Guild Wars 2

TIDES OF DECAY sounds epic. That’s something I’ve always been wanting and suggested over the year in different places. Something like that where it’s dynamic and player-based on a large scale where players feel like they’re really influencing the land and the world, making history and controlling their fates.

Also the factions/titles and whatnot are cool. I’ve always felt that for one, when we complete the personal story we should get a Vigil Warmaster or whatever Order we’ve joined at the very least xD

a t s e.9614:

Ok but a 5 warrior party is beyond ridiculous , it has been proven that you don’t need more than 2 . I agree that some builds are left behind but they can’t change it , it would be too late and would take too much time to change all boss mechanics to discourage zerk . They could add harder dungeons in the future though .

LOL yeah, i was exagerrating. Agreed, this post of mine is largely very speculative, i don’t know how possible it is to implement. Is it possible to change things over time or just change things for the future

In the newer living story, we see tequatl, fractals, clockheart etc, bosses that have more “advanced” mechanics needing different strategy, and we have that gimmicky (imo) things where the mobs need to be stomped after downed…. > < lol, maybe in the future there’s more variation

Or are there mobs, like we see the Toxic Bulwart, Toxic Sorcerer, blah blah, some mobs are characteristically ranged, and some are melee only etc, do they already have a mob class system in place where they can make some relatively universal changes to heighten the variety in their design

But i guess this is an issue that needs to be brought up and dealt with later

Gorwe.9672:

…

Those are some great observations. For the second point, I’d say that might have to do with the mob AI however. if you don’t touch the classes so much, and you touch up the mob AI so that some varieties of mobs are susceptible to DoT more than DD like the examples I mentioned, for example, where they have strong armor and armor build up resistance against heavy damage, (like glancing on higher level mobs while levelling), but the condition (an example of DoT) will melt those kinds of mobs, then we will have a variety of needs for different types of players even in PvE

I don’t know if its possible tho, can we just touch up the NPC enemy mobs AI and designs, emphasize different types of mobs, i.e. give the mobs very detailed and characteristic class types, without touching the actual class balances which affects WvW/PvP, to make PvE have more variety

a t s e.9614:

$$$$ cash money zerk farm $$$
Ok dude first of all , how we can have build diversity if there’s no Tank? No healer ? If soldier gear was a requirement to survive anything that would be lame . I hate taking the dmg when I can dodge it . Look I agree that zerker i the only way to go but so what? You can farm your zerk set in cof\coe\arah very quickly .

It’s like refusing to adapt . Exemple in gw1 , you join a fowSC speed run and they want you to go T2 instead of MT, what’s wrong with changing your build to help your party?

Lol it has nothing to do with me or people changing their build TO zerker. But the fact is that certain classes are excluded or more wanted, because they deal straight damage. Like classes like a necro are discouraged from speed run dungeons, because they dont zerker big numbers like a warrior. For example, people would prefer to run like five zerker warriors for a speed run… that’s excluding the rest of the community who likes to play other classes.

The build and class diversity is to be inclusive and encouraging to all players. Is everyone supposed to run a zerker warrior? There’s people who like to cast conditions, theres mesmers who like to use tricks and utilities, there’s other classes that are good at different things. Like thieves also feel they don’t have much use in dungeons or a WvW zerg. It would make PvE boring if everyone was supposed to run the same things, and Gw2 is about playing how you want, that’s why you have an open world PvE where people level and play the way they want, or else it would be a lobby with dungeon/instances.

There’s people who also don’t prefer to play dungeons and like to run other things. There’s people who don’t really farm either and prefer to look at scenery. The game has a variety of players. Saying zerker only speed run dungeons… is changing the game Anet designed. Then all I would have to say, is play a different game where that’s all it is.

Some people just prefer other ways of playing. Whats the harm in creating more diversity? What’s the harm in creating different challenges? it would be pretty cool if you could do a speed run with a team of zerker, condi, and other forms of players, all working together, yet can pull off fast runs, (assuming the mob / boss design has changed, because condis will actually speed things up)

And i’m by no means saying you need to run PVT armor… I’m saying different variety of situations for different variety of strategies.

Also, healers or whatever have nothing to do with this here, we’re talking about the damage and PvE AI just being plain health point pool to whack at. If anything, that is creating a more boring game.

Suggestions: Mob Diversity & AI = Build Diversity
I know many are of the opinion that Conditions should be viable and so should CC, and other features you would use in WvW. If so, classes and builds will be more diverse and accepted, into a speed run for example, in order to deal with enemies.

An example of what I’m thinking would be nice is if there are different types of mobs that are REALLY different.

- Mob type that has aegis reapplying at a certain interval (maybe other skills) and tough armor that regular zerker gear can’t really put enough damage and condition damage would actually be faster on them (think if you took a condition build into a higher level zone while levelling up – i did this alot recently while levelling my condi warrior to push my limits and skills – your normal attacks would be glancing, but the condition still ticks for full and melted higher level mobs probably faster than a guy in low level zerker gear).

- On the other hand, have other type of mobs that would have condition removal every few seconds or even have more advanced AI that responds to condition stacks, but be weak towards direct damage.

