Guild Wars 2

Obtena.7952:

apharma.3741:

Obtena.7952:

Levetty.1279:

Obtena.7952:

ACtually, i think the contribution is significant

Well yeah, thief players always think kittenting up the mesmer board is a valuable use of their time, doesn’t make it so.

At least the other guy is actually trying to make an argument, no matter how flawed it is. You are just coming in here without bothering to read what people are saying and declaring everybody is bad at the game while you are a genius who figured out how to really play Mesmer.

That’s lots of angry talk. I don’t know what’ other guy’ your talking about but making a bad argument isn’t better than disregarding the one I made. I mean, I can’t be the only person to have figured this out … unless I’m not giving myself enough credit that is.

Putting aside his comment, the point a lot of people are making isn’t that mesmers cannot play PvE or solo content. The point they are making is the ease of which other classes do it compared to mesmer and the lack of parity there in.

And as usual, that’s a pretty irrelevant point, for a whole bunch of reasons, most notably that Anet doesn’t balance classes based on other classes performance. The whole class is designed to deliver that kind of play to the player. Complaining about it is like complaining you don’t like vanilla when you ordered vanilla ice cream.

If people don’t like the style of play, the level of damage, the way you get damage or the deficiencies of the class, the answer is to play a class more suited to your style of play, not make the class more like other classes. It’s exactly the reason Anet made 9 classes that play all very differently with their various characteristics.

Except you are wrong, this is why ANet changed condition damage caps because it screwed over condition damage builds and classes who primarily apply conditions. This is why ANet buffed thief auto damage to make them top DPS when they had no role in raids.

This isn’t about aesthetics, you can adjust many things with mesmer to keep the aesthetics of a controlling mind games class but give it the DPS to compete and not lag behind other classes.

To put it on your ice cream metaphor. It’s like mesmers are ordering vanilla ice cream with every other class ordering vanilla ice cream except mesmers have to serve themselves instead of having it brought out on a silver platter. They also get poor quality water based ice cream not delicious chilled cream.

Obtena.7952:

Levetty.1279:

Obtena.7952:

ACtually, i think the contribution is significant

Well yeah, thief players always think kittenting up the mesmer board is a valuable use of their time, doesn’t make it so.

At least the other guy is actually trying to make an argument, no matter how flawed it is. You are just coming in here without bothering to read what people are saying and declaring everybody is bad at the game while you are a genius who figured out how to really play Mesmer.

That’s lots of angry talk. I don’t know what’ other guy’ your talking about but making a bad argument isn’t better than disregarding the one I made. I mean, I can’t be the only person to have figured this out … unless I’m not giving myself enough credit that is.

Putting aside his comment, the point a lot of people are making isn’t that mesmers cannot play PvE or solo content. The point they are making is the ease of which other classes do it compared to mesmer and the lack of parity there in.

Mesmer has various mechanics that actively work against the class at a core level. Mesmer has some of the lowest coefficients on auto attacks in the game and also has very few damage mods in traits to boot. The idea is that they have phantasms that then make this up in some ways and depending on circumstances they can. However most of the time these circumstances are just not there and that’s without mentioning how they get shafted by mechanics like “this buff allows you to damage/do 200% more damage to the boss” where phantasms don’t get the buff. This leads to the reality that the mesmer has to rely on low coefficient attacks and doesn’t get the phantasms making up the rest of the damage.

There are other things that mess up mesmers like targets disappearing during fights causing your phantasms to disappear crippling your DPS. They also have very poor AoE even with wells, in fact one of the best AoE damage skills a mesmer has is Mind Wrack which unfortunately also guts your personal DPS. Then there’s the way phantasms are summoned on the enemy meaning when it dies so does the phantasm. But what happens when 1 enemy dies but there’s still 3 more at half health? Well you gotta plink at them with your low damage autos.

Compare this to many other classes which can mindlessly cleave through mobs with such ease. I was trying to test the damage buff you get in the final part of the current LS episode by joining my friend who was on his berserker, I couldn’t get the buff for some reason so it was a bit of a waste of time. However I did get to see him cleaving through mobs like they were paper and the stark contrast between what mesmers have to do in comparison to burst spamming selfish DPS berserker.

Xyonon.3987:

apharma.3741:

Awww, +1 for effort but as I and many others have pointed out, it has 0 cleave which means it’s bottom of the pack for any DPS build. It also took a long time to build up to maximum DPS looking at your log, for the first 2 mins it was under 20k which nearly every single DPS build will beat. Try again please.

You don’t want to get smarter, now do you?

Yet it doesn’t take much to be smarter than you, especially when you stab yourself in the foot so much.

Xyonon.3987:

1. I mentioned this build would be stronger if adapted to raids since I used the solo build in the raid enviorment.

2. The solo condi build is – as I mentioned myself multiple times now – only good for 1v1 solos aka hero points.

So why do you have every boon in the game and most profession buffs if this was meant to be a solo build? Genius!

Xyonon.3987:

3. You wanted to know if it’s stronger than Condi Druid in terms of pure dps – that’s what I’ve clearly shown you, even with the weaker version of the build.

Except I was saying condi ranger and referenced a condi ranger build doing competitive DPS with other classes, here I’ll help you with that part and quote myself below as you can’t seem to manage that.

apharma.3741:

Xyonon you’re grossly misinformed, sure condi druid is 18k in a raid environment but condi ranger is significantly higher.

Source.

I have yet to see anyone credible post a decent mesmer damage number without disclaimers saying it’s either skewed in the mesmers favour or unrealistic.

Xyonon.3987:

4. I never said I’d use condi Chrono in raids, that’s why I only have the solo setup. Don’t start making up stuff now please.

Once again, why do you have it set up as if it’s in raids then with 2 GotL, Assassin’s Presence, PSEA warrior buffs etc? I’m not making stuff up but you clearly are if you’re twisting a simulation with all those buffs to mean solo.

