Guild Wars 2

This is exactly why I think it would be good to have a little dialog with someone from the Balance Team.

There’s definitely a disconnect here – either on our side or theirs. Why can’t we quickly chat about it and fix it?

Mesmer isn’t so horribly borked as Rangers have been. Rather there are a handful of issues that exist that need to be remedied. However, not having those remedied makes the class darn near useless in may ways.

ANet,

Nerfing dodge not only hurts a Mesmer’s ability to avoid damage, but also their ability to deal damage, due to clone-on-dodge and shatters spells.

The biggest problem with Critical Infusion is it effectively forces Mesmers to spec for large amounts of critical strike chance. The more they crit, the more they can avoid damage.

It’s a bit lop-sided.

Since you are going to change critical infusion, I’d like to offer a suggestion:

Inspiration Trait Line:

Move Vengeful Images to the Adept Major trait. Increase Phantasmal retaliation from 5 seconds to 15.
Move Vigorous Revelation to Adept Minor trait. Decrease vigor granted to 4 seconds per Illusion shattered instead of 5.

It would help maintain Mesmer survivability, while at the same time open up more build options, as Mesmers would not have to spec so heavily into critical strike chance.

I am not going to discuss the leaked patch notes here.

However, I think it would be very healthy for the community and the developers to recalibrate what each group expects for the Mesmer’s role in tPvP.

I, and many other Mesmer players, view the Mesmer as one who roams / back caps and provides support (usually snipe support) in group fights.

However, it is clear Mesmers are simply outclassed by thieves for that role; so much so, in fact, that all the competitive Mesmer players have left for thief. This was evidenced in the last “Ready Up”, where we saw SupCutie, who used to play Mesmer, playing thief.

Based upon what we’ve seen thus far in the preliminary patch notes, ArenaNet has not made any strides to change the Mesmer’s viability in that role. Nor have we seen any efforts to increase Mesmer out-of-combat mobility. As such, Mesmers are no longer viable for the roamer role in tPvP.

So, what role are they supposed to play? Their phantasms melt in group fights due to AoE damage. They don’t have heavy armor, their access to vigor is being nerfed, and they have limited access to protection, Prismatic Understanding aside.

It would be fair, and informative, to open a 2-way discussion between the balance team and the Mesmer-playing community to discuss how Mesmers fit in.

If Mesmers are to be roamers in tPvP, then here are their deficiencies for that role:
– out of combat mobility
– survivability against thieves
– Phantasmal survivability in group fights

PS Betchya didn’t know Herbie was actually a Mesmer! :-)

Did this guy get rescued from LA?

I know you guys aren’t prioritizing making Mesmer viable in the meta, but could you at least fix the bug you introduced which made our Focus weapon useless?

Thank you.

Morfedel.4165:

Well, that depends. Is he going to take punishment for an adventuring group, or is he going, for instance, shield children as they run for an escape?

The former is a tank, the latter is a hero

More the prior and not the latter. The energy amplifier is going to allow him to generate a large force field which which will block out the Miasma, allowing the players to fight without dying. The armor is for tanking.

I suspect we will see a greater act of heroism (i.e. self-sacrifice) on the part of Her-o-Tron at the end of the next Living World arc.

Here’s how I see it happening:

5 Person Dungeon + Rox, Braham, Majory, Kasmeer, etc.

Ellen Kiel plans attack on Scarlet’s drill. Using Kiel’s stolen Aetherblade airship, players board onto Scarlet’s drill. Upon landing, the Miasma quickly overwhelms the group. Out pops Hero-Tron, the stowaway on Kiel’s ship.

Outfitted with a suit that would make Tony Stark jealous, Hero-Tron pops his defense shield, protecting the team from the Miasma.

The group then proceeds through the dungeon, fighting enemies while keeping Hero-Tron alive.

