Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

That awkward moment you realise that a persons entire life for the past few years has been dominated by the hate he feels because somebody once defended a build used to tag zergs in the WvW mode of Guild Wars 2.

Funny thing is that due to how much stronger every class is now if you put it back in the game it wouldn’t be worth running.

Ha ha, yeah, resistance spam/share on top of cleanses for everyone. Anyone kept tally of how much Pyro has actually done for the mesmer community?

Who else would you say is a pillar of the mesmer community?

Ross doesn’t count, he plays warrior too much =P

That isn’t Ross’s fault. They just keep nerfing mesmer and buffing warrior.

apharma.3741:

DeceiverX.8361:

No, I’m looking at baseline shatter damage. The tooltips aren’t correct; they hit harder than they say they do.

I read to you the damage coefficients, not some random stuff I got from the tooltip. These coefficients have been gathered through tests done by other forum users both legit and non legit. These all factor into the same Damage Calculation as each other, there is no difference afaik between the way damage is worked out between classes for weapon skills.

DeceiverX.8361:

Again, I’m not saying the mesmer’s DPS is comparable. Very far from it; I know the mesmer’s personal DPS is the lowest in the game. What I’m saying is that conceptually, the DPS isn’t there because the burst is without requiring any investment whatsoever. For a thief to get the same burst potential as a mesmer, it already needs to run an offensive trait line, and have conditional modifiers such as < 50% enemy health apply.

Except they don’t. A backstab will do about the same damage as a non invested single clone mind wrack with a 2 clone doing a little bit more than backstab if they all hit.

I also said that other classes have much much better mods. When you take that executioner trait it doesn’t just affect backstab does it? It affects all damage under 50% health. Mental anguish not only affects mind wrack solely but it has a component where the enemy must not be using skills to get the full mod from it adding another layer of work to get the full extent from it.

That’s without mentioning the sheer number of damage mods thieves do actually get if they choose them all by my count it’s 10%, 20% under 50% health, 7% crit damage while over 90% HP, 10% crit damage while enemy is above 50%, 10% precision to ferocity conversion, +250 ferocity while they have fury and extends fury, fury generator, 7% to melee weapons in DD and another 10% for bounding dodger. Remember, these are not additive but multiplicative so a lot of these mods will be much higher.

Rev is the premier example of damage mods running wild though.

DeceiverX.8361:

Yes, the thief has much better personal DPS in its PvE build, but the chronomancer makes up for that per-encounter via the party-wide damage it provides to others, break bar damage, etc.
However, a thief does not hit like a truck without major problems in its build outside the realm of strict PvE. The meta PvE builds are pretty much unplayable in the PvP formats – I know when I come across a PvE thief in WvW, because it dies from any single remotely-powerful skill – straight 100 to 0, and cannot put up a fight in the slightest. It’s built to AA and it’s laughable to try and kill a good player with AA seeing as it dies to a stiff breeze (skill use is a DPS loss for max DPS PvE thief, and this build lacks Trickery, a mandatory PvP trait line, plus optimal PvE thief plays D/D since it has roughly a 1-2% damage increase on its AA as opposed to D/P).
I’m not arguing it’s fair for the thief, either. I directly opposed the AA damage buffs. They weren’t warranted, and the class isn’t fun to play in PvE because pressing 1 is boring. It got forced into the situation because the class was kicked-on-sight from raid groups, and ANet isn’t willing to re-balance the profession or multiple professions.

The point everyone is making though is that many classes have access to a wide number of damage mods that affect everything. They affect burst and sustained damage but are separated across multiple lines so you can’t pick them all in PvP/WvW without being extremely glassy. Mesmer doesn’t have that option and when they do decided to drop alacrity/quickness support the damage still has multiple problems.

1. Long ramp up time, sometimes up to 20s to reach what most classes do in the first few seconds.
2. Tied to a single target so when it dies or disappears so does your DPS as well as mostly being single target in nature.
3. Laughably poor against multiple enemies due to a combination of the above and waiting on phantasm cool downs even in condi builds.

If other classes decide to go full selfish DPS, they can, it will give a damage increase and while they won’t reach the lofty heights of ele, thief and epi bounce necro but they won’t be complete crap and usually pull into the 20-25k mark. Some classes can even do good dps while retaining a varying amount of support too like guards, rev, ele, epi bounce necro and engineer.

Edit: Here’s the post Pyro was referring to about PSEA warrior buffing the raid vs chrono buffing, thought I’d track it down and save you the trouble as you won’t know what topic you’re looking for. Added reading

I’m aware of how damage is calculated. You seem to be misunderstanding that the game-reported skill damage coefficient on MR is wrong. Because the damage formulae is the same, it therefore deals more damage than listed via tooltips, and more damage than the person who I reponded to who said the aforementioned skills had higher damage coefficients, while meanwhile listing the incorrect coefficient. Baseline, Mind Wrack is one of the hardest-hitting abilities in the game. I’m not arguing about scalars, because I already know how damage modifiers work; I’m [tied with] the hardest-bursting thief in the game as a consequence for knowing this. The dealio is that to get the results of what baseline mesmer has, other professions need to invest more in offensive capabilities. That’s why the potential is lower; giving mesmers easily-accessible scalars to pump huge DPS and burst would break the class on the conceptual level leaving it out-damaging everything else. Get rid of the shatters, and mesmer can have a field day with scaling bonuses.

