I play a thief and a warrior and I would say it takes substantially more skill to play the thief. As a bunker/banner warrior I just shield slammed/bashed/condi horned them till they gave up. Warriors are just much easier to play and have a much higher utility for the team than thieves.
Thieves are not part of any typical meta. They are considered leaches in WvW and everyone groans in sPvP when there’s more than one. They are strong 1v1, but that is SUCH a small part of pvp (especially with no dueling mechanism) that it’s not super relevant. Although I find the thief more fun to play I usually play my warrior since it’s more accepted in groups.
How come you missed the part where it was mentioned several times that thiefs are part of -any- competitive tournament team?
Same situation here… but quite honestly i already quit so don’t care much.. all I wanted was decent balance → not happening in a game where “balance” comes every other 2 years or so.
Quite funny to read forums post-patch day though, quite impressive that they managed to reach a new bottom :p
BUT BUT BUT….. what about my….
Perplexity PU mesmer
Perplexity Decap engi
Perplexity Condi warrior ( 9 confussion on interrupt lols)
Perplexity Terrormancer
*Perplexity Headshot spam teef! *
Perplexity Spirit Rangerwhy spam headshot when mindless meta thieves can simply continue to spam pistol whip, the stun will trigger perplexity too,
so now pistol whip will stun, damage, evade and apply confusion.
And Anet thought that it was not the time yet to nerf PW thiefs, instead they add another powerful tool for them.
As the forums are well aware, next patch is bringing free dragon to all! …
This is where I stopped reading and realized you were qq enough to create a new post. There are several threads already open and active for you to qq in. Please go there.
I dont think there’s any single thread made to point out that rank 70s are legitmately being punished because they aren’t being rewarded as much as kitten , regardless of how they’re already being screwed out of being ahead of the pack.
The differences in chests gained from 55-80 and 70-80 is an explicit mistake and something I think is thread worthy.
I think the biggest punishment is that you actually played this game in this kittenty state all the way up to rr71 brother :P
If you want to add some build diversity made around on confusion over interrupt don’t rely on a single set of rune but chose the classes you want to play that build and give them some traits that allow a similar effect as perplexity in way to avoid the risk of what can happens on tpvp with a party full made around perplexity proc.
PLS.
This.
+1 gazillion times.
Atleast give us the option to opt out of Skyhammer in our SQ rptation.
And then you’ll really see how many people actually likes that piece-of-kitten map.
No perplexity runes in sPvP would be a start.
You’ve got to be kidding…
Honestly i wasn’t even planning in comming back anyway, but deep inside I wanted this game to succeed… this is honestly the last nail in the coffin.
Its not the fact that it brings “new builds”, its just a boring playstyle, boring to fight with and against…
Basically e-v-e-r-y-s-i-n-g-l-e person is saying its a bad idea, and they’ll most likelly push it down throats… and then they come ahead and say “we listen to player feedback”… they just forgot to add “and we completely ignore just because.”
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
I’m talking about specific skills here. IS might allow you to teleport, but PW in and of itself doesn’t. That’s what I’ve been discussing for a while now… Specific skills, if you saw my list. Otherwise, I could argue, for example, that Churning Earth has amazing teleporting ability without mentioning that you need Lightning Flash to teleport while using the ability. I’m saying that PW, by itself, is harmful to your mobility; chaining it with IS (preceding) and IR (afterwards) doesn’t change that. It just makes for a period of good mobility followed by nonexistent mobility followed by good mobility again, you make it sound like PW teleports you twice or something.
What is the point in discussing selective skills by themselfs ? That does not promote a good argument at all. In fact indeed you should discuss used scenarios of gameplay not just “theorical… blablablabla”. Because if not you could say “mesmers got the highest mobility in the entire game.” not mentioning that their portal is once every 1 minute.
Yeah, S/D can “disengage without being seen” with that insane stealth we have. Also, unless thief can now travel faster than light, I’m pretty sure that Mesmer can travel back home faster than thief can. And remember those “movement-impeding” abilities I was talking about earlier? This is where they really come in handy.
