Guild Wars 2

Trigr.6481:

Levetty.1279:

Trigr.6481:

Levetty.1279:

Axe is terrible damage and its ambush attack looks worse then its auto attack, so Axe clones are going to be useless. If we have Axe in our main hand and aren’t using axe clones then we are back to spending minutes setting up our phantasms again which 6 years of the game has showed us just doesn’t work.

The amount of panic about your displeasure without even playing the new spec is baffling to me. Calm down, play it in a week. That being said not every new tree is going to make everyone happy. Get over it.

We know the mechanics, we have had 6 years of experience in the game to know these mechanics don’t work, we know the damage numbers and condi durations, we don’t need to play them to compare them to what is in this game.

Not every spec is going to please everybody but being usable should be a bare minimum of what to expect out of an elite spec.

Granted you haven’t tested every single amulet, tree, weapon, and sigil combination with the new tree. You’re just looking for a reason to be angry because the new trait line doesn’t appear to specifically suit your needs, go cry somewhere else until you have a real argument to go off of.

Yeah, stat combinations are going to fix fundemental flaws in mechanics. If only one of us had tried that nomad build with Mesmer we would be damage masters.

Not sure about the damage on axe in PvE but I think it will be quite useful in PvP/WvW even if its only for the #3 skill.

And even if the damage is good, there’s the odd chance that this whole “deception” mechanic is going to end up too gimmicky and near useless.

We won’t know until we see it in practice.

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

Levetty.1279:

We know the mechanics, we have had 6 years of experience in the game to know these mechanics don’t work, we know the damage numbers and condi durations, we don’t need to play them to compare them to what is in this game.

I’d be massively impressed if you have six years of experience, Levetty. :P

Carighan.6758:

Levetty.1279:

We know the mechanics, we have had 6 years of experience in the game to know these mechanics don’t work, we know the damage numbers and condi durations, we don’t need to play them to compare them to what is in this game.

I’d be massively impressed if you have six years of experience, Levetty. :P

2012 plus 6 is……is………….is………………………….17?

Pyro stahp trollin plz.
But yeah the game will be out for 5 years on august 25th.

I mean if we have fallen back to making fun of simple mistakes, then I can only presume you don’t have actual arguments against my points about how weak Mirage is.

Levetty.1279:

I mean if we have fallen back to making fun of simple mistakes, then I can only presume you don’t have actual arguments against my points about how weak Mirage is.

Oh come on, I was just poking fun at you! Wasn’t meant as a serious thing.

I’m onto you

so i went frame by frame through peachy’s video and got this screenshot of jaunt’s tooltip with the range barely visible.

400 seems… low. understandable, but….

(in game terms, 400 units is the rollback distance from ranger sword 2, or, the distance travelled with swiftness out of combat in 1 second)

Dethl.2875:

so i went frame by frame through peachy’s video and got this screenshot of jaunt’s tooltip with the range barely visible.

400 seems… low. understandable, but….

(in game terms, 400 units is the rollback distance from ranger sword 2, or, the distance travelled with swiftness out of combat in 1 second)

Wow, good job on figuring this out.

400 is definitely on the low side but this still looks like a decent skill in combat.

Longer range might make it too strong as out-of-combat movement ability.

Dethl.2875:

so i went frame by frame through peachy’s video and got this screenshot of jaunt’s tooltip with the range barely visible.

400 seems… low. understandable, but….

(in game terms, 400 units is the rollback distance from ranger sword 2, or, the distance travelled with swiftness out of combat in 1 second)

It has full range of 1200 (if U use 3 charges) and it give damage so it’s like upgraded blink

Yeah I imagine given you can chain them it could be used as a segmented blink on a longer overall cooldown?

Daredevil’s dash is 450 units, I think Jaunt could afford to match it.

Dethl.2875:

so i went frame by frame through peachy’s video and got this screenshot of jaunt’s tooltip with the range barely visible.

400 seems… low. understandable, but….

