Guild Wars 2

8v8s currently exist only in custom servers. I wouldn’t mind having them as Hot Joins. Unfortunately I don’t think we can have an 8v8 or other formats in competitive play because it would split the community too much. Queue times would increase rip. But yeah I wouldn’t mind the large Hot Joins.

Good catch witcher, thanks!

Thanks naphack. These builds are definitely snapshots of old meta and need tweaking. Unfortunately there are no tweaked builds to be found unless someone updated the ones on metabattle. I’ll add the axe spec and you can contribute whatever spec you want.

Hey guys I want to put together a list of the best builds for new players who don’t yet own Heart of Thorns. Some of these are better in the current meta than others.
For those who need some credentials, I’m currently in Pro League and played when these builds were in use.

I’m listing by profession which does not indicate which profession is best but I’ll organize them roughly by what is most likely to be best. I do list the specs by rank within the profession heading starting with best at the top. I’ll make a note next to each one of how good it is in pvp now.

Also keep in mind that these specs are basically snapshots of last meta and there are probably some tweaks to be made to make them the most optimized now. Some of these articles might have been edited and suggest runes/sigils that are locked on Free to Play accounts. There should be variations you can play where you don’t need to unlock anything.
If you having trouble, try to find recent videos and stuff up. Can also tune into streams and ask people.

Feel free to discuss if you think something is better or worse than I say. Haven’t played any of these in new meta so hard to say in some areas. I’ll probably edit this list periodically.

Elementalist:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger – Fairly strong node holder/duelist (not bunker). You’ll lose to things now but can probably hold your own in solo queue against many players.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Celestial_Staff – Fairly tanky, has more ranged damage.

Engineer:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Marauder_Rifle – Still fairly strong, mostly just overshadowed.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Soldier_Rifle – The Tankier version if you need.

Necromancer:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Necromancer_-_Celestial_Signet – Tanky might-stacking spec. This is the best option for necro unless your team needs more damage. Can hold a node while your team rotates in, and still has okay dueling.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Necromancer_-_Standard_Power_Necro – Will probably get killed, needs support, but if you like power can play this. Does big damage.

Guardian:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Burst_Burning – Easy to play, kills noobs and people who you catch off-guard, but will lose to good players. High Burn damage.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant – Power Damage variant. This might actually be better than burn but I put burn higher because it is more effective vs. bad players for less skill investment.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Bunker – If you need team support/bunker. Downside is that it’s slow and can’t kill anything.

Warrior:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_GS/Hammer – Fairly okay at team fighting. Pop that rampage and go in babyyyy. Has some decent damage during CC.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Greataxe – Has burst.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Shoutbow – The point holder/dueler spec.

Mesmer:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Shatter – This is like a worse D/P Thief in queues. Has higher burst damage out of stealth + portal that might make it more useful, but Thief might be better here.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Condition_Shatter – More of a duelist spec, or if you like condis. Not super good in team fights.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Mantra_Lockdown – If you want to embrace your inner Mesmer and mess with people, one of my favorite old specs.

Thief:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Dagger/Pistol – This might be the best non-HoT spec individually. Problem is that Thief has a hard time dealing with the new HoT specs now. This spec requires a lot of mechanics that are not intuitive. I would recommend watching videos to figure everything out.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Sword/Dagger – Not as good as D/P but has evading if you like that.

Ranger:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Power_Survival – Ranger might be the worst non-HoT choice overall, but if you have to play it try one of these specs. This one has a fairly high skill cap if you factor in needed positioning. It has decent damage.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Carrion_Survival – This is more of the point holder ranger spec.

Hey guys, I made a post on the GW2 subreddit about solo queue. Can check it out here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3t7lgn/important_discussion_about_spvp_solo_queue/

Now new and improved with a TL;DR!

Upvote if you agree!

Double ele booooyzzz

Updated the OP with RiotLytes response, and the responses to that.
I’m referencing League of Legends because they’re perceived as the game that has the most resources and should get it right. Also they don’t have a population problem and still decided to do it, so you get more pure responses regarding how it effects the competitiveness of solo queue.

@Uuni , yeah I feel you. Shorter queue times is better for the population overall.
I’m just trying to see if there’s a compromise to be found. A lot of what I am complaining about I do understand only applies to a small percentage of players.
1. High MMR might be punished for solo queueing.
2. A top solo queuer might not even be on the front page of the leaderboard; will just be teams.
I want to be competitive in both and not undermine myself by playing solo instead of with a team.

Yeah sorry I was thinking separate queues.
You’re right though, I think that’s probably the best solution. It’s what Dota 2 does.
They have two queues for ranked, and three MMRs. You can only team queue with 5, if you do 1-3 in solo queue you’ll have a party MMR which is separate from solo queue MMR.
I’ll add this to the OP.

So to summarize:
We would have
Normal Queue (1-5 players queuing together)
Ranked Solo (1-3 players queuing together)
Ranked Team (5 players queuing together)

for MMRs we would have:
Normal MMR
Ranked Solo – Solo queue MMR (1 player only), and Party (1-3 players) queue MMR.
Ranked Team MMR

Unfortunately, if you combine team and ranked solo queues, you pretty much have to allow any combination of 1-5 players to queue.

