Guild Wars 2

There’s another MMO out there which has an almost identical class to Mesmer. It’s called Allods Online, and it’s counterpart class was called the Psionicist.

Functionally and thematically they’re very similar, able to use telekinetics to move and bunch up foes, create decoy illusions and bend space and time with their minds. Like Mesmer their strong control abilities meant they they were great in 1 on 1 and team PvP scenarios, but their lack of strong AoE and complex skill chains made them a little weak in PvE and as a result they were one of the more underplayed classes.

And I come with a warning from the future!

You see, just like Moa pisses people off today, and portal could be potentially abused. So too could the psionicist’s counterpart skills – like 10 second AoE chain stuns. Like the mesmer, the class was actually built AROUND these concepts, without the ability to do this they were defenceless, yet when they did them in PvP, it caused much QQ – they wern’t even the strongest PvP class by a long shot, they were more of a force multiplier, but people really don’t like losing control, and a control class like Psion or Mesmer is a class designed to do just that.

Every patch, Psi would be nerfed – the Psionicists would of course protest this pointing out how increasingly unplayable PvE was becoming. But every other class was constantly screaming NERF PSIS at the top of their lungs.

This continued patch after patch, month after month – any single nerf was never that big, but it happened insidiously and constantly for an entire year

12 months later, there were just 1 or 2 viable builds for the class and so few people on the North American servers played Psionicists they were literally known by name to the other players, they were in high demand in PvE fior their unique control talents, but supply was almost non-existant as levelling one was like pulling your own teeth out.

Eventually they introduced a simple cross-class option where players could take one of a small list of skills from another class, unsurprisingly the psionicists signature control ability was one of the most popular and it this stage there was no point rolling a psi at all and the class finally disappeared into obscurity.

Mesmer’s still alive and healthy at this stage – sure some people find them tricky to play in PvE but they are still very strong played properly. But I’m worried – every patch so far we’ve seen nerf after nerf and barely caught a single break. I’ve seen this happen before, and I don’t want to see it happen again, I love this style of gameplay far too much to see the cycle repeat itself.

The psi formerly known as Mindhack (Nezeb server)

To be honest, then the devs of Allods Online were simply… well… bad. Sorry.

As a developer, rule #1 would be: don’t listen to your playerbase.
Mind you, listen is the operative word there. Don’t let them tell you what to do, they’re incredibly biased, each and every single player, and the average doesn’t help either because it masks many important details (for a comparable issue, see average-FPS versus stutter-curves when comparing performance of PC components) and because of numerical inequality.

Anyhow, if the devs of Allods Online nerfed Psis because of the whining: they were bad devs. Period.

If ANet keeps nerfing us after the we are no longer better in sPvP than other classes (and/or ignore the WvW/PvE issues thereafter), then they’re bad devs. Period.

Doesn’t mean that they have to do that, tbh. Also means that if they are good devs they’ll read – or rather, let read – our comments, but use them more as a general pointer towards “what to check out”.
In other words, if someone screams “Nerf Mesmer Moa, kittenolol”, then the dev should get from that “Moa Morph, take a look”, without a “nerf” or “buff” or “change” in input. Just to check out the skill. Then he takes a look, doesn’t get what the fuss is about, reads that they’re calls for nerfs at home and shrugs thinking that without the bias, the skill read quite balanced. (example, this is not my actual opinion!)

Well, I’ve always had a lot of faith in Arenanet’s ability to balance stuff. GW1 was balanced like a throwing knife.

GW2… I’m not sure the right hand knows what the left is doing. We keep seeing nerfs to skills that don’t outwardly appear to have needed them, they’ve avoided nerfing the skills that could probably afford a nerf, and they havn’t fixed any of the skills that are buggy but would make PvE smoother if they fixed.

Yes but GW1 was hardly “balanced”. It was well-balanced compared to say, the newly-released GW2 or WAR or anything like that (not sure I’d want to compare it with WoW with it’s continuous new-stuff→balance→new-stuff→balance cycle), but it wasn’t balanced.
Not that any RPG ever is.

