The build works in the off-season for having fun in unranked, and lots of players currently aren’t used to fighting it since we’ve been in a bruiser-heavy meta for so long.
But it continues to struggle in higher level games because it doesn’t have favorable 1v1 matchups vs. most meta classes played at a high level, is relatively easy to focus down in teamfights, typically has 0 condi cleanse, and is farmed by good thieves.
As for fighting it, the build basically revolves around attempting a 1-shot from stealth, and then resetting if that fails. So you need to have good reflexes to react to the MOD sound, or try to predict the burst and dodge it.
You’re worried about countering a rev? I have never encountered a revenant that didn’t melt while alone in PvP.
Mesmer does a good job at everything. Too good of a job at everything. Necromancer should be the one with the condi damage, while mesmer should be the one with the CC condis, but clearly that’s not the case.
You’re describing nearly every meta build, with the exception of necro and thief which trade versatility for being extremely good at their niche role.
What skill level of mesmers you play against? You sounds like it so easy to kill mesmers on necro. So you are saying you beat Helseth and others? you aoe down clones transfer condi and dead Helseth. Sounds good on paper.
At the top tiers, Meta mesmer seems relatively balanced, in the sense that it’s right up there with a bunch of other really strong specs.
At the top tiers:
- From the proleague vids I’ve seen, mesmer effectively stalemates 1v1 against high level druids, scrappers, and eles. Has a hard matchup vs DH except on certain LOS-heavy points, but generally will lose cap.
- Mesmer is vulnerable to getting +1’d or focused because good players interrupt the shield 4.
- Mesmer’s contribution in teamfights pretty much revolves around moa, which requires coordination from the mesmer’s team to secure a kill (and coordination from the opponent’s team to defend). Outside of that, the DPS is low relative to other meta builds when those other builds are also played by good players.
- On the other hand, mesmer portal plays are potentially one of the most impactful skills in the game in the hands of a talented mesmer and a coordinated team. This opens the door to counterplay and strategic thinking from the other team, and overall expands the depth of the game.
- Mesmer is one of the few meta builds that effectively counters rev. (Although a good rev can keep point contested for a moderate amount of time if he just focuses on survival).
Passive defenses? His two defenses are blurred frenzy and distort, with 0 cleanse. That’s less defenses than like every other build currently being played.
Then you can go oh I’ll wait until after its done casting to attack, but who CAN NOT do that? The real problem lies in evades that are extremely quick like vault. You can not time attacks to hit a recovering vault. If you hit them you got really lucky and its not a show of your personal skill.
For timing to be a legit way to counter evade frames, then most attacks would have to be instant in order to compete with evade spam. Most attacks have cast times and when you take into consideration latency it makes them even slower. I know I know, people will say “Anet don’t design balance around lag”. Well why create fast casting evade skills in the first place when they obviously can’t be skillfully countered with latency? I know, bad design.
Most people I play with can reliably time their attacks to hit a thief mid-vault. The thief has a shadowy aura around him when the evade frames are up. It ends when there’s like 1/2 second left on the vault animation.
Part of the skill in this game involves baiting your opponent’s active defenses (blocks, invulns, evades, etc.) and not bursting into an active defense. You can bait the defense skills through animation cancelling, or using low-CD pressure skills. When the defense skills are on CD, you set up the burst. A lot of classes also use their active defenses as part of their core offense (mesmer shield4, rev sword3/staff5, scrapper hammer2-4, etc.), so you don’t even have to time it.
Nearly 1 million damage in the first photo… A lot more than those “OP DPS BUILDS”… pretty good for “support only” no?
Second Photo has me at 37k damage received using a staff. (due to evades and dodging instead of tank n spank playstyle)
3rd photo is a hybrid build.
4th photo is marauder staff arcane mixture. 1v1 a thief for that point too.
5th photo is a 5 man ele team I was in for a few games, as you can see I’m clearly not the best Ele. That should be a testament to what people can achieve, I could probably do better myself if my fingers didn’t have arthritis or if I had a pc that didn’t sit at an avg ping of 300 with fps of 17-22.
I could post heaps of these builds/photos because I print screen every match stats to cross compare the stats between builds. Back to the point, it’s easier to spam aura menders heals than it is to actually play any other build. Don’t give the “team and TS” argument either because when I’m on TS or playing with a team I’m running a Paladin Ele simply because there is already a Mender Druid. What I bring as an Ele is mass condition removal, I let the real healers like Druid do the healing while I mass cleanse condi and apply hard and soft CC to a target. We fill in each others weak spots so to speak. Also playing with a Rev on our team, my mass condi removal is very much needed. (not pro teams, I just fill in for guild teams here and there)
There’s build diversity if players can handle high risk builds. Learning those builds takes patience and practice, you will wipe lots of times trying to learn them but the pay off is worth it. (its also the closest feeling you’ll get to the original pvp before HoT where timing and watching enemy skills actually mattered, before the HoT spray n pray builds)
Don’t mean to knock your builds (more power to you), but post-match damage stats is not the sign of a high-damage build. In fact, it can mean the opposite. Here’s an illustrative example:
If you instagib a rev with a perfectly timed burst 5 times in a row, your damage stat will be about 100k.
On the other hand, if you spend 10 minutes fighting a rev on point without killing him because he keeps healing up in between your burst attempts, your damage stat will be like 500k+.
The more effective build/player ends up with a much lower damage stat at the end of the match.
Also, the ESL meta isn’t 1 power, 2 bunker, 2 condi. It’s 1 power roamer, 2 power bruisers/support, and 2 condi.
The underlying issue is that many people don’t know how to distinguish between condis generated by autoattacks, which do way less damage than power autoattacks, and condis generated by key skills. They blow all their cleanses on the autoattack condis, and then facetank the condi burst. But since this is condi, the condi burst doesn’t feel like it’s killing them until the other guy is back to autoattacking or using defensive skills, so they feel like they just died to “passive” damage.
Here’s a clear example: When people fight a power war, they know to dodge the Axe F1. If you facetank the eviscerate, you see your health drop by 10k+. You obviously know not to blow your dodges, blinds, and invulns etc. against the autoattacks.
When people who complain about condis fight a condi war, they get hit with on-swap sigils, see a bunch of condis on their bar, and then cleanse. Then they facetank the Mace f1 (which literally functions the same as eviscerate in terms of how hard it is to land). Then they slowly die to confusion over the next few seconds, thinking that they’re taking “passive” damage.
Part of the problem is the GW2 UI doesn’t give sufficient information about condi damage. When you take a 10k power hit, you see the big “10,000” in red. But whether you take a 500dmg bleed stack (from autoattacks) or a 3k bleedstack, it looks about the same on your condi bar.
The other part is that a lot of people who complain about condi builds just don’t know them well enough, so they see it as “spam spam spam apply condis run around win,” which obviously isn’t the case.
The whole “condi is fire and forget” thing really shows a lack of understanding.
How do you land a power burst as rifle warrior? Build up adrenaline, land the F1.
How do you land a condi burst as mace warrior? Build up adrenaline, land the F1.
Both attacks are super dodgeable. The rifle f1 is ranged but a projectile. The mace f1 is melee.
Power burst as necro? Autoattack with dagger. Autoattack with shroud. Drop wells on point.
Condi burst as necro? Land scepter 2 & 3, staff 2 & 3. (The autoattack with scepter does less condi damage than power necro’s autoattack with dagger.) Land signets to corrupt.
The real reason people struggle with condi is because the damage is less obvious. People get hit with a bunch of autoattack condis that will only add up to ~2k-3k damage, burn all of their condi cleanses to prevent that damage, and then they eat the big condi burst skill and die.
