Preliminary Skill Update Notes: Feb 19

Every time you post about your game experience you convince me more: you should really learn to play the Mesmer better, no matter it being underpowered.


I replied in the other thread. Band-aid fixes won't change a thing. Unless you really think everyone is playing a Dervish now that Sand Shards got buffed. Pfff...

You just want more powerful skills. You'll just get an underpowered and unwanted class with a handfull of powerful skills, which is what the Mesmer used to be during the Cryway era.

Every few bloody seconds.

It's a good thing mesmer have that degen!

Let's be serious here. Ether Nightmare and CoP are both PvE-only skills. CoP anyone could equally use, so it's not really "mesmer buff", and besides it got nerfed so that events it out. Same with Ether, except mes will gain 1 second less of cast time. Today, CoP and Ether both take PvE slot right? Remember that you can only have 3 PvE slots right?

Now compare Ether and CoP to: Save Yourselves! That skill belongs to a class that is getting buffed this update.


Lyssa Aura - that skill is nice... except you have nothing to use it with. Now, compare this skill to Ether Renewal which also got buffed, and compare it to Spirit Siphon (non-elite), and drastic reduction in cost of spirits. Exactly. Which means mesmers got the least of 'power creep'. Thank you for proving the point.

Ether Feast - a skill that can give you 120-150hp. Nice buff, but doesn't change anything because no experienced skilled mesmer player will use this skill in PvE. And everyone here is saying "become more skilled then mesmer will be good for you", so we can safely ignore this then.

VoR and IoP - got nerf didn't it? +1 -1 = 0.

Energy Tap - don't remember seeing buff to this skill, but I checked it on Wiki and come on, are you serious, Spirit Siphon completely pwns this. 7 energy gain every 22 seconds? GoLE at zero attribute investment gives more.


..which leaves us with Empathy.




Now, last several years, let's see all the nerfs and indirect nerfs. 90% mesmer skills included.

IoP and VoR are still ridiculous skills.

Power creep isnt a good thing. It is bad. Rather than giving mesmers more power creep, we should be eliminating the powercreep of the overpowered professions.

Buffs and nerfs dont work that way. A buff isnt a "+1" and a nerf isnt a "-1". Both VoR and IoP got big time buffs which I would say would = more than just a +1, if you insist on using math. While VoR's nerf may have neutralized the "+", IoP's nerf barely effected the skill. In terms of math, IoP got a "+3" buff followed by a "-0.5" nerf. Really... IoP is still just as good as it was before.

Say where? Whenever some team needs disruption and interruption they think of BHA ranger. What are you going to do, Power spike in HM? Get real. I have yet to see a SINGLE mesmer who is doing interruption and disruption in PvE HM, so please do share with us your skills and build pls.

Abstractions, abstraction. BUILD PLEASE. Entire build. What the hell is IoP, I'd take Death Nova any day.

Look, I don't live in a fairytale, nor do I believe in leprechauns. No, the other professions will not be nerfed down to mesmer level, everyone wake up. Now the only choice is to keep mesmer down, or to buff him so that he is equal to others. Fairytales should die.

Yes, Dervish, although inferior to As, can do pretty much the same. But try explain that to people here who think As is all about SF and otherwise sucks. They never tried it, or never tried it with a proper team build. Mesmers don't exponentially get better in a better team build, they lack synergy. Unlike melee classes.

That's called argumentum ad hominem. As I said, you can do better. FYI, I'm one of the best mesmer players you will run into in this game, and even if I wasn't it doesn't change the fact that mesmers needed a buff, not necros. My game experience far exceeds that of 95% guru members, both PvP and PvE (except lately I play mostly PvE). But I am not here to compare e-peen. I come with arguments, which obviously are too difficult to refute when you need to constantly resort to "you suck" "cant be done" etc.

You could use them and have a free secondary, and thanks to Fast Casting you could use them better than anyone else. EN is painfully long to cast on anyone non-Mesmer.

BTW, you can't expect to have the exclusivity on anything. As a Mesmer you can run whatever you want thanks to your secondary profession.

Also, I don't remember Eles complaining for Mesmers nuking in 2 seconds thanks to FC and Signet of Illusions.

So? You want the Mesmer to be as overpowered as some other abuses in this game... I see.

And...?

