Guild Wars 2

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).

I guess I’ve been using reveal wrong. I’ve been using the lock on trait and Utility Goggles(the perfect mesmer stopper with reveal, vuln, fury, and immunity to blinds) to focus mesmers casting MI, thieves dropping SF, or even just mesmers I know are running decoy right before I CC them. But I guess reveal doesn’t count as a counter to stealth and I must be misunderstanding how reveal interacts with stealth. Heck, if you lost sight of a thief or mesmer, since their best burst requires them to be right on top of you, just keep dropping grenade auto attacks at your feet. Odds are if they try to burst you they’ll become revealed for 6 seconds.

ReaperJr.5967:

I don’t know where you got the idea that mesmer was underpowered pre patch. Ever heard of Lord helseth? Watched him play?

Most of the people who didn’t play mesmer pre patch were daunted because mesmer had a high skill floor and ceiling. Ding ding ding, what’s new?

Now post patch, bad mesmers who get carried by buff are shouting ‘we are finally viable stop crying and l2p whiners’.

So a class is only underpowered if there’s literally no one who is good at playing it? Guess that means classes with lots of competitive players must be OP and should be nerfed right?

Oh look, another one of these threads. I bet it’ll have completely unique and productive conversations. Definitely nothing like “PU is OP in 1v1/roaming” or “My build can’t counter mesmers anymore just by blocking a telegraphed mirror blade” and “I should be able to deal with the rising condi meta but also be able to deal with zerker mesmers and still be able to deal good damage because a build with a weakness makes no sense at all”. I could go on, but seriously people, play a mesmer at least for a while before you come to forums to cry. Sure you may surprise someone from stealth and burst a squishy down, but you’d be surprised how little PU offers to an organized team compared to the other options.

Krys.1835:

Like, we’ve deserved nerfs since the patch. I don’t think any mesmer would agree that the current state of PU is balanced. They’ve just nerfed and gutted so many things about mesmer because of some silly interaction they couldn’t fix. Only 1 nerf they’ve done since the patch was justified. While other pieces are still overpowered the new creative traits and abilities have been gutted or nerfed into the ground and were left where we were before the patch with just a stronger shatter/phantasm. Too much not testing things going around at Anet and its kittening us over…

Imagine the chronomancer coming out, with all these reset mechanics they make us all excited. They cant patch their way out of the most simple interactions, and when they throw band-aids on them they never revisit them. How many band-aids is chronomancer gonna have slapped onto it.. were just going to be mummies a month after x-pack.

Guess you haven’t been reading the PU threads then. People say PU needs to be nerfed, other say it is fine as is. Others go into more complex changes that could be a nerf or buff depending on what you use it for. But that’s not a topic for this thread as there are already several on this exact topic.

Point is, we should look at getting bug fixes before we nerf anything into the ground, and this should go for all classes. Hard to get a good judge of a meta if many key traits and skills are bugged or simply not functioning at all, and without that as a guide line it is kinda hard to tell what is becoming oppressive and what’s just general run of the mill whining.

Stealth’s counterplay in SPvP is the fact that you can’t hold points or greatly support your team’s damage while in it. When the objective is get the most points as fast as possible, doesn’t matter if you never die, if it takes you 2 minutes to get a cap and then takes the enemy 10 seconds of fighting you to decap it, you lost.

In WvW, stealth disruptor traps are a thing, and a thing that will pretty much guarantee that anyone caught in range won’t be stealthing to escape. But I can see it now, “That doesn’t count because no one can use the traps while roaming or in 1v1’s”. That’s because WvW isn’t for roaming or small group fights. What more could you ask for? 1200 range AoE reveal that can hit up to 20 targets and reveal for 30 seconds. Heck, the person in stealth doesn’t even have to be the one to trigger it. Phantasm rolls over trap? Guess you just hard countered a Grandmaster trait for 30 seconds. Ta da~

NvN.4321:

Are you aware that you can just kite until stability / rampage is over? Cooldown on stability skills on war are ~40-60 sec. And you can not always trait / use stability skills because all the condition pressure.
Don’t tell how to counterplay from mesmer perspective. Roll other classes and then talk.

I do play other classes, thief and engineer to be specific, but I have started toying with my necro recently. Sure stability isn’t easily accessible in some builds, but at that point you’re basically saying “I want my build to be able to deal with condition classes, but I also want my build to be able to deal with zerker classes, while at the same time being able to deal respectable damage myself”. And while you’re kiting away that warrior for 20 seconds, he almost certainly got a hold of the point or at the very least decapped it. Kiting is integral to many mesmer playstyles, doing it on a small point while still maintaining pressure is easier said than done.

Also lol’d at that last comment. A huge majority of these l2p issues could be dealt with if people actually bothered to try playing mesmer themselves. Want a build that has more than a single utility slot to deal with conditions? Enjoy neutering your damage. Want to interrupt a heal? Too bad, most of the good ones are passive, instant cast, have blocking frames or happen so fast you’d need to be really lucky to hit it.

Its like people want mesmer to be less new player friendly by raising the skill level required to perform, but at the same time want to reduce build diversity and lower the skill ceiling so that good mesmers have a harder time avoiding damage the way they were intended to. Mesmers should have a higher skill cap to dissuade new players, but also a lower skill cap so experienced players can’t pull off the feats they do currently. And then some just want to nuke PU from orbit because they don’t like fighting it so obviously it shouldn’t even be a viable choice.

