This topic is to address the Nov 15th patch and this specific change:
Illusionary Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, Phantasmal Mage, Phantasmal Defender, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Rogue, Phantasmal Warlock, Illusionary Mariner, Illusionary Whaler, Phantasmal Berserker, and Phantasmal Warden: These skills must now be cast in line-of-sight of the target. These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target.
The two most significant weaknesses about the Mesmer are #1. Offensive AoE skills #2. Maneuverability. Before this patch was implemented, we already have a difficult time managing our few offensive AoE skills in dynamic events with other players. We had to be extremely precise and timed the rotation of our AoE skills such as using Greatsword’s Phantasmal Berserker, Staff’s Chaos storm, and F1+F2 shatters all together just to be two-thirds of the competitiveness of most other professions like Elementalist, Ranger, and Necromancers.
In some dynamic events, the monsters are spawned with Invulnerability. Many of our skills revolves around summoning Phantasms, and that requires an enemy target to do so. Any Phantasm summoning skills will now fail to cast on target due to Invulnerability. This change brings out a serious problem when we are forced to be playing with many other players of different professions in dynamic events.
We’re in an open world MMO, so dynamic events are shared with anyone in the world. No one can control how the other players want to play the game. Comparatively speaking, I cannot control other Elementalists, rangers, or necromancers not to spam stacks of ground targeting AoE at monsters spawn locations in each different phase/waves before they’re even spawned and rendered.
Before the patch, I was able to precisely time Phantasmal Berserker activation time (3/4s) just before the vulnerability status on the target is about to wear off so half of its attacks will at least landed on the target and other targets around it to make it possibly count for some tags. It had to be done this way to counter those different stacks of preemptive ground targeted spams, or else it will almost always be too late to make a tag due to split second to a second of skill activation time and attack delay by Phantasms.
The patch has forced us to change the way we summon our Phantasms in this specific case with spawn invulnerability. However, other players will not change their way to abuse the usage of preemptive ground targeting skills whereas our only ground targeting AoE Chaos storm is going to have a very difficult time to keep up with the pace of others on base cool down of 35s (28s traited). Even then, Chaos storm itself deals minimal direct damage and mostly relies on its conditional damage over time, 5 secs. Chaos storm is not meant to be used as an offensive measure for making “tags” count in dynamic events, but it is our only measure for ground targeting AoE.
Finally, most of the balanced changes to Mesmer in the past have more of a focus towards PvP aspects in general. While those changes in the past may have its balance addressed, it’s a fact that those changes have brought a negative impact to PvE in general. PvP and PvE balance changes cannot be addressed using the same manner and principles. The dynamics in PvP and PvE are vastly different. If players have raised a concern, we need to determine where the source of problem came from and make the appropriate decision based on PvP or PvE aspects of the game.
“If you sacrifice nothing, you gain nothing”
GWAMM & CotG
[HERO] – Star Leader – Black Gate