Guild Wars 2

(Crosspost from the balance boards, not sure how many read this one)

Hi, r40 sPvP, ~3k hours on Mes, bought 2k gems in the last few weeks

The proposed changes to DE are terribly misguided and a negative on the whole.

Playing shatter, there are many, many times where you want the control of an immediate clone in melee range. This can be as an interrupt to ward off a foe, more damage for pressuring a downed player, or simply because positioning has changed in the short term (Mesmer has many instantaneous blinks so this is not a rare occurrence).

If clone death traits are a problem, why not change the traits themselves? They’re already set to ignore shatter conditions so the framework is there — just make them proc solely on death from actual player damage. This would be far less invasive than reworking a trait that has impact on hundreds of players who do not use these traits at all.

I deeply implore the devs to reconsider this change, it will make the Mesmer a less enjoyable and simpler class to play as a result. I am not sure why the team is pushing us towards a “turtling” style where three illusions (in their eyes, ideally phantasms) are kept up at all times but it is a mark down in all categories from the fast and fluid feeling one gets playing traditional Mes.

— Bliss

I do wonder why our class ability (shatters) revolves around killing off our clones ourselfs but they keep pushing builds that dont shatter at all, while nerfing shatter

I´ve lost my faith in anet

Stievie.6128:

I do wonder why our class ability (shatters) revolves around killing off our clones ourselfs but they keep pushing builds that dont shatter at all, while nerfing shatter

I´ve lost my faith in anet

I watched the Twitch livestream and I was baffled too by the reasoning put forward… from what I can gather, the developers were concerned that our clones were “spammy”, however here is what the GW2 official site has to say: “A clone is […] primarily intended to distract the enemy […]” Control over our illusions is one of the class mechanics, that is how it was and always should be.

If clone death traits are a problem then those are the traits you would target, not a peripheral one that hacks away at the rest of the class. It’s like cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Stievie.6128:

I do wonder why our class ability (shatters) revolves around killing off our clones ourselfs but they keep pushing builds that dont shatter at all, while nerfing shatter

I´ve lost my faith in anet

i lost the faith in anet the moment they started talking about mes:
hhahahahah…purple…hahahahchees…hahaha no clone for u hahahaha…cheesy…hahaha

They should do what Riot games does with their balancing issues. Work together with pro players or run massive Public Beta environments with open feedback on their changes from people who actually play Mesmer full time. Because clearly they don’t understand their own classes when the lead designer doesn’t even know how abilities interact and leave the actual players scratching their heads as to what they’re talking about.

yeah i bet if one of those devs was playing a mes in an organized guild in wvw, we would see changes quickly as they would realize how kitten the veilbot duty is and many other things they are absolutely clueless about. why didnt they just turnit into warrior wars and eliminate the rest of the classes as they clearly balance around so the warrior will always be the top played and top godlike class.

Could anyone having an opinion (one way or another) relating specifically to the perception that the ‘clone death’ builds & traits are too powerful please post your thoughts & findings here:

PvX MESMER Are clone death traits OP?

Since this was the reason given for the Deceptive Evasion nerf I think it’s important to really look into whether this is true or not, especially when proposing alternative solutions like nerfing those specific traits or builds in order to save others.

Glad you posted this Shimmerless, I’ll reply in the balance section as well.

You’re completely right that the change was misguided based on the reasoning provided. Not having potential access to an on demand clone, causing your clones to path to the target instead of respawning a few and bursting, and/or needing to use a different shatter first is not “improving the flow of clones” as Peters said. They should definitely address the Dissipation traits separately, as well as the phantasm replacement bug when you have 3 phantasms out.

This change has unintended side effects on Shatter that I don’t think were meant to be targeted towards Shatter. I may be wrong, but it’s not like Shatter is in the meta anyway.

I already messaged Grouch and Powerr about this, and haven’t gotten a reply from either (understandably busy). Hopefully they’ll reconsider, although it might be too late.