You wanted “longterm-goals”, now go for it. Happy grind!
Agreed.
It’s not the ascended requirements that are unreasonable, it’s the presence of these items at all.
a 20% increase is still a massive one.
They say they will continue to release new pieces.
This means a complete set with 20% more effectiveness WILL be part of this game if they are not convinced otherwise.
20% more effective stat is essentially a whole new 20 trait points invested in whatever line you choose.
that is HUGE. It is not at all insignificant.
“Ascended is not that much more poweful that exotic”?
20% is the figure….
20% is a MASSIVE increase in effectiveness.. if its all invested in one stat its the equivalent of 30 extra trait points.
Read this it will illuminate what is going on with gw2 after the patch http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment this person was hired to adjust game to push people to buy from cash shop and transform game to the standard f2p pay to win model nexon is known for.
Pathetic. I hope it’s just rumor-mongering, but it fits perfectly with what i’ve seen everywhere else.
[Edit]
Ascended items give the bearer advantage outside of fractals, and more importantly diminish the ability of other players to tag up on mobs.
[Edited by CC: Quote removed]
(edited by Moderator)
I think it’s odd that everyone assumes that they have the same information as Anet does. We have no idea what their numbers were like pre and post ascended gear. We do know that there was a significant group of people who were sitting around farming Orr at the expense of anything else. We do know is that a common comment on the forums was for people who didn’t feel like they had anything to do was to stop playing. That works great for the players, they don’t have to pay a subscription, so they can only come back for a few weekends a year and get their moneies worth. It makes complete sense to me that Anet doesn’t want to encourage that kind of behavior. It makes complete sense to me that adding this new tier of gear in slow batches was a measured move to combat the lack of progression that many players were feeling while hopefully not completely alienating the groups of people who are spending their time exploring the world.
I just don’t understand how everyone is so presumptuous about the facts of guildwars compared to the people who have all the numbers.
It’s also fine for ANet though if they only log on 1 week a year. This lowers infrastructure and services costs for ANet proportionally.
We’ve seen where vertical gear progression, particularly tying it to only one aspect of gameplay, takes games.
We’ve seen it in too many past and currently competing titles to name, and those competing titles should be very, very clear in ANet’s mind right now, because they have already implemented and perfected vertical gear treadmills.
I predict any effort to retain these titles’ target client-base for any significant length of time in the face of titles specifically engineered around this concept will be a losing one, and in the process the market segment they claimed to cater to will have abandoned them in droves.
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BINGO!
Essentially my sentiments exactly. Vertical Progression in and of it’s self is not “evil” or “anti-casual”. What and How it’s implemented along with the context in which it is presented and it’s “ratio” to Horizontal Progression is where it’s defined as lending it’s self more to the casual or hardcore player.
In this game, where contributed damage on a mob determines whether you can loot. Any form of verticality in the progression has a DRASTIC impact on everyone else.
In mmos where the first tap gives you the kill credit, vertical progression can be eschewed easily in favor of horizontal progression.
In this game, if you insert vertical progression, you are immediately putting anyone playing this game for fun rather than as a second job at a disadvantage in their personal gaming experience
They suddenly get less loot from what they attack, lower karma in dynamic events, etc.
This does not even get into the particulars of how the currency for said rewards are obtained.
Please re-adjust the difficulty of FotM dungeons not to require a new gear tier, and expand upon the concept to add more paths (and reward sets) to existing explorable mode dungeons with tiered difficulty (but NOT tiered gear).
As it stands now, the gear requirement, the fact that it can only be obtained through one aspect of game-play, and the gating of this game-play are fragmenting the community and killing off world-zone play. It is feeding the type of elitism that is reviled by the vast majority of the communities in other MMOs, and introducing fundamental imbalance to pvp.
Gone is the promised reward for helping your lowbie friends. Now you are rewarded for anti-social behavior, such as eschewing your fellow players requests for help to stay in fractals, excluding people who don’t have enough agony resistance or high enough level who look for fractal groups.
Soon you will see people who reach the end of this progression come back out of fractals to farm gold for the next “item batch release” in dynamic events, and they, with superior stats from a new vertical tier ANet promised for ages would never happen, will prevent others who don’t like fractals from properly tagging mobs.
I never thought i’d see this game end up in “Gearscore Land”, but it seems that’s the border we’re crossing right now, and in so doing violating every promise made to this community, and you CAN stop it without harming the playability and re-playability of the content!
IRL I would actualy say work hard to get rewarded. But the problem is I play this game for fun. I have already payed 60$ to have fun and I would prefer not having to grind to have fun when it would be possible to create an option that wouldn’t force me to grind before having fun.
So you would have a problem in real life about an option that would allow you to be rewarded without working hard?
I am curious why you think an online game should have easy access to fun while real life shouldn’t.
I find this response ironic and funny.
from wikipedia:
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool.
in other words: the game is supposed to be reward for your work, not a new job.
As for me: i’m the case and counter-point to the argument about human nature:
I’ve always been incredibly good in the MMOs i’ve played. I’ve been scouted by and personally rejected invitations to “elite guilds” because I don’t like that culture. I found reward in helping where I was actually needed.
