Guild Wars 2

Make [Time Catches Up] and [Time Marches On] baseline. This would make a non elite spec shatter Mesmer workable. A real buff to aa damage would be appropriate too.

Really ANET, that should have been done years ago.

Only if they buff other classes with base line improvements that are just as strong. You’re basically asking for Anet to make a situation that has been created by insane power creep even worse with more power creep. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Time Catches Up wouldn’t be so bad as baseline I guess, but Mesmer’s definitely shouldn’t have Time Marches On baseline. No class should have reduced duration on control impairing conditions as a baseline, that’s honestly an awful idea.

Maybe, but remember that condi cleanse isn’t something that Mesmer is good at in the first place. So I don’t think your concern is as big an issue as you think.

Just because a class is bad at something doesn’t mean it should have passive baseline ways in which to deal with those flaws. Thief has, arguably, worse condition cleansing than mesmer, and struggles just as much, if not more, when faced with control impairing conditions being spammed. Should thief get this sort of buff as well? Or how about warriors, who die in a matter of seconds after berserker stance turns off to condition spam in the current meta? There are other ways to deal with conditions that passive traits, such as dodging skills that apply strong conditions and not walking through aoes that pulse conditions.

I think it would be a smarter decision for anet to take a look at conditions and maybe scale back the application numbers on them slightly for some skills. I’m biased against power creep though, so I don’t know.

With respect to thief. I enjoy the class. I won’t play it in pvp though. I think that the revealed mechanic should be toned way back and that channeled attacks like Ranger rapid fire should be defeated by stealth.

I guess it could be said that in general, the core classes need some power creep. Under the present conditions, core classes aren’t much use in pvp.

As to warrior.. well I admit I’ve been hammered flat so many times by stun + 100 blades or hambow cc + burn + slam that I have a strong bias against anything that buffs them.

We seem to agree on [Time Catches Up]. How about a buff to Mesmer AA?

As to passive condi cleanse; “Diamond Skin Ele.” Need I say more?

Well in regards to Time Catches Up, I’m not even entirely sold on that becoming baseline actually. I think there are worse things than superspeed on clones of course, and they’re easy enough to dodge even with that trait, so I guess I’m rather apathetic about that lol. The one issue I could see happening if Time Catches Up was made baseline is that the trait makes shatter skills easier to land and more reliable, so if those skills prove harder to avoid taking damage from, then the damage coefficients on them will probably be nerfed at some point to compensate for the change, meaning it will take mesmers more successful shatters to kill an opponent than before.

In terms of Mesmer Auto Attack? I don’t main mesmer, so I don’t know the extent of the issues with Mesmer AA. I guess it would depend on what weapon we’re talking about. I’m sure some Mesmer AAs could definitely use a bit of tuning, but every class has weapons that need AA tuning. For example, Thief pistol is one of the most pathetic AAs in the game. I would like to see Anet take a look at every underused mainhand weapon for each class and think of a way to change the AAs on them to make them more desirable.

Ithilwen.1529:

As to passive condi cleanse; “Diamond Skin Ele.” Need I say more?

While I think Diamond Skin does need some changes now just due to how well some of the new Ele traits complement DS, I think it’s important to realize that DS is not actually a condition cleanse, but condition immunity. I don’t think it’s fair to compare a grandmaster trait that an Ele has to choose to a minor grandmaster that mesmer gets passively just from taking the elite spec traits either.

Also keep in mind, Time Marches On applies at all times regardless of the mesmer’s health, while DS ends the moment an Ele falls below 90% HP. There are ways to get around DS, and there are ways to get around Time Marches On. The issue with DS, imo, is the ease of which Ele can heal currently. I have no problem condi bursting a DS ele in PvP on a carrion necro once the DS threshold is broken, but it does usually mean I need to have another player help deal with that before my burst is usable (although I have managed to break DS on bad eles on my own quite often as well).

I just believe that instead of adding more baseline traits and mechanics to classes, the balance in this game should move away from passive combat to more active and skill based play styles. I would like to see players more rewarded for dodging an aoe chill field than simply walk through it without a care in the world knowing that they have a baseline trait that will handle the issue for them.

