Guild Wars 2

My preferred open world build is Staff+PP DD/Acro/Trickery. Acro is great for defence, and then I use Trickery to buff Steal and provide an extra daze for Defiance Bars.

Realistically, given all the ways Thieves can buff Steal, there was never going to be a Better Steal for the Elite Spec. What Thieves didn’t have was a way to play effectively that doesn’t require constantly resetting fights with Stealth. DD is all about giving us that, and I think it’s been quite successful.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

emkelly.2371:

• gate utility skills behind the trait line, for no good reason.
• gate the weapon behind the trait line, for no good reason.

No, there’s a very good reason: so you can’t use them while using a different elite spec.

This, pretty much.

The power creep between Elite Specs and No Elite Specs was pretty much inevitable. But the power creep between One Elite Spec and Two Elite Specs should be negligible, while still giving players something to work toward every expansion.

IIRC, clones and phantasms only interact with two things:

• the raw stats of the Mesmer
• traits that specifically mention illusions

Ananeos.4587:

So whenever I do Living Story I’m supposed to drag along with me 2-4 extra players just because I’m a Mesmer?

Right. I think many of the generic requests for a “dps spec” are misleading. Really what people want is just not to be hamstrung by our class mechanic in open world and living story content. More of a “solo spec” or “selfish spec” than a “dps spec”.

Now I’m wondering if the same thing happens when you get Moa’d while chronoshifted.

I think it’s ok to have trait lines that are always more useful for one game mode versus another. Desirable, even, since it makes balance easier.

Yes. In a vacuum, I kind of like the proposed SB #5, and I think it fits the theme of SB better than the current skill.

But in context… well, what Daniel Handler said. It ends up being a nerf to a stealth access for a number of builds, unless they pick up SB as a mandatory swap set, which defeats the purpose of trying to fix Infiltrator’s Arrow in the first place.

Kuya.6495:

In terms in pvp, dh has become the flavor of the season as revs, necros, wars and mes werte at one point. The reason for that is because dh currently has the widest range in terms of viable specs it can take into matches.

Saiyan.1704:

We really only needed the QoL changes Anet gave us but they proceeded to nerf the other classes as well. It’s not that we’re OP, the balance trinity is very off.

I think that’s most of it. Guard/DH is a versatile class with a design concept that just fundamentally works very, very well for Conquest. So it pretty much always has at least one build in S/A-tier.

Meanwhile, most other classes are drifting in and out of the meta on a whim. Some of them are pretty much never allowed to be good until they have one build that’s flat out broken, and then the nerf to that build ends up ruining all the other non-broken builds forever.

Being a main of one of those other classes frankly sucks, and it’s understandable to get salty about being subject to ANet’s inconsistent balancing when Guards aren’t. Which, you know, doesn’t justify dumping your salt on other players instead of keeping it to your own kitten self, but I get where it comes from.

This is a core Mesmer problem that’s been done to death on this forum. In absolutely optimal scenarios for Phantasm DPS, we’re on par with other classes, and that’s used as the balancing point for our class’ damage. Balance considerations need to take into account that those optimal scenarios pretty much never occur, but they don’t and probably never will.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I’ll be pleasantly surprised the day ArenaNet developers dare to test the waters again. For now they seem irrationally scared of it.

It’s a pretty rational fear, I’d say. Very few people actually like the underwater content as it is.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

It’s my theory that Lazarus is indeed after the Elder Dragons, considering they absord magic and are therefore quite desirable to him. The virtuosity of his plans could be that he intends to take on the Elder Dragons; perhaps he even thinks he can destroy them.

It would be a pretty shocking twist if Primordus emerged at the Ring of Fire… and Lazarus killed him. :O

The LS would be us trying to figure out whether we can actually trust Lazarus, then we’d either fight him or the next Dragon in the expansion.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

They’re just as likely to fight each other as they are the races of Tyria. It would be cool if ANet did that, 2 Elder Dragons fighting. Put Lazarus in the mix and it surely would be a step up of fighting one Elder Dragon at a time (which would seem kind of boring in the long run).

That’d be pretty kitten, though.

The water is lava!

Right. The spaghetti code comes in because the desired behaviour would be that CS resets the little effect that tracks the number of available charges for each Mantra, but it may not necessarily be easy to save just the effects related to Mantra charges but not other effects like, say, Blur/Stealth or trait effects like Fencer’s Finesse. Or at least not easy to do without incurring performance penalties or creating the potential for a ton of really annoying bugs.

