This is weird for me. For all of GW2 history, I have disliked thieves. As a mesmer player, they used to make my life miserable. The stealths really used to annoy me and I slowly learned ways and means to at least put up a fight before dying. Auto attacks, throwing up blocks when I expect a BS, running into their black powder to disrput stealth stacking, CC’ing the black powder area, running Mantra of Resolve to instantly clear blinds etc.
But despite all that, I hated thieves. I would single them out on my mesmer and try and take them down. And in all the youtube videos of mesmers fighting thieves, I was rooting for my class to take the thief down. To teach that stealthing little snit a lesson.
All that changed on June 23rd.
I realized this as I was watching a WvW video of a thief and mesmer dueling and to my shock, I found myself rooting for the thief! This has never happened before. And the reason is of course simple.
Now mesmers are the stealthing little snits abusing stealth and bursting…more than the thief ever did. When I saw the thief stealth, I could see the mesmer make some defensive moves – port around, throw up a block to anticipate the time of reveal, CC shadow refuge, CC black powder, run into the black powder field to prevent stealth stacking etc.
But when the mesmer stealthed, there was nothing the thief could do. Apart from Mass invis which has a CD, the other mesmer stealth skills were insta cast. And the mes used Mass invis just as the other stealth was ending – essentially free. I felt bad for the thief. And let me tell you, this has never happened before.
What really gets me is the identity crisis the PU builds have created for me. I used to be the class that could hold the moral high ground with stealth. Clones, porting, deception – was what I would use to fight. Honest deception in the sense that the opponent would be able to combat me fairly.
But this…this repeated camping in stealth for long periods of time and bursting down. That was behavior I despised in thieves. And now we do it!. It’s worse actually because it can be done from range with no counterplay to repeated stealth unlike the thief.
I remember a time before the patch where mesmer PU builds were considered essentially trolling. “Real mesmers” shunned the stealth camping and ran shatter. I never ran shatter myself, because that’s not my playstyle, but hey – shatter was legit. Now that PU has been buffed unimaginably, mesmers have suddenly flocked to this despised trait that was considered “trolly” even before!
And of course…CS. What was Anet thinking with that! Made even worse by MoD recharging in the background.
I never thought I would be saying this. But mesmers are the bad guys now. My class that was my very first character in GW2, the one I have played 80% of my games on, the class that I love to bits really…is the one on the wrong side of the debate here.
It’s an identity crisis. I can’t come to terms with the fact that I’m the cheap one!.
Kudos to those mesmers who don’t run PU and who don’t use the broken CS traits. You do our class proud. I know, I know…I’m in the minority here. It’s just that for all of GW2’s history, the mesmer was my identity.
And now my identity is relegated to “that cheap class”. And boy, does it sting!
(edited by bhagwad.4281)