Guild Wars 2

Reflect Mesmer(Staff+Scepter/Sword+Mimic/Feedback/Signet of Ether/Inspiration(Master of Reflection/Blurred Inscriptions)Mass Invis[Or Golem D if Asura like me])/Mantra Mesmer + Staff Guardian/Hammer Warrior/Chill Well Necro[w/ Mercy Runes]/Short Bow Thief/Bomber Eng = Pretty much impossibly duo to take down short of a running into a zerg. (This is what I tend to run with several individual friends roaming)

PU Mesmer/Thief = Obvious gank/keep ninja team is obvious

Shatter/Lock Mesmer + Condition Ele/Necro = Get them low… don’t let them recover.

Phantasm Mesmer(+asura golem if possible) + Ranger/Minion Necro/another Phantasm Mesmer = You are your own zerg… speed cap camps.

As you’ve read above your going to have a VERY rough time. Mesmers are great because they can have a huge variety of styles of play due to their diverse traits… but there-in lies the problem. You won’t have access to those traits for a while. However there is a ‘newish’ way to bypass this leveling madness and get you more used to the class.

Do PvP.
A) You’ll get to try before you buy.
B) You’ll get tombs of knowledge to speed up your leveling.

Now if your hardcore and love story like me and hate that PvP does actually limit your builds some and you want to enjoy the PvE world here is a couple suggestions.

Start with Staff and when you can use a second set of weapons, Sword/Torch. Torch will let you back off and escape, giving you a little time to heal and get your Phantasm(s) in play. Once you get a skill point, get Decoy and change Sword/Torch to Scepter/Sword. This is will give a very fun but defensive/survivable build with your iSwordsman/iWarlock and conditions doing a lot of your DPS while you kite things around, blocks giving a good spike damage and favor power/precision items OR condition/toughness if you are having a really hard time surviving.

Blink should probably be your next buy, it can get you out of nasty situations until you get some skill. I suggest Mantra of Distraction as your third so you start watching when enemies are trying to use attacks which you can interrupt OR dodge if it’s on cooldown. Seriously, learn to dodge. Phantasmal Defender can help a lot as you solo around and Mirror Images can help you learn how to use shattering effectively at the next tier.

If you want to try out WvW, get Feedback, Null Field, Veil and Portal and just find a commander and follow them around learning how it all works(You will die horribly by yourself until you have traits). Try to hide yourself in a keep/castle with stealth stuff on you when it’s attacked, if you succeed you can call out for people to come and Portal them over the wall to ninja it and get everyone’s undying love. (This also works for jump puzzles)

After that see what you like… if you enjoy the shatter skills, aim for a shatter build and traits, if you enjoy stealth and survival, aim for PU, if you like how Mantras work(they get a TON better traited)… ext, be crazy like me and try a reflection build(Learn how to use Mimic, bounce a staff auto right before using it to catch it). But most of all, don’t follow anyone’s build straight up, take them as a suggestion because our biggest strength is simply no one knows what to expect when they face a Mesmer.

Kicast.1459:

Wrong…thieves can’t reach zones they are not supposed to. So it should not be a problem for the mesmer to have it too.

Sure… but thieves don’t also summon a clone that they can swap with. Would iLeap just be summoned at where you stand and just stand there if it fails? How does it detect if it can get there?

I posted on the other thread the savage leap idea is somewhat decent, they had an idea for shooting a ball out forward and falling like savage leap that summons iLeap when it hits or touches enviroment. I do like your idea that this could be also without target to give so many mesmers less dependancy on Blink (and they don’t have to worry so much of where to put our ‘movement’ speed buff we’ve been begging for since the dawn of time.

To further clarify…
The sigils on the one handed weapons CURRENTLY in hands apply for both weapons (ie. force +5% damage applies to both). Sheathed weapons do not apply any of their bonuses at all, sigils or otherwise.

The one rulebreaker is On Kill stacking sigils (such as Bloodlust) apply a ‘buff’ on you that can only be stripped when downed. This ‘buff’ will stick around even if the weapon the sigil is on isn’t in hand however you can only have 1 stack of these ‘buffs’. So I suggest you always have at least one of these sigils in your 4 sigil slots on your ‘weak’ weapon(such as staff or focus).

Scepter/Sword and Sword/Torch

Before the April update I viewed two-handed as weaker due to only 1 sigil thus less variety. So I found the double block of Scepter/Sword to really surprise and drop people or spike mobs along with the confusion beam of doom and iSwordsman to be really effective and fun. When they get too close, I would switch to Sword/Torch, get a couple auto in, iLeap, Swap, Flurry, prestige, iMage and swap back in time to start blocking more.

Just recently I started playing around with Staff(<3 Torment + Malice sigils) and GS again, we’ll see if they stick around in my builds…

This might actually work IF the ball can only move forward or down to the target, maybe a weak lob and still spawns if it doesn’t hit the target(frankly Scepter 1 should also do this). ANET won’t do anything that lets you break puzzles and getting into Keeps more then our Portal already does. :P

I like it, but ANET is really resistant to anything that ignores terrain following. And Shadowstep/Necrotic specifically lets you step BACK to where you’ve been. Basically this is to make sure we aren’t accessing areas we aren’t supposed to, like say you summon iLeap at someone on top of a Keep wall then swap up there? Or a Mob at the top of a jump puzzle. Or a boss past a puzzle… it’s a nice thought but not so easy to solve. Even Blink and Lightning Flash follow terrain, where they fail, iLeap also fails. You just need to learn where to use it(or more when you use it in a bad spot how to still take advantage, ie. retreat swapping or just shatter bait)

Fay.2357:

LCV.7245:

Well, when I watch some of my idols, like Osicat or Pyro, use iLeap, they seem to always land it. This may be because they’re recording their content then choosing the clips where it works. But because I’ve never seen them miss the swap, I have to wonder if they throw out a ton of their clips, or if they have a better understand of the ability and they never miss it.

