A Formal Complaint: Take 2

A Formal Complaint: Take 2

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

A message to our esteemed forum moderators
To encourage thoughtful and organized discussion, it is best to leave threads approaching the patch notes from different directions as separate threads. Far from cluttering the forums, this allows for different aspects of the changes to be considered and discussed in an organized manner. If all such threads are merged into one, as has been done so far, it simply creates a disorganized mush of what could be helpful discussion.

That being said, here are my thoughts.

It seems to be that balancing and changes with regards to the mesmer class are being made while completely out of touch with the reality of this game. This patch only exemplifies that more.

Good Changes

  1. The Phantasmal Berserker was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, it comes 6 months too late to deserve any applause or thanks.
  2. Bounce logic was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, similar to the phantasmal berserker, this is a bug fix, and deserves only minor applause and thanks.
  3. Interrupt traits were significantly boosted. Unfortunately, due to the nature of interrupts, most of these traits still aren’t strong enough to base a build around.
  4. Phantasm hp was significantly increased in PvE and slightly increased in PvP. A good change, but more on this later.
  5. Signet of illusions was fixed so that it applies immediately. A good change but again, more on this later.
  6. Shattered conditions is now aoe

That’s about it. Now for the bad changes.

  1. Blurred frenzy is now an evade. It also has a its base cooldown increased by 20%
  2. Signet of illusions passive effect reduced to 50% down from 200%
  3. Vengeful images now only applies retaliation for 5 seconds after the summon of a phantasm
  4. Illusionist’s celerity moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor

These are abbreviated versions. There are obviously more changes that I didn’t touch upon, but these are the only changes that (in my opinion) actually make a difference.

Here is the main issue. The positive changes to our traits and skills are relatively minor or are complete bug fixes. On the other hand, the nerfs are massive. Anet is obviously spending developer and programmer time figuring out effective ways to nerf mesmers, while completely ignoring the parts of our class that are still completely broken. I will now list the largest offenders.

  1. The iMage could be replaced with a placeholder saying “This skill does nothing” and nobody would care
  2. The scepter (even after this addition of torment) is completely useless. There are 0 situations outside of a glamour build in wvw that the scepter is better than the sword, greatsword, or staff unless one ignores all functions of the scepter other than the block itself.
  3. Phantasmal haste still does not apply to 2 of our phantasms: Swordsman and mariner
  4. Illusionary elasticity still does not apply to staff clones
  5. Wastrel’s punishment is still useless
  6. Mantras are still extremely underwhelming with underwhelming and poorly designed traits
  7. Due to the nature of interrupts, the interrupt traits are still of very limited use

These are a lot of massive problems. However, instead of fixing these problems, Anet decides to hand out significant nerfs. The nerf to signet of illusions, in my opinion, is reasonable, but that’s pretty much it. Blurred frenzy is nerfed twice, once in evade and once in cooldown. Vengeful images is, for all intents and purposes, no longer a trait. Lastly, Illusionist’s Celerity is moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor, nerfing every single build that is not shatter.

And as if all that weren’t enough, these changes are made in the name of build diversity. Anet is telling us “These changes are actually good for your class. We are doing this to help you.”

Build diversity eh? These changes make a tank build very difficult to play effectively now. They vastly remove potential diversity from both PvE and PvP phantasm builds. They significantly nerf the already very weak condition builds that mesmers have. Across the board, all non-shatter builds that mesmers have are negatively impacted, most in very significant ways.

The small buffs that they gave us are insignificant. Shattered conditions is nice, but with the other changes, it’s now much more difficult to use it effectively. The interrupt traits are nice, but when you couple that with the other changes they just become another shatter variant. Bounce logic was fixed, but builds that rely on that (conditions) are even weaker now.

On top of all this, the phantasm builds that were stupidly overpowered in a 1v1 are still stupidly overpowered in a 1v1. A small cooldown nerf won’t change that. People are still going to get facerolled by any competent phantasm build player and they’ll just cry for more nerfs.

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Summary
These changes accomplished nothing positive for the mesmer class. The fact that they were made in the name of build diversity is insulting to every intelligent mesmer player. These changes, far from providing build diversity and flexibility, have significantly lowered the diversity of the mesmer class and restricted the flexibility our builds have. This is far and away the most devastating and most ill-conceived patch since this game was first released.

