Guild Wars 2

I hate this class, I hate its design.
I hate its clone/phantasm mechanic. A class that relies on confusing its enemies by filling the screen with garbage has no place in PvP.
I can understand that anet wanted to recreate the annoyance of the gw1 mesmer, but how they did it was certainly not the right way.
There’s already so much going on in a team fight, so much particle effects, why would they design a class like the mesmer that adds so much “noise” to a fight.

Fighting them 1v1 is not enjoyable, even when I win, there’s nothing but frustration left. No “wow that was a close fight”, no “nice play”, just frustration.

So what are your thoughts on this class, specifically their “pet” summoning mechanic ?

Mesmer is an acquired taste, but I don’t think there is much that can be done about that, hopefully with more practice or experience you will find it a lot less frustrating to deal with. !

You’re right about mesmers being annoying to fight. Even as a person who is already acquainted with taking out mesmers, I still find them the most annoying things in the world.

With that said though, when I make a new build or any build for that matter, they are always the first group I want to test it on. It’s always the same question “Can I kill a good mesmer with this?” and after that it’s “Can I kill a good Ranger with this?”.

I agree with topic starter. There are to much noise from mesmer and fight with them is really boring, even if i win. I have no problem with looking for original. But mesmer make me nervous and sometimes I want to shout “Die! Die! Die!”, but he just use decoy or blink and disappears

Remove their ability to create illusions and phantasms!! /sarcasm..
Target the real player, fight that one (kite the illusions that does damage), and whenever he turns invisible, just wait for him to appear again, and re-target. It’s not hard to fight them, as long as you know what their abilites are, and it’s not frustrating.
I think the Ranger’s Pet is more frustrating than the Mesmer’s Illusions, even though I don’t really have a problem with the Ranger’s Pet (I’m not one of those who screams at ANET so they’ll nerf them).

I think the issue has more to do with “general pet” design.

Gw2 is an action-packed game where spotting skill animations and weapon swaps is the only way to know what’s happening to you.

Factor in the fast pace of combat and you have “pets” being an absolute nuisance : clones, phantasms, ranger pets, necro’s minions, turrets, thief’s guilds…. they all add to the visual mess of fights and worse they require part of one’s attention to dodge their attack.

It’s hard enough to keep track of the distortion on the mesmer, but if you have to monitor 2-3 clones in addition, all of them in a purple field that blurries everything, then it becomes a bit too much for a single brain and the gameplay becomes much less precise and elegant – that’s an understatement

Hugs.1856:

It’s hard enough to keep track of the distortion on the mesmer, but if you have to monitor 2-3 clones in addition, all of them in a purple field that blurries everything, then it becomes a bit too much for a single brain and the gameplay becomes much less precise and elegant – that’s an understatement

Exactly!

I love playing with and against (shatter)Mesmers, it’s a very tricky char in Duels and a MU you really have to practise and study.

Illusions don’t confuse me at all, ppl make it easy distinguishing themselves from the Illusions.

In bigger Teamfights, it’s another story though….

PowerBottom.5796:

I love playing with and against (shatter)Mesmers, it’s a very tricky char in Duels and a MU you really have to practise and study.

Illusions don’t confuse me at all, ppl make it easy distinguishing themselves from the Illusions.

In bigger Teamfights, it’s another story though….

True. In a teamfight it can be hard to just blur out the illusions, as there’s so many other things going on at the same spot. However, they can’t just throw away all these abilities either.. It’s been here since start, and will be here till end.

It’s not a matter of spotting the real mesmer from its clones.

It’s a matter of devoting part of one’s attention to the pets to dodge their attack.

And as the fight grows messy, you start to rely more on """""""intuition"""""""" and AoE to deal with the many threats. Not too sure how it’s healthy for a competitive game.

Hehe. True true, however, there’s only some few of the illusions that you’ll have to dodge, and those aren’t hard to spot. Most of them barely even does damage, and it’s easy to spot the real player as his movements are different. However, in a teamfight, you often have atleast one player using AoE skills, which means that these illusions get killed pretty fast.

You aren’t fighting the mesmer though, you’re fighting its clones. Bad design all around , at least you are fighting a ranger even though he has a pet. Mesmer is like 90% passive gameplay, I don’t see esports in that at all especially in phantasm builds where they just keep their clones up the entire time and lolblurrfrenzy. They should not last that long, imo destroy that entire build and force mes to blow their clones.

How are you not fighting the mesmer? I’m always fighting him. Got no idea what you’re talking about.

