Guild Wars 2

Also, there’s a huge difference between sPvP and tPvP.

Really depends on the profession and build that I am playing.

Mesmer
Most Feared: Guardian
Least Feared: Warrior

D/D
Most Feared: Other D/D Eles (because we can’t kill eachother but that won’t stop the other player from wasting the entire match trying)
Least Feared: Necro

Condition Necro:
Most Feared: Theif
Least Feared: Mesmer

Ragni.4698:

(in reality, what i want is just variety i tournaments, i want clutch matches to happen much more often, i want to fight multiple builds of the same class, not just 1/2 per class… as things are, people know every bit of the tournament before it happens: 1 Bunker (99% guardian) 1 Mesmer (99% with portals) 2 Bursts (90% backstab thief or d/d ele) and the necro/engi filler)

Removing portal will not change this.

Macha.9160:

Yes, you are not asking for a nerf…

You just want a WHOLE KITTEN SKILL to be removed…

If that is not a nerf what es is it?

Actually, he’s asking for a whole profession to be removed.

Angriff.1935:

Battle Standard - 2 second cast time – 192 second recharge traited(240 secs untraited)- AoE Res(arguably the only reason you would even bring this elite). Banners are clunky, and it’s other effects (fury, might and stability) while beneficial are really only a bonus to the ability to res.

Realistically, the only real opportunity for using Battle Standard is when you have downed teammates. If you use it at other times you forfeit the biggest benefit that it provides. So most of the time you do not benefit from the effects of the banner, and even with the banner you need to be holding it to get the most out of it(stability). Whereas Time Warp can be applied to nearly any situation to turn it in the caster’s(team’s) favor. While both are powerful, Battle Standard is highly situational.

Now let’s look at the only other elite haste skill in the game.

Tome of Wrath - 1 second cast(to summon the book) and 2 seconds to cast zealots fervor(haste) – 180 second recharge –
Zealots Fervor, grants 3 seconds of haste and 10 seconds of fury to nearby allies
While it has some other offensive skills, the only real reason to bring this is for the haste and maybe the knockdown(which is a 4 1/2 second cast by the way)

Even if you were to use zealot’s fervor on CD both times, it takes 2 seconds to cast both times and only nets you a maximum of 6 seconds of haste. Not only that but most guardians, even offensive spec ones will probably opt for the survivability of the other two elites. And remember that guardian who is using Tome of Wrath cannot use utilities, can’t stomp, can’t res.

What are the hard counters to these elites?

jportell.2197:

yes but NONE of the mesmer changes have been split between PvP and PvE… Not a single 1 that I have found. So I still have VERY kitten good reason to stand my ground.

Also, TW doesn’t need a change. As I’ve said, it’s “requirement” in tPvP is a symptom of the problem of bunker builds and having capture the point as the only team-based PvP format.

Angriff clearly doesn’t like mesmers. He won’t even acknowledge the obvious drawback of TW in his “facts” post.

Angriff.1935:

Lets look at the other skills that give quickness(I do mean skills). They have drawbacks. All of them.

Frenzy – 50% increase in damage taken
Quickening Zephyr – the user and their pet cannot be healed
Haste – endurance is drained and endurance regeneration halted
Elixir U – randomly includes one of the drawbacks from other non-elite quickness skills

Compared to
Time Warp – 1/4 second cast – 210 second recharge – Ground targeted AoE – 10 seconds of quickness.
-Extremely Short cast time
-No drawbacks to the haste
-Can be casted from range

This is a fact, you cannot argue it. Every other method of acquiring haste through a skill, has some sort of drawback or risk involved in it’s execution. Tome of Wrath, you need to be casting for 3 seconds before you can grant haste(not to mention the giant book you just pulled out). All of the other haste skills have hard negative effects.

IF there’s anything that is wrong with Time Warp, it’s the fact that it is inconsistent with the other skills and seems to follow it’s own rules.

Why are you comparing utility skills with elites?

