Guild Wars 2

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

I think moa morph would be more interesting and less cheese if its duration was reduced from 10 to 4 seconds and its recharge from 180 to 60 seconds.

4s Moa on 60s CD. I can guarantee you that a LOT more Mesmers would run with that one, rather than the handfull hotjoin baddies that use it these days.

cyyrix.6105:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Mesmer: Mind Stab, Illusionary Wave, Chaos Storm, Temporal Curtain -> Into the Void, The Prestige

I know I speak for all mesmers when I say countering SR is obviously a l2p issue. I mean this guy has pretty much given us the blueprint…

Mind Stab: Nothing better than taking a guess at a 240 radius skill with a 120 radius skill! If it hits, you’ll do about 1.5k AND strip a boon!!! Amazing.

Chaos Storm: So good. Just put it on top of that little house and you’ll probably hit the thief for like 300-1k dmg! It’s unstoppable.

The Prestige: Thieves absolutely HATE it when you aoe blind them while in SR. Even better is that you’ll have a chance to guess which direction he ran after the refuge and maybe you’ll get a burning proc. Many thieves heal/cure conditions in stealth, but you should still be able to get in a good 1k hp if you guess correctly!

Temporal Curtain/Into the Void: This thing is amazing. With TC at a .25s cast time, and Into the Void cast time at 1s, the thief only has 1.25 seconds to notice the bright aoe line on the ground and dodge backwards. Just make sure you don’t try to catch the thief off guard by waiting to pull – the SR will be done pulsing by then.

Illusionary Wave: Another clutch SR counter. It works wonders…unless the thief uses a 1200 range blink before the SR, has a dodge available, or sets the refuge on any terrain with a slope of more than 10 degrees.

Just remember that even you get the thief down but he manages to self-rez in stealth, that means that his down-state timer is now on!! That gives you a massive advantage that shouldn’t be overlooked.

tldr: l2p issue. buff SR

Re-posted because you made me laugh and because you’re 100% spot on and OP clearly has no idea what he’s talking about and instead just posting a list of random skills.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

You all are really complaining that the mesmer is weak? It’s one of the strongest classes and has been since launch.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but nobody said anything about being weak, although there are certain game modes where we’ve certainly fallen out of the meta or are turned into utility-bots.

What people were complaining about is the lack of attention, especially with regards to the plethora of bugs that we have. Hell, I was fighting an ele on a slope earlier today in WvW and as iLeap bugged out the vast majority of time, a sizeable portion of my burst was just wasted. because of a grossly bugged skill.

It’s small things like that that matter and not even having a mention about those things is a worry. I can’t imagine anybody likes to play whilst being limited by bugs.

It’s only a taster of what’s too come though, so let’s hope they fixed some bugs at least…. :-)

Grimreaper.5370:

MESMER: Looks like this class was cried about being underplayed in 2012, but is growing in popularity because of buffs over the years, interestingly enough this “underplayed” class seems to also get a little bit of hate for being too OP.

Pray tell, which buffs the Mesmer got over the years that makes it so good? Also, please tell specifically what makes it OP?

Enlighten me.

What this game need is less silly threads like this where people ask for nerfs or buffs without understanding how specific classes function.

What this game truly needs is fortnightly small balance patches where things are tweaked, rather than wholesale being overhauled with big feature patches where even the devs cant judge the impact of every eight months or so.

“Ranger pets are receiving a responsiveness pass and will be much easier to command.”

God… I wish our illusions would do what I want rather than shatter on random targets, iLeap not working, etc, etc.

I mean, granted, the notes are all around minor bug fixes and clearly only the tip of the ice-berg but not being even on this list of notes makes you wonder if they’re going to do anything significantly positive for our class?

derbaer.1284:

Has anyone tested one of those builds in tpvp? I would think, that a s/s-staff build would be best here, with portal/decoy/MoR. Though I have to admit, I have a bad feeling about lyssa runes being my only defense against the abundant condition spam from necros and engis…

I’ve doing tPvP mostly with 30/20/20 and 20/20/30 (staff + sword/sword) the last two months. Granted, I’m by no means a top player and have R32 but I find that I do well against necros and engis, although rather than Lyssa I ran the -40% condi duration runes in my gear. The thing is, when properly chained, you can keep your opponent dazed, immobilised and/or chilled so their DPS dramatically drops. It’s still a hard fight, and some days I ran with Power Cleanse rather than Decoy, but it’s doable.

