Guild Wars 2

Hear me out, please.

Shatter and Phantasm builds depended on the synergy of clone death.

The cripple made it easier to hit for the shatters and phantasms.

The vulnerability allowed shatters and phantasms to hit hard.

The bleeds were that extra rider that made it all work well for some builds.

Supcutie used and recommended clone death traits. So did most of the other prominent Mesmers of the time. Osicat and Seven Mirrors come to mind. In fact, Supcutie recommends clone death traits in his shatter mesmer guide which is stickied on this forum.

Necromancers have a minion death trait. There’s no reason Mesmers should not have similar.

The clone deaths would punish some of the mindless aoe spam that is a part of every match.

Clone death traits were completely removed from the game after a condi clone death build killed a prominent ANET staffer in pvp.

From that time until the introduction of HoT, Mesmers were basically considered “trash tier.”

The class was designed and intended to work with the synergy of clone death traits. Moreover, a punishment mechanic like that is in keeping with the spirit of the class all the way back to GW1.

It’s time to bring those traits back and in so doing, perhaps bring back power shatter and phantasm builds.

comments?

Moreover there are lots, lots, lots more “cheesy” mecanics today with less counter than clone deaths.

The clone deaths would punish some of the mindless aoe spam that is a part of every match.

+10000

Ok, there’s several parts of this post that are very…questionable. I’ll start from the bottom since that bit caught my eye.

You’re saying that bringing back clone death builds will revive power shatter and phantasm builds? Ok, no. Nothing about that makes even the slightest bit of sense. Power shatter never used clone death in most builds because it conflicted with more powerful traits. Phantasm never used clone death because it conflicts with traits and was antithetical to phantasms, you know, functioning. So you can go ahead and axe those two points for why this would be a good thing.

Necromancers have a minion death trait. Necromancers also don’t have the capacity to pump out minions more or less non-stop. You’re trying to compare two totally different concepts, stop.

The argument that clone death traits punished mindless aoe spam is valid…kinda. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: why is it any better to mindlessly spam clones inside the mindlessly spammed aoe? 2 wrongs don’t make a right here, they just make double the amount of wrong. Instead of just dealing with all the aoe that exists, you’d now also have to deal with the clone death aoe!

Mindless aoe spam is a problem in this game. Adding more mindless spam is not a valid solution to that problem.

Lastly, I’ll address the issue of clones and phantasms dying easily and without consequence. This is an issue, but you’re looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Clones and phantasms should be prime targets to kill when fighting a Mesmer. Killing them should be a reward, it shouldn’t have a punishment to it. The problem is that clones and phantasms die too easily, not that there is no downside to killing them.

The downside to killing the illusions should be the very fact that they had to focus on the illusions instead of the Mesmer. The reward should be lowering the mesmer’s power by removing their illusions. This balance is upset currently because it’s too easy to kill illusions, and that’s what needs to be fixed.

Fay.2357:

Ok, there’s several parts of this post that are very…questionable. I’ll start from the bottom since that bit caught my eye.

You’re saying that bringing back clone death builds will revive power shatter and phantasm builds? Ok, no. Nothing about that makes even the slightest bit of sense. Power shatter never used clone death in most builds because it conflicted with more powerful traits. Phantasm never used clone death because it conflicts with traits and was antithetical to phantasms, you know, functioning. So you can go ahead and axe those two points for why this would be a good thing.

Necromancers have a minion death trait. Necromancers also don’t have the capacity to pump out minions more or less non-stop. You’re trying to compare two totally different concepts, stop.

The argument that clone death traits punished mindless aoe spam is valid…kinda. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: why is it any better to mindlessly spam clones inside the mindlessly spammed aoe? 2 wrongs don’t make a right here, they just make double the amount of wrong. Instead of just dealing with all the aoe that exists, you’d now also have to deal with the clone death aoe!

Mindless aoe spam is a problem in this game. Adding more mindless spam is not a valid solution to that problem.

Lastly, I’ll address the issue of clones and phantasms dying easily and without consequence. This is an issue, but you’re looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Clones and phantasms should be prime targets to kill when fighting a Mesmer. Killing them should be a reward, it shouldn’t have a punishment to it. The problem is that clones and phantasms die too easily, not that there is no downside to killing them.

