Guild Wars 2

redslion.9675:

All mesmers I met run Ether Feast. Yet it is not OP. One of the problems in GW2 is that one heal is CLEARLY better than the others, because HPS is THAT important in pvp.

Mesmers run with Ether Feast as it’s the only viable heal we have. Now, you can argue that the same applies to Healing Signet, which then implies that in order to kitten relative effectiveness you have to look at other functionality/prerequisites of the heals.

The main difference between EF and HS is then that HS is 100% effective, no matter what, whilst EF is only somewhat on-par with HS when we have three clones out, which cannot always be the case in a fight, especially when you’re under pressure or in WvW (try keeping three clones out in zerg fights, good luck!).

In short: Mesmers have to manage their clones to gain maximum effectiveness and ensure their heal doesn’t get interrupted. Warriors just get it all for free.

That’s why HS is OP and EF not.

Only thing the Mesmer staff need is a slight buff on the auto-attack and projectiles with a faster flying speed.

The most fun is when they block your chat before you have ever spoken them and then start to abuse you via whispers whilst you can’t talk back. So childish. You know you’re doing something good though if you’re invoking so much nerd rage.

The best is if you continue farming them, they then ragequit and re-log another character so they can farm you, after which you duly proceed to roflstomp their faces.

Had a Ele rage at me when I 1v1-ed him three times in a row yesterday. He then whispered me and said he’d log his thief and “hunt me down and make my life hell”. A shame for him that he was a 2-spammer and just too easy to kill. Chain-locked him on my Mesmer, then let my illusions kill him off very slowly when he was in downed state whilst I did a /dance on his corpse. He totally rage-quit shortly after.

… kids. There really is no need for this, but if you give it to me, be prepared to receive back. :-)

jayson.6512:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

You guys are crazy if you don’t think warriors are still far and above the best all around class. I main a warrior and if I play my other classes a few days and come back to my warrior I feel like a put on a god mode cheat.

i played mesmer for 5 hours and i face roll every class in solo q zerker mesmer is way better than zerker warrior with low hp , armor without OP HS , Cleansing Ire , zerker stance , adrenal health , CC now tell me how OP warrior is?

Build and video please or hush in your corner.

Pyroatheist.9031:

waffle waffle waffle

People need to whine less, think more, and play better.

It may irritate you to see people complain about other classes and mentally give up. It irritates me to see people just make assumptions about other people that they don’t know, have never seen play and have no relationship with whatsoever. You may have put it in a few paragraphs of nice English prose, but it can be summarised as: “L2P and kitten, noob.”

And that is an insult. And I don’t take kindly to insults, especially not from someone who has never seen me play nor who has any idea about what my mental state is.

Now, I know you’re one of the resident forum warriors and I can in all likelihood expect another lengthy treatise on how I suck and mentally give up and all that good stuff, but at the end of the day even you will agree with me that the current Meta is not a lot of fun, that the Mesmer still has numerous viable builds but most of them rely on PU which just isn’t my thing, that certain other classes are significantly much easier to play and have a risk/reward balance that is out of kilter and that – finally – the Devs clearly seem at a loss on how the Mesmer functions, let alone on how to balance him.

And, yes, that does get to me at times. Sue me. Or forum warrior me more and feel good about yourself. Whilst you type, I’ll chain-lock some more warriors, thieves and necros.

Bearlin.7238:

Been running staff/sword+sword lockdown also… without clone on dodge. Makes me want to cry sometimes XD

Oh I’m the same… there’s a lot of nerd-rage going on on certain days. Then again, I’ve never been one for choosing the easy path. I just like to experiment new things… the moment a build becomes the meta, I’m out of there and try something new. The moment certain classes become the meta, I try to find a build that counters it.

… nothing beats stun-locking the crap out of a HamBow. :-P

Ross Biddle.2367:

Marsares.2053:

Simonoly.4352:

Well I don’t blame people for utilising builds that are far more accommodating than most as they’re just using what Anet provides. However, I’m not a big fan of PU and the playstyle it encourages, so I’m back to shatter and sc/p + staff condi build myself. I imagine many regular Mesmer players have already become bored with PU and are moving onto lockdown builds

Same… ran with PU for the first time in ages yesterday and it’s just a crutch. Rarely died but was just so dull.

