Guild Wars 2

That’s nice damage though eldenbri. I am playing a similar selfish Condie build ATM, and am averaging about 300-350k, with often over 400k. Among the most damage I’ve done was a tad over 460k on Khylo in a medium length match that we won pretty handily. (Not a blow-out, but like 500-350 or something.) It wasn’t an overly lengthy match is what I’m saying.

Same as you, I had several 1v1s most of which I could win or draw, and a fair bit of team fights where the combination of GW + Condie shatter dumps put a lot of hurt on people.

A lot of this is luck though, as Yolo-queue tends to be. ;-) Sometimes Condie build feels really powerful, until you hit that organized team and your Condie damage plummets into the crapper…and then you think about Power builds again…it’s an endless cycle because -in reality- neither one is that effective in a team environment ATM.

It wasn’t a coincidence that bunker builds became popular post HoT, that’s all we had to counter the power creep of the other professions. Now that it’s gone, the blatant lack of damage creep for Mesmers post-HoT is easily seen.

Not a whole lot has really changed for Condie Mesmer with the HoT patch, well except for 5% on MS lol, so it’s sudden popularity is more “desperation” after overly heavy nerfs (the only kind Mesmers ever see!) then anything else.

So what is the build you were using?

I ran the plain Insp, Ill, and Chrono with Staff + Scp/Shield last night with Merc amulet and Torment runes and had a lot of fun. In one game I had over 460k damage on Khylo, and I averaged well over 300k, and felt like I did well in both 1v1s and team fights.

I’m currently on a 9/10 winning streak, but so much of that is plain luck. Just last week I had a 2/10 losing streak and still felt that I personally played pretty well, but most of the losses were total blow outs. Bad comps, bad teams, and sometimes just bad luck on top. (>490 – 500 losses twice in that 10 games)

Fact is that Conditions have continually been left off Mesmer utilities starting with Mantras, post-nerf Glamours, and now Wells too. They keep trying to make Conditions more appealing to play for Mesmers, but leaving 3 entire lines of utility skills completely out of the conditions game, not to even mention Elite’s, just always makes it hard to really enjoy playing a Condition Mesmer. It’s just always so many trade-offs that don’t synergize with the core of your build.

So yea, I agree we should put some damaging condies on Glamors, at least 1 Well, and 1 Mantra. Definitely could change Precog, just because it’s useless now, but it doesn’t really fit.

It wouldn’t make Calamity OPd to gain 1x Confusion per tick (3 seconds) and 3-4 on the final tick for 5 seconds.

Glamours I would probably fix by way of a single trait that adds a flat amount of Confusion when they’re dropped…like 3x Confusion for 5 seconds. I would just add that to TE and call it a day.

Finally, Mantra of Pain could get 1-2 stacks of AE Torment, ~3 second duration. Same deal, there is nothing to suggest that this would be OPd in the least on an otherwise nearly unused ability that deals mediocre DD at best.

This would also serve to cement the Mesmer back into the original position of being the games’ primary Confusion dealer.

YaYa.5879:

In a dream world, alacrity would be at 50% instead of this insulting 33%

+1

At the very least for ourselves!

Without going full traited wells and traiting IA it’s literally just plain terrible, especially for that it’s supposed to be a core ability of the Chrono Elite. Even with all of that it’s still lackluster thanks to Chrono utilities all being on very long CDs that were obviously balanced around a 66% Alacrity.

Thanks, very informative even if not so easy to pull off.

No offense but I would take 1 meaningful boost over a handful of fairly irrelevant changes.

Not that I think either will happen, we might see 1-2 irrelevant changes at best.

As others have said, I think the most we can hope for is nerfs for some other classes to bring them down to our level, rather than the other way around.

Silverkey.2078:

For PvP, we are in a slightly weak spot, though playable. I feel like we have decent build diversity in the sense that both the bunker, the power shatter and even possibly some condi builds are at a similar level.

Similarly weak, but you make a good point!

Although it’s with a bit of teeth gnashing, I have to admit that overall we are still slightly better off than we were in the dark days before last Summer.

Although none are particularly good, it is true that we have some build diversity. If a couple of severely OPd professions/builds were toned down just a bit, we would probably actually seem very balanced and also pretty diverse.

Interesting, nice to see the glass half full!

Thanks for the feedback Messiah.

I agree with you on the Chrono traits for Alacrity…I will give that a try.

I am really enjoying the OH Sword for both the damage and the extra CA, and of course the off-block that hits hard. It’s really a pretty nice mix of damage and sustain.

For Pug unranked it is a nice all-arounder build. It’s not meant to be optimized for group support, or bunkering, or any single role…in Pugs you just often don’t get the support and/or experience from your other teammates for a highly specialized role to work out. You need a little of everything, or at least I do, to enjoy games.

I want to be able to hold a point for a bit against 1-2 attackers, be able to 1v1 most professions at least when played by average or below players, be an effective +1er, be impactful in group battles in both damage and support, etc. (and not be Thief bait!)

So a little of everything, and fill many roles in a pinch. This build is doing well for me as far as those points go.

Again thanks for your suggestions!

messiah.1908:

i really want it to see it with group play not 1v1 while handling pressure

That.

