Guild Wars 2

My only input is that AI must be getting buffed for a reason, and it’s not because it’s as good as everyone seems to be complaining it is.

Annoying =/= Good

I don’t pretend to know anything about how gaurdians work since it’s the one class I don’t have an alt for, but I have one thing to bring up and if someone has more to say on it then by all means explain…

Isn’t Gaurdian’s meditations on relatively large cooldowns? I thought that a lot of their burst came from their utilities, and those had high cooldowns. That makes me think they they won’t really be that overbearing considering they need to time when they engage I suppose.

I don’t know, like I said I don’t know much about it.

I never thought I would be glad when my class was getting nerfed but the PU build needed a nice kick in the jewels for a while. Not even chopping block changes either, nice simple ‘this can now be avoided’ and ‘PU now gives more boons, less defense all the time’.

I approve.

You get used to it. It’s hard being this perfect.

Munkee.3951:

I can 1v1 pretty much anyone in pvp on my necro, except for mesmers.

So, because you can kill everyone else but can’t handle mesmer’s that means mesmer is the OP one?

K.

Eleivo.2761:

This is the perfect mesmer build. You can kill every other mesmer easily, great in team fights, hardly ever downed. Great at melee combat, able to engage and disengage at will, enough stealth to leave the enemy with nothing to hit. Trust me, if you run this build you will be the best mesmer around.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7pFOxyJ8PNBNhs9jOR0KQ3RL2E-TJhFwAAOFAy2fIxTAYaZAA

Make sure to change your clothes to purple. If you feel lonely, you can swap elites and even get some clones. Make sure to make shatter sounds with your mouth as you go along! Best of luck!

Sometimes I love the forums. This is one of those times.

Oh goodness, seems I upset a couple people since I last checked. I love how defensive people get when a simple no one like me states my opinion on the PU build.

By all means, use the build. Why should one care what I think? Everything you state is correct of course, it’s more challenging to play other specs when roaming. That is why, in my opinion, those mesmers are simply better than the PU ones.

The fact that one instantly jumps to “Go do a 1v4 with a thief” is silly. Because the only way a build should be deemed viable is if you’re able to roll around like a buffoon and still survive 4 people fighting you? Thank goodness you use a build that doesn’t require you to actually think right? This is why no one likes warriors, and why they are considered ‘easy mode’. That’s all I’m saying, that PU has lowered mesmers to a dumbed-down state, and that’s saddening to see.

That’s it. Just an opinion, nothing more. I don’t wish to derail the thread anymore than I already have.

Bo Van Swill.7619:

Oh why do all mesmer’s want to go PU as a long time mesmer i hate PU builds its one reason i find it hard to get a fight one on one in WvW and if i do and win i get messages like oh a PU mesmer how original well i never have or will run PU far better builds out there.

Everyone runs PU because they can’t play mesmer without using a build that carries them.

I’m sorry, I meant it’s because “PU is what’s viable and because it’s the only way a mesmer can roam effectively”.

Something along those lines I’ve been told.

When I used to run a shout build on ranger I would spam"Gaurd" on myself for perma swiftness and regen. If I was also able to make that perma aoe revealed that would be ridiculous.

Depends how you want to play. I personally use sw/sw & GS when I run phantasms for the lolz of it, but that might not be what works for you. It’s all personal taste.

With offhand sw: Block with a nice chunk of damage, hard hitting phantasm. Block can overwrite a phantasm since it spawns a clone if you aren’t careful. (already have 3 phantasms out)

With offhand pistol: Stun, and ranged phantasm.

Best way to learn what you like is trial and error!

Makes sense I suppose. Would the traits that effect the summons damage still be available? I know that Necromancer has one that increases minion damage a percent, I’m assuming Gaurdian does too.

Aleglast.6027:

So there has been a lot of complaints about condition builds in this game, that they are under powered and not viable in pvp.

That’s hilarious.

