apharma.3741

Was just before August 2019 as that is when chaotic interruption was disabled. Since then: Vigor on mirage was halved through nomads endurance Critical Infusion had 40% of it's duration removed while similar traits on other classes remain unchanged. Chaotic Interruption was basically deleted from the game. They made torment largely worse than bleed....oh and it's one of the mirages main damage condition. They increased the cool down of Illusionary Ambush by 75% Nerfed Chaos Vortex quite a bit but who knows with how much they've changed it Probably more that I can't remember to get to current place where mirage is considered not great in the meta, suffers from having 1 dodge. A lot of high level EU players are saying you could give it the 2nd dodge back and it would just be fine in the meta. Instead Mirage cloak is being nerfed so no more dodge while stunned or immobilised (which I'm fine with but can the superspeed go back to release level?). On top of that we're seeing a ton of chaos trait line and mirage nerfs just to be sure mirage knows it's place. Illusionary Membrane: Reduced incoming damage reduction from 10% to 5% in PvP only. Chaotic Persistence: Reduced concentration and expertise from 250 to 150 in PvP only. Illusionary Defense: Reduced damage reduction per stack from 2% to 1.5% in PvP only. Bountiful Disillusionment: Reduced vigor duration from 8 seconds to 5 seconds in PvP only. Mirage can no longer dodge while immobilized or under the effects of crowd control. Mirage Cloak: This trait no longer reduces the mirage's endurance in PvP and WvW. Chaos Vortex: Reduced clone bleeding and torment duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. Imaginary Axes: Reduced clone torment duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds in PvP and WvW. Split Surge: Reduced might stacks from 2 to 1 in PvP only. Elusive Mind: This trait now removes conditions when gaining Mirage Cloak instead of when dodging. Reduced the number of conditions removed from 2 to 1 in PvP and WvW. WHY?! It's already bad, the mirage cloak nerfs were enough but these will also hurt all mesmer builds and promote desert distortion use with signet of illusions even more than it currently does.

Exactly, I don't think ele will get played more and I don't think other builds will get gatekept more by the changes to ele, they will be gatekept by the nerfs from this paragon of neutrality. More build variety is nice....when other classes aren't potentially starved for even 1 competitive build that doesn't make you want to ump off a bridge in Divinity's Reach. The neutrality across the game from PvP to WvW and how some classes are getting token buffs compared to strait up "hey bro, taking that trait line for those CDRs was annoying, have em for free, on all the best skills and take another line to be stronger".

It's not just burst every 30/60s though. Remember, you're doing 22% more direct damage on the autos, you do more damage on all the longbow skills used to pressure, barrage does before crit 25% more damage than with cele. If you are playing defensively it doesn't just mean you stop attacking, you can be applying pressure or just putting range between you and the enemies. You do more direct damage across the skillset that the few extra might stacks from concentration won't make up for. That extra 20-30% more direct damage is the difference between someone backing off while pressured and getting away and them going down, then cleaving the rez if they try which the zerk version will do better. Celestial on a power focused build is not and never will be superior, just like it will not be superior on a healing focused build As for your other reply, the damage difference is about 20-30% before crits on a reasonably well armoured target 2681, more armour won't close that damage gap much, and with the crit damage and extra crit chance on top the gap widens where I'd expect the zerk build to easily be 20% more direct damage under most circumstances factoring in might. You get about 40% more boon duration which I estimate as being about 5 more might stacks (main might goes from 7s to 9.5s) until you get in melee with smoke assault. You're giving far too much credit to the might and vuln and not enough to the sheer raw stats or how multiplicative damage bonuses favour higher base stats. We agree the cele build is more survivable but the cost is that you do enough less damage that it will be the difference between someone going down while backing off and them surviving with you potentially having to put yourself in a worse position. I think Lucy above has made a good post.

Leave the game or stop playing mesmer, get others to do the same and collect them in one place saying what they did and why. Could be a forum post but a reddit post might be better once the 3rd party mess is fixed. You get 200+ people saying "I stopped playing mesmer because it has fewer viable build options and keeps getting nerfed in the wrong ways" and people will listen. At the very least it can get some bad press depending on response. Oh and it's not just PvP they're messing up, most people in WvW are tired of boon spam and they literally just buffed it and nerfed it's counter.

OK let me break it down to you, with sock puppets if you imagine hard enough. Elementalist's top 6 builds are like this: 1 and 2 are a 9/10 3-6 are 7/10 Changes don't make 1 and 2 better, they are 9/10 still. Changes make 3-6 better, they become 8/10. Little changes. FotM people playing ele are already and continue to play builds 1 and 2. Ele mains play a variety of builds to stave off boredom of posting how awesome they are and every other class needs to be brought up and they 100% don't need nerfs, "it's a skill issue bro". Every other meta build still beats 3-6 depending on whether your class is favoured by CMC and Roy as being "fair".

