Firebeard.1746

Given the results, I'm thinking that it shouldn't change much from current format, but as a little more than half of players want some lore, it should be "optional" content (unlockable without story line). If you swap to something different in Cantha, then you risk pissing off 40% of the player base, which is a bad idea. So some middle ground should be provided to make everyone happy.

+1 I've seen toxic behavior like this and it's annoying (though has been 1 out of 6 matches so far). Geez, entitled idiots believe that it's their right to win every match and if they don't seem to at first, burn everyone else. Also there are some pips earned for it being close and/or top stats, so really, there's no reason to this.

> @"ArlAlt.1630" said:

> > @"Odik.4587" said:

> > > @"ArlAlt.1630" said:

> > > I tuned in to Teapot's Teatime only to hear that according to Teapot, Mirage is butchered. Thank the Maker CMC ignored the stipulation. The class is clearly over performing still. Nerf it already ANET!

> > >

> > > @ArenaNet

> > Was it only mirage? I thought it was the entire class which was butchered?

> > But ye CMC is the MVP, ignored the question like a champ. He just couldnt tell him more nerfs are coming :joy:

>

> Rightfully so, the class is OP as hell.

This is a joke, right?

> @"Roarshack.4902" said:

> For starters, I am ranked Top 100 in the current season as a condi Mirage.

>

> A lot of what @Arheundel.6451 has merit, lots of players play FOTM because it will carry them and condi mirage pre-patch was a perfect go to choice. Now after the patch, lots of those players are complaining. That being said, the current state of mesmer is far from ideal. Most other classes are simply better, with certain 1v1 match-ups being nearly impossible to win. However, mesmer still shines as +1 class. You can easily jump into a fight to help down players quickly. This meta really forces mesmers to choose their fights carefully, gone are the days of us killing everything with ease. Play to the classes strength and you will be successful, ignore your strengths and you'll die miserably.

>

> I hope to see some buffs, I think IH could still be viable if it were reworked into buffing the Mirage damage with every additional clone instead of having the clone do the damage. The bulk of mesmer/mirage defense comes from being hard to find and pin down, this specifically punishes shatters since the current shatters are lack luster. It should be a better trade off.

>

> Mesmer is far from great, but good players will still make it work and kitten players will always complain.

Have you ever considered that you might be better putting all that effort into a class that isn't broken? Skill accounts for some %, but my experience has shown me that when classes are unbalanced, surprise, when both players are equal that the weaker class loses. That's pretty much where I've gone with this. I pick up almost any other class, read some guides, sometimes even do my own crazy stuff and have 10x the effectiveness and way higher win rates. I find it strange you admit the class is broken, and then say that everyone who isn't playing it anymore is just a noob. How do you know that everyone beating you in ranked isn't more of a noob than you are, but just aren't as stubborn about rerolling? Playing a non-broken class is what I would call "practical"

> @"Hirosama Nadasaki.6792" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> They are not targetable, they persist after your target dies. There are there for decoration only. Then, completely change phantasm skills: They have an instant effect (damage, defense, whatever makes sense as replacement) and as a side effect generate a clone.

>

> So basically you wanna rip mesmer's identity. No thanks.

> it' perfectly possible to balance them with the current clone mechanics, the balance team just doesn't want to.

I'm not ripping it. They're still used for shatters. I maybe didn't communicate that clearly, but what other class has their class resource vanish between fights? Or has it randomly erased because someone is spamming AOE? It's horrible design. Especially as shatters are supposed to be the main focus, at least that's the rumor I heard after the phantasm change. The class is hot garbage, especially when its resource system is so easily erased for its core mechanic.

> @"Arheundel.6451" said:

> > @"pninak.1069" said:

> > yea I think the opposite is true. mesmers are in need of a buff.

>

> No they don't....**mesmers for the first time in 5 years** have to work for their kills...for the past 5 years every average Joe could jump on mesmer and become a duellist god, many with time started to actually believe to be the hottest thing around. Dunno how many times in the past I would duel some clowns and win easy.....only for these living jokes to re-login on their **condi mesmer** and become 1v1 pro like that.

>

> Blur into distortion into stealth into distortion into dodge into stealth into blur again......**a massive uncounterable defensive rotation** that would make even the worst player out there look like a god; all those dodges also come with their perks because...why not?! and so we have clones cannon fodder ....reflection..yup...

