Guild Wars 2

Merge:
Glamour Mastery Inspiration (2); 20% CDR for Glamours
Temporal Enchanter Inspiration (9); Glamour Skills last Longer.
Into
Glamour Mastery Illusions (6)
Move Dazzling Glamours to Inspiration Tree.

Merge
Master of Manipulation; Dueling (1)
Far-Reaching Manipulations; Chaos (3)
Into
Dueling (1)
Master of Manipulation.

A) Create Build diversity
B) Kill Underused Traits (Read Never)
C) Buff Mesmer Ranged utility, Just like you said you were going to.
D) Create space for other Traits. Perhaps ones which are actually useful.

The first 2 merges alone would be an insane buff to the mesmer. Meaning: I like it

TyPin.9860:

The first 2 merges alone would be an insane buff to the mesmer. Meaning: I like it

not really, it just make the glamor cool down trait higher in the tree. I would rather anet proper buff mesmer core mechanics such as chaos armor, confusion, and eternal fields. Perhaps look into sword again.

I am thinking they are giving ranger lots of love at the moment. I hope they will look into mesmer and necro next

Those are two very good trait mergers. I still think that Time Warp should be reclassified as a Glamour now. A Mesmer with a Time Warp on a 168 second CD that lasts for 12 seconds would be a real boon for every game mode. Would also give non-phantasm builds a reason to go deeper into Inspiration.

Yeah, nice idea to merge the glamour and manipulation traits.

On another note, blinding befuddlement needs to have that ICD removed.

Here’s some other ideas…

Merge:
Mantra Mastery (Dueling 1) with Harmonious Mantra’s (Dueling 3)
or
Mantra Master(Dueling 1 ) with Protected Mantra’s (Dueling 2)
or
Protected Mantra’s (Dueling 2) with Harmonious Mantra’s (Dueling 3)
or even
Merge Mantra Mastery, Protected Mantra’s and Harmonious Mantra’s into a single GM trait.

Basically, Harmonious Mantra’s is not strong enough to be a GM, so any combination would be an improvement.

Unfortunately, merging traits is very unlikely to happen. The only way this would occur if ANet decided to do massive “Profession Review”, basically review/rebuild every profession traits. Which is a good idea, but doubtful in the near future.

Make Deceptive Evasion a 5 point minor in illusions,
Merge Illusionary Retribution into Shattered Strength.

Neptune.2570:

Make Deceptive Evasion a 5 point minor in illusions

I lol-ed. That’s a crazy huge buff.

Aberrant.6749:

Neptune.2570:

Make Deceptive Evasion a 5 point minor in illusions

I lol-ed. That’s a crazy huge buff.

You’re right. It shouldn’t even be a trait but a core class feature that can be toggled on/off without trait point cost.

Clones necessitate Mesmers.

And mesmers can create clones without this trait very well. However, with this trait “cloning” becomes way more effective. Making it so easy to access would totally break the game. No need to trait in Dueling any more for power specs. This are 4 trait points you could spend elsewhere and you could combine Phantasm or Lock down specs with Shatter specs, leaving the mesmer with virtually no weaknesses any more but maintaining full damage output.

Deceptive Evasion should be a GM trait and clone generation elsewhere should be pushed up slightly to compensate.

Mesmer in general should be less dependent on their traits to generate clones and more dependent on their base abilities.

Sarrs.4831:

Deceptive Evasion should be a GM trait and clone generation elsewhere should be pushed up slightly to compensate.

Mesmer in general should be less dependent on their traits to generate clones and more dependent on their base abilities.

It is indeed GM worthy.

Aberrant.6749:

Sarrs.4831:

Deceptive Evasion should be a GM trait and clone generation elsewhere should be pushed up slightly to compensate.

Mesmer in general should be less dependent on their traits to generate clones and more dependent on their base abilities.

It is indeed GM worthy.

All you’d be doing is ensuring all mesmer builds now require 6 points in dueling with the single exception of pure phantasm builds. You’re talking about inciting zero build diversity from this point on. 4 points in dueling right now is bad enough.

2/6/0/0/6 would be the only viable shatter build left with 2 required GM traits and Mental Torment to ensure you at least are hitting slightly harder than a wet noodle.

Making DE the 3 point minor trait would already be plenty helpful as you could pick another trait for 4 and have at least some more build diversity (most will probably go for either Blade Training or 1200 range blink, whatever they didn’t pick for their 2 point trait).

Ross Biddle.2367:

\All you’d be doing is ensuring all mesmer builds now require 6 points in dueling with the single exception of pure phantasm builds. You’re talking about inciting zero build diversity from this point on. 4 points in dueling right now is bad enough.

You contradict yourself. This change would create zero build diversity, but phantasm builds would still be available?

You are assuming that Evasive Deception is a must-have, no matter the price you have to pay; that’s the sign of a trait that’s broken, or at least GM material. There’s a short list of other traits which do the same thing at the Master level, most notable being Cleansing Ire.

Sarrs.4831:

Ross Biddle.2367:

\All you’d be doing is ensuring all mesmer builds now require 6 points in dueling with the single exception of pure phantasm builds. You’re talking about inciting zero build diversity from this point on. 4 points in dueling right now is bad enough.

You contradict yourself. This change would create zero build diversity, but phantasm builds would still be available?

You are assuming that Evasive Deception is a must-have, no matter the price you have to pay; that’s the sign of a trait that’s broken, or at least GM material. There’s a short list of other traits which do the same thing at the Master level, most notable being Cleansing Ire.

Not a contradiction as for some, DE goes against their phantasm setup. The Mesmer is still stronger/strongest with DE imo though. Playing to win, you’d take it.

