Guild Wars 2

Guys I wanna tell you a story that happened to me:

Long time ago, I played a Mesmer but I gave up very fast and played other classes (nekro, engi, warrior) but since the last patch I started to play a Mesmer again. I was searching for a nice build and then I found a very interesting and beginner friendly build from Sensotix.

I upgraded my character as the build showed me and tried it first in normal PvP.
After some matches I tried a 1vs1 PvP Server (a very popular one) and fought some matches. (6 matches). Btw I lost 5 of them.
And next day (today) I went to there again and anyhow I won with the build. But then it started: Players (I do not tell you their names) blamed me for my build and my gameplay. Statements such as: “You are a noob player just spamming the phantasms and they do the rest”. “You’re build needs no skill and is skill cap 0.” (Some statements are in the attachements!)

So guys. What do you think about it? Is it correct to blame a noob mesmer player that just wanted to pvp? And what do you think about my build? Unfair build or not? Pls comments!

2nd attackement:

I wouldn’t worry about it, nothing takes much skill in gw2 pvp. It’s all about the build you have and the counter to it. I play a phantasm mesmer and get ruined by mm necro but a shater mesmer would be able to kill it. Also a shater mesmer would get destroyed by a condi necro. This is just one example but if you take a look at all the classes you will see none require skill to play. Engi bunkers and turrets, Hambow wars, Spirit rangers etc.
Only class that requires skill i think is the elementalist and that’s not to say he is more powerful if played skillful, you just need to go all out to be on par with other players playing easier classes. If you want skill based pvp this is not the game for you. Gw2 is all about builds.

Don’t you just love when other players try to act superior by saying: “ur such a noob -.- LOL”?

Chances are high it’s just some douchy 13 year old kid who plays 24/7. I don’t care about them and neither should you.

If the comments are merely childish, ignore them.

If they are abusive, report them.

In no account should you pay any attention to them. Play as you wish and ignore the nonsense.

Relating to the title of the thread:

There are actually some Mesmer builds (like for a lot of other classes, too), which you could call to “suck and need no skill”. The problem with this is, that those builds usually are NOT bad and often actually goo, which is the reason they are played.

But this is more the fault of Anet, due to bad balancing. The fact that players use those builds is secondary.

Why do you even bother get affected what other people say? I mean common. Its just a game.

Some builds are certainly easier than others, some are tougher to play but reward a higher skill level with a much more powerful character, while others are quite powerful, while being less complicated to play well.

I say play what you like, have fun man, it’s a game and that’s what it’s about. If they bother you ignore them, if they’re abusive report them like others have said. You can troll them back I guess (people who say those kinds of things are usually quite susceptible to being trolled in those moments) but it makes you no better than them in most cases. Mesmers are kind of the target for the nerf calls right now because of some builds so you’ll probably catch more flak playing one right now, just let it roll off your back if you’rehaving fun .

StickerHappy.8052:

Why do you even bother get affected what other people say? I mean common. Its just a game.

Because they told me to leave the server, said insulting words and other things to me. And so i wrote this here. I often saw that players blame other players for their builds and i thought it’s time to mention that.

I think the reason you got some hate is because you were in a 1v1 server. In normal PvP, your opponents can do much more against you. They can leave the point. They can push you off the point. They can let you run off because you stealth a lot.

In a 1v1 server, it’s about learning your build and mastering your profession. If you bring a super easy build into there that’s mostly passive stuff, people get annoyed because you’re basically just going in there to wipe people. PU and Phantasm are widely thought of as 1v1 only builds and have a very small place in tPvP.

Try going back into those servers and run something that requires a bit more skill such as a shatter mesmer or that Power Lock build that has been a bit more popular lately (30/20/0/0/20). If you win, it will be because you were more skillful and you can really hone your talent as a mesmer. Phantasm and PU are far too simple to use in those areas.

