Guild Wars 2

DaShi.1368:

Wow. Blurred Frenzy now? There’s nothing about mesmers people won’t complain about. I’m becoming more and more convinced that mesmers are not the problem.

I know right.

Sword mainhand is already a shadow of its former self – I can’t believe complaints about blurred frenzy now… an evade that roots you, can kill yourself from retal and has low damage anyway… nevermind the evade spam possible on other class weapons (ranger/thief…)

Seems like people are using the excuse of a FEW mesmer trait issues post-patch, as well as game-wide damage issues (ie, the need to shave amulets and rebalance stats) that affect all classes, to unleash all their pent up hatred of mesmers over the last few years.

I bet there will be nonsensical complaints about iMage giving too much fury and Mirror Images giving too many clones, or something equally ridiculous next.

I know – how about signet of illusions recharging shatters! Oh wow, that’s broken – they can instantly burst after using that signet – nerf please! :o

I fully agree some mesmer specific trait combinations need to be looked at and dealt with (Confounding Suggestions, Blinding Dissipation, PU, free 15% phant damage…), but everything else existed pre-patch and is quite honestly a L2P issue.

Simonoly.4352:

Mesmer is just the ‘newest’ of the current threats right now and therefore most likely to cause an emotional response which translates to rage kittens on various fora. But really, they just need to branch out with their hate a bit…….like me!

In WvW I had a Warrior dodge roll by me last week and I ate a 7.4K Reckless Dodge from that. Then I dodged a bunch of stuff but got hit by one hammer auto-attack for 4.1K. That’s more than half my health from a dodge roll and an auto-attack. It all felt very pre-ferocity and I hated that this could happen.

I had to walk through the edge of an Ele Meteor Shower and was hit by two meteors for 6.9K and 7.5K. I hated that that could happen.

Ate a 13.5K backstab from a Thief that had stealth stacked around a corner somewhere distant. That was pretty hateful.

Having a Guardian do the same with Judge’s Intervention and Binding Blade as he teleports through a wall/floor on top of me also filled me with hate.

Then there was the Ranger that spiked me for 12.5K with a quickness Rapid fire at 1500 range. That brought up a lot of hate.

The only things I’m not finding much to hate on right now are Necros and Engis.

I must find something to hate about them. Any tips?

:D not bad.

The thing I find funniest/strangest is that a lot of things players are complainig about to do with mesmers already existed for ages before the patch such as stealth bursts – it’s only a small number of things that can be considered excessive post patch.

In terms of videos I learnt the most from – Osicat, Vashury and Seven Mirror (Idc what people say about the quality of opponents).

Magenta — Grey

Butterflies — Smoke

Elegance — Brutality

runeblade.7514:

Melee Staff.

I can look and play like a Dervish.

I just wish it did more damage or had better survival options. :/

While I love the low cooldowns, I don’t like the block only blocking one attack and the phantasm being exclusively power based (single target, spike damage).

I like:

1. Staff #3 spinning block. One of my favourite skills in the game now – I wish I could swap iWarlock for this on mesmer. Such a shame that the rest of the staff skills are awful in comparison.

2. The “yellow brick road” – fantastic animation and effect.

4. Ranged hammer – glad to see the concept realised, although it needs serious buffs.

Disappointingly awful.

I LOVE staff 3 spinning block and reflect. It’s a beautiful skill. The trouble is staff is absolutely useless for damage even if running full zerker, and the legends don’t help either.

None of the other weapons and legends seem to offer much in the way of damage either – mace/axe condition play seems to be decent but the survivability of the revenant is so bad that it’s impossible to stay in melee range long enough to deal enough damage…

ASP.8093:

There’s some stuff I really want to see balanced down a bit (CI, BD, PU) but all these declarations that you can literally faceroll your way through anything on a mesmer now are pretty dang comical.

And the whole “Mesmer used to take skill!” song and dance is just sad. Sad.

I agree totally.

So much exaggeration/hyperbole regarding mesmers at the moment, it’s getting kind of silly now.

There are one or two small mesmer specific things that can be toned down to help with balance (CS, Blinding Dissipation, PU, perhaps the free 15% phantasm damage). Everything else is to do with toning down damage across the board – amulets, damage calculations and so on.

Aside from those two or three traits, mesmer is totally fine and not much different than pre patch.

There’s a bit of variety in trait choice, although whatever the case you’re going to have to work to make yourself useful (compared to power builds for example).