That said, you don’t really want to be a scaling-based profession in sPvP, so do know that requests for scaling bonuses as an elite spec mechanic replacing shatters implies specific and pretty much exclusive PvE use. Baseline numbers are consequently developed lower with this in mind, and thus the profession becomes dependent on scaling bonuses, and since sPvP stat pools are so low for power builds to scale off of, the scaling bonuses are less meaningful than they are in WvW and PvE. +200% damage on a skill that hits for 1 damage nets less damage than +100% on a skill that deals 2 damage. This is strictly why the thief isn’t a good fighting class when played offensively in sPvP, and why it’s a problem-child for game-wide balance efforts as a whole. It’s why the AA’s got buffed; it was all ANet could do without changing the way stats got calculated in sPvP while fixing the kick-on-sight aspect of the class from raids, else with buffed coefficients you’d have nonsense like 40k backstabs in WvW and huge hits in sPvP if the coefficients got increased, instead.

I just mean to clarify that this is why base coefficients on the mesmer can’t be raised so substantially, particularly if another elite specialization is to introduce selfish DPS; if mesmer got its hands on scaling bonuses and had shatters available without subsequent nerfs to shatter base damage as how the thief is designed, it’d be grossly overpowered.

That said, I’m not against making the chronomancers stack up better to other support builds in PvE. I’m not in a place to justify talking about specific implementations that would fix the problem without collateral, but all I do know is that in order to increase mesmer’s selfish DPS potential, shatters need to go, else they need to get nerfed, but then the core mesmer and chronomancer end up nerfed with no means to get around it, with the justification only being a specific elite having scaling damage access.

This is in essence the same problem the thief has had for years, and it’s contingent only because of the split stat allocation amounts in sPvP. If normalized to PvE allotments, then this would largely be a non-issue, particularly in the case of elites or baseline abilities.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m aware of how damage is calculated. You seem to be misunderstanding that the game-reported skill damage coefficient on MR is wrong.
Because the damage formulae is the same, it therefore deals more damage than listed via tooltips, and more damage than the person who I reponded to who said the aforementioned skills had higher damage coefficients, while meanwhile listing the incorrect coefficient.

What’s the fuss about tooltips being wrong ingame? Since when have tooltips ever been correct? Just refer to the wiki damage coefficients for actual values…

DeceiverX.8361:

Baseline, Mind Wrack is one of the hardest-hitting abilities in the game.

That’s pretty disingenuous. Under absolutely perfect conditions (3 clone shatter) it reaches those levels, but under normal conditions (1 clone or 2 clone) it’s on par with skills like backstab and weaker than big warrior bursts.

DeceiverX.8361:

That’s why the potential is lower; giving mesmers easily-accessible scalars to pump huge DPS and burst would break the class on the conceptual level leaving it out-damaging everything else. Get rid of the shatters, and mesmer can have a field day with scaling bonuses.

Or, you know, put a bit of creativity into your ideas. How about traits that share the same slot causing the mesmer to choose between scaling shatters or dps? How about ways to integrate those scaling bonuses into shatters by using the shatters as utility boosts instead of raw burst? This doesn’t have to be limited to the false binary choice you’re presenting.

DeceiverX.8361:

That said, I’m not against making the chronomancers stack up better to other support builds in PvE. I’m not in a place to justify talking about specific implementations that would fix the problem without collateral, but all I do know is that in order to increase mesmer’s selfish DPS potential, shatters need to go, else they need to get nerfed, but then the core mesmer and chronomancer end up nerfed with no means to get around it, with the justification only being a specific elite having scaling damage access.

And again: PvE and PvP splits solve this issue cleanly and completely. Slap a big boost to autos or w/e in PvE and leave it the same in PvP.

I think the obvious answer would be to buff autoattack DPS and blurred frenzy damage in general, and then to a PvE split that buffs shatter damage enough so it’s worth even shattering phantasms.

That’s a bandaid fix, though.

As I said, phantasms should be a 1 hit summon that despawns after the hit, with lower cd as compensation while raising our autoattack damage and blurred frenzy damage.

Lower the spike of 2-3 phantasm+ mindwrack by only leaving in 1 phantasm hit and mindwrack, while buffing the mesmer’s sustained damage so it isn’t a feast or famine scenario of “land your shatter 100% or do no damage whatsoever for the following 12 seconds”.

They also need to make Cry of Frutration not utter trash. Cry of Frustration should inflict 6 confusion (total) at 3 clones, 3 seconds of weakness and 3 seconds of cripple per clone. Diversion needs to be aoe baseline and each clone should stack the duration so you’re not just using it with only 1 clone up as any beyond that is a waste of illusions.

Ranael.6423:

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

Even if the thread has derailed a bit and although as said previously, the DPS number only comes out of a video showing the rotation (hence no buf so no validity for comparison… another video later showed something closer to 12 kDPS) one should not forget what the real DPS of the mesmer is in this situation.
For this, do an experiment: try an Ele rotation with and without quickness. The difference is the contribution of the mesmer in the ele optimal DPS.
On top of that you can do it for the entire raid because every DPS is in the same situation.
So the comparison would hold if it was done between DPS builds and DPS builds, not support.

If you are going to come to the mesmer forums and claim that alacrity makes up for the kittentiest personal dps in the game then please at least read the actual discussion held by players who do play chronomancer and know what they are talking about.

This thread on this forum is highly relevant. This particular experiment was done with an ele. Guess what? Mesmer buffs to the ele (100% quickness and alacrity uptime) provided only a 28% increase in ele dps. Druid buffs provided a 32% dps increase. And warrior buffs provided a kittening huge 50% dps buff for the ele.

