Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

Me Games Ma.8426:

“Every profession is indeed only getting one new weapon. However, Jon Peters teased that classes getting an offhand would get something “just as good” as the extra three skills and that he couldn’t say more. I suspect that the specialization might unlock three new utility skills, but that’s my speculation." – Nefara
Taken from here

Reminder that Disruptor’s Sustainment is considered good by anet.

Remember, Anet always believes that a grandmaster trait effectively doing absolutely nothing against an entire class is also good design and working as intended.

We know that there is an object that seemingly resembles a glass. But as they recently said, the specialisations are not finalized, so if we get in now, we might finally get our kitten ed pistol!

Levetty.1279:

I’m calling it now, the defiance change will be as effective at bringing interupt and lockdown builds into PvE as the crit damage nerf was at removing the zerker meta and the massive might nerfs were at bringing cele eles down to a reasonable level.

We thought that when it was found that power block went through defiance…. Sadly, for anet, it was decided it was better to return to the zerker meta than run the risk of letting mesmers interrupt dungeon bosses…

SlimChance.6593:

Everyone is crying about what was seen in ~5 seconds of video. I think some of you need to get outside more.

What we know is that each profession gets a new specialization that would replace their core mechanic. And a new weapon for that specialization. So we see a video of what looks like a Mesmer with a shield casting a spell.

We also know that the new Revenant class has a new interesting mechanic and that by changing his elite, all his utility skills change.

So lets say that Mesmer’s does only get a shield as a new weapon with our specialization. Who’s to say that when we equip the shield, that the skills on our MH weapons don’t change with it. Maybe in addition to the 2 new shield skills, the currrent “illusion-based” skills on the sword & scepter will be replaced for new skills that support our new mechanic?

Maybe instead of everyone crying "we’re only getting 2 new skills ", we should be saying “SWEET, we get 8 new skills!!!”

The point is we simply don’t have enough information on what’s going to happen. And to scream bloody murder at ANet based on conjecture is just wasted energy.

Thanks for reading. And I hope everyone has a nice day.

What happens though when we find we actually get nothing, that in the end the worst case scenario was actually optimistic and rather than getting changes to our mechanic, we find an off hand shield that still is burdened with a Phantasm, all our main hand skills remain the same and the utilities make us increasingly pressed for what we will take. Then to top it all off like many of our traits, the new trait line’s procs do not work at all… Would you hold it against me if I told you, I told you so?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude.. I know its fun to look for reasons to rage but.. This is good news.

Combined with the defiance change, all we’ve seen are things looking up for Mesmer.

For PvP and the comparatively small, but vocal community of this subforum? Yes.

For PvE? No, since we all know that mesmers will be overnerfed (because ANET-MESMERS-OP-QQ-PLS-NERF) to the extent of being overshadowed by other classes in PvE all over again.

See this is what I’m talking about…

You have to admit though, mesmer often has found itself being made increasingly nerfed in pve as a consequence of pvp orientated changes. Furthermore, there is excellent form for Anet to over reach when attempting to balance mesmer skills and trait, off the top of my head, sword 2 skill, that awesome leap that then became the mess of a thing that I still cannot use reliably.( I remember using it as a mobility skill back in beta.), glamour traits and I will not even get started on the topic of power block, as that single trait has caused me on more than one occasion to lose my marbles and begin hurling abuse… All of this considered has a lot of people terrified. When anet says that things will be shaken up in pvp by the mesmer spec, I feel that there is a justified reason for people to be concerned that the inevitable clawing back will leave the class in an even worse state than it was originally. It is just like all those bugfixes we get that do not work and manage to break even more skills.

I guess on my part the lack of faith I have in the devs makes me concerned. I am just dreading actually looking forward to changes and having that rug ripped out from under me. All said, if they actually carry through with their implications of encouraging a meta mesmer control build I will be the first to turn in my membership to the happy dev flaming society…

I will say this, I love my mesmer, I love my mesmer so much it is why it hurts so badly when they hurt us. For me mesmer is about a different kind of play, it is about being mobile, being always applying pressure. My experience has taught me that the moment you stop pushing the other guy, the moment you begin to hesitate and look to retreat that is the moment the mesmer dies.

