Guild Wars 2

WARNING: Incoming wall of text. Sorry; got a lot to say.

Full disclosure first: I play a Mesmer main.

This is an attempt to respond to a lot of the threads that have been creeping up about profession balance, in particular these three professions.

With respect to thieves and mesmers, I feel like a lot of the frustration players are experiencing is the result of the choices in the way the professions were designed; that’s not, however, a statement of power in itself, and I feel like it’s no more common for players to want to substitute personal frustration for objective balance issues here than in any other game. League of Legends is the other game that I play regularly, so I’m going to use some analogies there. Thieves are Shaco (if you don’t play LOL, Shaco is a character who stealths with a shadowstep, fears, and does very strong single-target damage): reasonably high learning curve, squishy, balanced, but extremely frustrating to play against. As a consequence of this, at lower ELOs, Shaco is frequently banned—not because people think Shaco will swing the game for the team that gets him but because they just don’t want to have to deal with the risk of him being over there. Shaco being in the game on the enemy team demands that players adjust the way they play to accommodate the fact that he’s there, and many players (perhaps justifiably so) don’t want to put forth the mental effort to do so.

Mesmers are Kassadin, Leblanc, or Ezreal. For the uninitiated, these champions are high damage characters with self-relocation abilities. They aren’t really unbalanced either (Ezreal is in a good spot at the time of posting, but that’s probably a meta issue seeing as he’s had no buffs for a long time), but they’re extremely frustrating to play against because it’s difficult to retaliate against them. Kassadin and Ezreal are frequent bans at different ELOs for the same reason Shaco is at lower ELO. The champs aren’t unbalanced—people just don’t want to have to adapt to them.

Here’s the application: Should you have to adjust the way you think about the game mechanics to deal with a particular profession? Alternatively, is it balanced for some professions to require more concentration than others when engaging them? I don’t have an answer to this question, but I think it’s worth noting that it’s not the same question as “Is this profession more powerful (i.e., better in PVP—I don’t just mean damage) than another?”

I will gladly admit that there is a learning curve to dealing with thieves and mesmers in particular. Guardians less so since I feel like their power emerges more from the nature of capture point PVP than actual profession design (brick wall wins capture points), but I’m willing to concede that guardians frustrating for other reasons (compare, for instance, Malphite or Nautilus). With respect to thieves and mesmers, target dropping in particular is a very nasty mechanic to contend with, and I think it shouldn’t be limited to these two professions.

However, I’m not sure how you deal with any perceived imbalance when it comes to utility without fundamentally altering the things that give the profession its identity. Here’s a little hypothetical. Let’s suppose, hypothetically that warriors are overpowered and mesmers are overpowered. Take a look at the following changes:

• Hundred Blades damage reduced by 20%.
• Decoy no longer stealths the caster.

The damage of Hundred Blades is a number that’s easily measurable, quantifiable, and incorporated into a set of data about warrior performance in PVP. Just like Heartseeker, the team can take a look at the damage and adjust if something is out of line. The decoy change, however, has no numbers. Its a mechanic change; it theoretically reduces the frustration an enemy will experience when dealing with a mesmer who uses Decoy (or, alternatively, ensures mesmers won’t use Decoy in PVP anymore), but there’s no way to authentically verify that effect. You can track who’se using Decoy before and after, and kill/death rates for people on both sides, so you can tell if Mesmers perform better or worse after the change—but you have no way to measure if players feel the change improved balance or not.

What would you change about mesmers to balance them, if you’re one of the people claiming they’re unbalanced in PVP? Or thieves? Or hell, guardians for that matter? I personally can’t articulate a number of changes for thieves or mesmers that would make them less frustrating to play against than they currently are without completely stripping them of their identities. If a Mesmer isn’t confusing to play against, what kind of Mesmer is he? If a thief isn’t assassinating people, why have him on the team?

This is because I believe it is a principle of (or should be, if it’s not; I’m not a game designer) PVP that the characters are not only balanced with respect to each other but also balanced internally. You can’t take Shaco’s Deceive away without making him useless. This isn’t because Deceive is fundamentally broken or not, but because the rest of Shaco’s kit is balanced around Deceive being there. Similarly, thieves and mesmers are balanced around the fact that they have access to the mechanics that are so frustrating to deal with.

