Guild Wars 2

I want to open by stating how mesmers seem to be able to stay alive without extra armor or using their healing skill as long as the user is good at staying hidden.

So anyway…. I was playing around with one healing mantra making a hybrid power mesmer and stacking phantasms for dps. I found that my mantra can heal for 14k with a cool down of 7 seconds and at the same time removes 4 conditions. one match I literally just stood spamming the mantra vs 2 players and didn’t die. Anyway if they wanted a bursty mesmer they shouldn’t have given it more heals than a guardian.

14k? Mantra? Wat?

No seriosly, care to elaborate a bit? QQing about mesmer survivability and then throwing a suspicious example without providing any builds or gear stats seems.. fishy at the least.

Kisarachan @ Underworld

yes please do elaborate I have avoided mantra builds for the reason that I feel they lack the complete Umph that I like with ether feast. But ever and I mean EVERY class has quirky builds that will help it in a big way. Its just discovering the possibilities ourselves.

Kisarae.2850:

14k? Mantra? Wat?

No seriosly, care to elaborate a bit? QQing about mesmer survivability and then throwing a suspicious example without providing any builds or gear stats seems.. fishy at the least.

Kisarachan @ Underworld

Ill give u the details. Using a cleric amulet with traits 30/20/0/20/0 for good power. If you select the traits right you should get reduced recharge, an additional cast at 3 mantra casts, and you should definitely use the trait to remove a condition each time you use a healing skill. Furthermore, the superior water run at 6 stacks on armor will allow health gain every 10 seconds you use a mantra. Another trait in the spec I suggested will allow you to heal when you cast a mantra for about 2500 as an estimate. together it is estimated about 3440×3 from mantra casts plus 2500+1330 from water rune and mantra trait. together it is about 14k heals which is higher than a guardian at 10k maxed out on healing every 32 secs with reduced signet recharge (original cool down is 40 secs)

Have you considered Altruistic Healing on the Guardian? You are comparing a character specifically built around a very niche build that sacrifices a lot of utility to one that simply slaps on a healing skill and one trait. Traited and skilled correctly, Guardians have just as many, if not more ways of providing additional healing while not really sacrificing as much as Mesmers. Compare a full build to a full build and then your argument might find more legitimacy.

Super Goose.1467:

Have you considered Altruistic Healing on the Guardian? You are comparing a character specifically built around a very niche build that sacrifices a lot of utility to one that simply slaps on a healing skill and one trait. Traited and skilled correctly, Guardians have just as many, if not more ways of providing additional healing while not really sacrificing as much as Mesmers. Compare a full build to a full build and then your argument might find more legitimacy.

I am not basing this on one healing skill. First, the power is almost maxed out and phantasm damage is raised as an addition to the traits. Furthermore, regeneration ticks at around 300 per second for the party. The phantasms stack to kill anyone eventually. The saddest part is that they can never find me. I use Mass Invisibility for 5 sec stealth and decoy to stealth me while using blink to escape when necessary. I also spam the swords distortion dealing damage and avoiding damage while shattering for distortion. (I usually sacrifice the 7 second cool down reduction for dodging for clones so I can shatter and it is still low at 10 seconds.) The healing skill is just the example that stands out the most with the Mesmer.

The healing mantra does indeed scale through the roof compared to the other mesmer heals.

But this idea that having ~3k power and no crit or crit damage means your damage is good is wrong, and you really cannot have high +heal, high +crit, high +critdam, and high +power all at once. Something has to give in the itemization. The other big weakness of the healing mantra is that if they catch you channeling it and interrupt you, it’s out for the cooldown; and given the long channel time it’s not exactly difficult. Mesmers have a few utilities that could help cover those channels, but they’re competing for other (now traited) mantras and have relatively long cooldowns. The torch is no help, as some people seem to suggest, because the torch stealth is a channel and breaking the channel ends the stealth.

Nearly every class has access to bunker-ish builds that sacrifice spike damage for sutainability. The Mesmer is an unexceptional example of this. The very best classes have good heals and clearing, AND access to protection, vigor and regeneration. This is why elementalists and engineers can be very difficult to kill despite poor base stats: good access to protection and regeneration and vigor.

Try building to have good uptime on regeneration and protection as a mesmer and still have the mantra traits you need. I found it very difficult to do and still have a viable build.

All those skills have long cooldowns which you can’t really build around because you are already built to use mantras. Also phantasms die really quickly, especially when there is AoE or cleave damage involved.

And just to name a few classes that have more survival ability than mesmers: Engineers get a shield with a reflect projectiles and a block/stun that will block projectiles for its duration plus the chance to equip another kit with another general block that just blocks anything for its duration plus a plethora of ways to kite mobs while still dealing hefty damage with either bombs or grenades. Rangers have Greatsword that has a built in evade on 2/3 of the skills in their auto-attack and a moving block plus they can have two bears with mega vitality to tank for them oh and they can swap these bears every 15s for instant skill/health refill. Necromancers have a second life bar that they can recharge over time and can bring along some minions to take of the heat, they also have many ways of blinding or chilling foes. Warriors and Guardians both have lots of armor and several blocks and they ability to apply perma-weakness which is huge damage reduction. Elementalists can zip in and out of fights at a moment’s notice and have cantrips and auras. And thief has perma-stealth…

Basically every class has lots of ways to avoid damage and any of them can be built into something similar to what you described, in fact there is a word for these builds: Bunker Builds. I think every class has at least one variety of Bunker that can outlast multiple foes.

