Love how the thieves make all the difference, is getting to the point you see them everywhere all the time.
I think a few classes could stand to see buffs on their downed state (engi/ranger) but don’t think others need it nerfing or that the whole thing should be removed. Stopping the stomp and getting the revive in is one of the major differences between a good and bad player.
It’s odd, in my HJ’s ppl have started to use stuff other than glass cannon builds. Sad really since my mesmer build hoses glass cannons.
Ultimately though I can’t help feeling HB needs a change, when combined with bull charge it requires 0 skill on the part of the warrior and quite a lot of skill/cd’s on the part of his target.
With regards to the mesmer.
Make it so mesmers have to actually invest points into say phantasms, supporting, power/damage output to focus on 1 single role instead of being able to play 3+ roles in one build.
We do. Phantasm IS power/precision, since phantasms scale specifically off that. So you’ve listed 2 possible builds not 3 for a start. There is no mesmer raw damage build which ISN’T based on phantasms.
You don’t play 4 roles at once you play a damage orientated build with some defences and a focus on phantasms, any other build is equally pigeon holed. The big difference is that we don’t build 100% glass cannon because there just isn’t a viable build for it, that and any offensive build we have runs a lot of defensive utilities.
Moa is stupidly powerful, I’m not guna argue that. I’d say that realistically it need to have a shorter duration and a shorter cooldown since at the moment its a pretty hefty cooldown but a massive duration.
The mesmer downed state is also amazingly powerful, if people know how it works then its note quite so ridiculous but against those who don’t you can literally kill them from downed. Personally I can’t help feeling most other classes should have their downed state buffed (except warriors) since watching a ranger or engineer who has been downed is a sad joke.
Basically you seemingly know nothing about the mesmer class. At least when I say warriors with 0 skill win by pushing HB anybody can see this because the moment you dodge the HB they seem to womble about wondering what just happened and why the didn’t get 4 kills.
EDIT:
I find mesmers and thief’s very annoying as a ranger
Ranger’s are pretty much the only UP class atm. The other classes are arranged in a relative teir list but are all viable, the ranger is average even in the hand’s of an amazing player.
And with 2-4 stacks of confusion on me with short bow i could down myself from full hp in a few seconds if i didn’t stop attacking. Not attacking is hard when illusions are hitting me for 5k each though.
One part of this statement is null. If you have 2-4 stacks of confusion and they are killing you then the mesmer isn’t stacked full power so his phantasms hit for nothing. If his phantasms hit for 5k then his confusion is doing no damage. I suspect what is happening is that you are seeing yourself seemingly die for no reason and seeing only a few stacks of confusion, when actually your shooting into a feedback and gibbing yourself, I dropped one on a pistol rogue today and he 100% himself in 3seconds, I literately did not hit him.
EDIT2:
Maby i would change the range in HS or make it cost more initiative and change how moa works… guardians got their elites nerfed, but why leave moa like this?
Drop it’s CD to 90-120 seconds and reduce the duration to 5 seconds, it does have a reasonably long cast time relatively.
(edited by Malakree.5912)
Most profs struggle underwater. Problem is that nobody has a trait build designed for it. Mesmer is an amazing example of this in that our best land based build is power/precision phantasm while underwater you want condition base illusions due to how the trident illusions function.
I’ve seen the odd rifle warrior who seems to do quite a bit of damage (with raw power this is) not sure if they are just running it with the greatfaceroll or have a separate build set out for it. It’s kinda hard to judge how warriors stand at the moment since basically 100% of them are all about charging at you and blowing HB.
A fix to the shatter skills destroy phantasms would really help our PvE capabilities.
I feel like shatter should break all clones but not destroy the phantasms while giving you an effect based on the total number of illusions. This would make them way more useful for ALL builds of mesmer while also meaning the phantasm reload in the illusions tree isn’t so heavily misplaced it’s unreal. It would also make it a lot more viable to quick fire off the various shatter’s meaning that the fact mind wrack is so much better than cry of frustration doesn’t matter.
Then make all shatter’s cast as an instant projectile (as opposed to having your illusions run at them) and based on your target.
Mindwrack: Deals damage to your target an all target’s around it, combine with phantasms not breaking would actually give us some really strong aoe.
Cry of frustration: Applies 3 stacks of confusion for each illusion.