The downside to killing the illusions should be the very fact that they had to focus on the illusions instead of the Mesmer. The reward should be lowering the mesmer’s power by removing their illusions. This balance is upset currently because it’s too easy to kill illusions, and that’s what needs to be fixed.

Especially since they make up the bulk of our damage. We have to use them to achieve anything resembling decent dps, our own dps output isn’t up to par as it is, much less without them. I’m somewhat ok with that, since illusions are kinda our thing.

@Fay

First, I contend that you’re wrong. Supcutie, in his shatter guide for power shatter recommends clone death traits. In fact, you helped promote Lyssa’s Grimoire which contains that guide.

The majority of shatter builds I’ve looked up contained clone death traits.

Antithetical to Phantasm builds? Totally incorrect. Dying clones crippled and bled enemies as well as setting up vulnerability which allowed the phantasm to hit like a truck.

Quite a few phantasm builds contained clone death traits. Osicat’s “Napalm Cat” which I ran in WvW is a good example.

Again, what you are saying is simply incorrect.

As to your idea that the clones and/or phants should be the primary target; They never will be, since killing the Mesmer also destroys the illusions. There’s no reason whatever to focus the illusions.

(There is also very little hope of fooling an experienced player with clones except momentarily)

There might be, if the illusions did enough damage to be a serious threat. That’s not the case though and hasn’t been since the removal of clone death traits.

Ithilwen.1529:

@Fay

First, I contend that you’re wrong. Supcutie, in his shatter guide for power shatter recommends clone death traits. In fact, you helped promote Lyssa’s Grimoire which contains that guide.

The majority of shatter builds I’ve looked up contained clone death traits.

Antithetical to Phantasm builds? Totally incorrect. Dying clones crippled and bled enemies as well as setting up vulnerability which allowed the phantasm to hit like a truck.

Quite a few phantasm builds contained clone death traits. Osicat’s “Napalm Cat” which I ran in WvW is a good example.

Again, what you are saying is simply incorrect.

As to your idea that the clones and/or phants should be the primary target; They never will be, since killing the Mesmer also destroys the illusions. There’s no reason whatever to focus the illusions.

(There is also very little hope of fooling an experienced player with clones except momentarily)

There might be, if the illusions did enough damage to be a serious threat. That’s not the case though and hasn’t been since the removal of clone death traits.

I don’t know which shatter builds have you looked, but the traditional shatter build(20/20/0/0/30 or 4/4/0/0/6) didn’t have any clone death trait. I don’t even know why are you referring the Lyssa’s Grimoire guide when its shatter build is the traditional one.

Clone Death traits were only taken seriously when the condi PU became famous (since late 2013). They were purposely used only in condi builds, and taken in lockdown builds and variations of others as a subproduct of a choice of a more important trait, like Harmonious Mantras, PU or Chaotic Interruption.

Just to show how wrong you are, Napalm Cat was neither a phantasm or a power shatter build. It was a variation of the traditional condi build, which already took clone death traits in mind as a big part of the build.

I like the idea of clone death, but don’t like the idea of making it abusable. Clone death fits thematically with the Mesmer.

So the trick is giving counterplay to the clone death.

So a really simple idea I had was making a clone death trait that increased the cooldown of the ability used to kill it by 5 seconds, unless that ability has no cooldown. This has a few advantages to it over the old clone death traits. It isn’t an AoE anymore, so would only ever affect one target. It offers counterplay: if you can kill the clones with an autoattack, you don’t get punished. It also presents an interesting decision tree for opponents: Killing phantasms is important, but putting critical skills on a longer cooldown could cost them the teamfight.

I think the game would be better if it presented complicated decisions to its players. This is why I disagree with the attitude expressed here by Fay: "Killing them should be a reward, it shouldn’t have a punishment to it. "

Making everything black and white, and simple like that is some League of Legends type thinking/balancing, and has resulted in LoL game being one of the most bland, rounded corners type games ever. I won’t dispute League’s success, because there is no accounting for taste. DotA 2 is the superior game in my opinion, precisely because the developer isn’t afraid to present his players with complicated choices in gameplay.