Edit: For an eloquent analysis of why the IC change was extremely poorly done, see here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/A-Formal-Complaint-Take-2/page/3#post2294502

(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)

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Posted by: Xaelous.6528

Xaelous.6528

I agree…..so i wont be playing mesmer right now…..wont be forced in a condition build

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Posted by: drongas.4189

drongas.4189

agree agree151515

………..Gandara………..

I’m kill you’r bessies

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Posted by: overlordchin.7583

overlordchin.7583

I am more than a little disappointed in some of the nerfs.
the trait changes didnt impact me too much since i run a shatter build but it basically talked me out of changing my traits around to try anything else. So much for diversity.

The nerf to sword was pretty brutal if you ask me. I dont feel like the sword auto attack was particularly high in dps relative to a lot of other classes for the risk involved in being in melee range. The nerf to sword 2 skill was even worse. I wouldnt have minded one or the other but both of the changes make it pretty harsh.

Why did they nerf sirens call underwater. Most ppl loathe underwater combat and you just crapped on the one thing mesmers did reeeeally well underwater. Being able to stack 25 bleeds was essential to underwater combat for me and it sounds like that will be a lot harder now.

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Posted by: fadeaway.2807

fadeaway.2807

I don’t like shatter specs.
With that said I’ll be rolling another class until my beloved mesmer has another option available to it.

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Posted by: Karril Daltaya.4980

Karril Daltaya.4980

I am sitting here trying to stop the bleeding from my kitten from all the diversity they have bestowed upon us. As it is, it is going to be a while before I can sit down again…

(On a serious note: Thanks Pyro, I think your words pretty much sum up how must of us feel about now)

Tarnished Coast since Beta, now Banished forever to the Megaservers…

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Posted by: Alissah.9281

Alissah.9281

like i tried saying before the thread got moved, you just perfectly and objectively summarized what i was thinking… and the majority of the mesmer community.

idlike to keep the negativity out of this thread to increase chances its kept, becuase the last thing we need right now is objective posts like this being buried in the merged posts.

however, heres a fact that bothers me: they wanted to help us, increase build diversity. they failed.

cheers,
Alissah’

edit: i was, by the way, very very excited for this patch, especailly the build diversity and revamping useless traits. i even dreamt about how it would be if all useless traits gotreplaced by usefull ones! especially when they said in that preview article “wewont be nerfing things because it does more harm than good, instead were buffing new traits!”
ok, ill stop now.

New Rainbow Guild – An open-minded guild exclusively for Transgender people!
Warning: link may contain traces of awesome.
Lyssa’s Grimoire – a guide every Mesmer should read.

(edited by Alissah.9281)

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Posted by: TooBz.3065

TooBz.3065

Well said, Pyro.

But I think it’s a mistake is to think that most of the nerf’s had anything to do with build diversity. I think that ANet decided that there were a disproportionately high number of mesmers in the game which much mean that mesmers were OP.

It couldn’t possibly be that PvE is so broken that Portal is the only caster skill that has any value.

Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.

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Posted by: BossFi.6917

BossFi.6917

Back to my shatter build it is then!

Really don’t think ANet read the forums at all. There have been many excellent suggestions across the forum , not just about build changes but in all aspects of the game, and Anet keep proving to ignore everything suggested and implement their own half baked ideas.

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Posted by: vapour.2916

vapour.2916

First post… shows how bad I feel these changes are, eh? These changes would be much more accepted if ANET staff would elaborate on them. Why not send a dev to have a civil discussion with the community regarding the changes? Even better, if this happened in all class forums.

msixtyfive – Mesmer – DHE – Darkhaven

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Posted by: Jester.1236

Jester.1236

Izerker got fixed, bouncing got fixed. These were two HUGE issues from Mesmers for the last months. The thread on I zerker is somewhere around 170 pages long. And now thakittens fixed the general Mesmer consensus is “whatever you should have fixed it anyways” Most people said “Just fix the bugs, before anything else”. Well they fixed the bugs.

People are over reacting as usual. In a day or two you will all be back playing your mesmers, trying the new builds. And there are new variety in builds. They buffed interrupts, and I know in the 2 hours since the patch no one has mastered this. But maybe give it a day or two to figure it out? Prismatic Understanding was buffed. I see a lot of possibilities with the new traits. If all you guys want to do is hammer, everything is going to look like a nail.

