Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been told by a few people that have done ESLs/AG etc. That mesmer just “can’t work” anymore. I know people are gonna bring Supcutie/Misha/Helseth etc into this argument about how amazing they are at mesmer and they are great in their team. The point is…

When asking people about forming a team they flat out tell me “play something else.” Not because I’m a bad mesmer, I know I’m not the greatest mesmer but I know that I am not complete garbo. They say it because they and others feel mesmer just doesn’t have anything of value to teams anymore In their opinion just bring two eles with FGS they will match the mobility, and have better sustain. I know that in the past mesmers were great, it took the team building around them, however they were able to contribute a ton to the team if it happened that way.

Now even mentioning the class (along with others I know.), is met with heavy resistance, and if you some how have two on your team. It’s just called out GG before the match even starts.

I’m just wondering why PvP players feel that mesmer can’t work. What should change to make it in the meta? Do the top players not even want mesmers in their teams anymore? What would it take to actually have people say “you play a mesmer cool we need one.” Instead of “Do you play anything else?” as soon as you are on a team.

Kind of a rant, Kind of a question. I know this is a class question in the pvp thread but this is specific to mesmers in PvP.

TLDR: Do you think mesmers need something to be on teams again? Are there others just as frustrated that the class they have spent so many hours trying to become perfected on is just brushed off on the class alone.

Necromancers and (especially) rangers are in the same position, if that’s any comfort. 3 main things are pushing Mesmers out of the meta in high-elite level play, imo.

1) Mesmers face very serious role competition from thieves. Thieves are generally better at fulfiling the role of the roamer. Thieves have higher mobility and stealth uptime for backcaps and +1ing fights and can disengage from fights better. Mesmers can only do three things better than thieves: Boon stripping, sustained ranged damage and portal. These are things that can be very useful to the team, however…

2) (Shatter) Mesmers get farmed by thieves. If the other team has a thief, the mesmer spends most of the game kiting and trying to survive getting ganked, if he doesn’t get 2 shot from stealth to begin with. In other words, the mesmer becomes a liability for most of the game. This skewed matchup is especially problematic since the role of the mesmer is to +1 fights. If the mesmer rotates to +1 a fight, the enemy thief can get there to even out the fight. And in an equal numbered fight where one team has a thief and the other has a mesmer, the team with the thief will probably win.

Good peeling from your team can help to mitigate the thief hard counter. However, the simple need to peel can be a huge liability to the mesmer’s team as well, as when teammates have to peel for the mesmer, it forces the team out of position and lessens pressure on other players on the enemy team. Moreover…

3) Why would teams want to invest all that time and effort to make a mesmer comp work, if there are alternatives that require far less effort to succeed and are more effective? Thieves are simply kings of the berserker classes in conquest, and has been since launch, so every team will reserve one spot for the thief. If the team needs a second DPS/roamer class, a cele engi can perform the role exceptionally well AND counter the enemy’s thief. Same thing for a hammer meditation guard.

TL;DR: Mesmer faces serious role competition from thieves. Even the most exceptional mesmer players struggle against enemy thieves, even with impeccable team support. The availability of more effective alternatives to the mesmer for a second DPS/roamer class, such as the celestial engineer or the hammer meditation guardian, removes any incentive for teams to try to make a mesmer comp work unless the mesmer is REALLY exceptional.

Solutions:
1) Making the Thief vs Mesmer matchup more balanced (the thief should still have an advantage imo, but not an utterly overwhelming one as in the status quo).

2) Giving the mesmer more out of combat mobility so that it can better fulfill the role of the roamer (right now, mesmers are pigeonholed into traveler runes in order to even be competitive in the “roaming” role).

3) Maybe….gasp, fix some of the underlying issues of the class such as the huge number of bugs, nonsensical trait lines, the need to always have deceptive evasion (unless you spec for phantasms, which is great for pve and 1v1s but is terrible for tPvP) and useless grandmaster traits so that mesmers can spec something other than shatter and be useful to a team in high level play.

Yeah, going off what the other person said. They purposely borked up our traitline early on and it’s beginning to show at this stage in the game. Also we are just too susceptible to blind and guess what class gives that to us in spades. We’ve been hunted out of the meta by a class we used to beat down terribly. It is rather tragic.

We’ll just have to see if the specialization can save us. If not, that is GG

Realistically Do you think ANET will do anything to fix our role competition? I think one thing that should be looked at is BETTER condi clear.

If they try to buff mesmers sustain will it be effective? Or is the class so pidgeoned into thief food that its useless.

When I play, I find that certain mesmers in the game make me shiver in my little engi boots. If I see L Ipnotico, arete or sup cutie on the other team, I die a little bit inside. I have out right refused to do 1v1s against my friend’s mesmer cuz it’s just a massacre for my engi repeatedly. If it’s just some random mesmer, I’m really not afraid at all.

With many players I generally don’t find they dislike mesmers, but they’d much prefer to have a solid base to the team (two eles + war) before they start going crazy with a mesmer thief combo. Are you being told to switch classes when you have a solid base?

What could you really add to make mesmer more viable without sending it over the top? The most I could see is maybe throwing a single condition removal on their healing skill so they aren’t just dead if you get 20s of burn on them. Other than that, their burst makes me cry, portal plays done well make me feel like an idiot and their mobility is pretty strong. Is there something you feel they’re missing?

Yeah thief is completely broken in group pvp sadly.