I honestly see a very healthy mix of mesmer builds in SPvP, whereas prior to the patch it was almost all zerker shatter builds with maybe a few Maim builds here and there.

robertul.3679:

People hate mesmers for 3 reasons
Domination : CS spammable stuns no counterplay whatsoever, power block on heals is pretty guaranteed win, and the 30% more shatter damage is not too shabby either.

I guess stability isn’t considered counterplay anymore. Open with stab, you waste their CS because it tries to turn the failed daze into a stun IIRC. Heck, I ran into an engi using Juggernaut to basically be immune to any opener that relied on CC from any class. Stab eats the opener, engi switches to toolkit and block the burst that follows. Way too many people just continue with their burst even if the opener failed for whatever reason(like when engis pry bar the air after a failed magnet).

Also as for Power Block hitting heals, its actually surprising how many classes have heals that can’t be interrupted. Warriors run healing signet almost exlusively(at least in my experience, could’ve changed with the patch), Guardians are almost always using Shelter, thieves usually use Withdraw, eles use Signet most of the time, and interrupting a healing turret is pretty much all luck with how fast it gets dropped. That leaves necros, other mesmers, rangers and anyone not running those common heals. Mesmers have several ways to protect their heal(or run mantra), Rangers now have fairly good stab uptime with the elite shout and their pet can absorb your CC if they traited it. Necros are probably worse off against Power Block and are the only class that, AFAIK, have no reliable method to prevent it or good alternative heal.

dank.3680:

denis.9487:

NvN.4321:

Take a warrior and go 1v1 on mesmer in wvw, hell even spvp in certain maps. Then tell me again how i should learn weakness of mesmer class.
I am dealing with your illusions, clones, stealth, dodges, dazes, stun breaks and now the ridiculous dmg boost. And i have to keep constant pressure while trying to burst you to be effective.
If you fail you can just reset the fight and try again and warriors can’t keep up with you anymore because of the GS nerf.
And you are playing vs most telegraphed class in game. The warrior burst are like kitten cinema screen. Earthshaker, backbreaker, skull crack , eviscerate you name it.

The warrior using signet has awesome sustain. Warrior weapons cleave no illusions no burst (removed clone death). Warriors have the same stun breaks plus immunities. Stuns with no diminishing return stun Mesmer is a dead Mesmer. Practice more is the answer to that statement. Sorry Mesmer isn’t face roll for you playing a warrior.

Pretty much any experienced mesmer knows, fighting against a warrior IS a faceroll. Yeah he can cleave clones but I can throw them back up quicker. With all this extra stealth it’s even easier not to even get hit by the warrior, on top of that pretty much constant protection if you manage to slip up and get hit once or twice..

Depends. In SPvP, if you’re fighting over the point you obviously don’t want to stay in stealth for more than a few seconds and you don’t want to kite off point because your dps drops too low at that point to actually kill them. Many run LB since its condi removal that can’t be stopped like other burst skills and that’s basically an anti shatter field for as long as its burning. I usually either need one really good burst on a squishier warr, or two consecutive good bursts to take down your average warrior(since I usually opt for a little more defensive trait/sigil choices). If I mess up the first burst, they usually can gain back enough health to not die to the second. The longer this goes on the worse off it gets because you need to basically kite them perfectly since getting hit by more than one or two of their autoattacks on their dps weapons is no bueno. God forbid you get hit with their damaging burst skill, at that point it’d probably be better to just abandon the point and +1 somewhere else. If you can’t take them down quickly(say under 30-45 seconds), you’re wasting time that could be better spent +1ing a fight.

In WvW roaming/dueling, it doesn’t matter, because its WvW roaming/dueling.

Just be glad there were no nerfs. Gotta look at the positives.

There’s also that vindictive side of people as seen with Warlord of Chaos’ comment that sometimes makes me wonder if people actually think something is deserving of a nerf, or they just don’t like it and want to see it nerfed because of that. I get annoyed when a necro chain fears me or saves DS fear for my heal(since the cds sync almost perfectly), but that doesn’t mean its broken and needs to be nerfed.

It seems no matter the game or balancing, there are always people who hate stealth or mechanics that make it impossible to see your opponent. It makes them feel powerless and instead of getting better at predicting or learning the ins and outs of the class, its a lot easier to just hope that mechanic gets nerfed into uselessness.

Obviously not all of you are like this and some have specific reasons for why you think it should be changed, but judging from mesmer’s history with nerfs, when tons of people cry out for nerfs to everything mesmer, it usually leaves mesmers very unhappy with the state of the class and the whining people no wiser about how to combat mesmers than when they started.

DeWolfe.2174:

Stealth on Mesmer’s is at an idiotic level right now, idiotic. If the Dev’s played WvW or cared about it in the slightest, they’d never had given so much stealth to Mesmer’s.

More like if 1v1 roaming was a game mode they wouldn’t have given this amount of stealth to mesmers. But it isn’t, and they did.

Few people bothered to actually learn how to combat mesmers pre-patch because then, a failed burst basically just meant a dead mesmer. Now that mesmers have more potential for protecting themselves and their burst, people are left with no hp and no clue what just happened because they never bothered to actually form counter strategies for mesmers and instead just went with AoE>Block>Auto attack some>repeat.

Not to mention it seems clear that Anet is moving in a direction where reveal is more applicable and available to several classes. With engis now having 2 skills for it and guards getting a pulsing anti-stealth trap, who knows what other specs might get to apply reveal.

Also feel I should point out that in this condi meta(at least so long as burn is king), PU mesmer is at a pretty big advantage as they will likely have only one utility slot and torch trait devoted to condition clears. If they take Inspiration line to offset this, they probably won’t be dealing any meaningful damage to you and can just be ignored honestly as that leaves only 1 trait line for damage based effects and it will almost always be dueling at that point.

