Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

Mesmer

Mesmer has been on our radar for a while now, but it’s a delicate situation. We’re going to keep the change list small for this update, focusing mostly on sustain, and reassess the situation mid-season.

• Echo of Memory: The cooldown of this ability has been increased from 30 to 35 seconds in PvP only.
• Restorative Illusions: The healing contribution of this trait has been increased by 285% in PvP only. The base healing modifiers for this trait have been adjusted as follows:
  • 0 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 62% in PvP only.
  • 1 Illusion shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 50% in PvP only.
  • 2 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 42% in PvP only.
  • 3 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 36% in PvP only.

Could you please clarify these numbers? What exactly does all this mean for RI on current builds? (No healing power) What about with 560 HP from Sages/Menders?

Will it mean these Amulets will become useful to us? (As in, significantly more healing from RI then they do currently?) Or does the 285% boost only mean these already completely unused Amulets (for Mesmers) will remain useless?

I can’t begin to fathom the reasons for these nerfs, considering that all Mesmer Power builds need better sustain not worse. I was hoping you’d be interested in providing more build diversity, not killing off the already almost non-existent build diversity of this profession.

I think it’s great that you now have the ability to balance a little more freely without regard to PvE balance, but none of this will mean anything if you continue to nerf in this way. Every single significant nerf in this game should always be accompanied by some sort boost of an unused/underused aspect of the same profession. Considering that every profession is chuck full of useless/underused/underpowered traits, utilities, and skills this will not be hard to accomplish.

This constant process of only targeting specific builds for nerfs with absolutely no regard for what the nerfs do for the profession in general is never going to lead to balance.

Mesmers for one have loads of them! Is there nothing you can think of to boost for a class that has effectively one PvP build? Sad state of affairs if you ask me…

Slightly better than Sage + RI before the nerf? Or only slightly better than a no-healing Amulet + RI was pre-nerf?

It seems the idea was to make RI more powerful in combination with healing power, but somewhat weaker without it. (If done right then at least we could have an variant to current meta build using Sages.)

The latter is simply a very sleazy way to go about nerfing something. Mentioning a big percentage boost (285! ZOMG!) and it really meaning that the heretofore completely useless and unused Sage amulet stays pretty much the same as before…useless and unused. kkthxbye!

Once again a nerf completely misses the intended target. /golfclap (Power builds need more sustain, not less. And Menders won’t work, because Power Builds w/o Ferocity are bad.)

It seems we have only have 1 build and all others must continue to suffer the wrath of the nerf bat nonetheless. /facepalm

However, this is not a QQ thread…

I just would like someone to try to clarify what all this means:

“Restorative Illusions: The healing contribution of this trait has been increased by 285% in PvP only. The base healing modifiers for this trait have been adjusted as follows:
0 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 62% in PvP only.
1 Illusion shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 50% in PvP only.
2 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 42% in PvP only.
3 Illusions shattered: Base healing modifier reduced by 36% in PvP only.”

I am trying to calculate what this actually means to current RI performance. How much Healing would you need just to keep this from being a nerf?

I find this especially amusing since there is a fairly viable Condie/Healing Amulet, but the Power variant simply will not work without better Crit Damage.

Oh well, could someone enlighten me please?

Even the iMage is a lot better then it has been pretty much the entire existence of the game. The projectile could use a bit more speed to make it a bit more reliable, and the bounces could really be eliminated and exchanged for a simple AoE DD+Burn+Buff effect centered around the target. (Same value would be fine really, would just be loads more reliable than the bounce, and hardly OPing.)

I agree on TP, one simply can not forget the potential to burst from stealth with it, so the AoE DD probably can’t be boosted much, as it can be stacked in a near instant power shatter combo doing 15k+ damage to a softer target.

I think TP does need it’s CD cut a bit more, considering the nerfs that PU took, I think this is not likely to be OPd. (Although traited Torch with PU has a very nice low CD, but unfortunately it’s pretty hard to trait the two together.)

Overall though, it’s also kinda nice for Condie builds to stack 5x Burn between TP and iMage on multiple targets…and then laying down the the Confusion + Torment bomb on top.

So yeah it’s not that Torch couldn’t use a small buff here or there, but overall I think it’s actually one of the more competitive OH choices we have as compared to Sword, Focus, and most of all Pistol.

If anything I’d want to slightly boost PU duration back up again and/or make the reliance on Inspiration for sustain & condie clears a little less drastic, which might be enough to make Chaos a more competitive option to Inspiration. (Example: Replace the Reflect in MoM in Chaos with a condie clear, or even PU could clear 1 condition on entering stealth. Fix Mirror of Anguish to be useful, and replace Chaotic Persistence with something a little more reliable and impactful for a GM minor. Illusionary Defense could also use a boost to be a more competitive choice. )

Just my 2 cents…

Our “serious” burst is well telegraphed, easily countered, and on a long CD as compared to other class’. However, the real problem is that in order to achieve that burst, we pretty much give up any and all sustain, which simply isn’t the case for our enemies who frequently out burst us, out DPS us, while also out-sustaining us.

They simply have viable sustain built into their professions, while ours requires us to build for it, giving up all semblance of burst and/or DPS output. The only option is to go Condie damage, where you’re not relying on one single shatter to do all your damage, but can continually pump out shatters to apply conditions while sustaining yourself.

I do think that individual weapons need buffs, but I agree that it’s not all about damage. The GS simply gives up too much defense for what you gain in offense, and exactly the opposite is true for the Staff where you give up too much phantasm damage in order to gain minimal added defense.

