The real nerf mesmers need

Base health.

Coming from a fighting game background, the highly mobile and evasive characters with lots of tools are usually balanced by them having low health values. Sure they have a lot of mixups and offensive power, but they DIE if they mess up.

In gw2, that is sort of the case with Thief.

However, Mesmer for some reason has 15k base health and Thief has 10k, while Ele has 10k as well for some reason.

Warrior and Necro having 19k makes sense, they facetank a lot of damage, though necro has it way worse - lacking any form of invulnerability whatsoever.

In the 15k classes we have the balanced ones like Ranger, Engi, Rev and mesmer(???)

10k bracket we find Guard, who has a lot of blocks, mitigation and self healing traits and utilities. Thief a highly elusive class with huge evasion uptime and blinds plus stealth, and lastly... elementalist? an ok healer (not the best), an ok dmg dealer (not the best) with a very subpar amount of damage mitigation compared to the other 10k profs (obsi flesh and a few blocks, thats it).

Ele and mesmer places should be swapped. I don't wanna turn this into a 'buff my class!!1' thread, but it is reasonable enough. Ele has almost no damage mitigation or mobility, while mesmer is on thief's level or better. If you want to keep some of that evasion, deception, sheer burst damage and mobility it would only be fair for the hp values to be swapped.

Thoughts?

I think you are spot on. Mesmer either needs less full mitigation active skills (evades, blocks, distortion, etc) or it needs less hp. One is easier to change than the other too. ;P

In fact, maybe selecting certain elite specs should alter base HP for all classes... (Not to hijack the thread.)

It's not the worst idea in the world. I was doing okay on mesmer with deadshot amulet in plat 2. I think carrion mirage would survive at that health threshold.

I don’t think it would address the problem, every little bit helps though.

Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

@"OriOri.8724" said:Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

Nerf some ele healing values if you must. It's not like staff nuke ele bot wouldn't die to pretty much any other spec even if they had 25k health. It would just take a little bit longer.

Bruiser Ele "evades" damage by tanking it and power healing through it. Mesmer simply evades / blocks / invulns most of the damage, on top of having more health and burst / utility.

Buff mesmerNerf thiefNerf spell breakerNerf guardian (too many cleanses)

@Razor.6392 said:

@"OriOri.8724" said:Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

So instead of balancing a single class, your solution is to swap health pools so now that 2 classes have to be balanced? Because giving mesmers less health won't lower our evades at all.

If you want to balance mesmer then actually balance the class. But this will do nothing to balance mesmer, yet it will make ele less balanced than it currently is.

I'd say they should swap Mesmer/Ele HP pool. Ele has a lot less active defense, while Mesmer can chain a very long sequence of dodge/block/evades/teleport.

Personally I'd rather see Eles have their damage turbo charged again. Bring back fresh air weavers.

If Elementalist gets more base HP, then replace the HP trait on Weaver with something else. Sword/X weaver running that trait would have a very large amount of HP given sword's tankiness.

However I really do agree with your logic.

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

Moving Ele's base health up by 4k isn't going to turn ele into some crazy balance nightmare. The class isn't even good right now, and it's only fingerhold on viability is the lack of telegraph on FA, and even then FA's burst is on par with most burst classes.

Mesmer right now has better damage avoidance than all three of the T1 HP classes, on top of better damage than all three T1 HP classes, on top of better mobility than two of the three T1 HP classes.

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

But ele is not balanced lol, its weak.

You may be correct in that since the base functionality of the class was overbuffed then a nerf to base stats might be a good way to counterbalance this. The only problem is anet stated they want to make base function changes like this the same to both PvE and PvP, and this creates a big issue as it changes what stats a mesmer player might want when crafting their armor. So if anet actually did this, there is a very strong possibility that PvE mesmer players would throw a temper tantrum of epic proportions - and mes mains wouldn't be totally in the wrong to do so considering the gold investment in their gear.

