He’s right, i just tried it and my Mesmer can stack stealth upon itself and it increases the duration of the initial Mesmer stealth. I’m sure it didn’t at one point but I can admit when I’m wrong and will alter my post accordingly.
You can see the GS coming from stealth on mirror blade, it’s unblockable and they probably blinked to you straight after stealthing. Learn the pattern by watching him do it with others and you know to dodge about 1/2 to 1s after they stealth. The mirror blade will miss and chances are they will waste a shatter too doing minimal damage.
However one thing is worth pointing out. Nothing they are doing now in that combo is different to what they were doing pre-patch. If they were within blink range when they stealthed then they didn’t even need PU to extend stealth nor would it improve it. Only thing that has really changed is IP being baseline, the extra bounce is baseline and the range on blink. Most mesmers would have picked them anyway and still done the same thing.
Counter it by using burns to your advantage, they stack very high and will wreck him into running. These kinds of stealth nukers are very predictable and when you get their timing down they will no longer be a threat.
Another (high cool down) option is to wait with your finger on renewed focus and use it as soon as you see your health take a hit, you’ll negate all the burst and can get the VoJ active buff while keeping the passive to turn on him.
A thief will do the same to you, only difference is a good one you won’t even see coming.
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Unblockable for you because you failed to dodge or stun break and dodge. You stood still and ate it. Same thing happens to all Beserker classes. Stand still let a ranger pepper you. let a warrior hundred blades you. You put on a shirt protector and went 3 times to that buffet.
Which part can you not understand that you can’t dodge instant 1200 distance abilities that happen from stealth? Unless they start dodging like a kitten until they run out of endurance?
Also what part can you not understand that a mesmer can stealth, blink to enter the 1200 zone and 1 shot?
Because if you are suggesting that we should stay farther that 2000 from a mesmer when we see one, then i rest my case. You win
The Mesmer just used all thier defensive utilities…in fact possibly all their utilities to do that, had you been watching and waiting to hit your stun break you could have stun break then dodged and the Mesmer would have been a sitting duck. The Mesmer would then have been forced to switch weapons and either stealth away with torch or continue to kite with staff.
Conditions would destroy this kind of mesmer as they usually don’t have inspiration. What class were you playing, perhaps there’s some advice that can be offered for you to not only not die to these fotm mesmers but turn the tables and wreck.
I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I’ll also add that the reason might and swiftness was added was because it was too defensive and was mainly used in clone death condition builds. They have now gone. It was used in power builds before the nerf too as you could reliably get aegis and protection but seeing as they are less reliable now many don’t take it for the boons but instead for the stealth duration.
It’s also now worth pointing out Mesmer stealth is unique. What do I mean by this? All other forms of stealth as far as I know stack duration. You can have 4 guards blast a smoke field and get 12s of stealth. Get 4 mesmers to use mass invis and you will only get 5s as it doesn’t stack, thus making you stagger stealth. It also bugs out the stealth effect which is annoying. <- incorrect
In my opinion the problem isn’t stealth, the problem is the game modes to a lesser extent and the fact there is at the moment only one semi counter to stealth.
Game modes: SPvP has a lot of stuff to LoS behind, jump around and hide around. Seriously, it’s completely out of whack with the rest of the game which has a lot of open spaces. So a little stealth is very strong there and a lot is over the top. In WvW where there isn’t always something to hide behind a little stealth on a slow class like Mesmer is a bad joke and generally most roamers can catch up the 3-4s gap easily.
No real counter: When someone goes into stealth that’s it usually. You can’t reveal them unless you’re an engineer and AoE and get lucky with a trait. Ranger can put reveal on someone with a shout before they go into stealth. In WvW you have a trap that does reveal stealthed targets if they run over it but it’s got a supply usage and generally the main offenders for stealth (thief) will just run away and come back later.
With guards getting a reveal trap, hopefully there will be other such changes implemented to reveal stealthed targets in order to balance it out more. More classes are also getting access to stealth too and it certainly looks like we’re heading that way. With that said and under those conditions I feel PU stealth duration is fine.
I do however think aegis is very strong and might inappropriate, replace might with troll 1s stab and aegis with 3s vigor could be a possible balance change that would be nice.
Also, veil with 2s stealth is laughably bad, 3s after having to trait it is an insult given its cool down, 4s I can live with though.
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Eh, I stopped going to Teq and TT because it was soooo boring easy before the patch. It required almost minimal effort and no knowledge about how to play the game.
Sorry but it’s time people learnt to dodge, learnt to figure out when to cleanse and actually read what their skills and traits do. With the trait change it’s almost impossible to make a bad build so most of the difficulty from that is gone.