I’m seeing the results of FotM already as zones empty.
I did not sign up for that.
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Agree with OP 100%.
No wonder zones have been emptying since the 16th.
FotM caters to the worst category of MMO player, and should be scrapped.
Playing less here.
the reasons why:
1 – I play mesmer — I didn’t care much about any other nerfs to the class, but when they put into place the last major update to mesmer, the “blind, block, dodge, invulnerability prevents illusion summons” pretty much stabbed at the very heart of the way the class functioned. It turned blind into an extra, mesmer-only blanket-silence on pet summons, utilities, and defensive cooldowns. It allowed a single dodge to negate not just one attack, but the group utility the phantasms brought AND the next shatter. No other class has to deal with that injustice. It became a huge “no confidence” flag in the devs.
2 – The introduction of this new tier of gear when people are still getting used to this game’s most basic mechanics questions whether there will ever be a true, cohesive community in this game. This is how you produce elitists centralized in certain guilds telling anyone who doesn’t have their gear level to DIAF. This elitism is how communities rot from the inside out.
FOR THE RECORD:
I happen to LOVE the dungeons in this game. They reward skill and are challenging. You have to adapt to them. FotM should be scrapped, however.
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Given how our core resource and mechanic of clone generation and shattering was utterly gutted with the “illusions fail to spawn when blocked, dodged, or blinded” patch…
1 – confusion, bleeding, and poison will also cause illusions to fail to spawn.
2 – any abilities, but especially defensive ones, NOT tied to a clone or phantasm now requires one to function, unless that ability itself spawns a clone, in which case it is now subject to “50% fumble” at all times.
3 – portal: this cooldown has been removed, as it has been determined the conditions needed to ever use it given changes 1 and 2 will never be met.
see you on my dagger/dagger ele!
Be careful what you wish for in “making scepter a viable alnternative”. I know a certain gaming house that accomplishes this by nerfing all other superior alternatives.
Guys, a few words about WWW. WWW is not about 1×1, 5×5 or even 10×10. It’s ZERG vs ZERG. Small scale combat makes almost no difference for WWW’s points income.
So, what can mesmer provide for WWW?
Damage? No. Most part of mesmer’s damage comes from illusions – and illusions live about 0.25 sec in WWW. If (considering the last patch) summon illusion ability doesn’t fail at all.
Heal? No. ~2500 points heal every 6 sec for 5 frendlies, which must be cast for 4 sec – almost nothing, compared to guardians.
Utility? Yes, finally. Portal for the most part is the only reason to bring mesmer to WWW.
So, you request to limit portal to 5 people? I hope you understand that this nerf will make portal almost unusable for WWW. And the last thing, that makes mesmers viable for WWW will be gone.
About portal bombing.
First, it is available to everyone, but requires organization. If someone can’t fully use the portal due to organization, but the other side can – it’s not the reason to nerf portal.
Second. Thanks to last patch’s nerf to healing (5 friendlies only) portal bombing is quite unreliable against organized groups. You can easily be killed upon exiting the portal.
Third. Culling/rendering should not be the reason to nerf portal – it should be the reason to fix engine. Or maybe we should nerf keep doors too – a lot of people getting out through the doors simultaneously work like a portal :-)
This perspective makes it even more pressing that portal be limited to 5 people.
Mesmer needs to be more valuable to W3 than portal-bot, and removing portal-bot status would pave the way to other important mechanic overhauls, such as the suggestion I made a while ago to do the following:
1 – clone summons fill “dot bar”, but clone deaths to anything BUT shatter don’t empty it.
2 – shatter empties dot bar and kills all active clones, but instead of radiating from the clones, it radiates in 3 pulses from the current target.
This solves the issue of mesmer aoe dropping to nothing due to clone insta-death as the number of targets scales beyond 6 or so.
You’ve bought the game, Mere Image. What are you going to pressure/force them with? Quit? You’re not paying a subscription.
Do you really believe there is anyone okay with poorly implement patches instead of bug fixes? What are we going to do?
Leave, of course, eventually. Think Diablo 3. A massive success since it has no subscription plan. You bought it. Millions bought it. No one cares a month after the numbers dwindled to a tenth of that. For the record Diablo 3 will always be an astoundingly successful game even if gamers will have declared it a flop.
GW2 is pretty, I like it, I’m still playing it and have no plans to leave. I have my share of a pretty game with graphics, decent combat, WvW is casual enough to let me go in and out. I find the grind too much for mere cosmetic gear but since it’s cosmetic it’s not crucial either. But the lack of fixing bugs and adding nerfs is getting tiresome.
It’s not even as if the balance will stick if those bugged traits would be fixed. The meta game would change. But we get balance patches (who add more bugs) to balance the current game despite the fact the current game will change once all the bugged traits and skills are finally fixed. Which will then need more balancing patches making the current ones moot.
Micro-transactions are a big part of revenue. A large number of players grew up with mmos, and now have jobs, and thus more money than time, but still want to play, so they use micro-transactions to help bridge the gap.