Basically, it’s a combination of a few things.

First, I’ll try to use the skill in places that I know it works. This means flat ground.

Secondly, I know and understand how the clone fails, when it fails. It will leap out, but it won’t go anywhere. After it fails the leap, it’ll walk at a normal pace towards the target. If you’re patient and watch the clone, you can still get a successful swap off if the clone fails.

Ultimately, you just need to keep a close eye on the clone. Watch it leap out, track where it goes. This is a good idea in any case, because it allows you to use it as a gap-opener. If your opponent dodges away from the clone or kills it then moves away, you can still swap to where the clone is and gain a bit of distance.

^

It’s all in the understanding. Play with it, watch where it works and doesn’t and how to still use it. It uses the same pathing as monsters and such so if you notice a monster path weird in an area to get to you, your iLeap will too. Like several techniques to be a good Mesmer it just takes a lot of play and experimentation(cause at this rate it’ll never get ‘fixed’ to how we like it to be)

Well played good sir, well played. I’m ever so tempted to do this if I get more character slots.

Nretep.2564:

MoR: 58.2
MoR (lowered CD): 68.1
MoR (+ RestoMantra): 72.7
MoR (lowered CD+ RestoMantra): 85.1
MoP (+ RestoMantra): 42.1

Is that MoR/P with or without Harmonious Mantras(3 cast)?

Honestly, I’ve tried a ton of condition based mesmer builds. They just have nerfed our good stuff too hard in my opinion for it to be viable. All our damage conditions are too short and they nuked confusion, our main one, to literal death. I’ve been poking a torment build and tried it in PvP but you can’t take the best sigils for it in there so it might actually be viable, but it doesn’t seem like it.

Currently the only viable builds I see for doing damage are crit-based builds: shatter, mantra, reflect. I run Knights armor if you want to stay somewhat survivable, otherwise you have to depend on utilities to live, which has it’s own positives and negatives.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Dracatis.1908:

So TL:DR, if you don’t ‘like’ Mimic you haven’t really tried it long(it has a learning curve, and is greatly better with specialized builds, but short CD near invuln if you do it right even otherwise)

I think most people that don’t like mimic have tried it. I used to run it all the time, but I just had to ask myself why I kept doing that when other more generally useful options were available. Like you said, it’s better with specialized builds, which tend to be more situationally useful rather than generally useful.

If it wasn’t for the necessity of having to absorb a projectile to trigger the block effect, then this skill would be much, much better. As it is, it’s completely useless against melee based foes, and it can easily just serve as a “CC me” sign. Of course, if they removed the necessity of projectile absorbing, either the cooldown would need extending or the duration would need to be 1-2 seconds shorter (or a combination of both) to keep it in line.

That being said, I’d possibly end up running it on my shatter build if I could equip 4 utilities.

You do know about the bounce trick right? Any skill that bounces to you can set off the absorb, so you can absorb Staff 1, iDisenchanter, iMage, GS 2, (I hear Pistol works too but haven’t tested it) so it’s not REALLY situation it just takes a little practice and attention.

DavyMcB.1603:

I never mentioned that I don’t like this skills, neither did I tell the devs to change it to anything. I’m only pointing out the fact that the devs mentioned that this skill wasn’t working as intended so I wonder what exactly they planned to do with it. What is wrong with you telling devs to ignore people’s threads? Reading skill much?

Obviously you haven’t read the rest of your thread, most my post wasn’t directed to the OP, however I think at this point, whether or not it was intentionally supposed to be this way, it’s been this way over a year and unlike many of our traits, this skill actually WORKS with them and works itself. I rather they fix something broken which has a list a mile long.

Water-field Blast is useful in a very good group ready to blast and that your ele/eng wasn’t downed in the assault. I was running with an elite tanky defense/zerg busting team and let me tell you, every bit of healing helps and this is pretty significant.

I have one grievance with specs in this build though. Where is Mantra of Pain? If you or someone near you needs to heal and/or tank some damage Pain cycles quite fast and gives you a little spike DPS. I’d ditch Mantra of Resolve and just get Mendor’s Purity trait, let your allies worry about their own conditions, your focused on healing and making them tank better(with Defender).

If you want to make this a WvW build you’ll have to ditch the defender and get Concentration(Stability is Essential for a tanky team) and ditch Signet of Ether for Mantra of Recovery. But otherwise it’s pretty good and people will love you (if they notice). You might want to go with Medic’s Feedback also and let others worry about your conditions(ie well Necro or Null Field running Mes). This isn’t for running solo though, but can do well even with just a party.

Your kinda forcing the shatter build on this, two blocks with Mimic do as much as a Cry.

I’d knock illusions to 2 and throw the 4 into Inspirations, this does 3+ things. First Phantasms get initial retal. Second your get your Condition Removal on heal. Third you get almost constant regen and protection(chaos procs when you gain regen). 4th you get faster scepter skills and make back the condition damage ‘loss’.

Which brings me to the second thing. I suggest using Scepter/Off-Hand Sword or maybe even torch. The blocks from Scepter give 5 torment which can cause them to ‘bleed’ out pretty nicely as they take ret and move(as long as you keep moving). Off-Hand Sword can give you another block and a strong phantasm or Torch can give you a phantasm that gives Ret to those around plus confusion, burning, blind and a stealth.

Just some ideas…

If you are complaining about thieves your doing mesmer wrong. Best way to cure a Thief problem? Be near other people. In WvW you can also be near a portal inside of something you own. 95% of thieves are skill-less scavengers that will only try to gank you while your half dead attacking a guard or something. If you are REALLY worried about thieves also try to not be so stupidly glassy. I beat/scare off thieves all the time simply because they get their full combo off on me and I’m still standing. I’ve seen many just stand there stunned as I kill them because they don’t understand why I’m not ready to be pinned.

So if your going to solo/duo hunt in WvW, sure one of these might be fine you can go around and snipe all the wandering noobs hunting for map completion, maybe get you butt handed to you by a more experienced player, but don’t call it WvW. It’s more open world/build PvP.

