Guild Wars 2

I think a shining lightbow fits the guardian well.

You never lose a 1v3? Are you up against toddlers?

10/70 trait points equals around 14% of what you give up. A utility slot is 33% of what you give up (since you can only have 3). In my build I take 20 in tools anyway. I like it this way. With only two slots I would feel really limited in my choices.

On the other hand, I hope they do release it just for the other guys that want. I won’t be using it.

@TooBz: a HGH engineer mostly takes grenades that has no confusion, pistols which adds only 2 stacks and sometimes (rarely) swaps grenades for toolkit which brings 5 confusion stacks. Real confusion builds used Toolkit, Bomb Kit and Pistols and had no HGH because you can’t stack might with only 2 elixirs, a heal and a safe net (mostly).

It was aimed at mesmers. Way more crying about the glamour builds than about confusion engineers but it actually hit the engineer harder and that’s injustified. Mesmers resorted to other builds but the engineer stil needs to use the same kits with the weakened confusion. While it’s still fun to play with confusion on an engineer, I feel like a buff is in place. A 20% damage buff to confusion in general or some slight increases on the stacks per weapon skill.

On the other hand, having the need for a target also makes things more difficult. We can’t spam abilities around like say my engineer when a target stealths up. If our curtain is on cooldown we barely have anything to damage the thief in his refuge. Other classes can spam there aoe’s just like your necro depending on build but mesmer can’t.

I prefer the pistol as well because I feel like I need the offense with blowtorch. I have used shield though, in builds where I had more offense via kits and it’s really good. For pve, probably don’t bother, it’s a pvp weapon. Interrupts, knockbacks, reflections,… It’s all in there. One thing that’s annoying though are the long cooldowns.

^ Yeah that’s true. I think engineer is the profession with the least humans and the most asura Mine is asura, but all my toons are.

Who says he’s human? :P well 80% chance anyway…

Yeah I bought myself 600 for now I don’t think they’ll rise though. A slight maybe when the event is done.

Hot Boy.7138:

The happens to me all the time. I prefer it this way. Isn’t it better for us that our phantasms look like regular clones? I hope it remains this way.

Well, if the enemy sees them as regular clones it doesn’t matter. And to be honest, it shouldn’t be this way. Mesmers are already very strong and now they got even stronger, there’s no need for that. I’d actually want this to b non-existant so that I have an easier (read fair) time when playing other classes and that I don’t have it easier when I’m on mesmer.

I’ve tried the EG for the first time instead of the toolkit. I’m not sure if I like it. My previous build has toolkit traited, which I love for the block. It seems the stuff of the EG can’t match a ranged pull, followed by pry bar and a block. I will stay with my current build and a HGH build first. These are easier and I need that since I have only 80 hours on engineer or something.

I’m not even on lowest, just on low. I’ll try the one higher than that I guess..

Phantasms aren’t phantasms anymore. More often thannot, they appear like a clone. I had this happen on my own mesmer and against me. This phenomena appears to be only happing in WvW. Right now, I was up against a phantasm mesmer and ranger. I tried to fight back but hey, you can never win against a decent phantasm mesmer and especially not if his clones all look exactly like him.
There were 2 berserkers out and I could barely tell which was which because they weren’t pink, they were black like him. In a battle where those few milliseconds matter, this is EXTREMELY annoying and I didn’t last long.

Has anyone else had this happen?

I am new to MMO’s as GW2 is my first however I LOVE it. In my opinion, the minority is the loudest. Yes, there are some issues that need to be dealt with, balance issues, polishing, refinement, etc but all together that doesn’t take away how great this game is. Some of the professions like the engineer and mesmer are so versatile that even within 1 profession, you can do loads of different stuff.

As to your question of a good beginner guide, try guildwarsinsider. It’s not needed though, the game becomes second nature soon enough.

Btw, huge fan You and SirKoroshi have inspired to level my engi again and I now play it often. I’m probably moving to Gandara soon too, to fight with you and Osicat

Interesting. 1 note though: you barely use FT. Isn’t it better to get a set to kill faster like nades or bombs?

Beware that he says stamina, not energy. Energy shares the cooldown as well.

