Guild Wars 2

I also wonder how some class literally can pump out 4 digit damage numbers and life siphon heals…25. Oh wait…talented 28!
Well, fits to the overall balance.

Does trait work now that minions’ damage heal you? And if so, how much?

@MaXi: "n a massive team fight where is lots of clones, why dont you just focus someone else then a mesmer? he doesnt do so much dmg, phantasms do (the pinky ones) or why your teammate didnt “CTRL+T” someone before the massive team fight began? this complain is just way too stupid, sry but it really is…

same with guy who complain about having 16k dmg from Phantasmal Duelist in death table… wtf??? my PD does around 1700 dmg + around 450 bleed dmg, do you see how much dmg you could evade if you killed that stupid illusion with just 2 attacks?! ofc it is learn to play problem…

as i see, it is way far too easy to complain about other classes… i agree that mesmer have some over the top abilities/traits, but he is definitely not OP overall…"

1. Alt+T…seriously what idiots do you play against that this works against them. Staff 2 and decoy conveniently remove it

2. Every class needs 2 hits to kill a berserker, duelist or whatever? Really? Thanks for proving that you haven’t played some classes. Also, let’s say you need 2-3 sec to kill said duelist. Then he can cast a new one in 12 sec or simply switch weapons and get a berserker. All while the other stuff whittles you down. Rinse repeat. According to your logic a thief should eat a mesmer all the time…and mostly they lose badly.

Summa summarum:
A decent /golfclap for your lame arguments and last but not least have fun playing your mesmer and enjoy driving with training wheels with one of the most foolproof classes I have ever seen in an mmo.

pinkbunnies.4620:

poblem with clones?

I will help you… Clones always have one weapon. If the real mesmer is sword/pistol the clone will only be holding sword and will not be holding a pistol. Clones do not mimic off hand weapons. only time you might have a problem is gs/staff but then remimber clones die stupid fast so you have to be dumb to not notice your on the wrong target. O and clones do no damage so… also clones have really bad ai… clones run to you stand there and do basic attack and that is it. If youre to dumb to not see the difference then you deserve to eat the loss.

Sure, sure…now try ro find the real one in a group fight where hell is breaking loose or when you see tiny asura mesmers mixed up with an asure thief etc. Yup, sure. Take your time and look around to find the one without an offhand. Too bad that the guy just ran behind an obstacle or just uses staff 2 or decoy.

That’s the problem actually. The insane survivability thanks to clones and vanishes while at the same time packs quite good dps (just compare a berserker’s damage and a flesh golem – which is an elite skill and suddenly you will see what’s wrong).

Grizz.7045:

until necros learn how to master death shroud ;D

Uuuuh…rub salt in our wounds!!!!

hahahahaha Was a good one

It is the same as with hundred blades: the burst is simply too high. In team based play it gets even worse. At one point you eat a stun and then you eat that damage.

A thief also has no problem in group play. As soon as a player is focusing on another target teleport to him and pump everything into him. Kiting? Good luck. The thief class is, like the mesmer, playing with training wheels. It is comedy gold if those people yell to others “l2p”

It also cracks me up to see dots tickls for 100ish damage while a thief can remove in 2 hits often 50-75% of the whole health bar of medium toughness specs.

- Moa: cast it after staff 2 or simply vanishing and relocate. Your opponent won’t have a chance to react to the spell.
Moa single-handedly kills a necro minion spec because it despawns all minions and triggers the cd also the elite one plus cancels all elite forms and gives you a free go on the necro. Also in group fights it is simply deadly because you can focus on one while ignoring the other.

Amusing how some mesmer players even call it mediocre…would you like to have a class with a spell against you which puts all your utility spells on cd, stops your minion production and cancels your elite skill? I guess so, after all it is mediocre…

- Oh yeah, in a group fight your can only give your group a massive edge over the other once every 3.5 min and basically giving them the ability to roll over the enemy. Pretty bad…yeah

“I would trade any of those 3 for something actually useful to my character.”
When I read such a comment I wonder if you are either a hypocrit, the worst player on the world or just an ****.

Dunno…when I switch from my necro and play around with my mesmer alt is like driving with training wheels, especially when you play an illusion build.

