Guild Wars 2

I’ll throw my 2 cents in that I really do like the fact that it roots you for the cast. It definitely gives the skill a feeling of weight and purpose. This really isn’t the problem at all, the problem is it feels like it has weight and purpose…and doesn’t.

A larger radius and either the channeled idea or enhanced damage/boon stripping/w/e would be perfect.

I would like to see (4) with a (5) where you could re-position it once per second during channel by hitting the key for it again. keep the radius the same if you do this, so it takes some skill to use effectively.
also I agree with Pyroathiest keep the root on cast.

gasp a red post.

Incoming 1 year later update + probably a broken mechanic. Sorry, my pessimism is showing.

I would choose #4 or #5 though

Here’s my suggestion for a rework:

I LOVE the idea of a channeled aoe. While more boon removal would be welcome, however, I think the new Mind Stab needs to have some sort of Daze component.

The Domination trait line’s (which is heavily focused towards Greatsword) minor traits are all focused around Dazing/Interrupting. So in order to add trait synergy to the weapon, what I suggest is:

Mind Stab
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Range: 1200
Channel Time: 2.25 seconds
Pulses: 1 pulse every .75 seconds
Upon cast, the user stabs their greatsword into the ground and begins channeling. This creates an AoE of whirling blades and purple particles at the target location.
This AoE pulses 3 times. The first two pulses deal damage (probably roughly about 120% of the damage of a GS auto-attack) and remove 1 boon each. The final pulse Dazes all enemies inside the AoE very briefly, probably for about 1/4 of a second or less.

This solution not only adds purpose to 3 rather lackluster minor traits, but also gives mesmer an interesting new tool in both pvp and pve.

The channel time would make this skill balanced in pvp, as anyone who wants to avoid the Daze can either just dodge or interrupt the decently long channel. If this is still found to be too powerful, the Daze can be reduced in PvP.

The main reasons I argue in favor of adding a Daze for completing the spell is as follows:
1. It gives the player incentive to finish the spell. If you are only rewarded with the Daze upon the final tick, players have to choose between sacrificing mobility for a slightly longer time, or getting the Daze effect for their patience.

I would only keep the boon removal portion of the skill so no Mesmers feel as though they’ve been robbed of a source of quick boon removal, as I know it sometimes (rarely) comes in handy.

The changes I have suggested are largely from a PvE point of view. Currently, mesmers don’t feel especially strong in fractals in terms of offering direct support to their team. Adding additional ways for mesmers to apply Vulnerability and interrupt foes will give them more weight in parties and make the Greatsword weapon as a whole feel more appropriately “heavy”. Currently, Mind Stab feels very flaky. The animation makes the ability -look- like it should be very powerful, but instead, it is weak and lackluster.

What do you guys think?

Saw a response in Dev Tracker and was surprised that a blast finisher wasn’t mentioned.

Checked the thread – it was mentioned by players, multiple times. Still perplexed as to why a viable blast finisher for mesmer is not an option in dev’s point of view.

Karl McLain.5604:

Increase the radius.

Such instant-cast AoE-like skill would help at farming events with tons of invulnerable -> fast-dieing mobs.

Kadj.6725:

I think having insane access to Chaos Armor via a quick and simple blast finisher would be close to overpowered.

Chaos Armour is considered to be a mostly useless Staff #4 skill and the worst combo effect in PvE. How can it be “overpowered”?

Lishtenbird.2814:

Kadj.6725:

I think having insane access to Chaos Armor via a quick and simple blast finisher would be close to overpowered.

Chaos Armour is considered to be a mostly useless Staff #4 skill and the worst combo effect in PvE. How can it be “overpowered”?

Chaos armor is far from useless. I can see how it’s underpowered in PvE, but chaos armor is a great defensive option in PvP settings.

mango.9267:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Kadj.6725:

I think having insane access to Chaos Armor via a quick and simple blast finisher would be close to overpowered.

Chaos Armour is considered to be a mostly useless Staff #4 skill and the worst combo effect in PvE. How can it be “overpowered”?

Chaos armor is far from useless. I can see how it’s underpowered in PvE, but chaos armor is a great defensive option in PvP settings.

And having access to a non-kitten blast finisher would give us insane access to chaos armor how exactly? We can already have as much access as is possible via the use of the leaps on mainhand sword and staff. The limiting factor is the fields, not the finishers.

