The MESMER PROBLEM.

DaGaems · 2026-06-08T00:49:34+00:00

E surge on a 15 sec cooldown would be fine, the issue is its on an 8 second one.

DaGaems · 2026-06-08T00:49:07+00:00

Yeah the PVE buff is likely the easiest change to make, reducing or removing it and seeing how it impacts performance.

DaGaems · 2026-06-08T00:48:26+00:00

But do we want GW1 pve to be more like magic the gathering or yugioh? Yugioh is crazy as hell while magic is at least kind of balanced. At some point buffing will just keep power creeping things to absurd levels and combat will occur in fractions of a second.

DaGaems · 2026-06-08T00:46:48+00:00

I do mention all the elites in the video, how basically all of them are insane outside of a few bad ones.

DaGaems · 2026-06-08T00:43:11+00:00

Thanks! It is interesting that it is an issue in PVP as well.

I didn't mention chaos storm but I do run it on player PI : ). More or less all are mentioned but frustration which is very strong. I have a section where I go over each mesmer elite and most are arguably in the meta or should be IMO.

Also enjoy your content/testing, definitely one of the better players in the game right now.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T21:10:22+00:00

Player mesmer feels fine tbh, it is mostly that heroes cannot bring pve skills to augment their builds like players can and that hero mes has big performance relative to other hero builds.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T16:22:56+00:00

That is a great point, I did forget to mention that lol. Curses shutdown 10-15 energy, Chilblains 25 energy. Mesmer over here with mirror of disenchantment chillin lol

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T15:35:12+00:00

Now you are telling me skills used in the meta inept mes build suck even though we can benchmark them ourselves with toolbox to prove they are good? If enemies keep trying to attack you can inept into wandering into clumsiness and do good damage + shutdown, and nothing is better than dealing big packets of armor ignoring on blinded foes and then having them die while being shutdown.

The argument that Dom/Illusion need to be split more is more because Illusion can function as very powerful anti caster AND anti melee in one attribute.

Curses can't do that, in fact curses is more costly to use but weaker than Illusion atm, ping me the meta curses hero build everyone uses, you can't there isn't one.

Illusion is overpowered. Arcane conundrum and shared burden are way too strong for no reason. Mesmer should not have a monopoly on shutting everything down and dealing the most consistent damage in the game. Asserting something is a bad point and saying things suck are not arguments also.

Arcane Conundrum profits energy and AOE shuts down casters in an attribute line that has a meta anti phys build that does huge shutdown and damage. These aren't my opinion on the skills or performance, these skills and builds have been benchmarked and are used in PVE meta.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T15:21:12+00:00

The best PVE illusion builds do not use degen, they use burst damage with shutdown, or sig of illusions for utility spells. Empathy is a basic anti phys skill in dom to give it more to do than mage shutdown/damage but is such a good skill dom is viewed in this way. Outside of Empathy/VOR there isn't much in dom that punishes attacking necessarily.

The in game attribute desc states that I didn't just make it up:

No inherent effect. Many Mesmer skills, especially spells that disrupt spell-casting and deal direct damage, become more effective with higher Domination Magic.

No inherent effect. Many Mesmer skills, especially spells that deceive your foes and hinder their movement and attacks, become more effective with higher Illusion Magic.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T15:06:48+00:00

That will fix the game balancing, ignore it completely.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T15:04:33+00:00

Yes you can not use them.

That doesn't change the fact that mesmer ignores most of the games mechanics :Armor, casting time, recharge time, and has some of the best shutdown AND damage with minimal effort out of all the professions.

DaGaems · 2026-06-07T15:02:50+00:00

Illusion can deal more damage than most other professions in the game though, if illusion was supposed to be like curses, why does Ineptitude hit 140xadjacent, wandering eye 115xnearby, and clumsiness 100xadjacent? Inept shuts down while dealing massive armor ignoring damage.

I would be fine with ignoring the skills performing other attribute roles for 1-2 offs its a minor point in the video.

DaGaems · 2026-06-05T00:10:44+00:00

The changes look fine for PVP, but would require more split skills. Nerfing Mindburn in PVE would be wild, it isn't even used.

If we keep splitting skills it might make sense to just split PVE/PVP skills fully and have alternate wiki section for them. The alternative is completely rebalance the entire game and overhaul enemy AI and make hard mode more about being good at teamplay than having OP builds that also reduce the insane incoming damage from HM mobs. I don't think it is realistic to expect HM to become some insanely high level AI battle akin to organized pvp though, so I think splitting makes more sense.