Honestly, this just seems like a newbie mistake. Ignore the haters and just use those builds in regular hotjoin. For a 1v1 server, look up Shatter (20/20/0/0/30) and Power Lock (30/20/0/0/20). Power Lock uses Confounding Suggestions if that helps. If you want to know them, PM me and I can spell them out a bit more, although they are pretty common builds.

I’ve had reactions like this when I play bunker engi..people saying “You’re not doing anything, just healing!” after I kite them for 4-5 minutes calling me noobs.

In the end, I’ve found that in spvp just about everyone uses cheese builds…I just ignore it lol. Most of the time they’re just angry they cant do some simple AoE to get rid of those phantasms :P

Sodeni.6041:

StickerHappy.8052:

Why do you even bother get affected what other people say? I mean common. Its just a game.

Because they told me to leave the server, said insulting words and other things to me. And so i wrote this here. I often saw that players blame other players for their builds and i thought it’s time to mention that.

Welcome to the internet. If you ask around more you’d find that you encounter less abuse in GW2 compared to other games.

Sounds like people are trying to justify their loss or taking their ‘anger’ out on you instead of ANet. We are given tools, it would be stupid not to use them. Mesmers need phantasms n clones, our personal DPS is horrible with out them. You are not personally responsible for an unbalanced game.

If ANet deems a build OP they will fix it, until then use it and abuse it, IMHO.

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

First off OP a post like this does not really have anything worth discussing. It is spvp people will kitten. Running to the forums to tell people playing your class and ask them is this fair is a form of whining within itself. That being said even if you did want to bring this up the spvp forums is still a better place for this type of discussion. If you play a build that is currently meta for the random arena and solo que you are likely to hear complaints. Best advice I could give you a is play the build you feel comfortable with and never post something like this again. If they get offensive with the language politely send them a tell informing them that they have been blocked (and possibly reported). It will save everyone lots of text to read through.

I do not say this to be mean. Spvp is just like this so learn to ignore what isn’t all that important.

I’m a Warrior since pre-launch. How do you think I feel?

Worst thing is, Warriors were only legitimately OP for 3 months of it.

Bios.1398:

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

10$ for , you are a warrior .

Seeing warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
Warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
WARRIOR is nowhere to be seen in your post about RISK / REWARD

Nope, doesn’t get less funny the more you say it

Void.4239:

Bios.1398:

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

10$ for , you are a warrior .

Seeing warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
Warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
WARRIOR is nowhere to be seen in your post about RISK / REWARD

Nope, doesn’t get less funny the more you say it

I’m not a warrior although I do play warrior to learn some of their common builds in sPvP, I play all of the classes and don’t have a ‘specific’ one but I started as a ranger and then played thief then moved on from there.

I mainly duel in spvp with all of them as I like them all in their own ways. Warriors are kind of funny really. They’re easily taken down by poison and picking and prodding, something that I do quite easily with the mesmer (sigil of doom) and since the warrior needs to pressure you to attack you, keeping confusion on them (scepter / torch) consistently along with using torment block at the right times you can usually widdle down any warrior quite easily especially with bleeds which all of combined make a godo enough condi spread for even a shout-based cleansing ire warrior to handle. Stun breaks for hammer/bow warriors (hardest build of a warrior to fight against as a mesmer whether conditions or burst imo) when necessary and making them play your game and you can usually take down just about any warrior in a given situation with pu condi mesmer. Warriors aren’t really that hard actually , you just need to learn how they need to set things up and evade those methods of lockdown/setup.

Void.4239:

Bios.1398:

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

10$ for , you are a warrior .

Seeing warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
Warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
WARRIOR is nowhere to be seen in your post about RISK / REWARD

Nope, doesn’t get less funny the more you say it

I dont main warrior and I agree with that gentleman, the amount I get out of that build is EONS more than I should based on the skill I put in.

its called Trolling, and as a mesmer you should be kitten good at it.
in PVP I troll my PU build (Scepter/Pistol + Sword/Torch) all the time, its almost unkillable, and i get yelled at for it all the time. No my fault I can outlast 99% of the players in PVP with a simple PU build!

