Guild Wars 2

Wreckdum.8367:

Jonathan! I know you’re undermanned and all that trying to make miracles happen with sPvP but this seems to be the easiest decision someone could ever make… Add 1 laurel to the PvP daily and BOOM you’ll have tons of people who never would’ve thought of doing sPvP in there doing it anyway to get their laurel.

If even 1% of those people actually realizes they enjoy sPvP it served it’s purpose.

I think the #1 thing in sPvP that is lacking is population of regular players. Sure you have your ultra hardcore competitive paid tourny guys… But that isn’t enough. You need that fluffy casual base at the bottom. This is a great way to get it.

Pretty sure in their last State of the Game address they mentioned they would be implementing systems like this for PvP as well, but that they didn’t want to have the pvpers feel they had to pve and the pve’ers to feel they had to pvp. PvE system got implemented, I suspect the pvp one will come with a pvp update sometime in the future.

Lianna.6980:

MasterPakku.2890:

1) are mesmers that hard to lvl?
2) r they perfect in pvp?

1) Yes. Hardest levelling possible.
2) Depends on your skills. If you are good player, you’ll enjoy mesmer very much, if not, you will not find mesmer good enough class compared to, let’s say, Elementalist.

^^^^
This is the only post I read where they were completely honest with themselves in answering.

1) Mesmer is by far the slowest and most difficult class to level, that being said it’s really not too bad. Just expect all other classes to be easier.
2) PvP is entirely skill based. If you’re bad you’ll die until you learn to be better. If you’re aware that you’re bad and you kill other players as a mesmer it’s because they are worse. Mesmer noobs do very well vs other noobs in pvp because the clones confuse people. Advanced Mesmer pvp is a lot harder, you will be carrying team fight utilities and should expect to get focused right after the necro on your team.

I have been enjoying having a free trait point to spend on something else under dueling. Far-Reaching manipulations. Got so used to having it instead of the pistol weapon trait that I don’t know if I want to go back yet.

Hmm also now that I have tested pistol out I am convinced that what they actually did to correct the issue was to reduce the normal damage output down to the Duelist’s Discipline’s reduced damage. The utility is still there though.

TooBz.3065:

I’ll add my two cents.

The ability for short term dazes and invulnerability makes up for the fact that we can’t run fast as fast as every other class.

Good thing we’re not comparing ourselves to other classes that have all of the above plus high mobility.

Osicat.4139:

Fast question, you run IP and stay “in the face” of the enemy, or you send your clones on shatter from range?

Try send 2 clones on daze shatter, then insta cripple target, leap mirror and let a blade flurry + 4 sources mindwrack hit the crippeled and dazed target.

/Osicat

So what Osicat is saying is that you need this list of things in order to shatter and be effective at the same time:

Good positioning.
Good timing.
Use 2 clones that you have already spent time generating to daze your target
Once target is dazed you want to immobilize them to hold them in place (range on this is very short and doesn’t always work so good luck with that)
Leap to your target
Mirror Image
Blurred Frenzy
and then Mind Wrack them.

Simple right?!

Shatter spec is a melee dps spec usually with some ranged support. Get in closer. Don’t be afraid to blow cool downs.

MLieBennett.9031:

Least/Never Used Skills:
Mimic: Potentially powerful, but often too much of a hassle to try to use. As it will only start blocking/reflecting attacks AFTER it absorbs one projectile, which you take full effect of. Further it WILL NOT ABSORB any attack that interrupts/stuns/knockdown/etc without stability, it makes it quite unpredictable in effect. This is especially true when factoring in the Mesmer’s habits of leaving Illusions to take a few attacks.
++ Fun when slotting Mantra of Concentration to purposely taunt a projectile-type attack from an enemy to use later. Wurm’s Knockdown boulder shot, Orrian Drake’s breath spit with AoE zone (doesn’t need stability), etc. Still usually too much trouble and time taken to actually be useful.
— Feedback basically wins over this skill in almost all cases.

Mantra of Distraction: My least used Mantra. As an interrupt? Not useful. 1s of Daze for two shots that has a 5 second cd between uses, a 30 second CD between last use and charging, and a 3.25s charge time? Bleh. Dungeon Bosses get CC Immunity, meaning this is almost pointless against them. Regular mobs you don’t worry about CCing. PvP opponents, 1s Daze is simply not much and must wait 4 more seconds for another 1s Daze meaning they will get their heal skill off anyways.
+ Works decently with 15 Domination, as it would then give 8 or 9 stacks of Vulnerability depending on traits and if you interrupted or not. With Condition Duration, this would double for a decent amount of time to lead to a spike (though waiting 5 seconds to do so is rough).
— Signet of Domination is almost always better. As its a STUN, it means the opponent will not move. Combined with being a 2s Stun at that, vs. MoD’s 2x 1s Daze separated by 5s.