WvW is working in a team taking down targets(towers, keeps, castle, zergs) or defending them. If you truly want to WvW you need to worry less on survival skills, more on survival gear and more on teamwork skills. According to bad commanders we have one build, GS/Staff, veil, null field, feedback(and occasionally portal). Sadly it’s pretty hard to escape until you prove yourself. The good build closest to yours is a Porter build. Get with a zerg buster team/guild with Staff portal, null field and stealth skills, when you spot a zerg, group in a corner toss down portal entrance, then solo run into the middle of their zerg with stealth and toss down the other end followed by Null Field and Chaos Storm (and signet of inspirations if you are really nice). My teams have shattered zergs 2 times our size.

Though if you want to REALLY shatter zergs you need to get in a bunker defense squad(high boons especially stability, tanky gear; guardians, warriors and necros help a lot, an ele/eng for water field) and run a reflect build to hold a point(Mimic, feedback, Medic’s Feedback trait, signet of inspirations/ether with Blurred Inscriptions and Masterful Reflection and focus with Warden’s Feedback and staff for boons). Then your team gets a zergs attention or catches them trying to take a place, stack up at a choke point and absolutely destroy them. We’ve taken out 50+ zergs with 15 people as they tried to break us. Our favorite is the doorway to the south western camp. While they can climb the hill on the side and jump you can react fast enough to kill them as they straggle over it especially if you use temporal curtain to throw them off the cliffs.

There is also the mantra heal build for running with zergs, basically you run with Restorative Mantras and Mantra of Pain and just cycle it for mass heals and whatever other utilities your commander needs + Medic’s Feedback so you can touch downed people for free feedbacks.

1. Mimic – low CD utility for near invuln plus reflect plus tons of retal when traited plus burning with runes = good time had by all friends, but mostly me.

2. Signet of Inspiration – I buff me, you buff me, I give 5 friends all these buffs…

3. Portal – When I watched the first mesmer video and saw this I knew this was my class. Countless number of my best situations I have got myself into and out of with this lovely skill. Combined with stealth/blink no place is safe from me and my friends.

Runners up – Temporal Curtian(reflect traited), Illusionary Counter/Illusionary Riposte, Feedback, Mantra of Pain(hurt, hurt, traited heal! all in 5 seconds), Phantasmal Defender

Get ur grubby hands off my skill!

No seriously, this works fine, my favorite skill and now that they ruined my mantra build for the most part I can go back to using it more. I love using it on necros in their forms, various engineer things I can grab, catching ice bow 5 is really nice or all the fire/earth projectiles from eles, poison shots from several classes since that is one condition we don’t get much of… the list goes on. Now true, unless you see them pull an ice bow or see the poison green line 99% of the time you have no clue what you caught which I’d LOVE if they added to the tooltip(like if it has a condition make the picture the condition), but that would be A LOT of work most likely due to it’s special functionality, so I don’t expect it. I think they updated the tooltip recently so it actually tells you about the blocks/reflects.

This skill is pretty essential for a reflect build, don’t get this skill messed up. Even as an Asura I can run in front of my team and jump around reflecting quite a lot for 4 seconds and it’s not as obvious as feedback so many people take themselves out shooting at me. Secondly it’s great(and about the only reason to run) the Retaliatory Shield, when fighting a zerg or even a team in PvP I can get a good amount of retal from just this skill, also fun with Guardian Runes for condition builds.

Sure it’s a one trick pony you need to setup for, but it’s a one trick pony with a fairly low CD(hard to find) and I find it extremely useful when welding a staff(since you can start it with your own bounce).

About the only reasonable suggestion I see is to make it instant cast(which will require them to add ‘break stun’ to it). While we don’t NEED another stun breaker, having so many fits our class pretty well, we are all about the mind games and breaking tactics(And the infinite knockdown/daze tactic is getting pretty old and needs more counter anyhow). So ANET other then this, I urge you to ignore this whole thread. There is some love for this skill out there.

So TL:DR, if you don’t ‘like’ Mimic you haven’t really tried it long(it has a learning curve, and is greatly better with specialized builds, but short CD near invuln if you do it right even otherwise)

Not sure why everyone rants on Mantras so much, if you build for it they work well, but they are kinda all or nothing. If Protective Mantras gave Stability during recharge and less toughness that might be something but this isn’t the discussion for that.

The alternative to doing hexes is just having ‘reactions’ – usable when the circumstance happens utilities that would light up when you can use them after your target has done one of the things I listed. However that just puts more on the Mesmer and little on the thought provoking of your opponent nor would they have much feedback on why you were able to use a strong skill.

Maybe a decent suggestion is a ‘buff’ you can give opponents called Illusionary Pain. Basically when it wears off or is removed the target is healed for a % of the damage done on the initial hit. This basically would let some of our abilities do more spike damage but if we buff remove or take too long they get a portion of it back. Of course if we buff switch or someone corrupts it(I imagine it would turn into poison) it would also be a nice combo. This would require a bit more thoughtful play and actually make Arcane Thievery more usable. I used something like this in City of Heroes and it worked well without being overpowered.

Well there are two discussions I think here. There is the easy discussion of more access to conditions and buffs that ‘punish’. Torment, Chill, Poison and Protection are top of my list personally. Though honestly I think this doesn’t really provide thought provoking play just urges people to bring more condition stripping.

