I never really used mantras before my latest build, and after completing Cursed Shores with a dual-swords wielding Mesmer that had 4 mantras on my bar, it is apparent to me that they have some design flaws.
1. Mantra of Pain seems to recharge while Power Spike is up while the others don’t go into cooldown until after the second casting. The pain of a 3-4+ second cast time is enough of a penalty than to add on a cooldown timer in the middle of combat. If I cast a mantra 5 minutes ago, why do I have to wait yet another 30 seconds before I can wait another 4 seconds to use the abilities? The balance between time investment and the power of the skills is imho quite off. Please make all mantras cooldown while the cast skill variants are up. This just seems like a mistake.
2. Because of the length of time to cast a mantra, Mantra Mastery is very insignificant on a build with multiple mantras. This is counter-intuitive, as you would think the more skills that got the reduced cooldown, the better, but when it takes about 12-16 seconds to cast through 4 mantras, the recharge times are largely irrelevant. Mantra Mastery would need to reduce casting times instead of cooldown times to be worth while.
3. Mantra resets. This is ridiculous. Every time I looked around my Mantras were reset. That’s everytime I teleported, discovered a new area, heck, it seemed like anytime I went anywhere, my mantras reset and wooboy 12-16 seconds later I am ready to fight something. This was really noticeable when I had logged off at a waypoint that was contested when I logged back in. “Oh, half your skills aren’t there where you left them, sorry about that.” Seriously, why can’t the game save your Mantra’s states when you travel, log off, etc.? It makes it really unappealing to ever have more than one or two on your bar at any time. In GW1, a mantra build was actually viable though heavily energy dependent. If there is such a balance issue of these being soooo strong, why not relate them to endurance? Either cause active mantras to reduce your max endurance or have them take endurance to activate or something. Or for goodness sakes just don’t make them reset every time you walk.
4. Mantra of Distraction does not seem to trigger Confounding Suggestions and Counter Blade is still bugged in this way as well. Diversions also doesn’t seem to work with it. In a whole map of events, farming, exploring, skill challenges, etc. out of all the dazing I inflicted – yes, counting only interrupts – never did a stun trigger from Confounding Suggestions. I must have interrupt foes that could be dazed 1000+ times. This is a grandmaster skill that does absolutely nothing. What exactly CAN trigger the stun on daze, if anything?
I think this point might go more in a bugs forum, and there are just so many Mesmer bugs to go along with it, it could be a subforum by itself. I mean god forbid you teleport at the wrong moment during a fight, because the AI will flag you inaccessible, and the mob will go invulnerable and heal while you stand (or swim) right in front of its face (trying to) pummel it. Etc., etc. And don’t get me started on Confusion, the trait with different rules for every occasion. Why on Earth or Tyria would confusion trigger for every action a player makes, while only triggering once every 2 seconds for mobs, yet inflict reduced damage in PvP? In other words, why do mobs inflict a super buffed version of confusion? It makes no sense that a player-inflicted condition would be any different than a mob-infliced condition, OR that a player can suffer the full damage on every action when it is mob-inflicted but when it comes to PvP, it’s reduced damage. It’s either fair game or it’s not, and to do it in both ways that disadvantage a mesmer player as much as possible makes me wonder what the purple butterflies did to anybody to merit such hate.
Anyway, enough ranting. Please improve mantras. They have synergy with many, many other skills and traits and can be a nice build option, but as they are, they are more work than they’re worth. And please fix Mesmer bugs.