Curunen.8729

Need to sell it of course! 😄

oooooh this looks busted 😮 1200 ranged piercing daze ambush lol https://i.imgur.com/G5zVwXL.png Edit, I can't remember how to embed images...

Yep, planned to perfection. 😄

Yeah there's going to be some new degenerate stuff heh. Axe/shield on chrono or mirage could be quite nasty. I'm curious to see how dagger and rifle ambush will look for mirage.

omfg, kitten you Anet. For all the balance issues, then you go dangling a new shiny distraction and I've always wanted rifle on mesmer... Bah humbug, I'm so conflicted. Brb unlocking rifle skins and Predator. 😕

!remindme 3 years 😄

@Provocative.3561 Thanks for the response, yes this is from cele being the only thing worthwile for mirage at the moment (will be curious what happens tomorrow). I have several templates and while in the past have felt comfortable occasionally running around on power GS, right now it is masochistic unless having some kind of pet support. I was previously elusive mind diehard even through the exhaustion nerf, because as you say the cleanse is very good regardless of the uninspired design since original nerfs, and enabled fairly easy survival vs condi. When player ambush had max alacrity one could still output sufficient damage while taking elusive mind in a more player centric burst playstyle (when cooldowns allowed you to play more like a thief...). Since the shift of staff boons to clones, the prior nerfs to all cooldowns such as blink, illusionary ambush, jaunt and axe 3 are much more apparent with reduced alacrity - hence for the first time I feel there is no choice but IH for both utility and damage. It may not be essential for zerker, but then again the benefits of taking mirage (ie cleanse, mobility on sword, dodge while gs2 shatter etc) become questionable to be worth it vs chrono, virtuoso or even core. Unless they say buff player GS ambush damage and give some additional incentive in the traitline. Dune cloak needs something else going for it to be relevant as you sacrifice either insane levels of cleanse or insane levels of utility/damage. I can only see it being more useful in a group setting together with shattered concentration to be a mobile boon removing bomb. And while having "perma" cleanse is great I still think elusive mind showcases the lack of creativity in the current balance decisions. It's mundane and highlights the direction of the game in the theme of percentage increases and general spam. To me as for a long time the entire spine of the trait line needs a chiropractic to straighten it out. I think given dodge nerf, it won't be so necessary to maintain overnerfed utility cooldowns and maybe eg blink, IA, decoy could be closer to the 30s mark, sand through glass can have 2 ammo or be 20s (and it desperately needs to remove immob as well has having queue priority), and so on. Mirage advance can have the target break on return restored, and be given 3/4s evade like axe 3. Jaunt could meet halfway at 25s per charge. Probably more I can't think of. The desert distortion/blurred inscription may become more prevalent again as whether or not it is currently being run, it is still a badly designed and unhealthy interaction that promotes invuln chaining and likely a cause for at least a few different nerfs in the past. Ideally I believe mirage could have kept dodge while cced and instead replace distortion with desert distortion only (delete the trait) for 1s invuln and clones turning into mirrors. I agree false oasis should be 20s. Cutting this short as gtg, hope that covers some of the points, may edit later. 🙂

Some feedback following a bit of smallscale wvw on mirage this past week after a long break (caveat - playing on WiFi to 5G mobile internet across regions. The latency and stability has improved since last testing, surprisingly playable though occasional small spikes but it feels ok and on paper not as bad as what you Aus/NZ players have to deal with): . Limited build options. Must crutch heavily on gear (ie double energy/adventurer, dodge food) and then you've got a choice of maxing alacrity to alleviate all the heavy cooldown nerfs (so must run IH since the boon redistribution to clones), or the desert distortion/blurred inscription gimmick. I prefer the former, which if making use of all the associated cheese (ie chaos+cele, min maxing for concentration) is quite good, other than my gap in understanding for some newer elite specs. I feel much easier to play than virtuoso. Yeah endurance banking is not good so I'm glad to get the second dodge, but other than that I've had no problems. But, deviate in any way from min maxing this and things start to go bad. Eg swapping to elusive mind and the (good) cleanse does not anymore make up for horrendous cooldowns. You must run cele, must take IH and must get some uptime of alacrity to function. (Note: I do swap template to GS+Focus for largescale tagging, as you can be carried by allies, but would not feel secure on this anymore solo). Looking ahead to the patch, there are some serious issues. Limiting dodge when cc'ed makes sense on paper and in a vacuum of how the game should work which I agree with, but there are some subtleties. This would necessitate a shift back to old style core taking at least two stunbreaks (blink+X) and together with many other skills are instant cast already and don't benefit from being able to dodge cover cast. Shatters, blink, IA, SoM, Jaunt, staff 2+4, and even StG, Decoy, and short cast time abilities like axe 3, etc - not going to list everything but the point is many abilities are short cast time so mirage dodge benefits are marginal in terms of cover casting. So long cooldowns on utilities do need to be looked at - as the dynamic will change between dodge use and skill use. On a side note Sand through Glass is totally kittened by immobilise. It becomes a useless skill as you don't move, instantly break the mirror and lost 30s cooldown. StG must absolutely cleanse immob (and cripple/chill) as it is broken in this context. Next is addition of cleanse on any mirage cloak with elusive mind - we will see if this has any function for power shatter, but here if you're going for pure shatter without leaning into clone ambushes then surely it's better to play core for more damage or chrono for more utility... It doesn't matter how much cleanse they put on elusive mind, it's a dead trait as mirage currently requires IH to measure up, certainly on condi/cele. So the patch does not address build diversity at all, does nothing about the desert distortion/blurred inscription gimmick, and likely forces even more one way to play. Finally it's the issue of dodge being tied to ambush and the whole point of mirage which is balancing offensive and defensive dodge use. I don't believe this is being taken into account as you're not always saving dodge only to evade but may need to burn to ambush for damage/utility/etc (not going to talk about dune cloak as that is a separate issue as with EM above). Otherwise if saving dodge purely defensively you may as well go with another spec and have freedom in damage/utility/etc. This may prove to be more significant when dodge gets limited - we'll have to wait and see...

