What Class do you think could use a buff in PVE?

Actually rits are very powerful nowadays with the ability to heal well, and also high damage + Spirit tanking. My rit can take her SS build that she uses for general PvE and uses it for HM solo farming without changing a single skill. SoS builds are so powerful that they can be used well for restoration or spirit spamming and energy is not a problem with spirit siphon.

I would say mesmers are a lot less than rits right now in PvE.

Rangers. I only find them useful to interrupt and to poison. Too many drawbacks:

Attacking:
-Needs to be in a straight line without obstacles; other classes melee or cast spells bypassing obstacles.
-Very slow and difficult to do much damage since:

Skills:
-Too slow in activation, too high energy costs. Needed to boost you attacks but running out of energy too soon, and interrupted easily.
-As a side effect no way to use alternative dmg types in casting spells: not enough energy for that. No good healing options. (unlike warriors who can bypass both with Bonetti's defence in combination with other skills).

After reading this thread, I see much of the same responses over and over. Paragons, Assassins, Dervishes all need buffs. Well, while I may agree on Assassins, Paragons and Dervishes I don't think do.

The argument that Paragons have "Save Yourselves!" is a terrible one, because note that it is a Warrior skill. Sure, Paragons may use it more, but that disallows versatility, taking your Secondary Profession choice away. There's other combinations that can be done while still mitigating a large percentage damage party wide.

Now let us talk about Dervishes. The pet class of Arena Net, the class they absolutely adore and love. For that reason alone, how can one say they need buffing? Dervishes gain energy when enchantments end on them, whether its ones they've cast someone else doing it, its a powerful form of fuel. A monk spamming Patient Spirit on a Dervish between fights and even during fights can allow the Dervish to continue fueling those powerful high energy abilities.

So, I'm sorry to be "that" guy, but I don't think Paragons or Dervishes need a nerf

Note that many of these suggestions are based on comparisons with other classes. I would mention Dervish as needing a buff due to the fact that A/D and W/D are better scythe wielders than a Dervish now which is ridiculous.

From the most in-need of a buff to the least:

1. Dervish
2. Mesmer
3. Ranger
4. Paragon

I dont really think the rest of the classes need buffing. Eles have great utility even if their damage is a little lacking in HM. They also use PvE skills well thanks to energy storage, plus they have ER. Assassins have powerful Moebius dagger builds and scythe builds even if they dont go for SF. Monks have nice heals, utility, and even powerful RoJ/smite for damage. Warriors have Dragon Slash/SY, powerful axe buidls, and Scythe. Necros and Rits are probably the top 2 most powerful classes in general PvE at the moment.

Just a thought, but what if fast casting affected skill recharges by a small amount? If that could make too many spells become that much more spammable, perhaps fast casting could only affect mesmer spells.

Personally I still don't think mesmers need a buff, I play my part in groups and it's noticable enough to me.

Like I have said, "many of these suggestions are based on comparisons with other classes".

Can a Dervish or Mesmer be "effective enough" in HM? Sure they can. But are mesmers as effective as a Rit or Necro in general PvE? Are dervishes more effective scythe wielders than a A/D or W/D? I dont think so.

At least one of the problems here is in determining what role a dervish is supposed to play.
Is it a tank? Well, it can be, but warriors have the advantage of higher armor, etc.
Is a derv supposed to be dps based? Again, yes, but assassins do better...
What else is left for a dervish, healing? Well we all know ER eles and monks/rit/necro can easily do better there too.

I can't really think of a way to end this post
The choice in taking certain classes is very area specific, if we need interrupts then the best choice is mesmer/ranger. However, I agree that certain classes need to be more equal with others in general PvE play.

Mesmers do plenty of damage. Mesmers in general though werent built to mass amounts of damage. So for you to base the mesmer class as a viable damage dealer through rebuffing one pve skill is garbage.

If every class was built to just to str8 up damage, then why even have all these classes in the first place?

Which class can control the field of play from pressuring/shutting down all opposing classes in several differnt bar combinations?