Only done Teq since the patch, was a challenge but we succeeded in about the same time as we usually did pre patch, maybe a minute longer. Would like to go TT but usually full when I try at weekends, some 250 people trying to get into a map or I’m doing other things.
Oh my word. Never thought I’d see this post =P
Str runes work really well both in PvE and WvW, if you’re running warriors sprint then you don’t really need swiftness and knowing you you’re prolly all zerk so might stack away!
Generally pretty good. Loving the stealth duration of PU in WvW as now 1 veil really will let you surprise a Zerg instead of appearing near or needing additional veils.
The buffs to phantasms for PvE and the rework of mantras is great on that front and a much needed change.
PvP people are complaining the most.
Most classes are better off in general than they were pre patch but there’s been a fair bit of stat inflation on classes that used to have 300 points in places they didn’t want.
Still only engineer gets a half decent counter to stealth which is using utility goggles toolbelt skill if you happen to hit a stealthed player. With stealth being on Rangers, thief, engineer, Mesmer and soon to be guardians I would like it if there was a real counter to stealth.
The guardian trap in dragon hunter is a step in the right direction but there needs to be a bit more of that kind of stuff to provide real counter play to stealth, then maybe people will stop whining about PU and thief.
Edit: Typos, Apple I hate your idea of British English.
(edited by apharma.3741)
Ignorance Ignorance Ignorance.
Many Engi wants their OP bugged grenade barrage gone.
Many Ele wants their insane burning stack gone.
Many Guardians want their insane burning stack gone.
For thief idk, maybe not.This video pretty much sums up what’s wrong with Mesmer and Guardian.
You can keep making excuses. You can keep acting blind. You can keep giving silly arguments. You can keep pretending that the spec is weak. You can keep bringing up unrelated stuffs to justify this.
You can keep defending this BS, but you’d quickly see a dying GW2 pvp community. (Not like it’s not dying already.)
My favourite quote of that video: “Oh I messed up” followed by “Oh I messed up” and the repeated “I messed up” on an ideal long channel guard sitting there doing nothing but the most obvious channel in the game.
I also like how he used all his utilities, made sure he had all his damage procs going, used scholar runes everything to get absolute make burst.
Go watch JebroUnity channel on twitch, got a game or two with helseth and frostball, check their burst on competent players and use something like that as a comparison.
At the end of the day the only thing in that whole combo that is different from pre patch is the mantra of distraction for confounding suggestions and power block. Could it be what’s actually “broken” is the stat inflation and that marauder has about 10% more crit chance, more ferocity and power than the old zerker?
@mailmail yeah there’s a lot of things that if the ICD was per target they would work better and be either stronger and balanced or less powerful and balanced. I hope those kinds of things get implemented.
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The problem I see is things that are over performing don’t just get tweaked. They don’t get a sensible change, they get needed to the point no-one would use it.
Take confounding suggestions. Currently I feel it’s a little on the strong side, a few or many might agree. If Anet decides it is too strong it will get a 10-20s ICD or something. That will for the most part destroy it.
A better way to nerf it would be switch it with another trait in another line so power players have to choose but to keep its synergy with interrupts. Switching it with a trait in chaos means you could keep the synergy for interrupt builds but increase the opportunity cost for power shatters.
That is only an example, please don’t run away with it.
You mean like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TH0d-ofqbfs
Only you are limited to a 72s cool down per go if traited per Mesmer where as with 1 thief or engineer you can do it whenever you want (every 20s for engy) with smoke fields?
Yeah it’s due to an old or new trait being applied or something. It’s on the engineer forums, best part is the engineers trying to defend a very obvious bug like this.
While I wouldn’t say the healing prism thing was a bug, I would certainly say it’s painfully obvious to everyone it was too easy to proc constantly with other class interactions. No-one should defend the old healing prism.
That doesn’t mean I support keeping a 10s ICD, I’d like a real work around which stops it healing off small heals and heals off those intended like greater than 500hp which would be mantra charge, healing mantra, heal skills and the shatter heal.
So I’ve had time to do this in 50 fractals and Arah. It melts lupi perhaps not as quick as the 11s kill but it’s certainly not taking 30s and that’s pressing elite and auto attacks, wall of reflection in phase 2 for “advanced” users of such a low effort build.
It makes fractal 50 feel like a 10 and quite frankly just makes the entire game become a 2 button press and win.
I know the people who have run all these dungeons solo, naked, while riding a unicycle and juggling chainsaws can blow stuff up a bit quicker and find it no challenge. Still it removes nearly all effort from most content, you can even get away with never dodging most of the time.