Mesmers are almost always a challenge for newer players due to issues with auto targeting. Unfortunately, many people got over this by getting used to just nuking the area from orbit and just face tanking bursts and attacking in circles like a crazy person. Now people actually get punished for not knowing how mesmers work and they don’t like it.

PU has a great niche purpose among the other GM traits. In coordinated PvP, it allows you to reposition without having to waste your best stunbreaker(Blink) after getting focused by the opposing team. This enables great side point roaming as well as surprise bursts on other zerkers. The long duration makes PU and stealth stand alone good, whereas before if you really wanted to reposition yourself mid fight after getting focused, you pretty much had to waste Decoy+Blink just to alleviate the pressure, which was part of the reason thieves hard countered mesmer so easily. You pop out of stealth, they port to you and finish you off.

Mesmers are not thieves, so cross class comparisons really don’t prove much of anything. Claiming something should be nerfed because its annoying to fight or hard to catch(when Anet has flat out said that mesmer’s main defense is not getting hit in the first place) just opens up literally every meta build to nerfing. Pu doesn’t strongly impact the meta of any game mode(we’ll see once the meta stabilizes), but its at least a viable option outside of 1v1 roaming now. There is actually a tough choice between chaos GM traits now as all have their purposes and all lend themselves to very different builds.

Comparing people who like PU as is to engineers supporting an obviously unintended and bugged skill is a huge strawman if I ever so one though.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Necrotize.2974:

This will probably be a fairly divisive topic judging from what my guildmates had to say, but I’d like to know where everyone stands on Prismatic Understanding. Also a really long post, but if you’re not willing to read it I can’t really force you.

I personally think it is fine as is for a few reasons. Way back before several changes, 1 second of extra stealth really didn’t mean much(hell, thieves got that in a minor trait), but the boons were strong since they were all defensive. Then Swiftness and Might got thrown in, making it a lot less reliable kitten seconds of might when you’ve just entered 4 seconds of stealth is kinda…not useful. So adding Might and Swiftness to the mix was(IMO) a nerf. Increasing the duration to 100% was a good decision because now all the Chaos Grandmaster traits actually feel like build defining traits. It is actually a tough decision to pick one of them, which is how it should be for all trait lines. I’d much rather have tough choices to make instead of entire trait lines that are only really worthwhile if you’re going in for one specific trait. I think this is how all GM traits should be, build and playstyle defining, but not inherently more powerful than the others.

I understand a lot of people’s qualms with PU have to do with stealth. Mesmers, stealth, conditions and clones were all things that made for an annoying fight that didn’t require much risk on the mesmer’s part. This strategy was only really viable and common in WvW roaming(which is btw not a gamemode the game is balanced around) and was essentially useless in 2 of the 3 gamemodes(SPvP and PvE). Long duration stealth doesn’t help you kill your opponent, that’s why those mesmers relied on clone condition application. With the nerf to maim, this strategy is a lot less viable, especially now that burning has become king of dmg conditions and mesmers have almost no way to apply it, let alone stack it.

I’ve started using PU in SPvP as sort of an offpoint harasser and sidecapper. I can say from experience that while 100% duration is a lot, I almost never stay in stealth for that long. Staying in stealth for that long just gives your opponent time to regain cds and prepare. I use stealth for re-positioning, which the added duration is great for. If it were reverted to its previous iteration of 1 extra second and random picks from 5 boons, 2 of them being almost useless at that point, I’d probably never consider PU on tier with the other GM traits again. Giving my opponent a chance to recover and coming out of stealth with 2 stacks of might, some swiftness and maybe one of the defensive buffs really doesn’t seem worthy of a GM trait and if I really wanted boons that badly, I’d just go for Bountiful Disillusionment.

Also keep in mind that Anet seems to be moving towards more reveal access for certain classes. Engi’s lock-on, the spoiled guardian trap, ranger shout and WvW’s stealth trap are all good sources of reveal, so please don’t come to this thread just to complain about stealth. I want to hear opinions on Prismatic Understanding on MESMERS, not stealth in general and not cross class comparisons.

Anybody who has played for at least an hour in wvw and was not a mesmer will tell you this build is supremely broken with no risk at all. It is just THAT bad. At least in WvW.

And I’d be willing to bet it’d be coming from a 1v1 or small group roaming perspective, which may come as a shock to you, but those aren’t supported game modes. This game isn’t balanced around 1v1s or 2v2 in an area expanding almost endlessly on all sides with no real objective other than to kill as many people as possible. If it was, there’d be no need for zergs in WvW, everyone would just run in small groups or go solo. PU has always been superior when it came to dueling because there’s no real objective other than to slowly win. There’s no downside to backing out to reset the fight in a 1v1 in WvW.

As for PU’s contribution to a zerg(the other two GM traits would probably be better suited for a zerg though), the only big impact is on Veil, and stealthing an entire zerg for greater than 2 seconds was nothing a few mesmers couldn’t accomplish already anyway.

I wouldn’t say a majority of players think PU is OP, SPvP just happens to have a very vocal playerbase. Reactions ingame have been mixed, but especially on the forums you need to account for observational bias. People that don’t have a problem with it are going to be far less likely to post a thread claiming it needs to be nerfed than someone who was recently angered by a PU mesmer and hates stealth skills, thus making it look like everyone on the forums hates PU. People without strong feelings on the topic are going to be far less motivated to post about it at all.

