Guild Wars 2

totally agree. i would be happy to give up lots of my dueling specs in order to get some viable zerg wvw abilities. the glamour nerf hit mes the hardest as it was the only thing that made the mes a good zergplayer next to the immortal mesmer build.
since the glamour nerf we got mantra buffs and pu stuff, but nothing really aoe based. too much ai too much dueling for a light armor class. if they nerf veil now, mesmer will not be of any use in zergs anymore.
mantras are still horrible in zergplay as the constant cc and interrupt spams make it hard to use. i prefer not to use mantras ans would rather have something similar like the gw1 hexes. making a light armor class a dueling class is not really a great move in an mmo imo.

mesmers are great in zergs if you do carry your reflects and reflect on distortion trait

other than that it aint a mesmer problem its the current hammerfest meta going on

Rezzet.3614:

mesmers are great in zergs if you do carry your reflects and reflect on distortion trait

other than that it aint a mesmer problem its the current hammerfest meta going on

exactly we got the GWEN meta going on. no projectiles to reflect at all. i pop my feedback and get barely any numbers and i used to have a reflection build. im talking aoe here and not reflection builds. aoe that deals dmg like wells do, like marks do, like all the les abilities do and not an aoe that only deals dmg if certain conditions are met. our aoe onfortunately is ai based wich is terrible in zergfights. your phantasms get 1shot your clones poof before they even really materialize. the cc affects phantasms and clones. etc. i would love to see more aoe like chaosstorm that actually is an aoe.

like i said some field like hexes thaat would work vs heavy trains too and not just counter projectiles.

I think you make some valid points. I’m not sure that anet needs to set their sights on nerfing mesmer as a roaming class though. Sure, look into PU, it might be a bit stronger than it should be, but other traits don’t need nerfed to pay the way for variety in zerg play. That being said, it would be nice if they opened up some more options for zerg mesmer, for those that enjoy that kind of action.

I would love to see more diversity in lockdown builds, particularly with AoE daze in mind. Maybe a suggestion would be moving imbued diversion down to the Master tier (could also toy with the idea of having it lower the CD of diversion as well) OR keeping it as a grandmaster trait, but allowing it to apply to mantra of distraction as well. Other ideas could be having it apply to all sources of daze (chaos storm, mantra, sword daze, magic bullet, etc) but giving it a % chance (25-50) to cause an AoE daze.

I also like your suggestion about chaos storm using some tweaking, though 75% chance to daze every tick seems a bit high. If you combine it with halting strike and confounding suggestions its a nice recipe for yet another mesmer qq thread. I think fixing confounding suggestions so that it only triggers on the daze and giving chaos storm something like a 50% chance to daze per tick is pretty reasonable and easily countered by a good player.

I feel like giving mesmer a buff in lockdown play would be a fair way to increase build diversity, both for roamers and in the zerg. Also it really wouldn’t run the risk of being OP as it has hard counters like stability, stun breakers, and simply avoiding the AoE of chaos storm like you would a static field.

I think imbued diversion is an untouched trait that if tweaked a little (move its location to master tier or to another trait line and/or buff it) could open up some zerg lockdown builds that are quite affective provided you can strip the enemies stability often enough.

Also, it would be nice to see confusion returned to its former glory. Maybe bring the damage back to half-way between what it was and what it is now. I know a lot of people complained about confusion, but either taking off auto attack or cleansing the stack counters it just fine. If they did that along with buffing the lockdown aspect of play I could see two builds for zerg mesmer emerge that would both be very viable and an asset to the group: The AoE lockdown mesmer and the triumphant return of glamour mesmers.

Just my 2 cents.

lol no, thing should be based on small scale fight not zerg fight.

if u wanna zerg so bad then …. ask your ele to give you a hammer then here you can join hammer train.

Liza, we don’t ask to base the balance on zergs. But if we need to ask to eles to bring us a hammer or a bow, then it’s surely something wrong with mesmer on zergs.

I think the best role for mesmer on zergs should be lockdown/debuff. But for me, that only requires some reorganization to our traits:
We already have quite good lockdown/debuff traits, the problem is they are spread over 3 lines, making impossible to take most of them, and only be able to focus on one of those areas. That means our performance in zergs is always crippled.

Projectiles were never the ‘’way to go’’ in this game. Organised guilds ( calling Raids from now on) were never that stupid to spam 1 to deal damage with projectiles, because there’s always another job for the backline (since backline is the only way to deal damage with projectiles) to do in the raid.

The ‘’massive numbers’’, aka 500-2k damage max, was based around your own statts with your own traits, not from the enemy. Meaning you do see a lot numbers popping up, but most of those numbers were rather low. 1 Shatter + BF combo would probably result the same damage, whereas the damage you would get from retaliation would be 6k easily.

Okay let’s take a look at small scale: Mesmer
Where in tPvP is mesmer atm? Oh right, it’s viable now because of the CS bug, but what if we take that away again? We will be useless again.
Let’s say small scale WvW, does mesmer got a role here?
Yes, maybe, but I wouldn’t put my bets on a 5 man party with 2 mesmers rather than a 5 man party with 1 ele and 1 engi.

And why is that? Because of lack of aoe damage, lockdown or survivability. Our class is getting buffed for solo people more and more since day 1, while we consantly get nerfed in raids.

Mesmer should be a teamplayer, not a soloplayer.

