Guild Wars 2

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1so82e7?new_post=true

“I’ve played around a little with mesmer post patch. People spam whisper me in game for my thoughts so here they are:

These are some of the laziest nerfs I’ve seen since the time when arenanet nerfed quickness by half. How is this a hard concept to grasp? If you completely halve the effectiveness of a certain thing you need to look at the skills tied to this and balance them around the current value.

Well of alacrity was a high cd utility slot skill for the extremely powerful alacrity tradeoff. It was 100% worth the util slot and could be argued to be too strong.

The entire chrono line was balanced around alacrity and was only a problem in pve and in tanky mesmer builds. Alacrity by itself was never overpowered, the wells gaining alacrity to the point they did were.

So what about shatter gives alacrity? What about the trait that makes alacrity last 50% longer? What about all wells that ends well?

You balance the entire chrono line with multiple traits ALL around your new little mechanic and then you kittenING halve it.

The obvious result? Every single skill tied to alacrity, from the well to the traits boosting your duration on alacrity all take a ridicilous hit in effectiveness.

To the dev who proposed and went through with this change: Would you design flow of time (3/4th of a sec alacrity on shatter) with the current state of alacrity? Would you design improved alacrity around this? When you first designed alacrity in the first place you balanced all these cds around the previous state of alacrity.

You would never, ever have nerfed Improved alacrity to 25% but that’s more or less what you did now.

The whole kittening point of chronomancer line is that you don’t get buffed stat wise but that it’s all in utility. Not a single trait boosts your damage, toughness or anything. The only stat modifier is the movement speed(utility) and the 30% crit on slow (trash).

I could type about this forever but here is the golden notes you only need to care about:

ESL added a rule that class stacking is not allowed anymore. I suppose this means that PU chrono could MAYBE see play. This build is literally inferior in every single aspect to DH/rev/thief and would never be picked if the latter two werent allowed to be stacked. The only reason I’d ever play this is because portal+moa can still be abused on it. Stealth, portal, moa. If moa misses you disengage and try again.

The shatter mesmer with duel is completely dead, don’t even bother trying to play it. The CDR hit on alacrity is so big that you actually gain more CDR playing illusion shatter mesmer over chrono which obviously isnt viable due to the powercreep of the game. I’d put that build on the same level as warrior.

Condition mesmer is shockingly not a thing despite the 5% scepter aa buff. Huh.

For those of you that don’t know about the quickness nerf mentioned above, a very long time ago quickness used to have double it’s current effectiveness. Warriors played a build completley built around this using the frenzy utility which made them take double damage but gave them quickness for a few seconds (Can you imagine that the game has powercreeped so hard that quickness for 6ish s while you take DOUBLE DAMAGE as punishment used to be a high tier utility?) and thieves used quickness in exchange for losing their endurance.

Anet nerfed the quickness without even touching those skills, wars still took double damage but now they had half the quickness effectiveness.

I guess it’s worse in this case since they butchered an entire traitline but yeh."

Sadly, while many mesmers will probably agree with what was said, Anet won’t care and could care less about what we think.
That’s why they are on Reddit, changing how you compact gear, and commenting on “safe” posts as we will call them that have little to do with profession balance, gameplay, etc.
PvP forums gets some interaction, mainly about the Esports they are pushing for and failing to get.

For all of us , it would be common sense to change the CDs on wells etc now that alacrity has been nerfed ( after all , the whole trait line’s theme is alacrity).

BUT , did any of you maybe think that the existing CDs on wells are random? zero tests whatsoever , just put a random number , maybe look if it is too kittened ~thats it.

I personally started to believe that they don’t test and they don’t theorycraft , just throw a bunch of stuff and w/e happens.
I mean , why else would they lower the cooldown of Corrupt Boon from 40s to 15s?

Another example.. Time Warp.

Quickness and Slow no longer affect rez/stomps, a HUGE nerf to Time Warp in PvP.

But is there ANY adjustment?? Lower the CD/increase duration to compensate??