(in game terms, 400 units is the rollback distance from ranger sword 2, or, the distance travelled with swiftness out of combat in 1 second)

It would be nice to have 1 good thing on this spec.

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But won’t you be chrono for every group encounter that matters? I feel like mirage is, by default, doomed to be an open world or solo spec.

Levetty.1279:

I mean if we have fallen back to making fun of simple mistakes, then I can only presume you don’t have actual arguments against my points about how weak Mirage is.

Can you show me the gameplay video where you dissect how weak Mirage is with the expansion gear stats? If not, and I know it’s a not because we’re not into next week yet, then you have no argument. All you’ve been doing is putting down the spec despite the fact that:

A: You’ve never played it.
B: You have no idea what new gear we’ll be getting.
C: Your playing since launch experience =/= crystal ball.

You can crunch numbers all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that all you’ve been doing for the past week or whatever is doomsaying without the proof to back it up properly.

flabebe.5209:

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But won’t you be chrono for every group encounter that matters? I feel like mirage is, by default, doomed to be an open world or solo spec.

DPS Condie mesmer doesn’t use chrono.

flabebe.5209:

But won’t you be chrono for every group encounter that matters? I feel like mirage is, by default, doomed to be an open world or solo spec.

Considering Firebrands give Quickness, and they’ll probably push Alacrity somewhere else, why would you waste a slot on a Chronomancer?

I see a lot of references to creating a mirage (i.e. axe 2) but haven’t seen that mechanic listed anywhere – though I may have missed it. Is it just sort of a graphical artifact of you that converts in to a clone? Are they different than mirage mirrors?

Carighan.6758:

flabebe.5209:

But won’t you be chrono for every group encounter that matters? I feel like mirage is, by default, doomed to be an open world or solo spec.

Considering Firebrands give Quickness, and they’ll probably push Alacrity somewhere else, why would you waste a slot on a Chronomancer?

No other class gives the same uptime of quickness and alacrity as chrono. A ventari rev at best sees 60% uptime on alacrity for a short burst of 30 seconds, then it only goes downhill.

Which is how it should be given that if a class is going to have absolutely miserable DPS, the very least the spec can offer is unmatched support.

Zenith.7301:

No other class gives the same uptime of quickness and alacrity as chrono. A ventari rev at best sees 60% uptime on alacrity for a short burst of 30 seconds, then it only goes downhill.

Which is how it should be given that if a class is going to have absolutely miserable DPS, the very least the spec can offer is unmatched support.

Frankly someone else should give the uptime, though. It’s unhealthy to give classes fully unique effects unless (I like class-unique effects, on paper) all classes have these unique effects and are fully built around them.

That is to say, I wouldn’t mind a Chronomancer as the source of Quickness/Alacrity if Rangers are also the source of a percentage damage buff, Elementalists the source of healing, etc etc. But that’s a very problematic design for sPvP, where only 5 players exist per team, hence less than the number of classes.

Alternatively, give each effect a “primary” and a “secondary” class. Guardians already have some significant Quickness on their elite, so it makes sense they’re getting even more, we just need a viable secondary source of Alacrity. If healing were more useful in raids maybe Ventari Revs would bring that anyhow, remains to be seen whether PoF raids are designed better than the HoT ones though.

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

No other class gives the same uptime of quickness and alacrity as chrono. A ventari rev at best sees 60% uptime on alacrity for a short burst of 30 seconds, then it only goes downhill.

Which is how it should be given that if a class is going to have absolutely miserable DPS, the very least the spec can offer is unmatched support.

Frankly someone else should give the uptime, though. It’s unhealthy to give classes fully unique effects unless (I like class-unique effects, on paper) all classes have these unique effects and are fully built around them.

That is to say, I wouldn’t mind a Chronomancer as the source of Quickness/Alacrity if Rangers are also the source of a percentage damage buff, Elementalists the source of healing, etc etc. But that’s a very problematic design for sPvP, where only 5 players exist per team, hence less than the number of classes.