I know it’s unlikely anything would come of these suggestions, especially since they already have the system where you can gain points for losing against a good team. Here it is anyway :P

Reikou mentioned separate leaderboard and MMR.
I think the elephant in the room still is the population in GW2.
I want to believe that a combined board will work out, there are concerns though for sure.

I mentioned the gaining or losing less benefits of playing against a premade as a solo. It’s still a bad experience for players many players.
You could argue that the goal of ranked is to get as high rated as you can, regardless of winning or losing. I guess we’ll have to see how that plays out.
I’m just imagining a top ranked solo queuer, constantly going against premades, always losing, and gaining rating. Is that a fun game experience? Subjective I suppose.
I do feel like we need a way to view solo and party/team queues separate at least. If teams are always winning, solo queuers will never realistically have the opportunity to be rank 1.

I do agree we need more tools for communication in game. Pings is always an example brought up. Ping people back, to a point, or to be careful of a +1 etc. Something would be nice here.

I could see that. Being able to filter the leaderboard by different categories, like those who only solo/duo or something.
You still have a situation of potential bad queue experiences though.

With the announcement of the leagues coming December 1st, I figured it was a pertinent to have another discussion on the solo/team combined queue.

League of Legends just announced Season 6 changes, and among those, they announced the allowance of up to 5 man premade queues into their solo queue. Previously they only allowed duo queue into solo. This blew up on the subreddit, in fact a large portion of the subreddit is posts with concerns about the new dynamic queue.

Three of the top posts on the subreddit made it to the front page of reddit simultaneously with concerns about how it will significantly harm solo queue.

Edit Here’s the megathread about it on the league subreddit, a lot of good ideas and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3rht20/new_ranked_solo_queue_megathread/

Heart of the Storm had a dynamic queue, they removed it because it was horrible.
CS:GO Has a dynamic queue and it is currently a problem in the community. The higher you go in elo, the higher chance you’ll get put against a premade, and it happens.
Dota 2 has made it so that in solo queue you can’t go in with a premade of more than 3 players. That means no 4 or 5 queues into the solo queue. In addition to this, if you do party into solo queue, you have a separate MMR for solo and party queues. They also have a separate 5 ranked team queue. I think this is the system GW2 should adopt
LoL at least you still have a separate 5 man premade team queue, but I understand this is still potentially a population concern for gw2.

Regardless of the pros and cons, which I will list out, isn’t this evidence enough that the combined queue will be a problem?


Major pros of combined queue:
- Shorter queue times.
- More potential for balance comps because more people to select from.
- Have more options for playing with a number of friends if you all want to play but don’t have a full team.

Major cons of combined queue:
- If you solo queue and get a premade on your team you have a higher chance of being bullied. (This is evidence by a ton of anecdotal evidence in the other referenced games)
- Solo queueing into a premade is a horrible, almost guaranteed loss scenario where you don’t necessarily learn or have fun, you just get crushed.
- Longer queue times.
- The higher you progress in the ladder, the more often you will be queued into premades. (this has happened in every game that has a combined queue)
- Boosting will become a thing with the new leaderboard/icon next to your name in game. Having more than a duo into a solo queue could exacerbate this phenomenon.

Also because we don’t have a dedicated team queue in addition to the combined queue, you will have these cons:
- Teams will not want to solo queue because they want the highest rating possible.
- This will cause less people to stream because they don’t want to stream team queue, and may lose desire to stream since they don’t want to solo queue and risk ruining their rating.


Thoughts
As a competitive player I know that my specific wants only represent a small percentage of the population. Like high MMR being punished for solo queueing, or a top solo queuer not showing up at the top of the new leaderboards when you have teams there. I just want to be able to compete in both.
Guild Wars 2 has flip-flopped back and forth with combined queue, solo queue, combined queue, so I understand the developers probably have some metrics, and there is a method to their madness.
That said, please look around at the evidence from other games and consider a compromise here. – Maybe it’s just extra little matchmaking nuances in the combined algorithm you guys have. A reply to clarify would be appreciated.
Solo queue is a casual-enabler, and casual players are an important piece of the backbone of any competitive game.
Even if you have a system setup to lose less or even gain mmr when you lose against a premade, it still feels bad.
I would much rather wait even 5-8 extra minutes to have a good queue. I understand the general population would most likely just prefer shorter queues though. What if we could do hot joins again while in queue? That would make things at least slightly less boring during a long queue.

It will be interesting to see how the League of Legends dynamic queue complaints turn out, I will probably edit this thread with the outcome later on.

What do you guys think?
I can tell you right now I’ll have two accounts, a solo queue only account, and a team queue account. I’ll see how the experiences differ.