I’m glad that you’re running this spec as I’ve come to the same conclusion over the last month or so, therefore I’m not completely mad.

Confounding Suggestion was my first love as well, quite simply because I absolutely adore your MindCrush spec and basically constantly run that, no matter what game mode I do. I got addicted to CS and just couldn’t let it go for some reason, but then logic started to set in.

It’s a decent trait, but 25% daze increase seems a bit marginal for a GM trait and the combination of Daze & Stun just feels very strange. Very much so like Immobilise and Cripple on CI, but with CS you just don’t get anything else. Furthermore, in the Dom line on 25 Wastrel’s Punishment just seems underwhelming as well. I mean, 5% damage increase that is conditional and very situational seems not much.

The Chaos line, on the other hand, synergises much better. At 25 you get Chaotic Transference which gives me a condition boost, even more so since I run Knights gear in WvW so I have condition damage around 300, thereby providing a welcome boost to Delibitating Dissipation and Sharper Images. The crux of the matter, however, is of course Chaotic Transference and I’ve found – like you – that it can be absolutely devastating.

Sigils wise I run Hydromancy on Staff, Perception on Sword and Ice on another Sword.
The combination of Hydromancy, Ice and CI just provides a constant stream of Chill which really screws up the flow of your opponent.

Razor.6392:

Looks like you’ve never fought a condition mesmer or whatever that build is called.

And herein lies the rub, you clearly don’t even know how the build properly works. You clearly have an issue with PU Condi Mesmers, but the way you’re posting your thread is that you’re advocating a nerf to the class as a whole.

There’s no Mesmers left in top-tier PvP teams, all those have left or rerolled to other classes. The general status of the builds that we have available is as follows:

- Mantra: very much non-viable
- Signet: very much non-viable
- Hybrid: workable but very much sub-par
- Lockdown: decent but works only in 1v1 or 1v2 at best
- Phantasm: good in 1v1, but illusions die too quickly for anything larger
- Shatter: pushed out of the Meta by Thieves and others as it’s too squishy
- PU Power: good survivability, but lacks the oomph to take several specs/classes down
- PU Condi: strong but very gimmicky, only good in 1v1 or very small-scale, hopeless point-taker, does not work in zergs of PVE and once you’ve figured it out not that difficult to counter.
- WvW: veil/portal-bot. Oh joys.

Seriously…. is anyone still running with Moa????

Personally I find this build lacking somewhat in burst.

I’ve got similar stats to yours and don’t have a problem taking down most things, but the moment you run into something a bit bunker-ish it’s just rather lacklustre. The moment they take your iBerserker down (which any clever player will do), you’re a bit like a dead duck in the water as your DPS drops so significantly that you can’t dent them enough.

It has amazing survivability, but for me it just misses that “oomph”. This doesn’t become a problem when you roam with one or more people so you can focus your DPS, but when you’re solo against a defensive class, it just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard.

… maybe it’s just me doing something wrong, or me just running into the same enemy specs all the time. :P

trooper.2650:

@Marsares. I, like yourself, learnet to play without DE and I bless it. It gives room for more tweaking and experimenting and that’s how I came up with 30/10/30/0/0. I have been advertising it in all lockdown 3Ds Chaos opened recently, I apologise for that but couldn’t prevent myself in spreading this great build
Just kidding ofc but I really like it and it does wonders for me

Which traits do you run with 30/10/30?

My main is a Mesmer, hell I’ve really only played Mesmer since Beta as I love the class so much. Yet, I’m a strong advocate for fixing this… putting an elite on someone that kills of all their pets can only be a bug and needs to be fixed.

