Guild Wars 2

FLIMP.8172:

I think you guys are missing the point… he’s not a warrior main.

Indirectly, he’s saying if someone who knows how to play warrior tries it, they can probably create a decent counter for mesmer. Not saying it’s true but there is potential.

Ross Biddle has mentioned this a few times also.

If they actually took not of this it would mean that counters actually exist and Mesmer isn’t as god mode as everyone thinks. We can’t be having that, if you haven’t noticed Mesmer must he deleted from the game and therefore can’t have possible counters.

It would make too much sense for warrior to act like signet necro did for Cele ele( which condi Mesmer is now where near that bad). So everyone but a few simply over look the fact.

FrownyClown.8402:

Just like tornado on ele is game changing.
Moa was broken in pvp even before chronomancer. The only counter to it is reflect and it leaves you as a free kill for 10 seconds. It requires no real skill but gives your team a huge advantage.

Reflect? Or dodge, block, blind, etc. And if you say oh but stealth when everyone is copying the meta build(i.e. No stealth) you can kick a kitten. Moa has counter play. Plus the damage coefficients when in it are so high you can kill the Mesmer. Just have your team pull for you off needed. It’s not hard

phokus.8934:

Ragnarox.9601:

Just delete Confusion dot and everything will be fine. Something like they did with Reaper chill dmg.

I’m assuming sarcasm but you realize that Confusion is the whole idea around (condition) Mesmer, right?

I would be ok with that. Assuming they reverted the previous confusion nerf a couple years ago and made it were if you AA’ed with 4 stacks you insta killed yourself. It might have been higher of course but you get the point. Oh and glamours. I would want confusion put back on glamours

Alex Shatter.7956:

Fay.2357:

Alex Shatter.7956:

Fay.2357:

Varezenem.2813:

Fay.2357:

Varezenem.2813:

Simonoly.4352:

Can’t tell if satire. Need more sleep.

It’s probably not a satire. Condi mes and bunker mes are highly unpopular with people pretending to be long time mesmer mains

Fixed that for you. 620 hours is a long time Mesmer main? Don’t make me laugh. Come back when you’ve cracked 3k and we’ll talk.

Didn’t say that he was a long time Mesmer main. (I’ve been rev main for longer than that.)

But AFAIK they want power shatter back over the “skilless” condi Mesmer.

You have 2 types of people complaining about condie Mesmer.

Type 1 is bads that have complained about condie Mesmer for years, even when it was awful. No matter how badly it gets nerfed, they’ll still be whining about it. This is the vast majority of complainers.

Type 2 is mesmers that have put on their rose colored glasses for reminiscing about the good old days when power shatter was used instead of condie shatter. However, they conveniently forget that power shatter was still garbage tier, played only by Helseth because he’s too stubborn to do anything else. This is a small minority though, because most mesmers aren’t so insanely myopic.

That’s the point. Everything should be garbage tier. That’s how you achieve balance. The meta was better back then because people played garbage builds and it was chill. Not ideal, but it was feasible.

Yeah, you’re totally wrong. Mesmer had nothing but garbage builds. Other classes had great builds. Your 620 hours of experience are clearly not even remotely enough to understand what the class needs and what it should be.

Mesmer was fine before HoT. It wasn’t top tier, but I call that a good thing. It could veil in WvW, was a great roamer, could duel in PvP and it’s support in dungeons was decent too. The mesmer I remember was the margin profession. It was great. What makes you so bitter about it? And why do you prefer the streamlined, purple thing Anet spat out in October?

Duel lol! While 1v1’s happen in PvP the game mode isn’t about dueling so go some where else with that crude. It’s why there’s such animosity towards the class now.
And then you want to bring a one trick pony roaming build into the conversation and veil. I speak from my experience but not many people want that. Running the same thing over and over again because OMG that’s all you can do sucks. Try it some time.

And then we get to the key part of your sentence. It was a marginal class and you liked it. Seriously? You like licking up dirt when trying to run a power shatter build because a decent thief will wreck your kitten in 2 seconds? Give me a break.

Actual Mesmer mains are bitter because we constantly get screwed over. Anet took a step on the right direction with preHot with the pistol trait but oh no too strong can’t have that. MtD? Nerfed almost immediately. The list literally goes on forever, they cannot get anything right with the class. If they buff us it’s on completely unused traits or weapons. I mean, how many people use furious interuptions? Probably no one but they buffed it. Scepter and OH sword got buff but I think I’m the only person that actively uses OH sword simply because I’m an idiot and like S/S staff power shatter.
So excuse me for saying in you 600 hours of play time you have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know how confusion damage has been monkeyed with so many times it’s ridiculous. Or the glory of Pyros immortal Mesmer before it was nerfed, rather nuked, into the ground.
You want everything to suck and have horrible builds? That’s crazy. The potential for every class to have multiple builds viable at high levels of play is there if Anet would take the time to properly balance the game.
Heck id volunteer my time to do it but that’s beside the point.

Stupid forum bug

Cataca.3867:

Lets be honest here, the nerf didnt change anything.

Moa is still the only way to break bunkers, core mesmer is even worse off than it was.
Mesmers are still going to bear the stigma of “super OP, cant beat any mesmer ever”, even though its very easy to chain CC us to death.

Oh well.

Don’t forgot power shatter sucks, phantasm builds in PvP suck, bunker builds suck, condi is only good because you don’t see bunker guards, hambow Warriors and Cele ele’s cleansing every condi within a 900 radius.

Mesmer will always hear that cross due to the design. If you create a class built around dueling and people try to duel it… Yep you’re going to lose. Also don’t forgot that people still refuse to actually learn how to counter it. Oh I’ll just walk in circles while these illusions attack me. Oh! Now they are running towards me what do I do! Well you die.

I guess this is anets failure to properly balance… Would be nice to have tourney ready power shatter, phantasm, support, or whatever your poison for the day was. But no, one build and certain classes at a time

Cynz.9437:

Ross Biddle.2367:

So since I have 4k hours on mes, I can just say you’re wrong and should be ignored, and there’s nothing you can bring to argue the point.

Sweet, that was easy XD

Funnily enough Moa has now been heavily nerfed and condi’s HAVE been cut in half XD

are we playing same game?

This is Ross, leader of the GW2 Harlem Globtrotters, master of the Valkzerker and Killshot. So yes we are but he being himself making fun of people.

StickerHappy.8052:

Here is the major flaw of this post:

No offense, but your MMR experience skews your whole perspective. You have never fought really good mesmers/ Tourney quality ones.

