Well my personal experience disagree with this, but I guess, at this point, it’s kinda moot since the patch rolled in and I may have played against kittenty people too.
Some class clearly countered me (Medi Guard, Zerker thief), but I could deal my fair share of damage and win my 1v1 against equal leveled people.
I dueled a lot with my engi friend. Engi was one of the few classes that we actually had an advantage over in 1v1 before patch. I could win about 70% of time on my staff. Because it was so good for kiting and strong AA and clone AA. Remember before patch, shatter mesmer had some condition damage. Also, the base condie damage was way higher. With might stacks, it actually does respectable damage. However, on my S/T, I lost almost every single duel. The stealth burst is nice, but it is so predictable and only does so much damage. You have to wait for cool down after the execution.
IMHO, the experience in PvP hardly matters. The matchup system is so bad that you get matched to players with drastically different skill levels. However, there were clearly a lot of even non-beta builds you had little chance against in a straight-up duel. e.g. condie ranger, condie ele. or meta builds like shoutbow, medi guard, dd ele(this one you have chance, but they have more margin for error)
Before patch, you can also burst out of stealth a lot with GS S/T setup. However, in PvP the burst only does so much damage, a sustainable class can easily outheal your damage even if he face tanks everything(looking at you, shoutbow warrior). With such bursty setup, you will not be able to win any 1v1 against meta builds.
Now, the damage is so high that a burst can eats up at least 50% of a foe’s health. Against squishy, it is instant 100-0. It was already like this in WvW because of buffs before patch. That’s why people can roam with such setup in WvW. All they need is one good burst.
Even a video is not necessary anymore. Just search for power shatter mesmer roaming video, either before or after patch.
Used to be only the case in WvW because of all the crazy food, stack buff. Now due to the power creep, it gets in PvP as well.
I feel HM is really strong in dueling situation, helps you win 1v1 consistently. However, DE does provide more utility in various situations.
So it looks quite balanced at the moment depending on what you are looking for.
At this point, the best thing Anet should do is to improve both the quantity and uniqueness of WvW reward. Make the outnumbered buff 10 times better.
Also to OP:
I have to assume you are a somewhat new player. Don’t get affected by all the forum cry babies who do nothing but complaining about balances. 90% of the complaints are L2P issues. At least try to learn before talking about balance.
Mesmer is designed as a class for which your mitigation of damage is simply not being hit.
Actually same for thief, if you can land a burst on them, they are also as good as dead.
However in team fight, thief is definitely quite sneaky and post great threat to squishy target like mesmer.
So you need to be standing on your toes the moment you see a thief entering a fight. They will always target squishy target first.
For a long time, mesmer has been pretty much thief food. But the recent patch definitely gives mesmer both defensive and offensive tools to counter thief.
Tiips on how to survive a thief assault:
He will definitely attack you after going in stealth in 1v1. Stay close to your clones and count to 2 and dodge. If you are still not attacked yet, use blurred frenzy if you are on sword or be prepared to stun break and phase retreat if on staff.
Try to F3 interrupt their blind powder+heartseeker combo. You can burst them afterwards. Stay close to clones also helps you gain chance to deal shatter damage.
Take the blind on shatter trait, it is really good. If you see thief tryharding hearseeker you. Use F1 or F2 shatter to blind him.
Use terrain to get to place where they can’t instant teleport on you. Against shortbow, no need to try to dodge autoattack, it’s futile. Just try to trade back damage with GS AA /mirrorblade/izerker. Move randomly to avoid being hit by cluster bomb.
Save your mass invis for their shadow refuge. If you don’t have mass invis when they SR’d, go looking for some teammates help. You can also tell if the thief is still around by checking whether you are in combat or out of combat.
(edited by Exciton.8942)
Out of all the professions, I find ranger’s profession mechanics the least involving. Most of the time, your pet just relies on AI and does its own thing. I have seen plenty of ranger players almost ignoring their pet most of the time. The pet acts more like an annoyance rather than part of the profession.
I have a couple of suggestions I think that should at least make the pet slightly more fun to play with. Out of the F1-F4, F1 seems to be the least used command. So why not tie F1 to one of your pets specific offensive skill when your pet is already in the attack-foe mode. This way, I can control, say my wolf, to knock down my foe at a crucial moment.