Necro’s rely – much like Mesmers – in many ways for clones/pets/illusions/whatever you want to call them for damage, utility and support. Suddenly removing that with the press of one button cannot be right. It’s the same when the recent bug caused all illusions to self-destruct with a Mesmer when the opponent went into stealth and our illusions lost their targets.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So I’ve recently been playing with a build that’s essentially a fusion of Mind Crush and Phantasmic Interruptions…

---

20/20/30/0/0
Dom: V, VII Duel: IV, X Chaos: V, VIII, XI
Sword-Sword (or Focus) – Staff
Runes of Grenth, Sigil of Hydromancy (staff) / Energy (sword) / Bloodlust (offhand)
Blink – iDisenchanter – Mantra of Distraction

---

Taking the lessons I learned from Mind Crush (Vuln stacking, staff shenanigans, and chain dazes) and combining with the Dueling/Chaos trait-spread of Phantasmic Interruptions has made for whats possibly the best lockdown build I’ve played so far. Lots of AoE CC, a mix of both soft and hard lockdown and surprisingly good damage. I mourn for the loss of Halting Strike but I love the team utility of Crippling Dissipation. I still have more practice to do with the build (when I’m not playing a modified version of Arganthium’s LSD) but I’m really enjoying it. Again shoutouts to skcamow and StickerHappy for producing that awesome build.

Some interesting changes.

I’ve been running with MindCrush consistently the last few months and love it.

However, I more and more find that I don’t need DE and have recently dropped it although I’m still debating where to stick the additional 10pts. Running with both Confounding Suggestions and Chaotic Interruption seems a bit excessive though… what are your thoughts?

To anyone who hasn’t tried a lockdown build yet, I’d highly encourage you to try it. It has a steep learning curve in some ways, but you can get to grips with it quite quickly. Interrupting is not that difficult, learning to interrupt those skills of your opponent that are important, that’s where the difficulty lies.

Carighan.6758:

jihm.2315:

you know how difficult is to reach the real mesmer and get an instant pushback in your face?
good times..

Well, being a Guardian and not being absolutely useless at your own class, you capitalized on your access to stability ofc and shrugged off the Illusionary Wave, right?

Right?

One can live in hope.

Then again, this is the interwebz so all is in vain…..

Thanks for the fast fix, Anet.

However, can I also ask you to fix the Moa on Necro’s minions issue. I don’t use Moa and I don’t play a Necro, but only seems fair to fix this for them as well in a reasonable time-frame.

kylwilson.9137:

I think I’m the only Mesmer who’s welcomed the increased challenge, because I’ve still been outperforming stealth classes, but I’m also a total masochist so that’s me being a weirdo freak.

But yeah definitely expecting this to be hotfixed soon.

What build do you run out of curiosity?

- Bugs that create an unfair advantage: near-instant fix
- Bugs that destroy an integral part to the class mechanic: fix whenever they fancy

This is game-breaking. When our illusions get destroyed so often in a game where stealth is so prevalent, our class in essence gets rendered useless.

Ironvos.9014:

You can hardly call them an AI anyway.
They just attack with a set interval, and run into range when they are too far away.
Even a single cell organism has a bigger ‘to do list’ in its life.

Indeed, thus it’s funny to see players complain about being beaten by a single-cell organism. Says a lot about the intelligence of those complainers. :P

All joking aside.. this is game-breaking. Without our illusions our offense and defense is cut down to such an extent that the class becomes unplayable.

1) Shatter Mesmers (still relatively common but have been nerfed constantly since launch)
2) Lock-Down Mesmers (very rare, although some lockdown elements are woven into some builds)
3) Mantra Mesmers (non-existent, Mantra are still really cumbersome)
4) Signet Mesmers (non-existent, Signets are horrible compared to other classes)
5) Glamour Mesmers (non-existent, got a double nerf-bat six months ago, never recovered)

Hell…. any Mesmer at serious tPvP level is UP and not really desired these days.

The only Mesmer that might be construed as somewhat OP is some forms of PU Mesmers, and then only when faced by people who have little clue on how to deal with them (i.e. don’t spam kill the clones, don’t hit scepter and get a torment when he tries to block you, don’t stand there like a muppet and let his conditions eat you up, etc).

Edit… with the stealth bug that got introduced in the new patch, also render phantasm Mesmers no longer viable.

Nice, with the latest patch now illusions die when your opponent stealths.

There goes the vast majority of offense and defense a Mesmer has whenever your enemy disappears in a puff of smoke, thereby rendering the Mesmer into a sitting duck.

GG Anet.

