Super +1
I hope this won’t fall on deaf ears.
There are different things here.
First, the question of 3-point push: you have 2 and push the third (or you push 3 from the start). In organized game, it really depends on your team comp and the enemy comp. In very tanky team comp, pushing 3 points from the start can be advantageous. You deny them their home while you cap yours for free and your team sustain (undernumbered) mid until your home capper can join and balance the fight.
If you have a roamer (thief typically) you would rather instead focus on 2 points and let the thief decap the 3rd.
It also depends on the map. Forest is typically not as great for far push because the respawn is so close from the node.
But what you mention is a case where you won mid and lost close. In this case pushing far instead of close could be a decent strategy if the people sitting on home have high sustain and would probably take long to take down. By going far, you at least immediately deny their 2 caps and thus prevent them from getting too much ahead.
On the other hand, since you won mid, you are likely to get the enemy respawn soon, so you have to take into consideration that you most likely won’t be able to full cap (again, especially on forest). But a contested node can be better than a potential never-ending home fight.
So really, it depends on team comp and map. If you are confident that you can kill the enemy in home (you should have the number advantage) this may be the best move. But it’s not that binary.
A long post just to say… it depends :p
So I do not have the answer, but I have a suggestion:
- take a picture with a mesmer and find the color you look for (for example a color in the GS 1 beam)
- get the RGB or hex value of this color. For example I found F4B8F9
- then use this link (they may be some better ones) to find the best matching dye http://pendion.nfshost.com/gw2/dyesearch.php?h=F4B8F9
This link (https://www.gw2bltc.com/tool/dye/search?cloth=f4b8f9&ipg=25&page=1&sort=cloth) seems to be better in the sense that they also include the material, but unfortunately, I find their match not to be as good. But it still helps.
This is just a curiosity thing. Do you think build diversity would be fine if all current elite spec lines remained the same, but we got 2 other potential elites specs to choose from instead of just the one line? Do you think people will still tend take the inspiration trait line? I know this is really theoretical. The only reason I say this is because I don’t necessarily think this is just “the meta”. I think condis are pretty much here to stay with the new amulets, condi rework, and new ways that you can apply condis. I don’t necessarily think the prevalence of condis will ever go back to the way it was pre HoT. I am also not saying messiah is necessarily right. I just think it might be nice to say, reduce power cleans from 2 to 1 conditions and give another trait line (besides chronomancer or illusions) a weak way to remove condis, not necessarily messiah’s ideas, just something.
Sadly, I think your question is more relevant than my point. While I am not happy about it, I do feel that condi will just remain as they are and the elite specs too and diversity will come from additional elite spec (hoping they don’t power creep those even more).
And in this case the answer is not necessarily. Assuming no further power creep, the new spec will bring additional diversity. But they may have their own tools to deal with condi. For example, Chronomancer has tools to replace dueling, which is why this previously mandatory traitline has almost become the least useful traitline. Also, inspiration synergize well with chronomancer, since our main insp-cleanse come from shatters and chronomancer allows shatter spam. The new specs may have better synergy with other lines but bring their own cleanse to make inspiration less relevant.
One thing I would like to add about the mesmer cleanse: we do have a decent number of cleanse, but they are just clumsy. Null field takes its time to cleanse everything (I usually use it only with temporal enchanter, the initial resistance helping to survive while waiting for the cleanse), the mantra is… a mantra (typically the one I use though), disenchanter is… a phantasm (arguably worse than a mantra when it comes to clunkiness), arcane thievery has a long CD and fail more often than not, well heal is great, but insufficient.
And let us not forget about one we usually forget: the focus weapon! Many classes have cleanse in at least one weapon set. The focus in our only weapon with a cleanse. But this cleanse is not that reliable (it relies on our phantasm combo-ing in our light field, but we know how reliable and squishy our phantasms are) not to mention that focus is a particularly weak weapon to start with. In my phantasm rework suggestion (see signature), the combo finisher (as well as the phantasm) is now ground targeted (no need for AI nor target) and thus more reliable. Also the phantasm provides some healing, making the focus more useful and less situational.
so before adding new cleanse, why not improving the reliability of the ones we have.
Do you remember the time when all traitlines were viable? We had many very viable variants, like dom+duel + chaos (PU power shatter or interrupt), dom + duel + insp (mantra power shatter), dom+duel+illusion (another power shatter variant), duel + chaos + illusion (PU condi shatter), duel + insp + illusion (mantra condi shatter). At this time, our main diversity problem was our reliance on Dueling, this line you now consider “our weak line” , and inspiration was actually one of the least used one? We were even complaining on the forum that the line is weak (which I still think it is, mostly because I feel that it is too focused on survivability and not enough on support while being our main support line). Fun how things change!
Apparently, running with no cleanse or with only a utility cleanse was enough.
Since you like to compare us with elementalist, let me remind you how mesmer has much stronger damage avoidance and that we often build with the idea to simply avoid all damage and simply disengage in stealth if things turn bad.
So what does that say about the balance of our different lines? Well I believe it means our core traitline balance is fairly good and that currently, the only problem we have is power creep. I know I sound repetitive and I complain about this over and over again, but this is a fact. Conditions have now become more prevalent than before, not one condi like burn guard, but a whole pile of them. And the main problem in our build diversity is not inspiration but chronomancer. We run inspiration because we are facing a condi-heavy meta. This is not a build diversity problem, this is reactivity to the meta which is a healthy thing in the game. If you are facing a team with low condi pressure (which definitely happens in solo q) you can remove inspiration and play with other things. On the other hand, REGARDLESS of the enemy team, chronomancy is the best line to slot, and THIS is an unhealthy thing.
