Guild Wars 2

Yeah, sure, current Dungeon content can theoretically be completed by almost any non-troll team composition. But raids are not current Dungeon content. The whole pitch is that they’re more “challenging”. And being “challenging” means that, by definition, the “you must be this tall to enter” bar is getting raised above its current height.

In a game where easily half of the classes are only barely above that bar as it is, any raising of the bar that isn’t accompanied by substantial buffs is absolutely cause for concern.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

If someone you knew demanded, for three solid years, with increasingly unpleasant language and levels of hysteria, that you punch them in the face – like, as hard as you can, let ’em have it - would you continue to tell that person that they really wouldn’t enjoy getting punched in the face? Or would you, at some point, just give up and punch them in the face so they stop freaking asking?

The former, because I’m not a kittening sociopath.

myself.2143:

“You’re going to have a bad time. But don’t worry, as we’re leaving you a repair anvil at the entrance. You know—to collect your tears on.”

You know who else talked like that about their PvE content? Carbine.

^^^^^

I wonder how Carbine’s devs feel looking over at GW2 now with all this h4rdc0r3 nonsense over at the ANet offices. Always hard to see somebody else repeat your own mistakes.

Misguided.5139:

Attunement is like a pre-qualifying quest chain that you must complete before you can enter a raid or dungeon. The exact nature depends on the game, but these can be a gold sink or time-consuming. They often function as a gear-check.

Good definition, and it gets at the heart of the issue. True Attunements are annoying but essentially fair, because you know about them in advance and can’t even start the raid without them. ANet’s Mastery gates will let you start running to kick the football, then pull it away right before you connect.

That’s actually a pretty good suggestion. I mean, I’m not sure that Fire/Water blasts are “too strong” in an absolute sense. However, your suggestion is probably as good as any to bring all the fields onto the same baseline. And if any/all of the field combos end up too weak afterward, then their respective Auras can be adjusted as necessary.

Maybe we should try to lure some charging Teragriffs into this trap during the world event.

OR, here’s a radical thought, it could mean exactly what it says.

JayMack.8295:

There are quite a few ways they can implement to prevent enrage mode, though. It could be ‘do (x) amount of damage in 10 seconds’, it could be ‘Do 8 CCs in (x) seconds’, or ‘do (x) amount of condition damage or it enrages’.

Except that the actual article says that “[Bosses] most assuredly will enrage if you take too long to kill them.”

It’s really, really not ambiguous at all that Enrage timers are a DPS check in HoT raids.

Ok, my bad.

But the topic is “How do you kill”, not “How do you survive”. Stripping Might is a good trick, but the Ele will just swap to Water and shed all your damage and conditions until your cooldowns are blown, then burn the crap out of you.

Except that Enrage timers put even more pressure on the 6 DPS roles to be hitting their absolute maximum theoretical output at all times. Which means that any class that can’t Heal or Tank (most of them) will have a minimum amount of DPS they need to bring in order to participate.

Considering the huge gap in DPS output between the S-Tier classes and everybody else right now, I have no faith that the raid meta won’t just be 2 Guardians and 8 Elementalists.

I don’t give a flying fig about which gear stats are required, the Zerker gear set is far and away the least offensive think about the misnamed “Zerker” meta. The thing that sucks about the Zerker meta is that it favours two classes above everybody else because they can hit top DPS numbers and put out top utility (Healing, Boons, Reflects) at the same time. (Oh, and Warrriors get to play as well because of their Might stacking.)

Coxy.5269:

I’m fairly sure shattered concentration removes 1 boon per shatter skill hit, so a maximum of 4 boons per shatter. So very strong.
Unless I’m understanding it wrong?

The wording around it is confusing, to be sure, but I’m fairly certain it only takes one boon per shatter skill. The Might isn’t particularly scary on the D/D Ele, anyway, it’s the Healing/Cleanse and Burning, which aren’t tied to boons.

Adorable.

But, back in reality, that is definitely not going to be the case.

Have you raided in other games?

Enrage timers are absolutely a DPS check, period. That is their entire function. If your boss Enrages, you’re going to wipe, no matter how good your healer and tank are.

Raids will have Enrage timers on bosses if they aren’t killed quickly enough. So, there will definitely not be a place for Mesmers in raids after all.

So, they want build diversity, but enrage timers will ensure that maximum DPS is required to clear bosses.

