Guild Wars 2

Mesmers might have so few bulletpoints because they just aren’t buggy compared to other profs. They have no balance-affecting bugs like Guardian does or anything. Clones are so simple that the only AI problems I know of is dodge clones attacking closest instead of target, and Phantasmal Warden following the enemy as though it was ranged instead of melee.

Regarding portal, I think anet just made a mistake giving that to the best 1v1 profession in the game. There wouldn’t be that many cries for nerfs if all mesmers regardless of exact build weren’t point-defender-lite. So, uh, I’d rather keep the bag of tricks and have fun playing a more specialized profession than lose all the cool skills because mesmers are too strong at generic damage+pointdefending.

Too bad about the few balance updates, i had the audacity to be waiting for buffs. I’d love to see torch and focus phantasms on a level that makes the weapons usable. I’d like offhand sword block to become something that can compete with Magic Bullet on any level (offhand sword and pistol are direct competitors due to having burst phantasms, see). I’d also love for mesmers to get an actually competitive condition spec so the burstly phantasms wouldn’t be such a huge selling point for a weaponset. I mean, confusion does kind of work, but the problem is that the best weaponsets for confusion are the same as the best sets for burst.

Conquest inherently favors defense because it allows a team to utilize locational advantages more efficiently (by fighting at a disadvantage elsewhere). Another way to put it is that teams with a bunker or two are effectively more mobile than teams without. Mobility, in turn, is an important offensive tool. Furthermore, in this game bunker specs share most of their skills with balanced specs, so balancing them through skillbalance is a difficult task to say the least. A thing to note, though, is that the mobility increase has major diminishing returns and I don’t see any serious team using more than 2 bunkers.

A larger problem is that you only win by holding points. Even the secondary objectives work like point-holding. There’s no alternate tactic to winning. Without a reliable comeback mechanism you are forced to play it safe because a minor skill advantage won’t save you if you mess up in the beginning. Offensive builds tend to be high risk high reward. Even good players might die several times while getting used to an opponent’s way of thinking, the aim is to clean house in the end.

Unfortunately, there’s no reward large enough to offset the risk in tPvP. You don’t get to make a bunker weak enough to kill 1v1 by stacking death penalty on him. You don’t get to kill the enemy Guild Lord after wiping their team. Chances are you don’t even get all the capture points. And you definitely won’t be able to hold all of them, while a team that’s ahead might only need to hold one for the rest of the match.

Basically, no matter how much you’d nerf them, bunker specs are here to stay. Bunkers are to conquest what monks and defensive midline were to GvG. The question isn’t whether to have one, it’s how many and what secondary role they need to accomplish. The only way to make it not be so would be to allow a team to play in a way that makes guarding a point a bad tactic. In most PvP games, being mobile and seeking locational advantages is the way to do that, but how can you do that if defensive teams are inherently more mobile?

(Note: if you get confused by this mobility thing, in most games defense is built as parts that support each other and doesn’t scale down (or, in some cases, move). When fighting on a smaller scale than the defense scales, offense has the advantage. The defense also breaks down when one of its parts is killed. In GW2, defense scales all the way down to the point where one player can hold off 2-3 for a finite time. You can’t split any further than that. So, all defense has to do to be useful is to be where the fighting is (offense, on the other hand, needs to actively get kills to be more effective at taking points than defense is at holding them), and a guardian is perfectly as fast as a warrior. Even if the guardian isn’t literally shadowing the warrior, the time it takes to move from a point to another is slightly less than the time it takes to neutralize and cap one and far less than the time required to finish a battle with a one-player-advantage.)

Really disheartening to hear this. If paids don’t have enough people, the obvious solution is to have scaling paid tournaments on preset times every day.

An important thing that makes tournaments hard to access is that the playerbase is spread across dozens of servers and there’s no obvious cross-server PuG system. This would eventually help people form lasting teams for paid tournas. Paids are currently only for guilds and people who formed a network of friends at the higher levels of PvP (and were lucky enough that their friends didn’t quit forever before paids arrived).

Staff only needs one nerf. Nerf Phase Retreat to the ground. Make the teleport not work when you couldn’t leap or dodge either. Remove the finisher. When the skill is equivalent to a dodge that also spawns a clone, go hog wild with buffing Chaos Storm because it doesn’t give you a 5-second Chaos Armor as a bonus anymore.