The initial design of a-net was that not all classes can deal with conditions as easily. Mesmer was designed as a condi-vulnerable class, so was engineer or revenant. In the current situation, conditions are just too prevalent. To some extent, I would argue it’s not even the damage but the debuff which is really the most dangerous. I feel that chill or immobilize have killed me much more than burning, confusion or torment.
The main problem is that now classes can stack 5 different conditions on you in 1 or 2s, and if you are focused in a game, you will very fast have all 13.
For example, a reaper with staff 5 apply fear. Fear applies chill. Chill applies bleeds and vulnerability. So in one skill, you already have 4 conditions. Staff 3 does the same (with poison instead of fear). Skull grinder on berserker applies 4 condition and a daze.
Many of the cleanse were designed for 1 conditions (signet and torch for mesmer for example). 1 condition is currently absolutely nothing. And because the way it is designed, if you want to remove the chill, you may have to remove all the cover conditions (no priority).
So yes, conditions are currently out of balance, and the devs need to gather and try to think of what they want to achieve with them. So do we need to change the pledge or blurred inscriptions to 5 cleanse per skill (basically how much we need to make it work) or should we instead rebalance conditions completely.
The problem is that our low damage is a burden in all game modes, despite our utilities.
- In organized PvE, alacrity/quickness makes up for our low damage, but in solo play, our low sustained damage can be a burden, especially in HoT. For example, I find pocket raptors super difficult to deal with compare to my necro or guardian (haven’t tried other classes yet).
- In PvP, we have high burst, but no follow up damage in power builds. This is one of the reason we don’t see much power mesmer anymore. In the same way, mesmer cannot build for bruiser-y playstyle, because our damage as a bruiser is close to 0
- In WvW GvG, we have basically no damage since our phantasms die instantly in a zerg (or after 1s if traited… yeah!).
So we have to get more sustained damage if we want balance and diversity. Of course it needs to be made so that we don’t get overpowered, meaning that:
- building for alacrity/quickness should reduce your overall damage. This is already the case because we need to use shield phantasm instead of sword. This kind of compromise has to be kept if we want to increase our damage.
- our burst may need reduction to adjust for increased sustained damage, though I don’t think by much (if at all)
- in WvW GvG, there is really no need for compensation, we are currently VERY underpowered
On the other hand, I think the GS is not the main priority for sustained damage. I would basically reduce the gap between short range and long range damage, since I don’t see the point of it, but GS is a good burst weapon and has decent DPS at full range. One thing which I would really like is to change the staff to a more AOE weapon. We really need some better AOE capabilities and staff feels to me like the best place to have it. So instead of a single target phantasm, I would like to see some AOE damage on skill 3 (and also more damage on skill 5). And maybe the AA changed to a less “bouncy” and more “small AOE impact”.
- solution to low damage: rebalance mesmer damage, away from phantasm and in weapon skills instead (see my signature)
- solution to condi cleanse: rebalance conditions completely, separating debuffs (vuln, immob, blind, chill etc…) and damaging conditions (burning, bleeding, confusion etc…). Then rebalance hybrid damage to be on par with power damage (same overall DPS per number of stat) and reduce the amount of debuffs, with the idea that some classes excel in boons (ele, guardian, engi) some with debuffs (thief, necro) and some with a mix (mesmer, druid, warrior). Finally allow cleanse to only affect debuff (and reduce their amount and make many of them debuff-specific).This would overall reduce the need for condi cleanse (they will be used only to remove debuffs), and give them the same preponderance as boon corruption. Mobile builds or classes (thief, mesmer) would have easy access to self- immob/chill/cripple cleanse. Guardian would excel at AOE condition cleanse. Chill’s cooldown slowing would be reduced (like alacrity). We would live in a happy world!
I know it won’t happen, but I like unrealistic ideas.
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
I feel that no one at ANet ever stopped to consider the implications behind giving Continuum Split without making it replace something essential. Or non-replacing class mechanics changes in general.
I agree, I think CS should have at least replaced distorsion since both are “sort of” invulnerabilities (CS is not as good as an invulnerability but you get the additional benefit of double cast)
Conceptually, Celestial Avatar is easy to balance as you need to spend time inside a form which disables most of your outgoing damage.
I actually find this one of the most difficult thing to balance. One of the big problem in PvP balance currently is the ability to fully reset your health. Many classes have (or had) it: celestial avatar for druid, multiple combo in healing turret water field for engi, to some extent burst damage inside facet for rev (though you could call it bad play), I don’t even want to talk about tempests.
It is very hard to balance celestial avatar. It is currently too strong for PvP and makes druid much stronger than ranger. However, balancing it for PvP may end up making it completely irrelevant, especially in PvE.
In theory (if they hadn’t completely botched it) Tempest Overloads could be easily balanced against not having them if they brought extreme spike power for ridiculous cooldowns, essentially leaving you with 1 less stance for a significant amount of time (thinking 2+ minutes here, ideally 5+).
Elementalist is just the least balanced class of all. Period. Nothing about it is balanced. It has the most stupid PvE damage and cannot even play damage in PvP. Go figure.
triple-dodge
Actually this is probably the most underwhelming “elite mechanics” of all. 1 extra dodge is really nothing. There used to be a Acrobatics trait doing just that actually! What makes DD so strong compared to thief is all the traits, including the GM (ooh and staff 5 is stupid even if rarely used competitively).
Overall though I agree that class mechanics is a great part in the elite specs superiority. To be fair, I can’t really blame they had no vision for the game when they released them, since obviously they were just EXTREMELY LATE for them. Most of them were unfinished products, simply overtuned to make them work.
Sadly, this haste has resulted in a new baseline level for future balance so it feels like they won’t reverse the power creep. They may end up buffing core traits/skills enough to restore the core/elite balance, but this will just be more power creep.