They werent designed to mass amounts of damage, and they never will. That doesnt define a mesmer. They do plenty of damage with aspects to armor ignoring which makes up for str8 up dps from other characters. BUT if you continue to want mesmer damage buffs, then you are just wanting what most people dont want. Unbalance.

No wait maybe most (non-serious) players just want to be able to damage damage damage...smash mouth damage. Maybe most (non-serious) players just want to jump on pvx and pull out a damage dealing build.

I use a mesmer hero that does very little damage, some degen, but uses field control hexes to slow the pace of the opposing baddies down to where I want it to be. That doesnt mean slowing the game down. That means the bar I use synergizes so well with the other Mesmer hero I use(as well as other party bars)...doing great HM damage while keeping my group alive.

Or wait is it just about doing DPS? Maybe I'm an idiot, but dont ever call me a troll.

Mesmer heroes are wonderful, but only they can do much slow down and disruption. That just leaves human players with damage and conditions.

so true. i used to run mesmer-only builds in pve, but abandoned the idea in favor of pve skills because of the recharges. use several spells and then keep wanding the mobs? no thanks.

The Darvish needs a buff without nerfing other professions.
Also, paragon. It is dependent on a warrior skill.
Lastly, although not a class, tactics needs a big rework.

Ritualists are fine

Well the point of this whole thread is that classes are already unbalanced in PvE. Are mesmers well balanced against rits right now in PvE?

Even if you take the most useful domination, illusion, or inspiration skills, are primary mesmers able to use them better than secondary mesmers like N/Me or E/Me?

I think Spawning Power for primary rits are still more useful than fast casting for primary mesmers right now.

Yes.

You seem to think casting less and getting skills in later does more damage.

Most definitely. Look at many of the mesmer skills that are 2 sec casts and some 3 second cast. 2 and 3 sec casts skils in hard mode can become useless when there are interrupters.

Its like running against Norgu/teasway in HA....before they ended that.

Also, look at how many people like running fast cast fire mes/ele's.

Nope. I think casting MORE damage spells do more damage, than casting energy management skills and/or wanding because you are out of energy.

For PvE, there are many ways of exploiting the highly predictable monster AI to deal with interrupters. Like casting a skill to make them waste their interrupts? Or even staying way back to minimize the chance of you getting interrupted.

Fast cast fire mes/eles? If people are already complaining that fire eles do not do enough damage in HM, I doubt fire Me/E are going to come up on top as THE killer build to take for HM considering that they dont have runes for ele attributes and have lower energy reserves.

I think energy and recharge limit PvE mesmers well enough that their fast casting is not really as useful in most PvE situations as the primary attributes of the other casters (e.g. Soul Reaping).

Mesmers are like sprinters, not long distance runners. If their energy holds up, they can kill fast enough in NM. But in HM where you need to unload lots of spells before the target dies, mesmers tend to need energy management skills on their bar. Necros dont.

A part of the problem is theme vs application. The inspiration of a class is based upon its perception, nor are we interested in changing our interpretations of the classes/names. Each class has a definition in the mind of the beholder that is based upon the history and language they speak.

1. Assassins = quick strike and escape - instead they are tanks.
2. Dervish = who knows what they were meant to be - instead Mid East monastics that wear a dress and dance badly. But hey, their skills work great for everyone else.
3. Elementalists = Mass artillery and flashy effects - instead they are better trappers and healers.
4. Mesmers = Illusionists and Mind Messers - Interrupters and degen, with little to show for it.
5. Monks = healers and undead smiters - functional but not superior.
6. Necromancers = MMs and nasty stuff - Hey! We got one that works.
7. Paragons = Front line and party support - instead skill bars dependent on other classes and very limited buffing/nerfing ability using their own skills.
8. Rangers = harriers and medium artillery - instead tanks and interupters.
9. Ritualists = spirit summoners and healers - We got another one working.
10. Warriors = Hold the line combatants - instead they are temperary meat shields accompanying summoned things.

