Guild Wars 2

Coulter.2315:

Is no one going to suggest pushing Shatters? xD

You are giving far, far too much credit to this game’s playerbase, muffin.

Chicago Jack.5647:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

Please point out where in the post you’re quoting I said any of this utter nonsense? I assume I’ll be waiting a while?

I think it has something to do with comparing portal to shadow refuge, saying portal is utterly useless in comparison, and how you said the mesmer class is “held back” by portal. If anything, it’s “held back” by the almost mandatory decoy (which is a small portion of the reason why this tread exists). In the end though, you really ought to use less “flourish” in your posts. You might not get those types of responses in the future.

There could be a long discussion about portal on why, but the short answer is: It’s not.

Oh goodness! That’s two people now who’ve put words in my mouth and radically spun a very brief post I made to suit their own ends. Can I ask where in the world I ever said that portal was utterly useless? Will I be waiting as long as I am for my answer from Jayden Ennok?

Decoy is not mandatory for tournament-level Mesmers by the way, nor has it ever been cited as a balance concern by the dev team. Portal has, in both respects. But of course why bother responding at all, this isn’t the first time the wise oracle Chicago Jack has dodged the question only never to be seen again. You promise so much knowledge on matters like these and deliver very little. If there’s any purpose to that last departing line other than such grandstanding I can’t see one.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

Portal isn’t even remotely comparable to SR in terms of usefulness. It is a huge sacrifice on the Mesmer’s part (SR costs a Thief absolutely nothing). If I may be frank for a second, and without intention to divert the thread off-topic too much, Portal has really held the class back while SR has always been a painless option. It was the case back when “combat Portal” on a half minute cooldown used to exist and it’s still the same now.

Mesmer logic – all mesmers have is totally useless while our opponents are uber op and it requires a great deal of skill to kill anyone as a mesmer. Everyone should feel sorry for us and praise our persistence in playing such a underpowered class.

This is why mesmer posts are one of the most toxic ones and often lack any sense regarding class/skill balance.

Please point out where in the post you’re quoting I said any of this utter nonsense? I assume I’ll be waiting a while?

I would like to have a dialogue with others that might maintain some standard of maturity, no need to unleash your apparently raging animus out on me.

Portal isn’t even remotely comparable to SR in terms of usefulness. It is a huge sacrifice on the Mesmer’s part (SR costs a Thief absolutely nothing). If I may be frank for a second, and without intention to divert the thread off-topic too much, Portal has really held the class back while SR has always been a painless option. It was the case back when “combat Portal” on a half minute cooldown used to exist and it’s still the same now.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Okay well clearly killing P/D is never going to happen. But at least now I know how to tackle S/D thieves a bit better now. Are there any builds make to hard counter them, I know interrupt’s work well.

P/D is a terrible spec. I’m not really sure why the prevailing wisdom in this thread is that it poses some kind of challenge. If you at least have cleanse mantra they’re completely harmless and even if you don’t it’s probably still possible so long as you have your wits about you. (Shatter generally suffers against condition specs without ledge abuse so this is something of a sad commentary on the state of condition Thieves. The spec sucks, kids).

S/D is a whole other beast, this is probably the most difficult matchup for shatter in the entirety of the game. WvW heroes tend to play Shadow Arts which isn’t that tough but Trickery/Acro or Trickery/CS or Trickery/DS is a much bigger problem.

In any case they are 99 times out of 100 going to spec Trickery. The heart of the issue with S/D Thieves (and Trickery more generally) is that it relies far more on how they play than how you do. Steal is instant cast: it has no travel time, no wind-up and no animation. You can avoid it or you can fail to avoid it and the outcome will drastically affect how the game plays out. There isn’t a lot you can do, other than to play conservatively. One tip I can offer is to try and count out the 20 seconds between the last F1 (assuming you’re even still fighting) and then try to gain distance or use preemptive invulns/blocks. It won’t stop the proc but it’ll deny the plasma consumable. The plasma is a tremendous steroid so keeping it down if you can’t yet outright kill them is a must.

Saiyan.1704:

I’ve messaged the people who utterly beat me in 1v1 duels, if they use that build in tpvp and almost all of them say no. It’s the reason I can beat most classes 1v1 in tpvp…including d/d celes ele’s, crate engi’s and mesmers…They all just spec differently in tpvp, or they use different classes all together.

shimmerlessEU.6841:

Med Guard is pretty much useless in teams. (It’s actually worse than useless in that it needs escorting and doesn’t bring anything to justify it)

I made a guardian exclusive guild. Our 5man guardian team are currently 8 and 2. Last 3 games we all went zerk medi and it was kitten fun!