Perhaps adding a heal threshold might work which then keeps it unique from the engineer trait. Say whenever you heal yourself for more than 500 or 600 in a single heal allies get healed?
Then we get rid of the ICD and it works with all active healing.
But well, that’s just me it seems.
It’s not just you. Any sane player believes PU is in absolute need of HEAVY shaves – both mesmers and all other players.
It’s just that coming here to QQ is pretty much useless because of all the insane amount of trash players trying to defend a build with which they have started to win some 1v1s with and, thus, are enjoying the sensation of feeling like a god.So yeah, the devs are probably aware of this so a nerf is already in the air. Just wait for a few more days. This is not the only thing that needs to be shaved though.
Oh great enlightened one who can read the minds of all sane players, I beseech you, impart your wisdom upon us and show us the way that it is OP.
Almost no-one took PU after it was nerfed, only those clone death condi builds which have now been removed. Now it’s at least viable as a defensive GM trait in a defensive (mostly) and condition line. However it does compete with a lot of other great trait lines for survivability, inspiration for one and illusions has a lot of much better traits for power players.
Only condi players I can see picking up PU and even then condi Mesmer got gutted badly and I fear just about everything else but extra stealth Mesmer.
There seems to be a few pieces missing.
Slow is currently way too strong on some bosses. With it you can get a pure dps 11s lupi kill from timewarp.
Also 5s of quickness is enough to offload most of your burst, I know my ele can icebow 4 and meteor shower in that time very comfortably. It also stacks duration so 2 guards give more than enough quickness and it’s ready for the next encounter.
If you really want to know how strong the new guard elite is, get 5 hammer guards, go zeal, honor and either virtues for unscathed contender and support or radiance for some other damage modifiers (seems similar) and just spam hammer auto with quickness on every fight. With persisting symbols you just wreck everything even on 50 fractals with absolutely no effort and can face tank it all.
Whoa, it’s you that’s living in Lala land. Ele hasn’t brought 25 might since PS warrior happened. Sure they do the fury thing and help with sustained vuln and burst with glyph of storms assuming not needing blind (on a 60s CD). Earth elemental is situational and a brown bear does the same job.
Thief has naturally high modifiers but hey, mesmer has better modifiers than ranger, guard, necro, possibly warrior and engy too. Though we’re not top of everything so I guess that’s your beef? We still have the second most game breaking elite atm and our base damage was buffed nicely.
We also get invuln states folded into out dps options but I guess we skip that just as we skip past the silly high reflect damage we have now if we want it, or the stupid levels of support or the instant recharge on the most powerful skipping tool in the game.
Sure Mesmer has some major failings in PvE but damage modifiers isn’t one of them, it’s the reliance on phantasms and long casts for power damage.
I said it in another thread but unlike certain members of other forums I don’t mind repeating myself or do I tell people to look through my post history.
They should have made the heal from prism scale off the heal you received. So with vampiric presence if it was 20% of the heal you’re looking at 5-7hp or something silly, even a GS auto won’t heal your allies for much.
Scale it up to on crit food which has a 2s ICD from what I remember, about 70hp every 2s when it works, not OP and even with vampiric presence it’s not that much. Barely more than regen.
Healing mantras, this is where it gets better, looking at a 360 heal on prepped mantra in addition to the aoe heal, not bad. Not amazing but for a minor I’ll take it.
What about something like ether feast? Well you’re looking at a 1-1.5k heal depending on factors. No ICD so it will go off when it’s supposed to and actually ends up being a buff.
Ofc 10-20% would be about what I would choose as the percentage of the heal, thinking 15% is the sweet spot.
Edit: or make a minimum heal threshold so you heal allies when you heal yourself over 500 health in one heal. Should shut out vampiric procs and food effects.
(edited by apharma.3741)
It was being abused with vampiric aura and on crit heal food.
However I don’t see why they didn’t change it to be a percentage of the heal rather than a flat amount. 20% of a vampiric aura heal is what, 5hp, absolutely pitiful. 20% of the on crit food which has a 2s ICD is about 70, hardly game breaking.
20% of a main heal, well, that’s about 1000 or a bit more. Not bad and we don’t have to deal with ICDs on a support trait.
Yep, thanks for the changes to inspiration line, chaos and everything. The lines flow now like they didn’t before. Where you look at what you want to do and can see the adept, master and grandmaster options clearly and are simply choosing which line to take for it.
The changes to utilities like reduced cool downs and reworking a few poor choices was great and kudos for not being afraid to do something different and buff something to be defining.
A small mention to the changes you made for necro, very nice support lines too, can really see the out of the box thinking there and many I know are loving it too.