I agree that their changes seem a bit random. The bugfixing might be separate people, fair enough, but while I guess they got statistical data on which skills get over-/under-used, I’d like to at least have an explanation of that.
As in: “The two utility phantasms are seeing massive over-use on people’s hotbars compared to other utility skills. To try alleviate this, we are experimenting with increasing the cooldown slightly, as per the following changes.”

I LOL’d because I used to play Psi in Allods. What makes people more angry is not getting killed in 1 shot but because they can’t do anything while someone is obliterating them. The class is supposed to be nerf-reckoning. Ironically, that’s also why it got killed by the people who came up with the concept.

Arise long dead thread, arise! – Applies thread necromancy

So folks… 4 months later what do you think? – My warning from the future still looking like a knee jerk reaction to the BWE nerfs, or well founded concerns that history is repeating itself.

Mesmer isn’t a unique class, several other MMO’s have nearly identical classes; and all of those MMO’s nerfed their mesmer equivalent into obsolescence because it was too much of a pain to balance and had all the other classes screaming incoherently

Thought it’d be interesting to get people’s reactions now the situation has changed

I dont mind any of the change’s.

Some like the Membrane was a bit annoying, plus with phant I think they should summon if you blind. It just they first attack miss’s.

However none of the rest really bothers me that much and seem mostly fair.

Yet they are nerfing it every patch and so it is kinda scary that they will keep doing it until everything nerf to the point it useless.

So here I am hoping that they do not do that.

They nerfed Mesmer to death in GW1, then tried to buff them later on. Will probably happen here… or not.

Necro skills like that don’t belong in this forum. . . there is a whole forum for Necromancers.

KIDDING! Okay, but seriously though, Mesmer receives nerfs each patch pretty much (even if they don’t touch any other professions). That said they STILL feel like they are in a fine spot, and I honestly expect that IF they ever fix the bugs for the professions traits and abilities coupled with fixing bugs that make too much damage happen then the profession will be seen for what it truly is and receive buffs in PvE.

To be fair, we’re not in a bad spot. But I said that before.
What annoys me is the lack of cohesion or design paradigms in our traits. I mean on one hand I can understand that if they were to fix that, I’d explode in power compared to where I am now, given how weak and broken many of our current traits are.

But OTOH, I want to feel like I want all the traits, all the time. With a meme gif.

Your going to get alot of denial here, the fanboys run pretty thick and frankly Anet could give us whiffle bats and you would get replys of oh its not too bad

Balance is important, but are we forgetting the Anet mantra? All classes are able to do the same job equally but in different ways. I remember seeing that time and time again when watching vids before beta came out.

The change to membrane destroyed bunkering in one hit. Im sure some fanboy will try to convince me that 3 seconds of boons once every 30-35 seconds makes it just fine another will try to point out how they tank champs/vets… with little undersanding that what they actually do is KITE.
If I dont see the thief coming then I am dead in under 3 seconds, sure I can use the now cookie cutter shatter spec plenty of good mesmers post bug fix still use this but losing legion build? losing synergy? Just another bite out of the apple that makes this game special to me.

I dont expect to be able to insta jib ppl but I do expect to be able to enjoy the feel of the class I put my time and effort into. Take that away and your playing quake 3… interestingly one of spvp’s map seems to be inspired by.

At heart Im an optimist, if Anet is creative enough to come up with this game.. then I can only hope they retain that sense of fun and keep it ….. fun, in all respects.

This thread made me both laugh and get a lil sad since I used to play Allods and I had a Psi as well lol. It was a shame to see what they did to them in that game and I hope my beloved mesmer doesn’t get the same treatment. Mainly because I’ve played all the other classes(well except for guardian and warrior but thats just personal preference as those class types don’t fit my play style) and the mesmer is the only class that has everything I want. If they kill the mesmer I’ll prolly end up quitting instead of sticking around on a class I don’t enjoy playing as much. So please don’t kill the mesmer Anet <3

So THAT’S what happened…. I played a Psionist named Keldred years before I made a Mesmer here (with the same name as a sort of nod) and I had taken a year long break or so. When I returned, I tried to keep leveling him in PvE…. all I could think was “What the hell, surely it wasn’t like this when I last played or I’d have quit in two weeks!” Needless to say it only took a couple days for me to delete Allods from my system, and I haven’t picked it up since…

Edit: Now I really, REALLY miss my bad apple Egyptian undead Psionist dude… *mourns the fallen

the similarities is there..
just look how forum people are gunning for our skills. 1 by 1.

