Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. Lately the mesmer was updated in a pretty strange way. I’d like to know what Arenanet wants us mesmers to be.

With skills like Signet of Inspiration, Nullfield, Time Warp and the changes to the supportive mantras being aoe now it feels like they wanted us to be a supporter.

Another fact is that our shatters weren’t touched that mutch. This tells me that you’re happy with how the shatters work right now…

With the last patch we got 2 traits (Domination and Inspiration GM-Traits) that trigger on interrupt. Well, everyone might have heared about Power Block being able to set thieves or AAs on cooldown. This trait was “nerfed”(fixed) just now.
This would tell me that you want us to be an interrupter what would be fine because I really like this kind of style.

• Do you guys want to have the mesmer as a supporter?
• Do you guys want us to be spikers with our shatters? (one thing that wasn’t nerfed to death)
• Do you guys want mesmers to be interrupters? We have 7 Traits that trigger on interrupt…

Dear Anet: What is the position you want the mesmer to gibe in this game? It’d be great if we (you and the community) could discuss together how to put the mesmer into this position. Best would be if we together manage to make all of these styles viable in any gamemode.

~ Me Games Ma — a mesmer since GW1

Mesmers are in a lackluster spot right now.
Shatter is more or less dead due to ferocity nerfs
Same for phantasm builds
Stun lock is where they seem to be headed but this means no swiftness
Condie PU is meh and boring
Power PU has been nerfed as well due to ferocity
Only need a couple Mesmers to be veil bots in raids, otherwise they are pretty useless

Still have a lot of bugs (e.g. iwarden bug which goes all the way back to November 2013 patch)

RIP mesmers

i think mesmer has no role apart from utiliybotting.

i play wvw since headstart of gw2
mes used to be fun and glamour was our aoe dmg and yes it was strong and i would havve been fine with a shave(not a nerf into the ground though). cnfusion was our core mechanic that was taken away over a year ago and made non viable on mesmers. what people forgot though was that mesmers had no other dmg appart from confusion with a glamour build which included massive cooldowns and bad condi cleanse.
ok nerf happened and nothing but bugs and further nerfs have been introduced. and all we got was stuff we dont need. there is no wvw raid build out there. the only reason we got a mesmer in wvw is to portal golems around, veil the war/guard/ele/necro train and tryt to deal dmg which is hard.

problems:
shatters f1 – f4: hard to pull off in a zerg without ip trait as clones will not reach targets due to aoe

phantasms: fail often due to obstructed bugs, los issues, bugs, ai problems and again ai is terrible in a zerg(just ask rangers, they can sing u a song of this issue aswell)

clones: lol u spawn them and poof in a zerg( u could spec into clone death but that tiny little condi that is strong in 1v1 is a joke in wvw

aoe: there is none since glamour deals barely any dmg, feedback is useless against melee trains and most of our weapons are single target skills. we got no aoe also because of above mentioned problems with shatters and phantasms

stability: we got pretty much non and the one we have is a mantra…erm devs, i wanna ask u: have u ever used mantras in an outnumbered zerg fight before? especially with the thieve meta where the caster(which a mesmer should be, but isnt as we are no aoe dmg dealers anymore) get ganked by at least 2 thieves. also perma stunlock, operma immobilize, perma fear,perma lockdown is an issue.

condi cleanse: yes mesmer is supposed to be weak against condis, but this is ridiculous if u see all the other weak spots a mesmer has!

out of combad speed:… either we are forced to use a certain rune which limits our build variety) or we use our broken focus, that has an even more useless phantasm on it since the so called fix.

1v1 dueling class only: this is the worst thing the mesmer has turned into! yes, we were pretty good duelists, but we used to have options to spec for wvw with non ai heavy builds like immortal mesmer and glamour build. now we lack aoe multi target hits and dmg sustain..i mean we got chaos storm that is on a longer cooldown than an eles meteorshower and does not even 1/3 of that dmg….

rng based skills: u never know what u get: chaos armor (which was a really unneeded nerf btw), signet of inspiration, chaos storm, pu and such all are way too random.

so all people see is the hotjoinmonkey mesmer that confuses new players… but seriously the mesmer is dying! we have not gotten any attention from anet at all for over a year and the bugs keep getting worse and worse. i warden was a perfectly functioning phantasm, then anet wanted to "fix"it and broke it and instead of reverting that change, we now have a broken phantasm that cant be used at all for months!!!

this is a light armor class. a light armor class needs viable aoe options period. so if i wanna go wvw, i dont wanna veil and portal stupid golems around, i wanna fight, deal dmg and have fun! im not having fun with my mesmer anymore. too many bugs, the devs hate this class clearly(probably hotjoinmonkey killed a dev too often in hotjoin),utilitybot is not fun andi can not deal dmg to a zerg…
i mean thieves have more aoe dmg than we do! and no shatters are not viable, no ai is terrrrrrrible in wvw ai dies in seconds and no clones will not help me either.

we need rework and finally aoe compensation from the glamour nerf!
but im tired of waiting so ill just reroll war and play my necro and ele more often. at least i can have fun in wvw

To be honest, they should break all professions so badly that they ultimatly need to redesign the whole trait-and skill line.
It looks like the only support anyone can be is based on the amount of dps you got, or if you can boost others dps with either mightstacking or time warp. Everything else is irrelevant.

What Mesmer needs at this moment is bugs to be fixed and adjusted and clear build for different roles.

I still wait for that day when torch or staff will be just as good as sword and focus in PvE.

love my Mesmer. there isn’t really a class that will reliably beat me 1v1 if I am on top of my game. I’m not into sieges or blob vs blob since I actually enjoy having to play my class to its fullest, so I wont speak on that aspect of it. I will say that aoe and other brainless playstyles rule supreme in that aspect since that game style is pretty much a brainless game anyways.

only thing I would like to see from Anet is an ability to reliably keep runners in a fight if we so choose.

[@ Anet] – Where do you want the mesmer?

My guess is the recycle bin

Xavi.6591:

Mesmers are in a lackluster spot right now.
Shatter is more or less dead due to ferocity nerfs

Perhaps that’s true to some extent in wvw but that’s definitely not true in spvp where shatter still has significant on demand burst.