That whole paragraph could be summarized by saying . We are mad you moved our 5 point trait. Oh and we don’t like what you did with blurred frenzy. These changes don’t ruin anything. The sky is not falling.

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Posted by: decease.3215

decease.3215

building diversity my @ss.. they are just killing off phantasm build..

p.s. the only feature of this class is clone and phantom.. now phantom are dead.. clone? they now die faster in pvp.. which means people can one shot em easy before you can shatter.. gj anet

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Posted by: Aveneo.2068

Aveneo.2068

I fully agree with Pyroatheist. This patch has brought us nothing but massive nerfs and minor bugfixes that should have been fixed much earlier.

To me ArenaNet wants to promote build diversity by destroying build diversity.

Regarding Mesmer build diversity, ANet’s intention can be summed up as: ‘GO SHATTER OR GO HOME’

For Mesmers this patch has been the biggest failure since this game launched in my opinion.

Valiant Aislinn – Aveneo Lightbringer – Shalene Amuriel – Dread Cathulu
Fojja – Vyxxi – Nymmra – Mymmra – Champion of Dwayna .. and more

Highly Over Powered Explorers [HOPE] – Desolation EU

(edited by Aveneo.2068)

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Posted by: Colly.4073

Colly.4073

Time to move on to another game just as soon as one is available because Anet just couldn’t give a hoot.

Your post was well put Pyro but i very much doubt Anet will give it a second glance.

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Posted by: SuperSpicyCurry.2415

SuperSpicyCurry.2415

Izerker got fixed, bouncing got fixed. These were two HUGE issues from Mesmers for the last months. The thread on I zerker is somewhere around 170 pages long. And now thakittens fixed the general Mesmer consensus is “whatever you should have fixed it anyways” Most people said “Just fix the bugs, before anything else”. Well they fixed the bugs.

People are over reacting as usual. In a day or two you will all be back playing your mesmers, trying the new builds. And there are new variety in builds. They buffed interrupts, and I know in the 2 hours since the patch no one has mastered this. But maybe give it a day or two to figure it out? Prismatic Understanding was buffed. I see a lot of possibilities with the new traits. If all you guys want to do is hammer, everything is going to look like a nail.

That whole paragraph could be summarized by saying . We are mad you moved our 5 point trait. Oh and we don’t like what you did with blurred frenzy. These changes don’t ruin anything. The sky is not falling.

Buffing interrupts is nice and all but those traits aren’t nearly powerful enough to be useful compared to a shatter build, in PvE at least where bosses have a crappy anti-control mechanic. Nerfing Illusionists Celerity makes it so that in order to get a decrease on our most used skills requires 25 points into a trait line that is useless to non-shatter mesmers. Adding torment to the worst weapon for mesmers is dumb and not reliable in many situations. They shouldn’t be praised for bug fixes because that’s how the skills should have worked in the first place. Making only one build optimal and the rest sub par or completely useless is not how you add “variety”

Edit: Oh and I don’t really mind the blurred frenzy nerf. I think just the CD increase would have been fine but I don’t think people think it’s the worst nerf of the update.

(edited by SuperSpicyCurry.2415)

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Agreed Aveneo, ANet is trying to kill the Mesmer

I don’t think they’re trying to kill the Mesmer, I’ll give them that much. I just feel that they’re significantly out of touch with how this class works and what is needed.

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Posted by: Swedemon.4670

Swedemon.4670

/signed

There was already a large reduction in dedicated mesmers in wvw after the confusion nerf, and now this? There will still be mesmers, but mostly just for the utility of veil, portal, and into the void… how boring. We’re a lot more squishy now with the blurred frenzy nerf which means we’ll spend most of the big fights on the defensive… oh joy.

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Posted by: Jester.1236

Jester.1236

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

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Posted by: Titanimite.2534

Titanimite.2534

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

True, but that trait and the HP of our clones was crucial to any build. We are a clone and phantasm based class after all and both have been nerfed extremely hard.

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Posted by: TooBz.3065

TooBz.3065

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

Yeah, to me interrupts are basically random occurrences. And while many mesmer skills have random elements, you generally don’t build around the random chance that something will happen.

I guess dropping Chaos Storm in a zerg is likely to interrupt something. And a well timed interrupt can kill a heal, but that’s about it.

Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.