I’d also add that GW2 already has skills that complicate the reward with punishment. In combat you should absolutely focus the druid for instance. But the druid has a low CD thorns aura that punishes you for doing so. Retaliation is an extremely common buff that punishes you for hitting people that have it. The Necromancer’s most popular PvP build is based at least in part on punishing you for dealing condition damage to it, by transferring those conditions right back to you. All of these are interesting elements that add to the uniqueness of the game. So complicating phantasms by giving them death traits wouldn’t be bad: in fact if done right, it would be good.

I dunno if it was considered “meta” or anything as I’ve never followed that aspect of the game, but I used to run a phantasm build and I loved using clone death traits with it.

You could have 2 phantasms up and then keep your 3rd slot open to repeatedly clone-summon, thereby proc’ing the death traits while also still being able to use your clone skills. So you could actually use Mirror Blade and such and still get something out of it besides just killing your phantasm for nothing.

@Ithilwen: You’re working with some seriously revisionist history there. As Ansau pointed out, you’re totally off the mark with all your comments about the usability of clone death traits in shatter and phantasm builds. That simply didn’t happen.

You also haven’t given me a good answer as to why adding more mindless aoe spam is a good way to counter the already too large amount of mindless aoe spam.

@atlashugged: The problem with putting any sort of interesting mechanic on a clone-death is that clone-death is inherently bland and uninteresting. Lets compare it to your chosen examples. The druid has a thorns aura that they can use. However, it requires them to remain close to you (600 leash range) and pop it at the right time (before taking rapid hits). This means that the druid has to specifically play well to use that skill effectively.

We can also compare it to the necromancer transfer. The necro has to make sure that they’re capable of landing that transfer after they get loaded up. If they get interupted or blinded or the transfer hits a block/dodge, they have the potential to just squish from the condition load they’ve taken. The transfer mechanic inherently produces risk for the necromancer and requires them to play well to pull it off.

The clone-death mechanic is the exact opposite of all this. You simply put up clones and let people attack them. There is no downside here, you’re not risking anything to put up the clones. You don’t have to time anything properly, the clones will sit around until they die. You don’t have to worry about staying in range, or landing skills, or anything like that; DE doesn’t worry about range or blinds/blocks, that sort of thing.

I understand and agree with your stated desire for interesting mechanics and play, but clone-death is the absolute opposite of everything you’re trying to go for.

No it shouldn’t!

Fay.2357:

Ok, there’s several parts of this post that are very…questionable. I’ll start from the bottom since that bit caught my eye.

You’re saying that bringing back clone death builds will revive power shatter and phantasm builds? Ok, no. Nothing about that makes even the slightest bit of sense. Power shatter never used clone death in most builds because it conflicted with more powerful traits. Phantasm never used clone death because it conflicts with traits and was antithetical to phantasms, you know, functioning. So you can go ahead and axe those two points for why this would be a good thing.

Necromancers have a minion death trait. Necromancers also don’t have the capacity to pump out minions more or less non-stop. You’re trying to compare two totally different concepts, stop.

The argument that clone death traits punished mindless aoe spam is valid…kinda. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: why is it any better to mindlessly spam clones inside the mindlessly spammed aoe? 2 wrongs don’t make a right here, they just make double the amount of wrong. Instead of just dealing with all the aoe that exists, you’d now also have to deal with the clone death aoe!

Mindless aoe spam is a problem in this game. Adding more mindless spam is not a valid solution to that problem.

Lastly, I’ll address the issue of clones and phantasms dying easily and without consequence. This is an issue, but you’re looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Clones and phantasms should be prime targets to kill when fighting a Mesmer. Killing them should be a reward, it shouldn’t have a punishment to it. The problem is that clones and phantasms die too easily, not that there is no downside to killing them.

The downside to killing the illusions should be the very fact that they had to focus on the illusions instead of the Mesmer. The reward should be lowering the mesmer’s power by removing their illusions. This balance is upset currently because it’s too easy to kill illusions, and that’s what needs to be fixed.

To be honest phantasms as a mechanic has so many things wrong with it that ANet should overhaul it. The clones could do with not dying to every stray fart too but we’d also need more reasons to keep them alive as we’re currently at a point where shatter spamming isn’t much less effective vs waiting to shatter at a precise moment.