It gets worst in group fights.

You could be targetting the mesmer then all of a sudden he’ll stealth and then you have to retarget, but usually by that time theres 3 clones, not to mention other junk like necro’s minions, rangers pet, thieves clones and stealthing, ele’s with ADD painting the screen, engineers dropping their 100 turrents and grenades and bombs on the ground. On top of that ele’s can summon elemental pets, people can have rock dogs, you can get jagged horrors running around. Its as if kindergarten kids are painting the screen, nothing elegant in group fights just messy mayhem.

The couple of seconds for you to regather your thoughts and find the real mesmer means he either got away or your in a world of pain. Tho it goes both ways in group fights, I can’t imagine anything uglier then 5 mesmers vs 5 necro minion masters.

I kind of agree that there is too much clutter on the screen sometimes, especially during group fights. I don’t know of any other mmo pvp that has this many npcs. Its kinda ridiculous, but it is what it is.

My point is they are too passive, most of their damage comes from just letting their clones do all the work. No skill at all, at least shatter builds have to time their burst and actually blow the clones up.

I am just not in favor of builds that have you doing none of the work to take a target down, maybe it’s just me but that is lame gameplay. I imagine it would be pretty faceroll if I could summon 2 thieves guild worth of NPCs and just sit back loling as I watch them do 3-4k crits, don’t you agree?

Psychogene.6780:

It gets worst in group fights.

You could be targetting the mesmer then all of a sudden he’ll stealth and then you have to retarget, but usually by that time theres 3 clones, not to mention other junk like necro’s minions, rangers pet, thieves clones and stealthing, ele’s with ADD painting the screen, engineers dropping their 100 turrents and grenades and bombs on the ground. On top of that ele’s can summon elemental pets, people can have rock dogs, you can get jagged horrors running around. Its as if kindergarten kids are painting the screen, nothing elegant in group fights just messy mayhem.

The couple of seconds for you to regather your thoughts and find the real mesmer means he either got away or your in a world of pain. Tho it goes both ways in group fights, I can’t imagine anything uglier then 5 mesmers vs 5 necro minion masters.

I kind of agree that there is too much clutter on the screen sometimes, especially during group fights. I don’t know of any other mmo pvp that has this many npcs. Its kinda ridiculous, but it is what it is.

This is a MAJOR problem in both pvp and pve. We never had this crap in GW1.

Honestly i can’t see anything left of the GW1 mesmer but the color theme. It feels like the mesmer and the necromancer should swap mechanics entirely – currently while playing the mesmer i feel like a minion bomber with more burst, CC, team support and survivability. The necromancer, while their minions are useless in comparison to what the mesmer has access to, has a lot of skills that turns their enemies abilities against them (Corrupt Boons etc), and creates an actual mind game where the enemy has decide when to use his condition removals and boons and the necromancer has to decide when to use his condition bursts or epidemic.
They got rid of the GW1 mesmers mind games and replaced it with more chaos.
So one clone didn’t trick you? Then how about 3? Still not enough? Well how about if i just blow them up in your face!
If one would replace the mesmers exploding clones and phantasms with exploding necro minions and switched their color theme to green we’d have a better version of the minion necro right there.

It’s funny if every enemy on the opposite team is using pet-builds. How often do you see a thief using Thieves Guild in a pre-made team in Tournaments. Cause it’s the pre-made team fights that are the issue, as those are organized. However, if the Mesmer stealths, and then there’s suddenly 3 clones + Mesmer, there’s most likely a team mate of yours that is able to cast an AoE attack to just 1-hit all of those clones. You just got to react fast, which comes back to skill. It’s not a problem, seriously.

Invasion@:
how offten you meet pre maid team ?
As Thief you have not so much trouble with Mesmer as if you play Necro or Engi.
So if you can’t burst your dmg pretty fast when you target Mesmer and kill him, some classes can’t.

In compare mesmer clones are much powerful as Minions of Turrent.

I’m a mesmer and I find them the most annoying class to fight against

Luckily my phantasms are not confused by clones or stealth. Good bye squishy!

I enjoy both playing Mesmer and playing against Mesmer.
All the clones, ‘garbage’, needing to retarget and so on are just part of the game’s mechanic. It just hurts you another way then conditions do; it hurts you by confusing you personally. And that’s pretty much capturing the essence of the class.

Y’all just need to get more Jedi skills. Use the force!