Ostricheggs.3742:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elite

Time warp has a 30 second longer cooldown than…

Plague form, Lich form, Thieves guild, Tornado, Conjure fiery greatsword, Glyph of elementals (if the elemental lasts 60 seconds), Moa, Supply crate, Tome of Courage, Tome of Wrath and rampage.

It has a shorter cooldown than battle standard and spirit of nature.

As far as elites go the cooldown is very similar. I can pop two supply crates for very little effect in the same match as two time warps.

And as far as the “Counters”, there are none. Reflect walls are too situational and might end up hurting the damage output of an offensive time warp, but for a time warp laid down for stomps or rezzes it will have zero reflect at the cost of an extremely important utility slot for guardians or mesmer.

It’s too strong people…

No elite has several hard counters, which is what you asking for here.

Genesis.5169:

If they Nerf TW.
I garentee they will come after MI and Veil next.

I’ve come to the conclusion after playing this game for 3months, the community just doesn’t like mesmers and would rather them nerfed to the point of unviability, instead of learning to cope with them.

They want this game to be called Guardian Wars.

Please consider removing that first grey boxed pop-up that tells you that you are in the overflow. There is often a delay before it pops up, and you can’t do anything else why it is there. It doesn’t really provide any useful information.

The other pop-up that lets you decide to leave the overflow, leave the queue, or reenter the queue could also be less intrusive.

Angriff.1935:

Even if it were true that the ONLY reason people bring mesmer is for Time Warp, that must be one insanely good reason.

The fact of the matter is that Time Warp right now is a bonus. A “no risk” fire and forget(and abuse) button to turn just about any fight in the caster’s favor. Mesmers actually operate just fine without Time Warp. Notice how long the CD on Time Warp is? Most of the time Mesmers aren’t even using it and they’re STILL considered by many to be OP.

I would like to hear of all these elites that other classes have that can “turn the tide of battle.” At best those other elites are highly situational, some of which are COMBINED with Time Warp and abused.

All elites are no risk, and none are fire and forget.

All of the below have the ability to completely turn around a losing battle.

Tome of Courage – Can heal the entire party to full health. Basically, massive burst of healing and support. Doesn’t need much coordination. Things get bad, use it.
Battle Standard – Revives and grants three powerful boons to all allies. Basically, massive burst of boons. Doesn’t require much coordination. Things get bad or need an extra edge, use it.
Supply Crate – Heals, CCs, distracts, and does damage. Basically, a massive burst of everything. Requires some coordination to get the best use of, but still works as a good “oh kitten” to turn the tide.
Entangle – Lengthy CC. Basically, a massive burst of CC. Requires some coordination to get the best out of. Rarely a waste when used.
Thieves Guild – two powerful allies that can’t be ignored by the opponent. Basically, a massive burst of support. Requires no coordination. Use it when you want to win.
Tornado – Position dominance and CC. Basically, a get your * out of my way button. Requires little coordination. Just let your teammates know that you’re going to clear the area.
Time Warp – Speeds up skills for 10 seconds. Basically, a massive burst of damage. Helpful on other skills, if they are not on recharge. Requires the most coordination to use effectively. Can’t just be placed anywhere. Has to be placed at the right place (where all your kittens are standing) at the right time (when your kittens have their skills ready).
Lich Form – Necro on steriods. Requires little coordination.

All of the above are no risk, can turn the tide, and maybe a few can be fire-and-forget (Thieves Guild). However, TW is not fire-and-forget. Unless you have a completely different definition of that. Mesmers don’t need to be punished just because you don’t like them.

This thread has gotten ridiculous. It is clearly just another anti Mesmer thread. TW is being exaggerated just to kill one of the few reasons to bring a Mesmer in tpvp at all. Each class has an elite when used at the right time can turn the tide of the battle. Manywithshorter cool downs. TW is favored, not because it is op, because it counters the bunker builds that are the meta. So many are crying that Mesmers are op because they are required, but ignore that guardians are in every group (and are preferred in pve as well). People are complaining about a symptom rather than the disease because of mesmer hate. Removing TW not improve the game, it will only remove the Mesmer.

trigger genious.6583:

us necros can counter practically everything single handed. No one complains, why? cause everyone thinks we are underpowered. I am no pro but I am pretty decent at pvp and i can tell u once this easy ro counter stuff gets nerfed, everyone will just find something new. Guess what, not every build you play will decimate everything in your path.

