Wastrel's Worry/Demise (PvP: JQ)

Mesmers are overall balanced for JQ, but I'll repeat: Wastrel's skills kill carriers too fast. Yes, monks can counter that, but if you happen to not get a monk in your team, and they happen to get a good mesmer, it's incredible how easy they'll destroy your carriers before they even lose half their life. They can almost completely nullify half the points of a team without a monk, even when they're being chased by other players. It feels cheap and unfair.

You can't blame them for not hitting Shielding Hands + RoF under Divine Boon ...

Also I firmly believe in balance against good players, not bad. Bad players cast under Backfire and get themselves killed. It's not Backfire being OP, it's bad players being bad.

My problem with WW/WD isn't the skills, it's just the horrible AI that it takes advantage of. I'm all for bad Mesmers who thinking spamming WD/WW on someone with Mend Touch/Natural Stride/other fast-activation+recharge skills for 9-18 damage is a good use of energy. Other classes can usually freely cast spells since those kind of players typically aren't good enough to actually interrupt.

Just skimmed through this thread really quickly but are people seriously saying that WW/WD are too strong at caping shrines and killing carriers? What happened to that little thing we used to call "counters"?

If you don't like that wastrels mesmers are constantly ganking carriers and capping shrines, snares are the key. Illusion mesmers do a great job at this (and they can kill carriers almost just as well).

If it's the AI that's bothering you, there's nothing you can do about it. There's only so much the AI can do and fixing their scatter bug is probably gonna be really difficult to do and isn't worth it. So what do you do? You prevent your opponents from even getting to the shrines in the first place. Illusions mesmers, assassins and rangers do a great job of this.

Don't like that wastrels skills are too spammable and you run out of skills to cancel them? Go xx/Me and bring inspired hex/revealed hex and spam it back at them! There's plenty of others ways around this but the above is my personal favourite due to the amount of utility they bring to the table.

If you think about it, wastrels appearing to be "overpowered" has got nothing to do with the skills themselves, but with players being unable to play around and against it.

Wastrel spam make mesmers completely broken for JQ.

I think that's not the problem of JQ.. The problem is that it's purely about luck: if i got no cappers in my team but opponents do have 3 mesmers and 2 roj's, is there a point ?

Facing X mesmers surely rely on having smart players, but if you don't have key builds in your team, it's quite pointless... Jade Quarry is a random format, ok, but it's not supposed to be like : " okay let's see who caps fastest and who got most cappers in his team "..

It's in fact the same problem in every format :
- you can usually know by looking at builds who's gonna win/who's gonna lose( tactics have generally no use )
- you cannot resign or leave the map, else you get dishonor

That's probably why they added a good reward in fort aspenwood for losing..

The only way to prevent a Mesmer from killing a courier with Wastrel's skills is to be a monk and heal the courier. You can even be the greatest player and kill that mesmer in seconds: he'll kill your courier first than you'll kill him nonetheless. First by clicking skill 1, then by clicking skill 2, then by kiting/ self-healing/ using a block stance (if you're melee), then by clicking skill 1 again, then by clicking skill 2 again.

You can completely annihilate the mesmer, you can prevent them from capping well, you can prevent them from doing their overall job, but they'll always kill the courier before you kill them.

There might be an exception or another, and if there's more, I sure would like to know. As an ele, I can disrupt sins and other professions from killing couriers, but unless I'm allied with another player and both of us are spiking and disrupting the mesmer consistently, they might even die in 6 seconds, but they'll hit for their second time their lightning-fast wastrel's skills and kill the courier.

I stopped reading this thread after the first page and skimmed to here. I still think the best fix is giving them a skill that recharges every 3 seconds. All it does is removes one hex and activates in a half second. It won't stop the mesmers from killing the carriers. But it will slow them down.

Sure, if they time it right they can still get a lot of damage in, but they cant simply ww/wd, kite for a few seconds, the ww/wd again to finish the carrier. Also, if the carrier is stopping to remove hexes it makes it more vulnerable to other sources of damage. In all seriousness, this simple update would get rid of the overpowered carrier killing from mesmers.

Options:

1) Heal carrier. Obvious. Restful Breeze does a lot for the carrier unless the Mesmer has anti-enchantment.
2) Remove hexes off carrier.
3) Kill Mesmer. Unless Mesmer has Distortion, a good Assassin easily kills it (or at least disrupts the Mesmer until he can't kill the courier). Knockdown the Mesmer. Shock, Meteor, Gale, etc.
4) Stop Mesmer casting. Backfire and Diversion especially. He can interrupt you ... but if he's trying to kill the carrier there'll be openings to get the hexes on him.
5) Don't let Mesmer get there. Snares etc, and kill him before he gets to the carrier (stuff like Meteor easily stop him from reaching the carrier). Spells like Ethereal Burden can seriously impair the Mesmer. If the Mesmer gets in a prolonged fight he'll easily die because he can't easily kill other players, and he has no strong self-heal.

