pico.6402 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Curunen.8729 said: > Why do we play Mesmer? > > Because it's the only reason GW2 is worth playing compared to all the other generic fantasy/techy classes. > > The day I stop playing Mesmer is the day I stop playing GW2. Amen. Got the same, if not Mesmer I would never start plaing this game, and it would be huge lost for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyroatheist.9031 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > @FLEUR.7458 said: > > > I've been playing GW2 since beta, and because in original GW I played Mesmer (and followed the release of the Mesmer class since its announcement), my first character and main was of course a Mesmer. I've done all of my achievement hunting, story missions, map completion, etc on my Mesmer. Though I have had alts for a long time, I never really played them beyond just completing the story. I always sub-par geared them and took no time to learn rotations because they were just stand by alts in case I ever grew bored of my original profession. > > > > > > At release of PoF I specced mirage, played it for a bit - got a little into the story, and then I did something I havent done before - I switched to my viper reaper. I literally melted everything in the story line, had no problem in map completion, never died, did tons of damage. It sort of made me wonder why I even play mesmer. Then I realized I had grown comfortable in a niche. > > > > > > My mesmer was useful for 3 things: > > > > > > Fractals (if a mesmer wasnt already in the group) > > > Raids > > > HP trains > > > > > > But outside of those instances (in which other professions can perform easier and with less hostility from other players, and with an easier rotation/utility knowledge) my mesmer is pretty useless. Its fallen short in PvP and WvW. > > > > > > And so, I guess I'm just wondering now - why do we play this class? > > > > Well, lets see. > > #PvE > > ###Open World and Story > > So I've geared up my mirage in full vipers/sinister etc, and it's actually incredibly solid open world compared to what mesmer has had to struggle with since launch. > > When specced appropriately, the amount of damage it can unload on a very regular basis is very respectable. It also has the capability, with a quick weapon and > > couple major trait swaps, to respec into a high sustain dps boss-killing build. When doing bounty trains in completely random mish-mashes of players, I hit top dps > > of a large squad every single time unless one of the bounties has a cancerous anti-mesmer mod. This basically demonstrates that mirage is able to produce > > extremely reliable single target dps in non-optimal scenarios; perfect for open world fights. Same goes for all the story stuff: melt normal things, minor respec for > > bosses to melt those too. > > ###Fractals and Dungeons > > Don't bring your mirage here...but you don't need to. Chrono exists! Chrono still exists and is still one of the very best classes you can slot into a party to make it > > drastically better. A properly played chrono is an extremely valuable player in all fractals and dungeons. > > ###Raids > > Obviously, the chronotank is still the meta of metas. It's challenging to play, extremely vital to the performance of a group, and absolutely required. Mirage and > > power mesmer are also solid choices for raid DPS now on many, though not all, fights. You're not going to top the QT dps charts, but you very well might get top > > dps in actual raid parties due to the extreme reliability of dps that the builds enable. > > > > #PvP > > Mirage is a decent duelist, condie chrono is still a solid choice, portal and moa and still portal and moa. Mesmer still and likely always will have somewhat of a slot...but honestly who plays PvP these days... > > > > #WvW > > For roaming and small groups, both mirage and chrono are extremely powerful, in a variety of builds at that. Full glassy burst chrono is still potent, condie chrono is still excellent, full support chrono is a valuable player in a havoc group. Mirage is an excellent WvW condition duelist, and can be sorta shoe-horned into a power build as well. In large groups, mirage is pretty awful right now, but support chrono is incredibly valuable with high output stability, boon reapplication, resistance generation, superspeed potential, aoe control, and aoe healing. Any good WvW group comp is going to include some chronos because of their powerful support abilities. > > > > And...that's about it. You can't just take 1 build and expect it to work in every aspect of the game. However, a mesmer player that is familiar with the breadth of what the class can provide and able to master all of those different playstyles will be extremely valuable in every single aspect of the game. > > > > Nice summery, but you did not disprove TC. All you said was mesmer is very useful in its niche as chrono, which no one disputes. > > Mesmers niche is being currently THE support class you want for group content. > > Should that get taken away, the class as a whole would be in a worse state than any other class ingame, even those which are not dps meta in raids for example (because you can always take along a subpar dps, but a subpar support class will get benched). Uh...did you read the OP at all? That's not even remotely what they said. The OP is saying that they feel mesmer is useful in HP trains, fractals, and raids, but is bad in PvP and WvW and open world/story stuff. The whole point of my post was to demonstrate that mesmer has viable and powerful builds in every single aspect of the game. Sure its "niche" is support, but that's no less impermanent than a DPS role. Just look at the rapid rise and fall of preferred DPS builds in raids as Anet has buffed and nerfed the various ways of dealing damage. In fact, based on the past 2 years of balance changes, the support roles (chrono, ps warrior, druid) are far and away the most stable and reliable roles in the entire game. You should be happy that the mesmer niche is support, evidence shows that it's the role least likely to be ruined with a balance patch. > @Justine.6351 said: > Stupid question, > > I was messing around with just an open world pver solo damage chrono and I ended up domination, dueling, chrono with full wells traited for alacrity. I still had my wvw commander/wanderer gearing and felt like I was doing good damage. Is full zerker wells a build? It's not really. You can do it, but it's very underwhelming. The damage wells do is incredibly weak, even the damage one. Just as a fun comparison, a full autoattack chain from sword will deal a small amount less damage than a full set of ticks from well of calamity...but doesn't take up a utility slot on a 20s cooldown. Chrono is usable in open world with power damage from shatters, sword 1/2, shield 5, and some random phantasm stuff...but it's very far from solid. The self-buffed quickness and alacrity that you can provide definitely helps bring it up somewhat, but it's still very underperforming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenith.7301 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Esplen.3940 said: > Guardian always had "better" reflects than Mesmer. They had lower uptime, but more reliability, and their reflect damage is usually superior due to them having actual %damage buffs. > > Portal is no longer unique to Mesmer with Watchwork Portal Device, White Mantle Portal Device, and Sand Swell. Although Sand Swell can't be used to cross many gaps (but it can be used as a blink), and the Portal Devices either cost a lot of money per use or have a long cooldown. Guardian had even higher reflect/projectile hate uptime if we weren't counting synchronized iWardens. Wall lasts longer and traited has shorter cd than feedback. Then they had shield of courage and sanctuary. Alongside Stand Your Ground, guardian trivialized the infamous uncategorized fractal if you didn't have the Sanderinoas successfully stealth skip portal up top (which most pug mesmers or the average mesmer still can't do). If it weren't for portal tricks, guardians would have 100% replaced mesmers in dungeons. Better damage, aegis, reflects, and greatsword 5 is even more reliably than focus pull. The frenzy people have to nerf chrono is so dumb. That group utility is virtually all the spec offers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justine.6351 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > @FLEUR.7458 said: > > > > I've been playing GW2 since beta, and because in original GW I played Mesmer (and followed the release of the Mesmer class since its announcement), my first character and main was of course a Mesmer. I've done all of my achievement hunting, story missions, map completion, etc on my Mesmer. Though I have had alts for a long time, I never really played them beyond just completing the story. I always sub-par geared them and took no time to learn rotations because they were just stand by alts in case I ever grew bored of my original profession. > > > > > > > > At release of PoF I specced mirage, played it for a bit - got a little into the story, and then I did something I havent done before - I switched to my viper reaper. I literally melted everything in the story line, had no problem in map completion, never died, did tons of damage. It sort of made me wonder why I even play mesmer. Then I realized I had grown comfortable in a niche. > > > > > > > > My mesmer was useful for 3 things: > > > > > > > > Fractals (if a mesmer wasnt already in the group) > > > > Raids > > > > HP trains > > > > > > > > But outside of those instances (in which other professions can perform easier and with less hostility from other players, and with an easier rotation/utility