Guild Wars 2

So today I went with a friend to practise on PU condi mesmers in PvP as a thief. After a little getting into thief and used to it the fights were going on for 8mins with an end only in sight if I went aggressive but usually would kill me because I was out of CDs.

This was my own fault as I coulda just moved away, reset and come back and that’s not what this is about.

I hit upon the idea of if you used shadowshots unblockable properties with basilisk venom you should be able to blind, interrupt or at least stun the Mesmer using Illusionary Counter. However this didn’t happen. They blocked the shot and then the words missed came up for the counter but 5stacks of torment were still applied.

Can anyone confirm if this is behaving correctly or am I missing something?

To be fair Jana I find the skill lag is what deterred me from running thief in a zerg, those 3 way SM fights with AM, ER, DL or AG make anything but 1 spam guard unplayable.

Some of these reactions are hilarious. Here’s why.

PvE

1. No-one will ever use this because the gyro isn’t stealthed and so will aggro mobs, usually hitting party members, getting them in combat and defeating the point of a stealth skip.
2. The gyro doesn’t follow close enough that you stay in the stealth ring while moving.
3. No-one will use the toolbelt skill unless it is absolutely required to unstealth enemies, even then revenant will become meta and can do this at low to no DPS loss.
4. Mortar kit is more useful and orbital strike is part of the power meta.
5. Supply Crate is meta for burngineer in PvE.
6. Blasting smoke fields is faster and thief not only blasts but provides them better than anyone.

PvP

1. Both Elixir X and Supply Drop are much, much better options.
2. Only reason I see to ever take this is if stealth players are REALLY giving you a hard time. As in you’re against a stealth heavy comp.
3. Very few players in a high skill MMR bracket will take this gyro.

WvW

1. This is where the reveal will see use as stealth is and always has been stupid in this mode due to lack of PvP constraints such as point capture and time.
2. The actual gyro will be a poor mans thief, again due to it not being stealthed.
3. It’ll be useful for ganking (stack stealth, blow up gyro) but then having a thief with you would allow for supply crate and it’s insane lockdown abilities.
4. This game mode is where a lot of the stealth complaints come from.

Jana.6831:

Edit: It’s pretty hard to find a compromise actually. I think the best really would be to redesign Thief from scratch.

I think this is top contender for the most well thought out and sensible comment in the thread and no, I’m not being sarcastic.
A thief redesign could allow for thieves to trade mobility/stealth in varying amounts for point holding and team/small scale fighting prowess. Right now you can’t as a lot of that is in some way built into the weapons themselves which always makes the thief more mobile than any other profession with good to great disengage.

As a bandaid though they could change a lot of SA “while in stealth” to be upon entering stealth. You would always get most of the bonuses of the SA line even if you got revealed. It temporarily locking you out of the benefits of a trait line can’t really be avoided but the damage is lessened. Will also be an indirect buff to Jana’s favourite playstyle.

Jana.6831:

apharma.3741:

And before a thief main comes and says “but thief doesn’t have a bunker” not yet, let’s wait on daredevil though as it’s clear everything with the specialisation patch was balanced initially against the elite specs.

Now it makes sense, now I understand why thief in its current state is so weak – and all other classes are that strong, it’s because their elites will drag them down, power wise, right?

It’s missing a key piece, the elite spec. Once that is out and can actually be played a lot more everything can be tuned up or down for all the builds which are using low stealth.

I mean the beta weekend is nice and all and the feedback helps but you can’t test everything. All the interactions between the elite spec, different traits within a class and with other classes will make a ton of difference to many classes. I expect a tuning down right across the board for all classes when a lot of interactions can be seen.

Sviel.7493:

I must respectfully disagree with your base proposition. It is not a good idea to have the most skilled players in the game shoehorned into one or two class choices in order to shine. That means that the skill ceilings for the classes should be somewhat normalized, which likely means raising some and lowering others. Would be tough, but I feel like that’s what we pay game devs to do…make good games.

A second note, I don’t think that one can really say thieves have the highest skill cap. Yes, you can do some great things with them, but the stealth mechanic always causes a skill cap to plummet because it largely removes the opponent from the equation. In cases where there is stealth, burst damage and cc all in one combined with multiple leaps (some of which are stun breakers)…that’s too many tools that the opponent cannot reasonably answer to to say that it is a high skill cap class and deserves to be more powerful for it. A thief without stealth would be high skill cap, a thief with stealth is just hard to respond to.

That said, I don’t like that the recent changes seem to make the least interesting thief builds the favorites. I’m no fan of backstab.

I can’t say anything about engis though as I haven’t played much on them.

I agree with this over the OP and can add to the engineer part as I do play it also in WvW.

Power engineer is more risk and was so before the spec patch as they were very weak to conditions. This has been shored up some what due to the revamped alchemy line. Additionally they have access to some of the most amounts of immunity/blocks with tool kit and elixir S and the alchemy line. Not complaining just saying, which certainly gives them a lot more cushions to surviving burst than other classes like thief.