Funnily enough it is your build I started with, and went with Dueling and GS, plus personal adjustments here and there. ;-)

Will watch the video later!

Sorry about the confusion, yes I meant SoD instead of MoD. I used to play a lot with MoD, hence I guess I am used to using that acronym. ;-)

Yes indeed, this is totally high risk and high reward, and as I’ve stated repeatedly I realize that vs. very competent players you’re going to have issues unless you catch them with their CDs down. What this build does do is bring top notch spike damage to group fights, and thus it’s also an excellent +1 build. In 1v1 you can do well especially against mediocre opponents, and well you really don’t want to do too much 2v1 or worse odds.

It’s also quite different from power shatter, because you are focused more around staying at range in group fights, picking targets to stun/Moa and burst. The CD on the Stun isn’t that bad, considering the duration it brings to the table. Condie clears are for some strange reason also not nearly as big an issue as I thought, but as OriOri said, I don’t stick around fights I can’t win. (Play this a bit like a Thief I suppose.)

Well first of I’m not talking about really good Thieves…which, luckily most aren’t, but while I could do pretty well against the scrubs with the condie meta, it was often a long affair that required a lot more skill on my part (IMO) to win the fight, then on theirs. The only chance at a reasonably quick win was generally like a Moa + condie burst, but that’s not exactly easy or reliable to pull off.

Thieves basically reset the fight at will, and only dumb ones that stuck around after blowing all their condie cleanses. So as long as I played nearly perfect defense, eventually I could wear them down, but the good ones would either kill you pretty fast or move on.

In this build, as I said, it’s a bit like the skill floor to beat me is raised. Really bad/unprepared Thieves just get stunned and gunned down. That right there is easily 25% of the fights I get into with Thieves. The fight is over in seconds.

Against the next 50% you have to fight harder, again requiring near perfect defensive play, but they too are forced to play at a high level to avoid being burst down. I have 2 readily available bursts that can kitten near 100-0 them. (either an iZerker combo, or a MB→MW combo)

The remaining 25% is definitely a hard fight being in Zerker with under 16k HPs, and sometimes I get tooled pretty hard. However, the fact remains that I have up to 3 “I win” buttons available, and if I play well defensively I can usually manage to land one.

Naturally “I win” is a bit of an exaggeration here against a competent player, especially in the case of Moa, and the MoD stun can of course be broken, but both do often end up being a death sentence even vs. good players.

Really most of the same goes for DHs. Plus of course that I can hit’em from range and clear their pre-placed traps.

The main weakness of this builds is really conditions, but strangely I’m not having a big issue with this so far.

Thanks for the reply Soothsayer. (both of them! ;-) j/k )

Yeah it is very tempting to try hybrid with Destroyers on this build, and I have tried it a bit, but it is a significant trade off in spike damage to gain condition damage. Between Torch burns and a decent amount of Bleeds from Illusions, you can reach some fairly respectable condition damage since you can get over 900 Condition Damage with the Berzerker runes and SoD.

However, the trade-off is again over 20% damage on critical hits, the same as if going for a tad more survivability from Marauder amulet. While both the extra condition damage or survivability are nice, I feel that the purpose of this lockdown/phantasm thing is to maxmize the spike damage I can put out during a 3.9 second stun, or a 6s Moa. I don’t want to indulge the enemy in a battle of sustain, because quite frankly, we’re likely to get the shorter end of that stick no matter what we try to do with our build.

So the motto of this build as far as I see it is " hit’em fast and hit’em hard!", preferably before their sustain advantage is even able to kick in and turn the fight in their favor.

The interesting thing about this is that it seems to bump up the skill floor needed to beat us in 1v1. I am having a lot easier time beating most Thieves 1v1, then I did in the meta build. Even a pretty good one has to be on his toes, because I have 2 bursts that can pretty much 100-0 them if they eat the full combo.

The same goes for DHs, which before this build, were my absolute bane. I just couldn’t get past their sustain in the condie meta build, and their sustained DPS also always seems way higher then mine. (Not to mention those big spikes from traps if you were not careful.) Now I have potentially 2-3 “I win” buttons against them, and the spikes to take’em down so fast it makes their heads spin.

So assaulting points 1v1, or defending them 1v1 is still very viable in this build. In group fights the damage spikes are also quite devastating. I frequently target and assassinate a single enemy, or even better break up a big zerg ball with a huge damage combo leaving 2-3 enemies downed. Fun times!

So to get back to the topic of hybrid vs. pure Zerker, I have to say I’m happy with the high focus on DD spikes. ;-)

Thanks though and good luck with your build!

^ Yup and that’s really what it’s all about. It’s just a fun build that’s not terribly hard to play with a good measure of success. Of course the better you are at staying alive despite being very squishy, the more you will enjoy it, but even if you’re an inexperienced player you can at least get some kills in and feel like you’re contributing good damage in team fights.

MoD Stun -> iZerker -> F1 and throw a MS either in between there or after, and the respawned iZerker will still get it’s attack off before the stun wears off. That alone will kill quite a few people who don’t break the stun. (On lightly armored targets a 4x critical hit from the iZerker can deliver 6-7k damage. That times two, plus 3.5-5k crits from the F1 and 2.5k crits from MS plus AAs etc.)

Better of course is to get in close and add TP and MB before F1, and swap to Sw/To and BF.

