Guild Wars 2

Just a short idea:

Make it similar to One with Air

• You move 5% faster every 10 seconds you are attuned to air. Maximum of 25% bonus movement speed.

but instead of the air attunement I would say while you are in combat. Some numbers need to be lower since the ele trait is pretty useless. Something like this seems good to me:

• You move 5% faster every 5 seconds while you are in combat. Maximum of 33% bonus movement speed. The minimum bonus movement speed is 15%.

I’m not sure if this would fit the necromancer (since I don’t play mine too often) but it looks good to me. You could use the trait in every build and it wouldn’t be OP.

Imo the base stats warriors have are the reason why they are not viable in tPvP atm.

Not because they are low. In fact, they are too high to justify huge buffs for warriors. Let me explain what I mean:

Highest base HP and toughness in the game => low sustain
Extremly high damage output => unreliable damage

That’s how Anet wanted to balance the warrior but in the end that didn’t work out. While you don’t really need sustain in PvE (dodge + low heals are usually enough) and the damage will hit your target (now reliable instead of unreliable damage), it doesn’t work in PvP.

You need sustain in PvP which would mean less base HP and toughness. You also need reliable damage which would mean less damage output. That’s how the warrior should be balanced in both PvP and PvE. No more god mode for PvE and finally viability for PvP.

Until this happens I can’t really see the warrior being balanced in both parts of the game.

Tbh I don’t think smoke fields (= stealth) would help too much.

Neither would it give you more sustain (yes, you can avoid some damage but you have no trait synergy with it like thiefs) nor the ability to stick to your target. The only improvement would be stealth stomps which would help obviously but good luck getting to that point in the first place.

In the end nothing would change except for warriors to be able to stealth → stun/immobilize → 100b → stealth stomp. The combo would be so lame even thiefs would be jealous.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Feedback-Custom-Arenas-and-Observer-Mode/first

I hope this helps.

Reduced particle effects and some other things are mentioned in the thread.

+1

Sounds like a solid suggestion to me. Not the OP stuff you usually read in the forums.

Tbh I think Moa is pretty underrated.

In 1v1s is definitely OP and I am pretty sure most mesmers will agree with that. For team fights however it is not as good as the other elites and that’s probably why Anet won’t nerf it. It’s still a great skill in team fights but there are better choices.

The only thing that really bothers me is that Moa has no counter. That should be changed imo. All the other elite skills have a counter, why not this one?

Imo mesmers have the best elite skills in the game but instead of nerfing them I would love to see a buff for pretty much all the other elite skills.

Eles are a good example for bad elites. Instead of the elite skill I would much rather have a 4th utility slot. That’s how bad they are imo and that’s what Anet should improve.

Elite skills are supposed to change the outcome of a fight but currently most professions don’t have really good elite skills.

Regeneration is so weak because it’s only an addition to active healing. It’s not worth to get a lot of healing power if your only sustain is going to be regeneration.

I know about the protection problem but I didn’t want to mention it here since it is a trait problem instead of a healing skill problem.

Maybe you should create a thread for the problem (just in case nobody did that yet) to keep the 2 topics separated.

I don’t want to add any new ideas but this is why I think Anet hesitates to buff the warrior sustain (healing skills, traits, etc):

If warriors would have as much sustain as let’s say an ele (percentage wise) they would be the ultimate tanks and that’s something they don’t want after all the complaints about bunker eles.

Why would a warrior be that good then?

You can’t burst him since he has a really high HP pool and toughness (that’s how you can counter ele/guardian bunkers).

You can’t kill him with conditions since this would take ages and he can remove them (that’s how you can counter most other bunker builds).

If you somehow manage to get him low he could heal back to full HP (like an ele) and you would need to burst 20k+ HP with high toughness again. Good luck doing that.

Healing skills which scale with HP are a terrible idea imo because it would not make sense.

