Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about the F1-F4 Skills of the Mesmer and came to the conclusion, that they have a fundamental Design Flaw that basically forces Mesmer to use Shatter-Builds.

Looking at the Traits and Skills of the Mesmer, I think that ANet had 2 distinct ways of playing the Mesmer in mind; either going for Shatter, or for Phantasms. The Class-Skills though, only help the Shatter-builds and are useless (in almost any scenario, with few exceptions, for example using Mind Wrack to finish an Enemy) if not even counter-productive to the Phantasm-builds. There exists no other Class that has F1+ Skills that so heavily favour one type of build.

I’ve come up with a solution for this problem that would also fix the most common Mesmer build, which is widely considered as being too strong anyways, without diminishing the strength of other Mesmer-builds.

Give the F1+ Skills of the Mesmer a passive (like on sigils or the guardians virtues), but reduce the effectiveness of the Shatter-skills (actives) a bit. This would also create an interesting and skill-demanding dynamic where choosing intelligently whether or not to shatter could change the outcome of a battle.

Some examples that could work:

F1 [Mind Wrack]: Reduce the DMG of the skill by about 20%, but give it a passive that only works when the skill isn’t on CD like: Illusions deal 10% more DMG (both physical and condition)

F2 [Cry of Frustration]: I don’t really see a need to nerf the active, but you could easily just lower the duration for the Confusion. Give it a passive that gives Illusions a chance of lets say 20%, to inflict 1 stack of Confusion for 5 seconds or sth like that.

F3 [Diversion]: Again, just nerf daze-duration or make the CD higher or sth and give some passive for the Illusions, or maybe for the Mesmer, like getting immunity to the next control-effect, every 60 seconds the skill hasn’t been used or sth.

F4 [Distortion]: Make CD higher, but give it a passive so that Illusions have 20% more health.

What do you guys think about the Design of the Mesmer F1+ Skills and my proposed fixes?

sounds like a massive buff to lazy mesmers who prefer to just dodge about and let the clones do the damage.

Gintoki.6405:

sounds like a massive buff to lazy mesmers who prefer to just dodge about and let the clones do the damage.

It’s a buff to phantasm-builds yes, but no1 uses them in spvp anyways – I see no Problem there….

I highly disagree with you. Shatters are useful to all builds of mesmer regardless of their setups. As any spec mesmer, you can use shatters both offensively and defensively at any point in your fight to either save you, or try for burst.
They actually seem to be some of the more thoughful f1-f4 skills out there actually.
Warriors just get an extra special attack
Rangers get pets
Elementalists gets attunements so they can adapt to the situation they’re in (which is fun)
Necros get an extra health bar to be annoying with
Thieves get a damage and a random(ish) on use item
Engies are actually pretty cool because they’re based on their bundles

no gonna lie, i have no clue what Guardians get because I’ve never played one.

I think the f1-f4’s are just fine as they are.

edit:

PowerBottom.5796:

It’s a buff to phantasm-builds yes, but no1 uses them in spvp anyways – I see no Problem there….

I use a legion build to great success in spvp still thanks.

The only possible problem is that they are instant.
It makes evading their spikes, if the mesmer is playing well, an utter pain especially on BO.

Blurred frenzy and the blink/imob don’t help the matter at all….

Another obvious option would be to have talents in the phatasm trees also add passive effects to the F1-F4 skills along the lines of what you mentioned.

I dislike this idea.

The mesmer is designed around the permanent concept of lose-lose, much like its GW1 predecessor. In the case of phantasm builds, shatters are the lose condition for trying to kill the phantasms. In other words, your options are:

A) Focus the mesmer, eating phantasm damage
B) Focus the phantasms, which are shattered and you eat a Mind Wrack

I get the feeling Anet never intended players to spec into extremes of pure phantasm or pure shatter, rather you should (read: they want you to) be actively making use of both. At first sight the traits seem to heavily promote one over the other as taking + phantasm damage appears to be in conflict with + Mind Wrack damage. However, on closer inspection you realise these traits actually promote the lose-lose playstyle. If you took both of these traits, the example above becomes

A) +15% damage per phantasm
B) +20% Mind Wrack damage

Suddenly these two traits don’t seem to conflict with each other at all; rather, they cover your build’s weakness and reinforce the lose-lose situation.

Adding passive effects to shatter skills would instead give the mesmer yet another drawback to deal with. They already have to balance the issue of giving up their clones, phantasms and any utilities coming from traits when they shatter. There are more than enough incentives for the mesmer NOT to shatter – they don’t need another. If you make shattering too counter productive, you create a class based around pets.

I think one of the issues with the shatter build (which is perhaps hidden beneath the absurd fluctuations in the MW spike caused by each of the 4 hits having a separate crit chance) is the way the build ignores what I believe to be Anet’s intentions and focuses on the extreme of just shattering. This removes all the drawbacks that are usually associated with shatters because, frankly, they are meaningless to the build. Even if we did go with OP’s suggestion, none of the proposed functionalities have any meaning to the shatter build so it frankly won’t care about losing them by hitting that shatter key.

I never use them in PVE, because it’s really hard to time it against your target (sometimes due to lag and stuff, they don’t position themselves to explode in the right place). But anyways, I would call it a mechanics flaw rather than a design flaw… because technically if they hit the other player 100% the time, then these shatter skills should rather be quite beneficial. The problem is; I can guarantee that your shatter skills gets dodged or missplace their explosions more times than when they actually hit, and I guess it’s maybe intended that way (seeing the posts below) so that some damage can be neglected for the sake of balances???. I’d much rather see though, that they reduce the damage and let the skill hit 100% each time, rather than have it uncontrollably hit or miss.

Well, the question is: Why should you take 1.5k damage on a 18? sec cooldown if you can just mind wrack every 10 seconds for about 3k damage noncrit? with about 60%? crit chance?

Mind wrack is just overpowered atm.

^^ More like phantasms are bugged and underpowered.

To bring them to shatter-level, you should be able to instantly summon 3 phantasm and they all should deal together the same amount of damage shatter does, so like 4k noncrit on heavy armor

Cmon dude >_>

Teabaker.9524:

To bring them to shatter-level, you should be able to instantly summon 3 phantasm and they all should deal together the same amount of damage shatter does, so like 4k noncrit on heavy armor

Cmon dude >_>

Thats why they need to nerf the damage and let the effects apply 100%. This game is becoming so much about stats rather than the skill effects themselves (there’s always room for troll complaints for stats, all day).

A phantasm outdamages a single mind wrack “tick”. You can’t compare a single phantasm’s damage to a x3 (4) mind wrack.

If you want to talk about damage in 10 seconds, phantasms still outdamage MW by a hefty margin. 2 phantasms out in 10 seconds, will mean 4 attacks from them total.

It’s merely burst vs sustained.

Numbers on squishies? A mind wrack’s crit tick in a shatter build will hit for 2.5k (optimistic, with might and so on). A phantasm build will have the duelist going over 3k per attack, swordsman can easily crit for 5k, warlock 4.5k, berserker’s buggy and gonna get fixed so no point discussing it now.

So let’s say 10 seconds period. Shatter builds will have let’s say an average 4x MW hitting a squishie for 8k? And blurred frenzy on top of that.
Ten seconds with 2 phantams out? four attacks, let’s average them at 3.5k being really cautious, blurred frenzy on top of that and you can see how your point is really moot.

The simple reason Shatter builds are more popoular in pvp is merely because in the current meta burst is king, not because they outdamage phantasm, and because illusionry persona is freaking awesome for saving your squishie butt too.