Guild Wars 2

Necro: Not really any invuln at X health auto proc stuff. Generally always counterplay to nearly everything they do.

Mesmer: Outside of the mantra of distraction mirror blade mind wrack build you generally were outplayed through kiting.

SD thief: same as above, you were most likely outplayed as they don’t get a free lunch anymore.

Non cele arcana water ele: speaks for itself, they’re taking risks.

Though I generally won’t rage even if it’s a celementalist or condition engineer spamming condi. But if I had to pick a profession as a whole it’s necro just because they don’t really get it easy.

Daendur.2357:

Carighan.6758:

Daendur.2357:

Mesmers are OP.
That’s why there are tons of mesmers everywhere (and noone gives a kitten about pve).

True, despite the majority of players spending the majority of time there. Which is a bit at odds with balance being considered by PvP mechanics (limits of 5, etc).

what’s the point of pve balance ? Mobs can’t come here to complain about a profession or another. wtf, be serious plz

Imagine if they could complain though.

Mordrem nerf wishlist:
Condi guard, engy and ele.
Thieves (coz i r 2 dum + stelf)
Ele.
PS warrior.
Guardians.
Engineers.

Mordrem fine list:
Necro – they tickle.
Ranger – tickle at range.
Mesmer – my auto target puts me ALWAYS on the real one and those phantasms die instantly.

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

Interesting thing is that a thief can follow it up with either a 4k auto, 4k shadowshot and then do the backstab again in 5s time. A Mesmer can only follow it up with iZerker and mind stab and then must wait 12s. They could switch and blurred frenzy but I would assume competent players have dodged out of the way by that point, and no, they won’t be downed by it either even running marauder and having light armour.

wat? are we playing same game?
also, once again completely ignoring the fact that bs is single target with very limited time frame, positional requirement, can be blinded while shatter isn’t/can’t~

It was late when I wrote my initial response so didn’t have the luxury of doing this:

Shadow shot, vamp runes, DP and marauder amulet.
2225*1.31*952.5/1924 = 1443
Crit 1443*1.81 = 2611.8
With multipliers 2611.8*(1.10*1.11) = 3189

With executioner 2611.8*(1.10*1.11*1.20) = 3826.8

So the 4k crit most likely was using executioner. It’s worth noting I am using an averaged value of weapon damage. The actual damage received can vary up and down. Though I will say 4k is not common and I am off on that one.

Auto chain has a total damage coefficient of 2.82 (0.56×2 + 0.85 +0.85). It’s 4 hits we will average crit out while under fury 0.76*0.81 = 0.616. We assume at 11 initiative too, this is allowing for a shadow shot to target or a heartseeker.

2225*2.82*952.5/1924 = 3106.2
Crit 3106.2*1.616 = 5019.6
With multipliers 5019.6*(1.100*1.110) = 6128.9

That’s of course averaged out, the actual damage can vary quite considerably both up and down due to RNG. Damage would obviously be a lot more with executioner but it is not required to prove how strong a thiefs auto is. Note I am not complaining, only stating.

Without fury our crit multiplier is 0.56*0.81 = 0.454

2225*2.82*952.5/1924 = 3106.2
Crit 3106.2*1.454 = 4516.4
With multipliers 4516.4*(1.100*1.110) = 5514.5

All these auto chain calculations are without executioner too.

Additionally here is my auto on the light golem in HotM which has armour of 2180, significantly higher than the light armour mesmer we’re wrecking in this example. I get it being a 5k auto but what’s a few hundred damage between friends eh?

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

You know, it’s funny people talk about the burst from stealth. I worked it out in the PvP forums, mug with backstab and executioner will do about the same as a mirror blade mind wrack assuming Mesmer gets the full mind wrack damage bonus.

Interesting thing is that a thief can follow it up with either a 4k auto, 4k shadowshot and then do the backstab again in 5s time. A Mesmer can only follow it up with iZerker and mind stab and then must wait 12s. They could switch and blurred frenzy but I would assume competent players have dodged out of the way by that point, and no, they won’t be downed by it either even running marauder and having light armour.

As for the comment earlier about “you can’t just take one thing from a class and slap it on another”, they’re kinda doing that all across the expansion, wells, physical skills, thief is getting Mesmer type interrupt and just as Mesmer stealth is inferior to thieves so to is theirs slightly inferior to mesmer.

As for PU, it’s fine as is. It’s a GM, build defining trait which is exactly what ANet wanted. It wasn’t fine at +1 second as only 1 build in 1 game mode ever took it. Before the boon nerf power builds could take it for the guarantee of something defensive when they stealth, afterwards it was not worth it at all which is why they went for IP as being able to use distortion whenever was more viable.

wat? are we playing same game?
also, once again completely ignoring the fact that bs is single target with very limited time frame, positional requirement, can be blinded while shatter isn’t/can’t~

While you ignore that a thief can follow up thier burst with higher damage attacks as well as using the burst portion twice as often as mesmers with little cost.

