Guild Wars 2

To me Mesmers are about exploiting situations, anticipation, and capitalize on weaknesses when they are either presented by themselves, or forced by the Mesmer. Doing this requires skills (and traits) that are focused and impactful to allow opportunistic and rewarding play…

Good examples of this are
Scepter#2 where you anticipate an attack and block, being rewarded with applying an important stack of torment on the enemy.
Feedback by instantly turning the fight by using an enemies projectiles against them.
Sword#2 to negate that big damage coming your way

…however there are many Mesmer skills and traits that does not have this quality, but instead have low effects but on many different skills (or just no real impact at all), leading to the loss of the core Mesmer feeling of being able to capitalize on the situation.

Examples of this are
Phantasmal Mage which is a really low effect Phantasm, it spreads minimal burns on different targets by bouncing.
Illusionary Retribution and Maim the Disillusioned which gives low amount (and duration) Confusion and Torment on all shatters, so that you apply a little of them on all shatters.

In my opinion, this is terrible. It would be much more interesting and rewarding if you get results by using the correct skill at the correct time, instead of getting weak results by using any and all skills.

I think it would greatly benefit the “Mesmer feeling” and playstyle, as well as the feeling of accomplishment and reward for playing correctly, to change skills and traits to be more focused and impactful.

Some examples I have are:

Illusionary Retribution and Maim the Disillusioned only apply Confusion and Torment on Cry of Frustration, but in much higher volumes, e.g. from 1 stack of 3s per illusion on all shatters, to 5 stacks of 5s per illusion but only for Cry of Frustration

I would also give Cry of Frustration the same recharge as Mind Wrack since one is a Power damage shatter, and one is a Condition damage shatter, it makes no sense to have the Condition shatter have twice the recharge of the Power one, each build (Power or Condi) can only really make impactful use of one of the shatters.

Phantasmal Mage should lose its bounce, increase the burning to e.g. 3 stacks of 6s, and e.g. apply 3s fury in a small/medium aoe at impact or at phantasm.

Phantasmal Warlock fills no real purpose, there hasn’t been any situation where I think “if only I had a Warlock out..” or even “if I had a Phantasmal Warlock out instead of a Phantasmal Duelist I could have made it..” , this phantasm should be redesigned somehow to have a real purpose and be more useful.

Lastly I have the, in my opinion, ultimate Mesmer skill Chaos Storm
This is a really cool skill and should feel special to cast, like e.g. waiting for your Meteor Shower to recharge for Elementalists. At the moment I don’t think it has quite the impact it deserves, and I think it’s power should be improved somehow (perhaps more damage per pulse, or double the boons/conditions per pulse, or an additional 5s Confusion per pulse, I don’t know?)

There are other skills as well that I feel lack the impact, and opportunistic and rewarding playstyle, but I’m sure you understand my point.

What do you think of this subject? Do you have any suggestions to make the skills and traits more focused and impactful?

Anyone want to comment? Or did all Mesmers abandon ship already?

Aesa.4819:

Anyone want to comment? Or did all Mesmers abandon ship already?

yep,

tried playing other classes, just not the same. The game is pretty much done for me. I heard rumors of WvW testing invites were sent out, so maybe they are fixing a game mode that enjoy the most, maybe that will bring me back.

For now, it is catching up on my single player games and waiting for the next MMO that offers WvW type of mode for me.

I agree, there are many awesome skills with huge impact such as feedback, gravity well or time warp, aswell as countless other weapon and utility skills. But there are aswell “those skills” barely someone uses. Nullfield, utility phants, some phants in general etc etc blabla. In the end yes, there are skills with lack of impact. I totally agree with you about Chaos Storm – such an amazing animation and sound, huge CD and then … so little impact

Sadly we are not the only ones here – Ranger barely has any good utility skills, same goes for warrior and thief. They use all the same “few good skills”. Every profession has these problems and I have to say we are one of the professions with the most useful skills.

They should rework many old skills, in fact they should simply take a look at ALL of them once in a while … :/

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc