Mesmers vs Necromancers in PvE - which one needed buff?

But what does it really mean ? Because there maybe few mesmer skills that serve as decent utilty ( and imo there not really that popular ) proves what ? You can't set up decent mesmer build around them, or in fact best you can do on mesmer is to take one or two mesmer skills going Me/x ?

It seems so at first sight but given nature of pve making empathy aoe with let's say half current damage wouldn't be a thrashing skill but actually a buff, same goes with ESurge, who cares if it has high armour ignoring damage, reacharge makes it garbage in pve, so cuting damage in half but also cuting reacharge to 10s would also be a buff for this skill.

While I agree with your conclusions, your methodology is faulty. If you wanted to bring up your survey in an argument, it should have a little more substance:

1. You sampled players once at one mission outpost. Is there anything specific to the mission that would favor one class over another? Are the challenges in this mission representative of all of the challenges in the game? To avoid questions like this, it would be much more meaningful to take samples across multiple outposts with varying challenges.

Before you rebut that this was an informal poll, and not a major study, let me ask: what if I had done my own poll, choosing Gate of Pain as my outpost? Would you have taken my data at face value, or argued that this mission is distinct in that many players bring interrupt skills?

2. I saw no mention of hero builds in your data. I know that in the two threads in which this argument is taking place, some folks have come forward and said that Me skills are used in many of their hero builds. Did you collect this data from players in the outpost, or use player builds only? Why?

3. Your central question is whether Me deserved buffs more than N, but your poll has no mention of how many N primaries/secondaries/heroes were included in your sample. It's one thing to say that your sample included no Me players, but without the number of N players represented, it's hard to interpret that data. If the whole outpost were comprised of W, Mo, and E players, with one N and no Me, that would hardly make your case. Again, the data's just not there.

Again, I agree that Mesmers could stand to see some buffs to make them more popular in PvE. But you're not helping your case by throwing around QED's after really sketchy polling, and then discounting data to the contrary as opinion.

you use opinion and little bits of information gathered, call it logic and evidence. but considering how many people i know that actually use mesmer skills in pve, and more than likely the thousands that do. i'd say your argument is pretty much moot. kinda like me asking 3 people if they like wheat bread then claiming no one likes wheat bread just because the three people i asked don't. So yeah, you're wrong, you're wrong.

Not sure you know what irony means, so here you go

Irony
–noun,plural-nies.
1.
the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
2.
Literature.
a.
a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actuallyor ostensibly stated.
b.
(esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementaryimpulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
3.
Socratic irony.
4.
dramatic irony.
5.
an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
6.
the incongruity of this.
7.
an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.
8.
an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.

going to one outpost and talking to a few people is highly credible. You're being mocked because you use weak evidence, call it empirical to make it sound more credible, then claim you're right even though you only polled people in a single mission outpost on zb day.

oh, and

Hit the nail on the head.

http://img709.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=yawnw.jpg


Don't quote-mine me. Show me how what I've said in this thread differs from what you're saying here? It means to me that mesmers are only good in PvE for the good ulitity that it brings to other classes and not good as a stand-alone profession. Y'know...what I've been saying all along.

Psychic Instability, Feedback, Signet of Disenchantment and a whole load of other skills are garbage in PvE atm. Backfire, needs lower nrg cost, lower recharge, lower damage *or* AoE. VoR should be reverted for PvE. I could go on and on. Bottom line: Mesmer profession should have gotten the buffs not Necromancer Blood Magic.

Omg, read this entire thread and clearly you will see that going to current ZQ mission outpost and talking to players there is most creditable and empircical as anyone did in this thread without tons of arguments like :"vast majority of players", "I know, i am sure , i think etc ", "friend of my friend's guildie told me that... ".

because i absolutely wasn't being sarcastic. twit.

Truth.

Truth.

polling, and throwing out actual evidence contrary to the point you're tying to make makes you seem one sided, extremely biased, and irrational. all in all, your polling was poorly conducted.

Prob a good idea to close this thread.

The basic problem with the sample is that it is almost certainly not representative for a variety of reasons:

- ZQs draw a certain type of player. Good farmers don't do ZQs often. They are time inefficient; the rewards are not sufficient to the time invested.
- There is no certainty that the ZQ that day didn't happen to favor the use of the Mesmer class. I've been through the last several pages of posts and I can't find the claimed post, so I can't evaluate whether or not that day's ZQ was biased towards Mesmer use or not.
- There's an element of randomness to who shows up at any given time. It may be the case that the data provided was simply taken during a time period when there was a higher proportion of Mesmers present for no good reason. This is why a single small sample is insufficient.

I stand behind the assertion that observations of Mesmers in PvE are infrequent. You see a lot more Warriors, Assassins, Necros, Eles, Rits, and Rangers in PvE outposts. You have for years. Proving the point systematically isn't worth the time cost; doing it right would be a big project. And you should already know intuitively that the proposition is true.

There are reasons you see people spend more time on these classes. Mesmer has a bad primary attribute for PvE, and it has no niche. Rangers fill the disruption niche better, Monks and Necros fill the healing niche, other casters fill the damage niche better, and Assassins, Warriors and Eles are all much more effective at keeping the monsters rooted to one spot so the rest of the team can kill them.

Carving out a niche for the Mesmer class in PvE would take a lot of work. The natural niche is the disruption niche, but to make them competitive with Rangers in that niche would require the following:

- Skills that can interrupt important monster skills (Ranger interrupts and Spinal Shivers are generally used for this purpose)
- Skills that bring them up to par with Ranger (but not beyond) in dishing out damage over time
- Skills that fulfill these criteria but cannot be used effectively by other classes with better primary attributes

That's a big project, given that the goal is to bring the Mesmer up to par with the Ranger without crowding out the Ranger. So you shouldn't be surprised when the balance team chooses to take on big projects that affect classes people already play heavily.

I realize that those of you that choose to play Mesmer despite its shortcomings must have a deep love of the class. But that doesn't mean that it's sensible to give you priority. You're going to play Mesmer irrespective of whether or not it's weak. So only those of you that choose to play your Mesmer despite its flaws will be affected by any rebalance that doesn't make Mesmer competitive.

A good update would give players other than the diehard Mesmer fans a reason to give the class a try. If you want it to become easier for you to get your Mesmer into PuGs, that is the sort of update you need. You should exercise some patience and let the devs give you a quality update, rather than rant about how unfair it is that you're not getting what you want right now. In reality, it isn't all that unfair. The devs can only tackle so many projects at once, and it makes sense to solve problems for classes that are already popular first.

First paragraphs - qft, next ones -very problemtaic as :

"Carving out a niche for the Mesmer class in PvE would take a lot of work" - no it doesn't or at least it's really hard to say: it was already mentioned that reworking skills like blackout, diversion etc to give mesmers better crowd control and abilty to shut down dangerous mobs would be desired update.

And saying that mesmers are subpar to other profesions, hence undesired, so buffing them is bottom of the devs priority list until that come up with some general pve balance sounds extremally weird to me. ( i don't want to draw anologies as anyone can do it for themselves but such mechanism do really sounds weird).

Reworking Blackout and Diversion doesn't kill things. PvE is about killing things in the fastest amount of time possible, subject to the constraint of not dying. These updates wouldn't solve the Mesmer's problem. Damage is sufficiently overpowered that the efficient way to kill almost everything in PvE is to power through their heals, not to try to switch their heals off. Protective abilities are sufficiently overpowered that crippling a single target's ability to dish out damage is dominated by party-wide effects that reduce incoming damage.

I can't help you much with the logic on why it doesn't make sense to buff undesired professions. It's pretty straightforward: underpowered + update that leaves the class underpowered => still underpowered => only affects class diehards. If the update isn't going to bring the class up to par, then the update is wasted for most players. You need an extensive update to influence players' willingness to play Mesmer and therefore have the update impact lots of players.

Yeah I like my mesmer and would like some changes here and there but I can't blame Anet for doing other things first. Mesmers are good in PvP but not too many people play a lot of PvE with them cause other classes are better suited for that. Too bad perhaps but such is life...

Change a few skills all you want. It will not help Mesmer at all. It will only help the x/Me players. Either there needs to be a Fast Casting change, or the skills you want changed need to be tied to Fast Casting.

What about Imbagon ? TftF+SY is pretty useful as it mitgiate upcoming damage, so memers could be shuting down mobs to prevent damage being deliverd in the first place, of course it won't make mesmers as a avantagarde of pve steamrolls but that's not the point, the point is to make mesmer role more fun and meaningful in pve. Denaying them that role based on the fact it's so hard task to do this or mesmers niche must be so extremlly speciffic and unique and allowing mesmers even partially excell at niche currently being occupied by other class is no-no, do sound wierd. (more like bias in fact).

Is this principle that you generally use for yourself or for others ? If for yourself, well that's your choice, but other people may not be so eager to follow that kind of weirdness.

Please read the entire post before responding. In particular, the "Protective abilities are sufficiently overpowered..." bit addresses this. There is no reason to take a class that cannot dish out decent damage and can only shut down a single target when I can instead take a class that can dish out decent damage and can protect the entire party from every monster in the opposing horde.

To make the Mesmer work in the protective niche, it would need to be able to be as effective as SY at protecting the party and able to dish out comparable damage. Alternately, it would need to provide enough damage/protection to make the tradeoff in the other dimension worthwhile, but not confer so much of an advantage that it crowds the Paragon out.

Irrespective, it would also have to be the case that these skills only work on a Mesmer primary. Otherwise, people will just take their Ele or Necro and the Mesmer will still be the last kid picked for softball.

Until they obliterate Soul Reaping, Necros don't need any kind of buff.

Mesmers need help. Bad.

and what did you do about my post ? here it comes again for you :

of course it won't make mesmers as an avantagarde of pve steamrolls but that's not the point, the point is to make mesmer role more fun and meaningful in pve. Denaying them that role based on the fact it's so hard task to do this, or mesmers niche must be so extremally speciffic and unique, or allowing mesmers even partially excell at niche currently being occupied by other class is no-no, do sound wierd. (more like bias in fact).

I'm sorry, but you're just not listening.

The point is simple: if you update Mesmers but don't make them competitive, that update affects very few players. If proposed updates will open up options but will not affect the overall balance of classes in any way, then it makes sense to start by updating classes many people already play. This follows because the developers' time is finite and they want their updates to positively affect as many players as possible.

Storage chars don't need buffs. Mesmers' have no real place in PvE afterall... Blood Magic needed an serious overhaul.

Good choice.

Which is more or less the point, although I concede that an update that turns Mesmers into something other than storage characters would be desirable.

Agreed, but also highly unlikely. It's much too late.

Ok i make it short ( and subjective ) since this discussion is getting nowhere : None of these statments make any sense to me ( ok, devlopers time is of course finite but conclusin you draw from it is just as follows ) , nor make them valid in my eyes ,and definietly not relevant to what i was pointing out.
If you think that's what it's all about, have it yor way. Personally i think it was enough valid arguments that mesmer need a buff and plethora of invalid arguments why it shouln't be a priority, that anyone can form their own opinion .
Peace.

There isn't a right or wrong answer to the issue. You just haven't been acknowledging the fact that there are valid arguments to be made for pushing Mesmer down the priority list until there's a solution that gives them a viable niche.

From a social justice standpoint, you can argue that Mesmers have been ignored for so long that they deserve attention. This is what your side of the argument is attempting to claim. But there's an equally valid argument on the other side that they aren't worth the attention because they aren't played by many people, and the people that play Mesmer chose voluntarily to do so despite the flaws of the class in PvE.

Neither side is necessarily right or wrong. It comes down to values. You're correct that further discussion is futile once the arguments are on the table, and that we can only agree to disagree.

But if you want anything constructive to come of this discussion, you should start focusing on the end goal that would push Mesmer up the priority list and get you what you want: identifying changes that would make Mesmers viable but not overpowered as a class in PvE. Josip's changes won't do that, so we need some new proposals that address the real issue.

But as you correctly stated it comes down to values so producing arguments won't do me any good since, for example : where you states that mesmer need special niche in pve, i say there's nothing wrong in mesmers (using mesmer skills) to put on other profesion boots to have some fun and recognition in pve (since creating the unique mesmer niche might as well never happen). So for my arguments , you will find counterarguments from your point of view and we will be going circles again.

No, finding a solution that broadly impacts the playerbase breaks the circle.