Maybe some of you never played in good guilds, but raiding with 25 guys is not the same as zerging with 80 man. Even with 80 man, you can lose by only spamming 1 to a guild that knows what they’re doing pretty easily. And hey, I never said this game shoudl be balanced around ’’zerging’’, I only gave my perspective from mesmer and I find it pretty disgusting at the moment.

As a mesmer who loves WvW zerging, I would love to see more support for that playstyle.

But to be fair to ANet, Mesmers are advertised as duelists. The very first line of the Mesmer description of the professions page is: “Mesmers are magical duelists who wield deception as a weapon.”

They also said that Warriors should have a hard time with conditions and need ally help for cleansing. Just because the term “duelist” was used once in a class description, doesn’t mean it should only be able to fulfull this “single” role.

Honestly, I never joined a zerg after the huge glamour nerf with my Mesmer. They ruined that kind of build by nerfing glamour functionality AND confusion damage. One of those would have been enough, and the build would probably still be viable at some point.

So yeah I agree, having some raid viability again would be a really cool thing. On the other hand, there are other classes that aren’t really useful in zergs as well. Anet should really take a look at all those classes.

How about we nerf perp runes and revert the 50% damage reduction on confusion, amongst other confusion related nerfs back in march/april and bring back the glorious days of the glamour mesmer? That’d make them a whole lot more useful

The damage nerf to confusion was needed. The nerf to Blinding Befuddlement ON TOP of the confusion nerf was too much. One stack of confusion (4s) with an ICD of 5 seconds is just a horrible trait. A horrible, horrible trait. Combine that with the 50% damage nerf and better cleansing for almost all classes and there you go. One confusion stack isn’t worth anything.

+1
Balance team must look at mesmer in raid.
Contrary to eles who are in a good spot, mesmer have been nerfed to hell:
Blured fenzy nerf + confusion nerf + GWEN train left nothing but veil to mesmers.
Yes we are OP in 1v1. We do not want it. Remove PU. Give us something efficient in zergs.

Kicast.1459:

+1
Balance team must look at mesmer in raid.
Contrary to eles who are in a good spot, mesmer have been nerfed to hell:
Blured fenzy nerf + confusion nerf + GWEN train left nothing but veil to mesmers.
Yes we are OP in 1v1. We do not want it. Remove PU. Give us something efficient in zergs.

+2
seriously. making a light armor class a 1v1 class duelist is not what the mesmer should be about. i dont want mantra buffs as mantras are simply not viable enough in a zergfight.i dont mind nerfing the condi pu build if we get something like hexes or something like that that is NOT ai based aoe!
im tired of veilbotting and tw and stupid golem ports.

+1 from me as well!

Dear ArenaNet you do advertise the game as MMORPG but seriously forcing one class in FPS mode is not MMO at all!

I got really bored of roaming stuff long time ago, what’s the use of the “Guild” part if we are forced to play alone because this is what we are best at the moment?

I want to have fun with my friends and guildies not only to be able to portal golems.

I’ll restrain myself from giving suggestions as ANet never listens/read this part of the posts they do care only for whining if something is overpowered, then so be it!

Please balance our class ANet, we want to play the game not to watch it from aside!

And lets look at the roaming aspect of mesmer:
We’re 1 build, PU. Eventhough I play it in roaming, I would never use it in dueling unless the enemy wants me to. Why? Because it’s massively overpowered in roaming and dueling. The synergy is so good with phantasm that you can almost faceroll anything 1v1. And with the last patch, we only go buffed in roaming!
Give us something more challenging for roaming, idc if its not as strong as PU. I’ll find my way around it.

Shatter, Lockdown, Phantasm. Just because you only play 1 build doesn’t mean there aren’t more. PU might be the most powerful due to the defining trait being overbuffed but you wanted something challenging and…there are.

Iavra.8510:

And lets look at the roaming aspect of mesmer:
We’re 1 build, PU. Eventhough I play it in roaming, I would never use it in dueling unless the enemy wants me to. Why? Because it’s massively overpowered in roaming and dueling. The synergy is so good with phantasm that you can almost faceroll anything 1v1. And with the last patch, we only go buffed in roaming!
Give us something more challenging for roaming, idc if its not as strong as PU. I’ll find my way around it.

Shatter, Lockdown, Phantasm. Just because you only play 1 build doesn’t mean there aren’t more. PU might be the most powerful due to the defining trait being overbuffed but you wanted something challenging and…there are.

You just totally missed the whole point. Just already because there’s 1 build that shines above other builds, while those builds are roaming viable too.
Theres no point in being more and more superior in roaming while we got other aspects of the game being taken away from us. It only makes the game for mesmers more boring than it already is.

tetrodoxin.2134:

The damage nerf to confusion was needed. The nerf to Blinding Befuddlement ON TOP of the confusion nerf was too much. One stack of confusion (4s) with an ICD of 5 seconds is just a horrible trait. A horrible, horrible trait. Combine that with the 50% damage nerf and better cleansing for almost all classes and there you go. One confusion stack isn’t worth anything.

+over9000
The BB nerf’s a thing I’ve despised since its very inception, and -tbh- really needs to be reverted, soonish. Hell, we’ve seen a lot of buffing to both mantras and lockdown/interrupt playstyle. Therefore, why not create/modify a Trait to apply an
“acceptable” number of Confusion stacks on Interrupt? (Thus bypassing the much-maligned 6/6 on Perplexity Runes, which -imho- are a cool concept, but the power level thereof became the issue)
A good candidate for such an addition already exists as a GM Trait, namely Chaotic Interruption. Why not 1 stack Confu, along with the pre-existing Immobilize, which
could both buff the Interrupt aspect, but not get ridiculously overpowered. But, as always, YMMV.

