Guild Wars 2

Mesmer
Shatter skills now share a global 0.25 second recharge, to prevent multiple shatter effects triggering on the same illusion.
Shattered Strength: This trait now grants 1 stack of might per illusion shattered.

The update was not about balancing, but having those two changes leak in shows the urgency behind getting them fixed.

SS was overbuffed last patch (especially in comparison with an ele’s trait, which got its might duration increased from 5s to 10s, Mesmer has gotten not only double the duration, but triple the stacking – which was ridiculous), and both the overbuff and the bug were having negative consequences in pvp.

Going to get flamed and bashed, but it’s a bug fix that we mesmers were willing to exploit, therefore it’s justified. Now we’ll be seeing people crying out for blood because of it.

Yeah, before the storm comes, I think anyone can understand how strong the trait was, and how exploting a bug was leading to very unfair pvp experience.

Cant rly complain about the fixes, but that negates the only noticable buff mesmer had last few months :<

overEnd.2947:

Cant rly complain about the fixes, but that negates the only noticable buff mesmer had last few months :<

It’s not completely negated. It used to last 5s before it ever happened, it now lasts 10s.

SS became 5x stronger last patch, now it’s only 2x stronger than what it used to be.

I totaly agree with the change, i hope they will fix the macro users from thiefs too.

Read the patch notes – Felt pretty singled out as a mesmer. Would have loved to see some bug fixes and some other balancing done. Double nerf for mesmer, removal of the previous buff and added a global CD to our shatters.

Somebody felt that mesmers needed a buff that would provide might and allow for some additional damage output and gave us Shattered Strength at 3 might per illusion shattered. The VERY next patch this is reduced back down to 1 per illusion with a longer duration PLUS they don’t want shatter spamming so they put a CD on shatters to prevent us from dazing or distorting simultaneously with our Mind Wrack so that we’re vulnerable.

It seems like a minor adjustment and I am sure it is livable but I just do not understand the need for the global CD. I did expect the nerf to Shattered Strength because it was being abused.

Also not noted in the mesmer nerf is the damage reduction done to Mind Wrack that now no longer scales above 4 clones. Which in my opinion was the only thing they needed to change to balance the shatter strength debacle.

Totally expected. I’m disappointed of course, that only mesmers get a nerf first thing in the new year.

While this was completely “expected”, it would have been very nice if they’d gone about it differently.
The buff to shattered strength helped a lot, and it would have been NICE if the Anet devs decided to like… compromise and drop it to 2 stacks of Might per illusion.

And that doesn’t even touch on the fact that instead of actually fixing the bug with multiple shatters, they just slapped a big ugly bandaid solution over it that only hurts people who weren’t abusing the bug to begin with.

I’ve tried so hard not to come kitten on the forums about patches in the past and just dealt with it, but this is kittening stupid

I dont care about the patch and I am a shatter build. I do find it amusing this got a ninja nerf, but they destroyed izerker and nerfed us and it had to wait an entire patch cycle. Honestly i couldnt replicate getting extra shatters from clones, but i didnt try macroing it. Maybe they were cheating to get this bug to trigger, either way, i do feel you could get a bit ridiculous on 1 shatter with the might and vuln

And no fix for Duelist’s Discipline ….. duelists always hit 20% lower …..
Please fix it !!

It’s ok guys! Warriors are balanced

Warriors never kill me in WvW, unless its 1v1

I’m not surprised but I am disappointed. Perhaps this means that complaining on forums will get things done which means that if we complain enough about these changes we might be able to get them undone.

If only they fixed the 30+ bugs that plague the mesmer this fast…

Also Wars are a balanced FOOS class… no sarcasm.

Israel.7056:

I’m not surprised but I am disappointed. Perhaps this means that complaining on forums will get things done which means that if we complain enough about these changes we might be able to get them undone.

You’re just realizing this now? Every change they’ve made seems to have been done at the behest of thieves, warriors, and guardians on the SPvP forum.