Remember, the Mesmer can be highly versatile and can do a lot of things, but he can't do all of it. He has to choose which eight skills go on his skillbar, and there will always be holes.

The idea of "counters" is the best thing to do in an organised (or at least semi-organised) PvP format with no other goals but killing, best if only killing other players.
JQ is actually PvEvP, in that order. You are more contributing to your team if you're capping posts, keeping the NPCs alive or keeping and speeding (or killing) the carrier than ganking other players, especially given the auto-respawn and its rate.
Second 'issue' of JQ which negates the viability of bringing counter-builds to the meta ones is its total randomness; much greater than that of random arenas because of more party slots.

That's why Jeydra's remark that a good sin can easily kill a mesmer, while being true, is completely irrelevant. If you bring a sin only because you want to kill enemy casters, including mesmers, you won't be able to cap yourself. Even if sins do bring a build that may cap, they're easily outhealed by monks or disrupted/shut down by mesmers, necros, and even RoJ monks (one careful Bane Signet and your sin won't get up after the NPCs nuke them). If WW/WD were that powerful meta in any fully PvP format, even unorganised RA, going sin as a counter would be a good idea. As it is now, by going sin, you will choose to gimp your team's overall performance at this specific format, which primarily focuses on something else than ganking casters.

Nearly the same goes for rolling healing monks, just they can perform another semi-useful role - keeping carriers/shrines up, however not infinitely - while still gimping the team when it comes to the primary objective, that is capping (1) so that your team may accumulate jade and (2) so that the opponents can't. In the end, it's overally better to use your resources for constantly capping the enemy's 'home quarry' rather than camping your own, because keeping the whole map covered in your colour leads to the situation when the enemy team doesn't accumulate any jade, even if your own carriers are getting killed on the way. I'm not saying that carriers should not be considered when talking about overall tactics in JQ, but given their decent respawn times (and especially that they respawn at the quarries, and not at the home base, thus getting your own carrier killed soon after leaving the base might actually 'teleport' it to the farthest quarry), they become a bit disposable. As long as you keep all the quarries in your team's hands, there's no way you can lose simply because the enemy can't get any points, and sooner or later you will manage to get one or two carriers through.

Now, another problem in Jeydra's approach is that he's comparing mesmer to several other builds trying to prove that they [mesmers] are not overpowered (i'd just say: too versatile, as in good at many roles, using just one build). We can't say that mesmers are not OP because necro bombers can still cap faster, and sins are better at ganking players, and healing monks are better at keeping the quarries up, and even RoJ monks are better at running turtles, and rangers are better at rupting (they're not, imho, but that's a completely different topic).
The point is that one mesmer build can do all of the above and fare pretty well doing it, even if certain specialised builds are better at certain tactical niches occupied by them. The other point is that what mesmer can do, and can do really well (cap and kill carriers, plus provide some quarry protection in the form of rupting RoJs or stripping bombers) are the most important parts of the game mechanics used in JQ.