- Furthermore, for the most part, in PvE, it doesn’t matter what condition you would do, there are only rare mobs that are “immune to burning”. I’d suggest to add more of this, where certain mobs are resistant (maybe not immune) to certain individual conditions while having weakness and being extremely vulnerable to other conditions. I.e. a mob in Frostgorge Sound like in HotW would be extremely vulnerable to burning and burning could inflict like X% more damage or something, while having – X% duration to chill. (Think Pokemon LOL).
If a party wants to do a speed run for CoF, then you would bring a class that can apply chill and it would actually damage them a lot and be faster than with full zerker teams.

- Bosses also can have a variety, ones that will be able to be CC’d but have an extremely large health pool and armor mechanics (like the clockheart boss, Dredge fractal mining suit boss or tequatl, building up armor etc), and zerker damage wouldn’t be effective through their armor, so that conditions are necessary for sustained damage, so that while you can CC it, you can’t kill them that easily, they will just hurt less.

- And the Bosses that we already have, where you can’t really CC with defiant stacks but you can aim for solid big damage.

- There are probably many other ways to create diversity and blend WvW/PvE class diversity together

- The point here in PvE is less about survivability but can be summarized as Direct Damage / Damage Over Time, to balance the two of those, so different classes and strategies that deal damage differently will actually be balanced

As potentially difficult to do something like that, as well as all the balancing that would need to be done afterwards, dungeons for example should still be able to be “speed run” but with different chemistry of classes for different dungeons (class balance should be on its own, and PvE should be balanced to reasonably fit your class changes) things like that will open up the diversity for players in PvE to be accepted, not excluded, create more thought behind attempting a PvE activity, like planning out a team (with condition classes extra effective against certain mobs) for dungeons, therefore changes done to classes and balances, won’t be too different in PvE, and we can enjoy more diversity and strategy.

I’m sure there’s those who supports optimizing Zerker, but what are your thoughts? I would love to see different ways of playing PvE be viable

This discussion probably has already happened and points have probably been brought up but there’s many threads on the forums of course haha

There was a discussion elsewhere about the class balance preview, that made me think some and I’d like to offer some thoughts.

Class balance changes triggers a lot of response as always, however one particular response brings up a reoccuring issue we have with PvE, which is the zerker meta and some classes feeling completely left out and inferior, compared to speed runs done with zerker warriors, guardians, maybe some utility classes like summon weapon eles, a toolbox mesmer, etc. Of course opinions vary but for the most part, everyone will tell you zerker. Even to some extent it degrades the community to a very exclusive environment, asking what class you play, if you have zerker gear etc.

I play WvW as well, and I love it, and personally ever since i started WvW, (used to be zerker) i started running WvW roaming builds in PvE and do phenomenally, in any PvE situation, surviving well but dealing tons of damage as well. In fact my stats are close to my zerker stats while having survivability, but most people will not agree and will focus on “optimizing” big numbers by full zerker.

So the issue here is the balance between WvW / PvE really, PvP is slightly a different ball game but the same issue is here because i believe it’s the fact that PvE is actually lacking and too far behind

I don’t think balance between three game modes will ever be perfectly achieved, Arenanet has always taken on a lot of responsibility and set high expectations and goals for themselves, which I commend them for trying hard.

However, balance, imo, can be much closer and that way it would be more comfortable.

[Continued]

My mes for a while it was in the white, then it was in the red,

and then today I just changed the skins and dyed black after getting new hair

I think it looks pretty!

http://dulfy.net/2013/10/29/gw2-toxic-krait-historian-achievement-guide/

sorry for external link but it’s all here!

I dont have hopes for it staying no matter what they say, i won’t believe it til i see it LOL things are so temporary with living story. If the problem is solved, yeah what would happen with the tree and would the dungeon still exist to be ran… if the dungeon still exists then the problem is still there and the corruption should be spreading no?

I find this realy funny because there were people on these forums and we were all mentioning how we’d love to see cinematic cutscenes and so on. And there is it. However, it’s of course not crazy complicated or graphically intense, and most of their dialogue isn’t even in the cutscene XD but it did give a nice mood, and the personalities and how they talk was kind of interesting. it has this funny edge to it, like two friends joking around about something serious. i liked that touch

OMg yeah i cant wait for that staff

Yeah i was super disappointed and super angry cuz the male version looks so bad a** but then theres female which honestly looks like some of the crafted default light armor cloth stuff… its HEAVY ARMOR, wheres the heavy armor look? LOL its like cloth!

Imo, it would be really interesting if the tower created a vertical progression, instead of the usual. like literally fighting your way up the tower. If you’ve seen the anime Sword Art Online, or some other stories that involves a tower that consists of multi levels that are all dungeons basically, so you have like Fractals but vertically xD and you can keep progresssing and unlocking way points on each level, and each level would be somewhat different with different bosses maybe little tents and base of operations until you reach the top where it better be epic!

Thats my dream haha it would be interesting because it would be vertical, so its different than most content, (i loved the bazaar canthan update bc the map was so vertical, a nice fresh change), it would be a saved dungeon progression, and an ongoing exploration process

What do you want to see in this tower?