Diversion: dazes your target for 1/2/3(4) seconds based on number of illusions you have out.
I think the big thing it’s to stop is someone stealing it, ie. a mesmer uses swap on an enemy phantasm and gains 2 hours of fury….free 20% crit.
I still hate hundred blades more. As far as moves go at least if you get hit by a HS you can begin to take evasive manovers, if a warrior gets you in even a small amount of their HB you die.
EDIT: Basically, HS might be OP, but HB is completely totally skill less AND OP.
Feels like your build doesn’t really know what its doing :S
I’d recommend dropping the greatsword for a staff, it’s PvP utility and survivability are unmatched. If your running high upfront damage and reasonable crit you want sigil of fire instead, it gives extra burst and does a lot of damage.
The torch doesn’t really fit into your build since its condition based and your not running any at all, can see why it appeals with the extra invis but I’m not sure you wouldn’t get better mileage out of the pistol or sword, especially sword with the blade training.
On traits, I suspect that you would probably do better with phantasmal healing from 15 in inspiration instead of the 20th in chaos. Conditions are nice but your not really running any duration and even then you can get the “wrong condition” especially considering your lack of condition damage. Also as you have the 15 in chaos it basically means your getting a free regen+protection everytime you cast a phantasm.
Can see what your going for, not sure I’d run it over my phantasm build but still.
I’d like to experiment more with builds at the moment but unfortunately I can longer represent my guild due to some horrible bug. I can mash the represent button till I give myself carpal tunnel but nothing happens -.-
Had the same issue. Fortunately the work around still functions so you can just jump into WvW and select represent from there.
Had a hillarious one earlier, got downed by stray catapult fire and another mesmer came along to try and kill me.
1v1 against this mesmer I successfully downed them, then killed them only while downed. Got a res off the kill then did another 1v1 before being mobed in a 1v4.
Then anet should make easy and harder versions of the dungeons, with a better chance of getting good loot on hard mode.
Please god no, this was one of the worst things ever introduced into wow.
Currently the punishment for dieing a lot iskitten repair costs. I feel instead of anything suggested here they should just implement a stacking death res timer while inside dungeons. First time you die, instant respawn. 5th time you die 2min respawn. This means that on the first or second death its not so sever but if you a repeatedly dieing then you just become unable to res without a team mate revive.
clearly you haven’t played a necro if you think they have anything close to the damage that a warrior or a thief has.
Other classes I’ve met that have done “stupid damage”.
have done
I’m not speculating on whether they can do damage or how much they do relatively. I’m going from personal experience that I have met a necro who was reliably able to do large enough quantities of damage to me that I took notice of him. Much like the fact I have only ever met 1 guardian who was able to pump the damage he was while also being really hard to kill. If one person can do it however then anyone can.
Isn’t that where the Mesmer excels?
In dropping those ethereal combo fields in “zerg” mode so everyone and his grandma can proc their finishers popping chaos armor, confusion and confusing bolts.
If you compare this to another profession one can easily replace the mesmer with an elementalist (for a choice of fields) a guardian (for massive defensive buffing and the fields) thief (aoe blind field).
The combo field feature isn’t unique to mesmers and outside of it and a few random buffs we actually bring very little to zerg vs zerg battle. We as a prof do very little aoe damage, relatively. In fact the only thing we bring is timewarp which yes is very powerful but compared to moa in a 1v1 is still mediocre.
In 1v1 however the mesmer excels, I would go so far as to say that 1v1 a mesmer is basically unbeatable if built and played properly.
So we go from being literally the be all and end all of 1v1 to this “ok” “kinda useful” aoe buff support class in a zerg. I’m not sure how else I can put this. In a 1v1 we are the top university in the world, in a zerg we are that local university which aint kitten but nobody else has ever heard of.
Yeah.
We’re all noobs and badies and only Malakree knows it all.
Stupid statement, anyone claiming to know everything has learned nothing.
The more I’m surrouned the more Chaos Armor and confusion pops for my allies on my ethereal fields. The more allies with Chaos Armor are hit the more conditions are put on foes. The more conditions on my foes the harder my phantasm hits.
And so on and so on.
The more foes and the more allies, the better as the bigger my impact is.