I know it isn’t what you were saying muffin but fun =/= viable, trust me :P

style.6173:

ghaleon.2861:

Bitty.1409:

ghaleon.2861:

Bitty.1409:

ghaleon.2861:

8. Nice joke…… I can’t believe you’re crying about mes. Mesmer is by far the weakest class in game and has been the weakest for a long time. Everybody in this game can shut down a mesmer. Reason #1 Everybody runs celestial, which means everybody is doing condi dmg. Mesmer has 0 condi removal and we’re forced to take decoy and blink because without those 2, [Reason #2]a thief will literally destroy the mesmer. You did good from 1-7, but when it came to mes you lacked the knowledge of the class and you didn’t provided any facts.

Bro, I was trolling calm down. I thought it was obvious with the bad spelling, and the post that was complaining about shatter Mesmer that was posted like a week ago as a reference. I guess my sarcasm wasn’t obvious, my bad.

Sorry that I got too defensive, but everybody at the top lvl knows that mesmer is really weak atm. We have to outplay pretty much everybody to win. Also, our survivability is so bad, the only good thing we have atm is boon removal and portal. Those people saying mes is op clearly don’t know the mes class and are having a hard time spotting the real one. Clearly a L2P issue…

Yea, i’m aware of the state of Mesmer, but it’s not as bad as you’re making it sound.

It’s pretty bad actually, that’s why you don’t see many mesmers in tPvp.

How do you explain the EU scene then?

Mes is basically the only class (other than debatably Necro) which needs teamwork to be viable let alone to be competitive. Can you imagine not being able to play your class with your teammates unless they upped and changed their play just for your sake? The class gets destroyed by ridiculous port spamming and PBAoE (which killed its viability on point a long time ago) meaning you’ll only see specific team comps that take Mesmers regardless of how popular they are.

To be frank the niche that makes Mesmers attractive is always borderline because it rests on ledge and blink abuse and if those are fixed (as some have been recently) or if greatsword is nerfed it easily becomes questionable whether it’s worth the expenditure again. Are Mesmers viable, in a sense yes but I do not think the state the class is in is healthy by any means.

Med Guard is pretty much useless in teams. (It’s actually worse than useless in that it needs escorting and doesn’t bring anything to justify it)

All they have to do is revert the trait back to the way it was on release. Other than maybe the rez interrupt (and even then I think people were being hysterical) there was nothing wrong with it.

MSFone.3026:

Not a complaint more than just a comment: I think it says something that what many people consider to be the only “real” PvP build is shatter, and that shatter is the build and play style that least resembles the GW1 mesmer.

Yes Lockdown works and can work very well, but the point above stands.

I wish the “meta” mesmer build were something that actually felt like a mesmer from GW1. To me shatter has no resemblance to the class I loved in GW1. Yes it is very hard to play very well, and it is tons of fun to watch, but it’s mesmer in name only imo.

Just a tangential thought on this topic. Not a critique of shatter at all! Just a critique of how the mesmer in GW2 has diverged from the mesmer in GW1.

Power Block would’ve been a promising alternative but it basically got gutted on release.

xDudisx.5914:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

xDudisx.5914:

Just joined a match where 8/10 players were a mesmer.
#MesmerNewBowRanger

I take mild pride in the fact that I went into a random hotjoin after almost half a year not playing this game and gibbed this guy twice on point before he raged in map chat about Mesmers and logged, provoking this little outburst.

Next time you might not want to 12345 on Nec staff, spam mindlessly into the sword block and kill yourself on confusion because you blew both your transfers muffin.

Sword/sword + staff shatter too stronk folks you heard it here first.

I can’t play my main celestial ele because it has a birthday booster to spend so I made this necro build yesterday. Anyway as a necro and any other classes the biggest problem is always a mesmer due to the skilless faceroll build everyone runs.

The skill-less faceroll build? You mean zerk shatter, which I was the only one playing in said hotjoin? Mesmers or shatter, which is it?

xDudisx.5914:

Just joined a match where 8/10 players were a mesmer.
#MesmerNewBowRanger

I take mild pride in the fact that I went into a random hotjoin after almost half a year not playing this game and gibbed this guy twice on point before he raged in map chat about Mesmers and logged, provoking this little outburst.

Next time you might not want to 12345 on Nec staff, spam mindlessly into the sword block and kill yourself on confusion because you blew both your transfers muffin.

Sword/sword + staff shatter too stronk folks you heard it here first.

