Guild Wars 2

I don’t like that thieves go can go inviso and drop 10k to 14k damage in one backstab so there is literally nothing you can do. But hey, that’s fair right because it has a counter – remove program. Lets start there and not try to nerf one of the remaining viable mesmer attacks.

I get so confused sometimes. Did most of you people buy GW2 because you were exhausted from QQ’ing about your last MMO or did you buy it to play?

Mesmers have stealth just like thieves and btw clones are the best evasive stuff around….just saying..

BF is the only significant damage a Mesmer has on ANY weapon for the Mesmer’s actual attacks. It is also the only thing which makes a melee mesmer vaguely viable. It is an extremely powerful ability but it is that way because it is basically the only thing a Mesmer has that isn’t tied to illusions.

I am not sure it makes much sense to really move the Mesmer even more towards relying on illusions for 100% of everything. If you remove or tone down BF significantly Mesmer has zero damage without illusions and zero survivability without illusions except for chaos armor and chaos storm from staff. Not a recipe for a balanced or versatile class.

Quoting.

So. Lemme get this straight.

Thieves have stealth and plenty of evasion on attacks.

Rangers have invuln and plenty of evasive attacks

Warriors have blocks, endure pain, and plenty of mobility to get out of hefty situations, plus access to stability.

Engineers have blocks, knockbacks, blinds, dazes, stealth with combo field

Necros have fear, death shroud (they get it worse here, admittedly)

Guardians have blocks, aegis, protection, invuln, heals, stability

Eles get shock aura, knockdowns, best mobility skill in the game to get ouf of danger, plenty of healing, blocks, knockdowns, invul, stability if they go for it.

But mesmers aren’t fine becuse of blurred frenzy

Learn to play.
Every player that has a bit of experience knows how to evade blurred frenzy + very predictive attack.
As when I see a warrior running to me with the bulls charge, i know that HB is comming, and I try to do something about it.
So befor you psot a problem, that is a problem only because you don’t know how to play your class, take the time you would spent writing insane posts to practice.
And if you are not rank atlest 25+ you have no right to complain here about classes, because you still don’t have learned to play.

bdw. For blured frenzy to be eficacy atack need 2 skill waste. #3 and #2
And another ps. mesmers Without blured frenzy as defensive skill as well as attack skill, mesmers would be dead in A LOT OF SITUATIONS.
And as you were told, BF is the only mele attack that mesmer has to deal damage.
+ This attack actualy make mesmers “weak” in a certain way. “forces them to come closer”.

So changing this is most likely out of consideration.

Yiyojin.3241:

Quoting.
Learn to play.
Every player that has a bit of experience knows how to evade blurred frenzy + very predictive attack.
As when I see a warrior running to me with the bulls charge, i know that HB is comming, and I try to do something about it.
So befor you psot a problem, that is a problem only because you don’t know how to play your class, take the time you would spent writing insane posts to practice.
And if you are not rank atlest 25+ you have no right to complain here about classes, because you still don’t have learned to play.

It’s obvious these people did not buy this game to learn to play it. They just want to install and insta-pwn because they are all obviously the best players in GW2 so no one should be able to beat them.

To all the people QQ’ing, just roll thieves if you don’t want a challenge. Stop trying to destroy the mesmer class. It has already gotten seriously kittened through the phantasm changes.

Few points:
1. BF is on 8 sec cooldown when traited, not 10.

2. There was a stupid statement equating stealth and invulnerability: They are NOT the same. You do not get invulnerability by stealthing, you still get very much hit by aoe, channeled attacks, and random attack people throw around. Keep in mind that when you are in stealth you cannot dps people while they can dps you. That is completely opposite of what you have in BF.

3. It is funny to see how poeple resort to lies when unable to discuss facts: Supposedly ‘experienced’ mesmers claim they can use BF only once every 20 seconds. That is a lie. BF sould be a cornerstone of your rotation and it should go like this:
You pop BF at second 0, then you pop it at second 8, then you switch to staff at 10s, then you switch back to sword/pistol at 20s and pop BF again, then you pop BF at second 28.
There, I just used BF 4 times in 30 seconds. That is BF every 7.5 seconds.
So it is really you who has L2P issue if you do not know that with 650+ games played on your mesmer.
Note, that is 8 seconds of invul out of 30. Note that with the need to back away from BF a bit earlier and the time you need to come back (call it 0.5 sec each way) that 8 seconds turns into 12sec (you have to do it 4 times). So against melee, mesmer, with SINGLE SKILL gets about 12 seconds out of 30sec of no dmg whatsoever (yes, that is 40% of time).

continued the next post

4. People who claim that they are ‘helpless’ without 2 sec invulnerability on BF. Let me help you with your rotation since you make me sad (far from being good rotation since I never played mesmer in my life and it took me about 2 min to think of this one):
1. You start with duelist when you see the enemy. Duelist is now putting pressure on melee to close in.
time 0s: Just before he closes in use BF, that is what you open with. Takes 0.5s to cast and then you ahve 2sec of invul.
time 2.5s: hit him with magic bullet. Takes 0.5s to cast and then you have him stunned for 2 sec. Then proceed to DSP with autoattack.
Time 4s (enemy stunned for 1more sec): cast your clone that leaps (0.75s cast time enemy stunned he should hit).
Time 5s (just before so enemy is still stunned): Swap so you immobilize him for 2sec. He should now be immobilized from sec 5 to sec 7.
5s-7s: Proceed to dps with autoattack or you can dodge to make a third clone and shatter. (or combination of the two).
7s-8s: get some distance from the guy and dodge if necessary.
8s: as he chases you pop BF again. (this should keep you invul till 10s).
10s: Swap to staff and phase retreat (instant, generate clone that is annoying range attacker and teleport away).
10s+ – 11s: Cast warlock.
Proceed to kite the enemy (you can dodge once to create one more clone for annoying enemy). If he closes in cast chaos storm to force him to back out. You can also use daze or invul shatter as you see fit. Chaos storm and initial distance you have should keep him away from you till second 18, at which point you can ‘phase retreat’ again. (yes yes blink away again).
20s: switch back to sword. Cast the leap guy.
21s: as leap guy closes on your target, swap for immobilize of 2s. Here you can BF again while the guy is immobilized but let us not do that, dodge away and shatter him again with clones then come back to start BF
23s: BF.
25.5 – 27.5: Back off a bit (BF finished) and cast duelist. You can dodge if you really need to.
27.5s: Stun (Magic bullet). He will be stunned between 28s-30s.
28s: autoattack for a sec till 29s. Then BF for more dmg and invul till sec 31.
31s: switch to staff and again to the teleport thing and kite (use chaos shield instead of chaos storm in this rotation and you will go back to chaos storm the next one)…..etc etc.