Again, Mesmers are able to only use portal once every 1 minute. Thiefs can e-a-s-i-l-y disengage a team fight, and they’ll even lol at being focused while evading most damage and shortbow quickly to places, so yes, excuse me when you compare “single skills” but in 95% scenarios, thiefs have the higher mobility and disengage tools.
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
Team Trolling For Life participated in NA tournaments before and despite fighting at 5am against NA teams they still won the tournament if I remember correctly.
Same for 55HP Monks not so long ago. Same for TP, same for nearly every single EU team who went to play competitively against NA teams.
Mesmers are similar to thieves in this regard. They are much better at attacking points than defending them. They don’t fight on the point since a bunker would have the advantage there. They jump in and out of the point as needed and generally fight around the point. A mesmer should would those fights against the bunker 1v1 virtually always.
Except a thief can move there 10x faster then a mesmer can unless he uses portal which is once every a minute. Thiefs bring more “burst”/cleave damage also.
^^ This. There are several viable mesmer specs for tPvP.
Pistol Whip
Sword/Dagger
Spirit Ranger
Hambow
Decap^^ These don’t count as Mesmer specs, BTW.
you forgot that na is like solo q – you can play anything
Signs of desperation in a argument, puffing your chest with a pretend claim that one region is better than another region. When that specific topic is irrelevant to the matter at hand.
Countless
I’m sorry Countless, i respect you as a player but quite honestly. EU meta is far beyond NA meta, i played both competitively before. Sensotix is talking about top competitive play scenarios… not saying that he or we do not respect NA opinions or casuals opinion, but I believe the discussion is about high end competitive scenario which stuff as “mesmer best 1v1 class” is simply… wrong.
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
Pistol Whip is more of an anti-mobility skill- for yourself. The stun is far too short to make it any significant immobilizer, and the root is extremely harmful to a player’s own mobility.
Lolwot? Except you can literally teleport to the player while line-of-sighting him, with him unware you’re about to pop in, use PW which, by the way, evades all damage… and teleport back. So its basically a 100% no risk setup… and you’re saying its “extremely harmful to a player’s own mobility” ? wot m8?
Laughable? There is a certain group of people (not me, but a significant part of the forum-going population) that believes that warriors have better mobility than thieves. I provided evidence to you that other classes have a lot of the same mobility that thieves have, so I’m not sure what’s so laughable about this outside of your outright ignorance of the comments you’re trying so hard to refute.
This certain group of people are clearly idiots. Even though warriors do come close when talking about mobility do not compare only moving skills. Just think of a team fight going on… which class has the easiest tools to simply disengage without being seen and run to far point for a decap? This needs to also be taken into account when you’re saying “mobility” else lets go ahead and chose elementalists as the best “mobility” class. Btw, the answer for the question starts with “Thi” and ends with “ef”.
The fact that thieves are more likely to engage in these 1v1s is the main reason they are considered overpowered.
Plus the fact that any other berserk roaming build will easily die to thiefs ? Or you did not consider that ?
Mesmer will be in a really bad spot after the patch so please keep that in mind when you do your balancing anet
1v1: Mesmer is currently the best class for this. I don’t see that changing with the patch. At EQUAL skill levels, the mesmer will win.
Ok we honestly need to stop that. Its trully missleading. I honestly don’t want to hear any more people come in this thread and say that mesmers are good 1v1.
I’ll try explain:
1v1s in tournaments do NOT happen outside a node, unless you are a class that can engage and disengage easily just to harass someone. Having said that… mesmers do not fit this description, especially if they’re in a “dueling spec” which has few access to gap closers.
Mesmers are far to risky to be left alone to 1v1 in a node, for the simple fact that their main survivability skills are stealth and distortion, BOTH causes you to get uncapped. Besides if you go a more tanky build to not pop those skills that often then you simply does not have enough damage to kill anybody. Besides in most 1v1 situations on a node will be against either: Spirit Ranger, Hambom Warrior, Decap Engineer, Thief. There is literally nothing a mesmer can do against those specs to hold a point and keep the fight going for long.
