Guild Wars 2

I thought you can’t do worse to the mesmer after the confusion nerf… seem like we’ve hit new bottoms. Shame on you Anet.

This nerf is HUGE.
You’re not only touching “on death” clone builds, but the core mechanics of the mesmers -> the ability to “hide the real you” using your clones.
By touching to ONE essential trait – Deceptive Evasion – you render at least 3 others traits that rely on clone death ineffective :

Crippling dissipation: clones cripple nearby foes when killed
Confusing combattants: illusions (phantasm + clones) apply confusion when killed
Debilating dissipation: clones apply one random condition when killed
(for the moment, when killed = when the opponent kill a clone or it is replaced with another clone or phantasm)

Anet, WTF are you thinking???

I still don’t understand why people label the clone death builds overpowered. Annoying, yes … but overpowered? Annoyance is practically the class purpose of the mesmer .. to confuse an enemy.

I don’t know .. I use that build and never felt unstoppable. In fact the only reason I use it is it is fairly effective in 1v1, but also can at least do SOMETHING in a zerg (since I can spam clones that the other zerg kills). I mean, I barely think I dent a zerg .. it’s not as if I am wiping them out, but at least I got to see numbers over their heads when if I was a phantasm build I would have what tool to use? Chaos storm (if I even had staff)?

Respec every time I want to run with a zerg is not really acceptable to me personally.

Remember: clones doing damage when new clones are summoned is “cheesy”.

But a skill with a 15s CD that applies a stack of torment that basically cannot be cleansed because it keeps reapplying itself? Not “cheesy” at all.

Makes perfect sense.

lol, I’m with you. Why not play a class that has 458293484848 finishers, 2923848438 weapons, strong defense, strong offense, mobility, healing, stunning .. I only have a level 20 warrior, but it is fun to play for sure.

I chose mesmer because it was the “odd” class that seemed unique. Unfortunately, right now we are so unique and odd even the development team doesn’t really understand how to play us!

Soccergirl.5734:

Guess its time for all of the people abusing an op class and act good to find another one. ;D

Sorry but this isn’t the warrior forums

This is frustrating as a shatter mesmer. dodging into someone for instant dps or daze is important and often times clones get out of position.

Some good impression at the follow link:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Alashya-on-Mesmer-Changes/first#post3518429

would love to see your feedback!!

Will you be able to go Scepter/Pistol pve and autoattack without overwriting your three iDuelists? Also, If you summon a phantasm while having three clones, will it spawn ?

Soulseek.2867:

Will you be able to go Scepter/Pistol pve and autoattack without overwriting your three iDuelists? Also, If you summon a phantasm while having three clones, will it spawn ?

No, yes.

Neither of those two interactions involve deceptive evasion, why would they change?

Pyroatheist.9031:

No, yes.

Neither of those two interactions involve deceptive evasion, why would they change?

I feel so embarrassed. Completely forgot that the change only applies to clones summoned by the trait. Thank you for the quick answer.

As a sidenote, you know how well the devs do their work, do not feel surprised if they also forget that this change should be DE-only ; )

Edit: There are gonna be several days of mesmer pain before the hotfix

Well, it’s me again : D Now that I see things clearly, I have an even more amazing question:

What’s the point of this change, seriously? To encourage people to use the dodge button more responsibly? They already did this with the vigour nerf.

Soulseek.2867:

Well, it’s me again : D Now that I see things clearly, I have an even more amazing question:

What’s the point of this change, seriously? To encourage people to use the dodge button more responsibly? They already did this with the vigour nerf.

The aim of this change is to help Warriors with the brain of a dead horse to not get killed with the speed of a snail by clones around him he can not distinguish from the real mesmer in PvP. Otherwise, ANet will get in trouble with most of their PvP playerbase.

Warrior: “Uh, me not know wut is all that Mesmer, must punch all of Mesmer with big hammer now. Outch, it hurts ouch, must punch!”

@Kaiyanwan.8521
Well done, sir : D

Yes I would actually like to know why this change is occurring. Did they actually say in the live stream? I’ve heard people mention some dev comment about Mesmers “cheesing” something with DE, but that means nothing to me.