Also yes, shadowshot on crit can hit for 4k even in PvP, was on the receiving end of it and had to double check that one as I couldn’t believe it either. Dunno if the guy was running executioner or not. The full auto chain of dagger will do about 4k with all crits which being at over 70% crit chance is more than likely.

Btw a mesmers burst rapidly becomes harder as the number of players scale as illusions can and frequently do instantly die. You completely ignore this factor in mesmer burst and the positional requirement of being next to the target to get the most out of mirror blade AND mind wrack damage. You also ignore that mirror blade has a 0.75s cast time which shouldn’t catch anyone off guard unless coming from stealth which comes at a much higher cost to the mesmer than thief.

If you spent more time playing a mesmer instead of blurting out vitriol, you might have less problems with them and may even figure out that a thief not only can beat mesmers but has a better chance than the mesmer.

Curunen.8729:

apharma.3741:

As for PU, it’s fine as is. It’s a GM, build defining trait which is exactly what ANet wanted. It wasn’t fine at +1 second as only 1 build in 1 game mode ever took it. Before the boon nerf power builds could take it for the guarantee of something defensive when they stealth, afterwards it was not worth it at all which is why they went for IP as being able to use distortion whenever was more viable.

It wasn’t commonly taken because we didn’t have access to 3 full traitlines simultaneously, and IP required using 6 or 30 points in Illusions.

People even tried before to run shatter builds without DE in order to go 6 points in Chaos and 6 points in Illusions, because even at +1second with the boons it was very strong and almost worth the sacrifice of DE.

Now it [PU] is pretty much a free choice, no sacrifice needed.

It didn’t need buffing at all.

You could run a power shatter build in WvW with DE and the MW modifier as both only required 20 points in duelling and domination. Your other 60 points could pick up PU with the rest of the Domination line as Ross Biddle said for more survivability. This was when you were almost guaranteed to get either protection or aegis, usually both and provided you with enough survivability to comfortably run power shatter as a roamer.

When PU had the extra boons it became completely unviable and no-one would ever make that trade off that wasn’t already going into chaos already.

I see what you’re saying and yes mobility as you describe can be factored into fighting and TTK.

However you don’t (technically) have to fight to win the game in PvP, you only have to keep the control nodes in a favourable state for the majority of the time. In such a case TTK would in fact skew balance dramatically.

This is where I feel your Aion comparisons are not a great example. I don’t play Aion but from what I saw its PvP is entirely kill orientated and is balanced around that. TTK is the best for it but this game the goal isn’t to kill, it’s to hold the points. Obviously killing has a favourable outcome but it is not exclusive to winning.

You also seem to be under the impression that all skills and all abilities should have a perfect balance and that it should be impossible to make builds that cannot be killed by another. I personally do not share this view and view that as a player skill issue.

Time to goal as Eleandra said is a better idea but TTK doesn’t have to be perfect in this either. This would also have very very horrible balance in PvE but we’re getting new harder content designed very differently for this so we’ll see on that.

As for my comment on you working it out. If you can’t show some form of a perfect balance or even a glimpse at it then I can’t trust your original statement onTTK being so far off as you’re not offering a comparison.

Additionally ANet do gather a lot of data about a lot of things. We only have information on this from a few red posts over the years but it is clear they are correlating data on what skills are being used, where, by who, against what. I don’t know if they have a mathematical model or not and I don’t think anything but a red post could tell you.

However if you created the perfect balance algorithm for the game you could see how off it was and prove otherwise. That is why I asked you to do it. I wouldn’t pay you though as I am actually happy with the game as is and the balancing for the most part, even if I don’t agree with all decisions.

In other words, I’m asking you to prove mathematically how off from “perfect” the balance is in your original claim.

I think I can speak for a great many here when I say this Nyx.

If it is so easy as you claim, do it.

Again though you and no-one else has addressed my point of TTK does not correlate directly with winning. Examples of such are in oRNG games where they lost due to not holding caps but nearly always won the fights. In your entire TTK premise you do not factor in a characters ability to disengage from an unfavourable fight to find a more favourable fight or a more favourable circumstance to win.

Example: Thief/ele/mesmer choosing to leave a team fight putting his team at a TTK disadvantage but decapping the 2 points held by the opposing team.

In this case if you balanced TTK completely but left out factoring in mobility around a map, both horizontally and vertically, you would end up with only classes and builds with teleports/movement skills. This is due to the ability of classes with superior movement to be able to rotate around the slower classes and be able to win in engagements.