As for my opinion. I’m happy with how PU is now. I don’t run it that often, but I like that I can switch out either of the other chaos GM traits and completely change my playstyle while still being viable. Nerfing it back to +1 second but leaving the same boons would just be reverting it and wouldn’t really feel like a difficult choice between the other two traits anymore. If the boons were reverted to the original 3 and duration was nerfed, it’d be ok, but I still prefer the longer stealth duration as it allows for greater repositioning without having to waste blink. And when mesmers main defense is avoiding getting hit, long duration stealth seems like it fits pretty well with that.

As for stealth as a mechanic, I’ve always though that certain things should reveal and certain things shouldn’t, just from a logical standpoint. Blocked attacks should reveal as you’d obviously feel something hitting you. Invuln’d attacks would not cause reveal as they pass right through you. Blind attacks could go either way. If you’re blind and miss them completely, they obviously wouldn’t feel the attack. Part of the reason I’m hesitant is because this would basically just flip the previous role of Mesmer v Thief. With Blinding Dissipation, we could pretty much insure that mesmers never got backstabbed again and that’d be far too great a nerf.

Just for conversation purposes, prior to the patch I thought that applying burn should cause 1 second of reveal upon application(kinda hard to hide when you’re covered in flames). Now that burn is so powerful though, I’m not sure it should have the extra help. Thoughts on that?

I’m pretty sure they’re balancing Elite Specs so that they are viable options, but not necessarily strict upgrades to the current class. In other words, not all mesmers need to be chronomancers and not all chronomancers have an edge over regular mesmers. Way too soon to tell though seeing as a majority of the Elite specs haven’t even been spoiled and nothing is set in stone yet. It’ll probably be worth it no matter what mode you play simply to try out everything. It’ll also make it a lot easier to get a quick grasp of what other elite specs are capable of since its a lot harder to judge that when you don’t even have access to those traits.

Aomine.5012:

You have reflect on dodge, reflect on manipulation, perma stealth, burst from stealth and so on. How can you have trouble with ranger anymore? Are you really THAT BAD?

Bait out the Sig of Stone, go into stealth again, burst again and you win. If he uses RF, just use any manipulation or one dodge roll to make ranger kill himself.

Sounds really like a huge L2P issue on your part.. Mesmer and Ele Hard-counter Ranger. (With the most access of reflection and invulnerable)

If a mesmer has all of that in one build, then they are probably going for a mostly defensive build as all of those things are very redundant. As I said in the other thread, most mesmers opt out of Evasive Mirror(mirror on dodge) as blinding on shatter is better against mesmer’s weaker matchups generally. As for Mirror on manipulation, few mesmers run more than 2 manipulations(blink and Mass Invis) although some play around with the heal skill Mirror for 4 seconds of reflect in exchange for very sub par healing. And like I said before, mirror on manipulation has rather bad synergy with Mass Invis, especially vs ranger. If they see you casting mass invis they can just start casting RF so you either cancel the cast to avoid it, or enter stealth and immediately reflect a few arrows back, thus revealing yourself. I’d address “perma stealth” here but that’d be counter-intuitive as there are already far too many threads about PU.

The whole premise for this is kinda ironic. Thief has issues fighting a class they used to dominate because now when they reset the fight with stealth, the mesmer can too.

But @Aomine, most mesmers I’ve seen don’t take Evasive Mirror as Blind on Shatter is useful in more cases. As for mirror on manipulation, this affects blink and badly affects mass invis. Since the mirror applies after the casting completes, all you really need to do is start a channeled projectile attack or even just a projectile from far away and it’ll hit them in stealth, reflect back to you and give them reveal, effectively wasting an elite on a 72 second cd for them.

Choppy.4183:

Necrotize.2974:

PU was really only called cheese when looked at in a 1v1 dueling/roaming scenario, which isn’t even a real gamemode that this game is balanced around so it should be a moot point. Lots of people call anything having to do with stealth cheese, and those same people usually have terrible ideas to fix it. I’ve heard, make stealth last 2 seconds max, make it impossible to break stealth(can’t attack while stealthed basically), auto reveal yourself whenever you’re near an enemy, and basically just a ton of different ways of saying “I wish stealth either had incredibly easy counterplay that all classes had access to, or was so weak you don’t even need counterplay to stop it”.

Mostly true (except at the beginning, as noted by others). But it was still a reasonably popular trait choice pre-patch (not optimal, but forgiving) that lacked any real justification for a buff.

You’ll note that my comment was in response to someone framing the notion of putting the stealth duration back where it was, when the trait was fine, was an “omfg that’s a 66% nerf!” It wasn’t a call to gut stealth.

If it were set back to the base +1 second and the boons reverted to only include the original 3, it’d be better than nothing, but I still don’t think it is OP in its current iteration. It actually feels like a GM trait now to me and there is for once real merit to all the GM traits in the chaos line. Each is viable and unique. The longer duration helps mesmers with positioning as well as grants a large array of unique boons(Which synergizes well with Chaotic Persistence) and IMO helps reduce the necessity of Blink. Re-positioning in a team fight with the pre-patch PU usually meant Stealth then Blink to insure you shake off any other zerkers targeting you. With the increased duration you no longer need to use blink to re-position effectively.

Not to mention stealth has always had clear disadvantages in all the game modes. In PvE it just means things aren’t dying quickly and is best used for bypassing things altogether. In SPvP, longer stealth duration means a longer period of time where you aren’t holding a point or drawing the focus of the enemy. In WvW, stealth doesn’t protect you from cleave and AoEs so you still need to be very aware of your position, even if they can’t see you.