You’d either have to fit Bountiful Disillusionment into the build or take the Stability mantra. Charging the Stab mantra cuts into your MoP spam. BD might be a reasonable source of Stability, since you’re shattering for Quickness anyway, but is a Duel/Cha/Chr Duel/Ill/Chr Mantra build really giving you enough sustained damage to overpower the massive sustain we’re seeing in the current meta? Is the sustained damage from said build even remotely comparable to the now-standard Ins/Ill/Chr condi shatter?

Fay.2357:

After a shatter burst is when you’ll have quickness and alacrity to help charge your mantra. However, after a shatter burst is also the exact time when the last thing you want is to sit there doing nothing for a few seconds, letting your opponent recover.

I find this reasoning pretty persuasive. To make Mantras worth using, you’d need a build that uses shatters for something other than killing enemies. I don’t think we have a good example of one of those right now, though it’s at least theoretically possible. I know I played a successful Chronobunker for a little while based on Restorative Illusions + Bountiful Disillusionment, but that was several nerfs ago, and it also didn’t have any real space for Mantras.

FrizzFreston.5290:

But tbh, what’s locked behind adventures technically doesn’t make them bad or the worst idea. :p

Yeah. The wisdom of putting Mastery Points and Collection items behind Adventures is debatable, but it’s a debate totally orthogonal to whether Adventures were a good or bad idea to begin with.

Apparently, all you had to do to make Kill 10 Rats quests popular was give them a pretty map icon. Someone tell Blizzard.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

1. Ley Line Gliding Mastery needed to move quickly across the large map.
2. New Mastery, Thermal Propulsion (Ancient Magic tier 2) costs 3 Mastery Points and allow you to shoot around point to point much like Nuhoch Wallows.

Worth quoting the actual article on these two points, because there are a lot of ways to mis-interpret “needed”:

players would be wise right now to train up their Ley Line Gliding Mastery in order to rove quickly about the pretty large map (that’s the top tier of the Gliding Mastery). That said, if you’ve still got work to do there, don’t fret. Ancient Magic’s 2nd Tier will now have Thermal Propulsion which just costs 3 Mastery XP and allows you to basically be shot around from point to point across Ember Bay.

4. Heart Quests will be returning in the map with repeatable daily and rewards

Hearts were pretty boring, I thought. Adventures were a much better take on the idea, especially since (unlike Hearts), they aren’t required for map completion.

Rethink what? Apply what? If you have a point, make it. Don’t just say vague nonsense and hope we’ll be super impressed by your supreme intelligence.

I think the reason it’s a perceived problem is that “support class” wasn’t really part of our pre-HoT identity. Which is actually something that affected Rangers as well.

It’s not really a bad thing in itself, just an matter of perception.

One interesting thing I found about Ring of Fire while poking around the GW1 wiki is that it was a center of Mursaat activity, where they tried to seal and guard a portal leading to Abaddon’s Realm of Torment (specifically, the Foundry of Failed Creations that created the Titans).

Since LS3 has a Mursaat as a major focus now, that might be significant.

Fixing forum bug.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Watch it be the return of the Ancient Karka.

A Destroyerised Ancient Karka!

The second version looks better. Decoy is a very solid choice for PvE, though you can also consider Feedback when you’re in a zone with lots of projectile-using enemies.

In the traits, you might want to consider Persistence of Memory over Compounding Power. Open world combat is about moving from one brief fight to the next, so you won’t be fighting with three illusions up for very long. PoM gets your phantasms back up for the next fight more quickly. Also, Persisting Images won’t really do anything for you. PvE enemies do 95% reduced damage to illusions these days, so the bonus health is pointless. Retaliation will also be a very negligible source of damage. Might as well get Restorative Mantras for a little bonus healing while you’re spamming Mantra of Pain. Good way to get credit in world events, too.

Illusionary Reversion is very much a time mage trait. You’re turning back time to bring back one if the illusions you just shattered.

Mixchimmer.7230:

At least from a PvE perspective – yes, their role is mostly Support, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

Our unique support (Alacrity) got nerfed pretty heavily, though. And our other forms of support (Quickness, reflects) are things that other classes can provide along with with better personal DPS.

Chronos still have a permanent slot in organised content, but it’s mainly because our DPS is so minimal to begin with that a group loses almost nothing by having us swap out Zerker pieces for toughness gear.

That said, as Fay suggests, it’s a better situation than pre-HoT. Not a great situation, but better.

About as much as is actually possible in an MMO where you can’t actually, literally change time?

Finally unlocked Horologicus!

You are all about bursting and ccing, and forcing big cooldowns of youre enemies.

So that’s where Power Shatter went.

Looks like fun, though. Have you tried it with the Valkyrie amulet to max out the Opening Strike burst, or is trading off the more frequent crits not worth it?

Greatsword would make sense. Pop Mirror Images and Mirror Blade at the same time, straight into Mind Wrack?

