They should completely rebalance conditions and condition cleanse/immunity.
It should be like direct damage: you should mitigate it, not negate it. Condi cleanse and resistance make conditions absolutely unbalance-able: they are either OP or irrelevant.
I personally feel a huge level difference between unranked and ranked. I don’t know, maybe my MMR is just insanely higher in ranked than in unranked, but I am bored of stupid teams….
And yes, Skyhammer and Spirit watch don’t help…
What does chronomancer brings us (non exhaustive):
- wells, i.e. skills you have to be standing for 3s to get benefits
- shield, i.e. a weapon meant for defense
- 30% crit chance on slow, i.e. a way to get decent damage while running no-crit (e.g. more defensive) amulets
Conclusion: chronomancer is all designed for bunker or bruiser builds. Chrono should not be an obvious choice for any build, and in particular, I personally think the fact that power shatter is not straight better with chrono is a good thing: this is a part of build diversity.
We are back on a situation where any dom+duel+X gives you a viable power shatter in a different way. But now we also have chaos+insp+chrono (still working fine) and even some nice interrupt dom+chaos+chrono builds.
Now the only things we need are:
- all other OP professions brought down to core-spec level
- some buff to our sustained damage
The weird part is that I don’t see how difficult this would be considering the game already “sort of” does it. You already have a PvP and WvW and PvE build, and to some extent a underwater build (utilities). Basically we just want a small number (2-5) of PvP builds which we can save. Obviously, this means they don’t want; but I just don’t get why…
Yes, unranked is kitten.
I think you just posted at the same time.
My comments are mostly about the profession balances and are summarized by “why go further in power creep?”.
I think there was a general consensus in the forum that many things had gone out of control. Warriors and thieves did not need a buff, actually daredevil probably still needed a small shave. It’s every other elite specialization that was too strong.
And making everything stronger is not good balance. Many new things made PvP unpleasant. In general, too much CC (and often long lasting ones), insane amount of conditions and damage.
A few things were good in the patch: I feel like chronomancer has been brought in-line with the core specializations and now it does not feel mandatory. This is exactly what I was hoping for mesmer, as it brings back build diversity. While not an expert at it, I feel like it worked also for elementalist.
However, this treatment was not applied to all other professions (which also puts mesmer and elementalist in bad position):
- the sustain of scrapper was barely touched (the sneak gyro change is good, but not enough, many traits are still giving insane sustain).
- the bristleback burst is still too high. On the other hand, the reliability of most pets, especially melee ones can still be improved (in particular in attacking moving targets)
- thieves did not need a damage buff. On the other hand, more sustain and build diversity would have been nice, in particular, non-stealth support is still lacking
- the daze on traps is still a bad idea for dragon hunters, it is very disruptive. CC should be about timing, which is why F1 pull is good but random longbow push is not and “spammy” trap is not.
- Reaper did not need more damage. Reaper is currently the most scary damage and control dealer of the game. Chill is a very punishing condition (it should probably get the same treatment alacrity got) and the amount of conditions a reaper can stack is really insane. What reaper needs is better survivability when focused and a SERIOUS damage and control shave. I feel like reapers are single-handedly preventing most possible builds from all classes because of the insane condition cleanse you need against them.
- I do not play enough revenant to judge.
Overall, I would like to come back to the level of communication with the balance developers that we had during the HoT beta week-ends. I understand this takes a lot of time for developers, but it would really impact the game balance very positively.
Not useless… but not mandatory anymore. It is still mandatory in PvE, but in PvP, offensive builds may have better results without while bunker builds probably still need it.
The most typical difference between EU and NA in a “balanced” meta is that EU has mesmers and NA has necros. All other classes are rather even between both regions.
So this finale will be obviously NA >> EU
Didn’t you find it surprising that Roy, Irenio and Robert all disappeared around october-november. I think there is no-one left except Karl in the balance team. A-net probably hired them for the big specialization update and the elite specs, and then, bye bye.
Downloading now… Can we even talk about this here? xD
Anyways. How does Mesmer feel since the alacrity & friends nerf guys? Is it really “mez ded” or more of a really inconvenient and ill-thought change that makes the class harder and less rewarding to play… But somehow still viable?
It is a bit hard to tell right now because unranked is awful (at least for me). People are still trying things and they are just bad (I so miss ranked…). But I feel like I’m still viable. Yes, it requires more skill, but that’s fine.
