Guild Wars 2

Entropy.4732:

Been testing Torment from a mesmer perspective and as much as I love them adding something new to scepter, I’m decidedly underwelmed. They REALLY need to increase the damage boost when targets are moving. People who get Torment on them should be terrified to move around. Instead, it’s like the slightest uptick from a super weak bleed. This won’t be stopping anyone from doing anything. Not even worth a condition cleanse. It’s the GW2 equivalent of getting a small pebble in your shoe.

How do you guys feel about Torment?

I could say the same thing for Confuse. It’s clear that mesmer in GW2 is not supposed to be anything like the mesmer in GW1; control has really gone out the window.

Pretty sure it copies conditions once per second, not once per 10 seconds.

All I want to say is that mesmer downed state is the best downed state in the game… My god, it’s so good.

For those that don’t know:

#1: Spammable, stacks 1 confuse for 8 seconds per use. You can stack 10+ confuse on someone while downed. One of the best confuse stackers mesmer even gets.
#2: Turn invisible for 3 seconds, teleport in a random direction, leave clone behind (which is also in downed state and spams #1). Given a few moments in battle, you can do this twice, leaving multiple copies of you laying around and making it really hard for people to stomp the right mesmer.
#3: Create a phantasmal “rogue” to deal damage to opponent. Deals 2x damage from behind. Why was this made only for downed state? I don’t even think most people know what this phantasm actually does. It’s odd that it’s a special phantasm that does double damage from behind, but is only accessible while you’re downed.
#4: Same as everyone else’s.

That #2 ability is by far my favorite #2 downed ability of any profession. The #1 is also very very strong.

Why are mesmers so good?

It won’t let me edit my post up above to fix the link, so I have to make this new post; sorry.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQUQNArYWjEaF7tbObMcA

Do you play an Asura I wonder?

I’m grateful for any and all fixes on the necro, but I am a little disappointed that Plague Signet isn’t included :/

It’s the fix I’m most looking forward to.

They’ve stacked for a while, disregard anything you were told.

It’s one of the places we really excel, if I can honestly say that a class can “excel” in WvW.

My mantra is that WvW isn’t about classes, it’s about siege and team work. Individuals tend not to make a lot of difference, even in the large zerg vs zerg skirmishes (though some people really think they do, and I think they’re deluded).

With siege and team work aside as the obviously most important aspect in WvW, I’d say necromancers (conditionmancers specifically) are one of the best WvW classes for their long staff range and their heavy AOE condition manipulation.

Necromancer pets are purely utility. Damage output of a “minion master” spec is below both conditionmancer and powermancer.

Mesmers are more of a “pet class” than necromancers are because 50% of their damage comes from their phantasms.

I don’t play with any pets on my necromancer in pvp.

I’m using the traditional scepter/dagger + staff conditionmancer build. Bleeds…

I used this build before even coming to the forums; i.e. I decided this build was the most viable build on my own.

I decided by level 15 that dagger main hand was a joke and put it out of my mind completely. I had completely forgot we could even use a dagger in our main hand; that’s just how bad it is.

Siphon life abilities are incredibly under performing/underwhelming.

And I’d like to just throw in that I hate how our main class mechanic, death shroud, is entirely focused on the worst build for necro right now: power. Necromancers, from a design perspective, seem like they’re ideally supposed to be about using conditions/condition manipulation. Why, then, is death shroud all about power? Both damaging abilities are power abilities.

We need at least an F2 version of death shroud that has condition-based abilities. Or just lazily stick stacks of bleed on the #1 ability; I won’t tell anyone.

This same build will be posted 10000 times since it’s the most commonly used, but I’ll humor you with the details anyway.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQAQNAW7YjMaN7tbyb87JApCXH9gYjTm6R5mjOA;TsAAzCpogxAjAGrPOfk+sqYUx2DA

The build is about support and mainly manipulating conditions. Necros are terrible at stacking bleeds/damage conditions in terms of efficiency compared to other classes, but we’re able to at least take advantage of our teammates’ (thieves/rangers) ability to stack a ridiculous amount of bleeds; we can epidemic them to everyone else.

