Azure The Heartless.3261

> @"czerwoni.9563" said:

> ok so i got a question, is rev still to new and people havent figured out how to play that class or is it just that bad? i tried it and it was fun for pve but in pvp all i did was use the dragon thing to push people out of circles legit all i needed to do since my team killed them off fast/

Rev is bad. Power Herald (Glint/Shiro) puts out a lot of damage, but for that damage you have minimal condi clear. if you encounter any condition oriented build you will lose, provided they can avoid your Sword 4 and Sword 3.

1. Renegade's shortbow is clunky and its skills can miss people moving unaffected by swiftness or jumping.

2. Mace is clunky.

3. Shield is clunky, and the fact that it makes you stationary opens you up to unblockables.

4. Sword mainhand is clunky. The projectiles on Sword 2 often miss, the autoattack is awkward, and unrelenting gets put on full cd if the opponent dodges or moves away. unrelenting also doesnt count as an evade until the first hit connects apparently, so if you come into contact with something like a shocking aura with sword 3 you will be stunned and it will go on full CD.

5. Hammer is clunky and suitable only for wvw/support.

You can do well with some revenant builds, but it takes significant amounts of work to get to that point and the end result can be easily countered by merely switching damage types.

Not to mention that Mallyx, the only semblance of a condi clear trait that isnt stark ventari (which, mind you, is also clunky and geared for support rather than fighting), puts more conditions on you and then gives you resistance, which can be ripped or corrupted.

And its grandmaster trait gives -you- torment.

> @"Turk.5460" said:

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > Any thief that does significant damage is too powerful, and their playstyle is cheesy and annoying regardless of how fragile/easily countered it is.

> >

> > Because shortbow and stealth.

>

> Guardian block, heal, and aegis spam - cheesy and annoying

> Warrior regen and invuln and FC - cheesy and annoying

> Ranger knockback + rapid fire then let pet do all the work - cheesy and annoying

> Mesmer 40 page thread - cheesy and annoying

> Engy photon forge rotation spam - cheesy and annoying

> Necro aoe condition *spam* - cheesy and annoying

>

> Is there anything besides current state of ele and rev that *isn't* cheesy and annoying?

> None of these are or will ever be as easily countered as P/P thief.

No, wait, you see, if you play it then it automatically isn't cheesy.

Because you play it.

Normal people play those classes. Thief mains are all borderline monsters with no souls.

I think it's something like:

S Tier:

* Mesmer (Chronomancer, Mirage)

A Tier

* Necro (Scourge)

B Tier

* Warrior (SpellBreaker)

* Warrior (Core)

* Engineer (HoloSmith)

* Guardian (DragonHunter)

* Guardian (FireBrand)

* Thief (Deadeye)

* Ranger(Druid)

* Ranger(SoulBeast)

C Tier

* Thief(Daredevil)

* Necro (Reaper)

* Mesmer (Core)

* Warrior (Berserker)

* Revenant (Power Herald ONLY)

* Elementalist (Tempest)

* Thief (Core)

* Guardian (Core)

D Tier

* Elementalist (Weaver)

* Elementalist (Core)

* Ranger(Core)

* Engineer(Core)

* Engineer(Scrapper)

F Tier

* Necro (Core)

* Revenant (Non-power Herald Builds)

* Revenant (Renegade)

* Revenant (Core)

A good thief is particularly impressive to me to have as an ally, when I'm playing war. Good allies are not class specific ofc but something about having a hitman drop in and cut down a fleeing target/interrupt an opponent trying to set up to burst me is thematically pleasing to me. That kind of interplay is what made thief my second class pickup.

After that, its tied between Guard, specifically reaper necros, and Ele thematically. (Just being decent/aware transcends class preference though.)

Any thief that does significant damage is too powerful, and their playstyle is cheesy and annoying regardless of how fragile/easily countered it is.

Because shortbow and stealth.

Nah. CC should not be guaranteed. Aegis is a good counterweight to stunlocking.

I'm all for stupid-long-cast windups doing CC through stability if you get hit by them, like Drop the Hammer. But not all CC.

As far as Aegis, we already have unblockables/boon corruption/boon theft to deal with that. Let's not ruin guards.

With the Sylvari coming to terms with the fact that they are the minions of an Elder Dragon, and the Humans dealing with the betrayal of one of their gods, I can't help but wonder what is next in terms of major developments.

Is the major splintering or inversion of leadership values (and the potential chaos thereof) the main driving conflict for these story releases? Should we expect to see more? Are we going to see inversions of the current leadership/belief/faith systems of the major races (for example: Titans returning, maybe some charr want to worship them again. Inquest overtakes Asuran Arcane Council, some manipulation of the Norn by the Spirits of the Wild for some reason)?

