Guild Wars 2

They should prove your theory wrong!

Unfortunately, there is a little truth in it. But I really hope they won’t behave that way you described above. I just don’t want to believe it.

:-(

The problem is that they already should have read all bugs we found and described and should change them soon.

Why are they not communicating properly with us?

Hrrrrrmmmmmppfff….

Wait. . . someone said there was only 2 Developers working on class balance? How do we know this? Is it linked somewhere and I didn’t realize it, I mean if we know how many it is, then we can probably figure out who they are and be able to more directly influence the development through careful and considerate approach. That being said, I think it’s highly unlikely that there are only 2 people working on class balance, in fact so incredibly unlikely that it’s probably more like 5 to 10 people that work on these skills.

I mean you consider the development process and then the programmers needed, then the art changes that might need to be made, it feels like there are many more people working on these things then we might initially consider. Also these changes aren’t easy to fix, and far easier to break. The changes they implemented definitely were geared mostly towards an ease of use fix rather than a solid one in my opinion. changing a summon into a ranged attack broke a lot more than it fixed and made the playing of the profession much harder.

I really hope they fix these issues and our other bugs with abilities and traits but until they do I’ll just run around WvW and pull people off walls with Focus and set up Catapults on cliffs to blow up walls. Seems like the best thing I can do.

Cromx.3941:

its because ANET has a desire to implement a iberzerker nerf…and so they are just stretching it out for a bit hoping you forget, then maybe restore 70% of what it was with a “bug fix”….and then you will thank them for the 30% damage nerf.

Great strategy really. Its obvious by now they could have gotten the damage consistent with how it was pre patch…if they wanted to..they just dont want to.

My two cents.

If you hadn’t noticed the developers do not rush changes to game balance unless something is actually broken and destroying the game. When they want to rebalance they iZerker they won’t just slap some extra dps on it to “fix” it as we all wish they would. iZerker works very much like a boomerang/projectile and adding damage willy nilly as a quick fix just won’t suffice if it is connected to other similar boomerang mechanics.

Sadly though I do agree with the sentiment that they over did the damage nerf and have no intention of giving us the pre-patch damage output back. I can only guess that once they figure out what role they actually decide they want mesmer to play that they will try and make it an enjoyable dynamic for us all. Doubtful that the role is as a direct damage dealer, or long distance pvp transportation/mobility.

@Delofasht there are only 2 dev’s for all the (~500) skills in the game. One mains a warrior (Jon Peters) and the other a thief (idk who that is).

Funky.4861:

@Delofasht there are only 2 dev’s for all the (~500) skills in the game. One mains a warrior (Jon Peters) and the other a thief (idk who that is).

Have you read the follow-up post about that, where they explained the 2-devs thing when it isn’t out of context?

Which one do you believe? The one who blurted it or the one who came afterward trying to cover up what was said? Does the myriad of bugs and non working traits waiting to be fixed since beta seem the work of two guys, or of a ‘full team’?

Here’s the post for reference:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance/first

Kanto.1659:

Which one do you believe? The one who blurted it or the one who came afterward trying to cover up what was said? Does the myriad of bugs and non working traits waiting to be fixed since beta seem the work of two guys, or of a ‘full team’?

Dunno.
Look at WoW’s team, 8 years to patch it, and myriad of bugs and imbalances left (if much much less so than GW2, I am aware), it seems manpower hardly helps :P

That being said, yes, GW2’s team is too small. Like the stopped sales in the first week, I think we’re seeing a team completely taken aback by their own success. :$

However, I also don’t think they only have 2 people who do balance in total. It can at any given point be that only two actively work out abilities X, Y and Z, sure. But they probably got a team of 12-20 developers total, who have a daily scrum meeting before each going to what they’re going to do today (and it can be that only one or even none is doing balance, that day).
(Bugfixes are usually handled by a separate team)

Kanto.1659:

Which one do you believe? The one who blurted it or the one who came afterward trying to cover up what was said? Does the myriad of bugs and non working traits waiting to be fixed since beta seem the work of two guys, or of a ‘full team’?

