Guild Wars 2

Summary
These changes accomplished nothing positive for the mesmer class. The fact that they were made in the name of build diversity is insulting to every intelligent mesmer player. These changes, far from providing build diversity and flexibility, have significantly lowered the diversity of the mesmer class and restricted the flexibility our builds have. This is far and away the most devastating and most ill-conceived patch since this game was first released.

Edit: For an eloquent analysis of why the IC change was extremely poorly done, see here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/A-Formal-Complaint-Take-2/page/3#post2294502

A message to our esteemed forum moderators
To encourage thoughtful and organized discussion, it is best to leave threads approaching the patch notes from different directions as separate threads. Far from cluttering the forums, this allows for different aspects of the changes to be considered and discussed in an organized manner. If all such threads are merged into one, as has been done so far, it simply creates a disorganized mush of what could be helpful discussion.

That being said, here are my thoughts.

It seems to be that balancing and changes with regards to the mesmer class are being made while completely out of touch with the reality of this game. This patch only exemplifies that more.

Good Changes

1. The Phantasmal Berserker was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, it comes 6 months too late to deserve any applause or thanks.
2. Bounce logic was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, similar to the phantasmal berserker, this is a bug fix, and deserves only minor applause and thanks.
3. Interrupt traits were significantly boosted. Unfortunately, due to the nature of interrupts, most of these traits still aren’t strong enough to base a build around.
4. Phantasm hp was significantly increased in PvE and slightly increased in PvP. A good change, but more on this later.
5. Signet of illusions was fixed so that it applies immediately. A good change but again, more on this later.
6. Shattered conditions is now aoe

That’s about it. Now for the bad changes.

1. Blurred frenzy is now an evade. It also has a its base cooldown increased by 20%
2. Signet of illusions passive effect reduced to 50% down from 200%
3. Vengeful images now only applies retaliation for 5 seconds after the summon of a phantasm
4. Illusionist’s celerity moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor

These are abbreviated versions. There are obviously more changes that I didn’t touch upon, but these are the only changes that (in my opinion) actually make a difference.

Here is the main issue. The positive changes to our traits and skills are relatively minor or are complete bug fixes. On the other hand, the nerfs are massive. Anet is obviously spending developer and programmer time figuring out effective ways to nerf mesmers, while completely ignoring the parts of our class that are still completely broken. I will now list the largest offenders.

1. The iMage could be replaced with a placeholder saying “This skill does nothing” and nobody would care
2. The scepter (even after this addition of torment) is completely useless. There are 0 situations outside of a glamour build in wvw that the scepter is better than the sword, greatsword, or staff unless one ignores all functions of the scepter other than the block itself.
3. Phantasmal haste still does not apply to 2 of our phantasms: Swordsman and mariner
4. Illusionary elasticity still does not apply to staff clones
5. Wastrel’s punishment is still useless
6. Mantras are still extremely underwhelming with underwhelming and poorly designed traits
7. Due to the nature of interrupts, the interrupt traits are still of very limited use

These are a lot of massive problems. However, instead of fixing these problems, Anet decides to hand out significant nerfs. The nerf to signet of illusions, in my opinion, is reasonable, but that’s pretty much it. Blurred frenzy is nerfed twice, once in evade and once in cooldown. Vengeful images is, for all intents and purposes, no longer a trait. Lastly, Illusionist’s Celerity is moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor, nerfing every single build that is not shatter.

And as if all that weren’t enough, these changes are made in the name of build diversity. Anet is telling us “These changes are actually good for your class. We are doing this to help you.”

Build diversity eh? These changes make a tank build very difficult to play effectively now. They vastly remove potential diversity from both PvE and PvP phantasm builds. They significantly nerf the already very weak condition builds that mesmers have. Across the board, all non-shatter builds that mesmers have are negatively impacted, most in very significant ways.

The small buffs that they gave us are insignificant. Shattered conditions is nice, but with the other changes, it’s now much more difficult to use it effectively. The interrupt traits are nice, but when you couple that with the other changes they just become another shatter variant. Bounce logic was fixed, but builds that rely on that (conditions) are even weaker now.