More so, some specifics of the WW/WD + PI build make it too powerful in two terms - too easy to run, too hard to counter using other viable JQ builds (that is, nothing like Wastrel sins which are, as described earlier, useless in the format). That power is much more visible when juxtapositioned with other viable JQ builds, but i will limit myself only to the ones i'm experienced with (side note: yes, i am experienced and proficient at running a PI/WW/WD mesmer in JQ as well).
Mesmers can't really be interrupted. I mean, sure, by some odd luck, it is possible to time your own interrupt against PI or either Wastrel's, but it's impossible to do it purposely, whether using me/r rupts or knockdowns. RoJ monks are easily interrupted. Physicals are easily knocked down and/or disabled (even the Bane Signet is deadly against any physical, caught in the proximity of a still full quarry, other than a ranger). On top of it, you'd need to PBlock or use Sig of Distraction if you want your rupting Wastrel's to have any impact, due to its very quick recharge.
Mesmers do not rely on enchantments, thus are not strippable. Bring Gaze of Contempt (is this what this no attribute necro skill is called?) and gimp the bombers, strip the prots.
Mesmers do rely on hexes, thus possibly making them useless by removing the hexes before they can be harmful. This is not really viable given the low recharge and cost on WW and WD - they're simply too spammable. You can remove Backfire from a player, but you can't really keep a shrine or a carrier up by just removing hexes (which could usually be achieved back in the days of Weaken Knees).
Mesmers are hard to outheal unless you run a dedicated healer. However, a dedicated healer can usually also outheal a single bomber, and even a RoJ monk can easily keep NPCs up via Healing Breeze against other RoJ monks (unless they run /Me for Arcane Echo and manage to cast two copies of RoJ, which is very unlikely because NPCs at the shrines carry rupts, too, making the second copy of RoJ hard to land unless the HCT procs - and still it's ruptable). It's worth noting that RoJ provides only enough damage to kill the NPCs - if the monk gets Weakness, one RoJ will not suffice; the same is true if an NPC gets one copy of Reversal of Damage, and so on. Pretty much any /Mo or /Rt can easily keep at least one NPC alive against a RoJ monk. This is not the case with mesmers.
Mesmers are not likely to die when capping; they can keep the whole shrine down using PI, which isn't hard to hit, while spamming WW/WD and killing the NPCs really fast. A bomber sacrifices themselves when capping, thus losing some seconds to respawn. RoJ monks have a hard time surviving some caps, especially given their superior rune and running 40/40 set most of the time as their elite skill is the only truly useful one on the whole bar and they truly benefit from proccing HCT on RoJ.
Mesmers have spammable skills while also carrying a really decent self-heal along with some energy-draining skills. In attrition war against a monk removing hexes off a carrier, a mesmer will 'stand' longer, being able to spam WW/WD continuously, using their skills to 'regenerate' mana faster. More so, those are two spammable skills, and hex removals also have their cooldowns aside from costs.

Countering a mesmer reqiures bringing a certain mindset and running certain builds, like Wastrel sin, healing monk, snares, or simply another mesmer. Doing so would be quite viable in any clean PvP format, but is not in JQ, where the primary objective is to collect jade, and not kill other players, even if they're annoying mesmers. Bringing any of the first three builds mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph would gimp your overall party performance, leading to the only truly useful "counter" to mesmers, in the way Elnino put it, being bringing more mesmers. This leads to a power war within one class, rendering professions like paragons or warriors even more useless than they are now.

While mesmers can't fully excel at all roles using one build, they can do far more using their eight skills than any other build using theirs. They're still more versatile than bombers, even if a tad slower at capping; they're still the best at killing carriers and viable at, at the very least, annoying other players with WW/WD and rupts, not to mention their usefulness when interrupting an incoming RoJ; they still can kill or render physicals useless by Empathy. What's more important, what they're doing is useful in general terms of the given format.

On an ending note, i am personally outraged when i see any physicals on my team (maybe except from a ranger, but only if it's the only physical), and i am also annoyed by people running only heal/prot, because they do not contribute to the overall team performance and still can be outdamaged when two or three players decide to gank a carrier.
JQ is a format promoting sheer and quick damage along with personal mobility and player control; capping > keeping (of course not as much as 500 > 2, but still); killing carriers > running carriers. Mesmers can excel at the most important parts of JQ while still providing additional power.



edit:
Actually, the probably most useful counter against mesmers, with the respawn rate in mind (it's much better to control other players rather than kill them, unless that's really much faster and/or easier), is to steal and disable their skills (Arcane Larceny + all the clones and similar skills).
Yet still - this requires a mesmer-based build dedicated to shutdown enemies' skillbars, severely undermining the jade-oriented efforts of the whole team. It would mean that you basically have to follow that naughty mesmer all the time, cast your theft spells and hope to disable something truly valuable. Still, it seems much more useful and appliable than constant snaring, or killing just so they can respawn after a few seconds with full health and no DP.

2) Removing hexes won't do much when the wastrel's skills have 1 and 3 seconds of recharge. Besides, like nº1, a monk is most of the times needed for this;
3) By the time Meteor is casted, two Wastrel's skills have already been used. Once the Mesmer gets back up, the Wastrel's skills will be recasted, killing the courier. Besides, being a mesmer already means they'll have plenty of counters to survive (or delay their death) against an elementalist.
4) Diversion is powerful, but if you're the mesmer yourself, chances are your mesmer target will last long enough to survive, wait for Diversion to end, and recast his wastrel's skills. Or even recast them with Diversion on. Or even recast them with Backfire. The turtle/ juggernaut will die, and that whole point less will be more meaningful than a player's death.
5) It's hard to snare Mesmers when they're already there, or on the turtle's/ juggernaut's way.