Laquito, firstly don’t presume that the people who disagree with “thief mains” don’t play thief. It isn’t my main but it is 3rd on my list of most time played with only my main ele (I started before it was as OP as now) and guardian beating it and mainly because of PvE.

Secondly most people are not saying it shouldn’t be buffed because of DP. They are saying you must trade in some mobility or/and stealth if you want a bruiser spec. If you buffed thief to be able to beat the current meta builds 1 on 1 then thieves would be the apex predators of the game as no-one has more mobility than a thief without a long cool down. You won’t be able to get away from them and you won’t be able to beat them to a point.

ResJudicator has clearly and concisely put how I feel about thief so I’ll refer you to his post for the details.

You know, it’s funny people talk about the burst from stealth. I worked it out in the PvP forums, mug with backstab and executioner will do about the same as a mirror blade mind wrack assuming Mesmer gets the full mind wrack damage bonus.

Interesting thing is that a thief can follow it up with either a 4k auto, 4k shadowshot and then do the backstab again in 5s time. A Mesmer can only follow it up with iZerker and mind stab and then must wait 12s. They could switch and blurred frenzy but I would assume competent players have dodged out of the way by that point, and no, they won’t be downed by it either even running marauder and having light armour.

As for the comment earlier about “you can’t just take one thing from a class and slap it on another”, they’re kinda doing that all across the expansion, wells, physical skills, thief is getting Mesmer type interrupt and just as Mesmer stealth is inferior to thieves so to is theirs slightly inferior to mesmer.

As for PU, it’s fine as is. It’s a GM, build defining trait which is exactly what ANet wanted. It wasn’t fine at +1 second as only 1 build in 1 game mode ever took it. Before the boon nerf power builds could take it for the guarantee of something defensive when they stealth, afterwards it was not worth it at all which is why they went for IP as being able to use distortion whenever was more viable.

Can I just also say that the damage on the wells is excessively poor. It’s bad enough that the damage is back ended but the end damage is out done by mantra of pain. The team bonuses and the conditions are kinda nice but it would be nice if the final damage could be boosted by 50% or more as enemies are given a full 3s to gtfo.

I’d like to see illusionary reversion go down to 1 clone required (not mesmer) then we have a valid option to deceptive evasion.

I felt the alacrity generation was pretty decent, I’ll leave the math to Frifox as to whether a well shatter build has potential in PvE. I really hope so as it was kinda ok.

Shield in PvE I felt was completely useless. I’d like it if the block summoned iAvenger when you activate it and had the channeled block with you getting the second block if you actually did block an attack.

Didn’t get to test it in WvW or PvP, I’ll leave that sort of view to people who would have extensively tested it. Hint hint Menaka =P

Chorazin.4107:

It’s hilariously busted in WvW.

Jury is still out in PvP tho no? What with the sustain D/D eles have floating about.

No more busted than thieves in WvW.

Though as many have said change the torch trait and a Mesmer can’t stealth for huge amounts of time in keeps anymore as they have 8s and was it 24s of non stealth in cycles of about 72s which offers tons of counterplay.

Your entire premise falls short on one fundamental false hood.

You’re assuming TTK has a direct correlation with winning. In PvP this is not the case, you win by holding points that generate score. You can have teams with massively skewed TTK but ultimately one can out rotate the other ensuring they have more points ticking for them while keeping the capture points decapped for the enemy. In this case mobility has to be taken into account not just TTK.

Case in point, watch magic toker in the last WTS. You could theoretically win a game by not even fighting which then makes TTK as a form of balance completely wrong.

Maris.3164:

Sheesh, I have no clue where you’re getting all of this. I was merely saying thief and mesmer used to be the two professions that most of the time would contest points and decap. Of course any profession can do that but thief has SB5 and mesmer has portal and blink so that would make them more ideal for the job.

The thing is, thief can no longer decap contested points, only empty ones. Because they can’t survive 1v1 against… Well, pretty much anyone. You’re welcome to try 1v1 in ranked/unranked with a thief and you’ll get my point soon enough. Meanwhile mesmer has no such difficulties. And as I said before, thief and mesmer are a natural comparison because they share a role and a playstyle. Only mesmer does it better now.

And… Are you really saying thief needs to sacrifice something in order to be able to 1v1? Good grief get a grip of the game. I can’t even tell if you’re serious or not.

If this was even remotely true you would see mesmers replacing thieves in all top teams due to the gravitation toward low risk, high rewards. They aren’t because thief excels at mobility far more than mesmers, Mesmer has blink and then a long cool down portal. A thief has shortbow 5 for getting up on Z axis as well as good swiftness and can use shortbow 5 every 6 seconds without being left in the lurch. That’s without mentioning the into combat teleports like steal, shadowshot, sword 2 and infiltrators signet for those that still use it.

