Guild Wars 2

Fixing thread.

/15char

I shelved my mesmer it’s that faceroll easy to play now, totally busted in WvW. Maybe in sPvP its well balanced given you cant cap points in stealth?

I really enjoyed my mesmer back before all the kittened buffs when it was challenging, sure i lost a lot more but at least i wouldnt see every 2nd person small manning in WvW on a kittening mesmer.

One of the main problems is the long stealth uptime, there are others, like an instant 1200 rng uninterruptable stun(lol). But the stealth(PU) used to be tied to a defensive stat line which is no longer the case. You can have the crazy burst from stealth and the long stealth uptime.

If you miss the burst, no biggie, sit in stealth again and generate some clones/phantasms, this also ticks down your blurred frenzy/mirror blade timer depending on your flavour of burst. Your phantasms keep the pressure up if they are not being dealt with, and if they are this opens up your target for a halting strike interrupt from stealth to lead into your burst.

When you come out of stealth one or a couple of your defensive tools should be off cooldown, blinds, blurred frenzy, blinks, invuln, or one of your other stealth timers if you feel like you want more time in stealth, prestige, decoy, veil, mass invis.

Guys, burst was nerfed and you are still complaining?

Mak.2657:

Guys, burst was nerfed and you are still complaining?

It’s more the burst with very little risk, on top of the survival skills/dazes/blinds/invulns, but to make a point you could easily argue the PU/perplexity staff-scepter/torch cancer is equally as broken.

With the never ending clone production/spam of condis and long stealth uptime.

TheGuy.3568:

again you not making any sense here. you say to escape you need to plan ahead
3v1 i had against very good engi he escape the moment he feel the pressure against mesmer thief and ele . so yes he plan ahead and survive with just shield block shoes and stealth and after 5 sec reengage on the point as i knew he would have return i won as he had no escape utilities up.
if you check what anet gave to whole classes you will see balance skills and utilities to survive longer while some have better burst over defense

you are just sayingfor example condi are op because the other player didnt take condi cleanse so lets nerf condi.
if memser take sword for #2 and blink and have f4 its like every other class defense utilities . so yes balance means to compare each class

cause statement like yours few classes got nerfed because anet failed to compare it to others (check condi mesmer with torment nerf while other can do 4k burning dmg and 15 poison and bleeding we can do 8 torment = very balance

Chorazin.4107:

If you miss the burst, no biggie, sit in stealth again and generate some clones/phantasms, this also ticks down your blurred frenzy/mirror blade timer depending on your flavour of burst. Your phantasms keep the pressure up if they are not being dealt with, and if they are this opens up your target for a halting strike interrupt from stealth to lead into your burst.

Meanwhile the other person is twiddling their thumbs doing absolutely nothing and waiting for you to burst them again?

Honestly, judging from the “strategies” that people like to complain about on these forums, I’m convinced that most people like you are fighting people who bought the game a week ago and still haven’t figured out how to PvP. Anyone who is even remotely competent could counter your “strategies” without breaking a sweat.

So you are talking about wvw (perplexity/PU)? Idk.
In pvp I don’t feel OP of mesmer. Even when playing vs CS/PU mesmers (even if I don’t use neither of those traits). Its my personal exp ofc.

Fay.2357:

Meanwhile the other person is twiddling their thumbs doing absolutely nothing and waiting for you to burst them again?

Honestly, judging from the “strategies” that people like to complain about on these forums, I’m convinced that most people like you are fighting people who bought the game a week ago and still haven’t figured out how to PvP. Anyone who is even remotely competent could counter your “strategies” without breaking a sweat.

Id assume you are clearing clones/phantasms, or at least attempting to, considering i can keep generating them whilst in stealth at no risk. But this will open you up to a powerblock(halting strike) lead into burst if the mesmer is running it. Or the always amusing illusionary counter 5 torment stacks from stealth if you are a more condi based mesmer.

I mained mesmer/Guard since release, i mostly play support guard for a havoc squad on YB. But when i roamed i played my mesmer, as stated above ive shelved the mesmer because of how busted it is in small scale fighting in favour of something challenging like my engineer.

What was wrong with the mesmer pre patch? Nothing really, it certainly didnt need the level of buffing it received from a WvW perspective. I did just fine roaming, felt i had excellent escape, condi clear, im setup for hybrid dmg so i had DPS and condi pressure, it was all good.

