Guild Wars 2

I agree, the issue is that they’re going about fixing mesmer by increasing cooldowns and lowering attack rates. This just makes the class less fun to play, I’m having more fun as an elementalist because i don’t feel like i’m constantly sitting around waiting for cooldowns. I know it’s not easy to fix mesmer as it stands, but the way they’re going about is killing the class even more for PvE.

It’s been months since our trait bugs have been reported and nothing’s being fixed.. core issues with the class viability for pve. All i see is PvP spawned nerfs every patch and while they might be warranted, everything considered I think it keeps making the class less fun to play and more “auto-attack” while waiting for CDs..

Please fix the bugs before adding anymore nerfs, properly working traits will at least give us more options.

As it stands in PvE now, i feel like shatter is the only way to go. Before, phantasms were great despite their poor AI because they accounted for it with good damage, so it was worth trying to keep them up. Now the rate at which they attack keeps getting nerfed and the cooldown on them increased. Add the fact that i can’t move them out of AOEs and they despawn after every target, it makes them extremely annoying to use in dungeons. It’s more fun to just pop out clones and send them to their death.

/endrant

To save resources and have them load faster, have a circle appear on the ground that represents their team color. If you get 20 green circles around you, it means there is a team of 20 people about to aoe you into oblivion.

This should be easy to implement i think, yes?

or, if they should be visible to you, have a circle appear on the minimap with color depending on how many people are there.

I’m sorry you lose to mesmers and your ego is hurt. hug now stop crapping in our class forums with QQ threads.

wow is that way —-——>

Let’s look at mesmers shall we:

We can have a total of 3 illusions up, in 1 vs 1, this means 1 person takes all of them on. What happens in 3 vs 3? With aoe’s flying around, my phantasms get 1 attack before they die, i have access to 2 and they’re on a 16 second cd. This means that my phantasms get 1 attack each every 16 seconds; in the meantime i use illusions which do squat, defensively, to stay alive.

Mesmers are very powerful duelists by their design, nerf our damage and we become complete crap in anything other than 1 vs 1. This is why we suck in PvE, we don’t scale up with number of enemies, our cap is 1 vs 1, as soon as more than 1 enemy is in the fight, we becomes less and less effective. We can take advantage of gullible AI in pve to clump enemies together into phantasm aoe, but phantasms die quickly.

I make a choice on who i want to hit and i have to live with that choice for 16 seconds, if i spawn my phantasms on “x” and he retreats into an aoe and my phantasms die then “y” comes along, i’m sitting there with my d..staff in my hand, blowing defensive cooldowns, once those are blown i will die. I can’t tell my phantasms to go after someone else or avoid them blindly running into an aoe. Once i set them on someone, they either die or kill. I’ve had smart groups make me feel worthless, maybe try playing as a team and don’t use a pug for setting the bar.

1 vs 1 mesmer vs ele, mesmer will win.

3 mesmers vs 3 elementalists. If mesmers win, ele’s need to find a new game to play.

Think about it.

In 1 vs 1: mesmers have a set-up time before damage starts to roll. I’ve had classes take me down to 50% in that setup time as i can either set-up or defend. I won’t tell u how to beat me, but i have had smart thiefs, rangers and warriors beat me 1 vs 1 by taking advantage of my weaknesses.

Yes, i do win 90% of 1 vs 1. Do i manage the same in team play? Helllll no. Not even close.

as an addendum, if i remember correctly from that one class i took way back when that mentioned GPU architecture vs CPU, GPUs are much more powerful in the way of parallelism, rather than having a powerful core, they have multiple weaker ones but they can take care of many more things in parallel which is why they’re great for graphics rather than raw processing. If the engine was not implemented to take advantage of that for certain things and leaves the cpu to do it, there’s your bottleneck. This would also become extremely apparent in large battles: graphics hardware usage going down would be the sign for it as it has to wait for cpu.

if there are 20 things that need to be done in parallel, and complete before the next thing could be done, a gpu could potentially get them done without any switches from the kernel all in one cycle while the cpu would need many more. This would increase the overhead and lower throughput. CMPT 300 baby.

I noticed that as well, issue is this. If say the main thread was doing too much, i would expect to see the core the thread is running on to be maxed out and the issue being other threads hanging while waiting for it. That doesn’t seem to be case though, it seems to me rather to be an issue how object, players and effects are implemented into the engine and how these are being rendered.

This is pure speculation as i have no knowledge on implementation but there clearly seems to be a bottle neck in the code on how it renders and how much “parallelism” it has when it comes to multiple objects. In other words, it gets behind and starts playing a catch up game with the other threads while waiting for locks or whatever the case may be, this is restricting it from taking full advantage of the hardware.

