ShadowKatt.6740

It works. And if you're not playing a Virt then you can count on the signet to spawn a clone attacking every ambient creature in the world ensuring you can never mount.

I think you mean Quickness and Alacrity. Superspeed is Superfun and very few things in the game even give it.

I still want Chaos Aura on my clones. How about we compromise?

Uh.......I'm of two minds here. I mean, for starters I'm an old Dungeons and Dragons vet and Mirror Images has been a staple of D&D and Pathfinder for....ever. And the thing about there is that when you hit an illusion it goes *poof*. They essentially only have 1HP, and it's still an awesome spell. Then we have GW2 and I'll be honest I've never even thought about my Clone HP because #1 mine don't seem to die that fast or that often and #2 my clone generation is high enough that even if they were I'm replacing them regardless. NOw granted, that is exclusively in PvE. My experience in WvW has been a lot different. In WvW in a zerg I find clones to be pointless. Clones serve three purposes: To Distract, to Condition, and to Shatter, and in the middle of a zerg I find that everything they're supposed to do is paltry at best. Roaming is a little different but I'm not a PvP player so every time I've run into someone roaming it's always been a swift death and I generally didn't even have time to get clones out, so I can't really comment there except that there's a lot bigger issues than clone health. As far as the phantasms go I wish I could comment on that. Firstly I'm visually impaired so keeping up with all the stuff going on on the screen is nigh impossilble for me. I spend a LOT of time just pressing the buttons and assuming that it's working. I pressed the button, I saw numbers go up, SHOULD be good. And that's the other problem. When I'm in the middle of a fight I've got big numbers; those are mine. I've got little numbers; those are my clones. And then I've got red numbers (they're not really read but the icon is); those are my conditions. And then there's phantasms. When they strike and add their numbers to that sea of hostile math I can't tell what's what so I just assume they're working. It's interesting that you even bring up Phantasmal Defender. I carry it because it's a phantasm and I get bonuses from Phantasms, but I'm almost certain that -that- particular one does absolutely nothing at all.

I have ONE question: How do you survive? Mesmers are a scholar class. We have naturally lower HP and toughness than the other, burlier professions. We specialize in support roles and long range combat and flourish in a team setting. We do NOT want to be the center of attention. A scholar whether that's a Mesmer, Elementalist, or Necromancer in the middle of a group of baddies in like a nerd that got lost in the football locker room: It's gonna be a bad day and you're probably not walking away from it. To that end not only do mesmers have range on their side we also have clones that help to take the pressure off of ourselves. It's our greatest ability and strength and allows us to survive situations other professions could not. So here's a spec with the general idea that you WANT to be in the middle of things. It's not a bad idea, but for starters you've opted for a ranged weapon instead of a hammer or maces though I'll acknowledge that it seems you designed it with movement in mind rather than damage. But now what exactly is keeping you alive while you do all this? People aren't gonna stand and just eat it. They're gonna hit you back. Inflicting Slow and Chilled is going to take flight away from them so they're gonna have to default to fight. So what do you do then?

