Guild Wars 2

Mesmer:

Deception: This downed-state skill no longer requires a target in order to cast.

Dev note: This will allow for mesmers to better use their survival skill when facing an opponent using stealth.

Phantasmal Mage: The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with their attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage’s rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.

Dev note: This change should improve the overall pressure applied by the mage.

Confusing Images: The duration of confusion from this skill has been increased from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.

Dev note: This skill is all about confusion, and we feel that if you’re able to successfully land it, enemies should feel the pain!

Time Warp: The cooldown on this skill has been reduced from 210 seconds to 180 seconds.

Dev note: This is a general usability improvement to give mesmers a better support option for allies.

Illusion of Life: The cooldown on this skill has been reduced from 130 seconds to 120 seconds.

Dev note: Further improvements in support!

Phantasmal Defender: The cooldown on this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.

Dev note: This reduction should increase survivability a bit by enabling the defender to be active more often.

Thoughts?

I like all of the changes, but I’m worried they’ll think that that’s enough to make the iMage great instead of a more significant rework, particularly since they appear to have slightly nerfed it as well, by making it attack slower.

I don’t know why they just can’t give IMage a small AoE hit. This’d at least allow Mesmers using him to troll multiple attackers. Other than that, he (and IWarlock, not to mention Sceptre #1/3 could honestly use a modest speed increase.)

However, these are at least buffs. Unless(until?!) they break more mechanics.

Where was this?! I love them all, especially the iMage, and Confusing Images changes. An overall buff to mesmer’s confusion application.
Couple of other stuff we’ve been asking for too, which is great!

No nerfs! Hell yeah haha.
CD reduction should make IoL and Time Warp hopefully even more viable in PvP. Insane CD reduction on TimeWarp
I LOVE the downed state skill buff.
Also good thing they gave us more confusion (duration/application), a step in the right direction IMO. True lockdown builds which would punish any skill use via confusion (+ have all the interrupts, halting strike, CI procs ect) would be great and with a few more confusion related buffs for us(put confusion on scepter AA instead of torment and increase the cast to not make it OP) and we will have those!

Great changes- any improvements are good in my book!

I like the buff to confusion in PvE… though I’m still going to be wary of it until I can test out the impact it’ll have. Confusion buff + iMage buff might be enough to make it competitive in some cases.

A little bummed that there aren’t more WvW group-specific changes. We got some improvements to less-used skills, sure. However, I’d still like to see our group-oriented skills improved a bit further.

was just about to post these myself before i double checked…

Cant say i’m terribly impressed with any changes aside from that to TW which is lovely.

iMage will still be a useless kitten that cant hit anything but atleast when it does hit that dolyak in WvW, we know it’ll have even more confusion on it than before…

Defender cd reduction doesnt make the phantasm anymore appealing to me

IoL 10s CD reduction is a joke. doesnt change anything and it’s still a kitten version of all other profession revival skills..

Confusion duration increase would be awesome IF they also increased Confusion damage in PvP. The duration increase + 33% damage increase for PvE still isnt going to get you more than 2/3k per attack every 12 seconds to 30 seconds depending on what your fighting..

Overall impression

I think its a cute attempt at a nice gesture towards mesmer players but it’s not really fixing or changing anything of any real weight or importance. It’s more hand waving and distraction to try and cover up whats potentially behind the curtain.

plus we dont even know what changes will actually make it, be bugged, bug something else, break something else, be changed to be worse than before, dropped entirely and forgotten about, what changes are not being listed, etc .. etc..

Great changes, but they seem random. Hopefully there’s a chance they’ll fix previous blunders such as ruining Mimic and Blinding Befuddlement and the creation of the abomination that is Disrupter’s Sustainment.

The Image change is good on paper, IF it HITS. I would rather have them fix the pathing of projectile first.

The confusing images one, I dont get it. Yes if you land all stacks it should hurt, which during the channel you are vulnerable to interrupts. Second, at 100% condi duration, this would be like 14 secs confusion on a 9.5 sec cd (traited)

Why not retain the duration and make instant 5 stacks? IMO, the duration would not matter if the reliable source application is there.