If they want these micro-transactions to continue from me, they will revert the unjust illusion summoning nerf which gives mesmers and only mesmers the disadvantages of both pet summons and main attacks in addition to a further disadvantage of the one “block” dominoing into the next one to three attacks.
In the mean time, I will utilize my account to try out double-dagger elementalist, thus adding to their operating costs and reducing the value of what I’ve paid to them thus far.
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Confusion as it is is just awful. The suggested changes would make it an exceptional way of punishing those who don’t pay attention, and especially punishing selfish glass-cannon builds.
For those who think its powerful now I’m asking why you think so? If you build around it you lose pretty much all other sources of damage. Then YOU get punished severely when someone pays attention and lets his friends kill you instead.
Confusion is simply not powerful enough to build around. It would be infinitely more useful in the way OP suggested.
… just have the recharge happen passively instead of actively. Increase the passive recharge to include both the base cooldown and what would have previously been the cast time. Apply heal to “on use” rather than “on charge”, adjust the value accordingly to prevent it being ridiculously OP’d.
As an alternative, change the charge cast to 1.5 second MINUS to make it not feel like you’re “stoppin to charge yur lazer…….zzzz” and increase the cooldowns on each by the nominal amount removed from the cast time.
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You forgot the biggest nerf of all: Our illusions failing to summon if someone dodges, blocks, goes invulnerable, or blinds you. The rest of the changes I could give two-craps less about, as they’re needed adjustments (though LOS still needs a fix desperately in this game).
Inspiration, illusions, and chaos all have traits that give passives which require illusions to be active. Not to connect their attacks, but just be active . It’s outrageous to allow pretty much all evasion and half the status effects in the game to cancel OUR CORE CLASS RESOURCE GENERATION and the CORE MECHANIC FROM WHICH MOST OF OUR UTILITY IS CHAINED.
This gives players TWO DIFFERENT chances to block one “attack”, and if they block the summon (WTF is this i don’t even…), they TRIPLE PENALIZE US by also blocking the utility passives provided by an active (but not necessarily attacking) phantasm AND the next shatter as well.
No other class suffers in this way. You don’t see necro pets failing to summon when the main target dodges. You don’t see symbols and wards failing on guardians when they’re blind.
It’s a ludicrous double-standard is horrendously unjust, and I won’t main my mes or pay a thin dime until I see it reverted.
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It seems like most of the popular builds are based on around shattering, which makes sense, given the class’ utility skills. However, there also seem to be a lot of traits and skills available which would work well together in a build that would provide benefit to making illusions, and keeping them alive (not shattering).
Has anybody had any luck running one of these builds?
And for reference, here’s some of the things I’m talking about:
-Signet of Illusions (More health to Illusions)
-Phantasmal Healing (regeneration from phantasms) and subsequently Illusionary Membrane (protection when regenerating)
-Illusionary Defense (3% reduced damage for each illusion)
-Compounding Power (3% additional damage for each illusion)
Your summon has failed because:
1 – you were blind (WTF)
2 – your SUMMON was blocked (WTF)
3 – your SUMMON was evaded (WTF)
4 – your SUMMON was against an invulnerable target (WTF)
Your summoned minion has failed to connect its attack because:
1 – your summoned minion(s) was blinded
2 – your summoned minion(s) was blocked
3 – your summoned minion(s) was evaded
4 – your summoned minion(s) was attacking an invulnerable target
5 – your summoned minion(s) was killed due to anyone so much as breathing.
Shatter builds are used because theyre the only uses left, and without illusionary persona you have very few ways to break the combo of a blind-spammer post-patch.
I would LOVE to see a video of a Mesmer taking a +10 level Champion solo. Mostly I would love to see the technique used. My illusion usually get smashed in 1 shot before they are of use to either provide distraction or shatter.
I’m only level 55 and I’ve been building up
Duelist, Chaos and illusions as my spec because they fit my character RP design.I use staff after realizing the buff it offers my wifes warrior with Tactics:10 with the Empowered Trait(+Power per unique boon). So it was fire.dot, burn.dot + vulnerability + boost ally. yeah I thought that was pretty sweet. Purchased extra bounce(required for staff) to faster stack everything. Staff turned out to be pretty bad kitten
I continued to use a GS mostly for second support that the berzerker does a cripple and GS2 for bounce. But I’ve been thinking the torch for the invis to lose agro and it’s aoe on appear
Greatsword is the way to solo champions. The cripple keeps them away from you indefinitely.
If they have ranged attacks things get more complicated. Maybe you could run an illusion spamming build but I don’t know if that would keep you alive either.
soloed the champion inquest golem (the one with the 16k rapid-fire ranged attack) by using scepter/sword sword/focus pair for the invulnerabilities and projectile reflects. That thing spent most of its time behind feedbacks or being blocked.
That is not the issue though. The issue for mesmers is many targets. Their clones get killed before they reach 3 to shatter and this leaves them up the creek because they have no other real source of burst aoe and with that many separate foes, no distractions.
Mesmer is highly dependent on player skill. on paper you could say its UP but a good player can do anything behind a mesmer. Were pretty great at backing up allies too. those clones get a little more confusing when there not the only thing running at you. con effects and aoe boons are always awesome.