Well, honestly some level of the concept of Mesmer frankly needs to be reworked. There’s currently a fatal flaw in how some of Mesmer’s mechanics work that I don’t think the development team even fully realizes.

Mesmer, at least how I imagined it and I would assume most other people, is a class about, deception, trickery, and guile.

Besides Mesmer’s clone mechanic there’s not very much about mesmer that screams deception, trickery, and guile. I mean if the entire clone mechanic was removed and all the aesthetical purple along with it it would be very hard to see what about the class is so Mesmery.

Now this isn’t that fair of an argument to make considering that the clone mechanic is Mesmer’s central mechanic, but at the same time the bigger problem lies in the clone mechanic itself.

In a competitive game when mechanics are being designed to be used against one another the most successful mechanics are those designed with both players in mind. Both players should be able to interact with the mechanic in some form or fashion. The user of the mechanic should be able to influence the success of the mechanic and the target of the mechanic should be able to influence the failure of the mechanic. Sadly, more often then not, mechanics don’t always meet this criteria.

Even if a mechanic doesn’t meet the above criteria a mechanic should at minimum should let the user of the mechanic have the chance to influence it’s success. Even if the target cannot in any way or form affect the failure of that mechanic a game can still be played between them as they both have their own mechanics that they can influence the success of and a winner can still be determined by skill.

The problem is that any deception, trickery, and guile attached to the clone mechanic doesn’t meet either of the above criteria and instead falls into an odd 3rd category, a mechanic where the user of the mechanic can barely influence the its success while the target of it can almost entirely determine whether it will succeed or fail.

A Mesmer can do little to make his clones more deceiving, more tricky, or more …guileful? The only thing he can really do is try to stand still and act like a clone, but even then any competent opponent who has virtually any experience with Mesmer whatsoever will be able to distinguish the real Mesmer from his clones.

Whether the Mesmer clones work in confusing the Mesmer’s opponent relies solely on the opponent’s knowledge of the class. Nothing the Mesmer can do will influence how well the clones can confuse anyone (except going underwater and summoning trident clones :P). This turns Mesmer into a class, on the lower end of the skill spectrum (which unfortunately is the loudest voice), to be a noob killer as clueless people will just swing away at your clones all day, and on the higher skill spectrum, you might as well be summoning giant pineapples because your clones should never fool anyone competent.

Basically at high levels of play no deception, trickery, or guile exists on the Mesmer class.
Without deception, trickery, and guile what is the Mesmer? Just a summoner whose summons have really low HP and explode?

Whether you like it or not, mesmers (along with thieves) will always been seen as some cheap class because of how the class is designed. No one likes to deal with clones because it hurts their heads. Even if clones are OP or not; even if mesmer is OP or not, people will always hate mesmers. Does this mean the devs will screw us over to the point of uselessness? Don’t know.

The thing I see is…. well… yeah, nerfs. But its not about that “nerf”.
What I am depressed about the patch is that there is no so-called Changes AKA Modifications such as making GS#3 more usable by making the radius larger.
It’s always “the number” on damages going down/up. These aren’t impressive at all. I find no thoughts/care about the change they made from the patches.
But again, seeing the number going down every time is not something I can be positive about.

They’d really hate the class if it had all of the counterspell/interrupt stuff from GW1.
That kinda skill spread, and no magic/energy pool to limit its use, just c/d’s? I can smell the QQ in my sleep. Worst part is, moves like those would add the prerequisite ‘trickery’ and ‘guile’. Failing that: we’d need clones to be a little more unpredictable in their movements (maybe they dodge once in a while and duplicate effect tags on their maker (food buffs, etc. Just the ‘look’ of them, mind you.))