Like I said, the main problem with Wastrel's skills is that they kill too fast. If they took two times more to kill, mesmers would still be efficient carrier killers, but at least could be countered through most of your suggestions. As it is, they kill them so fast, that no matter how fast you finish the mesmer of, his 1s and 3s recharge Wastrel's spells have been recharged and recasted by then.

This is especially worse when mesmers camp the opposing team's base entrances and that team has no monk. Even when they have players dedicated to chase them off instead of doing other important tasks, which is already an advantage for the mesmer's team; and even if those players keep killing the mesmers frequently, carriers will still get killed way too easily.

An addition to Number 3 there is the point that half decent mesmers will be able to rupt a sin's spike chain in the less than a second they aren't KDed for.

So, after reading the last few posts, it is quite clear that people aren't actually complaining about Wastrels mesmers, but with the very nature of the format. I find it remarkable how people don't seem to understand that random means random.

You're complaining about the nature of the format. That's got nothing to do with mesmers and roj monks. JQ is supposed to be random. Don't like it? Don't play it.

Could you please explain what it's supposed to be like then? As far as I'm concerned, JQ is designed exactly like what you've said.

So now you got a problem with the entire game's design?

Ganking other players -> 10-30 second window of opportunity -> ??? -> profit.
Not ganking other players -> your shrine gets capped/carrier killed -> ??? -> loss. Just a really simplified explanation.

You also seem to be forgetting that killing/snaring other players is actually a way of keeping NPCs and carriers alive.

Regarding bringing a sin, yes they can't cap but that's not the only playstyle in JQ. Like Jeydra said, no build can do every and anything. Sins can't cap, but damn are they good at ganking other players (therefore protecting their shrines/carriers) and can also gank carriers aswell and healers healing the carriers/shrines. Bringing a sin does not gimp your teams performance. Period. The only way anyone could ever gimp their team is by bringing a build that does not tailor to any of the three playstyles in JQ. The one build that most sins bring achieves two playstyles. Hardly gimping no? For this reason, warriors, dervs, paras and every other profession does have a place in JQ, as long as they play appropriately and to their professions strengths. After all, this is a casual format.

If you don't know what I mean by three playstyles in JQ, they are:

-Capping shrines
-Killing carriers
-Defending

All three are equally important. What's the point of capping shrines if someone is constantly killing your carriers? That's where Defending comes into play and killing other players is a form of defending.

So can rangers. What's your point? And, no. Wastrels mesmers can't kill other players. You'd have to be braindead to die to one.

Obviously. That's why we bring healing skills too. Piece of cake after that. Yes they are hard to outheal if you're not a dedicated healer, but again, isn't that obvious???? From what you've said, you seem to have a problem with the very nature of the format. It's random for a reason. Don't complain if you don't have a healer who can keep the shrine up. There's nothing you can do about it and it's definately not an indication of a build being overpowered or not. By your logic, having no healers on your team and seeing a fire ele cap a shrines must mean that fire eles are overpowered. Nerf! Nerf! Nerf! Not.

So now your basing a build's strength by the skill level of players? Btw, I can't remember the last time I've died to the NPCs capping a shrine with a roj monk. That must mean Roj is op right?

Additionally, I have no idea why you even mentioned bombers and that they have to respawn. In what way does that matter? PI has a recharge time too.

Again, you seem to be forgetting that killing other players is directly related to your jade collection. Also, lol, please read everything I say. "There's plenty of others ways around this." No way am I saying mesmers are the only alternative. It's just one of them.

Just because your reaction speed is slow, doesn't make something op. I never have any problem ganking players. If for some reason they manage to kill the carrier before I kill them, they deserved it. Believe it or not, there are some skilled players in JQ. They do not represent the majority.

Take a look at extremes now.
What would be more useful in JQ - a team composed of eight players that can cap very fast but can't kill others or a team that can do the opposite?
Since they couldn't cap, sooner or later the whole map would belong to the cappers; even if they went down really fast, they'd just rush one post in three people and eventually throw their skills at the NPCs. Imagine a match of 8 cappers v. 8 cappers, as well as 8 gankers v. 8 gankers.
Now, let's go away from the extremes. How about 7/1 ratio, or 6/2 ratio, or 5/3 ratio. On either side. What seems the most optimal?
To me it's really clear that cappers are much more important than gankers, including carrier-gankers, and that the team having more dedicated cappers (in terms of builds AND what the players are actually doing most of the time) usually wins.
I do agree that having one, max two physicals excelling at killing enemy squishies would give a big advantage, especially if they were mobile enough to keep an eye on the enemy cappers' positions. However, since JQ is totally randomised, as you remarked yourself, you will maximise your odds at winning if you, personally, bring a build that can cap, and cap reliably. You don't know what others will bring, and the optimised team is composed of cappers, so running a sin is counter-intuitive. It wouldn't be the case with organised formats, or if the mesmers truly dominated the scene, in terms of popularity - then we might eventually get down to people running either mesmers for capping/shutting down or sins for killing mesmers.
As it is now, totally random, you should be able to cap properly if you want to maximise your odds. If everyone thinks this way and brings capping builds, you are not only much more likely to win than with the opposite mindset, but also the game gets much more dynamic and interesting, as an additional bonus.