Specific Situation Skills – Skills that I only slot for a specific Dungeon Fight or Event.

Arcane Thievery: Used specifically with Signet of Inspiration when targeting enemies that builds a 25 stack of Might and/or Long-term Protection/Stability/Regeneration. The Condition transfer part is largely ignored.
—PvP wants me to use this, but with just 3 boons taken its almost random which ones I’ll grab from a Boon-happy Enemy.

Illusion of Life: Currently, only grabbed for specific Downed-happy fights in Fractals/Dungeons. (Unless I feel like messing with someone in the Dragon fights). Charr Fractal sees the biggest use, followed by the Grawl Fractal boss. The 1/2s ability to quickly get someone on their feet is NOT to be ignored in comparison to all other skills that recover a Downed Ally take multiple seconds to cast.
++ GREAT when you know you are likely going to need to try to help an ally thats in a deadly AoE field, or being swarmed by numerous enemies.
— So UNUSED that you MUST explain it to allies what the Golden Glow around their character after they are revived means, and state TEMP REVIVE to remind them when you use the skill. Its made quite a number of fights easier by not having to fully revive a Dead ally, but its also given me a headache to a number of players that won’t listen to what the skill does.

Funnier when they read the combat log to see what killed them if they don’t get their rally after using Illusion of Life.

Holy crap I had to shorten your message to fit mine in.

Dastion.3106:

Gaiawolf.8261:

So you cone out with a controversial remark, and then attempt to explain the underlying message. Ever consider a career in politics, or TV?

It wasn’t quite sensationalism. Inevitably many who read the post and, no matter how I said it, assume I just wanted a nerf to IP. So I worded the topic in such a way as to catch those individuals attention and then in the very first sentence of the post explained in bold what I truly meant.

If they continue to think I meant something else after the bolded explanation at the beginning and then further discussion on the matter then there isn’t much I can do.

It is heartening to see a handful of people get what I’m saying. Rather than the tired old “it’s a 30 point trait, it’s supposed to be good” logic that essentially means no 30 point trait could ever be OP.

You will probably find when you make broad sweeping sensationalized statements that it is going to get some attention. OP is a buzz word and far too heavily used. No the skills aren’t OP by themselves, players make them strong by stretching the skills to do what they want to achieve. There is nothing Over Powered about them. It’s a shame that any time something is good or is strong I see 100 posts about OP this and OP that. Get some vocabulary and you’ll have far fewer issues with explaining what you really mean, and far fewer people arguing with you so you can move your ideas ahead.

ichal.9504:

jportell.2197:

Malice.8439:

I think people are a bit too scared of the term “overpowered”, because they read it to mean that it must be nerfed.

As I understand it, the desire to nerf Illusionary Persona is not to weaken Mesmers, but to re-balance them by making the trait weaker, and compensating by spread the effects out elsewhere, or possibly to buff the shatters baseline.

Illusionary Persona is – much like Deceptive Evasion – so powerful a trait that it re-defines our playstyle. I believe that traits should enhance playstyles, not define them. At least not to such an extent that playing without them feels like doing yourself a great, great disservice.

Playing with a new tank/phantasm build. Never shattered while playing and never even summoned a clone… Full time regen and protection though. So these traits do not re-define play styles. I love the shatter build and those two traits are necessary for a shatter build just like the phant regen/retaliation is necessary for phantasm/bunker build. You pick traits that compliment the build you want to focus and that is how it should be.

then maybe the protection and phantasm regen/retaliation and phantasms in general are OP too so it needs to be nerfed

They have been nerfed a couple of times on Mesmer already.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Henrik.7560:

For max mesmer damage and survival, get all power-toughness-vitallity gear, use superior sharpening stones for extra power, and power food, wield a great sword and dual swords, and trait 20/15/0/25/10. I got max attack (3500) and high health and armor.
My advice

I have some trouble understanding the playstyle behind the numbers, can you give me an insight on your traits? Is it more of a phantasm build?

Guessing he took +15% illusion damage and GS weapon 20% in domination
Sword 20% in dueling
nada
Remove condition on heal and phantasm health 20% in Inspiration
+3% damage per illusion in Illusions

There’s really no reason to go into Inspiration unless you’re doing a phantasm build or maybe lolhealing mantra’s. The traits are all terrible.

I love phantasm mesmer’s in PvP they always die quickly to my shatters. In WvW they last a little longer because they can maintain better stats than in PvP.

Allow me to sum up cause I think it’s funny how this works:

Trait for x skill and x skill becomes better.
Don’t trait for x skill and x skill is likely not the focus of your build.

GENIUS!