I’m just kinda mad that they introduced Perplexity runes to the game and, rather than just balance it, they broke the Mesmer. It’s not like the benefit the runes provided other professions was worth hobbling one.

Strongly agree. I wrote a very general summation of my experience of trying to find a raid build I could be happy with after the 10 December patch:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Having-a-hard-time-sticking-to-my-mesmer/first#post3477946

Still not actually playing my Mesmer, because WvW is what I enjoy most and my Mesmer just isn’t cut out for large-scale fights. With the Mesmer, it’s more a case of “making do” with what you have.

Ghanto.9784:

Strongly agree. I wrote a very general summation of my experience of trying to find a raid build I could be happy with after the 10 December patch:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Having-a-hard-time-sticking-to-my-mesmer/first#post3477946

Still not actually playing my Mesmer, because WvW is what I enjoy most and my Mesmer just isn’t cut out for large-scale fights. With the Mesmer, it’s more a case of “making do” with what you have.

yeah as a mesmer u have less freedom as u ALWAYS have to use veil and then they will ask u for feedbacks and pulls. u are allowed to use blink but that about it. ne defense no real offense, just a utilitybot that has to try to saty alive in the terrible cc meta! anet pleast u can have my stupid clones and phantasms if this is what it takes for u to give me aoe that is NOT ai based and actually useful in zergs!

shimmerless.4560:

No one is grabbing your hand and making you play Prismatic, as for the rest I would prefer we roll back to the Mesmer of the past before saturating the game with even moar AoE.

yeah u dont have to use pu at all, but in a zerg situation i find it useful for survival. i just wish instead of my berserker i had more aoe type of attacks that i can use ranged. after all mes is a light armor class and shouldnt have to run in the middle of a zerg in order tu use bf or certain mantras. also lots of our main abilities are single target. as a roamer i gotta say im very happy with mes. its very strong and has great survivabilities. i do miss the glamour builds as they were great vs mindless zergs.
war had to actually think before mashing buttons. a 35 dmg reduction to confusion would have been already quiet good, but the bb nerf and 50% dmg reduction was an overrreaction. thieves can spam blind warrirs can spam cc’s so mes had confusion spam and got nerfed into the ground of the grounds, war gets a little shave…. how about anet checking if that nerf couldnt get a little buff, or giving the mes a trait that increases confusin dmg by 15-25 percent or so. then we actually could spec into it again and have viable aoe

It’s fine as is imo. Mes is metter than thief in a duel… better than a thief in large groups… mes shouldn’t be the first priority when it comes to this.

Some classes are better at roaming/small play, others at larger scale things. Why is this inherently a problem when things seem to be designed this way?

Aberrant.6749:

It’s fine as is imo. Mes is metter than thief in a duel… better than a thief in large groups… mes shouldn’t be the first priority when it comes to this.

so, u enjoy being a veilbot then? because thats what we are. veil/tw,portal are the main reason why organized guild groups have 1-2 mes with them. yes thief needs help in that area too, but this shouldnt be the reason why mes cant have a buff. id rather see a redesign, than keeping a light armor class as a 1v1 duelist class only. then make the mes a medium armor class. in every mmo i played a light armor had great aoe and ranged attacks and duelists were medium armor as they do have to get closer in combat. light armor is squishy.

I think you mean Veil + TW + null field and then act as periphery (portal is usually just needed if you’ve hidden away in a tower/keep). Yes I do enjoy that.

No, mes shouldn’t be a med armor class… no light armor doesn’t inherently mean you should have large aoe damage… nor that all that med classes can do in gw2 is 1v1 (this isn’t the other games you have played). Mesmer does have amazing aoe utility though. That’s part of what sets it apart from other classes.

Light armor doesn’t mean you’ll be squishy… nor does heavy armor mean you’ll be tanky. There is a lot more that goes into how much punishment you can take than just that.

Thief was never designed to be a teamplayer proffession whereas mesmer actually was.
But like you say, mesmer is stronger than thief in almost everything. Yes, almost. Thief is stronger in tPvP than mesmer and it should never lose a 1v1 when the mesmer is player a tpvp shatter build.

Here we come to the same problem again, PU builds. Like listed above we got nerfed to hell in raid perspective. But what did we get back? Right, more roaming traits, which PU is 1 of them.

‘’Mesmer does have amazing aoe utility though. That’s part of what sets it apart from other classes.’’

Sorry… what? Amazing? That amazing to set us apart from other classes?
Okay let’s see:
Our main skills we use in raid are:
1. Null Field – Necro’s have a Well that’s better than our null field. Itpractically does the same, but also makes the boons into conditions.

2. Feedback – Atm, when fighting against guilds, you will reflect almost nothing. But when you do, it’s #1 spam of either their eles or necro’s cause they have everything on cooldown. The amount of damage you do with those skills is like really, really low since mesmers are now forced to go really tanky, whereas the damage is based on your statts and your traits.
You will probably notice more of the retaliation you get than the raid notices something of your feedback.

3. Veil – This, seriously, this is (if we talk about in-combat) one of the 2 skills that sets us apart from other professions. 2 skills. That’s mesmer.

4. Time Warp – The 2nd skill that sets us apart from other prof. But actually if you think about it, it’s an elite. Idk if Elites should set you apart from other prof in raids. It’s not like: ‘’Oh he got that elite which is better than that other dudes elite so I’m gonna pick him’’. With a cooldown of 210 seconds I would never rely on a mesmer making a huge change in a battle.