I'm very well aware of it. However, i pointed out that capping is more important than keeping your own NPCs alive, as well as killing carriers is more important than speeding and tending yours.
If you block the enemy team from getting any jade, and will control all the quarries 90+% of the time, effectively not letting the enemy carriers to even reach their destination, you're obliged to win. Sooner or later your own carriers from your 'home quarry' will deliver enough jade to win by attrition after the time runs out. And that's only in the case of enemy team really focused on ganking your carriers; what is much more likely is that once you cap their 'home quarry', they will dedicate most of their resources recapping it (as well as using some for yellow), effectively leaving your 'home carrier' undisturbed. So as long as you can block their quarries/carriers, you don't really have to bother about anything else (again, unless 7/8 opponents are running carrier-ganking builds and simply can't do anything else, but that's unlikely).

I believe you've said a bit too much with the second sentence quoted here, or i'm reading way too much into it
I am aware that JQ is a casual format, designed as a hot-join PvEvP for fun, and shouldn't really be played at any level of competitiveness. Heck, being so randomised it can't really be competitive, pointing out that it's for casual fun by design.
Within this mindset, yeah, there's a place for everyone - rit spirit spammers (the bloodsong/pain kind), ele warders, ranger touchers, and even wammos - after all, they can heal their carriers, too! But it's pretty obvious that those builds are much less likely to turn the tide of a JQ match and bring victory upon their team, right?
Yet when it comes to min/maxing the odds of winning, the possibility of getting the most optimised team without prior knowledge of what everyone else is bringing and what will the enemy bring, there are builds that clearly excel at JQ and those that are subpar in relation to the top ones. I'm not saying that ganking players or healing carriers is totally useless - if that was your initial impression, maybe i've used wrong wording before. All i'm saying is that it's far from optimal when it comes to getting the highest possibility of achieving a top team composition, and thus simply winning. The factor that you don't know what others on your team will bring or what the enemy will bring can't be ignored here, it can't even be marginalised, because it's really very prominent.

All three are equally important only if you can carry out at least two of them when using one build, or if you sync at least 6 players who specialise and share some tactics.
Mesmers can cap really fast, mesmers can kill carriers really fast and stable, mesmers can defend their own posts/carriers via interrupts, energy denial and sheer pressure - even if only an idiot will cast through Backfire, you still have to wait its duration out; even if it's easy to counter WW/WD as a player, you still have to use some skills, wasting energy and putting skills on the recharge. No other build can achieve it all, even at mediocre level - be it RoJ monks (no carrier killing), bombers (nothing but capping), sin gankers (no capping), healers (nothing but defending) or anything else.

They can't do it that fast, they are easier to disrupt (by kd, rupting, removing poison from NPCs). You stand a chance against a ranger as something else than a Wastrel sin (even a RoJ monk can severely gimp ranger's performance in JQ by Bane Signet and echoed Smite Condition).
No other profession can achieve what Wastrel's-based mesmers can do in JQ now.

No. The problem lies within several builds of one profession in relation to the nature of the format.
The format and its mechanics are fine, fun and enjoyable. The problem is that its basic premises are very much exploited and dominated by one profession. The key skills used to achieve it should be nerfed in PvP, however it might never occur because WW/WD/PI and other mesmer skills are probably also used in other PvP formats, which are the standard that makes skills change (that's just my guessing - if WW/WD are not used outside of JQ, they should be outright nerfed; if they are, they should be nerfed carefully ).
I'm also fully pro nerfing RoJ so it deals 20 less total damage in PvP at 16 smiting, simply because it's not used anywhere outside of JQ and it's much easier to make its damage lower rather than improve the AI at this point in the game.