I play support. Chill people, stack whatever conditions our necro class is meagerly capable of stacking, and corrupt the boons of well-buffed people — then spread the love with epidemic.

Might I say though… it’s pretty bad how little we can actually stack our own conditions. As a thief, I can stack 25 bleeds in under 5 seconds (this is no exaggeration); as a ranger, I can do nearly the same. Why are necromancers, the poster child for conditions, unable to create their own conditions as quickly as other professions? Would we be imbalanced if we could not only manipulate conditions, but also create them quickly? Our bleed stacking is abysmal compared to thieves.

I mean, what were you guys thinking giving thieves a HUGE aoe, very long duration (14 seconds) aoe bleed inducer that can stack 10 stacks of bleed even after the bleeds get cleansed and put it on a 26 (traited) cool down? Death blossom is a joke; 10 second bleed duration, 3 stacks each, spammable and in an AOE. We have nothing like any of that.

I guess we’re just supposed to be about manipulating conditions, not creating them.

You have two basic gripes within your post: One that stands on thematical grounds and one that stands on mechanical grounds. The thematic argument is that they’re too much about sucking life force and not enough about “death”. The mechanical argument is that you’d like them to use dead bodies, but they currently have no need of dead bodies.

The necromancer of guild wars manipulates the power of life like other mages manipulate the elements. It’s really simple. Life force and death (lack of life force) are two sides of the same coin. The necromancer seems perfectly themed to me. When something loses his life force, he sucks it up before it has a chance to meld with nature. He can use this life force to power his own abilities. That’s pretty darn necromancery.

He creates minions out of very obvious bones/gore. The blood fiend, for example, is a flying disembodied rib cage (still full of organs) and has intestine tentacles. That’s pretty messed up (in a good, necromancer way). They’re just as necromancer-y as skeletons and zombies (indeed if you look closely, they ARE skeletons and zombies just in a non-humanoid form). Such a design is not only more inspired than boring skeletons and zombies, but also lend to the believability that they can use any dead body to make their minions because the minions they make have their own contorted, unique forms that seem to only require the bones and flesh of anything dead laying around.

They changed the mechanics for obvious reasons (people can easily be revived in GW2, requiring corpses [as much as I love it] is a very limiting mechanic). Requiring bodies, while lending a thematic hand to the class, detracts mechanically from the class’ playability in GW2 specifically because of the changes that were implemented in GW2 compared to GW1.

Asthenea.1546:

Is this happening to everyone?

Are you somehow naming your necro minions in the first place?

I’d love to name my blood fiend “Dr. Bad Touch”

Well, in pvp your typical rotation as a necromancer is this (and it’s not really viable to devaite):

1) log out
2) character screen
3) (and this is really important) create a warrior or thief

Just kidding That’s what these forums would have you think though.

Shredicus.8706:

If DS is OP like Master Yi, can you make us a tutorial video on how to dunk on nooblords?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hPU9Ru1ftw

I’m extremely tempted to make one of these videos (with the synthesized voice, same humor) for necro this weekend.

Hmm. Could be funny. An ode to mastering death shroud to dunk nooblords, anyone?

Brogin.2395:

Narmix.4862:

If necromancer could create and stack the conditions himself, as well as say, a ranger or thief, then he would be imbalanced because he also contains within himself the ability/utility to keep the conditions off of himself and his teammates and throw any additional conditions on himself and allies back at the enemy. The question would then become “why would I play any other class but necro?”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Null_Field

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Thievery

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Disenchanter

Don’t condescendingly show me abilities and pretend I haven’t seen them. This doesn’t change anything. You can’t say that because these abilities exist, it would be balanced to allow necros to stack conditions themselves as easily as other classes. Do I really need to explain why it’s not a logical argument?

