Guild Wars 2

Now that PU is nerf, “The Pledge” falls rebound at nerf, i suggest change the trait something like:

The Pledge

Torch skills remove conditions. Torch skills recharge faster.

Conditions Removed: 1
Recharge: 20%

Weapon Torch

On the other hand, the projectile attack of the Phantasmal Mage, should move a little more fast, similar to the Phantasmal Disenchanter, and increase of a rebound more at 4, how the disenchanter, his attack rebound 4 times.

Because almost always, their attacks fail, especially to range 1200, and even when the phantasmal mage attack a position range 1200, not completed the number of bounces, and is a frustration, you feel useless, you’re forced to use it very close to the enemy, so you can make maximum use.

A increase of burn, it would be good.

Phantasmal Mage

Create an illusion that burns foes and grants fury to allies.

x2 Burning (6s)
Number of Bounces: 4
Range: 1200

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

nearlight.3064:

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

So? i don’t see why people want to nullify the Stealth options of Mesmer back to the abysmal state it was in. Even if the actual% of the cool down reduction on The Pledge doesn’t match the tooltip, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a mistake. instead of nerfing the trait, we could just update the tooltip.

feight.2704:

nearlight.3064:

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

So? i don’t see why people want to nullify the Stealth options of Mesmer back to the abysmal state it was in. Even if the actual% of the cool down reduction on The Pledge doesn’t match the tooltip, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a mistake. instead of nerfing the trait, we could just update the tooltip.

Because as a Mesmer you don’t need to camp stealth to succeed. In fact things like PU (pre today’s nerf) on their own can carry bad players by ensuring that they almost never die, while doing nothing to contribute to damage. A thief at last needs to combo skills and manage initiative in order to use stealth, for Mesmer it’s brain dead easy with the press of a button. Thankfully, stealth builds will be obseolete in the future since chronomancer won’t need it at all to survive, and revealed will be a bit more common as well.

Yeah the tooltip of the pledge should be fixed just for consistency alone. Without PU it’s fine.

Its not bugged, it’s intended! Weeeee!

• The Pledge: Fixed an incorrect skill fact that displayed the recharge reduction as a percentage instead of a duration.

nearlight.3064:

feight.2704:

nearlight.3064:

You did know that the cooldown reduction from this trait was bugged to give more than it should, right?

I mean even with just torch and decoy and no PU burning both gets the prestige down to 15 seconds after 6 seconds of stealth.

So? i don’t see why people want to nullify the Stealth options of Mesmer back to the abysmal state it was in. Even if the actual% of the cool down reduction on The Pledge doesn’t match the tooltip, doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a mistake. instead of nerfing the trait, we could just update the tooltip.

Because as a Mesmer you don’t need to camp stealth to succeed. In fact things like PU (pre today’s nerf) on their own can carry bad players by ensuring that they almost never die, while doing nothing to contribute to damage. A thief at last needs to combo skills and manage initiative in order to use stealth, for Mesmer it’s brain dead easy with the press of a button. Thankfully, stealth builds will be obseolete in the future since chronomancer won’t need it at all to survive, and revealed will be a bit more common as well.

Yeah the tooltip of the pledge should be fixed just for consistency alone. Without PU it’s fine.

Well if chrono is the savior then so be it. Imo it won’t. Mesmer needs stealth in order to survive. In structured pvp the fact can be debated but in wvw trying to survive without stealth skills is a death sentence. So if chrono is the savior then we will need de plus chrono. So much for build diversity.

So has the torch trait been fixed? Or it’s the same as before?

It appears they prefer ludicrous recharge reduction on stealth vs duration. They also seem to be scared that staff skills are too strong to warrant a good CD reduction which is a pita to use but stealth is fine to give crazy reduction to.

Chrono will give us a 2.5s channeled block with another 2.5s channel if they hit us. With alacrity and a moderate amount of shattering it will be able to block a large number of things. The 25% movement speed is also tangfastic for ensuring you can get away.

Feels like it recharges at the same rate if not faster than before.

As I just wrote:

(from the changelog)

• The Pledge: Fixed an incorrect skill fact that displayed the recharge reduction as a percentage instead of a duration.

Nobody reading the patchnotes? :P
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-29-2015

Okay yay, now the tooltip is fixed so you can go on and live your lives with a perfectly balanced pledge.

I don’t play the uncompetitive vacuum that is WvW roaming Denis, so I’ll take your word for it. In spvp though, stealth isn’t needed at all to do well, and chronomancer helps for the reasons that apharma described, and many more, such as through slow and sheer burst reset ability alone.

Give that poor phantasm just a homing aoe attack, just like disenchanter needs too. And warlock needs too a homing projectile. Those phants can’t even hit anything on a higher surface like a rock or something. It’s pathetic.

denis.9487:

In structured pvp the fact can be debated but in wvw trying to survive without stealth skills is a death sentence.

as a mesmer main i do understand your pain,but i would also like to remind you that WvW is not going to be wherr they balance things. PU made Mesmer strong and easy in sPvP, a mode they do balance around. This needed to be fixed. WvW players suffer from it, as mesmer survivability in WvW is low, i do agree, but WvW as a whole would be to difficult to balance and fix, i cant play it without a party of friends. i dont fault Anet for that myself, i prefer sPvP to the morr unpredictable WvW and I am glsd they’re balancing the way they are.