Every prof gets better the more ppl there are, what you have to consider is how they scale relative to each other. In 1v1 mesmer is basically THE profession, it’s so incredibly powerful its unreal. In a zerg vs zerg situation a mesmer is “ok” at best. Compared to an elementalist who become phenomenal when there are 5-10 players about mesmers simply don’t scale up that well. Hence we say that mesmers, relatively, become worse the more people there are.
The best example of a prof which far outscales us in terms of having more people around is a rifle warrior. All but their number 5 skill are combo finisher projectiles, in a 1v1 situation they will very rarely be procing any combo fields. Add another 4 players into the mix and they are now procing a finisher with every single shot, the addition of any second player that drops a combo field causes them to be WAY better. The mesmer really doesn’t have anything like this.
Mesmers are pretty bad for condition builds. They basically loose out to a powerbased phantasm build.
You can run condition builds, though you either have some strange staff/sceptre build which is mediocre or you run a build which stacks up bleeds through phantasmal duelist, at its core its a phantasm build but slightly different.
It’s fundamentally a Support Profession because it’s a massive buffer/debuffer. Also a nifty combat rezzer.
Only if you spec in a very specific way. Personally my build in SPvP relies on the fact that I do incredible quantities of damage that is very hard to stop while also having really good survivability. We run the staff because both the sceptre and the greatsword are bloody awful unless you play a very specific build. That and because it gives you amazing survivability, I run staff because it allows me to get 3 instances of chaos armor in a row which when combined with everything else I have means that I beat thieves 100% of the time.
In order for the mesmer to be a “support” profession it has to spec into it. Under that premise the only none support professions are necro and ranger. Ie. the two weak profs.
Huh? There are quite a few traits that support mantras. You can up your armor while casting, you can bump the no. of instacasts up to 3, and you can up the recharge and damage, and you can autoheal allies when you cast them.
Presumably what you mean is, they are awful for your preferred playstyle.
The cast time in combat is massively prohibative, they do reasonably little and it requires a 100% trait build to not even get all of the mantra traits. You need something like 90 trait points to pick up all the mantras.
One thing for sure, the more allies around us the more powerfull we become.
I’m flabbergasted by this statement. Mesmer gets WEAKER the more people there are around it. The easiest way to show this is the fact in WvW we are probably the bottom prof, you would want an elementalist every time instead. On the other hand in a 1v1 duel a mesmer should never, ever, ever lose. The only prof a mesmer should straight up lose a 1v1 to is another mesmer, if you HAVE lost a 1v1 either your opponent outclassed you massively (which yes has happened to me, only once but still), you kitten up (ie. when you die to a full glass cannon thief) or your build is wrong.
To sumerize. As a support class the mesmer looses out quite heavily to a large variety of other profs, the list currently being 1) guard, 2) elementalist, 3) warrior, 4) engineer, 5) mesmer, 6) ranger. With the bottom 3 being almost equal. This is not to say we don’t bring support esque abilities but these are bonuses to our toolkit which we get for free.
Oh and mantras are bad, ill thought out and poorly supported in the trait tree because of the seemingly random placement of the mantra traits. Try to build a mantra build which is even CLOSE to a phantasm build.
Hot join is 8v8 and pug.
Premade/tournament PvP is 5v5.
My god I come back after being out for a bit and seems like a bunch of randoms have wandered in to spread misinformation O.o
Primarily, the Mesmer is a support Profession (a force multiplier, focussed mainly on the application of Conditions – in more standard MMO terms a debuff class), with high survivability and harrassment capability in PvP, and a lot of tools in its toolbox. Again, if this doesn’t sound interesting, then don’t play a Mesmer, and don’t pollute the forums with calls to turn the Mesmer into some other class that you’d like to play.
In my experience the mesmer is a damage profesion with ramp up time that also brings amazing utility. As a support profession you lose out to guardian, warrior, engineer and ele (providing he’s built right).
I’ve been playing a mesmer for awhile now(80) and we are a unfinished class. I challenge anyone to pick a grand master skill that is extremely valuable compared to just putting 20 into a slot.
Mantras are terrible and should be removed.
The synergy between our talents skills and weapons need to be completely rethought. Engineers have similar problems.
