Guild Wars 2

Silverkey.2078:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Obviously we disagree on the might, as that’s the other part that brings in Chaos (12+ stacks of might from BD), and some other minor boons from BD (fury, regen, vigor).

I’m not really in the debate, but how does this provide 12+ might? As far as I understand, each F1 shatter is 3 might regardless of the number of shattered illusions, no?

When mind wrack is on a 6ish second cooldown, you end up with 12 might after about 10 seconds of rotation when you do it properly.

@FrenchFry: How long does it take to reach 25 stacks? You’ve really never played with a herald have you. The herald gives permanent fury, swiftness, and about 15 might just by existing. If they don’t pop their F2 until 10 seconds into the fight, the Mesmer could easily make that 15 jump to 25 in the first 8 seconds of fighting.

Levetty.1279:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Indeed, Pyro’s build received an upgrade for BWE3, with iAvengers being able to actually provide some alacrity, and Well of Recall providing 2s more alacrity per cast than before, and on a lower cooldown (which more than compensates for the decrease in uptime from Well of Eternity, as the Recall gain is up-front, while the Eternity loss is in long-term uptime).

Would it even be worth getting the iAvengers out with the way the block works now?

Imo, depends on how impactful slow ends up being vs the breakbar. In current pve content where slow works normally on bosses, I’d definitely say yes.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Have to go with Miku on this one mostly. Drop the staff. Also, drop the shield unless for some reason without it you can’t manage to keep up perma quickness.

Shield adds 9ish seconds of quickness to every rotation, it’s quite essential.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Might is provided by the warrior, and fury by the ele. And herald will NOT get taken because rev isn’t going to get taken for dungeons.

Sorry, but you’re going to need to back this one up. In BWE2 herald was doing damage that was ele/warrior tier, higher than thief. That solidifies their place in the meta unless their damage potential gets drastically nerfed. Since herald has the side benefit of passively stacking a ton of might and permanent fury, this now makes the rest of your statement wrong. Ele doesn’t need to stack fury, and warrior doesn’t need to stack might. This doesn’t change much for the ele, but it means the warrior isn’t yoked to greatsword and PS, allowing them to use their highest dps rotation instead (axe/mace iirc).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And idk what chaos is for at all.

For the third time, chaos is for boon duration (and boon output for that matter, since chrono + rev will replace ps warr in the new meta for might). Without chaos you lose your uptime on quickness.

Ansau.7326:

Anyway, you’re just proving again my point. The thing is not what we can do compared to eles or necros, but what we can do as a mesmers.

This is absolutely absurd!

So let me get this straight, your point is that you don’t want to bother thinking about what other classes can do, but just feel happy about the best you can do no matter what?

Sorry, but that line of reasoning doesn’t work once you get out of parent-pitch baseball leagues. Your personal performance is meaningless without a comparison to everyone else. You can’t go around touting how great your damage is if everyone else has damage that just blows yours out of the water! That’s like entering a marathon and saying that 8 hours is a fantastic time because it’s the best you can personally do, while ignoring all the other folks that finished in 4 hours.

Numbers are meaningless without comparison. In our case, the comparison must be made between us and the other classes that fill a similar role: eles and necros. When you make that comparison, it is plain for all to see just how extraordinarily pathetic our performance is.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Can’t give advice on pick up group compositions and tactics. For dungeons where fights last sub 40 seconds my build still stands superior.

1. What? 2. Hardly.

Here’s your comp: ele ele warr chrono herald.

Your build might get what, a 10% increase in damage over mine (generously)? 10% of poor damage is still poor. The damage difference that a warrior could get by speccing offensive instead of PS (lets them use a superior damage rotation with axe instead of camping gs) will be an order of magnitude greater than the tiny gain you’re getting.

Additionally, the fight doesn’t have to reach kitten for the recycle. Without boon durations, your quickness will terminate at 29 seconds instead of 35, so anything past 30s now has a gain due to quickness. While current fights in a full meta group don’t last more than 15 seconds mostly, there’s no point in discussing those since the obvious meta group is enough ice bows for every boss + a troop carrier Mesmer.

