Guild Wars 2

Fay.2357:

The top level meta has continuously evolved towards using low risk, low effort, and high reward builds.

I just want to point out that this is literally how every metagame in every competitive game always evolves. It’s a law of the universe. The only way to win consistently in any game is to always min/max around options which require the least risk for the most reward. Winning competitively is about reliable performance, full stop.

Yeah, they might not shake up anything about PvP Mesmer in the end, but they at least have the potential to do so. Definitely something to watch when HoT goes live.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Combined with wells (which are ethereal fields), chaotic dampening, persistence of memory.. Can’t say for sure yet of course but I’m seeing a few reasons to look forward to it.

Wells are a real game-changer in terms of a Mesmer’s PvP role. Right now, there’s little point in us going for bunker builds, because we can’t do all that much while sitting on a point. But the area denial from Wells changes that equation, and I think Shield could be a good complement — Shield 5 doesn’t help set up a burst, but it does provide a threat of “if you get in my face, I’ll stun you and then lock you down with Gravity Well”.

Photoloss.4817:

MoP deals higher dps than all non-Sword autoattacks, and outdamages even that if it hits the full 5 targets (not sure against 4 targets)

On the flip side of this, there’s almost no reason to use anything other than MH Sword in dungeons anyway.

But, that being said, you can use Power Spike during channeled abilities like Blurred Frenzy or Phantasm summoning, which will allow you to build up Mantra Strength stacks and do additional DPS. I think that’s the logic behind its inclusion in the Mesmer dungeon build on Metabattle.

Dastion.3106:

The maintaining of the long CD on Time Warp is because they also added slow to it. This is a very powerful condition that shouldn’t be ignored in your assessment.

If anything, “Feel My Wrath” is due for a CD increase.

That’s really my feeling as well. I mean, the Time Warp CD does feel a bit long, but overall the skill is in a good place. I mostly just want to see FMW eat a nerf, because come the kitten on with that skill.

Power Shatter. Just follow Chaos’ MirrorBlink build.

Fay.2357:

Fun fact: mods rarely show up without a report. Non-report mod appearances are usually in PvP/WvW forums where there are a lot of threads that can be seen to blatantly violate forum rules just from the title. For everything else, mods don’t waste their time reading every post unless it’s brought to their attention with a report.

Oh, I’ve been reporting. Looks like the worst thread of the bunch finally got locked, too.

Vieux P.1238:

Troll thread.. close it plz.. it’s an insult to all mesmers.

Blatant troll thread which duplicates other similar topics.

Unfortunately, all the forum moderators got hit by PU (lol) for infinity damage, so there aren’t any around to actually do their kittening jobs and lock these threads.

tetrodoxin.2134:

I’m not even concerned anymore. The QQ thread in the PvP section is derailing so bad, I doubt a single dev bothers to read that anymore.

Even the moderators aren’t reading it, or it’d have been locked four pages ago.

Forget PU, how do we solve the problem of all these ducking duplicate threads?

Mesmers are like kittenroaches. If you see one on the other team, that means there are 10 more hiding in PU Permastealth.

You assume that people run stun breaks in PvP, Jurica. Why would anybody possibly want to do a thing like that?

The trait does have an ICD, maybe it’s applied to the trait as a whole rather than per-target?

Loxsus.3841:

The other elites could use to have their cooldowns reduced a bit for the mesmers. I think timewarp could be on a similar cooldown. Moa has a passive now which isn’t the worst while the active is pretty backbreaking.

As long as Feel My Wrath! exists in its current state, there is ZERO justification for Time Warp having a cooldown over 60 seconds.

ASP.8093:

I feel like this discussion is way more personal than it needs to be. :/

Thread is done, TBH. Ought to get locked by a mod, it’s not serving any purpose at this point. We have multiple other threads running on similar topics that are actually productive.

ASP.8093:

5-second Mass Invis is plenty of time to res someone, reposition your whole team, or pull off a pretty decisive ambush.

It was my hands-down favorite before the PU change and it’s still my hands-down favorite even though I’m not running PU now.

Yeah, exactly. 5s is plenty of Stealth uptime, and 7s would be a noticeable improvement without being over the top.

ASP.8093:

Tealots.6095:

When will it sink in that trait “levels” are irrelevant. If you pick a trait line, you’re all in.

This bears repeating.

Quite. The level of a trait matters only as a means of forcing choices between alternatives that, for balance reasons, need to be mutually-exclusive. Having PU, Chaotic Interruption, and Bountiful Disillusionment compete for the same slot is way more important than ensuring that any of them is “stronger” than, say, Master of Manipulation.

I mean, in general, it’s more intuitive for traits further to the right of the screen to be more powerful — or at least more build-defining — but it doesn’t need to be a hard rule.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Mantra of Distraction is fine, if anything increase the cooldown between charges to 8s or so or increase the base cooldown by 10-20 seconds.

