Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

15% illusion damage Empowered Illusions has always been in the there. It’s nothing new.

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

Solori.6025:

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

He’s pseudo esports. You wouldn’t understand.

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

I agree this really needs to be looked at. Thats a really good video showing off that it might be wise to consider how much damage is able to be done in such a short amount of time.

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Squee Squashington.5189:

15% illusion damage Empowered Illusions has always been in the there. It’s nothing new.

You’re missing the point. They made the 15% phantasm damage from the inspiration GM minor baseline, which is too much free damage in most people’s opinions.

Probably doesn’t matter, but you have your TS info in that vid.

I haven’t watched the whole thing, but good info so far.

Zin.6170:

Probably doesn’t matter, but you have your TS info in that vid.

I haven’t watched the whole thing, but good info so far.

Thank you, I missed that

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Sorry I didn’t listen to anything because sleeping children. Did you know most videos have a mute button that turns off sounds and still let’s the footage run. Weird concept I know. Anyway

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Sorry I didn’t listen to anything because sleeping children. Did you know most videos have a mute button that turns off sounds and still let’s the footage run. Weird concept I know. Anyway

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

I apologize for coming off like a kitten. This video is to demonstrate how insane burst on both sides is. Obviously we didn’t fight most in the video but towards the end we did some duels.

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Sorry I didn’t listen to anything because sleeping children. Did you know most videos have a mute button that turns off sounds and still let’s the footage run. Weird concept I know. Anyway

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

I apologize for coming off like a kitten. This video is to demonstrate how insane burst on both sides is. Obviously we didn’t fight most in the video but towards the end we did some duels.

Ahh I didn’t make it towards the duels, I will pick it up where I left off when I get a free moment ( go go drug induced baby sleep)

Can you guys when you get a chance also test engineer and warrior

I was bursted down by an engi yesterday then condi wrecked by another.

For the warrior I noticed one skull cracked, then HB people down with quickness. pretty much insta killing them.

I also agree.
Damage is high for everyone.
I wish people would stop trying to favor one class over the other and admit that it;s high for their class too.

They are fine just l2p. /sarcasm

@Arken.3725, rather well done video. I normally don’t give time or day when comes to videos about balance but this was rather well done, people could say well it doesn’t count as it wasn’t real fight.

Nicely done.

Thank you Sol. Also, that test was AFTER the nerf Mesmers received to Power block, think about that for a second.

I didn’t watch the whole video as I was on my lunch break but from what I saw it sure did seem you guys were biased in your “testing” with comments such as “get 3 mesmers to focus on you and its instant gib rofl”. Isn’t that true of 3 of any class using a burst DPS build? Comments like that make it seem like you’re tunnel visioning and not looking at things within context.

Your whole testing is done to show the burst capabilities of mesmer in a post patch world where DPS for all classes has risen. If you wanted to be a bit more fair, you would have shown the burst capabilities of all 8 classes. However even doing this would prove little, since max burst builds are almost always impractical for PVP games (unless you don’t care about dying).

For example, I didn’t see the spec the mesmer used but I’m guessing it was some type of Dom/Duel/Illusions build for stun and max shatter damage. There is no condition cleanse in any of these lines so how long do you think the mesmer would last once he blew all of his cooldowns on someone for that burst? I saw Blink and MoD for his utilites so I’m guessing he would have to take either Decoy or some condi cleanse for his 3rd utility. If he doesn’t take Decoy then there is no escape for this mesmer. If he doesn’t take some type of condi cleanse then he will get quickly eaten with all of the hard hitting condis being thrown around now.

Edit: If you want to go Yolo with your class, that’s your perogative but please don’t use that as a reason to balance a class around. If you want to balance somewhat objectively, have some top scrimmagers with various builds play some team comp games so that the audience can view things and come to their own conclusions. Obviously, you wouldn’t be able to showcase this now since its too early after patch.

What’s even crazier is that this damage isn’t via some long cooldown elite.

Not sure how this got past internal testing, but you could tell things were rushed, so it’s not that unexpected.

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Sorry I didn’t listen to anything because sleeping children. Did you know most videos have a mute button that turns off sounds and still let’s the footage run. Weird concept I know. Anyway

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

I apologize for coming off like a kitten. This video is to demonstrate how insane burst on both sides is. Obviously we didn’t fight most in the video but towards the end we did some duels.

Ahh I didn’t make it towards the duels, I will pick it up where I left off when I get a free moment ( go go drug induced baby sleep)

Can you guys when you get a chance also test engineer and warrior

I was bursted down by an engi yesterday then condi wrecked by another.

For the warrior I noticed one skull cracked, then HB people down with quickness. pretty much insta killing them.