There is literally no more argument to keep our personal DPS so low because we provide alacrity. Ever since it was gutted to balance PvP it doesn’t hold up to buffs that other classes can provide. And mind you, a warrior providing those buffs can still output far more personal DPS than a mesmer can, and his buffs are more important to party DPS as a whole. Mesmer is not the only class that can provide quickness, its hard as kitten to provide 100% quickness and alacrity uptime as a mesmer, and yet even if you have excellent control over the class and gut your personal dps to around 8k to do so, you still give the party less support than a warrior does, all while he can deal far more dps in his support role than you could deal even in a purely selfish dps build.

Mesmers need a dps buff.

It’s interesting to see this, because to hear high-profile GW2 YouTubers or people on Reddit talk, you’d think Mesmer is one of the most important professions to bring with you on a raid. But if you look at the actual numbers, they’re not actually that important at all.

Which is sort of a bummer. I’m fine playing a support class, but I want to feel like my support actually matters, rather than just sort of being there. If our support isn’t going to get buffed, then the numbers definitely support a DPS buff.

Agent Noun.7350:

It’s interesting to see this, because to hear high-profile GW2 YouTubers or people on Reddit talk, you’d think Mesmer is one of the most important professions to bring with you on a raid. But if you look at the actual numbers, they’re not actually that important at all.

Which is sort of a bummer. I’m fine playing a support class, but I want to feel like my support actually matters, rather than just sort of being there. If our support isn’t going to get buffed, then the numbers definitely support a DPS buff.

The problem here is that I think chronomancer personal dps was balanced around their support role when alacrity was initially introduced at 66% increase in CD speed. But that was too powerful for PvP so alacrity was gutted across the board to 33%. I would really like to see alacrity in PvE un-nerfed back up to 66% and then have people run these dps tests again to see if it was originally good enough to warrant keeping the base dps of mesmer and chrono so horrible.

OriOri.8724:

Ranael.6423:

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

Even if the thread has derailed a bit and although as said previously, the DPS number only comes out of a video showing the rotation (hence no buf so no validity for comparison… another video later showed something closer to 12 kDPS) one should not forget what the real DPS of the mesmer is in this situation.
For this, do an experiment: try an Ele rotation with and without quickness. The difference is the contribution of the mesmer in the ele optimal DPS.
On top of that you can do it for the entire raid because every DPS is in the same situation.
So the comparison would hold if it was done between DPS builds and DPS builds, not support.

If you are going to come to the mesmer forums and claim that alacrity makes up for the kittentiest personal dps in the game then please at least read the actual discussion held by players who do play chronomancer and know what they are talking about.

This thread on this forum is highly relevant. This particular experiment was done with an ele. Guess what? Mesmer buffs to the ele (100% quickness and alacrity uptime) provided only a 28% increase in ele dps. Druid buffs provided a 32% dps increase. And warrior buffs provided a kittening huge 50% dps buff for the ele.

There is literally no more argument to keep our personal DPS so low because we provide alacrity. Ever since it was gutted to balance PvP it doesn’t hold up to buffs that other classes can provide. And mind you, a warrior providing those buffs can still output far more personal DPS than a mesmer can, and his buffs are more important to party DPS as a whole. Mesmer is not the only class that can provide quickness, its hard as kitten to provide 100% quickness and alacrity uptime as a mesmer, and yet even if you have excellent control over the class and gut your personal dps to around 8k to do so, you still give the party less support than a warrior does, all while he can deal far more dps in his support role than you could deal even in a purely selfish dps build.

Mesmers need a dps buff.

No it doesn’t. I can’t advocate for a DPS buff on this class when you’ve got 2 other game modes where they do not need a DPS buff.

I also don’t want my class’s abilities drastically nerfed in those other 2 game modes b/c a few PvE only players want to play selfishly.

Levetty.1279:

That awkward moment you realise that a persons entire life for the past few years has been dominated by the hate he feels because somebody once defended a build used to tag zergs in the WvW mode of Guild Wars 2.

Funny thing is that due to how much stronger every class is now if you put it back in the game it wouldn’t be worth running.

No words can express the level needed to illustrate how bad of an idea that would be….

Azukas.1426:

No it doesn’t. I can’t advocate for a DPS buff on this class when you’ve got 2 other game modes where they do not need a DPS buff.

I also don’t want my class’s abilities drastically nerfed in those other 2 game modes b/c a few PvE only players want to play selfishly.

I don’t think people are looking to “play selfishly.” I think people are looking to actually be useful. With the Alacrity nerf, Chronomancer simply doesn’t provide the level of support that would justify its low PvE DPS.

And it’s not like they haven’t done some subtle splits between PvE and PvP balance in GW2 already. Buffing autoattack and maybe Blurred Frenzy damage in PvE only should not be impossible.

Why is Backstab and Mid Wrack even being compared? One gets spammed multiple times and the other requires 3 clones of setup and is on a 12 second CD. Seriously?

i’m still holding out for a mainhand pistol elite spec that relies more on the weapon than the shatters for damage.

OriOri.8724:

If you are going to come to the mesmer forums and claim that alacrity makes up for the kittentiest personal dps in the game then please at least read the actual discussion held by players who do play chronomancer and know what they are talking about.

No I am coming to a DPS thread to claim that better science would be more profitable.
OP start with a comparison of DPS of power specs (full zerk and trait damage oriented) with a support spec, the rotation of which is not optimized for maximal damage output.
Then OP talks about a condi specs which he claim to be 13.3k while it has been months since video showing a 21 k DPS on single target have been released. So I think player skill may account for more DPS increase than any buff in the game.
I have yet to see a video of someone playing full berserker gear, with domi/duel/illu build and people around to buff the iSwordmen (because in raid situation your phantasms will also get might, quickness and area effect). Then the question of the DPS boost will be a thing.
Basing conclusion on bad science is maybe something we see everyday on TV but it still is a bad habit.

