Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

And i thought it was bad when people claimed PU gives you 20 stacks of might.

I hear PU mesmers can teleport 2000 range every second they’re in stealth and can see other stealthed targets. Also that PU turns all of mesmers skills into Backstab so Mirror Blade just becomes 4 consecutive backstabs. I main mesmer though so it’s ok, you know I’m not over-exaggerating.

Feel like a broken record here, but I’ll repeat it anyway. WvW roaming is not a good judge of if something is OP or not as the game is not balanced around small scale fights in WvW and it definitely isn’t balanced around 1v1’s.

Think mesmer is low risk high reward in WvW? Of course it is, there’s no penalty for running out of combat, there’s virtually no boundaries, and better gear can increase your damage and survivability. Its exactly the same for any class with good disengage skills. Thief, GS warrior, Ele with FGS, engi with rocket boots+EG, and Sword ranger. If you know after engaging the fight that your opponent isn’t running any strong movement skills or they don’t have movement skills as good as yours, there’s literally nothing stopping you from running until you get out of combat regen, then turning around to ping them before they get theirs. WvW roaming is inherently unfair, no matter what you do.

WilnerGW.3275:

apharma.3741:

WilnerGW.3275:

Every opinion is welcome here. But if u dont wanna discuss anymore jus tgo away. thx

Then care to welcome our opinions by showing the original video where you drop your pants faffing around for a few seconds not checking out your surroundings?

I would open a “wvw tips” topic if i wanted to discuss that dont u think?

Not saying im a WvW master and dont need some improvements

I mean, your opening post didn’t really set up anything for discussion or pose any questions. You pretty much just said “I think this is OP, everyone come and agree with me”. People tried explaining why is wasn’t OP or what you could do to counter it and you kinda brushed it off.

Best advice is make your own mesmer honestly. At first, you probably won’t be really good with it or used to all the different things, which in turn will help you differentiate between a good mesmer and a not-so good one. By doing this and paying attention to how you die most often, you’ll start building up a list of things that often cause you trouble or often kill you.

It also really helps to see all the traits, skills and mechanics from your point of view, makes them easier to remember and notice when they’re being used against you.

Plus you might end up liking mesmer and have a cool new class to play

Ele also has a nice balance of skills that help gain ground against a ranged opponent, or create it when you don’t want them near you. Staff has a plethora of knockbacks/disables/gap creators/etc to keep people away. D/D has Ride the Lightning and burning speed to help gain ground. Focus has ranged knockdowns and chill to stop people from running, but also has defensive skills to stop their attempts at creating space between you. Scepter is the only weapon without any skills in this category so it has to rely on the offhand paired with it.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Ahhh, sounds awesome, ty for the link. Will look at later, oh yeah, last question I forgot to ask….

How does it feel to beat thieves at their own game now?

Its pretty sweet not having to disengage the second I see a thief call target on me. Shatter mesmers got some new tricks to help with the thief matchup, but the biggest boost is that not all mesmers have to play full glkittenter now to be effective. Heck, I play a boonshare build now and fighting on point beside a warrior or guardian gets really crazy when suddenly I share 2 stacks of stability, regen, protection, and put them at over 20 stacks of might, all in under 2 seconds. With the addition of marauder, even glassy shatter mesmers can take a small hit to damage for a lot more survivability vs quick burst classes(like thieves and other mesmers).

Khyber.1284:

Oy vey, I’m reasonably new this forum and I would love to know why there is so much controversy towards this most recent update. A simple “Thank you” thread can be turned into a maelstrom of “opinions”

Because people like to exaggerate and instead of coming in for help on how to beat it or have constructive conversation about what could be done, they’d much rather the class as a whole be nerfed into the ground in the name of “balance”. I mean, what do you expect if you have a ton of people that don’t even play the class(some do, but definitely not all) telling the Mesmer forums what should be nerfed and what it should be nerfed to. Then you have the people that come in claiming to be mesmer mains but just looking through their post history shows they obviously aren’t. And finally you have the people that actually play mesmer seriously or as their main. These people usually have a more civil tone, but that quickly disappears when the mesmer forums are flooded by at least one new whiny post every day that is essentially saying the exact same things as the 20 before it.

Long story short, lots of people who don’t play mesmer think they know what’s best for mesmers and will complain in any outlet they can find.

Maybe there hasn’t been any changes because they don’t agree with you? :P

In all seriousness though, I’d much rather see bugs across all the classes fixed first so that we can truly see how each class stacks up, then start nerfing/buffing things. Doing so before bugs are fixed could end up leaving some classes in a better place than anticipated, or a much worse one.

Firelysm.4967:

I’ll simply put it this way, why does ranger pet reveals you if they hit, and you don’t get revealed when illusions hit you? That is just not justified. First step would be, removing stealth from all classes that are not thief OR Trapper runes. Mesmer should get mirror/mimic mechanics where they simply swap between clones, and ofc illusions are not killable only shatter-able. Amen.

Yeah…no. Rangers pets do not reveal the ranger if they are stealthed and I don’t think they ever have, so no idea where you got that little gem. It doesn’t work that way with any summon as far as I know.

A good mesmer could “fight back” against a good thief pre-patch the same way a house cat could fight a puma. Sure the house cat might land a few scratches, but it will inevitably lose and die or have to run away and hide, even though the puma is probably faster.

Those sound like reasonable changes that I could get behind. With the reversion of PU, Veil really should get the buff to 4 seconds(not 6 so that if necessary you can run through it twice provided you are fast enough) and Mass Invis should go to at least 8 seconds base, possibly 9 base to reach a nice 10 with PU, given how obvious its animation is and how poorly it synergizes with the manipulation trait. I’d also like to see the Manipulation trait apply mirror during the cast time of mass invis instead of after the stealth has already been granted. This will not only protect the cast from things like Knockback shot, but also make random ranged attacks less likely to instantly reveal you after they bounce back the second you enter stealth.