What are you going to do to balance mesmers? Get rid of illusions?! Going to restore order to PVP by getting rid of thief shadowstep and stealth? These professions are slippery, but their slipperyness is something they’ve had implemented to their design as a substitute for tankiness or some other version of active or passive survivability. If you nerf thief and mesmer damage across the board by 30%, you’ll still have people complaining about them, because I don’t feel like this is really a question of balance, and it’s not a question of risk-reward or skill level either. I suspect, at its foundation, it’s mostly player frustration, but I won’t put words into people’s mouths if I can help it.

Someone has rightly said that thieves and mesmers received some buffs since BWE3; this seems to be the case, but honestly, I didn’t play a mesmer or thief in BWE3, so I can’t say for sure. I’d be willing to listen, though, and would ask: which changes made the thieves and mesmers OP?

I can tell you which changes made the elementalists UP, if that turns out to be the case: probably the damage nerfs to many of the elementalist’s cornerstone abilities, like for instance the arcane nukes. Hard, concrete number examples—easy to adjust. You can’t adjust playstyle, however, and I would advocate that the mesmer, thief, and yes, guardian playstyles are things that shouldn’t be tampered with.

If Confusion does too much damage according to the metrics ANet has at its disposal, nerf it, by all means. If Haste+Signet+Backstab is doing too much damage, tone it down, absolutely. If you’re going to take my mobility away, though, then I want some heavy armor, because I’m not willing to concede that the profession I play is overpowered just because it’s popular or just because other players don’t enjoy playing against it. It’s PVP after all.

I feel like this is one of those instances where if balance is implicated at all, buffs are appropriate rather than nerfs, as buffs can be done (here—not in general) in a way that’s measurable according to the data available to ANet, or at least made in ways in which one can observe their success subsequent to implementation, and nerfs can’t, this due to the scope of implementation (i.e., if you want to nerf Mesmers and Thieves so people don’t hate them anymore, you’ve got to gut them and overhaul their profession mechanics; you can buff the struggling professions with a few lines of patch notes, mechanical or otherwise). It’s a lot easier to make and then evaluate the following changes (for example!):

• Entering Death Shroud, Spectral Walk (on ending or upon Severing), and Necrotic Traversal will break targeting (if they don’t already).
• Arcane skills (and probably other skills) damage increased by 15%.
• Static Shield now grants 4s of Stability.

than these changes:

• Replaced half of the Mesmer and Thief utility skills with new skills.
• New profession mechanic for Mesmers: _
• Guardian healing reduced by 40%.

Thanks anybody who bothered to read the whole thing; I’ll leave a few questions to hopefully further the point.

What would you nerf on a thief to make rangers the best roamer in the game? What would you buff on a ranger? Which is a better change? Should either be made?

Who is the next best profession at treb control after Mesmer? How far behind is it and why?

I feel not every class has found it’s role yet.
Only class I can genuinely say needs love is ele.

For starters:

• Make Mesmer portals unusable while carrying an item. Being able to portal to the treb with a repair kit makes Mesmer absolutely mandatory in tournament play.

• Move a portion of the Mesmer’s damage from Phantasms to the Mesmer himself. The main thing making Mesmer such an incredibly solid 1v1 class is that it can pump out Phantasms, then let them do the heavy lifting as far as damage is concerned. If you choose to focus down the Phantasms, the Mesmer can simply reapply them. If you focus the Mesmer, he can simply reset the fight using Stealth, Teleport, etc., while his Phantasms wreck you. By moving some of the damage to the Mesmer himself it a) puts more dps responsibility on the player rather than on AI, and b) gives opposing players more opportunity to actually engage the Mesmer.

• Either remove the .5 second stun from Pistol Whip or change it to a short duration cripple.

• Address Retaliation uptime on Guardians. Traited properly, they can achieve 100% uptime on it.

Those changes would be a step in the right direction, imo.

mouse.1689:

For starters:

• Make Mesmer portals unusable while carrying an item. Being able to portal to the treb with a repair kit makes Mesmer absolutely mandatory in tournament play.