There is nothing OP about IP. It’s a grandmaster 30 point trait that utilizes our shatters in while also being in our shatter tree where it should be found.

The only problem I have with well placed traits and skills like Deceptive Evasion and Illusionary Persona is that they shorten the road to max potential. This by itself is a good thing and makes these very strong to have, but my issue is with the fact that ALL other spec’s and builds are nerfed and adjusted based on our maximum potential and how quickly we achieve it.

What I am saying is that without these 2 skills mesmer would be laughable in pvp and would to be needing buffs in many many places to bring us up to par. Which is already the case in pve. Because shatter spec just is not the best unless you’re expecting to get ramrodded by a thief or some other instagib build.

Surprised to not see anything in here regarding Mesmer Glamours.

All Glamour skills last half their stated time. This has been an issue for several months and can EASILY be corrected.

Blink has a bounce back that frequently returns you to your starting location and burns the cool down.

Arcane Thievery does not remove conditions or steal boons happens frequently. Skill works sometimes but is very unreliable. Maybe some explanation of it’s limitations are in order or it really is broken.

I am looking forward to any intelligent opinions and commentary that come out of this.

Thank goodness the PvP community is represented by the top teams in these dialogues and not the forum criers that patrol threads like this and share their frustrations about how they shouldn’t have to L2P.

Gaiawolf.8261:

He has sword, too. Keep throwing a few sword clones in there too, and you can strip pretty well. You give up a bit of DPS, but getting rid of his aegis, prot, and regen should more than even that out.

Whenever I see a guard soloing a point I usually swap blink for null field, too. No need to port around so much on a point (esp against a guard), and the extra boon strip/confusion field works great. Though you might be missing blink if enemy help shows up. Ele bunker, that’s another story.

Lol… you make it sound so simple. Then you realise it’s a GS spin-2-win guardian that kitten all your clones as soon as they’re out. You’re taking damage, have no clones to remove boons, and the 3.5s you get from null field on a 45s CD is complete kitten. Plus you can’t shatter because you have no clones to shatter with. GG Guardian wins and all they have to do is spin.

VS Ele at least you have a chance to catch them in their cycle and trip them up.

muscarine.5136:

Like Liewec said, once you’ll get around r30 or so you will have so much glory that you’ll be able to buy enough chests for your current rank soon as you hit it.

At r46 i’m sitting on 200k glory and i don’t even know what i could do with it, the few armor pieces i’m missing i could craft them if i wasn’t lazy.

So yea, once you bought what you wanted (gold chests) save it, they may come up with an interesting way to spend it later.

It was stated they were working on things for us to spend out glory on. Eventually it will come. Save it and you can be like the members of some of the paid top teams and be sitting on a million+ glory with nothing left to spend it on.

Only direct damage projectiles can be reflected and many things you might consider to be projectiles are not considered projectiles by ANet. Somebody said before that basically if it doesn’t have a projectile finisher it probably isn’t a projectile, this is basically true.

This makes feedback and reflection in general a much more insignificant mechanic. If it were to reflect all incoming projectiles it would also become incredibly strong when used in the right situation. Unfortunately because mesmer has the keys to a lot of refection skills this is not likely to ever happen.

Had somebody tell me mimic could be used in Fractals to reflect and return agony back onto the bosses. I have tried to use mimic several times and always found that it was lacking even when used properly. Feedback at least creates a combo field, but is lacking due to it only having a half life with all glamours being bugged to last only half of their duration.

Leo Paul.1659:

The torch is rather underused atm but I find it extremely useful in PvP. It’s the only offhand that I use in PvP, I’m actually very surprised myself since I would’ve thought focus would work better with the bunker/support build I created for my toon.

Bunker? How do you bunker with cloak? Would you be talking about WvW and not PvP, because really anything with cloak removes you from being on point and it only takes a few seconds with somebody on point with you to neutralize in PvP. Sure you can take a hit but if they neutralize and run away they were successful and you failed to do your job.

Crossplay.2067:

Again, I support turning blink into a 25% movement speed passive signet. It wouldn’t have to be nerfed because, while the cooldown is active, the movement speed isn’t. That is a fair trade off for losing a unique skill.

I’m against upgrading the focus or traits for what I know are bias reasons. I don’t like the focus. I know it’s a good weapon. The pull alone is great for telling invaders “attack me again and you’ll NEVAH finish this jumping puzzle!” However, I have to take a main hand weapon with it and I hate the options available. The scepter just isn’t my cup of tea and I’m not a fan of 1h swords because I do dungeons a lot. It’s very hard to see attack tells when there’s a char or norn warrior blocking most of the boss. And there’s almost ALWAYS one there! Standing back and letting the big guys act as meatshields is so much easier.

