Mesmer hate on raids?
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
Thanks to my illusions this combat is nothing but a stage scene.
You should prepare for your great finale.
You should prepare for your great finale.
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
This…
Sure, with the change in the alacrity the lack in dps from the chrono will be even worse, so stack chronos… lol How many chronos you will need to stack? I see more the change in the composition of groups/raids from one chrono to zero.
I’ve been playing my mesmer since the beta. But I refuse to play my mesmer in the incoming state. If they don’t give us some good news in the release of the patch. I have decided to not play if I don’t see my profession competitive because I sufered it too many times. I still need to decide if reroll or quit.
Not one, but TWO terrible math mistakes in Karl’s explanation:
1. Alacrity is not a 66% increase, it’s a 40% increase max. He apparently doesn’t understand how the mechanics in his game work.
2. Bringing more chronos is a loss of dps to the raid. It would still be a nerf because to achieve the same alacrity, you’d need to bring more inferior dps.
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
lol, exactly.
It’s totally fine that Burnzerker can do 40% more dmg than other dps role, bring as many as you can while make other dps classes less optimal.
Sanctum of Rall
Pain Train Choo [Choo]
Mind Smack – Mesmer
Pain Train Choo [Choo]
Mind Smack – Mesmer
I don’t think the original comment had anything at all to do with not wanting there to be multiple Mesmers in a raid group. I felt it was geared toward the duration of Alacrity. If you nerf the duration instead of the intensity, because it is such a desirable buff to have, raids will start to bring 2 Chronos instead to maintain uptime.
This is bad because it doesn’t solve the problem caused by Alacrity (it being required/too strong). If anything it makes matters -worse-. This is because now instead of having 9 Raid members + Chrono, you have 8 Raid members + 2 Chronos. Anet might then further nerf the duration so that even 2 Chronos cannot maintain the uptime. What then? Do raids bring 3? Or do they decide that its not worth the space and take none?
Mesmers should be wanted for a myriad of abilities, including Quickness and Alacrity but not limited to them. Relying entirely on Quickness + Alacrity to get into raids forces Mesmers into a bad spot. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I’d hope that it means other areas will receive buffs in time.
Mesmers should be wanted for a myriad of abilities, including Quickness and Alacrity but not limited to them. Relying entirely on Quickness + Alacrity to get into raids forces Mesmers into a bad spot. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I’d hope that it means other areas will receive buffs in time.
Definitely too optimistic. I agree that relying entirely on quickness + alacrity to get into raids forces mesmers into a bad spot, but past experience says that if quickness and alacrity get nerfed, mesmers won’t get anything to compensate for it ever.
It’s just sad to see the work Robert Gee did to make mesmer actually fun for once start to unravel… Next thing you know they will nerf quickness, give alacrity to other classes, and find a way to ruin Continuum Shift.
This is bad because it doesn’t solve the problem caused by Alacrity (it being required/too strong). If anything it makes matters -worse-. This is because now instead of having 9 Raid members + Chrono, you have 8 Raid members + 2 Chronos. Anet might then further nerf the duration so that even 2 Chronos cannot maintain the uptime. What then? Do raids bring 3? Or do they decide that its not worth the space and take none?
This logic is nightmarishly bad.
Mesmers are undesirable because their dps is bad. Really, really bad. Bringing 2 chronos is weaker than bringing 1 chrono, because they do less dps.
Nerfing duration might force bringing multiple chronos to keep the same alacrity uptime, but that is always a dps loss as long as mesmer damage is so low.
Faulty logic like this is why we can’t have nice things.
Um. What? Did we read the same thing?
The quote from Dulfy about the change:
“Alacrity caused too much overall damage increase. Basically you had a mesmer or you had 66% damage loss. We didn’t want to reduce the amount of alacrity as you can just bring more mesmers to bridge the gap. We brought alacrity brought down from 66% to 33% so it is not useless. "
I’m not arguing that the numbers used in the statement are accurate but Alacrity was deemed too strong: “You had a mesmer or you had 66% damage loss.”