Hmm. Better, make using Mesmer Potals drop the currently held bundle. This way, if need as an escape, it can be used as one swiftly. However, you still reach the same goal of having to abandon your goal of carrying the repair kit around.

• Move a portion of the Mesmer’s damage from Phantasms to the Mesmer himself. The main thing making Mesmer such an incredibly solid 1v1 class is that it can pump out Phantasms, then let them do the heavy lifting as far as damage is concerned. If you choose to focus down the Phantasms, the Mesmer can simply reapply them. If you focus the Mesmer, he can simply reset the fight using Stealth, Teleport, etc., while his Phantasms wreck you. By moving some of the damage to the Mesmer himself it a) puts more dps responsibility on the player rather than on AI, and b) gives opposing players more opportunity to actually engage the Mesmer.

This would be difficult to impliment, because it’s the Mesmer’s stat’s that effect the output of the Phantasems, and it’s a broad range of them. A Mesmer already gains bonuses to their own performances when illuions are out, and there are builds built around high mesmer damage and less on phantasems. The only real solution here sould be to flat our nerf phantasem damage somehow, and that would only give rise to condition built mesmers who’d have the same problem.

You’re better off adjusting phantasem cooldowns, however I would disagree with the fact that phantasems need to be nerfed at all as you can target and kill them. Yes, they can bring them back up again, but you can knock them right back down again and still bring damage to the Mesmer while doing so.

I’m more inclined to beleie that AoE damage needs a slight buff rather than mesmer needing a nerf in this case. It will achieve the same goal and help classes that are struggeling.

• Either remove the .5 second stun from Pistol Whip or change it to a short duration cripple.

Or create a secondary debuff effect like sealth that prevents repeat stun usage from pistol whip. For example, when you get hit with pistol whip, you are stunned for 5 seconds and receive a full 1-2 second debuff that impairs your damage somehow (confusion?), but makes you immune to pistol whip’s stun effect.

• Address Retaliation uptime on Guardians. Traited properly, they can achieve 100% uptime on it.

I can one-up that one too. Instead of punishing retaliation guardians, increase the ease of removing boons in general. It’s not a problem being able to optimally have retaliation up 100% of the time, if that retaliation can be removed more often by the players assaulting them. Right now it seems that Mesmer has the mother load of boon removal right now and it could stand to be a bit more common in general.

LiliOups.5327:

just STOP with your crying posts already
they already nerfed my thief

l2p your class and stop whining…i do get 2-3 shot by warriors i dont cry or whine about it,i suggest to do the same.

enough with ppl crying for nerf everytime they get owned or cant beat another class just because they sucks.

Who exactly are you talking to? Did you read my post or the first reply before yours? I appreciate that it’s a long post and you might not want to read the whole thing, but please don’t respond if you can’t be bothered. If you’d read it you would understand that I do not think nerfs are appropriate, desirable, or even needed; the whole point of the post was to suggest that the problem is a perception problem—not a balance problem.

Xhieron.2168:

than these changes:

• Replaced half of the Mesmer and Thief utility skills with new skills.
• New profession mechanic for Mesmers: _
• Guardian healing reduced by 40%.

This right here, this is what you call balance changes? Nerfing Guardian healing by 40%., and removing half of the utility skills for two classes? I am so glad you are not a game designer, holy kitten.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Xhieron.2168:

than these changes:

• Replaced half of the Mesmer and Thief utility skills with new skills.
• New profession mechanic for Mesmers: _
• Guardian healing reduced by 40%.

This right here, this is what you call balance changes? Nerfing Guardian healing by 40%., and removing half of the utility skills for two classes? I am so glad you are not a game designer, holy kitten.

… Again, read the whole post please. In fact, in this case, I’d settle for you just reading the whole sentence.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Xhieron.2168:

than these changes:

• Replaced half of the Mesmer and Thief utility skills with new skills.
• New profession mechanic for Mesmers: _
• Guardian healing reduced by 40%.

This right here, this is what you call balance changes? Nerfing Guardian healing by 40%., and removing half of the utility skills for two classes? I am so glad you are not a game designer, holy kitten.

