Guild Wars 2

Yeh poor necros, not worried on my glass mesmer at all.

Necro does get shorter duration of lich form but increase in spike damage. Just need to run away can back later lol

Guard have better spirit weapon and meditation build. Spirit weapons can now be activated without destroying the spirits but spirits still suffers AI problem. Meditation will have slightly better sustain with Renewed Focus being a meditation skill (2k heals and 72s recharge, fury is too short for this skill to be used). Tome changes are unlikely to make it more frequent. Overall you probably still mainly see guard bunkers and this patch won’t really affect how mesmers deal with them.

S/D thieves used to rely on (precast FS)+LS+Steal+fire+air proc for instant burst. The main damage comes from LS but after the patch LS can only be activated after FS lands, so dodging FS can put quite a toll on their initiative system. Smart thieves can probably use illusions to land their FS then LS+Steal to strike the true mesmer. I’d say they’re still countering mesmer in general. Furthermore with the clone death nerf we’re probably going to see more S/P pistol whip spam.

Lich won’t necessary have bigger spike though, the devs balanced power scale with damage multiplier so the overall damage is similar but fire/air proc deals less damage.

Could somebody else explain ele’s change to mesmer?

Not much about ele’s.
Mostly nerf on unattended elites and skill (burn field stacks, meteornado)
Elementals may be more reliable since now will have a usable skill (heal on water and stun on air mostly)
Signets (lower cds and cast plus bleed on earth) and glyphs get a lil more usable with but nothing game change.