Guild Wars 2

Heya everyone.

The recent “Ready Up” is the main reason why I’m posting this (although it’s not the only one). I’ve been playing my Mesmer since release in all aspects of the game. I’ve played tournys, zerged/roamed in WvW and did all the PvE stuff.

Looking back, the Mesmer had many amazing builds that were killed for one reason or another. I understand that some of them were really powerful, they still remain completely unviable at the moment. Confusion Mesmers, Glamour Mesmers, Immortal Mesmers. Just to name a few. Confusion Mesmers are still a thing every now and then, but that’s because ~60% of their confusion comes from a runeset – the confusion caused by a Mesmer is actually pretty underwhelming. Glamour Mesmers were the most viable way of playing with a zerg, and guess what – they actually countered melee trains.
The thing that bothers me about this is that there is no actual compensation, making build diversity worse and worse with each patch. Only exception is the PU trait which opened up some possibilities – but with the DE nerf, it will get hit pretty hard (the wrong way really).
What’s the fancy talk about build diversity all the time? I can’t see anything like that. Only noteworthy “diversity” change was the buff to Mantras, which gave them a tiny AoE effect. Mantra Mesmers everywhere now, srsly. It’s still a mechanic that is unfun to many players. And it will probably stay that way.

This thread isn’t about PU or any specific trait/build. It’s about the direction Anet goes with the Mesmer. It worries me, really. There are some major flaws that remain untouched since release (iLeap bug, portal range indicators, Mimic, scepter AA and clones, iMage…). Some other changes made me think “do they actually know how the Mesmer works?” – take the Illusionists Celerity Nerf as an example. It was heavily overnerfed, then rebuffed after a while. Anet actually noticed that the traits affects pretty much all Mesmer builds out there, and all those builds, traits and skills were balanced around this trait – one way or another.

Now, the nerfs to Critical Infusion and Deceptive Evasion. While I kinda agree with the first one (reducing vigor base uptime by 50%), isn’t this enough nerf for DE?
Just as reminder: Most Mesmer builds are build around CI and DE. These nerfs may not be as the Illusionists Celerity one, but touching them will have consequences to a similar amount of builds. Those builds were, once again, balanced around these traits.
I’m not saying these nerfs are too hard. I can’t tell, since they aren’t in the game yet. Maybe not even final. I just want to remind Anet NOT to make the same mistake as with Illusionists Celerity again.

In addition – all those on-death clone traits are highly random in combat. Deceptive Evasion is probably THE most reliable way to trigger those effects by yourself. I said it some time ago and I’ll say it again here: There’s too much randomness within the Mesmer class. This change will enhance it once again.
If you really have to do this DE change, make Mind Wrack count as clone death (which it doesn’t at the moment fyi). I want more control of what I’m doing, what conditions I am applying and what buffs I’m getting. Some degree of randomness seems OK as it fits the Mesmer theme, but at the moment it’s basically everything we have.

Just my thoughts. Over a year now, and all I see is builds getting killed. Build diversity sounds nice as an announcement for patches, but it’s worth nothing if the most viable build after over a year is still shatter. I understand that other classes may have similar problems.

This is just a Mesmers PoV.