I’m waiting for Chronomancer (Duelling/Illusions/Chrono) which will hopefully (providing it is released with a few key traits intact) offer exactly what I need to allow the build I enjoy playing to be more effective.

Condition needs every shatter (F1, F2 and even wasting the utility daze of F3) to still make up less damage than a single power mind wrack wrack burst combo with GS or similar. And damage that will very likely not go all the way due to cleansing.

Anyway, I agree and am also banking on alacrity at this point, as well as the chrono illusion traits – it could probably be as you say the reason for the mtd treatment and could be mandatory in condition shatter builds in the future.

The hidden change which is making a huge difference to mantra effectiveness is that they cooldown in the background.

This means even without harmonious mantras, you can enter a fight with effectively 4 charges of any mantra (2×2 with a small manual recharge in between).

The cooldown change of mantras has essentially increases the frequency of use of charges and made managing charges a non issue.

So while I agree, confounding suggestions could do with a “per target” ICD identical to Ineptitude, every other so called “problem” is no different than pre patch when it comes to instant dazing.

The only big difference is having more of it, thanks to automatic background mantra cooldown.

Telekinesis.8312:

With mtd and illusionary retribution, cry of frustration applies 4 stacks of torment and 8 stacks of confusion + also deal a small amount of direct damage. i think it’s perfectly fine as it is imo

mtd is a little weak yes, but cof seems alright to me

Compare CoF to Mindwrack in a power build.

How about a 2 illusion power mindwrack compared to a 2 illusion condition CoF. It’s not like it’s always possible to get a 4 illusion shatter off…

Double the cooldown for absolutely no reason, does pathetic condi stacks and damage in a condition build compared to the insane damage of mind wrack in a power build.

Hell, compare CoF to Mindwrack in a condition build. It’s funny that the only thing CoF has over Mindwrack in a condition build is 1 measly stack of confusion per illusion – all that for double the cooldown, when it should be the go to “condition burst” shatter button.

I think the best remedy to the MtD nerf without making condition shatter too powerful (as it could have been with 2 stacks) is buffing CoF to one base stack of torment per illusion for 4-6 seconds and shaving the cooldown.

It would have minimal impact in power builds (the conditions would have negligable impact), but be excellent for condition or hybrid shatter builds.

I personally don’t see the distinction between these build anymore.

If you’ve got high power and crit (running glassy), then you may as well use mind wracks as well as phantasms and weapon skills to add up the damage. There’s no sense in ignoring other damage sources.

Then it’s just the varying level of “control” the build has – from minimal control (ie, sword/torch, no control traits) to full control (MoD, GS, Pistol/Focus, Staff, and assosciated traits).

I am firmly in support of your changes to Cry of Frustration – add torment to it and lower the cooldown to make it the primary condition shatter “burst” button.

I think 1 stack per illusion should be sufficient though, and a base cooldown of 15 seconds.

Phaeton.9582:

Sauncho.8076:

Am I missing something?

Well your opponents clearly aren’t…

lol, made me chuckle.

Assassin X.8573:

No thanks sounds like that weird ghost state from wow. No ty. No one likes down state just needs to be removed.

I like downed state.

Pulling off an insane res on an ally is sometimes more fun than 100-0ing a target.

We’re all gonna die. :o

I’m expecting it to be painfully overpowered to begin with.

I’m surprised there is nothing.

Well, we’ll just have to see what happens in another couple of weeks.

Choppy.4183:

You’ll have to read more carefully. I said it won’t do anything to reduce the fun or viability of the class.

Dueling/Inspiration is superior for burst, which is why most shatter members run it and to great effect. Ergo, the cheesy stealth buff isn’t needed for the class to be powerful, and you continue to make my point. Thanks.

Apart from PU, inspiration is actually better for survival than chaos (assuming the other two trees are domination and duelling in a power build) in pvp thanks to amazing condition cleanse and other traits giving excellent sustain.

Chaos offers better damage utility in both power and condition to boon traits like CI and Chaotic Persistence/Transference as well as the solid master of manipulation, as well as I believe offering the best/easiest method of surviving 1vX in wvw (where X is a huge group chasing you) thanks to the existence of PU. So I’d say chaos is superior to supplement burst damage whereas inspiration is superior for survival in small scale fights (ie in pvp).

