Guild Wars 2

Yes I understand that the bug with mantra was unintended, however for the first time in quite a while we saw mantra mesmer come back into the game. But I don’t feel that fixing mantra back to it’s original state was what was needed. Changing confounding suggestions in some way might have been the answer, but instead your decision was to complete gut it to the unbalanced mechanic known as mantra.

The way mantra is “supposed” to be, you are technically punished for waiting for the right opportunity to burst, the longer you wait, the longer your cooldowns on mantra is going to be because your timer doesn’t start till all of your charges are gone. Personally I felt that mantra in its current form was cheese BUT I felt the mechanic was there. With a few changes to perhaps confounding suggestions, or possibly reducing the cooldown by a large margin you could of made it something great. But instead you set the current form of mantra on fire.

TLDR: You made mantra great on sheer chance, and then returned it to the dirt without realizing about the wonderful accident you made.

Countless

Edit : My suggestions to fix it would be the following

Power Lock – Recharge increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds

That way you double the time in which mantra of distraction can be used while still maintaining the effectiveness of confounding suggestions. Not to mention you would still get use out of the no illusion shatter diversion & magic bullet for daze into stun on the second target.

I would have to agree with this. The reason I didn’t run mantra’s in the past was not because they were underpowered. I didn’t run mantra’s because they are cumbersome and punish you for saving the last charge.

For the first time in 2 years I wanted to run mantras because they were fun. A better solution would have been to maintain the “bug” and raise all mantra cooldowns accordingly.

Too late now though, given past balancing trends this change is set in stone and we will never see a reversal. Another set of utilities to throw in the trash bin.

And before people start calling me names, I liked mantra’s with the “bug” but still didn’t run the meta mantra build because it was so obnoxiously overpowered.

Agreed. The better change would have been to increase the CD between mantra recharges, so if you burn your mantras too quickly, you’re still stuck with a long CD. That way, there is a balancing act between burning your mantras too quickly (in which case you’re stuck with a long CD), and holding them too long (in which case you’re wasting potential recharge time).

With the current revert, you’re best off burning your mantras as quickly as possible to start the recharge process. (I.E. just interrupt the first two autoattacks for the power block dmg).

Also, the fact that CS + MOD gives you an instant ranged AOE 1.25s stun still hasn’t changed, which is really what made mesmer burst crazy strong. The current mantra change just makes it so mesmers who manage to whiff both their first 2-3 MODs will be punished. Those that don’t will still be able to get off super easy bursts with little room for counterplay.

Mantras were in a great spot.

The problem is that bloody trait that causes dazes to stun, it just needs removing, and mesmers damage toning down.

This is just a typical bandaid fix because Anet have foolishly put every single developer into working on HoT.

Countless omg, shhhhhhh.
<3 u. bessss Mesmer NA

the mantra recharging at once was wonderful.
there is no need to increase the base recharge time as it is balanced.

unfortunately, this was short lived.
fortunately, i do not run mantras.

Or even a better idea increase the ICD on Confounding Suggestions to 10 seconds and leave Power Lock cd alone.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the mantra recharging at once was wonderful.
there is no need to increase the base recharge time as it is balanced.

unfortunately, this was short lived.
fortunately, i do not run mantras.

wow. Another person who seems to think that Mesmer is balanced right now.

style.6173:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the mantra recharging at once was wonderful.
there is no need to increase the base recharge time as it is balanced.

unfortunately, this was short lived.
fortunately, i do not run mantras.

wow. Another person who seems to think that Mesmer is balanced right now.

Wow. Another person who seems to think that Mesmer isn’t balanced right now.

Well, considering that spirit rangers used to have 100% uptime for their spirits back then when it was all the rage and everyone complained about it which resulted in spirits getting nerfed, I fail to see why mantras should be exempted.

It’s not just confounding suggestions that was the problem. It was also mender’s purity which essentially gave mesmers infinite condi clear and a healing skill that is realistically only on a 3s cool down.

