Guild Wars 2

Mesmer’s in kind of a weak spot in sPvP and fighting large groups in WvW. Here’s a list of small tweaks that I think would put Mesmer in a better place.

Illusionary Leap Change

Problem: The path-finding on the clone from Illusionary Leap (Mesmer sword 3) cannot find a path up or down certain slopes, causing the clone to first stall, then slowly walk towards its target.

How big of a deal is it?: A HUGE deal for Sword/X shatter or otherwise power-based specs. Illusionary leap lets you set up blurred frenzy/shatters, which is your main source of burst damage.

Possible Solutions:

1. Change the functionality of Illusionary Leap to be exactly the same as Infiltrator’s Strike (Sword 2) on thieves, minus the Shadow Return. Activating Illusionary Leap could use the same animation as it does now, and would keep the same icon on the “buff bar” as “tells” as to not make it overpowered. After activating Illusionary Leap, you would still have 5 seconds to use Swap, except now you will instantly teleport next to your target and immobilize them as long as you are within 600 range of them. Having an improved teleport would be balanced out by not having a clone spawn that could be shattered. I like this solution best because it uses the least amount of AI.
2. Instead of having the clone “leap” at your target, have it spawn next to them instead. Everything else would function as it normally does. This eliminates the need for AI path-finding and still keeps the same concept as the skill has now.
3. Fix the path-finding on Illusionary Leap clones so that they can make it to their target 100% of the time.

Mind Stab Blast Finisher

Problem: Mesmers offer little support in terms of fields/finishers.

How big of a deal is it?: It’s one of the reasons why mesmers are veil/portal bots in big groups.

Solution: Mind Stab [Greatsword 3] should be a blast finisher. This would give power mesmers a way to contribute to group survivability other than putting out damage.

Unblockable Null Field

Problem: Blocking skills allow people to walk through Null Field without having any boons removed.

How big of a deal is it?: Not a huge deal, but it’s inconsistent with a similar necromancer skill; Well of Corruption.

Solution: Make Null Field unblockable.

Mantra Radius Increase

Problem: The AoE radius on mantras is too small to be of any use in most situations. Mesmers are normally near the back of a large engagement, and 240 is not a wide enough radius to reach most of your allies.

How big of a deal is it?: It’s at least part of the reason why you don’t see support-mantra mesmers.

Solution: Increase the radius on mantras to 600 to match shattered conditions.

Shattered Strength/Confusing Cry Buff

Problem: Shattered Strength [Illusions Grandmaster Minor Trait] and Confusing Cry [Illusions II] do not give a stack of might or retaliation for shatters on yourself, respectively, if you use Illusionary Persona [Illusions XI].

How big of a deal is it?: It would give shatter mesmers a little more “Oomph”, which would make them a little bit more viable.

Solution: Make Shattered Strength give a stack of might for shatters on yourself and Confusing Cry give retaliation.

Confusing Enchantments Buff

Problem: Mesmers currently have only 1 viable group spec, and it’s pretty weak.

How big of a deal is it?: The AoE damage a glamour mesmer puts out is usually not worth choosing a mesmer over a necromancer or elementalist.

Solution: Increase the number of confusion stacks from Confusing Enchantments [Domination VIII] from 1 to 2.

Decoy/The Prestige Instant Cast

Problem: Decoy and The Prestige are both 0 second cast time skills, but cannot be used while channeling other skills. Using Decoy while channeling another skill/stomp will interrupt the other skills cast, and The Prestige will not cast at all until the channel is over.

How big of a deal is it?: Being able to use Decoy while channeling a heal or stomp would be nice. Being able to use The Prestige to blind-stomp a guardian/engineer/warrior/ranger would be cool too.

Solution: Allow Decoy/The Prestige to activate while another skill/stomp is being channeled. Could also still make it stop channeled auto attacks (ONLY auto attacks!) like greatsword so you wouldn’t accidentally reveal yourself.

Someone gimmie something.

I like them all but getting Anet to buff mesmer is like pulling teeth. We’re all just jumping for joy that we aren’t getting nerfed again…

+1

+14 characters

They’re all such tiny changes that I don’t think anyones going to say, for example, “oh mesmers can’t have blast finishers, that would make them even more OP in duels because they can get 2s longer chaos armor”.

The only one that I think could use a little debate is increasing the amount of confusion you get from Confusing Enchantments. I think glamour mesmers were the reason they cut confusion damage in half in the first place, so this would basically rollback that nerf.

Let CS make the mantra of distraction become aoe 360 radius around the selected target. Make dazes 15% longer with CS too and 25% chance to stun. Have 25 trait of domination also 15% longer dazes.

Make chaos storm have 66% chance to proceed daze and just let it give conditions if it dazes too. The conditions it does are pretty kitten anyway.

Chaotic interruption needs to have different conditions besides cripple/ chilled. Make it 2 confusion stacks, blind and weakness (or chilled)

Imbued diversion to master trait and make it work with IP.
Blinding Befuddlement no cooldown, moved to grandmaster trait.

Shattered Strength (25 illusions), gain 2 stacks of might per shattered illusion.
Or! Gain 1 stack might per shattered illusion for 8 seconds and 3 seconds fury.

PU: Cloaking skills last 1 second longer , and you gain a random boon when you are cloacked.
Aegis/Protection/Regen (3 → 2 second)

Furius interruption: Gain quickness when you interrupt a foe.
Quickness (3s): skills and actions are 50% faster.
Idk, make it reworked something to:

When you interrupt a foe, the next time you charge a mantra it will be charged instantly. (So no casting time/ or 0.5 sec casting time.)
Effect remains for 10 seconds after the interruption.

Something like the VII trait in air of eles. (+10% crit damage after using arcane skills for 15 seconds.)

Restorative Illusions: Heal yourself and up to 4 allies when you shatter illusions. Make it work in combination with IP.

Sharper Images: Bleeding 6s → 5s

Just throwing some kitten in!

Mantra of Distraction = Make it Aoe by default, not so op, you’ll still have to channel it after a while and will be still on 2 charges.

Furious Interruption = Make It Affect Phantasms too.

Confusing Combatants = Change it, too lackluster for A GM precision minor trait, change it to have something like “Critical hits have a chance to…” Make Past effect a major trait, same as every condition kill clone traits.

Wastrel’s Punishment = again too lackluster for a GM minor trait, change it to something like interrupt effects + the 5% effect. Sigil of Impact gives 10% damage to stunned foes. 5% more than a GM minor trait.

Chaotic Interruption = Change cripple, immo+cripple = sense / or give cripple an additional second in duration so it still procs after the immo. Or Maybe change it to poison.

Agreed, small changes that wouldn’t break the meta (Anet is so good at doing that already). Especially Null Field, if this pules a little quicker it may help with surviving condi burst…

/obligatory comment about scepter 1/3 torch 5 annoyance.

BlackDevil.9268:

SNIP

I like the idea of interrupts recharging mantras. I think that would actually make a mantra build viable. I could see some interrupt-dependent Mantra of Pain spike damage build being a thing. I wouldn’t want to see Blinding Befuddlement moved to GM though. I like that Glamour mesmers aren’t forced into 30 points into Illusions anymore, frees up 10 trait points to spend elsewhere.

Giving mesmers access to fury through Shattered Strength could be really strong, maybe too strong. It’d be very possible to make a spec in WvW that has 100% chance for Mind Wrack to crit.

I like the idea of making Confounding Suggestions the key to a lockdown kinda build, like how it made Chaos Storm strong while it was “bugged”. Bringing back that effect and making the Mantra of Distraction AoE when using CS are interesting ideas that I don’t think are too strong. Might need a little debate though.

I also don’t mind buffing Wastrel’s Punishment to 10% since it is a GM minor trait, like Sticker said.

Well, if you look up joe’s video’s, he has 80% crit chance without precise wrack. So 100% mind wrack crit is already possible without even traiting for it if you just get fury from your allies.

Shatter just feels a little…. like you’re playing the underdog. It’s always yourself struggling with the spec than the enemy struggling with you.

Added another tweak letting Decoy/The Prestige be used while channeling a skill/stomp. I swear I read that they were doing this anyway a long time ago.

Bump for more input.

Holy kitten. Someone who has some remotely good ideas on the profession balance page. Well done Fox. This place isn’t just a giant toilet of shi- uh I mean poor ideas after all.

