Guild Wars 2

Add me for all NA mesmer sections

We all know that MM, rankings, and stats are being worked on and will hopefully be coming within the next few months. That’s awesome, and I can’t wait for them to be out. That said, I really hope the stat system is team-based and not individual based.

Right now, paid tournaments are difficult to break into for new teams, and there aren’t enough of them going on even at prime time. Even assuming you get in, it’s rather expensive to keep playing. Other people have already done the math so I won’t do it again, but in order to keep playing paids without running out of tickets, you need to be doing quite well consistently. By definition, only a minority of teams can be meeting that requirement.

Now one thing that I’ve seen top-tier players doing, and I’ve been doing myself a lot recently, is joining up with PUG groups or newer teams for paid tournaments. Since we can generally turn a profit running paids, it’s not a big deal to lose some tickets here and there, and it’s fun to play and help other teams figure out strats etc.

But if stats are individual, and playing with a random team is going to end up lowering your rating and racking up a loss count… we’re going to see less of good players helping out newer teams. This will make it even harder to break into the paids scene.

It’s also the only Mesmer ability that you must stand still to use. Generally, standing still is a terrible idea so if they suddenly stop moving and start the animation, chances are good you’re getting moa cast on you. At that point one dodge nullifies a 180s CD ult, and hey if you were wrong, then the most you’ve lost is a dodge.

TwoBit.5903:

I meant their presence. The combo was changed slightly so there’s a chance you’re missing some stacks of vulnerability.

The combo is completely identical.

TwoBit.5903:

Are you factoring in multipliers like vulnerability from Rending Shatters, Illusion of Vulnerability and Staff/Sword Autoattack? It wouldn’t be surprising it the glitch accounted for most of the damage drop either. It’s hard to take this too seriously without a set of controlled data.

But in any case, I don’t think ANet would need to lie about ninja nerfs.

By definition, no multiplier could affect the % damage change that is seen, since %s are themselves calculated as a multiplier.

For example,

say one damage formula is expressed by: dmg1 = (X + P) * A * B * C
now change one of those variables (for us, the might multiplier): dmg2 = (Y + P) * A * B * C

If we assume that A, B, and C all stay the same, which any multipliers would in my case because the execution of the combo I’m testing with is identical pre and post patch, and done hundreds of times in each case, then you can combine them into one “constant”.

Let A * B * C = D

dmg1 = (X + P) * D
dmg2 = (Y + P) * D

Now we’re trying to figure out the difference between dmg1 and dmg2, let’s call our result ‘L’.

L = dmg2 / dmg1
L = ((X + P) * D) / ((Y + P) * D) = (X + P) / (Y + P)

As you can see, D, which represent every modifier that was the same between pre and post-patch, can be completely removed from the equation when calculating a % result.

Although I certainly can’t prove to you that my damage results are hard data, I assure you that the numbers are right, and consistent between hundreds of identical tests.

Mufa/Zenith/etc please take your random bickering to one of the many Mesmer threads which were created for that purpose. It’s like you all read the title of the thread and not even the very first post in it.

Ziddy.2583:

Like I said earlier, without using the macro and manually shattering 3 + 1 for the vulnerability stacks then 3 + 1 mindwrack prepatch, you would never hit 3.5k on heavy golems unless it bugged. 2.5-2.7k is in fact the correct damage for mindwrack, on heavy golems.

That’s exactly what I’m wondering about. I expect that the 3.4k hits I was seeing were somewhat due to the bug, but probably not to the same extent that the 5k hits some people were seeing were.

But according to dev posts they didn’t fix the underlying issue, all they did was add the .25s cooldown. As I said earlier, my combo didn’t cast 2 shatters within .25s either before or after the patch, so it should not have been affected by that change. If they truly didn’t fix the bug, then I should still see similarly bugged damage on that combo (minus a bit from SS revert, as calculated earlier).

So, either they’re lying about fixing the underlying issue (which would be really odd, as it’s a good thing), don’t realize they fixed it, partially fixed it without saying so but needed the .25 to complete the band-aid, or something else completely was changed. I’m wondering which of those things it was!

Ok, that’s fine. So to correct that math we do:

(35 * #mightStacks) / power =
(35 * 10) / 2229 =
0.157 = 15.7%

That still accounts for less than half the missing damage, and only in the case where might has the largest possible effect it might have depending on how Shattered Strength is implemented.

