Guild Wars 2

To start, this is not a rage topic, however, if this game is to become the fun and competitive playground that GW1 was/is, these discussions need to happen.

After playing quite a bit of sPvP, I’m finding that there is a general consensus that Mesmers are simply too good at the moment. Between conditions from staff and a phantasm or two with sword/pistol, their damage output becomes absurdly high. It isn’t burst damage, but once everything gets rolling, their opponent is forced to blow several cooldowns in order to survive.

So the answer should be this: hit the Mesmer with heavy burst damage before their damage gets rolling. However, this is simply not possible. They have nearly endless defensive cooldowns on weapon skills and slotted skills. Nearly everything they have causes detargeting or targeting of a clone, and even something as simple as a dodge creates yet another clone if the Mesmer is traited for it. In a worst case scenario, Mesmers have Moa Morph, the undisputed best Elite skill in the game for a PvP situation.

I decided to give Mesmers a bit of a try yesterday and today, and I’m finding that no one beats me in a duel. In bigger fights, I get my damage rolling, then simply stealth/run away behind a rock or a wall while my phantasms and conditions do plenty of damage.

In short, there is a very clear cut issue. Mesmers have more useful defensive cooldowns than most/all other classes and do more (and more reliable) damage than any other class, short of a Warrior allowed to use 100B on someone or a Thief allowed to repeatedly Pistolwhip someone. Mesmers need to be given a role. Either they deal heavy sustained damage when left to their designs, or they confuse and disorient the enemy team, causing fights to go poorly. By aNet’s pre-release talks, I’m assuming Mesmers are supposed to be the latter, since Necromancers and Rangers already fill the role of high sustained damage.

Please try to keep this topic free of downright flaming. It’s understandable if someone has disagreements, but there is a general consensus among many players that this is indeed an issue. If you see a fatal flaw in the thought process, please point it out. Ideas for specific skill changes are great too.

TL;DR: See title.

You’re over-rating the Mesmer’s damage output capabilities, and assuming your team is incompetent at adapting to the Mesmer’s capabilities.

You also overrate Moa, which is kind of funny.

You mention Hundred Blades. HB is a good case study.

1. Legions of noobs get rolled by HB.
2. The average player eventually learns to counter HB.
3. HB is no longer “overpowered”.

Mesmer phantasm army isn’t as counterable as HB. It’s also not as potent as HB.

One of these days, players will figure out how to AOE and dodge phantasms (your Pistol reference is particularly hilarious, since the iDuelist attack is streaming, and with the blatant sound effect the game basically screams at you: “DODGE NOW”).

Mesmers have a potent combination of offense and defense, and may or may not be overpowered, but your case here is severely flawed and mostly whine.

[…]
I decided to give Mesmers a bit of a try yesterday and today, and I’m finding that no one beats me in a duel. In bigger fights, I get my damage rolling, then simply stealth/run away behind a rock or a wall while my phantasms and conditions do plenty of damage.
[…]

…Is this supposed to be something like the opponent not being willing to run out of a Feedback area? Finding it hard to believe that someone is just standing there and not either

1) Retreating because they can’t use abilities.
2) Attacking you back.

EasymodeX.4062:

You’re over-rating the Mesmer’s damage output capabilities, and assuming your team is incompetent at adapting to the Mesmer’s capabilities.

You also overrate Moa, which is kind of funny.

You mention Hundred Blades. HB is a good case study.

1. Legions of noobs get rolled by HB.
2. The average player eventually learns to counter HB.
3. HB is no longer “overpowered”.

Mesmer phantasm army isn’t as counterable as HB. It’s also not as potent as HB.

One of these days, players will figure out how to AOE and dodge phantasms (your Pistol reference is particularly hilarious, since the iDuelist attack is streaming, and with the blatant sound effect the game basically screams at you: “DODGE NOW”).

Mesmers have a potent combination of offense and defense, and may or may not be overpowered, but your case here is severely flawed and mostly whine.

