Guild Wars 2

A moment of silence for one of the last truly powerful Mesmer skills.

And so begins the dark age of being relegated to Time Warp gimmicks, because god knows you won’t be bringing satisfactory damage OR support to the table. ;_;7

It was a bug fix.

It still has its place in WvW where stubborn rangers all over the world continue to suicide on the warden’s reflection trait.

But it seems the “spin to win” no LoS siege exploits days of the iZerker are over…

DiogoSilva.7089:

It was a bug fix.

Uh? No. It was a nerf.

A bug fix would have been fixing the entire phantasmal haste mess, so half of our phantasms that get nothing right now got their fair share.

I don’t understand that change. What exactly changed? Warden would always spin if you had the trait Phantasmal Haste?

Yeah almost, the trait was reducing the recharge time of his attacks more than it is supposed to. So you had insane damage and almost 100% uptime bubble. It was ridiculous to be honest and I’m glad they fixed it. I hope they’ll fix the phantasm not getting the trait properly though and the fury/retaliation/regen bugged traits too.

There used to be close to only 1sec CD inbetween the spins. This makes the warden extremely powerful against mobs that only use ranged. It’s that ridiculous to the point where ranged AI mobs pratically has no chance against a warden.

Without the trait, the warden spinned for 5 secs, then idled 8.2 secs, then spinned again.

With the trait, the warden spinned for 5 secs, then idled 1.6 secs then spinned again.

The patch as advertised should be something like 5 sec spin – 5 sec idle. I wouldn’t trust it before testing in the Mists. The very fact it’s not a full change of the trait that is otherwise below its advertised benefit on all other phantasms, and in fact doesn’t apply at all to half of them, leads me to believe this was a hastily executed change that may have easily introduced a new bug.

Qelris.6901:

I don’t understand that change. What exactly changed? Warden would always spin if you had the trait Phantasmal Haste?

Basically speccing Phantasmal Haste made the Warden spin near continuously with a 1s delay between spins. No other Phantasm came close.

This change just reinforces my decision to stick with the “throw away” Phantasm 20/20/0/25/5 build personally. Does amazing all around and now I never have to worry about Phantasmal Haste as a factor ever again.

Zid.4196:

It still has its place in WvW where stubborn rangers all over the world continue to suicide on the warden’s reflection trait.

But it seems the “spin to win” no LoS siege exploits days of the iZerker are over…

Nope, Berserker can still be casted through walls with no LoS.

Also, the Vengeful Images trait bug/buff is still working as before.

Is the patch deployed yet? I’m only discussing the notes.

It idles about somewhere around 6.5 to 7 seconds with Phantasmal Haste now. Not the 5 seconds as stated.

It would have been NICE if they fixed the Range problem it has while they did this. Instead, the Phantasmal Warden still thinks its got a Ranged Attack and stands swinging well outside of its bubble’s range.

With Phantasmal Haste:
I.Warden – ~12 seconds from the start of one whirl, to the next.
I.Duelist – ~6 seconds from the start of one unload, to the next.
I.Zerker – ~6 seconds from the start of one spin, to the next.
I.Warlock – ~5 seconds from the start of one ball, to the next.
I.Mage – ~7 seconds from the start of one rabbit, to the next. (Still not working)
I.Swordsman – ~4.5 seconds from the start of one stab, to the next.

Without Phantasmal Haste:
I.Warden – ~14 seconds from the start of one whirl, to the next.
I.Duelist – ~7 seconds from the start of one unload, to the next.
I.Zerker – ~7 seconds from the start of one spin, to the next.
I.Warlock – ~6 seconds from the start of one ball, to the next.
I.Mage – ~7 seconds from the first rabbit, to the next.
I.Swordsman – ~4.75 seconds from one stab, to the next. (No change here as well?)

This patch did not come at a good time for me, was beginning to lose interest because of the lack of variety in PvE builds and bug fix or not this lowered it even more.