So, OP, take it to the next level. Start to Troll them when they act like that :-)

Ayano.5986:

Not sure why you even posted this, it’s not something unique to the mesmer class…. people whine about every class nothing new here. Seems like you want attention to make yourself feel better.

Why should I feel better?

The reason why I have posted here is that I’ve often noticed in pvp, that player offend others, say that they would play unfair and that you should delete your Acc. I found simply that it was about time to address this topic!

People tease each other it’s called a distraction. Haven’t you ever played anything social? Board games, classic card games? People try to throw off their opponents all the time with stupid and silly remarks. This is just another game no need to take it personal.

the only build easy to play and ’ doesnt require skill ’ is most likely a PU build, but its surely gonna be nerfed anyway

and to the guy who said its all about builds, it is about builds like 30-50% i guess?, ye its much but still, if u time ur evades etc and time ur dmg / burst u still can beat a build countering urs

GW2 was made with the intention of skill-based pvp and content.

However because this is a RPGMMO and the amount of things needed to be balanced is huge. It will take far longer to balance around the idea of skill-based pvp then say a FPS game.

I would think that passive builds should be moderately effective so as to allow unskilled/new players to enjoy the game or class.
However a issue occurs when those passive builds are the most powerful. Because then skillful players not using that type of build will nearly always lose by default.

This breaks the core ideology of skill to win and in its place creates build to win.

I would say that it all comes down passive vs active.
Whichever is favored determines if the game is skill-based or build-based.

Passive play requires very little skill to use so it should have a low skill cap and a low effectiveness to match. Overall it should remain very static in effectiveness and from there be very mediocre

While active play requiring far more skill should have a high skill cap and a high effectiveness potential to match that skill level.

The basic idea is to allow new player to be effective with passive builds but are always trumped by those with a high amount of skill, AND to keep passive play builds as a viable yet not the strongest type of build.

Right now I would say the strongest types of builds on the majority of class’s are those of passive play. This is not how it should be when looking from the perspective of skill-based. Granted the skill is there but its minimized to a degree that’s heart breaking.

Because these specific builds/skills/traits that are strongest are passive and thus easier to use it results in being the meta.

When its the meta it becomes popular. And the more popular it gets it reduces the skill to effectiveness ratio across the class and game more and more.

Because of this eventually all the class’s would devolve In to a single most effective build. Thus destroying diversity for the majority of players as what once was viable will take more and more skill to remain viable.

This has become very apparent in a few of the class’s. Warrior is the greatest example.

Wyrden.4713:

the only build easy to play and ’ doesnt require skill ’ is most likely a PU build, but its surely gonna be nerfed anyway

and to the guy who said its all about builds, it is about builds like 30-50% i guess?, ye its much but still, if u time ur evades etc and time ur dmg / burst u still can beat a build countering urs

I would think the perfect balance for PU would be to increase the interval to 3 seconds(first boon granted on stealthing). And to grant the random boon to nearby allies(small radius).

Would fix the insane survivability and allow PU mesmers to be useful in team fights.

Chaos.3579:

GW2 was made with the intention of skill-based pvp and content.

<snip>

This has become very apparent in a few of the class’s. Warrior is the greatest example.

Excellent post, Chaos. You perfectly described the biggest issue with GW2’s current PvP meta.

I’d like to note that before Warrior became OP garbage, they had almost no passive play: it was all reactive. Which pretty much made them UP garbage. Their improved Health Regen and Condition Management (through mitigation and auto-cleansing via Cleansing Ire) was what pushed them over the threshold much farther than was necessary.

Dat copy & paste. =D

People will sooner blame you and call your build “easy” than admit that they got out played because they made the wrong decisions.

“You won because I’m using a more difficult build than you! In reality, I’m so much more skilled and you’re just some faceroll noob. You should play by my rules and only use builds that I approve of!

