Mesmer Speculation

still, confusing is better than sucking ass. if a mesmer is a pvp-oriented and pvp-designed class, splits might be useful in that case.

are you able to tell us when we may get the preliminary update notes? in months - that is, are there any hopes for getting the notes in april, or is it sure for may (even the second part), or it might happen in may but will surely come in june?

Grats on proving Gill Halendt and I right then I guess? You just want to get from A to B as fast as possible and expect Anet alone to keep the game entertaining for you.

Backfire (PvE): For 10...18...25 seconds, spells targeting foes backfire and affect all nearby foes.

You don't HAVE to. From Anet's perspective, once you've reached B, you're done. It's YOUR CHOICE to go back to A and start over.

Not to mention you actually have to go to C, D, E, F ect to do them :/

With this, I must take issue. Player-option-to-player-option balance needs to exist at every level. A situation where mesmers cannot get PUGs for DoA, but are really popular with the ZQuest PUG crowd, is just as bad as a situation where mesmers cannot get a group with the ZQuest PUG crowd, but are desired in DoA. In my mind, player-option-to-player-option balance really should be done in a vacuum, completely without reference to players.

Player-option-to-environment-challenge balancing (aka difficulty balancing) is another story. In that arena, I agree that you need to balance for the average player (which is going to leave top players with a game they find a bit easy). So...

You're just going to have to accept that your opinion of where the difficulty bar should be set is pretty far off where market forces tell a-net to place it.


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In case anyone cares (which you very well may not), I'm thinking more and more that the skill to slow down monsters to make them interruptable in HM should be a general PvE skill and not a mesmer skill. Probably Tryptophan Signet. It doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to fix the monsters-are-too-fast-to-interrupt-in-HM problem for the mesmer, while leaving the problem in place for the ranger, which is also a woefully underpowered class in PvE right now. That also allows the three fundamental mesmer weaknesses for which you really don't want to do a monster buff to be addressed by one PvE skill each instead of trying to stuff two solutions into one skill. (As proposed, CoP solves the lack-of-damage problem (at least in part); TrypSig solves the monsters-are-too-fast-to-interrupt-in-HM problem; and Ether Nightmare solves the e-denial-is-totally-useless problem.) I've updated my previous post to reflect this.

How the dual profession system impacts Mesmer balance... Fast Casting is fundamentally similar to other primary attributes, but with 6-8 out of 10 classes utilising Spells, it has potentially the greatest impact.

#1 - Primary Mesmers using Secondary Skills
Examples: Long Casts - Water Magic & Necromancy
Which means: Be careful when buffing Fast Casting

#2 - Other Primaries using Mesmer Skills
Examples: Utilities - Stances & some Inspiration
Which means: Be careful when buffing individual Skills

(sorry gtg)

Ahh I am at work atm, but when I get home I'll put my thoughts into a blog post. I'm glad a TK guy is watching this thread.

Optional content. You can play GW without any grinding whatsoever. Again, your choice to stay and experience it

The alternative is simple: since we don't get any more playable content by design, grind, or quit.

People have been living without GW for thousands years.

Dumb ideas such as...? Realizing that stuffing ill-conceived content in the first game was a bad idea?

Actually, many people have seen so many carrots by now. And ate them. So the stick isn't really that long.

There are a few cases of the stick being probably too long, and those are mainly:

- Lucky/Unlucky - Little to no impact on the game, multiple ways of obtaining it, absolutely optional. Only reason to obtain it: GWAMM, but you have easier alternatives; HoM, but r3 in this title track is enough to get the achievement on the Monument of Honor.
- Kurzick/Luxon - See above
- Wisdom/Treasure Hunter - Purchasable, could use some rework
- Zaishen - Purely cosmetic, doesn't need to be maxed to be added to the HoM

Unhealty behaviour? Probably. That's what you need to keep up with a 5 years old game that doesn't get any new playable content since 2007: you really must be an excited fan to do that... Faculty of choice is the key. ANet runs a business, they have all the interests in keeping players busy. They are no nannies.