TwoBit.5903:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Notice that it’s weapon damage multiplied by power. Since might adds directly to power, you need to use base power, rather than displayed weapon damage + power, to calculate the damage difference.

35 (Number Might stacks)/base power = % damage difference.

Where are you seeing this? If you mouse-over the “Attack” stat in your hero screen (my bad for calling it “damage” earlier), you can see it’s weapon damage + power, not multiplied.

Powerr.3649:

yeah they reverted shattered strength to its previous state which virtually makes you miss out on the free might. Mesmers could get 24 stacks of might because of the greatsword bouncing attack. Now they get 6 base so i think 9 now. Which is 35 power per stack so 840 power previously now toned back to between 210-315 power.

So basically what was happening was that mesmers would have 2200 base power from their shatter builds, 2450 power and add a 24 stack of might makes it 3290 POWER. so ya

Not only that but with 3290 power their shatters were doing 1 clones worth of damage. With a zerker amulet you do roughly twice the damage on mind wrack than you would with 3. You could essentially get 4 4k+ shatters off and just be one shotting people left and right. I forget what the exact co-efficients are on the # of clones but yeah

Everything you said there is true, but you’re talking in generalities. I’ll lay out some more math for ya here to show more clearly what I’m talking about.

Combo being used: Duelist, Leap, Dodge, Leap, Diversion, Mirror Images, Dodge, Mind Wrack.

So that’s a full diversion, followed by a full mind wrack about a third of a second later (need to give dodge a small amount of time to go off). Before the patch, each mind wrack was usually crit’ing for about 3.4k. Post-patch, the exact same combo, which is totally unaffected by the .25s cooldown, is having each mind wrack crit for about 2.2k. Pulling from the stuff I said in the first post, depending on how the might stack application is coded, the most might that combo would produce for the mind wracks pre-patch was 15. Now it’s 5. Difference of 10.

Each might stack gives 35 power.

35 * 10 = 350

The shatter build I used to test this gives a base power stat of 2229, so now let’s look at the bonus that extra 10 might provides:

350 / 2229 = .157 = 15.7%.

If all that’s changed is the might stacks, then I should be seeing 15.7% less damage on my shatters.

3400 * x = 2200 (x is the % of 3400 that 2200 is)
x = 2200 / 3400 = 0.647

1 – 0.647 = 0.353 = 35.3%

So, the DPS loss I’m seeing with numbers I was very careful when recording is over twice that which the math on might suggests I should be losing in the case (which I think is unlikely anyways) that might has the largest possible effect on the combo, i.e. where the mind wrack’s generated might all happen simultaneously and all apply to themselves and each other.

Again, my combo used for this test did not change at all in terms of order of execution or speed of execution, so the .25s cooldown is not a factor.

Where is this discrepancy coming from?

EDIT for terminology.

Powerr.3649:

macroing allowed mesmers to shatter with 3 clones and actually do single clone damage.

all they did was revert the change entirely and add a gcd, they didnt change any coefficients. Adding the gcd makes it so that the bug doesnt work. It would still be there if there was no gcd.

basically that was the problem

That’s what I thought as well, but if that was the case then why did my damage go down so significantly? I never macrod or even hotkey lined before so the global cd does not affect me at all – I can essentially pretend it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t change my play. So, if the that was all they did to fix the bug, it shouldn’t have changed my damage nearly that much (see my math above).

I assume when you said revert the change, you’re talking about the change to shattered strength?

EDIT: added more math a couple posts down. check there for details if you aren’t getting what I’m talking about

I’m wondering if there was an underlying bug that was fixed in addition to the added .25s cooldown for shatters. The way I did my combo, my shatters were never within .25s of each other anyways so I very rarely set off what I deemed to be the exploit damage (4k+ crits). However, my shatters were regularly still critting for right around 3k pre-patch, and they are down to around 2k now.

Shattered strength can’t be soley to blame – the might boon is only given once your clone detonates, so assuming you use diversion after a ranged summon + dodge + illusionary leap, you’ll only have ever gotten 2 clones for 6 stacks of might (now 2 stacks of might) before setting off mind wrack. This amounts to a less than 4.5% change to power, which doesn’t nearly make up for the ~33% drop in damage that i’m seeing.

It’s also possible that the might stacks given from mind wrack are also applied to those mind wracks themselves depending on how that code is set up timing-wise. Assuming that, then we’ve moved from (6 + 9 = 15) stacks of might to (2 + 3 = 5) stacks of might, or in other words a third, just as you’d expect. That would amount to somewhere around 11% power decrease, which is only about a third of the damage change I’m seeing on matching testing conditions.