The second is to actually work on more specific punishment skills, stuff like Power Block talent is nice but not really provoking thought-play. Like having a skill that punishes someone that dodges with 3 stacks of torment. I think to make this happen we need a new set of skills that ‘enchant enemies’ (aka not conditions), mainly because the opponent needs to be able to know what they are being punished for instead of just lighting up when the skill is usable because they met the punishment condition. To assist this discussion further here is the start of a list of common things we can possibly punish:

Punishable Offenses:
Healing/Healing Others
Dodging(or just moving greater then base move speed in general for PvE)
Swapping Weapons/Kits/Elements(not easy for PvE version)
Ranged Attack
Melee Attack
AoE Attack
Stealthing
Missing an Attack (blind, having it blocked, or just outright button mashing kitten like out of range)
Using an Elite
Using an Utility
Finishing a Combo (aka Blast Finisher in a Water Field)
Not Cheering (Mad King Says style)

This set of skills might want a reverse power issue that confusion has since AI is gonna use stuff fairly indiscriminately so punishing it should be LESS then a player who CAN know better.

I was about to say Inspiration didn’t really need love but yea we need a speed buff somewhere and here is as good as any.

First of all, my personal vote is female because “You’re dumb. You’ll die, and you’ll leave a dumb corpse.” cracks me up every single time. While males have a couple good callouts, the females seem to have been given the better ones in my opinion. I wish I hadn’t made my charr necro already because I want to hear a female asura raise a minion and say, "This one’s kinda cute! "

Names
An asura’s name often consists of a short, sharp first name with one or two syllables. Feminine asura names typically end in -i or -a vowel sounds, but are not required to do so. Masculine names often end in a consonant sound. Both male and female Asuras often have two of the same letter in a row somewhere in their name, this being a cultural norm, but it is certainly not required. Asura do not have a last name, instead opting to use job titles, a krewe name, or honorifics to differentiate themselves. Those who choose to take a last name of a style similar to humans are rare and are considered eccentrics, and their surname is often ignored by other asura.

Name ideas:
Luv
Hona
Fira
Pips
Tru
Witi
Bev

If you want a last name think of something silly your krewe would be inventing then how you’d name yourself after it like “Alchemancer” (Mage/Prophet of the Eternal Alchemy).

Staff is the go to Condition weapon and nearly the go to AoE weapon. Power damage isn’t it’s purpose, however the condition damage(mainly their durations) isn’t enough. I like it how it is though I agree Warlock’s Aim needs to be fixed, the Chaos Armor cast should give initial protection and I believe they should add Torment to Chaos Armors conditions. I like Vuln because it works well with Warlock.

Decent suggestions, though I think Signet of Midnight would be better flopped over.

Passive: 25% chance to blind an when hit(5 second CD)
Active: Double time on all active boons(30 second CD)

Sad video is sad.

If they have to start attacks at a closer range they have to move more, which is good since it looks more like a real player. Remember we are theatrical, deception at it’s best, sure their more vulnerable getting close but they aren’t just there for DPS, they are you and you don’t just try to attack at max range(unless you are welding GS over a cliff).

I have to say I really do like where they went with Mesmers in GW2, however we seem a lot more physical and less mental-style then the GW1 Mesmers. So while I love Temporal Curtian and jumping in with one-handed swords I think we need a bit more love in the ‘Counter-Tactics’ category.

First and foremost, the condition that was supposed to our main punishment, confusion, was a nice idea on paper and I think is still quite viable since condition stripping has become a lot more common and easier to get but has been nerfed so much it’s not much a real punishment now. Maybe we need more of a directed punishments like ‘if player uses their heal in the next 5 seconds it’s CD is doubled’ or maybe one that they take damage for each signet not on CD or even better, damage for every buff they have.

There are two conditions that are great punishment ones that for some reason we have little access to, poison and chill. I understand when confusion was stronger these together might have been overpowering but now that you’ve really broken confusion’s spine we should move past that. Along with the ‘new’ condition torment I think we need more access to these. Even our access to cripple is somewhat limited(especially in length).

I love our scepter, one hand sword(the blocks make me feel like I’m some psychic ninja), focus(well once Warden logic is a little better), torch(once Mage moves to 900 range and shoots it’s 1200 range shot) these feel right to me. Even the chaos stuff like with Staff is good because it’s stuff they can’t plan for further forcing them to think harder in a battle with a Mesmer(though I think Torment NEEDS to be added somewhere in this, I have the sigil on it but it should be there standard maybe in Chaos Armor).

As for counter-buffs, as much as I’d love more sources of Aegis, I honestly don’t think it’s our theme, it’s silly enough some people are using Mimic and running Guardian runes. I think we do need more sources of Stability, Mantra of Concentration is a lot better now but I can’t run it in every build and how much CC is favored right now I’d just say we could use a new shatter skill that gives stability(or maybe just add it to the stun shatter), I juggle utilities enough as it is a new utility for it would be meh.

Protection gets it’s own paragraph. As low armor and medium health I can’t get enough protection, when someone expects you to go down in a zerker backstab spike combo and your still barely standing for some reason and they have to backoff and recoup that is Mesmer.

Lastly, targeting, I know clones can be confusing but to good players they really aren’t. Any skill that is a reactive/switching clone making should targetting follow the new clone, this is for blocks(Scepter/offhand sword), the clone dodge trait, One hand sword leap(after swap), Spear’s Feigned Surge(if you swap) and even Mirrored Images. This should also escape called targetting or it’s not much a deception is it? I’d be ok with weaker clone health(not phantasm) if it actually tricked them into taking a few hits into the wrong thing rather then hope their new enough to accidentally lose targeting. We have to depend on stealth too much, because of this.

Edit: Oops forgot a big one, Blind, we need more and better of it and we should have some trait that punishes opponents when they miss.

I meant just the 916 vitality by 30% so… not quite 7000. And counting you can get 250 in WvW from a power and a bonus for how your doing in WvW even in PvE and most people believe the best food is Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup for the -condition duration and that gives +70 vitality you still end up with 11K or so health.

I’m sorry that your overpowered character might get nerfed for using abusive stats. Elementalists have the lowest armor and health in the game, their supposed to be paper with many skills that keep them out of harms way. If you can’t take the heat, keep your distance or get a bit of tank stats, it won’t kill ya.

