Guild Wars 2

I watched a fair amount of the pvp finals. I think there was one mesmer playing.

That’s not the absolute picture of how good mesmers are now. I think there were no warriors, and even though I don’t play warrior, I hope they get more boosts than mesmer.

I’m guessing any changes that will happen on Feb 23 have already been done, so I’m probably too late with this list. On the other hand, I actually think more people would be happy with balance tweaks happening even if they came after the season started.

So this is my list of small and simple changes that I think would help mesmers without unbalancing things:

- Change F2 cooldown base time to 20 sec
- Increase illusion health (just remove pvp/wvw split from pve)
- Decrease shield cooldowns since alacrity is reduced (tides of time 40 to 36, echo of memory 30 to 26)
- Decrease non-elite well cooldowns all by 10%
- Decrease staff 4 cooldown from 35 to 30
- Decrease arcane thievery and mirror image cooldowns from 45 to 36 seconds

Those all look like adjustments that could be made very quickly, they aren’t massive shifts, and they will help make mesmers more effective with active use of skills.

While most of those changes seem reasonable, as you said the balance patch is unlikely to be that big. Might see 2-3 of them on Tuesday though.

My main guess is alacrity on shatter returning to 1 second

Arcane thievery could actually come down to 25 secs and be fine. Especially if boon corrupt necros are going to go unnerfed.

Well of calamity could use a damage buff instead of a cooldown decrease. I’d even argue it needs a cooldown increase and a MASSIVE damage increase. I’d like it to be a strong impactful skill, rather than that thing on the ground there, that does 900 damage and gets ignored for the most part.

Shield cool downs are okay in my opinion. It’s still a super strong pick over other off hands. But idk if there are some PvE implications to the buff on shield CDs.

Increase Flow of Time to 1s/illusion. Please.

Honestly the best changes for mesmer right now is the proper nerfing of the classes in the finals.

If we can get revs down to 1 slot max per team along with proper power creep nerfs we’d prolly be in a VERY good spot. You’d have to keep an eye on the healing/condi builds but power might make a come back if anet did it right.

No please don’t buff condi mesmer and chrono (shield). They are already the best out of the mesmer builds ATM probably. Buff focus, sword offhand, etc. Instead

Quadox.7834:

No please don’t buff condi mesmer and chrono (shield). They are already the best out of the mesmer builds ATM probably. Buff focus, sword offhand, etc. Instead

While I agree, I honestly have to make a serious point here.

Anet has been historically horrible at balancing this game. What I believe we need to find is ONE viable build per class that teams can interchange based on what each player is best at playing. Right now mesmer isn’t what it was before the nerfs, and we need to focus on getting a build that is good for the game propelled to the fore front of PvP.

Now I’m all for having complete control of your builds and diversity to each class, but at some point in time we need to realize who’s steering the ship. Our captain can’t navigate dangerous shoals and clearly needs wide open water only.

I don’t believe the issue lie in tweaks as much as in vision, mechanics and environment. The result is that the Mesmer is being pushed out of several roles but the reasons to play a certain way are still there. For example, the addition of chrono traits still play into the way eg., Helseth traditionally has played Mesmer in spvp (with portal rotations and double-range shatter) it is just that there is still a large disconnect between some of the new specs and the other in terms of base damage. Once a proper balance pass is made it is likely that we will see a returning appeal for such builds – with a normalization of weapon damage and possible changes to stat-weight trends as a result – as they rest on burst logic.

The other issues mostly lie in class mechanics where there are alot of things that could work but does not work. All the changes to Well mechanics is a good recent example of that since dealing with the issues attributed to them has sort of gutted the vision of what a Chrono was supposed to be, for now. Wells are not the only mechanics where vision is lopsided though and comming up with new roles for the class probably has to involve some sort of broad utility overhaul along with other unreliable effects and bugged functions. It applies to things like Mantras, interrupts and other class-iconic mechanics as much as it does to Wells. They can work, but for now they’ve just been “quick-fixed”, to not.

So, it’s not really an issue of damage, cooldowns or tweaks as much as it is an issue of scrapped visions and roles for the class to play (outside of sPvP too – people often overlook my preferred game mode, which is WvW, where many of the changes due to bunkering also hit the class hard in a game mode where there is no bunkering – taking utility away).

There are many things that could work but they are either extremely user-unfriendly right now or they are bugged, does not scale as intended (over modes) or are implemented as envisioned. It is a gum-and-duct tape job that still has potential if properly revisited, soon.