So mesmer / necro wells are blockable?
Mesmer is blockable. Condi mesmer don’t have a single way to be unblockable afaik.
Necro marks (staff) are usually unblockable. Also their condi transfer (signet) is unblockable. So for necro, you usually want to keep your block for when they are in shroud (or scepter).
Being unblockable is a very necro-thing. They are the class designed to eat bunkers: boon corruption, unblockable damage and CC, high sustain damage etc…
Necro are everything BUT unkillable. They have a fairly low sustain. They are tough match up in 1v1 but as long as you can focus them in a team fight, they die pretty fast. CC them when out of shroud and they die.
This has always been the design problem of necro (though admittedly less with reaper): they are just a (very large) HP bag.
@silver
if you could mitigate more condition damage then the ways it can be completely removed would have to be reduced. else kill times for condition builds would become far to long and the entire playstyle would be unviable against running a power build.
I absolutely agree. My ideal goal for conditions (and there actually is currently an active post about that) would be to split debuff (vuln, immob, fear, chill, cripple) and damaging condi (burning, bleeding, confusion etc…) and make cleanse only affect debuffs (and much less cleanse overall) while condi would be rebalanced and can only be mitigated and not negated.
Primordial legend means he reached legend in S1. If he didn’t play (or not enough) in S2, then he starts at amber. Nothing surprising. The mechanics here is to reduce the level gap in the beginning of the season. But you will always have a gap in the beginning, it should however reduce quickly as the season progresses.
You know that those actually exist:
- a block skill for condition application: any block skill prevents condi applications too
- Condition Reflect: a reflect skill will reflect any reflectable conditions (LB on warrior and SB on ranger and thief for example).
I know this is not what you had in mind, but I’m just trying to remind you that condis don’t just appear on you, they came with an attack that you can counter the same way you counter a physical attack AND you can on top of that cleanse or resistance. There is already more counter to condi than to physical damage. What condi lacks is mitigation (toughness/protection/many traits and runes benefits).
Were there any thief changes? :o
Not this week, but last big patch. Thief is back on pro league, and therefore people (=sheep) will decide to play it in ranked too. And with revenant, druid and condi mes weaker, there is more and more place for thieves (because less bad match ups more good ones).
I’m going to give a try to Paladin (old bunker style) chronomancer and Sage reaper because I feel they are decent (and good carry builds) and I enjoy them. Then I will see how hard it gets at higher divisions and adjust according to that.
I am very much on OP’s side, and this is actually something I have been asking for some time too.
I actually went a step further in my idea and simply remove condi (damage) cleanse altogether. There is already counter to damage or condi damage: block/evade/blind/aegis, etc… By removing the ability to cleanse it, it makes it easier to balance conditions. Namely, a part of the damage coefficient is changed to a condition, all other balance things remain identical.
By having this done, you can use very simple maths to decide the optimal ratio of power vs condi of hybrid skills, so that they all benefit from amulets in a balanced way (i.e. no advantage of relying on less stats for condition damage, simply because a full damage also requires power damage). I actually already made this calculation not too long ago.
Also, the future condition damage can be grayed out on your life bar as some have suggested. This will also ensure that people immediately link the skill they received with the damage it produces, and will help them learn which skill to avoid (making condition damage less frustrating).
Then some of you may wonder “what is the point of having DoT instead of simple damage if they essentially behave the same” and my answer is: they don’t behave the same. Condition damage ignores armor, and can thus be balanced to be superior for high armor targets while power is superior for low armor. This all makes perfect sense since power damage is also faster, and can thus be used to quickly down squishy targets while condi is used to demolish tanks. Also, this creates different type of damage which can be mitigated by different techniques. For example one can change resistance to now mitigate the condition damage (let’s say -50% condition damage or -50% incoming condition duration) and you will now have different classes/builds able to defend against condi-enemies or against power enemies.
Regardless of this additional suggestion, I am 100% behind OP (except that I put poison in debuffs and not conditions). Debuff and boons should get the same role in the game. They actually mirror themselves very much (aegis/blind, vulnerability/might, protection/weakness, regeneration/poison etc…). But because of the ridiculous amount of cleanse we have compare to the amount of boon rip, boons are ruling supreme in gw2.
I always thought guardian and necromancer were opposite class by design, guardian supporting through boons and condi cleanse, while necromancer supports through debuffs and boon rips. Yet the unbalance between debuffs and boons has made guardian an effective support class while necro isn’t nearly as much. This change is the step needed to fix that and add a lot of depth in the build diversity and roles of the game.
Even with berserker stat, power, precision and ferocity, staff will out damage GS due to illusionary warlock, by alot but if you really like GS there is no harm done because mesmer is the lowest damage dealer, you only have to throw in well for alacrity and time warp for quickness and your party will love you
Staff is great against single enemies. Greatsword has significantly more cleave (even is none of them is really satisfying against multiple enemies). Both weapons are useful, but in different situations.
This is not a discussion (or QQ) about the current balance.
I realize by reading the forums that everyone has a fairly different idea about balance. A big part of it is that people play different game modes (PvE, PvP, WvW), different professions and at different skill level, and thus have a different perception of the balance. But there is also a difference of point of view on what is the balance goal.
So my question to Karl McLain is very simple: what is a-net’s official balance goal when you balance existing skills and create new ones (elite specs)? What state of the game do you wish to reach?
I believe that knowing the answers may help us understand the decisions and might also make our comments more useful in the future.
Before I enumerate some different possible balance goal I can think of, a few definitions I will use:
- meta: a build which is considered part of the best composition, or close enough that being slightly more proficient with the build makes up for the small build inferiority. It is also noted that the best composition may differ depending on the match up. A last note is that of course, both high-tier and low-tier environment should be balanced, the requirement being slightly different at different skill levels.