Right now, Mesmer is Meta in raid (look how 4-men VG requires one), recommended in Fractals, has some good solo builds (I don’t know for power but condi build is correct), has no issue for tons of open world activities (personal experience where I can better solo champs with mesmer than Ele), is a deadly roamer in WvW, is more than appreciated in zerg, has always a place in the sPvP Meta and (cherry on the pie) has really good ways to troll people in open world without being sportted (illusion of life has a huge potential!).
I am not sure so many professions around are so much wanted then mesmer.
I can totally see that players want to have a super broken DPS spec because not being first hurts feelings, but if it happens it will remove Chrono and party wide buff through their utility.

clones are to squishy to a big aoe and there gone

Ranael.6423:

OriOri.8724:

If you are going to come to the mesmer forums and claim that alacrity makes up for the kittentiest personal dps in the game then please at least read the actual discussion held by players who do play chronomancer and know what they are talking about.

No I am coming to a DPS thread to claim that better science would be more profitable.
OP start with a comparison of DPS of power specs (full zerk and trait damage oriented) with a support spec, the rotation of which is not optimized for maximal damage output.
Then OP talks about a condi specs which he claim to be 13.3k while it has been months since video showing a 21 k DPS on single target have been released. So I think player skill may account for more DPS increase than any buff in the game.
I have yet to see a video of someone playing full berserker gear, with domi/duel/illu build and people around to buff the iSwordmen (because in raid situation your phantasms will also get might, quickness and area effect). Then the question of the DPS boost will be a thing.
Basing conclusion on bad science is maybe something we see everyday on TV but it still is a bad habit.

Right now, Mesmer is Meta in raid (look how 4-men VG requires one), recommended in Fractals, has some good solo builds (I don’t know for power but condi build is correct), has no issue for tons of open world activities (personal experience where I can better solo champs with mesmer than Ele), is a deadly roamer in WvW, is more than appreciated in zerg, has always a place in the sPvP Meta and (cherry on the pie) has really good ways to troll people in open world without being sportted (illusion of life has a huge potential!).
I am not sure so many professions around are so much wanted then mesmer.
I can totally see that players want to have a super broken DPS spec because not being first hurts feelings, but if it happens it will remove Chrono and party wide buff through their utility.

The actual truth in neat properly spaced paragraph form.

Well played Ran Well played indeed.

While I do agree mesmer dps should be low to prevent crazy opness, I do not agree that mesmer dps should be hilariously low. I think the way to help this is to increase trait dmg percentages. For example, the 15% illusion dmg increase in Domination should be higher. About 20% or maybe even 30% would be ok. Fragility should be increased to 2% per vulnerability stack for a total of about 50% dmg increase if 25 stacks of vulnerability. Compounding power should be increased to 5% for each illusion for a total of 15% dmg increase. The mantra trait is too clunky because of the cast times so maybe reducing cast times would be better. Lowering phantasm CDs would also help a bit but not by too much to prevent phantasm spam.

I think phantasms are horrible but for anet to rework the entire class is a bit unreal. I also believe that alacrity should be reverted to at least 50% in pve only. Another problem I have is our auto attacks. How in the hell is Staff aa for druid better than gs aa for mes? Staff aa for mesmer is bad cause of dumb bounce mechanic. Mesmer is definitely not in a great spot. Its subjectively good but its not nearly as good in pve than all the other classes.

Ranael.6423:

I have yet to see a video of someone playing full berserker gear, with domi/duel/illu build and people around to buff the iSwordmen (because in raid situation your phantasms will also get might, quickness and area effect). Then the question of the DPS boost will be a thing.

You still dont know what are you talking about do you?… Phantasms dont get boosted by might on them, quickness have close to no effect on their dps since they dont auto-attack but their dps is tied to CDs… Oh well….
Even then, if their dps could break 20k dps… still misses another 15k to tie the most selfish dps class can pull off (theif) and would bring even less utility than thief with basilisk share for cc. And let alone the huge ramp up time and the single target factors… ye.. thief can 35k dps cleaving, not single target.

Ranael.6423:

Right now, Mesmer is Meta in raid (look how 4-men VG requires one)

Dont you deceive yourself… Mesmer on 4 or 5-men VG isnt there cause their buffs/dps… If it wasnt distortion share for green circles you would rather see a hammer guard, rev, or another ele.

Ranael.6423:

recommended in Fractals

Are you talking about low fractals? cause there everything works and its recommended. On high lvl fractals? im not really sure. Boon thieves instability makes a pain to keep quickness uptime (since its tied to rather long cds, and not easy reapplied like ps might). Maybe for min-max top players? yes, for the everyday casual run? no. I would prefer another necro.

Ranael.6423:

has some good solo builds (I don’t know for power but condi build is correct), has no issue for tons of open world activities (personal experience where I can better solo champs with mesmer than Ele)

Dont mix “the better solo build” with “good build”. Being it the better cause the way condi ticks/dps uptime works doesnt mean its a good build. Compare it with a necro or condi engie, heck even a burn guardian….
Open world activities? Portal.
And maybe your experience with mesmer is like summon 3 phantasms and ai ai ai run around 15mins until champ dies… Slacker relying no AI while you play defensive with the character… If you actualy could pre stack some might/fury with ele and actually using defensive skills/dodges for avoiding dmg instead of moving faster… You can even summon glyph of elementals pets and actually make AI tank for you…. Completly biased comment…

has always a place in the sPvP Meta

Yes, as long as portal and moa are a thing AND it has a semi-decent build not to be a liability.