If you go full glass to nuke people, you’ll be dead by the time the thief look at you, and he himself can have a much better burst now since he can literally spam pistol whip at will, I believe its 5 before he runs out of initiative, while a full burst rotation from a mesmer involves Illusionary Berserk actually hitting the target, and/or Illusionary leap actually getting to your target – and we all know how bugged that is WHEN your target doesn’t dodge after you leap to him, which happens 3/5 times – plus probably you spending Mirror Images for a full burst.
Team Fights: Pretty useless. They are good for some burst (depending on their spec), but after the next patch, I’d much rather have an ele handle the AOE burst.
This part is quite correct.
I don’t agree with that for one you can’t call anything yet, things can still change and the patch hasn’t hit, who knows what will happen to the meta.
At the end of the day you practice your build enough everything is viable to a certain extent.
Not really.. the “pre-PAX” patch could be completely foreseen and everyone called that would make necromansers nuclear condition bombs even before the patch hit in… so it happened.
People said that the initiative buff to thiefs would make them unstoppable killing machines, especially to other berserk builds… so it happened.
Indeed, i just wish the changes that occur would also be based on the conversations we have around these forums…. but seems to be that decap engineer, PW thiefs, warriors… despite all the feedback are not an issue for them currently.
What? I thought any low skill & high reward build is called a “cheese” build.
this
Any warrior build regardless of whether he uses Soldiers Amulet or Cleric is cheese….
My honest beaf is only that all the proper feedback has been ignored and actually worked backwards in the past 1.5 year.
Lets take a look on what PvP players (many, many top players) have complained mostly about balance:
1) Thiefs being able to shut down other berserk builds – maybe not warriors at current state, but still being able to handle better then anyone out there. In no way, shape or form people were claiming “Thiefs are op! Nerf!”, they were just merely saying that their mechanic/gameplay gives them far to many tools and damage to remove all other berserk builds out there. And this was even back when backstab was the thing.
None of this was addressed, in fact, thiefs now have easier access to regen and teleports making them even a more deadly weapon against berserk builds.
2) Less passive, more active gameplay.
Needless to say that with the introduction/buff of spirit rangers, drumfire, healing signet this goes completely against what people asked for.
3) Lyssa needs to be addressed on low cd elites…
Still not addressed.
4) Less bunkering, create other viable mid bunker options…
So far after 2 or so years, only guardians are viable for this role.
5) Telegraphed strong skills in order to create viable ways/time to react to it.
Not addressed, in fact some buffed skills are uncountered (healing signet) and unpredictable (pin down, backstab, etc).
6) Remove screen clustering with to many AIs/effects.
Needless to say that MM necros were buffed, same with spirit rangers and phantasms mesmers.
7) Increase the # points for kills, so that teams focus more in what is fun about “PvP” which is defeating an opponent rather then sitting on a point rotating tanks.
Still not addressed. Infact the meta right now is 4 bunkers and a PW thief…….
The list could go on and i’m sure there far more experienced players to explain it better. But in resume all i see is Anet going backwards in good feedback.. which is reason why i’ve stopped playing.
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
Really? A legendary for winning a single tournament while others have to farm 100s of hours for one? Disgusting. Guess Anet only knows extremes with rewards, either almost nothing or precursors/legendaries lol.
The players who will win this tournament SURELY have spent 100s of hours perfecting their craft and strategies, without earning legendaries for it in the process.
We are tipping our hats to those that have put the time and dedication into PvP, and have earned this as a reward.
We’re not just handing them out.
Or they have 5 bads playing hambows/spirit rangers/decap engineers and pistol whip thiefs. So hard. Much Skill. Wow.
Lol and the people saying PW is fine are WvW players…
Do you even tournament pvp bro?