Where dya get this info pyro?

PS: They should get the forum specialist ASAP. some of the changes look good, (a buff is a buff). But i have no idea if they really know what the mesmer class needs. This items chosen for the changes are really inferior to the ones we really need. (Fix the traits first, confusion ones – make the changes realistic in practice)

StickerHappy.8052:

Where dya get this info pyro?

since i’m still here… and people are still asking

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/preview-of-upcoming-balance-changes/

The Time Warp change is lovely. Not sure adding stack of confusion, adding a second and taking away a second of cast time will help that fail phantom any though. Couldn’t they have thought of something better to help it? Illusion of life, still won’t be taking a slot on my already full bar. Defender remains meh.

Time warp though…that’s an awesome change. So thanks for not hitting us with a nerf bat this time ANet! Please don’t break more things!

Too much love, expect nerfs.

So I can only post once an hour, better write something valuable.

ANet has the tendency to make stuff look good on paper and terrible ingame.

We will just have to wait and see how things are after the patch.

Deception: Nice bit of help against Thieves in particular.

Phantasmal Mage: will still under perform due to the terrible projectile tracking, long cooldown and now even longer time between attacks. Needs an overhaul as it’s still not fun to use.

Confusing Images: change is strange as the real issue with the skill was the long channel time. Coupled with the slow Ether Bolt attack chain, scepter is still a rather clunky and often not very fun weapon to use.

Time Warp: nice change, but surely it would have been more interesting to just make it a glamour?

Illusion of Life and Phantasmal Defender: don’t think I even use these enough to comment on how anything will change. yay?

No love for the functionless glamour and Grandmaster traits or poor old Mimic with it’s newly superfluous functionality

Fay.2357:

Thoughts?

I like all of the changes, but I’m worried they’ll think that that’s enough to make the iMage great instead of a more significant rework, particularly since they appear to have slightly nerfed it as well, by making it attack slower.

First of all, I’m not “excited”. The changes are okay but that’s it. Most changes positively affect skills which need help. However, they are either uninspired or – at least from my point of view – not enough or the right thing to do.

guys, u r all happy about the buffs, me too, but..

what r we gonna do w all the new bugs?

Wyrden.4713:

guys, u r all happy about the buffs, me too, but..

what r we gonna do w all the new bugs?

Don’t think about that for now~

Just smile and act like they won’t exist, and maybe they’ll disappear…

Umm guys?

iMage, 3 stacks, 4 stacks, 50 stacks, 500 stacks? It doesn’t matter how many stacks if mechanically the iMage is flawed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHY6gJRhXM

Jurica.1742:

No nerfs! Hell yeah haha.
CD reduction should make IoL and Time Warp hopefully even more viable in PvP. Insane CD reduction on TimeWarp
I LOVE the downed state skill buff.
Also good thing they gave us more confusion (duration/application), a step in the right direction IMO. True lockdown builds which would punish any skill use via confusion (+ have all the interrupts, halting strike, CI procs ect) would be great and with a few more confusion related buffs for us(put confusion on scepter AA instead of torment and increase the cast to not make it OP) and we will have those!

There is no synergy between True Lockdown builds (CS, halting strike, interrupts, CI) and confusion. Out interrupt/lockdown builds and the great synergy we have it entirely power related. That’s not to say you can’t use interrupts to good effect in a condition build (MoD is MoD, and perplexity runes are fantastic. BI is always a great trait too as far as trait choices go), but a truly powerful rupt/lockdown build is power based thanks to the synergy between weapons and traits.

Inb4 Helseth video about how these changes will destroy mesmer and ruin gw2.

cyyrix.6105:

Inb4 Helseth video about how these changes will destroy mesmer and ruin gw2.

“Whatch out for the new iMage, AI spam newb mesmer meta, ya? It’ll be 5 man Mesmer teams running nothing but scepter/torch with signit of ether!”

I got mixed feelings about this.

• Deception: This change is utterly AWESOME! I can’t count how many times i got finished without any possibility of resistance, just because a thief was equipping an offhand dagger… but now it’s payback time!

