Guild Wars 2

Yet another awful night in WvW. With an Ascended weapon and 5 Ascended accessories, I can’t even make a credible effort at defeating most other classes.

Here’s my suggestion;

Make Mesmer Phantasms rezzable in the same way that Necromancer pets are, and retargetable.

My Necromancer with second rate gear does far better in WvW than the Mesmer I’ve already invested far too much time and effort in.

My only function in WvW at this point as a Mesmer is to give easy kills to noob zerg trains.

Yeah I know the feeling. It is not just you. I play my under geared shout heals warrior to help the home side these days.

Mesmer are strong in 1vs1 / 2vs2. It depends on your build. Copy a good mesmers build and copy his playstyle and you’re good to go.

im glad i play a op ranger and never had any problems in 1vs1 – 1vs5 situations. my bear soaks all the dmg while i can stay still and pew pew with my longbow

doublepost …..

Eviscera.9703:

Mesmer are strong in 1vs1 / 2vs2. It depends on your build. Copy a good mesmers build and copy his playstyle and you’re good to go.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ (January 2013):

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

Yet I keep hearing people saying to people frustrated by playing a class the way they want to play it that the solution to their problem is to copy the approved powerful build for their profession rather than playing the way they want to play. I’m not naive enough to believe that every build will or should work well, but there are plenty of styles of play that should make sense but don’t work because the traits and skills for other builds are just so much more powerful.

My other problem with this philosophy is that it produces cookie-cutter opponents. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference who is playing most of the characters that I fight in WvW because most of the characters in a particular class all fight in exactly the same way using pretty much the same builds which gets pretty boring in my opinion.

Truthfully… I play a D/D ele, it’s how I enjoy playing.

But I’m still not stupid enough to run into 30 players and or fight using D/D with zerg v zerg as I get melted. I swap weapons.

it depends on your build at the end of the day.

Chaos mesmers I ignore as they can’t do enough damage if I don’t engage them.
Power Mesmers… well I have to fight.

If you’re running with a zerg most the time (as most noobs do), spec to be useful…

I don’t see the problem… sounds like you just suck.

I’m not a “noob” at World Rank 130 and a bit under 7000 ap. It sounds like you are liking being OP and scared it’ll change.

As to zergs. I refer to those players as “zerg dolls” when I use printable language and have little to no respect for the “train” play style.

Berk.8561:

Eviscera.9703:

Mesmer are strong in 1vs1 / 2vs2. It depends on your build. Copy a good mesmers build and copy his playstyle and you’re good to go.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ (January 2013):

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

Yet I keep hearing people saying to people frustrated by playing a class the way they want to play it that the solution to their problem is to copy the approved powerful build for their profession rather than playing the way they want to play. I’m not naive enough to believe that every build will or should work well, but there are plenty of styles of play that should make sense but don’t work because the traits and skills for other builds are just so much more powerful.

My other problem with this philosophy is that it produces cookie-cutter opponents. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference who is playing most of the characters that I fight in WvW because most of the characters in a particular class all fight in exactly the same way using pretty much the same builds which gets pretty boring in my opinion.

Yet more than a year after nothing changed, there are still better builds/classes for every game mode, Colin might want it to change but that doesn’t mean it will ever change.

You canno’t build a berserker thief and pretend to be in the front line of a 60 man zerg clashing another 60 man zerg and survive like a PVT guardian would do, thats just ridicolus.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m not a “noob” at World Rank 130 and a bit under 7000 ap. It sounds like you are liking being OP and scared it’ll change.

ha? I play an Ele

WR is about rolling with zergs and does not contribute anything to playstyle or skill.

I main a mesmer and I completely annihilate people. especially warriors they stand no chance lol

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m not a “noob” at World Rank 130 and a bit under 7000 ap. It sounds like you are liking being OP and scared it’ll change.

As to zergs. I refer to those players as “zerg dolls” when I use printable language and have little to no respect for the “train” play style.

