Guild Wars 2

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. Now, Mirror Blade is back to 3 bounces baseline and you can’t trait for the 4th again even if you wanted to. So it’s literally worse than it was pre-patch.

iPersona was made baseline because Anet said they wanted all mesmers to utilize shatters since it was the class mechanic. And also to probably kill the clone death builds that just keep making clones and not doing anything with them.

Swear people are just looking for things to complain about. I’ve never once heard anyone prior to now claim the Mirror Blade was OP because it has long range, makes a clone, applies might/vuln, and can’t be blocked. It’s done the same thing since forever, but now that it’s suddenly worse than it was pre-patch it is way too strong and should stay as is or get nerfed more…

Let’s not forget that Mirror Blade might as well have 240 range as you’re just crippling your own damage while also giving your opponent more than enough time to react if you try casting it outside of melee range. Mirror Blade is undoubtedly strong, but nerfing it back to pre-patch and then some(since you can no longer trait for the 4th bounce anymore) was not only heavy handed, but it also wasn’t even the real issue, which IMO, is the power creep/amulets change. I don’t really wanna go back to the times when anyone who wasn’t pure glass could face tank a point blank mirror burst and recover to safe hp before it was even off cd again. Forget trying to burst anything tankier than marauder too, be better off ditching the fight to +1 somewhere else if it’ll take longer than 30 seconds to kill someone.

Working for me as well now.

Similar thing happening to me. When I first startup the launcher and click login, it just keeps loading and loading and loading. If I click cancel then try and login again, I get the same error.

It disconnected me while traveling to a WP and gave the me typical message about losing connection and how it could be from firewalls etc, then went to desktop.

Kinda relieved honestly, was afraid I’d screwed up my game somehow.

DHawk.2687:

baylock.1703:

Necrotize gets me could we get trait to add 1 bounce to mirror blade

technically a good idea, but i would make it a GM in the same tree as PU
to give players the insentive to not use this trait anymore or rather said increase the variaty of builds
since 1 bounce doesn’t sound like much you have to look at the damage increase that 1 extra bounce gives you, someone calculated it above if I’m not mistaking
since other classes have somewhat useless GM like thief e.g. gain 1 ini on weaponswap, woopdidoo ^^ I think it would make for a good balance

It’d be pretty much the same situation…
Elasticity was a master tier Illusion trait. Not only does it have pretty much no synergy with Chaos traits, but it definitely isn’t worth a GM trait slot, especially when it competes with the Shatter build’s only form of disengage/defense. Saying we should make more useless GM traits because other classes already have them is a horrible way to balance things. So again, 1 step forward, 2 steps back. We could get the bounce back, but we’d have to sacrifice literally all the defense in the current “meta” shatter build just to get pre-patch damage back. And in case you forgot, with pre-patch damage, most classes could face tank Mirror Bursts(In PvP) and recover before the next one came, meaning for most classes 2 consecutive, successful mirror blade bursts was what it took, and because of this, shatter mesmer was not too common in higher end pvp.

I don’t see too much wrong with it because at least now it competes with Ineptitude, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Don’t forget that it also lowers the block duration for scepter 2 if I’m not mistaken. But a GM trait that only speeds up 3 skills and cuts the cd of 2 seems a little lackluster, especially considering how great MH sword is because of Blurred Frenzy alone.

I’ll play around with it, but if it gets nerfed I’ll just go back to Ineptitude which was probably a more reliable choice for PvP anyway.

Nerfing Mirror Blade is just gonna take us back to the pre-patch damage where pretty much anyone but pure glass can facetank and shatter burst and recover. What’s more, with Elasticity baselined, we can’t even spend a trait slot to boost it back. So just looking at Mirror Blade, it is worse than pre-patch as it is now stuck at the base number of bounces pre-patch. Obviously there’s more to it than that(plus power creep), but it literally was one step forward, two steps back.

Lol, I kinda wanna say trolling but after these past few weeks even I can’t be sure anymore.

Elementalists are pretty much standard in every game mode. Between might stacking, water fields+group heals/cleanses and some pretty great DPS, ele is pretty much guaranteed a slot in the party no matter what you’re doing.

Hard to balance D/D ele without affecting all other ele builds? Guess Mirror Blade never got that message. Heck, the mantra recharge and Harmonious Mantra nerf hurt even mesmers in PvE, arguably more than those in PvP.

I just mean like programmable macros that would automatically type something in the current chat quickly. For example, I go to options and type out what I want to say and set it it something like the F4 or F5 key. Now when I press that key, it repeats that message in the current chat.

If by condi mesmer you mean a staff autoattack clone mesmer then sure. No condi mesmer will be applying dangerous stacks of conditions just by staying in stealth. Thief is the same way. In stealth they can do things like Caltrops and Bewildering Ambush. Out of stealth, their condi burst becomes much higher.