As for the gear change it’s not going to nerf zerker much at all and it’s a bad change, the problem is that zerker is too survivable solo with little skill not that it spikes too much damage. What it will kill is every other ‘ferocity’ based stats like Celestial and Valkyrie, while toughness and vitality don’t do enough as it stands.

Also props on the signature Nike, Jareth FTW :P

Now I know this is going to spiral a bit, so I tried to think of something that hopefully would have the least damaging on everything without muddying up the waters with respeccing stuff.

I think the best solution is to drop the level 80 base vitality and toughness by about 30%, then increase the effectiveness of vitality to 12 hp per point and increase the toughness gained from gear by 10% (like how you do condition damage on runes, not sure why you didn’t mirror that on gear, maybe a good time to fix that get a bit more uniformity).

What this will do is assure that low level new characters game is unchanged, except they have an even easier time if they get a bit of vit or toughness letting you pull a bigger crowd without breaking core mechanics but at level 80 running Zerker will be truely more glass cannon, while having toughness or vitality as a major stat will have clear better results. Everyone will be a little less tanky even though the max will go higher in the major stat(320 hp OR 20 armor?), the minor stats won’t.The only other fallout I see is maybe having to lower vitality gained from the WvW power.

And look, problem solved, people can still try to be their skilled dodgy/utility survivable glass cannons while those who want to survive more in the thick of things won’t be totally outclassed by DPS based characters and as a bonus you can tone down your bosses to almost one hitting tanky characters but be sure to make glass builds pay for fails to avoid.

Heh, I come back and see my thread and find it’s not quite going how intended, though good discussion.

Anet has done a REALLY good job in the past in keeping power creep out, I doubt that will be an issue here, secondly Zerker does need a nerf, I think everyone understands that. As people have stated earlier in this thread they build it so parties won’t be dependent on the trinity, this means there is inherent defense built into every character. Thus the correct solution would simply be nerfing how much the offense stats actually effect powers. I personally don’t mind as much as others being underpowered, I just mind if a strategy can’t compete at all.

I think the best way to sum up what I was getting at in my initial post is every good epic game should be simple to pick up but also allow players at the end to sharpen their specific build style to it’s best fine edge and the way this ‘patch’ is going it’s simplifying to a point where everyone has clubs instead and the ONLY people benefiting will be those that have the super high end computers, net connections and twitch skills. Simplifying the BACKEND of a game is NEVER the answer, that is what I mean by the fear of the SWG: Combat Patch. If someone plays this long to get to 80 and all ascended/legendary gear dumbing down the game is just going to make their hard work feel like you are stealing it’s worth.

You aren’t breaking characters like SWG did but I’m feel like I’m personally taking a blow to the chest. I’ll get up but I won’t look at you in the same happy light. If you are doing this to up your numbers or some corporate reason, that is your FIRST and BIGGEST red flag why you shouldn’t do this. Respect your current players.

Ok, I’m going to preface this with most of you will probably laugh or even this is evidence the change is good. But honestly I think you’re considering doing a lower version of the Star Wars Galaxies dreaded Combat Patch here, so let me explain the issues.

You have three types of gamers, casual gamers, twitch gamers and number crunchers. The first two won’t be effected, you’ll gain a tiny bit of love, maybe, from the first group but honestly you’re not going to break them away from the next Flappy Bird. You’re kneecapping number crunchers though.

Ferocity – an unknown fact that is now suddenly well known is that there currently is a viable chance based build for EVERY class to use excessive crit damage. This means while twitch gamers can most effectively plan out skill chains could find decent opposition in people that can tweak their numbers better or plan out teamwork numbers better. Now Celestial is worthless(there is almost always a dump stat for each class, the excessive crit damage which is luck based made up for it), balancing the best crit damage on accessories over armor isn’t important. The numbers are ‘easier’ but what does that really help? My casual friend told me, “I wish they just kept % that is easier to understand”.

And you’ll have to make all the crit damage gear changeable which will confuse some people when Appleseller’s Lucky Cog is set to Knights stats or whatnot. Though I guess you can just magically transform it the one they want(or make it a ticket for one and give them any infusion back that was in it)

Removal of Hybrids – I’ve poked around with A LOT of builds, found some viable ones I’ve never seen anyone use. And now thanks to this, no one will. Why? Because no one will be able to take the losses required to make a hybrid since they’ll be more severe. But yay for you, easier for you to balance then to actually let crazy people get to that max 100% condition duration or maybe just buff their Poison with 2 different Runes(And yes I know 100% is still obtainable via food/tool but you lose a lot for that too). Or maybe a bit from specific stats rather then a 5th and 6th divinity.

While I don’t personally mind the change to Traits from 30 to 6, there might be crazy people that are will to give up two abilities for 20 of different stats. Worse now your going to see further trait changing on the fly in WvW. It’s bad enough that most commanders I’ve worked with have considered me just utilities skills they can get if they shout at a mic as a Mesmer(especially since you keep nerfing what little fighting capabilities we have, ferocity will nerf our ability to have spike, confusion nerfs killed our attrition, despite it being more spike then attrition, really we need more Torment and maybe a short Poison). I ALREADY have mastered and put a lot of time into Utility/Elite/Major Trait/Gear Changing on the fly to manage different enounters and now I can totally redo my traits at anytime? Can I juggle bottles of plague while I’m at it? Now true, I love having the options and it’s fun being able to have such an exact counter to certain situations, but then there is little use for more then one of me and I don’t get to relax sometimes and let someone take over the juggling while I just enjoy a good fight.

Thirdly 2 sigils on Two-handed, I hope you realize your going to have to do a rebalanced on all those right? Most of them are quite overpowered and the ONLY ‘balancing’ fact was you could have a second sigil with one handeds. So your going to nerf the power that twitch gamers love to abuse and create more a conundrum for number crunchers to wade through, since we don’t mind ‘weaker’ weapons if they fit our tactic. Though while your there why don’t you have Giver’s Two Handeds give 20% duration(and make an ascended version). (As if I hadn’t spent enough time on http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ as is, sigh)

Summery TL:DR – So going through this every group is going to be hurt and little help will actually be made. Casuals will hate Ferocity(one step more they have to think about to get a stat, if precision wasn’t already bad enough, they’ll probably avoid crit play all together unless they just wanna see big numbers), Twitch will hate nerfing to power weapons and power stats(unless you’re going to ignore and just have power creep) and Number Crunchers will hate everything(especially since a lot of things they’ve built will be outmodded).