knowledge) my mesmer is pretty useless. Its fallen short in PvP and WvW. > > > > > > > > And so, I guess I'm just wondering now - why do we play this class? > > > > > > Well, lets see. > > > #PvE > > > ###Open World and Story > > > So I've geared up my mirage in full vipers/sinister etc, and it's actually incredibly solid open world compared to what mesmer has had to struggle with since launch. > > > When specced appropriately, the amount of damage it can unload on a very regular basis is very respectable. It also has the capability, with a quick weapon and > > > couple major trait swaps, to respec into a high sustain dps boss-killing build. When doing bounty trains in completely random mish-mashes of players, I hit top dps > > > of a large squad every single time unless one of the bounties has a cancerous anti-mesmer mod. This basically demonstrates that mirage is able to produce > > > extremely reliable single target dps in non-optimal scenarios; perfect for open world fights. Same goes for all the story stuff: melt normal things, minor respec for > > > bosses to melt those too. > > > ###Fractals and Dungeons > > > Don't bring your mirage here...but you don't need to. Chrono exists! Chrono still exists and is still one of the very best classes you can slot into a party to make it > > > drastically better. A properly played chrono is an extremely valuable player in all fractals and dungeons. > > > ###Raids > > > Obviously, the chronotank is still the meta of metas. It's challenging to play, extremely vital to the performance of a group, and absolutely required. Mirage and > > > power mesmer are also solid choices for raid DPS now on many, though not all, fights. You're not going to top the QT dps charts, but you very well might get top > > > dps in actual raid parties due to the extreme reliability of dps that the builds enable. > > > > > > #PvP > > > Mirage is a decent duelist, condie chrono is still a solid choice, portal and moa and still portal and moa. Mesmer still and likely always will have somewhat of a slot...but honestly who plays PvP these days... > > > > > > #WvW > > > For roaming and small groups, both mirage and chrono are extremely powerful, in a variety of builds at that. Full glassy burst chrono is still potent, condie chrono is still excellent, full support chrono is a valuable player in a havoc group. Mirage is an excellent WvW condition duelist, and can be sorta shoe-horned into a power build as well. In large groups, mirage is pretty awful right now, but support chrono is incredibly valuable with high output stability, boon reapplication, resistance generation, superspeed potential, aoe control, and aoe healing. Any good WvW group comp is going to include some chronos because of their powerful support abilities. > > > > > > And...that's about it. You can't just take 1 build and expect it to work in every aspect of the game. However, a mesmer player that is familiar with the breadth of what the class can provide and able to master all of those different playstyles will be extremely valuable in every single aspect of the game. > > > > > > > Nice summery, but you did not disprove TC. All you said was mesmer is very useful in its niche as chrono, which no one disputes. > > > > Mesmers niche is being currently THE support class you want for group content. > > > > Should that get taken away, the class as a whole would be in a worse state than any other class ingame, even those which are not dps meta in raids for example (because you can always take along a subpar dps, but a subpar support class will get benched). > > Uh...did you read the OP at all? That's not even remotely what they said. The OP is saying that they feel mesmer is useful in HP trains, fractals, and raids, but is bad in PvP and WvW and open world/story stuff. The whole point of my post was to demonstrate that mesmer has viable and powerful builds in every single aspect of the game. Sure its "niche" is support, but that's no less impermanent than a DPS role. Just look at the rapid rise and fall of preferred DPS builds in raids as Anet has buffed and nerfed the various ways of dealing damage. In fact, based on the past 2 years of balance changes, the support roles (chrono, ps warrior, druid) are far and away the most stable and reliable roles in the entire game. You should be happy that the mesmer niche is support, evidence shows that it's the role least likely to be ruined with a balance patch. > > > @Justine.6351 said: > > Stupid question, > > > > I was messing around with just an open world pver solo damage chrono and I ended up domination, dueling, chrono with full wells traited for alacrity. I still had my wvw commander/wanderer gearing and felt like I was doing good damage. Is full zerker wells a build? > > It's not really. You can do it, but it's very underwhelming. The damage wells do is incredibly weak, even the damage one. Just as a fun comparison, a full autoattack chain from sword will deal a small amount less damage than a full set of ticks from well of calamity...but doesn't take up a utility slot on a 20s cooldown. Chrono is usable in open world with power damage from shatters, sword 1/2, shield 5, and some random phantasm stuff...but it's very far from solid. The self-buffed quickness and alacrity that you can provide definitely helps bring it up somewhat, but it's still very underperforming. In a non-dps role (burst) is it OK for its ally alacrity balancing it out? Want to change out of support glamours for a well burst/alacrity bot instead in wvw. Idk will probably try but was curious if someone else had played it already. I play glass hammer rev too so glass mesmer wouldn't bother me too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyninja.2954 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > @FLEUR.7458 said: > > > > I've been playing GW2 since beta, and because in original GW I played Mesmer (and followed the release of the Mesmer class since its announcement), my first character and main was of course a Mesmer. I've done all of my achievement hunting, story missions, map completion, etc on my Mesmer. Though I have had alts for a long time, I never really played them beyond just completing the story. I always sub-par geared them and took no time to learn rotations because they were just stand by alts in case I ever grew bored of my original profession. > > > > > > > > At release of PoF I specced mirage, played it for a bit - got a little into the story, and then I did something I havent done before - I switched to my viper reaper. I literally melted everything in the story line, had no problem in map completion, never died, did tons of damage. It sort of made me wonder why I even play mesmer. Then I realized I had grown comfortable in a niche. > > > > > > > > My mesmer was useful for 3 things: > > > > > > > > Fractals (if a mesmer wasnt already in the group) > > > > Raids > > > > HP trains > > > > > > > > But outside of those instances (in which other professions can perform easier and with less hostility from other players, and with an easier rotation/utility knowledge) my mesmer is pretty useless. Its fallen short in PvP and WvW. > > > > > > > > And so, I guess I'm just wondering now - why do we play this class? > > > > > > Well, lets see. > > > #PvE > > > ###Open World and Story > > > So I've geared up my mirage in full vipers/sinister etc, and it's actually incredibly solid open world compared to what mesmer has had to struggle with since launch. > > > When specced appropriately, the amount of damage it can unload on a very regular basis is very respectable. It also has the capability, with a quick weapon and > > > couple major trait swaps, to respec into a high sustain dps boss-killing build. When doing bounty trains in completely random mish-mashes of players, I hit top dps > > > of a large squad every single time unless one of the bounties has a cancerous anti-mesmer mod. This basically demonstrates that mirage is able to produce > > > extremely reliable single target dps in non-optimal scenarios; perfect for open world fights. Same goes for all the story stuff: melt normal things, minor respec for > > > bosses to melt those too. > > > ###Fractals and Dungeons > > > Don't bring your mirage here...but you don't need to. Chrono exists! Chrono still exists and is still one of the very best classes you can slot into a party to make it > > > drastically better. A properly played chrono is an extremely valuable player in all fractals and dungeons. > > > ###Raids > > > Obviously, the chronotank is still the meta of metas. It's challenging to play, extremely vital to the performance of a group, and absolutely required. Mirage and > > > power mesmer are also solid choices for raid DPS now on many, though not all, fights. You're not going to top the QT dps charts, but you very well might get top > > > dps in actual raid parties due to the extreme reliability of dps that the builds enable. > > > > > > #PvP > > > Mirage is a decent duelist, condie chrono is still a solid choice, portal and moa and still portal and moa. Mesmer still and likely always will have somewhat of a slot...but honestly who plays PvP these days... > > > > > > #WvW > > > For roaming and small groups, both mirage and chrono are extremely powerful, in a variety of builds at that. Full glassy burst chrono is still potent, condie chrono is still excellent, full support chrono is a valuable player in a havoc group. Mirage is an excellent WvW condition duelist, and can be sorta shoe-horned into a power build as well. In large groups, mirage is pretty awful right now, but support chrono is incredibly valuable with high output stability, boon reapplication, resistance generation, superspeed potential, aoe control, and aoe healing. Any good WvW group comp is going