Lets see…. What else… Hm… Nope, that was it pretty much. 4 skills, all utility’s. None of them besides veil is better than other utility’s other classes have.

So we come to the same topic again veilbot!

You know, I’ve been running tankier because I’ve had enough of my leader being a kitten when I die. But it’s still funny. Even when I go tankier, I notice that I only die when my guardian in my pt is not at the fight or died earlier than me. I can only just bomb a little bit longer, but deal less damage.
So it’s funny to see we rely so much on 1 prof to make our own prof workable.

We need something that doesn’t require you to go squishy to actually deal damage.
We need something that other professions don’t have yet or which they are not as good at as us.
We need something that sets us apart from other professions, veil only is not doing that
We need something that makes our prof fun in raids/zergs again. Atm I almost fall asleep of boringness, how epic the fight may be. I only get satisfied atm if I hear sac complimenting my placement of skills, so I get the illusion that I’m doing something usefull. Isn’t that funny? I pretty much get mesmerised as a mesmer…

My WvW mesmer is repping [MOA] Not A Veilbot guild tag. Yes, pigeonholed into one playstyle is that big of an issue.

I never run veil just because now…..

as a solo roaming mesmer…i would be sad it they nerfed some of our dueling skills/traits/etc.

BlackDevil.9268:

Memser needs to be less strong in roaming and stronger in raids!

No, thank you. Buff our ability to contribute in large groups, but making us “less strong” for roaming isn’t necessary. You don’t need to nerf something to justify buffing something else. If you don’t like certain roaming specs, don’t play them. You don’t need to have them killed for you to try something more challenging of your own volition.

increase interval Duration on PU by 2 sec

BlackDevil.9268:

Thief was never designed to be a teamplayer proffession whereas mesmer actually was.
But like you say, mesmer is stronger than thief in almost everything. Yes, almost. Thief is stronger in tPvP than mesmer and it should never lose a 1v1 when the mesmer is player a tpvp shatter build.

Here we come to the same problem again, PU builds. Like listed above we got nerfed to hell in raid perspective. But what did we get back? Right, more roaming traits, which PU is 1 of them.

‘’Mesmer does have amazing aoe utility though. That’s part of what sets it apart from other classes.’’

Sorry… what? Amazing? That amazing to set us apart from other classes?
Okay let’s see:
Our main skills we use in raid are:
1. Null Field – Necro’s have a Well that’s better than our null field. Itpractically does the same, but also makes the boons into conditions.

2. Feedback – Atm, when fighting against guilds, you will reflect almost nothing. But when you do, it’s #1 spam of either their eles or necro’s cause they have everything on cooldown. The amount of damage you do with those skills is like really, really low since mesmers are now forced to go really tanky, whereas the damage is based on your statts and your traits.
You will probably notice more of the retaliation you get than the raid notices something of your feedback.

3. Veil – This, seriously, this is (if we talk about in-combat) one of the 2 skills that sets us apart from other professions. 2 skills. That’s mesmer.

4. Time Warp – The 2nd skill that sets us apart from other prof. But actually if you think about it, it’s an elite. Idk if Elites should set you apart from other prof in raids. It’s not like: ‘’Oh he got that elite which is better than that other dudes elite so I’m gonna pick him’’. With a cooldown of 210 seconds I would never rely on a mesmer making a huge change in a battle.

Lets see…. What else… Hm… Nope, that was it pretty much. 4 skills, all utility’s. None of them besides veil is better than other utility’s other classes have.

So we come to the same topic again veilbot!

You know, I’ve been running tankier because I’ve had enough of my leader being a kitten when I die. But it’s still funny. Even when I go tankier, I notice that I only die when my guardian in my pt is not at the fight or died earlier than me. I can only just bomb a little bit longer, but deal less damage.
So it’s funny to see we rely so much on 1 prof to make our own prof workable.

We need something that doesn’t require you to go squishy to actually deal damage.
We need something that other professions don’t have yet or which they are not as good at as us.
We need something that sets us apart from other professions, veil only is not doing that
We need something that makes our prof fun in raids/zergs again. Atm I almost fall asleep of boringness, how epic the fight may be. I only get satisfied atm if I hear sac complimenting my placement of skills, so I get the illusion that I’m doing something usefull. Isn’t that funny? I pretty much get mesmerised as a mesmer…

Venom share is the thief way of doing groups. It was just poorly designed.

I disagree that thief is better than a mes in tpvp. They both have their roles… but in a face to face I would give the advantage to mesmer.

It’s amazing that mes gets TW + veil + feedback (this just isn’t as useful due to the meta)… all of which are ethereal fields (a nice plus)… all in one package.

Tbh sounds to me like mes just isn’t for some people… might want to switch to ele for meteor etc.

BlackDevil.9268:

Thief was never designed to be a teamplayer proffession whereas mesmer actually was.
But like you say, mesmer is stronger than thief in almost everything. Yes, almost. Thief is stronger in tPvP than mesmer and it should never lose a 1v1 when the mesmer is player a tpvp shatter build.

Here we come to the same problem again, PU builds. Like listed above we got nerfed to hell in raid perspective. But what did we get back? Right, more roaming traits, which PU is 1 of them.

‘’Mesmer does have amazing aoe utility though. That’s part of what sets it apart from other classes.’’

Sorry… what? Amazing? That amazing to set us apart from other classes?
Okay let’s see:
Our main skills we use in raid are:
1. Null Field – Necro’s have a Well that’s better than our null field. Itpractically does the same, but also makes the boons into conditions.