Mantra’s are awful, the trait trees don’t support them either. Grantmaster traits are situational, there are a few times you would use them though again they are in odd places (phantasm based tree with a shatter based GM skill :O). If you think we are unfinished you haven’t played a mesmer in SPvP, we are imo T1 for that.
Illusions are supposed to die quickly. You should not land more then 1 of their special attack when you summon them.
In what fantasy land are you from O.o If you dont have 2 phantasms out at all times as a mesmer your doing it wrong. That or your running a very specific shatter spec.
You people really need to try one of the 10/20/0/25/0 +15 variants and realize just howkittenpowerful a mesmer, and its illusions, truly are.
The problem is that 1h sword/pistol (or sword) is the best damage output a mesmer can get. The staff then offers an ungodly amount of defensive options and utility.
On the other hand the greatsword is a bit schizophrenic, its 1 wants you to be at max range yet the 2 is best when close, while again the 5 is based around making distance. It’s 1 also sets it out as a single target weapon while every other ability is aoe.
The 3 ability wind up time is just to long and makes you a sitting duck, it essentially undoes everything that the 5 ability does, it feels like its standard cast speed should be the same as its current cast speed under quickness (use timewarp and then cast it to see what I mean).
The phantasmal bersker is then one of the weakest phantasms and completes the lack of focus that is the greatsword, it does random line aoe for mediocre amounts of damage and applies crippling of all things while having a really long recharge time.
Essentially there is no build of mesmer which would really WANT to use it. If your running a phantasm build then sword+pistol/sword and staff is better. If your running a condition build its just bad and if your running a raw power build then “maybe” you could use it but again I’m not sure you wouldn’t get more mileage out of something else.
Overall it has some nice core ideas but the actual implementation is to bad for it to be a good core weapon, definitely not in any form of PvP and only in PvE because we don’t have another ranged power/precision weapon.
EDIT: @redbyte. I recommend swapping your greatsword for a staff, if your build is solid and you use it right (sounds like your basically running my build though I can’t be sure) then the swap should greatly increase your survivability and damage output.
(edited by Malakree.5912)
Was crit by 7000 by a Mesmer Illusion. Says enough.
Yeah a full phatasm build does that, especially if it goes on for long enough that the phantasm gets a second shot at you.
Ofc when you compare that to 18k from HB by a warrior it becomes a little less meaningful.
2) Does WvW lag for anybody else? I run the game at 40-50 FPS on average, but during my first WvW game once a real siege began I could barely get up above 5 FPS.
Yes, big battles tank my frames down to a measurement in FPM.
3) What kind of end-game goals are there, and where will I find the first dungeon? I’m only level 20 at present.
Not sure, lvl 30. You will get a mail everytime you hit the level for a new dungeon.
No dot’s can’t crit (as far as I’m aware….never seen one crit and I run ~40% crit chance).
I want to say I’ve had a flame burst proc off my phantasmal duelist, but whether I actually have or if that carries over to necro pets I can’t say.
Also if you pack feedback you can use that and the 3 on your sword to get another chaos armor. 3 chaos armor in a row makes you REALLY hard to kill.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Pact
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinal_Shivers
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_skills
He was using dagger+focus I believe but these are all ways that you can lock someone in the well. Also I don’t talk about balance from WvW since it’s inherently NOT balanced. This was in SPvP.
Honestly? Thief, or warrior. They do stupid, I mean STUPID amounts of damage.
Still waiting on their nerf Anet.
Other classes I’ve met that have done “stupid damage”.
1) Necro
2) Engineer
3) Guardian (best player I’ve ever met)
4) Ele.
In fact the only class I’ve never gone "wtf where is my kitten " was a ranger. Oh and a mesmer, but I play that so I know how strong they can be.
Met a dagger/staff necro who was able to pump increadible amounts of damage into me using the well of….the damage well. He is still in my top 5 of players as far as those I’ve faced.
If a well drops on you, simply run out of the circle. The well your talking about does around 1500-2000 dmage and adds vulnerability which is why it does so much.
Literally all you gotta do is step out of the circle though, unless they have grasp which pulls you to them, but by the time they pull you in again, it’s probably nearly over anyway and it has a large cooldown.
Necro’s barely do any damage at all compared to the other classes. The only time we can actually deal out as much damage as other people is in lich form and it has a 180 cooldown. Staff is slow and is weak compared to axe. So, you probably just played against a guy who had way better gear than you.