Staff is for several things. First, PR and warlock can be summoned at 1200 range while approaching a boss to give a very safe 2 illusions for CS. Secondly, chaos storm does quite good power damage, and you’ll be recharging it extremely quickly with the staff trait and alacrity together.

Next, boons translate to more boon duration through chaotic persistence. With chaos, I maintain 5-6 boons more or less permanently, and that means 15% boon duration. Take that away and you lose a drastic amount of uptime on quickness.

Additionally, between this build and herald, your party is pretty much set for might. That means your warrior doesn’t need to take PS and can instead go for a more offensive traitline.

Honestly, the damage difference between your variation and the original is going to be tiny. Mesmers don’t do good damage, especially not when focusing so heavily on this type of support. The difference in quickness uptime will more than compensate for the damage loss, and letting your warrior spec more offensively will only solidify that advantage.

Ansau.7326:

If you put me Mirror Blade as the main source of spike damage in zergs, there’s nothing much more to say.
Mesmer damage in zergs comes from MW, iZerker, BF, The Prestige or MoP (all these without counting Chronomancer). With those skills the damage per target goes from 2k up to 6-7k, and you can easily hit 2-3 people for every skill, which starts to be quite considerable.

First, I’ll just take your numbers at face value. 6k-7k, on 2-3 targets as an outcome of blowing all your offensive cooldowns? Congratulations, your full bar of offensive cooldowns is equal to one single meteor from meteor shower! Seriously, it’s pathetic.

There are other issues too though. MoP and iZerker both require targeting to work. Since WvW fights usually occur mostly at the fringe of 1200 range, this makes it difficult to pick a target that’s both in range and in a good position. On top of that, you have to hope that they don’t have aegis/dodge or MoP won’t work. For iZerker, if you don’t have protected phantasms, it’s 50/50 that it’ll work at all. Compare that to just dropping a gtAoE.

For blurred frenzy, MW, and the prestige, we have a whole different set of problems. MW requires both illusions (a tall order) and melee range to do good damage. The prestige requires melee range, as does blurred frenzy. Sitting in melee range as a Mesmer is generally bad for your health, making these questionably useful. Blurred frenzy has the added bonus of killing you if you cleave into people with retaliation.

So to recap: you won’t get to 6-7k due to various reasons, but even if you do, you’re still just roughly as impactful as a single meteor from meteor shower.

If I’m going to WvW with the intention of participating in a group, then I get on my ele. Compared to ele, Mesmer is effectively worthless, especially considering I flat out refuse to veil.

Regarding Chronomancer:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Announcing-the-OMFG-WvW-Division/page/3#post5494908

Additionally, there will be some other fun tricks chrono could pull to make the Zerg experience less horrid. The old Zergmower build I made with guardian runes will work well with the new shield block, and that lets you tag quite nicely without utility investment.

Rikit Runk.5170:

yes for stacking this boons up you use the group, but once these buffs are up, you can spread out, in your zerg, so your group mates aren’t in range, to share the bonns with your zerg.

This takes so much time and effort to do though, it’s extremely inefficient. First you need to get the guards and mesmers together, the guards provide boons, the mesmers share them back and forth to stack up time. Now you have to split up, wait on the cooldown of the signet, and then share again. This is going to take 20-30 seconds to do in total before you’re able to actually deliver those boons to the group.

If you just took guards instead, the lag time between wanting to provide boons and providing boons is instant.

Ansau.7326:

Your mentality is what I’m talking about: First, since eles and necros do way more damage than us, let’s forget about this thing, WRONG.
And second you measure the damage as the amount of hits you achieve, and that’s the wrong way to do it (Better deal 4k to 2 people than 1000 to 15).

I won’t negate our damage is much lower than eles and necros, but that doesn’t mean we’re not able to do big damage spikes. In fact, mesmers are more capable than what people usually think.

You’re horrendously misrepresenting the facts of the situation. Let’s get more specific to cut through the bluster, shall we?