130 WR means nothing, I know people rank 600+ that can’t kill nothing in 1vs1 lol, 7k ap only tells me you like pve achievements but dosn’t mean you are skilled.

Jake.5017:

I main a mesmer and I completely annihilate people. especially warriors they stand no chance lol

I hope you are a time traveller and this is a post from the future.

If not honestly post your build and tips

I’ve spent quite a lot of time skill building. No.. I’m no high level eAthelete, but I have an 80 in every class in the game and have at least competence with each of them.

Zutha, I don’t zerg.. I consciously avoid it.

sminkiottone, my point exactly. Noob wannabees can run around all night on a heavily populated server and soak rewards simply by spamming skill 1. I’m certain that there are many rank 600 warriors who couldn’t complete a dungeon if their life depended on it.

I simply don’t believe you Jake, I know better.

Ithilwen.1529:

Yet another awful night in WvW. With an Ascended weapon and 5 Ascended accessories, I can’t even make a credible effort at defeating most other classes.

Because surely, the gear had so much to do with it. Don’t appeal to higher authority with this please, it’s rarely necessary.

The mention of the gear was to illustrate that this toon has a lot of time and energy invested and “should” be competitive.

True to form.. the forum ignores the suggestion and tries to find excuses to be snarky. How about replying to the suggestion?

Well, sure:

• “About to delete”, really? The equivalent to /wrist in forum complaints form? If the class is that bad off as it implies you’d have quit a long time ago, so let’s be a bit more honest and say that there’s issues, just as with every single other class. Okay?
• Rezzable Phantasms make no sense. You already do that, by recasting them. Or what did you mean?
• Retargetting? Hrm… maybe. But it’d probably mean their power is cut massively because now they’re a permanent tool and we’re a “proper” pet class. Look at how weak Necro minions are to compensate their theoretical uptime. I think Phantasms are plenty weak enough considering they are our damage output.
• The comparison to Necromancer is weird. Are you doing duel-focused roaming? If so, I’d like to mention that you are playing the worst possible way because you are leaving yourself open to any class, any built (or in fact no build :P ) easily killing you by simple tactical superiority. If you run WvW, you should never try to fight fair. You shouldn’t in sPvP either, but it’s a bit more problematic to do there. Win the fight before you start fighting. Necromancers aren’t such a strong class due to being such sitting ducks, pressure them quickly, done, you barely notice the speedbump. Ofc, try to fight one 1v1 and you are doing what she wants you to do. So why do that?

quercus.9261:

Jake.5017:

I main a mesmer and I completely annihilate people. especially warriors they stand no chance lol

I hope you are a time traveller and this is a post from the future.

If not honestly post your build and tips

I’m no expert with mesmer so there will be better build/tips, but with this one I rarely have any problem 1vs1 :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8flsnpMtNqxNNcrNig6h2ldfHJFtWqVShtdhA-zUCBYLCyEEw0HBK5pIaslhFRjVtATVSQWZKp+EFRrmUAjKMC-w

This is a standard shatter build, as soon as you understand the concept of shattering it will rocks a lot, against power based specs or 1vs2 i usually prefer portal instead of arcane thievery to confuse my enemys even more.

You always need to pay attention on where are your illusions/you and your target is, there was a video on this forum explaining everything important for shatter mesmer, maybe someone will find it.

The mesmer as a great survivalability even in serker builds, the important thing is to dodge/daze/portal/stealth at the right time, and of course burst in the right way.

Or a dire armor + perplexity is alway good against noobs.

Deleting was more about emotional state than actual action.

I meant Phantasm being able to be rezzed without a specific target. So that they are available at the beginning of a fight, rather than needing to be created on the spot.

That seems to be the root reason my Minion Mistress Necro does so well by comparison. Her Minions are standing by at the beginning of the fight and they can be redirected to a new target.

Berk.8561:

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ (January 2013):

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

And yet I still cannot buy ascended armor/weapons with gold.
Another lie..