- role: a specific role in a game mode. Role definitions are not necessarily universal. I would define for example roamer, frontline and backline in WvW; roamer, DPS, support and 1v1er in PvP; to some extent DPS and support in PvE (though usually everyone is sort of DPS in high-end PvE). Roles are of course flexible, and builds can be hybrid.
So… here are some possible balance goals:
- #1 Profession balance: each profession has at least one meta build in each game mode.
This is in my opinion the most elementary balance goal. The idea is that since players typically have one (or a few) favorite profession(s) it allows all players to be competitive at any time.
- #2 Alternative: rotating meta
In order to shake a bit the meta, some professions can be purposefully made un-meta, and switching at every major balance. However, because of the argument I mention above, I think this is not a good idea (I don’t say shaking the meta is a bad idea, but I believe keeping all professions meta is necessary).
- #3 Build diversity: each skill, weapon and traits is meta in at least one game mode
This is a more ambitious goal than the previous. Not only we have 1 build viable, but actually different ones, using different traits and skills. The idea is simply that it makes little sense to have weapon, skills and traits that are not used. Each of them should have at least one thing they do which justify their existence.
However, I am not sure this point is actually strictly required. There have been many cases in the past of skills that were underused and became meta at some point, not because the skill was changed but because the meta did and this skill fit the meta well. A (probably bad) example is that I don’t recall signet of Illusion for mesmer being meta in the past but this skill have good synergy with condi chronomancer and thus became meta while it was not changed on its own. There are probably many traits and skills that are not bad per say but have simply not found their use yet. But I still think (and arena net seem to be working on this) that currently some skills and weapons simply do not offer much.
- #4 Alternative: Role balance: each profession is able to build for each role at a meta level
This one is an alternative version of the build diversity point above. Instead of focusing on making different skills used, one focuses on ensuring the class can assume all roles (which of course will then make use of different traits and skills, but it is a different focus).
This is probably more ambitious and also likely to be a much more controversial idea. This is how I interpreted the gw2 philosophy mentioned by the developers before launch. Team compositions will usually try to cover different roles, and the idea is that you can’t necessarily wait for a player playing the specific profession that is good at this role. So you need a defensive support/healer but don’t have a druid player (for example) available but a mesmer. So should be able to ask your mesmer to spec for defensive support and be essentially as efficient as a druid would. Of course, because of synergies and complementarity, not every class would be as advantageous in any team comp, but the build should be good enough that it does a good job and would potentially be meta in some specific comp.
I think the main argument against it is the risk of losing profession individuality. You see it a lot from people arguing that druid should not have been made a healer, since this is a guardian role, while DH should not have gotten a « selfish » DPS role with bow and traps since this is a ranger thing. And profession theme can also cause difficulties in designing specs, for example, a support role may seem very counterintuitive and difficult for thief (though there are ways to design elite specs to fit this role or ways to use debuffs as a form of support).
I personally think this goal is compatible with profession individuality. For example, we saw how support chronomancer and support guardian can fill a support role in completely different ways, one with time control (alacrity, quickness), one with boons like protection, stability etc… and healing. There could actually be more work on the (already existing to some extent) association between some boons and some classes, such as chronomancer and quickness/alacrity, guardian and stability/aegis, elementalist and protection, revenant and resistance etc… I also think that in principle, if balanced correctly, debuffs (boon removal, non-damaging conditions) and control are forms of support and thus definitely expand the professions that could play « support ».
A last point on this is of course that this is a more difficult goal to achieve, and that the balance team should be careful to ensure that you cannot perform all roles simultaneously but need to spec for it.
- #5 balancing core with elite specs
This is a question that many players want to ask. Is it part of your goal to balance non-elite builds (3 core specs) with elite builds (1 elite + 2 core). And also if you want to achieve this goal, do you want to do it by mostly nerfs to elite specs or buffs to core specs, or maybe even a slight design change, such as making the 5th traitline (illusion, soul reaping, arcane, etc…) an elite spec and forcing to have at most 1 elite and 2 core specs in each build.
- #6 Alternative: Balancing only future elite specs.
This is something I see often in the forum: many have accepted that core specs will never be the same level as elite specs and that future balance should solely focus on elite specs.
This may be a somewhat messy post at the end, but in simple terms, I think the community would really love to have some communication with the balance team (like we had during the HoT betas) and understand the direction they are taking. I strongly believe communication has an almost bigger role than balance itself to appease the community.
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
Are you sure it’s not METABattle’s fault? I think 80% of PVPer’s just go there to get a decent build and go with it. The seasons get really competitive and everyone is paranoid that losing will trash their MMR. So the don’t risk experimental builds. I’ve been playing since 2012 and METABattle was not as prevalent as it is now. Back when the game was new, people had to come up with there own build and the META was a secret to be discovered. Now the best builds are laid out for all to see, so that’s all you see…
There used to be a site (can’t remember it now) that listed “glass cannon” “bunker” and “balanced” builds for every profession.
Metabattle is only partly responsible. Actually, one year ago metabattle had already a strong influence on PvP.
The problem is that the build diversity has effectively gone down.
Elite specs have some highly broken mechanics, which creates a huge difference between builds using and having synergy with them and builds which do not.
Also, the absurd pressure that enemies bring (with their own broken elite specs) force you to play a very specific way to be able to survive. For example, the amount of condition is insanely high, so you have very very hard time if you don’t spec against them.
Let us take an example: mesmer (my main).