2. Feedback – Atm, when fighting against guilds, you will reflect almost nothing. But when you do, it’s #1 spam of either their eles or necro’s cause they have everything on cooldown. The amount of damage you do with those skills is like really, really low since mesmers are now forced to go really tanky, whereas the damage is based on your statts and your traits.
You will probably notice more of the retaliation you get than the raid notices something of your feedback.

3. Veil – This, seriously, this is (if we talk about in-combat) one of the 2 skills that sets us apart from other professions. 2 skills. That’s mesmer.

4. Time Warp – The 2nd skill that sets us apart from other prof. But actually if you think about it, it’s an elite. Idk if Elites should set you apart from other prof in raids. It’s not like: ‘’Oh he got that elite which is better than that other dudes elite so I’m gonna pick him’’. With a cooldown of 210 seconds I would never rely on a mesmer making a huge change in a battle.

Lets see…. What else… Hm… Nope, that was it pretty much. 4 skills, all utility’s. None of them besides veil is better than other utility’s other classes have.

So we come to the same topic again veilbot!

You know, I’ve been running tankier because I’ve had enough of my leader being a kitten when I die. But it’s still funny. Even when I go tankier, I notice that I only die when my guardian in my pt is not at the fight or died earlier than me. I can only just bomb a little bit longer, but deal less damage.
So it’s funny to see we rely so much on 1 prof to make our own prof workable.

We need something that doesn’t require you to go squishy to actually deal damage.
We need something that other professions don’t have yet or which they are not as good at as us.
We need something that sets us apart from other professions, veil only is not doing that
We need something that makes our prof fun in raids/zergs again. Atm I almost fall asleep of boringness, how epic the fight may be. I only get satisfied atm if I hear sac complimenting my placement of skills, so I get the illusion that I’m doing something usefull. Isn’t that funny? I pretty much get mesmerised as a mesmer…

+1
this summerrizes exactly what is wrong with raid mes atm. couldnt have said it better.

When are you guys going to realise this post isn’t about PU? It’s about raid mesmer.
I mentioned PU because it only supports mesmer in roaming, like almost everything anet is working to atm for mesmer.

@Jackums.3496
You can’t buff a whole part of mesmer without nerfing the part where we are absolutely king in. We need nerfs in roaming if we want to be better at something else.
Even after nerfing that you will probably be still one of the top prof to roam.
I roam myself really often and find myself killing 1v5. Sure it’s fun, but it shouldnt be possible unless the enemy wants to get killed.

@Aberrant.6749
Ehm no… I think you need to rethink your POV on mesmer and thief. Just look at the last weeks ESL fights. You’ll see the best thief and best mesmer fighting eachother there. You can just see sizer facerolling helseth almost every 1v1 every fight.
And then to mention helseth is using a ’’bugged’’ (well… chaos storm should be like that but anyway) trait thats gonna get nerfed next patch so it should be even easier for sizer to kill him.
Not only that but he also got more mobility and more spike damage.

Only con of the thief is that mesmer is atm (due the bug) better at fighting on points than thief.

Btw maybe go read first what I say before you go make emo statements, because: ‘’Tbh sounds to me like mes just isn’t for some people… might want to switch to ele for meteor etc.’’ Doen’t make any sense at all.

I’m 100% sure I got a better perspective on how mesmer is atm and how it should be than you and I’m sure that has not much to do with my opinion about mesmer.

Btw they only gonna nerf us more next patch so GG to anet for nerfing us and not buffing us in raid, again.

Link to vid and I’ll watch it (prolly tomorrow with reset tonight and all). Overall I have very few problems with thief as mes… but build choices can make a large difference though, so I would need to see it.

Thief should have more mobility than a mes. That’s not to say that mes isn’t VERY good with in combat mobility though.

It makes total sense. You don’t seem to like the group support features that mesmer brings…. ele has a lot what I think you’re asking for in a mesmer.

Asking for mes to have more aoe damage etc. while keeping all of what it has now just sounds OP as all kitten (not saying that you’re asking for that)… and I know there are many that don’t want to have mesmer’s dueling side nerfed.

Almost everyone thinks they are right 100% bro… that doesn’t mean much to say stuff like that. If anything it just makes you look very stubborn.

Tbh… I agree with the deceptive evasion nerf. In its current form almost everyone would still take it even if it was a GM trait. It needed to be changed or bumped up to GM. My mes is a little sad, but I totally understand their reasoning.

Aberrant.6749:

Link to vid and I’ll watch it. Overall I have very few problems with thief as mes though. Thief should have more mobility than a mes. That’s not to say that mes isn’t VERY good with in combat mobility though.

It makes total sense. You don’t seem to like the group support features that mesmer brings…. ele has a lot what I think you’re asking for in a mesmer.

Almost everyone thinks they are right 100% bro… that doesn’t mean much to say stuff like that. If anything it just makes you look very stubborn.

Hm maybe because… mesmer doesn’t have any support feature besides veil and quickness? Which is like 1/100 of your gametime?
Yes ele got that because ele is actually balanced in WvW. Just like how mesmer should be.

O.k. ’’bro’’, Let’s see what I’ve done on my mesmer:
- I’ve been/am in the best GvG WvW guild of the game
- 2700h gametime, played mesmer from 1 month after release.
- I’ve been probably roaming more than 99% of the ppl watching the forum most likely
- I’ve pretty much tried every single build in raid, aswell as in roaming. That’s pretty much part of my trial-error to make builds like my roaming and raid one linked on my twitch channel and forum.