Marauder is of course also an option, but will drop especially critical damage by over 20%. Might still be worth it if you prefer a bit more survivability and more reliable crit streaks. I’m just having a good run with Zerker so I’m sticking with it for now. ;-)

Glad you’re enjoying it LazerCat!

Yes Messiah it is pretty squishy and quite a change of pace from the meta condition shatter where you fight on point a lot.

The strange thing is that there is nothing particularly new about this build, and I’ve periodically played similar builds in the past, but it’s a lot more fun and effective in Pugs then it was in the past. At least that’s my feeling so far. Maybe the meta of other classes has changed enough to make it stronger? I dunno, but I’m getting a surprising amount long duration stuns in.

I’m not nearly as sturdy on point as with condie meta, but I still feel that overall I’m doing better in 1v1s then with the condie meta. I just seem to surprise a lot of folks and 100 to 0 them pretty fast.

It is a bit simpler to play I guess, because once that first attack and a follow-up or two fail, you’re pretty much out of steam so there is no reason to hang around. So I don’t die as much as I expected, because I just don’t even try winning fights that aren’t going my way. Better to break off and +1 somewhere else. ;-)

I’m almost certain that high level players counter this better then the condie meta build, but for the average riff-raff Pugs it appears to really catch them off guard.

Anyway, glad someone else is having fun with it!

I know this isn’t a video and doesn’t prove anything, but at least it shows that I’m having fun with it the past couple of days. ;-)

The video is pretty crazy, but most of all shows some glaring balance issues in this game. I mean the player who filmed this was basically 100% immune to conditions the entire time thanks to permanent Resistance. I’ve always thought it was stupid that this buff was 100% reduction, as any such thing is bound to be OPd unless it is extremely limited in duration. (Such as invulnerability is, or the Distortion sharing you’re doing. Neat yes, effective when used right, but far from OPd due to it’s short duration. Even stacking 2-3 Mesmers wouldn’t improve it’s uptime nearly enough to be worth the loss in damage/healing/etc, so it’s clearly balanced.)

Unfortunately, Anet has been handing Resistance out like candy and stupid crap like this happens. Watching a guy be 100% immune to all conditions for several minute long fights is plain silly…not to even mention the out of control condition cleansing and ludicrous healing on top. Clearly that is a strong reason to forego even running Condition builds in WvW.

Now I realize you guys are anything but average skill level, and it’s fun to watch, and it’s not meant to trivialize that fact…but this looks like a far cry from a balanced game mode.

Build looks interesting, but I was missing the flare of the old Immortal Build…letting idiots kill themselves was just too much fun! :-)

The difference is simple. I used to use MoD with CS, and it’s “pretty good”, but with a high spike damage build like this a SoD Stun is a death sentence if you don’t have any stun breakers available. So I have 2 “I win” buttons, plus F5 to double up on Moa. (And of course the same for group fights, where a 3.9s stun on a marked enemy is also a death sentence.)

I find that this really helps mitigate the otherwise extremely squishy nature of this or any Zerker build. I stay at near max range in group fights, and eventually someone comes to “take care” of you. This person frequently ends up face down, as they often seem to have no stun breaks. (Or maybe some are just underestimating the amount of pain they’re about to suffer and think they can just ride it out. ;-) )

A 1.25 second stun on a 5 second CD is nice and all, and so is Power Block with 3x MoD, and MoDs new lower CD is really neat too…but none of these are a death sentence. In this kind of build you kinda have to kill fast, run fast, or die fast. ;-) Against a Thief a 1.25 second stun won’t kill them most of the time, and you won’t live 5 seconds to see the next stun land.

I’m getting a fair amount of whines about that long duration stun as well. ;-)

Been having ridiculous fun the past couple of days with this…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8fnsICNqhNoBmpBMrhFVjiMAGhirsDOutpuZj2qF-TpBCwAYOIAAuAAhLDQd/hMHBAGPAAA

I dunno, maybe I’ve just been lucky with the PuGs, but overall I am having more fun with this then the condie meta build. The burst damage output is very nice, but it is of course very squishy, so expect to die a bit more than in the meta condie build.

The jist of it is “lockdowns” with the 3.9s Stuns and Moas, with the burst damage to kill people before the effect wears off. Otherwise I stay off to the sides in point fights, crapping out iZerkers and/or controlling targets for my team.

I tried this with Shield too ofc, but Torch is working better for me defensively in this kinda Thief-like play style.

Just thought I’d share, because I’m a bit tired of the condie meta myself, so maybe someone else will enjoy it as well. This is not to say it trumps the meta build, but I’m having a blast and I personally feel like I’m doing better as well, for whatever reason that may be. (Bad enemies? Other current meta builds being poorly equipped to deal with this? Or just plain luck. ;-) )

It’s probably just a fun pug build and not meta worthy…oh well!

iZerker->SoD->MS->F1->MB->respawned iZerker hits again [->optional F2]

P.S. Sorry, I don’t record videos. Just try it if you’re in the mood for a Power based build to break the monotony of condie shatter.

^ lol

Yeah 13k HPs with ridiculous self healing and perma protection. ;-)

Forgive me if I don’t cry alligator tears for eles and fairness. :-D

Nice video and a good example of why videos help a lot in getting the point of a build across. I have to admit I was highly skeptical of the build the first time I saw this thread, but came back to it and you make it look pretty good in the video. ;-)

Also a great example of adapting your own play-style to a build.

