Guild Wars 2

jmoak.7821:

Malchior.5732:

jmoak.7821:

imo embrace the darkness is too similar to unyielding anguish and the traits make no sense as you said. However i do think pain absorption is amazing and banish enchantment has its uses too. I mean Shiro only has 1 useful skill in pve and is very selfish legend and its “mandatory”

He only has 1 skill that directly increases DPS, but Shiro actually has several useful utilities. The Heal does more damage, the Stun Break is awesome for solos and trash runs, phase traversal is great for moving around the map and gap closing, Impossible Odds is crazy, and Jade Wings is good for dealing with Break Bars.

What does Mallyx have? Banish Enchantment for very specific encounters and EtD for that 10% stat boost.

Yeah i forgot the heal also deals damage. that is pretty good. However how often will you phase traversal or riposting shadows in dungeon/raid scenario? Jade winds is also just a normal stun and costs 50 energy, Jalis and staff 5 are much better and cost effective ways to destroy break bars.

He is probably the best legend for the current “stack in the corner dps meta” but outside of that he really offers nothing to the party and is honestly..quite boring to play. but that is just my opinion :P

I think you’re underestimating Shiro. Riposting Shadows is basically a “Get out of Jail Free” ability. Stunbreak, evade, cleanses cripple/chill, and a movement skill. Seem very useful for getting out of nasty combo fields like in the Snowblind Fractal.

Phase Transversal is situational, certainly.

You also have access to Staff with Shiro.

The strength of shield 4 has little to do with dueling. It has everything to do with small fights including up to 6 or so people. The phants spawn far enough away that they won’t be immediately exploded and, combined with SS shatter, are quite likely to land. I don’t duel.

The other phantasm skills are, quite literally, just phantasm skills. They do nothing other than that. But Iduelist is a 20 second CD, so is Izerker, and so is ISwordsman. IWarlock is 18. And these skills don’t provide two blocks and are not instant cast.

The upside is very high on this skill, and the downside is pretty low. Mess up a block and you still end with one phant. And since its instant cast (which it obviously should be), its very easy to not screw up the blocks.

I like the skill, I like how it rewards intelligent play. But I don’t think the cooldown fits with the power of the skill.

I’m reserving judgement about wells/et al until we’ve had time to fully flesh out the class. Between this and Rev, I imagine some surprising and powerful builds to pop out as people explore what they’re both capable of.

But I want to comment on Shield 4. Shield 4 is, in my opinion, stronger than shield 5 by a large margin for shatter builds. And I think Shield 5 is fantastic. For a shatter build, having an on-demand 2x phantasm generation, as well as strategic blocking, is very strong.

In a Chrono/Duel/Insp build, Shield 4 will generate 3 phantasms extremely easily. There’s little opportunity cost that a normal shatter combo (aside from GS 2 combo) presents. You block 2 attacks, waste no dodges, and have a full, or nearly full, shatter. Applied intelligently, you can neuter an opponents important attacks and deal high damage to them.

There’s not much counterplay to the generation, either. Is your opponent going to not attack you? If you pop it early, sure, shame on them for attacking into it. But its not that difficult to time the blocks to attacks an opponent has already initiated, giving them little reaction room.

But I like the skill! A lot! I don’t want to see it changed in any way except for the cool down. Its a bit too powerful on a 30 second duration (especially if you’re using it while Shifted or under alacrity). I’d feel a lot more comfortable with 35-40 second CD.

Kirito.9207:

I wonder why a lot of people think it’s so amazing to be the person to cast portal and veil.

It’s not fun at all.

I doubt any mesmer who runs in a zerg regularly will you tell that its that much fun. Its probably more due to guild loyalty/etc that has them doing it.

But who knows, different strokes n’ all. I can’t fathom enjoying being in a hammer train but other people clearly do.

You’re a veilbot in zergs. You’ll be the integral guy stealthing your train and then running around on the outskirts annoying staff eles.

You’re a complete monster in small group. Shatter is, bar none, the most dangerous spec in a competent small team (we’re talking 5-10 people). You can burst small groups very quickly, and there’s less pressure to kill your clones before you can get it off.

Don’t get me wrong, its still going to be frustrating as hell due to the multitudinous bugs. You’ll also need 2-3 support partners, you don’t have stab nor cleanse, and you die very quickly without protection. Both the boon and the support guards healing you.