As for traits, I already have enough problems deciding what I want because there’s little consistency in the trait lines. The last thing I need is for a speed buff to be in some odd place that makes me give up something else and then have to set up the condition in which to give myself swiftness. Knowing my luck, it’ll be mantras and I just don’t use mantras. I hate the mechanics behind them.

In short, change blink. It’s easy and it would give us the “more reliable” speed we were assured.

The problem with putting 25% swiftness in with Blink is that it then becomes an essential part of EVERY mesmer build. I already use blink in nearly every build I make, but with swiftness built in? I would never be without it. I guess I just like the utility of blink a lot.

travosaga.6089:

It doesn’t feel like it’s a skill thing. Half the time you can’t or can barely see an indicator that the knockback is coming because the indicator is bigger than the platforms so it disappears into the air. It’s just tortuous and makes the fractal frustrating and tortuous.

I love that the Harpies do that knockback. It’s hugely trollish, and I love that a developer put that in purely for the troll factor. Seriously though watch the actions of of harpies and you can EASILY avoid that big electric ball flying towards you. Also those red circles you’re standing around in… that’s a sign to either move out of the way or brace yourself for impact.

There is no such thing as a prelease of patch notes. The will not likely ever do that. Trying to get ANet to even commit to anything verbally or in writing is already almost impossible.

I would be happy knowing when they will actually be doing the patches. I know that a big one must be coming soon because they haven’t had a significant patch since early December. I thought it would have already come but no official word of when it will be released. Can only hope it will be this week. Then we can tear 100’s of hours of work apart in minutes and critisize them for not changing the things we personally felt were the priority, and praise them for the changes that we all knew were coming and have asked for.

Plenty of answers here, but Mesmer was never fun to level for me from 1-80
It became easier after level 40 when I could get deceptive evasion, but never fun.

At 80 the game play for Mesmer became enjoyable in WvW and dungeons, but I don’t spend any time in the world since there is little to nothing there for me unless I’m with a group of friends or want to do a specific event.

Gaiawolf.8261:

While I’d like that, too, Blink is already one of our more popular/powerful utilities. Adding a speed buff to it would mean a nerf to the CD, which I would HATE!

I would be content with iLeap not requiring a target so we can use it as a speed burst out of combat (fix the Blade Training CD issue, too) plus a utility that grants decent swiftness so we aren’t forced to run focus or centaur runes. Altering Signet of Inspirations to only give swiftness and vigor OOC would be perfectly fine.

Other good options:

If, and only IF, they are going to nerf TW because of all the QQ make it: Mantras/Signet of Time that grants +25% move speed while active/charged and grants AOE quickness for 3/5s. But I prefer it not to be touched.

Compounding Celerity: +15% move speed, +5% per active illusion. Allow illusion summons outside combat. Just have them dissipate after 10s or so.

It’s coming Gaiawolf I see a new mesmer qq thread every single day in the sPvP forums. Whether it’s Portal, or Timewarp, or our addiction to our clone generation which doubles as stun breakers, or our ability to evade lockdowns using weapon abilities, or blurred frenzy or…. the list goes on. About the only thing I don’t hear crying from other players about is our speed and our mantra use.

I still prefer the idea of 1 here though. I’ve considered it many times, and as much as the appeal to have a permanent swiftness comes up I still think that a 50% movement speed burst would be overall more beneficial for it’s utility.

Darnis.4056:

I don’t know.. I’m terrible at portal, but it essentially allows you to be in two places at once, ever minute and a half…

You not only have to be watching the node icon at all times, but keeping the cooldown in your head.. and sometimes it just outright fails for no reason(Possibly a meter or two distance makes the difference)

I hate the portal because I feel like people force me to play it, I don’t like playing it it’s not fun for me, and this is why I generally don’t play in teams with a matron/patriarch figure.

I personally hope it’s nerfed, given to other professions or altogether deleted.

I’m mobile enough as it is, I have a focus, I have good swiftness uptime, I don’t need to give up nullfield for a gimmicky ability which allows people to get me to half health before the fight begins unless I pop distortion prior to entering, and then get destroyed by a thief.

And you obviously do not play on a set team. If you don’t like running portal tell your thief to run Ambush. It’s a self teleport with a range of 10,000 and a CD of 35s. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO RUN PORTAL, and you never have needed to and you do not need to encourage the skill being nerfed into the ground just because you don’t care to use it. Just don’t run it. Tell your group they need better mobility for roaming etc. Thief and Ele won’t complain. It only takes them a matter of seconds to traverse most maps.

Kazhiel.8194:

Exactly, there should be strategy and play style involved in your selection… and also in people selecting the class you play for a role in pvp or whatever. If people want a certain ability then they should play that class or learn to deal with not having it in the class they do play. Each class has a variety of builds and ways to play it. Learn, experiment, get good at what you can do and always strive to be better.