I believe the reason why the WoC is so weak untraited is that staff clones are absurd compared to other clones. So why not take their conditions down too and give WoC back a bounce or two. Not really necessary but hey, in the name of fun and balance.

I think scepter has some kind of ghetto fix to the attack speed range problem (has been since launch, so may not work properly). What I mean is that it’s the only weapon with which you don’t have to hit anything to open the next step of its combo. Try it, you can use its full combo out of combat, except you naturally won’t spawn any clones.

If you ask me, scepter just has nothing going for it. It’s not a damage weapon since its autoattack is the worst among all the weapons (except maybe greatsword, whose damage lies in the other skills). The mechanic it spawns clones with is pretty much useless since clones are best spammed in stacks of many using instacast abilities, which mesmer has plenty of. The block feels good, but it’s worse than Blurred Frenzy both offensively and defensively. Confusing Images is a condition damage -based ability on a physical-based weapon on a fairly physical-based profession. Not to mention that the confusion from it is useless compared even to traited Mind Wrack, because Wrack is instant AoE and can actually catch someone by surprise.

For it to have some kind of niche, I’d turn scepter into a legitimate condition/harass weapon. Change the chain finisher from clone spawn to 3 stacks of confusion or something. Make Counterspell spawn a clone or two (so you have on-demand clones, a must for a confusion build). Shorten Confusing Images channel and/or have it drop all the stacks at the same time.

I’m pretty sure illusion stats are the same as your listed stats. Anything that doesn’t show on your stat sheet (trait effects, sigils, special rune effects) they don’t get, anything that does (increased stats from armor and traits) they do. It’s worth testing whether they get the bonuses from sigils that add stats for every kill.

If you’re a beginner, play a simple, defensive build. With a complicated, offensive build (say; ele, engineer) you will just be dying a lot. With a simple, offensive build (berserker warrior or thief) you may get a lot of kills and feel awesome, but you’ll either kill or die so fast you won’t learn what the game is about and will instead end up posting whine treads about imbalances.

Playing a basic soldier’s amulet guardian or staff+sword mesmer you see in slow motion how battles work. What each build might want to do to you and how you can prevent it. Take all the tools (stun breaker, condition removal, stun/immobilize/knockback) and try them out on everything. Firstly you will never (well, rarely) feel like you had no way to survive. The game will feel more fair. Secondly you’ll have to learn to make the best out of your respectable but flawed damage engine.

This knowledge will help you play that glass cannon. Glass cannons play faster, can’t make as many mistakes, are extremely reliant on the same defensive utility guardians/mesmers have in abudance, and need to know how to make their enemy stay there and eat damage when he’s decent enough to react to your most obvious combo.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

I’m struggling to see the reasoning behind an all female team. What purpose does this serve besides segregating? Is it subtly saying they (women) aren’t welcome in male teams, that they have to make their own instead?

Is it an effort (if they win) to turn around and say “See, girls are good gamers too!” which by default suggests people assume they aren’t.

It all seems very condescending in an attempt at appearing PC. I should also add that your team name, Hormonia [PMS], while I’m sure is intended to be tongue in cheek, is also very inappropriate and only serves to encourage a negative stereotype.

Very poor taste.

Gaming communities everywhere have major sexism issues. On one hand, female players seem to get a lot of kitten (compared to male players, often unintended but still not excusable) in mixed teams, especially if everyone else there is male. The attitude that ‘girls’ are automatically bad at videogames is still very real. Sometimes coupled with the notion that they’re invading gamers’ personal space by doing a man’s job. On the other hand, all-female teams are a really shallow way for pro communities not to look sexist, born from the same thought processes that brought us all kinds of segregation systems.

Good job from you to aim to have an actual mature, fun guild, but the problem goes pretty deep. Basically, if you’re a woman making a team to have fun in, all-female is probably a great idea. If you’re male and want to appear progressive, oh god.

This was great reading in many respects. Decisions in GW2 matches lack weight and so you often can’t punish a team for their mistakes hard enough to win a losing fight. No overextending so badly that it gets your guild lord killed. There’s little prioritizing targets except for ‘who goes down the easiest’, whereas in GW1 there were many. Get the warrior while he’s frenzying, get the ele so you have a shot at the monks, get the monk so they lose their heal engine, get that guy with 45% DP.