Anyway, for the record I agree with you that the stealth durations of PU is excessive (I would like to see it reverted to +1 second and remove aegis, but then buff base veil, MI and The Pledge) – I don’t like using it but if for example I take Bountiful Dissipation in wvw and run into a Mesmer using PU I find myself at a serious and huge disadvantage – so I feel forced into taking it if taking Chaos and not inspiration.

In pvp I stick with bountiful dissipation which together with CI I believe are far more useful in conquest.

Torch without PU is kind of pathetic. It’s only really good for the extra condition cleanse. And with PU it encourages camping in stealth to minimise cooldowns which I don’t like.

And staff forces you to literally “jump through hoops” just to barely get a “normal” cooldown reduction.

At least with pistol you can get it with any interrupt – which if taking MoD and other suitable weapons (iwave, chaos storm, temporal curtain, F3, etc…) is not difficult and it gives a good payoff.

Pistol is the only good one.

Everything else is better off with a flat 20%.

denis.9487:

Also the pure lack of knowledge. The hate is from reading or listening from others. People still worried about clone death. Lol. Please play the Mesmer then understand what’s going on in order to fight them. It is blind hate. Because we Mesmer use stealth they scream pu. Just really a lack of basic knowledge and the riot mentality. Hate for no reason.

Yeah this is so annoying – when people complain about mesmer builds/traits when they are fighting a completely different build.

My only wish is that players can tell the difference between a mesmer using PU and a mesmer not using PU – especially now that the difference is so huge (double stealth duration and a ton of boons).

It really grinds my gears when players in game go complaining about “PU cheese” when they have no clue what traits are actually being used.

In fact the same goes for other builds – calling “cheap”, “cheating”, “cheese”, “post patch mesmer noob” or whatever. Learn the confounded mesmer traits and builds before spouting nonsense.

I’ve just taken to saying the build I’m playing now is actually weaker post patch than pre patch (MtD overnerf… )

Anyway, for the record I agree certain things need to be trimmed/balanced, like PU, Confounding Suggestions, Mantra of Recovery and overall damage from every class (shaving amulets or damage calculations).

I think they hate having to work to acquire a target, and also hate the “ai spam”.

Compare that to a more “honourable” class like a warrior or guardian.

(I don’t share this opinion by the way)

Double energy for sure, especially with the vigour nerf.

Then air or fire, depending on your preference of single target dps or aoe burst potential.

I hope it was intended because I’m loving MoResolve right now.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

It seems like the majority of players think PU is too strong. Which would you guys prefer as the solution to this, assuming the devs have infinite time to fix this?

1. Nerf PU to be less duration.
2. Nerf Stealth itself to stack fewer times.
3. Nerf Stealth itself to change reveal conditions (On miss for example)
4. Nothing, PU is fine. (explain why)

1. Less duration, +1 second as it was.

Remove aegis from the boon pool.

Still allow people to chain stealth, and burst/open from stealth as that was fine anyway – want to target balance on the trait, not harming all other stealth skills. With reveal on miss – check with thieves first, they might be up in arms about messing with that so I say leave it alone.

Also, buff veil to compensate – perhaps longer duration.

Then buff/fix The Pledge to flat 20% cooldown reduction.

serenke.4806:

The amount of misinformation in this thread is hilarious. Every mesmer these guys ever met must have been playing the infamous 66666 build.

Yeah, the hyperbole is getting a bit silly now.

Eh, what “condi meta”?

The only condi builds that remotely compete with power are the insane burning eles/guards.

Otherwise power is still top.

Esplen.3940:

I just realized Torch has a trait. Then I looked at it and realized Torch doesn’t have a trait.

lol.

Yeah but staff trait and PU are two entirely different things.

PU was fine, if not already powerful enough before the patch. Now it is ridiculously strong.

Staff trait is currently much weaker than pre patch with a flat 20% cooldown.

iMage is still bad – i think it needs to be completely overhauled to a different function.

Having said that, I still enjoy torch much much much more than pistol.

messiah.1908:

Curunen.8729:

messiah.1908:

for LB ranger it should be easy match up against condi shatter

condi shatter needs to be melee range to do good dmg (with ip) so he would try to blink to you and shatter

the blind when dodging is 10 sec cd so your only concern is shatter skills which again melee range

for melee classes condi shatter with blind its harder (works against our harder counter, warrior and thieves) but it balance as they can hit harder so 4 blinds wont make huge difference rather if they used right on burst skills.

the problem ppl forget to adapt to the new metas ans skills and play like before and failing.