Pyroathiest.4168:

mango.9267:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Kadj.6725:

I think having insane access to Chaos Armor via a quick and simple blast finisher would be close to overpowered.

Chaos Armour is considered to be a mostly useless Staff #4 skill and the worst combo effect in PvE. How can it be “overpowered”?

Chaos armor is far from useless. I can see how it’s underpowered in PvE, but chaos armor is a great defensive option in PvP settings.

And having access to a non-kitten blast finisher would give us insane access to chaos armor how exactly? We can already have as much access as is possible via the use of the leaps on mainhand sword and staff. The limiting factor is the fields, not the finishers.

I never said blast finishers would give us “insane access to chaos armor”. I just responded to the point about chaos armor being useless. For what it’s worth, I do think mesmers need a better blast finisher than the prestige…

mango.9267:

Chaos armor is far from useless. I can see how it’s underpowered in PvE, but chaos armor is a great defensive option in PvP settings.

Not sure about “great”, but yes, in PvP it’s more useful than in PvE. Still, I think that a blast finisher on Mind Stab will make eles more viable, and not mesmers It opens up more teamplay and with a finisher it may as well be often used as a finisher only and not as an attacking skill.

3+4 would be fun, but 3 would be best if only one of the two were chosen. Mesmer has a severe lacking of AOE damage.

Karl McLain.5604:

2. Increase the number of boons removed.

This would do for me. Also…

*Make it a Blast Finisher.

I’ve just really wanted this to be the case in such a long time. I always feel a bit left out during WvW guild raids when other classes are happily blasting each others fields on demand and I just can’t do that with my Mesmer (The Prestige just isn’t a viable option). Would be nice if Mesmer could offer even a little more group functionality in this respect.

Karl McLain.5604:

We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!

And just wanted to comment on this sentence… I appreciate it that you’re willing to develop completely new tech which could work for mesmers, but I’m sure me and many, many other players would appreciate it even more if you instead developed some tech to make

• Blink blink with 100% success when the indicator is green,
• iLeap get cast and leap with 100% success rate,
• iWarden attack and reflect with 100% success rate,
• Temporal Curtain stack swiftness.

@4 is a pretty good idea if it’s like some sort of a meteor shower. I think it would be better to be more centered around boon-ripping than pure DPS, like remove 2 boons per pulse and do a little bit more damage than now, but AoE.
It would put mesmers on a really good debuffer place, with this skill, Null Field and Shattered Concentration.

I don’t find pure big DPS pared with mesmers. We only lack damage in big scale fights (we have one of the best DPS in PvE, we excel in duels and small scale fights both at burst and sustained) but just a reworked skill won’t put us on a good spot.

Ansau.7326:

(we have one of the best DPS in PvE, we excel in duels and small scale fights both at burst and sustained)

There was a DPS spreadsheet which showed that a mesmer traited for pure DPS with 3 phantasms up did as much damage as an axe-mace warrior pressing 1. (Can’t find the link as the thread has been trashed).

Karl McLain.5604:

Some great ideas here guys! This skill is something we’ve been looking at, as it’s a little underwhelming at times.

Here’s a bunch of potential things we could do (we would do one or maybe two of these, not all:

1. Look at making it usable on the move. Currently, the animation is ONLY able to be used while standing still.
2. Increase the number of boons removed.
3. Increase the radius.
4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
5. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!
6. ???
7. Profit!

Tagging this thread for later.

Hello Karl,

Good to hear you guys were also brainstorming to change this skill!
Now I’ve been reading through the post and it seemed people mostly like #4. My problem with this is that it will, again, buff us on a part where we are already good at. (obviously I’m talking about boon removal atm). Don’t get me wrong, I do really like the idea, but I feel a bit let down cause of the few amount of blast finisher we have and we might never get. While every class has at least 1 reliable blast finisher I don’t really understand why especially mesmer (which is supposed to be supportive?) has only access to 1 which is very unreliable.

Do you have any thought on this? Are you thinking about adding blast finishers to mesmer or will this be a ‘’no go’’?

p.s. ; Please don’t add finishers to the end of the cast of a channeling skill. It’s like playing with 2/3/4 seconds delay in a skill without lag.

Malchior.5042:

Karl,

While number 4 sounds really awesome for Mind Stab, I wanted to point out something really quick.

