Guild Wars 2

Hello all,
I got a bit disheartened by all the constant nerfs happening with the mesmer and decided to drop the class about 2months ago. I’ve got a warrior casually to 80 since launch and have been trying to play it but there seems to be no reason to revisit old places as there is no end target to gear my warrior with acsended items and equivalent stuff again. I enjoy the powerful stuff but there really isn’t anything that provides a worthy challenge to warrant the effort and I’m not going to get my warrior to 30+ on fractals again… (if you can call it a challenge).

I’ve got over 700 hours on my mesmer and nice stuff, I just tried to start WvW again but just can’t get the motivation to play it. I was generally confusion spamming build in WvW then that was ruined. As for PvE I tried dungeons the other day with it and felt the same way, builds used back then are now outdated and been replaced with what looks to be sub par builds.

I’m sure it can’t be that bad and that I’m just negatively exaggerating it, can any of you help me gain some enthusiasm to start playing the mesmer again?

It comes down to what you want to play. Why not try out some of those “sub par” builds rather than assume the worst?

As for PvE I tried dungeons the other day with it and felt the same way, builds used back then are now outdated and been replaced with what looks to be sub par builds.

Anything besides glass cannon is subpar, what were you thinking was good back then?

Regarding the actual point though, the only reason for you to play mesmer is because you enjoy it, we’re a pretty weak class atm and the nerfs don’t seem to be letting up.

colesy.8490:

As for PvE I tried dungeons the other day with it and felt the same way, builds used back then are now outdated and been replaced with what looks to be sub par builds.

Anything besides glass cannon is subpar, what were you thinking was good back then?

Regarding the actual point though, the only reason for you to play mesmer is because you enjoy it, we’re a pretty weak class atm and the nerfs don’t seem to be letting up.

We haven’t gotten any nerfs for the past 3 patches. Instead, we’ve gotten buffs and bug fixes. Not sure what you’re on about.

@OP: Mesmers are still one of the most wanted/required classes in dungeons due to the utility and damage we bring.

We also have a tendency to survive every silly, half-baked nerf ANet tosses at us. We’re just not happy about it happening. Who would be?

We haven’t gotten any nerfs for the past 3 patches. Instead, we’ve gotten buffs and bug fixes. Not sure what you’re on about.

Nerfs followed by an interlude of a few irrelevant buffs and now speculation of a damage reduction for phantasms.

@OP: Mesmers are still one of the required classes

Nope.

utility

In most cases replaceable by a guard.

and damage we bring.

…even though we have poor DPS. The only major damage we bring is reflects, which again means we can be replaced by a guard.

The only reason mesmers are wanted is because the PUG meta hasn’t caught up with the experienced player meta, or for Arah.

Oh heavens. Even with the changes, we’re not a weak class at all. A bit situation specific, perhaps, but we always have been.

When I first got into the class, I would only run shatter specs and got pretty bored. (The confusion nerfs hit my build hard too.) So I branched out, got new gearsets and worked up new builds. I have four different builds that I make use of (zergball, roaming, dungeon, sPvP dueling) and they all handle very differently. It made things fun again, and a well-timed Mesmer is just as devastating as we’ve ever been.

colesy.8490:

As for PvE I tried dungeons the other day with it and felt the same way, builds used back then are now outdated and been replaced with what looks to be sub par builds.

Anything besides glass cannon is subpar, what were you thinking was good back then?

There’s a false statement if ever I saw one.

Name me one encounter where non-berserker is optimal.

colesy.8490:

Name me one encounter where non-berserker is optimal.

Optimal for what?

colesy.8490:

Name me one encounter where non-berserker is optimal.

Going alone into 15 veterans because everyone else is playing kittenty berserkers and cant handle them unless they got backup from at least 20 other players, so they stand around and try to stare the mobs to death?

I should make a youtube video of my invasion events solo charges, lol.

^Dawdler.