If you want to be able to duel on point and win against meta builds you will have to give up some mobility because as others have said earlier, if you’re fighting a thief and your build can’t win against them then you’re dead. This is because wherever you go, whatever skill you use a thief can follow and kill you because they have the best mobility. Keeping the mobility in terms of teleports would make thief the apex predator and apex duelist.

Give up some mobility or stealth or a combo of the two and I would have no problems seeing an on point duelling thief or even a bunker thief. Hopefully that is what daredevil will bring and from what I tried in the beta it should do with high weakness application and dodges, both more and the extra effects on them.

The heal and block/stun break utility on daredevil are fantastic, combine with the staff and you can last and win in duels. I dare say with sentinels or soldier amulet you could tank on point, certainly large points like foefire.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Freddy Mercury says No PU

https://youtu.be/v0dsUvOnOiI

If you want to argue with him, you have to go through his mustache first.

Oh my, not one of them dodged the 0.75s cast time mirror blade…so bad.

Pyro you also forgot to rub the thieves nose in the -25% damage reduction they get from the SA line as a minor which is arguably better than all the boons from PU.

Well it once again boils down to the way 3 phantasms make up about 50% of our dps and thus our mesmer attacks are about half (it’s more like they hit 33% harder) that of other professions.

Wow déjà vu, I thought HoT beta had ended.

Essentially if phantasms and by extension our off hands only offered very small amounts of damage but we’re more utility focused we could see an increase in the damage of our skills. We would also see much more shatter play in PvE, however it would mean the death of phantasm damage duelling builds and would hurt iDuelist interrupt mesmers.

I dunno just in two minds about such a change, is the death of a certain play style what we want if it were to make mesmers on par with other classes in PvE?

Clone death traits I always saw were a way to get something out of clones when in a toxic environment, which is pretty much everywhere where there’s more than 2 enemies.

I liked the idea of weakness and cripple, controlling and damage mitigation but didn’t like the bleed and vulnerability as it enabled that infamous PU clone death condition build.

However we have been compensated in some ways for this loss of clone death by getting blinding dissipation and the enhanced stealth durations. If you wanted clone death traits back then you’d probably have to give up some of these nice improvements we’ve had which I wouldn’t want to.

For PvP PU is alright but I would say inspiration line is better, heal on shatter and condi cleanse as well as healing mantras make the mantra heal viable. The GM can be chosen to suit flavours in shatter builds, it’s just all round good.

Interrupt builds don’t take PU.

Reason for this is there’s so much stuff torun around and LoS behind its almost its own special place as nowhere else in GW2 is it like that.

Where PU is almost entirely necessary is WvW. Why do I say this? Stealth in WvW is so incredibly powerful for getting out of a situation that turns against you.

I mean look at what you see roaming nowadays. It’s high stealth and/or high mobility. I don’t see as many warrior roamers since the change to swiftness not affecting movement skills. What I have seen is an increase in thieves (both trapper condition and DP power), trap and power rangers, condi engineers with traited toss elixir s and PU mesmers.

They all have the same thing in common, stealth and mobility. Thief is still top of the pile but mesmers are giving them a run for their money.

The only way you can justify a nerf to Mesmer stealth in WvW is if you also nerf it for thieves. This would cripple them due to them being balanced around a mechanic which has had little to no counter play for 3 years. No, running around hitting thin air is not counter play.

How I play in the morning: An undead abomination from Orr would probably roflstomp me.

How I play after coffee: Did I just win against 2 people?!

How I play in the next match: Why is the bunker guardian trying to recap a node against 2 signet necros??? /cry.

There’s a lot of things that affect how your match goes, don’t worry, it’ll work itself out. Win some, lose some, it’s all about the experience.

Cynz.9437:

someone actually believes mesmers are worse than thieves…..

Some thieves actually lose to mesmers when they have all the tools to shut them down…

Bonus points if you read the part about pre patch mesmer. Shiney star if you read the part which says mesmer isn’t as good as thieves for the role he described.