I did once a thread of this type…
Anyway here are my comments:
- signets don’t belong in domination. I think signets belong in dueling or illusions since they fit better with condi builds (2 signets improve condis) or with illusions (signet of illusion and healing signet)
- Mantras do. Mantras are burst effects, which I think fits domination very well, not to mention that the best mantra (except for heal maybe) is distraction, which is very much suited to domination
- furious interruption may work better if merged with slow on interrupts and put in chronomancy (quickness is very chronomancish)
- In my own suggestion (and I still like it) I tried to separate the mess of illusions and dueling by focusing dueling on condis and illusion on… illusions. So DE goes to illusions, but MtD and other confusion moves to dueling
- I did merge the fall trait with chaotic dampening (since as you said, fall traits should not be useless)
- Mental Defense is actually a support trait (the phantasm takes damage from all allies) so it belongs in inspiration
- Disenchanting Mender is odd in inspiration…
Other than that, these are interesting changes. I like to read those suggestions.
In PvE, the nerf just brought alacrity to a decent level. Now mesmer is a good but not godly addition to a party.
In PvP, as I mentioned, the problem is that the other elite specs were not brought in line. So yes, we are underwhelming now.
In WvW, the resistance nerf was stupid. My comments about the nerf “bringing us in line” was mostly alacrity.
I am sorry but I think anyone would agree that we want build diversity. Therefore, not being forced to play chronomancer to be competitive is a good thing. I we have 2 viable builds: power shatter dom-duel-ill and bunker chrono chaos-insp-chrono then that means that somehow every trait line we have is viable. I can’t see why we should not be happy with that and call that “balance”.
The lack of balance is that every other elite specs is still stronger than their core spec and thus to the whole mesmer class. By being the only “balanced” class (with maybe tempest), we end up being unviable.
I would like it just to avoid Skyhammer. But yes, I don’t feel the same skill level in unranked. I think my unranked MMR may be quite lower than my ranked one…
Which “in itself” is a good news. The chrono line should not be straight out necessary. We are reaching the balance we were hoping.
The bad news is that the other professions did not have the same balance and now we are left the only non-OP profession in the game.
I still play mesmer in PvP because:
- I like mesmer
- I suck at other classes so I’m more efficient on a bad mesmer build than on a good something else
Actually, currently, most classes are OP. So you need to be OP to survive.
Bunker mesmer was OP because of alacrity and quickness rez. They nerfed that, and more.
But bunker mesmer was not the only OP thing around. Revenant, scrapper and druid were all as OP. But any nerf there? Nope.
And thief needed sustain but got damage instead.
So why are we complaining? Because the balance patch did not offer what was needed: balance.
Since mesmer’s condi DPS only comes from bleeds, I only went for bleed duration and thus use rampager instead of viper while still close to 100% bleed duration.
With 25 might, banner, but no food, I got around 2500 condi damage. With that, each duelist is 3300 bleed DPS. Power damage is not amazing: 1000 DPS. We thus reach 4300×3 = 12900.
Then you have the scepter DPS. The speed is about 3 AA chain, 1 confusing image in approximately 10s. Assuming the enemy is immobile and does not attack, we get 3300 DPS (2200 power DPS, 1100 condi). Assuming the enemy moves all the time and attacks 1 per second, we have 5200 DPS instead.So overall, between 16200 and 18100 DPS.
While providing substantially lower alacrity uptime, and only actually getting into full dps mode close to 30 seconds at best after everyone else has started. It’s still just awful.
Additionally, it’s absolutely worthless on gorseval. Want to swap targets and take down the wall for a jump? Too bad. Want to help kill the adds before a jump? Too bad. Want to put dps onto the next charged spirit after killing one? Too bad. Want to continue dpsing at maximum strength after a jump? Too bad. It’s also bad on sabetha. Every time they swap bandits, you have to restart your dps from the ground up.
I do agree, I was just trying to bring some numbers.
It is worth saying though that the problems you are mentioning are general mesmer problem. Yes, PvE condi mesmer is even more reliant on phantasm and yes, it is slowly building up condi stacks, meaning it is worse, but still a general problem.
I would have answered to you that a epidemic necro would have fixed those problems, but sadly, they nerfed epidemic to only transfer 25 stacks, which of course means only burning is worth the transfer…. One more reason why burning is the only viable condition.