Isn’t all of this just a fancy schmancy rock-paper-scissors anyway? With each patch/update certain builds grow in strength while others lose. It’s kind of the cycle of life.

Something will always lose to something else.

Shademehr.1397:

Isn’t all of this just a fancy schmancy rock-paper-scissors anyway? With each patch/update certain builds grow in strength while others lose. It’s kind of the cycle of life.

Something will always lose to something else.

That’s the balance goal for most RPG combat systems, yes. It’s a common one, because it promoted group play to a significant degree, as you cannot win all your fights alone.

Ideally, each class would have strengths and weaknesses set up in such a way that any 2 classes could compete on level ground by playing to their respective strengths.

Anet basically deceived me by presenting a class and not telling me, “this class is incapable of beating medium to heavy armor class the majority of the time.”

Obviously, A net would prefer everyone play a warrior or guardian.

Hey, Good Guy will help you out! :

Step 1: Create a Ranger
Step 2: Try to do WvW with it for a month
Step 3: Go back to Mesmer
Step 4: Praise the God that you haven’t rolled Ranger instead of Mesmer and think that there’s always someone more kittened than you are
Step 5: Enjoy your class again !

Ithilwen.1529:

Ideally, each class would have strengths and weaknesses set up in such a way that any 2 classes could compete on level ground by playing to their respective strengths.

Anet basically deceived me by presenting a class and not telling me, “this class is incapable of beating medium to heavy armor class the majority of the time.”

Obviously, A net would prefer everyone play a warrior or guardian.

Uh, defeat in what scenario?

Mesmer is great at roaming and PU builds can easily kill 2 people at once who decide to stick around and fight you.

Mesmer is not good at zerging though

Ryn, I own an 80 toon in every class. I agree.. Ranger is unimpressive at best. Still it’s likely to beat a Mesmer most of the time.

Infantry, as it happens, I’m about to go and try a PU build, again. My expectations are pretty low though.

I don’t realy know what your goal is here. From what you are saying either your stubborn and want to loose your fights so you can complain or the class just isn’t for you man.

Don’t blame anet tho. You can play this game the absolute way you want. You still wouldn’t try to eat soup with a fork just because it’s your favourite now would you? Just be reasonable.

Also, unfortunately in life, balance is a state constantly changing. If there were perfect balance between all classes and builds, everyone would quit within a month.

Go watch purple wings I think his name is. He plays all sorts of builds on mesmer, and from what I can tell, you can learn a little from how he manages his fights.

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Also, unfortunately in life, balance is a state constantly changing. If there were perfect balance between all classes and builds, everyone would quit within a month.

It’s funny that you say this, because ANet only balance once every 3-4 months. Many more people do (and have) leave the game because of this.

Mesmers are really good at roaming, you just need practice.

I saw that you have a big rank and a lot of AP both much more then me.
But only one of those matter in WWW, and that one only matters if you got him roaming not with the zergs.

Try to go on Youtube and search for Mesmer videos, there are some people doing tutorials about their strategy during the fights.

GL

sminkiottone.6972:

quercus.9261:

Jake.5017:

I main a mesmer and I completely annihilate people. especially warriors they stand no chance lol

I hope you are a time traveller and this is a post from the future.

If not honestly post your build and tips

I’m no expert with mesmer so there will be better build/tips, but with this one I rarely have any problem 1vs1 :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8flsnpMtNqxNNcrNig6h2ldfHJFtWqVShtdhA-zUCBYLCyEEw0HBK5pIaslhFRjVtATVSQWZKp+EFRrmUAjKMC-w

This is a standard shatter build, as soon as you understand the concept of shattering it will rocks a lot, against power based specs or 1vs2 i usually prefer portal instead of arcane thievery to confuse my enemys even more.

You always need to pay attention on where are your illusions/you and your target is, there was a video on this forum explaining everything important for shatter mesmer, maybe someone will find it.