I personally think Blinding Dissipation should be able to go through evades, but not blocks or invulnerability, but that’s just a personal thing that I could probably learn to live without.

UrMom.4205:

Curunen.8729:

Necrotize.2974:

Everytime someone dies to fall damage, it’s really a perma-stealth PU mesmer oneshotting you from stealth then immediately hiding again.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they were really in stealth – or one-shotting you from 9000 range with their unreflectable, unblockable greatsword burst combo.

what makes this specific joke post even more hilarious is people over in the PvP forums actually believe this kitten..

I freaking love this. Yep, all those oneshot mesmers kill you by using Mirror Blade at max range and break their stealth with Illusionary Wave for no reason. We have 1 knockback and using it out of stealth is probably the worst idea for bursting, right next to auto attacking to break stealth. Maybe they should make the GS autoattack sound even more annoying and loud so that people know whenever a mesmer is nearby. Like when you could hear mesmers channeling mantras from across the map.

Everytime someone dies to fall damage, it’s really a perma-stealth PU mesmer oneshotting you from stealth then immediately hiding again.

5 mesmer team must be so godmode that not even the servers can handle it and that’s why we never see one.

Henrik.7560:

Veil is a lie. It is 3 seconds base with 6 seconds on PU. My proof is that I place the curtain and immediately walk through, then it runs out before my stealth does when I have PU on.
PU was fine back in the day when it applied defensive boons with might and swift, and gave one extra second of stealth, now, it’s just kittened. Anet ruined things that were good and made them ugly.

Prior to the patch, I don’t I’d ever seen anyone running PU anywhere except WvW roaming. I’d hardly call a trait that is almost never worthwhile over its other options in any gamemode “fine”. Even if they rolled it back to just the original 3 boons and +1 second, Veil and Mass Invis would still need to be looked at due to very diminishing returns.

Time Warp can be substantially better than Feel My Wrath though. I think a more sensible cd would be maybe around 120, maybe 100. Traited it’ll provide pulsing 12 seconds of slow in a very large area and 11 seconds of quickness, not factoring in boon and condition duration. With boonsharing you can push that quickness up a litte as well as give teammates 6 seconds of resistance upon creation, making it a very good elite skill for turning a fight around. Boosting the dps of everyone on point while simultaneously weakening all enemies and crippling condi classes for 3-6 seconds is pretty nice. It’s also quite possible they’re balancing it in preparation for Chronomancer who will likely have ways to extend quickness/slow or combine them with alacrity. 60 second Time Warp seems excessive though. 20% uptime on Slow in a huge AoE is nothing to scoff at and something I’d much rather have than 10 seconds of fury, so I’d say that’s a little too strong.

Curious if anyone else seemed to notice this, but Runes of Altruism appear to be granting 6 stacks of might instead of the 3 listed. Just wondering if this is occurring for anyone else? Not a gamebreaking thing by any standard, but still makes them quite a bit better than I had originally planned.

Mass Invis is considered the best option when playing with an unorganized team mostly because it allows you to escape outnumbered fights and has a shorter cd than the others. In a more organized setting though, Time Warp can turn a 2v2 or 3v3 on point into a massacre and Moa can stop a Lich or Rampager before they can crack your bunker. Mass Invis is kind of a reactive measure to when those things already happen while Time Warp is proactive and Moa shuts them down before they’re an issue in the first place.

Exciton.8942:

Necrotize.2974:

At that point it’d basically be a worse version of headshot in a utility slot. Longer duration stuns and dazes are what allow mesmers to burst effectively against slippery targets. Even with stuns, you’d be lucky to land a full shatter burst at anything more than point blank range due to illusion travel time and the obvious telegraph of 3 mesmers all running straight for you.

Well, isn’t that always the challenge playing mesmers before the patch? You have high burst but to land it requires setup. Bait out dodges, and use F3 efficiently.

That’s the issue though. All the mesmer skills that “bait dodges” are part of the burst. Mirror Blade cast from far away will most certainly force a good player to dodge and it’ll be what they look for during the fight. But sadly, wasting mirror blade means delaying your burst until its off cd again. Technically a full perfect burst would involve a 3 clone diversion to stack vuln, followed my Mirror Blade>Mind Wrack>Mind stab. You probably won’t be pulling that off against a player that has even a small idea of how mesmer works. So usually you have to settle for Mirror Blade>(dodge if they’re immob’d for clone)Mind Wrack>Mind Stab. To push the damage higher you usually need to use a utility skill like Blink to get a point blank mirror blade or decoy to get an extra clone instantly.

Nerfing Stun durations would just make Chaotic Interruption more necessary. As it stands, getting stunned or immob’d is a huge telegraph for good players. The second a thief sees Immob pop up, you can guarantee they’re about to Withdraw to not only break it and heal, but also likely dodge your entire burst. It’s a double edged sword. Mesmer’s burst requires fast acting and can occur very quickly, so it catches people off guard if they aren’t familiar with it. However, because it happens so fast, that means a single dodge roll can negate the entire thing.

At that point it’d basically be a worse version of headshot in a utility slot. Longer duration stuns and dazes are what allow mesmers to burst effectively against slippery targets. Even with stuns, you’d be lucky to land a full shatter burst at anything more than point blank range due to illusion travel time and the obvious telegraph of 3 mesmers all running straight for you.

Sandrox.9524:

omfg harry potter book had less text than in this thread

Yurr a mesmer Harry!