Condi engineer was not very high risk and incredibly rewarding, still is due to IP and the way they have so many conditions to cover the damaging ones. This is playing to the engineers strengths though and smart cleansing from the enemy team will render it fairly ineffective and unless the engineers team is built to overload with conditions it’ll be fairly weak in team fights.

I wouldn’t say skill cap is class specific though, I would say it’s build specific within reason obviously. Some builds have much higher risks and rewards but the meta builds will usually be the highest reward for the least risk, relatively.

“TL;DR
Thief/engineer take the most skill to play, therefore they should have the potential to be dominant(See highest skill caps) over classes which require significantly less skill to be competitive at”

I do not agree with this at all both as a false statement and in the fact that even if it were true it would make for an incredibly boring game.

All classes should be relatively balanced at max performance but within their role. For example thief and Mesmer could have a bunker spec but most other bunkers outshine it however those two completely outshine those other classes in a +1 and point decap/control aspect and are balanced against each other there.

And before a thief main comes and says “but thief doesn’t have a bunker” not yet, let’s wait on daredevil though as it’s clear everything with the specialisation patch was balanced initially against the elite specs.

Misguided.5139:

apharma.3741:

Saint Jabberwocky.5098

Lol. I have been eyeballing Juggernaut ever since playing with the hammer last beta weekend. Getting a precursor is a pain though so I’m looking forward to the new paths for them they are adding.

As someone who has made The Juggernaut you do not know pain till you’ve had to make a vial of quicksilver. Knowing full well that every single one of those silver doubloons is only worth that ludicrous amount of gold because of the juggernaut, otherwise it would be a couple of silver and junk.

I’ve had 3 level 21s parked in Sharkmaw for the last couple of months. making progress, albeit slowly. I’m in no hurry, though

Fortunately with the new map rewards for completing events in said maps then they should be much easier to get in a timely fashion. Sure you won’t get them all in a day but I dare say over the course of a month or two you can get them without having to grind too hard.

Same for charged lodestones that the devs keep putting in everything….

It’s useful if your build has no condi cleanses because you’re bringing portal and not running inspiration.

However I would never get it for WvW, at over 100g for a sigil it’s just stupid. Fortunately its dirt cheap to use in PvP =P

Saint Jabberwocky.5098

Lol. I have been eyeballing Juggernaut ever since playing with the hammer last beta weekend. Getting a precursor is a pain though so I’m looking forward to the new paths for them they are adding.

As someone who has made The Juggernaut you do not know pain till you’ve had to make a vial of quicksilver. Knowing full well that every single one of those silver doubloons is only worth that ludicrous amount of gold because of the juggernaut, otherwise it would be a couple of silver and junk.

Fay.2357:

Actually, I’m curious now. With permanent quickness and alacrity, melee range scepter very well might be higher dps than sword. Since sword doesn’t benefit at all from alacrity (blurred frenzy is like. .2% dps increase over the auto if I remember my frifox stats properly) scepter gains significant headway in the form of confusing images.

summons frifox for a dps test in BWE3

Whoa….you mean I might have a use for meteorlogicus in dungeons outside of my guardian!?

santenal.1054:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

apharma.3741:

Illusionary counter
This is when a Mesmer goes into a block animation and raises their sceptre up, do not hit them and just focus on killing illusions or just type /laugh.

Just as additional information:
If you accidentially hit into the block, you can still dodge the torment application.

The illusionary counter block is hard to spot especially when its an asure mesmer. Dodging the torment is a good idea but since you cant tell weither you just hit the illusionary block or an aegis from prismatic understanding its not really an option. Making illusionary counter more visually noticeable would solve alot.

To be fair this is not a mesmer specific issue. There are lots of people that exploit smallest asura models being hard to read. This is why we have standard models in PvP. I see a lot of smallest asura on engineers, mesmers and eles in general and certain forgiving builds on other classes as if they need every last bit of advantage they can get.

It also goes the other way, many exploit massive charrs with huge back skins to hide the small asuras and look like there’s more than there really are in larger scale fights.

To be clear I’m not meaning exploit in the way ANet would class it as an unintended effect but referring to what I consider underhanded tactics.

The real problem with PU condi mesmers is that the people fighting and losing to them have either got very poor cleansing or do not actually understand the class they are fighting and thus do not know how to counter it, possibly both.

Here’s a simple “How to beat PU condi”

Shatters
Just like all mesmer builds you want to avoid these, cry of frustration is the strong one and on a 20s cool down. Kill clones, preferably at a bit of a range. If they all start running to you then cleave them out or dodge them.

Confusing images
This is the big purple beam. If you dodge as soon as you see the beam hit you you will only have 1 stack of confusion and dodge the rest.

Illusionary counter
This is when a Mesmer goes into a block animation and raises their sceptre up, do not hit them and just focus on killing illusions or just type /laugh.

Smart Cleansing
You can reduce the damage drastically by not using skills and limiting movement if you did get hit. PU condi Mesmer has poor cover conditions especially in dire stats. Cleanse when stacks are 3 or higher, preferably from both torment and confusion if duration is high. Also -36-40% food to counter their food is mandatory.