Rennoko.5731:

Iceflame.5024:

Rennoko, I tend to forget the downed state bug since I mostly play sPVP. I’ve been thinking about DS CD too and I do not know what to say about it actually. I’d like to have DS without any CD since I agree that having double CDs on your abilities is kind of meh. But then again it’s kind of like a weapon swap and other profession mechanics tend to have 10 second CDs on them too so I am not sure. Would be nice to see your DS CDs outside of DS but then again other classes don’t see the CDs on other attunements and kits if I am not mistaken.

Elementalists for example have a short 2 second or so cooldown on attument swaps… I would be okay with DS having a 2 second cooldown on flashing (re-working the boons of course).

Mesmers have a split second cooldown on their shatters, I would be okay with that.

I wouldn’t compare it so much to a weapon swap, because weapons swap triggers its 10 second cooldown timer when you swap in. DS triggers its 10 second timer when you drop out. Attunment switching is a good comparison.

I just think the ability to have access to our instant cast interrupt would be a big skill ceiling raiser for the top end players, that we currently lack.

Have you even played these classes? Attunements recharge at 15s, 9 when fully traited in Arcana. Shatters recharge at 15, 30, 45 and 60s. Take 30% of them when fully traited in Illusions.

And removing the cooldown of DS isn’t raising the skill celing. It’s making it easier. If you can avoid almost every burst buy pressing 1 button, how is that raising the skill ceiling? 5 second cooldown would be better.

To the DD ele and staff necro from IRON, we had some nice duels. But why did you keep having that instagib 25 bloodlust stacks killshot warrior around? He’s out of LOS and then strikes. Seemed really skilless of you guys.

Protip: you can overcharge the healing turret, not detonate it for the blast finisher and pick it up again. This heals for a bit elss but your cooldown goes from 20 to 15 seconds.

LOL heavy. That would fit a charr and that’s it. We’re fine as medium.

What nerf? Incendiary power?

How can one get this new armor? I can’t log into the game until the weekend.

I think I agree with you (never played GW1) but wouldn’t it be cool to mix up the two styles together? At this point of the game I think stealth is overpowered in WvW (only there). Not when entering combat but when escaping. When a thief stealths up mid fight you never know where he is. He might be on your back or he used that time to ran away and is already almost OOC. That to me is a bit too strong. What I’d propose is a mix of shadowsteps and stealth. With a longer revealed built in but more access to other evasive moves like shadowsteps. And have it better built in than S/D. I don’t like that set very much and basically gets abused for 3 anyway.

Raven.9603:

Zenith.7301:

One of the reasons ranger does so poorly in pve as well is because of all the focus on the poison condition, which is useless in PvE, and in roaming most opponents have a heal that removes poison before the heal kicks in anyways (warrior, necro, thief, mesmer with inspiration trait, engineer turret, ele ether renewal; I think the guardian is the only class without a heal that actively removes poison before it heals).

i have to disagree here. i cant count how many times a day in wvw or spvp poison has been a key reason i won a fight. people in wvw simply are not running good condition removal, because the amount of condition based enemies makes it hard to justify, even for roamers (or because lol-zerg mentality).

• warriors hardly ever run that heal because all builds now are based on saving adren.
• engi turret only cleanses on the burst heal, and many engis are running HGH with the elixir heal.
• rangers have a pretty good split across each heal, so 2/3 chance hes not running spring, especially with the recent TU popularity.
• thieves, sure. but 30sec CD and is almost always their only condi removal because lol-wvw, especially since infusion of shadow competes with shadows embrace.
• most eles i meet are running d/d with signet or staff with glyph. poison will get them to blow their water attunement cd before they heal (and thus, almost all their condi removal).
• guardians have to eat it, and lets face it, it seems like half the wvw players are guardians.
• no one takes the mesmer trait because its 1 random removal, and better options exist.

which really just leaves necros as the only opponent who doesnt seem to be fazed by poison. sure, many of these classes have “every 10 sec, cure a condi…” but that still works out to an average of 5 seconds of them delaying a heal that they really need just for the auto-cleanse, and thats very useful too.

as far as pve, poison really doesnt come to mind as a short-coming. the problem has always been pet survivability is crap. and now, many groups insist on mesmers, guardians and warrriors. greatsword for warriors and guardians does much more damage in a dungeon than anything we have. even mesmers are only invited for their quickness to buff the plate wearing greatsword downies.