The Scarlet content though on the surface seems ilke a random funny insane bad guy, have you read the lore story? Scarlet has a HUGE tie in to the main core lore with Elder Dragons, perhaps the forest dragon, Nightmare Court, the Dream, Pale Tree, etc and even perhaps the Thaumanova Reactor meltdown and WP’s belief of the asura story with portals to a different dimension and people like the aetherblades and steam monsters crossing portals from different time/space… thats HUGE. but obviously it wasn’t enough in game to address that. But the scarlet update I would say is a huge and important development, not one of the silly ones.

I’m excited for the krait, not because of the krait, but because they are working with the nightmare court… which ties into everythign we’ve been having Scarlet, Twilight Assault etc we might be moving towards the whole awakening of the forest dragon stuff

There’s some people or builds that go without blink, actually i’ve seen some successful mesmers run without decoy, blink or like… anything… and i’m like… how do you manage? but they seem to do really well LOL. i’d personally never go without blink and decoy both xD im a kiter

khani.4786:

I love the web stories and am glad they’ll continue, but I do agree that it’d be great to have them in game as well.

Maybe a book on a table in our home instance that logs living story “discoveries”. Or a room of story memories in our home instance. We could have Majorie’s book (even if I deleted mine), the sanctum model, and a bookshelf where the short stories we’ve earned appeared once we get the achievement from the different segments. If you brought someone into your home instance you could then show off your collection. Some of the books (like Majorie’s) would be interactive, others could just be text with pictures. That would be awesome.

Ahhhh that’s such a great idea! they already give home instance mining nodes, this would be quite a nice solution, and give more purpose to home instances ^^

Astral Projections.7320:

Maybe they should have a ‘lore library’ in one of the cities. Shelves with interactable books where ANet could put lore. Maybe interacting with a book could start a cut scene that shows old lore from past living story events, like the scrying pool in Guild Wars 1.

This reminds me of the library in Durmand Priory, there’s like a ton of books in there to interact with and i actually read all of them LOL. it would be cool to have collective libraries with all in game books and of course the website stories to interact with. It would not only be accessible but it would b really neat and actually make an interesting role-play ish atmosphere, like my character is hanging in the library reading books XD esp if the library looks impressive. that’s totally fun

Randulf.7614:

I’ve been quite open about how I dislike the web stories. I (and this is entirely personally speaking ofc) think the quality of writing is well below a company of Anet’s capability and I also agree with the thread that this lore should be in game. Crucial storytelling should be prioritised in game, then expanded on if need be on the web stories. Currently it feels entirely that the story is only driven on these web stories.

It is great that this is being addressed, although it feels slightly like catching up with the horse that has already bolted. I’m still unclear why LS was launched w/o a basic structure in place first.

In terms of addressing this going forward, surely it would help just having NPC’s actually progress the story if we talk to them. Eg, if Scarlet is this Asuran scholared/graduated person the web story made her out to be, why not have lots of Rata Sum NPC’s discussing her? The herald or mail could point us in their direction and we can feed on whatever information we like.

Why not each time we get a mail, we get sent to our Order HQ or even just The Priory? A dedicated NPC each 2 weeks/month could be updating via a text bubble about what is going on the World. They can give us background on current affairs or even hint about movements across the continent that may end up being later LS tie ins. The HQ’s are underused atm and this would address this as well.

While I don’t agree on the writing quality as much, because the stories on the web really are treated as a kind of a “side thing”, and they do probably lack the time, manpower etc to really put forth some crazy writing like the quality of the novels, I agree that the stories shouldn’t be so much of a “side thing” and it should be in the game. The library books would be an easy and quick fix, but indeed, ultimately, the best thing is for us to talk to NPCs and discover the real story. Maybe also implement achievements related to lore digging /clue searching. However, some of the website stories written, cover some information that would probably not make sense if it was told from NPCs… like Scarlet’s experiment, with what sounds like only the asura scientist in the room, and now that the asura is dead, who can truly tell that story? As well Scarlet’s vision being described, would be something only Scarlet knows. It would have to be told from a third person omniscient perspective. That story was super important to game lore as well, and without it, it really makes Scarlet less important or seemingly random.

That brings me to the thought of why Anet is writing website stories. That is, some information would just NOT MAKE LOGICAL SENSE if it was in the game. Like Scarlet’s story, something only she knows? How can it appear in game as a book in the library? LOL. They also don’t have the resources to make real omniscient cinematics/ cutscenes to tell those stories

But i do agree we need more links to our affliated Orders… on the other hand why cant we get Order ranks as titles :P Vigil Warmaster etc

Read the patch notes? or check sites that give info like dulfy etc etc or your server forums or youtube or many other sources

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-15-2013/first#post3026412

Open World
In the Krytan areas of Queensdale, Kessex Hills, and Gendarran Fields, the Haunted doors have returned. This time, there are two varieties: the green Mad King doors and the red-purple Bloody Prince doors. Upon interaction, each brings one of several occurrences: a trick-or-treat bag can appear, or an event will start where players will need to defeat an intrusion of either the Mad King’s army of candy-corn elementals, plastic spiders, and gargoyles or the Bloody Prince’s army of skeletons, mummies, and ghosts.

