Guild Wars 2

Ok, as another point, I want to try and make something clear. There seems to be this big misconception that PvP changes are constantly impacting PvE and making mesmers worse.

This is false.

You may not remember all the nerfs, redcomyn, but I do. I also understand the base reasons behind Mesmer traditionally being poor in PvE.

First, let’s look at what makes something good in PvE. The first thing is damage, the second thing is utility. Let’s start with utility.

Utility

Mesmers have always had great utility between reflects, stability, condie cleanse, portal, stealth, and mob control. Post-HoT we now also have quickness and alacrity (though those sorta fit with damage too).

There has never been a PvP change that negatively impacted Mesmer PvE utility in a meaningful way.

Our condie cleanse is still great, stability share is still strong, portal is portal, and we’ve got plenty of stealth. Reflects are a lot worse, but that’s due to Anet specifically making PvE projectiles unblockable to avoid trivializing content, it has nothing to do with PvP.

Damage

Mesmer damage has actually always been spreadsheet competitive, but awful in reality. If you could miraculously keep up 3 phantasms on bosses the entire fight, your dps was great. This didn’t happen of course, and so the dps was bad.

This has nothing to do with PvP changes. Not one single time was Mesmer damage ever lowered in PvP in a way that affected PvE.

This can largely be attributed to the PvE/PvP preference split of phantasms vs shatters, but the point remains. In fact, most changes were on-paper buffs to Mesmer damage that failed to have an impact in PvE because they addressed the wrong problems. Mesmer has poor damage in PvE because of the inherent mechanics behind phantasms/illusions and how they’re locked to targets and destroyed, and it has nothing to do with PvP.

But Pyro, what about the alacrity nerf?

The alacrity nerf was first and foremost a PvE change. Yeah, mesmers were overtuned in PvP too, but that got nerfed in different ways (though the stack up between the PvE alacrity nerf and the other nerfs causing overnerfing in PvP is a real problem, but totally off-topic). Mesmer alacrity got nerfed because it was deemed as having too powerful of an effect on raids, along with the squad-hopping you could do. It has nothing to do with PvP.

In the entire existence of GW2, there have been very few nerfs to Mesmer that actually impacted us negatively in PvE, and these few were odd things like the change to the location of the old mantra traits that to this day nobody knows why it happened. The problems Mesmer has in PvE can be attributed to the underlying mechanics of the Mesmer class, and the difficulty in making those mechanics work smoothly in PvE, not collateral damage from PvP nerfs. If anyone wants to dispute this and bring up nerfs I have forgotten, feel free…but I’m not coming up with anything that goes against what I’ve just said.

@Nerfing: If you’re willing to make baseless accusations about poorly considered nerf requests, you should be willing to back those accusations up. You started off by accusing me of making thoughtless suggestions that harmed PvE, hence my taking offense to that. If the point of your comment was to try and show how PvP changes can negatively impact PvE, I’d recommend you aiming at someone that has actual recommended changes that were harmful to PvE instead of randomly taking a poorly aimed potshot at me.

@PvE: Let me be blunt. If you needed crippling dissipation to keep your distance from mobs, you’re playing really poorly, and it doesn’t take a ‘super Mesmer’ to get above that level of play. Additionally, everything and their mother has breakbars in HoT content, so you’d be in trouble anyway even if you had that trait.

The GS bounce has no impact on PvE performance. This change mattered in PvP because it reduced the amount of burst damage you could do (at point blank range). In PvE, if you’re using greatsword you should be at high range, meaning you won’t get the bounces anyway. If you’re at close range…you shouldn’t be using greatsword. Swap to sword and be done with it.

Ultimately, if you were even using the dissipations at all in PvE, you were using a really bad build. That could very well be the source of a lot of your difficulties. Instead of bemoaning mechanics that have been removed, why not try and find out what the stronger builds use instead, as using those will make your experience far smoother than relying on a bad trait would.

@GS1: If you’re doing HoT world events with a group, then you could absolutely just camp GS1 and be fine. You wouldn’t be contributing a whole lot, but you’d tag most everything and you wouldn’t be dying. Granted, I wouldn’t actually recommend doing that as it’s nice to have everyone contributing in groups, but the point is that open world content is easy enough that there’s no barrier to entry that makes Mesmer bad at it. We’ve got decent aoe with gs, wells, and shield, and we’ve got 25% passive with chrono. What more do you want?

Personally, I’m the tank for my raid so I go illusions, chrono, and inspiration for all 3 bosses of spirit vale. This gets me shatter heals and group distortion for nasty situations (like when we’re tanking gorsey breakbars) and it also lets me get a 3-clone CS going from just iLeap and a single shield block (because it summons the pDefender). For gear I go zerker and then pieces of knights as necessary to hold aggro with chrono runes.

For slothy, inspiration with focus traited is obviously super important. I also have been dropping well of recall for feedback on slothy. I started by swapping out the signet, but not being able to share quickness really bothered me, and a lot of alacrity uptime is from shield phantasms anyway. On top of that, Slothy isn’t really a dps race like gorsey, it’s more a mechanic fight like VG, so keeping your group alive and well through the projectile spam is top priority.

redcomyn.4651:

I have no interest in raids or dungeons. I am only interested in OW PVE, so this is irrelevant.

First, allow me a quick chuckle. Second, mesmer is fine in OW PvE. Everything is fine in OW PvE.

redcomyn.4651:

Here you admit that mesmer is weak and that pvp nerfs have made it worse.

Pre-hot, yes. HoT changed everything with respect to mesmer capability in PvE.

redcomyn.4651:

No, I never said that you had zero regard to pve, I only said that you advocated for nerfs for the purpose of pvp balancing. You have admitted to that in this discussion.