All great suggestions. I particularly like the Confusing Enchantments one, although I’d like to see it apply confusion and an additional condition like Weakness instead. I quite like the idea of Mesmers being able to effectively stack AoE confusion and weakness. Would make glamour Mesmers quite useful for some zerg busting in WvW.

how about a new weapon, like a whip that is aoe only. necro has the staff with the necro marks, so mes could have a whip that is aoe based and a mainhand pistol that has 1 aoe attack.
maybe we could change mantras into aoe skills and not the way they are atm. i mean real aoe that is ground targeted.
i would love to have less ai. our ai is the cause of most of our bugs, so maybe cutting the ai down and give us aoe would be great.

I like some of these suggestions – they make a lot of sense. However, they aren’t going to make Mesmer any more tournament-viable.

If you think the developers are actually going to buff Mesmers, you are sorely mistaken. The only way it would happen is if you tricked them into thinking they are actually buffing warriors or thieves.

I like the idea of mesmer getting a new blast finisher (besides the prestige), but adding it to greatsword #3 isn’t a good idea. GS #3 already does so many things considering its low 12 s cooldown (9.6 s traited). It is bad game design to create skills which do multiple powerful things in a short cooldown.

However some rarely used mesmer utility skills, like the mantras, could really use some love. What if the mantras would be blast finishers? Mantra of resolve would then be a blast finisher on a mere 20/16 s cooldown.

warhorn #5 of warrior gives vigor to allies, weakness to enemies, is a blast finisher and converts conditions into boons when traited +20% short cd. That’s on a 20s base cooldown.

I don’t see how mind stab is op compared to that. You need on-time blast finishers, not one that needs 3sec casting time.It will become juts as useless as the prestige blast finisher then.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I like the idea of mesmer getting a new blast finisher (besides the prestige), but adding it to greatsword #3 isn’t a good idea. GS #3 already does so many things considering its low 12 s cooldown (9.6 s traited). It is bad game design to create skills which do multiple powerful things in a short cooldown.

However some rarely used mesmer utility skills, like the mantras, could really use some love. What if the mantras would be blast finishers? Mantra of resolve would then be a blast finisher on a mere 20/16 s cooldown.

I don’t think adding a blast finisher would make Mind Stab too powerful. Compare it to something like Thief’s Cluster Bomb, which does excellent AoE damage, is ground targetable, and has a zero second cooldown (technically 3 seconds if you consider the time it takes to get the initiative spent back).

Maybe the Mantras could also be blast finishers, but like BlackDevil said, they would have the same problem The Prestige does in that it has a “wind up” time. You can’t use the blast finisher exactly when you want it (assuming you mean the blast finisher triggers when you charge the mantra). By the time you finish charging the mantra, the field you wanted to blast will likely have disappeared.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I like some of these suggestions – they make a lot of sense. However, they aren’t going to make Mesmer any more tournament-viable.

If you think the developers are actually going to buff Mesmers, you are sorely mistaken. The only way it would happen is if you tricked them into thinking they are actually buffing warriors or thieves.

As far as tournament viability goes, no I don’t think these changes will all of a sudden have the top teams clamoring for mesmers, but I think it would help. At the highest level in the current sPvP meta, Thieves are pretty objectively better at playing the “roamer” role. They are far faster than mesmers, have comparable burst damage, and have access to blind fields and AoE stealth. Mesmer is very good at sPvP team fights, though. The damage and boon removal shatter mesmer brings is something that you COULD ALMOST build a team around, if you wanted to. BUT the bugs like Illusionary Leap must be fixed before that’s possible. You can’t have your spike damage tell you something like “oh I can’t kill him right now, he’s on a staircase”. Imagine if Backstab would “wiff” if the Thief’s target was on a slope; it’s the same problem. The spec has to work 100% of the time before you can consider using it seriously.

I’ve also thought about whether adding a second stack of confusion to Confusing Enchantments would be OP, and I don’t think it would be. It was nerfed in the first place because a group of 12 glamour mesmers could easily stack 25 stacks of confusion on an entire zerg, since there’s no AoE cap, and they could wipe 60 people with 12. Back then, 25 stacks of confusion could easily tick for 12.5k per attack, so particularly squishy classes could 1-shot themselves, and even bunkers would die in 2 attacks.

If confusion stacks were increased to 2 per glamour field, you would only need 6 glamour mesmers for 25 stacks of confusion. However, since confusion damage is cut in half, 25 stacks of confusion would only tick for ~6.75k instead of the previous 12.5k. That seems like a lot, but there’s no inherent cover conditions to stop the confusion from being wiped. A single (traited) warhorn warrior could cleanse the confusion from himself and 9 of his allies, nerfing all the damage output of the mesmers for the next 32 seconds or so.

Compare that to a glassy power wells Necromancer dropping a Well of Suffering. It’s certainly possible for Well of Suffering to tick for 3k DPS, and standing in it for its entire duration will kill many classes. Yet, nobody complains that Well necromancers are OP because avoiding their damage is easy when you know what to look for; “don’t stand in the red circles.” Glamour Mesmer damage is the same way, if not easier to avoid; “don’t walk through the pink circles, and if you do, make sure you don’t have 15 stacks of confusion before you start spamming skills.”

Fox.3562:

I’ve also thought about whether adding a second stack of confusion to Confusing Enchantments would be OP, and I don’t think it would be. It was nerfed in the first place because a group of 12 glamour mesmers could easily stack 25 stacks of confusion on an entire zerg, since there’s no AoE cap, and they could wipe 60 people with 12. Back then, 25 stacks of confusion could easily tick for 12.5k per attack, so particularly squishy classes could 1-shot themselves, and even bunkers would die in 2 attacks.

If confusion stacks were increased to 2 per glamour field, you would only need 6 glamour mesmers for 25 stacks of confusion. However, since confusion damage is cut in half, 25 stacks of confusion would only tick for ~6.75k instead of the previous 12.5k. That seems like a lot, but there’s no inherent cover conditions to stop the confusion from being wiped. A single (traited) warhorn warrior could cleanse the confusion from himself and 9 of his allies, nerfing all the damage output of the mesmers for the next 32 seconds or so.

Compare that to a glassy power wells Necromancer dropping a Well of Suffering. It’s certainly possible for Well of Suffering to tick for 3k DPS, and standing in it for its entire duration will kill many classes. Yet, nobody complains that Well necromancers are OP because avoiding their damage is easy when you know what to look for; “don’t stand in the red circles.” Glamour Mesmer damage is the same way, if not easier to avoid; “don’t walk through the pink circles, and if you do, make sure you don’t have 15 stacks of confusion before you start spamming skills.”

1 attack would never tick 12.5k ever, but yeah confusion bombs by 1 mes was ver strong. eotm had a bug where confusion would deal the pve dmg and honsetly in the current meta the pve confusion dmg would tick up to 2k but wasnt overpowered at all. the bb nerf would have been enough to reduce the stacks and nowadays condis are cleansed very quickly in a zerg, so a buff to mesmers confusion and maybe a trait that makes confusion dmg higher would be great.

during this bug where illusions would dissapear when enemy stealthes showed me how ai rules the mesmers. thats why mesmers dont perform well in group fights as ai dies too quickly in aoe and cc spam. ai is also very buggy. los/obstructed bugs and phantasms being bugged for months cripples our dmg a lot. so a fix would be something like a trait that allows us to change phantasms into a non ai based aoe or new skills or weapons that give us access to aoe.
necros can choose to use minion builds, but they dont have to depend on it. power necros dont use any minions so should mesmers have an option to not use ai for game modes like wvw for example.
id love to have whip as a weapon and the whip could be an aoe weapon only, like the necro staff is aoe marks mesmer whip could be hexes or something like that.
i think our main problems are ai and ai is very buggy, so make the mesmer a little less 1v1 and a little more light armor class that can stay ranged and deal aoe dmg.

so some ideas:

change mantras into something else, a ground targeted aoe or something
give us a weapon that is not ai heavy like a two handed whip that is an aoe weapon
rework glamour and glamour traits as confusion is not viable anymore for a mesmer
give us an option to not use ai like a trait or so
make us less 1v1 duelist pet class and turn us into a true light armor class
remove moa and give us a better elite
give us an option to exchange the shatter f1-f4 to something non ai based
rework image to deal aoe fire dmg
rework scepter aa
rework staff aa
rework or un nerf chaos armor
remove and replace mimic
remove and replace illusion of life
reduce tw cooldown
rework clone death traits (too much condi which is causing the whining)
rework pu buffs to compensate for some buffs
fix ileap
fix los/obstructed buggs
fix iwarden

Honestly They should just rework all trait trees.