Let me try to gather the words in a way that makes sense.

It’s like saying you should be allowed to give a class a 1-hit-KO because people can dodge to prevent it from happening. Just because that’s so, doesn’t mean that on average it would be balanced or that in every situation those abilities you listed are going to be available.

Thresher.3049:

2a. Many utilities require you to disable yourself in some manner, yet their effects are
mirrored on other classes that don’t have to do this. Why?

I would like to speak to this, particularly.

Think of the “down sides” as “up sides” because you’re going to transfer them right away.

If you’ve played Magic the Gathering, necromancers are “black”. They have powerful effects, but at a self-sacrificial cost. E.g. destroy a target creature, but sacrifice one of your own. Most other colors, and indeed “classes” in the case of GW2, would see this as a serious drawback just as you’re doing. You’re seeing these drawbacks through the eyes of another class. I.e. you’re thinking about playing a warrior, using a similar ability a necro has, and wondering “why would I use this same ability as a necro, if I’d be getting a condition placed on myself”. You have to see it through the eyes of the necro though.

Black in MTG doesn’t see the sacrificing a creature to get a powerful effect as a downside, like another color might. Black in MTG loves sacrificing its own creatures because they usually have sweet “when this creature dies…” effects unique to black creatures, and similarly necromancers LOVE having conditions on themselves (to such an extent that if you’re stacking conditions on an enemy necromancer, you’re helping him; NOT hurting him) because necromancers easily transfer conditions from themselves to enemies. I’m actually amazed at how many people don’t realize deathly swarm (off-hand dagger #4; the locusts that bounce to 3 targets and blind them) actually transfers conditions from yourself to your enemy each time it bounces and it’s on quite a short CD (15 seconds?).

When a necromancer gets a powerful condition at a cost of putting a similar effect on himself, he elates because he’ll be transferring his own condition to the enemy as well. Double whammy. Plague signet is built around this mechanic. It passively sucks up the conditions from nearby allies and puts them on the necromancer; not because the necromancer is an altruistic good guy but because he can then activate it to move them all to an enemy (and epidemic for bonus points) using the conditions to his advantage; or alternatively he can keep the passive on the signet up, constantly draining conditions from his team and transfer them to enemies with other abilities like deathly swarm spam or staff #4.

So, ultimately, the self-afflicting condition “down sides” to some abilities are actually something your foe is going to feel, not you.

The Boz.2038:

Also, it doesn’t make the party immune to conditions eve if it DID in fact work; it pulses once per second, and each pulse removes one condition from each ally and applies it to you.

That’s a pretty massive amount of removal, regardless if it’s all of them at once or not.

I’m actually glad it’s not all at once, because odds are I would die frequently before being able to transfer them :P

::edit:: I just read CptCosmic’s post above, and realize (after writing my own) that I echo his opinion.

I’m going to, uncharacteristically, defend the necro class for a second. Devil’s advocate maybe.

I don’t think necros are supposed to be amazing at stacking conditions. I think the necro’s role is manipulating conditions. A thief might be able to stack 25 bleeds on someone in less than 5 seconds (I say this, instead of ranger, because I have actual experience doing this as a thief), but the necromancer can control all the conditions on the battlefield.

A necro can stack 15-20 on someone pretty easily, albeit not as easily as other classes. However, only the necro can take conditions from his team, put them on himself, and throw them back at the enemy. The necro can use the other classes’ ability to stack conditions and use it against them as if he were the one doing it.

You might ask “Why should I play a class that has to use OTHER classes’ ability to stack conditions when I could just play that class and actually do it myself?” The answer to that is: what you lack in the ability to do it yourself, you make up in the ability to protect your team from it, move them all from your allies to your foes, and then epidemic it to the rest of the enemy team. I.e. what you lack in the ability to do it yourself, you make up in utility.