Typin you may want to move the other conversation here as this thread is specifically about PU and that one is less so.
First, thief stealth itself can be countered already. For instance, I have now some experience with lock down after the patch. I can deny any stealth from D/P thieves with my lock down build. I will use D/P as reference now, because this is what I meet with the new skill system. Didn’t meet a S/D for instance or even P/D condi.
Getting into stealth:
First there is the Pistol #5 into Hear Seeker. The moment I see the blind field they are stunned and often interrupted. Shadow Refuge -> I push them out. So their potential burst can be mitigated by denying them stealth. I admit this was a bit idealized and in the actual fight, if the thief is clever, he can try to abuse LoS to get his skills off. So this point is only partly valid. The only instant stealth they got which I can’t deny reliably deny is steal itself.Executing the burst:
The other issue is, that thieves have less time to get their burst out. And they need to go melee to do it. Of course they have teleports such as Steal, Infiltrator Signet or Shadow Step. But those are, as well as our Decoy and Torch #4 also their defensive skills. The point is, as Thief, it is definitely harder to get your burst of and you risk yourself.My actual point:
I am not against Mesmer doing high burst damage from stealth. I am against giving Mesmers an “eternity” of stealth to have time to set up their burst.
Getting into stealth. No good burst or surprise came from anyone that went into stealth in front of you. More often than not they will stealth before you see them so they get you by surprise, whatever class that is. Most decent thieves know people try to knock them out of SR, that’s why when they use it (usually as escape) they save a dodge. You generally don’t see competent thieves getting knocked out of it. BP+HS is easily interrupted also, again most competent thieves know this and will try to do it out of your range or on top of you to blind and make you miss.
Mesmers on the other hand have to use torch 4 then it’s down to defensive utilities to stay in stealth. Do I really need to point out how bad of an idea it is to do that? Also mimic into decoy is not a great idea. I’d rather use it for a game changer utility.
Execution.
Thief is not harder to get your burst of, not by a long chalk. If you miss, hey keep trying. If you were blocked, repeat till that thing lands. Mesmer if they miss, well tough, you just wasted your burst, wait 5-10s depending on what you missed with. Additionally with a Mesmer a clone or phantasm usually appears next to you before the burst, how much more warning do you need? Thieves generally trait steal to a 21s cool down because it’s so useful for engage and don’t waste shadow step for engage. They also have skill 3 which can be cancelled while teleporting and go into backstab.
Your actual point.
Mesmers to spend “an eternity” in stealth would sacrifice all their utility slots and defences for what? A one trick pony that will get destroyed by any zero spec. It’s right up there with the one shot thief that blows all its signets for 20might and back stabs for insane damage. Then dies as they have no disengage.
No competent player or sane person would ever do that. Mesmers are not spending an eternity in stealth, they are spending precisely 16s more if they took every single stealth utility (not including desperate decoy as no control) and would be giving up a lot for something which is not needed.
Most mesmers will take decoy, torch and mass invis for a whole 11s more stealth with PU. Maybe veil for a Zerg but given it would be at the discretion of the commander I’m not sure we can count it.
So you’ll probably repeat this you said from the other thread:
“Alright:
1. Thief backstab needs to be in melee range. Mesmer shatter can be melee to increase damage, but doesn’t need to be. It can come from any direction and a very long range even.
2. Thief can be pushed or pulled during stealth to prevent him from getting to you. Often this results in stealth wearing off (in my experience at least). Mesmer with PU has a good chance the pull will get blocked due to aegis.
3. Backstab always works in the same patterns. Mesmer burst from stealth has way more possibilities (like dodge baiting via phantasms), which only increase with additional stealth time.
4. Thief gets revealed from Backstab. Mesmer can time shatter just when his stealth wears off, preventing him from being revealed.
Now does this all only apply to PU builds only? No it doesn’t. But with PU builds it is made considerably more easy to execute to a point where I think it is too easy"
1. Pyro covered this well by saying IP is a 1.5-2x modifier for a shatter and so to do anything meaningful in terms of damage you should also be in melee range. Incidentally most thieves have a 21s CD 1200 range steal to get into range and hit on their terms.
2. Not a surprise attack if you know the thief is there and it’s worse than hitting thin air as you’re ideally wanting to CC a thief when you can see and thus have a more than pot luck chance of hitting them. Needless to say using blind CC is a bad idea. Also if you can’t see the thief coming, and don’t know they’re there because they’re in stealth…point is moot.