Choppy.4183:

Sunflowers.1729:

Changing PU back to 1 second (from 3 seconds) is a 66% reduction, or even an 80% nerf in the case of MI. That would be an even larger change. Hopefully this puts it into perspective.

Except people (including some Mesmers) were already complaining about PU before the patch, calling it cheese, etc. There really wasn’t a justification to buff it in the first place. Hopefully this puts it into perspective.

PU was really only called cheese when looked at in a 1v1 dueling/roaming scenario, which isn’t even a real gamemode that this game is balanced around so it should be a moot point. Lots of people call anything having to do with stealth cheese, and those same people usually have terrible ideas to fix it. I’ve heard, make stealth last 2 seconds max, make it impossible to break stealth(can’t attack while stealthed basically), auto reveal yourself whenever you’re near an enemy, and basically just a ton of different ways of saying “I wish stealth either had incredibly easy counterplay that all classes had access to, or was so weak you don’t even need counterplay to stop it”.

Hmm the Lazy Kai build seems to have nice bit of damage but I’m really interested in the confusion build since I’ve always wanted condis to be viable and not just a chore of stacking then kiting. But Esplen, do you mean Sinister gear? I can’t imagine your bleeds or confusions hitting very hard with Assassin and the original 12k confusion build is running sinister IIRC.

I’ll probably try them both out and see which fits with my playstyle more. Thanks you guys

Morwath.9817:

Necrotize.2974:

Morwath.9817:

Necrotize.2974:

Seems no one will be happy until mesmers go back to being pointless to use competitively.

Mesmers were used in competitive games.
I would even dare to say : Misha and Helseth were MVP in their teams.

If I understand correctly, mesmers could bring unique things to the team, usually via portal, but if the other team had a thief that decided to focus you, it was an uphill battle. Prior to the patch thieves could roam faster than mesmers and +1 a fight faster, all while being able to disable an enemy mesmer rather quickly. Now that mesmers aren’t just thief bait and there’s more build diversity besides shatter portal bot, I think mesmers could become a lot more prominent or even necessary.

Prior to the patch you ran Thief+Mesmer, you still do so.
Also, no class should be necessary in sPvP. For this reason we have no Monks in GW2.

But the issue is that some classes are indeed necessary. Eles are pretty much necessary no matter what game mode you’re in. Warriors bring a lot to the table while also being hard to kill. Like it or not, a meta will evolve and certain team comps will just be plain better at more situations. IIRC, metabattle didn’t even list a meta-tier build for mesmer, just listed shatter as great and all the other builds as good. Because it was so much easier to just run Thief+Guard+Ele+Warrior+something else(usually engi, another ele or even another warrior). Mesmers are finally on par so that they can’t be shut down completely by a well played thief and can be a standalone member of the team.

Morwath.9817:

Necrotize.2974:

Seems no one will be happy until mesmers go back to being pointless to use competitively.

Mesmers were used in competitive games.
I would even dare to say : Misha and Helseth were MVP in their teams.

If I understand correctly, mesmers could bring unique things to the team, usually via portal, but if the other team had a thief that decided to focus you, it was an uphill battle. Prior to the patch thieves could roam faster than mesmers and +1 a fight faster, all while being able to disable an enemy mesmer rather quickly. Now that mesmers aren’t just thief bait and there’s more build diversity besides shatter portal bot, I think mesmers could become a lot more prominent or even necessary.

I’ve been putting it off for forever now but I think I’ll finally get to achieving world completion. Only have like 50% now, but I figured I’d try to grind it out. That said, I’m looking for the most painless build to do it since I don’t want to spend too much time going through it. I know that a definitive build won’t be best and in some places changing traits around will be better, but just in general. I’m guessing it’ll be Dueling/Dom and something else, but other than that I’m kinda in the dark since PvE was never really my thing. Any suggestions?

Seems no one will be happy until mesmers go back to being pointless to use competitively. Instead of crying for nerfs to other classes, why not actually be productive and suggest changes or buffs to your own classes’ underpowered skills to bring them in line. At least that way you don’t instantly come off as whiny.

Not to mention PU always had the advantage when it came to dueling, even before the patch. When you don’t need to hold a point or quickly kill someone, attrition will win vs a burst spec unless the burster gets really lucky or the other player doesn’t have enough defense. Guess its a good thing dueling and 1v1 aren’t actually game modes huh?

With all the burns running around and most zerker mesmers only running maybe 1 source of condi removal, I think you guys might be over exaggerating. Not like it matters to me, I’ll just sit here and enjoy countering all the burn guards and eles who try to focus me the entire match with traited glamours and a cele build.

Also enjoy all the anti PU posts. Sure a oneshot from stealth is possible, but it costs you literally all your dps skills, a stealth, usually a utility or two(usually mirror images) and if you fail for whatever reasons(blocks, intuitive player, passive procs, etc), all your stuff is now on cd and you’re revealed. You could get way more dps by picking any other GM trait in Chaos.

My advice to everyone is to just play a mesmer for a while. Try new builds, see for yourself. The issue with mesmer is that its hard to understand what’s happening if you’re fighting a good one and it may look like they’re just spamming. But if you actually play as one, you’ll realize its not as easy as Stealth>Mirror Blade>Shatter everyone dies.

I honestly don’t think I’ve fought a single minion master yet…

I did watch one though who destroyed a burn guardian who tried to do the instant 12 stacks of burning thing. Unfortunately for him that involved using Purging Flames and hitting like 2 of the minions. Didn’t even have time to cleanse before the by then probably 15-20 stacks got sent back. I thought it was hilarious.