I want them to bring back Rally on clone death was a fun time….

I wouldn’t mind having clone death return as part of the new elite specialisation traitline focus (one of the three major trait focuses) since it provide alternative playstyle in misdirections.

But I doubt it’ll make any impact to current meta as you really can’t kill anyone with the current condi cleansing/sustain. Lack of pressure is already a problem back then when combined with PU, and you’re more or less just a nuisance against anyone who knows how to fight you. Those bleed or confusion stacks will get outcleansed by

• careless burst with adrenal health and health signet
• astral form that build up in 7s by hitting staff 1, regen and dolyak runes
• guard’s meditation heals, wings of resolve and trap heals
• scrapper’s heal combos with superspeed heals
  May give slightly harder time for
• mesmer with restorative illusions
• ele with diamond skin
• necro who cleaves a lot and waste transfers

So the only one really affected by this change is revenant and thief, but their new specialisation will probably address their current weakness which, as we all know, is what makes HoT power creep so much. Not to mention that it’ll most likely be surpassed by other classes’ new elite specs. If it were to return a significant improvement needs to be make and ensure you can’t “force” clone death.

@Fay

It’s apparent to me that you’re not interested in listening to what I have to say. Your replies show that you didn’t check the builds I referenced. I’m sorry you dislike clone death so much.

Here’s an alternative that would support Phantasm builds: Allow us to selectively shatter clones only. This would allow the same build up of vulnerability and conditions that clone death did.

Hence, Phantasms would be a serious threat, assuming they were buffed a bit to allow them to survive.

There is another point that’s being overlooked here.

Clones don’t last long enough to be used in shatters because there is no penalty for killing them. They blow like soap bubbles, just cleave them away and the Shatter Mesmer is kittened.

With clone death traits, there would be a penalty.

Ithilwen.1529:

There is another point that’s being overlooked here.

Clones don’t last long enough to be used in shatters because there is no penalty for killing them. They blow like soap bubbles, just cleave them away and the Shatter Mesmer is kittened.

With clone death traits, there would be a penalty.

Again, you’re totally wrong. Even if you had clone-death traits, clones would still die just as fast. Nothing about clone-death traits makes them die slower, that’s obvious. The only thing that would change is that the clones would also fart condies all over the place, that’s all.

Ithilwen.1529:

@Fay
It’s apparent to me that you’re not interested in listening to what I have to say. Your replies show that you didn’t check the builds I referenced.

I looked at supcutie’s guide. It says absolutely nothing about clone death traits. Point me to where it says so in case I missed it.

Napalm cat was a condie build. A clone death condie build with added burning duration. It was not in any way a phantasm build, so you’re totally wrong.

Seven mirror’s builds were so old that they’re completely irrelelvant to the conversation, honestly. So many balance changes happened between when he quit and when clone death builds were popular that there is no point in discussing them.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m sorry you dislike clone death so much.

I figured this would come up eventually. So here’s something that you seem to have forgotten. Back when clone-death builds were a thing, I loved them! I used them in WvW, used them in PvP, and was one of the only vocal proponents for using the builds, because I understand the play-to-win philosophy. I enjoyed the playstyle and had a good time with those builds.

However, I’m also capable of looking at mechanics from an objective viewpoint. Objectively, clone-death builds have mechanics that are uncontrollable and involve you simply spamming clones and seeing what happens. This is bad design and should not be reintroduced into the game in any way.

Never again should this ever resurface in GW2.

Yes the clones would make aoe condies. So yes , there would be a penalty for killing them.

Shatter Mesmer would benefit either by getting something out of the wasted clones or from players avoiding killing them.

In both cases it would make Shatter more viable. It would also make Phantasm builds a bit better.

I considered Napalm Cat a Phantasm build. The condie clone death was support. If you watch Osicat play, he puts out what he calls the “damage phantasm” then kites and distracts while the clone deaths and the phant wreck the enemy.

Though yes, he went through various phases and styles.

I misread Supcutie, my mistake.

As to bad mechanics that are “uncontrollable”; First we both know that clones can be placed. So you’re not being straightforward.

Second, Mesmer is all about randomness and Chaos. The class is also alleged to be about punishment.

Yes a prominent anet staffer died to the build. That does not make it a bad build.