Depending on the time and the class daily, I’ve seen one or two rooms that are literally all the same class. Does it prove anything? Yeah. That people want to do dailies. That’s about it.

It is strong, but it is only really impactful when used properly, and if people don’t know where they’re going, don’t know how far away they are from the Entrance Portal, or don’t even know if the Portal is friendly, it kind of limits it’s usefulness outside of organized teams. Hopefully one day Anet will add game supported chat macros too so that I can say “Portal to home/far/mid” or “Mass Invis Coming” without having to type it because IIRC, they don’t want people using 3rd party programs to accomplish this.

Things that would be amazing for portal: This, range indicator either on the mini map or on the Portal Exeunt icon, different colored portals for different teams/red rings around enemy portals, and maybe a tick/timer to show you how long until the connected portals fade. All would be quality of life changes honestly, but would make it much more user friendly.

Also if I’m not mistaken, the Tempest Elite only reduces the cd on the next skill used, whereas alacrity applies to everything on cd while you’re under the effects of alacrity. Both useful in their own way, but I’d say Alacrity is more universally useful.

Yep, because before the patch it was completely impossible to destroy other teams in hotjoin and leave them at 0 points. That never happened. It also can’t happen now unless everyone on the winning team is mesmer. Truly this is a rare occurrence.

There are a lot of mesmers in hotjoin because mesmers are more new-player friendly now. It’ll probably die down in a while, but it’ll be exactly the same when Revenant comes out. Every match with probably have at least 2 and there will be Revs galore in hotjoin.

I have said in previous threads(not like it matters since people love coming here to rename threads and post the EXACT same things) there are certain things I would nerf/change with mesmer. The problem is most of the people whining have no idea how mesmer works and never learned how to fight them properly prior to the patch when most classes could face tank a full burst. They suggest horrible changes, but they don’t care because even if mesmer got nerfed into the ground they wouldn’t care, because they don’t, nor do they ever plan to, play mesmer.

There are at least 4 other threads on the front page alone about this topic in general. Why not share your amazing evidence there instead of flooding the forums like everyone else.

Vizual.3504:

denis.9487:

I’m sorry for the same forum vomit with new titles.

Only way to be heard

Everyone’s heard. Just no one cares after the first 40 threads on the exact same topic.

Well I thought the video was funny and accomplished its purpose(if its purpose was to show off the funny things you hear when you hunt enemies in their teamspeak). Obviously if it was a mesmer roaming guide/montage, it’d be a little out of place as most people expect to watch those and see more competitive play and at the very least against players who understand mesmer more in-depth.

Biggest friendly tip I can give to you is never use a stealth skill while Chaos Storm is still active, it will reveal almost 100% of the time and you even lost a mass invis or two off of it. This also applies to shatters. If you use a shatter and the clones are still in transit to your target, they will reveal you if you’re in stealth once they hit.

The Mesmer community might be a little hostile towards this given what’s going on now because people on the mesmer nerf-wagon will see this video and immediately latch onto it and claim it as evidence for why mesmer is OP and should be nerfed into the ground.

Firebird.8324:

Mesmers are very OP and there are bugs that work to their advantage (shatter blind goes through dodges) no icds for stupid op blinds or boon strips and their stuns are just out of this world. Not only can they 1 shot bunker guards but they can also stop a 3 man rez and put up slow so they can get a quickness invlun stomp. They can rez better than nearly anything, do more damage than anything, prevent any rez from happening on the opposing team, win any 1v1, get out of any fight, have a crazy burst on stupid low cds, moa to counter rampage/lich, mass invis because they really need the stealth… have heal that can out heal warrior heal sig.

So ya, mesmer needs to be nerfed ASAP

Seeing as the mesmer majority teams aren’t doing so well leads me to believe you are overexaggerating. Also blatantly mixing things that are impossibe to take all at once shows that you’re just trying to get the whiners on board. Either that or you have very limited understanding of how mesmers work.

Also on the healing bit. Ether feast only beats out Healing Signet if used off cd every chance with 3 clones each use. So I’ll assume your talking about Mantra. Seeing as it has to be constantly recharged(making it really susceptible to even slow interrupts, especially against other mesmers) and can only be used 2-3 times before needing to be recharged, it makes sense that this skill should outheal the entirely passive Healing Signet healing.

neptunechild.4831:

Necrotize.2974:

Belial.9350:

Extreme.8350:

almost anything can counter “MESEMER” not just useless melee. one trick pony thieves can counter some builds. The best way to counter “mesemer” as a “mesemer”. is actually with condi build but one also has too much counterplay like diamond skin sigh.

Power mantra shatter actually does quite well vs condi mesmer because they have enough cleanses to buy enough time to nuke the condi mesmer.

