Guild Wars 2

ANET chose to strip the vast majority of Mesmer defense. Offensive power was also greatly reduced ( 50% Alacrity nerf .)

At the same time they buffed thief auto attack by 30%. This alone would have meant that a thief pulling off a backstab would most likely be able to kill a Mesmer in 1 or 2 moves.

That wasn’t enough though.. ANET added an unblockable bassy venom. This makes the Mesmer shield ( our new weapon ) essentially worthless v. a thief. With the damage increase, a thief can practically kill a Mesmer with a very short combination of button pushes with almost no risk.

I doubt that even shortsighted ANET could have failed to anticipate this situation and it is likely to kick Mesmer right back to trash tier where we languished for years.

So, my question is; “Why do you hate mesmer , ANET?”

Are you taking revenge on a Pro League Mesmer?

Is it office politics at ANET?

Do you simply not want Mesmer in the game?

ANET won’t answer of course, that would require both courage and honesty.

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal→ black powder → heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Thief detected. Worry not though, you’ll have your time of eating Mesmers with no risk at all, then you’ll hear the drumbeat ; "thief is so cheesy , wtf? " and I hope you lose stealth altogether along with anything else that you can use for defense.

Cmon, your saying it like just thieves counter mesmer. All classes are gonna counter mesmer now. I mean..what ya want to play? Shatter? Its already weaker than thief, after balance patch buffing thiefs and nerfing mes even more so. Condi? Good luck with that. Bunker? It was nerfed in literally every possible way, and bunkers are gonna be free kill for necros now anyway.

Well, yes that’s true enough. Welcome back to the days after the confusion nerf. Still.. thieves do now have a virtually free kill.

We are all just pouring tears that your ridiculous reign of OP bunker nonsense is finally coming to an end. Guess you’ll have to l2p like the rest of us.

Thief is finally out of the gutter and people are already calling for nerfs/complaining L2p

Ithilwen.1529:

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal-> black powder -> heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Theres you’re problem, you’re a pver playing thief in PVE is much different than learning how to pvp with it. Chrono needs nerfs.

Ithilwen.1529:

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal-> black powder -> heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

You seem to be forgetting a zerk thief can also be downed instantly, especially in PvP where aoe spam and boon spam run rampant. Did you complain about thieves being able to be easily one shot by mesmers after the 6/23 patch? You know, when mesmer could press 2 on greatsword out of stealth and then his mind wrack, instantly removing all hp from a class with the lowest health pool? I doubt it.

Basilisk Venom makes 2 attacks unblockable… Still able to stun to break and move away, or dodge those attacks to begin with, you just have to be skill enough to notice when a thief is nearby and when they have used basilisk venom (Pretty sure there’s an obvious animation that you can even see unless thief is in stealth).

You might play thief, but you clearly have zero understanding of the class. If you think two unblockable attacks will completely destroy you, then I don’t know how you haven’t complained about Shadow Shot yet, because that’s an unblockable gap closing blind that only has a cooldown related to initiative use.

I’m not saying they might overbuff thief in the patch and have to scale back some damage, but to be this upset over a now underused thief elite becoming a competitive skill in the slot tells me that you were never a thief main, or at least stopped being one because you don’t understand the class.

Ithilwen.1529:

Thief detected.

Not so hard to detect tbh

Poor mesmers, have no defense beside blocks, except for evade, invuln, blind, cc, stealth, teleports …

The best way for a mesmur to not die to a thief is to slot in a amulet with some toughness and use the new chaos aura, which will inflict the thief with weakness. So basically role out with a staff and chaos trait line, also probably null field given the necromancer buffs.

