Mesmers can put out so many clones in such rapid succession. Currently there is a small reward to opponents who risk taking focus off the mesmer to kill it’s clones. Increasing clone durability would remove that reward and something else would have to be toned down instead, such as… stealth access or duration?
In reality clones die to cleaving, it is not like anyone need waste time on killing them.
Hammer needs a damage reduction. Ideally, you want a balance between rifle and hammer.
Current scrapper meta is going for full defensive/sustain traits/skills so the end result of being tanky is as expected. However, such spec can still do tons of damage is simply a bit too much.
Totally agree with your assessment.
I also feel the best working build is condie shatter. You can still take portal and moa which are the most impactful skills from mesmer and get low cd F5 shatter as well. If you take inspiration line, you also have some potential for on-point fight. Necro is hard matchup but moa counters them hard.
Moa is absolutely not a hard counter vs a necro. In a team fight, they just run away for 10 seconds (like anyone does when moaed). In a 1v1, moa is great on a power build, but worthless on a condie build if the necro you’re fighting isn’t an idiot. They can just stand still and do nothing for 10 seconds. It’ll hurt a bit, but that drastically lowers the damage they take. After 10 seconds they pop out with a condie transfer, and you’d just better hope that all those condies you’ve been loading them with end up on a clone and not on you.
Yeah, you are right it is harder get the best value out of moa with condie builds because stunlocking is not as easy compared to power builds. But I still have F3 and shield 5 at my disposal. You can also get much better value if you have a friend dual Qing with you.
I will also try playing with timewarp and glamour trait and see if it can bring more to the table.
I am kinda wondering if this is actually a troll build.
Compared to the few good ranger builds OP had posted before, it is funny how bad this mesmer bunker build is
Best PvE dps builds for both ranger and engi are condition builds.
Engi is one of the top condie class in PvE and offers quite a bit of utility as well. Ranger with druid spec is the go-to healer in raid but has the potential to do good condie damage as well if you want.
Totally agree with your assessment.
I also feel the best working build is condie shatter. You can still take portal and moa which are the most impactful skills from mesmer and get low cd F5 shatter as well. If you take inspiration line, you also have some potential for on-point fight. Necro is hard matchup but moa counters them hard.
I also feel condie shatter is currently the best bet for mesmer.
With chrono line, there is a good supply of illusions. So the damage pressure is decent. Illusion line gives nice CD reduction for shatter skills, with means more alacrity and faster F5 recharge.
Then you can take either chaos for PU or inspiration for condie cleanse depends on if you like a more bursty style or a better on-point fighter.
OP, you are exaggerating. Mes are still wanted in raids and are still playable in pvp (dunno about wvw, i gave up on it long time ago).
Just because you can’t faceroll right now on mes doesn’t mean there are no players that like to play mes and class should be removed (thief was in even worse situation in season 1, i still played the class and would hate it if anet would have deleted it). As poster before said, what killing mes (and frankly a lot of other builds) is power creep (inclusive all dat aoe spam) that was introduced with HoT. If anything Anet should be focusing on reducing it than “deleting” classes.
As far as complains about mes not being viable for 2 w/e years – absolute horse crap. I have met/fought with/against good mes past few years and they were doing more than fine. In fact i loved to run spike duo with mes before HoT (after xpac went live nobody wanted to play with mah thief -_-).
The class simply requires certain amount of skill/attention/game knowledge (dps builds at least). Chronobunker was too faceroll, attracted too many fotm rerollers and spoiled average mesmer players, imo.
I do not agree. Most real mesmer players play this class way before expansion and stick to this class because we enjoy the shatter build not the bunker build.
Current mesmer is even worse than thief in season 1. Neither mesmer nor thief have the fight ability against all the bruiser specs. But thief can fill the cap/decap role because of its superior mobility. All mesmer can rely on is portal. But in uncoordinated play, portal is not as impactful.
Current state for mesmer is the worst since I started playing the game two years ago. There was a time mesmer got completely shut down by thief when SD is the meta. But even then, you still have some wiggle room to be useful as long as you know enough tricks to survive thief.
