Guild Wars 2

100% agreement with every single word of this text.

I know that we haven’t seen the “damage” weapon/legend (Shiro or Glint) but I thought it would be still interesting to get a first DPS estimate of the class. Before getting into the results, it strikes me that we have almost no damage modifiers. While we would expect to find most of them in the “shiro” trait line, I am very surprised that the “Invocation” line has almost only support traits. But this being said here are the rough DPS estimate (just in case: mistakes are human)

• Hammer: 3750 if melee, 5100 if full range. The rotation is simply AA and 2 as soon as off-CD
• Staff: 4500. The rotation is AA and 5 as soon as off-CD. This is very optimistic because the 9 hits of 5 rarely work perfectly and the knock-back is not desirable in PvE. With AA only, the DPS is 4000.
• Mace-Axe: very approximately 5600 (berserker better than condi-gear assuming non-moving enemies), using axe skills off-CD.

So, even if more damage multipliers pop out of the missing trait lines (and one could expect that), it is clear that the damages are underwhelming. I think anyone who played today felt that. Considering that staff is supposed to be a “support” weapon, the low DPS is ok, but mace is very weak as a melee weapon and does not apply nearly enough condition damage.

I didn’t expect high direct damage since we don’t have the damage weapon/legend. But you could at least expect good condition damage from the mace-axe/Mallyx. The Mallyx legend will shine against a condi build. Fine, but at least the weapons should be able to give some conditions themselves and this is just not the case. In a sense, it reminds me of necromancer. You can destroy incoming conditions, send them back, transform them into boons… but you can’t give conditions yourself.

I agree. While I didn’t expect to get high damage since the “damage” legend and weapon were not announced, I at least expected a good condition DPS with mace-axe + mallyx. But even in full rampager (to get high crit for minor giving torment) the damage was underwhelming. Since we have 2 heals (more with ventari), I guess we are more tanky, but we also need to do some DPS!

I think it is clear that revenant lacks customization skill wise. Choose 1 weapon set out of 3, 2 legends out of 3. That’s all. Sure we will get more weapons and more legends, but that’s still very limited. I think we need weapon swap because as said, the weapons are very specialized. Also, despite being able to use utilities very often, it rarely feels that needed and thus switching legend I didn’t feel I was getting a very new play style. We need weapon swap or the weapons skills to be influence by the legend.

I tried a rampager condi build and no, it’s no op. It still feels very weak. I just could not get any DPS out of revenant.

While Kodan looks cool, I already saw somewhere someone pointing that character customization would be absolutely non-existing. All of them are just big white bears. Tengu could work thanks to the different colors in the feathers, different feather-hair styles etc… We don’t know much about Largos diversity so it could work.

I just made an interesting calculation. I already computed the damage in a 30s encounter with the usual assassin gear and the hybrid (sword-pistol/focus) rampager build. Now I added also the hybrid scepter-pistol build. I write only pistol because in the rotation, I used both duelist but no warden since it would be overwritten (so I assume you don’t want reflects and anyway I didn’t spec inspiration).
For the damage of the scepter to reach the damage of the sword hybrid, you would need an attack rate of 1 attack/s. Assuming 1 attack every 3s, you loose about 600 DPS compared to the sword hybrid. As I already said, the assassin has the same DPS as the sword hybrid but lower ramp time.
I thought it was interesting as it gives an estimate of how fast would enemy need to attack to be worth it. Just as a note, the confusion DPS is very low, about 700 with 1 attack every 3s. The torment DPS is about 400… One good note is that I didn’t include scepter 2 which would increase the DPS if timed properly.

One note: with this scepter hybrid, time warp is not very much our friend. On the other hand, the build only really depend on illusion and dueling, which gives a bit more freedom in the other choices.

Well pistol and focus are power weapons but we are mentioning using them as condition weapons

Warden stacks bleed indeed which is why I always mention it as second weapon in condi builds (+ of course projectile absorption/reflection). But less than duelist because less proc/s and no duelist’s discipline (assuming it is fixed at some point). As a matter of fact, warden in rampager is superior to warden in assassin. Rampager is loosing everything in the AA, which is sad. If scepter did not overwrite phantasm or had a better AA, it would make things quite different….

Which is why it is harder to estimate shatter sustained DPS than the usual PvE rotation 11111111111111111….