Ithilwen.1529:

bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Basilisk venom will make the attacks that stun (deliver the venom) unblockable so that means only 2 attacks, and also consider that you can see the venom icon on the thief and that it has a 1 sec obvious cast animation (although you can cover it with stealth).
Venom share on the other hand will be interesting. To bad that pretty much means that thief will have to drop deadly arts, and thus allot of damage and utility (poison, weakness, mug, 20%dmg modifier/improv) in favor of a easily coutarable trait line (scrapper, and revenant destroy shadow arts) all for a grandmaster trait that does nothing if you face the thief solo (which you will if he wants to go for a point you are guarding, say the home node).

Every time thief buffs are announced people go ham and whine their kittening kitten off in here. Thief never really had issues with mesmers to begin with and now OP wants to make us believe that it’s BV which will push Thief over the edge?

In reality whether you play with BV or not is completly irrelevant, cause you should be able to win against Mes anyway. BV is far more useful against Revenant, Guard and Scrapper than it is against Mesmers. It’s also only 2 attacks, not even a timeframe of unblockable attacks so this is clearly just another whine topic.

ANET chose to reign in ludicrously overpowered mesmer elements.

Exploitable utility with no counterplay was also brought in line ( 50% Alacrity nerf .)
At the same time they buffed an underperforming class that people report you for botting and verbally harass you for using’s auto attack by 30%.*

This alone would have meant that a thief pulling off a highly positional skill that can be countered with reveal would most likely be able to kill a Mesmer in 1 or 2 moves.

That wasn’t enough though.. ANET added an unblockable to an overly telegraphed elite skill with a high cooldown one second stun and still not competitive with the daredevil elite.

I took the liberty of changing some of your sentences. Words may be different but says essentially the same thing.

ddamico.4798:

We are all just pouring tears that your ridiculous reign of OP bunker nonsense is finally coming to an end. Guess you’ll have to l2p like the rest of us.

Looking at the comments here ome of ya’ll dont even remember what mesmer was like before HoT…

Like there was never a time mesmer was broken and was always op or somethin…

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Poor mesmers, have no defense beside blocks, except for evade, invuln, blind, cc, stealth, teleports …

This has never stopped thieves before has it? All it took was a prick to pop a mesmer.

Since the trait changes in June, mesmer could deal with thieves just fine …

Btw, rev has much more unblockable attacks and are way stronger than thieves (at least for now). Why don’t you cry about those?

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Since the trait changes in June, mesmer could deal with thieves just fine …

Btw, rev has much more unblockable attacks and are way stronger than thieves (at least for now). Why don’t you cry about those?

“Because revenants can’t stealth on demand so they’re not OP!” That’s what they’re going to say. Also, do these mesmers realize there is a trait that makes every mark a necro places unblockable that plenty of necros use at the moment? Personally when I play my necro and I see a mesmer using the shield block, I start dumping conditions all over them, including being able to fear them out of the block and screw them over even harder. I think being covered in conditions while being feared is a lot harder deal with, because even if you stun break the fear with decoy or blink, you’re still covered in conditions lol.

laquito.5269:

Every time thief buffs are announced people go ham and whine their kittening kitten off in here.

Maybe because Thiefs have frequent stealth access and with daredevil spec, loads of dodges on top. Than they have always had their superieur mobility with shortbow. Now their dmg is gonna be buffed by kinda a lot (and indirectly defences due to having more initiative left through more autoattack use).
People are afraid that thiefs become too good in 1 on 1, which could be too much with their tool set.
I think the fear that thiefs become like that is understandable.

Besides, nobody likes getting insta killed with a thief appearing out of stealth behind him, while in combat with someone else. Although that is more acceptable if Thiefs arent great in 1 on 1 or if the good in 1 on 1 comes at the cost somewhere in the toolkit.

Yashuoa.9527:

Besides, nobody likes getting insta killed with a thief appearing out of stealth behind him, while in combat with someone else.

Because mesmers can’t do the exactly same…

Jana.6831:

Yashuoa.9527:

Besides, nobody likes getting insta killed with a thief appearing out of stealth behind him, while in combat with someone else.