• If you have low HP and a lot of healing power you can be bursted but if you don’t die fast you will have a lot of sustain. (low HP = high sustain)

• On the other hand if you have high HP and low healing power you can’t be bursted but you don’t have sustain. (high HP = low sustain)

• If Anet would implement a healing skill which scales with HP it would be too strong. You can’t be bursted and you have the sustain for long fights which means you won’t be killed on equal skill level. Besides that healing power would have no use for those builds. (high HP = high sustain)

Don’t get me wrong. The warrior definitely needs more sustain. Healing skills scaling with HP won’t happen though imo because of the reasons mentioned above. You can’t expect them to have as much sustain as eles/guardians but I think slightly better sustain (which also includes condition removal) would improve their current PvP situation a lot.

Lvl 40+ fractals ele here and so far I never had any problems.

Pretty much every group was happy about having an ele with them (except for those warrior/guardian only groups) and if you use the proper gear and traits you can deal a lot of damage without relying on close combat. Close combat is pretty dangerous for every profession since most mobs in high fractals kill you really fast.

I use full berserker gear with a full DPS build. You are dead anyway if something hits you which pretty much never happens though if you know the fractals/dungeons. The damage is high and you also offer a lot of support.

To sum it up:
Unless you are planning to do a lot of speedruns the ele is really good.

I would say thief and mesmer are the best/easiest professions to farm in Hotjoins. You don’t need to be the best player to win against most other players in those games and if you happen to be good it makes it even easier.

Especially stealth/illusions confuse new players so much you could go afk, get a beer and still win the fight. :P

No seriously, there is a reason why most players use these 2 professions in Hotjoins. If you want to maximise your farming play a thief or mesmer and enjoy your free rank points.

What would be the counter to a condition that punishes people if they remove it? Wait until you die?

I like most of the ideas but usually every kind of damage needs a counter.

Condition damage? Remove them.
Burst? Invulnerability or protection.
Regular DPS? Protection and regeneration.

The “new” condition? Well, there is no counter other than waiting until you die. You can’t punish people for using the proper way to fight against condition builds.

I would like a new condition which adds something unique to the game, not a another DPS condition.

There was a really nice suggestion by Nemesis.8593 on his Youtube channel but sadly it doesn’t fit Anets DPS idea…

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Gorni.1764:

Magusaero.5740:

I’ll be trying this build and adapting it for sPvP to see how it works.

trust me, it doesn’t work. You’re too easily kited

signet of earth? lightning flash? Would it work if you did it like that?

Nope, not enough.^^ 1 immobilize or teleport is far from enough. Besides that 1 stun break (at best) won’t work too well against decent players. There are several other problems the build has in PvP. The build is simply not meant to be used in PvP.

nicknamenick.2437:

I find this funny to read..
I hope Anet will buff warriors and necro’s first, Ele is fine as it is right now.

Obviously warriors and necros need a buff more than eles but that doesn’t mean ele is “fine” right now. You have 1 (!) good build. All the other builds are not as far from “warrior tier” as you might think…

Btw this is the ele forum, not warrior or necro.

Cirax.9231:

A profession that spends deep trait points for condition removal is too strong? Reliable condition removal isn’t free, so if you are against a build that easily shakes off conditions, likely they will be weak in another area.

To some extent, all classes can build to cleanse conditions easily – some better than others, but where they are weaker, they are stronger in other areas. Unless your goal is to make all professions normaized and boring, what’s wrong with variety?

Bunker eles are great at removing conditions and resist attrition battles, but have a low base HP pool. Try well-timed burst – it works wonders.

And don’t forget about all the damage output you are losing for having good condition removal.

Kaleban.9834:

Blackhat.4016:

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

No I didn’t forget, it seemed obvious. If you consider that to be effective at damage, an Ele generally in D/D is using Fire and Earth on cooldown. Well if you move all the damage to Fire, with Earth becoming defensive, then obviously the cooldowns would be reduced for both, since neither depends on the other. And with increased damage and reduced cooldowns, there would no longer be a necessity to spam. Yes, your damage would mostly come from Fire and Air, but I think that’s a small price to pay for true versatility.

And some of those other changes may be necessary, but I think with my proposed changes you’d be fine with health totals for example, because now you’d have dedicated CC (Water) and defense (Earth) on hand.

If you included CD reduction in your suggestion then forget about what I said.

The other problems would need to be solved though. Otherwise you don’t encourage players to play non-bunker builds, you only make it less painful. I don’t see enough reward yet to get rid of the – by far superior – bunker traits and choose offensive traits instead.

