Guild Wars 2

Berserker Power: Gain 20% damage for 10 seconds when spending 3 bars of adrenaline.

100% uptime.

Harmonious Mantras: 20% damage for 8 seconds starting per 5 charges used, with much larger upkeep effort. Nerfed now to 15%, same difficulty to keep up stacks without gutting DPS.

WELCOME TO PVP BALANCING. TOO LAZY TO SPLIT SKILLS FOR PVE/PVP ANYMORE.

Who gives a kitten about PvP nerfs gutting builds for PvE.

Back to the garbage bin, you mantras go back to.

It’s back to signet builds for PvE again.

At least when HoT comes out we can take dom/chrono/inspiration now that dueling goes down the drain with absolutely terrible grandmasters now for PvE.

P.S. TO GIVE AN IDEA, PRENERF TO KEEP 4-5 STACKS OF HARMONIOUS MANTRAS UP YOU NEEDED TO BE CHAIN CASTING MANTRA OF PAIN WITH BARELY DOING ANYTHING IN BETWEEN. WARRIOR JUST DID HIS NORMAL ROTATIONS TO KEEP A 20% DAMAGE BONUS.

Harmonious Mantras is actually 15% now and imposible to keep max stacks up over a lengthy period of time.

balance team trolls on…

When thiefs are only allowed to have one viable build, Mesmer need to have only one viable build, too.

Justice.

Yeah I gotta admit while this might help (a little?) balance out the enormous burst/damage mesmer does in PvP, this was a major dump on PvE mesmers. It’s not like mesmers are dps kings there. Totally unnecessary.

A better change for all game modes would have been to reduce the number of stacks but increase the duration of them by a reasonable amount so you can actually hold them for a decent amount of time.

I feel the same way. This is just stupid. Even in PvP or WvW Harmonious Mantras wasn’t that much of a deal so why nerf that?

Looks like Anet wants mesmer damage to be kitten in PvE…

Welp. My Mantra Mesmer was enjoying the fun while it lasted. Time to go back to that old shelf again….. Gonna miss you.

Lol, shelfing mesmer that quick? If you think those small dmg nerfs were the thing carrying you, you’re better off shelfing it anyway.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Lol, shelfing mesmer that quick? If you think those small dmg nerfs were the thing carrying you, you’re better off shelfing it anyway.

Maybe it’s more about the trust in ANet that actually tweak the stuff that are necessary, instead of the ones pointed out in this thread? Did you forget the MtD and Chaotic Dampening nerfs too?

rchu.8945:

blitzkrieg.2451:

Lol, shelfing mesmer that quick? If you think those small dmg nerfs were the thing carrying you, you’re better off shelfing it anyway.

Maybe it’s more about the trust in ANet that actually tweak the stuff that are necessary, instead of the ones pointed out in this thread? Did you forget the MtD and Chaotic Dampening nerfs too?

That and the previous patch removing some of the damage modifers for Mantras did it in for me. Oddly enought though, how Mantras were working, resetting the CD after precast, even if it was a bug, helped to redeem the patch. Now that’s fixed with this new patch and mantras are now lackluster once again.

The mes wasn’t my current main anyways.

rchu.8945:

blitzkrieg.2451:

Lol, shelfing mesmer that quick? If you think those small dmg nerfs were the thing carrying you, you’re better off shelfing it anyway.

Maybe it’s more about the trust in ANet that actually tweak the stuff that are necessary, instead of the ones pointed out in this thread? Did you forget the MtD and Chaotic Dampening nerfs too?

Fair enough, yea anet doesn’t balance the right way. It’s a shame really.

blitzkrieg.2451:

rchu.8945:

blitzkrieg.2451:

Lol, shelfing mesmer that quick? If you think those small dmg nerfs were the thing carrying you, you’re better off shelfing it anyway.

Maybe it’s more about the trust in ANet that actually tweak the stuff that are necessary, instead of the ones pointed out in this thread? Did you forget the MtD and Chaotic Dampening nerfs too?

Fair enough, yea anet doesn’t balance the right way. It’s a shame really.

For PVE players trying to keep up with the high builds all over, every little bit we need. Losing some mantra burst PLUS back to the recharge as it was before DOES suck. Will look at it myself tonight to see how much this affects me.

They don’t care about PvE, last instanced PvE content update was 2 years ago.

