Guild Wars 2

Just split PvP and PvE skills already; the code is there.

While I don’t think these changes are “run for the hills” levels of nerfing as some others here seem to, I do think that they might well be indicative of the “nerf PvE via PvP” problem that GW1 suffered through for years.

This has been flagged early so I think it should be tackled early; split the skills quickly before any more of the rot sets in.

I would advise anyone complaining to actually play the changes first. Chances are, you won’t notice.

(edit)
I also find it somewhat hilarious that first everyone complains how we are overpowered, then we see an insane surge of new Mesmers (everyone rerolling, the FOTM-train is going full speed ahead), and now those very people are complaining that Mesmers are getting nerfed.
And, as in every previous MMORPG we once again see: Don’t choose your class for power, choose them for style and gameplay. Balance is in constant flux, you shouldn’t base your class choice around it.

Carighan.6758:

Don’t choose your class for power

I don’t think anyone here worried about mesmer in pve post this nerf chose this class for its power =)

I don’t understand what the big fuss is about. Then again I primarily use a Clone-based Staff build, so the Phantasm CD nerfs don’t trouble me.

The CD changes to Chaos Armour and Storm are, I think, primarily so the CD order of the Staff is preserved. Anet likes to order weapon skills from lowest CD on the left to highest CD on the right: when Chaos Storm’s CD was reduced from 40s to 30s, this broke the ordering as Chaos Armour then had a higher CD than Storm.

shrugs

I can’t say those changes have much of an effect in PvE, specifically. Now granted since I don’t use a Phantasm build, I don’t feel much of an impact at all – my previous setup with 3*Sword wouldn’t have felt any, actually, now I use a Staff but the reduced Armour-CD might actually come in handy.

I’d also like to point out that during Beta, the Mesmer Illusionist’s Celerity only reduced CD by 10% (it was 20% to begin with, then they nerfed it, and now they reverted the nerf) and weapon traits didn’t reduce CD at all; which would put the CD of the nerfed Phantasms then about similar to it is now post-nerf. Phantasm build were very viable then. Why should the Mesmer be “completely ruined” now?

“Just split PvP and PvE skills already; the code is there.”

No, don’t. When ANet did this in GW1 it was the worst decision they ever made. Never, ever, EVER split PvE and PvP skills. Balanced skills are balanced skills, period.

As someone who has played Mesmer since the beginning of GW1, I have no problem with these changes. Mesmer is a great class in both PvP & PvE, I have way more survivability than anyone else in any party I’ve ever been in. Yeah, a longer recharge on Chaos Storm is annoying, but it’s still an awesome skill. Phantasms – whatever. Fire & forget, learn to use another skill in the meantime.

Good balancing ANet, as I would expect from you.

Well, such a split isn’t necessarily bad – see how confusion is different between sPvP and the rest of the game right now – but it should be avoided whenever possible.

I actually went out to test this after the update in the latter half of Straits of Devastation, and the longer cooldowns don’t have enough of an effect that a phantasmal/staff build is less viable. This could be boiling down to technique, but while I notice the extra seconds it’s not long enough to actually impact my strategy any, and I can still get gold medals in DEs without any trouble. The longer CD on Chaos Storm is annoying, but it just means you have to be a little craftier about where and when you place it (and pray a warrior doesn’t go dragging the mob elsewhere).

Balanced skill in pve =! balanced skill in pvp, because mobs are just so kitten stupid. Look at eles for reference, an earth spec bleed build does wonders in pve, you alone can keep up bleed stacks up to the cap, in a pretty big aoe, and keep bosses permanently weakened, which is insane damage and utility. You might occasionally miss something, but if your team is kind enough (and it is in their best interest to do so) to kite mobs through your aoes, you can maintain a very high hit rate usually.

In pvp, no one ever stands in that circle.

When I saw this, juste one word : OMFG.
What a crap update. Just what exactly is the purpose of this ? Nerfing, hammering the mesmer so bad that EVERYONE rerolls so we can delete the class ? Good, it’s on a good way for it.
Seriously, WTF, mesmers we already weak and more precisely very hard to play in PVE, it makes things even worse !
Ok, it might have been necessary for PVP but for the love of god, before burying alive the mesmer in PVE for PVP sake, just separate PVE and PVP omg, leave the PVE players alone and let them be useful and TRY to be efficient in dungeons …
This update defintely sucks and, even though I love playing mesmer, I think I’ll reroll a class that is not nerfed to oblivion …

athuria.2751:

and I can still get gold medals in DEs without any trouble.