According to the blog post you’ll get your wish, at least partly. Thief AA is specifically mentioned for a buff.

Ithilwen.1529:

According to the blog post you’ll get your wish, at least partly. Thief AA is specifically mentioned for a buff.

Well the funny thing is about Thief AA, myself and other thieves never really asked for that outside of pistol AA, but Karl specifically mentioned in the blog post a focus on thief melee AAs, “In the first quarter of this year, we’ll be looking to drastically improve thief melee autoattacks until their overall sustained damage when coupled with initiative use is extremely dangerous.”

While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s not exactly what the thief class needs. The problem isn’t that thief melee attacks don’t do enough damage, it’s that thief can’t survive in the current state of balance with CC is thrown out as a result of mindless skill rotations and aoes blanket the ground on and surrounding every contested point. Every class other than thief and warrior has too much access to defensive boons/condition cleanses/healing at the moment, that’s the biggest issue. For example, I can almost instantly burst an engineer with thief, but it will cost me some initiative to frontload the damage required to do it. But it doesn’t matter because ever engineer runs a trait that auto procs Elixir S and they can’t be instantly killed by a thief who approaches from the right position and takes the engineer by surprise. After the Elixir S fades the engineer can throw aoes and crowd controls all around them and heal up to full hp while applying protection to his or herself (I know this because I mostly play engineer in PvP these days).

At least they said they’ll be looking at acrobatics, so hopefully that trait line becomes something other than just a weaker version of Daredevil traits.

No class should ever have baseline condition reduction or baseline increased ms.

Also shatter mesmer is not weak: It is just outclassed by a blatantly op class (rev) like everything else except bunker mes and power creep of elite specs in general, but compared to other core specs it is perfectly viable. Instead of more powercreep, elite specs should be toned down.
By making things baseline, you wont make core mesmer better in comparison to chronomancer unless you give chronomancer only useless traits as replacements.
Chronomancer offers too much for a single trait line as it is significantly stronger than any mesmer trait line.

….no.

What Core mesmer needs is various means of clone generation from various trait lines that does not involve deceptive evasion. Alacrity is important for Chrono’s to get invited to PvE groups, but for PvP viability Mesmer needs CLONES.

And, you know, other stuff.

….no.

What Core mesmer needs is various means of clone generation from various trait lines that does not involve deceptive evasion. Alacrity is important for Chrono’s to get invited to PvE groups, but for PvP viability Mesmer needs CLONES.

And, you know, other stuff.

I’d like the movement speed increase to be put on domination or dueling traitline (Hits classes that aren’t taking Dom/Dueling, like bunker mesmer).

Dueling would be the more versatile option, as that would also help out condi-shatter.

And a bunker mesmer trading Insp or Chaos for either dom/dueling would be sacrificing a lot of their sustainer or boons(stab included) for that movement speed, and everything else in that branch.

For replacing that trait, perhaps put a very short duration regen whenever you gain alacrity.
But if you do that, you’ll also have to hit our protection uptime on Chaos, because we gain protection on regen.

Idk, I’d be interested in suggestions for replacing that missing chrono minor.
Perhaps summoning a phantasm gives a short (say 1 second) aoe alacrity? Considering how high the cooldown is for phantasm summoning skills, it wouldn’t do much. But it’s something.

shrug

Ross Biddle.2367:

….no.

What Core mesmer needs is various means of clone generation from various trait lines that does not involve deceptive evasion. Alacrity is important for Chrono’s to get invited to PvE groups, but for PvP viability Mesmer needs CLONES.

And, you know, other stuff.

Hmm, how about create a clone on Interrupt?
With maybe an ICD of 5 seconds? On the chaos line?

Would make the daze mantra stronger, and in turn mantra mesmer.

And interrupts aren’t the easiest thing to land, so it would be pretty skill based.

I dont think “making <insert core class here> work” is in the radar sorry mate.
Ah and probably will never be. FeelsBadMan