This pretty much cements Greatsword as the Go-To weapon for any Mesmer, even Condi mesmers can get good useage out of Mirror Blade and Mind Stab.

If Mind Stab is getting a little buff, we really need to look at Scepter as well. Scepter as a whole feels completely lackluster and is not strong for Power or Condi builds. Not to mention that it just feels slow with its auto-attack, compared to a Mesmer’s other weapons.

Hopefully we can find a happy medium between all the weapons. Thank you, sir.

Malchior

A very good question my good sir.

I currently run with all weapons in my inventory and change depending on what am doing or who am facing.

As much as I the channelling idea like everyone here, just like Malchior said, it could end up been the go to weapon.

Keeping it rooted, but increasing the radius and boon strapping will be what I would go with.

Thank you Malchior for thinking outside they box.

Adding more boon removal only will barely have any impact in pve. That’s why #4 and #5 is the best: it adds both more boon removal and damage, at the cost of being easier to counterplay/ having a higher risk-reward ratio (due to the mesmer needing to spend more time not moving, either because the channel exists, or because they must click several times for a multi-thrust).

Those suggestions are also more interesting than a generic blast finisher. Do you really want the Mesmer to be yet another might-stacking or heal-stacking elementalist in groups? It’s not very mesmery. But stronger boon removal is.

If anything, Anet should re-balance all combo finishers, so that someday, the phantasm’s whirl finisher is also desired by groups.

well theres a boss in the dredge ini who use gs 3 on your whole team, beside that a lot of skills like gs 5 on guard use a system to randomly catch 5 enemies.
so why do you need a new technic ?

this is like the easiest change ever, just make it a blast finisher and keep everything else the same. done.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Those suggestions are also more interesting than a generic blast finisher. Do you really want the Mesmer to be yet another might-stacking or heal-stacking elementalist in groups? It’s not very mesmery. But stronger boon removal is.

If I have to choose between being an ele or a veilbot, I’d prefer an ele. As long as there’s no trinity, I don’t care if I’m “mesmery” enough or not; I care if I am on par with other classes or not.

I agree that we do not need to get buffs in parts we’re already good at. We need buffs in parts we’re bad at – AoE and blast finishers.

Karl McLain.5604:

4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
7. Profit!

My vote goes to 4 and 7!
I love the Idea of both.

Combine #4 and blast finisher?
Pulses a blast finisher/dmg/boon removal each second the mesmer holds down GS#3 and sits still. Lasts up to 3 seconds?

It would combo terrible with our own fields as chaos armor doesn’t stack duration. Wouldn’t be OP in PvE because it’s still the GS >_> I would use it more often though. For PvP we would have to stand still for 3 seconds with a huge target above our head. For wvw, it would give mesmers some form of AOE that is still loads weaker than ele or necro but at least we could feel more useful.

But yeah… please fix bugs before trying to “buff” this skill.

+1 for #4 – channel and pulsating damage + boon remove.

I also think it should root us for the duration of the channel so we have to be smart about when to use it and how long to channel it. I would actually rather have a higher impact skill in a small radius than just boosting the radius size. This promotes skilful accuracy rather than nuking everything in a huge circle.

+1 on AoE pulse! Would need a radius increase too tho.

A blast-finisher on a weapon which already has two finishers, and also have it remove 2 boons?

I’m all for a Mind Stab buff, but really? :P

Carighan.6758:

A blast-finisher on a weapon which already has two finishers, and also have it remove 2 boons?

I’m all for a Mind Stab buff, but really? :P

combo system in this game is messed up, only blast finishers matter or make much of a difference.

Take away the crappy projectile combos no one will even make a peep.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

My vote goes for number 4 “Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.”

This would be extremely interesting and give Mesmer some much needed AoE damage in a way that can be used creatively rather than “spam skill & forget”.

Would actually make mesmers a lot more useful in WvW as well.
Depenting on the AoE radius and CD tho

Zepidel.5349:

combo system in this game is messed up, only blast finishers matter or make much of a difference.

Take away the crappy projectile combos no one will even make a peep.

So instead of fixing the issue, we want them to make it worse?
Shouldn’t we want to see the other combos buffed up to the level of blast finishers?