Here is a proposed Dota 2-esque queue system for GW2:
We would have
Normal Queue (1-5 players queuing together)
Ranked Solo (1-3 players queuing together)
Ranked Team (5 players queuing together)

for MMRs we would have:
Normal MMR
Ranked Solo – Solo queue MMR (1 player only), and Party (1-3 players) queue MMR.
Ranked Team MMR


Update from League of Legends stuff, also cleaning up this post
RiotLyte made a statement about the Dynamic queue, can be read here:
http://ask.fm/RiotLyte/answer/133759089858

I think the post addresses a lot of concerns, however looking at the replies in the Reddit thread still reveals a lot of the downsides which mainly effect the competitive population, which indirectly effects the other populations. Reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3rjzyh/riotlyte_on_dynamic_queue/
Some examples:

“My main concern is going to be that solo person paired with 4 players and having the lack of communication with them. Naturally playing comps with like Malphite / Jarvan initiation with Yasuo ult to follow up will be even more deadly now. Since they can all be on the same page. But being that player who is not on voice chat or know what the strategies are is going to put me at a huge disadvantage.
In solo queue there is rarely voice chat and most of us communicate through typing / pings. I expect to see a lot less of that now.
My only real solution to the idea is to limit dynamic queue to 3 players instead of 4. That way you are looking at 2 odd men out, and for everyone to be on the same page teams have an incentive of communicating with one another.”

-Basically the concern here is that even though the matchmaking is adjusting for coordination, the coordination can still beat the higher level players that are matched against the premade, since it could be like a 4 man premade.
Also, he suggested the same thing that Dota 2is doing; limiting the party to 3 in solo queue.


“This does not address the ranked skill level problem. As people rank up as a group rather than a solo/duo, it will be even more difficult than before to accurately measure a player’s actual skill level. Ranked queues will lose all meaning and Riot will effectively alienate a large portion of their player base.”

-Boosting, carrying, etc.


“Surely the fact that pro teams can now queue in “solo queue” as a group of 4 will result in the top 4+ spots of the solo queue ladder being cemented by pro players. That’s not to say that pro players wouldn’t by default occupy many of the top spots, but there were non-pros who managed to have greater solo impact and be placed higher in challenger than the pros, which gets them noticed by professional organisations. Now, the highest rank a player is going to realistically achieve is the spot behind every single other professional team’s 4 players."

Lyte also talked about how they have a bunch of backup plans as you can read here:
http://ask.fm/RiotLyte/answer/133762129090
Would be nice to hear something from Anet Devs.

The initial heal is 2590 instead of 3230, without poison. It has been this way since Beta Weekend 1. I really hope this is actually bugged and they don’t fix it by just changing the tooltip… They seem to have been doing that a lot lately.

I’ll update this periodically with an edit and organize by date.

General
Stomps don’t work if you gain or lose quickness during the stomp animation (I think?)
What happens: I will cast a well with Chronomancer runes for example (to get quickness), stomp, allow the animation to finish, and wait additional time in case the animation isn’t synced with the actual stomp, still nothing will happens, enemy doesn’t die.

Stuck bug:
I know you guys are aware of this one.
Getting stuck in place where you have to emote like /sit to get unstuck.

Oldie but a goodie:
Immobilize while in the air.
This is a competitive balance concern and would be unacceptable in other esport games. I implore you guys to take steps to begin getting a system in place where this can be remedied.

Camera:
- With free camera enabled, if the last mouse button you have pressed is left mouse, then you about face, there is a small window of time where if you then right click, the camera will snap around (It’s around maybe .75 seconds long?) – After this period of time, right clicking will no longer auto turn your character 180 degrees. I talked to Brandon Gee about this and it’s clearly low priority but it makes Phase Retreating forwards slightly inefficient.
- There is also a bug where if you try to about face after left your character will be stuck, constantly trying to turn around during the about face but can’t. From the outside perspective, people don’t see you moving, but your character twitches whenever you try to about face. You have to move the camera slightly from where it is to unlock the about face again.
Seems to happen sometimes when about facing after stopping. Don’t know the repro.


Mesmer
- Well of Eternity, initial heal is bugged and heals for 2590 isntead of 3230 on tooltip. Please don’t just “update the tooltip” to reflect the functionality on this unless that’s actually intended…
-If you weapon swap and cast a phantasm too soon the phantasm will not go off but the ability will go on full cooldown.
- After using some abilities and then immediately casting Blurred Frenzy, sometimes BF goes off delayed, not sure what the cause or the repro is exactly but it seems like it happens after using sword 3 swap a lot. The delay is new with Heart of Thorns. (Might not be specific to Mes but this is where I notice it all the time)

Druid
-Staff 3 will put you in combat at the end of the cast. Seems to only occur in matches (not in the mists)

Good post, I think it addresses a real concern in the community of the game.
I’ve cross-referenced a lot of people in blind questioning about which professions they perceive get the most flak, and overall it seems like Mesmer definitely gets disproportionately more complaints than other professions for a given level of balance.
Even during the cele meta over the past year I would get mes op complaints, despite only two Mesmers going to WTS, and Mesmer representation in ESL being relatively low.
I talked to Roy about this at the Pax Prime party and he acknowledged Mesmer has struggled. Fortunately they’ve listened to the stats and not the complaints this time and brought Mesmer up.