Yep, I like my Mesmer. I played Mesmer since release and always liked and will always like it (I hope). Because Mesmer is the epiphany of perfection and elegance, of style and power, of awesomeness and more awesomeness.

Mesmer should, same like Ranger, return to it’s core of GW1. The main goal of mesmer was supporting team indirectly (from my feeling) via making the content less threating and more accessible for the rest of team. They had some nasty spikes, but most of skills were about playing with interruptions, punishing target for performing certain actions.

The whole class theme was like “No, no, you won’t do this, I’ll punish you for that”

Now that Power Block trait looks like a right step in this direction

Just look at Mesmer’s abilities from GW1, I leave the link here:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mesmer_skills_quick_reference

Mesmer is in a hard spot these days because we seem to be an amalgamation of skill sets that are either:

A. Not fun to play against.
B. Not Fun to Play.

From many other professions.
Lets look at them now.

Clones / Phantasms – Pet grade AI in squishy form. Also available to Rangers and Necros – Not fun to play nor Play against.

Stealth – See any thief complaint about stealth ever just minus the extreme Bursts. Not fun to Play against.

RNG – Not fun to Play or Play against.

Reflects – Also available to Guard – not terribly fun to play.

Group Support – Everyone but thief and maybe necro does it better.

Condition Spam – Short duration bursts with short duration conditions – Not fun to play and not as competent as Necro / Warrior / Thief / Ranger / Guard / Engi / Ele.

LoS / Target dependent / Single Target Proficient – Not fun to play in any game mode that can throw more than 1 to 2 targets at you at once.

Hard Countered with Nothing to Counter in return – We are hard countered by Conditions and Stealth and High evade upkeep and Sustained Health. We are not a hard counter to any play style since the confusion nerfs but still remain semi-effective against super spammy Eles.

What we can’t do in the current sPvP meta – Effectively Hold a Point, Quickly roam a map, Quickly Decap a point.

What we can do – Troll with PU, Add spikes and minor support/cc to a team fight.

@Swish.2463:
Phantasm play – fun to play to me
Shatter play – fun to play to me
Stealth – fun to play to me
Some nice CC options – fun to play to me
Invulnerability stomping – very much fun to play to me

I was today playing sPvP all day. First hot join and then Solo arena (or how this is called, cuz of Arah progression). And I was playing it all with Mesmer and it was super fun. It was hard, especially against those immortal engies and warriors and by no means did I dominate the arena. But it was fun and except for one Mesmer I met I faired well. Mesmer stealth play is not that hard to look though btw.

I agree that holding a point can be done better with other professions. On the other hand did I manage to delay groups of 3 players on one point, that they already capped, with my Zerker build (them being downed often might be a reason for them staying there). And those 3 players were no worries for my team mates that way.

I run Shattered Condition so I basically hard countered condition builds. So many Mesmers, Necros, Thieves, Warriors and Engies tried to burn, bleed, confuse, torment and fear me down. You could say I was a Condition bunker. I don’t know, if that is possible with another profession. (The irony is, people complain about conditions builds being tanky with high damage. Well, I tanked all the condition damage and did nice damage spikes)

TyPin.9860:

@Swish.2463:
Phantasm play – fun to play to me
Shatter play – fun to play to me
Stealth – fun to play to me
Some nice CC options – fun to play to me
Invulnerability stomping – very much fun to play to me

I was today playing sPvP all day. First hot join and then Solo arena (or how this is called, cuz of Arah progression). And I was playing it all with Mesmer and it was super fun. It was hard, especially against those immortal engies and warriors and by no means did I dominate the arena. But it was fun and except for one Mesmer I met I faired well. Mesmer stealth play is not that hard to look though btw.

I agree that holding a point can be done better with other professions. On the other hand did I manage to delay groups of 3 players on one point, that they already capped, with my Zerker build (them being downed often might be a reason for them staying there). And those 3 players were no worries for my team mates that way.

I run Shattered Condition so I basically hard countered condition builds. So many Mesmers, Necros, Thieves, Warriors and Engies tried to burn, bleed, confuse, torment and fear me down. You could say I was a Condition bunker. I don’t know, if that is possible with another profession. (The irony is, people complain about conditions builds being tanky with high damage. Well, I tanked all the condition damage and did nice damage spikes)

u are seeing this from an spvp pov…soryy many of us dont main spvp at all. i play wvw and not the roaming kind. i like the massive battles and am running with a zergbusting group and no mesmer is only there to veil, thats the only reason why we are accepted otherwise we are outclasses underpowerd and not useful at all. soo many bugs, no aoe, ai is terribe, even more bugs…sorry i dont have fun on my mes anymore and i dont care if u can 1v1 some hotjoin people.

I 1v3ed in solo arena and effectively delayed them for minutes.

I play in a WvW Guild on FSP and I main Mesmer, even on raids. I even play a shatter Mesmer with boon rips. Our glamor Mesmers and Necromancers have nice boon rip, but I have mobile boon rip. When I am on sword, I am meleeing with the melee train and have boon rip that moves with the party and otherwise I am jumping all over the place.

I admit, that as of now in Zerg raids other professions do more damage, hit more targets and are often tankier. But ask Thieves, Rangers and Engineers where their place in a Zerg is.

I agree that ANet could work on the Mesmer profession a bit more. But some remarks in this thread, judging Mesmer useless and all possible Mesmer play styles as totally despised, are just out of any perspective. If you don’t like the profession, you can make constructive suggestions or stop playing it. But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community. Your remarks of “hotjoinmonkey” in an earlier post are a good example for your disrespect, making me not take you too seriously.

Rym.1469:

Mesmer should, same like Ranger, return to it’s core of GW1. The main goal of mesmer was supporting team indirectly (from my feeling) via making the content less threating and more accessible for the rest of team. They had some nasty spikes, but most of skills were about playing with interruptions, punishing target for performing certain actions.

The whole class theme was like “No, no, you won’t do this, I’ll punish you for that”

Now that Power Block trait looks like a right step in this direction

Just look at Mesmer’s abilities from GW1, I leave the link here:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mesmer_skills_quick_reference

TyPin.9860:

I 1v3ed in solo arena and effectively delayed them for minutes.