Back to my staff + sword / sword lockdown spec… much more fun. Die a lot more but when I win it’s a lot more satisfying.

The crutch comment is hilarious. Drop stealth and attempt playing without the staff. Hell, the thing is the same shape and size of an actual crutch.

Staff was THE mesmer crutch pre PU craze. Still is at the end of the day, as is being demonstrated by this thread.

Staff synergises much better with my non-PU non-DE lockdown spec as with sword/sword I’m constantly in their face and need staff for some extra dazes/clones and some distance creation at times.

We all know real men play non-PU shatter or lockdown. ;-)

Simonoly.4352:

Well I don’t blame people for utilising builds that are far more accommodating than most as they’re just using what Anet provides. However, I’m not a big fan of PU and the playstyle it encourages, so I’m back to shatter and sc/p + staff condi build myself. I imagine many regular Mesmer players have already become bored with PU and are moving onto lockdown builds

Same… ran with PU for the first time in ages yesterday and it’s just a crutch. Rarely died but was just so dull.

Back to my staff + sword / sword lockdown spec… much more fun. Die a lot more but when I win it’s a lot more satisfying.

Arret Vice.5872:

4) Mantra of distraction – aka mantra that daze

Stores a charge every 36 seconds. Daze a target for 1 second.
The main issue there – to make a cooldown between uses longer than suggested 0.5 seconds or not. In my opinion, if it has 0.5 seconds cooldown, it is not owerpowered since daze duration is 2 times more than recharge time, so it will be inefficient to spam it. This change will encourage more lockdown gameplay (it requires skill – better for players to get more satisfaction from playing).

That alone will kill off Lockdown specs. One daze every 36s? Now we have 2 (3 with Mastery) on a 30s CD.

I only played WvW since Beta but since the end of the last season I probably played it for 30 minutes tops. It just got stale on me with the same server matchups, the same lame tactics and the same fact that it still doesn’t feel epic in whatever way. I also quit solo roaming… it’s just hambows, thieves and PU mesmers these days.

I’m playing sPvP nowadays but also there quickly losing interest…. the meta is just so spammy and skill-less and balance is so out of kilter, it’s a joke. And of course, class balancing is taking way too long…. two or more months till the next patch. Seriously?

I’m losing motivation quickly as well in spite of my earlier positive comments. All you face is spam-classes: warriors that just button-mash and rely on stability, immunity and sustain, thieves that just abuse stealth and mash-2 and condi-classes that spam condis whilst running in circles and hoping for the best. And yet, you often get face-rolled by them whilst clearly they’re just button-mashing.

It’s just soul destroying when you have to line up the stars, the moon and the sun in order to defeat certain classes that have so much leeway themselves and still can beat you just by button-mashing whilst you play perfectly or near perfectly.

I like a challenge. I love it, otherwise I get bored and quit a game… but at the moment it’s getting to a point where you wonder why you bother when class balance is so out of kilter that the dev team have become a joke and clearly have no idea how to fix it, nor are intend on fixing it in a reasonable time frame.

redslion.9675:

Morale of the story is: ALL IS VAIN! T_T

Lol, made me laugh.

All hail your Warrior overlords!

redslion.9675:

Marsares.2053:

Sure, I can turn my Mesmer into a GS PU one, or roll a Warrior, and enjoy the Meta and faceroll others but it’s just lame, skill-less and insanely boring.

There are still hard to play builds on warrior. But you have to go staff like full glass with no points in defense. It’s silly, but you deal a lot of damage and EVERYTHING becomes a threat. One backstab with 2100 armor and you are in trouble, for example.

I believe you. Now tell me how many players actually play that spec rather than HamBow spam. The fact that people have to justify that there’s still difficult to play specs goes a long way towards showing how easy the class has become in general.

I agree.

The philosophy of “shaving” and 3+ months balance patches is a recipe for disaster.

The condi + hambow meta has taken way too long to fix.

The more I play sPvP, the more I get disillusioned. It’s just spam-classes like Necro/Engy/PUMesmer that run around in circles, spam condis and hope for the best, or it’s classes with so much regen/health/armour like Warrior that it allows them to make silly mistakes compared to other classes and still come out on top, or stealth abusers like PU Mesmers or Thieves that then spam 2.