Since mesmer’s condi DPS only comes from bleeds, I only went for bleed duration and thus use rampager instead of viper while still close to 100% bleed duration.
With 25 might, banner, but no food, I got around 2500 condi damage. With that, each duelist is 3300 bleed DPS. Power damage is not amazing: 1000 DPS. We thus reach 4300×3 = 12900.
Then you have the scepter DPS. The speed is about 3 AA chain, 1 confusing image in approximately 10s. Assuming the enemy is immobile and does not attack, we get 3300 DPS (2200 power DPS, 1100 condi). Assuming the enemy moves all the time and attacks 1 per second, we have 5200 DPS instead.
So overall, between 16200 and 18100 DPS.
A-net’s promise: no dedicated healer class. Everyone can heal. Whichever class you play, you can build it to become a healer, or a damage dealer.
This is not fully true, some classes will do it better than others, but close enough.
check!
Necro Spam 1 to win
Thief Spam 2 to win, what’s next?
Actually, thief can now also spam 1 to win. Fun fact in PvE necro is spam 2 to win now…
I am not trying to nerf resistance, I am trying to rebalance conditions.
Conditions have to be broken to make an impact on the game because of all the negating. And this is unbalanceable because builds can fully negate others. By switching to more mitigation and less negation, we can start rebalancing conditions and prevent the condi crap that we currently have.
Actually I think the whole condi concept needs to change.
There are many reasons why condis do not work well in gw2 and are nearly impossible to balance. Many mention the 3-stats for power (power precision ferocity) compared to 1-stat for condi. This has been improved by adding more condi duration in amulets (which should have been associated with a nerf to burning but well…).
But the main problem of conditions is their all-or-nothing design. In order to counter damage, you can mitigate it:
- toughness
- protection
- weakness
- some special effects (e.g. frost aura) or damage (de-)multipliers on traits (x% reduced damage traits)
but to counter condition damage, you can only negate it
- condi cleanse
- resistance
So in order to have condis viable in PvP, a-net has buffed them excessively, has made sure many classes can stack all sort of cover conditions etc…. And now, you are either nearly-immune or completely destroyed by them. This is absolutely awful design.
There is a long way to rebalance conditions, but as a simple and well-needed change:
Make resistance a condition-mitigation tool instead of condition negation. There are many ways to do that, in particular:
- resistance reduces the damage from conditions currently on you by x%
- resistance reduces the duration of incoming conditions by x%
x could be around 30-40%, making it an equivalent of protection for conditions.
The first solution focuses only on the damage component of conditions, while the second one reduced the duration and thus mitigate both the damaging and debuff component.
I think other changes would be needed, such as making sure a class cannot stack all conditions of the game and reduce the overall condition output while reducing the overall amount of condi cleanse to instead prioritize on mitigating tools. But the resistance change is I think the first important step.
Actually a decent fraction of bunker mesmers in PvP were using the trait.
One more over the top nerf.
Bunker guard were not replaced by better bunkers (tempest or chrono), it got destroyed by condis and CC. Because a bunker guard plays with clerics, it has 13k health and cannot afford to be CC-locked or condi bombed.
According to their plan, just a few fixes if something is broken, but no major balance before the end of season 2.
Or at least do not commit to 1 patch every 4 month and instead implement small scale changes regularly.
Seriously, I am disappointed with the balance changes. Maybe I expected too much…
I was hoping they would fix the power creep. But they just went further into it.
From the changes, it looks like a-net considered the only problem in the meta was tanky amulets and chronobunker. Well that is not true.
Do you know why condi rev and bunker mesmer were so strong? Because they both have:
- resistance to negate conditions
- passive stability to negate CC
- a huge amount of block/evades to negate all damage
- on-demand quickness to rez in case someone still end up going down
Apparently, this fooled the developers into thinking that damage, CC and conditions were fine and sustain was the only problem. But it isn’t. Anyone trying to play without near-perma stability must have felt like they spent half of their time stunned or dazed for insane durations. Anyone without much condi cleanse must have seen in a few seconds all possible condis stacked on them, and in particular chill delaying all their skills (including their condi cleanse).