I play in a WvW Guild on FSP and I main Mesmer, even on raids. I even play a shatter Mesmer with boon rips. Our glamor Mesmers and Necromancers have nice boon rip, but I have mobile boon rip. When I am on sword, I am meleeing with the melee train and have boon rip that moves with the party and otherwise I am jumping all over the place.

I admit, that as of now in Zerg raids other professions do more damage, hit more targets and are often tankier. But ask Thieves, Rangers and Engineers where their place in a Zerg is.

I agree that ANet could work on the Mesmer profession a bit more. But some remarks in this thread, judging Mesmer useless and all possible Mesmer play styles as totally despised, are just out of any perspective. If you don’t like the profession, you can make constructive suggestions or stop playing it. But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community. Your remarks of “hotjoinmonkey” in an earlier post are a good example for your disrespect, making me not take you too seriously.

sadly , ranger are actually good for pve dungeons also as thieves . And engi ,ranger and thief are still great in team pvp .
The only thing mesmer could do better now might just be wvw roam and after power spec nerf almost pu only now which is a stupid 1v1 op build and anet didn’t nerf it at all.
I have all classes and i know what they are good at .My main mesmer gets nothing to do in this game now .

And also we are talking about design direction and balance issue here , stop using your 1vx experience as a fact to say game is balanced .
Many pvp players will agree that phantasm build is boring and op for 1v1 .also AI play is bad in any pvp game ,so don’t even try to argue here .
Shatter power build is fun and useful for team fight ,but with condition spam , hambow stun spam , immobilize stack its hard to do full damage now and easily get owned by hambow and necro. those are balance issue .Either give mesmer more condition removal or generally nerf condition in pvp.
shatter condition build with new trait now might have enough damage output and its fun to play . but we dont know if its comparable with condition necro and engi yet so lets just wait and see.
About pu condition ,i know someone think champion farm is fun too so i won’t try to convince someone like that here .
PU power or hybrid build is ok for wvw roam and makes mesmer have some use beside veil bot in wvw raid with that high survivability. But still pu needs a serious balance , stealth mechanism needs balance too right now it’s just no punishment and not enough counter .

Shutdown 4/4/6 CI mesmer is most fun to play after playing shatter for a year now . still lack of condition removal so that’s balance issue ,but it still doesnt punish thief as it should do . this is game design issue or direction problem here . And to fix this anet needs to do a lot of work , redesign many skills and animite . Just look at necro scepter AA chain , staff 4 marks , ranger shortbow etc and u know why shutdown doesnt work great in this game .

About pve for casual play anything works there. but for speedrun people still think rangers are useless and many bad rangers are still running around .Mesmer is still better than engi and necro . So we should have no complaint here .

All those are why mesmer players feel useless in every aspect in this game now.

musu.9205:

TyPin.9860:

I 1v3ed in solo arena and effectively delayed them for minutes.

I play in a WvW Guild on FSP and I main Mesmer, even on raids. I even play a shatter Mesmer with boon rips. Our glamor Mesmers and Necromancers have nice boon rip, but I have mobile boon rip. When I am on sword, I am meleeing with the melee train and have boon rip that moves with the party and otherwise I am jumping all over the place.

I admit, that as of now in Zerg raids other professions do more damage, hit more targets and are often tankier. But ask Thieves, Rangers and Engineers where their place in a Zerg is.

I agree that ANet could work on the Mesmer profession a bit more. But some remarks in this thread, judging Mesmer useless and all possible Mesmer play styles as totally despised, are just out of any perspective. If you don’t like the profession, you can make constructive suggestions or stop playing it. But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community. Your remarks of “hotjoinmonkey” in an earlier post are a good example for your disrespect, making me not take you too seriously.

sadly , ranger are actually good for pve dungeons also as thieves . And engi ,ranger and thief are still great in team pvp .
The only thing mesmer could do better now might just be wvw roam and after power spec nerf almost pu only now which is a stupid 1v1 op build and anet didn’t nerf it at all.
I have all classes and i know what they are good at .My main mesmer gets nothing to do in this game now .

My main Mesmer still is. I am not saying, that Mesmer is totally fine. I like Rym’s way of thinking and would be glad, if GW2 Mesmer would go more the ways of GW1 Mesmer. (I already hear the complaints: That Mesmer shut me totally down… Mesmer in GW2 once were able to via confusion, however people just spammed and died. Would be funny how they reacted to skills like Backfire)

What I don’t like is, if someone seemingly tries to tell me that my way of playing GW2 is no fun. And why is Mesmer behind in dungeons? I always play Mesmer in dungeons and I have no issues.

musu.9205:

And also we are talking about design direction and balance issue here , stop using your 1vx experience as a fact to say game is balanced .
Many pvp players will agree that phantasm build is boring and op for 1v1 .also AI play is bad in any pvp game ,so don’t even try to argue here .
Shatter power build is fun and useful for team fight ,but with condition spam , hambow stun spam , immobilize stack its hard to do full damage now and easily get owned by hambow and necro. those are balance issue .Either give mesmer more condition removal or generally nerf condition in pvp.
shatter condition build with new trait now might have enough damage output and its fun to play . but we dont know if its comparable with condition necro and engi yet so lets just wait and see.
About pu condition ,i know someone think champion farm is fun too so i won’t try to convince someone like that here .
PU power or hybrid build is ok for wvw roam and makes mesmer have some use beside veil bot in wvw raid with that high survivability. But still pu needs a serious balance , stealth mechanism needs balance too right now it’s just no punishment and not enough counter .

Shutdown 4/4/6 CI mesmer is most fun to play after playing shatter for a year now . still lack of condition removal so that’s balance issue ,but it still doesnt punish thief as it should do . this is game design issue or direction problem here . And to fix this anet needs to do a lot of work , redesign many skills and animite . Just look at necro scepter AA chain , staff 4 marks , ranger shortbow etc and u know why shutdown doesnt work great in this game .

About pve for casual play anything works there. but for speedrun people still think rangers are useless and many bad rangers are still running around .Mesmer is still better than engi and necro . So we should have no complaint here .