As far as being able to max out healing and power… yeah you can get those both pretty high but then you are missing out on precision and crit damage and toughness and vitality. You can really only choose two to really “max” and just power alone leaves your damage output way below those who have power and precision with a splash of crit damage. there is always a tradeoff.

Don’t think that just because healing power is high that you deal no damage without testing it. You can still have the phantasms that stack up for much higher than average damage (It kills bunker guardians). furthermore, I’m never worried about the mantra recharge because…. if I’m good…..:
A. I’m not supposed to be found.
B. I’m running around and dodging.
C. I hit the distortion shatter when I recharge my mantra or the stealth to recharge it.
D. I have a reason to use it since i heal almost 4k on use
E. its cool down if interrupted is 3 seconds which is not worrisome since I never drop below 50% hp vs anyone (I’ve done 3 vs 1 with one of the 3 being a burst warrior that could kill if I went afk for 2 seconds.)

I would start complaining about elementalist and guardian healing a year before I would think about starting to complain about how overpowered mantra heals are.

We didn’t say you deal no damage, we said you deal less damage. And just because you can kill one bunker class with another doesn’t make your class overpowered, it makes you a good player (congrats by the way!). Surviving 3 vs 1 against burst is the definition of bunker build and if you do a little search you can find examples from just about any of the classes where this is possible. One of my favs was the TankCat engineer spec, it’s hilarious to watch him just run a group of 10+ around in circles while his team takes the advantage. Here’s the link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-TANKCAT-build-Prybar-some-faces

If those fragile phantasms are an important part of your survival and damage, and your opponents aren’t wailing on your phantasms, you ought to find some better opponents before calling something OP.

Zelulose.8695:

Kisarae.2850:

14k? Mantra? Wat?

No seriosly, care to elaborate a bit? QQing about mesmer survivability and then throwing a suspicious example without providing any builds or gear stats seems.. fishy at the least.

Kisarachan @ Underworld

Ill give u the details. Using a cleric amulet with traits 30/20/0/20/0 for good power. If you select the traits right you should get reduced recharge, an additional cast at 3 mantra casts, and you should definitely use the trait to remove a condition each time you use a healing skill. Furthermore, the superior water run at 6 stacks on armor will allow health gain every 10 seconds you use a mantra. Another trait in the spec I suggested will allow you to heal when you cast a mantra for about 2500 as an estimate. together it is estimated about 3440×3 from mantra casts plus 2500+1330 from water rune and mantra trait. together it is about 14k heals which is higher than a guardian at 10k maxed out on healing every 32 secs with reduced signet recharge (original cool down is 40 secs)

I see it now, it is indeed powerful, even moreso than I would have estimated.. I really want to have a look at this now that you gave the basis. Coming from Aion as a chanter mantras always intrigued me but i just didnt find any way to get them to feel useful, but this might be a solid pick. Thanks again for sharing!

Kisarachan @ Underworld

Restorative Mantras and Mantra of Recovery scale with 20% of your healing power and their base healing is around 2700(with 20 Inspiration) You can’t reach 3400+ heal on MoR even with completely maxed out healing power(around 1400 with 25x Sigil of Life).

A more realistic number would be 3000 per heal on MoR with ~1000 healing power. But then, with THAT bad scaling, healing power only affects your regeneration, which has a MUCH better healing power scaling value, but that alone doesn’t justify sacrificing everything else for maxed healing power. Also the Water rune’s #6 effect is pretty bad, why would you even use it when there’s many better alternatives out there? Anything else would be better in that place(Runes of Altruism are pretty kitten good, especially with such a low cooldown healing skill, check it out).

This is all my honest opinion, consider it.

-Rezardi

as far as i know, the trait that heals on mantras is ONLY on recharging the mantra, not per individual use. you dont get 3 heals per mantra use, you get 1. the only mantra that lets you spam heal is mantra of pain, even then, its a heal every 5 seconds or so.

same with the trait that removes condition on heal, it’s for recharging mantra, not per use.

As another former aion player, with some heavy experience in the woes of balance. I can tell you its because mesmer is poorly designed. Player skill will always factor in yes, but the natural elements that mesmer is capable of such as deception/illusion bombing, many things; whilst indivually ok, stack to a ridiculous level in places against the other classes.

Mesmer has an almost unrivalled base advantage because of that. In comparison to the other classes its faceroll. It takes no brain to play.

