Preliminary Skill Update Notes: Feb 19

Yeah this is something I posted about years ago already from a different angle. I always felt that the most powerful spells/skills should be under the primary ability and not one of the other ones. This ensures that you don't have other classes running around with them.

It's really ridiculous that a necro/rit is the best healer in the game and that ranger/necro's have the best toucher builds. I never thought it should be possible that other primaries could outdo your primary. So I am always for changes that make a necro the best necro, the rit the best rit etc.

And I suppose that class pve skills like cop should be limited to primary class only. But that's an entirely different discussion I guess. I probably upset some people just even mentioning this idea...hehehe.

The problem with CoP was its stackability, so basically 8x CoP and multiple copies could blow anything up to smithereens.

They could have just solved this issue by having CoP trigger only on your Mesmer hexes (which I believe is just how it worked when first released).

Back to what really counts though I'm just glad Shadow Form and 600 Smite and Obsidian is getting the once over and will finally become just another skill like the rest of them. They had better really nerf SF good though or many will be pissed.

Well it would certainly complicate matters but I am not sure if it would stop it. Together with a range of illusion hexes, enough to make sure everybody has a different hex or two, they might still find a way to make a new way of spamming CoP. Making it Mesmer only would certainly take that whole possibility out of the picture entirely

Because there's nothing stating that won't happen.
Go to the Isle of the Nameless.
Cast Aggressive Refrain (keep it maintained for CA).
Buff yourself with Shield of Regeneration or Weapon of Warding.
Take some damage and observe average numbers.
Now cast Healing Signet.

The -40 armour stacks with the -20 from CA (at least, it appeared to when I did it).
Your comparison to the bleeding condition is flawed. A much better analogy would be degeneration from multiple sources (which clearly stacks). The difference between degen and armour is that I know of no limit to how low AL can be debuffed (but a degen cap clearly exists).

I dont blame ANet, I blame players like you and Arkantos with fairytalish (i would say childishly naive idiotic but I'd get warning point) view of the world. It's not like this game is 1 month old, it's several years old and that's how long mesmers have been crap in PvE. Then some of us come and ask for buffs, and what does ANet see, a bunch of people saying "oh its ok, we can wait 5 more years and then in gw2 mesmer might be ok.. and if not future update might cover it, like gw3".


Who cares if FUTURE UPDATE buffs mesmers when no one will be left to play neither mesmers nor gw?


Lets make it opposite - lets make mesmers super good and nerf other classes to current mesmer level. Then when you complain about your class we mesmers will tell you - dont worry, future update might cover your class.



ANet is 10x smarter than average customer.

I don't see a problem with it.

It will be indeed complicated, likely more expensive to run - each player must carry a different Mesmer hex, whose cost will add up to that of CoP itself, Arcane Echo, Echo and the echoed CoPs - and that makes 4 skill slots each just to run Cryway. Probably not worth it. Not to mention the attribute points to be spent for the Mesmer hex, unless you want to rely on CoP alone.

It's really not that different from a team running multiples Fire Eles with AP/Meteor Shower/Glyph of Sacrifice. I bet most enemies would die in a matter of seconds under 4-5 Meteor Showers, but is it worth it?

One is adjacent and the other one is in the area.

I think you've skipped a few posts.

It's nice that the lesser used attributes of the soon to be updated professions are fixed, but it's completely ignoring all the other professions that have problems more than one attribute or set of skills.

Reading the post of the one Test Krewe member not knowing a non-update profession didn't come as a shock. Mesmer players (the few that still exist) could mention possible fixes, how certain builds work (or more like how they stop functioning), what positive things mesmers to actually do (that could be expanded on), and what's it's like in hard mode. However, now there is no reason to as game is now focused on how the Test Krewe wants the game. This game likely lost many new and newer players who liked the mesmer way of getting spells up quickly, disruption, or damage, but then realized that the game is either too hard or that what they like isn't good. Same with other professions. There are players out there who only PvE and there are players who do both.

This update may fix a few over powered things, but it does not promote balance.

That's fair enough. IMO though, first there needs to be an acknowledgement (amongst the devs and/or within the test crew) that there is even a problem with the desirability of mesmers vs other classes in end-game PvE. I don't mind waiting on a solution, or for you/them to say "well we know we need to come up with something but we're not sure what yet", but atm it seems like ANet is saying "mesmers are fine" when they clearly aren't (compared to other classes, as opposed to able to complete the game etc as a class).

***

How about dealing with the actual problem and amending how heroes prioritise condition removal so that they don't spam themselves out of energy, rather than permanently reducing a para's armour by 20 if they want to use an IAS from their own class? Something along the lines of "is the character under the effects of AR/SF, is cracked armour the only condition they're suffering from, if yes to both and they're not in danger of dying and/or I'm running low on energy then don't use condi removal just yet".