No.
By my logic, people shouldn't bring anything that can't reliably cap or kill carriers to JQ. Then, after their ~5 skills are used for that, they can fill the rest of the slots with some utility to heal NPCs/carriers or some annoyances to block, disrupt or kill other players.
So if i don't have a healing monk and an ele caps my home quarry, i'd have eight players capable of retaking it on their own, rather than wasting time and ganking that ele. As i see it, constant capping and recapping is what JQ should be about, especially that no build can truly keep a quarry against 2-3 dedicated cappers, while another dedicated capper could simply recap the lost quarry within a matter of seconds.

What build/equipment are you running? Asking out of honest curiosity.
And of course that RoJ is broken in relation to JQ - one instance of one skill is enough to cap the whole quarry. It's a broken skill, and as pointed above, should be toned down. The difference between the builds of RoJ monks and WW/WD mesmers is that RoJ is much more prone to rupting and disabling (only one skill, with quite long recharge and cast time, you can fake-cast it but then you might end up simply burning your energy), while 1/4s Wastrel's Worry with 1s recharge time deals ~100 AoE damage. It's also worth noting that it's not dealt in packets, making SoA less useful than against RoJ.
Keep in mind that on top of WW/WD come other skills to make capping even faster and easier - Chaos Storm just to provide an example. Similar to RoJ, though not so powerful, but strong enough to push the mesmer's bar on the very top of the current meta.

Contagion's recharge is 20s, and on top of it, there's the respawn time and the time you need to recast your enchantments and get onto the spot.
PI's recharge is 12s and you don't waste time on dying.
Then again - bombers are more prone to disruption than mesmers because they need their enchantments to work at all. In fact, every other build is much more prone to disruption than PI/WW/WD mesmers - long cast-times of ele spells (sure, there's Glyph of Sacrifice, but it comes with a cost - especially clogging your skillbar), long cast-time and recharge of RoJ (also prone to being disabled by Signet of Humility), not to mention all the drawbacks of physicals when it comes to doing their job (which is, hopefully, capping or killing carriers).

I think we have a simple misunderstanding here.
I am stating that bringing more mesmers is the only solution against mesmers, as available right now. I related to your post only for the term of "countering", and provided with, in my opinion, elaborate enough explanation why no other build should be brought into JQ for mesmer-countering purposes.
To recap on the Wastrel sin vs rolling a mesmer: while a sin can kill enemy casters, including mesmers, faster and more stable, they can't do much else; a mesmer can at least throw Backfire on a mesmer, or burn their energy, or PI/PBlock them when they're casting a long-cast hex (Empathy, their own Backfire) - everything severely gimping the enemy mesmer's performance - while still being able to easily kill carriers, much faster and more reliably than any other profession, as well as capping at a decent rate.

That's your problem really. You can only see one playstyle. The fact is that a team of 8 N/A bombers is going to lose to any team with a competent turtle hunter, and a team of 8 Mesmers is going to lose to a more diverse team with defensive Monks. Mesmers are the best at killing undefended carriers, so your mindset that only cappers are useful makes Mesmers overpowered. You dismiss all the other builds that can handle Mesmers as "outrageous". Capping is not necessarily more important than keeping your own NPCs alive. If it was, the Mesmer would never be killing turtles because it's more important to cap.

^ This - defensive pure heal Monk is a perfectly fine template in JQ. I would know, because I used one.

Lol, that used to be my favourite way to play JQ.

Here's how to stop it. First, kill the Mesmer. Then, stop the Mesmer from getting there. How? You either snare + start killing the Mesmer in the middle of the map (it's the most convenient way to get to the base entrances), or cap the Archer shrines in the middle. If you do neither, expect none of your carriers to get through. That has nothing to do with Mesmers though; I did the same thing with Water Eles for a while. Don't imply having to chase them off as "unimportant". They're killing your turtles. You can have the entire map capped but if you can't bring turtle in you are going to lose.

You can't really wait out Diversion because if you do, there's a good chance carrier gets away (run it with Make Haste etc), unless you are already in a dangerous spot before the carrier even spawns.

Good Sin chains will not be easily interrupted by the Mesmer (if they aren't using fast activating skills, they'll have an IAS).

More than anything else, turtle hunters need time. Especially if they're not using a snare, you can get the turtle away before they can kill it. You CAN also stop them from getting there. JQ isn't typically a competitive arena because more often than not you're killing bots, but the next time there's a double JQ weekend (or when there are less bots in the arena), try playing the Mesmer as a dedicated turtle killer. You'll soon see what takes you out.

I'm done.

Back-and-forth quarry capping mostly results in the carriers running around in circles outside the base (unless it gets killed and a fresh one spawns from the quarry). Cap wars, in my experience, are long, drawn-out ordeals. And that's why not everyone runs a capper build.