The best model i can up with is say 10 slave threads having to do parts of the render, while not swamped, say in pve, these can manage fine. Once they finish their job the main thread can take the data and use it. In WvW where many things are happening, although i noticed the game starts to show less effects and reduce details and players on screen, there is much more than needs to be done so the queue for the slave threads becomes larger while they don’t properly scale in size, so what ends up happening is that the main thread has to wait too long. This would explain why hardware usage goes down, I would imagine the main thread to make the bulk of request to the gpu but if it’s waiting for other threads to finish their job and those are taking too long it’s just completing useless cycles on the cpu while waiting and thus not using the gpu.

That’s my kitteny theory.

So, i was looking at this for a while, but never could figure anything out. I get very good fps usually, but i get massive drops in WvW. That seems normal, the issue I have with this is that while my graphic cards are usually at 60-75% usage in normal environments the more crowded the area gets, the lower the usage becomes! I’ve been in WvW fights where i’m getting 20 fps and my gpus are sitting under 40% and my cpu at about the same. I attached a screenshot to show this as well.

I thought it might be a ram issue, but the hit rate is perfect, the number of page faults is very low (<10) which makes sense since i have plenty (8GB). I’m running out of ideas.

Specs:

i5 OCed to 4.6GHZ
2x gtx 460 sli
8GB ram
Win 7 64bit

Newest drivers

As has been said many times: mesmer and elementalist have a steep learning curve. Mesmer is fine, the only thing holding it back are the annoying bugs, once those are dealt with, the class as a whole will be balanced. Some people consider it op in pvp, but whilst powerful in 1 vs 1, anything above 2 vs 2 and we becomes significantly less effective. Elementalist is weaker in 1 vs 1 but becomes increasingly powerful as the number goes up. Well.. generally speaking, i’ve seen dagger dagger specs quite effective at 1 vs 1.

Mesmer clones don’t die in one hit unless you’re low level which is a scaling issue, at 80 with a phantasm spec, my clones and phantasms can take a few hits each and do a great job tanking for me. I’d like to see a more creative shatter mechanic and maybe some more creative status effects to open up a more control oriented spec that is viable, but as it stands, mesmer has the ability to do some decent control and good dps.

Mesmer here,

I usually win 1 vs 1 against less skilled people as they have no idea how to fight me, it becomes painfully obvious they’re just scrambling to hit things with no real plan. Fighting a good mesmer is more of a mind game than a dps battle. With that said, I have had warriors destroy me due to the sheer amount of burst they can do, they’ll figure out who i am, do the charge knockdown thing and spin on top of me. That usually leaves me at 30-40% hp.

As far as fighting a mesmer, there are about 2-3 main specs. The worst to be up against is a condition phantasm build. It’s easy to catch the real mesmer, problem is killing him before you die from bleeds/confusion. When all 3 phantasms are up and you have a 20 stack of bleeds and a 5 stack of confusion with my 1500 condition damage, you’re usually dead UNLESS you cleanse the bleeds/confusion, have a stun break and catch me off guard. Phantasms are dangerous, clones are not. You can tell them apart easily as phantasms look like ghosts (ie: transparent) while clones do not. Phantasms also have unique names ie: illusionary duelist.

If i’m up against a good player, i will have 2 phantasms up and clone, and i usually switch places with the clone or go invisible/stun while my phatasms throw their conditions up, I essentially control the fight while my illusions deal damage. I do next to nothing in damage so it’s best to kill my phantasms before going after me.

Most mesmers will usually run with pistol and greatsword. The pistol clone stacks bleeds very fast while the greatsword one cripples. It’s best to dodge the pistol phantasm.

All i have to say for struggling eles: stack condition damage, apply bleeds, slow and burn and kite. The amount of damage conditions do is insane if specced correctly. Stop looking for big numbers and understand that to properly play an ele you have to take advantage of the massive amounts of control each tree gives you and keep every element on cd almost constantly.

ie: open with meteor shower, switch to lightning and throw an aoe stun to keep them in, switch to earth and apply bleed, then apply slow and kite while everything dies. That’s just one example, if you have ranged mobs, throw a shield while u apply conditions then go mist forms while they bleed away while sitting in your aoe.

Spamming fire spells while standing still will not work well.

mesmer is hard to play well, but it’s very rewarding. Unless i come against someone very skilled, i rarely lose 1 vs 1.