But this patch does not fix this. The only real nerfs in this patch are elementalist and chronomancer. So congratulations a-net, chronomancers are most likely dead. But scrapper? Do you think sneak gyro was the only OP thing about this build? Druid? No single nerf? And do you think reaper needed more condis? And thief more damage? And seriously “a hard look at revenant […] defensive capabilities” means only a slight nerf to “Crystal Hibernation” healing and a iCD on stability? They were running “berserker” or “viper” and still taking on 1v2 without problems!!!
So yes, the new meta will be different. Removing tanky amulets and quickness rez will change the pace of the game. But it won’t fix the power creep that made the game unfun for me after HoT, even before the tanky meta settled.
Because you do not necessarily counter more sustain with more damage. You do not counter insane block durations with more unblockable CC. Contrary to what I sometimes read, “if everything it OP nothing is OP” isn’t true. Power creep can make the game less fun. In particular, CC creep does, because I play this game because… I want to play. I don’t want to wait for 10s while CC locked hoping my stunbreak will be back on CD, which it isn’t because of chill to end up dead. But apparently, I’m not anymore playing the right game for that…
The annoying part from this is:
- tempest auramancer slightly nerfed (duration of auras reduced) + celestial
- scrapper barely nerfed
- DH barely nerfed
- Reaper buffed
- Druid buffed
- Revenant nerfed, but will still have OP sustain in glassy amulets
- Daredevil buffed
- Berserker buffed
- Chronomancer: assassinated
So all the OP builds (condi and power rev, scrapper, druid) will still be there, the mildly OP will be fully OP (reaper), the non-OP will now be OP (daredevil), but mesmer is nerfed to the ground…
I am sorry but I do feel like the only class fully screwed by this patch.
Honestly, this may be a small change, but this is huge for condition mesmer in PvE.
With duelist’s discipline buff + scepter QoL, I think condition mesmer will now be the highest possible DPS.Doenst change the fact that torment/confusion conditions sucks in pve.
Meaning: ye its a buff in condi pve mesmer. No, still wont make it a thing.
Yes, which is why condition mesmer in PvE works with bleeds mostly. Now conditions should outDPS power.
Honestly, this may be a small change, but this is huge for condition mesmer in PvE.
With duelist’s discipline buff + scepter QoL, I think condition mesmer will now be the highest possible DPS.
Our actual healing numbers are decent. Nobody runs necro healing builds because necros provide kitten all besides that. Where is the burst condi removal? Where is the boon support? Those are requirements for bunker builds. Well of Power and well of blood need cd decreases, Death magic needs aoe prot, aoe condi removal (on Shroud 5 preferably), and Life from death needs to remove a condition.
Yes, we do not have boons. But our ally and self condi removal is “ok” (probably not enough in this meta, but very decent) and we can still provide high damage:
I do play for the fun of it sometimes a crusader healing-damage necro.
Looks like this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmQD7kZTobTscTwdTgeTsoNYxRwMYHkqEkCWUTBgQ2BA-TpQWABAs/AnlBAA
You do have marauder-esque damage + celestial-ish healing and pretty decent survivability. I have results like 300k outgoing healing and 500k damage at the end of the game.
Main weakness as always as necro: CC.
Otherwise, not meta, but not too bad.
I’m afraid TW will now become pretty much abandoned in PvP. I did oscillate between it and gravity well for support builds, but now I think the balance is clearly in favor of GW.
It just does not feel as impactful.
Good news, the skill will still be useful in PvE, so it’s not like so many other skills which just have no purpose in any game modes…
This is exactly what made bunker mesmer too strong in PvP: its defensive skills were back on CD too fast.e
You do realize that those are getting nerfed too, right? The block has been nerfed already, Well of Precognition just got wrecked, death of slow/quickness rezzes hits mes really hard, increase of unblockable attacks affects shield block, increase in thief power affects our survivability, removal of bunker amulets hits the build REALLY hard.
You’re living in the same bizarro-world that Anet is, where you can make any change as you want, and only have to discuss each change as though the others weren’t happening.
Which is frankly…a little strange to hear coming from you :P
I do know all the announced nerfs. As I have already mentioned in other threads, I think the nerfs were good “on their own”. It makes chrono a less obvious choice in PvP over core mesmer, which I think should be a balance target.
Earlier, I also supported the block reduction (which now puts it in line with comparable skills in other professions, which is already a lot considering we have other good evade/escape skills).