I personally don’t think the meta has been as lame as it’s now… it’s just mindless spam-spam-spam with a few classes that just dominate the rest.

I know I’m asking for some “L2P” comments from noobs who think that they’re god, but I’d like to see them play some of the crappy classes. On some classes you have to play perfectly to win, yet more often than not get still beaten by a button-mashing amateur who just happens to play a favoured class. It does make you wonder why you even bother. Play, say, a lock-down Mesmer and then a Warrior and tell me there’s no difference in skill-gap.

Sure, I can turn my Mesmer into a GS PU one, or roll a Warrior, and enjoy the Meta and faceroll others but it’s just lame, skill-less and insanely boring.

I’m very close to throwing in the towel… the proposed changes that they recently announced clearly show that they have no idea. They want to shave, yet don’t shave enough from their golden child (the warrior), whilst they are happy to propose changes that they clearly don’t understand yet impact on a whole class (i.e. DE for Mesmer).

It’s soul destroying.

This is one the bread-and-butter skills for a Mesmer and has been broken since day one. Fixing this seriously would make me a happy bunny.

To do decent burst damage, a Mesmer needs to line up his damage, then immobilise his target and subsequently burst. When the immobilise doesn’t materialise because iLeap once again bugs out, a whole rotation has gone down the drain.

Pyroatheist.9031:

RedCobra.7693:

Marsares.2053:

kubetz.3058:

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Here’s a fun way to stop the melee trains in WvW…
implement ‘friendly fire.’

It is an evil proposal, but it would make the performance lag in WvW a lot worse as the server would have to process a lot more data.

Body-blocking like Warhammer had would help as well, but the server performance in WAR was atrocious as a result.

maybe it could work but i think there would be too many complainers if they were to implement it after release

The servers already kitten themselves in a large fight. With body blocking it would be an absolute nightmare.

… that’s what I’m saying.

If warriors took a step back, most of the other classes got pushed off a cliff by the Devs.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well the biggest problem with passive procs is sun spirit. It is AOE dhuumfire basically. Giving everyone’s auto attacks the power to burn is really really unskillful and lame. Spirit ranger is the biggest problem with the meta not dhuumfire. They should fix dhuumfire as suggested but also need something similar for sun spirit which is 5x the problem.

To be honest, all passive builds that encourage lazy game-play whilst spamming condis and being surrounded by a pet-zoo should be nerfed. This includes MM dhumfire Necro, PU Condi Mesmer, Spirit Ranger and some forms of Engineers.

kubetz.3058:

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Here’s a fun way to stop the melee trains in WvW…
implement ‘friendly fire.’

It is an evil proposal, but it would make the performance lag in WvW a lot worse as the server would have to process a lot more data.

Body-blocking like Warhammer had would help as well, but the server performance in WAR was atrocious as a result.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The PvP in this game is not a truly competitive scene. It never will be.

Play the game because you have fun, no other reason.

I play mesmer in PvP because it’s fun, and that’s all I need.

Indeed, although “fun” needs to be defined in some cases:

- If you define fun as winning, then re-roll to the current FOTM OP class and feel good about yourself believing you’re pro;
- If you define fun as playing a class you’ve fallen in love with at day one, then stick with it through ups and downs.

Mesmer isn’t the apex predator at the moment and my lockdown spec certainly isn’t the best spec in the current Meta, but for me fun is beating others against the odds or beating others at their own game (i.e. nothing beats chain-dazing/stunning a HamBow to dead or stripping all boons from a Guardian through shatters and Nullfield).

Also, we don’t quite now what the March feature patch will bring balance wise… they’ll take another look at the proposed Mesmer changes they said, and they may provide some buffs as well. The whole Meta could shift again.

At the end of the day… it’s a game, so no matter how you define fun, go for that.

Mesmer isn’t in a bad spot, but it’s certainly not as strong as it previously used to be. At the end of the day, it really depends what you do (solo roaming, WvW zerging, guild raids, sPvP, tPvP or PVE) and what build you run (Condi, Signet, Shatter, PU, Mantra, Lockdown, etc) that determines how viable you feel.