Will you die running a power damage traits soulbeast build with cele? No but you're also not likely to kill someone either as the damage is lower and ramps up slower, the builds effectiveness is greatly depreciated by running cele. Zerk will net you more kills and if you're playing remotely well you won't die as you have immunity to all CC for 6s, two 1000 or greater range leaps and quite a bit of stealth. I didn't say they were irrelevant, I said they went to waste. The builds purpose is to spike people, then play defensively, spike again, play defensively. You mark targets, spike them out and move on. You don't need to be a tower ranger either, you can add into small scale fights and probably be the only one who lives if it goes south from 10 people on warclaws showing up. Playing cele on it makes it a better get in the thick of it fighter but comes at the cost of much lower spike damage and you need to ramp it up. Swapping to cele gives you: -14% crit chance -22% crit damage -654 power which gives you on "heavy 2.6k toughness" targets -154 damage or 22% less damage out of the box at max bloodlust non crit. Factor in crit and the difference increases more.

The point is that the stats are only worth however much you take advantage of them. One of the main culprits (not the only culprit) of the current situation is the amount of sustain and multiple damage types layered onto elite specs and their weapons combined with the boon spam. This comes back to what I've been saying for a while, a major problem is perfect stats. Minstrels and trailblazer are every bit as broken on their appropriate builds because they give every stat the build needs with nothing they don't need. People just single out cele for while ignoring the boonballs running around healing and vomiting boons or the trailblazer classes that have good damage mitigation and healing. Also the one shot builds that can 100-0 people if they don't have protection even with 3K toughness. Game is a balance mess.

The thing is, even PvP players who don't like mesmer are starting to see this is getting really weird in the constant nerfs: A message does need to be sent where ANet are listening. If they won't listen on the forums you need to take it somewhere they can't ignore.

A common mistake is attributing equal value to each stat within a build. If you run a power traits soulbeast build without any conditions then condition damage, expertise and to some extent concentration, vitality or toughness and healing power is going to waste. This is because you don't inflict damaging conditions and your control conditions aren't going to be significantly longer. Fights shouldn't last long as you're a burst and leave kind of playstyle so the other stats are less needed as your skills/traits will do more for surviving than stats. Where celestial matters is in do it all builds where weapons have different damage types with good scaling, where traits passively give good uptime of strong conditions (refinded toxins) as well as good stacking of might and other strong boons and where vitality, toughness and healing power scale well as the fight is going to last longer than Liz Truss.

*sigh* Read and think. You don't see offhand dagger played much as it's considered worse for most builds than other options, so fire grab while is a buff is not going to make ele as a class stronger than it currently is. Written in stone only affects signets, have you seen the signets? They're not amazing, you are unlikely to take these over the corresponding shouts on tempest and it competes with other options that are better, even for magnetic aura spam. Where you might see it played is weird off meta condition tempest (looking at you Sahne) and in particular weaver builds which are not meta and not likely to be meta. I doubt you will see them used in catalyst builds but you may see condition catalyst with it. Signet of restoration activation is an awful heal that you use as a last resort, similar to old healing signet. You may pair it with written in stone to get the passive when used but that hasn't changed and wasn't really used anyway, nothing changed. Again, you may see it in some condition/bunker builds adding to sustain with signet of water but that's awful and wasn't changed. What you're not likely to see is any of these changes create a build that significantly surpasses the current, already strong ele builds, which is what I said. You're not likely to see 5 ele meta returning because the best build isn't getting stronger. Just like we didn't see Virtuoso's running amok in PvP after the last patch. All of this is ignoring the part about how we should all be concerned about how much attention ele is getting to make multiple builds more viable and good options while some classes are potentially going to be starved for even 1 competitive option and are being pre nerfed on the core level to get a 2nd dodge back for an elite spec.

Read my post, read the edit, read these notes. Play ele and understand how most of these skills are not currently used because they're considered not competitive. Understand that these changes are unlikely to enable builds better than we currently have, just give more options that are close or equal.

Honestly, I don't think they're buffing ele as a whole, instead CMC is making a lot more build and skill options more competitive. That might be little comfort to anyone not playing ele and everyone is and should be rightly concerned about how much improvement ele is getting while some classes are at best getting weird changes and at worst CMC is shooting the dead and rotting corpse. Edit: I can feel TB salivating and ready for some kind of remark. What I mean is ele as a class is 9 out of 10. The changes CMC is making won't make it a 10 out of 10, it's going to be a 9 out of 10 but will have a good half a dozen good to competitive builds.

Yes but also no. You can't hide that people stop playing a class, especially if it's a known boycott. Perhaps that's what we should do, organise a boycott of the entire class as much as we can reasonably get friends to do.

