Guild Wars 2

I am not going to discuss the leaked patch notes here.

However, I think it would be very healthy for the community and the developers to recalibrate what each group expects for the Mesmer’s role in tPvP.

I, and many other Mesmer players, view the Mesmer as one who roams / back caps and provides support (usually snipe support) in group fights.

However, it is clear Mesmers are simply outclassed by thieves for that role; so much so, in fact, that all the competitive Mesmer players have left for thief. This was evidenced in the last “Ready Up”, where we saw SupCutie, who used to play Mesmer, playing thief.

Based upon what we’ve seen thus far in the preliminary patch notes, ArenaNet has not made any strides to change the Mesmer’s viability in that role. Nor have we seen any efforts to increase Mesmer out-of-combat mobility. As such, Mesmers are no longer viable for the roamer role in tPvP.

So, what role are they supposed to play? Their phantasms melt in group fights due to AoE damage. They don’t have heavy armor, their access to vigor is being nerfed, and they have limited access to protection, Prismatic Understanding aside.

It would be fair, and informative, to open a 2-way discussion between the balance team and the Mesmer-playing community to discuss how Mesmers fit in.

If Mesmers are to be roamers in tPvP, then here are their deficiencies for that role:
– out of combat mobility
– survivability against thieves
– Phantasmal survivability in group fights

PS Betchya didn’t know Herbie was actually a Mesmer! :-)

If the leaked patch notes are anything to go by, I don’t think the balance team have much of an idea how the class actually works, let alone what kind of role they want it to fill.
Skills seems to just get shifted around randomly, or given largely superficial buffs or nerfs.
Half the time it feels like they are just padding out the changenotes.

Outside of the utility of portal, which in itself thieves have a somewhat passable substitute for, I honestly cant think of any role a Mesmer can take in which they aren’t completely outclassed in by other classes for less trait investment and general effort on the behest of the player.
The fact that the baseline for most skills are quite poor until traited for, and being reliant on squishy illusions that most classes can 1 or 2 shot with low cooldown aoe skills puts the class in a rather silly spot against any kind of skilled player.

This is of course not even going into the myriad of bugged skills and traits.
At this point, it feels like the class needs a complete rework, which will never happen.

This is exactly why I think it would be good to have a little dialog with someone from the Balance Team.

There’s definitely a disconnect here – either on our side or theirs. Why can’t we quickly chat about it and fix it?

Mesmer isn’t so horribly borked as Rangers have been. Rather there are a handful of issues that exist that need to be remedied. However, not having those remedied makes the class darn near useless in may ways.

I think this is mostly on the devs at this point.
People keep making threads, inciting discussion, brainstorming and the like but its all generally rather one sided.

clipnotdone.9634:

I think this is mostly on the devs at this point.
People keep making threads, inciting discussion, brainstorming and the like but its all generally rather one sided.

yeah mesmer community has a lot of ideas, not all good, but a ton of suggestions:

for mimic there were a bunch of good ideas
for mantras many suggested reworking them into groundtarget aoes or something like this
scepter was discussed
swiftness was discussed
and all the issues u mentioned above, i experiance too, but even worse in wvw raids. nowadays if your veil is not perfect, u are a bad mesmer….because thats all we have to offer in wvw. veil and tw…

now we get downstate changes….o.0
the expected nerf to clone death traits
swiftness nerf on tc 50%
mimic not really made useful, followed by a massive cooldown…
swiftness on chaosarmor….
tw cd reduction
bug fixes that havent even been mentioned

all this apart from tw change shows me the devs havent read any of the suggestions and dont see the mesmers problem. i say it again, we lack aoe and the ones jumping in now saying no we got berserker and we got this phantasm…no we lack ao as a kitten light armor class because illusions die in ergs. we got no options to use groundtargeted aoes apart from chaosstorm.
chaosstorm is an aoe wich i love and this is what mesmers would need more in order to have something to offer in wvw. i fight in outnumbered situations where a smaller group does zergbusting and i experience the issues of the ai and no groundtarget aoe a lot more than someone who is in a giant zerg spaming 111 or a roamer.
my role is to veil on time and tw. that the only reason im on my mesmer when running with them. otherwise i go necro or ele.
utilitybot is not fun, but anet doesnt see that problem, but i experiance this every day. veilbot duty is pressure.
anet seems happy with the mesmer as they only see it in the duelists light, we give them inputs about how we experience the mesmer, but it gets ignored. since glamour nerf the wvw mesmer started to fall to the bottom of the bottoms, right next to the ranger.
oh well time to reroll i guess. too many bugs and no help for my game mode. hmm maybe dust off my ele and finish my warrior and main my necro. at least i have aoe and not ai.