The undocument charge-in-background change for Mantras would justify increasing the base cooldown by a fair amount. Bumping up the cooldown on Power Lock itself a little wouldn’t be a horrible nerf, either. I could live with both of these changes.

How about we talk about some BUFFS for once eh!?

• Chaotic Dampening needs a % increase to 3-4s

• Maimed nerf was dumb and should be fixed

• Fix our bugs plz.

Agreed on all accounts. Nerfs to our few broken abilities would be easier to swallow if the Dampening nerf were half-reverted and the MtD nerf was entirely reverted.

phokus.8934:

Power Block and PU are fine.

Power Block I have no opinion on. As I’ve said in other threads, I think PU needs to be given a flat duration increase of ~2s instead of a percentage increase. This would make Veil relatively better while stamping down MI, which is the only traited stealth duration we have that’s legitimately kind of ridiculous.

apharma.3741:

Is PU with traited decoy, traited torch and MI OP? This is where the majority of people have issues.

<snip>

A lot of people just want it flat out nerfed but aren’t thinking about what components and combinations are too strong and what actually feels OK considering the GM investment.

<snip>

Changing the torch trait to a reduction per burns you apply or per enemies hit by torch skills I feel would be a step forward. Then looking at the duration of PU and changing it to a static +2s would effectively sort out all the QQ.

Sounds good to me. Veil gets the short end of the stick from the current PU, while MI arguably benefits way too much. At the same time, the flat +1s that used to be on PU was really underwhelming. Changing the trait to a flat +2s instead seems pretty fair to me.

As for whether PU should lose some of its offensive boons for defensive ones, I wonder if it should go the other way. Stealth is defensive enough as it is, what’s the need to stack Protection or Aegis on top of it? But, on the other hand, allowing Mesmers to stack Might while hiding in stealth only reinforces the problem with stealth burst…

Pepsi.8907:

Yes that’s what I worry about too, Lockdown may seem viable, but really, it’s still inherently dependent on shatters to do well.

Absolutely. Consider what Chaos listed as the traits for MirrorBlink:

DOMINATION: II, IV, VIII
DUELING: II, IV, IX
ILLUSIONS: I, IV, VII *

• = Last tree is optional.

Replace Illusions with Chaos+CI, and you’ve got a Lockdown build.

Windwalker.7421:

It’s very unique and fits the original intent of Confusion. I also like the natural synergy with Slow.

Yeah, agreed. This is a pretty awesome suggestion.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Blinding Dissipation completely unavoidable, even through blocks and dodges.
• The combination of confounding’s instant stun and Mesmer’s massive damage spikes/stealth leaving next to no counterplay.

All right, so the first point has a pretty obvious fix (make BD avoidable through evade/block). But what can we do about the second point without dropping our Power build out of the meta entirely?

Some thoughts off the top of my head:

• Move some of Mind Wrack’s power out of the skill itself and into traits like Mental Anguish/MoF.
• Normalise MW’s damage-per-illusion scaling so that your burst doesn’t hit as hard unless you have all three clones out.
• Reduce MW’s power/weapon damage scaling coefficient.
• Remove or nerf the Wastrel’s Punishment portion of Mental Anguish.
• Remove the Stun/Daze duration increase on Confounding Suggestions.

The danger with any of this is that Power Shatter Mesmer is still considered to be our only particularly viable build for sPvP. I don’t have the confidence in ANet’s balance team required to assume that nerfs to Power Shatter will come with compensatory buffs to other, edge-of-viability builds. In other words, while I think there might indeed be a problem that needs to be fixed, I worry that the fix will come at the cost of destroying Mesmer’s PvP viability entirety rather than making a surgical strike on one or two problematic play patterns.

The other proposal, of course, would be to add a small amount of additional Toughness/Vitality to all PvP Amulets, which would serve to increase TTK across the board. Low TTK is really the main thing that cause people to carry torches and pitchforks when it comes to PvP balance anyway.

Aomine.5012:

XD, what shock me the most is that only 33% of the player-base pre-purchased HoT despite the hype. This is a very low number for the first expansion of the game.

This kind of number only makes sense in comparison with other expansions. What percentage of WoW’s active player base pre-ordered WoD within a month of pre-orders going live, for instance?

I think 33% is actually a pretty high number for an expansion that doesn’t even have a release date…

Yeah, seems like a legit bug.

Actually, considering that Mender’s Purity is implemented as “Casts Power Cleanse”, I wonder if Blurred Inscriptions is implemented the same way. If so, the ICD on Power Cleanse could explain why only one condition is removed.

Though, if that’s why this bug occurs, that begs another question, namely why Blurred Inscriptions clears one condition while Mender’s Purity clears two.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

4k hours on my main

o_O

blitzkrieg.2451:

Mesmers will definitely be nerfed somehow, the question is will it be damage or survivability.

