Guild Wars 2

(This is a PvP/WvW-oriented thread. This one’s a doozy, but please read)

While I don’t normally try to speak for an entire community, this thread is meant to address the influx of “Mesmer OP” claims that we’ve been receiving … all our Mesmery lives. With the advent of HoT and many new players joining the class, I feel now is one of the best times to start to separate truth from hyperbole and open a real discussion on the current state of Mesmer.

So, lets kick off with a fanciful quote…

”You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” -Harlan Ellison

A lot of what people say about Mesmer comes from people who don’t actually play the class so they’re taking bits of information they’ve gathered, adding the experiences they’ve had fighting Mesmer, and sprinkle in some quotes parroted by others to try and add authenticity to their claims. Odds are if you’ve played Mesmer or browse the forums then you’ve heard one of the following things:

• “Mesmer is super easy to play. I can 1v2 just about anyone just by hitting a few instant-cast buttons.”

• “Mesmers have too many escapes! They’re impossible to defeat because they can just keep resetting the fight with perma-stealth!”

• “Mesmer has an instantcast 100-0 burst from an instant unstoppable 1200 range stun that they can cast from stealth every 5 seconds! FIVE seconds! Anet wtf! Wtf anet!? Wat!? Wot!”

• “I hate Mesmer! I like turtles. You’re just trying to defend your broken class!”

• “Mesmer takes no skill because they have tons of invulns and teleports and stealths and can just hide while the illusions do all the work.”

• “Mesmers can have perma 12 stacks of confusion and torment and hide in stealth!”

• “Signet of Humility (Moa Morph) is an “I win!” button and totally broken!”

Or maybe, if you’ve played Mesmer long enough you’ve heard some variant of all of the freakin’ above! Now before I address the individual claims, I’d like to make one thing clear: All of these claims are bloated with half-truths or outright lies… Except for the instant-cast burst thing, that’s kinda true.

So.. How do you argue with someone who ..
A) Is using arguments based on what someone else said to justify losing to a Mesmer.
B) Claims you’re just blindly defending your class
C) Calls anyone who’s response doesn’t agree with their opinion a troll.

Well you do so with some fast facts. Let’s hit these arguments and see how accurate they really are…

—-

“MESMER TAKES NO SKILL! THEY HAVE TONS OF EVADES AND TELEPORTS AND STEALTHIES AND INVULNS! THEY JUST RESET THE FIGHT WITH STEALTH+HEAL WHENEVER IN DANGER”

”MESMER CAN JUST HIDE WHILE THE ILLUSIONS DO ALL THE WORK!”

—-

How do you define “no skill”? Is it when the class is so easy you don’t have to actually learn their mechanics to win? Is it because some skills are so monsterously overpowered that they take little effort to actually use properly? The term “no skill” is thrown around a lot, often from people who want to make themselves feel better about … themselves, like in the following:

“Mesmer is so easy to play! I picked one up and without even knowing all my skills I was scraping people.”

“All you do is hide while illusions do the work and press 1 button to shatter!”

If you hear any of the above, you’re identifying a scrub… Ah, sorry, that’s rude. “A player with less skill than others who expresses themselves in a scrub-like fashion, further addressed as ‘a scrub.’” Theres only two scenarios where the above happens: When you’re fighting against people who have NO IDEA how to defeat a Mesmer (newer players) or when you’re fighting against people who have NO IDEA how to play GW2 properly.

You’d be surprised how many people base their perception of a class from their experiences in hotjoin, where you literally jump into a match against largely inexperienced players. There is no way to beat a decent player who knows your class and skills by merely spamming everything off cooldown. Bottom line is that Mesmer is not so easy to play, no matter what build you run, where you can merely faceroll to victory. Also..