Mixing up targets with the real mesmer only really works on new players. I mean, remember when PU first became a thing and everyone was crying that it was so broken and OP for mesmer to have that much stealth(which was just +1 second). Then people just kinda slowly realized that if the mesmer is just sitting there in stealth collecting boons, they’re not really doing much to support their team and eventually PU mesmers kinda disappeared from SPvP.

Plus there are tons of people who hate playing against stealth just because it doesn’t have obvious counters that are as simple as slotting a different utility or picking a different trait. This is apparent from the thieves forums since…forever. Most of them wouldn’t be happy until stealth was either completely removed or nerfed into uselessness.

Pepsi.8907:

You’ll create Mirror Bursting aids in our community

Make sure you don’t get hit by his Mirror Blade. I hear that’s how it’s transmitted.

While I agree reveal should be more common, giving out too much of it could invalidate entire utility slots, elite skills, traits or in thief’s case, an entire trait line.

One thing that I thought could be an interesting way to make reveal more prevalent but still maintain the usefulness of stealth and stealth based traits is change most reveal applicators to be AoE based so they are easier to land and give most classes that don’t have access to stealth access to reveal(maybe even give classes with stealth access to reveal, but make it trait based and in competition with the strong stealth traits so you can’t have both). To balance this drastic overhaul, change the way revealed(applied by skills/traits only) works. Players that have been revealed by another player can be seen by the player that revealed them, but the stealth effect remains, so that traits and skills reliant on stealth aren’t rendered useless by long reveal uptime but also so that long duration stealth doesn’t necessarily mean a free opener or escape. Reveal applied by dealing damage while in stealth would remain unchanged. Thoughts?

Just an example to clarify. Say you have a PU mesmer who uses Mass Invis. In response a ranger reveals the mesmer as they’re casting with a sizable AoE skill. This applies reveal to the mesmer so that the ranger can see and target the mesmer but the ranger’s teammates cannot. The mesmer does not lose the benefits of PU and continues to gain boons every second until either the stealth duration ends or the mesmer attacks and breaks the stealth themselves with self-inflicted reveal.

Could even open it up and get a new boon. Something like “True Sight”. While under the effects of True Sight, you can see faint outlines of stealthed enemies and enemy traps. You cannot target stealthed targets, but you can clearly see them and their animations.

Maybe use Twilight instead? I hear its much better for bursts than silly ol’ Sunrise.

Probably because when you’re dueling or roaming in WvW, there’s no penalty for stealthing and just running till you get out of combat regeneration. There never was and multiple classes were capable of leaving combat either with stealth, mobility skills or both. This is nothing new.

Calling mesmers god tier and skill-less because you can win a duel or a small group fight in WvW means literally nothing. D/D or D/P thieves in WvW play exactly the same way. You switch between two modes, damage focus and defense focus. When you aren’t in danger you just focus on damage, when you are, you hop into stealth for as long as you need until you have your cds and hp back. Its already been stated a million and one times why this isn’t a viable strategy anywhere but WvW roaming.

While I know that obviously not everyone in favor or nerfing mesmer thinks like this, posts like those tend to beat the logical thinkers into submission just by sheer numbers. There are a few things I’d like to see changed , nerfed, removed, fixed, whatever you wanna call it across almost all classes. Unfortunately, those posts usually get buried under a sea of WvW roamers and raging people with a vendetta against certain classes.

You’re punished by not getting the interrupt and wasting a charge of your best mantra. It also puts CS on cd if I’m not mistaken because it tries to convert the failed daze into a stun. Could be wrong on this, only tested it for a while and it was still a little uncertain what exactly was happening and it was inconsistent.

Plenty of classes have instant or near instant skills, most of them are teleports to your target(thieves, guards), eles have updraft(which good eles can combine with Lightning Flash for a huge surprise), Warrs have the unblockable Fear Me, necros have instant cast fear in DS, Engis have overcharge shot as well as their healing turret which is almost impossible to interrupt unless you get really lucky. There are more, but the point is that instant interrupt or even just instant skills that are hard to punish exist across all classes.

That said, you know from the start if the mesmer is running mantras, you always know how many they have left, and multiple stacks of stability is the counterplay for that. I see a lot more eles picking Armor of Earth over Mist Form now because popping armor means that not only is the mesmer not gonna get their interrupts, but they probably won’t be able to burst you below 50% now either.

Not really gonna discuss PvE because windup, stealth bursts and pretty much everything else mean very little there. In PvE, dps is king but you could get by on anything really if you play well enough or have a good enough party.

As for WvW, the reason I skipped over this is because once its brought up, most people jump straight to their roaming experience, which should have nothing to do with balance as 1v1 and small group roaming are not a supported game mode. As for zerg v zerg, it doesn’t really matter much what everyone is running, so long as you have enough people, you move as a group and your commander knows how to call out for what they need and the people that have it provide it in time. I don’t know a whole lot about zerg v zerg tactics, but I’d imagine individual player builds and stealth bursts have little to do with it unless you’re talking Veil chaining and stealthing the whole group.

SPvP is the easiest place to look at it as there is a set pool of runes/sigils, stats are equalized and there are only so many stat combinations you can take. And with Anet trying to move in the Esport direction, its pretty clear they want SPvP to be a big attraction factor for new players and potentially competitive players.

As for the “mesmers are OP” thread in the SPvP forums, there are mixed replies in there and some people are obviously just whining. Everytime something changes, there’s always someone complaining because they feel they got the short stick. And nothing baits a stampede of posts like calling someone’s class OP/skill-less. Some people make good points and are logical on both sides, others are obviously just kitten/blindly defending things.

