Guild Wars 2

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Necrotize.2974:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Why not just add some cooldown reduction like nearly every other ability-specific trait?

They probably don’t want to infringe on Alacrity territory, especially since both skills on shield have ways to lower their own cds. Probably worried that too much cd reduction on weapons and on traits could result in a weapon with much shorter cds than intended. Also kinda tricky since Shield 4 applies Alacrity, so by extension, a shorter cd on Shield 4 means shorter cds on everything else.

I hear you on the shield, but I’m talking about wells right now. What’s the point of Alacrity if it just replicates the cdr that’s already baked into other builds?
Give wells a cd reduction and the trait for wells will be worthwhile. The lower cooldown will make well builds feel less like you’re wasting all your utility slots, too.

Guess they’re expecting anyone to be using wells to also be using Shield for good Alacrity uptime. Wells really need some functionality change because we knew they’d be iffy from the start. It says something that the one well people thought was gonna be usable was the one that CC’s people to keep them inside, now that’s gone. Maybe make it so you can trait for wells to immobilize upon creation or at the very least cripple/chill. Suppose they work fine if you’re bunkering, but if that’s what they were intended to be used for, don’t know why we can’t trait for more defensive things on wells like protection or condition removal on cast as opposed to 3 seconds later.

Spamming your shatters like that is probably the best way to guarantee you deal almost no damage to a competent player(sustainable or otherwise) and that you never have them when you need them.

I can already tell you don’t understand the mechanics fully because you mentioned “double heal”. Since the F5 resets both your cds and your health, using your heal skill during the Continuum Split serves no purpose other than triggering on heal effects because as soon as it ends, your health is gonna go right back to what it was when you start the F5. I made a thread in the mesmer forums earlier today that clearly outlines what Continuum Split can and cannot do, I suggest you give it a look so that you can see that it is a really double edged sword that requires on the spot planning and risk assessment before being used.

xDudisx.5914:

Everytime anet creates an op build the ones getting carried by it always come to the forums to say L2P. and don’t present any information to back up their arguments. Chronomancer clearly needs a nerf before they release. Compared with the other specializations it is by far the strongest. Mesmer right now is already one of the god mode classes, even without specializations.

Care to elaborate? Also, why shouldn’t the other elite spec just be buffed instead of nerfing the one that actually adds depth to gameplay? Everytime Anet changes anything, the forums are flooded with people who play classes that feel they didn’t get their fair share of buffs and all they do is call for nerfs to a class they barely understand the mechanics for. Goes both ways.

Silverkey.2078:

tobascodagama.2961:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Basically, being a chronomancer means coming up with ways to use the variety of tricks to compensate for raw damage and durability. Everyone who is complaining about how op it is are just seeing the tricks and assuming that’s just more powerful. What they don’t see is that under the hood, those extra shatters aren’t hitting as hard. And that the chronomancer is more vulnerable than other mesmers.

Yeah, it sounds like Chrono has expanded our 6/6/6/6/6 build into a 6/6/6/6/6/6 build, to hear some people tell it.

… and we can take a few GM per trait lines!

A few? I think you mean all of them.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Why not just add some cooldown reduction like nearly every other ability-specific trait?

They probably don’t want to infringe on Alacrity territory, especially since both skills on shield have ways to lower their own cds. Probably worried that too much cd reduction on weapons and on traits could result in a weapon with much shorter cds than intended. Also kinda tricky since Shield 4 applies Alacrity, so by extension, a shorter cd on Shield 4 means shorter cds on everything else.

Then you’re just getting into “this isn’t fun for me to play, so it should be removed” territory. Mesmer is far more interactive than Turret Engi was. The issue is prior to the patch, mesmers weren’t really a threat to most classes(especially not if you’re vsing a team with a good thief) so as a result, many people got by with sloppy play vs mesmers, when sloppy play is supposed to be the exact thing mesmers punish. It is far easier to complain that something is OP and should be nerfed than it is to actually learn the mechanics and adapt to a balance patch.

I don’t think people should use Ele to justify nerfs to other classes, that’s its own, complicated issue already. But people complained non-stop about mesmers until some of the changes they complained about were reverted(plus a bunch more no one even mentioned). The complaining died down after that, but it is still pretty prevalent. So after the nerfs, people are left with two conclusions if they’re still having trouble with mesmers:

1. The class is still OP and should be nerfed more.

Or

2. I’m still the same player and still not good at fighting mesmers yet.

As you can imagine, many people will flock to option 1 because it is a convenient lie and history has shown that if enough people complain about something, usually a nerf follows.

