Core Power Mesmer Is Nasty Toxic Nonesense

bravan.3876 · December 8, 2019

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Ouchies :cry:
https://streamable.com/v6ksk

Very bad done burst you had almost a second to dodge the flying Mirrorblade from the other side of the map. Don't afk autorun xD Never in my life i would get hit by that burst. This has nothing to do with the build, this is a l2p issue sry.

Twilight Tempest.7584 · December 8, 2019

Yeah, I know there's l2p. Especially since that was my first time seeing it. It was also my first match of the day (warmup), right at the start of the match.

I'm not saying anything about changing the build. Just that it felt like crap playing against it and the rest of the meme team it was on:

At least one of the Daredevils was a 1-shot backstab build too (25K from stealth). They kept my team of random solos on respawn. Yeah it was unranked shenanigans, but I think there is something to be said about how these experiences drive people away.

Leonidrex.5649 · December 8, 2019

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Ouchies :cry:
https://streamable.com/v6ksk

First of all, you could hear mes stealth.Sec of all he whiffed and you should punishThird of all, did you srsl follow up his combo with ambush?

Its hillarious becouse I see people do this exact thing all the time, I just evade it and laught at them lol.

Diut in the vide 1 Whiffed f1, was too far.Used gs too far so it bounced wrong.Didnt instantly gs3 ( it has 0,25s casttime ) so you evaded it with no issue.If you are on EU i could show you how the real burst looks like, at least complain righ!

Twilight Tempest.7584 · December 9, 2019

@Leonidrex.5649 said:
@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Ouchies :cry:
https://streamable.com/v6ksk

First of all, you could hear mes stealth.

I play with volume fairly low, but I don't even hear it in the recording. :confused:

Sec of all he whiffed and you should punishThird of all, did you srsl follow up his combo with ambush?
Its hillarious becouse I see people do this exact thing all the time, I just evade it and laught at them lol.
Diut in the vide 1 Whiffed f1, was too far.Used gs too far so it bounced wrong.Didnt instantly gs3 ( it has 0,25s casttime ) so you evaded it with no issue.If you are on EU i could show you how the real burst looks like, at least complain righ!

Honestly I was caught off guard and probably a bit stunned IRL. As I said in my post above, I have no experience with this burst. I don't claim to have the best reaction time or ping, but the burst really felt like it came out of thin air. Good thing for me it's not too common in ranked (I think).