Again, you're given a choice: find compulsive grinding boring and unhealty? Play something else in the meanwhile. Getting carrots faster will have you asking for more carrots sooner, so it won't solve the problem.

Really, I see your point. The problem is, there's no way to fix by just toning down grinding. The answer is "fresh content", and we all know we won't get anything like that.

That's your problem, really. I chose not to play Assassins at all because I find iWin buttons boring and really reductive, and I'm glad I was given the choice. Also, your magic iWin button (a shitton of buffs on an Assassin) doesn't impress me at all. You could get the same effects with six AP/GoS/MS Eles and two monks, and then call Meteor Shower "overpowered". So, you see... What's the point in fixing the game, when people are too lazy to use their own brains and look for alternatives instead of cheap iWin buttons and abuses?

disagree

Everything else applies tough.

Also, most of those skills are maxed/near maxed already @ r8/10, so you don't need the maxed title to use them to their full extent. R4 is also enough for the HoM.

The only reason to have allegiance titles maxed is one more point for the GWAMM or completionist's syndrome. Both of those are player-side issues.

r8 requires 2.5 million points. r10 twice that. for almost every player I know, r1 is intimidating, r5 the highest conceivable, and thats after grinding a lot. most people go to r8 sunspear (not too hard if you bring a book) and end up getting to r4/5 in most eotn titles, maybe r6 in one, and giving up on being as good as a lot of other players because time>skill (which fits with GW's original idea). Think of people with full time jobs who play a couple hours on the weekend. They're not interested in spending those couple hours vanquishing a luxon area over and over every week just so eventually they can get "save yourselves!" and be let into groups in those hard areas they can never manage to beat with heroes and henchmen (or that don't allow henchmen).

And now, completely unrelated to the discussion at hand, "mesmer speculation"

Odd, because my Mesmer performs better than my Assassin. Reason is because I do not use melee classes well (any of them). It is an issue of play style. I have had no problem (none) completing HM stuff with my Mesmer. I have all but about 5 missions done on Guardian, I have vanquished most of Factions (haven't started much on this yet), I have FoW armor I crafted during one of my 3 HM clears with a balanced team, I have cleared UW with a balanced team, and I have all of the Eye of the North titles at rank 8 or higher. And this is on a class that is 5th on my list of most used, behind my Ranger, Monk, Necro, and Ritualist.

Funny, but I just don't see Mesmer being unable to do things. I don't even see them unable to do things well. I do see them doing things less effectively than some classes, but less effective does not mean ineffective.

So, don't. I've been "playing for a couple of hours in the weekend" for 3 years now. Had no problems getting my full HoM and GWAMM anyway.

It just took longer for me. How's that a problem? I've been playing regularly for almost 5 years now and never got bored of the game thanks to that.

It's funny how people here despise PuGs, yet the one and only reason why grinding seems to affect their game is the difficulty of getting into some PuGs that discriminate... Find guilds, friends or simply better PuGs. Or play H/H with the magical "iWin Button" by upier. Or even without it.

I did it - I've played everything with close friends or H/H - and never found a problem. When the challenge was steep, this served me to improve my skills and find some way to make it.

People are just asking for easier, faster achievements - and don't realize that faster accomplishments will just mean a shorter lifespan of the game for them in the process.

Definition of achievement:

So, achievements require either exertion, skill, practice and/or perseverance. Since some of those achievements in the game don't take any skill (Lucky/Unlucky, Wisdom/Treasure Hunter, Zaishen - those are, incidentally, the ones where grinding is at its highest extent), removing the perseverance requirement doesn't make any sense.

The mere fact that GW was advertised as a game where skill > time doesn't mean that anyone must achieve anything (expecially OPTIONAL feats), and not in a matter of hours anyway.

mesmers are beasts in pve also

Grind is mostly something you choose to do...as its mostly cosmetic and for your own satisfactions. and purely optional.