Because mesmers can’t do the exactly same…

No, they don’t need to appear BEHIND their target. Any position is good enough.

Jana.6831:

Yashuoa.9527:

Besides, nobody likes getting insta killed with a thief appearing out of stealth behind him, while in combat with someone else.

Because mesmers can’t do the exactly same…

Read my post further.The lines that follow.

‘’Although that is more acceptable if Thiefs arent great in 1 on 1 or if the good in 1 on 1 comes at the cost somewhere in the toolkit.’’

Mesmer wont shortbow from 1 point quickly to another.
They have a different toolkit than thief apart from both being able to burst from stealth.

Yashuoa.9527:

Jana.6831:

Yashuoa.9527:

Besides, nobody likes getting insta killed with a thief appearing out of stealth behind him, while in combat with someone else.

Because mesmers can’t do the exactly same…

Mesmer wont shortbow from 1 point quickly to another.

True that, he will just teleport the whole team ^^

Btw this comparison with thief/mesm obvisously makes no sense, just pointing that fact

Yashuoa.9527:

snippet

They’re only buffing autoattacks so what the hell are you on about? Last time that thief was good at 1v1 is also well over 1 1/2 years ago and making claims of thief becoming OP without even having seen the full patch notes or testing stuff is completly out of place given the current situation of thieves.

Personally I don’t think that Dagger AA or Staff (hell no) needed a buff, but what definitely needed a fix was Sword aftercasts and an overhaul of Acrobatics, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Your whole argumentation just screams hypocrisy, “nobody likes being insta killed or killed from stealth” are no valid arguments. Thieves can only 1shot pure glasscanons and the last time a class could actually 1shot people from stealth was mesmers, not thieves.

Those people who are whining about thief possibly becoming a 1v1 monster just show their lack of knowledge about the PvP meta.

laquito.5269:

Every time thief buffs are announced people go ham and whine their kittening kitten off in here.

People go ham over plenty of classes, people went ham over engies when they did the trait line change, over turret engy, over decap engy, over cele engy, etc, they went ham over mes when they changed the way cooldowns worked on mantras, they went ham over D/D eles for a long, long time and so on.

As for thief specifically, the problem that sets many people off about thief (and I guess mesmers more than most), is really the base design / mechanics are not well designed, they are OP and in part playing from a different rulebook to everyone else, the result of which is as a generalisation whenever thief has been strong at fighting in this game it has basically pushed out any other class from running glassy builds (with the odd very rare exception like medi guard after it was buffed or needing a thief babysitter like mesmer, and even then you had mesmers rerolling).

Which is both dull and kitten poor game design, as of yet they have still not addressed this, just papered over the cracks with nerfs to thief, so with many “bunker/bruiser” amulets being removed from the game, nerfs to sustain/survivability, the prospect of a buffed thief rolling face against any glassy mesmer, ele, etc, some people “go ham” over the less than thrilling prospects they are faced with.

Though I guess without knowing all the changes to be made people are being a little pre-emptive with their complaints.

as far as i’m aware, thief was a mesmer’s worst nightmare to begin with as we are the only class that keep up with you.

mes is real disgusting right now, I know it feels bad to be nerfed, but mes deserves it badly. If you are a mes you don’t play the same game as me for you the game is easy and you don’t even know it becuz you are too used to abusing how broken you are.

Oh so the game is hard now and you have to play well? Welcome to my world.

laquito.5269:

Yashuoa.9527:

snippet

They’re only buffing autoattacks so what the hell are you on about? Last time that thief was good at 1v1 is also well over 1 1/2 years ago and making claims of thief becoming OP without even having seen the full patch notes or testing stuff is completly out of place given the current situation of thieves.

Personally I don’t think that Dagger AA or Staff (hell no) needed a buff, but what definitely needed a fix was Sword aftercasts and an overhaul of Acrobatics, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Your whole argumentation just screams hypocrisy, “nobody likes being insta killed or killed from stealth” are no valid arguments. Thieves can only 1shot pure glasscanons and the last time a class could actually 1shot people from stealth was mesmers, not thieves.