SYS! is pretty much a Paragon skill and it's not getting a buff in this update, so the comparison is non-sense. Last time a Warrior skill was buffed is August 2008, as far as I recall. Unless you mean that Warrior shouldn't be updated anymore because your Mesmer didn't get enough buffs. Wow, mature. Spoiled child much?

Ok. As much as you can ignore most of the Warrior and Necro buffs in the next update, since I don't see anyone using them at all.

Can I open a thread next Friday? "I wanted some usefull buffs for my retired Warrior, I don't even have that Tactics armor set anymore! These buffs are pointless to me!"

Both skill just were toned down. Changes to IoP in particular can hardly be considered a "nerf". Please stop calling any change to absurd stuff a "nerf"

You're just advocating a more democratic distribution of overpowered crap, while I hope most of this crap disappears as soon as possible.

It's painfully long to cast on a mesmer too. And I imagine CoP casts much faster on a mesmer

Ether BUILD PLEASE. 8 skills.



Yea I wonder why they didn't complain

Resorting to argumentum ad hominem due to lack of arguments

IoP BUILD PLEASE. 8 skills.

You mean, another word for BALANCE and fairness? If every class has equal access to overpowered skills, such as say, PvE skills, you can say it's a game feature. You can like it or not, but it's there. Much like a AK47 and a knife in Counterstrike.

But when OP skills are reserved only for some classes, and these classes keep getting buffed, then that is IMBALANCE and lack of fairness. Much like Terrorists having AK47 and Counters pistols.

As I said, unlike some people here, I don't live in a dreamland and work on fantasies. Some of us are trying to work with reality and proposing realistic and doable and fair things. All we get from the other side is fairytalish "they are working on it for several years, just wait till gw3 and see" or "wait till everyone is nerfed to mesmer lvl".

Fairytales should die.

Essentially, on a ranger the plan is to now take Hao, never rampage alone, hammer skills (including Yeti Smash).

Blood necro hero w/ enfeebling blood
N/Rt hero
Channelling Rit hero

watch as PvE falls at your feet.

Ok then. You're good. You just make idiotic examples then: if you spend 5 minutes killing a mob in Vizunah HM you suck whatever your class, period.

Anyway... This doesn't change the fact Anet is free to pick their priorities and balance whatever they want first. They surely have experience in developing a games that exceeds yours. Maybe they've just given up with Mesmers and finally realized they went for a Profession system that sucks big time. Mesmer work fine and even work better than Paragons and Dervishes in both PvE and PvP. At least, Mesmer are great in PvP and acceptable in PvE. They could be just happy with it and with this Mesmer role.

Pick a plane, go meet Linsey, go to her office, come back with proof they AREN'T buffing your Mesmer AGAIN in the future, and than I'll step back. Up to then, sorry, I don't care, you're just complaining with no arguments. Sure, some changes are more urgent, but they're urgent because they're BIG changes, and you can't simply assume they're not getting a fix because of smaller issues being addressed first.

By the same argument... Why bothering buffing Wastrel's Demise and Illusion of Pain in August, when nerfing a game breaking skill such as Shadow Form was evidently more urgent? Why nerfing Shadow Form now, when taking care of PvP-botters should be top priority? Why that, and not some revamp of the unsuccesful Codex Arena?

You call yourself an expert player, you should know by now that random buffs don't change a profession. I'm glad they're taking time to consider more reasonable buffs. In 2 months, if those three underpowered classes don't get a buff, I'll join your protest. Now, it's just a childish, polemic squabble.

LOL. I don't think this even deserves an answer. Your idea of "fairness" is simply appalling.

OP skills... Like those MESMER skills used in Cryway? Sure, they got nerfed, while SF and 600/Smite aren't. Oh, wait....

OP stuff is getting nerfed sooner or later, Mesmers got their well deserved nerfs, and now it's some other professions' turn.

Hope you're confusing "Overpowered" with "Powerful".

I agree, but I think you and Arkantos need to come up with a joint statement of which is true: ANet gave up, or has been working hard on buffing mesmers last several years and is just waiting for the right time to come in public with mes update

They're probably not, Mr Fairytale. All they can come up with is more band-aid buffs. Or nerfs to other professions? Who knows.

This wasn't the Mesmer's turn. I myself wish it was, since my Mesmer is my second most used character.

It isn't, some other issues are being taken care of, I'll look further for more updates. Sure I won't lose my sleep for it.

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Me/M...of_Pain_Ganker

Hi. Yeah, it's PvP and all that, but IoP is still powerful.