It seems obvious that all the classes were NOT created equally, because they were created for PvE. They took a bunch of ideas for classes, sprinkled conditions unevenly across their weaponsets, tossed in some attributes in the trait lines (that either have great synergy or don’t) and made a PvE game. Then they tacked on a single-format PvP style and tried to cash in on e-sports. They’re a LONG ways off from balancing the classes because the systems they are based on are inherently nonequivalent.

Yeah, mesmers are just the way they are, like when someone tells you ‘just because’, but that doesn’t make it right or fair. It’s a cop out. So is: ‘get somemore skill’, ‘oh, you can do this and this and this’, and ‘they melt in a team fight’. Amazingly, I’m not seeing it much here, but I’m really tired of seeing people say ‘Yeah Phantasm Mesmers dominate 1v1, but in a team fight, it’s all fair’. No it’s not. If anything it’s worse. So what if one of your teammates can scorch the earth and destroy all their clones with some huge aoe, they spam them just as fast as they are destroyed (and they don’t just fall over with one hit anyway). More over, with that much chaos on the screen, its even harder to track them, AND if you ever got frustrated with clones running body blocks for the mesmer, enjoy them blocking for a whole team on a node. The second time someone on the opposite team cc’s you, you’re gonna eat all those clone attacks.

The whole class is inherently broken. They should have more direct damage moves, less clone spamming, and possibly not stealth at all. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the devs have the incentive or leash-range to make the big changes necessary to put them on an even playing field. Not even considering the unfun format of conquest, balancing disparities alone put this game far out of reach from e-sports (which I personally couldn’t care less about). I just want a fun game with fair fights, and mesmers ruin this game for me (and others) far and away more than any other class. And yeah, I made mine about 7 months ago: it doesn’t matter if you know all their moves and exactly what they can do, they simply out-class every other profession. You’ve got an uber ele or BM build that can survive anything and gets S tier sometimes?: doesn’t make it right or equal.

Since you ask, I will put my thoughts here, save me creating another thread.

I think when you kill/get rid of a mesmer’s “clone” they should slightly take away some of the mesmer’s health. because letting one profession have so many helpers is simply not fair.

:D I’m amused that after all the nerfs to the mesmer, my joke nerfs are now being proposed seriously.

Well there was that cute little buff that allows turning people into a bird that can’t get away on the move. I guess it wasn’t enough to just remove people from the battle for 10 seconds: they had to be easily humiliated and destroyed.

I think a lot of issues regarding people fighting mesmer come down to little usage of peripheral vision. You watch the actual mesmer and watch the clones in your peripheral vision. You never, ever stare at a phant or a clone. If you’re always find and target a mesmer, most are an easy kill. And no drop target excuses. Since when do you need an icon to tell you what to kill? Click and kill.

I see this complaint a lot, and IMO I think this stems more from the effectiveness of their passive mechanics (phantasms) than noise (lots of other classes make noise and clutter up the screen). For example, imagine if Mesmers had no phantasms so they could not deal significant damage without actually engaging you in the fight. In this scenario Mesmers might still be annoying due to clones and stealth (along the lines of thieves), but probably a lot less frustrating for players.

IMO I think it would better for the game, from an enjoyment perspective, to reduce the effectiveness of passive mechanics (BM rangers, Phantasm Mesmers, turrets, minions, etc.) and correspondingly increase the effectiveness of their active mechanics and/or make these passive mechanics themselves more active. ANet devs stated that they have these kinds of mechanics because “some players enjoy playing these specs” but honestly they tend to be the least popular specs around. And the ones that are popular are, IMO, more due to their effectiveness than enjoyment factor.

I do actually enjoy phantasm build immensely, and I run a phantasmal regeneration + mantras build. You already assume too much. And yes, mesmers, the masters of misdirection and deceit can misdirect and are deceitful! Who would have guessed!

You think mesmer is annoying to fight?

How about some new thief builds which can re-stealth MULTIPLE times after doing damage (read as in 1/2 second later) and take you to 10% within 10 seconds. Also they are specced burst, but mind you, they can heal about the same as Eles did before nerf, in case you actually damage one… Also because of the stealth thing they do, they work around any stun aura or other effect that might otherwise affect them if they CC someone (not sure if new bug or just now popped up).

Also considering other pet classes that bring much more clutter, I find mesmers enjoyable to fight in current meta (both as Ele and Warrior)

The real fun begins when you face 3 or more mesmers at the same time!

Quite honestly, Anet went for a visually appealing game, but they focused too much on that aspect, having a gazillion npc’s and effects all over the place.