That’s pretty much it, the clones at most will put minor amounts of torment on you, which because you’re cleaving out will be very small amounts of damage. You may get small amounts of confusion from being blinded but again not spamming skills solves this. Don’t worry if you do get hit by a shatter, cleanse, kite, LoS and put some distance between you, heal up, engage or disengage.

Yes it’s incredibly frustrating playing on mesmer in PvE for the reasons above. Especially when classes like guardian do 90% of what a Mesmer does, are much more straight forward, pay off more and do more damage.

I very rarely play Mesmer in PvE because of this and would love for this to change.

T raw.4658:

apharma.3741:

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

1st There isn’t a class in this game that a thief has a 50% chance to win 1v1. Are there crappy builds that a meta thief can achieve 50% win rate against….Yes, but they are crappy builds thus don’t count due to them losing 100% of the time to all the other classes meta builds.

Reread OP’s post especially this part

Not so much to my surprise, there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games…with only 1 of them have 2 thief’s not counting myself. This adds up to 18 thiefs out of a potential 900

Only 1 match had 2 thieves other than himself. Using that information you are looking at best 18/500 which is a whopping 4%. Going by rule of thumb we can even look at the bigger picture considering that each team should utilize 1 thief per team. that would have made the numbers 100/500 and 200/1000.

4% vs the supposed 20% is quite telling on how UP a thief really is.

1st thing: I said “no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.” I did not mention classes, I was encompassing builds as well as classes. Marauder ele couldn’t possibly be a thing because, yeah thief and mesmer would eat it for breakfast and DD cele is just so ridiculous atm. It could fight most other meta builds outside of DD ele fairly well so it isn’t a “crappy build” either.

2nd thing: Lets assume we’re working by the rule of thumb that anyone that is a thief switches if they see another thief. This means we have to calculate thief popularity by games not players.

“there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games” which means thief representation is 17%.

However my complaint wasn’t the numbers. I was disputing the numbers, which is why I said:

“you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.
Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.”

If the OP was to do this again as I said above you would have a much better idea of whether thief was UP as it would be present in less than 12.5% of games assuming all classes were balanced with lower representation meaning it is UP.

Edit: To add I am not saying thief is UP or OP or balanced. I am disputing the way in which the whole data collection process. The OP played a thief and so would have to discount themselves and their team from any data collection due to the popular saying of “You don’t need 2 thieves on a team”.

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

Zenith.7301:

Just remove illusions off the aggro table and give them aoe avoidance in PvE (immunity to aoe/cleaves).

For WvW give illusions 70-80% aoe resistance instead. If you want to dispel illusions, you should single target them, not do a single greatsword swing that gets rid of clones immediately let alone grenade throws.

They don’t have to remove them from the aggro table just do something like this with phantasms/clones/minions/turrets/pets/anything I missed. Instead of half make it take 0 damage and jobs done. If you sit and let the companions do the work they get aggro and get killed if you’re keeping aggro or teammates are then they stay up a lot more.

This would then make iDefender slightly better but still it taking 50% of the damage makes it die very quickly. Perhaps a rework to something like the 55 monk Protective Spirit would be better where it limits damage to 10% of your max health but takes that damage.

Take a warrior at 20k health, 10% would be 2k, iDefender health is 12k so that’s 6 hits it can take, but on squishies it would help them live a lot longer as they have just shy of 12k health in zerker. It would not be able to tank the damage for the whole team and make them live forever as essentially them being hit by 2 AoEs would kill the defender but it would help with the odd mistake.

Kraljevo.2801:

Even though I don’t have problems fighting those PU scrubs (it just takes some time), I never understood why they kept the extra stealth duration at 100%. Every sane person that watched the specialization livestream knew that it is too much. It also promotes a boring ‘jump in and out of stealth’ play style, which is not mesmer-like at all. As far as I know, mesmers in Guild Wars 1 did not have any stealth.

Mesmer lost every single clone death trait. Which comprised of bleed, cripple, weakness and vulnerability which, 2 are very good damage avoidance conditions for the swiftnessless mesmer.

Now tell me how often PU was ever taken after the addition of extra boons to it? Yeah that’s right, the one and only one clone death build in exactly 1 game mode and it became terrible if more than 5 (competent) people were in the fight.

Before the PU nerf when it applied protection, regen and aegis people could choose it in power roaming builds and some did, even on the OPs server, at the cost of the illusions line (namely IP, IE and celerity). However once the boons became more random its defensive value plummeted to “only use if it’s within easy reach”. Non of this bullkitten about not having enough points, you could easily take it while keeping deceptive evasion, boon removal on shatter, range on blink and shatter damage.

This is why it was buffed because with all the random boons it was an unreliable defensive trait on a class that has poor swiftness to disengage and create distance with.

Zenith.7301:

More or less, it was always obvious PvP was a main focus of the game. They abandoned all PvE content for over 3 years and very few if any class balance decisions were done with PvE in mind.

/bitter over Harmonious Mantras nerf for PvE

I wouldn’t say they abandoned PvE. Look at the PvE traits that are taken, a lot of them you can clearly see it was slanted more towards that area of the game. I’m not just talking about mesmer but all classes, there are very conscious efforts to give damage traits out that will feel strong but the requirements are extremely hard to fulfil in PvP or it’s just not a good idea.