That’s no different from wasting your invuln on a warrior’s rifle autoattacks and then eating the killshot and dying.
Glass Fresh air and glass staff ele both work just fine in the meta, they’re just REALLY hard to play so they will never be “meta” since in GW2 meta builds are measured by how low the skill floor is, not how high the skill ceiling is.
Usually when people say “meta,” they’re referring to the proleague scene and the builds that get filtered down from there. They’re not talking about what’s popular in hotjoin or unranked.
To that end, “meta” builds aren’t defined by being low skill floor. They’re defined by being the most effective in the hands of a skilled player with a coordinated team, against other skilled players.
Neither fresh air nor dps staff (aka jihad ele) can compete in that context. Some of the top eles like Phantaram and Zoose tried to make fresh air work in previous patches and they quickly gave up. It’s not a skill issue, it’s the fact that the sustained DPS is so low to the point where your opponent can save every dodge and defensive skill solely to neutralize your phoenix bursts, which have relatively long CDs. On top of that, you have mediocre mobility (compared to thief/rev) and inferior sustain.
Not to say the builds suck in every situation, but they certainly aren’t competitive compared to other meta builds which can fulfill the roamer & dps roles much more effectively.
Ele has been pidgenholed into a support role, which it excels at. It’ll probably stay that way until A.net figures out ways to give ele DPS builds access to defensive skills that somehow don’t synergize with bunker or support builds. (For example, some trait interactions between fire and air that can provide meaningful damage mitigation).
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Yeah I get the sense Azukas is coming from WvW land, which I have nothing against. Those conclusions just don’t apply to PvP-Conquest for all the reasons explained in this thread.
What condi build is harder to play then a power build for the same class?
If you’re talking about PvP (not WvW):
- Engie (condi is waaaay harder than meta scrapper)
- Rev (post Ret nerfs)
- Meta Mesmer (condi is way easier to pick up, but overall more complex so harder to master, at least according to many ESL mesmer players)
- Mistrust Mesmer (no inspiration, relies largely on landing interrupts for condi spike)
The fact is that many condi builds now run carrion, which is about on par with marauder in terms of survivability (marauder even has more overall stats). Same deal if you compare rabid with demolisher. Both power and condi builds typically rely on the same defensive traits (except power mes also uses stealth).
But with power, your damage is straightforward. With condi, you have to time your bursts around your opponent’s condi cleanse, and interrupt their key cleanse skills (like DH F2, mesmer well, engie heal turret, etc.). As a condi build, letting your opponent get a cleanse skill off is like giving them a 5k+ heal. You don’t have that problem with a power build.
Of course is this completely different in WvW, where stealth-camping condi builds are braindead easy and way more forgiving than power builds. Part of the reason is that you have more gear and food/utility options in WvW, the other part is that you don’t have to worry about capping a point. I know this is a PvP forum, but I noticed that a lot of the people who want to discuss balance here come from WvW.
I think Yasha’s advice about trying all the different classes is pretty good. Overall, the checklist to be a good PvPer are:
- Know your build:* This comes from just playing it a bunch. Know what all your skills do, think about when each skill should be used. What are your condi cleanse skills? What are your stunbreak skills? What skills should you use when you’re being pressured? Those are questions you should ask yourself about your build, and you’ll probably refine your answers over time as you learn your build better.
- Know your opponent’s build:* You can generally get by just knowing all the meta builds. This is where Yasha’s advice comes in handy. Since you’re playing condi necro, you’ll probably want to ask yourself what each meta build’s condi cleanses are, what their CDs are, etc. You’ll also want to know what their key damage skills are.
- Work on your mechanical skills.* This includes things like only dodging your opponent’s key skills. Everytime you practice, consciously make an effort not to waste dodges on autoattacks. Know what animations you want to watch out for and save your dodges for those. Some builds have nasty instant attacks (like Rev’s staff 5), but those attacks often require a setup, so you’ll instead have to watch for the setup and pre-emptively dodge.
Note regarding the above: think of the above steps as long-term goals that you want to consistently work on. Shallow-minded people think all the builds in this game are braindead and take no skill to play. Don’t be one of those people. There’s a long road to mastery, as with most things in life.
- Practice!* Duel other people. If someone really good happens to be dueling in the server, spectate him/her! The key thing when dueling is to focus on improving the above 3 items. If you want to be good at conquest, treat each duel as an actual conquest fight: think about how long the fight is taking and whether you’re actually holding/contesting the point. Don’t worry about winning every duel (see below).
If you want to be super hardcore about this, record your duels and rewatch the footage. It’s really hard to spot your mistakes in the middle of a fight, but really easy to see them when you watch the replay
- Know the matchups.* Necro is generally not a strong 1v1 class in the current meta, which goes with the dueling point above. This is probably one of the reasons why a lot of new players might burn out on necro. That said, get a sense of which builds you’re strongest against and which ones you’re weakest against.
- Learn rotations.* This one’s really hard to learn b/c there aren’t any good in-game resources for it. Also, most of your teammates will give you bad advice and rage at you. A former proleague-level player-child named Backpack made a pretty good rotations guide and posted it on youtube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPb2jY19oU>;. I think it’s a pretty good starting point.
- Practice in unranked/ranked games.* Now that you have the above ideas in mind, practice implementing them in unranked/ranked games.
- Get some friends and practice teamwork.* There’s also a lot of room for teamplay that’s kind of hard to practice with random pubs. Things like swapping matchups, coordinating bursts, learning the downstate game, etc.
Anyway those are my suggestions for how to improve at this game. It mostly just boils down to practicing a bunch in both duels and ranked/unranked while trying to be really mindful of the above points so that you’re actually improving rather than reinforcing bad habits.
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I assume OP is talking about the meta condi chrono build that is actually used in PvP tournaments. Not the roaming WvW stealth-camping build that doesn’t exist in any moderate-high level of PvP.
The current meta chrono build was nerfed slightly this patch in two great ways: (1) the signet animation for moa now appears as soon as the mesmer starts casting — this is a gigantic icon above the mesmer’s head; (2) the mesmer now has to face the target when casting moa. These two changes make the moa cast super easy to spot in the midst of combat and easy to dodge, which is really important.
Otherwise, the build is relatively balanced compared to all the other powercreeped meta builds.
- Hardcounters rev and necro.
- Effectively stalemates vs a decent scrapper/druid.
- Beats most warrior builds eventually, but will have to give up the point due to the warrior’s resistance uptime.
- Loses to DH.
- Gets hard-countered by a good +1ing thief, but beats thief in a straight up 1v1 (inc. staff thief once you learn the vault animation).
Disappointed with the balance team on this patch. I was hoping for a nice shake up of the meta
I concur. I’m extremely disappointed that nearly nothing was changed. I’ll be taking a break and trying Eve’s free-mode for a while.
I get the impression that the balance team is lost without the previous staff members.
The patch just hit, it’s still off season, a lot of the ESL players are currently testing out new builds and theorycrafting new comps.
Even if the patch made significant changes to the meta, you (and the OP) probably wouldn’t notice the shift until the tournaments start up again and people see the new builds/comps being used and then copy/paste them.
The only place Thief isn’t very strong is in the very competitive scene that you don’t care about.
Actually I said I don’t care if DH was in Pro League meta they needed to remove that build or make it require skill to play. Please read the entire post before trying to rebuttal
Condition Mesmer is a skillful build, despite it not being the Power Shatter that you prefer.
Power Shatter is leaps and bounds more skillful than condi. It’s not even close in terms of how much skill is required.
As someone who played both extensively, I’d say condi shatter has a lower skill floor but a much higher skill ceiling.
