Guild Wars 2

Mesmer is the worst dps dealer, there are jokes made about Mesmer’s condi damage, Time Warp only affects 5 people at a time, and now Alacrity is being nerfed.

But wait, the icing on top is that Mesmer’s one of TWO mainhand weapons is getting a rework suddenly makes it all better like a kiss on a boo boo by Anet, while we forget that the reason we use sword mainhand and not scepter is because of slightly better damage.

There is no longer any reason to play Mesmer, unless teleporting people out of the map for laughs. That and turning people into moas twice in a row.

First of all, nobody knows how big of a ’’nerf’’ it will be.

Second, Mesmers should only played by people who understand this class… just like Thieves…

If you already give up, before knowing anything, then you should consider playing other class.

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf. Take Well of Precognition, which was used widely before, now is no longer used because it loses 75% of the point you stand on and has a 0.75 second cast time, making it the worst non-offensive/damaging stunbreaker with the highest cast time in the game. Don’t believe me? Look at every other stunbreaker each class has and compare it to Precognition.

As for understanding, Mesmer is my main. All masteries grinded, map completion, raids completed (besides Sabetha, still looking for a raid guild), and a hell of a lot of time played in pvp. I’d say I understand this class well enough.

Now that is a exaggeration…

There is a term called ‘’Risk and Reward’’

Sure it has ’’higher’’ cast time than other Stun breakers, yet you provide 3s of distortion to yourself and allies…
Neither you are forced to use WoP carelessly.

Only reason that comes to my mind why you would complain about it is, because you are playing Chronobunker, which you should not.

Sword does better damage than scepter? Lool. Have you tried to calculate the loss of dps from running around chasing ppl in vain and having 2x less clone spawn? Also from being downed trying to melee fire ele or DH? Or wait do you mean open PvE?

Just wait with stuff like this until you actually know how hard the nerf’s gonna be.

AivenPrimus.9184:

First of all, nobody knows how big of a ’’nerf’’ it will be.

Second, Mesmers should only played by people who understand this class… just like Thieves…

If you already give up, before knowing anything, then you should consider playing other class.

+10

Please Rip “Chronobunker”, is cancer in pvp.

More love for scepter weapons for mesmer, the damage conditions is very poorly assessed, especially confusion and torment.

Why Chronobunker is cancer? Facetank, rewind, facetank, rip. Same as Necros second bar; doesnt saves from an angry mob.

…if they want to rip bunker meta why no changes with druid? Like, no nerfs at all?

Its gonna be as always. Small buff to scepter that wont change anything in pve nor pvp(maybe breaking some scepter trait in the process), and to compensate, Alacrity will be nerfed to the ground cuz people yell at their favourite scapegoat.

One hope is that their last nerf(Well of precog) was reasonable… long casting time sucks but given the noise every druid and rev was making i was expecting wells to be destroyed..maybe just maybe they wont destroy alacrity too.

Rainbowsand.2438:

Why Chronobunker is cancer? Facetank, rewind, facetank, rip. Same as Necros second bar; doesnt saves from an angry mob.

When i play with torment and confusion pvp, they call me cancer, they say that i am a noob, it is a free win, bla bla bla. Now i see like them play with Chronobunker and they say nothing, of course, it is a more subtle way of gaining why ?, because if you do not get to kill me, they say “is that then you are a noob”, what is the difference? the way to play with damage conditions bother them, and Chronobunker assures the victory, and tests your direct DPS.

I only ask that give more love for mesmer scepter (mostly trait With confusion and torment), and other ways to play than ever “distortion” spam. Chronobunker yes, but not spam “distortion” with Well of Precognition, it is very cancer.

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf. Take Well of Precognition, which was used widely before, now is no longer used because it loses 75% of the point you stand on and has a 0.75 second cast time, making it the worst non-offensive/damaging stunbreaker with the highest cast time in the game. Don’t believe me? Look at every other stunbreaker each class has and compare it to Precognition.

As for understanding, Mesmer is my main. All masteries grinded, map completion, raids completed (besides Sabetha, still looking for a raid guild), and a hell of a lot of time played in pvp. I’d say I understand this class well enough.

wow for all the time you’ve spent on mesmer (no more than the rest of the mesmer mains since day 1) you really are out of touch with reality.

1st Anet does not have a grudge vs mesmers. Mesmers are not the most nerfed class in the game nor are they the class sitting in the corner getting zero updates. Here’s a news flash. By the time this supposedly end of the world nerf comes Mesmers will have enjoyed approximately 7 months of being among the top tier in terms of class strength. Thats not hating on a class that’s the complete opposite.