You uh… Mean the same quality players that get busted for cheating… Right?

Ross is poking fun and you get all serious goodness.

SlimChance.6593:

No mention of a reduced cooldown for Time Warp??

The change to quickness/slow no longer affecting rez/stomps was a huge nerf to Time Warp in sPvP. Sure, it still might have a place in raids and WvW, but it surely deserves a 120sec cd now?

Also, I think Imagined Burden could be improved by adding “slow” to the trait. But I like the Mind stab idea. (It does need more).

The problem with that is most PvP’ers don’t care about balance for PvE. Hence why people get kitten over balance changes or the lack there of.

And this is why PvP and PvE balance needs to be separated. I understand people don’t like being Moa’ed. I don’t like it, but PvP isn’t the only game mode and honestly it’s not the biggest in the game.
There’s three game modes and I know they say it would be hard to balance them seperate but it can’t be much worse than it is now. I’m sure they try and do what they feel is right, but sometimes I feel they don’t understand the changes they make. With a dedicated PvP team you can have grouch and Evan telling them to look into this or that and it be the sole focus for that team.
But I digress, they could give every player a legendary of their choosing, 3k gems, and a llama and someone would complain.

Kayberz.5346:

ArchonWing.9480:

(Them not accommodating you is selfish, but you not accommodating them… no?)

The difference is they DONT NEED accommodation, if they want to duel they can go to any number of places including # guild halls, obsidian sanctum, a non queued borderland, edge of the mists #. A player actually trying to do zerg vs zerg fights and capture player contested objectives in EBG has no choice but to wait in the queue for that specific map

Duelers have a choice to not inconvenience other people, yet they choose the selfish option because no one can stop them

And the same people that want to do ZergvZerg can go to EoTM, OS, guild halls, etc. want to take contested objectives? Eotm. Or PvE both have that.
I mean, your argument is flawed because it goes both ways. I’ll say it again, a duelist is a roamer, roamers flip camps, interupt enemy movements, tracks zergs, kill Dolly’s and such that a Zerg isn’t going to be doing because it’s supposed to be taking the towers and keeps and it moves more efficiently if the camps are already taken.
No one here is complaining how people in zergs like to hump open field siege, only do PvE stuff etc because they’re playing how they want.
Let it be

Chorazin.4107:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Viability isn’t a crime, despite popular belief XD.

But necessity is, how many pro teams played a chrono? If the answer is a few teams slotted them in as an option you have nothing to worry about.

If the answer is every team had a chronophantasma then you have problems. This goes for all classes, not just mesmer.

There needs to be class and build diversity within the format no? Who wants to watch the same classes with the exact same spec/amulet every match on each side?

You’re right, there does need to be build diversity.
However, wouldn’t it make sense to buff the underperforming classes and builds(cause lets be honest power shatter is meh atm.) and in doing so make the other classes perform on a level playing field rather nerfing everything? Because that’s what happens, when something works just a tad too well Anet nerfs anything and everything related to it regardless of other builds it may affect.
I’ve said it again and I’ll say it now, Anet should work towards having not only seperate balance teams for PvP and PvE but aim to have a minimum of 3 builds that are viable on a tourney level. It’s possible, would be a lot of work and require a test server, but then you could have a power, condi, and support build for each class that suits everyone’s playstyle and depending on the team comp could potentially win or lose the match.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Kayberz.5346:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

Im roaming and dueling for some years now here in Sfr. No one gives a kitten . Even commanders Just Let us duel while complete zerks passing by. Ofc in every zerk you have no brainers that want to interupt your duel. Thats always funny, cause those who interupt are the ones who getting powned. So in my experience. Only bad no skilled people complaining xD

Your experience means nothing, the system CHANGED,players are now in long queues to get into wvw to actually play WVW. The duelers are essentially glorified afkers as far as the game modes objective is concerned, your contributing nothing and preventing an actual contributing player from playing
Of course no one cared about duelers in EBG for the past 3 years, there was no reason to care, but now there is.
No queue? Duel all you want.
Large queue preventing people from playing legit? Go somewhere else and have some common courtesy for your fellow players.

A duelers spot in queue is no less important than a zergers. There is no requirement to join a group or do anything. Once I get in I can do whatever. I. Want. No matter what anyone says. I don’t even duel, I’m a small man havoc guy that often disrupts duel circles for lols and starting fights. But the amazing arrogance seen here from “real wvwers” is hilarious. Don’t want to wait in queue? Get here sooner stupid, I’m still playing with my slot in the BL.

I find it funny that people complain about duelist in the first place. The same people that duel are the ones that take enemy camps, disrupt reinforcement from getting to the main Zerg, kill the Dolly’s to prevent upgrades, and report on the position on enemy movement. So what if they stop by a forgotten corner of the map to do 1v1’s? They’re still serving an important role, much like the small group havoc teams that fight enemy zergs.
If anything people who want to Zerg need to go to EoTM because that was created for you. It’s all PvD, no PvP(which is what WvW is btw) and then you can be happy as cats in a field of catnip.

Who worries about bleed anyway? Dodge the shatters, block them, cleanse the confusion and torment. Easy.
No idea what class you play but anything unblockable hoes through the shield and if you have fear break/interupt the channel messes up the tempo of the Mesmer plenty of counter play if you take the time to l2p

denis.9487:

Sadly nothing new here. Azukas is right everyone else is wrong. He is using facts we are using facts. Just a giant kitten. At this point we should move on. My final thoughts. Actually this should be renamed Jerry springer post.

Actually it should be named deleted because I have no idea what I’m talking about.
This entire thread reminds me of someone argueing for their favorite politican that they know is trash. The person sucks, policy sucks etc yet they still stick up for them and when logic and evidence starts to prevail they start shaming others, changing the topic, whatever they can do to keep the topic focused on what they want it on.
Example- Notice how the OP a couple pages ago was trying to prevent the post from getting on WvW and PvE balance(arguably bigger more important balance than PvP) but now, because it suits his needs he will talk about it to keep the subject on how OP Mesmer is.
Yes people, this is what is called argueing with a brick wall. You will get no where because the OP’s though process is so convoluted he can’t grasp anything other than his own opinion.

By the way, isn’t this the same guy who had his signature as playing a thief a while back? If so that explains a lot.

tym.3791:

He does have a condition cleanse, torch will do that.

No he doesn’t. Look at his build, he isn’t running the torch trait which is how you get the condi removal.

Ragazm.6018:

yea! Lets do it! I would suggest -50% damage
And give them ability to summon two necros and one thief instead.

