Guild Wars 2

Recently I realized that after you cast a mantra, the cool down for the mantra immediately counts down even if you don’t finish using the mantra charges.

For example, If I were to cast Mantra of Recovery (10 second CD), I will get Power Return (2 charges of it without traits). However, the cooldown for Mantra of Recovery immediately starts counting down even if I don’t finish using the charges.

I don’t remember this being the case before, what’s the point of a CD if it counts down before you finish using the skill? With the new changes to Prismatic Understanding trait (double stealth time), there is no way anybody can beat mantra pu builds, because the long stealth is enough to cast the mantra and let the CD finish.

Preeetty sure this was in the June 23rd patch notes.

And no, the cooldown isn’t pointless, it’s still a cooldown. The minimum time to use another 3 charges of Mantra of Recovery (traited) is 12.75s (10s cooldown, 2.75s channel) and you can’t use 6 charges in a row, you’ll always have at least 2.75s between two chains of three.

Getting 12 seconds of stealth requires blowing torch4 and decoy, which requires you to have a generally inferior offhand and use a utility skill.

ALL THAT SAID.

Someone did the math behind Mantra of Recovery, and you are correct that it totally blows away other healing skills in healing per second. It’s probably got too low of a cooldown.

Personally, I’m not fond of the channel time.

Major mantra QoL update. You’ll feel the presence of those channels, and even the CD’s when pressed. Especially when running multiple mantras.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Someone did the math behind Mantra of Recovery, and you are correct that it totally blows away other healing skills in healing per second. It’s probably got too low of a cooldown.

Personally, I’m not fond of the channel time.

However that is actually a nice way of implementing implicit skill splits: in PvE mobs will almost never interrupt your channel, but you need that kind of healing output when enemies deal massive damage and can’t be bursted down.
In PvP you can’t do that, because you’ll be fodder for enemy interrupt specs, massively lowering the attainable hp/s. If there is any problem it’s how many recharges you can cover with MoC+MoD(PB on their interrupt)+PU stealth, and that “problem” isn’t unique to mantra channels.

The numbers might be a little off, but the theoretical hp/s should stay way above the other heals.

I really love the background charge thing. Now mantra is viable.
But mantra of recovery should get a CD increase

Yea it was a required mantra buff and now they are totally fine. The charge time is like the cd replacement, they now feel unique and smooth! I love the mantras now, it’s so much better than b4.

To be honest any adjustment to mantra’s should be in charge time. Bump it up to 3.0s and mantra’s become more in line with other skills. Alternatively, reduce the cooldown and boost charge time up again. I could live with 0 cooldown and 5s charge time. Then the balance becomes finding the time to prepare the spell, not preventing you from using it if you are not getting focused.

I mean… if MoR has the best hp/s that’s fine, imo, because you’re not attacking for 25% of the time, meaning you’re dropping your dps by about 10-20% (not actually 25% because you can use it when you’re in the middle of your low damage skills, such as auto attacks while waiting for phants/other skills).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Someone did the math behind Mantra of Recovery, and you are correct that it totally blows away other healing skills in healing per second. It’s probably got too low of a cooldown.

Is this still assuming you take HM and/or got the Inspiration line for condition removal? Or is it now superior even without those?

Ether Feast 374 hp/s (3 illusions)
Mirror 261 hp/s untraited, 326 traited
Signet 326 hp/s passive (3 illusions), 159 hp/s active untraited, 214 traited
Mantra 411 hp/s baseline, 615 RM, 616 HM, 820 RM+HM

Based on wiki values at 0 healing power. Note doubling the cooldown would absolutely gut the skill even if traited, and reaching the mantra hp/s means a raw statistical dps loss of ~10% even against traited Mirror (which is the nextmost spammy heal)

Wow, that’s a lot. And that is without assuming that the first time you spend the charges you can immediately recharge, right?

Nope, heal divided by cooldown. I assumed the other heals start cooling down immediately, so their numbers might be a bit lower in pratice (only a bit, Mirror would lose less than 10%)

Precharged mantra would net you 18320 hp in about 9s (Power Return cooldown…), but there is no point in calculating time averages for that without a specific build (stealth camping times etc.)

Zarathustra.1458:

To be honest any adjustment to mantra’s should be in charge time. Bump it up to 3.0s and mantra’s become more in line with other skills.

You mean they get back to the “noone uses them” place where they finally came out of? No thank you sir, I’d rather take the old CD back than a longer cast time…