Guild Wars 2

Right before the 12/3 patch came (like literally 3 days before), I tried a shatter build with iDuelist. He attacked INSTANTLY even without the Retaliation/Fury/Regeneration traits. I don’t know about you guys, but this certainly does not feel like 0.25s.

Dastion.3106:

JonPeters.5630:

So studying it here empirically we think berserker is just missing and not less damage, but that duelist was actually impacted by the “bladetrail” bug fix. I will try and up the duelist damage and I will try and track down why berserker is not always hitting.

It’s worth pointing out that since the same patch that broke Zerker you also caused Illusions to become subject to avoidance twice. 40% of our weapon skills are now redundantly subject to LoS, Blind, etc.

Is this intended? The spirit of this change seemed to be to prevent summoning illusions from out of LoS, not to require two hits when we’re already externalizing our damage in an unreliable way.

This is the most important balance related issue here. The berserker should have instant spawn/damage. People can already LOS/blind/dodge etc… the spawn of the phantasam. As shown in many of the youtube videos posted in this thread and others previous spawn time + damage were near instant previous to this patch.

Kysin.6349:

I played Hot join for an hour today over 3 different server both teams had at least 2 Mesmers at all times, sometimes more.

sPvP != WvW, Solo PvE, Dungeon PvE

The complaint is that NPC’s with their perfect reflexes turn around and one-shot and that in the mass crossfire of WvW, phantasms get tagged.

In an sPvP setting with fewer players and more focus, phantasms may well survive to attack, but don’t try and tell me Mesmer’s phantasms don’t need work because “lol sPvP”

JonPeters.5630:

It has always had a delay, I am investigating if the delay somehow got changed. If someone has good raw data on the old damage of berserker vs the new damage that will also help me track down where that change came from and fix it.

Thanks,

Jon

Dear Mr. Peters,

Many changes have been made in the last month and a half that directly impact the Illusionary Berserkers’ damage. Were these not intentional?

The reason I ask this is the fact you are asking the players to provide you with data you surely must already have. Surely decisions were made to lower mesmer damage based on something you logged in the live game. This is a logical assumption to make.

It is difficult to have faith that your team will not just fix mesmers but other broken classes like rangers if you rely on players to give you that which you should already have.

I have been playing MUD’s and MMORPG’s since 1994. I played on Sojourn and Toril with Brad McQuaid. I was alpha and beta testing Everquest and have been a part in some form or another of every single western AAA MMORPG released in nearly two decades. Therefore I find it hard to believe you need to rely on us to do your testing on the live servers. Something made you tweak mesmers – mostly likely due to sPVP performance – and I know you have this data somewhere.

Right now you have a serious class balance issue, with some classes maybe not being useless on paper but giving the player a feeling of uselessness when they attempt to participate in group pve or any form of pvp. Tweaking the pets on classes that rely heavily on pets (Mesmers, Necros, Rangers) when you have yet to nail down pet ai so they can hit a moving target is not the best course of action right now. It took Blizzard 2.5 years to give pets avoidance so the pet based classes weren’t hampered as that company attempted to make harder, more complicated encounters or just simply made ineffective from a single aoe. Will you take this long?

You are making a push to join Major League Gaming type events with Guild Wars 2 and I applaud the efforts, but you are on track to make the same mistakes as Blizzard.

Wise.8025:

Wait wait…. you’re trying to tell me that Deceptive Evasion has always created a clone that attacks neutral targets that are not in combat with you and that is something we’ve been content to live with that I have never noticed until now?

It has always been this way. The mechanic behind Deceptive Evasion is such:

1. Dodge roll to spawn a clone
2. Said clone attacks nearest attack-able target based on it’s path finding algorithm to determine “what” that shortest distance may be so it may be next to you or far away depending on how it determines that.

Wise.8025:

Just spent an hour trying to partake in WvW events. While defending from the walls of a fort I felt 100% useless. My phantasms just explode the second they’re spawned. Utterly frustrating feeling so completely useless. I am not a melee class. I do not and cannot withstand any sort of beating as I use deception and evasion to survive.

I posted an additional bug related to clone creation on the bug forums but it quickly disappeared to page 3 within a few minutes.

Clones are attacking their nearest target when created now and not who I have targeted. Deceptive evasion is now officially broken for PvE/WvW and to a lesser degree PvP.

If my clones and phantasms can’t attack the targets I am setting them on because they are incapable of attacking before exploding or refuse to attack the target that I have selected PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD REMOVE THEM. I am sick to death of the baby steps being taken for a class who’s core mechanics are BROKEN. Other classes may function with bugs and broken skills/traits but their CORE MECHANICS are not broken and they are able to enjoy game-play unhindered and but not wholly unplagued by their issues.

I thought I could live with the delay. I was wrong. It’s not even manageable in pvp now because players just swat at my illusions and poof they’re gone. My only recourse is to use entirely ranged phantasms if I want to use mesmer now and hope that some random aoe or projectile doesn’t kill them before having been some use.

Not sure if you really ever played Mesmer?

As a dedicated Mesmer I know how they work and I know what does what…. While in LA I like change my dye colors and make many clones by the dummy. While doing this I need to use decoy because when I use deceptive evasion, the clone created attacks the wrong dummy and it looks stupid.