Also you need to realize our class has a history of being extremely broken over the life of this game. I have to credit arena net from keeping that brokeness out of PvP for the most part….one of the few things they got right.

2nd Well of Precog broke the game. It was stupid, and needed the nerf. I’m happy they did what they did, and yes I main mesmer.

From reading your post we can tell that you aren’t for competitive play, but play where you win because you have a significant advantage over everyone else. You like your easy mode. That’s fine and you are entitled to it. You just have to remember “for the good of the game” is a real thing, and the upcoming nerfs (and its just speculation) are justified.

tdlr: Let’s all suck it up and put our big boy pants on. We’ll be fine, and if you aren’t I’m sure some other class will become ezmode OP for you.

Thank You

Lusteregris.2697:

…if they want to rip bunker meta why no changes with druid? Like, no nerfs at all?

Its gonna be as always. Small buff to scepter that wont change anything in pve nor pvp(maybe breaking some scepter trait in the process), and to compensate, Alacrity will be nerfed to the ground cuz people yell at their favourite scapegoat.

One hope is that their last nerf(Well of precog) was reasonable… long casting time sucks but given the noise every druid and rev was making i was expecting wells to be destroyed..maybe just maybe they wont destroy alacrity too.

Read the thief changes, it seems they want to over buff (AA damage buff, better evade, stronger acrobat traits for survivability) thieves to make the bunker meta go away. We are going back to the days that Mesmers are free kill for thieves.

While I’m arguably the most consistently pessimistic person on this forum, I too think that this post is a couple days too early. As of right now, Mesmer is a strong class in PvP, PvE, and WvW. As such, there’s plenty of reasons to play Mesmer.

Do I think the changes are likely to ruin that? Yeah. Do I know the changes will ruin that? No. While I’m certainly not looking forward to this alacrity nerf or thief buffs, I’m willing to at least let specifics be discussed before breaking down in tears on the forum.

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Sure can.

They don’t have some sort of grudge against Mesmer or everything they do.

There, was rather easy.

You’re right on time to feel the nerf bat between the legs and 2 years of walking funny! Perfect timing to get the authentic Mesmer experience of running terrified from a class that not only counters you but passively prevents you doing damage to it on all but 1 weapon!

Fairly certain we can kiss goodbye to chronobunker… AND I CAN’T WAIT FOR THAT DAY… that kitten was maybe our only viable choice in PvP, but it was so boring it cured my insomnia.

Now the question is: will they replace it by something worthwhile? I don’t know.
I certainly do not want any form of additional CC (even if lockdown is fun), nor any form of condis play…
And it’s not because there’s any dark conspiracies against every single mesmer in this game, but rather because it’s probably one of the hardest class to balance properly.
One thing at the wrong place and you got either: god-tier faceroll or, trash-tier facepalm.
Just imagine if they added strafing and dodging on clones… teeny thing, but then, no more ways to recognize the real mesmer out of its clone.

Pepsi.8907:

I certainly do not want any form of additional CC (even if lockdown is fun), nor any form of condis play…

Let me rephrase this for you.

“I’m going to whine about whatever anet gives us because it doesn’t fit within my strictly defined and totally arbitrary rules of what should be allowed”.

Fay.2357:

Pepsi.8907:

I certainly do not want any form of additional CC (even if lockdown is fun), nor any form of condis play…

Let me rephrase this for you.

“I’m going to whine about whatever anet gives us because it doesn’t fit within my strictly defined and totally arbitrary rules of what should be allowed”.

Don’t put words in my mouth, that is not what I said. I do not wish for it because
a) CC is present in such amount that adding in even more would just be like kicking a corpse… you won’t add anything unique, especially not with the amount of stability currently running around…
b) I do not like condis.
But if either of those two makes mesmer a viable asset to my team, then I’ll equip the build, I’ll learn the kitten out of it and I’ll try to enjoy it as much as I can, just like I tried to enjoy chronobunker the first few times (but it kinda gets redundant and I like doing damage).
And if mesmer fall out of meta, then I’ll kiss it goodbye and go onto the second on my list of class that can make me the most optimal choice for my team.

