Guild Wars 2

Let me start off by saying that i love power shatter mesmer a lot and i love roaming as one in wvw and engage in duels however all of our good traits are spread out in many different traitlines.
In order to play a power shatter mesmer build i need to generate as many clones as possible. The steadier clone production comes from deceptive evasion especially if you use sigil of energy.However i have to invest in a totally useless traitline to get that 1 trait.Considering how fast illusions are dying before getting the chance to shatter them, giving up on that horrible trait line is not an option. Blind on shatter (blinding dissipation) is an exception for this traitline but i dont feel its mandatory in any way.

Examples on shatter traits being spread out making it totally impossible to create a good power shatter build:
1) Master of misdirection (15% Recharge reduction on shatter skills) Illusions traitline
2) Restorative illusions (Heal and remove conditions on shatter) Inspiration traitline
3) Domination traitline is what boosts our damage output. Mental Anguish and power block which are on the same tier are both very strong but i mostly prefer Power block to diversify my damage output. You cant go wrong here with w/e you choose. Shattered concentration (boon removal on shatter), Confounding suggestions (Stun on daze every 5 seconds-Synergies with our F3 shatter) are very strong traits as well.
4) Chronomancer traitline is all about clone generation and alacrity on shatters
5) Deceptive evasion on dueling traitline. You cant play power shatter mesmer without it imo for the reasons i’ve already explained.

Of course i am not suggesting to move all these traits in 1-2 traitlines as that would be extreme. Having to choose though dueling traitline only for a mandatory shattered trait is beyond ridiculous. My suggestion will be the following. Since its an illusion summoning skill move it somewhere on illusion traitline. Merge it with Shattered Strength maybe?

I don’t really agree with this to be honest.

1.) You can already play power shatter without Deceptive Evasion. You lose out on clone generation, but a strong portion of power shatter’s damage also comes from Greatsword burst. Not to mention, landing a shatter with all 3 illusions isn’t even that big a deal, since the damage scales down the more illusions you shatter.

2.) Yes, all our good traits are spread across trait lines. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? If all good traits were in only one or two trait lines, then we’d ignore the rest. I understand that that’s not what you’re after, but if you take Deceptive Evasion out of Dueling then that trait line will be almost completely ignored.

3.) Dueling is not a bad trait line to begin with. Deceptive Evasion and Blinding Dissipation are immensely good traits, and the fury/vigor you get from the minor traits are not to be scoffed at either. I run Domination/Dueling/Chronomancer with Berserker/Scholar in PvP and it’s a ton of fun.

Traits are supposed to be all about making choices and sacrifices. Putting Deceptive Evasion in Illusions instead of Dueling will almost completely cement an Illusions/Domination/Chronomancer build for power shatter, whereas right now Mesmers need to make a meaningful choice between a reduction in shatter cooldowns and additional clone generation.

If anything Sharper Images should trade spots with Master of Misdirection. But combine the confusion duration with sharper images in the illusion line. Then we need more condi removal through duel, illusions, and dom in that order of accessibility and reliability.

(Also the game as a whole needs to throw away the whole concept of Adept, Master, GM. The slots don’t matter, they are uneven and often times an adept, or master is way more valuable compared to the entire line.)

Daishi.6027:

(Also the game as a whole needs to throw away the whole concept of Adept, Master, GM. The slots don’t matter, they are uneven and often times an adept, or master is way more valuable compared to the entire line.)

It’s there for lvling/unlocking purposes, to present choices and also as a crude balance gauge.
It succeeds/fails to varying degrees.

I don’t get why you don’t like Dueling. Deceptive Evasion is amazing, but so is Blinding Dissipation and the almost 100% fury uptime from the last minor. To be honest, when I play power shatter with Domi/Inspi/Chrono, I miss Blinding Dissipation almost as much as DE (chrono and iDefender compensate a bit the loss in illusion generation), and the loss in damage is noticeable.