I pointed out HB because of how one-trick-pony it tends to be. It’s nearly impossible to get off the full skill one someone with any knowledge of warriors. Mesmers, however, do lots of damage with conditions and phantasms. Sure, I can dodge the bullets from the phantasm, but it isn’t stopping the conditions from ripping me to shreds or the confusion on me making my casting (which is very frequent, as I’m an Elementalist) take chunks out of my health. Mesmers have damage coming from a lot of sources, and that makes it nearly unavoidable. These mechanics are fine, but a slight toning-down of the numbers would put them in a good place.

Sure, I can dodge the bullets from the phantasm, but it isn’t stopping the conditions from ripping me to shreds or the confusion on me making my casting

A Mesmer with strong phantasms does not have significantly strong confusion. At best, they can get a decent stack on you once in awhile. Wtb condition removal.

Also, you’re still not farting in the general direction of the phantasms (you are an Elementalist with AOEs HUR HUR) and erasing them. Instead, you’re trying to make excuses by tanking the phantasm damage of a phantasm spec.

There is a learning curve. For Hundred Blades, the learning curve is Bull’s Rush and how to deal with it.

For Mesmers, the learning curve is phantasms. They are ridiculously easy to kill with any attention. If you cannot kill them with low alternative costs (e.g. automatic/semi-passive/easily spammable AOEs while moving), you should re-think your playstyle or accept the fact that your build is weak to a Mesmer phantasm build.

When a Mesmer summons an iDuelist on me, I dodge the volley and throw a 5 second cooldown multi-target bouncing attack at the iDuelist. The phantasm dies. My attack bounces for additional damage, usually wiping most clones or doing damage to the Mesmer.

Easy.

Unlike Ranger or Necro pets, Mesmer phantasms are not durable. Therefore, you treat them differently. Get used to it.

Is it just me, or does everyone that comes here to complain play an Elementalist?

Pack condition removal, focus phantasms.

I really wish Arena Net would forbid people from creating threads intended to spread misinformation regarding class mechanics and their alleged power. Constructive criticism is often used to thinly veil a lack of knowledge or competence regarding the game itself. A shame, I do hope this game doesn’t end up falling into the trap of changing class mechanics and abilities on a patch to patch basis so the vocal portion of the community can be appeased.

With the (2?) ways mesmers can increase the health of their phantasms, do they still go down when someone looks at them?

The Signet (+50%) is horrible. Not only does it take about 5 seconds to apply to the phantasm after the phantasm spawns, it uses a utility slot for that purpose alone.

The other (+20%) is a trait. Tbh, +20% is not much, rofl.

If the Mesmer in question gets both of those, then they are balls-deep phantasm army, and they have jack kitten for utility or survivability past that (compared to other Mesmer builds).

Sounds like best case scenario .. the phantasm takes 2 hits to die instead of 1. Which doesn’t bode well for OP’s complaint..

1 GS Guardian AOE spin, in a hybrid or tanky build (e.g. they at least have +5xx power on amulet), can typically wipe most if not all of a Mesmer’s clones + phantasms in one go.

Thing is, most players in sPvP lean towards single target builds (I MEAN HELL, LOOK AT ALL THE PISTOL MESMERS). Mesmers, particularly phantasm army types, are more vulnerable to AOEs than most classes.

…An Elementalist, who gets Signet of Water (which removes a condition every 10 seconds as a PASSIVE effect) and an AE heal that also cures conditions every 3 seconds, is complaining about being affected by conditions? :/

I would very much dislike to get my already so/so PvE further nerfed (or my quite ok WvW nerfed) just because some people insist 5v5 should be more important.

Overall change which ends up nerfing sPvP while buffing PvE and leaving WvW alone? Fine.
Straight up nerf? Get out.

I play other classes aside from Elementalist. Elementalist is just my favored class at the moment. I’ve yet to find a solid build with any class that can duel a mesmer and win with relative (to other classes) ease. When I do win, it’s a long and drawn out duel, and if Moa is used, I may as well just hang up my hat and let myself lose so I can go be useful elsewhere and not waste so much time.

Perhaps this topic comes across as having more venom than I meant for it to have, but I ask all of you Mesmers to step back a second and honestly ask if you’re a notch or two above most classes. My two Mesmer buddies acknowledge that they simply have too many options (with their builds) for survival and still dish out plenty of damage. They play builds that are nearly as good at bunkering as a tanky Guardian, but can kill things far quicker.