I also agree.
Damage is high for everyone.
I wish people would stop trying to favor one class over the other and admit that it;s high for their class too.

try this for Engineers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zOWZUywrrg&feature=youtu.be

Sol.4310:

@Arken.3725, rather well done video. I normally don’t give time or day when comes to videos about balance but this was rather well done, people could say well it doesn’t count as it wasn’t real fight.

Nicely done.

They had a real fight toward the last 10 minutes.

Saw it entirely, amazing work, I appreciate a lot this kind of exposition.

And yep, it’s ridiculous: being able to kill characters in like 3-5 seconds seems more in line with a first person shoothen than with a MMO. The power creep is real.

Buran.3796:

Saw it entirely, amazing work, I appreciate a lot this kind of exposition.

And yep, it’s ridiculous: being able to kill characters in like 3-5 seconds seems more in line with a first person shoothen than with a MMO. The power creep is real.

I can appreciate the game leaning towards more twitch play but the issue is that in a lot of cases, you can’t even see the burst coming. Where’s the counterplay in that? Even if you could, the amount of damage isn’t justifiable.

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

Most of the shatter setups at the beginning of the video are pretty contrived. Here are my thoughts:
1. You generally wouldn’t open with iZerker, because it telegraphs the burst. You’ll notice in your actual duels, you dodge almost all of them. Therefore, including the zerker in the burst damage demonstration is unrealistic.
2. You’re setting up the burst by having the target use a channeled skill to get the interrupt for Powerblock damage and Chaotic Interruption proc. This is highly unrealistic, especially for a stealth opener. Mirrorblade has non-negligible cast time and the stun from mantra is too short to land the burst if you first interrupt then Mirrorblade. That means that you have to precast Mirrorblade and hope the opponent uses a skill that you can interrupt while you are casting Mirrorblade.
3. The full burst is not instant; it’s odd to assume that a competent player would just sit there and eat the whole burst combo without using any stunbreaks, dodges, or defensive utilities after they get opened on. It gets especially comical once you add in the secondary burst from Blurred Frenzy.
4. Mirrorblade has a telegraphed animation that most players are used to dodging/blinding, since it’s been the primary shatter opener for a long time now; it’s uncommon to just casually land point-blank Mirrorblades (and being able to do so should be highly rewarding), with the exception of stealth openers, which brings us to …
5. Stealth openers are a big problem in GW2 in general, and requires discussion beyond the scope of your video. However, as you obviously know, typical stealth openers can be avoided by either counting+dodge, or positioning. You see this in your own duels at the end of the video. That said, I strongly believe that stealth stacking and increased duration are problematic because they allow more time for burst setup, as well as making the burst timing itself highly ambiguous – but this is not a problem specific to mesmers.
6. A ‘tournament’ build (which you mention in the video) likely wouldn’t run Decoy – utilities are Blink, Portal, Mantra. They still have stealth access from The Prestige (assuming sword-torch) and Mass Invis, but it’s not as though most of the bursts are coming from stealth, especially because Mass Invis is often used as team utility. It’s certainly not on the level of thieves in terms of repeatable, on-demand stealth.
7. The burst being demonstrated uses a lot of cooldowns. Blink bursts are particularly risky for GS/Sword+torch builds because they burn their stunbreaks and disengage. GS/Staff still has Phase Retreat, but they can’t open from stealth without using Mass Invis.
8. I’m not convinced that most mesmers will be running zerker amulet once the meta settles. Thieves and mediguards are lethal when your health is that low, and the new marauder amulet is closer to the old zerker.
9. All of that being said, the video does include what I think most people would consider the ‘realistic’/standard burst of Mirrorblade+Shatter+Mindstab. I think it’s worth discussing whether the damage from that burst is too high when combined with the instant stun from mantra – but that’s different from some of the (I think) unrealistic burst setups in the video.
10. I agree that instant cast skills can be bad for the game, particularly when they CC. That said, we’ve tolerated thief stealth openers for a long time, which are not only instant and CC, but also go through stability (which mantra does not do).

