Guild Wars 2

Don’t ignore karma gear if you don’t have the money for the trading post. As long as you’re leveling in an appropriate zone for your level you can buy greens from quest vendors as good as any in the trading post.

Aeolus.3615:

is there any one logged in nsp? lol was there a few hours ago outmaned in 3 bl’s and noticed like 6-10 players (the usual ones) in eb and 1-2 in bl :<

Yeah, NSP is in a tailspin. This week’s match up with Mag may have crushed what spirit was left in all but our diehards. We can’t compete with that kind of server coverage.

Alex Caputo.7863:

Last week I saw about 25 NightShift [NS] (who are top 3 gvg/fight guilds on NA) get completely demolished by about 50-60 HG. What would happen before the stab changes was that NS would completely steamroll HG due to their superior skill based play, players, builds, commanding, etc. I saw them get one pushed and demolished by HG due to the blow up of CC which is impossible to counter in smaller numbers. What Anet has done is encouraged mindless blob play instead of coordinated strategy amongst players. I found this to be extremely sad and a killer to the game in itself. The GvG scene is all but dead, since now the meta seems to be extreme CC with no frontline, making half the classes NOT EVEN WORTH PLAYING IN THIS GAME ANYMORE. As a result Ns, Syn and i believe Agg have quit the guild wars 2, making this a sad example of what happens when you mess with an already stable system. Losing these experienced guilds and players is a hardstrike on the WvW community. Anet please find it in your hearts to put the game back on track and set the stab changes to the way it was, encourage small man play to actually have a chance to beat superior numbers. Sincerely, all WvW players.

Wait… It took “skill” for a dozen guardians and warriors to blob up and hammer on two buttons to ignore all other profession CC abilities?!?! The nerve of ANet!!!

Nikaido.3457:

The problem is the trolling with troll builds. Thieves can be built in such a way in wvwvw that they can pretty much harass you across the whole map and there is nothing you can do about it. They won’t kill you because they’re bad and the troll builds made to be highly resilient can’t kill anything but every time they see they’re losing against you they can just disengage into getting out of combat, wait for all their cd, initiative etc and then come back and harass again, and again, and again.

You must be a guardian or warrior in a bunker build. Me, I play thief bait, a mesmer, and those “troll builds” can burst me in literally two seconds flat, even in my most defensive builds.

What makes thieves overpowered is the sustainability the stealth mechanic allows them. It is unparalleled. A thief can easily survive the burst of every other profession with one click into stealth, then turn around for their own burst, then have two more in the same time it takes for everyone else to go off CD.

I prefer power.

I typically wreck staff/scepter Mesmers in WvW, both weapons are way too slow and very easy to interrupt in 1v1 and small group situations. But… Condi is a powerful havoc (small group) option and skilled people can do a lot with it even 1v1.

Overall, if you see yourself doing a lot of roaming with a small group, condi is definitely viable, but as others have said, power works everywhere.

Mesmer is a very difficult profession to play before you can get traits later in your career, so you’re not really doing anything wrong.

Greatsword is IMO the best primary weapon to roll with leveling PvE. It does solid sustainable damage and isn’t nearly as slow as staff. Staff eventually gets good, but not until you can trait into it with more condi power, and that doesn’t happen until 60ish.

Offset is up to you. When leveling I might suggest scepter and torch to keep the damage rolling and have a panic button in stealth with the torch. That said, GS/Sc&T doesn’t jive well once traited. If you stick with GS, you’re going to probably want to get used to the sword & torch combo. If you go with building condi for staff, scepter shares in its benefits more in going with your second set.

Typically it’s not worth shattering in PvE unless your enemies are clumped up and you have your defensive abilities off CD.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Thieves can’t 1 shot you from stealth. Mesmers can. I have a bigger problem with that.

I main a shatter Mes, I’m no pro but I can say without a doubt that only the most glassy, upleveled and new Ele, Thief or another Mes might be downed in what you call a “one shot.” To be precise we have to pop 3-4 CDs to do that with dead-on timing, not just one lazy button press like a Thief.

There is no comparison.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM? Please don’t use general terms like “damage” without elaborating for what game mode and why you feel this way.

