Guild Wars 2

You don’t see many Condition Mesmers in PvP. They’re not as good as Phantasm Mesmers in duels, and they’re not comparable to Shatter Mesmers in tournaments. In fact most people don’t even know what a Condition Mesmer is, thinking it’s the same thing as the “Confusion Mesmer” that used to be popular in WvW. Not even the Devs seem to realise it exists, as no patch ever addressed the Condition Mesmer directly.

I guess the reason I am making this thread is to make the Devs aware that there is such a thing as a Condition Mesmer. The reason for this is because a few changes in the past few patches have nerfed Condition Mesmers indirectly: first was the change to Blinding Befuddlement, a change that seemed to be aimed at WvW Glamour Mesmers but also destroyed the trait for non-Glamour Mesmers. Then, there is the hidden change to bouncing attacks in the 28/05 patch, which has decimated Winds of Chaos and neutered Condition Mesmer DPS.

Previously, while the Condition Mesmer was not the best build, it was still viable for most encounters. Now? I am not so sure. So please Devs, if you’re truly trying to increase build diversity in all professions, please consider how the changes you make affect builds that aren’t in the spotlight.

Condition mesmers don’t work because clones don’t scale from condition relevant stats, and most importantly the random nature of application (specifically the useless vulnerability that doesn’t affect conditions, and a power based phantasm on a condition weapon like staff). It’s too much ramp up to keep up with the condition clear of several builds.

There’s only one real condition weapon, the staff, since the scepter is absolute garbage with a single condition application skill, and the offhand torch has both absurdly long cd’s on condi application and the torch phantasm is just bad.

Most importantly, the scepter/torch combo suffers from what necros suffer — when a weapon set that is a condition set focuses solely on one or two conditions, it is useless against the rampant condition clear of many builds. It’s why engineers are the king of conditions — because their weaponsets all include a variety of conditions to cover their ample access to burning — by far the most potent condition of the bunch.

Zenith.7301:

Condition mesmers don’t work because clones don’t scale from condition relevant stats, and most importantly the random nature of application (specifically the useless vulnerability that doesn’t affect conditions, and a power based phantasm on a condition weapon like staff).

Clones do in fact benefit from all condition relevant stats. The random nature is a balancing factor IMO, remember all Clones also cast Winds of Chaos (albeit at a significantly reduced rate).

The problem is that the last patch made it so Clones can be the target of bounces, and bounce logic is no longer enemy-ally-enemy; it’s purely based on which is the closest target. This ruined Illusionary Elasticity and also ruined Might and Fury stacking on the Mesmer, as Clones are stealing all the bounces (and worse, Might doesn’t even affect the Clone’s DPS).

In the patch before that, Blinding Befuddlement was severely nerfed because of a knee-jerk reaction of the Devs to Glamour Mesmers, which in turn ruined its synergy with Chaos Armour and effectively killed it completely as a trait.

The main purpose of this thread, the be honest, is not so much about Condition Mesmers specifically, but a plea to the Devs to not ignore non-meta builds (and nerf them without even realising it) if they’re truly serious about improving build diversity.

Actually illusions now inherit our condition duration and damage. So the burning from a condition clones winds of chaos will be as good as the burning from the mesmers WOC.. However the new bug that is being talked about is that clones are getting priority over the Mesmer to receive the buffs from WOC and these buffs do not help the clones condition damage… they don’t scale on their own they scale from us… So if we aren’t receiving the buffs and they are then it is helping exactly nobody.

jportell.2197:

Actually illusions now inherit our condition duration and damage. So the burning from a condition clones winds of chaos will be as good as the burning from the mesmers WOC.. However the new bug that is being talked about is that clones are getting priority over the Mesmer to receive the buffs from WOC and these buffs do not help the clones condition damage… they don’t scale on their own they scale from us… So if we aren’t receiving the buffs and they are then it is helping exactly nobody.

Plus Condition Mesmers rely on Illusionary Elasticity to double-tap enemies, but now Clones frequently steal the second bounce negating that.

Embolism.8106:

jportell.2197:

Actually illusions now inherit our condition duration and damage. So the burning from a condition clones winds of chaos will be as good as the burning from the mesmers WOC.. However the new bug that is being talked about is that clones are getting priority over the Mesmer to receive the buffs from WOC and these buffs do not help the clones condition damage… they don’t scale on their own they scale from us… So if we aren’t receiving the buffs and they are then it is helping exactly nobody.

Plus Condition Mesmers rely on Illusionary Elasticity to double-tap enemies, but now Clones frequently steal the second bounce negating that.

yet another trait that ANET ruined and has no explanation as to why… love it…

Spirit ranger and condi mesmer is very strong. 1.8k condi dmg with no might or corruption stacks is a bit crazy.

ya, mesmers have more viable builds than most classes…

anet managed to almost balance this game, most classes see roughly even representation in tpvp and fair equal in duels…

most classes do this with 1 build and 1 build only.

its ‘balanced’ like that.

many people have asked for more viable builds. warriors would like one to start with, then we can move on from there.