Rangers and necromancers have been rotting in garbage land for over 3 years in PvE, while guardian/ele/warrior/thief have been coasting in supremacy for just as long. Nothing done.

They’re set on their e-sport balancing and PvE players be kitten ed.

It’s OK, PvE players can vote with their wallets for FFXIV/Wildstar/WoW where they know they’ll get some meaningful PvE content and balancing.

Zenith.7301:

They don’t care about PvE, last instanced PvE content update was 2 years ago.

Rangers and necromancers have been rotting in garbage land for over 3 years in PvE, while guardian/ele/warrior/thief have been coasting in supremacy for just as long. Nothing done.

They’re set on their e-sport balancing and PvE players be kitten ed.

It’s OK, PvE players can vote with their wallets for FFXIV/Wildstar/WoW where they know they’ll get some meaningful PvE content and balancing.

I know their “adventure” pve announcement for content seemed … unappealing to me. The solo stuff that’s timed. I don’t pvp a whole lot and maybe that just means the game’s on fumes for me. Luckily I have voted with my wallet somewhat. I haven’t pre-purchased HoT yet and haven’t been giving them money for their gem store stuff in a year since I haven’t seen a direction I’m in love with.

And I know about ranger woes as well. My mains are guardian and ranger with mesmer being main material recently even though I kill things slower without perfection from phantasm damage …

I haven’t pre-purchased either, waiting to hear about that “challenging group content” but what’s the point anyways since their directions seems to take a dump on a set of classes for PvP’s sake, making the challenging content even worse for the classes that are weak in PvE and get nerfed even more because developers can’t be bothered to split PvE/PvP balancing like they did in their first game.

I don’t know whether their entire GW1 team has been replaced or some directive has been imposed upon them to discard all the good skill splitting that kept GW1 good and go with this GW2 pvp-centric crap balance instead.

This game is a pale shadow of GW1, it’s disgraceful how poorly treated the PvE crowd is. Not that spvp is that much better given the conquest format being foisted on them for 3 years compared to the GvG iun GW1’s multiple formats. But at least pvp people get the game balanced around them.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know whether their entire GW1 team has been replaced

Well pretty much yes, at least all the Major ones.

on that april 15th patch long ago that moved the mantra trait to a different traitline, I quit mesmer and went back to ele. this year I finally came back to mes, fell in love again recently, and now they nerf mantras…. sigh.

The whining is pretty ridiculous. Effects aren’t comparable cross-class. Just because one class has a 20% modifier doesn’t mean that other classes should have the same or better.

Carighan.6758:

The whining is pretty ridiculous. Effects aren’t comparable cross-class. Just because one class has a 20% modifier doesn’t mean that other classes should have the same or better.

Yeah the idea that classes should be balanced against each other is ridiculous.

The thing is a-net probably wants us to have low damage in PvE. Arguably, mesmer is the easiest class to balance PvE vs PvP because both use VERY different builds. If you want to adjust the strength in PvP, adjust the shatter strength. If you want to adjust the strength in PvE, adjust phantasm strength. There is no viable phantasm build in PvP, so they could so very easily increase our damage by increasing the phantasm attack rate for example. Phantasms are usually killed before that in PvP!

No, we are meant to be a utility bot, and when our utilities are not needed, then we become pointless.

Carighan.6758:

The whining is pretty ridiculous. Effects aren’t comparable cross-class. Just because one class has a 20% modifier doesn’t mean that other classes should have the same or better.

I totally agree. Considering that our damage multipliers do not apply on phantasms, they are much less effective than on a warrior, so we should get a 40% modifier on mantras!

Wait, isn’t that what you meant

I’m not so bothered by the mantra damage nerf so much as that lovely background cooldown being removed. It was very handy, think I’ll miss that more than anything.

Mantra of pain is still pretty much without CD. Distraction on the other hand, despite the CD reduction…

In an amazing world ANet would read this thread and reconsider the changes to Harmonious Mantras damage modifier and the cooldown.
This is really a bummer to us crazy mesmers who ran mantras.

Silverkey.2078:

Mantra of pain is still pretty much without CD. Distraction on the other hand, despite the CD reduction…

It’s neither of those. Mantra of Recovery is the obvious one. With 2 stacks per use it was our most reliable way to keep 5 stacks for the 20% modifier without permanently casting mantra of pain and doing nothing else for just 4 stacks instead.

The change is plain terrible for PvE.