The only grind i have a gripe about is the grind for pve skills levels..to make them effective.. admittedly they compressed the upper and lower levels to make them more powerful at lower rank levels....but stilll they are too powerfull in general....

Personally i think they should be either unlocked or not at one strength ragardless of rank...and that would imo give a lot more insentive to roll new toons for people who dislike grind..(i have zero MAX titles btw on principle :P)

and that was too offtopic but meh

Erm.. mesmers with mesmer skills that can "compete" would be nice...?

While we're off-topic...

The best way to handle PvE skills, IMO, would have been to simply add a "PvE Skills" attribute to every player. The PvE skills' strength would be tied to the amount of points invested in the attribute, just like any other skill (with special exceptions: Critical Agility, etc, which are tied to existing attributes). This would be much more in the spirit of GW: you have 200 points to use, now find a balance. Want a maximum power EVAS? You're going to have to sacrifice the points that could be going into another attribute.

While skills like SY, AoHM, and Vampirism are fully effective for any profession?

I don't think so.

If those PvE skills are usable as secondaries, so should PvE skills like Critical Agility. Either rework Critical Agility and stuff like it (TNtF, for example) so any profession can use it with reasonable effectiveness, or make all of those PvE profession skills work only with their primary profession.

I believe that, since in PVE thats a lot more targets with a lot more health, the mesmers in PVE could be adressed in two ways.

1 - Buffing some skills to affect one target at massive spiking damage. Ex.: Energy Burn
2 - Buffing other skills to affect more than one target. Ex.: Empathy.

Plus...I believe mesmers should have more flexible ways to recover mana. Since they cast at a higher rate, they tend to burn mana quickly. Example: at each 4 or 5 points of Fast Casting they could gain 1 point of mana each time they interrupt a target.

I would have quit no problem. Without "grind", my game experience would have run dry in late 2008, after finishing all the available content in EoTN.

Better at this game? How's that? You mean, spamming SY! and clearing a mission with little effort makes you "better at the game" than healing/protting your party like a pro-player and clearing the same mission while facing some more challenge?

Choices, again. If you like taking shortcuts and diminish your game, feel free to play your iWin button and steamroll through anything. Reaching a goal doesn't make you "better" than anyone. Some PvE skills are demented by design, and they are anyway, even at lower ranks of their respective titles, because of the way they work. Reducing grind won't solve this problem, it will just level off the challenge and push toward more degenerate gameplay.

Bolded for emphasys. It's players who exclude each other. Take some responsibilities once in a while. We should by now admit that, while GW sucks big time in this respect, its community does as well and largely contributed at making this game shit by showing this kind of attitudes.

Judging by the numbers of GWAMM around, or just taking my story into account, those rewards are hardly that far away.

Their problem. This is not "God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals Wars", getting that title is not mandatory, nor is the sole purpose of playing GW. They chose the path of titles and got tired of it before completion. Take a break, find something else to do in GW. Stop behaving like GW is something needed to live. It's not, it's a game. And like every game, it doesn't last forever, it's limited in scope and sooner or later you'll find yourself repeating stuff just because you don't want it to be over yet. You can't blame ANet for giving something to do in the process.

Maybe. There little else it could be balanced on tough, after 2 years of no development.

This large chunk is endgame content for those wanting more than the playable content.

bear in mind that while you h/h, you're only 1/8th team.
bear in mind that you probably used pve skills, which are, well...
bear in mind that a lot of people use gimmick builds that are easy to run but not mesmery. i find mesmer to be the best discord caller so far, but still, it's not 'mesmer power'.

it's not only being less effective, it's also being limited. you either rely on gimmicks, pve skills or your secondary to be effective at a comparable, yet never superior, level to others in your team.

And you were complaining about the game being too easy? If you want it to be harder take out the PvE skills and play something else, like a mesmer lol....