Those people who are whining about thief possibly becoming a 1v1 monster just show their lack of knowledge about the PvP meta.

You misread, read it literally and black and white, which my post wasnt.
Besides the meta will change. Its not thief preview buffs in current meta.

Beta’s/previews etc. allow for speaking out concerns regarding changes being possibly too strong/weak and not everything someone has has to be classified as whining.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

as far as i’m aware, thief was a mesmer’s worst nightmare to begin with as we are the only class that keep up with you.

Not just that, a lot of mesmer skills, certainly in a power shatter build, needs targets and have longish cast times. GS – auto, mirrorblade and izerker, sword – ileap, most offhand phantasms and some offhand skills. Blind and stealth absolutely cripples a mesmers ability to fight.

Same for a lot of classes with skills that need a target or long casts, they absolutely hate fighting thieves because of this and they can’t escape except to the safety of others.

As a mesmer main I do find this scary, mostly because I have war flashbacks of the days of being thief bait lol. I do still think thief’s really needed a buff, but would require counter play as well.

Well precog nerf seems really out of place, it already decaps and would be good for offensive mesmers as a way of avoiding damage, but aegis seems more guardian use and plays into the thief’s unblockable attacks via venom. Right now. Mesmer needs a more creative way to deal with thieves than power shatter because it isn’t going to work, popping in and out with a gs to burst and run sounds more like a thief than a mesmer, I want to manipulate the fight, play mindgames.

“and in part playing from a different rulebook to everyone else”

That sums it up pretty much… Thieves are supposed to play dirty. Being the +1 kitten generates a lot of hate cause how we dare to enter in a beautiful 1vs1.

The buff on sword and overhaul on acrobatic have been needed for a long time. Not sure about the damage-buff on dagger AA. But if you let a thief autoattacking you nonstop you deserve to die ^^
Most CC on thief doesn´t last long (stealth attack daze from sword is even shorter in pvp than pve). If I remember correctly the CC on Impact Strike (elite) is our longest CC.

@Warlord.9074 Mesmer deserves nothing but a well balanced PvP-enviroment like any other class. You comment goes into the same direction like "thief deserved to be pushed out from competitive teams cause being stable for a very long time. "

After all the crap in the last 7 month it will be interesting how thief-mesmer gonna work. Remember that right now no one of them uses shadowarts (pray to god that it won´t come back) or PU (same for that). Mesmer got illusionary persona baseline and some better defence-possibilites (blind on shatter is better now – 5 shatterskills = 5 blinds). Mesmer has far more elites viable now then at the beginning of last year etc.
Its a very different time now.
Imagine you start to use your shield-block while a thief is nearby. If the thief has basi-venom ready he now first has to start channeling it → first block probably over when finished. If mesmer got the sec block through blocking another player and uses it and sees the thief jumping on him you can blind the frist strike through shatter and maybe dodge the next one. Shield block isn´t the only defence. Using it when thief has the venom-icon visible is plain stupid… ^^

Yashuoa.9527:

snippet

Yeah, thankfully the meta will change and I’m pretty sure thief will be a part of it, regardless of whether mesmer gets nerfed or not.

You can always voice your concerns about certain features or classes being too strong, thats what the forums are for, but if you take a look at HOW OP presents the issue without reflecting the other side of the coin, it is obvious that you’ll get answers like mine.

So to summarize:

1) Basilisk Venom competes with Impact strike, which will probably still be 1st pick. It’s more damage more utility and more useful useful, espceially now that quickness rezzes are gone.

2) Thief hits like a wet noodle at the moment, because it didn’t profit as much from the trait overhaul in June as other classes did. Our sustained damage is also non-existant pretty much like Shatter Mesmer.