I don’t know if you just haven’t been in a situation that you noticed but this is not broken, it is working as intended from the getgo.

Also it has been stated by a dev, but I will re-state it. The delay has been there since beta and I know this because I used to ask myself why it would delay. Maybe the update made it more obvious to you because people posted about it, but the rampage was started by one mad kid and was fed to the angry Mesmers to become a mob. There is no additional delay to phantasms.

Most people got around the delay by taking certain traits. I did this by accident and I don’t remember there ever being a delay before the update.

BEFORE the update :

ONLY iberserker HAD a 1-2sec delay before attacking. For me, it was totaly broken.

NONE of the other fantasm HAD DELAY before attacking, or, maybe like 0.25sec, but really not more.

the Skill balance team, is officialy the WORSE i ever see. You would just deserve to be fired since you are unable to make your job. Nothing else.

They DIDNT even fix the iberserk damage problem….

Seriously, FIRE skill balance team.

Thanks.

So the active replies from Mr. Peters is making me not want to aim my iDuelist at them and bombard them with /hugs instead.

I think Anet still has a LONG way to go to earn back my faith in this game (bug fixes en masse prior to buffs/nerfs), but this is one glorious kitten start! Keep it up!

So I cast iWarden on a thief that is trying to stealth finish a friendly player. iWarden pop up. Stood there doing nothing where ranged skills like unload, volley and what not have heat seeking abilities, iWarden just stand there and look pretty. Broken..

shochinhwa.1648:

So I cast iWarden on a thief that is trying to stealth finish a friendly player. iWarden pop up. Stood there doing nothing where ranged skills like unload, volley and what not have heat seeking abilities, iWarden just stand there and look pretty. Broken..

because the thief stealthed before the warden started attacking. all other phantasms work the same.

the phantasm needs to start attacking before thief stealths for the rest of the attack chain to complete.

Just a note to all the people still whining…

The 0.25 seconds our red poster Mr. Peters was mentioning was what he adjusted on his INTERNAL BUILD and will be pushing out with the next update.

it does not necessarily mean that it’s live now.

he’s changing the oil on the car, you still have to wait for it to drain and be refilled, if you know what I mean.

So leave it be for a little while.

Disastro.4086:

Wise.8025:

Wait wait…. you’re trying to tell me that Deceptive Evasion has always created a clone that attacks neutral targets that are not in combat with you and that is something we’ve been content to live with that I have never noticed until now?

It has always been this way. The mechanic behind Deceptive Evasion is such:

1. Dodge roll to spawn a clone
2. Said clone attacks nearest attack-able target based on it’s path finding algorithm to determine “what” that shortest distance may be so it may be next to you or far away depending on how it determines that.

It would make much more sense if it worked like this:

1. If the dodge evaded an attack from an enemy, clone is spawned on that enemy.
2. If the dodge evaded attacks from multiple enemies and one of these enemies is your target, spawn the clone on the one which is your target.
3. If the dodge evaded attacks from multiple enemies and none of them are targetted, target either the closest one or one at random.
4. If the dodge didn’t evade any attacks, but you have a hostile enemy targetted, spawn the clone on your target.
5. If the dodge didn’t evade any attacks and you do not have anything targetted, either do not spawn a clone at all, or spawn one on the nearest red target in range and only on yellow or grey targets if there are no nearby red targets.

plasmacutter.2709:

Just a note to all the people still whining…

The 0.25 seconds our red poster Mr. Peters was mentioning was what he adjusted on his INTERNAL BUILD and will be pushing out with the next update.

it does not necessarily mean that it’s live now.

he’s changing the oil on the car, you still have to wait for it to drain and be refilled, if you know what I mean.

So leave it be for a little while.

This will be an improvement and will likely be livable, but is still not a fix for the bugged damage output.

It seems to me that the iZerkers blade needs to connect with it’s target in order to have a chance to hit. So it’s like a spiraling linear aoe, where we expect it to be just a straight linear aoe and anything in it’s path is hit and for the same number of hits.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok so its sounds like you could counter the summon delay by having a subset of traits. So we fixed a bug that lets all those triats work together but that also makes them not able to exploit the delay anymore. Since it seems like they were working and mostly balanced without the delay I am going to go ahead and reduce the delay on this stuff to .25 seconds. I just tested it at 0 seconds and that breaks some other things so I think .25 is the best compromise.

Thanks for responding to feedback on this one, it’s quite the issue for mesmers who use phantasms.

Nike.2631:

Maybe slow, high-risk spike damage is critical to the mesmer play experience, but I bet many players would be happy to see their phantasms a little more mobile and doing half-to-a-third the damage on each attack if they did those attacks two-to-three times as often! iZerker is so dang slow to act (even before the patch) I’m constantly wondering if the script hung…

That must be the best proposition I’ve read on this forum since like forever. It would also be in line with Anet’s statement that they don’t want spike builds.

@Wise yeah I know that feeling of being completely useless since 15/11 when sieging or defending a wall.

little.6509:

Also it has been stated by a dev, but I will re-state it. The delay has been there since beta and I know this because I used to ask myself why it would delay. Maybe the update made it more obvious to you because people posted about it, but the rampage was started by one mad kid and was fed to the angry Mesmers to become a mob. There is no additional delay to phantasms.