The Mad Realm can be entered through the Haunted doors that appear in Queensdale, Kessex Hills, and Gendarran Fields. The Mad King and Bloody Prince doors will transport players to the west and east docks above the Mad King’s Labyrinth respectively. The Lunatic Boatmaster can bring you to the Lunatic Inquisition or the Mad King’s Clock Tower. Players can also interact with the portal seal on the ground to travel to the labyrinth below.

You mean maybe a pop up window like “Would you like to enter the Mad Realm?” But this isn’t something Anet is wrong for not doing lol, that isn’t a requirement. interacting is the responsibility of players… this scenario of interacting with something accidentally, happens in different places not just this patch. Especially when many players are downed and you accidentally revive people lol that happens a lot! The interact button will appear on ur screen and you should check to see what ur doing before doing it. If you’re looting, there is the AoE loot key bind to use. So this is completely your responsibility here

The website stories are good, I like reading it on the site, but I also think they should copy the same story content to be accessible in the game. For example in Ebonhawke you have like… over 10 segments of The Founding lore/story/history as in game books to interact with and read through, though not everyone will read it, at least it is accessible in game. In the game you could also have clues/pointers about where to read it, for example it would be next to wherever the objective starting star location is for the living story update, (which is shown on our maps from our in game mail).

or you could even make a new achievement section for reading, and put every in game book to interact with in those achievements, so people can work to collect all the achievements

I just think it is a simple enough solution that is easy to implement and will help more people to understand the lore. For example Scarlet’s story during that update was tremendously intriguing and important to the lore. Those who read on the site or watched Wooden Potato’s lore videos for example would pick up a lot from it, but yet people who missed that, will think Scarlet is another random addition that has nothing to do with the real lore

Unless you really really really mess up really really really badly and blow all ur CD all at once…. Which should never happen as there’s a billion defensive things you can do if u have trouble staying alive…. With decent play you should be fine. Blackwater is actually one of the safest and most well balanced builds you can take to WvW roaming.

What might contribute to stupid mistakes is not knowing the opponents class or build, like at all, I admit I was downed once cuz of something like that

The TP after the last TA patch started to not work for me consistently. Always giving a loading circle that spins forever beefore stopping to show a blank page. Logging out and back in, HAS NOT worked either. Sometimes a rare chance of perhaps 20% the TP will be working. this is frustrating and i’ve been able to do nothing much in game aside from pestering friends to do transactions for me and sending them the amount of gold necessary etc. this has got to be fixed. the TP hasn’t been very good in general at all, and will bug out before too, the design needs to be fixed

I don’t rmbr seeing effects on the gs skin, i might be wrong, but that sort of skin… if you get a final rest staff, that’s pretty much what you’d want on a necro… lol why shouldn’t we have more halloween spooky vampiric things on other classes? It’s not exclusive to necro because necro can choose to dress all flowery, dye themselves pink if they wanted to! XD

colesy.8490:

How is telling them GS is bad make us elitists?

You are why I hate this forum.

I’m not the one saying anyone is elitist but if anyone has an opinion that GS is bad, i think that is an unnecessary comment. I can understand if some players don’t prefer to use it, don’t like it or whatever, but it is not a bad weapon, or a weapon for baddies etc. It’s there for our build variety. There are some people who build great builds with gs and decided on gs after mastering all the weapons. Theres many builds that are extremely risky, and compact crazy amount of dps, at the sacrifice of defensiveness i.e. with a staff or PU torch or so on, and they play that build well enough even in wvw (likely more roaming). In order to play a risky build like that well, they are not bad at all. I myself didn’t want to go with gs til a shiny skin convinced me otherwise, and then reworked myself to use it and am enjoying it and is proving to be effective. I will still switch out to other weapons when the utility needs it. But no weapon is truly bad if you can make it work, nor does it make a player bad, if they can rock the class with any weapon

I use staff in my power phantasm builds, just bc its highly defensive, and is just amazing in fights to keep you alive and mobile. it’s also a close quarters/medium range weapon cuz of chaos storm and faster staff bounces, when enemies get close. The warlock phantasm will work with power phantasm builds but the other condi things will just be some icing. basically it is very versatile, and will help in more challenging situations, for example 1vX, and harder one shot PvE bosses that might be a dangerous fight or for protecting an ally when needed, especially with blast finishers, but in general you use it for its defensive ability and mobility

They can give a CD, like they have with veil and so on, as long as the swiftness buff is on you can’t get it again, i don’t think that’s hard to implement at all… and no ones going to stick around a line to get swiftness over and over if theres a CD, cuz you’d be getting nowhere lmao. if the swiftness is for combat, there’s no reason why we can’t run over it again if it’s still there

That was one of the best achievement rewards. The fiery book that lights up your path is really cool. I had to bust it out this year for fun but I feel everyone should have a chance at it, or perhaps equal or better achieve rewards.

It’s great actually, I rmbr asking this exact same question a while back and seeing the question every now and then haha

It’s actually wonderful esp against many enemies or in Zerg situations or running thru siege and other massive combat scenarios. While roaming its more situational you’d need to proc the blocks off of ur own bounce back projectile sometimes if the enemy has no projectiles. So solo it’s a little harder to help.