And just you wait, every oxygen-deprived pvp moron is gonna start coming in here justifying the nerf and white knighting out of their pvp resentment with mesmers.

First, they nerfed a passive mantra bonus where you could actually hit stuff between mantras and turned them into a QoL nightmare where you are staring at the skillbar like an idiot and mashing buttons like Lubomyr Melnyk instead of playing the game.

Then, background cooldown was awesome and finally felt like something that made mantras less clunky and gave the awful PvE mantra gameplay more flow.

…so obviously, they had to take it away. Because playing a mesmer should be utter pain and frustration for less of a result than an AFKing warrior, and no one cares about PvE balancing.

Back to sticking to ele in the rare cases when I could actually choose mesmer over it.

Zenith.7301:

Silverkey.2078:

Mantra of pain is still pretty much without CD. Distraction on the other hand, despite the CD reduction…

It’s neither of those. Mantra of Recovery is the obvious one. With 2 stacks per use it was our most reliable way to keep 5 stacks for the 20% modifier without permanently casting mantra of pain and doing nothing else for just 4 stacks instead.

The change is plain terrible for PvE.

And just you wait, every oxygen-deprived pvp moron is gonna start coming in here justifying the nerf and white knighting out of their pvp resentment with mesmers.

Yea but you have to realize the issue lies in balancing between game modes on anet’s end, you can’t blame the person in PvP for your justification of PvE stuff because anet fails to balance between both modes.

Simple fix , that really isn’t so simple for anet but still would be ideal: Keep it the way it is in PvP and WvW , revert it back for PvE only (and no, this doesn’t include WvW).

Erron.5327:

In an amazing world ANet would read this thread and reconsider the changes to Harmonious Mantras damage modifier and the cooldown.
This is really a bummer to us crazy mesmers who ran mantras.

In an amazing world ANet would put a pure DPS PvE trait in a tier where an absolutely integral, option-excluding PvP trait exists (which apparently Deceptive Evasion was not?).

Maybe Anet would be open to the idea of setting the cool downs lower.

Recovery: 10s (no change)
Pain: 1s (no change)
Distraction: 10-15s
Concentration: 10-15s
Resolve: 10s

It’s not ferpect but it would make mantras at least usable.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Yea but you have to realize the issue lies in balancing between game modes on anet’s end, you can’t blame the person in PvP for your justification of PvE stuff because anet fails to balance between both modes.

Simple fix , that really isn’t so simple for anet but still would be ideal: Keep it the way it is in PvP and WvW , revert it back for PvE only (and no, this doesn’t include WvW).

Except that the damage bonus for Harmonious Mantras wasn’t problematic in the first place, in any game mode. If ANet really wanted to shave a damage modifier somewhere, why not Mental Anguish?

Newsflash mesmer is mandatory on every single WR speedrun team already.

It’s a pvp nerf. If you wanna complain about it not even being a problem in pvp thats fine, but lets be real here complaining about mesmer’s PvE state is flat out ridiculous.

I have a feeling that it was done to lessen the impact of the" PU stealth>MirrorBlade>MoD/CS stun(Mantra Strengh)> MindWrack>Mind Stab" combo that is plaguing PvP/WvW. And that’s the only reason.

Meanwhile both CS and PU are untouched. Those will happen in the next patch.. So we get doubly hit. (just not at once.)

Linnael.1069:

Newsflash mesmer is mandatory on every single WR speedrun team already.

It’s a pvp nerf. If you wanna complain about it not even being a problem in pvp thats fine, but lets be real here complaining about mesmer’s PvE state is flat out ridiculous.

Haha, funny joke. Have you even watched those speed runs? Half the time the Mesmer doesn’t even attack the boss, they just drop a portal, pick up an fgs, and wait for the door to open so that they can portal the eles to the next boss. Trying to argue that Mesmer is in a good spot in pve just makes you look exceedingly foolish.

Linnael.1069:

Newsflash mesmer is mandatory on every single WR speedrun team already.

It’s a pvp nerf. If you wanna complain about it not even being a problem in pvp thats fine, but lets be real here complaining about mesmer’s PvE state is flat out ridiculous.

Q4T

Edit: Pyro you have a point but then again Linnael is mainly pointing out that the 4% to 3% makes very little and is pretty much no nerf to the PvE builds.

I personally think it’s a silly change, simply reverting mantras to the clunky way of using them pre patch is enough to kill that 1 team that may have almost beaten the Abjured…once.