Some of you have asked why we haven’t focused on fixing the issues already in the game. A lot of things have been fixed, but some concerns you guys have like with PW, HS, decap engi, etc. we decided to wait and see how the new traits will affect the meta.
Are you kidding me ?
Example 1:
So tell me how Power Block from mesmers will help them in any way, shape or form to fight against thiefs ? Who, by the way, when interrupted, do not get any cooldown what-so-ever. I think you know that what is mainly pushing any berserker build outside warriors, are PW thiefs ?Please tell me you have thought of that ?
Interrupt hide in shadows. Thief has no chance.
Every high ladder thief (like every thief with a bit of clue) use withdraw rather than hide in shadows since 6 month lol.
It has no casting time so it isnt interruptable and power block don’t work
Thank you…
Some of you have asked why we haven’t focused on fixing the issues already in the game. A lot of things have been fixed, but some concerns you guys have like with PW, HS, decap engi, etc. we decided to wait and see how the new traits will affect the meta.
Are you kidding me ?
Example 1:
So tell me how Power Block from mesmers will help them in any way, shape or form to fight against thiefs ? Who, by the way, when interrupted, do not get any cooldown what-so-ever. I think you know that what is mainly pushing any berserker build outside warriors, are PW thiefs ?
Please tell me you have thought of that ?
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
Can’t… I don’t play anymore nor have the desire to get rid of 400 glory boosters i got…
Please let me try to explain why some things in your, or rather, Anet plan’s is just flawed.. please don’t take this personally and i hope i’m being as respectful as i can, forgive me for any mistakes since english is not my main language.
I like this question. As you said, our focus right now is to better integrate sPvP with the rest of the game.
Ok. So first of all, how are you planning to do this? I believe you’re trying to get the rewards closer to each other so that sPvP players can enjoy all the “fat lewt” PvE players can easily access to.
Now there is a small mistake there… simply because sPvP players’s main reward from the bottom of their hearts are completely unrelated to shinny PvE stuff. What we really want is:
Skilled and active gameplay;
Promote single target skills instead of AoE;
Good match making system;
Steadily balance patches in a decent period of time;
Different game modes;
Monthly/weekly company hosted tournaments with rewards;
Detailed combat log;
Detailed leaderboards display;
Steadly bug fixes;
In-game built voice comn option;
Option to choose which map/gameplay you want to queue for;
Custom arenas to be as much customized as possible;
PvP-only rewards (skins, finishers…);
Highlight of the best teams/players both in-game and on the website;
The removal of hotjoins;
Build diversity, each being as good as the next;
Now what i’m trying to say with all of the above is that PvE players, in their vast majority do not like or want some of the points mentioned above:
Passive gameplay instead of active gameplay;
Steadily balance patches in a decent period of time;
Promote single target skills instead of AoE;
PvP only rewards;
Removal of hotjoins;
Build diversity, each being as good as the next;
And on top of that, they also want some of the same things sPvP players want such as:
Different game modes;
Custom arenas to be as much customized as possible;
And what i’m trying to say with this is that… if these people really arrive to sPvP… they will push or keep changes that goes against what most PvP players want, simply pushing those farther off the game (just look at all the competitive teams who already left) and nor will see at the features they want implemented (which PvP players also want) and they will just treat sPvP as a side-game not really playing actively nor playing it competitive or serious not really creating the “niche” PvP community that it is required…
This will hopefully do one major thing: Bring more people into sPvP that are already playing Gw2. This will mean more competition, and better matchmaking. The new ladders (which I hope you’re giving feedback for in the CDI thread) should be a good way to gain prestige for being the best.
Most of the PvE/WvW players i know only play hotjoins when they are waiting to raid in WvW or a dungeon. This is not solving queue times or increasing the true sPvP community playerbase at all.
Due the time they wasted in hotjoins they actually have no idea how to play in a tournament queue… no idea of rotations/roles/regroups/capping & decapping strategy or anything… in the end they are bashed by other players and hate the conquest mode which most of the sPvP players are starting to get sick of it as well…
Please consider removing hotjoins altogether, give a “testing ground” map so that people can test their builds and so on, but with zero reward so that they have to play tournaments and understand how the function. Perhaps adding videos or tutorials of the conquest mode will probably also help.