A lot of players (cough Chaith cough) who would’ve rightly kittened and moaned for the good of the game two years ago have given up and warped themselves into thinking things like this are normal. Hell they’ve added more AoE if anything (Thief dagger autos lulz).

It’s pretty silly muffin but then this is the same team that thought removing the stun break from Lightning Flash (and not from say, Mist Form where it isn’t really necessary) was genius, so.

Elitist.8701:

Hi frands, Teef Teef Teef Teef here, #1 Thief NA and world’s first Champion Shadow!

Just let this thread go my frands! Mesmer is already in the lower end of balance, its obvious ArenaNet has no intent of nerfing them! Dudis simply needs to practice the game more! He will learn eventually how to fight our Mesmer frands!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I lolled, solid gimmick to revive +1

What Vincecontix said is half true and half not quite right the way I see it.

It is true that staff is strong against Thieves and most other glassy or sticky classes (like Elementalists). However, sword is also just as strong because it grants even more defense against melee-training.

In fact back in the day sword/focus + staff shatter was a difficult matchup for 25/30/0/0/15 Thieves. (Nagnag would consistently lose to Slowkin about 7 times out of 10). It’s worth noting that staff/sword shatter was also the only spec in the game that could threaten bunker Eles.

With regard to Thieves the weak link is greatsword, which is trivially evaded and provides little to no reliable defense beyond just pumping out more damage. Mesmers must also play with a hand tied behind their backs in sPvP because of the necessity of running portal. When you have three utilities instead of two it is possible to cleanse the steal poison or the root from panic strike which can make a world of difference. When you toss in the many nerfs to Mesmer sword and its offhands and the buffs to Trickery it’s why the matchup has become so inverted.

DrDivine.5378:

shimmerless.4560:

I don’t think the OP is in danger of D/D Thieves since that weapon set sucks.

Would you say this build could take on a dps medi guardian? Or do you think they are also a counter due to immobilizes and their burst?

I don’t play double ranged that much but I rarely have any issues with DPS Guards, especially on NA where they don’t use scepter or hammer. That said it’s really a skill matchup, so of course it’s always possible to go toe to toe with them muffin.

It is just about patience, both with your defense (distortion or in my case sword #2) and your offense (many DPS Guards will use Shelter preemptively for the block, giving you ample room to burst).

The main threat from DPS Guard isn’t the burst so much as the constant burning. You also have much better disengage because their gap closers are less versatile and more valuable to them and you also have stealth.

WvW “kill comp” videos are almost as lulz as glass mantra spec (not nearly as fun to watch though).

kolompi.1287:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I don’t play anymore.

He raises a valid question, if you are not playing anymore then what are you doing here on the forums, adding your opinion to something you left?

A lot of us would love to play again if the game were even halfway enjoyable so it’s worth yelling into the aether in the very low chance that the devs actually listen.

Plus catharsis.

AmaleoOu.2489:

I’m a Mesmer main, I despise double ranged shatter mesmers and even I don’t think they should be nerfed. I think they’re a gimmick, but they’re easy to kill. You just need to practice. If anything, I just really dislike how almost every single Mesmer is a double ranged shatter mesmer in tPVP. I feel like I’m much more useful to every team as a lockdown/condi mesmer.

The only reason they should get nerfed is to instill more variety, but as I see it, nerfing them would mean no Mesmers in the meta. Hopefully, non-shatter Mesmers get buffs to encourage variety. Anything to get more variety.

No need to nerf them. One swing of the blade and they’re down.

If they wanted to see things other than staff/GS they probably shouldn’t’ve nerfed sword to hell and back.

At the moment the meta doesn’t favor Mesmers fighting on point and sword has been heavily nerfed to boot. It’s a reliable yet unreliable weapon.

sinject.4607:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

I agree with the thread poster but the reality is it’s going to be impossible to discuss the issue because there are too many inexperienced players choking the thread with replies. I mean no ill will whatsoever but this is the difficulty of having a purely public free for all forum.

Steal has the same issue that IP (for Engineer) does in that it can’t really be outskilled, only played around to the best of one’s ability. It is overloaded to begin with (there is no real reason Thieves need to strip boons, nor is the vigor required) and on top it is instant cast which makes landing or not landing the skill 100% luck.

If Steal is intended to destroy other glassy characters so much then why not cut all the silly BS and just make it a 30k damage nuke? (This is in essence what the idea was before the Mug nerf). I would like to remind everyone that this affects everyone, including other Thieves, who are almost guaranteed to lose if they miss their Steal and get hit by their opponent’s. It is exhausting to wear down a Thief only for them to bounce back every ~20 seconds due to their excellent sustain, counter-pressure and initiative feed.