At the end of the day, power shatter at high levels = stealth instagibbing someone in a +1. It’s not braindead easy, but there really isn’t a whole lot of complexity there. You even have an instacast stun via MOD to land the stealth burst. Yeah, you’re glassy AF, but your role isn’t to stay in fights. You stealth +1 someone to instagib them, and then disengage whether or not you succeed. Fights between two top-tier power shatter mesmers end up just being a random-dodge game due to all the instacasts.
In contrast, the meta condi mes build has way more things that you need to keep track of, and your role is a lot more complex because you aren’t limited to +1’ing people. Maximizing your damage from the retal + chronophantasma + phantasmal defender interplay, the whole mind game over whether to jump at the end of shield 4 (depending on if your opponent is going to pressure/interrupt right after vs. dodge), etc. are all considerations that you don’t have to deal w/ as power mes. The lack of stealth means you actually have to count dodges and set up your combos; it also means no easy resets.
But yes, condi mes is easier to survive with at a basic level, so if we’re talking about lower-level pvp then yeah condi mes is probably easier. Again, lower skill floor, higher skill ceiling.
As a more general matter, balance in GW2 has been moving towards builds that are generally lower skill floor but higher skill ceiling. I think this patch was basically just a continuation of that. It kind of failed to increase build diversity, but I think we’ll see better representation between classes at least due to the rev, druid, and scrapper nerfs, as well as the downstate change (which is great for thieves, which were great for +1 but risky for cleaves).
Condi thief is really forgiving, to the point where you’re better off just running away. Even if you negate his burst and dodge his CNDs, he can almost certainly disengage to avoid dying.
If you want to fight, here are some things to consider:
First and foremost, you need to deny him stealth as much as you can. This involves dodging the CnD. It also means making sure not to fight near objects/NPCs (which he can CnD off of). If there are animals or objects nearby, then find another battleground – you’ll never win unless he sucks (then again, the condi thief build generally draws weak players, so you never know). If you have the expansion, stealth gyro’s toolbelt skill is also really helpful.
Then you need some way to negate his damage. If you have scrapper, bulwark gyro gives you an instacasat reflect field, which you can use after he mug+cnds you. The reflect will negate his stealth burst. Run elixir elixir cleanse w/ e-gun, along with a couple of elixirs (B and C are good) and you’ll have plenty of condi-cleanse to negate the bleeds he relies on for dmg.
Then you need to be specced gear-wise to do enough damage to kill him in a couple of CC combos. If he’s just slowly losing the fight, he’ll disengage and reset. So you need to have enough zerker gear to kill burst him down quickly.
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- When I activate ED, initial healing is 1640.
- It’s realistic to expect 4 of the 6 charges to hit, so that’s 3232 health. I’m assuming that the 3432 life siphon damage didn’t kill the Ele.
- Right now I have gained 4872 in healing.
- After around 5-6 seconds my Legend swap will be ready, so now I switch over to Glint and activate FoL then Infuse Light immediately.
- Initial heal is 1853, bringing me up to 6725 healing over about 7 seconds
- From there, let’s say the Ele does 1500 damage before realizing that I’m absorbing damage. That brings me up to 8225 health gain total over the course of 10 seconds.
- I now have 20s left on my Shiro heal, 25s on Glint heal.
Alright, show me 5 realistic of other classes’ healing being worse. Please don’t forget extra effects like Daze and Blind on Purification or 2 extra dodges from Channeled Vigor.
Now do the math, but instead of panicking and mashing infuse light ASAP, you use it mid burning-speed and heal for at least 3k + residual burns or overload and just about full-heal, and this should be doable b/c EVERY SINGLE SKILL on ele has a nice long windup. Not only have you invulned through their most dangerous damage, you also healed from it too.
See, infuse light is a skill test. If they can stop damaging (which only applies in a 1v1, in a teamfight you basically ALWAYS full heal), then you are in a bad position, but if you invert a lot of damage, you can almost ensure you win. The advantage on when to use this is almost always in your favor (except vs. thief or fresh-air ele with nearly instant burst), because infuse light is instant and their damage isn’t. Therefore, its entirely up to you to wait and use it at the right time, not just when you are almost dead.
The point is, infuse light would be terrible IF IT WERE YOUR ONLY HEAL (that is why warriors don’t run the same thing that they have). However, when you have another heal (even if it is “only” 5k healing from shiro), you have so many more options for when to infuse. For that reason, nerfing ED isn’t going to kill rev by a long shot.
Pretty much this. The ball is usually in your court to get the most out of infuse light. Think of it like an interrupt or a blind, only instead of preventing the damage, it converts it into health. If people can get value out of infuse light vs. ESL players (and they do, regularly), then you should be able to make it work.
Revs still have a ton of sustain for a roaming class. Let’s see if the ED nerf actually causes some teams to start taking thief over rev.
It used to be more true. Now it’s less so. A lot of the meta power builds these days are bruiser builds, which are just as tanky (if not more so) than meta condi builds.
Case in point: the “glass cannon” in this meta is the condi necromancer.
Power builds like scrapper, rev, druid, DH aren’t any riskier than condi mes or reaper. And all these builds have pretty low skill floors, but high skill ceilings once you appreciate the intricacies of the game.
I think 0.75s cast-time on heal is on par compared to the heals used by other meta builds. The only faster heals used in the meta are from chrono well and rev (warrior doesn’t count since it’s passive). DH post-nerf is tied or faster than every other meta heal.
Going off the top of my head, but I think heal cast times are somewhere in this order:
Super slow / interrupt bait:
Necro (both vamp sig and consume conditions are ~1.25s),
Ele’s WTPA (1.5s, but pulses so partial benefit if interrupted)
Next slowest:
Druid’s WHAO (1s)
*Medium: *
DH (0.75s),
Scrapper’s healing turret (0.75s),
Thief’s channeled vigor (0.75s, altho it pulses so partial benefit if interrupted),
Fast: Chrono well (0.5s)
Fastest: Rev (facet is instant, not sure on shiro heal but I think it’s under 0.5s)
And ofc warrior uses healing sig so irrelevant.
I think the nerf to passive stab is going to make a much bigger difference than the change to purification. My main problem w/ hunter’s determination wasn’t the kitten ICD, it was that so much was loaded into it. Triggering the trait meant a stunbreak, 6 blocks w/ a potential heal on each from the shards (if running symbol build), and a daze on your opponent.
As a result, the DH would get value out of it triggering in pretty much every situation — which reduced counterplay. Even in the worst case scenario of having a thief headshot it away at the start, the DH still gets a trap that will daze if the thief mugs, an aegis to block the mug, and several more shards for aegis.
It looks like the balance patch nerfed both effects by nerfing the ICD and the effect. That might go a little too far, but I haven’t really played around enough w/ the changes to know.
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You can design much more trolly builds for other classes. Like acro/trickery/DD d/p thief, which has even higher evade uptime.
But all these trolly builds are completely ineffective against better players, which is why you never see them in any of the tournaments. I’m not even talking about ESL-level. Even novice teams at AG know better than to run builds like this.
Your mesmer build doesn’t put out enough pressure to neut a point on a side point, is too immobile to +1, can’t put out enough cleave or support in teamfights. All it can do is survive against 1-2 players without even holding the point due to stealth + distortion + csplit. Good players would ignore you while they trash your team 5v4 and 3-cap the map.
I pretty much winstreaked to legend every season after the first and can honestly say that there’s enough bad players in legend for your build to work, but that doesn’t make it a good build. This is especially true in Season 4, where bad players could simply grind their way to the top due to the matchmaking algorithm trying to balance teams by MMR.
