Guild Wars 2

Balthalzar.6243:

I’m playing shatter mesmer with basically no issues lol. Mind you i’m only diamond but yeah.

Then again I got to diamond playing warrior.

You can’t draw whats OP and not OP yet. It’s been a day.

You’re literally playing against an armada of people that rerolled into thief and necro, and have no kittening clue what they’re doing on their new profession.
And yet, you’re some how shocked that a burst class is able to kinda/sorta function in an environment flooded with inexperienced players?
In unranked no less?

Give it a week when everyone’s muscle memory catches up with their new class, or the people that got aggravated go back to their mains/quit.

Then go queue unranked, and get absolutely decimated by a thief that actually knows what they’re doing.
Or a necro that actually knows what they’re doing.
Or a scrapper, that actually knows what they’re doing.
Or a glint/shiro rev, that actually knows what they’re doing.
Or a DH/Medi guard, that actually knows what they’re doing.
Or a… you get the point yet?

Mesmer has a slew of bad match-ups against classes that are lined up to be at the top of the meta.
We only beat Druid in a +1, we only beat necro in a +1 with moa, we don’t beat scrapper, period, Glint/Shiro rev should be able to consistently beat us.

Ele is probably a dead profession, as I don’t see how they’ll be able to deal with thief pressure.

Oh, and everyone is so excited to play kittenous condition mesmer, that every single player in this kittening game hates.
And I mean hates!

Cancer Condi Mesmer has been nerfed many times in the past. It’ll be nerfed again, if it’s even viable (It isn’t. Why the kitten would you play it over a reaper right now?)

Bunker mesmer is dead, I can’t find any reason I would ever attempt bunker mesmer over Scrapper atm.

And shatter mesmer, while having high burst combos, is in a state of worthlessness.

Go throw 3-4 volleys of mind wracks into a reaper, and learn what true hell is.

kittenty thing is, that the player base wants to nerf the only thing we actually have to deal with reaper. Namely: Moa.
“It has no counter play”
The counter play is the moa itself. It’s fast, it’s tough, it hurts, and it can apply aoe weakness as a last ditch effort.

Oh, and shatter mesmer can’t 100-0 a moa that’s at least actively dodging.

So moa actually needs to be used in at least a +1 situation to be useful.

Oh, what about double moa? Well, what about a different problem? Now my 90 second cooldown just became 3 minutes of being unable to kill a freaking necro/reaper. Enjoy the freetime.

Pride.1734:

Gavity well- Check
Phase shift- Check
Weaker but still strong alacrity- Check
Amazing shield skills- Check
Condi buffs- Check-

All the overdramatisation.

Gravity Well – Chrono traitline is trashed, actually. I seriously think Dom/Duel/Insp or the like, is our best bet.
Oh wow, I just knocked off like, 4 points there, didn’t I? Holy kitten. Talk about a money shot.

Condi buffs?
Oh, how kittening cute.
Some more bleed on the ridiculously clunky to land interruptions?
5% more attack speed on a trait no one used because attack speed doesn’t actually help scepter, because scepter’s projectile speed is so low it kittens up the chain.
OH OHHHH, MOAR BLEED ON OFF HAND PISTOL.

PISTOL IS NOW VIABLE IN PVP GUISE!

CONDI MESMER IS NOW VIABLE IN WvW AND GvG GUISE.

WE GOT MORE BLEEDS ON PISTOL, EVERYTHING IS SOLVED.

Get off the mesmer forums, you OP kitten engineer.

We’re sorry.
We only communicate on the forums through news posts, and UDIs.

- ANet

Coulter.2315:

They could fold iit into the trait “Improved Alacrity – Increases Duration and Effect of Alacrirty by 50%”

Bringing it up to 50% increased recharge on Mesmer.

Although this does further nullify the existance of the other 2 major traits (even more than now).

I’m cool with that, however.
Why not just make alacrity a flat 50% across the board (I know, I know. I’m suggesting this YET AGAIN) and call it a day?

You’ll never make those other 2 traits viable. So don’t even consider balancing them. They need to be flat out replaced. Same with all the GMs except for Chronophantasm, which I suppose is still useful in PvE.

Allow me to quote myself for a moment.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

eyesrutherford.1357:

The nerf it got to alacrity many disagree with yet there’s one way that everything coulda been fixed in the first place.
I’ve said it a dozen times now. But the alacrity change obviously is gonna be an issue.
Yet all that woulda needed to be done “without breaking mesmer yet maintaining a nerf to alacrity” would be to nerf alacrity that is shared with teammates down to 33% and keep the alacrity on self at 66%.
Bam. Now all mesmer builds still work but bunker isn’t as effective.

Let’s blow this post up and hopefully get anet to notice.

I’ve seen this suggestion a thousand times, and I’m tired of it now.

Here’s why it’s bullkitten:
1. Chrono Bunker was strong LARGELY BECAUSE OF THE SELF-ALACRITY, NOT BECAUSE OF THE GROUP ALACRITY. Your change would only affect Chrono in PvE.
2. Chrono Bunker WAS ALREADY CLOSE THE GROUND THANKS TO THE QUICKNESS CHANGES. The most powerful thing it had, was the ability to come into a fight & stomp someone out/res the whole team very rapidly.
Otherwise, there were a few builds in this game that could 1v1 it and win. Namely, any Reaper build in this game…

No, what ANet actually needs to do, is get their hand out of their bum, revert the freaking resistance nerfs to kitten no one would ever seriously run outside of WvW.

ACTUALLY Rework staff & scepter to be viable weapons. Making it so that staff is a hybrid power/condi weapon.

Rework the 3 trash tier off hands mesmer has. Delete the crappy phantasm on torch.

Give us another freaking main-hand weapon. Power OR Condi would be very much appreciated. As both only have 2 “viable” “main hands” (Including 2h weps).

Buff some of our useless utilities, like mirror images. Why is this on a 45 second cooldown, yet decoy (which is stronger) is on a 40 second cooldown?
Why does precog still have a cast time?
Why are the wells cooldowns untouched?
Why are our Chono Traits untouched?
Why is timewarp, despite being severely weakened in most game modes, still on a 180 second cooldown. Despite that Gravity Well, an easily argued stronger elite, is on a 90 second cooldown?
Hey, we just buffed the kitten out of boon corrupt Necro. Can arcane thievery get some mother kittening love?
Can we replace phantasmal defender with something actually useful?
Can we get rid of some of the weird kitten after cast delay on our skills? Seriously, has anyone else noticed that sword 2 has an after cast in which you can’t dodge or do anything initially, unless you cancel the attack slightly early?

Have I made my point yet, are we about done?

Mesmer is one of the clunkiest classes in this bloody game. That takes ridiculous concentration and luck to even accomplish anything on, when compared to other classes that take none of that, and yet hit harder.

And that’s not to say that other classes can’t make similar lists. Holy kitten I know they can.
But that doesn’t hurt my argument. Only help it.
ANet hasn’t actually balanced the game, or brought us any build variety.

All they’ve been doing, has been removing build variety step by step. Shifting the meta to make it look like they’re doing something good. “listening to the community”

Toaly.7243:

I think we’re agreeing, but in different means. I apologize that I failed to mention that I was looking at the PvP side of the coin, I do not PvE often and quite honestly do not have enough PvE experience to form a solid opinion on the state of the profession there.

As you did say (and I agree), a big mechanic of the Chrono was quickness on revival and allowing others to stomp with quickness via Well of Action. I do agree that Quickness stomps were crucial in the Mesmer’s survival, however, as it was originally bugged and it did make much of the game feel trivialized, as stated, I don’t think it necessarily was a bad change (even though I personally would have preferred if Quickness still affected stomps, but not revivals).

