Guild Wars 2

“How many Mesmers do we have”, “I need a Mesmer”, “all Portal Mesmers type X in chat”…

It’s strange, but raidleaders hardly ever are asking for other classes…

Bones.5762:

Please tell what do you do with your mesmer when ALL the enemy server is on walls or behind it with sieges that is so much fun besides auto attacking a gate. Mesmer is still fun to play in a open field fight, but during sieges theres not much i see them doing. what do you want to do? throw chaos storm on friendlys and say its fun?

Call me when keep doors and buffy allies starts dropping badges and loot. I mean, if Anet had nerfed every other class like this the QQ’ed be everywhere. It’s just because we’re mes and bads couldn’t learn to play that we get hit with crap like this to little rage.

SteepledHat.1345:

Bones.5762:

Please tell what do you do with your mesmer when ALL the enemy server is on walls or behind it with sieges that is so much fun besides auto attacking a gate. Mesmer is still fun to play in a open field fight, but during sieges theres not much i see them doing. what do you want to do? throw chaos storm on friendlys and say its fun?

Call me when keep doors and buffy allies starts dropping badges and loot. I mean, if Anet had nerfed every other class like this the QQ’ed be everywhere. It’s just because we’re mes and bads couldn’t learn to play that we get hit with crap like this to little rage.

yup exactly, with my engineer before the recent patch i would beat a good mesmer 40% of the time, depending on their spec because i knew how mesmers worked and how to find the real one, but with the patch i have a 70% chance of winning against mesmers, especially squishy mesmers.

Bones.5762:

Also please tell me what builds would work for sieges

Reflect and glamour oriented builds work great. You have focus reflect, feedback, reflect on distortion, mirror, mimic. Confusion on glamours (you have several which you can target on walls) You can trait so glamours also cause aoe blindness and it’s reapplied if they exit/enter the glamour(feedback, chaos storm, null field etc..) This helps everyone stay alive longer even if its only a short while every small number helps in siege warfare. You can also trait it so that you instantly cause confusion when you blind coupled with the confusion on glamour traits and people running/in out it stacks up decently. There are traits to reduce the CD on some glamours and increase the duration well placed glamours with those traits or well placed reflects of any kind can kill people without you doing any direct damage. Obviously for the confusion damage you’re going to be pigeonholed into wearing a ton of +condition damage and condition duration gear. As you mentioned shatters won’t do ya good here a lot of the time unless you get inside a keep/castle then you usually have some open-action.

You have mirror heal + distortion reflect trait + mimic(you will get hit with 1 projectile with mimic any and all others that hit you during its duration get reflected after which you can fire back that 1 projectile). you can chain all of those back to back with feedback on someone shooting at your from a wall or bait them into doing so and kill them and usually multiple people at once even if you can’t finish them off, you can down them in bad spots letting those with the heavier hitting aoe finish them off.

Lets not forget portal bombing when assaulting a tower this is obviously useless. However during keeps and castles there are a lot of situations where you are inside fighting. You can instantly move your force onto their siege or into a cluster of players and aoe them down in seconds. This is a great tactic and turns the tide of battle.

I can still hit people on walls with my weapons if they are on the edges pulling people off still has value. I can still get izerker on walls at times to. All of that coupled with some of the above yields lots of kill credit for me and loot bags/badges and I’m helping folks out while doing so too. Staff + extra bounce trait condition builds can actually work all right too for kill credit if you have enough +cond dmg but its not nearly as good as a glamour/reflect/confusion setup. From my personal experience.

During siege defenses obviously you aren’t limited to these options as you can shatter/summon clones on people and all your usual stuff in those situations. AoE shatter confusion builds are absolutely beastly in defenses.

While I haven’t done much with them there are heal-oriented mantra setups I have a friend I run with that goes that route and can spam aoe heals for 3.5k non stop takes the edge off using rams while standing under arrowcarts. That build was better before the aoe heal cap of 5 targets though. It’s still a decent option for people that like that sort of thing.

Niim.9260:

Bones.5762:

Please tell what do you do with your mesmer when ALL the enemy server is on walls or behind it with sieges that is so much fun besides auto attacking a gate. Mesmer is still fun to play in a open field fight, but during sieges theres not much i see them doing. what do you want to do? throw chaos storm on friendlys and say its fun?

As a thief I pull out my ranged weapon and auto attack the door while waiting to get inside. Is that somehow different than what you are doing as a mesmer?

nope, i dont know much about thief skills so i can’t say, but it’s just proving that during sieges you can’t do much besides auto attack a door. So if thats all a thief can do during siege then i feel for them too, but they really need to fix culling, i have no issue fighting thieves, and i love fighting squishy thieves because im strong enough to take the damage and have enough damage to burst them before them can escape most of the time. I honestly feel that engineer as of right now is one of those classes that are well balanced, as in the aspect they can play most types of builds and have it work if theyre specced for it and not OP.

Since when are portals useless?

Columba.9730:

Since when are portals useless?

