Guild Wars 2

(CURRENTLY A WORK IN PROGRESS WHILE @ WORK)

On Friday we were treated to a preview of the changes to come for Mesmer, the current 14-point trait system is being completely reworked into something a bit different; specializations.
Instead of applying a certain amount of points to a traitline, you now choose three of the six (including the new traitline coming in HoT) trees to “specialize” in, allowing you to fully travel up the tree and pick the traits you’d like. For Mesmer, a class that mostly only dips into three skilltrees anyway (Example: 4/4/0/0/6 Shatter), this seems like a profound buff.

.. But they also made massive tweaks to our traits themselves, dropping some and merging others while adding some completely new possibilities.

So I’d like to share my opinions and thoughts on all the changes mentioned so far that are arriving BEFORE the HoT expansion drops. For those of you who do not know me, I’m something of a Mesmer teacher and one of the people who helped found OMFG, led a Mesmer podcast (“Mesmerized” on youtube) with Pyro and Shan, had the privilege of training with, interviewing and learning from some of the best players in the game, helped push Lockdown Mesmer into mainstream, and crafted the stickied Mesmer guide among other things. Most of this analysis will come from a “vs player” perspective, concerning WvW and PvP as I’m not too strong on PvE stuff.

I wanna start by saying that I’m overall impressed with most of the changes presented. It seems Anet is finally crystalizing their vision of what they want the Mesmer to be, and are working towards pushing Mesmer into a more active and skill-based playstyle. I know someone will come chop my legs out for this, but I feel like they actually listened. From Chaos Armor to iPersona to the changes to interrupt traits, they’ve either listened to many of the things we’ve asked for happened to do some really lucky balancing. It’s interesting to see that it looks like some of changes they made came specifically from builds presented here on the forums, almost as if a dev finally decided to peek into what we have been building and trying to make work and added a little magic touch to it. Right now the builds most affected by this change are:

• Shatter
  AoE Blind on shatter? Mental Torment buff?! Mysterious new Illusions Grandmaster? Shatter builds will undoubtedly evolve after the patch, and the meta shatter build will no longer be the same. With iPersona as baseline, Shatter Mesmer aren’t trait-strangled anymore and have the freedom to invest in another line besides Illusions. I still think DOMINATION & DUELING will be crucial, but it’s interesting to see how many builds will now start to trait into INSPIRATION to gain abilities like Heal/Condi Cleanse on shatter.

• Lockdown

Hehehehehahahahahaa!!!! Man, I could type that a dozen more times and it still wouldn’t adequately express my hype. Anet has recognized Lockdown Mesmer as a truly legitimate playstyle and has actively pushed some pretty heavy support for us. Every lockdown trait has been buffed and rearranged into a better position to allow us to now grab even more lockdown traits and add versatility to lockdown builds. From condirupt to standard power shatter/interrupt every single current lockdown build will be receiving a massive buff. The most interesting buff comes from Duelists Discipline: Interrupts reduce Pistol Cooldown by 50%. I predict so many gunshots ringing out, almost makes me wish for a mainhand pistol.

• Support

Now here’s a twist I didn’t expect, the INSPIRATION line is now bursting with all sorts of amazing support options, when mixed with the changes made to CHAOS Line (Chaotic Dampening: Chaos Armor grants 5s Protection, reduces Staff cooldowns by 5% for every second you have the armor up. Bountiful Disillusionment grants Stability & boon on shatter. Chaotic Interruption merged with bountiful) support builds now have more potential than ever before. Support builds are also going to benefit highly from iPersona being baseline and not having damage curtailed by traiting into Inspiration, allowing us to make boonshare, or even healer Mesmer without losing out so much on damage.