And what Fay said, but for some reason I touched a nerve and I have yet to figure out why he went all ghetto on me, when I said mostly the same things others said too.

lol

Anyway, I think I’m done here. His last reply speaks more loudly than any words I have…

Biklen.5490:

You are clearly just really bad at pvp.. I really do understand now half the people that post on these forums have no idea what half the skills on any class do…Yo sir are one of them. Clearly having a conversation with you is the same as talking to a wall. Continue enjoying the Amber ranks.

lol! A bit defensive are we? If you can’t take criticism well, then you should refrain from publicly posting bad builds…and bad videos for that matter. Putting aside how easy it would be to resort to personal insults based on the video, I will keep it civil and factual.

What exactly do you take issue with in what I said?

1) Fact: MoP isn’t “spammable” and very well does have a CD. Fay presents the exact same ~5 seconds that is effectively the CD. (Really much worse, because for 2.75 seconds of that “CD” you’re interruptible.)

2) Fact: Several people in this thread are pointing out to you how bad MoP is for healing in general, and how Healing Power scales poorly on a Mesmer. That’s plain mathematics and not really debatable in a serious discussion. You’ve found nothing new here, people have often tried MoP based healing builds, pre HoT, post HoT, and they never caught on. And for good reason.

3) Fact: Conditions don’t work with this build concept, because it requires picking up either (at least) Dueling, or preferably Illusions to attain adequate damage output. That immediately breaks the concept of this build being remotely “tanky”. ( Saying it’s Bunker is a plain misnomer. )

Virtually every single thing I said is factual and spot on. What part you take issue with from the above statements, would be lovely to hear.

Of course you can just continue to chest-thump and throw insults instead, it makes you look like that much better of a player! (And person! But the video does a pretty good job of pegging your IQ already, so I’m not holding my breath on getting an intelligent discussion at this point.)

Yep same “old” Chrono/Chaos/Insp tanky build with Staff and Sw/Sw. Yes, no Shield!

This minor detail adds so much to this build, it deserves to listed separately. The basic build already has a ton of survivability, so the Shield just adds even more, but at the cost of poor Phantasm damage output. With OH Sword this becomes basically a Phantasm build with shatters, and between the iSwordsman and the iWarlock, it can deliver very strong single-target damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8cnsnBNqhtfCmpBEgiFijqOT70Q9cDugOzMASgFC-T5AFgANXEAgnAQ9+DAA

- Great survivability (mucho CA for Protection!)
- Very good single-target damage
- Good AE damage (Calamity + CS + GW and BF)
- Great mobility

The general Thief riff-raff has also not been a problem at all, although I suspect good ones still eat your lunch eventually. I’ve had a lot of fun in PuGs with this build the past few days. It’s quickly become my favorite variant of the Paladin build, because it manages to retain very decent damage and is also very versatile all around. (High Precision and good fury uptime also helps a ton for both personal and Phantasm damage.)

GL!

“The Mantra is not a waste in any shape way or form…It gives endless team and self healing with no cooldown.”

Just to take issue with that statement, as it’s simply incorrect. There is a 1s CD between MoPain attacks, and of course the 2.75 second channeling time, which in realistic terms adds up to about a 5 second CD.

I also have not been able to find a reason to use Menders over Paladin, and even the video clearly shows that any more than 1 attacker would be very hard to survive. (Which basically means it ain’t bunker by any measure of the term.)

Sadly Condition Shatter Mesmer don’t work for this concept simply because it requires Illusions line to be remotely dangerous, which would mean giving up one of the other 3 lines, each of which means breaking the build for different reasons.

Ahh so this is what EZ mode looks like now. sigh

I don’t really get what your questions are, as it’s clear that none of these Mesmers had a prayer. They were quite simply outgunned, not outplayed!

“Mesmer trash tier confirmed.”

Yep, and that’s why we should be thankful to OP for posting this.

And as a parting thought, I want to point out that from my experiences from unranked PvP at least, Necros are currently averaging at least 2 per team at the moment. They’re pretty much destroying the fun for any normally or sub-optimally balanced profession and/or build. They’re not the only culprits by far, but they’re quickly becoming the most annoying nuisance around.

No hate, just calling it as I see it.

@TheOneWhoSighs

When you first wrote that I thought it sounded a bit too negative nancy, but just 3 days later I feel that pretty much everything you say is right on.

I’ve slowly come to realize that it’s bad enough in solo Q that about half the time you get stuck with a bad team (or just much better team on the other side) that has no prayer to beat the team you’re up against, no matter how well you play. However, now add to that the fact that you’re bringing what is easily now a bottom ~20% profession, and thus that ~50/50 win ratio is creeping lower and lower.

I find myself looking at the line ups before the match starts, facepalming when I see my team lacks the Necros, DHs, and to a lesser degree Reavers or Engies that the other team has. Then at some point I realized that everyone else on the team must be doing the same thing, facepalming as they sigh “oh great a Mesmer!”

It’s definitely time to hop onto the bandwagon, or take a break from the game.

Don’t come back to this class right now. It’s in the worst state it’s been in for at least 9+ months. (Quite frankly, I’m inclined to say much longer than that even.)