I don’t know of anyone who said portal was useless in this OP.

Oh that’s right, portals aren’t used in WvWvW?

Disastro.4086:

Reflect and glamour oriented builds work great. You have focus reflect, feedback, reflect on distortion, mirror, mimic. Confusion on glamours (you have several which you can target on walls) You can trait so glamours also cause aoe blindness and it’s reapplied if they exit/enter the glamour(feedback, chaos storm, null field etc..) This helps everyone stay alive longer even if its only a short while every small number helps in siege warfare. You can also trait it so that you instantly cause confusion when you blind coupled with the confusion on glamour traits and people running/in out it stacks up decently. There are traits to reduce the CD on some glamours and increase the duration well placed glamours with those traits or well placed reflects of any kind can kill people without you doing any direct damage. Obviously for the confusion damage you’re going to be pigeonholed into wearing a ton of +condition damage and condition duration gear. As you mentioned shatters won’t do ya good here a lot of the time unless you get inside a keep/castle then you usually have some open-action.

You have mirror heal + distortion reflect trait + mimic(you will get hit with 1 projectile with mimic any and all others that hit you during its duration get reflected after which you can fire back that 1 projectile). you can chain all of those back to back with feedback on someone shooting at your from a wall or bait them into doing so and kill them and usually multiple people at once even if you can’t finish them off, you can down them in bad spots letting those with the heavier hitting aoe finish them off.

I mean i haven’t played reflect/glamour build but i dont see you killing much people unless they dont walk out of feedback, and cure their conditions or simply just fall back to auto regen hp. But you have listed one build for mesmer that still works ok. I don’t know of anyone who uses mirror heal at all, because the heal is so bad, and the duration is like 2seconds i believe if even. I haven’t even seen a reflect/glamour mesmer yet in all my time of playing gw2, but it’s either i didn’t notice them because they didn’t do anything to wow me, or because they are that rare. I see more mesmers running mantra than reflect/glamour skills.

From my experience there hasn’t been many bad mesmers because people that pick up mesmers and they don’t click with it, don’t end up playing them, only the really good players that know how to play mesmers stick with it, so it’s hard to find a mesmer that don’t know how to play. Because if you’re like any other mesmer who started out, you tested alot of builds to try to make it work so you should know that class decently well. There’s a decent amount of thieves that are bad, just as much as there are good ones too.

Columba.9730:

Oh that’s right, portals aren’t used in WvWvW?

what are you talking about, the discussing at hand here is why mesmers are useless during siege (that means at the gate/wall already). There is no mesmer here saying that portal is useless, if they are please quote them because they are obviously trolls. In what situation are you going to use portal while attacking a gate if the defenders are on the walls defending? hack/exploit into the keep/tower and drop a portal? The only team that should be using a portal in this situation is the enemy team to portal bomb your sieges.

Hint: portals can be used in sieges. Mesmers don’t need anymore help.

Where exactly is the appeal in standing around and knocking on a door for 15 min? Someone still needs to man the siege weapons, you need to get supplies to get the siege weapons build, you can hide in a keep and use portal to get your teammates inside, you can portal bomb a camp, you can pretty much solo 1v3 as a Mesmer and live to tell the tale, you have a 10 second AoE quickness skill, you have AoE swiftness on the focus, you can pull people down from walls, you can use Chaos Storm, Feedback, and Null Field to support you team at the door, and so on. The Mesmer is hands down one of the best professions in Worlds PvP.

Kasama.8941:

Where exactly is the appeal in standing around and knocking on a door for 15 min? Someone still needs to man the siege weapons, you need to get supplies to get the siege weapons build, you can hide in a keep and use portal to get your teammates inside, you can portal bomb a camp, you can pretty much solo 1v3 as a Mesmer and live to tell the tale, you have a 10 second AoE quickness skill, you have AoE swiftness on the focus, you can pull people down from walls, you can use Chaos Storm, Feedback, and Null Field to support you team at the door, and so on. The Mesmer is hands down one of the best professions in Worlds PvP.

Ok i bolded out the parts that i saw an issue with. not very many wants to man siege because you’re the focus of target as well as it’s boring. second one you can’t attempt this during a siege, only after your defending your keep in which case you fail, and if the enemy group is smart and good they will sweep you out, unless you have a couple of thieves with you to perma stealth you. Portal bombing a camp is viable yes, but its not really a siege, its just a mass slaughter because you don’t place down siege except for the enemy team who defending might place down AC and balistas in which case you would counter with siege as well, but in most case you can just run through camps no siege. last one, you don’t get anything for supporting your team, such as a good aoe skill like chaos storm, theyre great supportive skills but to be honest theres a lot of better support classes than a mesmer.

Why do people think that the only thing to do at a tower / keep siege is AoE walls?