And I thought precog was too much, though I don’t agree with the announced change, which will just make the skill pointless. I would have rather gone back to making you unblockable, since unblockability has become trendy.
What worries me, is that I don’t think a-net has been as exhaustive when it comes to nerfing other elite specs… and the thief damage buff was really not needed.
So that is why you may see me defending mesmer nerfs while ultimately I think that will screw mesmer’s viability…
I am also in a similarly weird quantum superposition when thinking about next PvP season. I think I probably need to reroll to reaper or druid to remain competitive, but at the same time I don’t want to since I like mesmer and I know I am really bad at any other profession.
PS: this was a PvP-centric comment since ultimately, I think PvE-mesmer will still be a must even with reduced alacrity.
PS2: I do not agree with all nerfs, in particular I think chaos armor nerf does not make any sense…
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
Just make it part of one of the Chronomancer minor traits: “Alacrity has double effect on you.” They’ve already demonstrated that they can make traits that increase the effect of a boon on you (regardless of the boon’s origin) with Hardy Conduit.
You do realize that this is more or less what the “improved alacrity” trait does (50% increased duration on self)? Sure it’s about duration more than effectiveness, but the idea is the same.
And regardless: what makes you think that alacrity was not also too strong on self? Flash news: it is. This is exactly what made bunker mesmer too strong in PvP: its defensive skills were back on CD too fast. As for PvE, the only role of self-alacrity is to bring back your alacrity/quickness-generating skill faster on CD, since mesmer DPS in PvE is AA based (once phantasms are out). So you want less alacrity on allies but more on you… in order to get more alacrity on allies… does this make any sense?
My issue with the nerf is this:
alacrity is nerf BECAUSE of other class skills NOT BECAUSE OF MESMER SKILLS,
basically mesmer got nerf becuse of OTHER CLASS and NOT BECAUSE OF THE CLASS ITSELF.
see above
It does not bring you back from downed or dead. Downing just cancels the split.
Apparently, you can just swap profession right before the end of the match… et voilà!
…that is if all other elite specs had received a similar treatment. Which they did not.
Even then, I still don’t think that “balanced by being weak” is a good design concept.
“Balanced by only being overpowered in one highly specific case” works better because it feels better to play. You got your unique blaze of glory that way.
But alas, unlikely to ever get there. Among other things it’d more or less make any form of smallscale balance impossible for the same reason it is already impossible (because these differences exist, they’re just being actively removed instead of used as the focal points of balancing). If one were to embrace difference as the core balance mechanic, then that’d be as official as it gets that smallscale balance isn’t a design goal.
I could not disagree more. Pre-HoT classes were not weak. They did their job.
Post-HoT games are not fun. You can be stun locked for 10s or more without much effort, you can be condi bombed and chilled to death, you see classes just never dying, even those running glassy amulets, etc….
Also, they added elite specs to increase the flexibility of all professions, giving them more build variations, but it fails since now you HAVE to play the elite spec to be competitive.
Before HoT, I could play condi, power shatter, power interrupt, even bunker (yes!) and I felt I was adding something to my team. Now I feel I am a liability if I don’t play bunker.
I am not the kind of person nostalgic of “old times when everything was just so much better”. But here, it is the case. I know people complained about it, but I enjoyed post-23rd june meta. I don’t enjoy this one. I like that bunker chrono exists, I like playing chronomancer in general. But I am glad for the nerfs we got, (except chaos armor for which I still don’t understand the motivation) and just sad that most other professions did not follow and that I may have trouble being competitive with my mesmer next week.
But since I enjoy mesmer (and am pretty bad with every other professions), I will just play my mesmer and find a build that works for me.
If you look at pre-HoT meta, 7 out of 8 professions were played regularly in tournaments. Ranger was rarely played (but still sometimes) and ele was a bit over the top (teams had between 1 and 2), but all others professions were present in similar proportions.
So yes, a nearly-balanced meta IS possible. A meta where differences between classes overlapping for the same role are small enough that you personal skill with this professions matters more.
In the current meta, a bad bunker mesmer or revenant would still add more to its team than a good warrior. And at the end, every competitive team ran the exact same composition, save a possible swap between engi and ranger (2 bunk mes, 2 revs, 1 engi/ranger). This makes it possibly the least balance meta of all time in gw2.
