don’t need buffs. We have enough power creep already.

Man, I have to make a topic with screenshot showing how much mesmers I see in SoloQ these days.

Looks like that into the forums people are out of reality.

redslion.9675:

Well, this if I need to fight. If not, I usually manage to escape, unless I’m heavily outnumbered.
And mesmer usually doesn’t have a reason to chase me. The worst that can happen is that he caps my point. I can then force him off with force.

Well, maybe if you build glass cannon, but I don’t like glass cannons.XD

Well, if you are leaving the fight, the Mesmer has won the encounter in any case.

If he was defending a node (quite unlikely), he succeded to hold you off for 10s, more than enough to let a teammate come to help him.

If he was assaulting a point and you were defending, then he has a sure decap or even a full cap. He won the encounter.

If he is attacking a contested point by you, then he succeed to cap it back.

So, leaving the fight is the only chance you have. The mesmer wins. If you’re not leaving, then you’re going to die to mesmer burst. The mesmer wins.

And this without counting the fact that Moa Morph cancels any other transformation elite (Plague, Lich, Tomes, Tornado etc) and kill any utility AI entity (minions, spirits, spirit weapons etc). That’s too much for a single skill.

redslion.9675:

Well, if your teammate runs away too, you will have just lost 10 seconds.

And… well, elites often change the outcome of a fight, but they are on a long cooldown. And mostly in small fights. And in 1v1 you won’t be too much damaged. Thieves’ guild is much more annoying.

Yeah, but most elites have a counter. Moa has not.
If you get Moa’ed in a 1vs1, you are doomed, unless enemy Mesmer is extremely bad.

Yeah, turning a 2vs2 fight into a 2vs1 + chicken is absolutely useless and unwanted.
Like Moa can’t change the output of a fight in just a single cast.

Guardian tomes are definitely better.

Now, tell me when we should stop with jokes and getting a little bit more serious.

Darnis.4056:

Moa is the least powerful elite skill on a 180 cooldown..

Thieve’s guild
Entangle
Spirit of nature
Lich form
Plague
Guardian Tomes.
Crate
Timewarp
Mass Invis

All of these elites are way better then moa

And here’s a list of counters for every Elive you’ve listed:

• Thieves’ Guild: kill the thieves with AoE, they are kinda squishy
• Entangle: just destroy the vines.
• Spirit of Nature: kill the spirit
• Lich Form: focus the Necromancer, as he has no healing skill while in Lich Form
• Plague: same as Lich Form, but here you can just ignore him trying to stay out of the PBAoE, since the damage output is rather low
• Guardian Tomes: do someone actually use them?
• Supply Drop: kill the turrets with AoE and stunbreak the initial stun effect
• Time Warp: move the fight away from the AoE, not that much of a counter btw, but it is a buff more than an offense, so counter are supposed to be more soft
• Mass Invisibility: guesstimate enemy position with AoEs. Same as above, not a reliable counter since it is a buff, but might works

As you can clearly see, every single Elite you’ve mentioned has a counter, with a notable exception of Moa Morph.

You get Moa’ed. Either you run away or you eat the mesmer’s burst. In both cases, Mesmer wins. No counter found.

Eliyahu.1467:

I think people in this thread don’t realize that moa is a troll skill that is more of a novelty than a useful skill.

Honestly, any mes that takes moa over time warp or mad invis is gimping his team even more.

Please, stop with this “Moa is useless” joke.
Moa is not useless.
Most Mesmer, high-level and average, have Moa Morph on they bar because that skill is amazingly strong in small-scale fights.

FirstBlood.7359:

Their argument was stupid, so is the title of the thread. However, there are good arguments why different gamemodes harm the game:

Various PvP modes will break the balance.

ANet has learnt its lesson from GW. Riot has learnt its lesson from Dominion. So should you.

Nope. Single game mode break game balance in an MMO.
That’s why guardians are a must have in any team and AoE is a problem.

Jasher.6580:

lol… oh semantics. He mentioned “dodge” as being the only “counter” so I was going along that vein of reasoning.

Well then… there are various ways to “prevent” it.

Prevention is not enough when we’re talking about a skill that shut you down for 10s.
Any heavy CC in this game has a counter (stunbreaker), except Moa. I see no reason of why Moa shouldn’t have a counter.

Jasher.6580:

He just said none of those are counters. How are they not counters? He said name one skill outside of Dodge which countered Moa. And I did… he then went on to say that none of them did.