It’s way too squishy for my tastes and I don’t think I could make it work as well as you do, but still I really like it and it has given me more ideas to play with. ;-)

GG!

Carighan.6758:

Well, “extremely powerful” and 6s seconds including a speed boost. Not exactly the words I would have used, Fay. :P

I understand it’s strong, but not overly so really. Strong was 1:30 minutes of Mez in DAoC with self-purge being on a 5 minute CD even if fully specced.

Oooh! Nostalgia! :-)

Actually, Purge was originally on a 30 minute CD IIRC? It took quite a long time to get the RA overhaul that put it on a “reasonable” 5 Minute CD. (Which was anything but reasonable considering there was no immunity to other forms of CC after Purge, and only a 60 second immunity to Mess or Stun, depending on what you purged.)

Back on topic though, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that they keep nerfing Mesmer Moa, but Engineers stays the same!?
- Half the Cast Time
- AoE with up to 3 targets
- 33% shorter CD
- Plus another entire Elite attached to it (makes up for CS)

For an Elite, Moa has simply way too make points of failure for the short single-target effect it has. It really has only one reasonable use-case left, and that’s coordinated team play in which it continues to be just as deadly as it was with 10s duration. So why the nerf when it doesn’t actually change anything aside from make an otherwise rather weak ability even weaker and less used?

And why no compensation in another aspect like CD or the passive effect?

This Merry-Go-Round of nerfs is getting tiresome. We had a relatively useful offensive Elite with GW, it almost entirely replaced Moa as the most used Elite for Mesmers, but it too was nerfed continuously…Anet chipped away at it until it suddenly largely disappeared off Mesmers bars, and suddenly everyone was back to Moa!

The balance team on this game just lacks focus and proper leadership at the moment. It’s just one Knee Jerk after another, and it’s making this game and this profession dull anymore.

Moa virtually was untouched for YEARS! Even after the epitome of stupid design, which is CS for Elites, it still evaded nerfs for over a year!? Why did it suddenly need so many nerfs?

Make our other Elites remotely competitive, and Moa would see a lot less play. Or at least if you nerf something, then do it in a way that actually takes care of the problem that causes the imbalance: coordinated team play.

+1

…and stuff…

…it’s way overnerfed and entirely useless in it’s current form.

Sadly, it’s far from alone in that regard.

And getting CA off the iSwordsman is extremely reliable and much faster to execute then the iLeap. You don’t even need Staff and can still take advantage of the Staff trait using OH Sword in Etheral fields (WoC) to get a fairly decent amount of CA. (Add TW or NF and you can use both Sword #3 and #5 to generate CA.)

That said, Staff is a very strong choice for a melee-range Mesmer, as it is very defensive, brings a lot of CA (and thus Protection) and even does better damage up close then at range. (Though it’s still pretty bad, but you can build up a lot of Protection and head back over to Sword for melee.)

I don’t really see what else you’d use to go with S/S or S/Sh. GS is too squishy but nice damage, just a complete lack of defense. That leaves Scepter, which is not exactly optimal in both damage and defense, though I guess still better then a build with 2x MH Sword. (but untraited Scepter is simply too slow to be viable IMO.)

Maybe a MH Axe will shake things up a bit and allow for a competitive melee-oriented Power damage Mesmer build with: MH Sword, OH Shield/Sword/Torch, and MH Axe, OH Shield/Sword/Torch

MH Axe would IMO need to provide both more sustained damage from AA, and burst damage from #2/#3, at the cost of defense and/or mobility.

One can dream….

Definitely agree that the 4 stat ones are clearly vastly superior, and it makes little sense to leave the old 3 stat ones in as is.

I also agree with the OP to some degree that it’s downright ignorant to act as if all amulets are equally useful for all professions, and that some are downright OPd for some professions. This has clearly lead to the removal of some amulets that were obviously a balance issue on 1 or 2 meta profession/build combos, while on almost all others the amulet was either balanced or downright useless.

We still have this issue now, only a different set of professions/builds are the benefactors then before the removal of some amulets. So in a way the OP makes a great point, it’s perhaps a much simpler way to balance this game then what —in an ideal world-- would be the correct way, which would be to balance the classes without regard to amulets (and gear in general), in such a way that each amulet would be equally useful to all professions.

We all know that the latter simply ain’t gonna happen!

So why not add profession restrictions to amulets? I think it’s actually a pretty good idea to quickly reach a more balanced state then what we have now.

1) Evaluate all 3-stat amulets and bring them up to par with the 4 stat ones
2) Bring back some popular ones from the past, including Celestial
3) Apply profession restrictions to each amulet to prevent the return of OPd builds for those professions

Then you can quickly and easily handle OPd builds on a case-by-case basis, and react much more quickly to problem builds by simply tweaking the class restrictions on the amulets. (Which should be done even during an ongoing season when it becomes clear that one build/profession is simply way out of hand.)

Probably a bit idealistic too, but far more likely to lead to decent balance then the current “maintenance mode” schedule of rare and insufficient balance changes between seasons. (I swear the last balance patch was about 1/5th the size of what it should have been. Shameful patch IMO! It was a huge disappointment and looks like about 1 weeks worth of work.)

Not sure I want to pony up cash for an expansion of a game whose live team has obviously no interest anymore in investing time/resources towards addressing the numerous issues, bugs, imbalances, etc.

^ Spot on! Well put.

The only condie builds that really work are those that can continuously apply conditions, and against a team that is not able to continuously cleanse those conditions.