So if you are the kind of person that enjoys trying to get inside the head of the other guy, trying to force an action, then the mesmer is for you. No matter how kitten they may make us, they will never take from us our tools for playing the psychological game better than any other class…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude.. I know its fun to look for reasons to rage but.. This is good news.

Combined with the defiance change, all we’ve seen are things looking up for Mesmer.

Chaos you show a little to much faith… I myself though, have my dreams, of a time where mesmer in a control orientated build has a life outside of PVP

Shield would only bring 2 new skills not three, and one would likely be tied to the class mechanics or a phantasm unless the spec changes something massively.

I will be honest, all that I want is more lockdown and control, a reliable daze on a very low cooldown will have me jumping for joy.

I personally think whoever thought shield was a good first new weapon pulled the idea right out of their kittening jacksies myself. So many better options…

Hey, so long as they give us a mainhand I would be happy to take the shield too, the issue is, their language has always talked about specializations opening up a “whole new weapon” singular. This to me indicates we are only getting one weapon, and at this point, if all they are giving is a crappy off hand I am not sure it is even worth spending the money on the xpack.

I actually think it should be innate to diversion. Diversion as it is has a kitten long cooldown, doesn’t stack well and is an absolute pain to use with the whole clones being tissue paper. So I actually think it should be innate, so it can be used with the illusionary persona.

In actual classical dueling, it was somewhat rare to actually use a shield. Sure you used a buckler with short sword, but that is not the same as a shield. Furthermore, you would not actually use dueling weapons on the battlefield, a couple of times it was tried and most times those duelists had a nasty encounter with some giant peasant wielding an axe or a large kitten sword.

Because the trailer video showed us using it as an offhand… Now should we get it as a mainhand power ranged weapon I will be happy! Now though, how will you be feeling if when most other classes get a full five new weapon skills we find ourselves burdened with effectively a new weapon skill in an already crowded offhand weapon choice. Agitate now, make sure anet know what we want, so they might realize that we are not so traumatized as to simply take their beating with a; “yes sir, can I have please have some more.”

Me Games Ma.8426:

Fay.2357:

Do you remember the last time anet released new traits for our class? Remember what happened? Skills aren’t that different from traits, and I’m anticipating something similar.

This literally sent tears into my eyes. Yes. I remember :<

The bit I remember most was the fact we got one really awesome trait, then of course, out came the nerfbat after thieves QQ’d… Even if we get nice toys in the expansion, I fully expect them to be taken away pretty fast, and more than likely I will lose my marbles again and hurl abuse…

Still, NO SHIELDS! Give us mainhand pistols or go home!

How can we be overreacting, an offhand only means we get 2 new weapon skills. Staff, Hammer and Greatsword will give 5 new weapon skills to Ranger, Engi and Necro respectively. How the hell is that not something worth complaining about. Furthermore Fay, I agree our aoe is an issue, but anet fixed it all the wrong way. They should have made phants living conditions that could be purged and had a timer, and clones immune to all damage as they do no damage. In that way our aoe can come from shatters where it belongs… But far to late now.

Frankly I feel like we have to much aoe to be honest. Yes aoe is all the rage for getting credit, but I cannot help but feel as if the aoe makes it harder to be selective in your targeting. Consider, we are supposed to be magical duelists who use finesse and the magics of the mind and space and time to gain the upper hand. And yet, when we use a mainhand sword it hits everything in the sweep. Shouldn’t a duelist be a much more focused and direct attacker, with a more subtle stab rather than a whole bodied swing. I too have studied medieval combat forms, notably Long Sword and Rapier, and there is a massive difference between dueling and slashing. A duelist will use the point of the blade, in unfocused combat you just slash with the thing or club with it or anything that comes to mind. Our current sword use does go against the idea of being magical duelists. To that end, I support main hand pistol, so long as it is a nice single target weapon, give us a weapon set to focus and overwhelm one enemy (Pistol Pistol) while we then can use our other offhands to add the aoe we need for the build. (say focus)

All in all, I just want more cc options, and more control over what the hell i hit. I also do not want to not be able to use offhand sword, as I really like offhand sword as it matches quite clearly the idea of the mesmer as a duelist.