It’s even more confusing when there’s multiple mesmers I remember I was in a 5v5 against a team of all mesmers and it was awful trying to figure out what was happening other then the fact that we were losing…
make every third attack aoe and watch mesmerx5 melt.
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As of last patch mesmers are broken.
Their traits and overall survivability are tied heavily to the presence of clones and phantasms which now cannot be summoned if your primary target blocks, dodges, or goes invulnerable, or if you happen to be blinded.
Wa, wait, what? your claiming because your abilities do not work when your primary target blocks, dodges, or goes invulnerable, or if you happen to be blinded, that your mesmers are broken? I have heard of misinformation before but that is just a stupid thing to say. Because that is game design and it is how all classes work, stop trying to claim it broke mesmer, its embarrassing.
Summons DO NOT EQUAL ATTACKS! say it with me, say it until it sinks in!
You should not be able to put a SUMMON on cooldown by dodging. You want the primary offensive ability to be dodged by dodging, SURE, but the current situation post-patch is someone can cause your SUMMON to fail by dodging, then, if by chance they mis-time it, they can either: dodge again OR kill the summoned minion. They just heaped the drawbacks of primary attacks on top of the current drawbacks of pets with low hp, and tried to call that “balanced”? I suspect the (literally, CONFIRMED BY RED POST) 2 person balance team has been denied sleep so long they’re no longer rational if they think so
When a necro summons its pet, and someone dodges, blocks, or parries, that pet still summons, and they still get everything they traited for in passives while that pet is active. The pet itself can be dodged — JUST LIKE THE PHANTASM OR CLONE CAN BE.
When a guardian uses save yourselves, his symbols, his wards, they still WORK when the primary target blocks.
When ANYONE ELSE’s one attack fails, it does not domino into other attacks and prevent them too.
When you try to summon illusions and they fail, that summon goes on cooldown, and you gain none of the traited survival talents in illusions, chaos, or inspiration. Further, you lose your shatters, which are the core mechanic of the entire class.
This includes:
The projectile block(traited: reflect) ward from the warden
The regen from the phantasms.
The ability to teleport to a random clone location (sword 3)
Your phantasmal defender (primary purpose: SELF MITIGATION) does not spawn and you get trained because you were blinded.
And much, much more.
Or just make it a limit of 5 players.
Group play and dungeon play unchanged.
WVWVW portal bombing gone or made utterly impractical/suicidal
As of last patch mesmers are broken.
Their traits and overall survivability are tied heavily to the presence of clones and phantasms which now cannot be summoned if your primary target blocks, dodges, or goes invulnerable, or if you happen to be blinded.
I myself was fine with all other patches prior to the last patch, and all changes in the last patch except for this change, but this change has utterly broken the profession, and I’m trying two other specific specs which caught my eye:
*double-dagger tank-support elementalist
*mace/torch – hammer support guardian
both are highly survivable, dynamic, and rewarding gameplay without having 65% of their survival and group utility spells crippled when their target blinds, dodges, or blocks them.
This thread is a function of a group-think mentality that Anet still hasn’t beaten down yet, so I’ll repeat it:
Illusions are not proper pets. They aren’t meant to be. Mesmer is not a “pet” class. This will not change. Thus these in fact are attacks (a representation of attacking someone(s) mind) and therefore they are treated as such.
Good day.
Then why are half our support and utility skills tied to the summoning/presence of the phantasm independent of whether or not it hits something or even bothers to attack at all?
It’s very simple:
A – If they want to treat phantasms as attacks, then our support and utility skills (including defensive cooldowns!) should not be tied to them, and the phantasm itself should not be targetable or subject to damage in any way, and should vanish after it does ONE round of damage.
or.
B – They should not not subject our SUMMONS to dodges, blocks, and blinds, but should apply that to the resulting phantasm. If this was a problem before, then simply make the dodge window more “lenient” to catch the delayed action from the phantasm’s attack (the same way they did with LT. Kohler). BUT THE PHANTASM SHOULD STILL EXIST, SO MUCH OF OUR GROUP UTILITY AND SURVIVAL DEPENDS UPON IT BEING THERE!
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Agreed on this:
This will do nothing about portal bombing. What would, though, would be to make portal bound to the same rules as the healing patch notes from last update: 5 targets maximum before the portal dissipates. Then lower the cooldown.
higher use in dungeons, small scale content, USELESS in W3
Warkupo you’re the one with the failed argument about why summoning an illusion is an attack. That specific act is not damaging you. Later the phantasm will attack you…that’s what should be blocked not the actual summoning. Case and point: A thief has a sword skill where they can port to you, do damage, and then port back. If someone blocks the initial attack he can still port back to his original location. The other 2 aspects of that skill are not shut down because someone blocked just the first part. Why are Mesmers treated differently with their illusions?
Yet another to add to the list.
I think i’ll go experiment with a d/d elemental build while I wait for the devs to wake from their coma and restore us to a functional class.
I’m not having any problems. Sure ya gotta be smarter about setting up your clones, etc. but I still got em.