It seems like you misread what he said so I will explain. He is saying to NOT do those kinds of changes and if you read what he said again then you will find he actually wants to buff the professions who are underwhelming to be on par with these professions instead of nerfing those professions to the point where those utility, mechanics and Guardian heals are useless to use.

perhaps, instead of nerf thieves,guardians or mesmer, Anet, should buff the others??

the only frustrating thing is the guardian running the op build(cant remember the name) Thief and Mesmers are Ok, but guardians are just too stronk.

i’ve been playing the game since the last 2 beta’s i can tell u this

thief while its true they deal a lot of damage , they die just as fast , so no problem with the class in a balance point of view , that’s how they are designed

mesmers on the other hand i can’t say it’s working as intended i play the class by the way done hundred of tournament and i rarely die , although u don’t have to to nerf decoy to fix it , an easy fix is to reduce mesmer base health point 24,5k is a lot reduce it by 5k and the problem is solved , mesmers are balanced again

UptheIronz.6732:

i’ve been playing the game since the last 2 beta’s i can tell u this

thief while its true they deal a lot of damage , they die just as fast , so no problem with the class in a balance point of view , that’s how they are designed

mesmers on the other hand i can’t say it’s working as intended i play the class by the way done hundred of tournament and i rarely die , although u don’t have to to nerf decoy to fix it , an easy fix is to reduce mesmer base health point 24,5k is a lot reduce it by 5k and the problem is solved , mesmers are balanced again

Except thief doesnt die fast… maybe if they just stood there they die as fast as anyone else.. but right now, they have stealth, teleports, blinds, etc that make them far more durable than most classes.

I understand what you’re saying, but thought I’d point out that LoL does balance around mechanics and gameplay. They don’t take more mechanics from DotA/DotA 2 because of “anti-fun patterns”. However, Riot chooses to avoid implementing these at all in most cases, while ANet has forced themselves to balance around them.

I’ll keep it short and sweet and answer your final questions. I’d nerf Shortbow 5 on Thief, as that is currently what gives them their epic mobility for roaming. I can’t think of a single buff for a Ranger to put them above the Thief, though; it would take a few changes. Let’s say you decreased the CD on Call of the Wild so swiftness uptime is longer, and removed the animation delays on Sword skill 2 to make it a more effective mobility skill. But now you have to consider the consequences of these actions.

By buffing uptime on Call of the Wild, Rangers would have higher uptime on Might and Fury, too. Increasing their mobility on Sword makes an already good weapon (with a cripple and a small gap closer on autoattack, no less) even more powerful. You would have to compensate for this with nerfs, unfortunately. In this case, nerfing one class is preferred to buffing the other. Completely arbitrarily chosen changes, though.

I don’t think these changes should be implemented, but I do find Ranger mobility severely lacking in many cases – specifically compared to Thief and Engineer mobility.

Thief is possibly the second best at treb control. Stealthing allows them to avoid enemies, plus they have high mobility even without Infiltrator’s Arrow as they can use u-skill shadowstep/signet while carrying the repair kit. They are still quite far behind, though, because Mesmers only need to travel in one direction, then use their portal to get back.

Oh, and I hope EoNxBoN never reproduces.

I dont get why LoL players always gotta compare stuff to their silly little champions. Its just confusing and pretty pointless to read if you havent played it. But from another post i can see that you play a mesmer and dont want them nerfed but all the other classes buffed to their power?

If you think that they will work on seven classes for months just so 1 class doesnt need to get nerfed i think you’re mistaken. In an MMO the developers usually take the easier, more sensible way to approach the problem.

As much as i hate mesmers, yes i would prefer them not to get nerfed and everyone else brought up to par, but this isnt fairy land.

so basically what you are saying is all the classes is balanced except for elementalist in PVP ok how? 5%higher damage or what? they can already 1shot alot of obstacles in PVE so its not a option i don’t want skills to turn into pvp version skills like in gw1.
and your hypothetical nerfs is just awful. you also only mentioned 3 classes.
and please don’t make a post with “THE CLASS IS OP” because you cannot kill it in pvp instead adapt.

Animosity.5231:

I don’t think these changes should be implemented, but I do find Ranger mobility severely lacking in many cases – specifically compared to Thief and Engineer mobility.