After defeating Scarlet, she reveals that the drill is going to exlpode (or some such disaster). Hero-Tron mans up, overloads his shield generator to whack-out the drill’s self-destruct sequence, giving the team just enough time to escape.

Now that would be an awesome twist. The Pale Tree is Mordremoth, and Scarlet is going to poison the leylines to poison the Pale Tree, thus ending the dragon and the ‘dream’.

That would be great! All they need to do now is put together a montage of really small scenes and passages that gave small hints the Pale Tree was Mordremoth all along.

Kaiser Sözed!

What is great is I drop the fact that the top team in tPvP is running double warrior and mopping up everyone else, and the warriors happily ignore that tidbit and go on discrediting the arguments it is overpowered.

I agree with the OP. Chill is too punitive to elementalists and not punitive enough to thieves.

It’s a condition that needs a balance pass.

Fenrir.3609:

Having a low skill base requirement and being OP are two very, very different things.

All you are demonstrating is a combination of two things –
1. Warrior is potentially easier to pick up and play for new players (hard to deny).
2. You seem to be unclear about the difference between something OP and something easy to learn to a basic level of competency.

Warrior may be OP, but your experiment and post certainly does nothing to prove that to be the case.

Chappy stated when they see tPvP teams running 2 of a profession, it’s a sign the profession is imbalanced.

Cheese Mode has been mopping up tournaments running double warrior.

QED

We all know we willl eventually start rebuilding Lion’s Arch.

With the Lion destroyed, I think we need a new statue.

My recommendation: Hero-o-Tron

I’m with the OP.

1 more patch and still no explanation why he became abandoned content so powerful.

For those of us who have read the short story on Scarlet (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-what-scarlet-saw/, we know that she interacted with the Pale Tree while Scarlet was in the “eternal alchemy”:

Please: go no further. In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them. Society cannot withstand that.

The Pale Tree knows and sees many things. It must know, or at least have an idea, what Scarlet saw, and why she is doing these things.

Why is it still silent?

Since the current evacuation count is bugged on every server, but not on overflow servers, I’d suggest the following:

- everyone guest to a cerain 1 or 2 servers and attempt the event there

This will put the majority of players into an overflow where the evacuee count is 0, instead of 9,500.

Perhaps Blackgate and JQ would make good targets.

An alternative to guardian as mid-bunker would be a welcome change. There needs to be something other than just guardian for that role.

I guess the development team wants to wait-and-see on whether Fast Hands is too powerful with the sigil changes. I have my suspicions. However, what is abundantly clear to me is that the sigil change makes Fast Hands a far over-budgeted minor Master trait.

Based upon the description, I am a bit concerned. This doesn’t sound like a series of shaves and adjustments.

It really doesn’t sound like a “balance” patch; it sounds more like a “toss it in the blender and see what comes out” patch.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

I’ve seen Powerr play, and I’ll say he’s pretty good. So, I’ll take his word that the ele changes are going to be good and hopefully well-thought out.

I’m curious what he means by “technically”. Does he mean the ele mechanics have been reworked to change the mechanics? Perhaps he means they adjusted other professions that were keeping the ele profession down artificially.

…not sure.

I do believe ele is in a bad place because of the amalgamation of 3 things:
1) nerfs that were over the top
2) the change to a really condi-heavy meta
3) buffs to thieves that keep ele’s out of the meta

I suppose you’re right. I have little faith this game will get any better. Look what happened last time: players screamed and yelled about how Warriors were dominant in PVE and WvW. ANet listened and responded by making them dominant in tPvP too.

If they aren’t going to fix things, then they should just give warriors Stealth and be done with it.

Zero Day.2594:

Terrahero.9358:

Zero Day.2594:

Thedenofsin.7340:

…
Put simply: the developers are completely wrong thinking warriors are in a good place, or only need a small adjustment.

Or they are right, but all the other classes are in a bad place and need major adjusts. (to be on par with a warrior)

;) depends on how you look at things…

Well lets look at what we know arenanet is going to do.