Well the play style that has been successfully used here was “Forum Whining”

It’s not about choosing your class wisely and implementing a balanced strategy with the classes in your team. It’s about going onto the forums and kitten and moaning for months on end about how X class is so OP and how X class killed you and your ego was hurt and now that class needs a nerf and you need X ability for yourself on your class because that skill shouldn’t be allowed to be controlled by 1 class alone. For instance Mesmer’s get stealth, why can’t we Backstab? or get a surprise attack like thief?

I semi hope that ANet has a sick sense of humor about giving portal to other classes. Like tie it to the Summon Flesh Wurm and have it be some sort of death portal that has to be placed as it does now but when you use the skill any ally within 300 range gets sucked through the portal with you… whether or not they wanted to go.

The current meta encourages “team-work” and if your opponents come for your point while your team is wasting time on something useless then you will get 2v1’d die and lose your point.

Current meta encourages high damage roamers. 1 for pressure with conditions or cc and the other with burst. Pressure builds tend to be slightly tankier and usually engage first then the burst will come in moments later and wtfpwn you. What you really need is a solid team if you’re concerned about these things, and build a team composition that supports each other and is balanced for your individual objectives as well as team objectives.

If you’re solo joining then just play what you like and hope for the best.

In light of the fact that ANet has decided to share the unique mesmer mechanic of portal with other classes I am curious what other mesmers in the community would rather see. I am asking that ANet compensate mesmer with some sort of mobility skill if they’re going to pass around the one that made us unique.

Which would YOU rather see in you repertoire:

1 Focus like weapon skill 4 that gives 50% swiftness instead of 33% (seeing as it can’t stack and is overridden by all other classes’ swiftness already)

OR

2 Permanent utility type passive that gives us the standard 25% swiftness increase that nearly every single class is currently enjoying

OR

3 Make our swiftness stackable so that we can have perma-swift like several of the other boon stacking classes that are capable of having 100% uptime on swiftness

OR

4 A utility skill that grants aoe swiftness for a long duration

5 A Trait that adds swiftness to some ability use For example, Domination XI – Harmonious Mantras – add 5s of Swiftness to Mantra use (both channeling and casting), 5s cd.

You decide.

Personally I could go for any of them but I would prefer option #1 for it’s uniqueness. I like playing a class that has obvious unique abilities that set it aside from the average/typical lineup.

Edit: Added option 4
Edit2: Added option 5

@jportell Eventually that is my hope. My fear is that they will just change the tooltip to read the half life duration of the skills and say “This is what is balanced”

I am also hoping they will compensate mesmer with a movement speed skill since they’re going to be handing what once was unique to mesmer as our “mobility”.

jportell.2197:

Wise.8025:

Arcane Thievery Long CD. Unreliable for condition and boon swapping.
Illusion of Life Useful for specific situations, just not on my skill bar. There are always better options, and in pvp other classes do it better.
Mantra of Concentration Terrible skill. Needs to have longer stability to approach becoming viable in a build. Or put protection in with the boons it gives.
Mantra of Distraction Fun to harass people with only if you have 3 charges, but it’s still not a great option even in a mantra build. In pvp it sounds like it should be good but you give up too much control and dps in order to fit this in to a build.
Mimic Better than it used to be, but still pointless unless you’re farming a specific mob in pve. Could be improved if it absorbed melee damage as well.
Phantasmal Defender Dies too fast to be of any use. Allow it to mitigate the incoming damage and provide protection at 300 range.
Phantasmal Disenchanter Dies too fast to be of any use. Could be useful if it lived more than a couple of seconds. Needs some sort of damage mitigation
Signet of Domination Stun is nice, but I gain nothing from running conditions on a mesmer in pvp or pve. Conditions are subpar to power unless fighting certain mobs.
Signet of Illusions Garbage. If it were instant and had half the cool down I’d use it despite the useless passive portion
Signet of Inspiration RNG on boons that last only a couple of seconds. Useless right? Wait it gets more useless! You can transfer your terrible uptime on your boons to your teammates!
Signet of Midnight Mesmer boon uptime is terrible already 10% isn’t going to help in the least. Make it 50%
Veil Used this a couple times for stealth builds when exploring, but other than that I’m not sure why we even have this skill.

On signet of illusions. I love this signet soooo much. The difference it makes in my illusions health is very noticeable and I can sometimes run through my shatters very fast so being able to reset them and not wait for my health to go below X amount is nice. Hmmmm I should try mimic lol

I mainly do PvP and WvW though. 1.25s cast time on signet of illusions is too long as well as the CD. I’d rather just take a trait for the additional reset of my shatters since I only really need them back up instantly if I’m getting pounded on.