Tournaments definitely need a real death penalty system that creates target prioritization and real situational advantages. The situational advantages need to be big enough to actually turn the game around, and in the cap point format it’s really hard to do except by simply having more people on the field so you can realistically hold 3 points.

Another thing is that defensive builds actually increase team mobility in this game. By having players that can hold of 2-3 people for a reasonable amount of time you GAIN map control as opposed to being able to hold one point 100% but having trouble getting more, which it would mean in a saner balance system. There was a similar skew (for different reasons) in GW1 GvG and no amount of nerfing defense and buffing offense could help, it only made the game slower by forcing teams to use more and more defensive characters in their teambuilds.

Yes, I too would like to have everything that best synergizes with dealing heavy damage in the crit line and put all that baby utility stuff into its very own ghetto with a big “don’t put points here if you aren’t a puny torch user” sign stamped onto it.

The trait lines are balanced so that you have to make compromises and also so that no trait line is completely pointless whatever build you use. Making it all thematically correct without wrecking the balance would require remaking half the skills.

The reason even haste pistol whip is so terrifying is that immobilize breakers are a lot less common than stun breakers. Professions like mesmer that don’t even need to take an utility skill have a hilariously easy time, builds with no instant condition removal/teleport/invicibility are powerless. The 1-second cast time stuff is too slow, obviously.

Honestly I feel that Pistol Whip shouldn’t exist, or if it does, as a quick (off with the cast time) weak invulnerability like Blurred Frenzy (BF hits for 3.5k or so with all-out offensive statbuild) and not as a giant burst. Make it a reliable punish for being stationary and counter to enemy bursts instead of a one-trick-pony.

A staff+sword/pistol phantasm build is great for learning the ropes as a mesmer. Spawn your phantasms, try to set up small burst with the sword, mostly just sit on staff, abuse Chaos Armor and Chaos Storm+Phase Retreat, hide behind pillars and what have you. Decoy and Blink are utility skills that are just good on paper but incredible when you know when to use them. The shatters aren’t very complicated. Distortion when you’re finishing or ressing, Cry of Frustration on finishers/Guardian elite heal or similar, Mind Wrack when you immoblize burst and are prepared to recast phantasms. Take your time, mesmer is all about timing and you generally don’t benefit greatly from trading damage.

An important thing to know when you mesmer: always statbuild for pure offense. That means berserker’s amulet and +crit runes. Your skill (and general overpoweredness), not stats, determine your defense and staff alone has counters to every single build people whine about here.

Chaos Storm nerf is most likely because it gives Chaos Armor too. Twice, if you’re so inclined and have Staff+Sword. I still can’t wrap my head around why they don’t nerf Phase Retreat. It’s an instant anti-stun, anti-immoblize backwards dodge that spawns a clone and gives you Chaos Armor on a pitifully low recharge that is reduced further by a 5 point trait.

The phantasm nerfs were good though. I felt like they lowered the recharges too much with clones overwriting phantasms, causing unnecessary stuff like often keeping two duelists up. Now that phantasms are safe from clones, no mesmer deserves 3. Nor do shatter builds deserve to rely on having at least duelist up nearly all the time.

You’re not thinking big enough. I cast my vote for deadly pitfalls. Right next to the central cap point.

I presume Anet will have a few bags full of money just for the occasion that they feel sPvP is ready to be an esport. There’s nothing like some real-world prizes to get people’s mouths watering again.

Redscope.6215:

uncop.5073:

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

33% is 33%…50% is 50%. They’re different. They’re also different in how they increase attack speed. Currently, Quickness reduces attack duration by 50%. That’s effectively “Double Attack Speed”. Frenzy in GW1 increased an attack speed number by 33%.

Which is effectively this; assuming 1 attack per second in both games:

• GW1: 33% faster = 1.33 attacks per second
• GW2: 50% quicker animation = 2 attacks per second (the time it takes to do one attack reduced by HALF)

Way different. Math hurts. (Pun intended )

I do not understand where we disagree except that you didn’t know that GW1 attack speed boosts reduced attack duration (which the big fat minus sign denotes). The current quickness makes attacks 2x faster or reduces attack duration by 50%, whatever floats your boat. GW1 IWAY warriors also reduced attack duration by 50%, making their boost stacking equal to quickness.