It is squishy because all of mesmer’s trait lines are not too malleable for each build. Chronomancer needs to replace one of your trait lines, but it doesn’t replace them in functionality usually. Inspiration is our main source of condition mitigation and healing, Chrono doesn’t overlap in functionality there at all really. So if you were running Inspiration, Chronomancy pretty much needs to replace one of your other trait lines. The closest fit functionality wise is probably Dueling, but that still locks at least one of your Chrono traits to make up for the lost Deceptive Evasion. Plus you lose the very useful blinds.

It’s how an elite spec should be if you ask me. Not so strong that everyone has to run it, but not so weak that running it means giving up either a ton of damage or a ton of survivability. It adds depth to your playstyle, not necessarily just strict upgrades or downgrades.

tobascodagama.2961:

Thanks for posting this, Necro. CS is potentially very powerful, but there are also a lot of limitations on its effective use. Just like most of the rest of the Mesmer’s kit.

It’s definitely a complicated tool. A lot of people I talked to seem to have trouble wrapping their head around it conceptually if they didn’t play mesmer. Best way I’ve found to explain it so far is “Skills you use and damage you take during the shift are reset so long as you don’t die before it ends”.

tobascodagama.2961:

Treetoptrickster.4205:

CptCuddles.8912:

My vote is to drop ‘Improved Alacrity’ and create some type of shield augmenting trait (really disappointing this even needs to be suggested).

Make ’All’s Well That Ends Well’ into something more interesting, this trait and wells in general are pretty underwhelming.

I agree about how this trait could use some improvement, but I’m really liking the wells as they are.

I actually think the Well trait is fine as it is. Most builds don’t need it, but defensive PvP builds will spend a lot of time standing in wells with their allies. Two cleanses per well removes a ton of potential condi pressure, especially with Burning being such a big deal in PvP right now.

Maybe change it so it removes the conditions upon creation, then reapplies them to nearby enemies upon ending? Would make it more useful for removing condi bursts while simultaneously improving the offensive power of wells.

Been messing around with this skill just to see how it ticks and all so I figured I’d compile a list of stuff for those who don’t play mesmer or those who may not know all the things you can do with this Shatter.

In no particular order:

1. Continuum Shift cannot be used to get back up once downed. The rift disappears when you are downed, similar to minions. Limited testing due to timing issues so it is unclear if cds are still reset(as in, you use F5 before going down, use a skill, go down and then are revived by someone).

2. Continuum Shift will not remove conditions or reapply conditions that expired during the shift. It does not interact with them at all, making it less effective against condition builds other than condition burst(because you still get the hp lost during the shift back).

3. Continuum Shift functions like portal in that it ignores barriers and obstacles to return you to your location.

4. CS cannot be used in midair/mid jump like other shatters can.

5. CS will only reset skills that finish their casting during the duration. Skills with long cast times must have CS used just before the skill’s casting ends in order to benefit. This is important for PvE players as it allows you to Shift just before the end of Ice Storm, allowing you to cast it twice in a row.

6. Destroying a rift forces the mesmer to revert back to the point instantly. All cds, hp and positions are still reset as usual.

6.5. Building off 6, there is no way(that I know of) to cancel a Shift. Once it is used, you will revert back to that point one way or another.

7. If you had lower hp than when you Shifted, your hp will still go down to what it was when you shifted. Same goes for cds. If it was on cd when you shifted but came off cd while active, once reverted it’ll be on cd again. Thus it is not advised to use CS while your heal(or any important skill really) is on cd because you are effectively lengthening that cd by the duration of the shift(so up to 6 seconds).

8. Clones and Phantasms are not affected by reversion. They will not disappear(other than upon Shattering obviously) or appear in any unexpected ways when you return to the original time.

Any more to add? I feel like the best way to combat all these anti-mesmer/Chrono posts is information about how the class actually functions(instead of all these blatant exaggerations). Also feel free to post your favorite combos to do with CS. I just love the interaction between Chronophantasma, Persistence of Memory and CS. Makes for lots and lots of phantasms, all fairly quickly.

ronpierce.2760:

If you have to make a thread to say it, chances are…

Also, Slow can die in a fire.

Guess that applies to the avalanche of people who make threads just to whine about mesmers, right?

At this point I’d say we’re just wasting our breath. People won’t be happy until mesmers is nerfed back to at least pre-patch standings, while at the same time they want to keep all the changes their class got.

Unfounded statement? Check.
Huge exaggeration for shock value? Check.
Kindergarten level grammar and punctuation? Check.
Calling for nerfs without really explaining anything other than a desire to nerf the class? Check.

This has all the makings of a great post.

How about you people actually play mesmer before calling for massive overhaul of a class spec only in beta. Nah. That’d make too much sense and be way more time consuming than just whining on the forums. I seriously hope Anet doesn’t take this seriously because Chronomancer is incredibly unique and brings so much to the table, it’d be a shame to see it crushed into “just another trait line” before it’s even released.

