Guild Wars 2

Skill #3 got killed even more this last patch.. It no longer cripples on land and is extremely buggy to begin with.. If you are fighting the mesmer and have any sort of z-axis advantage the clone won’t even make it to you. But iLeap is the only time you will see something charging at you immediately dodge and the mesmer will do a blurred frenzy into air.

Keep in mind friends… Engineers got a new buff… They can keep 10 stacks of confusion on a target for 5 seconds… Mesmers we are limited 3 seconds for the most part still unless we are traited to have it last 33% longer… In which case its just our confusion and not our illusions so I think the duration of mesmer confusion needs a buff… Honestly if you are dying to confusion bombs in WvW its usually from a zerg and right now well necros are doing scary things in WvW even against confusion mesmers… Unshelf that necro sir have at it!

Edit: And for the love of god can they please add confusion to some part of the chain in scepter one… 1 stack 5 seconds…

The torch traited… My phantasm has a cooldown of 17 secs (illusionists celerity&cleansing conlflagration) by the time the prestige blows it has 20 seconds left on its cool down….. Its really not that bad…. The only weapons that I don’t feel need to be traited when used are a 1H sword and a pistol (but if duelist discipline were one tier lower well. So if they decreased the base cooldown for torches where would that put the phantasm at… 12 seconds? less? The prestige 15 seconds? I’m not gonna try doing the math pharmacology is already filling my head… But i think if they decreased it to what everyone here suggests (I am by no means against it!) but realistically thinking…. I don’t think ANet would do it… I would much rather increase the stacks of confusion from the mage and the duration…. 5 and 5?
Engineers with their new buffs can easily match us in stacking confusion… And I just find something wrong with that…

Keep the stacks the same… Up duration of confusion to 5 seconds… Happy happy joy joy… Engis get it at 5 seconds why couldn’t mesmers the “confusion” class get the same.

Ahem… I solo/small squad cap camps all the time… Start ninja ops on towers while the enemy is busy with a keep elsewhere and get compliments nightly on how well I fight in duels… I rarely zerg and I still think that something should be done with the thief type stealth and… Mainly because of the bonuses they get from stealth (most builds give them some sort of bonus) and the culling issue but that has been said will be fixed. And people like you are the ones that think that the only good players are thieves amiright?

I really hope the iMage gets a rework or at least a more reliable range! But honestly with the torch as is now compared to pre-patch (even with the finisher) I’ll take it now… It adds so much damage to a blurred/MW combo not that its not channeled… You can still stack confusion quite high and in WvW with the button mashers it is pretty awesome… I had bunker guards party me and say how they felt locked down the whole time because of confusion… So that should be worth something even to the people that hate the torch.

Any word yet on this bug?

Daeqar.8965:

purpleskies.3274:

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

Nope…they just complain about the “culling bomb” that drops on top of them whekittenerg materializes around their downed body because a mesmer veiled 20 people as they rolled in on your group or portaled nearby.

Oddly enough, this abuse of culling actually has a big impact on matchup outcomes whereas thieves with individual stealth is essentially inconsequential in the big picture.

I beg you sir gimme footy of how a veil bomb works… I want to use it but it kills far more useful utilities… TBH I don’t think any mesmers would gripe if they capped veil somehow… Most of these skills that people gripe about we only use if people scream at us too.

Fred Fargone.3127:

The way I see it,
we have conditions, and we have condition removals,
we got buffs, and we got debuffs,
we got stealth, and we got… Apples?
How about some stealth removing mechanism? For example, if you burn a thief, well, a human torch shouldn’t even be able to stealth. If you lodge your sword between his ribs, how can you not tell he is there? If you’re a mesmer… stealth is a type of illusion (right?) so surely a mesmer needs some counter skill for that, they’re the masters of illusion after all!

Your words… I like em!

purpleskies.3274:

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

I will say the issue with thieves and their stealth is the insane amount of bonuses they can proc while in stealth… Sure they can’t get them all at once.. But when they make the build for it and such they get too many good things… They have some of the best condi removal in the game and this is before they even touch traits. yeah mesmers have access to stealth but we have to go 30 points into a defensive trait line to even get a bonus from it… Now I am not saying remove all bonuses that a thief gets for going stealth… But tone some down.. I put a list somewhere in this thread earlier…. Other classes get some form of stealth mesmers are a far second with the amount of access we get to it… Then rangers only with traits and engineers (RNG dependent). Beyond that thief is the stealth class and they are ruling wvw… When most of the people you run into are 4/5 man teams of nothing but thieves and you don’t see any other enemy classes on the map something is going on…But when culling gets addressed… Hopefully we can see if there are more problems people have with thieves.. I have these.. and certain skills that do damage but don’t break stealth.