All those are why mesmer players feel useless in every aspect in this game now.

It seems you simply don’t like to adept your build. I have two Mesmers and on one I ran for a while PU. But it was not satisfying. I didn’t die, but also didn’t kill in WvW roaming for instance. PU is boring imho. And the claim that Mesmers have bad condition cleanse is very untrue. I think Mesmer has very good condition cleanse and usually condition builds are no different then power builds to fight for me.

I didn’t use 1v3 as an argument for it being balanced. I used as an argument, that you can have fun with Mesmer. When I started playing GW2, people understood that Mesmer is easy to learn, but hard to master. And this is still the case. I can fight (after almost 24h practice) any build you throw at me in GW2. I am not saying I will win all those fights, the win rate might be about 50/50 against good players, so it is fairly even.

Over all I don’t share your assessment of Mesmer being useless. On the contrary, I find Mesmer very useful. The lack of willingness to adept is an issue, that is very prevalent on those forums. I see it in the condition damage discussion and I see it here. For instance (covering both topics): How are Arcane Thievery, Null Field and 2 conditions cleansed on heal weak condition cleanse options (and those are simply the options on top of my head and doesn’t include Shattered Conditions or condition cleanse via torch). There are many rumors on those forums about certain professions (in this case Mesmer), that I personally have never observed…

That being said, I still would like to see Mesmer going a more GW1 direction. Mesmer in GW2 is fun, but it is nothing compared to the amazing GW1 Mesmer play style.

TyPin.9860:

musu.9205:

TyPin.9860:

I 1v3ed in solo arena and effectively delayed them for minutes.

I play in a WvW Guild on FSP and I main Mesmer, even on raids. I even play a shatter Mesmer with boon rips. Our glamor Mesmers and Necromancers have nice boon rip, but I have mobile boon rip. When I am on sword, I am meleeing with the melee train and have boon rip that moves with the party and otherwise I am jumping all over the place.

I admit, that as of now in Zerg raids other professions do more damage, hit more targets and are often tankier. But ask Thieves, Rangers and Engineers where their place in a Zerg is.

I agree that ANet could work on the Mesmer profession a bit more. But some remarks in this thread, judging Mesmer useless and all possible Mesmer play styles as totally despised, are just out of any perspective. If you don’t like the profession, you can make constructive suggestions or stop playing it. But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community. Your remarks of “hotjoinmonkey” in an earlier post are a good example for your disrespect, making me not take you too seriously.

sadly , ranger are actually good for pve dungeons also as thieves . And engi ,ranger and thief are still great in team pvp .
The only thing mesmer could do better now might just be wvw roam and after power spec nerf almost pu only now which is a stupid 1v1 op build and anet didn’t nerf it at all.
I have all classes and i know what they are good at .My main mesmer gets nothing to do in this game now .

My main Mesmer still is. I am not saying, that Mesmer is totally fine. I like Rym’s way of thinking and would be glad, if GW2 Mesmer would go more the ways of GW1 Mesmer. (I already hear the complaints: That Mesmer shut me totally down… Mesmer in GW2 once were able to via confusion, however people just spammed and died. Would be funny how they reacted to skills like Backfire)

What I don’t like is, if someone seemingly tries to tell me that my way of playing GW2 is no fun. And why is Mesmer behind in dungeons? I always play Mesmer in dungeons and I have no issues.

Its not about your feeling ,its just a fact ,mesmer needs some serious balance .Otherwise we don’t need balance at first play .Players feel wrong on mesmer ,so they said that ,and hope for balance. Saying mesmer useless is overkill but on the other hand when you get other better choice why play mesmer?
Also gw2 pvp player see pre nerf confusion op due to most classes do have to spam skill themselves and gw2 has faster pace than gw1 .In most cases you don’t have other players to rely on .Waiting 10s in gw2 you will almost die .It’s not player stupid enough not to stop using their skills .
So basically you prefer suggestive way to discuss with ,but i think players saying “mesmer feels weaker/useless ,needs a buff/rework/balance” are reasonable .
I played shaman in wow , paragon in gw1(not my mian tho) so nothing is new to me now lol.

TyPin.9860:

musu.9205:

And also we are talking about design direction and balance issue here , stop using your 1vx experience as a fact to say game is balanced .
Many pvp players will agree that phantasm build is boring and op for 1v1 .also AI play is bad in any pvp game ,so don’t even try to argue here .
Shatter power build is fun and useful for team fight ,but with condition spam , hambow stun spam , immobilize stack its hard to do full damage now and easily get owned by hambow and necro. those are balance issue .Either give mesmer more condition removal or generally nerf condition in pvp.
shatter condition build with new trait now might have enough damage output and its fun to play . but we dont know if its comparable with condition necro and engi yet so lets just wait and see.
About pu condition ,i know someone think champion farm is fun too so i won’t try to convince someone like that here .
PU power or hybrid build is ok for wvw roam and makes mesmer have some use beside veil bot in wvw raid with that high survivability. But still pu needs a serious balance , stealth mechanism needs balance too right now it’s just no punishment and not enough counter .

Shutdown 4/4/6 CI mesmer is most fun to play after playing shatter for a year now . still lack of condition removal so that’s balance issue ,but it still doesnt punish thief as it should do . this is game design issue or direction problem here . And to fix this anet needs to do a lot of work , redesign many skills and animite . Just look at necro scepter AA chain , staff 4 marks , ranger shortbow etc and u know why shutdown doesnt work great in this game .

About pve for casual play anything works there. but for speedrun people still think rangers are useless and many bad rangers are still running around .Mesmer is still better than engi and necro . So we should have no complaint here .

All those are why mesmer players feel useless in every aspect in this game now.

It seems you simply don’t like to adept your build. I have two Mesmers and on one I ran for a while PU. But it was not satisfying. I didn’t die, but also didn’t kill in WvW roaming for instance. PU is boring imho. And the claim that Mesmers have bad condition cleanse is very untrue. I think Mesmer has very good condition cleanse and usually condition builds are no different then power builds to fight for me.