I like to think I do not have arbitrary rules of what should be allowed, however I also believe that there is things that do not have their place in PvP, two of those things mainly being: CC spam people until they die and passively inflicting DoT until enemies melt…. that’s my own personal opinion, but I sure as hell won’t hinder myself by respecting whatever sets of “rules” I could have and which would prevent me from being efficient because I do not agree with…
I left my respectability and morally acceptable conduit at the login screen

Pepsi.8907:

Don’t put words in my mouth, that is not what I said.

Funny, because the rest of the post explains why that is exactly what you said. This is a very common opinion, too. It’s people going “Oh please nerf conditions, condition spam is soooo bad”, too.

Why?

Because someone arbitrarily decided that a CC-centric, DoT-centric, X-centric game is inherently bad? But a power-centric one is ok? Or one based on initiative or interrupts? That’s incredibly random.

If anything, demand a balanced game focus. But even then you’d have to explain why that is supposedly superior for one specific class in one specific area of the game than having a clearly defined focus.

Pepsi.8907:

Fay.2357:

Pepsi.8907:

I certainly do not want any form of additional CC (even if lockdown is fun), nor any form of condis play…

Let me rephrase this for you.

“I’m going to whine about whatever anet gives us because it doesn’t fit within my strictly defined and totally arbitrary rules of what should be allowed”.

Don’t put words in my mouth, that is not what I said

Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what you said.

“Oh, please nerf chronobunker into the ground because I don’t like that bunkering is a thing.”

“Oh, by the way don’t add any more cc, because I don’t like cc.”

“Oh, if you could get rid of conditions, that would be cool too, I don’t like conditions.”

Strictly defined. Arbitrary. Worthless. If people like you had your way, we’d all be playing the same class standing toe to toe doing nothing but power damage and pressing 1 to see who wins.

Fay.2357:

Strictly defined. Arbitrary. Worthless. If people like you had your way, we’d all be playing the same class standing toe to toe doing nothing but power damage and pressing 1 to see who wins.

Which is quite often – and worryingly so – the essence of what people seem to want for PvP balance in all of their games.

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Rome.7124:

Lusteregris.2697:

…if they want to rip bunker meta why no changes with druid? Like, no nerfs at all?

Its gonna be as always. Small buff to scepter that wont change anything in pve nor pvp(maybe breaking some scepter trait in the process), and to compensate, Alacrity will be nerfed to the ground cuz people yell at their favourite scapegoat.

One hope is that their last nerf(Well of precog) was reasonable… long casting time sucks but given the noise every druid and rev was making i was expecting wells to be destroyed..maybe just maybe they wont destroy alacrity too.

Read the thief changes, it seems they want to over buff (AA damage buff, better evade, stronger acrobat traits for survivability) thieves to make the bunker meta go away. We are going back to the days that Mesmers are free kill for thieves.

Frankly, the AA damage on thief being adjusted isn’t a big concern. Mesmers got eaten alive from the burst damage and stealth countering clones/shatters and not the sustained damage from thief auto-attacks. The initiative mechanic is designed as a whole to reduce the need to use auto-attacks as filler between skills. Frankly, most of the thief community is really upset by the change to attempt to “fix” the thief, because this is quite frankly the exact opposite of what is necessary for the class to function more consistently within sPvP. I have a hunch buffing thief AA damage is only to improve their viability in Raids, because at the moment they have zero purpose in Raids at all, and only bring damage to the table.

As far as Acro being buffed, I’m worried. I’m not worried because I think Acro is already in a good place or is even remotely threatening on its own – no, it’s largely considered to be the absolute worst trait line in the game – I’m worried that buffs to Acro will synergize too well with Daredevil and make Daredevil builds overpowered. They could give Acro a passive invuln and it’d still be considered bad. Daredevil, on the other hand, is every thief trait line combined and arguably improved, because most of the thief traits are just bad. Acrobatics when it was used (before it was completely and totally decimated to make room for Daredevil), had a pretty strict tempo to its evasion. S/D was used to offset this a bit, but its evasion couldn’t be spammed much. Daredevil can bring on lots of spammy evades, and with a tempo boost for more sustained dodges, I fear this combination could make Acro/DD thief the next chrono-bunker in terms of raw immunity/durability uptime. If Acrobatics gets stability, it definitely will.

I’m hoping mesmer finds its place and they don’t go overboard with the scepter. Dire perplexity scepter in WvW is probably the second strongest roaming build in the game and is very easy to play. That said, it’s kind of horrible otherwise. I hope we see the mesmer gameplay shift to becoming high-risk/high-reward with a high skill ceiling to make big plays into the future. It has low personal DPS but has the burst damage and some durability effects with distortion on top of a lot of trickery and deception and lots of support to compensate for the low personal DPS.