Just curious about where people speculating about the general storyline think it's heading, given what we have so far.

Several Factors I think.

The content devs and the balance devs have to sync their work, to avoid breaking each other's components. You also can't just implement a fix when you have a schedule for releases. There's a lot of teams that handle different aspects of the game, and what you introduce would require them all to update their platforms in the middle of work, which can cause a lot of internal issues with the final testing before shipping the release, etc.

Also, for some releases, it is better to watch the community and make sure the issue identified is not just player whining but something the metagame cannot solve (namely, something so imbalanced that it has no counterbuild) .

I don't know why it takes them half a year to take a shot at balance for pvp, but I'm assuming its largely because the majority of the playerbase is in PVE so the pvp dev team is smaller and has less clout on how often they get to implement changes for their respective sphere of influence. A very small fraction of us as GW2 players regularly dabble in pvp, and we don't need to spend gems very often for anything other than fashion because gear changes and stat changes are free as far as pvp is concerned, so as long as everything works it seems like we can be largely ignored unless there's a major issue with a particular class .

'Sucks, and I'd like to think it's a staffing issue rather than just a callous "we're too small a group to matter to the higher ups", but what'cha gonna do. If you play pve you get attention, if you don't and just take a break you reduce server load.

This has probably been said multiple times, but I don't run cheat engines when playing multiplayer games because most of them have a guard program that either refuses to let you play or flags you for cheating even if the process is running.

That and, if the publisher were to assert I cheated in correlation with some jerk reporting me for being bad, I would be fighting a losing battle if they could point to a cheat engine process running at or around that time.

And I surely wouldn't do this for weeks on end.

> @"FyzE.3472" said:

> **The majority of people are just lazy and play what is the easiest atm.**

That's useful behavior though, might I add. It shines a light on things that need to be rebalanced.

Lmao the RIP wave

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"EpicTurtle.8571" said:

> > > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > I'd love to see Mimic reworked into something interesting, almost like a fullcounter type skill where if you absord an attack you take no damage and the skill flips over allowing you to use whatever you were hit with.

> >

> > Legitimately that's exactly what it was before except it only worked on projectiles.

>

> That, but make it good. Imagine stealing a Holosmith's prime light beam.


rip engie

> @"Yukio blaster.9082" said:

> 1. ChronoPhantasma : This trait its the main reason of the current bunker Chrono meta, the OP factor for this trait isn't the dmg but the visual noise . cos **you can literally spam phantasms up to 18+ in a chain if not interrupted so you are literally a RAID BOSS however the AOE dmg can outrun than and destroy the Illusions** WARS 2 , plus **not a lot of mesmers can perfect this build to 1v2 for a fair time** and im sure that if they nerf this trait hard or make a cap to the phantasms spawn the chrono will be banished to oblivion in sPVP so careful with it PLZ .

>

> **My suggestion is to make a Q for phantasms spawn don't make the spawn phantasm destroy the previous one that's Bad mechanic and will make Chronophantasma useless.**

> 2. **Make Continuum Split resurrect you** if you cast it predeath with 1sc stun, this is not OP actually it make sense and it's gonna be a great trade for the next nerfs to Chronophantasma so the Chrono stay playable .

> One of the nerfs that Anet did That i hated a lot is the one they did to Continum splite when it could negate fall dmg if casted before you fall . that was a SO fun mechanic and very hard to time out so **just revert that nerf Back**.

> My point here is **No one will play an underdog class or build so nerf chronophantasma (no skill trait) buff Continum splite(skill-full mechanic) . and everyone is happy the Chrono main players will love that and the ones who swapped to chrono for Chronophantasma will look somewhere else maybe to RENEGADE OMEGALUL.**

I'm just going to let the bold stand on its own merit.

> @"rank eleven monk.9502" said:

> Pvp might be dead for you, but it's not for a ton of people. Stop the hyperboles.

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > @"Axelteas.7192" said:

> > > Hack dont kill the PVP, **this died when Gw2 became free to play**. Anyone can create alter accounts and put toons afk to manipulate combats.

> >

> > Yep, this is a major problem we all have to deal with. People with no prior experience or even an investment in the game logging on, thinking "hey lets go play ranked for leaderboard" and tanking teams, or people creating alts with [redacted way to manipulate matches] to tilt games.

> You have to be rank 20 to queue for ranked. So this is untrue.

Did not know this. Thanks for bringing that to my attention~

@Topic

I wouldn't say its dead, even with people being jerks. It just takes work beyond what many people are willing to give, and tolerance beyond what many people have.