3. Backstab is generally used as a surprise thing, the strength of it comes from a person not knowing it’s coming. Mesmer burst has patterns just like thief and generally has a tell. If we’re talking about attacks from stealth, which we were, thief can afford much more time to wait in stealth without burning their defensive cool downs. Mesmer is burning them for more time.
4. You ever seen block block block block block block block block backstab? Backstab only reveals on damage and has no penalty for miss or block which causes a lot of problems and makes it a lot less skilful. Also why would anyone wait till stealth is about to end to attack, you attack at the opportune moment not wait till it passes and then attack because stealth isn’t up.
Besides attacking when stealth wears off means you are no longer attacking from stealth, you’re going to show just before you attack which means you give them time to dodge. This is very different to how backstabbing works and is just a bad way of playing. Eat the reveal for the burst, you don’t wait it out and risk someone +1 the fight. Pyro also makes other good points about it making you predictable as they will then just count to 6 and dodge. We all know how to do that, just double what you do for Alpha in CoE.
Ok so we’ll drop the boons aspect if it was a side argument, I was only offering an aside to it.
My point about thieves is that they have the ability by default to give themselves way more stealth, to burst for more and lock you down from stealth. Which has been your entire premise from before anyone mentioned the boons on PU.
Literally every single thing you have said has been used to try and leverage nerfs to stealth and thieves.
So answer my question which you selectively ignored. Give me one reason why it is acceptable that a thief can burst as high, if not more so, from stealth of an equal or greater length with a double stun (now basi venom is 2 charges base) and it is suddenly OP for mesmers to get a bit more stealth from a GM trait which doesn’t even compare to the amount of stealth a thief can stack for themselves and their party?
As for obsession with thieves, it’s only because they are the nearest comparison. Trust me if engineers had non damage blasts/leaps and 5s shaved off that smoke bomb you’d see more QQ about stealth attack engineers.
As Windwalker said, it doesn’t matter what length of stealth you put on it, whether it be 2s or 5mins, it won’t change the burst from stealth and that is what’s downing people.
Setting up burst in a 4s window or in a 6s window makes considerable difference.
Escaping in a landscape where there isn’t something to LoS around in a 4s window or in a 6s window makes a considerable difference too.
Yes, and this is the other thing I am disliking in PU. Thanks for making this point for me.
PU is too strong as an offensive and defensive trait. It makes you even partly immune or at least more resistant to AoE dmg (what usually is used against cloaked targets) due to Aegis application and Protection.
So, make the argument to remove aegis and or protection and replace it with 1s stab and 3s vigor. Thieves get as much on demand stealth as they want, granted it’s only 4s traited but then they also have a lot more in and outside combat mobility, making it much stronger than the slow mesmer.
All this without a single argument as to why a thief in 1 hit is allowed to do as much damage from stealth as mesmers with 0 indication it’s happening. At least theres a tell with Mesmer by the sudden appearance of a clone/phantasm.
As Windwalker said, it doesn’t matter what length of stealth you put on it, whether it be 2s or 5mins, it won’t change the burst from stealth and that is what’s downing people.
Setting up burst in a 4s window or in a 6s window makes considerable difference.
Escaping in a landscape where there isn’t something to LoS around in a 4s window or in a 6s window makes a considerable difference too.
Mesmer dmg is same as prepatch shatter dmg eaven lower beacose you can’t take flat 20% dmg increase from adebt eny more only stat chance gives give me extra 200 power and 9% extra crit chance but it’s same for all classes
In addition this is all half true.
This patch you get the GM which is 15% so a reduction of 5% flat damage. What you do get is a double of the bonus against enemies not activating skills which is a 10% increase in damage over the old trait if you have enough sense to use it properly.
This is while also ignoring that phantasms had their base damage upped by 15% as baseline, IP became baseline and IE becoming baseline which all considerably increased the damage of a GS or staff shatter build.
So yeah, ignore all those other damage boosts and the stat inflation of more crit chance and crit damage on the amulets. Even marauder amulet is better than the old berserker amulet!
The only ways I’ve managed to get away as a Mesmer in WvW is with stealth. You couldn’t outrun the person most of the time and unless you managed to blink somewhere they couldn’t see they would chase you and kill you.
Out of all the skills pre patch the only one that managed to give me a fighting chance was mass invis. A close second was decoy into torch 4, maybe a blink if it was off cool down.
Now, I can decoy and get a decent way away before the chase happens. Does it reset the fight? Yep. Do warriors, engies, rangers, thieves and elemental it’s do this too? Yep,100% yep and they do it with considerably less effort with the amount of evade frame gap closures/openers.
As Windwalker said, it doesn’t matter what length of stealth you put on it, whether it be 2s or 5mins, it won’t change the burst from stealth and that is what’s downing people.
