Guild Wars 2

forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/balance/WvW-Mesmer-needs-to-be-balanced/first#post3491681

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whats a raid?

Yeah good luck finding a MMO playerbase which doesn’t revere 1v1 PvP. No matter how unsupported it is in the game they play. I doubt we’ll see much PvP balance aimed at WvW beyond fixing really big issues.
But have the tiniest imbalance in sPvP, and even then only in 1v1 situations which every smart PvP should always try to avoid, and all hell breaks loose on the forums.

Well, another problem I see with us is that all groups want mesmers but non of them want more than a couple, and you are expected to do everything that only mesmers can do (veil, focus pull, time warp, portal…). That leaves us almost no room to use other skills that can make the mesmer a little more fun to play in organized groups (for example skills that increase your survivability and allow you to increase your damage by using other weapons and stats).

In other words it’s not only that we are unbalaced. Our own groups also push us into being a utility-only class.

Malakin, the problem is not we’re pushed to be an utility-class. The problem is that eles/necros do way more damage than mesmers, warriors have way more cc than us, and eles/guards bring way more support. So for optimizing the raids, bring the mesmer for what it shines, and let to others to do the other jobs, where we don’t excel at all.

Very easy and logical things can be made to improve our value on raids:

- Move Chaotic interruption to Domination (A line based on offensive interruptions).
- Move Harmonious Mantras to Dueling (A line based on mantras).
- Move Furious Interruption to Chaos (A line based on self-defensive interruptions).

With only these changes, mesmer would have a well rounded build (30/x/x/x/30), based on boon-ripping and interrupts, and this setup wouldn’t messed up other mesmer builds, as those traits would be on a more logical line.

PD: Also, we’re the class with more build-freeedom in WvW. The fact that only 2-3 utilities are required in zergs, doesn’t mean we’re stuck to a single build-idea. You can be a glamour confusion, a shatter or a support mesmer and bring what we are asked for.

Ansau.7326:

So for optimizing the raids, bring the mesmer for what it shines, and let to others to do the other jobs, where we don’t excel at all.

What does the mesmer shine for? I guess utility! How is this not pushing mesmer to be utility-only?

Well, veil, quickness and pull is only 1/100 of your gametime in raids. So I don’t see the part where we dont have enough time to do other things.
The problem is rather that we got no other things that make us different from other classes, because other classes can do it much better, whereas the ’’thing’’ that we are the best at is the veil at the moment.
And yeah, like i said before, its only 1/100 of your gametime.

Malakin.2809:

Well, another problem I see with us is that all groups want mesmers but non of them want more than a couple, and you are expected to do everything that only mesmers can do (veil, focus pull, time warp, portal…). That leaves us almost no room to use other skills that can make the mesmer a little more fun to play in organized groups (for example skills that increase your survivability and allow you to increase your damage by using other weapons and stats).

In other words it’s not only that we are unbalaced. Our own groups also push us into being a utility-only class.

yeah i run with a zergbusting group and of course veil is nr1 requirement. due to the heavy cc meta i traited into pu aswell, so i get to stealth away if i get focused. problem is that i am required to bring focus for pulls, so i gotta swap all the time if i can as the torch is sometimes the only thing keeping me alive. i could use scepter/torch sword/focus, but then i lack aoe dmg which gs provides.
then of course tw and sometimes they want me to bring feedback…so yeah ill have to give up all my defensive utilities and weapons for the utilities people need from mesmers.
we have less freedom than other classes as everyone expects u to survive and use all that stuff. i already rerolled a necro in case anet decides to nerf veil, so i wont get gkicked.

I agree about our utility skills being 1/100 of our gametime. And that’s precisely the problem: if we ask for only one or two mesmer to provide all of those skills they will not be able to use those slots 99/100 of their gametime to do other things better. I think it’s better to focus on only 1 or 2 of our shiny skills and try to make a build that synergyzes well with them rather than requiring the mesmer to have all the utility skills loaded.

I’ve been theorycrafting a lot with styles and builds and there’s one thing I can assure, mesmers allows you to do tons of things that benefits your zerg.
The problem is it requires a lot of skill, timing the shatters and our phantasms, placing correctly the reflecting skills, healing with 3s casting skills…
You can do other things rather than just dropping utilities, and this is the biggest problem of most zerg mesmers. “Cause I’m asked only for utilities, lets forget about everything else.”

About utilities, only glamours are good. Even more, only Null Field is a reliable utility that you use a lot. Feedback has lost its touch with this melee-train meta. And both Veil and Portal are extremely situational, you only use them if you’re asked for. Also, improving any utility does not grant us other useful things, like shouts on warriors/guards. That was the point of confusion glamour builds and anet destroyed it.
I wouldn’t say we shine on utilities based on 2/3 skills that are very situational and used very few times.