The alacrity nerf is so bad, this afternoon I started to take a second/third/tenth look at some of the other chronomancer traits and quickly determined that core mesmer may now be in the ballpark of coming close to chronomancer. Maybe this was the intent, to buff the core by severely nerfing the elite. Whatever the reason, in PvP well of recall is 100% necessary to maintain any stretch of remote viability of ANY chrono build, and that’s sad.

skcamow.3527:

The alacrity nerf is so bad, this afternoon I started to take a second/third/tenth look at some of the other chronomancer traits and quickly determined that core mesmer may now be in the ballpark of coming close to chronomancer. Maybe this was the intent, to buff the core by severely nerfing the elite. Whatever the reason, in PvP well of recall is 100% necessary to maintain any stretch of remote viability of ANY chrono build, and that’s sad.

“Core mesmer has never been competitive – let’s nerf chrono to the same level!” — Anet

This is the first change I’ve been actually really disappointed with, in the long line of mesmer changes since the game first came out. It just feels so badly thought out and as if the development team has never played with one in any sort of group content.

Scribble.8069:

This is the first change I’ve been actually really disappointed with, in the long line of mesmer changes since the game first came out. It just feels so badly thought out and as if the development team has never played with one in any sort of group content.

And there for a few months we had representation and consideration from the devs.

If you are reading this, Robert Gee, thank you so much for your efforts to make our profession desirable, even if it turned into this. From the June 23 patch to the first few months of HoT, your dedication to making Mesmer stand out was and still is very much appreciated.

Makai.3429:

Scribble.8069:

This is the first change I’ve been actually really disappointed with, in the long line of mesmer changes since the game first came out. It just feels so badly thought out and as if the development team has never played with one in any sort of group content.

And there for a few months we had representation and consideration from the devs.

If you are reading this, Robert Gee, thank you so much for your efforts to make our profession desirable, even if it turned into this. From the June 23 patch to the first few months of HoT, your dedication to making Mesmer stand out was and still is very much appreciated.

What if he was behind this patch in relation to the mesmer changes?

Makai.3429:

Scribble.8069:

This is the first change I’ve been actually really disappointed with, in the long line of mesmer changes since the game first came out. It just feels so badly thought out and as if the development team has never played with one in any sort of group content.

And there for a few months we had representation and consideration from the devs.

If you are reading this, Robert Gee, thank you so much for your efforts to make our profession desirable, even if it turned into this. From the June 23 patch to the first few months of HoT, your dedication to making Mesmer stand out was and still is very much appreciated.

You know he still works at Anet and would have been involved in this patch right?

Barring some strange scenario where 2 Anet employees beat him up in the corner while a third quickly programmed all the nerfs, he was probably the one who came up with them.

Levetty.1279:

some strange scenario where 2 Anet employees beat him up in the corner while a third quickly programmed all the nerfs

I speculated last week that this might be the case, and that they threatened to lock him up in a closet if he tried to stop them, so he meekly went back to necro and gave them all the buffs he wanted.

Levetty.1279:

Makai.3429:

Scribble.8069:

This is the first change I’ve been actually really disappointed with, in the long line of mesmer changes since the game first came out. It just feels so badly thought out and as if the development team has never played with one in any sort of group content.

And there for a few months we had representation and consideration from the devs.

If you are reading this, Robert Gee, thank you so much for your efforts to make our profession desirable, even if it turned into this. From the June 23 patch to the first few months of HoT, your dedication to making Mesmer stand out was and still is very much appreciated.

You know he still works at Anet and would have been involved in this patch right?

Barring some strange scenario where 2 Anet employees beat him up in the corner while a third quickly programmed all the nerfs, he was probably the one who came up with them.

If that is the case then all hope is lost.

but colin said esports are better than taxi confession ads

I´ve heard somewhere that some “pro players” actively said that they wanted mesmer out of the game… I don´t know if it´s true but if it is…Gj on that I guess.

At first I was really angry about the balances and ranted about them but right now? I m only sad and really demotivated. I used to look up to the patch day because of the hype they built up, the pages and pages of suggestion threads that everybody wrote and the promise of meaningful changes but afret what all we´ve seen… I don´t know I just don´t want to wait other 6 months so they may fix things up. I can´t just trust them to do so anymore.

He’s right about something for once. And in this case, he’s right about it all unfortunately.

Didn’t you find it surprising that Roy, Irenio and Robert all disappeared around october-november. I think there is no-one left except Karl in the balance team. A-net probably hired them for the big specialization update and the elite specs, and then, bye bye.

Silverkey.2078:

Didn’t you find it surprising that Roy, Irenio and Robert all disappeared around october-november. I think there is no-one left except Karl in the balance team. A-net probably hired them for the big specialization update and the elite specs, and then, bye bye.

