Guild Wars 2

AnniMira.2506:

Fay, why are you bringing auto-attacking warriors to discussion? Stop.

I’m sorry, did I bring auto-attacking warriors into the discussion? I was under the impression that this:

AnniMira.2506:

Show me videos what happens when warrior attacks you. Don’t attack warrior – let him use axe/mace on you first and then greatsword, for example.

describes in rather precise detail letting a warrior auto-attack you to death. I must have misinterpreted ‘stand in one spot and let the warrior attack you without attacking back’. Kindly, explain to me what that possibly could mean if not letting a warrior auto-attack you to death.

As far as dying to a warrior goes, I don’t think I’ve died to a warrior in WvW in a year. Generally I’m killed from condie load due to either an engie that I didn’t notice or a surprise signet of spite.

Honestly, I’m not particularly enthused by any of the standard choices. Perplexity are okish, torment are also okish…travelers are just a waste of rune slots. Undead are for maximum condition damage, but they’re pretty boring. I’ve been considering tossing on melandru just for that crazy disable/condition mitigation and taking the hit to condition damage.

I’m curious, have you actually tried to run this yet? I’m asking because I’ve on occasion attempted to make a build that relies heavily on illusions (such kittenter or clone-death) without DE. After a few minutes of testing though, it becomes extremely clear extremely rapidly that it just doesn’t work. Even with IC and cooldown traits, you just can’t get the illusion production that you really need. It’s possible to run, but it just seems to end up with little to no pressure and/or presence in a fight.

As was mentioned elsewhere, losing sharper images is also a huge hit. Most mesmer hybrid builds rely significantly on that trait to add the condie side of the hybrid damage on anything that uses illusions. Without sharper images, you’re pretty much limited to staff clones and Maim. Staff clones (in this build) can only pop up once every 5 seconds minimum (less considering weapon swaps) and maim is going to be a bit unreliable when you can’t generate illusions as fast as a DE build can.

Overall, I’d recommend putting this in a similar fashion in PvP and actually trying it out. I have a feeling you’ll find pretty quickly that no DE in an illusion-based build is really just a no-go.

Edit: Also, ditch arcane thievery, it’s just an awful condition removal. Take the mantra or pDisenchanter instead. pDisenchanter can be potentially unreliable because of the whole phantasm thing, but it has an unbelievably high rate of strip/removal. The mantra is…a mantra, but it’s got 4 aoe removals whenever you need them on a 20s cooldown. Both are infinitely better choices than AT.

Just tested it out, I got 2 rangers to rapidfire and a thief to unload a few times. I got 39 reflects noted in my combat log, plus the visual recognition. The wiki is 100% wrong, thankfully. I’ll update it now.

expandas.7051:

Fay.2357:

I’ll correct a bit of misinformation that the poster above me stated, and add a bit more clarification.

1. Feedback is a sphere of projectile reflecting space, not a shell.

What? Every PvEr that I’ve ever talked to has called it a bubble, from the casuals to the vets in DnT and LoD. And even if we do call it a “sphere of projectile reflecting space”, what difference does it make? We mean the same thing, and I even went out of my way to stress that projectiles within Feedback would also be reflected.

That bit wasn’t intended towards you, sphere is just the terminology I like use when explaining it to someone newer like the OP.

expandas.7051:

Fay.2357:

There is absolutely no limit on the number of projectiles that can be reflected.

“The skill reflects a maximum of 25 projectiles to your opponent(s). After that, projectiles will be absorbed instead.”

- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feedback

If that actually is true, then it’s a quite recent change and a MASSIVE nerf. I wonder how they managed to sneak that one in. That’s truly monstrous.

Edit: will test and report back soon.

Xyonon.3987:

Just wanna leave here that at the PAX you can change at your settings the hotkes of your profession skills. You know:
F1
F2
F3
F4
aaaand F5

Hmmm. Speculation on what they could possibly put on a mesmer F5? That could be pretty awesome actually.

I’ll correct a bit of misinformation that the poster above me stated, and add a bit more clarification.