Bones.5762:

I haven’t even seen a reflect/glamour mesmer yet in all my time of playing gw2, but it’s either i didn’t notice them because they didn’t do anything to wow me, or because they are that rare

They’re rare because people prefer front-loaded damage. Reflect/glamour builds require good timing and baiting(i.e. more work that people don’t want to do). It actually kills people en masse quite reliably if you pop feedback on people all ready channeling big ranged dmg they’ll suicide before they notice it’s up usually same with the confusion dmg. I swap out mirror a lot with bigger heals depending on the situation it’s one of those run in do my reflection chain watch people die run out, swap it back out heal up wait on CDs rinse repeat. I run with people that know my play style so there is a lot of synergy I have outside healing to compensate a lot of the time. I run in a very large and rather skilled WvW oriented guild and we’re very organized so I’m never running solo most of the time.

I do hope some more option open up for those who prefer the front loaded damage, I wouldn’t mind going back to that kind of spec either but we still do have things that work quite well in the mean while.

For defending keeps/castles etc.. confusion builds are still my favorite since it’s so easy to keep applying and very few pop their condition removal when they see it.

zastari.1730:

Why do people think that the only thing to do at a tower / keep siege is AoE walls?

You know the answer – most players are not good at this game and are very unimaginative. Playing wall wars is one of the most useless things to do at sieges, but 90% of players are happy to sit there and do it.

Portal bombs are old hat. Safety portals require less resources (bodies) and are very strong at stalling out sieges or crushing them based on how much supply they have. Get 5 guys – 1 mesmer + 4 guys that hit for physical very hard (warriors). Get a thief to drop a refuge, drop an entrance, manually run out to a siege weapon. Blow up as much as you can, which is lot when you are time warping 4 heavy hitting melee, then toss down an exit portal back to the safety of your keep.

Niim.9260:

Bones.5762:

Please tell what do you do with your mesmer when ALL the enemy server is on walls or behind it with sieges that is so much fun besides auto attacking a gate. Mesmer is still fun to play in a open field fight, but during sieges theres not much i see them doing. what do you want to do? throw chaos storm on friendlys and say its fun?

As a thief I pull out my ranged weapon and auto attack the door while waiting to get inside. Is that somehow different than what you are doing as a mesmer?

You have cluster bomb with your short bow which is one of the best attacks for siege offense. It can hit people and siege on walls out of LOS (hitting further than any other class I think) because of the arc and explosion, can be used multiple times because of initiative and does lot of damage with a power spec. Attacking a door is usually bad, it often costs more than it helps. It is almost always better to attack siege on the wall or the people firing down at your rams/golems so they back off.

Disastro.4086:

Bones.5762:

I haven’t even seen a reflect/glamour mesmer yet in all my time of playing gw2, but it’s either i didn’t notice them because they didn’t do anything to wow me, or because they are that rare

They’re rare because people prefer front-loaded damage. Reflect/glamour builds require good timing and baiting(i.e. more work that people don’t want to do). It actually kills people en masse quite reliably if you pop feedback on people all ready channeling big ranged dmg they’ll suicide before they notice it’s up usually same with the confusion dmg. I swap out mirror a lot with bigger heals depending on the situation it’s one of those run in do my reflection chain watch people die run out, swap it back out heal up wait on CDs rinse repeat. I run with people that know my play style so there is a lot of synergy I have outside healing to compensate a lot of the time. I run in a very large and rather skilled WvW oriented guild and we’re very organized so I’m never running solo most of the time.

I do hope some more option open up for those who prefer the front loaded damage, I wouldn’t mind going back to that kind of spec either but we still do have things that work quite well in the mean while.

For defending keeps/castles etc.. confusion builds are still my favorite since it’s so easy to keep applying and very few pop their condition removal when they see it.

If you can i would really like to see some nice videos of relfect/glamour skills, might be curious enough to try, I already know condition dmg built is still extremely good to use, but just don’t wanna be one of those types of mesmers, because as of right now, the majority of mesmers i see are shatters and condition damage.

Phzt.9864:

zastari.1730:

Why do people think that the only thing to do at a tower / keep siege is AoE walls?

You know the answer – most players are not good at this game and are very unimaginative. Playing wall wars is one of the most useless things to do at sieges, but 90% of players are happy to sit there and do it.

Portal bombs are old hat. Safety portals require less resources (bodies) and are very strong at stalling out sieges or crushing them based on how much supply they have. Get 5 guys – 1 mesmer + 4 guys that hit for physical very hard (warriors). Get a thief to drop a refuge, drop an entrance, manually run out to a siege weapon. Blow up as much as you can, which is lot when you are time warping 4 heavy hitting melee, then toss down an exit portal back to the safety of your keep.

I run zerg busting groups sometimes, and the one’s ive had best success with is 1 mesmer(me) and 4 other thieves in which case they dropped dagger storm and i just drop timewarp, if it gets too heavy we just stealth out. These are probably the most qq types of parties that i’ve seen personally, because people hate the fact there’s not much to counter it, and the fact that it happens over the course of 10seconds where some people dont react fast enough.