At that point the "Warriors and Necros get played and deserve attention as a result" argument breaks down and you're in the driver's seat. You've got social justice and social efficiency on your side. But that will only work if you can put an alternative in play that would make Mesmers viable but not overpowered in PvE.

it's a vicious circle. no one plays mesmers, because they're weak, and they will remain weak, because no one plays them. making vicious circles is usually wrong by definition.
more people, including some of those few newcomers we have, would play mesmers if they were powerful enough. other people might reroll from dervs or paras, or even their GWAMM monks they've achieved everything on.

i've pointed it out about three times and i will do it again for you.
newcomers choosing their class usually don't use guru. newcomers read manuscripts. some newcomers read wiki. i doubt that totally new people, with no friends already playing, will ask communities and read through several fansites to pick their class.
i've read the manuscripts and the wiki. managing my and party's energy? great! disabling enemies? awesome! dealing insane damage through punishing the actions of mobs? terrific! stealing enemies' skills? cool!
the problem is - wiki/manuscripts/official sources of knowledge available to new people lie. or, well, they miss the truth of mesmer's abilities in the actual gameplay, if you prefer to call it that way.

and after you beat that campaign you bought, then buy another and beat it - with that mesmer - you still have NO real idea that your class is handicapped when compared to others. you still have no cool skills from nf/eotn, you think. you still have to complete all of them to use whole variety of builds, you think. if you started with a friend playing monk or warrior, they still have skills to get as well, they still have to learn playing - you compare yourself with also-'crippled' class this way, so nothing's wrong. the problem is even bigger if your friend learns the game slower than you - even though he plays ele, his party wipes often in kryta while you had your survivor title up till the crystal desert.

all of it gives you false image of your class. and when you realise that there's something wrong, that there are rits, necros, wars and monks but you very rarely see other mesmers, when you try to compete with your friend after getting all campaigns and you're still totally outclassed, when you read somewhere that mesmers are underpowered - it's a bit too late.
you either have the option to keep playing your character or reroll to another one. after you've beaten all campaigns on a character, even a mesmer, bought elite armor, invested time and money, it's hard to reroll. especially if you can't play eight hours a day and you would need months to get a new char to the place where your mes is.
so you grab ol' discord or another hero-team build and roll through pve, as heroes can usually do it on their own. the problem starts when you think about balance, when you look at other classes, when you try to get into a group of alive players or you try to actually run something based on your primairy class with them. when you want to feel that you're doing your job and that it's useful to the group, that you fill a niche.

that's why i've posted an idea to explicitly note on wiki the current state of mesmers in end-game pve: to warn newcomers that may base their choose on it. as seriously, after someone played a nuker/healer/tank/necromancer in another mmo, playing mindstealer/mind meddler/crowd controler - and whatnot mes is supposed to be - is VERY tempting.

The major flaw with this thread is the premise that balance updates ought to prioritize buffing where it is most needed (ie mesmers). That's wrong. Balance updates ought to prioritize first on the basis of what is possible and practical, and then second on what most needs attention. Blood magic was a relatively easy fix. Mesmers (and rangers and dervishes) have some seemingly intractable problems.

"It's good to hear your opinion on this matter."

We don't know if they're done buffing necromancers yet. The next skill update may likely have a lot of necromancer skill buffs.

Stop trying to cloud the discussion.


1. Did you, at the time of interview, use any mesmer skills? No. As you admit. And it's seen from your own screenshot.
2. Did anyone else in the outpost use any mesmer skills? No, at least all those I managed to grab, except the farming-build As.
3. Did you say you sometimes used mesmer skills? Yes, and completely pointless to my empiric data collecting because I wasn't doing historical overview of GW player habbits.


You agree with all this. But you don't like how it sounds. Too bad.

If you werent so emotional about it you would maybe see what I said.

Someone claimed mesmer secondary is amazingly popular, the most popular, or something like that. I said that while AE is used, mesmer secondary is by no means 'amazingly popular' and I went to prove that with empiric data, which you helped me gather. And no, I didn't say mes skills are useless outside of As farm build, stop putting words in my mouth and what is this obsession of yours with as farm builds.

Build please.

Consular Docks was ZM, and it's really typical PvE mission with nothing special. It even favors mesmers, for instance I ran FD build there.

So, if my methodology is faulty, by all means, you can do the same in some other outpost and post your data.

Every data has a value. The more the merrier.

Though, I can't help but notice that you want my data to be wrong, and now seek something wrong with my selection. My selection was the most general I could make = ZM. There's Ring of Fire today. Try it

No. Good hero builds are posted on wiki. Paragon builds, necro builds, rt builds etc. None of these use Me secondary to my knowledge. Showing that someone in PvE is using monk hero (subpar choice) and uses me skills, is only indication that mes is subpar choice if nothing else.