If you like WvW zerging or Guild raids.. we have little to offer after Glamour and Confusion nerfs, we’re basically Veil and utility bots. If you like tPvP, we’re in a pretty kitten bad state and need some serious baby-sitting in most teams. Solo roaming we’re in a good state and if you like casual hotjoin sPvP, then we’re more than viable too. PVE I can’t comment on as I don’t play it.

PU Condi is strong, but will get nerfed (and rightly so I’d argue, I just hope they go about doing it in the right fashion). Shatter is still viable, but needs more micro-management. Mantra’s and Signets have been “buffed” and are sneaking into many builds, although a pure build around them is still sub-par. Lockdown got some decent buffs and I my build is mostly focussed on this, but a lot of builds now take elements of lockdown.

In general, Mesmer has received major nerfs over time with some minor buffs, whilst some other classes have been brought up massively (e.g. Warrior). We’re still good, but the apex classes are now Guardian, Warrior and Necro and in most game-modes and specs we’re mid-tier in the table. I wish they’d push us a bit more towards Lockdown, give Shatter some minor TLC and have another look at Signets/Mantras and then – combined with some minor bug fixes – I think we’ll be in a good state.

All in all though, I still can’t see a reason not to play my Mesmer. I love it too much and although we’re being nerfed consistently and more and more pigeon-holed in our gameplay, it’s still the one class that I play. Then again, I’m a bit different than most players and I actually enjoy a challenge rather than re-roll to the next FOTM OP class. I choose one class in a MMO and tend to stick with it through ups and downs.

1) Will iLeap bug be fixed so it doesn’t bug out on uneven terrain?
2) Will the bug be fixed whereby you get stuck and can’t move when you use teleport under certain circumstances?
3) What are your plans for Lock-down Mesmers as they could do with some TLC?

clipnotdone.9634:

That’s a rather silly way to look at things.
I’m not saying it needs to be nerfed into oblivion, but PU is clearly to strong right now, its basically the top dog roaming build and you’d be pretty hard pressed to convince folkes otherwise.

Either way, it’s low risk, high reward.
The fact that almost every Mesmer in WvW is running it should speak for itself.

This game needs less cheesy easymodo builds, they are bad for the game.

False.

I pretty much only solo roam and I haven’t run with PU in 4 months. There’s plenty like me and – if anything – I see less and less PU Condi roamers as they’ve realised that they can’t kill anything if people choose to disengage, which is incredibly easy to do in WvW.

Julie Yann.5379:

Sizzle Hint.1820:

People seem to misunderstand things quite a lot

The SHARED GLOBAL cooldown between sigils is going away, they will still have their own internal cooldown. Otherwise an Engineer could stack 25 stacks of might in a matter of secnds by using Battle, i doubt that is going to happen.

You don’t understand. If they go ahead and remove the shared CD. With fast hands I could swap to 1 set and proc sigil of battle and energy. 5 seconds later swap to my second set and proc hyrdomancy and leeching. 5 seconds later swap back to my first set and proc battle and energy again. That’s 4 on swap sigil procs every 10 seconds.

It’ll be a bit like twisting aura’s on the Chosen/KotBS in Warhammer. It was a lame mechanic and it required you to swap every x seconds, but the additional buffs that it gave you were insane.

Hoping for a lockdown buff to Runes of the Mesmer…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

KarinaCO.6948:

The DE nerf is not really a critical nerf to shatter specs, it just causes the players to use clones and dodges up more wisely. It’s not that hard to send 3 clones to shatter before dodging again since every shatter skill sends clones into seperate queues until it hits the target. But, it’s definately a critical nerf to clone-death builds.

I am still suprised how little people know about shatter after all this discussion going on on the board. As if it was about just getting out three illusions and blow them up and that’s it.

In the end, I think most people do not play shatter, because they have no clue about how it works, about positioning, about targeting, about spreading out clones, that you do not just shatter because it is off cooldown.

It is hard to blame some random Dev’s not knowing about the nuances of the mesmer gameplay, if even the mesmers themselves have no clue…

+1

The mind boggles when you realise how little most Mesmers know about their own class….

jmatb.6307:

I’m actually somewhat encouraged by the most recent cast b/c Peters was talking about wanting skill to be more of an emphasis. It seems like they’re moving away from the “some eles just stay in one attunement” casual babysitting mentality.