Just put a tree for shatter for phantasm for lockdown and so forth.

Some of our traits are all over the place. Then rework some GM traits and Minors. and rework some phants too. (iwarden bug, image, etc.)
Ex:

Phantasm Tree would include the empowering illu and phantasmal strength, etc.

Shatter tree would contain shattered conditions and shattered concentration, etc.

I think this would promote more solid builds and not solely putting trait points that are left onto some trees.

Also rework scepter aa.

Wishul thinking:

Each phant should be unique:

Sowrdsman does hard dmg but no additional effect
Berserker has cripple
Duelist is long range but only useful with Sharper Images or Combo confusion, no unique effect
Image has confusion and retal
Warden absorbs projectiles
Warlock does more dmg for more conditions

Swordsman and Duelist can do more. Just my 2 finny.

I do think that scepter auto attack is really weak and needs some kind of change, but I don’t know what it should be. The direct damage from it is very weak, there’s no condition damage, and the clones it spawns obviously aren’t doing anything. Adding some kinda condition I guess would be nice since scepter is basically a condition weapon.

Added my solutions for changing iLeap to this post so you don’t have to open another link.

I agree with everything in the OP.

Something I always thought about was how short duration the confusion from the mesmer is. Cry of Frustration and Confusing Combatants, for example, only cause confusion for 3 seconds. In 3 seconds duration, an opponent will get off maybe two attacks, but in the randomness of a fight not even that is guaranteed.

This would normally be counterbalanced by the inaction of the opponent. If the opponent is inactive due to confusion if it somehow stacked really high, then this gives the player time to do additional damage against an inactive opponent. However, in practice this is flawed in three ways:

#1: The confusion is such a short duration that the “inactive window” is way too short to accomplish anything.
#2: Confusion is difficult to stack and maintain, making relevant stacks hard to accomplish.
#3: A condi mesmer doesn’t have alternative methods of inflicting much damage, leaving the already short inactive window nigh useless.

I haven’t suggested anything because this might be a temporary problem. The runes are under revision, and if Perplexity’s confusion duration gets fixed, then condi mesmers might finally have that duration increase they need… for WvW.

But if the runes aren’t fixed, then I would suggest increasing the basic duration for confusion from 3 seconds to 4 seconds for Illusionary Retribution, Cry of Frustration, and Confusing Combatants, and from 4 seconds to 5 seconds for Blinding Befuddlement and Confusing Enchantments.

Greatsword is already the most popular mesmer weapon, at least in WvWvW and pve, so buffing the most popular weapon doesn’t make sense. Blast finisher seems a bit illogical in scepter or focus and I think mesmer sword is fine as it is.

But I think we all agree: the mantras need to be reworked. Currently almost nobody uses them due the very long cast time of the mantra. Yet, they offer instant cast skills, which are by itself very powerful mechanism.

I think adding lots instant cast skills or powerful passive features to any profession isn’t smart, as it offers very little counter play. This is not mesmer specific, but true about every professions. Shouts are examples of instant-cast skills which can be used while channeling other skills. I do not think prestige (which is fine as it is) should be turned into a shout / instant cast while channeling others. Healing signet is a good example of overpowered passive feature. And traits like guardian’s purity also have no counter-play.

My idea isn’t fully fleshed out:

Mantra of Recovery
1 second cast, 18 s cooldown
The next 2 skills you activate heal you for 2620 points (+0.4*healing power).

Mantra of Pain
1 second cast, 20 s cooldown
The next 2 attacking weapon skills you activate deal 407 (1.250x multiplier) damage, 240 radius.

Mantra of Concentration
1 second cast, 25 s cooldown
Next two skills become stun breaks and give 2 s stability to nearby allies in 240 radius.

and so on…

But I think you get the idea. The damage multipliers or heals cannot be very strong as this would allow extreme bursts with the right skill combos. With my idea mesmer could add AoE to any skill she desires using mantra of pain. Just preload it 1 second and then unleash any two attacking skills and they have 240 radius AoE.

The healing by Mantra of recovery sounds small, but you have to take into consideration that with mantra mastery the cooldown becomes mere 14.4 s. Over the time it would heal more than ether feast. Combined with harmonius mantras GM trait it would heal much more than any other mesmer skill, but the heal would come in small doses and would allow more active counter play (each skill can still be interrupted and thus heal wasted), making it a bit more like engineer’s medkit, which allows has tons of total healing power, but the healing comes in small doses.

Some mantra related traits would probably need to be reworked as well.

Offtopic:
“warhorn #5 of warrior gives vigor to allies, weakness to enemies, is a blast finisher and converts conditions into boons when traited +20% short cd. That’s on a 20s base cooldown. I don’t see how mind stab is op compared to that.”

I am not the only person who thinks that warrior has too much mobility and almost every single warrior in WvWvW is using the sword/warhorn + hammer/greatsword. The biggest problem is that GS#5 gives 1200 mobility skill with 16/20 s cooldown and GS#3 is another 600 mobility skill. And warhorn with the quick breathing trait is way overpowered in any large scale combat. Warhorn #4 has just 12/15 s cooldown, converting conditions into boons and cures immobilized, crippled and chilled from yourself and up to 9 allies. This basically makes those conditions almost irrelevant against a controlled zerg (Not to mention the condition removal from all those shout warriors and guardians). Melee trains have way too much power and I am against any game balance changes which further deviate the balance in their favor.

Overall I think mesmer isn’t in such bad state as most people complain. Despite warrior is brokenly good at the moment, I would say a decent mesmer should win 1 vs 1 against a warrior. Mesmer lacks AoE and the thief (which is a bit overpowered) performs the roaming role better. But if thieves get toned down a bit, I think mesmers would be back in top game.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I agree with everything in the OP.

Something I always thought about was how short duration the confusion from the mesmer is. Cry of Frustration and Confusing Combatants, for example, only cause confusion for 3 seconds. In 3 seconds duration, an opponent will get off maybe two attacks, but in the randomness of a fight not even that is guaranteed.

This would normally be counterbalanced by the inaction of the opponent. If the opponent is inactive due to confusion if it somehow stacked really high, then this gives the player time to do additional damage against an inactive opponent. However, in practice this is flawed in three ways:

#1: The confusion is such a short duration that the “inactive window” is way too short to accomplish anything.
#2: Confusion is difficult to stack and maintain, making relevant stacks hard to accomplish.
#3: A condi mesmer doesn’t have alternative methods of inflicting much damage, leaving the already short inactive window nigh useless.

---

I haven’t suggested anything because this might be a temporary problem. The runes are under revision, and if Perplexity’s confusion duration gets fixed, then condi mesmers might finally have that duration increase they need… for WvW.

But if the runes aren’t fixed, then I would suggest increasing the basic duration for confusion from 3 seconds to 4 seconds for Illusionary Retribution, Cry of Frustration, and Confusing Combatants, and from 4 seconds to 5 seconds for Blinding Befuddlement and Confusing Enchantments.

While I agree that Cry of Frustration is by far the weakest shatter, I’m not sure if increasing the confusion duration by 1 second would all of a sudden make it attractive. I’ve played a lot of different mesmer builds, and the only time I ever use it is when I’m playing an Illusionary Persona shatter build for the little bit of extra damage it has. Condition mesmers don’t even look at it, and power mesmers might as well unbind it. I don’t think doubling the confusion duration to 6s or even higher would be overpowered, as even with 100% confusion duration, 1-2 stacks of confusion per clone for 12 seconds on a 23-30 second cooldown seems like it is barely putting the shatter on the map for a condition build.

I don’t think anyone would complain if Confusing Combatants was moved to a different trait tree or changed all together. Three seconds of confusion on clone death from a Grandmaster trait in the Precision/Crit damage tree never made sense to me.

Fox.3562:

Illusionary Leap Change
….
Possible Solutions:
…
2. Instead of having the clone “leap” at your target, have it spawn next to them instead. Everything else would function as it normally does. This eliminates the need for AI path-finding and still keeps the same concept as the skill has now.

Yes to this. Extremly easy fix and should not be too strong. Scepter Clones already spawn next to your enemy so it should not be an issue. Just make that skill work.