OK I get the OH Sword now, the illusion generation really helps! This is a nice build and about the only one I can remotely bare to play in the current meta in PuGs, which is all I play.

That said, Mesmers are a broken class right now, any way you slice it. At least in PuGs they’re mostly dead weight on a team, easily among the worst 2-3 professions in the game right now.

Since the nerf patch my win ratio is half of what it was for the past 9 months prior, and every day I am realizing more and more that despite my experience with the Mesmer, I’m a weak link in most of my teams. Most of the time you can look at the line-up of professions on each side, and realize that we are among the weakest classes in the game currently. Our teams would almost always be better off if even a relatively inexperienced Necro, Reaver, DH, or Engie was taking our place.

The more DHs & Necros are on a team, the more likely they are to win PuG matches. These 2 brain dead classes are ruining PvP for any normally balanced class.

Sorry to vent, but I haven’t been this frustrated playing a Mesmer in a long long time!

Yeah at times this condie shatter build can do pretty well, and I’ve played both Mesmers and condie shatter quite a while, but then some absolute brain dead noob DH comes along and drops his traps and blows me up instantly. At least half the time I die before I can do much more then pop F4, but since all clones instantly vanish it lasts way too short. Dodging out of traps almost never works, blocking never works, so it feels like kitten near a hard counter and it’s literally as easy as pressing a couple of keys to win. I guess I’m just doing something wrong with DH, because they just destroy me both 1v1, and even in most group battles I’m in it’s the traps that seem to kill everyone. Strangely, Anet nerfs us into the stone age, yet leaves this OPd trap junk as is.

Despite the cancer that Necros are to the game ATM, I can somewhat handle them in this build. (Maybe because many FotMers are gracing the class right now.) Surprisingly I have little issues with Thieves…although, again, most are probably just bad ATM.

Wah wah! Sorry, but it’s been a terrible week for me playing my beloved Mesmer, and I’m probably just going to take a break for a while until Anet gets their heads out of their collective rear ends! I swear, someone had a woody for nerfing Mesmers back into the bottom ~20% of professions where they’ve been most of the last 3 years!

Great videos, sorry to get off topic.

I agree nice video. You’ve got some good rotations worked out that show what a Condie shatter build is capable of.

I’m not 100% sold on Scepter for both MHs, but I might give it a try.

Why the OH Sword? I personally think I’d go with Torch for the added stealth, and the Burns —even if underpowered-- do mesh pretty well with the Torment & Confusion. You can ride in stealthed, pop iMage, then an F5 using GW, MI, and shatters. That’s a lotta Confusion, Torment, and some Burning.

Again might give the OH Sword a try though.

Again, thanks for posting the video!

Spanny.9256:

and would you mind linking me to that video you mentioned pyro was in?

Was it not a video? I thought I remembered him posting a video, but maybe it was just the build. He was the one who (once again) made public a build that became pretty much standard in PvE, and showed the rotations needed to get 100% Alacrity uptime for your team.

Are you disputing this, or why do you ask? I have no interest in digging out the post or video, but if what I say isn’t true, I’m sure Pyro will point out the errors of my ways. ;-)

Well you gotta hand it to Anet! Who would have thought we’d see builds forego Staff in order to —basically-- get 2x OHs and even go so far as endure a single MH to do it! lol!

That tells you volumes about what the nerfs to Staff did. They effectively killed what was a barely functioning weapon. All it had going for it was it’s defense! Everything else about it was trash and then you go and severely nerf that defense WITHOUT bringing up the offense that we’ve complained about for YEARS! (Silly slow projectile doing meaningless damage. 1200 range, but better off the closer you are, bad Phantasm, and long CDs on #4 & #5 unless you get the nerfed trait that barely made this weapon bearable!? I could vomit it makes me so agitated about how clueless these people are sometimes! )

On another note, you’re not alone. I have switched to a Sword/Torch & Scepter/Shield Paladin Power Shatter, and played the same weapons in a Merc hybrid shatter. Both work well, and simply outperform Staff both offensively and defensively! This also makes it much easier to give up the entire Chaos line, which outside of the 3 nice GM Majors is actually a very lackluster specialization line now that Staff and it’s trait was nerfed to subpar status.

Highly subjective title there, since “best build” depends on what you’re trying to achieve. From the PoV of a relatively casual player playing mostly PuGs, I am really enjoying the below build the most so far. (And I’ve tried quite a few, both Condie and Power, most always either leave me very susceptible to Thieves or Conditions. I’ve found that none of our utilities alone suffice for Condition clearing in the current meta. Not even 3x Mantra of Resolve, which was what eventually brought me to this build. )

So this build aims to balance sustain and damage output. I like being self-reliant, because in PuGs you generally have to be. I also don’t like unforgiving Power Shatter builds that require godly twitch skills, and often require team coordination just to keep you alive. I hate being Thief bait, and I hate being cheezed by the currently OPd Condition builds of other classes.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s pretty unconventional, but I finally found a post-nerf build that I can almost kinda live with. It gives a good mix of damage and sustain IMO.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRn0nBNqhloBmpBEgilVjqeZf2ptcDKuA48ISinD-TJBFwAWLDsb/BAnCgGPBAA

Note: The Amulet should be Paladin!