Otherwise I’m going to have to go with Kai’s explanation.

Edit: Found a list of possible answers on another thread. Now I’m actually convinced the balance team do not understand Mesmer functionality.

The point is, this is not just about PvP balance, it is about all areas of gameplay. This is why it belongs here in the mesmer forum.

Someone will tell them that the mesmer forum is on fire at one point.

Could anyone having an opinion (one way or another) relating specifically to the perception that the ‘clone death’ builds & traits are too powerful please post your thoughts & findings here:

PvX MESMER Are clone death traits OP?

Since this was the reason given for the Deceptive Evasion nerf I think it’s important to really look into whether this is true or not, especially when proposing alternative solutions like nerfing those specific traits or builds in order to save others.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Wasbunny.6531:

I had to go back and watch the whole 20 seconds about this on the stream to try to decipher their rational behind this nerf (42 minutes in btw). This is what I could make out that they didn’t like about the trait:

• It proc’ed ‘on clone death’ traits
• It disrupted the flow of your clones (no idea what that means)
• It forced you to either ‘cheese it’ (again, no clue what this means) or
• It interrupts your game-play (still no idea what specific type of ‘game-play’ this inhibited, especially since on-clone death builds make this an integral part of their game-play)
• It feels broken (very subjective but ok)
• You have your clone, you’re attacking and you’re there and it’s changing all your positioning (???)
• It can replace Phantasms. No it can’t. (Yes it can.)

So to me the only thing that makes any sense is they feel the ‘on clone death’ traits are too powerful. Why they think this is anyone’s guess as they really didn’t say.

Lol. And these are our actual devs everyone. Seriously. These guys are in charge of balancing this game. sigh

Yeah, this post really summed it all up. You can really tell when you compare it to all the other classes they talked about too. Loads of detail, loads of time spent, loads of explanation for the reasons as to why things were changing. Mesmer seemed a simple matter of “Hey, what could we do this time for mesmers. How about a change to DE! Done.” I’m not even all that fussed about the change, what bothers me is how inept and childish that panel of devs are. And hell, with changes to things with iWarden which evidently went through without a lick of testing, you gotta wonder, when and where are the performance reviews?

Sorrow.7384:

I made this to clearly explain issues with not being able to replace illusions:

http://imgur.com/a/kryzw

Simple but effective argument, and in picture form so even children can follow along

islarose.7356:

PH Law.4063:

i dunno if i would consider DE a nerf or a bonus, when i go invisible and when i dodge my clones is like a breadcrumb (at times) but critical infusion is a unneeded nerf because it syncs so well with DE…i mean hey if you are trying to make all classes the same with perma vigor nerf then guardians need one as well because i dont see it being mentioned in the upcoming patches…point is with these nerfs i do expect dev to either rework our kit or at least rework Cry of Frustration…point is a lot of the mesmer builds works around these 2 traits…

Guardians got a vigor nerf as well. I think this livestream was a bad idea, seeing as they announced the nerfs, but had to stay tight lipped about additional (positive) balance changes. They did try to emphasize that nothing was set in stone, as well as the possibly beneficial impact of reworked runes, sigils and two slots on 2H weapons, but I think that is easily overlooked when class changes are being mentioned.

If you actually read this thread, you’d have noticed that nobody gives 2 kittens about the vigor nerf.

Eh, I like this change, I can use DE in my PvE build now for a bit of defense and distraction whereas before it would mean if I dodged with 3 phantasms out I was effectively cutting my DPS massively.

What exactly is the vigor nerf?

I think i could live with this change if they made clones go for MY target when i tell them to shatter.

Also would it also be op if clones just counted as slow moving humanoid projectiles, as in they ignore AOE/maybe players(can still dodge the explosion though or kite them) and not blocking abilities for other players either, while on their way to their shatter target? I guess it would maybe make it too “easy” but it would help mesmers in wvwvw too i guess?

random though and possibly stupid

Jackums.3496:

The more I look into this, the more I don’t like it.

The more I look into it, the more I find it completely random a change.

“let’s put the screwdriver here and see what happens”

they only want you to play 1 build : phantasm

LumAnth.5124:

Here’s the thing Xaylin.

