Guild Wars 2

Greetings and salutations!

Welcome to the 1st Community Driven CDI thread! Obviously this thread is not currently backed by A-net themselves, but they’re so busy why not make their jobs a little easier, eh?

So, let’s get to it!

The Mesmer CDI

Primary Goal: To Provide the Mesmer with a more unique access to Punishment (Control), whilst remaining within the classes predetermined mechanical flow and play.

Tool Box
*Traits
*Weapon Skills
*Utility Skills
*Class Mechanics

Debriefing:
Why only Punishment? Aren’t there other forms of Control? You might ask, and the answers are “Because” and “Yes, there are and they are not entirely off the table”.

After creating other threads and researching, the reason Punishment has been selected as the Primary focus is due to several reasons. These being that:

Hard CC is already accessible to the class and also falls victim to Stability/Stun breakers/Defiant/Unshakable Depending upon your game mode of choice.

Soft CC is mostly tied to Conditions which requires an in depth look and balance thread all their own.

Denial CC Is already present within the class in many forms and piling on top of it would seem excessive.

What is Punishment
Punishment is a type of CC that is as much Physical as it is Mental. Punishment plays heavily upon the “Risk vs Reward” rule that we can find both in game and in real life. Punishment forces both sides to make a gamble at the open and hope it pays off in the end.

This is something that A-net does seem more Open to for the Mesmer Class

Karl McLain.5604:

Some great ideas here guys! This skill is something we’ve been looking at, as it’s a little underwhelming at times.

Here’s a bunch of potential things we could do (we would do one or maybe two of these, not all:

1. Look at making it usable on the move. Currently, the animation is ONLY able to be used while standing still.
2. Increase the number of boons removed.
3. Increase the radius.
4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
5. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!
6. ???
7. Profit!

Tagging this thread for later.

Borrowed from here

Current Examples:
Boon Removal – Risk of reliance upon long duration/long CD boons
Torment – Risk of Reliance on high Mobility and/or Constant Movement

[Rules and Regulations]
1. Be Respectful
2. Be Open to healthy Discussion on Your idea as well as Others.
3. Please be thoughtful to Multiple Game Mode Balances.
4. Do not feed Trolls
5. Attempt to remain “Realistic” with suggestions.

Example Ideas/Posts:

Replace Wastrels Punishment – 5% Dmg vs Inactive Foes.
New GM Minor – x% Damage for each Unique Boon on Foe.

- This, with some tweaks, could balance very well as punishment for Boon heavy “Bunker” builds as well as Boon Heavy “Glass cannon” Builds while still remaining “underwhelming” against foes that do not rely on, or do not have substantial access to Boons.

Chaos Armor
- Convert from “On-Hit” to PBAoE

Change means guaranteed Boons/Conditions are dispersed in a more controlled manner that can also bring the use of CA into a more Friendly atmosphere. Some boons/durations/conditions should likely be changed to compensate.

~Keep it clean~

~Reserved for Updates and links~

If it’s not backed by Anet, why do you call it ‘official’?

Crovax.7854:

If it’s not backed by Anet, why do you call it ‘official’?

Official Community CDI. Although threads get buried quite quick here so best of luck!

P.S as a main thief, I envy this thread.

NinjaEd.3946:

Crovax.7854:

If it’s not backed by Anet, why do you call it ‘official’?

Official Community CDI. Although threads get buried quite quick here so best of luck!

P.S as a main thief, I envy this thread.

^ It’s community driven, but that’s not exactly relevant to the topic.

I may be persuaded to do these for Other Professions, depending on how this turns out ;3

Now back on topic!

of·fi·cial (?-f?sh??l)
adj.
1. Of or relating to an office or a post of authority
2. Authorized by a proper authority; authoritative

The authority here is ArenaNet. Them not backing this makes it nonofficial.
Although that’s just a sidenote; good luck with the whole thing.

If the mesmer could remove AoE boons that means no more imba bunk guards that heal an entire team? Then why not.

Remove AoE boons o_O whaaaat

Isn’t official somehow exactly the opposite of “community driven / by the community”?

Next problem “more ways to punish enemies”. Will never happen since ANet obviously wants at least thieves to be immune to any kind of punishment.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Isn’t official somehow exactly the opposite of “community driven / by the community”?

Next problem “more ways to punish enemies”. Will never happen since ANet obviously wants at least thieves to be immune to any kind of punishment.

yes yes.. the topic is silly

but this is a good jump off point, thieves.

Thieves have 0 CDs on their skills and find the greatest benefit from “spamming”.

Punishments here are Retaliation and Confusion.

So, might I suggest that Mesmers be given a trait in either the Minor or Major lines that increases Damage on their confusion?

Since the introduction of perplexity runes and the nerf to confusion damage, its very difficult for ane to raise Confusion damage across the board, but if mesmers, as the masters of confusion were granted the ability to boost confusion damage they apply, would it balance out?

Obviously confusion would remain less effective in PvE due to AI relevant attack speeds but in WvW this could return Glamour to a useable Light, and in sPvP there are already many ways for the class to apply confusion to single targets almost constantly.

Preposal : Master of Misdirection – “Longer confusion Duration” – Traded for – “25-50% Increase in Confusion Condition Damage.”

Well, I’ll just leave this here.

Suggestions -

Chaos Armor – Change on hit to PBAOE – Removal of Swiftness in favor of Regen or Vigor. Retain 1s for Pulse, reduce Boon durations to compensate for “guaranteed” application. Keeping Swiftness here would promote a more OP feel to the redesign, allowing whomever has it, to stay on top of a foe attempting to run out of the way.