Frankly, I’d like to see the mesmer fit into a role between the thief and something with better sustain to allow for some solid map movement and control but allow for the class to be played skillfully, and let skilled counterplay beat the class. It can’t be too mobile/bursty at range for +1’s as then the thief is pushed out of its role, but its deceptive style and variety of skills to make big plays with such as absorbing a big bomb with distortion, really nuking a bunker with a shatter combo, stripping boons, or getting random team shuffles with portal and turning the table on a fight via alacrity and quickness allow for some huge plays to be made, particularly if the meta shifts to not be so durable. Frankly, the Chrono bunker is out of place in style and isn’t really fun to play as or against compared to what the mesmer’s concept offers.

One last kiss to my beautiful mesmer good bye it was fun

mesmer will be fine in PvP. they have plenty going for them there. maybe they won’t be the tippy-top of the ladder anymore, but i would find it hard to believe a GW meta existed where mesmers aren’t at least mid tier pvp.

for pve though, the aclarity nerf will be the last nail in their coffin. pve is all about sustained DPS, and their aclarity in pve is what they are barely hanging on to at the moment.

I guess Chicken Little couldn’t even wait for the actual balance patch notes…

• there are many ways to nerf alacrity and make it still valuable (but not OP) in both PvE and PvP
• hell, there are many ways to make mesmer valuable in PvE even without alacrity (example: make phantasms affected by damage multipliers, increase slightly damage coefficients on weapons skills)
• there are many ways to make shatter mesmer a thing again and not force anyone to play bunker in PvP (actually shatter mesmer would be fine if the other elite specs get nerfed properly)

Will a-net do all of that perfectly? Unlikely. But it is too early to judge.

So we can either complain in advance (I know the concept I’m french) or try to be constructive and suggest on the forum how you would balance mesmer to make it relevant but not overpowered in all game modes.

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

The nerf is going to be Mesmer breaking. ANET has an issue with Mesmer being successful.

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Actually reading thru the thief nerfs over the years the quality + quantity make mesmers look like anet’s golden child.

Azukas.1426:

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Actually reading thru the thief nerfs over the years the quality + quantity make mesmers look like anet’s golden child.

lol

Mesmer is the worst dps dealer, there are jokes made about Mesmer’s condi damage, Time Warp only affects 5 people at a time, and now Alacrity is being nerfed.

1.Mesmer has the best utility (portal, alacrity, illusions to mess with targetting) single target CC (moa), gravity well, and can reset your cooldowns. Skills need to effect only 5 for balancing purposes. Other skills only effect 5 so an elementalist in stronghold can’t air staff 4 his entire team plus the bombers for example.

Pro teams don’t take two of a class for being weak, they know its strongpoints and have deduced with their expert understanding that two mesmers are indeed optimal for this meta.

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Actually reading thru the thief nerfs over the years the quality + quantity make mesmers look like anet’s golden child.

lol

See, Fay is laughing at you because he was present for Mesmer history (we all saw thief along the way too).

So yeah, well done for making Fay laugh I guess. You must have hit a particularly high note of ridiculousness.

Silverkey.2078:

• there are many ways to nerf alacrity and make it still valuable (but not OP) in both PvE and PvP

There’s the very simple thing that before AWTEW was changed, we all thought that if anything Alacrity is nice but not a game maker.

It wasn’t before every, kitten , bloody, well applied 2s to 5 people that this became crazy.

So while I’m very happy that healing well now removes conditions baseline, maybe it’s time to find something else for “the well talent”. Ideas:

• Wells apply random conditions and boons (like Chaos Storm, but always duration 1s).
• Wells recharge faster if you aren’t standing in them.
• All wells apply confusion on tick, including Well of Eternity. That one deals damage at the end, the others remove a condition.
• Wells grow by 20% in size (not radius!) each tick.

Carighan.6758:

Silverkey.2078:

• there are many ways to nerf alacrity and make it still valuable (but not OP) in both PvE and PvP

There’s the very simple thing that before AWTEW was changed, we all thought that if anything Alacrity is nice but not a game maker.

It wasn’t before every, kitten , bloody, well applied 2s to 5 people that this became crazy.

So while I’m very happy that healing well now removes conditions baseline, maybe it’s time to find something else for “the well talent”. Ideas:

• Wells apply random conditions and boons (like Chaos Storm, but always duration 1s).
• Wells recharge faster if you aren’t standing in them.
• All wells apply confusion on tick, including Well of Eternity. That one deals damage at the end, the others remove a condition.
• Wells grow by 20% in size (not radius!) each tick.