Rather than creating new WvW content, they should have focussed on the number one issue which they constantly seem to be tip-toeing around: class balance.

Now, I’m not saying that the new map is bad or good (too early to tell), but the mind boggles they still can’t fix the one thing that in all likelihood is losing them most PvP players: ridiculously imbalanced classes and now clear plan of action or timeline on how they’ll fix it.

Reesha.7901:

Slim.3024:

Reesha.7901:

Slim.3024:

I hope this isn’t a bug, ‘cause it didn’t make much sense for them to instantly attack a stealthed player when he came out of stealth, before the mesmer even realized where the stealthed player was to begin with either.

None of the tooltips suggest that illusions come outfitted with the most advanced satellites and tracking devices of any sort.

So, if your opponent stealth, you should loose 90% your damage and defense. Mmmmm, nope, I really don’t think that is an idea you would like to see implemented to your own class.

But it’s fine that you can cast phantasms and clones without being affected by evades or blocks and that they always know where the player is instantly. Clones and phantasm in this game are smarter than the actual player and can not be juked.

Is that fine?

You can blind the cast of the phantasm and you can evade or block the actual attack.

This is not a topic regarding what you do not like about Mesmer.
This is not a topic regarding what you would like to see changed.
This is a topic about a bug that cripples Mesmer, against any opponent that has stealth.

+1

Players complaining about being beaten by horrible AI says a lot about their own intelligence.

trooper.2650:

It’s a great talent, one of the best. I have been using it in my 30/10/30/0/0 Mantra/lockdown build with GS and Staff for over a month and I love it. As Ross says it looses its luster in zergs, however it helps a lot vs thieves and necros and it’s one of the reasons I find myself in love with.

Right now I am trying to take the most out of it by picking all “interrupt” traits plus a might stacking concept (Bountifull Interruption and double sigil of battle). However, this setup relies heavily on food for extra long buffs (I use Chocolate omomberry cream 20% boons and traveler runes) but I do not like it much because the food 2nd buff (magic find) feels like a waste. So, I am tempted to go for 100% condi duration with veggi pizza & giver weapons for a 4sec immobilize/chill. That is jummy :P but it doesn’t solve the problem when running with zergs or vs stability.

Overall a great and fun talent for roaming or small scale fights

I use a similar build (slightly modified version of MindCrush) but rather than GS and Staff I run Sword/Sword and Staff. Both are equally viable I feel, I just personally prefer Sword/Sword.

Rather than Sigils of Battle I run Ice and Hydromancy, so with CI I get a constant stream of Chills which together with other soft and hard CC makes life rather difficult for the opponent.

I don’t run with zergs though, so can’t comment on largescale viability.

dimyzuka.7051:

Nerfing mesmers vigor without any compensation is just bad design considering the current meta. Vigor affects mesmers more than ANY other class, dodging gives us our clones we use to shatter for damage, defense and CC. As well as the fact that we are glass cannons that rely on avoiding damage in the first place unlike most other classes.

Is it some kind of inside Aanet joke that the only viable spvp build that mesmer has had for the LAST 2 YEARS is 20 20 0 0 30 shatter spec?

Now it is not even viable in the meta leaving us with nothing but to reroll to thieves and rangers like Helseth, Sensotix and Supcutie have done. (3 of the best tournament mesmers all rerolled within the last 2-3 weeks). The 16 team KOTM2 tournament last weekend had a grand total of 0 (yes ZERO) mesmers out of the top 80 players around the world. (There was even a staff ele that made the final)

The last Oct 15th major patch that was supposed to have changes to put us back in the meta gave us a Mantra buff (sigh..) which had to be a joke, it’s not just the fact that no competent player will let a mesmer get off a 3second cast in spvp, but its the fact that we CANNOT take any utility to tpvp other than PORTAL, BLINK AND DECOY. Portal and blink obviously because our only role left is a roamer, and decoy because without it we get kitten d by thieves even harder than we already do. What’s the point of bringing condition removal if we die instantly to a thief before the conditions even get put on us.

