Tiah.3091

Perhaps it's just my luck, but I can't say I see Chronobunkers THAT often... I played 12 games yesterday and have only seen Chronobunker once (and he wasn't even that "bunkery", to be fair). Which makes me really-really doubtful about this claim by OP: LOTS of mesmers -- yes. Majority of them were Chrono -- yes. But most Chronomancers play berserker shatter build, which is very easy to kill if one has at least some AoE to cleave their clones. Or stealth... Or reveal... (granted you can survive their opener) Somehow all of this makes me suspect that OP can't really tell the difference between standard Chrono mesmer and a Chronobunker. Which leads me to this conclusion as well: ...And also this: EDIT: IDK, perhaps in High Platinum all mesmers are Chronobunkers. But somehow I highly doubt that OP is high-rated player. Otherwise -- well, I'm sorry.

What ability in particular are you even talking about? Also, there's plenty of skills in pvp, that do rather crazy single damage.

The issue is not that it "doesn't work". It works allright. The issue is that it does ~zero damage after Feb 24 2020. It used to do 7k crits pre-nerf and it was almost the only redeeming quality to an otherwise rather kitten off-hand.

Condi reaper is obnoxious, obviously. But as roamer/duelist I at least I can chose not to fight them -- they are usually running with the zerg, participate in teamfights and aren't particularly mobile. So, I can just dump my burst in a teamfight and then yeet away to decap far or some place else, and let the DPS people deal with that. But condi SpB is a duelist, so they'llbe contesting that node I'm about to decap. So, I'm stuck with this motherkittener no maatter what I do. And they are pretty mobile too, so, if I'm out of cooldowns they can catch me and burn my kitten.

I'd personally be perfectly fine with SpB having a dozen of active defence layers, if they stick with power builds and Bers amulet like they used to. But nooo.... nowdays every god-damned warrior and their grandma plays condi with a bow and Carrion amulet, having a gazillion HP on top of their active defense, while at the same time doing some slow but respectable damage to you. kitten... I so don't want to invest heavily into condi cleanse, and I hate the condi meta big time.

Some things are becoming pretty good on Mesmer, but most -- not particularly. And these changes are especially weird in that sense, because they decided to buff two of the strongest (literally) off-hands that Mesmer has. (And TBH, pistol is probably one of the strongest off-hands in the game in general). While on the other hand, there is still stuff like off-hand sword, which was not particularly great even before Anet gutted it in Feb 25 2020 -- and now it's just beyond kittening garbage. There's still Virtuoso dagger, which is probably one of the weakest main-hands in the game (and certainly by far the laziest). I mean, I play power Virtuoso, and prefer a scepter instead of dagger, because scepter is better power weapon (despite being condi-oriented) than power-oriented dagger. I.e. Mesmer got buffs in places where it didn't need them, while in other places it keeps underperforming for many years with zero changes. This patch is weird as hell...

Swordsman even with Flurry was quite balanced a few years ago -- back when it had decent 2.5 power coefficient. Yes, that resulted in huge damage (like 12-13k on light armor), but the enemy could have merely sidestepped the Flurry, avoiding the dmg entirely. So, if you couldn't lock them down in one place somehow -- it was a garbage skill anyways. Now it has 1.35 power coefficient. Which is pretty much an autoattack level of damage. (And after they murdered old Chaotic Interrupt -- you can't lock people in place either). And then they buff Torch and Pistol, for kitten sake... I mean, I'm not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Pistol is arguably the strongest Mesmer's off-hand, and probably one of the strongest off-hands in the game overall. And they didn't even comment WHY are they buffing it... (and instead decided to write a wall of text about Mirage staff PvE alacrity nerf from 1.0 to 0.5 seconds, LMAO) kitten, I'm so confused.

Even though I unironically think that Virtuoso in its current form is pretty strong AND fun to play (I mean, sure, feel free to throw poop at me) -- that quote is 100% true. Without 1) Bladeturn Refrain, 2) Duelist's Reversal and especially without 3) Psychic Riposte (which now finally works properly) the Virtuoso would be F tier hot garbage. Which means it's just a kitten design. And even if ANET would somehow make those effects baseline for Virtuoso (e.g. push it to minor traits) -- the other 6 major traits are just garbage anyways. They are either boring, or weak, or (usually) both.

