Big Update & Feedback: rant or praise [MERGED]

From the moment you fire your interrupt, there's a 1.25 second window where you can't use *any* skills, or attacks.

I still play Mesmer PvE. I do damage through empathy, backfire, shatter delusions, and energy burn, and I use skills like diversion (even though 3seconds seems like overkill now) and shatter enchantment for crowd control.

One thing, though. Energy drain is really about equal to energy tap right now, with a 2 second cast time difference. This needs to be changed.

Yeah that's pretty much the build I used to use before I came up with my latest one. Oh, and it sucked. Bad.

On behalf of energy denial mesmers everywhere: Good going on ruining the game for us.

Now that makes no sense whatsoever. It'll kill the FoTM interrupt spammers, sure... but I only carried one interrupt (Savage). Doesn't seem worth carrying an interrupt at all now.

Oh well, the abusers make the casuals pay again.

I don't listen to people who don't back up their statements with evidence.

OH DEITY OF CHOICE FORGIVE ME I HAVE TO SAY THIS

TRY IT YOU`LL LIKE IT........i almost died (Alka-Seltzed comercial)

I have just been tinkering with my distracting shots and i have to say that i have no quarrels with this update.
The ability to view my enemies stances is amazing...just amazing.

Top marks Anet!!

The interrupt nerf was not a case of abusers making the casuals pay. Quickshot should be faster than interrupts. It wasn't. Problem fixed. Oh and Kinetic Armor owns now. If it's not shattered.

Nice update. However:

I think the main problem is, mesmers didnt get anything good out of it, only bad. They probably should have buffed some useless mesmer skills like mind wrack so that mesmer players have something to go "hey, something new for me to try" about. I think a good general policy for future balance changes is to include something to look forward to, for every class, for both pve/pvp players, for both casual/expert players, etc.

notes:

Elems in pvp, fire/air, no love?

Aura of the lich now has half healing removed? Doesnt that mean its even better now?

Dwarven Battle Stance? Rotgort's Invocation? etc... there's still a lot of severely useless skills out there.

Attack speed cap... awww, couldnt they try to nerf IWAY in some other fashion? Even though I dont use it, I -like- insane attack speeds. Hundred blades should hit 100 times lol :P

I <3 anet

What's wrong with it? Interrupts still chain *faster* than normal attacks. It doesn't affect how often you can fire a single interrupt, doesn't affect your DPS compared to a normal attack. In fact, with only one interrupt, you won't notice a difference at all.

Oh and a note for the "no love for fire," uh, check back to the SF update. That was more than enough love for fire. People needed more of a reason to use Magnetic Aura and Kinetic Armor, and also water magic in general wasn't working right on the slowdown hexes.

WTF? Warriors got mainly pve treatments and almost non in the pvp department where they needed it most. Who will be bringing crap like reposte and deadly reposte in pvp anyway.

Change savage slash please, have it more act like disrupt chop, or atleast change it to adrenaline based. Hammers really need to do higher single hit damage or buff up the swing speed a bit.

Wonder what kind of hidden pve nerfs they've implemented this time around

Everyone greatly improved except rangers we are nerfed again, but we are not alone because music was nerfed too, ditch those violins in war camp please!

I will with hold my negative comments except for the fact that this is the first game I can remember that updates take away from the game rather then add to it.

It is time to shelf the game.

49 skill nerfs in 2 updates. that is pathetic.

No arguments on the earth/water changes, they are nice.

As for fire, I was hoping they'd make most of the poor skills slightly more usuable. I didnt particularly agree with the SF update since fireball and meteor weren't that bad to begin with. And both spells are merely average for pvp anyway.

The Mesmer change is actually a mixed blessing. I can't tell you how annoying it was to have to spam something stupid to get rid of a secondary Mesmer's hex breaker (apparently one of three skills Mesmer secondaries ever took). Nerfing hex breaker improves all our other hexes. It's a good change.

However, Holy Veil is now one of the greatest hex removers in the game. WTF? Monks really needed to be able to remove a hex every ten seconds for FIVE ENERGY...and they get to remove the hex they WANT? (Monk: HOLY VEIL, wait for Backfire (a SIX SECOND CAST now), remove holy veil, recast holy veil.) Sure the skill needed a buff, but to buff it into this???

Energy deinal Mesmers are dead now. Few will mourn them. Although Energy Drain is not worth that Elite slot at all anymore, Energy Tap got pretty good as a means to restore your energy pool. The one thing I really detest in the energy denial change is the 30 second recharge time on ED. OMFG, yet another long-ass recharge time skill for the Mesmer. And Mindwrack, which used to be only arguably stupid, is now pitiful beyond all other skills than perhaps Otyugh's Cry. Since one can never get another person's energy down to nothing, why bother?

The Diversion change is really quite aggravating. One nerf or the other would have been okay, but to both increase it's casting time *and* its recharge time is just...simply too much. It was already one of the only dependable skills that were semi-spammable for the Mesmer. There are now only seven Mesmer skills with recharge times of five or less: Soothing Images (mana-nerfed), Mind Wrack (energy denial-nerfed), Illusion of Haste, Conjure Phantasm, Distortion, Wastrel's Worry, and "inspired hex/enchantment" (which really don't count, b/c they actually have 20+second 'cooldowns'). So of the FIVE skills a Mesmer can spam, two actually do something. ...and there are *Rangers* complaining that they have to sit around and look at the scenery? At least they have some skills that recharge faster than once every 15-20 seconds.

The reworking of the Skill Monitor has been long in coming, but will actually make life easier, and keeps Mesmers arguably useful rather than relegating them to official status as the most pointless profession in Guild Wars.

I can only hope some of the pending changes improve the profession.

The other changes seem amazingly good. OMG, Water is useful, finally! Hammers are better than ever! Overall some very positive changes. Thanks ANET.

cmb

Yeah after some thought, I'd have to say the next update will be for the crap Air Skills.

they removed it from the description, it wasn't there to begin with.