Alternatively, give each effect a “primary” and a “secondary” class. Guardians already have some significant Quickness on their elite, so it makes sense they’re getting even more, we just need a viable secondary source of Alacrity. If healing were more useful in raids maybe Ventari Revs would bring that anyhow, remains to be seen whether PoF raids are designed better than the HoT ones though.

For that to happen, mesmers would need viable and competitive damage/healing builds in PvE, which they don’t.

Anet could fix the immense DPS build disparities by balancing autoattack DPS between weapons to begin with to set a healthy baseline of sustained DPS in PvE, but they don’t give a kitten about PvE class balance.

Which means that if they spread chrono’s unique utility to other classes, mesmer will be deleted from instanced PvE play as it’s the lowest sustained DPS class in game and provides no real healing let alone group support outside alacrity/quickness.

Zenith.7301:

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

No other class gives the same uptime of quickness and alacrity as chrono. A ventari rev at best sees 60% uptime on alacrity for a short burst of 30 seconds, then it only goes downhill.

Which is how it should be given that if a class is going to have absolutely miserable DPS, the very least the spec can offer is unmatched support.

Frankly someone else should give the uptime, though. It’s unhealthy to give classes fully unique effects unless (I like class-unique effects, on paper) all classes have these unique effects and are fully built around them.

That is to say, I wouldn’t mind a Chronomancer as the source of Quickness/Alacrity if Rangers are also the source of a percentage damage buff, Elementalists the source of healing, etc etc. But that’s a very problematic design for sPvP, where only 5 players exist per team, hence less than the number of classes.

Alternatively, give each effect a “primary” and a “secondary” class. Guardians already have some significant Quickness on their elite, so it makes sense they’re getting even more, we just need a viable secondary source of Alacrity. If healing were more useful in raids maybe Ventari Revs would bring that anyhow, remains to be seen whether PoF raids are designed better than the HoT ones though.

For that to happen, mesmers would need viable and competitive damage/healing builds in PvE, which they don’t.

Anet could fix the immense DPS build disparities by balancing autoattack DPS between weapons to begin with to set a healthy baseline of sustained DPS in PvE, but they don’t give a kitten about PvE class balance.

Which means that if they spread chrono’s unique utility to other classes, mesmer will be deleted from instanced PvE play as it’s the lowest sustained DPS class in game and provides no real healing let alone group support outside alacrity/quickness.

Uhh…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6szbmy/dps_benchmarks_power_mesmer_305k309k_power/
It’s looking like a power chrono with decent DPS and only alacrity can be a thing. Would work well enough next to a Firebrand giving quickness.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Zenith.7301:

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

No other class gives the same uptime of quickness and alacrity as chrono. A ventari rev at best sees 60% uptime on alacrity for a short burst of 30 seconds, then it only goes downhill.

Which is how it should be given that if a class is going to have absolutely miserable DPS, the very least the spec can offer is unmatched support.

Frankly someone else should give the uptime, though. It’s unhealthy to give classes fully unique effects unless (I like class-unique effects, on paper) all classes have these unique effects and are fully built around them.

That is to say, I wouldn’t mind a Chronomancer as the source of Quickness/Alacrity if Rangers are also the source of a percentage damage buff, Elementalists the source of healing, etc etc. But that’s a very problematic design for sPvP, where only 5 players exist per team, hence less than the number of classes.

Alternatively, give each effect a “primary” and a “secondary” class. Guardians already have some significant Quickness on their elite, so it makes sense they’re getting even more, we just need a viable secondary source of Alacrity. If healing were more useful in raids maybe Ventari Revs would bring that anyhow, remains to be seen whether PoF raids are designed better than the HoT ones though.

For that to happen, mesmers would need viable and competitive damage/healing builds in PvE, which they don’t.

Anet could fix the immense DPS build disparities by balancing autoattack DPS between weapons to begin with to set a healthy baseline of sustained DPS in PvE, but they don’t give a kitten about PvE class balance.

Which means that if they spread chrono’s unique utility to other classes, mesmer will be deleted from instanced PvE play as it’s the lowest sustained DPS class in game and provides no real healing let alone group support outside alacrity/quickness.

