Mesmer Speculation

I really think it's for the best. Norgu's tight pants have been getting tighter from all the times i leave him out of my crew. Same goes for Gwen. Thackeray dumped her already due to a few extra unwanted pounds from never being a hero I use. Seems that Staci Magicalsen has caught his eye as of late.

Although this was a joke it's a brilliant idea. Mesmers don't actually mesmerise. Rather than the enemy attacking the mesmer enemies could be mesmerised and stop attacking altogether. Consider it a type of AoE Pacifism. Once the mesmerised enemy is attacked they (and their adjacent party members) can attack again.

Why are there no mesmer skills that control minds? Turn enemies against their own (obviously it wouldn't work against bosses - and players would be considered bosses so it wouldn't work in PvP).

Well - that won't happen but could we have a buff to Illusionary Weapon? I'm envisioning a minion type deal (that look much like enchanted weapons). Give the mesmer 10 weapons flapping about attacking and people will start to take notice. Obviously, if the mesmer dies, the weapons become like minions with a dead master. Interesting times.

If they are just going to fiddle about with energy costs and damage trhe mes is likely to stay a wall flower. That said, they do have the best armour.

This was what I referenced in another thread about something I've wanted to see changed in the game for over 4 years. So far, the changes we have in store are really cool. Keep in mind, Mesmers aren't designed to do tons of straight up damage, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to dish out some nasty DPS based on conditions being met. I think the changes we are working on are really focused on the primary issues Mesmer have in PvE right now, the main one being acknowledgment by the rest of the group that the Mesmer is really doing things. Mesmers will become quite popular with these changes me thinks, which is great, because my poor Mesmer has been neglected for too many years.


Nail. Head. Hit.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Sorry I can't be more specific, but NDAs are NDAs.

Pardon me, but some of us in the TK happen to be very proficient with the Mesmer, and in my opinion, none of our prior balances were dart board style... I've received almost completely positive feedback from players I've spoken with in game in regards to prior skill updates headed up by the TK vs without. So... no. Again, you will be pleasantly surprised by the changes; they are well executed, thoughtful, and broad reaching without being completely overpowered.

Wow, so you can dispense amazing life changing information (thanks again for getting me out of that bad housing situation from a year and a half ago) and you're also a test krewe member? Is there anything you can't do, Rahja?

On topic, as others have stated, I really hope monsters are given an eye of discernment with this update. The recent hammer and tactics changes have turned Amatz into a nightmare and let's not forget Joko's Domain. Methinks now would be a good time to vanquish areas that feature swarms of Riders.

Pardon? I'm not even sure what to make of this post...

That said... I don't think the changes to the Mesmer skills are going to make specific monsters unbelievably overpowered. They are still very fragile creatures with low armor and little defensive/healing ability. In groups, a HM monster might pack a bit more punch, but so will player character Mesmers, so it should balance out.

I like the sound of this, since we really don't have a profession that require skill conditions to deal damage.

I do have a question if the NDA permits; is this update primarily focused on damage output/shutdown for the mesmer, or is inspiration/party support going to be looked at as well?

looking forward to it.

just pleaaaaase remember that more shitty dps (in form of even more degen, high energy / long recharge spells, requiring three precast hexes) is still shitty. however this time, i have faith in the tk - we'll see on the outcome though.

Making energy denial decent for players in PvE is a really difficult thing to pull off.

Even a skill that was, for example, ''Target foe loses all energy'' 5e, 1/4 Cast 5 Sec r/c would be terrible for me to use. I could cast it on a HM monster and within 5seconds it already has more than enough energy to cast 10e skills again. Not to mention Rangers which can easily battle on with only 2-3energy due to their stupidly high levels of expertise.

Whats even worse is that, despite this skill being useless to players - its suddenly devastating when Monsters use it on players.

So lets look at an energy denial skill thats more viable for players. ''For X seconds target foe has -10e regeneration.'' Sure its good for taking out enemy monk bosses, provided nothing removes the hex, but its useless vs warriors/paragons who use adrenaline. Not to mention elementalists have a good +6-8e regeneration in the first place, and with energy storage aswell it will be a good while before they are actually shut-down. Then to top it off theres the argument which already exists today:
''Why center a build around shutting down an enemy and then kill it instead of just killing it in the first place?''
So for this skill to answer this argument, we'd probably have to make it semi-aoe. Cool, now its balanced.