The fact that you’re calling for massive overhauls after not even a day of testing shows that you not only have no interest in learning any new mechanics(only whining about them until everything is cookie cutter builds), but you also don’t really care what happens to mesmer overall since you don’t play it.

People already jumping on the “ITS OP AND SHOULD BE NERFED INTO THE GROUND” bandwagon after only a few hours of testing? Gotta be a record or something.

Distortion is not a boon so it shouldn’t be affected by boon duration IIRC.

Sweet, wonder if the dps calculating wizards can figure out if this means Mesmers are the best users of Ice Bow. Plus with Chronophantasma, we shouldn’t lose any DPS from doing a full shatter.

If someone could test this it’d be really great. How does F5 interact with conjures? Specifically, I’m hoping it’ll allow for a double Ice Storm from Ice Bow, which could give mesmers a nice boost in the PvE department that isn’t extra reflects.

Middle tier. So same as mesmers, rangers and engineers.

I’d say it’s like talking to a brick wall, but what has a brick wall ever done to me?

Bacon.4918:

apharma.3741:

Cyber Murmeli, if you nerf PU, where do mesmers get their defence from? After nearly 3 years no-one without some kind of mental handicap is falling for clones and there’s now no penalty to cleaving them out which neuters our damage and ability to shatter.

Are you serious?

Mesmers have innate invulnerability through distortion on a 60 second cooldown. Most classes have to waste a skill slot on this; it usually isn’t true invulnerability, but immunity to one type of damage, and is on a longer cooldown. The skills which do offer true invulnerability do not let you attack or use skills while they are active unlike distortion.

The second highest stealth uptime of all classes including the only stealth skill and trait that ignores the revealed debuff.

A 1200 range port on a 30 second cooldown.

Good access to vigor. Decent access to regeneration and protection.

A mid-tier health pool.

Clones which throw off targeting and block range attacks even if the enemy never gets confused by them.

Good access to blinds, confusion (which is defensive and offensive in nature) and weakness if you run staff or powerblock.

I’d say mesmers have some of the best defense in the game without PU. That is why they have always been one of the two classes able to fill the berserker role.

Mesmers have strong defenses because avoiding damage IS their defense. Distortion is a powerful skill on a long cd with situational usage due to the fact that it is a shatter skill, so when you need it most, you may not got the full 4 seconds. This is actually incredibly common against classes with good sources of AoEs since more often than not, clones die in 1-2 hits. True other classes don’t have access to distortion(except elementalist’s Obsidian Flesh, which is basically a 3 clone shatter on it’s one), but other classes have their own damage mitigation. Saying mesmer is strong just because it has a class mechanic that no other class has doesn’t really make sense.

I’m not sure where you’re getting stealth that ignores the reveal debuff, but I’m fairly certain no skill does this anymore. Decoy used to because it for some reason applied a unique type of unstacking stealth, but now it applies the same type of stealth as all other skills and is affected by reveal IIRC.

Blink is a great stunbreak. There are shorter cd stunbreaks and there are better ports. It’s kinda middle of the road honestly. Utility slots have always been a very restricted resource to mesmers with most builds only really having 1 slot to play with, if that.

Mesmer’s uptime on vigor isn’t really anything special seeing as most classes have some trait synonymous to Critical Infusion, sometimes on a shorter cd and some even have multiple.

Health tier pool doesn’t really mean much, mesmer shares that tier with 3 other classes.

Clones only throw off targeting of players not familiar with fighting mesmers. May sound a little harsh, but good players aren’t going to be distracted by clones. Some even have the potential to oneshot clones with auto attacks to prevent shatters. As for blocking projectiles, I can’t say I’ve seen this be an issue, especially since very few skills spawn clones right in front of you, plus many ranged skills pierce their targets anyway.

Blinds are useful, but most of them are coming from Blinding Dissipation, which requires you to shatter and be within melee range of your target. Hardly broken or cause for alarm. Confusion isn’t really a damage mitigator, especially since celestial mesmers aren’t really a thing. If they’re a power build, confusion can be pretty much ignored and you won’t be taking any big damage from it, much less avoiding attacking.

Weakness is only reliably applied by power block as you said. The only skill that applies weakness on staff is Chaos Storm, on a 35 sec cd with a 33% chance to apply 2 seconds of weakness. Not really reliable.

PainbowBrite.3785:

I’m sorry, but the mantra nerfs did not wreck the spec. It’s still very, very strong.