I don’t suppose it would bother anyone if Mind Stab had more in common with Mind Spike and dealt 33% more damage when its target has no boons.

When Mind Spike was changed, I had to re-read the notes because I thought it was Mind Stab that got the damage boost. It needed it then, and it still needs it.

As it is now, Mind Stab is the skill you use when everything else is on cooldown.

Here’s my 2 cents.

• Keep the root. The animation is awesome but, like Pyro said, it needs purpose.
• Increase the aoe radius. Mesmers are in desperate need of more aoe attacks.
• The attack pulses damage and converts boons into vulnerability
  – Only one boon per pulse
  – If enemy has no boons, slight damage increase
• Channel only pulses twice normally (starting pulse and one after the first second)
  – Can be held up to 5 seconds if the players holds the button down
  – Last pulse shatters the illusionary sword and is a blast finisher

On a related note, if you go with the “hold key to lengthen channel” mechanic, there are other skills that would benefit from it too. Elementalist’s Churning Earth immediately comes to mind. It would be great if the channel pulsed Torment every second instead of cripple, since the earth attunement is more about condition damage.

It could also be a big circle in which 3 random foes are choosen to be targeted. The targeting circle would be as big as a barrage or a time warp. Inside of this circle every tick of mind stab creates its own 3 fields that do the effects in a 120 radius. (This would make multitargeting easier I think) Also it would be closer to this dredge-dungeon-boss-mesmer mentioned earlier.

~ Me Games Ma

Crossplay.2067:

Here’s my 2 cents.

• Keep the root. The animation is awesome but, like Pyro said, it needs purpose.
• Increase the aoe radius. Mesmers are in desperate need of more aoe attacks.
• The attack pulses damage and converts boons into vulnerability
  – Only one boon per pulse
  – If enemy has no boons, slight damage increase
• Channel only pulses twice normally (starting pulse and one after the first second)
  – Can be held up to 5 seconds if the players holds the button down
  – Last pulse shatters the illusionary sword and is a blast finisher

On a related note, if you go with the “hold key to lengthen channel” mechanic, there are other skills that would benefit from it too. Elementalist’s Churning Earth immediately comes to mind. It would be great if the channel pulsed Torment every second instead of cripple, since the earth attunement is more about condition damage.

30 second cd?
I mean, that’s an awesome idea, but it offers ALOT for a number 3 weapon skill. I’d imagine they’d give it quiet the hefty cd.

Zepidel.5349:

combo system in this game is messed up, only blast finishers matter or make much of a difference.

Take away the crappy projectile combos no one will even make a peep.

The effect of blast finishers are significant because blasts are generally fairly long cd and low accessibility.
That said, other finishers are useful. Leap for heal in water or stealth in smoke. Added burns on projectiles through fire fields for condi builds. Stuff like that.
There are admittedly a lot of underwhelming ones though, but I’d prefer to see them brought up to par rather then gotten rid of.

Arewn.2368:

The effect of blast finishers are significant because blasts are generally fairly long cd and low accessibility.

Mmmmmno.

Warrior
Earthshaker: 10 seconds.
Arcing arrow: 10 seconds.

Guardian
Mighty Blow: 5 seconds

Elementalist
Dragon’s Tooth: 6 seconds

Thief
Cluster Bomb: No cooldown, 3 initiative

Engineer
Engineer doesn’t have spammable blasts the same way that these others do, but they have just so many of them. Blasts on shield, blasts on every turret, blasts on kit skills, blasts on gadgets, engineers have insane blasting ability.

So all of these classes have either massive access to blast finishers, extremely low cooldown blast finishers, or both. Now lets look at the others.

Necromancer
Putrid explosion is really the only decent blast finisher they have, though putrid mark can be used as well. Overall, necros have pretty bad access to blast finishing.

Ranger
Ranger has no good low cooldown blast finishers, but the one (non-pet) finisher they have is pretty strong. Call of the wild is a blast finisher as well as an aoe fury/might/swiftness.

So while necros and rangers don’t have the insane access to blast finishers as the other classes do, they still retain on-demand blast finishers that can be effectively used.

Mesmer
The prestige: A skill with a long cooldown that blast finishes on a 3-4 second delay.