Being able to put up phantasms w/out actually having to hit w/ the spell was so OP’d it wasn’t even funny. I’m happy now that a lot of the FoTM rollers of mesmers are leaving…..so let’s just keep the other OP builds a secret until they completely move on mmmkay?
Where is the “intelligence” of “setting up” your clones when the thief is chain blinding you and you need defender but OH.. you can’t use that, even though it has no attack!
The fact you consider the ability to summon what is essentially a turret that may move once in a while and has low hp “overpowered” indicates you don’t really play this class very often.
Mesmer has great survivability, which also means you can easily solo Vets. But that’s a far as it goes… for everything else in PvE mesmer is actually quite bad. Just doesn’t have the damage.
The larger the number of targets you face, the more fragile you become as a mesmer.
Pretty much everyone else is very strong against a swarm of low hp targets.
This same swarm is mesmer cryptonite.
they kill your clones as they spawn so you never reach 3, and you never have a distraction, so you’re taking full aggro and full damage. (and getting a nice stack of conditions that eat your low toughness builds for breakfast)
This dynamic is also why mesmers suck so horribly at DE’s and are hit or miss in dungeons depending on the encounter (good luck getting shatters on graveling swarms, for instance).
The devs design the game around a one-size-fits-all philosophy as to what damage people can dish out, but because our clones can die so quickly and our AOE depends on getting 3 up, our aoe falls off at precisely the time when we need it most.
If your target is out of range, don’t cast an ability.
If you are blinded, don’t cast an ability with a cooldown.
If you don’t have LoS on a target, don’t cast an ability.
Totally agree with this, I really like how you actually have to think when to cast phantasms now. Before you could just cast them with your eyes closed. Now it actually requires some skill.
@Nilvio
I’m also against removing the cooldown on failed skills, but phantasms are more than “an attack”.
They really need to find other ways to make the utility aspect currently shackled to phantasms available regardless of block, dodge, or blind, because as it is now, obstruction, block, dodge, or blind negates THREE separate and important abilities tied to the phantasm, not just the attack.
My suggestion is related to all aspects of the game.
Making mesmer phantasms and shatters more consistent and less subject to upper and lower bounds which vary too heavily based on encounter scaling and opponent skill would only be GOOD for mesmer players, their opponents, and the devs — as would be bringing phantasms into line with the latest vision in the patch notes by divorcing the utility aspect of phantasms from the attack aspect.
All of my suggestions above are designed to produce that consistency with a minimum of change to the current “feel” of the profession.
Aaaah, sorry. Misunderstood.
And yes makes sense, if a class turns non-viable (I think we’re far far faaaar from that, but we face lots of issues because our broken stuff isn’t fixed because it’d buff up quite a lot), then bunker builds survive the longest hence they’re used the most.
I think we’re already there.
Our phantasms serve as our wards, our boon sources, our defensive cooldowns, and our equivalent to the signet guardians get to remove conditions.
All of these functions can now be negated by blind, which is spammed my multiple professions.
The injustice of this is palpable and patent, and if this happened to guardians, engineers, or warriors, they would be dustbinned in droves. If they made blind and block stop initiative generation on thieves, there would probably be real-life riots tearing through their corporate headquarters.
Our damage was already sub-par enough that most people with the time rolled an engineer or elementalist SPECIFICALLY to take the mesmer’s place farming DE’s due to the tagging issue.
I’d managed to fanagle enough damage so far with sword 2 and greatsword 4, but now greatsword 4 no longer works, and even if/when fixed will continue to fail if i’m blocked, blinded, dodged, or happen to “stupid-target” (our targeting in this game is NOT “smart”) an invulnerable mob in the pack.
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This last patch broke the core mechanics of any phantom use in this class. I’m done with it until this isn’t the case. There goes hundreds of hours and 50g or so I spent on gear and extra bagspace -.-
I don’t remember who posted this video but at least it made me laugh.
Dear god that was awesome xD I also totally agree with the comments on that video. No phantoms coming out from obstructed/block/blind/dodge = class unplayable with anything other than clones -.-
The clones are subject to this rule now too, so now all anyone has to do to completely remove your ability to do anything but run and hit like a limp noodle is rotate blind, aegis, and dodge. (heck, you cant even use defender or distortion without the clones active. Imagine the uproar if they announced next patch that guardian wards and blocks would fail if they were blind)
I seriously question whether the two people they have working on “balance” understand how our phantasms and illusions function.
To be clear, most phantasms work for groups like engineer turrets, but producing skills more akin to what guardians produce (boons, reflects, wards) in addition to their damage. Neither guardian defensive and support spells nor engineers’ summoning of turrets are subject to block, blind, dodge, LOS, etc (even though, like phantasms, the turrets’ attacks are). Additionally, ALL illusions double as a resource for our shatters, which are assumed to comprise a large amount of our DPS and survival kit.
All of these functions can now be negated by blind, which is spammed my multiple professions.
The injustice of this is palpable and patent, and if this happened to guardians, engineers, or warriors, they would be dustbinned in droves. If they made blind and block stop initiative generation on thieves, there would probably be real-life riots tearing through their corporate headquarters.