What you should be more astounded/gobsmacked/angry/dismayed at is that they're ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING INVULN SPAM and removing blocks which have counter. Mesmer needs invuln spam and spam enablers in general removed (compensate with protection, health regen or at least mobility) because no-one likes hitting something and it being immune.. Once more: NO-ONE LIKES HITTING SOMETHING AND IT BEING IMMUNE. Maybe I should ping @Cal Cohen.2358 too NO-ONE LIKES HITTING SOMETHING AND IT BEING IMMUNE.

ANet isn't listening to you. They aren't listening to anyone who doesn't want mesmer soft removed from the game. Look at the last few patches. Look at the coming patch. We have literal high skilled PvP players saying 2 dodge mirage with no nerfs to it or any other class wouldn't be strong in the meta. Ignored. Nerfed. For no reason. Wake up and boycott mesmer.

Stab changes. Dan summed this up himself but for most people it was simply the pirate ship meta as we called it then and everyone hated it. First group to go in just died to endless CC. Remember back then there was no target cap on all ground targeted CC skills and there was no ICD on removing stacks of stab. It was just boring seeing 2 zergs standing there ranged attacking, faking a push then cowering back, going on for 10 minutes till someone said kitten it and pushed and died. HoT (multiple reasons). Some of this was covered but really it was a lot of things and it followed on from the above stab changes to make a really crippling blow to WvW that it has never recovered from. First HoT brought desert border ON ALL BORDERS and almost no-one liked it. It was common to see hundreds of people queued for EBG while every other border was empty. It was despised by many and was harder to get around than now due to verticality, often you'd be on a cliff with no way down and have to run for 5 mins to get to the lower section. Awful, just awful. Add in the power creep, stats creep and meta, this was covered by Dan, we went from groups fearing to push each other to boon balling into each other endlessly because everyone had so much defensive power you had to co-ordinate corrupt a single necro then hammer bash them out of the group immediately to prevent a fast rez. You would even see a guardian running JI just to start a stomp and finish it on the downed player. It was awful and the reason one of my closest friends quit the game including her guild. We were also sold elite specs as a side grade and they were a straight, massive upgrade with many really awful mechanics on top of core and we had dev silence for months on balance and meaningful changes while pro league went on. This video is from a year and a half after HoT launched but it gives you an idea of how much of a mess and how much broken stuff was in the game back then, this was entirely possible at HoT launch and you even had an AoE distortion/blurr well at the time: PoF and the future. This is where WvW was left to slow bleed but with PoF came the warclaw and any form of roaming had the final nail put in the coffin and thrown in the ditch. Roamers couldn't fight for more than 1-2 minutes before another person turned up on a warclaw and then you were on the wrong side of the balance equation and often more would turn up and you can't run away from them. Small to large scale also suffered here because more people or a zerg would show up promptly so if you didn't take something within 2 minutes then you were swamped with enemies which has led to zergs turning up, building 5 or more rams/catapults to get in as quick as possible then waypoint. Often with some servers (you know who you are) they would just leave and waypoint if someone got in and invuln was available. I've seen a lot of people just leave after PoF or play significantly less. At this point all hope has been lost and older people just play to meme and mess around, new players just see it as some kind of farm and don't even bother to learn how to play it. Just follow commander and auto. The absolute biggest loss was the stab changes and HoT following just after that was fixed, it resulted in this linked server system as population had declined so much. Many of my friends were just kittened off from it in WvW, not all of them left immediately but it started the ball rolling and when a shiny new game came out they left. Some might say bronze was empty, I was in last bronze and yes it was pretty empty but tier 7 and 8 were still relatively lively, about what I've seen in the beta off hours. We also have to remember before HoT Edge of the mists had a lot of people running around it all day as they queued for gold tier servers.

Justine is right about them folding some of the CDR traits into abilities baseline, they did it for Mass Invisibility, Mirror and Mimic. They didn't do it for Blink, Arcane thievery because these are somewhat useful for a mesmer solo. "Ah but so is Mass Invisibility" yes but it's also nice for zergs and groups so it gets special treatment. While the 2 lesser used get the CDR because no-one will notice and they can say "hey, we folded it in baseline!" You forgot Illusion of Life....yeah Roy hates this. The funny part is there's not really much CDR traits to fold into mesmer baseline because over the years they got rid of them all from utilities, heals and elites instead giving alacrity, weapon skills and reset mechanics out much to other people's annoyance. Also spam me with confused emoji pls.