• Phantasmal Mage Change: Somehow i’am not surprised… a-net buffed something condition-related again. I usually try to avoid using the torch, since it’s phantasm absolutely sucks powerwise (why taking it if i could have an iSwordsman or iDuelist?), and because it’s trait would prevent me from choosing ‘Greatsword Training’ or ‘Shattered Concentration’, but depending on my opponents capability to dish out conditions, i may have to take a traited torch with me. Any increase in the timeframe between iMages attacks decreases the chance of it getting rid of two (or maybe even more) conditions on me, and when playing shatter i might not be able to ‘wait another second’ before shattering it.

• Confusing Images: well, yet another condibuff to scepter (who would have thought :P ?). I don’t really mind it – my damage won’t profit much from it, and i’am not sure how much of a difference this will make for even dedicated condition builds.

• Time Warp: I always found the Cooldown to be a bit on the high side. 180s seem far more apropiate than 240s. I wonder where it will be used though. Dungeons? PvP? In Open World PvE isn’t all that useful due to it’s relatively high Cooldown. Roamers and Havoc groups prefer Mass Invisibility over Time Warp (for obvious reasons), which kinda limits the usage of Time Warp to accellerating your teammates attacks on tower-doors (i sooo wish it would work on inmobile siege like rams or catapults). All in All i like this one, it’s just not relevant to me.

• Illusion of Life: This skill was useless, is useless, will be useless, and is doomed to stay useless for all eternity. Except if there is some Moa near to use it as rallytool during the 15 seconds… No, scratch that, this skill still sucks.

• Phantasmal Defender: i like the reduction of Cooldown for this one. Unfortunately, it’s astronomically long casting time of 1½ seconds is a far greater threat to my health than it’s cooldown. 1½ seconds, during which you have to eat all kind of damage (lest you interrupt the summoning process) and are easily interruptable. Thats even more Casting Time than the future-version of Killshot. And if i were to decide, i would say that Killshot does offer far more for its casting time than illusionary Defender does (one-Hit K.O from tanky soldier Warrior on Zerky Mesmer after baiting all of the latters dodges by mindlessly spamming all of his skills vs. 50% less damage received with a set Buffer which can even be directly attacked – or the same time as the mesmer, making it even worse)

Overall the changes are kinda ‘meh’ in my Opinion, especially when the other classes (except eles) get such nice ones. And hey, the thief even got

Blinding Power: This skill no longer interrupts your own skills.

now, where is that change for our ‘decoy’ :O !?

Ross Biddle.2367:

Umm guys?

iMage, 3 stacks, 4 stacks, 50 stacks, 500 stacks? It doesn’t matter how many stacks if mechanically the iMage is flawed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHY6gJRhXM

Exactly this. Yet people are so happy with the so called buff. :o.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Jurica.1742:

No nerfs! Hell yeah haha.
CD reduction should make IoL and Time Warp hopefully even more viable in PvP. Insane CD reduction on TimeWarp
I LOVE the downed state skill buff.
Also good thing they gave us more confusion (duration/application), a step in the right direction IMO. True lockdown builds which would punish any skill use via confusion (+ have all the interrupts, halting strike, CI procs ect) would be great and with a few more confusion related buffs for us(put confusion on scepter AA instead of torment and increase the cast to not make it OP) and we will have those!

There is no synergy between True Lockdown builds (CS, halting strike, interrupts, CI) and confusion. Out interrupt/lockdown builds and the great synergy we have it entirely power related. That’s not to say you can’t use interrupts to good effect in a condition build (MoD is MoD, and perplexity runes are fantastic. BI is always a great trait too as far as trait choices go), but a truly powerful rupt/lockdown build is power based thanks to the synergy between weapons and traits.

I disagree. I run with a Condition CI build. I must say, its on par with a power spec if not more dangerous. Ask Chaos.

Meh. Pretty cool, and nothing that’ll make people cry for nerfs.

One day, Offhand sword… You’ll get your buff.

It is kinda pointless to buff Confusion Images and iMage like this. The core problem has always been the application (channel attack / slow projectile). Same goes for Confusion damage increase by 33% in PVE. It doesn’t solve the core problem.