With regard to burn guardians, your demonstration mostly relies on the assumption that the opponent doesn’t remove the burning; in the duels against Inspiration-spec’d mesmer, Rylock ends the fights with basically full health. Guardian doesn’t have easy access to many different types of conditions, so they can’t load a target up with conditions to overwhelm removals the way some condi specs can. However, I definitely agree that burn guardian over-performs against classes without strong condition removal, and I also agree that applications may be too easy/unavoidable – I’m just not sure we needed someone walking back and forth over Purging Flames to demonstrate that :P

varas.5621:

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

Most of the shatter setups at the beginning of the video are pretty contrived. Here are my thoughts:
1. You generally wouldn’t open with iZerker, because it telegraphs the burst. You’ll notice in your actual duels, you dodge almost all of them. Therefore, including the zerker in the burst damage demonstration is unrealistic.
2. You’re setting up the burst by having the target use a channeled skill to get the interrupt for Powerblock damage and Chaotic Interruption proc. This is highly unrealistic, especially for a stealth opener. Mirrorblade has non-negligible cast time and the stun from mantra is too short to land the burst if you first interrupt then Mirrorblade. That means that you have to precast Mirrorblade and hope the opponent uses a skill that you can interrupt while you are casting Mirrorblade.
3. The full burst is not instant; it’s odd to assume that a competent player would just sit there and eat the whole burst combo without using any stunbreaks, dodges, or defensive utilities after they get opened on. It gets especially comical once you add in the secondary burst from Blurred Frenzy.
4. Mirrorblade has a telegraphed animation that most players are used to dodging/blinding, since it’s been the primary shatter opener for a long time now; it’s uncommon to just casually land point-blank Mirrorblades (and being able to do so should be highly rewarding), with the exception of stealth openers, which brings us to …
5. Stealth openers are a big problem in GW2 in general, and requires discussion beyond the scope of your video. However, as you obviously know, typical stealth openers can be avoided by either counting+dodge, or positioning. You see this in your own duels at the end of the video. That said, I strongly believe that stealth stacking and increased duration are problematic because they allow more time for burst setup, as well as making the burst timing itself highly ambiguous – but this is not a problem specific to mesmers.
6. A ‘tournament’ build (which you mention in the video) likely wouldn’t run Decoy – utilities are Blink, Portal, Mantra. They still have stealth access from The Prestige (assuming sword-torch) and Mass Invis, but it’s not as though most of the bursts are coming from stealth, especially because Mass Invis is often used as team utility. It’s certainly not on the level of thieves in terms of repeatable, on-demand stealth.
7. The burst being demonstrated uses a lot of cooldowns. Blink bursts are particularly risky for GS/Sword+torch builds because they burn their stunbreaks and disengage. GS/Staff still has Phase Retreat, but they can’t open from stealth without using Mass Invis.
8. I’m not convinced that most mesmers will be running zerker amulet once the meta settles. Thieves and mediguards are lethal when your health is that low, and the new marauder amulet is closer to the old zerker.
9. All of that being said, the video does include what I think most people would consider the ‘realistic’/standard burst of Mirrorblade+Shatter+Mindstab. I think it’s worth discussing whether the damage from that burst is too high when combined with the instant stun from mantra – but that’s different from some of the (I think) unrealistic burst setups in the video.
10. I agree that instant cast skills can be bad for the game, particularly when they CC. That said, we’ve tolerated thief stealth openers for a long time, which are not only instant and CC, but also go through stability (which mantra does not do).

With regard to burn guardians, your demonstration mostly relies on the assumption that the opponent doesn’t remove the burning; in the duels against Inspiration-spec’d mesmer, Rylock ends the fights with basically full health. Guardian doesn’t have easy access to many different types of conditions, so they can’t load a target up with conditions to overwhelm removals the way some condi specs can. However, I definitely agree that burn guardian over-performs against classes without strong condition removal, and I also agree that applications may be too easy/unavoidable – I’m just not sure we needed someone walking back and forth over Purging Flames to demonstrate that :P

This is all correct I am sure but so what? The point was to demostrate how stupid damage is right now. Which I think the video does very well.

varas.5621:

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

1. iZerker was just to demonstrate damage, again not really feasible so I can agree with this.

2. It’s more so the conditions afterwards in addition to the stun which is essentially unavoidable. A smart Mesmer will have no issue’s interrupting weapon skills. We dueled many times and I witnessed firsthand how it was to land CI and Powerblock with relative ease. Before the patch, Warlord and I had back-and-forth duels all the time with his interrupt mesmer but the damage was nowhere near the levels it is now.

3. The damage is quite literally instant from a stealth opener. I’m pretty sure we demonstrated that handily.

4/5. Agreed.

6/7. I was just making an assumption of 2 Mantras and a stun-break, thank you for clarifying.

8. Against thieves which can stick to a target relatively easily? Absolutely. A guardian? Not quite due to the lack of said ability.

9. The damage is too high as was stated in my #2 response.

And I think I did discuss the merits of Burn-Guardian not being nearly as OP as many believe due to the lack condition variety. You would be surprised at how many people will run in and out of the circle.

You should do a video of a fresh air ele Vs a burning Engineer, the madness is spread amongst others as you shall see. Possibly even a D/D Thief (less so).

@varas: notice that albeit the burst can be “staged”, the video only involves 1 vs afk or 1 vs 1 and every burst stats in optimal conditions from both players.