So yes, I think I got a bit better perspective than 99% of the mesmers on here. Especially on the WvW part.

Oh right, the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3-jm3mCHI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUhZzGGaedp6XFdS9iUBUBxw

This weeks ESL was even better to watch. Sizer just totally destroying helseth at the 2nd fight every time he was alive.

You don’t have problems against thieves because you fight kittenters that think backstab is super op in spvp and then die 2 seconds later or you’re using PU in spvp and you pretty much can’t hold any point.

well maybe the nerfs anet is giving us this patch can maybe open a few paths to the new skills that HOPEFULLY are NOTTTTTT 1v1 stupid skills , but FINALLY useful in WVW! we dont need more mantra buffs. i dont like using mantras and think they are annoying to use if u have to keep recharging them while none of the other classes needs to charge any of their skills that do the exact same thing! remove mantras and turn them into hexes that are aoe. get rid of the endless clones ai spams and give me aoe. make weapons like scepter more compeditive. fix or remove torch phantasm or make it do an aoe instead of 1 slow hit. fix or remove i warden or turn it into an aoe.
fix illusinary leap. fix the los issues where u litterally stnt below unbuilt oil and cant hit it because of obstructed. dont make phantasms go into full cooldow if obstructed.. stuff like this could help the wvw mes, but when i watched the balance team i already knew how much they dont want togive us anything.fun for wvw mes. thats why i suggest rework mes completely. remove the whole duelist traits and abilities, remove mantras, remove phantasms, remove clones and start fresh!

Aberrant.6749:

Link to vid and I’ll watch it (prolly tomorrow with reset tonight and all). Overall I have very few problems with thief as mes… but build choices can make a large difference though, so I would need to see it.

Thief should have more mobility than a mes. That’s not to say that mes isn’t VERY good with in combat mobility though.

It makes total sense. You don’t seem to like the group support features that mesmer brings…. ele has a lot what I think you’re asking for in a mesmer.

Asking for mes to have more aoe damage etc. while keeping all of what it has now just sounds OP as all kitten (not saying that you’re asking for that)… and I know there are many that don’t want to have mesmer’s dueling side nerfed.

Almost everyone thinks they are right 100% bro… that doesn’t mean much to say stuff like that. If anything it just makes you look very stubborn.

Tbh… I agree with the deceptive evasion nerf. In its current form almost everyone would still take it even if it was a GM trait. It needed to be changed or bumped up to GM. My mes is a little sad, but I totally understand their reasoning.

support abilities?
oh yeah there is nullfield. massive cd, works slow and well of corruption is 10times better.
feedback: lol. what projectiles do u refelct? oh and not to mention the massive retal dm u get while using it. try to use it on a retal zerg and u get downed intantly. btw sooo how is that refelction going vs the heavy train? oh yeah there is none.

veil:yeah they want us to trait for it as it has a 1min cooldown, which makes a lot of builds not possible. veil is all that we have that it different from the other classes.

tw: seriously a 240sec cd for a little bit of quickness? pshhh. u dont even deal dmg and it only affects 5 people. ugh.

so what else do we have? dont even try to say mantras as the range is a joke, so i actually have to run in the middle of the zerg in order to use it and try to recharge a mantra in a massive fight. i’d rather have that stuff removed.
if i could get aoe on my mes, i would even give alllll my darn clones to thieves if this is what it takes, or give it to war so at least i am allowed to have aoe as a light armor.
gw1 es was soo much better than gw2 es. gw2 mes just seems like fake medium armor class.

Hey guys I support this 100%
While I have spent most of my time as a roaming mesmer due to a bad connection I do raid now and struggle to find a use for myself other than as a utility bot. I find that half the time shatters are not even very effective in raids (25-30 man group) as the clones/phantasms normally die before they even reach a target. The fact that you have to have 1-2 guards in your party to survive is ridiculous, sure, it is possible if you have pvt and staff you are down to being able to do nothing other than use utilities, cast the chaos storms and prey that your shatters might hit something.

The only time that I feel useful in my guild half the time at the moment is if I manage to place a really nice veil or if I can pull off a good portal bomb.

BlackDevil.9268:

Hm maybe because… mesmer doesn’t have any support feature besides veil and quickness? Which is like 1/100 of your gametime?
Yes ele got that because ele is actually balanced in WvW. Just like how mesmer should be.

O.k. ’’bro’’, Let’s see what I’ve done on my mesmer:
- I’ve been/am in the best GvG WvW guild of the game
- 2700h gametime, played mesmer from 1 month after release.
- I’ve been probably roaming more than 99% of the ppl watching the forum most likely
- I’ve pretty much tried every single build in raid, aswell as in roaming. That’s pretty much part of my trial-error to make builds like my roaming and raid one linked on my twitch channel and forum.

So yes, I think I got a bit better perspective than 99% of the mesmers on here. Especially on the WvW part.

Oh right, the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3-jm3mCHI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUhZzGGaedp6XFdS9iUBUBxw

This weeks ESL was even better to watch. Sizer just totally destroying helseth at the 2nd fight every time he was alive.

You don’t have problems against thieves because you fight kittenters that think backstab is super op in spvp and then die 2 seconds later or you’re using PU in spvp and you pretty much can’t hold any point.

Mes was the 2nd one I got to 80, started on her at about week 2. I like my mes a lot, got her bifrost and it’s a profession that I still play regularly. I’m not some mes hater by any means. I’ve done both roaming and large group stuff too

Yea it’s not a lot of your gameplay time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing imo. Must every profession be good at constant largescale actions? If so they have a LOT of work on their hands. I don’t see what’s inherently wrong with veil/null/tw then more periphery type work after that.