That was bad… and Moa is fine.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/counter

v.tr.
1. To meet or return (a blow) by another blow.
2. To move or act in opposition to; oppose.
3. To offer in response: countered that she was too busy to be thorough.
v.intr.
To move, act, or respond so as to be in opposition.

What you’ve listed are not counters, they are preventions (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prevention).

All skill in this game can be prevented, not so many can be countered.
Entangle, for instance, can be countered by killing the vines or prevented by dodging the skill.
Signet of Rage can be prevented by interrupting the casting or countered by stripping the boons.
Moa Morph, as it is now, has no counter.

Jasher.6580:

You are bad. Moa is fine.

Awesome reasoning, as usual.

I’d like to have the chance to manage pets, just like how it worked with heroes back in GW1.

For the ones who don’t know, in GW1 you were able to actively control heroes through the UI, overwriting the AI decisions. You were also able to prevent the AI to use specific skills and use them manually. Also, you were able to completely control their movement.

This will raise up the Ranger’s skill cap while making the profession less frustrating.

Achilles.2197:

Why are you telling me what the GW1 mesmer did when I clearly already know that?

Mesmers are still control, they just don’t shut down opponents like they used to. However, in a group setting they still play control. In WvW it’s the glamour mesmer that’s useful to it’s team, not DPS. No, they can’t interrupt and disable as much as they used to, but their role never changed.

Blackout disabling the mesmer’s skills was irrelevant. I fused for the most part in Gw1, and having blackout hit me (or Powerblock, for that matter) after using fuse served it’s purpose, trust me.

Not to mention the gimmick spike build mesmers could use with PI/wastrels/assassin skills.

Then if you clearly know what the old mesmer did, then you are manipulating the informations in order to prove a spoiled point.

Mesmer in GW2 rarely control, in most situations they deal damage they never deamed back in GW1. The control part is nearly absent compared to the damage part and it is not more relevant compared to other profession control ability.

Blackout disabling mesmer skills is relevant, because it made both players useless for the duration of the skill. I know that Blackout was strong (it didn’t find a great use back in GW1, due to the melee range), but it had an opportunity cost you had to face with. Moa Morph is quite similiar to blackout, but it has no opportunity cost at all and can be casted at 1200 range.

Power Block is also similiar to Moa Morph, but it needs the memser to be skilled to catch the interrupt on the right skill. It isn’t shot and forget like Moa. It also had a pretty high energy cost, meaning that you can’t afford to waste the skill.

As far I know, all the spike mesmer builds has been nerfed.

Achilles.2197:

For those of you crying about Moa Morph, especially the one who compared it to the GW1 mesmer. Just stop.

Guild Wars 1 mesmers had a MYRIAD of shutdown skills that were by far more dangerous than moa morph.

Powerblock
Diversion
Blackout (disable all skills for 6 seconds on a much shorter cooldown than moa)
Psychic Instability
Shame
Mistrust
Power Lock
Power Leak
Cry of Frustration
Complicate
Leech Signet
Power Drain
Power Spike
and the list goes on

There is quite a difference between GW1 mesmer and GW2 mesmer.

First off, GW1 Mesmer actually took skills and timing to get those skills landed.
If you just used Powerblock without interrupting a skill, then that skill did nothing at all. Same applies to all of those interrupt skills you’ve listed, whose effect applied only on a successful interrupt.

Then when mentioning Blackout, which is the most similiar skill to Moa, you forgot to mention that it disabled your skills too for the whole duration of the enemy’s skill disable.

Also, another important thing you forgot to mention, is that Mesmer in GW1 covered only the control role. Once you met one Mesmer, you can expect that he will use those skills. The counterplay of those skills, also is the same (fake the casting or remove the hex).

On the GW2 mesmer, the situation is completely different.

Poplolita.2638:

In any esport or competitive games, top experienced players streams and opinion are usually taken more seriously than any kind of theorycraftings.

Top player’s opinion are as biased as community opinion, as long as they are human beings.
Theorycrafting, on the other hand, if made right, is unbiased since it relies on math-like approach (logic), not on player’s feel.

Lux.7169:

Come land it on me then. I will be home in 2 hours.

I see it as a L2P issue. I hear people telling me its too easy to land and to avoid it you basically have to be lucky. I think that’s the wrong way to prove your point. Why not just roll a mes log on and Moa me then post how Aphro is a scrub who can’t rupt or dodge Moa. I don’t care if you have 3 clones and stun me or stealth to cast it, I will still avoid it.