Then last major patch the same mistake was made. Because of their limited understanding of the class they thought they could give us condition removal through a different trait line without realizing that no mesmer could take it because shattered concentration is a MUST. The only reason you bring a mesmer in your team is for portal and boon removal, that’s it.
Mesmer has been limited build wise since day 1. Shattered concentration is a %100 must in spvp, so is deceptive evasion, and to a lesser extent illusionary persona. It’s been like this since release. (20/20/0/0/30)
Helseth and Supcutie are using the exact same build that Xee, Xeph and Nero Vitus were using 2 kittening years ago!! (The only change of the build that has happened in 2 years is now lyssa runes are used with mass invis instead of timewarp or moaftfg.)

When you understand that we are competing with thieves as roamers in teams, who have better damage, mobility and survivability then you realize just how important portal (+blink) and boon removal is. They are the only reason we did have a place in the meta, so when considering buffs you have to build around these things.

The last 2 major patches have been a waste of time, and none of the changes have been used in pvp and we are still back at square 1, and looking at these patch notes it looks like Aanet have given up, or are delusional enough to think their changes had any effect. (hint- not a single top spvp mesmer uses mantras or has any points in the inspiration tree.)

As Helseth has said many times on his stream it is obvious that none of the devs play mesmer as a main and/or thoroughly understand the classes mechanics. So Aanet can you PLEASE start talking to top mesmers, this happens in LoL, SC2, WoW, and every other pvp game i can think of. If you were in contact with good mesmers you would have known that buffing matras was not the way to give us condition removal in the current meta, you would have known that the DE change would cripple shatter mesmers, you would have known that we have 0 flexibility when it comes to traits and utilitys, etc etc.

PS. I think mesmers will never be fully balanced if portal stays the way it is. It is impossible to balance a class when it has a regular utility that is stronger than nearly every other classes elite utility. If portal was made a elite, every mesmer would still take it in tpvp. I think that’s a huge balance problem because mesmers underlying problems are overshadowed by portal and it has been this way for a LONG time.

+1

WvW: veil/portal/timewarp bot and that’s about
HotJoin/SoloQ: plenty of builds viable, but the whole thing is rather noobish anyways so you get a lot more leeway to run sub-optimal builds
SoloRoam: it’s all about the PU or GTFO
high-end tPvP: 20/20/0/0/30 or nothing

We have various builds that are viable to some degrees, but for most game-modes we’re very much shoe-horned into a single build, although that build differs by game-mode. And in all those game-modes, except our utilities, we bring very little to the table and other classes do our role better.

Bryzy.2719:

PU mesmer is OP. You guys have little to worry about compared to rangers

There are numerous builds that utilise PU. Be specific which one is OP and what’s OP about it, please.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Marsares.2053:

Very much like the Warrior’s Healing Signet that has better HPS without any preconditions and never really want use their active. ;-)

YOU DID NOT JUST COMPARE HEALING SIGNET WITH OTHER SIGNET HEALS! HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I’ll be quiet now, go to my corner, FOTM reroll Warrior and think I’m pro. ;-)

Black Box.9312:

There’s only one passive effect with signet of the ether, and removing it would make it not a signet at all. It’s supposed to be meant for (semi)passive sustain, based on how well you are able to keep illusions up and active.

Very much like the Warrior’s Healing Signet that has better HPS without any preconditions and never really want use their active. ;-)

Sad day. Three of the best Mesmers are no more.

Still love my Mesmer to bits, but when I dust off my Thief (that I barely if ever play and am a total muppet at) you wonder why you bother with Mesmer. It’s all so much easier… better mobility, better dis-engage, massive burst, more stealth, and compared to a Mesmer remarkable condition removal.

I’ll stick with my Mesmer, for now, but especially WvW roaming as a thief is 10 times more fun. I don’t play high-end tPvP, so can’t comment on that, but solo queue a Thief is much more fun as well.

Profession stacking only happens if ANet fails to balance the classes properly.

Let’s address the root cause, rather than the issue.

You know when people are scraping the barrel in justifying a 17k hit when they say it’s highly telegraphed. Of course, telegraphed skills should hit harder as they can be interrupted, but 17k is out of whack and cannot be justified.

It’s funny to see how on one hand 17k damage is fine because it can be interrupted/dodged/etcetera as there needs to be risk/reward balance, yet on the other hand a skill such a Healing Signet which cannot be interrupted is fine with having a very high sustained HPS as well.