@MLieBennett, I get the same test result too. The recharge time is around 7sec instead of the intended 5sec.

Whatever, I’m just quitting the Mesmer until ANet learns to balance again.

I suspect the reason we’re seeing ~7 secs instead of 5 is that, judging by the patch notes, ANet was unaware of the 1.6 delay between attacks that existed before. Why’d they be unaware of information that has been up in the wiki for weeks, yet decide to nerf blindly I don’t want to speculate on.

The rest of the phantasms are probably as before, which is three get 15% instead of 20%, and four (don’t forget we have underwater ones too) get 0% instead of 20%. The boost the Warden had was the only compensation we had, and now it’s gone. That’s why I called nerf, not bug fix.

Well I guess I can get rid of phantasmal haste now for good since the constant spin was the only thing I was counting on it for. Most of the time a mob would melee or AoE it anyway before it would get through its first attack. Only would shine against pure ranged groups. Although now each patch I’m starting to care less and less about this profession.

Yeah it’s 10 seconds downtime without Haste and 7 seconds with Haste. I think I’ll be dropping Focus and Haste now. =/

I do understand why they “fixed” it, there are some fights that 100% uptime on reflection trivializes. I would have said that I expected a smarter solution than this, but I just finished the pve story line so my expectations are pretty kitten low.

Anyone else notice that Phantasmal hast lowers the Iwarden cd from 25 to 20 seconds while the other phantasms cds stay the same? Is it a tool tip bug?

GenericName.5046:

Anyone else notice that Phantasmal hast lowers the Iwarden cd from 25 to 20 seconds while the other phantasms cds stay the same? Is it a tool tip bug?

Check your traits. You either have Illusions 5(which I doubt considering you say others are still the same) or Inspiration 20(Focus trait).

Such a shame. I’ve been using Sword and Focus since I started my Mesmer and couldn’t wait to get Warden’s Feedback and Phantasmal Haste to improve it. Now I’m not so sure I should stick with Focus, the constant reflection and flurry of hits from Warden was why I wanted it, but if it’s going to sit there in melee range for 7 seconds even with the trait it might not be worth it.

/sigh. So many bugged traits yet most of our patch changes have been nerfs rather than fixes.

Warden works fine without the trait. You summon it on a focus objective point, especially if you intend on meleeing it, blurred frenzy and shatter when it’s done with rotation.

The cooldown on it traited was horrendously broken. Though I think they overcompensated on it a bit given its stationary nature. Still I use it for little more than placement defense/offense anyways. It effectively assists me with point attacks while keeping ranged damage of of me for a few needed seconds for blurred frenzy cooldown.

Beyond that, it’s a good traveling tool.

Zid.4196:

I suspect the reason we’re seeing ~7 secs instead of 5 is that, judging by the patch notes, ANet was unaware of the 1.6 delay between attacks that existed before.

There’s also the issue of how precisely to measure the duration of an effect. While it’s straightforward to measure the time it takes for the Warden to do all 12 of its hits, it is substantially less straightforward to measure the amount of time it provides a projectile shield. The graphical effect and the projectile shield do not necessarily line up perfectly, and it’s quite possible that the effect is there for a second or two after the graphics have stopped.

DiogoSilva.7089:

It was a bug fix.

This.
It was quite obviously not intended to work this way.

It’s a bit of a shame that they didn’t fix Phantasmal Haste as a whole while they were at it, but I hope we all knew that once PHaste gets fixed, Spam-Warden would be a goner.

“Rhyno: Whatever, I’m just quitting the Mesmer until ANet learns to balance again.”

So you’re playing a class that is deemed one of the 2 best classes and you’re QQ-ing it’s not balanced. Go play ele, you’ll quit the game, not just the class :P

Le sigh.

We’re the class with the worst AoE DPS, so they nerf one of our few god kitten AoE DPS skills, throw a bone here anet – we NEED AoE DPS, if you’re going to nerf one for whatever reason PLEASE give us something to make up for it, because dynamic events in orr are hell to get loot in at present and you just made it even worse

So you’re playing a class that is deemed one of the 2 best classes and you’re QQ-ing it’s not balanced.