This would be a massive nerf for all mesmer playstyles. Shatter wouldn’t be able to pump out the illusions it needs in order to burst quick enough, Phantasm wouldn’t be able to generate their damage source, even clone death builds would lose their source of damage from clone spawning.

It sounds to me that you want to turn the mesmer into a ‘summoner’. You’re essentially just replacing our shatters and tossing our illusions up there. As the person above me said, everyone uses shatters in some way. Ignoring your shatters completely (as it seems you do OP) is ignoring a lot of your potential as a mesmer. Sure, some playstyles use shatter more than others, but it’s a source that shouldn’t be ignored just because you happen to play phantasm (which is also the sense I’m getting from OP).

The idea of going down specialization trees is nice from a progression standpoint, but what always happens in MMO’s that have it is one specialization (for each class) is deemed the “best” by the community, and if you don’t go down that route then you’re sub-par.

Basically how OP already stated balancing would be an issue, in my opinion it would just force people to build a certain way….which we already have happening in certain parts of the game.

2161 health…

Are you an Ambient creature?

Pokecenter.3548:

I don’t use my Mesmer lately, but he is my main so i feel like i shoulda know at least how to use him decently in WvW..

I’ve been wondering this for a while, how bad is a Mesmer with a Zerker build in WvW?

Im terrible at fighting other players, but would it be okay for me to use a PU condition build? The good Mesmers i happened to meet on the field (or decent, since im bad it is hard to grasp their skill) seemed to be always PU, and originally i liked Staff the most as a Mes weapon, that’s why i was thinking it could be a good idea. I’m guessing something like 046004 with Rabid’s and Staff+Scepter/Torch, is that how the ‘meta condi PU’ looks like?

Any other good build you would advice? I know alot of people like and recommend a Shatterer build, but I’ve read quite often that you need high skill for it, so because of that and since I like the PU condi idea more i guess ill pass.

First of all the “good” mesmers aren’t playing PU because it’s a crutch build that plays itself for you. The reason you can’t beat them is because, as you stated, you aren’t very good at pvp.

However, given you’ve admitted that you don’t think you can successfully use a shatter build I guess PU would be the way to go. In my opinion this gimps you as a mesmer player though, as you really don’t advance as a pvp’er using the build. It’s all up to you. You can either use a build that will allow you to have easy wins for minimal effort, or you can attempt to challenge yourself.

Typical PU would be 4/4/6/0/0, scepter/torch with a mix of Dire and Rabid gear and weapons. Dodge roll around, stealth, profit.

As someone who plays a zerker mesmer in wvw, we aren’t bad in wvw as you seem to believe we are. We do have to work harder for our fights, especially in this condi meta, but it makes you better as a player. I can count the amount of times a PU mesmer has beaten me on one hand, and those times I can admit that it was because I messed up as a player and not because the other mesmer was actually doing anything “good”.

Best of luck to you.

Dondagora.9645:

For PvP, perhaps, rename yourself to something close to “Phantasmal Warlock” and you’ll confuse your opponents with clones, yourself, and phantasms.

So you mean name yourself like every other mesmer that’s ever played this game?

The amount of “Illusionary [insert name]” Mesmers I’ve seen speaks wonders to the originality of our player base.

Windwalker.7421:

I don’t really agree with any of this. Phantasms are the epitome of a Glass Cannon, being generally able to be killed in 1 hit by most professions/builds. Mesmers lacking weapon damage is an indicator of the intrinsic balance ANet intended here; devoting a moment to clear the most dangerous illusions is rewarded. (and should be)

(In turn mindlessly killing all illusions with AE damage is also punished, if the Mesmer traits for it!)

If you nerfed the Phantasms and boosted our own damage, you would imbalance this idea. We would be able to more heavily punish a player for focusing on killing illusions, which means they become passive damage boosts that people should ignore or suffer.