It can be pretty annoying not being able to attack anything but the door during a tower or keep siege. Even people really close to edge of the wall are basically immune to your attacks. Before at least I could throw a phantasm up there every 20-30 seconds. One that would get off one attack and be killed. Now I can put up one chaos storm, and stare at my opponents in the hopes that one of them will jump up onto the wall edge and I’ll be able to pull him down.

Phzt.9864:

zastari.1730:

Why do people think that the only thing to do at a tower / keep siege is AoE walls?

You know the answer – most players are not good at this game and are very unimaginative. Playing wall wars is one of the most useless things to do at sieges, but 90% of players are happy to sit there and do it.

Your statement is implying that keeping enemy siege from countering your own siege is useless. I suggest you rephrase that statement, as I believe that is not what you meant.

OP is under the impression that most classes have more options during a seige than a mesmer. What the OP doesn’t realise is that mesmers had far more options than most during sieges. Basically the playing field is a little more level.

To give a decent run down (for badges since that appears to be the focus).

Guardians – Scepter gives weak AoE to a wall. That is the only ranged option we have in a seige to get badges, else it is auto the door with the rest of the zerg. This is pretty much the same in seige defense.

Warriors – longbow, 2 aoe one is the F1 skill, otherwise it is auto the door with everyone else. Also these aren’t likely to kill anyone

Thieves has already been explained. Weak aoe on short bow and not much else to plant on a wall.

Classes with average AoE wall capability
Engineer with grenades of flamethrower through door.
Ranger with long bow, the AoE has a similar cd to chaos storm but again not that great.

Classes with good AoE wall capability
Staff elementalists have good AoE wall capability
Staff Necros with talents to place Wells are decent as well.

I just think the OP needs to adjust to realise that Mesmers are in the same boat seige wise and count their lucky stars it was OP for as long as it was. Also someone needs to man the siege, WvW is about being a team player not all about badge glory for 1 person. Play the team game. Mesmers are still one of the strongest classes in WvW.

Surbrus.6942:

Phzt.9864:

zastari.1730:

Why do people think that the only thing to do at a tower / keep siege is AoE walls?

You know the answer – most players are not good at this game and are very unimaginative. Playing wall wars is one of the most useless things to do at sieges, but 90% of players are happy to sit there and do it.

Your statement is implying that keeping enemy siege from countering your own siege is useless. I suggest you rephrase that statement, as I believe that is not what you meant.

The siege dynamic (on the back of cata/cart behind gate) is one that doesn’t rely entirely on siege on walls. Siege on walls are a numbers check at most – they deter small squads that wouldn’t be able to take it, but they simply will fall if a push occurs, because in a even numbers wall vs wall fight, the victor is the one with zoning room (the guys on offense).

Good defense happens from abusing certain locations on each keep/tower that can’t be countered unless they set up a treb, elevated catapult, or ballista. Safety portal squads are amazing at sniping off catas/ballistas and potentially trebs depending on location.

Basically, if you are defending siege by wall fighting, you’re either at a numbers advantage on defense which means you should be just jumping off and killing them, you are placing frivolous/easy to hit siege (not a bad thing if your tower/keep are capped on supply anyway), or your server hasn’t figured out the pain in the kitten cata/treb/cart spots that require precise counter siege to hit or force them to take a different approach.

Chaede.7348:

Guardians – Scepter gives weak AoE to a wall. That is the only ranged option we have in a seige to get badges, else it is auto the door with the rest of the zerg. This is pretty much the same in seige defense.

Warriors – longbow, 2 aoe one is the F1 skill, otherwise it is auto the door with everyone else. Also these aren’t likely to kill anyone

Thieves has already been explained. Weak aoe on short bow and not much else to plant on a wall.

Guardians, Warriors, and Thieves have it good compared to Mesmer currently.

First off, calling cluster bomb a “weak AoE on short bow” is comical. IMO cluster bomb is one of the best siege sniping spells in the game, and it hits like a truck. Sure thieves can’t make walls uninhabitable like a few elementalists can, but when an enemy treb is pounding your keep from a fort a good amount of the time Cluster Bomb is your best tool for killing it.

Guardian’s #2 on the scepter does 210 damage (steady scepter) on a 6 second cool down.

Warriors can do 67 damage every 10 secs with their longbow #3, and 1,968 burning damage with their adrenaline attack every 10 secs.

Mesmers currently do 16 damage every 35 seconds with a minor chance to poison.

Guardians do 35 damage per second on a wall.
Warriors do 203.5 damage per second on a wall.
Mesmers do .4 damage per second on a wall.

How can you even say with a straight face that Mesmer is more in line with other classes in this regard?

Before the nerf Mesmers were more in line. iZerker does 33 damage every 20 secs. Mesmers were able to do 1.65 damage per second to people and siege in a tower.

The issue was just the reach of the spell, being able to hit things that no one else was able to reach (though there were plenty of other spots that they couldn’t reach either that other classes could).

The removal of iZerker being able to hit on walls though essentially removes every single option that Mesmer have for hitting up there. Unless a mesmer is portaling or timewarping he almost might as well not even be there.