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Posted by: Jester.1236

Jester.1236

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

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Posted by: wintermute.4096

wintermute.4096

It’s almost as if they played their own version of “corrupt a wish” with those patchnotes.

- You want to signet of illusions to work reliably?
- Fine, but it will be insignificant boost now!

- You want access to the new condition instead of confusion?
- Fine, but it’s on scepter, and on with completely unpractical way of applying it too! (scepter being still complete crap by design as well)

- You want anything else?
- Fine, but we’ll nerf blurred frenzy just because.

edit:

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

Read again. He wrote that he was unable to reliably get an interrupt done in the first place with the current skills we have (and I agree here), which does have nothing to do with the rewards for doing so.

(edited by wintermute.4096)

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

I tested interrupts themselves. Since I’ve never had a reason to use interrupts before, I didn’t really know how they worked. The results were pretty clear. There are some skills that can be interrupted, but if it has under a .75s cast time, it is impossible to interrupt without simply getting lucky. Some class builds have more of these long skills, warriors come to mind, but most don’t. Since the most basic foundation of an interrupt build —the interrupts-- don’t really function well, the actual build itself can not function all that effectively either.

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Posted by: gvaughn.4163

gvaughn.4163

Agreed. I’m shelving my mesmer. This patch was yet another in a string of disappointments for both this class and this game.

HoD

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Posted by: Anatolious.8539

Anatolious.8539

I completely agree. I was heading into this patch completely hoping to spend $100 on gems to try and get that aetherblade rapier that might have been coming out for my mesmer. But after these stupid nurfs that crippled my favorite play style, Arenanet has lost me as a customer.

If they want me back they better make changes and fast.

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Agreed. I’m shelving my mesmer. This patch was yet another in a string of disappointments for both this class and this game.

I’d love to be able to say that I’m shelving my mesmer until fixes are made, but I can’t. I may dabble with alts, but if I don’t play a mesmer, I don’t play this game. I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel yet, and I’m just hoping anet doesn’t do anything to push me towards that even more.

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Posted by: skcamow.3527

skcamow.3527

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

I tested interrupts themselves. Since I’ve never had a reason to use interrupts before, I didn’t really know how they worked. The results were pretty clear. There are some skills that can be interrupted, but if it has under a .75s cast time, it is impossible to interrupt without simply getting lucky. Some class builds have more of these long skills, warriors come to mind, but most don’t. Since the most basic foundation of an interrupt build —the interrupts-- don’t really function well, the actual build itself can not function all that effectively either.

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

Kortham Raysplitter (Yak’s Bend)

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Posted by: Drakh.3128

Drakh.3128

Shatter builds were already terrible for large scale WvW with clones being so fragile, so making them even weaker makes no sense and leads me to believe that all they do is listen to QQ posts about people loosing 1v1s. Mesmers already had it rough and builds were already very limited, this patch helps none of that. There is just not much left for large scale WvW builds. Cheesy useless random interrupt build here I come. They should add a trait for chaos armor to make it interrupt attacks when hit, then maybe.

- Drakh (BT)
- Blackgate

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

I tested interrupts themselves. Since I’ve never had a reason to use interrupts before, I didn’t really know how they worked. The results were pretty clear. There are some skills that can be interrupted, but if it has under a .75s cast time, it is impossible to interrupt without simply getting lucky. Some class builds have more of these long skills, warriors come to mind, but most don’t. Since the most basic foundation of an interrupt build —the interrupts-- don’t really function well, the actual build itself can not function all that effectively either.

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

They still run into the same problem as any other type of interrupt. There are very few skills you can actually interrupt on purpose. Yes, using ItV in a zerg or chaos storm might get you some interrupts (provided they don’t have stability), but ultimately what do those interrupts do? Why would you run that build? For a chance to do still underwhelming damage and stack some boons that you probably already have?

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Posted by: skcamow.3527

skcamow.3527

No one knows how powerful the interrupt builds are going to be yet. I doubt in the past few hours anyone has completely geared there character and learned the rotation. The buff to PU was pretty huge. Making a lot of stealth builds even better. The same thing with Torment, you all have been using it for a couple hours tops. Maybe try it for a week before you start condemning it.

They did add diversity. Most of the people complaining are angry because of one trait move. And that’s it.

When I saw the leaked notes, I decided to test interrupts. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to interrupt a skill with less than .75 second cast time. You can still use a lockdown build or w/e, bu the problem is that the majority of the time you will not actually be getting interrupts.