P.S. Not saying mesmer is in a good place damage wise in PvE but at least it does have a role unlike everything that isn’t a warrior, ele or mesmer now.

apharma.3741:

Linnael.1069:

Newsflash mesmer is mandatory on every single WR speedrun team already.

It’s a pvp nerf. If you wanna complain about it not even being a problem in pvp thats fine, but lets be real here complaining about mesmer’s PvE state is flat out ridiculous.

Q4T

Edit: Pyro you have a point but then again Linnael is mainly pointing out that the 4% to 3% makes very little and is pretty much no nerf to the PvE builds.

I personally think it’s a silly change, simply reverting mantras to the clunky way of using them pre patch is enough to kill that 1 team that may have almost beaten the Abjured…once.

P.S. Not saying mesmer is in a good place damage wise in PvE but at least it does have a role unlike everything that isn’t a warrior, ele or mesmer now.

You don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Every meta team is war/ele/ele/thief/mesmer for speed clear records. So we’re talking ranger and necro being out of the meta, and guardians are heavily desired in fractal 50 over a mesmer.

Mesmer is a portal bot just like he is a portal/veil bot in WvW, a complete gimmick class with no purpose other than to blow two 75+ second cd’s and remain useless for the remainder.

The day a class gets portal other than mesmer is the day mesmer goes to chill with ranger and necro in the garbage bin of PvE.

Yeah sorry, my bad

http://gw2dungeons.net/Records

There are some thieves and guards kicking around just about.

Edit: I do know exactly what I’m talking about. I am more than aware what mesmer is there for, portal. The only thing that makes record runs faster at this point in time is time saved between mandatory fights. For that reason alone mesmer is top now with portal.

Additionally for the fractal records there are 6 done with guards and 5 done with mesmers. Across all dungeons guards are there for 13 while mesmers for 27.

Well it was nice knowing you Harmonious Mantras, but you’re just not worth the investment anymore.

This is really going to have very little impact on PvP (any mantra builds were already on the way out) but PvE Mesmer just took a 5% dps decrease.

Anet have now nerfed both direct damage and condi damage Mesmer (torment shatter, lower burn damage from staff clones) in PvE. I actually think torment shatter could have been pretty useful in PvE with some of the new mobs being introduced with HoT.

Mesmer is slowly entering the domain of Ranger and Necro in PvE now, especially as Guardians provide better quickness uptime. Better hope that Alacrity synergises well with…anything an Elementalist can do. More icebows!

You also forgot to mention that we need to fill our bar with, mostly useless, utility skills and to get that buff while warriors just needs to attack. Or just take damage with a certain trait. Or, and this is the best, just be in combat while not attacking or being attacked if they just take Signet of Rage.

apharma.3741:

Yeah sorry, my bad

http://gw2dungeons.net/Records

There are some thieves and guards kicking around just about.

Edit: I do know exactly what I’m talking about. I am more than aware what mesmer is there for, portal. The only thing that makes record runs faster at this point in time is time saved between mandatory fights. For that reason alone mesmer is top now with portal.

Additionally for the fractal records there are 6 done with guards and 5 done with mesmers. Across all dungeons guards are there for 13 while mesmers for 27.

Here’s the problem.

In dungeons, if the mesmer class consisted entirely of portal, time warp, and the ability to run forwards, they’d still be guaranteed a spot in most speedrun parties. The truth is, in most speedruns that’s pretty much all they contribute to the party. The damage is awful, you don’t really need other utility since eles/guards/warriors do it all, aaaand that’s it.

Instead of recognizing that as a bit of a problem, you and Linnael are attempting to argue that being a glorified troop transport is just fine and dandy, and nothing needs to change. In fact, we should be thankful that we’re glorified troop transports, just look at necros. They have no troop transporting ability and they’re sad because of it.

I have no idea who Linnael is, but I generally respect your posts, and seeing you making such an infantile argument disappoints me.

Which is hysterical because they’re rather pigheaded about not having a trinity and forced roles for groups/classes, yet mesmer is the equivalent of a Vanilla WoW shaman.

Drop your totem and do whatever since nothing besides those totem buffs really matters.

The mesmer is essentially pigeonholed to a single duty in a group with no other competitive functions. A complete contradiction of their design intent.