I’d like you to address the idea of a selective shatter, clones only. That would permit phantasms to be used longer. The clone shatters would build vulnerability or stun or conditions.

I’m aware that you were pretty upset back when those traits were removed and I respect that. However, I personally disagree on that those traits should return because of two reasons.

First, they still contradict our core mechanic. You’d either want to focus on shattering your Illusions or keeping your Phantasms alive. Clone on death traits don’t contribute to neither of those goals making them a fall back mechanic which requires no skill at all.

Ithilwen.1529:

Shatter Mesmer would benefit either by getting something out of the wasted clones or from players avoiding killing them.

In both cases it would make Shatter more viable. It would also make Phantasm builds a bit better…

This is out of question. But it is beside the point why those traits are bad.
On a different note: Many builds just picked them because alternatives sucked.

Second, and I agree with Pyro here, you are trying to fix an obvious problem the wrong way. Yes, there are close to no penalties for killing Illusions. Although there should be. But the penalty should be wasting time to get rid of them. Not them exploding into your face – with whatever effect attached to it – when successfully getting rid of them. We are not Necromancers who want their mobile organ donors to explode midfight.

What we need are Illusions with a reasonable amount of health – or at least area damage defense – in WvW and PvP. And traits which actually help keeping them alive.

Clone death condi spam wasn’t the only build who use clone death.

Criple on death was usefull for direct dammage to control melee distance to give an example.

And with condi spam, it wasn’t the clone death trait who kill player, but clone/mesmer attack.
(only dammage were 1 chance on 3 to do bleed and 1 stack confusion.)

I think it really destroy much opportunities for mesmer to remote it, instead of moving the trait where it compete with pu for example.

The thing is actually you have profession who easily do 5k-7k dammage aoe on 1 clic = insta clone death + more dammage than any clone death will do.

First, they still contradict our core mechanic. You’d either want to focus on shattering your Illusions or keeping your Phantasms alive. Clone on death traits don’t contribute to neither of those goals making them a fall back mechanic which requires no skill at all.

There is more skill to press 1 clic and to 7k aoe than to proc a clone?
I think it was one of the mesmer core mechanic from my view, and this remove hurt much gameplay diversity, skilled or not.

Other thing is , actually mesmer gameplay is all about burst in WvW, PvP.
You condi burst or direct dammage burst, but it rest burst. => monogameplay.
Clone death has the possibility to promote less bursty gameplay.

Edit : (or utilitary bot.)

I actually went through the trouble of logging in to tell you what a kitten idea this is. Go home.

One of the main reasons clone death traits were removed is because they don’t make sense:

• don’t kill clones = eat the condi (staff clones AA or shatters)
• kill clones = eat the condi (on-death traits)

it was too easy to just put clones and vanish/kite while they do the job in one way or another. In a sense, clone-death traits are counterplay to counterplay, it does not make sense.

On the other hand, a boost of clone HP and a significant boost of phantasm HP only make sense.

I can say the same with dh actually :
go out the circle, take dammage from trap, stay in the circle, take damage from symbol.
And with many other aoe.

on death had a small aoe.

The main problem is not only that clone insta die, it’s that we haven’t actually a gameplay based on long fight, it’s all bursty : interrupt, condi burst, direct busrt, other i miss.
or utilitary bot : veil, portal, boonshare.

I don’t know how to explain that, but we lose a no-bursty gameplay.

And the main problem with on death was PU + on death. (and mindless spam melee cleave.)

it was too easy to just put clones and vanish/kite while they do the job in one way or another. In a sense, clone-death traits are counterplay to counterplay, it does not make sense.

I agree with you but if i have to choose, I prefer put off clone dammage but have on death.

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

1. clone death traits were not interesting traits to begin with
2.its not what power shatter needs ,i would like anet make HS back as minor trait for dom line .and move current +0.5 %damage to vulne target to GM and buff it .
3.we dont use cancer to counter cancer .

Azukas.1426:

Never again should this ever resurface in GW2.