1. Feedback is a sphere of projectile reflecting space, not a shell. Any enemy projectile contacting any location inside that sphere is reflected. There is absolutely no limit on the number of projectiles that can be reflected.
2. You’re pretty spot on with how things end up squishing phantasms. The duelist and swordsmen do tend to stay out of the way better, and for that reason (if you’re motivated enough to switch all the time) you can swap out your focus for a pistol when you don’t need the reflects. There’s usually not any great way to keep the phantasms alive in most fights, just gotta keep pumping them out.
3. Reflections got nerfed hard recently, because Anet decided that interesting strategies shouldn’t work in most PvE encounters. You can no longer reflect stuff from malroana (or the champ spiders in arah, same enemy model). I think it still works on the 2nd boss (the dual form sylvari/spider), but you’ll only get reflects when she’s in sylvari form, the spider does melee attacks.
4. For builds, just look at the stickied dungeon thread, you’ll see all the different builds categorized and discussed there. Alternatively, say Frifox three times in front of a mirror to summon him, and he’ll walk you through them as well.
5. Shatter mesmer is awful in PvE because the total damage per second is absolutely abysmal. You can do a reasonable amount of burst…and then nothing. Even phantasms that die fairly rapidly will do more damage than a shatter build will over the course of a fight. Additionally, phantasm traits/lines line up nicely with the other utility parts of our toolset, and shatters don’t at all.

Anton.1769:

Fay.2357:

Because if I’m not in a coordinated team, it won’t get used. Just me using it isn’t enough to be worth having a 90 second cooldown ability on my bar that will have to take the slot of another important utility.

Portal works even better in lowskill pvp, because enemies don’t think about your ability to teleport.

If you’re talking about opponents that don’t realize a mesmer can portal, then you’re talking about the type of opponents that I can 3v1 on point in PU condie and still keep it decapped. That’s not exactly the type of opponents that I aim my strategies towards.

AnniMira.2506:

Show me videos what happens when warrior attacks you. Don’t attack warrior – let him use axe/mace on you first and then greatsword, for example.

I have seen too many videos where our hero attacks noobs etc. Let warrior which can solo Arah attack you.

…wat

I’m curious as to what possible point you’re trying to make by having a warrior autoattack you to death.

Supcutie.2538:

and s/d would be training him.

Thoughts on how this particular interaction will change post-port nerf?

LionChain.7694:

Does anyone know if Spatial Surge can be reflected? Does it count as a projectile or no? Could you please post screenshots/videos showing it can/can’t be reflected if you have them?

Spacial surge is a beam attack, not a projectile. It can not be reflected. As a general rule of thumb, if an attack can be seen to move from point a to point b, it is a projectile. The beam is a laser, it doesn’t move, just comes into being.

Mirror blade is a projectile because it moves from you to the targets. However, you can note that on the skill tooltip it is ‘Unblockable’. This means that it can not be reflected.

Not sure why you want screenshots or videos, go test it out for yourself if you want proof.

Really, I’m interested in seeing the effect this change has on thieves. Mesmer already doesn’t exist in the meta, so that’s obviously not going to change. There’s a distinct possibility that this could make life incredibly difficult for thieves given smart positioning by rangers and such. It’ll be very interesting to see what happens.

Saturn.6591:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Saturn.6591:

Ross Biddle.2367:

MoD > Chuck Norris AND Mr.T

*Hardly. I’ve tried it and found it quite useless most of the time.

This tramslates to “I’m useless with MoD/Rupt/Lockdown therefor it is bad”. See the problem?

You might want to read the rest of my post too.

Edit: Now that I think of it, there was one more lockdown Mesmer I’ve encountered once, and he completely obliterated me… but that was mainly because of the conditions I got due to the trait in Chaos haha. But ya. If that Mantra was THAT great and overpowered (Chuck Norris AND Mr. T), I think there would hardly be any Mesmer who wouldn’t take it. Instead, only very very few do, and even less do actually use it in a way that makes them really dangerous on their own.

MoD isn’t an overpowered skill. It’s just simple AoE daze, very straightforward. What you actually do with that daze it what makes it potentially strong.

Caelus.7139:

What are the chances that anet gives us a shield phantasm that involves interrupting/dazing targets when it gets hit?

Extremely unlikely. AI-based hard cc that can potentially be tripled in intensity is something that would be nigh-impossible to balance ever. It would either have to be awful or would end up being incredibly overpowered.

On the bright side, this won’t affect the mesmer place in the meta much. That which does not exist can not be removed…

Aomine.5012:

BlackTruth.6813:

If Ranger are people’s argument for fixing vertical range then can ANET just please make Ranger less braindead as a class then?

Cause really that’s whats anti-fun about Rangers, they just take absolutely no skill and kitten people off with AI and Long Bow. Let’s start by like making them easier to kill such as nerfing some of the evades on weapon sets if thats what it takes for people to understand that the vertical range teleport nerf needs to happen.

Vertical Range teleport is cancer anyways. Even the old quickness was more balanced.

Go try one while solo Que up your “brain-dead glassbow” , the Euro’s version full glass.
See how successful you can be w/o an excellent team’s support.
Many people talking big, have some success in hotjoin and gives out those none-sense about full glass ranger an easy class to play in real pvp.