Leonidrex.5649 · December 9, 2019

@bravan.3876 said:
@mortrialus.3062 said:
@Axl.8924 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:I am seriously getting tired of builds that can stealth in at you from 4000 some range and instantly drop your health from 100% to 0% with no tells.
It's a bad design that makes for a bad game that isn't fun to play.
~ Edit
I'm gonna paste this into the OP because I should have written this here to begin with:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Just want to make this post to really elaborate on quite exactly what attributes are stacking up here, to make this build so toxic:
Nuclear damage output.
This is normally fine imo on glass cannon designed specs. But it begins to get out of control here for the following reasons.
Too many instant cast pre-charged skills.
It can front load enough damage to drop any build instantly. Again, this is normally not that big of a deal in most situations, when a build provides tells so that it can be counter played. But this leads to the next reason of what makes this so toxic.
Too much stealth uptime paired with their mobility.
Lately these Mesmers have enough stealth to approach you from blind spots in the map where you are unable to see them visually on the screen, or even their class icon on the mini map. Don't believe me? Watch that video that was posted. This means that you have no ability whatsoever, to counter play the Mesmer's position or to interpret where he is or where he is going. Now your survival vs. the Mesmer burst is entirely dependent upon raw reflex, for when it attacks you, and if you have some kind of an instant invuln or instant mobility stun break with an evade, such as Roll For Initiative. This takes us to the following point to be made, which is the deepest and most toxic part about all of this.
There are no tells when a good Mesmer player is wielding this build.
Even middle tiered players can sort of "no tell" blow you up a fraction of a second with this build, but the good Mesmers out there, seriously instantly kill you by perfectly timing all of the instants & precharges, and landing them all simultaneously for a visual representation on-screen of seeing your health go from 100% to 0% instantly. There is no counter play to this. By the time any visual graphics appear or you hear any noises at all, you're already dead.
Subsequently, it is important to compare Core Power Mesmer to other notorious 1HKO builds
-> Even Deadeyes & Soulbeasts provide warning of inc burst when a DE marks a target or a Soulbeast uses Sic Em. A player can see these things on their UI, as a warning that they are being focused. The Mesmer on the other hand, delivers no such warning. The DE & Soulbeast also must approach a general vicinity before engaging in stealth play. Players can see this happening, and are ready to engage the situation. They know the DE or Soulbeast is close, they are being marked or seeing Sic Em on UI, they know if they are being targeted. The stealth's are also short on DE & Soulbeast to where players can intuitively gauge how long the DE or Soulbeast will be in stealth and if he is about to land a burst or how far he could move during that short time. The Power Mesmer on the other hand, yeah reread the points made in 3. Furthermore, the DEs & Soulbeasts don't actually "1shot" anything. The damage may lay down quickly, you may see your health drop from 100% to 75% to 50% to 25% to 0% from a Rapid Fire that takes 2 and a half seconds to complete, or you may see a 100% to 50% o 0% with a Maul leading into Worldy Impact that takes roughly 2s to complete even with quickness. You may see your health drop from 100% to 25% from a Death's Judgement, and then a DE follows up with some other attack to finish the job, requiring a good 2s to complete. <- All of this as annoying as it is, requires like 2s at the minimum to actually do, which is allowing counter play. But the Mesmer? Nah, all that damage lands in the fraction of a millisecond right out of stealth, especially if a person has a good macro set. Even the approach of the DEs & the Soulbeasts are rather obvious and allow players to position themselves to engage them. But the Mesmer? Nah you can't see it or interpret where it is at all. The final point to be made is that: DEs and Soulbeasts are nailing people with projectiles, which can be LOSed. But the Mesmer? That's mostly all melee functioned & ground targeted damage that HIT THROUGH WALLS.
I don't know what else to say. The implementation of this Core Power Mesmer lately, feels like I was eating at a nice dinner and enjoying my meal, then someone tossed a nasty leaky dirty diaper up on my table, and then I had to get up and leave. For real though. I've put up with a lot of bad metas in this game over the years, but there is something extra
bad feeling
about this no-tell Mesmer stealth across the map and 1HKO you stuff. Like actual instant 1HKO. Not like DEs or Soulbeasts that just deal a lot of damage really fast. No, this is an actual quite literal "instant 1HKO right out of stealth"

~ 2nd edit

And this meme deserves to be here too

How about we just nerf stealth on mesmers just like we did for the thief class?If 4 explosions of illusions are a problem and hitting that hard with mind stab cand o 20k well if we make stealth last 2 secs or something and then stealth falls off as soon as mesmer does anything they won't be so overpowered and maybe we might not need to touch their damage or maybe I dunno

Stealth should never last too long anyways. I still remember when perma stealth thief was wreaking havoc in WVW.

It's not 4 explosions of illusions, actually.

The typical instant kill mesmer burst you're seeing is just a one clone shatter plus the mesmer who counts as a clone themselves. That's it. I've seen just the 1 Clone Mind Wrack portion of the burst hit for 14k. It typically hits for 9-12k.

People keep pointing fingers at everything except what is actually killing people. We can talk about the stealth, and the multicasting. But 1 Clone Shatters were never supposed to be doing this level of damage to being with and are supposed to be something of a wasted opportunity in their own way. If we were talking actual 3 clones+Mesmer shatters the set up required for that actually probably does deserve to be something of an exodia execute style win condition, but that's not what is going on here. Mirror Blade into Mind Wrack can truck people as soon as the Mirror Blade makes its clone.

