Guild Wars 2

I really don’t see much changing for us TBH. I believe mesmer is in a good place atm. Would I like to see power mesmer become meta? kitten ya, but I have to say I’m happy where my class is

Thoughts?

I’m anticipating PvP-only buffs. I won’t even try to predict where those buffs might be for obvious reasons, but I think the devs recognize that a lot of the mesmer kit is pretty useless in PvP, and so they’ll toss out some random buffs to try and address that.

Blurred Frenzy: Increased cooldown to 15seconds, no longer an evade. Changed to pulsing aegis once at start and each second thereafter.

Justine.6351:

Blurred Frenzy: Increased cooldown to 15seconds, no longer an evade. Changed to pulsing aegis once at start and each second thereafter.

See what you did there
Hope they would improve on some traits that are not as good as their competitors e.g. Ineptitude was a very strong trait but they nerf it very hard because they gave it a icd based on the confusion you apply.
Additionally they should improve the well of precognition to something like a blocking area, everything inside the well gets block for some seconds (even after leaving) this can be counter played by unblockable skills and has some places in raids now.

I’m expecting senseless nerfs to skills and/or traits that are barely viable. That way at least I won’t be disappointed regardless of what the balance patch contains. I’m also expecting a small patch

Yeah my expectations are also very subdued as for both the size of the patch, and the impact it will have.

I think Anet is all in on the expansion at this point, and it probably would be somewhat futile to make any major adjustments when they know full and well that they will need to drastically rebalance everything once the new Elites are released.

I hope I’m wrong though, because totally unlike Azukas I’m not at all happy with the current state of the Mesmer in PvP. That would probably change a bit if a couple of “problem professions/builds” got some badly needed nerfs, but with a mile-long laundry list of completely unused traits, skills, and utilities I sure do hope they at least try to tweak a few things to improve our absolutely lacking build diversity.

Surely they will realize we need some Condie cleanse options for Power Shatter builds baked into some of the other trait-lines besides Inspiration.

That is IMHO a major issue for power builds, but by far not the only issue. For example, making Blurred Inscriptions cleanse 2 Conditions instead of just one, would make Signet builds a lot more viable as an alternative providing both extra sustain and condie cleanse. In exchange for missing out on boon strips, which is a big sacrifice to be sure! (Lowering the CD on Midnight to 20-25 seconds -or boosting it in other ways- would also be absolutely reasonable and synergize well with BI.)

Mantra Builds could be made more viable if HM was changed to lower channeling time by 20-33% and making the 3x charges a baseline feature. The channel time of Mantras is simply outdated.

Pistol needs some love as a viable OH. You simply give up way too much defense, which a Mesmer simply can not afford…certainly not for what you get in return with Pistol.

List goes on an on… (Dueling, Dom, Chaos are all underused. Focus, Pistol, OH Sword are also all mostly unused in PvP. Glamours unused, AT, Mimic & IoL underused, most Wells under/unused…)

“We felt that thief autoattack wasn’t high enough compared to mesmer with 60%+ output difference, so we buffed it some more and opted to give the mesmer a 5 second cooldown shave on arcane thievery and mimick. Vault has also seen a reduction in cost despite being a mobile evade that does 4x the damage of a blurred frenzy and can be chained 3 times in a row.”

OriOri.8724:

I’m also expecting a small patch

“Expecting”?

After the glorious four balance patches we had in over four years, each as large/tiny as hotfix-patches a week after a content release are in other MMOs, isn’kitten“know”?

I think people are overall happy with the current balance in terms of class comparison (all classes have a meta build or not too far in all game modes).

So for a large balance patch, I expect

• build diversity (mild power mesmer buff, maybe buff of wells)
• possibly the start of a long series of nerfs to prepare for the next elite specialization OP-ness.

You expect the nerfs to start on wednesday? Where have you been since HoT released?

Nuke level nerfs somewhere

Silverkey.2078:

I think people are overall happy with the current balance in terms of class comparison (all classes have a meta build or not too far in all game modes).

So for a large balance patch, I expect

• build diversity (mild power mesmer buff, maybe buff of wells)
• possibly the start of a long series of nerfs to prepare for the next elite specialization OP-ness.

I have to agree with current balance between classes being pretty great. Necro and Rev could use a bit of a PvE buff but overall class diversity is pretty strong. They just need to try to improve build diversity within each class.

The PvP team buffed base Virtues but not DH virtue’s last patch. I hope that buff is extended to the rest of the game this patch. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that buffs like this will happen to Mesmer as there aren’t base shatters. It’s hypothetically possible to have a mesmer Mind wrack and a chrono Mind wrack balanced separately but unlikely. Hence me recommending buffs to traitlines that the meta Chrono build doesn’t bring. Just have to wait and see.

Oh… a patch?

Doubt it’s going to be anything major to address pigeonholed gameplay, but there’s always hope.

I’m expecting a PvE damage increase considering that mesmer damage is either mediocre damage while also being completely conditional (ramp up time and single target only) with a super boring playstyle (Condition pistol phantasms) that prevents you from doing much to support without cutting your damage significantly, or just overall terrible (Condition shatter/any power build)/

I just don’t have any faith left in ANet.

Every balance patch since June 2015 took a dump on WvW that is the only game mode I really care about.

Mesmer always had problems in large scale because our class mechanic simply doesn’t work (shatters don’t land, clones are annihilated instantly), I had some hope for wells, but they turned out to be just too clumsy to cast (same range and 3x cast time compared to necro wells!) and with negligible damage and/or utility…

After the changes to boonshare, mesmers have no role left in a group: they don’t provide enough utility, being vastly outshined by revenants, they obviously don’t provide enough damage (especially in the current, very tanky, meta) where warriors and necros are king or sustain (healing with mantras, lol).

It’s no surprise that there’s only a few mesmers left in wvw, and most of them are roamers with condi builds similar to the pvp ones.

What do I expect from this patch? More disappointment.

Speaking from a WvW perspective I think power mesmer is not a long way off being well rounded. Some key nerfs to DD/Zerker could see power mesmer make a bit of a resurgence for small group/roaming play.

As for the inspiration line i think that was done on purpose by Anet. If you take inspirations you are losing out on a damage line(or utility in the case of Chaos) but gaining some nice sustain and the ability to deal with condis without having to slot Mantra of Resolve. I like to run Mantra of Recovery with Insp for the 4 condis cleared from the 2 mantra charges. Menders Purity and Restorative Mantras has some good synergy with Mantra of Recovery.

If you dont take Inspiration you will want to use a slot for Mantra of Resolve but it means you can pick Chrono and have 2 lines left. If you take dueling you can slot harmonious mantras to get an extra use out of the Mantra of Resolve.

You are losing out on the sustain provided by Insp, granted, Menders Purity, Restorative Mantras, Restorative Illusions, and mental defense. But freeing up a line by not taking Insp.

Condi chrono what do you do wit it? It’s busted as kitten in any sort of 1v1, useless in any sort of large scale conflict.

I fully expect anet to kick Mesmer out of serious PvP with some nuke nerf. There will be some sop with a buff to focus or something.