Good job making yourself look like an kitten for no reason at all!

Guardians are best at central points where a lot of fighting happens. On points just occasionally assaulted by a lone thief or something, you want someone who can actually win the fights instead of just not losing. Mesmers are popular because they also have the portal, but generally anything good at 1v1s goes.

Another thing is that when you need to have more than one defender on a single point, two guardians doesn’t seem to be the best answer at all.

The relation of burst vs defense seems mostly fine, DoT conditions are just toothless against burst. The solution would be to somehow make condition specs more reliable, less counterable.

Xeph.4513:

Quick question, apart from having retaliation toned down (which I completely agree with.) What other things do you want nerfed/removed, because as far as I’m concerned many classes have several ways to stop a stomp; as a mesmer I have 2 stuns, a daze, chaos storm (with some rng luck) and moa.
Engineer has (Flamethrower and Big bomb)
Elementalists (Updraft, Earthquake and Tornado)

The full hp aoe heal, is very easy to counter and the guardian can be cc’d to stop it; if he has popped stability than remove the condition using several different boon removals.

Guardians are strong, but they are not a god class and by no means do I find them overpowered; the only thing I wish for is a nerf to retal and everything else is currently in line.

Nerfs i can throw off the top of my head are:
- Phase Retreat should lose the Leap finisher, OR nerf Ethereal field. It also should not move you while you’re stunned, knocked down or immobilized.
- Phantasmal Duelist should have a big chunk of it’s damage converted to conditions or something to make pistol not be the best burst offhand too.
- Guardians honestly feel too balanced to be so good, there are no simple nerfs except for Retaliation. They’re good no matter the weapons, no matter the utility skills. Remove the knockback on shield 5? Simplest way to hit the great toolbox.
- Take Thieves’ Guild down a notch. Effect-wise it’s nice, but the long duration throws the ball on the defender to kill the thieves rather than on the thief to capitalize on their help.
- Either make Stun breakers break Immobilize or otherwise make Devourer Venom more counterable by people who don’t explicitly build for it.

Other professions have quite a few sleeper imbalanced skills, but I don’t know them well enough to comment too much on them.

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

“4 auto-aiming heartseekers”, huh. Heartseeker hits like a backstab on a 25% health opponent, which is to say 6-7k crit. Half that on full health. Basically, heartseekers aren’t even dangerous until you’re already near to death. Assuming you dodge half of them by just rolling your forehead on the keyboard, I can’t see how it’s a problem that you can die to thieves if they play well and capitalize on your mistakes.

This thread has made me feel like I should go make a 24k hp paper armor character and take screenshots of my deaths.

GankSinatra.2653:

because they are the best bunker class at the moment, does that make them overpowered;

That is the definition of overpowered. Being the best at something where noone gets close. So yes, yes it does.

No, best is not the same as overpowered. Guardian is not the best because it dominates every single aspect of the bunker role, it’s the best because they have reliable tools for every kind of situation. Always nerfing whatever is the best just creates a race to the bottom, if the best thing isn’t overwhelmingly so.

Many people seem to reject that this is a game about builds and roles as opposed to professions. The balance is tight enough that there’s no profession that is irreplaceable. Contrary to popular belief, thieves don’t deal more damage than others can hope to, Guardian isn’t always the most resilient and mesmer illusions don’t give an insurmountable advantage. Many things are just harder to play, less widely known or just never played outside tournaments. You don’t lose to unbeatable builds, you lose to better teamwork, better individual players or simply not having found your personal playstyle yet.

If you’re a thief against a mesmer, timing is everything. When you see the real one, make sure his Phase Retreat/Blurred Frenzy is on recharge depending on the weaponset, because those two skills are really obvious ways to escape most of your combo on reflex. Because of their short recharge, I know I use them with abandon if a thief doesn’t feel threatening. Hit hard when the mesmer’s defenses aren’t up and then don’t give an inch. A startled player is very obvious to recognize.

If you don’t have two of the following: Your main combo recharged, Thieves’ Guild recharged, most of your health left, do not fight. Mesmers are relatively easy to escape, thieves are good at escaping and you can’t really accomplish anything by trying your luck.