The whole problem with conditions and cleansing in this game is that everything is “black & white” with Anet balancing and abilities. Either you have a 3k+ per second Burn on you that may well have required 2-3 attacks to build up, or a single instant (or even passive) cleanse ability takes all of the stacks away and the condition attack is completely nullified without doing much damage! (Same for Resistance.)

Can we not always balance in extremes please?

How about “Resistance” actually being “resistance” and not “invulnerability?” Taking say 50% off of all condition damage done to you rather than 100%, would mean you could hand out more Resistance and for longer durations without completely killing off all Condition builds instantly. (Or make it stackable?)

Same applies to Cleanses; hand out a bunch more, and you naturally kill off condition builds totally. Such a simplistic “all or nothing” approach to balance simply can never lead to a balanced game.

It inevitably leads to cycles where Condition builds dominate, or where they mean absolutely nothing…and not much of anything in between. In fact against a competent team right now, conditions can often seem very very lackluster, because you blow all your load and often get absolutely no damage in return.

Sure, Power builds can suffer the same frustrating fate which is also wrong, but at least you generally get to do your damage, where as a condie build can often feel completely impotent in the presence of a coordinated team.

In short…

More gray tones, and less black & white please Anet!

I still fail to see your point that we’re lacking soft CC, especially when talking about Mesmer in melee range! We have Chaos Armor and lots of ways to proc it in our Etheral fields, and we can even trait that CA to provide us with oodles of Protection, which also aids us in melee range.

As long as our opponents attack us, they will therefore proc lots of Weakness and Cripple off CA, while also giving us boons (again Protection) .

Then from Chrono you can add a lot of Slow to this from Interrupts and Critical Hits, or from WoC or WoA, not to mention our TW Elite which is again a long-lasting Etheral field that you can proc CA off.

All that still leaves 1-2 open utility slots of your choice, and one spec line of your choice…although Inspiration is probably highly necessary to get a good bit more sustain. (Which as we’re telling you, you’re going to need as a Mesmer in melee range.)

None of this changes the fact that you’ll still do relatively poor damage output, while still having less on-point sustain than many professions/builds out there.

It’s not a terrible way to spec IMO, and it’s certainly not an issue of lacking soft CC, but rather that our sustained DPS is simply poor any way you slice it…as is our on-point sustain. (The latter of which we’re simply not meant for IMO, as a slew recent nerfs have clearly targeted exactly that.)

It’s frustrating, I agree…I just don’t agree with your solution.

It just sounds a bit confusing to be honest…

1) Sustain is usually used to refer to your ability to “sustain” in battle. So it’s a measure of “survivability” (defensive) and is not related to “sustained DPS” which is a obviously completely different. In the original post you talk about sustain when you probably meant sustained DPS, I think that was the first point of confusion.

2) In the follow-up there is another inconsistency in terms though. You are requesting Cripple, but then above you suddenly talk about limited access to slows. Again, a slow effect in GW2 is not a mobility impeding condition, but rather a means to slow down your actions. (Attacks, casting, etc.) Mesmers have a ton of slows in Chrono and utils/elites mainly, but I suppose we have a bit less Cripple. Still I don’t think we have a severe lack of Cripple:

- Sword #3
- Traited F2 Shatter
- Traited GS has quite a boatload of it actually
- Well of Calamity
- Chaos Armor

Of course Chill also has an even stronger movement impeding effect, and we don’t have a lot of that, but we do get it on Chaos Storm and Well of Recall. (And you can get it on Sigils and amor Runes.

So personally I feel we have quite a lot of movement impeding effects if built for it, but overall that does very little for us in pure melee combat with the vast majority of other professions (also built for melee range) because they simply greatly outclass us in both sustain, and sustained DPS. (Not to mention access to Stability.) That’s just my opinion though, not meant to attacks or devalue yours.

Just my 2 cents…

^ That’s surely coming with Dagger/Dagger! lol!

So saltiness intended, but you have to admit that for the statement Anet made with “so the team isn’t looking to make massive adjustments at this time” the list of boosts and numbers attached to them was pretty impressive. Especially from the PoV of many other professions that got nothing but nerfs, bugfixes, and maybe one or two tiny little boosts it’s pretty ridiculous. (like Mesmer: 6% AA Sword boost, and BF 100% but PvE only! lol! What a trade-off in —and I quote Anet-- sustained DPS for a huge nerf to boon-sharing and boon uptime…yeah that sustained Mesmer damage is gonna be mean now! bwahahaha!)

As far as abusing Stab by cancelling, it’s easily fixed with a 10 sec CD on gaining it when starting to charge a Mantra. With 1 Stack it would simply give us a slightly better chance to manage a channel in the middle of today’s PvP combat. Mantras channel time is simply outdated…simple as that.

I would also prefer 3x charges baseline and HM changed to lower channel time instead, but properly balanced the OPs idea would possibly go a long way in making Mantras more viable again.

How about bringing other utilities up in usefulness to better rival Blink, rather than knee-jerk nerfing Blink based on a highly subjective opinion?

Or how about asking to make it a baseline ability if indeed it is as mandatory as you claim? That would infer to me that it is also fundamental and critical to the professions performance, and that changing it in any way could potentially greatly impact the professions performance in PvP?

Sorry no. Leave it alone, and bring other utilities up instead. It’s not like we don’t have a long list underperforming and down-right broken utilities that could get significant boosts to make the choice to take Blink a little harder.