About the original post, for sPvP, dueling is not the strong suit of Mesmer in a higher end match. It’s actually too much of a liability with ganks. Much better to have a tanky/bruiser duelist who can survive ganks than a Mesmer. Mesmer does much better in smaller skirmishes and rotations with Portal. With Chrono, it looks like it will have a pretty strong team fight presence.

It’s possible Chrono does need to be toned down, but I would like everyone to understand that among the top players right now, Scrapper and Revenant are seen as even stronger than Chrono.
The way I like to put it is that the Mesmer base mechanics really exploit inexperienced players (which was mentioned in the original post). Mesmer is annoying, that’s what it’s supposed to be. However being annoying is mutually exclusive of being OP.
Once you understand Mesmer mechanics like being able to pick out which Mesmer is the real one, or counting cooldowns so you know when there are openings, the class becomes a lot less mysterious.
Also, there will always be professions that are better or worse than each other given any state of mmo balance; one class will always be on top. Maybe Mesmer is there or close this time? Is that really a bad thing? After years of struggling? The truth is, I’m along for the ride regardless, but people do need to chill out a bit with the complaining. Shift your complains over to Revenant, trust me the game will need it unless it gets nerfed before release.

What do you guys think?

Well, I’m not sure if Perma Alacrity is intended (I’m traited twice for Alacrity), so maybe that’s something to look at. There have been times where I walk out of a team fight with Zeromis and we have 20 seconds of Alacrity while we rotate (because we communicated and stood in each others’ wells). We will just blow Shatters while rotating because the Shatters will be up anyway, and it gives us more Alacrity for other skills. Slow is super strong but honestly the Alacrity up time right now I think is just better.
The change to Shield allowing it to block during the channel is also really good, Increased survivability a lot.

Hey guys :P

So first of all I wasn’t in TS with Aero, he just did a good job helping me out when I needed it.

The build is here:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8encfC1qhlpB2fCEgilTjiMAWggqMDauwp+Zz2tF-TZBGABeXGAgLAQaHEgDeCA2s/AA
I might run Moa in team play, still not sure.

There were five of us in the queue, Countless, Aeroxe, Bob, Zeromis and I. But Aero wasn’t in TS.

Basically someone accidentally queued us up for Stronghold when we wanted to do Conquest, so we just decided to kill people as much as we could instead of playing the gametype properly, thus I just hung outside the lord room just fighting, and Aero hung out with me too.

Anyway, it’s definitely a strong build, Chrono is strong. That said, Engi has never really fared well vs. Mesmer. And if I’m being honest, the outcome probably would have been similar even without Chrono.

My gut tells me that Chrono will be nerfed, but I’m not sure what levels of strength the developers are intending. It seems the last few Elite specialization balances have actually brought up the other professions to be closer to Chrono.

My last point I do want to make is that if you look at profession distribution for wins in ESL and WTS, Mesmer and Ranger are quite underrepresented (only two Mesmers ever in WTS – Helseth and myself). So frankly, it’s a nice change to be strong. That said, playing Chrono really well has a fairly high skill cap, and I feel that I am being rewarded for my skill.

P.S.
I’m all about counterplay and balance, but coming from an engineer who was in the meta for over a year on cele, it’s hard for me to have sympathy. I’m also not saying that previous imbalances justify current imbalances, but there were monetary rewards for all the celes for a year, and I feel like maybe I could get away with saying that I like being strong. Although maybe the strength is coming from skill? Who knows. If it gets nerfed it gets nerfed, I provide feedback to the devs and then after that I’m just striving to play as well as I can. Hopefully this time I can make some more money along the way though.

What do you guys think?

Just wanted to quell some of the hate train in here. The Power Block and Chaotic Dampening changes were decided before the patch hit, they just weren’t implemented yet. Also when the Power Block trait was merged with Halting Strike the damage was accidentally increased, so now it has been reverted back to it’s original damage which is unnerfed.
This means that these changes were not made in reaction to builds people made, but that Anet actually did have foresight and made sensible changes.
Personally I loved having Dampening at 5% because of how my rotation ended up working out but honestly it might have been too much especially considering Chaos Armor from blasts that allies did applied the cdr to you.

On that note, one thing I did notice however that is slightly inconsistent is that although Chaos Armor applied through blasts from allies (where you are not the source) reduces your cdr, those Chaos Armors that you are not the source of do not put protection up (finishers where you are the source give you protection).

Edit: As others have noted. We’re basically getting 20% cdr now, except we have to stack Chaos Armor properly and use skills specifically. It does feel like the trait is not comparable anymore to other traits that have flat 20% cdr. Should be 3-4% imo or just do 20% flat.

Oh hm maybe they did change it! Or we didn’t notice before haha. I’ll have to check it out, thanks for the heads up!