Please stop treatting PvP like it’s the global determinator or quality the vast majority of players are PvE focused, and in PvE mesmer is one of the hardest and least effective class by a big margin.

This isn’t nerf its bug fix one class shouldn’t be able to solo range gold mobs or groups of silver range mobs, in Sorrow’s Embrace with my mesmer I could solo 70% of mobs there…

“one class shouldn’t be able to solo range gold mobs or groups of silver range mobs, in Sorrow’s Embrace with my mesmer I could solo 70% of mobs there”

I rest my case.

It’s really sad to see people quitting the class because it doesn’t have an easily exploitable bug anymore.

It’s still a bug fix.
You might not like it – even for balance reasons – but in most dev teams the actual balance development and the bugfixing teams are fully separate. Fixing bugs is not part of the balancing process.

Yeah the issue with it as a bug fix for people is that they didn’t actually fix the trait, they bandaided the part that was working to well while it still doesn’t deliver what it promises for most of the phantasms.
A true bug fix would have sorted the issues in both directions.
And due to the way they seemingly has done this it looks likely that the I.Warden could get hit again when they get round to fixing the bug.

Carighan.6758:

It’s still a bug fix.
You might not like it – even for balance reasons – but in most dev teams the actual balance development and the bugfixing teams are fully separate. Fixing bugs is not part of the balancing process.

If they’re going to do a bug fix, wouldn’t it make sense to fix the whole trait and not just one aspect of it? At least that way we’d get some use out of it, but now it has gone from mostly worthless to completely worthless.

““Rhyno: Whatever, I’m just quitting the Mesmer until ANet learns to balance again.”
So you’re playing a class that is deemed one of the 2 best classes and you’re QQ-ing it’s not balanced. Go play ele, you’ll quit the game, not just the class :P*”

I stuck with the Mesmer while the entire forum complained that they were underpowered, learning mechanics, explaining why they were fine, discovering builds and teaching other players. This nerf is an unwarranted kick in the balls for PvE.

To everyone calling it a bug fix, I made two points:
1) A bug fix can still be a nerf or a buff, dramatically changing the balance of the class.
2) All they did was add a flat delay, so if it was a bug fix, the “bug” was that they accidentally entered in the wrong number for the skill delay? Yeah ok. This was a bandaid fix to something that wasn’t widely considered overpowered.

iWarden wen’t from a great skill keeping Mesmers viable in dungeons to another underperformer. For ****s sake, it stands still.

I’m also not sure what elementalists have to do with this. We know elementalists are weak, but they weren’t just dramatically nerfed. I’d be confused and annoyed if they were just nerfed too.

Rhyno.7084:

iWarden wen’t from a great skill keeping Mesmers viable in dungeons to another underperformer. For ****s sake, it stands still.

We still have tons of damage, utility and survival.

I have no idea how you can say that with confidence.

Outside of maybe stripping boons or ease of dazing, any class will do the Mesmer’s job (or, rather, the Mesmer’s desired role) better. And I mean dang near ANY class, save maybe certain Elementalist builds. Anyone with PvP experience will tell you Mesmers have insane survivability, but the class is a joke in PvE.

Now finally we have it.

95% of Mesmers will play with Sword/Pistol

<5% play with Scepter

Thank you ArenaNet, this “fix” is a great step forward to balancing all weapon choices of the Mesmer. Now please kill either Staff oder GS, so we have finaly an answer which of this weapons you want us to use.

Mephisto Loire.8207:

Now please kill either Staff oder GS, so we have finaly an answer which of this weapons you want us to use.

Admittedly, I literally lol’d at this. :-D

I think the Warden will be ok, but truth be told I wasn’t using it in the spammy fashion anyway.