Just ignore Lexander, he likes to troll and derail any thread about mesmer.
Mesmer has been more or less uncompetitive for about 2-3 years. It fills thief’s roaming role but teams need to build around it to prevent mesmer from being a rally bot. Even Helseth would spend a lot of time disengaging or running from spawn when most people just remember his portal acts.
In HoT there’s a dramatic shift in mesmer’s role to point holder, perhaps too well. But with the recent changes mesmer loses significant amount of surviving potentials. Unfortunately mesmer can’t really become a decent bruiser. Out of all the bruiser builds mesmer has the least potential due to damage depended on destructible illusions, especially when so many AoE thrown around nowadays.
That leaves mesmer back to roaming role, which will likely end up as what we had in the past 2-3 years, but worst for obvious power creep reasons. Devs tried to push for balance and Esports, but such roundabout change back to the start is rather disheartening.
This is a good analysis.
Mesmer wasn’t that good for 2 years but I still feel it was still playable and making decent contribution. But current state, the traditional shatter archetype just feels extremely underwhelming that you basically achieve nothing outside of a few moas.
I tried danger time but it still feels very underwhelming. Interruption also doesn’t feel very rewarding either.
In PvP, I like to play interrupt crusader:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8OncfClpB2oBEgilTjqOavWm7w2cDkBwCEUA-T5ABABxXGAgnAQR7PAAor the condi-resilient version (i.e. if I see a reaper in the enemy team)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8en0nBlphlqB2oBEgilTjqOavWkBwCEUnPRU0EA-T5ABABxXGAgnAQR7PAA(chrono GM is up to choice, I tend to take CP).
The goal is to slow with interrupts or shield phantasm and then, shatter burst the slowed enemy for a damage on par with marauder.
This build is much less thief-sensitive than typical shatter mesmer, which is good currently.
Why crusader? I feel paladin should almost always be better. It is not like we get a lot more sustain with crusader.
I like the function of SnR. It is strong but can still have some counterplay(pressuring off-point ranger).
If it still proves to be too strong in high-level play, i think a cd increase should probably be enough.
Portal is actually quite strong in itself as well. It is actually kinda mandatory on mesmer utility bar which shows how strong it is. But given that mesmer will be completely out of meta for next 4 months. I don’t think it needs a nerf at the point.
45 sec cooldown, 3/4 sec cast time and this only gives a small circle that pulses aegis.
Compared to skill like ‘Fragments of Faith’, this one feels so underwhelming with a similar cd. It is a group defensive utility skill. But the counterplay is way too easy from the offensive side with so many unblockable attacks in the game. Or in a group scenario, people can simply spam skills and completely ignore its mechanics.
Even before the patch, this skill was already not a must-have for bunker mesmers because it prevents point-capture contribution. In WvW, it gives a reason to actually play mesmer but it is definitely not too strong there either.
If the balance team has any doubts of the old precog well to be too strong, you can simply play around with its CD. Current form of precog well is simply not functioning for its purpose.
My prediction
Tier 1: (Almost every team needs one)
1. Scrapper
2. Druid
3. Reaper
Tier 2: (Very popular choice)
4. Herald
5. Daredevil
Tier 3: (Useful but limited)
6. Dragonhunter
7. Tempest
Tier 4: (Hardly any use)
8. Chronomancer
9. Berserker
No. Ranger doesn’t need compensation itself for pet nerf. They need to also nerf other OP specs to compensate.
Such as? I see you are not very constructive, neither you know anything about rangers, just nerf the class, cause you are too bad to beat it?
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those pets are better than all other pets. Clear imbalance.
The bigger problem of this game is not just imbalance. It is the powercreep that completely makes it a spamfest. Start nerfing things now. I know short-sighted ppl like you will be unhappy about nerfs. But in the long run, it benefits everyone who wants to enjoy the game.
Also, I play a lot of rangers myself as well. In this era, all meta builds are super easy to play at a decent level. Claiming other ppl don’t understand how to beat a certain class is ignorant and stupid.
(edited by Exciton.8942)
I main ranger so let me argue here a bit.
