Guild Wars 2

I’m sure I’ll get flamed for it so please enlighten me if I’m making any uninformed assumptions.

But if I’m to understand correctly, a Mesmer can go invulnerable every 24seconds if properly traited and can chain said invulnerability in to another one and another one after that.

Activating a signet grants Distortion (invulnerability) with Blurred Inscriptions. Signet of Inspiration and Signet of Midnight are reduced to a 24second cooldown. + the F4 Distortion + Blurred Frenzy. Then, there’s also Blinding Dissipation and you can go even further by taking Vampirism runes.

All that coupled with the fact that Mesmer is, in general, very difficult to pin down due to it’s high kiting potential and stealth.

I know this horse has been beaten to death but I’m not asking for Mesmer to be absolutely gutted and unusable… But I seriously think they’ve got just a tiny bit too much access to being completely immune to everything don’t you? I mean even a Warrior can only go invulnerable once every 60seconds unless they pop Endure Pain seconds before/after Defy Pain but they’re already almost dead if that’s the case.

Very few if any Mesmers run the setup you are talking about. It would do pretty poor damage. In addition, setting up that way would attenuate stealth and/or mobility.

Similar can be said of PU. Sure, you can stay hidden.. but then you do no damage and don’t contribute to your team. Well played, PU Mesmer stealth is on par with thief stealth and with a squishier class.

With respect to blinds. Sure, I can blind an opponent, which they clear by attacking. Considering that they are probably attacking several times per second.. blind isn’t really much of a defense as many a thief could tell you.

Kiting isn’t as easy as you think. I have no speed signet or way of keeping speed ( without compromising a lot of other utility by taking traveler runes.) I have [Blink] on a long cooldown. and [Phase Retreat] if I choose staff or [Temporal Curtain] with focus. Again long cooldowns.

As to being hard to pin down, well I get cc’d often enough. Playing Mesmer regularly, I can usually spot the “real” player pretty quickly. Many pvp’ers can. If this is difficult for you, I highly recommend rolling up a Mesmer and trying it out. You will perceive what’s happening pretty quick. Beware though, Mesmers are easily killed, especially if cc’d.

You appear to be theory crafting without much experience actually playing Mesmer.

Ithilwen.1529:

You appear to be theory crafting without much experience actually playing Mesmer.

I’m not theory crafting. These are actual builds I’ve encountered multiple times. This one in particular was using all of said abilities and the guy was either invulnerable or I was blind any time I got near him.

I definitely don’t know a lot about Mesmer so I’m far from being in a position to make balance statements but I think it’s hard to deny that they have a pretty absurd amount of access to invulnerability.

Also, they don’t do “no damage.” They might not insta-burst you 100-0 like a full Shatter would but they can still do significant damage all while being invulnerable quite frequently.

I’m just going to address the issue of invulnerability rather than go into the ‘mesmer has too much survivability’ debate.

Very very few builds run more than one signet. The only one I see with any regularity is the Elite. While there are some out there, I feel like I can say that mesmer signet builds are in no way meta nor popular.

The invuln on signet use trait also competes with Shattered Concentration, one of the best traits we have, so once again its rare to see its use.

No one complains about mesmer invuln chaining because it just doesnt happen. And even then, assuming all 5 signets are used, thats 5s with a huge cooldown. Warriors can top that with 2 stances. Engis have double elixir (?? forget which one, it makes you tiny). So I feel like mesmer invuln really isnt an issue.

Further points:
A mesmer can go invulnerable for 1s every 24s? So what? You got 24s to kill him.
Vampirism is accessible to all classes and therefore not an issue.
Blurred Frenzy has been nerfed repetitively. Not an issue.
Distortion has a big cooldown, not an issue.

Mesmer invulns are in a fine place right now.

You are mistaken. I challenge you to roll up a Mesmer and go try what you are talking about. It will cost you very little time. Make the super mesmer that scares you so much and go try it out in hotjoin.

I predict you will find it’s a lot less effective and scary than you think. Although we Mesmers do trade on mind games . Because you believe Mesmers are so strong, you will be at a disadvantage every time you face one.

Realistically the only Distortion you’d see from a Mesmer is from the Shatter. You might occasionally see the Blur from MH Sword but as most Power Mesmers run Staff + GS it isn’t common.