As for getting bursted from stealth in WvW. Casual players trying to roam is their first mistake. When you leave the amulets and stats being handed to you in SPvP for WvW, you can’t expect to do nearly as well as someone decked out in full ascended or exotics when you’re sporting rares. Casual players are probably more suited for what WvW was intended for, moving as a large group and working as a team, not roaming around by themselves and looking around.

In PvE it doesn’t really matter as stealth is primarily used for skipping enemies, not getting a “surprise attack” on an NPC.

ASP.8093:

Necrotize.2974:

Regen was already iffy, but since it was only a 1/3 chance of getting a meh boon, it was ok.

Regen wasn’t iffy.

Because it combined with the preceding minor trait that gave you Prot when you got Regen (15 sec ICD).

Hence the original use of PU to come out of stealth with like 5-10 seconds prot (it was wildly swingy), which helped a ton with survivability during the bad old days.

All I meant by iffy was of the 3, regen is not something you’d need all the time(like if you’re at full hp), whereas Aegis and high protection uptime are always nice, no matter what stage in a fight you’re at.

My favorite is interrupting Heartseeker when they try to dive through Black Powder. Some thieves are fast enough to turn around after and leap through again, but a lot just kinda run around and panic because they’re out of initiative and not in stealth.

Aomine.5012:

Necrotize.2974:

The issue is too many people see stealth as some sort of god mode, so while stealth is at least usable, too many people will never be satisfied with the risk vs reward because they’ll still think stealth makes you instantly unkillable.

Stealth is a powerful mechanic, which is why it has inherent drawback regarding Conquest and doesn’t provide protection against AoEs in WvW. Its also probably why it is only reliably accessed in combat by classes centered around avoiding damage altogether as opposed to tanking hits or simply outhealing them.

Stealth is ok, PU + auto Aegis / protection proc + way too long stealth time is not.

I honestly get more and better Aegis from Chaos storm. Keep in mind they purposefully nerfed PU a while ago to include swiftness and might. Regen was already iffy, but since it was only a 1/3 chance of getting a meh boon, it was ok. With the current iteration, its not uncommon for me to get 3 seconds of swiftness which is gone by the time I leave stealth and come out with a random 2 stacks of might that are about to expire. The defensive boons all last 3 seconds, so that means getting them in the first 3 seconds usually means they’re gonna just fall off if you’re sitting in stealth the whole time.

Sure the duration is long, but the boons aren’t always useful and the ones you want often expire before the stealth is even over. But randomness is as randomness does, and mesmers sure do love their randomness(I do too, but don’t tell Chaos Storm, it might decide to give me 15 seconds of swiftness).

The issue is too many people see stealth as some sort of god mode, so while stealth is at least usable, too many people will never be satisfied with the risk vs reward because they’ll still think stealth makes you instantly unkillable.

Stealth is a powerful mechanic, which is why it has inherent drawback regarding Conquest and doesn’t provide protection against AoEs in WvW. Its also probably why it is only reliably accessed in combat by classes centered around avoiding damage altogether as opposed to tanking hits or simply outhealing them.

Curunen.8729:

Simonoly.4352:

Mesmer is just the ‘newest’ of the current threats right now and therefore most likely to cause an emotional response which translates to rage kittens on various fora. But really, they just need to branch out with their hate a bit…….like me!

In WvW I had a Warrior dodge roll by me last week and I ate a 7.4K Reckless Dodge from that. Then I dodged a bunch of stuff but got hit by one hammer auto-attack for 4.1K. That’s more than half my health from a dodge roll and an auto-attack. It all felt very pre-ferocity and I hated that this could happen.

I had to walk through the edge of an Ele Meteor Shower and was hit by two meteors for 6.9K and 7.5K. I hated that that could happen.

Ate a 13.5K backstab from a Thief that had stealth stacked around a corner somewhere distant. That was pretty hateful.

Having a Guardian do the same with Judge’s Intervention and Binding Blade as he teleports through a wall/floor on top of me also filled me with hate.

Then there was the Ranger that spiked me for 12.5K with a quickness Rapid fire at 1500 range. That brought up a lot of hate.

The only things I’m not finding much to hate on right now are Necros and Engis.

I must find something to hate about them. Any tips?

:D not bad.

The thing I find funniest/strangest is that a lot of things players are complainig about to do with mesmers already existed for ages before the patch such as stealth bursts – it’s only a small number of things that can be considered excessive post patch.

Mesmers and thieves always were new player killers since they usually have the most trouble targeting the mesmer and differentiating from clones and stealth can usually throw new people for a loop easily. People who didn’t really feel like learning how mesmers worked just adapted to face tank things and heal afterwards. Now you can’t do that and they’re left up a creek without a paddle. So what should we do? Nerf the creek apparently.

I suppose 11 stacks of burning in 1-2 seconds is fine though right? Saying we should nerf bursts because some people have low ping and some people how slow reaction times is just catering to the lowest denominator, and since Anet appears to want Gw2 to go in the Esport direction, I doubt they’ll nerf it nearly as much as everyone is hoping, because on the competitive scene most of these things are non-issues. There you have Guards specced specifically to keep everyone alive and they do a hell of a job at it too, whereas in solo-que or hotjoin, you’ll probably join a match full of zerkers so it isn’t surprising when everyone goes down in under 30 seconds.

Guess you forgot to mention that with Churning Earth and Killshot’s big wind up, they’re almost never worth using unless you’re outnumbering a fight or somehow catch someone off guard. As soon as I see an ele 1v1ing me on point start to channel Churning Earth, I know they probably have no idea what they’re doing and are just using things off cd, back up just out of range to force them to blow lightning flash, and then I burst them. Killshot is pretty much the same way, maybe worse because adrenaline dissipates when not in combat. If I see a warrior trying to killshot me, blink towards them, get mirror, throw out mirror blade. Majority of the time they just downed themselves because they weren’t smart enough to cancel killshot. Good warriors will use Killshot to bait dodges and once they know you’re out, only then do they actually land it. Sadly, a majority of them just use it to fill in time between cds and get punished for it.