^ Agreed on that. The intention was for Phantasms to be far more of a throw-away pet, but that would require them to do massively more damage than a Rangers pet, which just is not the case and has not been for a long time.

Both the rate of attack and damage done per attack are simply outdated for Phantasms, especially considering their short lifespans.

Many frustrated players are thus rightfully asking for Mesmer mechanics to be changed away from this concept, putting the damage back on the Mesmer. I personally do not care either way, but the problem should be addressed. Either give the damage to the Mesmer, or make an honest concerted effort to bring Phantasms into 2016/2017.

Show actual PvP game play if you’re going to make any sort of valid PvP argument.

Otherwise…

Oh please no more bouncing attacks, especially on Phantasms! ;-)

TBH I don’t want to see an AoE Phantasm, I want the one we have to be worthwhile in both PvP and PvE. I also hope that with Axe as MH, and no means to get Shield OH, that the other OH weapons will be brought up to remotely match the Shield. (Mainly talking about Focus, Torch, and most of all OH Sword.)

Whatever it ends up being, really doesn’t matter. In order to make a viable and popular (read: probably OPd at launch) Elite, it will need to provide:

1) perma speed, or a viable alternative
2) illusion generation, or a completely new gameplay not revolving around Shatters
3) Significant Sustain/defense – without that it’s essentially Dead on Arrival
4) Significant utility, OR significant boosts to sustained Power Damage output

I would instead prefer they fix up our supposed Power-based line that almost no one uses, or the other lines that are un/underused.

That won’t sell expansions though, so we’re more likely going to get a line that basically nullifies one of the existing core Mesmer lines. I’m betting on Power-based damage as Condie Mesmer is currently pretty balanced & viable.

+1 to that ^^^

:-(

Dueling instead of Domination? That would kinda seem to kill the idea of the Signet build though?

I had a very hard time with Thieves in this otherwise fun build. The damage is very nice though. It was especially fun when I had a decent team where the damage output could really shine, but it was also quite difficult when in a poor team and pretty squishy overall in team fights.

First of all, congratulations!

Secondly, nice video as always. I think this build looks better than the power variant! Looks fun, although lack of cleanse is rough sometimes.

Nice going though, definitely going to try this out.

No video? hehe

I have a hard time believing you can fight Thieves in this relatively squishy build. I mean sure the Distortions off the Signets can add a bit, but 1s is just rarely long enough to have a major impact, especially when it’s activated by a 1 sec to 1.5 sec cast time Signet. (On Midnight it would work well to avoid 1-2 attacks, but even with the recent buffs, Midnight is still pretty bad IMO. )

I only say all this because I’ve played similar builds a lot lately, and always end back at the same conclusion that our Power damage output is woefully inadequate for what we give up in sustain to get it. (Making the distortion effect last for ~1.5s and/or making all Signets cast times ~.25 seconds or instant, would go a long way in making Signet builds more viable IMO.)

Thanks for sharing though, I’d love to see you play it in a video! :-)

True, but I don’t think it’s because people didn’t notice and rolled their eyes at Anet about it, but simply the fact that our expectations regarding Mantras are so low, that we simply were not surprised that they forgot about them.

I mean I’d like to think it’s because it would make Mantras woefully OPd and was intentionally left out, but I’d have to expel my drink through my nose in laughter at the mere thought of someone believing that.

Just my 2 cents…

Clone Death was not working, however Phantasms definitely should have on-death traits to punish an enemy for attacking/killing and negating one of our primary forms of damage.

I mean look at Gyros for Engies, they have a pretty significant on-death trait built right in! (AoE daze and damage, and it happens even if the Engie purposely kills it himself!? How this is different from Clone Death for Mesmers? Why are we making the same “mistake” twice, and thus creating a double standard? Very odd decision, especially since Gyros are in no way as important to Engies as Phantasms are to Mesmers!)

We have have a trait to “tickle” an enemy as punishment for attacking a paper-tiger Phantasm, Retaliation! lol! Be still my beating heart! “That’ll learn’em!” HAHA!

Seriously, that trait should apply AE damage and Daze too, or at least something meaningful enough to make it worthwhile speccing into. (Or at least it should give Phantasms 100% more HPs, then at least you might apply 2-4 Retaliations before it dies, instead of 1-2.)

^ lol Cecilia, too true! :-)

Nicely said Xstein, +1 to that.

Also though, we have to caution with “be careful what you ask for…” on this, because one of the key reasons why for example CS/F5 is lackluster in making you feel like a Chronomancer, is simply due to the fact that it works on Elites. This turns CS into little more than an Elite Doubler, and that of course has to be balanced out elsewhere as much as possible.

So CSs duration was drastically cut to compensate for it’s power to double Elites, but we all know that this only leads to Elites being nerfed (Moa), or things simply remaining out of balance and keeping us from getting much needed improvements elsewhere.

I for one have said from day 1 of reading about Chrono, that Elites should not be affected by CS, and I stand to that until this day. In return of course, we would need to un-nerf CSs duration, so that you can actually use it to do neat tricks, confuse/juke etc. (And of course more improvements to sustain, and DPS, and of course to power shatter in general.)

I also agree that Anet took kind of the cheap way out for “fixing” Mesmers with HoT, through the Chrono line, putting things in there that simply do not belong there. (It’s just really hard to enjoy the profession without Chronophantasms and the passive 25% speed, not to mention the super-speed shattered illusions.)