You guys have no tools?? Really??
Makes me laugh at how bad of a player you need to be to claim that you need more tools.
Look at the first 10s: you are pressuring with duelist who is doing singificant dmg. You are invulnerable at 0.5s-2.5s and 8s-10s. You have him stunned 3s-5s. And you have him immobilized 5s-7s. On top of that you are shattering him.
When is he supposed to do some dmg to you?
When you switch to staff you get immediate teleport (2 of them during those 10s-20s period if you trait). You get annoying ranged + condition dealing illusions. And if the guy manages to close in, guess what you get field AND shield that forces him to back off (least he keeps getting dazed/interrupted).
Then sec 20-30 and 30-40 are pretty much the same just a bit shuffled rotation to account for cooldown times.
Really people, you make me laugh.

Yes, one can say ‘use your utilities to break stun/immobilize (etc)’ and get a second or two oportunity to hit mesmer (or dodge). Problem with such argument is this:
Those cc breakers are on longer cooldowns than cooldowns of your skills that apply them.
Dodge if a matter of skill, I should be rewarded for the skill, not need skill to simply put me on equal footing with mesmer.
An example: Let us say mesmer made his leaping clone (assume two more illusions are there for shatter) and is going for a kill, he wants to swap (immobilize me), follow it by stun and then BF+shatter. If I sense this coming, and then dodge his swap and his stun and he goes into BF which I dodge through again and find myself behind his back, I should be rewarded for this and be able to for example C&D+ backstab him while he is standing there BF-ing. He should not pull off such a spike, completely miss it and then be completely forgiven….that is the point. Balance starts with these micro-sequences. If you get outplayed you should get punished, with mesmer you are forgiven so much more than you should be.
Note that he can attempt such spike without stun (just immobilize) every 10s, and one with stun every 25s.

And no I do not get stomped by anyone (this or some other class) despite all of this….at least I do not know a player who can just come and easily beat me. Not every comment about balance on these forums is due to person not being able to kill your class.

Nerf thieves – 10k to 14k damage with one move from inviso with no counter. Until that happens, no other classes attacks should be touched.

I play against those thieves all the time and kill them all the time. Just use ur stun breaker. It is a reflex problem. You are too slow and those builds are good 1v1 again slow people. People who react appropriately will just get hit with mug+c&d (and then quickly heal) when not seeing thief approaching and people who see them approaching do not get hit with anything (you see thief with basilisk on, precasting c&d at distance and you dodge) and he misses his 45s cooldown main spike and is left there useless and to die (or waste his heal to get 3sec headstart and try to run away).

Good for you. I kill them too. Doesn’t change the fact backstab dumb and if we are going to talk about nerfing anything, then we should talk about nerfing attacks from inviso that have no counter. Honestly, I don’t think any moves should be nerfed. 99.9% of this is L2P. Inviso itself, however, just needs a counter or needs to be removed from the game. So anytime I see incredibly stupid threads like this one, I’m going to just highlight the stupidity of the content by pointing out backstab.

Backstab: 10k to 14k damage from inviso with no counter.

I order for him to hit you 10K-14K:
1. you have to be complete glass
2. he has to put all his utilities (signets) CDs into that backstab.

Come on….how is that 45s cooldown easily missed spike comparable to what we are talking about????

So pretty much Haldunius doesn’t have anything to counter Mufa statement besides asking for thieves to receive a nerf due to backstab…what a shame. I don’t go nothing against back stab and when it comes to damage I think toughness should take affect on this case because they should be able to absorb a lot damage if the player has high defense. Then that should solve the case with glass cannon thieves.

Nothing to counter. Your guys’ posts do it for me. Got a bunch of bad players lighting up the torches and stampeding towards the nerf gates.

Actually, here I have a counter. Go play another game and stop trying to ruin this one for everyone else because your bads.

Haldunius.7864:

Nothing to counter. Your guys’ posts do it for me. Got a bunch of bad players lighting up the torches and stampeding towards the nerf gates.

Actually, here I have a counter. Go play another game and stop trying to ruin this one for everyone else because your bads.

That’s not a counter that’s just being a jerk and unlike you we really wasn’t asking for a nerf like you was a few post ago complaining about thieves backstab. All I’m asking is that blurry frenzy should not be able to be evade all attacks like AOE. Aoe knock backs, or fear should be able to counter evasion moves like blurry frenzy and death blossom. If they have stability up then it’s ok, but if they don’t something has to counter it. It can’t always be immune to everything

Players said its easy to avoid, maybe in a 1 vs 1 scenario, but lets face the facts not everyone will have their cool downs or endurance to avoid the attack especially if it’s a group fight.