From range I can pepper iZerker (plus MW), MS, and AAs with MoPain. For close quarters I have a lot of Condition removal and healing, and active defenses like Shield and BF. Decoy, F4, and Gravity Well provide cover for recharging Mantras which AE heal.

While not a bunker by a long shot, I can hold a point against a single attacker and somewhat contest it against 2.

While not a DPS powerhouse, I feel I make a solid +1er and 1v1er if need be.

I have not run into any Thieves that had an easy time killing me, and more often than not I seem to be able to either kill them or make them run. (Which btw is pretty hard to do, thanks to the MoP. It has the nice habit of killing Thieves that are trying to reset the fight.)

It’s a bit oddball and certainly won’t be meta, but it does deliver a nice balance of damage output & sustain in PuG PvP. I have never run Rune of the Wurm before, but in a Paladin build I’m liking it. It brings my Crit Damage to ~165%, which isn’t too bad. Not sure if that or some other choices are perfectly optimal, but after a LOT of testing I am liking it for now.

I’ve tested other Paladin Power Shatter builds too, but I feel this one brings both more damage output and sustain then most. The Dueling line fits it nicely to boost damage and make the 2 Mantras worthwhile, which are a key element of both the sustain and damage of this build.

I’m sad to say I kinda saw this coming when Pyro first revealed the 100% uptime in PvE videos. I even stated that this was clearly not as intended, and was berated for saying it.
So instead of doing the logical thing and greatly nerfing the ability to share out Alacrity ,which Anet said from the beginning it wanted to greatly limit, they blanket nerfed Alacrity itself; screwing Mesmers doubly in the process.

Funny thing is, there weren’t that many complaints about Alacrity itself, but rather it’s impact on team play in both PvE and PvP.

Smarter devs would have first chosen to nerf the ability to share out Alacrity, and leave self-Alacrity where it is. Since —ya know-- the entire Chrono line was balanced around it.

This nerf didn’t set out to “shave” anything, it clearly set out to destroy 2 Mesmer build types; Bunkers because the kool kidz have deemed the entire bunker meta to be unKoOl, and any Alacrity focused builds because in the current Anet eSports centered patching model there is no place/time for a “fine tune and see” approach to balance. They wanted to be darned sure that Alacrity was fixed and bunkers gone. It was just a bit of bad luck that both of those hit the Mesmer especially hard due to no real alternative builds that could keep up with the huge offensive power-creep of the other Elites.

The double-standard is most sickening though. Leaving clearly OPd offensive crap, even building more of it (Thieves), but leaving Mesmers out to dry when clearly you can see that Chronomancy offers absolutely zero offensive improvements aside from the ability to chain two bursts in a row once within 90 seconds. (Using an awkward and unreliable mechanic with a long CD on an already button intensive “twitchy” class…while others can literally bang away at 2 or 3 of their keys and yet deliver substantially higher damage in either Direct or Condition damage, while also having more sustain. In short EZ mode.)

I will be berated for this two, but I said pre-HoT that Elites should be excluded from the F5 mechanic as it’s difficult to balance it while keeping Elites in the picture. Instead we get continual chipping away at F5 leaving it as NOTHING BUT a means to double up on Elites. SAD! This was such a neat idea, but honestly how often do you feel you get the original intended feeling while using this ability? You know, as a time manipulator? All I see is that you’re forced to rush through as many buttons as you can manage to mash in before the ability ends, and that it’s usually not productive to F5 shatter 3 Clones when you can do most everything you need with just 1.

I think it should have a much longer duration without factoring in illusions, and make the added duration from illusions much smaller. Then you would be able to use it to juke people in interesting ways, and not just double up on your Elite.

Of course at this poor state of the Chrono, that would be devastating and only add insult to injury. It would require a significant overhaul to rebalance the line, so it’s not gonna happen. It’s just sad to see the original concept so poorly implemented a few months down the road.

You can always bet on one thing, if you ever see an official channel say that’s what’s going in, that is what is going in no matter how much good arguments, whining, etc. are brought again it. They never listen or change anything once it’s been announced.

lol @ Scepter boosts!

I actually want to smack the kitten that gave them the idea for this change, I remember reading it on this board. Thanks for getting them to accept a very crappy Scepter change, and sell it to us as a boost to Scepter! lol! Fat lotta good that will do getting 1 extra Torment on the RARE occasion that you have 3 illusions up.

5% on a nearly unused GM trait!
2nd Torment on 3rd in a chain…conditionally!

Be still my beating heart! Condi Mesmers are fixed! You read it here first!

Krysard.1364:

I would love that the stealth gyro works actually as stealth, and not just as a improved kite/detarget bot, but then we compare it to Shadow Refuge, which has exactly the same problem, or Mass Invi, who doesn’t have it but has 90s cd and traited 7,5s stealth makes me wonder if then it would not be broken :/

TY for saving me the time to point out the obvious here. Also take a gander at the casting time for MI… 1.75 seconds vs. instant, and it is well telegraphed.