These were all things that needed to happen to Mesmers for sure, but not in the Chrono line! The passive speed should be on a Signet, all illusion generation needs to be a normalized baseline ability of the class (DUH!), and shattering should always make illusions run at speed5 and be invulnerable (at least for a second or two.) There are simply too many other counters available to shatters, to include illusion death (especially now that on-death traits are gone!), and slow-moving shattered illusions that have no prayer of reaching a moving target in today’s game. (Not to even mention pathing issues that enemies frequently abuse to counter illusions.)

In short, no I don’t feel like a Chrono and I feel Anet has managed to rip away almost everything that was cool about the original idea, and replaced it with generic stuff that makes it feel like little more than just a new name for the “same old same old.”

Also hugely agree that Slow on Stomps was perhaps the single biggest ability to make you feel like a Chronomancer. It’s sad that everything that makes us unique ends up being watered down, and usually with no (or lacking) compensation elsewhere.

Take the new improvements for iDefender and iDisenchanter? How on earth did Anet manage to miss the fact that the single biggest issue these two have always had, simply was the ludicrous 1.5s cast time!? It’s just plain too long in today’s game, no matter how you dress it up!

Not to even mention that we literally have to room on the bar for especially iDefender. It would need to be a LOT better then it is, to make it worthwhile. (caugh BulkwardGyro caugh)

And all that lovely prose, while perhaps witty to the dim, does in no way diminish the simple truth of both the title and original content of this post.

Chronos are absolute trash ATM. Period. Nerfed into near uselessness, with one rather lame and in itself contradictory semi-viable build left, with the only saving grace being -once again- Portal and to a far lesser degree our Elite.

There are several professions that out match us pound for pound, at the very same time in the very same build, significantly outperforming us in sustain, damage output (either spike or sustained), group utility, and even mobility. Furthermore, pretty much every other profession also outperforms us in any specialized single aspect of the game with the only noteworthy exception being Portal.

What Jace said, in my experiences.

Fortunately, you can have a long streak of bad Thieves that’ll make you feel like we have at least a solid fighting chance against them, but really when you run into a good Thief, he’ll learn ya different.

With the removal of the Merc Amulet, it’s become once again far too easy for Thieves (and others) to dominate us with their generally superior damage, sustain, and mobility.

Too much of our sustain in sPvP is reliant on Amulets, and with the removal of all Amulets that are both tanky in nature, but still provide adequate damage output, we have suffered greatly.

Absolutely +1 on this thread. We’re so extremely pigeonholed into everything at the moment, in order to simply to stay remotely competitive, it just makes playing a Mesmer boring and repetitive at the moment. kitten many have said before, “Twice the effort half the effect of various other professions in the meta.”

IMHO only if you are running with either a pre-made team, or at least a buddy to support it with lockdowns, peels, etc.

I have occasionally run into a Power Shatter Mesmer in ranked, but only very few were impressive in that role and it was almost always when they were organized with others in some fashion.

Generally speaking, you will lack the on-point sustain and condie cleansing to compete in the current meta, however if you get some support in those weak spots, you can still bring some very decent spike damage to your team.

^ Not quite true. As others have said, you can opt to bring Nullfield and you’ll tear that Warrior a new one in a 1v1 point fight. I have fallen back in love with NF and I often even trait it for that +2s duration and 2s Resistance. One key reason I’m loving NF so much again is because of the new Condie Warrior FoTM.

It was really frustrating dealing with the droves of Warrior bandwagoneers with our only really viable build left being condition heavy. Attempting to out Condie-bomb them was impossible when they have so much Resistance, clears, and HP regeneration that it was just like smacking your head into a brick wall.

Then I tried NF a few times and realized more and more that it was a very potent weapon in the current Condie heavy meta anyway, and was especially lovely against Warriors. Traited and using NF with F5 it’s 14s of boon ripping and condition clearing/resisting goodness!

I’ve been running NF instead of Decoy and it’s been really effective. In the current game you really can’t bring enough condition cleansing.

Talk to yourself much! ;-)

Just kidding. I had a similar incident but a forced hard reboot prevented me from getting back into the match within that 2 minutes. We lost (we were losing badly anyway btw), I got a ~15m time-out as punishment for Anets buggy code, and of course lost a pip too.

Such things suck the fun right out of a game, and a gaming evening!

And to think, it was Anet that said they are all about fun and they don’t want to put things into the game that aren’t fun! lol!

Now don’t get me wrong, Dishonor has it’s place! I realize that and support the basic idea of it. And before some smarty-pants tries to explain the finer points of software engineering and the Internet to me, don’t bother…I am one. I fully realize all complex software systems have bugs, which is exactly why a ~15m punishment for a first “offense” is absolutely ridiculous and intolerable from a customer point of view.

You should always give the benefit of the doubt to the customer first, and assume it was an LD beyond his/her control! Start with a “slap-on-the-wrist” 3 minute timeout on the first “offense”, then scale it up quickly from there. (Count LDs over time, and decrement/decay the counter after every X matches without an LD.) Extra credit if you display a notice to your customer about possible causes of client crashes with a link to tech support to help you sort out if it’s the game or your PC, service providers, etc. causing the LDs.

If you LD because the client crashes, a 15 minute punishment is just not right. There are Casual players who don’t have much time to play and enjoy GW2 PvP precisely for the fact that it’s relatively quick & easy to get into and out of. (At least for an RPG.)

