Guild Wars 2

I liked the concept of mantras meant as spells chargable before engaging in battle and providing good istant burst/heal but… I would like you to consider the following:

A mantra specced mesmer will have 3 charges of each mantras and 4% damage increase per mantra ready.

Mantras are spells that got a relatively long cast time (2.75s) but provide 3 charges of an instant spell with a specific effect; after you have consumed all the charges, the mantra spell will undergo a relatively short cooldown.

The current mantras available to mesmer are:
Mantra of Concentration - Meditate, charging a spell that will grant you stability and break stuns
Mantra of Distraction - Meditate, charging a spell that will daze your target.
Mantra of Pain- Meditate, charging a spell that will damage your target.
Mantra of Recovery - Meditate, charging a spell that will instantly heal you when activated.
Mantra of Resolve - Meditate, charging a spell that will cure all of two conditions.

Now, what I had in mind was to make these spells more “effective” but also increasing the cast time and the cooldown.

If you give them a kitten cast time(like it was before, when mantras had 3.75s cast time) and 1min(more or less) cooldown while increasing their effect, they’ll be harder to recharge during battle but their effect will make up for it.

This change would make mantra builds a bit more challenging, as you’d need to carefully choose when to use those spells; however, if you time them well, taking into account the improved effect, they’ll give good results.

You won’t be mindlessly spamming MoP but you’ll try to chain it with some autoattack + shatter in order to deal a good amount of burst damage; if you misuse it, however, you’ll have to wait a relatively long time before recasting it and it will also take longer to recast it. Mistakes will be punished but a clean play will be more than rewarding.

What about other non-damaging mantras? Here the changes I would personally implement but I’m very open to other suggestions:
Mantra of concentration: add a 1s “immune to stuns” buff (45s CD)
Mantra of pain: increase the output damage (40s+ CD)
Mantra of distraction: increasing the duration of daze would be too OP if chained, so either leave it as it is or change the effect to “confusion” or “remove n boons” (30s+ CD)
Mantra of Recovery: increase the healing granted by each charge (45s+ CD)
Mantra of resolve: make it remove more conditions (1min CD)

What I listed are just approximate numbers; if there is someone willing to do the math, be welcome, otherwise I’ll try to do it myself when I’ll have more time (currently dealing with exams). The base idea is to increase the cast time up to 4s or even 5s and increase the cooldown from ca 10s to 30s or more, while improving the spells by a good amount, still avoiding to make them so overpowered that a MoP chained 3times 1shots someone.

I’d like to hear your opinions about this and other changes you’d like to add, if any. Are you happy with the current state of mantras? Do you think it’s okay as it is? Do you find it fun playing it or you don’t consider it enough worthy?

Thanks for your attention

Metallus.7690:

Mantra of pain: increase the output damage (40s+ CD)

would be used in shatter builds and nerfed after the first patch

-also the 2.75 s cast time make them still unappealing, at the beginning the cast time of mantras was 4s or smth, now we are at 2,75. This still long cast time is very likely to be interrupted so you should cast it from stealth. However,
First: phantasms are the best thing to cast from stealth since they don’t break it
Second: you have no stealth utility in the first place when you play a full mantra mesmer and torch sucks

another problem is that matras can be seen by enemy players and the mesmer is easier to spot

i think it is comparable with the grenades from the engineer, either you pull your traits to be a full grenade spec, or they aren’t worth it, at least they give you a bad feeling since you haven’t maxed their potential.

MY SUGGESTION: Remove the Mantra traits for 3 times cast and 4% dmg and give mantras a reasonable buff to be used without those traits

Marrt.2498:

Metallus.7690:

Mantra of pain: increase the output damage (40s+ CD)

would be used in shatter builds and nerfed after the first patch

-also the 2.75 s cast time make them still unappealing, at the beginning the cast time of mantras was 4s or smth, now we are at 2,75. This still long cast time is very likely to be interrupted so you should cast it from stealth. However,
First: phantasms are the best thing to cast from stealth since they don’t break it
Second: you have no stealth utility in the first place when you play a full mantra mesmer and torch sucks

another problem is that matras can be seen by enemy players and the mesmer is easier to spot

i think it is comparable with the grenades from the engineer, either you pull your traits to be a full grenade spec, or they aren’t worth it, at least they give you a bad feeling since you haven’t maxed their potential.

MY SUGGESTION: Remove the Mantra traits for 3 times cast and 4% dmg and give mantras a reasonable buff to be used without those traits

i actually rather have them keep mantra cast time of 3 seconds and leave those traits alone, but remove all extra cooldowns after the 3 cast. Removing the cd will help remove most of the downtime between plays and many of the clunkiness