As you said, yes, I do agree the Chrono Bunker build would still “function”, but it would by no means be effective as it would be taken down very quickly and not be able to set the same parameters as it did before, mainly due to the changes in stomping and revival.

I do however insist that Alacrity should be split and not have been nerfed. All chrono builds are suffering because of it.

And hey, give them credit, there’s a lot to read :P. They may read it, just not post.

They nerfed glamour traits that no one has ever seriously used (And were also useless because resistance is corruptible). Did a minor buff to scepter that doesn’t actually function as a buff because the actual projectile is so slow that it bugs the attack chain.
Killed the entire chrono traitline.
Yes, killed it. It’s useless outside of the super speed on clones, movement speed minor, and continuum shift.

I challenge you to seriously find a use for the alacrity/quickness on shatter. Or the crit on slowed enemies. Or the slow on interruption. Or alls well that ends well. Or the slow on a certain number of crits.

Lockdown mesmer already has an extremely high skill cap, with less rewards than standard shatter mesmer.
30% more crit on a class with 40%+ crit standard, doesn’t really matter. Especially when the prerequisite is that you do your burst while the enemy is slowed.

How accurate do they expect us to be with that? Give us slow on shatter or something kitten .

Oh, and have I mentioned that they’ve been silent about these mesmer changes on the forums & reddit?
Completely silent, despite having plenty of time to converse with pro mesmer players, or just the general player base.

DESPITE HAVING A CDI FORUM THAT THEY HAVEN’T USED FOR ABOUT A YEAR

MailMail.6534:

Feedback: This skill is now ground targeted and no longer requires a target.

• I’ve been asking for this for quite some time now. Very happy about this. Not as though this utility gets much use anyway though.

Mental Defense: The cooldown on this trait is no longer affected by Signet of the Ether.

• Unnecessary nerf. The very long CD on SoE justified the synergy it had with Mental Defense. This makes me pretty angry.

Ether Clone: This skill no longer generates a clone if the player has the max number of illusions. It instead applies 2 stacks of torment for 5 seconds.

• “OK.” in my Paris Hilton voice. I’d rather have a full health Scepter clone on top of my enemy than 2 stacks of torment simply for the shatter benefits. We’ll see though.

Chaos Armor: This skill no longer blinds enemies. It will instead apply weakness to them for 3 seconds. The applied duration for swiftness and confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.

• I like weakness… that being said, the conditions are supposed to deter your enemies from attacking. Confusion/Weakness/Blind makes sense. Cripple does not. This is a condition build nerf as we lose synergy with Ineptitude. Dumb Nerf.

Chaotic Dampening: The duration of protection has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.

• FAIR. I can live with this.

Duelist’s Discipline: The chance to bleed has been increased from 33% to 50%. Bleed duration has been increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds.

• This is cute. I like this buff.

Restorative Mantras: The healing attribute scaling of this trait has been increased by 400%. The healing from this trait will now be listed in the combat log.

• I like this a lot in theory. Mantras still suck so much that they aren’t worth using…

Furious Interruption: The cooldown of this trait has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.

• And it’s still not worth taking over the other two. This trait will only make sense when it also strips 2 boons.

Evasive Mirror: The duration of this trait has been increased from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.

• This is still a subpar trait except in wvw I guess??? I don’t even know. I don’t even care.

Mistrust: The number of confusion stacks this trait applies has been increased from 2 to 4.

• YAY the little person in my head says they listened to me on this one too lol. I know this skill has been discussed a lot. Interrupt traits need to have oomf behind them. 4 stacks is enough oomf to almost be worth it in a condition build that wants more dps over the defensive lines of Chaos/Inspiration.

Malicious Sorcery: The attack speed increase from this trait has been increased from 15% to 20%.

• OK. We’ll see how this works out…

Bountiful Disillusionment: The duration of resistance applied in a radius has been reduced from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.

• This nerf makes me angry. Obviously, our resistance duration has been out of control due to BD?

Temporal Enchanter: The duration of resistance granted by this trait has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.

• This nerf makes me even angrier, especially as a glamour fanboy. Resistance was not an out of control boon for us. Nerfing both this and the resistance on BD seems a bit harsh.

Overall, I’m severely unimpressed.

You know whats absolutely kittening hilarious?

I’m pretty sure resistance gets boon corrupted anyway, so it never kittening had a kittening use in kittening WvW any kittening way. And no one really kittening runs kittening glamours anywhere else. Because kittening null field has a kittening long kittening cooldown. And if you need null field, it’s probably because you’re up against a kittening necro/kittening reaper, who’s just going to kittening boon corrupt you anyway

Also, the scepter buff doesn’t even matter, because the projectile is still a kittened snail on a thousand downers and drowsy. He drank a fifth of vodka, dare him to drive?

I’ve already gone into detail about why this wouldn’t work (Doesn’t actually deal with Chrono Bunker).

An important thing to note, is that Chrono Bunker would still function without Sentinels/Celestial amulet. Or any of the tank amulets they removed.

However, the quickness nerf already pushed Chrono Bunker into a bad position.
If it were to need anything else after that, it would’ve been a small alacrity tweak (As alacrity was arguably “too strong” in PvE.)
Say, 66% -> 50%. Which wouldn’t have kittened people off.
It would still hurt, and might have been too much in and of itself.

But, it would’ve been better than what we got…

However, that changes nothing for every other mesmer role.

The quickness nerf kills Chrono in PvP.

Just to stomp a class, we need a source of stability (Are you running Chaos/That clunky kitten mantra?) or our distortion.

However, quickness let us bypass that for some classes.
Like Necro, necro’s fear took a bit to actually go off, so you could stomp him faster than he could save himself.

OP? Perhaps, perhaps not.

But lets not forget quickness res’s, which made Chrono Bunker absolutely ridiculous, as it could come into a team fight and res literally everyone.

Rather than removing the effects of quickness/slow on this aspect of the game, I would’ve like to have seen the effect lowered for it.

If necro’s fear could go off before quickness stomped it out, that would be reasonable. So a nerf to its efficacy IN THIS ONE AREA would have been reasonable.

BUT LETS FACE IT, ANet removed quickness/slow stomps, because they had a bug they couldn’t figure out how to fix.
The quickness/slow bugged stomps to hell and back.

So now, we’re back to spending our very few defenses to try and get a stomp out in a close fight, as cleaving really isn’t an option on a class with such low sustained damage.

sigh
I’ve wasted too much time on this forum. ANet won’t read any of this anyway.

dawna.6290:

Honestly, this was the only well that really made Chrono worth playing for me in WvW and with it gone, I may just move back to my old mesmer setups. I knew what the outcome would be but I tried the well tonight in wvw, in a normal situation and in every case it absolutely failed me. The alacrity nerf didn’t sting nearly as much as I thought it would but this, this was the worst.

Its truly made the skill worthless outside of granting alacrity to others really. :/

With a 40+ second cooldown, calamity is better for that. And at least deals damage (A.K.A. Does something useful).

The alacrity nerf hurts exactly as much as I thought it would. I actually have 0 reason to run the Chrono line other than continuum split.

The quickness nerf hurts even more.

The saving grace for Chrono, for me, was that mesmer had access to on demand quickness (as long as you didn’t use every shatter).
This meant we could actually kill someone in downstate in a close fight.

Which lets face it, if you don’t 100-0 a thief (Does this happen on anyone that’s paying attention?), then if you win it’s going to be a close fight.

Except thief’s downstate is kittening OP. So if you can’t stomp him out, chances are he’s going to kill you in down state. And his down state is stronger than yours. He’ll cleave you out first.