Your changes wouldn’t add counterplay to stealth. They’d make it so stealth is so bad you don’t even need counterplay.

I’m like 90% sure that some people don’t even read the first post before replying. They just look at the title and type the first thing that comes into their mind.

abclemons.7093:

What map? Were they zerging? What was their rotation schedule? What was your team comp? How did your team split (3/2, 2/2/1, et al)? What mitigating steps did you take (reflects, blocks, invuln, et al)?

So on and so forth…

GB is on a 25s cd. Engis are squishy. I don’t get the salt.

People are salty because its a bug and seeing an entire team of people getting by just by abusing that bug is annoying. If this is hotjoin(which I’m guessing it was), rotations and team comp probably mean very little as there will be almost no coordination between players, which is part of the reason zerging is a viable strategy once they’ve successfully killed one or two people. Unorganized teams that lose several people very quickly usually just end up taking turns rushing to their death as the other team zergs away. But yeah, 25 seconds on a bugged skill that can instantly take a tanky warrior from full to 20% is still a little short.

Darknicrofia.2604:

horrible copy/paste, how does blocks bait dodges?

Obviously it baits dodges so that you don’t accidentally auto attack into a block and get burned.

Agreed. But it is hilarious to watch them squirm when they fail. Fought an engi in skyhammer who literally tried forever to insta kill me. He used Grenade Barrage from stealth, magnet pulls over panels, overcharge shots near cliffs and failed many many times. Once his insta-kill attempt failed he’d usually just run off the point and hide behind it until something came off cd. He spent the entire game going for insta kills and still ended up losing with the least points out of everyone on the team.

I for one am outraged by [insert whiny reason] and think the exact opposite of everything you posted. Assume that everything you said is wrong and it’ll save us some time.

Why not just make stealth auto log out to character select. That way they’ll never find you.

In all seriousness, your changes would make it so stealth pretty much becomes nothing more than a pretty faulty positioning tool that doesn’t work in a majority of situations. Using stealth on point would be wasted since they just run in a small circle and reveal you. Shadow Refuge would literally never work. See mesmer casting mass invis? Just follow them till the cast completes and they’ll have wasted a 90 second cd. Cloak and Dagger immediately reveals you upon giving you stealth since it is indeed a melee range skill. You’d be better off removing stealth completely and replacing it with a new mechanic at that point.

Obviously the only way to bring back counterplay is to remove all amulets, runes and sigils. Better get rid of other classes too. Warrior only now. Should probably only play on Foefire too…

No items. Warrior only. Final Dest, I mean…Foefire.

Amir.1570:

Like think about it, when a Thief is spamming evades, can they actually take away 10k hp?

Seeing as the main DPS rotation for S/D thief is auto attack until they attack, at which point you use flanking strike, yes. Evades are literally built into their dps. Of course, a thief spamming flanking strike is going to be out of initiative very quickly, so if the thief is good, they’ll only use it when they need the dodge. And if the thief is great, they’ll know exactly when they need the dodge, making it seem to other person that they’re spamming evades since every attack gets evaded. Annoying feeling to fight against, but requires you to make on the fly risk management decisions.

Oh god, I hope the whiners don’t team up with the elitists to try and get mesmers nerfed into the ground. Whiners call anything that isn’t their own class OP or that is hard for them to deal with in their cookie-cutter build, and the recent changes seem to have brought out mesmer elitists that picked the class because it was an underdog at the time that rarely saw competitive play and now they’re mad that it is more new player friendly. Mesmer still has an incredibly high skill cap. There is just so much you can do now to add depth to your playstyle. A well played mesmer is incredibly interactive and honestly most people watching probably wouldn’t be aware of the reasoning for each play as they all happen rather fast.

Unfortunately, when people complain about mesmers, they seem to go all out and assume some magical build with 6 utility slots and 5 trait lines. For the longest time, the only condi removal most mesmers ran was a single utility slot. Anet has outright stated that a mesmer’s main defense should be not getting hit in the first place, hence the dominance of blink, decoy and phase retreat.

I personally advise everyone who hasn’t already to give mesmer a try. Once you’ve played one seriously for a while, fighting them becomes so much easier.

If your build isn’t capable of downing someone in the span of about 2-3 seconds or less(or you aren’t capable of doing that), Marauder will probably be better. More chance for error if the burst fails too so you can be more of a team player I guess. Against other mesmers I like Marauder since all it takes is one second of distortion to screw up your whole day.

messiah.1908:

i hate stealth abilities longer then 4 sec. stealth supposed to be a mechanism which should be used as re-positioning or disengage and not moving from point to point unseen thus SR for 15 sec is a joke also the buff to pu the same 10 sec and 6 sec????

for mesmer they should do that if illusion hit or created you get revealed

maybe also a unique change which if you stealth and walk close to your enemy you get unstealth (not revealed) so you can choose or to attack or gain stealth again

this way mesmer and thief will choose carefully when to attack and the enemy can move around to try to unstealth them.

The first change would cause accidental reveal a huge amount of the time and would probably be way worse than thieves dreaded Last Refuge minor trait. Mesmer already has an issue with bouncing projectiles causing reveal, but with that change it’d make using any kind of stealth while holding a staff almost impossible unless you literally shatter then do nothing(not even dodging) until all the clones reach your target. So stealth would essentially be better for your opponent than it would be for the person actually trying to use it.