Now wait for an enemy to cast it on your team.


I've got high hopes for this update. The last few changes to the ritualist recently gave us some awesome and interesting functionality changes to skills, itll be nice to see the same for mesmers.

@up: we've suggested a lot of possibilities on how to change/buff e-denial in pve, a few months ago. dig a little in sardelac, but there were loads of ideas there, e-denial included.

All well and good, just remember that changes work both ways.
Losing energy and suffering a recharge is annoying enough when you're interrupted by the AI's godlike reactions and I don't want them to be able to instantly drain my pitiful energy bar as well. What e-denial they already have can be annoying enough.

As for Punishment hexes; just remember that you'd only be bringing them for the actual punishment in PvE and hence they really need to be worthwhile - we don't need more slow reactive shit. I would suggest looking at the effects of Clumsiness and Wandering Eye for ideas on how to do it.
Other good reactive hexes are Spirit and Price of Failure (I know the last one is a nec skill, but it follows from SoF), but these are far too weak in PvE to be worth considering (high cost and high recharge).


No they're not. They're a disruption profession and try to resort to the slow, pitiful reactive stuff to do anything in PvE.
The disruption the Mesmer excels at is just not that valuable in PvE given most of the time one can just roll through shit and the Mesmer has to focus their disruption on only a few targets. The last point is what the TK seems to be focusing on (spreading the disruption around, to cover more enemies) and that is I think the best route to go - that way the Mesmer is still a Mesmer and doesn't try to compete with the other professions by doing the same stuff.

Not to mention that if you want to shut down people in pve via interuption you just bring a ranger with some daze and laugh as the minions interupt everything.

http://www.wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fevered_Dreams
http://www.wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Technobabble (+ http://www.wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Extend_Conditions)

Why bother with a Ranger with an annoying to use elite?

personally, I can tell you one thing, if these words are missing from their "Look at Mesmers":

"Visions of Regret: Functionality reverted to pre-Cry of Pain/VoR nerf version."

Then I'll know straight up that they're just playing us, and I for one will be calling Shenanigans. That's right, you heard it, Shenanigans. That word just gets funnier every time I write it. Seriously though, that would be a rather nice, and definitely obvious place to start. As Arkantos and I agreed in a previous thread on I believe, the last big skills update, there is simply no logical reason for the PvE version to remain nerfed whilst Cry of Pain stays as it is now.

Because 20 seconds of daze is much nicer than 3 seconds of daze. Sure the 3 seconds of daze is AoE, but thats seriously overated.

As for technobable and extend conditions - its a nice combo but is flawed because you cant run it on a hero or henchman. Not to mention the fact that you're using a PvE slot and an elite to achieve something a henchman can do with one skill. BHA just isnt that hard to hit in PvE - only melee are hard to hit because they move a lot, and you dont want to daze the melee anyway.

Truth is that extend conditions and fevered dreams are better for spreading conditions, not applying daze.

I'm not sure how I would buff them, either.

What build are you using? The Dazed I apply with FD lasts much longer than 3 seconds I assure you.

The advantage to BHA is that you can bring it on a hero, but I can't think of much other reason to take a hero ranger and I bring Zho anyway in EotN simply because she's better than Lo Sha.

As for EC+Techno, I fail to see how potentially indefinite AoE Dazed is inferior to single target dazed (if long lasting).

I wouldn't buff these two skills either. They're strong enough at what they do and are perfectly viable builds for a human Mesmer.
I don't bother with them for hero Mesmers because heroes are rubbish at chaining skills and you don't get PvE skills. But I still have some uses for Mesmer heroes (Air of Disenchantment, Mirror of Disenchantment, some interrupts and energy gains whilst carrying Aegis and/or Prot Spirit).


This is a different discussion though and not too relevant to the topic at hand.

Im gonna be lame and ask were this was posted?
had a look around but meh..lol..

I wanna read the whole thing? i think

In the first post of this thread, there is an icon you can click that will send you to the post that was quoted after Regina Buenaobra's bolded name.