Fox.3562:

Mind Stab Blast Finisher

Quite frequently asked for. I personally say no to this. GS is no support weapon. Why should it offer additional support? Also, the cooldown would be too low. First, Prestige needs to be fixed because its totaly unusable when it comes to the Blast Finisher. If another Blast Finisher was added it should be on Staff#4 to give it more purpose again and it would also fit the theme of the weapon. If there was a change to Mind Stab I could see a larger radius though.

Fox.3562:

Unblockable Null Field

Problem: Blocking skills allow people to walk through Null Field without having any boons removed.
…
Solution: Make Null Field unblockable.

I didn’t even know this was happening. Yes. Make it unblockable. There already is a way to avoid the boon ripping. Leave the circle. It should not be blockable.

Fox.3562:

Mantra Radius Increase

Yes to this. The radius is way too small. I’d also like an area effect on the Mantra of Pain to make it more useful. The Mantra of Distraction, however, should stay single target. It would be too strong otherwise.

Fox.3562:

Shattered Strength/Confusing Cry Buff

Problem: Shattered Strength [Illusions Grandmaster Minor Trait] and Confusing Cry [Illusions II] do not give a stack of might or retaliation for shatters on yourself, respectively, if you use Illusionary Persona [Illusions XI].

Really not a big deal. But yes, should be fixed.

Fox.3562:

Confusing Enchantments Buff
Solution: Increase the number of confusion stacks from Confusing Enchantments [Domination VIII] from 1 to 2.

This will probably change nothing. Glamour traits need a bigger rework. E.g., make Confusion pulse when enemies are inside the Glamour but implement a target limit. Dazzling Glamours should work the same way. Confusing Enchantments and Blinding Befuddlement got to work together. Temporal Enchanter should be fused with Glamour Mastery (see Master of Consecration). Glamour traits should also work with Portal.

A Glamour GM in Inspiration would also be appreatiated. Having two Shatter focussed GM traits in a trait line is a very bad design (e.g. Inspiration and Illusion).

Fox.3562:

Decoy/The Prestige Instant Cast

Yes to this. Would be very nice for Mantras.

While you brought up some nice ideas I doubt those will help with the more pressing issues Mesmers have. In general, there are various reasonable ideas and rework threads in the Mesmer subforum. Most of them were started at the time of the December preview. I sincerely hope to see some of those suggestions in March. I can understand that the Devs are not allowed to tell us everything but the changes to Mesmers so far are either unimportant or a nerf.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Greatsword is already the most popular mesmer weapon, at least in WvWvW and pve, so buffing the most popular weapon doesn’t make sense. Blast finisher seems a bit illogical in scepter or focus and I think mesmer sword is fine as it is.

The point of the change is not to increase the use of greatsword, it’s to make mesmers more attractive in groups. Mesmer offers no (massively) attractive combo fields, with only Light and Ethereal throughout the entire profession. Guardians have more Light fields than they know what to do with, and Chaos armor from Ethereal fields is almost never more attractive than Frost Armor from Ice fields when possible.

Mesmers also offer no blast finishers outside of The Prestige. Using a 30 second cooldown skill that has a 3 second delay on the blast finishers activation on top of being a very important skill for survival is a complete waste. Having access to some kind of readily available blast finisher on a relatively short cooldown is a very important part of a class being viable in a group setting.

Mind Stab is the perfect candidate for adding a blast finisher to, as it is targetable, the cooldown is a reasonable length (12s untraited), and it is on a weapon that lends itself (somewhat) well to group play.

Deniara Devious.3948:

But I think we all agree: the mantras need to be reworked. Currently almost nobody uses them due the very long cast time of the mantra. Yet, they offer instant cast skills, which are by itself very powerful mechanism.

I think adding lots instant cast skills or powerful passive features to any profession isn’t smart, as it offers very little counter play. This is not mesmer specific, but true about every professions. Shouts are examples of instant-cast skills which can be used while channeling other skills. I do not think prestige (which is fine as it is) should be turned into a shout / instant cast while channeling others. Healing signet is a good example of overpowered passive feature. And traits like guardian’s purity also have no counter-play.

There’s a difference between instant cast skills and passive skills. I have no problem with shouts being instant cast since all they do is grant boons. Even instant cast skills such as S/D Ele’s Lightning Strike doesn’t bother me since their spike-damage rotations are very predictable despite being instant-cast. The only powerful instant cast skill in my opinion is Mantra of Distraction since it makes interrupting heals trivially easy against certain heal skills, which can make duels very one-sided for a mesmer.

Deniara Devious.3948:

My idea isn’t fully fleshed out:

Mantra of Recovery
1 second cast, 18 s cooldown
The next 2 skills you activate heal you for 2620 points (+0.4*healing power).

Mantra of Pain
1 second cast, 20 s cooldown
The next 2 attacking weapon skills you activate deal 407 (1.250x multiplier) damage, 240 radius.

Mantra of Concentration
1 second cast, 25 s cooldown
Next two skills become stun breaks and give 2 s stability to nearby allies in 240 radius.

and so on…

But I think you get the idea. The damage multipliers or heals cannot be very strong as this would allow extreme bursts with the right skill combos. With my idea mesmer could add AoE to any skill she desires using mantra of pain. Just preload it 1 second and then unleash any two attacking skills and they have 240 radius AoE.

The healing by Mantra of recovery sounds small, but you have to take into consideration that with mantra mastery the cooldown becomes mere 14.4 s. Over the time it would heal more than ether feast. Combined with harmonius mantras GM trait it would heal much more than any other mesmer skill, but the heal would come in small doses and would allow more active counter play (each skill can still be interrupted and thus heal wasted), making it a bit more like engineer’s medkit, which allows has tons of total healing power, but the healing comes in small doses.

Some mantra related traits would probably need to be reworked as well.

Agreed that mantras aren’t used very often, and the reason is probably mostly because of the large cast time. The point of my post wasn’t to rewrite entire skills though, it was to tweak the way skills/traits work now. Redesigning skills like mantras is tricky, because I really liked the idea of having Furious Interruption change to recharging mantras on interrupt, but then what about if a mesmer is running Mantra of Distraction? It’s extremely easy to secure an interrupt with an instant-cast daze, so you could cycle dazes/Mantra of Pain almost indefinitely. Reworking things has implications you might not think about right away.

For example, if you change Mantra of Recovery to a 1s cast time, it is in direct competition with Ether Feast, since they both have identical cast times. If you get 2620 HP on your next two skills, that’s the equivalent of 291.1 HP/second. Ether Feast with 2 active clones is 342 HP/s. Traiting for cooldowns as you said would increase the mantra to 363.8 HP/s. Traiting for cooldowns and mantras have an extra charge increases it to 545.8 HP/s. Compare that to Healing Signet with 392 HP/s. The mantra heal is now objectively worse than Ether Feast with no traits, comparable with the cooldown trait, and is objectively better with both mantra traits. There is no “situational usefulness” which every other heal in the game has. There is nothing to distinguish the two heals besides HP/s because they both have identical cast times, and no secondary effects outside of healing.

I know you said that a skill has to be activated for the heal to take effect, but that is almost trivial. Unless you meant that a skill has to actually land for the mantra to proc, in which case that’s basically Venoms for mesmers, which is kind of interesting, but I don’t know if it’s something ArenaNet would go for.

The Mantra of Pain change would make the already strong burst damage of shatter mesmers much, much stronger. I assume you meant 1.25 is the skill coefficent, [Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)], which would mean a shatter mesmer with 2100 power would gain two more attacks to their burst each hitting for ~1,000 non-crit or ~2300 crit on a 2600 armor target. That’s basically two extra Mind Wracks. Assuming everything crits (very possible in WvW), that’s 13,800 damage from Mind Wrack x4 and Mantra of Pain x2 in a 240 radius around a target. Is that too much spike damage? I don’t know, that’s why I don’t like to rewrite entire skills.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Offtopic:
“warhorn #5 of warrior gives vigor to allies, weakness to enemies, is a blast finisher and converts conditions into boons when traited +20% short cd. That’s on a 20s base cooldown. I don’t see how mind stab is op compared to that.”

I am not the only person who thinks that warrior has too much mobility and almost every single warrior in WvWvW is using the sword/warhorn + hammer/greatsword. The biggest problem is that GS#5 gives 1200 mobility skill with 16/20 s cooldown and GS#3 is another 600 mobility skill. And warhorn with the quick breathing trait is way overpowered in any large scale combat. Warhorn #4 has just 12/15 s cooldown, converting conditions into boons and cures immobilized, crippled and chilled from yourself and up to 9 allies. This basically makes those conditions almost irrelevant against a controlled zerg (Not to mention the condition removal from all those shout warriors and guardians). Melee trains have way too much power and I am against any game balance changes which further deviate the balance in their favor.