Yes, from noon UTC-7

1 stack of 6s bleed is not equivalent to 2 stacks of 3s bleed. Your argument that our conditions last longer really does not mean much because there is too much cleanse. And even like this, I haven’t done the maths but I don’t think we do that much condition damage.
We don’t have many stun breaks because the dev think we have so much survivability with our DS.
We don’t have any active defense because the dev think we have so much survivability with our DS.
We don’t do much damage because the dev think we have so much survivability with our DS.
I agree we have one of the best passive defense of the game, maybe above the warrior. But the warrior has higher damage, higher stability, higher mobility, higher group support…. Is that balanced? I don’t think so.
We should NOT have mobility, we should NOT have much active defenses, that’s not our theme. We SHOULD have stability and high damage, that’s our theme.

I agree that the shatter vs phantasm is less clear cut for conditions. In assassin gear, shattering gives too low damage to even make up for the loss of AA during the time to recast your phantasms. But as the scepter has a weak AA and most of its damage come from a skill with cool down, the casting time can be acceptable. Typically, shattering at the end of your phantasm skill while signet ether is available can work.
Also, while F1 damage scales bad with the number of illusions shattered, the condition damage is linear, so it can become strong for 3 illusions. F2 can actually become 12 stacks of confusion (4 base, 4 illusion minor, 4 blinds + ineptitude) although you would most likely use Malicious Sorcery over ineptitude.

Isn’t it also one good side of condition build that they naturally pair well with signets and allow nice support from distortion sharing as a good damage negation? The only problem is that is forces us into domination which is not the best line for conditions…

Removing the stats from the traits was very good (although they will have to compensate with new gears). And I really feel like there is more viable builds now in most cases, which is good considering they have not really started balancing. The old system has had 3 years to improve/converge and I feel in many cases it did not offer as much viable variations as this one. So I am optimistic for this, and it was definitely needed to introduce elite specializations.

It adds to the character appearance, and if you look well, that is the main form of progression the game offers. But it comes at a very high price which is you have to create the personal story and fit all animations and armors to the new body shape.
And I believe in the statistics, humans are still chosen by most, and the second main choice is Norn… which is just large-sized human. So it seems like it is not really worth the effort.

Yet the community asks for it, so at some point they may have to give it. I believe one more race is not too much to ask.

While for PvP the meta is an evolving concept, in PvE, you can pretty much compute the meta in 10 min. The PvE meta is about max DPS while keeping some of the key utilities. For mesmer, basically you try to have some reflects, time warp and that is enough for all dungeons and low-level fractals. So you can very fast compute and see that direct damage still beats conditions, BUT that some conditions build are not that far behind.

The people here who use bold statements that assassin/zerker is best don’t do it out of faith in a lost religion but out of basic maths. I was all out for conditions when they advertised for the patch since my first estimates showed a hybrid build to beat the assassin build. But they nerfed the bleeding so this is not true anymore.

But it’s a game and everyone is free to play whatever they want. The only restriction is that when you’re playing with others, everyone should agree on the fact that this won’t be an optimal run. Being frank, the difference is probably a few seconds lost in the whole dungeon which is not a big deal for most people.

At the end, a good player who knows well the dungeon is probably going to do better on a condi or hybrid build than an average player in assassin gear. Not to mention that optimized teams bring the mesmer mostly for its utilities and not for its DPS (which does not mean 0 is an acceptable value).

I meant it as baseline yes.

@ButterOfDeath
if you make life blast 0.5 cast, you obviously adjust the power to make up for it (so basically half the damage in half the time). That is the best way to harmonize with underwater shroud and reaper shroud who both have 1/2s cast. I do not think dhuumfire would be overpowered, it is just underpowered right now.

Out of subject but actually condi mesmers are reasonable thanks to massive bleeding from our phantasmal duelist (with sharper image and duelists discipline traits). We can stack about 40 bleeds. Sure confusion and torment are lacklusters in PvE, but well..

I think there are nice suggestions in this thread but maybe we should condense them in some way and make sure we agree on them. If an organized constructive feedback is given, it may be heard, contrary to 100 messages in a thread with people disagreeing.