@messiah
Any Mesmer build that is half decent will work if you are a good player at all skill levels except the very top. I’ve never had a problem with >99% of players in solo queue and most team queues (except the higher end scrims) with non shatter builds (other than maybe PU because it lacks some proactive damage), like mtd for example.

There are three problems with mtd that basically make it not work (at higher levels):
1. It relies heavily on clones shattering – This is bad because If you are in a place of good positioning, your clones will never get to your target. They’ll have to walk around the backside of keep and despawn, or they’ll walk all the way around clocktower and despawn. In addition, clones will shatter on the nearest enemy. So this makes landing damage on the intended target far less reliable than power shatter with greatsword.
2. It is literally hard countered by generosity sigil. People don’t run it now but I guarantee you if mtd became meta and there were Mesmers on more teams, tons of people would run it, and it severely hinders the spec.
3. Because your damage is less reliable in a team fight, you might be saying “oh I should be the 1v1er or in smaller engagements.” This is also not good because you don’t survive in a 1v2 better than war, ele, or engi, so you become a liability that can be avoided/minimized by playing another spec in another role.
Besides, if you are good enough you can win almost every 1v1 except vs. Thieves and some DPS Guards as power shatter anyway, so if you are forced into that situation you might as well just be power shatter so you can help your team elsewhere more effectively.

Also I wanted to add that I tested mtd pretty extensively and I do have to say that its burst is arguably more than power shatter in the 2-5 second range, if you can get it all off on one person. Shatter obviously does more instantly but when you fully stack torment, confusion and the other condis, people melt insanely fast in the following seconds. (I’m talking like if you can get the 20+ torment up)

Hey guys I’m copying over a post from the Mesmer forums I made to here. Basically I was addressing why I went Thief in WTS and some other random thoughts, maybe it will provide some insight here.


To clear up some stuff in this thread:
Thief is better than Mesmer in most cases; in general if you are playing Mesmer and don’t have a thief on your team, it’s better to play Thief instead (the Ranger or Mes can swap to Thief – it’s just that our Ranger didn’t know how to play Thief well enough at the time). That said, we had previously been playing a Mesmer/Ranger comp to see if there was some magic that could happen that was greater than a Thief/X comp because of high raw damage and range (I still would have rather had a Thief though). It turns out however that longbow ranger does really well vs. d/p thieves, so not going Thief and doing portals was actually a fine strategy against teams who had d/p Thieves, which was China and Europe.
Against Abjured however, our comp runs into a problem where we can’t kill any of them very effectively from range because they are all fairly survivable and can line of sight our range (whereas a mix of Mes/Thief/dps Guard could land damage by porting to the enemy or stealthing to them behind their line of sight).
Basically we didn’t really have an effective strategy against Abjured if our Ranger was power at least on Niflhel because if I went Thief, we didn’t have the rotational potential of Portal and s/d would be training him. I could try my best to peel as a Thief but it was all very risky against their comp. So as a result on Niflhel at least we had our Ranger go Condi, and I went Thief. Power Ranger is very good on Legacy though, so he changed back there. Unfortunately my mouse wasn’t detected either of those games, so I had to use a standard mouse and didn’t have any of the 12 bindings from my naga. So I was using new bindings on the spot and that’s why I didn’t swap back Mesmer for the Legacy game.

Technically though, Thief was better, if you’re wondering. I was only playing Mesmer the whole time because I wanted to and I was sick of going Thief, but I think technically I was gimping my team. If I was an excellent Thief (and I’m not too terrible, I just hadn’t played Thief competitively in a while) the comp would have been better, and that’s what I’ve done for almost all of my competitive teams in the past. I just wanted to play Mesmer this time.

Concluding thoughts:
1. Thief is still strong, Mesmer is still strong. Thief simply offers more for the slot on the team compared to other classes in the vast majority of cases.
2. Condi/Cele comps are easier to run for equal or greater success rates compared to zerker, specifically power classes other than Thief (you can check my post history to find some more in-depth explanation for this). – This is why often times you hear the thought that while Mesmer is good, there are usually better choices. “Better” meaning having higher room for error with equal or greater success for equal or less player skill input.
3. I want to address the idea real quick that “in theory power comps beat cele/condi comps” This might be true but it is extremely unlikely to actually happen, and even if it does happen, I think because of the skewed percentage, it is at least indicative of some balance issue. Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.

Fay.2357:

Supcutie.2538:

and s/d would be training him.

Thoughts on how this particular interaction will change post-port nerf?

It will be a buff to everyone who doesn’t have as many ports as s/d :P
I foresee a shift to d/p as a result. Who knows though.