The issue that people complain about with DEs isn’t getting gold metals, it’s getting the xp and loot from the mobs themselves. The issue with the nerf isn’t that it breaks us in pve, it’s that it weakens us where we were already weak and doesn’t impact us where people think we’re too strong. It’s a ‘wtf?’ nerf.

KratosAngel.7289:

When I saw this, juste one word : OMFG.
What a crap update. Just what exactly is the purpose of this ? Nerfing, hammering the mesmer so bad that EVERYONE rerolls so we can delete the class ? Good, it’s on a good way for it.
Seriously, WTF, mesmers we already weak and more precisely very hard to play in PVE, it makes things even worse !
Ok, it might have been necessary for PVP but for the love of god, before burying alive the mesmer in PVE for PVP sake, just separate PVE and PVP omg, leave the PVE players alone and let them be useful and TRY to be efficient in dungeons …
This update defintely sucks and, even though I love playing mesmer, I think I’ll reroll a class that is not nerfed to oblivion …

Must be end of the world for you, if some seconds cd gonna make you reroll a class then rofl.

I love how everyone is overreacting like this change was a big nerf, but really it isn’t. Maybe start to rethink instead of QQing about something that had a way to short CD before. Every phanstasm skill can be lowered twice, so by 40% less cd.

Yes I play mesmer and have been in nerfs and boosts from betas. FOTMers go reroll, no love for the class, just want the OPness which they still are.

These changes are perfectly understandable. Phantasms were too strong, and a slight nerf was deserved.

However, mesmers have been complaining from the beginning that our DPS was relying too much on phantasms. So yeah, nerf them, but give our direct damage a little boost…

Darki, you don’t understand. The nerf on phantasms is not such a big deal. The nerf to Chaos Storm is already much more. Now think of the rest : we still have SO MUCH bugs to be fixed, never fixed, while the nerfing hammer crushes the mesmer.
And think of the phantasms in PVE : 1 shot by any AOE, and then you still have to wait even longer to respawn it … cool, given that our personnal damage output is weak.
So you see, the issue is not just a matter of a few seconds, it’s an accumulation of bugs, easily killed phantasms and “slight” nerfs …
Unless they plan to boost something else, yeah, this is quite a big nerf …

KratosAngel.7289:

Darki, you don’t understand. The nerf on phantasms is not such a big deal. The nerf to Chaos Storm is already much more. Now think of the rest : we still have SO MUCH bugs to be fixed, never fixed, while the nerfing hammer crushes the mesmer.
And think of the phantasms in PVE : 1 shot by any AOE, and then you still have to wait even longer to respawn it … cool, given that our personnal damage output is weak.
So you see, the issue is not just a matter of a few seconds, it’s an accumulation of bugs, easily killed phantasms and “slight” nerfs …
Unless they plan to boost something else, yeah, this is quite a big nerf …

You can have chaos storm on a 28 sec cd, not much difference from what is was before. No actual nerf was done to it other than a slighly longer CD.

I didn’t experience a drop in that, either, but I’ve always bounced targets/switched with swords to make up for the lack of AoE skills.

I agree it’s nonsensical from a pve perspective (I can’t comment on pvp) and teetering on the edge of balance, but the explosion of worry over this patch is kind of disproportionate to how much of an impact it’s going to actually have for most people.

I think the problem with the Mesmer is that it’s trying to be too many things at once. Unlike other professions it doesn’t really have a ‘This is what a Mesmer is’ while the other professions do. In a way this is great because it allows more freedom of playstyles but it also causes some issues with attempting to balance it.

This problem is made more apparent when they try to balance PvP issues then subsequently make the PvE side of things worse. Granted I don’t feel the few extra seconds are a huge deal but I never liked the staff to start with. I can imagine PvE staff users are peeved, They are quite weak in comparison.

I think the idea of making at least the Mesmer abilities separate in PvE and PvP is the best solution. The Mesmer struggles to keep up in PvE next to other professions yet in PvP it excels. The only way I can see this fixed is the above solution. Because any time you nerf something to balance PvP, it makes PvE weaker and every time you buff something for PvE it’ll make PvP too strong.