But i like the rest of the changes. Finally no more desperate tabbing for a target in down state.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like several people have the wrong idea about the change in the rate of fire for the iMage.

• Phantasmal Mage: The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with their attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage’s rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.

For example, if the RoF was 1 attack every 5 seconds, wouldn’t reducing the RoF by 1 second thus mean 1 attack every 4 seconds? That’s how I’m reading it anyway. (Not that this matters much, as the projectile never seems to hit anyway.)

canadez.5328:

It is kinda pointless to buff Confusion Images and iMage like this. The core problem has always been the application (channel attack / slow projectile). Same goes for Confusion damage increase by 33% in PVE. It doesn’t solve the core problem.

But i like the rest of the changes. Finally no more desperate tabbing for a target in down state.

EXACTLY, the problem with CONFUSION, is The APPLICATION.

First of all I want say I’m glad Anet is FINALLY telling us why they are making changes. That is a huge for understanding their direction and focusing feedback. Now they just need to relax about it. The notes are way too professional. This is a game and they should be the first ones having fun!

Now onto my thoughts…

The Deception change is a step in the right direction as it will help against stealthed opponents. The bigger problem, however, is that we can’t choose where we blink to. That is was really needs to be addressed.

I really have to test Phantasmal Mage to see if it’s any better but I feel it really needs a cooldown reduction and some projectile tracking. I think they mean the rate of fire has a second chopped off if it, which means the phantasm attacks more often. I’ll have to ask for clarity on that.

I don’t have an opinion about Confusing Images because I feel confusion needs to be changed. It’s too similar to retaliation. I would rather confusion stack to 5 max and burn a stack to cause an interrupt on the enemy’s next attack. The durations would have to be shortened dramatically for this but it would give it its own identity.

The Time Warp change is welcomed but I would rather it be listed as a glamour and chill all enemies inside of it. That would truly make it feel elite.

I refuse to use Illusion of Life until it fully revives. My suggestion is to have it turn everyone it revives into a clone of the mesmer with all the benefits associated with clones. The clones shatter using Mind Wrack after 10 seconds or upon receiving 10% damage. The mesmer can also use their shatters to trigger it.

Phantasmal Defender’s change grants a small “yay” from my support mesmer but I’d rather it be a stunbreaker. That would give it more utility than a cooldown reduction.

Now my personal issues…

Mimic needs to be readdressed. Personally I say it should allow us to recast the last skill we used and then use that skill’s cooldown. That would fit with the theme and be a LOT more useful that the present interpretation.

Mantras still feel clunky to me. I suggest charging one gives it one charge but the continuously gain more over time so mesmers aren’t stuck in the situation where they have to burn a charge just so they can stack the max again.

Because of all the recent nerfs, Illusionary Leap feels bland now. I think its range should be increased to 900 so mesmers have a real gap-closing option.

Power Block needs to work on thieves. It’s ridiculous that a trait meant to punish spammers doesn’t work on the profession that’s known for spamming.

Remove the internal cooldown from Blinding Befuddlement or crank it down to 1 second and let us have our Glamour build again. It was the only one I wanted to use in WvW.

Warshade.2984:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like several people have the wrong idea about the change in the rate of fire for the iMage.

I also interpreted it as a buff, but it is a little ambiguous.

iMage still useless :

- Bouncing one time on enemy. It could actually be good if it worked like Mirror Blade.
- Pathing and speed.

Devs should just rework the trait and remove the condi removal if it’s scaring them to buff the torch. I believe that most of mesmers use Mender’s Purity or MoR for condi removal anyway.

In general ? Beside Deception. Meh.

Time Wrap CD reduction is nice (though I still think It should be made a Glamour) as is the change to deception (though still a pretty lack luster set of skills), the rest just miss the point completely about what is wrong with the skills as does the general buff to confusion in PvE.

Also still no solution to Mesmers slow speed in Open World and WvW

Warshade.2984:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like several people have the wrong idea about the change in the rate of fire for the iMage.

• Phantasmal Mage: The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with their attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage’s rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.