Perhaps the classes don't need buffed per se. Maybe they just need to be able to function equitably according to what they are supposed to do. But they don't. Further, All elite players are only going to be interested in Dmg per Sec and Dmg Reduc/Prevent per Sec. So the fact will remain that unless every class can pump it out or shut it down the elite areas of the game will remain off limits to anyone not carrying one of the best 5-7 current, not yet nerfed to pieces, skill bars for DpS and DR/PpS in the game. This has always been a problem in GW used to exclude anyone who would be creative or attempt to express any kind of RP. (Which is why GW ceased years ago to be an MMORPG and became a bean counting farmland MMOG.) And frankly, it isn't the HH that elimianted interest in PUGing, it was shifting the game to being 75% farming in order to accomplish anything.

Since most casters run 40/40 sets I fail to see how FC is worse than spawning power.

You aren't going to see many n/me and e/mes run around in PVE playing mesmer because the damage is piss poor. I run echo SS on my mesmer and I can put forth more damage than you ever could using mesmer skills. Why? Because the recharge for the damage skills is so high that you are never going to see big numbers with aside from VoR+CoP!

I'd love to see your combo since the only synergy I've ever had with pure "field control' in HM is shared burden with a bunch of nukes.

Serious design mistake. That's why. Do not mistake a class that fulfills a misguided design intent (or a PvP design intent) for a class that is actually good at PvE. GW does not have enough meaningful mechanics to support 5 unique classes, much less 10.

There's a reason that damage is one of the central criteria of being a good class: Damage kills things; and killing things is usually your win condition. Take a minute to go over the missions and quests on the wiki. What's the win condition? It's almost always some variation on "kill monster(s) X," "kill the monsters between points A and B so that you can reach point B," or ""kill the monsters between points A and B so that you can deliver the fedex package to point B."

Similarly, you've got one lose condition: dying. Again, review the missions and quests -- What's the lose condition? Usually some variation on "everyone dies at the same time," "everyone dies at the same time at 60% DP," or "Rurick dies."

From this sparsity of win/lose conditions, there's a sparsity of things that directly advance you towards victory or preserve you from defeat. hence, there's only 3 fundamental mechanics:

• Damage - Make their red bars go down. Moves you towards the win condition.
• Damage prevention - Stop your red bars from going down. Keeps you out of the lose condition.
• Healing - Move red bars back up. Keeps you out of the lose condition.

That's it for primary mechanics. It's all about red bars, since those define your win/lose conditions.

There are other secondary mechanics that affect blue bars, skill bars, etc. You seem to be caught up on these as being equally valuable to the primary mechanics. They're not. Secondary mechanics are only valuable insofar as they help your primary mechanic skills get the job done faster than just bringing more primary mechanic stuff. For example: Is shaming/dazing/wail-of-doom-ing/etc. that enemy monk worthwhile? The answer depends on whether you'd steamroll him faster with more straight-up damage instead. For PvE, it's often the case that dedicating skills and cast time to shutting down a monk is slower than just killing it outright; or, at the very least, that a small enough degree of shutdown is needed that an entire bar dedicated to the purpose is wasteful. The same holds true for the rest of the secondary mechanics.

Now, that is NOT to say that secondary mechanics are useless. For instance, AP and GoLE may not do a darned thing to advance you towards the win condition or keep you out of the lose condition, but they greatly enhance your ability to use the best skills that do do that. What I am saying is that secondary mechanics are not an ends in themselves. Apologists for crappy builds in weak classes (certain rabid mesmer and ranger fans come to mind) often forget this or hide behind "my build does 'support'" as an excuse for sucking. In the end, if it does not kill things, prevent damage, heal, or increase your party's ability to do one do those 3 things better than just bringing more damage/damage prevention/healing would, then it's not worth being in the party.

1. The best shutdown is death. It's often faster to just kill them.

2. Mesmer shutdown prevents far less damage per resource cost (particularly skillslot and attribute costs) than things like SY!, PS, Enfeebling Blood, etc.

Used properly, one good damage dealing skill can be capitalized on so well that you don't need another (search "AP-AE-CoP"). The problem is that right now mesmers have zero good damage dealing skills.

