Guild Wars 2

EDIT: It should be noted that this post was made before the Mantra fix and that there are also incoming nerfs to PU. The only parts that are still relevant now are my dislike for CS’s and BD’s designs. It’s not even about being OP, it’s that I feel that traits like that make the class easier to play and can help poor players survive and deal damage much easier than they should.

I am not an amazing Mesmer player and I can now do very well with not a ton of effort. Even with the upcoming PU nerf it’ll still be a great trait for peeling.

I’m sometimes baffled when I read patch notes. Pre-patch I had started to really fall in love with the class, it was as good as you were. The only major issue was its weakness to Thieves, which was an obstacle that you could overcome if you played well enough. I played just one long session of Mes post patch with a PU Mantra Shatter…and had to shelf the class until further notice because I didn’t feel skillful when I did well, just cheap. I hoped that the few issues would be smoothed out and I could go back to playing the class; only to watch them totally sidestep the real issues and nerf things like Mirror Blade and fixing a bug that might have been a really nice feature with some CD changes to Mantras.

There were generally 2-3 main issues people had with the Mesmer buffs:

1. Confounding Suggestions: Combined with Mantra of Distractions it could feel like you’re constantly being stunned. However, the issue wasn’t the Mantra, it was this trait. There’s no real skill involved with it, and even post Mantra fix you still see it used to set up easy Shatters from stealth.

A acceptable solution would have been making dazes stun on interrupt. Considering interrupts are supposed to be a big part of Mes in the first place this not only fits but also makes the trait much weaker for ambush spikes and it becomes more skill based. If that was still too light of change a slight increase to the ICD could be added.

2. Prismatic Understanding: Really? Why would you ever buff what was already one of the most hated traits in the game? It’s not only cheap to anyone facing it, but it allows you to stack stealth out of sight of an enemy and do a massive burst before they even know you’re there.

This trait also totally throws off any sort of prediction you could once do. If a Mes had Decoy and a Torch, when they stealthed you knew the burst would probably come within the next 3 seconds. Now, you have to blindly guess if it’s going to come in 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 seconds.

In the past the way Mesmer did stealth was a much more reasonable way than Thief. They’re stealth lasted just the right amount of time to catch your breath or set up your spike, but not so long that they could basically reset the fight.

Now, the line between Mesmer and Thief have been blurred as both can effectively camp in stealth. In fact, countering Mes stealth is more difficult that Thief now.

3. Blinding Dissipation: Again, another trait that blends the line between Mesmer and Thief. While they cant use it as much as Thieves, it was also added in the same patch that Ele received Blinding Ashes. This means that now Thief, Mesmer, Ele, and Guardian all have reliable access to blinds. Guard Blinds are generally obviously telegraphed, only 1 is difficult to avoid and you have to trait for it and it has a decent CD.

In my opinion blind was never something Mesmer needed. Also, because of how many (Engi, Necro, Warrior, Ranger) classes are designed it is now painfully easy to get a free stomp on them almost on demand without having to spend Distortion on it.

If these three things, heck even just the first 2, were what ANet focused on, we would have had a perfectly viable Mesmer class that was both strong and still generally skill based. Skills that give instant stun on a low ICD that can be used in stealth AND a skill that allows you to camp stealth was not what the class needed. Mantras could have been viable if the CD mechanic had not been fixed and the CDs of Mantras were increased.

I want to play Mesmer again, but atm the class still feels carried by traits and not the player.

Alright.. This settles it. There is some secret warrior agenda vs mesmer going on here…

This was indeed how I played mesmer before the patch. Stealth was just a quick breather – a second or two. A quick burst of confusion as the opponent realizes you’re not there and back again.

PU has really cheapened the mesmer. We used to take pride in not being cheesy like the thief. Now I feel that mesmer stealth is much more cheesy than the thief with no tells (insta cast stealth) and long durations, blinds etc.

I used to carefully save my F4 invuln for stomping. Now bah – pressing any of the F skills gives you a blind and a guaranteed stomp against so many classes.