And the reason you need team support to play as a full glass longbow build is because thieves/other mobile classes can jump directly to you and apply pressure. If this change goes through, nuking from 1200/1500 range with a full glass longbow build will be time consuming and and difficult to chase down and punish.

One thing to note is that this won’t hit only mesmers. A change like this will produce a massive outcry from thieves, eles, and to a lesser extent necros as well. This doesn’t make it any less of a slap to the face to us, but it does mean that other classes will be clamoring for it to be removed as well.

ASP.8093:

Pwent.2639:

Balthazar runes now don’t ignore blind, evade, and block. Not sure if they changed anything else.

Did they always have an ICD?

All on-heal runes require cooldowns. The reason is engineer healkit.

Fynos.8762:

Fay.2357:

Daeson.5273:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Asserting that all opinions are equal is obviously false. Ok, we live in a post modern world and this sort of bad thinking has taken hold in the minds of people for various reasons. I’m not sure what yours are, Daeson, but you’re wrong to dismiss the counter claims or “opinions” that’ve been leveled against you in the way you have. You can disagree with me but I’m afraid you’d only be affirming my point :p

Anyway, Fay isnt really wrong. In terms of this build somehow being some sort of “cheap” alternative, it’s not. This is a pretty run of the mill condi setup people have been running for a long time.

Asserting that opinions arent equal is disrespect to the person you are argueing with that just sounds like fascism. again. Just my opinion.

No, it’s just a fact. Some opinions are factually right and some are factually wrong. If you have the opinion that 2+2 = 5, you’re entitled to that opinion. You’re also wrong.

Holy crap get over yourself…

Here’s my opinion, you should go clean those cheetoh caked slabs of bruised meat you call hands and take your troll train elsewhere as your typing is getting away with itself.

Is it really so hard to show a little appreciation for the Authors efforts in the mindless babble you call a reply?

Sorry I offended you with proper application of logic and facts, feel free to play inefficient an ineffective builds as much as you want, nobody is going to stop you. I don’t show appreciation or disdain for effort, I simply evaluate the effectiveness and overall value of said efforts.

ASP.8093:

If you’re looking for a cheap-to-make condi build? The pinned OsiCat build thread is quite dated now, but the PU condition build is basically this build with good burning output and MASSIVE condition removal. The Balthazar runes you need to run it never go above 3s at the auction house.

Take a look.

This is a pretty reasonable option for sure. I feel like they nerfed balthazar runes at some point between now and when that build was made, but I could be wrong. I just recall engineers being really crazy with them, and then that died out at some point.

Menaka.5092:

What if we get secondary effects on our main hand skills? Like, for example, if you have a shield in off hand, your Sword third autoattack applies quickness for 1 second (1 second of slow on scepter AA?), or something like that?

That sounds like a trait to me, not an innate mechanic.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude, scepter 2 torment was a MASSIVE buff to condi builds, despite how awkward the weapon is. And torment on auto is neat. Not what I wanted and not addressing the main issue, but still a good buff.

Ah, the scepter 2 torment was a significant buff to condie builds. That being said, you also need to consider that it was a significant nerf to power builds using the scepter. It basically changed the scepter from a power weapon into a condition weapon.

As far as the auto goes, I would rather they did absolutely nothing to it than this weak change, specifically because of what I said. The autoattack is close to literally non-functional. I almost never even press the button when using scepter, and that’s because it’s so god-awful. The fact that now they’ve decided that it’s buffed and is fine means we won’t get a real fix for it for another 2 years, and that’s just flat out insulting.

skcamow.3527:

• All mantras, most notably pain and distraction AoE.

Good point, forgot about these.

skcamow.3527:

• Spatial Surge line AoE (up to 3).
• Confusing Images line AoE (up to 5).

These were blanket changes to beam attacks…but I’ll give it to you.

skcamow.3527:

• Mind Stab (GS) AoE buff.

This is tarnished by the fact that there were so many great suggestions about how to make mind stab better…and they just increased the aoe a bit. We could have had a blast, a daze, a pulsing aoe, so many great things were offered…but none were taken.

skcamow.3527:

• Triumphant Distortion.

Which was neutered on released by a hefty ICD.

skcamow.3527:

• Scepter torment.

Which did absolutely nothing to fix the actual problems with the autoattack, so now we’re left with an incredibly awful autoattack…that happens to apply torment now. Additionally, the change means that fixing the scepter auto is off of the devs to-do list and so we’ll probably be stuck with it for another 2 years.

skcamow.3527:

• Halting Strike.
• Confounding Suggestions.

These were good changes, true.

skcamow.3527:

• Phantasmal Mage buff.

Look at me with a straight face and tell me that you actually believe the iMage buffs were impactful in any way and made the iMage anything other than still trash occupying the 5 slot on torch.