-Elementalist, buff.
-Engineers, nerf.
-Guardian, nerf.
-Mesmer, nerf.
-Necro, nerf
-Ranger, nerf (lol?)
-Thief, nerf.

Hell, most of these nerfs are bigger then the nerf to Warrior. Which has already been promised compensation for the slight HS nerf.
So it seems Arenanet honestly believes that Warriors are fine, Ele’s are slightly underpowered and everyone else is overpowered.

Just another reason to not take the current balance team serious.

You know… “Balance” could mean that it’s “balanced” around the warrior class… Say it’s in the center… each other class “specializes” in something (thief for instance, WvW roaming), leading away from the center… and in the center is the warrior that can do everything..

If that’s the case, I’d uninstall right away and never look back. That would be a horrible way to describe balance – one profession is the ‘best’, and all the others are second-class citizens.

I remember a long time ago ANet said they wanted a game where you wouldn’t be able to tell who would win before the match started.

Now, you can: the team with the most warriors wins an overwhelming majority of the time.

It’s not fun.

Read this through. Great stuff, supcutie. If only this profession were still viable in tPvP, this would be really applicable.

:-)

:-(

Faranox.4217:

MiLkZz.4789:

Because they want to make the warrior a regen based class

Oh, yeah, I hear Anet talk about how they want me to play warrior all the time. “Hey guys, use regen, it’s how we want you to play the Warrior. If anyone doesn’t use HS, let them know they’re playing Warrior wrong. Because there’s only one way to play a profession. K thx bye.”

Get that crap outta here.

On topic, what builds are these Warrior duos running? Let’s narrow the problem down instead of using such broad terms.

No one is using broad terms: HS is overpowered.

period.

8% is not enough. You cannot make a game based upon standing on a node then give one profession no weaknesses, the most armor, great damage and the highest sustain and expect it to be balanced. That’s just dumb.

First you start by nerfing thieves.

That’s probably the case. Perhaps they are just catering to the baddies out there, hoping the baddies will open their wallet and keep them afloat.

MiLkZz.4789:

Reduce healing signet by more than 8% and nobody will use it anymore, everyone will go adrenal surge. Burst heals are still superior to regen heals.

And that’s so bad because…. why?

@MonMalthias,

You have some good points. However, with elementalists it was the nerfs and the emergence of the condition meta that really drove them into the dirt.

But the reality, however harsh, is that not having 1 profession in the meta is better than having 2 of the same in the meta.

And warriors right now are every bit as strong as elementalists were back when 2xele was dominant.

At least with Dhuumfire, it was extremely detrimental to run double Necromancer on a team because increasing the shortcomings Necromancers brought to the team outweighed the benefit they provided.

With all that sustain, condition removal, damage immunity, etc, warriors don’t have any shortcomings, so bringing two of them simply helps the team.

In a game where sitting on a point is the most important aspect of the game, giving a class this much sustain, without introducing some other weakness, is disruptive.

If you run 2xthieves, you’re too squishy.
If you run 2xmesmers, you’re too squishy.
If you run 2xguardians, you don’t do enough dps and lose mobility.
If you run 2xnecro’s, you’re too susceptible to CC.
etc.

You run 2xwarriors, none of that stuff applies.

Rednik.3809:

Aberrant.6749:

He’s right though and it’s pretty obvious. Without other changes on top of the 8% on healing signet it isn’t going to change much of anything. It’s a minor shave on one part of the problem.

So you are from the future too and already know all balance patchnotes for all classes? Mind to share?

The current developers have said they are going to reduce HS by 8% and buff the active heal. That’s inadequate.

As seen by Cheese Mode winning tournament after tournament, the double warrior comp is still superior.

8% nerf to healing signet is insufficient to change this.

Put simply: the developers are completely wrong thinking warriors are in a good place, or only need a small adjustment.