The whole thing is an awful mess of design from the ground up, Grouch unfortunately also has a priapic stiffy for the class thanks to the company he keeps so it’s incredibly difficult to get sensible balance passes pushed through. (I have no idea what the flanking strike change was supposed to accomplish).

what a surprise you main mesmer! honestly this whole thread just feels like mesmers trying their hardest to get nerfs for the only beserker profession that can handle them.

it’s going to be out right impossible to discuss because there is nothing to discuss. steal is completely balanced even when fully traited; thief as a whole is one of the most balanced professions in the game without a shadow of a doubt.

steal can be outplayed ridiculously easily: blinds, blocks, invulns, stealth, and evades coupled with smart prediction make steal painfully easy to counter in straight up 1v1 scenarios. it’s an active skill that requires smart, conscientious use to be effective; comparing it to incendiary power is just wrong.

calling for a nerf on a profession that has recieved nothing but while it’s already considered to be well balanced just because it does well against your profession is caustic to the game. until someone is able to offer an argument not based solely on anecdotal evidence and biased opinions as to why steal is broken, there is nothing to discuss. as it’s been said here already, why look to nerf a profession that isn’t broken?

I never raised any class in specific with regard to this discussion muffin, as I made a decisive point in explaining that Thief v. Thief itself is incredibly swingy due to Steal, personally I have way more issues on Thief w/r/t Steal than I ever do with mesmer. It really affects all classes, even Guards, because Trickery has been artificially raised to the spec par excellence for tourney Thieves. I actually have a similar problem with my own class where the trait lines for competitive play are really just a false choice. It is the very same here. No one will give up traited Steal because it’s way too strong to pass on for any alternatives.

Blinds, blocks, invulns and so on are reasonable reactions to or anticipations for Steal; they are not means of outskilling the ability. Steal cannot be outskilled because it’s instant cast. That is why in its current form it’s very similar to IP. You can react to it and you can anticipate it but you can never reliably counterplay it. If you could it would be broken because you would never land a Steal on a decent player, and so much power is loaded into the ability it would likely kill the spec entirely.

The overall point is that something has to go. Either the sheer power needs toning down (Trickery was buffed to this state to begin with) or it needs dispersing with reasonable counterplay introduced to the skill itself. The class is already borderline immune to terrain defense and one of the gap closers is packed fatter than a Christmas turkey. It’s completely inane. As I’ve said if this is how it’s supposed to be then just replace it with a 30k nuke. Same difference.

People have raised the issue that Thief isn’t one of the overperforming classes right now. I don’t necessarily agree with this but I understand the point. In a perfect world balance passes would be holistic and more than one class per patch would actually be brought into line. We don’t live in a perfect world and realistically as I said we won’t see any changes to Steal either anyway. But it would still be nice to see people calming their emotions and taking an objective look at the many many things that need attention in GW2.

Elitist.8701:

@Blackbear Caed and Sizer dont beat Eles 50% of the time. At this point you have no idea what you’re talking about. At top tier if an ele can kite well enough they have a 50% chance to 1v1 a necro.

Bunker Eles have always cheesed out Thieves (especially tourney Thieves which is what you’re describing) and the image of Necros is distorted by the fact that most people have zero clue how to play Necro nor how to manage their own or enemy cooldowns.

http://www.twitch.tv/demonold/c/4988399

This is a pretty accurate picture of what’ll happen to an Ele that engages a solo Nec assuming the Nec has a working brain.

I agree with the thread poster but the reality is it’s going to be impossible to discuss the issue because there are too many inexperienced players choking the thread with replies. I mean no ill will whatsoever but this is the difficulty of having a purely public free for all forum.

Steal has the same issue that IP (for Engineer) does in that it can’t really be outskilled, only played around to the best of one’s ability. It is overloaded to begin with (there is no real reason Thieves need to strip boons, nor is the vigor required) and on top it is instant cast which makes landing or not landing the skill 100% luck.

If Steal is intended to destroy other glassy characters so much then why not cut all the silly BS and just make it a 30k damage nuke? (This is in essence what the idea was before the Mug nerf). I would like to remind everyone that this affects everyone, including other Thieves, who are almost guaranteed to lose if they miss their Steal and get hit by their opponent’s. It is exhausting to wear down a Thief only for them to bounce back every ~20 seconds due to their excellent sustain, counter-pressure and initiative feed.