In a 5 vs 5 PvP landscape landing a burst over a player busy with more antagonist or over a player which flees from other combat after losing significative amounts of health would end in a “insta gib” in a shocking amount of times.

Is not only the problem with the amount of damage in a fair duel between gentleman, but the whole picture of what will happen when you put n vs n in a landscape in which most of the roster is able to do over the top damage. Double and triple focus will usually end in people being deleted in seconds.

I think that a middle ground between the previous meta of bruisers capable to endure long fights while delivering high amounts of damage over time and the new meta of insane spikes of damage is possible.

I also think that in this game the differences between being a cloth, leather or metal armor user is too small. I would glady trade damage for more sustain.

I think the real takeaway re: mesmer is that the 15% phantasm damage boost was totally unwarranted.

When Rytlock used mirrorblade + mindstab + mind wrack + power block, the damage wasn’t over the top for a burst class. It also requires as a practical matter that the mesmer burn blink to get the mindblade bounces and extra mind wrack damage from IP. (Note that Rytlock asks for 20s to reset whenever he messes up his burst during the tests). But the izerker alone often did more damage than the mindwrack.

Given that phantasms are pretty much fire and forget, I’d be more inclined to first revert the 15% baseline damage buff to phantasms before even thinking about further nerfs to mesmer.

Edit: Arken, why is your JI going on a kitten CD when you use it? Shouldn’t it be going on a lower CD due to Monk’s Focus?

I don’t think that Guardian burn build is very good in real life application.

ResJudicator.7916:

I think the real takeaway re: mesmer is that the 15% phantasm damage boost was totally unwarranted.

When Rytlock used mirrorblade + mindstab + mind wrack + power block, the damage wasn’t over the top for a burst class. It also requires as a practical matter that the mesmer burn blink to get the mindblade bounces and extra mind wrack damage from IP. (Note that Rytlock asks for 20s to reset whenever he messes up his burst during the tests). But the izerker alone often did more damage than the mindwrack.

Given that phantasms are pretty much fire and forget, I’d be more inclined to first revert the 15% baseline damage buff to phantasms before even thinking about further nerfs to mesmer.

Edit: Arken, why is your JI going on a kitten CD when you use it? Shouldn’t it be going on a lower CD due to Monk’s Focus?

Not sure what you mean?

Edit Jasher: Indeed, stated multiple times it was to test how much we could do.

ResJudicator.7916:

I think the real takeaway re: mesmer is that the 15% phantasm damage boost was totally unwarranted.
……

Given that phantasms are pretty much fire and forget, I’d be more inclined to first revert the 15% baseline damage buff to phantasms before even thinking about further nerfs to mesmer.

It isn’t the 15% damage buff to phantasms. The increase in zerker stats causes the super high damage.

i don’t think there is any need for the nerf really …..

I really prefer to play fast pace than spending 5 mins taking down bunkers or Celes builds

currently the necro’s DS is more serious business for me. I haven’t checked update but it seems they refill very fast and it makes them very tanky.

on the other hand it’s easy to clean out the burn or pop stab when you see the interrupt icon on mesmer.

Leodon.1564:

I didn’t watch the whole video as I was on my lunch break but from what I saw it sure did seem you guys were biased in your “testing” with comments such as “get 3 mesmers to focus on you and its instant gib rofl”. Isn’t that true of 3 of any class using a burst DPS build? Comments like that make it seem like you’re tunnel visioning and not looking at things within context.

Your whole testing is done to show the burst capabilities of mesmer in a post patch world where DPS for all classes has risen. If you wanted to be a bit more fair, you would have shown the burst capabilities of all 8 classes. However even doing this would prove little, since max burst builds are almost always impractical for PVP games (unless you don’t care about dying).

For example, I didn’t see the spec the mesmer used but I’m guessing it was some type of Dom/Duel/Illusions build for stun and max shatter damage. There is no condition cleanse in any of these lines so how long do you think the mesmer would last once he blew all of his cooldowns on someone for that burst? I saw Blink and MoD for his utilites so I’m guessing he would have to take either Decoy or some condi cleanse for his 3rd utility. If he doesn’t take Decoy then there is no escape for this mesmer. If he doesn’t take some type of condi cleanse then he will get quickly eaten with all of the hard hitting condis being thrown around now.

Edit: If you want to go Yolo with your class, that’s your perogative but please don’t use that as a reason to balance a class around. If you want to balance somewhat objectively, have some top scrimmagers with various builds play some team comp games so that the audience can view things and come to their own conclusions. Obviously, you wouldn’t be able to showcase this now since its too early after patch.