Others will just opt for other skills cuz its more versatile or easily applied etc like feedback and already having focus reflects n whatnot…

It’s a good skill but a bit too specific that makes it harder to be applied

Lol I was running around thinking I had -42% inc dmg lol now with the fix I think I’ll be feeling even better

I essentially run the same philosophy, a power phantasm build that uses PU and is quite tanky/boon-full and has alot of mobility, as it’s kiting centric and has insane survivability and outlasts enemies. different weapons and play style no doubt. but you might want to look at blackdevil or my own, just for some ideas. while blackdevil has some condi hybrid, i don’t go for condi. my build has worked for me and i always keep going back to it, tho it doesnt look perfect on paper http://tiny.cc/prismage but essentially a same power-tanky-stealth philosophy. the 5 in the first line can be moved actually

I also find it would be lacking in condi removal so, I’ve used sigil of generosity and you can always swap to lemongrass poultry food even in mid-combat to lessen condi duration. condi removal on heal also helps. the use of my staff and all the stealth helps with proccing all the boons like aegis, regen, -39% inc damage. even with everything together tho its still lacking a bit on condi, when facing something with huge condi bursts like necro. In that case, I would respec for a torch build

However, I’m considering how to work into a condi hybrid build, without changing weapons bc i love the kiting xD

I don’t play condi build. I have around 3.5k attack and mainy go power phantasm. But I have no trouble against warriors and they will often run from me, and yes when they run they probably can get far away fast

1) I run the PU concept still, lots of boons and defensiveness with the stealths, veil, decoy, MI

2) I run staff which has super essential phase retreat, chaos storm which helps u defend when theyre close on you, in addition to phase retreat there’s my blink

3) both my weapons are ranged so I keep my distance and keep them chasing, with the dodge food. Learn to move not in one direction getting away from them but running circles around them, dodging right through them and their moves timed right, etc etc, they can catch u if it’s a race but they can’t if you’re ducking through and around and so on zipping all over the place.

So recap, ur blinks instant distance makers, multiple dodges, stealth to lose target, and many tanky boons, and I have 2.5k toughness, if you run sword you have a spammable blurred frenzy evade, you have off hand sword block or scepter block. You have invuln shatter to fall back on… with all that you have more than enough not to be affected by warriors or melee classes in general

SuLor.2840:

I am having a similar dilemma, Sunrise is by far my favorite legendary, I think it looks so pretty. But Greatsword isn’t my favorite weapon for my mesmer, I actually prefer staff and sword/x. I’ve thought about getting bolt, but then I’d want two as when I go sword/sword I want my swords to match, plus bolt just doesn’t excite me, and bifrost isn’t my favorite either.

Sigh. . . looking forward to these new legendaries they are supposed to be coming out with, hopefully a staff I can love, or even better a 1h sword I can really really love.

What’s funny is I finished levelling comfortably with my staff + sword/focus or sword/x and then i got a nice looking greatsword and i changed my build and adapted back into the gs playstyle just for the sword… LOL but now i love my gs/staff kiting build hahaha of course i still keep all those weapons handy to swap to

Mesmers don’t need a rework, I see many good players who are good at defeating mesmers or at least have an even chance at it. It’s just the fact that most people who main a mesmer or can play a mesmer tend to be able to handle its gameplay. People will say it has a low skill floor but i don’t find that true. I think people who like to play the mesmer or likes its playstyle tends to be a slightly decent player who can micro manage (Some ppl would like to say its spamming) But compared to something more straight forward, mesmers is constant button work and movement. We have a lot of utility and evasion and helpful things for us to stay alive, but its not that easy, you still have to do a lot of work. Take a super tanky warrior or guardian for example, they can stand and just take the mesmers hits. i’ve seen necros, good or bad, just pop a death shroud to get away from a zerg, thieves go perma stealth and get extremely far away. Mesmers have what they have in order to survive. That’s the class design. Mesmers in order to survive need to make use of all their skills, clones etc. Imo, if someone likes to main their mesmer, they are relatively skilled at the not so straightforward gameplay of mesmers, the button work and reflex and strategy. Everyone complains that mesmers have lack of dps in numbers compared to other classes, even our phantasms, do nothing compared to other straightforward dps classes, the way a mesmer can take someone down depends on their skill. Mesmers also have to sacrifice a lot to just have some condition removal, so you might find many mesmers who are susceptible to condition damage. anyway basically, mesmers perhaps averages with a slightly higher skill level of players. If someone is not a skilled player, they would probably be the ones who complain about mesmers being weak, and end up not playing it. The ones you face, are the ones who like the niche style of mesmer gameplay and find themselves good at it. However, there are many good players out there who will do fine against mesmers. It comes down to skill imo

Yeah pretty much only for fun :P which I don’t mind at all personally lol, if I had it on warrior I’d actually be annoyed at all the blade trails obscuring parts of the fight, imo XD Really up to the person, whatever they wanna do, I don’t feel my gs is a waste at all, i’m satisfied with just running around with it and doing tricks for fun, cuz when it comes down to combat, it’s not about the animations, i’d be focused on the actual fight and doing well, i’m not really concerned bout what i’m holding XDD

I think the idea is viable in pvp or wvw, sometimes some ppl have too fast of reactions/reflexes and instinctively are tabbing between enemies or auto-targetting enemies even and throwing down attacks, in a fast paced fight and scenario. It would be part of the mesmer concept of confusion, the foe would likely mess up and deal dmg to the next red name label. As well, it’d be nice for the few seconds if it means the new friendlies don’t receive damage and the now red name label enemies can. The duration and other details would have to be worked out to not be too OP

I think you probably have decent traits. What is your gear like? Do you have toughness other than the traits? Other than that, what about your utilities, do you have enough to get away? What about your weapons?

