Guild Wars 2

Before I begin, I’d like to politely ask anyone with their finger twitching over the reply button with a rant about how much they hate the downed mechanic as a whole to quietly leave.

The mesmer downed bar has a lot of questionable aspects at the moment. I’d like to discuss our downed skills in detail and suggest improvements.

Mind Blast. Sorry, but this is nothing short of overpowered. Mind Blast seems to be reminiscent of the pre-confusion rework. For those who didn’t play the betas, confusion used to be something you apply in low stacks for a sustained period of time. As such, our scepter and trident both had confusion on their auto attacks. Confusion was then reworked into something you apply in large stacks for a short duration. In doing so, Anet removed confusion from our auto attacks… but they left 2. First, the trident’s clones and second, the one which is relevant to this thread, the downed/drowning bar.

The combination of the mesmer and their clone spamming Mind Blast leads to a ridiculous downed state. I sometimes even intentionally down myself in PvE so I can abuse the masses of confusion.

There is really no other solution than to remove the confusion and buff the hard damage to compensate.

Deception. Deception is a really good skill to be honest. I think the fact the real mesmer has a giant red arrow above their head is perfectly fine. Deception breaks a stability charged finish, which is more than can be said for a lot of classes. It does need the silly bugs fixing where it will not break the finish though. I don’t mind Deception failing if I’m downed in a bad position; that’s a positional error on my part. But when I’m in an open area, or even only have a wall on me at one side, there is absolutely no excuse for Deception failing to interrupt the stomp. Finally, the mesmer/clone distinction needs to be made clearer for allies, some of whom have never played a mesmer.

Phantasmal Rogue. I actually don’t have any problems with this skill. It’s a bit meh in the sense it only deals damage whilst other classes have some original effects on their skill 3s, but it’s a pretty useful skill. It deals a chunk of damage to someone trying to finish you and if you’re lucky you’ll end up downing them instead. The only thing I would suggest is to move Mind Blast’s confusion onto the rogue. Perhaps make it deal double damage from behind or apply 3 stacks of confusion from the front.

Should illusions die when we are downed? In my opinion, yes. Currently mesmer will win any 1v1 downed fight with the combination of Mind Blast and any illusions they have alive sticking around to help out. It would make sense for the illusions to die; you could argue the mesmer’s power is disrupted upon entering downed causing their hallucinations to falter. I would then add a trait (perhaps replacing that wonderfully underpowered Prismatic Understanding /cough Meld with the Shadows /cough) which amends this and allows the mesmer to maintain their illusions on downing.

So what are your thoughts on the mesmer downed bar?

I think the Mesmer already is the weakest class and you ask for it to be nerfed down even more up the point we might ask ourselves why we are playing as Mesmer again other than the cool fact you can ’’clone’’ yourself.

I don’t quite follow why we’d need to remove Confusion from our #1.
It’s powerful, yes, but it’s hardly more damaging than other classes’ #1. Look at Engineer for a good example of where this fits in. Yes, we have clones also applying Confusion stacks but in return, whoever downed us doesn’t actually suffer confusion damage, they’re using the Finisher instead.

As for #2 and #3, they’re fine with me.

I have an issue with our Drowning bar in that it’s boring. It’s the same as the Downed bar, booooring.

Novalitus.7382:

I think the Mesmer already is the weakest class and you ask for it to be nerfed down even more up the point we might ask ourselves why we are playing as Mesmer again other than the cool fact you can ’’clone’’ yourself.

we may lack direct damage, but out confusion stack+shatter’s+glamours(condition stack) all then more make up for it,, if cloning is the only thing u can do, please dont play mesmer.

confusion when down, is good, no different to some the other classes OP downed option, especially when adventuring alone.

the lack of armor makes up for it imo

“Confusion was then reworked into something you apply in large stacks for a short duration”

Sry I lost it there. Confusion at is not reworked it is just nerfed to the ground. In beta it was used to punish the enemy for actions. It still does this if you can time it but even the the dmg you get is meh. So unless you fight a Thief, 100b Warrior or a ranger it does have little to no effect. When I play my guardian I heal more with spamming my stuff then it hurts me.

why did they mess around with deception in the first place. Before they started to mess around with it, it worked really well. In the open you were teleported a decent distance. However AFTER the reworked it in the 14th Sep update, it completely ruined it. So many times it teleports me only 2 feet from your downed location. Making it utterly useless as the person using the finishing move will land the move.
WHY was it messed around with??

