Guild Wars 2

It’s not game breaking at all.

You have to not be damaged in order to use the Trebuchet. How quickly he repairs it is irrelevant, because as soon as it’s repaired you assault it again.

The Treb is on downtime if someone is not opperating it, not if it’s destroyed. It’s bad gameplay to assume that just because there’s a red x over the Treb that you should ignore it as a point of interest.

Mesmer has some of the best point to point travel. But it does not mean other classes cannot make the traverse quickily either. The teleportation just means that they make the trip the fastest.

It’s not instantaneous. Other classes do not have to go to the downed Trebuchet first to lay down the portal. All they have to do is stack swiftness and make a b-line for the repair kit, and then use swiftness again to make the trip back. You get more warning, but the total trip time isn’t all that faster.

If you’re worried about repair times, you either ambush the repair kit, ambush the Mesmer at the turret when he comes back from the portal, or both.

It’s and advantage, yes, but it’s not game breaking. I’m fine if they patch it so that Mesmers can’t do it, but because someone has a particular advantage does not mean you’re excused from using your brain.

keroksi.3076:

yup, its a team game and if you dont have those 4 friends online every time you want to play, you cant. Just because this game doesnt reward individual skill at all.

Way to troll, bro.

Individual skills counts very much in the game.

You have to know your timing to be able to land the kill combo. If you know your timing, you can avoid it.

Agian, where’s the skill? In NOT getting caught, in making sure the enemy does get caught. In making sure even if you have taken the guy down, you survive the retaliation.

There’s skill in knowing when to and when NOT to fight off point. When bum rushing the Lord is a good thing. When it’s better to camp the Trebuchet and when not to.

But if you can’t possibly see how there’s individual skill in this game, then you personally don’t have any yourself.

Yep, and Guild Wars 2 is our nice warm toast we’re all squished together with.

The Logic is: Don’t hate the sandwich just because you’re jelly. It’s still tasty.

Bads be jelly.

Seriously, either hop on the train until the adjustments come or hush up. You might actually learn that you’re wrong about your assumptions.

Well no. It’s a matter of fact that someone will eventually get caught. The build would be useless otherwise.

But that does not mean that the build should not exist, or it should be nerfed just because someone can burst you down.

But this is a team game and if you are getting burst down then it’s not suddenly the game’s fault. It’s called getting ganked – and it’s an established mechanic. You learn to avoid it as much as you can, or work to expliot those who are overzealous in their attempts to burst you down into your advantage.

I have killed plenty of warrors, thieves, elementalists, etc that have tried the burst tactic. Sometimes, I lose. Ok, whatever. That’s the name of the game. You learn, you adapt. You don’t complain that assassin types are assassin types. They have to resource manage or deal with cooldowns.

There is no stream.
There is only kitten.

Yeah, Necromancer could use a bit of refinement in a lot of its build synergy. Not that it can’t be build to be powerful. It’s just that it takes a lot of oddball building and makes it highly specific.

But as far as Null Field, it removes buffs from enemies and conditions from allies. It’s not exactly the same as turning them into their opposites.

Arcane Theivery is great, except it’s twitchy. You either use it to steal a whole bunch of boons from the enemy, or use it to get rid of conditions from yourself. It dosen’t always work either, and it’s rare that you’ll get the best of both worlds from it.

Phantasmal Disenchanter isn’t worth the slot except for PvE raids.

The skill in getting killed in one second, of course, is how NOT to get killed in one second.

Do you think MOBA’s don’t have gib combinations. Take a look a Gragas’s burst combination. If it catches you you are dead, instantly.

The point is not getting caught out of position and working with your team. It’s also knowing when you hit your stun breaks, escapes, your own stuns, etc.

Some builds are meant to have that sort of incredible damage potential, that’s what makes these classes a real threat to deal with. If you hate them, learn to counter them hard. There’s plenty of slippery classes in this game that can bust them up.

Taking bets on how many posts manage to slip into this thread before lock.

Mikali.9651:

Oh, don’t get me wrong when I say they are too powerfull. I am against them doing 0 dmg hehe. I want to see them less strong, which means not nerfing their dmg to the ground.
As I said, Mesmers themself could do more dmg and do some more effective things, things you stated.

Also, I like shatter build more then phantasm, that is what is main mesmer design, but somehow this Phantasm build become stronger then real design…that is what is bothering me – it shouldn’t have been like this

Actually shatter builds are quite powerful. There’s a video and a spec you should look at.

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgIQNAW8alwzaqnVzoGa9ICqHaX29dkU0asWJF42FC;T0Ag0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1ssY8x5j9HvPA

Video explaining how to use it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT71X8Kfm8c

It’s very effective as a glass cannon build, just expect to have to use that portal to escape if you get slammed with conditions.

to those of you asking about mesmer burst and saying it doesn’t exist. I recommend you check out www.twitch.tv/jhaxe. His shatter build will leave you speechless with the amount of burst it puts out along with the amount of survivability and utility he has.