Maybe the cooldown timer could start when you spend your first mantra charge?

Trigr.6481:

Yes I understand that the bug with mantra was unintended, however for the first time in quite a while we saw mantra mesmer come back into the game. But I don’t feel that fixing mantra back to it’s original state was what was needed. Changing confounding suggestions in some way might have been the answer, but instead your decision was to complete gut it to the unbalanced mechanic known as mantra.

That was exactly the thing I thought at first too.

Having tested Mantra’s though (with the trait for 3 activations, which I didn’t use before), I think they are still very good.

But yes, many players switched back to decoy even before the patch, just because it was such a high risk running only 1 stunbreaker, so we’ll probably see even less mantras now.

I also think that confounding suggestions is the real imbalanced and kinda dumb thing in the whole equation, it should be changed to only stun on interrupt. This would kinda negate the ridiculous stealth-openers and synergy with mental anguish you got basically for free.

I think ANet should embrace the interrupting/support a bit more in general and tone the pure dps-stuff on the mesmer down a bit.

Powerblock for example, doesn’t get used that often anymore, because why would I need a longer recast on an enemy skill when I can just insta-stun him out of stealth and gank him off the map instead?

They should get rid of the dmg on powerblock and add additional control-effects instead, like a longer daze when you actually interrupted sth. so you could really take stuff out of teamfights and not just be a burst-cannon.

I agree with Countless.

Countless… er… I mean, Jasher.

PowerBottom.5796:

Powerblock for example, doesn’t get used that often anymore, because why would I need a longer recast on an enemy skill when I can just insta-stun him out of stealth and gank him off the map instead?

Power Block was never used for the cooldown effect itself.

People just didn’t take it. They took (the much more accessible) Halting Strike. And what was that? Damage on interrupt. That’s the good part of Power Block and always will be.

Trigr.6481:

Yes I understand that the bug with mantra was unintended, however for the first time in quite a while we saw mantra mesmer come back into the game. But I don’t feel that fixing mantra back to it’s original state was what was needed. Changing confounding suggestions in some way might have been the answer, but instead your decision was to complete gut it to the unbalanced mechanic known as mantra.

The way mantra is “supposed” to be, you are technically punished for waiting for the right opportunity to burst, the longer you wait, the longer your cooldowns on mantra is going to be because your timer doesn’t start till all of your charges are gone. Personally I felt that mantra in its current form was cheese BUT I felt the mechanic was there. With a few changes to perhaps confounding suggestions, or possibly reducing the cooldown by a large margin you could of made it something great. But instead you set the current form of mantra on fire.

TLDR: You made mantra great on sheer chance, and then returned it to the dirt without realizing about the wonderful accident you made.

Countless

Edit : My suggestions to fix it would be the following

Power Lock – Recharge increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds

That way you double the time in which mantra of distraction can be used while still maintaining the effectiveness of confounding suggestions. Not to mention you would still get use out of the no illusion shatter diversion & magic bullet for daze into stun on the second target.

100% agree with the title.

Please fix mesmer bug allowing phantasm summons thru dodge.

11/15/2012
•Illusionary Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, Phantasmal Mage, Phantasmal Defender, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Rogue, Phantasmal Warlock, Illusionary Mariner, Illusionary Whaler, Phantasmal Berserker, and Phantasmal Warden: These skills must now be cast in line-of-sight of the target. These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target.

Since beta back when clones did damage I kind of thought mantra would be fun, and I was initially turned off of the shatter mechanic. Although shatters have grown on me and I’ve learned to love the spec… I was pretty happy that mantra as a build was made viable although tbh it’s not my favorite playstyle.

But it really didn’t need this kind of treatment. Yes it was a bug, but I think it could have been expanded on.

The real issue was CS with MoD… But that is one mantra and one trait within a spec. The rest for mantras were better for not being so cumbersome, and as stated before by others the major reason for the lack of appeal, was saving your last charge punished you.