Like we can and should look at the multicasting with Mantra of Pain, Mind Wrack, and the very high stealth uptime with the Chaos Traitline (Though in my opinion mesmers should typically be very high stealth as part of their design). But I think the change that makes the most sense is to hit the damage on Mind Wrack with only 1x Clone and trimming might off mantra of distraction.

I hate those no clone 6k+ MW or up to 14k with one clone MW too, don't get me wrong, but they only do that much dmg when the Mesmer stacks every passive dmg multiplier he can find in the game. Just remove passive dmg mulitplier from traits, its a stupid, uncreative and lazy traitdesign doesn't add any skill ceiling anyway. Let only runes and sigils add small passive dmg boni. Or at least put different passive dmg traits in the same place so you have to choose between them, as Viquing suggested as a first step until Anet has some new ideas for a better traitdesign can replace that stuff. Superiority Complex also seems a bit bugged or simply overperforming, some crits i got hit by (not only from MW) run riot here and there. If you nerf the shatters, then every Mesmer build not using stacked dmg traits and run the more skillbased and active traitalternatives will do zero dmg, with other words we would punish the builds running more skilled traits for no reason. That is exactly the best way to kill skillbased Mesmer builds. Compared to the power creep we have shatters base dmg is already not great. Without stacked dmg traits/ rune they do less dmg per clone than most classes autoattacks.

As for the PU core stealthspam oneshot build just rework MoP into a non dmg boonremove mantra and the build maybe is already dead anyway. Used or not, PU still should get reworked into a less unhealthy mechanic too. For example remove the steathduration and higher boonduration in return (only defensive boons, delete the might from all grandmaster traits in Chaos).

No clue why we have so many so long threads about a build that is so obviously not skillbased and unhealthy from its playstyle (no matter how viable it is in conquest) but also so easy to fix...

ALright, for all the whining that this build takes no skill.1 You need to understand other classes ( know how and when to burst )2 You need to do the combo properly3 You need to be mindful of ALOT of interactions, reveals, what hits you in stealth, ETC4 You need to know how to kite, way more then I had to on thief/warrior.5 You need to pay attention to the map, MORE then on any build I playedThe combo itself is not very complicated ( but still 90% of core mes I met just whifs it all the time, I think I personally met only 2 that actually could reliably land it )But you have to pay attention to the map, surroundings, know when and how to take opportinities, and how to midgame oponents, understand when people will dodge ETC.I think when playing this build WAAAAAAAAAAAY more then with any other build i played, I Constantly keep track of cooldowns of oponents watch the map, have a mental clock when people spawm etc.When I played warrior i didnt gave a rats ass about your cooldowns, I did pve rotation and evaded for 70% fight, if by that time you didnt die then i would kite and propably leave or start paying attention tiny bit more.As thief i wouldnt care about map at all, just ram myself into random node to help, quick 10-15s gank, if it doest work just fuck off with 5 teleports and try somewhere else.And I fear how utterly boring and easy FB is, im afraid to make FB just to not lose braincells.Also respect to necro, had to use some brain to properly setup defensive marks, pay attention to corrupts and track players that are strong into me.

Thats just my take on the builds I played, having build be "skilled" doesnt mean I dodge your stuff more on average so im more skilled, for me map and game knowhow is much more impressive.

Leonidrex.5649 · December 9, 2019

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:
@Leonidrex.5649 said:
@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:Ouchies :cry:
https://streamable.com/v6ksk

First of all, you could hear mes stealth.

I play with volume fairly low, but I don't even hear it in the recording. :confused:

Sec of all he whiffed and you should punishThird of all, did you srsl follow up his combo with ambush?
Its hillarious becouse I see people do this exact thing all the time, I just evade it and laught at them lol.
Diut in the vide 1 Whiffed f1, was too far.Used gs too far so it bounced wrong.Didnt instantly gs3 ( it has 0,25s casttime ) so you evaded it with no issue.If you are on EU i could show you how the real burst looks like, at least complain righ!

Honestly I was caught off guard and probably a bit stunned IRL. As I said in my post above, I have no experience with this burst. I don't claim to have the best reaction time or ping, but the burst really felt like it came out of thin air. Good thing for me it's not too common in ranked (I think).