• Most Mesmer only have 2-3 forms of stealth: Decoy (3s. Stunbreak), The Prestige (3s) and Mass Invisibility (5s. Elite)
• Most Mesmer only have 2 teleports every ~20 seconds: Blink (30s), Illusionary Leap (12s – Sword)
• Most Mesmer run the same effing build: (Sword/Torch + Greatsword. Blink/Decoy/Portal (or Mantra of Distraction – Dom/Dueling/ X )

So the Mesmer builds that are being targeted here are your standard shatter Mesmer and standard condition Mesmer (can someone provide me the link to condi Mes? I don’t wanna assume and screw it up) yet in actuality,* the majority of the above complaints are focusing on a few things: Greatsword damage burst, Prismatic Understanding (Chaos Grandmaster – 50% stealth duration & random boons every second stealthed), Confounding Suggestions (daze = stun every 5 seconds + increased daze/stun duration) combined with Mantra of Distraction (instant 1200r daze).*

That’s about it.. The entire class claimed OP mostly because of two traits and how they interact with two utility skills… But are these traits really OP?

”MESMER HAS AN INSTANT-CAST 0-100 BURST! THEY CAN INSTANT STUN YOU EVERY 5 SECONDS! THEY DOMINATE 1v1s!”

Why yes, yes we do. If you’d like to see it in action, take a gander here..

Now here’s the fine print to this so-called instant burst. Or rather, here are the requirements:

• Enemy must be wearing Marauder or Berserker Amulet (any tankier and it wont work)

• Enemy be a Mesmer, Ranger, Guardian, or Thief

• Mesmer must engage with this burst or single out one target in a teamfight.

There is a little guide on performing the burst, linked here and it is super powerful in 1v1s.. But guess what? Mesmers were designed to be master duelists. This is the burst that makes people claim Mesmer takes no skill, or atleast far less skill to master than before.

Heres the thing… One trait doesn’t mean you’ve “mastered” anything. Even if it did, it only means you mastered one build. Take away that guys greatsword, or mantra of distraction, and see how much of a “master” they are.

CS doesn’t make Mesmer as a whole easier to play, it makes a somewhat hard-to-grasp meta build more forgiving. If the only thing that makes CS too “faceroll” is the combination of dom/dueling + fire/air runes + marauder amulet + mantra of distraction + greatsword…

… Then you’re not mad at the trait, you’re mad at a specific build that incorporates it.

SO.. IS MESMER OP?
At the end of the day, the only format Mesmer are OP in are duels. Not teamfights, not WvW zerging, not PvE open world or dungeons, not organized PvP. All of the above complaints come from people who lost to a Mesmer or play a Mesmer in small skirmishes.. Where the Mesmer is MEANT to shine.

People will always find a way to blame their faults on something or someone else, it’s just human nature. They didn’t lose because they’re bad, they lost because you’re OP. Or because their team sucks, or a glitch, lag, a bug, a pet, or whatever else they need to tell themselves for sake of pride and to ignore the fact that they could’ve done something better.

Fact is there’s always gonna be someone better than you, and there are always going to be higher levels of play. If you’re not playing top tier, or studying the class, then what gives you the right to argue with the people who put HOURS of time and work into learning their class and builds?

And if you do have a valid complaint or concern, voice it in a way that actually can be discussed. Be literal and direct, rather than obtuse, because saying things like “tons of X” or “can ALWAYs do Y” or “this happens all the time” or “a bunch of conditions” then you slip into the realm of hyperbole and half-truths.

An educated discussion is always welcome. Whining an ranting will get you flamed.

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

Me??? I did read!!!

Since you mentioned “mesmer is OP in 1v1”, I’d like to add that many professions have very good dueling builds. Necro in general is a beast in 1v1 (especially if he starts with life force). D/D elementalists… well they are D/D elementalists. I won’t go through all of them, because I don’t know all of them, but I really think mesmer is not necessarily OP in 1v1. It is one of the good dueling spec. But for sure, outside of small skirmishes, mesmer is currently fairly subpar.

Noss.4105:

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

But moan moan moan, groan groan groan, perma this perma that perma insta, insta perma, insta insta, burst condi cancer noob scrub invuln stealth over9000 clones reflect evade confusion torment ranged stun insta 100-0 PU blinds blocks daze aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Mesmerizing simply maintain the illusion of being overpowered to mentally debilitate and manipulate their opponent further, when in reality it’s one of the harder classes to play burst builds as due to the timing involved (since the nerfs to reasonable things I mean).

Noss.4105:

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

I read it. And it’s well written. Hopefully this will help, But you have to realize players come from all different backgrounds in this game. There will still be posts about Mesmer being OP because someone played 5 hot joins and kept dying to the Mesmer. But thanks for writing this hopefully some people will inform themselves.