He actually dosen’t have that much utility. Everything’s thrown into clone production and damage. Which means no protection, no regen, one stun, and he’s wasting his deocy on damage output.

And it’s a seven step damage burst combo. Powerful ,but it’s far more complex to pull off than some of the other burst combos.

Granted, if he gets the latter half of that combo into a group, that’s going to be some pretty impressive spread damage.

But his survivability and Utility both take a huge hit when going for a shatter build. It’s the reason why most Mesmers won’t do a shatter build.

As far as Moa… I’d kind a rather they’d remove the skill completely and replace it with something more thematic to the actual class. I was thinking perhaps a perfect duplicate. A timed illusion that takes your name, appearance, stats, and mimic’s your skills and actions for a short duration and is otherwise a perfect clone. Something that really reflects on the ‘twins’ nature of Lyssa, which is the Mesmer’s deity anyways.

But if they were to just adjust it? I’m fairly cool with your idea of a shorter cooldown for a shorter duration.

Mikali.9651:

4. Broken skills and broken designs

1. Mesmer

- Moa.

Skill with too long effect with also too long recharge.

I am always against skills like this. It doesn’t make their users happy because too long recharge, nor it does players against it cuz for it’s too long effect time.

What I would like to see is to lower it’s effect time to about 5 seconds, and lower it recharge to 120 seconds.
I am not balance expert, so I am just stating numbers I see fitting, just so other could understand what I want to say.
Moa is an elite skill. And it should feel like it’s elite!
When you are Moa, you are unable to do anything for that time. It’s already powerfull on itself! 5 seconds is enough time for it still being powerfull elite, making it on much lower recharge, makes it more usable, and with it, more effective.

Powerfull doesn’t mean hitting 30k in 1 hit, one shooting everyone and then making that skill on 5 min cooldown. It’s broken and unfun.
That is Moa in it’s current state.

- Phantasms.

They are too powerfull! They do too much damage! Phantasm builds give mesmer too much survivability. Yes, you can destroy them in 2-3 hits, but it doesn’t makes them less broken.
For me, it’s broken design when AI deals more damage then their master.
Mesmers are doing too low dmg on their own! A lot of skills aren’t viable because their too low dmg, and too low effect.

What I would like to see is, Mesmers getting more damage, and Phantasms to have much lower dmg, but to make them more effective in another way.
What do you think about them doing Cripple on every x attack for x seconds?
Or even chill? Protection? Stability?
It would make them much stronger in effective way!

Most Phantasems are on a 15 second cooldown before reductions. Phantasems themselves are obvious targets at they differentiate themselves from the mesmer themselves.

There are problems when it comes to balancing these issues.

First, the Phantasms, like all illusions, die quickly cutting them from their damage output and forcing the Mesmer to have to re-summon them, which catches up to them quickly as most Phantasms have a cast time which can be interrupted, as well.

Nerfing the damage of phantasms isn’t going to resolve the problem of Mesmers, as they also apply bleeds as a trait, which can be an alternate build for a Mesmer stacking condition damage.

And that’s the crux about Mesmer’s damage. It’s distributed. The Mesmer himself dosen’t do bad for damage either as Blurred Frenzy can do 5k to anything in front of the Mesmer.

As far as tweaking Memser, I have a feeling this is a quality of life problem for other classes. AoE Damage wrecks Mesmer’s illusion, but people aren’t building AoE’s because burst damage is more successful right now. Until that has been properly improved I’d say it’s too hard of a call to say that Phantasem’s are too powerful. Their damage only stacks if you leave the phantasems up to do so.

To do 15k to an opponent, in a quick combo a Mesmer has to:

1. Summon iDuelist, Duelist must crit it’s volley.
2. Summon iSwordsman, swordsman must crit on the first hit.
3. Use Illusionary Leap (This can flat out fail if you’re not close enough to target.)
4. Stun somehow. (Reliant on Pistol or Signet)
5. Swap. (Illusionary Leap’s clone must be 1. Alive, 2. Not glitched out, 3 adjacent to target.) Optional if convinced it will finish: Press mind wrack for shatter. (Do not if not convinced.
6. Blurred Frenzy, blurred frenzy must crit for high damage.

If the opponent is intelligent, they can break this combo at any point in those six steps. Easiest is of course to destroy the illusions as they won’t get an opportunity for that second volly or shatter.

Otherwise, Mesmer is reliant on easily killed illusions for damage. Yes, they’re AI’s, but no less so than a Necro’s pets, and just as susceptible to AoE damage.