It was obvious that what they were referring to “cheesing” was using DE to kill clones and activate the on death trait.

Their most used (and most lazy) fix to an “overpowered” trait/skill is add an ICD (see Necromancer)

What would’ve been better is, clones that die from DE should not proc the trait. Imo, it would’ve been better to tone down the traits than DE

Yes well, maybe. But keep in mind the on-death traits are actually fairly weak unless paired with DE.

Redball.7236:

Eh, I like this change, I can use DE in my PvE build now for a bit of defense and distraction whereas before it would mean if I dodged with 3 phantasms out I was effectively cutting my DPS massively.

What? You have DE on a phantasm build?

pls link your OP build, I’ll try it.

/sarcasm

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Ok just explain me one thing.
If I have one phantasm and 2 clones it will be 3 illusions, so if I dodge I will summon clone because I have only 2 clones in the world.
I hope I am right because this way one phatasm in the world will go around this nerf.

kolegam.5460:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Ok just explain me one thing.
If I have one phantasm and 2 clones it will be 3 illusions, so if I dodge I will summon clone because I have only 2 clones in the world.
I hope I am right because this way one phatasm in the world will go around this nerf.

Nope, if your three pink dots over the shatter skills are filled, you will no longer summon any clone by dodging with DE any longer. That’s what they meant.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

kolegam.5460:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey mesmers,

For clarification: if you have 0-2 clones out and you dodge, you will summon a clone.

If you have 3 clones out and you dodge, nothing will happen.

Ok just explain me one thing.
If I have one phantasm and 2 clones it will be 3 illusions, so if I dodge I will summon clone because I have only 2 clones in the world.
I hope I am right because this way one phatasm in the world will go around this nerf.

Nope, if your three pink dots over the shatter skills are filled, you will no longer summon any clone by dodging with DE any longer. That’s what they meant.

I cant see anywhere where they say its pink dots only clones.

Watch the video, those guys have hardly any clue what they are talking about when they start talking about the mesmer. That’s why they have a hard time to explain what they changed.
Those clueless people are responsible for class balance, that is bad enough, but to understand what they wanted to say, you have to look at the mechanic they wanted to change and how it works with the “cheesy” gameplay. They want to stop clone generation by DE if 3 illusions are out to fix clone-death spam.

After this and other updates no casual players will play this class.
I think only skilled ppl will play mesmers and force dev nerf it again because skilled ppl can play any class and make it OP.
This called nerf will only give me one more argument in my gameplay and I will change my build and once again will kill all warrior to make devs mad.

Honestly, I have played tons of MMOs, but I have never seen any of those try to destroy themselves with the passion that GW2 shows (maybe Star Wars Galaxy with NGE).
Ascended gear, Living Story, class balancing to a point where it is obvious that only warrior is loved by the Dev’s because the mechanics are simple enough for them to grasp.

Whoever has created the mesmer profession for GW2 must have left the ship long ago…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Watch the video, those guys have hardly any clue what they are talking about when they start talking about the mesmer. That’s why they have a hard time to explain what they changed.

Hrm, right. Because developers never know anything about the games they create. As proven times and times again since M59.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Those clueless people are responsible for class balance, that is bad enough, but to understand what they wanted to say, you have to look at the mechanic they wanted to change and how it works with the “cheesy” gameplay. They want to stop clone generation by DE if 3 illusions are out to fix clone-death spam.

Not only clone-death spam. Phantasms-Mesmers have repeatedly asked for this exact feature, just specific to Phantasms. They are implementing it for clones, too. As you said, because they want to stop the – probably unwanted – interaction between clone-death traits and DE.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Honestly, I have played tons of MMOs, but I have never seen any of those try to destroy themselves with the passion that GW2 shows (maybe Star Wars Galaxy with NGE).

So… you didn’t play any other MMO at all then? Or ever read their forums? The exact reaction we see here is levelled against every balance change in every MMO.
Including the whole “devs don’t get this class” / “devs hate this class” / “devs only play XYZ” / “devs love XYZ”, etc.