One option (clearly entertained by the devs, as the bold sentence indicates) is that lowering the duration/availability of Alacrity would help, but could result in Raids taking 2 (or more) Mesmers to counter that and keep 100% uptime.
You’re right, the dps loss of having multiple Chronos/Mesmers might outweigh the boost of 100% Alacrity/Quickness uptime. Players would soon determine that for themselves. If they had so determined that 2 Chronos is better than 1 (or none, after the hypothetical nerf) we’d find ourselves in the situation I described with 2 Mesmers + 8 Raid Members. And with Chronos and their Alacrity being even more ‘in demand’ (needing 2 per Raid instead of 1). I’d fear for more nerfs in this situation.
(edited by Glacial.9516)
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Um. What? Did we read the same thing?
The quote from Dulfy about the change:
“Alacrity caused too much overall damage increase. Basically you had a mesmer or you had 66% damage loss. We didn’t want to reduce the amount of alacrity as you can just bring more mesmers to bridge the gap. We brought alacrity brought down from 66% to 33% so it is not useless. "I’m not arguing that the numbers used in the statement are accurate but Alacrity was deemed too strong: “You had a mesmer or you had 66% damage loss.”
One option (clearly entertained by the devs, as the bold sentence indicates) is that lowering the duration/availability of Alacrity would help, but could result in Raids taking 2 (or more) Mesmers to counter that and keep 100% uptime.
You’re right, the dps loss of having multiple Chronos/Mesmers might outweigh the boost of 100% Alacrity/Quickness uptime. Players would soon determine that for themselves. If they had so determined that 2 Chronos is better than 1 (or none, after the hypothetical nerf) we’d find ourselves in the situation I described with 2 Mesmers + 8 Raid Members. And with Chronos and their Alacrity being even more ‘in demand’ (needing 2 per Raid instead of 1). I’d fear for more nerfs in this situation.
There is no “might outweigh the boost of 100% alacrity/quickness uptime”.
No, it WOULD outweigh it.
We have kitten for sustained damage.
“Unused Development Initiative. We care so much
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.
Just because they fail at it doesn’t change the goal.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.
Just because they fail at it doesn’t change the goal.
If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.
Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.
“balance” isn’t the goal.
If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.
“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.
“not trying” does.
“Unused Development Initiative. We care so much
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.
If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.
And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.
Just because they fail at it doesn’t change the goal.
They have never made a single change in this game that would move elementalist out of being stackworthy. At some point, you may have to admit that this isn’t really their goal, and they’re just making up kitten to rationalize bad or biased decisions.
Everyone’s too emotionally charged for the one sentence thing to work, so I’m going to break it down into bigger bits.
They have never made a single change in this game that would move elementalist out of being stackworthy. At some point, you may have to admit that this isn’t really their goal, and they’re just making up kitten to rationalize bad or biased decisions.
Icebow nerf, FGS nerf, Fire Dagger 3 nerf, upcomming cele amulet removal. I have a longer memory, so I remember periods in time where elementalists weren’t popular, both in PVE and PVP.
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity. Your claim doesn’t make sense: If the devs didn’t care to try to get other classes to see more play, then they wouldn’t buff them at all. I’ve seen this story before: every single profession forum is convinced that the devs have it out for their profession, and are all trying to support another supposed favorite profession. It happens every single time a class gets nerfed. And since every single class forum says that their profession is hated by the devs in preference for another… then what is this mythical favorite profession? They’ve all received buffs at some point in time, so how do you tell which one it is?
If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.
“balance” isn’t the goal.
If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.
“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.
“not trying” does.
There’s so much to unpack here I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll start it in list form:
#1: The devs balance primarily around 5 vs 5 PVP content. As there are 9 professions in the game, the idea that the devs directly want some profession to be stacked is nonsense. Especially since, after a recent 4 ele + thief PvP tournament victory, Anet made a rule that outright prevents severe stacking.
#2:The loudest fanbase is the one that complains the most. Therefore, when a class becomes underpowered, they become the “loudest”, as they have the most complaints.