I think Sneak Gyro will be used about the same as it is now, and will still be a great Elite with a still pretty low CD.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Here’s my pro tip to an straightforward burst setup

Get into combat

Signit of fury
F2
Signit of might
F1

fire away

F1 some more

such and so.

It’s quick, it’s effective, it has 1500 range, and it can’t be blocked XD.

And unlike Mesmers, it’s getting significant boosts rather than fat nerfs!

It might be time for a new bandwagon, but I’m sure you won’t like that though Ross.

Although, that bandwagon would be a huge refreshment from the current meta, that’s for sure.

kolompi.1287:

Bottom line is: Chronomancer made sense and worked fine and now you are changing parts of it and it won’t work as a whole anymore.

Absolutely correct!

Look at what they’ve done to this supposed “Chronomancer”. We had this awesome F5 ability, which is now gutted simply because Anet keeps nerfing the wrong things. The only thing this ever broke was obvious from day one, Elites, and look where we are several nerfs down the road…a shallow gimmick that still allows us to double up on (mostly) bad Elites. (No worries, I’m sure Gravity Well will be nerfed to bad status soon too!)

All the cool parts of F5 had to get nerfed into uselessness, instead of taking Elites off the list of things you can double up on. Very sad. I don’t feel like a time manipulator at all! The duration is just too short for people to even really notice what’s going on! All they see is 2 Elites in a row, and rightfully complain about it. There is virtually no play or counter-play, no jukes, no mind-games…at best the rift happens to get destroyed by accident due to splash damage.

Next up is Alacrity, another key selling point of the Chronomancer. With it becoming barely noticeable -for PvP at least- again I’m missing the feeling of manipulating time! If you’ve played a non-Alacrity focused Chrono build lately, you know that the amount of Alacrity you were getting from shatters and iAvengers alone was absolutely not noticeable. Now halve that! /cry

Half of barely noticeable is equal to trash. Being forced out of bunker specs at the same time means a LOT more Mesmers will be getting jack out of Alacrity. Zilch!

Next up, Precog! Already went from “hero to zero” in PvP the moment it stopped capture point contribution. Now they’re going to gut it completely, by making it virtually completely useless? Short duration Aegis x3? Really?

I don’t know about you guys, but that whole Chronomancer concept we were sold on pre HoT, is really looking very lackluster at this point. It’s turned into nothing but a couple of traits you basically can’t do without (F5, perma-speed, Chronophants), so you have to spec Chrono to compete, but everything that was cool about it is but a mere shadow of what was promised because it was nerfed into the ground.

+1 for Yanim!

Mesmers are getting nerfed rather hard, while at the same time Thieves are getting significant boosts.

This sort of “balancing” is what has Mesmers correctly worried about going back to the days where for MONTHS a thief wedging his #2 key with a coin and going AFK will once again enjoy a 75% victory rate over a Mesmers.

This is not intended as a cry about the fact that Thieves are getting much needed boosts, but rather as a wholly justified complaint that we’re getting severely nerfed at the very same time. This is bound to end very poorly for Mesmers, and has a strong stench of us returning back to the days of being Thief fodder. (And that among 2-3 other professions that we’re already mostly fodder too, if we didn’t have all that bunkering they’re deliberately trying to destroy right now.)

DH is failing to point out that it’s very easy to avoid and/or disrupt that rotation, and then the Mesmer is gonna get ripped to shreds by various professions/builds whose “rotations” consist of 1-2 buttons -mashed at random- producing twice the result, with a fraction of the CD, and with an order of magnitude more sustain then the Power Shatter Mesmer has.

Obtena.7952:

Anet should really rethink Alacrity because percent based effects are notoriously hard to balance.

Hmm maybe, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nerfing something by 50% is generally not the way you achieve balance. It basically says that either original designers of the skill were incompetent, or those people rebalancing it now are. In the rarest of instances will that ever yield balance.

In fact, this is the epitome of how not to balance a game. In fact I could swear Anet has often claimed to be in favor of smaller incremental adjustments, rather than using the nuclear option? lol

I don’t think you’d see any outcry over a ~25% adjustment to Alacrity at all. Most reasonable Mesmers were expecting something like that, because that would be a legitimate attempt to balance rather than destroy an ability. By the looks of it, they’re not interested in carefully adjusting here, but are out only to nerf something new and profession-defining into the ground.

As others have said, I would actually be in support of this monumental nerf to Alacrity, if it means they’re willing to bring Mesmers up to a competitive level in other areas. (And no, 5% on Scepter attack rate isn’t what I’m talking about! lol!)

I mean how can you be so ignorant to your customers feelings, as to announce a 50% nerf of a very popular class-defining ability, and then in the same statement talk about a 5% boost to a nearly unused trait on a nearly unused weapon??? That’s downright insulting! If you’re going to nerf that big, then you should always try to temper such a nerf by making significant improvements to something weak elsewhere! Lord knows, every single profession, no matter how OPd, has completely worthless weapons and traits that you can boost in a meaningful way without causing imbalances.

5%!!! lol!

Wow both Alacrity and Precog totally overnerfed. WTG Anet!