I have no problem with greatsword on Warriors giving them high mobility. A greatsword is a very weak weapon against an experienced player, since all of the attacks are highly telegraphed and easy to dodge unless they are setup with a stun/immobilize. That basically means a Warrior has to run mace/shield greatsword, and their entire build is based around setting up greatsword attacks, or they’re using greatsword almost exclusively to run away. In either case, I’m assuming a 1v1 situation, as greatsword is borderline worthless in groups, and the game isn’t balanced around 1v1s.

As far as warhorn on warriors, it is very strong in groups, but why shouldn’t it be? Sure melee trains are strong, but is there something wrong with that? Having a bunch of bulky melee classes protect a backline of DPS’y casters seems like a perfectly decent design choice to me. I think warhorn is pefectly fine as it is. If you don’t think imob/chill/cripple is an issue in an organized group, you’ve never been with an organized group. There are many, many sources of “soft CC”, and until you’re running 20 warriors deep, they’re going to effect you.

You don’t like melee trains, but there is always going to be a meta team composition, what would you rather have it be instead?

Deniara Devious.3948:

Overall I think mesmer isn’t in such bad state as most people complain. Despite warrior is brokenly good at the moment, I would say a decent mesmer should win 1 vs 1 against a warrior. Mesmer lacks AoE and the thief (which is a bit overpowered) performs the roaming role better. But if thieves get toned down a bit, I think mesmers would be back in top game.

It depends on what you mean by in a bad state. If we’re talking about 1v1s, there are very few mesmer specs that should lose to an even smaller amount of warrior specs considering equal skill level. I would say mesmer is the strongest class in a 1v1 situation, and if not they’re very shortly behind thief. But again, ArenaNet has said that the game isn’t balanced around 1v1s.

If we’re talking about WvW, there is little reason to bring a mesmer in a zerg (15+ vs X) outside of Veil and Portal. Mesmer AoE damage is very weak, and highly dependent on phantasms which quickly die in a large fight, usually before even landing a single attack. A necro or ele fills the backline AoE damage role much better.

If we’re talking about sPvP, Thief at the highest level of sPvP is almost objectively better than mesmer at playing a roaming role. The burst damage of thieves is comparable or better to that of a shatter mesmer, and they offer blind fields, better AoE stealth (Shadow Refuge: .25s cast, 60s recharge, 15s of stealth, utility skill, all untraited; vs Mass Invisibility: 1.75s cast, 90s recharge, 5s of stealth, elite skill, untraitable cooldown), better on-demand dazes for interrupting stomps/rezzes/heals (Headshot: .25s cast, 4s effective recharge, weapon skill, traited; Steal: instant-cast, 22s recharge, guaranteed daze as it strips stability, built-in profession skill; vs Mantra of Distraction: instant-cast, 15s effective recharge, utility skill; Magic Bullet: .5s cast, 25s recharge, stuns, weapon skill), and better mobility (high swiftness uptime and access to blinks through Infiltrators Arrow, Shadowstep, Steal, Infiltrators Signet, and Infiltrators strike.

As long as the “Roaming” role in Conquest sPvP is desired, thief will always be better than mesmer at it unless they are nerfed to the point of being worthless.

Sorry I had to split my response up so much; character limit!

Xaylin.1860:

Fox.3562:

Mind Stab Blast Finisher

Quite frequently asked for. I personally say no to this. GS is no support weapon. Why should it offer additional support? Also, the cooldown would be too low. First, Prestige needs to be fixed because its totaly unusable when it comes to the Blast Finisher. If another Blast Finisher was added it should be on Staff#4 to give it more purpose again and it would also fit the theme of the weapon. If there was a change to Mind Stab I could see a larger radius though.

Saying that a weapon shouldn’t have a blast finisher because it’s not a “support weapon” is just silly. Is hammer on guardians and warriors a support weapon? Both of those have blast finishers on cooldowns shorter than Mind Stab. How about shortbow on thieves? That has the shortest cooldown of any blast finisher, is that a support weapon?

Giving Chaos Armor a blast finisher would have almost the same problem The Prestige has. I’m not going to waste a 35s cooldown skill which should be used in combat to blast a (for example) fire field to stack might while I’m 5 seconds away from combat.

Xaylin.1860:

Fox.3562:

Confusing Enchantments Buff
Solution: Increase the number of confusion stacks from Confusing Enchantments [Domination VIII] from 1 to 2.

This will probably change nothing. Glamour traits need a bigger rework. E.g., make Confusion pulse when enemies are inside the Glamour but implement a target limit. Dazzling Glamours should work the same way. Confusing Enchantments and Blinding Befuddlement got to work together. Temporal Enchanter should be fused with Glamour Mastery (see Master of Consecration). Glamour traits should also work with Portal.

A Glamour GM in Inspiration would also be appreatiated. Having two Shatter focussed GM traits in a trait line is a very bad design (e.g. Inspiration and Illusion).

I completely disagree that increasing the confusion to 2 stacks on entry/exit wouldn’t change Glamour mesmers viability. Dropping Null Field and Feedback on the same spot means 4 stacks of confusion on everyone in the area is almost guaranteed (unless they decide to stand still for 8 seconds), and 8 stacks is very very possible. Thats 900 or 1800 damage of confusion on skill use, respsectively from a single mesmer with no AoE cap. That makes running 2-3 glamour mesmers in a group of 20 an extremely attractive option in my opinion.

The potential for very high confusion damage is balanced by the fact that a mesmer has no inherent cover conditions and glamour fields are on a 32s (traited) cooldown.

I think your idea is perfectly reasonable, but like I mentioned earlier, I’m only trying to work within the way skills work now, not really rewrite entire skills. And glamour traits do work with Portal, it just has to be activated (both entry and exit portals need to be dropped).

I agree with these since it works within the existing framework and doesn’t re-write the game like other suggestions.

What about scepter auto attack? The devs said they are looking at suggestions for Scepter auto.

Fox.3562:

Saying that a weapon shouldn’t have a blast finisher because it’s not a “support weapon” is just silly. Is hammer on guardians and warriors a support weapon? Both of those have blast finishers on cooldowns shorter than Mind Stab. How about shortbow on thieves? That has the shortest cooldown of any blast finisher, is that a support weapon?

It’s not silly. Every weapon should follow a specific idea and most weapons do so. Hammer on Guardian is a support and CC weapon. Shortbow indeed is not. However, this is a special case because of Initiative. If you have a look at other Blast Finishers you will realize that Mind Blast would be at the top cooldown-wise while most other Blast Finishers have a cooldown of 20-30s or even higher.

The Greatsword is a ranged direct damage weapon with some CC capabilities to keep your enemies at range (Cripple and Knockback). Staff is a mid-range supportive and defensive weapon which is way more suitable for providing a Blast Finisher to add support to your group.

Feel free to disagree. But my argument is neither silly nor has Mind Blast an apprioriate cooldown when compared to most other Blast Finishers.

Fox.3562:

Giving Chaos Armor a blast finisher would have almost the same problem The Prestige has. I’m not going to waste a 35s cooldown skill which should be used in combat to blast a (for example) fire field to stack might while I’m 5 seconds away from combat.

As I said, Staff is mid-range. You won’t be far. It makes sense. What would you use Chaos Armor for otherwise? I personally run Staff in PvP and I forget to use it because I got enough Chaos Armor thanks to Phase Retreat and Illusionary Leap anyway. This skill has no purpose right now.

Your argument makes it sound like you want to offer support from the distance while shooting lasers from safety. Again, check other Blast Finishers. While there are some which work at range most are close combat.

Fox.3562:

I completely disagree that increasing the confusion to 2 stacks on entry/exit wouldn’t change Glamour mesmers viability. Dropping Null Field and Feedback on the same spot means 4 stacks of confusion on everyone in the area is almost guaranteed (unless they decide to stand still for 8 seconds), and 8 stacks is very very possible. Thats 900 or 1800 damage of confusion on skill use, respsectively from a single mesmer with no AoE cap. That makes running 2-3 glamour mesmers in a group of 20 an extremely attractive option in my opinion.