So you’re happy that this change will drive most Mesmers into the AI-driven passive game-play Phantasm spec, as it’s the only spec that’ll benefit from these changes, whilst builds that require skill such as mantra, shatter and lockdown get nerfed and most likely become unviable as they are already marginal to play at best.

Pushing the Mesmer from one cheesy build into the other has nothing to do with skill-based gameplay.

boumz.9851:

Syndarin Eledhwen.6513:

Alashya on Mesmer Changes

literally who? why do people always make themselves important.

Who are you?

Rolyate.6753:

I really do believe vigor should be removed and classes should be balanced around having far less dodges available.

So what do light-armour classes light Mesmer, that’s heavily reliant on mobility for damage evasion, get in return for less dodges? Fewer dodges impacts every class, but it’s the light armour classes that don’t have the TGH or ARMR to absorb damage, unlike medium/heavy classes.

Carighan.6758:

Yes, it has side effects. Any balance change will. Happens, won’t stop an experienced dev (in general) because then you’d never get anywhere.

So…. an experienced Dev just willy-nilly comkittenfs two characteristics (vigor + DE) that impact clone generation which is critical to the core-mechanic of a Mesmer (shatters) and then giggles about it on live-stream whilst clearly not having a clue which ability he was talking about or what it does. The guy with the pony-tail just had no idea and needed to be re-assured by his colleagues.

Yes.. those are experienced Devs.

I get that changes have consequences, some of them unintended. But there’s making a well-though-out change and an ill-conceived change that’s poorly understood.

This is clearly the latter.

Carighan.6758:

Additional food for thought: Very many players couldn’t care any less about roaming in WvW or especially sPvP. Hell, there are plenty players who left to GW2 exactly because they no longer want something like sPvP, they had that in better in WoW.

… so, let’s reduce the game to the lowest common denominator by catering to the masses and thus remove any skill involved in this game. It’s perfectly suited for the instant-gratification generation of today.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I can understand the mesmer community is upset by this..the same as the necro community is saying goodbye to dhuumfire and minions..the same as warrior is saying goodbye to longbow/hammer and healing signet..the same as engi is going to have to live with turret changes. The simple fact is these stated professions were the strongest overall and each need a serious tone in some way. We asked for this against certain professions and we got what we wanted,..just the same as others asked for us to be hit and they got what they wanted. Something big needed to happen to all of us (apart from guardian who quietly sits in the corner knowing nothing big will ever happen to them) so we could eventually let ele shine again.

The difference is that the Warrior “nerfs”, the Necro nerfs and the turret nerfs do not impact on pretty much every build that that class can spec around. However, DE+Vigour changes impact massively on the core mechanic of the Mesmer and thus on every single build that it can spec for.

I get that the developers want to reduce the on-clone-death functionality and re-balance the risk/reward for the PU Condi build. I have no qualms with that.

However, to address an issue you should identify the root-cause and tackle that. The problem with the proposed “solution” is that clone generation through dodges is not the root cause. What needs to be looked at potentially are:

- That clones apply conditions when they get overridden, rather than killed.
- That some on-clone-death traits are perhaps too strong or synergise too well

Now, Mesmers need sufficient clone generation because their Shatters are reliant on it. If you limit this too much, you basically start cutting into one of the key elements of our mechanic (i.e. shatters) and thus disproportionally impact on our effectiveness. Let’s look at the builds that a Mesmer can utilise:

- PU condition: actively tries not to user Shatters, except defensively
- Phantasm: opportunistically but very infrequently uses Shatters
- Mantra: uses most Shatters on a fairly frequent basis
- Lockdown: uses F1, F3 and F4 on a very frequent basis.
- Shatter: is heaviliy reliant on all Shatters, except perhaps F2

By addressing DE (rather than on-clone-death traits or condis on clone-override) you basically negatively impact on all our builds, except the one that you’re trying to target. And it not only impacts our Shatters, it impacts our game-play in general as others have already described (e.g. defensively popping a clone when a thief unstealths, etc).

