Mell.4873

Yess it is very strong, you can even catch a theif off guard and down him very quickly. Its a higher damage hit and run class compared to theif. The only downside it trying to team fight when you are outnumbered.

Mesmer is not for everyone your best bet it to take mirage or chrono into pvp and try preform some of the more basic rotations. Mesmer is a very situational fighter especially for chrono, you need to commit more resources on hard to kill enemies or you just Bleed them slowly. I love it since I can create diversions with shield phantasm with Chrono or dodge all attacks with mirage. Again it comes back to how you spend your resources.

I guess I would shorten the rotation alot in pve. For general pve sick-me into maul then weapon swap and use Longbow barrage. For a boss I would do one wolf pack into rapid fire and then barrage. The weapon trait quick draw can be amazing since you could Greatsword leap twice in quick succession, or maul into leap into maul into hilt bash into maul.

Okay well we shall see when it comes out, I'm sure if it is underperforming they will buff it.

More access to aoe and cleave is good, and long cooldowns mean nothing in open world pve and WvW

Yup sounds about right. I used to play exclusively condi soulbeast with shortbow and axe/dagger, torch. Which I still do for pvp but I switched since I wanted more damage and not to die in berserkers gear. The answer I found was to use dueling type classes with lots of evades like mirage, or if I needed range power chrono. Now that is my main but its not for everyone since there is no set rotation with mesmer rather everything is situation with trade offs.

Ultimately if you want to use your pet and not be a druid this is the only other elite specialisation that you can use. For pve and some pvp applications untamed will be a slightly better version of core. Especially with the more aoe focused ambushes.

Open world content is ultimately a mixed bag since every encounter can favor melee, ranged or aoe. The best ranger builds for pve are ones with a melee and ranged weapon, and some trap aoe. The best bet is greatsword and longbow for power and shortbow and axe, torch for condi. When I played the bursty soulbeast I would always risk dying if I didn't finish the target first since soulbeast is not great at dueling, distracting or stunning large groups or breaking defiance bars. To be perfectly honest for me there are better open world classes.

Well I find it hard to get enough clones up to shatter them, enemies die or the clones die before I can get 3. This is very true in fractals where I most play. Mantra chrono can provide alot of burst heals but very little in the way of consistent healing, while Scrapper is the opposite your primary burst heal is bandage blast and vital burst but you have endless med blaster spam.

Honestly I only really see that with firebrand and that is mostly because the other two quickness healer are so hard to play. This is from personal experience, chronomancer has very good heals with mantras but getting enough shatters off to get 100% quickness uptime is really hard. Scrapper is a little better off with quickness but the heals are to inconsistent and the barrier application is not strong enough to justify it being taken. If they made the boon application more consistent in those other two specs you would see more role diversity.

Both Warrior and Elementalist have been left behind with the boon heavy meta with bother having very few ways to self or party boon (besides new ele) What would help is providing a better system for breaking defiance bars, maybe they recharge quicker allowing them to be interrupted more, providing warrior with a much needed buff. Combo fields and auras by extension should be reworked, my recommendation is that combo fields should stack which would be an amazing boost to Elementalist. Auras should not be on-self-hit but on-enemy-hit.

I agree there needs to be some balance around the top three professions since I have on many occasions complained about them too. The best reason why balance in this game is self defeating is that there will always be the top professions. I believe this game does a good job of making classes who have a broken mechanic still feel good, most other MMO nerf the unique and op part of classes into the ground like what happened in ESO. The true way out is stick to the implementation of their new classes and don't back down even if the player numbers suffer. They need a true trinity to survive, one that content can be created around.

Hmm I would agree with some of this but I would just stay stop playing and come back when the content you want comes out. It seems now days the most successful/popular MMOs have to stick around long enough for the content to become relevant. The meta is never set in stone I mean I play alac mirage and that is technically not best in slot. I even play it different by trying to spam short duration aegis which makes fractals very easy when it works.

Ultimately I believe nothing should change except for maybe how defiance bars work since they should be more frequent and harder to break.

I believe it does provide alot of wiggle room since not every class can provide the same boons and in the same way. I mean mirage alac can only provide a 100% uptime during combat but is more consistent while renegade is a one time skill with a long duration so very inconsistent if you miss the aoe.

That a horrible thing to say about me. I am giving honest feedback to the original poster. That's how I played it during the beta whether is better than a chrono main is up for debate untill in launches. Probably not though since chrono is melee

There is way more involved to get 3 clones to stay like long enough to shatter with Chrono. Virtuoso does not have that problem pve

Don't listen to the negative comments. The main advantage virtuoso has is that the clone(blades) are pre stocked so there is no ramp up for damage. Put focus one offhand and group the enemies together and nuke them. Chrono can do something similar but not from range which can make them very micro intentive in open world pve. My rotation when playing was to focus 4(group up), weapons swap to sword offhand. Phantasm on 5 for ferocity and then hit F1 to nuke the group.

Yes yes, I was going to suggest this in my original post but I didn't want to overwhelm the reader. Allonf with your idea would be to reduce the defence bar recharge time. All of this would create the fourth archetype, a sort of stunning brawler with warrior, revenent, thief being the most used. I think the mutation system from bounties should just be applied game wide since that has what you described, with some mutations forcing you into ranged or melee.

I would agree with pvp and the new elite specialisations hopefull will help with boon ripping. In terms of pve content I think its fine if bosses don't have boon rip, just make the fight hard enough so that a support class might die.

Tanks don't work outside raids and even within raids you only have one true option, mesmer Tanking In this game boils down to how many invulnerable abilities you have I much prefer the boon heavy meta in fractals.

Pets are fine, they are not going to win you any fights in pvp but they where never designed to. Use them as a distraction or extra boon/condition applications. The soulbeast merge mean you can instantly rez any pet so it not a huge loss if it dies.

I have seen alot of people calling for it but I really like it since it provides a true holy trinity. DPS provide might and minor buffs like swiftness and fury: ele, warrior, ranger Healers normally provide quickness and sometimes regen, aegis, protection and stability: guard, mesmer, engi Boon support provide alacrity, protection, stability, aegis, resolution: mesmer and revenant With the advent of EoD, we will have another alacrity support with engineer and another healer with theif.

It is my observation that it is really strong in pvp but I don't play it since i can't do well with it in pvp.

I do not know much about warrior but I believe if you buffed the core advantage underperformed classes like Elementalist have then you would fix the problem. Elementalist for example had combo fields and auras, buff those and you will balance the core class.