On top of all this, the phantasm builds that were stupidly overpowered in a 1v1 are still stupidly overpowered in a 1v1. A small cooldown nerf won’t change that. People are still going to get facerolled by any competent phantasm build player and they’ll just cry for more nerfs.

It seems to be that balancing and changes with regards to the mesmer class are being made while completely out of touch with the reality of this game. This patch only exemplifies that more.

Good Changes

1. The Phantasmal Berserker was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, it comes 6 months too late to deserve any applause or thanks.
2. Bounce logic was fixed. This is a good change. Unfortunately, similar to the phantasmal berserker, this is a bug fix, and deserves only minor applause and thanks.
3. Interrupt traits were significantly boosted. Unfortunately, due to the nature of interrupts, most of these traits still aren’t strong enough to base a build around.
4. Phantasm hp was significantly increased in PvE and slightly increased in PvP. A good change, but more on this later.
5. Signet of illusions was fixed so that it applies immediately. A good change but again, more on this later.
6. Shattered conditions is now aoe

That’s about it. Now for the bad changes.

1. Blurred frenzy is now an evade. It also has a its base cooldown increased by 20%
2. Signet of illusions passive effect reduced to 50% down from 200%
3. Vengeful images now only applies retaliation for 5 seconds after the summon of a phantasm
4. Illusionist’s celerity moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor

These are abbreviated versions. There are obviously more changes that I didn’t touch upon, but these are the only changes that (in my opinion) actually make a difference.

Here is the main issue. The positive changes to our traits and skills are relatively minor or are complete bug fixes. On the other hand, the nerfs are massive. Anet is obviously spending developer and programmer time figuring out effective ways to nerf mesmers, while completely ignoring the parts of our class that are still completely broken. I will now list the largest offenders.

1. The iMage could be replaced with a placeholder saying “This skill does nothing” and nobody would care
2. The scepter (even after this addition of torment) is completely useless. There are 0 situations outside of a glamour build in wvw that the scepter is better than the sword, greatsword, or staff unless one ignores all functions of the scepter other than the block itself.
3. Phantasmal haste still does not apply to 2 of our phantasms: Swordsman and mariner
4. Illusionary elasticity still does not apply to staff clones
5. Wastrel’s punishment is still useless
6. Mantras are still extremely underwhelming with underwhelming and poorly designed traits
7. Due to the nature of interrupts, the interrupt traits are still of very limited use

These are a lot of massive problems. However, instead of fixing these problems, Anet decides to hand out significant nerfs. The nerf to signet of illusions, in my opinion, is reasonable, but that’s pretty much it. Blurred frenzy is nerfed twice, once in evade and once in cooldown. Vengeful images is, for all intents and purposes, no longer a trait. Lastly, Illusionist’s Celerity is moved from 5 point minor to 25 point minor, nerfing every single build that is not shatter.

And as if all that weren’t enough, these changes are made in the name of build diversity. Anet is telling us “These changes are actually good for your class. We are doing this to help you.”

Build diversity eh? These changes make a tank build very difficult to play effectively now. They vastly remove potential diversity from both PvE and PvP phantasm builds. They significantly nerf the already very weak condition builds that mesmers have. Across the board, all non-shatter builds that mesmers have are negatively impacted, most in very significant ways.

The small buffs that they gave us are insignificant. Shattered conditions is nice, but with the other changes, it’s now much more difficult to use it effectively. The interrupt traits are nice, but when you couple that with the other changes they just become another shatter variant. Bounce logic was fixed, but builds that rely on that (conditions) are even weaker now.

On top of all this, the phantasm builds that were stupidly overpowered in a 1v1 are still stupidly overpowered in a 1v1. A small cooldown nerf won’t change that. People are still going to get facerolled by any competent phantasm build player and they’ll just cry for more nerfs.

Summary
These changes accomplished nothing positive for the mesmer class. The fact that they were made in the name of build diversity is insulting to every intelligent mesmer player. These changes, far from providing build diversity and flexibility, have significantly lowered the diversity of the mesmer class and restricted the flexibility our builds have. This is far and away the most devastating and most ill-conceived patch since this game was first released.

