Guild Wars 2

I apologize ahead of time guys, but this is a QQ post regarding the state of mesmer. Does mesmer have room in the current SPvP meta? Sadly the answer is looking more and more like no with each passing day without the interference of A-Net to make sure such things dont happen.

Mesmers are sadly now dealing with what ele’s dealt and are still dealing with, they are were they should be, but all the professions around them have been buffed and put ahead of them. Mesmers are slowly becoming the new ele’s in the SPvP setting (by which i mean they are overshadowed by other professions who fill their role better with less skill required whilst offering more utility and countering them) in the SPvP scene in which thieves counter them and preform their job with less “effort” as roamers due to their high mobility and unlimited access to stealth with certain weapons sets allowing them to constantly move around the map while avoiding combat completely if they need it in order to free cap nodes and/or deal immense burst to help take down targets.

Due to this the mesmer meta was forced to shift from active specs like shatter to passive specs. This is due to the passive meta – mesmers have been forced to take up “cheesy” specs that are hard to counter and rely on little to no actual need or talent to achieve results like phantasm, PU, condition and interrupt/lockdown specs in order to deal with the passive meta from other professions like warriors (which have become all passive lately with stances, signet heal and their insane condi dmg for landing single skills like longbow 5 and off hand sword 4), spirit rangers that passively apply conditions while being healed and revived by their elite if you do manage to take them down and power rangers (referred to as auto attack rangers), condition necromancers who lock you down with fears (that do a lot of dmg when traited), and sadly many more specs that have become the “go to” specs that are mainly if not the only specs that you encounter lately in SPvP hotjoins, solo ques and team ques.

Yet the sad part about this is that even most “cheesy” mesmer specs that most are forced into are regarded by a large player base as not up to par with other profession’s “cheese”. In the past a mesmer was a great help to a team with their utility and impressive burst, now their burst is overshadowed and their utility is un-needed whilst having their roles filled out better with less effort needed. This sadly is the reason that you will not see any twitch GW2 streamer play mesmer in SPvP, the “famous” mesmer players such as Helseth have openly expressed themselves regarding the subject and Helseth for example re-rolled to thief with Sensotix following suit afterwards from what ive heard.

Ive discussed this topic with many players and streamers on twitch which have given some of the points stated above. No one that i have discussed the topic with has yet to tell me otherwise, and the only positive information i recieved from said people is that mesmers are exactly where they should be (like i have stated before) but are overshadowed in many aspects such as burst, mobility, survivablity ETC and thus rendered inefficient by most and only one mesmer exsists in high tier (Misha from 55HP monks) as far as ive been made aware of. If i am mistaken in any of my points id be glad to be corrected and ill make adjustments to my post. Thanks for everyone who took the time to read.

Helseth still plays mesmer, he was just QQ-ing when he said he quit. He now plays 20/20/30/0/0 chaotic interruption build on his team in EU. He streams on hitbox, not twitch, so you won’t see him on twitch.

Also, sensotix was playing mesmer in the last esl 2v2 tourney.

And yes, thieves just need to be brought in line. They are a cancer that deletes so many fun and otherwise viable builds from existing.

Helseth doesn’t have a team anymore, per se. I haven’t seen him run with VotF in weeks. He may be playing mesmer, but he’s not really playing it competitively.
Sensotix is running thief on his team.

ANet will never nerf thieves. You are better off asking ANet to give Mesmers cheese builds like thieves do. I’d start with:

Blurred Frenzy on a 6 second cooldown, resets on crit.
Portal on a 45 second cooldown.
Blink on a 20 second cooldown.
Decoy on a 15 second cooldown.
Increase MH Sword damage by about 45%.

That would put our mobility, stealth and damage output on par with thieves.

It might sound insane, but:

Pistol Whip > Blurred Frenzy
Shortbow 5 > Blink
Shadow Trap > Portal
Thief Sword #1 > Mesmer Sword #1 (by about 45%!)

We should really do an objective analysis of how much more powerful thieves are then Mesmers. It’s insane.

AND… ANet buffed thief regen! wtf?

Might as well buff warrior MH sword too because the MH sword autoattack chain doesn’t remove a boon or apply weakness.

sorrychief.2563:

Might as well buff warrior MH sword too because the MH sword autoattack chain doesn’t remove a boon or apply weakness.

not sure if throwing another class to compair is the right road to go down considering thief and mesmer can have a much more similar play style than warrior. (not to mention the innate/passive survivabillity of a warrior compared to these 2 other classes)

However that being said I think most can agree
Double stack of Bleeds + cripple AND/OR 0.8 Coefficient + Cripple > 2 stacks of vuln + Boon removal. (unless you get lucky and remove a high stack of might or protection.)

and cripple on a chain would be a big deal for mesmers to have when you consider things like ileap+Swap being buggy and hindering a lot of the pre burst setup.

PU mesmer is one of the cheese specs.

style.6173:

PU mesmer is one of the cheese specs.

To do what exactly. You can’t cap points while in stealth.

Thieves are kicking out pretty much any light armoured profession out of the meta, not only Mesmers.
So not an issue of Mesmers into specific.

sorrow.2364:

Thieves are kicking out pretty much any light armoured profession out of the meta, not only Mesmers.
So not an issue of Mesmers into specific.

You mean Ele and Mesmer because iirc Necro is doing just fine.

Mesmers and Thieves compete for the same role in sPvP and the class mechanics of a Thief just lend themselves better to that particular role.

Outside of Portal Thieves can travel from A to B much faster.

They can also dump damage into a target much faster and regardless of cooldowns. A Mesmer needs Shatter and/or Blurred Frenzy to burst a target which requires setup and timing.

Thieves aren’t necessarily better in actual PvP fights but sPvP meta evolves around highly specialized roles, which Thieves just happen to fit best due to their class mechanics and/or abilities.

Iplaytokill.1674:

You mean Ele and Mesmer because iirc Necro is doing just fine.

Necro is not doing just fine.
Picking a necro is quite a big risk and the only reason to pick it is because of the pressure at the cost of constantly baby sitting him.
Considering the condi pressure he can output, the only reason any team isn’t running it is because of Thieves.

sorrychief.2563:

Might as well buff warrior MH sword too because the MH sword autoattack chain doesn’t remove a boon or apply weakness.

Might as well buff my refrigerator too since it doesn’t have a sword; it has just as much to do with this topic as your warrior.

Thedenofsin.7340:

sorrychief.2563:

Might as well buff warrior MH sword too because the MH sword autoattack chain doesn’t remove a boon or apply weakness.

Might as well buff my refrigerator too since it doesn’t have a sword; it has just as much to do with this topic as your warrior.

L2Cold-cuts&Celery noob! Lol

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Just want to throw into the topic, I get a lot of people comparing Sword/Pistol thief to shatter sword/x mesmer due to blurred frenzy + shatter. And I would just like to say, mesmers need to pop a lot more cool downs that are easily avoidable (at least 6-9 clones worth for max damage) with a relatively buggy or ineffective gap closer + lock down compared to thief, only to net over all less damage… Even calculating phantasm hits into that thief still does more for less, with more access to doge spam, better stealth, and mobility.