Same with necro, same with rev, same with name your class mate.

It bugs the kitten out of me, that to even stomp a thief I’m going to have to have blink up. Regardless of quickness.

And with the rest of the classes I’m going to have to have distortion up, no exceptions.

It’s ridiculously silly.

We have this one build that’s too strong in PvP, and one of our nerfs ended up being buffs in PvE & WvW.

NERF THE CLASS INTO THE GROUND is clearly the right answer.

eyesrutherford.1357:

The nerf it got to alacrity many disagree with yet there’s one way that everything coulda been fixed in the first place.
I’ve said it a dozen times now. But the alacrity change obviously is gonna be an issue.
Yet all that woulda needed to be done “without breaking mesmer yet maintaining a nerf to alacrity” would be to nerf alacrity that is shared with teammates down to 33% and keep the alacrity on self at 66%.
Bam. Now all mesmer builds still work but bunker isn’t as effective.

Let’s blow this post up and hopefully get anet to notice.

I’ve seen this suggestion a thousand times, and I’m tired of it now.

Here’s why it’s bullkitten:
1. Chrono Bunker was strong LARGELY BECAUSE OF THE SELF-ALACRITY, NOT BECAUSE OF THE GROUP ALACRITY. Your change would only affect Chrono in PvE.
2. Chrono Bunker WAS ALREADY CLOSE THE GROUND THANKS TO THE QUICKNESS CHANGES. The most powerful thing it had, was the ability to come into a fight & stomp someone out/res the whole team very rapidly.
Otherwise, there were a few builds in this game that could 1v1 it and win. Namely, any Reaper build in this game…

No, what ANet actually needs to do, is get their hand out of their bum, revert the freaking resistance nerfs to kitten no one would ever seriously run outside of WvW.

ACTUALLY Rework staff & scepter to be viable weapons. Making it so that staff is a hybrid power/condi weapon.

Rework the 3 trash tier off hands mesmer has. Delete the crappy phantasm on torch.

Give us another freaking main-hand weapon. Power OR Condi would be very much appreciated. As both only have 2 “viable” “main hands” (Including 2h weps).

Buff some of our useless utilities, like mirror images. Why is this on a 45 second cooldown, yet decoy (which is stronger) is on a 40 second cooldown?
Why does precog still have a cast time?
Why are the wells cooldowns untouched?
Why are our Chono Traits untouched?
Why is timewarp, despite being severely weakened in most game modes, still on a 180 second cooldown. Despite that Gravity Well, an easily argued stronger elite, is on a 90 second cooldown?
Hey, we just buffed the kitten out of boon corrupt Necro. Can arcane thievery get some mother kittening love?
Can we replace phantasmal defender with something actually useful?
Can we get rid of some of the weird kitten after cast delay on our skills? Seriously, has anyone else noticed that sword 2 has an after cast in which you can’t dodge or do anything initially, unless you cancel the attack slightly early?

Have I made my point yet, are we about done?

Mesmer is one of the clunkiest classes in this bloody game. That takes ridiculous concentration and luck to even accomplish anything on, when compared to other classes that take none of that, and yet hit harder.

And that’s not to say that other classes can’t make similar lists. Holy kitten I know they can.
But that doesn’t hurt my argument. Only help it.
ANet hasn’t actually balanced the game, or brought us any build variety.

All they’ve been doing, has been removing build variety step by step. Shifting the meta to make it look like they’re doing something good. “listening to the community”

Serious Thought.5394:

Has anyone tried cancer perma block mesmer yet? If not, I recommend it. Makes PU look like a teddy bear.

I have, I feel like a decap druid does it better.
The biggest thing is that it pressures and decaps far point. But druids already do that.

kybraga.7103:

Hope for you all to know.
Alacrity isn’t that big of a deal, half the ‘decent’ mesmers didn’t/don’t notice the difference.
Heck, half the decent mesmers don’t even need to use Alacrity.
Shatter mesmer is still viable. Why not try that out guys? Get some fresh air from all that invulnerability.

I have literally never stopped running shatter mesmer.
Most people haven’t, because Chrono Bunker was boring.

Why does everyone kittening think this is kittening about kittening chrono kittening bunker on this kittening website?

kitten chrono bunker. kitten it straight into hell.

BUT GIVE ME AN ACTUAL ROLE TO kittenING PLAY IN PvP

No Walking.6349:

Helseth is an kitten hole

Helseth is now angry.

Great patch anet!!! So happy to see the zerk/condi meta come back and push out the tank build babies.

Yeah. The literal LORD OF ZERKER SHATTER MESMER, is crying about his tank build.

He’s not saying “We literally don’t fit into the meta as any role” anymore.

No no, it’s just about chrono bunker.

Stilgar.6437:

faced 2 teams after patch that play in the pro league, both ran bunker mesmers. dont cry just yet, lets see how it works out

Oh god.
2 pro-league teams are testing something out?

Clearly not nerfed into oblivion enough.

Need to reduce protection from chaos armor to 0. Make alacrity increase cooldowns by 25% instead of reducing anything.
And decrease mesmer damage to 4-5 damage base.

Don’t worry, guy.
ANet has it all handled! They’re going to do a CD…
oh wait. I just got a notice that they’re going to remain absolutely silent on this.
How unusual.

bbennett.7463:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

bbennett.7463:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

bbennett.7463:

yeah pretty much/ thief mainly

I can’t imagine why a thief would be happy with the changes.
rolls eyes

Maybe I’ll run into you and 1 shot you with mesmer’s super 1337 shatter damage. It’ll be hilarious until the next round a nerfs come and shatter damage gets cut in half.

I did fine before the patch honestly. In my opinion the bunker meta was boring because who wants to just fight on a point for about 3 minutes straight with nobody dying? thats not very fun to me.

Who wants to die in 1-3 seconds every fight? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants fights to be decided almost entirely based off of the classes & builds played, rather than the skill of the player? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants to feel like they can’t contribute with the class they most enjoy playing, and have been playing since they’ve started this game? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants to have their unique class abilities gutted into oblivion 1 by 1 until what remains are a few scraps left? That’s not very fun to me.

1. No fights last 1-3 seconds…..
2. Before patch almost every class had to be bunker to win.
3. Have you tried playing thief against bunker builds?
4. I dont think any classes have been “gutted”, I would say all are viable. you just have to adapt and learn new strats…

1. Plenty of fights last 1-3 seconds… Once one burst class has landed their kitten on another one, the other one is forced into defense. They either manage to reset, or they die. Or they outplay the other person on some absolutely amazing level (A.K.A. They weren’t equally skilled to begin with)
2. And before HoT? You’re describing another cancerous meta, yes. All bunker IS VERY BORING. At which point did I deny this? Why even bring this up like it proves anything?
3. I have. Cele Signet Reaper (any reaper/necro actually) died easily to thief. P/P thief actually ate bunker mesmer alive after the WoP nerf. It only has so many invulns/blocks. And only so much healing.
Similar things happened with Cele Tempest, although tempest could switch to a reflect aura shout and handle it a lot better.
4. No. It’s not just about “adapting” and “learning new strats”. Ofc you have to adapt to the meta. But as we’ve seen many kittening times before, that often requires changing classes.

bbennett.7463:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

bbennett.7463:

yeah pretty much/ thief mainly

I can’t imagine why a thief would be happy with the changes.
rolls eyes

Maybe I’ll run into you and 1 shot you with mesmer’s super 1337 shatter damage. It’ll be hilarious until the next round a nerfs come and shatter damage gets cut in half.

