Guild Wars 2

I read a lot of cr*p on this forum about people arguing that conditions aren’t too powerful and so on. And some of them do make some good points, i.e some players take next to no condi removal then moan, which is fair enough, but I’m not a player who has ever followed the meta, I craft my own builds, to do 3 of the following, removal conditions well, negate power damage if possible, and also deal enough damage to win fights. I currently play thief, so when I saw all these conditions like confusion and burning getting huge buffs, I knew I needed to compensate for that, so I did. My build can and does removal a lot of conditions, and against the none stealth condi classes, (engi, necro, sometimes ranger) as long as I play to my capabilities I can win the fight. But you put me against a class with stealth (mesmer and thief for example) there is literally nothing I can do to win, believe me, I’ve looked at in every single way of going about the fight, and it’s literally impossible to win.

I’m not a person to just shout out accusations toward a class without doing some research however, so I made myself a condition mesmer yesterday, and found someone who would be willing to fight me in OS… I found a Staff ele, it was a regular 1v1 but with a twist, I used my nose to press the skills on my keyboard, that’s right my nose. For the majority of the fight I did nothing but press 2 and 3, I think I pressed 4 once on scepter/torch and I won the fight; without even going below 50% health, I didn’t dodge once, I didn’t use my heal, nor any utilities and I still won.

Now I ask ANET, why is it you let a class have so much? Stealth, multiple blocks, invunerablity, mobility and a damage source that not only ticks while he sits inside stealth, a damage source so high that is hits like a full zerker thief, but is tankier than a full soldiers guardian… Confusion first of all, should be counterable, it shouldn’t do a like 5k base damage, sure keep that in pve by all means, but not in WvW. On a side bar, burning is also a huge problem at the moment.

Okay, on to condi thief, I haven’t touched condi thief, I’d feel too dirty switching my beautiful thief to condi, but I’ve played a lot against it, and it gets a lot of what condi mesmer does, other than the blocks and invuns, but they get damage negated through stealth, I was fighting a condi thief yesterday, and he literally put me from 100% to 25% within using two skills, which would be fair enough, I mean zerk thief can do the same, but the difference again is, he’s not even close to as squishy as a zerk thief. I’m starting to think you should make soldiers do zerk damage and just remove precision and ferocity entirely, because what’s the point when dire can do the damage of a zerk thief and be just as tanky and a guardian?

I’m sure there will be people on here who will turn around and question my skill, go ahead, but I’ve been playing this game for 2 and a half years and a lot of that time spent has been spent on me learning every class and how to counter and play against them to the best of my ability, I’m not one of those power meta nuts who doesn’t take countering condi into account, I do… with every single class I have.

In conclusion, I strong feel that burning and confusion need to be brought down to a fair state within WvW, also I believe that it would be in Anets best interests to nerf condi mesmer and thief, so they dont ruin the game any further. A way of doing this would be, for example; if say the conditions are ticking over 2-3k combined, if they then enter stealth they get revealed instantly. Sorta like how throw gunk works with thief.

Remember anet, WvWer are the ones who usually end up buying more gems, please take a day away from HoT to make WvW game mode more enjoyable for everyone.

Also before anyone tries to point this out, no I don’t run a full zerk thief, i have about 3 pieces zerker now.

Stealth is fine, the problem is that some classes/builds do to much w/o sacrificing to much.

The main culprits are probably PU/Perplex condi mesmers, we all know them. The staff / scepter torch clone spamming like a boss builds that spend more time in stealth than out of it. You pretty much wont encounter anything else now roaming. And trapper condi thieves being the other amazingly enjoyable fight you may encounter whilst roaming.

This game however is not balanced around 1v1’s in WvW so you need to move on, are they OP in this situation, yes they are brokenly OP. Does it really impact WvW, a game mode where the metric for success is measured by PPT? No not really.

The main problem with stealth is unlike other MMOs, you can remain in stealth while your Condi damage ticks.