When they nerf thief dodging 9 times in a row (real dodge, not LDB) with a tanky condition build that can heal on initiative use and in stealth while dropping caltrops while invisible I’ll eat a BF nerf. It gets even worse if they actually do use LDB with this build to build endurance for another dodge chain. I don’t even think that’s overpowered, but it is leaps and bounds above blurred frenzy and anyone disputing that really just hasn’t seen anyone decent do it.

Brutalistik.6473:

That’s not a counter that’s just being a jerk and unlike you we really wasn’t asking for a nerf …All I’m asking is that blurry frenzy should not be able to be evade all attacks like AOE.

As I said, I’ll let your posts do the talking for me. Please stop trying to ruin this game.

Edit: And dude, it’s Blurred Frenzy. If you are going to storm the forums crying for nerfs at least get the name right. Obviously not an L2P issue for you.

I don’t think they’re gonna nerf blurred frenzy these guys are just whining to make themselves feel better.

We can presuppose any number of hypothetical scenarios where, if everything goes exactly according to the presupposed script, a mesmer could use blurred frenzy several times over the period of a single encounter.

The problem is that in real combat things don’t go according to a script. Illusionary leap, the only mesmer gap closer on one handed sword, is incredibly unreliable. So sometimes the clone spawns and goes to the target, often times it gets caught on the topography of the map or simply doesn’t follow its target very well. Sometimes triggering swap will put the mesmer at the intended target, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the aoe immobilize catches people where the swap occurs but sometimes they get a few steps away before the immobilize triggers. When any of these errors occur, the blurred frenzy/mind wrack burst sequence is undone. It’s also undone if someone dodges the shatter or blocks it with a shield etc etc. There’s also the possibility that mesmer phantasms or clones get killed by aoe before they can be shattered or deal any damage whatsoever.

Mufa mentions the use of the offhand pistol’s iDuelist as a way of putting pressure on melee but what he doesn’t mention is that iduelist has a 16s cd when untraited and gets killed in about two hits. It won’t summon if the game registers the target as being obstructed, if the mesmer is blinded, if the attack is blocked etc. It also struggles with topography sometimes when trying to go around corners. A lot of times it will LoS itself. Magic bullet, when untraited, is a 2s stun on a 25s cd. It can be blocked, dodged etc.

If a mesmer is using pistol offhand then he cannot be using focus offhand, the only weapon the mesmer has to pull people off a ressing opponent. So even if the mesmer downs an opponent with sword/pistol, he’s got no real way of getting a reliable stomp because decoy doesn’t last long enough and doesn’t negate the downed opponent’s skills like thieves’ refuge does. The only other option is to use distortion for the stomp, but that shatter is on a 60s cd and requires the use of clone resources to get enough time to avoid pushes, pulls and stuns. The best, most reliable way for a mesmer to finish a downed opponent is actually by dpsing him down with blurred frenzy because otherwise finishing the stomp can be very difficult, particularly in a group fight.

Mufa mentions the use of staff to counter melee but here’s the problem, staff auto attack is terrible for finishing downed opponents. The damage on warlock isn’t really that great and chaos storm and chaos armor are on relatively long cds when untraited. Sure phase retreat can get the mesmer out of trouble but he has no gap closer with staff and phase retreat usually moves a mesmer out of the point for defense which often allows the opponent to run in the middle of the circle and neutralize the point.

I could go on and on but I have already written more than I think anyone will read. The point I’m trying to make is that while blurred frenzy is powerful, there are a number of reasons why the invuln is so crucial for mesmers. Mesmer shatter burst can be undone in so many ways, mesmers don’t have a reliable way of stomping downed opponents and the class’s gap closer is unreliable at best. Fix Illusionary leap, give mesmer a way to reliably stomp downed opponents (something tankier classes and anything with spammable quickness buffs, and thieves can do much more easily) before any more talk of nerfing the one mesmer skill which can be used to both stay alive at melee range and finish downed opponents and then maybe we can talk about nerfs for the 2s invuln.

Archaon.6245:

Mesmers have stealth just like thieves and btw clones are the best evasive stuff around….just saying..

You aren’t very good if clones actually deceive you, just saying.

it’s sad that everyone immediately assumes that people want it nerfed because they can’t evade the attack instead of it being actually too powerful even when people avoid it

Can you guys stop misleading this topic and stick with the OP? The problem pointed by him it’s not the 2 seconds invunerability but the auto-target BF has.

I’m not sure that it autofaces I think the coned hitbox on the skill is fairly wide, wide enough to hit players standing next to the mesmer as well as in front.

You can turn while standing in place to track people while you frenzy, I’ve done that myself. I’ve never had it auto follow for me though.

^ Yup. I’ve never had auto-follow either. If it did auto-track, I’d happily request those training wheels be removed.

Haldunius.7864:

Nothing to counter. Your guys’ posts do it for me. Got a bunch of bad players lighting up the torches and stampeding towards the nerf gates.

Actually, here I have a counter. Go play another game and stop trying to ruin this one for everyone else because your bads.

Mufa:
Really lol? So ‘you are a bad player’ or ‘you are whining’ is now an fail-proof answer to any balance discussion?

Well I can easily take that “argument” away from you. Let us meet in the game and 1v1, after I am done with, you will have nothing left I guess.

Israel, I do not know where to start with your post that is just demonstrating that you should not be posting.
I guess i will do it in order:
1. What i gave you is not ‘hypothetical’ scenario, it is realistic rotation with which mesmer pressures the enemy. Of course not everything will go ‘exactly’ and that is where good player is differentiated from bad player (how he can respond to things not going ‘exactly’ or how he can slightly delay or mix up the rotation to adapt to the enemy).

2. Now you are justifying 30%+ of game time invulnerability due to one skill with bugs on some other skills you have? Pathetic. That is just nonsense, bugs need fixing and cannot be used to justify this unbalancing feature of the skill.