I’m not opposed to taking a bit off the top, damage wise, but not until we’ve fixed a lot of the quality of life issues we’re having with other classes first. We should be making other builds more viable rather than destroying builds because we feel they’re ‘too powerful’.

Speaking on that subject. Mesmers have been stating for a while that the Mantras in the game are fairly weak, even when speced directly for them. A substantial improvement on these may attract different kinds of mesmers.

The going reccomendation for them would be that instead of having a set amount of stacks, mantras gain stacks depending on how long it’s channeled, a full channel resulting in three casts without having to trait, the trait perhaps reducing the channel time significantly.

Oooh. Thanks, you’ve pretty much solved the issues I’ve been having working on my own Aura build. I spotted the layered buffs for the builds earlier on and have been theory-crafting a way of making them work. It’s nice to see that someone else had the idea as well.

Yeah, there’s nothing to say here, you got curb stomped.

Moa Morph is a THREE MINUTE ability for a reason. It’s a powerful hard-disable.

If you’re getting constantly moaed by a Mesmer, it’s because he’s saving it specifically for you and only you. I don’t use it as a Mesmer because the cooldown is so prohibitive, but it is a one button hard counter to a Pet based Necro. I’m not entirely convinced that we should have it.

People complain about Mesmers because they simply can’t keep track of the chaos. Not that the build is broken so much as the players are not sure how to focus. In group fights, Mesmer’s fighting drops off fairly significantly compare to other classes. They’re not a beat-all class so much as they’re the best duelists in the game.

There’s always going to be one class in any game that has superior one-on-one skills.

Animosity.5231:

I don’t think these changes should be implemented, but I do find Ranger mobility severely lacking in many cases – specifically compared to Thief and Engineer mobility.

I’m more of the mind that thief should have the best roaming mobility in the game, to be quite honest. They’re the ones that need to be opportunists to run their class properly.

Now that said, I’ve not dived into ranger yet. I do believe a good deal of their mobility is related their pet and weapon choices.

Balance tweeks will happen. And I’m fairly sure these top three jobs will likely get hit in some way, but aside from the super obivous, there’s not much that’s in the common complaints that can be done.

Guardian is Tanky, Thief is Bursty, Mesmer clones carry a strong portion of their damage. All of these basic functions are working as intended.

Many of other professions’ base functions right now are NOT. And they’re the more important fix, and will likely put things a bit more on equal footing.

Krustydog.1043:

Lol. The op is right. If its so balanced as you say good pvp’ers would have rolled all the classes basically equal. They havnt. Know why? Because the op is right. And no way I buying the arguement that its just a coincidence that so many who play rated just happen to like those classes. If ANet created a rat that could 1 shot people GW2 would be rat infested. They play them because they have to if they want to be competitive. They need a major patch and soon because it gets old fast. Look how fast SWtoR went down the crapper because they didnt fix PvP.

The reason why many, not all, of the complaints are literally a learn to play issue is because many of these builds are flatly hard countered by taking the time to think beyond the easiest method of doing things.

Again, 2/3s of a mesmers damage is phantasms, you destroy them, consistently, and they become a non element.

Safest way of doing that while still pressuring/damaging the mesmer? AoE damage.

Best way to counter a bunker player? Condition damage.

It’s players who refuse to take the step away from shiny numbers for the sake of a team that are dragging entire groups down, and then they cry nerf when tactics that top the performance ratings in a specific meta outshine them.

It’s more like there needs to be some mechanic improvements to the builds that serve as counters to these builds so that they’re not so unpopular. Again, I’ll reiterate, aside from obvious exploits like carrying bundles across portals, and fixing the long list of class bugs that plague everyone. There shouldn’t be any real nerfing that needs to be done. More like buffing of Condition and AoE Builds and a rise in buff removal.

Beyond that, sPvP needs to be segregated along skill lines like most other eSports before any major adjustments should be made, just like any other eSport. Quality of life adjustments should be made on confirmed high skill and low skill play individually, not based on the wailing masses of baddies who cant think beyond their first skill rotation.

Says a glass cannon Condition Damage?

Let me say it plain. If you’re building condition damage and not building tanky, it’s your own fault for going for a war of attrition and not gearing yourself the defenses.

There’s a reason why there’s plenty of abilities that cause stun break. These are your hard counters to the burst combos that pretty much reliant on both user and target being stationary.

There’s no shame in getting locked down by a suprise burst. It happens and is the design of the class. Just because an opponent is bursty does not make your profession impossible to play, it means you have to play with the Burst Damage meta in mind.

Hang out on youtube and watch a few good Necro Videos, it’ll give you some idea how to play PvP as one or how you want to play one.

But yes, PvP is primarily “Learn to Play.” and will be perpetually for a lot of players. Sometimes, your opponent is better than you, or luckier. This happens even at the professional level.

Having the class isn’t mandatory.