Yeah anet haven’t exactly been transparent with dev departures before so it makes me wonder as well.

Guys, quite honestly, you need to look at it objectively. Alacrity is not THE chronomancer mechanic. The F5 is. Alactrity is something that was put in to make the chrono relevant in every game mode.

It is not a boon so it is not corruptible and it affects 5 targets. And you get it from a minor trait with the possibility to further improve it and spread it around more.

Looking at it in a selfish manner, it will reduce CDs of 5 F skills, weapon skills and utility skills. And to top it all off you have the F5 reset button.

Even with reduced alacrity intensity, the chrono is such a massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense.

Now, I do not know how it compares to the buffed thief and necromancer yet, but if there is a problem with it, it will probably be because the thief and necromancer will be revealed to be OP.

Chokolata.1870:

Guys, quite honestly, you need to look at it objectively. Alacrity is not THE chronomancer mechanic. The F5 is. Alactrity is something that was put in to make the chrono relevant in every game mode.

It is not a boon so it is not corruptible and it affects 5 targets. And you get it from a minor trait with the possibility to further improve it and spread it around more.

Looking at it in a selfish manner, it will reduce CDs of 5 F skills, weapon skills and utility skills. And to top it all off you have the F5 reset button.

Even with reduced alacrity intensity, the chrono is such a massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense.

Now, I do not know how it compares to the buffed thief and necromancer yet, but if there is a problem with it, it will probably be because the thief and necromancer will be revealed to be OP.

This is quite possibly the silliest argument I’ve seen on this forum. You’re saying a 90s CD skill that lasts 1.5-6s should be THE one and only chronomancer mechanic? You do know chronomancer’s entire traitline is built around alacrity right? With the current condition meta, F5 has little impact on battle once those condition stacks on you as you don’t reset conditions.

And you answered it yourself, alacrity is not a boon, therefore the alacrity you stack on your own shatter does not get shared. So your suggestion on minor trait affecting share showed that you didn’t do enough homework before you post.

Every elite class has something new to the table, with a lot more skills and roles: Guardians has range and traps, ranger filled the typical RPG trinity role etc. But chronomancer’s alacrity only increase the frequency of old tricks, yet it is the one that got butchered so badly that core traitline Illusions does better job at reducing phantasm and shatter CD. Even plain CDR from most weapon skill does better job, with few exception staff weapon skill because its part of the nerf list. You should know better that with the current state you must slot in well of alacrity to shorten the gap between other traits CDR and alacrity, and that is very unrealistic in pvp setting.

So before you claim chronomancer is “massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense” you need a lot of hard facts to back it up.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

So before you claim chronomancer is “massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense” you need a lot of hard facts to back it up.

This person now the truth, if you don’t intend to play support or defense. The mesmer core is stronger than Chrono in term of offensiv
I was surprised as i turned back to mesmer, as said in some other thread:
I won or was even matched with, druid, scrapper, dare devil and my fellow chrono playing mesmer.

So all those stories about p2win or Elite are far better are not right.

People are just focused in their same way to play with their conviction about some amu/build better than others. This is not true.

I can share 1 of the viable mesmer’s build. There is plenty of them.

build
Could even use the new paladin amulett, which may be suitable for this one.

Ananeos.4587:

The shatter mesmer with duel is completely dead, don’t even bother trying to play it.

Shatter was always a bs idea because of how it instantly destroys your means of survival.

I think the reason why there is no adjustment is because Anet believes that the mechanic is inherently OP, and thus a nerf with nothing else is substantiated.

Rainbowsand.2438:

Ananeos.4587:

The shatter mesmer with duel is completely dead, don’t even bother trying to play it.

Shatter was always a bs idea because of how it instantly destroys your means of survival.

That is literally the complete opposite of a “bs idea”. Sacrifice defence to get a superior offence. High risk, high reward. It is a fantastic idea. The only problem is that now we get “Righ risk, low reward”.

Seyiwaji.4082:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

So before you claim chronomancer is “massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense” you need a lot of hard facts to back it up.

This person now the truth, if you don’t intend to play support or defense. The mesmer core is stronger than Chrono in term of offensiv
I was surprised as i turned back to mesmer, as said in some other thread:
I won or was even matched with, druid, scrapper, dare devil and my fellow chrono playing mesmer.