Mesmers work. I have no clue why people think other wise. Mesmer and thief working together is scary.

Thing with mesmers is that outside of Hellseth, Supcutie, Misha and a handful of others, there’s a skill gap. I think a lot of mesmers try to exceed their limitations in team fights and end up getting popped. Thieves have that happen to them too.

Form your own team. Stop BM’ing people. Take responsibility so you’re someone people want to be on a team with.

No one wants a thief w/ thieve’s guild or smokescreen—I’ve never been invited to play for any team but I formed a team w/ my friends and family and we do just fine regardless of what’s meta.

The Dream has been doing pretty well with a mesmer, actually. I realize they’re just winning AG weekly atm, but still that’s 6k gems each in 3 weeks (I think this is their 3rd week in a row winning it, I could be wrong). Sure you could say the best ESL teams aren’t in it, but notable players still compete so IMO it still has some significance.

ALL professions have bad / useless traits and Utilities, lets hope some day the balance team will do something about it.

i think mesmer is fine giving them condition immunity will make the class a bit broken because they can blink away and stealth to recover if the fight is not on their side. maybe a small condition removal. like while you use your healing skill remove burning or poison.

jayson.6512:

i think mesmer is fine giving them condition immunity will make the class a bit broken because they can blink away and stealth to recover if the fight is not on their side. maybe a small condition removal. like while you use your healing skill remove burning or poison.

That’s really all we want. Is something that removes damaging conditions on heal.

I guess you can ask yourself "If I was helseth/supcutie would my team say “go play something else?”"

The Gates Assassin.9827:

When I play, I find that certain mesmers in the game make me shiver in my little engi boots. If I see L Ipnotico, arete or sup cutie on the other team, I die a little bit inside. I have out right refused to do 1v1s against my friend’s mesmer cuz it’s just a massacre for my engi repeatedly. If it’s just some random mesmer, I’m really not afraid at all.

With many players I generally don’t find they dislike mesmers, but they’d much prefer to have a solid base to the team (two eles + war) before they start going crazy with a mesmer thief combo. Are you being told to switch classes when you have a solid base?

What could you really add to make mesmer more viable without sending it over the top? The most I could see is maybe throwing a single condition removal on their healing skill so they aren’t just dead if you get 20s of burn on them. Other than that, their burst makes me cry, portal plays done well make me feel like an idiot and their mobility is pretty strong. Is there something you feel they’re missing?

As other posters have mentioned, shatter mesmers DO work. They are not completely out of the meta. They are, more accurately, at the fringes of the meta: they CAN work well, and they CAN be scary. It’s just that you can usually make something else other than a mesmer work better. There’s a reason why Supcutie didn’t play Mesmer against The Abjured in WTS, and why he’s basically the only top player in NA that still plays mesmer competitively (and even then, not always). Heck, even Helseth admitted on his stream that he would probably perform a lot better if he played an “easier” (his words, not mine) class.

What the SHATTER mesmer is missing is, imo :
1) An answer to the thief vs shatter mesmer issue.

2) Lack of out of combat mobility if the mesmer does not use traveler runes (which do almost nothing for the mesmer other than the 25% movespeed increase) – this makes the mesmer sub-par compared to the thief or engineer as a roamer, due to their superior move speed and mobility

3) The lack of a clearly defined niche in the roaming role that would make teams seriously consider taking one. Engineers bring strong condition pressure and CC as a roamer. Thieves bring the best mobility in the game, stealth, soft CC etc. Mesmers do bring some cool stuff to the table, but these things just aren’t enough at the moment.

Some ideas for giving mesmers a “X” factor include:
a) Anet seems to like pushing mesmers into the “interrupter” role, with so many traits centering around interrupting the enemy. Perhaps the mesmer can be given more access to interrupts, such as lowering the cooldown on diversion and giving it a small, inherent aoe? Note that mesmers who run mantra of distraction in the status quo have pretty balanced access to interrupts: unfortunately, mesmers, like eles, suffer from the need to always have 3 specific skills on the skill bar and cannot run MoD, as they have to run portal, blink and decoy to be remotely viable at high level play.

Another idea along this line would be to move deceptive evasion to adept status and buff power lock and/or confounding suggestions. With this, shatter mesmers can now have access to (hopefully) useful grandmaster traits centered on interrupts, and may even give birth to a new viable 6/2/6/0/0 interrupt mesmer spec for high level play.

b) Making the mesmer the premier boon stripping class by giving it moderately more access to boon strips. For instance, mind stab can remove 2 boons instead of one, or attacks by certain phantasms (like Illusionary Warlock and mage) could remove a boon.

c) Making the mesmer more of a portal bot by either reducing portal’s cooldown or, heck, going all the way and make portal (or blink- which might as well be glued to every Mesmer’s skill bar) a secondary profession mechanic (i.e. doesn’t require a utility slot). I’m only half joking with the latter suggestion: if portal/blink becoming a secondary profession mechanic frees up a utility slot, mesmers can definitely bring more to the table through Mantra of Resolve (condition cleanse for team), Mantra of Domination (more interrupts), Reflects (feedback), Temporary rezzes (Illusion of Life), more boon strips/condition cleanse/ethereal field (Null Field/Phantasmal Disenchanter), greater burst (mirror images) or, heck, group stability (Mantra of Concentration).