It made traited mantras and running more than 1-2 very unreliable, especially when you consider that you’re giving up Deceptive Evasion. Between the 3 nerfs to mantra mesmer’s dps (Mirror Blade, Harmonious, and Fire/Air Sigils), more sustainable damage is gonna win out over mantras most likely, especially since it is so clunky to finish a fight now with 1 charge or something. Do I put my heal on cd to get 3 charges back and hope no one finds me while I have no healing skill, or do I hope my next encounter doesn’t require more than 3k worth of heals? It might work in WvW roaming, but in SPvP,recharging mantras on top of the cd they have is just not really worth it unless the fight is over because of how high everyone’s damage is. Prior to the nerf, mantra builds were not common at all. They only became common because of the cd change. Why would they suddenly be “very, very strong” now that they’re essentially back where they started?

Just to preface this, the clunkiness is only really an issue in PvP when taking the time to cast a conjure(plus the lost utility slot) likely for only 1-2 skills is unlikely to be more useful than just another cantrip. I do not think they should be made into a mirror of engineer’s kits. That would be a bit overboard and probably provide way too much utility.

This has probably been suggested in some way, shape or form before, but whatever. Anyway, here it goes:

Either

A: Make conjures replace their respective element for as long as they are active(while still maintaining the ability to drop it). So Lava Axe and FGS would lock you out of your fire skills, Ice Bow locks out water, etc.

Or B: Make conjures replace whichever element they are cast in. So if I’m sitting in Earth and cast Lava Axe, Lava Axe’s skills will replace my earth skills until it either runs out of charges or I drop it. This enables for more in depth planning relating to combo-finishers/fields than plan A does because it puts more choice in the hands of the player. It would also allow builds to pick and choose the proper course of action for each situation. Fresh Air build getting stuck on fire too often due to slow auto attack? Replace fire with Ice Bow for quick crits. Staff build could use more blast finishers? Replace Air attunement with Lava Axe or Hammer.

I prefer B honestly, but I think either is viable.

Additionally, a quality of life change regarding the second conjure. If all charges on your conjure are exhausted and the second weapon has not been picked up, consuming the final charge will automatically equip the second weapon. This addresses the clunkiness related to more mobile fights where running back to your second weapon may not be the best idea without affecting the functionality of PvE where allies usually pick up the weapon.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Nerf D/D ele complaints?(On second thought, please don’t comment about that last one).

I do so love the anecdotes. It’s just a double whammy too when people admit that they don’t actually play mesmer(thus likely don’t really care about what happens to it and sometimes don’t even understand basics of the class).

You won a match on a mesmer.Throws confetti Guess the only logical conclusion is mesmer is so broken that nothing else could possibly be a factor in any of that.

CyberMurmeli.3061:

apharma.3741:

I still see QQ about PU, I see QQ about burst, QQ about condi.

I see QQ from people everywhere. The funniest is from thieves especially ones that were running extremely trolly and forgivable builds pre patch.

Edit: Ha ha as I was typing someone never fails to post meeting my expectations.

Cyber Murmeli, if you nerf PU, where do mesmers get their defence from? After nearly 3 years no-one without some kind of mental handicap is falling for clones and there’s now no penalty to cleaving them out which neuters our damage and ability to shatter.

We lost most of our cripple and weakness on clone death so without PU we have what?

Umm.. Kiting..? Distortion.. Lost of stuff.. People made it work, its player that makes profession viable. If stealth is your only protection (Trying to facetank enemy dps when not in stealth) maybe concider changing class.. xP

If it’s player skill that is needed to make it work, then why would it need to be nerfed? Mesmer definitely has some good ways of mitigating/avoiding damage, and that is exactly how Anet intended it to be. They even flat-out stated that mesmers are supposed to negate/avoid damage completely and not tank it. Stealth fits right into that. Saying Condi PU should be nerfed because it is/was prominent in 1 psuedo-gamemode is just idiotic IMO. This game never was, and probably never will be, balanced around 1v1/roaming.

PU condi wasn’t even really a thing anymore post-patch. It wasn’t even that prominent out of WvW roaming prior to the patch either. Not only did they lose the clone death conditions(which were a pretty big part of PU condi), they also nerfed Maim, meaning even when you aren’t in stealth, most classes can cleanse away your burst fairly easily since it only really consists of two conditions, especially without the cover conditions of clone death. Too many people just like complaining about anything and everything stealth because it doesn’t usually have a character based counter(like a different trait or utility) and instead relies on player skill to be countered.

Probably because a lot of the people complaining weren’t really looking for balance or fixes, they just wanted to see mesmer get nerfed. That and irrational stealth hate that has plagued thieves and mesmers since pretty much the beginning of the game.

I’m sorry but how is Mimic broken? I can take up one utility slot to pretty much regain the cd on another maybe once or twice per fight. And it is required to be used before they’re needed in the case of stunbreakers.