The non existent target cap is what got Glamours nerfed in the first place and now you want it to happen again? I’m also not sure where you got the 8 seconds Confusion from. It should be 4 seconds. And still, I don’t think that 2 stacks instead of 1 will make a difference. It is a very crappy return on investment to have two of your utility skills on a quite long cooldown for 4 stacks of confusion evem in zerg fights. It will tag you some bags but that’s it. In keep fights every Warrior with Death from Above will be more effective. And it won’t work in PvP at all.

I personally feel that the entering/exiting mechanic doesn’t fit the design of Glamours. Enemies should be punished for staying inside not for leaving. The Blind on cast mechanic is even worse since it is extremly uneffective because of the cooldowns Glamours have. If they really want to leave a Glamour the Confusion on exit won’t do anything when they pay at least some attention. Even worse, in PvP it is totally unimportant when fighting on nodes and that is something where Glamours, since stationary, should shine. Enemies will just stay inside the Glamour. Nullfield might hurt boon heavy builds but it doesn’t destroy them. Feedback might force them out of ranged weapons but it won’t kill them. Both negative effects happen because of the innate effect of the Glamour. Not because of Confusing Enchantments. Confusing Enchantments will not have any effect at all.

Pulsating effects would make Glamours way more important in keep fights at doors and when fighting on cap points in PvP. They might offer less burst potential but are not affected by condition removal that much because the condition gets reapplied. Re-writing it this way also should not be a big deal considering similar effects already exist ingame (Symbols, Wells). From my perspective adding an additional stack of Confusion to Confusing Enchantments will simply not adress the issues which Glamours keep from being viable. It will just make them a shadow of their pre-nerf-self.

I mentioned this in the mesmer thread, but I’d like to see a small tweak to Mind Wrack: change it to a two-button skill. Hit f1 once and mind wrack behaves as it does now. But hit f1 again, and clones explode where they stand. This would add utility and strategy to shattering without really providing a huge buff, and help give mesmers a little aoe attack, even it remains a bit clunky.

Xaylin.1860:

SNIP

The average cooldown across every land weapon skill that is a blast finisher is 22 seconds. Filter out the useless ones (Shield of Wrath, The Prestige, Putrid Mark) and you’re down to 20s average. Mind Stab would be #6/16 out of weapon skills with the fastest cooldowns (Cluster Bomb > Mighty Blow > Dragons Tooth > Eruption > Arcing Arrow > Mind Stab). Of the 16 weapon skills that are blast finishers, 7 of them can be used at range (cluster bomb, arcing arrow, comet, dragon’s tooth, eruption, phoenix, putrid mark). The average cooldown of the blast finishers that can be used at range is 13.5 seconds.

A 12s cooldown blast finisher that can be used at range is in no way out of the norm.

If you’re not using Chaos Armor on your staff, perhaps it doesn’t fit into your rotation, or perhaps you’re mismanaging your cooldowns. Either way, using a skill as a blast finisher “because it’s worthless otherwise” should not be an option.

As I’ve posted previously, glamour was previously nerfed because of the limitless AoE cap combined with the pre-nerf confusion damage. While 25 stacks of confusion pre-nerf could easily tick for 11,250 damage (25 * 450), today that would only tick for 5,625. 11,250 damage was enough to kill a thief/elementalist/guardian with no vitality investment even if the first skill they used was a condition clear. As 25 stacks of confusion is an extreme example, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for 10.8k base HP class to die if their first skill used is not a condition clear.

The extreme damage of 25 stacks of confusion is also countered by situational awareness. Feedback and Null Field are both easily visible skills, and the confusion is not applied until the player enters/exits the fields. If a player is the target the mesmer casted the glamour skills on, they are forced to exit, but not reenter, the glamour fields. This means it would take 6 mesmers to guarantee 24 stacks of confusion on a single target. This means its unreasonable for any less than 6 enemies to beat a group of 6 glamour mesmers (the group with larger numbers should, assuming equal skill and coordination, always win). If a single member of the 6 person party is running AoE condition removal (EX: traited warrior warhorn), the party doesn’t need to take more than 5,400 damage worth of confusion damage from the glamour mesmers since there are no inherent cover conditions from glamour fields.

A party of glamour mesmers would have potential to do a large amount of AoE damage, but could easily be countered by situational awareness and AoE condition clears.

And I certainly think that applying confusion on entry/exit is appropriate. It punishes the enemy for staying in the field, and punishes them for leaving. With Null Field, for example, the enemy has to choose whether they want to lose their boons, or if they want 1 (or my proposed 2) stacks of confusion.

The 8 seconds of confusion comes from 100% confusion duration of a 4s base duration, easily obtainable in WvW (40% from Koi Cakes, 10% from Toxic Tuning Crystals, 20% from traits, 33% from traits or 30% from Perplexity runes [if they ever get fixed]). Since the base duration is so short, investing heavily in condition duration is important.

I’m writing this from the perspective that glamour is only an appropriate spec for large (15+) WvW groups. While glamour was a strong spec for dueling/sPvP(maybe? I didn’t sPvP back then) pre-nerf, it had more to do with Chaos Armor and Blinding Befuddlement having no ICD and confusion doing twice as much damage. I could see glamour being strong with a pulsing effect for fighting on point in sPvP, but like I said, I’m not trying to rewrite skills.

I just tried mantras for a few matches in spvp again.

Resolve and concentration aren’t that bad on their own.
MoR is my favorite condi cleanse since december, it’s good even without traits. It could use a buff to its range to be better support.
MoC is ok. It isn’t as good as MoR but that’s probably because we already have many other good stunbreaks.

Pain and distraction are not that good. It’s ok in 1v1 but there are other options and they don’t mix that well.
MoP is in my oppinion a very weak skill. I guess that’s justified because it becomes better when you use all these traits, but than again you have to take those traits. And it needs aoe effect to be useful outside of 1v1.
MoD is a great skill if you’re going for lockdown. 2 instant stuns are strong! But it seems to be stronger to take on interupt trait with it.

I guess my problem with mantras is rooted in the traits.
Harmonious mantras is kinda meh.. it helps if you take one mantra but it doesn’t allow to build around mantras. It would help me more if it would reduce the casttime, perhaps based on the number of mantras you have equipped.
For example:
HM with one mantra equipped reduces the casttime by 10%
HM with two mantras equipped reduces the casttime by 15%
and so on
That would make a build based around mantras faster with less wasted time and allowed weaker mantras to become stronger on their own.

Mantra mastery and protected mantras could be combined. Anyone using protected mantras? I guess it’s something you take when building for mantras but I wouldn’t.
Empowering mantras is okay. And restorative mantras is a good support trait.

The english feels weak in this post. :/

Please fix these issues.

I really disagree with Blast Finisher on GS#3:

• No reason. GS has 2 finishers already, and is a very offence-based weapon, so it fits that it has two offence-focused finishers while not having the much more support-y blast finisher.
• Skill has too short a CD to be a blast finisher considering it’s other uses.
• It just thematically doesn’t fit. It’s a boon-remover, what does it have to do with being a blast finisher?

IMO, if you want to buff it, make it strip 2 boons in the current radius, and one boon in a slightly larger radius.

Fox.3562:

The average cooldown across every land weapon skill that is a blast finisher is 22 seconds. Filter out the useless ones …

The average cooldown of the blast finishers that can be used at range is 13.5 seconds.

Excluding some skills because you feel they are useless just aids your argument since they happen to have longer cooldowns while it can’t be justified. They exist and therefore they should be included. Also using the average cooldown gives you very skewed results because most cooldowns are 20+ seconds and few outliers reduce the average cooldown. But let’s stick to it anyway.

I get a higher average cooldown duration of 15.3s (including: Putrik Mark). Even at 13.5s Mind Blast would still be above average. It becomes even better when traited which is quite likely. It doesn’t make it unthinkable but a Blast Finisher with a cooldown of 8-12s certainly is an outlier. The other skills mentioned on the other hand are not that likely to be traited. Also, ranged Blast Finishers are the minority, especially when considering Blast Finishers from utilities which you conveniently excluded.

Two other things you might want to consider when discussing ranged Blast Finishers: Elementalists rarely stick to one attunement. This means that while their skill cooldown is rather low, their practical cooldown is at least several seconds higher because of attunement switching. This would make the cooldown of Mind Blast even more outstanding. You also might want to consider that every other skill you mentioned comes with some sort of delay. Either cast delay, travel delay or has a certain conditions which has to be fullfilled. None of this applies to Mind Blast.

Fox.3562:

A 12s cooldown blast finisher that can be used at range is in no way out of the norm.