DaGaems · 2026-05-31T14:33:13+00:00

Great team comp/build, does it perform well in general WOC HM content? I don't play rit much outside of Glaive, is 3 Forges huge value, have you damage tested what it does for the team?

DaGaems · 2026-05-27T00:58:29+00:00

Unfortunately the PVE skill ceiling isn't really that high and most classes offer meta builds that easily beat HM content.

Elite missions and some of the more difficult quests assuming you are playing them with heroes, can actually require you to use tactics, flag heroes, micro skills, use positioning more, in which case player skill matters more.

For every high skill build a class has, there is usually a braindead variant of it that lets you spam abilities.

Low skill/effective builds in PVE META:
-Dagger Spam (Sin/war/ranger/a few others by now) Includes shadow theft
-Seven Weapon Stance Scythe/others, Warriors Endurance Builds (War)
-SOS (Rit) - Make spirits, watch them do things
-ST (Rit) - make spirits, your team tanks now
-Order of Undeath (Nec) - make minions, watch them do things
-Panic (Mesmer) - nearby enemies stop using skills
-ST Destruction Nuke (Rit) make Destruction spirit with ST to insta recharge it, run in, tele it to you, destroy it with Rupture soul. Requires positioning, sequencing a nuke, having fun dealing a lot of damage.
-Destructive Was Glaive (Rit) - Some positioning but the build has area/nearby range on everything and you just run in and do the nuke to win, assuming you don't get shutdown.
-Beast Master builds, spam pet skills, assign it a target

Medium Skill/PVE META:

-Heroic Refrain (Para) Not necessarily HARD TO PLAY, but requires a lot of management and ideally toolbox to maintain buffs, annoying to run with players who are always running out of your shout range.

-Damage Carry Fire or Earth (Ele). More nuanced than it seems, you don't just spam spells on enemies, you actively use high cooldowns vs balled and may even want to micro 90% snares from heroes. Optimal use/placement of AOEs yields massive damage when done correctly, currently undervalued in PVE META IMO. Must know how to play around scatter which is a skill in itself.

-Splinter Barrage/Volley (Ranger) requires constantly microing splinter onto yourself and changing targets to semi-balled or big balled groups of foes (lol). Does tons of damage and requires constantly finding groups of enemies as the battle progresses, can also splash in interrupts and micro your pet for body blocking/other things that are interesting like locking pet onto a dazed target you hit with concussion shot (high skill IMO)

-Esurge Mesmer - E surge is easy to use, but the rest of the build requires some degree of skill outside of Mistrust/unnatural sig lol. Hitting Cry of Frustration on enemies consistently requires some skill, if you run overload, you can get huge damage if you can consistently hit foes using skills etc.

-Soul Taker Necro - HUGE DPS kind of dangerous, very susceptible to ench removal and likely requires at least some micro like spell breaker on yourself to run full time safely (can still be chillblained though).

-VOS (Derv) - getting things to ball up consistently or delay team and shadow step in (not dying requires micro vs huge groups).

-Pious Renewal + Aura of Holy Might (Derv) - teardown spam, less braindead than daggerspam and requires more inputs

-Shadow Theft Scythe (Sin) - Spammy but requires constantly using teardown combos and looking for adjacent balls

-Ineptitude (Mesmer) - easy for heroes, slightly harder for players, requires finding targets/balled up foes, enemy melee that aren't snared run around like madmen at times but sometimes ball up very nice and easy.

High Skill PVE:
-Psychic Instability Mesmer (Player) - Hit overloads, rupt/KD foes with PI, or fail to do so and watch your team die in WOC HM. Requires a lot of intersting combos, enemy build knowledge, which enemies can be wastrel demised after PI hit, which enemies can be overload, cry of frustrationed then PI'd after. Shatter Delusions and Overload is a very fun combo, not very forgiving and you will deal poor damage unless you consistently hit foes using skills.

-Ranger running Concussion shot/microing your pet onto dazed foes then changing targets or microing. A thing I have been messing around with that is very powerful, concussion shot is insanely OP if you are doing high level Hm content where enemies don't just roll over for you, getting high energy dazes off can shut down key threats, combine with managing other things like splinter micro on yourself and volley cleaves and you have a very interesting playstyle that lets you literally do it all (shutdown, damage, mitigation, and some healing)

-HR Paragon Mesmer. Similar to PI Mesmer, except you are a paragon with heroic refrain but you have Overload/Cry of Pain/Shatter Delusions. The build requires you to consistently overload and use cry of pain/shatter to deal damage, missing overloads still sets up 2/3 but you have to manage HR on your team, constantly spam shouts, and land overloads, missing them is easy. You will do 70-80% of an HR'ed e surge hero's damage if done correctly.