PvE: Damage and an understandable profession mechanic; we are too trait dependent making play before level cap feel like a Mesmer is fighting with a feather duster. Correspondingly, our core profession mechanic is fundamentally flawed and nigh impossible for a newcomer to understand. On the technical end, pathing is unreliable making shatters undependable, and on a visual end there is too subtle cue shatters have had an effect telling the player they are accomplishing something.

WvW: Dependable damage, sustainability, accessibility; For the same reasons above, our damage is too unreliable. Our defenses are too meager to make us effective where the developers believe we should be (mid range to melee). Worse of all, I would argue a Mesmer has a higher skill cap than an Elementalist to use effectively. For proof of this simply turn to youtube. If Mesmer videos have to be slowed down to demonstrate a proper shatter, the developers are doing something very wrong. I don’t want an easy button, but with no room for error the profession is not even remotely graspable for anyone who doesn’t have the time and patience to learn what they could be doing wrong or better.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

Most: Once capped, Mesmer does decently in PvE, but play doesn’t fit the fluff theme of the profession. A Mesmer is a disposable pet spammer and little more. Our conditions are too weak to amount to the fluff behind Chaos and Glamour.

Least: WvW; we’re simply veilbots and golem taxis. We have no sustainability, unreliable damage mechanics and steep learning caps to play effectively. We offer little to a zerg as illusions are easily cleaved. About the only spot we fill well is a small roaming team as damage support.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

“This may take some time. Will supply answers when I can.”

I think that statement is self evident of just how many problems the Mesmer has. Minor adjustments will not balance the class at this point.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

At this point I often jump to one of my other toons if I want to substantially contribute to WvW. Our nerfs have just been ill advised and too heavy handed. I also patently ignore being a veilbot or golem taxi. We should be a full fledged profession, not an extra utility bar for everyone else.

I come back to the Mesmer as it’s my main toon and I want to love it, ANet just makes it so difficult.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

I have yet to see a developer openly demonstrate an understanding of the profession and/or acknowledgement of its challenges outside the PvP environment. There needs to be a demonstration of this in PvE (including dungeons and fractals) as well as WvW.

I would like to see an honest profession analysis by the developers based on how the Mesmer actually plays over the fluff of a marketing slick. Every profession could use this treatment and I believe it may go some way into the developers understanding their own game. Understanding how the professions interact with one another will help identify imbalances. It may never be perfect, and that’s OK, but it should not be so bad that someone needs to create a thread such as this one.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

Remove DE as a t2 trait, it should be a core profession or a t1 sub mechanic. Too many Mesmer builds rely on DE and hamstrings build diversity.

IGN: Sonoshe
Server: Northern Shiverpeaks
Playstle: WvW, PvE
Role: Scholar
Timezone: CDT

Ross Biddle.2367:

Initially I thought Mes might bring some cool stuff to the HoT field. After thinking about it for a bit, with the exception of portal to bypass chokes etc, it’s just going to be same old same old. Specializations are the only hope for change.

^This.

Feedback may get a lot more play, but that’s about it. The much hyped “verticality” is going to make our need for direct LOS on most of our skills even more painful.

ANet doesn’t consider us anything more than an intelligent extra utility bar for the rest of the professions.

YB vs DH vs NSP, NSP and DH together don’t have the same numbers as YB at any given time. Just another day in T3.

Me Games Ma.8426:

I also like shatters but in some way I want to see what new stuff they can come up with. I can think about so many ways to give us a mechanic that could fit the name chronomancer.
The next point is that our mechanic is not shatters alone, illusions are the more important mechanic imo. If they’d change Illusions they would not even need to touch the shatter skills to make the whole experience with our class change.

Just going to go out on a limb here and say that nothing with the base Mesmer mechanic will really change, chronomancer or not. Illusions, phantasams and clones can be just as easily explained as multiple temporal instances of the same person in one time to fit any chronomancer fluff. If anything, I see the buffs and debuffs shattering causes to change, like Slow instead of Confusion, Quickness instead of Might, etc.

Xaylin.1860:

Fay.2357:

Because if I’m not in a coordinated team, it won’t get used. Just me using it isn’t enough to be worth having a 90 second cooldown ability on my bar that will have to take the slot of another important utility.

This. I’m usually solo when doing PvP and teams tend to be too uncoordinated. I sometimes use it in Khylo for trolling by instantly repairing the treb, though.