TheDarkSoul.1938:

Thief main here.
So, whilst I’m not some pro PvPer by any means, I do know what “role” I have and I’m able to carry out that “role” pretty well. So please, no “l2p” in response to my comment.
I’d like to point out that Thieves are NOT asking to be A tier again, like DD ele is right now. That’s silly and if any Thieves ARE asking for that then just ignore them, I’m not interested in being stupid powerful.
However, every single time I read discussions like this about the +1 and decap-bot role that Thief has been, undeniably, FORCED into in PvP, I can’t help but sense some hypocrisy.
I’d love for any of the various Ele, Necro, Guardian, etc players here that are defending the current state of Thief to be assigned the same role as us for just a single day and see if you enjoy that experience, feel rewarded and engaged in the match, and to see how long it takes for you to close your game clients and create topics such as this. I’d love for you to experience the feeling of being flamed at by your teammates for attempting to 1v1 or contest a point without being handheld. I’d love for you to know how it feels to aimlessly run around the maps, standing in a circle for a couple of seconds and then moving onto the next circle to do the exact same for the entirety of the match, and occasionally fitting in the odd revive and stomp that your teammate has provided for you. To spend the whole game effectively running away from fights because you know that no matter how well you play, you’re the only player in your team that just cannot hold your own, and that you’re the most expendable player because there are other professions on the team that can fulfill your role if needs-be.
If you had that experience playing as an ele or a necro or whatever else, I can almost guarantee that the majority of you would feel far from satisfied with the viability of your profession. It’s really easy to sit here and say that Thief should be totally fine with the way they HAVE to play in PvP when your own favourite profession is suffering from none of the same issues.

Replace thief with Mesmer and you have what was pre patch mesmer. Post patch mesmer isn’t a touch on thief for this role (hence why thieves are on most teams and not mesmers) but can win a 1v1 against some classes.

My question is this: What would you be willing to give up to be better in 1v1 scenarios?

Mobility? Blinds? Reduced access to stealth? Eat a longer reveal debuff for more damage? Would you even be willing to swap initiative for cool downs?

Obviously not all, that would be crazy, but right now thief is too good at the role you defined to justify making it better without taking a little from what it already exceeds all other classes at doing.

As for the thief-mesmer comparisons made by others, you are so very wrong about your claims of what a mesmer can do especially as they’re not all in one build and are blatantly leaving out all the perks a thief has on mesmers.

Wow, so try hard.

/needmoarwords.

“When is it right to interrupt a duel?”

Whenever you’re going past them. Most “duellists” aren’t showing anyone else any respect on borderlands these days so I don’t see why anyone should show them respect.

Don’t forget to corpse jump and spam laugh.

You want to duel, go OS or PvP.

Jayne.9251:

apharma.3741:

I used to respect duels.

Used to, when people kept to the 1v1 or sat and watched.

Now I don’t care and if a Zerg smashes through I am happy they all eat dirt. Why?

The number of times I’ve seen a hand full of players from all 3 servers duelling only for 2/3rds of them to leap on and gank someone just running past (who is not threatening or even looks like they want to be involved) has filled me with nothing but spite for the little….kittens.

If you’re duelling, if I pass by, I will +1, I will stomp and I won’t feel bad.

Aw <3

You’re EU aren’t you? Come find me if our servers meet and we can have a few non-ganking duels.

Ha ha, not interested in duelling, that’s what PvP is for. Just sick of seeing people “duelling” but then as soon as someone runs past they all decide to gank that person then go back to “duelling”.

If they want to be left alone while duelling then they should leave everyone alone, a lot more aren’t now so they can suck eggs.

I used to respect duels.

Used to, when people kept to the 1v1 or sat and watched.

Now I don’t care and if a Zerg smashes through I am happy they all eat dirt. Why?

The number of times I’ve seen a hand full of players from all 3 servers duelling only for 2/3rds of them to leap on and gank someone just running past (who is not threatening or even looks like they want to be involved) has filled me with nothing but spite for the little….kittens.

If you’re duelling, if I pass by, I will +1, I will stomp and I won’t feel bad.

1-2s mist form sounds good to me. Lots of uses not just against revenant and would easily make them a high quality steal.

I also like Maugetarr’s suggestion of a teleport to thief, say 600 range to start with a view to buffing it to 1500 once thieves complain it’s not a brain dead iWin button.

In my opinion we have 2 forms of ICDs on traits.

Form 1: The trait activates an actual skill that has a cool down. In this fashion the ICD is the cool down on the skill and is usually affected by traits affecting said skills.

Form 2: The trait does something that isn’t a skill, a good example is IP for engineers where it will proc burning on crits with an ICD. These are usually not affected by anything.

I think alacrity should affect form 1 traits as they are indeed skills that auto activate under circumstances. They are essentially skills and that is the purpose of alacrity. Form 2 however have ICDs that are balanced by their inherent power with no reduction available in any way. If some of these were allowed to proc at a much faster rate, someone will enviably get burned, by about 4 more stacks =P

Personally I found the energy upkeep of the elite too much, at 5 it meant I couldn’t run it for very long, only a couple of seconds and certainly not while running other upkeep skills. Dropping it to 3 upkeep would be a little better imo and see it used more often

Right now I just can’t justify using the passive to get protection with that high a cost over double tapping the elite and nature when I need protection.