….ok. Not only does mesmer have no access to a spammable blast finisher like cluster bomb or mighty blow, they don’t even have access to a blast finisher that can blast in a reasonable amount of time. If you try to blast a water or something with the prestige, half the time it’ll be gone by the time the blast actually hits. Mesmer is the only class in the game without anything even approaching basic access to a blast finisher, end of story.

Giving us access to one is not going to be the end of the world, and saying that blast finishers are rare or on long cooldowns is probably one of the most absurdly wrong statements I’ve seen this week.

I suggest Mind Stab to be either channeled skill, or a blink skill (you blink to the area, deal damage, strip boon)

I would suggest to make it similar to a smaller and faster Meteor Shower:
1) You hit the ground and it spawns 2-3 pink-ghostly swords each pulse (let’s say 3-4 pulses)
2) For each pulse, it deals little or medium damage and rips 1 boon.
3) When the channeling ends, all the ghostly swords on the ground get shattered and it deals an additional damage to foes/enemies that are still in the area.

Cast time: 4 sec
Pulses: 1 sec
Radius: 360 overall area (let’s say the “red ring”), 60 every single swords radius.

For the damage and the spawned swords, I don’t rly know, it’s up to the devs.

Instead of make it a blast finisher, how about make the skill a combo field so that we can self combo like we do on staff?

Heres something i come up with:

Thrust your greatsword into the ground and stab foes at a target area. Also leave a lingering field of pulsating dark energy that converts boons on foes to vulnerability.

Initial damage: -same as current-
Radius: 240
Duration: 5s
Combo field: Dark
Interval: 1s
Each pulse converts a boon into 2 stacks of vulnerability per target
Max target: 5
Range: 1200
Cooldown: 15s
Cast time: 1/4s

That would, again, only promote selfish play by the mesmer. When exactly are we gonna get some skills to support? We’re selfish enough already. Also, what exactly do you expect to combo? Proceed blind with staff? That’s not gonna work out great.

blackdevil doesn’t darkness proc life steal and smoke proc blindness.or is this a staff is odd thing.
other wise go with a general channeled aoe (240 radius, 5 sec duration), boon rip on pulse, and have blade shatter (something similar to shatter’s crystals shattering) for daze on last pulse.
selfish and support in one if you have vuln on daze traited anyways.

http://gw2.game-guide.fr/outils/combo/#en
Nope see for yourself, blindness. A projectile or whirl would cause life steal, blast and leaps are both blind.
If it would have a type of field, it would be most likely be ethereal, Ice or light(please no more light fields…). A smoke field would be cool but probably op as you can stealth from that.

ugh forgot staff auto isn’t a projectile, and ya leap would proc blindness.
otherwise if we get a new field my vote is for ice, useful for power and condition builds.
ya smoke would be op or at the very least cause a large amount of whining about Mesmer spamming stealth, and more whining about pu. but if the dev give us this it would be sweet imagine stealthed ileap clone.

Channeled and pulsing aoe + target focused.

1. Mark target, 2. Start channel, 3, target takes dmg + get boons removed + nerby targets.

This give it a tactical aspect as a player who get targeted need to move away from frindlys to not dmg them. Also it let you chanel on stalthed targets (like archers).

Trait GS should be reworded aswell, take 50 power away and give :

Bigger AOE on al aoe skills (phantasm & #4) and increace boon removal.

This go in line with the domination tree,s boon removal trait for shatter aswell.

Another thing. Would like to se one of the new GM traits reowrked, several is close to uselss.

GM trait = al clones and phantasm get 2 sec immunity to dmg after used shatter1-3

/Osicat

Self-root sounds like a really bad idea, no matter how many benefits it brings. I would probably never use that outside PvE.
I’m not sure how #4 would ever be good outside zerging, and it’s not exactly going to solve the whole problem of the mesmer class mechanic failing horribly in large fights.

Karl McLain.5604:

Some great ideas here guys! This skill is something we’ve been looking at, as it’s a little underwhelming at times.

Here’s a bunch of potential things we could do (we would do one or maybe two of these, not all:

1. Look at making it usable on the move. Currently, the animation is ONLY able to be used while standing still.
2. Increase the number of boons removed.
3. Increase the radius.
4. Make this a channeled skill that pulses AOE damage and boon removal while you hold the sword in the ground.
5. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!
6. ???
7. Profit!

Tagging this thread for later.