Winds of Chaos – Removal of Vulnerability from RNG pool, replace with Weakness or Cripple (2s durations), – Mesmers have a wealth of Vuln in our traits and weapons, applying this to the staff Auto attack seems misplaced due to the low damage and other High Tick Conditions it carries. Weakness or Cripple are more control oriented and would make the staff much more concerning for classes that rely on Movement or Upkeep of Dodge.

Chaos Storm- Removal of Swiftness replace with Stability/ or vigor – Reduce base Cool down slightly (a few seconds) Swiftness just never fits well in the Chaos and with the high mobility many classes already have its effectiveness is questionable, I would rather see another boon in its place to give allies an incentive to remain in the spell apart from aegis.

Scepter Auto Chain – Reduce obnoxiously long Finisher skill to 3/4 or 1/2 second. The chain here takes longer than almost every other Auto chain on the class and other classes, and the animation is a dead give away as to what is about to happen. Bringing down the cast time/animation still signifies the attack and adds a higher sense of urgency to the target that they might want to evade now, and not 1 and 1/4th of a second from now.

Sword Auto Chain – Boon removal replaced with Increased Damage for target with Boon. It doesn’t seem fitting to have the Boon removal be at the end of the chain here when the class has so many other “upfront” boon removal. I would suggest that sword Main hand be more ideal for punishment of having boons and standing still than standing still so you lose a boon every few seconds.

Illusionary Riposte – Add Removes 1 or 2 boons on block – Reduce damage to compensate. This gives the offhand sword more punch and makes hitting the block more punishing.

Into The Void – Spell effect / animation would be nice, perhaps just a swirling replica of Portal when activated. Not super important but it would be nice so we have a clear marker that the skill has been used but the Light Field remains.

Wastrel’s Punishment – Replaced for + Damage % for unique boons on Target.

Confusing Cry – Now steps on Bountiful Disillusionment’s Toes, Replacement of Boon or Removal of Trait entirely would be preferable.

Imbued Diversion – Exchange Clone death to Interrupt causes AoE Daze to nearby Targets, ICD may be needed to prevent from 100% up time of daze on very large groups (WvW), the AoE daze the trait currently provides is neat but relies heavily on clones pathing successfully into a group of foes. Most people have witnessed how well clones do against multiple foes. Bringing more focus back to the Mesmer as the source limits the potential for AI errors/failures.

Downed-Rally Traits – Pick one to keep and one to replace, I cant speak to the amount they are used but they are very lack luster.

I’ll be back with more tomorrow
Until then, feel free to discuss or post your own.

mrauls.6519:

Remove AoE boons o_O whaaaat

We already do that, with Null Field.

ANet mostly ignored their own Really-Official Ranger CDI… good luck with this one.

Carighan.6758:

mrauls.6519:

Remove AoE boons o_O whaaaat

We already do that, with Null Field.

And shatters with Shattered Concentration.

Abrilete.1439:

ANet mostly ignored their own Really-Official Ranger CDI… good luck with this one.

thank you for the well wishes but lets try to remain on topic n.n

Ansau.7326:

Carighan.6758:

mrauls.6519:

Remove AoE boons o_O whaaaat

We already do that, with Null Field.

And shatters with Shattered Concentration.

Didn’t know about the second one! Now I have to be more careful, thanks

I would like to reset mesmer back to release state…

LunarNacht.8913:

I would like to reset mesmer back to release state…

yes agreed id like my mes to be viable in wvw again.

Just wanted to bump these to remind all the complaining mesmers what was attempted and ignored, you wanna try doing something constructive this time?

The changes I’d like to see:

Illusionary Leap – Create a clone at target foe, crippling them. Swap places with this clone to Immobilise foes.

Furious interruption – The quickness duration should either be increased or icd lowered. Completely unused at the moment.

Bountiful Disillusionment – Grant might on mind wrack, retal on frustration. All boon durations buffed, needs to be a viable alternative to Prismatic understanding.

Prismatic Understanding- Extends stealth skills by 2 seconds. Grants regeneration whilst in stealth – Interval -2s. (Just a suggestion, I’d quite like to see this nerfed a small amount, and it seems like the most OP part of PU is the protection and Aegis gained)

I can’t speak for all areas of the game, but for pvp.

Give us something to deal with thieves. I get that hard counters exist but would we have now means that there is absolutely no reason to take a Mesmer unless the other team has no thief (every team runs with a thief, and even if they didn’t taking a thief or s/f ele is a better option).

As it has been mentioned remove the ICD of chaos armor procs. Add the punishment for bad plays. Give thieves a reason to have to do more then shadow step then AA the Mesmer down.
Also could do with a tad more aoe, aside from our chaos storm, the RNG daze is nice, but having to rely on a RNG form of aoe on a high cd as our only form of defensive against them? (Our teleports just don’t work against s/x thieves, for every port away from the burst we do they have an instant gap closer with steal/sword 2/shadow step). If we do manage to survive the initial engagement (if the thief kittens up) s/x evade uptime is rediculous, and seeing how all our skills are single target dps, its impossible to get any damage back on them.

This is speaking with mostly shatter in pvp in mind, but it seems odd that no team in na is willing to pick up a Mesmer. because…. thief.

CDI threads are/were a waste of time. Things are going to be done according to anets plan regardless of input. I strongly suggest you all stop providing profession feedback to save yourself a lot of frustration.