Only if it’s the perma dodging thieves that hit me with an 11k backstab earlier. That would be acceptable I think.

Sticker I think one reason why everyone gets so worked up is because honestly Anet sucks at balancing. They’ve no notion of shaving, they take the nerf bat and swing for the fences every time and if other builds get caught up in it oh well. I run a non meta SS Staff build, it’s what I like, and it got nerfed the same time chronobunk did. I’m sure other people’s build did to on various patches. But Anet doesn’t care. Plain and simple. 9 out of 10 times they look and say this class is doing to well, or we don’t like it(like some devs are prone to say) and just nerf it.
Is Mesmer strong? Yes, absolutely in certain aspects. 1v1’s are one of those. Utility is another. But when you have people saying we can use double portals… Well you know the kind of crowd that complains the loudest often have no idea how the class works.
Realistically I think we should have multiple builds available to us. Honestly there is no reason Anet can’t have a tournament ready Power, condi, and support build for each class. That alone would open up so many different team comps it would be unreal. But with the way things are right now you won’t see a power shatter Mesmer in the pro league, not enough sustain, nor will you see a support(like chronobunk or similar) because it got nerfed into the ground.
This obviously would require a massive overhaul of all classes and I don’t see that happening.

Yeah your sample size isn’t the same as mine.
I’ve averaged 2 necro’s per team since Friday in the majority of my matches. And it seems like more often then not there is 3 on one team vs 1 on the other. Necro is far from dead

Brighteluden.2974:

The problem we have here is that Mesmer are super biased in this thread which is not surprising. The fact of the matter is mesmers do need to be toned down when it comes to moa and portal. I’ve hit legend twice and spvp last season and this season and did witness how broken these 2 skills can be. That’s especially the case now that necros, dragonhunters, scrappers got nerfed..sorry it’s your turn now

I think you missed half the point of the thread here bud. Just about every Mesmer here has said we are only meta because of those skills. Which would imply that they are stronger than the build they are on. You could put them on any junk Mesmer build that has decent sustain and people will cry that X build is OP when it’s not.
And the fact you even bring up dragon hunters getting nerfed like it was a big deal makes me question your ability. Sure you hit legend but dang bro DH sucked. You totally forgot to mention that Rev needed the nerf and didn’t get it.
Also, you’re saying it’s our turn for a nerf. Nerf what? Your complaining about two utilities, one that if memory serves correctly has already been nerfed. No the problem is everyone complaining about it has a massive L2P issue. Portal can make or break a match but it requires a team effort to do so. No team play no need for portal.
Same for Moa. Both require a team to be used effectively, last I looked we were talking about PvP which means that you have a team to pull for you and you for them, just like the other team does.

Levetty.1279:

I vote remove Moa and replace it with consume plasma.

Can we have it on a 15 second CD too?

Ross Biddle.2367:

AtomsOrSystems.9420:

Frankly, if I were part of ANet or the balance team (I’m neither, and for good reason) and I thought that Moa needed tuning, my first thought would be to see if I could get someone to add a reasonable Moa heal skill, maybe including a condi cleanse with the heal. I could be way off base, but that would be my first thought.

That being said, I agree with the majority of the responses here: SoH is a powerful skill with significant trade-offs (Elite, huge CD, easily blocked/dodged/invulned/anything else) and is probably fine. If I have any concerns, it’s how the current viability of Mesmer rests more heavily than ever on two skills (portal/moa).

If I was the dev in question I’d keep 5 as the evade/dash, but change 1-4 to the chicken dance. That way all the scrubs who qq over Moa can just stand there and hit any of those buttons, stand there dancing, and die.

They were defeated well before the signet was cast. Well before the match even started. Well before they even logged in XD

Ross I don’t know whose comments I find more entertaining, yours or Pyros. I look forward to reading both whenever I see them.

And I was PvP’ing earlier on my S/S Staff power shatter Mesmer and got Moa’ed GASP
I was fighting on my home point against a condi mesmer( go figure) and it wasn’t going his way so he Moa’ed me and guess what? I dodged and used the 5 skill to avoid his burst and then killed him! It was such a miracle! I don’t think anyone will be able to do something like that again! /s
This same Mesmer was moa’ing my teammates as well, keep in mind this was all PuGs too, and each time somehow we managed to win the match quite handily against this OP menace.

flog.3485:

Personally I just think, if it is possible on technical level, to tie the duration of moa up to the number of phantasm or illusion at the end of the cast. It could be something like this: one phantasm/illusion of the caster=3 seconds of moa, 2=6 seconds and three= 9 seconds. No illusion/phantasm on the field= no moa transformation

I was ok until you said no illusions no Moa. If youre going to tie it to illusions you might as well treat it like a shatter. I mean, even signet of the ether gives regen for having no illusions out and then scales up from there’s.
But I don’t think Moa is the problem here either. It’s blockable, you’re in a team match so your team should be pulling to help you etc. split balance between PvE and PvP so that you can balance CS for Pvp without messing up PvE and you’re golden. Then Anet can go further and work out the rest of the kinks because seriously, we should have tourney ready power, condi, support, and hybrid builds for most of not all classes Mesmer especially without having to have portal. But we don’t, we only have one build. Moa is a tiny fish in a big pond filled with a couple huge kitten fish that everyone is overlooking because they are too focused on the little fish.

You do realize that outside of this subforum Mesmer has always been OP right? Even when it was at its absolute weakest, no one wanted one on their team, and you might see 1 or 2 brave souls running it in a team comp? Yeah even then it was OP because people had l2p issues like not paying attention to an obvious casting of Moa gasp.

Your entire argument is flawed from the beginning because you keep referencing people who A) historically have never played the class and whine that it’s OP without understanding its mechanics. This can be seen in a separate post were a forum member drew phrases from the PvP forum, and you’re drawing conclusions from the ESL. All probably 20 people. That’s not a lot, hate to burst your bubble there. and you know what they are good at? Playing. Not balancing, that job would be for a balance team(if we had one) that would look across ALL game modes and say oh well this isn’t as big a deal as the newbs who can’t l2p and the handful of pro leaguer vs the other two game modes.
Not only that, but you can go into ranked, unranked, hot join whatever on whatever build you want on whatever class you want and o guarantee you unless you ruby or above you’ll find at least one person that can’t dodge, stands in red circles, etc.
there is no reason to cater to them. End of story.

And technically you haven’t ignored everyone you’re right. You’ve replied to them by saying they are wrong and your right. Which… Isn’t much of a discussion. More of a bad opinion.

