Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

I’m going to guess most people are going to disagree with this. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take forever to get anywhere in this game.

Exactly this.

The world is small enough as it is (as a result of ready porting after just exploring once). If anything, I’d make it less easy to teleport, but the current system works for me.

Anyhow, on topic, and serious suggestion this time:

• Remove duration increase entirely.
• Remove boons gained entirely.
• All Illusions stealth with you and stop attacking.
• During stealth, the skills change into a secondary skill, “Swap”. If targeting an illusion, swap with this illusion, both gain 3s of Protection, Swiftness and 10s of Aegis. 1s CD.
• If no target is selected, Swap will use the closest Illusion, but only once (that illusion initially gains a buff which is removed by this auto-swap).
• Swap reveals the illusion and it’ll start attacking again.
• Any otherwise uncloaked illusion will also attack.

Jashugan.4820:

there is a difference, between an aoe stealth with a radius of 240 and an aoe stealth 1,2k range… apparently i fail to see what that might be.

Then here it is, spelled out:

• MI happens to be equipped in a slot further to the right. Ever noticed that?
• PU happens to preclude you from taking CI, one of the cornerstones of what we as Mesmers even bring to our team in PvP. Same in WvW, we got a few multi-interrupts, CI is an autokill on most people in the context as standing still means instant death.
• MI also happens to have a wee longer cooldown, but I guess that’s a minor detail as you’re tabbed out crying on the forums by the time it’d matter. Sorry ,getting really tired of this constant “WAAAAH, this is so broken ;_;”

I mean yes, maybe PU is too strong (notice: not broken, but I might as well argue with a wall on that one, since PvP whining is inherently education-resistant, I know…), but even then, it is by a minor amount.

We’re talking maybe reducing stealth duration to 66% (giving 5s Prestige, 8s MI, 5s Decoy, 3,5s Veil), or maybe changing the boons assortment.

Though, given ANet’s track record with Mesmers, they’ll probably just remove the duration buff outright, then wonder why neither before nor after anyone picks Mesmers for their teams, but congratulate themselves on a job well done. And probably buff Thieves while they’re at it.

Hrm, I would say neither stealth nor conditions are a good pick for either large-scale WvW or ranked. Especially the latter.

That isn’t to say that it cannot work in random match-ups. But get an organized team or a partial team and you’ll never get any condition to stick on them, as their auto-procs keep cleansing them off. Plus stealth means you cannot do anything, and they happily cash in the points.

Jashugan.4820:

PU right now, especially with mass invis, is pretty broken. In WvW where roaming in groups is a thing i highly doubt that ppl didn’t happen to run into 5 ppl groups with at least 2 mesmers. not to mention how strong mass invis allready is in a premade group with access to teamspeak or any other form of communication, the bonus stealth-duration, made it rediculous.

So what you’re saying is, Thief is no longer the only class to stealth a group. I’m… shocked. Especially because I’m using my elite + a GM trait to do this, compared to a thief’s utility skill. Who would have thunk that mine is not rubbish in comparison as it used to be :P

Btw, that’s not “broken”.
What you state is that you consider it overpowered. That’s not “broken”, as the difference in word choice hints at already.

But as I said, how is it overpowered if Thieves can do nearly the same thing, and our skill is an Elite? Mind you I don’t advocate class-to-class envy, but if group-stealthing is an issue, remove it from both classes. If it ain’t, let us have our fun.

Because people love bags!
They add so much fun! So much tension from opening your lootbags! What will I get? Will it be green junk? Will it be blue junk? No one knows!

…

Seriously, stop it with the bags. This game is really, really RSI-inducing compared to other MMOs, as a result of giving everything in bags which are in bags which come from bags, and then having no “open all” or “use all”.