The cool thing about forums is that you can quote people.

redcomyn.4651:

I am not saying you randomly call for nerfs. I am sure that the ones you have asked for were all well thought out and probably justified…for pvp. They were not required or necessary for pve.

Right here you say that I’ve advocated for nerfs without making them well thought out or justified with respect for PvE. You’re wrong of course, but you did say it, so don’t try to deny that.

On top of that, you’re still just pulling random insults out of thin air. I’ve yet to see a single cogent response from you that actually made your point. I challenge you to find a time when I advocated for a PvP nerf that also reduced PvE capabilities.

redcomyn.4651:

Stealth was nerfed,

Nobody cares about stealth in PvE.

redcomyn.4651:

conditions on illusion death was removed entirely,

REALLY nobody cares about this in PvE.

redcomyn.4651:

the extra bounce for GS and Staff was removed.

First, you’re wrong. Staff didn’t have the bounce removed. Second, REALLY nobody cares about the GS bounce in PvE.

redcomyn.4651:

These all have weakened the mesmer. None of these changes were compensated for.

Uh…no. You’re just pointing at random nerfs (and not even being right about them) and claiming that they hurt mesmer in PvE, but you’re totally wrong. On top of that, you’re claiming they hurt open world PvE, where literally all you need is a gs and the 1 key.

redcomyn.4651:

You may have discussed compensatory changes. Tell me, did it work? I see a weak mesmer in pve, much weaker than it was 3 years ago.

You’re so wrong here it’s laughable. Mesmer is required for optimal raid comps, no questions asked. It’s wanted in all fractal runs, and nobody cares about dungeons. 3 years ago we were brought in dungeons sometimes just because nobody else figured out how to do reflects yet.

redcomyn.4651:

I see the results from people (not necessarily you) who thought mesmer was OP or that certain builds were cheesy (you remember about the infamous PU build, right?).

So if you’re trying to make the argument that mesmer is worse in PvE now than it was before HoT, you can just go ahead and stop right now, because you’re wrong. Additionally the nerfs that targeted PU didn’t touch PvE at all. Mesmer has always sucked in PvE, and PvP nerfs have only exacerbated that issue; they didn’t create it.

redcomyn.4651:

I have never said that you were a bad person or stupid or anything like that. I am saying when people ask for nerfs, even with compensatory discussions, it rarely makes anybody happy. Maybe if Anet had followed your suggestions exactly, we would all be happy, but when has Anet ever done that?

You’re changing your tune an awful lot. First you said that I advocated nerfs with zero regards to PvE, now you’re saying that it’s Anet’s fault.

Yes, Anet is going to Anet, but you’re playing this game so you’ve got to live with that.

redcomyn.4651:

When nerfs are asked for, no matter how you try to make it palatable to everyone, it sets a tone. A tone in which apparently Anet only sees the “nerfs” and not the compensatory changes. And not everyone has been as conscientious as you. In fact, most aren’t. Most people will only talk about the nerfs they want and that is it.

I’m not going to stop making intelligent and well-informed suggestions just because imbeciles like a certain friendly thief we all know come to the mesmer forum and complain constantly. If I see something is broken, I’m going to call it as it is, and I’m going to make suggestions that will fix it in a reasonable manner. The alternative is staying silent and hoping that when Anet nerfs it, and they will eventually nerf it, that they nerf it in a good way without any intelligent feedback. They don’t always take intelligent feedback, but they do sometimes, and so that’s worth the shot.

redcomyn.4651:

Fay.2357:

I’m going to go ahead and say that you’re lying. I have literally never advocated a nerf to Mesmer in PvE, so your statement is categorically false.

On top of that, I can fully and completely justify any nerfs I have advocated for. I don’t randomly run around the forums screaming ‘Nerf!’ I suggest that something needs a nerf, I suggest a viable method of nerfing it, and I explain the logic behind why that method will accomplish the stated goal without causing undo harm to other situations.

I challenge you to find any examples contrary to what I’ve just stated. Go on, I’ll wait.

I am not saying you randomly call for nerfs. I am sure that the ones you have asked for were all well thought out and probably justified…for pvp. They were not required or necessary for pve. Of course pvp needs class balancing, but pve doesn’t. Every class needs to feel powerful in pve. Mesmer doesn’t. Yeah, the mechanics are fun but the damage sucks, in pve.

And I’m saying you’re totally and completely wrong. I challenge you to find a single instance of when I advocated a nerf that would hurt PvE without discussing compensatory changes to fix that problem.

It’s easy to spout unsubstantiated insults about things, but you’re going to have a very difficult time putting your money where your mouth is on this one.

redcomyn.4651:

Fay, you do the same thing, only for the side of the pvp’ers, when you ask for nerfs.

I’m going to go ahead and say that you’re lying. I have literally never advocated a nerf to Mesmer in PvE, so your statement is categorically false.

On top of that, I can fully and completely justify any nerfs I have advocated for. I don’t randomly run around the forums screaming ‘Nerf!’ I suggest that something needs a nerf, I suggest a viable method of nerfing it, and I explain the logic behind why that method will accomplish the stated goal without causing undo harm to other situations.

I challenge you to find any examples contrary to what I’ve just stated. Go on, I’ll wait.

apharma.3741:

Pretty much what Pyro and Silverkey said and I especially agree with Silverkey about F5.

I’d much rather see them remove F5 though as reducing an elite to <90s CD by picking Chrono not just feels required but it adds to the one trick pony.

Ah yes, the classic ‘lets eviscerate PvE mesmers because the PvP folks are getting antsy’ suggestion. I’ll pass on that one.