So you’re saying we should reward players for having their dodges baited? Thanks but no thanks. This is PvP, it’s supposed to be about having a team help and support you while you fight against other thinking players. If I wanted to press 1 to win I’d play PvE or zerg EotM. But I don’t, I pvp and small scale roam were my actions dictate how a fight goes.

The problem isn’t necessarily Moa, we’ve always had Moa. You’ve always had a group of people complain about being Moa’ed too. But their problem was and always will be the fact they refused to learn the skills. That’s not my fault, it’s thiers and for no reason should my class be punished for that. And then Anet get the bright idea to introduce CS. Which is great, it’s an interesting concept, extremely useful, but hard as hell to balance. And there in lies the problem. It’s not Moa, that’s nothing new and not ground breaking, it’s l2p all over again. If you get your dodges baited and aren’t paying attention to the Mesmer to block or interupt an obvious casting oh well you deserved. No, the problem is now we have CS which gives us the opportunity to have multiple of everything. I mean, have you ever dropped Gravity Well at Mid twice after making sure everyone used their stun breaks? The results are hilarious. But it’s not GW’s fault, CS allowed the second use.
So why in the hell should we nerf or change Moa because of CS? It makes no sense.

Wolfric.9380:

This. Add Moa training to HotM.
Let the moa jump and dodgeroll.
I did already peck someone dead ^^.
Problem is most people die to focus very fast without their escape utilities. Moa, stun dead.
Maybe moa skills shoud be reworked.

1. A hard hitting single target strike with 150 range that bleeds.
2. A clawing attack like Whirling Axe on 5s CD.
3. a leap with a 1s knockdown on 1/2 cast and 10s recharge
4. A 600 rad 5s weakening scream that dazes for 1s. 1s cast and 10s CD.
5. Evade like now with superspeed and a stunbreaker added.

You can already dodge in Moa so how is that a problem?
And the 5 skill is an escape already as well so there’s basically 3 evades, I don’t understand what more you could want.

The problem is no one takes the time to familiarize themselves with the skills and in a team setting that’s a no no. You’re already doing it for other classes why not Mesmer too? Would make things so much easier.

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

Thank you for the well thought out reply. I do have to confess about liking some of your points specially the all users one….there is just one problem with it.

You are wrong.

Ooh ooh I can do this too!

See, there’s just one problem with your reply.

You are wrong.

We can all do that Fay!
I’m right and he is wrong. Yup I did it too.

I mean at this point we might as well reduce this to personal attacks since you have made it perfectly clear you won’t have any reasonable or logical comments to make. Of course, other than we owe Anet an apology. Which we don’t. If anything they owe us one for refusing to acknowledge they’ve messed up and won’t take any advice from the player base.

Azukas.1426:

Exciton.8942:

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

1. Alacrity was cancer. I applaud anet for doing what was right. [citation needed]

2. Once again going with the theme of cancer we once again arrive there. [citation needed]

I’m sorry if you disagree with the changes, but it was needed in the grand scheme of things. [citation needed]

https://youtu.be/_X9bH3udBsI

So would you like to try and explain how what they did to well of precognition was justfied?

Was precog too strong? Of course it was. Was the series of nerfs they slapped it with justified? Obviously not. The skill barely performs a function now, it’s incredibly weak.

You’ve also failed to justify the alacrity nerf. Alacrity was nerfed due to PvE considerations, not PvP. You may want to touch up on your history there.

Through all the nerfs our mesmers are still in the meta. A meta which is leaps and bounds better than that cancer we were forced to sit through last season.

There were no over nerfs to mesmers. The bunker build had to die. There was no other way, and the fact that anet kept us in the meta post mortem is a testament to how well thought out the nerf was. One could even argue that mesmer was so broken OP that even after a drubbing with the nerf bat we are still very strong.

Food for thought

There ARE absolutely other ways rather than completely killing off skills and mechanics. It is just Anet being super lazy on this matter. Even if they don’t nerf precog well and alacrity. Bunker mes would be out of meta(not completely dead) because of quickness/slow change and removal of bunker amulets.

Also, I am not even asking a viable build comparable to the current clone spaming condie mes. I am simply asking for so-so alternatives I can sometimes play for fun. Why is clone spaming the only way to play chrono? Current iteration of such skills/traits don’t provide any value as an alternative.

There is a difference between nerfs and over-nerfs.

You need to ask yourself this simple question.

When has Arenanet ever killed a build off?

The damage chronobunker did to the game was why it got rightfully gutted. Doesn’t matter about the collateral damage because the whole health of the game is more important.

But we are still meta and everyone here owes anet an apology.

Hahahahaha and here I was going to abstain from this conversation with trolls. But then you had to ask this. I mean seriously? Just think about what you just asked. Once you do you’ll realize turret engi was destroyed, glamour Mesmer nuked, clone death condi Mesmer are just a few.

And please. The new class stacking rule and the fact we have portal is the only reason we are in the scene at the moment. It’s not hard to realize. So no, I nor anyone else, owes Anet or any of the other cry babies that can’t l2p and have to have things dumbed down an apology.

No I understand that completely. The point I was trying to make was before we were limited due to non baseline IP and having to have DE.
Post HoT was better with Chrono with loads of build variety until Anet nerfed everything and made condi spam meta. Now in this meta we are restricted to building around our cleanse, which in most cases is Inspiration.
This, therefore is limiting our build variety by forcing us into specific traits. Sure you can run whatever floats your boat, but will it be viable in tourney play? Doubtful.

It boils down to the fact that no one wants Mesmer to be anything other than a noob killer. And it’s good at that but with so much potential to be more. But do devs want that? Nope and it’s obvious. Making a condi meta is just one way to keep Mesmer down.

Silverkey.2078:

I do feel that the current balance is in the hands of Karl alone. But maybe I’m wrong.

Regardless, it is pretty clear that the balance devs are focusing much more on the expansion than on current content. And that is a shame, because you can’t keep elite specs as the only way to fix bad design in the core specs. A-net recently said that they were trying to refocus, to stop creating new content and first try to improve currently existing one. But apparently, this does not apply to class balance.

Of course it doesn’t. With no true balance team and test server they probably don’t know where to start.
It’s unfortunate that we will only be able to use one elite spec at a time because those will be the only things some what balanced

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

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.

Which exactly is the problem, a lot of Mesmer potential is lost via traitline combinations bec ultimately you have to take Inspiration.

But don’t get me wrong, several classes also fall into that 1 required traitline scenario.