Cases and points:
Defender is now subject to the new rules on blind, block, LOS, etc even though it is not an attack at all! It does not attack, it is there to mitigate the damage from a sudden zerg on the player, and now BLIND AND DODGE will prevent you using a NON-ATTACKING DEFENSIVE COOLDOWN! The “anti-zerg” defensive spell is now not usable when being zerged because at least 3 professions out there pretty much SPAM blind!
Warden’s primary purpose in an explorable dungeon is to provide a feedback bubble that provides respite from ranged attacks. Trying to block golem missiles while it’s invulnerable? Good luck with that now!
Every phantasm provides regen when traited. You might need that if things are starting to get sticky for the group.. oops you got blocked.
I’d much rather have the damage component of phantasms removed and have them also divorced from the shatter mechanic than have the change that has been made. It has not just gutted outgoing damage, it has robbed us of defense as well.
On to clones:
Clones do almost no damage at all, but our survivability kit is built around them, both their presence and the capacity to shatter them. Now, someone can spam blind and we can’t generate clones? This is outrageous. No other class is denied their defenses or their ability to gain resources so badly by such a change.
This has turned fights, especially against thiefs and guardians which are already obscenely strong, into one-sided affairs where you may as well get up and get a soda, because there will be nothing for you to do.
Enough here.. I just hope someone who matters in ANet actually reads this.
If their change is to stand without modification, then we need a complete ground-up rebuild of our entire core mechanics to compensate, because no other profession has a condition that is “utter cryptonite” in this way.
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This is actually incorrect. I went through the other forums, precisely to see what was going on, and if the response was as bad as it is for mesmers. This is what I found:
Elementalist: As bad or worse than mesmers. They had a massive mechanic completely removed, with no warning.
The way I’m reading the patch notes and the trait description, this seems like it was an actual bug that got fixed, rather than a straight-up skill nerf, that caused another bug. The only spell that the trait casts which has an actual blast finisher is Churning Earth, and considering they said it won’t cast ‘unintentional’ finishers, I see a possibility of that finisher actually being added back in per the normal spell.
The way I figure it, it’s somewhat similar to the iZerker being fixed for requiring LoS, yet the ‘bouncing attack’ fix causing a bug that reduced it’s damage considerably. The LoS for that did, IMO, need to be fixed, due to the way the phantasm spawns (right next to the target, compared to near the player). The devs already said they’re looking into bringing the damage back up to par.
It’s one thing to fix a bug in a skill or trait, and have said fix cause other bugs – like the iZerker damage, and possibly the lack of an intentional blast finisher. However, it’s a whole other can of worms to alter literally the biggest mechanic of a class – illusion generation – without a significant amount of testing. Since there’s only 2 devs working on skill changes, from what I understand, I seriously doubt they alone could properly test a major mechanic change.
If you examine the huge thread on this, the “unintentional blast finishers” had become an adjusted part of the game and the expected behavior from the elementalist community.
The pvp community was not moaning or crying to the heavens about it, and people who brought elementalists as support in pve were using strategies for encounters which utilized this behavior.
It might have been a bug, but it was hardly “game-breaking”, and they could have instead corrected the tooltip and accepted it as “the new normal”
As for what they did to our iZerker and particularly our phantasms, I’m starting to wonder if their original balance team “walked” and these guys are fresh on the job from something more mundane like email services development, because it reflects a fundamental and glaring lack of understanding about how our phantasms work (hint, their damage is only HALF their function, and not even the most important half in group play!)
Happiness is a subjective thing. It’s generally much easier to start from a lower position and go to a higher one than to over-compensate then “take away” what was already there.
Also, in the case of mesmer vs other classes: It’s one thing to exclude the ground effects, turbo, or internal trim of the car, it’s another to take 4 of 6 gears from the transmission and say “you’ll be fine!”
(edited by plasmacutter.2709)
bunker builds are the last gasp of any class in any game when all other viable builds are destroyed.
You can’t do decent burst, so you just try to outlast (and against any competent player who is NOT playing a fundamentally broken class, you don’t outlast)
This doesn’t make sense to me.
This would be implying that high-damage builds are always inherently superior to other builds.That’s as broken as Bunker Builds being the only viable one “left” (because it’d imply that if a burst damage build exists, it is the only viable one).
Now ofc, plenty players prefer going for the l33t DPS. We call them: bad.
This guy was saying “this class is still alive due to my bunker build still being viable”, and what I am saying is that in the progression of a class fading to irrelevance (i’ve seen it MULTIPLE TIMES), the bunker build is always the last one to die. Other viable builds go first, starting from high dps builds, meandering indiscriminately through altruistic support builds, and finally dismantling self-only survival-centered “bunker” builds.
I stand by what I said: “Bunker builds are the last gasp of a class in any game when all other viable builds are destroyed”.
If you’re 60 scaled to 80, I believe your GEAR is still not scaled. This was what I noticed from the halloween event. If you’re scaling yourself up it doesn’t seem to work so well.
My shatters at 80 still hit just as hard as before the patch. Of course, when they’re really needed, there are so many things attacking my clones I can’t build them up to 3 to shatter.
