Guild Wars 2

Hi everybody, I know what is the new patch means to us. But I don’t think complain about it helps. I do not think Anet make changes base on what we say here. They may do a statistic or something else, and then make this kind of change.

I am not trying to suggest that the change is ok, I feel we are weak at PVE too, and I do think the change made it worse. But you know what, I still love this class. I believe the reason you guys talk about it is the same. So now, let’s be positive, go back to the game and try to enjoy.

In the end, if you still feel bad, just take look at elementalist and their change. You feel happy instantly (Unfortunately, I DO have a elementalist, now I decide to let her go, elementalist is just going to become weaker and weaker base on the experience of GW1, [7 Years, it took 7 years for Anet to fix elementalist in GW1]).

So, in conclusion. Be happy, if you not, look at elementalist and then be happy.

This whole “Mesmers are weak in PvE” is non-sense. Our guild’s typical Explorable mode group is three Mesmers, an Elementalist and an Engineer. Everything dies, and dungeons are completed. I play one of those Mesmers.

The nerfs aren’t too bad and need a period of non-panicy player adjustment; we’ll be fine.

^ what Parthis said. Even with heavy phantasm staff build, if non-champion mobs live long enough to get phantasm cooldown off, you’re doing something wrong. On those champions and bosses, 3x iWarlock + GS combo will still be one of the best ranged dps builds in game, it’ll just take a few extra seconds to set up.

The only thing that does kinda suck is the longer cooldown on Chaos Storm – let’s face it, Aegis every 30s was kinda awesome. Still, it’s not THAT bad, especially with reduced cooldown on Chaos Armor.

EDIT: Oh, btw.: elementalists aren’t a bad class, people just complain too much.

Agree.
Only thing is bad – Chaos Storm c/d, but we can handle it =)

In PvE mesmer is still nice, espec. in dungeons.

Yes, exactly. We are great. But look at the update on Oct 7 thread, so many people are really upset. So my point is, we are here because we like the class, so be positive.

Mesmer has great single target dps. As for aoes, a Guardian, warrior, ele… close to any class besides ranger could outdps us in aoes even simply with auto attack.

I agree with mdong, I don’t get what the big problem is. Sure we have our problems, we but we’re doing great.

As long as they don’t touch reflective & condition build I dont see any problem

If we don’t complain then Anet won’t know how the playerbase feels about a change and whether to tweak the change or balance further. By saying “everything is fine”, then Anet gets no worthwhile feedback. You’re essentially taking yourself out of the equation because you’re not offering any critical commentary on the change and instead offering up nothing but acquiescence. This is not conducive to effective balancing and effective feedback from the community.

But Plavski, we are very strong. Yes we have stuff we need fixed, but were you honestly not expecting any nerfs in the very near future? :S

Carighan.6758:

But Plavski, we are very strong. Yes we have stuff we need fixed, but were you honestly not expecting any nerfs in the very near future? :S

We’re still strong and we have some retardly op builds, e.g. heal support specced.

Had a 1vs1 in WvW Saturday afternoon and it was completely stupid. I could smoke, nip from my cup of coffee (no joke here) and still ended up nearly full life when I jumped to finish the poor fella. It took me no effort, no skill, to just beat the guy, imagine when I focuss and try to play properly.

I also tanked a big Ethin Champ on Sunday, I can actually tank nearly everything.

Expect more nerfs incoming I would say.

To be honest, the nerfs barely affected me at all; as my favourite build is a Clone-based Staff build. I usually only conjure Phantasms for Shattering.

I think the main reason for upping Chaos Storm’s CD and reducing Chaos Armour’s is so that the CD order is correct: Anet likes to order weapon skills from lowest CD on the left to highest CD on the right, and when Chaos Storm’s CD was reduced from 40s to 30s this upset the order as Chaos Armour now has a longer CD.

I am actually not sure how does this work. You see the mesmer forum is actually not too bad in the sense of “complain” in compare with elementalist forum. There, people are crying for their issues and posting really really well formatted post with suggestion. Many of them have very long explaining and quite some of them are reasonable change in my opinion. And you see what happened, they (I want to say we here, cause I have elementalist as well) getting weaker and weaker in every patch. It is like the more you complain the weaker you gets (You see, warrior is same as the release right? I have not seem any warrior say that they are underpowered yet).

Plavski.4092:

If we don’t complain then Anet won’t know how the playerbase feels about a change and whether to tweak the change or balance further. By saying “everything is fine”, then Anet gets no worthwhile feedback. You’re essentially taking yourself out of the equation because you’re not offering any critical commentary on the change and instead offering up nothing but acquiescence. This is not conducive to effective balancing and effective feedback from the community.

I am positive they should have at least fixed some of the dozens of bugs infecting this profession along with the nerfs, if not before them.