Necros are very underestimated. I played against a team that had two necros that together just rolled over everyone else. It was awesome to behold.

GW2 stories get better later on, taking on the length (though rarely the challenge) of GW1 missions. The earlier story missions have better stories, but are quite short and simple to complete.

Matthew Porter.2873:

What Torqueblue and Bean said is correct. Each armor skin comes with 6 pieces that can be transmuted to a regular piece of armor for aesthetics. If you want to keep the look of the armor and find armor with better stats you can then use a transmutation stone to keep the look of the armor skin that you purchased.

The problem with this system is that it costs you two sets of armor, plus the transmutation stones, to get the armor that you do want. For those of us who like to have multiple outfits for our characters, this is painfully expensive and time consuming.

Ah! Stop telling people how to counter it!

They usually strip my conditions pretty fast though. Perhaps I should try a necro build specifically built to take them out and work from there.

I’d like to see burst require more setup than it currently has. A player shouldn’t be able to do a burst from complete surprise like warriors and thieves do. Mesmers at least have to set up by getting out three illusions, so a player knows that a burst could be coming soon. This is how it should be. With warriors or thieves, they can hit you before you even know they are there.

I just can’t beat these things. I can sometimes get them to 1/2 health, but then they just heal it and I’m down to 25% health from their conditions and damage. How do other players get through their defense, especially their book elites?

Levetty.1279:

Seether.7285:

Rainu.6871:

If it’s split so that any change only affect PvE then fine. If not then I don’t see why something that only affects a very small (I’d guess max 5%) of the players should lead to more nerfs for a class that is already very weak in pve.

I’m glad we got the PvEers speaking up in every balance thread in the PvP section. Scripted NPCs are pretty tough to fight, any more nerfs to mesmers and they won’t be able to kill anything!!!!

That is actually pretty funny because the only difference between PvE mob AI and the average PvP player is that the AI actually kills illusions. Give it a go sometime.

This is what I’ve noticed as well. The AI handles mesmers so much better than other players.

A big problem that warriors and guardians (and to a lesser extent necros, rangers, and engineers) have with mesmers is that PvE trains them to stand still and tank damage. Just keep hitting until the enemy is dead. In sPvP, especially against mesmers and thieves this strategy is not viable. It will work against other professions like them because they do the same thing. This is also why d-d eles are able to make short work of warriors and guardians and fight on a level playing field with thieves and mesmers; they dodge and move.

That’s awful. The passive effect is weaker than non-elite passive effects on other classes. The active effect would hardly be useful. Some people really do just hate the mesmer profession. At this point, I hope they buff the mesmer.

Suggested changes to balance the Mesmer:

1. Damaging the clones (including shattering) hurts the mesmer.
2. Portal has the same range as blink and also can’t cross walls or gaps like blink.
3. Time warp requires the mesmer to enter an inactive meditation state for the duration. Recharge increased by 30 seconds and duration reduced by 5 seconds.
4. Moa morph affects both the target and the mesmer.
5. Blurred frenzy applies 20 seconds of bleeding on the mesmer. Damage reduced 30%. Recharging increased by 20 seconds.
6. Temporal Curtain pull range is reduced to 300. Pull cannot pull people off ledges.
7. Iarget stands in iWarden for more than 1 second, that target is now healed instead of damaged.
8. Magic bullet can now hit allies.
9. Confusion now only works for a target’s #5 skill.
10. Mesmer armor is now capped at 1000; health at 15000.
11. Mesmers must spend boons in order to complete shatters.
12. Mesmers suffer from poison while invisible and are still targetable.
13. Clones no longer have the name of the mesmer. Instead, they say clone. In addition, they are shaded a deep purple.
14. Mesmers now take twice as much damage from warriors.
15. Mesmers cannot damage guardians.
16. In accordance with its name, null field now does nothing.
17. Chaos storm has equal chance of applying boons and conditions to both allies and enemies.
18. Chaos armor has chance of applying boons to enemies that hit the mesmer and conditions on the mesmer when hit.
19. Swap following illusionary leap will only work 50% of the time.
20. Illusionary wave also pushes the mesmer back acting as a knockdown.