Blurred Inscriptions is pretty much non-existent as 1. Mesmer signets aren’t that strong and don’t synergise with each other, 2. good Mesmers always take Blink and Portal and won’t take Signet of Ether, so you at most can squeeze two signets in, and 3. taking Blurred Inscriptions means not taking Shattered Concentration, which is far more valuable.

So no, you won’t find a Mesmer with invulnerability on as low a CD or as chainable as you’re imagining, and if you do they’d be severely lacking in other areas that you can exploit and punish.

Everyone’s already said it but I’ll also do so.

Blurred Inscriptions conflicts with Shattered Concentration. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

Taking more than one signet in utilities means losing any two of blink, decoy, portal, nullfield, mantra of distraction/resolve and so on. Also ether signet is not great and signet of humility has a very long cooldown.

I’ve seen good signet builds/players, bur these builds have very clear tradeoffs and weaknesses due to trait and skill conflicts. The invuln on signet is basically their only decent defence along with the defensive shatter traits if taking Duelling and Inspiration with Domination.

I also recommend you try playing a 5 signet Mesmer and see how it works firsthand before saying the invuln is too much.

Smh… No one knows how to read.

I really need to try this mesmer build, never thought about a signet build, seems awesome ^^

Perhaps you would have done better posting this in The mesmer forum than here.

Sure you’re likely to “make friends” with Pyro but he will at least give you a direct answer.

As for your “no-one knows how to read” comment. You’re saying maybe this is too much invuln. Well we can discard vamp runes as all gain access. Blinding Dissipation is NOT invuln so we discard that.

What we have is 5 signets with cool downs as follows: 24s, 24s, 28s, 36s and 144s. Which means if we used all 5 in a minute we could in total get 12s of distortion and that’s assuming spamming them off cool down which is never a good idea and you only have 1 stun break with only possibly staff for kiting. Distortion on F4 usually only give 1-2s so that brings it up to 14s in 1 min.

To compare a warrior can double trait endure pain for 8s invuln in a minute but has much higher base stats and no cast time. Engineer can use elixir S for 3.5s of invuln 3 times in a minute for over 10s.

Those are the highest contenders for invuln. However comparing like that is disingenuous as a block is as good as an invuln and an evade is too. If we start counting blocks too we see engineers gain 12s more via gear shield. Warriors another 9s from offhand shield. Guards get far too much to bother counting and it’s hard to with aegis, needless to say there’s a reason people don’t bother 1v1 a bunker guard.

Mesmer also gains on this by being able to use mainhand sword and invuln goes up by about 12s. However Mesmer is rooted in all that and it’s assuming you’re spamming it off cool down which is not advised.

However as everyone else has said, what would you accomplish with such a build? Signet passive are terrible for mesmer, you give up your blink and portal so you’re of little use to your team and can’t really outrun or teleport away if things get sticky. That’s also without mentioning 3 of the signets have 1s or nearly 1s cast time and only 1 stun break.

nerf vampire runes they 2 OPP

I also forgot to mention the other thing. Many other classes have greater horizontal mobility than mesmers and other classes get defence in other ways. Great example is thief with the number of teleports and stealth which is almost as unparalleled as invuln.

Before someone says about “but mesmer gets stealth too” not on the build he’s suggesting, they would have to give up a fair bit to do that and essentially hit like a wet noodle while not justifying a reason to do so as stealth = lose point cap.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Smh… No one knows how to read.

Perhaps you’d like to elaborate further. It appears to me your concern is based on the Mesmer having too many sources of Distortion/Blur, we have explained why this is not the case in practice.

Iniquity, I love ye so I’d never flame ye but…

You’re talking about something theoretical and extremely impractical. Yes there are some Mesmers who run some nice signet builds (I myself have ran one) but there are multiple problems with such a build, I’ll highlight the main one: distortion cannot cap a point.

A Mesmer with a build like that in PvP can’t cap, and that severely gimps the usefulness of such a build since it wont outdo shatter/lockdown/mantra in just about anything. Sure, its possible but its possible in the same way a super glass warrior can run around one-shotting with 100 blades.

On average you’ll find Mesmer with a 2s blur on 12s CD and a1-4 second distortion on kitten CD. Everything else is teleports and dodges.

To OP’s defense, I also noticed that mesmers have a ton of defense mechanisms. If you notice carefully in your matches or duel arenas, the number of Condition Mesmers is getting very high. It seems like those type of mesmer are able to beat pretty much anything.