It takes one individual to ambush the Trebuchet. The Ambush does not even have to be successful so long as the Trebuchet isn’t being fired. The ability to quickly repair the Trebuchet is irrelevant if you’re constantly stuck defending it/yourself on the point.

That said, I don’t care if they change it. Repairing the Trebuchet with portal is just a convenience, like being able to sprint. It doesn’t create a win or a loss on its own.

So it is balanced that you must build your character and your strategy around defeating guardians?

This is false logic. Really you could supplant guardians with any bunker class. And YES, you should have at least one bunker-buster character in an organized team build.

And yes, if you’re seeing a trend in the meta you should build to counter that trend if you want to play successfully.

Summary. If you play a thief or mesmer everything is cool, if not you need to l2p.

I want to physically injure you.

There’s a difference in what people are complaining and what is an actually valid feedback. Most problems, yes, it is ‘learn to play’. The number of bads in this game is suprising even among mesmers thieves and guardians. But given these classes are popular, the ease of how these classes can be counterered should already be well known now.

Thief is a glass cannon, stun him once in his rotation and he’s forced to try to reset. Get agressive with him, and not sit passive every time he goes invisible, and you’ll find yourself winning against thieves consistantly.

Guardian’s are buff-kittens. Lay on the condition and buff removal and watch him melt. If you think you’re going to win against him with a physically bursty combo, you’re going to have a bad time.

And mesmers are so reliant on their their phantasems these days it’s embarassing. Destroy them with AoEs, lock down the mesmer with cripple/chill/imobalize and they’re dead.

Every other thing in this game right now that makes these classes stand out, is a matter of bugs (Each profession is littered with them, they need to be fixed.) and general performance tweeks like AoE damage spells and the rarity of Boon Removal.

Using the Portal to speed up repairs for Trebuchets is the only thing that could use a hotfix, and even that can be countered by not being akittenand constantly ambush the enemy trebuchet whether it’s up or not. Stick a tanky up there same way you would a capture point and if the enemy team tries to gank the assaulter, you punish them on the points. It’s amazing why people can’t think of a simple countergame like that.

mouse.1689:

For starters:

• Make Mesmer portals unusable while carrying an item. Being able to portal to the treb with a repair kit makes Mesmer absolutely mandatory in tournament play.

Hmm. Better, make using Mesmer Potals drop the currently held bundle. This way, if need as an escape, it can be used as one swiftly. However, you still reach the same goal of having to abandon your goal of carrying the repair kit around.

• Move a portion of the Mesmer’s damage from Phantasms to the Mesmer himself. The main thing making Mesmer such an incredibly solid 1v1 class is that it can pump out Phantasms, then let them do the heavy lifting as far as damage is concerned. If you choose to focus down the Phantasms, the Mesmer can simply reapply them. If you focus the Mesmer, he can simply reset the fight using Stealth, Teleport, etc., while his Phantasms wreck you. By moving some of the damage to the Mesmer himself it a) puts more dps responsibility on the player rather than on AI, and b) gives opposing players more opportunity to actually engage the Mesmer.

This would be difficult to impliment, because it’s the Mesmer’s stat’s that effect the output of the Phantasems, and it’s a broad range of them. A Mesmer already gains bonuses to their own performances when illuions are out, and there are builds built around high mesmer damage and less on phantasems. The only real solution here sould be to flat our nerf phantasem damage somehow, and that would only give rise to condition built mesmers who’d have the same problem.

You’re better off adjusting phantasem cooldowns, however I would disagree with the fact that phantasems need to be nerfed at all as you can target and kill them. Yes, they can bring them back up again, but you can knock them right back down again and still bring damage to the Mesmer while doing so.

I’m more inclined to beleie that AoE damage needs a slight buff rather than mesmer needing a nerf in this case. It will achieve the same goal and help classes that are struggeling.

• Either remove the .5 second stun from Pistol Whip or change it to a short duration cripple.

Or create a secondary debuff effect like sealth that prevents repeat stun usage from pistol whip. For example, when you get hit with pistol whip, you are stunned for 5 seconds and receive a full 1-2 second debuff that impairs your damage somehow (confusion?), but makes you immune to pistol whip’s stun effect.

• Address Retaliation uptime on Guardians. Traited properly, they can achieve 100% uptime on it.

I can one-up that one too. Instead of punishing retaliation guardians, increase the ease of removing boons in general. It’s not a problem being able to optimally have retaliation up 100% of the time, if that retaliation can be removed more often by the players assaulting them. Right now it seems that Mesmer has the mother load of boon removal right now and it could stand to be a bit more common in general.

The answer is Area of Effect, and disables, Gilgamesh. Make them a part of you regular routine and you’ll win over a Mesmer every time.