selan.8354:

clipnotdone.9634:

I think this is mostly on the devs at this point.
People keep making threads, inciting discussion, brainstorming and the like but its all generally rather one sided.

yeah mesmer community has a lot of ideas, not all good, but a ton of suggestions:

for mimic there were a bunch of good ideas
for mantras many suggested reworking them into groundtarget aoes or something like this
scepter was discussed
swiftness was discussed
and all the issues u mentioned above, i experiance too, but even worse in wvw raids. nowadays if your veil is not perfect, u are a bad mesmer….because thats all we have to offer in wvw. veil and tw…

now we get downstate changes….o.0
the expected nerf to clone death traits
swiftness nerf on tc 50%
mimic not really made useful, followed by a massive cooldown…
swiftness on chaosarmor….
tw cd reduction
bug fixes that havent even been mentioned

all this apart from tw change shows me the devs havent read any of the suggestions and dont see the mesmers problem. i say it again, we lack aoe and the ones jumping in now saying no we got berserker and we got this phantasm…no we lack ao as a kitten light armor class because illusions die in ergs. we got no options to use groundtargeted aoes apart from chaosstorm.
chaosstorm is an aoe wich i love and this is what mesmers would need more in order to have something to offer in wvw. i fight in outnumbered situations where a smaller group does zergbusting and i experience the issues of the ai and no groundtarget aoe a lot more than someone who is in a giant zerg spaming 111 or a roamer.
my role is to veil on time and tw. that the only reason im on my mesmer when running with them. otherwise i go necro or ele.
utilitybot is not fun, but anet doesnt see that problem, but i experiance this every day. veilbot duty is pressure.
anet seems happy with the mesmer as they only see it in the duelists light, we give them inputs about how we experience the mesmer, but it gets ignored. since glamour nerf the wvw mesmer started to fall to the bottom of the bottoms, right next to the ranger.
oh well time to reroll i guess. too many bugs and no help for my game mode. hmm maybe dust off my ele and finish my warrior and main my necro. at least i have aoe and not ai.

As stated at the beginning, this isn’t to talk about the leaked balance patch notes, which we now know are not true (really good fake notes, however)!

I’d still like to know what roles Mesmers have. If Mesmers are to be roamers, then they need to stand on a competitive footing with thieves. This means:
– more out of combat mobility
– better defenses against (or better counters to) thieves
– a different way to spike aside from shatter-spike

If they are to have a role as group support, then they need:
– more reliable access to protection and/or
– more reliable access to vigor outside of critical strike damage
– Phantasms that don’t melt in AoE damage

yeah im glad they are fake.
i think though its a bad idea to make a light armor class a duelist like the thief. light armor class is always a little squishy and so it would make more sense to actually fix our class so we can fit into better roles.
illusions and all traits that work great in a 1v1 , dont work in a wvw raid. as a light armor class i would like to see mesmer based, ground targeting aoe like during glamour times feedback,nullfield was and then chaosstorm. glamour was the only mesmer build that didnt rely on illusions and thats why it was good in wvw.
as a light armor class we shouldnt be forced to go close to the zerg, but mantras and mh sword will require that. shatters are hard to land on zergs and phantasms too buggy and too squishy and too much affected by cc to be a viable aoe.
if necro was only based on minions, they would be in the same dilemma.

Well, I don’t think ANet is going to redesign the class at this stage. That’s an issue you handle during prerelease alpha.

Mesmers are not designed around large group fights. However, they aren’t viable as a roamer now and lack the sustain to bunker or group fight.

I only play mesmer, I love gw2, and the above (is true and) makes me sad.

MSFone.3026:

I only play mesmer, I love gw2, and the above (is true and) makes me sad.

agreed. i love wvw raids and i love my mesmer and we used to be great in wvw with glamours and other builds, but they all got nerfed to the ground…..

Well if/when we ever get dual profession/horizontal progression or similar, then perhaps it should be that the mesmer can be specialised to fulfill more than one role – so it can be built more toward the thief’s role, or it can be built towards a support/utility role?

I can’t think of a single role the class could or should fill at the moment – given the nature of the skills there is scope to fulfill several roles.

No one seems to know what role the Mesmer is ‘supposed’ to have anymore, and that’s sad.

oh well we are veilbots. its sooo much fun i get to run in 900 range of the leader, put down veil and try to get away from the zergball and for the rest of the fight ill kite around the zerg, trying to deal dmg while staying alive so i can put down another veil and tw for all the war/guard/eles.

seriously utilitybot is not a role…its a burden, its stressful and boring at the same time.