If necromancer could create and stack the conditions himself, as well as say, a ranger or thief, then he would be imbalanced because he also contains within himself the ability/utility to keep the conditions off of himself and his teammates and throw any additional conditions on himself and allies back at the enemy. The question would then become “why would I play any other class but necro?”

My thief can stack a million bleeds on one or two people far, far faster than any other class I know. However, my thief is a one-trick pony in this regard. It’s stack bleeds and then try to dps the enemy down. Period. Very linear. My thief offers almost nothing else to my pvp team. The thief’s job is to DPS well; very well. No utlity however.

My necro might not be able to compete with a thief’s ability to quickly stack those bleeds, but I can keep my team protected from conditions and manipulate all the other conditions on the battlefield. I can copy my team’s conditions all onto myself with plague signet, transfer them to an enemy in a concentrated form, then epidemic it to the rest of the enemy team defending a point. If a thief on my team stacks 25 bleeds on someone, as a necro, I can spread that full stack to everyone for him.

I truly believe the utility the class has in the form of condition manipulation would be too strong if we were ALSO given the capability of stacking them as well as the other dps classes.

If you look at past posts I wrote, which basically said necromancers sucked and that thieves or rangers were totally better, I have since changed my mind after getting many more hours in sPvP as a necro.

No, necromancers are not amazing 1v1 classes for the reason that we can’t stack as much damage as any other single class. However, I don’t think necromancers were designed for 1v1. In a group environment, we are absolutely deadly if left alone. “Who’s not deadly if left alone” I hear you say; this is true so maybe I should say “we are more devastating than your typical profession that focuses on single targets”. We truly shine when there are a lot of conditions bouncing around our team.

And this post is only taking into consideration our ability to damage people; this ignores our other utilities such as chilling people, and weakening (the condition) people easier than any other class can.

Venom.6189:

@ Riot

Still doesn’t excuse why our minions generally look rather pathetic and docile though . . why not make them look menacing / terrifying instead of looking like reanimated forest creatures, ah cute little bunny let’s make that into cute little undead bunny . . No thanks.

Pathetic and docile? What about these look pathetic or docile?

Man, the flying blood fiend gives me nightmares.

Not literally, but the thing is really creepy looking. I love how the necro minions look. In fact, they’re so gory and creepy I’m a little surprised they decided it was a good idea. The blood fiend is a floating disembodied rib cage with organs falling out of it and weird intestine tentacles. There’s something that makes it not seem intimidating by virtue that it’s just in a video game but really take a look at it. Imagine seeing that in a movie or something. The design of it is pretty intimidating and also pretty inspired.

More inspired than… well, zombies and skeletons which are every necromancer’s pet, ever.

Kaikas.4631:

Per definition a transfer is removing an element from one set and placing it into another set. If they intended to copy the conditions, they should write “copy” and not “transfer”.

I agree. There are other examples in the game (even on the necro class itself) that says"transfer" and those ability take it from one place and put it somewhere else completely.

Like Deathly Swarm for instance. It says “Transfer up to three conditions from yourself to an enemy”. These actually remove the condition from you and place it on the enemy instead.

So if, per Deathly Swarm, “transfer” means to remove it from one place and put it somewhere else, then Plague Signet (which also says “transfer”) should do the same thing: Remove conditions from your allies and put them on yourself.

I admit when I fully understood what plague signet was, well, supposed to do, it looked a little overpowered truth be told. Disregarding that it’s bugged, if it worked the way it says, it seems like it’d be extremely potent. Think about it: A bunch of conditions are spread thin over your team. A bleed on someone, confuse on another, maybe poison here and there. Signet sucks all of it to you, concentrating it. You put this concentrated mix onto an enemy, then you epidemic it, copying the concentrated debuffs to a lot of people.

You basically take all the conditions and deliver them back, far worse than when they were on your own team.

This whole time, you’re protecting your team from ALL conditions.