Also, keep in mind that cripple and immobilize are better than stun. (Should go without saying that if you have poison, keep it on him to prevent resets.)

A lot of what they are saying though are basically saying the core mechanic of x job is broken.

Phantasems from Mesmers.

Defense/Support abilities from Guardians.

Burst/Evasion tactics from Thieves.

There is no ‘tone down’ that prevents this problem. They already tried with Hartseeker Strike. Doesn’t change baddies who are spamming it, doesn’t destroy their burst.

You’re going to make the closest thing this game has to a tank less tanky? Have fun in PvE, thanks. And no, they likely wont separate PvE and PvP performance levels.

In the end the bulk of the adjusting will likely be done on the player side, not the mechanic’s side.

sorrow.2364:

But when Thieves outperform everyone’s damage by far, when Mesmers outperforms everyone’s CC and DoT and when Guardians outperform everyone’s defenses, then it isn’t a L2P issue, it is a balance issue.

First, I disagree. Pretty much every class in this game has high burst potential, each one has to set up that burst differently. Thief, does this set up more traditionally and therefore you claim it’s overpowered. But get caught in the wrong combo by a Warrior, Engineer, Elle and you’re just as dead.

Thief’s defenses tend to rely mostly on its stealths, especially when you’re talking burst glass cannons like the one you’re complaining about. This is severely a learn to play issue in particular. You shut down a thief early, it can’t get the combo it wants off, and melts.

Same with Guardian. Yes, they are heavily tanky, but to do so, they have to sacrifice most of everything else to get that way, and is most often reliant on keeping up buffs to survive. So strip off the buffs, lay down the conditions and watch him choke to death.

Mesmers are reliant on their illusion mechanics. They fuel their shatters, are a huge source of their damage output, and pretty much the core of their own defenses. You shut down the illusions, you shut down the mesmer.

There needs to be a clearer latter ranking or ‘elo’ system to start weeding out the bads and organized players/groups from one another to start truly making established tactics. Cause right now there’s a pretty big skill disparity between players and that’s causing bad feedback to be given.

I am in support against Profession Stacking in tournaments for the time being so players don’t have to worry too much about it. However many of the people who are trying to make feedback are not actually making apt and intelligent critisim. They’re just complaining., and it’s kinda saddening.

Again, hopefully Anet realizes that much of this is players ignoring obvious solutions to their problems, refusing to admit “Hey, my build is bad for this trend.” And changing until they find something that clicks well.

That just means your stragety needs to be quickly adaptable.

AoE Damage is a good foundation to start against mesmers, but it’s not the whole of it. Illusions that go boom are only dangerous if you’re near them. It’s a good start to assume that all illusions must die as that’s essentially the strength of all mesmers. You leave them up, they can shatter you, or get close to be overwritten or killed for conditions.

Too many players go straight single damage in this game which really does give Mesmer’s the edge, as they’re a counter to that playstyle. More wide, AoE damage really does them in and singles them out for all the crowd control.

Stadig.7325:

I don’t understand why peopla are opposing the fact that this game is horribly unbalanced. Are you playing mesmer/guardian yourself anda re afraid of the nerf hammer…? Right now SPvP has boiled down to the team with the most Mesmers/Guardians wins. It´s a matchmaking lottery, if you are lucky you end up on the right team.

Right now sPvP is only frustrating and I actually hesitate to even play it.

I’m not afraid of adjustments. I’m afraid of the wrong adjustments.

The majority of complaints are stemmed form ignorance of a Profession’s mechanics or how to counter them, and that’s why there’s opposition here.

There’s a laundry list of bugs on each class right now that need to be fixed before balance tweaks can be made, cause, quite simply, some of these bugs are crippling. And Mesmer has a few of its own, some of them are actually playing to their advantage. (iDuelist’s regen refresh rate. iWarden’s attack refresh speed.)

But a lot, and I mean a suprisingly large number of players are calling for nerfs because they do need to ‘learn to play’, in spite of the fact they claim that they are good.

I think what needs to happen here is people need to be helpful to one another instead of competitive and combative. What class are you playing against mesmer with? Perhaps there’s some tips a regular mesmer such as I myself can give you to save you troubles.

The Boz.2038:

Know your enemies bla bla bla, funny how the mesmer doesn’t need to do that.
1. Drop some illusions
2a. Blow them up for massive damage.
2b. Let them kill your enemy while you’re… I don’t know. Thinking with Portals?
3. Gloat.
4. Tell your prey they just need to l2p, find your weaknesses, etc.
That’s pretty much what it boils down to.

This simply isn’t true at all.

It’s just more common knowledge how to counter a 100swords Warrior or a burst damage thief.

A Mesmer goes up first time against something like an engineer and they can easily get face-rolled. And again, Rangers can be quite the bane as well. Not to mention try keeping illusions up in the AoEs of Necros and Elementalists.