I'll say this: Since Weapon Master Training unclipped all the weapons we have, Mirage has become my most played spec. I'm not generally an aggressive player. It's why I don't pvp; I'm not generally competetive and I don't have that drive. However, Mirage with a dagger is something else. My build is nothing special. I just focus on maximum vigor so I can use Mirage Cloak as much as possible and to that end I have made something horrifying. The thinking is simple: Phantom Razor lets you throw three daggers at your target at a range of 1200. Infinite Horizon means your clones can do it too. That means that with 3 clones out, every time you mantle up and throw knives you are hitting your target with TWELVE knives. That's bad enough, but it gets SO much worse. Firstly, you can do that twice in a row, so we're up to 24. While you're waiting for your endurance to refill, fill the gaps with Crystal Sands (36 knives), dodge again (48 knives), then Illusionary Ambush (60 knives), and dodge again (72 knives). Against a single target, and mind you I'm wearing celestial gear, it is DEVASTATING, plus you're invulnerable most of the time as you're always in Mirage Cloak. And then it gets worse. I carry a focus, because the phantasm throws axes and mirages use axes; I'm a sucker for thematics. But the focus has Temporal Curtain which is a good skill but more importantly it's a dual skill. Following that you have Into the Void, which pulls 5 targets together at a single point. Did I mention yet that Phantom Razor pierces? Because Phantom Razor pierces. So Into the Void, followed up with an Unstable Bladestorm just to really drive in the idea that they're in a blender, and then hit them with up to 72 knives TIMES FIVE TARGETS. It's unrealistic to expect every one to hit but hypothetically we're talking about the potential to deliver THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY STRIKES in the span of only a handful of seconds. It is obscenely aggressive and undeniably a blast to play that I keep finding myself going back to it when I don't even have a legendary dagger yet. This build has trumped my love of my other legendary weapons and I absolutely recommend you try it at least once.

Mmmm.....no. But I like some of the ideas. In particular I like the "ammunition" idea, being able to place a number of turrets in general. Not only do I think it would be fun but it would also play into some builds. Some Engineer builds really capitalize on Burning damage, and so having multiple Flame Turrets could accentuate those builds. However, I can also see mulitple Thumper turrets being a serious problem, which is probably why it'll never happen. BUT, let's say we did that. I think it would be fairly easy. We already have this: Mesmers and Scourges. Both have slots above the weapon bar that keep track of clones or shrouds respectively. To work that into the Engineer wouldn't be too hard I think, but I think your biggest obstacle is a case of If it ain't broke don't fix it. And right now, Turrets ain't broke. Not bad ideas, but I wouldn't expect much. Also, as for the whole "Power Wrench" thing giving the turrets an additional ability....they do already. It's in your tool belt. Every turret gives you an extra attack in theme with that turret, so again, just kinda reinventing the wheel here.

I don't. I'd just like an update where I don't get nerfed for a change. I don't even follow what happens to the other professions, I just read the changes for what I'm losing this week.

Oh this is SUPER simple: I would delete ALL boons. Now hold on. A few of you I heard jerk your knee so hard your femurs snapping was audible from here. "Not my Alacrity!" "I need full Might for my DPS!" "There's no way to clear the boss witout 25 vulnerability!" And you don't seem to understand that that's half the problem right there. Right now the game has been balanced around the idea that these boons will be up, at maxiumum stacks, at 100% time, which has led to this bad meta we have where we have to have these purpose built builds that do nothing but boon spam. You have to have THIS weapons with THIS trait and THIS gear and use THIS rotation so we can achieve MAXIMUM DPS! And so one of two things is inevitable: Either you're going to just faceroll your way through all the content (which isn't really that hard anyway) OR the rest of the game has to be tuned up with that in mind, which is what's been done. Hence, power creep. But if we got rid of the boons, everything could be scaled back, and everything is on a much more even keel. Remove the boons and you remove boon support. Without boon support now you're much more reliant on your own skill, your own synergies, and teamwork. ANd it would drastically narrow that gap between the power players and the casuals since yes, the casuals are doing like 5-10k damage but now endgame content could be balanced around the 20-25k mark for the power players who know what they're doing even without boons.

Nope, I don't think you go far enough. I think we are just a stones throw from them going through and changing the whole game. If Quickness and Alacrity are NEEDED for literally every single game mode and every single build for every single part of the game then we may as well just adjust the speed and recharge of the skills and make them by default permanant.