A good trap DH (i.e. virtues over symbolic persistence; renewed focus over maw) is a bit of a counter to mesmer. The only way to win without losing the point is to get a really good moa burst, but that can be tough given all the blocks and blinds. On the other hand, DH has awful mobility so you can rotate around him pretty easily.
Symbol DHs aren’t too bad because they lack the burst to kill you and have less condi cleanse.
Staff thief is pretty easy once you get two things down. First, you have to get used to the evade frames in the Vault animation. The thief is vulnerable in the last 1/2 second or so of the Vault. If you time your shatters then, the thief has no way to avoid them. Second, get used to jumping when shield4 is about to end if the thief is currently dodging to make sure you get your shield phantasm. (The jump delays the phantasm summon trigger).
Agree on tank druid being a huge pain. But you can usually neut the point due to the druid popping into stealth whenever he AFs.
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Of COURSE losing in pvp doesn’t equate to getting beaten up in a club. Again, you miss the point.
A business should be held accountable not only to paying customers, but to ALL consumers that are being provided a free service. There’s a difference between a paid service and a privilege. Privilege brings power and advantage over others.
Gw2 is free-to-play. In pvp, HoT players have power and advantage over f2p players due to elite specs. Sorry, but f2p players deserve at least a level playing field and I will not reconsider that position.
I’ve answered your point at least three different ways by now, but I’ll try once more. Basically, you need to think harder about what “accountability” means. When A.net provides a free game (core GW2), it’s “accountable” in the sense that they should take basic precautions to avoid the product causing physical harm or damage. I.E., they’d be accountable if their game caused your computer to blow up. That’s your night club analogy.
That’s not the same thing as being “accountable” for creating an even playing field in PvP for core and elite specs. There’s is absolutely 0 obligation to do that. It doesn’t even fit within the actual definition of “accountable.”
Your attempt to differentiate between a “paid service” and a “privilege” is complete nonsense. Just go back to the airplane analogy. How is business class service not a “privilege”? You get the privilege of boarding before regular passengers (an advantage), you get the privilege of having priority for baggage storage space (an advantage), you get the privilege of deplaning first (another advantage).
At the end of the day, A.net absolutely does not have any obligation to give you an even playing field with those who paid for the expansion. The sooner you realize this the better you’ll do in life, because the same principle applies almost everywhere.
Whether or not elite specs should be balanced against core specs for the health of the game is another matter. I’m personally all for expanding build diversity and would love to have a more balanced game. But that’s not something I’m entitled to, and it has absolutely nothing to do with “accountability.”
The entire point of the nightclub analogy is that a business should be held accountable not only to paying customers, but to ALL consumers that are being provided a free service.
Your airplane analogy falls apart since there are no special privileges the business class passengers have that compromises the service of the passengers who didn’t pay. Here I’ll add to it!
“I’m not angry that the business class passengers have it good, with all that food and entertainment! Good for them! I’m angry that they’re throwing garbage down the chutes that were placed right above us! There are rats here too!”
Also, you keep trying to equate “losing in pvp to an elite spec” to being physically assaulted or abused by a company. Come on, that’s just ridiculous. Every company has an obligation to not literally attack you. That doesn’t mean that they also have an obligation to provide you with the same level of service.
I don’t think you’ve thought through either of the analogies enough, unfortunately. Just off the top of my head, here’s a couple things business class passengers get to the detriment of regular passengers:
- They get priority on carry-on baggage space, which means sometimes a regular-class passenger has to check in his baggage because there isn’t enough space left.
- They get priority seating, which means the regular-class passenger has to wait in line longer.
- They get exclusive access to 1/3 to 1/2 of the bathrooms on the plane, and can also use the regular-class bathrooms, which means regular-class passengers have more crowded bathrooms and have to wait longer.
- They get to deplane earlier, and if they’re asleep, the staff will gently wake them up first, before any of the regular-passengers are allowed to exit. That’s why after the plane is done taxiing, the regular passengers have to sit around for another 10 minutes.
That’s way more “P2W” than GW2, since expansion owner’s don’t get priority on anything. They just get access to new content, which is kind of the point of an expansion pack. Some of the new content includes better specs, yes. But the fact that you’re losing to an elite spec in pvp is nowhere near the equivalent of being harmed or abused by A.net.
So basically, a business has no obligation to serve the public….got it.
A nightclub is open to the public for free. The club also has VIP membership that you pay for. VIP members get access to an exclusive section and bottle service in addition to what the public gets. VIP is advertised as a bonus so the public can further enjoy the club experience.
However, unbeknownst to the public, VIP members also get “special privileges” (armed bodyguards). Armed bodyguards harass, beat up and intimidate the other club goers who didn’t pay and they don’t like. The club owners, of course, either look the other way or struggle to keep control of the establishment. I say look the other way because this is self-perpetuating since this gets the public to pay to get SOME enjoyment and protection.
According to you, the club has no obligation what-so-ever to the people who are beat up, bloody and bruised.
…uh-huh..
An even playing field is the LEAST they can do. That OR separate f2p players and b2p players.
Your nightclub analogy is silly. A club obviously has a duty to refrain from physically assaulting people on its property, just like any other establishment. A.net is not physically beating you, and to pretend like losing in PvP is the same as being physically assaulted is ridiculous.
The better analogy would be buying business class seats on an airplane. The people who paid extra get better seats, better food, and access to more areas of the plane (e.g. the business class lounge and nicer bathrooms). The people who didn’t pay just get to fly on the plane.
What you’re really complaining about is that you don’t have it as nice as the people who paid money, which seems kind of silly. You’re not entitled to get the same service for free. That’s true of virtually any business, and generally true of life as well.
It’d be more productive to talk about whether the expansion is reasonably priced. The reason why people complain about true “P2W” (like paying $10 just to get a super-strong sword) is that you’re not really getting any content or new gameplay out of it; the $10 megasword is just a transparent ploy to extort money. I personally think all the content that has come out of HoT was well worth the price of a meal or two, but that’s obviously for each person to decide.
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This thread is ridiculous. A.net is a business. They need to make money. A.net does not have any obligation — moral, legal, or otherwise — to give free trial players an equal playing field. It doesn’t matter whether you want to classify it as P2W, B2P, or whatever. The fact remains the same: A.net doesn’t owe you, the free trial player, an even playing field.
The expansion is dirt cheap and reasonably priced relative to other MMO expansions. In the time you’ve spent complaining about the free trial, you could have earned enough money to buy the expansion.
My Season 4 stats are 0 games played. If I want to do real sPvP. I wouldn’t spend my time playing a make believe sPvP game mode. I’d play the real thing in a sPvP game that had balancing for sPvP.
Too much fun wrecking fools while I’m solo roaming in Tier 3 WvW.
So you like the incredibly more unbalanced WvW gamemode than structured pvp.
Cool.You telling a joke right? Or do you just not WvW roam, and only zerg? Unstructured Player vs Player open field battles are by far the most balanced PvP in this game. Unless you think skill less point denial AOE fire and forget skills or the match maker system in sPvP is balanced.
At least in WvW you can build to counter on the fly. In sPvP you are pretty much “SOL” if match makes just say you ARE going to lose this match. In WvW I can choose to engage or not. I can build fully customizeable builds to cover ANets balancing short comings that loads of players see in sPvP.
How is unstructured open-world WvW more balanced than sPvP? It’s been awhile since I roamed, but that field used to be packed by stealth-camping sustain builds (usually condi) that would just disengage and reset whenever something went wrong. The only reason there appears to be build diversity is because 99% of players in WvW are relatively casual and don’t care about running the most optimal builds. And because there’s no real matchmaking system in place that puts you up against other roamers of your skill level, most of your fights will be with the more casual players, which gives you a false sense of confidence in your abilities and the efficacy of your build.