It’s a fun trick to blow away a single mob, but then you’re sitting on cooldowns for a while before you can do it again.

Knowing ANet, I wonder how long it’ll be until we get an effect that allows CC through Stability. They’re probably more likely to deliver something like that than to reasonably balance boon generation and boon stripping against one another.

Your Reload idea is pretty intriguing. It’s definitely something new and useful.

Moving DE to Master has been a suggestion since forever. ANet clearly wants it to be a GM trait, for whatever reason.

I hope y’all are still active!

IGN: Tanya Larina
Thief Type: Scholar
Server: Sea of Sorrows
Experience with thief: Thief was my original main for a while, until I switched over to Mesmer. I finally decided to go back and unlock Daredevil on my Thief, which revitalised my interest. I’m a big fan of the new DD playstyle!

BlaqueFyre.5678:

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

There actually is a Thief forum thread on that topic, as well. XD

Azukas.1426:

Never again should this ever resurface in GW2.

Credit it where it’s due. I completely agree with you on this one.

Why even bother making Protected Phantasms baseline? Easier to just delete it entirely and introduce a new trait in its place.

druid

for a couple years

I assume that’s a typo. :P

Because it would suck to shatter your Elite skill.

Carighan.6758:

And we don’t just have 55 skills of which around 30 are rubbish, we also have 540 possible trait combinations of which ~500 are useless. Then we have gear options, and stat options, and weapon choices.

Ironically, the most recent balance patch actually did make some minor positive movements on some of our less-used weapons and skills. And the person you’re replying to immediately started frothing at the mouth in anger about it. ¯\_(?)_/¯

The skill should have a red bar under it when out of range… But now that I think about it, I’m not 100% sure if this shows up correctly for the second activation of iLeap.

He’s S-tier forum warrior, don’t mess with him bro.

I like to use it in open world PvE so I have a ranged option for when I can’t get close with my Staff. Technically, Shortbow would be better for AoE tagging, but with P/P you can spam Headshot against Breakbars.

witcher.3197:

the signet only shows up above the mesmer’s head after he’s done casting, not as he begins

Having the Moa appear at the beginning of the cast seems like it’d be a good compromise, then? I’d be in favour of that.

I appreciate the idea behind the Chronomancer’s Slow line of traits, for sure. But, like Ross said, the actual execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Unlike Reaper’s Chill line, we have no way to make Slow into a directly damaging condition and, since the (justifiable) ICD nerf to Lost Time, no way to perma-Slow enemies reliably. We’d need at least some equivalent to those two things to make a Slow build worth playing.

I will say that the counter-productive interaction with Confusion is more of a design problem with Confusion, though. I don’t blame Slow for that.

Frostball.9108:

both of these lists are incorrect

Such reasoning. Much evidence. Wow.

Fay.2357:

OriOri.8724:

atlashugged.7642:

I always thought it would be cool if the player under the effects of illusion of life counted as an illusion for the duration, letting the mesmer have a 5th illusion for shatters.

You know that gave me an idea. Instead of reviving the actual player for 15 seconds, why not create an illusion of that player for 15 seconds. It would have the 5 weapon skills of the weapon that player was using when they died (to simplify it, it would be way too much work to give this illusion all the skills if it was only alive for 15 seconds) and some basic logic on how to use them (pretty much just make it not autoattack and actually use skills 2-5), along with the other stats that player had (so it doesn’t die in one hit). Illusion traits would affect it too, but not shatters. Would have to be an elite at this point I guess, but it would be a really kittening cool skill.

Aka mordekaiser ult.

This is actually a pretty cool idea. It retains the feel of the skill but removes the major weaknesses. Instead of an awkward semi-revive that confuses your allies as much as your enemies, it becomes a fake revive that gives you cover to rally your allies under, or at least shatter ammo to fight back with.

Velektrian.5491:

Carighan.6758:

Lightsbane.9012:

i think a way to solve this might be to give mesmer some more active damage instead of phantasms.

I hate it when such miniscule changes get brought up. Our class has issues at the following levels:

• Basic class idea.
• Basic class design-goal.
• Class mechanic (the F-bar and the illusions).

I mean until we solved those there’s no real need to tweak numbers by moving damage off of Phantasms, we need much bigger fixes.

Make Phantasm skills one shots that spawn a clone, rebalance the skills from there.

Moves the damage from a passive to an active skill and allows us to shatter without worrying about losing all of our damage.

^^^

Yes, I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while.

Chronophantasma would need a minor patch of some kind, but this would be a step in the right direction. (CP suggestion: an untargettable, unshatterable Phantasm remains behind and makes a second attack X seconds later.)

Taxi Wars sucks.

But, if you’re willing to play Taxi Wars, you can find maps doing the TD meta still.