It’s the same. Every – single – time. If anything at all, this is the reason why if you’re a game developer, you couldn’t care any less about this “feedback”.
History has shown that it’s completely meaningless dribble.

Carighan.6758:

Not only clone-death spam. Phantasms-Mesmers have repeatedly asked for this exact feature, just specific to Phantasms.

Phantasm mesmers asking for a DE change because they want the trait? Why? This trait has nothing to do with phantasm builds. Every phantasm mesmer that takes DE is a BAD mesmer, it is that simple.

If this was part of the consideration, than it was a failure.

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Except any decent phantasm mesmer doesn’t want that either. Skill clones are an important part of a mesmer’s utility and versatility (see: leap/swap etc.). Basically the original point that the guy made was just kitten.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Phantasms will still be overwritten by skill clones, so that would be what phantasm mesmers want changed. No word about that in the video.

Except any decent phantasm mesmer doesn’t want that either. Skill clones are an important part of a mesmer’s utility and versatility (see: leap/swap etc.). Basically the original point that the guy made was just kitten.

Yeah, I could live with a toggle for clone generation on weapon skills or something. This would let people decide depending on the weapon and utility of the skill. But that’s a different topic.

The original point is just cheesy so to say.

Hope they won’t do so cause it doesn’t help to support skilled players. For example, a lot of times you see the enemy healing (pvp) and you blink-dodge-F3 to daze the heal (if you don’t run Illusionary Persona). Now, sometimes it won’t work just cause you might have 3 clones up. Ok, then you can say that you have to be aware of how many illusions you have. Well, keep in mind that you can F1-blink-dodge-F3 to dodge the heal, but it takes a bit for the clones to shatter so even if you use F1-F2 before dodge-dazing maybe you will still have 3 clones up when you daze, so it won’t work anyway. The only way to make sure it works is using F4…if you have to use F4 to daze a heal for no defensive reasons…well, no explanation needed.

I tried to be as constructive as possible.

Demon.2430:

Hope they won’t do so cause it doesn’t help to support skilled players. For example, a lot of times you see the enemy healing (pvp) and you blink-dodge-F3 to daze the heal…

Someone on the balance team just said, “Wait, wut?”

Not everyone interrupts with GS5.

Demon.2430:

Hope they won’t do so cause it doesn’t help to support skilled players. For example, a lot of times you see the enemy healing (pvp) and you blink-dodge-F3 to daze the heal (if you don’t run Illusionary Persona). Now, sometimes it won’t work just cause you might have 3 clones up.

You know, two things:

1. One of your clones is close enough, and you just F3 right away.
2. None is, you press any other shatter, blink, dodge, F3. Or for that matter, blink, 2 (staff, aye?), F3. You’re skilled, so I’ll assume you won’t need the extra dodge clone while also not knowing how to work around having 3 clones out already.

bOgz.7263:

Redball.7236:

Eh, I like this change, I can use DE in my PvE build now for a bit of defense and distraction whereas before it would mean if I dodged with 3 phantasms out I was effectively cutting my DPS massively.

What? You have DE on a phantasm build?

pls link your OP build, I’ll try it.

/sarcasm

There’s no need to be condescending.

I run 10/20/0/25/15, and being able to swap the master tier trait from IV to X does help in open-world pve and dealing with trash in dungeons sometimes, as the dodge clones can provide some temporary distractions.

Carighan.6758:

Demon.2430:

Hope they won’t do so cause it doesn’t help to support skilled players. For example, a lot of times you see the enemy healing (pvp) and you blink-dodge-F3 to daze the heal (if you don’t run Illusionary Persona). Now, sometimes it won’t work just cause you might have 3 clones up.

You know, two things:

1. One of your clones is close enough, and you just F3 right away.
2. None is, you press any other shatter, blink, dodge, F3. Or for that matter, blink, 2 (staff, aye?), F3. You’re skilled, so I’ll assume you won’t need the extra dodge clone while also not knowing how to work around having 3 clones out already.

Oh dear, you argument is:

1. Hope that the clone that is close won’t run away to a far away mob that he is bound to and waste the shatter.

- or -

2. Waste another shatter or hope that your skill clone generator is not on cooldown, while the enemy has all the time in the world to do whatever he does.