I did fine before the patch honestly. In my opinion the bunker meta was boring because who wants to just fight on a point for about 3 minutes straight with nobody dying? thats not very fun to me.

Who wants to die in 1-3 seconds every fight? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants fights to be decided almost entirely based off of the classes & builds played, rather than the skill of the player? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants to feel like they can’t contribute with the class they most enjoy playing, and have been playing since they’ve started this game? That’s not very fun to me.
Who wants to have their unique class abilities gutted into oblivion 1 by 1 until what remains are a few scraps left? That’s not very fun to me.

bbennett.7463:

yeah pretty much/ thief mainly

I can’t imagine why a thief would be happy with the changes.
rolls eyes

Maybe I’ll run into you and 1 shot you with mesmer’s super 1337 shatter damage. It’ll be hilarious until the next round a nerfs come and shatter damage gets cut in half.

bbennett.7463:

I enjoy the patch. sounds like a l2p issue here. /threadclosed

Dude, you have been QQ’ing about people QQ’ing for months.
kitten off and play the game.

Sorry, edited my image to make it reflect reality a bit better.

If ANet wants to quell their forums, there’s one way to do it.
Communication. Open and honest communication.
Unfortunately, our line with them is a bit… offline atm.

A conversation?
Is the CDI still white on the forums for anyone else?
Cuz that’s your answer.

Most of them probably aren’t playing?
I didn’t play sPvP during the largest part of this season. I don’t like Chrono Bunker, and I didn’t like the bunker meta in general.
Was boring.

Know what I did? Played some of the PvE story kitten I skipped out on, and played a lot of WvW.

Fortus.6175:

Silverkey.2078:

Or at least do not commit to 1 patch every 4 month and instead implement small scale changes regularly.

Quite honestly, I expected a patch this size to be something done on a 2-3 week schedule, not 3 months……

Literally, the changes are so trivial in most cases, that I cant see why it would take THREE WHOLE MONTHS to come up with them……

Do they not have enough metrics? Is it is so hard to implement? Are they simply being lazy? Are they so out of touch with their own game? Do they have any experience in balancing, or are they just programmers who were shunned into this?

What is going on?!

I’m assuming they don’t have a balance team.

After the literally kittened math heard on the preview stream “Alacrity = 66% more DPS” that was never correct.
After the COMPLETE kittenING SILENCE WE’VE BEEN DEALING WITH, I’m sure they just don’t give a kitten.

A few responses to people on the mesmer forums regarding precog & alacrity, wouldn’t have necessarily made me happy about the changes.
Nor anyone else.

But it would have at least gave some people some complacency in the fact that ANet at least reads what we post.

But no, absolute silence.

Next Patch:
Malicious Sorcery was a bit too strong, not exactly where we wanted it.
So we’ve halved its effectiveness to 10%.

And we’re making the Scepter AA projectile 500% slower.

2/10 Which is infinitely higher than I would rate the ArenaNet balance team atm.
- IGN

Cynz.9437:

Most moaning comes from mesmers anyway, i don’t understand why even. Yeah, thief had slight advantage over mes for a while but it was never as bad as guards hardcountering thieves for years.

Funny enough, if mes complains about thief, it is justified. If thief complains about guards or scrappers, it is st*u l2p.

Mesmers didn’t, and don’t, have a good match-up against guard.
Nor do they have a good match up for scrappers.

QQ about guard? We weren’t doing too hot either.

I’ve also yet to see anyone other than a engineer main, argue that scrapper wasn’t OP.

Scrapper is kittened, and I’m not convinced any other class can actually 1v1 it, assuming equal skill levels.
Way too much defense on a marauder amulet.

However, on the flip side. Thieves have a better match up than mesmer against:
Ranger – The old passive Spirit BS/Condi/Power LB/name it. Thief killed it better.
Necro/Reaper – Thief pretty much beats any iteration of this.
Ele – Thief beats most iterations of this. Ele has problems peeling a thief off.
Engineer – Note: NOT scrapper.

What match ups is mesmer better in?
Rev – Specifically condi rev. Power Rev is a coin flip against mesmer, in my opinion.
Druid – As a +1, we can CC this out pretty quickly and easily. If not +1’ing, might be best to leave it be on point…

Classes we both suck against:
Power Rev – Arguable in either direction
Guardian – Despite mesmer’s slight advantage against guards over thieves. We really don’t beat guards consistently.
Thief – Seriously, even when I was playing a thief I hated fighting other thieves.
Scrapper – Not convinced anything can actually go toe to toe with this.

Classes we both beat:
Warrior – I never felt particularly threatened by most warrior builds. Other than an occasional hammer stun + hundred blades that managed to catch me without stun breaks, I didn’t really lose to warriors.

kitten condi mesmer.
It’s the most boring cancerous bullkitten in the game. It’s seriously not even fun.

It also doesn’t work in WvW or PvE.
It’s also inferior in effectiveness to Condi-Rev & Necro/Reaper.
It’s also a kitten team fighter/+1 (Reason why it sucks in WvW), it’s better for sitting on far.

A pure decapper role, yay!
I’ll just play druid instead? Thanks, but no thanks.

So now, now we have to convince ourselves that shatter mesmer is viable in this meta.

Why?

Well I’ll give the argument I’ve heard a 1000 times.
“Shatter mes can 1 shot people”.

With what? The EASILY AVOIDABLE burst?
I dodge mesmer shatters all day long AS A MESMER.

Kinda have to if I want to have any hope of winning a 1v1 with another shatter mesmer.

Nah, this game is full of people who went, ran the daze/damage mantra in WvW, insta killed a kid in full zerker that didn’t know what he was doing (Probably too busy drinking and having fun on TS to pay attention), and proceeded to say “mesmer still viable”.

On the bright side. We are still viable in WvW. Had one of our cool “save the commander” mechanics removed, but still viable. TW didn’t lose effectiveness for WvW, neither did gravity well.
So yay! I still have a game mode I can enjoy on set days when my guild is raiding. Huzzah!

Pepsi.8907:

Nozome.7853:

Mesmer still #1 in jumping puzzles.

Easy change : Kill portals and enable fly zones in every JP

Well, seen like that, we’re still authorized to make gold, right? Contribution and all that?

They’re banning mesmers from the TP.

You can only mail people mats and things you find.

If you receive gold in the mail, ANet has a 100% tax on it.

It was such a powerful thing, that literally no one ran it because of how OP it was.

Like venomwells.

Just… so freaking OP.

/s

Seriously though, kitten venom wells.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

zinkz.7045:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

…Mesmers complain when they try to beat Thieves at the only role they are capable of while Mesmer can fill multiple roles and provide group utility…

That’s a nice little fantasy you got going on there, here is the reality – for the vast majority of this game, thief was perma meta, taken on every single team and best solo carry in the game, whilst mesmer on the other hand was much of the time one of the least represented classes in teams (read non-meta), required a thief to babysit them, had mesmer mains rerolling thief as even as a mediocre thief they were more use, and only ever had one role for the majority of the game’s life.

I never was questioning that Mesmer was crap, but Thieves have had only one role, and provide no group utility, while Mesmers have had the option to group utility, the biggest issue they faced was trying to replicate the Thief role, which they should fail at since they can provide so much, Thieves have been relegated to decap because even if they +1 they hardly had an impact unless their team was winning to begin with, now with the Chrono Trait line Mesmer still have multiple roles they can fill but are strongest at group support, yes their group support took a hit but still lowering every teammates CD is still pretty big.

What are you smoking?
Group support?

Mesmer has been terrible at that for a very long time.

The reason we play shatter is because it’s the only build that has ever worked outside of Chrono Bunker.

And now you’re saying “Just play support”.

Okay, how?