Mainly, I am looking at their constant access to Aegis, Invisibility. Then once you’re done with it, any CC you do is reflected back from Mirror of Anguish, then if you happen to go through that, it is met with an invulnerability frame; following that, another stealth and reset the Aegis step. In between all that, you are threatened to be met with the Confusion beam (that deals a ton of base damage + a ton of confusion), and if there is no aegis, chances are that they are preparing to block with Scepter 2. Also, I forgot about Ineptitude’s blind, Blinding Dissipation etc… And on top of that, they have some on-demand Condition clear for the very few hits they will take.

I think OP has a point guys.

Alekt.5803:

To OP’s defense, I also noticed that mesmers have a ton of defense mechanisms. If you notice carefully in your matches or duel arenas, the number of Condition Mesmers is getting very high. It seems like those type of mesmer are able to beat pretty much anything.

Mainly, I am looking at their constant access to Aegis, Invisibility. Then once you’re done with it, any CC you do is reflected back from Mirror of Anguish, then if you happen to go through that, it is met with an invulnerability frame; following that, another stealth and reset the Aegis step. In between all that, you are threatened to be met with the Confusion beam (that deals a ton of base damage + a ton of confusion), and if there is no aegis, chances are that they are preparing to block with Scepter 2. Also, I forgot about Ineptitude’s blind, Blinding Dissipation etc… And on top of that, they have some on-demand Condition clear for the very few hits they will take.

I think OP has a point guys.

I almost feel like you’re being sarcastic for some reason but if not, good to see I’m not the only one who realizes this…

Like I said in the OP I’m not asking for the profession to be gutted or something but the amount of ways a Mesmer has to prevent/eliminate damage is too much. Yes, Guard has about the same amount as a Mesmer but a Guard also can’t stealth when said defenses are on cooldown.

Valid point about preventing capture point contribution however. Still, it’s something I’ve seen more than a few times. None of these Mesmers were “Signet builds” they just had Signet Of Inspiration, Vampirism runes, Blurred Inscriptions and Blinding Dissipation with sword. They might not have been able to insta-burst me 100 – 0 like a full shatter but they definitely didn’t hit like a wet noodle either…

I just think if you have as much access to kiting potential, stealth and reflects as a Mesmer does that should mean you don’t get access to an obscene amount of blocks and invulnerability as well.

Alekt.5803:

To OP’s defense, I also noticed that mesmers have a ton of defense mechanisms. If you notice carefully in your matches or duel arenas, the number of Condition Mesmers is getting very high. It seems like those type of mesmer are able to beat pretty much anything.

Mainly, I am looking at their constant access to Aegis, Invisibility. Then once you’re done with it, any CC you do is reflected back from Mirror of Anguish, then if you happen to go through that, it is met with an invulnerability frame; following that, another stealth and reset the Aegis step. In between all that, you are threatened to be met with the Confusion beam (that deals a ton of base damage + a ton of confusion), and if there is no aegis, chances are that they are preparing to block with Scepter 2. Also, I forgot about Ineptitude’s blind, Blinding Dissipation etc… And on top of that, they have some on-demand Condition clear for the very few hits they will take.

I think OP has a point guys.

Well lets break that scenario down…

- First stealth: Prestige (6 potential boons, 6 seconds [BUGGED])
- Mirror of Anguish (Reflects 1 CC every 60s)
- Invuln: Distortion (45s CD)
- Second stealth: Decoy ( 6 potential boons, 6 seconds stealth)
-Scepter block
- Blind on shatter
- Blind on dodge
- Phase Retreat
- Blink.

… Yeah I can’t honestly say I dont see your point, but the thing to remember here is that PU condi is primarily a dueling build, it is suited to tank multiple opponents (at the cost of losing a point) and the majority of its damage is single-target.

It’s quite possibly one of the best dueling builds in the game, but you rarely see it in tournaments for a reason.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Alekt.5803:

To OP’s defense, I also noticed that mesmers have a ton of defense mechanisms. If you notice carefully in your matches or duel arenas, the number of Condition Mesmers is getting very high. It seems like those type of mesmer are able to beat pretty much anything.