3. Your skills can be blocked/miss, etc? Well, guess what, other classes have the same issue. You are just talking nonsense to distract from the real issue.

4. Focus vs pistol: Again nonsense, all classes face tradeoffs when picking weapons. Again you are simply rambling to distract. As for CD on magic bullet: I am well aware of CD and if you read my post with rotation in it you will see I still manage to use it in every sword rotation. So yes you can use it ‘only’ once per sword rotation. poor you.
5. You need gap closer with staff? You are a joke. WTF do you need gap closer with staff. Luckily devs are not as clueless as yourself and you gave you what you actually need: gap OPENER, and on very low timer (8s again if you trait properly).
6. Staff bad dmg? Did you know those things apply burning on enemies? no? laughable.
7. Yeah…i am sure you ‘could go on’ sprouting nonsensical nonsense like you just did. Is your goal just to distract from the real issue by talking nonsense?

I’ve never understood the point of having attack skills that include a 100% defensive attribute. Melee attacks have always been about risk vs reward with only intelligent positioning and timing as means for mitigating that risk. A 100% defense on attack is doing dmg with impunity and removes the requirement of being thoughtful as to when and how you approach the target. It’s essentially removing a much needed skill requirement.

As for those Mesmers concerned about being a light armored class and having to jump into the fray to execute melee burst without the safety net of immunity being built into the skill, all I can say is: “Welcome to the club. Necros and Eles have been expecting you.”

Well, I don’t like the fact GS/Hammer Warriors can knock me all around and then spam Hblades on me when I’m knocked down. I don’t like the fact Thieves are constantly stealthing and jumping on me again. I don’t like that bunker Guardians and Eles can survive against 3+ people for a decent amount of time.

There are a lot of things I don’t like but it doesn’t mean they’re not an integral part of those classes.

Please, just play a Mesmer for a while, like up to level 80. Learn about the class and how ridiculously easy it dies when you don’t manage everything perfectly. You need to understand that when you’re complaining about burst damage Mesmers, you’re complaining about what is basically the only viable build for Mesmers. You should play the class and see how ridiculously underpowered Mantras are or you should try setting up a long-term damage attack by getting 3 Phantasms up (I’ll give you a hint, it’s freaking impossible in PvP, which is a huge reason why we use shatter-focused builds instead).

What you’re asking is to just hit Mesmers with even more nerfs to their only playable PvP build. It’s like when people complain about bunker D/D Elementalists and they don’t realize so much of that class is broken that they’re using what is considered the only build that allows them to compete.

Yes, I know it is annoying to have a Mesmer frontload a bunch of damage and leave you with some confusion stacks to boot, but your goal should be getting Anet to fix the class so that other builds are more viable, not trying to get them to nerf the only thing that allows us to compete in PvP. Trust me, I would welcome more diversity with this class, a lot of us are interested in Mantra builds or “pet” builds, but both mantras and phantasms pretty much stink, the only thing we tend to do with phantasms is let them blow their attack and then just treat them as ammunition for a shatter. I’d love the ability to be more tanky as well and have a focus on debuffs and other stuff as well, but that’s another weak and unviable build.

Until the Mesmer has more viable options available, you’re looking at the only build we can really use in PvP. If you get that nerfed, this class, which is already one of the more underplayed classes in the game along with the Necromancer and Engineer, will basically just die. I know it seems like you see Mesmers in PvP a lot, but you actually don’t see them as much as you think, you just tend to remember dealing with them, because statistically Mesmer is a very underplayed class.

Mufa, I don’t think there is a real issue here. I don’t think you’ve provided compelling reasons to think of blurred frenzy as unbalanced and I do not think the skill will get changed in the future.

You may find a few people on this forum who agree with you but I don’t think any of them will be the developers.

Keep whining if it makes you feel better though.

Mesmers have more than shatter burst with sword/pistol + staff as viable builds. Shatter burst just has a level of extreme effectiveness that isn’t matched by the alternatives. Greatsword (yes I’ll go there, since I play a GS mes) is still alright, staff bunker is still solid. Scepter needs some serious help (its getting better though).

Fixing elements that lead to degenerate play is part of fixing the class, and its not like all changes happen in some magical vacuum were stuff is changed to just suck. Things like functionality changes have, and will continue to happen.

hackks.3687:

I’ve never understood the point of having attack skills that include a 100% defensive attribute. Melee attacks have always been about risk vs reward with only intelligent positioning and timing as means for mitigating that risk. A 100% defense on attack is doing dmg with impunity and removes the requirement of being thoughtful as to when and how you approach the target. It’s essentially removing a much needed skill requirement.

As for those Mesmers concerned about being a light armored class and having to jump into the fray to execute melee burst without the safety net of immunity being built into the skill, all I can say is: “Welcome to the club. Necros and Eles have been expecting you.”

Mesmer having a melee ability that roots them in place without that invulnerability would result in a lot of dead Mesmers. Even the most defensive Mesmer builds are pretty easy to kill, the class as a whole has little emphasis on true defense.

There are two PvP playstyles for Mesmer, both of which utilize a similar burst damage philosophy. The only difference is one is more kite oriented and one is based around melee with the sword. You’re basically saying “Take away the one thing that makes a Mesmer in melee range viable”. It has nothing to do with timing or a skill requirement, a sword Mesmer outright needs that damage avoidance, the class lacks the escape abilities of other similarly weak classes. We can blink once a fairly long cooldown and we can swap to staff and use phase retreat, the latter takes the sword out of the equation so you are trading some offense for a quick evasion move. You’ve got Decoy in the mix, but frankly it is more for going invisible while people are chasing you, when you use it in close combat, you end up still taking damage while invisible because you don’t have much time to move anywhere, it’s more or less just used to generate a quick clone in close quarters.