Unfortunately I do not play all other 7 classes as well as my mes (Maybe except necro) so it would be hard to show off the other classes to their full potential. The build I was using was Dom/Duel/Chaos and yes, I have no condi cleanse. However, depending on the comp I am fighting, I do swap out chaos for inspiration to remedy my no condi cleanse issue

To answer your second question, I have done unranked against some 4/5 man ESL premades and the no condi cleanse isn’t an issue because the opponents are usually dead in under 5 seconds. Even if I have no condi cleanse, if I burst the opponent 100-0, they have no condis to give

A 1v1 burst of 100-0 should never happen.

At the very least, they need to change burning back. I’m all for giving people a few weeks to find anti burst meta builds, but there is no way to play around stacked burning. There aren’t enough condi clears in the world to deal with it right now. Team fights are pretty much determined by how many people on your team have access to aoe burning. It shouldn’t be possible to dish out that much damage on the entire enemy team. It’s breaking the game.

varas.5621:

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

1. Zerker can be used to force a dodge or be forced to take 5k+ damage.

2. While this isn’t always going to happen, if you are doing your job as a roamer to +1 fights, it isn’t too hard to get a interrupt proc before you go in with mirror blade. Besides, even if I don’t get a power block proc, confounding will still stun them for the entire mirror blade burst.

3. My mirror blade bursts are basically instant. By the time you can react to the stun you have already taken the full burst.

4/5: 100% agree

6. Fair enough. I would probably take decoy away for portal, but the build I was using was my pre patch build that I always used.

7. I wouldn’t say they are pretty risky in the opener because you have blurred frenzy/prestige to fall back on. If you don’t have those, then yes, it is all or nothing.

8. I am still testing if mara or zerk is better. Will just require more time with each, although I believe mara is slightly better.

9. Izerker doesn’t really give away a burst, although I should have mixed it up more like I usually do instead of always opening with it . I could use izerker and then just burst out of stealth 4-5 seconds later. That’s the beautiful thing about having an instant stun; I can burst whenever I want. I do think both bursts are too high though.

10. I hate instant cast bursts. Agree.

Glad you enjoyed the video btw!

What are you using as your off set? Still Sword/Focus, or trying traited Pistol Now?

Damage is high SHOCK!!! But seriously. Go play MANY ranked with top players/teams, gather stats and feedback then discuss what you think should be buffed/nerfed/tonned down. That is a constructive thread, not this.

Creating a post/video of 1v1 is just stupid because the game isnt revolved around 1v1 and never will be for this exact reason.

Imagine if you manipulated this exact scenario pre-patch with say a pu condi build or something in a 1v1 situation. You could easily create a thread saying ’ong pu is OP must nerf) when in reality is if far from the truth since pvp is a 5v5 system only.

I agree with varas. It is important to watch the last 10-15 minutes of the video, where there was actual fighting. Target golem practice (even if the golem is a guardian^^) always gives a somewhat unrealistic image of how things actually are.

But I generally agree that there probably needs to be some kind of tuning down everything. However, we are still in the 1st week after patch and people of course jump first to the killer builds. Once things have settled and people actually played around with support possibilities (one thing was mentioned in the video with Mesmer invuln support) and team compositions many things might get put into context.

Having high toughness might be less important than actually using actively defensive (team support) skills. So I hope that ANet will still wait for things to settle.

Liam McColgan.7689:

Damage is high SHOCK!!! But seriously. Go play MANY ranked with top players/teams, gather stats and feedback then discuss what you think should be buffed/nerfed/tonned down. That is a constructive thread, not this.

Creating a post/video of 1v1 is just stupid because the game isnt revolved around 1v1 and never will be for this exact reason.

Imagine if you manipulated this exact scenario pre-patch with say a pu condi build or something in a 1v1 situation. You could easily create a thread saying ’ong pu is OP must nerf) when in reality is if far from the truth since pvp is a 5v5 system only.

While sPvP is a 5v5 mode. The occurrence of a full out 5v5 battle around a point is actually very rare. When 5v5 do occur, it’s often very chaotic and people go down very fast regardless. It’s not surprising that 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 across nodes are actually more frequent. Sometimes 1v1 to keep a point captured until your allies rotate is important.

after the patch of yesterday,i had fun on create my own custom patch notes, enjoy:

new mesmer trait: “Supreme lockdown”, with this trait mesmer get the 100% chance on interrupt to kick opponent from the match for 1 minute. Reasons: we feel like players are having too much freedom on skill usage against mesmer, this is not how we intend the mesmer to be. We are looking at mesmer as an opponent that literaly dont let the enemy do anithyng, like anaconda deatly vice.

mesmer nerf: f4 and any signet distortion trait has been removed from the game. This is to ensure that mesmer players learn to dodge like other class, and they dont dodge only to create a clone.

thief nerf: we added a time bomb on thief HP, to force thief players to burst down opponents in a second. If he fails on kill opponent within 2 seconds, he blows up dealing 12k aoe damage on allies.