EFFIT you want clones go scepter sword! 4/5 skills have clone generation potential! But I love the GS I love the staff… you will not get me to admit to a bad Mesmer weapon… Its all preference and what you wanna do… Nuff said.

The Mesmer has 4… And please tell me where we have this skill that converts all conditions to boons? I have most certainly never seen it… We have arcane thievery which steals 3 boons gives 3 conditions (used to be all… about 6 months ago). Then we have nullfield which only removes conditions from us and boons from you… and its ground targeted… Then we have mantra of resolve which can cure two conditions per charge… Lastly we have iDisenchanter which… LOL… We can spend a couple trait points like on the torch go to master… but because confusion is so bad in sPvP most people spend that trait on something else…. Then we have menders purity which removes a whopping one condition per heal. OP please tell me the name of the Mesmer that converted all of your conditions to boons so I can shake is hand… lol…

Please fix the iLeap… Very annoying that one of our only ways to stop runners doesn’t cripple anymore…

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Scepter sword… sword torch… You can pretty much keep perma confusion up… Maybe not stacked through the roof but between the blinds that confuse, the mage, scepter 3, and the shatters you can keep confusion up almost the whole time. Why don’t I do scepter torch you may ask? Well the prestige needs you to be melee to get s**t done and because the iMage has emotional issues and sucks to go to a certain range I feel its best to use the torch in the melee set. This also keeps two sources of confusion in both weapon sets… Dueled a couple guards in WvW last night (fix Confusion in sPvP then I may go there) but they said “You had me locked down the whole fight with confusion” It may have not been doing insane burst damage the whole time but it was whittling away at them… And people really get hung up on the cooldowns for the prestige and iMage… Just go 20 into dom and get the trait for torches. The added condition removal plus the shortened stealth really adds to the surviveability… They say the cooldown on the prestige is still too long… Honestly after you break stealth with the blast its only got 20 sec left on its CD… Not too bad imo… A build like this would be even better if they brough one stack of confusion back to the end of the scepter chain… Just my 2c….

GS? Open with zerker, mirror blade, dodge in, Pop f3, Swap, MI iLeap Blurred frenzy+MW equals dead anything… They nerfed the berserker damage… And to the person that hated on the torch. Traited it is amazing. Just saying.

So after playing WvW tonight with a traited torch… even though its not a blast finisher anymore ( I think) I still find it to be an amazing weapon… helps with conditions and I have had a prestige go off for about 4k on a couple crits… plus the burning. image still good for the confusion but you gotta know when to do it for best burst potential. All in all a lot better than people give credit for.

Okay errrbody stahhppp! Torch… not the greatest offhand weapon but definitely not the absolute joke people make it out to be here!

PROS: Cleansing conflagration… Congratulations you now have 2 condition removers for a class that gets crap condition removal. Blinding befuddlement! Do this right after a shatter and tada! Without running the glamour confusion build you can still instastack around 13-14 stacks of confusion which is if you have good timing… couple this with confusing images on the scepter and constant shatters you can still keep some confusion on the enemy and the iMage is just a nice little buff to that oh did i mention? 2 condition removal in a weapon set when traited!

The cons: This weapon is only good if traited…. Beyond that it is lack luster and lameskies… But i feel most mesmer weapons are best when traited except for maybe the 1H sword because I don’t really need the reductions for it… Lets look at the focus… If not traited you can still get swiftness and a reliable (more reliable than mage) source of retaliation… iWarden not traited only blocks projectiles…. When traited reflects them as well.. rangers? P/d thieves? kitten please.

Thank you for the response. We really hope it gets fixed soon. We can worry about the other laundry list of bugs after but this response is greatly appreciated

Anet has posted in the thread in the bugs forum that they are aware and the change to iZerker was not intentional.

If it is not a nerf we would like the acknowledgement that it is a bug and at least being looked at… Nerf or not… Saying something is better than nothing as this gets more and more infuriating.

Tried messaging one of the powers that be but said persons inbox was full… Lovely… Maybe they just are that busy… Who knows.

Good places to get p/v/t are dungeons… AC and HOTW both have full sets…

No this time we are going to keep pressing…. It is ridiculous that we are getting ignored. If they close one thread in the bugs forum I suggest someone open another… Closed mouths don’t get fed… And if we sit back.. Then we have to wait til next patch for them to even address it.. Which is unacceptable.