You tested the build. Without any of the new abilities. Pyro you are one of the best build creators on this forum. I find it hard to believe someone as creative as you cannot work with these buffs, and work around one change.

I tested interrupts themselves. Since I’ve never had a reason to use interrupts before, I didn’t really know how they worked. The results were pretty clear. There are some skills that can be interrupted, but if it has under a .75s cast time, it is impossible to interrupt without simply getting lucky. Some class builds have more of these long skills, warriors come to mind, but most don’t. Since the most basic foundation of an interrupt build —the interrupts-- don’t really function well, the actual build itself can not function all that effectively either.

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

They still run into the same problem as any other type of interrupt. There are very few skills you can actually interrupt on purpose. Yes, using ItV in a zerg or chaos storm might get you some interrupts (provided they don’t have stability), but ultimately what do those interrupts do? Why would you run that build? For a chance to do still underwhelming damage and stack some boons that you probably already have?

It’s a support build using Signet of Inspiration – linked in my signature. It’s the only reason to do it in my opinion. Otherwise yeah what’s the point. Just trying to say that with the “passive” ways to interrupt using skills we typically would in normal game play, I found bountiful interruption useful.

Kortham Raysplitter (Yak’s Bend)

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Posted by: Simonoly.4352

Simonoly.4352

Great post. As I just said elsewhere, I can’t believe Scepter auto-attack and Phantasmal Mage weren’t buffed. This is just getting silly now.

Gandara

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Posted by: blenheim.6489

blenheim.6489

Been testing an interrupt build all afternoon, I’d like to believe it is possible but it feels too clunky. The mantra obviously requires charging, which sucks in and of itself, and the signet requires you to be facing your opponent and has a lame passive. The cooldowns on both these utilities aren’t the best. Assuming you want to maximize your choice of stuns, you have to work in a pistol, which isn’t the best of offhands. You also likely want to invest 30 into Domination and at least 20 into Chaos, but then are left with 10-20 points to put… pretty much nowhere useful. The whole thing lacks finesse and flow and while you can chain-stun people with a lot of luck, you’ll find yourself out of tricks and scrambling to survive. If you had significant burst to accompany the lockdown it might work, but the trees you have to invest in don’t really lend themselves to that.

As Pyroatheist stated, actually interrupting an ability is more like blind luck than a skill-shot and is utterly unreliable. And you’re bending over backwards to interrupt people for what? Maybe 5 might and some random conditions? It doesn’t seem worth it.

Gawdwyn

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Posted by: Mighty Helm.1268

Mighty Helm.1268

let me be sure not to captilaze ever letter, or they will remove my post. More important to keep people from yelling in forems than spending time really balancing classes, lol. This patch can be summed up as Arnet = Fail.

If Mesmer’s are not fixed by the time Oblivion is released im gone.

Sincerly,
A Concerned Mesmer

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Posted by: theCOREYCOLAK.5698

theCOREYCOLAK.5698

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

How is this a skillful use of interrupts? Right now the things that are viable to interrupts are elites, heals, and classes with extended cast times (engies, guardians and warriors.) I would be happy with being able to reliably interrupt said skills if the cast time would be reset, hell, even a grandmaster trait that makes the interrupted skill go on cooldown for another 10-15 seconds would be nice. Yet it’s available in another 3 seconds. It shouldn’t be a, “oh, let me drop this field down and pull here and there. Maybe I’ll get an interrupt and score some boons” type of situation.

Corey Goes Shatter (One Fabulous Mesmer)
Fort Aspenwood

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Posted by: Titanimite.2534

Titanimite.2534

Been testing an interrupt build all afternoon, I’d like to believe it is possible but it feels too clunky. The mantra obviously requires charging, which sucks in and of itself, and the signet requires you to be facing your opponent and has a lame passive. The cooldowns on both these utilities aren’t the best. Assuming you want to maximize your choice of stuns, you have to work in a pistol, which isn’t the best of offhands. You also likely want to invest 30 into Domination and at least 20 into Chaos, but then are left with 10-20 points to put… pretty much nowhere useful. The whole thing lacks finesse and flow and while you can chain-stun people with a lot of luck, you’ll find yourself out of tricks and scrambling to survive. If you had significant burst to accompany the lockdown it might work, but the trees you have to invest in don’t really lend themselves to that.