What is worse, you’ll end up moving us from one “cheese” and passive build (i.e. PU Condi) into another (i.e. Phantasm), whilst the builds that rely heavily on Shatters, timing, disrupts, immobilise and understanding your opponents suffer most.

On the point of vigour… I get that you are trying to reduce the number of dodges in-game, but this needs to be done on a class-by-class basis rather than as a blanket-approach. Lighter classes such as the Mesmer inherently need more mobility and evasion compared to, say, a Warrior.

As such, I’d strongly argue you to reconsider this change.

SO, I get that the developers want to reduce the on-clone-death functionality and re-balance the risk/reward for that build. I have no qualms with that.

However, to address an issue you should identify the root-cause and tackle that. The problem with the proposed “solution” is that clone generation through dodges is not the root cause. What needs to be looked at potentially are:

- That clones apply conditions when they get overridden, rather than killed.
- That some on-clone-death traits are perhaps too strong or synergise too well

Now, Mesmers need sufficient clone generation because their Shatters are reliant on it. If you limit this too much, you basically start cutting into one of the key elements of our mechanic (i.e. shatters) and thus disproportionally impact on our effectiveness. Let’s look at the builds that a Mesmer can utilise:

- PU condition: actively tries not to user Shatters, except defensively
- Phantasm: opportunistically but very infrequently uses Shatters
- Mantra: uses most Shatters on a fairly frequent basis
- Lockdown: uses F1, F3 and F4 on a very frequent basis.
- Shatter: is heaviliy reliant on all Shatters, except perhaps F2

By addressing DE (rather than on-clone-death traits or condis on clone-override) you basically negatively impact on all our builds, except the one that you’re trying to target. And it not only impacts our Shatters, it impacts our game-play in general as others have already described (e.g. defensively popping a clone when a thief unstealths, etc).

What is worse, you’ll end up moving us from one “cheese” and passive build (i.e. PU Condi) into another (i.e. Phantasm), whilst the builds that rely heavily on Shatters, timing, disrupts, immobilise and understanding your opponents suffer most.

On the point of vigour… I get that you are trying to reduce the number of dodges in-game, but this needs to be done on a class-by-class basis rather than as a blanket-approach. Lighter classes such as the Mesmer inherently need more mobility and evasion compared to, say, a Warrior.

As such, I’d strongly argue you to reconsider this change.

All hail your warrior overlords.

I still run sword/sword as I love the idea of it, but it’s frustrating to say at least how often it fails. With a Mesmer you have to setup everything and then are reliant on your burst.

If suddenly your iLeap bugs out and you stand there like a rabbit caught in the headlights whilst half your shatters miss because your opponent isn’t immobilised, you wonder why bother. I wouldn’t mind if it’s intended, but it’s clearly a bug that has been in-game since launch.

Now we’ll have the comkittenf of less vigour and DE changes and we won’t be able to generate as much clones for our shatters and then if iLeap keeps bugging out on top of that, shatter Mesmers will be an extinct race. In reality, we’ll move from one cheese build that doesn’t use shatters (PU condi) to another that hardly ever uses it (phantasm).

Good game….

SO, I get that the developers want to reduce the on-clone-death functionality and re-balance the risk/reward for that build. I have no qualms with that.

However, to address an issue you should identify the root-cause and tackle that. The problem with the proposed “solution” is that clone generation through dodges is not the root cause. What needs to be looked at potentially are:

- That clones apply conditions when they get overridden, rather than killed.
- That some on-clone-death traits are perhaps too strong or synergise too well

Now, Mesmers need sufficient clone generation because their Shatters are reliant on it. If you limit this too much, you basically start cutting into one of the key elements of our mechanic (i.e. shatters) and thus disproportionally impact on our effectiveness. Let’s look at the builds that a Mesmer can utilise:

- PU condition: actively tries not to user Shatters, except defensively
- Phantasm: opportunistically but very infrequently uses Shatters
- Mantra: uses most Shatters on a fairly frequent basis
- Lockdown: uses F1, F3 and F4 on a very frequent basis.
- Shatter: is heaviliy reliant on all Shatters, except perhaps F2

By addressing DE (rather than on-clone-death traits or condis on clone-override) you basically negatively impact on all our builds, except the one that you’re trying to target. And it not only impacts our Shatters, it impacts our game-play in general as others have already described (e.g. defensively popping a clone when a thief unstealths, etc).