I hate this, when im in a match vs a thief and i want to shatter then self distortion to evade a backstab, i can’t. that .25 seconds seems longer than .25s and it’s really throwing me for a loop i didn’t hear about this bug until right now. Why couldnt they just take longer to work on coding it properly instead of adding that time nerf

I just LOVE how the patch notes are black lion stuff and…… mesmer nerf and nothing else….

its kitten as hell… they remove the one buff mez gets for months b/c some ppl whine non stop…just look at the updates on all the buffs other classes get

possibly a temporary fix until they can eliminate the source bug, but that might take awhile.

By “a while” you mean 2015 obviously because fixing old content and bugs is definately not a priority. They just keep taking away reasons to play a mesmer and this game

SteepledHat.1345:

You’re just realizing this now? Every change they’ve made seems to have been done at the behest of thieves, warriors, and guardians on the SPvP forum.

I had naively hoped that perhaps Anet wouldn’t behave like every other MMO company I’ve ever purchased a game from but it seems that, as it has been with every other game, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

ensoriki.5789:

possibly a temporary fix until they can eliminate the source bug, but that might take awhile.

Nothing of the sort has been said, we can expect the delay is here to stay.

SS was expected.

GCD, lazy fix IMO. Hopefully it’s a band-aid fix.

Lol not giving much of a care about shattered strength. Screwing up proper shatter burst with .25 seconds of global CD because they can’t code shatters right is extremely annoying and disappointing.

The bug was a problem. The GCD on shatters is not a long term solution and kind of hurts survival and playstyle, so hopefully they find a way so that illusions don’t gain multiple shatter effects.

They could probably find a better solution to SS. Maybe keep the old might stack for allies but not the Mesmer themselves.

if they r gonna reduce the shattered strength to 1 stack atleast make it last longer so it helps, people are raging not b/c mesmers are op its b/c they dunno how to fite them

Everyone that keeps saying the GCD is temporary, have you seen anything said to that accord? I haven’t and I have no reason to think it will be changed. Please, realize this is the case and push for it to be changed back soon!

Happy New Years Mesmers!

Sincerely, ArenaNet

SuperSpicyCurry.2415:

Happy New Years Mesmers!

---

Sincerely, ArenaNet

lol’d

SteepledHat.1345:

Everyone that keeps saying the GCD is temporary, have you seen anything said to that accord? I haven’t and I have no reason to think it will be changed. Please, realize this is the case and push for it to be changed back soon!

I’m really hoping it’s a quick fix to satisfy the sPVP crowd.

Inferring the way they program (object oriented C++) the game based on their development job openings it’d be pretty easy to code a fix that doesn’t screw over people by putting in a lame kitten GCD. Of course it’s assuming a buncha stuff (such as every clone/illusion being it’s own object with it’s own set of properties, else, how could you have every illusion/clone have buffs/debuffs, etc?) and I could be totally wrong.

But we can pray.

Though I am looking forward to the next round of mesmer QQ to see what the good players are using to own the bads. ^^; (I’m guessing Distortion and Blurred Frenzy)

That is the one upside to this, they no longer have an excuse for when they lose. I was over in the SPvP forum and they were already talking about another mesmer “exploit”.

SteepledHat.1345:

That is the one upside to this, they no longer have an excuse for when they lose. I was over in the SPvP forum and they were already talking about another mesmer “exploit”.

I saw that and laughed. Oh it never ends.

I wouldn’t mind a GCD if they improved the shatter skills somewhat…shorter CD or whatever if this were to be a perma-fix. As it stands, it’s definitely just a flat-out nerf that was meant to fix a bug.

All I can say is this.

At least they didn’t reduce the Shattered Might’s Might duration back to 5 seconds.

I don’t mind the GCD on Shatters at all, its only 1/4 a second. I do miss Shattered Might actually being worth while of having though.

Can’t believe a mesmer can complain about warriors. Happy new years we truly are Irelia

im okay with this but they better change some useless traits mesmers have in grandmaster/master traits in the next patch. Tired of running the same ones for 4 years because the majority aren’t worth taking.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Tired of running the same ones for 4 years

lulz

Seren.6850:

Can’t believe a mesmer can complain about warriors. Happy new years we truly are Irelia

Mesmers are in a far worse state than warriors are right now… and have been since the blind/block/dodge =’s no illusions summon class breaking nerf… but wars are still not op. Mesmer just needs a total rework.