Yeah, there are some good things we’ve gotten, but not many, and most of the good things are at least slightly tarnished by their implementation or other associated nerfs.

Xaylin.1860:

- No NEW weapon doesn’t mean … Could HoT introduce offhands as mainhands? They specifically say that each class is getting only one new weapon, but they did not say whats happening with our older weapons. Of our offhands (Focus, Torch, Pistol, Sword) the only two that could make a viable mainhand are Sword and … Pistol! While I wouldn’t expect it, it isn’t impossible that classes only getting an offhand may be able to wield them in the mainhand and vice-versa.

But maybe we are overthinking it and this is the answer. We know how much ANet likes to play games with us. Pistol would be the main contenter and won’t be a new weapon. I can also see MH Torch. Focus… meh. I’d rather not have MH Focus.

I’m pretty sure this is massively overthinking and reading into what anet said. Anet made a really simple statement: 1 new weapon per class.

Reading into that statement the meaning of ‘oh, well they said ’new’, so what if we could have old weapons repurposed, that wouldn’t be ‘new’, just ‘kinda new’ but old at the same time…is probably the most textbook example of overthinking something I can come up with.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Fay.2357:

Levetty.1279:

What people are forgetting is that even if the shield skills are good (which is highly doubtful) then we are still stuck with what weapon to use it with. Scepter will still be bad outside of its little niche leaving us with just sword. So what happens if we want to use another one of our off hands as well? Go S/Sh S/x? The diversity of the class!

This right here is the biggest problem. It’s not like we don’t already have great offhands. Focus is fantastic, pistol is fantastic, sword is fantastic, torch has a fantastic skill and a blooper…but doubled ranged sets are still extremely popular because our mainhands are just trash in so many situations. Shield could have the best and coolest skills in the game and a ton of people would still never touch it simply because you have to use a mainhand with it.

Unless they revert the ileap nerf. =P

That would be a dream come true! Henceforth, why it most likely won’t happen.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

As for the shield granting different skills depending on whether or not you have a sword or scepter equipped, seems very possible to me… Or maybe the shield is a blank slate we can slot extra utilities in!? /hypetrain

The reason I would shy away from both of these actually, is what I mentioned earlier about it setting a dangerous precedent. Currently, only one class (thief) has skills that change based on full weaponset choices and that’s part of thief design. If they suddenly give that to mesmer, now they need to start giving it to everyone, because it’s no longer a unique class mechanic. It devalues the interesting possibilities it has with thief, and means they have to put a whole lot of work into providing it for a bunch of different classes. Similar sort of situation with shield as a blank slate to slot utilities in, that’s a really dangerous precedent to set and every class is going to want something they can do that with (particularly engineer, off the top of my head).

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- Equipping Shield could alter mainhand abilities:

I view this as incredibly unlikely. It would be such an enormous change and a really dangerous precedent to set in terms of future development being immensely complicated. I’d actually recommend against the possibility of doing that.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- 3 extra utilities:

This is a possibility…but I wouldn’t like it. We already have too many utilities that we want to slot at the same time. 3 extra ones is just going to give us more reasons to wish we had more utility slots…but no more utility slots to use.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- Possibility of a revamped class mechanic:

I actually think that some sort of modification here is the most likely thing…purely by process of elimination. It’s the only viable option. Unfortunately, there’s almost zero chance of this being worthwhile enough to replace a mainhand weapon.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

- No NEW weapon doesn’t mean … Could HoT introduce offhands as mainhands? They specifically say that each class is getting only one new weapon, but they did not say whats happening with our older weapons.

C’mon, this is one titanic stretch and you know it.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

What do you think this “something just as good” could be?

I think it’s Jon Peters extemporizing on the spot to prevent from having to explain awful design decisions to people that actually have knowledge of game mechanics.

Levetty.1279:

What people are forgetting is that even if the shield skills are good (which is highly doubtful) then we are still stuck with what weapon to use it with. Scepter will still be bad outside of its little niche leaving us with just sword. So what happens if we want to use another one of our off hands as well? Go S/Sh S/x? The diversity of the class!

This right here is the biggest problem. It’s not like we don’t already have great offhands. Focus is fantastic, pistol is fantastic, sword is fantastic, torch has a fantastic skill and a blooper…but doubled ranged sets are still extremely popular because our mainhands are just trash in so many situations. Shield could have the best and coolest skills in the game and a ton of people would still never touch it simply because you have to use a mainhand with it.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Bountiful & Chaotic Interruption. =P

Trouble is that that’s almost it. You could also add maim—after like 4 buffs to it to get it to a workable state.