There are 2 other problems though:

• No “trading potential” if you are in water/earth:

You can’t fight back once you switch to one of these attunements. A smart opponent will go all in once you are in water/earth and you can’t do anything about it. Yes, you can heal some of the damage dealt to you or mitigate parts of it but usually your opponent will win the trade. Switching to fire/air would be an option as well but your opponent could just disengage and suddenly 2 attunements are on CD while you basically achieved nothing other than reacting to your opponent.

• No game mechanic to back up non-bunker builds:

This is a general problem eles have. There is no “back-up plan” if you use an offensive build other than your high CD cantrips.

The only 2 professions who can go full offense without being punished for it really hard are mesmer and thief. Why? Because they have stealth, low CD invulnerability, illusions, really high mobility, etc. They have the potential to mitigate 100% of the damage dealt to them if properly played. Eles don’t have these kind of things. You have boons (mainly protection which you will find in bunker builds) and healing (again, bunker builds).

What that means is you either kill your opponent really fast or you are going to die if you run an offensive build.

There is one thing you forgot about:

CD.

All elementalist skills have pretty high CDs which means you will switch to another attunement once you used most of the skills in one attunement. The auto attacks are close to useless which means every time you are not switching attunements you are wasting time without really contributing to the fight.

That’s why spamming skills is so effective compared to staying in one attunement.

Besides that they would need to rework the majority of fire/air/earth traits to make them worth spending points on, reduce the base attunement recharge rate to make the Arcana trait line less important, increase the base HP to make non-bunker builds viable and so on.

I like the ideas behind your suggestions but there is so much to do I highly doubt changing some skills will be the solution to all these problems.

It’s a training place for those ones who want to play tPvP. For everybody else it is not and punishing them for not playing tPvP would be wrong.

Look at their base HP and you will understand why they got such a good condition removal…

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Blackhat.4016:

@OP

Which part of the game do you play? PvE, sPvP, tPvP, WvW? Which gear are you using after the nerfs?

If you don’t give us some input we can’t really give you a proper answer.^^

I think most people were complaining about s/tPvP and that’s where non-bunker builds were nerfed quite a lot over the last few months. They nerfed bunkers as well but no as bad. They are still viable and will stay viable unless Anet decides to nerf eles into the ground.

I was talking about the dungeons and I have tried some pvp and the only times I survive even a tiny bit is when I stay well out of range with staff or I go bunker. Anything else gets me killed.

Difficult dungeons usually mean you are going to be dead as an ele within 1-2 hits, 3-4 if you are using a bunker build. There are several reasons for that. The big ones are the low base HP, low base armor and no real defensive game mechanic like Illusions, stealth, etc. The only ways to survive there are invulnerability, dodging or – like you said – range.

For PvP I don’t like staff at all. The skills are either unreliable (because the skill is really slow or you can just walk out of the AoE) or have a long casting time which means you are usually dead before you hit the opponent. S/D or D/D bunkers are way better for PvP.

Currently bunker is the only way to go as an ele for PvP. The risk you take for slightly more damage is way too high. It’s simply not rewarding to play anything but bunker.

Those are probably the reasons why a lot of eles play that way.

Definitely going to buy a stack.

Having a free win against a thief might be helpful some day…

The guardian part was my question.^^

Definitely supporting your channel though. Maybe you should ask daphoenix.4283. He has a lot of videos about D/D builds.

Bas.7406:

We are revamping our youtube channel to better help the community. If anyone has Elementalist PvP Guides/POV Videos, WvWvW Guides/POV,
Dungeons and PvE Guides/POV Videos, Build Guides/POV videos, or just fun Elementalist videos. Please email gaming@sittingonacouch.com with a link to your videos.

Our podcasting team will view your video and if we like it we will put it in a playlist for it’s respective categories so that everyone who plays a guardian and follows us can find your guide. Our goal is to not just help our podcast, but to help every single player who wants to contribute to grow their own fan base.

We will be creating playlists for each profession under those categories. If you have a great video We will put it in a playlist just like the EU Tournament team.

?