You have to understand that if you try to extend what we call sPvP to PvE players then you’re simply making sPvP being hotjoins, just a side game for players who feel like taking a break from their farm. This is no form helping tournaments or any competitive gameplay.
So in the end, i honestly don’t see this as a short-time/medium-time or long-time solution. You have to understand that PvP players are different from PvE players. Hardcore players are different from casual players. Now if you want to have both you have to work on the points mentioned above… if you just want the casuals to play then you will not have a PvP community.
Apart from competition and prestige, what kind of things are most attractive to the high-level players? Personally I’m not hyper competitive and play all parts of the game, so the rewards overhaul will be amazing for me :P
Please look at the points i mentioned before.
Even if you give me a legendary for winning a tournament match in the current balance state / conquest mode, I’ll still not comeback to play Gw2, unless you fix the fundamental issues plaguing the game.
If you care to reply to me i might try to explain better each point… what they will achieve and what they mean for us players.
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
I would be sad if it got removed from solo q. It is a fun map.
Please understand that we don’t necessarily want it off… we just want to OPTION to not queue for it. Instead of being forced into it. We just want to queue for a map we like to play in, just like in any other game out there that has this feature since release…
Team Queue. No Skyhammer and better rewards! I solo or duo q in that a lot. Rarely do I run into full hard core premade teams. So you do have an option.
That’s exactly what people do. But it is wrong.. if i’m soloing, i want to be able to fight other solo players.
And i don’t know by you, but when i queue for team queue I often get premades, probably due my MMR, making the game nearly impossible to win when soloing against a full group using comns.
Have you honestly not played other PvP games? Such as Battlefiled, Counter Strike or anything? How hard it is to be able to opt for the game-mode (for now gw2 only has one so not necessary to have atm…) and maps? How hard is to have a ready up final button such as League of Legends? Honestly.
I would be sad if it got removed from solo q. It is a fun map.
Please understand that we don’t necessarily want it off… we just want to OPTION to not queue for it. Instead of being forced into it. We just want to queue for a map we like to play in, just like in any other game out there that has this feature since release…
I think there has been around 20 threads about it.
But according to Anet… its only 50% of the population who wants it off…. like 50% wasn’t huge enough…
You do realize if you create something completely broken with those Sigils/Runes rework, and it takes 4 months for you to fix it, it’ll be GW2’s pvp death?
I for one am playing LoL until you: nerf/change HS, nerf warriors and overall classes to be in balance with elementalists or so/remove Skyhammer & Spirit Watch from solo queue.
Structured in failing maybe..
Just give us the option to choose which map we want to queue for…
Usually 3 warriors in my team and i’m pretty happy.
You know the sad part?
When i started reading and saw some decent improvement suggestions by Lily i quickly stopped reading, since i’m sure it won’t be taken into account by Anet and I proceeded to scroll right down for this:
- hats
- more hats
- hats wearable in combat
- community driven designed hats
- again more hats
- profit!
#moarhats
Point is
The playerbase is not saying if Skyhammer is fun or not, since this is ofcourse subjective, all we are asking is very simple:
Please let us choose wether we want this map in our queue or not, give us the option, this will please every single one.
That’s all.
Get good at game.
Says the warrior….
Honest to god i just went to forums to make a thread to remove Skyhammer from SoloQ rotation but i realized there was one already.
Played 3 skyhammer straight… 2 losses and a win, all 3 matches were so terrible and boring, full of a full cc engineer with stealth/pull/punt that i’m honestly going to play BF4, so…
Just give us the option to NOT play this map, like a ban or something, for crying out loud.
If you just watched the tournament Good Fights Invitational you’d see how thiefs are completely broken right now. They simply made the whole tournament by nuking players while evading… while having insane mobility.