Look – I can’t really disagree with these nerfs. Phantasms were very powerful – though not easy to use, admittedly – and this was probably a good balance decision.

But please please can the scepter and mantras get a buff so we actually have a few options?

Mantras require 3s downtime each, and if you want to max them out with traits, you need to invest 30 in both domination and dueling (forcing you to play a glass cannon, basically) – and even then, those traits are only worth it if you have a lot of mantras, and no one can afford 12s of total downtime on a regular basis in his build. All non-grandmaster mesmer traits are dueling master traits, which means you can only have two of them IF you have 30 in dueling and give up one of the grandmaster traits. The sole exception is Restorative Mantra, which heals allies near you when you cast a mantra. Healing allies near you isn’t all that great in the first place (if you hit multiple people with it, it means you’re way too close to eachother and will get aoe’d to death), and the effect only happens when you charge the mantra, not when you use it, making it both too infrequently used for a master trait and impossible to time (no one is going to delay charging his mantra to make more of a tiny heal).

And scepters – well – uh… I really want to like them, but dear god that weapon is just awful. Is there anything good about it at all?

Awesome changes for staff:
now we have 2x 35sec cd
1x 20 sec
1x 8 sec
and plenty of time for Autoattack because other weapon sets are useless for condition DMG build (Focus is fine for swiftness to off hand but for main hand?)

Solution → give us main hand pistol

Doesn’t hit my heal/support build so no big deal for me.
And so much fuzzz about a couple of 3-5s cd changes on some phantasm and chaos storm.

But it would, effectively, be better if Anet strated to fix our stuff before going for nerfs.

So we literally have one viable PvP build now?

Cayafas.8290:

And scepters – well – uh… I really want to like them, but dear god that weapon is just awful. Is there anything good about it at all?

Actually #2 and #3 are very powerful.
The problem is in #1, or rather, in it’s sluggishness.
As people have found out before – I think it’s listed in the bugthread now – the swapping to the next skill happens when the projectile impacts. This makes Scepter excrutiatingly slow at max-distance.

Try it from melee against a dummy or so → it’s not actually such a bad weapon.
Ofc, no one would use a Scepter if it were about melee range, so this still needs to be resolved.

I think if that were to be resolved, then Scepter would be quite ok. It’s clone-generation speed is still the best out of the weapons, so it’d give us more fodder for Shatters, although it has some minor issues with the Clones as well (“more” is ok as the sole attribute only if they spawn at range instead of in melee).

One of the issues with the scepter is that it’s #1 nukes the staff #1 clone making it a horrible combination to use.

The Scepter needs to be more of a condition weapon, like its weapons trait suggests. They removed Confusion from its autoattack very early on and it has been undecided whether it wants to be Power-based or Malice-based ever since.

Not really fair, this is an huge nerf for mine build. The synergy with illusion is now broken.
I use’d to be a close range shatter build and now with these changes I require almost 7 sec plus more to kill the same SINGLE trash mob ( multiple mob become unviable ).
First you nerf the hp pool and then you increase the skill recharge? I feel bad for what will come and im not sure how much i can bear.
This is mine 2nd profession at level 80, dunno if i will make a third because you are ruining the game. If this is the outcome, I rather to not have you Anet working at all.
The game was fun in the beta now is becoming more and more depressing and each week i’m questioning if is already time to leave.
Thanks for helping me sorting out this dilemma, keep going in this direction. Please.

At this rate the game is swiftly going down the same route as a certain other popular MMO when it comes to class balance. One or two get a lot of love and the rest just exist as barely viable.

The game promised innovation and for our preferences to matter – and yet even many of the builds that aren’t overpowered are being negatively affected.

Yeah, but your preferences don’t actually matter when it comes to balancing the game, because they’re – as are mine, or anyone else’s – heavily biased.

That’s the thing with balance, and it was the same in WoW: “sob the other class gets loved all the time” <— this is said by all classes
Everyone always paints their own class as the poor, dev-hated loser, and some other FOTM class as the one the entire dev team plays.

Hence the only “proper” measure of class-balance if “whineflood”. Is everyone crying ~evenly? Good, balanced.