Andraus.3874:

Noss.4105:

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

I read it. And it’s well written. Hopefully this will help, But you have to realize players come from all different backgrounds in this game. There will still be posts about Mesmer being OP because someone played 5 hot joins and kept dying to the Mesmer. But thanks for writing this hopefully some people will inform themselves.

I didn’t write it. That’s all Chaos’ hard work.
I just tried to get some of the people who just scroll through the posts to actually read em before posting.

The original post needs to be stickied on the front page but still, players will probably post “mesmer op plz nerf” threads.

To players who call Mesmers OP – When HoT and Chronomancer are released, players will undoubtedly scream for the crucifixion of Mesmers. But keep in mind that the Chronomancer and the Mesmer are two different entities. Just because you get steamrolled by a Chronomancer once in a duel does not mean that Mesmers are OP. If you haven’t faced a bunch of them and don’t know their mechanics, L2P instead of complaining the instant you lose a match. Rather than cry for Mesmer nerfs, please instead either gain more experience of suggest tweaks to Chronomancer since so many Chronomancer traits seem to be strict upgrades for the base class.

Furthermore, playing a Mesmer for a few weeks against other classes in any game mode does NOT make you an expert in the Mesmer class. Virtually in every “mesmer op” thread have there been veteran Mesmers who actually do have significant experience in the class. Perhaps you should direct informed questions towards them rather than rant on forums.

I really think that all of the above is common sense and that it’s silly for me to have to type this all out but before anyone cries for Mesmer nerfs, read the original post in its entirety. Everything Chaos Archangel has written is beautifully laid out and explained.

Noss.4105:

Andraus.3874:

Noss.4105:

YOU! Yes, you who just scrolled down without reading. Don’t even think about posting before you’ve read the above.

I read it. And it’s well written. Hopefully this will help, But you have to realize players come from all different backgrounds in this game. There will still be posts about Mesmer being OP because someone played 5 hot joins and kept dying to the Mesmer. But thanks for writing this hopefully some people will inform themselves.

I didn’t write it. That’s all Chaos’ hard work.
I just tried to get some of the people who just scroll through the posts to actually read em before posting.

And I TOTALLY appreciate that! Smiled when I read it.

All I can say is Well put and #STICKY!!!!!!

inb4 that one guy who always starts his posts with…
your evidence is anecdotal at best.

so one time in wvw I was caught in a 3v1 and mid fight a thief just appears in the down state next to me, so actually it was a 4v1. they tried to rez the thief so I hit the rest of my f buttons and they downed too. then I stealth stomped all of them.

Thanks a lot Chaos Angel for explain to new people how mesmer workI i mained this class since the launch of the game and I get bored when i see people who constantly call us "OP’.

Mesmer use to be very difficult to play before the patch and now it’s more accessible for new player but it don’t mean that they are OP.

I still hope that new player in pvp would tried other build that meta (for every classes) because it’s more fun and more rewarding but that’s another problem. Pple has to master their classes before complain that ‘’noooo i was killed by someone who know how to play :’( ’’

This class was too much nerfed because the hated of other classes … stop the massacre .

you forgot the new classic one: “mesmer’s greatsword have the same dps that rival ranger’s longbow”

you have to admit that mesmers are rly hard to deal with even if you are giving them your full attention. most times youll be in a fight and you kinda see some clones appear on your peripheral and you wonder… are those for me? then you hear that awful annoying PEEEEEEW sound and youre in down state.

I think the actuality of the problem is mesmer are balanced around the post hot meta. they are OP now with out a doubt. I spent a lot of time fighting mesmers in bwe3 and they werent nearly as dangerous as they are currently.

most of my vs mesmer fights were chronomancers running shatter variants. real chronomancers are scary! I have spent these in between months learning mesmer and it was pretty fun being able to fight just about any class or build with confidence.

I didnt win every fight, I got in a couple duels with a necro who spanked me pretty hard. Mesmer was especially good vs ranger and theres just a kitten load of roaming rangers out there so I imagine most of the qq is from them.

what ever you think op or not, I believe hot will sort it out.

Professions aren’t OP. They just provide the tools. The tools of the mesmer are meant to help in 1 vs 1 situations. (It is the only profession that has duelist in its description.) People should instead criticize builds. The ones willing to learn would become better at countering them. Often it is a change of fighting style and not a change of build.