It’s that time of the year again! – Time to review the warning from the future…

So, we’re now 10 months in since I raised my concerns about the direction mesmer was taking as the BWE’s progressed. Last big skill balance patch major concerns were that clones were not actually distracting enough, and that mesmer relied a lot on people’s lack of understanding of the class.

As well as my original long term concerns that nerfs over time would force players into just one or two principle build configurations and take away all our damage to balance against our control/defensive skills even though GW2 isn’t a game with discreet DPS/support classes and all classes should have parity if specced for DPS.

By this stage in Allods the psionicist had recieve their big rebalance overhaul that took away a sizable chunk of their control and support options in exchange for slightly better defences and DPS. Mez seems to have taken the opposite path, where they’ve improved our defensive and support otpions with time, but DPS and control has consistently decreased

So, how’re we doing?:

Build versatility:
Support, Phantasm, Shatter are the 3 fundamental paths left – we pretty much lost condition and glamour in the last few patches.

DPS
Even specced full glass cannon a mesmer’s DPS doesn’t come close to that of a DPS specced warrior, guardian or engineer; there’s no point even trying to go full on DPS.

As a trend, DPS decreases with every patch, while other classes, notably warrior tends to increase so that seems to be becoming true.

Control
Glamour blinds got a nerf, confusion got absolutely destroyed, (Even more so if we look back to BWE when i posted this and sceptre chain inflicted confusion… you know, when sceptre was a condition weapon?), and now focus has a destructively long telegraph before you can pull with it.

Again, seems to be a “yes” here.

Well that’s my opinion anyway speaking as a PvE/WvW mesmer foremost, how do you guys feel; is the sky slowly falling for mesmer, was it a much needed lowering from godhood or is this all just doom and gloom?

Don’t forget to tune in 6 months time for the next update in the saga! (If you’re still playing mesmer by then)

Ryuujin.8236:

DPS
Even specced full glass cannon a mesmer’s DPS doesn’t come close to that of a DPS specced warrior, guardian or engineer; there’s no point even trying to go full on DPS.

When you say DPS, do you mean damage per second or overall damage? I’ve never seen a guardian or engineer peel aggro off my shatter mesmer in dungeons via damage. Warriors can, yes, but if I play smart enough, I can pull aggro off of them as well sometimes. Phantasm Mesmers do fairly consistent damage per second, but low burst. Shatter Mesmers aren’t too grand in damage per second, even accounting proper pZerker spawning, but we have godlike burst in dungeons. 14-18k mindwrack crits every 10 seconds? Yes please.

I’m sure Guardians or Engineers can go their respective damage specs, but I have to disagree with your post. Having done all the toughest content on both specs of mesmer, I can honestly say I feel as though I’m doing top tier damage when I do everything right.

Arale.4207:

When you say DPS, do you mean damage per second or overall damage? I’ve never seen a guardian or engineer peel aggro off my shatter mesmer in dungeons via damage. Warriors can, yes, but if I play smart enough, I can pull aggro off of them as well sometimes. Phantasm Mesmers do fairly consistent damage per second, but low burst. Shatter Mesmers aren’t too grand in damage per second, even accounting proper pZerker spawning, but we have godlike burst in dungeons. 14-18k mindwrack crits every 10 seconds? Yes please.

Sustained DPS I’m referring to. Mesmer’s have great burst capabilities, but my analysis is based on PvE team and solo play (There’s no doubting mesmer’s PvP credentials) – and in that respect mesmer’s sustained DPS when specced for the role is pretty close to the bottom (The reddit number crunchers say it’s second worst, coming after ranger)

Aggro isn’t a good indicator of DPS as there are many other factors besides DPS that affect aggro (Toughness is the single biggest influence. A mesmer in full knight’s gear doing pathetic DPS yet easily pull aggro off an entire team of zerker warriors).

As for the 14-15 burst every 10 seconds as a selling point; a zerker DPS specced GS warrior I’m told can pull off closer to 50k burst every 10 seconds (This same burst is of course almost useless in PvP as people will just get out the way, but again, in PvE, where sustained DPS counts, mobs tend to stand in melee and rub their face all over your sword, so mobility of said DPS matters less)

I agree in principal that the most complained about classes in games are the ones that can stun-lock or cc-lock, everybody hates that worse than anything else.