I am curious whether or not I’ll be able to add Portal to this list soon too since ANet stated today that they will be looking at giving the skill to other classes. If I don’t need to carry it for people movement then I won’t. Just hope they give us a 25% movement speed utility to compensate for our mobility.

If it were just about covering 2 points then I call bullkitten. Thief can do that and on a much shorter CD (30s) and a much larger range (10,000). It’s about moving multiple people around the map allowing people to pop through a portal kitten face and pop back through. Of course portal says it lasts for 20s but in reality it only stays open for 10s due to our glamours all having only half of their stated durations.

Daximus.8547:

It should go to thieves….

or maybe not.

Besides thief already has a self portal that can give them stealth for 5 seconds and teleport them up to a max range of 10,000.

So if they’re giving portal to other classes does that mean they’re going to give 25% movement speed to mesmer? Or something that can give us some reasonable swiftness uptime? Yeah… don’t think so.

Used a couple of spec’s with this concept in mind in sPvP. I found it was actually quite good for killing noobs, and absolutely terrible for killing anybody that has half a brain. You are essentially doing very little damage yourself and relying on your conditions to whittle your opponent down. 1v1 this was ok, 2v1 it wasn’t great. I never did try it in WvW where confusion has the potential to actually hurt somebody, but honestly the only class I worry about is a thief, and a smart one would just run away if he saw these sorts of shenanigans. Wait for you to get distracted or weak and them BAM BS you’re dead.

EsLafiel.4517:

With focus traited, you can already keep up a reflect field at lest 80% of the time easy and if done right 100% of the time.

So giving mez another reflect skill, is not needed and even if it is needed and can be use to cover the small gaps when rang can hit you.

Thats just make it way OP

How do you get 100% uptime on reflection? And better yet who cares. Projectile damage is the least of mesmer concerns. It’s the melee aoe damage and aoe spells that blow our kitten up on contact. 1 swing of any npc/player and if you don’t have your illusions separated they all just died.

Hopefully they will revisit mesmer traits and weed out the useless ones or add in something that makes them useful. As it stands you’re right we get sweet f-all for distortion making a couple of traits pointless. Expect this to happen some time early next year if my timeline estimation has any accuracy.

GoZero.9708:

I’d appreciate this. Having four level 80s and two World Completions, it feels pretty lame knowing that if I had waiting until this had come along I would have been far more rewarded.

Think you’re missing the point of what was said.

Only the daily and monthly quests will be a part of this reward system when it comes out. AFTER they implement the next stages those ones will be retroactive and will encompass existing achievements. If you are the sort of person that likes to do achievements to have the achievement, you’re going to be rewarded for anything they choose to include in the system when it comes.

Q: Will anything be done to balance the usefulness of base stats like Toughness and Vitality through all classes?

As it stands nearly everybody seems to build for max damage in pve and pvp, but when you give up the burst for some survivability it doesn’t mean much more than a few extra seconds of life vs the burst builds unless you have boons.

The problem I have with relying on boons for effectiveness is that some classes can have 100% uptime and some are lucky to get 25% uptime.

Arcane Thievery Long CD. Unreliable for condition and boon swapping.
Illusion of Life Useful for specific situations, just not on my skill bar. There are always better options, and in pvp other classes do it better.
Mantra of Concentration Terrible skill. Needs to have longer stability to approach becoming viable in a build. Or put protection in with the boons it gives.
Mantra of Distraction Fun to harass people with only if you have 3 charges, but it’s still not a great option even in a mantra build. In pvp it sounds like it should be good but you give up too much control and dps in order to fit this in to a build.
Mimic Better than it used to be, but still pointless unless you’re farming a specific mob in pve. Could be improved if it absorbed melee damage as well.
Phantasmal Defender Dies too fast to be of any use. Allow it to mitigate the incoming damage and provide protection at 300 range.
Phantasmal Disenchanter Dies too fast to be of any use. Could be useful if it lived more than a couple of seconds. Needs some sort of damage mitigation
Signet of Domination Stun is nice, but I gain nothing from running conditions on a mesmer in pvp or pve. Conditions are subpar to power unless fighting certain mobs.
Signet of Illusions Garbage. If it were instant and had half the cool down I’d use it despite the useless passive portion
Signet of Inspiration RNG on boons that last only a couple of seconds. Useless right? Wait it gets more useless! You can transfer your terrible uptime on your boons to your teammates!
Signet of Midnight Mesmer boon uptime is terrible already 10% isn’t going to help in the least. Make it 50%
Veil Used this a couple times for stealth builds when exploring, but other than that I’m not sure why we even have this skill.