Yeap. Stealth + Condition builds are top-tier in the roaming WvW scene. If they were good anywhere else, then we’d have a problem. In numbers 5+, thieves are useless and mesmers are mere portal/veil bots. Until that gets fixed, let ’em shine in the roaming scene.

Also, on your “duel” with a staff ele, how exactly did you win? The staff ele could just sit at 1200 range and you couldn’t hit him/her at all. Plus standing still vs a staff ele would result in a quick death with all their heavy-hitting AoE, no matter how tanky your stats are.

I’m all for bringing up valid “proof”, but either you made this up or that elementalist is the worst of the worst.

I’ve had fights with guardians, rangers, other mesmers and eles where my conditions do nothing. And in the past when I ran a power build then I would do zero damage against a warrior and only minor damage against a guardian… At the moment wvw from a mesmer point of view is balanced for the first time. There are builds in each profession that can beat me playing a PU mesmer. You just need to be more flexible in your build.

Mesmer as a whole needs some adjustments. Condition and PU (not every condition Mesmer is PU) especially.

I don’t think stealth + conditions are a problem but I do think that multiple blocks + invulnerability on top of being physically tanky while dealing very high condition damage is a problem.

I’m going to hold true to the opinion that Mesmer has too many ways to go immune to everything. They probably have more access to invulnerability than any other profession. And remember that immune and invulnerable are two different things.

I mean that is different from ele
X: “How do I play ele?”
Y: “Faceroll your keyboard and call it skill”

You’re right, just that I was WTF when reading the OP :D
And truth being told: A lot if not most of the classes are faceroll right now, Mesmer isn’t, Mesmer is noseroll!

easy fix, if condition damage does X damage tick and you happend to be in stealth you get kicked out of stealth.

also condition damage needs to get toned down its beyond lame how one can ram up to 8 ticks of burning or any other crappy conditions on your kitten without any problem and then just run off and watch you die these people dont even wanna fight all they wanna do is apply conditions and run..

see i have no problem with anything but atleast make conditions in a way that its “support” damage so they have to add their own damage on top of it to hit for example same damage as a melee build in berzerker

if berzerker toon hits for 1k dmg on target X
then condition toon should hit for let say 500 X condition damage and 500 from his own swings.

right now its 3k from X condition and 0 damage from guy him self as hes busy teleporting away or hiding in health till u drop your face in the dirt.. kinda lame but w/e its not like Anet will change it anytime soon last balance patch with upscaling in dmg was just horrible.

No stealth class applys 8 stacks of burning as far as I know.
Condi builds do a LOT less damage than physical zerk attacks. The difference is, that you can’t dodge condies once they are applied.

The fact, that we are currently in a condi-favorable-meta and people still don’t know what to look out for most of times…. results in such threads.

I somehow get the feeling that lot’s of people here are zerk classes that attack the mesmer scepter 2, get 5 tormet and instead of cleansing start to run around.

PS: If any condi-tick would end stealth… then stealth is broken.

Eme, no offence but that ele you fought has to be the worst ele in existence or using some kind of special snowflake build that is just flat out terrible.

There’s mirror images which 1 dodge can completely negate. After that look out for the shatters and just cleave clones out as they spawn. They have 2.4k health and wet paper for armour, even cele can destroy them with ease.

The only thing left is torment, not from clones, because we’re cleaving them, so it’s just from the block skill. Simple, just don’t attack.

Smart cleansing will result in a draw or at least you both deciding it’s just not worth going at it for 10 mins or more for 1 loot bag.

TheBeesKnees.8391:

I found a Staff ele, it was a regular 1v1 but with a twist, I used my nose to press the skills on my keyboard, that’s right my nose. For the majority of the fight I did nothing but press 2 and 3, I think I pressed 4 once on scepter/torch and I won the fight; without even going below 50% health, I didn’t dodge once, I didn’t use my heal, nor any utilities and I still won.

I play a kit less engineer with only one hand and have never, ever, once, lost a fight to a thief or mesmer, stealth or not. Not one loss.