But GW2 is in an interesting place b/c its emphasis on Interrupts rather than chain stuns. Unlike, say, WoW, anything can be interrupted, even non-magical skills and non-magical class abilities like Hundred Blades.

ANet could completely nerf/remove long-duration stuns and CCs and leave just Interrupt mechanics and it would still be an interesting game.

And Mesmers have been getting tons of Interrupt trait buffs in the past two patches, and all but two of our weapons have interrupt abilities (MH sword, Scepter, though they provide Cripple and Blind). ANet clearly intends Mesmers to be the high-skill-cap dueling class.

So, yeah in general I share concerns about nerfing a class into irrelevance, but I don’t see Mesmers getting there in the near future.

Full Zerker Ascended gear with its crazy Crit Dmg + our PvE utility (reflects namely) will be enough to keep the class not just relevant but T1 in dungeons for the foreseeable future. Maybe not top damage, but 4x zerk wars don’t take 1x mesmer for their damage, but for TW, Fury/Might multiplying Signet of Inspiration, and reflects. I don’t think that will change much.

In PvP everybody runs IP Shatter variants anyway, despite the big buffs to Interrupt traits lately. I’m wondering if we’ll start seeing any Interrupt-based builds like 10/30/30/0/0 or similar at all, either in PvP or WvW. Probably too niche, but one can hope.

It’s kind of an interesting place in Mesmer land right now, in between meta’s, some negatives some positives, but I wouldn’t say it’s bleak.

Interrupts were certainly buffed, but we have few options for precise interruption. It’s mostly luck. Chaos Storm is random. Into the Void has a large telegraph now. Counter Blade requires casting Illusionary Riposte and then another .75 sec cast (assuming the block isn’t activated first.) Vortex has a 1.25 cast time, but at least it’s AoE.

By my count, our only precise interruption skills are Magic Bullet, Signet of Dom., and Mantra of Distraction. Long cast times are a problem on the other skills, because the opponent is likely able to complete their cast time before our interrupt procs.

That all said, I do love it when I can interrupt a Kill Shot or Churning Earth. Those are easy.

EDIT: Illusionary Wave is also decent, but doesn’t really fit the theme of interruptions. GS is a ranged weapon, and Illusionary Wave seems best used as a “Get away from me!” skill.

I’m just waiting for the shatter nerf as well as a stealth/PU nerf. It’s approaching like a dark cloud on the horizon.

Ryuujin.8236:

Arale.4207:

When you say DPS, do you mean damage per second or overall damage? I’ve never seen a guardian or engineer peel aggro off my shatter mesmer in dungeons via damage. Warriors can, yes, but if I play smart enough, I can pull aggro off of them as well sometimes. Phantasm Mesmers do fairly consistent damage per second, but low burst. Shatter Mesmers aren’t too grand in damage per second, even accounting proper pZerker spawning, but we have godlike burst in dungeons. 14-18k mindwrack crits every 10 seconds? Yes please.

Sustained DPS I’m referring to. Mesmer’s have great burst capabilities, but my analysis is based on PvE team and solo play (There’s no doubting mesmer’s PvP credentials) – and in that respect mesmer’s sustained DPS when specced for the role is pretty close to the bottom (The reddit number crunchers say it’s second worst, coming after ranger)

Aggro isn’t a good indicator of DPS as there are many other factors besides DPS that affect aggro (Toughness is the single biggest influence. A mesmer in full knight’s gear doing pathetic DPS yet easily pull aggro off an entire team of zerker warriors).

As for the 14-15 burst every 10 seconds as a selling point; a zerker DPS specced GS warrior I’m told can pull off closer to 50k burst every 10 seconds (This same burst is of course almost useless in PvP as people will just get out the way, but again, in PvE, where sustained DPS counts, mobs tend to stand in melee and rub their face all over your sword, so mobility of said DPS matters less)

everything you’ve complained about only applies to pve. in that regard, the properly speced warrior may be able to do 50k/10seconds, but thats all he does. mesmers may only do a fraction of that, but they also provide great team utility and support.

it makes no sense to compare two different roles in pve.