Yeah I’m aware, he was also applying roots and kitten so even if I stealthed (to break it) and dodged to try and crawl out of it I was still taking 6-8k damage from it. That combined with his very hefty damage from his auto attacks and the high survivability his death shroud(?) granted him made him incredibly hard to deal with. My guild mate got his build off him since he’d been lamenting how bad the necro was, he then spent a day wrecking face with it.
Whenever I do a mail based trade I send what I’m getting as the text in it. If someone cons me I’ll then report them for scamming and let the dev’s sort it out.
I would have supported you except I’ve met a few reasonable engis and one really good one who is probably number 5 on my list of top 5 players. Have you tried using the rifle as that guy was getting some pretty high damage out of it while still being reasonably hard to kill.
Hmm? What? This guy I’ve been fighting in WvW can out damage me, heal more than me, use stealth, and take less damage then me. You figure it out. I’ll stick with the class until 80 to really see, but as it currently stand Guardians and Thiefs reck my face regardless.
Your trying to find balance in WvW, there’s your problem. If you want to judge what classes are OP and which aren’t go do some SPvP.
EDIT: Also just because A>B doesn’t mean A is overpowered. After all if everything > B then A could be the second weakest class in the game.
That and shatter. To clarify my point, a mesmer counts on the fact that an opponent doesn’t care what its strategy is. It just tries to kill you with hyper-offense. Obviously offense will kill you, but every mesmer has to have a plan, as it is an illusion based class. The plan only works if other ppl aren’t too concerned what the plan is.
I’m making the assumption that a player carrying CC, condition removal skills, etc., generally cares about whatever strategy a foe might be using. It may not be a good assumption though, but thats where I was coming from.
Imo all mesmers should be running a phantasm based build. Such a build really doesn’t give a tosh what you do if they run it properly. I’ve yet to find anyone who managed to counter strategy it other than “burst the mesmer down before he owns me”. Hence my statement that this specific spec isn’t gimiky in the way a thief 100% burst spec is.
Yeah, ranger is the one profession I consider to be underpowered. Basically it’s not everyone else is OP, just your class appears to be bottom of the bottom teir.
Met a dagger/staff necro who was able to pump increadible amounts of damage into me using the well of….the damage well. He is still in my top 5 of players as far as those I’ve faced.
I would be very upset if arenanet did anything to really nerf one of the classes right now. We are so close after launch that like sc2:WoL after its release nobody can really play the game properly and doesn’t understand the dynamics. Unless one thing comes out as so hideously broken that nobody can deal with I feel its better to let it play out and see if players can come up with a solution ala protoss deathball.
Unless you play a ranger, there is no room for you to call other classes OP. Only tons of room for you to increase your skill.
I think thief isn’t actually OP. It just feeds off low survivability glass cannons, ie. everything in HJPvP.
I’d say its broken because of how one trick pony it is. If you can survive their burst and deal damage back the thief literally has no options, they are entirely kill or be killed which removes a lot of the area for individual skill and is essentially a flat line level of effectiveness irrelevant of skill (not strictly true but largely).
Having played a fair bit I’ve found that most of the PPL who call “op” in a game are just bad. It sounds rather unfair but I had a guardian call me an “overpowered bullkitten class” after I 1v2’d him and another mesmer several times.
About 2 hours later I came up against another guardian who literally stomped all over me, I killed him a few times but he always started low hp and lacking CD’s. In an even fight he destroyed me. Despite this most of the guardians I meet, mesmers, necros, engineers are all godawful. (I’ve met skilled players of everything other than mesmer and I play a mesmer so that’s what I’m judging off there)
The 2 classes I would say have issues are the thief and the ranger. The ranger because I have flat out never met a good ranger, no matter what they are doing they seem lackluster. The thief because its so one hit wonder, they burst and spike while hoping you can’t survive it. If you manage to survive them then they are dead on their feet with no way to get out.
EDIT:
They count on that! They count on the fact that you have poor condition removal, that all you want to do is spam skills, that you have few forms of CC (cripples, stuns, knockbacks, knockdowns, immobilizes), and that you’d rather faceroll instead of paying attention to what the mesmer is doing (figure out the strat and the mes is toast).