I just hope this distortion actually get the reflect from the trait, then it’ll be useful for one of my builds…

So as a Mesmer I’ve gotten pretty good at changing my build on the fly. We need Viel here, portal there, feedback and null field. Going in to a team battle I equip this, scouting I do that, retrait, ext. It’s all a pretty big and annoying scramble while trying to pay attention to where you are running so you don’t aggro some mob or enemy. Then when I go into dungeons I have another build (I used to have a magic find build but that is gone). It’s all so cumbersome when I’m trying to enjoy the game but I’m spending a lot of time in my inventory and trait window.

I was thinking the F5-F12 keys don’t seem to be doing anything all that useful. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could set it as a macro which you could set the current state(what weapons, armor, weapon settings for legendaries, traits, ext.) and when you press that it would try to get you as close as possible back to that state as long as you aren’t in combat? Kinda like the skill build saves in GW1. Just an idea.

There are two types of players, there are the few people who can do a strategy and there is the mindless zerg. Maybe you should plan out these battles with this in mind, a small party or two can do all the intricate stuff which sets up the boss for taking mass damage from the mindless zerg, the ones that have rezzed themselves in time to run in and take advantage.

Expecting everyone to handle all the intricate ‘boring’ stuff like defending, cleansing people of conditions, not standing in the obvious fields of death is expecting a lot and while I DON’T want you to dumb it down, a pure mindless zerg shouldn’t win, maybe you shouldn’t ramp up the necessity of defending, pushing buttons and being in the right place at the right time. Also for the people doing ‘boring’ parts should get a stronger reward to tempt people to do them despite the monotony and lack of MDK (like, I don’t know, running Dolyaks in WvW).

http://www.twitch.tv/ruadvin/b/428725353 at 1:02:40 you can see this persons teammate on the map, an ele, going around to the backside and somehow dropping AoE’s through the back wall and destroying siege. You can see throughout the fight others going back there and doing it too, they are obviously exploiting a bad wall and as you can see we were hitting them back so they know they were getting through. Please fix this and put out the smack down as appropriate.

Also this fight is a hilarious to watch threeway(they both still lost to our defense in the end). Enjoy!

Thanks much

Embolism.8106:

Why you would run any interrupt in PvE is beyond me. Mobs that are actually worth interrupting almost always generate Defiant. If Vulnerability is all you want then Diversion is king, there are better Utilities to take.

Concentration is almost completely useless outside of very specific situations like knockback JP traps or whatever.

Well of course you can do Diversion too, duh, you can stack 25 vulnerablity and for champs that generate defiant, if you have time you can switch to a different Mantra/Utility but even against defiant, you may not get get the daze but you still get the vulnerability(that might be a bug, but at least for once it’s in our favor).

Yea, this is quite annoying on bosses, when I get three phantasms up I have to switch weapons so that the scepter doesn’t pop my phantasm. This is up there on my annoyance list with evasion/invuln preventing me from making illusions. They should still be made even if their attack misses. I can somewhat understand blind, if you can’t see a target you’d have trouble playing tricks on them, just like if terrain obscures them(though honestly if my characters head can see their characters head, I should be able to mess with their head, it is a mental attack).

Confusion and random conditions should BE our damage in my opinion. If anything to keep it balanced they should nerf the stacks and time OTHER classes that do confusion get, not nerf the overall effect in itself. High level nerfs have horrible fallout like how nerfing quickness killed our elite but made it a bit more viable for other classes utility. Or maybe the damage nerf was so they could buff our confusion length or stacks in an upcoming patch? Because yea, as one of the few backers behind iMage in hopes it gets more worthwhile… this, along with the stealth reveal/unable to combo with thief stealth… almost kills me running torch… ever now. I’m reconsidering Pistol(I’m a level 80 that hasn’t touched pistol even to learn the skills for personal reasons, mostly a distaste of guns in these types of settings) and I really would hate to have to change styles simply because it’s being nerfed to oblivion. That is the worst thing you can do in a game. Well not SWG combat patch worst, but getting there.

So when I was running as a pug, I did this all the time, hide in a keep that was about to be taken over, hope to not get swept while contacting a commander and getting them there fast enough that I wasn’t discovered. I successfully flipped back TWO keeps and a few towers.

The thing is… these aren’t upgraded at all so really, a decent guild can rip through a paper gate and take it anyhow in a couple minutes as their guild moves on to the next target and worse now that I’m running with a guild, me hiding means I wasn’t there helping the defense in the first place so we might have never lost it and all it’s upgrades.

So in conclusion, I think this playstyle gives a lot of fun to pugs. Teamed with a thief you can probably hide out indefinitely. But it’s unrealistic for the real teams where every additional person can possibly counter 2+ people in a pug zerg. I mean today we have a couple half dead golems and no good targets left so we sent them back to waypoint and two pug thieves decided for some silly fun, kept them permanently stealthed into an opposing zerg and played ping pong with whirling. This kinda of ‘deviousness’ gets pugs interested in teamwork and guilds while not really subtracting from the gameplay.

Edit: But thank you for the video btw, that was very interesting.

When having to sell your house, you think ‘I can hide there and when they are all asleep just portal my guild in and ninja the new guild claimer after it’s buff is off to reclaim it’. >.>

Or you point a stick at your boss concentrating hard and see confusing images work despite a lack of purple beam. It even works on people that cross the path between!

I completely disagree, a lot of PvE stuff has tons of knockdown, stun and such… having instant casts is quite helpful especially instant cast heal. They also recently reduced the cast time of Mantras so most info you see on them is old.