So, did something else change that wasn’t in the patch notes?

Not QQ, this bug was ridiculous and needed to be fixed, but wondering what happened here.

Woot, band-aid patch! But seriously, I’m glad they fixed this promptlyish, it was pretty ridiculous.

Deathcall.2104:

yes Mouse i agree, however that suggestion will not affect the meta. Mesmer will still be functioning the same way it is now. Anyhow, things could easily be separated between sPVP and PvE/WvWvW…..

The shorter cooldown should change the meta entirely, since with 20-30 second round trip you’ll barely get to the other point before you have to turn around and go back and wait for your portal cd, making constant portal uptime unviable.

Topic 3: Shatter Mesmer Popularity
Why are shatter mesmers so popular for tPvP? Against stuff like rangers, caltrops thieves, and eles it’s often a lot more effective to run a tankier phantasm build for 1v1. You’ll even live longer in 1v2s and 1v3s. However, the role of a mesmer is to defend the side point and then support anything within portal range. That means that the mesmer is running in and out of fights quite a bit, so burst > attrition. It’s simply much more effective to run into a team fight, shatter everything and leave again than to run in, cast some phantasms and …. leave i guess.

Those shatter bursts are also just insanely effective in big AoE situations, although I’d argue that necros are even more effective, and possibly thieves if they can get high ground on somewhere like keep. And of course time warp is ridiculously powerful if used at the right time. In contrast, even moa bird is now pretty terrible considering even if you do get it off (can be dodged or blocked pretty easily or just be chance), the victim can run away at high speed and come back when it’s over unless immediately CC’d with something else anyways. Mass invis is just bad; fighting happens on points, and it simply doesn’t make sense to invis your entire team in the middle of the fight, because then your opponent will be capping the point. It’d be awesome to see a rework of mesmer ults to make other choices more viable, and time warp less insane.

Naked clone week was an interesting time, because even though mesmers had a very hard time winning any 1v1s, they were still used constantly in tPvP. Because portal. Essentially, them having ANY use at all, plus portal, made them worth taking, Otherwise you have to leave a teammate on your home point to provide comparable protection, which is a complete loss of a player, rather than a partial loss of a player that the dulled mesmer was. Which bring me to…

Topic 4: Portal
So, the problem here is that we’re allowing a defending team to guard two points without fully committing a player to each of them. This is producing a distinct defender’s advantage, along with huge popularity for mesmers. Of course guardians are just as required, if not moreso, but that’s a whole other issue. Without portal, mesmers actually have some of the least mobility in the game due to severe lack of swiftness, but with it, they suddenly become what you need for a side point defender. The only other viable option I’ve seen so far is, hilariously, a guardian running double teleport.

I think we can fix this. Let’s keep portal as a really awesome skill with some great potential for cool stuff, while at the same time preventing it from being the end-all of side point defending. Right now, it takes about 10 – 15 seconds to travel between points as a mesmer, giving you 20 – 30 seconds of dead time if you expect to run back and forth between points. What if we severely reduced the viability of using a portal to “guard” a point by reducing the duration from 60 seconds to 30 seconds? To keep the skill useful, also reduce the cooldown to perhaps 45 seconds.

Now you can still use portal to defend a side point for short periods of time, but having only a mesmer defend your side point with it all game will turn out to be extremely inefficient. On the other hard, you could use a portal to attack a team that has 2 points by dropping a portal near one of your opponent’s points, then attacking the other with most of your team. If you meet heavy resistance, portal your entire team back to that first point to catch your opponent off-balance. This is just one example, but proves that portal would still be a cool and useful skill with more dynamic use cases.

As for side point def, the entire game would hopefully become more dynamic as players rotate in and out depending on who is available, and if you think there is a possibility of your side point being pressured.

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Alright, that’s all I feel like writing about for now. Feel free to correct any logical errors I may have made, but do so in a way that will encourage discussion instead of flame wars.

Hey guys, Mesmer tPvPer here. I’d like to talk about a few things here to do with Mesmers. To begin, I’ll state that I agree about the fact that Mesmers are overly important to have on a successful tournament team, although perhaps because of slightly different reasons than what everyone is complaining about right now.