This is when “pet classes” really stink IMO, when you inevitably end up being forced to completely ignore the pets and focus on killing the owner (pets become passive damage adds or passive utility-bots). This is basically how it works for Rangers, Necros, and Elementalist pets (with some exceptions) and it makes for lame PvP if you ask me. It’s also hard to strike a good balance between owner & pet damage output. (see Rangers)

I don’t think the current system promotes passive play at all, and in fact your ideas would lead us in the direction of Phantasms becoming nothing more then a passive damage add to be ignored. No tactics or skill involved.

If you actually do play passively with Phantasms now, and your opponents don’t exploit your laziness and kill off your Phantasms to leave you nekkid, then they get what they deserve!

Mesmers are a class designed to make the enemy think, and to punish mindless play against them. Your enemy is supposed to waste some powerful attacks to clear your Phantasms! This provides a form of defense for the Mesmer, and rewards strategic play over purely aggressive play, for those facing Mesmers. We need more of this in GW2, not less!

If you can just safely ignore the Phantasm, or get punished too harshly for killing them off by the Mesmers own attacks, then you end up with much less skillful play then what we have now.

I bolded my favorite part of this post. It’s all true, but that one paragraph is huge.

Our Illusions are going to keep the mesmer complained about regardless of how many nerfs the class receives. Players are always going to complain about being unable to find the mesmer in their lllusions, and blame their loss on “AI”.

The majority of PvP players are horrible, they’re going to complain about anything that requires actual thinking to beat.

Even if the finisher was just Tybalt standing still doing absolutely nothing of any interest I would buy it. Just yes.

Hey Joe, nice to see you still running shatter! Your videos are always awesome.

Keep it up ~

a t s e.9614:

WhiteRose.6934:

a t s e.9614:

I hope they won’t Nerf strength runes because of some random QQ. Seriously leave the runes as they are. Power has strength , condi has Balthazar.

Everybody is overpowered now… looks like we have achieved balance.

Aren’t you like, the king of complaining about stuff that kills you? I’m surprised you aren’t supportive of this.

But I guess seeing the classes you play in your signature I shouldn’t be THAT surprised.

I don’t use Balthazar runes , I think they are fine. I just don’t like this logic of " Nerf what is good" instead of buffing what is bad.

Right….I’ll keep that in mind next time I see you in a thread. But I digress.

To the OP: I haven’t had much interaction with these runes, (unless someone I’ve fought while roaming in wvw has had them and I just didn’t notice) But I would imagine that someone spamming their heal to get burning is kinda leaving themselves a little vulnerable. Now maybe the interaction with Engineer is just overwhelming due to the amount of burns (and other condi) Engi has available to them, but in that case it falls under the same issue that Perplexity does; Some classes are going to be able to abuse them more than others. It’s not fair but it’s the current state of the condi game at the moment.

a t s e.9614:

I hope they won’t Nerf strength runes because of some random QQ. Seriously leave the runes as they are. Power has strength , condi has Balthazar.

Everybody is overpowered now… looks like we have achieved balance.

Aren’t you like, the king of complaining about stuff that kills you? I’m surprised you aren’t supportive of this.

But I guess seeing the classes you play in your signature I shouldn’t be THAT surprised.

Came for the Burnfall post, wasn’t disappointed.

zHasgard.9827:

Hi , my name is Fred and I play MMORPG with over 6 years , I joined the guild wars 2 last year that I found very beautiful game and the pvp system made me so happy , I had never seen a pvp thus played Perfect World , wow , aion , everquest and tibia … throughout this journey with the online games I’ve played with all classes of these games , I know this is a forum for Guild Wars 2 and should not be commenting on other games , but wanted to highlight one thing in all these games , none of them there is a class that does what other fazem.Estou speaking warriors in GW2 , I play guardian , the guardian started because I thought he was the character who held more damage in the game , guardian is a very cool and beautiful class, but we guardians could only do one thing at a time , or we use build tank or we use zerk build , with a guardian zerk we took 15khp + – warriors with build zerk can build tank with zerk , they have a lot of life and a very good kit burst damage , they have mov.speed , they can ignore attacks by a lONG period of time , may use different types of weapons and get along with everybody, any it is feasible to build a rifle , ax , greatsword , hammer , hammer mostly , they hold the hammer like a toy, very fast attack … they can escape from it all with his mobility , and so much more that I will not talk here…Why warrior are soo ridiculous and overpower in this game?? I REALLY DON’T KNOW WHY.It makes no sense you create a class that beats all others, and that makes all the others do so better, it makes sense you do 0 damage on warrior, it makes sense to raise it after you die, it does not make sense hold the hammer like a toy, it makes sense to take it with a tank build 31khp.No fun in playing a game where one thing destroys anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfP6H-4dpI