This sPvP season has overall been fairly well balanced in terms of class representation. Far more so than any other MMO. The only issue has been dragonhunters at lower levels of play and thief at like ESL-levels of play.
~120 games / 92 wins, 10 pips into legend. The skill spread in most games seemed pretty crazy up until the end of diamond. Both teams would frequently have at least one player that was plainly new or playing a suboptimal build.
Most games in Ruby and early Diamond involved going far and just winning a stream of 1v2s in matchups that would have been impossible against competent players.
Games tended to get a lot easier toward the end of diamond when the overall average skill level increased and I could actually rely on teammates to leverage portal and moa plays.
This doesn’t add to any mechanic, its just poor game design (you seem to use the word bruiser in place of bunker). Bunkers should not be doing damage. They shouldn’t have huge access to CC (a control build is different from a bunker build, and one that right now GW2 does not support), or massively damaging AoE. A bunker shouldn’t be able to pressure you off point, they should instead be built to withstand the pressure you are putting on them, trying to make them move off point. At which point yes AoE helps, but relying on AoE means either they are overtuned (which some of them are) or you don’t know how to fight them.
I chose the word “bruiser” intentionally, because we don’t really have “bunkers” in the meta right now. There is no class that can safely hold the point for a meaningful amount of time when outnumbered. The role of bunkers has been supplanted by a combination of bruisers (like scrapper/druid) and support (like auramancer), which work together to provide peels for teammates. Unlike a traditional “bunker,” all the bruisers in the meta will die to coordinated pressure (at least at higher levels of play).
Here’s a classic example to illustrate the difference between bunker and bruiser. If two pre-spec bunker guards are fighting on a point, a thief probably will not make an impact by +1ing the fight. The outnumbered guardian will still last for a long enough time to make the thief’s rotation bad. If two meta scrappers duel each other and a (good) thief +1’s, the outnumbered scrapper is going to either die or lose the point (due to elixir S popping).
The classic “bunker” role you’re asking for was the epitome of “passive” play, and overall made the game less fun (at least for me). Case in point: bunker mesmer from Season 1, which could tank incredibly well but did negligible damage.
Truth of the matter is that capture points that are small enough to be covered by 95%+ of the AoE skills in the game are far too small.
…
Capture nodes need to be large enough to remove passive gameplay from PvP. Which means that they need to be larger than most of the AoE skills in the game. Add 50 units to the radius of all of the non huge capture points in PvP and they would be in a pretty good state, certainly much better than they are now.
You’re arguing off a false assumption. Almost none of the AOE skills that have been mentioned in this thread cover an entire node. DH traps, DH symbols (even traited), necro wells, scrapper Hammer5 — none of that covers the whole node even if placed perfectly at the center. And the reality is that people usually don’t drop their AOE dead-center on point because that’s often not the best place to put it. So there’s usually even more “safe” space.
Bunker builds can be slightly overtuned, massively overtuned in a team setting, but that doesn’t mean that the capture point size is the problem, it means that some builds are just too good at what they do.
That’s exactly my point (except I think we’re really talking about bruisers), and I think we’re in agreement here.
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You didn’t really explain why they are “the noob class”. Can you elaborate?
Absolutely im so glad you asked.
Condition Necromancers (well all necromancers) must rely on allies to function.
Condi necros only splash ambient conditions and try to cleanse conditions. Thats all they do.
Condition necromancers have nearly zero mobility which means even though everyone should worry about positioning, necromancers have to rely purely on their defensive stats. No active defenses like predicting shots to evade/block or out-thinking the enemy. They just plash conditions. Thats it.condition necros always run staff. Staff is the simplest two-handed weapon in the game if not the simplest.
Condition necromancers damage is all ranged and passive. Again, there is no concern for positioning. You’re pretty much a snail farting constantly. If snail’s fart.
The lack of mobility means necros have to rely more on positioning, map knowledge, and situational awareness, which are separate skills that many players aren’t even aware of. It also requires better jumping-puzzle and juke skills to kite; many of the trick-jumps are things “newbies” don’t know about and average players can’t execute under pressure.
The low amount of defensive skills means that necros can’t afford to waste dodges on non-critical skills. Whereas some other classes can afford to waste dodges/blocks/etc. on autoattacks.
When it comes to offense, the difference between a good necro and a bad necro is huge. Necro is one of the few classes who run unblockable CC in this meta, which is something that needs to be timed right to get good effect (e.g. interrupting mesmer Shield4, or knocking rev out of Shield5/Staff3). Same deal with corrupting stab into fear.
It’s easy to denigrate any class as being a “newb class” by ignoring (or perhaps being unaware of) all the nuances that go into playing it at a high level.
If your point is just that necro can be effective in a matchup between bad players, then I agree that the skill floor is quite low (which is also true for most builds and is probably intentional because that makes the game more welcoming).
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Yes, the size of the points means that some AOE attacks cover most of the point (although there’s almost always somewhere you can stand along the periphery to avoid it). I think the idea is that this places reliable, consistent pressure on the bunker builds that are trying to hold the point. This makes life harder for the bunkers (which everyone complains is boring and passive), and means that teams need to rotate players in and out of the point.
This would make more sense if half the bunker classes weren’t also the prime culprits in the AOE spam battle.
See:
Scrapper fields
DH traps and symbols
Condi Warrior fire fieldsFormerly:
Ele fields
The point is that the aoe spam places pressure on the bruisers. That the bruisers themselves are also able to pressure each other just adds to this dynamic. (And of course a bruiser build would spec for cleave.)
As a result, for most team fights a larger point actually favors bruisers, not roamers. The ability to kite around and avoid AOE means the bruiser can space out his defensive CDs more and possibly buy time for his next round of defensive CDs to come off cooldown.
Duels are different, since a large point could allow the roamer to kite around indefinitely without conceding the point (depending on the matchup).
This doesn’t mean small points are good, or that large points are bad. But large points aren’t universally better, and they certainly aren’t the solution to the difficulties roamers face (in fact, they’re the opposite). I wouldn’t mind some maps that make use of larger capture points, but the map should be carefully designed so that they don’t tend to become an endless respawn fight like Graveyard.
Separately, I would agree that AOE/Cleave as a whole makes teamfights a little bit too hostile for roamers. But the root cause of this problem are the AOE skills, not the size of the capture points. Even when you’re not fighting on a capture point, roamers still can get wrecked by AOE spam because all the other players tend to be clustered up and cleaving each other like a hedgehog orgy.
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“Legendary Backpack”
Either because you had to carry (making you the backpack and your team the contents), you got carried (making you the backpack, and your team the person wearing it), or because you just like backpacks.
Yes, the size of the points means that some AOE attacks cover most of the point (although there’s almost always somewhere you can stand along the periphery to avoid it). I think the idea is that this places reliable, consistent pressure on the bunker builds that are trying to hold the point. This makes life harder for the bunkers (which everyone complains is boring and passive), and means that teams need to rotate players in and out of the point.
As someone who’s usually playing one of the builds that melts on point, I can say that smaller points usually make my life easier. My job isn’t to hold points, it’s to +1 and get quick downs. When the points are small, the enemy bruiser is under more pressure, which makes it easier to burst the enemy bruiser down.
This whole thread relies on the assumption that your entire team needs to stand on a point. You only need to have one person on the point at any given time to contest it.
There’s already a counter to AOE, which is to avoid stacking up on point. Rotate people on and off as needed.