3) Sword has insane aftercasts on autoattack and Flanking Strike, which pretty much renders S/D and S/P useless, so it’s rather obvious ANet would fix them if they wanted to buff their damage (aftercasts will be reduced, damage coefficients remain the same).

4) Acro has completly been destroyed in June and has been utterly trash for months. Even with the buffs I don’t see it coming back, as S/D has historically been the only ever weaponset to use it, a weaponset that will still suffer from Flanking Strike being bugged/laggy.

5) Staff AA and Dagger AA don’t need any buff, so this is the only valid point you may whine about, but given that we don’t even know how bunkery the new meta will be theres no reason to kittening witchhunt thieves again given that we’re the second worst class atm.

apharma.3741:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

as far as i’m aware, thief was a mesmer’s worst nightmare to begin with as we are the only class that keep up with you.

Not just that, a lot of mesmer skills, certainly in a power shatter build, needs targets and have longish cast times. GS – auto, mirrorblade and izerker, sword – ileap, most offhand phantasms and some offhand skills. Blind and stealth absolutely cripples a mesmers ability to fight.

Same for a lot of classes with skills that need a target or long casts, they absolutely hate fighting thieves because of this and they can’t escape except to the safety of others.

What you forget here is the tracking of a lot of skills and that stealth doesn´t make someone invulnerable. Imagine mirrorblad would work like a normal shortbow-projectile… THAT would be miserable (RIP heatseeking projectiles on AA shortbow QQ).
What I consider interesting and scary at the same time is tempest fresh-air. The big disadvantage of the lightning not able to strike enemies in stealth doesn´t apply to the overload -> tracks through stealth. Together with the access to a third line like earth, more invulerable skills than before/higher uptime and less bunkers maybe (yeah, I know its not that likely but you never know :P) fresh air could have a good or at least better place in PvP.

Btw the problem with casttimes…with chronomance there is some quickness that helps with that :P

laquito.5269:

Yashuoa.9527:

snippet

Yeah, thankfully the meta will change and I’m pretty sure thief will be a part of it, regardless of whether mesmer gets nerfed or not.

You can always voice your concerns about certain features or classes being too strong, thats what the forums are for, but if you take a look at HOW OP presents the issue without reflecting the other side of the coin, it is obvious that you’ll get answers like mine.

So I take it some of the things you said after quoting me with snippet, were meant for the OP/others and not me? You didnt make it look that way.
I think I presented my posts differently (nuanced). Thats why I expected to not receive the same type of answer. Besides I was not talking about Thief vs Mesmer specifically, as I rarely play Mesmer. I do wish balance for everyone though.

Yeah its good to look at both sides of the coin.

inb4 thief is still god awful

Only aa that had a listed buff was S/D and I’m not sure that’s gonna be your biggest nightmare (if dagger go an aa buff then it may need a bit of shaving but that’s not even enough to make thief “god mode”). You really need to chill OP. This isn’t Mesmer doomsday like you seem to believe it is.

Besides, Mesmer still has plenty of ways to fight thief. Even if you eat basi venom you will still be able to activate distortion, any shatter you have for blind, any instant cast stunbreaker you have, if you have the daze mantra you can pop that. Or you could just pay attention to the thief and dodge when they ready basi venom. Mesmer will be fine, take a chill pill and let things run their course before we ask for changes.

And please for the love of kitten remember that basi venom is 2 attacks on a 40 sec cd that will lose charges if you are invuln or the thief is blinded when they attack. Negating 1 defense on their target isn’t as big a deal as you’re making it out to be. Wait until the patch comes and play with it a bit until you declare something this ridiculous.

Also take into account that you can kill the thief just as quickly, if not quicker, than the thief can kill you. Maybe try actually pressuring the thief in a fight to force them out because they don’t have a ton of cd’s to last in a prolonged fight and I’m not to sure that the auto evades from acro will do anything about that.