Its really frustrating to see so many reasons and good mentions of what is making warriors meta changing right now and yet, see Arena net do/say exactly nothing…
I really hope this final helped enlight how bad mesmers are at the moment besides good portal plays… they’re so easily countered by… basically anything. Especially thiefs.
It’s actually pretty huge. Poison, at minimum, ticks for about 100 dmg per sec. Healing signet heals for about 400 per second. So that means 400(0.67) – 100 = 168. It basically looses about (at minimum) 58% of its strength when is poison applied to the warrior.
If you put a 6s poison on a burst heal (lets say 300 hps), you end up cutting around 45~% of the healing over the 25~ second CD.
If you put a 6s poison on a warriors heal you end up cutting around 15% of the warrior’s healing over 25~ seconds.
kittening Massive difference.
Engies have poison volly and nades. Thief has choking gas and steal. Necro has poison on auto attack and scepter 3. Rangers and eles (lawl @ eles, and maybe spider pet from ranger? though no one really runs it in favor of dogs). A lot of classes have easy access to poison.
And there is condi removal.
Long duration poisons don’t tend to stay on targets for long durations in this game.
Especially against warriors.Choking gass will never get more than a tick off, and is almost never worth the initiative (that leaves steal and a 3rd attack in dagger chain, basically very low poison uptime at best).
Engineer poison nades is by far best used against downed enemies and volley misses half its shots most the time.
Rangers tend to have one poison tagged on to an evade skill.
Mesmers have none.
Warriors have none.
Guardians have none.
Whoever said Poison hurts warrior’s HS more then other classes… seriously?
Read the explanation the guy i quoted did and just do simple math? I honestly think half of the people defending warriors or any other kittened stuff in game is just really incapable of doing simple math.
For poison to be as effective as it is for other classes on warrior, you would basically need 100% up time poison… And if the argument was “good players will cleanse before using their burst heal”. Oh yeah? Tell this to mesmers running lockdown/shatter builds in competitive gaming, even if they run null field its most likely he’ll cleanse other stuff before poison, or even using cleansing mantra, especially since when you get condition bombed you got all the conditions in the game on you, and the safe way to survive is using Lyssa most of the times, which BY THE WAY, its stronger on warriors as well as thiefs due low cooldown elites, and i’m not even mentioning a skill called Berserker Stance with a duration of 8 seconds.
It would be an interesting mechanic if it wasn’t usable by any warrior build.
However, ANet just needs to make sigil proc when swapped in and out, while retaining icd. This way the 5 seconds weapon swap won’t mean more procs.
I hope this is how they’re planning, i just want an Anet developer to confirm or at least say something as “yeah we haven’t thought about this” just like they gave in regarding the DE change for mesmers, which is ok by me – it demonstrates they are listening.
I’m a mesmer and i hate necros with a passion. Ever since “Pax patch”.. but I do agree with you buddy.
Its as Helseth said when he gave his opinion about the Ready Up, it is a really big change for necros to be honest, completely goes what they say “shave it down”. In my opinion in the pax patch they overkilled buffed necros when they didn’t need to and with things didn’t really need, and now they’re over killing it.
Let me just try to understand your logic here…they “over buffed” with the pax patch. Now, necros are still maintaining an additional TWO conditions they didn’t have before they were “over buffed” and an active tweak to one of those two conditions you felt they were over buffed with…something just doesn’t make sense when you say that it is over killing it.
Yes. Because back then warriors weren’t as kittened as they are now.
I would honestly like to hear a dev answer regarding this. Thanks!
I’m a mesmer and i hate necros with a passion. Ever since “Pax patch”.. but I do agree with you buddy.
Its as Helseth said when he gave his opinion about the Ready Up, it is a really big change for necros to be honest, completely goes what they say “shave it down”. In my opinion in the pax patch they overkilled buffed necros when they didn’t need to and with things didn’t really need, and now they’re over killing it.