I didn’t use 1v3 as an argument for it being balanced. I used as an argument, that you can have fun with Mesmer. When I started playing GW2, people understood that Mesmer is easy to learn, but hard to master. And this is still the case. I can fight (after almost 24h practice) any build you throw at me in GW2. I am not saying I will win all those fights, the win rate might be about 50/50 against good players, so it is fairly even.

Over all I don’t share your assessment of Mesmer being useless. On the contrary, I find Mesmer very useful. The lack of willingness to adept is an issue, that is very prevalent on those forums. I see it in the condition damage discussion and I see it here. For instance (covering both topics): How are Arcane Thievery, Null Field and 2 conditions cleansed on heal weak condition cleanse options (and those are simply the options on top of my head and doesn’t include Shattered Conditions or condition cleanse via torch). There are many rumors on those forums about certain professions (in this case Mesmer), that I personally have never observed…

That being said, I still would like to see Mesmer going a more GW1 direction. Mesmer in GW2 is fun, but it is nothing compared to the amazing GW1 Mesmer play style.

Simple fact there are other 7 classes in gw2.
I’m sorry but I have 2 mesmers lv80 with ascended weapon different sets ,builds and one mesmer has another 4 sets for different builds .And yeah let’s just play a AI phantasm build with all those condition removal traits(oh i forgot one is for pu ) .That’s what i called balance and direction issue .
The lack of willingness to adept , before you offend someone with your ignorance check any gw2 pvp forum. Or you can feel you are the only one smart enough for this game where most builds on simply deponds on numbers.

TyPin.9860:

How are Arcane Thievery, Null Field and 2 conditions cleansed on heal weak condition cleanse options (and those are simply the options on top of my head and doesn’t include Shattered Conditions or condition cleanse via torch). There are many rumors on those forums about certain professions (in this case Mesmer), that I personally have never observed…

Make a viable build using these utilities and traits. Sure you can cleanse a lot but youll not kill a thing. Not even talking about your usefulness to group.

Neftex.7594:

TyPin.9860:

How are Arcane Thievery, Null Field and 2 conditions cleansed on heal weak condition cleanse options (and those are simply the options on top of my head and doesn’t include Shattered Conditions or condition cleanse via torch). There are many rumors on those forums about certain professions (in this case Mesmer), that I personally have never observed…

Make a viable build using these utilities and traits. Sure you can cleanse a lot but youll not kill a thing. Not even talking about your usefulness to group.

Typically phantasm dueling build ,no wonder why he feels so awesome .
And yes gw2 has 1v1 pvp mode .GW 2 just has too many secrets when it comes to mesmer lol.

i agre with u musu. the reason im upset is that we have been waiting and waiting and my wvw experiance has gotten worse and worse especially with the cc spam meta. i just dont feel like my favorite class which i have 5 armorsets and full ascended weaponsets and trinkets for differnt builds, my class that i have played since a month after release and a class i have loved in wvw. then the glmour nerf kicked in and all the other nerfs hit patch after patch and now im stuck with a class that gets no attention no buff, no changes, we get useless stuff like illusion of life fix, mantr buffs that are not really enough to make a mantra build rally viable and no improvements for our wvwv raid aoe issues, ai issues, ai buga, bugs and even more bugs.
fact is any other class can do exactly what we can but better apart form veil we got nothing that makes us stand out or give us a clear role other than veilportaltwbot.
we are alight armorclass with worse aoe options than the thief has…i mean really? feedback? feedback what? the warrior hammer?shatter? yeah sure all my clones are able to reach the zerg with no problem, its not like there is a ton of necrofields,meteornados earthshakers everywhere… fact is, confusion was our core mechanic and it was nerfed to the ground, also many other things that the mesmer had got nerfed. i mean thieves can spam blind our blinding befuddlement gort an icd, war can spam cc and perma interrupt and stun u, our power block get an icd, condi necros could spam condis and melt u in seconds they got nerfs but condis still viable and strong, mes glamour builds were nerfed to the ground!
there are so many things atm that just push us out of the meta to the bottom and this patch made this issue even worse as we got pretty much nothing at all.

we need lees ai, less 1v1 only, more group stuff, trait rearranging, trait changes, replacing of useless skills, non ai aoe options cd rework(240seconds on twarp?), we need a clear role, we need multi target dmg options, we need BUGFIXES!!!!!! we need old nerfes to bee looked at like chaosarmr, bb, blurred frenzy, confusion(give mes an option to increase confusion dmg), los nerfs need to be worked on as they caus a ton of obstructed bugs, etc.

and dont try to sell bugfixes as buffs and actual work on our class, its not, bug should get fixed no matter what and not be the reason why we cant get buffs.

I think the real problem with mesmers lies in their whole confusion mechanic. (not the condition but the “who’s the real mesmer”-thing). Anet has made it pretty clear that they want gw2 to appeal to casuals. which isnt a bad thing in general. You can balance numbers and skills. But the thing with mesmer is, against a new player they are inredibly strong because they have no clue what to attack with all the clones and stealth. it frustrates them. Against good or experienced players, clones arent really a distraction. maybe they give you half a second more time before your enemy has targeted you again. Now if you would make mesmer stronger to make them more viable in high tier pvp, doesnt even matter in which way, the effect against casual players would be 1000x stronger. frustrating them even more. and i dont think thats what anet wants.
Balancing mesmer how he currently functions isnt possible in my opinion. They would have to revamp the whole class. To make them more like a lockdown-class like he used to be in gw1, they would have to get rid of clones totally. And im sure thats not gonna happen. So they just make some minor tweaks, mostly nerfs, but for me it looks like they dont even know in which direction to go.

TL;DR. Mesmer will never be balanced because the whole class mechanic is too strong against bad/unexperienced players, but weak against better players.