to include some chronos because of their powerful support abilities. > > > > > > And...that's about it. You can't just take 1 build and expect it to work in every aspect of the game. However, a mesmer player that is familiar with the breadth of what the class can provide and able to master all of those different playstyles will be extremely valuable in every single aspect of the game. > > > > > > > Nice summery, but you did not disprove TC. All you said was mesmer is very useful in its niche as chrono, which no one disputes. > > > > Mesmers niche is being currently THE support class you want for group content. > > > > Should that get taken away, the class as a whole would be in a worse state than any other class ingame, even those which are not dps meta in raids for example (because you can always take along a subpar dps, but a subpar support class will get benched). > > Uh...did you read the OP at all? That's not even remotely what they said. The OP is saying that they feel mesmer is useful in HP trains, fractals, and raids, but is bad in PvP and WvW and open world/story stuff. The whole point of my post was to demonstrate that mesmer has viable and powerful builds in every single aspect of the game. Sure its "niche" is support, but that's no less impermanent than a DPS role. Just look at the rapid rise and fall of preferred DPS builds in raids as Anet has buffed and nerfed the various ways of dealing damage. In fact, based on the past 2 years of balance changes, the support roles (chrono, ps warrior, druid) are far and away the most stable and reliable roles in the entire game. You should be happy that the mesmer niche is support, evidence shows that it's the role least likely to be ruined with a balance patch. There is no new spvp or wvw meta out yet. To call Mirage useful there now is like throwing a coin. We will have to wait and see. Mirage is worse in open world than most other classes (which doesn't matter much, because it's open world so who cares?). I can jump on my necromancer/scourge/reaper, DH/Firebrand, condi zerker, ranger/druid, engi/holosmith, herald/renegade or tempest and do way more insane stuff while being either more tanky, have a lot more burst or both. I can't agree to you comparing support to dps specs. If you bring a less powerful dps, you can still easily finish any raid wing without noticing much difference at all. If you bring a slightly less powerful support setup, fights change dramatically. This is where mesmers main weakness comes in, we have no useful dps spec and even the ones we have are far behind EVERY other class. We are niche support, no matter if core, chrono or mirage. The difference in support classes (mesmer, warrior, ranger) is that the other 2 have viable dps specs besides bringing support. Mesmer does not. So yes, mesmer is by far the most niche class at the moment, at least as far as pve is concerned. Wvw and spvp we will have to wait and see. Personally I don't see Mirage beating Daredevil as +1 and cap/decaper in spvp, it might do okay for small scale and 1v1 roaming (which mesmer in general is very strong) and useless in wvw largescale (just like thiefs, who get booted if a squad fills up) where a limited amount of chrono are useful for support and portals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cave Rock.4869 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 I think people play the Mesmer for variety and complexity. Although personally I find it really to be a confusing profession for new players. That is why a limited number of players are attracted to the Mesmer/Mirage. Once a person really get to know how to play the core Mesmer then tend to like it and stick with it. I sum up the problem with the Mirage in my video and how it can be improved in balance patches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esplen.3940 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Zenith.7301 said: > Guardian had even higher reflect/projectile hate uptime if we weren't counting synchronized iWardens. Wall lasts longer and traited has shorter cd than feedback. Yep, but I was talking purely about Reflects. The problem with Mesmer is that they've always had a high skill ceiling so people think they're really good. The problem is they also have a high skill floor and require a completely different approach to the game (action-reaction vs fire-forget). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyroatheist.9031 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Justine.6351 said: > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > > @FLEUR.7458 said: > > > > > I've been playing GW2 since beta, and because in original GW I played Mesmer (and followed the release of the Mesmer class since its announcement), my first character and main was of course a Mesmer. I've done all of my achievement hunting, story missions, map completion, etc on my Mesmer. Though I have had alts for a long time, I never really played them beyond just completing the story. I always sub-par geared them and took no time to learn rotations because they were just stand by alts in case I ever grew bored of my original profession. > > > > > > > > > > At release of PoF I specced mirage, played it for a bit - got a little into the story, and then I did something I havent done before - I switched to my viper reaper. I literally melted everything in the story line, had no problem in map completion, never died, did tons of damage. It sort of made me wonder why I even play mesmer. Then I realized I had grown comfortable in a niche. > > > > > > > > > > My mesmer was useful for 3 things: > > > > > > > > > > Fractals (if a mesmer wasnt already in the group) > > > > > Raids > > > > > HP trains > > > > > > > > > > But outside of those instances (in which other professions can perform easier and with less hostility from other players, and with an easier rotation/utility knowledge) my mesmer is pretty useless. Its fallen short in PvP and WvW. > > > > > > > > > > And so, I guess I'm just wondering now - why do we play this class? > > > > > > > > Well, lets see. > > > > #PvE > > > > ###Open World and Story > > > > So I've geared up my mirage in full vipers/sinister etc, and it's actually incredibly solid open world compared to what mesmer has had to struggle with since launch. > > > > When specced appropriately, the amount of damage it can unload on a very regular basis is very respectable. It also has the capability, with a quick weapon and > > > > couple major trait swaps, to respec into a high sustain dps boss-killing build. When doing bounty trains in completely random mish-mashes of players, I hit top dps > > > > of a large squad every single time unless one of the bounties has a cancerous anti-mesmer mod. This basically demonstrates that mirage is able to produce > > > > extremely reliable single target dps in non-optimal scenarios; perfect for open world fights. Same goes for all the story stuff: melt normal things, minor respec for > > > > bosses to melt those too. > > > > ###Fractals and Dungeons > > > > Don't bring your mirage here...but you don't need to. Chrono exists! Chrono still exists and is still one of the very best classes you can slot into a party to make it > > > > drastically better. A properly played chrono is an extremely valuable player in all fractals and dungeons. > > > > ###Raids > > > > Obviously, the chronotank is still the meta of metas. It's challenging to play, extremely vital to the performance of a group, and absolutely required. Mirage and > > > > power mesmer are also solid choices for raid DPS now on many, though not all, fights. You're not going to top the QT dps charts, but you very well might get top > > > > dps in actual raid parties due to the extreme reliability of dps that the builds enable. > > > > > > > > #PvP > > > > Mirage is a decent duelist, condie chrono is still a solid choice, portal and moa and still portal and moa. Mesmer still and likely always will have somewhat of a slot...but honestly who plays PvP these days... > > > > > > > > #WvW > > > > For roaming and small groups, both mirage and chrono are extremely powerful, in a variety of builds at that. Full glassy burst chrono is still potent, condie chrono is still excellent, full support chrono is a valuable player in a havoc group. Mirage is an excellent WvW condition duelist, and can be sorta shoe-horned into a power build as well. In large groups, mirage is pretty awful right now, but support chrono is incredibly valuable with high output stability, boon reapplication, resistance generation, superspeed potential, aoe control, and aoe healing. Any good WvW group comp is going to include some chronos because of their powerful support abilities. > > > > > > > > And...that's about it. You can't just take 1 build and expect it to work in every aspect of the game. However, a mesmer player that is familiar with the breadth of what the class can provide and able to master all of those different playstyles will be extremely valuable in every single aspect of the game. > > > > > > > > > > Nice summery, but you did not disprove TC. All you said was mesmer is very useful in its niche as chrono, which no one disputes. > > > > > > Mesmers niche is being currently THE support class you want for group content. > > > > > > Should that get taken away, the class as a whole would be in a worse state than any other class ingame, even those which are not dps meta in raids for example (because you can always take along a subpar dps, but a subpar support class will get benched). > > > > Uh...did you read the OP at all? That's not even remotely what they said. The OP is saying that they feel mesmer is useful in HP trains, fractals, and raids, but is bad in PvP and WvW and open world/story stuff. The whole point of my