But GW2 is in an interesting place b/c its emphasis on Interrupts rather than chain stuns.

As a gw1 mesmer / ranger player, I have only 1 word for that: lol.

Nothing was more satisfying in GW1 than playing a Dom Mesmer in GvG or even HA, skills like Diversion & Shame were key to shutting people down, Power Block was devestating when used properly, interrupts like Power Drain were key to not only interrupt but return much needed energy to fuel your other expensive skills. I love my Mesmer in GW2, but it is an entirely different beast. I hope when the dust settles things like Confusion are re visited and buffed to allow more build diversity.

Ryuujin.8236:

Arale.4207:

When you say DPS, do you mean damage per second or overall damage? I’ve never seen a guardian or engineer peel aggro off my shatter mesmer in dungeons via damage. Warriors can, yes, but if I play smart enough, I can pull aggro off of them as well sometimes. Phantasm Mesmers do fairly consistent damage per second, but low burst. Shatter Mesmers aren’t too grand in damage per second, even accounting proper pZerker spawning, but we have godlike burst in dungeons. 14-18k mindwrack crits every 10 seconds? Yes please.

Sustained DPS I’m referring to. Mesmer’s have great burst capabilities, but my analysis is based on PvE team and solo play (There’s no doubting mesmer’s PvP credentials) – and in that respect mesmer’s sustained DPS when specced for the role is pretty close to the bottom (The reddit number crunchers say it’s second worst, coming after ranger)

Aggro isn’t a good indicator of DPS as there are many other factors besides DPS that affect aggro (Toughness is the single biggest influence. A mesmer in full knight’s gear doing pathetic DPS yet easily pull aggro off an entire team of zerker warriors).

As for the 14-15 burst every 10 seconds as a selling point; a zerker DPS specced GS warrior I’m told can pull off closer to 50k burst every 10 seconds (This same burst is of course almost useless in PvP as people will just get out the way, but again, in PvE, where sustained DPS counts, mobs tend to stand in melee and rub their face all over your sword, so mobility of said DPS matters less)

I wasn’t aware that our sustained was that bad. My PSwordsman were doing 6-8k per attack every 4 seconds last time I was a phantasm build, and my Warlock was throwing 10ks around every 7 seconds. I truly believe most people who say our sustained is bad simply summon phantasms at the wrong time. How you manage your summons, positioning, and proper chaos storms to keep them alive is where it will make or break the sustained dps. Those are just phantasms too, doesn’t count blurred frenzy or sword auto/shatter if they are about to die via aoe to summon more. Again though, I will look into that.

As for the warrior comment, that is true. Warriors do the top damage in dungeons, but my post was more along the lines of guardians/engi’s being better then us at damage, which simply isn’t true. They can be competitive, but I doubt they can pull out that level or raw damage. My point was that our damage is in fact very high on the list. Not warrior tier, but if played right, top tier. We can also provide all of our utility without nerfing our damage, so there’s that as well.

Are you sure you’re not just talking about gw2 mesmers?

Just want to point out. You know how mesmers were supposed to be a “lockdown class” being the only class that has a ton of trait points focused on interrupts etc. The interrupt Mesmer is not going to come out because of one thing and one thing only
Terrormancers. They can chain fears like no tomorrow while also doing damage. They get the bonus if they interrupted a skill or not. we only get the bonus if the target is interrupted while doing something so we pretty much just wasted a trait point centered on an interrupt for nothing.

While I agree this plays into skill and timing which is fine. But why run an interrupt Mesmer when your team can get a terrormancer and put out more damage with more chain lock downs… I hope people see the point I am making.

To be honest, I don’t feel the GW2 Mesmer is much of a control class at all. You could argue that old Confusion in WvW was a form of control, although it really was more of a “die if you do, die if you don’t” situation which is somewhat beyond control. Other than that the Mesmer isn’t that much better at control than other classes.

Embolism.8106:

To be honest, I don’t feel the GW2 Mesmer is much of a control class at all. You could argue that old Confusion in WvW was a form of control, although it really was more of a “die if you do, die if you don’t” situation which is somewhat beyond control. Other than that the Mesmer isn’t that much better at control than other classes.

