Wahlao.1069

Bug Fixes in latest patch:

Fixed a bug in which the Incinerating Shock Wave effect applied by the Destroyer of the Third Fortress inflicted 20 times the player's health in damage rather than the intended 20% of the player's health in damage.

:s No wonder so many of my party including me kept getting 1-shotted!

I play both scrapper and daredevil in wvw.

Like you, I like to roam and thief fits that role.

Usually these are the roles I do:

1) Scouting for enemy zergs, parties and telling any tags on the location.

2) Flip ruins/monuments/sentries

3) Flip camps (be careful, since enemies can see in map if a camp is under attack)

4) If keeps are invaded by enemy zerg, I'll stay behind, playing hide & seek. --> Thief portal is essential here to allow your team backdoor entry. (If there's too many enemies, I'll put down a portal, get out, but keep coming back before the 60s portal timeout)

My daredevil uses rune of speed, which synergizes well with daredevil dash trait, to get perm swiftness with +66% movement speed.

Dash also makes you invulnerable to immobilize, cripple, chill. (but not daze, so be careful!)

I'm very much focused on mobility, so my dps is not great.

This is my build, which is centered around WVW mobility and kiting, but has a lot of defensive utilities. I modified it from 'drunk engineer' build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeQAQlFw8YaMH2Jm6WWtOA-zVZYVB3FFgYYlRvJQFFgdDA-w

I chose grenade kit, as its more my style (ranged) and the DPS is much better compared to rifle/pistol.

You may want to change your settings though as grenades are ground cast (I chose instant cast at target)

I went with tools for streamlined kits trait, which gives me perm swiftness & +66% movement speed with runes of speed.

(Just remember to swap to a kit ~30s)

You should be a kiting god with the speed.

It goes well with scrapper object in motion trait, damage is +5% for every boon on you with swiftness, so keep on drinking those elixirs for boons.

Heals are plenty -> F1, F2 (at yourself), 6, EG5, plus passive heal from backpack regen trait.

Every damage you do generates barrier, there's an emergency barrier with bulwark gyro too.

If you need to get away quick, use the elite sneak gyro which gives you stealth.

If you've got elite specs unlocked, you can try scrapper. It has a lot of self sustain.

This is my build, which is more WVW oriented, but has a lot of defensive utilities. I modified it from 'drunk engineer' build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeQAQlFw8YaMH2Jm6WWtOA-zVZYVB3FFgYYlRvJQFFgdDA-w

I chose grenade kit, as its more my style (ranged) and the DPS is much better compared to rifle/pistol.

You may want to change your settings though as grenades are ground cast (I chose instant cast at target)

I went with tools for streamlined kits trait, which gives me perm swiftness & +66% movement speed with runes of speed

You should be a kiting god with the speed.

It goes well with scrapper object in motion trait, damage is +5% for every boon on you with swiftness, so keep on drinking those elixirs for boons.

Heals are plenty -> F1, F2, 6, EG5, plus passive heal from backpack regen trait.

Every damage you do generates barrier, there's an emergency barrier with bulwark gyro too.

If you need to get away quick, use the elite sneak gyro which gives you stealth.

Hi experts, given that mesmers are one of the slowest moving WVW classes, with no mobility to disengage, was exploring use of superior runes of speed on the mesmer to give us movement speed in WVW to allow us to move faster.

With signet of inspiration providing base 5s of swiftness + 50% from speed runes + ~30% boon duration from (diviners, commanders) gear we could reach maybe ~9 secs of swiftness every 10s.

In my humble opinion, the problem right now is the 'infinite' lifespan and infinite ammo of siege weapons.

All siege weapons like cata, ACs, ballistas, shield gen all have infinite lifespan (as long as you click on it once per hour), and infinite shots.

1) We should limit the timer on these weapons to (eg. 4 hours) with no timer refresh, this simulates typical wear and tear.

This forces defenders to keep building defensive siege weapons every few hours if they want to defend a tower/keep.

2) There should be an ammo system for these weapons (for eg. 5 shots)

Once the ammo is depleted, 1 supply gets deducted from the firer to replenish the ammo back again.

This prevents defenders from hiding inside towers/keep firing weapons forever. You have to make shots count now.

At some point, the supply is going to run out, and they will be forced to either come out to fight/abandon/get a supply train of player runners going to other places to get supply and take over the firing.

Naturally the ammo system should apply to attacking siege as well like catas and rams.

I faced the same problem..but waited for whole patch to download and used another char to login later....seems ok now!

The signet of undeath utility skill got a buff in Dec patch....works ok for me for LF generation with curses line!

Feedback on the light puzzle in the mountains:

There's 1 part where you need to lower the blue barrier in order to let the light pulses thru, by the time I fly to the faraway mountaintop, the pulses stop, probably due to the blue barrier coming up, impossible to complete alone.

I had to get a friend to stay at the raven lock to keep the barrier down

I like the new 'seize the moment' trait, was hoping to see another grandmaster trait that gives alacrity.

This will give us a trade-off playing choice on alacrity or quickness, but not both at same time.

I was hoping that with the new 'seize the moment' grandmaster trait in the last balance patch, they could change another grandmaster trait to give 5-man alacrity.

This will give chronos a real trade-off choice of either alacrity or quickness, but not both.