I can see the engineer switching some of these out and in (right tool for the job and all) depending on circumstances but I’ll be honest I don’t see it being much value in PvE as a trait line. Maybe if the hammer has a good coefficient it might make the GM worth picking over tools but I doubt it will prove better than SD for damage and tools for utility. I mean, engineer already has a lot of everything they need, there’s a reason I take it to 50 fractals, it’s because it pumps out so much utility at little cost.

What the…

…oh we have 2 people down and another going down, yeah let’s go rush Lord and win.

Frightlight.3796:

Fay.2357:

Frightlight.3796:

Use the gyro against them you can use gs 2 too hit the gyro and it will bounce and hit the engi and anyone inside

Oh man that’s just a whole different level of beautiful. Any close-range gyro on an engie is a free point blank mirror blade burst without having to be point blank range xD.

Yup just thought I could throw that out there I main engineer I like too think outside the box, adding too this if the engineer has his wits he can counter your mirror blade by using electrowhirl in front of the drone too reflect the mirror blade if it can be reflected I think it can thus creating counterplay for both classes.

Mirror blade is unblockable, so can’t reflect or block. You can however blind and dodge (obviously) and it does have a 0.75s cast time which should be easily seen.

Sadly not seen the size of the stealth bubble but it could be that you can knock people out of it similar to SR. Will have to watch the POI video to really see instead of Dulfy.

I’m getting passive 25% movement speed from chrono, definitely not worried at all. I can finally roam without stealth to get away from Rangers and everything but thieves.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I can feel the salt

Remember when you needed a clone that dies to a stray f*** to use your class mechanic…
Remember when people could rally off said clones…
Remember when mantras were not clunky to use…

Remember when mesmer had its class mechanic rendered obsolete if in a fight with 30 people….
Remember when mesmer had its damage gutted by a stiff breeze from bosses in PvE…

Jana.6831:

Offair.2563:

Instead of reducing stealth they will add more and more and more..

They add skills that reveal but didn’t keep in mind that the basically only way for a thief to survive is to stealth (not to hide but because all survival traits are tied to it) – so what they are currently doing is removing thief from the game.

Edit: Very poor grammar.

Yeah poor thieves, if only they had gap closers and openers, the best mobility in the game, one of the highest vigor up times, lots of blinds, on dodge effects to CC, remove conditions, heal etc being added.

I think daredevil will certainly open up a lot of non stealth builds for thief which is exactly what a lot of thieves have been asking for.

This is why I am so very glad the GW2 balance team do not give any consideration to the forums.

So much lack of information and desire to actually learn and figure out what is happening and how to counter it’s unreal. Especially when people post biased and silly comparisons to make out their class is UP or other classes are OP.

Plok.5873:

Levetty.1279:

Because the Mesmer motto is twice the work for half the results.

From a player enjoying engineer and mesmer class… engineer requires clearly more effort & coordination, sry.

Generally I would not worry about the gyros at all. From the POI vid & the turret balance (aka obliteration) I presume to expect they whole set of gyros will die from one Mirror Blade + Mind Stab.

Also running with many kits offers so much more flexibility and, if just hopping from kit n’s strongest damage ability to kit n+1’s, superior punch.

So don’t expect to be confronted with those gyros alot. I don’t think I will use them, beyond trying, on my main char. And when you do, oh joy, you met an opponent who forsake both flexibility & punch for cute steam-punk gizmos. ^^

I do agree with what you’ve said in some parts here as I do play my engineer over mesmer in PvE (pretty much all classes over Mesmer as its so awkward and frustrating to play) but as others said you missed the other part.

You don’t get as high a reward. Seen really high numbers on jump shot, blunderbuss, acid bomb, freeze grenade, shrapnel, grenade barrage, orbital strike and the auto in grenade kit ain’t to be sneezed at either being a consistent 3.6k and big vuln stacker. That’s without mentioning the massive amount of utility you can get from your 3rd utility slot if you drop flamethrower or the utility that elixir gun brings and how amazing healing turret is.

Mesmer on the other hand, outside of reflects is what? I guess good for portals and that’s it. On trash it can’t summon phantasms as the mob dies before or just after summoning and you didn’t tag it so no loot. Your auto is a lot lower than other classes and so are your other attacks. 10s cool down on your damage shatter so not like you can use it on all trash which leaves you with mantra of pain spamming with sword auto for meaningful damage.

On bosses phantasms are cleaved out and even killed on spawning and that’s without being targeted either completely tanking damage. It can provide support but why bother when a guardian does this and more damage all in zerk without giving up anything and with little to no effort?

There is just no point playing a Mesmer in PvE outside of a record run as all other classes are better and I include ranger and necro in that.

Raven.9603:

• new condis have become available to more classes but condi clearing has stayed relatively static since the dawn of the game.
• +40% and -40% condi duration food is incredibly stupid, and borderline mandatory for successful wvw roaming.
• PU mesmer is waaay overtuned.
• dire gear and perplexity was considered too imbalanced for pvp but the experimental lab rat of wvw seems to be stuck with it.

what to do?