Majic.4801:

I am positive they should have at least fixed some of the dozens of bugs infecting this profession along with the nerfs, if not before them.

THIS!

This is the entire problem with the way patches have been handled since the game went live.

Bug fixes are taking too long to rectify and when they “are” they actually aren’t (“Forging the Pact being fixed” has pretty much been in every set of patch notes since release)

Expecting perfect balance isn’t remotely feasible but if you’re trying to build a balanced, stable structure on a disease-ridden, bug-infested (sorry I find the sheer volume of persistent and game breaking bugs present in the game even in this early stage quite frankly embarrassing) foundation, well that always end well doesn’t it?

But usually the dev (as in, balance/content changes) and debugging (as in bugfixes) teams are separate.

In other words, the devs won’t fix our bugs because then their boss would be very angry at them. The bugfixing people won’t, once their Blocker- and Critical-bugs are closed. Although… do we have a critical bug right now? Don’t think so, only quite a few I’d classify High Priority.

I’m fully aware they’re separate teams, but neither operates in a vacuum. Balance changes made now aren’t necessarily going to be viable/balanced once bugged traits/abilities are corrected, perpetuating problems, and possibly creating new ones.

And when you say “we” I assume you’re talking specifically about Mesmers? The game has considerably more problems that that of a single class, and this “band-aid” style of fix implementation is only going to artificially delay getting the game to a more stable, balanced state.

None of the “nerfs” in today’s patch notes, across all the classes, are critical or high-priority, and stink more of “whiner appeasement” than anything else, yet they’re happening ahead of more pressing bug fixes.

Changes like these should have been made with a temporary PvE/PvP ability split/difference until high priority bug fixes, across all classes, have been implemented

“Changes like these should have been made with a temporary PvE/PvP ability split/difference until high priority bug fixes, across all classes, have been implemented”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not aware that ability splitting is currently implemented in GW2 in any shape or form.
Are you seriously suggesting that they implement something as significant as this as a temporary solution?

It is. Confusion is different for sPvP from the rest of the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Confusion

MrGorkajuice.8391:

“Changes like these should have been made with a temporary PvE/PvP ability split/difference until high priority bug fixes, across all classes, have been implemented”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not aware that ability splitting is currently implemented in GW2 in any shape or form.
Are you seriously suggesting that they implement something as significant as this as a temporary solution?

They’ve stated on numerous occasions they have the ability to do so, the BWE events show they have the capability to make adjustments to both skills and hotbars based on location/buffs/circumstances. And with mesmer’s specifically you can see that clones are still using OLD and now defunct versions of skills/abilities that this kind of ability separation exists within the game already.

But PvE/PvP splitting as a permanent solution isn’t the correct one as it’s very nature enforces the fact that the ability ISN’T balanced in it’s current state. If ANet are going to insist on the approach of making changes to skills to “balance” PvP that have a negative impact on PvE without bringing other abilities in to line, or fixing bugged ones then any class is going to be worse off for it.

The Mesmer is often referred to as having a “weaker PvE, or slower ramp up time than other classes as a balance for a strong PvP kit” aside from being a stupid, unbalanced premise to base a class around to begin with, changes of this nature are going to doubly impact a mesmer as both facets of the class are going to be affected negatively

They do come here and look at what we’re saying, but if people aren’t going to be constructive (I hope they refuse to read the primary patch thread we have), our concerns won’t be met with positive responses.

I feel if the changes to the phantasm’s CDs are because of PvP, then their HP should be increased to help with the PvE. Phantasms aren’t generally the first target in PvP so a little more health won’t really make a difference. In PvE however, more health can make a huge difference and make the extended CDs less of a problem. It would really help those with phantasm builds, especially in dungeons and yet have little effect in PvP.

On another note, many keep saying about the aoe side of things for DEs and such and that mesmers have little effect before other professions kill all the mobs. We could do with chaos storm causing faster damage and bounce effects either having more bounces, or a completely new skill. What if we had a Kamikaze phantasm that was an instant shatter with a poison or bleed aoe affect? A utility skill perhaps that makes a phantasm that runs to where you want (ground target) and then explodes. That would help with our need for aoe and a ground target skill that’s really useful. It wouldn’t be OP in PvP because it could be dodged but in PvE/dungeons would be amazing. To make a phantasm where it doesn’t matter if you had a target would be great too. Too often a mob would die in a group and the illusion army you were about to shatter it wasted.

Another thing that could help is if the Greatsword’s skill 3, Mind stab, had a bigger radius. It says affects up to 5 targets but at that radius they would need to stack on each other to all be hit!

I will not feel bad for eles because of the signet changes. Look. Face facts.

1) This game has been trying to have “skilled” combat where positioning and tactics matter. Being able to hit something you weren’t even facing is the sort of thing we were all railing against in games like WoW. It existing on signets was nothing more or less than a bug.