Timewarp is basically useless in PvP with the res changes. (Still useful in WvW)
Feedback is crap. Even in PvE. ANet has actually been making many dungeons mobs and etc have attacks that can’t be reflected. As well, a lot of the newer content can’t be reflected either.
Veil is crap in PvP. (Prefer smoke + blasts in WvW)
Alacrity’s 50% hit reduces the amount of alacrity we can pump out significantly, weakening it even further (If our cooldowns take longer to come back, then it takes longer to re-apply alacrity).
Mantras are kitten .
Boon sharing is actually more likely to kill your teammate than help them, considering all of the boon corrupt incoming.

The kitten is our support?
Portal?

Have you actually used portal in PvP? It’s not exactly easy to use it effectively.

Oh, and look what forces a mesmer to use portal just to survive.

Yeah, thief…

P.S. Not trolling the thief forums, just saw a post and had to respond.

Arewn.2368:

“When will they learn!?
How dare they do something -almost every mesmer- disagreed with.”

Seriously though, the change does suck.

Fixed*

Can all of the people who repeated the mantra:
“We don’t even know all of the changes yet”

Please stand up, and leave the room.

Okay, are they gone now?

So, who wants to play B&S until BDO comes out?

Walkure.9056:

The invulnerablity was too strong in pvp. I think it was fine in raids/open world pve/wvw where it saw a lot of good plays. Why can’t we split it between pve and pvp? —> problem solved!

The invulnerability was only arguably too strong in stronghold.
(stronghold is pretty imbalanced anyway)

It sees no use in Conquest anymore, because Invuln prevents point capture.

You know what was stronger than an AoE invuln in stronghold?
Multiple tempests rushing your base/healing their lord.

The reason it was nerfed, is because the Invuln was really strong in raids. Which is why people suggested making it a blur in PvE, and an invuln in PvP.

On the actual topic of the balance changes.

Thank kitten.

Those banners were so ungodly OP it’s not even funny.

The dragon banner’s auto attack is Revenant’s hammer 2. Like, the kitten ANet?
Pretty sure Centaur banner’s auto attack gives stability. Again, the kitten ANet?

I’d like it more if the banners were removed.
They’re literally cancer, and help ruin the game mode during prime times.

Especially against larger servers that like to BM (Looking at you Maguuma).

But, I’m glad they’re at least trying to balance the bloody things. And I’m glad for points on kill.
Rally cap is probably going to end up being changed again in a while. I agree rallying is very strong, but only 1 off of a rally seems a bit harsh. 2-3 seems reasonable.

Idk, we’ll see.

I’m going to try a hybrid with Scepter/Torch & GS

With mercenary amulet. And then also try out viper’s amulet.

I really don’t like staff for anything other than kiting on certain maps. So I’m kind of hoping I can get greatsword incorporated for a bit of extra burst.

I don’t think it’ll replace power. I don’t think it’s as strong as power mes…

Yeah… I just run traditional shatter Chrono…
Almost full zerker (Some assassin bits), blink/decoy/precog (Daze mantra after precog nerf…)
And gravity well.

Dom/Duel/Chrono
Sword/Torch & GS.

Idk what server everyone who does portal bombs is on, but those never work on my server.
Regardless of whether it’s happening to us, or we’re doing it to them, a guild group is just going to bomb the portal.
That sort of stuff only works against pug blobs.

Someone else will usually run veil, but honestly veil isn’t that useful. You can just kite it out.

I save precog for when the commander gets boon corrupted and pulled. It’s one of the only things that can save him.
(Or when we have a particularly nasty hunter’s ward on us)

Gravity well goes on top of necro wells. This is because we don’t run a venomshare thief, so we need CC/Immobs for the wells.

Everything else is self explanatory.

Silverkey.2078:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

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.

1. Mesmers have kitten sustained DPS in PvE. If we’re min-maxing, there’s a point when a fight has lasted long enough that a mesmer is no longer as valuable as another damage class.
Our utility is really all we’re bringing to the table. So ofc it’s powerful. It has to be powerful or else we just won’t be brought.
25% increase in party DPS, down to what is likely to be roughly 10%.
You think another warrior won’t fill that slot? Because I think another warrior will fill that slot and increase DPS more.

2. Ofc we would benefit from more sustained DPS in PvP. But ANet doesn’t appear to want us to have sustained DPS in PvP. We’re a “burst mage assassin”. So I’d like us to be sustainable in PvE at the very least.

3. I respectfully disagree with pretty much everything else you’ve said.
Not being able to balance 3 game modes at the exact same time, without separating the 3, isn’t the developers fault in any way other than that they haven’t separated the 3.

These game modes are very different from one another. One or more of them are going to be out of balance pretty much always.

Other competitive games can sort of get away with this, because their different modes have ban lists. (And are all centered around PvP)
Take your competitive 3v3 on LoL vs Competitive 5v5. You’re going to ban different champs.

Or highlander on TF2 vs 6v6. Both of which have different restrictions, rules, and ban lists on in game weapons.

Carighan.6758:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

3. Attempting to balance PvE, PvP, and WvW at the same time is LITERALLY kittenING INSANE. THE SKILLS & TRAITS NEED TO BE SEPARATED ACROSS GAME MODES

I think this is frequently blown out of proportions and also seen as this sort-of miracle cure for the game’s balance issues by players.

In reality, I doubt very many skills are better of straight up being split instead of first reworking them. Even then, splits would be small details about number scaling in the greatest many of cases, like it was used with confusion.

Even then, do you honestly think this’ll improve balance for something as inherently screwed up as sPvP? The bigger problem is that no one wants to hear that, “sPvP won’t be balanced”. Not among the devs or their managers either I bet.

" do you honestly think this’ll improve balance for something as inherently screwed up as sPvP?"

What is inherently screwed up about it? Sorry, I’m confused.
It’s literally King of the Hill with 3 points, how is that inherently screwed up?

If you’re talking about solo q, no one balances games for solo q.
If you’re talking about team qs being matched up against solo qs, again, no one balances games around solo q.

Solo Q is a toxic experience in pretty much any game I’ve ever played.

“I doubt very many skills are better of straight up being split instead of first reworking them. "
Alacrity could be stronger in PvE but weaker in PvP.
Mesmer’s sustained damage could be buffed in PvE, but left alone 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.

You seriously can’t think of things that would be better off being split?
You make polymorph moa an AoE in PvE, decrease the cooldown in WvW, and decrease its effective duration in PvP.
You could make veil last longer in PvP while also having a longer cooldown. You could make it something totally different in PvE. And you could leave it pretty much as is in WvW.

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.

Mikkel.8427:

We still haven’t seen all the changes for scepter…

“we’ll be improving upon the scepter, which will be receiving updates through skills, functionality, and traits.”

Traits is plural… so they’re adjusting more than just Malicious sorcery.

‘Updates through skills’ normally just means number adjustments.

‘Functionality’ is what is giving me hope. That gives me the impression that they bothered to address the terrible AA and maybe even the block.

Of course, a scepter revamp isn’t going to suddenly make Mesmer awesome, but its something to look forward to.

Malicious Sorcery’s attack speed increase could become really meaningful if the scepter gets a revamped AA… That’s a really big ‘if’ though

My problem with even being concerned about the scepter buff, is that it doesn’t help us in WvW (outside of roaming, which who the hell really cares?).
And it doesn’t help us in PvE.

No one seriously runs condi-builds in larger content. Say your 10v10 and 15v15.
Outside of a venomshare thief in the necro party, which is literally cancer, and anyone who does that in a GvG should be permanently banned from the game.