>

> 80% of current mesmer population are just some FOTM rerollers who jumped on the class after Hot launch thx to chrono bunker BS, chrono condi burst then PoF mirage etc etc, they never learnt to actually play the class and all its nuances.

>

> You can easily tell the difference between core mesmers from launch and staff clone ambush campers ( vast majority of which just spend their time on the forum asking for buffs), the latter run quickly out of steam and start crying once their "invincible" strategy fails, no more able to let their clones do all the works ( funny the same people then complain about ranger saying how pet does all the dmg..amusing) while they just staff 2/stealth/hide like champs and climb like hell.

>

> No more cocky condi champs running and laughing at you in wvw it seems...**good riddance**

I did not play mesmer because it's Fotm. It was my first class. Also mesmer hasn't been an optimal build metabattle for ages. Yeah, mesmers stomp trash players and I've acknowledged that, but outside that, they're not really that great and haven't been since the change in phantasm. At least seemingly so as I missed the time in between them removing phantasms and S4 end when I came back. The class like 6 months ago was maybe working for kills because there were still some plat mesmers. Now it's hot garbage that probably still confuses absolute noobs, but is useless against anything with a head between its shoulders.

> @"Tayga.3192" said:

> > @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> > for the first time in years.

>

> I love how romantic this statement sounds and how many people use it.

>

> ps: balance has nothing to do with "past", it's all about present and future.

Not true at all. In MMOs people are connected to their characters, so leaving a particular class in the dust over and over (or even most of the time) disenfranchises the players that like that class. One of our best guildies in my primary guild was looking for a new game as soon as the chrono revamp hit as it was his main, and chronos weren't particularly op at the moment either (ip being removed destroyed his ability to WvW). Not saying nerfs should never happen to a class barely coming out on top, but such things need to be done delicately.

Otherwise, the message is "devs hate x class, because they don't want it to even have a moment in the sun."

In fact many of either huge breaks or leaves from particular games for me have been directly because of the state of the classes i enjoy.

I mean why would we ever want Mesmers doing anything useful? The 1 dodge thing? Seriously? I also love that enemy team members can literally stand in chaos storm and it doesn't burn them at all! lol! Mesmer literally has no viable PVP elite spec. Honestly ever since the changes to phantasm, the class has felt incomplete by far. What makes mesmer difficult to balance in PVP is clones. In any sort of AOE situation, they usually just die and then your main mechanic (shatter) doesn't do much. what a joke. Then, if you're 1v1, you confuse the crap out of people and it's like you had 3 meat shields. Though that's not 100% true: Skilled players still knew how to identify the real mesmer or AOE the clones down, but it did make the class feel strong 1v1 most of the time.

At this point, I think the WHOLE balance team (not just PVP) should consider making clones a true resource instead of a meat shield that dies when your target does (and let us actually dodge twice): They are no longer meat shields. They are not targetable, they persist after your target dies. There are there for shatter and decoration only. Then, completely change phantasm skills: They have an instant effect (damage, defense, whatever makes sense as replacement) and as a side effect generate a clone. Also, rebalance the other skills to put Mesmers on par in terms of damage/defense/sustain when specced for it like other classes. There are plenty of situations where I feel like my mesmer, in both PVE and PVP is outright ineffective when compared to other professions I've started learning because it just keeps getting recursively gutted and not given anything in return.

This would allow Chronos in PVE to effectively use shatters to sustain boons (or potentially do other things with shatter depending on build), open world PVE wouldn't be half as clunky losing your core class resource between fights (or every time in any boss meta), and could allow for balance of the class in PVP against other classes. Because right now, the balance team is so overwhelmed by the class mechanics, their only solution is to make the class wholly ineffective. The removal of chronomancer's ability to shatter without clones effectively destroyed all PVP specs that mesmer were running.

I guess i'm slightly happy Warrior isn't meta any more, and tbh, before I took my last break I was running a different prof than what I would prefer to be my main in PVP, but am largely disappointed this balance team doesn't know how to balance. Revenants still seem as ridiculous as before.

Edit: or google was malfunctioning last night as I can't replicate.