• new condis have become available to more classes but condi clearing has stayed relatively static since the dawn of the game.
• +40% and -40% condi duration food is incredibly stupid, and borderline mandatory for successful wvw roaming.
• PU mesmer is waaay overtuned.
• dire gear and perplexity was considered too imbalanced for pvp but the experimental lab rat of wvw seems to be stuck with it.

what to do?

• review the condi clearing capabilities of each class and update them to an acceptable level to combat the current level of condi spam in smaller encounters. at the SAME time, seriously review the ability of group condi cleansing, as the state of shout clearing makes condi’s very weak in group play and that is unacceptable.
• nerf condi +/- duration food. cap it at 15-20%, make condition-type-specific foods buffed to 30%.
• they’ve already stated mesmers are getting nerfed. i know its hard, but nerf smarter not harder. adjusting PU and torch down doesnt mean “nerf them into the ground”. overnerfing is just as bad as overbuffing.
• dire isnt going to get removed. the long term solution here is a condi damage overhaul. lower the base dmg of condition tics but allow them to crit and make ferocity effect the crit tics damage. no more “condi specs only need to make half the investment for the same offensive result” nonsense.

its that easy. sadly, itll never happen.

Raven.9603:

• new condis have become available to more classes but condi clearing has stayed relatively static since the dawn of the game.
• +40% and -40% condi duration food is incredibly stupid, and borderline mandatory for successful wvw roaming.
• PU mesmer is waaay overtuned.
• dire gear and perplexity was considered too imbalanced for pvp but the experimental lab rat of wvw seems to be stuck with it.

what to do?

• review the condi clearing capabilities of each class and update them to an acceptable level to combat the current level of condi spam in smaller encounters. at the SAME time, seriously review the ability of group condi cleansing, as the state of shout clearing makes condi’s very weak in group play and that is unacceptable.
• nerf condi +/- duration food. cap it at 15-20%, make condition-type-specific foods buffed to 30%.
• they’ve already stated mesmers are getting nerfed. i know its hard, but nerf smarter not harder. adjusting PU and torch down doesnt mean “nerf them into the ground”. overnerfing is just as bad as overbuffing.
• dire isnt going to get removed. the long term solution here is a condi damage overhaul. lower the base dmg of condition tics but allow them to crit and make ferocity effect the crit tics damage. no more “condi specs only need to make half the investment for the same offensive result” nonsense.

its that easy. sadly, itll never happen.

Dire stats and food don’t exist in PvP which is where it’s balanced around, for good reason I might add. Adjusting conditions for that is very short sighted at least. The only times they add extra conditions which a class doesn’t already have is when the condition build is unviable or very weak.

PU condition in dire stats will generally give out 2 damaging conditions and maybe the odd cover condition, mostly blind but you could get a random bleed from illusions and sharper images. Not likely as you have little such a poor crit rate. Smart players cleanse when stacks get to a certain number and back off/kite when they’re cleanses are on CD.

Bad players run around swinging their melee weapons hoping to kill the mesmer as they walk into the middle of a 3 clone shatter, hit the block and tank mirror images and then cry about how OP it is. I see it all the time, both on my server and others where people just don’t pay attention and get annihilated by the confusion.

One solution to address the problem here is to add a rune set which add vitality, reduce condition duration and shout “Sic ‘Em” on hit.

Doug Whisper.2465:

One solution to address the problem here is to add a rune set which add vitality, reduce condition duration and shout “Sic ‘Em” on hit.

That sounds like something anet would do.

Instead of reducing stealth they will add more and more and more..

Offair.2563:

Instead of reducing stealth they will add more and more and more..

They add skills that reveal but didn’t keep in mind that the basically only way for a thief to survive is to stealth (not to hide but because all survival traits are tied to it) – so what they are currently doing is removing thief from the game.

Edit: Very poor grammar.

This is a dead horse that people continue to beat. I don’t know why people still think condi is in any way balanced in a PvP game.

I find stealth durations being nerfed slightly (like, 1 or 2 seconds here and there) would help, but condi just needs a massive nuke to bring it into line. Especially torment, confusion and burning.