When you compare the Mesmer’s evasion and escape abilities to other classes, you’ll find that, overall, the Mesmer is quite lacking. We can get caught and have our skull crushed in much easier than it can be done to a Thief or Ele. Honestly, the Thief is often a better “mesmer” than the Mesmer itself.

And if your idea is just “bring the Mesmer down to the same level of some other weak classes”, I think that is the wrong way to look at things. Nothing beneficial is going to come by further nerfing a class that is already difficult to play and dies easily. Elementalists, while currently build limited (just like the Mesmer), have an incredibly strong survivalist build for PvP which makes them slippery and able to soak up a lot of damage, the Mesmer is just the opposite, our viable PvP build is a burst damage build, we lack in the defensive options.

And I do feel bad for Necros and to some extent Engineers. But the solution is to fix these classes, not immediately nerf their few viable builds and leave them with nothing.

hackks.3687:

As for those Mesmers concerned about being a light armored class and having to jump into the fray to execute melee burst without the safety net of immunity being built into the skill, all I can say is: “Welcome to the club. Necros and Eles have been expecting you.”

Except Necros basically have a second health bar that refills really fast if you’re actually using the real melee weapon (dagger) and Eles are never really “melee”, even with daggers all their spammable attacks have more range than every other classes melee abilities.

Numot.3965:

Mesmers have more than shatter burst with sword/pistol + staff as viable builds. Shatter burst just has a level of extreme effectiveness that isn’t matched by the alternatives. Greatsword (yes I’ll go there, since I play a GS mes) is still alright, staff bunker is still solid. Scepter needs some serious help (its getting better though).

Fixing elements that lead to degenerate play is part of fixing the class, and its not like all changes happen in some magical vacuum were stuff is changed to just suck. Things like functionality changes have, and will continue to happen.

I actually barely use sword/anything. I have always been a GS+Staff player and still play that way, it is my favorite method and I’ve gotten pretty good at confusing enemies and maintaining effective kiting while still throwing good chunks of shatter damage at them. I definitely do not think GS+Staff is kittened by any means, it is just the kiting shatter build, while the sword/X is the melee shatter build.

The problem with any other build, as you say, is they lack effectiveness. When you’re not churning out burst damage or at least doing consistent damage as a Mesmer, you’re a detriment to your entire team and at that point you may as well have just hopped on another class entirely. Every class has to play to their strengths, the problem is that Mesmer is one of the classes that only has one real strength right now.

If we had equally effective options for builds, we’d be using them a lot more. As I said in an above post, I’d actually love to run a Mantra build, but it’s so weak that I’d be wasting a spot on my team if I did it in any serious capacity.

I guess this thread will be filled up in 100 pages, so where are my popcorns?

Israel.7056:

Mufa, I don’t think there is a real issue here. I don’t think you’ve provided compelling reasons to think of blurred frenzy as unbalanced and I do not think the skill will get changed in the future.

You may find a few people on this forum who agree with you but I don’t think any of them will be the developers.

Keep whining if it makes you feel better though.

I can say Mufa did a lot better explaining the mechanics about the attack better than you since he plays the class and admits the move is a bit sketchy on such a low cool down being immune to all in 2 seconds.

I play this class as well, but not often and I treat this attack as Endure Pain every 8 seconds while Endure Pain on a warrior is a 90 second cool down only being immune to physical attacks while Blurry Frenzy immune to both physical and condition.

If this move performed as hundreds blades since it has no immunity to anything when using it then we wouldn’t be discussion the issue here besides it doing a lot of damage. However it can be countered and stun where as blurry frenzy or death blossom cannot.

I understand the purpose of Blurry Frenzy to evade attacks like normal attacks, but it shouldn’t be evading AOE attacks such as knock backs, shockwaves, condition aoe or fear. Just because I’m blurry to hit shouldn’t make invulnerable to earthquake attacks or raining cats and dogs if you catch my drift.

@ Brutalistik

“since he plays the class and admits the move is a bit sketchy on such a low cool down being immune to all in 2 seconds.”

So he plays mesmer and thinks something is too strong, so what? I play mesmer too and I don’t feel it’s too strong. Which of us is right? Depends on who you ask. Everyone has an opinion but the only opinion that ultimately matters is the developer’s and I don’t know what they think about this “issue” but I doubt it’s along the lines of what Mufa and you seem to think.

“I play this class as well, but not often and I treat this attack as Endure Pain every 8 seconds”

Well then you know that the base cd on blurred frenzy is 10s not 8, it goes down to 8 with the sword trait in dueling. It’s sort of like endure pain except you can’t move when channeling Blurred Frenzy and warriors are in heavy armor the rest of the time whereas mesmers are squishy the rest of time.

“If this move performed as hundreds blades since it has no immunity to anything when using it then we wouldn’t be discussion the issue here besides it doing a lot of damage.”

Well if blurred frenzy was changed to do the kind of damage that hundred blades can then I’d probably be ok with losing the invuln. As it is it doesn’t hit for anything near what hb can.

“I understand the purpose of Blurry Frenzy to evade attacks like normal attacks, but it shouldn’t evading AOE attacks such as knock backs, shockwaves, condition aoe or fear. Just because I’m blurry to hit shouldn’t make invulnerable to earthquake attacks or raining cats and dogs if you catch my drift.”

This is an opinion that expresses a conceptualization of what you think ought or ought not be in a video game. I don’t necessarily agree with you but that’s all I can really say about this. It’s a difference of opinion.

“People who claim that they are ‘helpless’ without 2 sec invulnerability on BF. Let me help you with your rotation since you make me sad (far from being good rotation since I never played mesmer in my life and it took me about 2 min to think of this one): "

So, despite what you guys are saying he hasn’t even tried the class once, losing in my opinion all the credibility.