I play Phantasm mesmer from time to time. Not enough to feel guilty though.^^

I have another example which is pretty similar though:

Back when the D/D bunker ele was “OP” I usually used it for s/tPvP. After a while there were more and more D/D eles and people started calling it OP or called me a noob for using it. (I was definitely not the reason why they would call the build OP, don’t get me wrong here^^) Tbh I didn’t really care about what the others said back then because the build was fun for me. I did stop using it though since it was boring to use the same build for months. People will still call you a noob then even though you killed them with a completely different build. That’s just the way it is. People will always complain or call builds OP.

As long as it’s fun you shouldn’t care about what others say or if the build is considered OP. Just use it as long as you like. If the build would be that OP pretty much all the other players would use it as well.

Best leveling tip:

Play with a friend!

Trust me it is way more fun and makes leveling really easy. If you don’t have any friends who play GW2 join a guild and ask them if they want to level with you!

Use the weapon you like the most since the game is about fun. Gold for your skill book won’t be a problem once you reach higher levels.

Idk if this is a serious suggestion.

Mug is a major adept trait meaning it should have some impact on a fight without being a core aspect of a thief build. That’s what Anet did with the nerf.

Mind Wrack however is a profession mechanic which means it is supposed to be a core aspect of a mesmer build. That’s why the damage is so high.

Yes, the damage is high but that’s how it is supposed to be for a profession mechanic.

*gem store not game store.^^ My bad English…

Carighan.6758:

drongas.4189:

but they working every day to fix other profesions, why not mesmer? right?

True, never seen the “Never getting fixes” on another classes’ forum now that you mention it. :P

Also, Xdmatt, that’s quite /tinfoilhat. Ofc to some degree it’s important to keep Gem Store content coming, but realistically they got the company balanced for zero sales in the gem store, able to run just from box/xpack sales alone.

You can find those kind of threads in every profession forum unless, for some weird reason, one of the professions would get a huge buff/fix without any nerfs/new bugs. The mesmer is nothing special. The professions is as bugged as most of the the other professions. It’s just a way people like to think about their favorite profession.

I am pretty sure Anet expected profit from the game store.

Zero sales = costs because they have to pay the employees working on gem store content and they also have to pay for a lot of other things related to the gem store.

Anet would not pay for a gem store unless they expect profit.

Besides that I highly doubt box/xpack sales are enough to pay their bills right now. Usually box/xpack sales are high right after the game release and decrease over time which means they would be low now. That’s where the gem store helps because you can generate income even after the release. The huge amount of new content in the gem store every patch shows that spending the money on it seems to be worth it.

I hope this makes sense even though my English is pretty bad.^^

@OP

Which part of the game do you play? PvE, sPvP, tPvP, WvW? Which gear are you using after the nerfs?

If you don’t give us some input we can’t really give you a proper answer.^^

I think most people were complaining about s/tPvP and that’s where non-bunker builds were nerfed quite a lot over the last few months. They nerfed bunkers as well but no as bad. They are still viable and will stay viable unless Anet decides to nerf eles into the ground.

Tbh the bug fixes other professions got are not even worth creating a thread. There is no need to go crazy about every little thing Anet does (or in this case doesn’t do).

Just wait for the “big” patch and hope for some proper fixes.

Tbh I don’t think we could discuss all the problems in this thread. There have been several threads on each profession which means you can’t really give a short answer to your question.

For necros some of the key problems imo are:
Low mobility, low Stability uptime, most builds are condition based
=> opponents are usually faster, hard CC works very well against necros and finishing an opponent is difficult, conditions can be removed before they deal damage (which can be a problem sometimes)

The only problem about guardians is their mobility imo. The rest of their kit is really balanced and useful.

Not sure about the other 2.

Thiefs can be pretty good for roaming (if your team needs a solo roamer), even after their recent nerfs. They aren’t that horrible imo but I am definitely not a pro when it comes to thiefs.

Engineers can be really strong if played correctly but they are depending on boons. Maybe that could be one of the key problems but I would suggest you ask an engineer player here.

Archaon.6245:

Pretty much every skill that is not istant is interruptable, if it’s not a block/evade/invulnerability obviously…so yes warrior’s and engi’s, you can interrupt ranger’s pet aswell…but you have to daze (Kd, kb or whatever) the pet, won’t work on ranger himself..pet’s commands are istant as far as i know..