I wasn’t trying to be condescending when I suggested using a class that offers different things for large scale fights if that’s what you’re looking for. Different classes are better at different things in different ways. I like that variety. It gives more options for different types of players. I like my thief and eng a lot as well, but there are better classes for that consistent large scale gameplay. That’s part of why I play ele as well. I don’t have a problem with that (and that’s where I think we differ greatly).

I agree backstab isn’t the best thing ever in sPvP and I don’t do high level sPvP so that might be why I don’t have problems against them.

I’ll be sure to check out the vids tomorrow

Aberrant.6749:

BlackDevil.9268:

Hm maybe because… mesmer doesn’t have any support feature besides veil and quickness? Which is like 1/100 of your gametime?
Yes ele got that because ele is actually balanced in WvW. Just like how mesmer should be.

O.k. ’’bro’’, Let’s see what I’ve done on my mesmer:
- I’ve been/am in the best GvG WvW guild of the game
- 2700h gametime, played mesmer from 1 month after release.
- I’ve been probably roaming more than 99% of the ppl watching the forum most likely
- I’ve pretty much tried every single build in raid, aswell as in roaming. That’s pretty much part of my trial-error to make builds like my roaming and raid one linked on my twitch channel and forum.

So yes, I think I got a bit better perspective than 99% of the mesmers on here. Especially on the WvW part.

Oh right, the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3-jm3mCHI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUhZzGGaedp6XFdS9iUBUBxw

This weeks ESL was even better to watch. Sizer just totally destroying helseth at the 2nd fight every time he was alive.

You don’t have problems against thieves because you fight kittenters that think backstab is super op in spvp and then die 2 seconds later or you’re using PU in spvp and you pretty much can’t hold any point.

Mes was the 2nd one I got to 80, started on her at about week 2. I like my mes a lot, got her bifrost and it’s a profession that I still play regularly. I’m not some mes hater by any means. I’ve done both roaming and large group stuff too

Yea it’s not a lot of your gameplay time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing imo. Must every profession be good at constant largescale actions? If so they have a LOT of work on their hands. I don’t see what’s inherently wrong with veil/null/tw then more periphery type work after that.

I wasn’t trying to be condescending when I suggested using a class that offers different things for large scale fights if that’s what you’re looking for. Different classes are better at different things in different ways. I like that variety. It gives more options for different types of players. I like my thief and eng a lot as well, but there are better classes for that consistent large scale gameplay. That’s part of why I play ele as well. I don’t have a problem with that (and that’s where I think we differ greatly).

I agree backstab isn’t the best thing ever in sPvP and I don’t do high level sPvP so that might be why I don’t have problems against them.

I’ll be sure to check out the vids tomorrow

well yes we got some stuff for 1v1!but a game that offers a gamemode where they have massive battles should make sure that all classes can be part of it. there is no tank, healer,dps in gw2, so the mes is lacking a looot in this aspect. although i agree with u that mes is special, after the confusion nerf, mes never has gotten anything back in order to be very useful in large groups. not everyone likes to be a roamer. if i wanted to roam ill go spvp, not wvw. i enjoy large scale fights, but with my mes i simply feel like im only there to veil and tw and for the rest of the fight ill hit 1 or 2 targets, dont manage to kill them and stand on the side and hopefully live long enough for my second tw.

Seems like Shatter builds get a hefty nerf when Critdmg and Vigor changes are getting rolled out.

…seems like it’s time to give up on this farce of a game, soon.

its just sad the nerfs always hit the wrong builds…and in wvw we are already bottom feeders/veilbots. but anet will never admit that the mesmer needs buffs in wvw as they are blindsided by spvp and see the mes through war eyes!

@ Aberrant

I get your point, since I also agree not every class should be able to do the same, but mesmer was actually one of the main ppl you would get in your raid before all the kitten nerfs. Mesmer wasn’t OP, you’d still only run 4 at max, but that wasn’t only for Veil.
Mesmer was a good dps class, but at the same time very supportive. Sure maybe not on the hardest way since it was pretty much dropping down your stuff and watch the confusion ticks rise up, but at least mesmer was viable.
Atm raidleaders want as less mesmers as possible, with like 2max for, yes I think you can guess it already, veil only.

Btw, I’m not saying they should revert the confusion nerf, because that was a way too easy way to deal damage as mesmer. They need to do something, and I’d say aoe lockdown so our interrupt traits and boon removal can work together. No heavy damage is inhereted in there, still fits the role we’re doing now and what we should be doing in raids.

I just find the imbalance of classes around the game very annoying. Sure some classes should rise above others in different aspects of the game, but if 1 class is king and rises above all others on 1 aspect of the game, but sucks on all other aspects besides killing poor noobs in spvp, then that really bothers me. Especially if it’s the class I’m playing myself and noticed from day 1 how mesmer got nerfed into oblivion on raid perspective.

Mesmer needs teamplay buffs!
I abaddoned most of my mesmer play because everyone only wants veil, portal and nullfield and i hate it. At last i only took veil into my raid build. Yes these skills are strong, but they aren’t exactly fun to use. They don’t kill anything, most of the time they don’t help us survive, they don’t help us getting to our group as fast as others.

I posted this suggestion in the deceptive evasion change thread. Would it be a working buff? Would it be overpowered?