Mesmer bursting damage is typically quite strong. The standard mirror blade burst combo can unload 10k-13k damage nearly instantly, and that’s very powerful. However, there are caveats associated with this:

Firstly, that burst is single target. For an aoe burst value, you can remove about 4k off the top, leaving us at 6k-9k total. Additionally, this burst relies on 2 clones; one from mirror blade and one from a dodge roll. Lastly, this burst requires you to be at point blank range of your target to execute, otherwise the damage drops drastically.

All 3 of these things are a big problem. If you only burst a single person, their allies will just hit F and res them instantly. Leaving the burst reliant on illusions means that in a situation with aoe pressure, your burst will be 100% eliminated. Lastly, being at point blank range in an enemy group is distinctly unhealthy.

Now, let’s compare it to what eles are capable of doing. Meteor shower is a large aoe capable of being cast from 1200 range. It hits many times, effectively having an extremely high target cap. Each hit from meteor shower will do 6k-8k damage on a squishy target.

So here we have one single skill from Elementalist. It does similar damage in a single hit to what Mesmer does in a burst combo. It hits many targets, can be cast from 1200 range, and is ground targeted with a big aoe making it useful on walls.

If literally the only skill on their bar was meteor shower, Elementalists would still be better than mesmers.

You’ve also got lava font, the 1200 range aoe doing 3k-4k a tick. On the utility side you’ve got static field, unsteady ground, and multiple water fields. Essentially, Elementalist is just better at everything other than portal and veil.

Necros are similar. Their wells do massive damage, 3kish per pulse for some of them. On top of that, the wells do nasty things like boon corruption or blindness. On top of that, their wells are unblockable. On top of that, necros can pop into death shroud for additional 50% crit chance, meaning they can build with quite tanky gear and still achieve massive damage output.

You’re trying to say that Mesmer burst is actually good and makes up for their lack of aoe capabilities. The reality is that Mesmer burst is not only difficult to execute effectively, but is hardly more powerful than a single hit of meteor shower, or a couple ticks of wells.

On-clone-death was useless in PvE regardless, so it doesn’t really make an impact on mesmer play in PvE.

Rikit Runk.5170:

Fay.2357:

Or just bring a guard instead, since they’ll give might, aegis, prot, stab, and swiftness all better than a mesmer can without gimping their build.

“gimping their build” you mean equip one sigil and maybe take inspirarition as traitline?
i hardly call that gimping their build.
And better than a guardian? propaly not if alone, but if said guard groups up with 3 boonshare mesmers, most of his boons last up to ~30 times longer.
and more than 5 people can profit from his boons…
Jeah Guardian is absolutely better than boonshare mesmer and guard has to sacrifice nothing for boonshare, right?

What?

If you have a guard grouped with 3 boonshare mesmers, you’re going to happily be sharing boons back and forth between 3 boonshare mesmers and a guard thanks to how buff priority works.

Additionally, you could just ditch those mesmers…and get more guardians. On top of sharing all those boons, those guardians are also doing aoe heals and removing conditions at the very same time. On top of all that support, the guardian is doing good aoe damage as a tanky frontline build. Guardian is simply objectively better than mesmer. I’d take a guardian over some boonshare mesmer any day of the week.

Rikit Runk.5170:

Lockdown + no projectile +1200range is a powerfull combo to make shure that our target stay in unhealthy places and will kiss the floor sooner or later

If the other group is at all competent, they’ll have plenty of stab to protect a lockdown from a lone mesmer. Additionally, it’s absolutely impossible to actually get skillful interrupts on someone in a zerg, there’s too much visual spam. You just have to randomly toss out disables and hope something lands, which is hardly that beneficial to your group. I’ve tried this befoer.

Rikit Runk.5170:

Or well, leave the lockdown alone, and buff your friends, with all that lovely boons they need to make the kill.

Or just bring a guard instead, since they’ll give might, aegis, prot, stab, and swiftness all better than a mesmer can without gimping their build.

Ross Biddle.2367:

StickerHappy.8052:

What is the point of this thread? Rangers have been the lowest tier in pve and pvp. So what if they get something great?

Mesmers have gotten a lot of buffs to chrono on the recent BWE3 changes, and you still speculate “Oh other classes have this better”

What a joke. This will turn out to be another “pity party” for sure.

Way to go mesmer community..