What mesmers in general need is the ability to fill a role other than the roamer/DPSer and trait lines that actually make sense. Oh, and bug fixes. Can’t ask for too much though, can we?

Why would you play anything else when you could just be a thief?

One of the things that contributed to me not wanting to play in a team seriously was that if I had an off day or played a little worse than my best the team would suffer greatly. I couldn’t take the stress of being the obviously vulnerable link for others and ruining their night.

I am no where near the ability level of Misha or Helseth but certainly not such a bad player that this crippling effect is down to me alone (I fully admit I have a high variance on my play so I’m not without blame).

I understand where OP is coming from though. Luckily the people I tend to play with are happy to accept the risk and don’t ask me to change – this said though I wouldn’t want to subject them to the horrors of a string of bad nights just because I’m not at 80%+ of my cap while trying to be a serious team.

My god i swear some mesmer players are terribad. More balance to the fight vs thief? Seriously? Learn to freaking play. I don’t know how many times a mesmer has had me on the defensive (pretty much disengaging because death inbound).

As a thief, i still consider the mesmer one of the harder classes to fight against. So quit your whining, watch some LordHelseth vids and git gud.

Ravenmoon.5318:

My god i swear some mesmer players are terribad. More balance to the fight vs thief? Seriously? Learn to freaking play. I don’t know how many times a mesmer has had me on the defensive (pretty much disengaging because death inbound).

As a thief, i still consider the mesmer one of the harder classes to fight against. So quit your whining, watch some LordHelseth vids and git gud.

I actually fare pretty well against most thieves. I still get wrecked when I am caught off guard the, you know the standard way most die to thieves.

It’s the desire of players to have mesmers on their team. Yes everyone would love to be on helseth/supcutie level. But really you are trying to justify keeping the class down based off TWO players doing decent against good teams with mesmer.

Really?

Ravenmoon.5318:

My god i swear some mesmer players are terribad. More balance to the fight vs thief? Seriously? Learn to freaking play. I don’t know how many times a mesmer has had me on the defensive (pretty much disengaging because death inbound).

As a thief, i still consider the mesmer one of the harder classes to fight against. So quit your whining, watch some LordHelseth vids and git gud.

The thing you have to understand is when your playing Mesmer at a level higher then yours, the imbalance becomes greater. In seriousness there is no excuse for a s/d thief to loose to a mes unless stealth ganked while already in combat.
Even so, your missing the point Johnny was trying to make. He’s mentioning how no teams will even take any Mesmer anymore, and request you re-roll to be accepted on a team. Helseth would be taken no matter what class he was playing, and has admitted he’s gimping his team somewhat staying on mes.

Meh, aside from me not overreacting like that since I do not play in the “big leagues”, this is all due to the class(es) being overreliant on their teammates…

I mean go figure, Mesmer and Necromancer both play burst builds with little self-sustain (Condi Necro is a Condi Burst build), making them reliant on positioning and team peals… Now, get an Ele in your team who does not grasp this, never switching to the right attunements to protect you, and suddenly you have become a “Liability”… Same arguement goes with a Thief; have yours keep the one from the enemy team in check, if he can’t do that, well, good luck…
Compare this to say the burst a Med Guardian can put out while still sustaining themselves (with roughly the same mobility issues as a Necro) – the class itself has no hardcounters as a Mesmer does have against a Thief, and it is capable of fighting some of the bruiser classes on the node at least on par… Sometimes even capable of winning…

Ranger suffers from being too specialized… They are either a node protector, with less mobility than a D/D Ele, and less team support – or they are a Ranged Burst class, that is not well suited to play on nodes… There is no middle ground that is capable of supporting your team, staying on the node and giving the right extra pressure…

However, and going back on not being a top player, this is something that you should not take into consideration ever. I hate people saying “Play something else” because with this attitude we would’ve had a tripple Warrior, Guard and Thief meta or something stupid like that because people do not have the guts or the understanding to man up and become a team player.
When you are playing a Mesmer, your team needs to understand this. It is something I try to do whenever I am playing my Ele or Warrior and one of my partners is playing Mesmer. Peel right for the said Mesmer, and it will become the worst thing for the enemy team.
I don’t know your level of play, but people saying “Play something else” is just flat-out dumb. Yes, of course Mesmer, Necromancer and Ranger is more punishing than other classes in the game, but are we all gonna jump the Cele bandwagon and pretend it is the best thing since sliced bread, or are we gonna improve at what we are good at, and prove that the classes are playable?

Also, not to be rude or anything, but your teammates telling you to switch classes, means they know little about protecting you – which means that in the long run, they will still not be able to play their respective roles well… Unless your teammates consist of 2 Rangers and 2 Necros respectively

Neptune.2570:

Even so, your missing the point Johnny was trying to make. He’s mentioning how no teams will even take any Mesmer anymore, and request you re-roll to be accepted on a team. Helseth would be taken no matter what class he was playing, and has admitted he’s gimping his team somewhat staying on mes.