Why not give the mesmer baseline the “old” alacrity effect on himself, but ONLY on himself? Like the elite spec trait → alacrity on Mesmer has increased effectivity.

I wouldn’t like to have this as a chooseable trait, only as a minor or baseline for Chrono, since whatever the other trait options would be, you’d chose this and that’s bad for build diversity.

I think they should take a good hard look at all elite specs and bring them down a lot.

I think alacrity should be a chrono only thing and stay only on chrono, no sharing but buff it to 1s on shatter and maybe increase to 50% or even back to old 66%.

I think it’s practically impossible to balance continuum shift even though I do like it and should be removed.

Alls well that ends well gives chrono 1-2s quickness and 3s alacrity.

Completely remove phantasms and phantasm damage and refund the Mesmer for it so they can have competitive DPS and have something other than shatter builds.

Well of recall removes boons per tick then finishes by granting 3-5s of each boon removed to all allies.

Oh and buff well of calamity damage by 50% per tick and 25% on final.

I also would like to see similar nuking to other elite specs, they just give way too much a lot of the time even chrono feels mandatory because of F5.

think about it (will never be done but nice thinking)
CS
as for now is nice ability but i think it misses its mesmer theam

mesmer control time – ok i get it. so if i control it i know what is gonna happen and should prevent it .
so when activated once you put the cs on the ground and its last forever.
the second you activate it make it like for 3 sec you take no dmg and trasfer it to your enemy instead (condi and direct) for every clone you get 1 sec (so up to 6 sec)
so its like retaliation but more deadlier. while in CS you cant attack as you between time zones and when time is over you teleport back to the cs first location (like necro wurm)
also cause you control time you should have super speed on you.

I shall be the destroyer of hope and dream.
Portal in ESL? clearly that skill op, increase its cooldown to 180 sec and make it stay for only 5 sec.

Hlord.5940:

I shall be the destroyer of hope and dream.
Portal in ESL? clearly that skill op, increase its cooldown to 180 sec and make it stay for only 5 sec.

If we’re even remotely considering that, then make the range 20000 and the portal entre duration 90 seconds.

You shouldn’t just flat nerf skills by a massive amount with no compensation, that’s quite silly.
Especially when it’s seriously the only skill mesmer really has left, outside of moa.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hlord.5940:

I shall be the destroyer of hope and dream.
Portal in ESL? clearly that skill op, increase its cooldown to 180 sec and make it stay for only 5 sec.

If we’re even remotely considering that, then make the range 20000 and the portal entre duration 90 seconds.

You shouldn’t just flat nerf skills by a massive amount with no compensation, that’s quite silly.
Especially when it’s seriously the only skill mesmer really has left, outside of moa.

sorry, it was meant to be a sarcasm because mesmer has been massively nerf and the only thing left that people will seriously take a mesmer to a tourney is portal which doesn’t work well as we have seen it.

Hlord.5940:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hlord.5940:

I shall be the destroyer of hope and dream.
Portal in ESL? clearly that skill op, increase its cooldown to 180 sec and make it stay for only 5 sec.

If we’re even remotely considering that, then make the range 20000 and the portal entre duration 90 seconds.

You shouldn’t just flat nerf skills by a massive amount with no compensation, that’s quite silly.
Especially when it’s seriously the only skill mesmer really has left, outside of moa.

sorry, it was meant to be a sarcasm because mesmer has been massively nerf and the only thing left that people will seriously take a mesmer to a tourney is portal which doesn’t work well as we have seen it.

Ah, fair enough.
With some of the suggestions and kitten that I’ve read, it’s hard to tell serious people from satire.
Apologies.

I tried to focus this post on changes that seem like they should be technically straightforward to implement (but you never know when there might be unexpected constraints in the code).

In the short term, I think there are only two interesting questions:
- What changes are possible and make sense for Feb 23?
- How much change should happen within a pvp season?

I actually think basically everyone is better off by allowing balance changes to continue during a season. Most likely, the best approach is where you have the biggest changes before the season, modest changes early in the season, and as few of changes as possible as the season comes to an end.

Azukas.1426:

Honestly the best changes for mesmer right now is the proper nerfing of the classes in the finals.

If we can get revs down to 1 slot max per team along with proper power creep nerfs we’d prolly be in a VERY good spot. You’d have to keep an eye on the healing/condi builds but power might make a come back if anet did it right.

I’m in the same boat as you. A few small buffs to Mes/Chrono here and there to make underused skills/traits more appealing, but really, our overall effectiveness will be increased by bringing Herald and Scrapper into line.

No offense but I would take 1 meaningful boost over a handful of fairly irrelevant changes.

