Guild Wars 2

Redball.7236:

This is not a valid comparison, mesmer can dodge to shatter a clone that is far away from them to cause conditions to a target. A thief would need to be on top of the target in melee range.

Not to mention that the caltrops a thief drops pulse every second and are easily walked out of, compared to a mesmer clone death which applies all the conditions at once.

Do you play mesmer? fyi, clone-death builds dont shatter. illusions disappear at a certain distance, around 1700 range.

ohhh I remember, you’re the guy that uses DE on a full phantasm build.

Redball.7236:

Wasbunny.6531:

Before we all start asking for a nerf to any of the Mesmer ‘on-dodge’ traits (DE + clone death) by making them uniquely blockable or whatever we must find out if they are really overpowered in the first place.

You need to find out how much something is before stating it’s too much.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, I’m really more reminding the devs than anyone else.

So I did a simple side by side comparison between Mesmer & Thief using only ‘on-dodge’ traits (Deceptive Evasion & Caltrops) and only dodging to kill a moving target golem.

Mesmer: About 3-5 stacks of bleed 100% up-time (90% from auto-attacking clones). Very rarely a few seconds of Cripple,Vulnerability or Weakness.

Thief : 4 stacks of bleed 100% up-time. 45+ seconds of cripple.
also 2-4 stacks of might gained as well as swiftness and endurance regeneration

If anyone can seriously look at those two examples and arrive at the conclusion that the Mesmer is in need of having their ‘on-dodge’ traits nerfed in any way for the sake of balance…then I just don’t know what else to say.

This is not a valid comparison, mesmer can dodge to shatter a clone that is far away from them to cause conditions to a target. A thief would need to be on top of the target in melee range.

Not to mention that the caltrops a thief drops pulse every second and are easily walked out of, compared to a mesmer clone death which applies all the conditions at once.

This was not a theory, this was an actual test that anyone with a Mesmer and a Thief can do for themselves in 5 minutes. I encourage anyone who is genuinely curious as to if these traits are overpowered to try it out, it’s actually quite funny.

This was unrealistically best case scenario too, since I was chasing a slow moving golem running in circles and would hope that any actual player would take even less damage from these traits, by both classes.

Please make a special note that 90% of the bleeds supplied by the Mesmer in this test are coming from the clones auto-attacking (Sharper Images trait).

The real conditions supplied by all 3 traits to a moving target is closer to 0 than to 1.
So once again, before anyone says they are in need of a nerf please:

• Explain why you feel 0-1 stack of bleed for a 45 point investment is OP or
• Do the test yourself and show how my numbers are wrong.

Personally, i don’t see any of the on-death traits as a problem in particular. Having 3 defensive boons on PU (that is: No bad option like any other RNG skill or trait) is what’s more of a problem for me.

That’s why i suggest removing Aegis and replacing it with one of Swiftness or Retaliation, maybe even Might or Fury. Aegis in stealth is extremely powerful in a 1v1 situation and shouldn’t be possible that easily, imo.

Iavra.8510:

Personally, i don’t see any of the on-death traits as a problem in particular. Having 3 defensive boons on PU (that is: No bad option like any other RNG skill or trait) is what’s more of a problem for me.

That’s why i suggest removing Aegis and replacing it with one of Swiftness or Retaliation, maybe even Might or Fury. Aegis in stealth is extremely powerful in a 1v1 situation and shouldn’t be possible that easily, imo.

Yeah I’ve seen this idea floating around the forums and think it’s a good one. I’ve never actually taken PU or run any type of PU build but I can see how Aegis might be the real unbalancing factor there.

EDIT: Having no personal experience with it though I really don’t have an opinion whether it truly is OP or not. Certainly before even considering any nerf to PU I would hope the devs do more testing than was done before their proposed DE nerf. I’ve heard a lot of arguments against PU boiling down to ’they’re just so annoying to fight’ so they should be very careful if considering this a good enough reason to nerf PU.

Of course not once was Prismatic Understanding mentioned in the balance stream so I have no idea if they are even considering it a balance issue at all.