I need to say first I don’t actually think CS is a big deal without the mantra, a 1 sec stun on a shatter with a c/d upward of 30 seconds, offhand sword after canceling the block, and Chaos Storm (which is infinitely stronger with CI anyways imo) was actually more or less fine. And I do not think it needs a nerf other than its inate synergy with MoD.

But I also don’t feel this heavy a fix to mantras is ok. It just puts them back in their virtually unviable spot. I just don’t believe it makes sense to hurt all mantras based on one.

I think a better fix should have come down the pipe. For example increase or decrease the c/d accordingly to what is fair for all mantras. Then have the C/D ONLY start ticking when you have one charge left.

This makes the last charge not punishing to hold on to, but allows for a fair limiter between CS and MoD.

Mantras did feel strong, but at the same time I felt like it was always justified. With such a long a cast time it felt like there was counter play. If I can’t interrupt an almost 3 second cast time, I deserve to be punished for it. Adding on the full CD might be a little too much.

I’m confused…. so they buffed the kitten out of mantras….. making them better than what they should have been due to being able to recast the mantra as soon as you burn the last charge…. so anet fixed the bug, what the problem is?

I’m sure people will still use some mantras,

NeXeD.3042:

I’m sure people will still use some mantras,

That’s the thing. No they wont.

NeXeD.3042:

I’m confused…. so they buffed the kitten out of mantras….. making them better than what they should have been due to being able to recast the mantra as soon as you burn the last charge…. so anet fixed the bug, what the problem is?

I’m sure people will still use some mantras,

The problem is that they’ve shown us how mantras could actually be convenient and fun. Then instead of a power-level nerf to compensate for the changed mechanics and new synergy we’re getting a power-level nerf that’s also a huge usability/convenience nerf.

Meanwhile the actual gimmicks that cause all the tears persist, which means you can probably expect another round or two of random nerfs until half the specialization-patch goodies are thrown in the trash before they actually address the thing that makes all the QQ happen in the first place.

Trigr.6481:

Edit : My suggestions to fix it would be the following

Power Lock – Recharge increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds

That way you double the time in which mantra of distraction can be used while still maintaining the effectiveness of confounding suggestions. Not to mention you would still get use out of the no illusion shatter diversion & magic bullet for daze into stun on the second target.

While the state Mantras are back to after the ‘fix’ I got to disagree with your suggestion.

At least for me personally, being able to successively use Mantra charges is one of their main characteristics. The new Harmonious Mantras – let’s not judge the recent nerf and if the trait is well-thought-out in general – also caters this kind of playstyle. From this perspective, increasing the cooldown between charges to compensate for a different overall recharge mechanic like after the last patch is wrong.

Quite obviously Mantras got two weaknesses: Casttime and the ‘Do-I-waste-my-last-charge-so-I-can-recharge-my-Mantra’-dilemma. The recent ‘bug’ with the Mantra recharges basically was a cruth for the second of those weaknesses. But it didn’t adress the core issue. It just made it less aweful to waste a charge. And it made Mantras more powerful by virtually reducing their recharge.

ANet should let active Mantras recharge 1 charge every x seconds when out of combat whereas x should be high enough to prevent people from abusing the mechanic through stealth resets. After that we can see if any Mantra needs a lower overall cooldown.

ASP.8093:

PowerBottom.5796:

Powerblock for example, doesn’t get used that often anymore, because why would I need a longer recast on an enemy skill when I can just insta-stun him out of stealth and gank him off the map instead?

Power Block was never used for the cooldown effect itself.

People just didn’t take it. They took (the much more accessible) Halting Strike. And what was that? Damage on interrupt. That’s the good part of Power Block and always will be.

After the specialization patch we saw quite a few ppl running powerblock, but yes, not for the added CD – which is exactly what I find a missed opportunity by ANet.

added DPS is fine, but it’s nothing special and mesmer already has lots of burst. Why not strengthen parts that set him apart from other classes? Powerblock was IMHO one of the most interesting new traits and I was getting really excited to play a GW1-Style mesmer, that was mostly there for taking either dmg or healing out of the fight with Interrupts, Manadrain and a few skills like Diversion, Powerblock or Blackout:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Diversion
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Power_Block
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blackout

DPS wasn’t bad of the Mesmer, but the main part was the ability to either deny potential DMG, or potential defensive capabilities of the enemy team with the above mentioned skills.