Stuff like this is the main reason that the devs (in truth) rarely pay attention to feedback from players. The balance devs aren’t experienced enough with the game to be able to separate the unbiased feedback from the biased feedback, but they are intelligent enough to realize that 99% of feedback given is myopically focused on one aspect of the game with zero consideration for anything else. Therefor, they make the judgement call that operating with zero feedback is better than operating with potentially awful feedback.

Primarily because non-mesmers come to the mesmer forum to kitten and moan about mesmers.

The other reason is that plenty of mesmers would be pretty happy to see portal and moa get nerfs. The issue is that those 2 skills are so strong, they allow the devs to continually nerf the class without removing its usability in team PvP. This means you end up with a crappy one trick pony that isn’t fun to play all because those 2 skills carry it. If those 2 skills got nerfed, that excuse would evaporate.

Veckna.9621:

Now that you mention fractals, in that recent AMA they said they’re currently reworking a few things in them and working on new fractals altogether. When is this supposed to ship into the live game? I have no idea but I guess setting up things for fractal records now with a rework that could warrant a complete change a few months (I hope) down the line would be a waste of time.

Soon™.

Honestly, how many times have they promised/claimed to be working on upcoming stuff for fractals (wvw works here too)? How many times have they delivered?

Lalainnia.3598:

Question what exactly is being massively sacrificed in team fight ability? Isn’t the entire intent of portal to be used for teamplay even though that doesn’t always work out. On that point what exactly woul be taken if portal isn’t that’s so game changing in a team fight?

A non-mesmer would be taken =P.

Portal is mobility, that’s all. It affects teamfights by allowing your team to be at the teamfights whenever they occur. However, when what pops out of the portal is 2 mesmers instead of 2 scrappers, your actual capability to teamfight is massively reduced.

If you’re fighting 2 mesmers, it means they’re massively sacrificing actual team-fight ability for raw mobility. Don’t push far, because that allows them to outrotate you. Just put 2 people on mid, 1 on home, and rotate the last 2 between home and mid to steamroll the team fights wherever they happen.

Just going to post my standard disclaimer here:

Personally, I love name and shame, and think it should be fully supported. Unfortunately, Anet disagrees. Since your post has account name info, this thread will get removed and you might get an infraction unless you censor it.

Lexander.4579:

Fay.2357:

Lexander.4579:

Myrias.8732:

Next balance patch:

Mesmer

Portal: Enemies can now use opponent portals in SPvP.

thats how it should’ve been from the beginning

Care to justify that assertion?

Oh, silly me, of course not.

being able to be present simultaneously at 2 locations is a very huge advantage in sPvP: decaping/capturing a point and instantly returning back into the fight creates extreme pressure on enemies

people complain about double moa because, well, its the most obvious thing to do with continuum split but they have no idea how powerful double portals are

People don’t complain about double portals because it’s almost impossible to use CS with portal in a meaningful fashion. You’d realize this if you weren’t just making stuff up to complain on the forums about.

Lexander.4579:

Myrias.8732:

Next balance patch:

Mesmer

Portal: Enemies can now use opponent portals in SPvP.

thats how it should’ve been from the beginning

Care to justify that assertion?

Oh, silly me, of course not.

Lexander.4579:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I think the real question here is why is a thief complaining that mesmer is broken. A good thief completely shuts down a mesmer.

i think “comparing” fits here more than “complaining”

I’m not sure you’ve got a solid grasp of the meanings of those words.

Yeah, but the ones you do post in instantly acquire incredible levels of salt.

Seriously, I’m curious as to what you think you’re accomplishing. You’re not ‘spreading the word’, you’re turning yourself into a laughingstock. Even non-mesmers know who you are, and chuckle whenever they see your name because it’s a guarantee that a salty post of epic proportions is coming up. Do you realize how comically immature all your posting is?

Lexander, I’ve got an order of fries to go with that salt of yours.

@musu: BDO combat is ok, but not great. It’s sorta messy in the sense that animations are very flashy with a lot of…mess. It’s not crisp and clean, and so can make actually understanding what you’re doing somewhat tough. Additionally, a lot of the skills seem to lack character. Many things just seem to be another way to deal damage with a different animation, but without any sort of real distinguishing characteristics.

Enemies I’ve seen are very simplistic. I’ve been overall unimpressed by the PvE design so far. Most enemies are just very simple with simple attacks and ai. Questing doesn’t give exp, so your only means of leveling is actually killing stuff, and this ends up being somewhat grindy eventually.

I’ve yet to experience any PvP, but I have a gut feeling that with the amount of graphical overload from all the skills, it’s going to end up as a big blob of skill effects that you can’t see anything around.

@Rylock: Be warned, the PoE learning curve is exceedingly steep and you’ll probably die a lot. Don’t play hardcore unless you’re ok with losing your character fairly often.

Dethl.2875:

Jourdelune.7456:

Fay.2357:

This thread exemplifies the history of Mesmer in GW2:

1. Mesmer is not meta in competitive play
2. Mesmer has builds that steamroll bad players
3. Bad players get steamrolled and come to the forums to whine about it
4. Mesmer gets nerfed again
5. Mesmer goes from not meta to garbage in competitive play

Here’s to hoping Anet ignores the baddies and doesn’t execute point 4.

Well if you look more at ESL matches… you will see more mesmers than the last week. Next week, you will see some more.

Actually, if you play the RANK game… you probably find 1 mesmer each match from Diamond and up.