I noticed the delay before coming to these boards. The thing is the delay wasn’t there when phantasms had one of their 2 boon traits. They attacked almost instantly and there’s many videos that can prove this. I would gladly show you if you need evidence that the iberzerker had what appeared to be no delay at all. They are upset now because anet “fixed” the boon traits for phantasms and now phantasms begin slower regardless of traits. Was it a bug perhaps? Probably. But I believe the iBerserker should be changed to .25 secs. It’s easy enough to dodge/ block already because the skill animation is so easy to see. Giving the opponent an additional 1+ sec to avoid is just ridiculous.

.25 seconds is still .25 seconds too much.

little.6509:

Not sure if you really ever played Mesmer?

As a dedicated Mesmer I know how they work and I know what does what…. While in LA I like change my dye colors and make many clones by the dummy. While doing this I need to use decoy because when I use deceptive evasion, the clone created attacks the wrong dummy and it looks stupid.

I don’t know if you just haven’t been in a situation that you noticed but this is not broken, it is working as intended from the getgo.

Also it has been stated by a dev, but I will re-state it. The delay has been there since beta and I know this because I used to ask myself why it would delay. Maybe the update made it more obvious to you because people posted about it, but the rampage was started by one mad kid and was fed to the angry Mesmers to become a mob. There is no additional delay to phantasms.

Is this a joke? Are you trolling?

I’ve played a mesmer exclusively since the game was released. I wonder how I made it all the way to Dec 3 without my Berserker being ONE-SHOTTED BEFORE HE GETS AN ATTACK OFF – and now it happens REGULARLY. I reported the bug within minutes of logging in after the Dec 3 update – it was that obvious.

I can only assume you’re the one who hasn’t played a mesmer – else you’re not using phantasms, and certainly not a Berserker.

Anet BROKE the mesmer. Period.

I truly don’t understand the logic in making phantasms have a delay in their attacks. First of all, there are already easy methods to avoid phantasms now, starting with limiting phantasm generation: Blind, dodge, aegis will all prevent a phantasms from even spawning. Whereas if a warrior uses hundred blades, the first blow is merely nullified and the rest of the attack lands. Secondly, phantasms can be destroyed. A staff guardian can autoattack, destroying all illusions that may be on route for a shatter. Thirdly, no other profession has their attacks pre-displayed. Let me put this in warrior terms again. Imagine you’re playing a warrior and a banner appears above your head every time you use hundred blades to indicate what you are doing. Not only that, but you must now suffer a delay in your attack. It makes no sense to cripple a single profession like this. IT’S ILLOGICAL. How is it fair to punish a class by, firstly, nerfing their ability to land an attack. And secondly, by making it easier to avoid the attack if it even activates properly.

This is why I’m upset: it’s less probable that our attacks will even land anymore; our damage was nerfed when we don’t even come close to the damage of other classes in terms of weapon skills; even if our attacks can even be “summoned,” they can easily be killed before the damage or even the effect of that phantasm can trigger. We have the most difficult time getting our attacks to land, and now those easily avoidable attacks / utilities are weakened once again.

And btw, phantasms never had a delay in their attacks. I read a recent article about layoffs at NCSOFT. Also I have noticed that the guild wars team is always advertising for additional programmers. My bet would be that they lost the members who were originally responsible for designing the mesmer and their skills. We get nerfed each patch, with the addition of an “unexpected” nerf that is not even listed in the patch notes. Which is unprofessional and quite frankly, bull crap.

ArenaNet gave us an early Christmas present this year. “Your class is now kittened.”

See the positive side, they gave us more time to spend with family and friends instead of playing gw2. :p
Just joking..

Mere Image.8376:

I truly don’t understand the logic in making phantasms have a delay in their attacks. First of all, there are already easy methods to avoid phantasms now, starting with limiting phantasm generation: Blind, dodge, aegis will all prevent a phantasms from even spawning. Whereas if a warrior uses hundred blades, the first blow is merely nullified and the rest of the attack lands. Secondly, phantasms can be destroyed. A staff guardian can autoattack, destroying all illusions that may be on route for a shatter. Thirdly, no other profession has their attacks pre-displayed. Let me put this in warrior terms again. Imagine you’re playing a warrior and a banner appears above your head every time you use hundred blades to indicate what you are doing. Not only that, but you must now suffer a delay in your attack. It makes no sense to cripple a single profession like this. IT’S ILLOGICAL. How is it fair to punish a class by, firstly, nerfing their ability to land an attack. And secondly, by making it easier to avoid the attack if it even activates properly.

This is why I’m upset: it’s less probable that our attacks will even land anymore; our damage was nerfed when we don’t even come close to the damage of other classes in terms of weapon skills; even if our attacks can even be “summoned,” they can easily be killed before the damage or even the effect of that phantasm can trigger. We have the most difficult time getting our attacks to land, and now those easily avoidable attacks / utilities are weakened once again.