Maybe now people will be able to have a chance against mesmers.

Xeron.3745:

Why ends every thread with a (Nerf Mesmer and Thief) discussion?

Because they can beat bunker Guardians.

Any chance of Karka as a future playable race?

1 copper less than the lowest seller.

It will be nerfed.

I really don’t like the way they did armor in this game. I wish it was more like the dye system where you can unlock styles. Then I could change my armor look freely while keeping the same stats. Now, once I make a set, I feel like I’m locked into it.

I disagree that the scepter is good for shatter builds. It is probably the slowest of the main hand weapons for clone generation.

Crafting

15 characters

Simonoly.4352:

Sigh. I’m sorry OP but you have misunderstood a lot about the class and how it works. As many others have already said, roll a level 2 Mesmer in sPVP and you will quickly understand what other Mesmers are doing to beat you and therefore what you need to beat them.

If you haven’t got time to do that, I recommend asking on the Engineer forums how to combat Mesmers. I guarantee you there will be many people rolling Engineers who know exactly how to take down Mesmers with the skills available to them.

I’ve got to do this with guardians. I’m struggling to beat them even with using an elite.

Hardly noticed a difference using it or against it. Apparently, there is an exploit with it, but I don’t know anything about that.

Yes. It now takes me 2-3 minutes to enter a match now.

I was in a sPvP against 2 necro that absolutely dominated. However, 2v1 is always difficult. This thread only confirms to me that some people just see mesmer (and other scholar professions) as guaranteed easy kills and get upset when they aren’t. It was the same in GW1.

I’ve lost completely confidence that this will be looked into in a timely manner. We are still waiting on the bug fixes from the patch before. My mesmer is my only level 80 character. It’s my only character with exotic gear. Dungeons and fractals are out. Wintersday will just be annoying to play a mesmer in, if it is anything like the other monthly events. I’ve officially lost respect for Anet.

Happy Wintersday Mesmers!

Hockmed.9417:

Roll an aoe class. Run events. Profit.

Or more specifically, roll a warrior, guardian, thief, ranger, engineer, elementalist, or necromancer.

Good additions, there was still a chance a player could lose to a mesmer.

Now that phantasms are balanced, let’s suggest equal changes to balance other mesmer abilities:

1. Damaging the clones (including shattering) hurts the mesmer.
2. Portal has the same range as blink and also can’t cross walls or gaps like blink.
3. Time warp requires the mesmer to enter an inactive meditation state for the duration. Recharge increased by 30 seconds and duration reduced by 5 seconds.
4. Moa morph affects both the target and the mesmer.
5. Blurred frenzy applies 20 seconds of bleeding on the mesmer. Damage reduced 30%. Recharging increased by 20 seconds.
6. Temporal Curtain pull range is reduced to 300. Pull cannot pull people off ledges.
7. Since iWarden could still be OP, if a target stands in iWarden for more than 1 second, that target is now healed instead of damaged.
8. Magic bullet can now hit allies.
9. Confusion now only works for a targets #5 skill.
10. Mesmer armor is now capped at 1000; health at 15000.

Mystiq Angelic.8193:

I’ve just tested the Phantasmal Berserker after today’s patch:

1. Phantasmal Berserker’s damage is still not fixed. Its attacks damage are still inconsistent and no where close to the state it was before Nov 15th patch.