This game doesn’t have a devoted “Cleric” class because they want to avoid exactly what you stated. People make stupid decisions and play with much less risk when there’s someone sitting right behind them topping them off after every single mistake. You’re not supposed to face tank things in this game, even if you’re the tankiest warrior or a 3k armor guardian. Dodging/evading is and always should be superior to tanking hits.

Aomine.5012:

maha.7902:

i think average reaction time is like around .3s, so someone bursting you in 2 seconds is plenty of time to react. people just don’t like when their egos get hurt and would rather blame other players or classes or builds or w/e, and this happens in basically every pvp game ever.

it’s quite literally just “l2p”.

People have .3 reaction time when THEY’RE PREPARED and THEY KNOW IT’S COMING.

If it’s out of surprise, like from stealth, usually people will have a SLOWER reaction time due to emotionally shocked. This is proven by real life example, when people in shock or panic, they’d actually stop their action in the process and makes them vulnerable. The best example is during a car accident, which under normal circumstances, human should have the reaction speed to avoid the car. But when in panic, you actually stop your action when you see a car’s coming instead of dodging it.

I’d say against a stealth Mesmer that you do not forsee, it takes at least 1 second before you can react when you’re half prepared, and about 2 seconds if you truly do not see it coming.

This is actually not true. At least not entirely from the articles I’ve found. I’ve got a traffic safety and driving manual from a while ago(and I found it online as well) that set people up in a moving based driving simulator that would be subject to sudden onset of powerful winds, thus requiring them to turn the wheel quickly. I felt this was the most applicable comparison as it involves reflexes and muscle control in your hands as opposed to your feet(as the reaction time for breaking when surprised was almost twice that of the one for steering, probably due to not having your foot already on the pedal). Anyway, in this wind simulator, the average reaction time for steering to counter sudden heavy winds was about .39 to .5 seconds. The wind was sudden and occurred in random directions and intervals, which I feel makes it very applicable to this situation.

Just a quick google search for articles on this also shows other sites that claim anywhere from .4 to .7 seconds as well for drivers, although they don’t go so far into their method.

I mean, thieves have always been able to stealth long enough to approach and surprise you, does that mean whenever a thief stealths you just give them a free hit? I’ve seen plenty of people react to my burst, even from stealth. Newer players? Probably not so much unless they just get lucky, but especially in big maps with long walks to the point(like Foefire ), it not that hard to see someone coming and then disappear into stealth. If the mesmer stealthed before coming into view, that usually means they either blew mass invis(which also has a big tell and an after effect) or they’re chaining stealths and blink to get to you in time. Plus Immobilize is a huge obvious tell when playing against mesmer, not even one you can do reliable now as the Sword 3 move is so slow and messed up now. So the only time you’re gonna get that Immob is off CI, whih means your enemy is already aware of you or someone else’s presence, or they’re just flailing around on point for some reason.

Mesmer got a ton of stuff baseline because pre-patch, there was almost no variety in builds. If you wanted to any major help to your team, you went shatter, and that meant taking Illusions, Dueling and Dom. No real room to switch those trait lines around and the traits you picked in most of them were mandatory.Shattered Concentration? mandatory. Illusionary Elasticity and IP? Mandatory. Deceptive Evasion? Mandatory. So that right there set in stone all the trait lines you could take since that puts you at Master level traits in Dom and Dueling and GM in Illusions.

Same goes for your utility slots. Because getting focused meant getting dead, you always ran blink and almost always ran decoy. Last utility was usually portal if your team was smart enough to utilize it. So no condi removal at all, and that was the meta build.

IP was made baseline because Anet said that shatters should be something that all mesmers utilize, not just zerker burst mesmers or Maim mesmers. Mesmer finally has some solid alternative builds that work and achieve different things instead of Zerker shatter being top, maim and lockdown being ok afterthoughts.

Except all other classes can spec for at least 1 dps build and usually at least 1 tanky/support build and tons of things in between. From what I’ve seen, even when specced for full glass, Revs can’t take down people with any sort of consistency, which is surprising seeing as tons of people don’t really know their tells, animations or traits at all yet. So for a class to be specced completely for damage and have the element of surprise to have trouble taking down even other glass build, something is wrong.

There’s a reason Anet doesn’t have a “healer” class in this game. It just leads to pigeon-holing and ends up with classes that really have no viable builds other than heal/buff bot.

I still can’t really believe people are taking this as grounds to nerf mesmer. There’s plenty of far more legitimate concerns you could raise, Warlock will probably never be one of them. Not only is it a power skill on a condi weapon, but it also suffers from the same issues as Guardian’s scepter auto in that just walking is usually enough to evade it unless you’re right on top of it. On top of that, it required immense setup to see that amount of damage. Vuln stacking usually means blowing your diversion with 3 clones active and having none of them miss, plus condis from yet more staff clones, so I wouldn’t even call this a burst seeing as the damage setup probably started a good 5-10 seconds prior to the actual damage. Its even against a ranger. The fact that this happened without Empathic Bond taking away 55% of the damage is all luck of the draw.

High reward for severely outplaying your opponent.

sinject.4607:

Necrotize.2974:

sinject.4607:

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Counters to blinding dissapiations and general mesmer bursts

Warrior: Resistance, endure pain, berserker stance. shield skill 5(traits that reflect projectiles)

Guardians: classical medi heals, tons of blocks either through aegis or focus skill number 5.

just a few examples. Mesmers aren’t unchecked. Maby u ought to actually counter thier abilities instead. Maby more lockdowns? More CC? Maby disengage from time to time? Maby ask your members to take the mesmer down?

blinding dissipation is completely broken, to remedy it either of these things need to happen:

• give it a sizable ICD to prevent it from simply being spammable

or (and probably the better solution)

• move it to grandmaster. since thief’s cloaked in shadows clearly warrants that placement, there is absolutely zero reason for two traits that are doing the exact same thing being differently tiered.