Mainly, I am looking at their constant access to Aegis, Invisibility. Then once you’re done with it, any CC you do is reflected back from Mirror of Anguish, then if you happen to go through that, it is met with an invulnerability frame; following that, another stealth and reset the Aegis step. In between all that, you are threatened to be met with the Confusion beam (that deals a ton of base damage + a ton of confusion), and if there is no aegis, chances are that they are preparing to block with Scepter 2. Also, I forgot about Ineptitude’s blind, Blinding Dissipation etc… And on top of that, they have some on-demand Condition clear for the very few hits they will take.

I think OP has a point guys.

I almost feel like you’re being sarcastic for some reason but if not, good to see I’m not the only one who realizes this…

Like I said in the OP I’m not asking for the profession to be gutted or something but the amount of ways a Mesmer has to prevent/eliminate damage is too much. Yes, Guard has about the same amount as a Mesmer but a Guard also can’t stealth when said defenses are on cooldown.

Valid point about preventing capture point contribution however. Still, it’s something I’ve seen more than a few times. None of these Mesmers were “Signet builds” they just had Signet Of Inspiration, Vampirism runes, Blurred Inscriptions and Blinding Dissipation with sword. They might not have been able to insta-burst me 100 – 0 like a full shatter but they definitely didn’t hit like a wet noodle either…

I just think if you have as much access to kiting potential, stealth and reflects as a Mesmer does that should mean you don’t get access to an obscene amount of blocks and invulnerability as well.

That’s not fair.

Not every build gets every Mesmer defense, and I can’t think of a build that can be effective while grabbing everything you mentioned. Vamp runes are for everyone, and if they were running blurred inscriptions with only one signet then that’s… Not likely a very good build.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Well lets break that scenario down…

- First stealth: Prestige (6 potential boons, 6 seconds [BUGGED])
- Mirror of Anguish (Reflects 1 CC every 60s)
- Invuln: Distortion (45s CD)
- Second stealth: Decoy ( 6 potential boons, 6 seconds stealth)
-Scepter block
- Blind on shatter
- Blind on dodge
- Phase Retreat
- Blink.

… Yeah I can’t honestly say I dont see your point, but the thing to remember here is that PU condi is primarily a dueling build, it is suited to tank multiple opponents (at the cost of losing a point) and the majority of its damage is single-target.

It’s quite possibly one of the best dueling builds in the game, but you rarely see it in tournaments for a reason.

But hey, I am seeing those in high MMR ranked matches and they seem to be working pretty fine. Just wait for it for the tournaments.

Also, on your list, you forgot the most critical part of my argument. (It was listed first) Aegis. We also forgot about the base dodge rolls. The heals are also very solid (I am settler ele, and it is about the same).

As a condition staff ele, my defensive mechanism are:
-Classic Dodge rolls
-Burning Retreat
-Super Speed on Air attunement swap
-Reactive Crowd Controls
-1 stun breaker
-1 or 2 blocks from Conjure Earth Shield
-Fortify (invuln) from Earth Shield.
-5 sec of reflect every 30 sec.

I don’t have condition clear, only Diamond Skin. That’s about it.

Yeah, blurred inscriptions without at least taking 2 or 3 signets (and especially signet of midnight) is a waste when you can take Shattered Concentration.

Also there is not much aegis. The only native sources of aegis are Chaos Storm, PU and Signet of Inspiration. PU has random chance through watered down boons and SoI has a very random chance to proc it. Scepter and Offhand Sword only block one attack each and have no other defences. Greatsword of course is entirely offensive. Sword only has blurred frenzy (very easy to wait and time your burst for the end of the animation), Pistol is purely offensive. There are only three utility skills and the vast majority will be taking blink, decoy and perhaps portal/condicleanse/MoD, and all the elites are on very long cooldowns. I don’t feel like going on…

Good mesmers will make it seems like they have an infinite impenetrable amount of defenses, but this is an elaborate illusion as there are very clear windows of opportunity to catch and land damage on mesmers when they are very vulnerable. But you’ve got to know mesmer skills and traits inside out in order to identify what an enemy mesmer is using and then counter it – more so than with other classes tbh (other than of course thief).

The only thing skewing the defenses/sustain at the moment is the excessive stealth duration through The Pledge and PU. Once that is fixed, there should be no problem at all.

Staff ele is my secondary, the difference in defense is night & day. (and I run marauder on both). Mes is an immortal god compared to staff ele.

I didn’t mention aegis mostly because there’s no way to guarantee it procs, you just kind of stealth and hope for the best.

