The only thing I would change about mesmers is their downed state. The phantasms don’t despawn when they get downed, and there is nothing more frustrating than downing a mesmer and then get killed by their phantasms.
I was dueling a quite good mesmer a few days ago, I managed to down him first several times but to do so I had to blow all my cooldowns. Then, when he was down he could delay his death long enough with Deception to have his Duelist bring me down, since I was at 50% health and without any options. Then, I tried to bring the duelist down after downing the mesmer itself, wasn’t a great idea since it gave him enough time to cast Phantasmal Rogue downing me. Happened several times, it was quite insulting. Oh and I was playing thief, but not the burst build.
Stealth stomp? Hide in shadows, c&d, bp/hs…whatever…he can’t use his downed 3 if you’re invisible…or just dps him with sbow killing phantasms at the same time…sbow is the “must have” weapon for thieves so no chance you haven’t a sbow on secondary
The problem is, I had everything on cooldown (also no initiative of course). I bring SB but I don’t think autoattack’s dps and cluster as soon as it’s avaiable would be enough to kill a phantasm and the mes before he Phantasmal Rogues me. Phantasmal Rogue takes 8 secs to hit after the down. Let’s say I take half a second to get to press f, then he deceptions when the animation is, say, 1.5 seconds rolling. Then he stealths for 2 seconds, it’s 4 seconds. Then I take half second more to get him and 3 to complete the finisher animation. It’s 7.5 seconds, just half second before he brings me down with rogue. What if I take, say, 2 seconds to kill a Duelist?
My point is, anyway, that if two player of the same level of skill duel, blowing everything they have in the process, the one who get downed first shouldn’t be the winner thanks to an attack that takes 40% of health in one hit, nor he should get to keep all his pets that hit for 3000 per attack. If the standing player has left something like 50% hp he won by a decent margin so he should be able to finish off the opponent. It’s just unfair that a mesmer can happily blow all his abilities during a fight while the opponent has to keep some for dealing with downed state.
No other class has a downed state like mesmer does. Guardian’s Symbol of Judgement has 388 base dmg within 4 ticks, no pets. Engi has a 773 base dmg spell, no pets. Elementalist has a 755 dmg over 3 secs, maybe a pet. Necro has a 1260 dmg over time (poison) that could bring you down, but well after the necro itself died. Thief has a 3 secs stealth that blocks finish off animation, that can give 6 more secs to the allies to save him and maybe 2 pets, one that hits hard. Ranger has a pet, but no high damage downed skill. Mesmer has a 806 dmg attack and one or more hard hitting phantasms, and also can delay his death for more than other classes thanks to teleport+stealth. Hell, his Deception is basically Smoke Bomb+Shadow Escape+a little extra.
Vengeance doesn’t count, since if the warrior fails to kill the target he outright dies, so is high risk-high gain. But Mesmer’s downed just misses the high risk part.
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