post was to demonstrate that mesmer has viable and powerful builds in every single aspect of the game. Sure its "niche" is support, but that's no less impermanent than a DPS role. Just look at the rapid rise and fall of preferred DPS builds in raids as Anet has buffed and nerfed the various ways of dealing damage. In fact, based on the past 2 years of balance changes, the support roles (chrono, ps warrior, druid) are far and away the most stable and reliable roles in the entire game. You should be happy that the mesmer niche is support, evidence shows that it's the role least likely to be ruined with a balance patch. > > > > > @Justine.6351 said: > > > Stupid question, > > > > > > I was messing around with just an open world pver solo damage chrono and I ended up domination, dueling, chrono with full wells traited for alacrity. I still had my wvw commander/wanderer gearing and felt like I was doing good damage. Is full zerker wells a build? > > > > It's not really. You can do it, but it's very underwhelming. The damage wells do is incredibly weak, even the damage one. Just as a fun comparison, a full autoattack chain from sword will deal a small amount less damage than a full set of ticks from well of calamity...but doesn't take up a utility slot on a 20s cooldown. Chrono is usable in open world with power damage from shatters, sword 1/2, shield 5, and some random phantasm stuff...but it's very far from solid. The self-buffed quickness and alacrity that you can provide definitely helps bring it up somewhat, but it's still very underperforming. > > In a non-dps role (burst) is it OK for its ally alacrity balancing it out? Want to change out of support glamours for a well burst/alacrity bot instead in wvw. Idk will probably try but was curious if someone else had played it already. I play glass hammer rev too so glass mesmer wouldn't bother me too much. I'm assuming you're talking about large-scale fights? If so, then well burst/alacrity bot is not really an option. Particularly with the introduction of breaker bubbles, engagements are much too short and mobile to ever make use of the buffing that chrono wells can provide. Everything has to be done either on the move or capable of rapid unloading. You can certainly run a pick squad with a burst mesmer in it, but that's a rather different concept. If you're talking about open world PvE stuff, then yeah you can use wells and whatnot to provide sustained buffing. Nobody is really going to notice, but you will be having an effect on the people you support. > @Cyninja.2954 said: > Mirage is worse in open world than most other classes (which doesn't matter much, beacuse it's open world so who cares?). I can jump on my necromancer/scourge/reaper, DH/Firebrand, condi zerker, ranger/druid, engi/holosmith, herald/renegade or tempest and do way more insane stuff while being either more tanky, have a lot more burst or both. Not really. For open world boss fights, mirage is reliably the top dps. For just rolling around killing various trash, mirage has rapid damage rampup and control. For being more tanky...this is open world PvE we're talking about, are you serious right now? > @Cyninja.2954 said: > I can't agree to you comparing support to dps specs. If you bring a less powerful dps, you can still easily finish any raid wing without noticing much difference at all. If you bring a slightly less powerful support setup, fights change dramatically. This is where mesmers main weakness comes in, we have no useful dps spec and even the ones we have are far behind EVERY other class. We are niche support, no matter if core, chrono or mirage. And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. > @Cyninja.2954 said: > Wvw and spvp we will have to wait and see. Personally I don't see Mirage beating Daredevil as +1 and cap/decaper in spvp, it might do okay for small scale and 1v1 roaming (which mesmer in general is very strong) and useless in wvw largescale (just like thiefs, who get booted if a squad fills up) where a limited amount of chrono are useful for support and portals. I don't think you have a very good understanding of how powerful chrono support is in a WvW group comp. That being said, if your group is booting out chronos, please have them contact me. We need more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Noun.7350 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @atlashugged.7642 said: > I honestly don't know why mesmer got what it got in its long patch history. I'm not an anet dev. All I can tell you is the current state of the mesmer class and the whining whiners that play it. It seems that mesmer is good, but the players will be eternally dissatisfied. I don't know what it is about my favorite class that attracts you people, but I love the class anyways. Mesmer has an extremely desirable support spec, yes, but very few good DPS options. Condition Mirage puts out decent numbers, but they rely entirely on phantasm uptime, which means it's just not a viable option in a lot of fights where your phantasms just keep getting killed. On top of that, when Mesmers spec for DPS, they provide close to nothing in terms of group support, especially in a raid setting. In fractals, Portal is nice, but that's not really a big raid thing. Meanwhile, other specs that do a lot more DPS (and a lot more _reliable_ DPS) also come with extremely valuable DPS boosts for the rest of the group, like condi Soulbeast's Spotter trait and Frost Spirit, and Phalanx Strength Berserker's gigantic list of damage boosts. Mesmer has a significant number of legitimate issues in PvE and pointing to Chronomancer's desirability is a distraction, not a solution. It's not even _close_ to unplayable and it's definitely a lot of fun, but don't pretend everything's great and Mesmer players are just whiners. Yes, Chronomancer is amazing support and will continue to be desirable, but when it comes to group PvE, that's really all we have, and that's a legitimate issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Noun.7350 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. Are you arguing that we shouldn't have a viable DPS spec then, or that we shouldn't want one in the first place? Yeah, we're good at some things. Absolutely. Chronomancer is incredible support for any group. Chrono-tank is even better, because any other profession would lose a lot of utility and damage by taking up a tanking role; but for Chronomancer, we can tank while keeping our utility, and our damage is awful even if we spec completely for it, so we're a perfect choice for tank. That niche is going to stick around for PoF unless someone figures out another tank build that also maintains its support and/or damage. If that happens, and Firebrand can bring perma-quickness and great DPS at the same time (which probably isn't the case), _and_ Renegade can provide permanent alacrity and do more damage than an alacrity-focused Chronomancer (which parses at about 24k DPS right now), then maybe we'll see Chronomancer fall out of the meta. But that's a lot of ifs. But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atlashugged.7642 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. It is unreasonable however to see a lack of a viable dps spec in the first place. CondiMirage is viable. That's a fact. It isn't top tier. If by viable you mean top tier, then your statement would have some basis. But then it would be unreasonable. Because then you would expect mesmer to have both top tier support and top tier damage. So pick your poison: are you unreasonable because you're wrong about how the state of things is, or are you unreasonable because you have unreasonable expectations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Noun.7350 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @atlashugged.7642 said: > > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. > > It is unreasonable however to see a lack of a viable dps spec in the first place. > > CondiMirage is viable. That's a fact. It isn't top tier. If by viable you mean top tier, then your statement would have some basis. But then it would be unreasonable. Because then you would expect mesmer to have both top tier support and top tier damage. Yes, condi Mirage is viable. You'll note that I never said it wasn't viable--I said that there are a lot of _situations_ in which it isn't. It suffers huge problems in many raid fights: if a fight is going to kill off your phantasms often, your DPS _craters_ and there's nothing you can do about it except slowly summon them all again. And here's the thing _no other profession_ is this sensitive to mechanics and this unable to actually react to them. If there was some way to save your phantasms in those cases if you act quickly, and it's a matter of adapting, that'd be absolutely fine. But there isn't. You can shatter them for a comparatively tiny amount of damage, but your DPS drops by a massive amount until you can resummon three pistol phantasms. (Personally, my opinion is that too much of our sustained, boss fight-style DPS relies on phantasms and we have no viable alternative to that, but that's been true for five years so I don't see it changing.) No other profession's DPS is that fragile. Sure, some professions have different builds for different situations--Elementalist does stupid DPS with a staff on large, slow-moving enemies, for example, but should really switch to condi on smaller enemies or enemies that move a lot. Now, imagine a situation where Elementalist doesn't have that second option, to use condi dagger/focus when enemies move a lot of have smaller hit boxes. Let's imagine that Elementalist can do great DPS with a staff on a large, slow-moving target but has no other source of sustained, long-term DPS, so they're _massively_ less effective on any fight that doesn't allow them to hit a lot of times with Lava Font, Meteor Shower, and Ice Bow. That'd be pretty bad, right? You can't build around it. There's no "viable but not optimal" option to switch to. It's "do well in these situations, and do horrible in others," period. That's Mesmer DPS. If there's a fight where you can keep three phantasms rolling the entire time, you're going to do pretty well. Not as well as other professions, but, eh, it's an easy rotation, so whatever. But if a boss kills your phantasms a lot--and remember, there's not a whole lot you can do about that--your DPS is horrid. It doesn't matter how well you play. You can't build for non-phantasm sustained DPS. It's phantasms or nothing. So, serious question: do you see that as totally fine? Am I unreasonable for thinking that's a problem that should be addressed, that a DPS Mesmer just has no answer at all to fights where your phantasms die frequently, and that there's no alternative build a Mesmer could use instead? > @atlashugged.7642 said: > So pick your poison: are you unreasonable because you're wrong about how the state of things is, or are you unreasonable because you have unreasonable expectations? You can respond to a person's arguments without calling that person unreasonable, you know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esplen.3940 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > @atlashugged.7642 said: > > So pick your poison: are you unreasonable because you're wrong about how the state of things is, or are you unreasonable because you have unreasonable expectations? > > You can respond to a person's arguments without calling that person unreasonable, you know. Wait you can? Dang, I've been lied to my whole life. That's unreasonable! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyroatheist.9031 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. > > Are you arguing that we shouldn't have a viable DPS spec then, or that we shouldn't want one in the first place? > > Yeah, we're good at some things. Absolutely. Chronomancer is incredible support for any group. Chrono-tank is even better, because any other profession would lose a lot of utility and damage by taking up a tanking role; but for Chronomancer, we can tank while keeping our utility, and our damage is awful even if we spec completely for it, so we're a perfect choice for tank. That niche is going to stick around for PoF unless someone figures out another tank build that also maintains its support and/or damage. If that happens, and Firebrand can bring perma-quickness and great DPS at the same time (which probably isn't the case), _and_ Renegade can provide permanent alacrity and do more damage than an alacrity-focused Chronomancer (which parses at about 24k DPS right now), then maybe we'll see Chronomancer fall out of the meta. But that's a lot of ifs. > > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. I'm saying that it's absurd to argue that we're entirely niche because we "only have 1 viable spec" when most classes are really only brought for one thing: dps, support, healing, etc. Additionally, history has shown that the support role is extremely stable in Anet balancing tendencies compared to dps. On top of that, we don't lack a viable dps spec. Both power mesmer and condie mirage are viable dps specs in most raids. The only bosses you really wouldn't want them on are deimos, xera, and slothasaur. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atlashugged.7642 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 And on top of all that, early tests in other threads show clone based mirage builds doing comparative damage in PvE to current dps builds for mesmer. Enough that there's some promising discussion around the idea at least. So his problem with DPS ramp up in the phantasm build might have an alternative to choose from soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apharma.3741 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. > > > > Are you arguing that we shouldn't have a viable DPS spec then, or that we shouldn't want one in the first place? > > > > Yeah, we're good at some things. Absolutely. Chronomancer is incredible support for any group. Chrono-tank is even better, because any other profession would lose a lot of utility and damage by taking up a tanking role; but for Chronomancer, we can tank while keeping our utility, and our damage is awful even if we spec completely for it, so we're a perfect choice for tank. That niche is going to stick around for PoF unless someone figures out another tank build that also maintains its support and/or damage. If that happens, and Firebrand can bring perma-quickness and great DPS at the same time (which probably isn't the case), _and_ Renegade can provide permanent alacrity and do more damage than an alacrity-focused Chronomancer (which parses at about 24k DPS right now), then maybe we'll see Chronomancer fall out of the meta. But that's a lot of ifs. > > > > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. > > I'm saying that it's absurd to argue that we're entirely niche because we "only have 1 viable spec" when most classes are really only brought for one thing: dps, support, healing, etc. Additionally, history has shown that the support role is extremely stable in Anet balancing tendencies compared to dps. > > On top of that, we don't lack a viable dps spec. Both power mesmer and condie mirage are viable dps specs in most raids. The only bosses you really wouldn't want them on are deimos, xera, and slothasaur. Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. I agree with your general point though and while I wouldn’t kick a power mesmer or ask one to switch outside of the bosses you mentioned if I had 4 turn up for the dps role I would flat out tell them to reroll as it would make life far more difficult than it needs to be on a lot of encounters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyroatheist.9031 Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 > @apharma.3741 said: > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. > > > > > > Are you arguing that we shouldn't have a viable DPS spec then, or that we shouldn't want one in the first place? > > > > > > Yeah, we're good at some things. Absolutely. Chronomancer is incredible support for any group. Chrono-tank is even better, because any other profession would lose a lot of utility and damage by taking up a tanking role; but for Chronomancer, we can tank while keeping our utility, and our damage is awful even if we spec completely for it, so we're a perfect choice for tank. That niche is going to stick around for PoF unless someone figures out another tank build that also maintains its support and/or damage. If that happens, and Firebrand can bring perma-quickness and great DPS at the same time (which probably isn't the case), _and_ Renegade can provide permanent alacrity and do more damage than an alacrity-focused Chronomancer (which parses at about 24k DPS right now), then maybe we'll see Chronomancer fall out of the meta. But that's a lot of ifs. > > > > > > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. > > > > I'm saying that it's absurd to argue that we're entirely niche because we "only have 1 viable spec" when most classes are really only brought for one thing: dps, support, healing, etc. Additionally, history has shown that the support role is extremely stable in Anet balancing tendencies compared to dps. > > > > On top of that, we don't lack a viable dps spec. Both power mesmer and condie mirage are viable dps specs in most raids. The only bosses you really wouldn't want them on are deimos, xera, and slothasaur. > > Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. > > I agree with your general point though and while I wouldn’t kick a power mesmer or ask one to switch outside of the bosses you mentioned if I had 4 turn up for the dps role I would flat out tell them to reroll as it would make life far more difficult than it needs to be on a lot of encounters. On sabetha you don't really need cleave past enough to kill the adds now and then, so mesmer works fine there. As long as you don't shatter the phantasms, they'll retarget appropriately to kill the bosses. KC is a similar story, but you're right that you wouldn't want 4 mesmer dps as that would make killing the statues rather annoying. Trio is trio, nothing really matters there as long as everyone does something. Escort....heh. MO sorta, but condie mirage retargeting would work really smoothly there for killing all the pawns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carighan.6758 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @apharma.3741 said: > Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. And this is different from a DPSer how? If you need a 10th and only got one Mesmer so far, you'll tell some Weaver to go run along, too. Raid composition is independent of which specific class offers which specific raid functionality. For the most part. There are exceptions in say WoW because they gave each class 2+ raid roles, but GW2 is **so** far away from doing that, it first needs to give everyone **one** raid role. Hence why the whole "But but but we should also be able to play DPS" is such a weird discussion, we have a stable raid role, we're in the "Works fine"-pile. Plenty others are not. Unless a raid of 10 ideally wants to have one of each class and then someone random, there's little arguing that balance has worse issues than whether we need a DPS spec or not. Especially because our DPS setup is still easily good enough to kill the bosses with it, even if others do it much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyninja.2954 