There’s been a good amount of disappointment on the forum today regarding a misunderstanding of when the changes proposed on Ready Up would end up going live. See as how the next big update is still probably over a month away, I was thinking that maybe a small “hotfix” size patch in the next week or two could help address the biggest concerns for PvP balance in the short term, without adding undue amounts of extra work for the developers as they prepare the next big patch. I think 3 simple, small changes would do just that:
- Implement the proposed change to Healing Signet (reduction of about 30 hps, small increase to active).
- Implement the proposed bugfix to Spirit of Nature (reduction of 160 hps).
- Remove Skyhammer from the Solo Arena rotation.
Just my thoughts, but I am fine with waiting it out as well. What do the rest of you think?
Agreed. I’d add: Blinding/dodging/blocking etc burst skills from warriors should make them lose adrenaline… As far as i’m concerned this is a bug and its been kept for how long now?
I’d also remove Spirit Watch from Solo queue.
In another note, has Anet gave any feedback regarding how the sigils will work when warriors got fast hands? And now since sigils will not share cooldown, they’ll just get out of hand to be honest. I’m sure there is one main thread out there, has its been any official response?
I, myself like many players are feeling very dubious about these up coming changes. I think the only actual balance to them is that most professions are having their staple utilities/rotation taken away from them. Warrior hambow/sig are being reduced every patch. Engi turrets, necro burning and minions and mesmer clones have all been hit. They have said that they perhaps hit ele’s too hard and that thieve’s are in line for some quality of life stuff. I can appreciate that mesmers are upset by these changes, but if they changes did not occur when other common played builds/professions are being reduced it was only ever pushing mesmer back up the ranks to it’s old position of A class by virtue that all the S class builds had been demoted to A or B tier now. It appears clear this patch is about reducing vigor and dmg across the board in spvp and PvE. These changes have effectively done that, even though many of us don’t feel the right traits have been specifically addressed. This is nothing more than when warrior’s all complained mace/hammer hard hitters were “highly telegraphed” so therefore well balanced. Mesmer shatters are not well telegraphed so something was going to give. Like I said, at times there is windows with mesmers where you are no longer actually engaged with them, you’re just reaching for the brass rings to get to them to resume engaging. That is in essence the cheese factor that is being refereed to. How many clones and phantasms/teleports/dazes/stun breaks/gaps closers and creators/cripples/small confusions/immunites/stealth/combo fields/chao’s armors etc etc that dmg you does a player have to go through to finally get to the mesmer?
Alright you can argue a lot when you compare what mesmers bring in comparison with other classes, and how they perform and so on. But truly, this is apples and oranges. What you’re trying to bring it up is Apples. We are talking about Oranges.
And going back to the Apples you mentioned, even though mesmers can bring a lot, it does not mean they’re in a good state. Just look at Elementalists and how many different skills/AoE options they got in their hands, and they’re still terrible. Again, see where mesmers stand at the current meta, is probably just above Eles… and below everything else.
Keep in mind that a in tournaments you can’t just look at skills/builds individually… you’ve to look for their roles and in what kind of situations they’ll be most of the times, and what class/builds they’ll be fighting most of the times…
(edited by saVdoom.2067)
Thank god i don’t solo queue… i stopped because of Spirit Watch and Skyhammer. I solo queue IN team queue.
There’s nothing wrong with having to wait until one of your clones die before dodging. Vigor is the best boon in the game, and only spending 5 points to get perma dodging, especially since Zerker gives around 40% crit chance by itself, is pretty stupid.
I’m actually somewhat encouraged by the most recent cast b/c Peters was talking about wanting skill to be more of an emphasis. It seems like they’re moving away from the “some eles just stay in one attunement” casual babysitting mentality.
It is absolutely encouraging that the devs seem to have shifted their mentality towards a more skill based meta. This issue though is that making changes off of philosophy alone does not equal better play. I understand that only investing 5 points to get permanent vigor is an issue (for both guardian and mesmer, with guardian being much less problematic because crits are harder to come by). A nerf is warranted but the way in which it is being done is not optimal for the play style necessary to be successful (for both guardian and mesmer). Why not move the trait to a higher tier? Why not make the trait 3 seconds of vigor every 5 seconds (thus making it useful on its own, but also encouraging boon duration to achieve greater synergy)?