You know, sometimes I think we mesmer players must be insane, we keep doing the same thing, always expecting a different result.. Either that or the balance team is… I mean surely, giving bug fixes to mesmers and expecting us to be happy everytime, even when those bugfixes typically weaken us in the meta has got to be getting old for them…

On topic though, all I really want is a main hand ranged weapon that is not tied to conditions, and that has a short cooldown short duration daze to help us proc our interrupt traits more reliably. Is that really to much to ask for? I seriously have come to rely terribly on offhand sword just to have a daze up when I need it.

I feel like we need to at least start making a kittening sound. Too often we just bend over and don’t even bother asking for the lube… Who knows, maybe one day they will stop beating us so badly…

Oh and fay, you mention balance, and mesmer, you should know by now that it is likely they have done no work whatsoever on mesmer yet, and we are simply an afterthought at this point.

Chuck, it can be done with a single high end video card that supports either AMD eyefinity or the Nvidia equivalent. For years I played in 5760*1080 on an AMD 7950 3GB.

Considering the fact that anet keeps talking about how the class changes are still up in the air for HOT, I felt we should at least try agitating for them to drop this ridiculous notion of giving us an offhand shield, which appears at least looking at the trailer as if that is their intention. This thread then is for us to try and make some noise, and to not simply go quietly. Whatever weapon you may want, I am almost certain, that their is no mesmer out there who honestly can say, they want a new offhand weapon… So here my fellow mesmers is our rally, and so shall we cry;

NO SHIELD, NO SHIELD!

PS on another note, I seriously do not care what else they might give us, but at this point, another offhand to go with torch, sword, focus, pistol just does not fit. Our build diversity is intrinsically linked to our primary weapon, and as a consequence we are pigeon holed into four primary distinctions. Ranged condition, ranged power aoe, ranged condition aoe or melee power aoe. We need more single target weapons that stack well in the perpetual zerker meta.

PPS…. NO SHIELD! NO SHIELD!

What I really want is Mesmer pistol mainhand. I do not care about anything else, at this point, I would buy the expansion entirely for a mainhand pistol for mesmer. I am so tired of the same 2 mainhands, so tired I feel almost exhausted just trying to work out how to plan around the fact that scepter is too clunky, and sword requires me to walk into deaths embrace with each swing.

Mesmer will never be fixed and yet we keep coming back… It is the sign of an abused wife who cannot leave her brutal drunk of a husband in my view. For me, I enjoy the mind focused aspect of the mesmer, a profession based in illusion and deception. Unfortunately, that deception is next to impossible to achieve. I for one would welcome a main hand pistol, and part of me still feels that aanet will introduce one in this coming expansion, if only to ensure that when they officially confirm what they are giving us they will not be asked to please explain their wanton disregard and disinterest. One thing I do wonder, has anyone directly asked a developer what the hell are they thinking giving us a new offhand. A new offhand cripples our build diversity, as it forces us to essentially play exactly the same as we have been for the last couple of years.

I myself am desperate for a more reliable interupt mechanism, one which we can trigger more frequently, than every 8 or so seconds, (my math suggests that at maximum efficiency we could maybe interrupt once every 4-5 seconds if we factor in mantra’s, diversion, signet weapon swapping and sword off hand) But to achieve that sort of efficiency is insane. Why can we not get a single low cooldown (5s or) 0.5 second daze to add better synergy in our skills. Hell I would even take a total reworking of our offhand pistol skill to enable it to fufill the desperate need we have for a way to make so many of our grand master traits actually do something.

