Guild Wars 2

Hi fellow mesmers!
I’ll start saying that this is only my humble opinion, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.
All of this it’s about abstract concept, not numbers.

We all love the mesmer, we all love illusions and all.
But do they work in the right way?
What I’m concerned about is illusions, more about clones than phantasms actually.

All we can do depends mostly on illusions, our damage and our defence.
We’ve got great utility too, but you can’t kill nor survive with utility only.

In these days I’m also seeing great discussions about DE or not DE (mostly in favor of DE as essential).
This hints to me that we are not happy with clone generation/duration.
Sure, we can find many walkarounds and we are viable, but the issue stays there.

So that’s where my question comes from:
If we need them (and we do need them for anything), why can we be without them?
Back in beta they did damage on their own, they were somehow dangerous to keep around. So it was right to make their creation “active”. Is it still the case?
I’m not so sure anymore.

Wouldn’t sounds more right something along the lines of this:
- We keep our 3 illusions limit
- No more clone generation skills on weapon
- Some skill can change in something that use clones for active effects (swap, shatter, anything). Or those skills that could let us be more useful on our own maybe?
- Short cd passive that generate a clone automaticly when in combat (easier to balance and free space in trait lines)
- We can keep some clone generating utilities/traits for emergency situations or shatter burst

I know this is totally not perfect and probably it’s just pure bs.
And I also know that we could never hope to see a change this big.
But it’s the first solution that came to my mind in a boring day.

What do you think about it? Do you think that’s not the problem?
What would you suggest?

Thank you all anyway!

Frankly, there are times when I specifically do not want to generate clones, and I appreciate the ability to not have them around. My understanding is that Rangers can’t dismiss their pets and that many wish they could for various reasons. It’s not really a path I would like to follow.

The only thing I’d like to see changed about them is making it so that it’s not so blatantly obvious to tell them from the real Mesmer just by tabbing through them and watching for buffs. I’d like them to inherit the buff icons. I used to play Guardian exclusively and didn’t know anything about Mesmers, so I’d frequently end up attacking the clones and got confused about which was which. People would tell me that you had to watch for the one that wasn’t running towards you, one that dodges, etc. Now it seems that 95 out of a 100 opponents in WvW don’t attack the clones at all but always target me instantly, which renders the clones into nothing more than vehicles for putting conditions on enemies. There’s very little “confusion” going on, which I thought was the whole point of the job. I wouldn’t mind a nerf to PU if they fixed that, since I’d be more in charge of my own damage negation.

Yeah, I heard about rangers problems with their pets but I don’t really know much about it (never played as a ranger).
Keeping it on mesmers, when don’t you want to have clones around?
Are you afraid of them aggroing or something like that?
Making them only in combat when you have a target wuold help?
I’m just curios.

About the confusion thing…
Well, it is a very complicated problem imo.
As it is now, it works well with player with little experience facing mesmer and works way less with good players.
While this is bad for the mesmer, isn’t it right for the enemy?
Wuoldn’t it be a little unfair to the others if even with experience againts mesmer you still didn’t have any hint at all?
Clones are good only for a split second distraction (if not we could get easly OP).
That’s why within my proposal I put changing the weapon skills.
If you don’t have to worry about their creation you can worry about using them better.
If an enemy spot the real you, you could have a swap skill that makes you take the place of one of your clones for example.
That wuold be very confusing for the enemy because he wuold waste time to spot you again (and if you use stealth…).

To say it in way less words, I think we could do better if we could “use” them and not simply create them (that could easly be passive somehow).

I’d pay money to sit at a table for a few hours with the people that thought up the mesmer and to hear their initial vision for it.

Because I feel like what we got now is so far detached from that initial vision, that they just have no idea what to do with us.

So no, I don’t think the mesmer is as it should be. But I’ve learned to deal with the fact that a full remake will never happen.

Mesmers can be very confusing for new players and those unfamiliar with the nature of clones. Against vets though, they’re momentary distractions that buy the Mesmer time while the enemy tabs thru the clones until they find the obvious real player.

Buying time is valuable but it’d be nice if the clones acted just a little more naturally. I’d like it if clones did occasional non-functional dodge rolls or moved laterally just to give off the illusion of a real player. And of course, the boons, even if cosmetic only, should copy to clones. They don’t necessarily need aegis or regen, but at least the icons that says they do.

Boons are not so much the problem, as clones can have boons too. Sure, the mesmer will usually have more boons but not always. It is possible to create some confusion with this, so I don’t think it needs to change.
The real problem is that clones do not inheret signet/mantra icons. If you use any mantra or signet, you’re basically putting a target mark on yourself. So either remove those from the player bar or add them to clones as well. Mantras pose some problems here because of charges, but adding signet icons to clones should be no problem.