That’s why I realy liked Powerblock after specialization and the fact we saw so many Mantra’s of Distraction. I was very disappointed to see that it was mostly used as a rather easy out-of stealth insta-stun to spike sth. down.

There is nothing in GW2 that comes close to how the Mesmer was played and yes, GW1 was in 8-man teams and there was place for full-supporters, but I think a decent middle-ground between just DPS and full support/control could be found.

Few example:

- Old Mantra recharge is back (although again, I still think it’s useable with the mantra-traits)
- confounding suggestions only stuns when it interrupts a spell.
- Change Powerblock to: [Powerblock: If you interrupt a skill that has a CD, that cooldown is increased by 15 seconds, Your enemy is weakened for 10 seconds and slowed for 3 seconds]
- Get rid of mental anguish; it’s dumb and unimaginative. Make sth. that reminds of Blackout maybe? [Blackout: Add a stacking 5 second debuff on an enemy when he is hit by one of your shatters, at 3 stacks, the enemy player is dazed for 4 seconds]

They could also add sth. like the old GW1-Diversion: [Diversion: If an enemy is hit by cry of frustration, add a debuff on the enemy for 2 seconds that says: the next skill used that has a CD has no effect and it’s cooldown is 15 seconds longer]

Or maybe sth. like this? [Disarm: If you hit a player with a shatter emanating from yourself, all his weapon-skills are disabled for 3 seconds]

see? there are tons of great mechanics ANet could play with regarding the mesmer that aren’t just DPS-oriented but could still be very useful and unique to the mesmer. The inner GW1-nerd would just shout in joy when I’d see things like that implemented!

PowerBottom.5796:

That’s why I realy liked Powerblock after specialization and the fact we saw so many Mantra’s of Distraction. I was very disappointed to see that it was mostly used as a rather easy out-of stealth insta-stun to spike sth. down.

So that’s caused almost entirely by Confounding Suggestions + MoD. That’s what needed to be looked at. It was largely ignored in favor of just breaking mantras and shaving damage.

I’m all for there being a bigger focus on interrupts in the game. I would have no real issue with CS if it only triggered on a Interrupt. Fix the Pistol trait and you’ve got yourself a really cool potential lockdown build.

GW1 Mesmer was more about punishing players rather than outright damaging them. It’s a lot more skillful and creative.

ASP.8093:

PowerBottom.5796:

That’s why I realy liked Powerblock after specialization and the fact we saw so many Mantra’s of Distraction. I was very disappointed to see that it was mostly used as a rather easy out-of stealth insta-stun to spike sth. down.

So that’s caused almost entirely by Confounding Suggestions + MoD. That’s what needed to be looked at. It was largely ignored in favor of just breaking mantras and shaving damage.

Yepp, I was quite disappointed by that as well. I’ve pointed out in numerous threads that the main offender is confounding suggestions that is dumbing down interesting skills like MoD and make ppl choose the easy-route with mental-anguish rather than Powerblock, which is a far more skill-intensive trait to use.

I still don’t think we should condem CS alone tho. I think power block is fine since anticipating interupt and playing around them isn’t so hard.

But I do think we need revisions on the way mantras work, because if they are clunky no one would use them outside of supimentary skills, thus the diversity of being able to spec it as a build is lost with its viability…

Although it does make chrono more valuable perhaps, if one would go chrono/mantra (haven’t theorycrafted)

But to reiterate I don’t think CS alone is a problem only it’s synergy with MoD.

Fixing the mantra bug was a great start but Mesmer are still on par with D/D Cele Ele in terms of “being that much better than other specs”. It still needs a slight shave off the top of it’s new OP nature.