Then, there are two areas where we shine, or at least we have some potential. One is reflection, but by itself is weak, not much projectiles to reflect with this meta-game and the fact that only 1 mesmer is needed to do this job, cause it has no enemy cap.

The other is boon-ripping and lockdown, but how we’re designed, there’s not much to do in zergs.
Lockdown traits are inefficiently spread over 3 lines. There has not been any complaint about it, cause in duels, shatters are not that important and you can spend all points to get the most of lockdown traits. But in zergs, shatters become crucial, as their are the best way to deal damage and take credit of our lockdown traits.
We also lack of reliable aoe lockdown skills. Or they’re single target (Diversion, MoD), or they’re the after-effect of blocks and nearly impossible to throw (Counter spell and counter blade), or lockdown just comes randomly (Chaos storm and chaos armor).

PD: It is not true that we have less freedom. Ask for warriors/guards with no shouts. Ask for engis fulled with elixirs. Ask for neors without staff…
In exchange, you can bring a glamour confusion build, a mantra support build or a shatter build, totally different concepts, traits and gear. No matter what, if you have one place for veil/portal/null field, you will be welcome.

Actually if I was allowed I could link you 2-3 builds of war/guard in raids we use that doesn’t use shouts.
But hey, even if, the freedom we have is so kitten compared to other specs.

That is not freedom, cause they’re told to make that changes, and they are sticked to them. I was talking about more general stuff, not specific demands of raid-commanders, where everything can happen. Also, shouts are just 1-2 utilities, now try to change traits and gear, and see how Sacrx would take that new build xd.

Freedom happens when one, in a normal guild where you’re asked for common things, one day you bring a condi-glamour build, and the next day you bring a shatter one. Completely different gear and traits, even weapons. If in both you have space for veil, portal, Null Field or TW, nothing should happen.

And that’s the problem. We are ask only for 2-3 skills that can be put in any build, the rest is up to us.
I also want changes to be more reliable on zergs and have a more defined role.

Am I the only one who sort-of likes the spot we’re in, in regards to raids? I like that we’re not bound to specific traits and weapons for raid utility. I can do what I want to do, all they want of me if that I equip say, SoI and Feedback for Tequatl, or Feedback, Veil and Time Warp for WvW.

And I like that. I can do that.
I can also supply plenty ethereal fields, if I want to. But don’t have to. Or I could go melee. If I want to. Or ranged. If I want to. They don’t mind. I’m not a Guardian forced to run a staff to provide raid coverage.

I also enjoyed that we’re not bound to anything role, cause it let me try a lot of things. But after some months of playing in a dedicated guild, I need some sort of a defined role, which I can focus on, start improving my performance on it and stop searching how I can be more useful to my guild.

shatter imo is the most efficient build for a raid mesmer.

what we need is some sort of invulnerability for like 2s on newly created clones (not including phantasm) so we can shatter them. my clones just melt on aoe’s rendering them close to being useless.

@ carighan
It’s not about if we’re bound or not to a build, it’s if one of those builds are efficient enough to make mesmer viable in raids besides veil. As playing mesmer atm you can fairly say you are pretty much useless besides veil in raids.
Which is really stupid because we should be a lot more teamplay viable knowing mesmer is (or well… should be) a support class.

Yeah, the problem is not a lack of builds, is that none of our builds are good. And in my opinion having to use all your slots for the expected “mesmer skills” makes it even more difficult to come up with a decent build.

BlackDevil.9268:

@ carighan
It’s not about if we’re bound or not to a build, it’s if one of those builds are efficient enough to make mesmer viable in raids besides veil. As playing mesmer atm you can fairly say you are pretty much useless besides veil in raids.
Which is really stupid because we should be a lot more teamplay viable knowing mesmer is (or well… should be) a support class.

Lolwat? At least there is some more stuff that the Mesmer can do.

When you build for it, it still the best boonstripper there is which is hardly useless in raids. PU builds with perma-speed also rival Thieves for skirmishing and scouting – while the Thief still has the edge at specialities (ie stealth and evasion) the Mesmer is far, far more flexible and desirable to have in the raid. Portals pretty much define “support” – the ability to move your entire raid into keeps/up walls/hills/whatever. Lets not forget the best AoE reflections as well, though the effect of this has been somewhat lessened by the large number of melee and raids learning how to avoid it. All of this is a buttload of support skills on various builds. I dare say more than any other class can provide.

Its not like the other light armor “support” classes fair any better if you look at them with a critical eye. Necros are just there for their wells. Eles are there for their waterfields and meteor storm.