^ Yes! #2 is a gamble nowadays. I don’t understand the complaints about it. The teleport distance is a joke.

Regarding #4: I don’t think Necro’s lose minions on downed (I know there are bugs where they wont attack but that is a bug). I don’t think Thieves lose their summons when downed. I am almost positive Elementalists don’t lose their summons when downed. I know rangers don’t lose their pet when downed. I know engineers don’t lose their turrets when downed. And I am unsure about guardians spirit weapons.

Why should we lose our summons when almost every class in the game has the ability to keep summons up when they are in their downed state?

purpleskies.3274:

And I am unsure about guardians spirit weapons.

Nope, my spirit weapons keep on whacking my targets when I’m in a downed state

I expected illusions to be the touchy point and was looking forward to the arguments people make (I’m still not 100% convinced I agree with myself yet), but I have to admit I’m very surprised people don’t agree with me on Mind Blast.

As a reward for downing a player, the player’s influence on a battle is significantly reduced. This is seen across every single downed bar… except the mesmer.

With the mesmer and their clone using Mind Blast, you can get up to 7-8 stacks of confusion permanently. If you have a little +condi duration and are underwater (where MB seems to activate slightly faster), double digits of confusion from a downed mesmer are not a rare sight.

My problem with Mind Blast is the fact the confusion gained from it is fully sustainable. Normally when you have a high confusion stack on you, you can just sit back and wait it out for a few seconds, or just cleanse it and know it won’t be back for a while. However, MB’s confusion can’t be waited out and the cleanse will save you all of 5 seconds. It can (quite easily IMO) be argued Mind Blast is our BEST source of confusion. Where is the reward for downing the mesmer when you give them access to one of their best skills?

If the mesmer downed bar were in the form of a weapon set, I would happily take it. It really is that good. 1 applies confusion, 2 stealths and creates a clone who also applies confusion, 3 creates a high damage phantasm. Heck, it’s probably better than the scepter.

As has been noted above, the player trying to finish us is unaffected by the confusion. Removing the confusion and buffing the raw damage would actually buff MB in many situations whilst removing its utterly broken ability to maintain such high stacks of confusion.

For Pve it might be op as you say, because when you kill a mob they stay down, but 95% of the time i use my mesmer in WvWvW. In PvP when downed you might be able to down another player, but then you need to finish them off. Not an easy task when W3 is all about moving in packs, someone will finish you off very quickly. Deception is my main concern in W3. My main goal is to get some distance from where i was downed and try to heal up and get up and not expose my location. After the changes, the distance is pathetic.
Even before they changes made, in w3 it wasn’t easy getting back up due to the zerg factor.
They need to make Deception teleport a reasonable distance from the finishing move.

Deception teleport should match range of blink teleport. Instead it is less than a 1/3.

The only real problem I’ve ever had with the downed state is #3. For some reason, even when I survive long enough to even activate it, it either doesn’t go off or does so little damage that using the skill hurts me more than if I just auto-attacked. Perhaps it’s because I roll a condition damage mesmer, but why do I get a completely useless skill while power/crit mesmers get all useful ones? :\

About the confusion stacks though- I don’t see the problem. The #1 skill itself does very little damage, with the potential to do moderately high damage. Considering you’re super squishy and it takes significantly less hits to kill you than med/high armor classes, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have the potential to do decent damage.

Thank god for the downed state skills lol i dont have to worry that much about taking on mobs 7 levels higher xDD

Richard Nixon.6573:

The only real problem I’ve ever had with the downed state is #3. For some reason, even when I survive long enough to even activate it, it either doesn’t go off or does so little damage that using the skill hurts me more than if I just auto-attacked. Perhaps it’s because I roll a condition damage mesmer, but why do I get a completely useless skill while power/crit mesmers get all useful ones? :\

You already answered this yourself:
This is because the #1 attack (And by extension the clones created from #2) are much less powerful for a Power/Crit Mesmer than they are for a Power/Condition Mesmer. In turn, #3 is much less useful for the latter (it’s still quite useful, tbh).

lol u want a nerf for the weakest class of GW2? cmon….