In fact, anyone who does that in WvW should be permanently banned from the game.
I don’t care how big the zergs are, ban the cancer.

If I had my way, venoms would share with every class except necro.
And bassi venom wouldn’t be unblockable in mesmer wells/fire storm for eles. That way they’re unable to spread the cancer either.

The core problems ANet needed to handle, I don’t think are handled in this patch.

1. Bunkers aren’t dead. Only a couple of bunker builds are dead. Gratz, ANet.
2. Passive defenses are rampant. A (zerker) scrapper shouldn’t be able to waltz into a zerg by itself, get attacked by 10 people running full zerkers, and walk away into its team without dying. (That’s just 1 example. And it’s not a L2P issue, they have invuln for a very long time)
3. Attempting to balance PvE, PvP, and WvW at the same time is LITERALLY kittenING INSANE. THE SKILLS & TRAITS NEED TO BE SEPARATED ACROSS GAME MODES

And that’s just the beginning.
Lets ignore the fact that everyone has slowly been getting tired of doing the same thing over and over for years.
We need more PvP game modes.
WvW needs variety WITHOUT breaking the entire thing. Seriously, what the kitten ANet? Airships and dragon banners? Perma stealth with earth shrines? (I like the air keep buff though. That’s kittening sick. ZERG DIVE BOMBS WOULD BE kittenING AWESOME! If anyone played on the BLs…..)
PvE has needed new dungeons for a long time. People like dungeons. I like dungeons.
They have their own story, and speedrunning them is a fun challenge that everyone can enjoy to some degree.

Our stab is very selfish. Same as our healing.
And I question what a couple of stacks of stability really means in a fight with ChronoBunker.

Compared to Ele, we don’t output nearly the same amount of boons to the team.

Our condi-removal was also not particularly amazing.

Better than some classes, worse than others.

Certainly enough to deal with classes that only throw 1-2 types of conditions on you in a burst.

Alacrity was a problem in PvP.
A small reduction first, and some player testing would have been best.

After all, we’re also losing the bunker amulets, so the spec is actually a bit riskier anyway.

But no. 50% reduction. No talking on the mesmer forums. Presumably no talking on reddit about it.
No pre-patch CDI. (IS ANET EVER GOING TO USE THIS ANYMORE?!)

And I highly doubt they’re even reading anything anyone here has posted.
Else they’d at least respond a bit.

I also highly doubt that anything positive for mesmer is going to come before the season starts.

messiah.1908:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513

Which is why I ask.
Who do you consistently beat 1v1?

And whats your strategy for dealing with them?

Honestly curious.

as condi shatter i beat
warrior – most
engi – most unless they run
ranger – most unless they bunker
revenant – semi
necro – semi – hard unless he manage to trasfer them back to me
ele – semi hard if he focus on survival
thief – hard if he d/p or s/d and i cant burst him with all the stealth dodges

I’m sorry.
I might have bought this list, until I saw Ele on it.

And not because of diamond skin.
But because there’s no way you can out damage their healing & condi-removal on condi shatter.

Scrapper & Druid are hard enough to believe.
But Ele?

Are we talking normal ele, or tempest here?

Infusion.7149:

Honestly I feel like Mind Wrack ought to be exempt from alacrity to keep balance with core mesmer : Mind Wrack itself gives alacrity.

Xaylin.1860:

DeceiverX.8361:

They balance PvE for party contribution, attributing supportive bonuses as bonus damage dealt by the supportive class.

Balancing DPS to all be similar is a notion that makes no sense. Rangers historically (only now not true because of the incoming damage to pets changes) had lower AA DPS than even mesmers. What makes classes used in PvE is their ability to provide the entire party with more damage than it had before. It’s why ranger/druid is good. It’s why mesmer is now very useful. It’s why PS is used on warrior, and why boons play such a critical role as to allow other players to just keep dealing damage.

Of course, you got to see it within in a respective context. But how is this even an argument for your point here? Mesmer DPS has been crappy for ages. The only thing keeping Mesmers in a meta have been gimmicks. Portal. Veil. Time Warp. Currently it’s Alacrity and to some degree Quickness. Just as you said: You got to consider the additional support a class brings. However, now this thing making Mesmers at least slightly relevant is getting nerfed. Go figure why people ask for better sustained damage. It’s not rocket science. Otherwise the costs of opportunity to bring a Mesmer are too high.

Regarding the Ranger example, please don’t even go there. Mesmers had and have the same pet related issues Rangers have. Ranger Sword have been on par or even outdamaging Mesmer Sword for ages now.

Portal, Veil, Time Warp are all useful. The issue is the game gives drops & credit largely based on damage. If you play a reaper or staff wells necro , or an ele you will get massively more drops than a mesmer. This is especially true when enemies die fast.

- Portal
Depends. It’s very easy to force a mesmer to use this defensively, rather than aggressively.

- Veil
No. Thief smoke + Blasts is better.
And stealth lost most of its meaning when GvGs moved to Arena (Stealth isn’t really optimal there).

Veil is meh in open field Zerg v Zerg. It would be better if veil were invisible to enemies. But otherwise, you can see that someone’s veiling, and usually guess what direction they’re going in anyway. Making it pretty pointless. Not to mention, it lasts for such a short duration that everyone can just kite it out. (Thus why smoke + blasts is better)

- Time Warp
Only in PvE (Loses all meaning in PvP this patch). TW tends to override water fields in WvW.

DanielHarvey.7320:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Welcome to all of the problems with Mesmer that 90% of the player base doesn’t understand.
You can’t afford to take any defense on mesmer, because all off your defense will be use offensively.
Your dodges will be used to summon clones.
Your blinks will be used to gap close and burst.
Your decoys will be used to invis and burst from stealth.
Your portals will be used to contest a second point.

Only thing I see here is that actual skill in the game can compensate for all of that. In fact, I have to argue that you are doing all of those wrong if they don’t have the benefits AND the defensive benefits for you.

As for Portal. Don’t drop it on the second point. Drop it somewhere with no line of sight to any point, but close to a path you can take to the second point that is short and shielded from enemy LoS as much as possible. Boom, it’s now defensive and offensive as you can use it to get out of combat when feeling too much pressure, reset your health, and take far point.

Dodges to summon clones is good, you can use your dodge to avoid an attack, have a clone be created, and then shatter to interrupt his next cast. Boom, used the same skills you said, did twice as much.
Don’t blink to gap close, you don’t need it. Hell, if you want stealth run Sword/torch rather than decoy, stealth in to a fight and blink out. Or position yourself into a fight rather than blinking. If they are running pressure a point. If it’s a foot race to a point in a 1v1 situation you have to think about if you can get there long enough before he does to actually decap? Or if you can get a partial decap do you have the knock-backs and imobs to fully decap it if you have a slight advantage? If not then you don’t need to blink to gap close, most fights can be positioned into rather than blinked. If you need to blink to get an interrupt it better be for a stomp or a heal, and if you do that then it’s both offensive (vulnerable to your shatter while dazed) and defensive since you saved an ally and locked out their casts for a moment.

TL; DR git gud.

Which 1v1 match-ups do you win without 100-0’ing the person (Or +1’ing)?

Honestly curious.
Because my list is literally:
Mallyx/Shiro Revenant
Sometimes Thief (Depends if I get good timing on the evasion frames ending. I usually don’t)
DH (Unless I get kitten pulled into traps, and blink doesn’t cast for whatever reason)

“But mesmer isn’t a 1v1 class”

With all of our amazing defensive and offensive utilities mixed together, we should at least be able to win 1v1s against a decent amount of classes. Maybe even most classes.
Purely by skill.

Which is why I ask.
Who do you consistently beat 1v1?