But see that is the point! Why do we have all these traits focused on control when honestly other classes can do it better? There is still no place in the meta for an interrupt Mesmer maybe if the interrupt traits were changed to “daze” only traits or daze/stun traits we might have a chance but with all the particle effects it is hard to see what skills to interrupt what is more annoying is necros are the ones that we have to try and focus our interrupts on but aside from their heal they really have almost no animations to track and you can never tell which mark they are putting down or if its a will and I still haven’t been able to figure out the animations for things like corrupt boon an epidemic. They are just too subtle. Unlike Mesmer phantasms (1.5s cast time for some)

For those saying “but mesmer will never be irrelevant in PvE due to our support”, you might want to look closer at my original story. Psionics never became “unwanted” in fact they were incredibly desirable class for party play.

The problem was that their support was so good, that the devs kept trading in more and more of their DPS and survival, until they became little more than buff-bots who’s skills exist for the benefit of other people rather than themselves.

Where have we seen that before?

• “Portalbot”
• “Timewarp plox!”

Skills of dubious use to the mesmer themself, but we keep being nerfed due to their sheer power when given to a party or zerg.

wads.5730:

everything you’ve complained about only applies to pve. in that regard, the properly speced warrior may be able to do 50k/10seconds, but thats all he does. mesmers may only do a fraction of that, but they also provide great team utility and support.

it makes no sense to compare two different roles in pve.

That’s just. I’m comparing pure DPS spec mesmer against pure DPS spec warrior – the parity is a joke. A support spec warrior brings a hell of a lot to the table too while retaining DPS – AoE rezes, permafury/crit bonuses, stacks of might coming out your ears, party healing; you just don’t see them so often.

This is somewhat a different discussion for a different thread we’re getting into however; the DPS/support/control trinity in GW2, and how DPS counts for almost the entire game, support secondary and control is a joke. So saying support is our “role” in a supposedly non-role orientated MMO, and thats why we don’t do equitable DPS in any configuration overlooks anet’s manifesto promises.

Master of Timespace.2548:

But GW2 is in an interesting place b/c its emphasis on Interrupts rather than chain stuns.

As a gw1 mesmer / ranger player, I have only 1 word for that: lol.

Ditto – I mained ranger and mesmer (Guaranteed interuppts or your money back!) in my 5 years in GW1 and GW2’s interupts are awful by comparison.

Yep, where’s the diversity, don’t get me wrong I enjoy shatter, but it was more fun to be able to have multiple builds to run pre confusion nerf, I know there are more builds but boon sharing I may as well play my guardian and have 100% retaliation up.

I say down with Mesmers. You know who was nerfed every single patch in this game, just like those Psis in Allods Online? Elementalists.

Aether, I would think an Elementalist doesn’t want anyone nerfed. Considering your own situation. But, yes – this goes back to my favourite comment: nerf less, buff more.
All of this wholescale nerfing merely limits class diversity, when we should be adding it, for cryin’ out loud.

currently there is only one viable build for pve, tpvp or wvw. shatter. thats so sad..

i agree with @op. after 10 month enjoying the mesmer, its not so fun anymore.

and if u think interupt mesmers now good replacement for former mesmer great builds (blind/glamour. immortal, pvp phantasms. others) you are very wrong. if u meet good enemy opponent. he dont die in 5 sec after ur interupts combo. in a group fights 10+ u cant do something valuable. enemy group just have stability. simple buff and easy to get.
so imo if mesmer will nerfed again in over the next patchs. i better go play tetris or jewel star. ofc u can say: go now! but i wait a bit

Also we are out shined in interrupts by well most other classes…. especially fear necros

the amount that they can chain fear…. Mantras/And Mesmer interrupts need crazy buffs to be considered viable. Or we need conidition removal on par with other classes in this game because right now when it comes to condi removal we are bottom tier and in a condi dominated meta… that is no bueno.

Master of Timespace.2548:

But GW2 is in an interesting place b/c its emphasis on Interrupts rather than chain stuns.