Those of us who make use of PTV, PPT or PCdT are tired of res’ing those of you who don’t. ;p

Wow, there’s a lot of negativity here. I play Mesmer first and foremost because I think it’s more fun than any other class. One of the things I love is that you don’t have to sacrifice a ton of damage for survivability. When you are constantly teleporting all over the place and turning invisible (and doing it well), only the most skilled players can even touch you. Constant motion makes any battle much more exciting and interesting. Also, imo whenever you find yourself against a bunch of the same person in PvP or WvW, you think something like “well kitten, now I have to figure out which is the real one.”

They’re still perfectly fine, nothing game breaking was done. now if DE received icd, phantasms damage decreased by 30%+ and Mind Wrack damage decreased by 30%+ then we’d have a story to talk about.

Do NOT give them ideas, Nuka.

Going alone into 15 veterans because everyone else is playing kittenty berserkers and cant handle them unless they got backup from at least 20 other players, so they stand around and try to stare the mobs to death?

That’s something called bad players, they would be just as useless in any other gear. Give me a dungeon fight where non-berserker is better.

^Dawdler.
Those of us who make use of PTV, PPT or PCdT are tired of res’ing those of you who don’t. ;p

And I’m tired of people using non-berserker thinking they’re actually contributing a lot in PvE.

Mesmers are still very good, you just have to adjust to the meta.

colesy.8490:

And I’m tired of people using non-berserker thinking they’re actually contributing a lot in PvE.

“Contributing” in what sense? “Optimal” in what sense?

It all depends on what you want out of PvE. For example, some people want it easy and quick (e.g. to get rewards quickly), some people like it tough and edgy (because doing it easy is a snooze-fest for them and they don’t care about rewards that much).

Your personal preferences are not absolutes.

You can’t ‘contribute’ while you’re lying on the ground because you got one-shotted… and I can’t contribute while I’m res’ing you. It doesn’t really bother me in PvE, but in WvW, being downed constantly is a HUGE encumbrance to your allies.

Mesmers are still very good, you just have to adjust to the meta.

nonexistent in PvP, veilbots in WvW and easily replaceable in many PvE instances. If PUGs kept up with the actual dungeon meta, they wouldn’t even be using mesmers in dungeons besides Arah and CoF p1 for the boulders.

“Contributing” in what sense? “Optimal” in what sense?

It all depends on what you want out of PvE. For example, some people want it easy and quick (e.g. to get rewards quickly), some people like it tough and edgy (because doing it easy is a snooze-fest for them and they don’t care about rewards that much).

Your personal preferences are not absolutes.

Contributing to your party finishing the instance, i.e. DPS. Mesmers have poor DPS compared to engineers, warriors, lightning hammer elementalists, guardians and … well pretty much every other class.

You can’t ‘contribute’ while you’re lying on the ground because you got one-shotted

No, bad players can’t contribute but gear is irrelevant in that case since they’re going to be faceplanting due to inability to press their dodge key (berserker scrubs) or they’re wearing bad gear (anything besides berserker) so they’re not doing much damage regardless of the fact that they may hit every single dodge in time.

It doesn’t really bother me in PvE, but in WvW, being downed constantly is a HUGE encumbrance to your allies.

Well it’s a good thing I only really have to camp on the sides or the rear then since dropping myself in a zerg is practically suicide unless we’ve routed the other server and they’re running away.

Glass cannon in a dungeon works for speed runs and rehearsed groups. It’s not a playstyle for everyone, however, as you need to know the dungeon mechanics very well and have a script of events to follow. One misstep and the whole house of cards comes crumbling down.

I love me some speed runs and I use glass cannon builds for them, but I also like to take a more casual pace too. I’m a WvWer at heart, but one day five of us WvWers decided we would go “exploring” in Arah P2. We were in there for four hours, and we had to request adult supervision at one point. But we we cleared it. I brought in a support build that day. To some, this approach to Arah sounds painful and a waste of time. But we had a great time, cheered each other on, took little breaks to grab more coffee and get back at it.

