Guild Wars 2

Everyone already knows you can currently stack perma stealth with the exception of 1-2s while the Prestige is on cooldown. You do damage in this build with clones attacking for you. This means your build is literally being in stealth and running around while the enemy takes minimal damage and can’t do anything cause you’re not going to ever leave stealth. This is… bad. It’s bad design. They’re boring to fight, they’re boring to play as, and as always, some people get it in their head that, because they play the easiest build imaginable, they’re pro.

My problem isn’t with PU itself because it allows for a diverse play style but when you mix it with the pledge, a problem occurs. Right now, when you mix the two, prestige is at a 50% reduced cooldown with out using any other stealth skills, which is insane. I like the innovative idea of it being more than 20% reduced baseline, but 50% is just too high, especially when they can do damage while stealth.

I’m not threatened by them too much either because they never leave stealth so in pvp i can just cap points and cleanse my conditions while they roll around in stealth, but it’s just so tedious work with or against them. They’re not really going to do a hell of a lot of damage in team fights, so their strength is mostly in 1v1s and they can’t hold a point super well cause of stealth, but it’s just really fricken annoying.

I’d say to fix this, The Pledge needs work. I like the concept but when it’s mixed with PU and a condi build you never don’t have access to stealth. Either change it to a boring 20%, halve the cd factor or reduce it to 3/4s, or come up with another way. Right now, I think I timed it to 50s of straight stealth and 15s till I could go for another 50. I know everyone’s saying this, but most say it’s PU, I say it’s the pledge. PU dps shatter is fine(since you have to leave stealth to do damage and you can’t stay in stealth indefinitely), but PU+Pledge condi is just a hassle.

The Pledge is bugged, it’s currently giving 3x the CD reduction per tick than it should.

We’ve been asking for fixes for a while but they’re slow to come.

Sounds like the artifact of pledge fit Mesmer theme very well: manipulate opponents’ mind; feeling confused, in-patience which lead to miscalculated and lose.

Firstly, you can’t perma stealth as a mesmer or at least not without using absolutely everything you have to try and do so, even then I’m pretty sure there’s a gap. So please fix that wrong statement.

Secondly this is what every mesmer has been saying in all the “nerf PU coz i r bad” threads. Currently you can get prestige down to a 13s cool down by camping stealth.

“tedious and annoying to play against” is not a valid criteria for balance changes.

You know what else is tedious and annoying to play against?
Full-tank rangers.
Cleric warriors.
d/d Eles.
Any full-tank build in the game.
Any player that kills you.

And those players who sit around using it, do you think they’d magically be more useful if they didn’t choose this dumb as kitten spec? No, they’d be just as useless, running something else stupid. The spec you’re complaining about isn’t a problem, as you admit, it’s not useful.
And it isn’t the problem, as stupid players are stupid no matter what builds they try, and troll players will troll no matter what tools you give them.

In short, your complaint is rather meaningless, as fixing it won’t fix your annoyance, and Anet should never base balance of a class on the comfort levels of the people who fight against that class.

On the subject of tedious and annoying to play against.

If you watch the ESL finals for EU there’s a great moment where Tage as bunker guard fights Kervv as DD ele. After 2 or 3 minutes of neither of them dropping the others health in any meaningful way they both stop fighting and stand on the point leaving it neutral.

Happened twice in that match, hope they had a nice friendly chat. =D