Ranael.6423:

I am not sure so many professions around are so much wanted then mesmer.

For dps just everything is more wanted and for support just the rest of the other support classes are more wanted. Thats why they stack druids and wars to make sure everyone have their buffs..
If a single mesmer cannot mantain at least 80% quickness uptime to ALL other 9 ppl it is automatically a failure. You would be better off with another dps class. Stacking mesmers doesnt worth. Alacrity doesnt make up for it. (this last paragraph is an aprox. quote from raid comps guide in a top PVE guild)

Ranael.6423:

I can totally see that players want to have a super broken DPS spec because not being first hurts feelings

Its not a matter of being first or last. Look at ele current situation. Ele still King of dps charts. But since their rotations “feels bad” (i personally think its a matter of habit and ppl will eventually get used to the new cds/rotations) they are complaining. Just like playing mesmer feels bad in other pve content other than raids.
Having the very same raid build reaching ~18k dps by spot on buffs on sustained dps (aa, mods affecting phantasms, reduce dead traits on pve builds, increase low mods numbers, wep coefs/skill coefs, etc.) wouldnt break anything, mesmer would probabily still be last on dps, everyone would benefit from it, and the most important thing, it wouldnt feel baaad and a liability in most cases.

Honestly, the “rant” is the best part of that comment, and it’s not even that ranty. Required reading, IMO.

Azukas.1426:

OriOri.8724:

Ranael.6423:

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

Even if the thread has derailed a bit and although as said previously, the DPS number only comes out of a video showing the rotation (hence no buf so no validity for comparison… another video later showed something closer to 12 kDPS) one should not forget what the real DPS of the mesmer is in this situation.
For this, do an experiment: try an Ele rotation with and without quickness. The difference is the contribution of the mesmer in the ele optimal DPS.
On top of that you can do it for the entire raid because every DPS is in the same situation.
So the comparison would hold if it was done between DPS builds and DPS builds, not support.

If you are going to come to the mesmer forums and claim that alacrity makes up for the kittentiest personal dps in the game then please at least read the actual discussion held by players who do play chronomancer and know what they are talking about.

This thread on this forum is highly relevant. This particular experiment was done with an ele. Guess what? Mesmer buffs to the ele (100% quickness and alacrity uptime) provided only a 28% increase in ele dps. Druid buffs provided a 32% dps increase. And warrior buffs provided a kittening huge 50% dps buff for the ele.

There is literally no more argument to keep our personal DPS so low because we provide alacrity. Ever since it was gutted to balance PvP it doesn’t hold up to buffs that other classes can provide. And mind you, a warrior providing those buffs can still output far more personal DPS than a mesmer can, and his buffs are more important to party DPS as a whole. Mesmer is not the only class that can provide quickness, its hard as kitten to provide 100% quickness and alacrity uptime as a mesmer, and yet even if you have excellent control over the class and gut your personal dps to around 8k to do so, you still give the party less support than a warrior does, all while he can deal far more dps in his support role than you could deal even in a purely selfish dps build.

Mesmers need a dps buff.

No it doesn’t. I can’t advocate for a DPS buff on this class when you’ve got 2 other game modes where they do not need a DPS buff.

I also don’t want my class’s abilities drastically nerfed in those other 2 game modes b/c a few PvE only players want to play selfishly.

I give up. I don’t understand why you insist so heavily that mesmer dps is fine the way it is. First of all, our DPS was balanced around an alacrity effect of 66%. When alacrity was nerfed across the board because it was too powerful only in PvP, our damage wasn’t buffed to compensate for it.

Mesmers aren’t taken on PvP or WvW teams for their damage. I don’t know why you insist their damage is fine when in WvW they are preferred as portal bots for zergs and in PvP they are also usually used for portal and double moa in high level competitive play. Yes, we can have a pretty large burst. But its also a burst that is easy for other players to escape if they know how to fight a mesmer (compared to, say, a thief that can burst from stealth and already has far higher sustainable dps than any mesmer can hope to achieve. No preparation there for the player being bursted). Not to mention that once our burst misses (because few to no good players are actually hit by it, its so predictable) we have practically zero dps until all the cooldowns are up. No other class is crippled like that, none.

You might argue that our lack of sustained dps once our burst misses is due to our classes high sustain. But the burst build doesn’t have nearly the same level of sustain as a bunker mesmer. And even then, there are still classes that have better sustain and bunker ability than mesmer/chrono does while at the same time still having far better damage.

And by the way, people are calling for a PvE damage increase. It wouldn’t affect you in PvP or WvW at all. Stop pretending like mesmer dps is in a good spot, because it isn’t. And I don’t honestly know how you continue to think that it is

Fortunately for mesmers, they along with druid and to an extent warrior, are still reserved at least one slot for virtually every boss of every raid group. Something that none of the other 6 classes can say.

myren.5490:

I think phantasms are horrible but for anet to rework the entire class is a bit unreal.

Yes and no. I heard that just before GW1 went into self maintenance mode they completely reworked I think it was elementalist, from the ground up and that was right at the very end of a games life cycle.

Additionally there is absolutely no excuse for not changing class mechanics that do not work or are barriers to a players ability to play/enjoy the game. Necro death shroud needs addressing in terms of allowing heals (from others) of some sort through it. Guard virtues need a little look at to reduce cool down and base functionality as right now they’re kinda meh. Rangers and their pets need to be treated as one, they made grounds on that but fortifying bond should really have been baseline.