Seriously – a team can make MUCH more mistakes than a single person can, even more than you’d get fro straight multiplication of error quote by number of people assigend.

So, actually, if you have an extremely bug ridden game … it just might be the result of a whole team. ^^

Truth is, as far as designers go, if it were only a single one handling an entire class it’d probably be reworked extremely fast. The guy would have no one who’d say “no!” to his designs and ideas, so he could do a full class change in 1 day, then a few weeks for programming / QA and it’s live.

To be honest, I quite don’t care if they are 2 or 20 if the job is done properly. It doesn’t change the fact that they messed up completly our class in the last patch. Before implementing the changes, it means that several persons didn’t see the flaws coming with the changes? No one in this team actually playing some PVE to know how buggy the LOS is and how the changes they made would make things so bad? Nobody knowing the core mechanic of our class to feel it wouldn’t be ok to prevent us from working at all with a dodge/blind? Nobody even testing these changes to see how the berserker was unintentionaly nerfed in damages with their “fix”?
I could believe 2 persons wouldn’t but a whole team, that’s quite scary.
And lets not forget the mesmer post about our bugged trait/skill where most of them have not been adressed yet at all (same for other classes) and when they are (phantasmal haste), they still don’t work properly.
I start to believe our class will never get fixed only nerfed and seeing how many people even in this forum are ok with it and just tell you to run x build cause it was left untouched or l2p makes it even worse.

Carighan.6758:

Dunno.
Look at WoW’s team, 8 years to patch it, and myriad of bugs and imbalances left (if much much less so than GW2, I am aware), it seems manpower hardly helps :P

GW Team been on this game engine since 2003…

While were talking totally pointless things to add to the topic of the fix unbalanced DPS in other ways: My fence is 4 foot tall.

Bweaty.9187:

GW Team been on this game engine since 2003…

The engine has been modified so heavily in so many aspects that there’s probably not much left of the original engine. It’s like saying Windows 8 is the same as Windows 2000.

tqhx.2190:

Clerigo.9475:

Karl McLain.5604:

Illusionary Berserker has not received a direct damage decrease. Instead, is seems that the damage reduction you (and I) are seeing is most likely associated this fix:
“Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the more targets they hit.”
We are aware that this particular phantasm is now experiencing a significant drop in damage and are looking at getting it back to a more effective state.
Thanks for keeping the post civil and constructive!
-Karl

Not only the Berzerker Phantasm deals less damage, but also the main great sword atack also pulses for less damage.

On top of that, i had a boss encounter yesterday where seems to me that the berzerker damage was paralel to the great sword damage i was dealing, according to a given distance.

Using other words: if i was closer to the boss, thus dealing less damage with Spatial Surge, by berzerker would also deal less damage. Is this normal?

Also, since when is that particular phantasm a “bouncing projectile”? Is there a skill where i can pick it up and throw it in the air at some1? … Plz fix this.

Im runing low on patience with everything going on with this game….

Spatial surge is unchanged. The only issue is that the berzerker is not hitting with all swings on a single target.

OK, im not contesting the Berzerk issue. Only thing im saying, and i have tested this on many different targets, is that, sometimes, Spatial Surge deals considerable less damage ( this happening on same target) and if i go to melee range, thus dealing minimum GS dps, the Berzerk dps also scale down with this.

Lets see if i can explain. Sorry but english is not my native language.

- Hiting same target ( test numbers)

Test A: Spatial Surge at max distance: 500 – 1008 -1325 <→ Berzerk: 897 – 1758 – 2958

Now closing distance to the same (still alive) target to melee range and still with the same berzerk up:

Test B: Spatial Surge at melee range: 131 – 346 – 581 <→ Berzerk (the same one that is still up from Test A hiting the same mob) 347 – 856 – 1520

Quuestion: does the damage of the Berzerker scales up/down with Spatial Surge = Distance to target?