But this wouldn’t be the first time they’re caught lying. Some dev had the nerve to say rangers lacked burst because they were envisioned as a high sustained DPS class, and yet it is only ahead of mesmer and necro in terms of sustained DPS and behind the others.

This whole pretense of caring about both formats is so obviously revealed to be false by now. They don’t give a kitten about PvE balance.

For mesmer, you can’t have the same stuff in both game modes , it’s really simple as that. If you buff dmg in PvE , it effects PvP and on a huge level… They really need to exclusively split stuff between game modes ESPECIALLY for mesmer.

I think if they reverted the mantra changes for PvE (and no, not WvW also) then it would be fine as mesmers need the dmg in PvE to even come close to competing for dmg spots and just leave it like it is now in PvP/Wvw it should be perfectly fine. I think this would really give back mesmers the dmg they needed for PvE. (still doesn’t come close to warrior/ele dmg but whatever)

at least I enjoyed the mantra build while it lasted. back to Power PU yay!

I think the problem is a bit of stubbornness from developers. They didn’t think of dungeons in terms of speed-clearing zerk parties. They thought of it as a very challenging content that requires a lot of defensive support and stuff. They never tried to balance the top DPS of all classes because classes where not supposed to reach that DPS. So classes which provide a lot of defensive group support (mesmer, guardians…) or high sustain (necro) got low DPS because “they would be able to maintain it easily” while the elementalist “would always die so would probably not spec full DPS”. The warrior still bugs me in this design plan, but anyway.

And now that they realized this didn’t work as planed, they don’t want to fix it because they have a new experience in HoT “challenging group content” (which I really hope will be revealed in Cologne) so they don’t need to rebalance DPS because, you know… back to plan A. But I am very afraid that after the first weeks/months this new content will again be min-maxed and zerked to the ground, and the problem will remain.

Guardian is not low DPS. It is only below ele/engineer/thief DPS and on par with warrior, far ahead from ranger>necro>mesmer. And guardian utility blows mesmer utility out of the water.

Silverkey.2078:

I totally agree. Considering that our damage multipliers do not apply on phantasms, they are much less effective than on a warrior, so we should get a 40% modifier on mantras!

Wait, isn’t that what you meant

It is actually what I meant, indirectly. I was seriously just complaining about people always comparing things 1-to-1, as if that’s sensible.

I do agree with you that if anything our modifiers should be higher, not lower. Though this also depends on base weapon damage calculations, attack setups ,utility selections, bla bla bla. Tons of variables.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy Mesmer is a glorified troop transport and considering on casual runs (anything that is there for the loot as much as the gold) it’s very poor. However the point that was being made is they’re there for a certain reason, portal, with that more or less making their spot guarenteed.

Warriors weren’t exactly happy they were there for might providing reasons. On the bright side the trait changes allow them to do that with very little loss of dps now.

Tbh I’d just be happy if they made it so phantasms only took damage from mobs when targeted or something.

Zenith.7301:

And guardian utility blows mesmer utility out of the water.

Not really.

Fhaeris.9237:

Zenith.7301:

And guardian utility blows mesmer utility out of the water.

Not really.

Yes, really. Say one PvE utility that guardian does not do better besides portal.

Higher reflect uptime, their wall of reflection is placed where they need it, not dependent on a targeted mob that may or may not move out of it while the guardian can place the wall on the group unlike the mesmer who can no longer place the bubble on the group without a target.

With traited spirit shield and wall guardian has far more projectile absorption.

Stability for harpy/aether blade fractal? Hallowed Ground/Stand Your Ground is better than mantra of concentration.

Feel My Wrath has greater group quickness uptime than time warp.

And then there’s the high uptime of group protection and aegis/blinds.

I was thinking about it and my suggestion is to add one extra damage percentage point to compounding power. This helps make up for the pve loss of harmonious mantras and helps forge a greater identity difference between taking illusions for damage and inspiration for group support and reflects.

Xstein.2187:

I was thinking about it and my suggestion is to add one extra damage percentage point to compounding power. This helps make up for the pve loss of harmonious mantras and helps forge a greater identity difference between taking illusions for damage and inspiration for group support and reflects.

Yeah, because 3% to a trait based on illusion uptime in a format where illusions are immediately wiped out by cleaving autoattacks and spammed lethal AoE would be a “fix” for a completely unnecessary nerf.

By all means, don’t address confounding suggestions. Nerf a grandmaster and mantra utilities many other builds that are not a problem use.

Typical Anet balancing.