Don’t get me wrong, the change to iZerker was needed, it was ridiculous the things you could hit with it, but taking it away without giving Mesmers anything in return to help attack while on offense is just as bad.

And no, just because Mesmers have Portal and Time Warp is not justification to make the rest of the class crappy, that’s just bad design.

Ask yourself this, if Portal and Time warp were removed from Mesmer would you still play the class? I personally would, and I’m sure others would too, but I don’t think it would be an understatement to say that they would become the least played class in WvW virtually overnight.

This is the issue. Mesmer isn’t seen as powerful because it’s a strong versatile class. It’s seen as powerful because of one or two almost gimmicky spells. Without those couple of spells Mesmer would be a very underwhelming class in WvW.

That is what people are complaining about. The foundation of Mesmer is full of bugs weakening and eating away at it, but it seems perfectly fine because of the nice coat of paint from a few spells. If the nerf bat keeps smacking away at it eventually the foundation will collapse and mesmer will really only be good for being a portal b**** in WvW.

Well said Supersun. You were able to nail the crux of the issue.

… the damage numbers mean nothing if they enemy is hidden and rarely result in the badges the OP wants. Trust me.

Chaos storm does significantly more damage if the enemy takes any hostile actions, it shuts them down. Denial is a tactic.

IBerserker was more powerful because you didn’t need LOS, you could activate it and move out of threat range. it was a little more powerful than you give it credit.

The Crux of the issue is that this is a team game. Sometimes you have to spam the door or guard paths to keep to prevent reinforcements. Mesmers offer a ton of WvW utility and are one of the best dueling classes in the game. That their options during a siege are on the low side, comparable still with warriors, guardians and rogues despite minor descrepancies is a non issue.

Basically, learn to be a team player in a team situation, enjoy the benefits your class does bring and participate in the most effective way for your team in the given situation.

Portalling and Timewarping as utility more than make up for a slight reduction in raw damage against people defending that actually stand in AoEs.

Chaede.7348:

Chaos storm does significantly more damage if the enemy takes any hostile actions, it shuts them down. Denial is a tactic.

I think you are mixing up chaos storm with confusion. Chaos storm randomly hits for one of 4 conditions (1s daze, 1s chill, 2s weakness and 2s poison), it also provides nice buffs if friendly people stand in it. It does minimal damage and really is a better defensive tool than an offensive one.

The Crux of the issue is that this is a team game. Sometimes you have to spam the door or guard paths to keep to prevent reinforcements. Mesmers offer a ton of WvW utility and are one of the best dueling classes in the game. That their options during a siege are on the low side, comparable still with warriors, guardians and rogues despite minor descrepancies is a non issue.

Basically, learn to be a team player in a team situation, enjoy the benefits your class does bring and participate in the most effective way for your team in the given situation.

i can easily get ppl off catas with my asuran mes by using radiation/chaos storm. that gets em off cata for about 10 secs. then you die, but that buys the zerg time, and 10 secs can mean the difference between a lost keep/tower and a saved one.
teamwork, not “i wanna get the badge gear for my mesmer! make me OP!” wvwvw is pure teamwork, you cant farm the badges solo or it will take forever! team work or die to a zerg or small party.you must learn this concept of wvwvw!

Fair enough, Daze, Chill and weakness still all add up in terms of helping other people’s AoE’s keep people in range. No one person kills someone with AoE’s on a wall. Any effect a mesmer can apply on a target its useful and leads to the same chance of getting bags. Its not all about the damage numbers.

Thing is, only a few classes really have a meaningful damage contribution to opponents in cover during a siege. Arrow carts and catas (particularly defensively) earn far more bags for most classes.

No one on their own earns bags during a siege, its a team effort and the OP should consider the total contribution mesmers have in a siege for their team and the ways they can help the team rather than just seek big numbers and loot bags.

I can’t believe a mesmer is even on here trying to complain. How OP is your 4 or 5 mirror images that blow up doing massive damage you can spam every 10 seconds give me a break don’t even cry. Not to mention your mini invis please…..

I’m going to try to be respectful. Mesmers can only have 3 illusions up at a time. We can get an additional shatter on ourselves if we trait for it. (Grandmaster trait)

Tbh, if you really feel that mesmers are that OP you should probably just run. I get a lot of runners. God forbid you dodge when they shatter. Mesmer shatter build hasn’t been OP for a while. Or you can just hide in a keep where we can’t get to you….

SteepledHat.1345:

I’m going to try to be respectful. Mesmers can only have 3 illusions up at a time. We can get an additional shatter on ourselves if we trait for it. (Grandmaster trait)

Tbh, if you really feel that mesmers are that OP you should probably just run. I get a lot of runners. God forbid you dodge when they shatter. Mesmer shatter build hasn’t been OP for a while. Or you can just hide in a keep where we can’t get to you….

Hmm hide in a keep from illusions. They appear on top of the towers all the time when I defend a tower.

scooby treat.8420:

I can’t believe a mesmer is even on here trying to complain. How OP is your 4 or 5 mirror images that blow up doing massive damage you can spam every 10 seconds give me a break don’t even cry. Not to mention your mini invis please…..