Lol, I love how you’re instantly on the Ranger Defensive, Stickers

In his defense, this is a pretty unnecessary thread.

Ansau.7326:

- Mesmers are treated just as tools because the mesmers put themselves in that job, just as veil/portal bot. It’s really hard to see a mesmer who is pushing to do as much damage as it could. Most run very conservative build to not to die, or even some have run the glamour confusion build years after it was nerfed to the ground.

This is total bunk.

I and many others have tried our very best to make mesmers viable in terms of large damage output in a zerg. Unfortunately, it’s simply not possible due to the mechanics of the class. You’ll try something, get a bit of success with it, then go play a staff ele for comparison and realize just how incomparable the two are. Ever since glamours were nerfed into the ground, mesmer has been 100% totally nonviable for significant damage output other than in a pick group.

Me Games Ma.8426:

Remember when…

• distortion turned into blur for a short time?

Indeed I remember this one rather clearly…

Solori.6025:

When portal worked by just walking over it.

This was great! I remember breaking maps with it. You’d have 3 mesmers set up their portals in a triangle, so that the first would port you to the second, which would port you to the third, which would port you back to the first. People would step on it and be continually ported instantly around and around. The map would freeze after a second or two, and unfreeze once the portals timed out.

I don’t agree 100% with 100% of this post, but I do agree 90% with 90%. Overall well informed and eloquent critique.

Who are you kidding? Druids are going to get nerfed versions of our skills, not buffed ones…

Embolism.8106:

EnRohbi.2187:

Remember when Phantasms could be cast without LoS?

I seem to remember only iZerker could do that.

Remember when conjuring a Phantasm cannot be negated by blind or dodge?

Back then, all phantasms except iWarden could both be cast without LoS and didn’t get countered by blind. The iZerker was special because it was the only phantasm summoned on target, which meant somewhat silly things like summoning it on trebs that you had no LoS to but could get a target on.

Embolism.8106:

kitten

Aye En Zero Zero Five

My guess is it could be considered 13375p34k for the hole where faecal matter comes out of, as spoken with a ??? accent.

I’m unconvinced that l33t speak has accents :p

Esplen.3940:

The poor are poor because they act rich and the rich are rich because they act poor.

I mean….waypoints cost almost as much as each centaur rune. If you honestly can’t shell out enough cash for that, you’ve got a bit of a spending problem. At a certain point, some expenses don’t even matter. Sure I’m frugal, but each centaur rune is less thkitten% of my net worth.

(seriously anet? What on earth is worth censoring there? This is ridiculous)

Right, lets test.

Less than

thkitten

.005%

kitten%

From this point forward, I guess .005% will just be known as ‘the kitten percentage’.

Esplen.3940:

Why y’all being so expensive. Just spec chrono and run around with Mimic Blink (don’t use CS unless you’re doing a JP).

Centaur runes cost 5s each and a sigil of speed costs 8s, I’m not entirely sure how poor you’d have to be to consider those expensive.

Scapper.4236:

Yet @Fay the crux of this post is not to dwell on what the problems are but how to deal with the status quo, and that is to learn otherwise you aren’t helping yourself either.

No, that’s not what the crux of the post was.

Scapper.4236:

Regardless, portal is an excellent skill as is, unique in its own right with powerful utility, for its worth I think it has an appropriate skill level to use it properly, just use it more.

You straight up said ‘I think that because portal is a strong skill, it’s ok that it’s absurdly inconvenient to use due to poor implementation’.

This is an awful train of thought, and needs to be stopped.

Scapper.4236:

I’d say it doesn’t matter in pvp that much because most portaling is done between mid and close/far. What I think Robert’s main issue would be with the pace arrow and portal direction marker would be if the portal is over different terrains or the Exeunt is vertically above the Entre. Regardless, portal is an excellent skill as is, unique in its own right with powerful utility, for its worth I think it has an appropriate skill level to use it properly, just use it more.

Rangefinding on portal isn’t skill, it’s just a ridiculous obtuse problem. How are you supposed to know the range on portal if you’re someone learning? The tooltip says 5000, so what are you gonna do, measure out 10.4 chaos storm diameters to get there?