So all those stories about p2win or Elite are far better are not right.

People are just focused in their same way to play with their conviction about some amu/build better than others. This is not true.

I can share 1 of the viable mesmer’s build. There is plenty of them.

build
Could even use the new paladin amulett, which may be suitable for this one.

Base memser provides nothing special to make it stand out among other professions,. Everything you can do, others can do better.

The solo existence of continuum shift makes chrono line pretty much mandatory. It greatly enhances one of mesmer’s strongest poitns: elite skill.

Quadox.7834:

Rainbowsand.2438:

Ananeos.4587:

The shatter mesmer with duel is completely dead, don’t even bother trying to play it.

Shatter was always a bs idea because of how it instantly destroys your means of survival.

That is literally the complete opposite of a “bs idea”. Sacrifice defence to get a superior offence. High risk, high reward. It is a fantastic idea. The only problem is that now we get “Righ risk, low reward”.

I would agree with you IF a rather massive amount of our sustained DPS wasn’t also locked behind phantasms.

Its more like “Sacrifice your defense and offense for a marginal spike in offense.”

Mikkel.8427:

Quadox.7834:

Rainbowsand.2438:

Ananeos.4587:

The shatter mesmer with duel is completely dead, don’t even bother trying to play it.

Shatter was always a bs idea because of how it instantly destroys your means of survival.

That is literally the complete opposite of a “bs idea”. Sacrifice defence to get a superior offence. High risk, high reward. It is a fantastic idea. The only problem is that now we get “Righ risk, low reward”.

I would agree with you IF a rather massive amount of our sustained DPS wasn’t also locked behind phantasms.

Its more like “Sacrifice your defense and offense for a marginal spike in offense.”

Phantasms are a whole other issue, so many problems =(.

Exciton.8942:

Seyiwaji.4082:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

So before you claim chronomancer is “massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense” you need a lot of hard facts to back it up.

This person now the truth, if you don’t intend to play support or defense. The mesmer core is stronger than Chrono in term of offensiv
I was surprised as i turned back to mesmer, as said in some other thread:
I won or was even matched with, druid, scrapper, dare devil and my fellow chrono playing mesmer.

So all those stories about p2win or Elite are far better are not right.

People are just focused in their same way to play with their conviction about some amu/build better than others. This is not true.

I can share 1 of the viable mesmer’s build. There is plenty of them.

build
Could even use the new paladin amulett, which may be suitable for this one.

Base memser provides nothing special to make it stand out among other professions,. Everything you can do, others can do better.

The solo existence of continuum shift makes chrono line pretty much mandatory. It greatly enhances one of mesmer’s strongest poitns: elite skill.

I find myself not using CS on elites anymore.
I know, I know, blasphemy.

But how strong is a gravity well if you don’t have the damage to follow up on it?
In comparison to potentially doing a double mindwrack combo, with something like mirror images.

“Oh but you should never be 1v1”

Literally double gravity well’d a necro 3 v 1, and it didn’t die. Lol.
Bad teammates? Ofc.
Am I bad? Probably.

Rerunning that scenario though, I could’ve used CS to get a nice shatter out there, and an iZerker, and then waited for the necro to get out of DS (He’ll use it, guaranteed) and go for another shatter.

Will he be dead? Probably not. BUT he might!
And that’s all I can hope for now. lol…

It’s not like this thread accomplishes anything.

As usual, anet devs only appear when they have game boxes to sell from vanilla/xpac sales, and once those sales windows are gone they disappear back into the nether until the next product sale comes around.

I mean, can anyone here say when was the last time that after previewing changes from patch notes they changed a single thing from feedback?

These are not WoW/FFXIV/Wildstar devs, they don’t give a kitten about player input when making balance changes outside of the two weeks they gave us before heart of thorns.

Zenith.7301:

I mean, can anyone here say when was the last time that after previewing changes from patch notes they changed a single thing from feedback?

The feedback on Feedback and some feedback on scepter AA seems to have been noticed.

I also recall being angry about the Duelist’s Discipline nerf (before we’d even got to try the unbugged version), and suggesting something very much like what they just did as a compromise.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Zenith.7301:

I mean, can anyone here say when was the last time that after previewing changes from patch notes they changed a single thing from feedback?

The feedback on Feedback and some feedback on scepter AA seems to have been noticed.