Edit: Added line for better flow of the post and distinction between 2 quotes. I’ll leave Pyro to dissect the rest of the stuff you’ve posted.

Xyonon.3987:

apharma.3741:

I’ve still yet to see a credible source backing up your claimsabout mesmer DPS though which doesn’t have the aforementioned disclaimers. Most DPS tests I’ve seen usually say your actually DPS will be a lot lower than the number they show.

Then when everyone points out the flaws you dismiss it as inconsequential saying it doesn’t matter that it’s a single target build.

Here you go – 4m HP golem went up to 22k. To mention, you can get higher if you play core Mesmer and use Chaos for more condi duration, while also swapping out Viper gear for Sinister. I expect the dps to scratch the 25k, but I don’t know for sure. I use my Chrono version only for open world.

However this is just like the condi Ranger a dps focused build and if you would want to be able to do the Quickness rotation, the dps would be around 14k only and you would still only provide close enough Quickness for everyone – or rather, just not enough to be viable.

Awww, +1 for effort but as I and many others have pointed out, it has 0 cleave which means it’s bottom of the pack for any DPS build. It also took a long time to build up to maximum DPS looking at your log, for the first 2 mins it was under 20k which nearly every single DPS build will beat. Try again please.

That’s without bringing up the fact I and many others have been referring to mesmer solo as being garbage.

You can shine a kitten , cover it in gold and add all the glitter in the world but it’s still a kitten .

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Your linkings and our current has has no comparasment at all. Maybe our last link up we had a good server but the first link ups were nowhere near as bad as you say.

Unfortunately the ppt hero’s will always go for the easy stuff, and it’s most likely that it was eb where they spawn camped you too. Our first reset vs ag/dl we had 4 ag/rof guilds all at once in our garri (apline map) for about an hour and the response we got from 1 guild was that “they were bored” 4 guilds against 20 or so defenders, I don’t recall GH doing anything like that.

I remember the T3 SMs from GH, I remember the upgrading of our keep and holding it all day in EB, I remember the karma train in our border at all times with us daily trying to get garri upgraded before guild raids started. If it wasn’t upgraded then our border was an enemy colour for the rest of the evening. I also remember GH upgrading Bay in our border and constantly flipping our keep with their zerg almost off cool down.

I also remember being outnumbered in almost every map constantly for months till Glicko finally shunted down AM and Angry Rock who were just as shafted as us.

Looking at the current scores and the last few weeks it’s very clear this is a Glicko problem as you can see other servers in complete blow out matches. A GH, SFR and Elona match up would be how our Angry Rock, RoF and AM matches were.

porem.2601:

.

GH had lowest pop from all host servers and yet, we got linked with lowest pop guest server. So no surprise there is no chance.

RoF and WSR had this problem since linking started and were even linked together again even after they had the lowest population. Know how much sympathy GH gave us? None, BM, corpse jumping and spawn camping while always focusing the weakest server (us).

It sucks when this situation happens and it shouldn’t happen but all things considered I won’t shed a tear for 95% of the server, shame the few people I know from MM and Tag will be having a bad time. The rest of the server is only reaping what they sowed.

Something I don’t think I saw anyone mention is that persisting images gives retaliation to phantasms as well as giving them more health. This means you can do some solid damage against AoE classes especially if they don’t do enough to kill them all in a hit or two. Shatter when they get low to resummon the phantasms and continue letting them whittle themselves down ready for your condi burst.

Xyonon.3987:

apharma.3741:

Xyonon you’re grossly misinformed, sure condi druid is 18k in a raid environment but condi ranger is significantly higher.

Source.

I have yet to see anyone credible post a decent mesmer damage number without disclaimers saying it’s either skewed in the mesmers favour or unrealistic.

I’m very well aware of the Rangers dps against completly immobile enemies, especially with perma Alacrity, however we talked about Condi Druid just now.

Levetty.1279:

The highest dps we can posibly achieve is about on par with Condi Druid …

I’ve still yet to see a credible source backing up your claimsabout mesmer DPS though which doesn’t have the aforementioned disclaimers. Most DPS tests I’ve seen usually say your actually DPS will be a lot lower than the number they show.

Then when everyone points out the flaws you dismiss it as inconsequential saying it doesn’t matter that it’s a single target build.

Ross Biddle.2367:

messiah.1908:

Xyonon.3987:

I still wonder if this is intended or a bug, because to me it’s more like a bug that the shield #4 is the only phantasm that can be dodged. I hope they “fix” this eventually

bit its also the only phantasm which can proc twice

Yes, but it’s also the only phantasm that has no offensive ability.

If you remember when Robert (or whoever it was) was designing it, this was stated as such- “You get double, but it’s purpose is utility and not damage”. Thus two summons assuming you “land” it all.

But it’s the only phantasm that give a buff to all allies in an AoE when attacking….

Music editing has got a lot easier now music is so repetitive, simple clipping at the right time and then doubling up on a segment can give you decent results if people are busy watching.

I believe audacity is free and pretty simple to use.

Xyonon you’re grossly misinformed, sure condi druid is 18k in a raid environment but condi ranger is significantly higher.

Source.

I have yet to see anyone credible post a decent mesmer damage number without disclaimers saying it’s either skewed in the mesmers favour or unrealistic.

Actually during the fight you get a buff that makes you do 2-3 times more damage to the boss if not more. Anyone wanna check to see if phantasms get it or if mesmer does the same damage as every other class?

For reference I was getting 18k for rift slash and 12k for the other 2 of the auto.

P.S. Also did it on rev, hilariously easy to do.

Nostradus.2187:

thanks for the response,and its sad at the same time.

oh the problem that was with guardians and high lvl fractals,that could kill the hole grp? they fixed this with the last patch ?

Yes, mobs used to steal boons and when it stole retaliation usually supplied by guardians it did a lot of damage when you hit the mobs.