The other suggestion would be make F2 skills swappable. The pet usually has 3 skills with CD. Tie one of the offensive one to F1 and let player choose one of the rest of the two as a F2 controllable skill.
Every human profession has more female than male haha.
And same for norn
not sure how people can say mesmer is not op, im willing to duel anyone whos trying to defend mesmer in this thread, you can pick any class except mesmer and ele.
btw i don’t even have mesmer title, so fair fight.
I don’t find a single person in this thread saying that.
Everyone knows confounding suggestion+daze mantra is too strong. PU can be but only in WvW.
The problem is the random complaints about healing(wtf?), condie spam(has never been and will not be in the meta any time soon) or blurred frenzy?. Let’s be honest. It’s the complaints that are irrational not the defenders.
The upgrade of daze to stun for MoD is simply too powerful.
When a good player gets dazed, he immediately dodges. But if you get stunned, you need to first use a stunbreaker and then try to mitigate damage. Against a well-executed burst, this is asking a bit too much to do. In addition, the same chain can be executed in 5 seconds again.
It doesn’t require interruption to lock down your opponent with this. Power block and chaotic interruption are also strong, but both of them requires the ability to read opponent’s animation and execute your skill at the right moment. This one does not, you just need to rapidly press down a series of buttons.
Also just to remind you, if PU stayed at the same +1s length as prepatch, it would be objectively worse. The boon duration from chaos line was lost so the defensive boons from PU last shorter. So you won’t be able to rely on PU as much to help you recover in a fight.
can you tell me what fun you had?
it reminds me the cheat ppl were used to go below the surface and killing ppl
pu seems like it now
It has nothing to do with PU. WvW roaming has been like this. Even before patch, you rely on those food/stacks buff, so you get enough burst to one shot squishy target. Thieve do this even better.
Just go check all the shatter mesmer roaming vids before patch. 80% of them are like this. That’s why I never found WvW roaming fun. Good fights are rare. Most of the time you either steamroll some clueless folks or you get hunted down by some 3-4 man gank squad.
PU only really helps you escape and survive, which is of course important. But it does not help you one-shot other players. Shatter mesmer still gonna stealth gank with prestige and mass invis.
OP’s vid is actually pretty nice in that it shows a good all-around overview of PU roaming. Not just one-shot foes but some deaths and struggles as well.
(edited by Exciton.8942)
We got overbuffed people. Not hating. Just Keeping it real.
Stop copying pasting the same kitten into every of your post. Then we probably will have less random noob complaints like this
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/So-um-memsers-seem-brokenly-OP/first#post5270214
That’s why you shouldn’t care too much about PPT during other times.
Simply enjoy the capture and defend during the timezone you play.
I dont think the mentioned classes do particulary well 1v1 on point at equal skill level using metabuilds already now. Issue non existant.
They cannot keep the point but especially mesmer can easy win 1on1s and cap afterwards. They should literally win no 1on1 with that amount of utility/mobility and I think all classes should have fair 1on1 matchups. So either nerf their mobility/utility or increase utility of other classes imo.
Even with current mesmer being a bit over the top, if you lose 1v1 easily to a power based mesmer who takes portal, then your build is simply not working or you just don’t know how to fight the class.
I dont think the mentioned classes do particulary well 1v1 on point at equal skill level using metabuilds already now. Issue non existant.
It is actually more about other burst damage class’s viability, e.g. power ranger.
You need to at least have a very clear advantage over mesmer/thief in 1v1s to be taken by a team. Gimmicks like 1500+ range does not cut it alone.
So you have take sustain classes or zerker that have clear advantage over thief/mesmer like meditation guardian.
It was already like that before.
Thief taken by team for their mobility and mesmer taken for portal. However, they will try their best not to 1v1 anyone else because it is to their disadvantage.
But the mobility and portal don’t affect most unranked/ranked play though. There is not enough coordination to make the benefit work.
(edited by Exciton.8942)
Mesmer aren’t that strong at high level tpvp but the blind through everything should be fixed just like they did for the ranger taunt.
A simple fix to the annoyance level of the class would be to make any phantasm apply reveal to the mesmer if they hit anything meaning the mesmer would have to shatter before stealthingmesmers carry in “high level tpvp”. meaning that a benchwarmer like backpack can learn it a week and carry the Abjured. only at Arenanet. ESPORTS!