Chaotic Interruption is great in any lockdown build as it can significantly increase your damage in team fights and allows you to basically call and disable a target in the first seconds of the fight so your team can focus them. I personally run BD to great effect in a boonshare build. Think Chaos posted a video of the match in question, but one or two mesmers running boonshare builds pretty much fills the role of a team rezzer but with greater damage. In the middle of fights it isn’t uncommon to share around 12 stacks of might with allies(usually taking them to around 20) and sharing stability instantly is great. The boons do accumulate, namely swiftness, fury, regen and protection. By the end of the match I shared something like 3 minutes of swiftness and 50 seconds of fury.

It is great build and is definitely viable, it just isn’t meant for hotjoin or solo que without a few changes because it benefits greatly from at least being part of an organized duo.

Zenith.7301:

Necrotize.2974:

Zenith.7301:

Just cap stealth so you can’t go beyond one blast’s worth of stealth.

Shadow Refuge should not provide stealth besides its primary pulse, if you exit it you lose stealth after 4 seconds, when Shadow Refuge ends you have 4 seconds remaining on stealth.

Apply same principle to PU mesmer, they can’t layer stealth. Applying Decoy as soon as mass invis is about to end or vice versa should not renew stealth.

Black Powder probably needs an initiative cost increase. It nullifies melee too easily.

So basically make Shadow Refuge a big “murder me” circle, neuter the main viable thief build, make stealth skipping in pve impossible/stealth based team coordination in PvP unusable, and cause a stealth/reveal interaction a thousand times more annoying than Last Refuge for thieves and mesmers alike. Oh, and nerf a skill that is already initiative intensive because not standing in a little red circle is too complicated.

Biggest issue I have is so many people like yourself call for these crippling nerfs, but really don’t offer much in the way of replacing it. Thieves in particular have an entire trait line devoted to stealth and it is one of their primary damage mitigators. What would you replace it with? Or should thief pretty much stay exactly as they are now, just without their main source of damage mitigation? Same thing for mesmers. Anet has stated before that mesmer’s main source of damage mitigation is damage prevention, IE, stealth, evades, invulns and in-combat mobility. You might as well ask to give warriors the lowest hp pool because a high hp encourages people to face tank things and not dodge, then not replace it with anything.

And I chuckled at the teleport stomp bit. You’re basically just listing qualities of the classes and asking for them to be flat out removed from the game.

God forbid there’s some counterplay to stealth skills. You list stealth skips in PvE as if skipping even requires stealth, which is a chuckle I’ll be honest, there’s not a single part in the game where that is a necessity. Even in the harpy fractal all you need is stability and some reflects while making the run. Otherwise you can stop being a noob and bring your own harpy feather kits.

Shadow Refuge is there for stealth rezzing, or drop targeting, forcing people to use aoe (which most classes that aren’t engineer or ele don’t have without long cooldowns). It’s not there to give you some free 10+ seconds of stealth.

Thief doesn’t need replacement. That would put you in line with berserker rangers, berserker engineers, and berserker ele levels of survival.

You know, so the only berk class in tournaments isn’t thief or mesmer.

But you know, keep being a dimwit and pretend like berk mesmer and thief and even warrior haven’t been the reason pushing all other classes out of berserker amulets in the meta. Anything that isn’t those three is better off running condi bunkers for that very reason, because their mobility and active defense on top of damage output/burst is inferior to a berk thief/mesmer.

You keep talking as if you know what’s best for the game and saying you know “what skills are for” but it is pretty obvious that you don’t or that you’re spouting opinions as facts. Yep, Shadow Refuge is just there for rezzing and dropping target(as if that helps since it is easily one of the most telegraphed stealth skills). That’s exactly what it says in the description: “Use only for rezzing allies. Not to be used to gain stealth for other reasons”.

Thief doesn’t need replacement ayy? Yep, that’ll put it behind zerk ele and zerk engis, which btw, aren’t exactly in a strong spot right now anyway, hence why D/D cele and Soldier Engineer are the norm. Most thieves and mesmers don’t even run zerk amulets anymore because with how much damage everyone is dealing, Marauder is by far a safer option, so you’re a bit out of touch there. Power Creep is happening hardcore, hence why no one uses Zerk amulet anymore. Marauder is just in general a much safer option that takes only a moderate hit to damage.

Keep being rude though, maybe I’ll take your insults to heart and completely agree with everything you say.

bhagwad.4281:

Necrotize.2974:

bhagwad.4281:

Ithilwen.1529:

The statement that Mesmer was never underpowered goes against years of forum posts. I’m sorry, that assertion is just plain wrong. That’s pure sophism.