Killing the clones? Good idea! Just pray that he hasn’t specced that you get a sh* load of conditions when you kill them.

Also, the clones are not easy to kill if you do not play a hard hitting dps class. The clones even survive a full channel of a life transfer from a death shroud while their phantasm rip you a new one. The berserker hits for 2-3k…while an elite flesh golem does around 700-800.

Even if you are on the mesmer…heck, just use decoy, staff 2 or just moa your way to victory.

The insane survivability combined with the too high damage for that kind of survivability is just mind-numbening . This plus the insane burst of some classes simply kills the fun in pvp – at least for me.

I’d like minions but the deal breakers are certainly:
1. Minion AI (or lack thereof)
2. Pet Pathing
3. Zero control – how do you want to play tactical if you cannot tell minions what to attack, to go into aggressive mode, defensive mode or simply “stay there” combined with “aggressive” mode

The other things which make them simply “unfun” are…
1. They die easily and have no out of combat regen – not even if you spec into Death
2. The damage is simply low
3. There is no real penalty for killing our fragile minions, thieves and warriors just run into their midst and aoe them down along the necro (Death Nova doesn’t do much)
4. Switching Forms despawns minions and water the flesh golem – seriously, the one who came up with these ideas should be flogged publically
5. Some oldschool zombies would be cool because the necromancer using minions looks more like a Pokemon-Mancer or a Pervert-Mancer simply because the flesh golem looks as if it has a huge p3nyz on his nose.

Cik: “If you like getting kicked in the nads, Necro is for you.”

Let’s rename it to Masomancer then?

brickforlife:"Necromancer is fun. You can make a ton of disposable minions to send to your enemies to kill them "
Sorry to break it to you, but that’s the Mesmer class. However, I correct it for you.
“You can make a handful of minions which are easily disposed of by your enemies however, mostly watch you how your enemy kills you or they are running somewhere trying to find their way to you”

Are you using that build only for pve or pvp?

PvE it may be ok unless you fight mobs with nasty AoE attacks…well then you have problems. I consider it as well for leveling.

In PvP I see no way to use a dagger spec there unless occasionally versus casters but I prefer staff / axe & warhorn. Melees like warriors and thieves will simply beat the sh out of you and you would want to reduce their uptime on you as much as possible.

Hufflepuffer.4201:

It’s only fair the three strongest classes (mesmer, guardian, thief) should get the strongest downed state abilities too.

Necro’s are in line with warriors, rangers, engineers

Ele’s have the worst

Exactly. ANet is just consistent .)

Nerfed soon? Well, I guess WoW’s MoP will take a huge junk out of GW2’s playerbase because getting 2-3 shotted can be gotten there as well (and no, I won’t play it). However, the game is more complex due to is age.

And that’s the problem: the obscene burst damage especially combined with stuff like quickness.

Geez…imagine Arena Net had to balance around gear as well.

The only advantage this game has is, it is free to play.

I always read that necros counter guardians sooooo hard. Seriously, corrupt boon doesn’t work most of the time because it is hideously bugged (no, I don’t speak of Aegis) and if you cannot find what seems gazillion heals/regeneration on your bar or forget to put some there while the low damage dots tickle you to death…well…then you deserve to lose… wait or are you the ones who sit in the weird cirlce on the ground which a necro put down?

Let’s see moa morph vs necromancer:
1. All minions despawn and set on cd (yes, also the elite flesh golem)
2. if he is in one of his forms (DS, Lich, Plague Cloud) they are canceled

To sum it up: your elite 1 button mash cancels out the elite of another class, and (depending on spec) sets all support abilities of the class on cd AND gives you 10 sec a free go on the necro.
And heck if you think you can dodge it, then cast it after you stealthed. Until the guy locates you again and reacts your moa moph goes off.

I cannot see how that’s balanced in any way. However, if you disagree, would you like to face a class which could put all your support abilities, your minion production on a 20sec-2min cd, cancels your elite skill and can beat you up for 10 sec on top of that? Nah, you do not need to answer.