If there is a large point, it should be far enough from spawn that downing the enemy bunker reliably secures the point. On Foefire, (depending on team comps) you can lose your bunker at mid but contest the point long enough via kiting and LOSing for your bunker to respawn and rejoin the fight, which essentially resets the whole endeavor.
Whenever I see 3+ dragonhunters on the other team, I swap to tempest and usually get an easy win out of it.
What? Just walk into the trap and then dodge backwards.
Oh, believe me, if that didn’t result in me ending up flat on my face, I wouldn’t have posted.
Dodge roll, Withdraw, Roll for Initiative… they’ve all ended up in faceplants. Shadowstep seems to be the only consistently successful escape method. Keyword there is “consistently.”
The only trap that does what you’re describing is Dragon’s Maw, and that’s only after the activation happens. You have half a second after you first trigger the trap to dodge out.
If you’re slow and get stuck inside w/o shadowstep, it’ll hurt. But depending on the circumstances you can still use shadowshot, shortbow5, or F1 to escape.
From a Thief’s perspective, the main issue with Dragonhunter traps is that they are duration-based instead of instant. When a Guardian drops a trap, it turns that area into its own personal playground. It is a Thief-free zone that is strictly enforced.
Again, evading a trap is not the issue. The problem is even when you evade, you lose… especially when your evade doesn’t carry you far enough away.
What? Just walk into the trap and then dodge backwards.
If the condichrono remains as THE build for mes, then it’s going to be an even easier matchup for berseker (and it was kitten easy before XD )
This week’s pro league just illustrated how wrong you are. Will it change after these changes? Maybe we’ll see though.
This is wrong.
Only two warriors actually ran the M/Sh + LB merc build that people said beats mes: Sunfish and Denshee. Sunfish’s warrior absolutely wrecked every fight he participated in (including fights where the condimes was present). Denshee’s team also won, but that matchup is not a good representation because ORNG was purposely throwing the match and TCG was just messing around .
The other two guys who played warrior ran different builds: Zeromis (sword/torch over longbow) and Tao (wanderer over merc). Neither of them performed all that well, which only suggests that the mace/shield + longbow variant works better in this particular meta (which will change in a week anyways).
As for the future of mes — I can see Sage working as a replacement. I understand the shatter heal doesn’t scale well with Sage’s, but the loss in toughness isn’t gamebreaking given that mesmer still has plenty of ways to avoid power damage. I tested Wanderer’s a little bit and noticed a very noticeable loss in DPS, but it might be worth exploring more in Season 3.
I actually used to play Viper over Merc through most of Season 2 and wouldn’t suggest it as an alternative. You get instagibbed if you fail to dodge any bursts. Even autoattacks are deadly when you’re in viper. The increase in damage stats doesn’t justify the extra time you have to spend kiting. Viper makes you squishier than a power-shsatter mes, except you don’t have the burst damage to quickly end fights or the stealth to reliably disengage.
Unless Mes gets some overhauls, I don’t see the amulet changes bringing Power Mes back into the meta. Revs and thieves still counter power mes way too hard.
I don’t think it’s possible to “win” the matchup as Tempest in the sense of killing the chrono.
If you’re willing to run Cleansing Water + aura regen over Powerful Auras + overload stab, you can stall indefinitely. The trick is to not use your cleansing skills while diamond skin is still up — let the clones or staff autoattacks hit you to proc diamond skin. Once you dip below 75%, swap to water and/or use one of your auras to cleanse and pop back over 75%, then let diamond skin do the cleansing again. If you keep this up, your defensive CDs will last longer than the mesmer’s offensive CDs. (You can see Wakkey doing this really well in a lot of the earlier Proleague matches this season, before mesmers stopped trying to decap against him).
But stalling indefinitely against the mesmer isn’t really a “win,” since that means you’re not around to support your team in teamfights.
Your best bet is to get a rev or thief to +1 and down the mesmer quickly (with your support, including condi cleanse, shocking aura to interrupt blurred frenzy, Air5 to interrupt block). Or swap in someone who can do better in the matchup (like druid or war) so that you’re free to leave the point and join a teamfight.
With Powerful Auras (which I notice you’re running), I don’t think the matchup is winnable. The mesmer will put on condis faster than you can cleanse.
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Words and an awesome picture
Your analysis is worse than your MS Paint skills, but better than your Youtube videos. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.
So you’re not going to argue any of that? Figured, I’d say that too if I was grasping for straws. And you’re totally right about the star, that took me over 8 hours to make in ms paint. Kappa
Everything you wrote has already been fully raised and addressed earlier in the thread — there’s no point repeating the reasons why you’re wrong.
I do find your comment about double-dodging ironic, though, given that your favorite Mesmer playstyle involved you spamming dodges back to back to proc clone-death condi traits, and then you posted a long Youtube rant when A.net removed those traits. (Pre-Spec patch)
This whole debate will likely be a moot point anyway, depending on how the removal of mercenary amulet plus other balance changes shakes things up. I’m going to wait to see the patch notes before revisiting this matchup. If it’ll help your feelings to get the last word in, go ahead (preferably in the form of a Youtube video with extra stars).
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Words and an awesome picture
Your analysis is worse than your MS Paint skills, but better than your Youtube videos. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.
regarding the fight on the movie
in pvp if i see warrior as condi mesmer i will take utility which steal 3 boons and trasfer 3 conditions (forgot the name sry). this will put yours winning chance better if after he use healing skill you steal the resistance for 5-6 sec. and shatter him
also in the movie it seems the mesmer just spamm skill. he didnt try to stun you from using key skills (healing) or preparing a shatter burst with 6 fast illusions when you stun.
also its treu that 1v1 the warrior has the advantage on the point. if the mesmer would kite around the point with staff and PR he would had better chances
He takes portal because that’s what he’d take in a serious conquest game. We weren’t counter-comping (for example, I had endure pain slotted even though it serves no purpose vs. mesmer).
As for interrupting my heal — warrior heal is “passive” in the sense that warrior just has to land 1 F1 every 15 seconds. The only stun that’s effective at stopping the warrior’s F1 is a multi-clone diversion (~30s CD) because zerker mode is a stunbreak that grants pulsing stab.
There’s obviously potential for mesmer to stunlock the warrior and secure a kill, but a lot of it depends on whether the warrior dodges, has stunbreaks, zerker stance, or pre-emptively blocks/stabs. So there’s room for counterplay on both sides.
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If you think that Warrior spec works good, try this:
- Defense – usual stuff
- Discipline – usual stuff
- Berserker – all middle fire traits
Sword/Torch – Mace/Sword – Bursting/Smoldering both sides
Mercenary/Balthazar
Heal sig/Shattering Blow/Dolyak Signet/Outrage/Head ButtCounters Thieves/Druids/Necros/Scrappers/Glass Ele
Balanced against: Mesmers/Bunk Ele/Dragonghunter “gotta burn their cooldowns”
Gets countered by: RevenantsPowerful as hell in 1v1
Great in team fights if it’s with support which stacks with it’s natural defenses
Rotates just fine with sword #2 and 25% speed increase
Has problems if focused while alone, it’s not a 1v2 point holder
Doesn’t contribute at all to team fight support splashing such as Rev booningThat’s about the break down for current warrior
The only concern I have about dropping bow is you lose out on the guaranteed condi cleanse + adrenal health proc from the Bow’s F1. Sword’s zerker-f1 is also projectile based, which is dangerous in this meta (scrappers, eles, and mesmers all have reflects). The sword zerker-f1 also requires either setup to hit, or you have to use it near point-blank due to the projectiles moving slower than firey, pregnant sloths.