First, I have to agree that the pet dmg is absurd. Specially bristleback “F2”. Having the greatest burst in your pet is just bad idea. I agree here with the nerf needed, however to compensate the lack of burst (basically ranger doesn’t have any atm) some weapon skills need to be changed. As for me I would leave pet only as a supporter with zero dmg output.
Glyph planting a seed, I don’t see a problem here. Seed needs to be plant first and it takes some time until it blossoms and also the effective radius is very small. Just move away to avoid it, easy as that. You also don’t stay in thief’s black powder do you?
Ancient seeds trait is still buged and is not working with most of ranger’s CCs. Increase the cd when it’s working properly.
No. Ranger doesn’t need compensation itself for pet nerf. They need to also nerf other OP specs to compensate.
You can do this with any profession.
Using your skills on recharge is how you achieve like 80% efficiency in GW2, and the rest is actually learning how to play. I challenge anyone to actually look at their own gameplay and see if they aren’t mostly spamming skills on recharge.
Pretty much this.
But I really think this spam-happy gameplay starts to take over after the recent power creep. It used not to be the case a year ago. You actually had to time your skill to achieve better effectiveness.
Do not agree with thief having the worst heal.
Withdraw is probably one of the best heal in game.
Regarding sustain, I still remember thief having amazing sustain duration the SA DP meta before expansion. Current thief sustain is a bit less but still decent. When judging sustain, you have to put things into perspective. The popular thief burst build has probably one of the best sustain among all the bursty builds. TBH, most other bursty builds can hardly make into meta. Thief being the exception has a lot to do with its great ability to sustain in a game.
1 reaper, 1 scrapper, 1 druid.
The other 2 can be a lot of different choices. Thief will be a great addition. Revs are also pretty good. You can also go for additional scrapper/reaper/druid.
Reaper is harder to judge because of life force.
It is easy to 1v1 a reaper with scrapper/druid when they have 0 life force. Just try to negate their staff opening at all cost and then you can spam skills to win. However, against a reaper with 75%+ life force, it becomes extremely hard even as a scrapper.
DH is easier to get into if you are new. It has very high spike damage and puts on a lot of pressure in team fights. But you will lose to good bruiser specs 1v1 and may find it lacks disengage sometimes after you meet better opponents.
Herald is slightly harder to play but not too hard either. It is more versatile than DH. Good damage, good mobility, a lot of evades and block.
As mesmer/warrior, you want to +1 reaper or do surprise gank when they are low.
Mesmer has one of the most useful tool to combat reaper that is moa.
You can 1v1 reaper who doesn’t have life force(i.e. start of the game) relatively easily with a druid or scrapper as well. However, against a reaper with close to full life force is almost impossible unless you completely outplays him.
Druid still has amazing support potential with new ‘search and rescue’ and menders
amulet. But it is definitely harder to bunker down for any profession at the moment. You have to play smarter which I would say is a good thing.
Mender druid has amazing sustain and support but will still fall easily to spike damage.
That would be way to OP especially with F3 shatter.
For reall? Getting blind every 12 seconds makes it a very strong trait. I have been using this all the time.
Today when I was dueling my friend on reaper, he kept complaining getting a lot of blinds.
A DH not in team fight is already an inefficient DH.
It is probably not your best option to 1v1 a DH on point. You can simply poke, bait out trap skills. Stealth and go away so that you outnumber at another node. He will be the one confused and try to figure out where you go.
Thief and revenant are strong. Probably need slight tunning down.
Druid, reaper and scrapper are still OP, need some major nerfs.
Too much OP stuff in the game at the moment. True shot is not the biggest concern.
But I agree CD is a bit too short.
I am afraid that even with zerker gear, you want to go with druid so that you can heal and buff your allies’ damage. Also, sword is your best dps weapon, not greatsword.
You might just swap in a few healing gear if your group find it hard to survive.
Shouldn’t thieves be hardcountered by DH?
No.
If as a thief, you screw up against DH, just disengage and find another chance. Your mobility is better than DH by a mile. This is hardly a counter, let alone hard counter.