If you have enough life force, Klinch. That’s sometimes a real deal breaker

Same holds true for the retaliation trait in the Death line (cannot remember its name). It isn’t triggered by regeneration of syphoning life either

1. Thief/Guardian/Mesmer
2. The Hulk
3. Godzilla
4. Warrior / Engineer
5. Ranger
6. Ele
7. Bugs from Starship Troopers
8. Necros (after all they are the victims of the bugs)
9. Forrest Gump
10. A pile of rocks
11. The AI of necromancer minions (Forrest and the pile of rocks have a higher IQ)

Some arguments crack me up, no really they do…

1. But thieves are fragile
Maybe if you catch them but when they are in stealth often…well, it is hard to hit them. Also, why do you need a lot of health if you take away 50-75% of someone’s life with the opener alone?

2. But when people get support my thief dies quickly because he is so fragile
Guess what? Hardly any class survives a 1 vs 1+X fight assuming that all people know what they do. Also, you always claim to be such assassins: then do not attack a target which gets easily support because an assassin would have screwed up in their planning at that moment.

3. Bwaaah waaah waaah my thief has no chance versus mesmers
Hey, welcome to the club. Too bad that their op mechanic proves to be the bazooka to your scissior.

Nevertheless it is not just a “thief problem”. The burst damage is too high across the board. If you get caught 1 sec unaware or your stunbreaker is on cd, it is game over. What a crappy balance.

The wrong things got fixed first, however, maybe that is because of the difficulty of the fixes.

I’d prefered:
1. Minion AI
2. Adding of some minion control buttons
3. Corrupt Boon

to be fixed first and foremost. But as I said, maybe those are difficult fixed and the other ones were rather easy…hopefully.

Terok.7315:

Can I get some opinions from other necro’s as to the state of the minion AI? It seems to be 75% more responsive — but I’m worried about a placebo effect, lol.

Flesh Golem is still attacking random people though.

AI in Arena Nets dictionary for acronym means: Artificial Idiocy. More doesn’t need to be said about the minions inteligence or lack thereof.

Also, why oh way are we not able to give some commands to our minions like: aggressive stance, passive stance, mark a point they should wait…and most needed “attack THIS and bloody hell only THIS target”. The latter would solve so many issues

“well said:
funfact 2:
necro’s fear is instant
thief fear cast 3 secs, with exagerate casting movement, so it is easy to interrupt.”

funfact3:
you have to switch to death shroud to access your instant fear – you need to have gathered life force for that

funfact4:
The other 1-sec fear is not instant (however, aoe)

I think it is hard to assess where the necro class’ power level is. At the moment it feels underpowered but that stems also from the fact that the class has ca. 100 bugs (that was the last count when I read the thread).

And sure, some traits are in weird places and some designs parts of the class suffer from a terrible lack of synergy

Most of all, though, pets are running on Artificial Idiocy, die quite easily and cannot be really controlled. In short: worst pet system I have seen in any mmo so far.

Maybe if all those things are fixed a true assessment can be made.

“The problem with the whole L2P argument is that it freely suggests classes using brainless burst combo should just get free kills whenever they catch someone whose block/stun break/vigor is down.”

Exactly that what Xaiden said. Also, dodging it is not that easy. Usually in some fights I crept up with my warrior behind a fight and simply did bullrush, frenzy, hundred blases and he (nearly) died because the player focused on someone else or maybe burned his stunbreakers…I know cheesy tactics but efficient.

In addition it also limits spec choices across the board. You must run a lot of stunbreakers because if one is down…bye bye.

In short: burst across the board is too high and that even without some pvp gear implemented yet.

Burst damage is obscene at the moment. It feels as if you get only 1 sec unaware by one of the big moves like one hundred blades or your stunbreaker is on cd then you are eating dust.

Which is also a shame because it limits builds (a certain amount of life/tough/stunbreakers is mandatory)

Now we only need some pvp maps which make jumping from high points mandatory .)

On a more serious note: thanks, I haven’t tried that before. It is also a nice way to make travels shorter.

Edit: Oh darn, I just read what Ascii said

Rika.7249:

One way to counter the instant repair on treb is by not destroying the treb at all. Dodge the treb, suddenly your team has 5 people, and their team has 4 people.

Yeah, and you cannot lose, if you do not leave your starting location. After all you haven’t even tried to win.