I’m unsure of the FUD level of what I’m going to say, but this game was released quite raw. Anet are working their kitten off, but when PvE bugs run rampant, one can’t focus on adding new functionality (major skill changes are functionality that require extensive testing). I can imagine the PvP transforming in a great update next year, when they finally add proper ranking and ladders, the big tournaments, observer mode and so on they’ve stated that they want to have. Then the metagame really kicks off and the regular players get to see what’s really worth buffing/nerfing. Right now even the devs might only have statistics to rely on.

Seeing the title, I was prepared to go all ‘nooo our precious essence of sPvP’, but that’s kind of a legitimate issue. The good thing is that farming isn’t that effective with the cap, easily less than 5 times that of legitimate play, so it doesn’t seem to be worth the mindnumbing boredom to many. As long as there won’t ever be a botting epidemic… That would make PvP a joke.

Killyox.3950:

Huh? What, are people already crying about it? What happened to all the bragging “if you don’t spot the real mesmer in 0,5s from a fake then you are bad” ????

Yes, it is annoying, yes it is intended, yes it is the only defense mesmers really have. Is it OP ? No it’s not. Can i tell them apart? Yes, almost always but not always instantly.

Clones aren’t half bad. Phantasm dmg and shatters are worse;p

I’d love that to be true, but mesmers have loads upon loads of defense apart from the clones. They have some of the best defensive weapons, traits and utilities in the game on top of their class mechanic. The greatsword/sword mesmers who are honest glass cannons that deceive using their clones, those feel balanced. Staff/sword mesmers that are statbuilt like a three-hit-kill thieves but play like Guardians, those do not.

Thief role is to harass. Assault objectives that are weak, get into the path of people trying to get your points/reinforce a teamfight, make the enemy have keep defenders on their points and then go to your team etc. Thief has a really high skill ceiling and it’s the really good ones who amaze me. They know where to go, where you are likely to go and to utilize your field of vision. They play with your expectations like a mesmer, make you stand in place like a fool while they go somewhere else. Appear behind you when you thought they were gone.

Also, shortbow is what makes thieves useful in teamfights. They’re often too fragile to stay in and finish the enemies they burst in melee, but the shortbow keeps the AoE pressure on. I’m pretty sure the shortbow and venom sharing are the reasons to run condition thief at all. Please don’t be that guy who spams death blossom. Condition thieves have a harder time 1v1ing and need a different approach than pistol whip guys.

All kinds of thieves are at home in defensive comps, IMO that’s exactly where they shine. They help you kill faster when you need it, make your slow fights count by helping keep the objectives and generally disrupt the slow, methodical atmosphere defensive builds have to them. The reason you might feel thieves don’t work is that you’ve played with ones that don’t pick their fights and escape when in the slightest danger.

Excuse me, but a 2,2k power, 68 crit damage thief backstab crits for 6.5-6.8k on a medium armor dummy. Thieves don’t cheese people to death with one or two hits, they use a combination like everyone else. Say, Mug→Cloak&dagger→Backstab→Heartseeker combo is in the 20k range assuming every single hit crits.

I actually said (or tried to) that necromancer unreliability is exactly what makes it so much worse than the mesmer. Minions are decent in 1v1 and horrible anywhere else, conditions are good in group fights but a lot worse than straight damage in 1v1, both also have a clear counter (AoE to minions, removal to conditions). Death Shroud is something you can lose and are a lot weaker without. When I play necromancer, I find the best balance to be a scepter/staff condition build with Flesh Golem and Flesh Wurm, where the weaknesses really often balance each other out.

About the versatility, they aren’t versatile as in they have many good builds, they’re versatile, like the mesmer, as in they can perform a variety of roles within a good build.

That tactic is both risky and fair on a single-battle-basis, although I do find myself hating how the trebuchet can’t be repaired and the 2nd time the same tactic is used, it’s gone for sure. It’s not just guardians that do this; Pistol Whip thieves are great at teleporting in, hitting as long as they have health for it and stealthing+teleporting away to regenerate and spend a moment assisting at a point.

I’m opposed to having a scoring system and not a tiering system, because how good a profession is is directly related to how good the others are at the same jobs. I also feel rating professions might not be the way, because most have builds that play differently, do different jobs and most importantly are in different tiers compared to what the other profs can do. The devs have stated they’re balancing on a per-weaponset basis, not a per-profession one.