On the battlefield, I’m heartless and strive for surgical precision when I’ve got my commander pin up. But I’ve also got a carebear in me. Fortunately, Mesmer has builds viable for all walks of life.

It’s not so much that you have to be in a rehearsed group, it is literally learn 2 dodge, and then you will clear 100% of PvE content that doesn’t strictly require more than one player (say standing on platforms to open a door, or using computer screens like in CoE lasers). As a glass cannon, you evade the big hits and then just burst away. If you’re in full defensive gear, you’re still going to takea giant chunk of damage from a big hit so the DPS loss from running it is pointless, I mean Lupicus will like …3-shot you regardless of gear.

People not running optimal gear doesn’t bother me as long as:

1. They know the set they’re using isn’t optimal
2. They’re choosing to use their other gear set out of preference and their group is fine with it

When people try to claim a non-DPS build is good though, that’s irritating because it’s a flat out lie since even if your group is terrible, you will be supporting them more with DPS rather than weak heals which will just get one-shotted down to their original HP number anyway.

tl;dr everything is viable in PvE, only one stat combination (power/prec/crit) is actually good and if you’re not running shatter or phantasm your build is bad.

Again, PvE, I don’t argue about PvP because it’s not my strong point and I’d rather not have my posts smeared all over the wall by pyroatheist for being giant heaps of wrong.

Oh, healing others as a Mesmer is an exercise in futility. Nobody likes charging mantras that much :P

My dungeon build doesn’t fit either of your suggestions though. I run a mantra build. Still relies heavily on phantasms, but I skipped the Inspiration tree entirely. Also, I carry PVT armor for certain dungeon steps. It helps a lot in places similar to the end of CoF P2, Dredge Fractals, and Fire Shaman. Otherwise I’m too much of a liability in glass gear with that many spawns.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsaRl4zyoHSTiGa9IBqCYn0DVn6VX6BuztsB-jQyAYLBRKCAlBkKAl8KiGbhjIasNgqrxUuER1BBMK-e
(Note: Left the utility consumable blank for dungeon specific potions.)

Anyway, I keep prattling on because I agree with most of your points, but blanket statements can’t account for everything. There are no cookie cutter builds when it comes to Mesmer, and we limit our potential by thinking that way.

colesy.8490:

Again, PvE, I don’t argue about PvP because it’s not my strong point and I’d rather not have my posts smeared all over the wall by pyroatheist for being giant heaps of wrong.

I’m not that bad…..usually >_<.

Honestly, I think that your posts are regularly the most abrasive posts on these forums, and that doesn’t really make me tend to be happy. However, you’re also almost always correct. In the current state of PvE, there are extremely few situations in which the best choice of gear is not pure berserker for the skilled player. For less skilled players, more survivability can be nice.

Mesmers have strong PvP condition builds. However, mesmer condition builds are weak in PvE, and PvE conditions are bad anyway for multiple reasons.

Mesmers have very strong tanking/healing/supporting builds. However, this is unnecessary in almost all PvE content. Tanking and healing is unnecessary, and mesmer builds have enough built in support (boon share/projectile reflects/condition+boon removal can all be used without any modifications to dps) that building specifically for them is simply unnecessary.

This is not a reflection on mesmer builds, but a reflection on the PvE in this game. It is not a good situation, but it is the current reality.

PvP is an entirely different beast though, and WvW is even more different and varied as you can have solo roaming, kill groups, zerg combat, or anything else. While mesmers can most definitely still be used in PvP, the condition meta is currently very strong and difficult (though not impossible) to counter. In WvW, many builds are viable for doing different things, and all sorts of gear then become available for use.

My dungeon build doesn’t fit either of your suggestions though. I run a mantra build. Still relies heavily on phantasms, but I skipped the Inspiration tree entirely.

Are you aware of how powerful traited phantasmal warden and temporal curtain are? In a dungeon not only will it deal around 15k from its whirling defense, but it makes your party immune to ranged attacks for five seconds and free to burst the mobs you’re meleeing, plus you can then just shatter it for more AOE damage (warden cleaves up to 3 enemies I believe). Traited warden + curtain + traited feedback equals around 18 seconds of non-stop reflects which is great in uncategorised fractal against harpies and even the asura boss since it reflects the agony attack.