Wells spring water. Colonies are born and thrive.

To out there?

When you say “mesmer is fine in pvp” you really mean chronomancer.

Carighan.6758:

• Wells grow by 20% in size (not radius!) each tick.

Without judging this idea at all, I’m just curious as to how you think ‘size’ is supposed to be interpreted. Not radius apparently, so…diameter? Area? Circumference?

I know some of the suggestions are kind of funny and some things said are borderline different reality but let’s try not to let this get into moderation area and be a little more civil.

Carighan, you can’t say a 2D circle grows in size then say not in radius, it really only can increase in radius. I also don’t agree that alacrity sharing is that big of a problem, it’s one of 2 reasons why mesmer chronomancer is even used in PvE, the other being large amounts of quickness which may or may not be possible to be supplied by guards for the same uptime.

Azukas, it’s not the quantity of nerfs you should look at, it’s how many were deserved as well as the state of the class/game at the time. If 2 classes had 20 overpowered things that needed toning down, I could nerf one thing a patch on thief for 20 nerfs but then nerf 5 things on warrior on 4 patches.

I will agree some changes are for all classes a pile of BS but when a class is represented well across multiple game modes for 2 years solid to the point of excluding everything else from its role, you know it’s over tuned.

Fay.2357:

Without judging this idea at all, I’m just curious as to how you think ‘size’ is supposed to be interpreted. Not radius apparently, so…diameter? Area? Circumference?

Oh sorry. 20% added area. Although that might be too little to matter, but I would love to see it ingame and actually see the circle expand before I judge that.

I mean it’d be of-the-previous-circle, so it’s 100%, 120%, 144% area covered. That could be ok. Maybe.

apharma.3741:

I also don’t agree that alacrity sharing is that big of a problem, it’s one of 2 reasons why mesmer chronomancer is even used in PvE, the other being large amounts of quickness which may or may not be possible to be supplied by guards for the same uptime.

That’s actually the main reason it needs to go.
I mean, now Alacrity is being nerfed to compensate. So now we have a weak effect we can share, for X overall effect.
I’d rather have a strong an hence gameplay-affecting effect which is less shared, for X overall effect.

Same overall effect, but now the talent is going to be required because Alacrity is balanced with AWTEW in mind.

In other words, being a one trick pony is a really bad thing. Especially when it then turns out that the devs want that trick to be weaker. I’d rather lose the pony entirely then and find something else.

Carighan.6758:

In other words, being a one trick pony is a really bad thing. Especially when it then turns out that the devs want that trick to be weaker. I’d rather lose the pony entirely then and find something else.

As is the case with most sentiments like this, it relies on the faulty idea “find something else.”
It’s not faulty because it’s not a good idea, it’s faulty because ANET NEVER DOES IT.

You want a nerf and replace, but Anet doesn’t nerf and replace for mesmer, they nerf and nerf until we’re out. Then, one day, they finally add something because they have to (HoT = something for everyone). And then the cycle begins anew.

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Just saying that the few weeping over some kind of proclaimed grudge ANet has to mesmer isn’t really justified. The thief has been nerfed more frequently, nerfed more substantially, buffed fewer times, and given less compensation in the act of nerfs. I said it above and I’ll say it again that many of these changes were justified. I’m not crying boo-hoo like many other people about cheesey and low-skill/risk : high reward builds and traits getting substantially toned down. It was on the thief. It’s still there. And I continue to vouch for reworks and subsequently nerfs to the thief’s cheese to make the class more interesting to play and more rewarding for skilled players. I’m saying the mesmer/chronomancer has comparatively gotten more done to it to improve its gameplay, and that I endorse nerfs, no matter to what class or build, if something has a very low skill floor and a very large minimum reward.

There are a lot of core design principles wrong with the mesmer and thief (as I mentioned) which cause balance concerns and leave them in sad shape at particular things because those concepts don’t get reworked, and numbers tweaks don’t really do anything to offset them. ANet realizes that shatter’s burst is the best in the game per unit of time, and that they subsequently need to keep sheer DPS down a bit to compensate. The greatsword won’t get its AA damage buffed until it’s made into an actual projectile that can be reflected rather than a pseudo-projectile that still gains bonus range from physics. Sword DPS won’t be raised heavily because it has a powerful defensive mechanic built-in on a low cooldown as well as passive boon removal on the AA chain.