Credit it where it’s due. I completely agree with you on this one.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

There actually is a Thief forum thread on that topic, as well. XD

tobascodagama.2961:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

There actually is a Thief forum thread on that topic, as well. XD

Yeah my post is dripping with sarcasm though, there are some things that should stay dead in Gw2s past. Like Mug Crits and Clone Death

tobascodagama.2961:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

There actually is a Thief forum thread on that topic, as well. XD

I say give it to em but remove the jump dodge from being able to crit.

Like always, skill is relative.

Just get in mind that not all mesmer share pro-shatter = master skill, like it seems to ever been in this forum. (or at last not all mesmers find it interesting.)

While we are asking for ridiculous things from Gw2s past can Thieves get crit on Mug because that was so….. Interesting and provided complex gameplay…..

Ridiculous is your point of view, I’m ok with it but it cheap in informations, we can’t compare thieve mecanics with mesmer mecanics, and personally I don’t care about crit on mug.

1. clone death traits were not interesting traits to begin with
2.its not what power shatter needs ,i would like anet make HS back as minor trait for dom line .and move current +0.5 %damage to vulne target to GM and buff it .
3.we dont use cancer to counter cancer .

1. It’s your point of view, you found it not interesting, it’s not the case for everyone.
2. Contrarily to op, I don’t shearch to buff power shatter here but to have a different gameplay come back.
I used sometimes a 20/20/10/20/0 direct dammage build who had a nice use of cripple on death.
3. Cancer (i really don’t like this word use on game context, still prefer cheesy) is like skill relative from the player who play.
Was on death with pu cheesy ? From my view, probably.
Was remove totaly the on death concept a good idea, definitly not from my view.
And their justification was kinda brief, like when they remove retaliation from mesmer with the justification : mesmer are not supposed to be hit. (when we think about the chaos armor concept… cough cough.)

I’m really curious of how many people thinking it was imba op can do something with it today. (even when it was in game, i don’t have much issues fighting blackwater or other clone spam.)

We can run in circle about this subject during years but I don’t share the majority opinion who said it was healthy to remove it. (other options were possible.)

I contend that clone death would provide a means to make Phantasm builds ( which I like ) potentially useful in PvP and elsewhere. It would also help shatter build which suffer from the fact that the clones seldom survive to be shattered.

1) Clone death punishes mindless spam and aoe.

2) Clone death gives some value when our soap bubble clones are slaughtered as a by product of auto attacks.

3) Clone death can be used to build damage over time without shattering. It’s a kind of non-shatter. That’s the reason it’s so good in a phantasm build.

From GW1 onward, Mesmer has been alleged to be a punishment class. Clone death is a perfect example of this mode.

Ranger pets are quite tough and are persistent attackers. There’s only one pet you say? then make each phantasm 1/3 as tough as a ranger pet.

Clone death is basically a defensive build…It discourages people from attacking.

I think that whether or not someone likes it depends on where they fall on the offense vs. defense question.

The devs unquestionably prefer offense. Just look at the removal of soldiers runes and all of the other defensive and/or healing runes from pvp.

I personally like defensive builds and miss clone death.

But even more than that, I miss GW1. In GW1, you could create many builds with different aims and clone death (if it existed) would not have caused a dev to bat an eyelash. GW2 is so much more contrained, however, and doesn’t have anything approaching the variety…

If we take a trip back down memory lane we might remember what was happening with clone death and the point where it had evolved to.

Basically the final iterations of “clone death” builds were stacking energy, the regeneration of said energy, and the maximum output of clone generation via skill use and dodge roll spam. The end result was a highly evasive/defensive mesmer with a maximised offensive and defensive mix of condi application (perma cripple made it impossible to pursue, perma weakness shut down power builds, bleeds/confusion for damage + weapon skills and timely shatters etc etc)

So to talk about bringing back clone death under the HoT, Chrono meta is asking to introduce a power creeped version of the old on death setups. Especially when we have a much easier time keeping phantasms on the field (health resets the first time if you shatter them) thus allowing for a continual proc of condi’s just from dodging and activating clone skills.

Of course this is presuming they’d return with similar on death effects.

I think moving forward this is not the direction the game should be taking. If there’s been any consistent feedback from the GW2 playerbase post HoT it’s been for the reduction in power creep, and the removal of both overly defensive effects, and of passive gameplay/effects. Particularly where “spammy” aoe dps/cc effects are concerned. We’ve also just come from a season of intense condition spam, and this sort of constantly accessible condition cover spam is exactly the sort of thing that’d exasperate those issues.