Conditions still are probably the best counter to most common mesmers since they kind of rely on killing you before the conditions get out of hand. All these pure dps mesmers run either no condition removal or have maybe 1 utility slot for it.

You’re absolutely wrong. Mantra mesmers, running Harmonious Mantras and Inspiration line, can have up to 10 condi cleanses ideally. 2×3 from mantra heal and 4 from F1-F4.

The Mantra mesmer does have more condition removal, but its also a burst build, so condition removal on Shatter will usually be incidental. No one’s gonna waste Distortion to remove a condition unless they’re sure to die without it. Likewise, using Mind Wrack just to remove conditions means you’re wasting a big part of your burst for more sustain. And as Ross said, the Inspiration minor trait is currently bugged with regards to MoR, it never applies to the last charge. So with HM you get 2 cleanses and the 3rd fails, without HM you get 1 cleanse and the 2nd fails. I was mainly referring to the PU Burst mesmers that everyone claims is so unbeatable and god tier because that’s just what I see everyone complaining about the most.

Phaeton.9582:

Necrotize.2974:

Phaeton.9582:

Necrotize.2974:

Oh wait, people on the PvP forums don’t want logic, they just want to complain and have people agree with them.

Is that what you want?

Sorry for troubling your great analytical mind with such flawed and misinformed statements. Condition immunity is an entirely subjective balance matter and should not be dismissed on principle alone

which will likely just be Chill, Immob and Cripple.

It’s a little premature to say “X hardcounters Y and Z is totally useless” seeing as most of this probably isn’t even finalized. Everyone’s just looking for things to complain about.

Is there a source on this? I’ll delete the thread then.

Otherwise you’re being far more speculative than me trying to create a fair scenario for a fandamentally unfair mechanic ‘Necrotize’

Being kinda vague again. Do you mean source for the conditions listed or source for Chill Immob and Cripple usually being cured together? It says “Inhibiting conditions”, this makes me think it doesn’t mean just damaging conditions. Since there are already tons of traits and skills that cure Cripple/Immob/Chill or reduce the durations of those movement impeding conditions, I think it’s reasonable to believe that’s what it means. But I also said “inhibiting” could be defined a different way as well. Weakness for example, inhibits you damage, so it could reduce the duration of weakness. Vulnerability inhibits your defense. There’s several ways it could go, but I don’t see it applying to most damage conditions in any way.

Phaeton.9582:

Necrotize.2974:

Oh wait, people on the PvP forums don’t want logic, they just want to complain and have people agree with them.

Is that what you want?

Sorry for troubling your great analytical mind with such flawed and misinformed statements. Condition immunity is an entirely subjective balance matter and should not be dismissed on principle alone

You’re overexaggerating . Its not even complete condition immunity, just inhibiting conditions, which will likely just be Chill, Immob and Cripple. This immunity also requires the elementalist to take the Tempest line and the Lucid Singularity trait(I don’t think we know what tier this trait is yet, I’d guess master though) which means losing either Fire, Water or Arcana, all of which are kinda vital to the D/D meta build we know today. And it revolves around overcharging attunements, which if I understand correctly, is a channeled ability you gain by sitting in the same attunement for a certain amount of time, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what D/D eles do. You’re complaining about something that hasn’t even been set in stone yet and ignoring all other variables just to focus on a single interaction.

It’s a little premature to say “X hardcounters Y and Z is totally useless” seeing as most of this probably isn’t even finalized. Everyone’s just looking for things to complain about.

Sagat.3285:

Necrotize.2974:

Chill.

This why?

Because all the other skills/traits that remove/reduce “inhibiting conditions” like Roll for Initiative, Charge, Withdraw, Rocket Boots, Overcharge Shot, Mecha Legs, Dogged March, Geomancer’s Training and Don’t Stop all affect Cripple, Chill and Immobilize. Why wouldn’t this?

Or am I misinterpreting your very vague quote and post?

I guess we should ignore the part where Overload seems like a very anti-D/D mechanic since staying in one element for very long is not conducive to might stacking or damage dealing. Lets also ignore the part where it means a D/D ele will have to give up one of their trait lines to get this trait line(and be forced to take Lucid Singularity if they want this condition reduction). If they give up fire there goes a huge amount of damage and a lot of might. Giving up Water means they’ll heal less and take more damage from conditions(plus lose some good group support and cantrip synergy). Giving up Arcana seems very unlikely due to how good Evasive Arcana is. Which trait line would you give up? Also note it says “inhibiting conditions”, which most likely refers to Cripple/Chill/Immobilize and maybe weakness?

Oh wait, people on the PvP forums don’t want logic, they just want to complain and have people agree with them.

Belial.9350:

Extreme.8350:

almost anything can counter “MESEMER” not just useless melee. one trick pony thieves can counter some builds. The best way to counter “mesemer” as a “mesemer”. is actually with condi build but one also has too much counterplay like diamond skin sigh.