Mirror heal and blurred frenzy together with ineptitude give me a very easy time against LB rangers.

I lack raw condition burst because of not using scepter, but have some advantages against certain classes/builds.

as it should be as you said melee range .so its mind game . LB can bait your heal and then burst. he can fear you and immobilize you with wolf and dog etc..

thus i think it fair game.

Yeah, though I also take MoResolve making it easy to cleanse/dodge out of entangle or fears.

I would like to have seen a proposal for remedying the overnerfed MtD and putting condition shatter back on the table as a noteworthy alternative to power shatter or lockdown, because currently it’s well below par for competitive builds.

Two possible solutions:

1. Revert MtD to 2 stacks of torment but reduce the duration to 4 seconds.

2. Add 1 stack of torment for 4-6s per illusion shattered to Cry of Frustration, and reduce the baseline cooldown of Cry of Frustration to 15-18s untraited, 12-15s traited.

Obviously not both at the same time, I think option 2 is possibly the better and more balanced choice.

Tsin.3165:

MtD was unreliable anyways, I rarely use shatter because on condi mesmer clones deal more condition dmg over time just autoattacking.

How is phantom dmg high? Its low compared to other power build classes.
I hope they wont touch PU, its our only defensive trait.

Good, in which case I hope they revert mtd.

;)

messiah.1908:

for LB ranger it should be easy match up against condi shatter

condi shatter needs to be melee range to do good dmg (with ip) so he would try to blink to you and shatter

the blind when dodging is 10 sec cd so your only concern is shatter skills which again melee range

for melee classes condi shatter with blind its harder (works against our harder counter, warrior and thieves) but it balance as they can hit harder so 4 blinds wont make huge difference rather if they used right on burst skills.

the problem ppl forget to adapt to the new metas ans skills and play like before and failing.

Mirror heal and blurred frenzy together with ineptitude give me a very easy time against LB rangers.

I lack raw condition burst because of not using scepter, but have some advantages against certain classes/builds.

I believe 1 torment + 1 confusion per illusion makes sense for F2 – it is meant to “Frustrate” your enemy so torment and confusion are perfect conditions.

Then thinking about the cripple which is available with Master of Fragmentation, it could be an interesting condition combo and make F2 stand on its own merits.

So yeah, I’m going to push for 1 stack of torment for 4-6seconds per illusion on F2, and a cooldown reduction – possibly making F1 and F2 have equal or similar cooldowns, something between 12 to 18 seconds base and 10 to 15 seconds traited.

Condi?

MtD was already overnerfed – other classes do condi much better than us at the moment.

The team swapping and imbalanced teams is bad.

I think swapping to the losing/weaker team should be allowed at any point in the match (I like doing this because it gives me a good challenge – either to see if I can turn the match around or fight against better players).

But joining spectate and rejoining a match should be disabled – if you go from playing on a team into spectate, you can’t play again till the next match.

I also like the idea of “waiting to balance numbers” when you try to join a team – so you won’t enter the match until another player has been put in to balance the opposite team numbers, unless the team you are attempting to join is losing by over 100 points?

Anyway I agree, it still needs fixing, to make the experience better for all players.

I don’t want to see any restrictions on using shatters or skills in stealth because it has been absolutely fine without this pre patch.

It would seriously hurt non-PU builds that use stealth, and make things like torch almost useless. For example prestige, mirror blade blink into F1 would be impossible – and it is a pretty high risk move anyway blowing key cooldowns for surprise burst.

One thing that adds to the problem right now is the conditional cooldown effect of the torch trait – which synergises with and encourages camping in stealth for a long time. I think this trait should be changed back to a flat 20% cooldown reduction on the torch.

Secondly Anet need to decide what they want PU to be – a source of boons, or extended stealth.

I personally think given that Chaos is the “boon line” anyway, it makes sense to have PU be a different way of booning yourself up – through stealth rather than interrupt or shattering.

So the stealth duration should either be removed entirely, or reduced to +1 second as in the past. Individual skills like veil can be fixed separately.

I also suggest changing the boon pool – remove aegis.

Regarding damage from stealth – that should be dealt with separately because damage is too high from every class – either by shaving amulets or changing damage formulas – then unless you are a tissue paper thief you should never get one shot from a stealth burst.