Thats odd, I heard it about 1-2s into the video, just about when you were passing the wheel of the cart on your right.

Leonidrex.5649 · December 9, 2019

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Yeah, I know there's l2p. Especially since that was my first time seeing it. It was also my first match of the day (warmup), right at the start of the match.
I'm not saying anything about changing the build. Just that it felt like kitten playing against it and the rest of the meme team it was on:
At least one of the Daredevils was a 1-shot backstab build too (25K from stealth). They kept my team of random solos on respawn. Yeah it was unranked shenanigans, but I think there is something to be said about how these experiences drive people away.

Trust me, no ammout of toxicity has anything of the introduction I had in league, yet here I am playing it 9 years later.Along with MILIONS of other players,From people walking through the wall to bugs that make people unkillable ( literary )To bug that instaspawned you to instakill you ( yes I got banned for "intentionally feeding" ), at least support apologised after that one :DYou get instagibbed even to this day, and your counterplay is "dodge" exept you dont have dodge button, and some of the things cant be dodged anyways.

bravan.3876 · December 9, 2019

@Leonidrex.5649 said:
@bravan.3876 said:
@mortrialus.3062 said:
@Axl.8924 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:I am seriously getting tired of builds that can stealth in at you from 4000 some range and instantly drop your health from 100% to 0% with no tells.
It's a bad design that makes for a bad game that isn't fun to play.
~ Edit
I'm gonna paste this into the OP because I should have written this here to begin with:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Just want to make this post to really elaborate on quite exactly what attributes are stacking up here, to make this build so toxic:
Nuclear damage output.
This is normally fine imo on glass cannon designed specs. But it begins to get out of control here for the following reasons.
Too many instant cast pre-charged skills.
It can front load enough damage to drop any build instantly. Again, this is normally not that big of a deal in most situations, when a build provides tells so that it can be counter played. But this leads to the next reason of what makes this so toxic.
Too much stealth uptime paired with their mobility.
Lately these Mesmers have enough stealth to approach you from blind spots in the map where you are unable to see them visually on the screen, or even their class icon on the mini map. Don't believe me? Watch that video that was posted. This means that you have no ability whatsoever, to counter play the Mesmer's position or to interpret where he is or where he is going. Now your survival vs. the Mesmer burst is entirely dependent upon raw reflex, for when it attacks you, and if you have some kind of an instant invuln or instant mobility stun break with an evade, such as Roll For Initiative. This takes us to the following point to be made, which is the deepest and most toxic part about all of this.
There are no tells when a good Mesmer player is wielding this build.
Even middle tiered players can sort of "no tell" blow you up a fraction of a second with this build, but the good Mesmers out there, seriously instantly kill you by perfectly timing all of the instants & precharges, and landing them all simultaneously for a visual representation on-screen of seeing your health go from 100% to 0% instantly. There is no counter play to this. By the time any visual graphics appear or you hear any noises at all, you're already dead.
Subsequently, it is important to compare Core Power Mesmer to other notorious 1HKO builds
-> Even Deadeyes & Soulbeasts provide warning of inc burst when a DE marks a target or a Soulbeast uses Sic Em. A player can see these things on their UI, as a warning that they are being focused. The Mesmer on the other hand, delivers no such warning. The DE & Soulbeast also must approach a general vicinity before engaging in stealth play. Players can see this happening, and are ready to engage the situation. They know the DE or Soulbeast is close, they are being marked or seeing Sic Em on UI, they know if they are being targeted. The stealth's are also short on DE & Soulbeast to where players can intuitively gauge how long the DE or Soulbeast will be in stealth and if he is about to land a burst or how far he could move during that short time. The Power Mesmer on the other hand, yeah reread the points made in 3. Furthermore, the DEs & Soulbeasts don't actually "1shot" anything. The damage may lay down quickly, you may see your health drop from 100% to 75% to 50% to 25% to 0% from a Rapid Fire that takes 2 and a half seconds to complete, or you may see a 100% to 50% o 0% with a Maul leading into Worldy Impact that takes roughly 2s to complete even with quickness. You may see your health drop from 100% to 25% from a Death's Judgement, and then a DE follows up with some other attack to finish the job, requiring a good 2s to complete. <- All of this as annoying as it is, requires like 2s at the minimum to actually do, which is allowing counter play. But the Mesmer? Nah, all that damage lands in the fraction of a millisecond right out of stealth, especially if a person has a good macro set. Even the approach of the DEs & the Soulbeasts are rather obvious and allow players to position themselves to engage them. But the Mesmer? Nah you can't see it or interpret where it is at all. The final point to be made is that: DEs and Soulbeasts are nailing people with projectiles, which can be LOSed. But the Mesmer? That's mostly all melee functioned & ground targeted damage that HIT THROUGH WALLS.
I don't know what else to say. The implementation of this Core Power Mesmer lately, feels like I was eating at a nice dinner and enjoying my meal, then someone tossed a nasty leaky dirty diaper up on my table, and then I had to get up and leave. For real though. I've put up with a lot of bad metas in this game over the years, but there is something extra
bad feeling
about this no-tell Mesmer stealth across the map and 1HKO you stuff. Like actual instant 1HKO. Not like DEs or Soulbeasts that just deal a lot of damage really fast. No, this is an actual quite literal "instant 1HKO right out of stealth"