Isn’t the name plate different too? I thought a red arrow appears with the name plate on the real mesmer.

Temihal.8651:

Keeping it on mesmers, when don’t you want to have clones around?
Are you afraid of them aggroing or something like that?
Making them only in combat when you have a target wuold help?
I’m just curios.

They are completely unreliable. They aggro whatever they feel like. The very last thing I need when I’m trying to hide in a keep is clones standing around or aggroing guards.

msalakka.4653:

Temihal.8651:

Keeping it on mesmers, when don’t you want to have clones around?
Are you afraid of them aggroing or something like that?
Making them only in combat when you have a target wuold help?
I’m just curios.

They are completely unreliable. They aggro whatever they feel like. The very last thing I need when I’m trying to hide in a keep is clones standing around or aggroing guards.

DE clones go for the nearest foe, hence no real targeting and control.

If you pick up some clone death trait, those clones can still create certain degree of annoyance to melee players. Particularly if you stand close to clones.

yeah in wvw all our clones are kinda useless as they die right away. so lots of our traitsare kinda useless in wvw raids. in roaming and 1v1 illusions are our main dmg dealers. if u cant have illusions u dont have dmg or shatters. without ip i cant shatter anything as i dont have illusions…. so id say its a bad design to not give us some viable non illusion heavy builds…well we did have glamour builds and they were good until the nerf came along and took this away.

Well, to be fair their getting a lot of bug fixes in the feature patch, so they should become more reliable after that.

And yes, while new players can be easily confused by clones and not so much vets, but I think it cuts both ways. If your acting in overtly non-clonie ways, then of course your going to get spotted.
If your trying to run away for example and you pop your Decoy, running in the same direction isn’t going to help you, because your expected to go that way. But if you jute back and double around, or use cover to break line of sight you can trick people, and your clones can play into that.

I think it’s important for the Mesmer to think of how best to make use of their mechanics, rather then play as if it were just another caster.
If your not trying to actively deceive your opponent, I don’t think your in any position to cry foul when you don’t.

Yoh.8469:

[…]
I think it’s important for the Mesmer to think of how best to make use of their mechanics, rather then play as if it were just another caster.
If your not trying to actively deceive your opponent, I don’t think your in any position to cry foul when you don’t.

Yeah, I agree.
That’s why I think we should have more ways to interact in an active manner with our clones.
For example I was very surprised when I found out that we don’t have any defensive swap with clones (we only have the leap on sword #3, but I see it much more useful for attacking rather then defending).

Temihal.8651:

Yoh.8469:

[…]
I think it’s important for the Mesmer to think of how best to make use of their mechanics, rather then play as if it were just another caster.
If your not trying to actively deceive your opponent, I don’t think your in any position to cry foul when you don’t.

Yeah, I agree.
That’s why I think we should have more ways to interact in an active manner with our clones.
For example I was very surprised when I found out that we don’t have any defensive swap with clones (we only have the leap on sword #3, but I see it much more useful for attacking rather then defending).

Agreed. I was actually hoping one or two of these new grandmaster traits would have played to that effect, sadly not, it’s just more of the same.
Unfortunately there aren’t many traits that play into the whole deception aspect of Mesmers, esp not grandmasters. PU is the only that actively does by riding on the tailcoat of stealth.

That being said decoy and blink do a pretty solid job, and portal is underused when soloing. Portal is quite effective of getting you out of a jam if you know how to use it.

Yoh.8469:

Agreed. I was actually hoping one or two of these new grandmaster traits would have played to that effect, sadly not, it’s just more of the same.
Unfortunately there aren’t many traits that play into the whole deception aspect of Mesmers, esp not grandmasters. PU is the only that actively does by riding on the tailcoat of stealth.

That being said decoy and blink do a pretty solid job, and portal is underused when soloing. Portal is quite effective of getting you out of a jam if you know how to use it.

I totally agree with all of that.
Sadly the deception part would be of little use in PvE.

I undestand that trying to come up with some change, in a pratical way, it’s quite difficult.

It’s not like we’re too weak atm, we just work in a strange way and we are not effective enough in certain situations where illusion just can’t do anything as they are now (wvw zerg).

I think we have only two possible ways to go:
- illusions are always useful (like invulnerable while shattering or for x seconds after created or something like that)
- we can be useful without illusions

But this should be true in all game modes.

More interplay with the clones would be nice. As they are now, they’re summoned, stand still, attack.

- A teleport swap would be ideal. To targeted clone or random if untargeted.
- Some way to absorb a clone, making it run to you, for boon gains.
- A way to smoothly redirect a phantasm’s target. Maybe a utility that focuses all active phantasms to attack current target. Useful when a phantasm’s target is about to die or to spike.