Guild Wars 2

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well. Most would prefer to run a cele ele or a cele war, something that really takes no brain to play and is extremely forgiving.

Wow the thread seems pretty divided… But I’m siding with those saying the mes is in bad shape. I mean our options is either burst or go home… I guess people have to go pick on odd ball of the class to get nerfed down into near oblivion.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

No, that during a big tornament event, there is one mesmer who decides they are better off as a thief. What does that tell you about the state of the class?

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

It’s not an argument, it’s a counter-example. Your statement was ‘with enough hours spent mastering mesmer, it’s an effective class in PvP’. I have provided a counter-example of a situation where enough hours were spent mastering mesmer, but it still wasn’t an effective class in PvP.

Mesmer = Thief Version 0.1 Alpha?

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

Mesmer is viable in certain scenarios but not really optimal for team setup in a place like the WTS. Basically, mesmer has a role but the thief has a similar role and can do it a lot better.

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

It’s not an argument, it’s a counter-example. Your statement was ‘with enough hours spent mastering mesmer, it’s an effective class in PvP’. I have provided a counter-example of a situation where enough hours were spent mastering mesmer, but it still wasn’t an effective class in PvP.

Well thast supcuties problem, not mine or other mesmers. There are still very high level mesmers who play out there who do just fine. If supcutie feels it doesnt’ work with his team comp or give him exactly what he wants to do then that doesnt really say anything about other groups or people.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

It’s not an argument, it’s a counter-example. Your statement was ‘with enough hours spent mastering mesmer, it’s an effective class in PvP’. I have provided a counter-example of a situation where enough hours were spent mastering mesmer, but it still wasn’t an effective class in PvP.

Well thast supcuties problem, not mine or other mesmers. There are still very high level mesmers who play out there who do just fine. If supcutie feels it doesnt’ work with his team comp or give him exactly what he wants to do then that doesnt really say anything about other groups or people.

No, what supcutie himself does doesn’t say much about other groups of people. For that, you need to take a wider sample.

In the entire world tournament for GW2, nobody played mesmer at all except for supcutie in those couple games. This is a significantly wider sample encompassing multiple groups and people all competing at the top level of GW2 PvP. The unanimous statement that was made is that mesmer is not viable at the top level of GW2 PvP.

I love playing mesmer, and I’ve actually literally not played a single tournament match as non-mesmer ever. I have no plans to break that record. I’m good at what I do and I generally win my games. All that being said, I still recognize the fact that mesmer simply is not as good as the other classes in high level PvP. The preponderance of evidence states this as a fact.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well. Most would prefer to run a cele ele or a cele war, something that really takes no brain to play and is extremely forgiving.

Calling ele a brainless class pretty much shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Going through might stacking rotations, managing your attunements well so you don’t get locked out of water or lightning at the wrong time, using your cantrips smartly so the random sword thief doesn’t just eat you alive with boon steal spam.

Landing a fire grab with its buggy hitbox is a mission, using lightning flash to land burning speed.

Ele is far from an easy class. Just because it’s a strong 1v1 class in the hands of competent players does not make it a brainless class.

Don’t call a class with powerful synergies and properly designed utilities and skills brainless. Maybe the mesmer is just handicapped by design. The difference between a good and a bad ele is fairly obvious, just as much as that between good and bad mesmers.

The key word in all of the arguments in this thread is “viability”.

[Quote=Wikipedia]Viability is the ability of a thing (a living organism, an artificial system, an idea, etc.) to maintain itself or recover its potentialities.[/Quote]

In top level play, it has been decided by many teams that there are better options to take than a mesmer, and that mesmer’s spike damage, portal and boon removal utilities are useless when they are being focused down by a thief.

In anything else but tournaments, you can run whatever you want, you can kill whatever and whoever you want because the differences in balance and skill level vary so greatly. You can run your torment shatter build and kill plenty of people but if you can’t fill a role on your team that benefits not only yourself but your team members and do that role better than any other build or class, you are not viable.

In random pvp matches, you may destroy noobs with your torment builds or your bunker mesmer builds or your phantasm/condi hybrids but the match up is in your favour. Bring your current randomly put together hotjoin group up against a premade group (of similar skill level) running meta builds and you’ll get destroyed and if not probably fail to contribute by capturing and taking points from all those bunkers supporting each other and building up each other’s boons.

At the end of the day, there’s is nothing wrong with playing whatever build you want. You paid for the kitten game so play how you want. But don’t mistake the viability of a build with “I wrecked this guy in pvp once so therefore its a viable build”.

Anyway, this stuff doesn:t affect the majority of players because most of us are casual and play how we want to, but you can’t deny that if you got rid of at least half of our traits it wouldn’t make a difference to most poeple’s builds. You can’t deny that, so far, most of the changes they’ve made to mesmer have been changes that most people never asked for and that every time they make a change more bugs appear and more QOL issues resurface.

Xyonon.3987:

Hlord.5940:

speaking of nerf, was illusion skills ever require 3/4-1 sec cast time?
has the mesmer’s clone have more health in the the beginning?
has the phantasm skill do more damage in the beginning?
because i ran phantasm build and i found that phantasm do sub par damage and took too long to cast while other class have near to instance activation time

Never played beta, but in some preview vids the were summoned faster, nearly instant. But also 2 at once, so I think it’s just for demo. There’s also a demo vid where the GS aa and chaos storm dealt damage ~loel~

Phantasm and clone hp has been increased in a patch long time ago, just for pve. But they (maybe bugged again) ninjanerfed the HP a few patches ago into the ground, now they are terrible weak again …

I guess they increased the utility phants cast time once, but I’m not sure though.