Mufa.1326:

4. People who claim that they are ‘helpless’ without 2 sec invulnerability on BF. Let me help you with your rotation since you make me sad (far from being good rotation since I never played mesmer in my life and it took me about 2 min to think of this one):
1. You start with duelist when you see the enemy. Duelist is now putting pressure on melee to close in.
time 0s: Just before he closes in use BF, that is what you open with. Takes 0.5s to cast and then you ahve 2sec of invul.
time 2.5s: hit him with magic bullet. Takes 0.5s to cast and then you have him stunned for 2 sec. Then proceed to DSP with autoattack.

Didn’t read past there because by time 0-2.5 you have revealed you don’t have a clue how to play a mesmer and have just made a fool out of yourself.

The only thing you’re not catching on to is that the ability is on a short cool down compare to other classes that have invulnerable abilities. Sure you can move with Endure Pain if you’re not snared or immobilize, but you still can take condition damage unlike Blurry Frenzy.

If anything Endure Pain cool down should be lessen because it’s only immune to physical damage. Let’s not forget Endure Pain is on a 90 second cool down and the warrior can still be countered by a stun or knock back just while receiving condition damage without taking physical damage. I screwed a lot of warriors on my warrior that way when I use to play condition spec because I knew Endure Pain weakness and it’s weakness is it doesn’t have stability unless the warrior has it on their bar.

Now lets compared Blurry Frenzy to Endure Pain again. Endure Pain is on a 90 second cool down only being immune to physical attacks and nothing more. Blurry Frenzy is on a 10 second cool down or with trait on an 8 second cool down being immune to all every 2 seconds when using this ability.

Blurry Frenzy can be used 10 -12 times before Endure Pain is useable again.

And just something else I noticed.

“5. You need gap closer with staff? You are a joke. WTF do you need gap closer with staff. Luckily devs are not as clueless as yourself and you gave you what you actually need: gap OPENER, and on very low timer (8s again if you trait properly).”

Phase retreat actually has a 5s cd with the staff trait in chaos line, 8s is the skill’s base cd. I’m sure that Mufa already knows this since he’s an expert mesmer but it’s almost mandatory to run 30 points into illusions with shatter based builds to get illusionary persona, the trait that causes all shatter skills to trigger on the mesmer as well as his/her clones. Shatter builds also typically require 20 points in dueling to get deceptive evasion, the dodge roll clone generation trait and at least 10 points in domination to get mental torment, the mind wrack damage modifier. This doesn’t leave enough points left to go far enough into the chaos line to get the staff trait. This means that shatter mesmers using staff are not going to have the staff trait and so phase retreat will be 8s rather than 5.

The reason I’m talking about gap closers is because the bread of butter of shatter damage is mind wrack which is maximized at close range if the mesmer is running illusionary persona which, as I said before, almost every shatter mesmer is. In order to ensure a 4 illusion shatter, the mesmer needs to close the gap between himself and his opponent. This is why so many mesmers use illusionary leap as a way of rooting their opponent before triggering shatters and blurred frenzy. Staff doesn’t provide any means of doing this.

“6. Staff bad dmg? Did you know those things apply burning on enemies? no? laughable.”

The staff auto attack applies one of three conditions randomly: bleed, burning or vulnerability. The damage on these conditions is not very high relative to say the damage of the greatsword auto attack spatial surge and finishing a downed opponent with winds of chaos is a very slow process that leaves plenty of time for teammates to res the downed player. I think it’s fair to characterize staff as being the more defensive of the mesmer two-handed weapon options.

None of this directly relates to the invuln question but perhaps Mufa is not the source of all knowledge about mesmers.

@Brutalistik

“Blurry Frenzy can be used 10 -12 times before Endure Pain is useable again.”

Mesmers can nullify damage more often than warriors can. Does that mean that in the grand scheme of things that the mesmer and warrior classes are imbalanced?

I think we need now to consider the classes in terms of strengths and weaknesses. Warriors are typically played as AoE damage dealers and in that capacity they can excel tremendously.

Warriors have many more ways of doing AoE damage than mesmers do. Whirlwind attack hits hard, bladetrail still hits hard even after the nerf and let’s not forget hundred blades, a skill which can 100-0 as many squishy people as are in its range. All the greatsword auto attacks are AoE. Warriors also have far more mobility than mesmers do if they use the one handed sword in combination with the greatsword.

Does this mean that mesmers need to be given more AoE damage or that they need to be made to be more mobile?

No, I don’t think so. I accept that on my mesmer I’m more of a single target damage dealer than I would be if I were playing warrior and that I’m going to be slow even with the focus offhand. That’s the tradeoff of playing a mesmer.

lol…just more of pathetic staying off topic and talking about me.
I guess authority on the topic are mesmers only, the very people who benefit from this issue? Really laughable.

Isreal, Phase retreat is stated as 10s cooldown on wiki. But it does not matter, 8s is even worse.
You CAN trait for both staff and sword reduction (20 duelist 20chaos and 30 illusions) but it may not be the best. I just gave an example of what can be done.

As for gap closer with staff: you do not need it. You do not have to shatter during staff (but you can if enemy closes to you or if you want to use it defensively), you can kite and do dmg from distance. Bad autoattack? Well, when warlock and you and two clones are doing it, it quickly reduces enemy’s health.
You have gap closer on 10s- on sword. You can pull two gap closers on single sword rotation if you want.
It is just too funny to see how you guys actually do not want to talk about rotation example that pretty much either:
1. keeps you invul OR
2. enemy stunned OR
3. enemy rooted OR
4. you kiting the enemy with two gap openers in 10 sec + fied/shield to keep him off you if he closes in.