Again, design intent has nothing to do with whether a class is actually good at PvE.

Other classes do significantly more armor-ignoring damage.

OK then.

That's hypocritical. And also I see eles running out of energy all the time in PvE. While I do think Inspiration should be improved, you clearly have the same problem those elementalists have.
Then don't run out of energy.

then keep on wanding cause your skills are recharging. heck, there's also a mesmer's insignia that adds you some armor when your skills are recharging. that's sick.
even mesmer's insignias are by far the worst out there, every other class can benefit from at least one insignia at least in some situations; mesmers won't. and, btw, checking the runes/insignias prices is a good way to check the popularity of the class as primairy out there. the more expensive the runes, the more people buy and use them. i've never seen any mesmer rune to be over 200 and those that hit this cap are mostly the ones used on various pve mes heroes straight from pvx.

if you play a primairy mesmer, you either deal less damage and you have to wait longer to do anything or run a generic gimmick build (ap/spiritmancer/etc).

also +1 to Chthon. really good point made there.


mesmer heroes are great in pve, especially hard mode, to interrupt and shutdown enemies - a way of damage mitigation, so they play the role of a supporter-protector, not damage dealer, not even anything else. i thought we had already two classes to heal/prot the party.

While I think recharge times should be lowered, I think you should continue to learn how to play mesmer or think about maining something more simple. Surely you'll get good at it if you keep trying.

Rangers

1. Rangers excel in applying condtions, interruptting, and surviving. But in PvE, conditions like bleeding, crippled, and poison are pretty useless (burning's okayish but it's still better applied by eles). Faster casting and quick deaths make interrupting much less useful, and survival is better focused on by the monks.

2. Beast Mastery still sucks, Traps have always sucked, and while Nature Rituals have great potential, most of them are absolutely useless or impractical.

3. Their only worthwile elites are Barrage (which can be better used by Rits) and BHA.

4. A large portion of skills are terrible (Practiced Stance, Called Shot, Punishing Shot, etc, etc, etc). Also, Expert's Focus and Melandru's Assault are broken.

And Inspiration is improved enough, it would be exploited by secondary mesmers which is what we dont want.

Give us a fast recharge energy management skill like spirit siphon or something like soul reaping. Otherwise mesmers are still viable but just not as powerful as some other caster classes.

If the elementalist is not doing one of these two things:

- Wards
- Blind spam

Then the elementalist is doing it wrong.

That's assuming they don't figure a way to prevent that.

Elementalists are the most awesome heal/protters I've played with.

Give Dervish the Dhuum hax skills and maybe they might be back in the game :x

I'd largely agree with this assessment. Mesmer skills aren't bad... the first time they're used. They're just not so good at being able to affect a group in a consistent manner... and if you're going to use AP to compensate for long recharge times, you might as well go the whole hog and spam PvE skills.

Compare the Dervish to a warrior running Warrior's Endurance (and, thus, having access to other Strength skills, the Strength passive effect, and more armour at the cost of an elite...) with a scythe, or an Assassin simply running with hit Critical Strikes with a scythe. The Dervish is weeping into its cups.

Point blank area of effect damage.

But a WE warrior can run that better due to having better energy.

Mesmers are, in a word, crap at shutting down physicals. Best physical shutdown in the game is probably Blinding Surge, but that requires an elementalist elite. Enfeebling Blood is weaker, but much more convenient to bring (an optimised group is probably already bringing at least one necro, likely two).

Caster shutdown is based mainly on interrupts and hexes with long-ish cast times. Good luck getting either in before the nuke from a HM elementalist boss lands and wipes the party. SY! and PS are not only more convenient, but usually much more reliable too - however nice it is to see an entire mob take a packet of armour-ignoring damage from CoF or Mistrust.

Meanwhile, the damage options are pretty much universally weaker than what the Necro has. In fact, the Necro has the most powerful versions of what might otherwise have been the Mesmer's damage speciality (Spiteful Spirit, Spoil Victor...)