~ 2nd edit

And this meme deserves to be here too

How about we just nerf stealth on mesmers just like we did for the thief class?If 4 explosions of illusions are a problem and hitting that hard with mind stab cand o 20k well if we make stealth last 2 secs or something and then stealth falls off as soon as mesmer does anything they won't be so overpowered and maybe we might not need to touch their damage or maybe I dunno

Stealth should never last too long anyways. I still remember when perma stealth thief was wreaking havoc in WVW.

It's not 4 explosions of illusions, actually.

The typical instant kill mesmer burst you're seeing is just a one clone shatter plus the mesmer who counts as a clone themselves. That's it. I've seen just the 1 Clone Mind Wrack portion of the burst hit for 14k. It typically hits for 9-12k.

People keep pointing fingers at everything except what is actually killing people. We can talk about the stealth, and the multicasting. But 1 Clone Shatters were never supposed to be doing this level of damage to being with and are supposed to be something of a wasted opportunity in their own way. If we were talking actual 3 clones+Mesmer shatters the set up required for that actually probably does deserve to be something of an exodia execute style win condition, but that's not what is going on here. Mirror Blade into Mind Wrack can truck people as soon as the Mirror Blade makes its clone.

Like we can and should look at the multicasting with Mantra of Pain, Mind Wrack, and the very high stealth uptime with the Chaos Traitline (Though in my opinion mesmers should typically be very high stealth as part of their design). But I think the change that makes the most sense is to hit the damage on Mind Wrack with only 1x Clone and trimming might off mantra of distraction.

I hate those no clone 6k+ MW or up to 14k with one clone MW too, don't get me wrong, but they only do that much dmg when the Mesmer stacks every passive dmg multiplier he can find in the game. Just remove passive dmg mulitplier from traits, its a stupid, uncreative and lazy traitdesign doesn't add any skill ceiling anyway. Let only runes and sigils add small passive dmg boni. Or at least put different passive dmg traits in the same place so you have to choose between them, as Viquing suggested as a first step until Anet has some new ideas for a better traitdesign can replace that stuff. Superiority Complex also seems a bit bugged or simply overperforming, some crits i got hit by (not only from MW) run riot here and there. If you nerf the shatters, then every Mesmer build not using stacked dmg traits and run the more skillbased and active traitalternatives will do zero dmg, with other words we would punish the builds running more skilled traits for no reason. That is exactly the best way to kill skillbased Mesmer builds. Compared to the power creep we have shatters base dmg is already not great. Without stacked dmg traits/ rune they do less dmg per clone than most classes autoattacks.