Why do not you go back to the topic.

ashleydoll.8563:

hackks.3687:

I’ve never understood the point of having attack skills that include a 100% defensive attribute. Melee attacks have always been about risk vs reward with only intelligent positioning and timing as means for mitigating that risk. A 100% defense on attack is doing dmg with impunity and removes the requirement of being thoughtful as to when and how you approach the target. It’s essentially removing a much needed skill requirement.

As for those Mesmers concerned about being a light armored class and having to jump into the fray to execute melee burst without the safety net of immunity being built into the skill, all I can say is: “Welcome to the club. Necros and Eles have been expecting you.”

Mesmer having a melee ability that roots them in place without that invulnerability would result in a lot of dead Mesmers. Even the most defensive Mesmer builds are pretty easy to kill, the class as a whole has little emphasis on true defense.

How so? Suddenly they lost their stun, daze, immobilize, leaps, blink, decoy, mirror images, portal, etc.? Gimme a break. If I drop an FB on someone they’re already CC’d, the invul just means their friends can’t do anything about it either.

There are two PvP playstyles for Mesmer, both of which utilize a similar burst damage philosophy. The only difference is one is more kite oriented and one is based around melee with the sword. You’re basically saying “Take away the one thing that makes a Mesmer in melee range viable”. It has nothing to do with timing or a skill requirement, a sword Mesmer outright needs that damage avoidance, the class lacks the escape abilities of other similarly weak classes. We can blink once a fairly long cooldown and we can swap to staff and use phase retreat, the latter takes the sword out of the equation so you are trading some offense for a quick evasion move. You’ve got Decoy in the mix, but frankly it is more for going invisible while people are chasing you, when you use it in close combat, you end up still taking damage while invisible because you don’t have much time to move anywhere, it’s more or less just used to generate a quick clone in close quarters.

When you compare the Mesmer’s evasion and escape abilities to other classes, you’ll find that, overall, the Mesmer is quite lacking. We can get caught and have our skull crushed in much easier than it can be done to a Thief or Ele. Honestly, the Thief is often a better “mesmer” than the Mesmer itself.

I’m almost convinced you’re trolling now. Mesmer, along with Thief and Ele, have the most escapability within the game atm. Blink, Portal, Decoy, Illusionary Leap, Phase Retreat, aoe Daze, stun, etc.. I mean the list of defensive/escape options are much longer for Mesmer than majority of the other classes, let alone their light armored brethren. Your argument is flimsy here at best and trolling at worst.

And if your idea is just “bring the Mesmer down to the same level of some other weak classes”, I think that is the wrong way to look at things. Nothing beneficial is going to come by further nerfing a class that is already difficult to play and dies easily. Elementalists, while currently build limited (just like the Mesmer), have an incredibly strong survivalist build for PvP which makes them slippery and able to soak up a lot of damage, the Mesmer is just the opposite, our viable PvP build is a burst damage build, we lack in the defensive options.

And I do feel bad for Necros and to some extent Engineers. But the solution is to fix these classes, not immediately nerf their few viable builds and leave them with nothing.

“Difficult to play” and “dies easily” are not phrases I associate with playing my Mesmer. Closer to the complete opposite. And my idea is not to bring the mesmer down to the same level of the “weak classes”. I don’t consider Necro, Ele, or even Engi (by your standards) to be weak. The idea is to actually make it require more skill than it currently does to make a risky maneuver such as jumping into melee range of your target.

Yiyojin.3241:

Quoting.

So. Lemme get this straight.

Thieves have stealth and plenty of evasion on attacks.

Rangers have invuln and plenty of evasive attacks

Warriors have blocks, endure pain, and plenty of mobility to get out of hefty situations, plus access to stability.

Engineers have blocks, knockbacks, blinds, dazes, stealth with combo field

Necros have fear, death shroud (they get it worse here, admittedly)

Guardians have blocks, aegis, protection, invuln, heals, stability

Eles get shock aura, knockdowns, best mobility skill in the game to get ouf of danger, plenty of healing, blocks, knockdowns, invul, stability if they go for it.

But mesmers aren’t fine becuse of blurred frenzy

Learn to play.
Every player that has a bit of experience knows how to evade blurred frenzy + very predictive attack.
As when I see a warrior running to me with the bulls charge, i know that HB is comming, and I try to do something about it.
So befor you psot a problem, that is a problem only because you don’t know how to play your class, take the time you would spent writing insane posts to practice.
And if you are not rank atlest 25+ you have no right to complain here about classes, because you still don’t have learned to play.

bdw. For blured frenzy to be eficacy atack need 2 skill waste. #3 and #2
And another ps. mesmers Without blured frenzy as defensive skill as well as attack skill, mesmers would be dead in A LOT OF SITUATIONS.
And as you were told, BF is the only mele attack that mesmer has to deal damage.
+ This attack actualy make mesmers “weak” in a certain way. “forces them to come closer”.

So changing this is most likely out of consideration.

This just sumarizes it all, well said, 1 more nerf and mesmers are going to be 100% useless unless tank specced where all you do is survive, since BF is the only viable defensive skill for going melee, which is nearly the only viable damage build.

hharry.1967:

Yiyojin.3241:

Quoting.

So. Lemme get this straight.

Thieves have stealth and plenty of evasion on attacks.

Rangers have invuln and plenty of evasive attacks

Warriors have blocks, endure pain, and plenty of mobility to get out of hefty situations, plus access to stability.

Engineers have blocks, knockbacks, blinds, dazes, stealth with combo field

Necros have fear, death shroud (they get it worse here, admittedly)

Guardians have blocks, aegis, protection, invuln, heals, stability

Eles get shock aura, knockdowns, best mobility skill in the game to get ouf of danger, plenty of healing, blocks, knockdowns, invul, stability if they go for it.