- The shield is probably our strongest off-hand with very high defense, very good CC, high illusion generation and some support. Alacrity pretty much improve anything we do as mesmer and F5 allow double cast anything we want. No other traitline give you so much. So we have to run chronomancer (broken elite spec)
- We need to run inspiration if we want to survive the insane condition output of other classes (including enemy mesmers, how ironic!). Mesmer is otherwise very weak against condis.
- we have now 1 traitline to pick. That leaves us domination for power, chaos for bunker and illusion for condi. Power has a really low damage output. The burst is high, but with all the defensive elements of enemies, it is not enough to really pressure someone, and we lack follow up damage. That leaves us bunker (Paladin) and condi (Mercenary). Our support is fairly low, so bunker, while definitely playable does not have the same kick as it used to. Condi survives almost as well if not better (benefits from CD reduction of illusion on both shatters and shield block) and synergize very well with the illusion spam traits that chronomancer give you (broken elite spec again). These illusion spam traits also synergize very well with inspiration for more cleanse and heal. Tadaa!!!!! A broken build.
Can you play bunker? Yes but you don’t gain survivability while you lose damage.
Can you play power? Yes, but you lose survivability and you have no damage after your initial burst which everyone can block/evade/invuln or simply fully heal right after.
So yes, in principle you have build diversity, but nowhere near as good as the broken meta specs and small minor variations around them.
Until they remove sinister amulet or any of those condition power amulets mesmer will be fine. Infact, sinister is probably better if you know how to use your defenses and not waste them. I don’t understand the logic they had when they implemented a pure power precision condition damage amulet.
Does anyone actually use sinister i dont think ive ever seen a pvp build that uses it
I think you can prove that viper is usually straight out superior to sinister. It has slightly more damage (even considering precision) and more condi damage. If you start to add ferocity, might or other stuff, it may not be as straightforward, but on its own, viper is a better choice.
I mostly disagree with your suggestions. Actually very often, offensive traitlines contain defensive elements (for example, you could argue that for a thief, deadly art is a better defensive line than acrobatics). And the “class mechanics” line as well as elite spec line usually contain a mix of offense and defense.
And the results are hybrids. All the classes playing currently in PvP (except ele or thief) are playing hybrids. A lot of sustain, a lot of damage, a lot of control, a lot of support etc…. They are good at everything, little one man armies.
If people play defensively instead of offensively it is because they feel they get more benefits from the defensive traits. This is partly the fault of the “conquest” framework and also partly because those defensive traits are just too good to pass.
The one thing which I agree with you and yet not fully is the condition cleanse. Many of the defensive lines are mostly here to survive conditions (inspiration, alchemy). And this is just because of how unbalanced conditions are if not cleansed properly. But I would rather solve it by a redesign of conditions (my suggestion would be: damaging conditions cannot be cleansed, but are balanced the same way as power damage; condition cleanse only cleanse debuff like vuln, immob, blind, chill, etc… and hybrids like poison).
So each line should be clear: damage, condi, defense, support and class mechanics. Then the elite spec should have a clear role focus.
If you want a mix of offense and defense… well you have 3 lines to choose from, that should be enough, no?
In short, I want DPSer to die fast and not sustain outnumbered for as long as they do now. They should need offensive lines to get good damage, and those lines should be strong enough to be a good choice instead of defensive lines.
On the other hand, tanks should have low damage.
Opportunity cost!
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
The point of Fay is simply that power shatter has 1 burst. That’s all. If you miss mind wrack you have no damage left.
On the other hand condi shatter can use every shatter for damage and recharge them all with the signet for another round, while always keeping max illusion count thanks to traits.
As always, the problem with power mesmer is the lack of sustained damage. We have one of the highest burst in the game. But this burst is highly telegraphed and with all passive procs, blocks/evades/invuln and innate tankiness, it does not suffice to pressure the enemy. Sadly our follow-up damage is ridiculously low.
Your whole point is good except Mesmer was the only class to take so many nerfs. They didn’t look at any other classes with this power creep and adjust, just Mesmer. That’s the problem.
I think this may be mesmer-centric thinking. Chronomancer and Revenants were arguably the 2 OP-est classes after HoT. So they are the ones who got hit the most. Revenant got continuously nerfed since the expansion. They are still broken OP, but they almost only got nerfs. DH are probably even worse, since they got hit so hard that they are the single most useless class right now. Listen to the necro or engineer forum and they will tell you how “butchered” they have been by the last patch.
The problem imo is that a-net has reduced its goal to “at least one build works”. And from this point of view, chrono works, and most classes (except guardian) are deemed “viable” in pro league so they are happy (even if actually the class stacking rule is one of the main reason for that).
And our build diversity problem is actually true of all classes too.
So mesmers should stop feeling like they were the main victims, we are all in a bad position.
Now I will agree that the forums are very biased against mesmers. So mesmer alleged OP-ness is always blown out of proportion because low/medium-tier players just can’t handle mesmers. But so far, the truth is that since june patch, mesmers are meta in one way or another.
Silverkey.2078, I dont agree at all with most of your points. Your point on lack of diversity is completely off field. Ppl knows when we say build diversity, we are talking about builds that actually works. META & NONE META. Cuz anyone can pull about 50 different build out of the hat. Problems is none of them works efficiently. & saying that ArenaNet is not at fault for the mesmer nerfs is kinda of an ignorant statement when patch after patch Anet has hachet mesmers.
We agree and disagree at the same time here. I am saying that the nerfs we got never put us out of the meta. But I also say they were often misplaced. For example you mention the mantra nerfs. Technically the main mantra nerf was actually a bug fix, and I have been since that asking for a rework of the recharge functionality to make them less clunky. But technically, this nerf did remove mantras but not the power shatter archetype that it was a part of. What did remove power shatter is all elite specs and not a mesmer nerf.