I like this a lot and hope some sort of enhanced customisation can be possible in this way. Beyond traits, it would be great to see other ways to upgrade and tweak skills for a more differentiated class gameplay experience.

Virtuoso could really do with an additional targeted pull skill that synergised with the whole piercing damage in a line. F3 should be a line pull like Rev's Temporal Rift. Master of Fragmentation could increase the range/width of the pull. That way it can be a setup for burst, but with the challenge that you have to generate blades quickly for follow up damage F3 -> F1 cc and burst. And Bladeturn Requiem should go back to F4, delete F5 (no separate Distortion) and have BR be: - usable with zero blades (if shattering with zero blades, only gain channeled distortion with core mesmer visual and virtuoso BR character blocking animation plus respective trait procs) - 0.75s channeled distortion followed by channeled block 0.75s per blade, and also give to self and allies in 240 radius after 0.75s: - Stability (1 stack & 0.75s per blade) - Protection (0.75s per blade) - Resolution (0.75s per blade) So at least you could take a few hits if unlockable, after the initial distortion. 1-5 blade shatter visuals stay the same, shattered blades start orbiting immediately and last for 1s per blade shattered. Eg if you have 2 blades, you get 0.75s channeled distortion followed by 1.5s channeled block and 1.5s/2stacks stab, 1.5s prot, 1.5s resolution. Damaging blades orbit for 2s. Timings up for change. Many ways this could be different, I just think going back to the four bladesongs is more thematically coherent than stuffing core Distortion on there as well.

Yeah I hope it is not the case, but given the usual process with mesmer I'm half anticipating it to not function with daze - then wait for the community to go wtf when they can't dodge during the high number of daze sources in the game which will kill mirage in every mode, before finally relenting. Anet please if you're reading this I hope by "crowd control" you mean only all the things that prevent a normal dodge

I just thought - what if crowd control also includes Daze? Edit - on reflection I also recall this coming up in discussion some years back. This would be so bad because you can normal dodge when dazed. Hopefully it is only fear/taunt/immob and hard cc like stun/knockdown etc.

I'm curious how Elusive Mind will work with fear/taunt/immob - will it prioritise clearing or dodge simply fail to function? Will IA clear those? I'm assuming Jaunt/blinking into a mirror should prioritise clearing those. (It's still a stupid trait!) Also they didn't seem to touch the Desert Distortion/Blurred Inscription bullkitten gimmick. This nonsense may bring about further nerfs if not changed.

I don't get this at all - it seems like a resignation that the design of exchanging F4 for block didn't work so moving it to F5, shoehorn Distortion back in and then removing the block from F5. Why not give bladeturm requiem distortion, remove actual Distortion and go back to 4 shatters? I don't get where Virtuoso is going, the block was unique on that, maybe it could have had more function to supplement eg damage reduction, aoe control or something.

lol, it's an Entmoot. I reckon even ents would have reached that conclusion faster.

About kittening time. Can we have deception cooldowns unnerfed now because the traditional use of utility slots as stunbreak etc are going to be necessary again. So I see no reason not to reduce IA, StG, Jaunt, MA by like 20%. Still underwhelming. I'm mildly concerned there's going to be a few bugs - I thought one issue previously was that it was difficult to get the dodge to not work while disabled, so credit to whatever solution they found. Elusive mind though - what the kitten? How in any way is this worthy of a GM trait thematically? Put this in place of renewing oasis and make something with some imagination. Or make IH a minor trait so we can have three completely mundane GM major traits that at least compete with each other... You've got complete game changing clones getting mirage cloak and casting ambush, and then you've got Elusive Mind and Dune Cloak - ie convenience adept tier traits. Absolute nonsense tbh, the entire mirage GM major traits need changing. Chaos nerfs seem excessive. Critical Infusion should be buffed.