The thing people also seem to forget is, that those few Mesmer players started playing the class, making a name for themselves, finding people to play with back when Mesmer actually was desired on a team.
How is new Mesmer players supposed to “learn to play like helseth” if they are rejected instantly due to class? Can’t become a part of a team?
We all need to start somewhere but currently it is a lot easier to get started if you are playing warrior, engi, elementalist etc.

for me mesmer or even dps ele or even dd thief is not the issue, the issue is that the competitive population has decay, its impossible to make a team with decent enough team play to be able to support those. On paper and on actuality 3 berserker amulets should beat celestial meta, but who is there to support them atm?(not talking for sd thief or medi guard, those 2 are self sustain…) so what u have to think is how much u have to push for the game to get the team-play level that is needed to be able to play those classes… most likely the ppl u talk to have no chance of making that gameplay level and there are about 10-20 ppl both regions that can pull this and the majority of them are already in teams

Ravenmoon.5318:

My god i swear some mesmer players are terribad. More balance to the fight vs thief? Seriously? Learn to freaking play. I don’t know how many times a mesmer has had me on the defensive (pretty much disengaging because death inbound).

As a thief, i still consider the mesmer one of the harder classes to fight against. So quit your whining, watch some LordHelseth vids and git gud.

No. You get completely wrong. Mesmers are fine in average level competition. It’s at the highest level that they start to lose their effectiveness. So actually the better you get, the more you will notice the difficulty of getting this class to work.

Mesmer is played alot and is very strong. In fact the best comp probably has mesmer/thief combo in it with 3 cele.

jim.5380:

for me mesmer or even dps ele or even dd thief is not the issue, the issue is that the competitive population has decay, its impossible to make a team with decent enough team play to be able to support those. On paper and on actuality 3 berserker amulets should beat celestial meta, but who is there to support them atm?(not talking for sd thief or medi guard, those 2 are self sustain…) so what u have to think is how much u have to push for the game to get the team-play level that is needed to be able to play those classes… most likely the ppl u talk to have no chance of making that gameplay level and there are about 10-20 ppl both regions that can pull this and the majority of them are already in teams

dis

GoogleBrandon.5073:

However, and going back on not being a top player, this is something that you should not take into consideration ever. I hate people saying “Play something else” because with this attitude we would’ve had a tripple Warrior, Guard and Thief meta or something stupid like that because people do not have the guts or the understanding to man up and become a team player.
When you are playing a Mesmer, your team needs to understand this. It is something I try to do whenever I am playing my Ele or Warrior and one of my partners is playing Mesmer. Peel right for the said Mesmer, and it will become the worst thing for the enemy team.
I don’t know your level of play, but people saying “Play something else” is just flat-out dumb. Yes, of course Mesmer, Necromancer and Ranger is more punishing than other classes in the game, but are we all gonna jump the Cele bandwagon and pretend it is the best thing since sliced bread, or are we gonna improve at what we are good at, and prove that the classes are playable?

You know this is a not thing that has suddenly become an issue with the “Cele bandwagon” right? In the months before the cele / might rune patch when ele was nearly non-existent in teams, the next least represented class was mesmer.

Or go back to Pax long ago, you had TP keep losing scrims to CC before the EU qualifiers, and eventually Xeph switched to thief 2 or 3 weeks before the qualifiers, and TP started winning (and then won the qualifiers), with a guy who was clearly less able on his thief he had played 3 weeks than his mes he played over a year, but was more effective.

Same thing goes for this notion that it is a problem with team-mates not peeling for the mes, I remember TP responding to being asked why they switched on one of their streams, and part of it was they simply could not protect the mesmer anymore, there is only so much even good players can do to support / protect a team mate.

The game is poorly balanced it is as simple as that, the differences in risk, when the reward is the same (and often not even that) are ridiculous, in every comparable game I’ve played if a class was high skill cap or had team “requirements” if it produced the results then good players/teams/guilds would use it, this game is no different, people don’t use mes for the simple reason it is not up to it.

Coulter.2315:

One of the things that contributed to me not wanting to play in a team seriously was that if I had an off day or played a little worse than my best the team would suffer greatly. I couldn’t take the stress of being the obviously vulnerable link for others and ruining their night.

I am no where near the ability level of Misha or Helseth but certainly not such a bad player that this crippling effect is down to me alone (I fully admit I have a high variance on my play so I’m not without blame).

I understand where OP is coming from though. Luckily the people I tend to play with are happy to accept the risk and don’t ask me to change – this said though I wouldn’t want to subject them to the horrors of a string of bad nights just because I’m not at 80%+ of my cap while trying to be a serious team.

This is the same issue i have with necro. You need to play in a comp which supports it and with people who understand how to support you. For me the combination of this has never happened which is why i did so well at solo queue for a long peroid but only was at the top of team queue when the leaderboards first came out.

The point we are both making, i think, is that playing classes which can only play roamer roles and have poor self sustain = pushes people away from playing in teams. So it kind of drives ppl away from the game. I have no doubt that in a settled 5 man team mesmer and necro can be totally dominant. But it just isnt going to happen because finding a team to play with is impossible when people are unwilling or unable to even recognise they need to adapt to bring in a mesmer or necro.

I think the solution is to create viable spe s with high self sustain for all classes. Only necro and mesmer are currently in need of these specs

zinkz.7045:

You know this is a not thing that has suddenly become an issue with the “Cele bandwagon” right? In the months before the cele / might rune patch when ele was nearly non-existent in teams, the next least represented class was mesmer.

Of course, I never stated otherwise… But are you going to deny that Mesmer does have it’s strengths and benefits within a (Coordinated) team? Unlike Ele at that time, which was burst or be forgotten, and playing burst gave them both no role , and they were made food for Thieves (similar issues ey?)