I own at least one 80 in every class and that’s after deleting several ’toons.

In truth I find D/D ele very difficult to play and exhausting. The work required to keep that lovely boon stack is real.

The ele should be rewarded for good game play if they can do it.

As to Mesmer being “grossly overpowered” I’ll return to you what you said to me about longbow rangers pre – patch; “Learn To Play.”

Mesmer was not underpowered. I’ve been a mes player for 3 years and I was just fine thank you very much.

When the enemy team could run a single thief to effectively take your mesmer out of the game in 20 seconds, I think that’d qualify as underpowered. Many of the most well-known competitive mesmer players even admitted to this.

That’s because the standard mesmer was the power shatter glass cannon. Remember, the “meta” only takes into consideration organized premades. However, the reality is that only a tiny minority of games are 5-man pre-mades with comms. In such a makeup, members rely on other team mates to make up for their weaknesses.

The real PvP consists of teams made up of solo players. Once we accept that reality, a lot more builds open up and are extremely viable. And in that environment, there were plenty of nice mesmer builds that did quite well against thieves.

Yes, but seeing as Anet has made it fairly clear they wish to move into Esports territory, it makes sense they would want to balance around more competitive play. I’m also curious where you’re getting these numbers to compare. You seem to be suggesting that Hotjoin/solo que is the only real test of the state of PvP and that it greatly outnumbers those who do organized pvp. Judging from how often people complained about getting set up against organized/guild teams or even just organized duos when they solo que I’d say that number isn’t as small as you’re suggesting. Not to mention, balancing around organized teams is a whole lot more reliable than balancing around 1v1s and matches pitting uncoordinated teams of greatly varying skill levels against each other.

Michaeas Magister.1589:

Jordo.5913:

I’d like to be able to kill reasonably quick, but I also don’t want to die in 2 hits.

Mesmer. When you absolutely, positively HAVE to kill someone in one second or less using just a couple of keys…

Accept no substitutes.

In light of the recent nerfs, if someone is getting oneshot but a Mirror Burst in under a second, they deserved it or got severely outplayed. Even marauder builds can face tank it now with reasonable success due to the Mirror Blade nerf+Fire/air sigil stealth nerf.

Because a lot of people get things just for the skins. Why bother spending weeks working for something when someone could just come along, pay 20 bucks and achieve the exact same result. If things are easy to get, they lose value. With nothing to work for, many people would probably get tired of the game.

If it bothers you that much, you can indeed buy over hundreds of dollars worth of gems and sell them to get a legendary.

bhagwad.4281:

Ithilwen.1529:

The statement that Mesmer was never underpowered goes against years of forum posts. I’m sorry, that assertion is just plain wrong. That’s pure sophism.

I own at least one 80 in every class and that’s after deleting several ’toons.

In truth I find D/D ele very difficult to play and exhausting. The work required to keep that lovely boon stack is real.

The ele should be rewarded for good game play if they can do it.

As to Mesmer being “grossly overpowered” I’ll return to you what you said to me about longbow rangers pre – patch; “Learn To Play.”

Mesmer was not underpowered. I’ve been a mes player for 3 years and I was just fine thank you very much.

When the enemy team could run a single thief to effectively take your mesmer out of the game in 20 seconds, I think that’d qualify as underpowered. Many of the most well-known competitive mesmer players even admitted to this.

The fact that such a thing is ridiculously easy to test and disprove leads me to believe you’re either very ignorant of not only mesmer skills but also basic game mechanics, or are flat out trolling.

Zenith.7301:

Just cap stealth so you can’t go beyond one blast’s worth of stealth.

Shadow Refuge should not provide stealth besides its primary pulse, if you exit it you lose stealth after 4 seconds, when Shadow Refuge ends you have 4 seconds remaining on stealth.

Apply same principle to PU mesmer, they can’t layer stealth. Applying Decoy as soon as mass invis is about to end or vice versa should not renew stealth.

Black Powder probably needs an initiative cost increase. It nullifies melee too easily.

So basically make Shadow Refuge a big “murder me” circle, neuter the main viable thief build, make stealth skipping in pve impossible/stealth based team coordination in PvP unusable, and cause a stealth/reveal interaction a thousand times more annoying than Last Refuge for thieves and mesmers alike. Oh, and nerf a skill that is already initiative intensive because not standing in a little red circle is too complicated.

Biggest issue I have is so many people like yourself call for these crippling nerfs, but really don’t offer much in the way of replacing it. Thieves in particular have an entire trait line devoted to stealth and it is one of their primary damage mitigators. What would you replace it with? Or should thief pretty much stay exactly as they are now, just without their main source of damage mitigation? Same thing for mesmers. Anet has stated before that mesmer’s main source of damage mitigation is damage prevention, IE, stealth, evades, invulns and in-combat mobility. You might as well ask to give warriors the lowest hp pool because a high hp encourages people to face tank things and not dodge, then not replace it with anything.