The other issue is that BI and CI still fall into the category of builds (interrupt builds) that work great until they don’t work at all. Against some classes, you’re a terror that must be avoided (necro, some warriors, bad thieves, other mesmers) and against others you’re someone that has the majority of their traits and toolsets devoted to a mechanic that simply does not work (engineers, eles, good thieves). It’s such an on or off sort of thing that makes it really hard to fully get behind for me.

Mogar.9216:

Liam McColgan.7689:

From a pvp perspctive…….IMO you should ALWAYS take portal.

In tpvp premade pvp its vital and one of the only reasons you would bring a mesmer. Good co-ordinated portal play will help massively with out rotating enemy teams…(pushing far with thief and portal playing it) effectively meaning you can play 3 bases really fast.

In unranked/ hotjoin….i would still take it….learn it…you will be unkillable with it. It might not help your team as you are playing with randoms..but use it selfishly…resetting a 1v1….pulling out of an unfair fight (2v1/3v1 etc) and free roam capping/decapping by yourself. I use it and when it is on CD…i pretty much cannot die.

There really is not much option tbh. If you want to be a valued mesmer…learn how to portal play

PS. its almost ALWAYS better to pull out of a fight via portal and reset/ loose the base…than die and wait for respawn…..a dead mesmer is no help to anyone

While I agree with pretty much everything you said about portal’s strength what you don’t take into account is this. What if you could have WON a fight out right if you had another utility rather than portal? Then you do not need to reset the fight or lose a point.

This is a massive point, particularly since portal usually takes the spot of condie removal. If taking pDisenchanter would have completely shut down the condie build I’m fighting and given me an easy win, that’s a distinct advantage over portal.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Fay.2357:

At any rate, I don’t really see this as being a significant change from the mesmer point of view. The major difference will be that you won’t be able to strip/steal long duration stab from some of the transforms, but that’s not a huge change, just means that moa will become a bit more important vs transforms, and we’ll have even less reasons (if that’s even possible) to take arcane thievery or mimic.

Well Diversion will now strip stab even without shattered concentration. 3-clone diversion shatters will be a bit more important in any Mesmer build.

Doing that will still be a waste though; no dazzling procs is a pretty significant change. You’ll still want the boon strip and then followthrough.

Sorry Ross, but you’re quite a bit off in your statements here.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Power block has an ICD of 10s.

This is incorrect. There’s no ICD on power block, it’s just not useful for other reasons.

There’s quite a few solid interrupt builds that are available on this forum if you look around. I feel fairly confident that you’ll get about 15 links to them within the hour, so I won’t do that myself. I will, however, address your questions about power block.

The problem with PB is that it’s a really awful trait. It was good for about 24 hours, then the devs hotfixed it to be awful. Here’s the deal:

Power block does not work on autoattacks. This means that even if someone is spamming a long animation autoattack nonstop, you don’t get to punish them for it at all.

Power block does not work on thief skills. At all. This has pretty obvious conclusions, particularly since thieves are the direct counter to mesmers in PvP currently.

Power block does not work on any channeled skills. These skills already go on full cooldown when interrupted, and power block doesn’t add anything to that cooldown.

So basically you’re left with an interrupt trait that doesn’t actually do anything against the vast majority of easily interruptable skills and doesn’t do anything against our direct counter-class. This is a worthless trait that nobody has used seriously starting at 24 hours after it was introduced.

Essentially, on release of the trait everyone was excited about the possible return of the GW1 lockdown mesmer. It seemed like it could actually be the case; the lockdown was strong and got pretty nasty. Unfortunately, the devs decided that the GW1 lockdown mesmer is not a set of mechanics they want to see in this game and removed it posthaste.

StickerHappy.8052:

Zarathustra.1458:

You know, nothing really is worth as much as three main hand skills. Utilities always have 20-30s cooldowns, profession mechanics always have long cooldowns, and our mechanics have always been lackluster. So what could really make up for a new auto-attack doing power ranged damage without locking us into a GS?

Uhmm.. Mind wrack is 15 seconds? Shatter is lackluster? Whattttt?

Mind wrack has a nice cooldown, but the others are far longer of course.

It’s absolutely a fair statement to say that shatter is lackluster though. 3/4 shatters are ignored 99% of the time by pretty much every PvE build, and 2/4 are ignored 99% of the time by a very large subset of available builds. Only actual dedicated shatter builds (and/or lockdown builds that revolve around shatter) actually use our profession mechanic fully. If that’s not the definition of lackluster, I’m not sure what is.