Well imo generally making the game harder is a good thing imo, however I do hate when they take the cheap way (also known as Call of duty NPC nade spam) like the did in HM where monsters have double damage and half casting time. What they should of done is raise the level and give NPCs good weapons based on their build, eg 40/40 sets for eles, a 20/40/20 staff for monks ect, It would keep the game a lot more balanced when it comes to classes imo.

Now i swear that wasnt there before :P or that it was blocked...on ff.

Gah! brain fart i guess :P cheers

Add this to Fast casting:

When you interrupt a non-monster skill, that skill has a (0...30...90)% chance to backfire. If a backfire is successful, a skill that was targeted on the Mesmer or Mesmer's ally will instead instantly be cast on the interrupted foe. A skill that was targeted on the foe or foe's party will instead instantly be cast on the Mesmer. A successful backfire also rewards the Mesmer with energy equal to the casting cost of the interrupted skill.

It would act like a crit chance on primary Mesmers, and make interrupting an actual punishment for the interrupted foe.

It would also make facing enemy Mesmers more challenging.

Here's mine:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...pdate_-_Mesmer

Mantra of Recall
10 1 20
Enchantment Spell. "For 15 seconds, whenever you cast a spell, you gain 1 energy for every 3 ranks in Fast Casting (max 1..4). You gain 10..20 energy when Mantra of Recall ends."

Expel Hexes - Moved to Fast Casting
5 1 8
Spell. "Target ally loses up to 2 hexes. For each hex removed, you gain 0..8 energy."

Shatter Storm
5 2
Elite Spell. "Target foe loses all enchantments. For each enchantment removed, this spell is disabled for for +5 seconds (maximum 15 seconds)"

Recurring Insecurity
- Also hexes nearby foes

Stolen Speed
5 ¼ 10
Hex Spell. "Interrupt target foe. If target foe was casting a spell or chant, they casts spells 100% slower, and you cast spells against them 25% faster, for 5..15 seconds."

Aneurysm (PvE only)
5 ¼ 3
Spell. Target foe regains all Energy. For each point of Energy gained in this way, that foe takes 5..20 damage. (maximum 120 damage). No effect if Fast Casting is less than 8.

Mind Wrack (PvE only)
5 1 5
Hex Spell. For 30 seconds, whenever you cause target foe to lose Energy, that foe also loses 2..12 health for every point of energy lost. No effect if Fast Casting is less than 8.

No. They never were, and they never should be.

We're trying to balance Mesmers, not lob overpowered and obnoxious junk like this on top of more overpowered and obnoxious junk. Game mechanics that involve around reflecting spell targets or attacks shouldn't exist under any condition.

And that is why mesmers are a class designed for pvp. PvE is mostly about inflicting huge damage as fast as possible. Investing in fast casting is limited if mesmers do not have the energy to maintain their damage spells, like the necros can.

They are and they will alway be. They aren't focused on just damage, but they should be allowed to have certain builds that give them a chance to if "certain conditions are met" as previously said in this thread. By "we're" I'm assuming Test Krewe and this just helps to confirm there are players apart of it that would rather keep mesmers the same or have mesmer players shut up instead of being able to do some role(s) really well like others professions. Again, keeping overpowered stuff for others while only making things okay for mesmers isn't going to make them wanted, balanced, or useful. Mesmers should be allowed to do many things, as in enough with the double standards.

Anet, keep your buffs out of PvP thank you very much. You're free to RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up PvE as much as you like, PvE players love it and I don't care.

I can understand not liking the specific suggestion, but out of curiosity, why would a better implemented skill reflection mechanic be unacceptable? Wouldn't it encourage smarter play?

That kind of gave me an idea. If Mesmers excel a disrupting, why not devote a few skills to target other ally disruption prevention?
We could revive MoC, make it an enchantment spell with adjacent range or nearby, and change the functionality to protect enchanted other allies from interrupts for x...x...x seconds. Persistence of Memory could be the non-elite version, protecting target ally. Just throwing out there.

[edit]yea, i know about MoR, but it too has its distinct downsides.