Synosius.9876:

mesmer […] are OP now with out a doubt.

It didn’t take long… 1h30 and someone says mesmer is OP…

Silverkey.2078:

Synosius.9876:

mesmer […] are OP now with out a doubt.

It didn’t take long… 1h30 and someone says mesmer is OP…

why is it so hard to admit? feeling self conscious that maybe skill is less of a factor?

we should embrace our superiority!

Synosius.9876:

Silverkey.2078:

It didn’t take long… 1h30 and someone says mesmer is OP…

why is it so hard to admit? feeling self conscious that maybe skill is less of a factor?

we should embrace our superiority!

As a scientist, I have hard time admitting wrong facts…

Synosius.9876:

Silverkey.2078:

Synosius.9876:

mesmer […] are OP now with out a doubt.

It didn’t take long… 1h30 and someone says mesmer is OP…

why is it so hard to admit? feeling self conscious that maybe skill is less of a factor?

we should embrace our superiority!

OP = Overpowered = Too powerful = it should not be this powerful = it is a bad thing that it is this powerful = it should be nerfed.
That is what you are saying when you call it OP, by definition.

That’s a secondary part of the problem, many people like you are trying to say “yeah, it’s the best” but instead saying “it’s too powerful”.
Being at the top of the heap =/= overpowered. In the case of mesmer, for example, being the best duelist class (arguably) is balanced out by the lack of viability in larger combat. Bringing a mesmer instead of another DD ele means shifting team power from team fights into solo roaming. It can be a legitimate move (a couple teams have tried it in tourneys), but it’s a strategic move, and a risk. That’s the balance.

Given the above, calling it “overpowered” is a disservice to the class, and is frankly not true.

Also, I want to point out that even though mesmer is a strong dueling class, you still rarely see mesmer go for 1v1 in high level tournament play. We can hold our own pretty well 1v1 but you don’t unless you have to

That is because most meta builds are tanks that can sustain very well. Thief is still a very hard matchup if you don’t take daze mantra. However, portal is always taken instead of daze mantra in ESL despite the fact the latter can help you a great deal to win 1v1.

As can be seen in this thread already, anyone that is going to cry about mesmers being op won’t also have the intellectual capacity to read and understand a post like this.

It’s a nice write up, but you’re preaching to the choir here.

Synosius.9876:

inb4 that one guy who always starts his posts with…
your evidence is anecdotal at best.

so one time in wvw I was caught in a 3v1 and mid fight a thief just appears in the down state next to me, so actually it was a 4v1. they tried to rez the thief so I hit the rest of my f buttons and they downed too. then I stealth stomped all of them.

I won a 1v4 once, & I have to say actually felt bad about it, because the way they wete behaving I don’t think they knew how to play; in other words I think there new to the game; it was in world vs world and all 4 of them were acting very timid, they should have been all over my butt, they they kept backing off, not acting like a coordinated team, and they were acting like they were afraid of engaging. I think they were up levels too, but I finished them off easily, I actually felt pretty bad about the whole thing realizing that they’re probably newbies

You know, chaos, you and I have been on the opposite sides of the fence in other discussions, but in this case I’m giving you two thumbs up lol

It’s a fallacy, a fallacy based off a single premise which was highlighted here ‘the 1v1 setting’ and somehow people think it’s justified. (Anet plz nerf ppls opinions!!!)

Fay.2357:

As can be seen in this thread already, anyone that is going to cry about mesmers being op won’t also have the intellectual capacity to read and understand a post like this.

It’s a nice write up, but you’re preaching to the choir here.

Hi im Rylock and I think mesmer is op. Then again, I have played mes since beta so I am super biased by now. I do think my boonshare mes is amazing in teamfights though, just not broken like other things.

Silverkey.2078:

Synosius.9876:

Silverkey.2078:

It didn’t take long… 1h30 and someone says mesmer is OP…

why is it so hard to admit? feeling self conscious that maybe skill is less of a factor?

we should embrace our superiority!

As a scientist, I have hard time admitting wrong facts…

I truly feel you. Forum is always filled with illogical, exaggerated, false claims and argument.