2. Phantasms and not only just Berserker now suffers a delay before they will initiate their first attack. Often times they’ll get destroyed or significantly damaged due to delayed Signet of Illusions not granting them health bonus before phantasms initiate their first attack.

The current state of Phantasms is even worse than before. At this point, I’m really feeling frustrated by this.

I’ve noticed this as well. iBerserker still doesn’t hit reliably (sometime missing a stationary dummy completely). Also, the delay is quite a disadvantage to the mesmer. Against all other professionals a player gets one dodge. Against a mesmer phantasm, they now get two, and the second one is easier.

Usually they are really good about fixing things that patches break. Not sure why iberzerker fix is taking so long.

Kyriosh.8095:

Osicat.4139:

The 0-20-20-0-30 staff – s/p uses 20 p in chaos for staff cd,s and thoughtness. Its a solid defensive shatter build I used in some tPvP and sPvP, its not as fun as 10-30-0-0-30 thu and some enemys give you problem as you simple don thave the burst.

The illusion traits I discuss in my guide, simply fantastic stuff.

I can just reccomend shatter cat vuild for anyone interested in wvwvw shatter spec. Have fantastic ressults with it especialy after patch. The staff fix a few weeks ago and now sword leep fix is making this build alot more jumpy aswell, with some skill you can be just outside reach of ppl while doing hit and runs with burst.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat

I am interested in your “0-20-20-0-30 staff – s/p” shatter build. Do you use power or condition stat for the build ? Also hows the rotation going ? I am still low level mesmer (lv 37), after GS nerf I am thinking to use staff. To my knowledge staff ussually more on condition, so I am interested on this staff shatter build. Is it more effective compared to gs shatter build ?

Thx

For sPvP I’ve run a 0-20-20-030 staff-greatsword build with success: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgMQJAWRlwzipXUzmGZ9IiJFEXwh6B2BefXJF42FC;ToAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1sEZIC. It lacks the burst of other builds, but is much more survivable. It is generally good against glass cannons because it can survive their assaults, but less effective against bunkers. Since both the gs and staff (along with deceptive evasion) produce clones quickly, you can easily recycle them. I use master of manipulations because I use arcane thievery (I like null field more, but the reduced cool down makes at more useful in this build), and blink is a life saver. I haven’t run this since the gs nerf though.

Invite please…

I liked the story better the first time we did it on Claw Island.

All those people who were dreaming of legendaries thinking, someday I’ll get one. Just need to take my time. Maybe next year. Oh, that guy just got a precursor for a 2 hour event. And that guy too. And that guy…

Branwin.4609:

The only lesser rewards I can think of is NOTHING. You guys are in denial—- the rewards SUCKED. 2 and a half hours for a 20 slot bag and some rares and exotics that do not apply to my toon I was on? Get real. Glad it’s over and I hope it never comes back.

That’s better than anything I’ve gotten in over 100 hours of play.

Thank you Karl. This is an important issue to many mesmer players and we appreciate hearing from you and the Anet team concerning it.

The issue is definitely that iBerskerer isn’t hitting as consistently as it used to. Additional whirls are just as random as the first (getting 0 to 3 possible hits). So it is not just the first whirl. Overall, this is a huge nerf to that phantasm, making it significantly weaker in damage output than any other phantasm (possibly excluding iMage and the utility ones) and unreliable in whether it will even hit or not.

I’m glad I didn’t get an exotic greatsword as I was planning this week, because now it is simply not an effective weapon to use.

Did some testing with this. The problem appears to be that iBerserker doesn’t hit as consistently as it used to. Before the patch, it would hit a standing target at least 3 times during each attack. Now it hits from 0 to 3 times per attack against a standing target. So if it hits for 2 or less, you are seeing a large decrease in damage. Overall, you are seeing a significant decrease in damage from iBerserker, making it now one of the weakest phantasms (iMage may still be weaker, haven’t tried it after the update).

I finally did it. Being in a group without Charr or Norn made a huge difference.

What I don’t understand is, every map has other players invisible but this one.