Well the one positive thing is
necro > condi cleanse (either “take that back in your face” or “yumm thanks for the boons”)
you just need to hope for a burn guardian or a condi engineer to attack you…

I still keep with my idea that currently each race has its own dragon to handle…. except the underwater dragon. If they keep the idea of the underwater dragon, we should get a corresponding race and I would guess Largos. I just hope they would get a better design than Sayeh al’Rajihd. The concept of their race is beautiful but she is ugly.

As some have said, each class should be different, so necromancer is not the mobility/support class. And I’m fine with that. So what are we: the scary powerful horror monster. So why the hell do we have the lowest DPS? Why do we have no stability (do you imagine the powerful horror monster slipping on a banana peal?)?

I think the problem is that somehow the developers think our death-shroud makes us so resilient we should not give much damage. But the problem we have is that this is mostly passive defense while we have nearly no damage negation. This game is much more about active defense than passive defense. So I am fine with us having less active defense “for the theme’s sake” but do not punish our DPS thinking our defense is “op”.

That is why reaper still have so little stability. I think it was meant to allow higher PvE DPS without making it too strong in PvP since it will get interrupted all the time. So this makes perfect sense but is based on the wrong idea that we’re already op in PvP.

I am a fairly new necro, so I don’t have the answer for everything but my few suggestions:
1) make life blast a 0.5 cast time. That’s the only way to balance the various DS-1 traits. This will automatically make dhuumfire stronger.
2) Stability should be part of the theme. I don’t want reflects, I don’t want active defense, I don’t want mobility but at least stability.
3) Without mobility, without group support, at least give necro high DPS. A necro entering death shroud should be feared (and not faked using DS-3 ). Staying on a well should mean assured death. And we should deal high condi-damage! We should not wait for the enemy to give us conditions for us to be able to wreck them with conditions!
4) I love the idea of the resistance for traited corruptions. Resistance fits so much the necro theme, I can’t understand why we don’t have it already.
5) Axe should be longer range (900 maybe) and slightly higher damage to fill the missing ranged-damage spot when reaper shroud comes.

So you used a assassin/berserker set-up. For a hybrid or condi build, there is not even a doubt about DD superiority.
With this acronym I feel like I’m speaking about elementalist builds o.O

This shines mostly in organized teams. This is for example a great way to regroup your teammates to take a well defended point without leaving the other points unattended too long since you will teleport back to them.

Not to mention that since there is a near-consensus on our class “op”-itude, we will get nerfed, so I’d rather we suggest the “right” nerfs (to avoid chaotic dampening and MtD-style butchery).

I already answered that above ^.^
But thanks for the additional support

But that’s the minimum amount to get decent hybrid DPS :p

I do not think it would be a problem in PvP. That would basically amount to 5 more bleeds (so about 1k damage) on a 20s cooldown. And in PvE, that would just make a hybrid build “decent” for mesmer (about same DPS, higher ramp time, more resilience to phantasm instead of personal DPS).

Well the efficiency of sword-sword/focus is above any condition builds at the moment. hybrid (rampager) sword-pistol/focus is quite decent thanks to the bleeds from sharper image and duelist’s discipline (when they will be fixed). Then hybrid (rampager) scepter-pistol/focus is not bad but still a bit under because of the phantasm overwrite of the scepter AA and the fact that confusion and torment are not that great in PvE.
The staff phantasm can hit hard if you keep some power, but the AA is not that strong. Staff is excellent for solo PvE in rabid gear (very defensive while decent condition stacking).

The problem is that we are quite far from having shatters viable in PvE. Sure, they can be temporarily useful for very short fights, in particular in the cases Vizardlorde mention. But for a more sustained DPS (more than 5s), phantasms are clearly over. Currently, in PvE, I believe MW with 3 clones hits less than 1 swordsman every 3s. So if you have 2 clones and 1 swordsman, shattering is a DPS loss (since it takes very much effort to recast the illusions).

The problem is that you cannot make shatters more damaging… because PvP. You can’t either make the phantasms less damaging… because PvE. So you’re stuck in a PvP=shatter PvE=phantasm which is sad. The DPS rotation in PvE is really as boring as “cast 3 phantasms and then AA all the way”, I would love to jump around and shatter, but my DPS input would be insignificant.

As I said, my suggestion may not fix anything, but I thought it was interesting. I’ve always seen illusions as being our class mechanics more than just shatters.

