Guild Wars 2

TL:DR Mesmers are not OP or UP. They fix exactly into their niche. They’re meant to be duelists. Duelists don’t fight wave after wave after wave of monsters – they fight people. They 1v1 extremely effectively. This is why they’re weaker in PvE. But they’re still very strong in PvE and can run through everything when you adapt to the situation.

I apologize for my massive wall which contains a lot of reiterated themes but this is so because it is somewhat difficult to describe. I hope I did an effective job at doing so.

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I see people saying mesmers are OP/UP/too hard/whatever else. The main point I see is people are complaining that Mesmers are too strong PvP and too weak PvE.

Mesmer -> I can see where people are coming from with their complaints. However, the way I see it is that the Mesmer is similar to the Elementalist in that it is much more difficult to play than the other classes. The general consensus seems to be that Mesmers are too strong in PvP and not strong enough in PvE. Thing is… it makes sense that it is this way. Mesmers are supposed to be THE duelist profession. Thieves are a spike-out class but not a duelist.

Duelists engage in combat, usually 1v1, and can maintain themselves for a good long while and deal significant damage while not taking very much.

I don’t know about anyone else but I play a lot of League of Legends. Mesmers remind me a lot of Fiora, a duelist champion. She has great sustain, an ability that blocks the next incoming attack, and a lot of sustain damage. It makes sense that she’s really good at fighting other champs. She is not very good at jungling though. Mesmers aren’t so good at it either and it just makes sense. Mesmers are meant to duel people by messing with their heads. You’re supposed to attack the wrong clone while the real Mesmer deals significant damage to you. You can’t do that to a computer that knows which one is real and which one isn’t. The computer isn’t another player, and isn’t really gonna duel you unless you’re fighting a vet or champ 1v1.

Speaking of League of Legends, if I had to associate each class with a champ they would be as follows:

Warrior -> Darius/Garen/Lee Sin/Mantheon/Udyr. Get in, tank some dmg, walk away with a kill. Notice, these are good at killing champs and jungling.

Guardian -> Taric/Volibear/Shen/Mao/Galio/Alistar. Can kill you, but are tankier, more about outlasting you than getting in a murdering you quickly. Notice, also good at killing champs and jungling.

Thief -> Akali/Talon/Poppy/Rengar/Shaco. Designed to kill you quickly and are extra squishy in comparison to others. Notice, great for assassinating champs and generally good for jungling.

Ranger -> Jayce/Riven. Mostly Jayce but I wanted more than 1 example. Jayce obviously because he is the epitome of “jack of all trades.” Ranged when he wants with loads of damage, vs melee when he wants. Notice, good for everything as well. This example isn’t the best because ranger’s probably the most difficult to place, but rangers are definitely great for PvE and PvP.

Necro -> Swain/Yorick/Brand/Cassiopeia. Designed to be very high damage and not super tanky but still able to hold their own. Notice, also great for both PvP and PvE.

Engineer -> The obvious Heimerdinger. Can deal lots of up front damage or can set up devices to do the dirty work for him. Notice, great for whatever he wants to do.

Elementalist -> Annie/Anivia/Zyra/Ziggs/Fizz/etc.. Lots of damage output and not very tanky. Take Fizz for instance – very hard to play without getting completely rolled. Notice, great for PvE, especially with a bunch allies to group enemies for you, but also good for PvP because of the assassin-like qualities of the daggers.

Mesmer -> Fiora/Jax/LeBlanc/Syndra. Relative to Fiora and Syndra, much more difficult to play. Timing Fiora’s riposte to effectively protect yourself while damaging the enemy.

The overall point is:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:> Mesmers are hard. They’re more of an assassin type than an Elementalist type. As a Mesmer, you have to work harder in combat, but the rewards exceed that of the Elementalist.

Mesmers are the rangers of magic. Rangers run around with pretty much any weapon they choose. Mesmers are similar because Mesmers can apply boons to allies, remove conditions from allies, teleport, create portals for allies, invert enemy ranged attacks, cloak, cloak allies, spam conditions, evade nearly all damage temporarily, morph an enemy for 10 seconds, summon allies to tank for you, use very long range, use melee.. am I missing anything?

The only take away I got from this is that you aren’t good at LoL.

What he said. Don’t seem to know much about GW2 either.

Lol @ necros doing “very high damage”.

I’m not going to read through your wall of LoL text, but I’m going to go ahead and say that being an OP duelist class in exchange for being meh in other fields doesn’t equate to balance. In fact it’s a clear indication of inbalance in every single aspect. Classes should be balanced for all types of play. They should have a niche for every aspect of a game. And YOU as the player should want it to be that way! You’re extremely short sighted to not want to be competitive at PvE, WvW, and high level sPvP (ie team play), all in exchange for guaranteed wins in 1v1s.

Everyone on these mesmer forums who are trying to argue that Mesmer’s are balanced because they are bad at other aspects of the game in exchange for being great duelists is a complete idiot who apparently doesn’t understand the very basic concept of “balance” (a seesaw with one end raised up high while the other side is down in the dirt wouldn’t be called balanced by anyone with a brain).

It’s not very helpful that you contradict yourself at the start of your post.

Saying Mesmers are great 1v1 and are meant to be, but weaker else where, thus their disadvantage, but then immediately say, they’re still very strong thus don’t really have a disadvantage.

Quantum is spot on. Just because a class might excel in PvP is not an excuse for a class to do not so well in PvE. If a class is balanced, than it should do well in both PvE and PvP, depending on the skill level of the player. Also I believe a class should not be nerfed just based on PvP or PvE alone. If you nerf the Mesmer because of PvP, then they are going to perform horribly in PvE. However, rather than just nerfing, there can be some sort of compromise such as removing some utility or damage output from the class but replacing it with something else that can be more helpful in PvE, or maybe even introduce a new weapon like a main hand pistol that would be used mainly for PvE purposes, etc. The Mesmer section of the forums has a lot of ideas that Anet should read and consider, rather than just flat out nerf the class or not balance the class.

However, I chose to play the Mesmer before I even played the class, so I’m not somebody who switched over to the Mesmer once the word got out that they excel in 1v1 duels. I play the mesmer because it is fun to play, and it is very unique. I don’t want the Mesmer to change so much that it becomes generic and boring.