As for the unstealth near enemies, that would also kinda defeat the purpose of having stealth. Decoy and the Prestige would fall off almost immediately in a lot of situations since they are typically used while disabled or in melee range. Mesmers and thieves already don’t make good on-point pressure, that change would pretty much doom them to roaming forever as stealth would be almost entirely useless anywhere near a small scale fight with several opponents.

bhagwad.4281:

To those who’re saying “stealth doesn’t contest a point”, that depends on how fast the PU mesmer can kill you by superior positioning granted by long stealth duration. If it’s fast enough, then killing you + gaining the point after your death is an excellent compromise.

Also, for those saying “long stealth durations…simply avoid the burst etc”. The point is that the mesmer (or thief) can break stealth at any time. They don’t have to wait out the full duration of stealth to initiate their burst. This uncertainty means you have no idea when to blow your CDs. If you dodge too early, then you just have to pray that the mesmer has chosen that moment to burst you.

The whole point of stealth is its unpredictablity. You know what…this gives me a great idea for modification to stealth. Stealth effect:

Stealth: You cannot break stealth till the duration ends. You cannot do any damage in stealth.

I guarantee you that if this change occurs, all the complaints about stealth will end. Why? Because you have removed one key element – the unpredictability of when to come out of stealth.

What do you think?

I doubt the complaining will end. People would still be annoyed that they can’t target the mesmer until stealth ends. And especially in PvP, these condi mesmers aren’t exactly bursting anyone from stealth yet those seem to be the builds complainers are most vocal about. Probably because PU condi is/was a problem in WvW roaming, but not so much in PvP, where Anet seems to focus a lot of their balancing time.

But that change itself would single-handedly cripple thieves’ stealth attacks and probably destroy main-hand dagger for thieves. Even if they could somehow use backstab at say the final second of stealth, it’d still mean giving your opponents a guaranteed 3 seconds to recover/prepare. People are complaining about stealth because countering it isn’t as simple as slotting a certain utility or using a certain skill at a certain time. Its application is very open ended and suits the mesmer well, meaning skilled players can do amazing things with the help of stealth. Anet seems pretty adamant about leaving stealth as is and instead giving certain classes more reveal access and uptime.

As for Spvp and PU, then the choice is obvious. All classes can exploit PU’s weakness there. Stealthed mesmers aren’t holding points and rotating around points is what mesmer is great at. So find yourself face to face with a PU mesmer guarding a point? Decap it, then move on and outnumber his team on mid. The mesmer needs to wait till stealth is gone to even start recapping and then has to wait there while you 5v4 the rest of his team. That’s the simplest scenario. Things obviously become more complex if you factor in other rotating teammates/enemies, but the weakness is still there.

If the PU mesmer wants to negate your pressure, they have to stop contesting the point. If they’re a tanky PU condi mesmer, then they aren’t gonna offer much to teamfights, and they’re extremely vulnerable to decaps when alone. Not exactly top tier material and this has always been an inherent weakness of mesmer stealth in SPvP(since we have no real incentive to prematurely end stealth like backstab).

It doesn’t exactly help that the first Inspiration minor is bugged at the moment with MoR. It never applies the condi removal to the final charge, so if you don’t have Harmonious Mantras, you get only one cleanse. I honestly don’t roam much, but that shouldn’t be a factor as 1v1 is not a gamemode this game is balanced around. Balancing everything for 1v1 Roaming will probably be next to impossible if they’re also balancing for Zergs in WvW, small groups in TPvP and PvE. What you seem to be describing though is a mesmer just sitting in stealth the entire time and doing nothing but dodging to produce clones. Seeing how prevalent condis are now, one source of condition removal(albeit a bugged one) does not seem like a great way to combat that. Mesmer v Mesmer is also a fairly unreliable matchup in this case as stealth has always been an issue for mesmer to combat simply due to the sheer amount of skills that require targets, GS being a huge offender for this one.

But if I had to give advice on fighting it in WvW roaming, I’d say if the mesmer is just sitting in stealth, kill the clones while you’re waiting. Without DD applying bleeds and such, there’s no real penalty to killing the clones while you can’t target the mesmer. I’ll say it again though, roaming is not really a supported game mode, hence certain things are going to counter others. Stealth can counter quite a few things, but in TPvP, that’s countered by preventing point capture/contesting while stealthed, so the longer you stay stealthed, the more points your opponents get or the quicker its decapped. Nerfing stealth/PU in all aspects of the game because it is too strong when roaming hardly seems reasonable IMO.

ASP.8093:

Leodon.1564:

Theres a big difference between a thief who specs to just hide/evade but does poor damage and a mesmer who does good damage from stealth.

Both thief and mesmer stealth builds don’t really require neutering your damage, beyond missing out on access to a couple of awesome traits/utilities. Stealth-troll thieves can go all-in on Power/Precision/Ferocity or Condition Damage just like stealth-troll mesmers can.

Except those “stealth troll mesmers” lost a huge amount of their condition application with the change to maim and the removal of Debilitating Dissipation, meaning the only reliable condition application that can be used while stealthed is Staff Clones, which will only apply a damaging condition 66% of the time. So the two greatest strengths of what many people considered a trollish build that should be the reason of PU being nerfed aren’t even issues or even in the game anymore. And I hate to say it, but if a mesmer is killing you with staff autoattacks and stealth, then maybe you need to reconsider your build, especially in this new rising condi meta(at least as long as burning is so strong and prevalent). Power mesmers running PU are a completely different beast. They also give up quite a bit to get that stealth. Dueling obviously can’t be dropped. Illusions is also fairly mandatory as it reduces clone/phantasm cds AND shatter cds as well as providing some might. That leaves usually Domination, which can provide an insane amount of vulnerability to a proper burst. So giving up anyone of those lines for stealth isn’t exactly an easy choice.