Mesmer phantasms and how mesmers do sustained damage definitely fits into this category as they act as a barrier to using the class mechanic and so this should 100% be addressed just as the above need tweaks to ensure class mechanics remain fluid.

apharma.3741:

myren.5490:

I think phantasms are horrible but for anet to rework the entire class is a bit unreal.

Yes and no. I heard that just before GW1 went into self maintenance mode they completely reworked I think it was elementalist, from the ground up and that was right at the very end of a games life cycle.

Additionally there is absolutely no excuse for not changing class mechanics that do not work or are barriers to a players ability to play/enjoy the game. Necro death shroud needs addressing in terms of allowing heals (from others) of some sort through it. Guard virtues need a little look at to reduce cool down and base functionality as right now they’re kinda meh. Rangers and their pets need to be treated as one, they made grounds on that but fortifying bond should really have been baseline.

Mesmer phantasms and how mesmers do sustained damage definitely fits into this category as they act as a barrier to using the class mechanic and so this should 100% be addressed just as the above need tweaks to ensure class mechanics remain fluid.

A complete rework would be ideal for sure. But at the least ANet could reduce our reliance on phantasm by increasing our personal DPS and changing phantasm attacks to be an effect with some damage (still a nontrivial amount, but less than they currently do) on the side. That way we could still shatter for a burst but we wouldn’t be reliant on shatters in order to deal damage.

You can’t buff mesmer base damage without making the already condition damage builds stronger. It would be best just to tweek the damage multiplier ratios to be inline with the meta damage wise for shatter and the weapon sets. As far as I have seen, sustain is fine and in a good spot for team play. Now mesmer needs its damage to be on par for non condition builds.

Sustain could be reduced for all classes but at its current skill-less state it is at least more balanced than any mmorpg I have played.

Zelulose.8695:

You can’t buff mesmer base damage without making the already condition damage builds stronger. It would be best just to tweek the damage multiplier ratios to be inline with the meta damage wise for shatter and the weapon sets. As far as I have seen, sustain is fine and in a good spot for team play. Now mesmer needs its damage to be on par for non condition builds.

Sustain could be reduced for all classes but at its current skill-less state it is at least more balanced than any mmorpg I have played.

cant say i got what you said here
we are talking about sustain dps in pve ,man you dont need to claim that sustain is out of control in every single posts .

and the very point most mes made here is : mes dps in solo play is not fine while you jump in and claim it is fine by word “as i have seen ”.

may i ask , what you have seen : the number from dps test or theory craft is low . the actual game play in open world or living story or anything that is not raid feel clunky unfun and powerless and people here have given many many example (you can even check what dulfy guide said about living story each of past guide ).

btw there is no such a thing called base damage in gw2 ,and fay or someone else in this thread already said this before .
example :
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mind_Wrack

Zelulose.8695:

You can’t buff mesmer base damage without making the already condition damage builds stronger. It would be best just to tweek the damage multiplier ratios to be inline with the meta damage wise for shatter and the weapon sets. As far as I have seen, sustain is fine and in a good spot for team play. Now mesmer needs its damage to be on par for non condition builds.

Sustain could be reduced for all classes but at its current skill-less state it is at least more balanced than any mmorpg I have played.

A – Conditions in general need a huge rework, so its not any sort of even halfway decent argument to keep our DPS so low. Besides that though, there are other classes that can output more DPS than mesmers can and still have powerful condition builds.

B – You bring up PvP yet again when everyone is talking about PvE damage for mesmers. Who the hell cares if mesmer has a “strong” condi build for PvE if by the time you rake up enough condis on the one mob to get to that point, other classes could have killed 6 or more mobs? That is still far from balanced. Yes, when a condi mesmer fully loads up a champion with their conditions, then the champion goes down pretty fast. But it takes a pretty long while to get to that point for a single PvE fight. And even then few mesmers run condi builds in PvE because there isn’t really a point.

Zelulose.8695:

You can’t buff mesmer base damage without making the already condition damage builds stronger. It would be best just to tweek the damage multiplier ratios to be inline with the meta damage wise for shatter and the weapon sets. As far as I have seen, sustain is fine and in a good spot for team play. Now mesmer needs its damage to be on par for non condition builds.

Sustain could be reduced for all classes but at its current skill-less state it is at least more balanced than any mmorpg I have played.

Phantasm Condition: ~13,000
Shatter Condition: ~10,000
Staff Daredevil: ~30,000

I’m pretty sure that buffing Condition Mesmer too wouldn’t break anything.

What Staff Daredevil does for DPS does not determine if Condi Mesmer builds would break if they were buffed.

I’m just curious how exactly are they going to make condition builds broken powerful by buffing mesmers sustained DPS?

Especially as most people have been talking about sustain power dps.

Obtena.7952:

What Staff Daredevil does for DPS does not determine if Condi Mesmer builds would break if they were buffed.

Because whether something is broken or not is determined by how it compares to the other options. Given that even the highest damage mesmer builds aren’t anywhere near the other class’ comparative builds, it definitely implies that buffing those too wouldn’t make them suddenly soar above the competition.

As it is, berserker and druid support builds both support better than support built chronomancers, and also outdamage even their highest damage low-utility build. The only reason anyone cares about chronomancers is because they can be run in addition to the others.

Eponet.4829:

Obtena.7952:

What Staff Daredevil does for DPS does not determine if Condi Mesmer builds would break if they were buffed.