Not that I think either will happen, we might see 1-2 irrelevant changes at best.

As others have said, I think the most we can hope for is nerfs for some other classes to bring them down to our level, rather than the other way around.

I think one meaningful boost is also fine. I guess the challenge is picking which one – maybe make alacrity a bit better?

I think trimming back on classes that clearly seem to be in the lead is also good. That probably wouldn’t be enough to get warrior more competitive, but it seems like it would help if there were clear tweaks to be made.

eldenbri.1059:

I think one meaningful boost is also fine. I guess the challenge is picking which one – maybe make alacrity a bit better?

I think trimming back on classes that clearly seem to be in the lead is also good. That probably wouldn’t be enough to get warrior more competitive, but it seems like it would help if there were clear tweaks to be made.

To be fair, warrior needs an overhaul.
It’s stupidly easy to play, and unrewarding.
If you reward it, then you’re rewarding a lack of skill.
If you don’t reward it, then it’s a dead class.

And before anyone gets mad over me saying it’s stupidly easy to play.

Hammer stun → Hundred blades is not a difficult combo, by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s literally 3 keys.
And that is what every warrior combo is like.

It’s also stupidly easy to dodge/deny.
Hammer stun, gunflame, killshot. All of these have long animations that make it easy to blind/dodge.

Windwalker.7421:

No offense but I would take 1 meaningful boost over a handful of fairly irrelevant changes.

Not that I think either will happen, we might see 1-2 irrelevant changes at best.

As others have said, I think the most we can hope for is nerfs for some other classes to bring them down to our level, rather than the other way around.

I really think the actual curtailing of the AoE disgusting spam that has infiltrated high level pvp needs to be removed. This by itself would instantly propel mesmer effectiveness 10 fold.

Mesmer in truth doesn’t need much….just a nice smacking of the rest of the classes.

p.s. I understand that anet properly balancing the rest of the game is a long shot, and I am deeply against anymore power creeps since history shows us that it fails 100% of the time.

Meh, I would prefer balancing to not be based on something as alien to the rest of the game as sPvP.

That being said, many specific examples (arcane thievery having ~2x the CD which would be bearable, Well of Calamity being too weak and on too short a CD, F2 needing a 10s CD like F1, etc etc) are solid. But there’s… well… bigger fish in the pond, really.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA the op makes me laugh…
Listen kid, if you think that Anet is going to make a reasonable change (like the one you suggested) in 2 days, you believe in miracles.
I don’t know if you noticed but Anet can’t balance a class to save their lives. I mean each balance patch some classes become garbage and some become overpowered.

I mean look at the last patch they nerfed the class without adding anything new.
I hope that when the next patch comes, mesmer will still be able to create clones and phantasms XD

YaYa.5879:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA the op makes me laugh…
Listen kid, if you think that Anet is going to make a reasonable change (like the one you suggested) in 2 days, you believe in miracles.
I don’t know if you noticed but Anet can’t balance a class to save their lives. I mean each balance patch some classes become garbage and some become overpowered.

I mean look at the last patch they nerfed the class without adding anything new.
I hope that when the next patch comes, mesmer will still be able to create clones and phantasms XD

We will.
But since it was unfair for mesmer to have alacrity all to itself, scrapper, guardian, & ele will all be able to give alacrity as well.

Also, alacrity will be corruptible/rippable.

Hi @YaYa – as it turns out, I’m actually old. Most likely, I’m more than twice as old as you. And I’ve managed software development for decades. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be wrong or naively hopeful about changes being made.

But I do have a perspective about building and maintaining complex software products. I understand a lot of the tradeoffs that happen as you’re trying to build, test and release something that has many different kinds of users and many different priorities.

And I fundamentally believe that I’m better off trying to offer constructive suggestions than just providing criticisms. When I talk to customers of my products, sometimes they take the road of being critical (yeah, my software has problems too – all software does). In the end, the only way I can help those customers is if we focus on what can be done.

So this post is about looking for little things that would at least show the spirit of trying to make improvements for the class while keeping the effort and risk of disrupting the balance low. And I think it’s awesome if you have some ideas that might help with that goal.

I’ve lost faith ages (A few weeks) ago, Loving my engi and ele though.

There’s to many newbs that believe in fairy tales.

eldenbri.1059:

Hi @YaYa – as it turns out, I’m actually old. Most likely, I’m more than twice as old as you. And I’ve managed software development for decades. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be wrong or naively hopeful about changes being made.