There are two things that contribute to the perception that Mesmers are overpowered. The first is they are really good one versus one, and the other is that if you don’t understand how to fight them, between their illusion generation and their cloaks and their teleports, they can definitely be frustrating. But what people don’t get is they can also be very fragile, and once you understand how to fight them its not as bad as it seems.

my only issue fighting against mesmers is if its in a crowd of other people, trying to the to identify between a clone and the actual caster when there is also other enemies around, necromancer minions, etc etc then it becomes a very complicated shell game, my whole screen is flooded with enemies. Lol

There was this one PvP match once where 7 of the 10 players were mesmers, and another where 9 of the 10 were either mesmers or thieves. Those two matches were very interesting lol

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3pig2o/so_i_analyzed_chronomancer_today_on_the_gw2/cw6m17y
Chronomancer OP ^^

There is some merit to saying mesmers or other classes are OP. I mean rock is OP vs scissors: 100% win rate is unfair… but then you are missing the point of the game.

Nice write up. Its nice that someone took the most common complaints, organized them, and made logical sense out of them. Unfortunately, I doubt very many people are going to read this before they post an OP mes thread. But ya, I think a lot of the complaints come from people who don’t know how mesmers play. At least I know I had a hard time doing simple things like spotting the real mesmer before I played the class.

Though it’s an absolutely wonderful write-up Chaos, I never thought I’d see the day when I correct you on a fact. It’s a minor one though. You forgot about Phase Retreat, which can also be considered a teleport. It has a 10 second cooldown.

I also feel there’s an issue that you should address. Mesmers are designed from the ground up to go against the conventional wisdoms of fighting . Many skills have duel natures and building on one aspect of a skill can greatly vary the way we use it. There’s also the interrupt traits that encourage us to look for patterns in our opponents’ attacks and disrupt them while many other classes rely on skill rotations for maximum effects. Confusion punishes those that button mash blindly. Torment punishes those that run around aimlessly. Swapping places with clones can be hell to deal with when trying to find the real mesmer.

All of these abilities can be countered but they require thinking outside of the norm. I feel most players that have problems with mesmers are too ingrained in traditional ways of fighting to try such tactics. Seriously, tell someone whom is hit with 12 stacks of confusion that they should simply stop attacking until the stacks go away and they’ll swear you’re crazy but it does work. Simple fact is, any mesmer that stacks confusion that high is specced for condi damage. Their power isn’t likely to be high and confusion isn’t designed for sustained damage. Yet people will swear it’s OP because they prefer to actively use their skills whenever possible.

You forgot classics such as:

“Has more stealth than thief”

“Can attack from stealth without being revealed”

“Has high dps”

Good post, I think it addresses a real concern in the community of the game.
I’ve cross-referenced a lot of people in blind questioning about which professions they perceive get the most flak, and overall it seems like Mesmer definitely gets disproportionately more complaints than other professions for a given level of balance.
Even during the cele meta over the past year I would get mes op complaints, despite only two Mesmers going to WTS, and Mesmer representation in ESL being relatively low.
I talked to Roy about this at the Pax Prime party and he acknowledged Mesmer has struggled. Fortunately they’ve listened to the stats and not the complaints this time and brought Mesmer up.

About the original post, for sPvP, dueling is not the strong suit of Mesmer in a higher end match. It’s actually too much of a liability with ganks. Much better to have a tanky/bruiser duelist who can survive ganks than a Mesmer. Mesmer does much better in smaller skirmishes and rotations with Portal. With Chrono, it looks like it will have a pretty strong team fight presence.

It’s possible Chrono does need to be toned down, but I would like everyone to understand that among the top players right now, Scrapper and Revenant are seen as even stronger than Chrono.
The way I like to put it is that the Mesmer base mechanics really exploit inexperienced players (which was mentioned in the original post). Mesmer is annoying, that’s what it’s supposed to be. However being annoying is mutually exclusive of being OP.
Once you understand Mesmer mechanics like being able to pick out which Mesmer is the real one, or counting cooldowns so you know when there are openings, the class becomes a lot less mysterious.
Also, there will always be professions that are better or worse than each other given any state of mmo balance; one class will always be on top. Maybe Mesmer is there or close this time? Is that really a bad thing? After years of struggling? The truth is, I’m along for the ride regardless, but people do need to chill out a bit with the complaining. Shift your complains over to Revenant, trust me the game will need it unless it gets nerfed before release.