Uhh…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6szbmy/dps_benchmarks_power_mesmer_305k309k_power/
It’s looking like a power chrono with decent DPS and only alacrity can be a thing. Would work well enough next to a Firebrand giving quickness.

30-31k is around what a revenant does, utterly mediocre when thieves, elementalists, and engineers are doing 34-35k+.

What’s worse, power chronomancer’s DPS is tied to a single target with phantasms and no target switching capacity whatsoever.

It’s a gimmick build with little use in raids.

Great find Dethl! I’ll add it to the main post. I am pretty disappointed by that elite. 3 charges, 20 sec recharge, 400 range? Ugh. I guess it has condi removal but that is like a short hop with less range than sword 3.

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But Axe3 only make your Axe clones retarget, not phantasms, not clones using other weapons.

How useful is that in raid?

Exciton.8942:

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But Axe3 only make your Axe clones retarget, not phantasms, not clones using other weapons.

How useful is that in raid?

Read the skill please.

Fay.2357:

Exciton.8942:

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But Axe3 only make your Axe clones retarget, not phantasms, not clones using other weapons.

How useful is that in raid?

Read the skill please.

Okay. If it retargets all illusions, then It will be very useful indeed.

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Near.7439:

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Nah. Sword #3 please…

Xaylin.1860:

Near.7439:

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Nah. Sword #3 please…

That would be sick. I’m just thinking Mirage utilities are still up for minor changes so they could throw us a bone there but I like the sword3 idea better.

Xaylin.1860:

Near.7439:

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Nah. Sword #3 please…

Imagine if sword 3 detargets you from all opponents, forces your targeted opponent to retarget the clone and gives the clone 1s blur on spawning. :o

Maybe a bit crazy but kitten that would be sweet.

Curunen.8729:

Xaylin.1860:

Near.7439:

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Nah. Sword #3 please…

Imagine if sword 3 detargets you from all opponents, forces your targeted opponent to retarget the clone and gives the clone 1s blur on spawning. :o

Maybe a bit crazy but kitten that would be sweet.

Detarget is a mirage thing and should stay that way, but sword 3 definitely should gain the ability to retarget illusions.

Honestly retargeting illusions/phantasms should not be locked behind an elite spec and should be a function of the third step of the autoattack chain for all weapons.

Mesmer needs target switching to be a thing.

And shatters need to be relevant at some point other than being fodder for continuum split.

I don’t understand how hard it is to make shatters do damage in PvE without shattering your phantasms, so they function like warrior burst except phantasms are not consumed but shatters are still gated behind cooldowns.

Cry of Frustration has been garbage since it’s existed, and diversion should have been aoe baseline with a lower cd so mesmer isn’t the garbage cc class overshadowed by thieves and warriors for breakbar damage.

Fay.2357:

Curunen.8729:

Xaylin.1860:

Near.7439:

How neat would it be if Jaunt also worked like Axe3, detargets and moves all illusions to closest enemy. Then even power builds could use it.

Nah. Sword #3 please…

Imagine if sword 3 detargets you from all opponents, forces your targeted opponent to retarget the clone and gives the clone 1s blur on spawning. :o

Maybe a bit crazy but kitten that would be sweet.

Detarget is a mirage thing and should stay that way, but sword 3 definitely should gain the ability to retarget illusions.

I guess I was a bit sleepy. I indeed meant the retarget part not the detarget part. Would just make so much sense for this skill and would help baseline Mesmer a lot.

Zenith.7301:

Honestly retargeting illusions/phantasms should not be locked behind an elite spec and should be a function of the third step of the autoattack chain for all weapons.

Um… why? I mean at that point, I’d prefer to get rid of the needless complexity, just remove Phantasms, and give us extra attack skills instead.

utility 3, from the soulbeast/renegade datamining thread on reddit.

Last utility, from the same thread on reddit.

LeCardCaptor.6730:

Last utility, from the same thread on reddit.