If you want to level and play a chrono it’s not a bad choice (except solo PvE), just keep a second class on standby for when a group already has a chrono. Oh and be prepared to put in a lot of effort into being good for a group.

I’ll just quote the relevant bits in context from what Pyro wrote as it’s not too long ago

Fay.2357:

Mesmer performance in instanced content is fantastic. We work extremely well in a party and are a valuable asset to any group, if you’re good. A bad chrono is bad, a decent chrono is bad, a great chrono is excellent.

Open world PvE is different. Overall, Mesmer performance in open world PvE is heavily dependent on whether or not you’re alone. Soloing as a Mesmer is a miserable experience, no ifs ands or buts. It is certainly very possible, but it sucks. Your damage is low, mobs squish your phantasms, multi target capabilities are close to non-existent. If you intend on doing open world content solo, play something else. End of story.

However, you can still be useful if you have a party. Chrono is a great buff slave in any aspect of the game, and your party will enjoy the quickness and alacrity you pump out for any elite mobs or bosses. On the other hand, your buffing ability is worthless for just normal clearing, so most of your play will be grouping up mobs with focus so that everyone else can kill them for you.

However if a raid group or party already has a chrono you will not be wanted at all on chrono. Having a second class that you know how to play well is invaluable. Guardians are in general never a bad class to have especially now boon thieves is fixed.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

To clarify what I was using:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAs6mcfC2oBEgiFVjq8DKhBoeZf2qlMAqgdC-TBSGABrv/wQKPgSJmUKBBU9HAeAAkpH4+TAgoACM-e
Would swap to shield or GS depending on the fight. I found myself mostly camping sword/pistol and prefered shield as my extra by the end of it. Focus could probably also work too.

Sigil of strength not rune of strength. If you’ve been paying attention, it’s meta in some comps so it’s not that much of a stretch for mesmers to have one. That build has 2484 power. Sigil of force is equivalent to (2484 * 1.05 – 2484 = 124 power) or 4 stacks of might only on the mesmer not the phantasms and only on power nor condi damage. In long solo fights, fights where you bring some conditions, or in long team fights with 7/2/1 setup, sigil of strength is better for the mesmer than sigil of force/air. In raids with a 100% boon duration, it’s easily 12-15 stacks of might that can be SoI. In solo situations with 20% boon duration, it’s still better than the 2-3% that sigil of force effectively brings.

Don’t take my word for it though, check qTs guide.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52qtw3/updated_raid_chronomancer_guide/

Sigil of draining takes TD tokens and having a pistol. It’s not necessary but the 1k lifesteal per interrupt with no ICD is really nice for that build.

TLDR: 1 new sigil on a pistol. A debatably meta sword. Same armor/trinkets as the raid build are fine although rune of strength doesn’t hurt at all.

I took your build, grabbed a strength rune and the food, used my zerk armour with traveler runes for extra boon duration. Was the instance impossible? Nope not by a long shot but I then rushed my necro through it too. Both cases I knew what I was walking in to so neither class had an advantage and all I can say was my necro was super easy to do it on.

Epidemic the big dude to cleave out adds, lots of minions putting 10 bleeds on enemies almost as soon as I targeted them, lots of poison. I wouldn’t say it was face roll but I wouldn’t say it was difficult by any stretch of the imagination on necro. Mesmer was certainly “harder” but it wasn’t harder because the instance is hard just harder because mesmer in general sucks for solo. I also had plenty of might when it mattered due to blood is power.

Best bit? I didn’t have to change a dam thing.

Xyonon.3987:

You don’t need a full new armor etc. The only thing you have to do is retrait, if you are fancy get another weapon, that’s it.

If you are too lazy to do even that, then you shouldn’t complain about issues with your profession in a specific area you do not adapt to.

It doesn’t matter if other professions have to retrait, because some of them even can’t retrait to be stronger. You must only compare the optimal realisitc setups with each other.

I thought he used strength runes that’s why I said armour, I guess he doesn’t but then the might won’t last very long without some boon duration increases even with golden fried dumplings.

Even retraiting it doesn’t change much, you’re still going to be expending considerably more effort trying to kill mobs than most classes who cleave them out like flies. When other professions are doing twice as much sustained damage while cleaving I don’t think they really need to get stronger and that is a moot point.

Xyonon.3987:

apharma.3741:

So here is a fairly well known streamer playing mesmer in the final fight, judge for yourself how it is.

And this is good example of a Chrono who plays like in Raids in open world. And then pulls the GS Q_Q

Oh definitely, it’s by no means “optimal” for that but then look at what DuckDuckBOOM was suggesting, that’s essentially another full set of armour, weapons and a full build change that’s if you’re not overriding sigils etc.

“Because interrupts were a thing again, Domination, Dueling, Chrono with a pistol with Sigil of Draining and HM for MoD. Alternate between Pistol 5 and MoD to recharge p5 via DD. Interrupts were providing slow (and 30% crit on slow), quickness, vulnerability, damage and weakness, more damage and healing (sigil of draining is 1k lifesteal with no ICD) and just preventing damage. Sword with sigil of strength and golden dumplings meant decent might on crit. Dueling gave fury. I died once in the final mission but was more so because I got sloppy. I had to try harder than DH and engi but it wasn’t that much harder. I’ll try for the achievements later today.”

Do you know how much I’m going to be changing my build on my other characters? I’ll be switching a few utilities maybe, might swap a trait line but everything else will be the same. I’m actually looking forward to this fight on my condition engineer and necro because of how face roll it will be.

The whole thing is about parity with other classes, mesmer falls far far behind others for solo instances. As Pyro said, playing mesmer solo is miserable when you compare it to other classes.

The link contains massive spoilers for the new living story episode, don’t click it if you don’t want to know what happens.

So here is a fairly well known streamer playing mesmer in the final fight, judge for yourself how it is.

