Guild Wars 2

At this point I feel pretty certain we are going to see nerfs, and honestly I do not like my class being at the top of the heap and drawing in “flavor of the month” players. There is something about playing mesmer that requires a little more of you to play well and I think that was lost somewhat this patch. At any rate, with all this QQ nerfs are coming I think, I just hope they aren’t over the top.

I’m kind of worried because the complaints are getting so insane: It started out about PU and CS, but I’ve seen people now talk about BD, our dmg in general, mantras passively recharging, Inspiration being OP and on and on, basically just looking to gut our whole class back to pre-patch non-functionality.

To me it’s obvious that our burst is not the problem. Our ability to one-shot has not changed since pre-patch out of proportion with other classes; shatter could always one-shot glass, and with the overall increase in dmg shatter can one-shot tankier classes. A nerf to our dmg would be a terrible balance decision and a huge over-nerf.

The culprits are CS and PU. The stun from CS is sweet, but everyone knows it just isn’t right combined with everything else. Everyone also knows that PU gives way too much stealth in addition to everything else.

CS should be changed to a flat and significant increase to daze duration, like 50-100%. That makes it a solid boost to our CC fitting the domination line, but also completely removes the complaints by players of getting gibbed during a stun; nobody complains about daze being OP and is taken seriously.

PU should be, well, I dunno, taken out back and shot? Honestly the supposed deal with PU is “mesmer’s aren’t supposed to get hit.” Ok, well how about instead of doubling stealth it doubles our invulnerability and evade duration? Now we aren’t getting hit as much, and people can’t cry about bursts from stealth. Or instead of boons in stealth, just have some kind of static pulse of defensive boons somehow. Those aren’t really good, just examples, all I’m saying is there are plenty of non-stealth mechanics to use for “not getting hit” and PU should just involve some combination of those other mechanics, not stealth.

If the stun from CS were gone and the stealth duration increase from PU were gone I think we would see the crying cut down by 90%, more importantly the Flavor of the month players would go somewhere else and mesmers could go back to quietly kicking kitten out of the spotlight.

“Nerfs” “Shaves” “Balancing”, sometimes its all in the words you use. Reasonable is reasonable, unreasonable is unreasonable, you just have to wait and see how things fall.

Obviously our damage is being targeted atm because you still have Rangers and thieves running zerker gear for straight damage. And when we go in for a burst(whether it’s from stealth or not) with the proper traits we have increased shatter damage PLUS the power creep anet added. So that to me isn’t a problem.
Like you said CS and PU are the biggest culprits. Although how to deal with it is were we differ.
CS should have a per target icd of 10 seconds. I think that would aliviate a lot of its problems.
PU on the other hand… Stealth is in the game. We have access to it might as well make it work for us. However, a flat 2-3 second increase and swapping might out for resistance would be a good fix for it. The reason for that is, while small, there is a chance for you to stack might especially if traited for it on shatter, etc and more might equals more damage either direct or condition. Removing it removes a portion of the potential damage PU gives.
The other thing is blinding dissipation. A lot of the QQ over it is that it can go through blocks and dodges. Well even through on clone death traits worked the same way for a long time I guess people like the thought something can be blocked so make it blockable.
There’s also a lot of QQ about our sustain but since we devote an entire trait line and another GM in a different line I find it unfounded. You trait for sustain you should get it.
That’s like Ele’s going into water and not picking up sustain traits.

Baseline IP gives shatters higher burst than they had before because they dont have to go into illusions at all while picking up damage modifiers and more on shatter traits.

You know what bothers me the most? Its not that mesmer is unreasonably more powerful after the patch, the class did need some buffs especially against thief what gets to me is that Anet appears to be purposefully shifting the status quo.

If you’ve been around since release you will remember that the top of the chain was Warriors and their out of control passive healing, followed by thief in WvW and PvE Engineer in PvP, now its mesmer, what will be next? to make matters worse Thief was nerfed considerably (or pushed into stealth spamming playstyle for viablity). This begs the question, how safe is our mains?

I primarily mained necro from release till october last year before going for an evade thief, was really excited about it put alot of effort into learning it in PvP then they kill it. Fortunately Revenant is looking like an alternative, but for how long? Say i start working on a high evasive, risk/reward revenant, will it get destroyed 6-7 months from now?

Mesmer is gaining all this popularity, more people no doubt are running it as a main but we all know it is going to get nerfed possibly destroyed and players will come back here and begin the whole “buff please!” and “suggestions” threads again and Anet would have probably given the title of top dog to another class.

If this power shifting keeps on going, and builds keep getting wrecked every other year, i can definitely see myself replacing this game with something else.

Why changing main? I did not choose mesmer for its efficiency but because I like the play style. If they nerf us to the ground, I’ll still play it because I enjoy it. I’ll just end up in lower tier PvP.

Silverkey.2078:

Why changing main? I did not choose mesmer for its efficiency but because I like the play style. If they nerf us to the ground, I’ll still play it because I enjoy it. I’ll just end up in lower tier PvP.

I picked evade thief because i liked the playstyle, since Anet is insistent on making necros fight in slow motion and still punishes the class for it, i switched. I also thought it didnt matter till i realized that part of what makes the playstyle fun is being effective with it even if it is difficult.

Just hope what ever nerf is coming to mesmer leaves the core of the playstyle intact instead of destroying it like they did with acrobatic thief, otherwise it wont take you long before you look for a replacement.

if they actually got serious about limiting stealth like making attacks reveal at the start of the cast instead of if it hits then problems like this can be avoided. Also, mesmer really shouldnt have near perm stealth with blocks, invulns, evasive attacks and clones at the same time then still be able to daze and stun every other second.