Man . . . drkn. You really know how to brain my damage lol. Would definately appreciate a tl;dr version from you next time.

From this, it's evident that you value capping much more highly than the other two playstyles. Which is wrong. The other two playstyles have the capabilitiy to completely nullify capping.

I remember one match where I had an absolutely garbage team when it comes to capping and the kurzick side had a somewhat decent team (iirc). The team I was in struggled to cap points. Luckily, the opponent team were rather stupid. I was running an illusion mes and just stood around outside their base and took turns killing each carrier as they came in. No one came after me because, like you, they did not understand the importance of defending their carriers. So, despite the fact we hardly ever had control of the shrines, we still won when the timer ran out (that's right no team got 10 points) because those few occasions when my team managed to cap the shrine, we got carriers in and the kurzick side only got one cariier in! Took them until near the end to realise I was ganking all their carriers.

You make a lot of blank statements like this with little reasoning behind them. I'd like to see some elaboration. The second part of that paragraph made no sense to me.

Are you sure about? You said earlier that having 1/2 carrier or player skillers can be advantageous but the thing is, everyone runs meta wastrels mesmers, roj monks or necro bombers. You do have an idea of what people bring. I know that the majority of people who play JQ do not understand that killing carriers and defending shrines/carriers are just as important as capping and will most likely run capping builds. So I run builds that achieve the other two playstyles because a team with a combination of all three will always beat a team of full cappers. I don't think I would have gotten as much wins as I did if I brought a capping build. My win:lose ratio is quite incredible

Me as a sin:

1. I kill you
2. You're dead and useless until you resurrect
3. I kill you

I would think that it's fairly obvious that outright removing someone from the vicinity is far more stronger than forcing them to use skills which they would have to use on something therefore dealing damage in some way which would put your npcs/carrier at risk, even if just a little. But it would open up the opportunity for someone else to come and finish it off rather than doing damage that may not have been adequate enough.

You have listed things mesmers can do but I think it should have been quite clear, even to you, that there is one thing wastrels mesmers can't do. Kill anyone. Again, let me repeat. No build exists that can perform all three playstyles at an optimum level.
Wastrels mesmers can cap shrines and kill carriers but are weak at defending.
Illusion mesmers can kill carriers and snare/kill players but can't cap shrines very well (they still can but one npc at a time )
Rangers are great for killing carriers and snaring players and can even cap shrines. Only drawback is the speed at which they kill.
Sins can kill players and carriers well but can't cap.

You can kd mesmers...
You can remove hexes....
Don't rupt them, instead, remove their hexes...
Don't forget, the wastrel skills are spells and there are ways to deal with spell ... I'll let you figure those out yourself.

That's your opinion. However, that is not what JQ is all about.

You'll be surprised.

I run the usual setup.

Also, regarding your roj vs wastrels argument. One word: Kill. You can't rupt the mesmer but you can sure as hell kill it before it gets to a shrine to even cap. Yet another reason why killing is just as important.

And you make a too big point about killing cappers. Sure, i agree with it, but if you don't have shrines capped, what's your job? That place is entirely about luck, about what you get in your team and what opponents get.
The point i will agree with is that most melee players in JQ have no clue what they're doing and they are usually making you fail. But, the problem here is :
- if you go in as a sin, you need to expect cappers in your team
- if you go in as a capper, you won't care much about not having carriers killers

You can come with " most players in JQ are running roj/nec/mes anyway", ok but it's still an average and about luck... How come i never ever get any monk or ele in my party in RA although i see many in district ? . Besides, when formats are random, they should be playable whatever the team composition is . It used to be true before 2008, but builds changed, formats did not.

Today, JQ is more likely used as a fast faction farming, with players running the most easy and OP build without caring much..

Quick post, since it's important.

If you argue that going in as a Sin means you "need to expect cappers in your team", then the second line should be "if you go in as a capper, you need to expect defensive characters that can keep your carriers alive".

The fact that fewer people play defensive characters amplifies the effectiveness of pure carrier killers ... and makes them appear overpowered.

Btw Elnino AFAIK Illusion Mesmers can't kill carriers as effectively as Dom mesmers because they can be outhealed by a RoJ - however, the area they are superior is when a real Monk is defending the carrier, when they can keep the carrier snared and so delay the carrier anyway, while the Dom Mes is powerless. It's still arguable though that a Water Ele is better for that situation, but Water snares did take some fairly big nerfs over the past couple of years (increased recharge + energy on Winter's Embrace + Freezing Gust), and the fact that carriers have a fair amount of armour.