The rest of the upkeep skills I found alright, I’d like facet of nature to be dropped down to 1 for upkeep as it feels too costly to use most of the time with other upkeep skills. Sure the benefit is good but I find if I’m wanting to use weapon skills I can just about afford two 2 upkeep skills.

The worst part: Even he wouldn’t be able to make out a mesmer does good DPS in those situations, no matter the twisted logic.

/cry

Raven.9603:

There used to be a time when PU stealth didn’t last 6 seconds per skill, and mesmers were still the pinnacle of duelists and roamers. Nerfing PU and fixing The Pledge bug would still leave mesmers as THE apex roaming class, barring some huge HoT specialization upset.

When was that? Last I remember the apex roamers were thieves during that time. You saw condi mesmers sure but most people could outrun them to either escape or beat them to wherever they were going. Thieves though, only a nike warrior could out run them and now no-one can outrun a thief except another thief.

As a mesmer who used to roam without traveler runes (and still do post specs) I can honestly say that speed and stealth are the keys to roaming. You can make up for a lack of one with the other but if you’re against a class that matches you on one and exceeds you on the other you will likely lose. Mesmer pre specs had low stealth even with PU (which was a big cost to power builds) and low speed which meant they were pretty poor solo roamers. Groups they were better as they could get speed and stealth from others.

Nerfing PU will result in thieves becoming the apex roamers again, not that they aren’t still, just that they have stiff competition from mesmers now.

uglydan.1638:

As a non-permastealth thief, I can do reasonably alright against the permastealth mesmers IF I have something to cloak and dagger off most of the time (not counting clones etc) but it’s usually better to just move along since if I get the mesmer low, they usually are slippery enough to get away.

What were you saying about hypocrisy?

Raven.9603:

started seeing this in the past few weeks.

different than clone death because they can’t make you stand in their dodge-caltrops and there is no one stacking conditions on you from stealth (ambush trap is more of a cc concern). they have to come out to sneak-attack-headshot-perplexity you. access to cover conditions is very limited. is it still cheesy that they can permastealth and avoid any fight they choose, or passively kill yaks / camps without fear for safety? of course.

with clone death, if you didnt kill the clones the phantasms would keep stacking condis on you while the mesmer is stealthed, and they would always be available to shatter. you were kitten ed if you do and kitten ed if you dont.

mesmer and thieves are not the same class. what is op for one, is not necessarily op for the other.

A thief can dodge on top of you in stealth laying caltrops on you, which does no damage so doesn’t reveal them, so yes, they can stack conditions on you from stealth.

The thief has WAY more cover conditions now, steal alone can give 2 conditions, needle trap has 5 in the original build even in the other linked build.

Perplexity….er thief isn’t using perplexity, they’re using trapper, starting to think you’re not looking at the links and talking about old builds.

I appreciate you’re and others are making comparisons to the old PU clone death build but that is long dead now. One thing a lot of people are also missing. A thief still has superior mobility in this build, the old (and current) Mesmer you could walk away from most of the time and get away unless they ran traveler.

Alpha, I actually do agree with Robert Gee in regards to his view on mesmer shield and how it’s a shield, it’s not really for “teh deeps”. However what I would like to see is a rebalancing of the way mesmers do their damage.

If damage was moved off phantasms and more onto the weapon skills with us getting auto attacks comparable to other professions we’d be in a much better place PvE wise. We would also be able to shatter in PvE.

Having said that PvP wise being able to summon phantasms (duelist, warlock) on the side of a point and let them whittle opponents down while you’re distracting them would disappear. This could be made up some ways if the phantasms provide a good enough function.

Additionally you’d need to find a function for those phantasms, iZerker, avenger and warden have their functions but the rest would need a complete rework no doubt.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Fay.2357:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

What’s unfair about it?

You’re using advanced arguing techniques such as simple logic and the capability for rational thought. That’s a rather unfair advantage when having a discussion with someone like that.

xD God Pyro, its like.. I always wanna rebuke you, even when I agree.
But you’re like the Domination to my Inspiration. Better when working together.

But the guy was saying that a thief only has stealth and damage. A mes has stealth, damage, condition damage, survivability AND free Doritos.

You forgot the extra 2 trait lines Mesmer gets as standart over all other classes with permenant cheese layered on top of said doritos.

On topic, I do like how the thieves defend the build saying only idiots get killed by it, that it’s unviable, easily countered and useless. I’ve met one or two of these guys in WvW, very annoying as they can kill dollies and you’ll never stop them.

tobascodagama.2961:

I cleared all the world bosses with no off-hand! One-handed build is totally viable.