The mesmer as a great survivalability even in serker builds, the important thing is to dodge/daze/portal/stealth at the right time, and of course burst in the right way.

Or a dire armor + perplexity is alway good against noobs.

Well thanks for answering

FYI a WvW warrior can eat a full zerker shatter and still be at %60 health if he has at least 2800 def (and they all do). And that is only if he is a noob because when I see a mesmer with swords running at me on my warrior I just IP stance and don’t take any damage at all. Now your glass mesmer is sitting there with everything on cooldown.

The best approach is PU/power and a sword/torch burst/shatter and then go stealth, dps range rinse repeat. Eventually the warrior will get to half and run away.

of course this is all 1vs1 which is kinda pointless and none of this works in zerg where mesmers are veilbots

I sometimes get kitteny with my Ranger, and get in way over my head thinking I have survived the same before but then things go sideways… bad days sometimes!

Ithilwen.1529:

Yet another awful night in WvW. With an Ascended weapon and 5 Ascended accessories, I can’t even make a credible effort at defeating most other classes.

Here’s my suggestion;

Make Mesmer Phantasms rezzable in the same way that Necromancer pets are, and retargetable.

My Necromancer with second rate gear does far better in WvW than the Mesmer I’ve already invested far too much time and effort in.

My only function in WvW at this point as a Mesmer is to give easy kills to noob zerg trains.

Well Mesmer’s are basically veil bots in a zerg

That isnt where there strength is.

A Mesmer is better suited for roaming, or small havoc groups, and 1v1.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/List-Find-your-Mesmer-Builds-Guides

That’s a list of different guides and builds for a mesmer.

If you want a class to zerg with

Necro-Guardian-Ele- will pretty much guarantee you tags in a zerg.

If you want to do well in 1v1 or solo roaming

engi-theif-mesmer-warrior

You are also thinking of mesmer as a pet class..

Dont.

It isnt and hasnt been since BW1.
Instead of thinking of phantasm’s as a pet.

Think of them as an attack that linger’s that you can re-use in the next 15-20 seconds.

Berk.8561:

Eviscera.9703:

Mesmer are strong in 1vs1 / 2vs2. It depends on your build. Copy a good mesmers build and copy his playstyle and you’re good to go.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ (January 2013):

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

Yet I keep hearing people saying to people frustrated by playing a class the way they want to play it that the solution to their problem is to copy the approved powerful build for their profession rather than playing the way they want to play. I’m not naive enough to believe that every build will or should work well, but there are plenty of styles of play that should make sense but don’t work because the traits and skills for other builds are just so much more powerful.

My other problem with this philosophy is that it produces cookie-cutter opponents. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference who is playing most of the characters that I fight in WvW because most of the characters in a particular class all fight in exactly the same way using pretty much the same builds which gets pretty boring in my opinion.

You’ve misread/misinterpreted the comment.

“…the way you want to play in order to reach the most powerful rewards”

This means that you can get the rewards you need, like Ascended gear, whether you do PvE or WvW. It also means you can earn new skills like the new heals in sPvP or PvE/WvW.

It’s about rewards, not build.

If you’re going to misrepresent an ideal, you might as well just link to the article so it isn’t clear as day that your comprehension is off.

The competitive aspect of games has always boiled down to certain builds that are “better” for a class/hero/race/whatever. Always. It won’t ever not do that. Make the build you like work as best you can, but the game can’t accommodate every permutation.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m not a “noob” at World Rank 130 and a bit under 7000 ap. It sounds like you are liking being OP and scared it’ll change.

As to zergs. I refer to those players as “zerg dolls” when I use printable language and have little to no respect for the “train” play style.

7000 ap….? really? I’m a D/D ele and tried out the mesmer a bit in pvp, I got 22 kills in my first match with a random build I created. Do note that even after 1000 hours on my D/D ele with a meta build I can’t even get 6 kills let alone 22…. This continued for a couple days till I deleted my mesmer because it made me sad how ridiculously overpowered it was.

don’t whine just learn to play.