#3: The problem with “fixing everything” is that nobody knows how to do it. For three reasons. First is that, no one is sure exactly when something is “fixed”. Exactly what proportion of the game should be defensive vs. offensive, point control vs. map mechanics, duels vs. group, or the dynamic nature of the map is all subjective. Second, the community itself is an unpredictable force, so what is balanced and unbalanced can be skewed by the flow of player preferences. Third, there is a massive amount of factors that go into each class, and making sure that there always exists some combination of skills and traits that can reliably beat all the others is so difficult that nobody can figure it out. The devs aren’t wizards who can magick up an answer out of nowhere.
#4: The point of having class balance in a PVE scenario is for flexibility. While the devs don’t want you to stack all of 1 or two professions, they also don’t want the game to be so anti-stacking that you have to have 1 of everything. That creates a similar kind of pressure that class superiority does.
#5: The original “group content” in the game, aside from overworld 100 man events, was 5 man dungeon groups. Larger raid content was added by popular demand 3 years later, and as such is more or less just imposing the conventions of other games onto GW2 more than any conscious class balancing decision.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)
Icebow nerf, FGS nerf, Fire Dagger 3 nerf, upcomming cele amulet removal. I have a longer memory, so I remember periods in time where elementalists weren’t popular, both in PVE and PVP.
You may want to re-check that long memory of yours. Elementalists were underpowered for ~1 year at the beginning of the game in PvP, and since that point have been top meta picks without any interruptions. Elementalists have been top meta picks in PvE for the entire existence of the game. The only time they weren’t top meta picks in PvE was at the very beginning when nobody had any clue what they were doing.
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity. Your claim doesn’t make sense: If the devs didn’t care to try to get other classes to see more play, then they wouldn’t buff them at all. I’ve seen this story before: every single profession forum is convinced that the devs have it out for their profession, and are all trying to support another supposed favorite profession. It happens every single time a class gets nerfed. And since every single class forum says that their profession is hated by the devs in preference for another… then what is this mythical favorite profession? They’ve all received buffs at some point in time, so how do you tell which one it is?
I agree that it’s foolish to think that the devs are maliciously attempting to ruin mesmer. However, it’s equally foolish to deny the facts that mesmer has been the most consistently nerfed and underpowered class in the entire game. Mesmer was completely non-existent in the PvP meta for 2.5 years, has never been useful in a WvW group past portal+veil since glamours and confusion were nerfed, and have been the lowest realistic dps in the game in PvE for the entire game, only brought for gimmicky tricks like portal.
While other classes moan about getting nerfed, most of the time they come out alright anyway. When mesmer gets nerfed, we vanish from the meta for a year until anet realizes they just steamrolled an entire class with their mistake.
You may want to re-check that long memory of yours. Elementalists were underpowered for ~1 year at the beginning of the game in PvP, and since that point have been top meta picks without any interruptions. Elementalists have been top meta picks in PvE for the entire existence of the game. The only time they weren’t top meta picks in PvE was at the very beginning when nobody had any clue what they were doing.
So I checked, and I remember two periods when Ele’s fell out of favor after the initial year. First was with the initial introduction of boon hate, which many ele players felt was the death of their class. Many sources of boon hate were nerfed, which lead to the resurgence of the ele. Second, after that, was the necromancer domination period, with the introduction of dhuumfire alongside of several other bug fixes which lead to a condi heavy era. This period also came with several nerfs to the elementalist, which lead to them being low power and easy pickings, causing them to immediately fall out of favor in the PVP circuit. This was remedied with other classes getting nerfed, and ele’s getting access to Diamond Skin.
Those were the biggest periods. The elementalist itself tends to walk a fine line, since by being the squishiest class, the distance between too much sustain and and not enough is a razor’s edge.