The whole thing is an awful mess of design from the ground up, Grouch unfortunately also has a priapic stiffy for the class thanks to the company he keeps so it’s incredibly difficult to get sensible balance passes pushed through. (I have no idea what the flanking strike change was supposed to accomplish).

Take Doom sigils (you should be using these anyway for heal denial elsewhere, ride this gravy train til they inevitably get nerfed).

Elementalists of any variety aren’t that difficult, your offensive cooldowns outpace their defensive ones. Use F1 in Fire/Air and F2 once he comes out of water. D/D has very little kill damage outside of burning. Most Elementalists will use skills without really thinking about it so hold on your distortion even if you get CCed, they’ll often have no real follow up.

If you want to keep greatsword just abuse your range and ledge potential since dagger mainhand Eles basically can’t do anything about it.

glock.6590:

Geomancy- doom is also over the top. If doom sigil didint exist, warrior would be in a decent stop right now and D/D ele wouldnt be that strong.

Yeah I’m not a huge fan of Doom either. The poison is longer than a majority of weapon skills.

Staff is the Mesmer’s weapon ne plus ultra. It has an excellent mix of mobility, disengage, denial, defense, offense, utility and damage. I would say it is probably the most powerful and complete single set of weapon skills in the game. Every skill on the weapon is multi-purpose and skill-capped. (Even staff #4 can be used offensively due to the confusion procs).

The main reason (from a competitive perspective) for staff is that when you’re shatter you need to be a) mobile and b) capable of disengaging from unfavorable situations. Sword can prevent you from being melee trained to an extent but it is still all-in and it’s been nerfed a lot. GS has little defensive capability or mobility whatsoever. Staff has both in spades.

I would sooner give up greatsword than staff if I were to run sword. I usually play staff/sword + (x) unless I’m specifically asked by friends to take GS.

Lucentfir.7430:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Lucentfir.7430:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

DPS Guardian isn’t well-designed. Classes need to be a lot less like DPS Guard rather than more.

Yes pls, moar all in one package builds/classes please, kick the sacrifice from other specs already ;P

Yah, I seriously don’t understand the hate for Medi Guard. It is one of the more high risk-high reward builds out there. It’s strong but has several big weaknesses. It’s not like trip kit of D/D Eles that have an answer to everything.

Also, I’m getting really fed up with people not reading the full post before responding. It’s obvious because some of you are referring to things that have already been addressed.

I am not saying Med Guard isn’t high risk/reward (in a sense) I am saying that its actual in-combat design is poor, constant instant cast teleports creates an arms race situation that favors high invulnerability uptime. It is the exact same design motif with sword Thief which warped the game in a negative direction for so long.

If ArenaNet is afraid of ledgers they need to reduce the power of range, not create porting assassin specs to effectively shut them out of the game. This is what they did with HGH back when it was overbearing and it worked just fine. For a game that is based on capture points it is focused far too much on the strength of range and kiting to begin with.

Then you should just say sword guardians only then. Since non sword builds don’t have any constant/frequent teleports, and if they do have a teleport it’s just JI , which hovers around a 36 s CD to kitten , thief is a different issue, and how are you even comparing a sword thief with flashing blade , when Thieves have a large array of teleports, ranging from shortbow 5(No CD, int cost), Shadow step, Infiltrator strike/Shadow return(init cost, no CD,immoblize, condi remove), steal, signet of Agility, those are all teleports/ Shadow steps, 2 of them not needing a target.

I am comparing them because they fulfil almost the exact same role. Sword Thief has been much more popular than Med Guard because it is simply more powerful (particularly w/r/t mobility), however it is very easy for that to change, apex setups have been dumped in the gutter and vice versa with ArenaNet’s volatile and unpredictable patch cycle. The biggest difference between the two is that Med Guard is completely all-in, meaning it suffers in team fights and can’t escape unfavorable matchups. If this ever changes we will just have a different flavor of Sword Thief to deal with.

Basically the design of instantly blinking around with innate blocks and dodges is bogus. I know why it exists and I’m saying that ArenaNet is completely wrong-headed in promoting these types of setups.

Ranger shortbow was mandatory for the better part of two whole years. I actually don’t think I saw a competitive Ranger with a longbow during that time even once. In fact most high level Rangers didn’t use bows full stop lol.

It’s just the cycle of wild nerfs/buffs, if you think the devs have any clear vision whatsoever for where they want the Ranger or any other class to be well I have some marshland in Florida to sell you muffin.

They described Mesmer as a “ranged 1 v. 1 DPS dealer” not so long back, please if someone can even translate that to English from Anetese I’ll be in your eternal servitude.