Hi Karl, could you consider changing the visual into a hybrid of what “Tazza” in Sorrows Embrace Part 1 does. A quick recap is that she does an AoE attack that does a burst attack which appears as a dozen Mind Stab animations in a moderately large (close to but not quite what chaos storm is now) field. For cool factor when the mesmer is using the new awesome power of this reworked skill you should animate his clothes blowing back from wind gusting from the rift his sword is going through

The skill should pulse every 0.75s for four seconds.

Further because the mesmer is committed to channeling and unable to move or take other actions, the damage on this skill should be significantly increased with a twist. First off the base damage should be upped by perhaps 30-40% from where it is right now, however the twist should be each time it pulses and removes a buff it should “explode” the buff off the target doing (2x) additional damage. This should allow the mesmer to punish players who are refusing to run out of the mind stab aoe radius (bunker smash!).

I would further tweak this skill such that if the mesmer is in the radius of his own Mind Stab the reuse time should be halved compared to if he is throwing it at a distance at people. This would allow the skill to be balanced for close range fighting (pve/dungeon tweaking) and still have range capabilities (wvw/pvp).

Finally Mind Stab should trigger blast finishers.

This is a stupid point towards the root but I use the current heft of the skill to test packet loss. If mind stab takes five seconds for me to pull my sword out of the ground, I know it’s not a good day to play. xD

Pyroathiest.4168:

Arewn.2368:

The effect of blast finishers are significant because blasts are generally fairly long cd and low accessibility.

Mmmmmno.

Warrior
Earthshaker: 10 seconds.
Arcing arrow: 10 seconds.

Guardian
Mighty Blow: 5 seconds

Elementalist
Dragon’s Tooth: 6 seconds

Thief
Cluster Bomb: No cooldown, 3 initiative

Engineer
Engineer doesn’t have spammable blasts the same way that these others do, but they have just so many of them. Blasts on shield, blasts on every turret, blasts on kit skills, blasts on gadgets, engineers have insane blasting ability.

So all of these classes have either massive access to blast finishers, extremely low cooldown blast finishers, or both. Now lets look at the others.

Necromancer
Putrid explosion is really the only decent blast finisher they have, though putrid mark can be used as well. Overall, necros have pretty bad access to blast finishing.

Ranger
Ranger has no good low cooldown blast finishers, but the one (non-pet) finisher they have is pretty strong. Call of the wild is a blast finisher as well as an aoe fury/might/swiftness.

So while necros and rangers don’t have the insane access to blast finishers as the other classes do, they still retain on-demand blast finishers that can be effectively used.

Mesmer
The prestige: A skill with a long cooldown that blast finishes on a 3-4 second delay.

….ok. Not only does mesmer have no access to a spammable blast finisher like cluster bomb or mighty blow, they don’t even have access to a blast finisher that can blast in a reasonable amount of time. If you try to blast a water or something with the prestige, half the time it’ll be gone by the time the blast actually hits. Mesmer is the only class in the game without anything even approaching basic access to a blast finisher, end of story.

Giving us access to one is not going to be the end of the world, and saying that blast finishers are rare or on long cooldowns is probably one of the most absurdly wrong statements I’ve seen this week.

All is relative. Blast Finishers are next to non-existant compared to the availability of projectile finishers.
Furthermore, in your own post you showed that literally half the classes don’t have very good accessibility to blasts.
If that was the “most absurdly wrong statement” you’ve heard this week, you’ve either been going around with your proverbial ears plugged, or been around people who are nearly always completely correct in what they say.

Arewn.2368:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Arewn.2368:

The effect of blast finishers are significant because blasts are generally fairly long cd and low accessibility.

Mmmmmno.

Warrior
Earthshaker: 10 seconds.
Arcing arrow: 10 seconds.

Guardian
Mighty Blow: 5 seconds

Elementalist
Dragon’s Tooth: 6 seconds

Thief
Cluster Bomb: No cooldown, 3 initiative

Engineer
Engineer doesn’t have spammable blasts the same way that these others do, but they have just so many of them. Blasts on shield, blasts on every turret, blasts on kit skills, blasts on gadgets, engineers have insane blasting ability.

So all of these classes have either massive access to blast finishers, extremely low cooldown blast finishers, or both. Now lets look at the others.

Necromancer
Putrid explosion is really the only decent blast finisher they have, though putrid mark can be used as well. Overall, necros have pretty bad access to blast finishing.