Pfft casual, I’ve speed cleared Teq with no weapons! 100% viable.

Look at food and sigil stacks. If you see corruption or +condition duration food 9 times out of 10 they’re a condi mesmer.

As others have said sceptre and staff are other give aways, generally they will want to start with sceptre for that confusion ray. You sometimes get weird people like me that pick a torch that looks like a sceptre on a power build but those kind of idiots are thankfully few and far between.

What class are you running? Some classes can afford to jump in and find out.

Well I’ve only been on 2 Whiteside Ridge and Gunnar’s Hold.

WSR: Nice community, nice people, shame it’s had 3 or 4 exodus’s of WvW population leaving the WvW population depleted and eventually the community depleted as people took breaks. It’s flip flopping between T8 and T9 so that gives you a good idea of how little WvW action there is outside prime time. I have a friend who flipped keeps solo because the populations are so low.

Gunnar’s: Pretty good, would recommend it. They have some really great guilds that run events like morning coffee raid, rock and roll reset, they try to do server vs server and have some good characters. Always people to fight being mid silver and certainly worth a look on a free account as higher tier servers give more loot bags and keeps you on your toes.

Here’s on of our guilds [So] gives you an idea of what it’s like. A little outnumbered but generally fun.

I was about to suggest the same thing Mikkel. Maybe the time is right to really question the DPS (as in sustained damage) aspect of the mesmer.

It would also probably have to come at some cost to a mesmers burst too, not a huge cost as Mesmer burst isn’t as high as people (thieves, one vocal thief in particular) would have you believe.

You would also have to define a role for the phantasms as well. If you’re taking most of their damage then a lot would need utility. It also has the issue of how many classes get very strong number 4/5 skills, sometimes damage wise that also provide utility. You can’t have the phantasm sitting around continuing to use said big attack otherwise it adds to dps which is the problem at the moment.

Do phantasms then become like spirits? Temporary buffing stations but can be shattered for burst?

Edit: Duck, now is exactly the right time to be having this discussion. We have devs paying attention to our thoughts and opinions, the classes are all in a state of flux at the moment and so are a few things until HoT is released.

It is also a great opportunity to really improve the class in areas it is very weak and tone down where it is very strong.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, I can’t go into much detail on things quite yet, but I just wanted to reassure you folks that we’re actively discussing a number of issues that are affecting balance in PvP – including, but not limited to elementalist sustain/damage. Per the usual, we’ll be talking to you folks about the changes once we’ve finalized them.

Sorry I haven’t been that active on the forums lately – we’ve been pretty busy around the office.

“Thanks, Grouch. You’re the worst!”

Edit: Also, just because this is an elementalist thread doesn’t mean we’re only looking at elementalist, and it also doesn’t mean we’re only looking at doing nerfs.

Glad to hear this. I also really do hope it’s not all nerfs without buffs in other areas.

Are we going to see any more in depth changes or is it mostly going to be number tweaking?

P.S. You’re not the worst. Don’t be so hard oon yourselves when you can see how much passion people have for this game on the forums every day.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

apharma.3741:

Bit late to the party. It would be nice to have another dps weapon but having seen what has been put here I can see the other side.

Perhaps for iCaptain, pulse 1s alacrity to up to 5 players upon attack and it fires a bouncing projectile at enemies slowing them. That way we get the party benefits without having to deal with a clunky bounce type mechanic but we keep the awesome captain not America bouncing shield in the attacks.

With this, it’s important to note that Robert’s point cuts both ways. Making a shield phantasm more damaging may not be appropriate, but that means that the phantasm should be very good at what it does do. 1s of alacrity on a bouncing attack is much, much weaker than the extra damage you’d get from, say, iBerserker in terms of long-run effect.

Pretty sure I made it clear the alacrity should pulse from the phantasm to nearby allies and be removed from the bounce attack. Keep the attack as is though but without the alacrity or targeting allies.

Essentially its separating the positive effects for you and the negative effects for the enemy and making the phantasm a lot better. The point of having iAvenger isn’t about giving yourself more damage its about reducing cool downs for you and your party, you give up damage but you gain immense reductions on CDs.

Jayne.9251:

Eh, it’s cheap. Like placing a trebuchet in spawn area.

You can counter it, but it’s silly to have to in a video game.

Agreed. Also technically it can be against the ToS if it can be proven the passing on of info from spy to real server commanders is manipulating the match up or causing others on the spy server grief.

The 1v3 argument. I don’t often see people winning 1v3 unless the opponents are running Zerg builds and thus are not able to deal with a roaming build or the 3 people are bad players.