Perhaps you missed it, but here again:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

The first class in META section, is hybrid mesmer. And it’s not because the admin of this website are Necros…

i don’t really care enough to debate
but the order is alphabetical from the name of the specialization so good job

Nah, you must be mistaken. Clearly chrono is listed first because it’s the meta-est meta that ever meta-d.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Even as a dom mesmer main since gw1 (I was THAT guy), I find it really hard to play GW2 these days. I loved playing the game before the dumbfire and June trait revamp patches. Ever since then it has gone progressively worse. After HOT, which severely reduced the skill of all classes and increased the power creep to 11, I lost motivation to play my mesmer. I only play now just to see if the game is worth coming back to (Which it isnt for me atm). A real shame considering what this game could have been.

I really miss the old days of 20/20/30 CI mesmer. It was so much fun to play that spec, especially with my way of playing it

Currently playing Path of Exile, they just released a new expansion. PoE obviously isn’t for everyone though, but it’s fantastic if you like that sort of game.

I’ve been playing a good amount of Blade and Soul lately. The game is decent, but has a very long laundry list of issues that add up to it probably being dead within a year. It’s definitely fun to play for now though, just don’t get too invested into it as it’s just a temporary distraction.

Fay has been enjoying Black Desert. It’s a bit of an odd game, but sorta fun. It just lacks any sort of PvE endgame though. I haven’t seen the open world PvP fights yet, but the combat system smells like it would make open world PvP really questionable. We’ll see though.

On the non-mmo side, I’ve been enjoying DA:I a lot, if you haven’t played it yet. Just don’t try playing a daggers rogue, the combat system doesn’t work well for it.

I’ve heard of POE before. Seems like a diablo-esque game that I never really tried but im sorta interested in it.

Black Desert I will hold off on for a bit.

I have dragon age on my xbox and beat everything on nightmare. Fun game.

Yeah, PoE is diablo-esque, so if that’s your type of thing it’s fantastic. If it’s not your type of thing, it’s awful xD.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Even as a dom mesmer main since gw1 (I was THAT guy), I find it really hard to play GW2 these days. I loved playing the game before the dumbfire and June trait revamp patches. Ever since then it has gone progressively worse. After HOT, which severely reduced the skill of all classes and increased the power creep to 11, I lost motivation to play my mesmer. I only play now just to see if the game is worth coming back to (Which it isnt for me atm). A real shame considering what this game could have been.

I really miss the old days of 20/20/30 CI mesmer. It was so much fun to play that spec, especially with my way of playing it

Currently playing Path of Exile, they just released a new expansion. PoE obviously isn’t for everyone though, but it’s fantastic if you like that sort of game.

I’ve been playing a good amount of Blade and Soul lately. The game is decent, but has a very long laundry list of issues that add up to it probably being dead within a year. It’s definitely fun to play for now though, just don’t get too invested into it as it’s just a temporary distraction.

Fay has been enjoying Black Desert. It’s a bit of an odd game, but sorta fun. It just lacks any sort of PvE endgame though. I haven’t seen the open world PvP fights yet, but the combat system smells like it would make open world PvP really questionable. We’ll see though.

On the non-mmo side, I’ve been enjoying DA:I a lot, if you haven’t played it yet. Just don’t try playing a daggers rogue, the combat system doesn’t work well for it.

You’re hardly running a build that can claim to do good damage. 2.1k power is very low for wvw stats, and I’m willing to bet your crit chance and crit power are rather low as well.

The Mesmer you fought was obviously running a very tanky build, hence them not dying and being unable to threaten you. However, your complaints about being unable to kill them are pointless. Let’s take a look at this from the Mesmer point of view, shall we?

“I was fighting an ele, they had loads of sustain and I was unable to ever kill them. They never really did enough damage to threaten me though, so neither of us ever died.”

The situation is identical on both sides. You’re both running defensive builds, you both have a lot of sustain, and neither of you have the capability to kill the other. This is a nonissue. Now, if you were running an offensive FA burst build and still couldn’t kill them, then maybe you’d have a complaint. As is, you’ve got nothing.

This thread exemplifies the history of Mesmer in GW2:

1. Mesmer is not meta in competitive play
2. Mesmer has builds that steamroll bad players
3. Bad players get steamrolled and come to the forums to whine about it
4. Mesmer gets nerfed again
5. Mesmer goes from not meta to garbage in competitive play

Here’s to hoping Anet ignores the baddies and doesn’t execute point 4.

Because you’re totally wrong in your evaluation of its effectiveness. I don’t think anyone outside of the mouth-breathers at metabattle actually think that condie shatter is a top tier meta pick, but it is by far the best option that mesmers have in the current meta. Is it as good as a reaper? No, probably not. Is it the best shot we’ve got? Yep.

So the short answer is that power shatter doesn’t do enough damage.

Power shatter has been hit with a lot of nerfs. The mirror blade nerf was nasty, and drastically lowered our burst damage. Additionally, it’s basically a requirement that you take inspiration for cleansing a lot of the time, and this means no DE. Unlike condie shatter, power shatter has garbage damage past the initial burst. If they’re not dead at that point, they’re going to full heal and wreck you. This means that different mechanics have more impact on you. DE becomes essential for how it enables higher instant burst…but you can’t take it due to needing inspiration.

You will never break a reaper with a power burst. Granted, you won’t kill a reaper with condie shatter either, but you can at least spec inspiration for cleansing without massive trade-offs.

You’ll never kill a rev with a power burst. They have too many automatic defenses from traits, and can pop the glint heal to full heal from your bursting. After you burst you’ve got 10s of trying to survive someone that can chase faster than you can run, and can autoattack you to death in about 5 seconds.

You’ll never kill a scrapper with power burst. They have too much passive and active defenses. Additionally, they have the sustain to heal back up after you’ve burst them, and the damage output to scare you off.