+1 actually. i'd love to see mesmers as the masters of meddling in the battlefield, not dealing damage - keeping teammates from being interrupted for x seconds is something new, as well.

A good e-denial build with Aneurysm would be kinda fun. If properly managed, Aneurysm should be a one hit, ultimate damage kill.

I dunno. I just always thought it was a neat skill and a potential abuse if some other skills get pumped up.

Monsters, while have lots of Energy, don't have infinite Energy. And the regen is so fast, you won't even notice much more damage than if you had attacked a player.

As much as people tend to whine about Mesmers, they only need few tweaks to be more effective.

Tbh I'd rather see pve skills nerfed and Dervish/Paragon core skills boosted for the pve.

Let me start by saying that I'm not sure it's even possible to fix mesmers. But I might as well give it the old college try...

1. Damage + Mitigation is the Gold Standard.
Thanks to powercreep and better player understanding, GW has gotten to the point where virtually every good "offensive" build is really a hybrid of damage and damage mitigation.* Melees dish damage while carrying SY!; Earthshaker builds dish damage while keeping things floored with KD's; curse necros all pack EB and/or RH in addition to their damage; minion and spirit builds soak up damage with disposable summons that also do significant damage; etc.

That means, of course, that if mesmers are going to be competitive, they are going to have to be able to offer the same: Some balance of damage + mitigation with the same overall value as the best builds from other classes.

(*Damage+Healing and Mitigation+Healing are also valid (Orders necros and ER eles come to mind, respectively). But, since mesmers have no serious healing at all right now, I don't see that as a good direction to try to go.)

2.Damage.

A. Buff CoP.

For a brief time, mesmers were desirable because of CoP. (Yes, there were a whole lot of E/Me and N/Me going around, but that was only because many people were too dumb to realize how much stronger Me/A was.) Then CoP got nerfed to put an end to degenerate Cryway teams. The nerf was too harsh because there was a way to kill Cryway without killing CoP. This might be a good time to revisit that mistake and do it right:
B. Buff Reactive Hexes?
Burst suggests buffing reactive hexes. I have to disagree. The game can either be in a state where reactive hexing is as good as active damage dealing, or one where it isn't. If reactive hexing can get you the same results, the incentive to develop skillful active damage dealing ability disappears. We also end up with a dominant playstyle that's very passive. Does anyone remember the days of Prophecies when effective strategy meant casting SS on stuff and just not dying?

C. Then What?
I don't know. It's hard to think of vehicles to deliver caster damage that aren't already taken by necros eles or rits. Perhaps the best direction to go is to buff skills that cause damage when you do something mesmer-y to a foe like Frustration, Mind Wrack, etc.

In any event, remember to keep damage armor-ignoring (because that's what makes it not worthless in HM) and strongly consider making it leveraged (because that's usually what makes it worthwhile in PvE).

3. Mitigation.

A. Straight Mitigation.

In PvP, mesmers have a great deal of "straight mitigation" because reactive hexes often outright stop (smart) opponents from dealing much (or any) damage for their duration. In PvE, this isn't the case, since monsters keep swinging through reactive hexes. About the only straight mitigation mesmers have in PvE is FD/EC builds that spread blind/weaken/dazed around.

One solution is to simply give mesmers a couple straight mitigation spells in the vein of EB or RH. Spirit of Failure and Calculated Risk might be good candidates for being reworked into effective mitigation.

Burst suggests buffing caster-slowing skills like Migraine with better AoE and a stronger slowing effect. While this sounds like a good way to make player mesmers more effective at mitigating damage from caster monsters, it sounds like an even better way to make certain monsters that are already annoying just obnoxiously overpowered. I really can't support this unless extreme care is taken to avoid buffing the monsters with it. But, I think we end up needing it in any event if interruption is ever going to be viable. See below for further discussion.

B. Interruption.

This is probably the biggest mess at the heart of the mesmer class (and rangers too). Power creep and lazy monster design have left us in a situation where (1) monsters generally aren't worth interrupting when you could just kill them a little faster instead, and (2) monsters pretty much can't be reliably interrupted thanks to the HM cast bonus.