For example, if the RoF was 1 attack every 5 seconds, wouldn’t reducing the RoF by 1 second thus mean 1 attack every 4 seconds? That’s how I’m reading it anyway. (Not that this matters much, as the projectile never seems to hit anyway.)

Well, if you interpret the Rate of Fire like that (which – by the way – i would do as well usually), the actual RoF would be a numerical value having the unit [1/s]. Reducing the “Rate of Fire” by one second would mean that you’re subtracting one second from said value, and the result would have the nonsensical Unit [(1/s)-s]. The very concept of “reducing a rate by a second” seems rather strange

Now i see mainly two possibilities:
a) they said “rate of fire” (i would prefer attack-frequency in this case, but thats another matter), but meant the “period” (timeframe between two attacks) instead. In this case you’re right: the period would be decreased by 1 second, thus increasing the attack-frequency/rate of fire, which would be a solid buff to it.

b) they increased the period by 1 second (nerfing the skill), and the writer mixed things up: He could have been thinking about the ‘real’ Rate of Fire when he/she wrote ‘The Rate of Fire has been reduced", and then about the period when he/she wrote ’by 1 second.’. This isn’t as far fetched as it may sound – increases/decreases in RoF are easy to imagine, but the numerical value of a rate might be not as intuitive as timeframe between two attacks: Telling us how the RoF went from 0,166[1/s] to 0,142[1/s] isn’t very intuitive, but everyone has some sort of idea of how long ‘one second more’ is. My guess is this is what happened here, but then again, it’s only a feeling

It’s all buffs, so it’s hard not to love it.

Very minor changes and not exactly ones that were really needed.

1. #3 scepter it’s issue is not at the duration of the stacks, but at the casting time, so this buff is only towards massive aids condi builds in WvW.
2. The buff on I-mage, same story as with #3 scepter, is not the correct buff to give. It’s cooldown is the problem, which should be reduced to at least 25 seconds.
3. Downed state buff is okay I guess. Not something we truely needed. If they wanted to buff it they could aswell just allow us to sign a specific spot where we want it to teleport to instead of this buff.
4. Time Warp buff is not the buff to be made to make it useful again. If they kept it 210 and made it ethereal it would have so many more options than it does now. Not only that but it would be much more in-line with the other confusion buffs they giving this patch. Though I must say that 210 seconds was awefully lot and 180 should be in any case the cooldown, especially when comparing it to other elites.
5. Illusion of Life is very minor and almost not even worth mentioning. If they reduced the cooldown to 100 it would actually be noticeable. A 10 seconds reduction means an 8 seconds reduction with the reduced cooldown trait. I don’t think anyone will notice this over a cooldown of 90+ seconds…
6. Phantasmal Defender
   Now this is something I completely don’t understand. This phantasm is not something you would ever pick over the current utilities because with every meta build, shattering illusions is almost a main thing to do. Not only that but what’s wrong with this skill at first is the casting time and it’s purpose. Maybe if casting time would be instant instead of 1.5, its cooldown would be reduced to 25 and it would become a stun breaker it would actually become useful in practice against thieves or so. Where you stunbreak their basilisk venom, neglect the rest of the incomming damage and just counter burst right after because you’re less worried about staying alive.

I have to say I understood it the same as Warshade, I believe it was meant as a buff and not a nerf to attack rate. Obviously they’re trying to boost this Phantasm, and I have a hard time believing that they think the extra stack and 1s duration warrants a nerf in attack speed to compensate. That would be pretty silly and self-defeating.

It makes more sense that they mean the rate of fire increases.

Just my 2 cents, but that’s the way it sounds to me and makes more sense. Otherwise it would be a really small boost to damage, with a caveat of even slower attack rate? That was plain suck.

Overall the changes sound “OK” but I agree that Scepter #3 would be better off simply having it’s channel time reduced to 2s, and having Confusion damage as a whole buffed in PvP by 20-25%. (And at least 50% in PvE if you ask me!)