Fay, your earlier post contains much of my sentiments, as do your arrangements Zenith, I know with the change to power block from where it was in the first glorious days (allowing us to interrupt around defiance) I thought that aanet had intended to open a new role for mesmers in the Meta. Sure the function that let it make bosses unable to do anything for 10s was too much, but surely they could have kept the ability to let us interrupt and proc our traits, it would have made all the difference.

Asura are the master race In pvp there is no advantage to being an asura admittedly, but the racial skills in pve are something I enjoy, a daze on a 45 second cooldown and another skill that lands 3 stacks of confusion can be quiet effective in wvwvw.

OreoWolf.9564:

Fay.2357:

Advent.6193:

Never expect balanced numbers of skills here. You’ll probably be disappointed.
At this point, I’m holding out that the new skills and trait line aren’t chock-full o’ suck.

Precisely this. We’ve already seen how good they are at designing new stuff for mesmer in the new grandmaster traits. I’m just hoping to avoid a repeat of that.

To be fair, Power Block was an amazing trait until Anet nerfed it to the ground the very next day, LOL xD.

Don’t remind me, the very day of this nerf, I uninstalled the game for a year and half after posting that anet could take their changes and shove them up their collective jacksies…

I was doing the math, we are in desperate need of a new mainhand weapon. WIth the likelyhood of us getting shield in HOT so close, that will leave us in the curious position of having 5 offhands for two mainhands, and that simply is not good. Thus I present to you my thoughts on a mainhand pistol, for power/lockdown builds.

1st skill
Unload, a volley fire skill we can use while moving does high damage with the final shot in the volley inflicting cripple.

2nd Skill,
Duelist’s shot
Inflicts a 1st daze and does medium damage. On a 5-8 second cooldown.

3rd Skill
Duelists agility.
Range 15, teleports us 15 behind the target leaving a clone in our original position. Makes us face the target. This skill is essentially a blink that moves us behind our target and orientates us to shoot at their exposed back. 15-20s cooldown.

I welcome your comments on your thoughts, if you have ideas or what not do share, I am sure we can all agree we desperately are in need of some other mainhand to add to build diversity. The Scepter hegemony cannot last…

Kicast.1459:

Riccardo.7254:

You guys took the feedback of the mesmer community and worked for fast changes of what you proposed. Just take a look of the Necromancer forum and make your day. You are still in time to give us a reason to keep playing it (or gw2)
thank you

do you really want a quick nerf ?

If they do to the necro’s what they did the mesmer, soon Necro’s will need to pay health to use their class mechanic or something else equally brainless..

Swish.2463:

Spanny.9256:

i’m actually quite excited for the upcoming patch, i’m not seeing a ton of enthusiasm at the moment from anybody else though??

……

what are the general thoughts on these specific changes and how we can use them to our full advantage?

You haven’t been a mesmer for very long have you?

My general Thoughts are that:
A. I will not get excited or hopeful for changes to make it into the game that are working, will not be altered to a poop state, nor require a hotfix 2 days later to have them “work as intended”.

B. I cannot plan to take advantage of any of these things because i do not know what will now become broken, what will arrive broken, what will be fixed, what wont be fixed, what will be buffed/nerfed, and what wont be buffed nerfed.

Anet can take me to their HQ and show me all the mesmer changes in the game fully working 100% of the time with now new bugs and Promise me that this is what is going into the game on September 9th, and I still wouldn’t believe it.

It is kinda sad, we the class of illusions cannot even trust the reality they give us as being anything more than a cruel deception played upon us by vengeful gods. To truly be a mesmer is to live in this Kafkaesque torment of never knowing, burdened by the Nietschean realisation that hope is a delusion of the ignorant and that this torment is the price we pay for knowing the only true thing, that no good news is real!

Dazed and confused be I, that instead of torment, the scepter is not in receipt of a nice buff in the application of confusion on Ether Blast. This would give back to the class a change that always felt exceptionally odd, the loss of AA means to apply what was supposed to be our primary condition. Surely it would be better to give us confusion back, and help us maintain at least 1 or 2 stacks of a condition that our very description on the webpage mentions?