it was nice while it lasted. I'm not gonna pretend that Chaos Aura was SUPER significant. It only procced conditions when you were hit, and as a mesmer you don't want to be hit so it wasn't doing you much good. It might have been more useful on OTHER people since they'd be in the fray of things. I mostly just used it for the regeneration anyway. But that's not what I wanna talk about. While I don't PvP it's not because I don't get PvP. I just hate losing. One of the things that I have forever had a complaint with is that if you're a staff mesmer and you have 3 clones you want to BLEND IN with them. That means if you use Chaos Shield, OOPS! There's the mesmer. You just outted yoruself. So on the staff you have five skills and ONE of them is now absolutely useless because it actually harms you more than helps you. When you could share it though you tap it once and ALL your clones get it. You get all the benefits of Chaos Aura AND you haven't marked yourself as the target to kill. This is once again a case of Anet has no idea how mesmers work, how mesmers play, or what mesmers do. I have to assume that they are absolutely ignorant of their own game because the only other option is that they DO know what they're doing and they're breaking the mesmer on purpose. Unfortunately, I tend to lean more towards the latter these days than the former.

So the way I see it, the way I understand it, is that this is only really a problem is because the meta right now and for the last....years....is so centered on Quickness and Alacrity basically to the exclusion of everything else that it's become the crux of this problem. It's QuickScrapper. it has a single purpose: Give quickness. And that movement aspect of Rocket Charge gets in the way of giving Quickness. So honestly we could strip the damage out of it, the movement out of it, we could essentially remove every aspect of that skill so that when you hover over it it just says "Quickness: X:XX seconds, 5 Targets" and there you go, QuickScrapper happy. But that's not what it was for. This is the crux of my arguement about Alacrity and Quickness. I never cared about them until they became literally the only thing that mattered anymore and like a black hole started to twist the whole game around them. It's not just that Snowcrows is trying to edge out that extra 0.8 DPS by keeping Alacrity up for 0.1 more seconds. They're crazy, whatever. It's that because of them and their benchmarks now every raid group demands that you play that way, and every strike group, and even the balance team is building around that now for reasons I cannot fathom. In a way I think it's funny. I said before several times that Alacrity should have stayed with mesmers and everyone recoiled talking about the dark days. The time when the only mesmer allowed was chrono and you weren't allowed to play anything else. So then they exported Alacrity and Quickness to every profession, and where has that landed us? Congratulations, you are no longer pigeon-holed to playing AlaChrono. Now you can play whatever flavor of Alacrity or Quickness build you want, so long as it gives Alacrity or Quickness. I'm reminded of that old Henry Ford quote when he started to mass produce the Model T car: "You can have it in any color you want so long as it's black". That's what we've devolved into here, and people are actually complaining because that hasn't been done ENOUGH. I dunno what the solution is. If I could rip those boons out of the game with hanging wires and dangling strings of code I would, although I'll admit that 100% quick uptime is about the only way to make Mesmer Rifle tolerable. I just know that the premise of this thread isn't the solution.

I don't see it happening, because most mounts aren't made for combat and making them combat ready would be a huge ask. That being said: Raptor Jousting. We already have the ability to run raptors in a line (EoD Taxi system). After that, Rock/Paper/Scissors. You use 7/8/9 as your target to hit, and 1/2/3 to aim your lance. If you hit their target, you knock them off and get a point! First to five points wins!

The difference I see there is that while you're right I haven't seen anyone calling for swords to have a 240-360 range because melee-only builds are too vulnerable as opposed to the original premise of this whole thread.

Look, I know there's a discussion to be had here but all I can think of is Naruto when he makes a shadow clone and then throws it at someone: Clones as ammunition. Kagebushin no Mesmer!

That's almost exclusively the reason why the first thing you do in End of Dragons (after you land in Cantha) is do a tutorial. And what's in that tutorial? Movement, Defiance, and Combos, three key parts of the game that SO many players do not understand.