They need to remove the global cooldown on shatters, fix the bug, mesmers reactionary shatters are 2 3 and 4, they basically have nerfed the effectiveness of reactive play on 3/4th of our class mechanic.

No other class has global cooldowns, its not a global cooldown built game, dont start adding this now.

.25 seconds is too long to land a proper interupt 3 skill
.25 seconds is too long to evade a proper attack(or reflect an attack if you traited for that skill)
.25 seconds doesnt allow you to get some extra damage on before an enemy action, although thats only one stack so its not as bad, pretty bad for diversion and distortion though

Im ok with this being a quick interm fix for a short while, until they can really fix it, but nothing they have said leads us to believe this is the case.

1 stack per shatter, is pretty bad but maybe 2 would still have been too strong, maybe it would have been just right, still i think they need to incorporate some other boon traits, maybe for phantasm or clone generation

Shattered Strength no longer work on self shatter ( Illusionary Persona).

Now we’re only getting 3 stacks on a 4 shatter. This leaves us worse off than before the Dec 14 patch.

It is incredibly worrying, Anet once again can’t fix a bug so it just slaps some horrible change to the skill to fix it.

Mesmers are now the only class that has to have los/not blinded/not get dodged/etc to be able to summon its pets and now we are the only class to have GCDs. How is this fair?

And seriously why can’t they do PvE/PvP splits?

phys.7689:

No other class has global cooldowns, its not a global cooldown built game, dont start adding this now.

Elementalist attunements have a global cooldown, and I believe Engineer kit swaps do as well, though I could be mistaken on that (my Engineer runs turret build, so I rarely have more than 1 kit).

I like the idea of having 0.25 delay on shatters i found myself on situations when i did push 2 or 3 shatters at same time in a rush of mistake and i hated my shatters going on cooldown even is the effect of 2 shatters happening at same time, it just didn’t feel right.

Now for shattered strenght i’m cool with 1 stack of might with 10 secs duration, you can improve duration with proper gears and keep stacking, not really a nerf.

Oh well the things people use to cry about… chill out and learn to play your class the way is meant to be.

Montblank.2937:

I like the idea of having 0.25 delay on shatters i found myself on situations when i did push 2 or 3 shatters at same time in a rush of mistake and i hated my shatters going on cooldown even is the effect of 2 shatters happening at same time, it just didn’t feel right.

Now for shattered strenght i’m cool with 1 stack of might with 10 secs duration, you can improve duration with proper gears and keep stacking, not really a nerf.

Oh well the things people use to cry about… chill out and learn to play your class the way is meant to be.

Next time can you put the l2p in the first sentence instead of the last so I don’t waste my time reading all the uninformed opinions?

I presume the GCD is meant to prevent the usage of macro, or at least weaken it.

The .25 GCD on shattering sounds more like a bug fix to prevent unintended usage of the mesmer illusions.

I asked my mesmer friend what it was because I never knew this bug, and he told me it makes sense to fix it. Why? Well, remember that the f1-f4 abilities do damage/whatever amount it says based on the number of clones? So using f1 SHOULD consume your CURRENT clones. However, with the bug, you could use f1-f4 or use them in a combo, effectively getting the effects of all your clones on different abilities. That’s totally not how mesmer was meant to be played… F1 should just be used for your current clones, and f2-f4 shouldn’t benefit for those clones your f1 is using. That’s my 2 cents.

Leo Paul.1659:

Totally expected. I’m disappointed of course, that only mesmers get a nerf first thing in the new year.

not a nerf, a fix. get that through your thick skulls.

nerva.7940:

Leo Paul.1659:

Totally expected. I’m disappointed of course, that only mesmers get a nerf first thing in the new year.

not a nerf, a fix. get that through your thick skulls.

Shattered Strength: This trait now grants 1 stack of might per illusion shattered.

For the people who insist on saying that the global cooldown is a fix, and not a nerf, understand that you are wrong. It is entirely possible for a change to be both a fix AND a nerf, and this is most certainly the case with this change.

What Anet should have done, was actually fix the exploit, without nerfing the rest of the mesmer playstyle. What they ended up doing was fixing the exploit by changing something not directly related to the exploit itself, simply because it was easier to code. This is just pure laziness on the part of the devs, and completely unacceptable.