More useful suggestion at 8 p.m. tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Epidemic is great if you find a guardian who buffs himself and you can use corrupt boon and then can spread the whole pack. The same goes if you can stack your stuff.

However, the downside is you need:
1. To build up the debuffs (and lately I got the feeling they get cleansed terribly often)
2. The enemy needs to be in one place
3. (in case you use corrupt boon: the frikkin thing doesn’t just nothing)

Well, if that’s not the case epidemic is mediocre or outright worthless.

Bhawb.7408:

This idea that necros are bad is hilarious, and so wrong. I played necro in GW1, I have played necro all through beta, and since launch; I haven’t played anything else beyond screwing around a few minutes.

People expect something out of necros that they can’t deliver. Necro has always been a “weird” (read: not straight forward) class, it was that way in GW1, it is that way now. A minion spec should give you 3k armor, 28k HP, and about 1.5-2.5k DPS (depends on what you use), not including any skills, just your minions auto attacking. Condition damage isn’t insane, but is complemented by easy access to AoE conditions and non-damaging conditions (vulnerability and chill abound). Siphoning health lets you giggle like a school girl as you stab a guardian in the face and drain more damage than he can do. DS is essentially a temporary god-mode at the cost of some DPS.

Necros aren’t there to out tank a tank, out spike a thief, out damage a warrior, we never have been, and never will be. Its not that we can’t do it either, I’ve tanked 3 people in tPvP while my team goes and has a picnic on the corpse of their Lord, and I’ve treated thieves like a high school jock would treat a freshman. If you are having trouble in WvW, its because you aren’t using the ability to spread AoE conditions, if you are having trouble in tPvP its because you have a horrible team, or haven’t learned how to make a build that abuses the survivability we have while retaining DPS.

If you are having trouble playing necro, then you either need to roll a new toon and stop filling every thread with inane QQing, or give yourself time to adapt to the playstyle. Devs have posted about the profession multiple times, I’d listen to them. Honestly, its a turn-off to people who might post helpful things here to see all the negativity about the profession; personally I have multiple guides I’ve written on builds that I have personally tested and found viable in game, and have helped people in my guild, but no one wants to put their hard work out there in this environment.

Dear self-proclaimed pro-player,

I thank you for the laugh you provided (Sorry, but a guardian, even one without any points used in his trait bars) does more than 28 points all the vampiric stuff combined heals – and even if you add life syphon to this.

The rest of your note provides the same sort of entertainment. Once more, thank you. I am sure next you will tell us how great the life gain through minions via the other trait is as well (sorry, I cannot remember it because I wouldn’t pull it into my trait bar even if I’d had an extra slot)

Best wishes

In most mmos I have played there were a class like the rogue which pumped out enormous dps and the excuse was that the class would be squishy and like in GW2 they had escape mechanics to compensate.

Of course those “pros” yelled others down and telling them to “learn to play” – ironically never realizing that they were the ones needing training wheels all the time.

However, to be fair, the burst damage is just nuts in this game and it is not just the thief class. You realize that when you compare it to conditional build. Take a necro for example. His dots tick for 100-200ish. Now do the maths how long the stuff needs to tick to rival the damage (even with multiple dots) of a 15k backstab or heartseeker spam – that is if the conditions don’t get removed

Last but not least, this gets old very fast. The burst limits the choice of spec (e.g. you need stunbreakers, if you are too squishy a thief nearly 1-shots you etc).

But again, it is not about the thief class only but burst across the whole board.

@shiNn: Yup, obviously a troll. There would be at least 16-20 mesmer clones if 4 mesmers would defend one node:):)

Nice that a dev plays with the “common folk” because he knows everyone will watch him or be out for his hide. That takes some balls.

That said I wait for some death shroud jokes coming up /sits back and eats popcorn

Why do you guy get annoyed? The OP is spot on.

If I roll certain classes (for the sake of argument I won’t bring them up) I am UP.
If I roll one of the 3 or 4 classes at the other end of the scale I am suddenly OP.

Of course I was playing devil’s advocate here. I meant:
Just face it. The balancing is so hideously bad (some classes are so good or bad designed) that they even compensate for much of the players’ individual skill. The sad thing is: gear isn’t even a big factor as in gear-based mmos’ pvp.