What do you guys think?

The funny thing is, even with the burst combo, its been ages since I one shot anyone from 100 – 0, except for zerker thieves.

And most decent players can tell your burst coming from miles away, and will just dodge away. Which lead me to include Mantra of Distraction.

Which means, I have zero conditions cleanse aside from Sigil of Generosity.

So burn guards and D/D kill me all the time.. I don’t think that makes us OP when we have a hard counter.

As much sense this makes, I have no hope for “others”

Supcutie.2538:

Good post, I think it addresses a real concern in the community of the game.
I’ve cross-referenced a lot of people in blind questioning about which professions they perceive get the most flak, and overall it seems like Mesmer definitely gets disproportionately more complaints than other professions for a given level of balance.
Even during the cele meta over the past year I would get mes op complaints, despite only two Mesmers going to WTS, and Mesmer representation in ESL being relatively low.
I talked to Roy about this at the Pax Prime party and he acknowledged Mesmer has struggled. Fortunately they’ve listened to the stats and not the complaints this time and brought Mesmer up.

About the original post, for sPvP, dueling is not the strong suit of Mesmer in a higher end match. It’s actually too much of a liability with ganks. Much better to have a tanky/bruiser duelist who can survive ganks than a Mesmer. Mesmer does much better in smaller skirmishes and rotations with Portal. With Chrono, it looks like it will have a pretty strong team fight presence.

It’s possible Chrono does need to be toned down, but I would like everyone to understand that among the top players right now, Scrapper and Revenant are seen as even stronger than Chrono.
The way I like to put it is that the Mesmer base mechanics really exploit inexperienced players (which was mentioned in the original post). Mesmer is annoying, that’s what it’s supposed to be. However being annoying is mutually exclusive of being OP.
Once you understand Mesmer mechanics like being able to pick out which Mesmer is the real one, or counting cooldowns so you know when there are openings, the class becomes a lot less mysterious.
Also, there will always be professions that are better or worse than each other given any state of mmo balance; one class will always be on top. Maybe Mesmer is there or close this time? Is that really a bad thing? After years of struggling? The truth is, I’m along for the ride regardless, but people do need to chill out a bit with the complaining. Shift your complains over to Revenant, trust me the game will need it unless it gets nerfed before release.

What do you guys think?

Rev? Sure. But Scrapper in the right engie main hands? ….watch yourselves.

That’s what it really comes down to though. Having these classes (and elite specs) in the right hands. This ties back into the fact that skill truly does come into it. Those with more skill, those who understand their class better, they’re going to shine and put other players, particularly new ones and your general scrubs, into their place.

Thus they run to the forum and instead of l2thread, continue to face smash their keyboard like they do their toons :)

Ross Biddle.2367:

Supcutie.2538:

Good post, I think it addresses a real concern in the community of the game.
I’ve cross-referenced a lot of people in blind questioning about which professions they perceive get the most flak, and overall it seems like Mesmer definitely gets disproportionately more complaints than other professions for a given level of balance.
Even during the cele meta over the past year I would get mes op complaints, despite only two Mesmers going to WTS, and Mesmer representation in ESL being relatively low.
I talked to Roy about this at the Pax Prime party and he acknowledged Mesmer has struggled. Fortunately they’ve listened to the stats and not the complaints this time and brought Mesmer up.

About the original post, for sPvP, dueling is not the strong suit of Mesmer in a higher end match. It’s actually too much of a liability with ganks. Much better to have a tanky/bruiser duelist who can survive ganks than a Mesmer. Mesmer does much better in smaller skirmishes and rotations with Portal. With Chrono, it looks like it will have a pretty strong team fight presence.

It’s possible Chrono does need to be toned down, but I would like everyone to understand that among the top players right now, Scrapper and Revenant are seen as even stronger than Chrono.
The way I like to put it is that the Mesmer base mechanics really exploit inexperienced players (which was mentioned in the original post). Mesmer is annoying, that’s what it’s supposed to be. However being annoying is mutually exclusive of being OP.
Once you understand Mesmer mechanics like being able to pick out which Mesmer is the real one, or counting cooldowns so you know when there are openings, the class becomes a lot less mysterious.
Also, there will always be professions that are better or worse than each other given any state of mmo balance; one class will always be on top. Maybe Mesmer is there or close this time? Is that really a bad thing? After years of struggling? The truth is, I’m along for the ride regardless, but people do need to chill out a bit with the complaining. Shift your complains over to Revenant, trust me the game will need it unless it gets nerfed before release.