Hmmm… Who were the devs that had posted in this thread on the prestige bug glitch? I’m not saying all mesmers and their mom send a message. But a message from someone trying to represent this player base to voice our concerns might be worth a shot… But then again… It may also get shot into the ground… Who knows? But since the patch was released:

1. iLeap no longer cripples on landing
2. izerker damage has been cut in half or worse by some accounts
3. The prestige cooldown was fixed but is now no longer a blast finisher leaving mesmers with 0 blast finishers…

I love how this went from an easy/lazy class suggestion forum to make someones life easier to a flame war… OP you want an easy class? Make a new char of what you don’t have… Go to HOTM… Play around if you feel that class requires too much effort… Delete char… pick a new class.. rinse repeat til you feel one is adequately lazy. Your welcome.

I really wish that retaliation damage showed up in the logs outside of PvP. Just in the normal combat log….

Everytime I post I get infracted. Maybe I should reword lol. I really hope we get a response from someone other than the moderator or just be informed that the thread is closed.

Look at the sticky thread for the shatter cat, Osicat runs nothing but sword sword, and staff as a back up

sostronk.8167:

jportell.2197:

sostronk.8167:

Jasra.3627:

i have only problem with P/D thief, they have mostly high survivability an insane stacking of bleed + still they have c&d from dagger, this is "meta"in wvw atm i think, i see more and more thiefs with this
anet forcing ppl to play thieves, when they want small scale pvp in wvw

It might be meta. But I do notice most seem to be running P/P – D/D. I run PP-DD because I find it has a better contribution overall. As a full GC you can do 12-13k damge burst off the PP and you can do it twice in a row before CD (out of initiative). Just got to be careful as reflect skills from Guardian and a few other things and you will basically instantly kill yourself as you only have 10k health. The bleed stacks are only good if they don’t have condition removal or worse condition transfer.

But there is just one thing I don’t like about this thread. Its all QQ about thiefs. But the most OP thing in the game right now is stealth and it is Veil. The amount of times Ive seen this wipe 50 player zergs just because it was landed at the right time. This contributes more to a server than any thief could ever dream to. There are alot of players who know how to deal with thiefs and its brutally obvious who they are when I am facing them. But alot of people dont. And rather than actually work out there mechanics by playing them for a period of time they just want to complain about them without knowing how they really work.

You kiddin me right? If a Mesmer does run veil the duration is not long enough for 50 people to run through and if that be the case by the time all 50 people get through it the ones that popped in it first are already coming out… Then lets talk about the kittenedly long 90 second cooldown on a freaking utility slot (genius!) and the fact that the Mesmer is then losing out on another useful utility slot… Mesmer stealth is not spammable like a thieves… By the time a Mesmer spams all their stealth skills they are SOL and have no more access to it if a Mesmer is running veil then you have roughly 90 seconds to deal with them after… And in all honesty if they were to make veil to have a X person limit… I highly doubt anyone would care… The only people trying to deflect this conversation about the highest stealth class in the game away from it are said players that play this class… And the only people that would get any ADDED BONUS from going through a veil would be thieves especially in damage…

Try telling this to T1 servers. By time organized zergs come out of veil the enemy zerg is pretty much wiped. When its not that, its portal bombing. Both Mesmer abilties. Just because your players don’t know how to use veil doesn’t mean anything.

So because zergs can organize and coordinate its need for a nerf? Portal bombing can also be seen coming a mile away…. And if an enemy zerg can wipe you in a whopping 4 seconds then I’m sorry that’s just terrible… Me (and others) run right into the middle of an enemy zerg and we last for a good 30 seconds if we are alone and they out number us… I find it a very large exaggeration to say that 50ppl can wipe another 50ppl in 4 seconds….

Srsly Pyro this is a great build and really good at dueling… I have people refuse to duel me because they say “I know your build… The more I hit you the more I die…. No thanks.” But I was dueling a thief yesterday that started to get wise to the iDefender and he would take it out as soon as I would pop it up.. Any suggestions on how to deal with people that forget about you and go right for your tank?

If you attack us through the clones and shields that is your reward… Some Mesmers can build pure tank and won’t even try to hide from between their clones because they are gonna have a bunch of regen and half time protection….. Base vitality is a joke generally… And honestly go ahead make our health the same as with an ele’s but give us better active defense… (cuz unless we are pure tanks we don’t have much.)

In wvw confusion is the main reason I have a scepter… Tornado ele’s what? But in sPvP the damage is ridiculously low even when stacked through the roof… Which makes me a sad panda because its our only reliable condition. But I don’t see them giving confusion any sort of serious buff people gripe about it enough in the WvW forums.

GS is fun and we have other options but we shouldn’t be forced to choose other options simply because the one we enjoy most was destroyed.