I mean you can continue posting about how it’s too hard for people to reliably avoid all you want… But good players seem to defy that logic. You don’t have to jump in the air or throw your arm up to have a telegraphed skill.

I am driving home now. You can add me in game and ill add you when I get home.

I’m in Europe, it’s late night here.

I won’t be there when you are home and I’ll tell you this again.
Trying to land a Moa in a 1vs1 staged situation when you are expecting Moa the whole time won’t prove your point.

Many arguments has been brought to prove you why Moa isn’t as telegraphed as you’re claiming it to be, such as:

• Aura color blends with the Mesmer theme
• Aura dimension is small on smaller character models (asuras)
• Mesmer movement isn’t particulary emphatic
• No icon shows up during the cast time above mesmer’s head
• It can be casted while stealthed

All your arguments were “come at me and let’s do a 1vs1 with me trying to dodge a skill I surely know it will come”.

You should realize that a person’s experience (yours) isn’t a valid argument, while logical reasoning and factual considerations are.
I can come here and claim to have magic powers because I know some card tricks, but that doesn’t mean that I’m saying the truth.

Lux.7169:

That’s extremely easy for me to read. Everyone I PvP with would have no problem dodging or interrupting it because of the animation.

I could distinguish that from the Mesmer heals from the clone activations from the auto attacks extremely easily and so can all the other top players and mediocre players if they knew what to look for.

I will be home and online all night if you want to duel and try to land that on me.

You are making pointless claims.

Moa Morph is not easy to read. Skills like Entangle (ranger clearly jumping in the air), Ether Feast (clear blue aura which is in contrast with the pinkiness of mesmer), Doom (clear reaper animation over the Necro’s head) or Signet of Rage (clear signer simbol above warrior’s head) are easy to read skills.

While you’re fighting a Mesmer, you’re fighting with at least 3 pinky AI entities and, of course, the mesmer himself, who has also the ability to stealth and cast Moa Morph while invisible. If you add this to the fact that PvP is overcrowded by Asura-rats, whose model (and animations) are even smaller, it is extremely hard to read that pink aura that telegraphs a Moa Morph coming.

The situation is even worse when you are fighting on a node against multiple players. In that case, reading Moa Morph is extremely hard because you don’t have only to look for the real mesmer among the clones (it happens that sometimes you target the wrong mesmer after he stealths), but you have also to pay attention to the other enemies animations and Moa Morph doesn’t clearly jump to your eyes.

If the aura was green, yellow or any other color that has contrast with the pink theme of the Mesmer (like Ether Feast), then I would agree that Moa Morph is easy to read.

You can claim that you can read Moa Morph as much as you want, but when making comparisons to some other skills, Moa Morph is quite hard to notice and in most cases, the animation fades between butterflies and pinkiness.

Lux.7169:

Dodging isn’t the only counter play. As was mentioned earlier its a telegraphed skill that is not difficult to interrupt and you can LoS obstruct or you can blind the Mesmer. Dodging is just one of the several counter plays, not the only one.

Please, avoid to spread misinformation.
The Moa Morph animation is extremely hard to read.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cqTJ2RdjJg

There is no telegraph at all. It is just an average, anonymous, pinky mesmer skill.

I’ve just came back home; time to check all the videos you’ve posted. Thank you all guys for the contributions.

Aza.2105:

TTK is not the argument. That is only part of the problem. It would be fine if the possibly existed to build a anti spike build. But gw2 doesn’t have much variety. Then we have cheesy mechanics such as clone spamming and stealth, none of which existed in gw2.

I can guarantee you, that thief and mesmer would be at the top of the QQ list if deathmatch mode actually made it to gw2. The only thing that prevents the complaining from reaching its peak is due to the fact that conquest doesn’t revolve around killing but capturing.

Its true that gw2 had semi spike builds, but you could always build against it. But there were NO skills in the game that literally took your hp from full to less than half. If a DM mode was to make it to gw2, then serious rebalancing would be needed.

PS

Backbreaker sins never bothered me, I remember rocking them. Only fragility stuck in my mind, because I didn’t know what wakittenting me when I first seen it. After I looked at the build it was easy to deal with.

That’s a problem of Mesmer and Thieves being too strong (not sure about thief damage, tbh). Their damage is high regardless of the mode they play in and a deathmatch wouldn’t stress it more as it would unstress the AoE abundance (since in TDM you’re not forced to sit in a circle).