An interesting point. However you don't have to go pure killer to take down carrierers. Any class speccing 11 or 12 into dom can use WD/WW to kill carriers efficiently.

Well, it depends on what skills you bring on your bar. I find inspired/revealed enchantment to be quite effective against the roj monk's restful breeze. Even if the carrier doesn't die, it doesn't matter because you would have slowed it down severely and also lured the monk away from the shrine leaving it vulnerable. Just like what you've said about the dedicated healer.

Water eles are strong. I'm actually trying to come up with a build for them in JQ. Only problem is that they lack a good heal like Ether Feast.

I've run Shatterstone/Glowing Ice/Shard Storm/Maelstrom(for shrines or if you're super brave and time maelstrom to hit RoJ on lemmings)/Ice Spikes/Armor of Mist/Aura of Restoration/Water Attunement with a lot of success. You're not going to be capping a lot of Ranger shrines, but you can cap quarries pretty easily. The main thing is the huge snaring ability you have on multiple targets and still dishing out respectable damage on carriers(although you're not going to kill a healed one, you can really slow it down). A minor bonus is you almost always get the initial cap on yellow with Armor of Mist's long duration.

Anyway I suppose this is a minor derailment but it's a good break from the dissertations on the last page.

Ele self-heal is considerably stronger than Mesmer self-heal @_@ Also in all fairness you have to agree that actually killing the carrier > delaying it, i.e. the real difference between Water Ele and Dom Mes only comes into play against real Monks (and as it happens, when killing other players matters).

This was my favourite Water build in JQ for quite a while:

When Illusion of Pain was 1s cast, the same build worked exceedingly well with IoP instead of Conjure Nightmare. Relative to the Dom Mes this build aims to stay on the field for much longer.

Because Dom Mes is so versatile, a worthy option is to load up on the Wastrel's skills and then bring some snares. This was my favourite JQ build until I tried running purely defensive Monk last weekend:

The self-healing is a lot less reliable, which means you can't camp the carrier lines for very long if the other team doesn't let you. One snare is also considerably weaker than the Water Ele. In return the capping potential is quite strong, allowing you to play cap when you need it, and you punch through RoJ Monks easily (+ you can run through Archer shrines without eating a long Cripple, you just lose half your health doing it). It's certainly possible to optimize this build even more for pure carrier hunting at the expense of capping power.

After I tried running pure heal, this became my favourite JQ bar:

Triggers the flux. The build can hold a shrine vs. all the meta builds easily, often 2v1 and sometimes even 3v1. The big drawback is of course it can't cap at all. Lack of speedboost is a problem as well, but it tends not to be very mobile (just camp purple / green) so it's not that critical.

In all cases these bars have serious drawbacks, hence I don't find any overpowered. It might surprise some to say that my win % is highest with the pure healer, but that's just the way it is.

The way I see it is the build has become so common place through its effectiveness that people start to complain. From my experience with a Mesmer in JQ I have learned its PI who is the real culprit, without it shrine capping would become very difficult.

Your also missing that its difficult to cap ranger shrines with WW/WD. Sometimes I can do it but when my ping gets to high its impossible to do with the Rangers constantly spamming Sundering Shot and Bestial Fury. Its even difficult to do with chaos storm unless you echo it but that takes a lot of energy and skill slots out of the original meta build.

I don't think the problem is the skills themselves but that the different PvP formats call for certain skills because of the situations that arise in them(Carries don't use their one skill unless something is blocking them and this gives power to WW/WD). This is why so many skills go unused and are considered crap.

When you start changing skills because they shine in a certain format your going to either make the skills useless across the board or create problems elsewhere. The best solution is to tweak the formats and in this case spread out the shrine NPCs so they don't get nuked in 6 seconds. This would slow down the PI build without making it useless.

Maybe:

Mighty Roar - 4 recharge
Shout
The creature unleashes its anger at being attacked in a primal roar. (This skill has no effect.)

Added to the Hauler and Carrier. Causes the last packet of Wastrel's Demise to be wasted, and reduces the rate at which they can be Worried to once every 4 seconds at most. Chuck in a neat and loud sound effect, and call it a flavor addition.

Edit: Actually, should probably be a maximum of 3 Wastrel's Demise packets and 1 Wastrel's Worry packet with the best timing, due to reaction time, cast time, and aftercast.

I like that idea. Mesmers would still be effective at killing carriers, but at least they would require a bit more skill to do so, and should you fight them, you could have a chance to kill them before they kill your carrier.