Imagine buffing the two best offhands

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

Great job buffing torch and pistol instead of focus or sword, very funny

Edited April 21, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[phokus.8934]

The cc's are going to be abundant - 20s mage and 18s (minus 25% per cc) magic bullet is just flat out bananas.  I'm oddly okay with this but there are more pressing matters than pistol and torch off-hands.

[Gesbo.6420]

What are you on about? Source?

[Gesbo.6420]

OK I'm on board and now im mad. Wtf man that was supposed to be a pvp balance patch...

[semak.7481]

Monkey randomly throwing darts...

We know the name of the monkey

[Gesbo.6420]

What is happening with the mirage dodge tho why isn't this focus?

[apharma.3741]

Link for those who need it: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/130086-may-2-balance-update-preview/

Exactly, this is really not what is needed, the following phantasms really need looking at instead:
Phantasmal Warlock being useful (boon strip?)
Phantasmal Warden
Phantasmal Swordsman
Phantasmal Disenchanter
Phantasmal Defender (honestly rework this please)

2nd dodge?
How's about removing distortion spam?
How's about making Virtuoso shatters useable from behind?
Some mobility options would be nice too especially for Virtuoso.

Prestige condi removal buff is nice for power builds though. Might be better to allow power builds to get cleanses elsewhere.

Edited April 22, 2023 by apharma.3741

[Curunen.8729]

iMage needed 25 seconds for years, I'm very glad that's finally been done.

But yes, Warden needs an overhaul as the rng axe throwing is useless. And Curtain could do with projectile destruction standard (so both 4 and 5 have a symmetry with the reflect upgrade in the trait).

And Swordsman is really awful compared to old style thrust. The player attack is too slow and close range also.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Curunen.8729

[dead.7638]

The two least problematic phantasms they focus on...   What about the never used phantasms in the utility line, what about sword 3 never working.   What about focus 5 being completely useless.  Staff phantasms should have had a buff, like back to having two instead of one especially since mirage staff (what they hate the most) and didn’t touch it aside from alac being nerfed.   Cool another nerf to Mesmer, and giving us things no one is asking for or even needed to be balanced.   However kudos on fixing some bugs after 10 years.

[Stavros.8249]

Why not the buffs for pve? 

[viquing.8254]

Dunno what there are doing. Maybe they aren't used in PvE while being bests in PvP ?

And what about @apharma.3741 list. Moreover about 2nd dodge...

[Leonidrex.5649]

On 4/22/2023 at 2:13 AM, Gesbo.6420 said:

What is happening with the mirage dodge tho why isn't this focus?

CmC is making sure he upholds as few promises as possible kek

[Tiah.3091]

On 4/22/2023 at 4:04 AM, Curunen.8729 said:

And Swordsman is really awful compared to old style thrust. The player attack is too slow and close range also.

Swordsman even with Flurry was quite balanced a few years ago -- back when it had decent 2.5 power coefficient. Yes, that resulted in huge damage (like 12-13k on light armor), but the enemy could have merely sidestepped the Flurry, avoiding the dmg entirely. So, if you couldn't lock them down in one place somehow -- it was a garbage skill anyways.

Now it has 1.35 power coefficient. Which is pretty much an autoattack level of damage. (And after they murdered old Chaotic Interrupt -- you can't lock people in place either).

 

And then they buff Torch and Pistol, for kitten sake... I mean, I'm not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Pistol is arguably the strongest Mesmer's off-hand, and probably one of the strongest off-hands in the game overall. And they didn't even comment WHY are they buffing it... (and instead decided to write a wall of text about Mirage staff PvE alacrity nerf from 1.0 to 0.5 seconds, LMAO)

kitten, I'm so confused.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Tiah.3091

[JormagSorbet.8079]

I think it was decent to focus on these, at least for pvp. Mesmer doesn't seem to have much presence in the meta right now, and the few mesmers you do see are running defensive kits like virtuoso/chronobunker. 

It seems like they want to nudge people toward using the more aggressive options / lean toward power mes builds. I'd imagine that if they focused on phantasms people -didnt- use there would be a similar number of people upset that they were buffing things less immediately useful, like they just did with signets on thief. Perhaps I'm interpreting this wrong, though. 

On 4/21/2023 at 8:39 PM, apharma.3741 said:

Phantasmal Warden
Phantasmal Swordsman
Phantasmal Disenchanter
Phantasmal Defender (honestly rework this please)

2nd dodge?
How's about removing distortion spam?
Some mobility options would be nice too especially for Virtuoso.

These are all true, especially the last two. Regardless of their choice this time, these do need a look at at some point. I wouldn't say it's -urgent- for pvp, but perhaps so for pve. 

