Guild Wars 2

I have lately been seeing people playing Asura more often. Clearly this is because they’re OP.

Edit:

The point of this post is that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. I can make the claim that the increase sales of ice cream results in more drownings. There’s correlation but not the cause. The same can be said about classes player choose. Just because you see more people play a specific class (how do you even quantitatively measure this?) doesn’t mean that they must be OP. I could also make an argument of false premise/conclusion as well as no evidence was provided to support your claim.

Kill me now please

P.S. Since I don’t want to just troll, explain first of all what type of setting you mean most*, pve, wvw, pvp?? Second overpowered in which way??

I like where this is going….

1. Post in Mesmer Forum
2. Any proof rather than ‘I see a lot of these’?
3. subjective: don’t nerf mesmers… they are already in a quite misserable spot in PvE

Let me just make sure I’m getting this correct. Mesmer is OP in WvW? Roaming WvW is the game mode we are choosing as the basis for this discussion?

If that is indeed the case why mesmer over trap dragon hunter? Traps are by far some of the best skills for working in close quarter points like in WvW or sPvP. Most mesmers I have fought either have blown up or run off, assuming I don’t make rookie mistakes like I do.

countytime.8134:

An easy way to tell what classes are overpowered is to see which are overplayed. In the case of mesmers you’ll see them taking or defending objectives entirely on their own. Contrast that with some classes that you almost never see wandering in WvW.

There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.

If you can’t take down a solo mesmer in WvW, … you might want to try playing one to see just how much skill it takes to survive briefly, never mind defend an objective. Further, even if I agreed with your hypothesis (which I don’t — frequently played is only tangentially related to overpowered), you haven’t provided any specific evidence that mesmers are popular, never mind the most popular choice for solo roaming.

Look, I have mained mesmer for 5k hours and been in game since late 2012 earl 2013. I’ve done wvw GvG group fights, I’ve roamed and dueled. I’ve spvpd. I’ve pved. Mesmer as a class is amazing, without how much damage or how much dots or conditions aside, mesmer as a class offers interesting ways to disengage enemies and engage the environment. That being said mesmer since the first days has been gutted over and over. Hence we are called veil bots or portal bots. People only care about us because of our utilities, which themselves are being replaced by other classes. Scrappers stealth gyro works way better than veil or mass invisibility. We have had our endurance nerfed, our vigor nerfed, our staff had been nerfed 3x and maybe more. Our focus hasn’t been fixed. Our alacrity which is the bread and butter, the foundation of chronomancer was gutted, wells were nerfed. On top of that our confusion and torment nerfed gutted and also given to other classes. Torment alone was nerfed several times pre and post HoT. Our Ai pets (phantasms/clones) are good in 1v1 or small groups but large scale fights we are only useful as portal or veil bots (were since wvw is dead). Our condition damage has been nerfed. You will never know what fear truly is or was, since you’ll never experience a true confusion glamour mesmer, or a rabid pistol torch mesmer. Or even an immortal retaliation mesmer. Mesmer is on life support at the moment, and as a proud owner of 2 female human mesmers I proudly salute and await our demise. Go read the mesmer forums, go read the pvp forums, the wvw forums. If your logic were to stand ground we should ban human females and asuras because there’s way too many of them in game. Mesmers are a fun class that few ever truly master because it has a high skill cap, but it’s interesting enough that most can enjoy even in basic settings such as JPs.

countytime.8134:

There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.

Please tell me a build on Mesmer that is overpowered like you say. I’ve been trying power greatsword and the damage is bad.

Narsil.6579:

Look, I have mained mesmer for 5k hours and been in game since late 2012 earl 2013. I’ve done wvw GvG group fights, I’ve roamed and dueled. I’ve spvpd. I’ve pved. Mesmer as a class is amazing, without how much damage or how much dots or conditions aside, mesmer as a class offers interesting ways to disengage enemies and engage the environment. That being said mesmer since the first days has been gutted over and over. Hence we are called veil bots or portal bots. People only care about us because of our utilities, which themselves are being replaced by other classes. Scrappers stealth gyro works way better than veil or mass invisibility. We have had our endurance nerfed, our vigor nerfed, our staff had been nerfed 3x and maybe more. Our focus hasn’t been fixed. Our alacrity which is the bread and butter, the foundation of chronomancer was gutted, wells were nerfed. On top of that our confusion and torment nerfed gutted and also given to other classes. Torment alone was nerfed several times pre and post HoT. Our Ai pets (phantasms/clones) are good in 1v1 or small groups but large scale fights we are only useful as portal or veil bots (were since wvw is dead). Our condition damage has been nerfed. You will never know what fear truly is or was, since you’ll never experience a true confusion glamour mesmer, or a rabid pistol torch mesmer. Or even an immortal retaliation mesmer. Mesmer is on life support at the moment, and as a proud owner of 2 female human mesmers I proudly salute and await our demise. Go read the mesmer forums, go read the pvp forums, the wvw forums. If your logic were to stand ground we should ban human females and asuras because there’s way too many of them in game. Mesmers are a fun class that few ever truly master because it has a high skill cap, but it’s interesting enough that most can enjoy even in basic settings such as JPs.