I run a projectile reflect support/damage hybrid build, and not being able to summon a warden for the feedback bubble against multiple ranged mobs while blinded pretty much guts the point of speccing inspiration.
That is the last vestige of non-mantra support, so I guess I can go guardian or ele.
Besides mantra builds what other builds viable now? I’m getting a bit lost since as most mesmers i used GS/staff as well. Can someone help me out and let me know what builds should i try on? Mainly PVE and dungeons, lately on WvW a bit. Also scepter is really that bad for Pve and dungeons?
Thanks in advance!
scepter-sword is excellent for soloing champions. the double-block and rapid clone generation against single targets really helps you outlast, but because the main attack does not bounce and the block applies to only one attack, the scepter becomes useless compared to sword once you exceed one target.
Hrm, I’d do it the opposite way around Plasma, remove the damage from Phantasms and have them purely as utility/finisher sources.
That would work. We would, of course, need the damage expected from those phantasms moved into the main weapon skills. This is not something i’d be against, either.
My Phantasm suggestions would do more to enhance quality of life and balancing efforts while bringing phantasms more into line with the apparent dev vision for Mesmer:
Right now our phantasms are treated as only attacks, but our group utilities are tied to their presence, I want to fix this with the following changes
1 – make our utility spells “unlockable secondaries” (think focus 4 pull attack) that are made available after a phantasm is cast, but exist independently of the phantasm. (phantasm dodge/blind/block will no longer utterly gut group utility)
2 – Make our phantasms persist for only one attack (the fact they persist after the first attack, and that there can be more than one up, is unbalanced in that it scales ridiculously —- this leads to forum crying and frustrated rage quitting)
3 – compensate for the above by de-coupling the phantasm count from our clone-count and shatter mechanics, and making them untargetable/invulnerable to guarantee the first attack hits. (provided the mesmer themself is not blind, the target does not dodge or become invulnerable)
Those changes would bring phantasms into line with the way devs described them in this recent patch while reversing the evisceration of our group utilities and putting an end to “phantasm army” (which if you track the patch notes devs obviously don’t want) once and for all.
Additionally, I don’t think our clone mechanic when it comes to shatters is in good shape right now.
As encounters scale, our clones become increasingly useless. They’re supposed to be a source of AOE but die a fraction of a second after spawning when they’re really needed on “aoe packs” in pve.
I’d like to see our clone-to-shatter mechanic changed thusly:
1 – our clones still fill our “dot bar” on summon, but no longer empty when they are killed by any means other than shatter.
2 – “shatter” gets transformed into a 3-pulse aoe radiating from the current target. (Shatter STILL kills all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones would remain un-changed)
3 – Any shatter will still kill all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones will remain unchanged.
The effects of this will be to make the performance of shatters more consistent with event scaling. It would be a huge QOL improvement in general while also providing more consistent results for the balancing of mesmer. (As of now they seem to be always assuming all 3 clones survive and make it in to shatter, which is unreasonable in the most important circumstances.)
(edited by plasmacutter.2709)
As someone creating an ele coming from the perspective of mesmer, thief, and guardian, I think there need to be more survival tools built into elementalist weapon skills.
My experience with ele is that the damage is good, not overpowered, but good, but the kit reeks of a class which was built around higher damage than it actually has.
Immediate candidates: add some invulnerability mechanics to the dagger skills, and make the “rush” skills (burning speed, ride the lightning) function as dodges.
I’m sure ANet can add others. The mesmer weapon skills should be a good template to work from. Almost every mesmer weapon has one BASE skill that doubles as survival… the skill will trigger either cripple,knockback,evasion, projectile reflect, dodge, or block. Most elementalist weapon kits don’t do this, and I find it distressing.
Finally, do something about elementalist down state. It is by far the weakest i’ve seen in the game. The mist form doesn’t help because you can’t heal while using it and it doesn’t cause target drop.. everything done in this state feels like an inexhorable march to death even when only one foe is alive.
Adding survival/block/dodge abilities to our basic attacks would really help.
If you think Elementalist downed state is bad now, be thankful you didn’t see it a month ago. Vapor Form used to have a 10+ second delay before you could use it at all. I’m sure you can imagine how often anyone used that.
For daggers in particular, the one that really jumps out at me is the lightning shield that stuns enemies which attack. It should also produce aegis. Eles have low hp, and using an ability which depends upon you allowing hits from multiple mobs to land seems the height of stupidity and rewarding to bad gameplay.
As someone creating an ele coming from the perspective of mesmer, thief, and guardian, I think there need to be more survival tools built into elementalist weapon skills.
My experience with ele is that the damage is good, not overpowered, but good, but the kit reeks of a class which was built around higher damage than it actually has.
Immediate candidates: add some invulnerability mechanics to the dagger skills, and make the “rush” skills (burning speed, ride the lightning) function as dodges.
I’m sure ANet can add others. The mesmer weapon skills should be a good template to work from. Almost every mesmer weapon has one BASE skill that doubles as survival… the skill will trigger either cripple,knockback,evasion, projectile reflect, dodge, or block. Most elementalist weapon kits don’t do this, and I find it distressing.