Daeson.5273:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Asserting that all opinions are equal is obviously false. Ok, we live in a post modern world and this sort of bad thinking has taken hold in the minds of people for various reasons. I’m not sure what yours are, Daeson, but you’re wrong to dismiss the counter claims or “opinions” that’ve been leveled against you in the way you have. You can disagree with me but I’m afraid you’d only be affirming my point :p

Anyway, Fay isnt really wrong. In terms of this build somehow being some sort of “cheap” alternative, it’s not. This is a pretty run of the mill condi setup people have been running for a long time.

Asserting that opinions arent equal is disrespect to the person you are argueing with that just sounds like fascism. again. Just my opinion.

No, it’s just a fact. Some opinions are factually right and some are factually wrong. If you have the opinion that 2+2 = 5, you’re entitled to that opinion. You’re also wrong.

MailMail.6534:

HYPE TRAIN!

Uhh. Hype for…what? Some nebulous thing that Jon Peters claims will be as good as having another mainhand weapon?

Flufferz.8907:

well then I have learned something – thanks Fay

Also fun fact, distortion will actually strip boons with shattered concentration. There’s a very small aoe range around the clone (or yourself with IP) that somehow does a hit-check and will remove boons if something is in range.

Daeson.5273:

to be widely used by politicians taking a ordinary normal thing in a hobby or whatnot and trying to force less objectivity on it by giving it an morale extreme. It doesn’t work for politicians or logic,You seem intelligent which is why i expected you to drop that and move on. Still agreeing with my first opinion of you being intelligent i suspect that is no longer necessary.

Using the Holocaust was not an attempt to force a moral extreme, it was using the example of an something that definitely happened. Since it definitely happened, having the opinion that it didn’t is factually wrong.

Price
You have up to this point still failed to address my question of what exactly is cheaper about the build. Any condie roamer build can swap runes, so that’s not cheaper. All condie roamers use rabid, so that’s not cheaper. Obtaining traits is only cheaper if you assume the person using this build will literally do nothing else ever, and that’s not an assumption you can make.

Condition Clear
Your response to the lack of condition clear was ‘most people I find blow their conditions on my clones so I don’t need any’. This is literally saying ‘everyone that I’ve fought is awful’. Fighting anyone competent will result in conditions on you, there is no way to avoid this. Therefor, all builds either need to have a way of dealing with the conditions, or be capable of bursting so hard that no defense is necessary. Standard shatter builds take the latter approach but your build can’t do that, so it needs the former.

You’ve asked for feedback and you’ve received it. This build is not an effective way to roam in WvW if you’re fighting anyone remotely competent that can apply conditions, and it’s also not cheaper in any meaningful way than other condition roamer builds.

Flufferz.8907:

@Fay
Pretty sure when you diversion someone with stab right now you don’t strip boons (ofc I learned not to do that mistake in the first couple days of PvP but still). Now since there is an effect (lowering stab stacks by 1) you should get the boonstrip proc so you can diversion with impunity for strips.

Diversion, like all shatters, will remove boons on hit if you take shattered concentration. It still hits, it just doesn’t daze until the stab is removed.

Daeson.5273:

I am open to criticism and ideas. i also answer questions. I also answer concerns and opinions to try to clear up concerns. If you cannot take my answers at face value that is not my issue. I took yours at face value but you continue to keep saying the same thing

Ah, here’s the little bit of dispute. I gave you criticism, points, and ideas. I pointed out specific examples showing why what you’ve said was incorrect or misinformed. Your response to this was, and I quote:

Daeson.5273:

As i keep saying “my opinion” i’m entitled to mine as you are to yours saying my arguement is invalid implies there is a right and wrong but that definition is not set in the terms we are speaking of i respect your opinion and mine differs that is perfectly fine,

That’s all. Your response was literally ’you’re not allowed to call my opinion wrong’. I gave you facts and logic, and you responded with ‘all of these facts and logic don’t apply because I say so’.

I’m more than happy to hear actual counter-points and arguments to the things that I addressed, you just have failed to provide any.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

It’s not an argument, it’s a counter-example. Your statement was ‘with enough hours spent mastering mesmer, it’s an effective class in PvP’. I have provided a counter-example of a situation where enough hours were spent mastering mesmer, but it still wasn’t an effective class in PvP.

Well thast supcuties problem, not mine or other mesmers. There are still very high level mesmers who play out there who do just fine. If supcutie feels it doesnt’ work with his team comp or give him exactly what he wants to do then that doesnt really say anything about other groups or people.

No, what supcutie himself does doesn’t say much about other groups of people. For that, you need to take a wider sample.

In the entire world tournament for GW2, nobody played mesmer at all except for supcutie in those couple games. This is a significantly wider sample encompassing multiple groups and people all competing at the top level of GW2 PvP. The unanimous statement that was made is that mesmer is not viable at the top level of GW2 PvP.