Actually it makes perfect sense. In a better, more robust game you would want to reward players for playing at their optimal range. Usually this means damage falloff for exceeding it and generally accuracy penalties for being too close. Of course, then you can have skills that can negate or even capitalize on those conditions, like a Longshot to fire from beyond range, or a Point Blank Shot to deal more damage from inside the range. But GW2 doesn't have that, and so there's really no reason to use a melee weapon unless you just want to use that weapon. I THINK, but I'm not sure about this, that melee weapons do a small amount of damage more than ranged weapons but how much that affects your decision is up to you. And I say this through experience because my fiancee plays a ranger and she's always using her longbow in melee, always calling down a Barrage right on top of herself. Drives me up a wall but that's the game. This isn't really specific to Guild Wars, this is just general game design 101. If you're going to have weapons you want to diversify them otherwise they're all just skins on the same weapon. So first you divide up into melee and ranged and generally make them ineffective and the other. Obviously melee weapons don't work at range....because they don't reach (excluding skills like Throw Sword and the like; they are exceptions that prove the rule), and so you need to balance that by making your ranged weapons ineffective or at least less effective in melee. Far as I know and if there is something I'd love to be corrected on this, GW2 doesn't do that. It's not technically all bad though. There are some niche cases where this actually works in our favor. The most obvious is Elementalist and Engineer who do not have weapon swap and so are often forced into using their ranged weapons in melee. In particular I've called the Mesmer Staff a "Total" weapon because it's a ranged weapon that kinda wants you to be at melee range as Winds of Chaos bounces between targets and so using it in melee means it both conditions your target AND boons yourself. But again it is the exception. As it is there's really no reason not to and so weapon choice is purely down to preference, which means that you can stack with any ranged weapon you want as well. I personally feel that this does cheapen the game a bit because while this does offer more choice to the players and more flexibility in your build I feel that it makes those choices far less impactful. But, that's just how I feel and I'm sure there will be a LITANY of confused emojis and arguements to tell me how I'm wrong. God help me if they ever saw the games I've developed, they'd probably find where I live and burn my house down.

Well, the way I see it, you can blame one of two things: #1 You can blame them for focusing on the meta and bending the game to the absolute limits OR #2 you can blame the devs for actually listening to them. And I suppose if we're going to be fair the blame really falls on the devs and the balance team for listening to them at all. BUT here we are. Doesn't really matter because either way you want to go here we are. So.....gonna tell me how I'm wrong? No? Just gonna stand there and call me a troll? Alright then. I've been reported enough on these forums for my comments that I figure it's time enough to start giving back. If this is the way the forums are going to be then I guess we'll let the mods sort it out.

As I said above I think Snowcrows is one of the worst things to happen in this game. GW2 would be a completely different game if it wasn't for them and their golem benchmarks. They are to GW2 what Goonsquad is to Eve, except I don't even know that Goonsquad is really harmful to Eve, just noobs. The weird thing is that it's not. Something that I hate but I'll acknowledge is that there's zero penalty to using your ranged weapon at point blank, in-your-face range. So you can use a pistol/rifle/bow AND stand in the stack for everything. I think that's a design oversight, maybe they just didn't care.

Even in PvP though....as you said it was designed with an attentive player in mind, and they're not. And they're not because of what I said above: Even as a mesmer, a scholar profession, even I don't fear damage. Back in GW1 if you were a warrior and you got hit with Empathy or Spirit Shackles you backed off because there was a coin toss chance that you die before your target does and even IF you win, you'll be easy picking for the next. Now it really doesn't matter. You could slap Poison, Torment, Bleeding, and Confusion all on the same character and they'd still shrug it off, at least for a while before they even consider they might need to back off. But the balance team would never let conditions be that devastating, and I think that's to our detriment. This game feels like we're playing with foam bats and silly string. Nothing is actually dangerous, confusion least of all. Confusion in Pokemon is more dangerous than here.

NOPE! Believe me, I feel you. One of the reasons it has taken me so long to roll a Guardian is because by defaut (not counting weaponmaster training because that's still fairly new) Guardians only had two ranged weapons: Staff and Scepter. Staff is super defensive, not great at solo play, but the scepter?? If you've ever played Guardian with scepter it is the WORST! It is SO loud and because the AA for Guard Scepter is a single attack it just keeps going over and over and over again. I've rolled my first Guardian 12 years in now that they have a kitten pistol, but I get it. For what it's worth, in comparison, I don't find the Mesmer RIfle nearly as bad. A little annoying, but I can deal with it. Now, as for the Chrono wells...I actually kinda find them funny. Purrsonally I don't really use them because wells don't work against moving targets but I get a chuckle every time I'm in the meta and I hear one. Then I can point and say "There's the mesmer!". Yes, I am that easily amused.