For those complaining they can’t figure out the post;

“My name is Fred and I’ve played MMORPG’s for over 6 years. I joined Guild Wars 2 last year and I found it’s a beautiful game and the pvp system made me very happy. I had never seen a pvp system like this, and I’ve played Perfect World, WoW, Aion, Everquest, and Tibia. I know I shouldn’t be highlighting these games on this forum, but I wanted to say how there is one downside that GW2 has vs. these games. One class dominates; The Warrior.
I main a gaurdian, I thought that gaurds were a powerful class and very cool, but unfortunately we can only do one thing at a time. We either tank, or we build glass cannon. In comparison the warrior can build glass cannon and still tank, or build as a tank and still hit like a glass cannon. Warriors have a good base health, great burst damage, mobility, blocks and invulns, as well kitten many weapon options that put other classes to shame. The warrior is so ridiculous and overpowered.

I don’t understand having a class that beats all others. It’s no fun playing a game where one class dominates."

EnRohbi.2187:

Dei Veien.2456:

(the amount of times I have had people ask me if I am running pu when regen appears on my buff bar)

Despite being a Power based Interrupt build, I frequently get accused of being a condi based PU build.

People…

Try playing full glass cannon, no PU, and still getting called a PU baddie.

This is what PU has done to our reputation.

Amir.1570:

I’ll say it again and I’ll keep saying it.

Mesmer will always be zero skill cancer class. This class is just flat-out EVIL and should just be deleted and re-worked from scratch. Why? Because distortion is Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, and Balanced Stance in one package. It boggles me that people think Warrior is brain dead with it’s invulnerabilities but Mesmer isn’t. Like seriously Mesmer takes skill? It’s so easy to count dodges while spamming dodges on this brain-dead excuse of a class. Even worse now that they enabled Knights amulet in sPVP. Add to the fact that that Mesmers can attack while spamming endurance dodge or any form of cheese for that matter, something will go wrong if they aren’t kept “UP”.

I guess balancing will always be pathetic when ANET is in charge of GW2.

Mesmer is the perfect example of EVIL in video games. Never a fun class to play against and people literally think they’re good when they play this brainless class just because “I have to time my evades on a Mesmer” when this cancer class has so much more evades than any other class in the game.

Don’t even bring Thief into the discussion, Sword Dagger is balanced now and Thieves don’t deal DPS if they spam short bow 3.

Calm down there Satan.

Khenzy.9348:

I know I’m going to get trash talked by other Mesmer players but… Osicat, can you please stop promoting PU builds or similar like these? Where perma protection, near perma regen, heavy stealth, AI (and other stuff I wont even mention, you know you class already) just outclass everything you encounter? Making these junk builds popular is definetly not good for the game as a whole.

Flame away fellas.

I fully agree, but as you can see the “Forum Celebs” and fanboys (and girls) do not. Unfortunately the state of competitive players has become “use what’s easy” and anything else is subpar and makes you a scrub.

I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. You always know what people are going to be using, so prepare to counter it. It’s what makes fighting other mesmers so easy lately.

Mesmers have one of the best, if not the best, in combat mobility (comparable to thieves). Not saying that adding a signet would bring them over the top by any means, but I believe that a weakness we are faced with (and are able to overcome with investment via runes, etc) is our out of combat mobility.