I totally agreed with you Narsil
Mesmer is my main and favourite character , even that again was nerfed very heavily

Yeah I’m so fed up of losing a pvp match every time the enemy team has more mesmers. Oh wait…

It’s definitely over-played in WvW. Certainly not overpowered in sPvP, but easily competing with the top spot for WvW roaming. Both power and condi variants are extremely strong builds here because the power/ferocity stats aren’t awful in WvW, allowing for mesmers to actually get off the damage they need, and the lack of dependence on traits for damage lets them be a lot beefier and more flexible than other classes in the end.

Dire perplex condi mes is absolutely OP, and probably makes the most out of dire and perplex, but dire perplex anything is overpowered. I wish ANet would honestly just remove this combination from the game like they did with the Magic Find stat and refund players with selectable stat armor with the ability to pick any other stat combination in the game and any associated runes. Would definitely help WvW balance a lot and really wouldn’t affect PvE or sPvP at all.

Most common classes I find these days in WvW tend to be DH, chrono, and Herald, then reaper, followed and scrapper. The rest kind of follow as normal. Interesting how the two most common aren’t used at all in competitive sPvP but define a lot of groups in WvW.

Can’t really say the class is OP when it’s balanced for sPvP, in which case it’s weak. The condi variant is definitely overtuned for WvW regarding ease-of-use and how effective it is.

Would like to see some more reward for active play on the mesmer, though. It has a lot of passive effects that involve waiting around in stealth a lot, and I’m not fond of being on the giving or receiving end of such things (also why I dislike the Shadow Arts thief trait line).

As far as the whole “veil bot” thing goes, it isn’t true. A lot of zergs are running increasing numbers of chronomancers for backline support and damage, as the number of reflects and aegis-spamming going on is heavily hurting a lot of traditional ranged builds, and being able to strip aegis quickly, provide cooldown reduction to a blob, and simply go invuln/stealth/AOE stealth the backline if attacked by periph to not die are huge gains for a backline to have and make frontline work a lot easier.

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s definitely over-played in WvW. Certainly not overpowered in sPvP, but easily competing with the top spot for WvW roaming. Both power and condi variants are extremely strong builds here because the power/ferocity stats aren’t awful in WvW, allowing for mesmers to actually get off the damage they need, and the lack of dependence on traits for damage lets them be a lot beefier and more flexible than other classes in the end.

Dire perplex condi mes is absolutely OP, and probably makes the most out of dire and perplex, but dire perplex anything is overpowered. I wish ANet would honestly just remove this combination from the game like they did with the Magic Find stat and refund players with selectable stat armor with the ability to pick any other stat combination in the game and any associated runes. Would definitely help WvW balance a lot and really wouldn’t affect PvE or sPvP at all.

Most common classes I find these days in WvW tend to be DH, chrono, and Herald, then reaper, followed and scrapper. The rest kind of follow as normal. Interesting how the two most common aren’t used at all in competitive sPvP but define a lot of groups in WvW.

Can’t really say the class is OP when it’s balanced for sPvP, in which case it’s weak. The condi variant is definitely overtuned for WvW regarding ease-of-use and how effective it is.

Would like to see some more reward for active play on the mesmer, though. It has a lot of passive effects that involve waiting around in stealth a lot, and I’m not fond of being on the giving or receiving end of such things (also why I dislike the Shadow Arts thief trait line).

As far as the whole “veil bot” thing goes, it isn’t true. A lot of zergs are running increasing numbers of chronomancers for backline support and damage, as the number of reflects and aegis-spamming going on is heavily hurting a lot of traditional ranged builds, and being able to strip aegis quickly, provide cooldown reduction to a blob, and simply go invuln/stealth/AOE stealth the backline if attacked by periph to not die are huge gains for a backline to have and make frontline work a lot easier.

Mesmer condi roaming is popular because it allows for easy disengages.
The reason people claim its “OP” is because most of the time they decided they want to 1v1 a class designed around dueling and the majority of WvW’ers for whatever reason do not bring any condi clear. Heck a month ago I ran into a Warrior with no cleanses and a guard that only brought one. Is that a mesmer problem? No, its a l2p issue. Spamming your AA because you have auto target and auto target on is again a l2p issue.
Whenever I roam thats all I ever see. I’ve 1vX’ed on power and condi in WvW, power can be less forgiving sure, but condi kills the stupid people 90% of the time.
And I don’t like Perplexity runes either, don’t need them. They work better on a condi engi that can ’rupt you for days. Matter of fact I run Scavenging because the % condi boost is better imo.

And can you tell me which passive traits you are referring to? I’d like to know seeing there isnt clone death traits anymore and if a condi mesmer wants to kill anyone that have to be actively summoning illusions, shattering, proc’ing scepter 2 and landing scepter 3.
The only really passive traits is PU(give me a break its been nerfed to kitten) and the torch trait which encourages stealth camping. Except for the fact mesmer cant camp in stealth.