Mesmer is also seemingly in the same position that the thief is undergoing. I wrote an extended post in the past regarding why the mesmer doesn’t want high stealth and evasion uptimes as the thief has; ANet has a tendency to nerf classes with stealth access substantially in everything but the stealth, even when the stealth isn’t or wasn’t a core feature of a class or build, pushing the class into selfish stealth-oriented designations. I’m frankly surprised that Scrapper is likely going to stay the way it is this iteration (let’s be honest, Scrappers are overpowered, too). I doubt it will for long, though.

As far as the thief hasn’t been suffering. I don’t know what to make of that statement. The thief has has more “use” to sPvP than the mesmer over time, yes, however a bulk portion of that use extends solely from shortbow 5 and Shadow Shot. The class’ most prominent players state things like “Avoid combat” or “You’ll die 1v1 against pretty much everything.” I don’t think it’s fair to make a comparison of “suffering” here or proclaim the thief hasn’t been this whole time. The thief’s role has boiled down to running away at the first indication of a fight, and +1’ing is just a role designed for “winning harder” in what is a close matchup or matchup the thief can understand as the opponent having blown his cooldowns. Mesmer’s use has been limited because the thief hard-countered the class and nothing can out-run the thief in regards to uncontested point control, so the thief has been a staple which at one point shut mesmers out as a consequence. Prior to the D/P PS meta on the thief (before they changed traits up), mesmer wasn’t selected because it simply wasn’t able to compete with what was at the time a very overpowered hambow warrior and post-nerf an even more overpowered D/D elementalist. It simply hasn’t been top-tier and hasn’t hard-countered anything too aggressively in the meta like signet necro to be considered really important to take.

Like the thief, the mesmer isn’t meant to hunker down and hold a small-area point, nor is it meant to have very high landspeed. As such, its weaknesses stem design-wise in sPvP. Take a mesmer out into WvW where there’s no need to stay in such a small area, you have the freedom to stealth/blink, etc., and you’ll find the class functions actually extremely, extremely well.

They tried to make the Chronomancer (and Daredevil) better at point control. They failed on the Daredevil outside of D/D condi 3spam, but arguably went a little bit overboard on the Chronomancer, and implemented the concept of wells, support, CC, and mitigation in the wrong ways such that number tweaking will likely lead to the class remaining either very overpowered or very weak because something will just do the role better.

The possibility of straight up removing the Celestial Amulet from sPvP has been recognized and considered by ANet. This could allow for a tone-down on Chrono (and hopefully every other Elite Spec) while potentially not removing the class’s purpose from sPvP because it won’t be too heavily out-classed by D/D tempest and the likes.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

As is the case with most sentiments like this, it relies on the faulty idea “find something else.”
It’s not faulty because it’s not a good idea, it’s faulty because ANET NEVER DOES IT.

You want a nerf and replace, but Anet doesn’t nerf and replace for mesmer, they nerf and nerf until we’re out. Then, one day, they finally add something because they have to (HoT = something for everyone). And then the cycle begins anew.

I understand that that is the problem.

It’s not actually a problem of “they only nerf mesmers”, rather it’s a move overarching problem of their development just being really, really, really slow. They can nerf – where necessary – but then lack resources to build up something else.

Many of our current balance problems are results of a failure to replace or rework entire mechanics. Or in the case of the condition change, reworking them but then not doing a second pass once the issues with the first pass became clear. It just needs a second pass for burning and confusion, really, changing them mechanically yet again to something more workable.

But really, that doesn’t make it any better. One trick pony is a bad thing unless it’s the class design. That is, if a Mesmer’s stated design goal is “Provides Alacrity, a unique effect, to teammates and themselves”, and every single spec we can make is 100% based on that, then this needs to change.

I’d accept Alacrity as a powerful effect readily. If it were a baseline thing, strong independent of talents, skills, spec, items, whatever. If it were baked directly into our core class mechanic, or in fact, was our class mechanic.

DeceiverX.8361:

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Just saying that the few weeping over some kind of proclaimed grudge ANet has to mesmer isn’t really justified. The thief has been nerfed more frequently, nerfed more substantially, buffed fewer times, and given less compensation in the act of nerfs. I said it above and I’ll say it again that many of these changes were justified. I’m not crying boo-hoo like many other people about cheesey and low-skill/risk : high reward builds and traits getting substantially toned down. It was on the thief. It’s still there. And I continue to vouch for reworks and subsequently nerfs to the thief’s cheese to make the class more interesting to play and more rewarding for skilled players. I’m saying the mesmer/chronomancer has comparatively gotten more done to it to improve its gameplay, and that I endorse nerfs, no matter to what class or build, if something has a very low skill floor and a very large minimum reward.