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > @apharma.3741 said: > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > @"Agent Noun.7350" said: > > > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > > > And yet...in the 2 years and countless balance patches since HoT released, support chrono has never budged from it's reliable spot as primary tank and support buffer. In this time, all around it dps classes have come into meta and fallen back out at the whim of Anet balance patches. Evidence shows that the tank and support roles are reliably sustained and not nearly as subject to Anet whack-a-mole as dps roles, and that makes the chrono spot rather comfortable. You can talk about what might be or how the meta might change if this that or the other thing happens, but the fact is that history shows otherwise. > > > > > > > > Are you arguing that we shouldn't have a viable DPS spec then, or that we shouldn't want one in the first place? > > > > > > > > Yeah, we're good at some things. Absolutely. Chronomancer is incredible support for any group. Chrono-tank is even better, because any other profession would lose a lot of utility and damage by taking up a tanking role; but for Chronomancer, we can tank while keeping our utility, and our damage is awful even if we spec completely for it, so we're a perfect choice for tank. That niche is going to stick around for PoF unless someone figures out another tank build that also maintains its support and/or damage. If that happens, and Firebrand can bring perma-quickness and great DPS at the same time (which probably isn't the case), _and_ Renegade can provide permanent alacrity and do more damage than an alacrity-focused Chronomancer (which parses at about 24k DPS right now), then maybe we'll see Chronomancer fall out of the meta. But that's a lot of ifs. > > > > > > > > But I don't think it's unreasonable to see our lack of a viable DPS spec, and relative selfishness when we spec for DPS compared to other professions, as a real problem that ArenaNet should seek to solve. > > > > > > I'm saying that it's absurd to argue that we're entirely niche because we "only have 1 viable spec" when most classes are really only brought for one thing: dps, support, healing, etc. Additionally, history has shown that the support role is extremely stable in Anet balancing tendencies compared to dps. > > > > > > On top of that, we don't lack a viable dps spec. Both power mesmer and condie mirage are viable dps specs in most raids. The only bosses you really wouldn't want them on are deimos, xera, and slothasaur. > > > > Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. > > > > I agree with your general point though and while I wouldn’t kick a power mesmer or ask one to switch outside of the bosses you mentioned if I had 4 turn up for the dps role I would flat out tell them to reroll as it would make life far more difficult than it needs to be on a lot of encounters. > > On sabetha you don't really need cleave past enough to kill the adds now and then, so mesmer works fine there. As long as you don't shatter the phantasms, they'll retarget appropriately to kill the bosses. KC is a similar story, but you're right that you wouldn't want 4 mesmer dps as that would make killing the statues rather annoying. Trio is trio, nothing really matters there as long as everyone does something. Escort....heh. MO sorta, but condie mirage retargeting would work really smoothly there for killing all the pawns. Maybe actually play dps mesmer in raid (not support, dps mesmer). Half of the arguments you bring are theorycraft bs and don't actually work out the way as you'd expect. That's not even considering that even WHEN those issues were to be resolved, mesmer dps is far behind other classes. > @Carighan.6758 said: > > @apharma.3741 said: > > Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. > > And this is different from a DPSer how? If you need a 10th and only got one Mesmer so far, you'll tell some Weaver to go run along, too. > > Raid composition is independent of which specific class offers which specific raid functionality. For the most part. There are exceptions in say WoW because they gave each class 2+ raid roles, but GW2 is **so** far away from doing that, it first needs to give everyone **one** raid role. Hence why the whole "But but but we should also be able to play DPS" is such a weird discussion, we have a stable raid role, we're in the "Works fine"-pile. > There is 4 dps spots. Exchanging a 38k dps for a 35k dps will hardly matter and can easily be covered by playerskill. Not to mention that dps usually have the easiest of all the jobs, meaning it's quite simple to cover. > @Carighan.6758 said: > Plenty others are not. Unless a raid of 10 ideally wants to have one of each class and then someone random, there's little arguing that balance has worse issues than whether we need a DPS spec or not. Especially because our DPS setup is still easily good enough to kill the bosses with it, even if others do it much better. > That's just it though, other do it much much better and the biggest issue is not pure dps, but: - ramp up time - no aoe cleave - minimal utility (or no utility if other classes cover alacrity/quickness) We bring NOTHING except bad dps. The only thing we have going for us is that power mesmer has one of the safest and easiest rotations ingame which makes it desirable in pugs where the skill level is often very low. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyninja.2954 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @atlashugged.7642 said: > And on top of all that, early tests in other threads show clone based mirage builds doing comparative damage in PvE to current dps builds for mesmer. Enough that there's some promising discussion around the idea at least. So his problem with DPS ramp up in the phantasm build might have an alternative to choose from soon. Could you link to one of these threads please? I haven't seen any current Mirage build which exceeds 33k selfish dps and even comes close to 35-40k which most other classes have access to (not counting Elementalist with 46k atm since they will get tuned down, Soulbeast with 40k, and Firebrand which was already tuned down to 38k). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esplen.3940 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > On sabetha you don't really need cleave past enough to kill the adds now and then, so mesmer works fine there. As long as you don't shatter the phantasms, they'll retarget appropriately to kill the bosses. KC is a similar story, but you're right that you wouldn't want 4 mesmer dps as that would make killing the statues rather annoying. Trio is trio, nothing really matters there as long as everyone does something. Escort....heh. MO sorta, but condie mirage retargeting would work really smoothly there for killing all the pawns. > > Maybe actually play dps mesmer in raid (not support, dps mesmer). Half of the arguments you bring are theorycraft bs and don't actually work out the way as you'd expect. > That's not even considering that even WHEN those issues were to be resolved, mesmer dps is far behind other classes. I have played DPS Mesmer in Raids. Against Sabetha you have, at best, 4 mobs at once and they die extremely quickly to the 3 DPS + 2 cPS constantly whacking the boss and cleaving. Sure, DPS Mesmer "doesn't have Cleave" but they still deal ~60% of their output to 3 targets in addition to having comparable DPS pre-PoF. In fact, if you look at some bosses, Mesmer actually sits at a pretty high consistent DPS (top 3 on many bosses for the average group). > > @Carighan.6758 said: > > And this is different from a DPSer how? If you need a 10th and only got one Mesmer so far, you'll tell some Weaver to go run along, too. > > > > Raid composition is independent of which specific class offers which specific raid functionality. For the most part. There are exceptions in say WoW because they gave each class 2+ raid roles, but GW2 is **so** far away from doing that, it first needs to give everyone **one** raid role. Hence why the whole "But but but we should also be able to play DPS" is such a weird discussion, we have a stable raid role, we're in the "Works fine"-pile. > > > > There is 4 dps spots. Exchanging a 38k dps for a 35k dps will hardly matter and can easily be covered by playerskill. Not to mention that dps usually have the easiest of all the jobs, meaning it's quite simple to cover. Sorry, but you never hit the benchmark, not even in no-green VG or Mursaat Overseer. A benchmark simply shows you the ceiling of your DPS, but the floor for most classes is pretty low. For Mesmer, the DPS is so easy to push out that the limiting factor is how much support you receive, not your rotation. That's really good in terms of output, although it maybe be boring. Sure, an Ele can theoretically hit 38k DPS in a raid, but how many raids do you have where your Eles are consistently hitting that? Coming within 10% of that? 20%? 