Somna: Signets are generally a complete waste on the skill bar when things like Mist Form are necessary to simply survive, and we have to take an arcane skill or two for our damage to be on par with anyone else. There are generally better options for support-based builds as well.

Carighan.6758:

I would very much dislike to get my already so/so PvE further nerfed (or my quite ok WvW nerfed) just because some people insist 5v5 should be more important.

Overall change which ends up nerfing sPvP while buffing PvE and leaving WvW alone? Fine.
Straight up nerf? Get out.

GW1 was balanced seperately for PvP and PvE. Skills sometimes didn’t even function the same way between the two modes. There’s no reason they can’t/won’t do the same for GW2.

Zetta, I am not going to openly agree or disagree with you on this. I would like to point out that you dueling as a Mesmer will reflect the knowledge you have gained from your many other classes. This would result in a byproduct of you knowing your opponents abilities, and what skills that opponent would have trouble dealing with.

As a general rule, people who play/have played many classes tend to be much better at picking up a class and stomping other people.

I don’t think you’ll see any nerfs to Mesmers until the current bugs are fixed. Then the developers will be in a better place to make appropriate changes to the class.

zetta for the record I play a mesmer in spvp and I totally agree with you on almost every point you make but you won’t find any love here, players will just find any argument to keep the status quo

I’ll say this, I haven’t lost a 1 on 1 fight as a Mesmer in PvP. WvW or sPvP. Even if I’m fighting two people, I can use Moa bird on one and kill/down the other before I die(might even survive!).

Though if you put me up against 3 mobs in PvE, I’m having to pull out all the l33t skills to do a little below a guardian’s or warrior’s damage. As a guardian with GS, I cleared through 10 mobs like nothing. As a Mesmer, that would be suicidal.

If they could nerf sPvP a tad while buffing PvE, I’d be a content Mesmer.

McKnighter.6472:

I’ll say this, I haven’t lost a 1 on 1 fight as a Mesmer in PvP. WvW or sPvP. Even if I’m fighting two people, I can use Moa bird on one and kill/down the other before I die(might even survive!).

Though if you put me up against 3 mobs in PvE, I’m having to pull out all the l33t skills to do a little below a guardian’s or warrior’s damage. As a guardian with GS, I cleared through 10 mobs like nothing. As a Mesmer, that would be suicidal.

If they could nerf sPvP a tad while buffing PvE, I’d be a content Mesmer.

This is exactly why the separation of balance (between PvP and PvE) needs to be put in place.

all of the op points would be valid if mesmers didn’t give up so much in pve for this pvp prowess

any nerfs to their pvp ability will make them even worse in pve

Dixa.6017:

all of the op points would be valid if mesmers didn’t give up so much in pve for this pvp prowess

any nerfs to their pvp ability will make them even worse in pve

I suppose I should have been more clear in the title. >.< My bad.

I’m pretty sure Anet has stated that they aren’t going to separately balance PvE and PvP, and I for one am glad. If you have to separately balance one single skill for two different situations, that skill is inherently not balanced. That’s a flaw of the skill, and it also makes it harder to get into the game, and it also creates an even bigger disparity between PvPers and PvEers.

That being said, I think you made a few good points, and a few bad points. I’ll start with the bad so we can end on a happy note.

Moa is not nearly as powerful as people think it is. A good comparison is with 100B. 100B is deadly and can potentially kill you in one simple combo. (Moa Morph can’t even kill you directly, it just gives you a different skill bar) Once you learn how to avoid 100B, or watch for the swirly yellow lines of Frenzy, the skill becomes much less dangerous. Moa Morph is similar in that it is fairly easy to avoid. Difference is, Moa has a MUCH longer CD. Also, after being Moa Morphed you still have every capability to run away, which for some reason, most of the people don’t do?

As someone else already stated, Mesmers honestly cannot spec for respectable condition damage and power. Within a few hits, you should be able to decipher which one they are more into, and react accordingly. If they’re specced for power, get rid of those phantasms as soon as possible, as they’ll be doing the most damage by far. If they’re condition, smartly use condition removal to get rid of your conditions, but only once they reach high amounts of stacks.