Time to face the truth – we are not the “skilled” class anymore.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Alright.. This settles it. There is some secret warrior agenda vs mesmer going on here…

I’m not Anti-Mesmer. I am however Anti-These 3 Traits. I would probably be maining Mesmer if not for those traits. It also doesn’t help that several builds I WANTED to run have bugged traits atm…

BurrTheKing.8571:

I want to play Mesmer again, but atm the class still feels carried by traits and not the player.

Funny you didn’t feel that way during Hambow’s solid Reign on the meta.

I’ve been having the most fun playing the class post patch, I agree with your views to the CS trait, having an easy burst set-up from stealth at practically any-time is just to strong and rewards unskilled play.

I disagree with changing PU too much, it gives a breather to our defensive options, but I believe a 1+ cast time should be added to the torch stealth skill (So that it can be countered like thieve’s stealths). And possibly make that mass invis can’t be used while in stealth to avoid promoting stealth camp.

I think mesmer is fine the way it is, It would be annoying if the balance team defiled the class any further like they defiled Condi Engi/Condi Necro/SD Thief/Longbow Warrior.

Phantom Master.9582:

BurrTheKing.8571:

I want to play Mesmer again, but atm the class still feels carried by traits and not the player.

Funny you didn’t feel that way during Hambow’s solid Reign on the meta.

I’ve been having the most fun playing the class post patch, I agree with your views to the CS trait, having an easy burst set-up from stealth at practically any-time is just to strong and rewards unskilled play.

I disagree with changing PU too much, it gives a breather to our defensive options, but I believe a 1+ cast time should be added to the torch stealth skill (So that it can be countered like thieve’s stealths). And possibly make that mass invis can’t be used while in stealth to avoid promoting stealth camp.

I think mesmer is fine the way it is, It would be annoying if the balance team defiled the class any further like they defiled Condi Engi/Condi Necro/SD Thief/Longbow Warrior.

I didn’t really like Hambow that much, but Warrior didn’t have much else at the time. I actually played an old version of Skullcracker back then as well unless I was with people I wanted to do well with.

Even at it’s height, Hambow was NEVER as good as Celemancers and PU Shatter Mesmers are now.

I personally thing PU should just be remade into something else. I hate random, and this trait is the very definition of it. Random boons and it allows for you to attack at your leisure in many cases. I would much rather have a trait I KNOW is going to have a certain effect when I use it.

Disabling Mass Invis while already stealthed would be welcomed though.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Alright.. This settles it. There is some secret warrior agenda vs mesmer going on here…

I’m not Anti-Mesmer. I am however Anti-These 3 Traits. I would probably be maining Mesmer if not for those traits. It also doesn’t help that several builds I WANTED to run have bugged traits atm…

This is pretty much how I feel about mesmer right now perfectly lol. Id like to run different builds but CS, BD, and PU are just so broken you have to take them.

And what of our drawbacks we used to have to dissuade people from slaughtering our clones in seconds? Not that they needed to be put off as the amount of AoE effectively makes them dead half the time anyway.

At least when I had cripple on clone death I knew I’d be able to outrun them with my slow kitten mesmer if they kept mowing my burst down, no more.

You might love lugging boulders up hills just to be on par with what everyone else is doing while watching youtube and enjoying a walk in the park but I don’t. Especially when the reward was what? Feeling you beat that guy with skill because you’re class is so hilariously bad your only relevance in most metas is portal?

apharma.3741:

And what of our drawbacks we used to have to dissuade people from slaughtering our clones in seconds? Not that they needed to be put off as the amount of AoE effectively makes them dead half the time anyway.

At least when I had cripple on clone death I knew I’d be able to outrun them with my slow kitten mesmer if they kept mowing my burst down, no more.

You might love lugging boulders up hills just to be on par with what everyone else is doing while watching youtube and enjoying a walk in the park but I don’t. Especially when the reward was what? Feeling you beat that guy with skill because you’re class is so hilariously bad your only relevance in most metas is portal?