This can easily be seen that there are classes that if you do not dodge their one move or your stunbreaker is on cd they easily take about 60-75% of your lifepool in what feels a second or even in one huge blow. It also matters for organized group play: you cannot survive that burst once focused of 2 of those.

Titus.9705:

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the realm of sPVP, I have reached level 20, and have a lot of experience in the tournaments. I can say, with a clear conscience that there isn’t an overpowered class. A few select abilities may be fractionally more powerful than they should be, but it’s far from game breaking. There is however a few classes/ weapon-sets that deserve a few buffs, but that isn’t the point of this post. I simply think the real problem is people are not trying to learn and get better. They just want to win; I hate to break it to those people but there will never be an iWin button. Just my view, constructive comments appreciated.

I hate to break it to you Mr. Level 20 but in some cases even real “I-Win” buttons exist. Moa morph versus a minion specced necromancer for example. All minions despawn and are put on their long cd (the mesmer just killed all ability skills and the elite skill) plus the mesmer gets 10 sec of a free go at the necro.

I know, I know a certain spec vs a class using a skill which often isn’t used in teamplay but anyway. That it exists says much about the current balance issues imo.

@Rieselle: Do you think the game could survive it would only cater to tournament players? Like it or hate it but the majority of players are casuals

VincentCross.6954:

Mesmer: They specialize in confusing the enemy and debuffing them to hell. So the class is working as intended.

Thief: They wear medium armor not heavy and they fight in melee combat. They need large spike damage to make up for their lack of armor. So the class is working as intended.

Guardian: Its right there in the name. The guardians job is to play meat shield and protect everyone else. They wouldn’t be much of a guardian if they couldn’t take the damage thrown at them. So the class is working as intended.

…and an earth elementalist works as intended because he is mostly stomped into the ground

…the necromancer also works because he is that associated with death, that he is mostly in said state

Point is: Your logic is soooooo sharp, really.

Why don’t we all just switch to WoW? I mean the dependency on stunbreakers (or death if not specced for it or if it is on cd) easily rivals the dependency on WoW’s pvp trinket…but WoW has at least diminishing return.

Before you get a knot in your pants, I just wanted to say that it is weird that developers don’t learn from previous mmos and that it also forces cookie cutter builds which incorporate many stunbreakers – which reduces variety of pvp specs

Sidenote: I wonder how a thief, warrior etc would react if a ranged class head a skill called “headshot” along with a ranged stun which takes away 50-75% of your life if you do not break the stun and perform a dodge in time.

You are right, then it would be balance. However, some classes can do it. Some can’t. Therefore the balance is out of whack.

Try a necro power build. You get crits with the axe 1 of maybe 1-2k depending on the target if not less. If you spec for DS and spec heavily into lifeblast about 2.5k. However, the numbers may be somewhat off. I haven’t played a power build for some time because it is simply subpar in many ways.

And as I said before: the game design of that high burst damage is limiting the ability choices because you need stun breakers, make you cooldown dependend (of your stun breakers), and god forbid you get caught unaware for 1 sec.
Makes me think of WoW’s dependency on pvp trinkets. I cannot comprehend why a designer brings himself willingly in that position.

The huge phalus symbol on my flesh golem’s nose. They may all beat me up…but we all know who has the biggest “staff” in town .)

I am also specced for Greater Marks, ladies.

Knyx.5926:

UptheIronz.6732:

Guardians and mesmers has no weakness that’s the problem while both warriors and thief are glass cannon they still die just as fast as they kill , but what will u say about mesmers and guardians when they just refuse to die , all u have to do is to play one of them , i play mesmers in tournament and i dont even die , it’s just zzzzzzzz , i mean who don’t want challenge as mesmers stand there’s no challenge just faceroll

I have a Thief and Mesmer at 80 in full exotics, I play Spvp and w3, so I am sure that is considered quite more experience then just spvp play. I have Ranger, Warrior and Ele for spvp only.