Thieves with massive burst, killing from the shadows the age old problem, or is it?

100% stealth up time is truly ridiculous. Had a friend make a WvW pvp video recently where he was able to take on sometimes 5 or 6 people without pretty much any risk to himself. He even stops and waves at people in some of his videos. Highly amusing.

Thief in tPvP and sPvP is very strong, and their perma stealth builds are not counterable for several classes and builds. Will this be addressed? I doubt it. Personally I think thief class should have to give up a lot to be stealthed all the time.

Jasher.6580:

How would you guys rate the Sceptre/Pistol, Staff condition build? I tried out the shatter build last night and I felt like I was a lot more effective with the condition build. Maybe I just need to get better with the shatter build?

What are your views?

It’s really about play style. You may be more familiar with your condi build. I know I’m more familiar with my shatter build.

Sceptre 1 is actually on par for damage output with sword people do seem to love the blurred frenzy though as part of their combo because of the additional survivability it gives. Sceptre 2 is really only defense against a single attack.

The problem I find with the mesmer condi builds is that they’re so weak in comparison to nearly every other classes condi specs plus our power/crit shatter build manages to retain a lot of survivability. If there were some aspect of mesmer condi builds that prevented people from just running away it would be far more worthwhile.

Immobilize is one of the strongest conditions in the game if not the most game changing in pvp, and sword MH gives us that.

It’s a situational utility but can be very useful.

Just use it like you would any other mobility skill, but keep in mind its mechanics work a little differently and you will need to plan ahead where and when you want to use it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Game-yet-to-be-explored-post-non-meta-vods/first#post1188808

The desire to have portals removed because people refuse to learn to play is not the problem of the dev’s it’s the problem of the bads that refuse to think of a counter.

This link shows top teams changing up their play style and meta just to prove mesmers and guardians are not a requirement.

Portal removal and Time Warp threads are really just a L2P issue articulated by people with either no imagination on how to design and play a TEAM build or they’re just too kitten lazy to learn how to counter it.

High mobility teams counter portal. Thief traps counter portal. Bunker negates portal. etc. etc. etc.

I read about about half of the first paragraph and stopped. Sorry but no class should be subjected to removal or massive changes just because a vocal minority doesn’t understand how the mechanics work and believe the class is face-roll easy.

Mesmer is far from easy to play well vs good players, it only seems to manage to confuse distracted, bad, and new players.

Sprawl.3891:

Follidus.8027:

I really liked what you guys did today. I really liked that you streamed it, because I didn’t even realize you were streaming today!

I hope these vods show people that you can win without a bunker guardian, and without a mesmer. imo trends are started, and then other people copy them because it’s easy. When everyone copies a trend then it becomes “required.”

That lineup today was very scary!

Mesmer make things easier, period. You can be successful with other builds but it requires more work. This is fact. Had they had simply used a portal/TW mesmer and swapped one person out they would have won easier/faster.

So you’re suggesting TP were beat before the match even started? Sorry I disagree. Mesmer may be familiar and therefore easier in that sense but having a specific class in your group does not win the day. Having good players and great teamwork does. Did you hear their communication? Maybe they put in a little more effort because the classes being played weren’t the ones they were most familiar with, but that’s the only reason.

Breakin.2409:

the videos in the first and third link are slow mo and have no audio

Vids are fine for me.

@Powerr thank you so much for posting some footage of good players going outside of the current accepted meta.

Just had this happen to me too. Then right after that I retrieved items I no longer wanted to sell at the trading post, a stack of 4 Superior Rata Sum runes and when I looked in my inventory I had only received 1.

Honestly don’t care too much since it was such a small amount of money I lost but now that I think about it… if it happened to somebody taking a stack of 250 off the TP and they ended up with 1… oh the rage!

Depositing items into collectibles is the same thing. I have nowhere else to put them so I send them right to collectibles when I pick some up, but several times I have noticed I am missing things. Thought it was my imagination though or maybe playing too late.

This happens with every weapon cooldown reduction trait that also doubles as an illusion summon for every single weapon.

It’s a tooltip issue I think and feel free to post it in the game bug area but I believe it was posted several times now.

Mass Invis is all I use for an Elite in WvW. Veil is the skill that’s underwhelming, it has the same cool down as Mass Invis lasts 1 second less. Sure it’s a normal utility skill and provides a combo field for us for 6 seconds, but aside from a full on stealth build I see no use for it as a Mesmer utility.

Also why did you post this exact same thread twice? Are you experiencing that lovely 502 forum error?

Server Error

502 – Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy server.
There is a problem with the page you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed. When the Web server (while acting as a gateway or proxy) contacted the upstream content server, it received an invalid response from the content server.

Good times.