As for popularity, I was interested in popularity of skills among players itself. I am not interested in hero popularity contest.

Popularity is popularity. If W Mo and E are in the outpost, then those are popular, and secondaries they use.

I'd like to see your data. Talk to me after that.

No one was talking about degenerative form of gameplay known as farming. I stated that clearly. I stated I was looking at general PvE gameplay. Which of these is not clear?

I apologize for missing it, but where is your empiric data? Choose your defensive line:

"It cannot be done"
"It's impossible to interview so many people"
"I can't go through all mission and outposts because by the time I come to 10th people in 1st would change"
"I don't have time to do it"

Not here to just criticize? Alright, I'll wait to see your data.

Or effectively blocking. Obviously, poor 1-target would-be-shutdowns won't solve it. But AoE Blackout as I suggestion purely theoretically - would be interesting and it would work.

Easy fix? Have you seen those overpowered-to-be blood magic skills? If mesmers got something like that there would be mass rage on how it's impossible to balance mesmers without making them overpowered, yet with any other class it's ok.

Soon Ritualists will be better hexers than mesmers. It's not that it cant be done, there's just no desire and there's collective consciousness whispering "it can't be done" and everyone stands like hypnotized.

You do realize that monks don't just redbar, right?

Farming is a way to accumulate money without playing the same storyline over and over again. Do not exclude a form of pve that has existed in most mmo's becasue you do not aprove of it.

I was hoping that you would get my implication about the "looking into the elite areas" but I might have been a bit too vague. With caster spike teams (such as FoC or the blue laser beam), there is usually a mesmer that uses DF to snare the mob for the rest of the group to AoE them to death.


As mentioned by other posters, if you want to have credible evidence you are going to have to a more thorough job at proving your point. I am still standing by my point that a mesmer's skills are more usefull to other primaries than themself because of the groups I've been in and the builds posted on pvx.

The same comment could've been said for rits before they got their update. I'm still optimistic that sometime before GW shuts down mesmers will get some pve love.

Bad data is no better, and in many ways worse, than no data at all. Bad data => misleading inferences => worse situation than the null state.

The charge was that your data was not representative of the underlying population of GW players. You have not addressed this charge. I am free to ignore your data as biased until you provide a representative sample. It's on you to produce a representative sample if you want to use empirical data to support your conclusions.

Until then, I and many others will stick to the intuitive proposition based on experience and theory that not many people play Mesmer.

OOT but only true if there was a chance for better data, but since no one else was eager to present better data , these "bad" data is best we have and therefore it's better then no data at all,and as this thred shows it makes collosal difference, because you can now criticize Josip's data and although mostly irrelevant to subject of this topic it stirred discussion into: data gathering, analyzing etc, but as a net result it stoped rebutal and obnoxious:"vast majority of players" , " we all know ,see ,think ...", " there are thousands ..." and so on.

Truth.

Because if you replace "mesmer" with "dervish", this becomes my story exactly.

"A scythe-wielding paladin that can turn into avatars of the gods?! I'm sold!"

"Avatar of Grenth with a conjure rocks!"

"Aura of Holy Might? What's that?"

"Wait, assassins can do how much damage with the scythe?"

"Guess all I have left worth using is Wounding Strike..."

"Uh oh. Math says that even with deep wound, I still won't kill as fast as other scythe users. RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO."

*Cue journey to sardelac*

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the memories.

A matter of conjecture that depends entirely upon how biased you are against Type II errors. Presenting this thesis as fact is at best misleading and at worst intellectually dishonest.

I've done enough research of my own to have a healthy respect for how problematic bad data really is.

I'll start by calling you an idiot. MAYBE that will get your attention. Now, if I have your attention, why have you ignored me? Twice I posted this, and this will be the third time. My second time was a quote of my first.

You proposed they change some skills to make Mesmer more effective for PvE. Of those skills, you included Blackout, Guilt, Shame, etc. Nowhere in that idea did I see a link to Fast Casting. If they were to change those skills you mentioned, why would a PUG take a Mesmer to use them, when they could just as easily take a N/Me, Rt/Me, R/Me, Mo/Me, W/Me, etc.? Without changing FAST CASTING, or making the skills you change linked to FAST CASTING, why would anyone choose a Mesmer over a x/Me? You aren't fixing a class, you are adjusting skills to make PvE easier for the people who already run other classes.