Face palm moment, I’m at a loss what to say.

I hope that all of the actual OPd professions that are already dominating the meta, and Mesmers in particular, will also suffer a >50% gutting.

I mean Precog from 3s of invuln to 3x Aegis? Really? I don’t think I can even calculate the size of that nerf; probably on the order of 90% less damage avoidance in team fights. It better do AoE damage on the level of DH traps to compensate.

I hope they remember to take down the CDs on all this junk to the levels many of the other Elite’s are enjoying for skills that are far more powerful than the new Precog will be.

Very disappointed. I hate to side with the tin-foil hats, but it is hard to not believe that someone at Anet doesn’t like Mesmers. I just don’t see us dominating the meta to deserve this kinda gutting.

They better have a lot planned to compensate for these losses…and Scepter better be godly! lol!

I am hoping for a complete overhaul here, as tweaking will NOT fix this weapon! (ANet has tried time and again, and failed miserably each time. )

- AA is terrible, way too slow, and thusly so are the Clones it produces

- #2 is buggy and easily avoidable. The block is bad and always has been, and the counter is too slow and heavily telegraphed making it easy to avoid in 1v1. (And it’s a purely 1v1 skill! It’s even worse in GvG where neither the block nor the counter has any impact at all!)

- #3 is again way over-telegraphed and even though they did manage to make this almost decent with recent tweaks, that telegraph still makes it far too easy to avoid. It’s also again pretty terrible in GvG, where it’s simply too slow for the very negligible effect it does.

Whatever the change is, it has to fix that god awful AA, including the Clones AAs!

^ Pretty good suggestions.

Although that is certainly rather conservative, but it would go a long way in making Torch at least as good as it was before the patch.

I’m all for conservative balancing, but I would also suggest to increase the projectile speed from the iMage, and to reduce the CD on it as well to 20-25s. (For some reason all the best Phantasms also have the shortest CDs, and the worst ones get doubly punished with a high CD and a crappy attack!)

Nice!

I do like the video.

Sorry man, couldn’t stand the Hasselhoff.

I tried, really did, but that just ruins the experience.

Any way you slice it, having a 100% negation of another’s attack for unlimited duration is simply poor game design. I don’t hate on Eles, I do think they’re annoying but not stupidly strong in most cases either, but DS has always irked me. It’s just stupid.

Having a strong countering class to conditions is not the problem, but you don’t need 100% immunity on an already very powerful healing class. That just adds insult to injury and makes you feel stupid and ineffective when fighting an Ele 1v1 for several minutes, and literally never seeing his health bar drop at all while you’re fighting to stay alive, because many condie-focused builds can do anywhere close to enough damage to get past DS.

Wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t also so effective at healing at the same time. Then you could even boost DS for all I care, but there has to be a way to get past that threshold for the ability to be balanced, and many condition builds simply can’t.

So I’m not in favor of a blanket nerf to Eles, but rather a balancing of DS…which to me means, a trade off somewhere.

All that said, this is far from top priority. A DS Ele is simply not nearly as disruptive to PvP as a stupid Trap DH is in a largely point-control based PvP game. Yeah in the high-level game skillful team play is a counter to DH, I accept that, but that in no way excuses the fact that traps are grossly OPd and make lesser levels of PvP almost unbearable for casuals/pugs.

I like that it was changed to a Burn, for the simple fact that it’s a Torch Phantasm. However, clearly under the new condition damage system 1 stack of Burning is just laughable for a Phantasm attack. (And compared to the previous 4x Confusion is again a bad joke.)

They went and changed the Burn stacks on various other classes, and there is absolutely no reason why this already worst Phantasms attack can’t have at least 2 to 3 Stacks of Burn. (I’d even say 3 stacks for 3 seconds. )

And while we’re on the Torch & Burn, also increase TP’s Burn to 3 stacks of Burning for 3 seconds.

Oops sorry about the hastily written answer that led to some typos and inaccuracies…got distracted by the kids and hit enter before re-reading.

I did completely miss the Inspiration part so yeah you have condies covered fairly well, but that doesn’t really change much about my opinion of the build.

This build would be better off in every conceivable way by dropping Signets (:P), especially the Signet heal, and picking up better utilities. Sig of Domination is simply not worth a utility slot, and Midnight isn’t either for that matter.

Sig of Torment, Agility and Earth are also all pretty sub-par IMO, especially giving up Energy on a glassy build like this.

This build is IMO trying too much, and doesn’t provide enough synergies. With a low 30% crit chance, not to mention poor Crit Damage, the Power damage is a pale shadow of any usual power-based build. In turn, in completely lacks the sustain that a condition damage build needs for its conditions to take effect. While this is of course the concept of hybrid, and some sacrifices must be made, I think you’re making some poor decisions in many places.

For example, using Pack Runes would give you ~7% more Crit Chance base, plus a near 50% uptime of Fury for a quite nice ~57% chance to crit.

It’s also a very selfish build that looks at best “pretty good” in 1v1, and in large part due to Humility being clearly a bit OPd in 1v1.