I play ONLY PvE, & have one of each class … taken them all to at least 30 so far & of them all my Mesmer is by far the weakest class in Guild Wars 2 … I was aghast when I read the nerfs …
I play 10 levels on each Class, then swap to the next to get 10 levels & my Mesmer’s 10 levels takes twice as long as all the other classes, as she is so weak I have to be very careful on the battles I enter … have to rely on waiting for other players to come along to complete Skill Challenges (whereas all the other classes can solo most).
Just like in Guild Wars, the Mesmer was smashed in PvE & will soon be exclusive to PvP.

I am assuming these are knee-jerk PvP Nerfs with no thought whatsoever for the PvE implications.

What’s next? Blurred Frenzy nerf? lol I"m a sword/pistol mesmer and honestly Duelist is the only potent dd that I can use in boss fight, which often gets destroyed in seconds and sometimes it doesn’t even last long enough to deal damage. Anet, you do know that 99.9999% of your freakin bosses do aoe, right? Increasing CD would just make it harder for us to pull out damage and even if we can, the damage isn’t that good considering other classes can do much more while I sit here waiting for phantasms’ attack recharge.

You put too much sPVP/WvW into the calculation already, mates. Mesmer is the only class I’ve been playing since the launch and I’m already feeling useless enough in most dungeons. That said, I use 4 sets of weapons in general occasions — GS, Scepter/Focus, Sword/Pistol, sometimes Staff and constantly adjust my traits throughout the dungeon to make sure I do highest damage possible in each circumstance and YET my damage can’t even beat that from other dd spec classes .

I’ve never complained about any nerfs before but now it’s starting to bug me. If you don’t want mesmers to be a comparable dd then do tell so I can delete it and play other professions.

kraziefox.5697:

I play ONLY PvE, & have one of each class … taken them all to at least 30 so far & of them all my Mesmer is by far the weakest class in Guild Wars 2 … I was aghast when I read the nerfs …
I play 10 levels on each Class, then swap to the next to get 10 levels & my Mesmer’s 10 levels takes twice as long as all the other classes, as she is so weak I have to be very careful on the battles I enter … have to rely on waiting for other players to come along to complete Skill Challenges (whereas all the other classes can solo most).
Just like in Guild Wars, the Mesmer was smashed in PvE & will soon be exclusive to PvP.

I am assuming these are knee-jerk PvP Nerfs with no thought whatsoever for the PvE implications.

It gets better at higher levels. Mesmer first big improvement I felt was around lvl 60 with an decent update of my stuff. After that it becomes one bug pleasure to play her.

I’m level 80, full exo (mhenlo as heal/support) and I solo up to champions, not the big ones but those I end up tanking most of the time while healing everyone and his/her grandma.

I would say it’s a slowish starter the Mesmer but it gains in power and strength along the road.

Speaking of PvE/PvP split can we please get one for the Mesmer class forum? That way we can have proper conversations about the Mesmer without PvP whiners coming in and calling us FOTM class bandwagoners and acting like punishing PvE players, who probably rarely play PvP, for their unwillingness to actually attack the Phantasms (seriously even centaurs have figured out how to do this) in PvP makes even a bit of sense.

nidwin.6731:

It gets better at higher levels. Mesmer first big improvement I felt was around lvl 60 with an decent update of my stuff. After that it becomes one bug pleasure to play her.

=)))
Still it’s true. The only problem is a AoE shortage and light armor – melee is not for us.

kraziefox.5697:

I play 10 levels on each Class, then swap to the next to get 10 levels & my Mesmer’s 10 levels takes twice as long as all the other classes, as she is so weak I have to be very careful on the battles I enter … have to rely on waiting for other players to come along to complete Skill Challenges (whereas all the other classes can solo most).

This is sorta confusing, because before the whinefest started the universal opinion on forums like gw2guru or reddit was that while Mesmers were slower at churning small mobs, we excel – and we do! – at soloing powerful targets since they never really get to hit us in the first place.
Skill challenges especially are quite a bit more difficult on my Engineer. And it’s not like they’re difficult on her, but on my Mesmer all I do is keep the clones and phantasms up and fire away. Replace any lost illusion, done.

well with one update they have all but killed my spec, well done Anet..well done. instead of FIXING the issues and bugs you are just making everything worse. Seriously they increase the cool down on one of the VERY few AoE abilities we have that is VERY easily moved out of

Then they go and destroy Phantom builds, knowing that we werent exactly the best damage dealers thanks to several design “flaws” and they just go and make it worse if they have to increase the cool down on the Phantoms attacks then they MUST increase health and toughness of clones and phantoms as we simply wont have the damage to kill anyone now and the fact that the clones and phantoms die when sneezed on

Bye bye Measmer – you’re getting shelved until this class is fixed i REFUSE to be forced into a specific spec that i HATE – shatter spamming so give me a call when you fix the class

When we were all joking about nerfing either the GS or the Staff so we’d only have 1 viable weapon set, ANet took it literally?