They said they fixed range issues on phantasms, I’m not sure if that’s another nerf or it means the warden will follow targets properly now. I hope the latter, if not then it’s a bit sad that they’re only fixing the bugs which make us stronger but not the ones which leave us weak enough that those bugs are “compensating”. Our bugged traits issues are still present which is pathetic, especially when a minor trait is over writing another minor from the same line.

It’s possible to still succeed in events without spammable aoe though, you just have to time your abilities perfectly to get the same results others get with spam.

The warden is NOT a 5 second recharge it is around 8-10 sec recharge.

So it is a nerf and I am dropping focus :/

Sixpax.8360:

If they’re going to do a bug fix, wouldn’t it make sense to fix the whole trait and not just one aspect of it? At least that way we’d get some use out of it, but now it has gone from mostly worthless to completely worthless.

Yeah, this is the part I didn’t get, either.

Plus you’d think that this is easy to balance.
Phantasms seem to be balanced around a roughly 6s inter-attack delay.
Hence the CD of each of their abilities should be set to:

x = 6 + <animation_duration>

And then Phantasmal Haste changes this formula by reducing the constant to 4,8. Done.

A lot of Mesmers Skills and Traits are bugged or pretty useless.

But although my engineer is a very powerful profession in PvE and PvP, with my Mesmer i already killed some 80+ Champions that were too difficult for my Engineer, mostly because they are ranged. I also killed with my cond-damage built several large pulls in openworld and outlasted bosses or bulks of trash in instances, sometimes 1 minute or 2 until the rest of my party came running back after they all died.

Mesmer may be bugged and in some regards(Mantras, somePhantasms/Clones) loaded with too much simply useless skills, but it is, while not the fastest killer, extremly hard to kill and therefore powerful in its own way. And it is, at least when compared with my engineer, a good supporter for a party.

Fixing the instant recharge of iWarden was definitely warranted. There’s a boss fight in almost every dungeon I’ve been in where a hasted iWarden trivializes the fight. No skill should be “insta-win”.

I’ll still use focus because skill 4 is great, and iWarden is still useful (although they should fix the new bug of 7s recharge vs. 5s recharge).

I wish they would have fixed some of the other bugs. I agree it’s great to fix bugs, but the mesmer bug list is pretty long and the fixes from the update last night were pretty short.

9 seconds not 7 seconds.

This whining is too kitten funny

I didnt even know about this bug and love my mesmer, only used the warden on occasion cause I didnt think he did much and seldom used the focus.

I have no idea how you can say that with confidence.

Outside of maybe stripping boons or ease of dazing, any class will do the Mesmer’s job (or, rather, the Mesmer’s desired role) better. And I mean dang near ANY class, save maybe certain Elementalist builds. Anyone with PvP experience will tell you Mesmers have insane survivability, but the class is a joke in PvE.

This isn’t entirely correct.
Unfortunately, I really don’t have patience to write insane tldr with orichalcproof evidences, so I will leave the joy of true mesmer’s pve for you to discover. Sorry!

Just have to say it may be a bug fix but it was singled out for a reason.

There are a lot of bugs that COULD have been fixed but Anet chose this one specifically since it needed to be nerfed now.

Keep that in mind when you look at the loads and loads of bugs our class has and Anet doesn’t think those are as important as nerfing our class.

The traited iWarden was the only thing that keep Mesmer on par with other classes in terms of AOE dmg. We are now officially a joke in those AOE heavy dungeons.

So you’re playing a class that is deemed one of the 2 best classes and you’re QQ-ing it’s not balanced. Go play ele, you’ll quit the game, not just the class :P

Maybe in “arenas” but not anywhere else. Because in RvR they are not so great. I would say probably one of the LEAST effective in RvR. I ended up dropping my 80 mesmer and switching to engineer because frankly the mesmer brings only a few gimmick utilities and no punch. In almost every case you are better off with another class.

;D so mesmers have three weapons. staff, greatsword and pistol. well sheets. i liked the whole condition damage/ vitality build but it seems like kitten now considering id hv to use only a staff lol