Curse

Reverend Dr · Jan 30, 2010, 10:40 PM // 22:40

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Originally Posted by reaper with no name

It doesn't matter why the mesmer is weak in PvE. It is, and that needs to be fixed.

Its not a matter of fixing. Right now the mesmer can be overpowered in the pvp environment and at the same time be completely underpowered in the pve environment. Its killing 8 things vs killing 800. So either a complete redesign of the class (aka delete mesmer, create a new class, call it mesmer), or completely change pve so it more about beating a small number of very strong monsters rather than beating tons of terrible ones.

Del · Jan 30, 2010, 11:06 PM // 23:06

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Originally Posted by drkn

i believe that dervishes will be the most desired class to do the droks run)

you mean they aren't now?

Lanier · Jan 30, 2010, 11:16 PM // 23:16

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Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

or completely change pve so it more about beating a small number of very strong monsters rather than beating tons of terrible ones.

Thats an interesting idea. It would be interesting to see that in action but im sure Anet wouldn't be willing to invest the amount of time needed to make something like that true.

Del · Jan 30, 2010, 11:30 PM // 23:30

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Originally Posted by Lanier

Thats an interesting idea. It would be interesting to see that in action but im sure Anet wouldn't be willing to invest the amount of time needed to make something like that true.

but if gw was better designed that way, all classes would generally be more viable, and with quality over quantity, they'd have to put a lot less effort into nerfing farms to begin with.

Shriketalon · Jan 30, 2010, 11:55 PM // 23:55

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Originally Posted by Lanier

Maybe it is true that mesmers are more "limited" in what they can do more efficiently than other professions, and maybe it is true that mesmers can not do the stuff that makes PvE "faster" than other professions, but mesmers do interupt and disable better than any other class.

The problem is, as mentioned, interrupts and disabling are not as worthwhile in PvE. There's no point in disabling a monster if there are five of the exact same kind right next to it. There's no reason to interrupt when you can just kill. They may be fun, sure, but fun won't get you into a group, and fun won't pull your weight in high end areas when the entire team is counting on you to contribute just as much as any other class.

What mesmers need is a way to be Credit To Team.

Recharge times have already been mentioned. They are ridiculous.

Energy loss doesn't work against monsters, who have nearly infinite energy. All skills that use it should be reworked.

More skills should be Area Effect. This helped several Illusion elites, it should be expanded.

Inspiration skills should be better at buffing the party; more hex removal, better recharge on hex removal, and ability to use energy stealing skills to transfer to the entire group.

And finally, Fast Casting skills need a serious buff. Right now, it is a pathetic prime attribute, simply because Mindbender and consumables blow it out of the water. The four normal skills (Persistence of Memory, Power Return, Symbolic Celerity, and Symbolic Posture) all need incredible buffs, along with the elites, to give the mesmer an edge, a reason to actually play a mesmer primary over any other class.

Currently, Mesmers are not Credit To Team. They should be.

maxxfury · Jan 31, 2010, 12:29 AM // 00:29

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Originally Posted by Cuilan

Damage, more disruption, or anything else. Have you played an interruption or e-denial build on a mesmer in hard mode? Illusion of Pain is that far overpowered compared to skills of other professions in PvE? I'm sorry, but "their shutdown skills are plenty powerful enough (in hard mode and useful in normal mode)" doesn't seem right with how the skills/foes are atm..

Id run an Interupt bar in hm if i was called norgu or gwen, untill then i dont have the reflex's.

And e-denial in pve? no i havent, as it doesnt work and i hope to hell no one else has with even a hint of seriousness. And that would be a good way to fix the mes in pve, make mobs susceptible to e-denial.

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Originally Posted by reaper with no name

It doesn't matter why the mesmer is weak in PvE. It is, and that needs to be fixed. It doesn't matter that they aren't intended to do damage (assassins aren't mean to tank or do AoE damage, ritualists aren't meant to use scythes, elementalists aren't meant to heal, rangers aren't meant to throw spears, etc). Damage and damage prevention wins PvE. So, either PvE needs to be given a serious rework, or Mesmers need to be given a way to do one of those two things so that it can at least compete with the other classes in the game.

Just quoted that as its far too true!

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Originally Posted by Lanier

Because I find disruption to be far more fun than direct damage. Thats the whole reason why I play mesmer in PvE.

Alas fun is subjective..a lot of people like to blow stuff up

especially wih the horrendously short cast times of hm mobs....your left with the pre-cast interupts as the only reliable ones in your arsenal..and they aint all that hot :S

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Originally Posted by Lanier

nor do they spread conditions well.