Slow? Mesmer has some of the best in-combat mobility available. Don’t mistake movement speed for mobility. Skills like Blink and Staff 2 are way more valuable than any Swoop/Rush in PvP.

Yes in PvP, Mesmer has great in combat mobility and the proximity of points and the entire game mode shores up this crippling weakness of the Mesmer, currently. Not played stronghold so no idea how that will shift things.

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

I guess I could also bring up PvE as another place mesmers are painfully slow but it’s not the right place.

The point I’m making though is before we had options to at least get something defensive from the mindless slaughter of clones and phantasms, whether it be cripple to help kite, weakness to reduce damage or confusion in condition builds.

We lost all that, if we didn’t get some of the things mentioned in this thread we would be in a worse state than pre patch, certainly outside of PvP and it’s debatable how effective mesmer would be in PvP too. Remember everyone else got a lot more defence and offence with the traits too, a lot are minors in trait lines so just always on without really picking.

Great examples are thieves with -25% damage in stealth, guards getting a lot better aegis application, elementalists with elemental attunement/blinding ashes. I’d list others but it’s very late and I’m too tired but you get the idea.

Mirror/projectile deflection uptime is also potentially waay too high. I don’t understand why they buffed this aspect of Mesmer so much. With just the clone body blocking, stealth, invuln shatter, etc they had plenty of stuff to deal with projectiles.

apharma.3741:

Yes in PvP, Mesmer has great in combat mobility and the proximity of points and the entire game mode shores up this crippling weakness of the Mesmer, currently. Not played stronghold so no idea how that will shift things.

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

I guess I could also bring up PvE as another place mesmers are painfully slow but it’s not the right place.

The point I’m making though is before we had options to at least get something defensive from the mindless slaughter of clones and phantasms, whether it be cripple to help kite, weakness to reduce damage or confusion in condition builds.

We lost all that, if we didn’t get some of the things mentioned in this thread we would be in a worse state than pre patch, certainly outside of PvP and it’s debatable how effective mesmer would be in PvP too. Remember everyone else got a lot more defence and offence with the traits too, a lot are minors in trait lines so just always on without really picking.

Great examples are thieves with -25% damage in stealth, guards getting a lot better aegis application, elementalists with elemental attunement/blinding ashes. I’d list others but it’s very late and I’m too tired but you get the idea.

Not really. Mesmer was already a privileged class. And Thief and Guardian buffs don’t even compare to what Mesmer has gotten.

It was never hard to spam evades while counting people’s dodges. There was NOTHING hard about Mesmer other than maybe portal plays and rotation awareness, which already isn’t that hard to understand.

The blinds are unnecessary, the mantra instant cast with confounding suggestions isn’t necessary.

I think you’re confusing mesmer with SD thief or ele who can actually spam evades.

Mesmer has a rooted evade on sword with a 12s CD and a 52s CD distortion…so where are we getting the “spam evades” from coz vigor got nerfed so hard it’s almost a cover boon now.

Or are you now meaning stealth and classing that as an evade? Once again 30s CD and 40s CD respectively and a blink.

Here is where I compare guard defensive abilities (medi guard) with Mesmer. It’s very clear that while Mesmer has the superior disengage guardian completely blows Mesmer out of the water for sustain and in combat survivability. That’s without mentioning guard completely destroys mesmer for its group support with Mesmer having portal.

Right traits, but wrong assessment from my point of view.

First, all the talk about blurring the line between Mesmers and Thieves is rather suberficial. Mesmers always had those characteristics. It’s also not true that Blinds of other classes are significantly more telegraphed. The only thing I might agree with is that personal stealth of Mesmers became too much with the recent buff to PU.

Confounding Suggestion

People need to stop suggesting it only to work on interrupt. You might as well just remove the trait since it would only become a low-budget version of Chaotic Interruption since Daze + Immobilize basically equals a Stun. It’s not like the trait would become useless but there simply is no point in doing so.

I wouldn’t try to fix it. Just completely rework it.