We have only 1 condi build that’s viable. & that’s only if you can kite well. So plzz.. pretty plzz. Besides condi, list me all the Viable build mesmer has that actually works in spvp?
None, hence my comment about build diversity. You can play other things and make them sort of work against weaker opponents, but at equal skill, the gap between condi chrono and everything else is huge.
Right- gap between meta & not hits hard. But, What do you mean the problem is not from Anet running the mesmer down? It’s exactly that! & you just pointed it out. -Your saying exactly what i’m saying but in more details. Since HoT came out, almost one by one, Anet nerfed or killed every mesmer viable build to the ground. Build diversity but one is gone by Anet hand except for Condi build …we all know this. I’m not saying builds such as the bunker mesmer should not have bin deleted. Sure, i agree it was to much. But, what about all does other viable build that got destroyed? ( PU, mantra, power shatter, chrono Alacrity?..& ect…, all nerfed & destroyed.)
So let’s assume we have somehow 3 great archetypes, meaning 3 types of builds that were meta at some point:
- power shatter (the most viable build for most of mesmer history, meta after june patch up to HoT)
- bunker chrono (season 1 meta)
- condi chrono (season 2 and 3 meta)
Bunker chrono is the only one I can agree with you. It was demolished by nerfs. Essentially, removing quickness rez + alacrity nerf would have been enough to put the build in a bad spot, but they had to reduce protection, resistance, blind etc… as well. So we ended up with a build with decent but not amazing survivability, and bad support (the main problem of bunker mesmer currently is the lack of support).
But when people complain about the lack of build diversity for mesmers, they seem to mostly mean power shatter.
Power shatter was made very strong with the june patch. From then, they got many nerfs, but those nerfs, while often misdirected, did not put mesmer out of the meta. What killed power shatter is power creep of HoT. The build died when all broken elite specs arrived. Some people try to stick to it after the expansion, since power shatter was actually buffed by chronomancer. But despite CS, despite strong alacrity, despite blur on precog, etc… power shatter could not rival the super broken elite specs of other classes.
So I won’t blame a-net for nerfing chronomancer. I will however blame a-net (and many in the community who support this) for not nerfing elite specs back to core levels, for letting those builds with insane sustained damage (which power shatter does not have) and absolutely insane survivability despite that (which power shatter definitely does not have) ruling gw2 PvP. Power shatter is high risk, high reward. How can we compare to all the very low risk, very high reward specs around?
The problem is not so much that they have run mesmer down to the ground. Actually, mesmer is still a strong PvP class, strong PvE class and strong WvW roaming class.
The problem is that the balance team has apparently stopped trying to get build diversity. So PvP mesmer is only viable playing condi. And many of us just don’t enjoy this playstyle or at least would like to change from time to time.
Before HoT, I used to alternate between power, condi, even some variants of each. Now the gap between meta and non-meta builds is insane.
If you are playing unranked/solo q/ranked non tourney = anything is viable. No one is forcing you to play condi meta.
You can still see people playing power shatter for unranked.
I agree with you yet only partly. Sure, you can play anything. To a large extent, you could play the most garbage build out there, as long as your rotate correctly, you will still beat a team of bad “meta” players.
I actually currently play different variants of power builds with berserker amulet, because I enjoy it more than the meta build.
However, I also see how inefficient I am. The matchmaking attempts to put you with decently similar level players, and thus, playing a non-meta build is putting you at a disadvantage. At some point, you will have tanked your MMR so hard you will be competitive again, but because you play players with much lower skills.
In the past, I felt that the gap between meta and non-meta was small enough that you could enjoy theory crafting and adjust the build to get a playstyle that suits you. Actually, to a large extent, the “meta” was not even relevant because in solo queue, you may have to adjust to your team comp significantly. Now the gap is so high that the meta is by far the best build you can play with your class almost regardless of your and your enemy team comps. SUPER BORING!
#MakeGw2GreatAgain
But that is the state of PvP currently, you need something broken strong to content in the meta. Adrenal health is now obviously that thing for warrior.
And it is interesting that warrior’s thing is not in their elite spec. If now we restrict everyone from playing elite spec, warrior will be the obvious OP one out of all.
This
It’s quite simple really. Warrior post-HoT was the only non-broken elite spec. There was a clear trade-off for traiting berserker, so even if the burst skills are a bit over the top, many felt that warrior was on par with berserker.
And before HoT, warrior was viable. Definitely not the best, but viable.
So really, I said that so often, I don’t think warrior should have been buffed. All elite specs should have been nerfed.
Instead, a-net overbuffed one trait, making it mandatory for viability. And now berserker is almost broken enough to be viable… I guess it’s something…
The problem is not so much that they have run mesmer down to the ground. Actually, mesmer is still a strong PvP class, strong PvE class and strong WvW roaming class.
The problem is that the balance team has apparently stopped trying to get build diversity. So PvP mesmer is only viable playing condi. And many of us just don’t enjoy this playstyle or at least would like to change from time to time.
Before HoT, I used to alternate between power, condi, even some variants of each. Now the gap between meta and non-meta builds is insane.
First, I am very confused when you say that bunker and condi need to be buffed as a general case, but it is not. Your example seem to be guardian, and that is one of the only classes where your analysis is really relevant. For example, condi reaper is much better than condi necro, bunker chrono the only real way to make a bunker for mesmer, etc….
Other than that, I disagree with the fact that you need to buff core to the elite level.
- It would not be a balancing nightmare. It is much easier to nerf 1 traitline than buff 5, and as you say, there was good build diversity before HoT, so nerfing the elite spec is the best way to bring back very fast this build diversity.