@OP:

Please post a video of your failings and see if the community agrees you’ve played your Mesmer to a reasonable degree. Having all professions at lvl 80 doesn’t mean that you will automatically be good with any of them or if you’re gd with one profession, you’ll be as good with another one. And high AP only means you possibly play a lot of LS or have been playing constantly for a long time.

On top of that, the other people here can help you with how you play your Mesmer during specific encounters.

Eviscera.9703:

Mesmer are strong in 1vs1 / 2vs2. It depends on your build. Copy a good mesmers build and copy his playstyle and you’re good to go.

he is talking about raids not 1v1. when people refer to wvw, they usually mean raids unless they state roaming very clearly.
i feel the op though. being a mesmer in an organized group can be a pain. veil veil veil and veil again. u are not useful for anything else than veil. mes lacks aoe and has to spec for survival which is pu ye, but u dont kill anything really. u get lucky if u get to tag a few enemies.
there is no real raid builds out there as everything we can trait atm is illusions or shatters, shatter u gotta be glassy to deal ok dmg and u have very little survivability and anything u gotta rely on ai is automatically bad and non viable in wvw raids.
maybe the new gm traits will offer at least something

I have 0 problem on my mes in group fights, while you don’t have the huge blow them up skills that other classes have, you do have utilities that will enable you to get more than enough tags to make you happy. Are they the weapons or build you want to use? nah probably not, but it can be done. null field + feedback + time warp + gs/staff = lots of tags, lots of bags and support for the group.. just sayin’

sminkiottone.6972:

You canno’t build a berserker thief and pretend to be in the front line of a 60 man zerg clashing another 60 man zerg and survive like a PVT guardian would do, thats just ridicolus.

That’s why I said, “I’m not naive enough to believe that every build will or should work well, but there are plenty of styles of play that should make sense but don’t work because the traits and skills for other builds are just so much more powerful.” But that doesn’t explain why one can’t play a strong longbow Ranger.

Cogbyrn.7283:

The competitive aspect of games has always boiled down to certain builds that are “better” for a class/hero/race/whatever. Always. It won’t ever not do that. Make the build you like work as best you can, but the game can’t accommodate every permutation.

Seriously, tabletop wargames and role-playing games have dealt with this issue since the 1960s and 1970s and having a narrow set of optimal builds is the sign of a weak design. Board games and sports have dealt with it a lot longer than that. Other types of computer games have dealt with it since the 1970s. It’s trivially easy to plug a game’s mechanics into some spreadsheets or software and find the optimums, which means players will quickly discover them and exploit them and all play will revolve around those styles of play, which is why most board games, wargames, tabletop role-playing games, collectible card games, playing card games, and even sports craft their rules so that a wide variety of options are viable rather than allowing a single tactic or strategy to dominate the game. It makes for a bad game. If it’s not an objective of MMOs, it should be.

Ithilwen.1529:

Deleting was more about emotional state than actual action.

I meant Phantasm being able to be rezzed without a specific target. So that they are available at the beginning of a fight, rather than needing to be created on the spot.

That seems to be the root reason my Minion Mistress Necro does so well by comparison. Her Minions are standing by at the beginning of the fight and they can be redirected to a new target.

Lol. MM Necro. The noob build for 1v1 fights. It is getting the nerf it deserves, was fun while it lasted though.

Spec PU,

stack Dire gear,
Perplexity Runes,
+40% Condition Duration Food,
and condition-applying Sigils.

Go to town.

Berk.8561:

Cogbyrn.7283:

The competitive aspect of games has always boiled down to certain builds that are “better” for a class/hero/race/whatever. Always. It won’t ever not do that. Make the build you like work as best you can, but the game can’t accommodate every permutation.