As Upier explained (before going on to troll with a silly idea), the "correct" solution to problem #1 is to nerf damage output across the board so that shutdown matters more. Since that's not going to happen, the second-best solution is to give you a big collateral reward for successfully interrupting something.

Some possible rewards include:
* heavy damage bonus
* meaningful energy gain (either as a part of the skill or as part of Fast Casting)
* faster/instant recharge on that skill
* faster/(chance of) instant recharge on all skills (either as a part of the skill or as part of Fast Casting)
* potent collateral hex on the target
* potent collateral e-denial on target (only if e-denial is being reworked overall to become viable)

Right now, my personal favorite idea is a 6% or 7% chance per rank of Fast Casting to recharge on all skills on a successful interrupt.

Problem #2 is more thorny. The "correct" solution is to remove the HM fast cast bonus and do something to make HM legitimately hard that isn't just braindead stat-pumping. Unfortunately, if a-net had a better idea for making HM hard than braindead stat-pumping, they would have used it already, so that's probably not going to happen.

So, we're going to need some way to slow the monsters down enough make it possible to interrupt them reliably in HM. The only thing I can think of is buffing the caster-slowing skills like Migraine. Basically, it would need to be a hex with a quick cast, huge AoE radius, long duration, uptime ratio above 100%, and pretty heavy slowing effect (probably 2.5x or 3x like Burst suggests).

Which brings us back to the problem above: If you give this skill to any monsters, they are going to positively rape the players with it. I can't even conceive of a way to convolute a normal skill to avoid that outcome. So it's going to have to be Ether Nightmare.

A second reason why the skill that makes interrupts work needs to be a PvE skill is Gwen. The heroes' superior reaction times is going to make them preferable to live mesmers unless the live mesmers get some outside advantage. And a PvE skill is exactly that.

(Yes, I know that Interruption is not properly classed as Mitigation. It's properly regarded as the opposite of whatever mechanic it interrupts, so sometimes it's Mitigation and sometimes it's Damage and sometimes it's E-Denial (which I am also miscategorizing for simplicity's sake), and sometimes it's a headache to even try to classify it. But, that distinction isn't relevant here, so I'm just lumping it under Mitigation for now.)

C. E-Denial

E-Denial suffers from the same two basic problems as interruption: (1) monsters generally aren't worth e-denying when you could just kill them a little faster instead, and (2) monsters pretty much can't be e-denied because they have super-deep energy pools and extra pips of regen.

Problem #1 has the same "correct"-but-never-going-to-happen solution: Nerf damage output across the board. As for the second-best solution, it's really hard for me to say. Since e-denial has never worked in PvE, it's hard to imagine exactly how potent it would be if it did work. My guess is that e-denial would be viable if it could (a) quickly and completely drain a priority foe like a monk or OP caster on demand, and/or (b) quickly drain a lot of less-important foes at the start of the fight well enough to prevent them from using one or two skills that they otherwise would during the first 10-15sec of the engagement.

The "correct" solution to problem #2 would be to improve the AI so that it doesn't need the super-deep energy pools and extra pips of regen, and then get rid of them. Obviously, that won't happen. So the second-best solution is to make e-denial really, really, really strong. Burst suggests "loses all energy" or -10pips as the sort of potency that would be needed, and I agree that's about what it would take.

Unfortunately, that creates problem #3: You can't give monsters skills with things like "loses all energy" or -10pips because, again, they would absolutely rape the players, who don't have super-deep energy pools and extra pips of regen.

Again, the only solution I can think of is to locate the forbidden power in a PvE skill. I wish I had a third mesmer-specific PvE skill to use here, but, since I don't, it's going to be tacked on to Ether Nightmare, since it (even in the form proposed above) is the less overpowered of the two:

[edit: The more I think about that, the more I worry about secondary abuse. The e-denial effect is too strong a reward for the low, low price of just being E/Me or N/Me. Maybe...
...would solve that problem.
(And this is why I really wanted a third PvE skill to mess with....
Perhaps the caster-slowing effect should be moved to a general PvE skill (which would make it available to rangers too) and Ether Nightmare should just be for e-denial. So, perhaps something like:
hmmm?
end of edit]


4. Energy Management.

Mesmers have the most e-management skills of any caster class, but the worst e-management.