I think the meta classes right now all have a very low skill floor — meaning that they’re easy to pick up and be reasonably effective with. But most of them also have high skill ceilings, meaning that a good player can do a lot more with them than a bad player. So in some respects, I think A.net is generally succeeding.
The main culprit right now is DH, which was way overnerfed due solely to complaints from more casual players (and I guess WvW).
Na, DH wasn’t overnerfed. It was nerfed in a great way, which would be more noticeable if all the other elite specs received the same treatment (with more nerfs in most cases).
100% agree.
I meant DH was overnerfed relative to the treatment other builds got. But, like you, I’m all for a massive across-the-board nerf to elite specs in general to bring them more in line with core.
Didn’t watch the video, but I’m enjoying the irony that OP is getting a hard time for “missing many of his attacks”. If he had landed all of his attacks, he would instead be accused of killing a bad mesmer. ^.-
And also the irony of people saying that mesmer is a faceroll class, then claiming that this mesmer lost because some of his dodges were wasted.
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As self confessed, you have less than 100 hours on warrior. I also suspect the mesmer has very limited hours as well.
The reality is that for the majority of the duel you had at least 2 conditions on you. If you watch the mesmer and time them, they never had more than 2 for longer than 3 seconds.
Your head butt and shield failed consistently to ever stun them in anyone position. this is because phase retreat was used to GTFO quickly. If that isn’t available, their also blink, or decoy or distortion. The mesmer had you in gap closing mode for the vast majority of the game.
The mesmer entirely let themselves down with failing to set up and execute their shatters to connect with you. If they had done that properly the amount of stacks wold have overwelmed you and the amount of continued interrupts would have effectively denied you any sort of counter.
The ultimate truth here is that you didn’t win..the mesmer lost by not making great or effective use of their skills.
I appreciate the contribution, but both players here don’t have the profession depth on either warrior or mesmer to conclude warrior is a hard counter chronomancer.
Thanks for your feedback. Your critiques of my warrior misplays are spot on. But your critiques of the mesmer and the fights overall show a distinct lack of understanding about how the condi mes build works, or the matchup strategy.
The mesmer player may not be proleague, but he’s mained the class since release, ranked high on pre-season leaderboards, and moved up prestige ranks in legendary easily both seasons, often going against proleague players and winning (although a large part of that is due to condimes just being dominant in 1v1). I’m not saying he’s top tier or anything, but he’s easily better than 90% of the mesmers that people in the forums are complaining about. So if he can lose to a not-so-experienced warrior player, then many other mesmers would die too (which has been my experience in this Off Season).
If you haven’t realized it yet, I also have extensive experience on mesmer (which helps a lot with fighting other mesmers). This is probably the main issue with chronomancer right now — I think you really have to know the condimes build well to beat it.
As to why you’re missing the broader strategy - It’s in the warrior’s favor to burn through offensive cooldowns at the cost of the mesmer burning through his defensive cooldowns. Like I wrote in the OP, the warrior’s CDs have substantially lower cooldowns than the mesmer’s defensive skills.
Once the mesmer’s gone through his cooldowns, the fight swings suddenly against him. With only mind wrack left, he’s stuck cleansing just one condition every 10s (and a second condition every ~20s with cry of frustration). That’s nowhere near enough to survive the pressure that a condi war can put out. (And this is where a better warrior than me would really shine insofar as being able to end the fight more quickly).
As for the number of conditions on me:
The mesmer player landed plenty of shatters in the fights. The reason you rarely see any condis on me is because zerker mode + F1 is a full condiwipe, and it’s on a lower cooldown than every shatter but Mind Wrack. (And using another F1 will wipe any condition that Mind Wrack puts on).
Like I wrote in my OP, the defensive strategy is to hold off on the zerker mode + F1 until after the mesmer uses his shatters. The mesmer is going to run out of steam — contrary to what you see in the forums, the mesmer does not have an unlimited supply of shatters. And if you dodge the Shield4 summon, the mesmer also will end up short on illusions. This leads not only to reduced pressure from the mesmer, but also reduced condi cleanse from him.
The only counter the mesmer has to preventing your condiwipe is to set up a chain-diversion (on a ~30 second CD) to interrupt the F1 during it’s quickness-speed animation, or to moa (on a ~65s CD). You can counterplay both by pre-emptively using shattering blow (for block + stab), or activating zerker stance for resistance. And even if you get interrupted, zerker mode itself will still cleanse 2 condis, and there’s a decent chance one of those condis will either be the torment stacks or the confusion stacks.
The mesmer entirely let themselves down with failing to set up and execute their shatters to connect with you. If they had done that properly the amount of stacks wold have overwelmed you and the amount of continued interrupts would have effectively denied you any sort of counter.
This is a L2P issue on your end as far as understanding how mesmer works. There’s a lot to go over here, so I’ll try to just focus on two key ideas -
(1) The mesmer’s primary “setup” for a shatter would be iLeap, which telegraphs the shatter (so you can block with Shattering Blow or Shield5). As a mesmer player, you don’t want to use iLeap to set up shatters against classes that can actively block — it’s too obvious a tell. Instead, you shatter whenever you think your opponent isn’t going to be able to react (either because the clones are on top of him, which often is itself a tell, or because you baited his dodges). The other setup is Shield5, but it’s on a long CD and is better used to cover SOI or Moa.
(2) More importantly, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of condis the mesmer puts on you at a time. Zerker mode + longbow F1 clears them all. A chain-shatter like you suggested would put all of the mesmer’s offensive shatters on CD — 30s (diversion), 20s (cry of frustration), and 10s (mind wrack).
That means most of the mesmer’s condi cleanse is gone, as are his follow-up pressure opportunities. Yet you’re cooldowns are still ready to go. In ~3s you can F1 again for another 3-condi wipe plus damage to mesmer.
Even if you’re stuck on mace, you can f1 a nearby illusion if you absolutely need the condi cleanse.
That’s why you see the mesmer player staggering his condi application instead of chain-shattering. He doesn’t want all his condis to get cleansed in by one zerker+F1 combo. Instead, he’s trying to bomb just enough to bait out the zerkermode + F1, and then using his second shatter (cry of frustration) for follow-up pressure.
I understand that you’re a warrior main. If your experiences have been different, I’d genuinely be interested in seeing footage of how the matchup turns out for you. You’re probably a much better warrior, but this particular matchup requires that you really underestand how the mesmer build works in order to get a sense of the timing.
If it takes you 3 minutes to win a 1 v 1 a mesmer, you’re not a counter in any meaningful way for high level conquest.
I win in the first few seconds by effectively decapping the point (or showing that I can defend it for the entire fight). The warrior has too much sustain and melee-range pressure for the mesmer to fight on-point. This is hugely significant for high-level conquest, not just for the obvious reason that you take the point from the mesmer. But also because it synergizes well with druid, which is also capable of holding points against mesmer. It doubles the rotation options available, which makes it harder for the enemy to counter-rotate.
Obviously the video would have been super boring if it ended after the mesmer concedes the point, and I wouldn’t have gotten as much practice from the fights. That’s why you see the fight continue until one of us dies. But if you pay attention, I’m the one either standing on point or chasing for most of the fight (I only disengage when moa’d).
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So it just shows, no matter how good the +1’er is (kuddos to those who can actually handle chrono 1v1) something needs to be changed. It’s way to effective and the AoE conditions which are not even meant for the others around target are getting hit too hard by it. It’s both (too?) effective in AoE and single target.
What? This is completely wrong. A decent thief, reaper, or warrior will absolutely wreck a mesmer in a +1. Both the thief and reaper can CC the mesmer out of the Shield4, which leads to a kill. The warrior can chain CCs and put on enough pressure to force the mesmer to retreat.