Seriously, tabletop wargames and role-playing games have dealt with this issue since the 1960s and 1970s and having a narrow set of optimal builds is the sign of a weak design. Board games and sports have dealt with it a lot longer than that. Other types of computer games have dealt with it since the 1970s. It’s trivially easy to plug a game’s mechanics into some spreadsheets or software and find the optimums, which means players will quickly discover them and exploit them and all play will revolve around those styles of play, which is why most board games, wargames, tabletop role-playing games, collectible card games, playing card games, and even sports craft their rules so that a wide variety of options are viable rather than allowing a single tactic or strategy to dominate the game. It makes for a bad game. If it’s not an objective of MMOs, it should be.

I don’t know enough about Tabletop games, but for Board games in general, often the rules are homogenized enough for all parties involved such that you get a very minimal, if any, advantage for going first. But that’s it. You either incorporate dice rolls to add some variability, or you take turns moving the same set of pieces with the same rules. Unless you want to get into some other more recent games, but all the games I’m thinking of (Chess, Checkers, Risk, Stratego, Sorry, Trouble, Mancala) force everyone to follow very similar rules to achieve easy balance.

Homogenization is something MMO players typically scream about, and I don’t blame them. In Sports, you similarly have two sides working to achieve identical goals, and there are a lot more variables involved with Sports (innate physical ability, coordination, dedication, will, coaching, practice, training). It isn’t really applicable here, I don’t think.

It’s trivially easy to just say “craft the rules so a wide variety of options are viable” and expect some developers to go do that, but I’m not sure if you’ve tried to think of the implications of that generalized statement. That’s the ideal, yes. If every class could have the following viable builds at a competitive level:

Control
Support
Condition Pressure
Power Pressure

That would be great, but you aren’t just balancing for competitive PvP, and you aren’t just balancing for a competitive group of people. It’s a nightmare, and the more active and fast-paced you make combat, the more you have to homogenize people’s options. The more time you give a player to sit and think, the more you can control what they have to think about and the closer you can come to balance even with a variety of options.

I think it’s a noble goal for sure, and I would love if they could achieve it, but honestly, I’m personally pretty impressed by the variety of builds I’ve seen find success in GW2 for almost all of the classes. Necros are in a precarious place for high-level fractals, and still I’ve seen people take Power Necros the distance. I’ve even seen people talk about running Apothecary builds to success.

Is an Apothecary Necro asked for by speed-running groups? No. But I really think that’s the sacrifice you make when you provide this much variety in a combat system that is as variable as GW2. Having a dodge mechanic alone completely changes the game and adds an incredible layer of complexity.

But let’s be honest: how many people complaining about balance/variety are pushing the game to its competitive limits? How many people that you see out in the world are playing competitively well? Maybe 1%. It could be higher in the sPvP world, but I’ve seen so many people try to pull of flavor of the month builds and fail miserably. I specifically remember a Hammer/GS Warrior in WvW who lose to me with my Axe+Mace/GS set-up. It wasn’t even close to being close, and I’d maybe used Axe+Mace to fight a few mobs before that fight.

Some things work really well and aren’t too difficult to pull off, other things work well and are much more difficult to pull off. An average player can still get hosed on his easy build against an experienced player, and I don’t think people acknowledge that about this game, for whatever reason.

I think I’m digressing. Either way, I really don’t think little imbalances here and there are necessarily a bad thing. The only really bad things I can think of are those that break the typical mold in some way, namely untelegraphed abilities that do extremely high damage. I also don’t like how the entire Stealth mechanic is designed, but I’ll let that rest for this thread.

sminkiottone.6972:

quercus.9261:

Jake.5017:

I main a mesmer and I completely annihilate people. especially warriors they stand no chance lol

I hope you are a time traveller and this is a post from the future.