One part of the problem is that a lot of mesmer skills are overpriced because they were designed around Inspiration being there (much like a lot of necro and ranger skills are overpriced). These e-costs were never reduced even though Inspiration took nerf after nerf, leaving mesmers unable to pay for their own skillset.

A second part of the problem is the long recharges on many of the e-management skills. One fix is to lower the recharges. Another would be adding a change to recharge all skills to Fast Casting, as described above.

A third part of the problem is the large number of skills that give you a little energy, plus a crappy secondary function. The original intent was clearly that players were supposed to string together several of these skills to get decent energy while doing something else too. Maybe people would consider doing that if the secondary functions were buffed so that they didn't suck terribly.

Another good idea would be to make a plain Jane skill that gives a straight-up energy bonus or cost discount at about the same level as GoLE.

5. Make Monster Skills More Vulnerable

Burst also suggests:
I see that as a good idea, but a pretty incremental one also. Few monster skills are really so nasty and spammable that I really feel a stong need to disable them. (Also, I'm pretty sure that allowing some monster skills to be stolen would cause crashes.)

Well... That's all I've got for the moment.

Chthon pretty much summed up all the most important things. bravo, sir, bravo.

Seriously? How about we just make a spell that flat out disables all foes' skills in earshot while we're at it?

Chthon has the best summary that I see.

Several posts have raised the objection that if mesmer skills are buffed in particular ways, monsters would become overpowered. This is in fact part of the point, and actually plays right into a mesmer's hands. As Chthon states, PvE is currently in a stagnated damage+mitigation meta, and interrupts are often unnecessary (though sometimes insufficient). You can solve this problem by making winning essentially impossible unless you can shut down the enemy team. In short, we need to create a credible answer to the question, "Why should I bother to interrupt or shutdown a monster when I could just kill it?"

I actually don't see the issue with buffing reactive punishment hexes. Chthon attempts to divide the question into two scenarios: where reactive hexes are "better" than active ("skillful") damage, or where they aren't. The problem, of course, is defining "better". Reactive hexes are conditional by definition, and the condition is based on enemy behavior rather than player or ally behavior; as such, I see no problem with making their effects significantly stronger than "active skillful damage". It's certainly possible to make further buffs even more conditional (e.g., Ineptitude does bonus AoE damage and AoE blind if the attack is an attack skill). This also addresses the issue above regarding overpowered monsters - if the strongest mes effects are highly conditional, it becomes the player's responsibility to avoid triggering the condition.

Chthon's Ether Nightmare suggestion is quite attractive, although "earshot" radius might be overdoing it.

Actually, we've always been stuck in a damage+mitigation+healing meta since day one, we just didn't see it at the time. Pretty much every RPG/RPGish game that focuses on little red bars is going to come down to damage+mitigation+healing.

Because the AI are always going to swing through (except for a few skills when they'll stop one hit short of dead), reactive hexes are equivalent to straight DPS in PvE. If that DPS is comparable to the DPS on other options that you have to actively work for, it creates a perverse incentive to be lazy.

That's a clever way to avoid overpowering the monsters. The only thing that worries me are large mono-mobs like Mindblades that spam so many copies of a skill that you can't avoid it.

As for the e-denial, it's bigger than I'd like.
As for the caster slowing, there needs to be a pretty solid guarantee that it's going to already be in place on anything you need to interrupt, before you need to interrupt it. That requires such a huge radius and long duration that you can fire-and-forget and the start of the engagement and not have to worry about your target not being slowed because it was out of range when you cast or the hex expired.
The alternative to sticking both hexes together, is to move the caster slowing effect to a general PvE skill that's usable by both mesmers and rangers. (See the edit to my previous post for one possibility.)

reactive hexes being much more powerful than any direct form of damage were already suggested back in december-january, i think. it's quite obvious that they should be more destructive - not necessarily only in means of damage - than just spamming direct damage skills.

it's still conditional. empathy is still limited to mob's attack speed. backfire is still limited to mob's skilltab and it's casting possibilities. it's still mechanically inferior to direct damage and should be rewarded more.

I'm sorry to say but... When women are smiling that much they are about to bring some ***very*** bad news...

Thats a good point actually