When you say something is OP it should mean it has literally no counters. And condi mesmer has plenty. Running away, condi cleanse, condi transfer, condi damage, heavy CC.

countytime.8134:

An easy way to tell what classes are overpowered is to see which are overplayed. In the case of mesmers you’ll see them taking or defending objectives entirely on their own. Contrast that with some classes that you almost never see wandering in WvW.

There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.

Your basis is in wvw. What is fair there? The largest blob wins. Running away. Using a tower/keep/camp is not fair. Random creatures attacking is not fair. Have you ever went to spike someone to have them rally of that wolf?? So fair. If you want fair play pvp. That’s when you see how sad Mesmer is.

The mesmer didn’t kill you in one hit, … what are you complaining about again?

The only OP Mesmer skill in WvW is Gravity Well , because of the amount of stability it removes.

Portal, Veil, Time Warp, Null Field, Feedback require proper use and situation.

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter. Also note some classes, such as the thief, have general condition cleansing on only a handful of abilities; some cleanses only remove a select few conditions which often do not cleanse confusion nor torment.

WvW roaming typically features a very diverse set of builds which leads to encounters being unpredictable. Unlike sPvP where comps are pretty well-defined and roles are typically preset and optimized for specific duties, WvW roaming can encapsulate anything, and often, duels are based on matchups between players not both suited to roam; in many instances, it comes from the roaming player ganking another trying to get back to a group of others, where such cohesion is handled through group utility.

Pretty much the entire Chaos line is passive effects (meta rejuv, membrane, mirror, PU) and the entire Illusion line rewards camping stealth while not really doing anything but summoning clones (let’s not also forget about desperate decoy being another passive). Shattering clones is often pretty wasteful unless your target cleaves heavily, but this isn’t recommended considering it involves running around a lot to chase clones (torment procs), and attacking a lot to kill them (perplexity/confusion stacks on scepter 3/Ineptitude). PU being considered underpowered is a ridiculous statement because it’s unpredictable and frequently allows near-permanent protection uptime, crippling most power builds.

You don’t really need perplex for the interrupts but rather the passive 3 confusion it applies just for being hit. It works nicely with mirror because often you’ll get the 3 from being hit + 3 more from interrupting CC. 6 stacks of passive confusion is extremely strong.

You can’t run away from a condi mesmer without having cleanses because of the simple fact that the torment will kill you. A transfer is the same as a cleanse, and very few classes (actually, just the necro and mesmer) have access to them, and typically speaking, plague signet is not used in WvW because the self-transfer radius is so large and often can get one killed. I’d also further mention that this build also has some of the best condition removal access of any roaming build on any class, so claiming that condi damage counters PU mes is just a false statement considering it can and will out-cleanse almost every other build via its trait options providing so much cleansing via The Pledge, and a comparatively-low-cooldown burst cleanse on thievery or MoR, which gets further augmented by the effects of alacrity for even superior cleansing if running chrono. It also has some of the best cover condition access in the game and rapid-application and repeated use of said cover conditions and high-impact abilities.

All the while it’s running random defensive boon gains on top of defensive stats and 40% more base health than a thief or ele, with stealth, and a skill tied for the lowest-cooldown teleport in the game. As far as not camping stealth, it has superior stealth access to the thief unless the thief uses Shadow Arts or Daredevil while using D/P, so even that argument is pretty much invalidated.

Without dire/perplex gear, the build would be killable. It would still absolutely punish bad players, and likely require more active play, but as it is currently, unless the player fighting against it knows well in advance it’s going to be fighting a PU condi mes in dire/perplex gear, a diversely-built roamer rarely has the tools to deal with one while providing enough damage to actually kill it. It’s not a fault of the mesmer but one with dire/perplexity gear causing the counter (burst damage between intermittent condition removals while not taking action or taking limited action) to not actually work. It’s why the build isn’t OP in sPvP but attracts a lot of negative attention in WvW. The kit punishes playing against dire/perplexity innately, and while dire/perplexity is already overtuned, it creates pretty much no available space for counterplay in the WvW roaming scene.

In that case then thieves must be the most overpowered of them, they are everywhere!

And necros, can’t forget about them

Scrappers too

Oh and dragonhunters…

Poor warriors, does anyone play them anyway? :p

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Fay.2357:

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Serious that the issue stems from dire/perplexity gear being overpowered and the root cause of the problem in the case of PU mes, rather than the mesmer design itself? Yea, actually. Unless you’d like to argue that dire/perplex isn’t OP for roaming, in which case you’ll basically get laughed out of WvW.

countytime.8134:

An easy way to tell what classes are overpowered is to see which are overplayed. In the case of mesmers you’ll see them taking or defending objectives entirely on their own. Contrast that with some classes that you almost never see wandering in WvW.