In tower assault though those illusion shatters do you pretty much no good at all. The topic of this thread is siege combat not roaming/1v1/spvp etc..

If want great ranges damage then give up your stealth and portals. You can’t have everything.

scooby treat.8420:

I can’t believe a mesmer is even on here trying to complain. How OP is your 4 or 5 mirror images that blow up doing massive damage you can spam every 10 seconds give me a break don’t even cry. Not to mention your mini invis please…..

Its only 3 clones at most, and also you see the clones running up, you can dodge, or decide what to do. Also you can’t really use shatters for much except on door, which will do minimal damage anyways. Not really sure wat the problem with the mini invisi is but sure?

Bones.5762:

Ok i bolded out the parts that i saw an issue with. not very many wants to man siege because you’re the focus of target as well as it’s boring. second one you can’t attempt this during a siege, only after your defending your keep in which case you fail, and if the enemy group is smart and good they will sweep you out, unless you have a couple of thieves with you to perma stealth you. Portal bombing a camp is viable yes, but its not really a siege, its just a mass slaughter because you don’t place down siege except for the enemy team who defending might place down AC and balistas in which case you would counter with siege as well, but in most case you can just run through camps no siege. last one, you don’t get anything for supporting your team, such as a good aoe skill like chaos storm, theyre great supportive skills but to be honest theres a lot of better support classes than a mesmer.

Ok re-roll then, clearly you are playing the wrong class.

Bedinar.1754:

It can be pretty annoying not being able to attack anything but the door during a tower or keep siege. Even people really close to edge of the wall are basically immune to your attacks. Before at least I could throw a phantasm up there every 20-30 seconds. One that would get off one attack and be killed. Now I can put up one chaos storm, and stare at my opponents in the hopes that one of them will jump up onto the wall edge and I’ll be able to pull him down.

sorry warriors have it off worse.

Chaede.7348:

Thieves has already been explained. Weak aoe on short bow and not much else to plant on a wall.

That is not a weak AoE

Columba.9730:

If want great ranges damage then give up your stealth and portals. You can’t have everything.

You mean trade long cooldown gimmicks for sustained ranged and aoe damage?

Sure, where can I sign up?

So, I just wanted to jump in with my own pov from the classes I play in wvw, Thief and Elementalist.

Thieves -can- feel a little useless in siege against a tower/keep when there aren’t any active, on-the-wall defenders. But I will say this… shortbow is amazing when there are. Even taking down arrow carts and boiling oil turns into bags. Don’t forget the #1 sb attack -bounces- to nearby targets. Trying to hide behind that pot of oil to break LoS? Gotcha. Manning that arrowcart from a few feet away? Gotcha again. And #1 regains init between Cluster Bomb and the #4 (poison field!). Sure, I have to be close to hit the siege weapons… its a calculated risk, just like everything in wvw. Thieves weren’t meant to be huge long-ranged powerhouses, if they were, we’d be Rangers. If I get a few conditions, using two skills and a dodge will not only break me out of 90% of conditions, it’ll give me 3s of swiftness too! Hit a Hide in Shadows to heal any damage, sneak back over, and get back to your killing.

Elementalist – This is the one that annoys me. Everyone holds up Ele’s as the great shining ‘siege’ class. Because a few attacks on the staff have wall/AoE attacks. Do you guys realize that you have to trait/skill yourself towards staff to be effective with it? Personally, I hate it. Why should I have to run staff to feel effective? I run D/D on my Ele.. and she’s still not useless in siege. Air-traited Ele’s are hands down the fastest bits in the game. In D/D on Air, I have 3 skills that make me go faster. A D/D Ele makes great ground support during a siege. Need more supply for siege weapons? Have them wrangle a small group and run to the nearest supply camp. People jumping the walls? Perfect! Combat time. And lets not forget that Tornado elite that tosses people around like ragdolls.

Essentially… no one class is great for everything. Yes, Mesmers -may- be less effective at siege now that they’re stuck with LoS… congrats, you’ve joined the ranks of every other caster out there not using AoE. Mes AoE isn’t that great? Think of how exciting and stimulating it is to sit on a staff and spam 2-3 attacks over and over again because people think the only thing you’re good for is to AoE the walls. Personally, I love having Mesmers during a sustained siege. You guys are the ones that keep the enemy so twisted around and upside down that the rest of us can do what we need to! Is it the most glamorous of positions? Not really. But every class has it weak area. Frankly, I would think you’d want to complain more about how the enemies in PVE can see right past your illusions and copies to go right for you. But then, I’m levelling a Mesmer… so that’s more my complaint.