Along with elementalist they do have some of the most OP traits and it’s a low risk high reward class but it seems to me that a well played thief will often win the burst spot in a team over mesmer because of the venom sharing and better decap potential.
Nope. Here’s what you need to know, benchwarmer Backpack has never touch mesmer in his years of playing gw2. He got to touch it for a week and the match get one sided with his appearance on a mesmer. His 1200 range burst took opponent ele down to 30% health from 100%. And this is not even a full burst, just a random burst from 1200 range. Put that with a well placed time warp and a spammable daze that stun and deal damage at the same time.
That just show how powerful mesmer is atm. Remember shoutbow war? That is how mesmer is now, you only need to be a little good at it and you’ll be way over effective to your team and carry the match/team fights by your own. How the kitten can you guys defend this kitten, when it is already being displayed how powerful it is by some of the best team in NA.
Backpack is a terrible example. He is running with Abjured which gonna carry him to victory easily. All I see him doing is basically dying two times with in first 5 minutes while Abjured still got the lead.
Basically Abjured can take anyone half decent and win the tournament with ease. I remember in last weekly ESL. They got pushed a bit by the double warrior composition in game 1 but in game 2 and 3 they easily handled that.
Then you go watch EU final between TCG and Orng. TCG has one of the best mesmers in the game. He is also running PU. Did that make him facerolling others or winning all the 1v1s? Hell No! Also Orng didn’t even take a mesmer in their team and they still won game 1 and was so close in winning game 2. Tell me how mesmer is over effective to the team or even a mandatory to have like shoutbow before patch.
(edited by Exciton.8942)
Mesmer greatsword is an all damage little utility weapon. People need to couple it with something else(CC, immob etc) to land the burst.
Confounding suggestion+daze mantra really make the burst setup way too easy. Basically all those FOTM mesmer players are running this. Imagine either confounding suggestion or daze matra is taken out of the game. All these players will not be able to do anything. Sure they can still take PU but all they can do is just stealth running around and contribute nothing.
Watched the EU ESL monthly today.
Helseth was running PU.
Did PU help him survive better? Surely! Did PU help him win 1v1?No. Did PU make his mesmer facerolling over others?Hell No!.
The kittening clutch engi AOE moa when defending lord!
Amazing game as always between these two teams.
It is quite literally l2p. I know I sound somewhat bias in that assessment, but think about it. The class is based around confusion, (literal and the condition). We have more interrupt traits than any other class, we still remain in gw2 a class devoted to locking down opponents. Take all the “brokenness” of stealth and add a class that doesn’t attack you directly most of the time. Add in the general hate of AI.
We are the class that punishes people who lack restraint or experience, which is every new player ever.
I think after the patch, experience is not even a factor anymore. The mesmer community should just accept the fact that we got the most out of everything.
Baseline traits are already enough to make us stronger.
IP,IE,Manipulation Range, Glamour CD, 15%Phantasm Damage, Protective Mantras, Mantras are now auto charging (I forgot how to name this one)
This is ALL without the new powerful traits we have gotten. So the people saying that “Oh mesmer gotten buffed, so other people needs to fight them better now”
This is blatantly wrong.
In my opinion, mesmer was never weak pre-patch, the only problem we had before was the thief hard counter, and we are overshadowed by thieves in a team" <- this is pvp wise.
PS: I am not asking for nerfs or anything. All I am pointing out is memsers were never weak pre patch.
It’s complete bullkitten saying the only problem of mesmer before patch is thief. ICan’t believe this is from some one who mains mesmer
Our strongest meta build, power shatter is only built for team fight and portal. It is incredible hard to land any damage unless you have a thief/engi teammate who knows what he is doing. Without their cc, you are pretty much a non-factor. The 1v1 ability is bad, the only 1v1 matchup you should be willing to take is against engi. Even against engi, you will give up the cap and there is no guarantee that you can have upper hand at same skill level. Against ele or necro, you might be able to fight if you get a perfect opening. Against shoutbow or medi guard, it is hopeless. Your only choice is to rotate somewhere else.