And I chuckled at the teleport stomp bit. You’re basically just listing qualities of the classes and asking for them to be flat out removed from the game.

I’m convinced that many people won’t be happy with the state of mesmer until they’re nerfed back to what they were pre-patch(maybe a little further just for the hell of it) while still maintaining all the changes that came to their class.

Not to mention that the percentage of GW2 players that frequent the forums is probably ridiculously small and judging how the game is doing just by how vocal some drama queens are being is probably not gonna produce any meaningful results. For every player that makes a “Goodbye forever” post, 10 more new players probably sign up and play the game without even realizing that “Armageddon” is happening right under their noses on the forums.

Carighan.6758:

Odyssey.2613:

It’s nigh time we start holding the dev’s accountable, specifically by name.
By doing so it’s harder for them to hide behind generic terms like “team”, & “devs”.

By the same token, I think it smells that players can hide behind their account names and attack the devs or cry about each other with no accountability.

Post player real names. And possibly email. Hold players accountable for their comments, too.

(Hint: WoW tried to do this, it didn’t really end well. Now project that back onto your idea again…)

I mean, Devs can easily hold commentors accountable. One swift perma-ban and not only can they not post on the forums anymore, but they also are out however much money they spent on that account. Hard to be held more accountable than that.

I personally just think more personal Dev correspondence would help a lot instead of the countless threads popping up with no Dev responses, then patch notes with no explanations or room for debate. Have the person who is responsible for the balance changes for each class do a QA every once and a while or maybe allow for suggestions to be sent directly to them. The issue remains that logically, the players who don’t play a class will likely outnumber those that do, and if Anet bases nerfs off what they see the majority saying, you’ll have people who don’t play the class and don’t care how it turns out deciding how that class should be balanced.

Mesmer will help you take down nooby players that can’t differentiate between clones and you or can’t handle stealth at all, but if you start to rely on that to survive, better players will just focus you/your teammates and punish your lack of positioning. Their burst got nerfed by a sizable amount recently though, so you need to pick your fights very carefully and know when to back off. Tankier warriors and D/D eles are almost never worth engaging on point unless you can 2v1 them because your damage probably won’t be enough anymore to threaten a competent one.

Those poor squishy eles with their low hp pool. It’s a wonder they even last 10 seconds in PvP.

BurrTheKing.8571:

I find it weird that this is even considered a major “issue” considering Ranger’s place on the hierarchy. They don’t have much going for them and Taunt is the one way for them to make some builds work. I’ve been running Traps in PvP and the only reason I can reliably land them is because of that taunt.

Because people complained non-stop about Blinding Dissipation not working as intended but so few actually care about this, showing that they don’t really care about bugged skills or broken mechanics, they just wanted to nerf mesmer specifically. I honestly thought it’d be the other way around as hard CC that makes you attack the pet is a little more noticeable than a short range, self centered blind.

Zelulose.8695:

Buff S/D healing or damage or evades or CD reduction. It needs to happen for S/D

My mesmer can deal s/d damage with greatsword aa and shatter. But my mesmer can also have 3 phants that deal 5k each. Theif needs this kind of damage.

Thief has that kinda of damage. On dagger. Sword has always been a damage avoidance tool and not merely one of damage. While I agree thief isn’t in the best place, saying it doesn’t compare to a mesmer who somehow has 3 living, DPS phantasms is idiotic. This blatant exaggeration is also part of the reason people are still whining about mesmer and lumping them together with D/D ele despite pretty much all factors of their burst being nerfed(Mirror Blade, HM, Fire and Air Sigils).

If you’re killing people with 3 phantasms and auto-attacks, they’re just plain bad.

Can’t even say CS and PU need to be adjusted anymore because there’s just no combination of traits or weapons that will bring that bursting damage back. Some classes running Marauder can face tank a burst from mesmer just fine and heal up before the next one comes without any real punishment. Anet lowered the damage on several things that affected mesmer’s burst , but instead of slightly toning it down one at a time, they lowered all of them at once which leads to very unburst-like burst(for lack of better words).

People that don’t play mesmers obviously don’t care about the state of mesmers though, because everyone is only really looking out for their own class. Can’t blame them really, but eventually your class will be on the chopping block and no one will really care because they’ll be too caught up in how it might benefit them.

dank.3680:

Necrotize.2974:

It definitely hurts our burst. Guess we’re slowly going back to people facetanking Mirror Blade Bursts and really taking at least 2 to actually go down. I wouldn’t care so much if amulets we reevaluated overall, but I definitely feel the damage lost when I’m fighting people, especially D/D eles. Fought one on point and just couldn’t get him below like 40% because after a burst+some took him there, I just couldn’t seal the deal before his allies showed up. Kinda sucks, but I guess I’ll live.