As for the PU core stealthspam oneshot build just rework MoP into a non dmg boonremove mantra and the build maybe is already dead anyway. Used or not, PU still should get reworked into a less unhealthy mechanic too. For example remove the steathduration and higher boonduration in return (only defensive boons, delete the might from all grandmaster traits in Chaos).

No clue why we have so many so long threads about a build that is so obviously not skillbased and unhealthy from its playstyle (no matter how viable it is in conquest) but also so easy to fix...

ALright, for all the whining that this build takes no skill.1 You need to understand other classes ( know how and when to burst )2 You need to do the combo properly3 You need to be mindful of ALOT of interactions, reveals, what hits you in stealth, ETC4 You need to know how to kite, way more then I had to on thief/warrior.5 You need to pay attention to the map, MORE then on any build I playedThe combo itself is not very complicated ( but still 90% of core mes I met just whifs it all the time, I think I personally met only 2 that actually could reliably land it )But you have to pay attention to the map, surroundings, know when and how to take opportinities, and how to midgame oponents, understand when people will dodge ETC.I think when playing this build WAAAAAAAAAAAY more then with any other build i played, I Constantly keep track of cooldowns of oponents watch the map, have a mental clock when people spawm etc.When I played warrior i didnt gave a rats kitten about your cooldowns, I did pve rotation and evaded for 70% fight, if by that time you didnt die then i would kite and propably leave or start paying attention tiny bit more.As thief i wouldnt care about map at all, just ram myself into random node to help, quick 10-15s gank, if it doest work just kitten off with 5 teleports and try somewhere else.And I fear how utterly boring and easy FB is, im afraid to make FB just to not lose braincells.Also respect to necro, had to use some brain to properly setup defensive marks, pay attention to corrupts and track players that are strong into me.

Thats just my take on the builds I played, having build be "skilled" doesnt mean I dodge your stuff more on average so im more skilled, for me map and game knowhow is much more impressive.

Every roaming +1 dmg build needs to have map awareness and needs to know where to rotate that is nothing i count as specific difficulty of the build, this is simple conquest knowledge you always need for the role you play. As for the other points, train the combo for 10 mins at golems and even i could do it fast enough. Doing the combo never was the hard part of oneshot builds, it was the surviving in case the target didn't instant die for whatever reasosn but thanks to Chaosline you don't even have that difficulty anymore. As a trash Powermes player even i could play that build during i fail to make other Powerbuilds work which rly need to interact with targets and need to actively outplay them. This build doesn't need to do that at all. Ok you need to know reveal that can hit you in stealth, that is more or less all. Wait a bit with the burst after the target used some defensive skills already (no matter what class) or is busy with something else (like your teammates) and just burst it down right in the end of the dodge or other defensive skill. Compared to other Powermes builds this is super easy to play in both offensive and defensive. And you rly feel how shit most of these players are when they suddently have to fight an opponent for whatever reason or when you then see them on another Powermes build or another class with a more reactive playstyle. Most oneshot heroes suck on Mesmer mechanically. Doing the burst fast and correct is one thing (every average Meser can do, even me), being able to outplay opponents on a Powermes build with reactive playstyle and not carried by 2 unhealthy mechanics (Pu and MoP) and stacked passive dmg multiplier is something different. In the end i don't even mind oneshot builds, as long as they are counterable and at least predictable by not too long stealth and punishable for mistakes. Both is remarkable reduced on that Core PU kitten compared to a oneshot build without Chaosline and even more compared to a non oneshot power build.

But as said this build is easy fixed, the 2 unhealthy mechanics are obvious and at least one can be easy fixed fast by turning it into a non dmg boonremove mantra.