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > @"kratan.4619" said:

> > > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > > > @"Zexanima.7851" said:

> > > > > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > > > > I honestly feel sry for people who actually put the effort into putting a bot into a game lmao like how important in life does a game have to be to reach that state? And of all games gw2. I say let them have the bots if it means that much to them cuz they probably dont have much else going on irl so. Kinda sad.

> > > >

> > > > Often times the people who make things like this do it just to see if they can. They don't actually care about the game so much. It's the act of making the bot and seeing it function they find enjoyable. As both a enthusiast and professional in software/tech I can relate.

> > >

> > > Hmmm finding it enjoyable to negatively impact a bunch of other gamers, lol yup about in line with people today.

> > >

> >

> > There was not one mention of them enjoying the negative impact on other players in this post. All that was said was that they enjoy seeing their bot perform as expected in a game. No different than writing a ton of code and having it compile the first try.

>

> They are not soposed to be there. No wonder this games pvp is garbage cuz players like these who find excuses as to why it's ok. Oh I feel so good my bot a created behaved relatively decent in a match but still over all poorly and contributed wrecking a groups rating. It's ok though cuz I'm happy it got its pathing right. With player mentality like this anet has a upward battle if the want to try and bring this game back cuz it's it's very own players whine about its state but contribute to the problems. Unreal how stupid people are. I'm sure people who make hacks and cheats that work how they planned feel good or those pos people that rip people off through hacking devices as I'm sure they feel great about their programs success as well.

Both you and the poster above you are completely wrong. I did not author the bots. I was pointing out a botting strategy so hopefully Anet will try to fix it (and enjoying some Schadenfreude at the botters' expense). Ranked PVP in this game is garbage because the matches are usually decided before you jump in: either by the people who choose not to queue to avoid losing ranking, Anet's matchmaker doing nothing to balance duo queue, people who are good at figuring out the other team to last minute switch to hard counter and the bots. I actually hate it. I actually enjoy normal PVP way more because there's far less garbage and feels more balanced, but i rarely play it because I want to at least build 1 legendary PVP armor set (and will likely stop there, forever). It's just not worth it with the one-sided match making in ranked and the normal PVP is only worth it for dailies, so I may touch that, but really, if you know what meta to chase, mats/gold is much more efficient elsewhere. In fact ranked PVP really isn't competitive until you hit the highest pip chests, especially if you're on a restricted time interval.

> @"Bassdeff.1895" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > The whole game focuses on making your life easier the more you stick to it. I'm answering the opposite direction to play devil's advocate. When you first start out, no profs, no account bonuses, no mf, the rate at which you acquire gold is very slow. Also the cheapest ascended gear to craft is envoy's but it requires a ton of collections first. The game has a lot of other "activation energy" bonuses i'm sure i'm missing, but if you find the game too easy i suggest starting a completely new account. The game becoming easy for vets is an intended mechanic.

>

> I am going to partially agree with you on that. Having recently started a new account after a 3 year hiatus I can understand how someone who has never seen the game before could easily be overwhelm by it all and finding the most efficient way to progress to end game gear can be daunting. There is a lot of information thrown at you and if you don;t know where to look for information or all the little trick on what not to wasted you time, money, and mats on it can really hinder your progression. GW2 community is friendly, there is always someone ready to help new people.

>

> That being said, I leveled my main to 80 within 2 weeks, leveled crafting to 400 (not 500 yet) and had my first complete build in exotics within a month. Exotics are enough to get you through all the content except fractals, so no rush on ascended. That was in September, fast forward 5 months, I got 3 toons in full ascended, 500 gold in the bank, and a 80% complete gen 2 legendary. Once you get past the learning curve the game isn't very hard for the most part.

And i've been playing much longer than you since feb 2019 and am not that far ; ). Some of it is knowing stuff, and i'm learning methods, some of it is also what you actually enjoy doing. The most efficient things are not always the funnest.

The whole game focuses on making your life easier the more you stick to it. I'm answering the opposite direction to play devil's advocate. When you first start out, no profs, no account bonuses, no mf, the rate at which you acquire gold is very slow. Also the cheapest ascended gear to craft is envoy's but it requires a ton of collections first. The game has a lot of other "activation energy" bonuses i'm sure i'm missing, but if you find the game too easy i suggest starting a completely new account. The game becoming easy for vets is an intended mechanic.

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> I found HoT considerably easier than PoF in terms of map enemies. Awakened condition spam, forged aggro range and Djinn hp pools alone made it more of a slog.