While I love that now action camera exists, unfortunately I still prefer using autohotkey for crosshair toggle and associated function because of two fairly significant things: 1. Automatic cursor centering when toggling crosshair on. This means when toggling off the cursor always starts from the crosshair point (roughly screen centre or wherever the crosshair position is set) and not wherever it last ended up on screen prior to enabling action camera. This allows more efficient use of toggling off/on for use of the cursor as you always know where the cursor is - either for ground targeting, target selection or other. 2. Binding right click to a skill while crosshair is on. It would be nice to have this option in game as you currently have to use autohotkey for this anyway on top of it. I can fudge number 2 through rebinding mouse buttons but this is not ideal. I would like to finally transition completely from having to run an autohotkey script to purely in game features, but these two points prevent from making the change. Is there a possibility that this could be implemented in a future patch? Edit - for clarity on point 1, I believe it's most efficient to be toggling on and off during combat for use of the cursor as needed, and have been doing that for years. The current action camera function encourages either having always on or always off, which is limiting its potential.

A bingo card would be fun: Mirrors give alacrity Mirrors give barrier All ambushes get alacrity! (insert Oprah meme) 2 dodges returned 1 dodge all modes Zero dodges, only mirrors! New shatters (I hope not now tbh, they'd probably be worse) Desert distortion rework IH minor EM rework Speed of Sand merged to adept minor Mirage mantle change? Self Deception no clone requirement? Jaunt charges/cooldown/range All Deception cooldowns Mirrors on dodge Mirrors on jaunt Mirrors everywhere Clone persistence on target death . And on core: Clone stow/draw with player Vigor restoration . Can't think of more otoh but will edit if so.

I've had plenty of use out of it, but with the aurene (and jormag/primordus/Kralk) staff I slightly wish I could exchange Bifrost, as the sound, cast, trail, footfall and death animations are much cooler. However the Bifrost model itself is more elegant so I'm still kind of satisfied, and will probably end up making the aurene one at some point anyway.

Yeah it could certainly be from the spectre. Heh indeed, if it's another "reduce chaos vortex alacrity by 0.1s" I'll get the popcorn out. 😄

Looking at the new twitter picture preview with the mirage mirror - is mildly unsettling. Having waited so long for something to happen with mirage beyond the multiple chaos vortex tweaks, this could be the patch that either does something good or kittens mirage to an even more boring playstyle. I wonder if two dodges will come back in exchange of mirrors granting barrier instead of an evade, going by the picture?

I'd like the Rifle that chrono was going to get, for core mesmer so all specs can use it.

I'm not an ele main but felt it worth posting here as every time I want to play ele it's sad there's no rifle/bow options since they neutered Frost Bow a long time ago... Hammer is a cool weapon (I've also been wanting a hammer mesmer spec for some fun), but does seem a bit redundant and an odd choice given the other specs. Nothing quite scratching the itch aside from playing a different game which has elemental ammo, or having to make an aurene and by extension jormag/primordus etc legendary rifle for engi or similar and pretending it's an elemental gun wielder, which isn't quite the same. 😕 It's a perfect template for elemental arrows or bullets - freeze enemies, burn them, shoot round corners with magnetic rounds, etc. I mean sure I could just go and mess about in warframe/destiny/borderlands/mass effect and so on, but it could be really awesome in gw2. By extension it would be nice to see more rifles and bows across light armour classes for the variety, as virtuoso does nothing for me either.

Regarding point 2, instead of any given skill having only one version (that can be enhanced by traits), potentially having additional branching upgrades to certain skills that alter how they function more drastically than traits currently do. Could be done through traits themselves, as there are enough filler traits that can be repurposed. Alternatively it can be done on the weapon skills menu - where you could use some resource to train enhanced versions of skills - but this being finite such that you have to choose which skills you want to spend it on to unlock upgrades to those skills. It could be too messy on top of the trait system and wreck any semblance of balance left, but may open up a lot of fun customisation. I mean it could just be an extension of the trait system tbh, may be better. Sorry not got a specific example to share right now. Fair enough, I suppose elite specs cover this sufficiently anyway.

I'd like to see any of - new core weapon(s) - skill branching evolution upgrades - select between at least two options to tailor a skill for a niche (ie wider radius vs more damage, and so on) - cross class elements (looking at Warframe subsume type mechanic)