Signet of Ether also relies on heavy illusion generation to be remotely viable(1v1 or 1v2 at best), if you’re facing a class that can consistently take your illusions down quickly, or you’re shattering them for your burst for that matter, then you have very little healing from this Signet. (And no condition clears unless you use it, which of course is counter-productive.)

Two condi removals on a 35s CD, in the current meta? Really?

I don’t see this build working well. It’s pretty much the usual hybrid build, but with far poorer choices for utilities, leaving gaping holes in sustain. You’re a total glass, but not a cannon. You can’t do even close to the damage of a power shatter build, but you’re effectively even less survivable.

The healing signet is bad. You’ll end up having to blow it’s heal just to clear a couple of condies or get a burst heal off, and then you’re outta luck for 35s.

You’re basically praying for your enemies to be baffled by your frequent shield blocking, and that’s so 4+ weeks ago. So even power-based enemies with a clue can get you out of your block rotation, and then easily go through your 16k HPs in a hurry.

Outside of cheesing people with Moa in 1v1, you’re pretty well finished as soon as you A) meet anything with conditions, or anyone who breaks your blocking rotation by simply not attacking during your block.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of oddball builds, but I fail to see the synergies here. The same build would IMO be better without sigils, among other changes.

I’ve been using it in a Settler’s Chrono Condie Shatter build the past week or so, and I’m liking it for the same reasons you’ve pointed out. It’s a bit more selfish and thus probably better for pug sPvP, but that’s pretty much all I do.

The CD on it isn’t all that long (60s) once you factor in Alacrity, and considering what it does. It seems to be up almost every time I am inclined to use it.

It’s a solid utility for any Condie Shatter build, especially since the MtD nerf. With F2 being our only decently effective burst, it’s nice to get more of them off with all the condie clearing going around.

Yeah it’s always tempting to couple Ineptitude with that Dueling BD trait, but it’s a pretty glassy build compared to anything with Shield and either Inspiration or Chaos.

Definitely puts out more condie pressure though, so I’m glad it’s working for you.

Just FYI though, you can’t stack SoP and the 25% duration from the Confounding Suggestions trait. It’s either/or, not both.

Post shield nerf I’ve gone with the old Settler’s Chrono Condie Shatter. Illusions, Insp, and Chrono using Rune of Durability, Wells (Heal, Precog, Elite), and Sigil of Illusions + Blink. (SoI is something I’m trying out, but so far I like it. It beefs up the pDefender and makes it harder to kill illusions before they can shatter, and of course the reset on the shatters is really quite fun.

With this build the shield nerf is almost a boon! :-) You get those iAvangers out quicker, and thus get your burst-shatter rotations off faster.

I’ve been doing very well in pugs with this. It’s a well rounded build that can tank a point adequately, and does a good mix of support and medium AoE condie pressure in point fights. You can solo very well too.

The main weakness is on assaulting a point 1v1 against anything that isn’t a glass cannon, because your pressure is just too weak and too slow. However, it synergizes very well with other strong assaulters as you can provide a lot of support and hard CC to keep them up and banging, all the while bringing enough condie pressure on top.

I think the idea of Mistrust is good, but the implementation is poor. As usual, it’s balanced on a completely insanely rarely possibility that you interrupt 4-5 people whom all happen to be standing real close to one another. This simply doesn’t happen in PvP, and not even often enough in WvW to make this a worthwhile GM to take.

What is it Anet is afraid of here? The worst case being 25 stacks of Confusion on 5 people from a single ability. No doubt, that is OPd. As unlikely as this is to ever happen, it is possible and clearly OPd.

So how can we make a better compromise here?

I would suggest making it apply 5 stacks of Confusion for 5s in the same 240 radius, but only on the initial target that was interrupted. Then give it a ~5s CD.

This would be a compromise that dramatically lowers the potential damage output of Mistrust in the extremely rare best case scenario, but also substantially boosts the effect that it achieves in the worst (and really average) case scenario. (1-2 targets interrupted within kitten period within a 240 radius.)

It would also maintain the basic premise of the abilities name, in that you instill mistrust from others because you were used as an anchor to their misery.

I don’t think the changes were that dramatic or unwarranted. I just wish they’d finally address other stupidly OPd crap like DH traps, condie Reavers, the AE stealth gyro’s CD, etc.

In the case of the DH they could just make points much larger, or the radius on their traps a little smaller…but in the end the damage is still broken as well. Yeah there are some counters, but there were always plenty of counters to MtD, the recent bunker Mesmer too, and anything else I can think of that got nerfed into oblivion. Didn’t save those things either. Between the insane damage and low CDs, it’s just plain broken.

At least for pug PvP, there is no stronger indicator of which side will win then how many Guardians you see on each team, up to at least 3. Whoever has 1+ more than the other side, tends to win in my experiences. No other profession/build even comes close to having this blatantly pre-calculable effect on a match’s outcome.

Yeah maybe it’s the newbness of some/many players, but people have had ample time to adjust now, and the fact is they simply haven’t. It’s far more likely that DH traps are simply overpowered. And how come bunker Mesmer and MtD or any Mesmer nerfs always seem to get addressed in a VERY timely manner, while Guardians and some others seem to be bullet-proofed vs. nerfed for long periods before they’re finally addressed?