And they don’t want attunement, but there are encounters that are flat-out unbeatable if the group lacks specific Masteries.

k.

Coxy.5269:

Mesmers can do it. Boonstrip means their might isn’t too much of an issue. Whittle them down until they enter water and burst immediately after. (Unless they’re in earth)

TBH, Mesmer boonstrip isn’t that good these days. The meta Power Shatter is only going to have Shattered Concentration, which just removes one boon per shatter skill use. Eles should have a lot of cover boons, so you won’t necessary get an important one.

Kidel.2057:

Not only pvp please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DE8It42yQI
^ this basically makes every other class USELESS in a pve group.

Similar things can be said for Mesmer.

Mesmers have 16k DPS in PvE? I’d love to see the build and rotation that pulls that off.

Zenith.7301:

You’re acting as if the mesmer is the only utility class when the other classes bring just as powerful utility but can actually pull far more DPS.

Which is exactly the problem with GW2’s PvE balance in general. The top DPS classes are also the top utility classes. Thieves and Mesmers only have a slot at all in dungeon groups because of stealth skips. If HoT raids don’t have skippable sections, then we won’t have a place at all.

This’ll be a fun thing to try out. Maybe at a OMFG/TEEF WvW event where we practice launching stealthed Thieves into enemy strongholds or something. (Mesmers on one world, Thieves on another, then we gang up on the remaining world for some shenanigans.)

Bumping this since Robert is paying attention to the forum at the moment (between sprints?), and it’s tangentially related to the Shield PvE thread that’s also running.

Here’s another, simpler suggestion for Phantasms that bounce, based on a suggestion from said Shield thread. Make the attacks bounce to enemies only and move the ally effects to an AoE effect centered on the Phantasm itself. It’s both more effective and more readable — “stand next to Phantasm for a buff” makes way more sense to allies than “stand next to Phantasm’s target for a buff”.

The best part of this suggestion is that it can be easily applied to all Phantasms that have bounce attacks without re-engineering their skill effects.

Zenith.7301:

WoW, 4k damage power block on a 40s cd stun; that’s like 5% of a fractal 50 mob’s HP. That’s like, a weak autoattack crit. 3.5 seconds of quickness IF the wall goes through twice through allies, 1.75 seconds otherwise.

Realistically, it’s going to be less than 40s due to Alacrity, and in PvE getting the double Quickness is a pretty safe bet.

Shield 5 is actually fairly respectable for PvE purposes. Not amazing, but it has uses, especially in fights with Breakbars. The Phantasm is the disappointing part of the Shield (in general, but particularly for PvE).

Xyonon.3987:

My thoughts exactly! Especially when you combine shield 5# with Power Block, you get quite a nice amount of direct damage, vuln stacks, stun, quickness and therefore also passive damage.

And you’re going to proc Power Block how often in PvE?

Windwalker.7421:

It’s about a legitimate complaint that the one Blast finisher we have is clearly unusable in a tactical way, especially with PU, and that the fields we have access to are often not a boon but a detriment to our teams!

Hear, hear!

Robert Gee.9246:

Even if you don’t consider the phantasm, the chronomancer’s shield 5 skill alone has higher damage output than the shield skills of any other profession. In general shields aren’t intended to be high DPS weapons. If the utility of the skills is lacking, that’s an area that can be tuned, but we don’t have any plans to really increase the damage that much.

What Fay said, essentially. I agree that just increasing damage isn’t the right lever for the Shield in PvE, but a bad targeting type (Bounce) and a condition that literally doesn’t do anything in boss encounters (Slow) really hamstring the usability of the Shield’s phantasm, even more than the summoning condition does.

I suspect that Signet of Ether is intentionally bad for PvP because ANet doesn’t want Phantasm burst builds to have good passive healing. (They’re obviously nervous about Phantasm burst in general; see their caution around Chronophantasma’s follow-up attack.) As it is, you can try it, but you’re sacrificing a lot of healing to get those double-iZerker bursts off. (And keep in mind that Chronophantasma turns that into potentially a quadruble-iZerker burst with Mind Wrack icing.)

I absolutely agree that PvE Memsers need better options to get out Phantasms quickly, though. This is especially true if HoT’s encounter design starts to require PvE builds to run with good self-healing.

Robert Gee.9246:

From a design perspective, Mesmers are more about providing fields and less about activating them. It’s not just blast finishers, Mesmers lack reliable sources of many other finishers too. Necromancers fill a similar role. By contrast you might notice that Warriors have lots of finishers but not many fields.