WvW also isn’t the most welcoming environment to this type of player either. You’ll have to pick your fights and know when to bail. And you’ll bail a lot. But kitten is it satisfying to watch people melt to your and your buddies.

BlackDevil.9268:

@Spearchuka
It’s only a good weapon because of #2. If #2 wasn’t that good designed and on a much higher cooldown this weapon would be 100% useless.

I can asure you, staff is far from being meta in roaming.

I think you mean Mirror blade and not mirror images. For if you didn’t know, the ‘’casting time’’ is only 0.75 seconds. That’s the same as wind of chaos. I don’t see how you could potentially interrupt that. Its velocity is even higher than WoC and the blind would only be described as ’’outplayed’’ or ‘’poor play’’. If you get blinded before the cast then its your own fault of casting it. If you use it at max range, then yes you can expect to get blinded somehow (eventhough the traveling time of it is only about 0.5 seconds max.).

Again you’re only bringing up personal experiences. Let’s match numbers:
Mind slash -> 202 (0.6)
Mind gash -> 202 (0.6)
Mind spike: 403 (1.1) (on target without boons)
302 (0.9) (ripping 1 boon if target has boons)

This would come down to about 1.8 times more base damage than WoC and a -0.1 to 0.1 scaling on the 3rd chain. Even with 3000 power you would come down to around 10% more damage on sword AA which has a faster casting time too.

700 crit, 900 if bleeds? Wait what? 200 bleeding? Since when? In a power build? Sorry, but power builds do around 60 bleeding, not even close to 100. Same goes for burning, it only scales to roughly 400 and seeing the duration on it sometimes doesnt even apply to those who run -condi duration food. The scaling doesnt affect condition builds, only power ones and I’m quite sure that the AA of sword and GS both easily out dps staff AA in power builds even with 1.00 scaling.

I don’t say this often to people, but can you please stop bringing up personal stuff to the forums and bring up some comparisons with actual math in it. As long as theres no prove to any of your points, I don’t see the reason in further discussion.

My my, you bring up numbers. Let’s see. Hm. Bleeds on staff, base of 7 seconds on AA. 42.5 dps per stack of bleed baseline. 7*42.5. Oh look, 297.5. Neat. Burning. 1 second base on AA. 328 per second baseline. How wonderful! Numbers are fun when you actually take the time to look at them instead of blithely vomiting words on your keyboard.

10% more damage on a melee weapon, requiring you to be in melee range. That sounds balanced to me. GS is a single line beam attack meaning, functionally, you’ll likely hit mostly one target. So yes, it will outdps a bouncing attack that also applies conditions/boons.

Roaming meta uses builds that don’t want Staff because they’re already so very durable and have lots of control. They don’t need more.

Mirror Blades, .75 seconds is enough for any decent thief to get their grimy little hands on your sweet bottom. .75 on an auto is different, you don’t mind if its interrupted/blinded/whatever. Its probably because I play total glass but .75 cast time can be quite some time.

BlackDevil.9268:

You’re only describing how it is usefull for yourself, yet you havent proven me wrong. #2 GS is more reliable than #1 of staff. As you said #2 is clunky, you must find #1 staff clunky too. However, I don’t see how #2 is clunky, especially in zergs. You stand on a side, you cast it and press F1/2 the moment it hits someone. It bounces between the closest target when hit. The only problem with mirror blade would be that it hits the first target which is on your path, but I guess that’s how projectiles work, they can’t just beam through an enemy to hit your target. That’s just an issue of the design in your eyes, rather than the skill itself.

Yes staff may be good for you due those effects, because you get hit more often with lower numbers in zergs. Most people are specced more tanky, resulting in lower damage, resulting in being able to get hit more often. The moment you start getting a lot hits, the RNG on chaos armor doesn’t matter that much anymore since you will most likely get all effects anyway. This doesn’t mean the RNG isn’t bad, neither does this mean that having chaos storm on #4 makes sense. It’s not even an aura. It’s more like arenanet went like
‘’Oh idk what to put on #4 so lets just throw them a skill that can be obtained through 2 skills on your weapon set already, but wait! they can’t stack because that would come out even more depressing than it already is’’.

Chaos storm can help yes, but which aoe can’t? It’s a specific role of aoe’s, not of chaos storm itself. Still doesn’t take away that it’s RNG is horrible and very unreliable.