Mesmers can rarely, if ever, compare damage to other classes. My boyfriend is a warrior and I can honestly say that his simplest auto attacking does potentially more than most anything I can do short of him standing inside three Phantasmal Warden bubbles. We can amount to some sort of sad burst with a phantasm or two, blurred frenzy, shattering the illusions, and mantra of pain, but all that work will probably still amount to less damage than what a Pistol Whipping thief can get from one round of haste. This leads me to the happy agreement notes.

Yes, we have a lot of defensive abilities. But that’s because our fights are a battle of attrition. Like I stated above, we can’t really burst anything down besides perhaps a glass cannon clothie. I typically play a full support healer in other MMOs, and the Mesmer (oddly) fights like that. We don’t do amazing damage unless we can perfectly manipulate what’s going on. We survive until the other person dies.

Yes, Mesmers are very powerful in 1v1, but I think there are two reasons for this:
1) We’re frustrating to fight, by design. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of our clones and phantasms, and we can summon more pretty easily and quickly, and some of us even spec so that if you do destroy our shinies it’ll give you condtions like cripple or confusion. Now this doesn’t necessarily make us overpowered. It just makes us annoying. But that’s the design of the class. We’re meant to be the masters of mirage and annoyance. In group fights that aspect is hardly noticeable, but in 1v1, it shines. That part won’t change. It’s the focus of the Mesmer. We annoy you. We hex you. We deal pretty good sustained damage. You can’t take that away and still call the class a Mesmer.
2) We are versatile. This means that anyone fighting us has to know a lot of bulk knowledge to make sure that they can counter our stuff. Not only do they need to understand their own skills and their own rotations, but they have to know ours as well, and we have a lot of very unique and crazy skills.

Well that’s my wall of text. Hope it adds something to the discussion.

while i don’t always agree with easymode, what he’s posted in this thread is spot on.

moa op? if you are having trouble dodging/interrupting/LOSing moa, that’s your lack of skill, build choice, or team support.

phantasms op? if you are having trouble focusing phantasms for 1-2 seconds against mesmers with phantasms builds, once again, that’s on you.

there is practically nothing a mesmer can do that you can’t evade with proper timing and/or use of your profession’s abilities, especially with good team support behind you. most of their abilities are decently telegraphed if you’re actually watching the mesmer amongst it’s clones. i still believe the majority of the community is confused about how to counter mesmers, and that’s the main reason why they seem OP to some people, even those of us who are playing them.

also, most things mesmers do is at the expense of something else. if we want to burst, then we sacrifice potential survivability. if we want to survive, we sacrifice potential damage. doing either of these simultaneously isn’t sustainable, so usually it’s one or the other for short periods of time, and both of these usually require proper timing, cd management, and setting up the right situation. it doesn’t just happen because i hit this or that button all willy-nilly… it’s planned and executed with precision (aka skill).

But … but … the Mesmer is (at recent official count in one of John Smith’s posts a couple of weeks ago IIRC) one of the two least-played classes in GW2, along with Engineer.

How about that for a “general consensus”?

everyone here obviously plays a mesmer. You’re not going to get a positive response even though what you say is generally true. People that say its about skill and timing are right. You can beat a mesmer with timing. They fail to realize that you can do it with any other class as well. The mesmer just has more options in general. Dont even deny. if you dont agree you are just a terrible blind player.

Derek.9254:

You can beat a mesmer with timing. They fail to realize that you can do it with any other class as well.

So what’s the problem then?

Also, I’d venture to suggest that nobody who’s even semi- “serious” about their GW2 PvP plays only one class. Getting good at PvP is all about knowing the classes and what they can and cannot do from the inside.

So if people say “Mesmer is fine, just a few tweaks”, it may be because they have a sense of all the classes, not because they “favour” their particular class.

gurugeorge.9857:

So if people say “Mesmer is fine, just a few tweaks”, it may be because they have a sense of all the classes, not because they “favour” their particular class.

I would tend to agree on a statement like this, if they were not solely focused on sPvP. Try getting the same amount of badges in RvR or farm Orr the same way another class can.

So these tweaks I see all the time is focused on sPvP and the skills are very very good in sPvP, but to call balance and nerf and tweaks around one aspect of the game is starting to bug me.