I’m more of the mind that thief should have the best roaming mobility in the game, to be quite honest. They’re the ones that need to be opportunists to run their class properly.

Now that said, I’ve not dived into ranger yet. I do believe a good deal of their mobility is related their pet and weapon choices.

Balance tweeks will happen. And I’m fairly sure these top three jobs will likely get hit in some way, but aside from the super obivous, there’s not much that’s in the common complaints that can be done.

Guardian is Tanky, Thief is Bursty, Mesmer clones carry a strong portion of their damage. All of these basic functions are working as intended.

Many of other professions’ base functions right now are NOT. And they’re the more important fix, and will likely put things a bit more on equal footing.

so basically what you are saying is all the classes is balanced except for elementalist in PVP ok how? 5%higher damage or what? they can already 1shot alot of obstacles in PVE so its not a option i don’t want skills to turn into pvp version skills like in gw1.
and your hypothetical nerfs is just awful. you also only mentioned 3 classes.
and please don’t make a post with “THE CLASS IS OP” because you cannot kill it in pvp instead adapt.

I dont main a ele in pvp no’r do i favor the class (or any other for that matter) but i do have one. Ele’s dont need a dmg buff no one is asking for that what ppl are advocating is a defense buff or a interupt utility at least AND to fix the bugged skills on the ele since half of them are bugged.Even the auto attack bugs out next to being way to slow.

You clearly have not played a ele otherwise you would have known this from experience.

I appreciate the OP’s effort to convince everyone that the Mesmer is alright the way it is,so his/her main can continue ripping apart on pretty much every 1v1 and take all gredit for winning the tournie for the team by exploiting the class’ massive advantages in Khylo.I really do appreciate the effort,i am afraid i cannot see the Mesmer not being nerfed though.If i doesn’t,i’ll just move to some other game,that’s how ridiculous i find the class to be at the moment,on PvP.

to the OP → Idk about LoL but in dota 2, if you face a naga, chaos knight, or basically any hero that benefits from manta (heroes that split to have 3-4 copies or items that copy your hero) it is oftentimes difficult to effectively deal with them.

Much like the mesmer in Guild Wars 2, it is mentally challenging, more-so than other classes to deal with. There is a sense of frustration. This is true of any stealth mechanics as well. It was psychologically tiresome and you run the risk of completely wasting skills on a clone.

Now I don’t think that makes the class OP, but I would say mesmer’s and thieves to a smaller degree take more mental awareness to fight. Because of this people get rolled in sPvP and naturally there are many complaints about them in the forums. Same as WoW rogues (stealth) and SWTOR’s Operatives (stealth).

It’s hard to fix, because as you say, there are no number’s to consider. You can’t properly quantify nerfing a skill like decoy.

cursed.5619:

It’s hard to fix, because as you say, there are no number’s to consider. You can’t properly quantify nerfing a skill like decoy.

Hard to fix?Hard not to.Make the phantasms proper mirror images doing zero damage and shattering in 1 hit of anything.There you go,problem solved.Mesmer still has a ton of utility as well as the images to cause confusion.Everybody’s happy.

As someone who has played mesmer for quite awhile, I think the best nerf would be to just revert the buffs to illusion generation.

One of the biggest buffs they got was that illusion generation recharge going from 10-20%. Makes decoy a lower cooldown, mirror image a lower cooldown, all phantasms and clone generating skills. Mesmer can just poop out illusion with impunity to make killing them not punishing whatsoever as well as just having much more shatter fodder. IMO they buffed that because of the Mesmer’s poorly designed counter-intuitive mechanic.

Oh and stealth is such a huge advantage in this game. Being able to disengage whenever you want, and constantly gain an advantage with every single stealth such as getting ahead in the dmg race, and coming back with an ambush each time, it’s huge.

kittenon.8572:

cursed.5619:

It’s hard to fix, because as you say, there are no number’s to consider. You can’t properly quantify nerfing a skill like decoy.

Hard to fix?Hard not to.Make the phantasms proper mirror images doing zero damage and shattering in 1 hit of anything.There you go,problem solved.Mesmer still has a ton of utility as well as the images to cause confusion.Everybody’s happy.

That’s a pretty harsh change – potentially this would make the mesmer completely underpowered lol.