To clear up some stuff in this thread:
Thief is better than Mesmer in most cases; in general if you are playing Mesmer and don’t have a thief on your team, it’s better to play Thief instead (the Ranger or Mes can swap to Thief – it’s just that our Ranger didn’t know how to play Thief well enough at the time). That said, we had previously been playing a Mesmer/Ranger comp to see if there was some magic that could happen that was greater than a Thief/X comp because of high raw damage and range (I still would have rather had a Thief though). It turns out however that longbow ranger does really well vs. d/p thieves, so not going Thief and doing portals was actually a fine strategy against teams who had d/p Thieves, which was China and Europe.
Against Abjured however, our comp runs into a problem where we can’t kill any of them very effectively from range because they are all fairly survivable and can line of sight our range (whereas a mix of Mes/Thief/dps Guard could land damage by porting to the enemy or stealthing to them behind their line of sight).
Basically we didn’t really have an effective strategy against Abjured if our Ranger was power at least on Niflhel because if I went Thief, we didn’t have the rotational potential of Portal and s/d would be training him. I could try my best to peel as a Thief but it was all very risky against their comp. So as a result on Niflhel at least we had our Ranger go Condi, and I went Thief. Power Ranger is very good on Legacy though, so he changed back there. Unfortunately my mouse wasn’t detected either of those games, so I had to use a standard mouse and didn’t have any of the 12 bindings from my naga. So I was using new bindings on the spot and that’s why I didn’t swap back Mesmer for the Legacy game.

Technically though, Thief was better, if you’re wondering. I was only playing Mesmer the whole time because I wanted to and I was sick of going Thief, but I think technically I was gimping my team. If I was an excellent Thief (and I’m not too terrible, I just hadn’t played Thief competitively in a while) the comp would have been better, and that’s what I’ve done for almost all of my competitive teams in the past. I just wanted to play Mesmer this time.

Concluding thoughts:
1. Thief is still strong, Mesmer is still strong. Thief simply offers more for the slot on the team compared to other classes in the vast majority of cases.
2. Condi/Cele comps are easier to run for equal or greater success rates compared to zerker, specifically power classes other than Thief (you can check my post history to find some more in-depth explanation for this). – This is why often times you hear the thought that while Mesmer is good, there are usually better choices. “Better” meaning having higher room for error with equal or greater success for equal or less player skill input.
3. I want to address the idea real quick that “in theory power comps beat cele/condi comps” This might be true but it is extremely unlikely to actually happen, and even if it does happen, I think because of the skewed percentage, it is at least indicative of some balance issue. Should playing power be rewarding? Yes. Should playing power be so disproportionately more difficult? Probably not.

Right but they can spam stealth. So it’s a repeating guessing game where you can try to guess, but you’re forced to do a lot more guessing than they are.

I agree D/P is the easiest to beat., but if you’re finding Thieves to be predictable, you’re not fighting good enough Thieves. In a pure 1v1, s/x gs with shatter reset can do alright, but in a team setting, Thieves will just hunt you, or at least prevent you from doing your job using less cds than you use. I agree Thief stolen abilities need to be nerfed. The Devs have brought it up but put it on the back burner I think. I agree that GS/Staff might be too strong if Thieves weren’t in the game, but Thieves are in the game, and they restrict every other power class. I agree that in the past there was healthier balance than now. I also agree that it is fairly balanced now (other than specs surrounding celestial amulet) and that devs have continuously taken arguably wrong approaches. You’ve always needed a Thief to counter other Thieves.

Favorite Costco menu item? Daaaat salad.
Boxer Briefs.
Answering your questions in a forum mail Chaos sent me so he can format it.

My body is ready.

Interesting, many of these changes are close/related to the leaked patch notes, in addition to some the matchmaking/queueing stuff that was implemented on Tuesday. I wonder if they actually weren’t fake, but just early thoughts? If that’s the case, there are many good changes they still need to put in.
If anyone would like to see the leaked notes pm me and I’ll send the link.
I feel like seeing more potential changes will spark discussion in the right direction. My current thoughts are that these changes are not enough.

Yes it’s real I can confirm seeing it in the ESL finals chat. It’s sad to see but at the same time illustrates why it’s important for the developers to communicate with us. Ele has a better win ratio vs. Necro in the current meta for example.

Necro flips condis, engi has aoe condi cleanse, ranger has a lot of passive cleanse.

Here are some of my Mesmers!
Edit: Forgot to turn on my tentacle back piece!

Hey Smirgel
I did not factor in any of those things sorry. Those are good ideas I can add in to my next guide update.
I think the extra bleeds stacks might come out to like 2 or something.
I haven’t tested the damage multiplier traits either. Personally even if it did work better with mental torment that still wouldn’t be enough for me to take either.

How can I possibly be accused of being selfish and out for my own class when there is obviously a balance issue? Mes damage is super high, and in order to fix a lot of things I’m sure it would have to be toned down along with other classes. Power classes other than Thief are clearly struggling.

I also did read your part about 50/50. You’re saying Mes does worse in the matchup, but also implying with the rest of your wording that this is due to Mesmers not taking the right skills, which we have already established is not realistic. So then how can this be okay?
For Reference

I don’t think you will see more than a 50/50 match up against s/d without doing portal – which is not realistic. Mesmer has a reliable window to land shatter on flanking strike however. It just takes patience to land burst but it’s a gauruntee with the right timing, and is enough to kill our force the thief to fully reset if you land the right abilities. For some reason people forget the busy potential of mirror images as well. Coming from a time where mesmers used to one shot everything I’m sure you can recall how mirror images adds to Mesmer burst potential.