As Pyroatheist stated, actually interrupting an ability is more like blind luck than a skill-shot and is utterly unreliable. And you’re bending over backwards to interrupt people for what? Maybe 5 might and some random conditions? It doesn’t seem worth it.

Its not worth it, the blind condition from Thief Black Powder works so much better than the Mesmer Interrupt build.

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Posted by: Ramiel.4931

Ramiel.4931

I am now sure that ANet does not know what they want the Mesmer to be.

They had a vision in the beginning, tried to make it true to that vision, then started to change different things as response to different problems. Somewhere along the line, they lost track of what the Mesmer was supposed to be and now they just go with the flow, nerfing and buffing things according to the meta flow.

They also seem to have adopted a pet, in the form of the shatter spec. Every good thing that they did so far has revolved around a shatter spec.

This makes me quite sad. I love the class and it has so much potential, but for all the potential and possibilities, there’s an equal number of bugs and problems.

I won’t abandon the Mesmer, it’s basically the only class that doesn’t bore me to tears but the future is grim. Nothing good will come of it.

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Posted by: Titanimite.2534

Titanimite.2534

The question raised is what do you do with the gains from Interrupts when you’ve almost completely traited into the Interrupts themselves? With SoI you have a great support option but is that all we can manage?

Interrupts are damage mitigation and by that definition provides support for your team to DPS. So yes, this is the best you can do with a interrupt spec.

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Posted by: skcamow.3527

skcamow.3527

Did you test using Chaos Storm or Focus Pulls? Those two, coupled with the occasional F3 shatter provided mounds of boons and extended duration (if you already had the boon) when using bountiful interruption. Now with the “buff” to the trait, there won’t be quite as many boons, just more might and a single random boon.

As effective using those methods were for interrupts, with the changes I can see maintaining very high might stacks using the same build. Haven’t tested it out yet to validate though.

How is this a skillful use of interrupts? Right now the things that are viable to interrupts are elites, heals, and classes with extended cast times (engies, guardians and warriors.) I would be happy with being able to reliably interrupt said skills if the cast time would be reset, hell, even a grandmaster trait that makes the interrupted skill go on cooldown for another 10-15 seconds would be nice. Yet it’s available in another 3 seconds. It shouldn’t be a, “oh, let me drop this field down and pull here and there. Maybe I’ll get an interrupt and score some boons” type of situation.

It’s not a intended to be a “skillful” use of interrupts. Pre-patch I found it extremely useful (didn’t test in sPvP) to gain valuable boons/durations to spread to the party in a support role. Honestly I’m not sure there was a better way to get that many boons with that high potential duration with the way BI was pre-patch. Now post-patch it’s a different story. 5 short duration stacks of might I’m not sure is worth it but I need to test it.

Kortham Raysplitter (Yak’s Bend)

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Posted by: Sinaya.4201

Sinaya.4201

It’s almost as if they played their own version of “corrupt a wish” with those patchnotes.

- You want to signet of illusions to work reliably?
- Fine, but it will be insignificant boost now!

- You want access to the new condition instead of confusion?
- Fine, but it’s on scepter, and on with completely unpractical way of applying it too! (scepter being still complete crap by design as well)

- You want anything else?
- Fine, but we’ll nerf blurred frenzy just because.

^This cracked me up.


Anyway, regarding the thread:

Pyro, thank you for the patient and eloquent response to these trait / skill changes.

Crystal Desert

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Posted by: LiuliRenai.3928

LiuliRenai.3928

Illusionary Celerity being a 25 points trait actually makes sense by itself. BUT! The problem is it’s in the Illusions traits tree, which gives +condition damage and -Shatter Cooldown.

This means only Shatter and Condition builds benefit from speccing so deep into the tree. Condition builds are already weak due to their lack of ability to damage more than a single opponent at a time unless they use Cry of Frustration which is on a 22 seconds cooldown. This leaves Shatter builds as some of the few viable builds, in sPvP at least.

If Phantasms were nerfed -20% in damage across the board, it would have been a better change than the Illusionary Celerity placement – Doing your main source of damage on 16 seconds cooldown is really not viable in team fights.

Liuli – Mesmer – Piken Square

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Posted by: Titanimite.2534

Titanimite.2534

Illusionary Celerity being a 25 points trait actually makes sense by itself. BUT! The problem is it’s in the Illusions traits tree, which gives +condition damage and -Shatter Cooldown.