Power mantra shatter actually does quite well vs condi mesmer because they have enough cleanses to buy enough time to nuke the condi mesmer.

Because there aren’t any real strong condi mesmer builds anymore since Maim was the main source of damage and got reduced to 1 stack of torment. Conditions still are probably the best counter to most common mesmers since they kind of rely on killing you before the conditions get out of hand. All these pure dps mesmers run either no condition removal or have maybe 1 utility slot for it. Metabattle’s PU mesmer build for SPvP literally has no condition removal other than Sigil of Generosity on sword.

Isn’t this just a great of example of people jumping the gun though? Making definitive decisions about how X and Y will perform in however many weeks or months is not only impossible, but very naive. There is just no reasonable way to predict exactly how things will perform given that the coming expansion will not only bring a lot to mesmers, but also bring a lot to every other class(and a lot of it still being completely unknown).

That and some people take things too personally. But welcome to the internet I guess, where people won’t walk on eggshells around anyone and certainly won’t be afraid to call you out on something you did in the past.

I feel like I should suggest playing a mesmer for yourself(and no, not in hotjoin) because you know, you should probably have some sort of understanding of the class before suggesting changes. But I also feel like that suggestion would fall on deaf ears because 90% of you aren’t interested in real balance or making mesmer balanced(FYI I’m not a blindly supportive mesmer, there are several things I think should be changed) and you just want to whine and exaggerate, because for you, there’s no downside to mesmer getting nerfed since you have no intention of ever playing the class.

People got used to pretty much anything but pro-mesmers never really being a threat so now that you can’t eat a full burst to the face it’s the end of days.

Just to give some perspective, necromancers were(and probably still are) very lacking when it comes to most game modes, especially when compared to the all-star classes that are usually in every match. But does anyone but necromancers really care about that? Not really, because if you don’t and have no intention to play necromancer, why should you care?

bhagwad.4281:

Mak.2657:

Mak.2657:

You know “stability” boon (cowered with other boons or just pulsing)?

Mesmer’s instant stealth skills:
1. Decoy (can be done when stunned)
2. The prestige (can not be done when stunned, need torch)

Thieves instant stealth skill:
1. Blinding powder (can be done when stunned),
2. Hidden thief trait (can be done when stunned, need trait ofc)

Both can cast stealth skills with cast time or combos from stealth.
Mesmer bursts works at melee or almost melee range. Mesmer can initiate burst from distance. Thief can too.

Do not playing with cs right now. Have no big problems vs cs shatter neither on mesmer, nor thief. Idk, mb hadn’t meet good cs shatters. I eat most part of stealthed combo burst, but usually manage to escape and burst back.
Though cs is banned now on angz server, didn’t notice big problems with it when it was allowed (mb just coincidence).

Played pug round as a thief right now. Enemy had 2 mesmers with cs. They couldn’t burst me even together. Keep them busy and contesting point most time of the round through the kiting and los.
I m not good thief, pretty mediocre probably. But knows some basics.

Stealing to gain stealth has costs. To start with, it’s just 2 seconds. Second, it teleports you right into range of your enemy. If you teleport to a clone, it’s even worse. 2 seconds stealth for the loss of an extremely powerful skill that didn’t even damage the other guy… If the purpose of stealth is to confuse your opponent and not let them know where you are, stealing to achieve that is counter productive.

The point I’m making has to do with trade offs and counterplay. When a mesmer decoys or torch stealths, there is no counterplay. No chance of disrupting the stealth. They don’t give up anything. There is no downside to stealthing other than the CD of course.

I mean if a thief is fighting a mesmer, using steal on a clone just to gain 2s of stealth is even worse, because think of the boons they’re giving up!

I’m sorry but do you even play thief? Couple of red flags here, Saying it’s just two seconds makes me think you’re just looking at the traits from wiki because most thieves know the master Shadow Arts minor increases all stealth by 1 second. It has always been this way and even pre-patch it was impossible to take the Stealth on steal trait without having the +1 second stealth minor.

Seeing as all of thieves damage skills and one of their best stealth gaining skills(CnD) are all melee range, steal teleporting you to your target is a huge boon. In fact, many bursts rely on instant teleports to launch fast attacks from outside melee range initially.

If a mesmer is overstealthing, why not do the same? The issue is most thieves are running the typical pre-patch D/P build(still with zerker amulet even though marauder is probably a better option currently), which has a much harder time stacking stealth when fighting competent players. Standing inside Black Powder has always been a viable way to counter unskilled D/P thieves. But if you run S/D, you can 2 for 1 the mesmer when they stealth. CnD to kill a clone(reducing their burst should they try to hit you from stealth or forces them to dodge to make more) and then gain stealth yourself.