Tbh that’s a bit… boring? I mean it’s kind of copy paste of axe 3.

Edit: Ok I can see it being useful for other weapons, although the cooldown looks a bit high.

Curunen.8729:

LeCardCaptor.6730:

Last utility, from the same thread on reddit.

Tbh that’s a bit… boring? I mean it’s kind of copy paste of axe 3.

Edit: Ok I can see it being useful for other weapons, although the cooldown looks a bit high.

Yep but range is twice of the axe skill

pico.6402:

Curunen.8729:

LeCardCaptor.6730:

Last utility, from the same thread on reddit.

Tbh that’s a bit… boring? I mean it’s kind of copy paste of axe 3.

Edit: Ok I can see it being useful for other weapons, although the cooldown looks a bit high.

Yep but range is twice of the axe skill

Good point – precasting mirror blade, hitting this utility straight into mind wrack could be pretty good for power mesmer. I can see the complaints already. :p

I’m just struggling to think how it could take the place of any of the other amazing utility skills we have.

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

Honestly retargeting illusions/phantasms should not be locked behind an elite spec and should be a function of the third step of the autoattack chain for all weapons.

Um… why? I mean at that point, I’d prefer to get rid of the needless complexity, just remove Phantasms, and give us extra attack skills instead.

That’s actually been my suggestion. To make phantasms one strike summons with increased damage to compensate for the fact they’re not permanent. Lower cd to 8 sec cd.

They’d be our equivalent to 100b/Vault.

That would allow for shatters to make it into the PvE rotation as you can now shatter clones freely.

Removing 3 phantasms and making them one big strike (might have to buff sword auto too) will also remove the complaints in PvP about pets doing damage for a class.

LeCardCaptor.6730:

Last utility, from the same thread on reddit.

This is of course going to be mandatory on certain raid bosses, but the 30s cooldown means it’s not viable in fractals or general pve. It’s a solution we’ve needed for a long time, but unfortunately it’s quite badly designed.

1. The effect is stapled to a shadowstep/evade, which are powerful in pvp and mean that they can’t give it a shorter cooldown in pve. It’s a pretty textbook case of a need for splitting between game modes.

2. It occupies a utility slot and, worse, is locked behind an elite spec when some version of it should really be baked into the main class. It’s looking like Mirage will only be taken by condi specs unless the sword ambush skill is a 15-20% dps gain (extremely unlikely), so power mesmers will never get it. Condi specs by contrast will have a really hard time slotting it because two slots are already required for signet passives (one of which should really be rebalanced to a dd bonus), and it also makes axe 3 redundant since that one only moves clones.

Having looked over the Mirage traits and skills I have to say that from a WvW perspective this is going to be my choice going forward. I’ll still have my zerk Chrono builds that I can swap to when facing certain situations but I think Mirage zerk and condi will perform exactly how I’ve wanted mesmer to perform since release.

Pretty excited!

I was disappointed it is all condition damage, primarily confusion. Mesmer already has several skills and builds that do the same thing. This seems pretty redundant. Will test and see how the mechanics work and if it works with power, but very disappointing so far.

I rather see it as hybrid spec, the fact is if we want to have good use of our illusion retarget skills we need to change target before last one will be dead, so we need to hit hard, put some condie, then change target and let condie do it work.

I can see Illusionary Ambush being very strong. It’s an instant dodge, long range blink, and burst.

I want to see more details regarding Mirage Advance though.
Will there be a time limit between your initial shadowstep & your return like with Thief Shadowstep? Or is it going to be an infinite duration?
Does look like a really interesting skill though.

Too bad both seem to require a target to use. (I assume at least.)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Split_Surge

someone got GS ambush. It’s better than the Auto by a bit but if clones do some similar damage this would be good.

Refia Montes.3205:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Split_Surge

someone got GS ambush. It’s better than the Auto by a bit but if clones do some similar damage this would be good.

It looks like what GS normal auto attack should be and still rather weak.

Clones will do about 30 damage with that because they still do normal clone damage with the scepter ambush.