Mesmer is currently locked into playing full burst or full bunker because of their low sustained damage. Basically either you can kill the enemy instantly (full burst) or you don’t and then your sustained damage won’t be enough to kill him/her ever.
Increasing the damage on weapon skills, especially on the AA, but also a few others (chaos storm isn’t that scary for its cooldown) would help create more bruiser-y archetypes. To compensate for this increase, the shatter burst can be shaved a little. In particular, the scaling of F1 with the number of illusions could be improved since with IP baseline, the damage with 2 or 3 illusions is almost identical: keep the current 3-illusion damage but reduce the 2-illusion damage by 5-10%.
Technically, they haven’t (announced) major core-mesmer nerfs. Only chaos armor, which is not plenty in core power shatter.
And those changes make chrono somewhat in line with core mesmer.
So technically, chrono may join the small club of “balanced elite specs”, which I could be very happy about…
…that is if all other elite specs had received a similar treatment. Which they did not.
In summary, the changes to chrono were good… and because of that may make mesmer/chrono unviable in PvP.
Mixed feelings…
multiple buffs to condi mes? So far I only saw the slight increase of malicious sorcery. Did I miss something else? Or do you mean the new amulets?
+1
And unfortunately, instead of fixing the overblown power creep from HoT, a-net embraces it in the next patch. So let’s buff warriors (the only one who were still balanced at a pre-HoT level) and thieves (DD is already above pre-HoT level) and let’s add some boon corrupt to reaper to counter the powercreeped amount of boons.
Anyone who plays mesmer in the current meta knows that 1 condi on shatter is not that much…
I play bunker, with:
- 5 condi cleanse on heal = 0.17 condi/s
- 7 condi cleanse on null field = 0.22 condi/s
- 1 condi cleanse on shatter = 0.18 condi/s
- resistance on F5, null field, and sometimes time warp
So in total, about 0.6 condi cleanse/s, a bit more thanks to alacrity (but this is getting nerfed) and a bit less considering that shatters are used for more than just condi cleanse so they are rarely used on CD.
And at the end, I still melt to condi if focused (in particular by reapers corrupting all the boons since I also get boons on shatter).
You should remember also that this is a heavy investment. Condi cleanse is the main reason a mesmer uses inspiration. We don’t get much more out of this trait line than condi cleanse. Remove it and the whole traitline becomes really really weak.
nice maths man, 0,6 condi cleanse per seconds, alias 1 condi removed every 2 sec…
isnt that enough? How can you whine about it?
and what if that remove condi on shatter would be on hit rather than on use? would be more in line with warrior cleansing ire, and you would start thinking before saying you have no good cleansers.He said he plays a bunker. Basically standing on point cycling through skills while sitting in 2 fields (null and timewarp) with alacrity. Outside of this specific build (which will soon be dead after the next patch) hardly anyone uses null field and timewarp. The numbers presented do not represent the majority of builds, because your damage hits like a wet paper bag.
I play mes and the condi clearing is a atrocious outside of the inspiration line. Even with inspiration clearing multiple conditions on you is a nightmare, and you have to burn through all your shatters in one go to cleanse which means you are wasting a lot of damage. A burst chrono is likely to be rolling with minimal condi clear. There was a time when most mes builds lived on the wire and rolled with no condi clear at all before the buff to condi damage/stacking.
Personally I would like to see some decent condi clearing in other trait lines because at the moment you have to choose too much between damage and condi cleanse. Also access to decent stability if you play power shatter is virtually non-existent which means you have no cc protection at all.
Yes I realize my post did not make a clear point. What my maths showed is that in order to bunker efficiently, bunker chrono use a lot of condi cleanse, only a small proportion coming from shatters. What made bunker chrono really strong was:
- quickness rez/stomp
- shared alacrity (support)
- personal alacrity boosting our personal defenses (block, sword 2, shatters, heal etc…)
- a huge amount of HP + armor to act as a damage sponge
And I use the past tense because the next patch is going to axe all of that by a lot. The viability of bunker chrono after this patch is possible but far from obvious. And the sad part is that outside of this build, chrono don’t have much. Power shatter is in the same situation as thief currently (but won’t receive any buffs), condi shatter may receive buffs, but it will hardly put up the same amount of condis that reaper or condi rev can provide (we have only 2 real condis). There are also some interesting interrupt-slow build, which is currently unviable because of the passive stability (rev+bunker mes) + “eye for an eye”, but depending on the patch may be remotely viable.
