Guild Wars 2

It is really irritating.

Do Glint’s lair on my guardian, everything goes well.

Do a repeat on my mesmer, and now the boss is surrounded by a lethal aoe zone that means I can’t even use my illusions to whittle down the crystal golem so it takes three times as long.

It’s getting pretty tiresome, I thought you would have learned with Liadri not to totally screw over pet specs, but apparently you just don’t give a kitten about mesmers and rangers having their class mechanics completely negated by negligent encounter design.

If there’s gonna be lethal aoe on the ground the pets need to be immune to it.

Same goes for Tequatly my mesmer phantasms even with signet of illusions extra 50% hp and persisting image 20% hp bonus, the illusions get one shot before they even apply damage because of all the void zones surrounding the boss.

If you can’t be bothered to give pets aoe/cleave immunity in PvE you shouldn’t have wasted people’s time releasing classes whose mechanics don’t work in an active combat system saturated with one shot mechanics that need to be dodged but the AI is too stupid/frail to contend with.

Mesmers have a trait that gives their illusions distortion on creation, so you should at least be able to get the phantasms initial attack off before they die.

CrimsonDX.4821:

Mesmers have a trait that gives their illusions distortion on creation, so you should at least be able to get the phantasms initial attack off before they die.

Yeah, it’s also a grandmaster trait slot and your sustained is still xrap because the illusion still gets one shot afterwards. 6/6 also means you can’t get phantasmal haste.

I shouldn’t need a grandmaster trait for my illusions to not be totally negated by an encounter.

Unfortunately, this is just the way of things. If they suddenly structure all of their fights around being all-inclusive, the amount of encounter variety decreases exponentially. The net effect would be boring design – even worse for the game than the occasional “discriminatory” annoyance in encounter class balance.

That is why a general solution to this problem would be nice. It’s not like it’s new, after all – it continues being brought up since before launch.

There ARE some boss encounters in the game where pets have damage immunity. Go fight the Megadestroyer or the MKII Golem and your pets will happily wade into the lava / lightning fields without a scratch. So I’m not really sure why they bother doing that with some bosses and not others.

Your pets being insta-killed was by far the dumbest part of the Liadri fight and I have no idea why Anet didn’t do something about it.

I’d have killed her far more easily if my pet could stay alive for more than a few seconds in that arena.

As far as this particular boss is concerned, it is also rather immune to damage if you don’t have the buff, as well (if not, it could easily have been made that way). So it seems to me illusions, pets and minions could stand there and hit him all day long, and you would still need the buff to be able to damage him. So making them immune to the aoe field would only make the classes viable, it would not allow you to kitten the fight.

My ranger I had to keep my pet heeled to do it, my necro I had to switch to a well build, when I had just switched to a minion build to try and take down the boss before. But that is only something you can do with necro, you have no other options for mesmer or ranger.

It wasn’t too terrible on my ranger because I use a quickness burst build with GS. But it still made the fight terrible as I had to micromanage my pet through the entire encounter. Even the little aoe fields would kill it in a second.

“Whats so bad about micromanaging your pet? Isn’t that what you always have to do with a pet class?” Sure, if I was actually fighting with them. Micromanaging them constantly just trying to keep them from dying, when they arte no use in the fight beyond the quickness burst when swapped, is kitten. Yet that is every major encounter in the game.

Yeah, very frustrating to not be able to use illusions/phants. Since I was maining mesmer at that stage.

I even ragequit on Liandri because of it.

I imagine it’s really tricky to get balance across classes and make encounters interesting. In these situations giving players a buff that says something like “Pets and phantasms take 50% (or whatever it would need to be) damage from aoe attacks” would seem a reasonable fix. Mesmers and rangers rely on these for a high percentage of their damage, and this sort of dps nerf tests a player’s patience rather than their skill.

Too bad we don’t have a handy dandy petless ranger build we could use in such situations. Or in any situation, for that matter.

I understand why Anet didn’t gave phantasms constant immunity to the field, if thy would do that a mesmer could use it to attack the boss and receive an edge that other clases don’t have.

In my opinion the way to tackle this problem is:
If the player have the immunity shield every phantasm/illusion/pet will receive it upon creation the shield will disappear when the player’s shield disappear and the phantasms/illusion/pet die upon creation.

Rhinala.1739:

I understand why Anet didn’t gave phantasms constant immunity to the field, if thy would do that a mesmer could use it to attack the boss and receive an edge that other clases don’t have.

As it has been pointed out, they could stay in the field all night long, and without buff on main char, the boss would have been invulnerable anyway, so not sure what edge you are thinking of.

Astralporing.1957:

As it has been pointed out, they could stay in the field all night long, and without buff on main char, the boss would have been invulnerable anyway, so not sure what edge you are thinking of.

I know that, but the phantasm can start attacking the boss at the second the main char receive the buff giving a minor boost, Anet took the opposite approach and nullified 90% of the mesmer’s abilities.
My main char is a mesmer, that boss fight was a nightmare, when i used my ranger the pet received the buff when i did and i was able to kill it in a fraction of the time it took me with the mesmer (things are rather o.k. if the ranger don’t change pets). I know that with the mesmer i can use the sword in order to have nice dps, a weapon that i don’t usually use (prefer to have range in order to maneuver and survive).

Hmm … the mini pets will actually get that protective buff. Why doesn’t phantasm/ranger pet/whatever get it?