I play one myself and granted im used to a skill bind list of 40+ not 5/swap + 5 utility such as with gw2. Yet there is no challenge to mesmer. Well played its easier than anything with too much on offer.

That is however personal opinion, although as you know the class is everywhere. I respect non mesmer players for the great 1v1’s ive had. Dropping the class for now, and as you can appreciate im sure mesmers (it wasnt fun to pve level it) so this is actually hard to do! and im not just someone who dies to them and wants them nerfed.

I just really believe this class should be nerfed into the ground. Its silly. Almost like d/d ele atm wvw wise.

-Agreed that different environments yield different results. Im talking about the same average player rolling this class, or another. On mesmer he will fare better, win 90% of the time with osicats generic build. That is a faceroll base advantage imo.

^seriously? Osicat is an amazing player that USES skill… IMO mesmers have one of the highest skill caps in the game because they require the most player awareness not just a tank and hit everything while taking the damage.. Especially when it comes to clones…

^^
He’s bored playing mesmer.
He doesnt want to face more mesmer.
He wants the class destroyed because of it.
.. and after he’s done , he’ll start a. “why d/d ele ability to faceroll at wvw so unfair” thread..

wads.5730:

as far as i know, the trait that heals on mantras is ONLY on recharging the mantra, not per individual use. you dont get 3 heals per mantra use, you get 1. the only mantra that lets you spam heal is mantra of pain, even then, its a heal every 5 seconds or so.

same with the trait that removes condition on heal, it’s for recharging mantra, not per use.

I already took into account that the 2600 healing only comes with the mantra charge.

By the way, as a correction you do get a condition removed per cast when and after the mantra is charged. That means the mantra has the potential to remove 4 conditions every 7 second recharge + 3 second cast so about 10-11 secs.

Seriously, folks, something’s fishy here. If this guy plays a Mesmer and LIKES playing a Mesmer, then what motivation would he have to post a topic like this? I know, I know, he’d probably respond with some lofty assertion that he likes a challenging and fair game and that he’d make an argument against ANY class he thought was OP, etc, etc., but who’s really buying it? If this supposedly OP Mesmer build was really viable, a lot more people would have copped on to it by now and be using it. But it’s not viable, at least not in wvw or pvp.

@ ErraticFaith.9142

You, sir, obviously don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about. Can you please tell us your favorite class to play so we can visit that profession’s board and complain about how the class needs to be nerfed and how every one playing the class are all a bunch of talentless players who deserve no respect. TIA!

Until mantras are uninterruptible nothing is overpowered about them. Any decent player will catch on the first time they see that nice little heal at the end of the channel and then start smacking you down with interrupts every time. That’s being generous and assuming they don’t think fast enough to figure it out while you channel the first time

Phantasm dps is ok with straight power, but it’s nothing compared to what a GC has. I thought this thread would be more about phase retreat, blink, decoy, blurred frenzy, distortion, and mass invis…. not a niche spec that I wouldn’t run without 2 guardians babysitting me with stand your ground.

jportell.2197:

yes please do elaborate I have avoided mantra builds for the reason that I feel they lack the complete Umph that I like with ether feast. But ever and I mean EVERY class has quirky builds that will help it in a big way. Its just discovering the possibilities ourselves.

Just wanted to quote what I wrote on my thread about the mantra build I use. Mantra of Recovery is overall the superior heal. The only downside people have with it is that they aren’t used to the cast time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Video-Guide-Mantra-Burst-Heal-Build-PvX

Fay.2735:

possante.8310:

IMO mantra healing is the worst healing we have. even full traited mean you can cast it 3x with a 8s CD, problem is: after you use the healing 3x you are done, no more healing in combat because on tpvp a insane 3s to activated mantra healing is insane……

3x mantra healing isnt much better than ether feast + 3 illusion, for me taht heal skill look terrible

You are forgetting restorative mantras and you could also use Rune of Dwayna. With my setup I have 220 healing power which gives about 2.8k per charge of a mantra (+ allies around you), then there’s the 2.7 per readied mantra x3.

So if you were to charge + spam the 3 readied mantras that would be roughly 10.8k health regained in about 5 seconds. If you would add Rune of dwayna you’d heal for more + get 5sec of regeneration per charge + readied mantra used (if you’d wait 5 seconds between use.

Mantra of recovery also only has 10 second cooldown till you can recharge instead of Ether Feasts 20 second cooldown which is only 5.7k for me + if I had 3 illusions up it would be about 7.7k every 20 seconds. So roughly if using Restorative Mantras:

Mantra of Recovery = 10.8k every 15 seconds (With RM trait) – 8k (Without RM trait)
Ether fest = 7.7k every 20 seconds (depended on whether you have 3 clones up or not)
Mirror = 4k every 15 seconds

Mantra of Recovery is therefore the far superior heal. Especially when used with a mantra build with restorative mantras and healing runes because you will also proc 2.8k on other mantras cast that doesn’t just heal you but people around you also.

Also you can use the heals when you need them regardless of being stunned/knocked down and because they are divided up you can use them in a smarter way.