Honestly, as expensive as the runes are they are far worth it as to not sacrifice a utility slot for mobility. So many of the mesmers utilities are too essential to survive. (Blink, Decoy, condi clear, just to name a few.)

The only ‘con’ I have is the megaserver. I really wish and pray that it would go away.

Thief if you want to use stealth and annoy people.

Warrior if want to do everything the thief does without stealth and still annoy people.

The only immobolize I have issues with is warriors. Against them unless you’re also a warrior, you aren’t getting out of their immobolize spam.

Could you imagine the crying if mesmer could do half the things they used to be able to do in gw1? If the players of this community can’t handle thieves, or handle mesmers confusion back before if was nerfed then they certainly can’t handle skills like Blackout/Backfire/Clumsiness.

In short, the pvp players of guild wars 2 are terrible and wouldn’t last a second in gw1 pvp.

2. makes me laugh.

Like a lot.

Stop being bad, learn to play the game.

Why get rid of the only thing that actually makes Races unique? Why get rid of the last shred of lore based game play people can actually have. I like that my characters are all different with their individual cultural pieces that set them apart from other races. It’s the only reason to have multiple races, to make them all unique in their own right.

Grimreaper.5370:

I’m talking about good PU mesmers with 1000s of hours played. PU mesmers that took the time to learn every single class mechanic in the game in order to counter each class.

If the mesmer (or any player for that matter) has been playing this much, and has taken the steps and the effort to learn every mechanic in order to counter other classes, what makes you think that you deserve to beat them? They’re obviously better than you of they did all of this, why do you deserve the win?

Everyone can kill a thief. This isn’t a card game where one card beats another. It’s a game where if you suck then you lose, if you don’t suck you win.

“Who actually puts forth the effort to learn how to fight thieves?” – Is actually a question worth asking, as clearly it’s not the majority of players.

If you aren’t built for the encounter or prepared as a player, don’t be surprised when you lose.

There’s no way to argue that PU builds have anything but the lowest of required skill to play and be successful, especially the condition variety that EVERYONE uses. That’s why people would be messaging you “Lol PU mesmer”. It’s basically them calling you out for using a build that plays itself for you.

Not that I condone harassing people via messages because of it, but that’s the reason it’s happening.

If you’re being confused visually there’s something wrong with how you’re playing.

We’ll still be around, shatter may be weak in comparison to other forms of power burst but it’s still a very fun and active (and viable in my own experience) way of playing mesmer. Not to mention in wvw small group roaming you can line up AoE bursts of 8k upwards if you’re playing smart.

I do enjoy seeing the buff to condition shatter, which is the kind of condition build I use when I roll conditions. Keeps up the active play on the mesmer’s part. Hopefully people will start to gravitate away from the PU craze, but I feel that shatter as a whole (condition or power) just doesn’t appeal to players anymore due to the extra effort it takes to pull it off.

How nobody has mentioned Lyssa yet is beyond me. Lyssa, the twin goddess of beauty is (well, more accurately WAS) the patron goddess of Mesmer’s back in Gw1, and her color is Purple/Pink.

Butterflies being added in gw2 are probably just a nod the the Butterfly Effect thing.

Okay, I’m not fan of warrior or CC or anything like that….but this is a little much.

First of all this just homogenizes the game and classes. That’s not balance, that’s uniformity. Also adding long casting times to everything just makes the game boring and slow. Half of the actual ‘skill’ in the game is knowing your opponent to be able to dodge key attacks and CC. Taking certain utilities (stunbreakers) with you is part of your choices as a player. Do you want this stunbreaker, or that utility that adds more dps? Make the choice.

Honestly your suggestions take away skill and dumbs down combat and the game itself.

I’m sorry, but learn to play dude.

I don’t enjoy the phantasm ideas that have been getting thrown around lately. Phantasm mesmer isn’t that overwhelming (Talking from a WvW standpoint) and the illusions are so easily destroyed or just avoided that making the illusions have more attached to them just makes them more of a hindrance than it already is to get burst going.