There are a lot of core design principles wrong with the mesmer and thief (as I mentioned) which cause balance concerns and leave them in sad shape at particular things because those concepts don’t get reworked, and numbers tweaks don’t really do anything to offset them. ANet realizes that shatter’s burst is the best in the game per unit of time, and that they subsequently need to keep sheer DPS down a bit to compensate. The greatsword won’t get its AA damage buffed until it’s made into an actual projectile that can be reflected rather than a pseudo-projectile that still gains bonus range from physics. Sword DPS won’t be raised heavily because it has a powerful defensive mechanic built-in on a low cooldown as well as passive boon removal on the AA chain.

Mesmer is also seemingly in the same position that the thief is undergoing. I wrote an extended post in the past regarding why the mesmer doesn’t want high stealth and evasion uptimes as the thief has; ANet has a tendency to nerf classes with stealth access substantially in everything but the stealth, even when the stealth isn’t or wasn’t a core feature of a class or build, pushing the class into selfish stealth-oriented designations. I’m frankly surprised that Scrapper is likely going to stay the way it is this iteration (let’s be honest, Scrappers are overpowered, too). I doubt it will for long, though.

As far as the thief hasn’t been suffering. I don’t know what to make of that statement. The thief has has more “use” to sPvP than the mesmer over time, yes, however a bulk portion of that use extends solely from shortbow 5 and Shadow Shot. The class’ most prominent players state things like “Avoid combat” or “You’ll die 1v1 against pretty much everything.” I don’t think it’s fair to make a comparison of “suffering” here or proclaim the thief hasn’t been this whole time. The thief’s role has boiled down to running away at the first indication of a fight, and +1’ing is just a role designed for “winning harder” in what is a close matchup or matchup the thief can understand as the opponent having blown his cooldowns. Mesmer’s use has been limited because the thief hard-countered the class and nothing can out-run the thief in regards to uncontested point control, so the thief has been a staple which at one point shut mesmers out as a consequence. Prior to the D/P PS meta on the thief (before they changed traits up), mesmer wasn’t selected because it simply wasn’t able to compete with what was at the time a very overpowered hambow warrior and post-nerf an even more overpowered D/D elementalist. It simply hasn’t been top-tier and hasn’t hard-countered anything too aggressively in the meta like signet necro to be considered really important to take.

Like the thief, the mesmer isn’t meant to hunker down and hold a small-area point, nor is it meant to have very high landspeed. As such, its weaknesses stem design-wise in sPvP. Take a mesmer out into WvW where there’s no need to stay in such a small area, you have the freedom to stealth/blink, etc., and you’ll find the class functions actually extremely, extremely well.

They tried to make the Chronomancer (and Daredevil) better at point control. They failed on the Daredevil outside of D/D condi 3spam, but arguably went a little bit overboard on the Chronomancer, and implemented the concept of wells, support, CC, and mitigation in the wrong ways such that number tweaking will likely lead to the class remaining either very overpowered or very weak because something will just do the role better.

The possibility of straight up removing the Celestial Amulet from sPvP has been recognized and considered by ANet. This could allow for a tone-down on Chrono (and hopefully every other Elite Spec) while potentially not removing the class’s purpose from sPvP because it won’t be too heavily out-classed by D/D tempest and the likes.

how would you go about tuning both Mesmer and Thief class to be able to co-exist, and not one or the other like before (and potentially the future with the jan 26 patch)?

Ultimately that’s my main issue atm, being a mesmer main I do not want to go back to the days where thief had made everything else (necro, ranger, mesmer) irrelevant for a role on a team.

Ok, NOW you’re allowed to complain.

Fay.2357:

Ok, NOW you’re allowed to complain.

I’d rather say “I told you so” in person to everyone who denied that ANET had a personal vendetta against Mesmer.

you killed wath i love of guild wars anet ty and cya

Rome.7124:

how would you go about tuning both Mesmer and Thief class to be able to co-exist, and not one or the other like before (and potentially the future with the jan 26 patch)?

Not DeceiverX, but one approach would be to first focus on their underlying class design:

• Mesmer: Illusions, beguiling the enemy, never here or anywhere, making enemy combat futile.
• Thief: Fast, lethal, a scoundrel, fights dirty, gone before they know what hit em.