I would love to see Portal getting a significantly lower cooldown (e.g. 45-60s) but having the number of available ports cut based on the cooldown reduction. This would encourage people to use Portal while fighting and not only for fast-travels between cap points.

This again, so bump?

As it stands, portal is too situational with too long a CD for anything uncoordinated. I purposely pretend it doesn’t exist to the chagrin of many in WvW because I’m not there to drive a golem bus. Maybe if I got xp for every golem I carried I’d reconsider.

Current meta is zerker for shatter (and I believe) CI lockdown. I am one of those who rolls Travelers runes as I hate filling the Mesmer slow condi death sponge stereotype.

The trade off between zerk and any set that gives T and/or Vit is whether you think you do better in sustained fights or prefer to burst the other player down as fast as possible. There is a case for either IMO, so it really depends on your comfort level. Me, I prefer to be glass with zerk because Mesmer is already weak in sustaining, concentrating on it only makes it nominally on par with other professions with new players behind them. Against a veteran, I really don’t think anything other than zerk will avail you of much.

We have no good condi clearance options and while you can trait for it, I simply gave it up. You will die to condi unless you’re pro, so don’t even try. I use the mantra for condi clear if I think I need it, Feedback and Nullfield also have their uses here. YMMV depending on skill and comfort level.

I run GS > Sw/P or T shatter. Pistol is a must if you are caught relatively alone and want any shred of hope against a thief. Park it in your inventory for that occasion if it isn’t your thing as default, just trust me on wanting one as a backup.

Just my 2 cents: CI lockdown is fun for a diversion, but I just couldn’t get into it. Loading up on the interrupts took away too many necessary tools for survival. It might be really good in a small roaming group, but solo/duo shatter wins hands down.

And now for an honest answer from an everyman:

Are Mesmers fun? Short answer is they can be depending on your playing preference and skill.

PvE: For the new player, Mesmers can seem like you’re fighting with a feather duster until you begin to trait. I would argue no other class in the game requires as much understanding of the nuances of how the game plays than the Mesmer. At mid to late levels you bloom and things become much easier. I find most PvE content easy these days and don’t pay much attention to the Dungeon/Fractal power gamers. If you know your class and have a good group it doesn’t matter what you play, you can succeed.

PvP: I have not honestly played much PvP, but from my arm chair is seems all of ANet’s decision making on the Mesmer comes out of the PvP environment and vocal players there in. This is unfortunate because one size does not fit all. What Mesmers can do in PvP may seem overpowering to some, but the nerfs we’ve received because of PvP gripes have hurt all aspects of the profession. That all said I do know from experience Mesmer has a ridiculously high skill cap to be effective in PvP because…

WvW: I play a lot, and for the general player, in its current state, Mesmer is a terrible profession. It takes a great amount of practice and skill for a Mesmer player to accomplish what many other professions do with two or three lazy clicks. Knowing timing is critical with every Mesmer build, whether PU, interrupt or shatter. Condi is probably the easiest, but they are slow in every aspect of play. Overall though, Mesmer players need to stop fooling themselves into believing this is acceptable and be more honestly vocal about the poor state their profession is in. This is not to say you can’t have fun, but know up front that the moment you start feeling weak or under performing, you are not alone, and it may not be because you are a bad player as much as Mesmer is a very poorly supported profession among the developers.

I don’t want an easy button, but we are in desperate need of some buffs and heavy class tuning to be more attractive to everyone.

coglin.1867:

I was just looking through his post, and I do not see any mention of “weekly”. I do not see any specific time frames mentions. It appears he said “periodically”.

I came back to WvW about a month ago after a several month break, so I can’t report on further back than four weeks, but I’m on NSP and we’ve drawn SoS at least 2, maybe 3 weeks now. We’re sharing the suffering with SBI this week.

Regardless, it is extremely demoralizing and the server community for WvW is in tatters compared to when I left.

I’m all for the Reverant being the new OP developer’s pet class because I’m certainly tired of Thieves holding the title.

Reverant also doesn’t look to have anything in common with Mesmers to me, outside maybe sharing a new condition.

Tier 3 and 4 is actually fairly choice for roaming for the same reasons its become such a contentious topic. SoS has such overwhelming numbers compared to the rest of t3 and 4 that they constantly have scouts and camp flippers roaming at all hours of the day. I’m on NSP and never for lack of finding some roamers in our BL to say nothing of EB whenever I’m on.