And I believe PvP with a phantasm build can be very interesting and absolutely not passive. Since they can die very easily, you need to keep a close look and shatter whenever you think you will loose your phantasms. Or spec into a more supportive player, letting phantasms in charge of the main DPS while you try to buff them through active support to keep them alive. Or spec into lockdown which also allows your phantasm to outlive your opponent.

@Afya
I perfectly agree with you. While DS is a very strong defensive ability, its offensive strength is sub-par. You do more damage with your dagger than with your DS. The main benefit in PvP is that this damage is ranged. But one would hope for the DS to be a bit more like lich form: activating it does make you dangerous.

The mesmer class mechanics is a bit weird as it is only used to sacrifice our illusions. This means that many builds (PvE) never use it, which makes the dev unhappy because “you should use your class mechanics”. But as someone mentioned some time ago (he didn’t want to shatter), most classes benefit from their mechanics without any being detrimental effect. Sure, I get the idea of high-risk high reward, but actually the reward of shatter is fairly low compared to the reward of keeping your phantasms up. If the phantasms were not dying so easily in PvP, they would be better than shatters. So in a sense, shattering is the low-risk low-reward.

Anyway, I am not sure my suggestion fixes this in any way, but I thought it was interesting: what about having a passive effect on the F1-F4 skills. They would work a bit like a signet (or like guardians meditations): their passive would help the player, while the active give a burst but removing the passive until the cool down resets.

Example:
F1: active:mind wrack. passive: your illusions damage is increased
F2: active: cry of frustration. passive: your illusion inflict confusion on critical hits (confusing combatants :p )
F3: active: diversion. Passive: your illusions have chaos armor? (not sure about this one)
F4: active: distorstion. Passive: your phantasms have increased health or protection

Pros:

• conceptually, everyone is now benefitting from their class mechanics
• it makes it easier to balance phantasm build vs shatter builds since now someone who shatters will make his phantasms weaker and reciprocally. Maybe phantasms build will become a more viable low-tier PvP build.

Cons:

• it does favor phantasms build, which is obviously a more passive play style.

What do you think?

No my logic is fine really. Sure you get more bleeds out of “sharper image” than out of “duelist discipline”, but you get more bleeds out of “duelist discipline” than out of “phantasmal fury” (sharper image is always taken in dueling).
In your case, if you have 50% crit, 70% with fury, you get the numbers you mention (5.6). BUT if you take instead duelist, you get 8*0.33*2 + 8*0.5 = 9.28. You still have the 50% crit. So the added crits from fury is indeed 8*0.2 =1.6 compared to the added 5.28 from discipline and IT DOES NOT DEPEND ON YOUR CRIT CHANCE except if your crit chance is already above 80% in which case the fury is even less useful.

I think it is quite clear that anyway, open-world will never be properly balanced to be challenging because it depends on how many people participate. As said, Orr is designed to be done in groups (I believe it is intentional), so a solo can roam around but not succeed many events.
On the other end, dungeons should not be meant as a grinding tool but as a challenging experience. And it actually is… in the beginning. The enemies AI really prevent meaningful replayability . Boss should not be tough because of 100000k HP and 1-shot kill you. They should have basically 100-500k HP, at most 5-10k per attacks (on cool down) but react to the enemy instead of just looping through their animation list.

I think most people here complain BECAUSE they love the class and see it does not reach its full potential.
I still have a good hope Reaper will fix PvE. Sure the group utilities are not great except for fractal where blood magic can become useful. But if at least the DPS is increased (and that is what they promised us), this is a big step forward. Plus necro may be very useful for “challenging group content”.
For the rest, it seems to me like tuesday’s patch was more meant as a bug fix than a balance patch. Let us give them some more time to fix things.

phantasmal fury gives 20% more crit which means less than 2 more bleeds on average for a iDuelist. On the other hand, duelist’s discipline gives effectively 66% chance bleeding (2 stacks x 33%) which amounts to about 5 more bleeds. The benefits from phantasmal fury (outside of the fact that duelist does not work) is that you also get this bonus on the second phantasm and if you have some power you also get an improved power. But if you spec in bleeds, duelist wins (+ you possible get a good recharge reduction from interrupts to keep higher Duelist uptime).