What do you guys think?

Rev? Sure. But Scrapper in the right engie main hands? ….watch yourselves.

That’s what it really comes down to though. Having these classes (and elite specs) in the right hands. This ties back into the fact that skill truly does come into it. Those with more skill, those who understand their class better, they’re going to shine and put other players, particularly new ones and your general scrubs, into their place.

Thus they run to the forum and instead of l2thread, continue to face smash their keyboard like they do their toons

Agreed.

At least with Scrapper, whose sustain/damage as a bruiser is probably unmatched beyond anything we’ve ever seen in conquest, I can rest easy knowing that the amount of button pressing needed to make it work eludes most normal players (myself included, I=noobengisaurus).

Revenant in my mind seems to be almost more forgiving considering how powerful cycling active defenses and mobility skills of the glint/shiro syndrome. The thing is for revenant though, I feel as though they’ll have D/D ele syndrome, in which everything they try to run that isn’t a power glint/shiro build will fall flat on its face. Mallyx was nerfed into insipidity making it a second rate condi-tank, Jalis is a tank with no real active defense or sustain, and Ventari has too active defense for the decent sustain it brings. I fought a marauder glint/shiro herald last beta and couldn’t kill it or even get a decap in a 2v1 since he cycled his active defense cooldowns (evades, 2x soothing bastion, staff/sword evades, etc.) very well (and my partner was a condi-thief, so not too useful).

But still I doubt anet will nerf it until after league season 1 to help sell the game.

My personal experience with rev is that they’re more dangerous than most other classes, but nothing I should be particularly scared of.

Scrapper, on the other hand, is either great or awful. The great ones are really really nasty, and took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to match. The awful ones you can basically afk.

I believe the “class is brain dead easy to play” ONLY ever shows its ugly face when people lose to said class and are very bitter about it. Then forum spectators read said comment and take it as law because “dude on forum says it’s true” and then it just proliferates from there.

Ranger gets this often. People DONT like losing to Mesmer, ranger or any “FOTM” build. So naturally those classes are easy to play and take no skill and that’s the only reason they lost to one.

ragnarokda.1805:

I believe the “class is brain dead easy to play” ONLY ever shows its ugly face when people lose to said class and are very bitter about it.

For sure, this goes without saying. I’m sure that close to 99% of all ‘mesmer is op’ complaints happen immediately after said person gets dumpstered by a particularly good mesmer a few times.

Honestly, every class has unfair mechanics and is OP in some aspects. You can thank general power-creep for that.

I do think mesmer is in a pretty good place right now. Medium-high skill floor, extremely high skill-cap. Very impactful when played well. It fills in a good niche besides thief that both have a place.

With HoT, however, chronomancer is downright terrifying. In terms of 1v1 balance, the damage/control/survivability is about to go through the roof. In terms of team-fights, the insane power of alacrity is already broken, especially given how much a mesmer can get. Continuum split alone is potentially game-breaking on a mesmer when used well. Yes, chronomancer takes mesmer skill-cap and ramps it up even higher, but OMG all of the options and powerful effects just tacked onto the current meta spec are insane.

And the reason I am most scared of chrono is because it is just shatter mesmer++. At least I can understand that scrapper, rev (herald actually), and reaper will need some adjustment as they are bringing different roles to their classes. Chronomancer just seems to bring so many abusable mechanics to the table, and I feel that they will be nearly impossible to balance (messing with CD’s globally is already playing with fire, as they know, adding in double-casting AND shoring up all the weaknesses mesmers had AND adding more support)…shudders.

Personally, I embrace the challenge of learning chrono. Seeing as my favorite version of my old main was fresh air ele, and shatter mesmer is basically fresh-air ele++, I am looking forward to learning the playstyle. Ele is just stale and the new elite is both bad and uninteresting. Mesmer is a great new direction, and chronomancer is very compelling.

