Guild Wars 2

For a long time now Shatter has been pretty “meh”, a good portion of the top players who were running the spec have either re rolled class or went PU or Interupt. (not all but clearly a significant amount)

The damage on the build requires more set up than most other GC specs. (usually blowing a good amount of c/ds on both weapon sets and utilities to hit max damage) But is only slightly harder to read than the old 100B builds.

In terms of damage however especially in the current meta there is a lot of low risk high reward builds that can sustain a lot more. This means most of the damage becomes a spike, (spamming shatters gets you no where anyways) but then with the abundance of sustain-ish type of heal builds a lot of the in-between damage gets shot. This means it is very hard to gain any feasible momentum that’t isn’t turned around instantly.

I find the lack of punch behind this glass cannon spec, or even the amount of set up required for it leaves it significantly wanting.

Now one could argue “Team utility”

Which is a valid point, if you consider it compared to certain thief builds.

But how much utility do you gain for giving up survivability? Arguably Mesmer has more in terms of base stats, but when you take evade spam and much more on demand stealth, with much less setup to both pressure and burst/spike. I don’t think I buy it, the amount given up makes the spec redundant. But even class comparison aside, most of the utility that can be utilized by shatter can be supplemented by almost every other mesmer spec.

Changes? Well the typical bug fixes would help, but so many bugs since release and a lot of the major ones that would be enhance options in performance. have been neglected, or shrugged off. (For example like fixing i-leap)

But in terms of direct buffs I suggest the old buff to “Shattered Strength” 3 stacks per clone allowing for more might stacking. This was implemented around a time of a bug that caused shatters to do extreme damage. But what happend to shaves? The game didn’t even get to see the 3 might shatter was like post band aid fix, and it was all revoked at once.

Another option would be how a change to how shatters work, instead of having the clones run at your foe, have them all dissipate and apply a personal buff to the mesmer adding a proc to the next hits X (times) the amount of illusions shattered. doing the same properties of the shatter. The goal with this would make set up easier and still offers the ability to be out played.

A simpler suggestion would be a strait buff to the damage a shatter can do or the properties inherent to it. But instead what if illusions became purely a resource? we reduce all the shatter’s c/ds by half so: Distortion 30, Diversion 22.5, Cry of Confusion 15, Mind wrack: 7.5. Then we keep the same 30% recharge from the illusions tree all shatter builds go.

This then makes set up less risky, and clone generation more viable. It ALSO increases the survivability (not as much as evade spam that a ranger or thief can pull off but still pretty good) Still has C/Ds to prevent overly spamming, and allows you to keep up sustained spikes for those prolonged fights. All this while being still completely out playable.

New players do already get stomped by this build currently, and a buff in general would seem overbearing to them. However it’s clearly something to learn, once you get the visuals down it’s usually fine for most players.

Any other suggestions for Shatter? Or those who argue it doesn’t need it? Would it be to OP? If so tell us why.

Please be constructive. Thanks.

Careful, you’ll get yourself perma banned talking about buffing mesmer.

I know you have the qualifier for pvp, but power shatter mesmers need some love in wvw too. It’s the only spec I play, whether solo roaming or group play. With the current nerf to power damage and vigor, and no buff to the current power spec, I do feel a tad neglected.

I like your idea of shorter cd on the F1-4 skills. That F4 evade is too few and far between, especially if you need it instantly with no clones up and all you get is a 1 sec evade. I too also find our bursts take too long (and requires a hefty price in cd’s or dodges) between shatters to keep the pressure up. If that original burst doesn’t down the player or get them below half hp, we need to get outta there or else we are gonna die. Perhaps there is a way to slightly buff our sustained damage between bursts? Or a different fix would be to our damage mitigation so we can stick around more to do better sustained damage.

We are supposed to confuse our opponent with clones, and originally we did when we were all new to the game, but now it’s been over a year and people have learned our mechanics. Clones rarely fool our opponents these days. Further, our stealth is just short enough that when we use it to avoid damage, most of the time we are hit anyways because it only procs for 2-4 seconds. I usually have to combine a stealth with a blink, dodge or an evade to avoid any damage completely. Perhaps more access to blinds? Like our clones periodically aoe proc blind on a reasonable cd? Or a trait we can pick up that makes our stealths blind, a la thieves? More ways to bolster our sustainability would go a long way to reviving the power shatter builds. As it stands now, it feels like the risk is too high for the reward.

I think the WvW issues run deeper than just our clones. Our clones not arriving to be able to shatter is a symptom of the issue.