I’m assuming you mean ether feast (the most popular mes heal) the heal is potent but depends on how many clones you have at the time. It’s effectiveness is build-dependant.

Edit: Like Curunen said, the PU playstyle will be getting a nerf once the bugged torch is fixed.

We’ll see with the possibility of a PU and Pledge nerf like Curunen said. But, I doubt that it is going to be enough: Mesmers’ defense also come from its overwhelming offensive capability.

Signet builds. . .

Anytime I see a mes using a signet/distortion build, he mentally goes straight into the “newbie/non-factor” bucket. Out of hundreds of signet build mesmers, I think I’ve only run across 1 mesmer who was able to play the build well and that was before the patch.

OP, if you actually spent some time either playing this build or spent some more time playing against it, you’d probably have a change of heart. There is a reason why no one really complains about this build.

Just so I don’t run into accusations of ‘not reading’, I’ll happily quote everything you said while showing you why you’re wrong.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

But if I’m to understand correctly, a Mesmer can go invulnerable every 24seconds if properly traited and can chain said invulnerability in to another one and another one after that.

This is probably about as vague a statement as possible, so I’m going to go ahead and call it wrong.

Yes, mesmer can go invulnerable roughly once every 24 seconds. For 1 second. If they’re traited for signets, and if they’re running a bunch of signets. So your average invulnerability uptime is going to be 1 second every 24 seconds. You also can get up to 4s of invuln from distortion, but that’s on a much longer cooldown. Additionally your weird accusation of ‘chain invulnerability into another one and another one’ is just…totally out in right field. Yeah, I suppose you could blow all your signets at once and rack up a whopping total of 3 seconds of invulnerability (5s if you blow heal and elite too)…but why would ever do that? That would be a fantastic way to lose to literally anything.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I know this horse has been beaten to death but I’m not asking for Mesmer to be absolutely gutted and unusable… But I seriously think they’ve got just a tiny bit too much access to being completely immune to everything don’t you?

Really? You think going invulnerable on average for 1s every 24s is over the top? There’s not really any argument I can make against this other than pointing out the absurdity of it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I mean even a Warrior can only go invulnerable once every 60seconds unless they pop Endure Pain seconds before/after Defy Pain but they’re already almost dead if that’s the case.

Math is hard I guess? Endure pain lasts 4 seconds untraited. However, since your imaginary mesmer is heavily traited for signets, this warrior will be heavily traited for stances, making endure pain endure pain last 5 seconds instead. 60/5 = 12. 24/1 = 24. As you can clearly see, the warrior has literally double the access to damage immunity as a heavily traited mesmer.

On top of all of this, I’m really curious as to how you even identified this as a problem. Literally nobody runs builds like this, because they’re awful. The signet trait competes with shattered concentration, making it a hard sell. On top of that, even people that do run signet builds would never chain signets the way you’re imagining it, because they’d lose (or maybe they do, and they’re just bad, idk). The only realistic way I’m seeing this as being identified as a problem is you idly browsing the gw2 wiki, seeing distortion on a trait, and making up an imaginary situation that doesn’t happen, but sounds like a good thing to cry ‘MESMER IS OP GUYS’ about. Seriously, this is one of the more absurd complaints I’ve seen this week.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’m sure I’ll get flamed for it so please enlighten me if I’m making any uninformed assumptions.

But if I’m to understand correctly, a Mesmer can go invulnerable every 24seconds if properly traited and can chain said invulnerability in to another one and another one after that.

Activating a signet grants Distortion (invulnerability) with Blurred Inscriptions. Signet of Inspiration and Signet of Midnight are reduced to a 24second cooldown. + the F4 Distortion + Blurred Frenzy. Then, there’s also Blinding Dissipation and you can go even further by taking Vampirism runes.

All that coupled with the fact that Mesmer is, in general, very difficult to pin down due to it’s high kiting potential and stealth.

I know this horse has been beaten to death but I’m not asking for Mesmer to be absolutely gutted and unusable… But I seriously think they’ve got just a tiny bit too much access to being completely immune to everything don’t you? I mean even a Warrior can only go invulnerable once every 60seconds unless they pop Endure Pain seconds before/after Defy Pain but they’re already almost dead if that’s the case.