Even if everything is welcome, you don’t expect it to come, or maybe even worse, you expect it, but it wont occur.
for example; You drop a chaos storm on a player finishing a downed person. You expect to at least do 1 daze every 2 ticks, but it wont happen and you might even lose a fight because of the RNG.
This is just 1 example out of many. People can’t rely on the skill, they will just have to ’’hope’’ it will go in their favor.

I agree RNG can sometimes be very frustrating but, to me, that keeps the power level of the skill basically fine. Could you tweak it to lose the RnG and make it slightly better? Sure. But staff as it stands is still a very good weapon.

Also, I use staff while i’m roaming as well and chaos storm/armor are also very useful there. Yes, this all hearsay and blahdidy blah blah blah, but that’s all I got.

Mirror Images is clunky because of the cast time, nothing else. Its very prone to getting blinded and interrupted. Its still a fine skill, just clunky.

Also your power coefficent for staff AA is absolutely insane. 1.0 scaling is very, very high. The sword auto has a scaling of .6 and its melee. I play a full glkittenter and get ~700 crits with staff, which is inline for what the weapon ought to do given my stats. That’s ~900 total if its the bleed, 1k if burn. Given that it bounces and gives boons that seems fine to me.

BlackDevil.9268:

Just cause it’s viable doesnt mean it’s well designed. The weapons is good only when used in small scale area’s such as tpvp and when you are lucky. There’s too much RNG involved with staff, theres a skill that absolutely makes no sense to be even a weapon skill as it can be obtained from combo’s and there’s a warlock that only hits when you’re lucky. Almost every skill besides #2 is based on luck (and a little bit placement of yourself vs the enemy). It’s a really bad designed weapon with 1 super good designed skill on it. That 1 skill is the only thing that makes it viable.

Unlike the other 2h weapon we have, where at least 3 skills are well designed. (#2, 4 and 5). Can say something about #1, though for an AA I guess it’s design is decent.

I use Staff extensively when fighting against zergs. In fact I prefer it over greatsword and I prefer GS over staff in sPvP. GS #2 is an incredibly clunky skill so I’d argue that only well designed skills are 1,4,5 on the GS.

Really the only problem with Staff is #4 which could see a slight buff. Its a control weapon that controls the battle very well. Its my fallback weapon when things start get hairy and it does that job very well. And its not all because of #2, not even close. Chaos Armor is very important to upkeep on a squishy build. Chaos Storm can cover you and your allies’ retreat and interfere with your opponents. Yes, both of these skills are RnG dependent but, aside from swiftness/confusion, all of the condis/boons they apply are always welcome.

@Xyonon: Fanboy comments? Really? 3.5 seconds of cripple, 1s of chill, and 2s of poison are tangible. They give you an edge that you can exploit. Cripple and Chill matter, period. In a shatter build those scant few seconds may be all you need to ready another burst or have another survival skill come off of cd. Is a 1 second ICD a bit much? Yes. And is swiftness a less than desirable boon? Yes. But those make it slightly less powerful, not this kitten skill some think it is.

Staff is fine as a weapon. Its completely viable in certain builds. I use staff for Shatter and that baby has saved my kitten too many times to count. Sure, like all weapons, it has its glitches/quirks/underpowered stuff. But its 100% viable.

Let’s break down why:

1. Auto attack. Adds boons, applies conditions. A bit underwhelming but it has to be since your clones will apply the same conditions/boons. Its fine as is, just fix I-elasticity.

2. Perfection. Nothing else to say. It does what it does exceptionally well.

3. A great phantasm, aside from its wonky pathing on its attack. To buff it would be insane considering the strong damage potential it already has.

4. A good skill. Yes, it has been nerfed. Yes it only procs 1 per second. I’d prefer it to be 1 per 1/2 but whatever. It could ditch swiftness/confusion I guess. The cripple and blind are very, very good.

5. A control skill. All of its harmful effects affect the way the enemy can play. Chill reduces movement and impairs skill usage. Cripple hinders movement. Daze stops skill usage. Poison reduces any healing going on. All of these effects are great. Its a combo field for chaos armor! Could ditch the swiftness.

The staff is a control weapon. It allows you to place yourself where you want to be and helps you to hinder the movements and abilities of your enemies. Of course the damage is going to be lower than that of other weapons. That doesn’t mean it isn’t viable.

Message well recieved, anet. Go condi-roaming or go home. Also, the auto attack fix is fine for me. But to actively refuse to punish thieves for spamming skills. My loquacity fails me.

Edit: To avoid double posting I’ll just put this here. My loquacity only failed me for about 30 minutes.