All of that, on one ability. It seems quite strong. Amazing support. The kind of support Necro needs right now.

This should be fixed as soon as possible.

nachtnebel.9168:

It currently doesn’t remove conditions from your allies, you just get a copy of theirs.

Oh, that’s bad news indeed. That’s a horrid bug.

Broken as in OP or UP?

This makes your team practically immune to conditions as long as you’re alive. I didn’t realize, upon first reading it, that it passively sucks the conditions off all nearby teammates and puts them on to you. This gives you an almost endless pool of conditions to throw back to your foes (pve OR pvp) using spammable deathly swarm/staff #4/or plague signet itself.

This is a very powerful ability. Permanent cleanse on your whole team.

Anyone want to discuss the merits of this signet?

forice is only known for his redundancies and his redundancies.

Skaramush.3480:

It seems like giving necromancer a few permanent but weak pets a little like dumbing it down for lack of better word to make the class more accessible?

Skaramush.3480:

dumbing it down

Ding ding ding!

You’ve stumbled on the #1 most discussed design philosophy around the “round table” discussions in every developer board meeting since 2004!

“Let’s dumb it down to appeal to more people”.

There hasn’t been a sequal in the last 10 years that hasn’t “dumbed it down” to “appeal to a broader audience”.

Gaming has been on this downward slope for years… It devastates me sometimes to think that my favorite hobby is going the same route as all other media based entertainment.

Why have a fewer dedicated fans that stuck it out and really learned how to play a difficult/rewarding game when we can just dumb it down so that every moron and man-baby can have a blast playing it? Dumber people in general are pleased with simpler mechanics and they STILL feel like they’re showing “skill” even if the game’s overall learning curve is practically non-existent. Thus, every developer seems to be taking this stance.

Yes, I know my tone is a little biased, but please look objectively at every game that has come out in the last 10 years. Very few games and even fewer developers actually make difficult games. Instead the model is “dumb it down so that everyone and his mom will play it, then nickel and dime the larger player base with downloadable content.”

Look at Diablo 3 compared to Diablo 2. Every modern warfare game to come out one after the other. This game’s mechanics follow the same path. “Conditions” are VERY streamlined (i.e. if they need an ability to do damage over time, they just slap bleed on it); in fact all the class mechanics are more streamlined than their GW1 brothers. They even removed cross-classing (which I’ll admit may have been a design choice that aimed at something other than simply streamlining).

Magzillas.4865:

You clearly haven’t mastered death shroud. Only once you master death shroud will you actually become the alleged “best fear class.”

>Mastering 4 abilities

Man, I thought we got past 240p at 10 frames per second.

This is too painful to watch.

Anyway, carry on I guess.

leman.7682:

Necro doesn’t need bug fixes nor buffs.

It needs a Death Shroud nerf, because it clearly is OP as hell.

You mean compared to other classes that can basically just become invincible or turn invisible?

Death Shroud, in my opinion, is one of the worst survival mechanics in the game compared to what other classes get. And this is coming from a mesmer main, not a necro main.

Lawbringer.1956:

You act as if any role is nothing more than a weird damage dealer, no matter what spec you play you are nothing more than a damage dealer with a gimmick, it was dumbed down for the masses and basically its a button masher with short cooldowns

Yes, yes this is exactly how I feel and I think this is exactly what GW2 is trying to accomplish. I think they’ve actually said it, in so many words, that it’s what they’re trying to do.

Lawbringer.1956:

The power of mesmer in gw2 comes in pvp, where confusion does massive burst and feedback destroys zergs, you really feel like something far more powerfull than a gw1 mesmer or anything ive seen really in WvW as a mesmer, being able to litterally control the battlefield with your reflects and barriers

I think it’s pretty obvious that I am talking about PvP and no, you’re somewhat deluding yourself if you think any of that is true. Feedback does not destroy zergs… What planet do you live on? This is the primary statement that leads to my former statement of you being deluded. Feedback, at most, makes people stop attacking for 6 seconds (its duration) and at worst, causes people to just take 3 seconds out of their time to walk around it. In WvW, as you described, it does hardly anything at all. Instead of using it and thinking “God I’m so awesome!”, actually pay attention to what you’ve changed/done; you’ll find that it was actually hardly anything at all. And it’s on a very long cool down for what it actually accomplishes (which is almost nothing).