I would propose that every UI/usability dev should do the following, once a day:

• Do a full round of Silverwastes including Vinewrath and using Greater Nightmare keys on the chest (don’t have to do the main pacman run).
• Go back to the east side of Silverwastes.
• Open all bags, salvage, sell runes/sigils, open more bags, etkittenil you’ve processed the entire loot.
• Vendor all the grey items (you will already have AHed or vendored sigils and runes or you would have run out of bag space).
• Use all the MF-items.

And then have a stand-up meeting about this experience afterwards.

Do this once every day.

I reckon we’ll have either a use-all or a shift away from bags by day 3. Day 4 maybe if issues crop up during QA testing.

Simonoly.4352:

Condi Mesmer is absolutely awful in sPvP right now so you won’t be seeing any nerfs there.

But! But! I heard someone died to a Mesmer! NERF THEM ALL! TO THE GROUND!

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mix

Not really. If we want the content to be:

• Challenging for the player (do we want that? Or do we mean challenging to the character?) and
• Risky to undertake

Then by extension we’ll have the majority of players be unable to complete it or the players who are now demanding more difficult things to do will be sitting here again after a handful of runs.

It’s in the nature of the beast. If you want content which is perceived as difficult, then in an MMO you do this via induced elitism. You make it so that only a minority will complete the content. This minority then has bragging rights, they get to feel more skilled / tougher / more dedicated than the rest.
Because essentially you created an aptitude test. And to have any meaningful value of difficulty, X% has to fail the test. X will likely have to be a significant number, so that only a minority gets to feel that the content was difficult but hey, they made it.

This cannot be avoided.

Zenith.7301:

Compounding Power is just a flat 9% boost to everything, it’s better in pve.

If you assume illusions all die the moment they are summoned, you have to assume Compounding Power provides 0% boost, too.
Otherwise if you get to consider CP to be a 9% boost (i.e.: permanent 3 illusions up), then someone else can assume they can always run full-power shatter, phantasm or phantasm-shatter.

We’ll probably get nerfed. Can’t actually have Mesmers be fun to play, need to reduce all mechanics to being pointless again.

sPvPers ruining the day for everyone else, as usual.

Sandrox.9524:

Broken is when I can one shot heavy armor w/o the use of shatter even.
Broken is when i can 1v3 thieves with just using one shatter burst.
Broken is when mesmer can stealth more than thief with PU which is thief sort of unique ability.

No.

That’s not broken.

You completely missed the point of the person you cited. What you complain about is balance issues. I.e.: stuff can be unbalanced, either overpowered or underpowered.
Very different from broken.

Broken is:

• Symbolic Avenger
• Grenadier

Stuff like that.

Also, Thieves still kill Mesmers nicely. Honestly the only difference is that you now have to approach Mesmers like other classes, i.e.: care about the enemy. Instead of just HS-spam-to-win.
Mesmers are no longer thief-fodder. Or well, they are, but not as easy to kill. Still easy.

What Esplen and Tongku said. Mesmers set up to be evasive can do well at 1v1 harassment, but they cannot win the fight.

So bunker down. And hit objectives. Rezz each other whenever the Mesmer(s) try to attack, they won’t be able to make a dent.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

When UC was first announced I was hyped, but I quickly realized that it feels like ANet stopped at about 50% of implementing UC and didn’t implement the rest. Most underwater-areas were way too crowded (which was already fixed mostly).

Exactly this.

It’s as if they stopped right in front of the finish line.

And it’s a giant shame because the underwater world is beautiful.

The one objective part of armor criticism is how >50% of the female armor is insanely skimpy. This looks stupid for light or medium armor but downright idiotic for heavy, as there’s no way this’d be any help in combat.

Now, even then it’d be acceptable – if the male armor looked similar. For many armor types, male and female armors don’t look like they’re part of the same set. Plus as I said, it looks stupid.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Yes, I was irritated, and will not forget. I deleted two mid-level characters. While I can understand the desire to cater to those who struggle with game mechanics, too much of that goes on in GW2 for my tastes.

You deleted two mid-level characters over a negligible loss in power for a negligible amount of levels?