If not honestly post your build and tips

I’m no expert with mesmer so there will be better build/tips, but with this one I rarely have any problem 1vs1 :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8flsnpMtNqxNNcrNig6h2ldfHJFtWqVShtdhA-zUCBYLCyEEw0HBK5pIaslhFRjVtATVSQWZKp+EFRrmUAjKMC-w

This is a standard shatter build, as soon as you understand the concept of shattering it will rocks a lot, against power based specs or 1vs2 i usually prefer portal instead of arcane thievery to confuse my enemys even more.

You always need to pay attention on where are your illusions/you and your target is, there was a video on this forum explaining everything important for shatter mesmer, maybe someone will find it.

The mesmer as a great survivalability even in serker builds, the important thing is to dodge/daze/portal/stealth at the right time, and of course burst in the right way.

Or a dire armor + perplexity is alway good against noobs.

good luck with this build in tier1-tier2. u are soo glassy!!!i run with a zergbusting group and this build would kill me in like 2 seconds. i immobilize and its over, plus most of the zergs have 2-4 thieves ganking casters. u would get 1 shot by them.

i like the shattter for roaming though and yes it kills fast. lets hope the ferocity is not gonna make shatter builds non viable

Whilst mesmers may not be the alpha predator for WvW roam, that belongs to thieves, they are certainly formidable.

spec PU
set urself up for condi dmg
collect bags

The blackwater is a solid spec for roaming, you are tough to pin down and staff – scepter/torch are defensive. Once you get more confident with the build and recognise what other classes are playing(spec and gearwise) you are fighting you can start changing it up.

There is a reason why PU is complained about a lot, it’s a very powerful trait and hinges off the stealth mechanic in this game. Then take the stealth slots veil, decoy, mass invis with blink to throw a bit more confusion in there.

It’s really important to know what you are fighting, it’s all well and good to go ‘o thats a thief or warrior’, but what ‘kind’ of thief or warrior, food buff will give you an initial clue on what to expect, koi cakes probably an unload condi thief, crit dmg/precision, big burst backstabs. Weapon sets for the warrior, has a rifle or axe id expect big burst damage from kill shot/eviscerate, has a hammer and bow, condi hambow warrior(will probably be running koi cakes).

I personally run greatsword not staff because i like the interrupt(bountiful interruption, perplexity, illusion of vulnerability), raw dmg, and izerker snare for runners. And i run a hybrid condi – pow/crit

Ithilwen.1529:

Yet another awful night in WvW. With an Ascended weapon and 5 Ascended accessories, I can’t even make a credible effort at defeating most other classes.

I main a mesmer too, got about 5k AP, 118 wvwvw poins and I win about 50% of the fights in wvwvw. Ascended trinkets, exotic gear the rest.

I have a lot of fun in wvwvw roaming, I run both PU phantasm and 20/20/0/0/30 shatter. I prefer the shatter one latetly, cant not love that burst, even though I die a lot more.

- Rangers are 95% win in roaming, in 1vs1 they know their kitten so more like 50%.
- Necros in my rank are easy target, just spam dmg at ‘em and interrupt and it’s a win. Higher ranks kick my kitten at insane speeds though.
- Guardians, most in roaming have zerg spec so its too easy to win, 1vs1 specced are kitten, but rare to meet.
- Warriors, some/many builds are totally OP, I just leave. They used to be 100% win, now they aren’t.
- Engies, very fun fights, feels quite balanced between the professions.
- Eles, good ones are hard, but can be fun fights.
- Thiefs, I’d say 50/50 chance of winning, some build are difficult.

To me it feels quite balanced, I’m no pro but no noob either, I win some but loose some. The only professsion that feels to OP atm is warrior, but I can see the nerf hammer dangling over their head

What I learned when roaming is to chill the kitten down. Go in, burst, GTFO, back in, burst, repeat. I used to be more aggressive and had big problems with many classses, more defensive and controlled aggression payed off.

If you’re on a EU server, send me a PM if you wanna go roaming and share ideas.

If only you had skills.

You should re-roll warrior. That class carries people with no skills.