That's not even funny.
IoP is crap.

Oh shit, you're talking about PvP?
Oh wait, NOBODY ELSE IS!

the virulence variant of that build is bloody insane.

Mesmers and monks must be balanced huh

anyway it will be fun to try some new hammer builds

IoP is garbage now. There's no way to be able to employ it effectively without a strong energy management [i.e.: Lyssa's Aura *which is strippable to begin with*]. Mesmers in PvE are a joke, and no matter how inclined players are to tell a mesmer fanboy to try harder and do it better, shit = shit = shit. No matter how you rearrange that equation, mesmers in PvE are still going to be equal to shit. PvP is totally different. Mesmers have very little troubles there, and their skillful usage does shine [esp. in GvG and HA].

In conclusion, PvE Mesmers need some lovin', and I think alot of the community members have made it abundantly clear: buff VoR [at a very minimum].

My personal suggestion would have to be to give all of the strongest and most effective mesmer domination hexes a damage and/or duration boost and possibly even give them a tiny aoe like Arcane Conundrum or Clumsiness to be equivalent to nearly the same duration as that in PvP when casted on regular players. Half-duration of hexes totally reduces a mesmers' output, and interrupts [as the community also made clear in previous posts] are worthless since enemies, and bosses especially, cast so fast that there's no way to skillfully interrupt equal or less than 1/4-1/2 second cast spells from bosses/enemies.

Oh god, you actually want them to BUFF VoR? I know this place is shitty but I couldn't predict hearing something that stupid.

Do you intentionally skip over the parts where it says that this is PvE only or is that just part of your charm?

I think lowering the cost and recharge of mesmer spells makes alot of sense for the faster pace in PvE, but please none of this AoE changes. If you wanted to play nuker you shouldn't have picked mesmer to begin with.

Sorry, you're the one with the stupid remark...and I'll even tell you why.

People who think VoR is too powerful are the same people who never bring any hex removal in their team. I don't think that you can call an elite hex with a recharge of 20 seconds that can be removed within 1 second overpowered.

This game has plenty of hex removal...more than plenty. Especially in PvP it's gone before you cast it almost. Monks always bring at least some hex removal and VoR is really only powerful if it's the only mesmer hex on the target. As soon as you cast a cover hex it's effect is halved. If you don't cast the cover hex it's removed before anything else. Hex removal spells generally have a faster recharge than 20 seconds also.

I really don't think there's any merit in calling other people stupid because you don't understand hex removal.

Ohh and thanks for the general insult to people here. Since a forum is made up of people calling it "a shitty place" is the same as insulting the general population here. Well done again.

Well, that second part may be true, I was just showing him a build. I don't really want to get involved into this argument right now, however:

1) Is it really necessary to have this discussion in 3 different threads?

2) If you want to buff mesmer skills in PvE, fine, but keep them out of PvP. Thanks.


EDIT: @Ctulhu: Just because something can be removed doesn't mean it's not overpowered.

Very, very odd priorities.

Mesmers are underpowered in PvE. Having never played one, or much PvE for that matter, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

As a matter of fact, the ONLY 2 times that mesmers were a viable option in PvE was when:

1) Spiritual Pain did lolz amount of AoE damage, and mesmer could perform a 'CoP'-like spike to take down intire mobs in under a second.

2) CoP did lolz damage.

Both of them are nerfed, and thus so is the mesmer classes.

As for the people arguining: "You can go Me/X": It's not a question about abusing secondaries, because if you go by that logic, no profession well ever be underpowered or overpowered, because they can just go /X, and abuse some broken builds in that profession.

On top of that, FC is a near useless attribute in PvE. Given, it speeds up the casting process, but the biggest issue with PvE casters isn't the cast time, but rather the recharge. (Most mobs don't have interrupts, and those who do can interrupt a 1s cast just as easily as a 2 second cast *AI wins so I hurd*)
Unlike in PvP where casting time is more important than recharge.

Hence, any secondary a mesmer can abuse, will simply be worse than having that secondary as primary. RoJ monk > RoJ mesmer. Ele nuker > FC nuker. Simply because having 2-4 more attribute points invested into it will speed up your killing by roughly 15-30%.

Skills such as clumsiness, wandering eye, ineptitude ARE usefull in PvE, mainly due to their armor ignoring damage, but they're not excuse to not call a mesmer "useless". Because, at the end of the day, it simply comes down to: "Is this the best thing to run?"
And the anwser to that question for every mesmer bar out there is: "No!". You can post here ANY BAR you want, and I will give you a different bar who will simply peform better, and not just a little bit.