A more accurate description for phantasm boon traits and video:

Picking up phantasmal fury, vengeful images and phantasmal healing results in all 3 not working properly:

The phantasm gains fury for 10 seconds, never gains retaliation and once fury expires, it starts giving regeneration but then fury never gets refreshed.

http://youtu.be/5y7-NY33W4w

I added a video to show #1
http://youtu.be/5y7-NY33W4w

For #1 I added a video:
http://youtu.be/5y7-NY33W4w

i spawned a warden later but could not select it ;_;

Hmm, i’ve only tested warden’s feedback in pvp and didn’t see any change, from what you describe i guess it would never work in pvp. I noticed into the void does that, the tooltip implies they would get pulled into the line rather than into the direction of it.

Posted this on the bug forum as well, but i figured a lot of people should be aware of this when creating their spec as it leads to a lot of wasted points.

1) phantasmal fury, vengeful images and phantasmal healing

http://youtu.be/5y7-NY33W4w

• These do not work PROPERLY at all if spec-ed into more than 1, they seem to override or cancel each other. I have not done enough testing, but with all 3, phantasms seem to start with fury, never get retaliation and after the first 10 seconds of fury expire, they gain regen and never receive fury anymore.

• These traits are so horribly buggy that picking up more than 1 is a complete waste. The other issue is that regen comes standard, so if this were a feature where you can only have 1 boon or something, there’s no way to even disable it. As it stands, this is my BIGGEST problem with mesmers right now.

2) Mesmer portal: supposed to last 20 seconds once the exit is placed, only lasts for about 11 seconds.

3) Into the void: supposed to pull enemies into your temporal curtain, it just throws enemies all over the place most of the time.

4) Phantasmal Haste: is this even working? I think it only affects warden.

5) Warden’s feedback: i’ve never seen my warden reflect a single attack

6) Masterful reflection: does not work with blurred frenzy

[Edit] I made a fraps video to showcase #1, i’ll upload it and hopefully it will help speed up fixing it. Thanks for all the input you guys gave on 3,4,5,6

1) phantasmal fury, vengeful images and phantasmal healing

http://youtu.be/5y7-NY33W4w

• These do not work PROPERLY at all if spec-ed into more than 1, they seem to override or cancel each other. I have not done enough testing, but with all 3, phantasms seem to start with fury, never get retaliation and after the first 10 seconds of fury expire, they gain regen and never receive fury anymore.

• These traits are so horribly buggy that picking up more than 1 is a complete waste. The other issue is that regen comes standard, so if this were a feature where you can only have 1 boon or something, there’s no way to even disable it. As it stands, this is my BIGGEST problem with mesmers right now.

2) Mesmer portal: supposed to last 20 seconds once the exit is placed, only lasts for about 11 seconds.

3) Into the void: supposed to pull enemies into your temporal curtain, it just throws enemies all over the place most of the time.

4) Phantasmal Haste: is this even working? I think it only affects warden.

5) Warden’s feedback: i’ve never seen my warden reflect a single attack

6) Masterful reflection: does not work with blurred frenzy

I do agree, most of our damage in aoe comes from phantasms unless you go sword and start chopping things. With that said, we are the only class where our aoe can get “killed” before it does damage. I feel like shatters are still unreliable and clunky and they really need to do more damage and not die before they do so.

Mesmer is a GREAT solo duelist, we have great control but we lack in the aoe department very hard. We also have a high “set-up” time before we can reach our good damage output. With that said, in fights with a lot of weak(er) enemies which die fast, we tend to be sub-par.

I feel that shatters need to be a lot more reliable, as it stands, shatters for me are more of a “oh, my phantasms are low on health, might as well shatter as it MIGHT add some damage”, rather than a class mechanic on which i can rely.

For the mesmer portal slot skill, the description states that once the exit is applied, the portals last for 20 seconds. They only last for about 11seconds. I hope the bug is the duration as that skill could really use the 20 second duration.

My specs:

core i5 2500k @ 4.6GHz
8GB RAM
2 x gtx 460 SLi

I’m running latest nvidia beta drivers

In WvW my FPS can go as low as 20-30, same goes with certain areas in the game although not as severe (40ish). I notice my graphic cards never get used at more than 60%. On the other hand, the cpu does get pushed quite far when fps drops are seen. The core the main thread is running will go to 100% while the others can hover at up to 75%

Disabling SLi will lower performance.

I’m assuming a lot of the processing is still being performed by the CPU, adjustments to graphics settings will not make much of a difference (2-3 fps at best).

Anyone having issues with similar setups? Anyone getting max (ie: refersh rate bound) fps in WvW battles?