Or do I just desperately want the old days back?

From a mechanical perspective, confusion would make more sense, why not just give scepter confusion back on the clones, and drop the torment?

I would rather see the additional time of the interrupt lost than see it loose it ability in pve.. This has me happy to be a mesmer again….

I would say shave the lockout time. Make it interrupt the skills which do not have a cooldown by 5s and skills that do have a cooldown by 10s. This would allow it to keep the functionality closer to what was the original intent of the trait and still let it remain a viable trait for us against certain classes.

In Pve it should remain the same, this skill has actually made a lockdown mesmer viable in dungeon runs. This is incredible! In this one change you actually made me excited to long into the game again…. I have not enjoyed dungeons since the introduction of defiant, but this, letting me use a proper interrupt build, letting me act as a viable support to my party by preventing the damage they would other wise receive from that massive aoe, this is what being a mesmer is all about to me… Let me keep I beg of you.

Yes it does seem to be an interesting ability built into the armour. I noticed prior to the update after replacing my CoE armour runes with perplexity runes I had two rune bonuses, one was the golem that I seemed to be always summoning and the other was the confusion additions. Tbh I kinda like this, it makes the dungeon armour sorta special in that it always keeps a bonus for doing the dungeon.

CobraPolo.1723:

Pyroathiest.4168:

shimmerless.4560:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Nm, forget I said anything, it’s getting hotfixed.

I’ll refrain from commentary here, because I’d get permabanned from these forums.

Can I ask what it is they intend to change, love?

Power block will no longer affect ressing and stomping. I’ve also heard that the devs consider blocking aa’s and thief skills as unintended behavior, so I’ll assume they’re removing that as well.

Which thief skill we referring too?

All thief weapon skills have 0 cooldown. According to how this trait was unveiled it was supposed to add +5s to cooldown skills. This means that all thief weapon skills will be immune to this now… Which is absolutely kitten. This trait gave us a reminder of what it used to be to be a mesmer, We were actually able to hold back the thieves. I guess it is by design though that thieves are to be the apex predator…

If they do this, they will essentially destroy the trait… I could understand halving it, make it do 5s to instant cooldown skills, and 10s to cooldown skills, but seriously to remove it entirely is kitten…. Why the hell give us a moment of the old memser back if all they are going to do is take it from us.

This said so long as it still goes through defiant there will be a place for lockdown mesmers in pve…

Me Games Ma.8426:

full mez grp permarupt

Thing is, this sort of group would be next to impossible to actually kill anything…

That said, I think the solution for this is not a change to the skill but an addition to enemy mobs, more attacks, weaker attacks yes, but more of them. This would allow rewards for blocking a large attack, such as subject alpha’s aoe without entirely trivializing the content.

To be honest I do not see a problem with that.. It is no less trivializing than some of the reflect builds that people run. The only difference is that this would allow a skilled mesmer to once more hold a boss in place while their party obliterates it.
What is so bad about that.

This move is actually brilliant in my interrupt build, it lets me take both empowered mantras with power block and thus be able to interrupt 3 times before I need to recast the mantra… A brilliant move in my opinion, especially for trying to use a interrupt build in a dungeon.

I knew there was a reason I kept my full set of TA armour…

Maybe this is intended…. Power Block does not cause stun locking… While in open world events this might be a little to strong, I can see this being very useful in dungeons for opening up new builds. It lets the mesmer go back to a style of play from GW1 (Which is what the community have been asking for) without it being anywhere near as game breaking as infinite stun-locks. This would then let the mesmer play pve with a focus for domination rather than being a phantasm summoner…

I guess I cannot help but feel lacking when I compared it to my thiefs offhand pistol My thoughts though really are focussed on a more frequent interrupt skill so that rather than having to spend our entire utility bar on lockdown skills we can get the lockdown back as a role we can focus again on.