If the people are wanting “tweaks” I want something that will be good in RvR too, an not a chocolate fireguard either.

Let’s look at mesmers shall we:

We can have a total of 3 illusions up, in 1 vs 1, this means 1 person takes all of them on. What happens in 3 vs 3? With aoe’s flying around, my phantasms get 1 attack before they die, i have access to 2 and they’re on a 16 second cd. This means that my phantasms get 1 attack each every 16 seconds; in the meantime i use illusions which do squat, defensively, to stay alive.

Mesmers are very powerful duelists by their design, nerf our damage and we become complete crap in anything other than 1 vs 1. This is why we suck in PvE, we don’t scale up with number of enemies, our cap is 1 vs 1, as soon as more than 1 enemy is in the fight, we becomes less and less effective. We can take advantage of gullible AI in pve to clump enemies together into phantasm aoe, but phantasms die quickly.

I make a choice on who i want to hit and i have to live with that choice for 16 seconds, if i spawn my phantasms on “x” and he retreats into an aoe and my phantasms die then “y” comes along, i’m sitting there with my d..staff in my hand, blowing defensive cooldowns, once those are blown i will die. I can’t tell my phantasms to go after someone else or avoid them blindly running into an aoe. Once i set them on someone, they either die or kill. I’ve had smart groups make me feel worthless, maybe try playing as a team and don’t use a pug for setting the bar.

1 vs 1 mesmer vs ele, mesmer will win.

3 mesmers vs 3 elementalists. If mesmers win, ele’s need to find a new game to play.

Think about it.

In 1 vs 1: mesmers have a set-up time before damage starts to roll. I’ve had classes take me down to 50% in that setup time as i can either set-up or defend. I won’t tell u how to beat me, but i have had smart thiefs, rangers and warriors beat me 1 vs 1 by taking advantage of my weaknesses.

Yes, i do win 90% of 1 vs 1. Do i manage the same in team play? Helllll no. Not even close.

Problem with Mesmers, they have all the best utilities from multiple classes on shorter cool downs and in better forms.

Feedback > Wall of Reflection
Blink > Lightning Flash
Decoy > Thief Stealths
Arcane Thievery > Plague Signet + Corrupt Boon
Null Field > Well of Power/Corruption/Purging Flames
Temporal Curtain > Binding Blade
Time Warp > All Quickness (it’s elite yea i guess)
Chaos Armor > All other forms of Protection (Can be used twice, Phase Retreat into Chaos Storm)

Seeing the trend here? Their damage and mobility aside (which is heaps better than most), they pack all the good stuff on much much lower cool downs, and they get all of it to pick from.

Lumines.3916:

Problem with Mesmers, they have all the best utilities from multiple classes on shorter cool downs and in better forms.

Feedback > Wall of Reflection
Blink > Lightning Flash
Decoy > Thief Stealths
Arcane Thievery > Plague Signet + Corrupt Boon
Null Field > Well of Power/Corruption/Purging Flames
Temporal Curtain > Binding Blade
Time Warp > All Quickness (it’s elite yea i guess)
Chaos Armor > All other forms of Protection (Can be used twice, Phase Retreat into Chaos Storm)

Seeing the trend here? Their damage and mobility aside (which is heaps better than most), they pack all the good stuff on much much lower cool downs, and they get all of it to pick from.

Not even close to accurate.

-Wall of Reflection lasts almost twice as long as Feedback, and defends a larger area for the same cooldown.
-Arcane Thievery caps at 3 buffs/debuffs, Corrupt Boon hits them ALL and has a longer range.
-Decoy is a straight up 4s single target stealth, compared to Thief’s which are all at least 5s and heal/gives regen/removes conditions/aoe blinds/aoe stealths.
-Null field lasts 3s (not 7 as tooltip says) and only removes conditions(or buffs from enemy), whereas Well of Power lasts longer, removes conditions and gives YOU boons.
-Binding Blade can pull anywhere since it brings to the guardian, whereas Temporal Curtain can only push targets in a single direction once the field is down (ie: completely avoidable if you see it dropped).

I mean, really? Those comparisons aren’t even close. I hope that was an awful troll attempt. People have problems with Mesmers because clones are annoying, Moa is the best 1v1 elite in the game, and portal can blind side you if youre not prepared for it. That’s it.