I love playing mesmer, and I’ve actually literally not played a single tournament match as non-mesmer ever. I have no plans to break that record. I’m good at what I do and I generally win my games. All that being said, I still recognize the fact that mesmer simply is not as good as the other classes in high level PvP. The preponderance of evidence states this as a fact.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Fay.2357:

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

So supcutie quits and mesmer is no longer viable? What stupid argument is that? Its no argument.

It’s not an argument, it’s a counter-example. Your statement was ‘with enough hours spent mastering mesmer, it’s an effective class in PvP’. I have provided a counter-example of a situation where enough hours were spent mastering mesmer, but it still wasn’t an effective class in PvP.

Daeson.5273:

Fay.2357:

Daeson.5273:

As i keep saying “my opinion” i’m entitled to mine as you are to yours saying my arguement is invalid implies there is a right and wrong but that definition is not set in the terms we are speaking of i respect your opinion and mine differs that is perfectly fine,But defining it as right or wrong is detrimental to an arguement to provide healthy feedback.

This is a commonly misunderstood point of logic, allow me to clear it up for you. You are entitled to have whatever opinion that you want. For example, you could be of the opinion that the Holocaust never happened and that’s your business.

Now, while you’re entitled to whatever opinion that you want, that has absolutely zero bearing on the correctness of your opinion. In the aforementioned example, the Holocaust obviously happened, and having the opinion that it didn’t is very much wrong. In our example, your build is obviously not less expensive in any meaningful way than the other many condie roaming builds out there, and so the opinion you’ve expressed stating that it is, is very wrong.

As i stated before there is no right or wrong when expressing an opinion

I take it you ignored my Holocaust example then. Usually the example where you literally say ‘If you say this, you’re saying that Hitler was right’ gets people to see the logic.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with having an opinion. This doesn’t make the opinion right. You can have the opinion that this build is cheaper and more effective, you’re just wrong.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I don’t agree that mesmer is the worst in pvp. I think that they could use some buffs to survivability, but otherwise its a rarely played class because its so hard to play. Shatter probably has the highest skill cap in game, and is really really capable if put into the hands of the right person. Most people just dont want to put the thousadns of hours of effort into the class thats needed to play it extremely well.

This is a wonderful argument to make, and it would be awesome if it were true. Unfortunately…Supcutie, who is one of the best mesmers in the game and has certainly spent multiple thousands of hours mastering mesmer, ditched mesmer after just a couple games in the WTS and went back to thief because it simply isn’t good enough. Those couple of games were, as I understand, the only appearance of mesmer in the WTS.

Daeson.5273:

As i keep saying “my opinion” i’m entitled to mine as you are to yours saying my arguement is invalid implies there is a right and wrong but that definition is not set in the terms we are speaking of i respect your opinion and mine differs that is perfectly fine,But defining it as right or wrong is detrimental to an arguement to provide healthy feedback.

This is a commonly misunderstood point of logic, allow me to clear it up for you. You are entitled to have whatever opinion that you want. For example, you could be of the opinion that the Holocaust never happened and that’s your business.

Now, while you’re entitled to whatever opinion that you want, that has absolutely zero bearing on the correctness of your opinion. In the aforementioned example, the Holocaust obviously happened, and having the opinion that it didn’t is very much wrong. In our example, your build is obviously not less expensive in any meaningful way than the other many condie roaming builds out there, and so the opinion you’ve expressed stating that it is, is very wrong.

Daeson.5273:

Those runes you added are a serious gold difference You are looking at upwards of 55+ gold for those whereas undead cost copper,Also most of the mobility runes have the same gold difference,

As I said, other than the runes. The thing is that you can easily swap out perplex/traveler runes for rabid in any condie build and have minimal changes in how that build actually plays, you don’t need some crazy new trait distribution to accomplish that.

Daeson.5273:

Also rabid gear should you buy it via gold is much cheaper in most cases than the most common zerk,celestial,pvt build i see most wvw roaming mesmers running,

Rabid gear is used in the majority of mesmer WvW roaming builds, since the majority of mesmer WvW roaming builds are condie based. Zerk is used certainly, and that is a bit more expensive for sure. Nobody uses celestial, and PVT is actually fairly cheap…and only is used in some really specific zerging builds.

Daeson.5273:

also in my opinion time is money,now with the new lvl 80’s having to unlock Every single trait, “Most” of the traits in my build are easily achieved i say “Most” because there are only two in particular that take a bit to attain compared to other builds.

This is not a valid argument. If literally the only thing they want to do on mesmer is run 1 particular build with absolutely zero possible variation then….sure. There’s pretty much nobody that actually does that though, so this is a meaningless point.