Guardians have had top status for far too long even before HoT, and it’s a bit sick that they also made sure their elite would be at/near the very best. That’s not balance, but simply a popularity contest that Mesmer, Thief, etc. simply will never win.

Yeah I played this for BWE3 and for a week or so after release. Chrono/Insp/Chaos with Marauder. It’s a solid combination of damage & survivability.

Thus it’s a very well-rounded build Power Shatter build, but you’re definitely not a bunker. If you get locked down and focused you explode just as fast as any marauder build. However, if your opponents don’t know how to get past your Shield block, you can at times feel like a bunker and hold a point for a bit against 2 attackers. (3+ is really stretching it IMO, they have to be pretty bad to let you do that for very long)

Well I’m by far no fanboi, but Fay had his hand in a lot more builds then just the latest meta. And he’s usually right too…albeit a bit terse most of the time! :-) (Lately though he’s been pretty nice about his criticisms. Softening up in old age?? :P)

I’m with Curunen on this. Rabid is a waste of Prec, and Mesmers simply don’t gain enough from Healing Power to make Settlers worth it IMO. Even with 1200 Toughness, having only 16k HPs makes you only marginally more tanky then in Carrion with a full 9k HPs more.

Best of all you have no wasted stats. The 900 Power does great things for Retaliation damage, which becomes almost like another Condition for you. It also brings up MW and other DD quite a bit. This helps vs. Diamond Skin and in general gives quite a bit more of a bite to this build as compared to a pure Condie Shatter build.

I played with Settlers for a while, but

Curunen.8729:

On that note I’ve also started using Carrion + Scavenging runes in pvp with Inspiration/Illusions/Chrono Sword/Shield + Staff and I find it a good compromise between survivability and damage output.

Yeah I like Scavenging with it too, nice 1500+ Condie damage and adds some nice heals & spikes from the leech.

It’s not bad but still a bit niche, and occasionally you run into a real Condie damage profession and realize just how mediocre Condie Mesmer actually is. ;-)

A few things:

1) Torch #3 and Torch Phantasm need to be brought in line after the changes to Burn. How on Earth Anet ever equated 4x Confusion for 3 seconds with 1 stack of Burn for Five seconds is plain ignorant math. Even with the old Burn this was a bad trade, but now it’s just a huge disgusting nerf to the worst Phantasm we have, and always was the worst. The Prestige used to own, now it’s neither good in DD and the Burn is an insult. Should be 3 stacks of AE Burning to bring this back to it’s old glory. TP carries the Torch, and always has!

2) Agreed on Staff AA. The Burn should be 2 stacks, same short duration.

Both of these are NOT even a boost to Mesmers, they are merely a FIX after the huge indirect nerf caused by the new stackable Burn and changes to condition damage modifiers. No one has ever cried about the Staff AA being OPd before, so why the huge nerfs? It’s still way too slow to ever be a decent attack.

All that said, I’m actually playing a Carrion Condition Chrono-Shatter right now in unranked sPvP and doing OK with it. It wouldn’t be nearly as viable in ranked play vs. organized teams, but in pugs I’m noticing a LOT of people running FoTM builds/professions that are quite vulnerable to conditions. With Carrion you can also muscle through Diamond skin and do roughly the same Power damage as Condition damage, truly hybrid. (Love the new post game stats that show this very clearly.)

I also feel that overall the 25k HPs from Carrion is often times better than the 16k in Rabid, despite the difference in Toughness. In this new burst-damage meta 16k just makes you squishy any way you slice it IMO. Between Staff/CA, Shield, and 25k HPs I have pretty decent survivability and do a fair bit of tanking on point.

The key to damage output for a Condie Shatter Mesmer is making use of Chrono Phants + IR + Shield and rapid-firing shatters to stack Confusion + Torment. And during this, the Power on Carrion does a good job adding Retaliation and MW DD.

My own experiences also seem to indicate that, at least as far as pug games go, indeed most of them are decided primarily by the presence and number of DHs on each team. I don’t know if this holds for more than 2, but being without a DH on your pug team is usually a strong indicator of being on the losing team if the other team has one.

Similarly, while having 1 is nice, if the other team has 2 you’re usually in the same boat.

In fact some of the most fun pug matches you can have right now are those with no DH present on either team…no doubt, very far and few between! It’s the quintessential FoTM right now and this was clear during the final BWEs and post patch, and Anet has been completely inept in balancing this ridiculous class in a timely manner. (Whilst other less popular glasses got some of their new stuff gutted before it ever went into the hands of the general population to test! Or very very shortly after.)

DH isn’t even close to being balanced right now, and needs some pretty significant nerfs to traps, and it’s whole risk:reward balance. (Cry’s of L2P have never helped any previous OPd profession avoid a nerf bat, and neither will DHs…eventually when HoT settles in a bit more.)

It’s really quite a bad showing for Anets balancing that having -or not having- a Guardian on your team really has always been the most significant impact on your team’s success out of any of the professions.

Agreed. Especially since the train overhaul it’s become pretty silly, because most builds come down to a fairly obvious set of traits & synergies, with only minor modifications here or there for anyone to “claim” as their own.