Upier it's time to drop this discussion and get some sun light. You're taking things way too seriously and your view of the game is somewhat jaded and not in line with what's really going on. The game is never going to go the way you think it should. Let us leave it at that.

Started reading a book today that caught my attention with a neat comparison. The book is "Demons Don't Dream" by Piers Anthony, well worth checking out the series. Anyway, this book is about a computer game based on a magical world called Xanth. People in our world (called Mundania) can play it, and enter the magical world of Xanth through it. One player is just starting out, and gets to a point that seems familiar to GW. I'll quote it, it isn't long.

"Well, I sort of thought you might want to win, and get the prize."
- said by the magical person supposed to help out the unmagical one.

"Well, of course I want to win the prize! But the fun is also in the playing. I want to experience every part of Xanth, and enjoy it to the utmost. It's great already, just seeing it in three-dee and talking with you just as if you're real."
- response from the player, who is not magical.

The part I bolded is what I think a lot of people have missed. Mesmer isn't the only part of this, but it the one relavent to this discussion. I have fun with Mesmer they way it is. I agree some things could use some improvement, but most of the ideas I see discussed are based on people getting the prize. I still want to get the prize, but I'd rather enjoy the time I spend doing it.

That's subjective though. Everyone's definition of fun is different. You may have fun with how things are but that doesn't speak for the next guy. Which is why this community has been divided for so long. Everyone has their own agendas.

I agree that the fun is also in the playing.

The issue is that, if your main character is a Mesmer, and you've done pretty much everything but far end-game content, it would be nice if some Mesmer skills were improved so that they could fill a spot currently occupied by another profession by being as effective in that role, or more effective in a different role.

The fun is in playing, but if you can't find a team to play with you because of your profession, then you're not going to be playing, so you're not going to have fun.

What I've felt over the last page or 2 worries me in a way. Question that most immediately springs to mind is this: "Are the changes going to break the way we Mesmer users are doing things now?"

IMHO, there are plenty of us who like some of the current options. I've mentioned it many a time, but again for the kids at home , I'm from Neverwinter Nights prior to GW, and we see things a little differently, to me, I don't care whose skills I'm using on my Mesmer as it's supposed to be a thief. Don't believe me, go get a set of Elite rogue armor, and a mask of the Mo Zing, then dye it all black. Being a thief class, it's no surprise that several of the best builds are all stolen, and sped up a bit with FC.
I'd just like it to be known that whilst yes, I'd like other more Mesmer-focussed builds, I like my stolen builds very much, and I for one will be severely pissed if you break my toys.

PS: Revert VoR +1 FTW. Thank you.

I'm still curious to what our "reward" for having a decked HoM in GW2 will be. If it's any sort of boost - XP bonus, damage bonus, or anything else - I will be ticked, real ticked.

Otherwise I will find it as "rewarding" as a prestige title in Call of Duty - which is to say, not terribly rewarding at all. If that's the case then I have no issue.

While I would've liked the titles reworked in GW2, the concept isn't a daunting one. As long as benefits aren't mandatory or actually improve your success - something ANet could learn for GW2 - then I'm totally fine with lengthy titles.

Sure hope you don't mean that you're fine with PvE skills and overall imba D:?

I don't disagree with that one bit. I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I see people who don't care much about playing the game and having fun, but only caring about getting the armor, skills, weapons, etc. (the prize). Look at some of the new posts on these forums. People asking about maxing titles and they have had the game for a week. Yet they already want to get GWAMM, and not waste time 'playing the game'. This same issue has come up in regards to game balance. People don't care about playing the game, they only care about getting their prize. If the game requires you to go from point A to point Z, most people are looking for ways to skip all those letters in between or eliminate those letters. Then they get mad because going from A to B (which is what they were after) is too easy and fast.

I know not all people enjoy the same things. But I don't see many people asking for skill changes looking for PLAY reasons to change those skills, just reward reasons.