Also, I carry PVT armor for certain dungeon steps. It helps a lot in places similar to the end of CoF P2, Dredge Fractals, and Fire Shaman. Otherwise I’m too much of a liability in glass gear with that many spawns.

Why not use your dodge key?

As condescending as this sounds, if you run a dungeon once and carefully note the animations and types of attacks mobs do, next time, you know to reflect the projectile attacks, dodge the melee hits and your DPS won’t be compromised by weak gear. If you have problems wasting dodges, there’s the superior sigil of stamina, and if you have no dodges there’s blurred frenzy and distortion. It’s strange, I actually found myself a hell of a lot more survivable on my mesmer, the light armour class so as opposed to my guardian. Sure I had 10.8k HP on my guard, but there’s just that whole perception of “this character wears heavy armour and yet dies to the wind blowing too hard … and yet my mesmer in light t3 cultural can just eat hits because of the fatter HP pool”.

Anyway, I keep prattling on because I agree with most of your points, but blanket statements can’t account for everything. There are no cookie cutter builds when it comes to Mesmer, and we limit our potential by thinking that way.

Well there kind of is to be honest. For quite a few dungeons (I’m thinking CoF, CM, Fractals, SE, Arah, I’m probably missing some here), 20 points in inspiration for phantasmal warden traiting, letting you DPS uninterrupted while the mob/boss just sits there hitting themselves. You get some massive crits from reflecting mobs in CM, and I’m sure you’ve seen the Lupicus kills under 20 seconds where the mesmer(s) drop feedback and he basically kills himself so fast he doesn’t even enter his third phase. That’s feedback, but it shows how powerful reflects can be. Reflects were even disabled for Old Tom in uncategorised fractal because it trivialised the whole thing. Though in all fairness, beyond that you pretty much have free reign to do as you want. I just trait for sword, pistol and focus cooldown reductions, fury and longer/-X% CD on glamours and more illusion damage in domination which allows me hard hitting phantasms that I can replace faster. If it weren’t for having to throw points in inspiration for reflects I’d probably experiment with 10/30/0/5/25 so that I can get IC.

—

I’m not that bad…..usually >_<.

I’m a lot worse, as you can see.

Honestly, I think that your posts are regularly the most abrasive posts on these forums, and that doesn’t really make me tend to be happy.

It’s probably not fair for me to take it out on the mesmer forum since the forum isn’t full of braindeads like the other sections are, but when you get told “I play how I want” because players don’t want to hear what you’re saying, you get your gear choice mocked by scrubs using poor spelling (“leet” and “deeps” are normally words involved here) because they think they’re being funny and on top of that you repeatedly get reported (I have had 14 infractions the past two months) despite not reporting anyone else or even insultinganyone (ANet moderators like playing thought police rather than punishing actual offences) you tend to not bother with niceties unless somebody has actually proven they know what they’re talking about, for example you, who has shown time and again their competence with the mesmer class.

Everything below the section of your post I quoted I agree with besides more survivability being nice, but this is more personal preference – I think it’s better to go in the deep end full glass cannon (I did this myself) and adapting to survive since it just makes you a better player I feel. But again, personal preference. I think it’s fine if people gradually add more berserker gear as they get more comfortable too.

Helios.3598:

It comes down to what you want to play. Why not try out some of those “sub par” builds rather than assume the worst?

I appreciated the question – if you didn’t have a thing to add, why did you bother to answer the post???

atheria.2837:

Helios.3598:

It comes down to what you want to play. Why not try out some of those “sub par” builds rather than assume the worst?

I appreciated the question – if you didn’t have a thing to add, why did you bother to answer the post???