There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.

savage

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Serious that the issue stems from dire/perplexity gear being overpowered and the root cause of the problem in the case of PU mes, rather than the mesmer design itself? Yea, actually. Unless you’d like to argue that dire/perplex isn’t OP for roaming, in which case you’ll basically get laughed out of WvW.

Overpowered in solo roaming? Sure…so what? Solo roaming doesn’t really matter much unless you’re in T4 and below. Dire/perplex loses effectively drastically once even small (3-man) roaming groups are taken into account, so who cares?

Edit: And did you even read the op? Whining about how mesmers can solo camps on their own? Come on, you make a fool of yourself by defending this rubbish.

DeceiverX.8361:

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter. Also note some classes, such as the thief, have general condition cleansing on only a handful of abilities; some cleanses only remove a select few conditions which often do not cleanse confusion nor torment.

*Confusion deals low damage over time. If the passive DOT kills you you have problems that can be helped. I will agree some classes have little access to cleanse however.

WvW roaming typically features a very diverse set of builds which leads to encounters being unpredictable. Unlike sPvP where comps are pretty well-defined and roles are typically preset and optimized for specific duties, WvW roaming can encapsulate anything, and often, duels are based on matchups between players not both suited to roam; in many instances, it comes from the roaming player ganking another trying to get back to a group of others, where such cohesion is handled through group utility.

*And I will also agree with the statement that builds are varied. However, the moment you step foot into WvW you should know this and your build should reflect the fact that you are as prepared as you possible can be unless you know you will be a group. Most zerglings dont do this.

Pretty much the entire Chaos line is passive effects (meta rejuv, membrane, mirror, PU) and the entire Illusion line rewards camping stealth while not really doing anything but summoning clones (let’s not also forget about desperate decoy being another passive). Shattering clones is often pretty wasteful unless your target cleaves heavily, but this isn’t recommended considering it involves running around a lot to chase clones (torment procs), and attacking a lot to kill them (perplexity/confusion stacks on scepter 3/Ineptitude). PU being considered underpowered is a ridiculous statement because it’s unpredictable and frequently allows near-permanent protection uptime, crippling most power builds.

*And this is were we will completely disagree.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Condi_Roamer
The standard by which I would imagine most people choose mesmer will play this variant of the build.
Desperate Decoy in Dueling is there because… Well there just isnt anything better for the build period.
Blinding Dissapation is there because of the synergy with the grandmaster in Illusions but its requires active button pressing.
And of course you have DE.
In Chaos you do have some minor traits that proc when you reach a certain threshold or acquire a certain boon. However, in a condi build why would you bring Mirror over Dampening or Transference? Even bringing that up is silly. Plus Mirror is on a 60 second CD. Yeah so broken there.
I would love to see your math on how PU give near perma uptime on ANY boon, let alone prot when you have 3 sources(not including desperate decoy) of stealth, the shortest being on a 30 second cd. Sure it can be shortened but thats assuming you dont get revealed and managed you cd’s properly. Plus you have 5 boons that you have a random chance of getting… yeah nothing perm coming from there. If this was the 100% stealth uptime PU I would agree. Its not. Its 50% which in most cases is around 1 second. Alpha or Apharma did the math on it a while back.
Also, you are traited for MtD and confusion on shatter. Whats the point of running MtD if you arent going to shatter? I run it and believe me shattering works wondering. Again, there is no clone death traits. Just letting my clones aa and be cleaved down its pointless most of the time.

You don’t really need perplex for the interrupts but rather the passive 3 confusion it applies just for being hit. It works nicely with mirror because often you’ll get the 3 from being hit + 3 more from interrupting CC. 6 stacks of passive confusion is extremely strong.

You can’t run away from a condi mesmer without having cleanses because of the simple fact that the torment will kill you. A transfer is the same as a cleanse, and very few classes (actually, just the necro and mesmer) have access to them, and typically speaking, plague signet is not used in WvW because the self-transfer radius is so large and often can get one killed.

*Again, this goes back to having cleaneses and being prepared. Its not my job, but yours.

I’d also further mention that this build also has some of the best condition removal access of any roaming build on any class, so claiming that condi damage counters PU mes is just a false statement considering it can and will out-cleanse almost every other build via its trait options providing so much cleansing via The Pledge, and a comparatively-low-cooldown burst cleanse on thievery or MoR, which gets further augmented by the effects of alacrity for even superior cleansing if running chrono.

*At this time, you have three condition removals, two one condition removals on torch, and AT(which traited is 36 seconds so not so short) or a clunky mantra that removes 2 conditions per charge with 2 charges on a 20 second cd(rather short)
The build you’ve presented so far has already taken 3 trait lines so we cant take chrono and if we did you drop dueling, lose clone generation and what not. Your condi clear is still not on par with a mesmer taking inspiration and is still lacking compared to say ele or guardian, both of which can spec for wonderous condi removal.

It also has some of the best cover condition access in the game and rapid-application and repeated use of said cover conditions and high-impact abilities.