Ever thought that maybe you’re a bit touchy about this whole thing? Not everyone is made of brittle glass and falls apart the moment someone changes something. Even if the new system gives you stuff you didn’t want, the difference during leveling (the only time where this can happen) is so trivial that there’s a very good chance that if you never open the spec screen, you’d never notice.

Aomine.5012:

I think the most urgent priority for Anet to fix Mesmer is disable/nerf PU, and add an ICD for reflect on manipulation (10 sec) reflect on dodge (10 sec), and shatter blind (5 sec)

Aw how cute. Someone died to a mesmer. It’s been so long I forgot what the nerf cries even looked like. :P

Hrm, well to be fair we already deal way too much damage in PvE. Although the PvE issue cannot be solved just with reducing our damage (although that’s one component). What I’d do is something like this:

• Work on scaling encounters 1-100 players better. Bring in additional gameplay elements above X players, but these need to smoothly disable if players leave the combat area again.
• Re-enable the AI used in early alpha, where enemies would actively dodge AE, gank the squishiest or lowest-HP target on queue, etc. It was punishing, yes. It made you actively use the combat system. And provided an incentive to bring some personal defence.
• Slightly reduce player damage again.

RevanCorana.8942:

Are you really implying ranger is on par with mesmer?

No? Where did I say that?

More importantly, but this is really difficult to get through to the more vocal sPvP crowd, why would it matter?

RevanCorana.8942:

The difference between LB ranger and Torch-Mantra mesmer is that the first seem OP to ignorant players and the 2nd actually is.

Said the Ranger. Unsurprisingly.

MailMail.6534:

Having faced a few more Power Mesmers using PU lately, I must say it is extremely frustrating.

The difference between Mesmer and Thief is that thief has to be on top of you in melee in order to burst. Mesmer doesn’t (you don’t need a 4 clone shatter to knock someone down several pegs) AND Mesmer’s burst is AOE. I see issues here with PU.

Anything which hits Thieves where it hurts is a good thing IMO. I can’t stand stealther classes. This includes not liking PU conceptually, mind you.

I was happy when picking up Gw2 that on a general level it seemed Stealth was a momentary escape tool here. Not the usual, a guarantee for initiative.
However due to trait mechanics (default stealth is usually fine), it ends up that way. And that’s blergh.

So IMO, remove any and all stealth-duration/-availability modifying traits entirely, then rebalance baseline trait a bit. Not much, stealth should not be a crucial mechanic for no one. Not thieves, not mesmers, not warriors or elementalists.

I would love this to have a 60s CD and be an Elite, but let’s be honest: Our utility skills can be kinda cool. Actually useful. Our elites not. An elite to essentially get a fourth utility slot would be by and large the default pick, lack of competition and all that.

Purple Miku.7032:

In general these specializations just don’t really feel all that special due to the fact that so much less customization is available.

On this specific point I feel the exact opposite.

Or maybe it is just that Mesmer traits used to be terrible, and now some are not-quite-but-still-mostly terrible.

The new system actually has impact. The old one had… well… DE, IP, Reflecting Focus. Done. The rest was astoundingly powerful effects such as 6s retaliation on getting downed, a total game changer certainly.

That’s why the new system is so much better: Having merged so many traits, they actually feel meaningful. Instead of making 2-3 choices with all my 14 trait points, I make 7-9 picks between 3 traits each + choosing the lines themselves.

Because some pro-gamer somewhere said Mesmers aren’t viable. Fact: That means you’ll never ever win, even once.

Caelus.7139:

Yea cause being non-viable in high tier was totally balanced.

“non-viable” = I lose 54% of the time

Invictus.1503:

As a counter point, I get very annoyed by hearing “I could outrun a centaur” all the time in the same setting. I don’t see this as any different than the other repetitive phrases I constantly hear.

This has actual value however. It tells you this person just got the Swiftness boon.