You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Galsia.4102:

Karl McLain.5604:

Warrior:
Our changes for warrior focus on providing telegraphs to stronger skills and to reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet.

• Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
  • We’re looking for ways to incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Healing Signet Active: Cures Poison then quadruples healing effectiveness for the next 5 seconds.

Healing Signet’s base after nerf, 361, would quadruple to 1,444 for each second for the next five seconds, ending up with a 7,220 heal.

Potency, length of time, CD is open to scrutiny.

Lol. Seriously?

Even after the 8% nerf, which is hardly a nerf at all, HS will still be the best heal hands-down. Your idea for the active is just ridiculous… just buff it to the skies again.

For comparison: Ether Feast, the heal on Mesmer, heals for 7870, IF I have three illusions out. So you want:

1) Near comparably burst healing, without any prerequisites such as a Mesmer has
2) Massive sustain healing, which Ether Feast won’t give at all
3) Have a poison cure thrown into the mix.

What else would you like with that, GOD mode?

Rednik.3809:

phaeris.7604:

The fact that you called Longbow ‘meh’ in WvW pretty much sums up what sort of player you are.

Yes, I’m pretty clueless and unexperienced player, I know.

That ranks is easy to get by running with the zerg and PVE-ing doors with karma-trains. Not saying that’s how you got it, but that’s how most people got 500+ ranks.

Therefore, rank does not equate to skill. In most instances, it’s the opposite. There’s a reason why most WvW-ers are horrible at 1v1, whilst sPvP or tPvP players are a lot better at it.

Funny write-up, loved it!

I guess I’m a bit like you in that sense… I never really got the hang of the GS. It works well in WvW but I’m just utterly in love with Staff + Sword/Sword and just can’t let go. :P

Substance E.4852:

selan.8354:

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t know why people still expect anything big to happen. These people are a joke. I’m obviously a bit biased, I play and love Minion Master necros, but they’re only good for 1v1. They suck in teams, they suck in wvw, they suck in just about everything else… They don’t scale with armor tiers (ascended) get 1 shot by aoes they can’t dodge. Basically the entire game, mostly useless, only pretty good for 1v1 (mostly against nubs, not even pro players).

Minion master:
Putrid explosion now blockable, shaved 5% of the minion damage boost from Training of the master, nerfing Vampiric master by 10%.

Warrior:
The king of every kitten part of the game and played by most of the devs, and known for the most hated heal in the entire game.
Healing signet -8% hps, but we want to bring up the active to make more useful…

Really? Minion masters were the issue, when the top 50 tpvp are dominated by Guardian bunks, warriors of all flavors, thieves, spirit rangers and aoe condi spammers (collectively, this is about what every major tpvp team consists of, 1 of each). It’s just my one, biased, but prime example of them having no idea. x.X

exactly they nerf something about the warrior and then buff something to compensate. where was the wvw mesmers compensation when anet nerfed confusion dmg by 50% and bb trait in one patch?
every other patch after that all we saw was nerfs and nothing to compensate and now we got the veilbot duty, because no build and nothing works in wvw raids for mesmers. veilveil veil, portal this portal that, veil, tw this and dont die, while not dealing dmg. great job balancing fair……

I’d love for rangers to have the kind of WvW utility veil, null field, time warp, and portal bring. Mesmers may not be action packed but at least it’s an indispensable class. A zerg with no rangers is probably better off than an equally sized one with rangers in it.

Problem is… you need one Mesmer per zerg to do all that. So yes, we may have on guaranteed slot. Wahey, lucky us!

Zera.8907:

I run it. It’s rather nice, I do miss a more powerful Phant that what the torch has to offer but torch is there for the stealth and surprise element of it’s stealth, ileap, into blurred frenzy combo. What I’m really waiting for is a shut down/interrupt build from Osi! (Yes I know there are some from the other amazing dudes we have the forums as well)

I’d strongly encourage you to try the MindCrush build then. I’ve been running it pretty much non-stop the last two months with great success. It lacks stealth but has decent survivability through constant boon generation and by interrupting the flow of attack from your opponent by dazing/stunning/interrupting him. The burst is semi-decent, but boon-stripping and damage through interrupts makes up for it.