Looking at your approach to the situation, maybe you should join the balance team, as you seem as clueless as them…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Looking at your approach to the situation, maybe you should join the balance team, as you seem as clueless as them…

Maybe you should, you seem like you’d do really well. Have you considered working in development btw (I work there, just not for GW2 :P )? You’d be surprised how this stuff looks on the other side of the “fence”.

Additional food for thought: Very many players couldn’t care any less about roaming in WvW or especially sPvP. Hell, there are plenty players who left to GW2 exactly because they no longer want something like sPvP, they had that in better in WoW.
The amount of detail you care about in regards to interrupting a single heal is of virtually no importance to any large scale balancing effort simply because it’s an edge case which makes for a negligible amount of use cases. At large, no one makes money from a few dedicated sPvP players or free roamers. Plus, these players are already committed to the game, and despite ranting and flailing and everything, on average they always stick to the game unless your game is in full-scale decline anyhow (see: DAoC ~mid-TBC, or WoW now).

In other words, their input is interesting for the next meeting, but not for the current one. Make the people who are still undecided whether they’ll stick with your game happy.

Though many players laugh at it, a lot of GC’s comments are quite true in regards to balance complaints in WoW: For every 1000 people threatening to quit over a balance change, one does. And comes back in 2 weeks. The loss-ratio is absolutely negligible. People don’t leave over balance changes. They complain because of them, but that’s fine. That’s in fact normal, as far as our experience with MMORPGs as a genre can tell us.

So why would I – or the ANet devs – care about that? I mean sure I “care”™. Don’t want to get into the media about this, after all – that’d reach the actually important userbase.

But the “forum whiners”, as a whole, they’re really not that important. We like to think we are, but for a development team we give them a pointer what to look at, we’re never looked at directly.

Carighan.6758:

Additional food for thought: Very many players couldn’t care any less about roaming in WvW or especially sPvP. Hell, there are plenty players who left to GW2 exactly because they no longer want something like sPvP, they had that in better in WoW.

… so, let’s reduce the game to the lowest common denominator by catering to the masses and thus remove any skill involved in this game. It’s perfectly suited for the instant-gratification generation of today.

Carighan.6758:

Additional food for thought: Very many players couldn’t care any less about roaming in WvW or especially sPvP..

Then what do the very many players care about? PVE and dungeons? If that’s true, shouldn’t there be a bunch of new threads complaining about the vigor nerf instead of a bunch of new threads complaining about the nerf to DE?

Marsares.2053:

… so, let’s reduce the game to the lowest common denominator by catering to the masses and thus remove any skill involved in this game. It’s perfectly suited for the instant-gratification generation of today.

No, it’s just not black and white. There’s not “this is a game for skilled players” and “this is game for Facebook” and that’s that. Both are equally niche game designs in a way. And both are unsuited for a MMORPG.

You cannot cater to the highest-end crowd. You also cannot cater to the lowest-end crowd. In this case, the nerf is based on the interaction between on-death traits and DE, and that on-death traits by themselves are already too weak. It makes “sense” (in this perspective).

Yes, it has side effects. Any balance change will. Happens, won’t stop an experienced dev (in general) because then you’d never get anywhere.

Cassiel.8762:

Then what do the very many players care about? PVE and dungeons? If that’s true, shouldn’t there be a bunch of new threads complaining about the vigor nerf instead of a bunch of new threads complaining about the nerf to DE?

No, because the lion share of the playerbase of online games are quite content. That is, they don’t truly care when they get nerfed as long as it doesn’t impact them in a large way – and usually it doesn’t. Hell, I’d argue it never really does.

That’s why the forums of any MMORPG is filled with negative feedback, because the players posting are those who are annoyed enough to take to the forums. I remember a good rule of thumb was that the 15% on the least satisfied part of the playerbase are the ones partaking in forum feedback.

And mind you, there’s tons of PvE feedback threads, but they’re focused about the change which does get people agitated enough, the gear change. Something as small as the vigor nerf doesn’t even register for most MMO players, who define a noticeable change as say, one ability being removed and replaced with a different one.