Saying there’s no downside to mesmer stealthing is a huge overstatement, especially when thieves are well known for their ability to completely reset/escape fights using Shadow Refuge or even just stealth stacking+Sbow. Every second the mesmer spends recovering in stealth is another second for your SR or steal to come off cd. Another second for Shadow Step to come off cd, etc.

Also can’t forget that sometimes stealing from a clone is a good option as IIRC, it provides Blinding Tuft, which will net you 8 seconds of stealth if you’re running Shadow Arts and Improvisation(11 if you’re running stealth on steal) which is more than enough to recover.

Thieves can no longer hard counter mesmers just by taking 20 seconds to focus them anymore, unfortunately a lot of players got used to not having to try when it came to killing average mesmers.

tobascodagama.2961:

Necrotize.2974:

Null Field and Time Warp can be taken as well as taking Medic’s Feedback. One share the second you drop a Glamour means allies get around 6 seconds of resistance. Pretty substantial IMO.

What’s your Stun Break, then? Seems like you could get bursted down pretty easily by any build with even a little hard CC.

Blink usually. Blink+Null Field+SIgnet. Perma protection does wonders when it comes to surviving bursts and you likely have permanent regen as well.

Take a shot everytime a thread like this pops up. You’ll be drinking for months straight.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Necrotize.2974:

Another thing, if the main reason you liked playing the class was because it was an underdog at the time, you probably picked that class for the wrong reason. Just seems like you purposefully picked the perceived underdog to lord it over other classes or give yourself an excuse should you lose.

If you jump from class to class wanting to play what’s weakest and are advertising it, it just comes off as a little elitist.

Using my class as an excuse for losing is a very strong accusation. Again this post wasn’t to complain, but rather to express what I personally felt after the patch. Clearly some people will disagree and agree, but a frontal accusation isn’t appreciated. (1v1 me irl m8)

It wasn’t meant to be an accusation and I didn’t mean to offend, I’m just saying how it comes off. In some of the first threads on the “mesmer OP” subject there were quite a few people who claimed they wouldn’t be playing mesmer again because it wasn’t an underdog anymore. I was actually surprised how many people flat out admitted they picked mesmer just to be underpowered and not so much because they liked the class. That to me just seems like they picked the class for all the wrong reasons and purposefully wanted mesmer to be unwelcoming to new players.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Short answer: having both forms of boonshare makes the build go from somewhat gimmicky to a legitimately strong build. (Also.. The new bountiful disillusionment helps with that. =P)

If you only had to choose one, I’d say Signet of Inspiration is better than the trait. The ability to directly control when you share the boons makes a major difference.

Sure, you can cancel-cast the phantasm and still proc the trait, but illusionary inspiration tends to be passive 75% of the time and demands a playstyle shift to accommodate it. (Like not summoning phantasms at the start of a fight)

Now an interesting question is if the signet trait is worth it over something like Temporal Enchanter and the ability to share resistance alongside signet of inspiration. I personally haven’t done enough tests to see.

I’ve been messing around with exactly that and tried combining it with a more glamour-centric build with boonsharing being an after-thought(but still pretty big part). Both variations seem to be very effective, although obviously the Glamour trait is better against condi heavy teams. Burn guards in particular have an issue with mesmers running Inspiration due to small amounts of cover conditions, but with Temportal Enchanter, burn guards and even celestial eles will have a problem with your whole team. Sharing up to 6-7 seconds of resistance with everyone on point is crazy good if even one of the opponents is condition focused and effectively takes them out of the equation for the duration.

I’d say both builds have their uses and are both effective. The Glamour traited build however would be better suited to being the team rezzer, as traited glamours+Medic’s Feedback means you can revive regardless of poison or slow.

If you have 2 boonshare mesmers, I see no reason not to have one running Glamours and the other running Illusionary Inspiration. Together they’d have incredibly sustain and if timed properly, pretty much immune to conditions. Say mesmer 1 is glamour traited and mesmer 2 is iInspiration. Drop null field, 3.5 seconds of resistance to both. Mesmer 2 shares, M1 goes up to about 6 seconds resistance and then shares it back to M2(8-9 seconds) and then M2 summons a phantasm to share again putting M1 at about 14-15 seconds of resistance, plus whatever mess of boons there happened to have at the time.

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Now an interesting question is if the signet trait is worth it over something like Temporal Enchanter and the ability to share resistance alongside signet of inspiration. I personally haven’t done enough tests to see.

Unlikely, since in that build you really can’t take more than one glamour. Also, since the duration of the resistance is so low, you’re not going to get much benefit from boon sharing it.

Null Field and Time Warp can be taken as well as taking Medic’s Feedback. One share the second you drop a Glamour means allies get around 6 seconds of resistance. Pretty substantial IMO.