What you’ll find that this build is all about timing and understanding your opponent. If you do it right, you annihilate them. If you make a mistake, you’ll be in trouble. High risk but high reward I find.

It also works wonders against Warriors and through a constant barrage of stuns you can also keep Necro’s quite well at bay and take them down. PU GS are my greatest nightmare with this build, but other than that I feel confident enough to take on most builds.

+1

+14 characters

FOTM Warrior rerollers. :-P

Flissy.4093:

Heimdallr.7021:

Marsares.2053:

Cygnus.6903:

So warriors don’t have the best damage? Shocker.

No seriously, welcome to warrior. You will love it. And that’s from somebody who started with mesmer also. Warrior feels more… easymode.

Fixed.

Trolling much?

Naw, he’s just sick of getting kicked on a bearbow.

Not really, HamBows aren’t a problem for my Lockdown Mesmer.

I just find it hilarious that someone is going from a Blackwater Mesmer (which is the cheesy easymode spec for Mesmers) to a HamBow Warrior (which is the cheesy easymode spec for GW2 in general).

Easymode much?

Cygnus.6903:

So warriors don’t have the best damage? Shocker.

No seriously, welcome to warrior. You will love it. And that’s from somebody who started with mesmer also. Warrior feels more… easymode.

Fixed.

ensoriki.5789:

It’s because they have condition damage for the purpose of bypassing toughness and want to keep things simplistic relative to say GW1 which had armor pen, armor reduction and armor ignoring damage, as well as elemental damages.

This is nonsensical as it basically prevents any non-condition class from taking out tank-type classes and pushes the game further into a condition Meta. In every MMO I’ve played heavy defense classes were susceptible to (1) magic damage (i.e. conditions in this game) or (2) specialists (mostly light armour classes with big unsustainable burst and high armour penetration and a high level of risk/reward).

I’m personally all for this as the game is becoming more and more heavy-armour centric for a reason.

Thedenofsin.7340:

If warriors get 360 hp/s for doing NOTHING at all, then you need to really beef up the Mesmer Signet since Mesmers need to keep 3 clones up to get their healing.

This.

Furthermore, as has been said a million times in this thread: underwhelming.

We’ve been waiting for months for proper balancing and then we’ll have to wait more months for some basic changes like this, whilst in many ways the most obvious problem classes (UP or OP) are not being addresses properly.

Now, I’m not a programmer but I can’t imagine this will take two months to code and test, so I sure as hell hope that the balance team is working on much more that we’re not aware and that they haven’t announced yet. As much as I like this game, I’m losing patience quickly with the dreadfully slow changes.

Harper.4173:

Bombsaway.7198:

I Agree with Demandsynz the fundamental problem is warriors have things that a warrior should not have. They should not be great at range. They should not have heavy armor and be very mobile. (They should be the slowest to get into combat really but then hit hard and be able to take damage).

There is a reason in terms of game balance why other games split abilities that you find on a warrior. No other game would put so many toys on one toon. Why would GW2 be designed to be an exception?

Taken from the wiki :
Warriors are masters of martial skills. They rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive. They’re versatile in combat and benefit from offensive and defensive abilities. Warriors inspire allies and demoralize enemies. As a soldier profession, warriors wear heavy armor.

notice the word SPEED being first in that line of attributes that come with the class.
You can’t HIT HARD when other professions are so well geared towards disengaging/ confusing / running away if you lack mobility.
A slow, hard hitting, heavy damage taking class is just a damage sponge if it has no means to deliver that damage ( mobility and range) which is EXACTLY what you want to take away from the warrior.

Did you really even think this through?

Yeah, let’s take the Wiki as the gospel:

“Mesmers can create illusions to fight by their side, which they use to harass enemies with phantasms or mislead them with clones. Illusions can also be shattered, destroying them and causing secondary effects, such as confusion, a powerful condition which damages foes as they continue their assault in vain. Their unique attribute increases their Shredding Recharge Rate.”

Confusion got nerfed over and over again, is neglible unless you stack it immensely which only can be done these days via Runes of Perplexity and yet, ironically, other classes are much better at stacking it via those Runes than a Mesmer, and this includes Warriors who can stack it very fast.