The only thing you have to be aware of is making sure you don’t waste your +1 burst on a dodge or evade, which is 100% up to you. (It’s really easy as thief or reaper ’cause you can wait for the mesmer to put up shield and then interrupt + bomb).
Yup. +1ing on a chrono is super easy particularly for those classes. It’s an easy kill and/or easier decap.
If you’re scared of aoe fallout, try a weapon with range. This ain’t rocket science xD
It’s far from an easy kill with hundreds of blocks/invulns and random dazes chaining eachother. It has too many of those while being effective in dps aswel.
I know you’re a mesmer main but come on man, be honest Chrono is not in line with the rest.
Atleast put effort in giving feedback what should change to bring them more in line.I wrote a long post on countering Condi Mes as Warrior, with video footage: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Warrior-The-Counter-To-Condi-Mes/first#post6143481. I hope you find it constructive or at least helpful.
And about your comment on how the mesmer has “hundreds of blocks,” I directly addressed that with my earlier post about +1ing as Thief or Necro. Both of those classes can 100% reliably INTERRUPT THE MESMER’S BLOCK. This let’s both the +1’er and his buddy pound on the mesmer.
I thank you for linking the video but it’s not really a factor to consider if:
1. the fight was half of the time off-point
2. the condi warr build only shines vs chrono’s but lacks pressure elsewhere + mobility
3. fighting a mesmer who (with all due respect) double dodges nothing, wasting his dodges (I know u need to dodge for clones but that wasn’t meant for clones since he got CD on f-skills)I did got close killing chrono’s multiple time in 1v1 on point with a DPS warrior, but same problem here resides; dps warrior won’t really be a thing in coming meta.
1. If you notice, the only reason the fight went off-point is because the mesmer kept having to disengage. I immediately ran onto the point each fight and would have neuted it within a few seconds of the fight.
If the mesmer tries to contest the point, then the fight is entirely in the warrior’s favor. The warrior’s melee-range pressure is way higher and on lower CDs.
2. Condi warrior pressure is crazy high in other fights — much higher than mesmer in teamfights. Condi war can spike harder and more frequently due to the low cooldowns on headbutt + zerker mode + f1’s. The condi war also has the highest access to CCs of any meta build — you can singlehandedly prevent any ele in the fight from using overloads or Wash The Pain Away.
You’re right about Condi War having lower mobility, but it’s not terrible — Condi War has perma 25% movespeed and 2 low-CD dashes (Shield 4 on 16s, Headbutt on 20s).
3. Any criticism you have of the mesmer player completely contradicts your original post, which was that mesmer is an autopilot class. You can’t say that mesmer is faceroll easy for anyone to dominate with, and then come back later and say that such and such mesmer only lost because he missed some dodges. If he played the fight perfectly, then I wouldn’t have deserved to win. Warrior isn’t autopilot either.
I also don’t agree with your assessment about the fight. Again, the fighting only moves off-point when the mesmer has to disengage (or when I get moa’d). The mesmer definitely wasted some dodges, but so did I. He’s still better than most of the mesmers you’ll run into in Unranked, and better than most of the ones in Ranked.
2. Condi warrior is very easy to take down, I would even say the easiest to pick out in teamfights. Im 90% certain we wont see it in the coming meta.
Suggesting to use your CC’s as mobility is not the way to go, certainly if you get jumped on.
3. Dodging wrong has nothing to with builds whatsoever, so your argument is invalid.
Afaik, every class can dodge. Let alone builds.
Basically any build made up just to counter a mesmer can be used to take it out. But it’s useless if it doesn’t cut to the meta/getting farmed by everything else.
Last post on this thread, since I think I’ve made my point:
2. Most meta builds fold under focus fire. Condi war is relatively tanky due to its mercenary amulet, decent block uptime, ridiculously high heal-per-second, very high condi cleanse, high resistance uptime, and double endure pain. Its survivability scales well with team support: getting protection from the ele synergizes well with the warrior’s high healing and health, getting just 5s of peels from teammates translates into 5k more health from your 1k health-per-second regen.
In any event, I don’t expect condi war to be a teamfighter. It’s better for +1ing and fighting on side nodes. Anastasis, who’s played in the top teams and is probably one of the top warriors, thinks that condi war will be meta (His Post).
Using your CC’s as mobility is not a huge deal. They’re on ridiculously low cooldowns. It’s no different from mesmer using blink (his only stunbreak) as mobility, or phase retreat (his best kiting skill and a source of clones). If mesmer burns blink + phase retreat for mobility and then gets jumped on, he’s in a worse position than a warrior who’s used shield4 and headbutt.
3. I think you may have missed my point here. You are claiming that Condi Mes is “Turret Engie v2.0,” meaning that the build is brain-dead easy and anyone can win with it no matter how bad they are. In order for this statement to be true, the player running Condi Mes shouldn’t need to worry about saving his dodges and timing them for key skills. You’ve contradicted your own point by arguing that the mesmer in my video only lost because he wasted dodges. That means the build isn’t autopilot like you claimed.
Yes, every build has access to dodge. But not every build is as reliant on dodging. Generally speaking, the builds people think of as more “high skilled” are more reliant on smart, active dodging. The builds people think of as “low skilled” allow you to facetank and just dodge randomly (or not at all).
For example, thief (which I’d say is hard to play well), requires very good dodging — one missed dodge usually means you die. Power shatter mesmer is the same.
As a counter-example, turret engie (which was super easy to play), required very little dodging. If you eat a CC chain because you didn’t dodge as turret engie, your turrets would still be outputting DPS. On top of that, you’d passively get a protection proc plus an additional 25% damage reduction from traits everytime you ate a CC.
You’re saying the condi mes in my video lost solely because he didn’t use his dodges well enough. Your own arguments push the mesmer out of the “Turret Engie” spectrum.
Finally, I’m not sure why you think condi warrior gets “farmed.” It has a favorable matchup against rev, druid, and scrapper. Reapers are also easy if they try to contest the point.
(edited by ResJudicator.7916)
I think the meta classes right now all have a very low skill floor — meaning that they’re easy to pick up and be reasonably effective with. But most of them also have high skill ceilings, meaning that a good player can do a lot more with them than a bad player. So in some respects, I think A.net is generally succeeding.
The main culprit right now is DH, which was way overnerfed due solely to complaints from more casual players (and I guess WvW).
For example, a thief is 100% helpless when he’s coming down on his vault animation (outside of mugging to interrupt). But it’s up to the thief’s opponent to be good enough to land skills during this animation.
If every class / build had instant / fast, ranged interrupts like mantra of distraction mes / f3 or steal / head shot then yeah it would be up to the opponent, but when classes / builds have interrupts with the same 3/4 of sec cast time as vault the idea of precision interrupting it at the right frames is laughable (and let’s not even talk about waiting for most AI to respond), just one more example of why “skill” in this game is so secondary.
Most of the meta builds do have access to a good source of punishment.
Revenant – Staff 5 + Legendswap (to trigger staff on-swap sigils). This is instantcast and will almost instagib the thief.
Necro – Plague Signet (aagainst condi D/D evade spam builds). Eat the condis, plague sig back when thief is helpless during latter half of Death Blossom. Then stow weapon so you don’t attack into evasions (which is how the thief cleanses condis).
Warrior – Shieldbash is instant, Mace3 is instant, Zerker mode + Mace burst has like a 1/4s casttime. Longbow blind is instant.
Scrapper – You can just let your gyros take the hits and the thief will die from his own vault due to final salvo.
Thief – Headshot. Mug. Shadowshot.