The deceptive evasion nerf on the other hand, doesn’t really make sense to me. As others have stated, this is a nerf to ALL mesmer builds not just clone on death. If clone on death is the issue the devs want to address, then please devise a way to affect it without changing the entire profession. Making clone death blockable is a great suggestion. Hell, why not change the mechanic so that replacing a clone doesn’t count as a clone death?
Very good post. And the suggestions for the clone on death are very intelligent, they would pretty much clear the whole issue to be honest.
I dont care about shatter, I have no issue with fighting them. Sometimes they win, sometimes I do, but it feels like a fair fight. But the tanked up clone spamming stealth lovers are a completely different story, and that needs to be ruined beyond belief.
This is what you are not understanding.
There is 2 topics at hand:
1) Reduce vigor overall for mesmers;
2) Rework of DE trait;
1.1) The first just comes as blatant nerf, which you can argue is ok or not due other classes receiving it too.
1.2) If you also add with the sigil rework Anet said that will happen (most likely nerfing sigil of energy), the fact is that high risk/reward builds such kittenter & mantra, will suffer the most from this.
1.3) Plus take into consideration that mesmers role in competitive play are already close to non-existent losing only to Elementalists, since Phantasm & PU (high survivability due stealth & low risk builds due using condition damage as main source of damage, meaning they can pick defensive stats as well) are not good at all for a team tournament match up since: They can’t hold a point because it rely on stealth for effectiveness, can’t roam because its to slow + can’t train down targets, and can’t be as effective in team fights because everything gets cleaved down in AoE.
1.4) Now wrap it up taking into consideration that outside of Phantasms & PU builds, the main source of survival of mesmers (usually in Mantra or Shatter) comes from dodging the right stuff, since they got no reliable way to clear conditions, no easy access to stability and speed, no 10s immunity to something etc as other classes.
2.1) Now this is the real issue for most of us mesmers because its a blatant reduce in effectiveness in a big mechanic of mesmers especially used in high risk/reward builds, it’ll completely wreck them ! Just read the examples used above by the OP and many others more.
2.2) As mentioned before, high risk/reward builds are already lacking ALOT in survival, so the clone generation on dodge is one of the scarce tools they have in order to battle against enemies ! Such as dodging so the thief backstab the clone, dodge to put the clone between you and the longbow warrior shooting you, or rangers with shortbow, etc.
2.3) This change might actually INCREASE the effectiveness of PU mesmers (the ones you called perma invisibility cheese) because once they lay their clones/phantasms they can freely go into stealth and dodge away without reapplying clones – which is one of the main things that give away the position of the actual mesmer you need to kill.
So just to put it simple, we actually don’t want the cheese to stay, if applying conditions on clone death is to strong and open room for cheese builds, please reduce the effectiveness of the trait ! Make it able to block those conditions, there are many ways to work this out, but the way chosen will actually improve the cheese making PU basically the ONLY viable option for mesmers (so they can say goodbye for competitive tournaments), and will completely wreck high risk/reward builds that people don’t have trouble to deal with it anyway, its an already very easy build to fight against.
What I find weird is that:
- at my level of play (65-70%), where PU mesmer dominate (both in numbers and in 1v1) and I don’t expect much change, my clones get annihilated faster than I can generate them because many players still can’t figure out where the mesmer is (hint: these days, it’s the one with the flashy purple glory booster icon).
- at higher level of play, where mesmer are under represented, clones are less targetted and team-oriented mesmer don’t play PU (can’t kill a bunker fast enough, or cap, or keep a cap). There the nerf hits hard the shatter specs where positioning the clones for defense or for shatter was more important than the ‘on death’ condition.
This this and this.
+ what Teutos just said above too!