But you know Stickers this is pretty much the same problem we had before HoT just slightly different. You couldn’t run a shatter build without full investment to get IP, which only left you 8 points to go else where. And taking IP meant no MtD, but taking MtD was like hamstring in yourself because you couldn’t self shatter.
Now IP is baseline but we can only go into 3 trait lines and our condi clear is no better than it was before, just needed more.
Basically the full potential of Mesmer lies within its traits, possibly more so than other classes, but because of game design we tend to be constantly limited to whatever Anet decides we can have. Of course, other classes have the same problem, but I don’t think it’s as bad. Could be. Dunno

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.

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.

Instead of both of y’all making assertions about the other that you don’t know is true why not just settle it in game?
Because you’re going to say he’s a bad player, he’ll say you only face low ranked players which means you’re a bad player, etc. Best way to prove your point? In game. If you win with no condition removal you’re right. You lose, obviously you’re wrong. Done.

DeceiverX.8361:

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter. Also note some classes, such as the thief, have general condition cleansing on only a handful of abilities; some cleanses only remove a select few conditions which often do not cleanse confusion nor torment.

*Confusion deals low damage over time. If the passive DOT kills you you have problems that can be helped. I will agree some classes have little access to cleanse however.

WvW roaming typically features a very diverse set of builds which leads to encounters being unpredictable. Unlike sPvP where comps are pretty well-defined and roles are typically preset and optimized for specific duties, WvW roaming can encapsulate anything, and often, duels are based on matchups between players not both suited to roam; in many instances, it comes from the roaming player ganking another trying to get back to a group of others, where such cohesion is handled through group utility.

*And I will also agree with the statement that builds are varied. However, the moment you step foot into WvW you should know this and your build should reflect the fact that you are as prepared as you possible can be unless you know you will be a group. Most zerglings dont do this.

Pretty much the entire Chaos line is passive effects (meta rejuv, membrane, mirror, PU) and the entire Illusion line rewards camping stealth while not really doing anything but summoning clones (let’s not also forget about desperate decoy being another passive). Shattering clones is often pretty wasteful unless your target cleaves heavily, but this isn’t recommended considering it involves running around a lot to chase clones (torment procs), and attacking a lot to kill them (perplexity/confusion stacks on scepter 3/Ineptitude). PU being considered underpowered is a ridiculous statement because it’s unpredictable and frequently allows near-permanent protection uptime, crippling most power builds.

*And this is were we will completely disagree.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Condi_Roamer
The standard by which I would imagine most people choose mesmer will play this variant of the build.
Desperate Decoy in Dueling is there because… Well there just isnt anything better for the build period.
Blinding Dissapation is there because of the synergy with the grandmaster in Illusions but its requires active button pressing.
And of course you have DE.
In Chaos you do have some minor traits that proc when you reach a certain threshold or acquire a certain boon. However, in a condi build why would you bring Mirror over Dampening or Transference? Even bringing that up is silly. Plus Mirror is on a 60 second CD. Yeah so broken there.
I would love to see your math on how PU give near perma uptime on ANY boon, let alone prot when you have 3 sources(not including desperate decoy) of stealth, the shortest being on a 30 second cd. Sure it can be shortened but thats assuming you dont get revealed and managed you cd’s properly. Plus you have 5 boons that you have a random chance of getting… yeah nothing perm coming from there. If this was the 100% stealth uptime PU I would agree. Its not. Its 50% which in most cases is around 1 second. Alpha or Apharma did the math on it a while back.
Also, you are traited for MtD and confusion on shatter. Whats the point of running MtD if you arent going to shatter? I run it and believe me shattering works wondering. Again, there is no clone death traits. Just letting my clones aa and be cleaved down its pointless most of the time.

You don’t really need perplex for the interrupts but rather the passive 3 confusion it applies just for being hit. It works nicely with mirror because often you’ll get the 3 from being hit + 3 more from interrupting CC. 6 stacks of passive confusion is extremely strong.

You can’t run away from a condi mesmer without having cleanses because of the simple fact that the torment will kill you. A transfer is the same as a cleanse, and very few classes (actually, just the necro and mesmer) have access to them, and typically speaking, plague signet is not used in WvW because the self-transfer radius is so large and often can get one killed.

*Again, this goes back to having cleaneses and being prepared. Its not my job, but yours.

I’d also further mention that this build also has some of the best condition removal access of any roaming build on any class, so claiming that condi damage counters PU mes is just a false statement considering it can and will out-cleanse almost every other build via its trait options providing so much cleansing via The Pledge, and a comparatively-low-cooldown burst cleanse on thievery or MoR, which gets further augmented by the effects of alacrity for even superior cleansing if running chrono.

*At this time, you have three condition removals, two one condition removals on torch, and AT(which traited is 36 seconds so not so short) or a clunky mantra that removes 2 conditions per charge with 2 charges on a 20 second cd(rather short)
The build you’ve presented so far has already taken 3 trait lines so we cant take chrono and if we did you drop dueling, lose clone generation and what not. Your condi clear is still not on par with a mesmer taking inspiration and is still lacking compared to say ele or guardian, both of which can spec for wonderous condi removal.

It also has some of the best cover condition access in the game and rapid-application and repeated use of said cover conditions and high-impact abilities.

*We have horrible cover conditions. And the only high impact ones we apply are torment and confusions. While the most impactful one is burning which we cant stack. If someone pays attention to their conditions they know when and what to clear.

All the while it’s running random defensive boon gains on top of defensive stats and 40% more base health than a thief or ele, with stealth, and a skill tied for the lowest-cooldown teleport in the game. As far as not camping stealth, it has superior stealth access to the thief unless the thief uses Shadow Arts or Daredevil while using D/P, so even that argument is pretty much invalidated.

*Actually its not invalid seeing a thief can actually be perma stealth. Again, Alpha or Apharma has done the math on this. preneft PU with 100% stealth uptime, mimic, full all stealth skills could achieve close to perma stealth while a thief can actually maintain it. I’ll find the related posts for you.

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s definitely over-played in WvW. Certainly not overpowered in sPvP, but easily competing with the top spot for WvW roaming. Both power and condi variants are extremely strong builds here because the power/ferocity stats aren’t awful in WvW, allowing for mesmers to actually get off the damage they need, and the lack of dependence on traits for damage lets them be a lot beefier and more flexible than other classes in the end.