But mesmers aren’t fine becuse of blurred frenzy

Learn to play.
Every player that has a bit of experience knows how to evade blurred frenzy + very predictive attack.
As when I see a warrior running to me with the bulls charge, i know that HB is comming, and I try to do something about it.
So befor you psot a problem, that is a problem only because you don’t know how to play your class, take the time you would spent writing insane posts to practice.
And if you are not rank atlest 25+ you have no right to complain here about classes, because you still don’t have learned to play.

bdw. For blured frenzy to be eficacy atack need 2 skill waste. #3 and #2
And another ps. mesmers Without blured frenzy as defensive skill as well as attack skill, mesmers would be dead in A LOT OF SITUATIONS.
And as you were told, BF is the only mele attack that mesmer has to deal damage.
+ This attack actualy make mesmers “weak” in a certain way. “forces them to come closer”.

So changing this is most likely out of consideration.

This just sumarizes it all, well said, 1 more nerf and mesmers are going to be 100% useless unless tank specced where all you do is survive, since BF is the only viable defensive skill for going melee, which is nearly the only viable damage build.

So you’re going to ignore every other viable spec you have over one defensive weapon skill you have on a short cool that needs a little toning down like being able to counter it with an AOE attack? One AOE attack counter makes the mesmer useless forgetting the fact you have clones, teleport and stealth for survivability?

What are the other viable specs?

As I pointed out earlier in the thread (and was promptly ignored by the haters), BF is the only mesmer weapon skill in the game that does decent damage without relying on a clone, and it’s also one of the only mesmer weapon skills that has any survivability on it that isn’t dependent on a clone.

It’s not a coincidence most mesmers use sword/x and staff. They are the two weapons that actually provide decent abilities that arn’t illusion centic. Aside from those two weapons basically everything a mesmer does involves illusions.

I do not think it’s a great idea to take the mesmer class and make it even MORE dependent on illusions.

BF could certainly be nerfed but you’d have to go back and systematically make other mesmer skills not dependent on illusions more powerful to compensate. I am not sure you would like the change and it would certainly take too much time and energy for anet given their generally glacial pace when it comes to class balancing.

So many clueless mesmer haters posting in here.
A lot of dopey kittens posting theoretical and mathematical possibilities when simply, majority of the time the setting or circumstances won’t allow for it (referring to that useless rant by mufas).

Also people crying about mesmer having stealth aswell? Well I don’t know about other people, but the only stealth skill I use in pvp is decoy which is 3 secs stealth on a 32sec cd. I use time warp instead of mass invisibility and I don’t see many people running around with a torch, unlike a thief who can spam stealth.

Anyway there is a kitten load more of bullkitten that should be responded to that have been posted by clueless kittens who don’t think or compare with other classes before actually spilling their kitten on barely viable (as of right now) mesmers, but I just can’t be bothered.

Lastly, in the state of the game vid, the was a part talking about skill balancing etc and hundred blades came up. Basically what was said is that it is not going to get nerfed and people need to learn how to play and avoid it. Lol 8-10 secs is more than enough time to melt a light armor glass cannon in melee range, not to mention (most) people in (most) situation are probably going to wep swap which adds another 9 secs and I stand with what I said in an earlier post. If you can’t kill someone who gets 2secs invulnerability every 17-19 secs, you do need to learn how to play lol.

Josh, you are just insisting on lying. 2 sec invul is available to mesmer every 8 seconds. Claiming it is every 20 seconds is a lie. You will not respond to my post because you have no answer, stop pretending to be ‘above it all’.
Tonight I rolled mesmer to test. Yeah, you can easily use BF 4 times in 30 sec as i described above. I went straight to duel a decent warrior and killed him. Should I be able to do so in my first fight on a class? No, but it happened for some reason.

Mufa.1326:

Josh, you are just insisting on lying. 2 sec invul is available to mesmer every 8 seconds. Claiming it is every 20 seconds is a lie. You will not respond to my post because you have no answer, stop pretending to be ‘above it all’.
Tonight I rolled mesmer to test. Yeah, you can easily use BF 4 times in 30 sec as i described above. I went straight to duel a decent warrior and killed him. Should I be able to do so in my first fight on a class? No, but it happened for some reason.

That warrior was obviously Pro, and claiming it is every 20 seconds is about accurate. If you sit with your sword out constantly what exactly do you plan on doing while BF is on cooldown? Auto attacking? in pvp? melee? with cloth? Learn to play the game and you’ll understand what he meant. Weapon swap.

Jake Dressler.8204:

Mufa.1326:

Josh, you are just insisting on lying. 2 sec invul is available to mesmer every 8 seconds. Claiming it is every 20 seconds is a lie. You will not respond to my post because you have no answer, stop pretending to be ‘above it all’.
Tonight I rolled mesmer to test. Yeah, you can easily use BF 4 times in 30 sec as i described above. I went straight to duel a decent warrior and killed him. Should I be able to do so in my first fight on a class? No, but it happened for some reason.

That warrior was obviously Pro, and claiming it is every 20 seconds is about accurate. If you sit with your sword out constantly what exactly do you plan on doing while BF is on cooldown? Auto attacking? in pvp? melee? with cloth? Learn to play the game and you’ll understand what he meant. Weapon swap.

Jake pretty much summed up what I was going to reply with but I guess in a 1v1 circumstance it may be possible, but even then the opposing enemy would have to be teribad lol and as I stated in my previous post “majority of situations and circumstances”. In SPvP I rarely get to 1v1 without starting to get attacked from one of their team mates or just more players entering the battle in general. Even in TPvP where 1v1s are a better chance of happening, I doubt many are going to lose to a glass cannon melee mesmer sitting in sword all day unless they are really bad.