Mesmers need to know the classes they face unless the class is playing poorly.

As far as ‘thinking with portals’. Portal is pretty much the only mesmer ability I feel is in the iffy department there. But it’s mainly countered by actually guarding the points you cap and not assaulting a point on your own.

A mesmer that has to flee to save themselves is still a mesmer who’s lost their engagement, and an active portal (both sides open) only lasts 12 seconds before the whole thing goes on a full one minute cooldown.

Methinks it could use a cooldown increase for the most part. But the whole ‘thinking with portals’ thing can be countered by, well, thinking with portals.

Yasha.5963:

As I just posted in another thread, ranger pets do not “stick like glue” you have to actively tell them to attack the mesmer and they drop target on stealth. I have been playing a tank condition build and its great- I can beat guardians, withstand and turn the table on thieves, warriors etc, all the classes troublesome to a glass cannon. But against any half decent mesmer its a no go.

Then you’re doing something wrong. Rangers have the easiest time against Mesmers next to a decently played Necro.

You can’t kite them because of how their pets work, you run out of dodges because there are so many pets and player attacking you, and despite being tricky to target with numerous get aways they can deal a truck load of damage.

I’ve got to the point where I can see which is the real mesmer without having to call target, and I’ve also of course played one. I’m still hopeful of finding a build that works against them. I’m not convinced that they are “OP”, although every spvp I’ll be cursing the kitten mesmer as I res in the graveyard.

Against mesmers, the best defense is a good offense. Don’t try to kite, kill their illusions. As a Ranger you’ve some of the safest ways of doing so. First of which is to watch your terrain and gain a vantage point. iZerker, iDulist are the only ones you really have to watch out for if you have the high ground.

And don’t be afraid to blanket on some AoE’s to weaken and destroy illusions, even if I’m cloaked you’ll probably hit/cripple me before I can get away and that stealth only lasts so long.

All I can say is they are the hardest class to play against on every class that I’ve played. I mean you come across builds and players of any class that just blow you away, but with mesmer its like all the talented people must be playing one because they nearly all blow you away.

Playing Mesmer first, and going to other classes (Elementalist, Necro, Engineer) I actually don’t have many problems against mesmers, knowing how they work and how they fight. Mesmers aren’t as easy to tell where the danger is coming from right away, as each Mesmer can build differently. That’s probably the biggest problem I have. Once I know the set up they’re using, they’re not hard at all.

I have more problems going after a mesmer when other classes are pounding down on me, than with the mesmer themselves. There really needs to be a few “This is how you kill mesmers.” videos made. Mesmers do have some pretty hefty universal weaknesses.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Lewk.8359:

9k dmg from 2 illusinary sword attacks…

That’s relatively tame. My Illusionary Swordsman deals 5.5k minimum per attack, if I instantly switch to Great Sword my Berserker deals an additional 5.5k damage. Thats 11,000 damage instantly.

It gets even more interesting if I drop a Time Warp…

I’d love to see what you’re building to do a 5.5k minimum. A full phantasm built Swordsman in sPvP and I’m not hitting those numbers as a maximum.

Yasha.5963:

As far as I can tell mesmer are a hard counter to everything. They have great survivability and great damage, no matter what class/build I use they are one of the toughest classes to play against, even more so if played well. In fact I have found the best anti-mesmer build is a glass canon- you have to kill them before they get their illusions out, something tanky builds can’t do.

Another thing, mesmer “pets” seem much better than other “pets”. They fire skills off relatively quickly, their ranged skills are quick (pistol shots) they do a lot of damage and can be pumped out relatively quickly. I have never felt threatened by a ranger pet or necro pet.

Smoke and mirrors.

Glass Cannon is actually weak against mesmers unless you catch one off Guard. Tanky, Ranged, Condition damage are all effective.

Keep in mind that these pets you also look down upon compared to Mesmer Illusions also stick onto the real mesmer like glue.

You’ll find that most mesmers are a great deal weaker than they seem once you’ve got an idea on how they play. Right now most the issue is players are just intimidated and don’t how how to keep a clear head against them.

I’m kind of suprised a Ranger is having problems against a mesmer, as they have 3 of the major annoyances to a Mesmer.

First. Ranged. The further you are away from a mesmer, the less of a threat they seem. You get a better grip on the situation from a vantage point. Rangers excel at this. Mesmers damage does actually drop off a fair bit at range for several reasons. (I’ll elaborate if needed.)

Second, Conditions. Bleeding shot is painful. Even if we disengage we may not be able to cleanse it unless we build specifically for clearing out conditions from ourselves, and we have to sacrifice a lot of utility to counter something like that.

Third, PETS. sicking a pet on us is like targeting us without a disengage. They track us, they pressure us, they disable us if we’re not careful.