Glad this is being looked into because it’s super annoying. Having an active community is important for anything online these days. I can only imagine that this is one of those rare social diseases that only a few members of the community have to suffer through, where as bad game patches everybody has to suffer through.

Me: Any Mesmer build
Most Feared: Any bunker
Least Feared: Any burst

Nuka Cola.8520:

Eurantien.4632:

So i’m a ranger… I have no access to confusion or retaliation… Should i just run away?

You should stop wasting time on the most broken class there is. Rangers have nothing. Wait for anet to make them less ****** and run another class.

Lol what?

Ranger is so underrated. Ranger has some amazing builds that will shred any class in seconds, but standing in the middle of an enemy’s time warp is a terrible idea for anybody on your team. Rangers can use a ranged weapon instead and stand outside the field while laughing at the people inside.

Nobody should stay still next to a player that has just popped TW or any other source of quickness. TW has the disadvantage of being the only non-mobile source of quickness. When a thief, warrior, ranger etc. pops their quickness you will likely have them following you trying to take advantage of it’s uptime, when a mesmer pops TW: Don’t stand in the field.

You may say “But I have to I’m the point holder”. Most point holders can block, or invuln or both + protection long enough to negate the majority of all damage, that would be a good time to use those skills. If it’s you vs the world on the point then step off of it and let it go neutral then prevent them from capping it for themselves while you wait for backup.

Giving up your life and 5 points plus the point you were holding is not worth it if you can save yourself and hold the point neutral. All kinds of possibilities to counter and play around other strong skills and strategies.

Seether.7285:

To all the people in this thread thinking this is about nerfing mesmers, it really isn’t. It is about making the game better to play. If they were to change these two abilities I would actually like them to do something to help mesmers out because these two abilities are obviously a big part that teams take mesmers. But as I stated in my first post, these abilities are pretty much the strongest two abilities in the game and no other class has anything that can match these two abilities making mesmers a part of nearly every competitive team.

You would be wrong Seether. This thread is entirely about nerfing mesmer, from the title through to the end. If it were about quickness then the discussion would be about removing that from the game and not just Time Warp.

If it were about balance and making game play better there would be discussion regarding Time Warp as an Elite skill and some suggestions on how to compensate mesmers for nerfing their only offensive pvp elite. You’re also suggesting they change portal yet again, even if portal only allowed 1 person to go through it people would still cry about it. A thief could use a trap for essentially the same result plus a 5 second stealth on a 30s cooldown then with their amazing dps and mobility they could kill the person and be back in to the fight far more easily than a mesmer with portal…

Edit: forgot to mention that the thief trap has 10,000 range on it. slightly further than portal has wouldn’t you say.

Ostricheggs.3742:

I’m usually not one to bust out the massive QQ threads, but after playing a decent bit there seems to be one thing glaringly overpowered and dysfunctional about spvp compositions and team fighting. TIME WARP.

10 seconds of AoE quickness with a massive radius that also counts as an ethereal field (chaos armor/confusion with finishers). TEN. SECONDS. Not only is it the longest quickness in the entire game, it also comes with no penalty and it’s AoE. Every utility activated quickness in the entire game comes at a pretty hefty penalty, most notably frenzy for warriors.

Time warp is a game changer. It makes or breaks team fights allowing the mesmer’s team to quickly rez/stomp/DPS so incredibly fast as to force the opposing team out of its MASSIVE radius.

I’m alright with portal in most respects. It has its limitations and it is slightly gimmicky. But when you add in the ability of a mesmer to be able to watch a backpoint and contribute to a fight so massively with a no-cost short-cast 10 second AoE quickness it becomes broken.

I know for sure I’m not the only one who thinks this way. I could say many other things on the topic of time warp, but to be blunt it makes mesmers a necessity on any competitive team.

For reference:
(a warrior can pop frenzy, proc last chance and a rage sigil and still come out with 12 seconds of personal, non-aoe quickness at the cost of 50% extra damage for 5 seconds and a wasted sigil)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

Time Warp gives it’s haste to 5 targets and there is no priority Pet/Player/Illusion/Minion what ever.

How about we work on getting bugs and traits fixed and use the many builds each and every class has. If you’re keen you can actually design a team composition that works well instead of using the cookie cutter builds everybody tries to play as a solo entry. Even with premade teams you often see really poor team synergy and poor team work because the over all composition is bad.

There are things that need to be balanced still and maybe Time Warp is somewhere on that list with all the other forms of haste/quickness, but Mesmer doesn’t really need yet another nerf to our team support and damage outputs across all playing areas by nerfing a skill you don’t care for.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-Portal-uptime-tooltip/first#post1166333

thought I’d just direct the mesmer community to this thread to weigh in if you have an opinion about my suggestion