It’s detailed here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/phasing-out-pvp-glory/

That was actually a lot of fun to watch. The joking and light-hearted manner worked well for this type of event.

Next time, please turn the gain on Jeb’s microphone up.
It would also be great to hear Blu shoutcast as well – he’s really superb at shoutcasting.

now

/15characters

Did Chappie just make a reference to the Transformers cartoon movie?

You guys been watching the recent tournaments with Cheese Mode?

Curious what you guys think about that double warrior comp beating down the competition.

20/20/30 PU
30/20/10/10 lockdown
10/30/20/10 clone-death

These are your best bets. Clone-death is the best for holding a node and defending against thieves. Lockdown is good if you have bunkers and can /assist a thief or some glass cannon class.

Tsyras.5274:

Decap engi is the same as any bunker except can knock off the point easier.

So the decap engie is the same as other bunker builds, but better at defending the point.

Isn’t that sort of the definition of overpowered?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s as bad as HS warriors, but I think it does need to be toned down a little. The number of times you can get knocked down/bounced off a point is silly, especially when you consider how little effort is required to be successful at it.

I’d go so far as to say it’s a skill floor/cap problem. Right now the skill floor for decap engie is right about where the skill ceiling should be.

That is, an excellent decap engie should require 2 players to drop, but that’s the norm and not the exception.

If the game were better balanced and elementalists were viable, I’d be interested to see how well a decap engie would fare. And if wishes were fishes, then we’d all cast nets. So, the thing I think should be done is figure out how to increase the skill required for the build.

We’ll likely never see decap engie get nerfed. That’s not ‘cheese’ according to the developers. Only classes they don’t play are ‘cheese’.

Is that what people voted for? To talk about a league system???

Julie Yann.5379:

Bombsaway.7198:

You miss the point.
Warriors were easy kills.
Now warriors get easy kills.
Warriors can be beat (any class can) but the level of effort is higher given how it was buffed.

The warrior needed rapid buffing and should appreciate that it got that buffing and that it was rapid.
But, given it was a rapid set of buffs, does it really come as a surprise that the pendulum swung too far in the other direction? Would you really have preferred if all your changes came over 6-8 months to make them perfectly “balanced”? Isn’t clawing back some of the extremes still going to put you in a just fine position?

Warriors are hardly the problem for condition engineers but that doesn’t negate the fact that for most of the game, the warrior has gotten too many buffs and too few remaining weaknesses. This came BECAUSE you needed a triage.

This is the exact same thing I would ask they do for eles and rangers. Fast buff then pare them back when you really see what is OP.

I don’t deny that we still need some adjustments but for the past couple months all we have seen is “WARRIOR OP PLZ NERF” with the same reasons:

Highest Health
Highest Armor
Highest Damage
Highest Healing

but not objective reasons as to what and why it is OP. It’s all “I keep getting kill by this warrior and I can’t even hurt him. Wah wah wah”

Warrior is in a good place, we have a lot of viable builds to choose from and can fulfill pretty much any role. I would like it to stay that way while. I would also like for Anet to fix all the other professions to the point where that can have the same amount of viable builds and fulfill any role. Just crying nerf is not going to accomplish that.

Ah, I’ve seen this argument before. “X is not overpowered. Everything else is underpowered”.

Go play 50 games of tPvP. Make note of the following:
1. How many warriors are on the winning team
2. How many warriors are on the losing team
3. How many warriors are in the match

Surprise! You’ll find this amazing trend: the winning team, an overwhelming majority of the time, will have the most warriors.

I believe there would be a significant amount of rework required to the thief profession if you make stealth break on damage.

What if you limited it to a handful of abilities that break stealth if they hit the target? Then restrict it to abilities that have a small area of attack, but do not necessarily require a target.