I could go on, but that’s the gist of it. Condie shatter doesn’t rely on killing in 1 burst. You deal substantial pressure over the course of a fight and eventually kill them without putting all your eggs in the ‘kill or be killed’ basket. Additionally, condie shatter has more reasonable flexibility in traiting. Taking inspiration doesn’t sacrifice anything too major for condie shatter, while giving up dueling (DE) is close to an unacceptable loss for power shatter. Combined with smaller things like staff being vastly more defensively powerful than greatsword, illusionary reversion synergizing very well with condies but awfully with power, and having a far more favorable matchup vs thieves on condie shatter than on power shatter, it all adds up to power shatter being substantially inferior.

Quadox.7834:

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t think changing the sword block to a continuous block is a good idea. We simply need the sword to have a more clear role and I think a good role would be mobility and boon removal (see my suggestions in my signature).

See the problem is that a rework of the entire functionality will never ever happen, whereas Anet has proven that a change from Single Block > Continuous block can happen. The same goes for almost all your suggestions, they unrealistic at least if we look at the history of Anet’s balance. Something which i think is a problem with many “rework” threads on the mesmer forums sadly. =)

Finally somebody gets it. Every time “yet another massive and complex rework for half of our mechanics” thread gets posted, I just sigh and don’t even bother to read it usually. There’s no point in wasting your time and energy on comprehensive reworks because they will never happen. Instead work within the confines of the skills we have; modifying their functionality instead of rewriting it.

I THINK ROBERT GEE IS STILL THERE.

Welp, I guess we’re stalemated now. Two all caps statements with absolutely nothing to back either of them up. Anyone want to break the stalemate?

apharma.3741:

I have a genuine question:

Fay, do you have a folder full of text files of all these posts you have written, all ready to just be quoted?

Sometimes if I have the presence of mind to realize I’ll want to quote one again, I’ll bookmark it. In this case, I simply remembered that I made it during a discussion that occurred after/during one of the HoT beta weekends. That gave me a pretty narrow time period to look in, and a quick bit of find in page lookups in my posting history located it.

Kobeathris.3645:

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

It’s with the old MS, but the difference between old and new MS is incredibly tiny, so it won’t make any noticeable difference. Probably would end up as 1-2% change.

I think I have read that MS affects charging mantras as well. Is that true? Regardless of whether or not it is, in a power build, would using MoP, and recharging on the autos instead of confusing images make a difference? If nothing else, it is ranged AoE instead of single target at least.

Yeah, MS affects the mantra, but you’ll basically never be in a situation where you can safely take the mantra without sacrificing too much. If in a raid, you’ve got 2 wells and SoI. If fractals and dungeons, you’ll either want the same or with feedback for reflects. Particularly in dungeons, there are very few fights that will last long enough to even bother thinking about charging antes for dps; you’ll just do your buffing rotation, autoattack a couple times, and the boss will be dead.

Xyonon.3987:

Thank you fay with the great post – this was with the new MS?

It’s with the old MS, but the difference between old and new MS is incredibly tiny, so it won’t make any noticeable difference. Probably would end up as 1-2% change.

Marioos.2835:

This question was asked 10000000’th times before. Why no range indicator. At least say why you cannot do it, or go kitten yourselves, any answer will suffice.

And it was answered, but with an attitude like that you can go find it yourself.

So:

Fay.2357:

Melee range scepter gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 31 seconds.
Sword gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 24 seconds.

So this means we’ve got .32 rotations/second of scepter and .42 rotations/second of sword.

A full rotation of scepter has a damage coefficient of 1.75
A full rotation of sword has a damage coefficient of 2.3 without boons and 2.1 with boons.

This means that scepter has a total damage rate of .56 coeff/second, while sword has .966 without boons and .882 with boons.

However, now we can work in confusing images. Confusing images has a coefficient of 2.5 over a duration of 2s, for a total coeff/second of 1.25. This does, however, take up the space of autoattacking, leaving us with a bonus coeff/sec during confusing images of .69.

With permanent alacrity, confusing images occurs for 2 seconds every 9.92 seconds. This means that the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for scepter will be 1.25*2+.56*7.92 = 6.9352.

Accordingly, the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for sword will be simply .966*9.92 = 9.582 without boons or 8.74 with boons.

However, this neglects the effect of malicious sorcery! Lets do that now.

Malicious sorcery is a 15% as increase, which increases the scepter coeff/sec from .56 to .644.

It also is a 20% cdr for confusing images, bringing the base cooldown to 9.6, or the alacritied cooldown to 6.336. With MS, the coeff/sec of confusing images now rises from 1.25 to 1.4375, and you’re able to use that for 1.7 seconds every 8.036 seconds.

So with all that, the final coeff over 8.036 seconds for scepter becomes 1.4375*1.7+6.336*.644 = 6.524.

The sword coeff over 8.036 seconds becomes 8.003 without boons, or 7.08 with boons.

So

Assuming all that math is correct, permanent alacrity on scepter with malicious sorcery allows it to get pretty close to sword autos on a target that has boons, while a bit farther from a target without boons. Sword is still definitively better though, assuming you’re able to maintain 100% uptime on actually autoattacking…which is actually a really awful assumption.

Things start to get a lot more complex once you take into account things like dodging, summoning phantasms, or bosses that move around. The less time spent actually autoattacking, the more scepter will gain on sword, since scepter damage is biased towards a skill with a cooldown, and sword is reliant on actual autoattacking. I’m not quite bold enough try and simulate it taking into account phantasm summons and such (I’ll let frifox do that if he wants to), but suffice to say that once all is said and done, sword and scepter are going to be very similar in terms of damage output.