Everyone is doing silly levels of damage at the moment. Let Anet get a handle on the damage both direct and condition, then start messing with the traits.
This thread is kinda nice for looking at the comparison of old condition damage and new.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3b2n3z/new_condition_damage_evens_out_at_700_base_stat/
So don’t forget, not only was MtD nerfed but torment was nerfed too especially as you can only get 1200 condition damage stats in PvP and more has to come from traits. Have a nice day =D
Thief could have taken Hidden thief trait, stolen straight into backstab followed by a 10k HS with Fire and Air sigil procs. More efficient and can be done at 1200 range. Could even have used blinding powder to get in range where you couldn’t see them and it offers no counter play.
Oh sorry I forgot, claiming mesmer stealth blows stuff up and offers -100 counter play easy mode is flavour of the month. Suck it up and L2P PU mesmer [insert general PvP false, biased and wrong smack talk].
P.S. Sarcasm alert in the 2nd paragraph.
Meanwhile , some of mesmers who regularly post in the forums also ask for all kinds of nerfs (sorry, BALANCE).
So your average Anet developer sees what? He can go ahead and nerf the class because hey, everybody is asking for it, even the mesmers themselves. We can just come out later and say: it was a bug and we did not nerf you, just fixed the bug.
Funny how people who played condi are upset about the MtD nerf, but they don’t care that much about other things being OP, nerfed or what.Honestly, if you guys keep asking for nerfs, or saying “there is so much that needs to be toned down”… then don’t be upset later that we’ve been nerfed. Did you see what the engineers did when their precious swiftness was at stake?
Except a lot of if not all the regular mesmers who care about balance are in the MtD thread complaining it’s an over nerf even when they don’t often play that build.
Those same people you’re saying asking for nerfs want the staff trait buffed a bit to between 3-4% to find a happy medium between where the users feel it’s good and the developer feels it’s not OP.
Some things are just plain too strong. 4k from power block was a tad too strong especially given all the other stuff it did, 17% reduction is a fairly decent shave and it hasn’t broken it while retaining all the usefulness it had before.
Engineers are spoilt little ****s with a silver spoon in every oriface, 10k auto mortar kit gets toned down and people cry, I’d love it if any Mesmer auto did even 50% of that reliably. Don’t anyone dare link a GS auto total of 100k, no-one falls for that stuff anymore.
I expect more shaves, all we can do is make arguments for how it has a counter or possible alternatives. I’d like it if the devs posted a list of things they felt were too strong and allowed us to give feedback on ways it can be adjusted. Given the general rudeness from a lot of people especially to Josh and Gaille recently I can’t imagine they’re too keen.
P.S. Anyone able to summon phantasmal Robert Gee to help adjust what is too strong, he really pulled a number on the final revision. Their layout and positions are great while being very thematic in the end.
I actually do damage to monsters and clear packs of creatures, the new [class mechanic] damage and the new trait lines are amazingly powerful and really take alot of the drudgery out of leveling a [profession] that I experienced the first time around.
I remember that, with my warrior, my ele, my thief, ranger, guard, necro and engineer.
I also remember a dark patch in my memory full of misery and suffering, crawling pathetically slowly around maps. Taking a while to kill stuff or not really getting there in time to tag something as I was summoning and so hearts took longer. Where my class mechanic was frequently (and still is) made redundant and I’m left fighting a champion with a toothpick.
I guess the dark clouds are parting, if only for the rain of nerfs that will blot out that sun.
We just did it for the unscathed contender buff tbh, nothing to be sniffed at. Might try going radiance too but tbh it’s so faceroll that I don’t think it really matters.
My favourite is Mai Trin if you’re downed…wiggle wiggle wiggle of the sword and 56 bleeds.
I don’t really mind, just means you need to think about preventing it and dodging the attacks more. Pug killer inc.
Yeah we did 5 man hammer fractal 40 earlier with a similar build to this. To say it trivialized everything is an understatement. Archdiviner melted in seconds and gotta say the only fatalities were from the environment (thermanova tired isn’t good) and people could tank almost anything.
With 5 guards, try all having retreat and going into virtues for unscathed contender, all pick absolute resolution for the extra troll heal and indomitable courage or whatever tickles your fancy.
We plan to faceroll lvl 40 and 50 fractals tomorrow to get a friend closer to 50.
Mesmer burst was always strong it’s just now Mesmer has the ability to take some defence like blind on shatter, inspiration line, PU, high protection uptime and other things to help survive.