Edit: I know his build is woefully bad for a single player story instance however there’s not much to go on going in.

Nice video, only criticism I can make is there was 3:35 there was a clip of you bursting 2 people down who were reviving. I felt it was a bit out of place during the dueling/outnumbered clips. Otherwise good as always, ever considered dabbling in music editting to allow you to make them as long as you want without having to fit it to a specific song or set of songs?

Also I think your other videos were good especially the long one playing core mesmer.

Are we talking small groups of 5-10 or big zergs or map blobs?

Tempest in full minstrels is pretty silly on the support, so are guards tbh.

As others have mentioned double Daredevil you can prey on anyone and gank solo players, escape groups and generally be annoying. It won’t get you many friends and will most likely make you a big target for most servers after a while for corpse jumping, siege throwing and general BM.

Druid especially the PVT concentration sigil staff builds are stupidly tanky and you can 2v1 easily on them. Double druid you can troll groups, survive and the builds synergise well with each other. Druid also couples with scrapper, condi mesmer and thief well due to stealth and them either complimenting the sustain, offering a different damage type or adding in more burst respectively.

Put simply stealth and mobility should be your biggest concern if you want to duo roam. Oh and the lvl 80 boost comes with tanky gear too so maybe look at druid.

Fay.2357:

apharma.3741:

OriOri.8724:

tobascodagama.2961:

Ananeos.4587:

Just to prove my point, the latest Living Season episode featured a kill room where waves upon waves of normal mobs and then a boss that spawns infinite waves until you kill it. You had to defend yourself and the object. If you died you failed the achievement and you had to replay the entire episode all over again.

How are mesmers supposed to deal with this?

“Restart from checkpoint” spawns you back in the room with full health but doesn’t reset the boss mob’s HP. So that’s how I did it.

That said… This is far from the hardest fight in the game, but it’s a perfect case in point. They clearly expect players to focus the boss mob while cleaving the adds. But because our cleave sucks, we have to deal with adds that stack up faster than we can kill them, which quickly becomes overwhelming. And because our personal DPS sucks, we can’t kill the boss fast enough to avoid the adds stacking up on us, either. And because the adds and boss both drop persistent AoEs, dragging out the fight as long as we have to quickly leaves no room on the floor to stand.

Every LS release seems to include at least one of these fights. They’re not “hard”, they’re just designed and built in a way that plays to all of Mesmer’s weaknesses. It’s cheap as hell, and I’m sick of it.

Sums up my experience with the fight. I went down twice (once during the monkey because I didn’t expect him to hit me for nearly as hard as he did, he downed me in one hit from ~80% hp, was just not expecting it). The earlier waves were easy, if tedious. They took a while but presented no real threat. The boss however, we just cannot kill the boss fast enough before the floor turns completely to lava. I got in one or two of those water orb things to clear it and it still wasn’t enough because of his spawns which just added more and more lava fonts everywhere. The time those are up needs to be seriously reduced, and the spawns in the boss phase should not be spawning their own lava fonts on top of the boss’. Its just a painful kittening instance to solo as a mesmer, let alone get the achievement

Oh you poor thing, he wasn’t meaning that, it’s something further on in the story.

Spoilers….

But yeah, that later fight would have been BRUTAL if I weren’t playing with Fay for it (the actual Fay).

Anyway, BnS is a bit outdated, I’m just too lazy to update my sig. I was playing vindictus for a while, but Path of Exile released a new expansion recently that I’ve been dedicating most of my playing time to. I play GW2 about 8 hours weekly: 4 hours PvE raiding and 4 hours WvW raiding.

In any case, as to your questions Joxer: I do love this class, and it’s basically the only thing I play. However, it has massive problems, as I don’t hold back my criticism or realistic assessments of it. Let me try to answer you directly.

Mesmer performance in instanced content is fantastic. We work extremely well in a party and are a valuable asset to any group, if you’re good. A bad chrono is bad, a decent chrono is bad, a great chrono is excellent.

Open world PvE is different. Overall, Mesmer performance in open world PvE is heavily dependent on whether or not you’re alone. Soloing as a Mesmer is a miserable experience, no ifs ands or buts. It is certainly very possible, but it sucks. Your damage is low, mobs squish your phantasms, multi target capabilities are close to non-existent. If you intend on doing open world content solo, play something else. End of story.

However, you can still be useful if you have a party. Chrono is a great buff slave in any aspect of the game, and your party will enjoy the quickness and alacrity you pump out for any elite mobs or bosses. On the other hand, your buffing ability is worthless for just normal clearing, so most of your play will be grouping up mobs with focus so that everyone else can kill them for you.

Even running with another person, I often want to play another class so that I can actually contribute the majority of the time in open world. The only thing stopping me really is that all my world completion is on Mesmer, so it would bug me if I don’t complete the new stuff there too. We’ll see how well that resolve holds in the future.

I pretty much agree with this except the bolded part. It’s not that mesmer is superb in instances more that it’s tangfastic in parties. Doing story instances alone is as you describe a miserable experience. The alacrity, quickness and support is nice for fractals and dungeons but it’s kind of overkill I feel as even 4 good players trivialise both of them since the HoT creep without a chrono.

Also you really haven’t done mapping on any other character!?

Really funny seeing that but also kind of saddening too. The game has become mostly a rotation game where you run in, do your rotation and then bug out if you’re not winning. I guess a lot of that is muscle memory at that level but still it’s disheartening to see that the game is so faced paced there’s no careful playing and countering.

You just throw each piece into the forge with a gift of excessive gold, gift of PvE grind mastery and a perfectly crafted unobtainium jewel and you upgrade that single piece.

OK so it’s not out yet. I would guess it will come when they figure out how they’re going to allow us to upgrade the mistforged weapons and possibly be similar in how you upgrade them.