It’s ridiculous and a problem and needs to be solved.

Yeah, there’s some sort of tracking operation occurring at some point in the code, since ultimately it checks whether or not it’s in range. That information just needs to be isolated and brought up to the appropriate level.

Frightlight.3796:

Use the gyro against them you can use gs 2 too hit the gyro and it will bounce and hit the engi and anyone inside

Oh man that’s just a whole different level of beautiful. Any close-range gyro on an engie is a free point blank mirror blade burst without having to be point blank range xD.

Quadox.7834:

Embolism.8106:

Fun fact: a long time ago Staff 1 was called “Chaos Strike”, uses the current Chaos Armour icon and simply hits a target with a random condition/give yourself a random boon. No projectile, no beam, just point and bam. Back then Winds of Chaos was Staff 4.

And wasn’t phase retreat on greatsword in place of mirror blade or something? I have forgotten.

I feel like staff had both a leap forward and a leap back, but I could be totally wrong.

Curunen.8729:

When blurred frenzy was godmode every 8s traited.

When blurred frenzy could be used to make trebuchet shots in WvW go poof…

If the directors of the tournament didn’t anticipate the issue of stalling builds dragging out the tournament ahead of time, then they were obviously incompetent and not fit to run a tournament.

Simple rules can be put into place, and have been put into place in the past. If I recall correctly, past tournaments have made 3 strikes and then out rules where matches that run over X minutes must be restarted, and then if it hits 3 restarts both players are disqualified. Simple and effective at either preventing stalling or removing stalling.

On top of that, conduct from the tournament directors was obviously inappropriate, ban-worthy quite honestly, under the heading of verbal abuse.

The main takeaway message that should be gleaned from this is that Academy Gaming is obviously incapable of properly setting up a simple tournament, incapable of properly administrating a simple tournament, and incapable of making sure that their appointed tournament administrators aren’t abusive people that deserve bans, not tournament control privileges.

Disgraceful.

Remember when phantasmal haste made the warden spin continuously?

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m going to back OP up a little bit.

-He didn’t say he was beaten by anyone, they could just run away constantly.
-He said “seems to be able to constantly keep super speed up” which is not the same as constant uptime. It’s possible to make it seem like it is being used more than it is by smart movement (ex, not necessary when using gap closers, rooted skills, etc.).

Im not definding his points though, only his actual words. I couldn’t care less if a Ranger is quick or confusing since they aren’t a real problem.

Rangers have literally zero access to superspeed unless using trapper runes. OP is either wrong or lying.

Plok.5873:

Levetty.1279:

Because the Mesmer motto is twice the work for half the results.

From a player enjoying engineer and mesmer class… engineer requires clearly more effort & coordination, sry.

You’re neglecting the other part: half the results. One the engineer has put in the work, they get a nice reward (say, highest sustained dps in the game). Once mesmer has put in the work, they get….nothing?

Remember when the prestige was a full 3 second channel?

Embolism.8106:

There’s absolutely no reason not to Swap immediately given that with MH Sword you’d be doing kitten-all at range.

There used to be strategy and thought behind when you would swap, back when you could swap even once the clone got killed. Strategy and thought apparently isn’t conducive to game balance, so it got nerfed.

Instead of travelers, get centaur runes and put mirror on auto cast. Far cheaper, and you’ll actually move faster.

Carighan.6758:

Fay.2357:

This is really just another way of saying ‘I submit to the fact that engineers are simply being handed utilities that are literally mesmer utilities with buffs’.

Maybe it is, but then, classes aren’t comparable. One class could have a set of utilities (all of them!) which is completely, one for one, superior to another’s set of utilities, and still be overall inferior.

While I agree that this is theoretically possible, good luck crafting such a scenario in a realistic fashion.

Cecilia.5179:

Question: Is PU condi mesmer actually viable in other gamemodes?

PU condie Mesmer is not viable in PvP. It is not viable in PvE. It is not viable in WvW raids. It has substantially reduced viability in roaming groups with more than 5 people.

It’s certainly interestingly educational seeing the different personal statements of good and bad in this thread.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

…invariably forced to bail in front of pacts of mesmers and thieves. As if they weren’t already super advantaged alone. No, they also have to band together… very sad and annoying.