You have to be with in a certain range… It works. And I use it a lot in certain dungeon situations… I try to just tell my group to stay around me and I Spam MOP the entire fight and I can get almost 3k heals off in my entire party.

Well too bad no mesmers were sitting there loggin numbers on the zerker damage before patch because Anet is also going to be asking for comparison numbers (heaven forbid they are wrong and the playerbase is just having a bad perception). But if someone can do a video on the damage of the zerker now. Orr, Dummies in LA, Golem in HOTM, anything… And give their account… There is a thread in the game bugs subforum on this topic. Please post the videos there… Hopefully a response is made. soon.

Okay so there we have it a controlled study about the reveled debuff on thieves… Thank you sir.

But it doesn’t really limit anything… And I am glad they do this right now because if they allowed multiple chars on other servers WvW would become a nightmare… People already bought multiple accounts just to spy on the other WvW servers… Its especially gnarly in the higher tiers.

My guild was dueling all last night it was great… If any players showed up as soon as we saw them on our team we just said “dueling welcome to join just please don’t troll” if the person didn’t take that hint and started whaling… then… well they got roflstomped and told again… We weren’t rude unless the people that came in were not taking the hint.

Aberrant.6749:

jportell.2197:

Bunker build useless? They are the only counter to a thief because the slow rendering and the haste of a thief make it impossible to render on your screen before a balanced build is dead… Can I go balanced? sure but I will die to a thief at some point instantly… I could also just go full zerk but I like surviving normal encounters too not just GC thieves.

It’s a passive defense. It’s boring. Often it doesn’t even work as you can’t kill what’s hitting you. All of my toons take a balanced approach. If you go more offensive than a bunker you’ll notice things like high vigor uptime kick in (depending on class). That means (with skill) you can avoid more damage than what a bunker can mitigate with just passive hp/toughness. On top of that you’re doing more damage than a bunker… so you kill things faster, and things still can’t kill you. Win-Win… presuming you have decent reaction time and skill (which you can get with practice). But some people can’t stay aware of their surroundings and are too sluggish and hit a stunbreaker when they see their character stop moving and then turn to stone I guess…

Here your logic is severely flawed… Bunker builds are wars of boons and attrition and its all about the bunker managing what they have. And bunkers are still a full on counter to the GC thief because it gives us reaction time before we are dead. It still takes about 1-2 seconds for a thief to fully show on your screen after they break stealth hell even on my mes when I come out of stealth (because Im like oh sheet sheet sheet run!) I turn back and see them doing nothing thinking “Why aren’t they chasing me?” Then I’m like oh yeah they still cant see me. Take a bunker Mesmer for instance I still have almost 2.9k attack total and nearly 3k armor… My shatters grant me specific boons that lead to the enemy killing themselves while they fight me… The only way I don’t get a stomp in this build is if they run (in which case I still win) or they slap more conditions on than I can remove because even when specced conditions are the bane of a Mesmer. I still do tons of damage because people are too stupid to notice that I have full uptime on retal and so does everything I have out… So It is most def not passive defense in this case. And to think other wise is just silly.

Aberrant.6749:

sahamk.5672:

It is a matter of skill. Noob thief or just a thief is not a problem. But good thief… He could kill you, your teammate and a guy who was just running with you. I met such a thief. It was totally impossible to kill him. I dont know how good were those two guys, but they were killed and me so… The same thing with mesmers. Mesmer is a free kill, but when mesmer’s skill reaches some point, he becomes unkillable.
Anet should change some mechanics so noobs wouldn’t be a free frag, and skilled guys wouldn’t be ubstopable…

To me this shows that skill matters. This is a good thing. If anything I wish they would make skill matter MORE than numbers in WvW (stupid mass res’s from downed state).

Btw… I’ve also had people whisper me on my guard and on my eng and tell me that the class is OP… and yet I’m able to smash most other players who are playing the supposedly OP class. It’s a skill thing, not a class thing. Thankfully A-net has said that they don’t balance based on the lower/mid levels of skill.

Note I’m not trying to say I’m a godlike player with any class… just that I’m better than most randoms in WvW. It also took some time/practice/thinking on how I can counter other classes.

jportell.2197:

A thread a few days back asked why so many bunker builds are popular in wvw… the one answer is thieves… if one class can make every person in wvw want to try bunkering there is a big problem

I find that bunker builds are nearly useless and are just a crutch for bad players. I can mitigate/avoid/deal more damage in a balanced set up Vs. some one who just refuses to learn to react to attacks with something other than passive hp/toughness. That doesn’t therefore mean thief (or any other class) is OP… it does show how many people are unwilling to practice and learn though…

Bunker build useless? They are the only counter to a thief because the slow rendering and the haste of a thief make it impossible to render on your screen before a balanced build is dead… Can I go balanced? sure but I will die to a thief at some point instantly… I could also just go full zerk but I like surviving normal encounters too not just GC thieves.