When I look at problems like the current DH AoE DPS defensive spam, I don’t think “Let’s add more counter aoe defensive spam to solve this problem!”. That’d just create another problem, the same problem, for the next person to face. I want real solutions to genuine problems. Remove the passive, add cast times to the instant casts, reduce the reward for area of effect. Has the Ele dominion of the majority of the GW2 era taught you nothing?

Burn that kitten to the ground. Take a hard look and fair approach to risk vs reward. An honest take on the health of the game puts clone death, and things like it, on the shelf gathering dust where it belongs :)

Maybe Anet could have just differentiated between an illusion replacement and an illusion death? But oh well, we shall never know now.

I miss clone death because it was actually different. But if Anet would prefer for me to apply 20+ stacks of confusion and 10+ of torment instead of the minimal condition application of ye olde clone death, I guess I will just have to live with the pain

Persisting image currently gives retaliation to phantasms. I would say, give that retaliation to clones as well.

Exciton.8942:

Persisting image currently gives retaliation to phantasms. I would say, give that retaliation to clones as well.

So that people take 400 damage when cleaving down a full group of clones? Yes, I’m sure that’ll make a huge difference…

I would rather Anet not waste their time implementing worthless changes like that.

Fay.2357:

Exciton.8942:

Persisting image currently gives retaliation to phantasms. I would say, give that retaliation to clones as well.

So that people take 400 damage when cleaving down a full group of clones? Yes, I’m sure that’ll make a huge difference…

I would rather Anet not waste their time implementing worthless changes like that.

I almost said this myself, but figured id wait for someone else to.

It took less than 20 seconds XD

Fay.2357:

@atlashugged: The problem with putting any sort of interesting mechanic on a clone-death is that clone-death is inherently bland and uninteresting. Lets compare it to your chosen examples. The druid has a thorns aura that they can use. However, it requires them to remain close to you (600 leash range) and pop it at the right time (before taking rapid hits). This means that the druid has to specifically play well to use that skill effectively.

The old clone death mechanics certainly were the opposite fo what I’m asking for. But that doesn’t mean that clone death itself is never going to be interesting. For example, the trait I listed above would reward precise timing with clones, almost like an interrupt build. It has interesting counterplay, but is not effective if simply spammed. I think you’re missing the forest for the trees: by focusing on the inherently bland and uninteresting version of clone death we’ve had, you’re missing the interesting possibilities that clone death can be.

Fay.2357:

Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: why is it any better to mindlessly spam clones inside the mindlessly spammed aoe? 2 wrongs don’t make a right here, they just make double the amount of wrong. Instead of just dealing with all the aoe that exists, you’d now also have to deal with the clone death aoe!

Mindless aoe spam is a problem in this game. Adding more mindless spam is not a valid solution to that problem.

If only we could get ANet to understand these philosophies. Answering power with more power and then throwing in a few totally senseless nerfs into the mix to hope to offset things is NOT working for anyone.

I just want my clones to stop dying 0.0001 seconds after appearing in WvW. What good is the ability to shatter when the clones are dead before you can hit any of the F-Keys.

I agree with OP. It used to give weakness also which helped for melee builds to survive in melee against other melee.

After they removed clone death builds I didn’t enjoy playing mesmer again until they patched in the demolisher’s amulet in pvp.

I agree with OP, i think they should also bring back vampirism runes and all the amulets that were removed from pvp, especially minstrel. Im sure we can all agree that way the game will be more fun to play.

Frostball.9108:

I agree with OP, i think they should also bring back vampirism runes and all the amulets that were removed from pvp, especially minstrel. Im sure we can all agree that way the game will be more fun to play.

Just gonna tack on a big ’ole Kappa to this, just in case.

Not a thing in spvp, but clone death traits were definitely used in roaming power phantasm builds for the weakness and cripple. They were huge benefits, not just filler to get to a certain GM trait. Seven Mirrors used it extensively and I had a video that used it in the CI lockdown variant.

Just because the forum gods didn’t give it some goofy name in an official build-claiming post doesn’t mean it wasn’t a thing.