This is from a WvW roaming perspective not an sPvP perspective where taking points is key and im guessing the stealth uptime is not that much of an issue. But really until you get out and play other classes, roam on other classes and see what its like playing them you are only theory crafting.

I see you only post on mesmer threads from your post history, get out and try a different class, then come back and tell me mesmers are fine.

Chorazin.4107:

Id assume you are clearing clones/phantasms, or at least attempting to, considering i can keep generating them whilst in stealth at no risk.

Right, no risk. Lets see…

If you’re a power build, you’re running sw/t+gs. You can’t make a clone from mirror blade, the pMage only causes your enemy to spam /laugh, and using iLeap just to spawn a clone means you’re wasting an incredibly important skill just to ‘spawn a clone’. This means you’re limited to casting the iZerker, which can get cleaved down in a hit or two, and wasting dodges. If you waste dodges while in stealth just to create clones, you’re not going to beat anyone except those ‘bought the game last week and have no idea how to pvp’ folks I mentioned previously.

If you’re a condie build, same situation except the iWarlock will tickle in this case, and you have the option of wasting the incredibly important phase retreat cooldown instead.

Tl;dr: You’re wrong, and using your tactics is a fantastic way to make experienced mesmers laugh at you.

Chorazin.4107:

What was wrong with the mesmer pre patch?

• A damage model entirely based around shatter for bursting and phantasms for sustained DPS meant you had very subpar damage unless you specced into one or two very specific builds.
• The most successful roaming build was essentially condi-troll garbage.
• Clunky Mantrkitten
• tering was very unreliable and underpowered unless you take IP.
• Several useless and busted skills (old Mimic is a great example; the only reason to take it was to bug it out and use it as a projectile shield).
• Zerk builds were thief food to an embarrassing degree.
• Practically unable to take a DPS rune because you really want Traveler’s. Speed is life or death in havoc and roaming.
• Glamour Confusion builds got nerfed into oblivion, killing a lot of the class’ original zerg-fight potential.

The specialization patch actually addressed a number of these, directly or indirectly. My concern is that we’ll backslide for all the wrong reasons.

ASP.8093:

Chorazin.4107:

What was wrong with the mesmer pre patch?

• A damage model entirely based around shatter for bursting and phantasms for sustained DPS meant you had very subpar damage unless you specced into one or two very specific builds.
• The most successful roaming build was essentially condi-troll garbage.
• Clunky Mantrkittentering was very unreliable and underpowered unless you take IP.
• Several useless and busted skills (old Mimic is a great example; the only reason to take it was to bug it out and use it as a projectile shield).
• Zerk builds were thief food to an embarrassing degree.
• Practically unable to take a DPS rune because you really want Traveler’s. Speed is life or death in havoc and roaming.
• Glamour Confusion builds got nerfed into oblivion, killing a lot of the class’ original zerg-fight potential.

The specialization patch actually addressed a number of these, directly or indirectly. My concern is that we’ll backslide for all the wrong reasons.

Yes the roaming build that you seen a lot was condi because of the way the escape was setup, speccing into PU meant speccing defensively. It was an unfortunate by product of matching stats to trait lines.

Things like mimic were just plain broken, did they need to overhaul the class to fix a couple of traits/abilities?

There will always be a couple of builds that everyone uses, i think that is the nature of the game and this patch from what i have seen doesnt change that. Id like to know how many mesmers are not running PU in a PvP environment.

Has anyone got any builds running Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interruptions over PU in a PvP aspect of this game?

Chorazin.4107:

Has anyone got any builds running Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interruptions over PU in a PvP aspect of this game?

Yes. If you run a condie shatter build in sPvP, you should be taking BD over PU, as it gives you safe stomping ability and consistent access to some strong boons. CI is also a very viable choice in power shatter builds instead of PU.

The issue is that the devs, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut the legs off of condie shatter before it even had a chance to exist, so you don’t see it too much.

I’m sorry but how is Mimic broken? I can take up one utility slot to pretty much regain the cd on another maybe once or twice per fight. And it is required to be used before they’re needed in the case of stunbreakers.