I find it irritating that even though it should be blatantly obvious after this patch whether a Mesmer is using PU or not (huge difference in stealth durations), enemies playing other classes still complain about “PU cheese” or “I hate PU” when I’m not even using the kittening kitten trait. >:(

It seems as soon as you pick up a torch and decoy – bam, you’re a “PU Mesmer”, regardless of trait choice… so insulting.

Hmm, sounds weird – especially if it happened more than once. Could be a bug.

Can you describe what actually hit you?

Were there any allies next to you, were you all interrupted together (overlapping mistrust), was there a magic bullet and scepter #3 plus a shatter involved?

Yeah it must be hard for rangers currently – while I haven’t played ranger for quite a few months, I can appreciate that at the moment vs mesmer it is a hard matchup for the ranger – at least from what I’ve seen/fought against.

CC conditions hurt – immobilise, chill, cripple, weakness.

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t mind F2 being “useless” for direct damage builds outside of its traited abilities. I mind that F2 is hardly better than F1 even in condi builds! We get 2 stacks of confusion from traits on all shatters, so F1 is still more used for condi builds than F2 (lower CD and hardly less damage if any).

I agree – it would make sense for F2 being made the primary condi shatter burst button – which is why following the MtD nerf it would make sense to give F2 one stack of torment per illusion standard as well as lowering the cooldown to around 15 seconds fully traited.

It would have negligable effect on power builds, be decent for hybrid power/condi builds, and be great for condi shatter.

This would give it some identity and also provide condition shatter with its much needed burst, without making it “overpowered” as with mtd 2 stacks of torment (if the devs see it that way).

I propose:

- Add 1 stack of torment for 4 seconds per illusion shattered as standard for F2.
- Lower the base cooldown of F2 to 18 seconds (~15 traited with Illusions).

This will go halfway of also remedying the MtD nerf by giving condition shatter a dedicated burst shatter to use, just like F1 is used in power.

Iavra.8510:

Things i use F2 for:
- Stripping boons (traited)
- Cleansing conditions (traited)
- Removing Blinds
- Damage when i know i don’t need F1 (rarely)
- Getting rid of illusions after a duel
- Very, very rarely stack confusion on an ele (which does basically no damage with my only condi damage coming from Treveler runes)

I can see it being used for the cripple when traiting Master of Fragmentation, but aside from that it doesn’t have much use.

Yep – traited, traited, using it for auxilliary functions instead of it’s standard function.

In power, the only reasons I’ve had for using F2 for its standard function (ie, tiny direct damage and one confusion stack) is finishing off <10% of a health bar say after unloading an F1 burst, or supplemening an F1 burst.

Otherwise most of the time it’s been for proccing traits or as you said things like clearing blind.

And then in condition, F1 and F2 “burst” (I use that term loosely because since MtD nerf there is no big “burst”) are largely interchangeable.

F2 still feels like an afterthought shatter, with no defining purpose – and yet is on twice the cooldown of F1.

Besetment.9187:

F2 cooldown is probably a relic of the days when confusion builds were a thing. Even so it is still a very important shatter skill, not just for boon ripping like it was pre 23rd June. Now it is a way to apply blind from blinding dissipation without having to blow mind wrack, diversion or distortion. I use it for reaction blind stomps now when I would have had to do an interrupt or invuln stomp. That in itself is huge.

Yes but you can also do all of that with F1 or F3.

If anything, it’s even more apparent that outside of condition builds, F2 is almost always used to apply traited effects – very rarely for its standard affect which is rather pathetic damage in power builds. That should be raising alarm bells, whereas F1, F3 and F4 have much more useful standard effects outside of condition builds.

F2 is a “backup shatter”, used to proc traits for the most part.

Condition shatter currently homogenises F1 and F2 into roughly the same thing (just a few confusion stacks difference), so it makes little sense for one to have double the cooldown of the other.

GummiBear.2756:

I do feel there need to be more clarity about that for new mesmer, wouldn’t be surprised if basically any new mesmer from now on dont even realise you make the shatter effect on yourself as well, it is literally not stated ANYWHERE.

Sure it all cool and dandy right now where you can refer to some patch notes a few weeks ago, but wht about in a year or 2? do you think ppl are gonna read year old patchnotes to figure out base mechanics of a class?

I agree – specific class changes should be in an in game mail the first time you log on to a character of a particular class post patch.