Jana.6831:

Offair.2563:

Instead of reducing stealth they will add more and more and more..

They add skills that reveal but didn’t keep in mind that the basically only way for a thief to survive is to stealth (not to hide but because all survival traits are tied to it) – so what they are currently doing is removing thief from the game.

Edit: Very poor grammar.

Yeah poor thieves, if only they had gap closers and openers, the best mobility in the game, one of the highest vigor up times, lots of blinds, on dodge effects to CC, remove conditions, heal etc being added.

I think daredevil will certainly open up a lot of non stealth builds for thief which is exactly what a lot of thieves have been asking for.

apharma.3741:

Yeah poor thieves, if only they had gap closers and openers, the best mobility in the game, one of the highest vigor up times, lots of blinds, on dodge effects to CC, remove conditions, heal etc being added.

I think daredevil will certainly open up a lot of non stealth builds for thief which is exactly what a lot of thieves have been asking for.

Yeah, non stealth builds are: Staff maybe and S/D. So the traditional thief still will be dead
But that is what a lot of people have been asking for (yes, I don’t care anymore).

Disengage is part of combat in this game sometimes players will run away
its just how it is in gw2 cant kill all deal with it also was not designed for 1v1 combat.

Just to make it clear, yes the ele was a bad ele, which is why I didn’t release the video I made. But that really wont stop me from proving it at some point in the near future, the minute I find someone who is half decent, I’ll remake the video and release it.

As always people will argue blind against something so black and white, but a lot of those arguing don’t roam to start with. You can argue until you’re blue in the nose how condi’s are counterable, that’s true they are. If I play right on my thief, a condi mesmer can’t kill me, but you know what? I can’t even get them below 90% health, the main problem with condi mesmer isnt their huge burst damage, that would be fine if they had any weaknesses, but they don’t, not really. I’m fine with dire staying in the game, but you put a tanky condi class then give them stealth aswell, it’s just way too much.

I understand anet likes having these easy cheese builds so new players can compete, but in a 3 year old game, when are they going to stop catering for the new players and instead actually start giving a cr*p about their veteran players? Having these cheese builds in the game just increases the likely huge that said new player will just get raged at and probably leave anyway. It’s the vets that keep buying gems month after month, not the new players.

And I’m not saying the game should be balanced around 1v1’s, but If we’re realistic right now, a competent condi mesmer will easily win against multiple average players.

Also think of it from a 5v5 perspective, 1 side have a power thief and the other have a condi mesmer, both with the same skill, who will win? Well Id guess the power thieves team would start out winning, then the condi mesmer would just 1v4 the rest.

And if that wasn’t clear i was over exaggerating to get my point across, although the likely-hood of that being the case isn’t close to impossible.

Starfall.6425:

I somehow get the feeling that lot’s of people here are zerk classes that attack the mesmer scepter 2, get 5 tormet and instead of cleansing start to run around.

You know that scepter #2 is on a 6 second cooldown right?

12k torment damage on a 6 second cooldown? You really think that’s balanced? (and it actually goes up to 15k if you factor in weapon and guard stacks).

You’re right, people should bring condi-cleanse and know the animation for these skills to evade/counter properly, but when such a massively hard-hitting skill is on such a low cooldown, it almost doesn’t matter.

I was getting frustrated fighting condi-mesmers, so I made one to try myself just to confirm that it really is face-roll easy, and that I wasn’t just being bad. And it really is that easy. I was stunned at how hard the skills hit, how low the cooldowns are, and how tanky I could get at the same time.

6 second cooldown on a block with also applies 15k of torment damage, on top of all the other stuff the mesmer can dish out, from it’s autos, from its shatters, from random sigil/rune procs, from other weapon skills, it is only a matter of time before an opponent is un-able to cleanse it. They cleanse it the first time, 6 seconds later it comes again, dodge it, 6 seconds later again, dodge again, 6 seconds later, cleanse again, 6 seconds later…….