I agree that it’s foolish to think that the devs are maliciously attempting to ruin mesmer. However, it’s equally foolish to deny the facts that mesmer has been the most consistently nerfed and underpowered class in the entire game. Mesmer was completely non-existent in the PvP meta for 2.5 years, has never been useful in a WvW group past portal+veil since glamours and confusion were nerfed, and have been the lowest realistic dps in the game in PvE for the entire game, only brought for gimmicky tricks like portal.
While other classes moan about getting nerfed, most of the time they come out alright anyway. When mesmer gets nerfed, we vanish from the meta for a year until anet realizes they just steamrolled an entire class with their mistake.
Ranger might like to have a word with you. Otherwise, you are simplifying the memser’s roles way too much: the period for which confusion was “not nerfed” is the majority of time. In WvW the mesmer used to be capable of yanking large numbers of players off of the walls with focus pulls, and summon phantasms on top of the walls to harass players. I’ve seen a dozen keeps fall to portal and invisible tactics, making mesmer potentially the single most influential class in the entirety of WvW. Mesmers maintained a strong dueling presence with IP builds, being the bane of any roaming class until more stealth hate was added just to deal with them.g
Mesmers have been on the low end of sPVP for the same reason why ele’s have been on the high end. Due to the illusion mechanic, as well as all of the unique tricks that a mesmer has, the class can act as a force multiplier. Stealthing an entire zerg and giving quickness to 10 people is not an insignificant skill by any means. If the mesmer didn’t have situational personal damage, then what class could possibly compete with time warp, illusion of life, phantasmal defender, portal, alacrity, etc?
It comes with the territory. The best utility class has to have low damage, or else another class will be obsolete. Mesmers can have situational damage and still be useful. Something like the ranger or thief can’t.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
the period for which confusion was “not nerfed” is the majority of time.
What are you talking about? Confusion was nerfed on April 30th, 2013. This means the period where mesmer wasn’t worthless in WvW groups lasted about 8 months in total.
In WvW the mesmer used to be capable of yanking large numbers of players off of the walls with focus pulls,
If by “large” you mean “up to 5” and by “off of the walls” you mean “to the edge of the wall unless they were being stupid” …then sure.
and summon phantasms on top of the walls to harass players.
Firstly, you could only do this with iZerkers. Secondly, I’m pretty sure this was nerfed even earlier than confusion was, due to it being a rather broken capability. So…maybe 4 months of that? Your case for mesmer being good really isn’t looking too strong currently.
I’ve seen a dozen keeps fall to portal and invisible tactics, making mesmer potentially the single most influential class in the entirety of WvW.
Ah yes, the good old “but you can equip portal and press a single button on your bar, so you should be happy being a portalbot!” argument.
Mesmers maintained a strong dueling presence with IP builds, being the bane of any roaming class until more stealth hate was added just to deal with them.
Roaming is literally the one singular thing that mesmer has been consistently good at in this game.
Mesmers have been on the low end of sPVP for the same reason why ele’s have been on the high end.
The same reason? Uhm…because we’ve been nerfed into the ground over and over and eles have been…(not) nerfed into the ground over and over?
Stealthing an entire zerg and giving quickness to 10 people is not an insignificant skill by any means.
Quickness to 5 people, and…Oh look! It’s the other age old argument of “but you can equip veil and press a single button, you should be happy with being a veilbot, stop complaining”.
If the mesmer didn’t have situational personal damage, then what class could possibly compete with time warp, illusion of life, phantasmal defender, portal, alacrity, etc?
It comes with the territory. The best utility class has to have low damage, or else another class will be obsolete. Mesmers can have situational damage and still be useful. Something like the ranger or thief can’t.
I’m not entirely sure what this has to do with anything? Yeah, mesmer is a utility class….so what? Us being a utility class obviously hasn’t helped us be viable in PvP for most of the game. On top of that, you’ve obviously failed to consider the possibility that being brought for literally 1 utility at a time is basically just as bad as not being meta at all. The pre-HoT mesmer role as utility was “ok, go ahead and drop portal/veil, then you can afk and let the real classes accomplish things”. That’s not fun, at all.
What are you talking about? Confusion was nerfed on April 30th, 2013. This means the period where mesmer wasn’t worthless in WvW groups lasted about 8 months in total.