I could argue that in unranked/ranked play, thief is not even the biggest problem for mesmer. The biggest is that the lack of teamwork completely nullifies any effort you make.
The new marauder is quite a bit different from zerk + valk.
It has high precision and low power. While zerk + valk gives you high power and low precision. You probably have to mix in assassin to get a closer stats to the pvp marauder.
Usually you can also go for zerk + valk + precision food.
Nothing new. NA scene as boring as always.
Like, we’ve deserved nerfs since the patch. I don’t think any mesmer would agree that the current state of PU is balanced. They’ve just nerfed and gutted so many things about mesmer because of some silly interaction they couldn’t fix. Only 1 nerf they’ve done since the patch was justified. While other pieces are still overpowered the new creative traits and abilities have been gutted or nerfed into the ground and were left where we were before the patch with just a stronger shatter/phantasm. Too much not testing things going around at Anet and its kittening us over…
Imagine the chronomancer coming out, with all these reset mechanics they make us all excited. They cant patch their way out of the most simple interactions, and when they throw band-aids on them they never revisit them. How many band-aids is chronomancer gonna have slapped onto it.. were just going to be mummies a month after x-pack.
If there is one thing that needs to be nerf’ed, it should not be PU.
There is only one thing that every power mesmer runs these days, pro or casual. It is the mantra of distraction + confounding suggestions. It is this combo that provides easy and repeated lockdown burst. You don’t have to interrupt to burst, you don’t need stealth to cover the burst. Surely both interruption and stealth can help make it even stronger, but neither of them is fundamental cause of the problem.
The fix has to start from confounding suggestions and see what we go from there. Not PU, nor any of the interruption or damage traits.
Be careful that they might put in a patch that temporarily disable blinding dissipation just like what they did with grenadier and symbol avenger.
a thief vs thief have been always like this, no post-patch, if a CS thief did his opener and you could not react, you were rekt… What you have to do is steal him, or use your stunbreaks+withdraw, and then attack him, it is likely you will do the same amount of dmg than received
That’s not true. It’s not common to get HP from 17k to 3k in less than a second.
Thief can usually survive as long as they get just a little bit more time. I went to dueling server a lot and rarely see thief duel ending up being a one-shot fight.
mind explaining what happened?
Rather than suggesting nerfing a class, plz be more specific on what exactly is causing the problem.
Now that mesmer has more access to swiftness. Maybe it is good idea to change temporal curtain so that it gives 4-5 sec of swiftness but can stack?
The answer is that we are indeed very hard to catch, haha.
You need to make sure you have enough CC or gap closers. But most mesmers run glass cannon. So one good hit is enough to make them panic. We still have very little condie clear unless we go for inspiration line. So immbo is really strong on mesmer.
However, if the mesmer runs PU, he will not die if he decides to disengage. Also it is the best if you play some mesmer youself. It is a good time to try one! After the patch, the class gets much easier and newbie friendly.
IP baseline is the best decision on mesmer change.
I just couldn’t play any build w/o IP before patch. Now I can play so many different builds with joy.
You still watch for the same thing. Mirror blade burst, izerker, clones running towards you. Nothing has really changed.
And yet, mesmers are still not that common in high tier competitive play.
Yes mesmers now have strong mechanics, but remember the mesmer theme is in great part preventing the enemy play (lockdown) and even punishing it for playing (reflects, interrupt damage…).But all professions have their own strength. “before I never had any problems vs mesmers” so it is a good news that you now have problems. No class should cause “no problem” to fight against. Mesmers used to be weak and the update has definitely improved them. They may be currently strong in low-medium tier competitive play, but this is partly because people are not used yet to fight the new mesmers. Let things settle and don’t worry, the nerf war will be tough for mesmers and it has already started!
I am not asking for a nerf, never did I mention that right?
FYI mesmer was strong before, it has never been weak in my opinion.
Good news for me that I am now having problems with it? If you ask anyone here the forums, I meant what I said literally.
I don’t wanna be rude but I take pride If I say I do not have any problems with them.
Now even the a not so skilled mesmer can fight on par against me.
Before it was a matter of skill vs skill.
No before we go off topic.I am asking for tips, and hints?