But seriously, anyone arguing that these past two nerfs were insignificant are out of their minds. They were arguably needed for PvP, and really crappy for PvE. ANet obviously can’t handle balancing PvP and PvE right now, so split them.

Also Mesmers are FotM? Look at this forum earlier this month where I was arguing with dozens of people that Mesmers weren’t underpowered in PvE, now we get dumped on twice in a row? It’s like ANet wants me to be wrong.

Don’t be surprised when Moa Morph gets nerfed either, just a heads up because that’s what’s coming next.

guys to be honest, i run a phantasmal build (staff+ sword, sword) and with the 976 toughness build phantasms were actually OP, my sword man made 5k even 6k damage each hit and the same was for the warlock, other char were actually destroyed in a nanosecond. I think i can say this also because I’m lvl 30 rank pvp and i played 1200 more games with mesmer so i know what i’m talking about. bb The bigger problem is that there is too much different between PVE and PVP, in PVP mesmer were/are really good, in PVE much less, anyway let’s see how the situation will evolve.

Don’t split them, there’s no need to. We have plenty currently unused abilities to boost PvE-centric to increase our PvE performance, there’s no indication a split in functionality would be necessary.

i honestly dont see a problem, phantasm builds where ridiculious IMO and needed some sort of change, i dont view this as a nerf just a way to stem some damage without nerfing the damage itself which to me is better and for PvE purposes we have tons of ways to get clones out for decoys and in all honesty if people cant ’’adapt’’ then theyu shouldnt be a mes in the first place.

hey how do you think eles feel they nerfed our only good elite skills ruined our revive skill and we are riddled with bug fixes, as a ele i don’t see why they made chaos storm have a longer cd it does no dmg anways.

Slightly long post, see TL;DR (I think the whole thing’s actually well thought but I’d say that wouldn’t I? :P)

For those that are saying it’s not a nerf, it really and truly is. Both to PvP and PvE in my opinion.

From a PvP perspective, the argument is that phantasms were “too easy”, that they were/are a “drop and forget” skill and perhaps at times they were. But in many ways, the reason for them being a “drop and forget” skill is because that is primarily what they’re meant to be. They don’t have reliable enough utility or damage to be a direct damage skill which some claim they should be. Frankly, I’d rather have the phantasms changed so that they only fire off one attack and then be fodder for shattering but have that one attack be predictable and useful. For example, the iZerker (the best phantasm we have at the moment IMO), have it be a reliable cripple/AoE damage that I can control the area of effect on. Better yet, have the iWarden be a ground-target projectile-reflecting phantasm that I can actually use for defense or gasp an actual AoE! If they did that then I would welcome the increased CDs. But at the moment, the reason our phantasms are “drop and forget” skills is precisely because that’s how they’re meant to be used IMO.

It’s even more ridiculous in PvE due to their fragility and single-use (one mob) nature. Again, the argument is that they are simply another damage skill that the player needs to use “correctly” to have effect (ie. Warrior has to actually “aim” HBs correctly). But unlike other classes, phantasms aren’t in our control anymore after we hit that button. We hope it spawns in-range (looking at you iWarden!), we hope it attacks in the right direction (iZerker!), we hope it doesn’t spawn in the mob’s AoE or simple auto-attack (iWarlock!), we hope it… (actually, both iSwordsman and iDuelist aren’t bad in PvE IMO) and finally, we hope it… (haha, who actually uses iMage??). Anyways, you get the picture. There’s too much randomness to these skills to call them proper simple damage skills. For all this guesswork and unreliability, now we have longer CDs?

I’m no expert, but I have played a mesmer to 80 and am in the process of rolling another one (I know, I’m a masochist) but these are definitely nerfs and maybe while they’re not game-breaking, they don’t seem all that warranted to me.