Dire perplex condi mes is absolutely OP, and probably makes the most out of dire and perplex, but dire perplex anything is overpowered. I wish ANet would honestly just remove this combination from the game like they did with the Magic Find stat and refund players with selectable stat armor with the ability to pick any other stat combination in the game and any associated runes. Would definitely help WvW balance a lot and really wouldn’t affect PvE or sPvP at all.

Most common classes I find these days in WvW tend to be DH, chrono, and Herald, then reaper, followed and scrapper. The rest kind of follow as normal. Interesting how the two most common aren’t used at all in competitive sPvP but define a lot of groups in WvW.

Can’t really say the class is OP when it’s balanced for sPvP, in which case it’s weak. The condi variant is definitely overtuned for WvW regarding ease-of-use and how effective it is.

Would like to see some more reward for active play on the mesmer, though. It has a lot of passive effects that involve waiting around in stealth a lot, and I’m not fond of being on the giving or receiving end of such things (also why I dislike the Shadow Arts thief trait line).

As far as the whole “veil bot” thing goes, it isn’t true. A lot of zergs are running increasing numbers of chronomancers for backline support and damage, as the number of reflects and aegis-spamming going on is heavily hurting a lot of traditional ranged builds, and being able to strip aegis quickly, provide cooldown reduction to a blob, and simply go invuln/stealth/AOE stealth the backline if attacked by periph to not die are huge gains for a backline to have and make frontline work a lot easier.

Mesmer condi roaming is popular because it allows for easy disengages.
The reason people claim its “OP” is because most of the time they decided they want to 1v1 a class designed around dueling and the majority of WvW’ers for whatever reason do not bring any condi clear. Heck a month ago I ran into a Warrior with no cleanses and a guard that only brought one. Is that a mesmer problem? No, its a l2p issue. Spamming your AA because you have auto target and auto target on is again a l2p issue.
Whenever I roam thats all I ever see. I’ve 1vX’ed on power and condi in WvW, power can be less forgiving sure, but condi kills the stupid people 90% of the time.
And I don’t like Perplexity runes either, don’t need them. They work better on a condi engi that can ’rupt you for days. Matter of fact I run Scavenging because the % condi boost is better imo.

And can you tell me which passive traits you are referring to? I’d like to know seeing there isnt clone death traits anymore and if a condi mesmer wants to kill anyone that have to be actively summoning illusions, shattering, proc’ing scepter 2 and landing scepter 3.
The only really passive traits is PU(give me a break its been nerfed to kitten) and the torch trait which encourages stealth camping. Except for the fact mesmer cant camp in stealth.

When you say something is OP it should mean it has literally no counters. And condi mesmer has plenty. Running away, condi cleanse, condi transfer, condi damage, heavy CC.

Xyonon.3987:

Excuse me?! shield 4 was ridiculously op in pvp and terrible in pve, now it’s amazing – and shield 5 is one of our strongest skills aswell one of the strongest skills in the entire game. The shield is amazing, nothing else to say.

Luckily thats your opinion. I hate shield, it feels clucky. Shield 5 is nice but I dont like #4 on it plus the tracking on 5 doesnt allows come back to me which is annoying. It wasnt even OP in PvP before it was nerfed, more annoying because it carried bads. I’d rather take off hand Sword. Sure its one block but it can crit pretty dang hard, its also a daze, the phantasm hits like a truck. So yeah. To me shield is again, like so many of our off hands, situational.

Carighan.6758:

About the “don’t compare yourself to bad players” think from before, I wish people wouldn’t do that. As appropriate, you need to exactly look at the average.

Consider this:
Say 2% of the game are top-end, and you roll a random 4 group mates.

Chances of having only decent people? Negligible. Hence any spec / setup / plan / tactic should be based on the suboptimal plan B, not on how you’d act in an ideal but utopian clean room scenario.

This is akin to raidleading while assuming raiders won’t make mistakes: they will. If they no longer do, they also no longer need you (meaning the raidleader). Raidleading assumes that you need to lead someone, which again assumes they need this leadership, which is evidently necessary.

Yes, there are situations where looking only at the theoretical top makes sense. In most scenarios, that is not the case. You won’t ever have those situations, you might as well look at the average case.

I see what you are saying but… My problem is there seems to be an overabundance of people that play the game and have a such a major Learn to Play issue that bringing it down to their level will make everything the equivalent of an smart phone game. Honestly, dodging is not hard, learning the basic mechanics of each class is not hard, figuring out how your class works is not hard. There is nothing really hard about GW2.
Sure Raids arent exactly casual friendly but hey if that is your cup of tea find a few friends in game that have the same schedule you do and play with them.
Same with PvP, the basic mechanics are not hard to learn either. Yet you have so many people came to these forums and complain about so and so not rotating and matching making needs fixed or if someone is on block list not to let said person on their team. Even beyond that you have these same people complaining that something is OverPowered. If you want to complain about anything, complain about the over use of “OP”. Its used so much that I do not think people actually know what it means anymore.
A few things that people consider OP- Condi mesmer, Turret Engi(prenerf), D/D ele(pre cele nerf), Bunker mesmer(prenerf), Mesmer in general(Its a curse I think), Trap Dragon Hunter, Druid(both pre and post nerf), etc.

Everything listed above, except d/d ele, had ways to work around it or are so easy to defeat when you learn how they work that there is not really anything “OP” about them. We literally could still have 66% alacrity if people realized that simply the removal of quickness rez(which is rather silly to me in the first place since its been around for idk.. 3 years? Its only a problem when mesmer is doing it. Pattern? I think not.) and the removal of cele amulet. That alone would have made some teams drop bunker mesmer in my opinion.
But, since the average player complained, loudly, about all of those build and amulets even, they got nerfed. Some so hard they don’t exist anymore.

So essentially I believe its more important to base your buffs and nerfs not off the average player, but the above average player. That small group of players that isn’t here to complain everything is too hard and they cant do it because they are a casual. The ones that get on and maybe they’ve made it to ESL’s tournies but never won, the ones that do Raids every day and just cant finish it because they are trying to work with what they have but dont give up and say this is to hard, or the poor deprived people in WvW that actually want to have a good experience while there. Those are the people balance should be made around. The average player in GW2 cant dodge, doesnt know that the longest stealth available to a mesmer is 5 seconds long and on a 90 second untraited CD. Or that if you stand in a hundred blades you probably will die. Or Red Circles are bad. When you say average and refer to GW2 in the same sentence thats what comes to my mind.

I like how first it’s condi Mesmer, then it’s portal, now it’s Moa. Like seriously, how many of you people are legitimately dying to Moa in? Moa is the kittenznit.