And btw, phantasms never had a delay in their attacks. I read a recent article about layoffs at NCSOFT. Also I have noticed that the guild wars team is always advertising for additional programmers. My bet would be that they lost the members who were originally responsible for designing the mesmer and their skills. We get nerfed each patch, with the addition of an “unexpected” nerf that is not even listed in the patch notes. Which is unprofessional and quite frankly, bull crap.

having a slight delay made sense before they made it so blind/block/dodge nullified the phantasm spawn. it doesn’t make sense anymore, thats why they said they are reducing it to manageable amount.

Impressive that this topic is still being carried forward knowing that we have an entire patch dedicated to professions balancing coming on the 14th. Well. . . there will be other content as well. . . but balancing is definitely in there somewhere. At any rate, some of us are very upset I can see that, but I think we should wait the week at this point, level an alt or learn those thief abilities so you can better counter them or something.

As a community we really should be looking to help the developers and not simply dismiss them as idiotic. They are working on things, and we have a rough timeline on several issues. That being said, if they really hurt the profession more it’s going to get harder and harder to win partial group free tournaments.

Yeah, but it would be great if Jon Peters could reply once more that he received the links which provides him with data for the berserker damage before and after the November 15th patch.
There is a difference!! And if he does not have data, he can look into the several threads, where we described what changed.
If he does not have enough time to read it (I would really appreciate if he reads these threads by himself to get a better picture what is going on..) than I would be happy to shorten these threads to a data list or whatever could be useful for him.

But right now we only now they will do something e.g. for the delay, but the last statement from Jon about the damage of the berserker was that there is empirically no less damage and that is NOT true. (And yeah, he said they want up the damage, but there is a huge difference in damage and not just a little bit..)

By doing “something” I really hope that doesn’t mean slight fixes with unintended new bugs, as it has been the last 3 major patches. I have a right to be distrusting at this point. This is not the time to hope for changes; it’s the time to demand for them.

First of all, let me say… wow. What a great, no-nonsense and clear reply from JonPeters. Stuff like this is what we DREAM of over on the Ranger forums, let me tell ya.

Second, I’d like to re-iterate that this issue right here is EXACTLY why a pre-release Test Server is a really, really, REALLY good idea. Like Dixa above, I’ve played in MMOs and other online games for years, and I can say without reservation or the merest hesitation that games that utilized some form of pre-release Test Server were always, 100% of the time much more “fun” to play than those without. Why? Because the community in an MMO will always have players like the ones posting in here that are VERY committed to their class and wo are VERY observant and VERY sensitive to changes (unintended or otherwise). As a result, placing tweaks and changes on the Test Server ahead of time:

• Allows the devs a “safe” space where the only people playing are, by definition, more advanced and aware of changes than the general population
• As a result, unintended consequences are FAR more easily caught than when they are finally released to Production
• So can be more easily “tweaked” and immediately re-tested by the community, leading to faster iteration
• Which leads to a 2-fold reduction in player frustration: once because the highly-vocal types like the folks who are posting in here have a way to directly affect the game and its changes as well as secondly: because by definition what finally lands on Production is almost guaranteed to be “working as intended” due to direct user feedback, thereby not inflicting bad mechanics on the less-aware/more casual base.

All that said, WAY TO GO devs for the great feedback! Mesmers, you should feel privileged that you were here to see it.

ImagoX.4718:

All that said, WAY TO GO devs for the great feedback! Mesmers, you should feel privileged that you were here to see it.

Fair comments. However, this is now day 5 of the class being essentially unplayable, and I’m getting real tired of “stalking” warriors and guardians to get myself safely from point A to point B…

GW2 Designers, can we possibly get an update on this issue? I have to believe you’re going to revert the Dec 3 changes, because as I said, the class is unplayable now.

Saraneth.6021:

If this is intended… wtf.
Let’s make it so ALL classes’ skills do nothing for two seconds then.

lets start with thief stealth abilities! see how long that lasts…:)

JonPeters.5630:

Ok so its sounds like you could counter the summon delay by having a subset of traits. So we fixed a bug that lets all those triats work together but that also makes them not able to exploit the delay anymore. Since it seems like they were working and mostly balanced without the delay I am going to go ahead and reduce the delay on this stuff to .25 seconds. I just tested it at 0 seconds and that breaks some other things so I think .25 is the best compromise.

Look @ the bold… the reason for the delay isn’t to give them extra time to ract, it’s because it causes other issues.

IMO to make up for the delay before the attack, they should shorten our animation time by .25s.

It’s quite overkill for how many chances people get to avoid the phantom. The summon is already telegraphed with an obvious animation… that should be enough. No need to kill mesmers with the dodge/blind/block and then nothing gets summoned rubbish which applies to no other class’s multi hit/aoe attacks. However, if that gets applied to all other classes we would be fine with that…we just want an even playing field.

I’ll wait and see what they do for this next patch. Although after the last one my hopes arn’t high for this class. Oh well at worst I’ll keep playing my guard, theif, and eng. They are working on getting sigils to proc and stats from weapons to apply while using eng kits… how awesome is that !

TrevorEh.6915:

little.6509:

Not sure if you really ever played Mesmer?

As a dedicated Mesmer I know how they work and I know what does what…. While in LA I like change my dye colors and make many clones by the dummy. While doing this I need to use decoy because when I use deceptive evasion, the clone created attacks the wrong dummy and it looks stupid.