Generally all the roaming I’ve done and seen against other roamers who aren’t complete idiots running a fotm cheese build that they know very little about, a 2v1 usually ends in a win for the 2 without a lot of luck.

Bit late to the party. It would be nice to have another dps weapon but having seen what has been put here I can see the other side.

Perhaps for iCaptain, pulse 1s alacrity to up to 5 players upon attack and it fires a bouncing projectile at enemies slowing them. That way we get the party benefits without having to deal with a clunky bounce type mechanic but we keep the awesome captain not America bouncing shield in the attacks.

meltdown.5870:

So many heros on this tread….roamers ganking are just no good, no skilled players who are scared of PvP or suck at PvP …so they come to WvW with an UBER class in full PvP setup with food and everything and 3 looser friends and gank peoble in Zerk/BloB gear. well done you are heros….Roamers are just a bump on the road and they do very little for their server to actually win the machups. So down to it im happy that most peoble comes to WvW to win the machups…imagine all were just roaming zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I guess you have or are a bad roamed then. Here’s a list of things I and good roamers do whether in a group or solo:

1. Keep server updated on enemy positions.
2. Stalk enemy zergs and pick off stragglers or slowing them down.
3. Burn sups in objectives we have no plans to keep.
4. Hide in objectives if we know the enemy is coming with a view to flipping it 4mins later when they don’t bother sweeping.
5. Stick supply traps in front of enemy zergs again slowing them.
6. Flip camps ahead of enemy zergs meaning they can’t re supply.

All these are things that can make a karma train derail and lose momentum very fast. It arguably defends your areas just as much as those guys on the ACs or that guild coming to push out a blob from an entrenched position.

So no, I do not agree with your view of roaming as what you described is a bunch of morons running around just as mindlessly as those morons (staff guards usually)in blobs pressing 11111.

Woozified.7058:

Nah, you’re just talking down to everyone. Unless you can address the following, this is my last post to you since it’s detracting from the topic -

“A class that forces 5+ players to stay behind for 3-4 minutes to play hide and seek to POSSIBLY find the 1 enemy player, or forces others to play a specific class to counter them is pretty imbalanced, don’t you think?”

Thieves have been doing this for almost 2 years before mesmer and 1 PD thief can solo the keep easily, 2 or 3 can kill the Lord before swords even appear. “Oh but there’s counter play” not if you don’t know they’re there and GL catching the kitten things especially with caltrops on dodge.

Say we remove all stealth from Mesmer, what do you think will happen? The world shoots unicorns into the sky and we all dance happily as we ktrain around without a thought?

No. You will just end up with parties of thieves hiding and actually permanent stealthing. They may even help hide a mesmer.

Here’s the trick to being a pro Mesmer portaler. Wait for enemy to bash down out and inner gates. Walk in out of LoS behind them. Use invis. Wait for them to run out of lords room, blink into a corner, sit there out of stealth as the idiots pat each other on their backs sipping that sweet karma as they sniff out another wooden door to bash in with 4 super Rams.

Yet more evidence that thief is truly the hidden OP class.

Triple thief ESL win inc!! =D

Only thing that needs adjusting is the torch trait, rewards stealth camping massively and under performs in almost every aspect outside of that.

Another thing people are forgetting is 2 classes are getting AoE reveal in HoT so sweeping will be a lot easier too, especially when one of those classes is actually the most common class in WvW, just about.

Still think thief has the edge on roaming. Not died to a single mesmer one thief since spec patch. One nearly got me but going down in SR meant I could rez, then I got revenge for him bursting me when I was letting him get to his destination.

In fact generally thieves can steal something to counter what they’re fighting, it doesn’t get better than that and I can easily out stealth a mesmer, especially these bandwagon idiots.

I’m more concerned with the limited main hands to go with all these off hands…

As for stealth, I dunno, I was roaming with my thief in WvW today and I was easily out stealthing the mesmers and murdering them with complete ease. I guess most thieves don’t realise they can wait several seconds before stealthing if they see mesmers disappear less than 10s after mirror blade. They will win the cool down war.

Laraley.7695:

Jasher.6580:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Just put the ready button right in the middle of the screen with flashing quaggans dancing around it so people don’t miss it.

I don’t think people are missing it. I think a lot of people don’t know that if everyone ready’s up it will start the match.

Most of the people I’ve played with simply forget about the button and so do I after so many matches played. Come on, it’s a tiny button located somewhere I rarely look. Adding rewards for pressing it would definitely not make me press it, I would still forget.

Wait you do this?!?!

We are no longer friends, this is unforgivable =P

Tbh it only takes one to not press it anyway and you still end up waiting and as others have said some just don’t care. Why not halve the ready up time instead.

I also liked the experimental monkeys analogy.