Caelus.7139:

Except I’m pertaining to the fact that without the spec patch or any mention of it, Anet liked to ignore our call for our balance and being put on par with other classes. I’m pertaining to the fact of how ANet treats this class in terms of their “balance”.

Since every class shares this opinion, I guess they did, in fact, achieve balance?

I love that every time this comes up people look at the power stat only.
The reason this is being changed the second time now is that even given this stark difference in raw power, a high level char will be more powerful and – usually – do more damage.

Yes, in raw AA-per-hit damage you might be weaker. That is a concession to the lower level char to have some faint hope of being useful compared to the downleveled level 80s.

Is absolutely stellar. Double-Feedback alone gives it plenty worth, but so do double-signet-of-dom for 6s of stun, double-Nullfield, double-Veil and double-Blink. Or even double-Mirrorimages for clone burst.

Dinks.2478:

Attached is my level 80 mesmer vs my level 21 mesmer in full level 20 greens except not accessories and a backpiece because they don’t seem to exist at that level.

My level 21 Mesmer has 64 more power than my level 80 in full level 80 exotic gear and ascended accessories. That is a 28% difference in power…..

Convenient also (see my quote in the post before) how you forgot the nearly doubled critchance and the added health. Yeah your downleveled char is so much weaker…

I know this goes against what many people expect, but: This makes sense.

Give me a second. I’m not trying to fanboi here, this was a change I specifically asked for early on just after the game released, with reasons. I wasn’t the only one either, it was a fairly common sight.

Anyhow…

The issue is that a level 80, applying even downscaling, would naturally be much stronger than a low level character. Because outside of any items or stats on them, they got:

• More skills
• More traits
• More sigils / procs

It added that downscaling wasn’t actually “fair”. It slightly favored the higher level characters.

This favoring was at one point reduced, though it still existed. And the brunt of the added power still comes from the added skills and traits and all, not from stats.

Back then I posted that to make lower zones less of a snorefest for a higher level character and make it more feel like what they advertised, “Zones don’t become outdated as you level”, they’d need to make the lvl80 numerically weaker. To compensate for the added skills and traits they possess.

And this is exactly what happened here.

Mind you, comparing my lvl22 Mesmer to my lvl80 Mesmer, the latter is still far stronger. Far. By a huge margin. But she is so because of skills and traits and procs and flexibility now. Numerically to slightly make up for it, the lower level char gets a raw power advantage.

Which makes sense. The higher level character always belongs to an at least somewhat experienced player. They don’t need raw power to carry them along, they got their plethora of effects and knowledge how to use them to do that.

TL’DR: The lvl80 is still stronger, just in a different way. One which balances more readily.

Dinks.2478:

There is no reason why my decked out level 80 should be weaker than a low level character. Completely ridiculous.

That’s the thing: Your level 80 is stronger. That’s the whole point. This difference, the advantage your level 80 has, was significantly reduced this patch, but she is still stronger.
(The whole point of downscaling is to make your lvl80 only marginally if any stronger than a lower level char, so this gets it closer to the mark.)

Levetty.1279:

WvW is PvD

PvD?

Besetment.9187:

Am I going crazy or is Mirror Blade missing might stacks? I can never generate more than 6 might on bounce even when it generates 9 vulnerability on target.

4 bounces.

• Enemy
• Friendly
• Enemy
• Friendly
• Enemy

Makes for 9 Vulnerability and 6 Might.

Levetty.1279:

They both have runes but they won’t put either into PvP.

sPvP. They can be used in WvW, so it’s all perfectly fine there.

Hrm, what would I do…

• Maim the Disillusioned: Back to 2 stacks, 4s duration. More burst,steady damage is dealt via Phantasms, we need Shatter to be the burst. Plus it aligns well against Might on Shatter this way.
• Chaotic Dampening: Honestly not sure. Maybe 5% each time Chaotic Armor procs, instead of just while it’s active? But that’d make it pretty weak in PvE and much of WvW, too. Or just 3% as a compromise. Or remove Protection from it, and make it 7% per second. Actually I think I like that one best.
• Time Warp indirect nerf: No action needed, just do something about Feel My Wrath.
• Sharper Images / Confusing Combatants: Please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top? :S

coglin.1867:

In my opinion, the diversity has vastly grown. The issue right now are bugs and certain things we were informed would be baselins, that did not make it in, taking value away from specific weapon sets and utilities.