Do you even WvW? Your analysis is wrong on quite a few topics. Tons of thieves take shadow’s embrace. An ele will not have any problem with cleansing poison. They are top 3 in condition cleansing. A HGH engi will probably not have a problem because elixirs remove a condition. Other style engis will remove the poison during the healing turret burst, right before the heal. Guardian generally have no trouble as well with that poison since most run a shout build and they remove conditions using shouts and they have that passive trait as well.

Not saying that your poison will get cleansed since it depends on other factor too but most classes will not just take it everytime…

Will get a screenshot when my PC is fixed

Right now I’m using a mix but primarily karma armor. I’m an engineer so it fits the rugged look well. I want T3 since that’s the best armor in the game to me but it doesn’t fit the engineer bags that well. Hopefully, asura engineer bags will be updated to look asuran.

My highest level is 18 on my ele so that’s not high but I’ve gotten tons of rings. I have done 13 dailies (1 ring and 3 relics in my inventory) and have gotten 6 rings so far. Those I have gotten after a mere 11 dailies. 1 berserker, 1 cavalier, 1 mixed stats but primarily rabid, shaman and 2 others with healing power that I don’t care about. I have been told that I’m extremely lucky in there.

1stworldproblems.gif

Thanks for the extensive feedback I acutally think I had Arcane Thievery on because of the jellyfish in fractals but I don’t think I used it… Too distracted by what the guardian could do lol.

Almost exclusively shatter build. I tried phantasm but it’s not fun to me, is either faceroll or a hard loss because you don’t have that many tricks. I feel like a shatter mesmer takes more skill to play. There’s always the next trick, a nuke with mind wrack, a diversion, distortion. Many options and a good mesmer knows when to use which.

My build is now 10/20/10/0/30

I myself am a semi glass cannon shatter mesmer. I’m more on the edge of glass though. My only defense against conditions is lemongrass food (-40% condition duration) and it seems to be enough. Occasionaly I get schooled by condition builds but I can survive it by putting extreme pressure with shatters on them, use my invuln right and try to dodge most incoming damage. I feel like this is enough but I think a phantasm mesmer is more susceptible to condition damage.

Could you guys give some tips on what weapon skills are strong? I heard never go to spear but I’m so inexperienced in water I might miss out.

A while ago though I was on my shatter glass mesmer, my friend was on his BM regen ranger and we had another mesmer in greens. We were engaging a guardian in water (boon bunker) and we literally couldn’t get him below 25%. 3 guys, both of the so called best classes in water. How was this possible? I trief stacking phantasms, didn’t work. I tried shattering first, worked even less.

When I went to run cause I was bored he suddenly hit me for half my health very quickly (2s). That was my first real combat experience with mesmer underwater (I have a lot of experience on land) and it sucked hard.

The first batch I don’t like that much but your second chart with the females has some really neat ones. My favorite is the left one in the middle row. After that bottom left anf top right

What I would do is changing the evasion to a form of protection. Instead of evading and getting hit by nothing, he’d now get hit by 40-70% attack of the skill, depending on what skills used and such.

They are NOT designed to to not share cooldown. Can you imagine how OP some classes with 4 weapons instead of 2 would be? Also, what class are you?

eric.8203:

everyone knew this would happen i knew it after i hit lvl 80 and seen only 6 ori nodes vs 300 mithril nodes and monsters/bags dropping t5 items with t6 items and i knew this would suck for getting a legendary. i laughed then cried when i was on my norn war in snowden still getting t1 mats then going to lorners and getting a ton of t3 mats then i find out odd=good numbers even = bad numbers in most cases. looking at t1,2,3 metal nodes then look at t1,2,3 wood nodes t1 umm tired of looking at t2 wtf i see it more than t1 and t3. t3 wood nodes makes me cry and want to buy anet a big giant silver spoon but they already got it from gw1 and ncsoft stole it and has a big bully fee to get it back

u wot m8

It is designed this way, it’s not a bug…

ManCaptain, I suggest you to watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nADHVzc9y8g

It is a shatter mesmer going full glass cannon just straight up owning people and he’s NOT using staff. If you think he’s downed easily, you’re going to have a bad time. He gets caught off guard by a few thieves in the video and just handles them correctly.