@OP:

Are you a zerg player or a 1v1 player?

If you are a zerg player, I definitely understand your complaints.
If you are a 1v1 player, mesmer is the best class in the game for that. Roll PU and win.

Use glamour skills, and put on the trait that makes them give enemies confusion. Watch as enemies waste their condi-removal on the original push by the hammer train while you destroy them immediately afterwards with the confusion.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Use glamour skills, and put on the trait that makes them give enemies confusion. Watch as enemies waste their condi-removal on the original push by the hammer train while you destroy them immediately afterwards with the confusion.

erm confusion is not viable anymore in wvw. it does barely enough dmg to tag anything. i played glam before nerf for a long time and even if it was unnerfed or buffed back up to 25% more dmg it still would not be even close as effective like before. back then, noone used condi cleanses at all. everyone just went full perserk or full pvt but noone specced for condi removal. nowadays condis get cleared very quickly. glam skills have long cooldowns and confusion even with perplexity is hard to stack. so yeah not viable anymore.
i tried it….

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t know enough about Tabletop games, but for Board games in general, often the rules are homogenized enough for all parties involved such that you get a very minimal, if any, advantage for going first. But that’s it. You either incorporate dice rolls to add some variability, or you take turns moving the same set of pieces with the same rules. Unless you want to get into some other more recent games, but all the games I’m thinking of (Chess, Checkers, Risk, Stratego, Sorry, Trouble, Mancala) force everyone to follow very similar rules to achieve easy balance.

All of those games are very simple, with the possible exception of chess. It’s not that easy to destroy Stratego and make it not fun because there isn’t much unpredictability or variety in it (ignore the flag, put your highest pieces up front, and go for annihilation instead of flag capture). But there are other more complex games out there including CCGs (collectible card games), Cosmic Encounters, and board games like Axis and Allies that have a lot more complicated balance issues taken into account.

Cogbyrn.7283:

It’s trivially easy to just say “craft the rules so a wide variety of options are viable” and expect some developers to go do that, but I’m not sure if you’ve tried to think of the implications of that generalized statement.

I spent a lot of time researching and studying tabletop role-playing game rules and even designed some of my own. I understand it’s not an easy demand to achieve and a lot of games fail at it to varying degrees, but it’s a goal that should be attempted. What is the purpose of a game giving you 50 options if only 5 are really viable?

Cogbyrn.7283:

I think it’s a noble goal for sure, and I would love if they could achieve it, but honestly, I’m personally pretty impressed by the variety of builds I’ve seen find success in GW2 for almost all of the classes.

It depends on what part of the game you are focused on. In the PvE parts of the game, the classes are not competing directly against each other and the NPCs behave fairly predictably, so it’s possible to succeed in a lot of different ways. That’s not so true in WvW, where I’m seeing less and less variety because only a handful of things work reliably well. See the guild recruiting threads or best and worst class thread for WvW and the opinions are fairly consistent about what does and doesn’t work well.

Cogbyrn.7283:

But let’s be honest: how many people complaining about balance/variety are pushing the game to its competitive limits? How many people that you see out in the world are playing competitively well? Maybe 1%. It could be higher in the sPvP world, but I’ve seen so many people try to pull of flavor of the month builds and fail miserably.

Sure, a great build isn’t going to save a bad player and a great player can often get decent results with a poor build, but I don’t think that negates the point or the problem.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Some things work really well and aren’t too difficult to pull off, other things work well and are much more difficult to pull off. An average player can still get hosed on his easy build against an experienced player, and I don’t think people acknowledge that about this game, for whatever reason.

Again, I’m not sure that negates the point. A chess master can beat a novice even if he takes half of his pieces off the board at the start of the game as a handicap, but that doesn’t mean it would be good if the normal rules of chess gave one side that much of an advantage over the other I could likely win a game of Stratego against a novice with my flag turned around so they can see exactly where it is, but that doesn’t mean it would be ideal for one side to always have to play that way.