All this was done with the old alacrity though, so the final numbers on scepter are going to be somewhat lower than what I calculated. With some rough guestimation though, you can reasonably say that with permanent alacrity + malicious sorcery, melee range scepter will do ~70-75% of the damage sword will in a power build. Given that ranged weapons are almost always lower damage than melee weapons, I honestly don’t think this is an issue. The real issue is that scepter damage drops the farther you are from the target, and we’ve been complaining about this forever.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@Pyro
Did you not read my whole post? I explicitly say that the Mesmer DPS doesn’t compare to melee classes on stationary targets and we need a sword buff to be competitive to other melee DPS. And no, raw mesmer DPS is not competitive on a spreadsheet. It’s the exact opposite. It’s only competitive as more factors that mess with melee DPS from (below) average players are tossed into the scenario.

No, this isn’t really quite right. Mesmer dps is actually quite competitive on a spreadsheet. 18k-20k dps in a condie build is very solid in the current dps environment, so raw spreadsheet dps isn’t the issue. The issue is that there are tons of very common things that make that spreadsheet dps drop drastically or become meaningless in other ways.

So, in order for our dps to be relevant, we need the perfect storm of avoiding the factors that make our dps bad while combining factors that make other class’ dps bad. VG is very close to that perfect storm.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

New raid wings is sort of like starting over again. As people are learning brand new mechanics for fights, I would much rather have a bunch of Sc/Sw mesmers or Sc/P condi mesmers than average players trying new squishy meta builds that are focusing too much on rotations/ positioning of their build rather than mechanics/ positioning of the fight. Unless a fight has environmental weapons built into the mechanics, at current balance, stacking Mesmers won’t be a thing for records.

I think you are drastically overestimating the difficulty of dpsing on non mesmer classes.

Daredevil rotation: 1111
Guardian rotation: 1111
Rev rotation: 121212
Staff ele: 521521521

The other classes excepting FA ele and engineer aren’t much more difficult. It doesn’t take a genius to play those correctly. The only situation in where even mediocre players would be better off on mesmer than those classes would an aggressively mobile and melee-hostile fight. I sorta doubt we’re gonna see one.

Day Trooper.3605:

Fay.2357:

You don’t run PU in PvE. Ever.

I know it’s not something you’d run like ever in PvE (guess I should have clarified) – just wondering how I’d maximize my stealth as a mesmer (i.e. to run hammer in Cliffside 59/69).

…but why…

I mean, if you really want to maximize stealth, just take PU, toss on decoy, mimic, and mass invis. You can doubletap on mass invis with CS if you can’t spawn any illusions, then double decoy. If you have illusions up, you can do CS, MI, Mimic, decoy x2, MI, Mimic, Decoy x2 for more stealth than you could ever possibly need.

But again…why? There’s literally zero situations where that would actually be useful or necessary, even in higher level fractals. It’s not like there’s many mobs over there, just pop over then blink back, or even portal it.

You don’t run PU in PvE. Ever. I can give you normal PvE builds though. I’d recommend taking a look at the guide by sanderinoa on the dulfy website for it:http://dulfy.net/2014/07/21/gw2-mesmer-pve-class-guide-by-sanderinoa/.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

Jace al Thor.6745:

denis.9487:

StickerHappy.8052:

phokus.8934:

StickerHappy.8052:

phokus.8934:

StickerHappy.8052:

phokus.8934:

You don’t need condition removal as a mandatory function to make Mesmer work.

Know your enemy first and foremost and learn to disengage when you need to.

This is false. I do not know on what MMR you play at but in High MMR matches, you might as well just afk if you do not have any cleanses.

Knowing your enemy is like 5% of the equation. You will never ever beat any condition class without a cleanse. It’s impossible. (Assuming equal skill)

Every class needs condition removal of atleast 1 source.

What you said makes you sound like a bad player who needs a crutch.

Again, I do not know what MMR you play in, so I am assuming you are facing average players.

And you’re clearly a bad player. Case in point, this thread.

Okay, 1v1 my ranger with no condi cleanse. Let’s bet gold on it. NO condi cleanse means no sigils either.

And please no PU.

I can understand the condition cleanse stipulation. But still the hate on pu???

If it’s a 1v1 why would you need PU? I don’t care much for PU because I love Bountiful Disillusionment too much now over it but if you have to rely on PU to win then you’re as bad a player as phokus claims Stickers is.

This is basically the definition of scrub logic. While stickers is right that you’re not going to see PU in most competitive matches, claiming that a win to PU is a false win is nothing other than creating false win conditions that have nothing to do with the actual game.

Oh yea. Lemme ask you pyro, am I delusional that Condition removal is required in competitive pvp matches?

So in the past, you could play power shatter with minimal/no condition removal. You played it as hit and run with ample stealth; engaging rapidly, bursting rapidly, disengaging rapidly. This worked, mostly. If an engineer or necro or trap ranger or something got the jump on you, you died without any question.

Power Mesmer is not viable in the current meta, and so neither is that tactic. Any sort of condie build has a much longer time period of engagement that they need to be impactful on a fight. This is true for power interrupt builds too, not that they’re viable either. Needing to stay in a fight longer means you can’t just blink away in stealth and nurse yourself back to health every time an engineer sneezes on you.

If you run without any condition removal in this meta, you’ll generally end up dead or dying most fights. You won’t accomplish anything useful outside of adding screen clutter. A single necro mark can incapacitate you for most of a fight without removals. What are you going to do with chill, poison, and weakness on you for 10 seconds? What are you going to do if the necro spends 3 seconds to cast more than 1 mark? What will you do when an engineer walks by and covers a point in condition aoe?