> @"Dante.1508" said:

> For me Forged and Mordrem just eat my mirage alive.. way to many condi to cleanse and the illusions just don't do anything other than attack random deer and things i've not even attacked... No idea what nerfs they have done but open world is not fun on mesmers anymore.

>

> Why pve always must be ruined due to the pvp modes ruining everything is beyond me but yes i'll stick with warrior, guardian and Engi thanks for the heads up.

Check out Lord Hizen's mirage build:

His build link is listed in the video description.

I use it and I can solo champs with ease

> @"Funky.4861" said:

> Tyvm. Looks like a fun OW build but i'm not making another gear set for my (primarily raiding) mes. If we had as many gear templates as we do build templates, then maybe ^^

I use arc-dps templates!

> @"Funky.4861" said:

> We saw his gear/stats but not traits.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAWWn0nBtph1oBGpBMMjFcjqMAatfxcBChRyf9j/6H-jxxHABmpLAgLBAtPBAX2f4JlgDq+DRK/CAcAs7up7uB2d3d3d3dru7u7u7u7u7u7ulCoK9WA-e

Your gear has toughness, power, condi and boon duration....you should be deciding on tradeoffs rather than go with so many stats.

Lord Hizen has a youtube channel where he has a great video on pve mirage build using double staff.

I use that when I go DPS.

I'd rather pick the other grandmaster trait 'seize the moment'. That's way more helpful to the party. With the new F2 and fast clone generation via scepter, I can upkeep perm quickness, though in a pitiful small radius....

I have 2 mesmer PVE builds:

1) Boon/Heal Condi Chrono. I use Scepter+sword/focus. Reason is scepter has fastest clone generation, and I shatter like crazy using F2 with 5s cooldown as long as I shatter 3 clones. Can keep up perm quickness around me with 'seize the moment' trait as of Oct bal patch.

2) Solo Condi Mirage. Staff + staff with energy sigil. I generally don't shatter unless my staff 2 & 3 are both off cooldown.

Kittymarks has a heal chrono: https://kittymarks.wixsite.com/kittymarks/blog/heal-chronomancer

When I played Chrono, I use a variant of it, and with Chrono's recent July patch where the new F2 skill has a fast cooldown as long as you shatter 3 clones, you can heal pretty good when you can summon clones quickly using scepter.

Interestingly, I can reach 5s cooldown on the F2 shatter skill.

Basically I go for illusions line, and shatter on 3 clones.

With the 15% shatter skill cooldown reduction, -15s recharge from shattering 3 clones, and personal alacrity -> 5s F2 cooldown.

Problem is trying to generate 3 clones every 5s! :#

I know mostly everyone is sad after the changes to Chrono...but these are the positives I noted:

1) Longer alacrity duration when shattering with clones.

2) F2 skill cooldown is 7-8s now, if you shatter with 3 clones. -> I find I couldn't generate clones fast enough, so had to change to scepter for faster clone generation, plus switched to Illusionary Reversion trait.

3) Longer quickness duration (if traited)

You may want to visit the post on 'Open World Domination: Mirage' in this forum.

There's a budget build of all Dire exotic stuff you can start buying from TP posted by

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

>

> However, I also came up with a variant designed specifically to be inexpensive, more forgiving, and easy to play. This build even proved to be stronger in scenarios where you are swarmed with smaller enemies - just the sort of thing you find all over the expansion maps and storylines!

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAnfWnsICNohFMDWoBMMjFcjqMAWtfxP9n/63cBitRC-jhyCwAHViBRJoBzf61C0U5hw9HSpLAwpAIwTAAn6PkCIhRbA-e

>

> Basically, the second build is a lot tankier with tons of armor, more health, and extremely high condition damage. However, it works best when you have enemies to kill because killing an enemy will refill endurance and grant a large boost to condition damage. It also cost me less than 20g to outfit this entire build in full exotic! That's a lot more accessible than the Viper set I use with my build!

I also faced problems at the hard level.

I had to switch to my herald, and turned on swiftness facet.

What helped also was to toggle action camera (c button), I kept the white dot in the direction of the skyscale, and managed to complete the 12 catches.

> @"Clownmug.8357" said:

> Unyielding Devotion might work like sanctuary runes and need a trigger for the healing check, like on-skill-activation, on-hit, on-crit, when struck, etc. I don't think Steadfast Rejuvenation or Facet of Nature w/ Ventari will work. LIfe steal will probably work, but I haven't tested it.

>

>

If you take Elevated Compassion (from glint) + unyielding devotion (from salvation) and activate at least 1 facet to give out a boon, I find that if there's any ally within facet range that gets my boon, I get perm uptime on unyielding devotion.

A unyielding spirit icon appears among your boons, with a timer that counts down from 4s to 0s and then refreshes as long as a boon hits an ally.

You don't need to press anything else.

I'm guessing the healing from Elevated Compassion triggers the heal check for allies.

Added: The self-heal from Steadfast rejuvenation doesn't trigger the unyielding spirit icon, I can see self-healing via Steadfast in the combat logs, but the icon never pops up.

> @"Profanity.6829" said:

> You would at least expect an update in this topic or in the announcement section at least...

With the community manager Gaile Gray gone in the recent layoffs...we have to wait and see who's gonna engage us from now on....

Well, this could be the last major patch for some time given the news of upcoming layoffs... :'(

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/69249/update-from-arenanet#latest

Hopefully there will still be some developers left...