My guess: They’ll nerf survivability and utility. Then other classes will still kitten about how OP we are when a power build blows its Mind Wrack load and 25-0s them.

Korusef.3714:

I suspect this is issue on the environment side rather then on the persona side.

This is an absolute classic game dev bug, actually.

Effects (e.g., “apply Blind”) usually need both a source and a target. The source is required for the game to calculate duration, strength, etc. When a mob applies the effect to a player, the source is obviously the mob, so the game uses the mob’s stats to determine the final effect. Same for a player applying the effect, like in PvP.

The thing is, sometimes the source is required to inherit from a specific class, often something like “Character” or “Actor”. Mobs and players will both inherit from this class, so no problem there. But environmental objects (like the blinding sands) often inherit from a totally different class that may not be allowed to serve as the source for an effect.

At that point, you have basically two ways to work around this. You can spawn an invisible and untargetable mob nearby to serve as the source of the effect. Or, you can specify the player as both the source and the target. Each approach comes with its own delightfully weird bugs.

(League of Legends is rather famously inclined to use the "invisible, untargetable minion approach, which occasionally caused bugs like being able to ignore enemy champions’ walls if you had an item or ability that allowed you to walk through minions.)

GreenIcey.2456:

So is s/f still basically all anyone ever uses? I’m not fond of the playstyle which makes dungeon running with my mesmer not as fun as my other toons

Don’t expect this to change unless HoT delivers some radically different dungeon content.

Though I do think that S/P might be considered a viable alternative if you don’t need the traited reflects?

Update! Bug Fix! Nerf!

^ dev summoning mantra

We don’t actually know what’s intended for this, I’m afraid.

Ok, so it’s half fixed. Better than nothing.

IMO, I prefer conditional cooldown reductions, but with a huge caveat. Namely, it’s all or nothing. Either every weapon for every class has some kind of conditional CDR, or none of them do.

Though actually my overall preference for an MMO is that cooldown reduction isn’t a thing in the first place unless its tied to a specific skill mechanic. (E.g., Mimic or Alacrity.)

I still think that the change to Berzerker Amulet (removal of Vitality) has gone unnoticed by the majority of PvP players, who mostly just copy what they see on Metabuild and don’t read patch notes. So they’re noticeably more squishy than they used to be, they just don’t know it.

Burst classes are the ones most likely to end up on the receiving end of player hate in a situation like this, and most PvP Mesmers are playing power shatter. So it was basically inevitable that the hate on us would get amplified.

Necrotize.2974:

I wouldn’t say a majority of players think PU is OP, SPvP just happens to have a very vocal playerbase. Reactions ingame have been mixed, but especially on the forums you need to account for observational bias.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Carighan.6758:

I mean yes, maybe PU is too strong (notice: not broken, but I might as well argue with a wall on that one, since PvP whining is inherently education-resistant, I know…), but even then, it is by a minor amount.

This is it, exactly. Mesmers can maybe stay in Stealth slightly too long for the purposes of WvW roaming. That’s… about the only problem. A Mesmer who hides in stealth for 60 seconds in SPvP is literally just taking himself out of the match for 60 seconds, so there’s no real need for a nerf there.

Though, given ANet’s track record with Mesmers, they’ll probably just remove the duration buff outright, then wonder why neither before nor after anyone picks Mesmers for their teams, but congratulate themselves on a job well done. And probably buff Thieves while they’re at it.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow!

Esplen.3940:

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

That makes it a lot easier to plan your shatter usage, as well. Assuming you’ll have 3 Phantasms up, you’ll wait for your weapon’s Phantasm summon cooldown to reach ~6 seconds, then you shatter and immediately resummon it. Then swap weapons and resummon your other weapon Phantasm. Supplement with a clone or a utility Phantasm or the pDefender from Mental Defense.

This definitely gets way better when we get Chronomphantasma, of course. Then we can recover potentially 12s off all of our Phantasm cooldowns by shattering twice.

I’d probably wait until we get Chronomancer and Chronophantasma before trying to do a shatter build in dungeons.

Photoloss.4817:

The problem probably stems from fiddling with the base stats, less “wasted” potential investing into defensive traitlines and a general shift in the damage vs hp scale (hp doesn’t really matter in PvE)

Yeah, I’d agree with this. The 100 points or so of Vitality that was given back from the trait changes wasn’t enough. I think ANet might want to tweak the level 80 stats, Vitality→HP formula, or something else to even things out before looking at specific class-level nerfs. It makes the most sense, if we’re seeing damage get too high across the board, which seems to be the case.

A Scepter+Pistol/Staff interrupt build will probably be the best way to apply condition pressure when/if a few of our broken traits actually get fixed. For instance, Pistol skills should be applying bleeds through Duelist’s Discipline, but that isn’t actually happening. (Though iDuelist will still proc Sharper Images pretty often.)