So in summary, stop whining your kitten off because you can’t be immortal anymore, if you get +1d and you didn’t plan ahead and leave an escape route you deserve to die. 2 unblockable attacks don’t make thief godmode when their hits won’t be strong enough to 1 shot and the rest can be easily negated or healed past.

Coronit.9432:

apharma.3741:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

as far as i’m aware, thief was a mesmer’s worst nightmare to begin with as we are the only class that keep up with you.

Not just that, a lot of mesmer skills, certainly in a power shatter build, needs targets and have longish cast times. GS – auto, mirrorblade and izerker, sword – ileap, most offhand phantasms and some offhand skills. Blind and stealth absolutely cripples a mesmers ability to fight.

Same for a lot of classes with skills that need a target or long casts, they absolutely hate fighting thieves because of this and they can’t escape except to the safety of others.

What you forget here is the tracking of a lot of skills and that stealth doesn´t make someone invulnerable. Imagine mirrorblad would work like a normal shortbow-projectile… THAT would be miserable (RIP heatseeking projectiles on AA shortbow QQ).
What I consider interesting and scary at the same time is tempest fresh-air. The big disadvantage of the lightning not able to strike enemies in stealth doesn´t apply to the overload -> tracks through stealth. Together with the access to a third line like earth, more invulerable skills than before/higher uptime and less bunkers maybe (yeah, I know its not that likely but you never know :P) fresh air could have a good or at least better place in PvP.

Btw the problem with casttimes…with chronomance there is some quickness that helps with that :P

I’m more than aware that mirror blade so long as it’s cast before you go into stealth will track. Weird thing about phantasms is they stand there picking their noses but still cast.

However I thought he was referring to old pre elite mesmer thief dynamics where quickness wasn’t available without the elite or on interrupt.

Yeah that air overload tracking in stealth is BS but then I believe it’s an AoE field so follows those rules for targeting. I doubt FA will have a place in PvP tbh, ele would just be eaten alive by focus fire due to extremely long cool downs on defence.

Idk, FA ele may be able to work with aura heals and mara ammy. The overloads would give it some strong aoe damage while the auras and potential condi removal of a cantrip/ aura build sound pretty BA on paper. Just gonna have to test when it comes out cause that could be real fun if it works.

Ithilwen.1529:

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal-> black powder -> heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Assuming you’ve traited mug, steal would burn one basilisk venom proc. Black powder, unless you quickly stow, would burn the second proc of basilisk venom. If you stow, you’ve wasted precious seconds since BV doesn’t last that long to begin with and now the opponent knows to prepare a defense which (surprise surprise) chronocancer still has a lot of. If you haven’t traited deadly arts (no mug or improv), heartseeker procs the second BV. Now you can simply stun break (if you’re that antsy about not dying) AND THEN block and it’ll be (almost) business as usual.

Seriously, it IS a learn to play issue lol. I won’t believe that mesmer is all but dead until I see a good mesmer actually complain the way some top level thieves have literally been moaning for the past few months. Have mesmers had it hard before 6/23? Yea, thief wasn’t a particularly fair matchup for mes, along with the rest of the faceroll cele bunkers, but a lot of that is changing. I honestly doubt that with all of chrono’s tools, you still wouldn’t be able to outmaneuver a majority of the thieves here.

thief extremely weak now, so huge buff is understandable. Every class should have a weakness. Thief still will be shaat on by revenant and many more classes.

whining on thieves…

…what year is it?

Thief needs this buff to be anywhere near to viable. And chronomancer needs nerf. Seems okay to me.