This.

The F1 – F4 skills work like all the other skills in the game which means you can interrupt them unless they are instant.

Penguin.5197:

Most likely why boons are powerful are because most they are usually given to the naturally weaker classes. Take the usual guardian vs warrior comparison. Both nearly the same except with warrior having t1 base hp and guardian having t3 base hp. In a normal fight, warriors have the advantage but during that time those boons are up the advantage is reversed. Then its up to the boonless classes to find a way to overcome those boons, or get help from boon stripping classes, and if they do the advantage switches again.
As for boons if they are really overpowered or not, I couldn’t say but they definitely have to be strong enough to give the user an advantage. I’m just throwing my thoughts out there.

That’s true.

Eles would be another good example.

• Defense? Low base armor and low base HP but a good amount of protection.
• Sustain? Good heals and high regen uptime.
• Damage? Ok fury uptime and a good amount of might stacks.
• Mobility? Some skills but also swiftness.

Take away the boons and all that’s left is a 1 shot kill with good heals and some movement skills. It would be the most useless profession in the game.

That’s why balancing parts of the game which affect all professions is pretty difficult.

milo.6942:

Blackhat.4016:

I would add 2 more things to make the matches easier to watch for viewers:

• Cast bars: The viewers want to know which skill was used. Just looking at the animations is not enough.

• “Reduced effects option”: The spell animations are way to flashy. Even in a 1v1s it’s not that easy to see what’s going on. This is especially bad for new viewers.

these should be standard for all players

True.

I have both professions and currently I like the ele a little bit better.

Yeah, you don’t have too many builds for PvP but I love how fast the ele gameplay is. Especially D/D. Jumping into the fight, a few spells, dodging back out, some more spells, jump back in. That’s pretty much going on non-stop. The APM feels pretty high to me and that’s something I really like. You can always use a new skill which just came off CD.

The mesmer doesn’t seem as fast to me but you got a whole different gameplay here. You can play “mind games” and once you pull those off successfully it is the best feeling in the game imo. Sadly they don’t have interrupt mesmers anymore like they did in GW. If that kind of build would be back in GW2 I would play nothing but mesmer.

Really fast gameplay and you can play those mind games. The best of both worlds.

I would add 2 more things to make the matches easier to watch for viewers:

• Cast bars: The viewers want to know which skill was used. Just looking at the animations is not enough.

• “Reduced effects option”: The spell animations are way to flashy. Even in a 1v1s it’s not that easy to see what’s going on. This is especially bad for new viewers.

Tbh I think casting GW2 is pretty difficult in general.

There are things happening all over the map like it does in any esports but GW2 has 1 huge disadvantage:

The graphics.

There are way too many spell animations and they are way to flashy. No viewer will be able to follow what is happening because of all the things going on even in a single fight.

No matter which esports you think about they don’t have this problem.

• CS? Nope.
• LoL? No.
• Dota2? Nice animations but still no.
• SC? There is a lot going on on the screen but it’s still not as bad.
• …

Maybe they should give an option to reduce these animations for spectators and players. Besides that something like a cast bar to know which skill is used would also help.

In the end there is still a lot to do to make it easier/better for casters and viewers.

Not the first time.

I know GW2 was on the front page when the SAB came out and one huge Youtube channel (don’t remember the name) was playing it.

Still nice to see something like that happen. It shows the game is not dead.

I don’t think you need a certain amount of viewers to become esports but if that would be the case, 1.6k viewers is way too low.

If you look at the real esports a single player can have up to 10x or 20x the amount of viewers GW2 has. Huge tournaments would be somewhere between 50k – 300k.

GW2 has 2k viewers when something special like a tournament happens or one of the big youtube channels plays the game but that’s it.

The average amount of viewers is not even close to esports.

I have got a similar thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Rework-Elementalist-skills-Staff/first

Maybe you like some of the ideas mentioned in there. Since I don’t play GW2 too much anymore I won’t update the rework but feel free to use some of the ideas for your thread if you want to.

I especially like the rework for earth 2. Being able to let the eruption explode whenever you want instead of a delay reduction sounds better to me.

Ever? Yes.
Soon? No.