Topic 1: Shattered Strength
This is the big gripe with the new patch. I agree that it was a rather silly change to do, considering that it directly buffs what was already by far the best, and possibly the only viable build for high end tPvP (shatter). However, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. First of all, as far as I can tell, instant 25 stack might is a myth. Every other top mesmer I’ve talked to agrees with me on that. The best you can do for a shatter combo executing within 1 – 2 seconds is 18 stacks of might. Furthermore, if you want to blurred frenzy, either your first shatter has to be mind wrack, or you’ll only be mind wracking with 2 images. Alternately you can wait until after your immobilize/blurred frenzy and try to set up just the mind wrack for higher damage, but that’s unreliable and much less bursty overall.

So in reality, your mind wrack is either going to take a # of images hit, a reliability/burstyness hit, or only actually be affected by the stacks of might that it itself generates, which is obviously very few. What shattered strength DOES do very well is allow you to continue pressuring a lot harder after your burst with auto-attacks. Signet of inspiration to share the might stacks could work very well, but it would have to be at the cost of blink, decoy or illusion of life (whichever you run in your 3rd slot, since portal and mirror images are required), which are hard skills to give up.

Another thing you can do is use up a random shatter when preparing for your burst and get up to another 9 stacks, but then you’ve used up illusion summoning and possibly a defensive shatter, not to mention that the prep time for your shatter combo has just more than doubled.

Topic 2: Countering Shatter Combos
This is just a quick educational section in which I’ll explain how to beat mesmer burst. Basically, a mesmer relies heavily on the pressure put on by a shatter combo. If it misses, he really can’t do much at all for the next 10 – 20 seconds, and can’t do another full combo for 45 seconds. Also, mesmers in general like to get that combo off as quickly as possible before you have a chance to start pressuring them. So, what to do? Lure it, and watch for it.

Example: warrior. 1v1 situation, war vs mes. Run in on the mesmer, but keep a bit of range at the start to see what he does. If he has sword/pistol out, he’s almost certainly going to open with a shatter. He’ll summon a phantasm, cast his 3 illusion which will slide along the ground towards you, then dodge and shatter combo you. Switch to shield sometime along there, and shield block when he teleports to you. A lot of mesmers will actually use their full combo on you while you’re immune, particularly if they are using a macro. Great, now do whatever you want, you’ve probably won or at least got a neut on his point. Can’t swap weapons? Shield block down? Use endure pain. Ele? Mist form. Eng? Use that aoe blink thing… this one is particularly annoying because it’s harder to catch on to. Etc, etc.

Obviously this leads into mind gaming each other and trying to lure defensive cooldowns vs luring burst, but you still don’t even see a whole lot of that at high end tPvP. There are also several builds/classes which straight up counter mesmers, especially in a point defense scenario, such as staff ele and certain offensive guardian builds.

CONTINUED…

Portal: Casting the second side of Portal in the last ~1.5 seconds of it’s duration doesn’t stop the first side of the portal from fading out, leaving you with a inactive glowing portal and a long cooldown. First side of portal shouldn’t fade out until the skill flips back to it’s un-casted form on your bar.

My team [RC] also thinks this is a terrible change. As powerr said, it removes the strategy involved of bleeding someone out vs a stomp (do you risk reinforcements coming and getting a res in favour of increased respawn time?), and makes the big AoE team fights an even bigger deciding factor, since you’re guaranteed so much time to go get something else done (boss kill, reclaim side point, etc) after a 4-man wipe. This also increases the already significant defender’s advantage.

I was originally expecting a 10 second timer for everyone when I read about this change, which would still reduce some of the skill required in the game, but at least not move even more importance to team fights. 20 seconds is over the top.

Quick note: Folly meant “PZ aka Im Like A Nine N Ur Like a Five”. Pancakes to Celebrate (PTC) is a different team

It’s simply not viable to share every milestone plan with the public. Things get re-prioritized, postponed, cancelled, redesigned, etc all the time, and every time that happened there would be a crap-storm of complaining by the people who’s favourite feature didn’t stay on the list.

On a side note with this gear stuff, how about something useful to do with my overwhelming amount of account bound arcane powder?

Illusion of Life: It appears that this skill is intended to put an effected player back into downed state with the possibility of being res’d after it completes. However, the ability will sporadically instantly kill (cannot be res’d) the affected player both when the spell first takes effect and when it ends. It appears this may happen when the player takes damage right as the spell goes off.

It’s rather disconcerting to instantly kill a teammate instead of res’ing him in sPvP!