Or go back to Pax long ago, you had TP keep losing scrims to CC before the EU qualifiers, and eventually Xeph switched to thief 2 or 3 weeks before the qualifiers, and TP started winning (and then won the qualifiers), with a guy who was clearly less able on his thief he had played 3 weeks than his mes he played over a year, but was more effective.

I have no notion of this considering I did not follow the scene that much – regardless, looking at the past and saying “See, we got it tough” is not an arguement for the current state of the Mesmer (Necromancer and Ranger) within PvP
Because if we talk about the past, then the distant one proved that Mes+Thief with a Bunker Guardian proved to be incredibly potent in the EU meta, adopted by many teams (Purple Smokers, 55 HP Monks, TCG and Made in Meta come to mind) – which results in an endless back and forth

The game is poorly balanced it is simply as that, the differences in risk, when the reward is the same (and often not even that) are ridiculous, in every comparable game I’ve played if a class was high skill cap or had team “requirements” if it produced the results then good players/teams/guilds would use it, this game is no different, people don’t use mes for the simple reason it is not up to it.

Hey look, in my original comment I did say something about the nature of these classes being too reliant on team peels, which mean I agree with you in a sense… However, I get sick of people saying It is not working because X-comp is better Q.Q – When this is clearly not the case when you look at the “EU Top”, featuring 4(!) teams with different comps giving each other a beating every week with no clear winner, of which one even has a Bunker Guardian and Mesmer who are, according to the forum community, “out of the meta”…

People are so sickenly obsessed as to what about 4-5 teams accomplish that they forget that they are not these people! If the “top players” all massively decided to give up on their dedication for certain classes, then we would only see mirror comps, boring and stale fights and no, and literally no improvement on the meta…

Yes – The class is far too dependent on a team to do well
No – This is not an excuse to pretend as if the end of the world is neigh

Don’t you guys think that the upcoming stability changes might give us a new niche ?
We don’t know how big of an impact on the current meta it will have, but I imagine something like Chaos Storm on point could become more meaningful for example …

And then HoT with its specializations and the new class will most likely change up the entire meta anyway …
We might move from a roamer role to something more of a teamfight control ( with Slow) and “making the enemy vulnerable” role .
Right now there is no real way to predict what will happen. We will have to wait and see.

I am not that experienced with Mesmer in PvP, but I have seen some pretty strong mesmers dominating in matches.

They can be very effective and do contribute to the teams efforts. At the end of the day it all comes down to player skill. If these players that refuse mesmers have only ever experienced bad mesmers, then their opinion will be tainted. And as mesmer is one of those professions that takes more skill than other profs to play well, I’d say it is likely there are more bad mesmers out there than good ones. It doesn’t mean the profession is bad, just that it is harder to master.

Cerpin.9152:

Don’t you guys think that the upcoming stability changes might give us a new niche ?

No.

One of those fight-deciding moments are f.e. a warrior trying to throw a banner.
Without stability, you just need to put any CC on him. Every profession has access to some sort, but I would still rank thief with ‘Head Shot’ on #1.

Currently with stability: You have to remove the stability first. The best profession to do so, is still thieve with traited steal since it also interrupts the warrior.
After that the next one in line is necromancer with Corrupt Boon and a follow up fear.
On 3rd place are we mesmers with ‘Shattered Concentration’ and a followed up CC.

Now, how would this situation look like after the stability change?
The battle standard has a 2 second cast, and the warrior has 5 stacks of stability. The easiest way would still be the above mentioned boon remove.
With reaction time I hard think a single player will be able to put more than 2 CCs on the warrior, but a whole team COULD work together to bring down the 5 stacks, but it is still unlikely.

In most other situation, which is not so crucial for a team fight, you will still wait, till the stacks of stability are running out, before you use your CCs.

I think the profession who will benefit the most from the stability change is going to be the engineer. With a full knockback build he might be faster to neutralize a capture point.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Coulter.2315:

One of the things that contributed to me not wanting to play in a team seriously was that if I had an off day or played a little worse than my best the team would suffer greatly. I couldn’t take the stress of being the obviously vulnerable link for others and ruining their night.

I am no where near the ability level of Misha or Helseth but certainly not such a bad player that this crippling effect is down to me alone (I fully admit I have a high variance on my play so I’m not without blame).

I understand where OP is coming from though. Luckily the people I tend to play with are happy to accept the risk and don’t ask me to change – this said though I wouldn’t want to subject them to the horrors of a string of bad nights just because I’m not at 80%+ of my cap while trying to be a serious team.

This is the same issue i have with necro. You need to play in a comp which supports it and with people who understand how to support you. For me the combination of this has never happened which is why i did so well at solo queue for a long peroid but only was at the top of team queue when the leaderboards first came out.

The point we are both making, i think, is that playing classes which can only play roamer roles and have poor self sustain = pushes people away from playing in teams. So it kind of drives ppl away from the game. I have no doubt that in a settled 5 man team mesmer and necro can be totally dominant. But it just isnt going to happen because finding a team to play with is impossible when people are unwilling or unable to even recognise they need to adapt to bring in a mesmer or necro.

I think the solution is to create viable spe s with high self sustain for all classes. Only necro and mesmer are currently in need of these specs

it’s not even this.

The real problem is “why should we bring a necro when a cele engi is so much better on almost everything” and so on with other professions.

Even thief is kinda “meh” right now and it’s the most OP roamer this game has.