Throw in the Harmonious nerf as well and it seems like Anet wanted to try slowly toning down mesmer’s damage from several sources, just all at the same time.

omg 2 mirror blade bursts to get someone downed?!?!?!? say it isnt so!?!?? You might have to actually fight a player for 10 seconds to land 2 mirror blades??!?!?!? omfg the world is gonna end…

mesmer confirmed dead

That’s assuming they do absolutely nothing to counter any of your burst. Might as well say 100 Blades is OP because if I stand there twiddling my thumbs for 3 seconds I might die. Tankier classed didn’t, and probably now don’t, even have to try to mitigate the damage from mesmer’s bursts because it just isn’t bursty enough. That fight with the D/D ele went on for ages, simply because with all the nerfs to damage, he just wouldn’t drop below 30-40%, and if I missed a Mirror Burst, he was almost back up to full by the time it was off cd again. People said Blinding Dissipation was OP because it lacked counterplay. No one seems to care that some classes don’t even need counterplay to survive mesmer burst now.

Seeing as Blinding Dissipation wasn’t supposed to go through blocks and evades apparently, I seriously doubt hard CC was meant to.

Figured I’d post this before I go to work so I can jump right in when I get home, so thank you in advance

Basically just the title. I’m looking for a build or builds that you guys would recommend for World Exploration. I know you shouldn’t just pick one build and stick with it the whole way, but that’s what I end up doing more often than not anyway just out of laziness. Haven’t played my ele much of late, but when I did I mostly just used zerker staff in PvE and Celestial staff in PvP, but builds other than staff are great too.

Guess blinds doing the same thing is so broken every other thread on the mesmer forums has to be about it until it’s changed. I don’t really care either way since ranger needed help anyway IMO, but it is interesting to see how people can call a mechanic inherently broken and cry for weeks on mesmer forums, and then many just ignore its functionality elsewhere.

Sandrox.9524:

skcamow.3527:

Kicker.8203:

It was very much a needed nerf. They had waay too much burst for a single combo.

Maybe, but now with the Air/Fire sigil nerf (assuming it’s intended), the mirror blade nerf needs reverted.

what was the nerf?

If I’m not mistaken, they had their damage lowered to about 2/3 what they were previously.

It definitely hurts our burst. Guess we’re slowly going back to people facetanking Mirror Blade Bursts and really taking at least 2 to actually go down. I wouldn’t care so much if amulets we reevaluated overall, but I definitely feel the damage lost when I’m fighting people, especially D/D eles. Fought one on point and just couldn’t get him below like 40% because after a burst+some took him there, I just couldn’t seal the deal before his allies showed up. Kinda sucks, but I guess I’ll live.

Throw in the Harmonious nerf as well and it seems like Anet wanted to try slowly toning down mesmer’s damage from several sources, just all at the same time.

I think I was running something similar to your boonshare. I might have to change my Altruism runes out though since they got stealth changed back to 3 stacks T_T

I didn’t have traited glamours though, but that might change depending on how much the global cd caused by the signet cast annoys me.

At least this isn’t the match before with my nubby death in like the first 20 seconds T_T

This isn’t really directed at any class really(especially not warrior since I’m not familiar enough with it) so just keep that in mind.

No matter how things get balanced, some things are bound to be more effective than others, that’s why meta builds even become so. Just because something is better than the other options doesn’t mean it should be baselined. Have to find that line I guess between something that is integral to the class and something that’s just really good in the current meta. It’s a big grey area and there is no simple, one size fits all classes answer.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Necrotize.2974:

Using mesmer might not be the best example. Illusionary Elasticity was made baseline because it was taken pretty much only for Mirror Blade, but it was also taken in pretty much every build that could afford it.

No it wasn’t. Watch any EU Go4 stream during May and June before the patch and tell me how many mesmers were running Illusionary Elasticity. Nobody running gs + s/t (the most popular build pre-patch) ran Illusionary Elasticity.

I don’t play on EU so I never took much of an interest, so I guess sorry for the mistake. But for the longest time, Metabattle listed two popular builds for mesmer(double ranged shatter and Sw/T Shatter), both of which took iElasticity to boost GS burst. Even if it wasn’t as popular on EU, my point still stands. Mirror Blade took one step forward when iElasticity became baselined, then took two steps back when it was reverted because now you couldn’t get the 4th bounce even if you wanted to. That’s just a simple comparison.