- balancing core with elite by buffing the core also removes any incentive to buy the expansion. This is a non-argument.
- the problem of power creep is not only balance. Even if we had balance right now I would still argue for a nerf to elite specs. The reason is that the power creep has significantly reduced the quality of the combat. More AOE, more CC, more block/evades/invuln, more unblockable, etc…
So in summary: you want bunker and burn guardian to work? I do too. But the best way to do that imo is to nerf DH (mostly the virtues, a bit some of the traps+LB), as well as all elite specs to this level. As many, I consider core guardian the quintessence of a balanced class. This is the level I want for all classes and all elite specs. If the game goes back to a stage where (unbuffed) bunker guardian is meta or near-so, I think the health of gw2 PvP will be VERY SIGNIFICANTLY improved.
Currently, alacrity is very strong in PvE, rather weak in PvP. Make alacrity a boon and:
- PvE benefits from it since you can reach high boon duration. Actually, PvE chrono already strive for high boon duration for quickness.
- PvP would suffer from it since it can now been stripped/corrupted
So it is the opposite direction of the balance we need currently.
As a solo player and mesmer main, HoT open world was much easier with my reaper. MUCH MUCH easier.
Especially with pocket raptors…
Gw2 has always had healing skills. Gw2 used to have more death. What changed are defensive traits being too effective.
So if you nerf Ancient seeds, what will be left for the GM traits? Please do explain.
PS: Every decent player will bring a cleanse with him.
Well something more imaginative than “if you get CCed, get CCed even more” would be nice. But I would be happy if the trait apply a simple immobilize instead of an entangle. Because as you say, every decent player will bring a cleanse, but entangle is a bit more difficult to escape than “just” cleansing it.
On paper I would agree with you. In practice nerfing this trait would be wrong. No skilled players has trouble with this trait. Despite how OP it seems, it is a minor annoyance at best.
Balance is not only for skilled player. This trait is actually very strong, especially because not all builds have the necessarily cleave to get rid of those vines. This trait adds to the long list of excessive CC that the druid specialization brought.
Moa has always been a broken skill btw, so broken that has always been banned from duel and it has always been source of qq.
Very many high CD skills are banned from duels. Those skills are not necessarily broken. They can turn the tides of a fight but have a very high cooldown so that this does not happen too often. But in a duel, turning the tides simply mean winning, so it is unwelcome.
I would say you’re spot on with the problems I have with the expansion. Your text is basically a well phrased summary of exactly all the things I have been complaining for the past months.
Thanks for putting it up.
However, I have to warn you that while you will get a lot of support from many, many others seem to have just accepted that this will remain like this and will ask you to move on.
But I hope with enough messages, a-net will understand that this problem is the highest priority for PvP for many of us. They recently made a poll for WvW asking what was their priority, and if there was one for PvP, this would be hand down mine.
My priority order would be
- Fix power creep
- Increase build diversity (for me #1 will already go a long way for build diversity)
- an expansion
- change maps to make them more competitive
- anything else
and #3 should really really REEAAAAAALLLLLLLY not happen before #1.
Well my take on this is:
- build diversity on mesmer is pathetic. But then again, it is essentially the case for all professions. HoT power creep has increased the gap between meta and non-meta. Before, I always pretty much played my own build, sometimes miles away from the meta role (like bunker mesmer pre-HoT) while still feeling I was contributing to my team as long as I was smart about it. Now the best I can do is a variation of the meta build or I feel like I am useless.
- In particular, we just don’t have good support anymore. We have never been good at healing, boons are flying around easily already (or there is a necro which would make you regret it) and alacrity does not feel strong enough to invest in it. CC and portal is pretty much the best support we can do. This makes me sad as I like play support roles and I thought that alacrity and quickness are a really unique take on this role.
- I feel like we have too much blocks and evades, so much that just rotating through your cooldown without taking into account what the enemy is doing will keep you alive just well. Same thing with shatters, instead of trying to read the opponent to land a good shatter, you can just shatter every 2 or 3 seconds and the enemy will die eventually. So in summary, I find the condi mesmer plain and tasteless and I moved away from chronomancer.
So for me this is Super Sayian Sad State. But chrono is meta, so we are happy! right Azukas?
PvP people have always used “balance” as a buzzword for “I don’t like losing duels to this class”.
Mesmer and thieves are the ultimate classes to frustrate/annoy people in 1v1 situations, so naturally they’re the ones that demand most nerfs.
Unfortunately when developers decided to move away from the GW1 mesmer’s theme of control and shutdown and introduced the visual clutter of clones and their terrible implementation of stealth with little counter play to said stealth, they doomed the classes that use these things to be the most complained about regardless of their overall balance.
And people won’t stop the QQ until said specs are erased from relevance, much like how they saw spirit rangers and any offensive ranger for that matter gutted to hell as well as any minionmancer.
I don’t disagree with the analysis. I think the problem is that some builds have mechanics which make them very strong in low tier PvP. In general, any build which can burst you down fast (backstab or P/P thief, power shatter, LB ranger, trap DH) or has very strong skill which ABSOLUTELY need to be avoided in fight (like moa) will be pushed into oblivion by a-net to prevent excessive forum QQ.
I think the game needs to take care of all its population, including the low PvP tiers. However, in those cases, I think the smart move is to reduce the impact of the skills to be less of a win-button and reduce the cooldown appropriately. With this logic, the current Moa nerf was only half of the right move.
I saw your post in the WvW forum and I agree with the basis. However, I am not sure the mesmer would be good frontline material anyway considering the ridiculously low damage we have and the fairly limited support we can provide (which is anyway mostly area of effect, and not adapted to moving groups).