2) Same for signets hitting things well beyond their documented range.

3) Whirlpool…OK let me start off by saying it sucks for Eles that they have so few choices for elites while in the water. However. Is there any build that relies on whirlpool so muchthat it is now completely invialbe to play the game with a 33% reduction in damage? I admit it’s a steep nerf but I cannot imagine that an elite means THAT much outside of underwater combat. And really how often do you need that?

I do have concerns with the recent Mesmer changes, and I intend to bring them up elsewhere, in a hopefully more productive discussion.

Carighan.6758:

But usually the dev (as in, balance/content changes) and debugging (as in bugfixes) teams are separate.

Untrue. Usually they are separated by the part of the code base they work on: profession, crafting, art, word mechanics/dynamic events, infrastructure, etc.

Really? I mean in the team I currently work in we also do work on the bugfixes, but this is a temporary situation neither of us or the client likes. Separate support team is how it should be, including the bugfixers, and we do the enhancements and feature additions.

Dark Blue.4530:

Another thing that could help is if the Greatsword’s skill 3, Mind stab, had a bigger radius. It says affects up to 5 targets but at that radius they would need to stack on each other to all be hit!

I wouldn’t mind the small radius if it was more rewarding to hit with Mind Stab. Currently:

- Removes 1 boon
- Does about the same damage as GS auto
- Can’t move during animation

So I have to aim this tiny circle on an enemy who is likely moving, and the only thing i have to show for it is it removes exactly 1 boon. Mind Stab is on a long enough cooldown that the removal of 1 boon doesn’t seem to even help that much.

I’d be happy if they either made the damage worthwhile, or added some kind of cripple/immobilize or other condition effect to it, possibly along with a CD reduction.

Agree, cripple would be great.

Kyrul.7681:

Dark Blue.4530:

Another thing that could help is if the Greatsword’s skill 3, Mind stab, had a bigger radius. It says affects up to 5 targets but at that radius they would need to stack on each other to all be hit!

I wouldn’t mind the small radius if it was more rewarding to hit with Mind Stab. Currently:

- Removes 1 boon
- Does about the same damage as GS auto
- Can’t move during animation

So I have to aim this tiny circle on an enemy who is likely moving, and the only thing i have to show for it is it removes exactly 1 boon. Mind Stab is on a long enough cooldown that the removal of 1 boon doesn’t seem to even help that much.

I’d be happy if they either made the damage worthwhile, or added some kind of cripple/immobilize or other condition effect to it, possibly along with a CD reduction.

I’m not upset about phantasm nerf. I like phantasm nerf, phantasms are doing too much damage. I am upset about anet failing to address any of the issues of the class.
I recall during BWE2 devs made posts on this very forum promising that mesmer will be polished before release. All they did was increase the phantasm damage and changed clone generation so they don’t replace phantasms. And now they are nefing phantasms. Hey if you’re gonna nerf the phantasms fix the kitten confusion and condition builds, million bugs on traits and skills, fix half of traits being completely useless or mutually antisynergetic.

mdong.9056:

I do not think Anet make changes base on what we say here.

You’ve just nailed it. ANet makes changes based on what people who play other classes say. And that’s the root of the problem.

P.S. I really, really wanted to be constructive but then I read the patch notes…

My problem with this patch notes is that they are nerfing things that works before fixing things that doesn’t, which leaves us with a only few amount of builds possible. I always love to play something different from the " standard " build but I think Anet doesn’t ake it easy for us (not impossible). One of their principal goal was to let players have a wide range of builds to choose from and are doing the opposite to mesmers.

I would love to play a sword-torch mesmer but it isn’t a possibility at the moment.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with arenanet on thois subject i have some questions to ask ?

I gotta be honest, I was pretty upset by the changes. Because they’re rather pointless, really.

I mean, did they do anything that will stop the PvP whining about Mesmers? Nope. The few extra second CDs really aren’t much of a game-changer.

Did they do anything to make Mesmers weaker in PvE? Well, did Mesmers need to be made weaker in PvE? I don’t think I ever saw anyone argue that Mesmer was THE best PvE class in the first place. So were nerfs needed in PvE? Personally I don’t think so. I always found Mesmer to be a little weak on PvE side, especially in heavily camped Orr DEs.

So, why change it? I guess what I’m trying to say is that the changes really make little sense to me. They solve nothing, it’s more like a placebo so that other classes would look and say “Aha, Mesmers got nerfed!” and be happy. But if that’s their reason for these changes, this game is bang in trouble…

Personally at this stage I feel they need to communicate with their player base. Tell people why these changes are being made, on what basis, and with what goal in mind. It would really help.

The changes are not eventful. Only notable change, as stated earlier in the thread, is the Chaos Storm hit.

The cooldown on phantasms won’t matter much except for an extended bunker army build.

Just means you trait some cripple on clone death and kite more.