Bones.5762:

Ok i bolded out the parts that i saw an issue with. not very many wants to man siege because you’re the focus of target as well as it’s boring. second one you can’t attempt this during a siege, only after your defending your keep in which case you fail, and if the enemy group is smart and good they will sweep you out, unless you have a couple of thieves with you to perma stealth you. Portal bombing a camp is viable yes, but its not really a siege, its just a mass slaughter because you don’t place down siege except for the enemy team who defending might place down AC and balistas in which case you would counter with siege as well, but in most case you can just run through camps no siege. last one, you don’t get anything for supporting your team, such as a good aoe skill like chaos storm, theyre great supportive skills but to be honest theres a lot of better support classes than a mesmer.

How is manning a siege weapon more boring the hitting a door with your weapon skills? It might be that you become a target , but if you are on any server worth playing on, you will have 5-10 allies standing around you until the wall/door is down. And if you use a cata, instead of a ram, you don’t even have to worry about anything.

You can still use portal during a siege. When you have to pass two walls, there are times when foes will build up the first wall again, to lock you inside. Most teams don’t sweep for Mesmers, but just run around attacking one place to the next. And those that do sweep, generally do it really badly.

A camp becomes a siege if there are players guarding it. And in those cases, portal bombing is a great tool. If you can get the jump on your foes unexpectedly, you can often kill one or two players before the rest even have time to react. Between Decoy, Veil, The Prestige, and Mass Invisibility, you have at least 14 seconds of stealth.

What do you mean by “don’t get anything”? If your whole group is dead because you were all just standing around hitting a door, then no, you aren’t going to get anything. Support is not a competition. The more that takes time to support, the better your team is going to do. And the Mesmer is one of the better support professions in Worlds PvP, as our support skills are very offensive. Meaning we both can defend our allies, and damage our foes, with just one skill.

Well, the way this is going of tracks is quite ridiculous.

We can see in this thread a lot of feedback about the Mesmer. I’ll try to sum some of the arguments:

Dumb Arguments:
- Mesmer got portals, enough said;
- Warriors are worse, shut up;
- The 4 or 5 “minions” Mesmers summon are OP;
- They are needed a lot, they must be good;
- They have Stealths and Portals. Balance done;

Real Arguments:
- Mesmer can be traited with Confusion builds to make opponents kill themselves;
- Knowing how to play is a key to the Mesmer performance;

While the purpose of this topic was to discuss the Mesmer role in Warfare, some players tend to make it a Mesmer class suck/don’t suck thread. Mesmer is not a bad class at all. Mesmer can be quite powerful if well played/traited.

Mesmer is very powerful in small fights/guerrilla warfare. But the sad truth is that Mesmer is an zerg-ophobic class. In a zerg, only the glamour utilities (some of them – Portal, Feedback, Null Field) have slight chances of doing something good. However, Glamour skills are support skills. Enemies will not stop from moving towards you nor run, because of used any of them. Phantasms and clones are useless because they are quickly destroyed. To shatter them is hard because they have to run to them, so no shatter builds also. Boons defensive builds are hard to accomplish due to the randomness of the boons Mesmer can set. So condition is the only viable option and truth be told with serious limitations.

Also, with the weapons limitations, only Focus, Staff and Greatsword can do AoE’s. GS Mesmer being nerfed, Staff Mesmer being randomly supportive and with focus being also a support weapon (with the added “Pull you off the walls to feed you to the angry mob”), the Mesmer lacks something.

My conclusion stands. Mesmer is only good at WvW due to the fact that he has the Portal Skill and TimeWarp. But, let’s put it on other way: “What do you do with your Mesmer in WvW if Portal and TimeWarp were removed from the game?”

LHound.8964:

Well, the way this is going of tracks is quite ridiculous.

We can see in this thread a lot of feedback about the Mesmer. I’ll try to sum some of the arguments:

Dumb Arguments:
- Mesmer got portals, enough said;
- Warriors are worse, shut up;
- The 4 or 5 “minions” Mesmers summon are OP;
- They are needed a lot, they must be good;
- They have Stealths and Portals. Balance done;

Real Arguments:
- Mesmer can be traited with Confusion builds to make them kill themselves;
- Knowing how to play is a key to the Mesmer performance;

While the purpose of this topic was to discuss the Mesmer role in Warfare, some players tend to make it a Mesmer class suck/don’t suck thread. Mesmer is not a bad class at all. Mesmer can be quite powerful if well played/traited.

Mesmer is very powerful in small fights/guerrilla warfare. But the sad truth is that Mesmer is an zerg-ophobic class. In a zerg, only the glamour utilities (some of them – Portal, Feedback, Null Field) have slight chances of doing something good. However, Glamour skills are support skills. Enemies will not stop from moving towards you nor run, because of used any of them. Phantasms and clones are useless because they are quickly destroyed. To shatter them is hard because they have to run to them, so no shatter builds also. Boons defensive builds are hard to accomplish due to the randomness of the boons Mesmer can set. So condition is the only viable option and truth be told with serious limitations.

Also, with the weapons limitations, only Focus, Staff and Greatsword can do AoE’s. GS Mesmer being nerfed, Staff Mesmer being randomly supportive and with focus being also a support weapon (with the added “Pull you off the walls to feed you to the angry mob”), the Mesmer lacks something.