Mantra of Distraction is one of my favorites with 15+ points in Domination because you get 5-8 stacks of vulnerability for 8-10 seconds(depending on if you interrupt their action, which is easy to do in PvE) in the middle of another action like Blurred Flurry or Confusing Images.

Restorative Mantras is really nice for additional heals for long fights, though if you get this I wouldn’t bother with the 3 cast trait, instead go with 30 in Dueling because you can get faster cooldown, 250 armor when casting a mantra and up to 16% more damage for just having all your mantras with at least one charge left.

Personally I run Recovery, Distraction and Pain for 12% damage and cycle Pain for healing with one other utility. I also run Torch and Mass Invis so I can recharge a couple when I’m in a crowd or CC heavy mob.

Resolve and Concentration are ok, but there are better things like Decoy, Mirrored Images and Phantasmal Disenchanter, so I find little use for them personally unless you are doing the daily condition stripping or trying to move through several traps rapidly(Swamp in Fractals).

ExZee.8109:

I read this as an obviously justified complaint of a natural consequence of a well-predicted outcome of the fail patch that nerfed confusion.

More power Mesmers; what did you expect would happen?

Actually just the opposite. My personal build actually has very little to do with conditions so I don’t have a ton in condition damage and more in power/precision. But my build isn’t about doing big damage, it’s to take advantage of mistakes and things people are too dependent on.

Purifier.9865:

zaxon.6819:

the problem i see with this argument… “make this class a smart class”

how do you buff stupid people enough to beat smart people without nerfing stupid people that play mesmers.

the problem is that anet looks at the strongest potential of a class and compares that to the worst players of another class and nerfs to balance that.

confusion wasnt killing good players. and good players were balanced vs confusion specs. same with thief stealth. but it killed alot of dummies. so it got nerfed.

it should be balanced around the best players of each class. if they can go back and forth evenly with even skill they are balanced.

they should balance the class based on thier potential and make people who suck strive for that potential to be balanced vs the best of another profession. but they tone down the top end to make crappers comparable to the best geared/played.

Could not agree with you more, however ANet focuses on the mainstream so that might never happen. The need of the many outweighs the need of the few, even if that need is really stupid. This is the history of humanity basically bro.

You nerf stupid people that play mesmers. I’m sorry, not every class needs to be accessible to every play style. While I understand they don’t want the specific classical party types (AKA Tank, Healer, DPS, ext.) there are certain things and specialties that some classes will do better. Thieves will stealth, Rangers will trap, Guardians will wall off areas, ext. I simply wish Mesmer’s would simply be more like the class they were set up to be a class that counters tactics. The weakness being of course if they aren’t using a tactic that you are set to counter, you’re probably going to lose or at least have a hard fight. Powerful long cast spells and minions/turrets counter confusion, melee and beams counter reflection, no dependance on boons counters boon removal/steal, no dependance on conditions counters condition stripping/giving, condition removal(or pure random luck) counters mass random conditions or confusion/bleed stacks.

Our variety should be on how we choose to pick our counters to things our parties are most threatened by. We need our counters working and stronger rather then more pure DPS.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that you can do a ton of different things with Mesmer. But the sheer fact that there is so many directions and combinations that Mesmer keeps getting nerfed because someone is going to find the new powerful combo. I think Anet really needs to step back and think hard on what they really want Mesmer to be.

Personally, I see Mesmer as being a counter-class. They don’t need to be powerful or do top end raw damage, leave that to other simple classes. Of late I keep seeing our ‘counter’ strategies being crippled and getting more and more raw DPS. That is somewhat nice for PvE, I guess… but that isn’t Mesmer(except in the case of the two block skills, but that is a type of counter which they pay for not noticing).

Mesmer should be there to control a fight, they cause chaos, mislead you with clones. You notice a powerful Phantasm, you should kill it before it unleashes it’s pain. You win by CC and disables? We have things like Mirror of Anguish and a few good stun breakers. You want to get at us? Maybe you need to run through that chaos storm and take the random chance. You’re gonna cast that big power attack? No, interrupted and your gonna pay since I noticed and countered you. You’re gonna hit me with a ton of fast attacks without thinking? How about some confusion and retribution to make you pay for your mistake.

This is the essence of Mesmer, it’s not supposed to be a powerful class. It’s a smart class that if you play well, your opponent will do themselves in or run away raving mad. You assist a team by throwing a psychic dagger at the proper time making the other team stumble and give yours the advantage.

Everything I’ve seen from day one is making things purely stronger, but not actually fixing skills (with the exception of Confusing Images, which was nice, and the half fix on The Prestige so it isn’t channeled, now you just need to fix the blast finisher). And to counterbalance that you’ve made our counter/utility weaker like confusion(first lowering the length of time and now dropping the damage), quickness, nerfing illusion of life, keeping mantras(a really nice anti CC skillset) pretty weak(though I appreciate the initial cast reduction as a start), nerfing blurred frenzy so it’s effect isn’t distortion can’t reflect from the trait instead of fixing it(just add the Mirror effect, not that hard). Fixing the animation and timing on when the effects actually go off(Like Temporal Curtian’s crazy swiftness, our only ‘dependable’ one, that doesn’t play nice with others or if you[or a Dolyak] start on it and stealth not playing nice with Thief stealth). I like being chaotic but using stuff should be somewhat dependable even if it fails to get the desirable outcome aka they didn’t fall for the trap. My skill shouldn’t be based on how I avoid bugs in the stuff I use.

I love Mesmer, I’ve learned to adapt, but I have to say for the most part I’m not happy with the direction the changes, stop upping direct damage, fix our bugs and please stop nerfing our class specials and counters.