But I do have a perspective about building and maintaining complex software products. I understand a lot of the tradeoffs that happen as you’re trying to build, test and release something that has many different kinds of users and many different priorities.

And I fundamentally believe that I’m better off trying to offer constructive suggestions than just providing criticisms. When I talk to customers of my products, sometimes they take the road of being critical (yeah, my software has problems too – all software does). In the end, the only way I can help those customers is if we focus on what can be done.

So this post is about looking for little things that would at least show the spirit of trying to make improvements for the class while keeping the effort and risk of disrupting the balance low. And I think it’s awesome if you have some ideas that might help with that goal.

As it turns out my old friend my post wasn’t about mocking you, it was about saying that what you suggesting is awesome, but Anet is so bad with balancing that it’s a dream.

Thanks for giving me your curiculum vitae, it was necessary.
I mean i am just working in business law so… i wouldn’t have such experience

Someone suggested that other class would have alacrity… That would be the death of the mesmer…

1. Change well of precog back to its old form, giving evade, maybe increasing CD to 50 sec
2. Remove the aftercast of GS auto attack, like they did to ele lightening whip ages ago.
3. Add “Increase slow application time by 33%” to the GM trait slow time
4. Normalize all phantasm summoning time to 3/4 sec.

Actually, I want to suggest swap Furious interruption and confounding suggestions. But given how poor the power shatter mesmer is currently, I wouldn’t want it to happen.

Vieux P.1238:

There’s to many newbs that believe in fairy tales.

I am sure you meant that in the nicest way possible, but yea I agree with you 100%. I feel bad for any new player coming into the game and was sold on Mesmer’s decription and invested time to level a Mesmer to 80… total waste of time.

In a dream world, alacrity would be at 50% instead of this insulting 33%

Azukas.1426:

Honestly the best changes for mesmer right now is the proper nerfing of the classes in the finals.

If we can get revs down to 1 slot max per team along with proper power creep nerfs we’d prolly be in a VERY good spot. You’d have to keep an eye on the healing/condi builds but power might make a come back if anet did it right.

This.

Azukas.1426:

Quadox.7834:

No please don’t buff condi mesmer and chrono (shield). They are already the best out of the mesmer builds ATM probably. Buff focus, sword offhand, etc. Instead

While I agree, I honestly have to make a serious point here.

Anet has been historically horrible at balancing this game. What I believe we need to find is ONE viable build per class that teams can interchange based on what each player is best at playing. Right now mesmer isn’t what it was before the nerfs, and we need to focus on getting a build that is good for the game propelled to the fore front of PvP.

Now I’m all for having complete control of your builds and diversity to each class, but at some point in time we need to realize who’s steering the ship. Our captain can’t navigate dangerous shoals and clearly needs wide open water only.

Sure, i choose power shatter as that build.

YaYa.5879:

In a dream world, alacrity would be at 50% instead of this insulting 33%

+1

At the very least for ourselves!

Without going full traited wells and traiting IA it’s literally just plain terrible, especially for that it’s supposed to be a core ability of the Chrono Elite. Even with all of that it’s still lackluster thanks to Chrono utilities all being on very long CDs that were obviously balanced around a 66% Alacrity.

I don’t think they will change alacrity back to 50%. Pretty sure they will stick to 33% and balance from there.

Oh no doubt, but a Mesmer can dream, can’t he!?

Anet rarely does what makes sense from a balance PoV. There was a short stint with HoT where they were listening to player input, since they wanted to build hype for each profession within it’s community, but now it’s back to business as usual:

Balance by Magic Eight-balling.

“Zomg Sir! Our elite core of mathematicians has just calculated a 66% damage boost to the entire team in PvE at the hands of a single support Chronomancer!”
“Holy kitten! What’s the Magic Eight-ball say about a 50% blanket nerf to Alacrity!”
“Sir, it says… – - – ‘It is certain!’.”
“Well, then what are you waiting for private!? DO IT!”

Replace phantasmal mage with phantasmal rouge. It hits harder and works better with invisibility theme from prestige.

Also would be nice to change torch trait to give confusion with damage so it could work in condi builds.

Yeah Rogue would be awesome, but it’s not Condition oriented and that would mean no Condition Phantasm at all.

They could just finally fix the silly iMage instead to not kitten so much. ;-) Anet simply refuses to acknowledge that the slow projectile attacks need to at least have a big bang in exchange for their poor performance/reliability. The iWarlock at least kinda does, though compared to iZerker it’s clearly inferior in every possible aspect.

iMage needs projectile speed increased by 33%, and 3x Burn for 3s. Then TP also gets 3x Burn for 3s and you have yourself a very powerful and flexible weapon that is useful for all build types and is competitive to Shield.