Step 1) find Mesmer
Step 2) play and arouse Mesmer
Step 3) make them use Moa
Step 4) peck the living crap out of them with the unbelievably high coefficients Moa attacks do.
Step 5) stomp Mesmer
Step 6) profit.

Granted in a highly organized team with someone like Supcutie or Helseth if the call is made for someone to be Moa’ed offs are theyre downstate. But rightfully so. Because it’s requiring team effort.
If you’re dying to Moa in 1v1’s…. I don’t even know.

Quadox.7834:

StickerHappy.8052:

Quadox.7834:

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.

Okay, go right ahead and grab generosity sigil.

Generosity sigil? I was talking about Class condition removal. Generosity sigil is RNG, you cant control when you want to use it. you know this right?

Swap to sword use blurred fenzy or shatter > done.

So you’re going to blow a BF cool down just to try and get Generosity to proc? Yeah man that doesn’t sound like good advice to me at all. Because you might blow it to attempt that one clear and then get +1’ed, etc and need the blurred Frenzy. Which is why most people I know and see run Inspiration for the condi clear on shatter. And even its not great considering its one condi per shatter, not illusion shattered if I recall correctly.

Infusion.7149:

Mesmers have condition removal from Mantra of Resolve, Well of Eternity, Blurred Inscriptions (trait in dominations) with signets, Null Field , torch’s the pledge trait (illusions), arcane thievery, disenchanter (very unreliably).

You can also use physical projectile (Mirror Blade or Magic Bullet)/ whirl ( Phantasmal Warden/ Berserker) in a light field (Temporal Curtain / Veil / Well of Eternity).

edit: I don’t feel that it is the Mender’s Purity that’s very strong, using Mantra of Recovery is the only time it would be removing significantly more often than using Mantra of Resolve and that has a tradeoff of less burst healing. Restorative Illusions on the other hand I feel should have had an internal cooldown since it doesn’t require illusions for the condition removal/heal….

Also if you add untraited condi removal to mesmer weapon it’d better be 15+ recharge such as on staff 4, sword 5, GS 5, or on another skill with little effect other than as a defensive weapon.

Of all those options you listed… They all pale in comparison to the Inspiration trait line. Especially the ones that requires trying to time an AI spinning into a light field…
And I disagree with RI having a ICD, our class mechanic is based around shattering, we self-shatter, its one condition, and a small heal with crap healing power scaling. Its not like its going to make that big of a difference when you eat a full condi burst.
Also, the shortest Signet CD is 24 seconds on SoI and SoM other wise the CD’s are as long or longer than Null Field and no where near as short as an RI MW condi clear. the also only clear 1 condi, just like RI. So Unless Im running a full signet build(never happening) Signets are out.
Torch clear is again. 1 condi clear per use. The shortest cd is 24 seconds, but can be cut shorter if you in stealth. Again, this does not compete with Inspiration’s condi clear.
Arguably the best route that should have been taken was for Anet to maintain the condi clear on well’s end trait instead of its present form because it could potentially compete with Inspiration. As it stands, unless you are going for a specific build, i.e a mantra or signet build, then Inspiration is a hands down winner.

DeceiverX.8361:

Backstab Cooldown via animations to gain stealth/revealed (minimum 3.5-4.25/4.5-5.25s, minimum 6 initiative, degen rate sustained use implies 25% increased cooldown per use up to 7.25s minimum based on D/D max pre-casting). Only Blinding Powder utility can reduce this to a true 3s/4s cooldown every 40s.

True Shot (DH) 4s – higher damage than backstab.

Traited GF war (4.25) – higher damage than backstab, identical cooldown in sPvP.

Coalescence of Ruin (Rev) (4s) – higher damage than backstab.

Maul (ranger) – still 6-8k burst depending on build, cooldown reduced to < 5s.

Dragon’s Tooth – similar damage to backstab, 6s CD un-traited.

Death Shroud AA chain (traited DPH Spite ‘n’ Might core power necro) – easy 6-8k hits via might stacking (got mine to 14-16k in WvW) – 1s cast/CD.

Gravedigger – up to 1.25s CD depending on reset proc. Traited < 6s.

There are a lot of skills that can easily burst for substantial damage on similarly-low cooldowns. I’m not understanding the explicit thief hate in your post, Ansau.

And then there are all of the brief multi-hit skills which do even more damage like RF, blurred frenzy, Unload, UA, ZD, wrath, everything on scrapper, death’s charge, soul spiral, volley, MR, grenade engi, life transfer, GC… just to name a few.

Because they are trying to make a point to a thief main?
I mean, yes, there are multiple skills that can do that much damage however, they are trying to relate it to a thief. Which wont work well since the one in question is thick skulled.
Also, I must be doing something wrong because I do well to get in the 3-5k range with Blurred Frenzy and that is with Berserker Amulet and Scholar Runes. So how are you getting more than 8k on BF? Plus burning that to use offensively in a Pshatter build when in most cases you’ll need it for defensive is not always a good idea.

@bearshaman.3421 Pyro has indeed been posting here. Fay = Pyro.

@ Lexander- How many times are people going to have to shove this down you throat before you realize your spouting off nonsense? Portal, like Moa, is only useful if you have a good team. Which is why you rarely see multiple mesmers in high tier play. If your team cannot use either efficiently, the other team has a thief(or necro depending on the build the mesmer is running), or the mesmer just overall sucks then those skills are worthless and the team is better off with a thief.
No one here is denying they are not strong, but they are no where near as strong as you are trying to make out. Its like saying DH is OP when you literally can dodge all the traps. Or run away from most condi mesmers. Since you know, unless they have Chrono theyre slow as kitten and you can literally auto run away from them.
Which goes back to the whole idea of this. Mesmer did not have a good showing in any of the recent metas until Chronobunker, which was one build not the class, and everyone flips their kitten because its “OP”. And because of this the class gets nerfed instead of the build. When in reality simply nerfing Quickness rezzing/stomping would plus a few other small adjustments would have lead to most teams dropping mesmer in favor of other classes due to the one major TEAM benefit it brought. Since you cannot cap a point while using Distortion and prenerf WoP gave distortion as does f4 a lot of caps would potentially be lost. But people, like yourself, overreact and scream OP at something they do not like and it gets wasted. Not just the build, but the class.
Condi has always been a go to build for Hotjoin/Unranked play because.. Well lets be honest, Mesmer in general kills newbs and condi just makes it easier. In both those arenas most players are testing builds/hardly have any cleanse and condi rips through them like butter.
However, in higher tier Ranked play you see a lot more condi clear and coordinated team play which efftectively negates the two conditions that mesmer will be applying. You say Confusion/Torment are the strongest conditions in the game. I disagree, for that honor goes to burning. Burning isnt conditional like confusion or torment to do the most damage and even a few stacks can wipe out most classes if left unattended. Now, which class has horrific access to burning? Mesmer. We cannot stack burning well at all because staff is RNG and torch is unreliable. So that leaves the other two conditions. Both of which can be applied through shatters(highly avoidable), a scepter block(Torment and this is a L2P issue), and Confusing Images(also avoidable again l2p). If any of these “high” damaging attacks are avoided your are negating the majority of mesmer burst. There isnt anything OP here. If anything the current condi mesmer is balanced if not slightly underpowered.
As for Alacrity, LOL. Yeah it got nerfed, so please go some where else with that. To get decent self stacks you have to devote an entire trait line and utility bar just for it. You lose as much as you gain.