Now I wouldn’t have a problem with this if in order to achieve it the mesmer had to sacrifice something else. Zerker classes can potentially hit just as hard, if not harder, but they do so by sacrificing alot.

So, please, explain again how 15k damage on a 6s cooldown while also having 25k health and 3k armour, near permanent projectile-reflect, multiple gap-openers, and good stealth access is balanced.

For reference:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNArfWlsnhG1YZawINwtGLvGk5KG+IKTwvjGaAy5RA-TFyCABAcEAs4RAg3+DAqPwT1fSUJYWK/o4EAQKgFlGB-w

What I don’t like is that you are calling for nerfs that will affect PvE and PvP, but don’t consider some facts that make the condi so strong in roaming. Namely full ascended gear and all the possible buffs (most important +40% condi duration). When the dmg is so much higher than in pvp it’s clear that longer durations of stealth are ‘op’.

Edit: Just now saw the previous comment. Will answer shortly.

Edit2: @Ragnar.4257

Yes what you posted is defenitely OP and scepter 2 is a strong spell, never mentioned otherwise (but still you don’t spam it and deal 12k every 6 sec like some might think).

Like I said before reading your post. Lot’s of people here call for nerfs that will affect pvp and in pvp the mesmer isn’t broken, he is in most builds a typical +1er and quite balanced.

But you yourself must know that dire set and this rediculous buff-food make a huge difference. In pvp you can dodge scepter 3 and cleanse scepter 2.. then what?

In a lot of cases I would still call it missing knowledge if someone gets steamrolled and in your case loosing to such a build I call it a misbalance because of the WvW-roaming setting (anywhere else in WvW this build isn’t op I guess).

Stealth ruined the game a long time ago. It never should have been there in the first place. Its so terribly designed in this game.

But Anet loves it so it’ll never go away. Lol they even increased it for HoT.

Ragnar.4257:

You know that scepter #2 is on a 6 second cooldown right?

12k torment damage on a 6 second cooldown? You really think that’s balanced? (and it actually goes up to 15k if you factor in weapon and guard stacks).

4 things:
- To have 6s of CD you need to take the scepter trait, which is inferior to Ineptitude.
- It’s a reactive skill, so to activate it needs participation of the enemy to activate it.
- Torment damage can be reduced to half if the enemy is not moving.
- You negate the damage by cleansing it.

So in the end, the skill damage is proportional to the enemy’s lack of awareness and lack of control of the fight.
So, if someone is receiving the 12k of damage it’s because he deserves it.

Conditions and stealth, it’s ruining the game

- True
Just watch trap thief playstyle… u can see something like that only in GW2

While in stealth, condition damage and duration decrease by half — the most logical fix.

Stealth, it’s what’s for dinner now. Until anet makes more counters, it will remain the flavor of the month. Don’t mind condi’s because there are enough cleanses for those.

Starfall.6425:

No stealth class applys 8 stacks of burning as far as I know.
Condi builds do a LOT less damage than physical zerk attacks. The difference is, that you can’t dodge condies once they are applied.

The fact, that we are currently in a condi-favorable-meta and people still don’t know what to look out for most of times…. results in such threads.

I somehow get the feeling that lot’s of people here are zerk classes that attack the mesmer scepter 2, get 5 tormet and instead of cleansing start to run around.

PS: If any condi-tick would end stealth… then stealth is broken.

I can open up with 9 burn stacks on my engi, but that is extremely rare because of the set-up and require point-blank range for it.

I can burst for even more on my guard, not via opener, but via set-up + blocking during the fight. This again requires a huge set-up on my part.

As for mesmer, no, they are actually still in the last place, the only thing that makes them even viable is perplexity runes. Also, the other day I was getting hate whispers from a ranger that stood in my feedback and killed itself, quite literally did 80%ish of its healthbar in damage by standing in feedback while popping all its CDs and then started to proceed with condi hate tells while there was no condi damage applied to it. Don’t be such a ranger and half your problems will disappear.

I also replied to it and told it to come to these forums and make a QQ thread, which it probably did.