Way too optimistic.
There is only unranked games at the moment and ppl are running squishy for fun.
But as the meta gets gradually figures out by top-tier players and new season starts, the game will be again be dominated by specs that have the best survivability.
Guardian and Mesmer in a good place are you serious.
TBH, I find guardian and mesmer being in somewhat decent place. Of course, a lot of fine tunning is needed.
However, some other professions are still OP. Ranger new pets need nerfs. Thieves didn’t need that damage buff. Necros didn’t need that corruption buff. Engi hammer needs damage nerf.
So before you claim chronomancer is “massive improvement over the core mesmer in every single sense” you need a lot of hard facts to back it up.
This person now the truth, if you don’t intend to play support or defense. The mesmer core is stronger than Chrono in term of offensiv
I was surprised as i turned back to mesmer, as said in some other thread:
I won or was even matched with, druid, scrapper, dare devil and my fellow chrono playing mesmer.So all those stories about p2win or Elite are far better are not right.
People are just focused in their same way to play with their conviction about some amu/build better than others. This is not true.
I can share 1 of the viable mesmer’s build. There is plenty of them.
build
Could even use the new paladin amulett, which may be suitable for this one.
Base memser provides nothing special to make it stand out among other professions,. Everything you can do, others can do better.
The solo existence of continuum shift makes chrono line pretty much mandatory. It greatly enhances one of mesmer’s strongest poitns: elite skill.
If you want good 1v1 class with good mobility, then druid/scrapper are your safest bet at the moment.
Check out raids. They have pretty much exactly what you described. :P
Not really. Raids is still all about damage. Everyone just takes traits that maximize damage. No need for utility trait, no need for sustain trait, no need for condie cleanse.
Not when everyone was doing it for the first time. Keep in mind that raids are now like 3 months old I think and at least decent groups are on farm status. That’s why it looks easy. During progression everyone wanted cleric healer druid with scrapper for VG for tanking. Now you can get away with berserker druid with healing and chrono tank with 1005 toughness. And the meta is still evolving in a sense that reapers, condi druids (yes I said it!), dagger warhorn tempest, etc are still being adapted by whole group.
I mean if you were doing something that is exactly the same with people of similar skill for weeks at end, wouldn’t you be competent enough to at least learn the mechanics by heart and experiment with different stuff that ultimately makes raid easier? If you really want challenge, put yourself on LFG as the guy who would like to help guild/groups that haven’t still cleared. You’ll have fun and get to experience different style of play.
What I claimed is true from beginning to the end. Yes, there is a bit of different stats min/maxing. But majority of builds are the same: take all the possible personal/group damage modifiers you can find. Utility traits are worthless when competing with damage modifiers. They are only taken when there is nothing else.
Condie cleanse and sustain are barely a thing. One healer is more than enough to manage a 10-man group. Only thing you need to worry about as a player are just some major boss mechanics. Most of boss attacks hit like soft noodles. There are 0 condition problems you need to worry about. I remember even in old scale 50 fractals, ppl tended to need utility/defense/cleanse a bit more than current raid.
actually in old fractal 50 dps was more needed than anything. Basically if you had a competent guardian and 2 eles who rotated around using glyph of storm in earth attunement you were able to kill the trash mob and melt down bosses. The current raid is the beginning of how great Gw2 Pve can be with its amazing combat system. Bosses hit like a soft noodle? Tell that to me when you are playing full berserker’s tempest without protection. currently you are literally being carried by competent druid and teammates who are able to share around boons and such if you believed that.
You are underestimating how good some of the players who produce raid clears (low man, speed run, etc) compare to the average population and the quality of guilds the players represent. Utility traits are not worthless, its just that they can be covered or replaced with human intuition (swiftness/movement skill for VG green not needed), dodging crucial attacks (“egg” from gorseval) and using many boons to advantage to beat the bosses. It comes down to why risk going over the enrage timer or not beating the boss when you can learn the mechanics and perform your best for smooth raid runs.
Having to wear toughness gear=/= difficulty of raid.