In any case…. you want to have (1) speed, (2) strength, (3) toughness, and (4) heavy armour. Where’s the trade-off? I’m all for warriors having speed, but they shouldn’t have heavy defenses then. If you’re want to be a hard-hitting tank, you move slowly. If you want to be hard-hitting and have high mobility, you should have little defensive stats.

Simple as that. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Godmoney.2048:

That being said the runes of perplexity make a condi mesmer work. Without them I don’t think my condi mesmer specs will work anymore and go back to retirement before the perplexity rune patch.

I strongly disagree with that. I ran the PU Condi Mesmer spec also known as Blackwater for a few months whilst solo roaming in WvW and never used the Perplexity set, yet could easily take on 3+ people.

Whilst I totally agree with your premise that Confusion is more a Mesmer ability than any other class and that it’s strange that other classes can much more reliable apply multiple stacks these days thanks to the Perplexity rune set, I do disagree that the Condi Mesmer would be unviable without it.

I also don’t think that having it proc on an interrupt is a bad thing… if you look at Mesmer traits and abilities, many of them are centred on interrupts so Confusion would synergise well with that. It’s just that ArenaNet didn’t appreciate that other classes can interrupt much more often than Mesmers.

The runeset does need to be nerfed though… but it shouldn’t be nerfed in such a way that only Condi Mesmers benefits from it

Both are very very good in the current meta and with the impending class re-balancing, who’s to say what the best one will be to play. Just play what you like most. I never got this whole rerolling thing… I find a class that has a mechanic, abilities and traits that I like and that allows me a game-play that I find entertaining and then stick with it.

hihey.1075:

If you get killed as a phantasm mesmer against a hambow, you’re doing something wrong.

False. Any competent Warrior will kill off your phantasms (which normally takes only a few hits) and your damage will drop so far that you can’t outdamage the sustain that a Warrior has. Of course there’s plenty of FOTM Warrior rerollers that have no idea, but in general a Phantasm Mesmer will struggle against a decent Warrior.

PU Condi Mesmer, however, is a decent counter to most HamBow warriors. The problem is that it takes ages and if the Warrior is losing and chooses to disengage, there’s nothing the Mesmer can do about it then as it’s the slowest class in the game and the PU Condi one has no CC to stop the Warrior from fleeing.

I personally run a Lockdown Mesmer, centred on interrupts, dazes and stuns and have relatively little problem with most Warriors. It’s much less forgiving than a PU Condi one, but has much more CC, burst and boon-stripping and you need all that to take a Warrior down. And nothing beats chain-dazing/stunning a HamBow. ;-)

A well-played Mesmer is one of the few classes that can stand up to a Warrior, but even then the disparity is glaring: make a mistake on your Mesmer and you’re toast, but make a mistake on a Warrior and chances are you’ll be fine.

For WvW solo roaming I run with Ascended Knights gear and Ascended Berserker trinkets and weapons… just my luck that Berserker trinkets seem to get nerfed disproportionally in the pending crit nerf. >.<

Only benefit I can think of is that your animations will be less obvious to the enemy, thereby making it a bit more difficult for them to time their interrupts properly.

Iavra.8510:

Nausicca.6038:

Why not changing PU instead of your weapon set? And see if you still get complaints? That’s a serious question. Because I never receive complaints with my shatter build. So I’m curious. Ty

It’s funny how even against decent opponents i always get perceived as another build. I’ve been called phantasm, PU (despite not having a single source of regen, protection and aegis apart from Arcane Thievery) and even Perplexity so far.

Nobody expects a 20/20/0/0/30 with Traveler’s anymore in these days…

There’s always haters who have no idea. Today I got called a PU Staff clone-spammer by another Mesmer…. given that he ran DE with PU and a GS, I just had to remind him that he’d spam much more clones than I do with Staff + Sword / Sword without DE, and that I didn’t run PU on top of that either.

Guess he was just one of those FOTM rerollers that take the current Meta build and expected to roll faces. Lockdown specs are especially useful against them, they have no idea what hits them. :-P

Not sure what’s going on but the vast majority of matches have been 5v4 recently which, needless to say, pretty much straight away determines who’s going to win. Anybody else experiencing this?

Takes me longer to kill the pet than to kill the ranger itself. I wish my Phantasms had those base stats… they blow up when you sneeze at them.