All that's done is concentrate the pvp scene into people that are really good or really dedicated.

And the people willing to cheat but we don't acknowledge those.

> @"will de grijze jager.6594" said:

> And there it is! Get called out and need to offend people. Really aldut like.

Hey, telling someone they're on a high horse usually doesn't go over respectfully. Just sayin.

Even if there are a handful of mesmers actively trying to keep the class overperforming, there are also some willing to discuss what is or isn't broken, and what is or isn't a learn to play issue. Instead of accusing -all- of them of behaving in this way (and then being outraged when they berate you for it) , highlight specifically what you think is broken. The solution for nerfing is probably more than mesmer mains are willing to give and less than some other mains are willing to take, but we have to start somewhere.

By now it is established that Elusive mind, Chronophantasma and Signet of the Ether are overperforming with the recent rework. If that kills the visual clutter issue, fine. I think there are some areas where damage can be toned down, but if the damage is telegraphed well enough I can ignore that issue for now. If we keep it too general the balance will hamstring mesmer mains, not fix the problem, or both.

You dont.

> @"KaporHabakuk.6219" said:

> CC em,block+evade+dodge.You have healing signet and zerker stance for resistance+3 condies on burst and 1 on wep swap packed with high hp pool.Shouldnt be a problem.Well at least if you talking about 1v1 :)

Nah it's a problem.

Resistance can be corrupted and stripped. **NEVER** use the active healing signet skill against scourges while in melee range.

Condi application, including _blindness_, can cause cleansing ire to whiff, unless you are using longbow. And if you are using longbow, you might as well range them anyway.

Basically leave Scourge to pistol pistol thieves, deadeye, and things that can strike from range. Only go in to interrupt heals or pressure when the scourge is going to down. Theyre really good versus anything melee, and really bad vs anything ranged.

Code for Revenant, because the spec is about as useless as wielding a potato in combat.

> @"rank eleven monk.9502" said:

> After all those ... great quality threads here, I really thought this was going to be serious.

Lmao you expected the wrong thing

It's going to punish people that solo main and have never tried to master anything else. It has a ring of truth though, so I'm kind of curious what people think, even if it never gets implemented.

Seeing as how balance patches go through long periods of mediation and sometimes get dropped midseason, it has a _slim_ potential to be a stopgap for overpowered specs.

It requires people to at least play two classes, yes. But given the strong opinions several of us have about certain comps/builds, you'd think that would be a given.

> @"Kako.1930" said:

> I wanted to post an update to this:

>

> I played only a few matches last night, but using standard character models and increasing the character limit to highest appeared to solve this problem for me.

Good to know. At least the people that know about this can avoid having their matches hamstrung. My rig can handle highest settings, but obv it's still an issue. player vs player should lean toward the minimalist side, so people can see why they lose and what animations they need to avoid clearly.

/ramble

> @"FyzE.3472" said:

> Also, if DE uses an action camera, there is no laser :)

>

> But mesmer is still more broken lol. Wake up people!

Just a note, Mesmer still needs to be fixed, but that is also a huge issue and we should address immediately after.

We need to be able to see the majority of big damage attacks before they hit us, regardless of what class initiates them, especially if they are outside of melee range.

_Wait, who uses action camera-_

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> But there would be a telegraph. You could still see the the mirror blade or stun daze and react to it.

Doesn't that depend on the location of the caster? If they are close to you or behind you, you have less time to react to the initial blade.

That being said, I concede on that one point. Camera angle is not a suitable excuse, if the telegraph exists it exists.

That is a portion of Mesmer's core though. I would rather the focus be on the phantasms/elite specs rather than general Mesmer performance, so I'll cool down on the wild rhetoric.

Something -does- need to be done though. I'm still taking issue with the people pretending it's fine.

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > > > @"Jojo.6590" said:

> > > >

> > >

> > > > Mesmer can initiate burst from stealth.

> > > When not played with Mass Invis the mesmer has 3 seconds stealth, every semi decent player knows when to dodge when a mesmer goes into stealth. This is a very not so good player problem in PvP. Stop complaining about something only very not so good player cry about and that since gamerelease 2012... Pure glass power shatter is still a not viable build, very hard to play vs not very not so good player. It is only a good newbie and baddies-killer. Its ridiculous to cry about such a build.

> >

> > What if I don't see the mesmer go into stealth? lets say they've entered stealth behind a brick wall and I'm not in combat.

> > What if the mesmer -Is- running mass invis?

> > What if the memser is running Torch, decoy, and prismatic understanding? Decoy still stealths you if you dont have a target in range selected, and it wont spawn a clone to give you away if you so choose.