Anyone remember how the “pro” players used to tweak games like Quake and CS to be as ‘clean’ as possible, all in favor of improving actual gameplay by removing excessive and distracting clutter and making things easier on the eyes?

The mesmer class mechanic, in combination with all other things going on is a bit over the top for most ppl. While you struggle to first of all find the real mesmer after a swap and/or stealth or whatever, then retarget the actual player in all this mess, the mesmer can continue to punish you nonstop.

The way they implemented the thief and the mesmer was to make them too reliant on abusing a somewhat faulty game mechanic (= screen clutter). They both should have been designed completely differently.

Mathias.9657:

You aren’t fighting the mesmer though, you’re fighting its clones. Bad design all around , at least you are fighting a ranger even though he has a pet. Mesmer is like 90% passive gameplay, I don’t see esports in that at all especially in phantasm builds where they just keep their clones up the entire time and lolblurrfrenzy. They should not last that long, imo destroy that entire build and force mes to blow their clones.

You are not fighting the Mesmer? It’s 90% passive? Okay so I guess those 15+ stacks of confusion I just slapped on your whiny kitten all came from illusions….I guess my clones just shatter themselves without me doing jack… When I fight mesmers I only focus the phantasms if I NEED to… And you can usually tell if the Mesmer is a phantasm or a shatter very quick by idk seeing if he shatters! Man people I swear… this game has a lot of classes that can use AI. Mesmers have no choice….

Mathias.9657:

My point is they are too passive, most of their damage comes from just letting their clones do all the work. No skill at all, at least shatter builds have to time their burst and actually blow the clones up.

Sadly that’s true. The mesmer class mechanic is c00l, and that’s the reason they designed it this way, cos it’s c00l. Imo this game has way too many effects, way too many uselessly confusing things, way too much aoe spam. This is not a game breaking problem in 1v1 or really small scale, but it’s directly proportional to the fight size. That’s why wvw is so bad, it’s pure chaos. In bigger fights you can’t even understand what is happening. Mesmer mechanic contributes largely to this chaos, just like necro wells/circles spamming. Mesmer clones, minions, pets, bring absolutely nothing to the game and just make it messy.
The typical fanboy anwer is always “just l2p and target the real mesmer”. Yes after a while recognizing the real one is very easy and that’s way i can’t really call the class op, cos it’s not. But this does not mean is well designed, cos tbh i consider its design terrible.

Fjandi.2516:

Mathias.9657:

My point is they are too passive, most of their damage comes from just letting their clones do all the work. No skill at all, at least shatter builds have to time their burst and actually blow the clones up.

Sadly that’s true. The mesmer class mechanic is c00l, and that’s the reason they designed it this way, cos it’s c00l. Imo this game has way too many effects, way too many uselessly confusing things, way too much aoe spam. This is not a game breaking problem in 1v1 or really small scale, but it’s directly proportional to the fight size. That’s why wvw is so bad, it’s pure chaos. In bigger fights you can’t even understand what is happening. Mesmer mechanic contributes largely to this chaos, just like necro wells/circles spamming. Mesmer clones, minions, pets, bring absolutely nothing to the game and just make it messy.
The typical fanboy anwer is always “just l2p and target the real mesmer”. Yes after a while recognizing the real one is very easy and that’s way i can’t really call the class op, cos it’s not. But this does not mean is well designed, cos tbh i consider its design terrible.

in a zerg fight… mesmers don’t run clone builds because the clones die before they are of any use.. mesmers suffer the most when it comes to zerg fights… especially since our confusion got kitten slapped by ANet last patch.

jportell.2197:

in a zerg fight… mesmers don’t run clone builds because the clones die before they are of any use.. mesmers suffer the most when it comes to zerg fights… especially since our confusion got kitten slapped by ANet last patch.

Yep that’s actually true my bad. I didn’t mean 40+ ppl anyway, just anything >5 shows how bad designed this game is. Oh btw that’s not a mesmer-only issue tbh, many classes have problems in zerg fights (i don’t give a kitten about that tbh, zerg fights should not be encouraged anyway, too bad this game does exactly the opposite).

I mean just create a team with 5 asura mesmers, all of them identical, with long similar names…now gl at targetting the real ones. Ofc that’s not an issue cos this setup is not really viable in the current pvp capture the flag kitten-mode, but this is a clear reason why they are not introducing new game modes. Why? Cos a different game mode will show how bad designed this game is. Too bad for anet most players have already realized that.