17k was the DPS I got for my hybrid build (sword-pistol, rampager) using the bleeding that was announced the week before the patch. With the current patch, I think I get 14-15k, which is about 1-2k above assassin. For the ramp time, I calculated that it was equivalent to a 1s loss of DPS before the DPS converges, but that was neglecting mantra of pain which can significantly boost the beginning of the fight. So that’s most likely 2s DPS loss.

I guess the DPS discrepancy may come from how you compute DPS. For example, I did not include the 25% increase from vuln.

Obviously, we don’t want every single mob to be as smart as a player. Because in PvP, killing one player can easily take a minute. You can make mobs a bit more intelligent but not excessively. Basically, just make sure they don’t stack in the same point to let themselves cleaved/AOE-d to death. But then, have some challenging boss fights were indeed, AOEs won’t work every single time, but add an immobilize first and you may get 2 or 3 ticks out.
Currently in PvE, 80% of all skills are pointless because they are designed to keep a challenging enemy down. Everyone is using their cleave and AOEs, nothing else. There is no build variety (except somewhat for Ele), half of the professions are “not meta”…

Also, let NPC use all the game mechanics themselves. The necro currently is one of the worst PvE profession. Add boons to the enemy and necro suddenly has its own unique addition to a team.

Yep, so if they do golem-testing (like for MtD), they’ll say we’re OP and nerf it. Of course realistically, having 3 duelists up and alive is strictly impossible in PvP. And in PvE, even like this, it would barely outperform and direct damage build. But those are big numbers you know…

Most people of all professions are complaining about it. The problem may be fixed with a general nerf of damage, making sure that everyone can survive the first burst. And the current stealth duration of mesmer is also likely to get nerfed (100% PU was a bit overkill).

Well at least I think the PvE meta with necro will be reaper. To some extent, I am actually grateful that we finally get something which SEEMS to solve some of our PvE problem, it is just sad that you have to pay the expansion for it…
For PvP, I’m really afraid that the greatsword will make the reaper mesmer meat. And I don’t see the new shroud as good in PvP as the old except if they significantly boost the damage (we haven’t seen actual numbers yet).

There was a fairly long list of bugs for all professions, mesmers included. They would have definitely not written the description this way if they intended it not to work for iDuelist. Plus, the bleed on pistol 5 is fairly anecdotic. It was clearly meant to work for iDuelist but they just didn’t have time to fix mesmers yet (we were not very high on their priority list). Now, when they will start seeing a mesmer stack 50 bleeds on her/his own, they will definitely nerf it, so I’m only mildly optimistic about it.

@AlphatheWhite
Whether YOU say it or not does not say much actually. There are several people here who have at least as much experience with mesmers in dungeons as you have AND a few of them have actually run the DPS calculation. So we don’t deny that you can do good damage with conditions, we just say you can do better damage with direct damage.

Now if you prefer running conditions, go for it! I myself pug conditions from time to time simply because some pugs decide to stay at range all the time and then the scepter is a very efficient weapon. Maybe in HoT, the enemies will move more and attack faster and then torment and confusion will be worth it. In the meanwhile, zerk still rules over Tyria and if you want fun condition play, join the mists.

@Einlanzer
Many (if not most) of the “meta” (or at least used-to-be-meta) sPvP builds have one ranged and one melee set. You play range, but if you manage to get close to/immobilize the enemy you try to burst him with melee.
Also, most melee weapons also have defense mechanisms, so they are actually using both increased defense and increased offense to make up for the loss of range.

There would be if you had no way to get life force. But there is a life force gain on all weapon sets and on skills that are desirable to use.
Now it is true also that for some reasons developers are very scared of the death shroud. I remember the initial developer comments on the necromancer (Jon Peters I believe) that they didn’t want to buff it because it is very strong and people just didn’t realize it yet.

I believe that considering there are a few traits which currently affect DS1, they should ensure the attack speed is identical. So yes, make all DS1 skills a 1/2 cast. It’s already the case underwater.
Then dhuumfire will probably be worth it.

Soul Comprehension and Gluttony already increase the life force gained, and I feel like gaining life force usually goes quite fast. Then again, I mostly use dagger-warhorn.

Why would you say it does not really work? Currently both ranged and melee weapons have their use, which means both are relevant in their own context.

I agree, just tested. Magic bullet works, not duelist.
I didn’t try before to see if magic bullet did work, so I don’t know if they fixed it.