• review the condi clearing capabilities of each class and update them to an acceptable level to combat the current level of condi spam in smaller encounters. at the SAME time, seriously review the ability of group condi cleansing, as the state of shout clearing makes condi’s very weak in group play and that is unacceptable.
• nerf condi +/- duration food. cap it at 15-20%, make condition-type-specific foods buffed to 30%.
• they’ve already stated mesmers are getting nerfed. i know its hard, but nerf smarter not harder. adjusting PU and torch down doesnt mean “nerf them into the ground”. overnerfing is just as bad as overbuffing.
• dire isnt going to get removed. the long term solution here is a condi damage overhaul. lower the base dmg of condition tics but allow them to crit and make ferocity effect the crit tics damage. no more “condi specs only need to make half the investment for the same offensive result” nonsense.

its that easy. sadly, itll never happen.

Dire stats and food don’t exist in PvP which is where it’s balanced around, for good reason I might add. Adjusting conditions for that is very short sighted at least. The only times they add extra conditions which a class doesn’t already have is when the condition build is unviable or very weak.

PU condition in dire stats will generally give out 2 damaging conditions and maybe the odd cover condition, mostly blind but you could get a random bleed from illusions and sharper images. Not likely as you have little such a poor crit rate. Smart players cleanse when stacks get to a certain number and back off/kite when they’re cleanses are on CD.

Bad players run around swinging their melee weapons hoping to kill the mesmer as they walk into the middle of a 3 clone shatter, hit the block and tank mirror images and then cry about how OP it is. I see it all the time, both on my server and others where people just don’t pay attention and get annihilated by the confusion.

To be honest I’d like to be able to play on 2 servers on my main account.

I started on WSR and I have a lot of friends there I’d like to play with again even if it’s only every now and then. I moved to GH because, well, after 3 mass migrations of players it left the server feeling very empty more often especially when you can’t play at the silly times others do.

I’d love to be able to play on both with my main account and not have to get a second account or keep paying transfer costs over and over. They’re certainly never going to be in direct conflict, that’s for sure.

Eme, no offence but that ele you fought has to be the worst ele in existence or using some kind of special snowflake build that is just flat out terrible.

There’s mirror images which 1 dodge can completely negate. After that look out for the shatters and just cleave clones out as they spawn. They have 2.4k health and wet paper for armour, even cele can destroy them with ease.

The only thing left is torment, not from clones, because we’re cleaving them, so it’s just from the block skill. Simple, just don’t attack.

Smart cleansing will result in a draw or at least you both deciding it’s just not worth going at it for 10 mins or more for 1 loot bag.

In PvP I run marauder interrupt mesmer with dom, duelling, chaos with DE for a little extra shatter flavour and MoD with blink and decoy. Time warp usually for elite and traveler runes for running.

I tried running it in WvW but I’m forced to use scholar as there ain’t no way I’m over writing them and, well, when you have pew pew Rangers and a very angry blob running after you not having PU is a death sentence.

So generally I run PU power shatter with scholar runes in WvW 6k mind wrack hits are not uncommon but I have little to no condi cleanse and that’s really only on other glass builds.

Thinking about getting a full set of traveler runes for WvW but with chrono around the corner I might wait it out and run an interrupt chrono build.

Actually didn’t Helseth started using PU condition in high level (last few weeks of Go4) matches…not that it did his team a whole lot of good.

Go watch it and see how much better he would be on power shatter.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

You say you are curious but never say about what? How can I help you? I play on SoR and am currently facing BP and SF… TONS of mesmers. We do have our fair share ourselves. IDK what to say but to me, as well as many people apparently, there is unarguably a very significant increase in the profession visibility on the field no matter the server we have faced.

I do not see PU “occasionally”. It’s, apparently, near mandatory now. Almost a bad running gag actually. People seem to be soooooooo afraid to roam without their stealth it’s ridiculous. I assume my kamikaze roaming style with my zerk staff ele but if I always felt alien before while roaming alone now the feeling is overwhelming when invariably forced to bail in front of pacts of mesmers and thieves. As if they weren’t already super advantaged alone. No, they also have to band together… very sad and annoying.

Yeah I’m ill at the moment so that slipped by, will edit it in.

For me I see PU on mesmers generally because of thieves. As I’ve said many times, Mesmer has very poor swiftness so escaping a thief without stealth won’t happen and 3-4s won’t cut it. You can’t outrun the things and you couldn’t out stealth them either. Roaming as a power Mesmer pre patch was painful. It was possible but you could be easily killed by the many, many thieves out there and they didn’t even need to be skilled to do it.

That’s without mentioning the necessity of being able to escape from a zerg or a bunch of people from the other server coming to outnumber you. Again, without traveler runes there is no way I’m escaping without stealth of a decent duration.

You can’t say mesmer stealth is too much without also saying thief stealth is too much but that’s been there for 3 years solid. Additionally it would be incredibly hard to change it. Please do try roaming as a mesmer without PU and see how “easy” it is without support.