If the Devs thought they could do that, they probably wouldn't have made this kind of change in the first place. Adjusting the hero AI like this can be something for them to consider in the future, if a cleaner and simpler solution isn't reached.

I guess I kind of did miss the point of the attack spammer builds Dervishes (primary or secondary) use. My apologies for not doing my research.

I'm not really interested in the MoD damage both builds can put out, as most battles in PvE will be over much faster, energy isn't as much of an issue (to my experience, atleast) with 4 pips of energy regen and AI+Lyssa's Assault as the only energy management skills. Another (slight) benefit over WE scythe would be there's no movement hinder through the use of Soldier's Stance over Flail. While this might not mean much, hitting moving foes means you'll always make a critical hit. And faster movement in between foes (when groups aren't properly pulled, it happens...) means more attacks made anyway.

With auto-crits I meant the insanely high critical strike rate "Fear Me!" seems to offer, ofcourse you won't have a 100% critical strike rate. But with a +5...40% chance you surely shouldn't have problems getting critical hits in.

Again, I'm sure WE scythe will do more overal DPS against the Master of Damage, in a static 180 seconds fight. In practise things might be different but then again; knowing Anet the numbers will probably favor WE scythe (again.)

P.S. Sorry about the bad wording before, english is not my native language.

Mesmers are fine in PvE, So QFT.

Okie, mebbe they're not... LOL but hey, just wait 'til next update! If mesmers don't get buffed next upcoming update, keep waiting! Eventually you'll either:

a.) get bored and move on from GW as a whole,
b.) die waiting for some PvE mesmer love,
c.) accept the fact that whoever's in charge of finalizing decisions on updates doesn't give a rat's behind about mesmers, or
d. ) a jar of almonds! (from the show "Who's Line Is It Anyway" xP)

That wont happen what ? if theres no statement saying that they dont stack , they do. The point is that irremovable debuffs are tricky. If you use Frenzy you recieve double damage but you can cancel it with another stance ; you can cancel Healing Signet cast but you cant cancel an Echo or a Refrain. It may seem a little diff for you but in this case , it matters enough to set min armor cap for that debuff imo.

No is not , they are conditions and they have EXACTLY the same effect ( and both are self inflicted in those cases ), like 2 bleedings , not like Poison and Dissease for example.
In fact , right now , that debuff doesnt exists and CA was created to unify ( i think thats the verb ) -20 armor debuffs ( see Weaken Armor´s previous state ) so this is a step behind . They clearly made CA to cap armor debuffing to 60 and now they are going a step backwards to make sure that AR and SFury give a -20 armor debuff that cant be removed.
Ok , if the point is that , fine ; but the lower armor cap for that debuff should be 60 too ( and it doesnt state the opposite ).

Its pretty unfair like i said that Blood necros dont get a -3 HP degen debuff when using some blood magic spells and get bleeding instead while P wont get CA anymore ..... but an irremovable -20 armor that LOLSTACKS with CA and its reapplied frecuently ( while doing regular Paragon playstyle ofc ). Well that "stacking" should be removed or at least set minimum armor for that debuff at 60 too.

Weaken armour really sucks now though, it never should have been changed, it used to be able to drop armour below 60.

The quote in my post wasn't quite clear. The first statement in my post is responding to the last bit of the quote from you.


Cracked Armour is a condition. It reduces AL by 20 down to a minimum of 60.
If Soldier's Fury and Aggressive Refrain are changed so they reduce AL by 20 without CA. Crucially, this will not be a condition (even if it was a condition, it will still be distinct from CA and the following will still apply).
Unless a cap exists then it seems logical that the armour reduction will stack.
The sources of armour reduction are different. It would be possible to be under the effects of both at the same time.

Your comparison was flawed because it is not possible to be under the effect of two Bleeding conditions. However it is quite possible to be under the effect of Poison and Disease and suffer 8 health degeneration and it would be quite possible to be under the effects of the reduction from SF/AR and Cracked Armour.

All these whiners are ridiculous. I don't think many of you realize how much goes into updating skills. Buffing Mesmer skills isn't as easy as adding damage, lowering cost/recharge time etc. The Krew has to look into all possibilities of how the skill can be used in conjunction with other skills as to make certain that someone won't find a quick way to exploit it in PvE or PvP, cuz that's basically what people in this game do now...find the easiest, quickest way to clear an area by exploiting something in the game.

Get over it.
Cry yourself to sleep rather than on this forum all day.
Play the game as it was meant to be played.

Yes the Mesmers get a hard time of it if you can recall this,

When eye was being prepared for release Anet said we are rebuilding the Mesmer ..gw eye of north (Gwen) I thought hey at least we are going to get something done no so.

All we get is hero Gwen placed in H.O.M..and a few little things to tide the guys over.