What is worse, you’ll end up moving us from one “cheese” and passive build (i.e. PU Condi) into another (i.e. Phantasm), whilst the builds that rely heavily on Shatters, timing, disrupts, immobilise and understanding your opponents suffer most.

On the point of vigour… I get that you are trying to reduce the number of dodges in-game, but this needs to be done on a class-by-class basis rather than as a blanket-approach. Lighter classes such as the Mesmer inherently need more mobility and evasion compared to, say, a Warrior.

As such, I’d strongly argue you to reconsider this change.

I play staff + s/s (lockdown spec) and never use any speed buffs in any of the game modes. Even though I spent most of my time solo roaming in WvW, I don’t really miss the speed as much. Sure, it can be frustrating at times, but I’m a patient man.

Wolvenheart.9681:

Tbh, Hood of Grenth should always be reserved for a necromancer. It just doesn’t fit the mesmer theme of light colours and illusions. (and butterflies).

I’d have to politely disagree.

One of the reasons that I love GW2 so much is that it tried to steer away from many MMO conventions. It hasn’t always been able to achieve its ambitions, but in many other areas it has been successful.

It managed to break largely the holy trinity of tank, damage dealer, healer. It has weapons that can be seen as an archetype for a class, yet can be used by other classes (i.e. I’ve seen various warriors run around with a Vision of the Mists). It has sources of damage that could be archetypical for a class, yet can be applied as well or even better by other classes (i.e. confusion and engineers/thieves). And it has gear that is split up by light/medium/heavy armour, rather than by class, indicating that Anet actually wants you to mix/match armour of various classes.

Although the Mesmer on the Anet website is portrayed with light purple colours and butterflies, this does not mean that there is one archetype for the class. Like some others said, to me it has always been an aristocratic type caster (hence why my previous look was just that) or a ninja-type caster (hence why my new look is dark and menacing).

Not to mention that the main purpose of a Mesmer is to mesmerize and confuse. As somebody in the “Show us your Mesmer” thread replied to my post:

Guardian.5142:

You did pretty well with it too. When I think about what makes the mesmer awesome, I think about deception and giving folks the “wrong impression” as part of the main class “theme”. When I see the Grenth hood, I think necro. When I see the dual swords I think thief/warrior. When your enemy finally prevails in a hard fought battle only to see you burst into a cloud of butterflies, a sword through their back will remind them never to trust a mesmer.

Well done.

The colours are still a work in progress and don’t show as well in the screenshot as I used Abyss, Graphite and Mithril colours. I tried mixing in some purple but it didn’t quite work, although I’ll have another play.

Soulseek.2867:

Btw, I couldn’t help noticing your sick keybinding. What do you use the buttons 2,3,4,5 for ?

ESDF is or movement (forward, backward, strafing), all the action buttons are located around it so I can basically do everything with my left hand. 1 is the elite, F1-4 are shatters. I don’t really use 2-0 for anything. It’s just the way it evolved over 20 years of MUD, RPG, FPS and MMORPG. ;-)

3x Ascended
2x Whisper Blade
1x Hood of Grenth

… what are your thoughts about the look?

Wasn’t too keen on the Ascended look myself, but think that this works rather well.

3x Ascended
2x Whisper Blade
1x Hood of Grenth

… think I made ugly Ascended armour look cool. :_)

vapor.5390:

To land it properly you need to time the 0,5sec( i did not believe it would actually be such a big change to 0,25) correctly, maintains the super narrow 130range distance while channeling, not to be lucky blinded/blocked/ dodged/ccd, not to be skill blinded/ blocked/ dodged/ ccd and last but not the LEAST to not INTTERUPT it with weapon swap( since SC usually leads to some another weapons selfcombochain).

… try playing Mantras on a Mesmer which have a 2s charge and then complain again about 0.5s. ;-)

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Much appreciated!

Yeah, the interrupt rewards are really what separates this build from Mind Crush, but in my opinion this ends up being an overall more efficient build. Between this and Mind Crush, which do you prefer?