I have one build that i use from time to time that use blurried inscriptions, also passed it to a friend. If his still playing it you can probably run on him in a dueling arena (TIDE or FEAR mostly).

About the damage: A full or nearly full blurried inscription build do damage as you said, it has less damage on shatter, but the damage its still significativly high, cant tell you the actual math, but i dont think its less than 75% of a full shatter build (considering 2 swords main hand). Still you can use berzerker amulet to reduce this damage gap (i have done that).

Inmunity Distortion its a 42.5 secs invuln, with a signet of illusions it can go back again, but the signet itself has a 48 secs colddown and only 1 sec distortion, plus the signet takes 1.25 sec to charge.

Except midnight signet all signets have a cast time, so you need to read very well to use them.

For blurried frenzy to be consitently effective you need to run a doble main hand sword run, meaning you are full meele (huge disadventage).

If you run more than 1 utility signet you are beggining to take down more usefull utilities like blink and decoy (portal, but lets go in a 1vs1 aproach), meaning you effectivly lose batle (with doing damage) survivility.

The invuln time:

Ignore cast times for now:

If we do a chain its a 2.5 secs blr frenzey, all dodges : 0.75 * 2 + 1 change weapon (energy sigil) meaning another dodge: 2.25 secs. Then a 4 secs distorion: 8.75 secs, then sword of hand block (one time, probably a 1/2 time, and add you cancelled the counter to max invuln): then agains blurried frenzy: total right now: 12 secs.

After that, vigor have give you one more dodge and after it energy sigil give you one more. 13.5 secs, midnight sigil + distortion=5secs, lets add up the doble distortion blinds for a 1/4 hit each: 19, time to use blurried frenzy: 21.5 secs, assuming you have anotehr 4 sigils: 4 secs and 2 dodges counting change of weapons + a new sword 4 block, plus a blind from midnight sigil and a new blurried frenzy: 30.5 secs aprox, after 2 more dodges = 32 secs, if he spamed f1 and f2 for poor damage and blinds: aprox 1.25 secs more.

You have like 20 secs for been hit to death after, if you have a damage setup and your enemy its competent you are done for, now defense or form to avoid damge except sword 3 and he can kill the clone and hit you later.

If you did this, your main damage were phantoms casted in the distortion times, plus you eat your own invuln time casting sigils. After that you are dead, and if someoen die for what litle you did then his bad -.-. And you only have one blink skill that its telegraphable.

What i just described its how you dont use blurried inscriptions:

You only must invuln the bursts and high dps, plus your condi cleaning its based in the same sigils.

Reality

Blurried inscriptions its hard, except midnight signet, all signets need to be timed perfectly (in none low level gameplay). Add that that the invulnerability isnt eternal and you will get that the mes its frequently killed if he isnt capable of finishing the opponent fast enough, specially if you go for a very invuln play still, meaning only melee, that will kill you since mes depends of teleportation to closing gaps and dont have mobility techniques.

If the mesmer you fought was only melee (maximum reliance of blurred frenzy, and the only justificated “theres a lot of inmunity”) his in a huge problem and will mostly die against enemies that use properly this range difference and take care of the shatters, or survive until the invulns go out, if he didnt have full melee, he outrotated you in a way that you couldnt exploit the less invuln times.

You can always survive the invuln phase and then its a win situation, after the signets and distortion go down the mesemr have a huge period of none defense piñata time.

Blind on shatter its a trade off, except if you fall in the big hurting shatter.

If someone kill you with a build like this its your fault!

What makes the build bad are: Now group suport, range opponents and condi opponents counter it very well, too well…..

Edit: When i put inmmunity its invulnerablity, you take condi damage.

Good thing PvP is balanced around 1v1 dueling, right? Oh wait…

Velimere.7685:

Good thing PvP is balanced around 1v1 dueling, right? Oh wait…

Good thing I know how to rotate, right? Oh wait..

If I’m a trap ranger and I’m up against a d/d ele (because I’m the only mobile person to save backpoint) and then because I have to call for help since we have no d/d eles to mirror that and it’s a bad match-up, then it’s a 1v2 against the d/d ele right? Now my team is 3v4 on mid point. And if I’m 1v1 to keep numbers on track against d/d ele, most of the time I will LOSE because d/d ele takes no skill to play against anything that isn’t a d/d ele.

1v1s MATTER in this game. It is ignorant to say it doesn’t.