I totally get this idea and where it’s coming from. However, there are two problems with this in practice:

• Allies with Blasts will prefer to use them on Fire fields, which we don’t have, for AoE Might stacking
• As others have mentioned, we’re one-trick ponies as far as what fields we provide, so we don’t even have flexibility to drop different fields for different situations.

Our lack of Blasts is not a critical issue (it’s way down the list compared to build diversity issues and dungeon DPS), but at the same time I do sort of feel like there’s a gap where an Ethereal-blasting support Mesmer build could be.

Yeah, it’s mildly irritating, but I can’t really be mad about it or anything.

It kind of feels like it should be combined with the GM minor, to be honest.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Uh.. The Mes thread was one guy mentioning that he still has trouble with thieves and asking advice on how to beat them.

But on topic; I love everything so far about daredevil, even the name.

Maybe his concept of the Mesmer forum is stuck in a pre-6/23 state. Kinda like how a lot of people still think we have clone death traits.

Gray.9041:

but other classes don’t give up a trait for it – they get it in their minor.

Nobody else gets an additional 50 Endurance from a minor trait. Or any other trait.

Xaylin.1860:

I thought the same. Since Protective Mantras is gone/innate and Empowering Mantras changed I’d rather see the same mechanic for our Mantras. It would also solve the issue of being stuck with half-used-up charges.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. Protected Mantras doesn’t do that much when we’re basically always charging them out-of-combat or in stealth. Having a 15s window to use mantra charges means we’d have to charge them just before entering combat or during combat, which means we might actually see the extra Toughness do something once in a while. Which is technically a nerf, but totally worth it in exchange for not having to waste our last charge on nothing and then hope nobody engages on us while we wait out the full cooldown.

I’m actually semi-hopeful that if this skill works out well for the Teefs, ANet will consider reworking Mantras.

Crossplay.2067:

I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.

Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.

(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)

Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.

Fixed according to patch notes, anyway: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-25-2015/5416188

BillFreist.1527:

Planning on pushing a fix for this in Hotfix 2

Thanks for the quick response!

apharma.3741:

msalakka.4653:

UnknownFreak.2805:

devs aware of this, and a fix is on the way.

Source?

Check the bugs forum. One of the top posts, red post too.

It’s apparently planned for the next hotfix:

BillFreist.1527:

Planning on pushing a fix for this in Hotfix 2

vana.5467:

Except for veil. They sure gutted that one.

I intentionally left that out, since nobody actually ran that even while it was bugged.

ronpierce.2760:

Yeah, shatter a downed body is like shattering life into him. It’s a very neat twist. :P

Wait, so let me make sure I understand this:

• Mesmer has illusions out
• Mesmer downs Opponent
• Mesmer shatters (e.g. Distortion shatter to cover stomp)
• Opponent rallies

Is that correct?

Orangensaft.7139:

not sure why they removed the PvP tutorial though…

it took like 3 minutes
and knowing how finishing works and what capping points and rezzing downed players is in this game would be useful for people who really enter PvP the first time

Yeah, I agree. We already have problems with people not understanding the win condition of Conquest, removing the tutorial will just exacerbate the situation.

Yeah. I mean, the bug fixes in this patch are all good, but it’s weird that the bugged trait with arguably the biggest balance implications (The Pledge) hasn’t been fixed yet.

I don’t think that stomping is actually an attack that can be dodged. As far as I know, you have to either interrupt the channel or move out of range.

If you truly want to bunker and hold a point, I think Shield and Focus are the best offhand choices. Why? Because they provide area-based attacks, interrupts, and projectile destruction. Shield 5 is a little easier to get interrupts from, but Focus 4 can pull people off-point and Warden is arguably a better Phantasm, both all-around and also specifically as bunker support. (It’d be a closer fight if iAvenger didn’t have that awful bouncing attack.)

apharma.3741:

It depends on personal taste. I think female light armour is generally terrible as it ranges from 1900s fully covered drab to kitten with very little middle ground and slanted more to the latter.

Yeah, I agree. I switched my Mesmer from Sylvari to Charr for precisely this reason (which had its own set of problems).

Bleh, missed that nerf.

Doesn’t change the rest of the argument, though. Even if Null Field got un-nerfed, it still wouldn’t fit into our meta builds. And, either way, not stepping on the toes a skill nobody takes is not an argument against giving condition cleanse to Wells.

