The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things: 1) Increasing some of the mesmer support traits and condition-removal traits. 2) Reducing the dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered Conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours to the Adept tier are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s Celerity accomplish the second goal. Before this change, mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points to get the illusion cooldown reduction, which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the mantra-centric traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra Mastery to the Adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.
DOMINATION
Domination XII—Confounding Suggestions: This trait now also increases daze duration by 25%.
DUELING
Dueling VI—Mantra Mastery: Moved to the Adept tier.
Dueling VII—Protected Mantras: Moved to the Master tier. Increased the toughness from 400 to 600.
CHAOS
Chaos I—Chaotic Revival: Reduced the cooldown from 35 seconds to 10 seconds.
Chaos VII—Mirror of Anguish: Reduced the cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
Chaos 25—Chaotic Transference: Increased the conversion from 5% to 10%.
INSPIRATION
Inspiration IV—Mender’s Purity: This trait now removes 2 conditions.
Inspiration XI—Shattered Conditions: Increased the radius from 240 to 600.
ILLUSIONS
Illusions VI—Dazzling Glamours: Moved to the Adept tier.
Illusions VIII—Illusionary Invigoration: Reduced the recharge from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Moved to the Master tier.
Illusions 15—Illusionist’s Celerity: Moved to the Master tier.
Illusions 25—Shattered Strength: Moved to the Grandmaster tier.
Bug Fixes
- Ether Feast: Fixed a bug that was preventing the heal amount per illusion to properly scale with healing power.
- Temporal Enchanter: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to display multiple durations on glamour skills.
New Healing Skill
Signet of the Ether (35 second cooldown)
Signet Passive: Regenerate health based on the number of active illusions you control.
Signet Active: *Heal yourself and recharge all phantasm skills.
Couple of questions:
- Has anything changed about scepter for Mesmers? It was discussed in the dev thread.
- Did anything change about the vigor-on-crit trait in Dueling?
- Is craftable ascended armor in the game now? I didn’t see it in the patch notes, but there’s a gallery of armor images on Dulfy.
Couple of questions:
- Has anything changed about scepter for Mesmers? It was discussed in the dev thread.
- Did anything change about the vigor-on-crit trait in Dueling?
No (not in patch notes anyway)
- Is craftable ascended armor in the game now? I didn’t see it in the patch notes, but there’s a gallery of armor images on Dulfy.
@eldenbri
- I don’t se there’s any change to scepter.
- Luckily for us, we still have perma vigor.
- Yes, they are available. You need to buy the recipes first.
About the changes, all they’ve put is what we knew 1 month ago with the exception of Confounding Suggestions. A little bump to the hybrid PU build, some buffs to support on small scale fights and duels, and the nice bump of illusion Celerity.
Thanks that this patch doesn’t affect to my theorycrafting zerg build.
I think I found at least one practical weakness with the healing signet: the long cooldown puts you in a conundrum in situations where you’re down on health, have a short breather, but not long enough for combat to reset. Normally in that situation I’d hit my heal knowing it would cool down quickly enough that I’d be okay to use it again fairly soon. But untraited, that 35s makes using it a tough choice if, say, at half health.
I would have rather seen the healing signet be based around illusion death/shatter as Ether Feast already fulfils the role of a heal scaling off number of active illusions. If the signet healed you every time an illusion is shattered or killed then It would synergise well with shatter and on clone death builds. It would also be more active, instead of just sitting here and passively granting regen, you would have more control over it and could perform bursts of healing with things like mirror images + mind wrack.
I’m def. anxious to try out the new heal. I run a 30/30/10/0/0 phantasm & clone spam build with near perma vigor. I’m usually always in situations where all of my clones are up. Wouldn’t touch the new heal in a zerg battle but for my roaming small party needs this might work really well with my build.
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Wu Táng Financial [Táng] – YB
Signet works extremly great in PvE with the warden
Also I could imagine that the combination with Phantasm – Signet – Phantasm could really change a whole duel. You don’t just heal up but also have the chance to hit twice as hard.
IMO this skill really needs to be used by really good mesmers that know when they can take profit in having 2 phantasms of the same type summoned quite fast.
I’m going to create a build with that one for wvw roaming that can spike with phantasms.
Signet works extremly great in PvE with the warden
Also I could imagine that the combination with Phantasm – Signet – Phantasm could really change a whole duel. You don’t just heal up but also have the chance to hit twice as hard.
IMO this skill really needs to be used by really good mesmers that know when they can take profit in having 2 phantasms of the same type summoned quite fast.
I’m going to create a build with that one for wvw roaming that can spike with phantasms.
This is exactly where I think money will be made using this signet. You heal, then immediately summon 1-2 more phants for a quick spike in damage. Haven’t used it yet, but sure sounds like it could potentially turn the tide in a small scale fight.
Eve Morrow, Mesmer, Eve Flamescythe, Ele
Tarnished Coast
Well I like the buffs. But I’m kinda annoyed wih how the intro said "before the changes, most Mesmer builds needed to put 25 points in illusions, which limited build diversity.
The thing that annoys me, is that completely wasnt true. At all. We actually avoided IC for the most part, becuase it was such a huge investment. As far as I know, only shatter used IC.
Either the balance team just wanted to make it sound more awesomer than it is to casual players who don’t know an awfull lot, or they just have no idea how to balance Mesmer :/.
New Rainbow Guild – An open-minded guild exclusively for Transgender people! Warning:link may contain traces of awesome. Lyssa’s Grimoire – a guide every Mesmer should read.