Curo.2483:

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Sind Bowdragon.8374:

To all those responding. Awesome, thank you. Please remember this isn’t a bashing post, just a cry for help.

What exactly do you want Anet to do?

Force transfer all players on SoS to random servers. Give guilds a chance to transfer first so they can stay together. Cap the amount of transfers to a specific server so they don’t all just pile on to the same server.

/fist bump with OP

Unfortunately I know for a fact a lot of NSP have bandwagoned to SoS or maintain dual accounts with that particular server.

Working as intended eh ANet?

Mesmers are the “late bloomers” of the game. The class lives and dies on its traits, probably more so than any other, before you get those trait points it is a fairly unforgiving and very weak class. For that reason, they were extremely unpopular at launch, turning most people away.

MadBomber.3719:

Thanks everyone for your input! I’ll try out different things over the next couple weeks and hopefully see some improvement. I think my issue is not knowing what to do in dungeons/ fractals because of inexperience. I don’t think I’m utilizing my utility skills enough and dodging effectively, and as someone stated above it probably has to do with lack of battle awareness and knowing when to use what, thus I’m being downed more than i should.

Now I’m not saying this is the best, but I ran a hybrid (GS/Sw&P) 20/20/-/10/20 build that was very forgiving and incredibly tough in PvE/dungeons/fractals. Few things could easily wade through my phantasms and I used to run pDefender for extra tanky-ness. I wasn’t doing heavy burst damage like Shatter builds, but I was probably the hardest to down while providing steady DPS. The tough phantasms also often bought a lot of breathing room for my group tying up mobs.

DH: If it were “skill” your opposing server’s scores would be closer to your own.

All the OP’s screenshot proves is that your server can cover off hours and that NSP and SF have the ability to fight back (and apparently succeed) when they are on.

The issue is a failure in encounter design, not a failure on the part of the player. Telling the Ranger to place their pet on passive is akin to telling the Elementalist not to use certain attunments or the Mesmer to not shatter clones.

When every point in the game has taught the player to do “X”, do not passively expect them to do “Y” not “X” only in specific circumstances.

A mesmer just isn’t going to bring the heat like GWEN in a zerg, the profession isn’t about burst damage or large aoe, it’s actually a hybrid of both. That said, you don’t have to be the veilbot/golem bus either. I find effectiveness playing outrider to zergs, sticking close enough for help if needed, but picking off enemy herd from the flanks.

Outside the zerg mesmers can be deadly roamers paired or alone, if you have the skill.

I’ll be brief. I have no problem with the dungeon/grouping concept by choice, but I’ve had it with new dungeons being the only answer to continued PvE development in the game.

Why does every major PvE concept, whether Personal Story, Living Story or special events have to end with forced group instancing? I’d like to complete my personal story, Flame & Frost and experience Super Adventure Box on my time without having to deal with the random and varied expectations of strangers, much less their schedules.

Grouping for anything should be a choice, not a requirement.

Give me slower progression, less reward per run. I don’t care. It gives me something to do when I play. As it stands, you only produce walls which actively discourage me from playing the game.

Honestly, the chief failure here is in the scripting of the “personal story”, creating an expectation that is left unfulfilled. The showdown with Zhaitan should be an optional end, not the primary one.

Written properly, I think players would have been satisfied with knowing they were responsible for taking the fight back to the dragon, pounding on his door and leaving it there on whether they personally finished the job or not. Perhaps summoning other great commanders to their aid? (In other words, four other players to complete Arah?)

I get the feeling this conclusion was implied in the Source of Orr, but wasn’t given a dramatic enough finale/reward to feel like a passable ending to the personal story. There is no sense of accomplishment, and that’s a big problem. It’s fine if you want to have defeating Zhaitan be a special and perhaps difficult achievement, but you have to also leave players who are unable to make that step feeling they accomplished something special by seeing the story through to the end. No one likes seeing a project unfinished.

As it stands, I agree that forcing both a raid to open Arah and then four additional players to complete your “personal story” is unacceptable. It will simply lead to more disillusionment from casual players and soloists who do not have the assumed resources of large guilds and multiple friends to accomplish a goal left in the right corner of all of their screens.