Peppel.9736:

@joneirikb

agree 100% with you! We are also T1 (EU) but only since this linking and we hardly play. All what we want:

- roaming (take keeps, tower and camps – ppt),
- small scale fights with guild groups

I moved my BF’s acc to RoF, ok lvl 34 in wvw .. but it’s more fun to play there! However, this should not be the purpose of a game

Please, Anet: Relink us as soon as possible, not in 1 months. Give us a place / home in a low tier.

Thing is Tinks I and many other more experienced players on WSR absolutely detested RoF by the end of our linking. The decent players I could name on one hand but it was very clear to me why they were a higher server than us pre linking, pure numbers. The amount of people just sitting there not reporting enemies attacking somewhere, building paper siege was driving just as many people out of WvW as this T1 blobfest.

A silver linking might help but I doubt it, many just want to go back to being a single server even if we end up absolute bottom. At least we are all bottom together.

OriOri.8724:

tobascodagama.2961:

Ananeos.4587:

Just to prove my point, the latest Living Season episode featured a kill room where waves upon waves of normal mobs and then a boss that spawns infinite waves until you kill it. You had to defend yourself and the object. If you died you failed the achievement and you had to replay the entire episode all over again.

How are mesmers supposed to deal with this?

“Restart from checkpoint” spawns you back in the room with full health but doesn’t reset the boss mob’s HP. So that’s how I did it.

That said… This is far from the hardest fight in the game, but it’s a perfect case in point. They clearly expect players to focus the boss mob while cleaving the adds. But because our cleave sucks, we have to deal with adds that stack up faster than we can kill them, which quickly becomes overwhelming. And because our personal DPS sucks, we can’t kill the boss fast enough to avoid the adds stacking up on us, either. And because the adds and boss both drop persistent AoEs, dragging out the fight as long as we have to quickly leaves no room on the floor to stand.

Every LS release seems to include at least one of these fights. They’re not “hard”, they’re just designed and built in a way that plays to all of Mesmer’s weaknesses. It’s cheap as hell, and I’m sick of it.

Sums up my experience with the fight. I went down twice (once during the monkey because I didn’t expect him to hit me for nearly as hard as he did, he downed me in one hit from ~80% hp, was just not expecting it). The earlier waves were easy, if tedious. They took a while but presented no real threat. The boss however, we just cannot kill the boss fast enough before the floor turns completely to lava. I got in one or two of those water orb things to clear it and it still wasn’t enough because of his spawns which just added more and more lava fonts everywhere. The time those are up needs to be seriously reduced, and the spawns in the boss phase should not be spawning their own lava fonts on top of the boss’. Its just a painful kittening instance to solo as a mesmer, let alone get the achievement

Oh you poor thing, he wasn’t meaning that, it’s something further on in the story.

Malediktus.3740:

Cameron.6215:

Malediktus.3740:

Cameron.6215:

Malediktus.3740:

Or make it available for pvp season tickets in a tab only unlocked after reaching legend

Maybe, but that would be a tad bit too easy imo

They plan to make legend harder in future. Also it would be stupid to limit the reward to 5 people per season.

Nah scarcity adds value

5 per season would make it more rare than a chak egg worth 10k gold (people would probably pay more, but 10k is the trading post cap). And there are 18 pieces of this armor to collect

Pretty sure he said it in direct response to you because I seem to remember you were singing that tune about the aetherblade path weapon skins.

Course he might not have intended that awesome wit but I like to believe in the best of people to begin with.

Joxer.6024:

apharma.3741:

Joxer.6024:

Stuff

your stuff

WOW!! Thanks for that! That’s the kind of info I was hoping for and you nailed it. Shame though really but now I know…time to put up the lil Chrono til something happens in a positive way.
Thanks again! Cheers!

I wouldn’t put chrono away completely, it’s more than serviceable for boss trains, great for JPs and does well in WvW/PvP in condition builds. Additionally they are as I said an integral part of raids but you only need 1. Being able to reroll chrono when needed is very helpful and is one thing I was having trouble finding when I started leading raids. Now I have about 4 or 5 people who can play chrono on an evening.

Also I had to replace your quote with the word stuff as I hit the 5000 limit.

Dhemize.8649:

apharma.3741:

Lol, less of that annoying terrain. Yeah who wants to think tactically and use awareness of their surroundings when we can fight on flat boring surfaces.

I’d love it if the arena was bigger and you could add terrain, different elevations and thin walls to LoS behind. Right now it’s boring and the few features you can put in are very big pullers.

You know you can add stuff to the arena, right?

Last I was messing around with it you could only put in turrets which no-one wants and pretty big pillers that take up way too much room. They might have changed it but I’ve not had a mess around in it for a while.

messiah.1908:

but what does it means what he saying

he used moa+blink+F5 to reduce the after cast . but i didnt notice anything
if i use moa and weapon stow i cancel the moa and not the after cast
same with healing skill

check his vid and tell me what am i missing

No what he did was cast CS while in moa aftercast which meant it counted the moa as if it was cast in CS. If you slow down the video you will see the golem turns into a moa, the signet appears above his head, then he hits CS so it goes on cool down during CS. When he comes out of CS he has Moa again.

The point behind that is people see CS and think “Ah he’s going to moa me, I’ll dodge!” but this trick moas the target then CS mote appears during aftercast when they are already a Moa.

No idea what he’s talking about with the heal though.

Joxer.6024:

Stuff

Ok so our clones do minimal to almost nonexistent DPS except in condition builds. Condition builds gain a lot more because 1 stack of bleed, burn etc all do the same damage as yours as it scales off your condition damage.

Phantasms do a lot more direct damage and with various traits can do a decent amount of condition damage, for example duelists discipline and pistol phantasms. 3 DPS phantasms like with sword or pistol can account for about 50% of a power mesmers sustained DPS.

As for how it fairs in PvE, that’s subjective and heavily dependent on what you’re doing and where you are.