*We have horrible cover conditions. And the only high impact ones we apply are torment and confusions. While the most impactful one is burning which we cant stack. If someone pays attention to their conditions they know when and what to clear.

All the while it’s running random defensive boon gains on top of defensive stats and 40% more base health than a thief or ele, with stealth, and a skill tied for the lowest-cooldown teleport in the game. As far as not camping stealth, it has superior stealth access to the thief unless the thief uses Shadow Arts or Daredevil while using D/P, so even that argument is pretty much invalidated.

*Actually its not invalid seeing a thief can actually be perma stealth. Again, Alpha or Apharma has done the math on this. preneft PU with 100% stealth uptime, mimic, full all stealth skills could achieve close to perma stealth while a thief can actually maintain it. I’ll find the related posts for you.

countytime.8134:

An easy way to tell what classes are overpowered is to see which are overplayed. In the case of mesmers you’ll see them taking or defending objectives entirely on their own. Contrast that with some classes that you almost never see wandering in WvW.

There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.

As far as I can tell you play(ed) engineer and could probably play Scrapper when you get to that level in elite specialization. From what I understand Scrapper is pretty good at dishing out conditions and keep targets in place with CC. Is that OP? Rhetorical question

After the latest patch Daredevil got some buffs and then WvW was instantly filled with those pesky fast moving, hide-and-seek, back-stabbing players. Would you consider that overpower or is that just how something changed and now a lot of player are searching (or trying out) for an easy to win solution with fast rewards?

FYI I have soloed camps with Revenant, later Herald, Mesmer, Chronomesmer and even on good ol’ Ele (that was before HoT went public, so not that strong at that time and before I had WXP). So what you are saying that that just because there is some profession that can solo camps they are OP?

Have you even been taking into consideration that some Guild upgrades might add buffs and banner which also might be in play when some player can solo a keep lord, if they are lucky enough?

In WvW you can not assume that just because you see a profession do something that they haven’t put a lot of time in min-max gear (or run ascended, when other player only use exotic), make use dedicated builds to fill a particular role (aka roaming) or make use of items in game which you might have overlooked that not everybody playing Mesmer/Chrono might use?

Then we also have our Ranking system in WvW which might change what you can do with siege weapon, what kind of damage buffs you will have against guards, mercenaries or lords and how fast you can build/repair stuff. Defending a keep without any (WXP) ranking is something very different from having used World Ability Points to not take full damage from NPCs fire at you from walls or to be able to build and use AC with wider range and the full ability of AC Mastery which give you reveal and poison.

In short: your observation do not contain any information about what WXP level those you claim to be OP had. You fail to try to motivate what skill, trait or gear combination that could prove to be OP for what run yourself.

When something feels too “powerful” (aka OP) it is often because you have a build which isn’t optimal for that situation/encounter or you haven’t found a way to reduce its negative impact on you during a fight. Blocking or interrupting a skill will often cause those powerful attacks to render less impressive, unless you have an opponent with unblockable trait or skill which will procs from block.

Fighting stealth with stealth (if you have access to that in your profession from going into your specialization/traits/skills) when possible will also change the playing field and there is tools in game to reveal as AC (siege weapon), traps you can buy with badges or simply wait for an attack as that should break stealth.

Use map chat or join a guild/group on map and you will see that those OP build isn’t that strong. Mesmer and especially Chronomesmer is more a supportive profession as we provide some tools (when traited) to help a small party in range of our skills and traits (around 300, 600 and 900 [Wells of eternity]). That is no different from Revenant/Herald and probably most other professions in this game.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Serious that the issue stems from dire/perplexity gear being overpowered and the root cause of the problem in the case of PU mes, rather than the mesmer design itself? Yea, actually. Unless you’d like to argue that dire/perplex isn’t OP for roaming, in which case you’ll basically get laughed out of WvW.

Overpowered in solo roaming? Sure…so what? Solo roaming doesn’t really matter much unless you’re in T4 and below. Dire/perplex loses effectively drastically once even small (3-man) roaming groups are taken into account, so who cares?

Edit: And did you even read the op? Whining about how mesmers can solo camps on their own? Come on, you make a fool of yourself by defending this rubbish.

Not agreeing with the OP on the principal I think the mesmer itself is overpowered, but the dire/perplexity PU build in solo roaming is.

As far as taking camps goes, anything can, which is why I’d like to distinguish myself from the OP. I have a feeling you didn’t read my first post, either, which states I don’t think the trait composition itself is overpowered, or that the mesmer is overpowered, but that this combination of gear makes the build holistically overpowered in small-scale or solo fights.

This is why I said this gear is the issue (and it is on everything) and should be removed, and not the mesmer nerfed. Understand the difference?
——-

As far as the comments regarding mirror not being used by most mesmers… I’m sorry but almost every single roaming mesmer I’ve ever met with an ounce of skill or understanding of the format runs this trait because it deliberately hard-counters a substantial number of burst/combo builds which are what counter PU condi dire/perplex (or are supposed to).