I don’t know if you just haven’t been in a situation that you noticed but this is not broken, it is working as intended from the getgo.

Also it has been stated by a dev, but I will re-state it. The delay has been there since beta and I know this because I used to ask myself why it would delay. Maybe the update made it more obvious to you because people posted about it, but the rampage was started by one mad kid and was fed to the angry Mesmers to become a mob. There is no additional delay to phantasms.

Is this a joke? Are you trolling?

I’ve played a mesmer exclusively since the game was released. I wonder how I made it all the way to Dec 3 without my Berserker being ONE-SHOTTED BEFORE HE GETS AN ATTACK OFF – and now it happens REGULARLY. I reported the bug within minutes of logging in after the Dec 3 update – it was that obvious.

I can only assume you’re the one who hasn’t played a mesmer – else you’re not using phantasms, and certainly not a Berserker.

Anet BROKE the mesmer. Period.

lol calm down kid. I don’t see how they are broken as I am in wvw and spvp on my mesmer everyday and I still never lose 1v1’s and I provide great team support. And I have a legendary weapon on mine, so that is to show I have spent loads of time on it. It’s not broken, maybe for someone who smashed buttons and didn’t incorporate skill into a fight it made it more difficult, broken? nah

Aberrant.6749:

Look @ the bold… the reason for the delay isn’t to give them extra time to ract, it’s because it causes other issues.

Look here what Jon wrote why the delay is there:

JonPeters.5630:

Fyi, the delay on first attack has been present since BWE2. It is there for balance reasons to give enemies a moment to react to the powerful summon.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phantasms-retested-after-12-3/first

And that doesn’t make a lot of sense for many players/ mesmers.

ImagoX.4718:

First of all, let me say… wow. What a great, no-nonsense and clear reply from JonPeters. Stuff like this is what we DREAM of over on the Ranger forums, let me tell ya.

Second, I’d like to re-iterate that this issue right here is EXACTLY why a pre-release Test Server is a really, really, REALLY good idea. Like Dixa above, I’ve played in MMOs and other online games for years, and I can say without reservation or the merest hesitation that games that utilized some form of pre-release Test Server were always, 100% of the time much more “fun” to play than those without. Why? Because the community in an MMO will always have players like the ones posting in here that are VERY committed to their class and wo are VERY observant and VERY sensitive to changes (unintended or otherwise). As a result, placing tweaks and changes on the Test Server ahead of time:

• Allows the devs a “safe” space where the only people playing are, by definition, more advanced and aware of changes than the general population
• As a result, unintended consequences are FAR more easily caught than when they are finally released to Production
• So can be more easily “tweaked” and immediately re-tested by the community, leading to faster iteration
• Which leads to a 2-fold reduction in player frustration: once because the highly-vocal types like the folks who are posting in here have a way to directly affect the game and its changes as well as secondly: because by definition what finally lands on Production is almost guaranteed to be “working as intended” due to direct user feedback, thereby not inflicting bad mechanics on the less-aware/more casual base.

All that said, WAY TO GO devs for the great feedback! Mesmers, you should feel privileged that you were here to see it.

what makes you think they don’t have a test server? they do have a test server, 1 of my guild mates is a permanent invite on it. I have been very jealous of him.

guys, cut it out with the melodramatics. mesmers need some fixing it, but they are neither broken nor unplayable. I have been playing mesmer since day 1, and while I would like them to fix a few things, I am still having a great deal of success with my character.

and seing the responses of some of the other players, I am NOT the only 1.

claims that the mesmer is now broken and unplayable is over exaggeration. otherwise myself and those other players would not be able to have success

Morfedel.4165:

guys, cut it out with the melodramatics. mesmers need some fixing it, but they are neither broken nor unplayable. I have been playing mesmer since day 1, and while I would like them to fix a few things, I am still having a great deal of success with my character.

and seing the responses of some of the other players, I am NOT the only 1.

claims that the mesmer is now broken and unplayable is over exaggeration. otherwise myself and those other players would not be able to have success

Mmm k… “not broken”, but “needs fixing”. Got it.

little.6509

lol calm down kid. I don’t see how they are broken as I am in wvw and spvp on my mesmer everyday and I still never lose 1v1’s and I provide great team support. And I have a legendary weapon on mine, so that is to show I have spent loads of time on it. It’s not broken, maybe for someone who smashed buttons and didn’t incorporate skill into a fight it made it more difficult, broken? nah

lol back for more trolling i see.

Let’s review your previous contribution to the thread. Other than going on about yourself (which – props – you DO seem skilled at), I believe you offered this nugget:

“The delay has been there since beta…. There is no additional delay to phantasms.”

Now I’m wondering…. it’s been shown with multiple videos that the delay wasn’t there —still isn’t with the mariner-- and of course a couple threads are filled with comments from people who have noticed the delay, and you HAVEN’T noticed the delay…. well I’m just wondering who’s button mashing, huh? Yo don’t feel too bad. I used to whoop my friends at Street Fighter like that when i was 8.

Run along now kid, the grown-ups are talking.