Prismatic Understanding

The stealth duration indeed needs to go. But it should partially be moved to the baseline Mass Invisibility and Veil. Decoy and Prestige don’t need the additional duration. However, skills with long cooldowns like MI and Veil should actually do more than 2-5s stealth. Everything else would just be laughable.

Blinding Dissipation

Mesmer always was meant to have Blinds but they took it away from Glamours. It’s not a new addition, it’s a reallocation. It not being unblockable should make the trait all right. People really downtalk the sacrifice you have to make for wasting your shatters just for Blinds while they exaggerate the work it takes to get rid of one Blind. I’m not saying that random Blinds on shatters aren’t beneficial at all but it’s not like they are too likely to actually negate the attacks you want to negate.

Holy kitten i can’t believe i only saw this thread now. OP’s description is so perfecttttttt. I feel like you must have read my mind when you made this thread. +111111111

Quadox.7834:

Holy kitten i can’t believe i only saw this thread now. OP’s description is so perfecttttttt. I feel like you must have read my mind when you made this thread. +111111111

Dude, you have been all over the forum yelling how you approve of the PU nerf, how it wasn’t nerfed enough or should be removed etc. Now you even necro month old threads on the subject?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Alright.. This settles it. There is some secret warrior agenda vs mesmer going on here…

It was never a secret.

apharma.3741:

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

…you know Mesmers are getting +25% movespeed less than a month from now, right?

IMO CS is nowhere near OP. You basically have stun on diversion which is a 40s CD. By that logic necro ds 3 is super super super OP because its better than a stun and on a shorter cooldown. PU I agree with and Blinding Disippation I don’t. You basically have only 2 blinds. Mind wrack and CoF, using distort and diversion for blind is just stupid + you need to be close range. This all with PU is a bit over the top but once chrono becomes meta it will be needed for mesmer to function properly and everyone will see that CS and BD are not OP.
So CS and BD crying is invalid, PU crying I support.

Jurica.1742:

IMO CS is nowhere near OP. You basically have stun on diversion which is a 40s CD. By that logic necro ds 3 is super super super OP because its better than a stun and on a shorter cooldown. PU I agree with and Blinding Disippation I don’t. You basically have only 2 blinds. Mind wrack and CoF, using distort and diversion for blind is just stupid + you need to be close range. This all with PU is a bit over the top but once chrono becomes meta it will be needed for mesmer to function properly and everyone will see that CS and BD are not OP.
So CS and BD crying is invalid, PU crying I support.

Im scared of stating my opinion because of forum warriors (not you), but i think Confounding suggestions is not overpowered, rather it makes mesmer too ez. I think this is what OP meant as well, and other in this thread. (plsdon’tkillmepeople)

Amante.8109:

apharma.3741:

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

…you know Mesmers are getting +25% movespeed less than a month from now, right?

Yup tied to chronomancy trait line. Though you actually have to take it over the other lines which is a hard call. Current builds are still the slowest things out there apart from medi guards.

Also just so you know, this is almost a necro thread and when written we/I had no ETA on HoT.

Quadox.7834:

Jurica.1742:

IMO CS is nowhere near OP. You basically have stun on diversion which is a 40s CD. By that logic necro ds 3 is super super super OP because its better than a stun and on a shorter cooldown. PU I agree with and Blinding Disippation I don’t. You basically have only 2 blinds. Mind wrack and CoF, using distort and diversion for blind is just stupid + you need to be close range. This all with PU is a bit over the top but once chrono becomes meta it will be needed for mesmer to function properly and everyone will see that CS and BD are not OP.
So CS and BD crying is invalid, PU crying I support.

Im scared of stating my opinion because of forum warriors (not you), but i think Confounding suggestions is not overpowered, rather it makes mesmer too ez. I think this is what OP meant as well, and other in this thread. (plsdon’tkillmepeople)

Yes, that was my general point.

I was a very “meh” Mesmer prepatch but post patch I was surviving engagements I had no right to just because I could panic spam abilities and shatters to blind and then set up a easy spike that was all but unavoidable.