I’m only trying to make the game better. You should give people some more benefit of the doubt and be more kind. I don’t appreciate the whole

Again, you didn’t even read what I wrote before you came in here all Gung Ho for your class.

Balance is relative and has a lot of variables. Some of those variables include adjusting other classes which can put Mesmer in a better place. This is normal balance?

Maybe there would be more good Mesmer players if it was worth playing?
And effective damage is important. It’s like d/p vs. s/d. D/p does less damage overall but can still do comparable pressure to s/d in a fight because of burst.
I’m also not suggesting Mes should be buffed.

I’m confused, you say:

Mesmer actually does fairly well against s/d if played properly. Furthermore mesmers pigeon hole themselves into running staff/greatsword – which is a good weaponset but provides nothing against thieves. Sword/torch and sword/focus with greatsword is a lot more well rounded, far from unviable, and has a good match up versus thief.

Don’t blame one weapon set for keeping a class out of the meta when the players of the class are too stubborn to adapt.

Then:

You clearly didn’t ready anything I said if you think I insinuated that mesmer did “well” against S/D thief. But I’ll lay some things out for you. It’s by no means impossible to kill a thief on a mesmer. Mesmer is also quite far from unviable. I also never said that you need to go S/F or S/T to kill a thief, it’s more than possible to do it on Staff/Greatsword as well.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to kill a Thief on Mesmer, I’m just talking about realistic scenarios in a match. I won’t be 1v1ing, I never talked about that.

You don’t actually need to go s/f or s/t just because a thief is on the other team.

This was meant to imply that Mes success is team based and I totally expect my team to help me with Thieves while I support the team in other ways.
The key here is that we are talking about effective damage. Condi damage is often more effective because there is more application, and condi classes usually have more CC. Power has more damage overall but less CC and are more fragile, so the effective damage is arguably similar, but condi classes have more room for error.

My main concern is with statistics like this:

Just checked the profession usage from 7 out of top8 teams(except for zero to hero) in the recent NA ESL.
9 engi, 8 ele, 5 warr, 4 thief, 4 necro, 2 ranger, 2 guard, 1 mes.

Even if I do mention Mes vs. Thief, s/d vs. Mes is not 50/50 in a match.
Put yourself in Mes shoes – what would you drop for Mirror Images? Blink? Decoy? Portal? Even if I drop Portal I would take Mantra of Resolve. Those are all better than Mirror Images. If you’re losing to Mes as s/d you’re doing it wrong.

It’s averaged out mang. That’s why I said the part about you have 14% more crit on openers, in addition to the increase in damage. It’s the same thing, it’s statistics, sometimes you will crit sometimes you won’t. Those percentages are average damage increases.

It’s statistics and percentages, it’s all included.

It’s power for precision and ferocity.

Clearing some things up:
Mes does not do well vs. s/d. S/d can always get away.
S/f and s/t with shatter reset do better vs. thief especially d/p but are worse in more matchups overall. You don’t actually need to go s/f or s/t just because a thief is on the other team.
We have tried many things to make mes viable. It’s clearly a balance problem at this point. Condi classes in general have more defenses while doing similar damage, but over time. Power shines in the beginning of fights but their openers can be stopped by any number of things, leading to a very difficult uphill battle for the power team.

Yo I did this comparison in my guide:
Assassin’s Amulet vs. Berserker – Here are the results with Hoelbrak Runes
(power runes like strength):
- Sin does 9.4% more damage on average with 0 might.
- Sin does 11.2% more damage on average with 14 might.
- Sin does 10.67% more damage than Zerker at 14 might when both have Fury. (Zerker
amulet scales better with Fury)
- You are losing 16.67% health with Sin amulet

The bottom line is: You gain 14% more crit on openers leading to more consistent crits, and higher damage with might, resulting in about 10% +/- 3.5ish percent more damage for 3k health.
So some quick math about using Sin – You’re basically doing around 1100 more damage per big shatter for example. This damage could make the difference, but I would argue that in most cases, the health is better. If you have 3 or more dps on your team, you should definitely take Zerker amulet. If you have 2 or less, I would say you can consider Sin amulet but even then personally I like the health more.

Also Shockwave I would like to say that the same one mesmer has also been stubborn enough to not off class and alleviate the disadvantage Mesmer has continuously brought. TCG has built up a lot of synergy and that’s great but we’re simply saying here that there shouldn’t only be one Mesmer who at the behest of his team still stayed Mesmer.
I would be curious if you would report back here with your findings after playing your Mesmer comp. I can assure you it will be more difficult than you think, especially playing against something like Abjured.
Helseth has had a lot more opportunity in EU to play, and continued to play Mesmer so I think it’s a fair statement that his conquest gameplay is good. I can also fill you in that recently people playing on both EU and NA scrimming TCG and others have said that he hasn’t seemed as good lately and many would argue that I’m better. Anyway I’m not interested in slinging mud either and that’s all irrelevant now because neither of us are playing Mesmer.