TrevorEh.6915:

Morfedel.4165:

guys, cut it out with the melodramatics. mesmers need some fixing it, but they are neither broken nor unplayable. I have been playing mesmer since day 1, and while I would like them to fix a few things, I am still having a great deal of success with my character.

and seing the responses of some of the other players, I am NOT the only 1.

claims that the mesmer is now broken and unplayable is over exaggeration. otherwise myself and those other players would not be able to have success

Mmm k… “not broken”, but “needs fixing”. Got it.

I suspect you are intelligent enough that you know what I meant. so let’s not play churlish word games and address the meat of the situation.

fact is myself and some others are still having a successful game play with the mesmer, therefore the class is clearly playable. does it have issues that need to be addressed? absolutely!

but there is a big difference between issues that need to be addressed, and being unplayable.

Morfedel.4165:

what makes you think they don’t have a test server? they do have a test server, 1 of my guild mates is a permanent invite on it. I have been very jealous of him.

This is not meant as an attack or demeaning gesture; but having a permanent invite and actually testing proposed changes (and providing feedback) are two distinctly different things

I participated in a closed beta (with NDA) of a Fallout New Vegas patch in the past which included a weapon rebalance. As a result, several weapons were rebalanced because we provided proper testing results and a sound reasoning on how those changes would affect the weapon in order to get the proper ‘feel’ for each (and having a direct line of communication with J.E. Sawyer didn’t hurt either)

So on behalf of us all, I sincerely hope your guildmate is actually testing and providing feedback and not treats his permanent invite as nothing more than a ‘bragging rights’ flyer without actually doing anything.

Aveneo.2068:

Morfedel.4165:

what makes you think they don’t have a test server? they do have a test server, 1 of my guild mates is a permanent invite on it. I have been very jealous of him.

This is not meant as an attack or demeaning gesture; but having a permanent invite and actually testing proposed changes (and providing feedback) are two distinctly different things

I participated in a closed beta (with NDA) of a Fallout New Vegas patch in the past which included a weapon rebalance. As a result, several weapons were rebalanced because we provided proper testing results and a sound reasoning on how those changes would affect the weapon in order to get the proper ‘feel’ for each (and having a direct line of communication with J.E. Sawyer didn’t hurt either)

So on behalf of us all, I sincerely hope your guildmate is actually testing and providing feedback and not treats his permanent invite as nothing more than a ‘bragging rights’ flyer without actually doing anything.

he was until 2 months ago. testing that is. I remember him saying that something happened out of his control and he hasn’t been back for a bit. in other words, he wasn’t just invited, he was participating until recently.

he also mentioned that he was almost ready to get back on, had been reading the alpha test emails and was pretty excited about what was coming. he just dreads doing the massive write ups required with with the testing.

by the way, he did actually prove his claims, but I can’t go into details on that. it was sufficient to make me a believer.

I am so jealous of him I can’t stand it haha

Morfedel.4165:

he was until 2 months ago. testing that is. I remember him saying that something happened out of his control and he hasn’t been back for a bit. in other words, he wasn’t just invited, he was participating until recently.

he also mentioned that he was almost ready to get back on, had been reading the alpha test emails and was pretty excited about what was coming. he just dreads doing the massive write ups required with with the testing.

by the way, he did actually prove his claims, but I can’t go into details on that. it was sufficient to make me a believer.

I am so jealous of him I can’t stand it haha

Yep, lots of writing and providing numbers. But then again I always felt good about actually being able to do my part in order to facilitate changes to a game that the community in general would be happy with. And that’s probably the best reward anyone could ask for when they know they can be part of something and see their proposed changes becoming reality.

But I’m getting off-topic here. Let me just say that I sincerely hope that the Mesmer phantasms (among other things) will see acceptable changes on the 14th of december. This applies to all the other classes as well ofcourse as I’ve been keeping tabs on all the ‘known issues’ lists.

Delofasht.4231:

Impressive that this topic is still being carried forward knowing that we have an entire patch dedicated to professions balancing coming on the 14th. Well. . . there will be other content as well. . . but balancing is definitely in there somewhere. At any rate, some of us are very upset I can see that, but I think we should wait the week at this point, level an alt or learn those thief abilities so you can better counter them or something.

As a community we really should be looking to help the developers and not simply dismiss them as idiotic. They are working on things, and we have a rough timeline on several issues. That being said, if they really hurt the profession more it’s going to get harder and harder to win partial group free tournaments.

so basicly u say its fine that zerker dmg is bugged since 15th november and with new patch it became total useless including all other phantasms and its fine to wait 1 month for a fix and probaly get some new bugs.

and developer is asking us for tests, jep sure thats totally fine.

really hope all this nerf balance crap doesnt come form svpvp

myself i enjoy wvw and pve and with this nerfs phantasm spec, which i prefer over shatterspec anyday, is pretty much usless not enjoyable anymore.

if its really the case they nerf the crap out of us for useless boring spvp……

theres a serious lack of communication and hotixes in this game atm, so i find it very important to keep such posts alive to inform other players.

if anet wants help they should give us public testservers before adding some crappy patches where their qaulity team just plain and simple fails. not talking about mesmer bugs only here.

one more week to wait and then lets see

Mesmer is still a good playable class, however, it has begun to feel a bit clunky. First distance was changed to only summon in the given parameters (meaning prior I could summon anywhere if I had a target, and the phantasm ran into range and then attacked). That was fine, but it did make some of the clone skills bug, like leap. They sometimes refused to leap at that point which meant no immobilize . But again, not a big issue, but required careful monitoring on certain skills to ensure they functioned properly.