Concerning the mantra itself, the high cooldown is probably because it is potentially 3 stunbreaks, the stability being almost a side-feature. I think it is safe to say that this is a skill which sees little use currently, but this is in great parts related to the overall clunkiness of mantras.
One suggestion that I have seen (from Curunen if I remember well) and really liked was a change of Bountiful disillusionment to have AOE stability granted on F3. This, added to a more mobile support elite specialization (with shouts for example) could be an answer on the mesmer side to your request to diversify the frontline and have an alternative to guardian as its core element.
You have 2 types of people complaining about condie Mesmer.
Type 1 is bads that have complained about condie Mesmer for years, even when it was awful. No matter how badly it gets nerfed, they’ll still be whining about it. This is the vast majority of complainers.
Type 2 is mesmers that have put on their rose colored glasses for reminiscing about the good old days when power shatter was used instead of condie shatter. However, they conveniently forget that power shatter was still garbage tier, played only by Helseth because he’s too stubborn to do anything else. This is a small minority though, because most mesmers aren’t so insanely myopic.
Power mesmer was perfectly fine post June patch and until HoT. So maybe there are some of the complaints are from mesmers and many others just want to go undo the power creep and get instead the side-grade they bought the expansion for. Though those ones usually target broader than mesmer.
Personally as a player (who is not playing much mesmer recently) I never really felt condi mesmer OP. When I die to someone, I just assume I need to improve my own skills. But I do miss the pre-HoT time, when I felt I would play many different builds and still be useful, when there was not AOE CC flying around from every direction etc…
So I did feel condi chrono was too strong, and I did suggest nerfs. And I am not overly happy about the moa change, but it is a minor patch and I guess they just wanted a quick fix to the balance before the season starts.
The stun break occurs instantly. This is why an interrupt will put it on the full cooldown. It works just fine as a stun break, it’s the rest of the skill that’s awful.
Doh! Has it always been like that? I seem to remember when it was first nerfed to 3/4s cast time, prior to the change to Aegis, that I tested it and the Stun didn’t occur until after.
Oh well, sorry for the misinfo then, but you’re right…the rest of the ability is still trash, but good to know that stun-break and stability are instant.
It DOES have 3/4s cast time but the stunbreak is instant and the stability is meant to ensure you won’t be interrupted before the cast actually occur.
This is still potentially annoying because I often used stunbreak during CS to ensure that I did not waste its duration. A 3/4s cast means I basically have to wait anyway (or maybe cancel the cast but lose all the effect while still going on cooldown) so it is definitely a drawback that is not needed anymore anyway considering how bad the skill is.
The most important idea in this is to get more balance FASTER! The meta since HoT has been simple, the strongest specs were way too strong for way too long. The community is festering, and balance is at its core. 3 month balance patches are not fast enough!
I can only +1 that.
What’s unacceptable about 6s Moa?
Mostly that it nerfs core mesmer even more while the real Moa problem is because of continuum split.
Overall, I don’t mind Moa duration reduced, if at the same time the cooldown was reduced and the visual cue increased (to make it easier to dodge). That would have been a good rounded balance to make this skill less annoying, more avoidable, but with lower CD to make sure it remains useful.
Let us be honest, this change does not change much. Condi chrono is still viable. As a matter of fact, I prefer it with gravity well already so…
The problem of mesmer currently is that condi chrono is the only playable thing and this is not necessarily a build people enjoy (I don’t). But again, being honest, build diversity is an all time low and very few classes have different playable builds.
On top of that, this is a minor fix and not a balance patch per say. So you couldn’t expect much.
So switch to ele if you want, I have moved to reaper and ele 2 patches ago because I don’t enjoy condi chrono. But don’t be overdramatic, this patch hardly changes anything in the meta.
It’s been reduced from 10 seconds to 6. I was hoping it wouldn’t be nerfed but hopefully now people can leave the mesmer alone.
You’re waaaaayyyyy too optimistic. Mesmer would always seem OP even when underwhelming. The reason for that is that lower tiers don’t know how to handle the class.
note: I am not saying chrono is not OP currently, but mesmer always get disproportionate hate.
It is a bandaid fix because that is the way a-net does right now: big patch every 3 months, small fixes in between. Be happy that we have this at least.
For the changes themselves: Moa reduced duration is a nerf to chronomancer, widely regarded as one of the strongest class right now. So you could say it is good. On the other hand:
- we are really back in bunker meta pace. Moa at least was one way to get a kill.
- this is probably not the best way to fix moa since it nerfs core mesmer even more compare to chrono. Moa was always an annoying skill, but it only got out of hands because of continuum split. So now they halved Moa duration to make up for the halved CD coming from continuum split… Bad balance
Rev nerf was needed. Surge of the mist is one of the most stupid skills of the game, it should not have damage on it to begin with (very strong CC + gap close + evade should be enough for one skill).
Moa needed a CD reduction in addition to the transform reduction but you take the good with the bad here, at least Moa is better balanced with chrono AND we can still CS elites.
Yes, if we only wanted to change Moa, I would have reduced the duration, reduced the cooldown and increase the visual cue for the cast.
But I still think CS is unbalanceable. All skills are balanced according to effect/cooldown and CS just prevents balancing the CD properly, especially for high CD skills. Any CD higher than 150s is now only 75s, CD of 70-90s can be doubled. How do you balance that?
This is the smarter move, lazy would have been to nerf ability to CS elites.
I think the other way around. This nerfs core mesmer (which didn’t need a nerf) because of chrono. This is very bad maths but in a sense, you could say that since CS doubles Moa they halved the duration…
Mesmer
- Signet of Humility: Reduced the moa transform duration of this skill from 10 seconds to 6 seconds. The defiance-bar damage has not been changed.
I personally think this is the lazy way out…