Pyro…. I can’t believe the amount of stupid we’ve had lately on the Mesmer forum. Between the person thinking Open World PvE needs specialized builds and makes a “profit”, the person that thinks condi Mesmer is the best thing since sliced bread because one team ran it over the weekend, and now this guy. There must have been a convention were they passed out some of the good stuff and we weren’t called in on it.

On topic, condi Mesmer, to me, hasn’t been as good since they deleted clone death traits. Why? Because now our three most easily applied conditions are torment, bleed, and confusion. Unless you run dueling I don’t find bleeds to be worth it so that leaves torment and confusion. Both of which have received nerfs over the years. The most important one recently was the nerf to MtD so that the torment stacks we applied on shatter was 1 from 2. Which sucks. Now you’re essentially bursting someone and if they clear it, dogde, or invuln through it like you would a power shatter you’re screwed until you can set up another burst.
Which basically means the only reason for any team to take Mesmer now after quickness nerfs is portal. And it’s not strong if you can’t use it properly.

Sadly, while many mesmers will probably agree with what was said, Anet won’t care and could care less about what we think.
That’s why they are on Reddit, changing how you compact gear, and commenting on “safe” posts as we will call them that have little to do with profession balance, gameplay, etc.
PvP forums gets some interaction, mainly about the Esports they are pushing for and failing to get.

Curunen.8729:

Levetty.1279:

Anybody want to give me a quick run down of the roles, gimmicks and mechanics are of the different classes in Blade and Soul?

Also what the PvE and PvP content is like and how the f2p model is?

I’ve just been watching some videos trying to decide – am I right in thinking Summoner is closest to mesmer?

Or is another class more in line?

If you have to have AI then yes summoner.
My suggestion would be try the classes to find which play style fits you best

Levetty.1279:

Anybody want to give me a quick run down of the roles, gimmicks and mechanics are of the different classes in Blade and Soul?

Also what the PvE and PvP content is like and how the f2p model is?

The combat is more skill/combo based.
I play a KungkittenMaster and my “role” would normally be tank as I can counter in and do threat stuff in PvE.
Can’t speak about the other classes as much.
PvP is 1v1 and 3v3 arenas. The 3v3’s are tag team style matches so your still in 1v1 style match ups.
No dodge rolling and no true heals. You won’t be using Ether Feast any time soon in BnS.
From what I’ve experienced the PvE is fairly fast paced with lots of daily missions and quests to do. You also have dungeons that I’ve only done a few of.
My suggestion would be just download it and play it.
The f2p model is really only different from the sub by faster queue times and access to the in game store for skins and materials. It’s NOT BUY TO PLAY.

Fay.2357:

Some math:

100% condition duration. Phantasmal haste. 3 duelists. 50% crit chance. Duelist’s discipline.

Attack cycle is once every 6.6 seconds. Each salvo will stack 4 bleeds for 10 seconds and 4 bleeds for 12 seconds. Maximum bleeds per duelist will vary between 16 and 12. Maximum total bleed stacks will be between 36 and 48.

With 3500 (lol) condition damage and 25 vuln on target, 48 bleeds will tick for about 14k dps. In other words, condie Mesmer is still garbage.

Now that’s what I was expecting!

The last time I talked with thief players the argument they presented was Mesmer has more build variety(um really) and they are stuck to being +1’ers and decappers. I can’t help but picture how stupid a thief bunkering a point would be where as a mesmer(you know master of illusions and deception) could possibly do that.

Oh and they threw on the portal utility crap to. I can’t help that Mesmer has decent utility, good burst, decent sustain(when specced out the whazzo for it), etc. but I can tell you that to have one of those we give up the other. If you were killed by bunker Mesmer you suck imo. Shatter goes for burst over sustain and take portal(the only true team utility skill it takes)
But no one comprehends any of that

FJSAMA.2867:

Same for Moa. Heck some traits like rev shield hibernation still function during moa….

Still, its purple cheese for common sense.

I hardly see anyone run Moa. The last person I saw run Moa was condi. Couldn’t kill a fly. And had to constantly disengage from every fight I was in because they were sustaining go much damage. That’s even after I was Moa’ed in a 2v2.

A lot of Mesmer balance would be solved if people actually L2P

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

I don’t care if people take this post with vindictive joy or sadness, but mesmer are basically only used for portal and rally bot in pvp now. You’ll see standard shatter mesmer build won’t be able to keep up with the rest of power creeps.

All other roles can be filled by other classes.

• Necro has a lot more boon corruption than standard shatter with their weapon skills and corrupt boon on 15s CD (look at arcane thievery at kitten CD lol). They probably do better job at bunking as they don’t have to be completely useless.
• Revenant does better job at applying torment and confusion than mesmer. These 2 are the main conditions for mesmer and mesmer need illusions to stack high.
• DH has better and easier burst than shatter mesmer in conquest, at the same time bring in lots of area denial. Oh and they hardcounter mesmer with trap insta-kill most illusions
• Thieves has always been better at +1 and decapping than mesmer, and they hard countering both power and condi mesmer with the recent buff.

Yup, goodbye mesmer I guess. I was happy that I moved onto ele as they’ve been taking favors since 2.5 years ago.

What’s sad is people keep throwing Portal out there as one of the reason Mesmer is strong like the skill automatically when’s the game. When they do that though I don’t think they consider the fact a dead Mesmer can’t portal, a Mesmer using portal by themselves isn’t good portal play most of the time, and your team generally has to be build around the Mesmer. If you have a crappy mesmer then you might as well not use portal. Or Mesmer for that matter.