And whats your strategy for dealing with them?

Honestly curious.

Pepsi.8907:

Why do I start seeing theory craft when:
- We don’t even know the extent of the changes;
- The patch hasn’t even rolled in, so we can’t truly test anything?

Sorry, I have to correct this.

- We don’t even know the extent of the changes
ANet hasn’t given any mesmer balance thread on this forum a single response. Their balance team itself, is focused on buffing scepter PER THEIR OWN STATEMENTS. Not any of the other weapons that have needed buffs for a very long time.

- The patch hasn’t even rolled in, so we can’t truly test anything?
Irrelevant. Everyone is going to do their back of the envelope calculations to figure things out.

There are things ANet clearly didn’t consider with their changes across the game modes.
1. Commander sniping in WvW is pathetically easy.
Why? Because boon corrupt and pulls are extremely powerful. You don’t even have to corrupt a commander’s boons at first. 3 pulls and a commander is in the middle of your zerg. Corrupt boon on his stab 2, and he’s dead UNLESS I drop a well of precog on him.
Invuln on the commander is THE ONLY THING that can prevent wells from killing him.

Why? Because Necro wells are unblockable.

It’s potentially even worse, actually. You see, there’s an ultimate strategy that very few guild groups do in WvW.

Venomshare wells are OP as hell in WvW.
They’ve had a slight nerf before, but they’re still extremely powerful.

They also make the 2nd (out of the 3) jobs mesmer does irrelevant.

2. Gravity well is almost irrelevant in WvW, and it’s one of the 2 things we’ll bring.
The entire point of gravity well in WvW, is to keep enemies in the wells.

But that means I have to not “over extend” to get a down, so that I can be ready to drop a GW wherever the necros drop their wells.

Why bother?
Bassi venom is an immob, and wells also boon strip. It’s far better than gravity well. And is also up more often than gravity well.

Again, most guild groups don’t run venomshare out of courtesy, not because it’s weak.

GW is really only useful there because everyone nerfs themselves.

3. Condi mesmer is useless in GvG or ZergvZerg
Condi builds don’t usually work on group content. Outside of maybe 1 condi necro just to kitten everyone off.

And that’s just WvW…
The glaring problems with PvE, where scepter is absolute crap, and alacrity is a very large part of our support.
The nerfs to the already weak staff.

I’m not convinced ANet has anything meaningful planned for us.

Does anyone have a link to a reddit discussion between devs to counter this?

Is there a CDI I’ve missed on this?

Azure The Heartless.3261:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

@Azure
“Why do two unblockable strikes make mesmer thief food?”

We’re already thief food. The basi venom just seals the deal. Attack us when we’re hurting (A.K.A. When we’re using shield, the only actual defense skill we have now other than distortion & sword 2) and kill us.

The reality though, is that thief, with its high damage, high mobility, and kitten tons of evades, already eats us alive on anything that isn’t the bunker spec.
You have 3 dodges, roll for initiative, the rolling heal (which is being buffed if I recall correctly), and vault/sword also evades.

You guys have more invulnerability than mesmer does now. And it’s also being made so that if I want to take you from 100-0, you’ll stop at 25% and evade everything I do for 2 seconds.

I’m going to give credit where credit is due.

Yes, Thieves eat non bunker mesmers.

That being said:

“You guys have more invulnerability than mesmer does now”

No.

“(A.K.A. When we’re using shield, the only actual defense skill we have now other than distortion & sword 2) "

Don’t do this. Don’t downplay distortion and sword 2 to make it seem like mesmers have less defense than they do. I know better than that, at least.

Level with me here. I’m tired of the silly balance see-saw, and I know that if I give in and go full jerkass with whatever inversion of power that is coming with the balance patch, Its only going to be six months long, so I’d rather things be settled out of the gate.

I will grant:

• There are a lot of dodges

• Non bunker mes is (probably) thief food.

We still have bunkerish amulets though. they just are not full bunker and require more active play instead of forcing slow death by attrition.

I’m looking for mechanical disadvantages, glaring imbalances that we can have ironed out promptly, from people who play the class and can manage winning with a playstyle that is a far cry from [insert every block possible here and wait out opponents hp bar].

I’ve lost to zerker shatter mesmers as a thief before; whether that makes me bad or them good idk, but I’m looking for solid arguing ground here, since the majority of people that are angry with thieves getting looked at after a 6 month period of uselessness (and those that believed we deserved it) played or main mesmer.

" Don’t downplay distortion and sword 2 to make it seem like mesmers have less defense than they do."

Literally every thief I’ve ever fought, has capitalized on sword 2 ending.
Sword 2 sucks, and it appears to have this after cast delay that prevents me from dodging immediately after it. So I usually end up ending it slightly early. Although, maybe that’s changed, or maybe I’m an idiot.

Distortion is for a grand total of 1 second.

So, assuming I have 2 dodges up (Unlikely, I probably used 1 offensively, and it’s likely not fully recharged yet) I have about 2 1/2 seconds of invuln at my disposal. + about half a second? of evasion. Lets call it a whole second for the sake of argument.

So 3 1/2 seconds of actually meaningful defense, while I wait for my 11 second cooldown. (Remember, energy sigil is being nerfed)

So, thief → 3 dodges = 1 1/2 seconds of evasion (Based off of what I said for mesmer)
Withdraw = 1/2 (Prob a bit longer) second of evasion
Roll for Initiative (Really strong when running staff, imho) = 1/2 second of evasion (Again, probably longer. But I’ll use the dodge estimate)
And you can spam 3 vaults on full initiative = 1 1/2 seconds of evasion. As well as damage

Comboing that properly, you should actually easily be able to get 6-7 vaults across that time.

But, lets go with minimum estimates, assuming you don’t know how to play your class.

1 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 1/2 = 4 seconds of evasion.

+ 2 seconds when you hit 25% health (post patch)

= 6 seconds of evasion, with minimum estimations, and using staff’s instead of D/D or S/D.

Literally twice mine. And you don’t have to wait 11 seconds for your next burst. Vault IS your burst.

This is not an even fight.
Shatter mesmer’s entire thing is about bursting and getting the kitten out of there. But you can’t run from a thief. Thief has too many gap closers.

So literally, to kill a thief.
I have to land my burst in between the very short evasion frames.

Or get a surprise 100-0.

All of which is even harder if someone’s running condi thief. Which is literally the bane of my existence.

Is it OP? Ofc not. Necro is better for condi.

But can anyone think of another spec for mesmer that even challenges condi thief?
Again, if I don’t 100-0 condi thief by surprise, it’ll annihilate me.

Too much poison & evades. Evades which also apply more bleeding, torment, and cripple…

If you lost to a mesmer, it doesn’t mean you’re a scrub. It means that mesmer managed to either 100-0 you, or miraculously survive to land a second burst.

Unless you died to sword autos. In which case, yeah, kind of a nub.

Korusef.3714:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Freaking thief had stealth FOR AGES.
The PU swing was really a swing at tanky condi-mesmers ganking people in WvW.
With 0 regard for how it would effect the class elsewhere.

And here I got the impression from the WvW forums that they do not care about WvW at all.

All of the forums feel that way.

PvE forums feel like the devs pay too much attention to PvP.
PvP forums feel like the devs pay too much attention to PvE & WvW.
And WvW forums feel like the devs pay too much attention to PvE.

And it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

Serious Thought.5394:

Maxodon.5243:

Serious Thought.5394:

Maxodon.5243:

Serious Thought.5394:

I would play my Mesmer if it wasn’t disgustingly potent. Didn’t touch it past 6/23 because one shots were just boring. Then HoT I was on Thief still, touched Mesmer’s (ahem, Chronomancer’s) “Chronobunker” build and was disgusted again. If its not faceroll easy, I will play it again. Honestly looking forward to nerfs, I need a light armor class to use (I play Warrior, Thief, and Ele. Hate ele, but…its less broken than Mesmer and people just hate whisper me 24/7 on Mesmer).