You are NOT asking for tips by saying things like ’don’t ask me to AA and cleanse’. These SHOULD be the ways to deal with blind. AA is an important part of PvP gameplay in this game. You are underestimating AA way too much. However, It’s perfectly fine to openly question the power of a trait. Just don’t pretend you are not.
This trait indeed has problem being unavoidable. We knew it will be a very strong trait even before the patch comes online. It should be fixed that you can avoid it by blocking/evading etc. Since it comes with shatter, players should tend to dodge when mesmer comes close range. That’s exactly the time mesmer tries to burst. Or mesmer uses it for defensive purpose when the opponent is close. Then I think it is a good play if the mesmer can time the skill correct to avoid the big hit. This is essential since now endurance has been nerf’ed and most players can hit harder with their build.
mesmer is defintiely on the strong side at the moment.
But many people are over-exaggerating it. There are other builds that are even worse than some mesmer builds.
It is a great trait that gives mesmer chance to fight against thief.
Ranger is in a pretty decent state.
All they need to do is nerf some blatantly OP stuff, say some warrior burst, some guardian/engi/ele burning, some mesmer stunner.
You should have played the other day when it was engi day. Grenadier still on that time. It was basically nades throwing competition every game I played.
For general PvE, I suggest experimenting yourself. It is the most fun way to play!
For PvP, gs/staff is a pretty all-around set that you can build in various ways. For power shatter, take domination and dueling line, Then pick one of the rest three.
PU is definitely the best if you opt for 1v1. But I feel in teamfight, it is hardly OP.
I feel it will probably still not be taken as meta just like before patch.
I don’t know if it is worth taking both idefender and ienchanter just for the sake of shattering them and reducing cooldown.
By taking the GS trait and illusion line. You already have mirror blade and izerker on pretty low cooldown. Shattering 3 phantasms give you 6% cdr, which is about 1 sec. It is really not that big of a deal. Considering in a real fight situation, you also need to spend a lot of time on staff kiting and supporting.
It is after all an adept trait. Not build defining in any sense but some nice extra is you like to shatter your phantasms.
It has been complained about before and it is indeed powerful.
Since it is really a power creep patch, it’s better to give skills like this a bit more time. We will see in a few weeks whether it needs a higher cooldown or something.
Maybe it’s because the meta hasn’t been settled.
I have played a lot of mesmer, ele and ranger after patch. Feel there is better build diversity for all three classes.
Would be so happy if Anet can implement some of OP’s suggestions.
Very good post! Bump!
The biggest problem PvP in the game is not class balance. It is the player skill balance.
I noticed the players I got matched up with tend to have dramatic skill difference. I am not a PvP veteran but still has rank 70 and a fair amount of games under my belt. How come do I get matched up sometimes with players who barely played any PvP before? It is really not fun for either of us.
I know Anet is taking their time, trying to balance all the classes.
But I am really not sure how long it would take if you want to put out a big patch trying to adjust everything.
Can we first get patches fixing the worst problem first? Say the engi grenades….Today
is engi day. Games are turning into a pure grenade battle. This is really not fun.
Like think about it, when a Thief is spamming evades, can they actually take away 10k hp?
Of course. That’s exactly why SD thief hard hard counters mesmer.
The more I play, the less powerful I feel mesmer is.
Every other class seems to have either one shot build or sustain build.
Look at this:
http://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/gw057bwoz63gpvx.jpgEle burning 35k. It is definitely OP, right?
Until you see the 3 hits Burning speed only deal 500 damage each. That ele is using a pure Burning Duration build. People need to realize what’s OP is neither Ele nor any other class. It’s also not Burning. It’s the Burning Duration runes/sigils, which is a 65% raw damage multiplier. Without the Burning duration runes/sigils, the above burning would be 21k, which is not OP anymore.
For 50 ticks? That’s actually fine. If it was a single tick for that much it would be a problem, but that’s 50 ticks of burning on you, shame for not cleansing it (not you specifically but whoever that was). 50 ticks of burning is a lot, especially when you have 0 context for the fight. 50 ticks means that burning was there for a long time, maybe from multiple sources and such. Also we don’t know how long the fight actually lasted nor how many people where there. For a 1 minute fight (10 seconds more than 50 ticks) that’s pretty OK in my book.
Are you sure it works that way? Maybe 10 stacks of burning equals 10hits each tick?