Orr:
Mesmer
Here you can use a greatsword, mirrorblade then mind wrack and most normal risen will be dead. The vets might need a few follow up hits maybe a phantasm summon but generally ok. However there are tons of mobs and you have a minimum of 10s CD on this so you’ll hardly be carving a path through the hordes. If you group them up to AoE shatter it can help but you still do terrible damage between shatters even with sword.

Events you also lack the AoE to really tag things, you can drop wells however be aware they don’t do particularly good damage either and you can end up not qualifying as tagged the mob to get loot when you have event trains up.

Guardian
So the guardian can burst the mobs too with sword to teleport to them dropping a symbol and a few hits. Symbol has 5 targets hit, sword 3 and both hit with a good punch. It won’t burst as quick as a mesmer however the sword auto is significantly stronger than the mesmers so is doing more damage between targets. They also have more damage mods in their traits so will be buffing it considerably too.

Events, well it’s a bit biased using guards for this, needless to say they are top of tagging events, whip out your staff, press 1, drop traps where mobs spawn. Other classes do this well though like engies, necros, eles, warriors, jalis revs so they aren’t the only ones that have super easy tag options.

Dungeons, Fractals, non-raid instances
Mesmer
In parties your best option is to buff them than to go for max damage you can do tbh. Solo things can range from mild annoyance to incredibly frustrating. In a DPS build a lot of things will die before you can summon your phantasms so for trash shatter burst is best but 10s is an awful long time to wait be doing minimal damage in instances.

For bosses this is where you can shine best in a DPS build, they go on long enough to summon all 3 phantasms and for them to get to max DPS. You have utilities to allow party support via cleanse, reflects, stability etc and you have some nice suitability via blurred frenzy. However phantasms are half your DPS so anything that will make them despawn due to the target disappearing, going out of range or simply massive AoE damage like cannons at Mia Trin will set you back. Additionally anywhere where you need a unique buff to hurt something you will get shafted as a mesmer as phantasms don’t benefit. A prime example is Glint’s Lair in Living Story Season 2.

Guardian
Cleaves through mobs, trash, everything. When faced with bosses has a DPS spike then settles down to it’s moderate rotation while providing various defensive buffs to the party. Provides group utility on par with core mesmer but no unique buffs off note. Doesn’t suffer from aforementioned mechanics problems but can lose DPS if boss moves out of AoE symbols/traps.

Raids.
Mesmer
Unparalleled support, can keep 100% quickness on 10 people and a splash of alacrity too isn’t bad. Plenty of defensive skills to block damage and distortion share for when people can’t/won’t dodge a mechanic that otherwise would down them. Brings reflects, cleanses, heals and does decent break bar damage to boot.

Is probably the worst DPS class to bring to a raid because of it’s mechanics as mentioned with bosses above.

Guardian
Not the best DPS but certainly not the worst, kind of middle of the pack. Offers great utility though and can generate quickness with the elite however is pretty much outdone as a healer by druid and tank by mesmer as it doesn’t supply unique DPS buffs. With a hammer build it can keep 100% protection up for the party which is nice. There’s no reason to choose one specifically but no reason to kick them either.

As for Fay, he’s known as Pyro, short for Pyroatheist. He’s been around since well before I joined GW2 and was a big community contributer of builds, information and help along with others. He doesn’t play GW2 as much last I heard and pretty much moved to Blade and Soul where he’s part of mesmer refugees which should speak volumes about how they feel ANet has handled mesmer over the years.

Lol, less of that annoying terrain. Yeah who wants to think tactically and use awareness of their surroundings when we can fight on flat boring surfaces.

I’d love it if the arena was bigger and you could add terrain, different elevations and thin walls to LoS behind. Right now it’s boring and the few features you can put in are very big pullers.

To be honest I think it depends on the situation. If you have the thief on the ropes then by all means stand in black powder to deny stealth, if the thief is fairly healthy then you are just making backstab easier for them by running over.

Having said that I almost never stand in it as a power mesmer due to the latter and that it will blind me for CC which is much more useful for denying stealth. Other classes I play like DD core ele I find it’s best to AoE the area to deter repeated HS, course a decent thief won’t BP combo within easy reach of you often.

Fay.2357:

apharma.3741:

To be honest mesmer does have one thing going for it, has the easiest and possibly highest lazy DPS on world bosses. Summon 3 warlocks and auto attack if traited Dom, duel and illusions for buffing phantasms to the max.

Ofc I wouldn’t say this is something to be encouraged though…

I mean, it’s better than anything else we can do…

It’s better than what a lot of other classes will do auto attacking too, classic bearbows, staff guards, bow warriors. Hell 90% of the world boss train is ranged players now and those warlocks hit hard with all the conditions.

Sure it’s not better when people make an effort but the last time I saw people making an effort was new shatterer and I was in the first no fly shatterer where we discovered the achievement was bugged.

To be honest mesmer does have one thing going for it, has the easiest and possibly highest lazy DPS on world bosses. Summon 3 warlocks and auto attack if traited Dom, duel and illusions for buffing phantasms to the max.

Ofc I wouldn’t say this is something to be encouraged though…

Fay.2357:

If you have an experienced and good tank, wing 3 should be by far the easiest wing. Wing 2 terminates at Matthias, by far the hardest raid boss. Wing 1 doesn’t have any particularly hard bosses, but they’re all fairly challenging.

Wing 3 has two very easy encounters, keep construct is a rather straightforward fight, and Xera has almost 100% of the difficulty loaded on the tank, not the party.

Hardest parts of Xera:
Using leylines
People coordinating when teleported
Rez bug

If you have party members who are proactive you shouldn’t have any problems, it’s the ones that don’t speak up that I find are problematic as they don’t say what they’re going to do when teleported.

Well it does look nice, I guess someone cracked the whip?

Black powder is the pistol 5 skill, blinding powder is the utility that stealths you and is a blast finisher….