Mesmers have more viable builds than most classes?… all mesmers in tourneys usually run x/20/x/x/30.. Leaving only 20 points to be used in any given tree…. Every single grand master tier in Mesmer trait lines sucks except for illusions and any time mesmers try running a bunker non shatter build one blind is all that it will take for them to be shafted since you know defender can’t be summoned on a blind or invuln. Glamour builds are useless in pvp condition builds once again were nerfed in this patch thanks to the A+ programming and confusion builds have to work twice as hard to achieve half the results of a shatter build… So how many viable tourney builds do we have?

Tried a condi mesmer today (spamming one on staff ftw) and it seems to work alright. Compared to the AoE conditioning that Engi can do, it’s nothing but it can hold it’s own in a 1v1 I think.

Also, the fact that the auto-attack bounces between your clone and the target actually helps your damage, if it didn’t do that I’m pretty sure my bleed stacks wouldn’t pass 8.

Dirame.8521:

Tried a condi mesmer today (spamming one on staff ftw) and it seems to work alright. Compared to the AoE conditioning that Engi can do, it’s nothing but it can hold it’s own in a 1v1 I think.

Also, the fact that the auto-attack bounces between your clone and the target actually helps your damage, if it didn’t do that I’m pretty sure my bleed stacks wouldn’t pass 8.

If the Mesmer is completely out of range for the bounce sure that is fine… But currently if the clone is any closer to the target than us they get the buffs which are useless for them… It did work that if we were behind our clones slightly before we would receive all the bounces from their attacks and ours… Now it goes to the entity closest to our intended target which does nothing to help us with the staff considering that #2 clearly shows it should be a kiting weapon.

Not enough conditions that do damage and not enough conditions to cover your damaging conditions. Engineer has bleeding, poison, burning, confusion and a bunch of conditions to cover them from cleansing. My poor necro! Engineers took our JERBS!

Torqky.3682:

Not enough conditions that do damage and not enough conditions to cover your damaging conditions. Engineer has bleeding, poison, burning, confusion and a bunch of conditions to cover them from cleansing. My poor necro! Engineers took our JERBS!

TERK EUR DERBS!!!!! I just want bouncing attacks to work how they did before this patch… PLAYERS FIRST! No clones. no turrets no freaking jagged horrors.

Already tried confusion too…duration, apply on blind, apply into ethereal field and so on….

Went in…more than 5 seconds blowing pretty much everything to stack like 13-14 confusion and puff…condition removal and it’s gone, or pp just obviously stop skilling while under it, wait some seconds, since duration, even traited, is still ridicolous…and then continue as before..same for general cond dmg….only viable condition for mesmers is vulnerability (And you already apply it before shatter if you want to deal a decent dmg) atm…everything else is just crap imo…

Well said, I for one have ALWAYS preferred playing staff mesmer because of how WOC worked and am going to need to change my mesmer to something else now… Though I hate to consider going glass cannon like most…

welll…my condition signet mesmer is still viable

Most likely for the active stun not the passive condi damage boost… ANETS handling of the mesmer in the recent months has been disheartening at best as we have to wonder every patch what they didn’t put in the patch notes. And if they will ever fix those things that are bugged thanks to the patches. But as you can see noone that doesn’t play a mesmer cares because of whatever reasons they can muck up to justify despising this class.

The main issue here is Anet making sweeping (and hidden) changes without stopping to consider how this affects builds that aren’t FotM. By focusing mainly on FotM builds how do they expect to improve build diversity?

10 years ago Asus R+D developed a motherboard for all their new machines. Mean while the Asus ATI video card chipset divison developed a new video card chipset. Upon release it took user feedback to point out to them that the new motherboard was not compatible with the new video card chipset. Obviously this was embarrassing for Asus as a whole. The 2 R+D teams worked independently, and weren’t entirely aware of each others work.

I agree all changes should be accounted for in disclosure notes, but more importantly that the same development team that created character classes is also the same team that then balances them a year later and creates new exotic accessories etc. I understand it is not always possible to get the same development team to work for you forever unchanged, but I also think a simple calculation chart consisting of;

1) how many boon stacks and diversity can be stacked in X amount of time?
2) how many conditions stacks and diversity can be stacked in x amount of time?
3) how much plausible mobility does this class have?
4) how damage per armour scaling can be achieved?
5) I think you get my point…

If a class can achieve over value X in 60% of the stated categories..then that is our definition of over powered and not how we intended. Much the same if a class can’t achieve over 30% in all stated categories, then that is our definition of very under powered.

Obviously this is just a quick example..but ever going buffs and nerfs being implemented without a specific standard of what is, or is not outside of the envisioned archetype for a class is pointless and over time the class changes so much that it may as well just re labelled as a whole new class altogether. Changes to warrior should still feel like a warrior and not make it feel more like a guardian now. Changes to Ranger melee should feel like ranger melee and not quasi thief. Changes to mesmer glamour should still feel like mesmer glamour and not, “Oh well..I ain’t playing glamour anymore.” It really seems the changes to glamour have made people just stop using it altogether and shelved it next to their old scepter and their only used once torch.