What mesmers do better than any other class is interupt and disable.

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Originally Posted by Cuilan

You have Fevered Dreams and Extend Condition builds, but they're very fragile to the smallest slip ups due to the various illusion and inspiration energy skills.

Fevered dreams, condition whoring galore with some solid interupting from daze, other than spamming sins its the only other truely viable build for pve atm and its only fragile if you have no concept of applying a hex properly in heavy removal areas, you know a fish hex or a cover hex. Other than that its solid.

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Originally Posted by Shriketalon

The problem is, as mentioned, interrupts and disabling are not as worthwhile in PvE. There's no point in disabling a monster if there are five of the exact same kind right next to it. There's no reason to interrupt when you can just kill. They may be fun, sure, but fun won't get you into a group, and fun won't pull your weight in high end areas when the entire team is counting on you to contribute just as much as any other class.

What mesmers need is a way to be Credit To Team.

Recharge times have already been mentioned. They are ridiculous.

Energy loss doesn't work against monsters, who have nearly infinite energy. All skills that use it should be reworked.

More skills should be Area Effect. This helped several Illusion elites, it should be expanded.

Inspiration skills should be better at buffing the party; more hex removal, better recharge on hex removal, and ability to use energy stealing skills to transfer to the entire group.

And finally, Fast Casting skills need a serious buff. Right now, it is a pathetic prime attribute, simply because Mindbender and consumables blow it out of the water. The four normal skills (Persistence of Memory, Power Return, Symbolic Celerity, and Symbolic Posture) all need incredible buffs, along with the elites, to give the mesmer an edge, a reason to actually play a mesmer primary over any other class.

Currently, Mesmers are not Credit To Team. They should be.

Lots of this and some more of this....Tho i dont see a need to directly buff FC, but to link some of the more easily abusabe skill to it (ala glowing gaze) to stop some of the 2ndry abuse and increase what the primary mes can do with their own skills!.
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Personally id like to see some of the OP stuff brought down a level or two from other classes and some of the weaker pve classes pumped up a little......no gimp classes and no uber godly classes.....i wont hold my breath waiting for this tho :P In the mean time i want a few buffs for the lower tier classes.....not holding my breath on that either tbh :P

MithranArkanere · Jan 31, 2010, 02:18 AM // 02:18

I'm totally fine with nerfing mesmers into oblivion.
Any change done to PvE mesmers will be done to monsters too, and that means an easier life for my elementalist.
And oblivion isn't that bad. It was 2006's best RPG.

So you should be fine with it too.

Ok, seriously now. Remember that any buff to PvE mesmers will be done to monsters too. And mesmer bosses tend to come together in bunches.

Wind Riders are just annyoing. Give them interrupting AoEs with great damage, and you can bid your farewell to almost any party. No more healing spells, signets or chants...

So, if they are buffed, it should be in a way that benefits a mesmer, but not a bunch of mesmers. Centering changes in Hexes should help with that.

ForgottenAccount · Jan 31, 2010, 03:02 AM // 03:02

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Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

I'm totally fine with nerfing mesmers into oblivion.
Any change done to PvE mesmers will be done to monsters too, and that means an easier life for my elementalist.

...

Ok, seriously now. Remember that any buff to PvE mesmers will be done to monsters too. And mesmer bosses tend to come together in bunches.

Wind Riders are just annyoing. Give them interrupting AoEs with great damage, and you can bid your farewell to almost any party. No more healing spells, signets or chants...

So, if they are buffed, it should be in a way that benefits a mesmer, but not a bunch of mesmers. Centering changes in Hexes should help with that.

Mesmer monsters are annoying because their "AI," if you can call it that, is capable of perfectly interrupting any skill it sees being used regardless of how fast it may actually cast. Now, it'd be nice if ANet just went ahead and gave all monsters an additional 200-500ms of virtual "lag" like any human player experiences in Guild Wars, but really, it's not going to happen.

Of course, most Mesmer skills are pretty weak, or rather weak when used with no actual intelligence, so that inhuman reaction time is the only thing monster Mesmers even have. Pop a fast-recharging skill so they waste their interrupt and then kill them. Or, more likely, leave the Mesmer monsters for last because once they've blown their interrupt they're no longer a factor in the battle for the next 20 seconds -- Plenty of time to kill everything else then mop up the pathetic Mesmer monster wanding you.

upier · Jan 31, 2010, 08:52 AM // 08:52

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Originally Posted by drkn

it was. e/me on mindbender, especially. no one complained or suggested to nerf it before e/me (or, well, any/me) started to cryway everything.