So no need for additional nerfs, mesmer is not in a good spot right now.
If you haven’t noticed, mesmer got all the “we did not want plain CD reduction” or “buff that stack but you can’t really stack them” while other classes are just fine. Examples:
- “Imagined Burden”: would you really stack clones for the might instead of… I don’t know… phantasms? And all of that for 5s might?
- “Fencer’s Finesse” as OP said, though it can work in PvE where you usually camp sword
- “Harmonious Mantras”: almost impossible to reach full stack for a decent amount of time
- “Chaotic Dampening”: beautiful CD recharge…
- “The Pledge”: another one of those
Alacrity could be stronger in PvE but weaker in PvP.
I find it cute that people seriously think alacrity was a PvP problem. Alacrity did increase too much the mesmer defenses in PvP, but alacrity was first and foremost OP in PvE, since it did offer a huge damage increase to the whole party, making mandatory for optimal DPS. With the coming nerf, mesmer’s DPS contribution will still be good in PvE.
Mesmer’s sustained damage could be buffed in PvE, but left alone in PvP.
Mesmer would also benefit from increased sustained damage in PvP.
Well of Precog could stay an invuln in WvW & PvP (I’m not convinced the invuln mattered in PvP, everyone ran recall/action instead), but be a blur in PvE.
Precog was a tad too strong in all game modes. However, I don’t think the change they made was appropriate, and now this will be trash in all game modes.
You seriously can’t think of things that would be better off being split?
There’s literally an endless amount of ideas you could come up with that could all be fun and balanced based on their game mode.
It’s not “a few skills”.
There are a slew of abilities not used 99% of the time in this game, because if they’re buffed they’ll be too strong for 1 of the game modes. And in their current state, they’re too weak for all of them.
Very few in my opinion. PvE players often complain about the nerfs “because of PvP whiners”. The truth is that many of those nerfs are good for all game modes. Balance in PvP is bit more subtle, because you are directly comparing classes. PvE can have more unbalances without destroying too much the game mode.
For example, I remember PvE mesmers complaining about the shield block nerf (again “because of PvP whiners”). Let’s be clear, the mesmer could have 100% immunity to damage, it won’t make it that much more valuable in PvE if its DPS is low (the only thing which matters in PvE). But at the same time, that does not mean this is not OP, even in PvE.
So no, I don’t think it makes much sense to split abilities between game modes. And yes, many of the changes will probably seem to come from PvP, simply because this is the place which has the most need for accurate balance. Any remaining unbalance in any game mode is not the fault of the other game modes, but truly the fault of developers.
Anyone who plays mesmer in the current meta knows that 1 condi on shatter is not that much…
I play bunker, with:
- 5 condi cleanse on heal = 0.17 condi/s
- 7 condi cleanse on null field = 0.22 condi/s
- 1 condi cleanse on shatter = 0.18 condi/s
- resistance on F5, null field, and sometimes time warp
So in total, about 0.6 condi cleanse/s, a bit more thanks to alacrity (but this is getting nerfed) and a bit less considering that shatters are used for more than just condi cleanse so they are rarely used on CD.
And at the end, I still melt to condi if focused (in particular by reapers corrupting all the boons since I also get boons on shatter).
You should remember also that this is a heavy investment. Condi cleanse is the main reason a mesmer uses inspiration. We don’t get much more out of this trait line than condi cleanse. Remove it and the whole traitline becomes really really weak.
Chaos and Inspiration lines were so OP that all mesmer meta builds used them even before HoT, and mesmer was known as a tanky class…
am I right?
No the problem is
- alacrity meaning all skills (including shatters, shield block, heal, precog, etc…) had very much shorter cooldown than initially designed.
- durability rune giving boon duration on top of good stats
without the 2 points above, let’s be honest, our stability uptime is not amazing, and in general “bountiful disillusionment” and “Restorative Illusions” are not overly strong traits. A few months ago, I was actually calling to buff restorative illusions to make it heal AOE, because at this time, the support provided by the mesmer was not that good.
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
The problem is that the amount of boon as gotten out of hands. Now people get boons on autoattacks…
The good solution would have been a shave on boon production.
The lazy solution was to make sure boon rip/corrupt also gets out of hands.
This is called power creep.