This is a full tank build that I created with mesmer. It is really strong in both pvp and pve, although it has really low damage output in pve.

Here is the build: http://tinyurl.com/ptapo2d

This build works around getting hit, and returning damage. The main features are 100% retaliation uptime, 100% regeneration uptime, and around 50% uptime on protection and chaos armor.

The weapons used are staff + sword/focus. Traits are 0/0/20/20/30, taking chaos 4 and 10 for staff recharges and 3% reduced damage per illusion. Inspiration 4 and 8 for condition removal on heal, and focus recharges. Illusions 2, 6, and 11 for retaliation when using cry of frustration, recharge shatters at 50% hp, and illusionary persona. The usual utilities I run with are phantasmal defender mirror images, and decoy. I will swap out mirror images for arcane thievery or feedback depending on the situation.

Gear

All of my armor and weapons are level 80 exotics with soldiers stats (Power/vitality/toughness). My amulet and earrings are level 80 exotics with soldiers stats, and crests of the soldier. My rings and backpiece are ascended with soldiers stats. The runes in my build are 6x runes of melandru. These give a good amount of toughness, but more importantly provide a massive amount of innate condition resistance with the -25% condition duration and -25% stun duration.

Food

I always use superior sharpening stones. Since this build has very high toughness and vitality, these stones give a large amount of power. My other food is now always bowls of lemongrass-poultry soup. This gives 70 vitality, but most importantly it gives -40% condition duration. In combination with the runes of melandru, this provides a total of -65% condition duration. With this much condition duration, things like immobilizes become little more than stutter-steps, cripple and chill drop off barely noticeable, and bleeds become exceedingly difficult to stack in any relevant way.

Buffing

The playstyle utilizes leap combo finishers to keep most of the buffs up. Illusionary leap and swap are a total of 2 leap combo finishers. Dropping temporal curtain then using both skills on top of it generates around 14 seconds retaliation. A full 3 clone (illusionary persona won’t increase the time here) cry of frustration will generate around 15 seconds of retaliation. Between these 2 skills and the token retaliation from chaos storm, you can easily have 100% uptime, even against someone stripping the boons.

Regeneration is given in aoe pulses of 3 seconds from your phantasms. You should be dropping phantasms as often as possible, and this will easily keep regen going 100% of the time.

Protection is gained in a few ways. Every 15 seconds, you will get 2 seconds of protection from the regen applied by the phantasms. This used to be stronger, but was nerfed. You will get 5 seconds of protection upon activation of the chaos armor skill on the staff, as well as another 5 seconds whenever the proc goes off from being hit. This ends up producing a decent uptime on protection, provided you have chaos armor on while being attacked.

Chaos armor is applied from the staff 4 skill, as well as leap combo finishers through any ethereal combo field. This can be feedback, chaos storm, time warp, or null field. Generally, I use phase retreat for the leap combo finisher through chaos storm. Chaos armor lasts 5 seconds, and does not stack in duration, but simply refreshes the 5 seconds duration when reapplied, so be careful about stacking too many chaos armor combos, as they will not gain in effectiveness.

Fighting

Your focus will reflect projectiles, and so abuse this as much as you can. Dropping a warden on anyone spamming ranged attacks will force them to immediately change to something else. When starting a fight, there is a bit of build-up time where you get your boons up, and shattering phantasms at this stage is fine, as I usually let them get 1 attack off and then shatter. The exception to this is phantasmal defender. As soon as you have done your initial 3 clone cry of frustration, put down the defender, and don’t shatter until it is dead, as this doubles the damage returned from retaliation.

In order to really finish someone off, you generally will need to burst confusion with a cry + mirror images + mind wrack for just a little bit of burst damage to get them downed, but for the majority of the fight, just focus on staying high on health, and letting them slowly work their health down from retaliation damage.

And without further ado, here is a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6ASnuG8uI

One versus many, part 1:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UWl92k63C9k

One versus many, part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T--u3A25GI&feature=youtu.be

Soloing a fully upgraded supply camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gslSDbmlhe4

Enjoy!