A thread a few days back asked why so many bunker builds are popular in wvw… the one answer is thieves… if one class can make every person in wvw want to try bunkering there is a big problem

Darnis.4056:

whats even the go to build for newb mesmers ?:/

Maybe devs theorycrafted a build NONE OF US HAS EVER PLAYED BEFORE THAT’S SO EARTHSHATTERING GOOD.

He means 20/20/0/0/30 which is full glass and goes down like a to a wet sneeze.

Icelut.3509:

I haven’t played with a GS since it was having those pathing issues and missing a few patches a go with the izerker. I switched to a more bunker condition spec and I do heaps of damage and can take on multiple foes. Confusion does great burst especially against button mashing thieves and eles.. adjust and win people. GS isn’t the only weapon we have

Yeah pretty much… I play bunker..I play power/shatter… I play confusion… This affects multiple people GS isn’t the only weapon we have true but that doesn’t mean that destroying it is excusable

Glad that someone that has brought actual highlights to Mesmer weaknesses here… Yea we are good but not god mode OP… that honor goes to the person in the keyboard in any fight… And no one ever wins only because of their class.

Navi.7142:

Meh, I am mostly interested in the PVE mesmer. The pve mesmer has to stay viable. Whatever they do to the oh-so-mighty-pvp-mesmer they shall do, but keep it separated from the pve mesmer.

And to be on topic: The pve mesmer is not viable if they (unintentionally) change the berserker damage.

I do mainly WvW but the only change to Mesmer that was split is the confusion other than that any Mesmer change to cater to pvp carebears has affected my game play elsewhere and until ANET fixes that I will voice my concerns… If it does get split.. then nerf PvP Mesmer into the ground for all I care..

Darek.1836:

I’m just saying that the mesmer has far more viable options and can be way more diverse than any other class, often without needing to change builds.

That one is just not true… In order for a Mesmer to go from a full shatter spec to a hybrid spec they would have to drop some trait points in power and put them elsewhere… If a Mesmer wants the focus to be reliable they have to put 20 points into a vitality tree… If we want to run glamour we would have to change our traits from our shatter spec… If we want bunker we lose a lot of clone generation but gain a lot more toughness… A Mesmer can not have several viable specs without changing builds… No Mesmer is going to try to run a bunker spec and keep the 20/20/0/0/30. No Mesmer is going to try and run a shatter heavy spec with out something in deceptive evasion… Mantra mesmers are guaranteed to go 30 into domination and the only people that do… I am not sure what specs you are talking about that we would have to not change builds for but nothing is further from the truth.

Darek.1836:

Well I dont play much ele thief or engi but I know for sure no good ranger in the game will use a greatsword. Yeah I think the condition removal should be nerfed, though in this last fix the pet should die before it gets too out of hand (which makes it less viable to use)

But still better than a mesmers. Everyone loves to come to forums and whine about how OP certain classes are while completely ignoring the drawbacks to the class or the drawbacks to the particular builds they encountered…And I have seen rangers that are pretty effective with a GS. There have even been gripes about rangers, guardians, Thieves (of course), Eles, Guardians, even saw a necro one. And people have griped about how OP engis can be as well… Every class has something that can make them OP as all hell but, when people QQ and call for nerfs they are neglecting that they may have had a bad build, or that the build they countered may be the perfect counter to theirs, or refusing to acknowledge the class that they played against does have some weaknesses. People never say “I lost because this person played better.” Nope its I lost because you are playing an OP class and refuse to play one with skill like “My class”… Do people not see how self centered and childish this is?

But outside of that we are kittenedly slow no speed buff for us and that is partly why! Also rangers can just Poof all conditions gone every 10 seconds with their pet… And yes I really do think mobility is better on a ranger. And the cooldown on that 600 range leap back and the two evasive attacks? Also you know nothing about Mesmer if you think staff 2 is a stun breaker… had this argument before… It moves the Mesmer but the duration of the stun is the same and since every class has better more reliable gap closers (HS/RTL/Bulls Rush/Ranger GS3/or engi gear shield which is a pull) it kinda negates it…

hence the whole illusion thing… I personally think it would be ridiculously cool if the only people that the illusions were visible to were the target they were cast on and the memser. After all this class is supposed to be a mind kitten… How much more crazy does it get when no one else but you and the Mesmer can see the illusions!