40%? The average Ele will hit 50% of that number in most raid encounters while good eles will come within 30-40% of it. That's a HUGE variance and it exists for every profession (including Mesmer). That's something people need to realize about the whole benchmarked DPS. It's a hardlimit, not an expectation; a goal, not a given. > > @Carighan.6758 said: > > Plenty others are not. Unless a raid of 10 ideally wants to have one of each class and then someone random, there's little arguing that balance has worse issues than whether we need a DPS spec or not. Especially because our DPS setup is still easily good enough to kill the bosses with it, even if others do it much better. > > > > That's just it though, other do it much much better and the biggest issue is not pure dps, but: > > - ramp up time > - no aoe cleave > - minimal utility (or no utility if other classes cover alacrity/quickness) > > We bring NOTHING except bad dps. > > The only thing we have going for us is that power mesmer has one of the safest and easiest rotations ingame which makes it desirable in pugs where the skill level is often very low. The ramp up period can be negated as long as you don't ramp up again. Every profession has a ramp-up time, and while Mesmer takes ~10s to get their third Phantasm out, they actually have pretty good damage in the first few seconds of a fight, considering all of their damage is in Phants + Blurred Frenzy, which is exactly what they're doing. People keep seeing the whole Phantasmal Force and 3 Phantasms and choking on how long it takes, but Phantasmal Force is a slow, small damage increase. It accounts for roughly 10% of your total DPS, but reaching 90% within 10 seconds of a fight is pretty darn good. You actually start at 80% of your DPS at the beginning of a fight with 2 Swordsman, so you start the fight at 80%, going up to 90+% after ~10s, then it continues up to 100% over the next ~17 seconds. Yes, you're not at 100% right out of the gate and it takes ~27s to reach 100%, but it's not as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > @atlashugged.7642 said: > > And on top of all that, early tests in other threads show clone based mirage builds doing comparative damage in PvE to current dps builds for mesmer. Enough that there's some promising discussion around the idea at least. So his problem with DPS ramp up in the phantasm build might have an alternative to choose from soon. > > Could you link to one of these theads please? I haven't seen any current Mirage build which exceeds 33k and even comes close to 35-40k which most other classes have access to (not counting Elementalist with 46k atm since they will get toned down, Soulbeast with 40k, and Firebrand which was already tuned down to 38k). While I would like to see his magical thread on clone Mirage doing comparable DPS, he did state comparable to current dps for Mesmer, not everyone else. You're seeing an argument on a point that doesn't exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyninja.2954 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Esplen.3940 said: > > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > > @Pyroatheist.9031 said: > > > On sabetha you don't really need cleave past enough to kill the adds now and then, so mesmer works fine there. As long as you don't shatter the phantasms, they'll retarget appropriately to kill the bosses. KC is a similar story, but you're right that you wouldn't want 4 mesmer dps as that would make killing the statues rather annoying. Trio is trio, nothing really matters there as long as everyone does something. Escort....heh. MO sorta, but condie mirage retargeting would work really smoothly there for killing all the pawns. > > > > Maybe actually play dps mesmer in raid (not support, dps mesmer). Half of the arguments you bring are theorycraft bs and don't actually work out the way as you'd expect. > > That's not even considering that even WHEN those issues were to be resolved, mesmer dps is far behind other classes. > > I have played DPS Mesmer in Raids. Against Sabetha you have, at best, 4 mobs at once and they die extremely quickly to the 3 DPS + 2 cPS constantly whacking the boss and cleaving. Sure, DPS Mesmer "doesn't have Cleave" but they still deal ~60% of their output to 3 targets in addition to having comparable DPS pre-PoF. In fact, if you look at some bosses, Mesmer actually sits at a pretty high consistent DPS (top 3 on many bosses for the average group). > > > > > @Carighan.6758 said: > > > And this is different from a DPSer how? If you need a 10th and only got one Mesmer so far, you'll tell some Weaver to go run along, too. > > > > > > Raid composition is independent of which specific class offers which specific raid functionality. For the most part. There are exceptions in say WoW because they gave each class 2+ raid roles, but GW2 is **so** far away from doing that, it first needs to give everyone **one** raid role. Hence why the whole "But but but we should also be able to play DPS" is such a weird discussion, we have a stable raid role, we're in the "Works fine"-pile. > > > > > > > There is 4 dps spots. Exchanging a 38k dps for a 35k dps will hardly matter and can easily be covered by playerskill. Not to mention that dps usually have the easiest of all the jobs, meaning it's quite simple to cover. > > Sorry, but you never hit the benchmark, not even in no-green VG or Mursaat Overseer. A benchmark simply shows you the ceiling of your DPS, but the floor for most classes is pretty low. For Mesmer, the DPS is so easy to push out that the limiting factor is how much support you receive, not your rotation. That's really good in terms of output, although it maybe be boring. Sure, an Ele can theoretically hit 38k DPS in a raid, but how many raids do you have where your Eles are consistently hitting that? Coming within 10% of that? 20%? 40%? The average Ele will hit 50% of that number in most raid encounters while good eles will come within 30-40% of it. That's a HUGE variance and it exists for every profession (including Mesmer). > > That's something people need to realize about the whole benchmarked DPS. It's a hardlimit, not an expectation; a goal, not a given. > > > > @Carighan.6758 said: > > > Plenty others are not. Unless a raid of 10 ideally wants to have one of each class and then someone random, there's little arguing that balance has worse issues than whether we need a DPS spec or not. Especially because our DPS setup is still easily good enough to kill the bosses with it, even if others do it much better. > > > > > > > That's just it though, other do it much much better and the biggest issue is not pure dps, but: > > > > - ramp up time > > - no aoe cleave > > - minimal utility (or no utility if other classes cover alacrity/quickness) > > > > We bring NOTHING except bad dps. > > > > The only thing we have going for us is that power mesmer has one of the safest and easiest rotations ingame which makes it desirable in pugs where the skill level is often very low. > > The ramp up period can be negated as long as you don't ramp up again. Every profession has a ramp-up time, and while Mesmer takes ~10s to get their third Phantasm out, they actually have pretty good damage in the first few seconds of a fight, considering all of their damage is in Phants + Blurred Frenzy, which is exactly what they're doing. People keep seeing the whole Phantasmal Force and 3 Phantasms and choking on how long it takes, but Phantasmal Force is a slow, small damage increase. It accounts for roughly 10% of your total DPS, but reaching 90% within 10 seconds of a fight is pretty darn good. You actually start at 80% of your DPS at the beginning of a fight with 2 Swordsman, so you start the fight at 80%, going up to 90+% after ~10s, then it continues up to 100% over the next ~17 seconds. Yes, you're not at 100% right out of the gate and it takes ~27s to reach 100%, but it's not as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. > > > @Cyninja.2954 said: > > > @atlashugged.7642 said: > > > And on top of all that, early tests in other threads show clone based mirage builds doing comparative damage in PvE to current dps builds for mesmer. Enough that there's some promising discussion around the idea at least. So his problem with DPS ramp up in the phantasm build might have an alternative to choose from soon. > > > > Could you link to one of these theads please? I haven't seen any current Mirage build which exceeds 33k and even comes close to 35-40k which most other classes have access to (not counting Elementalist with 46k atm since they will get toned down, Soulbeast with 40k, and Firebrand which was already tuned down to 38k). > > While I would like to see his magical thread on clone Mirage doing comparable DPS, he did state comparable to current dps for Mesmer, not everyone else. You're seeing an argument on a point that doesn't exist. @Esplen you are a very knowledgable mesmer, but please realise you're entire raid experience (at least from logs you have provided so far) has been with pugs or very very bad fixed groups. I've been consistanlty 1st in dps as cPS in pugs for example (not that I've puged often in the last few weeks, but the 2-3 times I helped out this was the case). That alone shows how low the bar for skill in these groups is. Sorry to say, but any boss try where people are sub 70% alacrity, quickness and sub 20 average might can simply be omited from comparisons. Those are not hard values to reach, even for pugs. Yes, the benchmark will not be reached, neither will the mesmer one. But a good damage dealer will be able to maximise his damage on boss just as a mesmer will. Ease of rotation, while relevant, will only be a benefit until you reach the skill cap where a more difficult rotation is no problem for the player. That said, yes mesmer rotation is also less penalised by suboptimal alacrity, quickness and might uptime. Also issues which a good group does not face. I did mention that our ease of rotation is our main benefit. I'm not going to repeat my arguments against ramp up time being bad. I've explained why this is an issue and also the retargeting to trash mobs a detriment earlier in this thread. Yes I did missread the last part about mirage being close to dps mesmer. Doesn't change my point about it still being miles behind most other classes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Noun.7350 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Cyninja.2954 said: > That's just it though, other do it much much better and the biggest issue is not pure