I get that but it's a "QoL" change that serves little to no purpose. If it healed or gave a super rare boon (does that even exist in today's state of game?) or something that benefits an ally I'd say yes, great, please do. Unfortunately staff just doesn't. That's without mentioning the elephant in the room, GW2 targeting is hot garbage at the best of times where you often have to rely on select nearest, or next enemy when they're clustered and don't even think about clicking the enemy as half the time you don't get the one you want. I wouldn't want to cast winds of chaos on an ally most of the time but may end up selecting them due to the awful targeting system. I think the better solution is to ask for a mesmer weapon that does something useful for allies then ask for that to get allied targeting as mesmer support is janky at best.

Trust me, you do not want other stat combos bringing up to celestial in terms of total stats, all you would do is push everything to more extremes. Burst builds will one shot and kill you far quicker unless you're in minstrels and have perma prot, bunker builds will be a mess and trailblazer builds with constant protection will be a nightmare to kill. Just think how imbalanced these are and dial it up to 13. The next bit isn't directed at you, just the topic in general. The OP is on the right track but is missing one very crucial bit of information. Elite specs and reworks happened which brought more to the table in single builds than core ever did (outside of 2 very strong builds). We saw elite specs that gave constant heals over time or extra skills that healed or mitigated damage using healing power, we saw weapons that applied conditions but also had non negligible power damage, we saw the boon spam grow and with it stacking to 25 might and maintaining it. Often a lot of this was in a single build and catalyst exemplifies this entirely, especially with the scepter rework. We also saw the rise of "perfect stats" because if people think celestial alone is too strong I have news for you, trailblazer, minstrels and berserker/marauder/dragons mixtures are every bit as broken for their respective builds too. Think about how often you've fought 1v1 a minstrels person and died of boredom. Possibly fighting a trailblazer condition tank that for some reason has great healing for no investment. How about that burst guy that came out of nowhere and did 20K+ damage to you in 1s, heaven forbid 2 guys do it in co-ordination and you just die. "But apharma, you're talking out of that place you 💩from, berserker was in the game in core and wasn't a problem!" This is true but again, if you were berserker, you were glass and most of the time you didn't have good sustain skills, ticking heals and the plethora of mobility, mitigation and regeneration offered by elite specs and expansions. We also didn't have frankly idiotic people in charge of balance that thought a 40% damage increase or that flat 15% damage reduction just for fighting was fine. Oh and their VERY obvious bias for their main classes. There isn't an easy solution but minstrels and trailblazer stats should be removed, celestial probably going back to not including concentration and expertise as they already capitalise on both damage type and might (compounding effect as OP stated) or adjust the values down to compensate for having the 2 extra stats. We also need to have elite specs not have the plethora of healing, boon spam, might stacking and frankly crazy amounts of damage mods (or enabling crazy damage mods) on top of good power scaling with conditions being applied. A return to there being risks, trade offs and above else no perfect stats.

I saw your post in WvW section a while back about not really playing etc so I'm going to say it now. You've been one of the most sensible people (not the only one) on this forum over the years and I still remember having that conversation about coalescence of ruin damage figures and doing the math with you when Rev came out. One day we will both just stop, to no fan fare, so I wish you all the best in life.

Because everyone and their mum vomits out might and fury like teenagers at a house party. There is literally no reason to target allies with it, none, no-one is needing the pitiful 1 stack of might and short duration fury badly enough that it needs to be allied targetted.

Community: Mesmer invuln uptime is really obnoxious and Virtuoso in particular because of blocks. ANet: OK, let's nerf the block bladesong, make invuln spam the last defense available and call it a day. Community: WTH??? 😕 I'm not going to get deeper but it's very clear certain classes are being favoured and having options expanded while classes they don't like are being slowly nerfed again and again.

Oh I have and seen all those but it's all PvE stuff. The juicy leaks are when some PvP guy gets permabanned and leaks the PvP Discord xD

This, we are blue team this match up, so there's little difference....also he had other blue infusions in.

Here is what to expect when roaming: You will find 3-10 people who will chase you across the map just to kill you while they keep mounting up if a few fall behind and others keep you in combat. You will run into cele stat classes which ends up 2 muscle idiots smacking each other till the aforementioned 3-10 guys randomly turn up and kill whoever was on the wrong side of that skill equation. Rangers either immobilizing you for an eternity, killing you in 1s with sic'em/OWP or just playing cele and see the second point about 2 muscle idiots smacking each other. SUDDENLY ZERG....that also chases you for literally no reason and a few random people BM you. You finally come across a person that's not playing cele, has no friends around and can't run to a nearby tower. Unfortunately, this guy drinks antifreeze and apparently forgot to equip the grey matter between their ears because they double dodged hit invuln then died in a few seconds to auto attacks somehow. Welcome to roaming, enjoy. Also, if you want to actually get better, get the armistice bastion pass and duel people, I'd select your teams and then do it away from the arena as some poor guys who clearly weren't loved by their parents do tend to interrupt duels for kicks.