If anything, feedback is better in sPvP where skirmishes take a much shorter time and the area being fought in is much smaller. But you’ll notice no good mesmers take feedback with them there, either.

Trust me, I felt like you did at first. I thought “Wow, feedback is so big and has such a devastating effect!” then I realized it only lasts 6 seconds and does maybe 10,000 damage, distributed among the 20 people firing through it accidentally (read: that’s not 10k to each person, that’s 10k divided by 20 people). Oh, and that’s being generous. It tricks less and less people as time goes on; you won’t see many people blindly keep firing through it like you would at release.

So no. You can not control the battlefield, unless “control” means stopping ranged attackers from attacking every 45 seconds with a 6 second, relatively small aoe that is easily walked around.

Have you actually paid attention at all to the enemy zerg when you’ve used it? Do you really think anyone is saying “Dukes! We’ve been foiled! Run!”?

Of course not. It does nothing to the zerg’s mentality at all. And why should it? You’re one individual.

Currently torch, using “the Prestige” gets you a 3 second invisibility on a 4 second cool down.

As you may know, when an ability is interrupted during cast, it gets a short 4 second cool down.

The Prestige gives you 3 seconds of invisiblity WHILE you cast it. Activate it, you turn invisible for 3 seconds, at when the cast bar is at 99%, interrupt yourself by casting another ability (like #1 auto attack). This’ll pull you out of stealth after you’ve been invisible for 2.99 seconds, and put The Prestige on just a 4 second cool down.

Pretty imbalanced.

Then you find out thief stacks 25 bleeds in 4 seconds and that bleed outclasses confusion 100% of the time, let alone the meager other dots you can stack as a mesmer.

Oh and he can just stealth away, because those bleeds last between 10-14 seconds.

:/

Unless that mesmer turns invisible which clears it.

Currently with torch alone, you can turn invisible for 3 seconds on a 4 second cool down (by interrupting your own “The Prestige” when it’s almost reached its end).

Activate the prestige
You turn invisible and start “casting” for 3 seconds
When the cast bar is 99% complete, use ability 1 to interrupt it
Prestige goes on it’s short “I was interrupted” 4 second cool down instead of 30 seconds. If you interrupt late enough, you even get the explosion + only a 4 second CD.

Bug, yes I assume, but I don’t think you should be able to target lock a mesmer with such an easy button click either.

Rhyse.8176:

I feel your pain. Gw1 mesmer here, and I’m playing a conditionmancer because it’s closer to the original mes.

Gw2 mes is just a minion bombing DPS class. It feels to me like Anet got down to the wire, and shipped the class to release in the most functional form they could get in time. What they ended up with is not mesmer-ey, and not what was promised at the class reveal either. I made a longer post on the “IDEAS” thread a couple posts down, but here’s the basic problems imo:

#1, there is no true control in Gw2. They streamlined everything into basic conditions as part of their design intent, and specificity has been the cost for it. Think about it; the only punishment type ability (mesmer’s trademark, to force the hard decisions OP mentioned) is confusion, and it affects every action equally. There’s no control, or forcing hard decisions there, it’s just another DPS condition.

Here’s the bottom line: control should be something that compels the target to act. Disruption (daze, knockdown, confuse somewhat also) is reactive; control should be active. Force the bad guy to make a choice. Your ability to predict that choice is what makes it controlling.

