Guild Wars 2

• Illusionary Leap: Fixed a bug that allowed players to swap places with their clone after it was destroyed.

The “fix” was unnecessary and uncalled for. Sword 3 is a short range teleport regardless of if the clone is alive or not. It’s a necessary part of Mesmer mobility, control, damage, and survival. By making this change the devs have actually played right into their clear acknowledgment that Mesmers have a problem in the current meta where AoE, cleave spam, and resulting clone/phantasm death are a major problem/flaw.

Easy solutions

• Revert the change. If iLeap was “bugged” and acting unintentionally since launch, then alter the intention of iLeap. The clone can be killed. We still maintain teleport to last living location.

• Make iLeap’s clone invulnerable until it the end of it’s leap animation (at the very least). Or, make it invulnerable from direct damage (and not condi’s or CC’s, as has always been the case). That way we can still get the teleport/chance to imob in if we’re using the iLeap with immediacy. Counterplay can still be used with stuns, walls, knockbacks, or you know dodging as per usual.

The fact that this was a stealth nerf was kind of sad. ArenaNet just hid it inside of the patch notes. Instead of fixing the more important bugs they NERF a skill that was already broken.

Since my post got absorbed into a bad spot during a thread merge, I’ll put this here:

Kadj.6725:

Combine and reverse the skill.

-Create ordinary clone at current location. Teleport/leap to enemy.

On teleport: Cripple enemy.
On leap clone death: Immobilize enemy.

Rationale: We lose our second combo finisher and forced immobilize, but for once we have a clone that actually punishes AoEs… AND we hold on to the mobility, even if slightly reduced.

(Clone death effect is immob because we already have a cripple on death trait, of course.)

Optional: Chained effect to teleport back to original spot. I don’t like this though because that’s pretty much identical to a thief skill.

I will say I don’t like the “make clone invulnerable” idea, but only because this game has a clear, ongoing history of invulnerability becoming bugged and permanent on AI, especially if it’s tied to animations or other circumstances. I DO think that an Aegis effect would be nice though, perhaps as a trait – I’d bet people would actually take it if that were the actual effect of the illusion HP trait.

I like the invulnerable idea. Only thing is, instead of it just being invulnerability that the game gives the clone. The clone should spawn with 3 or 4 seconds of Distortion.

At least this way it sticks within the Mesmer’s capabilities and lore and as previously mentioned by Kadj invulnerability on AI has a tendency to get bugged.

Elitist.8701:

The fact that this was a stealth nerf was kind of sad. ArenaNet just hid it inside of the patch notes. Instead of fixing the more important bugs they NERF a skill that was already broken.

Clear as day in text format in a place everyone can see? Not a very good hiding spot.

The ability was behaving in a way that ANet didn’t intend. You can call it a “happy accident” all you like, but unintentional functionality is still unintentional, and depending on ideas they might have down the road, this bug might manifest itself differently and cause other issues.

But if you’d like to explain exactly what situations you utilized the old functionality in the past, why it was essential, and why the ability is useless without it, I’d be happy to hear. By the sounds of it, you could just not really care where you sent the iLeap and still get a short cooldown teleport with potential immobilize out of it. I suppose now you’ll have to keep an eye out? Will it really be as difficult as people are leading on?