Basically, this build is no cheaper than any of the other condie roamer builds that you could easily find around on these forums…but is far less effective due to various things that you lack. No cripple, no condie clear, an odd combination of wanting to use clone deaths and shatters at the same time (this doesn’t work). It’s cut-price in every sense of that phrase other than the actual cost.

Flufferz.8907:

It actually makes shattered concentration better since diversion against a stab target used to be immune now itll proc in removing.

What you said here makes zero sense.

At any rate, I don’t really see this as being a significant change from the mesmer point of view. The major difference will be that you won’t be able to strip/steal long duration stab from some of the transforms, but that’s not a huge change, just means that moa will become a bit more important vs transforms, and we’ll have even less reasons (if that’s even possible) to take arcane thievery or mimic.

All the comments regarding the inability of this build to even remotely handle condition pressure are valid, but I have a different one.

What exactly makes this build stand out as cheap? I see nothing in this build that makes it cheap other than undead runes instead of say traveler or perpelexity, but that’s hardly a significant change.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Yo Pyro I want you to make a promise.

If Mesmer gets more than 2 new weapon skills (either by a new mainhand or if the specialization changes any of our current weapon skills) or if there’s at least 5 viable new traits and 3 viable utilities or chronomancer brings viable build diversity to pvp/pve.

I want a public apology thread! If not there will totally be an “I sorta-kinda told you so” thread popping up.

Woah now, that’s a pretty extensive list! I’ve never said that there’s going to be nothing usable in the new content. My main worry is more that there’s going to be no fundamental significant improvements for mesmer. We’re going to get some new shiny toys to play with, but ultimately we’re still going to be bottom of the barrel in PvP and primarily veil-slaves in WvW.

PvE is going to be highly dependent on the challenges in the content that they release and not very dependent on what they actually give mesmer. Mesmer already has a lot of interesting utility capabilities, control, interrupts, etc, they’re just useless in current PvE content and giving us more stuff along those lines won’t make it any better. I’d love to be able to make full use of this class in PvE, but that’s (oddly enough) not the fault of the balance team, it’s the fault of the lackluster PvE content design.

Me Games Ma.8426:

Me Games Ma.8426:

Whenever I read something like this I get hyped to the max. Then after at least 2h someone comes up and drags me down to the hard and cold reality. (In most cases it’s Pyro)

Fay.2357:

Uh, no. You’re forgetting that chronomancer is explicitly a subset specialization of mesmer, not a new class. The class mechanics are not being rewritten, they’re being tweaked. Basically everything you’ve said there is being pulled directly out of you know where.

Aaaaaand again. ._.

Seriously I am hoping for a new class mechanic but as the ranger still keeps it’s pet I don’t really think it might happen.

Hey hey hey! That was totally not supposed to be a debbie downer post. I rather happen to like our class mechanic and such, and am rather happy that it’s not gonna be getting removed/replaced. Doing that that guy had described would literally be creating an entirely new class, and I’d rather not see mesmer disappear.

Knighthonor.4061:

Zarathustra.1458:

Considering the fact that anet keeps talking about how the class changes are still up in the air for HOT, I felt we should at least try agitating for them to drop this ridiculous notion of giving us an offhand shield, which appears at least looking at the trailer as if that is their intention. This thread then is for us to try and make some noise, and to not simply go quietly. Whatever weapon you may want, I am almost certain, that their is no mesmer out there who honestly can say, they want a new offhand weapon… So here my fellow mesmers is our rally, and so shall we cry;

NO SHIELD, NO SHIELD!

PS on another note, I seriously do not care what else they might give us, but at this point, another offhand to go with torch, sword, focus, pistol just does not fit. Our build diversity is intrinsically linked to our primary weapon, and as a consequence we are pigeon holed into four primary distinctions. Ranged condition, ranged power aoe, ranged condition aoe or melee power aoe. We need more single target weapons that stack well in the perpetual zerker meta.

PPS…. NO SHIELD! NO SHIELD!

YOU PEOPLE ARE FORGETTING!!!!!

Mesmer and Chronomancer are different.
Chronomancer will have unique class mechanic different from the Mesmer. They will share certain skills.
But with this in mind, this would imply that Weapon skills also have to change to fit the Chronomancer, because most main hand weapons have Clone/Phantasm, used for the Shatter Mechanics, which likely the Chronomancer DOES NOT HAVE.

So that means those Clone/Phantasm skills on Weapons will likely change for the Specialization, and with those weapon skills changing, likely the whole weapon will change as well.

Uh, no. You’re forgetting that chronomancer is explicitly a subset specialization of mesmer, not a new class. The class mechanics are not being rewritten, they’re being tweaked. Basically everything you’ve said there is being pulled directly out of you know where.