I’m talking about the update which changed confusion damage to be a DoT with an on-active effect instead of constantly active effect. Before that change, confusion damage in all PVP modes was quite substantial. The false equivocation here is off the rails. Not having confusion damage doesn’t mean the mesmer was useless. In fact, nearly every “useful” class does not have good confusion damage.
If by “large” you mean “up to 5” and by “off of the walls” you mean “to the edge of the wall unless they were being stupid” …then sure.
Unless you constantly play on a tier 1 pop server, “5” is how many you’ve got. The focus pull itself was specifically nerfed to prevent the instant wall pulls. First, by giving it a 1 second ICD. Second, by making pull only to the curtain, instead of through it. Until then, it was a common occurrence to find yourself suddenly yanked off the edge of a tower with no warning.
Firstly, you could only do this with iZerkers. Secondly, I’m pretty sure this was nerfed even earlier than confusion was, due to it being a rather broken capability. So…maybe 4 months of that? Your case for mesmer being good really isn’t looking too strong currently.
4 months into the game, I hadn’t even played WvW, so it was long after that. Unless it was changed recently, so long as the edges of the tower/keep walls themselves don’t get in the way, a phantasm will spawn on the same level as the enemy player. It was the through-walls phantasm summoning that was removed.
Ah yes, the good old “but you can equip portal and press a single button on your bar, so you should be happy being a portalbot!” argument.
Except that the entirety of the post you’re debating is dedicated to showing that mesmers aren’t a portal bot. Just because you’ve diced up the most into single lines doesn’t change this fact. What also doesn’t change is the fact that portal is unique and useful. If you want to be difficult enough, you can describe every single class in the game as a “____bot”.
The same reason? Uhm…because we’ve been nerfed into the ground over and over and eles have been…(not) nerfed into the ground over and over?
You’re not even being reasonable here. You’re just being difficult.
Quickness to 5 people, and…Oh look! It’s the other age old argument of “but you can equip veil and press a single button, you should be happy with being a veilbot, stop complaining”.
I do wonder how many skills it takes before the class is suddenly valuable.
“Oh, I’m just brought into fractals because I have reflects. I’m a reflect bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into sPVP because I have illusion of life. I’m a rez bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into WvW because I have veil and portal. I’m a veil and portal bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into dungeons because I have time warp. I’m a time warp bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into zergs because null field strips boons. I’m a null field bot!”
“Oh, I’ll only be brought in to raids to strip boons. I’m a boon strip bot!”
“Oh, I have a bunch of features that are good at dueling. I’m a roaming bot!”
“Oh, I’m only brought into teams because I can spread quickness with Signet of Inspiration. I’m an Inspiration bot!”
“Oh, I’m only in this team because I can peel with moa morph. I’m a morph bot!”
Maybe it is just because I come from thief, who literally runs signets because they have nothing better to do, but Memsers have never been a class that just does one thing. The reason why people bring up time warp, portal, veil, illusion of life, Signet of Inspiration, and endless reflects is because these are the most potent things a mesmer does. This does not mean they are the only things a mesmer does.
I’m not entirely sure what this has to do with anything? Yeah, mesmer is a utility class….so what? Us being a utility class obviously hasn’t helped us be viable in PvP for most of the game. On top of that, you’ve obviously failed to consider the possibility that being brought for literally 1 utility at a time is basically just as bad as not being meta at all. The pre-HoT mesmer role as utility was “ok, go ahead and drop portal/veil, then you can afk and let the real classes accomplish things”. That’s not fun, at all.
I’ve tried to explain this simply. I’ll try again, and if you don’t understand it after this, then maybe you should consider why it is you feel so compelled to speak on matters you literally cannot understand.
The complaint that Mesmers have low personal DPS is short sighted and ignores the entirety of the game as a whole. It is by necessary design that mesmers have a low “practical” damage, as this is balanced out by their high and unique utilities. If mesmers didn’t have low practical damage, then every other class in the game would need utilities that are equally as potent as the mesmer in order to keep balance. The flip side to this is that, if you want the mesmer to have high personal DPS, then they would have to lose that much utility.