Then came the LoS update. I used to be able to put my iZerker up on a wall and help AOE in WvW. No longer. But then again, being able to cast out of line of sight was a bit unfair, so I will give that one needed to be updated somehow. However, with that came the fact if we are blinded or the skill is dodged, no phantasm. And Aegis too. Well, that hurts the ole DPS and certainly hurts a shatter build.

Now, I was helping a friend level, and did not get to play my Mesmer when the 12/3 patch hit. Then when I got around to playing him again, I noticed the delay. And though still playable, they can now be AOE’d in WvW and PvP prior to doing any damage and insta-killed by mobs. Again, this really hurts a shatter or power build and makes one skill (the one deemed “powerful”) is virtually useless in a good bit of circumstances.

Now, I had the delay prior and traited Phantasmal Haste, and they insta-casted again. If that could just be put back in…that would clear up a lot of pain.

Mesmers were already considered one of the harder classes to be good at due to the micro-management and also timing/weapon-swapping. That is not the case with a lot of classes. And I bring this up for only one reason, it was stated that “The delay is there in order for these classes to dodge this POWERFUL attack.” Powerful? Are you even serious? Fully traited the iZerker can do 3.2-3.7 if he landed ALL crits. You see this as extremely powerful? I don’t. Hundred blades does how much (been hit for 14k when I had no stun breakers after bullrush)? How about backstab (highest on me was between 7-9k)? Rapid Fire (given you popped Zephyr it is a quick cast)? So these MUCH harder hitting skills hit pretty much instantly.

With that said, I also can’t shatter as quickly now because I do have to wait for the damage or waste the skill. So, when I am wanting to use it once and shatter I have a longer delay. I know it has been stated there was always a delay…and after playing almost solely Mesmer since September I can say that with Phantasmal Haste traited that is a lie. Now, even with it, I have to wait.

Now, there is already a cast time, which is pretty recognizable. Now I have a cast time and I have a delay for my spell to hit as well? This is on all Phantasms. I don’t think it made the class unplayable, but I do think that it made a class that already took some of the highest skill to be good at and made it less viable.

Anyways, just wanted to point out a few things. I know others have. I hope that this issue gets resolved before a very unique and interesting class that requires a lot of finesse and understanding to be good at goes into the Nerf bat pit. Mesmers have already been suffering without the ability to wear clan tags or titles unless they were willing to give themselves away versus the clones (since clones don’t carry the tag or title…pretty easy to spot). We have carried this burden that no other class had to carry…don’t make us carry the Nerf bat too!

Hello Jon,

I just want to let you how much I appreciate you taking your time to give us feedback regarding the progress you’re making towards this issue. It’s clear that the community (I myself included) is frustrated at all these bugs and want to see positive changes in the coming weeks.

While not everyone here understands the pressure and difficulty in hustled fixes over existing bugs/regressions based on priorities set by management (even if you or other devs are aware of/care very much), I do understand (as a software developer for a small start up here in the S.F. Bay Area) and hope that you and everyone at ArenaNet will keep up your morale as you all plunge towards the challenges ahead.

Most of us have played other glitchy games and have used buggy software (Windows being a fine example), so we can understand if things aren’t perfect and will take time to be worked on. However, the silver bullet to the issues at hand is ongoing clear and responsive communication. We want to know that you (and the rest of ArenaNet/NCSoft) care – and I’m sure you can see the various positive feedback among us players after you have responded to this issue.

Of course there will still be some negativity, but I’m sure that time will heal these wounds if we all continue to strive towards a more transparent and responsive community of players and developers – much like how thing were when this game was still in Beta. Just remember: successful software is not all about the product – it’s about your users and the trust they have in your company and you.

That said, I wish you luck and godspeed in the weeks to come. Also, thank you CC Eva – as it’s probably not a complete coincidence that we got Jon’s response on these issues after your response to my thread in the bug forum. =]

Sincerely,
MysticHLE

has it been reduced to a .25 delay yet? Thought that change was not going to happen until the balance patch

Katlan.6301:

has it been reduced to a .25 delay yet? Thought that change was not going to happen until the balance patch

supposedly the 14th

I’m providing this disclaimer because many people who say what I am about to say are not often being completely truthful. The following is a very honest and sincere statement and request:

I haven’t played my Mesmer, or GW2 (outside of a brief login), since the December 3 patch. My reasons are summed up reasonably well in the thread I started here.

Whether or not I continue to play GW2 hinges entirely on the forthcoming “Winter’s Day” patch. In addition, I have played significantly less since the previous rounds of phantasm nerfs were introduced.

I do not believe that setting the attack delay of the Mesmer phantasms to a quarter-second will be sufficient in balancing the class in both PvE and WvW.

For PvE, it is difficult to maintain high enough damage output in dungeons, even with a glass-cannon build.

For WvW, the brief delay in the phantasm’s attack allows the intended target yet another opportunity to nullify the damage. This compounds the already heavy-handed reductions to phantasms’ summon reliability that were introduced in November.