There’s so much healing/condi clear floating right now ( with so much damage added) that if u play a dps comp ( mes-thief-nec/condi engi + 2 holders) you’re risking the “snowball” game as soon as u do 1 mistake.

It’s totally not worth, even the most skilled players do mistakes ( as we’ve seen in the WTS finals) in every game, be it E-game or real games.

The risk/reward ratio in Gw2 is totally skewed, that’s why the game is boring and it’s dying.

Rin.1046:

I am not that experienced with Mesmer in PvP, but I have seen some pretty strong mesmers dominating in matches.

They can be very effective and do contribute to the teams efforts. At the end of the day it all comes down to player skill. If these players that refuse mesmers have only ever experienced bad mesmers, then their opinion will be tainted. And as mesmer is one of those professions that takes more skill than other profs to play well, I’d say it is likely there are more bad mesmers out there than good ones. It doesn’t mean the profession is bad, just that it is harder to master.

I wish this was the case. I wish we could just show all those teams that they had only seen bad mesmers and then yay the good ones will be taken in teams and considered in tourney comps. But obviously, thats not the case and it’s rediculous to think that after almost 3 years that’s all thats wrong with mesmer. Sure it’s a hard to work class, but the points where you see it least are at high tier/tourney’s. The better you get at Mesmer, the less and less viable you are for the teams at your skill level. Great reward for a “hard to master” and “takes more skill” class… :l. After 3 years the top teams have seen good mesmers, used good mesmer, and know good mesmers dont bring anything to make em worth it anymore.

they can’t work vs d/p thief… the rest is fair game…

What do Mesmers,Ranger,Necro have in common? Bad healing/sustain with burst builds and thus no viable spec with celestial amulet

Not a coincidence that these classes require more peels and team synergy aka hard work

Not a coincidence that these classes are not wanted and self sustaining classes are more wanted aka easier to make work

Mes works with proper peels and can be ok in triple DPS comps.

However it’s hard to justify such comps in the current meta. And having your team babysit lackluster burst compared to other zerkers who don’t need to be covered as much.

jportell.2197:

Realistically Do you think ANET will do anything to fix our role competition? I think one thing that should be looked at is BETTER condi clear.

If they try to buff mesmers sustain will it be effective? Or is the class so pidgeoned into thief food that its useless.

when Mesmer receives another OH as a new weapon, you already know Anet is treating this class as a joke…

mesmer definitely needs buffs on certain aspects, for example a thief and all the celestials(cengi cele shoutbow) can eat them alive and this is their biggest struggle, so thief needs a nerf too to become more in par with mesmer in terms of roaming-bursting-zoning. The biggest picture is that both of those classes cant do kitten alone vs celestial and celestial is the biggest problem at the game that makes mesmer unviable and a thief nerf unviable too.

Wow thanks for the responses. I was expecting a bunch of l2p noob posts but this is great! So some ideas I was tossing around in my head specifically have to do with portal. Right now (and almost since release) portal was what kept mesmer hanging on. I remember it used to be a lower CD. Do you think lowering the CD would help give mesmers that buff in team mobility just by making it more consistent?

Or, what about making portal an elite skill? One of the bigger consensus I’m seeing in this thread is mesmers need better condi clear. Well everyone knows why its almost impossible for mesmers to bring condiclear. If portal was made an elite, leaving a skill open for mantra of resolve or null field. This wouldnt necessarily be a buff just a changing of skills (and you could remove moa when you make portal an elite for all I care.)

Like I said just some thoughts that may make the class more optimal without sending it over the top.

Rome.7124:

when Mesmer receives another OH as a new weapon, you already know Anet is treating this class as a joke…

Thank-you. Someone finally said it.

the real problem mesmer face is really thief (which every team has one), other then that, mesmser is pretty amazing…

lighter.2708:

the real problem mesmer face is really thief (which every team has one), other then that, mesmser is pretty amazing…

Most team run 1 dps, thief or mesmer. But thief hard counter mesmer, so the team with mesmer will lose to the one with thief if everything else being equal. Here lies the problem, there is no reason to have a mesmer on your team at all.

Hey guys I’m copying over a post from the Mesmer forums I made to here. Basically I was addressing why I went Thief in WTS and some other random thoughts, maybe it will provide some insight here.


To clear up some stuff in this thread:
Thief is better than Mesmer in most cases; in general if you are playing Mesmer and don’t have a thief on your team, it’s better to play Thief instead (the Ranger or Mes can swap to Thief – it’s just that our Ranger didn’t know how to play Thief well enough at the time). That said, we had previously been playing a Mesmer/Ranger comp to see if there was some magic that could happen that was greater than a Thief/X comp because of high raw damage and range (I still would have rather had a Thief though). It turns out however that longbow ranger does really well vs. d/p thieves, so not going Thief and doing portals was actually a fine strategy against teams who had d/p Thieves, which was China and Europe.
Against Abjured however, our comp runs into a problem where we can’t kill any of them very effectively from range because they are all fairly survivable and can line of sight our range (whereas a mix of Mes/Thief/dps Guard could land damage by porting to the enemy or stealthing to them behind their line of sight).
Basically we didn’t really have an effective strategy against Abjured if our Ranger was power at least on Niflhel because if I went Thief, we didn’t have the rotational potential of Portal and s/d would be training him. I could try my best to peel as a Thief but it was all very risky against their comp. So as a result on Niflhel at least we had our Ranger go Condi, and I went Thief. Power Ranger is very good on Legacy though, so he changed back there. Unfortunately my mouse wasn’t detected either of those games, so I had to use a standard mouse and didn’t have any of the 12 bindings from my naga. So I was using new bindings on the spot and that’s why I didn’t swap back Mesmer for the Legacy game.