That said, Thieves, Mesmers and Guardians are definitely 1st tier.

Thief – The de facto roamer. Perfectly as capable as warriors, elementalists, and rangers, with the added bonus of stealth and mobility that let them never waste time in a losing fight. Thieves’ Guild is an awesome elite that gives them great odds against anything 1v1 and even decent 1v2 ability.
Guardian – The face of support and point defense. If what you want is support, this guy has it all. No matter how you build, you’re going to have a great combination of defense, movement control and healing. guardians have competition in what they do, but neither eles nor engineers get to have it all the way guardians do, their support builds are more specialized.
Mesmer – The 2nd best guy at everything. They’re what you want if your team needs to switch tactics on the fly and adapt. You can leave them on a point, since they’re safe in any kind of 1v1. You can send them to roam because of that same thing and average mobility. You can send them to assist anyone, at anything. They don’t do bad in group fights either.

2nd tier is for professions that have a specialty that rivals/beats the 1st tier guys, which is a sign of a balanced game.

Engineer – This guy sure can defend a point. Extra effective in group fights, but by no means a slouch in 1v1. Supply drop is a great counter to most guardian counters. I’ve also heard of roamer potential with all the speedboosts and high damage, but haven’t faced that kind.
Elementalist – Best heals in the game. Again, more effective in group fights. Plant a staff ele and a guardian/engineer on a point and you’re never going to lose it. They have serious roaming potential but it is, again, mostly untapped because thieves are so good.
Ranger (Tier 2/3) – The king of sustained damage. Not reliant on melee range or quick bursts to deliver death with their shortbow, they nonetheless have loads of quickness and pet-bound stuns and immobilizes. The least clear tier 2 because their specialty only comes into effect when there’s something your thief can’t beat and no one (like a mesmer) to assist him.

Tier 3 are guys who just don’t have the same kind of versatile, powerful build to a role like the others do. They aren’t that much worse, but there’s little reason to take them except having a master player.

Necromancer – Counter master. Ask any guardian or non-elementalist point defender, and you’ll hear that this is what they fear. Necromancers are also the mesmer kind of versatile, as they can point defend with a full Death Shroud or assault a point with minions. However, necromancers’ specialty consists of the two least reliable things in the game at the moment: conditions and minions. Both have clear counters that kind of balance each other out, but ultimately make necromancers less reliable than competitors outside of a few matchups.
Warrior – Master of… uh? Warriors can specialize and compete with the best of them at anythign from roaming to support, but they’re less versatile within their role than the competitors, giving players no reason to use them.

If you ask me, there are a few things at the top tier holding the other professions down, but the differences are mostly about undeveloped meta (the best players don’t get to fight each other enough) and certain professions just being plain harder to play a role with.

Mesmers don’t have to get screwed on loot, but phantasms just don’t work for more than one attack cycle. Cast a phantasm, cast a clone, dodge roll for a 3rd one and shatter. Switch weapons when you feel you should, and shatter more. With confusion on shatters etc. this playstyle easily beats those wide-swinging 2h melees in the AoE department.

Phantasms are pretty much only good to keep around against veteran and champion mobs. I don’t think this is a problem since they put out a quick burst of damage and can be shattered.

Everything is imbalanced, nerf it all. The QQ about pistol whip is just fascinating; it’s a skill you beat by dodging as long as you have something (an instant condition removal, a teleport…) to get out of the initial immobilize.

Seriously, I love how everything feels just so good in this game. Every once in a while you see that ele who plays like a guardian and oh my god he doesn’t die either and heals 3x faster, nerf that! That thief who you barely manage to hold off against again and again, only to find him 2.5k range units away after a single stealth. The ranger who leaves you with half your health, 20 bleeds and a poison in the 4 seconds their spider’s immobilize lasts.

Most of the imbalanced-feeling stuff isn’t 1v1-related at all since it’s a team game. Ever tried to beat a good guardian-support ele pair? 3 people need coordination to end that fight. Engineer just juggling your whole team off a point while laying on the damage, hiding behind allies when in danger? Mesmers dropping off an ally through a portal to a fight you should’ve won? Nerf it!

Kalar Meadia.8439:

I’d like to see your build.