Anet made it pretty clear that GM traits are supposed to be build defining. Blind on shatter is already limited by the fact that its tied to mesmer’s burst and its probably the reason why Cry of Frustration has such a long cd for what it does compared to Mind Wrack. If it did have an ICD, it should be shorter than 10 seconds. This enables it to be up for each Mind Wrack should the mesmer need it, but prevents it from being triggered after a burst or repeatedly with MR+CoF+Diversion in a short period of time. Or give the mesmer more control over it and increase the ICD slightly. A blind that triggers whether you want it or not when you burst is not so great compared to one that can be used independently whenever you want, albeit on an ICD. This embodies the high skill ceiling and battle manipulation that mesmers were built for.

Cross class comparisons are also not a strong argument for changes. Could apply literally the exact same argument to say that Cloaked in Shadows should be Master tier since it has an added effect and all other classes have their fall damage trait at Adept. Or that it should be there because it is a combination of a master tier trait and an adept trait. Its flawed logic.

you lost all validity when you suggested that an on-fall trait is actually worth anything to anyone in pvp. that is an incredibly desperate hail mary attempt at justifying things as they are.

blinding dissipation needs either an 8-10 second ICD or get moved to GM tier. there is no arguing it.

not to mention mindwrack needs lower damage, confounding suggestions/mantra of distraction needs a nerf, PU needs a severe nerf, and GS auto needs to be changed so that it doesnt have ridiculous air/fire proc potential + can be exploited for higher dps. (imo it should be one hit at the end of a substantially reduced cast time for slightly less damage)

When did I suggest that…? I said the cross class comparison logic doesn’t apply here because I can say the exact opposite using the same reasoning. It was an example of how cross class comparisons don’t really provide concrete evidence of anything.

StickerHappy.8052:

Necrotize.2974:

sinject.4607:

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Counters to blinding dissapiations and general mesmer bursts

Warrior: Resistance, endure pain, berserker stance. shield skill 5(traits that reflect projectiles)

Guardians: classical medi heals, tons of blocks either through aegis or focus skill number 5.

just a few examples. Mesmers aren’t unchecked. Maby u ought to actually counter thier abilities instead. Maby more lockdowns? More CC? Maby disengage from time to time? Maby ask your members to take the mesmer down?

blinding dissipation is completely broken, to remedy it either of these things need to happen:

• give it a sizable ICD to prevent it from simply being spammable

or (and probably the better solution)

• move it to grandmaster. since thief’s cloaked in shadows clearly warrants that placement, there is absolutely zero reason for two traits that are doing the exact same thing being differently tiered.

Anet made it pretty clear that GM traits are supposed to be build defining. Blind on shatter is already limited by the fact that its tied to mesmer’s burst and its probably the reason why Cry of Frustration has such a long cd for what it does compared to Mind Wrack. If it did have an ICD, it should be shorter than 10 seconds. This enables it to be up for each Mind Wrack should the mesmer need it, but prevents it from being triggered after a burst or repeatedly with MR+CoF+Diversion in a short period of time. Or give the mesmer more control over it and increase the ICD slightly. A blind that triggers whether you want it or not when you burst is not so great compared to one that can be used independently whenever you want, albeit on an ICD.

Cross class comparisons are also not a strong argument for changes. Could apply literally the exact same argument to say that Cloaked in Shadows should be Master tier since it has an added effect and all other classes have their fall damage trait at Adept. Or that it should be there because it is a combination of a master tier trait and an adept trait. Its flawed logic.

You are forgetting the fact that, we have distortions, we stealth and add those blinds with all the burst we can do.

Hell we can even trait with more reflects. BD is easily useable every 12 seconds, just on mind wrack.

Gimping damage? Mindwrack blind can easily do 2k with mental anguish. And this is only with IP.

With the addition of IP, you can access BD very very easily. No tells either.

Oh I forgot one more thing. We can also trait BD with Mental Defense. Burst + Defense right here. Not encounting distortion and stealth.

No chaos armor either. No Ineptitude.

You’re basically cherry picking the best situations. I haven’t seen many mesmer take Mental Anguish, especially not over power block. Mostly because you’ll rarely hit a target using no skills unless you’re running interrupts, in which case Power Block is better so there’s no real reason.

A build that contains all of the things you’re listing would need Domination+Inspiration+Dueling, so its not a condi build and thus unlikely to be running Ineptitude and probably not having reliable access to Chaos armor, especially not if they’re traiting for reflects because that means they have focus and their other weapon will need to be GS for burst. This also means no torch, so their stealth is either Mass Invis or Decoy. Due to the trait options that also means no PU so stealth isn’t over the top either.

So you’ve got a Sword/Focus+GS mesmer(but probably not an interrupt build) running Decoy+Blink and leaving one slot for condi mitigation because if you traited focus you’re not getting it from Inspiration(you have the bugged Power Cleanse minor but that’s really not enough against any heavy condi class, especially if you aren’t running PU).

Is the build workable? Sure. Mesmer has great build diversity now. But its not over the top. Building to have all those things you listed just means you pass up arguable better things purely to abuse Blinding Dissipation.