People started to Cryway everything because they realised how insane CoP was and not because CoP could be used on secondary guys.

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Originally Posted by drkn

other classes already have something cool. paras - imbagons; sins and warriors - scythe builds; monks - 600/smite, RoJ, versatile 55, (...); necros - minion masters, bloodspikes, excessive life stealing, wells. the list goes on. mesmers, at the very moment, have nothing unique (or especially powerful and mesmer-only or at least mesmer specific) to compete with against other classes.
i don't really see people rerolling to mesmers just to be able to cryway again. pugs would include the old mesmers but it wouldn't cause the same boom as shadow form - as everyone had to get a sin.

You seriously underestimate the role of farming in this game.
And in farming, people don't run what they "like", they run what works best.
If CoP would be back to it's insane self, but only useful for mesmers, you WOULD see massive numbers of mesmers.

reaper with no name · Jan 31, 2010, 08:59 AM // 08:59

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Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

Its not a matter of fixing. Right now the mesmer can be overpowered in the pvp environment and at the same time be completely underpowered in the pve environment. Its killing 8 things vs killing 800. So either a complete redesign of the class (aka delete mesmer, create a new class, call it mesmer), or completely change pve so it more about beating a small number of very strong monsters rather than beating tons of terrible ones.

There's this thing, see, called the PvE/PvP split...

Del · Jan 31, 2010, 09:19 AM // 09:19

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Originally Posted by reaper with no name

There's this thing, see, called the PvE/PvP split...

there's this thing, see, called mesmers not being designed for being an imba pve class, so if you don't like it, roll something else. if you don't want to play another class, then play pvp, or get over the fact that mesmers suck in pve

drkn · Jan 31, 2010, 09:31 AM // 09:31

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Ok, seriously now. Remember that any buff to PvE mesmers will be done to monsters too. And mesmer bosses tend to come together in bunches.

isn't pve easy enough now? browse through guru to see people whining that pve is too easy and buffing anything would make it even easier. buff the monsters then, we will adapt while having more options of playstyle.

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there's this thing, see, called mesmers not being designed for being an imba pve class,

were sins designed to tank? were eles designed to heal? were monks designed to 600/smite everything, including doing three-man foundry or two-man uw? were warriors designed to use scythe?
no. and although i agree that mesmers were designed for pvp, not pve, and this is why they suck there, i think all of the above should be changed.

@upier:
i'd rather see more possibilities of playstyle AND buffed monsters to be resistant to the new ways than being limited to one build, built not around my primairy profession. adding an effect to CoP like 'after the second copy of CoP hits any mob, he resists next copies for 7 seconds'. there are many, many ways to give us more freedom while setting our builds without breaking things.

Del · Jan 31, 2010, 10:18 AM // 10:18

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Originally Posted by drkn

were eles designed to heal?

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Originally Posted by drkn

were warriors designed to use scythe?

you should probably find something secondary that a mes primary can use well. people managed to do it with a couple classes that were already ok in pve, prob can't be that hard to do with mes, even though VoR works well enough as is.

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Originally Posted by drkn

were monks designed to 600/smite everything, including doing three-man foundry or two-man uw?

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Originally Posted by drkn

were sins designed to tank?

probably not, but the tools were there for someone to learn how to abuse it.

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Originally Posted by drkn

no. and although i agree that mesmers were designed for pvp, not pve, and this is why they suck there, i think all of the above should be changed.

mesmers are fine as is, if you don't like long drawn out fights with pve mobs, then mesmer obviously isn't a class you should be playing

Tenebrae · Jan 31, 2010, 12:11 PM // 12:11

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Originally Posted by Apathetic Tom

there's this thing, see, called mesmers not being designed for being an imba pve class, so if you don't like it, roll something else. if you don't want to play another class, then play pvp, or get over the fact that mesmers suck in pve

Bullshit. Plain and simple BS. "mesmers not being designed for being an imba pve class" ? what kind of cr .... thing is that ? did you design mesmers ? do you have special info that no one has ? NO.
No one is even asking for them to go 1234 with any random skill in its bar and pwn all HM pve so back off.
Rangers and Mesmers have an pvp oriented design but with skill split it doesnt mean it has to be always like that and we have seen it many times. Like all ppl that uses its brain know , pve mesmers need aoe effects in some spells and lower recharges in some others. No one asks to overcome necros and eles in any role , just a logical buff that many mes need.

PS: Mes Mobs are not a problem even with those buffs , AI is still dumb and thats it .

Lusciious · Jan 31, 2010, 12:39 PM // 12:39

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Originally Posted by Tenebrae

PS: Mes Mobs are not a problem even with those buffs , AI is still dumb and thats it .