I guess the increase in PU condition mesmer is an NA or upper EU thing as I don’t see it often in any of the servers we fight, but then as I said, those players tend to have a very bad time with the corpse jumping and laughing. Finally, you really need to put down the zerk staff ele, we’ve been over this in the last nerf PU thread, it just isn’t viable atm, seen zerk or close to zerk DD ele with lightening rod be effective though.

Me too, nothing better than blinking straight in front of a rapid fire ranger and shatter bursting them while they eat their own rapid fire.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude can we PLEASE get a timer and some indicator when were out of range of the entry portal?

Running to go port your zerg only to drop a failing portal is so embarrassing…

Can we add this to the good mesmer/bad mesmer list? =P

Maybe with all these pets flying around ANet will do something about how they’re all cleaved out in a second or two by bosses.

Yes you, Robert Gee, I know you’re reading this. Please AoE/cleave immunity for pets unless specifically targeted certainly in PvE would be amazing.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

As for PU, I still scratch my head trying to understand why they felt an already very powerful and viable trait was in need of such a massive buff… Specially knowing the problem stealth represent in at least one of the game mode.

That’s complete and utter bullkitten and you know it. It was viable in precisely one build in the entirety of the game and only because you were going into that line for all the other great condition boosting traits.

You used to be able to pick up PU with power builds for roaming in WvW but when they nerfed the boons to have might and swiftness it became non viable as the defence was unreliable and there was nothing else useful in that line.

It’s at that point where IP became the better choice as 1s invuln on a 42s cool down as well kittenter recharge at 50% health were just far better.

Oh and before you jump on the “he 2v1 people train” it’s a highlight vid. I’ve played on the same server as him in the past he died a lot too. The people, especially the staff 1 spamming guard were simply outplayed.

Just curious about people claiming they’re seeing these mesmers all the time in WvW, whigh servers are these? I’m mid silver EU and while I do see them, we see more SD, DP thieves, trapper thieves, rangers and power shatter mesmers. Sure we occasionally see PU condi roamers but generally they get ganked, corpse jumped and laugh spammed hard. They’re certainly not that prevalent.

Doesn’t even need more than 2 of you to blow them up. Caught one sitting there in the block animation on sceptre and we both had enough time to do the laugh emote. Then we murdered him for having the audacity to think he would stand a chance on that build. Dodge the mirror images and he was powerless as we killed all the clones. Literally he couldn’t do a thing except try to run.

Cynz.9437:

It is really frustrating. You look at mesmers that fill exact same role and they get silverspooned beyond comparison. I do not understand devs. I simply don’t. I don’t see any logic in their balancing besides blatant class discrimination aimed at thieves. Who can protect us from devs? Nobody. Only choice is to quit game or reroll.

And yet Mesmer is still not taken over thief, because a thief does a better job at that role than Mesmer and you’re deluding yourself to think otherwise.

The problem with thief is it’s had massive forgiving mechanics and builds. Stealth has not really had a whole lot of counter play for a long time and generally it’s not been a problem on other classes because they haven’t had more than kitten without smoke field blasting.

Remember old SD before the flanking strike change? You just couldn’t hit the things as they were in evade frames 90% of the time. No-one wants a return to that brain dead spam dodge till the enemy runs out of skills play.

I still think the best way forward is to ask for buffs on skills that don’t have stealth tied to them and generally don’t affect mobility. It would be nice to see a venom rework. I’d love to see a better signet trait, maybe remove a condition on signet use and reduce the might to 3. Haste and roll for initiative dropped down to 40s cool downs so they’re competitive.

Generally more options to make the lacking utility skills better. Weird thing is the more I play around with the traits, the more I see why they’re feeling kinda meh. When you pair them with daredevil a lot more viable for sustain builds.

Oh and let the 2-5 weapon skills interrupt the blooming auto. If I hit flanking strikes or death blossom I want it to evade now not a few seconds later after its finished several attacks.

Oh and Cynz, if you want a laugh/cry check out the balance list on the PvP forum if it hasn’t been locked yet.

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

At least we now know why it doesn’t. Thank you for explaining it to us.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Tealots.6095:

Ross Biddle.2367:

So I’m doing alright then. Good to know.

Arrogance is another sign of a good Mesmer apparently…

You know, this thread was honestly intended to see how people analyze their opponents… And yet only one other person actually answered the question. =[

Wait did I win?!?

On the subject of tedious and annoying to play against.

If you watch the ESL finals for EU there’s a great moment where Tage as bunker guard fights Kervv as DD ele. After 2 or 3 minutes of neither of them dropping the others health in any meaningful way they both stop fighting and stand on the point leaving it neutral.

Happened twice in that match, hope they had a nice friendly chat. =D

The same things that separate any good player vs any bad player.

Patience.
Kiting.
Knowledge.

I was meaning CC heavy players or those with interrupt builds can’t do much against people with stab, not the other way around. Last I checked boon strips aren’t that common outside of signet necros and shatter mesmers, the latter which has to hit you with the shatter (clones) to remove the boons which you should be dodging anyway.

Yeah I guess that’s where the differences lie as I don’t play PvP on premodern teams so I don’t end up against or in teams often where people will come and help someone out and they only notice when the point gets decapped/full capped.