Seriously, we shouldn’t be okay with nerfs and no bug fixes. It gives them the okay to continue poorly implemented patches, when we should be discouraging these kinds of things.

You’ve bought the game, Mere Image. What are you going to pressure/force them with? Quit? You’re not paying a subscription.

Do you really believe there is anyone okay with poorly implement patches instead of bug fixes? What are we going to do?

Leave, of course, eventually. Think Diablo 3. A massive success since it has no subscription plan. You bought it. Millions bought it. No one cares a month after the numbers dwindled to a tenth of that. For the record Diablo 3 will always be an astoundingly successful game even if gamers will have declared it a flop.

GW2 is pretty, I like it, I’m still playing it and have no plans to leave. I have my share of a pretty game with graphics, decent combat, WvW is casual enough to let me go in and out. I find the grind too much for mere cosmetic gear but since it’s cosmetic it’s not crucial either. But the lack of fixing bugs and adding nerfs is getting tiresome.

It’s not even as if the balance will stick if those bugged traits would be fixed. The meta game would change. But we get balance patches (who add more bugs) to balance the current game despite the fact the current game will change once all the bugged traits and skills are finally fixed. Which will then need more balancing patches making the current ones moot.

Kanto.1659:

You’ve bought the game, Mere Image. What are you going to pressure/force them with? Quit? You’re not paying a subscription.

Do you really believe there is anyone okay with poorly implement patches instead of bug fixes? What are we going to do?

Leave, of course, eventually. Think Diablo 3. A massive success since it has no subscription plan. You bought it. Millions bought it. No one cares a month after the numbers dwindled to a tenth of that. For the record Diablo 3 will always be an astoundingly successful game even if gamers will have declared it a flop.

GW2 is pretty, I like it, I’m still playing it and have no plans to leave. I have my share of a pretty game with graphics, decent combat, WvW is casual enough to let me go in and out. I find the grind too much for mere cosmetic gear but since it’s cosmetic it’s not crucial either. But the lack of fixing bugs and adding nerfs is getting tiresome.

It’s not even as if the balance will stick if those bugged traits would be fixed. The meta game would change. But we get balance patches (who add more bugs) to balance the current game despite the fact the current game will change once all the bugged traits and skills are finally fixed. Which will then need more balancing patches making the current ones moot.

Micro-transactions are a big part of revenue. A large number of players grew up with mmos, and now have jobs, and thus more money than time, but still want to play, so they use micro-transactions to help bridge the gap.

If they want these micro-transactions to continue from me, they will revert the unjust illusion summoning nerf which gives mesmers and only mesmers the disadvantages of both pet summons and main attacks in addition to a further disadvantage of the one “block” dominoing into the next one to three attacks.

In the mean time, I will utilize my account to try out double-dagger elementalist, thus adding to their operating costs and reducing the value of what I’ve paid to them thus far.

give mesmers dual wield GS!!!!! NAO!

since beta I knew mesmers would be constantly nerfed (the concept is very difficult to balance we have to agree with it), it is up to ANet to decide where the fine line between fun and disgrace is before ruining it completely. Three or four patches like the last one and this class will be worst than necro ever been.

When similar bugs happened to my shadow priest in that other game it was fixed in days, not to mention when they did big patches it went through the PTR.

How arenanet can make changes to a class and not even take one out for 5 minutes to test the changes it’s a bit of a worry, all of us knew something was wrong the first time we cast beserker

Seren.6850:

When similar bugs happened to my shadow priest in that other game it was fixed in days, not to mention when they did big patches it went through the PTR.

Oh you mean bugs like the Shadowfiend not attacking? I think that was fixed somewhere in late ICC, IIRC.

Carkara.1846:

since beta I knew mesmers would be constantly nerfed (the concept is very difficult to balance we have to agree with it), it is up to ANet to decide where the fine line between fun and disgrace is before ruining it completely. Three or four patches like the last one and this class will be worst than necro ever been.

My main in GW1 was paragon… so I know what’s coming.