I understand the sentiment, in that there is an apparent lack of AoE for mesmer. I don’t see this lack, but maybe it’s just me. With proper placement of iZerker, Blurred Frenzy, Mindwracks, I’m getting massive AoE bursts on groups (still wvw), so maybe people are getting too used to not using their shatters (Cough PU COUGH) and wondering where the AoE potential went.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Axelwarrior.9084:

5- I’m sure any enemy who saw a random tree somewhere it’s not supposed to be would know it’s a Mesmer.

Smells like a GW2 version of prop hunt to me

My god wvw prop hunt? Yes please.

Very nicely done, I especially enjoyed the victories against the PU users. Go Shatter go!

Keep it up ~

whyme.3281:

Condition damage is mitigated by
- condi duration
- immunities
- condi cleanse
- Blind
- Invul
- Block
- Evade
etc

-Anti-Condi duration isn’t a stat you can build for like Toughness is to counter damage.

-Immunity works against everything.

-Condi cleanse is viable (obviously) however in contrast conditions are much easier to apply than they are to cleanse as the fight goes on.

-Blind/block/evade all work against attacks, while you’re probably taking damage from conditions already on you. Whereas in contrast you dodge a power attack and you’ve just diminished your foes dps completely. As a condi user if you dodge my attacks I’m still keeping dps up time while you roll around like a fool.

phaeris.7604:

You’re playing a cheesy condition PU spec setup on possibly one of the best 1v1 classes out there?

You’re lucky anyone bothers staying to give you a fight.

If you had any honour as a player you’d be playing pure shatter spec, not some cowardly condition spec.

I was going to say roughly the same thing. The whole “honor” thing went out the window when I saw the build was just another condi PU.

Even better is that my full glkittenter can outrun, outchase, and just have more mobility in general than this “only viable build” everyone is using.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

grave of hearts.7830:

Bhawb.7408:

If you get killed in a zerg by being stunned at 900 range, you can’t blame anyone but yourself.

Also i am still waiting for you to turn around and question anet on why guardians can have 500 more condition dmg than a necromancer and a synergy setup bumping it to a total of 4k con dmg (can go past the 4k if a condition is met)while class mechanic enhances siege.

Please tell me this is a joke.

I can’t really tell honestly. Let’s just smile and nod.

grave of hearts.7830:

Bhawb.7408:

If you get killed in a zerg by being stunned at 900 range, you can’t blame anyone but yourself.

You may wanna tone down the hostility and degrading others,just a slight touch.
First reply was in a joke sense ,and all of a sudden i get two hostiles on me.
Also not everyone is on a stacked server and hiding behind a guardian blob,some have to make due with what they got and thats where the stacked effects like stability and cc locks show how unbalanced are compared to necromancer cooldowns and lack of mobility.
Also i am still waiting for you to turn around and question anet on why guardians can have 500 more condition dmg than a necromancer and a synergy setup bumping it to a total of 4k con dmg (can go past the 4k if a condition is met)while class mechanic enhances siege.
You never got hit by a cannonball that sticks 10 stacks of bleeding for 220 per stack and burning for 1200 at the same time to wonder why the numbers arent even comparable?

When Phase Retreat and Illusionary Leap (it’s not just Swap, in case you didn’t know) Are instant gap closers, and immobolize, and clear a condition, oh and have no cooldown, THEN we can compare the two.

And stop referring to swap as if mesmers can just use it at will. You summon a clone that has to actually find it’s way somewhere before you can decide to swap with it, in about 3 seconds. This actually requires a target, and line of sight at that. If you are even slightly out of range, tough luck enjoy your no clone and full cooldown. In no way is it comparable to IR. Sure, there are times that you might be lucky and manage to swap right as you got stunned, but I can count those times on one hand.

Phase Retreat blinks you away from a target, doesn’t break stun/immobolize. It just moves you. The cooldown is short, but not as short as 0 and certainly does nothing for conditions.

I have nothing against thieves by any means, but come on dude.