Fools, Deceptive evasion is amazing. Please, continue to use less effective and less synergistic trees when making your shatter builds.

DE + Chronophantasma + Illusionary Reversion = YOUR WELCOME.

Seriously, there is no debate. With all of these traits especially, you can just machine gun shatters. I think it’s quite ridiculous and will flog it into the ground since they took away my beloved clone death traits.

kodesh.2851:

Fools, Deceptive evasion is amazing. Please, continue to use less effective and less synergistic trees when making your shatter builds.

DE + Chronophantasma + Illusionary Reversion = YOUR WELCOME.

Seriously, there is no debate. With all of these traits especially, you can just machine gun shatters. I think it’s quite ridiculous and will flog it into the ground since they took away my beloved clone death traits.

At a certain point clone production reaches redundancy, and swapping X trait line for Y decreases overall viability.

Dueling has no place in anything anymore. It holds no good traits for weapons (or relevant clone/cd reductions in general), offers nothing for clone production, offers nothing to survivability, offers nothing to damage. It’s current status is that gimmick, since you can form some interesting gimmicky builds using it :)

Ross Biddle.2367:

kodesh.2851:

Fools, Deceptive evasion is amazing. Please, continue to use less effective and less synergistic trees when making your shatter builds.

DE + Chronophantasma + Illusionary Reversion = YOUR WELCOME.

Seriously, there is no debate. With all of these traits especially, you can just machine gun shatters. I think it’s quite ridiculous and will flog it into the ground since they took away my beloved clone death traits.

At a certain point clone production reaches redundancy, and swapping X trait line for Y decreases overall viability.

Dueling has no place in anything anymore. It holds no good traits for weapons (or relevant clone/cd reductions in general), offers nothing for clone production, offers nothing to survivability, offers nothing to damage. It’s current status is that gimmick, since you can form some interesting gimmicky builds using it

I wouldn’t say it has no place at all Ross. Blind on shatter, fury when striking an enemy below 75% health and fury for phantasms along with vigor and bleed on crit are all nice things.

The problem for me is domination gives better mods with boon removal and I can get fury from a rev for my burst. Course I’m one of them weird folks that still play power and get eaten alive by a revenant trying to bludgeon themselves to death on the keyboard or a thief accidentally dodging into me for 9k….

I think ideally, DE should be a GM in the “Illusion” traitline (since it is based on illusion generation) and all the condi traits of “Illusion” should go to the dueling line (the condi line). This is what I suggested in my rework for example (signature).

Silverkey.2078:

I think ideally, DE should be a GM in the “Illusion” traitline (since it is based on illusion generation) and all the condi traits of “Illusion” should go to the dueling line (the condi line). This is what I suggested in my rework for example (signature).

Looked through your rework (I somehow missed this thread). Very impressive. I definitely would love to play this version of mesmer. On a admittedly trivial note, I’d switch the names of the Chaos and Dueling lines, i feel the names would better match the traits you have in those lines better that way lol. (Also Chaotic Interruption and Mistrust won’t play well together I think, but a minor detail.) Seriously though, very impressive redesign, well thought out. Best I’ve seen so far, at least thematically (I’m not good at mathing things either.

Meh, there’s so much which could be improved about Mesmer just by reshuffling traits, but it’d require a completely new approach to traits. Right now, I feel they’re just stuffed in wherever the devs felt balance wouldn’t cough up blood.

And that’s not just for Mesmers, that’s for everyone.

What GW2 traitlines lack is a clear theme to them. An identifying characteristic, telling you that by picking this line your XYZ power will increase but A, B or D won’t.

This can be seen in somewhat working (not really, but for sake of argument) for the Elementalist. Each of their element-traitlines has an obvious theme, even if it is only half-realized, improving one of the 4 stances.

So you can either enhance 3 of 4, or only 2 and pick up a generic mixed-element traitline which is good if you want to swap a lot. Of you can pick up Tempest and be much superior, but let’s not look at that right now.