As far as being prepared, I already also addressed this; when roaming you need to account for diversity in fights. You can’t go running around with three utilities of cleanses with a cleanse heal. A power build will walk up to you and kill you with extreme ease of that’s the case, and in most cases, cleansing abilities and stunbreaks are mutually exclusive, and most classes do not have a condition cleanse on weapon skills to compensate. My post indicated Dueling/Chrono as swappable on the last trait ine option as DE isn’t imperative. Passive torment on scepter AA chain will often do more damage than bothering to shatter, particularly since even rapid cleansing will not keep up. A kitten CD 3-cleanse skill + boon rip is actually a pretty reasonable cooldown. Mantras are extremely low.

Apharma did the math out assuming the thief runs a specific build. Don’t run SA and thief stealth uptime drops to <40%, even on D/P.

Why do you guys fall time and time again to these trolls? Zero evidence, spectacularly laughable complaints that have NO weight whatsoever.

Just another MESMAR OP NERF PLZ post. Laugh and move along.

OP just started the game less than 2 months ago and has less than 3 posts on his account. This is a l2p issue, stop getting your panties in a bunch.

I remember when a dire perplexity PU Mesmer was a threat in a 1vX scenario. Now it’s just a nuisance that can be easily focused down with a few button presses from something glassy. I imagine it’s difficult for new players to manage (like the OP if this is indeed a genuine struggle of his/hers) but for anyone with even the tiniest amount of understanding of what the Mesmer is doing it’s just not a threat anymore.

lol.

/15charrs

Mesmer is clearly OP. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhyhUm2VEA0

Mesmers are anoying, but not OP. Its one of the classes like DH that gets weaker the higher skilled teams are. Clearly you can tear bad to average players appart with a well played mesmer in a way the victim feels helpless. But someone that has learned his own class well and can target the mesmer and not his clones, most mesmers don´t live long …

another post with the threadstarter not replying
flame bait thread?
or just ranting cus he can’t beat a mes.

DeceiverX.8361:

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter.

True! Now instead of only torment dealing negligible damage, confusion joined the club and can be safely ignored instead of needing to be cleansed.

Seriously, the damage is stupidly low, the condition is just pointless to even have. It’s equivalent to the background noise of procced bleeds. Yes it deals damage, but it does so in the most unimportant and non-impactful way possible. It used to at least have a unique mechanic which got gutted in favor of adding ignoreable passive damage.

Menaka.5092:

Mesmer is clearly OP. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhyhUm2VEA0

All I see is a mesmer using every skill he had to kill someone trying to spam aoe banner skills. If another person were to suddenly show up he would have been screwed.

Carighan.6758:

DeceiverX.8361:

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter.

True! Now instead of only torment dealing negligible damage, confusion joined the club and can be safely ignored instead of needing to be cleansed.

Seriously, the damage is stupidly low, the condition is just pointless to even have. It’s equivalent to the background noise of procced bleeds. Yes it deals damage, but it does so in the most unimportant and non-impactful way possible. It used to at least have a unique mechanic which got gutted in favor of adding ignoreable passive damage.

Torment still does more damage than bleeds if the target is moving, by a factor of just over 50%. It used to be overpowered because a majority of the condition removal skills in the game didn’t remove torment. For example, the thief only used to be able to remove torment with Antitoxin Spray, which they removed from the game. A majority of skills still do not remove torment. Clearly, all torment sources are weak because torment is weak because its static-object DPS is lower than bleeds! Clearly it’s not designed to not be effective if the target stands still, but punish targets for moving! That would be logical and imply a counter!

Back to confusion, though.

That 7k damage from scepter 3 is really, really weak. Not like it’s almost ticking the same as Deathly Chill does.

Oh wait, except it does. Because confusion ticks are actually strong. I guess we’ll just neglect the fact that the act of cleansing the condition applies its active too, so that when all things are said and done, it frequently deals its listed full damage, which is often better per cast than a majority of the skills in the game employ, particularly against targets in say, full Nomad’s armor.

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around. I liked the prospect of the old confusion, and thought it was fun conceptually (implementation was iffy, though, cleansing skills should have removed/still should remove the confusion before the damage kicked in, as often the act of cleansing would kill the player, which is dumb when you’re bringing cleanses to a fight to counter-act the torment/confusion to slip hits in). I’d have liked to have seen it much more punishing and played similarly to interrupts with high-intensity but short duration stacks, but that’s not the vision a large number of condi PvE players wanted.

Ananeos.4587:

Menaka.5092:

Mesmer is clearly OP. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhyhUm2VEA0

All I see is a mesmer using every skill he had to kill someone trying to spam aoe banner skills. If another person were to suddenly show up he would have been screwed.

Depends heavily on the builds of people involved. Very easy to kill players while using banners, though. Managed to snag one on my tankier necro and ticked people for 7k burn ticks. Whole parties wiped in < 5s.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around.