Now learn rotations please before you say ANY more. Inb4 the same guys says, “well you should be mirroring that d/d ele comp wise anyways” yawn.

Popular PvE build, but you lose boon strip to get it.

Nier.8741:

Velimere.7685:

Good thing PvP is balanced around 1v1 dueling, right? Oh wait…

Good thing I know how to rotate, right? Oh wait..

If I’m a trap ranger and I’m up against a d/d ele (because I’m the only mobile person to save backpoint) and then because I have to call for help since we have no d/d eles to mirror that and it’s a bad match-up, then it’s a 1v2 against the d/d ele right? Now my team is 3v4 on mid point. And if I’m 1v1 to keep numbers on track against d/d ele, most of the time I will LOSE because d/d ele takes no skill to play against anything that isn’t a d/d ele.

1v1s MATTER in this game. It is ignorant to say it doesn’t.

Now learn rotations please before you say ANY more. Inb4 the same guys says, “well you should be mirroring that d/d ele comp wise anyways” yawn.

Straw man followed by a tangent argument based on said straw man? Disregarded.

Personaly i have no problem with invul on mes itself, it is just combination of invul, stealth, ports, stun breaks, high CC and really high dmg (aoe to extend) in one build that really bothers me. I think some traits/skills need to be competing and not synergize so much.

Potential mirror uptime is also pretty ridiculous. It’s bad enough that clones body block projectiles if they dont pierce. It would be nice if Mesmers had some sort of Achilles heel.

Fay.2357:

-snip-

The only thing I gathered from that long winded rant was that you’re feeling offended over something you apparently think is misinformed. Maybe you’re doubtful about the accusation and there’s a part of you that’s agreeing with me. Now you’re just taking your frustrations out on me.

Or maybe you’re just uptight and don’t know when to step away from the computer. Either way, thanks for the info, chief. It was about as informative as a trip to the shoe isle at Wal-Mart.

Fay.2357:

Just so I don’t run into accusations of ‘not reading’, I’ll happily quote everything you said while showing you why you’re wrong.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

But if I’m to understand correctly, a Mesmer can go invulnerable every 24seconds if properly traited and can chain said invulnerability in to another one and another one after that.

This is probably about as vague a statement as possible, so I’m going to go ahead and call it wrong.

Yes, mesmer can go invulnerable roughly once every 24 seconds. For 1 second. If they’re traited for signets, and if they’re running a bunch of signets. So your average invulnerability uptime is going to be 1 second every 24 seconds. You also can get up to 4s of invuln from distortion, but that’s on a much longer cooldown. Additionally your weird accusation of ‘chain invulnerability into another one and another one’ is just…totally out in right field. Yeah, I suppose you could blow all your signets at once and rack up a whopping total of 3 seconds of invulnerability (5s if you blow heal and elite too)…but why would ever do that? That would be a fantastic way to lose to literally anything.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I know this horse has been beaten to death but I’m not asking for Mesmer to be absolutely gutted and unusable… But I seriously think they’ve got just a tiny bit too much access to being completely immune to everything don’t you?

Really? You think going invulnerable on average for 1s every 24s is over the top? There’s not really any argument I can make against this other than pointing out the absurdity of it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I mean even a Warrior can only go invulnerable once every 60seconds unless they pop Endure Pain seconds before/after Defy Pain but they’re already almost dead if that’s the case.

Math is hard I guess? Endure pain lasts 4 seconds untraited. However, since your imaginary mesmer is heavily traited for signets, this warrior will be heavily traited for stances, making endure pain endure pain last 5 seconds instead. 60/5 = 12. 24/1 = 24. As you can clearly see, the warrior has literally double the access to damage immunity as a heavily traited mesmer.

On top of all of this, I’m really curious as to how you even identified this as a problem. Literally nobody runs builds like this, because they’re awful. The signet trait competes with shattered concentration, making it a hard sell. On top of that, even people that do run signet builds would never chain signets the way you’re imagining it, because they’d lose (or maybe they do, and they’re just bad, idk). The only realistic way I’m seeing this as being identified as a problem is you idly browsing the gw2 wiki, seeing distortion on a trait, and making up an imaginary situation that doesn’t happen, but sounds like a good thing to cry ‘MESMER IS OP GUYS’ about. Seriously, this is one of the more absurd complaints I’ve seen this week.