Carighan.6758:

@shimmerlessEU
It has nothing to do with the limitations of the Mesmer class, more with what the PU-specs (specifically Blackwater) actually do: Punish 1v1 combat.

In random games, and in free WvW roaming, there’s a neverending supply of people happily throwing themselves at every 1v1 fight, meanwhile telling themselves that this has anything to do with skill instead of build wars.

Ofc, PU shoves that right back into their face: Here’s a build which yes, quite clearly dominates 1v1.

And?
As you say, it’s not being played much outside of an entirely unsupported game format which is actually quite actively discouraged by the game. The reason is that in the end, PU needs buffs. Quite significantly. Or well, the trait is good. But the specs we can build around them, high-stealth-builds, they’re rubbish outside of 1v1. They don’t bring anything other specs don’t bring worlds better.

Sticking with it since Torch was the weapon I picked up out of liking the graphics in the beta, long before PU was ever buffed. Yet on a pure “sense”-level, playing PU is only ever worth it if you run around punishing roamers. Which is fun, especially when you read on the forums how “srsbz” they think that whole style is. :P

PU is not invincible 1 v. 1, it isn’t even the strongest 1 v. 1 Mesmer spec — there are others which are borderline unkillable and put out much scarier damage. I sort of understand where you’re coming from but I don’t think that’s cause to give PU buffs (it was buffed once before already). As far as Mesmer traits go it serves its niche quite well. Like I said it’s weak in capture points for basically the same reason no one plays Shadow Arts, it isn’t just the overdependence on stealth it’s that you give up too much to get to what are essentially selfish traits. 1 v. 1 is semi-supported in home bunkers but you can get much better results with other specs that don’t cripple your ability to keep points capped.

The appeal of PU is mostly based on the hype, the fact that it’s very simple to pick up and play and it pubstomps decently enough for the effort put in. The typical PU setup does counter some other specs (for instance DPS Guard and most crit-heavy melees) pretty hard which may give it some theoretical team value but it’s usually because of the clone death traits, not PU itself. If more people understood our class and what it’s actually capable of I really doubt the lustre around PU would last long.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Lucentfir.7430:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

DPS Guardian isn’t well-designed. Classes need to be a lot less like DPS Guard rather than more.

Yes pls, moar all in one package builds/classes please, kick the sacrifice from other specs already ;P

Yah, I seriously don’t understand the hate for Medi Guard. It is one of the more high risk-high reward builds out there. It’s strong but has several big weaknesses. It’s not like trip kit of D/D Eles that have an answer to everything.

Also, I’m getting really fed up with people not reading the full post before responding. It’s obvious because some of you are referring to things that have already been addressed.

I am not saying Med Guard isn’t high risk/reward (in a sense) I am saying that its actual in-combat design is poor, constant instant cast teleports creates an arms race situation that favors high invulnerability uptime. It is the exact same design motif with sword Thief which warped the game in a negative direction for so long.

If ArenaNet is afraid of ledgers they need to reduce the power of range, not create porting assassin specs to effectively shut them out of the game. This is what they did with HGH back when it was overbearing and it worked just fine. For a game that is based on capture points it is focused far too much on the strength of range and kiting to begin with.

To get this out of the way, playing PU doesn’t make you anything. If you’re going into the game with the intent to troll and cause mischief then that’s on you, the Mesmer has nothing to do with it.

In my humble opinion if there’s any problem with PU and similar specs it’s that you won’t really learn about your class at all. There is some mild play in using endurance offensively vs. defensively, but this goes for glkittenter as well. I disagree with Pyro in that sense, I think the skill cap on these types of specs is low and that is what hurts the player behind them ultimately.

There is also an important point that has been raised: if these specs are so good to warrant scorn, why don’t teams run them? Well there are many reasons for that but it boils down ultimately to the limitations of the Mesmer class. I think there are some non-shatter setups that could potentially have team value as home bunkers but PU isn’t one of them. It’s too easy to counter, it doesn’t bring much of anything to the team and the heavy reliance on stealth is a major hindrance in capture points.

DPS Guardian isn’t well-designed. Classes need to be a lot less like DPS Guard rather than more.

Eurantien.4632:

Every class has an edge in orb denial and orb running! No class is the end all be all of orb running. Every class to run the orb or pick up the orb has counterplay at all of its steps. Imo, SW should be in team queue. It’s the only map with a truly meaningful secondary objective that actually shakes the game up from it’s standard pure conquest gameplay. The main reason is that the orb can decap nodes, which can be insanely useful to counter things like the bunker meta we have been victim to for so long.