Yes, best boonstripper, i’ve been saying that to ppl for months now. The only kittenty thing is that you would need to go almost full tank and have at least 1 guardian in your group to propperly survive against 2x your numbers.

1v1 in a 30vs60 is just as useless as not playing at all. You dont support your raid at all and you can better roam somewhere else than trying to pick off 1 or 2 guys.

Portal isnt usefull in combat. We’re talking about incombat here, not siege mode.

Reflection damage is based on your own statts and traits, meaning the damage you reflect will be like really low. Sure you see a lot numbers popping up, but the downsides of it are:
1. Really low damage
2. Really spread damage, which is the worst thing you can do
3. A lot retal damage on yourself, giving yourself a really hard time staying alive.
4. Atm, all smart guilds barely use any projectiles. And if they do, its just spamming1 kittenty damage.
5. You would need to give up a lot to get reflects. For example you would need to swap null field for feedback, or respec to get focus reflect so you lose a big part in the shatter area.

Necro’s arent there ‘’just for wells’’. DS 4&5, fearwall, plague form. Necro is 1 of the best dpsing backline.

Eles aren’t ’’only’’ for waterfields either. But let’s say they are, then only that would be more important than what a mesmer is doing right now.

bOgz.7263:

shatter imo is the most efficient build for a raid mesmer.

what we need is some sort of invulnerability for like 2s on newly created clones (not including phantasm) so we can shatter them. my clones just melt on aoe’s rendering them close to being useless.

I have a hard time making shatter work in a ‘raid’ environment. For me, I’ll loosely define “raid” as any encounter of 20v20 or larger.

On my server, large groups are often pretty well organized. The main blob is surrounded by so much AoE support from the backline and melee-cleaves that only a fraction of my illusions reach their target. Interruptions are weak as well; there’s generally an abundance of Stability and daze offers enemies only a momentary chance to dodge or reposition rather than a true ‘lockdown’.

Trying to keep up with the frontline is a challenge for a mesmer as we have limited access to stability, one of our defensive moves (blurred frenzy) immobilizes, and our forward-movement skill (leap) is too buggy to be reliable. I generally only engage if I have full stability support from my team, blink ready, and enough illusions for a full Distortion. In a traditional sword-focused build, most of my time is spent sitting in the mid-line hoping to find a weak target and then hoping that my leap doesn’t bug out and they aren’t immune to its immobilize effect.

As for back-line support, we lack a lot of that too. Phantasmal Berserker, Chaos Storm, Null Field, Time Warp, and Feedback might be the only skills that I really value once in combat in a large battle. Veil is nice for the initial collision, Focus’s pull occasionally isn’t resisted, and sometimes my GS auto-attack hits a few targets for minor damage. It’s a very limited set of skills without too many reliable AoE options on our weapons.

Personally, I’d love to see shatter and phantasms re-balanced to work better in larger battles. Reduced damage from AoE or a trait that grants them stability/protection/quickness when commanded to shatter would go a long way towards keeping the class useful. Incorporating some of the necessary utilities (like blink and condi cleanse) into some weapons would free up the slot for a useful “selfish” utility like the Signet of Illusions.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah good luck finding a MMO playerbase which doesn’t revere 1v1 PvP. No matter how unsupported it is in the game they play. I doubt we’ll see much PvP balance aimed at WvW beyond fixing really big issues.
But have the tiniest imbalance in sPvP, and even then only in 1v1 situations which every smart PvP should always try to avoid, and all hell breaks loose on the forums.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they DO focus a lot more on balancing WvW from here on out, because I think they’re smart enough to know that if they don’t they could possibly lose a big part of that player base when ESO rolls out in a few months. We’ll see.

BlackDevil.9268:

Reflection damage is based on your own statts and traits, meaning the damage you reflect will be like really low. Sure you see a lot numbers popping up, but the downsides of it are:
1. Really low damage
2. Really spread damage, which is the worst thing you can do
3. A lot retal damage on yourself, giving yourself a really hard time staying alive.
4. Atm, all smart guilds barely use any projectiles. And if they do, its just spamming1 kittenty damage.
5. You would need to give up a lot to get reflects. For example you would need to swap null field for feedback, or respec to get focus reflect so you lose a big part in the shatter area.

Well yeah, that’s the flaws. Didnt say it was always a good thing, I prefer both boonshatter and PU hybrid nowadays. 30v60 with Vizunah and feedback did its job very good, against lower tier servers with more focused guilds… Not so much.

The only time I’ve downed someone with reflection has been when I’ve downed myself due to retaliation. It is only good for tagging and protecting your allies just a little bit.

Malakin.2809:

The only time I’ve downed someone with reflection has been when I’ve downed myself due to retaliation. It is only good for tagging and protecting your allies just a little bit.

Reflections doesnt give tags.