In my opinion here are some potential changes regardless of cele balance:

Overcharge shot given a cast time – counterplay
Withdraw given a cast time of some sort – counterplay
Nerfing Feline’s Grace – the dodging isn’t good for the game.
Potentially toning back some of the Thief stolen abilities. – This one I’m willing to say is debatable.
Look at Necro fears – they’re all instant except 1 which has a 3/4 second cast time and I’ve personally tested that sometimes it can come out faster than that based on relative latency. And Reaper’s/Nightmare still proc Terror. What if Terror caused fears to have diminishing returns? Maybe it needs some sort of ICD. Maybe Terror shouldn’t apply to Rune/Trait fears. I would just like to see more counterplay here.
Fix stow weapon cancelling across the board. For Mes, War, Ele, etc.
Should Mes GS auto have instant travel time?

@Zento Yeah it would be awesome if Mind Stab was a blast. Unfortunately that has been talked about by devs and it was decided that Mesmer is not the class to blast things like that.
I always imagined Mind Stabbing a black powder from a distance or something haha!

Yeah I feel like the greater picture we’re getting into is basically trying to pinpoint why mesmer is often subpar to other classes meta after meta.

Yeah Shockwave those are good points. Also I think there are good mes on NA! Maybe even better

I can try to dissect this more, but bear with me as comparing and contrasting between classes is extremely difficult because of so many variables.
I’ll start basic and try to build up a case and define things.

Let’s pretend it’s a power team vs. a condi team. Power meaning their damage sources are power specs like thief mes or something, and a condi team, their damage sources being condi based like engi necro. Currently for the condi team we could also just be talking about like a celestial team since celestial stats are so strong. Also since might affects power and condi damage the result is a higher sustain to damage ratio in addition to what they have already (which is a high sustain to damage ratio) on classes that utilize celestial well like engi/ele.

The power team’s damage has to be invested in the triple offensive stats of power crit ferocity because otherwise they simply won’t have enough damage. This is how the game is currently balanced.
So right off the bat you have the condi team with more room for error, because they mathematically have more defensive stats.

The advantage of the power team is that they have upfront, burst damage that can kill targets with proper coordination. The advantage of the condi team is that they have more sustain and higher room for error.
So now we have a condi team with more room for error and a need for less coordination in addition to having more sustain.

Now let’s compare some damage. First I want to define effective damage. If an s/d thief and a d/p thief are both in a fight, the s/d does way more damage overall, but the d/p can still cause equal pressure to be put out because their damage is burst. So the d/p thief has more effective damage, less total damage.
Typically, for the same skill use investment, condition skills or the celestial power-condi combo skills, do around the same amount of damage as power, but over a longer duration. This is fine except they also have all of their defensive stats (compared to the power triple offensive stats).
Now Usually the power classes have more damage skills (which results in more total damage output from the team), and the condi/celestial have more crowd control. Crowd control leads to the lesser damage of the condi/celestial team outputting equal pressure on the power team because the power team is squishier (so the condi/celestial team has more effective damage).

The result we then get is, the condi/celestial team has similar effective damage to the power team but with a lot more defensive stats. So, maybe this is fair? The power team has the opportunity to win immediately if they play it correctly, right?

And this is the important part – the answer is yes, but is it realistic? -> no.

This is because the coordination required is not rewarded fairly as a result of the luck factor of random dodges, and the increased defensive capabilities of the condi classes through raw stats and more crowd control. Weakness for example hurts a power class a lot more than a condi class. Instant fears, or instant overcharge shot. Celestial engi and ele being able to heal each other and the rest of the team.
It is often the case that even if you kill someone on a condi team, once your opener is done, the condi team can rotate, kite, and sustain all while doing damage (nades, marks, other aoes), allowing them to marginalize their losses a lot more effectively than an equivalent power team who couldn’t do damage like that while running.

Basically if for any number of reasons the power team doesn’t perfectly open and kill the condi team quickly, the power team immediately falls behind into an extremely difficult uphill battle.

It’s simply an imbalance of stat point and coordination investment per unit of reward.

Please discuss though!

It’s difficult to really find the problem. I think if we knew exactly then it would have been solved. It’s something like a combination of:
1. Power classes needing to stat for power, crit, and ferocity to be seemingly on the same level of effectiveness as condi who can have success with 2 or maybe even 1 offensive stat.
2. Power damage being arguably mitigated more easily than condi damage, like with what Swish said about spammable condis. And the condi classes being able to stat defensive like in the previous point because they need to invest less in their offense.
3. In the current meta, celestial builds simply being more cost-effective than the alternatives. Hence bunker guards being out of meta, and even rangers along with mes.

I think I’m forgetting some good points but that comes to mind off the bat.

Some base condi cleanse might also help a bit.

It’s okay Dirame, I just felt I needed to post because a typical response from people is that I need to try their build that they’ve had success on. I’m just asking for a little trust, faith, and some evidence.