Reason to bring though, uh lets see. Slow, Quickness, Slow, Quickness, Near instant 25 might, near instant kills (or just instant…), aoe CC control, a free stun retaliation to backwards instagib Thief (Mirror of Anguish, Rage Sigil, Cry of Frustration, Mirror Image+Mirror Blade+Mind Wrack). An unblockable nuke to just agitate Revs in hybernation. A good method to shut down Necro’s who will be stupid strong again. Ele’s won’t be a problem still, if so I’ll just go condi.

No bunker amulets means Mesmer is a MAGE ASSASSIN. From 1200 range. Thief is from 1200 range, but has to combo you dead from 900 or less. 250 or so to be frank, because pistols are still utter trash.

If a rev hits you, they will be dealing far less damage so just same as Thief. Backwards instagib.

Ehm, like every other class Mesmer can only have 3 trait lines equipped at the same time, not 5.

I described a build with Domination, Chaos, and Chronomancer focusing on Blink and Greatsword plays. What did you think I was describing?

I thought you tried to describe a viable build, but to get that with the skill and trait choices you mentioned, you would need atleast 2 additional trait lines.

Number one- VIABLE is described by YOUR capabiltiies. Meta is for scrub players who have no individual style. Play how you want is a real thing- its like in LOL: I couldn’t play Sej when she was meta, but I knew my Shaco and Evelynn were still strong. So I won the Cinderhulk Sejunai meta. Same here, Viable builds are you capability. Generally viable is meta, most effective tactics available- based on the basic playstyle for new/unexperienced players to pick up and coordinated teams to mesh together over voice chat. In solo Q, this means nothing.
Here’s my current Mesmer build- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAsfRnknBlphdqB2oBEgilTjiMAWggqOav2t1cH2mbA-TZBFABCcCAEvMAAPBAf2f4hDBAA
Granted, this is an odd and “weak” build but for me it works. I stun bomb teamfights then delete squishier players and heavily damage bunkers. When the squishies are alone (upcoming meta, hotjoin, RARE unranked/ranked) I one shot them with Prestige, Mantra, Mirror Blade+MirrorImage+wepswap into flurry+mind-wrack. I do not know who would use this besides me, but it works out well in my case. Pin down solos, destroy teamfights when I get 5 interrupts. Very nice stuff for me. I might…swap Chaos for that aoe confusion and the new Mercenary ammy I’ve been staring down. Anywho, this is the 30/30/30/30/30 or 6/6/6/6/6 or all-5-spec thing.

The guy who has been on this forum, openly stating he doesn’t play mesmer, is going to tell mesmer mains what’s viable.

I have literally ran multiple iterations of non-“meta” specs for Chrono.

They don’t work.

Lockdown is our best viable alternative to bunker (Shatter kittening sucks. Run 4 or 5 mind wracks into a reaper, and learn what I mean by how bad this actually sucks. WE HAVE NO SUSTAINED DAMAGE)

You know what counters lockdown?
THE 80000 STACKS OF STABILITY EVERY CLASS HAS NOW

Also, you’d be better off with scholar runes. Half a second of daze isn’t likely to make any significant difference.
10% damage on your first shatter against someone might. Doubtful though.

@Azure
“Why do two unblockable strikes make mesmer thief food?”

We’re already thief food. The basi venom just seals the deal. Attack us when we’re hurting (A.K.A. When we’re using shield, the only actual defense skill we have now other than distortion & sword 2) and kill us.

The reality though, is that thief, with its high damage, high mobility, and kitten tons of evades, already eats us alive on anything that isn’t the bunker spec.
You have 3 dodges, roll for initiative, the rolling heal (which is being buffed if I recall correctly), and vault/sword also evades.

You guys have more invulnerability than mesmer does now. And it’s also being made so that if I want to take you from 100-0, you’ll stop at 25% and evade everything I do for 2 seconds.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.

Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.

“balance” isn’t the goal.

If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.

“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.

“not trying” does.

There’s so much to unpack here I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll start it in list form:

#1: The devs balance primarily around 5 vs 5 PVP content. As there are 9 professions in the game, the idea that the devs directly want some profession to be stacked is nonsense. Especially since, after a recent 4 ele + thief PvP tournament victory, Anet made a rule that outright prevents severe stacking.

#2:The loudest fanbase is the one that complains the most. Therefore, when a class becomes underpowered, they become the “loudest”, as they have the most complaints.

#3: The problem with “fixing everything” is that nobody knows how to do it. For three reasons. First is that, no one is sure exactly when something is “fixed”. Exactly what proportion of the game should be defensive vs. offensive, point control vs. map mechanics, duels vs. group, or the dynamic nature of the map is all subjective. Second, the community itself is an unpredictable force, so what is balanced and unbalanced can be skewed by the flow of player preferences. Third, there is a massive amount of factors that go into each class, and making sure that there always exists some combination of skills and traits that can reliably beat all the others is so difficult that nobody can figure it out. The devs aren’t wizards who can magick up an answer out of nowhere.

#4: The point of having class balance in a PVE scenario is for flexibility. While the devs don’t want you to stack all of 1 or two professions, they also don’t want the game to be so anti-stacking that you have to have 1 of everything. That creates a similar kind of pressure that class superiority does.

#5: The original “group content” in the game, aside from overworld 100 man events, was 5 man dungeon groups. Larger raid content was added by popular demand 3 years later, and as such is more or less just imposing the conventions of other games onto GW2 more than any conscious class balancing decision.

#1: They had plenty of chances to make a rule where you can’t bring 2 of a class in. The teams this year actually discussed making that rule themselves if I’m remembering correctly.
And you’re only making my point for me when it comes to larger scale content. If they’re balancing for 5v5 PvP, then they aren’t balancing for raids. A.K.A. Not even trying.

#2: Yeah, no. Actually it depends on the amount of players that main a class. Warrior, Ele, and Guardian are the 3 most played classes in this game (Based off of post launch data, because that’s all we have). If they’re too weak, they’ll complain as loud as possible.
Mesmer & Ranger are 2 of the least played classes in this game. If they complain about being too weak, they won’t be nearly as loud as the Eles, Warriors, and Guardians arguing for thief/mesmer/ranger nerfs.

Which btw, none of those complaints for nerfing those classes has ever, or will ever, stop.
Not until we literally can’t play our class anymore.

#3: You know where they could kittening start? They could split the skills across the 3 game modes.
THE FACT THAT THEY HAVEN’T YET, SHOWS THEIR UNWILLINGNESS TO ACTUALLY BALANCE THE GAME
They have a situation where a class, yes, has too many utilities that are too strong. That class needs a rework. Not a numbers tweak, a rework.

If we’re stronger than thieves, then our portal IS amazing. If we’re weaker than them, then it’s a utility we’ll rarely get to use.
Moa… The counter play to this is either aegis, dodging, or LOS. It’s a BS skill, but at the same time, the moa itself isn’t a push over.
That thing is fast.

#4: Uhmm, no. That’s not the point of PvE balance. The point of PvE balance, is bringing everyone in line with everyone else based off of what they’re able to bring to the party.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fay.2357:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fay.2357:

Arkanthor.2307:

Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.

If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.

And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.

Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…

Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.

Just because they fail at it doesn’t change the goal.

If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.

Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.

“balance” isn’t the goal.

If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.

“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.

“not trying” does.