The TRUE issue about Mesmer is that it’s enitre mechanics rely on deception, and those unfamiliar with the build do not get the benefit of capitalizing on your weaknesses.

For example, depending entirely on your build, you could be highly vulernable to condition damage and AoE damage. My guess is that you’re running a power/condition damage build which is why could could flawlessly switch to Sword (Main or offhand?)

It’s not that you’re highly survivable, it’s that you’re slippery and people are trying to lay physical damage on you, instead of piling on the condition/AoEs. I’d have to see your build, however to see for certain.

You kind of ignored that everything I specified was simply in the weapons themselves, no special building required. My build is 80-100% the same any streaming/youtube staff+sword/pistol mesmer runs (power+precision+crit). Mesmer a very versatile profession, you’re usually the 2nd best guy at anything in your team, and do what the best would do if he wasn’t fighting elsewhere, so you get into all kinds of fights. The way mesmers play is they fluctuate between two weaponsets to maximize illusion spam (and consequently shatters), so you’re often weaponswitching on recharge. Sword is to get an edge by carving into enemy hp and staff is to keep that edge through medium sustained damage and through-the-roof defense. It’s something explained best by watching a good player’s videos.

You should realize a profession can be both slippery AND tough, and that was kind of what I was getting at. Like guardian, mesmer has no counters bad enough to make them feel weak in 1v1, just vulnerable in the sense that if you make a few mistakes, you might lose. Utilities can also be switched during matches; if you’re afraid of a specific condition-build enemy, you switch that blink to a condition removal and back after winning the match. Because staff has counters to both burst and sustained damage, subbing defensive utility out doesn’t feel like a sacrifice.

In all honesty, the lack of a good matchup system severely hinders the evolution of the metagame and finding really good players to fight, so there could be ways to reliably punish mesmers for statbuilding all offense, but I’ve never seen one that didn’t require popping an elite. What I mean by this is when I lose a fight, it was always a mistake of mine, never just the other guy being so good or having such a build that i couldn’t beat him next time. Only defensive builds like support Guardian evoke the same feeling of “I can shrug off everything that guy can throw at me if I’m just smart about how I use my skills.” Other berserker-wearing builds are more like “I’ve got to hit him hard from a good position so he never gets to hit back, otherwise I need a plan to get away”.

You guys are seriously overhyping backstab, it only deals 6-7k on a regularly armored person. Thief bursts are in line with warrior and elementalist damagewise. The major advantage thieves have going for them that warr/ele don’t is that they get to pick and choose their battles. That and one of the best elites in the game.

In low-level play thieves are good because they have really easy powerful bursts and most people freak out when they disappear. In high-level play they’re good because their elite allows them great odds against anything and shortbow lets them cover a huge amount of distance during a single 3-second stealth in the case they fail. Basically, warriors have at least the same damage and survivability, but if they get into an unbeatable matchup (say, another enemy appears while you’re fighting), they waste a huge amount of time and die.

Churning Earth is a terrible skill. Good bursts are the ones that have little to no risk when you play right (all have some combination of immobilize, stun and knockdown). Elementalist bursts are hidden into weird, hard-to-execute combos like Ride the Lightning+Lightning Strike+Blinding flash→Updraft→Signet of Earth→Dragon’s Tooth→Phoenix→Fire Grab. That one’s basically equivalent to Devourer Venom→Steal+Haste→Pistol Whip x2. Personally, i feel that eles cater to APM-crazy masochists.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Guardians break anything (since if you just look at the cool things a class can do, I’m pretty sure every single one is imbalanced), but they are special. Even a not-absurdly-tanky support guardian will only die 1v1 to their own mistakes. Only in 1v2-3 do the counters come in, they allow you to kill the guardian fast enough for their allies not to arrive in time. Supporty guardians tank with the best of them and tanky guardians support with the best of them.

That said, the point defense business is complicated. A well-played engineer is at least on par with guardians as a straight point holder, and staff eles offer more powerful support. Engineer has the added bonus of beating guardian counters (Supply Drop, condition builds can’t kill those turrets) The most impenetrable defenses I have seen are some combination of these 3, not just mass guardians. A big reason why guardian is seen more is that it’s much easier to play and since everyone plays them, the good builds are widely known.