Do to it as was done to the "Glowing" Elementalist spells - double-link them to Fast Casting so they are most efficient when used by a Mesmer primary.

i suggest you to try playing other classes instead, to see the great gap between primairy mesmers and most other classes in general pve. whatever a mesmer can do in pve, another class can do better/faster/cheaper/more times/with more damage. oh, wait, we can res other members fast due to fc bonus, so no need to carry mindbender or rock candies. cool!

Critical hit
Double linking some skills to its main prof main att is one of the best balance tools ever made imo. They MUST do it more often instead breaking skills ( cough cough *shadowofhaste* cough ).

There are profs with "weak" main att like mesmers and rits but rits now have less "weak points" than mesmers so thats why i said "mesmers , without a doubt" .

One obvious way to prevent that would be to place the more powerful energy management skills in Fast Casting or to make Fast Casting more useful (e.g. having some energy return when you cast a spell for each X level of FC or something like that).

Making FC useful would make primary mesmers more useful and more balanced against necros and rits.

Simply buffing the inspiration line would not help primary mesmers. Alternatively, go with suggestions above on double linking to the FC line but that sounds more complex.

Sounds like you are agreeing with me. Since most casters run 40/40 sets, FC for the primary mesmer, is a little redundant.

Assassin

Depends on how your team is build. Ele's can perform very well with only 1 ele skill: Aura of restoration. And the rest in 2nd profession, making good use of the enormous amount of energy to spamm spells. Ele/necro is a good example. Along with Demonic Flesh and Parasitic Bond the Ele almost becomes a tank spamming life stealing spells. But also other combo's, e.g ele/rit or ele/monk work perfect... With only AoR as ele spell.

if they made it 10 man teams there would jus tbe more sins in each group.

BUFF WARRIORS PL0X

PvE+PvP

Dervs..at least buff VoS (strength) and give back the old Mystic regen. for unlimited enchants. And I'll be fine.

warrior with out a doubt. my warrior only goes on manly way runs and random pve stuff. i wish their tanking abilitiys could rival other tanks.

warriors is imo the best HH character avalible. u can do everything regarding guardian and vanquishing with a warrior, pimped out heros, and general knowledge of the game and enemys u encounter. as for grouping with players its kinda hard to get into high end areas now-a-days.

Are all ppl that are saying that warriors need a buff in pve trolling ? . Seriously , this isnt a joke thread and some ppl are bringing good points about disadvantages of some classes .... for god sake , "Warriors" and "Necros" are not allowed names here for the "need pve buff" slots ...

Assassins, after a radical functionality change to Shadow Form.
With a neat buff, they would whine losing their preciousss Shadow Form, but they (may) whine less if they have new things to try like the ones they gave to Ritualists.

FC allows you to get spells off quickly in other weapon sets, instead of relying on 40/40s. FC also stacks with HCT

Unless you give the FC line a super-energy skill, buffing inspiration would bring is going to give other primaries more energy management than they should have (though I never really had a problem with boon prots)

HCT already halves the casting time of your spells which is equivalent to a level 15 FC. With the minor conditions, that it happens only 40% of the time and it doesn't affect signets.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fast_casting

My point is, why would I waste maxing FC and a major FC rune to get FC to level 15, when I can achieve almost the same thing with equipment? Maxing FC is just not worth it.

40% of the time with a level 15 FC triggering is good enough for me for 0 investment of FC attribute. I usually just pump excess attribute points into FC. Besides, on your point on FC stacking with HCT, I believe there is a hard limit on how much total fast casting animation you can get but that is a minor point to me even if there isn't.

Agree with you that simply buffing inspiration line is not going to work.

I am not sure what about traps sucks, they are quite useful If a party knows anything about stealth and focus instead of Rush and Bang. What deters the use of rituals is their lack focus. The used spirits will be those that affect the enemy more than the party - that is practically none of them. If the focus of nature rituals didn't provide negatives equally to both party and foe, but either benefited the party or lessened ability for the foe, then they would be more desirable. They do not follow the meta of any other class. What would happen tactically if AoE affected both sides? Or if shouts and chants affected both sides?