This thread is from before multiple bug fixes which had Mantras on low CDs and it was very easy to just be consistently putting out stuns.

Even now it’s still a easy way to land spikes and Blinding Dissipation can help you survive in situations you probably shouldn’t have. I think we just see less Mesmers now because D/D is much more broken and players perspective changed. Now the setup is just great as opposed to absurd. I still can’t go back to my Mes because I just don’t feel skillful doing well on it anymore. I was aspiring to master the mechanics to bring out the classes power, now traits can do that for me. Even if I don’t do that I think the class has been forever tainted by the mantra bug and a few traits.

I was so hoping for a off-meta interrupt build too…

There’s nothing wrong with blinding dissipation – especially since it can be avoided and also when people will take dom/duel/chrono because it will be one of the few defensive options in play. This doesn’t need any changes.

I agree CS should have taken the hit rather than mantras.

I’d accept that it’s too easy to survive when you shouldn’t if all classes were like Mesmer was pre patch.

Unfortunately you look at things like guardian both medi and bunker, DD/staff ele, DP thief by anyone who’s at least aware of the surroundings, warrior, engineer with the chained immunities and blocks.

Just about the only 3 classes I could say you had to work hard to survive and perform your role were mesmer, necro and ranger. The spec patch has improved all 3 classes substantially. Only class not getting QQ threads is ranger but then Mesmer is the stronger in both PvP and WvW roaming where you can attribute you dying specifically to that class.

Anyway time to burn Quadox for having an opinion =P (this is a joke before someone takes it wrongly)

To the OP → Don’t play PU. No mesmer that actually likes the class for what it is and played it pre patch does. I hate playing PU and only did so in pugquest for 1 game yesterday as we had no thief and didnt know if we would need the stealth. I play full zerk no vamp runes and illusions or the occasional CI (I also always run staff) and I do perfectly fine in soloq. Don’t shelf this wonderful skillful class just because of 1 skilless build that exists which you don’t really have to play. Thats like shelfing mesmer when you enjoyed it because PU condi existed.

Jurica.1742:

To the OP -> Don’t play PU. No mesmer that actually likes the class for what it is and played it pre patch does. I hate playing PU and only did so in pugquest for 1 game yesterday as we had no thief and didnt know if we would need the stealth. I play full zerk no vamp runes and illusions or the occasional CI (I also always run staff) and I do perfectly fine in soloq. Don’t shelf this wonderful skillful class just because of 1 skilless build that exists which you don’t really have to play. Thats like shelfing mesmer when you enjoyed it because PU condi existed.

This is sort of true and i do run this build myself, but the point of the PvP forums is to provide reasonable suggestions that will improve game balance and feel.

So, to the people who want mesmer to be on the easier side/are happy with it as it is, you should definitely play Chaos traitline or Inspiration traitline (with duelling and domination). There you will find a good burst build that is still not too hard to play if you prefer it not to be. To the mesmers who want a more difficult but more rewarding build, you should choose the Illusions traitline. This is the beauty of Guild Wars 2, we have choices- we don’t have to argue.

The only problem left is therefore the fact that the Illusions trait-line currently doesn’t offer enough reward even though the build is much harder to pull off. A number of things can be done about this. I don’t know what would work best, but i had this idea:

Move Blinding Dissipation to the Illusions Trait line. The Illusions line has always been about shatters, much more so than dueling. We have “Illusionary Retribution”, “Master of Fragmentation”, “Shattered Strength”, “Master of Misdirection”, “Maim the Disillusioned”, you name it. In fact, Blinding Dissipation makes much more sense thematically and in terms of balance in the Illusions-traitline. Not only is illusions the trait-line for shatter traits, it is also the trait-line for conditions. Just look at how well Blinding Dissipation synergizes with Ineptitude for example. I am not sure exactly where you would place it, but i do think that there are multiple viable choices. Anyone has any thoughts?

Another idea is to simply add the extra bounce on mirror blade back as a trait in illusions- “Mirror Blade has one additional bounce”. In place of the 3% damage per illusion.