I....kinda think it should go the other way. We were discussing this in your other thread, but I kinda want to expand on it here. We all agree that confusions DoT sucks. And honestly, bumping up its DoT to match Poison or Bleeding isn't really an option given that it also procs damage. WHAT IF, and just stay with me here, we stripped the Damage over TIme entirely and focused instead on the proc. Dump that damage into the proc so every time you use a skill it hits back, and then for every stack it hits back harder. The damage done on proc is....just an incomprehensible equation but if your confusion did....and I'm just throwing numbers here but 250 damage on skill activation but you could stack 6-8-10 stacks of confusion that's 1500-2000-2500 damage every time you swing your sword. Not only is that very significant in the middle of a fight but I think it's a nice callback to Empathy in GW1 but it might even serve the same purpose, forcing them to either back off or cleanse. I think TOrment is great the way it is since forcing you to move makes it a little harder to fight but we can strafe and fight so torment is really neutered from the start, but this change to Confusion might actually make it more viable, particularly in PvP (I don't see it being that significant in OW/PvE).

So to put numbers to it, for example, if a 10 second Confusion would do 1000 damage DoT, if they attacked on the second tick it would do 100 DoT and then a 900 burst and the that stack of confusion ends. If there were three stacks of Confusion and they attacked in the next second, that stack would have done 200 DoT and then 800 Burst, and so on until if you caught it at the end of its timing it would be negligible. I'll be honest, I don't like it, but that's my personal taste. It's functional, but I'd rather keep Confusion the way it is. As I said, Empathy and Backfire were the cornerstones of my mesmer way back when and I like the way confusion works now. But I do agree that the damage should be tuned way up. Mesmers, unless you're running Sword/Sword or Dagger/Sword with Sharper Images, primarily do our damage through Confusion and Torment, and right now the only reason that it works at all is the fact that enemies don't carry self heals. If they did, Confusion and Torment would be literally useless.

I had to read throgh that a couple times to really get what you meant. At first I thought you thought it wasn't a DoT skill, but I see what you mean now. You want it to just dump all its damage on skill activation rather than give bonus damage. It's...an interesting thought. I'm sure you're already well aware that Confusion is the GW2 equivilent of Empathy, which as a Punishment mesmer was one of my signature skills. it kinda sounds like you're looking for less Empathy and more of a Clumsiness or Frustration. And...I don't think so. I think Confusion works really well as it is BUT I also like where you're going. It might be a bit wishful thinking but I wouldn't mind seeing a new condition that did something similar to that, call it a Trigger or Delay or something where we put it on you and if you do something THEN you get hit with it, forcing them to either back off or eat it. I'm not sure it would matter because, and I mean I'm as guilty of this as everyone is, in GW2 getting hit's not really a big deal. Back in GW1 if I started taking damage I knew I was in trouble. In GW2 I can be standing in the death circle and I'm kinda just....eh, I'll be fine. So while I love the idea the way I see it it's either gonna be so pitiful that no one will care or so broken that it'll get nerfed into the afore mentioned anyway. But hey, maybe you have some further thoughts on how to implement it.

Part of me wants to say "Dear god not more ground targetting WHEN WILL IT STOP!?" But then I use Snap to Target or whatever it's called, so honestly not a bad option. Not the best option, but not the worst either. THAT BEING SAID though, not gonna fix the core complaint of this thread. The complaint was that if you use something like Rocket Charge, and the boss moves or teleports, then there you go careening off a cliff like a lemming in a Disney documentary. Adding a ground target won't necessarily fix that; perhaps you could just aim it a different direction but I have a feeling that it's gonna end in the same complaint.