No utilities other than Blink, Decoy, Portal, and Mantra of Distraction will ever be “meta” in PvP without being insanely overpowered. Just kittening deal with it.

Let me remind you that Null Field currently removes ALL boons from enemies and ALL conditions from allies and lasts five seconds. Holy kittening kitten is that good. Amazingly good.

Nobody uses it. Why? Not because it’s not strong, because it’s REALLY kittenING STRONG. Nobody uses it because we have to use Blink, Decoy, and Portal or Mantra of Distraction or we’re useless.

Allowing Well of Eternity to cleanse one condition per pulse for three pulses does not invalidate Null Field. Everything else about Mesmer invalidates Null Field by locking us into picking three out of four viable utilities.

Null Field also strips boons and can benefit from Temporal Enchanter, so it’s fine. The bigger problem it has is that Mesmer has so little flexibility in terms of utilities that it’s super hard to fit Null Field into a build. It’s an amazing utility, but how can we give up Blink, Decoy, Portal, or Mantra of Distraction?

Well of Eternity loses the Vigor application (which nobody was noticing anyway) and instead cleanses X conditions per pulse. Bam, done.

No serious speculation on the traits, but if Daredevils are indeed getting Physical skills, I expect the spec to be based on interrupts and CC. So, I’m taking a guess that there will be at least a couple of traits that proc effects on interrupt.

I’ll take another wild guess that the Elite skill will be a transformation like Rampage, but focused more on mobility than tankiness. The weapon skill replacements will include a lot of tumbles and evades, and instead of a reduction to incoming damage there will be a boost to Endurance regeneration. I’m picturing like a Tasmanian (Dare)Devil kind of situation where the Thief is just rolling all over everywhere messing stuff up.

Well, as usual, it’s a case of one class having a totally legitimate weakness that they can optionally patch over with slight build adjustments while another just cheerfully blows everybody else away without trading anything.

Krispera.5087:

Maybe we will see shatter mesmer taking Inspiration if burn stays the same. Mender’s Purity, Restoratives Illusions and Temporal Enchanter. Cele Chaos or Illusion/Insp/Chrono anyone (lol) ?

Chrono/Insp/Chaos was pretty legit in the last BWE. The change to All’s Well definitely hurts its ability to hold out against conditions, though.

I wrote a bunch of crap about how hard it is to fit condi clear into a Bunker Chrono build, but then I remembered that Restorative Illusions is a thing. Bunker Chrono can and should maintain a pretty regular shatter cadence for the benefits from Bountiful Disillusionment (Chronoshift gives Resistance, even!) and of course the shatter effects themselves, so actually grabbing RI is kind of a no-brainer even if Protected Phantasms has a better synergy with Chronophantasma.

Rambing aside, berserker seems to follow that theme as well (all hail Robert Gee)

Seriously, the guy’s three for three in delivering really cool, thematic, and cohesive elite specs. Shame that the other class devs tend to overcompensate for lack of creativity with raw power.

It’d be nice if Phantasmal Disenchanter didn’t suck balls, for one thing.

Anyway, our true condi clear options are Mender’s Purity, Null Field, and Mantra of Resolve. Of those, Null Field is the strongest, but it’s on a non-trivial cooldown. Mender’s Purity and Mantra of Resolve are unfortunately mutually exclusive due to a bug, but both are pretty decent sources of condition clear as well.

The real problem we have is that we have to give up either a third trait line selection or a utility slot to run condi clear. A standard Dom/Dueling shatter build that trades Illusions or Chaos for Inspiration sacrifices either damage or defences/boon generation. The same build that chooses to sacrifice a utility slot instead will sacrifice either lockdown via MoD or the stunbreak/clone/stealth from Decoy. Hard choices all around. (I’m assuming, obviously, that Blink is non-negotiable.)

Now, builds other than Power Shatter have an easier time of this, Condition builds in particular. They still need Blink, but it’s easier to trade out the other two utilities for Null Field or Mantra of Resolve, which should provide all the condition clearance you need.

Forgot to add: Well of Eternity with iWarden, iZerker, or iDuelist is actually a pretty decent source of bonus condi clear as well, but not as reliable as I’d like. Our only non-Phantasm finishers are Mirror Blade, Mind Bullet, and The Prestige (which can’t proc condition clear).