I’ve been playing both extensively now the last two days and each has their pros and cons as you would expect.

Personally, Mindcrush suits my playstyle better. The endless stream of boons that you get with it just massively helps with my survivability, not to mention that I can run with Blink and Decoy at the same time. I tend to either hotjoin or solo roam, so survivability is more important to me than raw damage.

That’s not to say that your new build isn’t good. Far from. It’s very very good, but probably shines a bit better when you’ve got some organised people around you, rather than purely having to rely on yourself.

Have just played 7 sPvP matches as hotjoin and although the first few matches didn’t go very smooth as I wasn’t quite sure how to make the build work, after a while it started to come naturally. Chain dazing/stunning whilst whacking in amazing shatter burst or whilst having some hard-hitting phantasms running around will not get old quickly.

Having played shatter most of my GW2 life and MindCrush the last six weeks certainly has helped though as it’s certainly not an easy build to master.

I do really miss the boons on interrupt, but it does significantly address two issues I had with MindCrush:

- Condi cleansing: getting two iDisenchanter up is glorious and may actually try solo roaming without the -40% condi duration food
- Burst: sometimes it felt MindCrush lacked a bit of burst to take down tough opponents, with this build I feel back in my Shatter days again.

In short, I love the build and thanks for it!

Very interesting. Am a massive fan of Mindcrush so definitely will try this one out.

Somewhat concerned about losing Shatter Concentration as it’s awesome for stripping off stability before you disrupt, but iDisenchanter should make up for that. If only this build could allow Bountiful Interruption, I’d be in heaven.

Coincidentally, been running a version of Mindcrush recently without DE but with BI and CI. It’s a monster. :-)

Tomes of Knowledge are great… now everyone can level up their FOTM Warrior faster so we’ll have even more of them in the lakes. :-)

Other than that, the reward is a shambles. Just goes to show that WvW-ers really are second-class citizens. Compared to how easy it is to get Ascended in PVE, in WvW it’s a long hard and boring grind with little to no reward.

Taldren.7523:

Marsares.2053:

This heal mostly caters to passive builds like Phantasm or PU Condition which have a relatively low skill-floor and largely ignore our unique class mechanism of shatters. Nor does it address one of the inherent problems we face (i.e. our role in large-scale fights) as our clones get wiped instantly.

Low skill-floor? Compared to what? Shall I greatly over simplify your play style and suggest that any monkey could do what you do?

Our unique class mechanism is illusions. If you want to just use your illusions as fodder that is fine, but there are other things you can do with them.

“relatively low skill floor” I said. I personally rank our builds as follow (from relatively low skill to relatively high skill).

- PU Condition
- Phantasm
- Shatter
- Lock-down

Now, you can disagree with me or not, but that’s my view, and the newly proposed signet mostly caters to the first two types of build where the core tenet is – and this is obviously a gross over simplification – to rely on the AI of your illusions whilst confusing your opponent with teleports, stealths and other movements, and in doing so largely ignoring our core mechanic of shatters.

Totally agree. I am a solo roamer and don’t find karma-training interesting nor do I like PVE. I play GW2 to fight other players in the WvWvW lakes, and do not expect to be forced on some hamster-wheel in order to have gear that’s on par with PVE-ers, zergers or door-PVE-ers.

BlackDevil.9268:

Same goes for phantasm, yet they add another skill for phantasm. I don’t mind if they want phantasm as superior meta in roaming, but it’s not gonna make the gameplay much more interesting.

I agree. I can see a few builds with this healing signet that would be potentially very strong:

1) PU condition, whereby stealth gives you breathing space to regen health through signet
2) Pure Phantasm, whereby stealth gives you breathing space to regen health through signet
3) Phantasm Lockdown, whereby dazes/stuns/interrupts gives you breathing space to regen health through signet

Xyonon.3987:

So 20-60 HP per Second? Well staying at good ol’ Ether Feast…

They are for a Level 1 and are not the actual HP/s values as these are influenced by – amongst others – your heal power, etc. Ether Feast will give more burst heal, Signet of the Ether probably more sustained heal.

Ether Feast has a base value of 120, thus the new heal may actually be worth it dependent on how long the fight lasts for (with added potential for one-off burst damage).