I’ll believe there’s something wrong with PU when I see PU mesmers all over the top of the PvP leaderboards, being demanded in dungeon runs, and dominating WvW zergs.

Until then, it’s just more “person X beat me and used stealth, so nerf it!”. Why any mesmer would support nerfing one of our best traits, regardless of the reason, is beyond me. It’s not like we’d be guaranteed to get some sort of improvement with it in some other area, and it’s not like PU as it is right now puts mesmers into some kind of overpowered place.

Well, the problem with PU builds in PvP is, that you won’t be able to cap/decap anything while in stealth ^^

Qaelyn.7612:

I’ll believe there’s something wrong with PU when I see PU mesmers all over the top of the PvP leaderboards, being demanded in dungeon runs, and dominating WvW zergs.

Until then, it’s just more “person X beat me and used stealth, so nerf it!”. Why any mesmer would support nerfing one of our best traits, regardless of the reason, is beyond me. It’s not like we’d be guaranteed to get some sort of improvement with it in some other area, and it’s not like PU as it is right now puts mesmers into some kind of overpowered place.

Good point. We’re getting a little off topic but still good point. I’ve edited my post above to mirror some of your arguments here.

Iavra.8510:

Well, the problem with PU builds in PvP is, that you won’t be able to cap/decap anything while in stealth ^^

So here we have the same thing again: people simultaneously saying PU is overpowered and useless.

See it all the time in the PvP forum and it makes no sense.

bOgz.7263:

Do you play mesmer? fyi, clone-death builds dont shatter. illusions disappear at a certain distance, around 1700 range.

ohhh I remember, you’re the guy that uses DE on a full phantasm build.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant by that, it’s still a valid argument regardless if the terminology is wrong. Thief caltrops need the target to be underneath, a mesmer clone can die up to “1700” range from the mesmer and apply those conditions.

I already posted this in another thread that topics the clone generation in combination with on death traits:

I totally agree with anet in this point. Making it impossible for us to kill our clones by ourselves is one step in the right direction. We are mesmers since guild wars 1 we were the class that does the reactio. The enemy destroys our clones -> he’ll be punished for this. It’s a mesmer’s style to dominate the enemy by leaving the difficult choices in battle up to him.

Like in GW1:
Backfire: Deals dmg when he casts a spell
Wastrel’s Demise: Deals dmg over time when he doesn’t cast a spell
The enemy had to choose what skill is more dangerous for him.

Example:
A clonespam mesmer with Chaos-V who’s able to destroy his clones by himself will cause massive aoe-conditions in his fighting area without using the clones for something else.

After a patch it’ll be like this:
The mesmer’s enemy will have to choose between killing the illusions and suffer to the resulting conditions and letting the illusions life what will cause some extra conditions.

But the problem with the postnerf situation is that the ondeath traits are still too weak to make anyone choose between killing or bearing the damage from our illusions.
When they nerf the gameplay of these builds, they could just buff the traits themself:

For example one could make Chaos-V to always inflict a few stacks of bleed (like Chaotic Interruption always inflicts immobilize) to make it more viable in conditionbuilds. Also they could make all ondeath traits trigger with every illusion because at the moment the enemy would be punished only for killing weak clones but not for killing the bigger problem: phantasms.

kills the clone that he could easily ignore -> suffers to conditions
kills the phantasm that deals good dmg -> is happy that it’s away now

Well this is my opinion. I agree with the devs in this situation.

~ Me Games Ma

@Me Games Ma: Those changes wouldn’t fix the problems with how the DE change would screw over shatter builds.

I’d suggest to not change DE but the ondeath traits to not trigger when we kill the clones by ourselves.

I think that’s why they want to nerf it in the first place, isn’t_(lolfilterxD)_it?

Me Games Ma.8426:

Like in GW1:
Backfire: Deals dmg when he casts a spell
Wastrel’s Demise: Deals dmg over time when he doesn’t cast a spell
The enemy had to choose what skill is more dangerous for him.

In hindsight that was a pretty poor implementation though. I mean ofc, given the hotbar-restrictions it worked, but in the end we’re looking at a DoT here. Target takes damage. More if they actively use skills. Could roll that into a single DoT.