Carkara.1846:

since beta I knew mesmers would be constantly nerfed (the concept is very difficult to balance we have to agree with it), it is up to ANet to decide where the fine line between fun and disgrace is before ruining it completely. Three or four patches like the last one and this class will be worst than necro ever been.

Its funny during the betas I spent ages on GW guru looking up opinions and builds to decide whether to have Mesmer or Necro as my main.

While I eventually chose Mesmer based on how fun the mechanics looked while Necro seemed rather basic, the general opinion was that Mesmer was very underpowered and rushed. People were testing out clones and Phantasms with every new build and concluded that they obviously couldn’t be used to trick people into thinking they were the actual Mesmer for long and shatters weren’t effective because the clones were dieing or people were avoiding them by walking away. There was an infamous video of a staff Guardian only using auto attack and being completely immune from shatters. Then combine that with almost all Grandmaster traits being worse then the minors and all the bugged traits. Most of us stuck with it because the class seeemed fun and we figured we would get buffed after release.

If only we knew the general skill level would go way down after beta and people would stop moving and cleaving through clones, I could have saved myself a lot of time and focused more on making a better decision of whether to have a Thief or Ranger as my alt.

I didn’t get to see the Guardian video but I did play staff Guardian in BWE1 pvp.
Staff autoattacks 2 shotted clones and now it 3 shots (while also hitting mesmer for 700-1k).
It was hilarious against mesmers. I just kept the target on the mesmer, hitting him for about the same or better damage than he would hit me and clones were dying pretty soon after being spawned. Short of getting in melee range with me and using Mirror Images + shatter, I was pretty safe from shatters.

You lost some true fans on this one anet, just so you know. It’s not that you messed up, it’s your lack of communication and your unwillingness to fix the things you messed up.

deapee.7516:

You lost some true fans on this one anet, just so you know. It’s not that you messed up, it’s your lack of communication and your unwillingness to fix the things you messed up.

That’s precisely the heart of the matter. Today I logged back on to GW1 and stared at my Mesmer with nostalgia.

Maybe I should give Prophecies another run from the start…

Oh, what about Panic? O.o

Reading this and many other threads, I have come to the conclusion that what Anet needs most is a competent PR department

Stratigo.1976:

Reading this and many other threads, I have come to the conclusion that what Anet needs most is a competent PR department

This.

Just some communication – an apology for the amount of time this is taking, the plan for addressing it, and an estimated date for the fix.

Unless of course they simply hope we’ll forget about it and don’t plan on ever fixing it, or have no one left on staff competent to fix it.

Levetty.1279:

Carkara.1846:

since beta I knew mesmers would be constantly nerfed (the concept is very difficult to balance we have to agree with it), it is up to ANet to decide where the fine line between fun and disgrace is before ruining it completely. Three or four patches like the last one and this class will be worst than necro ever been.

Its funny during the betas I spent ages on GW guru looking up opinions and builds to decide whether to have Mesmer or Necro as my main.

While I eventually chose Mesmer based on how fun the mechanics looked while Necro seemed rather basic, the general opinion was that Mesmer was very underpowered and rushed. People were testing out clones and Phantasms with every new build and concluded that they obviously couldn’t be used to trick people into thinking they were the actual Mesmer for long and shatters weren’t effective because the clones were dieing or people were avoiding them by walking away. There was an infamous video of a staff Guardian only using auto attack and being completely immune from shatters. Then combine that with almost all Grandmaster traits being worse then the minors and all the bugged traits. Most of us stuck with it because the class seeemed fun and we figured we would get buffed after release.

If only we knew the general skill level would go way down after beta and people would stop moving and cleaving through clones, I could have saved myself a lot of time and focused more on making a better decision of whether to have a Thief or Ranger as my alt.

In the mesmer’s defense, he was playing really badly in our duel. However, in theory it might be possible to shut down a glass cannon shatter mesmer completely if I specifically built against it by only using staff one and dodge on a guardian. I know it’s currently possible (and hilariously effective) against mesmers in Spvp, but I don’t play Tpvp where it really matters. It’s also not as effective on confusion based mesmers.