All that aside you’re wrong in saying that the trait is broken. Rather Mesmer is broken without DE. If you don’t already know this you don’t understand Mesmer.

Ross Biddle.2367:

All that aside you’re wrong in saying that the trait is broken. Rather Mesmer is broken without DE. If you don’t already know this you don’t understand Mesmer.

They are broken towards one another. The trait is overbudget to make up for baseline mesmers being underbudget. Hence,

Sarrs.4831:

Mesmer in general should be less dependent on their traits to generate clones and more dependent on their base abilities.

Sarrs.4831:

Ross Biddle.2367:

All that aside you’re wrong in saying that the trait is broken. Rather Mesmer is broken without DE. If you don’t already know this you don’t understand Mesmer.

They are broken towards one another. The trait is overbudget to make up for baseline mesmers being underbudget. Hence,

Sarrs.4831:

Mesmer in general should be less dependent on their traits to generate clones and more dependent on their base abilities.

It might become a boon to base abilities, but it’d water down and likely ruin mesmer overall because clone production, while (possibly) quicker via abilities would become lackluster and unreliable. DE works because, the class is SO dependent on clones that it falls apart as soon as you can’t have maximum clones NOW.

When I block with scepter or OH sword I do so for the block and/or riposte, the clone is an added bonus I work into things as best I can. But what makes my bursts/counters/defenses actually come together is on demand dodge roll clones to fill out my golden 3 as soon as I want/need them. Base skill clone production will never meet up to the current standard. Not in the meta we have now.

Touching Deceptive evasion in any way is probably a mistake IMHO
It’s super strong and actually dictates all viable builds with 20 point investment required.

Is it 30 Points strong? Maybe, but it’s also the only trait that makes mesmer builds viable pushing it to 30 would kill Boonstrip capability of mesmers or surviveability/damage of mesmer considerably.

Should It be made 5 point trait to allow extreme build diversity ? Maybe/maybe not.
a)Too strong! b) Locks crazy builds out, which is good. c) I honestly don’t want to see tank/condition mesmer meta.

I think what needs to be looked at are the underused-unviable traits/trait lines
I can only speak to pvp and mesmers are strong but not Optimal atm with only one real viable spec at high end play… which is why merging some traits could be a good idea. I’ve also heard that mesmers don’t bring much to the table in wvwvw/pve..

I like the idea of moving most Glamour traits to Inspiration (and adding more). The idea would be that if you want to you can go full-glamour, but you sacrifice even essential Inspi-traits such as Temporal Enchanter.

What I’d do is change:

Disruptor’s Sustainment —> Enchanter’s Sustainment – Inspiration XIII
Friendly players entering or exiting your glamour effects gain 1000 Healing Power. Refreshes duration on reapplication.
Healing Power: 1000
Duration: 5 seconds
Cooldown: 1 second

although the suggested trait merges do sound tempting, I think you forgot the one trait that should be moved to adept tier all together or just added to the Mesmer kit without even having to trait for it. X in dueling?!?! HI Mesmer not forced to run X in dueling? We can actually use the other 5 traits in master tier without having togo full precision? OH

Actually the DE argument is much much more complicated than that.
For one, it’s not actually used by all specs. Not nearly.
But this compounds the issue that our class mechanic isn’t useful for a subset of our builds. Shatter relies on clones. Want to use shatter? Need DE ideally. Or you forego clone-spam, but then you don’t need DE and you cannot really use much of Shatter.

Move DE and increase weapon clone generation is a good alternative.
Some merges are great, but we need remplacement for the lost traits. Would make mesmer viable and add flavor to builds, instead of what we have with 80% DE, 50% IP.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Move DE and increase weapon clone generation is a good alternative.
Some merges are great, but we need remplacement for the lost traits. Would make mesmer viable and add flavor to builds, instead of what we have with 80% DE, 50% IP.

Yeah, my favourite thing would be to “de-fang” DE in that it should not be as powerful for raw clone generation, but in turn make it so that clone-generation is by itself much higher.

What I always favoured was to take the name of Deceptive Evasion a bit more literal:

Deceptive Evasion
Generate a clone when you dodge. The clone will dodge in the opposite direction and shatter shortly after, damaging enemies around. It is temporary and not counted for any other effect, trait or ability.

This is assuming they’d bump non-DE clone generation and clone longevity significantly, ofc.

Neptune.2570:

Make Deceptive Evasion a 5 point minor in illusions,

Please no.

Keeping Deceptive Evasion a Major trait is necessary, no matter where it is, so that Mesmers who rely on phantasms don’t overwrite one of their phantasms when they dodge.

Lazy thought for changes directed at addressing Deceptive Evasion;

Add a Minor Adept trait somewhere for mesmers, possibly in Dueling.

Deceptive Armory:
Whenever one of your weapon skills generates a clone, generate a second clone.
20 sec CD

CD is arguable, and it doesn’t completely remove the dependency on traits, but it might help.

no buff to mesmer let’s nerf it, it annoys noobs (Anet main auditory) and must suks.
Oh.. he already suks

I’m personally against buffing Ai builds :/
There’s enough cancer going around with Turret engies being playable.
Deceptive evasion is in a good place IMHO.

What Traitlines/specs aren’t in a good place?
Just about everything honestly…

Right now in top end of PVP the only viable spec is shatter, and questionably viable at that because of the super high skill cap compared to the other classes (SdThf,War,Guard), so no one specs out of 4/4/00/6 not really anyway…

Adding some incentive to take underused traits would be good;
Overbuffing mesmer would be bad.

Darnis.4056:

I’m personally against buffing Ai builds :/

I’d be curious to know why you conceptually consider more AI-reliant builds bad for a game. As long as they are optional, I mean.