One thing I notice, is that complaints, as those of the OP, all seem to be nonspecific, and avoid hashing out any specifics, with what they feel are actual problems.

That is because as always, people are Resistant To Change™. They dislike the new system because it’s so vastly different in design and layout, and so they’d have to learn all over again. When they perceived having to copy a spec off the internet as “effort” in the old system, and then it worked, so they don’t want to do it again. :P

Confusion has runes, at least.

It’s quite arrogant to think that we (as in, the forum people) had a hand in those nerfs, sorry.

Yes we’re vocal, but the devs would be very amateurish if they’d listen to us. Remember, correlation != cause.

Hrm… while pure HP sponging is bad, at least it is some step in the direction of making PvE enemies not auto-wins. The worst one, but still better than nothing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I like that players can use portals to ease the puzzle, but I don’t think they should be a requirement…. which is what it feels like right now.

Hrm, well I prefer inter-reliance of players to game-given normality. That is, if players need to (the horror!) talk to one another and organize Mesmers to port through the JPs, that’s awesome IMO. Much better than game-normalized checkpoints.

Mind you I hail from EQ1 originally. Wizards and Druids or days of travelling the world. In a group, or you’re just mob-fodder, or am a Monk or Necro who can feign death.

I <3 that. We need incentive to talk to each other in this game, and making us reliant on one another is one of the easiest ways. Ofc, each class should have 1+ things they do for the other classes which helps with general QoL.

StickerHappy.8052:

If we get unnecessary or become over nerfed, (which anet has a history of doing) what would you do? Point fingers?

And the forums are vocal minority of the mesmer community, Not all of us wants to get “nerfed righteously” So if we do get nerfed unnecessarily would you blame those people if they get mad?

As you say, we’re a minority, if very vocal. Smart devs mostly ignore the forums. They use them as pointers, that is, ideally the community managers only convey “what”, not “how” or “why”.

So they might send upwards, in their weekly summary:
“Mesmer forums: something about PU, CS, Confusing Combatants and lots of comments about Maim the Disillusioned.”

They would not say the actual nature of the comments or suggestions. The devs are only supposed to use this as a basis of looking at the traits on their own, and then after their own investigation, if they want to, come to the forums to read about suggestions what to do with it. Or not, if they decided it’s fine.

So why would I point fingers. If anything, players talking about something made the devs do a change they would do anyhow a bit sooner. That’s all. Since this goes both ways, it’s a balanced system.

Purple Miku.7032:

It’s so bad that autorun with swiftness pretty much nearly matches warrior GS rush and whirlwind.

So in other words, I need to send the devs a crate of beer as a thank-you? I guess so.
Finally! \o/

I agree, game is a joke with all this focus on sPvP and ignoring everything else!

(hey, that was fun to write )

Toxsa.2701:

You can keep defending this BS, but you’d quickly see a dying GW2 pvp community. (Not like it’s not dying already.)

Good.
The sooner sPvP – and it’s playerbase, luckily minor as it is – is out of the game, the sooner the devs can free up resources to work on improving the actually played parts of the game.

NERF THIS ANET FFS! 4 STACKS OF TORMENT!

Overall I’m happy. However, the old Sharper Images + loss of Confusing Combatants really really stings, and removed multiple builds I wanted to try, one now and a few after Chrono comes out.

Huge shame they dropped the ability to do condi at all without shatter, especially because power can still be played without going full shatter spec.

Solori.6025:

But in this class community.
We have people advocating for everything we have be Nerfed into the ground before the dust for a new meta even settles.
why are we like this? I am genuinely curious.