I think they switched IC for phantasm builds’ shake, specially in pve, where the most renowned builds picked either 20Dom or 25Illusions, “wasting” the might on shatter minor if you went for the IC build (because, although I love shattering and spicing adistortion up sounds good enough, you shouldn’t be shattering all that much).
(Though that was 1~2 months ago, dunno what happened after I stopped playing in late october)
Really Qaelyn? Mesmer was my first character and I still play from time to time but the buffs mesmers got and this heal are just promoting dull play as it stands now. As much fun as I had and still can have with the blackwater build, the skillfloor is low and the way it encourages passive play is just bad for pvp imo. For some this heal skill just adds to the passive play or gives an easy phantasm burst. Overall I might take out my mesmer again and enjoy this while it lasts.
Recap: I play a mesmer myself and they did not need some of these buffs and the heal just promotes the already cheesy builds. I fyi I am speaking mostly from a roaming and casual solotourney point of view. All you have to do is step into pvp and you can already see how there are even more mesmers than usual and there is a reason for that.
I don’t play straight BW, it may be extremely useful there. It could be useful in a lot of builds.
It’s just not an “add this to any mesmer build OMG OP” ability like many have been carrying on about, IMO. There are places where it’s not appropriate even in a phantasm build, and then of course there are shatter builds.
I’ll admit that it’s hard to judge. I sometimes find myself running around wishing I had more healing, but then that happens to me with Ether Feast also.
It might be nice in PvE, but I don’t see it working that well in PvP or WvWvW for the simple reason that clones die way too fast or are used for other means other than letting them stay up to deal damage.
Also since the passive doesn’t heal out of combat, I don’t think it’s that useful if you’re between fights.
however, would all the when you’re healed traits be activated whenever it ticks every 3 seconds?
The thing that annoys me, is that completely wasnt true. At all. We actually avoided IC for the most part,
Speak for yourself.
The hit to “on death” builds was significant when they changed it from an adept to a grand master, in fact it basically broke it. You’re being a bit short sighted if you think it didn’t cripple quite a few builds though. At least those that relied on both clones and phantasms being up at all times.
I don’t like IC. It affects close to half of our weapon skills, and for one trait that’s pretty sick. Especially for minor trait. Before the patch I was totally cool without getting it, but now it’s just too darn close!
To encourage more build diversity, maybe there’s shouldn’t be a trait “that’s needed for most mesmer builds”
The hit to “on death” builds was significant when they changed it from an adept to a grand master, in fact it basically broke it. You’re being a bit short sighted if you think it didn’t cripple quite a few builds though. At least those that relied on both clones and phantasms being up at all times.
It’s true that hit quite hard most of builds, as nearly all builds since release had it. But it’s also true that this change opened a lot of doors for mesmers. It was the first time that the illusion line was not useful for a lot of builds.
Also, with the remodelation of PU, most mesmers changed their playstyle. Think about it, how many build based on clone-death were before the IC change? How many people theorycrafted with lockdown builds?
Yes, it hit hard, but the change also showed us that IC is not as awesome as we though. With the time we have seen the base CD’s are good enough, and now this trait will be taken mostly by shatter mesmers (obviously) and pve DPS optimizers.
I don’t like IC. It affects close to half of our weapon skills, and for one trait that’s pretty sick. Especially for minor trait. Before the patch I was totally cool without getting it, but now it’s just too darn close!
To encourage more build diversity, maybe there’s shouldn’t be a trait “that’s needed for most mesmer builds”
I agree, and wish they would either get rid of or rework IC. It’s a boring trait that affects our potency way too much.
We better split up the threads don’t you think so too?
Ziggs Ironeye – Engineer | Madame Le Blanc – Mesmer | Mentor (PvE) | EU
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
The thing that annoys me, is that completely wasnt true. At all. We actually avoided IC for the most part,
Speak for yourself.
The hit to “on death” builds was significant when they changed it from an adept to a grand master, in fact it basically broke it. You’re being a bit short sighted if you think it didn’t cripple quite a few builds though. At least those that relied on both clones and phantasms being up at all times.
How did you make on-death builds with 25 in illusions? That seems like a very bad choice to me. Or maybe you should just read my post again.
New Rainbow Guild – An open-minded guild exclusively for Transgender people! Warning:link may contain traces of awesome. Lyssa’s Grimoire – a guide every Mesmer should read.
You could do on-death builds with 25 illusions, Alissah. 10/25/10/0/25, it’s got all the necessities. OTOH, with IC dropped by 10 points, there’s now an option to do
10/25/20/0/15 or 10/25/10/10(for mender’s)/15. Which, of course, leads to diverse methods of clone-bombing.
Also, I’d freaking LOVE it if Mesmer C/Ds were readjusted so as to make IC less “needed” for most builds. It’s a bit ridiculous that any Trait lynchpins a class’ efficiency so kittened much.
Malegryne (Sylvari Mesmer), Lannka (Asura Thief) – Ferguson’s Crossing: [PRD/BRB/OMFG]
Other 80s: Any but Warrior
How did you make on-death builds with 25 in illusions? That seems like a very bad choice to me. Or maybe you should just read my post again.
It wasn’t 25 points when i ran the build (from release), it was 5 until it got changed to be a grand master trait (25). I’ve been running clone on death builds from release. Needless to say I didn’t do as well after the change. It broke it by a mere 5 points, but broke it non-the-less.
The recent change has made it better but still not optimal as it was.
Though admittedly there are better options to choose from given all the changes since those earlier changes.
Edit: Changed from not used to showing it was less effective, because i’ve never stopped using clone on death builds (non PU).