> > What if the mesmer has entered stealth behind me, behind an obstacle and has blinked into GS range to set up burst?

> > These are all situations you can run into on the field that would make counting to dodge burst not effective.

> >

> > Not every situation starts out with you visually identifying the mesmer.

> > Not that any of this detracts from the point that "Mesmer can initiate burst from stealth". That is a fact. Stealth has no telegraph. if it does, I'd like spammable backstab back.

>

> If you get jumped by a Power Mesmer you can see the Mirror blade even if they're stealthed. If you dodge the mirror blade, you're golden. Most of their burst is gone. If they open with the stun you can stunbreak and dodge since you'll know the burst is coming. [Like this](

>

> If the mesmer is running torch, decoy, and prismatic understanding that means they either aren't running portal, the daze mantra or blink, and they've invested in a traitline that's going to make them significantlly less threatening damagewise so you would actually be much more likely to kill them. The opportunity cost of not having the stun mantra, not having the stunbreak with blink, and not having portal which is easily the most powerful utility skill in PvP would be extremely devestating, especially since burst mesmer is a +1er and they'd be giving away so much mobility.

Yes. That's not the point I'm trying to make, though. My intent was to prove that there are situations in which mesmers can open on you from stealth, not their respective viabilities.

My issues are largely with the overperformance of Chrono and Mirage, not core Mesmer or its associated traits. I provided those scenarios to prove that there are situations in which a mesmer can open on you with no telegraph, specifically to address the rant that tries to discredit everyone claiming that mesmer is unbalanced.

> @"EpicTurtle.8571" said:

> Phantasmal swordsman only gives might if the Mesmers melee strike hits you, it's also rooted while attacking

> Avenger has to charge into you, it doesn't deal it's damage from 900 range.

> Defenders radius is 240, although it could use a smaller cap on it's damage, 200 or 250% and maybe a reduced taunt duration.

> Disenchanter actually can't hit the same target multiple times, the projectile just goes away if there are not enough viable targets.

> None of the skills require you to get in range of your target yes, but 3/5 require the phantasm to do so, and you can just walk away from 2 of them.

> Mental Defense's Defender is bugged currently, the bug is what makes this a half decent trait otherwise I think it's appropriate for a GM tier provided both versions of Defender get their damage cap lowered to 250% or 200%

>

> SotE, lots of mesmer mains agree that this is a problem, or that it's interaction with Chronophantasma is a problem.

>

> Again, a lot of mesmer mains agree this is also a problem with it's ridiculous synergy with a lot of other traits in various lines.

>

> Again, the might is only if the mesmer hits you with the melee part. Are you going to complain about the Vuln on Rapid Fire too? Or Bladestorm? Or Whirling Defense? Or Thunderclap or Shock Shield? On Death Spiral? Or basically the mountains of other skills and passive traits that apply Vuln with abandon?

>

> Continuum Split only refreshes the illusion recharges if you spend your entire CS casting them and Signet of Ether and if you destroy the Continuum Rift, none of the skills get restored either. Continuum Split only lasts a maximum of 6 seconds too. Assuming you don't catch on and interrupt or dodge any of the summons, Chronomancer spamming phantasm skills frantically sure will get a lot of phantasms out because you were complacent AF. This is not to say Chronophantasma doesn't need to be reworked (it does). And the heal from SotE is a pithy 350.

I appreciate the feedback on this. I'm looking at this again to make sure I have the overperforming sections as isolated as possible.

> @"Vieux P.1238" said:

> > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > @"Vieux P.1238" said:

> > > Really????? is this thread for real???? Rather to learn how to counter a class you don't like to fight, you rather have them removed from the match???

> > > Can this thread be deleted? This is really not constructive & again pushes the lazy playing instead of just forcing yourself to actually learn to skill play & learn how to counter.

> > > sigh....:(

> >

> > Hahaha~

> >

> > Okay, tell you what. When Mesmer gets balanced we can revisit this thread again and see if L2P still applies, mkay?

> >

> Hahaha~

>

> Okay, tell you what. When players gets skill's instead of relying on passives we can revisit this thread again and see if L2P still applies, mkay?

So now? :3 All the passives got nerfed.

Except for...

y'know.

_The ones that didn't._

> @"Vieux P.1238" said:

> Really????? is this thread for real???? Rather to learn how to counter a class you don't like to fight, you rather have them removed from the match???

> Can this thread be deleted? This is really not constructive & again pushes the lazy playing instead of just forcing yourself to actually learn to skill play & learn how to counter.

> sigh....:(

Hahaha~

Well no, not just me, it would have to be a team majority.

So three people~

Then Arenanet can see which classes people dislike fighting the most and use that as a balance metric!