Finally, do something about elementalist down state. It is by far the weakest i’ve seen in the game. The mist form doesn’t help because you can’t heal while using it and it doesn’t cause target drop.. everything done in this state feels like an inexhorable march to death even when only one foe is alive.
Phantasm suggestions:
1 – make our utility spells “unlockable secondaries” (think focus 4 pull attack) that are made available after a phantasm is cast, but exist independently of the phantasm.
2 – Make our phantasms persist for only one attack (the fact they persist after the first attack, and that there can be more than one up, is unbalanced in that it scales ridiculously —- this leads to forum crying and frustrated rage quitting)
3 – compensate for the above by de-coupling the phantasm count from our clone-count and shatter mechanics, and making them untargetable/invulnerable to guarantee the first attack hits. (provided the mesmer themself is not blind, the target does not dodge or become invulnerable)
Those changes would bring phantasms into line with the way devs described them in this recent patch while reversing the evisceration of our group utilities and putting an end to “phantasm army” (which if you track the patch notes devs obviously don’t want) once and for all.
Additionally, I don’t think our clone mechanic when it comes to shatters is in good shape.
As encounters scale, our clones become increasingly useless. They’re supposed to be a source of AOE but die a fraction of a second after spawning when they’re really needed on “aoe packs” in pve.
I’d like to see our clone-to-shatter mechanic changed thusly:
1 – our clones still fill our “dot bar” on summon, but no longer empty when they are killed by any means other than shatter.
2 – “shatter” gets transformed into a 3-pulse aoe radiating from the current target. (Shatter STILL kills all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones would remain un-changed)
3 – Any shatter will still kill all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones will remain unchanged.
The effects of this will be to make the performance of shatters more consistent with event scaling. It would be a huge QOL improvement in general while also providing more consistent results for the balancing of mesmer. (As of now they seem to be always assuming all 3 clones survive and make it in to shatter, which is unreasonable in the most important circumstances.)
The end issue ANet has been trying to target, but missing wide on, is the presence of multiple phantasms on the field.
People whine because they stupidly allow multiple phantasms to spawn in and remain up, and these phantasms persist and attack multiple times.
This produces inconsistent results with unreasonable upper-bounds for return on investment in the same way our shatters have unreasonable lower-bounds (zero).
Our utility skills should be made a secondary attack that casting a phantasm would “unlock” (like the pull on focus 4), but independent of the phantasm’s existence. Our group buffs should be similarly disconnected from phantasms.
After this, Our phantasms should only persist for the first attack, (immune to damage for the duration), then expire.
This would bring the actual function phantasms perform for mesmers into line with the way devs have treated it this patch without gutting our group utility or giving people more than one chance to dodge the same “attack”.
Supervillain, it gets better. Chain blind also applies to phantasmal defender. That thing doesn’t even HAVE a damaging attack.
I get the feeling the only way the ANet devs are going to realize this is you print this thread, tie it to a brick, and throw it through their head office, hitting their game balance lead square in the forehead.
The lack of response on the issue of the utilities shackled to our now un-summonable phantasms so far has been pathetic.
It’s not a double standard though. All you’ve done is list a bunch of attacks that aren’t completely shut down by dodging/mez effects. I can just as easily name a bunch of moves of other classes that are. I can just as easily name a bunch of abilities that mesmers have which still retain some functionality when you are dodged/mez’d.
Look at the inspiration tree.
Everything equivalent to what guardians bring in terms of symbols and wards are shackled to our phantasms.
Let’s see what would happen in the guardian forums if being blinded meant you couldn’t use a symbol or ward?
Did you know phantasmal defender, a phantasm that does nothing but sit and make you take less damage (it does not even attack!) is subject to this?
Let’s put all protection-generating abilities on cooldown when you get blinded.
(edited by plasmacutter.2709)
Illusionary Berserker has not received a direct damage decrease. Instead, is seems that the damage reduction you (and I) are seeing is most likely associated this fix:
“Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the more targets they hit.”
We are aware that this particular phantasm is now experiencing a significant drop in damage and are looking at getting it back to a more effective state.
Thanks for keeping the post civil and constructive!
-KarlCould you please explain why those changes were also made in pve? I undertsand why they have been made in pvp but why in pve? I feel that mesmer is just useless now. My chances to hit mobs and do damage with illusions (which is the primary source of my damage) are so low now…especially when you do DE in cursed shores when there is a lot off people and it’s not so easy and now just 1 blind or block is enough to screw my illusions…
I’m more concerned about inspiration builds.
Why should my group regen, projectile reflects, etc be compromised?
I thought this was the reason they were SANE before and had blocks, dodges, and blinds prevent the first strike of the phantasm, not prevent it from coming into being.
Heck, even DEFENDER, which does not even perform an attack, is subject to this. So hurray, blind now prevents you from popping mitigation cooldowns, and our “anti-zerg tool” no longer works when getting zerged.
The whole inspiration tree may as well disappear now for all it’s worth.
In addition to my other suggestions, mantras should recharge in the background (with full recharge time equivalent to their cooldown plus cast time)
This would make them more attractive to use as they would allow you to do more effective things in long fights than stand there “chargin’ up yur lazer”.