SY is a viable skill for almost any profession. I can think of viable (and fairly effective) builds that utilise SY for all professions except for the Mesmer.
3 professions can make very easy and effective use of AoHM.
Many professions can make viable and reasonably effective use of Vampirism.

Oo since when?
the fact that a class has several skills stealing other skills doesn't mean it's a thief-like class. we're clear enough that elementalist is not a nuker per se just because of fire spells and monk is not the uber aoe dps class because of roj and several other skills. sure, those are options, but not the main ones.

@Magma:
i dropped the series at about the thirteenth book. i have even played 'xanth' the game, though.
totally agreed. but when you've already experienced every part of GW and enjoyed it, you are inferior as a mesmer.
experienced != completed, for the first. second, when you're down to grinding - allegiance, eotn rep titles - you're much slower and much more limited. after you have explored the game and found out it's all pretty much the same - except the storyline, but the general mechanics are the very same in all campaigns - you realise that you're limited and your friends on other classes can do something better - faster, safer, in more ways; while still getting benefits from playing their primairy class.

Tbh I hate Pve skills, have since factions (the last two missions) which is why I generally dont use them.


However my point to upier was if he finds the game too easy maybe he should stop using iWin builds and try something that's harder to win with. For example actually try winning in Pve with shut down, not using SY, SoS, only using one healer, or hell dare I say something thats actually FUN to use. If thats the problem its really that easy to fix for him. Plus since he does things H/Hway hes in total control of how easy or how hard the game is.

We can agree that Prophecies was the first installment of GW, yet the word "Rogue" wasn't invented for GW. If it were like that, then surely the word would, at least in a gaming sense be more likely to have been created for D&D, if it was that line of thought you attacked it from. However in Prophecies, the mesmer gets not only Rogue but also Elite Rogue armors. Now lets also not forget that the D&D Bard class not only used melee and spells and mind affecting chants/songs, etc, it was also a pickpocket=thief.

It doesn't take much thinking then to get to the idea that regardless of which side of the coin you're looking at, mind altering/skill stealing spells, or the Rogue armors available since the first installment, or the fact they're actors, not unlike Bards, that the Mesmer then is indeed a thief class.

Sorry if that makes you feel dirty for using one or whatever, but if it walks like a duck..

His complaints of the game being so easy is largely due to the imba. A lot of people don't get much satisfaction by having to shoot themselves in the foot for "challenge". It's true that in time you will always master a game, but that shouldn't be reached so easily. Playing through Dragon Age with the pause button turned off is harder than this, and DA is *horrendously* balanced.

For all the things I disagree with you on, this is one area where I agree. No character should ever have a mechanical advantage over another. Doesn't matter it's +1 damage or +50. Doesn't matter if you get it by grinding for 5 hours or 5000.

The fact is, if you have two players with equal skill and the same builds, the guy who has done more grinding on his Kurzick or Luxon title (assuming the builds utilize those skills) is going to be more powerful and effective. That is wrong. It is in complete opposition to the GW design philosophy, and makes players who want to be powerful or optimal feel like they're being forced to grind. It's not "grind if you want to"; it's "grind or be less effective than you would be otherwise".

Of course, this doesn't apply to titles like Lucky or Sweet Tooth. Those are purely cosmetic.

In other words, completely killing Paragons in PvE by making the one skill they have that makes them best at their one good build (TNTF) equally usable by anyone (or removing SY as an option for them, also killing Imbagon)? No thanks. I'd prefer the current "case by case" system.

When they are a Necro/Mesmer like mine. )

No it doesn't, people exclude a number of people from the game not grind or the lack of grind. Plus intelligent players can do 99% of this game with heroes and henchies as I've done all of Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall with them. I can even do much of UW and FOW with 3 heroes. So don't give us that crap that players are excluded from the game because they don't grind. It's always about players dealing with other players or just playing by themselves.