My conclusion stands. Mesmer is only good at WvW due to the fact that he has the Portal Skill and TimeWarp. But, let’s put it on other way: “What do you do with your Mesmer in WvW if Portal and TimeWarp were removed from the game?”

Your post is ridiculous.

Glamour skills only have a slight chance of doing something good? What the hell are you talking about? They work every time. The only time I really see foes run away on top of a wall, is when they are surrounded by purple. Yesterday I was fighting against a zerg past the first wall in SM, and every time me and other Mesmer placed down Feedback or Chaos Storm, you could obviously see the foes moving backwards. Everyone ells was just moving forward next to us. Confusion and fear is the Mesmers best weapon. And who makes a boon build with the Mesmer in the first place? That’s just plain bad. Support is more then handing boons out. Conditions are an option, you can stat for direct damage just as well as any other profession. Greatsword, swords, and pistol are all meant for direct damage builds.

The only problem here is that people think the Mesmer is suddenly useless, just because you can’t hit players on top of a wall with your illusions. It only speaks to how lazy a player you are. Stop following the herd, and find something useful to do.

Kasama.8941:

Your post is ridiculous.

Glamour skills only have a slight chance of doing something good? What the hell are you talking about? They work every time.

Read again, you probably misread it. I never said that Glamour skills do not work. I said that they have small chances of Working.

The only time I really see foes run away on top of a wall, is when they are surrounded by purple. Yesterday I was fighting against a zerg past the first wall in SM, and every time me and other Mesmer placed down Feedback or Chaos Storm, you could obviously see the foes moving backwards.

You really believe that was Mesmer doing? LOL! Now saying that the only time you can see opponents backing is due to Feedback and Chaos Storm, is really dumb.

Everyone else was just moving forward next to us. Confusion and fear is the Mesmers best weapon.

Fear? … rly?

And who makes a boon build with the Mesmer in the first place? That’s just plain bad. Support is more then handing boons out.

You would be surprised on how good those builds are. If you never tried it, don’t talk based on assumptions. Not for WvW though, as i said.

Conditions are an option, you can stat for direct damage just as well as any other profession. Greatsword, swords, and pistol are all meant for direct damage builds.

Good find sherlock, never would guess!

The only problem here is that people think the Mesmer is suddenly useless, just because you can’t hit players on top of a wall with your illusions. It only speaks to how lazy a player you are. Stop following the herd, and find something useful to do.

Following the herd? LOL
Hitting the wall with my illusions? LOL
Not worth talking about.

And my post was ridiculous… If you have nothing constructive to add to the discussion, just shut up and go to your dreamland pushing back (and fearing) foes with you purple Skillz!

SteepledHat.1345:

I’m going to try to be respectful. Mesmers can only have 3 illusions up at a time. We can get an additional shatter on ourselves if we trait for it. (Grandmaster trait)

Tbh, if you really feel that mesmers are that OP you should probably just run. I get a lot of runners. God forbid you dodge when they shatter. Mesmer shatter build hasn’t been OP for a while. Or you can just hide in a keep where we can’t get to you….

No they can’t, they can have tons of clones up at once because as soon as you choose to shatter a clone they go out of your 3 active slots. I often have 5-6 clones up because one batch is running to a shatter while I have another group freshly set up.

I keep saying that mesmers are kittening awesome in this thread. My main is a level 80 mesmer and I can’t even level anything else because I love it too much. Quit complaining and learn to play your class.

I think maybe you all should rephrase this entire thread: Wall war tower sieges are kittening boring. If you have enough people to wipe their AoE off the wall then the rest of your group should kitten off and go roam somewhere else. If you don’t have enough people on the walls the battle is going to back up to cata / treb range really quickly and the siege turns into a lot more than smacking a button at a wall over and over.

Bones.5762:

styx.7294:

Might be alright that not every class can cover the walls with crazy AoE. Keeps the walls clear of too many crazy AoEs.

Not referring to you but this is the kind of logic that gets mesmers nerfed to be honest. “Man mesmer can do so much more than me, if i can’t do it mesmers shouldnt be able to do it either” But it’s funny how it doesn’t work in reverse.

Since I only play mesmer, I can’t speak to “mesmers can do so much more than me”. Mostly I was thinking about how I, as a mesmer, have to stand on the edge of a wall and shoot down at people and how it would suck if everyone could lay down AoEs that covered the entire wall. Right now if arrow carts are back enough, only like elementalists or rangers or whatever few folk can reach them and so you get enough shots back.

I don’t know if this is the way it should be but it’s just somethin that popped in my head and I wrote it down. I don’t think mesmers need more nerfing =( and some interaction with the walls more than a focus 4 (which is useless against something like a treb up on Hills) would be somethin I would appreciate.

I played mesmer and currently even after nerf they are the strongest 1on1, best zerg utilize and anti-siege.

I wouldn’t call a situation that encourages you to leave the zerg a bad situation.