TL;DR Balancing sround WvW roaming will never be a thing and the changes made were intentional to fix sPvP.

nearlight.3064:

Okay yay, now the tooltip is fixed so you can go on and live your lives with a perfectly balanced pledge.

I don’t play the uncompetitive vacuum that is WvW roaming Denis, so I’ll take your word for it. In spvp though, stealth isn’t needed at all to do well, and chronomancer helps for the reasons that apharma described, and many more, such as through slow and sheer burst reset ability alone.

You actually don’t get to make that statement when the meta almost entirely used PU. Unlike whatever uncompetitive things you were referring to I follow the meta of wvw and of PvP.

Please tell me the last time helseth played without stealth.

Like PvE, PvP isn’t just about succeeding it’s also about min maxing success. And just because you chose to self nerf yourself doesn’t mean you should make blanket statements.

Helseth plays with stealth but without PU.

Korusef.3714:

Helseth plays with stealth but without PU.

Um. No he doesn’t? Has has been using it almost continuously since the mantra nerf, including his most recent tournament 5 days ago.

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

PU wasn’t needed to survive in PvP because of this reason: There’s so many things to LoS and hide behind in 3s travel range that base stealth will usually cover it. What people were using PU for was to have a second class that brought a stealthy leave fight, decap role other than thief but not replacing it.

Thing is now because PU has essentially been reverted to old PU outside of MI it means the Mesmer has fallen even further behind thief in this regard.

Additionally it means a Mesmer has to work a lot harder at carrying people through dungeons with stealth and outside of a very organised party there’s no reason to do this when a thief can stealth the party for prolonged durations on their own. I know, portal and have done it but it is a lot of faffing about especially if someone isn’t on TS and isn’t used to the “stand here and take portal, then peg it in that direction”.

In WvW you will really feel the lack of stealth on disengages if you don’t run some form of movement boosts either runes, focus or something. Essentially MI is your disengage and you have no business going back if you end up using it, which is why I now run traveler runes so I can ditch PU and take up inspiration and it’s ludicrous condition cleanses.

Here’s a question though, why would you ever take PU? The boons are too random and the stealth duration is not GM worthy outside of MI or if using the torch trait too.

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

Ci is not what is needed for the job we are filling.

i think pu also let us handle a thief better. Sure we have blinds on shatter but once found we go back to become a team hinderance when the enemy team is using a thief. We need more peels babysitting. Pu let us disengage by allowing us to create distance and not have to hold our teammates hands due to a thief being present.

Idk, maybe you just need to practice dueling thieves without using PU? Sw/t and soon Sw/Sh are more than enough defense against thieves, you just have to time your defensive skills properly to wait out time between weaponswaps to land bursts.

Also, any interrupt based build eats thieves so hard it’s not even funny.

nearlight.3064:

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

I completely disagree that you spoke with any certainty. Your points about it making it easier at the beginner level has no basis on the conversation.

What matters was what effect it had on upper level tournament play. Your barometer was at june 23rd. When mantras still had not been nerfed. July 28 was when mantras and mirror blade received their changed.

You friend who does coordinated bursts is self nerfing himself in someway or the other. The possible utilities are decoy, portal, and blink. Which utility did he give up to pick up mantra of distraction?

edit:
the effect of chaotic interruption on thieves was sharply reduced with the trait don’t stop. and immobilize has never been a big player on warriors or those with innate reductions. It is also completely redundant with confounding suggestions. not to mention the faction that interruptions are not dependable.

Daniel Handler.4816:

nearlight.3064:

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

I completely disagree that you spoke with any certainty. Your points about it making it easier at the beginner level has no basis on the conversation.

What matters was what effect it had on upper level tournament play. Your barometer was at june 23rd. When mantras still had not been nerfed. July 28 was when mantras and mirror blade received their changed.

You friend who does coordinated bursts is self nerfing himself in someway or the other. The possible utilities are decoy, portal, and blink. Which utility did he give up to pick up mantra of distraction?

edit:
the effect of chaotic interruption on thieves was sharply reduced with the trait don’t stop. and immobilize has never been a big player on warriors or those with innate reductions. It is also completely redundant with confounding suggestions. not to mention the faction that interruptions are not dependable.

No, everything I’m talking about actually happened after the mantra/mirror blade nerf on July 28th. The friend thing was just to simplify a reddit discussion about a certain mesmer on a certain NA team who still uses mantras in ESL on one of the best NA teams even to this day, I just didn’t went to get too off-topic in my rebuttal. Anyway the point is, after the July 28th nerf, to be precise, you haven’t seen teams with PU mesmers in their core win major tournaments consistently, as evidenced by Helseth’s WTS performance, oRNG’s EU dominance, and the fact that the only teams to fight abjured with any shot of success since July 28th either didn’t run mesmer at all, or ran one with mantras.