Even though I don’t have problems fighting those PU scrubs (it just takes some time), I never understood why they kept the extra stealth duration at 100%. Every sane person that watched the specialization livestream knew that it is too much. It also promotes a boring ‘jump in and out of stealth’ play style, which is not mesmer-like at all. As far as I know, mesmers in Guild Wars 1 did not have any stealth.

Kraljevo.2801:

Even though I don’t have problems fighting those PU scrubs (it just takes some time), I never understood why they kept the extra stealth duration at 100%. Every sane person that watched the specialization livestream knew that it is too much. It also promotes a boring ‘jump in and out of stealth’ play style, which is not mesmer-like at all. As far as I know, mesmers in Guild Wars 1 did not have any stealth.

Nobody had stealth in GW1. One reason why it is a better game.

Kraljevo.2801:

Even though I don’t have problems fighting those PU scrubs (it just takes some time), I never understood why they kept the extra stealth duration at 100%. Every sane person that watched the specialization livestream knew that it is too much. It also promotes a boring ‘jump in and out of stealth’ play style, which is not mesmer-like at all. As far as I know, mesmers in Guild Wars 1 did not have any stealth.

Nobody understands. Seriously, I dont think anyone do. How could they? The Mesmer prepatch was already one of the strongest duelers, with PU being a strong and given trait for anyone that was based on stealth. Then they ramped it up to be twice as strong. Literally. It made zero sense whatsoever and we _knew it would make us hate stealth once again. Personally I think someone at Anet secretely main a Mesmer, managed to push through this change without anyone really noticing it and is now loving every second of it.

How about adding a rune set which cleanse conditions when using elite skill? Wait! Isn’t it called rune of lyssa?

Solution would be bring back hexes, and make conditions to pressure just like we had in Gw1, altough they were really strong on team spikes.
In gw2 lore hexes were forbiden so Anet is making the lack of hexes damage on condi spam(while ignoring game balance).

More team play instead one class do it all…

Doug Whisper.2465:

How about adding a rune set which cleanse conditions when using elite skill? Wait! Isn’t it called rune of lyssa?

XD and wich elite has a 6sec cd? XD XD

Problem is: there’s not enough condi cleansers compared to the condi easy spam.

And back in topic, ye condition mesmer is the easiest class to play of the game.

Tongku.5326:

I can open up with 9 burn stacks on my engi, but that is extremely rare because of the set-up and require point-blank range for it.

I can burst for even more on my guard, not via opener, but via set-up + blocking during the fight. This again requires a huge set-up on my part.

As for mesmer, no, they are actually still in the last place, the only thing that makes them even viable is perplexity runes. Also, the other day I was getting hate whispers from a ranger that stood in my feedback and killed itself, quite literally did 80%ish of its healthbar in damage by standing in feedback while popping all its CDs and then started to proceed with condi hate tells while there was no condi damage applied to it. Don’t be such a ranger and half your problems will disappear.

I also replied to it and told it to come to these forums and make a QQ thread, which it probably did.

Cant tell if trolling or is serious.

Ansau.7326:

Ragnar.4257:

You know that scepter #2 is on a 6 second cooldown right?

12k torment damage on a 6 second cooldown? You really think that’s balanced? (and it actually goes up to 15k if you factor in weapon and guard stacks).

4 things:
- To have 6s of CD you need to take the scepter trait, which is inferior to Ineptitude.
- It’s a reactive skill, so to activate it needs participation of the enemy to activate it.
- Torment damage can be reduced to half if the enemy is not moving.
- You negate the damage by cleansing it.

So in the end, the skill damage is proportional to the enemy’s lack of awareness and lack of control of the fight.
So, if someone is receiving the 12k of damage it’s because he deserves it.