Punishing customers for your own faulty programming is not only a very poor business practice, it’s plain asinine and disrespectful to your customers. The Dishonor system should be about punishing repeat offenders; cheaters, jerks, trolls, sore losers, etc. and not about doling out blanket punishments while keeping your head in the sand to the reality that your game client crashes without the customer being at fault!

Lastly: I vented to Anets support about this, admittedly in a less than entirely mature manner. (Not cursing, but not exactly friendly either.) However, the reply I got 2 days later was so fraught with Ivory Tower attitude and general lack of caring for your customers valid and plain common-sense complaint, that I really have to decide if I want to continue playing/supporting this game & company any longer.

I finally found the build with which I can turn those team fights around in S3!

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Power_Hammer

Not meaning to troll…but…

The league in which this profession plays as compared to the Mesmer in its current state is truly unfathomable until you play it yourself.

I went from a losing streak of 5 games and a constant ping-ponging in Pips and tiers, to a 6 game win streak on a profession I haven’t even played in well over a year. In fact I’ve never played Scrapper before at all in PvP, and I spent maybe an hour testing things out on the test golems before I headed into ranked battle.

Ridiculous sustain with strong damage output and control. In years of playing the Mesmer in sPvP I’ve never broken like 600-700k damage in a match, and in 4 games I already had one with >900k damage on a rather average length match on TSS.

Can’t beat’em, join’em!

The last time I played the Engie was ironically when Mesmer was also almost unplayable/unenjoyable. Now we’re in the same boat again IMO, and as much as it pains me to go FoTM, it’s really what you gotta do to get Anets attention. They messed up Mesmers, plain and simple.

I’d love to see some footage of you playing your lockdown-anguish build Ross!

Don’t mind the trolls OP, I understood you just fine and it wasn’t painful to read. I’m guessing he’s just covering his own language deficiencies if he has nothing better to do then to gripe about the written language from a non-native speaker in a public forum.

Pyro is correct about the Focus pull, but none-the-less this weapon could use some lovin’. Yeah it’s PvE focus makes it hard for Anet to do anything without upsetting half the Mesmers on either side. At least the curtain Swiftness could last a tad longer, or how about this: if you do NOT use Into the Void, the CD is cut by 25-33%. That seems like a fair trade off, without lowering the CD on the pull.

As for the iWarden attack, didn’t the Ranger version of this attack get some boosts lately? I see it now gets built in Retaliation, possibly reflect?, and applies Vulnerability with each attack. If they normalized the iWardens attack to be back in line with the Rangers, it’d be quite an improvement. Furthermore, boosting the iWardens health to that of the iDefender at least, and maybe have it summon with 5s of Protection, would give this poor Phantasm a chance in PvP. (It used to be a decent Phantasm, it’s just plain outdated and needs boosting…especially defensively!)

Levetty.1279:

How about they just stop piling on multiple nerfs at once that multiply each others effects.

And delete PvP.

Or how about that they temper every single significant nerf they make to a profession, by making a positive adjustment to a broken/useless aspect of the same profession?

Is that so hard? Is that too much to ask as a paying customer when there is SOO MUCH broken about my profession that every nerf becomes a slap in the face, because it whittles away at already non-existent build diversity?

I mean, do we not have plenty of things they could tweak positively!? (Not boost through the roof, just tweak!)

- Casting times on Utility Phantasms
- CDs on old utilities that are never/underused (won’t fix’em all, but a couple could be useful with a realistic CD in todays game!)
- CDs on Wells post nerf
- CD and passive on Signet of Humility after nerfing it into the ground. This is an Elite? lol! Engineers Moa-morph is now superior in every possible way! Again, great balancing there Anet!
- Tweak the Phantasm and TP on Torch after a HUGE rework of Burning! How can you leave these 1 stack of Burns on these abilities with a straight face, when considering what other classes get?
- Tweaks to unused/underused weapon sets

And that’s only common sense stuff right off the top of my head without much thought…it’s easy low hanging fruit that would have near zero impact on the meta, but might make other builds more viable. OH NO!!! We wouldn’t want that!

^ Anet has never grasped that concept.

Same for the meaning of the word “tweak”, as that kinda implies amounts less than 100% , 50%, or even 33%. They prefer shaves, and thus we have the unbalanced pile of dung that we now have for a game, and are left with 75% useless junk on most professions and ZERO build diversity.

GG ANET!

You have to wonder if anyone in management is awake to allow this esports thing to ruin their game.

After a few matches in an experimental Destroyer’s build of my own, I decided to just go back to the meta Condie shatter with Carrion. Works 90% as well as Merc did, and is every bit as deadly.

I hardly could tell a difference TBH, and it kinda got me laughing and wondering if Anet will now remove Carrion as well. That seems to be their fix for everything lately, remove an Amulet, create a new supposedly OPd one and remove it again too…lol.

It’s fun that all the haters are still going to hate this build just as much as always, because crybabies just cry…it has nothing to do with balance in most cases, we all know that, so these scrubs will continue to die to the “cancer/aids/<insert epithet>” Mesmer.

They hated Immortal Mesmer, nerfed out of existence.
They hated PU Mesmer, nerfed out of existence.
They hated the Clone Death Mesmer, nerfed out of existence.
They hated the Bunker Mesmer, nerfed out of existence.
They beefed up everyone else to effectively nerf the Power Shatter Mesmer out of existence.
They re-create the Mesmer as a Condie Shatterer, and the crybabies now hate that too, so they nerf, and nerf, and nerf with every patch.

They haven’t nerfed it out of existence yet though! HAHA!