Are you so scared of a nerf that you cannot fathom that people might consider their own abilities to be too strong?

What is bad about that? Is this some kind of competition, “Quick, we got to cry about the other classes being OP while continuously deflecting their whining with justifications about how balanced things are!”?

Because sorry, last I knew I wanted a balanced game. And I don’t care one bit how the other classes work outside of sometimes feeling too strong / too weak overall. I play Mesmer. I care about Mesmer balance. Which exists in a vacuum, not only in comparison to other classes (this isn’t sPvP Wars 2, the game has non-player-based targets to provide judgement on overall power or lack of power, be it gates or be it PvE enemies).

Plenty things are too strong. Usually across all classes. Some things we only have are too strong. Some things other classes have are too strong. Only I don’t play those, so I won’t comment much on them, sorry. I can only really judge Mesmer state-of-balance.

(edit)
I intentionally left out the counterpart, ofc I also have plenty things which I consider too weak for both my class and others. And again, I only comment on Mesmer-specific stuff because that’s the only class I know enough about.

DeWolfe.2174:

How about condi in WvW which is nuts.

Not really. That is to say, due to the bug Grenade Engi dominates the entire playing field in WvW right now and the dynamics of either side is who can field their engis more effectively, protect them better, etkitten

il that is resolved, we don’t even know how WvW works.

It’s not just in comparison to TW.

Other sources of quickness are:

• Personal
• Have a downside
• Have longer CDs

Guardian elite Quickness is 24 or 30s CD, 5s duration, AE, hits 5 targets, 0 downsides, even has another beneficial side effect. Yes it’s an elite, but it’s massively superior in all aspects, not just in some.

While TW has some up- and some downsides.

Preface:
When we got the new trait system, I was immediately reminded of the triplets of talents WoW has, nowadays. But then thinking about that, and how far the WoW system has fallen of its once proud goal, I noticed GW2 might actually make the same idea work.

Idea:
That idea being, each “triplet” should essentially provide 3 traits which “do the same thing, differently”. This would provide for an interesting choice each trait, as you would gain X boost to defence or Y boost to damage or whatever either way, just you could pick what meshes best with how you want to play the spec or what other traits you picked.

Example:
Mesmer Duelling GM trait. Theme: Clone generation. Traits:

• Deceptive Evasion: Create a clone when you dodge.
• Endless Assault: Every 10 seconds, your next autoattack will summon a clone.
• Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned: Your clone-producing abilities recharge faster the more illusions you are missing.

These would all essentially provide you clones. The first does it via overloading an otherwise defensive maneuver, but can in theory provide the most clones (vigor gives you more dodges, after all). The second provides the most stable income as you’re basically always going to be attacking some what or another. The third has the lowest clone production in that you still have to use the abilities, but as most have some sort of secondary effect it’s the only one giving you a secondary benefit.

This is just one – and not really well-thought-out, didn’t think about relative balance much – example. The general idea however is that each triplet should ultimately want to do the same thing, just in 3 very different ways.

This would have a number of advantages:

• Picking comes more for indented playstyle, not pre-decided “I want to be a shatter Mesmer” locking you into select traits.
• Characters become less predictable and 1-dimensional. “Shatter Mesmer” and “Shatter Mesmer” could be nothing alike.
• Much easier to balance, as overall character power gain is roughly equal per pick, meaning that devs can rely on someone picking Dueling to get 6 trait effects, 3 minor and 3 major, but the 3 major are reliable in total power gain (roughly).

I get why they didn’t want to make it percentage-based, sure (this way it’s useful even if you don’t go 100% healing).

Only now with a 10s ICD it might be equal for everyone, but only insofar that it’s equally rubbish. It went from good for everyone to bad for everyone. I’d have preferred to make it heal for a percentage, making it good for fully healing-centric mesmers (compare engi trait in Inventions!), just not for other specs.