4 Things on Your 4 Things:
- Even though one Trait is considered “Better” doesn’t mean people won’t use it, and in a place like WvW where a lot of things can be blocked, who wouldn’t take a skill that has a 6s CD and inflicts 12k to 15k DMG.
- The skill’s animation is pretty instant, so good luck seeing it before your skill/attack gets blocked, and a 6s window with everything else going on in the fight, isn’t big enough for someone cleave through 25k HP, while cleansing, while dodging/evading, while moving out of Condi-pits, while trying to find the real, nearly perma-invis Mesmer who can slap you with a few conditions and stay in Stealth while you bust your CD’s in the hopes of living against 12k Torments, and 5-6k Burns, ect.
- Yeah, “Not moving”, doesn’t work so well in WvW, don’t know if you where serious about this one or not.
- How many cleanses do you think people have? Even choosing traits that reduce skills that strip conditions, the rate at which those same conditions can be re-applied, is frustrating as heck.

I remember when Condition builds was all about beating someone through attrition, having to have not only solid Condi-dmg, but the ability to stick in the fight, and have the survivability to do so. Now it’s just so hands off, that once you apply conditions you can sit back and just worry about moving around and dodging something, and re-apply those conditions directly after they are cleansed.

To be honest, I’d be happy if they just made it so the most damaging conditions got purged first. When I use that skill, I don’t wanna be clearing the bleeding or imob first, I wanna be clearing those 11 stacks of confusion that are currently punishing me for daring to try and actually condi cleanse.

Although I don’t enjoy condi builds, I do not complain it. But I would like to see ANet offer gear stats with vitality, power and precision in HoT. The introduction of specialization remove players’ ability to adjust their attributes without changing the gear set. Why I have to invest in healing power or condition damage when I just want to get vitality?

- condi damge is over top
- stealth on mesmer is ridiculous atm
- perplexity still needs to go

made this rabid pu plex mesmer – steamrolled everyone in roaming on first day pressing random buttons and having forgot to pick traits… yeah. lots of roamers do the right thing and just run away when they see my torch… gg. the kitten balance right now is really amazing.

Once i tried fighting a 4 PU mesmer + 1 trapper thief group. It was painful.

I have read in the other thread a fifty five years old survivor after two stokes have difficulty to finish LS2 last mission. He didn’t mention which build he roll. But taking out builds which is easy to play, but boring to me, isn’t seems to be fair for players who might be in disadvantage.

Kraljevo.2801:

Even though I don’t have problems fighting those PU scrubs (it just takes some time), I never understood why they kept the extra stealth duration at 100%. Every sane person that watched the specialization livestream knew that it is too much. It also promotes a boring ‘jump in and out of stealth’ play style, which is not mesmer-like at all. As far as I know, mesmers in Guild Wars 1 did not have any stealth.

Mesmer lost every single clone death trait. Which comprised of bleed, cripple, weakness and vulnerability which, 2 are very good damage avoidance conditions for the swiftnessless mesmer.

Now tell me how often PU was ever taken after the addition of extra boons to it? Yeah that’s right, the one and only one clone death build in exactly 1 game mode and it became terrible if more than 5 (competent) people were in the fight.

Before the PU nerf when it applied protection, regen and aegis people could choose it in power roaming builds and some did, even on the OPs server, at the cost of the illusions line (namely IP, IE and celerity). However once the boons became more random its defensive value plummeted to “only use if it’s within easy reach”. Non of this bullkitten about not having enough points, you could easily take it while keeping deceptive evasion, boon removal on shatter, range on blink and shatter damage.

This is why it was buffed because with all the random boons it was an unreliable defensive trait on a class that has poor swiftness to disengage and create distance with.

Steelo.4597:

- condi damge is over top
- stealth on mesmer is ridiculous atm
- perplexity still needs to go

made this rabid pu plex mesmer – steamrolled everyone in roaming on first day pressing random buttons and having forgot to pick traits… yeah. lots of roamers do the right thing and just run away when they see my torch… gg. the kitten balance right now is really amazing.

This is a prime example of an unreasonable blanket complaint. Conditions are fine as a whole. The issue in this case is with mesmers ability to stack them to high, too fast with certain combinations of food, runes, sigils, weapon set, and traits. It has nothing to do with conditions themselves, so to make that blanket complaint, serves to offer no real constructive talking point.