I’d love to hear what advantage my class has in orb running? Thankfully it’s “balanced out” (lol) by the fact that I can run incredibly obnoxious specs for “orb denial” if I really want to.

The map has absolutely no semblance of balance whatsoever, the things that cancel or don’t cancel orb are 100% random and all over the place.

and Spirit Watch still hasn’t been removed. The most broken thing by far to affect competitive gameplay by far and the devs haven’t even made the effort to fix it rofl.

I’ve waited so long for this thread… getting 2012 deja vu…

Riot also does regular patches that are sane, measured and balanced around the competitive level (and they even hold back on releases for event servers until competitions are over). It is an immense cry away from GW2’s penchant for plopping out some absurd “miracle patch” every half a year that completely reworks the entire game.

Turret Engineer sucks and it isn’t even remotely close to being the reason Engineer is such an overbearing and silly class. Wish people would stop bringing it up whenever the word “Engineer” is mentioned honestly.

Blackhat.4016:

shimmerlessEU.6841:

I find it terribly amusing that Blackhat.4016 is posting in here when he was basically a huge voice in getting Mesmer sword gutted. The sorry excuses for players in this game have zero shame.

I play every single profession in the game so I don’t mind if skills gets nerfed/buffed. If something doesn’t feel properly balanced to me I post it on the forums and ask for other opinions (although I’ve been away for quite some time). I also posted about stealth before Anet introduced anti-stealth skills and other skills/game mechanics like a lot of players did. That doesn’t mean Anet listens to me at all. It was the most logical thing to do imo, even if it means some players disagree.

As you can see I still play the profession and use the weapon. In fact, it’s my most used profession since I started playing again.

Congrats, so you (loudly and repeatedly) offered your opinions on a game you don’t really play anyway. You can pass me the shovel if you’d like to stop digging yourself deeper muffin.

I have a pretty good “fix” for it in mind, I’ll tell you that.

If you want to play standard shatter just take cleanse mantra. It’s a lot less expensive than Null Field and you can get rid of small conditions you’d otherwise tough out.

I find it terribly amusing that Blackhat.4016 is posting in here when he was basically a huge voice in getting Mesmer sword gutted. The sorry excuses for players in this game have zero shame.

The Mesmers who tended to call staff a “crutch” no longer play any more. I wonder why?

When you have the capability to at least start to defend yourself from porters and melee aggressors you are taking a lot of stress away from your team in needing to peel for you. Greatsword is almost completely monodimensional (although you can use some of the defensive shatters from range) whereas staff can be defense and offensive, can be used to reposition, can grant heal denial, can serve in 1v1 and 2v2s up to 5v5s without any fall-off.

Staff is an incredibly versatile weapon and far more resilient than greatsword (which can be countered on the whole pretty easily bar things like stealth opener cheese). If I could only have one Mesmer weapon and no weapon swap it’d be staff, no question.

Schattenlied.4873:

I see why many of you like staff regarding your pvp setting (small maps, on-point fights, plenty of phase retreat spots…), but from my wvw perspective it´s a horrible weapon for power builds. No range, no cleave, no damage. Yes, CI+iWarlock gave me some instant thief kills but the majority of builds I encounter is not that glassy. IMHO the defense S+T provides for shatter is superior as well, while maintaining the ability to chase via GS. I´d rather call staff a burden than a crutch since a crutch should actually be helpful, and for me, its definitly not.

/hide in stealth
/charge MoD to interrupt harsh critique ;P

I have played staff for a long long time and in WvW I never had any issue without greatsword, and I regularly held my own or outclassed other greatsword Mesmers. From a shatter perspective if you are relying on your weapon skills to serve as the brunt of your burst you’re playing it very suboptimally, in my opinion.

This thread is hilarious, please keep it on the front page as long as poss.

Elitist.8701:

The reason EU runs thief/mesmer/guard comps is because they have the ability to properly rotate the guardian to teamfights and have the thief mesmer combo be able to coordinate bursts. NA runs cheesy cele comps because they lack basic abilities such as bursting down targets and winning teamfights, so they just force 2v2s and 3v3s that last forever. EU also tends to have better players individually as well. Basically its a skill issue.

All opinions I have shared in this post are merely observations, I am not biased towards any side. I am on NA as well, so no inherent bias towards EU.

-Teef Teef Teef Teef

Strong agree with all the above. I have accounts on both servers and my main is on NA to head that off at the gate.

It would be nice to see NA catch up to EU but there’s a broad lack of game knowledge and a tendency towards destructive egoism that’s holding them back.

Much like focus Mesmer sword is a total shadow of what it once was. Quite possibly the most heavily nerfed weapon in the game.