Some very interesting points in here. Main reason I wanted to ask was because whenever I heard people call PU broken or OP, they rarely mention power builds, its usually just the super passive Staff condi clone death build(probably because its annoying to deal with and takes a while), which IMO isn’t exactly viable anymore, especially not with the maim nerf.

Stealth could use some changes in my opinion, but it needs to be a class by class thing. Just giving a blanket change in stealth will obviously affect thieves, mesmers and possibly engis differently. For example, thieves have an entire trait line based around stealth, its one of their primary sources of damage mitigation(alongside evades and blinds). For mesmers, its less of a damage mitigating tool and more of a positioning one as we have easier access to boons, crowd control, invulnerability and combat mobility to keep us alive. Obviously any class would suffer if all of a sudden their main source of damage mitigation was less effective. Like if blocks on guards only blocked a certain amount of damage or if Water attunement recharged slower than the others.

Only reason I bring this up because honestly the mesmer forums have been kinda sad lately. Lots of people calling for nerfs on things in several threads constantly. Are we really the self defeating class? Seemed like some people picked mesmer because it was the underdog and are upset that it isn’t completely so anymore.

This will probably be a fairly divisive topic judging from what my guildmates had to say, but I’d like to know where everyone stands on Prismatic Understanding. Also a really long post, but if you’re not willing to read it I can’t really force you.

I personally think it is fine as is for a few reasons. Way back before several changes, 1 second of extra stealth really didn’t mean much(hell, thieves got that in a minor trait), but the boons were strong since they were all defensive. Then Swiftness and Might got thrown in, making it a lot less reliable kitten seconds of might when you’ve just entered 4 seconds of stealth is kinda…not useful. So adding Might and Swiftness to the mix was(IMO) a nerf. Increasing the duration to 100% was a good decision because now all the Chaos Grandmaster traits actually feel like build defining traits. It is actually a tough decision to pick one of them, which is how it should be for all trait lines. I’d much rather have tough choices to make instead of entire trait lines that are only really worthwhile if you’re going in for one specific trait. I think this is how all GM traits should be, build and playstyle defining, but not inherently more powerful than the others.

I understand a lot of people’s qualms with PU have to do with stealth. Mesmers, stealth, conditions and clones were all things that made for an annoying fight that didn’t require much risk on the mesmer’s part. This strategy was only really viable and common in WvW roaming(which is btw not a gamemode the game is balanced around) and was essentially useless in 2 of the 3 gamemodes(SPvP and PvE). Long duration stealth doesn’t help you kill your opponent, that’s why those mesmers relied on clone condition application. With the nerf to maim, this strategy is a lot less viable, especially now that burning has become king of dmg conditions and mesmers have almost no way to apply it, let alone stack it.

I’ve started using PU in SPvP as sort of an offpoint harasser and sidecapper. I can say from experience that while 100% duration is a lot, I almost never stay in stealth for that long. Staying in stealth for that long just gives your opponent time to regain cds and prepare. I use stealth for re-positioning, which the added duration is great for. If it were reverted to its previous iteration of 1 extra second and random picks from 5 boons, 2 of them being almost useless at that point, I’d probably never consider PU on tier with the other GM traits again. Giving my opponent a chance to recover and coming out of stealth with 2 stacks of might, some swiftness and maybe one of the defensive buffs really doesn’t seem worthy of a GM trait and if I really wanted boons that badly, I’d just go for Bountiful Disillusionment.

Also keep in mind that Anet seems to be moving towards more reveal access for certain classes. Engi’s lock-on, the spoiled guardian trap, ranger shout and WvW’s stealth trap are all good sources of reveal, so please don’t come to this thread just to complain about stealth. I want to hear opinions on Prismatic Understanding on MESMERS, not stealth in general and not cross class comparisons.

WhiteCrow.5310:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Mortar kit dealing the same amount of damage as grenade auto attacks? Better gut it by 28% a day after patch release. don’t want the precious grenade kit not being #1.

Grenade Kit piercing and throwing 13 grenades at once? Better let that stew for a couple days, who knows what could happen!

Honestly, it really calls into question their QA process. How do things like this get into the live servers? It’s incredible.

Not intentionally. The fact that this bug in particular existed before suggests that while they were changing traits and grenades around, it somehow bypassed their previous fix. Its not something they’d probably think to check for since the bug was fixed a while ago, but it makes sense that by changing the way grenades work might accidentally invalidate an older bugfix. As for how no one caught it, time seems a big factor. Take the Maim the Disillusioned trait that got changed one day after release. They were probably short on time and had a deadline already set. I’ve played games where the servers go down for maintenance for over 12 hours then get extended till the next day, people are usually not happy. At least with this method, the game is mostly up to date quickly and can be patched easily.

Really needs to be fixed, but its hilariously easy to tell when an engi in pvp made a build purely to abuse it and a majority of the time they’re just plain terrible. Started using staff on my mesmer and don’t think I’ve been hit with Grenade Barrage since. Most of them just instinctively toss it out after magnet, even if it failed. Sort of like all the engis that reflexively use Pry Bar after magnet even when the target doesn’t get pulled.

Needs to be fixed though. There are a lot of high damage things that could probably be toned down, but few of them mean going from full to downed in a second. Being able to do it from stealth is just icing. In an older game I used to play(Dragon Nest if you’re curious), bug fixes also meant retroactive bannings (usally for a week) for people who were abusing it. Helped keep the community in line in the meantime. Of course, that’d require Anet to first address the bugs publicly before fixing them.