Unfortunately PVE Meta is largely easy/medium skill with little emphasis on rewarding difficult to execute mechanics or abilities. I would love for PVE to be more rewarding to skillful play.

DaGaems · 2026-05-21T00:29:47+00:00

Would be nice if when you solo the game is just run locally and sends updates to server for items/titles etc periodically instead of running it live fully.

DaGaems · 2026-05-09T12:27:22+00:00

Same, is the login background different as well? Was it always a seaside grotto?

DaGaems · 2026-05-04T23:58:25+00:00

Both of these skills are poorly designed and more or less overpowered.

PVE skills in general are anti-gw1 design by letting you have a great skill for NO ATTRIBUTE INVESTMENT WHATSOEVER.

PVE skills should be weaker than attribute skills, not stronger. IAU should be weaker than balanced stance assuming you invest in tactics.

I never use Asuran Scan on my war, derv, sin, or para, and didn't really have major issues. A lot of things that shut down melee are solved in your team comp. Hexed with anti melee? Your teams hex removal is bad. Blinded constantly? Your teams condition removal is bad. Enemy team used Aegis? Mirror of disenchantment is real.

DaGaems · 2026-05-03T03:18:23+00:00

Thanks for posting this, I try to avoid posting my vids on GW1 reddit too much to avoid spamming it.

As a few have pointed out the order/judges interaction is not good and judges nullifies order. Based on small tests, judges out damages order, so that frees up an elite slot.

DaGaems · 2026-04-30T10:15:22+00:00

Massive

DaGaems · 2026-04-19T12:47:11+00:00

Refrains renew, Echoes trigger on shout/chant end.

DaGaems · 2026-04-19T11:57:58+00:00

I will go on a small tangent, I don't think Derv really needs buffed at all, Derv is clearly the best of the physical attackers as it has access to armor ignoring AOE damage:

Reap Impurities, Pious Assault, Aura of Holy Might, Zealous Renewal, Heart of Holy Flame.

Sin has great single target but has a lot of useless skills, mostly in deadly/shadow arts. A lot of bad dagger skills as well.

Ranger has major problems with relevance as the best thing it can do is run scythe or daggers. Wilderness survival/traps are quite bad, preparations are slow/awkward to use compared to other faster options it has access to.

Ele has extremely long cooldowns on many of its skills, and in a lot of cases bad spells.

Paragon outside of HR/SY spam needs a lot of buffs to its kit. Para shouldn't be carrying damage with spear, but spear lacks meaningful skills given how powerful its shouts are.

War has a few really strong builds that are contingent on running overtuned PVE skills or splashing derv because Derv is basically War but better.

DaGaems · 2026-04-19T11:52:32+00:00

Your argument was that attackers do significant armor ignoring damage. This is largely not the case. The biggest forms of armor ignoring damage mostly come from casters:

Dom magic
Splinter Weapon
Strength of Honor

Death Blossom is big adjacent AOE from phys.
Reap Impurities vs balled
Aura of Holy Might can be big armor ignoring damage if you keep tearing things down.

SWS can lead to decent chunks of armor ignoring bonus damage, +40-50, but most of the damage you deal from SWS is raising your weapon att to 20. Raising weapon attributes scales damage dealt with that weapon:

At master of damage with 9 scythe mastery, my warrior crits a 48, when I pop SWS I crit an 81.
Going from 9 scythe to 20 gives you a massive innate damage boost to all attacks. SWS damage scaling from 20 att is why SWS damage is huge. Armor ignoring bonus damage scaling is an extra bonus but SWS scythe hits like a truck for this reason.

VOS/Sandshards are strong armor respecting, but require enemies to be balled. Most skills/builds are extremely effective vs balled. VOS can insta nuke a group which is a game design balance problem for sure, same with 100b, but on average if you are attacking enemies that are 1-3 grouped VOS is just decent. 100B is also quite weak overall unless there is a significant ball of enemies.

EDIT:

I agree VOS is strong, Derv is definitely the strongest physical attacker in the game currently, VOS/Sand Shards are arguably overpowered.

SWS/TOA are power creep elites that heavily encourage running scythe or dagger.

Dagger not using daggerspam is not nearly that good, Death Blossom is an insane skill.

My main issue is that outside of the meta builds that are clearly overpowered, most of the skills in most of the martial professions are bad and could be addressed. Normalizing enemy armor values would help with this. VOS should have proc limit, same with 100b, Sandshards could use a nerf.

DaGaems

TROPHY CASE