dps, but: > > - ramp up time > - no aoe cleave > - minimal utility (or no utility if other classes cover alacrity/quickness) > > We bring NOTHING except bad dps. > > The only thing we have going for us is that power mesmer has one of the safest and easiest rotations ingame which makes it desirable in pugs where the skill level is often very low. This is one of the concerns I keep wanting to address. Our DPS options are both weaker than other professions', and sacrifice the majority of the support Mesmer can provide (given that a ton of it is tied up in Chronomancer and that's not a great DPS trait line). If we spec for DPS, we can bring nice utilities like Feedback or Null Field, but those don't do anything truly unique, and in a raid, they're not nearly as valuable as they were back in pre-HoT dungeon and fractal times. My take is that we either need to do significantly more DPS, so that a DPS Mesmer is actually desirable and not just "well, we have a slot and it could be worse," or we need some sort of profession-specific buff on _core_ Mesmer that helps others do more DPS. Yes, Chronomancer has alacrity and is still the only spec that can achieve 100% alacrity uptime, but you're not running a strong DPS spec if you're running Chronomancer. If we take Inspiration, we can share distortion and provide some condi cleanse, but taking Inspiration is, again, a pretty big DPS loss compared to power Mesmer's Domination/Dueling/Illusions or condi MIrage's Illusions/Dueling/Mirage setup. Meanwhile, Rangers don't make a DPS sacrifice to bring Spotter and Frost Spirit, and Warriors make only a small one to bring Empower Allies and banners (which, by the way, affect 10 players, which is something a lot more profession-specific buffs ought to do). I think that gap should be closed, y'know? Bring Mesmers up to speed with other professions' DPS options, because giving players more strong options to play each profession is a good goal. Circling back on that banners affecting 10 players thing, alacrity really ought to affect 10 players. It's nuts that any good raid group is going to want two of the same profession, on the same spec. Yeah, it'd mean that raid groups are only going to want one Chronomancer instead of two, which is technically a bunch of raid slots that would've been guaranteed for Mesmer but aren't anymore, but if you couple that with a Mesmer DPS buff of some kind, then I think it'd be worth it. > @Cyninja.2954 said: > - minimal utility (or no utility if other classes cover alacrity/quickness) On this point specifically, it's worth noting that Firebrand can apparently pull off 100% quickness uptime with only 50% boon duration. That means all they really need are Runes of the Firebrand and Sigils of Concentration. Then they can wear full Viper's and still do fantastic burning DPS, including sharing Ashes of the Just (which is also part of how they generate quickness). Firebrand is just plain better at quickness than Chronomancer. Chronomancer's still the only source of 100% alacrity uptime, though, and Chronomancer actually gains about 10k DPS on a benchmark if you only have to care about alacrity instead of quickness, so I consider this a good thing, weirdly. Rolling Firebrand + Chronomancer instead of just full support Chronomancer will probably be a DPS gain for a group and also puts a lot less pressure on just one player to keep up all the buffs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apharma.3741 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Carighan.6758 said: > > @apharma.3741 said: > > Viable, as in if the raid group lacked a 10th player and that’s all you could bring maybe but you wouldn’t want a situation with more than 2 mesmers in the dps role for sabetha, KC, Trio (debatable but lack of cleave may be an issue), escort and MO. Mesmer would be one of the last classes you would want for most of these fights and the 3 bosses you mentioned above, that 8 out of 13 bosses a mesmer would be treated with an “erm” rather than a “sure as long as you can play it well” response. > > And this is different from a DPSer how? If you need a 10th and only got one Mesmer so far, you'll tell some Weaver to go run along, too. > > Raid composition is independent of which specific class offers which specific raid functionality. For the most part. There are exceptions in say WoW because they gave each class 2+ raid roles, but GW2 is **so** far away from doing that, it first needs to give everyone **one** raid role. Hence why the whole "But but but we should also be able to play DPS" is such a weird discussion, we have a stable raid role, we're in the "Works fine"-pile. > > Plenty others are not. Unless a raid of 10 ideally wants to have one of each class and then someone random, there's little arguing that balance has worse issues than whether we need a DPS spec or not. Especially because our DPS setup is still easily good enough to kill the bosses with it, even if others do it much better. > I was just talking about the dps role, generally you fill up the required roles and classes and then pick your poison of dps classes. If someone joined with a dps ranger, engy, thief, necro, ele, war and guard people wouldn’t think twice about letting them in because they all have good to excellent damage potential and can bring cleave. Mesmers are very well known to have appalling cleave, and damage tied to really annoying mechanics, clones and phantasms. As I say if 1 joined I wouldn’t really care but if I had multiple turn up then it starts becoming an issue where you can lack cleave or certain mechanics would be a more difficult. This doesn’t happen with every other class, you can take 4 of every other class in the DPS role and there won’t be any concerns about who has to do what mechanic. I do agree that while ever chrono is in such an almost required role that this isn’t an issue but that isn’t an ideal situation and quite frankly the monopoly chrono has on support really should have been addressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esplen.3940 Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 > @Cyninja.2954 said: > @Esplen you are a very knowledgable mesmer, but please realise you're entire raid experience (at least from logs you have provided so far) has been with pugs or very very bad fixed groups. I've been consistanlty 1st in dps as cPS in pugs for example (not that I've puged often in the last few weeks, but the 2-3 times I helped out this was the case). That alone shows how low the bar for skill in these groups is. Sorry to say, but any boss try where people are sub 70% alacrity, quickness and sub 20 average might can simply be omited from comparisons. Those are not hard values to reach, even for pugs. > > Yes, the benchmark will not be reached, neither will the mesmer one. But a good damage dealer will be able to maximise his damage on boss just as a mesmer will. Ease of rotation, while relevant, will only be a benefit until you reach the skill cap where a more difficult rotation is no problem for the player. > > That said, yes mesmer rotation is also less penalised by suboptimal alacrity, quickness and might uptime. Also issues which a good group does not face. I did mention that our ease of rotation is our main benefit. > > I'm not going to repeat my arguments against ramp up time being bad. I've explained why this is an issue and also the retargeting to trash mobs a detriment earlier in this thread. > > Yes I did missread the last part about mirage being close to dps mesmer. Doesn't change my point about it still being miles behind most other classes. That's the thing, you aren't clear what you're asking for. You want a strong DPS option, which we already had since the Pre-PoF trait update. Yes, it doesn't have the damage ceiling that other classes have, but overall, it outperformed other classes. And I'm not just talking about my logs, I'm talking about [raid logs of average groups](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/6zmvmo/) that weren't posted or listed by just me. Yes, there are some fights where Mesmer isn't that great, and that's to be expected. But the advantage of the "braindead easymode rotation" on both Condi and Power Mesmer allows the player to deal with more mechanics before damage loss starts to kick in. You talk about less penalization from buffs, but that's entirely untrue. The rotation is so easy that any buff loss is a huge penalty to your DPS, as you're able to reach 80% of your output in the first 3 seconds of a fight, up to 90%, then 100%. The limiting factor in your output will be buff uptimes more than anything else because you can ignore so many mechanics (dodging, distortion for Power Mes, significant amounts of damage constantly being pumped out even when you're rolling, etc). Sure, you won't be able to reach the actual benchmark itself, but you'll be able to get a lot closer than most other professions, and going toe-to-toe with other DPS options is a good thing. Yeah, this isn't going to be great in your elite speedrun static group, but does that really matter? If you had a static that wanted to clear things (fast), then they're going to have people who are playing at the top of their game and know how to squeeze every last drop of damage out while dealing with mechanics. If they can't, then bring your Mes and outdamage them. I haven't only been providing my logs, I've been providing the average logs posted on GW2Raidar, which is a significant portion. The numbers listed on the GW2Raidar data show ~1,000 of each raid boss (clears). If that's not a realistic expectation, then you might want to address the line differentiating theoretical and practical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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