Dryce.4578:

I think the real problem with mesmers lies in their whole confusion mechanic. (not the condition but the “who’s the real mesmer”-thing). Anet has made it pretty clear that they want gw2 to appeal to casuals. which isnt a bad thing in general. You can balance numbers and skills. But the thing with mesmer is, against a new player they are inredibly strong because they have no clue what to attack with all the clones and stealth. it frustrates them. Against good or experienced players, clones arent really a distraction. maybe they give you half a second more time before your enemy has targeted you again. Now if you would make mesmer stronger to make them more viable in high tier pvp, doesnt even matter in which way, the effect against casual players would be 1000x stronger. frustrating them even more. and i dont think thats what anet wants.
Balancing mesmer how he currently functions isnt possible in my opinion. They would have to revamp the whole class. To make them more like a lockdown-class like he used to be in gw1, they would have to get rid of clones totally. And im sure thats not gonna happen. So they just make some minor tweaks, mostly nerfs, but for me it looks like they dont even know in which direction to go.

TL;DR. Mesmer will never be balanced because the whole class mechanic is too strong against bad/unexperienced players, but weak against better players.

excactly what i thought , i said this in another post . A reason why anet wont balance mesmer in a short time .sigh.

TyPin.9860:

I 1v3ed in solo arena and effectively delayed them for minutes.

I play in a WvW Guild on FSP and I main Mesmer, even on raids. I even play a shatter Mesmer with boon rips. Our glamor Mesmers and Necromancers have nice boon rip, but I have mobile boon rip. When I am on sword, I am meleeing with the melee train and have boon rip that moves with the party and otherwise I am jumping all over the place.

I admit, that as of now in Zerg raids other professions do more damage, hit more targets and are often tankier. But ask Thieves, Rangers and Engineers where their place in a Zerg is.

I agree that ANet could work on the Mesmer profession a bit more. But some remarks in this thread, judging Mesmer useless and all possible Mesmer play styles as totally despised, are just out of any perspective. If you don’t like the profession, you can make constructive suggestions or stop playing it. But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community. Your remarks of “hotjoinmonkey” in an earlier post are a good example for your disrespect, making me not take you too seriously.

And don’t you criticize selan when 90% of the posts on our forums now are about the community’s disgust with arena net. If anyone you are badly out of touch with the mesmer community.

The majority mustn’t be right per se. I admit that Mesmer in GW2 is different to Mesmer in GW1 and I would be glad, if Mesmer would be able to go there in GW2.

However, claims of Mesmer being useless are simply wrong. You are right, that I am rarely checking the Mesmer forums. However, to understand a profession, this is not needed. The forum is full of false claims. The only thing I can do, is talk from my experience. Is that wrong? Should I not draw from that? What else should I do then? Follow the main stream position in the forum, even if it opposes my own experiences? Did you actually tell me not to criticize someone due to a majority supporting his position? You know, how that sounds, right?

The condition cleanses I mentioned are all traits and abilities I use in different builds (not all in one build of course). This build I used a long time in WvW roaming and Dungeon runs (in dungeons I altered it a bit for glamor cool down reduction and feedback). I could kill stuff with that build and also had enough condition cleanses to deal with condition pressure. It is a phantasm build, yes, but it was only one example for a viable build with viable condition cleanses. In PvP I am running this atm.

I did not claim, that Mesmer is the strongest profession ever made and I agree with the assessment of Dryce. What I simply don’t agree on are statements of: Mesmer is/feels useless in almost any part of the game atm, while such claims are simply untrue (to me at least). I presented my assessment, but I was called ignorant and “feeling awesome”. Giving the impression, that one simply doesn’t want to argue an opposing position.

" But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community."
Turn this on its heel. You are telling him that because he and so many of his Mesmer community members are having real difficulties, they are nonchalant because you, one person, are going fine. Don’t bring the community into this. That is what I am saying. Because you have proven quite clearly that you are not aware of the community, only the profession.

I also agree with Dryce. It is hard to balance a profession that is based around confusing players.

yeah i agree with dryce. people cry about mesmers all the time cause they are confused when facing one. they also havent played the class themselves so of course they dont understand how to counter it. the moment u are used to mesmers u will actually see how easy it is to beat
another problem is that spvp and wvw is handled the same way. mes is a good 1v1 class, but in wvw and anything tht has to do with group, mes is not strong enough to keep up. the lack of aoe, the bugs and the ai will stand in our way. and yes confusion was supposed to be our way of punshing players for mindless spamming skills. the nerf was too harsh because it happened right after the free trial weekend and all the new players complained about confusion…well with a new trial weekend people might complain more about cc…we will see.
i think mes just needs a complete rework. make us a real light armor class, fix our ai, give us traits that allow more non ai aoe and rework and replace unused skills and traits.
the new gm traits could be ok if they werent gm traits so i think a trait line overhaul is needed too.

but the bugfixes are really annoying …i really wanna be able to hit oilbuildside and i would really love to have my old iwarden,clones and other stuff back

Apparently they want Mesmer 1-shotting Thieves according to screenshots in the sPvP forums.

I’ve seen some good points and some redundant points— most are viable concerns imo. What I’ve noticed is that Mesmer, really, has been niched. Mesmers are the king of 1v1 in PvP. If you go into sPvP as a mesmer you’re more likely to win your fights than not (provided you play well/have a good build). Now, not everyone wants to play Mesmer in that kinda format. This is where I’ve noticed the complaints are coming in hard. Mesmer needs something that makes it a viable playstyle in many different roles, not just 1v1ing. Anet’s been trying to go the route of making mesmer into a support role by adding some very impressive traits that allow it to disrupt enemies and gain massive boons for doing it. I’ve even seen a decent support build that focuses on this. The problem is that the effectiveness is very short lived and, as stated by many in this thread, there are other classes that just do it better and sustain these boons for longer. To be more viable in wvw, the disruption needs to be able to affect more people, not only five at a time.

To say Mesmer is a terrible class isn’t accurate. To say it is a very niched class, I would definitely agree.

[EDIT] Confusing players is easy as long as they don’t know how to look for you. Mesmer and Thief both make use of Chaos to win their battles. It’s sad, but PU is now a mandatory trait to really make this class effective to its fullest and thus create the maximum amount of chaos. To say “it’s hard” to confuse players may be true, but a good Mesmer is able to effectively use Chaos and always come out on top.

Daniel Handler.4816:

" But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community."
Turn this on its heel. You are telling him that because he and so many of his Mesmer community members are having real difficulties, they are nonchalant because you, one person, are going fine. Don’t bring the community into this. That is what I am saying. Because you have proven quite clearly that you are not aware of the community, only the profession.