Literally half of the Monthly Tournament teams had at least one Virtuoso in their roster. One even had 2, IIRC. This is NA, if I'm not mistaken: I play virtuoso myself, and it's the only mesmer spec I really enjoy after all the giga nerfs to Mirage a few years ago. Mostly because aegis spam at least to me feels like a more reliable defense layer than a clone spam. Since, well... contrary to mobs, human players usually can tell pretty fast who's the clone and who's the real mesmer, while Aegis "just works" regardless of the circumstances. Granted, having a cast time on shatters doesn't feel particularly great, but that's a tradeoff, I guess. With this point, however, I can not agree more. One hundred percent true. I played mesmer in PvP since release, not for the straight 13 years, of course, but at least I tried to regularly check on the game, may be like once a year or so, sometimes once per a couple of years. Mesmer had a HUGE variety of builds over the years: There always was shatter, of course, but back then such builds were supported by Confounding Suggestions trait. There were phantasms (I mean when phantasms were responsible for the majority of your burst) There was "old" Chaotic Interrupt, which allowed for some unique playstyle There were many Mirage's Infinite Horizon build variations, both power and condi (back when Mirages had 2 dodges) Portal was considered a cornerstone mesmer ability and for many-many years was one of the main reasons why mesmers almost always had a spot in organized play. Now ALL of those things are in the gutter, except rather heavily kitten shatter builds... And it usually only gets worse for mesmers over the years. When ANET game Virt and Chrono a Distortion on top of their current F4s -- I think that was the only significant mesmer PvP buff I've seen in YEARS.

Well, I haven't played the game since 2018. I tried it out briefly at EOD release (for like a week or less), but didn't notice it back then. Last week I decided to give it a second try. Okay, that makes sense. Thanks! (Granted, I can't say that made me feel any better. The bug is still annoying AF)

But that's the point: I didn't cast anything. I rolled, I casted Bladesong -- Bladesong got blocked. (I did cast mantra AFTER all the projectiles were already in mid-flight, and some even already hit the target).

I noticed that sometimes my Bladesongs get randomly blocked. I'm obviously thinking "well, perhaps the buff expired". Then I read somewhere, that if you get a Psychic Riposte and then do some other action (weapon attack or a spell cast) then the buff just doesn't work. I'm thinking -- okay, that's weird, but I'll try to cast Bladesongs ASAP after dodge/block. Then this happens: I mean, I literally just dodged a dragon tooth, then immediately casted Harmony. And it got blocked entirely by Rev's Staff 3. How's that fair?! Can we get a fix on that?

I know this thread is about WvW, but it doesn't feel like Virt is all that horrible in PvP in general (I mean sPvP). Especially now, that it has distortion. It has a crapload of active and passive defense, so you can survive fairly well even with a glass build. And the shatters are pretty nice too (unless enemy has too much reflect), considering that you can spam them much more often than other mesmer specs. Personally, my main gripe with virt is dagger, which is just beyond trash for no apparent reason. All 3 skills is just plain damage with 0 utility (not even a single puny condi nor boon), and not too much damage for that matter.

It's kinda stupid (to say the least) to compare the MMORPG PvP balance with MOBA's. It's two different genres. And out of all the existing MMORPGs with a PvP mode GW2 is BY FAR the most balanced (and probably the most fun). Particularly compared to modern WoW, which is an absolute joke (despite having official PvP tournaments with prize pools measured in 100k $$)

Although true in theory, in practice (at least in my experience) it's not quite accurate. I'm dangling between g2 and g3 at the moment, still learning the meta and stuff after a very-very long break. But I noticed that the games are usually extremely one-sided and last for 8-9 minutes on average (couple of teamfights lost, and then the losing team is just afking at the spawn). 10 is rare. Queue times are generally around 1 minute. https://i.imgur.com/U0O4XN7.png So, assuming the matches become more even at higher ratings, thus becoming longer, and assuming the increase in queue time, I actually get less time farming it in gold than in platinum (157 vs 174 hours, according to the spreadsheet). And it would probably be even faster if I was silver, lol.