For example:

The following abilities, if they hit the target, will break stealth:

Elementalist: Lava Font, Lightning Touch
Mesmer: Blurred Frenzy, Mind Stab
Ranger: Stalker’s Strike, Hornet Sting

Dawdler.8521:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Consume Ectoplasm
Cooldown 60 seconds
Gives Mesmer all Boons for 10 seconds

Used with Lyssa that would be 15 seconds of all boons + duration, lets say 50%. That’s 22 seconds of all boons with a 38s downtime.

Seems a little OP, dont you think?

Besides, its a boring elite. A new Phantasm elite is IMO the only way to go.

No I think it sounds just like a thief using mug+basilisk venom. Except thieves get to do that every 45 seconds instead of every 60.

That aside, I believe signet of chaos would be a very nice, but not overpowered, elite skill. What are your thoughts?

1. Mesmers
2. Warriors
3. Elementalists

Arganthium.5638:

Phantaram.1265:

I think most people are missing the point of this thread.

Yes the meta is super tanky and within it thieves are just average. Take away the super tanky meta and it will be about thieves. Mesmer and ele, the other mobile power squishy roamers, won’t see the light of day because thieves are so far ahead of them and actually counter the mesmer and ele themselves.

There are layers of broken things in this game. The first one that needs peeled back is the tanky meta, after that there are other things that need peeled back. Thief is one of them.

What garbage.

Mesmer is by no means countered by thief. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that they have a theoretical disadvantage against thieves (i.e. they have 5k more health in exchange for thief’s 7% damage reduction, Mes has a little less burst than thief but a little more sustain, Mes has tons of AoE while Thief has great single-target damage, etc)- in fact, if anything, mesmers should have an advantage against thieves, simply on the basis of their wider range of flexibility (see my mesmer build in my signature) along with very, very slight pluses in a wide number of other areas.

Elementalist, on the other hand, is just a generally bad class at the moment. I have no problem crushing eles with any profession. Their base stats are the weakest of all classes (lowest base health and light armor), their heals are downright awful, their supposed “flexibility” is actually very limited, their damage skills are unreliable at best, their traits are extremely limited, their condition removal is weak, and so on. This has absolutely nothing to do with thieves being “overpowered” or some kind of stupid idea like that. Heck, you can’t even use the (already pathetic) excuse that S/D thieves are a strong counter to eles since there are virtually no players using S/D any more (Sizer was asked by his team to change weapon sets).

You might be a good player, Phantaram, but your comments are so off-target that I feel that you’re shooting way out of your league here. There’s absolutely nothing to support your comments; what little evidence has been provided by a large number of players supporting your ideas is either easily refutable with objective analysis (i.e. just because Sizer was “hunting” Helseth didn’t mean he was being particularly helpful to his team; in fact, looking at his gameplay, he wasn’t really doing as much for his team as Helseth was doing for his) or by determining the actual root of the problem, as I did with the elementalist.

I checked your signature. Your theorycrafting is a bit off. Perhaps you would benefit from spending more time playing. If you did, you’d know what a disadvantage mesmers and elementalists have against thieves.

You say thieves do ‘a little more’ damage and mesmers have ‘a ton’ of AoE. That is simply not the case. Thieves can beserker thieves can crit continuously for 4-5k, which is about what the maximum a shatter would do for a Mesmer.What makes the argument absolutely laughable is you conveniently left out that, when facing Mesmers, thieves have:

far greater mobility
far greater access to stealth, and longer duration stealth
far more access to evades and vigor
shorter ability recharge times
more access to Lyssa 6-piece proc
access to Consume Plasma
better auto-attack damage
long-range teleports on shorter cooldowns

Your argument is faulty. If Mesmers had an advantage against thieves, then surely Sizor hunting down Helseth would have resulted in Sizor losing the fight most of the time. Instead it resulted in Helseth being run off point or killed. That’s just a single example.

Good man Justin – now go over to the balance team and tell them the servers will all perish unless they fix that hambow crapola!

And tell them to tune down thieves so ele’s and mesmers can actually get some playtime!