Well, after from what i have read i’ve been digging up some old youtube on beta and i found these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V6Ckj6--Z0
http://www.thehealthygamer.com/2012/07/31/guild-wars-2-mesmer-videos/
leap instance activation time?!!?!?
clone and phantasm have zero activation time just like normal skills?!?!?
also all the clone and phantasm seem to have shorter cooldown than the current one
what kind of black magic is this!!?!??!
ps illusionary wave have the base cooldown of 25s!
this kind of make sense and make the class useful and not slow but dev design to nerf the hell out by adding 3/4-1 1/2 sec of activation time to all clone and phantasm, making mesmer an easy target while all other class have burst skills with zero activation time!
lastly, about mesmer’s counter skill on both scepter and blade, having 1/2 and 3/4 activation time after a counter (which other class doesn’t have) is screaming for “even thou i have blocked an attack i still like to get hit plz” is kinda pointless for a blocking skill there
the video really show that the mesmer have alot of potential, even cry of frustration can stack confusion on the opponent make a damage of 400 per skill use! diversion is aoe! now event the pve mob can use confusion better than a mesmer, every class have better interruption, even necro
kitten it, i am still mad at the nerf on temporal curtain, a few last skill that was useful for a mesmer

Mind Stab had daze O_O

To clear up some stuff in this thread:
Thief is better than Mesmer in most cases; in general if you are playing Mesmer and don’t have a thief on your team, it’s better to play Thief instead (the Ranger or Mes can swap to Thief – it’s just that our Ranger didn’t know how to play Thief well enough at the time). That said, we had previously been playing a Mesmer/Ranger comp to see if there was some magic that could happen that was greater than a Thief/X comp because of high raw damage and range (I still would have rather had a Thief though). It turns out however that longbow ranger does really well vs. d/p thieves, so not going Thief and doing portals was actually a fine strategy against teams who had d/p Thieves, which was China and Europe.
Against Abjured however, our comp runs into a problem where we can’t kill any of them very effectively from range because they are all fairly survivable and can line of sight our range (whereas a mix of Mes/Thief/dps Guard could land damage by porting to the enemy or stealthing to them behind their line of sight).
Basically we didn’t really have an effective strategy against Abjured if our Ranger was power at least on Niflhel because if I went Thief, we didn’t have the rotational potential of Portal and s/d would be training him. I could try my best to peel as a Thief but it was all very risky against their comp. So as a result on Niflhel at least we had our Ranger go Condi, and I went Thief. Power Ranger is very good on Legacy though, so he changed back there. Unfortunately my mouse wasn’t detected either of those games, so I had to use a standard mouse and didn’t have any of the 12 bindings from my naga. So I was using new bindings on the spot and that’s why I didn’t swap back Mesmer for the Legacy game.

Technically though, Thief was better, if you’re wondering. I was only playing Mesmer the whole time because I wanted to and I was sick of going Thief, but I think technically I was gimping my team. If I was an excellent Thief (and I’m not too terrible, I just hadn’t played Thief competitively in a while) the comp would have been better, and that’s what I’ve done for almost all of my competitive teams in the past. I just wanted to play Mesmer this time.

Concluding thoughts:
1. Thief is still strong, Mesmer is still strong. Thief simply offers more for the slot on the team compared to other classes in the vast majority of cases.
2. Condi/Cele comps are easier to run for equal or greater success rates compared to zerker, specifically power classes other than Thief (you can check my post history to find some more in-depth explanation for this). – This is why often times you hear the thought that while Mesmer is good, there are usually better choices. “Better” meaning having higher room for error with equal or greater success for equal or less player skill input.
3. I want to address the idea real quick that “in theory power comps beat cele/condi comps” This might be true but it is extremely unlikely to actually happen, and even if it does happen, I think because of the skewed percentage, it is at least indicative of some balance issue. Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.

Supcutie.2538:

and s/d would be training him.

Thoughts on how this particular interaction will change post-port nerf?

Allison The Strange.4519:

All I got to say is I played many classes that just have zero chance of killing a bunker with certain builds but the mesmer is another story. Set it up as condi torment or zerk shatter and it doesn’t matter, removes tons of boons and has HUGE burst potential. Once when I was fighting a bunker guard (using sentinels amulet) I got him to waste a couple of his cooldowns and took him from 100% to downed state in less than 3 seconds. When playing condi it is nothing to keep a 1k+ torment tick on another player along with spamming tons of confusion on them at the same time.

If you can’t play mesmer effectively its your fault. As to why its not found in most high end teams is simple; it requires too much teamwork, support, and has next to zero chance at surviving fights if trying to stay on point. The issue isn’t the mesmer, it’s the game type.

pretty ignorant post, but here’s some more discussion related to sPvP:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Being-told-mesmer-can-t-work

Fay.2357:

Supcutie.2538:

and s/d would be training him.

Thoughts on how this particular interaction will change post-port nerf?

It will be a buff to everyone who doesn’t have as many ports as s/d :P
I foresee a shift to d/p as a result. Who knows though.

Honestly, I play Warrior, (power shatter) Mesmer, Thief and Necro in WvW roaming and my Mesmer feels like the most lacklustre of the bunch, but not by THAT much.

My primary complaint about mesmer itself lies with the length of all the cooldowns (weapons skills and utils) that always feel like just a little too long for what you’d like.

Shaving those down would probably go a long way already.

My primary complaint about other classes when I’m on my mesmer is Rangers (which are completely cow-doo-doo and everyone knows it) with their channeled lol-i-kill-you-in-stealth and engineers, who can just explode you in seconds while tanking 3 other guys.