Everyone that made nerf/complaint threads, said the same EXACT thing about Warriors at the start. Everyone that made nerf/complaint threads about Thieves said the EXACT thing as well. ( “There is no counter to them” or “They have no weakness”)

There is no denying it. The thread makers and their bandwagon just gave in and adapted where the majority did from the get go.

Weird. I see enough complaints on the forum about those classes. 15k backstabs (on light armour) are not balanced glass cannon or not. The number makes adapting..umm..problematic ^^

Personally I find the high burst damage in this game disgusting. Take a warrior: if you are aware that he is coming, then you can avoid most of the damage. All is fine and dandy. However, if you get surprised or your stun breaker is on cd…then you die in seconds. Other classes can’t do it. It also reduces the viablity of builds because tons of stun breakers are mandatory. Why no reduce burst and buff their consistend damage as compensation?

I think A-Net faces another problem: imaging for example that classes which perform terrible at the moment due to game mechanics and/or bugs would get their issues ironed out and suddenly a mesmer or guardian would got laid flat by such a class. I bet there will be bucketload of complaints from those players. Just wait and see. The next patches will be interesting.

On the other hand I doubt A-Net can wait for too long to change the power levels. In October a whole bunch of new games gets released (single player, I don’t speak of Mists of Pandaria) and unsatisfied customers may just throw the towel.

@Visualize; You can argue all day long. However, there are some classes which simply do not play in the same league (I won’t name them because else another argument starts and that’s not the point I want to make).

As for your logic: If I play class A and put hours into it playing it, tuning it, read up advice in the internet etc. and have a dubious success rate 1:1 and in teamplay. Then switch to class B and suddenly everything is easy and you shred people left and right WITHOUT those hours of play I invested in class A – well, then something is clearly wrong. That’s simple logic. And that’s what Sorrow wanted to tell you.

If you do not believe me climb into a cage with a lion wielding a machine gun and look how fast you can drop a lion. Then take a club (take another lion of course) and see if you are able to leave the cage alive.
That’s a metaphor for the weapon/abilities some classes have. And yes, in some cases the difference is THAT huge.

If you still don’t believe me, I suggest YOU play other classes and see why people complain about YOUR class. Maybe this will put your perspective on things straight again.

@Sprawl: Yup, an up-to-date chart would be interesting. However, I doubt ANet will provide one because it would point out that at least 2 classes have severe design problems and/or are more bug ridden than a stray dog sleeping next to a tick colony.

Kalar, sorry, but good luck killing mesmer pets consistingly. They pop up so quickly that the low necro dps has problems to do it quick enough to threaten the source: the mesmer.

Yup, you can go into DS and aoe them (if the mesmer hasn’t moved and spread them out) but then your aoe is on cooldown and you have to use your staff. If you are cond. build, then your DS aoe will do pathetic damage anyway and it is not even sure that you killed all phantasms.

And in the meantime you get shot by the mesmer’s other stuff … and you haven’t done any meaningful damage to the mesmer yet.

It is a race which you cannot win. Especially when you use your elite skill and he just pops moa morph…or time warp (then you have some other problems).

The necro has not much going for him at the moment apart from soaking up conditions and spreading them. A kind of one trick pony.

@DJTool:
If you play it longer, you will discover more and more shortcommings. E.g. try a minion spec and see how a moa morph just killed ALL your minions and put them on cooldown.

I won’t go into detail but mesmer minions are just so much better (more dps, better AI, no cooldown when the get killed, you produce more while you fight, your minions do not need utility slots etc).

However, you are totally right when you say that the class lacks stability. I played some matches with hammer warriors and I felt like a ping pong ball. Sure, you can dodge 2-3 times but then you run out of energy and then you are screwed.

As Qspec said: “The class isn’t broken to the point of unplayable. The class is weak to the point of fast becoming unfun.” This holds true for pvp and pve (try to kill an object in pve…no conditions apply to them nor trigger marks haha)

Could you please explain what is bugged (I don’t play a warrior).

Yukishiro.8792:

This thread really shows why balancing around an ability like DS is a bad idea.

It’s very much like paladin bubble in early wow: because of one ridiculously powerful ability, everything else about paladins had to be subpar. Leading to a situation where the class is subpar in every way except for one particular, extremely powerful ability.

That’s just bad game design.