So I don’t feel like dealing with the rest of your post, but I just wanted to point out how patently absurd this bit is. Confusion was absolute garbage in PvE before. Confusion is absolute garbage in PvE now. Additionally, are you really saying that “faceroll dire tanks” are relevant in PvE? If so, just keep in mind that you’re so far from the truth it’s not even funny. There is no element of truth to any part of the argument you just made.

I think you guys are being too hard on the OP.

I mean, he did get the part about Mesmer’s being broken right.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around.

So I don’t feel like dealing with the rest of your post, but I just wanted to point out how patently absurd this bit is. Confusion was absolute garbage in PvE before. Confusion is absolute garbage in PvE now. Additionally, are you really saying that “faceroll dire tanks” are relevant in PvE? If so, just keep in mind that you’re so far from the truth it’s not even funny. There is no element of truth to any part of the argument you just made.

The entire reason behind why confusion was changed to deal DoT damage, according to ANet’s own announcement’s discussions, was because of complaints about its poor performance in PvE. Confusion was buffed once on 1/27/15 for increased damage, which showed a lot of backlash for not being enough, and had a lot of suggestions (in this forum and in general discussion) to make the condition tick “similarly to torment with a passive DoT” as one post mentioned. It then underwent this exact change on 6/23/15.

Yes, it did suck before, and it still sucks. I never said the build or condition was good in PvE. I said dire confusion perplexity players in PvE were effectively the reason why confusion got changed to begin with. That’s historical fact. If you bothered to read my post, I argue against the current implementation of confusion. A build being weak in PvE also doesn’t stop ANet from making changes. Making adjustments only to the top-performing builds is a horrible way to balance and develop a game. Ask any expert in the industry that question, and they’ll respond in the same manner. But there are few threads complaining now, because the dire-faceroll tanks playing the build are no longer crying that they do not see any numbers at all.

As for PvE being the reason for unjustified changes, do you think the thief needed AA damage increases? I certainly don’t think so. I doubt you do, either. Do you know why they buffed the thief AA chains? PvE. Why? Because the thief was out-gunned by the revenant and out-supported by everything. It had literally zero use as a profession in the game’s PvE content. The whole of sPvP balancing is pretty much a farce when it comes to class skills. The reason ranger got the druid as its spec was to maintain its support role in raids (ranger before sinister engi previously had a critical role for speed running dungeons due to damage augmentation support). The reason necro got melee DPS and cleave was to have a position in raids. The reason berserker and daredevil do nothing new for their professions was because their core professions were already used in top-tier PvE and taken over other professions. The reason mesmer got support DPS with a new mechanic via Chronomancer was to make them un-replaceable in raids due to their low personal DPS (we’ve discussed this). The reason guard got a DPS boost was for use in raids. Why ele got a nerf to AoE ring abuse? Also raids.

Balance and profession design has barely ever been about sPvP and WvW, and despite me being here entirely for those game modes, I’ve come to terms with the fact this game is balanced for PvE.

If you want to argue about the integrity of my posting content, I would suggest you instead read my posts before making any kind of assumptions and dismissing my whole argument. I really would like to see how you reached the conclusion that I somehow argued confusion in PvE was even remotely good. Last I said, the mechanic got gutted and I would have preferred to have had the active effects been buffed to deal more damage to unskilled players not cleansing the effect.

DeceiverX.8361:

Apharma did the math out assuming the thief runs a specific build. Don’t run SA and thief stealth uptime drops to <40%, even on D/P.

I’ll address this. Yes Mesmer can compete (though thief can stay per a stealth) with thief for stealth however not with equal investments (equal amounts of traits to increase duration/decrease cooldowns) and generally is much more restrictive.

Just having an offhand dagger gives the thief 3s stealth on and effective 5s cool down (time for ini regen) which even with casts gives 50% uptime. A Mesmer would need pretty heavy trait investment to get close to that. Remove SA and thief stealth uptime does drop significantly however at this point the thief isn’t really picking up any stealth enhancements so we should compare it to a Mesmer who is also not doing that. With the gutting of alacrity illusions line gives the best cool down reduction on things that matter which still won’t match the thief.

I also did the math on comparing thief and Mesmer burst, they’re actually not too different with thief doing less burst damage but more often and mesmer having the higher burst less often but reliant on the games terrible clones which can be insta killed upon spawn.

You can’t maintain permanent stealth with an offhand dagger without a static target that’s letting it get hit, as the thief must leave stealth first to re-gain it, and still, this setup will run out of initiative after only nine seconds, unless you want to imply the thief is traited for Trickery as well, in which case it gets twelve. There is a resounding grace period of < .05s where the thief can chain it, however the hitbox of the dagger has to collide at the proper time (thus a stationary target is necessary because this also requires pre-casting delays to be timed and potentially latency taken into account), otherwise you are either visible or are revealed.