I wouldn’t like to see the defence go away as hunting down a Mesmer that didn’t have excessive stealth wasn’t that hard. Perhaps toning down mind wrack might help a bit. I remember seeing frostball and helseth in recent matches (pre patch) and if the shatters went off in the middle of a team fight the damage was huge. However they’re very good players so…dunno.
I really don’t want to see harmonious mantras, fencers finesse or blurred inscriptions changed. I also feel the traits are all very well laid out for picking what works well together. Maybe it’s more that other classes don’t have traits as well laid out as Mesmer?
Edit: Additionally, mesmer wasn’t fun to play in PvE, it felt lacking, didn’t match the effort required for the damage and you had to give up all your utility for meagre buffs. You’re phantasms died frequently to boss AoE, didn’t get [unique buff] so couldn’t damage something and generally it was a pain. Now I feel like I’m pulling my weight, that I can provide the utility without gutting my damage. I feel on par with other classes for the most part for the first time in almost 2 years (didn’t get GW2 at launch)
Additionally the stealth buff with PU means we don’t need a thief for skips anymore in my party as I can either portal people through comfortably with personal stealth or MI and veil lasts long enough to get them through. Before, certainly veil felt very poor for its CD and utility slots were at a higher premium, now I feel I can slot it without feeling hampered in the next fight.
(edited by apharma.3741)
Thanks for clearing that up Josh, hopefully you’ll take on board Fay’s recommendation of making chaotic dampening a 3% instead of 2%. Though if you wanna make it 4% that would be great too =D
As for everyone else, I know it’s really annoying getting something really great and then it being toned down or taken away. However it’s not helpful to rage at the devs, think from their point of view. This is a major patch, it changes so many things that it’s very hard to make it balanced and they’re really putting in the effort especially with all the forum posts.
Keep it polite, keep it constructive and keep thinking whether it really is too much for one thing. Power block being 17% reduction is a shave and most people think it was needed. Staff trait is over nerfed but Josh said its under review and could go up, make compelling reasons for it to be changed.
A red post of all the problematic traits etc in a post and asking for feedback stating they feel X trait needs toning down (or buffing slightly) I’m sure a lot of people would give helpful ideas in this forum, at least the regular posters would.
This patch really shook up the game in a good way and now condition users are not trivialised and penalised in large scale events. The specialisations while needing tweaking are a big step in a good direction to provide meaningful choices instead of having multiple borderline useless traits.
Well done Arena Net, keep up the hard work.
As for the rest, everyone is going on about nerfing conditions, burning is a bit excessive and does need toning down, I agree. However bleeds and condition builds are nowhere near as strong as the direct damage counterparts.
My ele was and has been hitting for about (usually over) 10K direct damage a second for well over a year or two, condition users outside of those with ridiculous burns couldn’t even hope to come close to that.
I hope Anet does instead look at applications of burn and just put ICDs and limits on just how much people can generate, that or alter it to be medium damage, medium duration so the damage isn’t over 2s but 4s.
Also quickness stacking up to 2 minutes and the many, many, many guards using that elite, can’t possibly be compounding the issue.
I know it’s going to be a rough few weeks but I hope the adjustments are made carefully, the core of the patch and the intent is great and I would hate to see that thrown away.
Not played with it but it does seem strong given what has been said here. I also agree that having the ICD on the target not the Mesmer allows the trait to scale well without becoming silly OP.
Another thing to consider, multiple mesmers. Do they all share the same ICD on a target so the target can only get hit by the trait every 10s?
If all conditions are too strong then it’s a formula problem so all builds should get toned down with multiplier changes. MtD should then be checked under a new formula to see if it really should be nerfed.
Btw people are complaining at Mesmer stealth, burst, power, everything now. Bend over time soon memsers…
As awesome as this sounds….it’ll be nerfed within, well by the time I wake up tomorrow morning along with all forms of burning and anything pink and butterfly producing.
I’ll be ok with them replacing confusing combatants with this new fury minor IF they do one of the following-
A) remove phantasmal Fury and make fury on us affect our illusions’ crit rate.
or
B) Combine phantasmal fury into this new minor
+1
I figured that confusion on crit was gonna go, just way too much stacking potential especially on condi builds.
Disappointed by MtD though, I’d like to see 2 stacks or if only 1 stack of torment a much longer duration of say 8s so you can get some nice stacking without blowing all your shatters.
I guess the cries of OP are getting listened to without people realising how easy it is to neuter mesmers.