Essentially, taking no condition removal means that you can’t fully engage into any fight. Fighting on any point will be abject suicide, and you’ll be eaten alive by many current builds in a 1v1 scenario. Phokus argues that you can just disengage when necessary to stay alive. This is technically true, and will result in you awkwardly standing between points accomplishing nothing for most of be game, hoping that nobody notices you slowly bleeding out in the corner.

With that said and done, what are your suggestions? Really curious to hear em.

I run dueling/ill/chr (mistrust) with the heal well for cleansing (blink, precog, portal) against teams without reapers. I run insp/ill/chr with the heal well and shatters for cleansing vs teams with reapers. Ultimately, you need the removal, so you take insp. It sucks, but you do what you have to.

Chrono gives us 25% movement speed as a minor trait. We also get 5s swiftness every time signet of inspiration ticks, and temporal curtain has been fixed to apply swiftness even if you already have it.

You probably won’t win a land speed race with a warrior, but it’s MUCH better.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around.

So I don’t feel like dealing with the rest of your post, but I just wanted to point out how patently absurd this bit is. Confusion was absolute garbage in PvE before. Confusion is absolute garbage in PvE now. Additionally, are you really saying that “faceroll dire tanks” are relevant in PvE? If so, just keep in mind that you’re so far from the truth it’s not even funny. There is no element of truth to any part of the argument you just made.

moomincat.9816:

Do it every day, maybe your just a bad mesmer? I don’t have a problem holding 2-3 people, I guess you don’t manipulate your cool downs and hammer every thing at the same time? Don’t try and plant your awful mesmer play style on other people, really I use pretty much the same build for every thing, why because it works,

Clearly you are a far superior Mesmer player than the rest of us, obviously eclipsing even folks like Helseth or supcutie in your preeminent mastery of the Mesmer class.

Oh Great One! We beg of you, please deign to bestow upon us a video of your exceptional exploits so that we may properly bask in the glory of your play!

moomincat.9816:

Inspiration illusions chrono, with hybrid = hold a point against 2 – 3, its kitten good, you can go crits too sheild with domination, that line gives so much sustain its bonkers, so you can go glassy as hell for the DPS and still have portal on utils

You can’t hold a point against 2-3 people unless they’re absolutely awful. While “glassy as hell” too? Have you even tried any of the things you’re talking about?

Ananeos.4587:

If you have the karma you can grab an entire set of exotics from the Grenth temple in arah using karma, it’s how I made my other characters raid worthy.

Just keep in mind you can’t salvage karma gear. Anything you put in stays in.

@DuckDuckBoom:

VG is basically the best case scenario for mesmer dps. He’s highly mobile, half the group has to be out of melee range for a significant portion of the fight, and no aoe dps is required. If you change any of those 3 qualifiers, Mesmer dps instantly becomes far worse. Needing aoe basically bricks our entire toolset. A stationary boss means persistent aoe stuff from tempests does unreal damage. Allowing everybody to be melee range means we lose any advantage of having phantasms attack instead of us.

Yes, Mesmer damage is competitive on a spreadsheet, but it requires are very specific set of circumstances to be realistically competitive. Right now, only VG comes close to meeting those requirements, every other encounter is far worse. The only other possible example is the thaumanova anomaly, but since most people would rather tear their hair out than do that fight, I think we can safely neglect it.

Maniac Magee.2643:

Fay your last paragraph asking me about staff hate is off topic. I’m here to talk about the staff and my build; just because I have mentioned general player-base dislike of the weapon does not mean it is the main subject.

Clicking on “view messages by user” it is apparent very quickly that you go from thread to thread to thread posting negatively. Most people may get sucked into negative exchanges with you but after I skimmed 30 of your posts in a row and saw nothing positive I figure there’s no point. I won’t be responding to anything else you post unless I feel it positively contributes to this post. I do hope that you have constructive influence somewhere.

I’m not sure what sort of positivity you’re looking for? Staff is a great weapon, it always has been and probably always will be…but it can’t be used everywhere effectively, just like most weapons/mechanics. How about instead of being randomly positive I’ll give you some direct and fair feedback on the updated builds you posted. It’s not going to be positive, but it will be fair.

PvE build:

The best thing I can say about this one is that it’s definitely usable for open world content. It’ll be very slow, but fairly safe and will probably do enough damage to tag most champs and such. However, I’d feel ashamed bringing this build into a dungeon/fractal party, and any raid group worth their salt would ask you to change to a reasonable build or kick you.

The reasons for this is that the build just doesn’t provide anything to a party. Your dps is exceedingly low. Rabid gear is not good for damage anymore, and due to bounce mechanics the damage output of staff is literally halved when in a party as opposed to solo (each winds of chaos will hit an enemy once instead of twice, halving the damage).

Now, having exceedingly low dps is sorta a hallmark of Mesmer PvE builds, but it means you need to bring something else to make up for it. This takes the form of some sort of strong utility, which this build entirely lacks. You don’t have Chronomancer, and that means you can’t spread quickness and alacrity. You also provide no boon support whatsoever for your party, and there’s no need to take a Mesmer just for the aoe mantra cleanse.

So to recap: open world you could use this. It’ll be slow but fairly safe for exploring HoT. You’ll need to be wary of the reflects that those chak throw out though, since that’ll brick your damage. For anything outside of open world though, using this build is disrespectful to the other people you’re partied with.

PvP Build:

Generally speaking, it’ll work. You’ve got PU, torch trait, and the mantra for excellent condition removal and defensive slipperiness. You’ll be very difficult to kill, even for reapers.