It is not unthinkable of. However, it is quite significantly above average. I won’t go as far as saying it is out of the norm. But it would be outstanding. I don’t feel that introducing an outstanding benefit to a weapon which is doing all right is reasonable.
Scepter, Torch and Staff are the weapons which could need improvements. The only reason why people keep coming up with your request is because of the name ‘Mind Blast’ and not because it would make sense gameplay-wise.

Fox.3562:

If you’re not using Chaos Armor on your staff, perhaps it doesn’t fit into your rotation, or perhaps you’re mismanaging your cooldowns. Either way, using a skill as a blast finisher “because it’s worthless otherwise” should not be an option.

My rotation is fine but thanks for your concern.

I’ll try to transfer my issue to the GS. While Mind Blast has a niche purpose it does have one: Boon removal. Now imagine Illusionary Wave or Mirror Blade having Boon removal, too. Using Mind Blast would become pretty unappealing. Chaos Armor is in a similar situation since you get it from Phase Retreat + Chaos Storm anyway. Having it in slot 4 with such a high cooldown makes it a very crappy skills.

Fox.3562:

I’m writing this from the perspective that glamour is only an appropriate spec for large (15+) WvW groups. While glamour was a strong spec for dueling/sPvP(maybe? I didn’t sPvP back then) pre-nerf, it had more to do with Chaos Armor and Blinding Befuddlement having no ICD and confusion doing twice as much damage.

I wrote my suggestion a while back. In December I think. I was trying to improve Glamours in general not for a specific situation. Considering the title of your thread I assumed we are talking about at least WvW and PvP. Your idea will indeed make Glamours a bit more powerful in WvW. It won’t make any difference for PvP and PvE. You also assumed using a specific sort of food. While it is reasonable to balance skills if they become too powerful when using food it should not be necessary to use food to make skills and traits viable in the first place.

Glamour has never been that popular in PvP as it was in WvW. That is because Confusion was not the main reason for it being so powerful. Neither was Blinding Befuddlement because of the on-cast limitation. The missing target limit is the real cuplrit. That’s why it didn’t work that well in PvP. Lack of players to affect.

Your suggestion probably won’t make Glamours nerf worthy again. But it also does not adress the issue which caused the nerf in the first place – the missing target limit. It will make one Glamour trait less crappy which is very one dimensional when considering that there are more issues with Glamour traits. I also still doubt it will make Mesmers more popular in large scale WvW. In the end it might just prohibit a proper rework of the Glamour traits. That’s why I don’t like it.

The nerf to Chaos Armor is totally unrelated to the Glamour and Confusion nerf.

A couple thoughts.

• Imbued Diversion: I personally thing moving it to the master tree is too “whack-a-mole”. While it could work, I think they should buff it more carefully, such as introduce a decreased recharge on Diversion for however many opponents are interrupted – call it 5% per. So if you interrupted the max 5 opponents (which pretty much never happens), the minimum recharge you could get would be about 26s. An easier alternative to this would be a global Diversion recharge (say 15 or 20%) added to Imbued Diversion.

• Cry of Frustration: I noticed talk of this in the thread and thought I’d note that condition/confusion duration doesn’t appear to even apply to this skill, which is lame (and I believe a bug). I’ll be pursuing this in the bug forum.

• Scepter AA: awhile back there were some decent suggestions brought up in the 12/10 balance patch thread. It’s important IMO that no damaging conditions should accompany ether blast. This isn’t to say maybe a low duration soft cc couldn’t be applied. Here are a couple excerpts – I’m interested to hear any thoughts on this and especially keeping in mind Anet’s desire for scepter to be more of a support type weapon:
  Scepter AA #1
  Scepter AA #2

If Anet does nothing with scepter AA, at the very least I think they should make it 1200 range like guardian’s scepter AA.

Mainhand Pistol for Mesmer!

—-

1. Double Shot: Fires two quick shots at the target.
   followed by
   Aimed Shot: Fire a powerful aimed shot at the target.
2. Illusive Separation: Roll to the left or right and summons a clone that rolls in the opposite direction (Evade 1s). Clone then uses ‘Double Shot’.
3. Chaos Barrage: Fire several shots with your pistol. Uses both pistols if one is equipped in the offhand (like the iDuelist animation, but damage remains the same).

I’ve been playing a Mesmer for quite some time now (and still love it, despite certain changes in the past), but it still feels as if the Mesmer is severely lacking in the choice for mainhand department, as if it simply wasn’t a fully finished class at launch in terms of weapon choices.

Only a Sword or Scepter remain as options for mainhand, which feels rather minimal; especially considering all the other classes. Only the Engineer seems to have even less choices, but can make up for it with all their kits.

Also, there are 2 illusionary pistols in the game; Lyss and Ilya. To this day this still leads me to believe that it may have been the original intention to include a pistol as an option for a mainhand as we already have it as an offhand option and a Master trait (Duelist’s Discipline) that affects pistols (plural).

Lastly, there is the pretty odd positioning of the Offhand Pistol skills when viewed from the weapon selection screen in our Hero panel and it all feels like theres a piece missing in our puzzle; as if it was originally intended for Mesmers to have pistol as a Mainhand option but not implemented at launch.

As such, I sincerely hope that ArenaNet would want to consider adding the pistol as a mainhand weapon for the Mesmer. Personally I would love to have more options available to me as the current choices simply do not seem to mesh well with one another.

(And the concept of finally being able to wield both Lyss and Ilya on my Mesmer is very appealing to me.)

So I would really love the choice of one more mainhand weapon that focuses on being a true Power based weapon. And to me the pistol could be that choice as a 900 range (1200 when traited with Duelist’s Discipline) weapon. This would allow ArenaNet to modify our scepter to take up to its own true calling; an actual condition based weapon.

Currently Jon and the rest of the balance team are trying to figure out what to do with the Scepter’s identity crisis and its very awkward auto-chain. Having a Mainhand Pistol would allow them to turn the Scepter into a true condition weapon while allowing the Pistol to become a viable choice for power based attacks.

For me having the mainhand choices of Sword, Scepter and Pistol would complete our puzzle and give us a full set of weapons where each has its own identity and function.

Math time!

Below I’ve listed every land-weapon skill that is a blast finisher. I’ve included Earth Shaker since Burst skills on warriors are essentially a 6th weapon skill. I did not include utility skills, since I am advocating a weapon skill being given a blast finisher, not a utility skill, so it is only appropriate to compare apples to apples.

Skill / Cooldown (seconds)
Cluster Bomb / 3
Mighty Blow / 5
Dragon’s Tooth / 6
Eruption / 6
Arcing Arrow / 10
Earth Shaker / 10
Call to Arms / 20
Phoenix / 20
Comet / 25
Magnetic Wave / 25
Putrid Mark / 25
Magnetic Inversion / 30
Churning Earth / 30
The Prestige / 30
Call of the Wild / 35
Shield of Wrath / 45
Earthquake / 45

Mean Cooldown: 21.76 seconds
Median Cooldown: 25 seconds
Standard Deviation: 13.06 seconds

Mind Stab as a 12 second cooldown would fall well within one standard deviation of the mean (8.7-34.8 seconds). Any argument relating to the cooldown being too short is invalid.

Does it fit “thematically”?

This is highly subjective. Are entire weapons based around a single theme, such as DPS/Support/CC? Let’s compare a few weapons.

Guardian Hammer

Hammer Swing – 3rd hit grants protection
Mighty Blow – DPS – Blast Finisher
Zealot’s Embrace – Immobalizes – Soft CC
Banish – Blowout – Hard CC
Ring of Warding – Hard CC

Warrior Longbow

Dual Shot – DPS with no other effects
Fan of Fire – DPS – Applies burning
Arcing Arrow – DPS – Blast Finisher
Smoldering Arrow – Blinds – Soft CC
Pin Down – Immobilizes – Soft CC

Mesmer Greatsword

Spatial Surge – DPS with no other effects
Mirror Blade – Grants might, grants vulnerability
Mind Stab – DPS – Removes Boons
Phantasmal Berserker – Applies cripple – Soft CC
Illusionary Wave – Knockback – Hard CC

DPS/Support/CC Count

Guardian Hammer
DPS – 1
Support – 1
CC – 3

Warrior Longbow
DPS – 3
Support – 0
CC – 2

Mesmer Greatsword
DPS – 2
Support – 1
CC – 2

If a skill grants boons, I consider that a support skill. If it applies hard or soft CC, I consider it a CC skill, if it has no added effects, I consider it DPS. I counted Mind Stab as DPS, but counting boon removal as support or CC would be debatable.