I disagree with this statement. Except for one guardian I’ve not faced one person who could properly face me in a full on 1v1. Whenever they did it was just from raw upfront burst. Are you talking about some sort of confusion/condition based mesmer?
EDIT2: Says stuff, contradicts self in edit! Sorted. What I mean is, mesmer isn’t gimicky in the same way a thief or warrior(HB HOOOO) is, it’s just incredibly powerful in a straight up 1v1.
(edited by Malakree.5912)
Any word which is considered not approriate is replaced by the word “kitten”. It produces some hilarious kitten comments.
EDIT: switched words around for dramatic effect.
(edited by Malakree.5912)
There really isn’t any OP class, just people calling other classes OP because they die too often from it.
Also, engineer is a high skill class and is pretty hard to be a first character to play. I suggest going Warrior/Guardian.
There are several classes which would be considered hard to play. That said if you “get” the class and it melds with how you play then a lot of what it does can seem almost intuitive. I’ve heard a lot of ppl say mesmer is hard to play but I find it almost obvious.
In PvE you suffer a bit because you have a ramp up time that say a thief really doesn’t. You can solo a lot harder mobs because of your illusions though.
In SPvP we are monsters who eat face easily.
Oh and mesmers have far and away the strongest down state in the game. I’d kill to have any of those 3 abilities on my normal bar. The down state auto attack should be the sceptre auto attack.
DAOC ruined PVP for all other MMOs for me. I had some nice 15 minute 2v2s over and over for hours in that game.
I did try however… went in with my awsome Elementalist and had a Necro take 90% of my life in less then 2 seconds at max range.
You say that almost as if
1) Thats the norm,
2) Long drawn out battles dont occur in any other mmos (go play priest feral vs Hpala dk)
3) As if there is nothing you could have done in terms of skill, utilities or trait setup in order to stop this.If you play glass cannon you shouldn’t be surprised when another player can blow you up….that’s why they are called GLASS cannons, because they break so easily.
This game has TONS of burst Damage and every Profession seems to be a GLASS CANNON with the exception of a few Guardian builds. It is not just the Elementalist.
With my mesmer I can survive for a really long time even in 1v2/1v3 situations. In a 1v1 the only 3 ppl who have been able to burst me was a guardian, a theif in a 100% glass cannon build and a well of suffering necro. Only the guardian was spec’d for any survivability of them.
Other than that the only time I have short fights is when I out-class my opponent so hard he has no clue what just hit him.
Your not the only class which has some really odd choices.
Trying to build a mantra based mesmer is like dealing with someone who has schizophrenia. Also having condition duration on our power damage tree is REALLY odd.
Hopefully they will fix the trait trees to not be quite so seemingly random at some point in the near future.
SPOILERS
I know that at higher quest levels you stop being a single order and instead become part of the pact that all 3 make (as second in command). Whether or not this influences your ability to purchase the other orders cultural armor I’m not sure.
I did do a bit of queensdale earlier and do remember getting about 10-18 butter from a single bag….didn’t think much at the time but it does seem a bit OTT.
DAOC ruined PVP for all other MMOs for me. I had some nice 15 minute 2v2s over and over for hours in that game.
I did try however… went in with my awsome Elementalist and had a Necro take 90% of my life in less then 2 seconds at max range.
You say that almost as if
1) Thats the norm,
2) Long drawn out battles dont occur in any other mmos (go play priest feral vs Hpala dk)
3) As if there is nothing you could have done in terms of skill, utilities or trait setup in order to stop this.
If you play glass cannon you shouldn’t be surprised when another player can blow you up….that’s why they are called GLASS cannons, because they break so easily.
My guild leader plays a precision+condition damage guardian, its pretty funny when the two of us lvl together because it vapes pretty much everything. I’ve also encountered a PvP tank guard which takes ages to kill. Lastly I’ve encountered one greatsword guardian in PvP who was basically untouchable for me he did that much damage. Only player I’d say I didnt have a positive matchup/win ratio with.
That build of guardian is the one build which really annoys me. It does frigging no damage but it takes me like 2/3 mins to kill. Often when I see one of them defending a point I just go take a different one since I’m not in a spec designed to mash them and in the 2/3 mins I spend taking that point I could have made a massive difference elsewhere. Ofc if that spec of guard is assulting my point I just laugh since they have no chance.