The swiftness it provides is also nice for getting around. On top of that, the random boons it provides can mean an extra 6% boon and condition duration due to Chaotic Persistence. The fact that it isn’t tied to your phantasms like Fay said is another great way to time it effectively and get the most bang for your buck. While you probably won’t have a super impressive stack/duration of boons on yourself, more shares means your allies will. Sharing more frequently can allow you to give allies quite impressive amounts of not only might, but also long duration Vigor, Protection and Regen.

So not necessary by any means, but it does give you the freedom to cast your phantasms when you want to, not just when you have a lot of boons.

Another thing, if the main reason you liked playing the class was because it was an underdog at the time, you probably picked that class for the wrong reason. Just seems like you purposefully picked the perceived underdog to lord it over other classes or give yourself an excuse should you lose.

If you jump from class to class wanting to play what’s weakest and are advertising it, it just comes off as a little elitist.

More importantly, if the goal of balance patches was to make the game “more fun”, not only would the game probably never be even close to balanced, but everything would be incredibly subjective to. Some people found oneshotting with bugged Grenade Barrage fun. Some people find gimmicky builds with obvious weaknesses fun. Some people find consistent meta builds fun. If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one.

StickerHappy.8052:

Necrotize.2974:

Ross Biddle.2367:

One example
I came across this vid on the warrior forum yesterday. Montage of duels this war has with the new build he’s adopted post patch. Final fights are vs a standard shatter mes setup run by a relatively average mes (link starts at mes fight). This war is running duel melee.

https://youtu.be/hSIge84iGDw?t=721

It is a duel so things should be taken with a grain of salt, but here’s what I saw:

That is an excellent example of how you should combat a shatter mesmer. More often than not, the warrior destroyed illusions far before they became an issue, sometimes even before they had a chance to attack. By destroying clones quickly, you force the mesmer to burst on your terms, not theirs. If the mesmer goes into stealth, don’t just stop attacking. Head for phantasms, then clones. This insures that the mesmer either needs to waste dodges to produce more(and give away their location), or settle for suboptimal bursts. People got so used to ignoring clones because with debilitating dissipation being commonplace in most build, you didn’t want to go around cleaving them. Now you’re actually rewarded for taking down clones.

FYI, as a warrior you have luxury of taking down clones, High armor, High HP, HS, All those stances, so that comparison is really invalid.

True warrior is in a better place when it comes to taking down clones, but other classes with fast autoattacks or many aoes could probably accomplish something similar. Guardians GS, Thief’s dagger auto, staff ele and I suppose D/D ele, engineers with mortar and grenades, LB ranger’s Barrage is pretty much an anti-shatter field, etc. Obviously not every class can accomplish this and not every build can either, but it’s still a viable counter strategy. Way too often when I stealth mid fight with decoy, people just stand there on point waiting for me while clones tick away. Most are good enough to target phantasms when I’m in stealth, but too many people still have the idea to completely ignore clones ingrained in their heads.

Ross Biddle.2367:

One example
I came across this vid on the warrior forum yesterday. Montage of duels this war has with the new build he’s adopted post patch. Final fights are vs a standard shatter mes setup run by a relatively average mes (link starts at mes fight). This war is running duel melee.

https://youtu.be/hSIge84iGDw?t=721

It is a duel so things should be taken with a grain of salt, but here’s what I saw:

That is an excellent example of how you should combat a shatter mesmer. More often than not, the warrior destroyed illusions far before they became an issue, sometimes even before they had a chance to attack. By destroying clones quickly, you force the mesmer to burst on your terms, not theirs. If the mesmer goes into stealth, don’t just stop attacking. Head for phantasms, then clones. This insures that the mesmer either needs to waste dodges to produce more(and give away their location), or settle for suboptimal bursts. People got so used to ignoring clones because with debilitating dissipation being commonplace in most build, you didn’t want to go around cleaving them. Now you’re actually rewarded for taking down clones.

Suppose it depends on the team comp. A good boonshare mesmer could easily sub for a bunker, especially if they’re with the other boonsharing as you said. If there’s a good D/D ele on the team, I’d take the boonsharers in a heartbeat. Ele+Boonshare is a beautiful thing and usually leaves you with a constant 10+ stacks of might and the ele almost always having around 25.

If your team is unorganized though, bursters probably would do better since when rotations fail, killing fast is usually a nice substitute. At least that way you won’t have any delusions about which way the match is going after a while.

Also consider that it could be due to your own perception. Obviously if prior to the patch you were getting hardcountered or had to work significantly harder to kill someone then all of a sudden you only have to work as hard as other classes, it’ll feel like you don’t have to try nearly as hard to be successful because you got used to being an underdog. A good analogy would be suppose you went your whole life wearing weighted shoes that slowed you down. After a while you probably wouldn’t even notice them anymore. But then one day, you take off those weighted shoes and realized everything is a whole lot easier than before, so easy that things that were previously much more difficult seem incredibly easy. Of course this is all objective and not very precise, but the point still stands.