One could most certainly ask the same of you…and be a bit more topical to boot.

colesy.8490:

As condescending as this sounds, if you run a dungeon once and carefully note the animations and types of attacks mobs do, next time, you know to reflect the projectile attacks, dodge the melee hits and your DPS won’t be compromised by weak gear. If you have problems wasting dodges, there’s the superior sigil of stamina, and if you have no dodges there’s blurred frenzy and distortion.

Quite right.

But (going broader on the topic) stand back a bit from what you’ve just said – in what way is “knowing a dungeon” playing an RPG, or having a virtual adventure?

It’s not your fault, you’re just fitting in with what has been designed, and formally you are correct in what you say.

However, dungeons in my opinion OUGHT NOT to be “learnable”. It’s precisely the “learnable” quality of dungeons that creates the Zerker meta for dungeons. (It’s also responsible for the analogous syndrome of “damage is king” in pretty much all MMOs. That is to say, despite all the wonderful options devs give people, most MMO metas eventually default to the same.)

Of all the content in an MMORPG, dungeons ought to be be the most “living”. Why? In order to make them genuine adventures where a good reward is hard-won at the end. Under such cirumstances, the meta would then be more spread out amongst all the possibilities.

The tediousness of the Zerker meta – and the tediousness of dungeons in general, such that they are something you can “learn” and then do more or less mechanically – is entirely the fault of the game design.

I hope Anet do spread their philosophy of “living” content back into the micro-level of dungeon design. Then we will see more use for build and gear variety.

But (going broader on the topic) stand back a bit from what you’ve just said – in what way is “knowing a dungeon” playing an RPG, or having a virtual adventure?

This is such a broad topic that I don’t think it’s worth discussing since it’s just going to be us interpreting what an RPG or a virtual adventure is which is an effort in futility.

However, dungeons in my opinion OUGHT NOT to be “learnable”. It’s precisely the “learnable” quality of dungeons that creates the Zerker meta for dungeons. (It’s also responsible for the analogous syndrome of “damage is king” in pretty much all MMOs. That is to say, despite all the wonderful options devs give people, most MMO metas eventually default to the same.)

Why should they not be learnable? Competent players get rewarded for actually paying attention to encounters unlike 99.5% of the game community who just want to brain-afk every encounter, so they’re punished by having slower runs. I’m not claiming they’re masterpieces or anything (HOTW bosses are just pathetic HP sponges, if they had reasonable HP pools it probably would have been the second go-to dungeon pre-rewards change along with COF and COE would have been 3rd place instead), but they do reward good play.

Of all the content in an MMORPG, dungeons ought to be be the most “living”. Why? In order to make them genuine adventures where a good reward is hard-won at the end. Under such cirumstances, the meta would then be more spread out amongst all the possibilities.

There’s only so many times you play something for fun before you just start doing it for rewards. ANet made explorables farmable right from the get-go rather than wasting their time on content which everyone would skip anyway (I have dungeon master and farmed COF p1 and yet I only actually saw what was said in the cutscene pre-effigy when I watched a newbie playthrough a few days ago).

The tediousness of the Zerker meta – and the tediousness of dungeons in general, such that they are something you can “learn” and then do more or less mechanically – is entirely the fault of the game design.

Well that’s the thing, I don’t see it as a fault. Like I said above, players get rewarded with fast clears if they learn the encounters, people who want to shut their brain off will get rewarded with a long, tedious dungeon crawl and most likely will be taking long dirt naps.

I hope Anet do spread their philosophy of “living” content back into the micro-level of dungeon design. Then we will see more use for build and gear variety.

Step 1: ANet needs to recruit a dungeon team.
Step 2: Profit

This isn’t me being rude either, they don’t actually have a dungeon team.

And it doesn’t matter how they change dungeons, it’s going to be berserker or go home for as long as this game exists. Check Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat and the Gauntlet fights (no idea about Scarlet’s Playhouse), you can just zerk through the whole thing (in fact the one-shot mechanics of the Gauntlet encourage it), and this is ANet making more creative and interesting encounters. True, it works, the encounters are more interesting than the HOTW borefests which are quite possibly the most anti-fun encounters in the entire game, but they still reward zerking.