>

> There’s very little in hot I find problematic beyond hero points unless I find myself not paying attention to hylek or snipers.

>

> PoF maps are more varied and easier to navigate, although spelunking in Tangled Depths was great fun

They're both challenging tbh. HoT will punish you hard for not having a strong open world build with gear that supports it. PoF isn't as dangerous everywhere as HoT but definitely has its spots where things are challenging. This game's greatest strength is also its weakness: the ability to make your own builds and a solid power cap. There's a lot of room for error, but good builds feel very satisfying. I've seen newer players struggle with both areas tbh. Some insights and hero points in PoF are in harder places.

I saw something really strange in the match I played sometime around 2 am PST last night. On the first mid fight, we rofl stomped them, but lost home. I started noticing that we were often beating the opposing side, but some members of my team seemed to be throwing it: If I was on point capping, one of them would come and cap too, once I start moving to another objective, the would leave too (leaving point uncapped). I also noticed them not capping even after they won in an area, like WTF? I also noticed that the enemy team somehow seemed to be be everywhere: our points would get capped almost immediately after we finished capping. We were down by quite a large margin and I thought the match was pretty hopeless. But I decided to cap one of the points my team had left uncapped and defend it, what happened next was interesting: two theifs, one by one came after the point, they were obviously bots. Was running a flamethrower engi and they would literally stand on the firewall AOE and didn't dodge anything. I think at least ONE of my team mates was trying not to throw because someone went and capped the other points for us. I did get some help defending the point at one point and somehow we ended up winning by a large margin. But I was also very incredulous as members of the enemy team were complaining about bots. I'm like "really? your bots were keeping everything capped for you until I wrecked them, and members of my team were trying to throw" I didn't say this in chat, but I was thinking it and couldn't roll my eyes any harder at a victory I didn't think we'd have & smirking at an obvious cheater. But something occurred to me:

What if a member of the other team queued with a bunch of bots, and swapped the bots on their team to thief with a capping AI and bots on the other team to an AI for fighting off point? Is that how some cheaters rig matches? I'm glad we were able to counter, but the AIs of the thieves seemed to synergize too well with some of my teams' behavior for me to think the throw was by agreement. If you have seen this and believe it's bots, maybe that's another AI pattern Anet can isolate to prevent cheaters from doing this to clean up the game mode.

Well but to play devil's advocate, there are plenty of squads that are literally created for a particular event or map (such as Halloween Lab, Drakkar/east meta) there should be a way to declare that you don't intend to move your squad around to make things easier for the finder and people looking for groups for a particular event.

Finding a squad is really annoying when half of the ones you apply for are full. Having been on the commander side of this, it's not obvious if the map is full and when it is (a ton of people aren't zoning in), soemtimes you're too busy fighting something/explaining mechanics to delist. Can we please get an auto-delist feature for when the commander's instance is full, the group automatically delists from LFG and they can't relist until the instance has slots?

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > > > @"Nightcore.5621" said:

> > > > > > Raids so toxic and I dont ever think People well be into something so toxic so i think the Whole strike Thing to get People to do raids well never happen

> > > > >

> > > > > There’s more toxicity coming from those against toxicity than from those being accused of being toxic.

> > > >

> > > > Lol that's rich. The hardcore pveers are going to kill this game blaming noobs all along the way.

> > >

> > > How?

> >

> > Because they're unwilling to actually build a community in the name of speed clears. Also the data on # of Lis vs your percentile in the community is hilarious in the context of "bring massive kp"

>

> Do you even play this game? Serious question because your 2 sentences make no sense at all and therefore are utter bs.

It's okay, just watch the raiding pop over the next 5 years. That will tell all, I won't be wrong unless both Anet and the community change their approaches.

> @"Shikaru.7618" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > > > @"Nightcore.5621" said:

> > > > > > Raids so toxic and I dont ever think People well be into something so toxic so i think the Whole strike Thing to get People to do raids well never happen

> > > > >

> > > > > There’s more toxicity coming from those against toxicity than from those being accused of being toxic.

> > > >

> > > > Lol that's rich. The hardcore pveers are going to kill this game blaming noobs all along the way.

> > >

> > > How?