Prior to the patch, there really wasn’t much to fear from your average mesmer. Their bursts were predictable and most classes could eat a full burst to the face and recover, especially warriors. My experience fighting average to above average warriors in SPvP was that I needed to land 2 consecutive full bursts to seal the deal. If either was messed up, chances are I was wasting my time and I would be of more use elsewhere. It’s not that they could kill me easily(since I usually ran staff so kiting was natural), it’s just that if the fight takes longer than say 45 seconds on point, I’d be much better off just leaving him to cap and +1ing another fight.

Tealots.6095:

Or you go PU condi and puke confusion all over them.

I’d like to request that the animation for confusion be changed from the pink spiral around their head to just having the character continuously throwing up. If that happened, I’d probably never play anything but confusion condi builds.

I mean, there’s no guaranteeing it’ll be great, but I’m sure it’ll at the very least see some use somewhere. But its true, if you don’t like shield, you don’t have to use it. But I always try out new things when they come to PvP because it helps me understand them better and counter them more effectively since I’m bound to run into someone using it. I personally hope that it’ll make for a more reliable AoE interrupt than Pistol as it’s doubtful iCaptain America will outdamage duelist.

Why not just wait to actually test it instead of discounting it so early? Every class is getting a new weapon and a completely new trait line, we have no idea how this could perform in a, hypothetically, completely new meta.

It’s not super impressive, but I still love pulling off ele rezzes using portal. Just feels so satisfying. My best rez ever probably had to be on Khylo. I was capping far and my teammate was fighting a warrior at mid. Apparently they both downed each other at the same time and the warrior had just used his downed skill and was getting up to stomp with stability. I blinked up onto the ledge, dropped down, reverse phase treated to get right up next to him, Mind Wracked to strip stability and popped Diversion just as he was about to finish. He started again as I started rezzing and my weapon swap cd finished just in time for me to switch to GS and iWave him off the point. Vengeance wears off and ally rallies and I felt pretty good about that :P

I’ve played with PU(it’s not my cup of tea since I prefer support anyway) and honestly found it fine for what it accomplishes. If I’m just jumping in solo Q and I know I’ll get no cooperation out of my teammates, PU is awesome. Helps me recover from fights that quickly become outnumbered massacres which happen quite often if one team is more organized than the other. The increased duration provides a clear benefit in engaging and disengaging, but not an obscene one. Basically I don’t have to waste Blink now if I want to get the jump on someone or get away. There wasn’t a demand for increased stealth duration pre-patch because no one outside of roamers really used it anyway. There were just bigger and better things to run and seeing as mesmer only had 1 real “meta” build that pretty much was run by any competitive mesmer, PU never fit into that.

You keep assuming that you’re right and that you don’t need to provide any real evidence to support your claims. “Pretty easy to conclude from that alone that the buff wasn’t particularly needed”. You get this from 4-5 people arguing with you on the forums? That’s some solid evidence there. I’m sure the fact that the only builds that included PU listed on meta-battle for months were only under the roaming category means PU was totally great in PvE and PvP right? PU finally shows up on the SPvP build list as well, which is probably why this seems like such a profound change to so many people. It went from never being considered to suddenly a very good choice for SPvP and mesmer actually has more than 1 “meta” build now

You’re repeatedly being confronted for solid answers but literally every single post you make is just a rehash of the previous one and some spin to turn it around on others. To hopefully avoid that, how about I ask a question.

Do you think that Prismatic Understanding is so overpowered that not only is it uncounterable, but also that at all levels of play and gamemodes, PU should be consistently taken instead of other Chaos GM traits or even other trait lines because it is just so great?

Just for the record, I’m not just blindly defending my class. I think some things could stand to be changed and fixed. As for PU, I think the best way to silence all this whining would be to revert it to +1 second base( although +2 seconds would be better), remove might and swiftness from the boon pool, increase Veil base duration to 4 seconds(3 if PU is +2) and Mass Invis to 8 seconds(as well as change the way MI interacts with the manipulation trait to prevent reflects instantly revealing you) and possibly change The Pledge to a static cd reduction.

People dodging hard questions when confronted by saying other people are dodging the questions. I bet this thread will be just as constructive as all the others and totally not devolve in mindless repetition and over-exaggerations. Definitely not. Honestly wish Anet would just merge all of these into one super thread cause I’m getting real tired of seeing a new 2-3 page thread every day that’s pretty much just repeating exactly what was said in PvP forums or restating everything from a thread that died down 2 days ago.

Choppy.4183:

denis.9487:

Dodged what? The trait works. You yourself used it and it let you survive while your own party died and that leads to a nerf?

As has been explained to you repeatedly, that’s not it’s only use, but you remain fixated on this bit to the exclusion of others. Do you know what a strawman argument is?

