Guild Wars 2

Well with the upcoming buffs to both dagger and sword I think it’ll be hard to say thief will have only one build. Thief, like Mesmer, only has one working PvP build for high tier play. Which at the moment isn’t used as bunkers galore.
As for utilities.. Your standard shatter build for PvP really only brings portal for the group. Otherwise it’s fairly selfish. Chrono bunker gives boons out the ying yang but is lack luster in the damage department, what made it really shine was its Rez/stomp ability.
I’m not saying one class should be better than another. Far from it. Ideally each class would have its counters and it comes down to individuals skill level and not hard counters/passive procs as we have now. But that won’t ever happen as those in charge of balance don’t understand how that is supposed to work.

Chip Skylark.2367:

mesmer will still be mandatory for raids post alacrity nerf, they don’t need any buffs.

I’m so glad that we dont follow your idea of balance. Not only was the livestream filled with misinformation about how alacrity works but PvE isn’t the only game mode in the game. And with Well of Precognition being nerfed a lot of tanking ability for raid bosses is out as well. Since Mesmer isn’t brought for its great DPS in Raids, anything really, but for what utility it can provide in a certain situation you may find that it’s not mandatory.

Mesmer, like thief and ranger, need reworks on their core, skill adjustments, AI fixes, etc. and that’s just a start.

Jace al Thor.6745:

Well with the upcoming buffs to both dagger and sword I think it’ll be hard to say thief will have only one build. Thief, like Mesmer, only has one working PvP build for high tier play. Which at the moment isn’t used as bunkers galore.
As for utilities.. Your standard shatter build for PvP really only brings portal for the group. Otherwise it’s fairly selfish. Chrono bunker gives boons out the ying yang but is lack luster in the damage department, what made it really shine was its Rez/stomp ability.
I’m not saying one class should be better than another. Far from it. Ideally each class would have its counters and it comes down to individuals skill level and not hard counters/passive procs as we have now. But that won’t ever happen as those in charge of balance don’t understand how that is supposed to work.

Thieves have multiple builds but only one role as I stated, while Mesmer can provide multiple roles with more build diversity. Yes builds should have various counters, which is prevalent. But when players complain that one class that one has one role and excels at that role and counters another class that tries to emulate it, people seem to forget that Mesmers can bring other things to the table besides decap/+1 even after patch Mesmer can bunker if they wanted, and provide group support, also people undervalue the ability to mass port people to a point if needed, group support in this game mode is very valuable, which is something with the current design Thief will never bring to the table.

Personally I would love to see phantasms do no damage anymore and just be a damaging skill that produces a clone at the end. That would allow for some of the sustained damage to be balanced out without worrying about hypothetical 3 phantasm scenarios.

I’d be very careful about buffing various weapons, the after cast on the greatsword should be removed as there’s too many after casts in the game. They could certainly bring up the sword auto and adjust mind wrack damage a bit (thinking lower the 1 clone shatter damage a little but keep the 2 and 3 clone as is) so mesmer finally has a viable sustained damage build. Sword is a good candidate for buffs as it puts you in melee and thus is more risk and pairs well with power off hands.

I think it was Frifox that did the match and worked out that pre spec patch a Rangers frost spirit increased party dps more than all 3 sword phantasms from a mesmer. Those three phantasms were about 50% of the mesmers dps at the time, so yeah mesmer dps is a joke.

apharma.3741:

Personally I would love to see phantasms do no damage anymore and just be a damaging skill that produces a clone at the end. That would allow for some of the sustained damage to be balanced out without worrying about hypothetical 3 phantasm scenarios.

I’d be very careful about buffing various weapons, the after cast on the greatsword should be removed as there’s too many after casts in the game. They could certainly bring up the sword auto and adjust mind wrack damage a bit (thinking lower the 1 clone shatter damage a little but keep the 2 and 3 clone as is) so mesmer finally has a viable sustained damage build. Sword is a good candidate for buffs as it puts you in melee and thus is more risk and pairs well with power off hands.

I think it was Frifox that did the match and worked out that pre spec patch a Rangers frost spirit increased party dps more than all 3 sword phantasms from a mesmer. Those three phantasms were about 50% of the mesmers dps at the time, so yeah mesmer dps is a joke.

+1

The entire Phantasm mechanic is boring, frustrating and impossible to balance. Trash it.

Jace al Thor.6745:

Does Mesmer have good burst? Yes, however, in this meta it’s pretty much useless with all the bunkers.

Considering the majority of the capacity of classes to bunker via stats is going to be removed entirely in a few days and thus burst damage is going to be innately valuable as a consequence, I don’t think this is a reasonable claim.

Alacrity was providing too much. Recall that the mesmer offers similar damage to the ranger (when power; condi ranger does quite a bit, but that issue stems from burning more than anything); the ranger was/has been preferred on the basis it provided damage bonuses to the rest of the party, not because of its personal damage output. Alacrity was such a huge bonus that a chronomancer was basically seen as a “requirement” for most content, pushing out the need of other classes into the position the mesmer was in before HoT. Moving Alacrity more in-line (potentially over-nerfed, we’ll see what happens next) with the rest of the utility other classes can provide will remove the emphasis of “requiring” a chronomancer, and it also leaves room into the future to instead buff the core mesmer over just the chronomancer as to prevent blatant power disparities between core and elite specializations.

This thread is so full of people that have no idea how the game works, it’s mindblowing.