> >

> > Because they're unwilling to actually build a community in the name of speed clears. Also the data on # of Lis vs your percentile in the community is hilarious in the context of "bring massive kp"

>

> Except there are literally communities dedicated to growing the raid scene and newbie raiders. For some reason people decide to ignore them so they can go join lfgs they're clearly not qualified for based on the lfg posting.

There is ONE in NA, and basically you're like waiting around for someone to take you. Sure. They told me I am not even aloud to ping for PuG groups in Disc. So yeah, it's great. Everything the community has constructed is based around gating to a particular elite, I have to get special training to make a group. Like I can't just watch videos and ask other people who are interested in the content and study it on their own time like me. It's awesome. I would have expected a discord community to be a bit looser as it's understood the people participating would be figuring things out and have the idea of working together. And MAYBE, JUST MAYBE have issues making a guild time slot on a consistent basis, or heck are struggling to find guilds that run when they're free.

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > @"Nightcore.5621" said:

> > > > Raids so toxic and I dont ever think People well be into something so toxic so i think the Whole strike Thing to get People to do raids well never happen

> > >

> > > There’s more toxicity coming from those against toxicity than from those being accused of being toxic.

> >

> > Lol that's rich. The hardcore pveers are going to kill this game blaming noobs all along the way.

>

> How?

Because they're unwilling to actually build a community in the name of speed clears. Also the data on # of Lis vs your percentile in the community is hilarious in the context of "bring massive kp"

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"Nightcore.5621" said:

> > Raids so toxic and I dont ever think People well be into something so toxic so i think the Whole strike Thing to get People to do raids well never happen

>

> There’s more toxicity coming from those against toxicity than from those being accused of being toxic.

Lol that's rich. The hardcore pveers are going to kill this game blaming noobs all along the way.

> @"Zhaid Zhem.6508" said:

> Players : ignore mechanics, outheal the dmg

> Anet : kill everybody before mechanics

Pretty much this. I tried keeping the torches lit and pretty much died when i did before posting this. It also seemed like the bar, when not broken, would expand the aoe area (and you aren't given much of a window to break it). And requiring a particular gear set, with no natural way to gather it before the encounter from that kind of content, is poor, disconnected design.

All in alll the community resorted to hard counters because executing the mechanics was ridiculously difficult.

> @"Tuna Bandit.3786" said:

> Better loot... nice, but what about better scaling?

> Example right now: 15 to 20 people here, 18 minutes to go, Drakkar at 92%.

> We know already it's useless...

> So bailing out with 18 minutes to go...

> That must be - BY FAR - the WORST Boss design ever.

>

> Some ascended stuff won't make me more excited about Drakkar at all.

I'm glad that someone else commented with fails because i've seen map chat messages about failures and all the elitists are like "Zomg too easy", and i'm like "probably because you carried"

> @"Fire Attunement.9835" said:

> Hi everyone,

> We’re going to make some improvements to high-end rewards for the Drakkar fight soon, including adding an ascended version of the Illuminated Boreal weapon set with a unique color scheme. For now we hope you'll have fun learning the fight and collecting the current spoils of your victories.

>

Nice to hear! I hope this means all ascended weapon chest drops are of the illuminated boreal weapon chest type. If it's a random type that would be sad. Also the fight is fine. We almost failed it when I tried, and you have to be good to adapting to the claw's movement.

Edit: it looks like getting ported to the pass area between the two sides of the zone is a bug experienced by some, but not all players, updated title to reflect that. I have finished thr episode 2 story and someone who has is not having this bug. The only comment i have is i didn't do the episode 1 and 2 stories on the same character. That may be worth investigating as the cause.

I hate it. Usually getting to a new loading screen means a nice time to pee or something before coming back. The Bjora portal scroll, however, ports you to an area with dangerous monsters. Coming back to a dead character sucks.

> @"Lexi.1398" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > I could have sworn i've defended rigs and not had them spawn before. But it does feel like they love to spawn on the miner's southeast to southwest transition when they do.

>

> you may have not seen them if you were with people who instantly kited them away or a zerg that killed quick, and they spawn on the far edges away from the rig like everything else and can potentially run quite far, and you may also have only defended the rigs after their spawn point (for example following the escort for most of the meta then running back to an earlier rig after it reaches the last one) and they die/get kited out of sight before you reach them, but they should always spawn.

usually I stay put from the start, but okay, good to know.