Technically though, Thief was better, if you’re wondering. I was only playing Mesmer the whole time because I wanted to and I was sick of going Thief, but I think technically I was gimping my team. If I was an excellent Thief (and I’m not too terrible, I just hadn’t played Thief competitively in a while) the comp would have been better, and that’s what I’ve done for almost all of my competitive teams in the past. I just wanted to play Mesmer this time.

Concluding thoughts:
1. Thief is still strong, Mesmer is still strong. Thief simply offers more for the slot on the team compared to other classes in the vast majority of cases.
2. Condi/Cele comps are easier to run for equal or greater success rates compared to zerker, specifically power classes other than Thief (you can check my post history to find some more in-depth explanation for this). – This is why often times you hear the thought that while Mesmer is good, there are usually better choices. “Better” meaning having higher room for error with equal or greater success for equal or less player skill input.
3. I want to address the idea real quick that “in theory power comps beat cele/condi comps” This might be true but it is extremely unlikely to actually happen, and even if it does happen, I think because of the skewed percentage, it is at least indicative of some balance issue. Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.

Supcutie.2538:

Hey guys I’m copying over a post from the Mesmer forums I made to here. Basically I was addressing why I went Thief in WTS and some other random thoughts, maybe it will provide some insight here.


To clear up some stuff in this thread:
Thief is better than Mesmer in most cases; in general if you are playing Mesmer and don’t have a thief on your team, it’s better to play Thief instead (the Ranger or Mes can swap to Thief – it’s just that our Ranger didn’t know how to play Thief well enough at the time). That said, we had previously been playing a Mesmer/Ranger comp to see if there was some magic that could happen that was greater than a Thief/X comp because of high raw damage and range (I still would have rather had a Thief though). It turns out however that longbow ranger does really well vs. d/p thieves, so not going Thief and doing portals was actually a fine strategy against teams who had d/p Thieves, which was China and Europe.
Against Abjured however, our comp runs into a problem where we can’t kill any of them very effectively from range because they are all fairly survivable and can line of sight our range (whereas a mix of Mes/Thief/dps Guard could land damage by porting to the enemy or stealthing to them behind their line of sight).
Basically we didn’t really have an effective strategy against Abjured if our Ranger was power at least on Niflhel because if I went Thief, we didn’t have the rotational potential of Portal and s/d would be training him. I could try my best to peel as a Thief but it was all very risky against their comp. So as a result on Niflhel at least we had our Ranger go Condi, and I went Thief. Power Ranger is very good on Legacy though, so he changed back there. Unfortunately my mouse wasn’t detected either of those games, so I had to use a standard mouse and didn’t have any of the 12 bindings from my naga. So I was using new bindings on the spot and that’s why I didn’t swap back Mesmer for the Legacy game.

Technically though, Thief was better, if you’re wondering. I was only playing Mesmer the whole time because I wanted to and I was sick of going Thief, but I think technically I was gimping my team. If I was an excellent Thief (and I’m not too terrible, I just hadn’t played Thief competitively in a while) the comp would have been better, and that’s what I’ve done for almost all of my competitive teams in the past. I just wanted to play Mesmer this time.

Concluding thoughts:
1. Thief is still strong, Mesmer is still strong. Thief simply offers more for the slot on the team compared to other classes in the vast majority of cases.
2. Condi/Cele comps are easier to run for equal or greater success rates compared to zerker, specifically power classes other than Thief (you can check my post history to find some more in-depth explanation for this). – This is why often times you hear the thought that while Mesmer is good, there are usually better choices. “Better” meaning having higher room for error with equal or greater success for equal or less player skill input.
3. I want to address the idea real quick that “in theory power comps beat cele/condi comps” This might be true but it is extremely unlikely to actually happen, and even if it does happen, I think because of the skewed percentage, it is at least indicative of some balance issue. Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.

^ Wise words from a wise man.

Rome.7124:

jportell.2197:

Realistically Do you think ANET will do anything to fix our role competition? I think one thing that should be looked at is BETTER condi clear.

If they try to buff mesmers sustain will it be effective? Or is the class so pidgeoned into thief food that its useless.

when Mesmer receives another OH as a new weapon, you already know Anet is treating this class as a joke…

Sadly this is true.

It is adorable how just a few months back all the pvp hotshots were saying d/p thief was subpar, that s/d thief was just a mediocre class to bring. That berserker specs are dead and condi bunkers rule.

And now suddenly the thief, which hasn’t changed at all, is finally deemed the supreme berserker amulet class. Who knew, it’s fun to be saying this since beta and people dismissing you only to find out 2 years later that thieves are the very reason for the condi bunker outbreak since no class besides a berk guardian can run berserker amulet and not get farmed by thieves.

Like, why even bother being a berserker of any class but warrior or thief, the rest of the classes don’t have enough mobility and immunities to not die miserably compared to a thief who just needs to spam stealth and port up a ledge while his burst comes back up in less than 10 seconds unlike the scepter ele who needs to wait 30 seconds for arcane utilities, fire grab, and his lightning skills to align.