The next patch is going to be a bug fix instead of a balance patch. I wouldn’t expect the nerf before June patch.

Eurantien.4632:

Blackhat.4016:

What Mrbig.8019 said. +1

I only thought about that back in beta.

“Wait. Why am I not able to change my skills like in GW? Oh right. This makes it easier to balance but in the end we will have a lot of good builds!”

They made balancing pretty easy for them but in the end they still failed. Currently the best builds are kind of balanced but all the other builds are close to useless in comparison.

This is just sad.

Is this because of balance or because of the meta which determines the viability of builds?

I would say it’s a combination of both.

Bad balancing within a profession leads to the lack of build diversity. The few good builds combined are the meta we are currently in. The meta defines which builds are viable now and once the meta changes (mainly because of nerfs/buffs to certain builds) which builds are viable then.

Good balancing would allow more builds to be viable which would lead to a better meta.

+1

I feel like the things you mentioned are the main reasons why a lot of players don’t like PvP.

In general I expected a lot coming from GW PvP. The game was balanced and you had a lot of different builds.

GW2 is completely different. No build diversity, only 1 game mode and mediocre balance at best. Even GW Prophecies was better when it comes to PvP.

I stopped playing PvP a while ago because I hated being forced to play 1 build without any other options. Since I am mainly a PvP player it won’t take too long until I finally quit the game.

What Mrbig.8019 said. +1

I only thought about that back in beta.

“Wait. Why am I not able to change my skills like in GW? Oh right. This makes it easier to balance but in the end we will have a lot of good builds!”

They made balancing pretty easy for them but in the end they still failed. Currently the best builds are kind of balanced but all the other builds are close to useless in comparison.

This is just sad.

1. Easy to pick up, hard to master. That’s at least what I experienced when I started my mesmer (but that’s pretty much true for all professions).

2. Yes, that would be one of the reasons why they are currently popular in sPvP. Everybody loves a lot of damage.

3. Not as much as other professions/builds have but good enough to survive.

4. That’s the biggest point imo. Confusing new players (who will mainly play sPvP instead of tPvP) is the key to be able to deal a lot of damage without being hurt yourself. Thiefs are another good example. Stealth confuses new players. Combine that with a good amount of damage and you know why thief is a good profession for sPvP.

I am not saying those professions are bad for tPvP but those are the reasons why they are so dominant in sPvP and nerfed quite a lot.

That’s why I agree with you. Your idea sounds good to me.^^

On the other hand I know that a lot of engineers complain about their builds being nerfed on a regular basis and that’s why Anet should check the nerf before it goes live.

Imo it’s a little to strong right now but on the other hand those professions have to trait and use the proper gear to be able to do that.

Non-stacking runes sounds like a good solution to me but Anet would have to check if -40% might duration would make those builds too weak compared to other builds.

In the end it’s just a matter of time until Anet nerfs those builds anyway. They either nerf the runes or something else.

Imo the balance is not as terrible as it used to be. Not perfect but also not awful.

There are 2 things I don’t like though:

• No build diversity. There are 1 or 2 builds per profession – warrior. That’s not a lot to balance and most likely the reason why Anet finally kind of made PvP balanced.

• Balancing = nerf. So far I haven’t really seen any buffs/reworks for more balance. That’s why a lot of players are frustrated and stop playing the game. Yes, there have been small buffs but in the end there are way more nerfs.

Anyway, the players who still play the game will most likely stay since PvP finally is a little more fun and the ones who left still have no reason to come back. But that’s just my opinion.

Maybe some kind of cast bar like we had in GW would be awesome. Builds focused on interrupting would be possible then.

I know you can do that already now by looking at the cast animations but try that against a small Asura.^^

Imo those interrupt builds were the most fun and required the most skill back in GW.

Here is short idea which came to my mind:

Instead of nerfing/buffing there should be a rework.

Imo the skill is based on terrible skill design. A spammable invulnerability skill with damage on top of it. It’s pretty obvious a lot of players will complain about that.

On the other hand Mesmers don’t want a good skill to be nerfed which is understandable.

Instead of relying on melee combat and invulnerability the skill should be ranged. There would be no need for invulnerability anymore and the Mesmer would still be able to deal damage without dying.

Problem solved.