Ranger
Ranger has no good low cooldown blast finishers, but the one (non-pet) finisher they have is pretty strong. Call of the wild is a blast finisher as well as an aoe fury/might/swiftness.

So while necros and rangers don’t have the insane access to blast finishers as the other classes do, they still retain on-demand blast finishers that can be effectively used.

Mesmer
The prestige: A skill with a long cooldown that blast finishes on a 3-4 second delay.

….ok. Not only does mesmer have no access to a spammable blast finisher like cluster bomb or mighty blow, they don’t even have access to a blast finisher that can blast in a reasonable amount of time. If you try to blast a water or something with the prestige, half the time it’ll be gone by the time the blast actually hits. Mesmer is the only class in the game without anything even approaching basic access to a blast finisher, end of story.

Giving us access to one is not going to be the end of the world, and saying that blast finishers are rare or on long cooldowns is probably one of the most absurdly wrong statements I’ve seen this week.

All is relative. Blast Finishers are next to non-existant compared to the availability of projectile finishers.

No, you’re wrong about that. All spammable projectile finishers are only a 20% chance, making them unreliable. 100% finisher skills are on comparable cooldowns to the blast finishers.

Pyroathiest.4168:

No, you’re wrong about that. All spammable projectile finishers are only a 20% chance, making them unreliable. 100% finisher skills are on comparable cooldowns to the blast finishers.

I’m well aware. Even if the spammable ones only trigger one fifth of the time, that’s still more often then you can blast, which (I imagine) is why the effect is weaker relative to what you get from blasts.
Even excluding that, the 100% chance projectile finishers are still more accessible and plentiful then blasts. Not by nearly as wide a margin on their own of course, but more plentiful they remain.
As I said in my original post, I agree that there are a lot of underwhelming ones though. The unreliable ones in particular need looking at in my opinion (whirls and 20% projectiles). Perhaps get rid of 20%projectiles and proportionately buff 100%projectiles. Whirls just need to hit more reliably and their effect needs buffing in some instances.

Karl McLain.5604:

1. Multi-stab! You choose multiple ground targets and stab all of them simultaneously (or one-after the other). We don’t have tech for this yet… but it’s a possibility!

You know, I gave it some thought and I realized… we already have the beginnings of this tech. No need to spend too much dev time on actually coding it:

Make it behave similar to a Mantra. Jam GS in ground to begin, rooting the user to the ground; this applies a couple stacks of a buff that lasts for a couple seconds(maybe 5). Then use a sequential skill that consumes the stacks of the buff to apply the effect.

Honestly, I would like to see this considered to outright be a mantra, even if the mechanics are very slightly different. This gives a boost to mantra builds that I think they really need, an actual weaponized mantra, and fully traitable. It also creates an unusual defensive option on the greatsword, for those who might take the toughness-on-cast trait.

I really don’t like the idea of a aoe channeled skill. I very much like how the skill functions as it is. It really has a unique feeling to it. You stab your great-sword in to the ground and the tip of the sword erupts from the ground of your targeted area damaging and slightly hindering your opponent giving you the advantage.

The problem though is that it does not feel like it hinders your opponent nor gives you a decent advantage and its damage is decent to sub par at best.
Resulting in this skill just being “meh” when we all know it should be a godly skill as our #3 of our great-sword.

I don’t think we as Mesmers should have much aoe and I like that. It is our weakness.

What needs to happen is to make this skill a decent to amazing skill with a few of these optional improvements

• skill is now a blast finisher

• increase damage base, or based on the situation(number of boons,number of conditions, ect)

• increase the number of boons removed, stolen, corrupted ect.

• steal the boon "giving us the advantage*

• send one condition we have to our foe(s)

• corrupt the boon(giving us the option to fear a target if the boon corrupted is stability)
  As well as many other use’s depending on the boon corrupted “hindering our opponent”
  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupt_Boon

Put simply what I want is for this skill to be something rather than “meh”.
I want our opponents to fear it. I want them to actually have to understand that when the mesmer goes to stab their great-sword in to the ground they better dodge.

Also I want it to remain as a skill shot. And for its rewards to increase based on the boons of the target(more damage if the target does not have a boon ect) and if we happen to hit more than one target( such as stealing multiple boons from multiple targets. 1 from each)