I will hate this nerf more then anything even the nerfs Anet has done to my class already.

1) what illusion dies when you dodge? The one on the player or the one at range? Does the on death ae large or small? will it hit a moving target or one just out of range?

2) why is my 3 stacks of bleed on death a big deal?

3) why is my cripple on death a big deal? how long does it last? 30sec? long enough for me to run away? nope don’t think so!

4) does 3 stacks of confusion for 4 sec hurt you anymore then bleeds do?

5) do all of these go off at the same time? are they all hitting my target?

6) is having two extra clones come up and die worth a nerf? even with 100% uptime vigor can you really put out enough dodge’s to kill something with clones on death?

7) is on death ( traits for all on death skills ) worth it? if they all proced what is the price my enemy pays?

8) Why is Anet even thinking of nerfing the dodge trait? are there not more powerful dodge traits out there? ( this is the only class I have played to lvl 80 others sit around 20 or so for now )

9) even if they fix this “bug” they should give us something better, when you dodge you make a chaos storm! lol

10) If you dodge and your at your illusion limit don’t give an illusion a on death effect but is replaced with a dodge clone then you get a boon for 10 sec. or something. There is a reason you dodge if your not dodging to make an illusion to die on target.

11 ) Or make this a new build dodge melee clones all day long build all I do is dodge to make melee clones and HOPE they go to my target and die on him!

Does Anet even think some of these things through? There has to be a reason to remove that trait and if so just remove all on death traits and let us keep our dodge clone and trade up on those oh hum so useful on death traits.

P.S. I am right now going to go build a dodge on death build!

Before we all start asking for a nerf to any of the Mesmer ‘on-dodge’ traits (DE + clone death) by making them uniquely blockable or whatever we must find out if they are really overpowered in the first place.

You need to find out how much something is before stating it’s too much.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, I’m really more reminding the devs than anyone else.

Test:
So I did a simple side by side comparison test between Mesmer & Thief using only ‘on-dodge’ traits (Deceptive Evasion vs Uncatchable) and only dodging to kill a moving target golem.

All ‘clone death’ traits & DE taken by the Mesmer and all ‘on dodge’ traits taken by the Thief.

Results:
Mesmer: About 3-5 stacks of bleed 100% up-time (90% from auto-attacking clones). Very rarely a few seconds of Cripple, 1 stack of Confusion, Vulnerability or Weakness.

Thief : 4 stacks of bleed 100% up-time. 45+ seconds of cripple (continually stacking).
also 2-4 stacks of might gained as well as swiftness, endurance regeneration & condition removal

Conclusion:
If anyone can seriously look at those two examples and arrive at the conclusion that the Mesmer is in need of having their ‘on-dodge’ traits nerfed in any way for the sake of balance…then I just don’t know what else to say.

This is not a theory. This was an actual test that anyone with a Mesmer and a Thief can do for themselves in 5 minutes. I encourage anyone who is genuinely curious as to if these traits are overpowered to try it out, it’s actually quite funny.

This was unrealistically best case scenario too, since I was chasing a slow moving golem running in circles and would hope that any actual player would take even less damage from these traits, by both classes.

Please make a special note that 90% of the bleeds supplied by the Mesmer in this test are coming from the clones auto-attacking (Sharper Images trait).

The real conditions supplied by all 3 traits to a moving target is closer to 0 than to 1.
So once again, before anyone says they are in need of a nerf please:

• Explain why you feel 0-1 stack of bleed for a 45 point investment is OP or
• Do the test yourself and show how my numbers are wrong.

I made some minor clarifications to the above (Caltrops should have been Uncatchable). I’ve been trying to make these tests as clear to understand as possible but in reality it’s far simpler to just run the test yourself. It’s really the first and most crucial step before making any assertions about relative balance.

Should be noted I’m not finding there to be anything OP with any thief traits. I’m also concluding it’s hard to logically defend the argument that the clone death traits, when taken with DE are overly powerful and require a nerf based on these results.

EDIT: I realize facts are usually less interesting than speculation but if anyone wants to see the results of my other two tests I’ve been compiling them here.

PvX MESMER Are clone death traits OP?