Effectively, MMO devs fly somewhat blind. They know the worst reception in their playerbase, but without spying on guild chats – rather unethical – they’d not know any more positive reception. So as long as the most angry reception is “the usual” – and this is – all is well in dev-land.

I hope they will hire an experienced Dev one day. This blind and stubborn activism is helping noone (well maybe the warriors).
They will do it and stick to it like the Tequatl fiasco. Wow. Undead encounter is dead.

Honestly, they can have my feedback for free on the board, I don’t see why they should hire me. But hey, if they want to spend some money, I would be glad to be the first person to work in the right now non-existant QA department of Arenanet.

Carighan.6758:

Yes, it has side effects. Any balance change will. Happens, won’t stop an experienced dev (in general) because then you’d never get anywhere.

So…. an experienced Dev just willy-nilly comkittenfs two characteristics (vigor + DE) that impact clone generation which is critical to the core-mechanic of a Mesmer (shatters) and then giggles about it on live-stream whilst clearly not having a clue which ability he was talking about or what it does. The guy with the pony-tail just had no idea and needed to be re-assured by his colleagues.

Yes.. those are experienced Devs.

I get that changes have consequences, some of them unintended. But there’s making a well-though-out change and an ill-conceived change that’s poorly understood.

This is clearly the latter.

Carighan.6758:

LumAnth.5124:

Here’s the thing Xaylin.

It was obvious that what they were referring to “cheesing” was using DE to kill clones and activate the on death trait.

Their most used (and most lazy) fix to an “overpowered” trait/skill is add an ICD (see Necromancer)

What would’ve been better is, clones that die from DE should not proc the trait. Imo, it would’ve been better to tone down the traits than DE

Yes well, maybe. But keep in mind the on-death traits are actually fairly weak unless paired with DE.

What Carighan said.

The on-death traits are not the issue. DE is. Will always be. It is a very powerful trait since it massively affects the class mechanic and therefore most builds. If anything needs to change then it is DE. Following your argument, DE could get an ICD of maybe 5-10s. Man… that would create a massive rage among Mesmer players. It would also be very annoying to use because it requires more micro-management.

I have come to the point that I would like DE to become a Grandmaster trait. Many Mesmers will hate it – including me – but it might make sense on the long run. Currently DE covers weaknesses and flaws in the class design. If it was not available all the time the devs might become more aware of existing issues.

Xaylin.1860:

Carighan.6758:

LumAnth.5124:

Here’s the thing Xaylin.

It was obvious that what they were referring to “cheesing” was using DE to kill clones and activate the on death trait.

Their most used (and most lazy) fix to an “overpowered” trait/skill is add an ICD (see Necromancer)

What would’ve been better is, clones that die from DE should not proc the trait. Imo, it would’ve been better to tone down the traits than DE

Yes well, maybe. But keep in mind the on-death traits are actually fairly weak unless paired with DE.

What Carighan said.

The on-death traits are not the issue. DE is. Will always be. It is a very powerful trait since it massively affects the class mechanic and therefore most builds. If anything needs to change then it is DE. Following your argument, DE could get an ICD of maybe 5-10s. Man… that would create a massive rage among Mesmer players. It would also be very annoying to use because it requires more micro-management.

I have come to the point that I would like DE to become a Grandmaster trait. Many Mesmers will hate it – including me – but it might make sense on the long run. Currently DE covers weaknesses and flaws in the class design. If it was not available all the time the devs might become more aware of existing issues.

You seem to not be understanding what I’m trying to say.

They most likely refer to “cheesing” game play as using DE to kill clones, in turn, procing the on death traits.

But instead of toning down the death traits, they nerf DE.

One of my usual shatter combos is izerker → Mirror Blade → dodge then mind wrack. With the DE nerf, I am not able to do this because previous to doing the said combo, I usually set up some clones to prepare for a daze before my spike.

On death traits by themselves are horrible because you must rely on CD skills (clone generation) and player decision (that is if you want to deal some damage)

Nerfing DE was not the way to go. Not only do they neutralize the power of on death traits, they once again, nerf shatter in a game play where it’s already ridiculously hard to thrive in one