Warriors and thieves are the easiest class for me because I run a kiting build, I stay at ranged and with so much mobility and utility, they will never land more hits than necessary, with some toughness you’re sure to survive.

You have to understand the warrior probably needs to stick to you to deal damage so you need to keep that in mind. And also that the mesmer has a ton of mobility and escapes. You’ll want to stay moving and at range, and always just out of his range, while popping in to deal damage while you are evading (i.e. blurred frenzy and shatters) for short periods of times and bursts.

The staff is a spectacularly defensive weapon, it is also viable in close quarters, suddenly pop down a chaos storm around you granting you protection, regen, aegis etc and then pop out with phase retreat etc, I find that its especially nice to surprise them as they jump onto you, with weapon swap to staff with like a on swap sigil like hydromancy or something to CC them while you get away

Just keep moving, and definitely only let them in range of you when you’re ready to i.e. aegis, block, evasion, shatter, etc.

As for thieves, you’ll have to learn to expect their coming out of stealth, for that hit and i.e. you got your chaos storm, blurred frenzy, distortion shatter, a decoy/other stealth, if you time those things right, a few seconds after they’ve gone into stealth they’re probably not going to get their hit in. I’d be more wary of non-stealth condi evasion healy thieves

I run a stealth heavy build, if you’re finding you’re still not doing so well, I’d suggest going PU, 30 chaos trait line and going with decoy, veil, blink, mass invis and a torch (if you want that fourth), itll be proccing regen, protection, aegis, in my own build i also have -3% per illusion so i have -39% damage almost always and can take on outnumbered fights. With your disappearing acts and teleportations and boons… warriors pose absolutely no threat, as long as you go for some condi removal if its against a condi warrior

I agree with your ideas, i think similar ideas have been talked about before, though not sure whether where it should go, like whether its OP in trait form or whatnot, but I too believe the concept of the mesmer does include the mind control/confusion, it would be awesome to be able to flip enemy / friendly targets, that is a very practical and good way of doing the mind control thing

colesy.8490:

The two reasons to not get greatsword are that it is bad on a mesmer, and that you won’t be seeing it that much because they don’t swing it around.

Actually you CAN swing it. I swing it around all the time by doing a nice little item swap trick with the Jotun Greatsword consumables from dredgehaunt cliffs LOL I got like 200 of these to do 100b and “whirling wrath” with my mesmer’s Sunrise that’s how i feel good and watch my mesmer swing it and the pretty blade trails LOL.

I also know a bunch of other tricks that makes it really really fun.

I think it’s worth it anyway, the gs looks nice just even running around, jumping around and making the blade trail behind you, and on certain maps the gs or effects in general are especially intense and it literally shines so bright, almost white, and hurts your eyes, like i.e. queensdale, malchor’s leap, etc

For looks no doubt, I’d say go with a legendary gs if you’d like the shine. If you’re not especially into the shiny-ness, then you can choose your others. I think the Quip is a winner because its so jokes and trolly and fun

IGN: Reina Takayama

Server: Sanctum of Rall

Playstyle: Adaptable PvX – Nowadays its like Chat 60% (LOL), PvE 25% open world, dungeons, etc, WvW 15% roaming, small group, zerg etc

Role: Scholar/Instructor, Experienced mesmer and I love helping and can help teach players who are learning the class and love organizing events, while I still have more to improve and different play styles or more unique builds to try as well

Play time: Approx 5 AM – 1PM, 6PM – 8PM PDT/PST Server most days

Arius.7031:

How do you deal with hammer warriors? In my experience, while this build is epic against most things, it’s still inferior to the hammer warrior. I just can’t break stuns that many times, and they are just so freakishly tough that it takes forever to kill them.

I run similar traits but gs/staff, which is a kiting monster, and warriors (any build) are the easiest class to deal with. I had a duel with a zerg busting commander warrior, those tanky CC ones with hammer etc, and he could never catch me or did i run out of stun breaks, I was always at range, always keeping my distance from him and with aegis, regen, -39% inc damage, CC hammer doesn’t pose a threat. Staff phase retreat, blink, decoy, and then the stealth here and there, running around. I am moving towards a stronger hybrid condi build that has a torch that brings extra stealth to the table. currently doing something that has worked for me personally, http://tiny.cc/prismage but going to a potential http://tiny.cc/prismage2 So yeah, I think a staff will give you that upperhand with stunbreaks and escape against something like hammer warriors or things with lots of CC if you need it

we do lack some tagging options in zvz, but i have no problems staying alive, i have about 3.4k attack, 2.4k armor, 16.5k hp, with zerker and knight mix gear (mostly zerker), while staying stacked with a zerg busting commander taking down double our size, i’ve always been one of the last standing. might have to do with my PU and other synergistic traits, that give me alot of aegis, protection, regen which procs protection, which is constant even while i’m on my own, especially with a zerg it’s always there… i’ve had no issues staying alive, but tagging yeah its slow i reckon i should swap to a 1h sword and just swing it to tag things lol