Rangers are one of the counters to Mesmer when played correctly. The point is knowing your enemy.

“Mesmer is OP” is smoke and mirrors. The fear of its power and presence stems from the fact that it’s entire concept is mind games. You just need to be more on top of yours.

Kenny.2530:

Dont expect people who main mesmers like Kalar to agree.

I’m sorry, agree on what? That Moa is powerful? It is. But it’s not broken. Again, the cooldown is so prohibitive that I don’t use it – as a mesmer main.

As far as agreeing to the cooldown/duration adjustment? I’m open to a little bit of experimentation on that, actually. How to balance that out though is a question.

My essential problem with it is that I don’t see how it fits within Mesmer’s kit at all. So many illusion skills and time manipulation skills, and suddenly we have a transform? I’d rather they scrap the ability and replace it with something more thematic from that perspective. (Like a short duration full on clone that duplicates your exact stats damage, and actions.)

But it’s not mechanically broken. Just anti-fun.

Believe me, I hate when I get Moaed too. But that’s not the reason it should be changed. This isn’t a balancing issue, it’s just a player complaint, much like my complaint about it.

Kiirin.3418:

So taking someone out for 10 seconds in a team fight at mid is very minor? Making a 4v4 into a 3v4 is quite disruptive. In tournament there’s a lot of situations where you do come up 1v1. If you’re fighting 1v2 you Moa one and make it a 1v1 situation again.

I personally don’t really see the need to nerf mesmers other than the stupid instant treb repair with portal. Mesmers are a requirement in Khylo or you put your team at an incredible disadvantage.

You forget the cooldown.

It’s 3 minutes for 10 seconds of an engagement. Most times, punishing a 1v2 into a 1v1 for 10 seconds isn’t going to do anything for you if your opponents have any intelligence about them. A good team turtles out of the engagement until the Moa is over and reingages.

It can be the difference between a stomp and an enemy saving one of their teammates, but that’s 3 minutes spent for something like that, and it can be dodged and aegised. If playing for an important teamfight, timewarp is going to be much more powerful, because it gives your entire team that performance perk, that field effect, AND the quick-stomp.

Or if you’re playing long term manipulation, the AoE Invisible can give you a clean reset for fights, or a powerful engagement. It can enable invisible stomps and heals.

Again, Moa is a powerful ability, but it’s over-hyped because people hate being shut out of an engagement. Now, there are ways of making it seem less of a cheapshot and more of a “You got hit with something big, deal with it.” A larger tell might make it better or even a projectile (so long as it paths and can’t be obscured.) A mesmer has far more deadly tools on their kit.

Moa just seems the most anti-fun.

Malakree.5912:

The problem with MMO’s nomally is that

1) players are whiney kittenes who want everything here and now while
2) The balance isn’t actually close enough or tight enough that
3) There isn’t enough variety so
4) The nerf’s/balances changes happen to quickly to allow players to learn to counter something.

SO much this.

I can understand some quality of life buffs, like bug fixes and adjustments to spefcific build routes that are just not working as they should be. But for the most part, let the Meta play out. I’m already starting to see people trying to hard counter Mesmers, and I’ve had to adjust my builds to compensate.

But I’m seeing a trend here of complainers and quitters who are realizing that dicerolls was the system they really wanted all along. That they’d rather not have to be adaptable and skillful.

I love mesmer because I love it’s concept. What adjustments it gets, it gets. It won’t prevent me playing the class or enjoying it, because I enjoy it’s premise. But a lot of people are speaking out of ignorance of their own classes, let alone ignorance of the classes they are calling nerfs for.

Again, I cannot reccomend this enough to people: If you’re having particular problems against one class, play that class a while to get familiar with it, so you get knowledge of the class when you fight it as your main.

I don’t think there is a clear tier list because players haven’t experimented enough builds to really doll out the potential within each profession yet.

The classes with clearly visible build combinations will usually stand out on top over those that take a bit of getting to know in order to be fully realized (Phantasm Damage build vs Ele Aura Build as example.)

I’m hearing a lot of complaints about Moa Morph, which is essentially a 10 second daze on a 3 minute cooldown. IMO there are more dangerous abilities that shut down or cause a change in fight, but Moa is the most powerful 1v1 ability. They could balance it out if it came with a stun-breaker sprint button aside from dodge to give a Moaed person a disengage tool, but that’s just a suggestion. I don’t even use it because it’s not as effective in group fights. Mass Invisibility is a stronger engage/disengage tool for it’s cooldown for my build specifically, but milage between players will vary.

It’s these contrasting viewpoints that give evidence to me that players just don’t know how to play yet, especially concerning getting to know and know how to counter other classes.