So while nerfing mesmer down to T3 base vitality may actually be one of the best nerf ideas, for various complicated reasons they really cant do this.

@Razor.6392 said:Base health.

Coming from a fighting game background, the highly mobile and evasive characters with lots of tools are usually balanced by them having low health values. Sure they have a lot of mixups and offensive power, but they DIE if they mess up.

In gw2, that is sort of the case with Thief.

However, Mesmer for some reason has 15k base health and Thief has 10k, while Ele has 10k as well for some reason.

Warrior and Necro having 19k makes sense, they facetank a lot of damage, though necro has it way worse - lacking any form of invulnerability whatsoever.

In the 15k classes we have the balanced ones like Ranger, Engi, Rev and mesmer(???)

10k bracket we find Guard, who has a lot of blocks, mitigation and self healing traits and utilities. Thief a highly elusive class with huge evasion uptime and blinds plus stealth, and lastly... elementalist? an ok healer (not the best), an ok dmg dealer (not the best) with a very subpar amount of damage mitigation compared to the other 10k profs (obsi flesh and a few blocks, thats it).

Ele and mesmer places should be swapped. I don't wanna turn this into a 'buff my class!!1' thread, but it is reasonable enough. Ele has almost no damage mitigation or mobility, while mesmer is on thief's level or better. If you want to keep some of that evasion, deception, sheer burst damage and mobility it would only be fair for the hp values to be swapped.

Thoughts?

Yes, I fully agree that elementalist should have the higher base health.

Mesmer has too much utility when it comes to dueling other professions, like teleport, evades, blocks, invulnerability, stuns, dazes, stealth etc. Also, it has Blink which is similar to the elementalists' Lightning Flash, only it is a stun breaker, has a lower cooldown and it has increased range. I know that you can use Lightning Flash while you're stunned, but I would really like it if it was a stun breaker.

Some will say that mesmer is supposed to be the best dueling profession, that no other profession should even think about dueling the mesmer. Lowering the base health would give other professions some chance to beat a mesmer like thief, elementalist and engineer. Elementalist may be the better burst/nuke profession, but guess what? So can the mesmer. I would argue that mesmer can do burst damage much better than the elementalist.

In my opinion, in order to properly nerf the mesmer are as follows: either reduce the base health or reduce the amount of utility mesmer has when it comes to dueling other professions. Not being able to win a duel against a mesmer, no matter how much you try is something that I don't think any profession should have to deal with. Also, they shouldn't be able to win outnumbered fights.

I’m still struggling on the reasoning why warrior is balanced, it’s designed to tank damage yet in reality it has a lot more mobility, blocks, evade on GS and defences than necro that also allows it to kite far better too, so much more that you’d have to give necro even more health if we were really being serious.

Also I’m perplexed at why you think ranger and engineer are deserving of medium health over thief, a ranger can have as much if not more damage mitigation through evades and has a ton of kiting ability. Engineers can get a lot of blocks, invulns and throw on rocket boots and it’s got top level escape, though worse than mesmer. Sure I get they’re not as obviously jump in and jump out of combat, might not be quite as fast but the gap has closed a lot since the base game between all medium armour classes especially since elite specs. There is a very good reason Druid has had to be nerfed not once or twice but several times.

I guarantee as soon as people stop complaining about mesmer holo will be the next one complained about, the amount of sustain it get baseline from holosmith is crazy, it’s basically a free kit with traits to give it everything it needs to stick around a fight with no real downside.

'I don't know how to balance the class so let's just cut the HP pool'Nope. Problems lie deeper than that, sorry.

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@"Razor.6392" said:Base health.

Coming from a fighting game background, the highly mobile and evasive characters with lots of tools are usually balanced by them having low health values. Sure they have a lot of mixups and offensive power, but they DIE if they mess up.

In gw2, that is sort of the case with Thief.