I’d say mesmer is pretty well balanced, in a good place, it’s not like completely OP, but it definitely doesnt suck and you can adapt into diff situations. Certain builds are getting quite popular and people always say how strong it is, cuz when you build that way you’re pretty much a guardian/necro/thief hybrid xD theres a lot of ppl who hate fighting mesmers… which says how its pretty nice in general. but nothing like the necros that everyone thinks is OP xD

Haha, I know theres many build threads and stickies and stuff :P I took a brief scan but ya know there’s so much it’s hard to find all the options available on the official forums. I’d also like some personal opinions from different voices

The ranger was my first character but only for like a month and I’ve been maining mesmer ever since. Mesmer play style really fits me but I refreshed the look of my ranger and think I might try to play ranger again.

I do both PvE and WvW, which I mainly do with mesmer but I’m interested in creating a ranger that is bunker if possible. There used to be the Regen builds but I’ve heard things changed a lot. I don’t really care about damage as much as I have my other characters for damage but I don’t really have something thats like totally tanky (if thats possible) without rolling a guardian or something like that

In WvW I would probably want to bring this zerg busting, so maybe some support or traps? CC? And while roaming maybe just to hold enemies off for friends who can hit hard?

What options are there? Redirecting to pet tanking? Boons? Regen? Evasion? Chill, cripple, CC? There’s diff options it seems for rangers, at the same time the traits aren’t that eureka moment, tasty looking

Hawk.3574:

I still have 2 rolls of toilet paper left. You never know when you may need some. =P

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toilet_Paper

Yeah that’s the best thing ever! I used up all mine So jelly of people that kept as souvenir XD I hope its back this year lol i need to stock up mwahaha

I went to my bank today and realized I still have my Candy-powered Meter and Mad King book backpack. The backpack was really cool cuz it lit up the way in dark places permanently when you have it equipped

On another note, I remember volunteering by running tours and escorts to help new or low level players and people new to the living story idea to get their book/clue achievements. And then someone gave me the freaking scythe staff skin as a token of appreciation. I will forever remember that, though I feel like it was too much, it helped prove the new living story direction anet is going really promoted a sense of community and cooperation. I still have that scythe skin, and I used it cause I would feel guilty just selling a gift away xD

Then there’s the witch outfit and all sorts of stuff, that made me realize the halloween update last year perhaps left me the most stuff all over my account

What were your favourite souvenirs that you’ve kept or memories from last year?

And hmmm, would our candy meters be useful this time LOL

I wouldn’t say it works or anything cuz all the tabs/pages loaded once after i logged in, but then after a while it stopped working again. It spins forever and then shows ablank page. This error is still re-occuring and has not been resolved by Anet. This also has not been happening before the patch (as often). As of right now, today, nothing loaded. The TP activity is quite critical to gameplay, I’ve been needing to convert my gold into gems, sell items, and buy items, while the market is moving without us

Still the same issue over the entire week. Sometimes it loads but most of the time pages are blank.

- This happened after the patch.
– The TP design in general always had little issues and errors and bugs

That’s ridiculous but imo, it should’ve been solved much earlier. It doesn’t matter that he’s there, he’s not gonna be able to do a thing.

Get the other guild to murder him. Done. Don’t need to even talk to him

GvG is WvW, there’s no difference, there’s zerg busting tactics and confrontations between two guild forces on open field, you could technically find out the raid time of a guild and then appear at the same time and confront them, arranged guild fights, if they weren’t GvGing then perhaps both guilds might be capping things on maps anyway so its good to keep them out of ppt for the time being, that would be part of WvW strategy too.

Jamais vu.5284:

takatsu.9416:

I don’t intend to be another QQ’er.

But you do QQ.
Believe it or not, but ability to coordinate in a larger group is a player skill too.
If you (and every other player present) can’t do that, you might be not as skilled you think you are.
Play some WvW, for perspective. Dodging hugely telegraphed attacks while putting out maximum DPS like you do in every other piece of PVE content is not the only measure of a player’s skill level.