The end result makes the phantasm-dependent Mesmer significantly less fun and less effective to play.

How to fix the Phantasms. These solutions are considered an either/or and assume the .25 second attack delay fix goes live:

1) Leave the current damage output on phantasms unchanged but allow the phantasm to be summoned on invulnerable and dodging enemies (as it was pre-November). Line of sight and blind will still affect the phantasm summon. However, equipped weapon sigils will transfer to Mesmer phantasms. For example: an Illusionary Berserker would have a chance to proc the Sigil of Fire on critical hit if the Mesmer has the sigil imbued on the equipped greatsword.

…or…

2) Increase the damage co-efficient of the power stat for Mesmer phantasms so that high damage builds can effectively damage opponents relative to the risks they take in dungeons and WvW. Do NOT change phantasms’ summon reliability to pre-November levels.

…or…

3) Leave the current damage output on phantasms unchanged but remove line-of-sight requirements for phantasms that attack at melee range. This allows for better survival tactics and more damage potential/utility in dungeons and WvW. I.e. The Phantasmal Warden will appear nearby an enemy whether or not the Mesmer has direct line of sight, but the Phantasmal Duelist will still be subjected to line-of-sight rules since it appears near the Mesmer. Blind will not prevent a phantasm from being summoned, nor will an enemy’s roll or invulnerability.

…or…

Some other creative solutions.

The bottom line is that without a buff, phantasm/greatsword Mesmers still suffer with yet another completely unnecessary nerf. Almost any Mesmer who relied on phantasms also slotted traits to enhance them and therefore never experienced an attack delay. Even a quarter-second delay is too much without some sort of compensation. Meanwhile, some class specs are running wild with power (cough Dual Dagger Elementalists) and still continue to receive buffs!

My request isn’t so much an ultimatum as it is a plea to fix the class I sunk hundreds of hours into. If not, well, I won’t be fooled twice. Here’s hoping for some serious Mesmer and phantasm love next patch.

^^^ some great suggestions right there. Good post.

You already put the casting time on Phantasm, why do you need some ridiculous delay for the reaction? Do you give other players reaction time for thief stealing or backstab?

Just none sense.

After years in Guild Wars 1, I never dreamed that ArenaNet would so callously destroy my favorite profession, and their most iconic creation.

I can only hope that the recently-introduced problems that make mesmer a very undesirable profession to play will be recognized for their severity and rectified as quickly as the better programmers (and smarter gamers) at ArenaNet are able.

It is truly staggering that it was ever considered reasonable to cause the creation of phantasms to “fail” due to blocking, evasion, blindness, etc. as well as those same problems affecting the phantasms themselves. One or the other, please. Not both… bear in mind that only the latter makes sense considering the nature of phantasms.

Now, on top of that, there is time to destroy the phantasm before it can even act.

Who’s idea was this, exactly, and what is his or her favorite profession? It’s a safe bet it isn’t mesmer.

Other professions, played and spec’d properly, can put me down with only 4 attacks through 2,100 toughness from 20,000 health — all the while remaining stealthed.

None of their abilities are anything short of instantaneous and very few of them have any kind of telegraph animation. This is what is called “balance” in Guild Wars 2 at present.

Does ArenaNet agree?

This post doesn’t even acknowledge the myriad of other bugs this class still has.

AEs insta-popping illusions as they are created has always been a problem, but putting yet more delay on our primary source of dps is ridiculous. Between LOS, blind, invulnerability, etc. causing our cast illusions to fail and the delay before attacking, it is becoming an incredible hassle to get through the game and still consider yourself a) useful to your team/PvE/WvW, b) having fun, and c) doing decent/reliable damage.

Our class gimmick IS the reliance on illusions to do damage, whether that is shatter or phantasm attacks. If our skills were direct damage skills like other classes, and illusions were just the added byproduct of the direct damage, then there would be much more wiggleroom for tweaking illusions. As it is now, they are vital for us to survive and dps.

I am glad that the delay is being looked at and is supposedly being changed, but .25 secs is still .25 too long. This argument of ‘giving people a chance to react to powerful summons’ is invalid, unless we want to ‘give people a chance to react to 100b/Stealth/Barrage/Aegis’ as well. Fundamental parts of a class to function shouldn’t be handicapped. If it’s causing too much trouble to balance, then, as I said, the class should be overhauled so that our skills do direct damage with illusions as the icing on the cake. As in, casting the iZerker skill causes damage on cast, and the iZerker phantasm is created and it does conditional damage of a kind. Basically, change phantasm damage to no longer be the main source of damage but causing various conditions, crowd control, dazes, stuns, etc instead.

As for some of the complaints about the iZerker damage being much lower lately, I will agree. I have played Mesmer since headstart. Mesmer has been my primary character. I have been L80 with all exotics and a phantasm build since September. I used to be able to get high crit damage (3k+) with my build on iZerker, now I am lucky if I can broach 1.9k. And considering how slow phantasms attack and the CDs, and all the conditions to cast them successfully, and the chances they can be destroyed by AEs easily, that’s not a very reliable amount of damage over time. If any particular class needs balancing (and not just more delays/nerfs/conditionals for use), it is Mesmer.