Also there seems to be 2 different discussions going on, one about the way stealth and counters are in PvP and the other about WvW.

In WvW stealth is waaaayy too forgiving and abusive we all know that. To the gentleman implying I’m against unskilled opponents, no offence but if you’re getting beaten by a warrior I think it’s the other way around, they just don’t have anything going for them once you kite and wait out the stances. Again, speaking in WvW in this case as that’s the only place I’ve ever seen a ranger use sic em.

evilapprentice.6379:

Except it isn’t, at all. Poison can be cleansed, Reveal can’t. In fact, if you look at some recent past meta’s and even the current one, any class who specs for heavy healing sustain also has copious access to condition cleansing – they’re given tons of tools to counter their counter – thieves using stealth aren’t given those same tools.

I get what you’re saying but I think other thieves are really over reacting when they say revealed completely negates their entire trait line which is what I was referring to. It doesn’t, it only temporarily does in the same way stability does to CC heavy players does, the way high amounts of poison does to healer specced characters does, like how resistance and berserker stance temporarily counters conditions.

evilapprentice.6379:

The tactic isn’t to blindly AoE and hope you hit the thief. The tactic is “You know where the thief is trying to go(Hint, it’s behind you, in melee range)” so you either punish them heavily with your own high DPS skills or avoid their backstab all together via maneuvering/cc/etc." If thieves had a high damage ranged attack option(you know, like mesmers) while in stealth, it’d be a different story…but they don’t.

Firstly mesmer ranged option is as poor as thieves (hint: a mesmer shattering at ranged is taking a huge damage hit) though I would say thieves get the better utility. Additionally a Mesmer bursting from stealth needs to be next to you to come even close to backstab damage which isn’t really ranged.

Secondly I generally let them waste their skills doing that. Wait it out, re stealth and engage. I now have the upper hand as they wasted those AoE skills and I usually have full initiative by the time I need to restealth. The only thing the enemy accomplishes is buying time before the inevitable backstabbing happens…generally works well against things that are not DD eles or AI heavy builds, not that MM necro is a problem, just that pistol 5 generally won’t grant me the wide reaching protection from attacks it does to other builds.

Stinja.9612:

There being more counter play to stealth could certainly be used to get reduced cool downs on some utilities that are not very competitive.

Lets be honest as 2 thieves to one another, we both know we’re not allowed to have nice things lol.

• Roll for Ini should be way shorter in cd but most likely wont be

• SR will be useless against glint Revs, which will be essentially almost every single Rev.

• Wont change the fact that Reveal is poorly designed and invalidates entire trait-lines which isn’t counter play. It’s more like if we were playing rock,paper,scissors and someone came along and cut our hands off. They proceed to say “Hey you can still play just work around the whole lack of hands thing!”

• Smoke-screen could use the Revenant Tech to glue it to your thief to make it more appealing but again, it prolly wont be.

• Venoms have always needed a stun break on one of them to be actually viable in solo-full venom builds otherwise you need to cover it with stealth or trying to be “tanky” which isn’t feasible in reality on a thief.

Counter play has existed for stealth for a long time players just chose to panic, complain or pretend it doesn’t exist.

If someone is stealth you know they’re either going to open up on you or run away.

You don’t at this point stop attacking, but start planning how to react place AoEs traps w.e you got to plan for their next move.

If you’re a guardian you can literally throw binding blade out and track them with it but most people aren’t even aware of things like that because they never took the time to learn. But I’ve gone far enough off topic at this point.

My previous post got deleted for quoting a deleted post =S

Anyway, try asking for a CD reduction on roll for initiative, devs are making changes right now, it’s the time to ask.

SR does have counter play when it goes down I do agree just as mass invis also has counters due to long channel. The problem is when you have stealth openers using these where the opponent is pretty much defenceless other than standing somewhere where you can’t get to easily.

The glint gaze of darkness I find is more of a counterplay thing to prevent escape or when you need to make sure they can’t get an untelegraphed burst on you. Both thieves and mesmers.

Reveal is short and complaining about the way it invalidates a whole trait line is like complaining poison invalidates or massively reduces healing support. Additionally you’re not acknowledging why reveal is there in the first place, as in to prevent backstab spamming.

Against bad thieves, sure sitting in black powder works but any competent thief (as in they don’t use auto target) can easily HS through it if someone sits in it. Better still the target just made themselves a sitting duck by being blinded and coming to you for BS.

Sure guards have a lot of ways to counter thieves with lines, rings, GS5 bullkitten but what of other classes? Rangers can rapid fire you as you go in otherwise more or less hit thin air, same for mesmers, warriors and a lot of other classes. The tactic is to hit that area with cleave/AoE and hope you’re hitting them which any competent thief can easily avoid. Though in general I don’t stealth up that close to enemies (usually 600 range away so they can’t do it easily)

There was me thinking steal and initiative were a thiefs core mechanics.

I know many mesmers and Rangers would happily exchange their damage shared with AI pets to have “while in stealth” or “from stealth” mechanics. You know, those that have real core mechanics very easily shut down by there being more than 2 people with any form of cleave.