However, Mesmer for some reason has 15k base health and Thief has 10k, while Ele has 10k as well for some reason.

Warrior and Necro having 19k makes sense, they facetank a lot of damage, though necro has it way worse - lacking any form of invulnerability whatsoever.

In the 15k classes we have the balanced ones like Ranger, Engi, Rev and mesmer(???)

10k bracket we find Guard, who has a lot of blocks, mitigation and self healing traits and utilities. Thief a highly elusive class with huge evasion uptime and blinds plus stealth, and lastly... elementalist? an ok healer (not the best), an ok dmg dealer (not the best) with a very subpar amount of damage mitigation compared to the other 10k profs (obsi flesh and a few blocks, thats it).

Ele and mesmer places should be swapped. I don't wanna turn this into a 'buff my class!!1' thread, but it is reasonable enough. Ele has almost no damage mitigation or mobility, while mesmer is on thief's level or

better

. If you want to keep some of that evasion, deception, sheer burst damage and mobility it would only be fair for the hp values to be swapped.

Thoughts?

Except Lightning Flash is a damaging AoE spell.And I'd really like to expand on this. There's a rarely brought up fact that vanilla mesmers' only damaging utility skills used to be mantra of pain and phantasmal disenchanter (correct me if I'm wrong), at least untraited. So, as a duelling profession, mesmers had enough damage on just their weapons and shatters to run "pure utility" skills and be competitive.With the introduction of elite specializations as well as the recent rework, ANet has added more utility and elite skills that deal damage. In effect, a profession that was already capable of dealing lots of damage with just their weapons was allowed to apply even more DPS pressure and burst targets more reliably.With the option to send their damage output through the roof, mesmers should now be balanced via either random nerfs (creating more balance issues and possibly affecting core mesmer) or buffing other professions (ends up a balance nightmare just as likely).

TL;DR My opinion is: the nerf mesmers actually need is a heavy nerf to their utility and elite skills' damage (I'm not opposed to some pure utility buff to compensate).

This won't solve the issue with ele and certainly not the mesmer one.

But since we're here with kitten ideas of a new balance method.Ele should trade to full counter with arcane block, because ele could use both a spammable damage mitigation skill and a spammable damage skill.Mesmer should trade photon forge with arcane thievery, since mesmer needs sustain damage and holos are always complaining about condi removal.

I agree with the overall sentiment, but I would rather they address Elementalist survivability by looking more closely at weapons, utilities, and traits to build or expand on the themes and mechanics they already have in place. For example, adding moderate-to-strong barrier (without a healing power investment requirement) on earth skills for each weapon except sword would be interesting.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@"Razor.6392" said:Base health.

Coming from a fighting game background, the highly mobile and evasive characters with lots of tools are usually balanced by them having low health values. Sure they have a lot of mixups and offensive power, but they DIE if they mess up.

In gw2, that is sort of the case with Thief.

However, Mesmer for some reason has 15k base health and Thief has 10k, while Ele has 10k as well for some reason.

Warrior and Necro having 19k makes sense, they facetank a lot of damage, though necro has it way worse - lacking any form of invulnerability whatsoever.

In the 15k classes we have the balanced ones like Ranger, Engi, Rev and mesmer(???)

10k bracket we find Guard, who has a lot of blocks, mitigation and self healing traits and utilities. Thief a highly elusive class with huge evasion uptime and blinds plus stealth, and lastly... elementalist? an ok healer (not the best), an ok dmg dealer (not the best) with a very subpar amount of damage mitigation compared to the other 10k profs (obsi flesh and a few blocks, thats it).

Ele and mesmer places should be swapped. I don't wanna turn this into a 'buff my class!!1' thread, but it is reasonable enough. Ele has almost no damage mitigation or mobility, while mesmer is on thief's level or

better

. If you want to keep some of that evasion, deception, sheer burst damage and mobility it would only be fair for the hp values to be swapped.