Because whether something is broken or not is determined by how it compares to the other options.

Except you haven’t done that … you have only compared it to ONE option you cherrypicked. You can’t even say with confidence what comparators Anet would use to balance between classes in the first place, but somehow make arguments BASED on the ones you assume they would (I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion this is even how Anet makes balance changes). Such arguments based on between-class comparisons are frivolous; they appeal to people because they are easy … but the aren’t sensible.

Frankly, I’m pretty certain that’s not what Anet does anyways, based on the sheer volume of ‘unbalanced, between-class’ comparisons anyone can cite for any class, as well as the absurdity that it’s even possible to take 9 classes and make them unique, fit their concept AND perform at similar levels across three different game modes .. but that’s already been covered.

I think it’s pretty self evident. It’s been 4 years now and still lots of unbalanced between-class comparisons … so there are 2 conclusions you can arrive at:

1. Anet is terrible at balancing by using between class comparisons

OR

2. That’s not how they balance in the first place

Either way, making arguments for balance between classes by comparing them isn’t actually going to get you anywhere because of the conclusions above.

The option to attain those categories of build is not related to comparisons to other classes though; how does that even make sense? Just do a thought experiment: “Guardians need good condition damage because … Necros have it” I mean, that kind of thinking lacks any sort of logic. The fact that necros have good condi damage is indicative of the fact that if you want to play that way, you have the option to do so, not that every class should be at the same level of condi performance that necros are.

It’s not even clear that what you say should be an option to attain various categories of builds is part of Anet’s class design approach because Anet is NOT preaching the philosophy that any class fills any role; This would, in fact, promote the idea that encounters are designed around a holy trinity approach when clearly they are not. In otherwords, it would promote the idea that roles actually exist for classes to fill, which is something Anet was clear to players they wanted to avoid in this game from the beginning.

This BTW even excludes raids because even though there is healer/tank roles, Anet doesn’t promote the idea that every class can play any of those roles.

I mean, again, if you are right and each class should have that option, then it’s clear that Anet simply can’t do it; it’s been 4 years and there are way to many inbalanced class comparisons to make anyone think they are anywhere near balanced if this is indeed their approach. They either can’t or don’t do balance that way. Therefore, class comparisons likely have little impact to their approach to balancing things.

I seriously wonder what people think how much damage they do in raids and under what circumstances.

Xyonon.3987:

I seriously wonder what people think how much damage they do in raids and under what circumstances.

Depends how experienced you are and what you contrast it against.

I won’t pretend to be doing perfect rotations 100% of the time but I can get pretty close to maximum on ele when we do tests on the DPS golem. This is partly because it is my main class and I have way more experience on it than anything else. I can carry very hard with it.

That’s not a real raid scenario though is it? What I have noticed is when I’ve had the opportunity to play ele instead of someone else the times to kill have gone down markedly and phases happen quicker with mobs being cleaved out quicker. I guess it helps I generally keep the scholar buff up a lot more reliably as well as other modifiers.

Notice the part in bold? It’s something mesmer just doesn’t have in great amounts. Sure if you posted a 27k condi DPS on a single target from a test golem with realistic buffs you still have to factor in that even another class doing only 15k per target is doing considerably more for the raid if there’s a lot of mobs that CC you or cause problems.

Then we come to other aspects like the buffers. A PSEA war really shouldn’t have trouble keeping up 25 might on all but they may have trouble keeping up the berserker’s power buff especially without arms line. That’s a pretty hefty loss. What if your rangers are doing a great job healing but not maintaining 3-5 stacks of GotL? Well that’s a big loss there, especially if not using glyph of empowerment at the right times.

Then there’s other factors like not being in the right position like I kept telling my group off for last night. I pulled them up on it because we were getting flame walls all over the shop on Sabetha last night. People started running round like headless chickens at gorseval until I told them to stick to my tag no matter what (except chrono). Then we were all 100% healthy and buffed doing no updraft easily.

Hey A-net remember at release when you were like “Oh, we can totally split abilities between game types!” then you were like “ugh it’s to hard!”…

Good times.

Xyonon.3987:

I seriously wonder what people think how much damage they do in raids and under what circumstances.

Depends on the fight. On gorseval I expect folks to be very close to maximum damage rotations. Same on sabetha. VG and sloth are less because they move, and matthias is much harder, so it’ll be lower too. KC is essentially the absolute maximum damage condition, nobody should be missing anything on that because it’s a static non-attacking target. Xera is somewhere between VG/sloth and sabetha. It’s a busy fight, but you’re not moving constantly.

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

I won’t argue with your numbers, but decent Mesmers consistently give me a harder time than any other class in WvW or PvP. I run both thief and warrior. With thief I need to land that surprise attack burst or just run. With warrior I find that mesmers can out-sustain me by stealthing, cloning, etc. Good Mesmers toy with me on a regular basis, even if they don’t kill me outright.

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

I won’t argue with your numbers, but decent Mesmers consistently give me a harder time than any other class in WvW or PvP. I run both thief and warrior. With thief I need to land that surprise attack burst or just run. With warrior I find that mesmers can out-sustain me by stealthing, cloning, etc. Good Mesmers toy with me on a regular basis, even if they don’t kill me outright.

-_-

PvP/WvW is…so so so far outside the scope of this thread…

Fay.2357:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

Ananeos.4587:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
44,320 dps divided by Mesmer’s 7,828 = 5.7 rounded up to 6

This has to stop. Even the second lowest class, the Ranger, manages do deal more than double the dps at 18,969. The Mesmer was in full Zerker.