Quote

How's about making Virtuoso shatters useable from behind?

I'm not on board with this personally.

Edited April 24, 2023 by JormagSorbet.8079

[voltaicbore.8012]

I'm a mesmer hater. I sincerely believe (purely in the competitive modes) that it is the epitome of unhealthy game design (dependence on broken mechanics to perform, thanks to otherwise poorly handled balance). 

Every time a mesmer player looks at patch notes and cries in pain, GW2 gets to live one day longer. Long live the game!

Less hatefully, my pve mesmers would like more buffs, and the long overdue fixes to the less effective phantasms as already mentioned in the thread.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

21 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

I'm a mesmer hater. I sincerely believe (purely in the competitive modes) that it is the epitome of unhealthy game design (dependence on broken mechanics to perform, thanks to otherwise poorly handled balance). 

Every time a mesmer player looks at patch notes and cries in pain, GW2 gets to live one day longer. Long live the game!

Less hatefully, my pve mesmers would like more buffs, and the long overdue fixes to the less effective phantasms as already mentioned in the thread.

In that case you should be hoping for buffs to our less powerful weapons (like sword offhand) rather than our more powerful weapons (like pistol and torch offhand). So if you celebrate this patch you are actually celebrating something that runs counter to your goals.

Edited April 25, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Provocative.3561]

Coming from a mesmer main. Sword and focus do need some love. A valid change to sword 4 would be make the block, blocking for x time rather than just block an attack or add some extra reward like blind, for example, when you successfully block an enemies attack. Focus 4 pull range could be increased. And possibly you can cast focus 5”s location. 
 

Also, it’s good to note I appreciate the off hand weapons that are used more often are buffed rather than buffing something people don’t use to begin with. It’s cool to give a wider variety of options. But what works works. And pistol has single target CC and torch opens up more stealth and additional condi clear and can combo into phants daze with either diversion stacking or whatever you choose. Let’s be fr

 

[voltaicbore.8012]

16 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

In that case you should be hoping for buffs to our less powerful weapons (like sword offhand) rather than our more powerful weapons (like pistol and torch offhand). So if you celebrate this patch you are actually celebrating something that runs counter to your goals.

Perhaps. But from another perspective, the already-good offhands were... already good. And noted changes don't seem to affect counterplay all that much, just further punishes people who already had trouble dealing with those abilities. As @phokus.8934 said, there really are more pressing issues when it comes to improving mesmer, and those didn't happen.

So the net result is that mesmer didn't get fixes it probably needed to actually improve, and instead got a (not gamebreaking) boost to things that were already okay. I believe my hate has been properly fed here.

Edited April 26, 2023 by voltaicbore.8012

[dead.7638]

Sword 4 imo works great.   You have a block plus a counter block that does dmg all in one.   So many times I’ve downed someone with the counter cause I don’t think people know it exist.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

3 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Perhaps. But from another perspective, the already-good offhands were... already good. And noted changes don't seem to affect counterplay all that much, just further punishes people who already had trouble dealing with those abilities. As @phokus.8934 said, there really are more pressing issues when it comes to improving mesmer, and those didn't happen.

So the net result is that mesmer didn't get fixes it probably needed to actually improve, and instead got a (not gamebreaking) boost to things that were already okay. I believe my hate has been properly fed here.

Yes your hate has been fed by the patch but not by the disappointed reactions to the patch from Mesmer players

[Tiah.3091]

2 hours ago, dead.7638 said:

Sword 4 imo works great.

The issue is not that it "doesn't work".  It works allright. The issue is that it does ~zero damage after Feb 24 2020. It used to do 7k crits pre-nerf and it was almost the only redeeming quality to an otherwise rather kitten off-hand.

[dead.7638]

So I have suggested that sword gets reworked.   But that doesn’t mean it should lose any of its good qualities.   The fact that the leap on virt hardly lands a hit is a issue.   Tbh with most of the phantasms skills, I only want to see them fixed in a way that adds qol and they work as intended.   So many of them are busted and unreliable to expect them to land a hit.

[zealex.9410]

On 4/21/2023 at 9:35 PM, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Great job buffing torch and pistol instead of focus or sword, very funny

They buffed focus.

[phokus.8934]

3 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

They buffed focus.

Fixing a bug where most people don't utilize combo finishers is hardly a buff.

[zealex.9410]

6 hours ago, phokus.8934 said:

Fixing a bug where most people don't utilize combo finishers is hardly a buff.

Its easily 12 to 18 more stacks of confusion or some other condition depending the comp and fields placed, wouldnt call that hardly but sure if ppl dont utilize it it they will miss out on most of it.