Unfortunately, your offensive capabilities are extremely lacking. Your impact in group fights will be little to nonexistent. Compared to a standard build with chrono and shield, you have far less burst, far less control potential, sacrifice your runes for mobility, and opt for defensive capabilities that necessarily prevent you from having an offensive presence while you’re using them.

Overall, it’ll work. It’s not the worst build I’ve seen, in fact it’s not at all a bad build. It’s just old and behind the times of the power creep we’ve got now. Even in a 1v1, most classes (scrapper/reaper/rev/tempest) are going to be able to ignore your damage pressure and just sustain through it with little effort. You’ll do ok running this build, but you’ll just end up having very limited impact in fights when fighting skilled players.

I don’t think anyone could call this post positive, but I’m fairly confident most would agree that it is very fair. Feel free to disregard this post as you wish though.

thunderfall.8095:

I was asking armor not runes, sorry for confusion. (Already bought runes) Thank you!

Hopefully you bought chrono runes? If not, you’re gonna have a rough time maintaining quickness uptime. It’s possible to keep solid quickness with the insanely expensive boon duration set (commander’s I think?), but obviously that doesn’t fit in the 20 gold limit you posted.

As long as you’ve got chrono runes though, the armor stats don’t matter for your quickness uptime, allowing you to run the standard dps stat set of zerker (or adding some knights for tanking as I mentioned).

So while you do need a bit of hefty translation protocol for this, it’s not really that hard to do…

messiah.1908:

nice

A compliment.

messiah.1908:

try to do 1080p videos and put some music or commentary

Some constructive criticism on the video itself. 1080p is definitely desirable, and music/commentary can definitely make a video better…though they can also ruin it, so be careful.

messiah.1908:

dont spam shatter and save f3

Some constructive criticism on gameplay. I can’t really comment on this since the video has been removed.

messiah.1908:

nice hanging without condi cleanse ….

A compliment on your staying alive without the use of condie cleanse.

Not really seeing how you managed to pull an insulting/condescending feel out of that comment.

Yep, chrono runes with exotic berserker armor. If you’re tanking (I recommend learning how, chrono is a great tank), do so by adjusting a couple of your trinkets to knights or cavs instead. Just make sure you have enough toughness to be higher than your warrior even if they’re reviving (warr has a trait that boosts toughness when reviving).

Maniac Magee.2643:

In a thread that’s been around for a year you have the most immature post. Most people post using quotations of previous posters to illustrate real points, each of yours were just snarky comments I’d expect out of an adolescent. I especially love the “Oh. Stronghold.” As if that says it all. It says nothing. Has no depth.

The staff has always been the least favorite Mesmer weapon, and I used to get crap from people everywhere I went in game for carrying one. How long have you been playing?

Anyway the purpose of this post is clearly for people who are interested in the staff and are looking for a positive opinion with some detail. You’ve not brought anything useful yet but please do if you feel you have it in you.

So I’m sorta curious now. You’ve made a pretty specific statement about getting hate for running staff, but it doesn’t match with my experiences at all; having used staff in my primary build where appropriate almost since the start of the game without gaps.

Specifically, where/how have you received so much hate about staff? Are you talking PvE or WvW or PvP, and what sort of builds were you running?

Additionally, saying that staff has always been the least favorite Mesmer weapon is not only untrue, it’s also patently absurd. Remember when the prestige had to be channeled to even function? Remember when scepter was practically twice as slow on skill 3, applied no torment, and the autoattack was even clunkier and slower? Scepter and torch for a very long time were rightfully shunned by almost everyone because they were so astoundingly godawful.

Quadox.7834:

DeathReign.7821:

Fay.2357:

DeathReign.7821:

I’m waiting for that 1v1 to happen. It would be fun to see Phokus put his money where is mouth is.

Ahh, this reminds me of the good old days when I cared enough about this game to force people to put up or shut up.

I remember this one time, probably 2 years ago, when this one engineer came to your phantasm dueling build thread, claiming that his build could stomp anything and that you were a scrub. You challenged him and beat his bum flat and he came back to the forums crying that you were cheap and that mesmers are op.

Good times.

Phantasm build such skill such viability.

Kappa

It was advertised as a 1v1 dueling build with literally zero application outside of that. I was and am fully aware of the mechanics of this game, and had zero illusions about where phantasms are and are not capable.

So, not to be a party pooper but…

Maniac Magee.2643:

I was on sPvP a lot today, and died once. Once.

This means nothing. You could have been fighting noobs, you could have been fighting in an extremely defensive way that didn’t help your team much.

Maniac Magee.2643:

I killed all kinds of classes and builds. I ran supply.

Oh. Stronghold.

Maniac Magee.2643:

I held at different times all the roles in a game, not just killing people. I was top 2 team player many times,

You can get top team player easily by running in circles doing nothing but cap points, but you’ll also be totally useless. This means nothing.

Maniac Magee.2643:

and my teams won most of our matches. If staff was so bad I’d have dragged the wonderful teams I had down a bit.

I…have no idea where you got this notion that everyone thinks staff is bad. It was a staple in double ranged shatter way back when, then it became a staple of many interrupt builds, it was a staple of PU condie during clone-death build era, it was a staple of condie shatter once MtD was introduced, and it’s still a staple of many builds now. Pretty much never has staff been regarded as an awful weapon. It has, and rightly so, been necessarily limited in what builds and what uses you apply it to…like any weapon in the game.

If you try and use staff in PvE, you’ll be rightly laughed at and kicked from the party. Staff is of limited effectiveness in large WvW groups…though the same could be said for most of our weapons. Outside of those, staff is usually pretty solid.

While I personally think it’s a bit ridiculous, I do admire your dedication in responding to multiple month/year old posts.