Like what ele/ warrior/thief/ mesmer? those were alreadyin the meta speedrun parties guardians have been phased out of that for a while, we are only part of of the not so speedy speedruns because its easier to carry bad people with a guard. Our damage is not amazing by any means and all we had going for us (damage multipliers) either got slashed or became more conditional (less % uptime) . The classess that actually needed more attention got screwed by this patch just like us ( necro corruption changes and ranger only got pet stats in exchange for damage multipliers)
Yeah I know mesmers have largely replaced guards (only really because of portal) in speed runs but not everyone does speed runs, in fact it’s probably safe to say more people don’t do speed runs by a substantial margin.
I’m also talking about all game modes. We’re finally at a point in WvW where most classes do have a function, whether it be focus group or zerg. PvE I’d love to have seen necro and a good melee ranger appear. Sadly eles, warriors, guards and thieves will still dominate most runs. Mesmers in speed runs but it most certainly isn’t because of mesmer damage with that ~30s ramp up time.
I hope these changes will see other classes used a bit more as 3 guard parties are not uncommon outside of speed clear wannabe record runs. We’ll have to wait and see how the condition change also affects necros and rangers. I really hope we can see them get a substantial buff in PvE except for that blooming longbow.
(edited by apharma.3741)
I think the problem was not that vigor was too strong but that access to it was too widespread. I mean a lot of teams have a warrior, if you’re near them when they war horn 5 that’s vigor for 5 allies for 10s and on a 16s cool down if traited. Ele and thief need vigorous the most, they have low base health and rely on dodging, hence why they needed high uptime. Other classes not so much as they had invuln, block, teleport or excessive movement speed to compensate.
Still I think now is the time to perhaps revise some of our utilities and see if a cool down shave is appropriate if vigor is being reduced. I’m sure even Mik would agree to that =)
And you got my post wrong. I’m saying that there are a lot of classes that have been neglected for up to 3 years from most game modes because they couldn’t offer anywhere near as much as a guardian could. With guardians being clipped substantially maybe we will see better balance.
Then who knows, maybe guards can get buffs to things they need buffing or a way to GTFO on mediguard.
We got turned into peasants with greatswords and hammer’s, from what I see so far from the livestreams, compared to other classes. I personally don’t see guardian being so viable as it was on the last patch, but everything will become more clearer after a week or so after the patch. I hope I’m wrong.
Oh no, one of the most played classes in the entire game is not feeling as well off as the half a dozen other classes few people played because they didn’t measure up? I’ll get the necros to pass the handkerchief over when they’re finally in a good place in 3 more years.
As for OP, no chill on symbols is silly. Just restore the do more damage to targets in your symbol trait to 20%. The application is going to be very hard to hold without persisting symbols. I do feel a fair chunk of damage modifiers have gone poof and bringing back a 10% modifier to specific weapons would help but I’m waiting to see how it all rolls out. Certainly a lot of the traits look better for PvP than PvE.
That means a good 7-8 of the amulets will be a no go for guardians, thieves & elementalists because they will give no vitality or so little as to not matter & without that vitality you will be easily nuked/plagued to death by conditions.
Last I checked thieves didn’t put many points in a vitality line for health, it was for the actual traits. Just as elementalist puts points into water for the regen, healing and support.
Everyone seems to also forget that all builds will now be able to pick 9 major traits instead of just 7 so there’s now room for that added defence. Sure there is a loss of those special 1 point minors like the classic medi guard but on the whole you should be able to take the defence you need to compensate.
Play the patch first before whining for more health, it’s what I plan to do with my zerk WvW ele before adding vitality or complaining.
if you take the manipulation trait in chaos then you can get a mirror for reflects after using a manipulation. Pair it with arcane thievery, blink and mass invis and you should have plenty.
Can’t comment on the rest of the traits as the link doesn’t work on my tablet, I just see the standard ele page.
PvE Mesmer got a lot of damage buffs, however it still (no chrono remember) suffers from poor AoE and doesn’t do well against trash. It also still (most likely) has the drawback of having 50-60% of its direct damage on phantasms as well as having a hefty ramp up time and they die to random AoE, boss reflects with no indication (looking at you archdiviner) and just plain old dying when the target dies.
PvP I think a lot of it will seem OP as the good are going from fighting with one arm behind their backs to fighting with two hands. The stealth duration, I would love an alternative to thief for party stealth and currently Mesmer stealth is just a tad too short for its cool downs. The new trait addresses that in some ways.
Mesmer also now has ways to get survivability from shatters, you know, getting defence from your class mechanic like other classes do. In return they are giving up a lot of if not all clone death traits (funny how everyone skips past that) and no longer have to trait to make stuff work how they really should, like manipulations.
All classes are going to be able to pick 3 full trait lines and there’s some very powerful combinations no class could have before. Everyone is getting stronger not just Mesmer.