I haven’t touched my mesmer since the patch…. I think that sums up the feeling for everyone. I don’t even plan on playing him anywhere until something is done. Mesmer are strong no doubt, probably the strongest 3 class in the game, because i would choose a mesmer over any class to win a 1v1 scenario except maybe a tanky guardian, but that means that mesmer would have to be extremely knowledged in his class and knowing how to play it well. I went back to my engineer main, because he can do everything a mesmer can’t do, support extremely well, tank extremely well, do damage extremely well.

nuff said

I’ve been doing just fine roaming solo in WvW. I consider myself an average player and nothing to brag about at all. So I think there’s at least some overreaction here. I can only think of 2 fights that without a doubt the iBerserker cost me the win. Both with Thiefs. 1 that lasted 10 minutes of back and forth. The Thief had the audacity to spam laugh me after, but that’s Thief players for you. I’d have bowed had I won because it was epic. Either way, though, I’m doing just fine. I do wince when I see those 400 point iBerserker hits or he just misses outright, certainly. So I keep coming to this thread hoping for a fix. But I don’t see any reason to shelf my character at all.

brogarn.8723:

I’ve been doing just fine roaming solo in WvW. I consider myself an average player and nothing to brag about at all. So I think there’s at least some overreaction here. I can only think of 2 fights that without a doubt the iBerserker cost me the win. Both with Thiefs. 1 that lasted 10 minutes of back and forth. The Thief had the audacity to spam laugh me after, but that’s Thief players for you. I’d have bowed had I won because it was epic. Either way, though, I’m doing just fine. I do wince when I see those 400 point iBerserker hits or he just misses outright, certainly. So I keep coming to this thread hoping for a fix. But I don’t see any reason to shelf my character at all.

everytime theres a close fight, when you barely win or lose, having a unbugged berserker would have let you win handedly. thats a huge difference.

in an average fight lasting 15-30 seconds, you can cast berserker anywhere from 1-3 times, thats a total of atleast 3k-9k missing damage done in the fight.

i just can’t believe they haven’t fixed this yet. its absolutely kitten

deapee.7516:

You lost some true fans on this one anet, just so you know. It’s not that you messed up, it’s your lack of communication and your unwillingness to fix the things you messed up.

If the issue was just berserker LOS… they could have tweaked it and left everything else alone. In past mmo experiences though, these types of sweeping nerfs with phantasms (and all associated skills/traits) are deliberate and NEVER given a second pass.

The one thing you can always count on in a MMO is for Devs to ruin fun builds by using a sledgehammer approach for class adjustments. All I could do was stare in amazement when playing my bunker build and iDisenchanter/iDefender failed to summon 80% of the time.

currently disappointed on mesmer now i feel like i don’t want to use this class anymore. couldn’t kill decently on a mass mobs coz phantamal/illusion die quickly before they can attack. still waiting for a change in mesmer feel like quitting the game for momentarily.

What really bothers me is the fact that they are quick to nerf Mesmer but they aren’t quick to fix actual bugs (traits simply not working, grandmaster traits are all bad except illusionary persona, scepter being bad wep etc. etc. etc.) so we receive all nerfs but none of fixes. That’s very disappointing.

Well I thought about that before, if they were to fix my bugs I’d explode in raw power. I can sort-of understand where they are coming from, sucky as it is from my perspective.

EvGenius.6208:

What really bothers me is the fact that they are quick to nerf Mesmer but they aren’t quick to fix actual bugs (traits simply not working, grandmaster traits are all bad except illusionary persona, scepter being bad wep etc. etc. etc.) so we receive all nerfs but none of fixes. That’s very disappointing.

