Guild Wars 2

Obviously, condition chronomancer needs a nerf of some kind. I mean I could turn auto target on, put a blind fold on, and spam shatters and beat some people 1v1. But thats not why I created this. Some of us that play mesmer play it because there was a time when power shatter mesmer was the most fun and skilled build in the game. It played a lot like a thief with huge burst and your only survivability being a short invuln and stealth since you pretty much had to go muruader or full zerker to get any decent damage out of it.

Then you guys gave almost everything in the game some sort of reveal and everything’s survivability got buffed with the elite specs. Now you have no way to survive and the famous mesmer burst does about as much as a precision strike on a rev unless you take mental anguish even with scholar runes. Even in wvw where the burst was even more insane, it only does decent damage against people with no armor investment now which is basically nothing left in the game. Outside of the burst shatter mesmer has no sustain damage as greatsword auto attacks do laughable damage. I went roaming in wvw with mesmer today and “bursted” a guardian for 1.2k mind wrecks WITH mental anguish, scholar runes, utility, and food and it crit. My “burst” did somewhere around 4-5k damage and then I’m useless until mind wreck recharges. On top of all that everything in this game seems to have reveal. You guys have buffed thief so much and its still not being used in spvp meta. Shatter mesmer always played similar to thief and has gotten nothing. It is becoming near useless in all game modes.

Power shatter was always high risk high reward. Now its just extremely high risk, no reward. While it can still decimate full zerk thieves and eles, thats if the burst actually lands considering the long obvious wind-up of greatsword 2. I don’t think the base damage of mind wreck needs to be buffed, but with the amount of damage mitigation just being thrown around like its nothing, power shatter mesmer is becoming a dying build.

I just want to throw 3 ideas out there as simple potential buffs to at least make this build usable again.
1. Increase greatsword auto attack damage.
2. Buff mental anguish slightly by making shatters also ignore protection.
3. Rework empowered illusions in Domination so that the player deals increased damage per boon on the opponent.

I’m not saying all three of these need to happen since I think 2 and 3 together could be overkill but right now, power shatter just feels like a class to troll uplevels in wvw.

As I said, I really feel that the problem of power shatter is MOSTLY that there is no place for roamers in the current PvP meta (something which thief is also suffering from).

Every single build in the meta is currently too tanky to be killed in a reasonable amount of time, which prevents efficient roaming.

The main and maybe even only way to fix this is by nerfing sustain and reset potential across the board.

Power shatter is not near useless. It’s underpowered, yes, but far from useless.

I think its biggest issue is that HoT just worked against the build overall. Classes got given more sustain, damage mitigation, evades, blocks, stunbreaks, stability, AoE, and in some cases (such as Revenant), horrible passive CC procs. Power shatter’s all about locking down your opponent and bursting them before they have any time to properly react, but it’s near impossible to do this when you’ve got Dragonhunter’s traps oneshotting your illusions, Revenant chaining together immense amounts of blocks/evades/invulnerability, Tempest healing up whatever damage you deal, etc. It’s a little too hard to land a proper burst, and a bit too punishing to miss one.

To bring it up to standard, I think the sustained damage of the build should be increased a bit more. The burst damage and frequency is fine, but if you miss it, you’re really going to suffer for the next 10 seconds or so. You just can’t keep up decent sustained damage pressure. I’d consider that a valid weakness for the build if not for the fact that any other class/build with comparable burst to power shatter also has the ability to keep a fight going even when the burst is on cooldown. Buffs aimed at increasing power shatter’s sustained pressure would bring it up to par. Things like greatsword’s Mind Stab ripping two boons instead of one, greatsword’s phantasm having less downtime between each attack, sword auto attack’s power scaling increased, buffs to the Dueling trait line, etc.

Having said that, I still strongly believe the build is very good at certain things and still works well if you put enough effort into it.

thankitten.6307:

Obviously, condition chronomancer needs a nerf of some kind. I mean I could turn auto target on, put a blind fold on, and spam shatters and beat some people 1v1. But thats not why I created this.

Hence why you started your thread off with the claim and a stupid amount of hyperbole.

Go back to the thief forum.

thankitten.6307:

Obviously, condition chronomancer needs a nerf of some kind. I mean I could turn auto target on, put a blind fold on, and spam shatters and beat some people 1v1.

Obviously.

Also, bye. Reported for flamebaiting.

I posted that first sentence because I figured someone would bring up why I was asking for mesmer buffs while condi chrono exists. Calm down and can we please stay on the topic of power shatter.

It feels like greatsword has been neglected for a long time now. Power shatter has always been my favorite build in the game and all I’m asking is that its usable. I was thinking about this more and I think that part of the issue is that power shatter has to take domination and dueling which only leaves one trait line open which is obviously going to be chrono. There is no room in the build for defensive trait lines and if you were to take a more defensive trait line, you have to give up so much for it.

Appreciate the responses and curious what others think about the state of power shatter at the moment.

Oh I would like to see the extra bounce on mirror blade restored.

And then give some incentive to run Domination or Duelling over Inspiration/Illusions…

Some small thematic condi cleanse would be a start.

Silverkey.2078:

As I said, I really feel that the problem of power shatter is MOSTLY that there is no place for roamers in the current PvP meta (something which thief is also suffering from).

Every single build in the meta is currently too tanky to be killed in a reasonable amount of time, which prevents efficient roaming.

The main and maybe even only way to fix this is by nerfing sustain and reset potential across the board.

I see your point and agree with you, however I think there is a larger picture here that this idea misses.

Power shatter builds are assassins, right? You look to pounce on somebody when they don’t expect it and blow them up before they can react. This is the mentality that someone who wants to play a power shatter build is likely coming in with. Pair this with the reality that in EB / EotM, you’re likely roaming and finding plenty of people with non-optimized builds or sub-80 levelers. These happily coincide with what an assassin mentality player is looking for – easy targets to blow up.

As a result, I think that Power Shatter, while it may not win any tournaments or do well against another dedicated roamer, is an entertaining setup, and can see plenty of success in what the end-goal of the person playing that type of build is looking for.

Sorry if this is hard to read, kind of just mind-spewing it out while I think through the idea.

Power shatter? Where are phantasm builds? Glamour builds? Basically anything that doesn’t include condition shatters?

To find a thread with a developer or ANet employee response, you have to go THIRTEEN pages deep.

They haven’t abandoned power shatter; they’ve abandoned the entire class.

Silverkey.2078:

As I said, I really feel that the problem of power shatter is MOSTLY that there is no place for roamers in the current PvP meta (something which thief is also suffering from).

Every single build in the meta is currently too tanky to be killed in a reasonable amount of time, which prevents efficient roaming.

The main and maybe even only way to fix this is by nerfing sustain and reset potential across the board.

There is place for roamers in PvP. We have power revenant filling in that role. Condi mesmer can also somewhat roam with portal. It is just that other bursty power specs are not good enough to make the role any more.

Actually I would be very happy is power mesmer is just as good as power thief, power warrior or power dragonhunter. They still won’t have a place in meta but at least somewhat playable. But the current situation is that the only professions that have worse bursty power spec than us are ele, engi(but their bruiser spec already does a lot of damage) and necro. Before HoT, we were probably top 3 in that department.