BiggyB.4825:

Thief is finally out of the gutter and people are already calling for nerfs/complaining L2p

What comes around goes around, you bet your rear end I will be clamoring for them to be nerfed, given what will happen to Mesmers.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Ithilwen.1529:

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal-> black powder -> heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Assuming you’ve traited mug, steal would burn one basilisk venom proc. Black powder, unless you quickly stow, would burn the second proc of basilisk venom. If you stow, you’ve wasted precious seconds since BV doesn’t last that long to begin with and now the opponent knows to prepare a defense which (surprise surprise) chronocancer still has a lot of. If you haven’t traited deadly arts (no mug or improv), heartseeker procs the second BV. Now you can simply stun break (if you’re that antsy about not dying) AND THEN block and it’ll be (almost) business as usual.

Seriously, it IS a learn to play issue lol. I won’t believe that mesmer is all but dead until I see a good mesmer actually complain the way some top level thieves have literally been moaning for the past few months. Have mesmers had it hard before 6/23? Yea, thief wasn’t a particularly fair matchup for mes, along with the rest of the faceroll cele bunkers, but a lot of that is changing. I honestly doubt that with all of chrono’s tools, you still wouldn’t be able to outmaneuver a majority of the thieves here.

Do you play Chrono regularly? If not stop assume things will be “ok”.

I play mesmer on the very odd occasion, but plenty of thief, so I’m more than sure that basilisk venom will be the very LEAST of mesmer’s issues vs thief.

Helseth has commented on this reddit thread, see below quote.

LordHelseth:
From my perspective mesmer will be completely unplayable provided that these notes are all the meaningful changes. Similiar to how warrior is in its current state right now, I can’t find a single justified reason to play shatter mesmer in pvp over thief, rev or necro.
Bunker mes is completely dead with quickness rez and alacrity nerf sso shatter is our onl hope. From what I’m theorycrafting shatter will be n such a pitiful state that it wont even be worth playing casually, might aswell reroll thief
It seems to me that arenanet is killing the chrono bunker mesmer because they don’t want ANY iteration of this build in pvp but my question then is what build do they want us to have? Shatter? Shatter was already not viable and inferior to thief/dh/rev before the patch. So if the bunker archetype is dead and shatter is unviable mesmer will have no spot whatsoever, which I feel might be intended by the devs because they simple have no idea how to balance it. Frankly, I don’t either. Portal is completely broken and so is moa and the effect of continum split along with those effects so it’s really hard to be viable without being mandatory.
Still sad that the class I’ve mained for so long is likely completely dead for half a year.

Link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/416x1z/as_a_mesmer_main_for_years_i_am_not_too_fussed/

Well I’ll be kitten ed. Welp, bring on the doomsayers. Guess everyone has to taste the frustration of being underpowered every now and then. Guess its mesmers turn to feel weak again, then it’ll be back to necros and rangers being UP, then warriors and thieves as the cycle simply continues.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Well I’ll be kitten ed. Welp, bring on the doomsayers. Guess everyone has to taste the frustration of being underpowered every now and then. Guess its mesmers turn to feel weak again, then it’ll be back to necros and rangers being UP, then warriors and thieves as the cycle simply continues.

Now let’s be honest here, compare to many other classes, Mesmers didnt really exist as part of meta in the past 3 years, classes like Ele, Guardian, Engis, warriors have all enjoyed longer stay at Meta. I really dont get the extreme handle by ANet when it comes to the Mesmers class. ONE meta and they decided to nuke it into none existence. They have no idea what the Mesmer class should be.

gorram forum bug is still in

I don’t think that blaming the thief is the right way to go, here. Thief does need to be able to make kills because of how squishy it is. High damage is important to a class with such low-moderate sustain.

I think mesmer is being overnerfed, though. Its offenses could probably use a moderate boost in order to compensate for it being squishier. It will probably end up being outclassed, as it is.

Don’t play Mesmer or theif but that well of precognition nerf and basilisk buff is a huge counter to Mesmer. And yeah Mesmer has stealth, ports and the like but thief has more than enough to stay right on top of them, plus how easy it is to pre stack stealth for them lets them engage undetected, so they can probably jump in mea and nuke them down before the Mesmer has time to react, especially with those damage buffs.