You can’t say I’m trolling when you’re trying to convince me Well of Power is better than Null Field.

I’ve been playing a conditionmancer for the longest time and switched to Mesmers in tPvP because they’re better in every way.

Feedback forces them to eat it right then and there or they better move out. They can choose not to shoot at the area Wall of Reflection is. This is why Feedback blows up siege right away in WvW and Wall is only useful for bridges and other choke points.

Arcane Thievery may be capped, but it is both a defensive and an offensive cool down meaning it’s more flexible and has more usage in different situations.

Decoy doubles as a stun break, with an impressively low CD at that. Like all other Mesmer skills, it’s both offensive and defensive at the same time, not everyone’s utilities can match that. Another illusion means another source to stack bleeds from, if they choose to pop it, they’re handing you a precious second in an engagement while dumping yet another condition on them.

Well of Power along with all other Necromancer wells pulses once per second over 5 seconds. It only washes off one per second meaning you also must stay it in longer with multiple conditions thus becoming AoE bait. Null Field strips both boons/conditions instantly the moment it comes out, how can you even argue this? It’s ground target by default and is on a 45s CD. Necromancers have to heavily trait for Wells (20 pts in Curses, 20 in Blood Magic) to even slightly compare.

It’s true Guardians have more flexibility when it comes to when they want to pull, however they can still only use Binding blade to peel for others, not themselves. Mesmers can do both with Temporal Curtain so yea, functionally it IS better.

I know how Mesmers work, I theorycrafted them with my guildie who plays one as his main, I also have extensive first hand experience with one. You are kidding yourself if you do not see how Mesmers easily outclass others in utility. Point being, the Mesmer’s iteration of all these utilities are more flexible and less one dimensional than its counterparts. If you can’t see that well..

Can you please theorycraft me how does mesmers have more mobility then perma 25% bonus thieves get, plus infiltrators arrow/rangers with perma swiftness? Or how we do more damage then haste PW spam? You could even ask your friend to help you out preparing the raw data to prove your claims.

Never once did I claim Mesmers have better mobility than thieves, nor did I say they did more burst than them. Relative to most other professions though, they do have many ways to distance themselves and have really high sustain once the ball gets rolling. When Phase Retreat works properly + Blink, you can cover quite a bit. Stealth is always a good way to displace yourself too.

Also, just because you may not have the huge passive movespeed thieves or rangers have does not mean you don’t have presence on the map. Portal is actually really useful on Foefire and not only Kyhlo. You can use it to quickly snap back to Quarry/Waterfall (depending on team) from the keep gate. When the point is clear, you’re free to wear down the gate to the keep lord while instantly being able to port back and defend.

I never stated that Mesmers are the perfect roaming profession in tPvP, all I did was list out my reasons as to why it pack the best utilities. You however are going off on a completely different tangent and seem to want your Mesmer to be more thief than caster. Damage was far from the focus of my original post. The intrigue is the Mesmer’s greatest weapon, and theirs far outshines other classes (perhaps a bit much) for a tPvP environment.

Lumines.3916:

Seeing the trend here? Their damage and mobility aside (which is heaps better than most), they pack all the good stuff on much much lower cool downs, and they get all of it to pick from.

Obviously not… Must by my bad English then.

No, you are for some odd reason trying to say mesmers are the end—of-all profession, which they are not.

If anything is true from what you are saying about mesmers utilities – its the fact that on two most viable builds (atm) we are more free to choose our utilities then other professions – because there is very little synergy we can get between utilities and weapon sets/traits. And that is not a good thing.

In other words:

1. We have a ton of illogical traits, bugs, broken or outdated design ideas, and our traits are very randomly sorted (we don’t have proper “Themes” to our lines, or rather themes aren’t truly developed, compare Guardian or Elementalist or Ranger, and for one having similar troubles compare some traits of the Engineer).
2. OTOH, we are extremely powerful due to a handful of abilities, namely Time Warp, Feedback, Null Field and Into the Troll Void.

How on earth are people considering mesmers have amazing mobility? We have some of the worst mobility out of every single profession. Our mobility is Blink, Decoy, Phase Retreat or Swiftness obtained from Temporal Curtain. All of these have such long cooldowns, short ranges or short durations.