As the initiative consumption would lead to the following levels:
12 -> 6 -> regen to 9 (3s)
9 -> 3 -> regen to 6 (6s)
6 -> 0 -> regen to 3 (9s)

Which on a 9s regeneration pattern = 50% stealth uptime under absolutely ideal circumstances including what is considered an objectively bad weapon set and no initiative to perform other skills, all with perfect timing. This percentage holds for Trickery alone as well, since the cap is only increased and not the rate of regeneration.

So for > 50% uptime in an ideal environment, you need two trait lines on a thief. Yes, Trickery is taken on every single thief build because the line is universally good, but it does not discount the fact that the comparison you’re making really isn’t totally valid.

Don’t really need to let clones sit around for burst. Also depends heavily on context in what is preferential. If you take your target to 30% every 3s, but it can heal to full every 3s, it never dies. Sometimes that 100-0 potential despite being on a longer cooldown is necessary. It also depends on how you constitute cooldowns; do we include steal? BV as a critical part of reliability? Sustained encounter presence when taking into account the initiative regeneration timing potentially leading to an upwards of 10s of do-nothing? There are a lot of variables up in the air. The burst is certainly different, and that’s again why I’ve said mesmers will continue to deal weak sustained DPS in PvE; their burst via their innate class mechanic (shatter) that operates independently of weapons and has very little dependency on trait modifiers compared to most other builds is holding the class back from being able to be given sustained DPS features; otherwise it just becomes either OP/UP by design with an impossible-to-balance class mechanic, or the mechanic is removed (maybe with the next ES) in favor of a sustained damage approach so that the burst isn’t so crazy with offering ranged safety and blur.

But that’s a whole other topic in itself. Stealth access for every class but scrapper (as access is kind of fixed and also ridiculous for what it is) requires a huge investment. Imho, the mesmer would probably be better off as a class without it as then it could get proper traits and balancing. Frankly, I’d like to play my thief without the stealth dependencies (though preferably not power-creeped like Daredevil or any of the elites), and the mechanic as a whole has proven more troublesome than it’s worth in my opinion because balancing efforts are pretty much impossible.

OP you are an impudent fool.
Mesmers are OP how so? Their blocks except shield all suck, lowering their mitigation, their condi removal relies on wasting a whole traitline, or your healing skill and a utility slot, and that may still not be enough, their standard power DPS is trash atm, half of their offhands are trash, the only thing they have going for them is portal and mobility, with some condition pressure and strong elites. They aren’t bad but they certainly aren’t amazing.

yes please I’m sick and tired of mesmer being first place in this game. time for a new class to take the role anet or i leave

/s

I think a more constructive thread would focus specifically on which skills/traits (or combination thereof) make the mes OP in which situations.

trolololololo lolo lolo heheheheheeee.. everybody sing

Don’t waste your breath. Mesmers will be OP forever. ArenaNet closes threads that threaten the Mesmer supremacy.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Shatter-Mesmer-needs-nerf/first

Chip Skylark.2367:

Don’t waste your breath. Mesmers will be OP forever. ArenaNet closes threads that threaten the Mesmer supremacy.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Shatter-Mesmer-needs-nerf/first

+1 Yeah, there is no hope

Chip Skylark.2367:

Don’t waste your breath. Mesmers will be OP forever. ArenaNet closes threads that threaten the Mesmer supremacy.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Shatter-Mesmer-needs-nerf/first

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to view the world through another person’s eyes. It seems like it would be such a scary place, filled with incomprehensible occurrences and decisions that just can’t be understood. I wouldn’t want to live that way, and I’m glad I don’t have to.

Fay.2357:

Chip Skylark.2367:

Don’t waste your breath. Mesmers will be OP forever. ArenaNet closes threads that threaten the Mesmer supremacy.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Shatter-Mesmer-needs-nerf/first

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to view the world through another person’s eyes. It seems like it would be such a scary place, filled with incomprehensible occurrences and decisions that just can’t be understood. I wouldn’t want to live that way, and I’m glad I don’t have to.

+1 to this ^.^

It’s amusing to see how many “Mesmers are totally OP” threads pop up; with so little justification offered.

Can’t just say Mesmer is OP and needs to be nerfed

PvE? Seems to be in a good place
WvW? Seems fine
PvP? Condi Mesmer does need a nerf, but shatter needs a buff

style.6173:

Can’t just say Mesmer is OP and needs to be nerfed

PvE? Seems to be in a good place
WvW? Seems fine
PvP? Condi Mesmer does need a nerf, but shatter needs a buff

1 : ok
2: hmm not the builds that can 100-0 people in 1/2 sec
3: totally agree needs a nerf

Well condi mes is still the king of 1v1 but that has always been the case. However Mesmers are still very lacking is large WvW encounters. I think nerfing the one without giving something to the other isn’t a good idea.
Grav Well deserves a hit tho.

Pride.1734:

Grav Well deserves a hit tho.

I don’t know. Why?

It only hits 5 targets. It deals comparatively low damage. It does what it says on the tin, CCs 5 players unless they break out of it. But that is 5 players. Not a whole lot in WvW, at all.