This patch, to me, has been as though there were a concerted effort by Anet to nerf skill-intensive builds, at least for mesmers. Perhaps it wasn’t deliberate and if it wasn’t then that is pathetic. The nerfs to critical damage (in WvW), a refusal to give mesmer’s reasonable access to high vigor uptime, and now power block have all reduced the effectivness of our most skill-intensive builds.

Glass used to be glass. It meant high damage but low durability. In WvW its now low durability and average damage. The nerf to critical damage in WvW is inane and it would please me greatly if it were reverted.

Power Block had some great implications. A 10 second cooldown for using any skill (sans Autos, those should remain immune)or for attempting to brazenly resurrect a downed without stability, was a very good deterrent. Now Power Block is now particularly useless.

Roaming in WvW was already a parade of condition builds with a few interspersed power builds. But it was manageable. And it was manageable without having to run PU or conditions. Now? With the critical damage nerfs and the nerf to Power Block? Don’t even joke.

It’s something I’m heavily considering. I’ve played Mesmer since released and enjoyed the heck out of it. Played shatter for many, many months before swapping to condition based builds when the patch hit in June of last year. But most other mesmers builds aren’t nearly as compelling gameplay kittenter-mes.

PU conditions is simply a faceroll build in 1v1s and barely functional in 3v3s+. Condi-Shatter is interesting but lacks the visceral nature of power-shatter and is, in effect, simply a poor man’s version of PU condi. Phantasm builds are, more or less, the same. Lockdown builds are an interesting variety but don’t function well in my environment and PvP maps haven’t changed in many, many months.

The long and short of it is that power-shatter got kicked right in the man-jewels, undeservedly so. I always found shatter to be extremely compelling gameplay, mostly because you would wind up your best haymaker and sock some poor guy in the teeth. And if that silly kitten could survive you’d have to run around being squirrelly until you wound up another punch.

Condition shatter doesn’t run that way. Sure, you still got your burst. But your stats are so magnificently better that it makes me want to puke. Either you sacrifice some bleed stacks and go full dire tankmode or you go rabid. You’re still a tank.

I’ll live. I’ll adapt. But i’ll always be dour in the knowledge that a power well-necro now does my job better. And for no other reason than to change, futilely i might add, the zerk-meta in pve

Oh My God.8423:

I play a shatter mesmer too. When I read about the change to Critical Infusion, I almost had an heart attack. Personally I think the shatter build was at the right place. Not sure if the change is necessary,

To be fair, 5 points was way too easy for near perma vigor. But shatter needs perma vigor like Miley Cyrus needs attention. Its almost as if the Devs forgot shatter was still a build (lol @ forgetting the fundamental mesmer build) and neglected to add in a way for mesmers to get reasonable access to vigor.

In a build already constrained in traits, asking mesmers to put 10 points into a line totally unrelated to shatter just to get the vigor they need is absurd. Its not a question of a trade off between that and stripping boons. I need to strip stability and protection, it isn’t debatable. Frankly I’d be much happier if they put Vigor in as the adept trait in Illusions, it would at least makes sense there.

In the nearly 2 years that i’ve been playing GW2 I’ve never posted on the forums. But this patch. My God, this patch.

I’m not one for hyperbole so i’ll say it straight. Shatter is no longer a viable build. I’ve been running shatter for the past few months in a group composition, typically 5-8 going up against 15-20, and doing very well. In fact, I’d say that Shatter was one of the most powerful builds to run in that environment. But not anymore.

To those unfamiliar with the role of a shatter mesmer in the group, its to be full-glass and down a cluster of 4-5 people as quickly as possible. That’s the job and shatter did it extraordinarily well. Not anymore.

Now, I’ll be lucky to do 75% of a cluster’s life (this is with ~25 stacks of might). This allows a competent zerg ball to regroup and heal. Additionally, I’m much harder pressed to live as I’m highly reliant on dodges/invluns to survive. This is due to the halved duration on critical infusion, hamstringing both my defenses and my clone production (which was already hard-pressed while fighting a zerg).

I would like to stress that I’m running full glass. Its supposed to be a trade off of durability for damage, which it certainly was. Now I’m doing mediocre damage with terrible durability.

Perhaps, once I’ve stopped fuming I’ll reassess the situation and see that all is not lost. Perhaps. But shatter was not a build that required nerfs and yet got its teeth knocked out by this patch.