Just because it's not super-obvious, in addition to buffing FC, mesmers could also be buffed by improving skills that require a certain secondary which does not make a better primary. Me/A is the best example. Since Me/A always beats A/Me as a caster, you can buff things that require AP to work well and the mesmer comes away the biggest winner.

The most obvious choice is CoP. I've suggested many times that the correct way to do CoP is: "Interrupt target foe and remove 1 mesmer hex. If a hex is removed in this way, that foe and all foes in the area take 50...100 damage."

Unfortunately, this is just nibbling at the edges of a problem that has no good solution. A mesmer can't do damage, healing, or damage prevention as well as other classes, and pretty much nothing else is worth doing enough to justify foregoing more damage, healing, or damage prevention.

Universal decrease of players damage outputs and defensive strength, aka reverse the power creep.. giving disruptions a slight buff and a chance to matter in the long term. that sounds fun

And a regular energy pool for mobs but thats lol as they would prob fail hard without so much juice

I know its all already been suggested but im bored

Same problem. E/Me can easily take Fragility and CoP and use it effectively to get that damage. Why would you need to use a Mesmer to apply a Mesmer hex? There are a lot of low energy, low recharge hexes available, even a W/Me could do it if they were smart. CoP requires Mesmer secondary if you aren't using a Mesmer anyway, so why would your change make it require a Mesmer primary? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think a 12 second recharge requires the use of Assassin's Promise, especially when you could take Echo and/or Arcane Echo.

Did you ever play AP+Arcane Echo+CoP? A single Me/A could pump out as many CoP's as 3 or 4 X/Me wannabes. If CoP was buffed to being worthwhile again, everyone would benefit, since everyone could use it, but mesmers would benefit a lot more than the other classes.

Not if you gave them a skill that decreases the cost of all skills: Expertise on steroids. Making it an unstripable effect with an unlimited duration and giving them a normal sized energy pool would improve the Mesmers ability to....

Haha, listen to me, what the am I even talking about? Improving Mesmers, that's a good one!

Disease existed in all civilizations, which proves what?
Skills are not balanced for farming (except sometimes some are nerfed because of farming) but it has been no intention of ANet to make professions equally good at farming. It just happens that sometimes some build is more suitable to farming, that's all.

The core of farming is skill IMbalance. That's what farming is based on. Therefore, all debate about farming should go to farming section, not to skill balance section. I dont mind if you farm all day long, but it really has no point to discuss farming in this thread.

Non farming wiki build pls.

Empiric evidence IG please.

Your data is where?

Hey there. I fully understand what you mean, I actually did make one example but not sure if it was in this thread.

Arcane Languor (PvE) - made into elite Blackout, AoE effect, tied to FC of course. Let's be honest, this skill as is will never be used in PvE, but elite blackout tied to FC would help mesmers.

One other thing - as Upier said, problem with Necromancers is their skills are too cheap compared to awesome e-gain they get.
Also, if you notice non-mesmer casters, you will see that each skill update contains reduction of casting time for some of those skills. What does that mean? Less point in FC and more point in x/Me indeed.


How to fix it? Making skills under FC attribute actually useful (none of them is right now in PvE, I think this is 'unique' among all professions). And, as has been said before, lowering the energy cost of mesmer skills. If you have 5e cost of modified Backfire I posted earlier, with 2sec casting time, then you have no need to take x/Me.

Example: Ritualist spirits. R/Rt was much better before than Rt primary. Ranger actually had enough energy to spam them constantly due to expertise, and, it could use Oath Shot to recharge them. But now, Ritualist has enough energy thanks to overpowered Spirit Siphon, and thanks to much lower cost of spirits. Also, SoS was redesigned.

That's true, but let's not forget many of us are bored already with pumping PvE skills. While I do agree it would be nice to have good mesmer-only PvE skills (redesigned CoP), I'd much rather focus on actual mesmer skills. The problem here is that AP is just too strong, but it's also the only thing left (FD is too situation specific).

Assassin needs nerf after the update.

The thing why Mesmer is so weak, is because they nerfed the signature skill VoR.
Take SS from Necro and it doesnt look much better, take Save Yourselves from the imbagon and so on.

So pretty simple if a class relies on 1 or 2 skills and you nerf them, give them another thing to play.