Basically, point defending is really powerful, in random PvP no one does that since it doesn’t award you with points and you can’t call for help on voice chat, and people get fooled by how guardian is the public face of point defense.

I main mesmer and honestly, there’s something off with the profession. It’s the only profession where I (and seemingly most high-level players) run pretty much berserker all the way and still feel about as survivable as a non-tanky guardian or necro. The clones make Decoy and Blink awesome, but apart from that, they’re just disproportionately good against beginners.

The real problem is the combination of staff, Ethereal combos and possibly the trait that gives protection on regen. Mesmer is the only profession that has a (semi) stunbreaker and anti-immobilize in a neat 10 (usually 8 )-second recharge pack. This makes them virtually invulnerable to regular burst specs, even if he makes a positional/clone mistake. While Chaos Armor is up (and thanks to Leap finishers, it is up a lot), it’s a given that he has protection. Again, something that is usually a medium-recharge utility skill.

Then there is Sword/Pistol. It’s the main Mesmer damage set, except it still offers defense comparable to guardian weaponsets. This is understandable with Mesmer having caster armor, but eh. Make a mistake, and Blurred Frenzy usually is there to bail you out. Have fun with the dual Leap finisher that is skill 3, especially if you use Null Field (which you should, shortbow rangers and condition necros are among the only things that make me feel vulnerable). Trick Shot I’m sure everyone knows, buys a couple seconds against anything.

Not really related to this thread, but these 3 weapons are so much better than everything else mesmer has that major nerfs/buffs are in order. I used a greatsword+sword phantasm build when I started tournament play and when I found out how to really use staff, the loss in damage felt like nothing. I successfully played a scepter condition/shatter build for over 80 tourna matches and when I switched to sword, it only took a match or two and I felt like I’d been an idiot.

Confusion is at a good place at the moment, it’s legitimately powerful supplementary damage. The scepter confusion is kind of so-so, but traited shatter confusion is good. If confusion were weaker and longer duration, it’d just be boring for the mesmer and annoying for the enemy. Retaliation in a nutshell.

The real problem is that the only real condition damage weapon is staff, which is a defensive weapon with low damage potential. You’re annoyed with the confusion not dealing enough damage because you can’t really stack those bleeds like rangers and necros do. The closest I get to that is by aggressively traiting clones and staff and only using scepter for 2, 3, 4, 5.

TL:DR; I wouldn’t buff confusion, I’d make scepter an actual condition weapon.

Scepter is almost purely a skirmish weapon, as such it is naturally almost useless in PvE. The auto-attack is too slow to be worth using to get clones, although the clone is a nice bonus if you capitalize on it right after spawning it. Scepter clones also suck; compare them to sword clones (fast vulnerability stacking, crit bleed, enchant removal) and staff clones (deal actual damage), so they’re purely shatter fodder.

Another thing with scepter is it doesn’t know whether it’s a condition weapon or not. If you aren’t condition spec, sword is so much stronger there’s no comparison. If you are, you have one attack and a fraction of your shatters, otherwise it’s all power-based.

Nonetheless, the scepter hasn’t failed me in the situations it is useful. Against a single big enemy (such as a player character), scepter 2 gives a nice amount of invulnerability, okay damage and a fast clone. Scepter 3 has probably the highest possible single-target damage you can deal if you’re condition spec and time it right. The hurdle is that unlike Blurred Frenzy, if you exchange it with an enemy big hitter, you’re the one who will lose out. Also unlike Blurred Frenzy, the only proper way to use it is exactly when the enemy is attacking.

My proposed scepter buff would be directed at the auto-attack: change some of the damage to minor conditions, so it’s an actual condition weapon and the scepter clones become somewhat useful to keep around.

Portal should lose its treb repair ability; not because it’s unbeatable but because it makes mesmer and portal a boring non-choice in Kyhlo.

Also, I use the portal in all of the sPvP and it’s a really tricky beast to balance. Its power is limited by your role, ability to plan ahead, knowledge of the maps, teammates, voice communication and so on. I fully believe that when the top players get really good, portal will be an integral part of their repertoire, since mesmers are versatile enough to fit into any team setup.

That 60 second duration elite idea made me chuckle, I know I’d never use another elite if I had that. It’s literally ‘For 60 seconds, your team is on 2 points at the same time, and can escape either fight with no consequences.’