People like that are usually the ones who say:

“Mesmer OP! Warrior OP! Ranger OP! Necro OP! Engineer OP! Thief OP!”

.. and they’ll feel validated as long as there’s someone to repeat and confirm it (IE all the other people who lost to you). I guarantee if people started saying "Guardian OP! out of nowhere, then everyone who lost to a guardian would parrot the same thing.

It’s a bit silly and ridiculous and completely unsportsmanlike, but there is some truth in their words. Some builds are easier to play than others, but it’s very hard to tell that from a glance. Someone who doesn’t know your build sees “oh phantasms do damage, oh they’re so hard to hit, it must be sooo easy for them.” when they have no idea the strengths and weaknesses of your build. Maybe it’s great in duels but sucks in team fights, maybe its perfect for solo roaming and atrocious in zergs, if your build is superior in 1v1 then they were dumb to come at you solo because they’re playing to YOUR strengths.

Maybe their build IS more difficult to use, maybe not, they’re spewing out a generalization to make themselves feel better and try to take away some of the glory of your win.

Its a mind trick, we’re Mesmers, don’t let that stuff bother you. =P

It is true that people will immaturely judge a build, trait,and or skill as OP, and that it will most likely by out of lack of knowledge or understanding.

However there are multiple criticisms about traits,skills,builds ranging from all class’s and situations that have not been made with lack of knowledge. Rather with excessive amounts of knowledge and understanding. But are denied credibility automatically because players incorrectly have been led to believe the game is perfect and any criticism of that perfection is incorrect.

The facts are this

1) the game is not yet perfect. So there are imbalances within the game still, and most likely forever. Even though those imbalances can be mitigated
The proof of this is that there are regular updates to the balance system.
Why update it if it is perfect?

2) a imbalance in this game is when a build,class,trait,or skill allows in the majority of situations a skill to effectiveness ratio that is far higher or lower than the average build,class,trait,skill.
The reason for this is that because this game is supposed to be skill-based, and anything that gives a high effectiveness for a low amount of skill or a low amount of effectiveness for a high amount of skill contradicts this fact.

3)smart play
Granted of course there will be things that grant a high amount of effectiveness for a low amount of skill in VERY specific circumstances. However when the circumstances reverse their skill to effectiveness ratio will also reverse. So even when running it you will still retain a average skill to effectiveness ratio (assuming everything else is perfect)

To give you a perfect example of this think of reflects.
Reflects will be amazingly easy to use and effective against projectiles however against non-projectiles well….you get the idea.
^taking advantage of these things is what I would call smart build crafting/tactics “smart play”
However so many players have confused this “smart play” with builds,traits,and skills that allow a low skill to high effectiveness ratio in the majority of situations instead of specific ones. Thus breaking the core ideology of skill-based combat. So although it is smart to run those specific builds,traits,and skills. I would simply label them as imbalance users simply because if their skill to effectiveness is greater than the average build in the majority of situations and no situations were the build is countered then its all but certain that they took advantage of imbalances to reach that skill to effectiveness ratio
And I call them imbalances because of #2 above.

So overall i would say this.

There are imbalances in the game. This is unquestionable.

If the core idea of this game is skill-based content then anything that allows a different skill to effectiveness ratio is a imbalance. Unless it is something that is very specific to a situation. (example:reflects)

Knowing this I would say that everything in this game is up to debate.
There are things that are far stronger than they should be or far weaker than they should be. And that these things should be exposed and debated about.

Not idiotically and automatically turned down with the idea that everything is perfect and that we should always mold ourselves to better fit these imbalances.
^ this is how people that are abusing these imbalances are defending themselves from ridicule. And thus keeping us from skill-based content.

There are some things in this game that needs to be molded around us instead,
And molding them around skill-based ideology instead of keeping the imbalances and adjusting ourselves to imbalances would be a brilliant start.