Just in case its unclear, I play mostly SPvP. I WvW’d for a while, but I got tired of my assassin build and didn’t feel like regearing so I just stopped.

sinject.4607:

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Counters to blinding dissapiations and general mesmer bursts

Warrior: Resistance, endure pain, berserker stance. shield skill 5(traits that reflect projectiles)

Guardians: classical medi heals, tons of blocks either through aegis or focus skill number 5.

just a few examples. Mesmers aren’t unchecked. Maby u ought to actually counter thier abilities instead. Maby more lockdowns? More CC? Maby disengage from time to time? Maby ask your members to take the mesmer down?

blinding dissipation is completely broken, to remedy it either of these things need to happen:

• give it a sizable ICD to prevent it from simply being spammable

or (and probably the better solution)

• move it to grandmaster. since thief’s cloaked in shadows clearly warrants that placement, there is absolutely zero reason for two traits that are doing the exact same thing being differently tiered.

Anet made it pretty clear that GM traits are supposed to be build defining. Blind on shatter is already limited by the fact that its tied to mesmer’s burst and its probably the reason why Cry of Frustration has such a long cd for what it does compared to Mind Wrack. If it did have an ICD, it should be shorter than 10 seconds. This enables it to be up for each Mind Wrack should the mesmer need it, but prevents it from being triggered after a burst or repeatedly with MR+CoF+Diversion in a short period of time. Or give the mesmer more control over it and increase the ICD slightly. A blind that triggers whether you want it or not when you burst is not so great compared to one that can be used independently whenever you want, albeit on an ICD. This embodies the high skill ceiling and battle manipulation that mesmers were built for.

Cross class comparisons are also not a strong argument for changes. Could apply literally the exact same argument to say that Cloaked in Shadows should be Master tier since it has an added effect and all other classes have their fall damage trait at Adept. Or that it should be there because it is a combination of a master tier trait and an adept trait. Its flawed logic.

So suddenly dealing 9k damage with an easily dodged projectile, summoned from a condi dominant weapons on a power build, against a target loaded up with conditions and 25 stacks of vulnerability is broken? Almost seems like some people will latch onto literally anything if it has enough shock value to support mesmer nerfs.

Laraley.7695:

Necrotize.2974:

Laraley.7695:

Ross Biddle.2367:

It’s funny because I’ve been watching players in game start adapting and bringing builds/strategy to either take Mesmers down, or shut them out.

Guess you guys need to L2P

That, or keep honing your forum warriors kills

It’s funny that usually the bad players who needed mesmers to be this overbuffed now tell everyone to l2p.

People who are actually good at their class realize where the issues are and what needs to be toned down.

Did it maybe occur to you that mesmer could have been underpowered before and the well known pro mesmers had to overcompensate to be viable against pro players from other classes? Naturally if mesmers got buffed in any way, the people that were already very skilled at playing mesmer would feel like they didn’t need to try as hard.

Also, people are quick to cite the pros until their views conflict with yours, then they’re just noob mesmers again. Its been 2 weeks since the patch hit, at least let the big fixes come and the meta settle before trying to neuter things, regardless of class.

I believe that those people’s opinions mean more to me than some random dudes telling everyone to l2p. At least have some decency and admit that there are things about mesmers that need to be toned down, because if you really don’t see that I do not think you can tell anyone to l2p.

I personally think that damage in general needs to be toned down, not just for mesmers. Stats were IMO balanced badly to compensate for the loss of stats via trait lines. Between burns and various power skills across all classes, amulets could do with a little reduction in effectiveness. But its also been 2 weeks, I’d say give it at least a month to settle before drastically altering traits/skills damage or functionality. Only reason I say this is because when I do play burst mesmer, I’m shocked by how many people call it OP, then I look at their build and they’re running almost pure glass themselves or slotted mostly condi mitigation. The meta hasn’t settled yet and its hard to determine what needs to be changed when a good deal of skills/traits are broken still.

Laraley.7695:

Ross Biddle.2367:

It’s funny because I’ve been watching players in game start adapting and bringing builds/strategy to either take Mesmers down, or shut them out.

Guess you guys need to L2P

That, or keep honing your forum warriors kills

It’s funny that usually the bad players who needed mesmers to be this overbuffed now tell everyone to l2p.

People who are actually good at their class realize where the issues are and what needs to be toned down.

Did it maybe occur to you that mesmer could have been underpowered before and the well known pro mesmers had to overcompensate to be viable against pro players from other classes? Naturally if mesmers got buffed in any way, the people that were already very skilled at playing mesmer would feel like they didn’t need to try as hard.

Also, people are quick to cite the pros until their views conflict with yours, then they’re just noob mesmers again. Its been 2 weeks since the patch hit, at least let the big fixes come and the meta settle before trying to neuter things, regardless of class.

As for Blinding Dissipation going through things. I’m unsure if its intended or not. You people are all acting as if this is the first thing to go through evades. Unsteady ground, ring/line of warding, static field and guardian’s GS pull all ignore evades. I haven’t played around with it as much though so I still don’t have a strong opinion either way on this trait.

Ross Biddle.2367:

It’s funny because I’ve been watching players in game start adapting and bringing builds/strategy to either take Mesmers down, or shut them out.

Guess you guys need to L2P

That, or keep honing your forum warriors kills

A lot of people I run into seem to have builds designed to counter the one trick pony burn builds so they slot a bit more condition removal than usual. Since condi memser isn’t so great in SPvP without glorious burning, its mostly all zerkers or marauders and then people get upset that their build specced to counter condis doesn’t also counter zerker anymore. Damage needs to be adjusted all across the classes IMO, but expecting your build to be able to deal with both power and condi while still being able to do respectable damage yourself is a delusions many people seem to labour under.