It’s less that it’s too strong and more that it’s very frustrating to play against and very forgiving to play as. The only spec that had consummate risk-reward was pre-nerfed HGH (with three elixirs plus heal) and even that was arguable since you could ledge cheese.

Lucentfir.7430:

@ Sinject

And that’s not what I’m saying, instead you put words in my mouth. Certain specs will have a much better time with other specs that feel OP. For instance the whole Necromancer with boon corruption vs D/D bunker celestial ele, necro has a because it has the best tools available for deal with ele’s strongest aspect . it doesn’t appear you have enough knowledge about the classes or game. You’re bouncing your argument from competitive conquest scene, to dueling 1v1s on all the specs you think are OP.

1v1 2v2 Tournaments PU mesmer banned? I’m not surprised, it’s a entirely passive spec that leads to a endless duels. Clone death traits apply weakness, bleed, or vulnerability if you try to take aggression on the mesmer, which they will also stealth and gain defensive boons, being Aegis, Protection, Swiftness, Regen, or Might, for each second stealthed, but there’s also the double whammy minor when you gain regen, you gain protection. So forget about bursting mesmer down when you have weakness and protection, and aegis to go through. it doesn’t work in conquest well because it takes forever to bring down someone not attacking you with confusion or procing torment block, meanwhile teamights they do not contribute much if there’s AoE condi clears flying around, even transfers.

Turret Engi and conquest mode, it’s the only spec that takes advantage of this mode since it’s all about point capture and holding. Everywhere else though it is not worth taking because smart players will simply not fight you in your field of turrets or they’ll come with a friend and wreck your face, especially if it;‘s a condi spec’d player. You can also kill the turrets, but it’s mostly not worth killing if they placed them on different ground levels.

And finally the me defending medi guard guard statement. Decent engis will wreck your face as a guardian because most of the damage you do is in melee, and engis are ranged, with lots of soft CC and sustain, consistent poison/condition application and all so they can and will kite you all day if they can unless guardian happens to be running the Amplified Wrath spec and punish them with high damage burns for hitting while having blocks up. PU condi mesmers are immortal against melee power foes you need at least another person or two if you really want to kill them. Most of Guardian’s weapons cleave, meaning you will kill a majority of the clones and get punished for it with weakness bleeds and all frequently when you want to attack mesmer.

Smart players that know how medi guardian works can beat them, with with simple kiting and dodging key attacks. Thief, Warrior, Ele, Ranger, Engineer, Necromancer all have specs that can beat meditation guardian.

Also in order for Meditation Guards to have a chance to do damage well, they have to sacrifice their rune slots for a 25% movement speed so they’re not so painfully easy to kite, as well as not feel like a slow turtle. Another thing they give up is a lot of boon access and team support, for a more selfish build. and if you go the 4 in virtues path you slash your damage so you have a little bit more team support and condi clear. Their burst is also telegraphed for the most of it.

Play the other classes you think are OP, and get a feel with them. Thieves have told that to other player before, i know I did, now i know all the little quirks thieves pull off and it’s much easier to fight them.

Prismatic Understanding is banned in those servers because the players in them are dumb and don’t really know anything about the game.

Lopez.7369:

Turrets shouldn’t exist in PvP. Neither should minions, spirits, or spirit weapons. Illusions and phantasms are fine for shatters and whatnot, as long as the builds aren’t based around them.

Developers should work to ensure AI-based builds are never viable in competitive modes.

This is short and succinct but also completely spot on. AI-heavy builds are conceptually impossible to balance: either they’re too weak to bother with or they’re so strong they’re completely overbearing and aggravating to play against. There can never be a happy, balanced medium because the skill deficit provided by the AI summons means a skilled player will always push it over the top with his personal surplus. Every game I’ve played that had any kind of AI-heavy spec struggled with this over and over when the answer was plainly obvious that it just doesn’t work in most forms of PvP.

I’m personally of the opinion that turrets (and similar specs) are weak and that the spec brings little value to sPvP. But that could very easily change and I implore the devs to make sure it doesn’t happen.

This is a very good question which I have given an embarrassing amount of thought to over many many months. I still haven’t come to any real answer. IP is of an appropriate strength for a grandmaster, but at the same time Mesmer really feels terrible (at least in my opinion) without it. I don’t know if it’s appropriate that a class should literally feel “incomplete” without a trait, never mind that it’s GM.

If it were revamped I think what would need to happen is the base damage values and effects on all shatters would be brought substantially down, and where IP is there’d be a trait to boost them back up again.