• Condition

Anet wants us to do confusion, and apparently Torment. They’ve loaded us with all sorts of ways to stack Confusion, with the most interesting being in the form of the new trait: Mistrust. Mistrust creates an AoE confusion burst on any interrupted target. See that beefy zerg over there? Drop a Chaos Storm and some Daze Mantras on them, watch as every interrupted target spikes confusion on all nearby targets, over and over in a glorious chain reaction. Cause some blinds, drop some glamours, don’t forget to mix in some torment and you’ll start to see that Condi Mesmer may now be one of our best AoE-oriented class. With Confusion-on-crit as a minor, Pistol Phantasms become much deadlier, but it also makes you wonder: Will Greatsword clones be our best confusion-stacking illusions? Also: Pistol clones now can cause bleeding when traited independently of Sharper Images (all illusions bleed on crit). Suck on that necros.

• Phantasm
  (TO BE INSERTED)

• Mantra
  (TO BE INSERTED)

• Signet
  (TO BE INSERTED)

One could argue that with less traits and a more streamlined way to grab them they’ve actually heavily diminished the amount of potential build diversity for all classes. I agree, but I do not think this is a bad thing. As far as Mesmer is concerned, the majority of the traits we lost were only used in bad or lackluster builds. Nearly every one of the current traits proposed here is effective and has a use, and every skill tree offers something very tempting.

BASELINE CHANGES
The following changes are now naturally a part of Mesmer and need no trait investments

• Skill trees no longer grant bonus stats. Stats are given through gear and increased base stats
  _Ugh, not exactly a fan of this change. While it makes certain trees like Inspiration less of dps loss to invest in, I really don’t like losing Boon/Condition duration.*
• Illusionary Persona, Illusionary Elasticity, Protected Mantras
  This is awesome! Illusionary Persona is an extremely strong trait that adds a ton of versatility to any Mesmer build that could grab it. iPersona makes the Mesmer count as an additional shatter, which boosts all shatter damage, allows for 0-clone distortions, and an instant point-blank daze. Shatter cooldowns have also been reduced overall to make up for the lack of ‘Shredding’ stat that used to reduce cooldowns when investing in the Illusion line. Many people feel that Deceptive Evasion should’ve been made baseline instead as it is more important to Mesmer builds, but I disagree. Yes, DE is extremely important for clone production, and many Mesmer builds are forced into dueling to take it, but it is still an “-on dodge” trait. It wouldn’t be fair for Mesmer to have their on-dodge baseline and other classes do not, alternatively iPersona should never have been a trait and should have always been baseline. I believe having iPersona as base will help push lackluster builds into viability and may even make it so we don’t have to rely on DE so often for every single kitten Mesmer build.
  
  Illusionary Elasticity adds an additional bounce to all bouncing moves. Greatsword 2, Staff auto (and clones), iDisenchanter and even the Pistol’s magic bullet will all be enhanced. Protected Mantras means that we’ll gain a pretty hefty toughness boost whenever a Mantra is charged, it was never a trait actually worth taking but is definitely nice to have as it further pushes the possibility of bunker Mesmer emerging.
• Glamours 20% Recharge Reduction, Manipulation Range Increase, 15% Phantasm damage increase
  Not much to say here. I wasn’t expecting this at all, but happy for it. Glamours have always had excessive cooldowns, so this is nice. But 1200 range blinks without having to trait for it?! Pinch me. Twice. Both of these changes are especially nice for WvW whether roaming or in a zerg, with 1200r blinks getting us much farther out of danger (or chasing people down) and more rapid glamours in group fights.

Overall I’m really happy with these baseline changes. iPersona being baseline alone would’ve been enough to merit a backflip or two, but if I had to rate my top three favorite changes it’d be:

3) Glamour 20% Recharge Reduction
2) Manipulation Range Increase
1) iPersona! Still can’t get over this! /hypetrainoverload

I think these three changes will have the most noticeable effect on overall Mesmer gameplay, no matter what the build. Glamour Cooldowns makes Null Field a very strong contender for condi removal/boonstrip, especially with the Chaos Armor buff (more on this soon), Blink is a staple of most Mesmer, so the range increase is fantastic. And iPersona.. Jeez, I really can’t explain all the benefits this grants us, but no matter what build you run iPersona will grant you a noticeable damage/defense/control boost. 1 extra shatter may not seem like much, but it makes a massive difference in the fast-paced playstyle of the Mesmer.