This means only Shatter and Condition builds benefit from speccing so deep into the tree. Condition builds are already weak due to their lack of ability to damage more than a single opponent at a time unless they use Cry of Frustration which is on a 22 seconds cooldown. This leaves Shatter builds as some of the few viable builds, in sPvP at least.

If Phantasms were nerfed -20% in damage across the board, it would have been a better change than the Illusionary Celerity placement – Doing your main source of damage on 16 seconds cooldown is really not viable in team fights.

If it was in a different tree maybe. But it should be easily accessible because the Mesmer is focused around Illusions, Clones, n Phantasms. There should have been a nerf only in PvP. Mesmer was balanced in team fights pre patch with all the bugs.

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Posted by: Lue.6538

Lue.6538

I’m glad they changed Blurred Frenzy.
Illusionary Celerity was way too strong for an Adept trait and it definitly surpassed the other 2 minor traits in Illusions in efficiency, a spot on adjustment.

While my phantasm builds got weaker and I suspect more mesmers will be going to be heading towards shatter builds more now, I kinda like the changes overall.. but I’d like to see the possibility to actually play a proper shutdown mesmer again.

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Posted by: decease.3215

decease.3215

I’m glad they changed Blurred Frenzy.
Illusionary Celerity was way too strong for an Adept trait and it definitly surpassed the other 2 minor traits in Illusions in efficiency, a spot on adjustment.

While my phantasm builds got weaker and I suspect more mesmers will be going to be heading towards shatter builds more now, I kinda like the changes overall.. but I’d like to see the possibility to actually play a proper shutdown mesmer again.

only shatter viable = reroll to different class. there will be more shatter mesmer, but overall less mesmer. hope you enjoy it..

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Posted by: selan.8354

selan.8354

i rolled a mesmer as i liked the idea of confusing and fooling the enemy, interrupt them and weaken them, or punish them for mindless zerging. i cried sooo hard when they destroyed glam builds and made confusion completely unviable in wvw, the only viable condition of a mesmer and now they are giving us 1 condition, that is not an aoe, only single targeted and works through a block. and conditon builds di thake a hit too with the bleed change.
i play wvw, but there anet also absolutely fails to balance wvw correctly. what is strong in spvp, doesent mean it is strong in wvw aswell. the clone change is a big one as we wont be able to shatter them in massiv aoe and arrowcart rain.

thanky pyro for listing the good stuff too, but yeah this patch seems like a mesmer eliminator and less and less viable builds for wvw. i want viable builds for wvw and not a 1v1 thing as it is useless tome i fight zergs of 20-40 people!!!

Lv 80 glamour Mesmer Triforce Mesmerpower PU mes,Lv 80 power necro
[AVTR]
Isle of Kickaspenwood

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Posted by: Khal Drogo.9631

Khal Drogo.9631

Kittening balance team sure love their shatter builds in PVE.

They mentioned taking away illusionary celerity some time ago, fine replace that with a phantasm friendly trait. I really wish enough ppl QQ to nerf shatter mesmers. And Fkitten PVP.

Apologies to those who may find my posts on GW2 forums offensive and hateful.

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Posted by: Khal Drogo.9631

Khal Drogo.9631

That whole paragraph could be summarized by saying . We are mad you moved our 5 point trait. Oh and we don’t like what you did with blurred frenzy. These changes don’t ruin anything. The sky is not falling.

Gee Whizz I hope your posts get upvoted to star status.

Apologies to those who may find my posts on GW2 forums offensive and hateful.

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Posted by: Khal Drogo.9631

Khal Drogo.9631

I completely agree. I was heading into this patch completely hoping to spend $100 on gems to try and get that aetherblade rapier that might have been coming out for my mesmer. But after these stupid nurfs that crippled my favorite play style, Arenanet has lost me as a customer.

If they want me back they better make changes and fast.

Too bad. GW2 as an Esport is going to reap dividends for Anet.

Apologies to those who may find my posts on GW2 forums offensive and hateful.

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Posted by: keenlam.4753

keenlam.4753

Prismatic Understanding was buffed.

Sorry for my noobness but how PU was buffed. How is it different now?
I’m using it and can’t understand which it means in the patch notes. Thanks