Granted he isn’t a phantasm mesmer but you said a glass mesmer without staff is cake. Well, say that after this video.

I don’t know if many players actually use asuras for this reason. I play asura almost exclusively, 4/5 toons are asura but more so for their fast running (only appears so I know), their awesome animations and general badassery.

I do agree it’s a bit harder to see asura’s animations but we also have disadvantages. It has happened before that my camera couldn’t see up a small hill because my POV is lower. On my human thief I would see what’s on that small slope. It’s tiny but the advantages are tiny as well.

1. More viable builds and balance
2. Other gametypes
3. Easier way to get nice gear (this is just a filler)

Hmm so lemongrass isn’t such a strong counter then? Is it worth using then, say on my mesmer?

Thanks for finding this out cool to know for my engineer

I’d say the ascended stuff will have more of an impact on mesmer since it’s built for damage which you will notice even if it’s slightly.

I thought Osicat was the best shatter mesmer I had seen but ‘Oh my god’ at your skill level and gameplay. You are insane and I’m now picking up a scepter torch. Inb4 s/t bandwagon. Or am I too late already?

The torch nuke is brilliant.

I play a thief amongst other classes like engineer, elementalist and mesmer. While I can kill any class on any of mine if I’m better, I do have to admit that no one can blow up someone like a thief can. My mesmer has strong burst but it has a higher cooldown compared to thief. If my attacks fail I can still stealth up and reset the fight.

If I die on my thief it’s only because of a few reasons:
a) very strong burst damage
b) CC chaining when Shadowstep is on cooldown
c) Group CC’s and immobs.

That’s generally the only thing I die to. Other classes don’t kill me unless I overcommit which I often do because I don’t like running that much.

When playing my other classes I know how to counter thieves because I have 500 hours on mine but yet they can almost always escape unless I can burst them on my mesmer or they kill themselves on confusion on my engineer.

I feel like some classes their escape mechanics are too much. Especially stealth, which is the strongest of all. I have talked to my friend about this and he says the same. I think there should be a nerf to stealth, I just don’t know what. Making us slightly visible would kill the class so that’s out of the question.

On another note, stealth is not that easy to counter. I can spam aoe’s effectively on my engineer but I still don’t know if he is right behind me, or has he shadowstepped and permastealthed? That’s the broken aspect. Too much chaining of stealth. Not in combat but rather with escaping/entering combat.

Guardian is in my eyes one of the top 3 class for WvW together with thieves and mesmers. The ONE thing that’s quite effective against guardians is conditions. And what’s funny is that you still have PLENTY of ways to deal with them. Traits, shouts can convert them if traited, Contemplation of purity, natural regen, heals on dodge.

As a comparison, what do mesmers get to deal with conditions? Null field (lol) and a sucky matra. Most mesmers don’t have ANY condition removal, so please don’t come complaining what you have is not enough.

Every class has a natural counter. If you are arguing that the guardian needs their one strong counter removed (not even that strong compared to a mesmer’s weakness) than I got nothing to say to you. You clearly just want your guardian invulnerable to everything.
FYI, guardian is already the most wanted class in WvW, especially for zerg fighting. Brb, giving unlimited retaliation to an entire zerg with a pack of guardians. My engineer nearly downs himself on a zerg with just 3 grenade throws and the grenades throw so slow that when the first one lands, you already have thrown 3.

I am running my own build but it’s not uncommon. I’m playing 30/10/0/10/20, p/p, nades and tool kit. I really like the toolkit for the 16s cooldown block and the nice confusion. The pull is great to catch runners as well and u can set up some great burst with it.

This is such bullkitten…

I don’t understand how these guykitten so hard. I’m a valkyrie/berserker thief with 3k power, 110% critical damage and my backstabkitten only for 8k max on level 80 glas cannons. On your armor I’d do around 4k. My heartseekers barely reach over 3k on bunkers. If anything, I feel bunkers are too strong sometimes.