So you want AI to be smarter ? as smart as humans ? or smarter than humans ? maybe till they take over the world ? o.o

The only reason why i didn't play a mesmer is that male mesmers are ugly .

Anyway, back to topic.

These "nerfs" aren't hitting mesmers as bad as you think . there's always another way to do something . Just gotta think out of the box . SCs makes everything boring . What's the point of being able to finish the deep in 12 minutes ? so you can get money ? Dude it's just a GAME . You play games to HAVE FUN . not to earn money . If you want to earn money, go get a real life job . at least those type money can help you unlike these virtual money. However, i have to agree that we need money IG to an extent that without money, we cannot really do much and be satisfied with the bare minimum.

These nerfs were targetted at OPed stuffs . it's you guys who decide what is OP and not . If something is OP, chances would be everyone would abuse it like if you could hack in a game, you would because it would make it so much easier . don't tell me you never tried hacking before . I'm sure everyone have done it once .

Like mentioned earlier, if everyone abuses it, it becomes popular, test krewe finds out about it and BAM! It's always like that .

But tbh, IMO i feel that instead of nerfing this and that . Why not buff other skills ? There are many useless skills i can think of . But i guess the reason behind the nerfs is that it is much easier to nerf a skill than to buff a skill / AI . Also, Nerfing the skills means we're back to 1:0.5 where 1 - us, 0.5 - AI.
If we were to buff a skill, it would mean that it'd be 2:0.5 and then they would have to buff enemies' AI as well . Why would anyone want double the work ?

Theres something i don't understand ... why are there duplicate skills of each other . If you want a duplicate skill, get echo or arcane echo not another skill with another name but has the same effect . If you cannot think of another effect for this other skill, why bother implementing it ?

drkn · Jan 31, 2010, 01:20 PM // 13:20

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So you want AI to be smarter ? as smart as humans ? or smarter than humans ? maybe till they take over the world ? o.o

he just pointed out that no skill buff could overpower mobs as they're dumb anyways and easily beaten. if the mobs are given a higher damage, a better recharge or lower energy cost, it wouldn't matter that much. general difficulty of pve might rise a little bit - and that's good! - but in the end, the playerbase will adapt and roll the mobs as they used to.

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The only reason why i didn't play a mesmer is that male mesmers are ugly .

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These "nerfs" aren't hitting mesmers as bad as you think . there's always another way to do something . Just gotta think out of the box .

you didn't play them and you come with 'i-know-better' attitude? that's the way to go!

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What's the point of being able to finish the deep in 12 minutes ? so you can get money ? Dude it's just a GAME . You play games to HAVE FUN . not to earn money .

of course, i share your view. though using e-denial on mobs isn't fun at all. using most of mesmer skills on one target and then just wanding for 30s, because the skills are recharging, isn't fun.

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These nerfs were targetted at OPed stuffs .

so why VoR got nerfed, making it half as useful for mesmer lovers, while RoJ is just merely touched?
i could go on with those examples.
the problem with nerfs is that they nerf what people abuse on secondary mesmers, totally ignoring the fact that there are primairy mesmers playing pve. and they don't like splitting too much.

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why are there duplicate skills of each other .

the general idea behind it is alright - dragon stomp is sometimes useful, or teinai's crystals. but when one class has four or even more duplicates, and all of them are pretty much useless skills, that's where problem starts.

e:
my general attitude towards pve balancing is pretty simple.
* nerf severely broken skills and builds, like SF, 600/smite, w/d scythes, infusers
* if you want to increase the difficulty, it's better to buff monsters than nerf players
* buff or completely rework useless skills, attributes, insignias
* by improving monsters and buffing some useless skills, you can keep the general difficulty at comparable level to the current one while giving us much more options on creating working builds

i applaud to the add on of skeles in uw. THAT is the way to go. too bad it turned out that old tricks are stronger than new foes - so SF has to be nerfed, even though anet tried to nerf uwsc and leave the sin-base with their god mode.

rather than enforcing the use of meta in pve, just handle us various options, comparable in the outcome and team supporting. one of the most enjoyable things to do in GW is to form a working build. but it's impossible when you're limited to several useful skills or lots of copies.

Lanier · Jan 31, 2010, 02:41 PM // 14:41

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there's this thing, see, called mesmers not being designed for being an imba pve class, so if you don't like it, roll something else. if you don't want to play another class, then play pvp, or get over the fact that mesmers suck in pve

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mesmers are fine as is, if you don't like long drawn out fights with pve mobs, then mesmer obviously isn't a class you should be playing

^This and This

The only reason really to be playing a mesmer is because you want to have fun or because you dont mind slightly longer battles. If you want to speed through PvE, play another class.