To be frank, there’s not many established guidlines for build approaches and methods yet. The official boards themselves have only been up a short while and the community before that has been split into several fan-forums before then. The best you can do is research different player’s reactions for things that work and hope you can duplicate.

kittenon.8572:

Which part of the Mesmer being able to just sit there watching his phantasms soloing someone and having a laugh did you not understand?

The part where you were moronic enough to sit and let it happen.

Phantasm spec is easy to counter – engage the mesmer. Again, condition specs are great on this because the Mesmer has, at best, one condition removal for his phantasem (Null Field) and Phantasems are easy to kill and 12 seconds minimum to return.

The person who sat and let themselves get attritioned by Phantasms was an utter moron. That’s like sitting in the sights of a ranger and not engaging him at all.

Also, I’m not changing your quote name. Blame Anet forums. I’m just hitting the quote button.

Vlaid.5790:

And then the mesmer can go grab a repair kit and have the trebuchet repaired faster than any other profession anyway even if you do kill them 1v1 or 2v1 or 3v1. You’re just wasting your time trying to keep a mesmer off a trebuchet, you get at most 15-20 seconds out of it unlesss you just keep 2 people camping the trebuchet all game.

1. ONLY if the Mesmer is speced Portal.

2. If you’re going for quick engagements and turret destruction with a Mesmer guarding, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s bad to presume that you should destroy the Trebuchet and go on with your business. When you’re winning an engagement at turret, you remain in that area to keep the turret pressured. Remember, it’s not the 15 seconds the turret is down that you’re keeping the pressure off. It’s the full minute you’ve kept the Mesmer from using that you’ve kept that turret non-functional: Engagement time is part of the disablement time.

Again, people right now haven’t shaken the noob off the game yet. They’ve got bad ideas on how to play the game, an in turn it’s causing bad feedback to be given. I do hope the developers are taking player complaints with a horse sized salt block because they can stand to make some critical mistakes in this early period if they listen to knee-jerk reactions.

The OP is correct. Buffs over nerfs is the correct path of correcting imbalances in the game. Some negative tweeks will be necessary to balance out the overall structure. But some aggressive stances need to be taken to tell people “Hey, shut up and learn to play the game.” in many situations. Thieves, regardless of their build, can be shut down easily. Mesmers can be shut down easily. The trick is learning how instead of complaining that your specific build for your class that you love isn’t working on someone who has a build combination that works better than yours or works well against yours.

Again, I don’t complain that thieves are broken when I get caught by them. Or that Necros and Rangers are broken because my build is weak against continual conditions.

This game is too far in its infancy for people to make assertive claims like the ones being made.

kittenon.8572:

I just fought a Mesmer in Khylo who was basically hidden behind a building while his phantasms were doing well good damage on me.

The Mesmer situation is getting out of hand,day by day more people try it so they can feel epic and ‘imba’,going for internet builds that do incredibly well in 1v1 even 1v2.Khylo is a good example because a good Mesmer is by far the best class for the trebuchet which in its turn makes too much difference in the final score.By the way,Khylo happens to be a tournament final,go figure.

Mesmers are good for turret runs because they’re good duelists. if you’re attacking a Mesmer one on one you better have a game plan ahead of time because a Mesmer always will.

Premeditation is the Mesmer’s greatest advantage, no amount of nerfing will change that unless you gut the profession out completely.

Now, you take that claim about the trebuchet defense and you attack a Mesmer on that turret with a AoE/Condition Necro, and come back to me crying that Necro’s are OP.

I find it so highly difficult to imagine why people are having such problems with the above classes.

EACH class has their weaknesses to exploit, but because players prefer a certain meta and are not flexible in how they decide to play, they automatically consider a Profession to be Overpowered.

My best advice to anyone having problems in sPvP vs a particular class – play that class for a week. By the time you turn around to play your root job again, you’ll have figured out how to counter that pesky class you dislike so much.

Guardian’s and Mesmers are particular in this. Right now, Mesmers and Guardians are at the top of the current meta, because nobody wants to take the hit in performance in their chosen areas to counter them. This is very apparent to me in the success a more AoE/Conditioned focued enemy can easily shut me as a Mesmer down, yet all of these high-focus build classes just get gunned down.

Yes, as a Mesmer, I have tools to build myself a different way to counter that weakness, but doing so opens up other weaknesses.

So the second biggest advice I can give is, if these professions are countering you hard, change tactics. Even if it doesn’t make you as much as a standout against other professions. Your chosen build has left you too far open in weaknesses to be exploited. Also keep in mind that sPvP isn’t a solo game, it’s a team game, so sometimes it pays to have one person in the team specifically countering a profession or a specific kind of tactic. (Again, I’m seeing a substantial LACK of AoE damage in the current hot-join meta. When I do encounter it, I typically have problems maintaining engagement, especially concerning condition damage. Nullfield only lasts for so long.)