Problem is, even for the Elementalist this is at best a minimal influence on how the traits are actually placed and what they do. And they have the best one. But back to Mesmer…

Mesmer traitline re-shuffle

• Give each traitline a clear major theme.
• Each traitline also has a gameplay relevant focus, but this is not about “Illusions” or “Reflects”, those are given by the major theme. This is about specialization. Healing, CC, etc.
• Each trait choice actually always provides 3 traits doing roughly the same thing, just in a different way. That way there’s an actual choice involved. Usually this comes down to a passive trait vs a passive procced (auto) trait vs an active procced (on-demand) trait.

Examples:

Illusions: Focuses on Clones and hiding among them. Gameplay-wise, the damage specline.
First pick: Passively have Clones dodge and perform different attack animations and move around. // When using a utility/heal/elite skill, a random clone uses a graphics-only version of that skill which has reduced FX (it’s not perfect) // Your Mirror Image skill now spawns two clones then becomes a chain skill which swaps you with the clone closer to your camera. The clones also spawn a bit apart from you.

And so on. The idea would be that my first choice is “easier to hide among clones”. That’s the minor pick. How I want to do that? Well I pick that myself. The minor traits realize the damage boost, btw, not the picks, except maybe the Grandmaster one.

Carighan.6758:

What GW2 traitlines lack is a clear theme to them. An identifying characteristic, telling you that by picking this line your XYZ power will increase but A, B or D won’t.

Yeah, GW2 traits are an absolute mess. They need a total rework in terms of theme and just general continuity. The elite traitlines are slightly better, but still suffer from drastic issues.

Carighan.6758:

What GW2 traitlines lack is a clear theme to them. An identifying characteristic, telling you that by picking this line your XYZ power will increase but A, B or D won’t.

This I absolutely agree with.

Carighan.6758:

Each trait choice actually always provides 3 traits doing roughly the same thing, just in a different way. That way there’s an actual choice involved. Usually this comes down to a passive trait vs a passive procced (auto) trait vs an active procced (on-demand) trait.

This I completely disagree with. Because there might be a choice. However, your choice would be irrelevant because the effect would always be somewhat the same.

I do like the approach ANet explained for Reapers (Movie Monster + yadda + yadda). But the three traits per tier still need to do something different instead of being pseudo options which just end up being combat effect cosmetics. Picking a theme for a trait line doesn’t mean it should become monochromatic.

Another issue I see is that, for example, traitline X could become the must pick for a specific playstyle (X). Now, you want to extent on that playstyle. But you can’t. Because A, B, C, Y and Z got other themes and all traits that do X are in X. Balls.

Silverkey.2078:

I think ideally, DE should be a GM in the “Illusion” traitline (since it is based on illusion generation) and all the condi traits of “Illusion” should go to the dueling line (the condi line). This is what I suggested in my rework for example (signature).

Deceptive Evasion is as much about Illusion as it is about evading – which suits Duelling better. There are arguments for both placements.

The main reason I’d be against putting it into Duelling is that we would have a second traitline – the other one being Chronomancy – which heavily improves our core mechanic. This puts all other traitlines in a worse position because Illusion generation is one of the main issues Mesmers have.

The risk of Illusions + Chronomancy becoming mandatory in too mansy situations seems pretty high. We would basically be back where we were at the start with Duelling + Illusions being mandatory. Nowadays you might choose between Duelling or Illusions based on personal play style. After moving DE I’m having a hard time not picking those two lines for obvious reasons.

Then again, your rework suggestions quite a huge amount of trait shifting. I just wanted to point out that moving DE without taking any other measures probably won’t end well.

This has been an issue for Mesmer from the start. We needed de due to clone creation. We can get by now using chrono to make clones. Anet has stated they want a shattering Mesmer. We need clones/phantasms to shatter so as before we are still locked into taking certain traits just to create ammo to use our core feature. If they made de a feature baked in it would help. Imo.