Gambino.2109:

It’s the blinds, invulnerability, burning that’s killing me

Every single turn in a fight I manage to get blind.. missing my burst

But mesmer only has 1 skill that applies burning consistently… and its only 1 stack.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

apharma.3741:

I respectfully disagree. The following is a build someone used to use before the PU nerf that added might and swiftness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10-Xty8wP24

He didn’t run IP as he didn’t feel he needed it for a 3 clone shatter and watching the video, he didn’t. Once PU was nerfed to what it was before the specializations his build was unplayable, he just couldn’t rely on the boons for defence any more and I did ask him. At the same time 1 extra second of stealth is not worth going for a GM, not when it shares the same slot now as chaotic interruption and other lines have many defensive options.

People could pick up and some did pick up PU before it was nerfed as it was a solid defence trait. Almost no-one but “that one condi build” did so after the nerf as it just wasn’t worth it where as for the condi build they wanted the GM minor (toughness to condi I believe) so 1 extra point for PU usually was the only defence available.

PU pre patch is not defensive enough to pick up sticking at +1s since the boons were watered down. I’d rather go inspiration for the extra condi clears and heals as they massively outweigh PU in combat, especially as burn is still so lethal.

Before, taking PU was sacrificing a lot of damage and utility. Now you get to keep that damage and utility (and more) and still have PU.

But you lose other things. Still in the chaos line, you lose one of mesmer’s few sources of Stability+some other boons, or you lose the ability to call and take down one target with an organized attack. Doesn’t really matter if you live forever with PU if you’re not doing anything to support your team other than summoning phantasms. Sure you can devote your other two lines to dps, but that also means you aren’t running Inspiration and thus probably have no more than the Torch trait(which from my experience only really works well on The Prestige anyway) and a single utility slot to deal with conditions. If you want to build to have high damage and PU, you’re not gonna have much in the ways of condi removal and you certainly won’t have any supplemental healing effects should you get caught by an engi or ranger running reveal skills. Especially with all these burn builds, running Inspiration is not only great for your survivability, but also helps your team as most of the traits apply in an AoE.

Probably won’t be too great until Chronomancer comes out. Then you’ll have great synergy with the trait that reduces the cd on phantasms for every phantasm shattered and the extra phantasm whenever you shatter one. It’ll also get better once the duelist trait is fixed since duelist is probably the safest phant to keep alive against other players. Until then, I don’t think pure phantasm would be a great idea, would be best to mix it with something else to give it that extra finishing power.

Choppy.4183:

Lol, he’s not right when he tries to claim your logic as mine as proof of your point.

As for the usefulness of PU in PvP, you can fight with the other people who’ve said the opposite in this thread in an effort to diminish the importance of the buff and to claim no nerf is needed.

Are you saying you’re using PU in pvp and that you have trouble positioning without it? For realz?

I personally don’t run PU at the moment(playing with glamours because condi meta too stronk), but I have zero problems fighting those who do use it. PU is finally usable in SPvP in comparison to the other traits, which is saying something since Chaotic Interruption basically got fused with a great master tier trait. It makes PU the obvious choice when it comes to off point pressure and point to point engagements. PU aids in positioning, which is vital to the mesmer playstyle. You sacrifice party support/coordinated bursting for more self sustain. The buff was indeed important IMO for the reason I stated earlier. So instead of being some weird middle ground when it comes to duration, it now has a very clear focus that isn’t too oppressive nor too niche to be used.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Necrotize.2974:

I have no idea why people keep bringing up WvW as grounds for nerfing PU. Not only was the biggest offender(condi PU) neutered with the patch, but a majority of the time all they’re talking about is 1v1 and small group roaming which should have zero impact on balancing. Mesmer wants to sit in stealth forever? Run away. They probably only have blink for catching up to you and if they’re not running traveler runes, you shouldn’t have too much trouble escaping them, especially not if you have your own good movement skills(depends on class and build).

1) Many play wvw as their main end game mode and are affected by such things.

2) wvw is where the level of absurd reaches levels that can be just stupid some times.

3) Because regardless of A-Net saying they didn’t care for balance in wvw there are limits to that line of thinking. They still have some responsibilities toward that game mode and had no obligation to make a known problem worse.

4) Running away is not only no fun, it’s simply not always an option.

PU rly sux for almost all in wvw atm and the defense for the huge buff that a build that needed none received is at best lame no matter the game mode. This build is up there with all the no risk all reward hall of fame.

All those points apply almost exclusively to roaming, which as stated before is not a supported game mode. PU is not oppressive at all when it comes to zerg v zerg(the main purpose of WvW) due to the huge amount of AoE. Doesn’t matter if you have stealth, you’re not gonna survive frontlining it without sacrificing most or all of your damage.

If players spent all their time gearing up for roaming, I’m sorry but that’s not really Anet’s problem as roaming was never a game mode they balanced around in the first place.

Choppy.4183:

@Denis
I don’t know how to make a post easier for you to understand. But, swing and a miss, buddy.

He’s actually right. It isn’t causing any glaring issues in any game mode, but we should nerf it just because people don’t like stealth? Its finally a reliable trait choice in SPvP despite the obvious limitations and heavy competition with other GM traits in the line. The increased stealth duration lets mesmers position themselves(which is pretty much life or death for mesmers) without having to waste blink and allows them to disengage from outnumbered scenarios once they’re focused. Prior to the patch, an extra second of stealth wasn’t going to really make or break much of anything(especially with Might and Swiftness in the boon pool). It wasn’t long enough to properly disengage without blink, but it was long enough to make it a bad idea if you need to deal with a capped point. Now at least it allows mesmer to mitigate damage the way they were meant to(by avoiding it altogether) while still supporting their team.

Nerf the duration and its right back to where it was before. Long enough to have issues in SPvP, not long enough to disengage from most classes or reposition yourself mid fight without the use of Blink.