Again, I don’t see the problem with this, good players are rewarded, lazy players get “punished”.

colesy.8490:

Well that’s the thing, I don’t see it as a fault. Like I said above, players get rewarded with fast clears if they learn the encounters, people who want to shut their brain off will get rewarded with a long, tedious dungeon crawl and most likely will be taking long dirt naps.

It’s a fault because the structure doesn’t allow the various options in the game to be utilized. And whatever your precise definition of “RPG” may be, it must surely involve choices with consequences? And whatever your particular definition of “adventure” may be, it surely cannot include “doing the same thing the same way over and over again”?

I don’t disagree with what you are saying about rewarding players who pay attention and punishing players who don’t pay attantion players at all. That is how a dungeon ought to be.

But don’t you think the game ought to be designed so that all the options for armour and weapons HAVE SOME USE (responsive to the idea of choices with consequences that’s core to the concept of RPGs) in a situation where players ARE paying attention?

But it hardly ever so in MMORPGs. And that’s because designing static content which can be learned once is always going to be easier than designing content which changes up a bit every time you play it, so that EVERY time you play it you have to pay attention in the same way as you paid attention the first time you played it.

But don’t you think the game ought to be designed so that all the options for armour and weapons HAVE SOME USE (responsive to the idea of choices with consequences that’s core to the concept of RPGs) in a situation where players ARE paying attention?

No. The way I see it, once you become familiar with an encounter, if you want to reach your potential you use less and less defensive gear and more offensive gear until you’re capable of going full glass cannon. This makes defensive stats pointless for competent players, but lets bad ones experience the content because they now have more survivability. It’s the same in basically every RPG ever, you have gear that can give you defensive stats, but if you want to maximise your efficiency at clearing content and you can handle having less armour (or whatever the game’s equivalent to armour is) and HP you’ll always run the gear which maximises your damage.

The only thing I disagree with is condition builds being poor in PvE due to stupid mob HP pools, condition cap, being unable to take advantage of vulnerability and being worse than useless against the final boss of dredge fractal (condition damage doesn’t scale when the boss is superheated). All they’d have to do there though is scale up condition damage in PvE (plus probably a bunch of other stuff I can’t think of off the top of my head).

It’s a fault because the structure doesn’t allow the various options in the game to be utilized. And whatever your precise definition of “RPG” may be, it must surely involve choices with consequences? And whatever your particular definition of “adventure” may be, it surely cannot include “doing the same thing the same way over and over again”?

Well I barely consider GW2 an RPG anyway.

But it hardly ever so in MMORPGs. And that’s because designing static content which can be learned once is always going to be easier than designing content which changes up a bit every time you play it, so that EVERY time you play it you have to pay attention in the same way as you paid attention the first time you played it.

Static content is easier and cheaper, that’s why it’s done, plus I think it lets you give it more identity rather than making dungeons just full of RNG which just makes it feel computerised.

And if you make players have to pay attention more you’re just going to get (even more) QQing bads who want the rewards at the end for free.

For the record, I don’t actually call players bad as an insult, I use it purely to describe their skill level (or lack of). Whether people take offence to it … well.

colesy.8490:

And if you make players have to pay attention more you’re just going to get (even more) QQing bads who want the rewards at the end for free.

Yeah but screw them, they shouldn’t be playing dungeons. The way I see it, dungeon content should be the content niche in MMORPGs that’s for really good players, to challenge them – and not just the first time they do it, but always, every time. That’s why the rewards should be high.

Doing a “learned” dungeon seems to me to be the acme of tedium. I’d rather have something fresh each time and have to work through it slowly, as an adventure, with a bunch of people who are concentrating, bantering, etc., like virtual comrades, rather than grimly getting on with it like ships that pass in the night (which is what it often gets to be).

That’s usually what it’s like first time with a dungeon with a bunch of people who have never done it before, and that’s where (as I see it) one is immersed in a virtual world, rather than putting another tick in a box.