Looking at all of the changes though it seems that they clearly didn’t want to rock the boat on anything, aside from nerfing Might quite a bit…which we all know is a good thing to tone down the Celestial meta. That alone will help Mesmers more then anything else if you ask me, since we can’t really make Celestial work nearly as well as some other professions.

I’ve gotta say, as a general response to those who claimed that confusing images long channeled time should be changed, I disagree entirely. The long channel time on this skill makes it a very effective dodge baiter as well as a nice option to track the location of thieves in stealth. On top of that, if anet were to change it to an instant 5 confusion stacks without the channel, you can almost guarantee that they would not keep all of the power DMG it inflicts. As it currently operates, its a fantastic skill for a hybrid buid and it would be sad to see that change. -Priest of Lyssa

Anet, while you’re working on Confusion for Mesmers, please don’t forget:

1) CoF Shatter – Add 1s to base duration here as well
2) Illusionary Retribution – Again, add 1s base duration
3) Confusing Combatants – GM Minor? Really? Make it 5s base duration and 2 stacks of Confusion. (Or replace it if you’re worried about Clone Death builds. It’s useless as it is now, and really is worse then all of our Adept Minors even!)
4) Blinding Befuddlement – Fix this somehow please! At the very least make it useful vs. single targets by making it apply 3 stacks, but better yet would be to remove the CD on it and simply cut it’s base duration to 2s if you’re worried about a return of the Glamor AoE Confusion junk in WvW.

Windwalker.7421:

Anet, while you’re working on Confusion for Mesmers, please don’t forget:

1) CoF Shatter – Add 1s to base duration here as well
2) Illusionary Retribution – Again, add 1s base duration
3) Confusing Combatants – GM Minor? Really? Make it 5s base duration and 2 stacks of Confusion. (Or replace it if you’re worried about Clone Death builds. It’s useless as it is now, and really is worse then all of our Adept Minors even!)
4) Blinding Befuddlement – Fix this somehow please! At the very least make it useful vs. single targets by making it apply 3 stacks, but better yet would be to remove the CD on it and simply cut it’s base duration to 2s if you’re worried about a return of the Glamor AoE Confusion junk in WvW.

For the GM minor part I agreem but you gotta remember all classes GM trait are either crap or underwhelming. Many of them if not all follow the % cliche.

Deception: Cool I guess.

Image: Still garbage.

Confusing images: Um ok? I mean its nice but I feel it should also have its cast time reduced.

TW: I had a 10 minute debate with Grouch about buffing TW, he eventually said that they would look into it so im glad he followed through. I still think making it a glamour would be awesome but Grouch thinks it would be too good so it probably wont happen.

Iol: Dat 10 sec cd reduction on a 130 cd skill! Much buff, very wow. Make it keep the hp when you kill someone instead of immediately go back to rally hp, which is around 25%.

Phant Defender: Whatever.

All in all , we needed more. Interrupt buffs would have been appreciated. Other classes that are more dominating the meta didn’t get nerfed (war and engi, ele did get hit), so we will still not be viable. Another 6 months of waiting to see if we get any new buffs

So these “buffs” were all kitten. No one is going to use any of these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Actually, there is not a single (serious) build that use these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Yah, that was really crap :)

inhearth.2038:

So these “buffs” were all kitten. No one is going to use any of these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Actually, there is not a single (serious) build that use these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Yah, that was really crap

I might consider using Time Warp for the same past application I once used it for (pre haste nerf). That being quick stomps and resses.

I’d only do this if I could comfortably run my setup without needing MI.

180 seconds is a decent CD for TW.

Ross Biddle.2367:

inhearth.2038:

So these “buffs” were all kitten. No one is going to use any of these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Actually, there is not a single (serious) build that use these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Yah, that was really crap

I might consider using Time Warp for the same past application I once used it for (pre haste nerf). That being quick stomps and resses.

I’d only do this if I could comfortably run my setup without needing MI.

180 seconds is a decent CD for TW.

Time Warp for stomps/resses…

Well, now I know why Anet buffed this skill. It has a really good use, eh :^)?

Will definitely be using Time Warp in a sPvP setting, if only because I’ve noticed lately people have a harder time pulling off quick stomps than usual. Specially if we’re lobbed into a darn Courtyard map.