Interrupts, shutdown in general, because near useless in HM, and therefore also the mesmer class. I'm all in favor of buffing the mesmer class in PvE. But rather than giving them carbon copies of Ele/Necro/RoJ builds, I'dd rather see them stick to their true nature: shutdown.

Skills such as blackout should disable for longer, and deal some minor damage for disabled skills.

Skills such as shame and Pleak should make monsters loose ALL energy, and put them at 0 energy for +-5 seconds.

Diversion, or disable skills, are near useless, make them deal minor damage + shut intire mobs down, rather than one individual target.

Rather than giving mesmer lolnuking powers (which is what most people here suggest), giving them lolshutdown powers. Bringing a mesmer in your team means you can guarantee healers, damage dealers, etc getting fully shutdown, because right now, mesmers don't have a single niche. And if you claim they do, you're selling bullshit and you know it. *Interrupting is NOT a viable niche in PvE HM*

ThEn by your definition, no hex will ever be overpowered, because it can get removed?


VoR is way too powerfull in PvP, and in PvE, it's just meh. SS outclasses it by deal AoE damage (which is better than the hex itself affecting more people), lasting twice as long as the recharge, as opposed to the recharge being twice as long as the duration.

VoR is VIABLE in PvE if you're doing a guildies/friends run, with the mentality: "He wants to complete this on his mesmer, so let's just bring him", but as a serious PvE competitor, no. Just no...

Does that mean it needs to get buffed (In PvE)? No, because the skill isn't completely useless. I'dd rather see other skills get buffed, which promote a bit more active usage than VoR.

Me/A AP spiker feels a lot smoother than its counterparts.

someone originally posted instead of nerfing the sf skill to buff the essence of celerity and other cons(excluding candies) to where it'll benefit each class as a primary much like the opposite effect of Fingers Of Chaos, that should balance out things and allow everyone to participate in underworld/fow/speed clears etc.

because 1-2 hex removals are really going to be efficient against a hexway team, which is where VoR is most often used.

lol, no.

in hexway build, necros cover the VoR/panic etc with lc, soulbind, etc. the mes doesn't have to worry about it since the necro/s are just going to make massive hex stacks anyway.

Mesmers can't disrupt anything. Fevered Dreams would work if mesmers could handle groups that separate, fast killing teams, or long battles that are found in the later rooms of Foundry as an example. Shouldn't have so much down time with having to keep picking off hexes for energy. Any efficiency in getting the conditions up and ability to blind seems so minor when the necro running a similar bar can keep things going far easier and with extra skill slots.

As said, the priorities seem really wrong.

Fixed that for you.

There's no "priority", they release updates as stuff gets ready. Again, do you really think they've been working just on those 30 skills alone in the last 8 months?

You just have partial insight on their work, please don't go for assumptions.

If anything, nerfing some OP abusable stuff was prioritary, and it's being addressed soon.

That was more in how they don't make any or much impact on a foe with most mesmers skills, not because foes cast quickly in hard mode and lack of knowledge of what skills the foes use.

To be fair, there's not a lot you can reflex interrupt in HM.

On the other hand, interrupting is inferior to just rolling shit, so whatever.

if i was gonna hm on a mes with the intent to interrupt i'd prob have the common sense to pack panic, arcane conundrum, daze, etc.

Nothing about fixing the skills they raped by half-assing the update for the mAT. Yay.

Or did I miss something where needling shot was game-breaking for PvE?

Or instead of wasting time dazing and hexing enemies, you might as well take some offensive skills (laughable when it comes to Mesmer spells) and help your team roll shit, like Arkantos said. You either kill monsters fast enough interrupting doesn't matter, they cast too fast for you to catch skillfully (1/2 second... this isn't PvP where every skill is important to interrupt), or they cast so long it's better to let them cast the spell and your monks will use prot spirit or hex removal and you can... yeah... pew pew away.

I don't attempt to, but if that was my aim, i'd prob bring some aids to assist with rupting in hm.

You lost me on panic there? -2 energy degen and crap damage when they use a signet? that helps with interupting? or did i miss the point..thx

not panic, brainfart, meant Migraine.

^^ :P you had me there for a min checking wiki incase it had been changed and id missed the update D