You’d give up decoy for mantra of distraction of course. You still get blink and portal, which is all you absolutely need. That stunbreak stealth peel isn’t necessary when the mantra just lets you blow up what ever you’re fighting. Granted you have to be good enough to make sure that instant cast lands, which is so much harder to do than camping stealth.

Also Don’t Stop? How many thieves have you seen that run acro since June 23rd? Oh wait, NONE, since they all run vamp runs D/P shadow arts. Even caed ran S/D with critical strikes over acro because acro is that bad and totally irrelevant to this conversation.

CI isn’t redundant if you run AoE interrupts, Chaos Storm and GS5 being a prime example, since it lets you bypass the CS ICD and CC multiple targets. And anyway, its just an example of something else you can run that works better than PU. Theres also inspiration mantras which I personally don’t like, but has its strengths even post-nerf since you can duel condi builds with impunity and actually go on a point without blowing up (which certain NA teams have done very well with post-nerf I might add) and Illusions shatter builds which as I have stated before, have better burst potential than PU builds due to shattered strength and MoF, and can burst much more often due to shatter and illusion generating skill cooldowns.

nearlight.3064:

Daniel Handler.4816:

nearlight.3064:

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

I completely disagree that you spoke with any certainty. Your points about it making it easier at the beginner level has no basis on the conversation.

What matters was what effect it had on upper level tournament play. Your barometer was at june 23rd. When mantras still had not been nerfed. July 28 was when mantras and mirror blade received their changed.

You friend who does coordinated bursts is self nerfing himself in someway or the other. The possible utilities are decoy, portal, and blink. Which utility did he give up to pick up mantra of distraction?

edit:
the effect of chaotic interruption on thieves was sharply reduced with the trait don’t stop. and immobilize has never been a big player on warriors or those with innate reductions. It is also completely redundant with confounding suggestions. not to mention the faction that interruptions are not dependable.

No, everything I’m talking about actually happened after the mantra/mirror blade nerf on July 28th. The friend thing was just to simplify a reddit discussion about a certain mesmer on a certain NA team who still uses mantras in ESL on one of the best NA teams even to this day, I just didn’t went to get too off-topic in my rebuttal. Anyway the point is, after the July 28th nerf, to be precise, you haven’t seen teams with PU mesmers in their core win major tournaments consistently, as evidenced by Helseth’s WTS performance, oRNG’s EU dominance, and the fact that the only teams to fight abjured with any shot of success since July 28th either didn’t run mesmer at all, or ran one with mantras.

You’d give up decoy for mantra of distraction of course. You still get blink and portal, which is all you absolutely need. That stunbreak stealth peel isn’t necessary when the mantra just lets you blow up what ever you’re fighting. Granted you have to be good enough to make sure that instant cast lands, which is so much harder to do than camping stealth.

Also Don’t Stop? How many thieves have you seen that run acro since June 23rd? Oh wait, NONE, since they all run vamp runs D/P shadow arts. Even caed ran S/D with critical strikes over acro because acro is that bad and totally irrelevant to this conversation.

CI isn’t redundant if you run AoE interrupts, Chaos Storm and GS5 being a prime example, since it lets you bypass the CS ICD and CC multiple targets. And anyway, its just an example of something else you can run that works better than PU. Theres also inspiration mantras which I personally don’t like, but has its strengths even post-nerf since you can duel condi builds with impunity and actually go on a point without blowing up (which certain NA teams have done very well with post-nerf I might add) and Illusions shatter builds which as I have stated before, have better burst potential than PU builds due to shattered strength and MoF, and can burst much more often due to shatter and illusion generating skill cooldowns.

Making casts land with the stun of the mantra was always easier than camping pu, because the burst of mental anguish could be assured, and they wouldn’t be able to dodge. I don’t know why you treat pu like such kitten. It was a boost to survival in a very dangerous meta.

Don’t stop was just one of many examples of traits where your 2 seconds immobilize isn’t going to make that much of a difference.

And you keep mentioning the staff/greatsword meta where no duh they wouldn’t run PU. If a person is running no stealth skills why would they run pu?

With sw/t+gs you could not only benefit from pu on decoy, but pu on torch, and pu on desperate decoy. It wasn’t just camping steath, but a direct response to the huge bursts that came from the changes of stats.

With the synergy that came from pu+desperate decoy+ vampirism runes you could go invincible for 3 seconds and stealth for 6 seconds, instead of dying to a sudden burst that came from stealth.

I would trust hesleths judgement over whatever NA meta you are referring to. Because the teams you mention don’t use Mesmer to the same degree. For example in the most recent WTS abjured used no mesmers, and neither did orange logo. You haven’t seen guilds with mesmers in their core achieve ANY dominance recently. So your comments could as easily be used to say that the reason orange logo and abjured dominate is that they don’t use mesmers.