About backbreaker, they really took your life from 500 to 0, obviously if they didn’t mess up with the combo. The only chance you had is monk catching the spike.
Fragility spike was another piece of instagib.
If you dig deeper, you’ll find that GW1 had their insta-kill builds too, obviously nerfed right after they rose.

Jharkin.9357:

I’ve been having more luck with it 1v1 then in zergs/groups and only have taken a couple of videos just for myself. Nothing real awe inspiring, but I’m just an average player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuidDAoqFtg

Nice footage, I saw you both were running perplexity.

I’m really considering to level up the warrior I’ve parked before the ranger.

Are insanely OP.

Has anyone some WvWvW footage/montage of a condi-perplexity warrior, just for the lulz?

Aza.2105:

I don’t remember any of them causing trouble. The only build I fondly remember is fragility mesmer. But they were easy to counter once you found out how they worked.

Backbreaker assassins, actually, cause quite a lot of trouble. If they managed to land the backbreaker, you’re dead if the monk didn’t catched the spike.

Anyway, GW1 was very different and had its spike builds too. Saying that TDM can’t work on GW2 because of low TTK is not a good argument.

Achilles.2197:

I agree with a lot of what you just said (most of it actually). The only 2 things I disagree with are in regards to interrupts and necros/conditions. I do not think every class should have easy access to interrupts, they should be centralized around mesmers (and if you ever played GW1, mesmers were the definition of interrupts). Mesmers in pvp were renowned for their skills at interrupting. You had to time your interrupts on key skills. It was all about precision. It was a very skilled role.

As for what you said about necros/conditions, well, necros have also been known for their inherent affinity towards condition control. They should have better incentives for using them/controlling them.

Other than that, HUGE +1

Edit: had to spellcheck

Well, to be honest, if you notice, right now pretty much every profession have access to interrupts.
They just need to encourage CCs to work more as interrupts than as stunlocks, since interrupts encourages skillplay and gives depth to the game, compared to raw stunlocks.

Of course Necros are better at condition control, but this doesn’t mean they should be better at conditions overall. Condition control is a different thing, it’s not always tied to condition builds.
A Necromancer is capable to have awesome condition control also with 0 condition damage. Just take Plague Signet, Well of Power, Dagger offhand (Deathly Swarm) or staff (Putrid Mark) and you have condition control with no need of condition damage.

Wryog.5073:

I don’t think that a 90 second cooldown ability is reliable. Tornado is just plain bad. Eles don’t have any reliable stability unless they spec in earth for it.
Also, there’s dps traits in the arcana tree. Why would someone take bunker traits over dps traits if they want to go dps? Without full boon duration runes the duration on protection from that 1 trait isn’t really good. And it’s definitely not enough to make up for the low HP in dps spec.
Guardians and elementalists have almost 0 reliable condition cleanse in dps specs. Casting a full Ether renewal as an elementalist in a dps spec is probably going to hurt more than help. Also conditions still damage you in mist for so that definitely doesn’t help right now. Changing the meta is a possibility but they could just give guardians and elementalists viable condition specs. Right now they both lack damaging conditions for a real condition spec.
Also I think we both agree that focus needs buffing. It’s simply terrible.

Well, a 90 second cooldown 6s protection, stability and stunbreak is definitely more reliable compared to a 3s on granmaster trait.

DPS traits in the arcane tree are not that worth picking compared to defensive traits. Arcane Mastery and Arcane Retribution are the only ones and I think that only a fool would take those traits over Elemental Attunement or Renewing Stamina.

If you want to run full dps, you can but you’ll die horribly as much as every full dps spec does. Warriors and Necromancers are as squishy as dps elementalists. The only difference is that they can last a couple of seconds more because of the higher HP pool, not a big deal anyway.

My ideal meta is when there is no profession with incredibly high damage, neither condition or power.

In my ideal meta, raw damage can’t kill a thing without the pressure provided by conditions, while conditions can’t kill a player without raw damage.

In my ideal meta, strong skills are slow and highly telegraphed and all professions have access to tools to interrupt them.

In my ideal meta, you can drop a guardian to take another profession as a bunker.

In my ideal meta, CCs are short-lasting but with low cooldowns, pretty much like thief’s headshot. Every profession should have access to one or two long-lasting CCs at best on high cooldown.

In my ideal meta, if I want to play burst damage, I’m not forced to pick either a Mesmer or a Thief and if I want to play conditions, I’m not forced to pick a Necro, or a Engineer or a Ranger.

Glass-cannon power meta is as unhealthy as much as condition meta. It is stupid and skill-less on the offensive side and some professions with high evasion access have obvious advantages.