I knew I liked you for a reason!

Mesmer is now in 5th place!!!

Half as many votess as necro and engineer!

Get back over there and make Mesmer your #1 choice!

Elite ideas:

Consume Ectoplasm
Cooldown 60 seconds
Gives Mesmer all Boons for 10 seconds

Signet of Chaos
Cooldown 60 seconds
Grants Mesmer:
30 seconds of swiftness
5x might (30 seconds)
Your next 5 attacks inflict a random condition on your opponent and grant you a random boon (30 seconds)

Mesmer is falling far below elementalist, ranger and necromancer.

Need more #1 votes to get the profession some attention.

Curunen.8729:

selan.8354:

Curunen.8729:

Alissah.9281:

Curunen.8729:

As much as I’d love mesmer to be the focus, I can’t in good conscience put it above ranger or ele at the moment.

Here, drink this water, then go to the cdi thread again.

• gives a scentless, tasteless and colourless liquid containing 95% alcohol *

Now I’m too busy dying on the floor.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Then go back and move Mesmer to #1 slot. That’s the slot that will receive attention first.

What’s a mesmer? hic

lol no dont get drunk because u will accidently move the warrior to the first spot

Someone already did… I’m not joking – look in the thread.

(To be fair they said “balance”, not buff)

To be fair, they said “most help”, not “balance”.

Make sure Mesmer is in the #1 slot. That’s the slot that will receive attention first.

Don’t forget, all the rangers and elementalists are voting for their professions as well, which means Mesmers will probably fight just to end up in third place.

Currently, Mesmer is somewhere in 4th place, behind Necromancers!

If you put rangers and elementalists before mesmers, you have to be OK with the thought that the balanace team may not get to working on Mesmers for another year – 12 months, if at all!

All:

Now is the chance for Mesmers to get some developer attention.

Get over to this thread and vote Mesmer in the top slot for the next profession to work on!

Make sure Mesmer is in the #1 slot (each position is weighted)!

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

For our upcoming CDI projects, we would like to collect your ideas for professions that need balancing. Since there are 8 professions, we would like to do one at a time and would like you to vote on which one comes first.

Please pick the three professions that you feel need the most help right now and list them in order of priority like so:

Example
1. Profession1 (this needs the most help by far)
2. Profession2 (this needs help, but not more than 1)
3. Profession3 (this needs help, but not more than 1 & 2)

Please keep your post to just your 3 votes. If you have any questions, you may ask them here as well.

We will collect the information at the end of the day tomorrow (5:00pm pacific), so make sure to get your vote in before then!

Thanks!

You phrased the question in such a way that people are going to answer with professions which are in the worst shape (meaning underpowered and/or poor mechanics).

However, in order to achieve balance, wouldn’t it also make sense to ask what professions people feel are over the top (too powerful / synergy too stong)?

What if you have a situation where profession X, Y, and Z need the most help, but really it only appears that way because profession A is so overpowered it keeps X and Y from being more widely accepted?

For example, in tPvP, Mesmers and elementalists are nigh non-existent, but that’s actually because thief is so overpowered for that role, elementalists and mesmers have no place in the meta.

In PVE, elementalists are actually really awesome for dungeons, but are far outclassed by warriors because warriors are so overpowered for dungeons.

In WvW, elementalists are good in zergs, but again, warriors are simply better (leaving ele’s relegated to glorified might stackers).

Also, isn’t the primary objective of the balance team to kitten the profession balance in the game and make adjustments to achieve balance? Why do they need our input? Isn’t that kind of like the car manufacturer asking me where he should put the airbags?

I’m not asking for suggestions to make mesmers more powerful than thieves. I’m asking what changes would make them viable in the meta.

Piscore.6934:

This is the best time to negotiate the Tengu help other races? or we will help evacuate the wounded / refugee from LA?

/discuss

Some people just like to watch the world burn.