LunarNacht.8913:

This trait is very important for many builds. And most simply take it, locking 20 points into this line. That isn’t really a problem, because this line also has another good trait that’s taken in many builds.
Switching blade training and deceptive evasion wouldn’t destroy any build. At least none of the ones I checked at intothemists.com.

But it would free 10 points on the basic (most smooth) shatter build.
Illusions 30 and Dueling 20 > Illusions 30 and Dueling 10
Instead of having only 20 points left we would have 30. These could be spend the same than before or they could be used completly different.
Taking 30 in Domination would be an option for more power or its utility traits, like cleansing conflagration or confounding suggestions.
Or we could take 30 in Inspiration for shattered conditions or restorative illusions.

It would open more ways for shatter builds.

As I’m not that into PU and stuff it could backfire someway I didn’t think about, so feel free to destroy this suggestion. What would be bad about this?

We need buffs other than the PU nonesense.

we need aoe that is non ai like the glamour build was.if u have a gamemode that is about group play all classes should be able to contribute, not just GWEN trains everywhere. as a light armor being force into the duelist role without an option to spec for groupplay is terrible.
people always say, but u are support and all that. no we are utilitybots, not support. we provide a veil for 3 sec and a tw for 10 sec and the rest of the fight u will try to stay alive, but cant really kill anything. u are a light armor and stay with the casters but your aoe dmg is a joke. the 1v1 balance will keep bringing nerfs to us as anet refuses to balance wvw and spvp differently. thats why in wvw balance is completely broken. it was more balanced when wvw and pve were handled the same and spvp was different. the glam nerf was wayy too much and now we are stuck and unable to ever receive buffs in wvw, because of spvp!

We have the base to be a very useful profession in zergs and teams, the problem is we were designed to excel in dueling, so most of our traits/skills are designed on that.
But it has ended to be the least common situation on this game: PvE is about parties, for every single-roamer in WvW there’s 200 people blobbing, doing raids or in roaming teams. Only in sPvP we see dueling is important, but because sPvP is a game mode based on 5-8 people teams that have to take 3 points quite far from each other, so those distances and small size teams provoke a lot of duels, but not because sPvP is based on them.

Ansau.7326:

Illusionary Persona, Shattered Concentration, Confounding Suggestions, Chaotic Interruption, Imbued Diversion, Dazzling Glamours…

We could have a debuff-lockdown role with them. But, as you can see, Debuff-Lockdown includes 4 GrandMaster traits over 3 lines. With 70 points it’s just impossible.

Also, we can excel on support, as we have quite good support traits, like Restorative Mantras or Shattered Conditions (it needs to work with IP). But this needs much more changes.
We have a lot of support traits/skills that only benefits us, and making them AoE would make us a really good support profession. I’m talking about Restorative Illusions, Mender’s Purity, Cleansing Inscriptions or Confusing Cry.
Mantras mechanics also need to be redone. With only 2 casts, such CD’s that start after all casts are used, nearly 3s of cast time, and CD’s between casts, they’re a big MEH, not only in zergs, but in most of game situations. They should have 3 base casts and Harmonious Mantra could be reworked to decrease the cast time, or make you have stability while casting mantras.

I agree with most of the things with OP.

I have all characters in level 80, but I play my mesmer very rarely. The first 30 levels as mesmer were so much fun, but as I progressed in levels, it became more and more tedious. Summon illusions, shatter them, rinse and repeat. I find it really boring to be the “veil-bot” in zergs, so I rather play something else and let guildies do the job. It is true that mesmer has one of the most powerful utilities in the game (portal, time warp etc), but few people enjoy playing just support. Mesmer doesn’t have much AoE direct damage skills, thus it is suboptimal in the WvWvW zerg tagging game.

Mesmer is currently very strong in 1 vs 1 and even in small scale like 1 vs 2-3. PU mesmers are everywhere and I would argue that the typical PU builds do not require much skill to be very effective indeed. If the developers will start buffing mesmer in zergs, there is a risk it becomes way too overpowered in small scale settings.

The same problem exists for many other professions:
Medium armor professions are not part of the WvWvW zerging meta, but thief, ranger and engineer all have valid roaming builds. So I see mesmer is sort like a cousin to them.

Warriors are lucky, because they currently excel in all forms of the game (free world pve, dungeons, spvp, WvWvW zerging and roaming).

They key problems lies in this:
Mesmer is too AI dependent.

Most mesmer builds do large part of their damage via phantasms or shattering the illusions. In zergs the phantasms don’t work that well, because there is AoE damage flying everywhere and the phantasms get killed in a second or two. For comparison phantasm has about 4.5k health in pvp/WvWvW, while ranger ursine pet has 50k health (yet rangers rightfully complain that the pets are useless in zergs).

If one would increase the health pool of the phantasms or give them dodging, mesmer would easily be grossly overpowered in small scale.

There is no simple way to balance this. Either one needs to make mesmer less reliant on clones and phantasms for damage or one needs to accept the fact that mesmer’s own damage output is suboptimal in zerg situations. Some weapon skills could be altered to be AoE skills, but such changes require extensive testing before putting them live. Adding damage or area to weapon skills is problematic because mesmer can create additional damage with illusions and one needs to count all these together.

I personally feel that fighting against AI (phantom mesmer, spirit ranger, minion master necro) is not fun.

What about something like gs #1 doing splash damage on hit it’s all a tagging game you help your team and have nothing to show for it atm.

I know this may seem treasonous to say but, like some Rangers, I’d wish we had one build that focused more on us than our illusions. I’d like more Power, CC, and Support than conditions and shattering.