Of course, old scale 50 fractal is mostly about dps as well. But even that requires a little bit of utility like you mentioned, blind, aegis, reflect etc.
Raid only takes advantage of a very limited potential of the combat system gw2 offers. Compare to PvP/WvW, the pressure you feel is way less. All that matters is just a few major mechanics. There is no interesting terrain usage, because the boss AI obviously can’t handle that. The whole combat is still mostly monotonic with a group of people crowding on top of boss. Looking at Sab being a stationary cannon is just hilarious.
Despite of how much Anet messes up their PvP/WvW, the combat there is still the only place that takes full advantage of the game’s combat system. As for PvE, it has no lasting value even for the seemingly amazing raids.
This is sPvP. So the meta will always end up with builds with the best sustain.
Check out raids. They have pretty much exactly what you described. :P
Not really. Raids is still all about damage. Everyone just takes traits that maximize damage. No need for utility trait, no need for sustain trait, no need for condie cleanse.
Not when everyone was doing it for the first time. Keep in mind that raids are now like 3 months old I think and at least decent groups are on farm status. That’s why it looks easy. During progression everyone wanted cleric healer druid with scrapper for VG for tanking. Now you can get away with berserker druid with healing and chrono tank with 1005 toughness. And the meta is still evolving in a sense that reapers, condi druids (yes I said it!), dagger warhorn tempest, etc are still being adapted by whole group.
I mean if you were doing something that is exactly the same with people of similar skill for weeks at end, wouldn’t you be competent enough to at least learn the mechanics by heart and experiment with different stuff that ultimately makes raid easier? If you really want challenge, put yourself on LFG as the guy who would like to help guild/groups that haven’t still cleared. You’ll have fun and get to experience different style of play.
What I claimed is true from beginning to the end. Yes, there is a bit of different stats min/maxing. But majority of builds are the same: take all the possible personal/group damage modifiers you can find. Utility traits are worthless when competing with damage modifiers. They are only taken when there is nothing else.
Condie cleanse and sustain are barely a thing. One healer is more than enough to manage a 10-man group. Only thing you need to worry about as a player are just some major boss mechanics. Most of boss attacks hit like soft noodles. There are 0 condition problems you need to worry about. I remember even in old scale 50 fractals, ppl tended to need utility/defense/cleanse a bit more than current raid.
Check out raids. They have pretty much exactly what you described. :P
Not really. Raids is still all about damage. Everyone just takes traits that maximize damage. No need for utility trait, no need for sustain trait, no need for condie cleanse.
Well of precog change is definitely unnecessary and needs to be changed back to blur. Some alarcity time should be given back to certain skills to compensate a bit the huge effect nerf.
Mesmer/Chrono is actually still decent after the balance change. However, what makes it out of meta is that devs decide to create other OP monsters that completely overshadow mesmer/chrono.
They now need to apply the same balance standard they did to mesmer across all professions. Stop the powercreep and start to actually balance things.
I would be fine with the alacrity nerf if they apply the same standard to all other professions.
The precog well change is inexcusable, laziest change ever.
For me, it was 2015 after cele ele nerf and before June update.
Most balance and entertaining meta. The only aids spec back then was shoutbow warrior.
But even shoutbow warrior back then was way better than today’s aids.
Well, at least now you may as well have a few more classes being in trash tier together.
Funny part nobody asked for it, all we asked for is better way to land dmg and give us ability to live longer than 1 sec in all that aoe spam.
That’s Anet’s ridiculous balance philosophy: trying to counter OPness by OPness.
Now, two players in unranked that both have 500 unranked games played will score better than a player with 500 and a player with 200.
Can you please elaborate, why you taint your match making algorithm with other variables instead of only using your glicko2-based mmr?
From an outside perspective, it looks like you don’t trust your mmr, that it will provide us with good match ups. What else could be the reason to include games played?
Why should a player with 200 matches not play vs one with 2.000 when the MMR system rates them equally?
It keeps new players without an accurate rating from playing with experienced players who have similar, but accurate ratings. We could use rating deviation as a scoring parameter for this purpose, but it not as fine-grained as games played. This effect has a configurable limit so that the difference in games played don’t matter past a certain point.