You are confusing issues here. I am open to discussing the issues, picking up on “the communities” arguments and addressing them one by one and community doesn’t mean: the majority of the community is right. I was reacting, with the quote you stated, to the statement, that he doesn’t care, if I enjoy my Mesmer play. He turned a blind eye to my opinion, thus disregarding his peer in (according to your assessment a minority of) the community. You then come with that whole out of touch statement.

I might not share the opinion of your declared majority, but I am not saying: “I do not care, what you can or can’t do with Mesmer.”

Claudin Maximus.9710:

[EDIT]Confusing players is easy as long as they don’t know how to look for you. Mesmer and Thief both make use of Chaos to win their battles. It’s sad, but PU is now a mandatory trait to really make this class effective to its fullest and thus create the maximum amount of chaos. To say “it’s hard” to confuse players may be true, but a good Mesmer is able to effectively use Chaos and always come out on top.

Mandatory? I am not using it at all atm…

TyPin.9860:

Daniel Handler.4816:

" But disregarding the enjoyment other players have with it, is simply closing your eyes to the community."
Turn this on its heel. You are telling him that because he and so many of his Mesmer community members are having real difficulties, they are nonchalant because you, one person, are going fine. Don’t bring the community into this. That is what I am saying. Because you have proven quite clearly that you are not aware of the community, only the profession.

You are confusing issues here. I am open to discussing the issues, picking up on “the communities” arguments and addressing them one by one and community doesn’t mean: the majority of the community is right. I was reacting, with the quote you stated, to the statement, that he doesn’t care, if I enjoy my Mesmer play. He turned a blind eye to my opinion, thus disregarding his peer in (according to your assessment a minority of) the community. You then come with that whole out of touch statement.

I might not share the opinion of your declared majority, but I am not saying: “I do not care, what you can or can’t do with Mesmer.”

first off i (she)am not turning a blind eye. but u are coming from your own point of view because u had a good time killing people. well i dont and i can tell u i talk to a lot of mesmers and guilds about this and they are not happy with the wvw mesmer state…its even an ongoing joke in my guild where they say nope we need to nerf mesmers! they say that because mesmer is nothing more than a veilbot in wvw. yes i get to kill a few people here and there, but is it because im strong or is that because my guild is doing great?
yeah its because all the guardians tank the zerg, while war cc and dmg them while necros condition,turn their boons into condis and deal aoe dmg to them them and zerker eles meteornado them. thats why we win. not because im strong enough in wvw. im only there to veil and tw!
yes i had good times in spvp, but wvw is a grind atm for mesmers. there is no clear build..everything is sort of improvised.

see it like this: in wvw how many mesmers does a zerg need? and then think of how many eles they need.

fact is u will need 1-2 mesmers and only cause of veil and tw
u can never have enough eles cause massive aoe dmg, great aoe heals, great condi cleanse, nice cc
and the more war u have the easier the win cause of cc, regen, condi cleanse, stability, regen,toughness, hp……
the more guard u have the better the boons and the longer u will stay up
the more thieves u have the less backline will your enemy zerg have
and the more necros the less boons the enemy has and the more condis the enemy gets and necros can go 2 ways, power or condi
now what will more mesmers bring to the table? a few tw more every 240 seconds? a portal? feedback?feedback what? the warriors? and necros can actually pull u to them if u use feedback…

that is the problem u fail to see. thats why i call people out that come from a spvp perspective and their own pvx experience. im playing wvw every single day and have been for a very long time and i see the mesmer change and the problems which i think u arent .
after every patch u will see a ton of mesmers poping out and testing new stuff out to see if they can come back and every single time they will dissappear again cause its still the same.
i used to have a blast in wvw on my mes and when glamour came along it was awesome. i ran in a mesmer guild and we had 13 mes with a few eles 3 havies and would go zergbusting. the glamour nerf was so harsh though that it all started falling appart and we have tried and created many builds but countless nerfs and bugs have even taken this away.
now all that is left is dueling 1v1 specs and thats the problem cause i liked wvw raids and veilbotting is not fun at all. im begging my guild leader everyday if i can play my necro or ele instead cause i dont wanna veil!

i reacted to your post because u overlook all this u overlooked the wvw raid mesmers problems because u can only see your own experiance, but u dont wanna understand our standpoint. it sounded like: there is nothing wrong with mesmer i was able to kill like 3 people and i can do this and that…

i mean even pyro who always has a new build and ideas is scratching and shaking his head atm.

Okay, now we’re getting to the core. Don’t claim that Mesmers are/feel worthless in every aspect of the game, when your main complaint seems to be actually WvW Guild Raids/Zerg Fights. Because this was the point I disagreed with: the all area worthlessness.

I come from WvW too. Started out roaming on FoW back in the day and switched before 1st Season to FSP. I joined Kalevala, a pure WvW guild. I do the sPvP just now to advance on the progress lines, because I don’t like PvE much. And we in Kale have our daily guild WvW raids, where I play Mesmer. We are mainly utility bots and next to veil and null field we can contribute only a little. I completely agree with that. Still, I do considerable damage on the spikes, our commander calls out, where the huge AoE coverage of some professions can be even a problem, cuz they don’t hit the actual downed target but everyone around them.

There are areas like boon supporter and such, who but come not much into effect, because also the opponent has efficient boon rips. I lately run a shatter build in Zergs. And it goes actually pretty well. Dodge shatter and 2 boons were ripped. Dodge and shatter again and another 2 boons where ripped.

I wish we had more abilities to do AoE damage and to effectively CC in a Zerg. But when you run around claiming, that Mesmer is useless in all areas of the game, than I have to disagree, because we are truly very weak in only one area and this is mass battles (in PvE and WvW the same then). The more people are involved, the less you notice a Mesmer in there…

selan.8354:

i reacted to your post because u overlook all this u overlooked the wvw raid mesmers problems because u can only see your own experiance, but u dont wanna understand our standpoint. it sounded like: there is nothing wrong with mesmer i was able to kill like 3 people and i can do this and that…

You don’t want to understand our point of view either. You only see the raid mesmer. But mesmer class is amazing in small group wvw. Not only yolo 1v1. If Anet had to fix and improve the class, mesmer would become insanely strong in good players hands. I think they really don’t know how to handle us actualy.