#2: Far too many things are schlepped off to the illusions, phantasms in particular. Mesmer is just a wonky pet class now, the Gw1 uniqueness and brilliance is gone. Clones need to be brief distractions that are sacrificed for momentary gain, and phantasms need to apply very specific effects to the target. They need to be the “living hex” that they were originally designed to be. As an AI entity, this could actually be impressive, since they could be made to respond to certain types of actions by the target, taking the idea of punishment mechanics to a new level.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

I agree 100%. Maybe I’ll start playing necromancer to get that feeling of GW1 mesmer the closest way I can.

Relevantex.1098:

The support Mesmer is definitely available if you spec for it. Pick the skills Mass Invisibility and the Portal. Use the staff to Chaos Storm your allies. Switch to an off hand Focus to speed up your team and remove conditions with the iWarden. And go deep into the Inspiration tree for Vigorous Revelation [shattering grants vigor to allies] and Restorative Mantras [mantras heal allies]

It doesn’t have to be about Shattering or Phantasmal damage if you don’t want it to be.

But in GW2, boons and conditions hardly matter unless stacked highly. You won’t notice yourself making an impact at all if you run that build. Putting the occasional might or aegis on someone isn’t going to help nearly as much as playing the game the way Anet apparently wants you to play it: as a damage dealer. Dead enemies can’t hurt your team. That’s the best buff of all it seems.

Sadly, I’m sure a sword/pistol mesmer is going to do far more for his team than a mesmer trying to be support in the game’s current meta.

Reflections like feedback? How do you keep reflections up? The mesmer doesn’t have many at all; the personal heal, traited focus and feedback. Doesn’t seem like enough to honestly force a zerg to change their strategy.

In GW1 mesmers were about control, putting enemies “between a rock and a hard place”, forcing them to make hard decisions and punishing for choosing the wrong ones. (Before anyone says “but confusion!”; NO. Just… no. The math proves that bleed beats confusion in every way, 100% of the time. More damage, easier to apply, always does its damage. You can read the other topics dedicated to buffing confuse. Currently people can attack happily knowing that even if they do, it’s still not hurting them as bad as bleed would.)

They were about support. Lording over their teammates like a general, watching the battlefield and manipulating individual players with a series of debuffs and interrupts so that their team could successfully beat them.

If I can use a magic the gathering analogy, mesmers were Blue. They focused on outwitting the opponent and ultimately beating them through weakening their defense and finding that hole.

Right now, control doesn’t even exist in this game apart from removing debuffs (conditions). Mesmers are just marginal damage dealers when played the way they were intended, and great damage dealers when played as “in your face” melee fighters. But why all the emphasis on damage dealing?

Going back to Magic, GW2 mesmers are Red with a couple Blue tricks. But ultimately they’re aggressive and rely on confusing (read: not the condition, but actual confusion) the enemy just long enough to burst them down.

I can hear you guys right now: “But this is GW2 not GW1. Everyone can do a little of everything”. That’s true, but Anet has already explained that while everyone can do a little everything, certain classes have an emphasis elsewhere. It seems like currently Mesmer emphasis is still on dealing damage; the control aspect of them is a joke. I don’t know if this is because of the watered down way Anet has done “conditions” so that all DoTs are bleeds or burn (either slow or fast dps), weakness (the opposite of might), etc.

I feel like as a thief, I can do as much control as a mesmer, but do way better damage. Mesmer utility just doesn’t feel “Oomphy” enough to warrant playing mesmer over something that just bursts people down easier. Necromancers in GW2 are more like Mesmers of GW1 than actual Mesmers are.

What? Why? Thoughts? I’d like to say I’m not complaining, but I guess I am. I’m sad that the class isn’t about control; that it’s about just dealing weaker damage while being a bit more survivable by having these clones.

Is mesmer just a brand new class? Should I forget about the days of control and “intelligent” play and just embrace the new face-roll damage dealing that is shattering or watching phantasms deal damage?

Eh, it’s a weird mechanic in general.