What about having a rating deviation dependent on No. of game played?
As you explained, the no. of games played affect accuracy of ratings, not the actual value of ratings.
In theory its a good idea, in practice it will be useless.
First as I mentioned in another thread people see the tiny buffs we did get and refuse to believe that these buffs do nothing.
Second, even though the reddit board is mostly PvE focused, if you make any complaints about Mesmer you get bombarded with down votes and responses telling you that Mesmer is OP in pvp and you need to l2p. Even if you make sure to emphesise that you are only talking about pve and don’t care about pvp. Even if you say you don’t care about being effective and just want a fun build the response will be the same.
Third, related to the second. Theres this patheticness with the vocal pvp minority that if they think a class is op in pvp (which they always think Mesmer is) they think it deserves to be underpowered in pve.
And ironically, mesmer has never even been OP in PvP except for the bunker spec in recent 3 months.
All the people who complain mesmer OP base their opinion on some clueless foe getting instagib by mesmer in either WvW or hotjoin.
+1.
Anet balance team need to read this.
A better rotation after winning the first teamfight is probably like this:
A bunker mes + engi pushes far. This is a very durable dual and needs opponent to outnumber them to take them out. They also have good survivability and disengage.
Then the rest of you go back to home node with you leaving a portal at mid. Now you have one bunker mes at home, one bunker mes at far, one portal at mid. You will have total control of the map.
Surely in solo queue, you can hardly control your teammates’ rotation. But I still think engaging that second fight at home is bad rotation from your side. First, after coming back seeing them killing the boss, you probably should go for a steal. There is no point going back on home node. It is very hard to neutralize a point as a shatter mesmer anyway. Second, you should probably portal back to mid immediately after seeing unfavorable matchup at home. It did end up taking a very long time for you guys to get home node back. If you ported back mid, you could have helped out the engi and kill the revenant. From there on, you can go back home together with the engi. This way you won’t lose mid node(bunker mes camping there anyway) and you will get home back after a fight.
I have to say, your video kinda shows why shatter mesmer is not a good solo queue spec.
You were doing pretty good in every fight. However, you never really utilized your portal well. W/O portal play, shatter mesmer is not that impactful in the gameplay. I would say you would be much better off with a dragonhunter or reaper.
You were complaining team losing fight at 8:12. But it is not the reason your team was losing.
You guys won the first teamfight because one opponent team member was killing boss. Then after the first teamfight, the rotation completely fell apart. Your engi teammate pushed far. But no one went together with him. This is extremely risky because all the dead enemy players are respawning. He indeed ended up dying.
Then both bunker mesmers were sitting at mid doing nothing. He clearly didn’t even learn PvP 101: almost never sit on a cap doing nothing. They were the main reasons you guys could win teamfights. However, their inaction resulted in a very bad fight at home node. You guys did end up getting home node back, but only by having quite a few deaths over the map and then respawn to home node.
Aparently 80% warrior,guardian,revenant rest are fillers i guess.
Lol replace warriors with necros and you’re about right.
I dont know the NA meta but for EU the warrior is still just for bannering. Guardians is the core of the melee train while the backline will shift between being either heavy revenant (often seen in smaller tighter groups) or heavy necro mix.
Mesmers are seen more often but its not that big of a difference. Eles remain a small part of the backline. Thieves, engineers, rangers are still the kittens of WvW, not being wanted for anything really.
Guessing at least 2/3rds go with elite in zergs while its near 100% in roaming/small scale. The same classes that dominated dueling still dominate, with a notable exception – reapers are very popular (with little surprise, they can be unkillable 1v1). Necros was considered really bad at it before.
So what do zerg frontline DHs typically run these days?
Obviously some traps are very powerful. But do they still take altrusic healing and shouts? Feel that ‘stand your ground’ is very hard to replace.
Weapon set? For frontline, I would assume mobility is important so greatsword is probably still neded. Longbow seems to be a better weapon than hammer and staff.
So is GS/LB a good idea?