It is supposed to but I have seen people disappear when they go down and I immediately get out of combat. Didn’t count as a kill as no loot or XP given. Dunno how they do it but there is a way it doesn’t count.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

It sucks but thives should know by now not to even bother with shadow refuge, and I don’t mean because of revealed I mean the amount of aoe/cc since hot. Blinding powder is much better if you want s stealth utility.

To be honest given the amount of dodges thief gets from Daredevil it’s not like they need stealth more than DP provides.

OriOri.8724:

apharma.3741:

Fay.2357:

Ranael.6423:

The only time story instances took me forever to finish was when I played Chrono. The rest of the time the story instances were done in a comparable time as other characters. I won’t tell it is exactly the same time but it did not seem much longer. I even cleared solo the Chak nest for the achiev (this time I was playing condi), but it bugged because one chak was encased in the textures

You’re definitely playing the other classes wrong then. Every class other than Mesmer (with the possible exception of ranger) will clear through instances and such drastically faster due to much higher damage on skills, and sustained damage that isn’t tied to long cooldown and fragile phantasms.

You also forgot they don’t get kitten by fight mechanics like the facets in Glints lair. There are other areas where mesmer gets shafted too but tbh I stopped doing story on mesmer because it was so bad compared to other classes.

? The facets were pretty easy fights tbh

There was one where you need a buff to be able to hurt it, none of your phantasms got the buff last time I played it so you had to rely on your own personal attacks. They may have changed it as I haven’t done those stories since release and certainly have had no inclination to go back on mesmer.

Fay.2357:

Ranael.6423:

The only time story instances took me forever to finish was when I played Chrono. The rest of the time the story instances were done in a comparable time as other characters. I won’t tell it is exactly the same time but it did not seem much longer. I even cleared solo the Chak nest for the achiev (this time I was playing condi), but it bugged because one chak was encased in the textures

You’re definitely playing the other classes wrong then. Every class other than Mesmer (with the possible exception of ranger) will clear through instances and such drastically faster due to much higher damage on skills, and sustained damage that isn’t tied to long cooldown and fragile phantasms.

You also forgot they don’t get kitten by fight mechanics like the facets in Glints lair. There are other areas where mesmer gets shafted too but tbh I stopped doing story on mesmer because it was so bad compared to other classes.

Ranael.6423:

apharma.3741:

Ranael.6423:

I am not sure everyone has the same definition of open PvE, that is, random mobs around the corner which you need to kill to fill the event bar.
I don’t get the impression that mesmer lacks in term of burst damage. I always go around with clone on dodge and double clone utility so I can spam my shatter with 3 illusions even before the mobs started to move towards me. With Sw/focus you can play the invuln burst then move them thanks to the field of focus 4…. I even play the might on GS attack traits, pop 3 clones and when might is high, shatter to maximize the F1 damage. It goes as fast as many other profession with a unique difference that mobs don’t jump on me because they are more attracted by illusion. I spend much less time healing than on my Ele when played solo.

You’re not going to like this but it needs to be said, if this is indeed true then you’re just bad at ele and this comes from someone with 3.5k+ hours on ele. On staff ele most mobs die in 2 hits, for D/X 2 lightening whips will do the trick, no might stacking needed and that’s without talking about air overload. It’s at the point where I use the glyph heal not because I need a heal but because it gives permanent swiftness in air.

In addition if you truly are using the GS trait to stack might you will be waiting a few seconds before shattering as you described. During that time most other classes have already killed the mobs and moved on. You are also playing a shatter build, even assuming 100% alacrity and illusions line you’re looking g at a 7.5s cool down on your burst while most other classes will kill an extra 1-3 mobs while you’re plinking away with attacks that do half what other professions do.

I simply say that for what is required in open PVE there is no big difference in moving forward or completing events with a mesmer. I may be bad at Ele or you bad at mesmer, who cares… do you really feel impaired with mesmer progression in open world PVE, a.k.a loot party by following a train or chain killing weak mobs to fill an event bar?

Anyone that has played mesmer for any period of time over a few hours will have noticed the hilariously poor AoE a mesmer has compared to many other classes and I’m not even comparing to guardian lootstick trains either.

There’s only maybe 1 class that I would consider worse than mesmer for what you are saying, ranger. Every other class either has extreme cleave with good damage and high attack speed or pulsing AoE on low cool downs. Sadly I will need to clarify this, by low I mean a few second cool downs not chrono 20s+ well cool downs.

You go to the CD event train and what do you see? Flamethrower engies, lootstick guards, staff eles, staff and well necros, Jalis revs and maybe the occasional thief and warrior.

Edit: This is without going over the other down sides mesmers have like poor sustained damage, sustained damage usually being single target, targets in fights disappearing removing our phantasms and thus our sustained damage or the relatively high ramp up time for them compared to every other class.

Ranael.6423:

I am not sure everyone has the same definition of open PvE, that is, random mobs around the corner which you need to kill to fill the event bar.
I don’t get the impression that mesmer lacks in term of burst damage. I always go around with clone on dodge and double clone utility so I can spam my shatter with 3 illusions even before the mobs started to move towards me. With Sw/focus you can play the invuln burst then move them thanks to the field of focus 4…. I even play the might on GS attack traits, pop 3 clones and when might is high, shatter to maximize the F1 damage. It goes as fast as many other profession with a unique difference that mobs don’t jump on me because they are more attracted by illusion. I spend much less time healing than on my Ele when played solo.

You’re not going to like this but it needs to be said, if this is indeed true then you’re just bad at ele and this comes from someone with 3.5k+ hours on ele. On staff ele most mobs die in 2 hits, for D/X 2 lightening whips will do the trick, no might stacking needed and that’s without talking about air overload. It’s at the point where I use the glyph heal not because I need a heal but because it gives permanent swiftness in air.