The warrior and guardian both have access to blast finishers of 10 and 5 second cooldowns, respectively. What is the threshold for a weapon being deemed “support” and earning a blast finisher? Warrior’s longbow has access to zero supporting skills, and Guardian’s hammer has access to only one through the third attack in their auto attack chain. If weapons are indeed classified as “support” weapons, why doesn’t mace on Guardians, which has 2 skills which grant boons and the auto attack chain grants AoE healing, have a blast finisher?

I would conclude that there is no hard evidence supporting the theory that only “support” weapons are given blast finishers.

Possible Substitutions

The qualifications for a blast finisher to be useful to me are:

1) It can be activated on demand
2) The position of the blast finisher is controllable.
2) The cooldown must be conducive to being able to use the skill to pre-stack might by blasting a fire field and having the skill be ready to use in battle with a minimal delay. I personally would consider any skill longer than the median cooldown on blast finishers, 25 seconds, too long.

Here is a list of every weapon skill, excluding auto attacks, Mesmer has that is not already a combo field/finisher, and is not a Phantasm summon. Excluding Phantasms because they fail requirements 1 and 2.

Greatsword: Mind Stab, Illusionary Wave
Staff: Chaos Armor
Scepter: Illusionary Counter, Counterspell, Confusing Images
Sword: Blurred Frenzy, Illusionary Riposte, Counter Blade

Illusionary Wave and Chaos Armor have cooldowns longer than 25 seconds and fail requirement 3. Illusionary Counter and Illusionary Riposte fail requirement 1 as they require being attacked by an enemy. I will also exclude Blurred Frenzy, as it is already a very strong skill.

Mind Stab (12s recharge), Counterspell (12s), Confusing Images (15s), and Counter Blade (15s) are all possible candidates for adding a blast finisher.

Blast finishers are best used in groups, so I would not advocate for giving Counter Blade a blast finisher, as offhand sword is mostly a single target weapon. Counterspell and Confusing Images are both strongly biased towards being condition weapons, so I would not give them blast finishers either, as condition mesmers can be part of a group already as a glamour mesmer.

This leaves Mind Stab as the most logical choice for adding a blast finisher.

As far as changing scepter auto attack goes, I really have no idea what to do to it. I don’t think adding a blast finisher to the 3rd attack would make it any more desirable, and same goes for projectile finisher. The combos would be too unreliable, since they are dependent on the enemys location, and they could easily walk out of whatever field you are trying to combo.

I don’t do dungeons/PvE seriously, so I can’t speak for it there, but I don’t think the added blast finisher would make using such a low DPS weapon attractive there either.

Making scepter clones spawn more scepter clones after completing the auto attack chain would be strong since it would greatly increase the rate of “on clone death” traits activating. I don’t know if buffing “on clone death” traits is something the world needs though.

And it doesn’t surprise me that Cry of Frustration’s condition duration is bugged, since I don’t think anyone uses it seriously anyway. Same goes for “give 5 seconds of retalition on down” and “gain chaos armor on rally”. Both of those traits could be bugged and cause your next 10 attacks to do 10x damage, but I don’t think anyone would know that since nobody has ever used them.

re: scepter auto

I’d like to see .5 seconds of chill added to the third attack in the chain. This doesn’t sound like much (and on its own it isn’t), but it would provide a tiny bit of soft cc, and more importantly encourage the use of scepter clones, which are currently useless. Having multiple scepter clones out would now provide an amount of chill uptime, and add a bit of (soft) cc to the scepter, which right now has none.

Seriously, I don’t see such arguments against blast finisher in Mind Stab. First of all, the description of blast:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blast
blast [blast, blahst]
2. the blowing of a trumpet, whistle, etc.: One blast of the siren was enough to clear the street.
3. a loud, sudden sound or noise: The radio let out an awful blast before I could turn it off.
16. to affect with any pernicious influence; ruin; destroy
24. to produce a loud, blaring sound

Now, why people have such amazing ideas to make skills to have blast finisher that doesn’t have any relation with explosions, aoe or anything like it, like Chaos Armor???

Then, why you’re looking into other blast finisher skills CD’s to state Mind Stab would be OP? There’re skills with 5-6s Cd and others with +40s, and the idea to make it inviable only because its CD is below the mean is just silly. The cooldown of any skill is, and should be, determinated only by what it does. Forget about other skills, means, medians, etc.

Mind Stab is a ground-target aoe skill that creates an illusionary GS from the ground making some sort of noise and causing aoe damage and soft cc. Even the description says it’s a thrust, which has a lot of relation with blast. So just from what it does and how is designed, having a blast finisher should be perfectly normal.

Now, Mind Stab is a small aoe skill with 12s of CD and acceptable damage (coefficient is 0.85) that removes 1 boons from up to 5 enemies. Also, it’s a movement-locked skill, moving while casting it will interrupt the skill. For what we can see, is pretty weak. The CD is fine, but long for what what the skill does. The damage could be much higher (Autoattack at 900 range have better coefficient), and the area is so small it becomes quite complicate to stab an enemy if it moves.
That makes Mind Stab the fewest used skill in GS, as all other skills bring a lot more are: AoE damage and CC.

A well rounded Mind Stab could be:
Mind Stab (15s CD): Thrust your Greatsword into the ground, damaging foes and removing 1 boon.
Coefficient = 0,85.
Number of targets = 5.
Radius = 150.
Blast finisher.

What I don’t get is what people mind about the current Mind Stab. Am I the only one who thinks that a GTAE boon remover with non-trivial damage is not bad at all? I mean sure it’s bad in 1v1, but then no game mode supports 1v1, neither does the combat system or the balance as a whole. So why would that be an issue.

And in group fights, stripping a boon each of 2-5 targets and causing some damage is plenty fine for me.

Maybe increase the damage coefficient ooooor if need be the radius. But Blast finisher? We’d lose either the projectile or worse the whirl finisher. But losses would be significantly worse than gaining the blast finisher, something to use during the buff phase and which other people already do for us (as in, this isn’t a real gain).

Fox.3562:

Mean Cooldown: 21.76 seconds
Median Cooldown: 25 seconds
Standard Deviation: 13.06 seconds

Mind Stab as a 12 second cooldown would fall well within one standard deviation of the mean (8.7-34.8 seconds). Any argument relating to the cooldown being too short is invalid.

No, it is not invalid. How can you say that 12s is okay when the Median is at 25s? It still is scewed because of several outliers like Mighty Blow. You included Cluster Bomb which doesn’t even have a cooldown. You used the skill cooldown of Dragon Tooth which actually has a higher practical cooldown because of attunements.

Even when not considering the flaws in this calculation the only way to justify 12s is when you say that you don’t mind introducing quite obviously above average skills.

Fox.3562:

Does it fit “thematically”?

This is highly subjective. Are entire weapons based around a single theme, such as DPS/Support/CC? Let’s compare a few weapons.

Of course, it is subjective. I never denied that. I literally said it.

Yet again you refer to weapons which benefit your argument (e.g. Longbow) but exclude others which don’t, making me sound totally erratic. Guardian Hammer is support and CC. Warrior Warhorn is Support. Ranger Warhorn is a support hybrid. Necro Staff is a support and CC hybrid. Mesmer Torch is defensive. It is a bit difficult to say for Elementalist but I think we can agree that the Blast Finishers are on the less offensive weapon choices.

Greatsword on Mesmer is a pure DPS weapon. It does have some CC but that doesn’t make it a support weapon and it also is far away from being a CC weapon. Neither do those Might stacks make it supportive. Of course, you could still argue that this shouldn’t keep ANet from introducing a Blast Finisher to it. And you are right. However, you can’t deny that there isn’t a real reason for it besides ‘just because’ since Greatsword doesn’t need it.

Fox.3562:

If weapons are indeed classified as “support” weapons, why doesn’t mace on Guardians, which has 2 skills which grant boons and the auto attack chain grants AoE healing, have a blast finisher?

I would conclude that there is no hard evidence supporting the theory that only “support” weapons are given blast finishers.

There is a difference between saying that most Blast Finishers are on less offensive weapons and saying that all supportive weapons have Blast Finishers. I also never said that Blast Finishers are exclusive to rather supportive or defensive weapons. But there certainly is a pattern. Of course, this unfortunately doesn’t aid your cause.