Burning buff: we feel like burning condi should be more similar to a burst damage, cuz we dont remember that condi should be a damage over time. So we made burning damage like a burst skill eviscerate, making it thick 8k per sec.

Engi mechanics: shield duration skill is now 40 seconds. Also, engi is now free to spam granades on the ground while beeeing blocking. Reason of this change is that we feel like engi has not enough blocks/evades compared to guardian.

Guardian nerf: any guardian healing power is now deleted. This is because we think guardian is the real warrior, and he shouldnt heal.

Warrior mechanics: now warrior has to write in chat 5-4-3-2-1 when adrenaline is full before burst skill beeing activate. This is to be sure warrior’s opponent really have the time to react to their fast unpredictable deadly attacks.

Warrior shouts: Shouts now damage 1k yourself and allies around on usage on a 1500 radius.

Warrior cleanse mechanics: we feel like warrior should really die to condition, so to proc cleansing ire,so now to proc this trait not only he has to hit the target but he has to get all the conditions on him and /kneel on wishper to opponent. We really think that 3 condi removal on our condi spam fest game is really too OP, so this trait wont activate if the opponent wasted for some stupi reason his double dodge.

Warrior buff: yea we also have some buff for this class. Now lognbow has 2500 range, cuz we really think logbow fits so well on our concept of warrior in our game, and feel players like him in his role of ranger wannabe.

Warrior bug fixes: RUSH skill five of GS now has a 100% chance to fail if the opponent moves above a 5° degrees from the skill line of attack. This is to avoid some useless forced dodge on this skill that was never intended to land, was here only to scare people.

XD XD was so fun. XD XD XD
Aniway guys, talking seriuosly moral of this patch is that the only class that should be able to burst like mesmer is now doing is warrior without lognbow, cuz is the only full melee class predictable. Ranged classes should never have the same or more dps than a melee, this is the basic of the balance and thats what anet is doing wrong. Especialy if that range class is able to disappear, block, blind, CC/interrupt on button push, teleports and kite easily with cripple/immobilize spam.

Akikaze.1307:

Liam McColgan.7689:

Damage is high SHOCK!!! But seriously. Go play MANY ranked with top players/teams, gather stats and feedback then discuss what you think should be buffed/nerfed/tonned down. That is a constructive thread, not this.

Creating a post/video of 1v1 is just stupid because the game isnt revolved around 1v1 and never will be for this exact reason.

Imagine if you manipulated this exact scenario pre-patch with say a pu condi build or something in a 1v1 situation. You could easily create a thread saying ’ong pu is OP must nerf) when in reality is if far from the truth since pvp is a 5v5 system only.

While sPvP is a 5v5 mode. The occurrence of a full out 5v5 battle around a point is actually very rare. When 5v5 do occur, it’s often very chaotic and people go down very fast regardless. It’s not surprising that 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 across nodes are actually more frequent. Sometimes 1v1 to keep a point captured until your allies rotate is important.

I agree, but at a good level of tpvp….a mesmer v guard both dps is a 1 shot fest anyway, so in that sense its balanced (mesmer should win due to range advantage but both is crazy dmg). If you are looking at 2v2/ 3v3,s then yes i agree theory craft that, but once again this thread/video is irrelevant in this sense. Finally, a mesmer or guard shouldnt really be trying 1v1s anyway, their job is to team support/ +1. Just because a mesmer +1’s a fight, 2 shots the target then leaves, hes is op? No he is doing his job just like any other zerker. I still fail to see the point of this.

The duels at the end look balanced. I’m enjoying the new “meta”, but it’ll continue to change as players experiment. It still feels like you have lots of control of your success when changing out traits, etc. Build vs Build, but due to the twitch play, it falls down to who is the better player, if both players aren’t countering the other. Either way its a team game, and I’m having a good time. (this as a cele staff support ele with mercy runes)

But the video was fun to watch, so thanks for that. Duels were really fun to watch. This game reminds me even more of shooters than it used to. I love it. Best action mmo out right now imo.