Chaotic Interruption is great in any lockdown build as it can significantly increase your damage in team fights and allows you to basically call and disable a target in the first seconds of the fight so your team can focus them. I personally run BD to great effect in a boonshare build. Think Chaos posted a video of the match in question, but one or two mesmers running boonshare builds pretty much fills the role of a team rezzer but with greater damage. In the middle of fights it isn’t uncommon to share around 12 stacks of might with allies(usually taking them to around 20) and sharing stability instantly is great. The boons do accumulate, namely swiftness, fury, regen and protection. By the end of the match I shared something like 3 minutes of swiftness and 50 seconds of fury.

It is great build and is definitely viable, it just isn’t meant for hotjoin or solo que without a few changes because it benefits greatly from at least being part of an organized duo.

Chorazin.4107:

Id like to know how many mesmers are not running PU in a PvP environment.

Has anyone got any builds running Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interruptions over PU in a PvP aspect of this game?

I’m sorry but PU sucks. Here, I said it. With the nerf (“fix”) to mantras you can’t use stealth to safely pre-cast MoD in a middle of fight anymore. Since it’ll be on full cd after exhausting it’s charges. Which indirectly nerfed PU, since you don’t need the extra stealth as much. Not to mention the nerf to Mirror Blade, so your spike from stealth is less threatening.

You assume mesmers have to run Chaos. It’s master and adept traits are bad, unless you run Mass Invis. Which, to iterate, isn’t as needed as before. You’re much better off with Moa or even Warp imo. Chaotic Interruption may be wroth it. I’ve found that it helps immensely in taking down thieves. Which once again, eat you for breakfast (, launch and dinner).

I, for an example, run Inspiration. I can cleanse condis from myself and my teammates. I can heal myself for more and I can mitigate some damage for those around me (Mental Defense). Seems better to me than being able to do nothing for a little more.

Chorazin I have roamed on every single class in WvW. Generally I would say thief, engineer, warrior, elementalist and possibly condition ranger were better than mesmer especially for solo. Medi guard I felt was about on par as they needed traveller runes to really excell like mesmer and necro was dead last because of its vulnerability to CC.

That was pre patch.

Post patch, I see condi rangers blowing people up in seconds from stealth, same for thieves, both condition and power, medi guards are mostly the same, Warriors had their escape trimmed a bit but still a strong choice in both condition and power. Engineers are as annoying as ever especially the condition builds and necro is in a better place but still last. Elementalist just flat out got buffed and is imo right up there with thief.

Mesmer is in a much better place now they have enough stealth to get away, take that away and they go back to pre patch if not worse as you don’t have a reliable way to cripple and weaken foes like we did with the clone death traits.

In groups is where mesmers really made up for it though, this is where 3s of stealth could allow you to get behind your guys if in trouble so they can support you. 3s was just enough to get out of the firing line and transfer aggro.

Essentially before patch every class but mesmer, necro and possibly mediguard had many ways to disengage and get to safety without traveller runes. I’d like to see necros get a hand in this regard but then they’re also getting very good in team fights and you almost certainly need to focus them otherwise they will tear through the party.

Fay.2357:

Chorazin.4107:

Has anyone got any builds running Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interruptions over PU in a PvP aspect of this game?

Yes. If you run a condie shatter build in sPvP, you should be taking BD over PU, as it gives you safe stomping ability and consistent access to some strong boons. CI is also a very viable choice in power shatter builds instead of PU.

The issue is that the devs, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut the legs off of condie shatter before it even had a chance to exist, so you don’t see it too much.

I run a condi shatter using PU right now and it working for me. It might not commonly exist but what am running is very good for what i do. Might not be good say in sPVP when you are talking about fighting on points cause of PU stealth, but in solo and hot joint condi shatter using pu exist.

I am talking strictly from a WvW perspective, not sPvP, or PvP, or hot join any any form of PvP. I sometimes forget this game mode exists,, so when i say PvP i mean WvW.

Just for clarity lol.

I kind of got the impression PU wasnt that bad in sPvP as you cant cap points in stealth which is kind of what the game mode revolves around.

As for the roaming mesmer pre patch, i roamed fine on my zerker phantasm build and my hybrid PU build. shatter was fun to play but i found it not quite as effective as the other 2 options.

Personally, i love playing CI but find myself switching to PU every now and then because of too many other PU mesmers around. It’s kinda like -condi duration food that you only use because condi builds run with +duration food.

That said, if they were to nerf PU (and CS, but that is a different story), they need to compensate by undoing some nerfs to:
- Mirror Blade
- Chaotic Dampening
- MtD (i hate condi, but it seems just fair to me)

Necrotize.2974:

I’m sorry but how is Mimic broken?