The people who balance and bug fix are two different teams. The bug fix team has to work on all the bugs in GW2, not just professions so it may take them a long time. Though sometimes it really bothers me, the completion star bug for the mesmer has been known since about three weeks after launch and yet every time we bring it up they go “Oh, we didn’t know about that, we will look into it.” A month later and we mention it and it’s the same message.

Esorono.1039:

EvGenius.6208:

What really bothers me is the fact that they are quick to nerf Mesmer but they aren’t quick to fix actual bugs (traits simply not working, grandmaster traits are all bad except illusionary persona, scepter being bad wep etc. etc. etc.) so we receive all nerfs but none of fixes. That’s very disappointing.

The people who balance and bug fix are two different teams. The bug fix team has to work on all the bugs in GW2, not just professions so it may take them a long time. Though sometimes it really bothers me, the completion star bug for the mesmer has been known since about three weeks after launch and yet every time we bring it up they go “Oh, we didn’t know about that, we will look into it.” A month later and we mention it and it’s the same message.

It’s just one of many examples. Other sad facts: chaos armor from combo field is beta version of spell, clones don’t have 2nd wep equipped, not sure if still true, clones use old version of winds of chaos, sword -20% traits don’t decrease iLeap cooldown, scepter trait also don’t seems to decrease block cooldown, you can’t take phantasm regen and phantasm fury at the same time, etc etc etc. These are all bugs that were reported at least 1.5 months ago and still not fixed.

I just really want (and I dont know if its possible) is for Anet to release one giant patch that fixes the mesmer (or any class for that matter) to how Anet wants them to be. I know it would probably take a while but any word that lets us know that one day the mesmer will be perfected (traits that work, skills that work, better grandmaster traits, and trait positions that just make more sense) would be sooo much appreciated.

I think I can roughly guess why and how iBezerker is coded like a boomerang, and how it affects the damage.

In effect, all boomerangs are coded like a spell with penetration, which recasts the spell at the end of the path/duration. Similarly, illusions recast their spells at the end of a path/duration, hence ALL illusions are boomerangs in this sense.

The bug somehow causes attacks to do more damage on it’s initial pass. It is not mentioned whether the “more damage” is due to simply added damage, or hitting more times for multi-hit attacks. In this case, it is conceivable that one of the above may have affected iBezerker, and other phantasms (and illusions, if they could do damage). This would also essentially mean that the bug is much larger than just iBezerker alone, and hence might take somewhat more time to fix.

I think it would be helpful if we split the discussion to focus on the three separate issues:
1) Damage/hits reduction from iZerker and all other illusions.
2) Illusions not being created when a hit does not register. (though I personally do not think this should be considered a bug, since illusions are targetted attacks)
3) LoS issues. (not really a mesmer specific bug either)

Okay, I have to admit… was roaming with a Thief buddy the past couple nights which gave me a little extra time to watch the iBerserker more closely. It’s pretty bad. I must be fighting some bad players normally because I’ve still been able to take people down regularly. But now that I had a half second to watch the damage output a little closer… ouch.

I really don’t want to roll something else while waiting for a fix. I’ll probably just keep plugging away and deal with it.

Oh tiny tree, why you made me lose this 1v1

someone with a reddit account post in the AMA about this bug, and ask how soon until they fix it.

…this still hasn’t been fixed? How disappointing. I guess I’ll be extending my time away from the game, since I outright refuse to be pressured into re-rolling one of the more ‘balanced’ professions.

They obviously have no intention of fixing this. At this point, I no longer consider it a bug – I consider it a deliberate nerf.

Almost two full weeks since anet caused this problem. We have had no fix and zero communication. At this point its getting to be a character issue.

Can’t they hire a mesmer lead, like other games have to communicate with us.

Seren.6850:

Can’t they hire a mesmer lead, like other games have to communicate with us.

It was a great idea… but then you went and used the h-word. If they can’t even pay enough developers to fix the bugs, how are they going to have enough to hire the PR staff?

I’m just glad I stuck with Staff/Sword + Pistol and never really bothered with GS. With all the QQ regarding the izerker, you guys didn’t see a nerf coming?