The Dervish and Paragon are similar positions, They as far as I am concened only use the saying hear no evil speak no evil..they turn a blind eye also to whats been said and hope it satifies some...I do wonder how many of the test crewe even have a Messmer bet you a dollar not many

There's nothing wrong if one aspect of a profession can be used better by another profession, it only becomes problematic if that's the case for every aspect of a profession.

In the case of CoP that wouldn't have helped; it was changed because multiple characters with CoP could spike down several monster mobs within seconds.

I fear that by the time this update comes gw2 will be so close to release or already out

I have not read the thread, but I need someone to hit me with the catapult in Isle of Nameless while I use this.

edit: Guru's calculator shows 15,997.58 (707 damage at -80 AR, and doubled for Frenzy). I'll have to pull the lever on the second account to test that.

Mesmers aren't crap in PvE, it seems that you're just crap at using them. Yes, mesmers aren't omgsuperamazing in PvE, but the main problem isn't that, it's that the majority of the community are too dumb to realize that mesmers aren't complete shit. Assassins had the exact same problem, everyone thought they were shit when they really weren't. If you haven't noticed, there's a lot of attribute lines/professions that suck/aren't great in PvE, so stop whining because your precious profession wasn't buffed in this update.

there were loads of suggestions posted in Sardelac. some of them:
* more viable Ineptitude - AoE, better recharge
* AoE empathy
* AoE and/or cut recharge+cost on backfire
* cut recharges on most skills, as casting a skill and wanding for 30s is not only inferior to other classes, but just not fun
* give player mesmers a way to interrupts foes in hard mode - one idea was to give them something similar to maelstrom, an AoE interrupt over time that would deal low damage or, even better, drain energy, and would fail if fast casting is 6 or lower; this way, living players could do what mesmers were actually designed for - just remember not to make the skill cost 25e and have 45s recharge, we've got enough of those
* fix useless elites, just take a look at Panic - it's the quintesence of useless pve skill; again, high costs and long recharges on skills that do nothing useful in pve come up
* introduce synergy on mesmer skills - i know that it requires in-depth thinking and tests, so i wouldn't expect that one to come next week - but some of the ideas were to add 'the next time you interrupt a foe...' (allies in earshot gain x energy, for example), 'the next time you put a hex on a foe...' (that foe's spells are disabled for x seconds, for example), etc
* what you would find to be 'overpowered' or easily abusive by other primairies, simply tie to FC (requires fast casting 7 or higher or fails; damage/energy drain/duration/other effect dependant on FC rank)


there were NUMEROUS suggestions to what exactly change and it's not necessarily 'moar dmg plox'.


another thread changed into mesmers' whining. although i don't like to see it - would prefer to never have the need to post those things - but i think it's a clear SHOUT from the playerbase that something HAS to be changed.




it would be better than nothing, but a permanent -20 armor is still an overkill.
-5 armor and ends prematurely if [xyz] (under effect of dazed, knocked down - there are possibilities)


again, please post somewhere how we should play our mesmers to be viable in high-end pve. until then, sorry but i don't think you've even tried it.

I would have to say Mesmers are far from sucking in PvE. In fact my my hero combinations usually include a mesmer, rit, and necro. Mesmer does require some skill to use to be good, if you think that mesmers suck, its probably just your skills and not the class.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to play a class in high end PvE. Every class is viable in high end PvE, you just have to play with people who are decent and realize it. With my old guild we've run viable dervishes in DoA, viable rangers in DoA, viable mesmers in DoA. Hell, we used to run a mind blast ele in HM DoA and it was viable. Sorry if you're stuck on the pug mentality that if it's not the best, it sucks and no one should use it.

You're spending about 8-10% of your dps time maintaining your Weapon of Aggression. If that's not a drawback, I don't know what is.

The response to the cracked armor nerfs was almost universally negative from the pve community. This was the alternative that many of you wanted.

QFT

Also true, my alliance does events (end-game areas) on most weekends and we accomidate whatever professions people want to bring, it works perfectly fine 9 times out of 10, and the times it doesn't it is usually connection errors.

I use my mesmer in all of them.

we're not talking about heroes. heroes have godlike interruption and targeting skills.
sorry, but as long as you don't enlighten the dark masses how they should play their mesmers in their current state, i don't take your words on it serious.
with cop? with vor? with a permasin balling up and keeping mobs?
with what?

Find out what you'll be fighting in an area and bring counters to them. Or spam PvE skills if you're feeling lazy.

I still think Mesmers could use a buff, but they're not nearly as bad as some of you are making them seem. And Dervishes and Rangers (mostly Dervishes) are much worse off.

With a solid backline you can steamroll with any kind of physical out front. Mesmers make outstanding cleaners, it's not always about pew pew. It also really depends on how far back in history with the DoA you want to go...Echo/CoP is actually a very old build.