As a gw1 mesmer / ranger player, I have only 1 word for that: lol.

+1

Sometimes i wonder what would have been Gw1 if it had this community of whiners instead of the more mature one that grew there.

GW1 Mesmer, if properly played, was a nightmare.
-You’re healing? Interrupt!
-You’re attacking? There we go, Emphaty. Stop slapping yourself!
-You’r*rupt* oh, i took your mana, sorry for that.
-Where are you thinking to run? Crippling Anguish!
-How are you so nicely stacked toghether! Panic or Fevered Dreams.
-Self protection with a enchant – stripped your enchantement. Ah, and aoe dmg with that.
-I see you like to spam that Heal… here, pick up this +72 seconds of CD.
-Look, so many conditions on you! Let’s share those with your friends! Epidemic

Seriously, GW1 mesmer ability to control the field puts all the GW2 professions stacked toghether in shame.

GW2 mesmer is much more oriented on dmg – not a problem per se. Issue is, it’s getting bunked more and more each month.

By the powers of the NECRO. Arise dead thread ARISE: (Insert evil laugh here).

Relevant considering the recent patching in the last few months and the future outlook for mesmers, maybe, maybe not ? or should I of held off this long awaited necroing till next year ?

Hmz, I forgot this thread existed. Bit of a different situation, as nobody was clamoring for ileap nerfs, but same result. Leveling a Mesmer is certainly like pulling your teeth out.

True the situation is a bit different but as you said same net result. Mesmer is not top pick in PvP or PVE and over all mainly nerfs instead of buffs. Also only thread I remembered from a year ago that I could necro for the fun of it :P

Oh wow!!! I used to play an elven oracle psi in allods right before GW2 came out! Yeah that class was similar to mesmer, but a lot clunkier (the game was in general though) and it was more ranged purple spell effects and telekinetic linking than mesmer’s melee abilities or clone powers. The strongest skill a psi could do in allods was telekinetic pull, an ground target AoE that would pull mobs to the target of the area, and make them easier to tank or AoE, kind of like a guardian’s binding blade. It was the subject of many a nerf thanks to all the QQ, and eventually they changed the skill so that it applied a buff to enemies that would make them immune to the skill for a bit after the cooldown of the skill is up. I played that class right after they revamped it and everyone ran psyshock builds. It was a cool class, but mesmer is so much more interesting and fluid.. but I would say the circle of nerf is quite similar.

Overall allods had a lot of problems. leveling was such a grind, the cash shop made it pay to win in every way, and after playing GW2 I could never play an MMO again that roots you for every spell on a caster class, or one that doesn’t use dodging. Anyway it will be interesting to see what happens to Willdstar’s esper class, but I don’t know too much about their viability, or too much about that game in general.

Edit: Also OP, you were mindhack :O

I vaguely remember you from when I used to play that game. I didn’t do much, but I did post an extremely comprehensive Psi Compendium of the forums back the month or so before GW2 came out to get free cash shop points from their GMs lol. But when GW2 came out, and I saw how “kewl” it looked, I knew I had to never touch allods ever again.

about a year ago

Jeez… That sounded so familiar and had so much sense that I was purely amazed at that it wasn’t posted today.

to black-tagged people who have the power to kill undead threads: no need to do it here; this one is more topical than ever.

Lishtenbird.2814:

about a year ago

Jeez… That sounded so familiar and had so much sense that I was purely amazed at that it wasn’t posted today.

to black-tagged people who have the power to kill undead threads: no need to do it here; this one is more topical than ever.

Wow.. that’s crazy 0.o

erm actually this has kinda happened to the mes already. confusion and glamour war our dor and signature. anet nerfed it sooo hard it was almost impossible to viable stack. then they bring out perplexity runes that allows any other class but mes to stack 25 stack of confusion that last longer. this was suuuch a slap in our face and the nerfs are never ending. at least fix the bugs first before nerfing more!!!!

It was a prophesy!!!!

Ryuujin = Nostradamus

You know, I play mesmer as my main, and he is doing just fine, thank you. I only have a problem against thieves, and some hammer warriors. otherwise, I do pretty good, thank you very much.