My overall point is that balance discussions should revolve around realistic setups rather than ideal damage against an unresponsive target. While it’s certainly fun to show how much damage you could theoretically do in perfect scenarios, much of the "wow" factor from the video (such as showing how low you can get a 3k armor target in a "single" burst) relies on extra damage that you wouldn’t normally be able to get. We’re already seeing comments in other threads about how shatter mes is doing 30k bursts from stealth and how building tanky is useless because even Guardians with sentinel amulet get one-shot from stealth. So, while I enjoyed the video and appreciate Arken and Rylock putting in the effort to make it, I’m wary of perpetuating the idea that shatter bursts hit harder than they do in actual usage. Shatter damage is super high already, we don’t need to exaggerate it :P

In practice, the only part of the burst that is instant and unreactable is Mirrorblade+Mindwrack(+Fire/Air proc). Even the Mindstab is slow enough that a good player will avoid it some of the time. The iZerker is certainly used for baiting dodges, but my point was that it’s unrealistic to add it to the burst damage the way the video does. Any damage after the Mindstab is unrealistic. Again, if you watch the actual duels, Rylock isn’t landing instagib 20k+ stealth bursts. Real bursts do very high damage, but they’re not quite as outrageous as some of the setups being shown in the earlier part of the video.

In my own playing since patch, it seems that a large part of the problem is the ferocity on the zerker amulet. The difference in damage between a burst that fully crits and one that doesn’t is comical (i.e., one-shot vs. half-health). Non-crit Mirrorblade does <1k per hit, for example, which is completely reasonable. Sharply reducing crit damage would bring down the ceiling of achievable damage, while also reducing RNG. Burst damage should be reliable; you don’t want people living or dying based on how many hits crit (Fire/Air RNG procs are also a problem, but we’ve all talked that one to death in the past). I disagree with the suggestion to nerf Fury, because that actually increases RNG, and still leaves the possibility of achieving absurd damage if you get lucky. Directly addressing amulet stats also has the benefit of toning down damage for other outlier builds, because let’s be honest - mesmers aren’t the only ones doing insane damage in this patch.

Rylock, my point in items 6 and 7 is that since a ’tournament’ build takes portal instead of decoy, the stealth opener would burn torch 4 and blink (not to mention weapon swap CD if you were still in combat before engaging). That leaves you in melee range, in GS, with no stunbreak. Sure, you’ve got f4 and blurred frenzy, but on a light armor class with 15k health, I’d classify that as risky :P. Also, +1 situations have always been terrible for the guy getting jumped. Let’s not pretend the target would survive if it was a thief jumping them from stealth with basi+steal+backstab :P.

Solori.6025:

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

Im not sure this is stat compensation at work.

Base crit chance is still 4%. The character where i was benefiting from the precision/ferocity from traitlines have much less crit chance and crit damage. Losing more than 10% crit chance and a similar number of critdmg.

Precision base stat only went up with ~60. (was 942 or 946, now 1000). So unless they went balls to the wall crazy and gave everyone a ton of free Power, i don’t think it’s the compensation.

Arken.3725:

ResJudicator.7916:

I think the real takeaway re: mesmer is that the 15% phantasm damage boost was totally unwarranted.

When Rytlock used mirrorblade + mindstab + mind wrack + power block, the damage wasn’t over the top for a burst class. It also requires as a practical matter that the mesmer burn blink to get the mindblade bounces and extra mind wrack damage from IP. (Note that Rytlock asks for 20s to reset whenever he messes up his burst during the tests). But the izerker alone often did more damage than the mindwrack.

Given that phantasms are pretty much fire and forget, I’d be more inclined to first revert the 15% baseline damage buff to phantasms before even thinking about further nerfs to mesmer.

Edit: Arken, why is your JI going on a kitten CD when you use it? Shouldn’t it be going on a lower CD due to Monk’s Focus?

Not sure what you mean?

Edit Jasher: Indeed, stated multiple times it was to test how much we could do.

Sorry, the language filter randomly picked up on my edit text.

I was asking at the end whether the cooldown on your JI was bugged. I notice it was going on a full untrainted cooldown of fourty-five seconds (using numbers activates the filter), rather than going on the reduced cooldown of 36 seconds (which I believe is what traited JI should have).

Regarding the damage, I understand that you guys were testing how much total damage you could do. But the purpose of the video was also to show whether something was OP or needed nerfing — both you and Rytlock constantly made comments in the video about certain skills being OP or too strong.

One item Rytlock picked up on was the iZerker damage and the 15% baseline phantasm dmg buff, which I completely agree with. If you rewatch the video and look at the damage logs, the iZerker was doing more damage than the mind wrack most of the time (and sometimes iZerker was doing significantly more damage). And I’ve seen similarly high numbers with iWarlock in my own play. I was just suggesting that, if people are going to talk about mesmer nerfs, we first think about phantasm damage (which requires no setup, doesn’t break stealth, and is fire-and-forget at 1.2k range) rather than nerfing the rest of mesmer’s damage. Because the “instant burst” combo from mirrorblade + blink + MOD + mind wrack + mind stab alone is comparable to the “instant burst” that other burst builds can do (lower than some, higher than others).