Now see, this complaint has no meaning.
How often do you not bail in front of packs of anything? Grouping up is kind of the name of the game, yah?

Also, mesmers by their very nature (worse for condi mes) are at a disadvantage in more than a 3v3. If anything, grouping up into multi-mesmer groups is making this less of a problem, as a group of 4+ ele/guard/warr would be more effective anyway.

You are supposed to get the idea there are lots of them (mesmers) now and understand that as hard as it was to solo roam with what I like to it’s much worse now. The solo roaming rant is not mesmer oriented btw…

So you’re solo roaming on a zerker staff ele and complaining that you’re getting killed by packs of enemy players? Are you actually serious right now? Zerker staff ele gets massacred 1v1 vs anything competent, let alone most roaming builds, let alone actual groups…

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Deceptive EvasionA lot has been said about Deceptive Evasion as a trait, with chronomancer we get IR and still the feedback has been quite consistent: Deceptive Evasion is a must for virtually any build. So why should it be baseline:

…no. There are quite a few builds that don’t use DE, and chrono is decreasing that reliance even more.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

During all changes many classes got access to cleaving skills on auto attacks (necro dagger for example), while clones never changed.

Thief auto and necro auto got adjusted to 2 target attacks. This is hardly a game-changer for illusion survivability.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Phantasms in pvp/wvw
For pve I think they are at a fine spot.

Uh…are you for serious right now?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

At worldbosses like Golem Mark II

/facepalm

HypnoticEyes.2683:

1 really sluggish still: The scepter.

Ok, I’m with you so far.

HypnoticEyes.2683:

Sadly: The auto attack is what really hurts when you compare it to other classes.

Yep yep, still doing good!

HypnoticEyes.2683:

The attack itself is decent both in damage and speed, but it’s the torment that is out of sink.

allofmywat.jpg

Are you for serious right now?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

A surplus of stability stacks/resistance for several classes which makes them impossible to land.

You do realize that resistance doesn’t affect interrupts, right? You also realize that mesmer has ample access to boon strip, right?

HypnoticEyes.2683:

While many other classes got unblockable skills/trait we got no skills of importance (other then gs3) doing just that.

I’m trying really really hard to figure out how you’ve managed to connect unblockable skills with interrupts and stability, but I’m failing.

To summarize: For real?

Embolism.8106:

With Celerity, PoM, Phantasma, Alacrity, double iAvenger and Mental Defence, I can get a lot of Shattering done with high uptime for iDefender. Since I’m Shattering and reconjuring/Phantasma-ing iDefender a lot, its limited HP doesn’t matter.

Illusion of Defence is not tied to any particular iDefender so reconjured/Phantasma’d iDefenders inherit the scapegoating effect.

If iDefender is replaced by Bulwark Drone, sure it’s better by itself but it loses its synergistic place in my Chronomancy build.

Arguing to literally take bulwark drone and put it on mesmer is ridiculous, to put it lightly. The point is that everything pDefender does…bulwark drone does it better. Yes, pDefender is an illusion, and this means that on mesmer, you can do illusiony things with it… but that contributes less than nothing to the issue that bulwark drone is simply better at doing what pDefender is supposed to do.

Embolism.8106:

Fay.2357:

Embolism.8106:

All’s said and done though, the Mesmer isn’t meant to be tanky like the Scrapper’s obviously meant to be, so I don’t begrudge them for the Bulwark Drone.

This is really just another way of saying ‘I submit to the fact that engineers are simply being handed utilities that are literally mesmer utilities with buffs’.

If that’s how you want to take it, sure.

Personally if given the choice I’d still take iDefender over Bulwark Drone because the way it synergises with our traits and Shatters makes it very potent with the right (Chronomancy) build.

The way it synergises with our traits? Hardly. You can reduce the cooldown by shattering phantasms I guess, there’s a cooldown trait for it…and you can boost the health by an insignificant amount. That’s pretty much it for anything unique to the pDefender.

It also interacts anything but well with our shatters. Shatters and pDefender interact rather destructively, since the pDefender is purely a defensive skill that instantly loses all benefit when shattered.