Anet knows this. When combined with the fact that, in low to mid end PVP the mesmer is a frustrating enemy to fight, you have the reason why it is that Mesmers have always been balanced on the “underpowered” side of things: because with the slightest of changes, the mesmer could go out of control. Very fast. It just so happens that, while Anet is hesitant to nerf eles because the slightest changes make them obsolete, Anet is hesitant to buff mesmers because the slightest changes would make them OP. They’ve made that mistake recently, and we ended up with the Chronobunker meta, which has be heralded as the most boring meta ever.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
I’m talking about the update which changed confusion damage to be a DoT with an on-active effect instead of constantly active effect. Before that change, confusion damage in all PVP modes was quite substantial.
You’re totally wrong here. Confusion damage has been an afterthought and largely worthless for the vast majority of the game. Nobody decent at PvP died to confusion damage since they halved the damage it did.
The focus pull itself was specifically nerfed to prevent the instant wall pulls.
Haha what? The focus was nerfed for PvP, nobody gaf about people getting pulled from walls in WvW.
4 months into the game, I hadn’t even played WvW, so it was long after that. Unless it was changed recently, so long as the edges of the tower/keep walls themselves don’t get in the way, a phantasm will spawn on the same level as the enemy player. It was the through-walls phantasm summoning that was removed.
Uh…sure. If you’ve got direct line of sight you can spawn a phantasm, but that’s incredibly rare. Even most structures up on top of the walls (burning oil and such) will return obstructed despite being supposedly attackable.
I do wonder how many skills it takes before the class is suddenly valuable.
Well, lets go through your little list here and see which of them are actually true today!
“Oh, I’m just brought into fractals because I have reflects. I’m a reflect bot!”
Nope, nobody cares about reflects in fractals for the most part. There’s a couple specific instances, but the mesmer (chrono) is brought for alacrity/quickness. Guardian does reflects better than we do.
“Oh, I’m just brought into sPVP because I have illusion of life. I’m a rez bot!”
Yeah, taking IoL in PvP sorta hasn’t been a thing since the first 6 months of the game, before mesmer dropped out of the meta. You’re just a tiny tad bit outdated on this one.
“Oh, I’m just brought into WvW because I have veil and portal. I’m a veil and portal bot!”
This is quite accurate. Mesmers would literally drop veil then do nothing for the rest of the fight, because we had zero effective aoe.
“Oh, I’m just brought into dungeons because I have time warp. I’m a time warp bot!”
Guardians are still better at quickness than core mesmer. Chrono is still only brought to provide quickness and alacrity.
“Oh, I’m just brought into zergs because null field strips boons. I’m a null field bot!”
Yeah, that’s literally never been the case. Nobody has ever brought a mesmer to strip boons in a zerg. Necros do that far better than us. Mesmers would bring null field certainly, but the mesmer was there in the first place purely to drop veil. Null field was taken just because it’s better than having nothing.
“Oh, I’ll only be brought in to raids to strip boons. I’m a boon strip bot!”
You’ve clearly never run the raid.
“Oh, I have a bunch of features that are good at dueling. I’m a roaming bot!”
…
Maybe it is just because I come from thief, who literally runs signets because they have nothing better to do, but Memsers have never been a class that just does one thing. The reason why people bring up time warp, portal, veil, illusion of life, Signet of Inspiration, and endless reflects is because these are the most potent things a mesmer does. This does not mean they are the only things a mesmer does.
See. this is where you’re totally wrong and your inexperience on mesmer is showing. You seem to think that we’re always brought to do all sorts of cool things, and that’s simply not the case. Let me break it down for you:
PvP: You don’t bring a mesmer, because mesmer is bad (not true for chronobunker meta, but true for pretty much every other point in gw2 history).
WvW: You bring a mesmer to do 1 thing and 1 thing only: veil. If the mesmer happens to hide inside a keep they’ll toss on portal, but that’s comparatively rare.