As for me, I already mentioned it but I think they should/could make them a single-use damage spell. BUT! If they do that, then make iZerker a ground-targeting AoE skill that cripples after its one use (or something like that). Make iWarden also a ground-targeting skill that we can hide in for projectile reflect and then explodes into nothingness. Make iSwordsman stab once and apply vulnerability and then explode. Make iDuelist unload one round with bleed (without critting or traits) then explode. Make iWarlock do only one attack but have it swap 1(2?) conditions on you for 1(2) boons currently on the enemy. Make iMage completely different so it’s useful? Haha, I don’t know, make it do an AoE burn/confuse attack? That’d be cool.

Sorry it got so long, but I love playing my mesmer(s) and just had to chip in my 2 (or more like 100) cents.

TL;DR
These are nerfs both to PvP and PvE since phantasms are so random. My suggestion is to retool them slightly so that they become more reliable single-use damage+utility skills (ie. iZerker becomes a ground-targeting AoE cripple that does not to be cast on a mob but explodes after the one use)

Ok i had a night to sleep on it. My fellow mesmers Anet is not going to change their actions, they do not want to give off the vibe that they can be swayed with customer frustration. Since we clearly are not going back, and what i think could help change the conversation somewhat from speculation to understanding is for ANET to get in front of us and tell us why…. From my experience both in business and elsewhere, when people understand the why, it helps move the conversation forward and this is one conversation that needs to move forward. Not only does this help but it is a mature and responsible action. Community, if your with me, let ANET know we want to know why, I do not think it is to much to ask, but I most likely am wrong….

Illusionary berserker wasn’t nerfed lol, neither was the greatsword in general, same goes for the self shatter — those are your primary sources for enemy tagging.

I never run phantasm army builds, though, they bore me to tears unless I combo with them.

What is so odd about the complaints is that the most significant Mesmer nerf came in the form of the runes of the Adventurer being cut down to 50%; over the 100% that it was previously. I used to run it with deceptive evasion, couple it with the low-cooldown heals the Mesmer had, I found it stupendously overpowered in a shatter/dissipation build.

But then again the one and only Mesmer build on forums was teh PHANTASM ARMY!!11! Seeing how Anet noticed the above with the adventurer rune, they are one step ahead of everyone else.

Please just separate PvE and PvP nerfs. Problem solved. Revert PvE nerfs, keep PvP nerfs.

Really, Swordsman and Duelist are the two most damaging Phantasms that also have the lowest CDs. The CD increase was long overdue IMO. As for Warlock, the CD increase is relatively minor; and is also somewhat justified given its high potential damage.

While I don’t think these changes actually do anything for Mesmer PvP balance, I don’t feel they are totally unjustified either.

as a mesmer.
Changes are fine

My 1 attack on my thief does more damage than Illusionary Duelist.

Wow i just read the patch notes and Mesmer got destroyed, iam level 70 with my mesmer and already had a hard time getting there and now is even worse. Between this and the nerf to drop rates this game is really starting to not look so enjoyable. Anyway no wonder why people dont want mesmers in groups, now even less

I’m a PvE guy. I have a Guardian and Engineer to 80, and a Mes to 70.

Ermh, i meant, a Guardian and a Engineer.

After today’s patch, lost any interest in Mes for PvE – parked her in HotM for when i’ll want to step in pvp, whenever it will happen.

I mean, Mes in PvE was already a pain in the “youknowwhat” to use. Even more, to get it work on par with other prof.

Since today, it just lost any sense, it’s only struggling SO hard for so little reward.

Anet: you created PvE/PvP splits. It’s time to use those.

Mere Image.8376:

I can’t believe I made my PvE main a Mesmer. What a waste of time! Warriors can smash 1 while were left with longer cooldowns for phantasms AND one of our only AoE’s. I thought they needed a buff. Screw you people that think we’re OP because they own you in PvP; try leveling one in PvE as a solo character. Guess I will be leveling an Engi now. Or just giving this game a break considering there’s no knowing what will waste my time next. Great patch ArenaNet. I’ve always been so supportive of this game, but every thing keeps getting nerfed to my disadvantage. Keeping phantams alive in dungeons is hard enough…now I can’t even rely on quick recharge times. Fanatastic!

As much as I’m unhappy about this change, I am leveling one in solo PvE right now. It’s not hard; I think I may have died all of twice so far in 1-62. It’s easier and more fun than leveling my MM necro or tanky Guardian were, which is saying a lot.

And I’m definitely only talking about leveling solo in PvE, in response to the quoted post.