The real problems with thief has and always has been the spammy nature and how stealth has not had a whole lot of counters. Sure I know you were where that smoke field was but for the next 4-9s I don’t know if you’re here, gone away or waiting for me to use cool downs to attack.

As someone who does play thief and mesmer, I do welcome the more counter play to stealth, this was a long time coming and now thief might possibly get buffs to things it needs like cool down reductions on haste and roll for initiative.

Incidentally the trait for haste on attacking from behind has double cool down reduction with the trickster trait and ends up with an ICD of 36s which I’ll be honest is a better place.

Hiki.9310:

After reading the feedback towards the mallyx changes I noticed that the players that like the new changes are viewing them from a WvW and PvE perspective: These players talk about using food buffs, torment runes, and other things that don’t exist in sPvP to make the changes work to their advantage.

On the other hand, players like myself that believe that the old mallyx skills, with the exception of UA, were in a perfect state view these changes from the sPvP perspective.

With only one beta weekend left and a mallyx getting a complete revamp at this stage I doubt that all of the changes needed to make him viable all game modes can be rooted out before release.

So here’s a proposal: Just split the skills.

Let those of us who were content with the previous mallyx slot the old versions of his skills (excluding UA) and the others take on the new version if they like.

Now that there is talk of adding a 100% PvE only trait that increases torment damage on non-moving targets I think a split is needed more than ever.

Actually I’m thinking of it in a PvP perspective too on Mallyx. Say you are on a team with a bunker guard. Guard needs to pump out boons and shouts to sustain to a degree but you’re mallyx so if they do that then you get screwed over by your condis being cleansed. Not doing that screws him over too so it’s a lose lose situation.

Giving Mallyx a way to transfer conditions to enemies would go a long way towards resolving this issue. It allows those that liked the old play style to get some degree of it back without punishing other players for inadvertently cleansing you.

Crossplay.2067:

Zenith.7301:

I take it you haven’t done a single fractal 50 boss, or face tanked lupicus’s autoattack projectile for that matter.

Lupi I can’t say anything about as, yes, I’ve never done Arah dungeons yet. I’m doing the dungeon collections in order. Level 50 fractals, on the other hand, are all kinds of broken. In fact, I’d argue that they are the reason that multiple smaller hits would be better than scarce one-shots.

Maybe so but it teaches you to dodge and use active defence like aegis and blind…oh wait blind is 10% effective. Nevermind just guardian and aegis.

As for lupi, he’s easier than he looks. First time we did it we cautiously ranged him and eventually he went down after 5 mins. Now we melee him and kill him in 1 min or less and that’s even when he decides he needs to shadow step to the NPC -.-

Doug Whisper.2465:

I don’t play thief but I read another thread compare trap thief Vs PU Mesmer. I also read how thief lose because of stealth disruptor traps in WvW.

I wonder if ANet add more counter stealth measures in the game, will people take it or rather than hold onto their builds?

To be honest with the current changes I’ve heard about in WvW beta we’re looking at the death of hiding in keeps whether you’re a Mesmer or a thief and that’s where the complaints lie.

I think that a lot of classes are going to have the option of anti stealth mechanics, whether they run them is another thing but I doubt stealth disrupters will get any more prevalent as people won’t use them even now against stealth.

I just generally don’t get the hate on mesmers though. A thief can stealth and dog you all across a borderland map until you get to allies and even then if they want can sit there and follow you waiting. A Mesmer can’t without traveler runes and even then most classes have better swiftness and movement skills.

Maybe when people realise you don’t have to kill every enemy you meet we might see problems go away. I don’t bother with condi mesmers as I just can’t be bothered wasting my time. If they attack I’ll interrupt mirrorimages and counter burst, usually makes them back off and I go back to what I was doing.

I can only really agree to number 1.

Vamp runes are a double edged sword, how many times have you been interrupted by them procing when you want to heal?

Burn is fine, as a condition and it’s formulae. What isn’t fine are the skills that apply burning allowing you to stack 12 burns in a second.

Bleeds are not fine but we don’t see that on your “balance” list. They’re pathetically weak and need a slight buff.

I don’t have a problem with thief stealthing people while they Rez them. Trait is an old one, just no-one ever took it.

Taunt going through blocks and dodges, not seen it enough to really be that concerned at but I don’t care if it’s changed.

Signet of vampirism needs a huge buff in cast time otherwise and mark duration so people can actually get use from it.

I do not think necros need more punishment for being in death shroud. It’s bad enough they can only use their innate life stealing to heal. They are very easy to CC and lock down, if that was changed I might agree but not in the current state of necro.

Additionally as you stated later, what about engineers elixir X? That thing is shutting down most transforms with the toss and is pretty much the only rampage anyone sees now at 84s cool down to next try for rampage.

Firstly, you can’t perma stealth as a mesmer or at least not without using absolutely everything you have to try and do so, even then I’m pretty sure there’s a gap. So please fix that wrong statement.

Secondly this is what every mesmer has been saying in all the “nerf PU coz i r bad” threads. Currently you can get prestige down to a 13s cool down by camping stealth.