Guild Wars 2

So a while ago I was reading through the “Things I Hate Seeing Other Mesmers Do” thread and came across a bit of a tiff regarding the use of our F1-F4 shatter skills. The problem with our class mechanic is that unless you are speced into a fairly narrow set of traits making use of it can be quite deleterious to both DPS and survival, so I started thinking about a way to make our F skills more useful for more Mesmer builds without changing a ton of coding or existing shatter builds.

This idea is half-baked and needs some fleshing out, but this is what I came up with. Remove the CDs on F1 and F2 shatters and greatly reduce the CDs and F3 and F4 shatters. Instead of making the F keys kill all cones and phantasms, make 1 press of an F key kill 1 clone. If you want to a 3 clone Mind Wrack, you just mash the F1 key 3 times. F skills would prioritize clones and then phantasms based on distance from the target.

This change would mess with damage scaling based on number of illusions shattered and the shatter skill CD reduction bonus from the Illusions trait line. However, the damage scaling could be overcome by giving the Mesmer a buff that increases shatter damage and condition duration whenever a shatter skill successfully lands. Going into the Illusions trait line could increase the duration of this buff allowing the Mesmer to maintain more stacks. This buff mechanic would also insure that Mesmers could only achieve really big burst by going all in as is currently necessary; however, it would allow other builds to make more intelligent use of their F skills without completely loosing momentum.

looks good on paper, in practice you’d have to remember exactly which clones you summoned first or last or second while moving while they move and while you spawn more ontop of those and those that get destroyed out of order etc etc etc…

the problem with your second part to your theory is that Mesmers are bound to builds that are either Shatter, or Non Shatter. a Non shatter based build will always suffer from hitting an F skill even if its just 1 phantasm or clone that goes up in purple smoke.

Mesmers need a different class mechanic to really open up diversity imo, not a rework on shatters.

Mantra’s could have been a much better Class mechanic for us
F1 MoP – do damage, trait to add like confusion or something
F2 MoC – Condition cleanse – trait to add protection or whatever
F3 MoD – Same as F3 Now – trait to make it a stun or blah blah…
F4 MoS – Stability or invuln with Stability at the end.. blah blah..

Charge these up before the fight starts, use them wisely during the fight, if you have to recharge them in battle its a risk etc…

Anet should have tied Clone summons into Dual chains similar to the Necro/Engi/Ele counter parts, where the shatter is tied to that clone/phantasm

Phase Retreat – make a clone and SS backwards —> use --→ Phase somethingelseclever – shatter your clone causing cripple/bleed/vuln to nearby foes (takes the place of DD, opens up space for a new trait)

Ofc this would limit clone generation a bit and remove the need for DE or maybe change DE into something else like timed clone bombs.. idk..

It could also mean anet couldn’t keep our damage and defense so kitten low with the class mechanic excuse as much as they currently do.

Thats what i would personally like to see happen with the mesmer.

I vehemently disagree with any idea to change our profession mechanic to something else entirely.

I think I can get behind Feaduin’s idea, but I feel like it should and could be engineered a little better. We can generate a very large number of clones in well under the time it takes for Mind Wrack to come up. On one hand, the idea of just constantly hitting F1 for an endless barrage of shattering clones sounds kind of cool; however, a mechanic like that discourages keeping clones up and utilizing them at all. Why should I leave any clone out at all? It’s not fooling anyone, it’s not dealing damage, and it’s going to die if I don’t use it. May as well fire it off.

To fix that, I suggest a supporting mechanic named something like this: Clarity of Thought.

Functionally, it is Initiative but for only our profession skills(nothing else, ever). Every three seconds, we get one pip(total of three? Maybe five?) to our Clarity gauge; our shatter skills each consume 1-3 points.

The direct impact of this change is mind wrack wouldn’t actually be usable much more than it already can, and more importantly from a game design perspective, makes our shatter skills a more “meaningful” choice. Right now, if we have three clones up, we don’t really sacrifice much of anything by using them all… we just dodge roll/Mirror Images/whatever else and have more ammunition up immediately. By limiting ALL of our profession skills, I think our choices would become more tactical.

In addition, under this supporting mechanic, I think we could actually do away with the cooldown on F3 and F4 if we also made those skills use all of our illusions and retain equivalent effects to their current functionalities. This would prevent immobilizing people (Daze spam with Dom XII or Chaos XI) for phantasm rushes too easily.

Furthermore, Clarity of Thought can stand in for the shatter cooldown reduction in Illusions; 6 points in Illusions would make CoT regenerate a pip every two seconds(or so).

With all that said, my idea would create for a much busier UI. I think it would be fun, but it might also be a bit too much.

As for a PvP aspic having F1 and F2 skills with no CD is Overpowered… For a GC shatter spec and a Condition spec. F3 combined with halting strike is a force to be reckoned with and having the CD “reduced greatly” will further drive mesmers beyond OP.

even with shattering 1 clone at a time. Mirror Blade + Mind Wrack does ALOT of damage to squishy targets specially with Crit + weapon Proc(air/fire or both)+ Illusionary Persona, Adding Deceptive evasion, and all the other clone abilities you can just barrage people with clones continently

There’s a very “simple” change to our class mechanic which would add so much flavour and usability to the class:

• Swap Shatter-effects to be weapon- or utility-skills. They destroy 1 clone (or 1 phantasm if no clone is available) for a specific effect, be it clearing conditions, leaping forward, crippling a target, simple damage, etc.
• Swap Illusion-Generation-effects to be our F1-F4 skills. So say, F1 creates 1 clone on a short CD, F2 creates 3 clones (which can overflow temporarily!) on a long CD, F3 creates a weapon-based phantasm doing high damage on a medium CD and F4 creates a defensive Phantasmal Defender on a medium~long CD.

There’s a few extra considerations, ofc.
We have a lot of clone-/phantasms-generation skills and some of the clone skills have secondary effects. As these would now be shatter skills they would need a careful look to see what their secondary effects would become.
As for the Phantasmal Defender, make it DW a Scepter and a Shield (yeah! ) and make it either proc the bubble by meleeing with the scepter, absorbing damage, or if the target has 10s+ of total boon duration remaining it’ll instead cast a 900 range bouncing dispel bolt to mirror the current Disenchanter. Attack speed should be increased to compensate for it now having two defensive roles. The thing should also have considerably higher defence.

Speaking of which, as we have a very limited illusion output after that change, I’d propose making all clones and phantasm be as durable as a rather defensively geared Mesmer. Wasting time on a clone should not be immediately obvious if you don’t watch the animation.