Beacuse portal – which does grant amazing options – seems not to have cooldown

Ofc not! It’s constantly up, all over the map! :P

After playing a little bit more Mesmer, I’m seeing the issue that certain aspects of the class are almost useless without being traited for, so Mesmers end up pigeonholed to one or two (powerful) types of damage. Outsiders looking in often see the Mesmer as a difficult-to-play class with a lot of options, but this ends up being untrue.

As an example, an Illusion-based mesmer will have no reason to shatter his Illusions for more damage, and a shatter-based mesmer wants to set up a nice shatter as soon as possible.

Perhaps a nice solution would be to make these options more attractive to players even if they aren’t traited for it. Give me a reason to shatter my illusions when they get low. As it stands, hoping it gets off one more (very damaging) attack is generally a much better option.

In short, Mesmers should be working off of several options/mechanics, not just one or two very useful ones they are traited for while they grab all their slotted skills for potent defensive cooldowns.

Outsiders looking in often see the Mesmer as a difficult-to-play class with a lot of options, but this ends up being untrue.

Or, when you get even more proficient with the Mesmer class, you start seeing more of the options that are actually there.

Off the top of my head, viable builds include:

- Mantra 30/30 burst
- Shatter power
- Shatter hybrid
- Shatter support
- Clone spam/expire Staff
- Phantasm army
- Bunker army
- Glamour star
- Power no SI general (Phantasm/shatter/direct)

There’s probably more that don’t come to mind. Probably several support builds, since I don’t really do support.

Heal Support seems to be working well, with Mantra of Pain and that Inspiration 20 trait that AE heals.

Just need Cleric’s gear to really try it out though.

I didn’t mean build options. I mean that in each of these builds, there tends to be one or two mechanics that you rely on while the rest are rendered near-useless. If there is an awesome build out there that uses everything, then let me know I’m wrong, but I’ve yet to see one.

Also, specialization is important, but every mechanic should be an option, no matter what build you are using, especially for a class intended to have a high skill-cap like the Mesmer.

Sorry, did you say Necromancers fill the role of high sustained damage? This may have been the intended design, but it certainly is not the case currently

Levian.6742:

Sorry, did you say Necromancers fill the role of high sustained damage? This may have been the intended design, but it certainly is not the case currently

This is completely my point. Mesmers are THE condition class to play. Necromancers are inherintly tankier, but their defensive cooldowns aren’t nearly as useful. Also good luck to any Necromancer doing anywhere near the damage a Mesmer can pump out.

Comparing Necromancers to anybody right now is a bit silly. Pretty much every class does almost everything better than a Necro. Burst damage, condition damage, survivability and support, Necro’s rank dead last or close to last in just about every category.

At the moment the only thing a Necromancer excels at is tagging mobs in certain DE’s, but even then a Turret Engineer often does that better.

Yes, Mesmers are better in a lot of ways than Necro’s. But this isn’t because Mesmers are particularly overpowered but because Necro’s are dreadfully broken, and so far ANet’s only response has been, “Master Death Shroud.”

if the signet that increased illusion health actually worked on phantasms at all, and clones reliably perhaps phantasms would not die immediately

also noticed that neither iduelist or iwarlock will work at 1200. sure, you can create them, but then they walk up to just short of 900 to attack. lets just say i was extremely KITTEN playing with stomp-spamming Kol yesterday.

yet the clones generated by staff stay at max range.

Zetta.5102:

To start, this is not a rage topic, however, if this game is to become the fun and competitive playground that GW1 was/is, these discussions need to happen.

After playing quite a bit of sPvP, I’m finding that there is a general consensus that Mesmers are simply too good at the moment. Between conditions from staff and a phantasm or two with sword/pistol, their damage output becomes absurdly high. It isn’t burst damage, but once everything gets rolling, their opponent is forced to blow several cooldowns in order to survive.

So the answer should be this: hit the Mesmer with heavy burst damage before their damage gets rolling. However, this is simply not possible. They have nearly endless defensive cooldowns on weapon skills and slotted skills. Nearly everything they have causes detargeting or targeting of a clone, and even something as simple as a dodge creates yet another clone if the Mesmer is traited for it. In a worst case scenario, Mesmers have Moa Morph, the undisputed best Elite skill in the game for a PvP situation.