I also recall being angry about the Duelist’s Discipline nerf (before we’d even got to try the unbugged version), and suggesting something very much like what they just did as a compromise.

Those are changes that happened in subsequent patches.

What I’m talking about is when have they ever, after previewing changes and receiving feedback about them, altered those changes according to feedback before they are patched in.

99% of the time they go “here are the changes that are coming, you can see them maybe 1-2 weeks before they land, you can talk about them if you want, but they are going as is regardless of what you have to say”.

It tells you a lot about crappy development practices when this is the single MOO without a Public Test Realm deployed one month before a patch to test and gather feedback before changes are implemented and adjust accordingly.

And they don’t care about having a PTR, which pretty much tells you that they really don’t care much about player input when deciding changes about the game.

Zenith.7301:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Zenith.7301:

I mean, can anyone here say when was the last time that after previewing changes from patch notes they changed a single thing from feedback?

The feedback on Feedback and some feedback on scepter AA seems to have been noticed.

I also recall being angry about the Duelist’s Discipline nerf (before we’d even got to try the unbugged version), and suggesting something very much like what they just did as a compromise.

Those are changes that happened in subsequent patches.

What I’m talking about is when have they ever, after previewing changes and receiving feedback about them, altered those changes according to feedback before they are patched in.

99% of the time they go “here are the changes that are coming, you can see them maybe 1-2 weeks before they land, you can talk about them if you want, but they are going as is regardless of what you have to say”.

It tells you a lot about crappy development practices when this is the single MOO without a Public Test Realm deployed one month before a patch to test and gather feedback before changes are implemented and adjust accordingly.

And they don’t care about having a PTR, which pretty much tells you that they really don’t care much about player input when deciding changes about the game.

I never understood Anet’s reasoning for not having a PTR, and you are right, they never care about feedbacks, unless you are some ESL sponsored by help them promote esports. I read some pro players wanted Mesmer out of the meta, and Anet happily met that demand.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

[…]You do know chronomancer’s entire traitline is built around alacrity right? […]

The whole traitline? There is 1 minor trait and 2 major traits which have something to do with alacrity. So this is the whole traitline?

Alacrity is one choosable aspect of chronomancer, not its whole concept. The other aspects are slow/quickness and resummoning illusions. Just because you choose to ignore these doesn’t mean there isn’t anything else about chronomancer.

Kodama.6453:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

[…]You do know chronomancer’s entire traitline is built around alacrity right? […]

The whole traitline? There is 1 minor trait and 2 major traits which have something to do with alacrity. So this is the whole traitline?

Alacrity is one choosable aspect of chronomancer, not its whole concept. The other aspects are slow/quickness and resummoning illusions. Just because you choose to ignore these doesn’t mean there isn’t anything else about chronomancer.

The slow/quickness traits suck.
Let me use one of my at max 6 weak interrupts all on nasty cooldowns, so that I can get a slow on the enemy, which then gives me 30% crit on a build that likely already has 54% crit…
And then this escalates into me after a number of crits, into doing a slow on my next attack.

Yeah, as far as clunky and hard to actually use mechanics go, that’s pretty high on the list.

Good for a low crit clockdown build I guess?

The 50% alacrity is likely still more valuable than the 30% crit.

So what are you left with? That well alacrity stuff? Yay.

Super speed phantasms (I’m not sure I even want these).

illusionary reversion. Which escalates to a grand total of meh reaction from me.

Chronophantasma, another meh reaction from me.

And quickness on shatter, something that I really don’t even need anymore since quickness stomp/res isn’t a thing.

Yeah, the largest value in the chrono traitline, was in alacrity. The rest are situational at best, and generally useless.

Kodama.6453:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

[…]You do know chronomancer’s entire traitline is built around alacrity right? […]

The whole traitline? There is 1 minor trait and 2 major traits which have something to do with alacrity. So this is the whole traitline?

Alacrity is the specialization mechanic – not only the traitline, the utilities and weapon skills are all designed around it.

The way I see it is that this season won’t be a great season for us mesmers. Like most other mesmers I’ve been playing this class since launch and shatter is still my all time favorite build. But this season our class has just fallen out of the meta. Last season thief and warrior was out of the meta after having it’s time as shoutbow and D/P. This season D/P is back and warrior/mesmer has fallen out of the meta. The only thing we can do is wait and hope anet at least makes shatter, our one build that we have viable again before the season or after it.