The most OP spec in PvP will always be those that can sustain and stack might to do damage at the same time.

It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Scrapper and Revenant will be the next candidate.

Chrono, on the other hand, will make mesmer the pinnacle zerker class. The role will remain exactly the same as before.

Also, Supcutie’s analysis of mesmer is role is very accurate in PvP. It is not a dueling class because I mentioned in earlier post that all you can find to duel are tanky specs that are not even worth dueling against. Rather, our role rotates around portal and create favourable skirmishes to help the team win.

Triflux.8027:

The funny thing is, even with the burst combo, its been ages since I one shot anyone from 100 – 0, except for zerker thieves.

And most decent players can tell your burst coming from miles away, and will just dodge away. Which lead me to include Mantra of Distraction.

Which means, I have zero conditions cleanse aside from Sigil of Generosity.

So burn guards and D/D kill me all the time.. I don’t think that makes us OP when we have a hard counter.

You won’t be able to one-shot almost anyone because the abundunce of passive proc. Not even thief because they all wear vampirism runes.

Exciton.8942:

Triflux.8027:

The funny thing is, even with the burst combo, its been ages since I one shot anyone from 100 – 0, except for zerker thieves.

And most decent players can tell your burst coming from miles away, and will just dodge away. Which lead me to include Mantra of Distraction.

Which means, I have zero conditions cleanse aside from Sigil of Generosity.

So burn guards and D/D kill me all the time.. I don’t think that makes us OP when we have a hard counter.

You won’t be able to one-shot almost anyone because the abundunce of passive proc. Not even thief because they all wear vampirism runes.

At launch they’re reworking the mist form to be an AoE lifesteal prof instead, so you’re incorrect in your reasoning due to a lack of information.

The ironically, scrapper and herald will have the option to have a similar if not stronger proc that’s similar in design to the vamp must form.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

While I don’t normally try to speak for an entire community, this thread is meant to address the influx of “Mesmer OP” claims that we’ve been receiving …

I very rarely post here, but I had to upvote your post: Well said!

My impression is that some (many?) of the people who claim that mesmer is OP do not play (or main) mesmer themselves, but have problems fighting them using other classes. They don’t understand the mesmer class, they don’t understand their enemy, or they simply lack gameplay skills in general. So instead of trying to become better at fighting mesmers, they get frustrated and ask for nerfs instead. Some classes do (hard)counter other classes, but that doesn’t mean the class is OP in general.

Sometimes I also see the “mesmer is so easy to play” (particularly PU and condi mesmers) statement, although many do agree that mesmer is still one of the more difficult classes to play.

Anyway, nice post

as a thief, this warms me.

The entire original post does not invite real discussion IMO, but we can still try.

You mention mesmer now being able to do more damage from stealth then thief can. How can this be intended when thief is meant to be the assassination class?

I play mesmer, as well as thief and warrior. I am way more skilled at the other two, yet the rewards I claim as a mesmer are far greater then with either war or thief. This is coming from a wvw roaming perspective.

Currently, the skill floor is too low. The ceiling is still high, though.

Cygnus.6903:

The entire original post does not invite real discussion IMO, but we can still try.

You mention mesmer now being able to do more damage from stealth then thief can. How can this be intended when thief is meant to be the assassination class?

I play mesmer, as well as thief and warrior. I am way more skilled at the other two, yet the rewards I claim as a mesmer are far greater then with either war or thief. This is coming from a wvw roaming perspective.

Currently, the skill floor is too low. The ceiling is still high, though.

THIS.

Cygnus.6903:

The entire original post does not invite real discussion IMO, but we can still try.

You mention mesmer now being able to do more damage from stealth then thief can. How can this be intended when thief is meant to be the assassination class?

I play mesmer, as well as thief and warrior. I am way more skilled at the other two, yet the rewards I claim as a mesmer are far greater then with either war or thief. This is coming from a wvw roaming perspective.

Currently, the skill floor is too low. The ceiling is still high, though.

I highlighted the problem of your whole premise. It’s a faulty presumption.

As for roaming warriors, thieves, and mesmers in WvW, that’s entirely relative. While I understand you have your personal experience, I don’t know how you’d hope to hold a serious standing in a discussion on those grounds alone.