The bulwark gyro…

Has a higher cooldown…but no cast time which means that you’ll realistically be able to use it more often than the defender, which has an absolutely insane 1.5 second cast time.

Stays by default next to the engineer. This means that you can move around to keep it from getting smushed by aoes or other cleaving attacks. The pDefender goes and facerubs whatever you summon it on, meaning it’s first in line for getting instakilled by any attack.

Doesn’t instantly disappear when something dies. The pDefender in theory lasts forever, but in reality it dies rapidly from damage, and often dies even more rapidly with its target.

Has a daze built into the skill. You don’t even need to waste other gyros to apply it, just press the button and off it goes!

But wait, there’s more!

The bulwark gyro comes with a nifty built in toolbelt skill. The toolbelt skill is feedback, if feedback was pbaoe, moved with you, had a cooldown that was 7 seconds shorter, aaaaand didn’t take up a utility slot.

So yeah, bulwark gyro absolutely blows our stuff out of the water, there’s really no valid way to argue otherwise.

Embolism.8106:

All’s said and done though, the Mesmer isn’t meant to be tanky like the Scrapper’s obviously meant to be, so I don’t begrudge them for the Bulwark Drone.

This is really just another way of saying ‘I submit to the fact that engineers are simply being handed utilities that are literally mesmer utilities with buffs’.

Who wants to bet that the bulwark gyro is gonna have like 3x the hp of the defender?

Yeah, generally it’s a better bet to dodge or use blurred frenzy than to block. There’s just too many attacks that are either multihits or completely unblockable, and that’ll get you killed.

That being said, it sounds like your problem is stemming from visual effects and not the blocks themselves failing. The only thing I really can say for that is that you get better at it with time. There are quite a few really atrocious visual effects in terms of obscuring boss animations, and mesmers aren’t exactly free of blame in this aspect (though guardian blue flames will always remain the worst one). This has been a pretty common complaint for quite a long time, so you’re not alone in this at all. Just do your best and try to learn what the animations look like through all of the effects.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean. Did you mean to say converts slow to quickness? Your suggestion isn’t quite making sense, can you elaborate?

Ithilwen.1529:

Help is hard to come by. No one will tell you the combos.. the skill sequences.. Such as I know I learned mainly through careful analysis of gameplay videos and trial and error.

Contrary to your complaints, people are happy and willing to give all sorts of advice, as long as the question is asked without hiding inside an enormous wall of complaints and absurdity.

AtomsOrSystems.9420:

EDIT: Sniped by Fay, with 1/10th of the words. And I’m ok with that.

I’ve seen this drivel too many times to bother typing up a long post to respond to it.

Anet doesn’t balance around WvW roaming, sorry.

Yashuoa.9527:

I am looking for an up to date Mesmer pvp guide that you recommend,
or maybe some advices and tips from people in this thread.

Like how to setup your attacks with the metabattle builds.
Maybe some general tips that you consider important.

As a new player, taking a look into this unique gw2 class (with a playstyle I am not familiar with from other games), some stuff is still unclear to me.

There’s a lot of metabattle builds, if you link particular ones we could give more focused advice for how to use them.

Shogun.7401:

Robert Gee.9246:

Fay.2357:

Just to reiterate, could you clarify the cooldown of well of eternity? In BWE2, it was 20 seconds. Is it being moved to 25 or to 30?

Sorry that was a bit of confusion on my part. The correct recharge is 30 seconds. I’ve edited the original post to reflect this.

SaintSnow.6593:

One thing though, any clarification on the wells finally being distinguished as ally or enemy? For the last two weekends they have had ally rings on them regardless is if it is an enemy’s. Needs the red line for distinguishing.

Thanks for mentioning this, I hadn’t seen any reports on this yet so I’ll look into it.

Fnix.5608:

Not sure if I like this change at all, very sceptical about this one. Sure, I want to test it first – but placing phantasms in melee range, and only hitting one target with slow at the time is a big nerf overall to this one.

Slow is also applied AoE.

One off topic question for you.

Please consider working on thief class too. We need a better dev like you

Careful, this is how you get infractions.