Zenith.7301:

It is adorable how just a few months back all the pvp hotshots were saying d/p thief was subpar, that s/d thief was just a mediocre class to bring. That berserker specs are dead and condi bunkers rule.

And now suddenly the thief, which hasn’t changed at all, is finally deemed the supreme berserker amulet class. Who knew, it’s fun to be saying this since beta and people dismissing you only to find out 2 years later that thieves are the very reason for the condi bunker outbreak since no class besides a berk guardian can run berserker amulet and not get farmed by thieves.

Like, why even bother being a berserker of any class but warrior or thief, the rest of the classes don’t have enough mobility and immunities to not die miserably compared to a thief who just needs to spam stealth and port up a ledge while his burst comes back up in less than 10 seconds unlike the scepter ele who needs to wait 30 seconds for arcane utilities, fire grab, and his lightning skills to align.

i don’t really know when exactly are you talking about, because from my experience, thief has always been part of the top teams, and thieves have never been subpar and mediocre.

lighter.2708:

Zenith.7301:

It is adorable how just a few months back all the pvp hotshots were saying d/p thief was subpar, that s/d thief was just a mediocre class to bring. That berserker specs are dead and condi bunkers rule.

And now suddenly the thief, which hasn’t changed at all, is finally deemed the supreme berserker amulet class. Who knew, it’s fun to be saying this since beta and people dismissing you only to find out 2 years later that thieves are the very reason for the condi bunker outbreak since no class besides a berk guardian can run berserker amulet and not get farmed by thieves.

Like, why even bother being a berserker of any class but warrior or thief, the rest of the classes don’t have enough mobility and immunities to not die miserably compared to a thief who just needs to spam stealth and port up a ledge while his burst comes back up in less than 10 seconds unlike the scepter ele who needs to wait 30 seconds for arcane utilities, fire grab, and his lightning skills to align.

i don’t really know when exactly are you talking about, because from my experience, thief has always been part of the top teams, and thieves have never been subpar and mediocre.

Oh sure, but all it takes is reading some thread from prominent thief players a month back defending their precious class as just average while all the attention went to spirit rangers and elementalists and necros.

Zenith.7301:

lighter.2708:

Zenith.7301:

It is adorable how just a few months back all the pvp hotshots were saying d/p thief was subpar, that s/d thief was just a mediocre class to bring. That berserker specs are dead and condi bunkers rule.

And now suddenly the thief, which hasn’t changed at all, is finally deemed the supreme berserker amulet class. Who knew, it’s fun to be saying this since beta and people dismissing you only to find out 2 years later that thieves are the very reason for the condi bunker outbreak since no class besides a berk guardian can run berserker amulet and not get farmed by thieves.

Like, why even bother being a berserker of any class but warrior or thief, the rest of the classes don’t have enough mobility and immunities to not die miserably compared to a thief who just needs to spam stealth and port up a ledge while his burst comes back up in less than 10 seconds unlike the scepter ele who needs to wait 30 seconds for arcane utilities, fire grab, and his lightning skills to align.

i don’t really know when exactly are you talking about, because from my experience, thief has always been part of the top teams, and thieves have never been subpar and mediocre.

Oh sure, but all it takes is reading some thread from prominent thief players a month back defending their precious class as just average while all the attention went to spirit rangers and elementalists and necros.

You are horribly missinformed. S/D thieves have been regarded as the apex predator of zerk builds for the last year and a half at least. Spirit rangers where being complained about last month? Wut? You mean 2 years ago.

Zenith.7301:

lighter.2708:

Zenith.7301:

It is adorable how just a few months back all the pvp hotshots were saying d/p thief was subpar, that s/d thief was just a mediocre class to bring. That berserker specs are dead and condi bunkers rule.

And now suddenly the thief, which hasn’t changed at all, is finally deemed the supreme berserker amulet class. Who knew, it’s fun to be saying this since beta and people dismissing you only to find out 2 years later that thieves are the very reason for the condi bunker outbreak since no class besides a berk guardian can run berserker amulet and not get farmed by thieves.

Like, why even bother being a berserker of any class but warrior or thief, the rest of the classes don’t have enough mobility and immunities to not die miserably compared to a thief who just needs to spam stealth and port up a ledge while his burst comes back up in less than 10 seconds unlike the scepter ele who needs to wait 30 seconds for arcane utilities, fire grab, and his lightning skills to align.

i don’t really know when exactly are you talking about, because from my experience, thief has always been part of the top teams, and thieves have never been subpar and mediocre.

Oh sure, but all it takes is reading some thread from prominent thief players a month back defending their precious class as just average while all the attention went to spirit rangers and elementalists and necros.

Spirit ranger that’s like 2 years ago’s news.

necro is and always rarely used by any team
except burning trait, which is also more then 1 year ago

ele has always being playing bunker role since 2014, and got kicked out of meta before that.

so i’m not really sure what you really talking about.

btw i heavely suggest you don’t take any of the QQs in thief forum seriously…as in some of them don’t even know DP had blink gap closer.

Thieves and medi guards are really the only truly viable zerk classes right now because thieves have either a ton of stealth and mobility or a bit of stealth with a ton of evades and mobility. Guards have a pretty decent amount of recovery because of their invulnerabilties/block and many heals.

I dont think they need a nerf because that would just throw power out of the meta and who would wanna be stuck in a gross cele meta? They just need to give other classes like mesmer smart buffs to their survivability.