I apologize for the rambling nature of the post, more of a brain-storm than an argument I am afraid.

Would I be alone in thinking that Mantra of Distraction is beginning to feel a little lacking in its ability to contribute to an interrupt build. In a sense I am of the opinion that a halving of it’s recharge time and perhaps a reduction of its duration would greatly assist the mesmer in more interrupt focused builds. With so many of our new grand master traits relying on interrupts would it not make more sense to give us a much more viable on-demand interrupt option. Perhaps if need be a new utility with a kitten cooldown that does a 1/4s daze and no damage would be better for this role, but it would still allow us to play a far more interrupt focussed build without having the moments of downtime we currently seem to be stuck with.

Seven Star,. As an aussie I was there and i got a precursor which i sold on for 120G kinda kicking myself now, the same bloody hammer is worth a thousand Gold..

To be honest I would very much like to see mantra of pain have an interrupt effect, if only to ensure that mesmer with its focus on interrupt synergies has one with a minimal cooldown…

I will be honest, In beta this was a 15 point minor trait and in my opinion that worked considerably better. I would like to however see this become baseline, the mesmer does need some weapon independent way to allow for clone generation on demand. Either give us this somewhere easier to access within the tree or halve the cooldown on clone generation utilities. So long as clones remain a resource for shatter we are forced to generate them or lose access to our entire mechanic, I want more clones kitten it!

Actually this would be a very good idea. This adds more conditions and synergy with existing builds (Mantra of distraction for example would be very useful in a condition build) and would help to make some of the more useless skills actually have a purpose in pve.

After a good deal of thinking i believe this may be the most lore appropriate way to allow players to Role play as a Golemancer. As someone with 5 Asura and a love of Golems i envision this class as being based around consumable pets which when summoned will assist you in battle until either the duration wears out or they are destroyed. Like other consumable buffs there could be different kinds of Golems, some which act more tank like, some which spray the enemy with fire or dust which confuses them, some which act as heavy burst support. My idea in of itself is also balanced. Like food you don’t need these Golems to compete, its another advantage sure, but with the trading post and the ease of crafting anyone can have a Golem backing them up. The idea is that each Golem would be crafting from a combination of the rare metals (like gold, silver etc) and the more readily avaible metals(Iron) as well as precious gems to handle the advanced ai.

CM provides a useful lore exception to enable non-asura golemancers, with the golemancer crafters either being what an asura whips up to serve an immediate purpose or the creation of one of the other race who using destroyed asuran creations is working to try and replicate the technology. This would explain why the Golems would be only a temporary companion rather than a full time assistant. Perhaps make it possible for a lvl 400 Golemancer to create a permanent Golem or something similar however such a possibility is liable to be OP.

This suggestion is born simply of the fact that as an Asura i want more Golems however i am sure there are people playing all races who wouldn’t mind having a temporary “Mr Sparkles” to help them in content when the going gets tough.

The Fundamental idea is not for these Golems to be seriously Game Changing, rather they are a nice little addition that can make very hard content simply hard for a short period of time. Take what you will from that.

actually i dont know, if it does in theory you could have a total of 7 condition removals on your bar :P

wait i miscalculated make that ten :P with mantra of concentration giving a total of 4, could make for a serious kitten now you die necro build :P

Just curious how many people have noticed how effective the heal on cast mantra trait is. Been playing with my bunker build and found slotting even 2 mantras would allow me in a ten to fifteen second period restore close to 10,000 morale to every member of my party. granted this isnt comparable to healing in other games, but when combined with the pure amount of shutdown options availaible to a mesmer, it does seemingly become viable to run a manta based shutdown/interupt build with a secondary focus on restoring health to your group and keeping yourself alive and the enemy messed with. Just thought i would see if anyone else has noticed the sheer power availiable from a simple 20 point trait. (for the record using the empowered mantras trait i can restore close to 12k of my own health without crits, getting 4 mantra of healing casts in effect, with only the first having an induction)