The second issue is the ability to stealth, do damage by stealthing, and cleanse by stealthing. A lesser problem can be targeting and body blocking by clones.

When you put all of those together, sure it is strong 1v1. You lose me though, as the point you cry about balance in WvW. Put this same string of builds your complaining about in a larger group and they are weak against another large group. WvW has been advertised since before release as specifically intended not to be balanced.

Personally I feel stealth needs a duration nerf, and other defensive aspects of professions with stealth access, should be increased. Or perhaps the ability to chain stealth so easily. The next step, as I see it, might be to increase some of the ICD on traits that allow specific conditions to stack too high too fast.

Odokuro.5049:

4 Things on Your 4 Things:
- Even though one Trait is considered “Better” doesn’t mean people won’t use it, and in a place like WvW where a lot of things can be blocked, who wouldn’t take a skill that has a 6s CD and inflicts 12k to 15k DMG.

Scepet trait is never chose no matter what CD reduction you can have. Why? First because it only affects on 2 skills which already have low CD while Ineptitude can be activated through many sources. But second because the speed boost is bugged.
So now, stop putting ourselves into the dreaming world, and face the reality, which is a CD of 8s.

Odokuro.5049:

- The skill’s animation is pretty instant, so good luck seeing it before your skill/attack gets blocked, and a 6s window with everything else going on in the fight, isn’t big enough for someone cleave through 25k HP, while cleansing, while dodging/evading, while moving out of Condi-pits, while trying to find the real, nearly perma-invis Mesmer who can slap you with a few conditions and stay in Stealth while you bust your CD’s in the hopes of living against 12k Torments, and 5-6k Burns, ect.

The skill animation is pretty instant if the mesmer is good enough to activate just before you land a kit on him, which he should be rewarded. But a lot of times mesmers activate so you fall in it. In this case, you have enough time to see the animation and stop doing the attack.
About the rest, if you pretend to win, you need to be able to dodge, cleanse, stop attacking, attaking, controlling you character and the enemy at the same time. If you cannot do it, all this complains lose their value, since there’s a more predominant fact, lack of skill and a l2p issue.

Odokuro.5049:

- Yeah, “Not moving”, doesn’t work so well in WvW, don’t know if you where serious about this one or not.

You have 12s to stop moving at a point. There’s plenty of time. The problem is people don’t care about what they have and are locked into a mechanical playstyle.

Odokuro.5049:

- How many cleanses do you think people have? Even choosing traits that reduce skills that strip conditions, the rate at which those same conditions can be re-applied, is frustrating as heck.

People run just a fraction of condi cleansing they should have, and that’s the reason why they fail so much.
At roaming, you need to bring as much condi cleansing as you need. Anything else is just your decision to not to care about bringing defenses against the most dangerous source of damage there. It’s your problem and it’s your fault if you die against condies when you don’t care about it.
And here there’s no excuses. There’s 3 ways of passive defense against condies (food, runes and sigils), and all proffessions have, at least, 3 other sources of condi cleansing. There’s no excuse on dying from conditions when having such amount of condi cleansing sources.

Odokuro.5049:

I remember when Condition builds was all about beating someone through attrition, having to have not only solid Condi-dmg, but the ability to stick in the fight, and have the survivability to do so. Now it’s just so hands off, that once you apply conditions you can sit back and just worry about moving around and dodging something, and re-apply those conditions directly after they are cleansed.

You can do that because people don’t care to cleanse them. But when you face someone who knows how to deal with condi, I can assure you it’s one of a hell of a fight.
And some of them were able to deal massive damage. You know something called Confusion glamour build?

Btw, you referring scepter #2 as a 12s skill means you’re counting the mesmer running the +40% food, but you’re not using the -40%.
In what world do you thing you have a valid point when you fail miserably at such a basic thing like reducing the damage at least 40%?

So, in the end, if scepter #2 hit you for 12k is because you let it to hit it, it’s a l2p issue. It’s your fault when with just 2 passive tricks and some smart active defenses you can negate around 60-90% of that damage.

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