Honestly, the condi traits seem pretty well-balanced between shatter and everything else. It’s just that shattering is the best way (apart from Scepter 3) to apply a ton of conditions at once and get burst damage. Burst damage is the name of the game for everything except WvW roaming, so all the meta builds for Mesmer are based on either shattering or lockdown.

EDIT: That’s annoying, the forum doesn’t appear to support UTF-8. So, instead…

Telly.4962:

Not any more, they already stopped the Mesmer stealth stacking

As of when? I didn’t play last night, but Mesmer stealth was definitely stacking on Sunday, and there haven’t been any patches since then.

Leodon.1564:

I don’t think Mantras are good for holding a point because they are hard to recharge without some cover for it. A class with good cc (lockdown mesmer/theif) will be able to lock you out pretty easily every time you attempt a charge. Having 3 mantras means alot of charging and I don’t see it working for hold pointing. One person can completely shut you down, let alone 3.

Well, I believe the point is that you can hold enemies off for a while before you even need to charge your mantras in the first place, provided that you’re using them intelligently.

Silverkey.2078:

I haven’t used much mantras post-patch so I am not sure I understand everything: Even if they recharge in the background (which I still think is a bug) you still need to channel them which takes 2.75s. So as a spike damage it works, but after 3 uses you still need to charge it right? Is your point simply that since we get 3 instant casts worth more than 1s AA DPS each, the 2.75s channeling is still worth it?

The cast time of the Scepter chain means that it takes about the same amount of time to burn three charges of MoP as it does to go through a full Scepter AA chain. And three MoP charges will deal more damage to more targets at a longer range.

Most importantly, you can use MoP while channeling a different weapon skill. Like Scepter/Sword block or Scepter 3. And then you can use another weapon skill with no activation time (e.g, Phase Retreat and Chaos Armour, other charged Mantras, some of our utilities) while charging MoP again.

Xyonon.3987:

Just don’t do auto attacks. You can do scepter #3, summon phantasm, while at the same time unloading mantra of pain, charging it again after the phantasm, unload it while doing 2 (!) basic attacks, use scepter #3 again, recharge again, swap to sword. Something like this. You never have to use the 3rd basic attack. Try it! Scepter #3 is amazing dps wise, truly amazing.

One nice thing about Mesmer is that Mantra of Pain really can fully replace our AAs. Of course, the flip side of that is that we have a lot of crappy AAs that we’re better off replacing with Mantra of Pain…

One nice thing is that PU and Mimic+Veil mean I can play most of the open world like a fractal skip.

Silverkey.2078:

I think healing prism should have healed allies for a percentage of your own healing and thus without ICD.

Yeah, that’s the best suggestion I’ve seen. It’s not only a good way to balance the trait, it’s also more intuitive.

Fay.2357:

Bunker is a PvP term for someone protecting a point.

Which — because a non-PvPer probably wouldn’t know this — a PU Mesmer can’t really do because being in stealth disables your ability to block point captures.

Windwalker.7421:

Lots of broken, bugged, or useless traits and only the one single build that’s viable…the almighty Power Shatter! Love it or leave the Mesmer profession!

That’s what really gets me about these nerfs. The builds that they’re leaving intact are the ones with the least counterplay. PvP players should rejoice if MtD Mesmers unseated Power Shatter. You can’t cleanse Mind Wrack.

The logic behind the nerfs is completely lacking.

FlawlezZ.3178:

i’m pretty sure Feel My Wrath will get nerfed

It’s a Guardian skill, there’s no way.

I predict that Time Warp will be allowed to benefit from the cooldown reduction trait, but in exchange its base cooldown will be increased to 240s. Seems to be how things go for us.

Aither.2859:

Question, why did you choose Sinister’s and not Rampager’s? I notice mixed reactions on this forum about choosing sinister or rampager armor and I myself would like to know which is the better of the two. I want at least one condition ascended armor which right now I have Rabid but I would like to change that to either sinister or rampager but don’t know which to choose.

Silverkey.2078:

If you use duelist’s discipline to increase pistol bleeds, then go rampager to make up for the lack of phantasm fury and use sword. If you use phantasm fury, you loose bleeds but you can invest in sinister for the extra condi damage. Then scepter may be a better main hand.

I think it’s worth noting that Duelist’s Discipline is apparently broken right now. Once it’s fixed, a Sc/P+T build seems like a good way to apply lots of conditions.

GS is a perfectly good weapon for open world, though. Actually, with the new trait, it’s probably one of the best weapons for Silverwastes. Teragriffs will be flopping all over themselves if you so much as look at them.

But for dungeons and fractals? Yeah, it’s gonna be Sw/Sw+F.