What I’d do relates mostly to the underlying combat system:

• Reduce how fast the fights get shorter the more damage is stacked per side.
• Slow down combat in general (ideally again only in group~zerg situations).
• Reduce the availability of AE/Cleave attacks greatly. Each class should have access to multiple quite distinct such effects, but they shouldn’t be able to “spam” them. Cleave-melee attacks should be quite weak on a single target, for example a GS auto-cleaves but swings ~2x slower than any comparable weapon.
• Reduce the general availability of conditions and boons, and more or less remove area versions of them (boons are applied to friendlies by targeting them!). In return, increase their potency significantly. Same overall power, but more focused and less readily available.
• Reduce the availability of cleansing, and remove any and all forms of AE cleansing not based on combo fields.

Overall, this would slow combat, and reduce the “bomb on me”-aspect, to the point where it nearly doesn’t exist.

And really, what reaction time do you have in PvP right now if the assist train picks you as a target? Not exactly all that much. It is this from which the part where our clones never get to the target originates, because in the raw spam focused on or near the central spot in a fight, nothing other than a blocking or bunkering player can survive for more than a split-second.

Remove that – which would be good in any case – and many of our shatter and zerg-scaling issues evaporate entirely. Same for basically all other classes’ pets.

I agree with you, however odds are combat won’t get a huge overhaul that would make zerging more fesable on specific builds.

Thats why in one of my suggestions I though of was after shattering it would be great to have the damage be added as procs to our weapon attacks.

So vs the guy super far way you hit your MW pull you your GS and next 3 hits are gonna hurt!

My idea would actually be to buff Mesmer Weapon damage.
Even though it is hard to land, shatter actually does some good damage.
Buffing shatter Dmg, might get it a little it over the top.

However, buffing phantasms also seems like a bad idea, as I’m not a fan of builds getting carried to much by AI.
This leaves us with the last choice:
buff the overall Damage of Mesmer attacks.
I think, this probably would help a lot of Mesmer builds in all game types.

Even though I land a full shatter (maybe even F1 + F2), my enemy isn’t down then, my damage becomes rly low, as all of my illusions (aka dmg sources) are gone. This leaves me with no more options to put pressure on my enemy. And I cant just repeat the shatter 3s later like a BS thief.

In general, I think, Mesmer actually could need a very, very big overhaul. New players usally have hard times versus clones or Moa, but on the other side, you wont fool any experienced player.
A profession, which only shines in “destroying noobs” doesn’t make much sense.

The idea to turn illusions from NPCs straight into some kind of “ressource pool”.
Found an old post (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Mesmer-Illusions-total-rework-necessary/first#post3790043), I made some time ago:

One way might be, to replace clones with some kind of buff. Let’s call it “PowerPoints” (not the office tool). Every skill which created a clone, instead gives the Mesmer a PowerPoint.
Other skills (especially shatter skills). Use those points for greater effects. This might be somehow similiar to the adrenalin mechanic of warriors.
Maybe you could replace phantasms with sth closer to conjured weapons or transforms. Something, you have activly to control. Or at least make some “Phantasm free” Weapons. So you don’t have to use phantasms when you don’t want.
I’d also like to mention, that Phantasms are in a lot of situations rly unflexible. They can’t follow you and they are bound to an enemy. For “utility Phantasms”, which often might just be nice to summon like P.Disenchanter, P.Defender and also I.Warden, you also need a target, which is bad.

What I would also like, would be the removal, or a reduction of the CD between the shatter skills. I know, it’s only 0.25s, but it actually happens a lot to me, that my shatter skills don’t trigger because of this.

And ofc, fixing also those bugs, which harm Mesmers, would be great.

EverythingEnds.4261:

My idea would actually be to buff Mesmer Weapon damage.

Except I doubt Anet will do this, since they rarely revert nerfs. Remember the patch where main-hand sword was nerfed for every skill? EVERY. SKILL. THE HORROR!!! And people already complain about GS damage…. They might boost staff damage, since it is laughably bad, or scepter (lol). However, most shatters don’t run these weapons (exception: staff, which I think is big in EU pvp where they use GS/staff?).

EverythingEnds.4261:

What I would also like, would be the removal, or a reduction of the CD between the shatter skills. I know, it’s only 0.25s, but it actually happens a lot to me, that my shatter skills don’t trigger because of this.

Remember when A-net said this was supposed to be a temporary fix and that they were going to look into it? Yea….

EverythingEnds.4261:

And ofc, fixing also those bugs, which harm Mesmers, would be great.

*sobs uncontrollably *