That’s actually very different from one another, and easy enough to base class balance on. Everything the Mesmer does should be weaker, but in return it is really really difficult to nail them down in any way, very slippery. The Thief OTOH is very easy to kill, but can easily overpower enemies before she goes down, so she has to go in, kill, out, and that has to happen fast enough.

The two might just be natural enemies, anyhow. If the Mesmer has his tricks on CD he’d be an easy kill for the Thief, who OTOH cannot kill a Mesmer with their stuff available fast enough to avoid running out of juice and then being vulnerable.

People wanted to argue with me when I said AWTEW was going to be a problem. Now we have this series of ridiculous kitchen sink nerfs that are going to keep compounding and never get reviewed/corrected. I complained about this trait pressuring us into slotting wells for everything and now they are breaking the profession as a result. Precog will be trash with this change. The ability to actually stand in a well to get the benefits…was made possible by the evade frames of precog. They have already partially broken the functionality of echo/deja. They have already made precog an unreliable stun break via compounding cast times …on a stun break. Now they evade frames are going to be replaced by aegis?!? We’ve already seen how aegis is inferior to evade frames. You may as well replace mesmers with guardians now….the only thing you will be missing is alacrity….which just got hosed. Not sure of the math, but I’m skeptical that alacrity will be worth bothering with at a 50% nerf to effectiveness. What’s that…a couple seconds off of cool downs? I’m thinking I’d rather take a core guardian with the quickness elite instead…at least you don’t have to stand in the circle for any length of time to reap that benefit.

Lusteregris.2697:

…if they want to rip bunker meta why no changes with druid? Like, no nerfs at all?

Its gonna be as always. Small buff to scepter that wont change anything in pve nor pvp(maybe breaking some scepter trait in the process), and to compensate, Alacrity will be nerfed to the ground cuz people yell at their favourite scapegoat.

One hope is that their last nerf(Well of precog) was reasonable… long casting time sucks but given the noise every druid and rev was making i was expecting wells to be destroyed..maybe just maybe they wont destroy alacrity too.

Ill tell you why ! Because no one posts a video on youtube about them doing 34K burns because of a druid buff that they got. Druid does not increase the effect of everyone in the group by 66%. Im sad about the Mesmer and I will most likely stop playing mine after the massive nerf. I am really sick of the nerfs being so hard hitting they already nerfed PU by 50% and now they are nerfing another ability by 50%.
Why cant they just dial it back 10% and see how that works if its not enough maybe another 10%. There seams to be no fine tuning with them everything seams to be cut it in half !

DeceiverX.8361:

Ross Biddle.2367:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ananeos.4587:

This is Anet. You cannot deny that they have some sort of grudge against Mesmer and everything they do (which isn’t much) and tend to overnerf.

Clearly you have never played or really paid attention to the thief to make this claim. Thief is objectively the most nerfed class in the history of the game. Like all classes, however, some of these nerfs were completely justified, despite crying from people who claim certain aspects of the class were “fine” when in all honesty they were just blatantly overpowered.

Heard this said over, and over, and over again.

So I’ll respond the same as I did in the past, over, and over, and over again.

Quantity < Quality.

If they had nerfed it just once at the start really really well, then Thieves wouldn’t have this drum (MOST NERFS EVER FOR ALL TIME OMFGDKFKJH@*Y$*!!) to beat.

Funnily enough the one and only time Thieves have truly suffered wasnt from being nerfed to hard, but rather because everybody else got buffed to much.
~HoT Meta 2016

Just saying that the few weeping over some kind of proclaimed grudge ANet has to mesmer isn’t really justified.

Oh right, well, when you read those sorts of irrational comments you have to assume those people are unbalanced and have issues.

It can be fun to jibe Anet for “hating Mesmers” but really when it’s beyond a joke and you’re serious, you’re in need of evaluation.

Mesmers and Thieves can co-exist, the biggest problem I see are Mesmers comparing one aspect of what they can do to the whole of what makes up Thieves, all that Thieves have is the ability to be +1/decap. Yes Mesmer has shown a lot of potential at this but they have a lot more group utility which can be just as important in the current game mode, yes after patch that will take a huge hit.

A huge problem that is facing Mesmer is that Anet hasn’t specified exactly what they want Mesmer to revolve around, thief they have said they want to be extremely dangerous and highly mobile. If Anet could specify what they want Mesmer to be good at then maybe they could make it have a place that won’t make it nerfed every other patch, it’s sad because I like playing both classes equally.