I am a WvW’er . LOL. i’ve been in very amazing zerg busting guilds, and wiped outnumbering forces. The amount of coordination in those encounters are amazing. Tequatl, is COMPLETELY different. it is not the same game. it is near impossible to have everyone coordinated, and those that are, like BG, is a small percentage (at the moment), there are many afk’ers reserving spaces, there are under levelled, under geared, people who don’t WP back or just don’t listen for whatever reason, the segments depend largely on the skill of 6 people on turrets etc etc. Some servers have it better, some servers can’t get people on TS, some servers just have everyone leaving bc of one or two success cases etc. There are too many people or not enough people, it is not one tight knit guild who are there in WvW for a guild raid or pugs in WvW willing to follow a commander. It is a different ball game. WvW is not the same. We have WvW commanders on teq maps, but you’ll see that the commanders behave very differently. You don’t move the zerg around and veil and portal and roll the frontline through, static fields and aoe heals (well u do heals here too), you don’t have anybody on arrow carts and spam them on opposing zergs hitting your doors, because anyone is capable of doing that… instead you have eles spamming conjured weapons to DPS and stand still and try to tank for turret buffs, you have people on turrets whom you hope they know what they’re doing and can only tell them when they need more cleanse or theres too many stacks of scales etc. but still depending on the 6 people on turrets….it’s a different game. It’s almost like in WvW you can micro-manage and micro-coordinate or people have a general idea what to do and it doesnt depend that much on doing everything exactly right, like grab supplies, and you hope everyone will get supplies and itll be enough usually, and if its really not enough you run back for supplies… it’s not THAT critical. it’s not life or death sometimes, and other times it is life and death but you have an option for micro-managing commanding. If you get wiped, run back from WP. you don’t have to wait for an hour until you can do it again and hope you have the same players who are willing to be coordinated. Getting people organized is important, but a large of the problem for organization is due to a large variety of issues, most especially seen in overflows

Tradewind.6913:

Tequatl is a good case study for when player expectations don’t match reality. This camp seems to have been expecting the same difficulty, but with more “coolness” attached to it. I honestly can’t give much more feedback than that because having done things like raids and such for the better part of a decade, the fun is in the challenge and that feeling you get the first time you kill it. When you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.

Clearly it is doable, as more and more servers have got the job done as time progresses. The only obstacle to making headway is the stubbornness of players who can’t differentiate between a challenge and a nuisance.

While I completely agree with challenging content and the exhiliration and feeling of accomplishment, we also have to think about the different varieties of players in the game.

For example someone who works and only has two hours at night or something, they hop on to try Tequatl maybe even waits for like an hour and it fails (we can argue it will get smoother later, but at the same time the difficulty level has a high level of failure). At the moment, someone like that might care a lot about getting the achievements or whatever making use of their time as much as possible. It’s discouraging regardless of how much they’d love a challenge and victory.

Then with the current situation, while we’re sure things will change later on, the current situation has things that should be improved, so it should be looked at as well: if someone wants to succeed, they simply try to get in with the main original BG force (or similar server), and this is common knowledge said all the time, get on the right server. So is that feeling of victory really that good, when people just flock to another server to bandwagon with people who can do it? Is victory easily attainable, as people say, on the right server, and just unreasonably kitten other servers? What then? Was it a good challenge or just a result of circumstance.

Then you’ll have dedicated and loyal players to their server with their limited amount of players who have a lot of time and decided not to guest attempting tequatl over and over, after so many times of repetition, is it easy to consider it a challenge or a nuisance?

I don’t intend to be another QQ’er. Nor do I have trouble staying alive or knowing what to do etc. But from a game design perspective we need to look at this and go, maybe this isn’t the best.

A month or two into it, when most players have their Sunbringer title or whatever else they want, when it’s this difficult, how many players will continue to do this, will there be enough for a coordinated force to take it down? Will it become a ghost town not worth the attempt? Why was the design for this not more carefully thought out, imo?

Hard and challenging is good, but ridiculous and unreasonable design that has a negative impact on the servers, communities and discourages players is not

1) Elite servers like BG, who has had such high success rates. When you are on BG you see many people with the Sunbringer title, guests or natives, while others will find it almost difficult to get it on another server. We hear how its not so hard if you’re on the right server. Why or how was it even possible when other servers may have just as many people/wvw commanders/coordination? And then on the other hand, there are servers with less experience or coordination or even player population. Rather than criticizing BG, it just so happens BG is the example, their popularity is making everyone guest to BG. BG is singled out as an elite server everyone wants a part of, causing problems for other servers, and their own natives. Further more, you have BG who will make rotations to other servers, which is good and helps but also means certain number of server natives won’t get in on the action, and then when BG leaves, they are back to square one.

2) We have guilds forming just for teq and so on. It’s cool, but once again, we see the same pattern of people fighting for spots and getting a chunk of the “elites”

3) We have people with bad attitudes in chat sometimes, calling others out, for under levelled, lack of gear, unwanted classes, etc

4) Most importantly, we have a segregation of people who are “hardcore” about this spending full days sitting in maps or queues waiting for teq, or who flock and wait to guest to other servers, not caring about doing it on their own server, while there are people who have school, work, or not a lot of time to sit around waiting for teq, and then only to have it fail again if they are not on a select server, people who were excited about a new patch and more challenging content only to realize they aren’t good enough/frustrated at getting nothing much from it after spending so much time/people hostile towards them, then the more casual or laid back or people who want to do this for fun or maybe they just want the title or the wings etc, will begin to lose hope and give up on their own server, Teq, or gw2 in general.

5) theres probably more examples, or more that will come up

While it’s still only been a few days as everyone would say, however, from a game design standpoint, is this what should really happen? The content should be challenging and encourage amazing player coordination and cooperation of course, but a positive game environment and server culture… not a segregation of hardcore vs casual or people with hours of time to wait vs busy people or all other servers vs one or two servers. not to mention, players not doing other content in the game, because they spend most of their time waiting on teq and hanging on to a little percentage of hope to succeed.