Guild Wars 2

Mesmers plays could be next level if their effects, health didn’t give them away.
You can, as a mesmer, turn off autoattacking and attack at the rate you illusions do, run in straigth lines to look like a clone. Stow your weapon after coming out of stealth, like illusions do.

Unfortunately this is not worth doing because people instantly see that you are the mesmer as soon as they look at your boons, conditions, health, or even boosters.
Please, since illusions don’t deal more than 3 damage anyway make them look like they have the same health, boons, boosters and condis as the real mesmer. The illusions would not have more hp, they would just look like they lost less hp after taking some dmg. Currently an illusion loses 1/3 of its health from 800dmg, so it gives them away instantly they dont even have to die.

There would still be plenty of counterplay left: looking for animations, dodges, keeping clones’s and mesmer’s position in mind, killing clones, etc.

Make acting a thing!

Even though I agree with you i don’t think anything will ever change to the point where you can confuse a good player into thinking that you’re a clone.

It could happen, but I don’t think anet would ever do this.

Good players also get confused sometimes even now.

Arenanet is gonna make illusions have an offhand finally.
Plus the might stacking trait is coming in with autoattack on gs.

Of course, this wouldn’t be your playstyle all match coz u dont do much dmg, but its perfect when u r out of CDs or u go defensive for a bit.

They could even add some different skills to the illusions like blurred frenzy on sword, mirror blade and phantasmal berserker animation for gs(but no phantasm would spawn and the mirror blade would only deal like 3 dmg, no boons), or dodge.

glenndevis.8327:

Even though I agree with you i don’t think anything will ever change to the point where you can confuse a good player into thinking that you’re a clone.

It could happen, but I don’t think anet would ever do this.

This, and to be honest, I don’t see any reason why they would. The benefit of having clones (once you hit a certain skill level in gw2) isn’t the diversion, that only works on newer players. Clever illusion positioning grants you boons, extra bounces, bodyblocking attacks and it’s rewarded with effective shatters (triangle mind wrack, triple interrupt).

Frankly, I don’t give a kitten that my clones aren’t fooling any good player.

Off hand issue keeps breaking and getting fixed… But I don’t find it makes much of a diffrence outside of aesthetics, but a rather important aesthetic feature since I’m sure most of us designed our looks to want to show up 4 times on one persons screen

But I do agree. Boosters and mantras shouldn’t show, a mesmer should naturally punish over zealous targeting even if it makes little difference it at least opens up options.

Different boons and health is fine imo.

If you have to target Clones to tell whether they’re the real Mesmer by the buffs/effects on them, then you’ve already been amply fooled! That wasted time, possibly wasted attacks, is already a major advantage.

It’s not intended to be such a fool-proof deception that you literally have to attack each one to find out if it blows up or not to tell if it’s the real Mesmer. That would be really entertaining from a Mesmer PoV, and thematically also really cool, but in reality it’s rather sickly OPd.

The deception definitely works now enough to make people pause and take time to locate the actual Mesmer, mostly by attacks/movements rather then targeting I might add, and it’s only going to get slightly better with Clones inheriting off-hands correctly.

You guys don’t get it. Of course you don’t have to target anyone in order to see which one is the real mesmer practically noone acts like a clone. Why? Because they would spot the real one in 1-2 seconds by randomly targeting them.

Kicker.8203:

You guys don’t get it. Of course you don’t have to target anyone in order to see which one is the real mesmer practically noone acts like a clone. Why? Because they would spot the real one in 1-2 seconds by randomly targeting them.

A good player spots the Mesmer near-instantly without even having to target them. It’s a nonissue either way.

Fay.2357:

Kicker.8203:

You guys don’t get it. Of course you don’t have to target anyone in order to see which one is the real mesmer practically noone acts like a clone. Why? Because they would spot the real one in 1-2 seconds by randomly targeting them.

A good player spots the Mesmer near-instantly without even having to target them. It’s a nonissue either way.

Did u even read the post? I’m talking about mesmer acting like clones.

Honestly though for the sake of arguing, let’s say they changed it like you wanted and mesmers and clones looked exactly the same, there’s still some viable inconsistencies there. First of al the mechanic itself, you say you want the clones to appear to have the exact same health as the actual player correct? Meaning clones would either start with less health than they already have or that Anet would have to make a new system just for clones to automatically match the Mesmer. Another thing, if clones are to be exactly the same then wouldn’t that mean if you had a condition, say poison for example, on you that all the clones you made at the time would be poisoned as well and constantly losing health so that they’d appear the same as you? That sounds like a nerf to me to have all my clones spawn with my conditions. And even if all this somehow works out and clones look exactly the same as the player any decent player or anyone whose played Mesmer enough to be adept should still be able to easily tell them apart because they can either watch you attacks to see when you phase retreat, dodge roll, etc and just follow you or, since clones rarely move around much, just cast an aoe on the 1-2 that will undoubtedly be clustered and either target the one who doesn’t lose half health in one pulse or whichever one is left outside the aoe. I can appreciate what your saying but overall I just don’t think it’s a feasible request.

I envy mesmers with legendaries as those big glowy weapons doubly distract. With offhands for illusions Inc I might have to dust off the vision of the mists/whisperblade/anomaly Mesmer ;-)

I once fought a noob Mesmer who had ZERO buffs. Was weird not being able to confirm if they were real Mesmer with targeting.

Kicker.8203:

Fay.2357:

Kicker.8203:

You guys don’t get it. Of course you don’t have to target anyone in order to see which one is the real mesmer practically noone acts like a clone. Why? Because they would spot the real one in 1-2 seconds by randomly targeting them.

A good player spots the Mesmer near-instantly without even having to target them. It’s a nonissue either way.

Did u even read the post? I’m talking about mesmer acting like clones.

If the mesmer is acting so perfectly like a clone that you truly can’t tell the difference between them without tabbing around…then you still don’t need to tab around. A mesmer acting perfectly like a clone is, for all intents and purposes, a clone, and a clone is not even remotely threatening.

Basically, if a mesmer is pretending perfectly to be a clone, they’re useless, so it’s besides the point.

If I used a staff and I wanted to act like my clone by standing in one place and casting Winds Of Chaos, I would die. I can confuse my enemies rather easily with my clones. Just pop in a few stealth’s and voila.

As a relatively new player, acting like a clone worked plenty fine for me. Of course, condi build meant staffs clones actually did decent damage. Auto-attack is how you get the dps while all skills are mainly for surviving. Just crank out your clones before every fight and chances are you got at least several seconds before getting targeted. As a further bonus, if you play that way it’s pretty easy to run away if things get out of hand. People just keep looking through the clones while you go do something more useful than taking a dirt nap.

I don’t see how it would work well for any build that gets dps any way besides auto attack though. As Fay said, acting like a clone means you’re as useful as a clone. If you aren’t making damage, you aren’t making progress.

Even though you can tell, sometimes there are enough targets on the field, esp if the mesmer isnt the only one, that locating the real mesmer can be challenging. Of course, is there are TOO many players it won’t matter as AoEs will take over.

In other words, I think clones do their best job of confusing in small to medium sized groups, but solo or zergs not so much.

When facing experienced players, clones are less threatening. That being said, do NOT underestimate how painstakingly frustrating it is for low-tier (and even lower mid-tier) players at times to face a Mesmer’s clone mechanics.

Even in my coordinated teams, I always put Mesmer at a lower target priority (squishy Necros/Rangers first please!). The effort it takes tabbing to re-find the Mesmer wastes a few seconds, and in pvp, sometimes a few seconds is all it takes to turn the tide of a fight!!