Interesting this whole discussion is about Mesmers and not the Guardian’s ability to output Burn damage. Maybe just 1 condition really isn’t as bad as many people may believe.

@ResJudicator: Rylock and myself used to duel A LOT before the patch and it was always back and forth while he ran the same exact build(Not the same since the new traits but interrupt non-the-less) and even when I got stunned and took damage from a full burst, the damage wasn’t nearly as high. After the patch, I barely stand a chance(and no chance if it’s the PU version)

First off: Why isn’t the mesmer using harmonious mantras with mantra of recovery? Second: Why go chaos when you can go inspiration and have so much heals from shatters? With Dom/Duel/Insp you are literally a walking tank with high burst.

Chobiko.9182:

First off: Why isn’t the mesmer using harmonious mantras with mantra of recovery? Second: Why go chaos when you can go inspiration and have so much heals from shatters? With Dom/Duel/Insp you are literally a walking tank with high burst.

He switched to Inspiration at the end and completely nullified my condition dmg.

I saw a pretty balanced matchup.

Mesmer gets facerolled by conditions, he swaps damage for sustain and unsurprisingly wins. It even seemed that towards the end the fights were pretty close so maybe some more theorycrafting on the guard’s part or a different weapon set and he might win.

Also want to mention that everyone complaining about illusion damage are the same ones that don’t save their dodges for them. All phantasm attacks are extremely telegraphed and easy to dodge so it’s definitely an l2p issue on their part. Even the illusionary mage’s attack is easy to spot seeing as how it’s projectile travels extremely slowly.

varas.5621:

My overall point is that balance discussions should revolve around realistic setups rather than ideal damage against an unresponsive target. While it’s certainly fun to show how much damage you could theoretically do in perfect scenarios, much of the “wow” factor from the video (such as showing how low you can get a 3k armor target in a “single” burst) relies on extra damage that you wouldn’t normally be able to get. We’re already seeing comments in other threads about how shatter mes is doing 30k bursts from stealth and how building tanky is useless because even Guardians with sentinel amulet get one-shot from stealth. So, while I enjoyed the video and appreciate Arken and Rylock putting in the effort to make it, I’m wary of perpetuating the idea that shatter bursts hit harder than they do in actual usage. Shatter damage is super high already, we don’t need to exaggerate it :P

In practice, the only part of the burst that is instant and unreactable is Mirrorblade+Mindwrack(Fire/Air proc). Even the Mindstab is slow enough that a good player will avoid it some of the time. The iZerker is certainly used for baiting dodges, but my point was that it’s unrealistic to add it to the burst damage the way the video does. Any damage after the Mindstab is unrealistic. Again, if you watch the actual duels, Rylock isn’t landing instagib 20k stealth bursts. Real bursts do very high damage, but they’re not quite as outrageous as some of the setups being shown in the earlier part of the video.

In my own playing since patch, it seems that a large part of the problem is the ferocity on the zerker amulet. The difference in damage between a burst that fully crits and one that doesn’t is comical (i.e., one-shot vs. half-health). Non-crit Mirrorblade does <1k per hit, for example, which is completely reasonable. Sharply reducing crit damage would bring down the ceiling of achievable damage, while also reducing RNG. Burst damage should be reliable; you don’t want people living or dying based on how many hits crit (Fire/Air RNG procs are also a problem, but we’ve all talked that one to death in the past). I disagree with the suggestion to nerf Fury, because that actually increases RNG, and still leaves the possibility of achieving absurd damage if you get lucky. Directly addressing amulet stats also has the benefit of toning down damage for other outlier builds, because let’s be honest – mesmers aren’t the only ones doing insane damage in this patch.

Rylock, my point in items 6 and 7 is that since a ‘tournament’ build takes portal instead of decoy, the stealth opener would burn torch 4 and blink (not to mention weapon swap CD if you were still in combat before engaging). That leaves you in melee range, in GS, with no stunbreak. Sure, you’ve got f4 and blurred frenzy, but on a light armor class with 15k health, I’d classify that as risky :P. Also, 1 situations have always been terrible for the guy getting jumped. Let’s not pretend the target would survive if it was a thief jumping them from stealth with basisteal+backstab :P.

To add to this, you have to remember that in the duels arken was running with 3.2k armor and 20k hp, and I was bursting him for half his health just with the mirror blade burst. When he swapped to power guardian with marauder ammy after the recording, I was exploding him for about 75% or more of his health just from the mirror blade burst.

To your comment with the tourney build, I ran staff/gs (I run this a lot more now) with decoy port and mantra and did quite well. As long as I positioned well I didn’t need to blink to burst or survive. Even if the other team had 2 thieves, I would just instakill them if they tried to burst me lol.