PvE: You brought a mesmer to drop time warp, portal, and run to the next boss. The mesmer may as well not have even attacked.
Ultimately, what the core mesmer was used for was even more limited than your tiny list of things. We weren’t brought to drop null field in wvw. We weren’t brought in PvP at all. We weren’t brought to do anything but serve as a glorified troop transport in PvE. Other classes do all of the rest of our supposed special utility better than we do. That’s only changed with HoT and chrono, but anet seems determined to bring it back to the way it was before.
If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.
“balance” isn’t the goal.
If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.
“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.
“not trying” does.
There’s so much to unpack here I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll start it in list form:
#1: The devs balance primarily around 5 vs 5 PVP content. As there are 9 professions in the game, the idea that the devs directly want some profession to be stacked is nonsense. Especially since, after a recent 4 ele + thief PvP tournament victory, Anet made a rule that outright prevents severe stacking.
#2:The loudest fanbase is the one that complains the most. Therefore, when a class becomes underpowered, they become the “loudest”, as they have the most complaints.
#3: The problem with “fixing everything” is that nobody knows how to do it. For three reasons. First is that, no one is sure exactly when something is “fixed”. Exactly what proportion of the game should be defensive vs. offensive, point control vs. map mechanics, duels vs. group, or the dynamic nature of the map is all subjective. Second, the community itself is an unpredictable force, so what is balanced and unbalanced can be skewed by the flow of player preferences. Third, there is a massive amount of factors that go into each class, and making sure that there always exists some combination of skills and traits that can reliably beat all the others is so difficult that nobody can figure it out. The devs aren’t wizards who can magick up an answer out of nowhere.
#4: The point of having class balance in a PVE scenario is for flexibility. While the devs don’t want you to stack all of 1 or two professions, they also don’t want the game to be so anti-stacking that you have to have 1 of everything. That creates a similar kind of pressure that class superiority does.
#5: The original “group content” in the game, aside from overworld 100 man events, was 5 man dungeon groups. Larger raid content was added by popular demand 3 years later, and as such is more or less just imposing the conventions of other games onto GW2 more than any conscious class balancing decision.
#1: They had plenty of chances to make a rule where you can’t bring 2 of a class in. The teams this year actually discussed making that rule themselves if I’m remembering correctly.
And you’re only making my point for me when it comes to larger scale content. If they’re balancing for 5v5 PvP, then they aren’t balancing for raids. A.K.A. Not even trying.
#2: Yeah, no. Actually it depends on the amount of players that main a class. Warrior, Ele, and Guardian are the 3 most played classes in this game (Based off of post launch data, because that’s all we have). If they’re too weak, they’ll complain as loud as possible.
Mesmer & Ranger are 2 of the least played classes in this game. If they complain about being too weak, they won’t be nearly as loud as the Eles, Warriors, and Guardians arguing for thief/mesmer/ranger nerfs.
Which btw, none of those complaints for nerfing those classes has ever, or will ever, stop.
Not until we literally can’t play our class anymore.
#3: You know where they could kittening start? They could split the skills across the 3 game modes.
THE FACT THAT THEY HAVEN’T YET, SHOWS THEIR UNWILLINGNESS TO ACTUALLY BALANCE THE GAME
They have a situation where a class, yes, has too many utilities that are too strong. That class needs a rework. Not a numbers tweak, a rework.
If we’re stronger than thieves, then our portal IS amazing. If we’re weaker than them, then it’s a utility we’ll rarely get to use.
Moa… The counter play to this is either aegis, dodging, or LOS. It’s a BS skill, but at the same time, the moa itself isn’t a push over.
That thing is fast.
#4: Uhmm, no. That’s not the point of PvE balance. The point of PvE balance, is bringing everyone in line with everyone else based off of what they’re able to bring to the party.
“Unused Development Initiative. We care so much
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
about your feedback, that we don’t even read it.” ~ Crystal Suzuki
Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…
Except you know… warriors and elementalists…