But wait you ask, what about condi mesmer?
13.3k on a test golem (without confusion and torment’s added damage, but it wasn’t high enough anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wC1NsFfVUc

Anet why do you torture us so?

/endrant

I won’t argue with your numbers, but decent Mesmers consistently give me a harder time than any other class in WvW or PvP. I run both thief and warrior. With thief I need to land that surprise attack burst or just run. With warrior I find that mesmers can out-sustain me by stealthing, cloning, etc. Good Mesmers toy with me on a regular basis, even if they don’t kill me outright.

-_-

PvP/WvW is…so so so far outside the scope of this thread…

So the OP is only complaining about PvE content? Yeah, sorry I stopped by. Also surprised this thread has a thousand posts.

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

So the OP is only complaining about PvE content? Yeah, sorry I stopped by. Also surprised this thread has a thousand posts.

You might also infer something about the actual way the game is played and where the balance attention is needed. But I guess that’d go against the PvP-superiority-complex, so I can see why many PvP-centric players would avoid going there.

Carighan.6758:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

So the OP is only complaining about PvE content? Yeah, sorry I stopped by. Also surprised this thread has a thousand posts.

You might also infer something about the actual way the game is played and where the balance attention is needed. But I guess that’d go against the PvP-superiority-complex, so I can see why many PvP-centric players would avoid going there.

To be fair….PvE is way more reasonably balanced compared to PvP, so that argument is sorta bunk.

I love my 3-4k Sword Autos in PvE, while rev Sword autos hit 10k twice as fast. But Ranger Sword isn’t much better.
Mind Wrack doesn’t hit any more than 2k, power mesmer is completely obsolete now.

Henrik.7560:

I love my 3-4k Sword Autos in PvE, while rev Sword autos hit 10k twice as fast. But Ranger Sword isn’t much better.
Mind Wrack doesn’t hit any more than 2k, power mesmer is completely obsolete now.

Nah man you got it backwards. Our 3-4k sword auto is way too OP becuz portal. It needs to be nerfed to 1-2k autos

i think a way to solve this might be to give mesmer some more active damage instead of phantasms.

Lightsbane.9012:

i think a way to solve this might be to give mesmer some more active damage instead of phantasms.

I hate it when such miniscule changes get brought up. Our class has issues at the following levels:

• Basic class idea.
• Basic class design-goal.
• Class mechanic (the F-bar and the illusions).

I mean until we solved those there’s no real need to tweak numbers by moving damage off of Phantasms, we need much bigger fixes.

Carighan.6758:

Lightsbane.9012:

i think a way to solve this might be to give mesmer some more active damage instead of phantasms.

I hate it when such miniscule changes get brought up. Our class has issues at the following levels:

• Basic class idea.
• Basic class design-goal.
• Class mechanic (the F-bar and the illusions).

I mean until we solved those there’s no real need to tweak numbers by moving damage off of Phantasms, we need much bigger fixes.

Make Phantasm skills one shots that spawn a clone, rebalance the skills from there.

Moves the damage from a passive to an active skill and allows us to shatter without worrying about losing all of our damage.

Velektrian.5491:

Carighan.6758:

Lightsbane.9012:

i think a way to solve this might be to give mesmer some more active damage instead of phantasms.

I hate it when such miniscule changes get brought up. Our class has issues at the following levels:

• Basic class idea.
• Basic class design-goal.
• Class mechanic (the F-bar and the illusions).

I mean until we solved those there’s no real need to tweak numbers by moving damage off of Phantasms, we need much bigger fixes.

Make Phantasm skills one shots that spawn a clone, rebalance the skills from there.

Moves the damage from a passive to an active skill and allows us to shatter without worrying about losing all of our damage.

^^^

Yes, I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while.

Chronophantasma would need a minor patch of some kind, but this would be a step in the right direction. (CP suggestion: an untargettable, unshatterable Phantasm remains behind and makes a second attack X seconds later.)

Everyone in this thread knows by now, that Chrono deals a lot more than 7.8k dps, since they only showed the rota, right? I get the feeling that some people here still seem to misunderstand this a bit. The Chrono from qT had no buffs, it was only for rotation purposes.

Xyonon.3987:

Everyone in this thread knows by now, that Chrono deals a lot more than 7.8k dps, since they only showed the rota, right? I get the feeling that some people here still seem to misunderstand this a bit. The Chrono from qT had no buffs, it was only for rotation purposes.

You mean I do rubbish DPS instead of ignorable DPS? I feel so much better now.

Xyonon.3987:

Everyone in this thread knows by now, that Chrono deals a lot more than 7.8k dps, since they only showed the rota, right? I get the feeling that some people here still seem to misunderstand this a bit. The Chrono from qT had no buffs, it was only for rotation purposes.

Everybody knows that. Doesn’t change the fact our DPS is still by far the lowest DPS of any class. Even building for a pure selfish damage build we output less damage than some other class’ support builds can…..

And some of the arguments “justifying” our horrible personal DPS is the party buffs we can bring (perma alacrity and quickness). But as someone has tested out on an ele and posted their results, both warrior and druid buffs contribute more to party DPS than the perma quickness/alacrity that a top tier chrono can provide while also still contributing far more personal DPS than we can. Which is why we deserve a damage buff. There is not point to keep our damage so low, especially considering our party buffs aren’t even the best there are anymore. Other possible solution is to unnerf alacrity in PvE and re-run the tests to see if that would be enough compensation for the worst DPS in the game. Even then though, that doesn’t help any core mesmer who won’t even gain the effect of alacrity, so either way our DPS needs to be buffed.