Was broken. I was answering a question about what used to suck (some of which was changed, some wasn’t). Mimic used to absorb a projectile and then allow you to cast it back, but in practice the use for this was that there were a lot of projectiles it didn’t absorb and so you could use it to soak them for a few seconds.

Now it’s a pretty good skill and the various new Mirror-based traits cover its old niche acceptably without relying on weird buggy interactions to work.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

Fay.2357:

Chorazin.4107:

Has anyone got any builds running Bountiful Disillusionment or Chaotic Interruptions over PU in a PvP aspect of this game?

Yes. If you run a condie shatter build in sPvP, you should be taking BD over PU, as it gives you safe stomping ability and consistent access to some strong boons. CI is also a very viable choice in power shatter builds instead of PU.

The issue is that the devs, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut the legs off of condie shatter before it even had a chance to exist, so you don’t see it too much.

I run a condi shatter using PU right now and it working for me. It might not commonly exist but what am running is very good for what i do. Might not be good say in sPVP when you are talking about fighting on points cause of PU stealth, but in solo and hot joint condi shatter using pu exist.

Honestly, if you’re just using something in hotjoin, I’m not sure why you even bother mentioning it…

That being said, PU works, it’s just far far inferior to BD in duels/hotjoin/sPvP because the stability is so strong, and you don’t need that extra defense.

In WvW though, PU is almost a necessity for an effective roaming build. Without PU, engaging 1v3 or worse is obvious suicide against players of any competence. With PU, you can hold your own and maintain a fight if you’re skilled enough. If 1v3+ didn’t happen all the time in Wvw, I wouldn’t take PU…but it does.

Like it or not, mesmer isn’t currently OP. Essentially all of the observations in this thread reveal (without detailing all of the underlying reasons—see above):

pre-patch mesmer:

• popular opinion was that mesmer had become practically useless
• had the worst dps of all classes, but decent burst
• was edged out of PVE meta almost completely (niche only)
• was not part of large-scale WvW meta (except as utility for non-essential strategies like portal bombing, veiling in, objective sitting)
• had more counters in roaming WvW than other classes in roaming meta, low escape and low survive
• was hit-or-miss in PvP

post-patch mesmer:

• has average DPS among all classes, but slightly less burst potential than pre-patch mesmer
• is part of new PVE meta (only ranger and necro are still on the sidelines here)
• still isn’t part of large-scale WvW meta
• much more survivability in roaming WvW, but mostly due to higher escape with increased stealth (also due to stat-trait decoupling, but all classes have seen a benefit from this)
  • Thieves who were formerly used to running down and gutting roaming mesmers are extremely vocal on this one, since (in their minds) takedowns of this sort should be calculable and therefore risk-free—i.e., you should be able to know that the mesmer will die and you will escape
• is more reliable in PvP, but each meta mesmer build still has its own clear counter—as such, mesmer is still hit-or-miss, depending more on your opponent than on you

Fay.2357:

With PU, you can hold your own and maintain a fight if you’re skilled enough.

I think that deserves emphasis. For most people, there are about as many roamers of greater skill as there are of lesser skill. That means that most players won’t be able to roam as a PU mesmer and win a majority of their encounters—and this will always be the case [till next balance patch at least].

And as a result of that, most average players won’t typically roam as a PU mesmer (unless they’re trying it out, or stubborn). So eventually, we’ll reach the point where if you meet a PU mesmer roaming, that mesmer is either

• average and probably an easy kill, or
• pretty good at PU mesmer and won’t go quietly into that goodnight (so bring 2 friends)

i play condi shatter in tpvp (not hotjoin)
i play it without pu as i need to hold points
its good build but in much emphasis on your group composition. thus if your team lack dmg i switch to power mesmer.

pu is not good . although i play versus a condi shatter pu . he didnt manage to do much dmg to me as i know pu duration skills so i dodge , blind when needed but i couldnt kill him. he manage to kill me when it was 2v1 and he join to 3v1 .

but you wont see much of condi shatter (my team play with 2 which are 50% of the condi shatter players )

They should force people to make a choice on their main and 2 other class people plays without possibility of changing
And they’d lock you out of the capability of whining about classes you haven’t picked on your previous choice… The quality of critics would be so much higher and so much better
wishful thinking of mine

I am only using PU in WvW because I do like running with our zerg there and traited Veil is better.