That said, I absolutely agree with getting rid of them. They surely didn’t promote skillful play, but I was never one to intentionally handicap myself.

Just my 2 cents…

Clone Death was not working, however Phantasms definitely should have on-death traits to punish an enemy for attacking/killing and negating one of our primary forms of damage.

I mean look at Gyros for Engies, they have a pretty significant on-death trait built right in! (AoE daze and damage, and it happens even if the Engie purposely kills it himself!? How this is different from Clone Death for Mesmers? Why are we making the same “mistake” twice, and thus creating a double standard? Very odd decision, especially since Gyros are in no way as important to Engies as Phantasms are to Mesmers!)

We have have a trait to “tickle” an enemy as punishment for attacking a paper-tiger Phantasm, Retaliation! lol! Be still my beating heart! “That’ll learn’em!” HAHA!

Seriously, that trait should apply AE damage and Daze too, or at least something meaningful enough to make it worthwhile speccing into. (Or at least it should give Phantasms 100% more HPs, then at least you might apply 2-4 Retaliations before it dies, instead of 1-2.)

Windwalker.7421:

Just my 2 cents…

Clone Death was not working, however Phantasms definitely should have on-death traits to punish an enemy for attacking/killing and negating one of our primary forms of damage.

I mean look at Gyros for Engies, they have a pretty significant on-death trait built right in! (AoE daze and damage, and it happens even if the Engie purposely kills it himself!? How this is different from Clone Death for Mesmers? Why are we making the same “mistake” twice, and thus creating a double standard? Very odd decision, especially since Gyros are in no way as important to Engies as Phantasms are to Mesmers!)

We have have a trait to “tickle” an enemy as punishment for attacking a paper-tiger Phantasm, Retaliation! lol! Be still my beating heart! “That’ll learn’em!” HAHA!

Seriously, that trait should apply AE damage and Daze too, or at least something meaningful enough to make it worthwhile speccing into. (Or at least it should give Phantasms 100% more HPs, then at least you might apply 2-4 Retaliations before it dies, instead of 1-2.)

Yeah no. Sorry but as stated before this idea needs to never be even considered

Windwalker.7421:

Just my 2 cents…

Clone Death was not working, however Phantasms definitely should have on-death traits to punish an enemy for attacking/killing and negating one of our primary forms of damage.

I mean look at Gyros for Engies, they have a pretty significant on-death trait built right in! (AoE daze and damage, and it happens even if the Engie purposely kills it himself!? How this is different from Clone Death for Mesmers? Why are we making the same “mistake” twice, and thus creating a double standard? Very odd decision, especially since Gyros are in no way as important to Engies as Phantasms are to Mesmers!)

We have have a trait to “tickle” an enemy as punishment for attacking a paper-tiger Phantasm, Retaliation! lol! Be still my beating heart! “That’ll learn’em!” HAHA!

Seriously, that trait should apply AE damage and Daze too, or at least something meaningful enough to make it worthwhile speccing into. (Or at least it should give Phantasms 100% more HPs, then at least you might apply 2-4 Retaliations before it dies, instead of 1-2.)

In my opinion, phantasms should just not have damage to begin with. They are currently easily more than half of our sustained damage, which is ridiculous considering their life expectancy. Also in general, we do not want a playstyle where we let the AI do most of the work. Phantasms should be bringing support, not damage (see suggestions in my signature).

Now since we all know this is unlikely to happen, I think a trick similar to the one done in PvE where phantasms take less damage (say only 20%) if they are not targeted directly and/or a mild HP increase could do wonders.

Clone death was removed because a ranking ANET staffer died to a clone death build. He said as much on stream.

His complaint was that dodging allowed aoe damage. Now some classes get advantages on dodging so I don’t see the issue with that.

Still, it should not be difficult to code so that if a clone is destroyed because of a dodge, it does not apply aoe.

I continue to contend that:

1) Killing a dev is no reason to destroy a build.

2) The issue that anet staffer had could have been resolved by not having clones apply aoe if destroyed by a dodge.

3) A clone death build would discourage mindless aoe spam.

4) Clone death traits have the potential of making Phantasm builds work again

Ok, lets go over this again.

[quote=6316277;Ithilwen.1529:]

Fixing forum bug.