I decided to give Mesmers a bit of a try yesterday and today, and I’m finding that no one beats me in a duel. In bigger fights, I get my damage rolling, then simply stealth/run away behind a rock or a wall while my phantasms and conditions do plenty of damage.

In short, there is a very clear cut issue. Mesmers have more useful defensive cooldowns than most/all other classes and do more (and more reliable) damage than any other class, short of a Warrior allowed to use 100B on someone or a Thief allowed to repeatedly Pistolwhip someone. Mesmers need to be given a role. Either they deal heavy sustained damage when left to their designs, or they confuse and disorient the enemy team, causing fights to go poorly. By aNet’s pre-release talks, I’m assuming Mesmers are supposed to be the latter, since Necromancers and Rangers already fill the role of high sustained damage.

Please try to keep this topic free of downright flaming. It’s understandable if someone has disagreements, but there is a general consensus among many players that this is indeed an issue. If you see a fatal flaw in the thought process, please point it out. Ideas for specific skill changes are great too.

TL;DR: See title.

Another “insta kitten” who rolls a Mesmer then “can’t be beaten”. Sorry, raising the BS Flag on your claims of being automatically unbeatable now that you rolled the anointed class. I see the various angry Elementalist/Necro/Ranger that hops on a Mesmer, usually named “LoL Mesmer” or “E Z To Play Mesmer” or something equally as foolish and I end up beating them or they run away and get help (oops, guess not all people know how to play the easiest class/profession). The only players you’re going to beat with that “hide and let my extremely OP phantasms do all that MASSIVE damage while I sit over here and plan the end of the world and other various mischievous schemes MUAHAHAHAHAH” strategy are bad players or ignorant players. Hint: if you’re a below average player on one class, you’ll be below average on probably all of them…just throwing that out there. Oh, I know what’s next “Mesmer is the easiest of all and all of them are UNSTOPPABLE cuz even my handicapped sister who has 1 arm plays her Mesmer and she’s TIER 1 spvp…bro.” You got me.

Fact is, once you figure out how to separate the player from his illusions, fighting a Mesmer becomes as easy as other classes. I know it’s been beaten into the ground, but the phantasms aren’t very durable and save for the berserker, they, for the most part, just sit there and beg for a face full of AoE. The warden can pump out some nice damage but I think mine’s broken cuz people run away and he just sits there. sadface

Zetta.5102:

Between conditions from staff

Staff conditions don’t do much. None of the mesmer weapons do much damage directly.

Nearly everything they have causes detargeting or targeting of a clone

[/quote]Nothing except stealth cases losing target. And even stealth doesn’t cause pet and summons from losing target of the real mesmer. You’re way off base.

and even something as simple as a dodge creates yet another clone

With a trait. By your own standard something as simply as a dodge causes thief to gain swiftness, might and to drop caltrops. Because traits are free.

In short, there is a very clear cut issue. Mesmers have more useful defensive cooldowns than most/all other classes and do more (and more reliable) damage than any other class, short of a Warrior allowed to use 100B on someone or a Thief allowed to repeatedly Pistolwhip someone. Mesmers need to be given a role. Either they deal heavy sustained damage when left to their designs, or they confuse and disorient the enemy team, causing fights to go poorly. By aNet’s pre-release talks, I’m assuming Mesmers are supposed to be the latter, since Necromancers and Rangers already fill the role of high sustained damage.

Anet talks aren’t the measure of anything. They can talk about mesmer being deceptive till their faces turn blue on their blog, it won’t magically make experienced players go around smacking clones. Their design decisions speak louder than words. They want mesmer to be a summoner class. Kinda like a minionmancer, but with more expendable summons.

About 75%+ of mesmer damage comes from illusions. Majority of that part doesn’t come from shatters but from phantasms directly or from bleeds from illusion crits. This is a clear indication that it’s a summoner class.

I don’t want it to be that way. I don’t want to slot two +15% phantasm damage traits and just sit there while the poor guy tries to avoid the damage from my summons.
But anet leaves me no choice.