Something else you could do is move up Confounding suggestions to master tier. This forces the player to choose between it and Shattered Concentration- both amazing traits. A problem Mesmer has always had is that nothing competes with Boon-strip Shatters.

However the PU nerf should also help with this luckily.

Quadox.7834:

Something else you could do is move up Confounding suggestions to master tier. This forces the player to choose between it and Shattered Concentration- both amazing traits. A problem Mesmer has always had is that nothing competes with Boon-strip Shatters.

This I totally support, and maybe move Furious Interruption down to adept.

Aside from small reduction to frequency of blinds and that adept that makes every daze a stun with no ICD, I think Mesmer should be pretty okeish balanced.

Well, at least untill Chronomancer arrives.

apharma.3741:

And what of our drawbacks we used to have to dissuade people from slaughtering our clones in seconds? Not that they needed to be put off as the amount of AoE effectively makes them dead half the time anyway.

At least when I had cripple on clone death I knew I’d be able to outrun them with my slow kitten mesmer if they kept mowing my burst down, no more.

You might love lugging boulders up hills just to be on par with what everyone else is doing while watching youtube and enjoying a walk in the park but I don’t. Especially when the reward was what? Feeling you beat that guy with skill because you’re class is so hilariously bad your only relevance in most metas is portal?

Complaining about AoE killing your clones, when in reality AoE hitting clones in teamfights in many cases actually meant 100% damage reduction on an actual teammember?

Ever wondered why minionmancer is so popular? It’s not just the obvious abilities and traits… it is that they like to absorb AoE hits from the 5 target limited AoEs.

Clones do the same.

But it doesn’t stop there. If you are using projectiles which don’t pierce, they are like a projectile destroying wall when they all stand in the way. That damage reduction is huge.

That’s one of the big reasons AoE target limit in PvP should be practially unlimited.

Um you do realise clones have about 2.5k health, even a bunker guard can kill them with their staff in a few hits never mind the DD else which are so prevalent killing them almost instantly.

You cannot compare paper thin clones with minions that have anywhere between two and five times more health and considerably more armour. Especially when in a minion build that gives them 50% more health, life siphoning and everything else as well as doing meaningful damage.

People don’t pick minion master because of the AoE limit, they pick it because its a great entry level build that allows you to focus on the fights, positioning etc while some measure of sustain, condi removal and damage are offloaded onto AI.

apharma.3741:

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

They have?

shagwell.1349:

apharma.3741:

In WvW you are the slowest thing outside of a medi guard. Even necros have better and more accessible swiftness than mesmers.

They have?

War horn and spectral walk if both have a 50% uptime on swiftness and if used correctly can give permanent swiftness especially if running pack runes.

Mesmer has…focus and signet of illusions, the former at the moment till balance patch comes doesn’t give swiftness if you have any from another source. Once temporal curtain is fixed they will be the same for swiftness.

Though this is the PvP forums so Mesmer does have better Z axis mobility so it balances out. WvW is a different story but again, this is PvP forum.

Yes it is and it will continue to be but as long as its played in high level…
Someone won with 4 eles in esl but thats fine because they deserve buffs not mesmer.

apharma.3741:

Um you do realise clones have about 2.5k health, even a bunker guard can kill them with their staff in a few hits never mind the DD else which are so prevalent killing them almost instantly.

You cannot compare paper thin clones with minions that have anywhere between two and five times more health and considerably more armour. Especially when in a minion build that gives them 50% more health, life siphoning and everything else as well as doing meaningful damage.

People don’t pick minion master because of the AoE limit, they pick it because its a great entry level build that allows you to focus on the fights, positioning etc while some measure of sustain, condi removal and damage are offloaded onto AI.

3 times 2.5k damage absorbed (not counting overdamage) is 7.5k damage not inflicted on your team. That’s more than your average healskill heals.

And that sort of defense is so easily replaceable, that mesmer can use it as means of damage ontop of having them as damage soakers on the field.

They nerfed exactly what was needed, the amount of stealth