Dude, i made it so clear ...... ill explain it to you again.

NOW , that debuff doesnt exist . They are going to make it to make sure paragon is at least -20 armor when uses those skills , thats the only purpose of creating that debuff. Because of that , the 60 min cap should also be applied to that debuff ; because of that , Weaken armor was changed to give the "new" condition , CA . Because the point is ( and was , like CA case ) lowering the armor with a min cap.

I said that they stack , i know some others DO and if this goes on , this will to. . Never said otherwise , dont know why you keep telling me that is logical for them to stack over and over again.

Poison an Dissease are different , have same HP degen but one of them is contagious and once again , i never said that CA and armor debuffs cant happen same time. Read the blood magic comparison , to be FAIR and BALANCED if the point is that blood necro inflicts internal bleeding or whatever to himself then if Paragons now dont get CA , blood necros should have a -3 HP debuff instead of bleeding , am i clear ?. Even degen has its cap , no matter what kind of degen is . P´s problem is NOT the "stackable" issue , its the min armor cap. Hope you understand what me and Cthulu were talking about ....

it's not that easy, believe me
it's not being lazy - it's the limitation; to be useful in a team, one has to rely on pve skills. don't think it's fine.


there was another way to buff mesmers that was proposed a lot times. it sounds overpowered, but with some careful adjustments and tests done by the Test krewe, it should be fine.
split fast casting. leave it as it is in pvp. buff it in pve - add an effect that shortens recharges of your spells and signets. so, for example, at 10 fast casting you'd have 15s reuse of chaos storm instead of 30s. it might affect only mesmer skills for it's full power and 30-50% of the set value of non-mesmer skills (so, if on 10 FC you had 50% shorter recharges, it's 25% for non-mesmer skills - it's just an example and the numbers are used for simplicity). count all enchantments out for the sake of keeping general balance and not bringing new imba solo builds up (so signets and non-enchantment spells).
that one buff, solely, would bring mesmers into high-end, imho, or at least make them useful and enjoyable to play. all with just one split!

"Its not even OP anymore because of the speedbuff and after Obbyflesh/600/SF are gone, I garuntee youll lose atleast 500 players"
You mean 5000 so making some funny calculations gw players reach 50000 maybe. GG ANET always prompt to ruin an uber dead game

Well I don't entirely agree with that. Take the example of the Ritualist especially.
When the Rit came out it was shunned from virtually all parties and generally people didn't know what to do with it. At some point people found out they could do some decent healing and because of a lack of monks Rits slowly become more and more accepted as long as they used restoration. For DPS people would still prefer an ele over a channeling rit and well communing never really did make that big an impression.

So the Rits biggest card has always been Restoration...and that's exactly the skill group that Necro's are better at using because of the mana gain from soul reaping.
Bottom line is that the Necro Rit basically all but killed the Rit primary.

I hope that the current changes will do something for channeling but if it will be enough to make the Rit primary viable as a party member, I'm not so sure.

Aha yea. That's why Arkantos when he wants good hero build he takes Norgu and Gwen and plows through PvE.

No, wait. He makes a 2Rt 1N Arkfenway.


Hypocrit.



Now, go to the drawing board and make 2mesmer PvE team build.

Just because you can do some area in the game with some profession, doesnt mean that profession isnt crap. Hint: all-mesmer saturday meetings.

Build please.

OQNEAasj2xIEiBgAWwHYwZDQjA

^Really lolworthy build, but it works for most things, honest, I'm sure there are better builds, but it's funny to watch Norgu's health bar plummet and rise randomly and if that works, plenty of other things work.

Who cares if every class is viable? If Rangers, Sins, Warriors, and even Ritualists can do the exact same thing as Dervs but better/higher dmg/more AL/unstrippable buffs/etc... then why the hell should a Derv be taken?

It's not about making every class viable, its about making sure every class has a niche in which it outshines all other professions yet is nearly as useful as having another profession in that role.

Sure, every class is viable, but just being viable when nearly every other class would be more useful in that spot is the problem.

A cracked, aggressive para is still ~86 armor. I'd like to say the adjustment might allow them to stop nerfing para support but I don't think it makes any real difference.

Thats why people talk about comparative balance.
Crap works in pve and everyone knows it.

But thats not the issue. The issue is that some classes are well behind others in comparison, for amount of viable builds, number of skills that dont blow, or are blatantly just in a higher tier.

Sidenote: heroes have godly reactions, and targeting speed(think death nova spamming) so are naturally good at some things and horrendous at stuff that requires some real thought So their bars have to be different to that of a human..

Crippling Anquish etc, yea I thought it's something like that

Now, dont get me wrong, im all for fun builds, but we are talking about efficiency here and that build of yours is like 5x less useful than necro hero builds from pvxwiki.