Leonidrex.5649 · December 9, 2019

@bravan.3876 said:
@Leonidrex.5649 said:
@bravan.3876 said:
@mortrialus.3062 said:
@Axl.8924 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:I am seriously getting tired of builds that can stealth in at you from 4000 some range and instantly drop your health from 100% to 0% with no tells.
It's a bad design that makes for a bad game that isn't fun to play.
~ Edit
I'm gonna paste this into the OP because I should have written this here to begin with:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Just want to make this post to really elaborate on quite exactly what attributes are stacking up here, to make this build so toxic:
Nuclear damage output.
This is normally fine imo on glass cannon designed specs. But it begins to get out of control here for the following reasons.
Too many instant cast pre-charged skills.
It can front load enough damage to drop any build instantly. Again, this is normally not that big of a deal in most situations, when a build provides tells so that it can be counter played. But this leads to the next reason of what makes this so toxic.
Too much stealth uptime paired with their mobility.
Lately these Mesmers have enough stealth to approach you from blind spots in the map where you are unable to see them visually on the screen, or even their class icon on the mini map. Don't believe me? Watch that video that was posted. This means that you have no ability whatsoever, to counter play the Mesmer's position or to interpret where he is or where he is going. Now your survival vs. the Mesmer burst is entirely dependent upon raw reflex, for when it attacks you, and if you have some kind of an instant invuln or instant mobility stun break with an evade, such as Roll For Initiative. This takes us to the following point to be made, which is the deepest and most toxic part about all of this.
There are no tells when a good Mesmer player is wielding this build.
Even middle tiered players can sort of "no tell" blow you up a fraction of a second with this build, but the good Mesmers out there, seriously instantly kill you by perfectly timing all of the instants & precharges, and landing them all simultaneously for a visual representation on-screen of seeing your health go from 100% to 0% instantly. There is no counter play to this. By the time any visual graphics appear or you hear any noises at all, you're already dead.
Subsequently, it is important to compare Core Power Mesmer to other notorious 1HKO builds
-> Even Deadeyes & Soulbeasts provide warning of inc burst when a DE marks a target or a Soulbeast uses Sic Em. A player can see these things on their UI, as a warning that they are being focused. The Mesmer on the other hand, delivers no such warning. The DE & Soulbeast also must approach a general vicinity before engaging in stealth play. Players can see this happening, and are ready to engage the situation. They know the DE or Soulbeast is close, they are being marked or seeing Sic Em on UI, they know if they are being targeted. The stealth's are also short on DE & Soulbeast to where players can intuitively gauge how long the DE or Soulbeast will be in stealth and if he is about to land a burst or how far he could move during that short time. The Power Mesmer on the other hand, yeah reread the points made in 3. Furthermore, the DEs & Soulbeasts don't actually "1shot" anything. The damage may lay down quickly, you may see your health drop from 100% to 75% to 50% to 25% to 0% from a Rapid Fire that takes 2 and a half seconds to complete, or you may see a 100% to 50% o 0% with a Maul leading into Worldy Impact that takes roughly 2s to complete even with quickness. You may see your health drop from 100% to 25% from a Death's Judgement, and then a DE follows up with some other attack to finish the job, requiring a good 2s to complete. <- All of this as annoying as it is, requires like 2s at the minimum to actually do, which is allowing counter play. But the Mesmer? Nah, all that damage lands in the fraction of a millisecond right out of stealth, especially if a person has a good macro set. Even the approach of the DEs & the Soulbeasts are rather obvious and allow players to position themselves to engage them. But the Mesmer? Nah you can't see it or interpret where it is at all. The final point to be made is that: DEs and Soulbeasts are nailing people with projectiles, which can be LOSed. But the Mesmer? That's mostly all melee functioned & ground targeted damage that HIT THROUGH WALLS.
I don't know what else to say. The implementation of this Core Power Mesmer lately, feels like I was eating at a nice dinner and enjoying my meal, then someone tossed a nasty leaky dirty diaper up on my table, and then I had to get up and leave. For real though. I've put up with a lot of bad metas in this game over the years, but there is something extra
bad feeling
about this no-tell Mesmer stealth across the map and 1HKO you stuff. Like actual instant 1HKO. Not like DEs or Soulbeasts that just deal a lot of damage really fast. No, this is an actual quite literal "instant 1HKO right out of stealth"