Quoted for biblical accuracy.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Fay.2357:

-snip-

The only thing I gathered from that long winded rant was that you’re feeling offended over something you apparently think is misinformed. Maybe you’re doubtful about the accusation and there’s a part of you that’s agreeing with me. Now you’re just taking your frustrations out on me.

Or maybe you’re just uptight and don’t know when to step away from the computer. Either way, thanks for the info, chief. It was about as informative as a trip to the shoe isle at Wal-Mart.

More like you haven’t really shown signs of taking in opposing arguments and seem to have no interest in entertaining the idea that you may be wrong. Lots of skilled mesmer mains have said pretty much the exact same thing to you, but you keep operating under this flawed premise that somehow, not only is Blurred Inscriptions too strong, but it is also incredibly common in mesmer builds(which it isn’t).

And in Fay’s defense, threads like this one that are predicated on incorrect or exaggerated info are incredibly common. What’s worse is they usually garner a ton of support from non-mesmer players who think it’s true, and then you have a horde of people asking for something to be nerfed when they don’t even really understand what it does.

Honestly I’d say you just made this thread for mindless self validation, hoping to stir up another wave of “MESMER OP!!!!!!1!1!” complaints.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Fay.2357:

-snip-

The only thing I gathered from that long winded rant was that you’re feeling offended over something you apparently think is misinformed. Maybe you’re doubtful about the accusation and there’s a part of you that’s agreeing with me. Now you’re just taking your frustrations out on me.

Or maybe you’re just uptight and don’t know when to step away from the computer. Either way, thanks for the info, chief. It was about as informative as a trip to the shoe isle at Wal-Mart.

Iniquity.. Fays trademark sass aside, he just gave you the most accurate, informative and legitimate counterargument in this entire thread.

Man,, all you guys ganging up on the OP.

I do agree mesmers have a lot of defenses on top of that Invuln. Ports, Blinds, BF, Chaos Armor, Phase Retreat (traited its 6 seconds), Stealth, Reflects.

Traits (PU,BD, Mental Defense, Ineptitude)

Comparing Endure Pain to Distortion is pointless. One is invulnerability, one is reducing one type of incoming damage to 0. Warrior has no invulnerability. Even if you pop all your stances at one, Stability is a boon and can be stripped. You can still get crit effects on a Warrior using Endure Pain as well.

As for Mesmer sustain…OP picked the wrong focus. There are very good signet builds but only for dueling generally. Now Condi an Common Shatter builds are a different story. Blinding Dissipation is amazing for countering melee fighters and is a big part of why Thief isn’t as much of a threat to them now. On Shatter using Blink reflects projectiles (can backfire on your stealth elite). Oh and Blink can be used to easily kite anyone without teleports. Have a staff and it’s nothing short of insane. You have Blurred Frenzy of course for general use and to top it all off you have PU and Distortion.

On Condi builds you also have Staff which is even MORE sustain. Oh and the mantra heal can be set up to be absurd.

When played even moderately well you should have no problem at least escaping danger. I was below average to average at Mesmer pre patch but post I felt like a god even post “nerfs”. There are so many times I should have died but had enough tools to escape or just kill them. It’s not me being good. It’s mostly the traits.

Comparing Mes sustain to Warrior is like comparing a force field to a wooden buckler.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Fay.2357:

-snip-

The only thing I gathered from that long winded rant was that you’re feeling offended over something you apparently think is misinformed. Maybe you’re doubtful about the accusation and there’s a part of you that’s agreeing with me. Now you’re just taking your frustrations out on me.

Or maybe you’re just uptight and don’t know when to step away from the computer. Either way, thanks for the info, chief. It was about as informative as a trip to the shoe isle at Wal-Mart.

I never respond with the aim of convincing the person I’m responding to. The very fact that you made this thread is confirmation that an argument with you is pointless. I respond with the aim of letting people who haven’t yet been poisoned by this foolishness know what the reality of the situation is.

@BurrtheKing:

You’re fairly correct that comparing endure pain to distortion isn’t the most apt comparison on the planet. That being said, you’re trying to make the case that warrior sustain is bad, and that’s rather laughable. Warrior has an immense amount of strong defense and effortless sustain that has been around for a long time. The classes aren’t the same, and they don’t deal with incoming damage in the same way. Mesmer focuses on avoiding that damage, and warrior focuses on trucking through it. Both work, they’re just different.