Challenge Accepted ANET, challenge accepted.
First, this thread would likely be deleted for containing “Anet” in the title (at least, that’s what they did it to me).
Second, the mesmer in beta and after game release was the result of the class design. But the last patch is not the result of the design but a “fix” to satisfy the complains of players not playing mesmer that are unable to deal with the mesmer’s phantasmal zerker. So what they did was to totally break the GS build and mechanic.
No, it’s not a challenge to make the class harder to master, but a mistake that just makes a branch of the class weaker.
They just need to separate the skill-set for each gameplay environment.
PvP-only, PvE-only, WvW-only. Done and done.
And of course, fix all the kitten bugs already, which affect the entire game very negatively.