Now, I recognise that mesmer could use some AoEs in zerging, but please, stop saying we are useless in every other aspect in this game. This is not true.

We are going by different concepts of useless. You have casual players and you have hardcore players. In areas of the game where players seek to maximize efficiency the mesmer is next to useless. In dungeons without a high reflect component, hardcore players are highly unlikely to bring a Mesmer, especially on speed runs. In pvp the top tier teams don’t use Mesmer they use thieves. In wvw mesmers are constrained to our utilities, the benefit we have to the raising our servers level is nothing beyond veil, timewarp, portal, null field, feedback. And even in those instances 1 or 2 mesmers is all that is necessary. You can have fun with Mesmer. But you can’t excel with mesmer

Daniel Handler.4816:

We are going by different concepts of useless. You have casual players and you have hardcore players. In areas of the game where players seek to maximize efficiency the mesmer is next to useless. In dungeons without a high reflect component, hardcore players are highly unlikely to bring a Mesmer, especially on speed runs. In pvp the top tier teams don’t use Mesmer they use thieves. In wvw mesmers are constrained to our utilities, the benefit we have to the raising our servers level is nothing beyond veil, timewarp, portal, null field, feedback. And even in those instances 1 or 2 mesmers is all that is necessary. You can have fun with Mesmer. But you can’t excel with mesmer

I’ll keep watching Vashury, Wing, Alissah and Osicat exceling at mesmer if you don’t mind.
You should reroll warrior btw.

You can choose your role. In wvw support, spvp spike-rupt etc. Not as rangers

Nausicca.6038:

Daniel Handler.4816:

We are going by different concepts of useless. You have casual players and you have hardcore players. In areas of the game where players seek to maximize efficiency the mesmer is next to useless. In dungeons without a high reflect component, hardcore players are highly unlikely to bring a Mesmer, especially on speed runs. In pvp the top tier teams don’t use Mesmer they use thieves. In wvw mesmers are constrained to our utilities, the benefit we have to the raising our servers level is nothing beyond veil, timewarp, portal, null field, feedback. And even in those instances 1 or 2 mesmers is all that is necessary. You can have fun with Mesmer. But you can’t excel with mesmer

I’ll keep watching Vashury, Wing, Alissah and Osicat exceling at mesmer if you don’t mind.
You should reroll warrior btw.

This is mostly roaming, Alissah has pointed out several times that in larger fights Mes loses significance. Excelling at mesmer within the constraints of the mesmer class, and the mesmer class excelling in more than one very small mostly unsupported aspect of the game are two different things.

As a Mesmer I feel rather lonely in a large flight. It is not the same when I roll my characters in other professions. My Engineer and Elementalist can layout all kind of combo fields. My ranger have Healing Spring, Search and Rescue and Spirits. My Guardian can provide shelter, healing and boons. None of my character is geared toward any support build. But when situation rise, I can switch things quick to provide some level of utility for my allies.

I think the issues with my Mesmer is he not only rely on Phantasms to do damage, but also use them as utilities through their bounce attack. However, Phantasm cannot survive on the front line long enough in large flight and we cannot summon Phantasm on back line neither because this requires an enemy target. As the game mechanic Phantasm always tie in with the life span of their targeted enemy, because of this a large truck of utilities through Phantasm is not accessible in a big flight.

To rectify this situation, I would suggest adding ability to Mesmer so that we could summon illusions on target allies when they are either less than 100% health or in down state. Illusion dies when the targeted allies reach 100% health or rally. In this case even without a build geared particularly toward support, we can use our illusions as usual to provide boons and remove conditions among our allies.

Just to remember all of you. This thread is not meant to be a QQ threat. I just want to hear your and ANets opinion about the mesmer and what you think they’ll make the mesmer to be in the future.
It’s a question because I’m rather confused about the things Anet gives us. Please stop QQing about the mesmer beeing useless. I’m aware that mesmers aren’t that good in WvW zergs or other game modes but as Nausicca said, there are good mesmers that handle their class perfectly.

Nausicca.6038:

Daniel Handler.4816:

We are going by different concepts of useless. You have casual players and you have hardcore players. In areas of the game where players seek to maximize efficiency the mesmer is next to useless. In dungeons without a high reflect component, hardcore players are highly unlikely to bring a Mesmer, especially on speed runs. In pvp the top tier teams don’t use Mesmer they use thieves. In wvw mesmers are constrained to our utilities, the benefit we have to the raising our servers level is nothing beyond veil, timewarp, portal, null field, feedback. And even in those instances 1 or 2 mesmers is all that is necessary. You can have fun with Mesmer. But you can’t excel with mesmer

I’ll keep watching Vashury, Wing, Alissah and Osicat exceling at mesmer if you don’t mind.
You should reroll warrior btw.

And I’ll keep facerolling 1v3+’s and do /sleep on any other aspect of this game.
GvG’s is probably the only thing that gets close to being active and usefull in a big group, while also that can be compared to roaming.

If this patch was supposed to be a ‘’massive skill/meta change patch’’, then they failed immense on it. The meta changes that did happen were also horrible… Conditions for everyone! Yeah… WTB condition nerf.

I’ll bump this in agreement with the OP. What role are we Mesmers expected to fill?

I still feel half of our utilities are useless. Traits are spread out all over the place, with many bugged or nerfed.

/sigh

well i would love to fill the role of what gw1 mes was. punishing which doesnt mean to be a support that cant deal dmg only. it means something like glamour mes was. glamour was punishing mindless spammers. yes, i di get killed at first by glamour, but if learned to slowdown and use condi cleanse.
so if our role was more like this again it would make mes way more dangerous in a zerg fight for example.give us some traits and aoe options that are punishing,deal dmg and can slow down those heavy cc spam trains. just give us something back from the gw1 mes, we dont need more ai and this should not be a pet class anyways. there should be build options like the necros has: u can use mm build but u also can use well builds, condi build, power builds. we are wayy too dependant on clones and phantasms and shatters, we need new options so mes can do well in other game modes than spvp