Typically I cast iMage while stealthed(as long as I don’t need to recharge a Mantra) and then just shatter it like a clone after it takes it’s shot, which isn’t that bad. I understand the logic of why it should be powerful but the ret/confusion is so short and Mesmer is supposed to be the one class that can spec into a confusion build(but Eng and maybe even Warrior does it better?). Maybe if it gave Ret again each time it shoots(basically like a pain inverter) and both it and confusion were extended to 5 seconds (cooldown on attack would be 10 seconds instead of 6, maybe up the raw damage a bit too) and fixed the bounce to hit enemy only that would be something. It dies very easily so this way at least if it only gets one shot off it would be still potentially worth it. People use so much condition stripping and a good amount of buff stripping this shouldn’t be that big of a game changer.

And if they could fix the blast finisher on The Prestige(maybe put it at the start and/or the end[without the field check at the start]), that would make Torch a lot more usable.

Your name is Ender’s Shadow, you play a caster, stealth, pet and CC style stuff. Yes, this is your class. It’s not an easy class but there is a lot of variety in how you use it along with perfection for tactics and pure chaos. However it isn’t one of the stronger DPS classes. That doesn’t stop it from being the most useful class in WvW, hands down. You have found your home.

12 CD rating up
13 EB rating up
15 AR rating down
16 DH rating down

We are gonna be fighting each other… FOREVER >.<

DaisyRogers.6837:

I sceptor/sword and sword/torch.

the blocks hit really hard and are not all that hard to time. My favorite thing to do is walk into red circles now and spike the block damage followed by the iswordsman which hits like a truck and is really easy to pop out more.

The strong point of the sceptor is its clone regeneration on auto chain. Combined with rolls and clones will be suiciding to make new ones. Clone death traits shine with it. Lots of CC capability with the weapon set with my sword/torch for quick BF spike or defensive evasion.

I second this setup. I use focus when I’m in WvW squads but when I’m just doing PvE or solo/duo running in WvW I use torch.

Staff + Signet of Inspirations is good for teams to get full buffs, but like you said, a bit boring. Greatsword is too situational for me. Bouncing in, being invicible twice(with shatter) and stealthing out(with The Prestige) and switching to scepter/sword is pretty nice.

Ooh, I have a crazy idea… maybe the Illusionary Leap clone should you know… leap at people. A leap would ignore terrain issues. Functionally I think this would be a better fix and a bit more logical if your clone appeared, leaped at the opponent and then ‘swap’ would have you leap at the opponent and the clone leap at your old position, while slower and less effective then a blink switch this would work more for the confusion clones are supposed to give. If a second/third clone is out it should also leap to the place the first clone was doing cripple if it hits the opponent. Also you’d get the rush of a pouncing ninja o.o

It took me a long time to figure it out but it turns out Mass Invis is secretly your best friend in WvW, first of all it’s one of the lowest cooldown elites period, 5 seconds of stealth allows me to run in a different direction and possibly hide, worst case scenario make a clone or two to confuse them.

You aren’t going to outrun them most have a trait speed boost especially Eles and Necros and/or near infinite swiftness, if you use focus you can toss them about or over a cliff but really your best escape is stealth and knowing the terrain. Stealth also gives you a good chance to recharge your Mantras and/or cast Phantasms. In big groups bring Veil, in small groups bring Decoy or Blink. Don’t be afraid to double back, smart players will think your a clone, when you run past and decoy they might turn and attack it realizing it might have been you. Sadly, people not used to fighting Mesmers are your worst enemy there since they attack obvious clones regardless. If you are doing a shatter build, Mirror Images followed by a quick Decoy works really well too since people used to Mirror Images see three there, so therefore you must be one of them.

tldr;? Shatter Mesmer use Mirror Images/Decoy, otherwise use more stealth

The best Mesmer build for farming is to get a Guardian. No seriously, we aren’t that great at farming. The best thing about our farming is at least it is less boring then most grinds.

You probably want a shatter build since in PvE clones are a lot more effective at drawing fire. Confusion is fairly meh since most enemies swing at the rate of once every 3 seconds which bypasses a lot of non-extended confusion(thanks Anet), even worse on slow swinging enemies like Ogres, they might even get hit once. That pretty much throws Scepter under the bus, most the rest of them are viable though. Personally for farming I like Greatsword with Sword/Torch when they get close or in large groups. You can also do Pistol for a bit faster DPS but The Prestige can save your butt if you accidently pull too many and gives you another good AoE damage. Off Hand Sword has a strong phantasm and you can do a lot of damage if you time your block well but once again, no AoE. Staff is slowest at killing but can make you a bit more survivable too.

I’d have 5-15 in Domination so your interrupts stack vuln, 20 in Dueling so you make clones when you dodge. Getting both 15 in Chaos and Inspirations gives you pretty much permanent regen and 3 seconds of protection every 15 seconds. Chaos is also nice for when you need to jump off a high jump and not die. Put whatever you have left in Illusions to max your shatter damage and shorten the cooldown, lots of good stuff in there.

Ergg, now I read that you want to do dungeons, um, Staff is everyone’s friend, Signet of Inspirations makes it better, everyone loves Time Warp and Mantra healing(20 points in Inspirations with Mantra of Distraction/Pain) will make you indispensable.

Cataca.3867:

Dracatis.1908:

Personally I would use Cleric not Berserker with the healing Mantra trait in Inspirations. You can still get some of your crit and extra damage along with safe times to recharge if you do a bit of thinking and research. It’s worked quite well for me personally, I win most 1 v 1 fights, even against d/d/ eles. A random guardian gave me a good run the other day though… but we got interrupted so who knows who would have won.

Just interested why you’d put a priority into healing power, as far as i can see, 1k healing power will give you some 200 more health on mantra charge (ie. 2800 instead of 2600) which doesnt seem all that significant. Wouldnt knights or something give you more dps with hardly any survivability lost?

Mantra charge x 3(for me), Heal spell, and near constant regeneration(for me). Toughness makes non-condition damage that much less making ever bit of healing that much more, and I personally have a couple ways of getting rid of annoying conditions. Though I play a wierd mesmer so what works for me, may not work for you.