They ought to get rid of DS entirely or make it a much simpler mechanism that works similar to how warrior adrenaline works: no new skill bar, just an F1 skill with 5ish levels, with greater effects at each level. Have it give 1 second of block per bar, with the bar depleting at the rate of 1 per second.

This means at full DS you have 5 seconds of block saved up that can be either used all at once or distributed across several uses or whatever combination of the two you want. Meanwhile you can still use your normal skills and arn’t pigeonholed into using a bunch of skills that are mostly ineffective for the builds most necros use.

If DS would be soooo powerful I’d agree that it needs to be balanced around DS primarilly. However, when you are in a conditional spec it let’s you soak up some damage when you expect a burst from the enemy. Also because you are specced for it you trade bad dps for some soaking capacity.

In a kind of power build which uses traits for DS…well, the necro seems to scale just terrible with power. I still hit like a wet noodle in DS with Life Blast despit I gear and use traits for it /shrug

All in all the class seems to be one huge construction site to me. So many things don’t fit. Synergy is hardly there (except in a kind of cond. build – but the spec doesn’t go along well with DS). Some traits are in weird places etc.

However, in the end it doesn’t matter. I bet we will see only Guardians, Mesmers and Thieves and perhaps Warriors in pvp soon anyway.

The problem with the mesmer goes much deeper. This gets apparent when you compare it to minion specs of other classes e.g. the necro.

1. Fire & Forget Pets
They attack and cause even confusion and act simultanously as a defense mechanic. If one dies: no problem. More pop up soon

Necro: Pets for a weird reason don’t seem to be seeker missiles like mesmer pets. Their AI often goes bogus.
Many of them do not take much more damage than a mesmer pet and are on a 30 sec.

2. Utility Slots
Mesmer pets are (in some cases) linked to their attacks giving them free utility slots.

Necro: If you want pets say bye bye to your utility slots. The abilities you gain from the pets are, with the exception of the charge of the flesh golem and the flesh worm teleport (too bad that the pet is not moveable), mediorcre at best because they have all long cast times.

3. Blowing up your minions
Even there the mesmer is better. The necro can blow up 2 minions which do ridiculous low damage when you blow them up…that is if they live long enough to make it to the enemy.

4. Taking minions out
Mesmer minion do not vanish once the mesmer is down nor do they vanish when a mesmer gets hit by a moa morph (at least I had the impression that they were still there. Correct me if I am wrong here)

Necro: Minion often just stand there or attacking the wrong target while the downed necro gets finished off.
Moa morph despawns all minions, negating an elite skills and all utility abilities. If that’s not harsh I dunno.

5. Minion damage
Duelist and berserkers can really hurt and the dps just increases the more spawn.

Necro: Well, the damage isn’t that great not even with the training of the master talent (30% more damage) and the dps often decreases soon because most minions die easily and, as said above, cannot be replaced.

The only thing I can think of, though, is that the spawn rate of the mesmer minions should get lowered somewhat and the necro pets get some serious tweak (AI, pathfinding, player control over them etc)

Do you get retaliation from every tick of the well or just once after casting?

At peak time there is lag. Sometimes something between 1 and 4 sec it seems. If that happens I am usually very dead

One point people forget is that if a necro specs for conditional damage his death shroud will be a bad joke. Not that it is that great if you spec for it. However, in a conditional build you can just soak up some damage when it is necessary but you will lose a lot of dps…while having no access to utility spells nor do you see any debuffs. It is like fighting blind.

You see, so many things of the class design just dot fit together or have (next to) zero synergy.

Also, fighting a mesmer with conditions and a necro is like day and night. The one has a brilliantly working defense mechanic, the other hasn’t.

Rika.7249:

It’s the ONLY viable tactic to finish someone. Else you’ll just find yourself being dazed/knocked/whatnot’ed to death.

Stealth finishing is clever use of stealth, and the reward is appropriate.

Exactly. And they are totally balanced because they are on the mesmer and thief class.

Kryank.8069:

if you got beat by a Mesmer with no clones and illusions and with out been MAO Morphed as you have said above

You obviously play the Chinese version. I wonder what is better being Mao Zedong or a moa bird .)