Thoughts?

pDefender, arcane thievery (under certain circumstances). Mesmers power has always come from shatters, Condi and power build alike.I wouldn't touch mesmers elites as they are already really weak. Mass invis was the go to for years, and not because it was in any way a good skill.

I would nerf traits, and obviously phantasms. Expect thought it was a good idea to buff their damage by between 300 and 1000% were probably high at the moment. I'd also nerf their stability access by putting a 10 second ICD on the stability portion of disillusionment.

I'd get rid of the daze on lesser chaos storm (the trait version) and I would rework chronophantasma so that it doesn't duplicate phantasms and multiply clone generation.

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:pDefender, arcane thievery (under certain circumstances).

This is sort of what I'm talking about. Phantasmal defender didn't do noticeable damage before the recent rework (really, the damage number was cosmetical), and as you said arcane thievery is about as damaging as mirror.

I wouldn't touch mesmers elites as they are already really weak. Mass invis was the go to for years, and not because it was in any way a good skill.

Yup. My point is none of vanilla mesmer elites do any damage, and it's fine because it balances out mesmer's already decent weapon and shatter damage. I question if it is really necessary to give mesmers more sheer damage via elite skills, hence I only discuss their damage, not functionality.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Ele is supposed to be the glass cannon spellcaster in GW2. The reason mesmer was placed in the medium health pool was because it was originally designed as a dueling class, not a nuke like ele, and would therefore be eating more damage than an ele would. Right now ele is being balanced around having the low health pool, swapping ele and mesmer means you would now have to re-balance ele around the higher health pool.

The correct solution is to tone down mesmer where its overperforming, instead of radically changing some of the core balancing features of the class.

And, yet again, lowering the base health of mesmer will do nothing to change that. If you want to balance the class, then actually balance the class. If you think mesmer has too many evades, then lower how many evades it has. If you think it does too much damage, then lower its damage. But changing its health pool does absolutely nothing to balance a poor class design.

@OriOri.8724 said:But changing its health pool does absolutely nothing to balance a poor class design.

Agreed. We really should be looking at its elites instead of its core. In your eagerness to rein in mesmer, you will destroy the small handful of builds that do not take advantage of the cheese provided by Mirage/Chrono.

Identify specifically what makes its rotation so problematic, and weaken those areas instead of just throwing a wrench into the inner gears of the class. Right now, we have Elusive Mind/Phantasm clutter and perhaps an overtuning of defensive skills so that they can be easily chained when offensive skills are on cooldown.I find them as annoying as the next person but I'd still like them to be usable.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@"Razor.6392" said:Base health.

Coming from a fighting game background, the highly mobile and evasive characters with lots of tools are usually balanced by them having low health values. Sure they have a lot of mixups and offensive power, but they DIE if they mess up.

In gw2, that is sort of the case with Thief.

However, Mesmer for some reason has 15k base health and Thief has 10k, while Ele has 10k as well for some reason.

Warrior and Necro having 19k makes sense, they facetank a lot of damage, though necro has it way worse - lacking any form of invulnerability whatsoever.

In the 15k classes we have the balanced ones like Ranger, Engi, Rev and mesmer(???)

10k bracket we find Guard, who has a lot of blocks, mitigation and self healing traits and utilities. Thief a highly elusive class with huge evasion uptime and blinds plus stealth, and lastly... elementalist? an ok healer (not the best), an ok dmg dealer (not the best) with a very subpar amount of damage mitigation compared to the other 10k profs (obsi flesh and a few blocks, thats it).

Ele and mesmer places should be swapped. I don't wanna turn this into a 'buff my class!!1' thread, but it is reasonable enough. Ele has almost no damage mitigation or mobility, while mesmer is on thief's level or

better

. If you want to keep some of that evasion, deception, sheer burst damage and mobility it would only be fair for the hp values to be swapped.

Thoughts?

It's really just Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender. None of our other utilities are pushing out much damage.