In addition if you truly are using the GS trait to stack might you will be waiting a few seconds before shattering as you described. During that time most other classes have already killed the mobs and moved on. You are also playing a shatter build, even assuming 100% alacrity and illusions line you’re looking g at a 7.5s cool down on your burst while most other classes will kill an extra 1-3 mobs while you’re plinking away with attacks that do half what other professions do.

You can’t look at this only from a single match up or just from match up to match up views. You need to look at it in terms of how the VP system shows your servers coverage and ability to be dominant for the majority of the match up. If the VP was in match up calculations we hopefully would see less blow out match ups as servers migrate to bands where their coverage meets others.

There’s always exceptions and anomalies though, you could get a match up with 1 server having a strong night cap dominating 4 skirmishes, another with a dominant 4 skirmishes at prime and pulling a close lead in early and late prime while a third server wins the off period in early and midday.

Sthenith.5196:

Yeah, those mobs taking so much damage from confusion by spamming that auto attack while running round like newbs…

With a decent condi build (2K+ condi dmg) paired with staff – scepter/focus you’ll apply more then enough bleeds/burns/confusion and vulnerability. Mesmers aren’t useless, it’s how you use them that counts.

On a side note, i love my Chrono equally as much as all my other classes (got em all).

See here’s the thing, my ele does 4k+ lava fonts and about the same for auto attacks, solo, no real might generating. Most of my classes easily do that level of damage without a party for buffs and it doesn’t exactly take much set up and can be continued without waiting on cool downs.

Heaven forbid you play another class with 25 might, fury, GotL stacks, frost spirit etc and get 13k meteors, 8-9k fireballs/lava fonts.

Sparks The Rescue.5043:

Exciton.8942:

Sparks The Rescue.5043:

I don’t think you realize the difference of skill level between general ranked PvP and the level of play in the LAN tournaments. AA are definitely top tier PvP’ers.

I will say, however, that the classes that each respective player of AA is best at has fallen out of the meta and they haven’t been able to adjust to the HoT/mesmer comp. Chaithh had to fall back to engi, and they put up two great matches, but they are rigid when it comes to multi classing and that has definitely hurt them since HoT.

In the first season final, rnk 55 has to have Misha rerolling to necro. But they still managed to beat Astral who has probably the best necromancer in the world.

So I don’t think meta change is the excuse of not performing. They are obviously not as committed as the European teams. I guess lack of strong contenders is the biggest issue. They have slowly fallen down to PZ level recently.

Misha re-rolling necro is my point. Other teams can multi class and they benefit from it. AA are stuck with their comp, pretty much, because each respective player has much more skill with their main. Ie, Chaithh having to roll back to engi from druid. They have to play thief comp, which is at a disadvantage in the meta, because if Toker rolls to Rev, what is Phanta going to roll to? Already have wakey as ele. And nos is one of the best necros in the game. They are just in tough situations when it comes to adjusting to the meta, and it has definitely hurt them.

That’s a lack of planning or hoping ANet gave them a favourable meta. They have had months to play different classes and even different roles, phanta could have picked up druid or mesmer and let Toker be the thief or revenant as he’s very good within the role. I also don’t think Toker was that bad it’s just thief doesn’t dominate the +1 decap role like it used to. He was certainly minimising the enemy point gain from his decaps and forcing cool downs out from classes between nodes.

I feel their problem was running rev and thief as they had 2 classes in the same role while most other comps had team fighters/team support with the rev as the power damage and spiker.

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

Kolly.9872:

When even a world tournment is not enough as a proof that thief is in the worst spot regarding gw2 balance. When even the few of the best thieves rerolled to other classes. Well than it’s a lost fight anyway.
People will never admit that thief needs badly help in the current state.

The problem is no-one wants to return to a meta where a thief completely dictates how the match goes through excessive mobility. While thief may not be the star of the show it once was in PvP it is unquestionably the highest DPS on medium/small targets in PvE while having easier rotations and OK support to boot. In WvW they are still great in small groups ganking people and running away only really suffering in serve which many other classes suffer from too. This means it’s unlikely to see too much change as it isn’t hurting in all game modes unlike at the launch of HoT where it was not very well represented across the board.

More buffs to thief is not the answer either, a good long look at diversifying it and making it about more than just damage, stealth and mobility is what is needed.

Thieves are Op, revs are fine. Ok lol.

I didn’t say revs are fine, don’t be that guy.

The sum up of your message does. Any buffs to thief would be a problem, meanwhile revs are thieves on crack and everyone is fine with it~

No, I didn’t mention rev or any other class at all. Don’t make a straw man argument about me being fine with revs or that buffs to thieves is a problem as I said neither of them. I said the answer wasn’t to buff thief but to diversify thief, a big difference.

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

Kolly.9872:

When even a world tournment is not enough as a proof that thief is in the worst spot regarding gw2 balance. When even the few of the best thieves rerolled to other classes. Well than it’s a lost fight anyway.
People will never admit that thief needs badly help in the current state.

The problem is no-one wants to return to a meta where a thief completely dictates how the match goes through excessive mobility. While thief may not be the star of the show it once was in PvP it is unquestionably the highest DPS on medium/small targets in PvE while having easier rotations and OK support to boot. In WvW they are still great in small groups ganking people and running away only really suffering in serve which many other classes suffer from too. This means it’s unlikely to see too much change as it isn’t hurting in all game modes unlike at the launch of HoT where it was not very well represented across the board.

More buffs to thief is not the answer either, a good long look at diversifying it and making it about more than just damage, stealth and mobility is what is needed.

Thieves are Op, revs are fine. Ok lol.

I didn’t say revs are fine, don’t be that guy.

Dirame.8521:

How do you deal with large groups of enemies as a mesmer? Simple! Play condi. Condi hits everything in the area, you apply 2 conditions that the enemy will always take full damage from and you’re not dependent on a phantasm to do damage.

Yeah, those mobs taking so much damage from confusion by spamming that auto attack while running round like newbs…