Guild Wars 2

I think the bugs are a stealth nerf.

Anet must realize by now that yet another hit on Mesmer would be bad PR but “broken” stuff has plausible deniability.

Truthfully dear moderators, why does Anet hate Mesmers?

I don’t think they hate mesmers, I think they don’t understand mesmers.
(or, well, their understanding and the community understanding of the class diverge)

Menaka.5092:

I don’t think they hate mesmers, I think they don’t understand mesmers.
(or, well, their understanding and the community understanding of the class diverge)

I can confirm, Anet does hate Mesmers.

I vote a new rule be instituted and enforced on the Devs. That rule is this: before you can even touch the class, or even think about tweaking it, you have to actually play it as your main class. No more of this “I play a warrior/thief mainly, but I’m the one who tweaks the mesmer” malarky. Who’s with me?

Ross Biddle.2367:

Menaka.5092:

I don’t think they hate mesmers, I think they don’t understand mesmers.
(or, well, their understanding and the community understanding of the class diverge)

I can confirm, Anet does hate Mesmers.

Hey that’s unfair and untrue.

Anet doesnt even know the Mesmer exist, how can they hate them?

I’m sure the dev who originally designed mesmer loved the concept – just like many of us who chose the class. And the class does have some really cool concepts.

But a class that relies on gimmicks and strange game mechanics is guaranteed to be either overpowered or riddled with major problems simply because most classes aren’t very complicated.

You have the trademarks, like thiefs having initiative, warriors having adrenaline, mesmers having clones, etc. But with mesmer, it doesn’t stop with one clear mechanic; instead, they have clones and phantasms and portals and mantras and… the list goes on. It’s like a smorgasbord of cool ideas that are never going to work quite right because if they did, mesmers would overshadow every other class in the game.

That said, the bugs themselves are an issue because bugs are just hard to fix sometimes. If you’ve ever done programming you would understand how wonky things can get. More so considering that a lot of mesmer skills involve teleporting in some way, which is always a breeding ground for problems. I don’t know if axes (Y, X, Z) are still a major issue, but I’ve seen problems with them in numerous MMOs.

Bugs? What bugs, I only see features.

Fun thing to watch if you want to get nostalgic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiWcN0jmWiE

You may notice first the awesome shatter/summoning sounds (and Thief pistol sounds!). The Mesmer has Shadow Refuge instead of the Thief, forward Phase Retreat that cause damage (and for some reason cause swiftness to enemy mobs), scepter that sound like a 150mm tank gun, insta-popping of 2 Phantasmal Duelists, Chaos Storm that cause poison, cripple and apparently insanity, instant staff auto-attack on target, commanding phantasms to move to location and omgisthatafreakininstakilllasergreatswordthatsoundlikeafreakinrailgun?!?!

Dawdler.8521:

Fun thing to watch if you want to get nostalgic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiWcN0jmWiE

You may notice first the awesome shatter/summoning sounds (and Thief pistol sounds!). The Mesmer has Shadow Refuge instead of the Thief, forward Phase Retreat that cause damage (and for some reason cause swiftness to enemy mobs), scepter that sound like a 150mm tank gun, insta-popping of 2 Phantasmal Duelists, Chaos Storm that cause poison, cripple and apparently insanity, instant staff auto-attack on target, commanding phantasms to move to location and omgisthatafreakininstakilllasergreatswordthatsoundlikeafreakinrailgun?!?!

The best part of this trailer is how the mesmer casts two iDuelists at the same time, they kill off two different mobs and he can shatter them on the last.

That is exactly how those phantasms work. NOT.

I have done some programming. The idea that the Dev or Devs working on Mesmer should main Mesmer seems like it should be a given. This is just too cool a class to keep dissing so hard.

Menaka.5092:

I don’t think they hate mesmers, I think they don’t understand mesmers.
(or, well, their understanding and the community understanding of the class diverge)

I think their original vision clashed with early community input, now they’re somewhere in the middle and no one wants to be the one to put their name under the decision which direction to go.

It’s a classic problem in multiplayer game balance. Happens a lot. Usually takes years until changing game systems provide a context for scraping major components of the class and re-doing them.

Compare buff-classes (Paladin, Shaman especially) in WoW and how only after raid-buff homogenization they lost their limiting factors, because the original idea of being weaker in return for making others stronger clashed with the community’s desire to be 1-on-1 comparable to everyone else on their main chars.

Other games just use expansion as chance for a hard reset of things that do not work.

While we are at the other game. Feral druids/caster druids in vanilla compared to the burning crusade anyone?

ANet just won’t give themselves a chance to reset the game and start from scratch with things that do not work. Sort of sad. tPvP meta bullkitten just ruins it all.

Expansion pls.

I really really hate expansions in most MMOs. They are just used to invalidate your game world.

Ofc due to the downlevelling aspect, in theory they wouldn’t do that in Gw2. But then at the same time I feel that with every zone being in theory “current”, the game world is plenty large already, even with no additions.

What could work is axing an entire continent in favour of another.

Say if they want to go hardcore rebalance underwater, sink Orr again, and make it underwater-Orr. Make all skills usable underwater (I suspect some like Flamethrower might be out :P ), and re-do underwater combat in general. Take 3 zones, give 2-4 zones.

And yeah, use the chance for some major class changes.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

tPvP just ruins it all.

FTFY. This obsessive focus is really disheartening.

It’s more that they just don’t know what they are doing.
They stealth nerf us.
They bug our class when they think they know what they are doing
Then they just flat out nerf us.

That is a whole lot of F ek You from the devs.

We have our voice and that is it. Oh someone might say you can vote with your wallets. I for one, enjoy this game immensely and don’t see anything in the mmo market that remotely catches my attention.

I don’t think it’s right when someone does speak up, one of the most knowledgeable, well spoken and intelligent members of our mesmer community….well he spoke up a ‘little too much’ , let’s ban him.

It’s ok mesmer devs, I hate you too. You sad little bunch of nerds, having your nerdy programmer meetings—- I don’t like you either.

ANet balancing meeting:

DEV1: “Dear lord, look at the mesmer profession, it’s as messy as a port-a-potty at a truckers convention. What the hell should we do?”

DEV2: “Buff warriors I say!”

DEV3: “Yeah buff them warriors.”

DEV1: “Ok, so we buff warriors, problem solved. Let’s move on to the next topic.”

Dev 1; "If we nerf them enough with the “bugs” maybe less people will play them!"
Dev 2" yeah, /wink, “BUGS”, I get it lololol."
Dev 3 “OH I get it! Less people play them the less people care!! WIN WIN!”

Mesmers was one of the least played professions as it is. Please understand that.

I think many Mesmers think they are still playing GW1 and they are not and this profession doesn’t work that way any more. I think A.Net looks at which professions are being played the most and those are the ones that get the most work, since the developers can see most data on those.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Mesmers was one of the least played professions as it is. Please understand that.

I think many Mesmers think they are still playing GW1 and they are not and this profession doesn’t work that way any more. I think A.Net looks at which professions are being played the most and those are the ones that get the most work, since the developers can see most data on those.

That confirms what a lot of us have felt all along. We’re the unwanted kids in the attic (from Flowers in the Attic book). That’s at least how it has felt. You see Warriors and Thieves get their stuff fixed almost overnight, and we still have issues unresolved since launch. It’s kinda depressing.