One idea I liked, however, was making monsters in PvE more powerful. This would not only make the mesmers primary role more powerful in PvE, it would also make PvE more challenging in general. Maybe the normal monster's health armor and damage could be buffed to the level of the current bosses and the current bosses could have their health, armor, and damage buffed to the level of boss-like foes at the end of the dungeons. That would certainly make PvE more interesting.

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of course, i share your view. though using e-denial on mobs isn't fun at all. using most of mesmer skills on one target and then just wanding for 30s, because the skills are recharging, isn't fun.

As someone else said, fun is subjective. You may not enjoy shutting down, but i certainly do. To me, draining energy until mind wrack activates or landing that Power block is more fun than using a 1234343 attack chain on an assassin. Oh, and wanding for 30 seconds is definitly an exageration. The skill recharges arn't THAT bad

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Why not buff other skills ?

NO! this game is so easy... more buffs for the player is not what is needed.

drkn · Jan 31, 2010, 03:04 PM // 15:04

i think that the real question is if we want to have complete specialists in guild wars or classes that have some stage of versatility. either way, one rule should apply to all professions.

mesmers are specialists. they specialise in disruption, what is damn hawt in pvp, but they suck at nearly everything else.
if we were about to follow that trail, monks would only be able to heal or prot (hybrid monks would need to be somehow eliminated - you either heal or prot), rits would have to either support by healing/protection, summon spirits or support damage, paragons would have to either play supportive role as imbagons or pure damage on spear mastery...
as you see, it would limit and cripple the game badly. very badly, i'd say, and it's NOT the way to go.

the other option is to give some sort of versatility to everyone. sure, sins shouldn't be god mode tanks, but i don't mind them tanking at some level or running scythes as long as dervishes are better with their primairy weapon than them. monks can heal, prot, go hybrid, go damage, bond etc, and that's good for them.
mesmers can, at the moment, be successful only at disrupting. they may try to deal some moderate damage or use their fast casting in conjuction with a subclass, but they're still inferior to all other classes at it.

so what we need is to balance out the versatility level. either nerf all other classes and make specialists or buff underpowered classes and give their players the ability to run other builds than they had to.

if you enjoy playing disruption in pve, that's fine and that's your view. it's not the only righteous option, though. i believe we should be able to choose from a bigger skill pool when we form our builds and decide what we want to run in pve without the need of rerolling to another character, especially that there already are classes that can do everything.

so a mesmer should be a specialist disruptor with other options to go, at a viable level, making him useful in a team in high end pve area, especially that disruption itself isn't the best in pve. an elementalist should be the damager, but i'm fine with ele healing or tanking as long as monks/rits are generally better healers. the more options to choose from, the better.

right now, we have classes with loads of options and classes with max one useful way and loads of crappy, useless skills.

the same applies to w/d and a/d problem. if dervishes were the most powerful with scythes, sins or warriors running with them wouldn't hurt that much. right now, though, a warrior can achieve much higher damage with a scythe than the primairy scythe user. something's wrong.

the same applies to other things. make mesmers top disrupters - so that rangers' interrupts should be nerfed - but let them run some other options, too, at a level letting them to get into a pug.

pvp, on the other hand, should be, imho, specialised to the pain. or there should be two-three general builds to run. but, now, i'm not a pvp expert, so you may disregard that very part.

Voice of Reason · Jan 31, 2010, 03:08 PM // 15:08

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Originally Posted by Lanier

The only reason really to be playing a mesmer is because you want to have fun or because you dont mind slightly longer battles. If you want to speed through PvE, play another class.

A player shouldn't be gimped for playing the class he or she wants.

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One idea I liked, however, was making monsters in PvE more powerful. This would not only make the mesmers primary role more powerful in PvE, it would also make PvE more challenging in general. Maybe the normal monster's health armor and damage could be buffed to the level of the current bosses and the current bosses could have their health, armor, and damage buffed to the level of boss-like foes at the end of the dungeons. That would certainly make PvE more interesting.

That would make PvE more gimmicky.

Del · Jan 31, 2010, 03:09 PM // 15:09

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Originally Posted by drkn

mesmers are specialists. they specialise in disruption, what is damn hawt in pvp, but they suck at nearly everything else.

FC water, FC curse, FC stoning, VoR, backfire, empathy, drain enchant, shatter enchant, virulence spike, signet of illusions spelljacking, there's quite a bit more to mesmers than rupting.