Anet will probably change the mesmer somehow, like you said, but I’m sure it will be subtle or in small steps in efforts to maintain some kind of ‘balance’.

The problem with the mesmer goes much deeper. This gets apparent when you compare it to minion specs of other classes e.g. the necro.

1. Fire & Forget Pets
They attack and cause even confusion and act simultanously as a defense mechanic. If one dies: no problem. More pop up soon

Necro: Pets for a weird reason don’t seem to be seeker missiles like mesmer pets. Their AI often goes bogus.
Many of them do not take much more damage than a mesmer pet and are on a 30 sec.

2. Utility Slots
Mesmer pets are (in some cases) linked to their attacks giving them free utility slots.

Necro: If you want pets say bye bye to your utility slots. The abilities you gain from the pets are, with the exception of the charge of the flesh golem and the flesh worm teleport (too bad that the pet is not moveable), mediorcre at best because they have all long cast times.

3. Blowing up your minions
Even there the mesmer is better. The necro can blow up 2 minions which do ridiculous low damage when you blow them up…that is if they live long enough to make it to the enemy.

4. Taking minions out
Mesmer minion do not vanish once the mesmer is down nor do they vanish when a mesmer gets hit by a moa morph (at least I had the impression that they were still there. Correct me if I am wrong here)

Necro: Minion often just stand there or attacking the wrong target while the downed necro gets finished off.
Moa morph despawns all minions, negating an elite skills and all utility abilities. If that’s not harsh I dunno.

5. Minion damage
Duelist and berserkers can really hurt and the dps just increases the more spawn.

Necro: Well, the damage isn’t that great not even with the training of the master talent (30% more damage) and the dps often decreases soon because most minions die easily and, as said above, cannot be replaced.

The only thing I can think of, though, is that the spawn rate of the mesmer minions should get lowered somewhat and the necro pets get some serious tweak (AI, pathfinding, player control over them etc)

cursed2eternalnerdiness.5619:

That’s a pretty harsh change – potentially this would make the mesmer completely underpowered lol.

Anet will probably change the mesmer somehow, like you said, but I’m sure it will be subtle or in small steps in efforts to maintain some kind of ‘balance’.

Alright then,revert back to the Mesmer staying in place and not swapping for one of the phantasms while the target ring also stays fixed,like it was on an early BWE.I have no idea why the had to fiddle with that.

1st advice please read up on the classes that you say op before commenting.

@Asmodean:
You can’t compare a class mechanic to another pieces by pieces.
1)Mesmers don’t have a second health bar like Necros do
2)Mesmers pet dont heal them while dealing dmg.
3)Necros pets not attacking a player when morph does not mean mesmer have to get that bug too.(what were u implying when you give that point.)Anet should fix that not break other classes.
4) Mesmer illusion dies from splash dmg faster then necros pets.
5)Mesmer dont such a strong aoe cc like fear >.<

So don’t compare 1 class from 1 perspective to make them seem op, or cry op.

Mesmer and thief like what cursed said it requires the players that are up against them to use more mental attentiveness to battle them. As a Mesmer player myself i don’t find fighting a mesmer a problem compared to many other players. 1st mesmer is a complicated class and requires the user to fully understand and bring out the potential in a mesmer. Most mesmer opponent don’t have a single clue what is their strength and weakness and how to spot the real player or how to deal with them. That what mesmer so strong.

For thief, their build around mobility and stealth. Stealth in every game is a very strong mechanic, even in real life. How can you deal with something that you can see.(which is what we are doing in mmo, sound doesn’t give us a single clue except dying.) What i agree is that pistol whip and some of their burst are to powerful atm and should be tweak.

Guardian, i think their too tanky and offering to much dmg in pvp with certain build and yes retaliation guardian are just to powerful to go against especially if they weild a greatsword and mace/focus and have their shield give burn to target who attacked them. It like a suicidal battle which guardian will have a upper hand or which could lead to the battle dragging out and his ally coming to assist him.

Finally, i think that currently in pvp , all classes need some tweak. Ele and engineer really need some love. (Ele dies to fast >.<)(Engineer to much RNG and too little viable build, mostly supporting builds).