The best thing out of those IS the Timewarp cd reduction. Timewarp is one of, if not the best Elite in sPvP. But nobody runs it (but me) because MI is used more for the Mesmer’s survival/sneak attacks than for team support.

So yes, the TW change is a HUGE buff.

As everyone else has said, the rest won’t really do anything.

ANet just doesn’t get it. The only thing they come up with to improve iMage is to increase his rate of fire, when the real problem is the slow projectiles speed. Meanwhile, did everyone see this:

Dancing Dagger: The projectile speed from this skill has been increased by 33%.

Dev note: This skill is intended to help thieves catch their enemies, which is pretty hard to do if the daggers are slow.

You know, because thieves have such a hard time engaging their enemies???

And on the topic of thieves, no mention on Consume Plasma changes.

It’s getting very hard for me to keep playing this game. And if this is all they’re going to do after all this freaking time……

inhearth.2038:

Ross Biddle.2367:

inhearth.2038:

So these “buffs” were all kitten. No one is going to use any of these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Actually, there is not a single (serious) build that use these Phantasms or Time Warp.

Yah, that was really crap

I might consider using Time Warp for the same past application I once used it for (pre haste nerf). That being quick stomps and resses.

I’d only do this if I could comfortably run my setup without needing MI.

180 seconds is a decent CD for TW.

Time Warp for stomps/resses…

Well, now I know why Anet buffed this skill. It has a really good use, eh :^)?

Makes for a great life saver, thus game changer. Haste is about as clutch as clutch can get.

Wait wait wait WAIT WAIT!
I’m amazed nobody mentioned this:

ArenaNet:

“we are also looking at the confusion condition in PvE” … “The effect of condition damage on confusion has been increased by 33% in PvE only. This change does not affect PvP or WvW.”

This changes everything!

Ok, end of the sarcasm. I’ll get my buff to timewarp and pray for them to not break anything important.

Change to phantasmal mage sounds nice, but the projectile is so slow it rarely hits, so what’s the point?

Illusion of life: … really?

And of course phantasmal defender. Lots of people running that. I guess. Somewhere.

I tend to get something out of iMage by summoning him right next to my opponent right from Prestige. Then I shatter it. Not a complete waste of time. Hopefully with this buff I can get a 15 Confusion stack combo with scepter-torch.

Just some new documentation on the true problem with iMage

• 1. iMage cast within range can potentially hit a target walking away slowly. No speed buffs. (opening seconds)
• 2. iMage cannot hit a target at max range walking away slowly (10s)
• 3. iMage well within range is very likely to miss moving targets within range. This includes mid range attacks, and even point blank range. (1:04, 1:38)
• 4. iMage can be “dodged” simply by jumping while moving. (1:00)

Test subject (thanks Tealot) was able to do all this without even realizing what the test was. In other words he wasn’t even trying to avoid the incoming attacks. He was jumping at random.

iMage confusion stacks and duration do need improvement. But no amount of stacks or duration is going to matter if the application is ineffective. iMage needs his buff, but he also needs a redesign to do with it.

Possible solution: iMage uses his own version of Confusing Images. Traited iMage removed condition on pulse within beam. ICD to match current attack/bounce time?

Some sweet changes,yes! But still, mesmers casting time still sucks puddles. No matter how many buff we get, we still get nailed hard cuz we to slow to burst our skills out.

Menaka.5092:

Wait wait wait WAIT WAIT!
I’m amazed nobody mentioned this:

ArenaNet:

“we are also looking at the confusion condition in PvE” … “The effect of condition damage on confusion has been increased by 33% in PvE only. This change does not affect PvP or WvW.”

This changes everything!

Ok, end of the sarcasm. I’ll get my buff to timewarp and pray for them to not break anything important.

Change to phantasmal mage sounds nice, but the projectile is so slow it rarely hits, so what’s the point?

Illusion of life: … really?

And of course phantasmal defender. Lots of people running that. I guess. Somewhere.

AS I’VE SAID, CONFUSION FOR PVE. WHAT THE HELL.