But, sure, let’s just look at that one thing. Do you think it’s legitimate for a player to consistently survive party wipes without breaking a sweat? How about a party of PU mesmers? What condition would lead then to wipe at all?

And is that the value, in your opinion? Mesmers need a way to survive party wipes?

Oh look, another reference to WvW small group roaming. Totally didn’t see that coming…

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Phil.8901:

This trait is absolutely ridiculous.

It’s incredible how Anet succeeded to buff one trait already op

The result of this it’s not only Phantasmal condi mesmer are super brainless but now shatter power version can use this trait and stay 1 year in stealth, ready to burst people for 15k

Worst trait ever.

Remove it from the planet pls, better game for everyone.

Go ahead and build yourself a “phantasmal condi mesmer,” take it into pvp and tell me how well you do.
I’ll wait.

It’s no joke, I swear the other day a Phantasmal Mage almost grazed me. The gravity of the situation then dawned on me and I thanked the gods that I didn’t have to endure that 1 stack of burning.

Serious note though, no way in hell you’re dying to a Phantasm condi build. The only phantasm that is good for applying condis is iDuelist, and the pistol trait is currently bugged or is bugging out Sharper Images because they don’t stack nearly as many bleeds as they should when the Duelist trait is taken.

Claims like the one above make it kinda hard to take a lot of those calling for nerfs seriously.

Awww I totally thought you had that game too. If the necro hadn’t tried to steal beast you might’ve won though so nice little bit of irony :P

Condis tended to stay on you for quite a while, do you think once the Inspiration minor is fixed it’ll drastically change that or just kinda be a drop in the bucket?

Really exciting match though, those phantasm crits were just so satisfying.

It’s basically coming down to “You need to defend the trait and claim why it shouldn’t be nerfed, but I don’t really need to support why it should be nerfed”. You’re assuming you’re right and that if something isn’t broken then it must be changed. Everytime you’re pressed on this subject you give some half answer that usually has roots in roaming and dueling tied in with some sarcastic or snide remark. Roaming and dueling are pretty much the fulcrum of all this complaining despite them being almost completely inconsequential to balance.

Exciton.8942:

It’s kinda funny when shoutbow/medi guard/cele ele/cele engi dominate the scene, teams stack those professions in PvP.

Now we are supposed to be the OP profession but hardly any team takes more than 1 mesmer. Even after patch, you see ESL teams stack ele, stack warrior, stack guardian. But I don’t see any stack mesmers. And also PU is not even a popular trait among those mesmers.

Yeah, we have CS being too strong and PU being too forgiving. Damage might be a bit too high. But it is not like you auto win by just playing mesmer. People are exaggerating things to an unimaginable level.

Some people could have an agenda if they are really bearing a grudge against mesmers. But unfortunately, I’m guessing a lot of it is just ignorance of how mesmers work. If someone gets totally destroyed by a mesmer post patch and it makes them angry, sadly the first response is usually go to the forums and complain about it, instead of actually making a mesmer and learning the class inside and out. So while some of it is probably intentional exaggeration in hopes of getting something nerfed to pre-patch levels again, I’d bet that a lot of it is just people trying to describe a class that they’ve never played themselves and only have experience fighting against.

People(myself included) have outlined a risks to PU in all game modes, you just choose to ignore them and spout some random cross-class comparisons. Just gonna recap them since I’m really getting tired of every other mesmer thread devolving into the same conversation.

In SPvP, stealth prevent point capture as well as point contesting, so PU is not the best choice for point to point rotating(which is what mesmer is great at). Additionally, it means you interact less with your team since the other GM trait options can be easily used to either protect an ally, buff an ally, or call target on someone and immobilize them in preparation for a coordinated burst. The tradeoff for PU is by losing that interaction with allies you gain more personal survivability as well as a way to safely reposition once you’re focused without wasting blink.

PvE doesn’t really matter as stealth skills are only used for skips anyway.

WvW. This is where all the problems come up because people keep dragging roaming into this. In Zerg v Zerg, PU probably isn’t the best option. Only a few of the boons will be useful and on top of that, AoEs will likely hit you anyway. Being in stealth for too long also means you probably are doing no damage at all since phantasms rarely stay alive for long. The other GM traits would offer more to you and your zerg.

Only reason I said stealth traps could work in the other thread is because when you’re actually playing the way game developers intended(I.E, not 1v1/small group roaming) it isn’t hard to utilize them. Stealth trap near a gate that’s about to broken down to prevent a zerg from stealthing. If it was meant for 1v1 or small group roaming in the slightest, it wouldn’t have 1200 range and a target cap of 20.

You keep saying it lacks counterplay, but what you really mean is that you can’t be bothered to actively counter it. Or you’re just talking about small group/1v1 roaming in WvW still.