OH Sword should grant 1s Blurr after you successfully block with #4. This would improve a huge issue with this ability, as you often end up taking a ton of damage between the time that you block a single attack, and counter-attack & summon. It defeats the purpose of a counter attack when you have to take more damage then it delivers. This would also give the OH Sword the defense it needs to be competitive with other OHs. (We simply need some defense to make a viable OH in my opinion.) The iSwordsman really only needs a bit longer range on the leap (and/or like 10s Swiftness on summon), and more HPs & Toughness for being a melee range Phantasm.

Then there is the OH Focus. Wow, really? How could this remain so bad for so long? Why was it nerfed? lol! The iWarden also needs greatly improved sustain for being, optimally at least, placed in the center of multiple opponents! It’s attack cycle should also be shortened, or damage boosted. (And attack rate greatly improved to acknowledge the severe limitations this phantasm has!)

Into the Void simply needs a reliable defensive component for the Mesmer. Maybe you gain a few seconds of Protection when popping it. And the Curtain could use slight improvements too.

Windwalker.7421:

Yeah Rogue would be awesome, but it’s not Condition oriented and that would mean no Condition Phantasm at all.

Yes there would no condi phantasm but true is we don’t need any, and some raw damage could be great to. I propose this because it could be easy to do, just replace one with another.

And about iwarden i think this should be ground targeted skill, but then will come to problem that phantasm need a target to cast.

Yeah GT on iWarden is something I’ve often thought about. Then shorten CD to compensate a bit for it not being able to move, or better yet compensate with a stronger attack. Could just add 1x Confusion for 3s for each attack. That would be completely negligible in PvE and certainly not imbalancing in PvP either. Of course it would still need significantly beefed up sustain for being a purely melee range Phantasm.

Are there going to be any changes? They said they were only going to do a balance patch every 3 months, and they have already done one for this period.

Vague Memory.2817:

Are there going to be any changes? They said they were only going to do a balance patch every 3 months, and they have already done one for this period.

Personally I wouldn’t call that a balance patch, ele sceptre changes? It was one friggin skill that changed and even then it was half kitten d.

They went half way and nerfed things that were good or too good in their eyes but they didn’t fix the mountain of mechanics, skills or weapons which don’t work.

apharma.3741:

Vague Memory.2817:

Are there going to be any changes? They said they were only going to do a balance patch every 3 months, and they have already done one for this period.

Personally I wouldn’t call that a balance patch, ele sceptre changes? It was one friggin skill that changed and even then it was half kitten d.

Ththey went half way and nerfed things that were good or too good in their eyes but they didn’t fix the mountain of mechanics, skills or weapons which don’t work.

Agreed. But that was their big balance patch for the quarter and the PvP season. They might do some bug fixing, but no balancing, just like the last season. That is how they have decided to do things now.

eldenbri.1059:

Hi @YaYa – as it turns out, I’m actually old. Most likely, I’m more than twice as old as you. And I’ve managed software development for decades. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be wrong or naively hopeful about changes being made.

Ah, a fellow sufferer of software development :P

HAHAHA
You really thought Anet would care about Mesmers?

I made the thread to suggest changes that I thought could be done by Feb 23. It was almost certainly too late when I made the thread to get those changes in, but they seemed like the kind of changes that can be done quickly with low risk.

I think one of the problems Anet has when they announce there will be a balance patch is that they create expectations from the player base. Everyone who sees their class as under-powered expects some improvements (or a few people who really want to avoid power creep suggest that the most powerful classes get reductions). So when a class doesn’t get any changes, it mostly doesn’t meet the expectations of the player base.

Most likely Anet is better off not pre-announcing there will be balance changes unless they have a clear list of things they can and will implement for each class.

The most interesting question now in my mind is whether Anet thinks they are better or worse off by doing some balance tweaks within a season.

The balance patch was done on January 26th. That’s it for another 3 months.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-26-2016/first#post5957898

Biggest issue really is how they announce these as “big quarterly balance patches” and then this one ended up being so tiny and meaningless. Independent of Mesmer.

There so few changes of so little value in that. :S

After the “big” balance patch, they mentioned there would be another balance patch on Feb 23 (think it got mentioned on one of the Friday live chats). So that was what caused this post.

As it turns out, they made two more tweaks (reducing bristleback spikes and reducing damage coefficient on chill for reaper) just recently. So… maybe… there could be more small balance tweaks during the season

We’ll see