(Pt 2 will detail traitlines)

Eh.. Reserved x.x

I can’t wait for the domination traits to kick in and to see how fast Rylock is going to global people down with one interrupt.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

…Anet has recognized Lockdown Mesmer as a truly legitimate playstyle and has actively pushed some pretty heavy support for us…

Remember, when they classified Mesmers as either Shatter, Phantasm and Mantra?

I really like the changes due to reasons similar to yours. Can’t wait for the update.

Nice read Chaos ! Just as hyped as you are.

btw, the Mysterious Illusion GM (Master of Frags) is an all-in-one +20% crit on MW, +1 confusion on CoF, AoE Diversion and reflect on Distortion.

Hang onto your hats Chaos, the next news may blow your mind.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/27/gw2-mesmer-elite-specialization-teaser/

Thanks a lot for this. I imagine the phantasm will be sparse. There’s a severe lack of cohesiveness for phantasms considering their traits are spread so thin across Domination, Dueling, Inspiration and Illusions…

Anyway, thanks again for this write up, and I look forward to seeing you fill the rest out. Great observations!

I was telling my wife the other night that I didn’t even feel like playing this old, out dated, crappy version of the mesmer. It just doesn’t seem right not playing these proposed changes yet :p

kitten y shout out to the upcoming kshot warrior too :D

Ross Biddle.2367:

kitten y shout out to the upcoming kshot warrior too

gl with all the reflects I’ll be running with mirror heal, dodges, blink and arcane thievery.

Yes good write-up, summation, and observations/opinions. I agree with pretty much everything you say.

Although it’s far too early to speculate how things will actually pan out, it looks like we’ll have far more viable build options then before. Sometimes “less” really is “more”. ;-)

Aside from the usual Power Shatter and Lockdown builds, I think we’ll see a more viable Condition Shatter, “tanky” Power Shatter, and Support Shatter (boon share looks borderline OPd). Each of these will also have slight variations, and of course Phantasm builds will also be possible, although perhaps more hybridized as you’ll add either more shattering, condies, or rupts to it.

Contrary to those who would like to redefine the Mesmer without shatters, I think it’s great that Anet is holding onto this theme and finding ways to improve it rather then to ditch it altogether.

We’ll see what our Elite Spec brings later today, which I’m guessing will also fundamentally change how we can choose to play our Mesmer, and of course with that add even more viable build options.

Disclaimer: My definition of viable has never, and will never, be a narrow-minded focus on only top-tier paid PvP tournaments. I hope we will see more viability there as well, but since I’m not personally interested (or qualified :P) for this level, it’s not really an important aspect to me as a customer.

this really looks promising so far. im getting a little excited as i see many many options to spec with changes like these especially new options for our wvw mesmer players. good stuff so far.this could pull the mesmer a little out of the veilbot wvw meta. we shall see how it goes. the ip change is getting me real excited though as in wvw your clones die too quick so f1-f4 used to be pretty useless or luck based now with ip like that yess i get to shatter in zergs and still can spec in other trees

I’ll give an actual response :P

It does look like some support options are showing up. Like summoning a phantasm right after you’ve interrupted a ton of people, and you just laid out some massive heals/condi cleanses.

That being said, pvp-focused — as you are, Chaos, for the most part I think Mesmers will be contributing to group play in a really selfish way. AoE interrupts/lockdowns/sheer damage will be our main contribution, and I think it’s still looking like we will be controlling, sniper-type players in a group.

Then again, we’ll find out what our specialization is all about. Mages in WoW had an alter time ability where, after 6 seconds you’d return to where you were when you first cast the spell, with the same buffs, health, mana and cooldowns ready. I imagine we could be receiving some pretty neat things like that. If we are chronomancers…