Guild Wars 2

Did we ever get an explanation for why these were swapped? I still haven’t heard a valid reason.

Arenanet

I’m not sure either. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I would say that they put the “increase damage” functionality in a “damage” tree because it “fit more”, whereas the “more uses” functionality went into a “utility tree” because it “fit more” as well.

For instance, domination has things like halting strike, vulnerability applications, mind wrack damage boost, and wrastrel’s punishment. In comparison, the dueling tree has things like deceptive evasion, desperate decoy, protected mantras, blurred inscriptions, and triumphant distortion.

I’m not saying I think that’s the best reason in the world for anything, but that’s the only thing I can think of that they might’ve used as a justification for the swap.

While Min-Max-ers might not have liked the change it actually makes a lot of sense for many other reasons. However, they probably should have changed Empowering Mantras into a Signet trait, too.

At the end it probably comes down to personal taste rather than rational reasoning.

Yeah, I was thinking that I’d want both Harmonious Mantras and the new Triumphant Distortion in a zerg build . . . but of course that isn’t really possible.

And on a separate note, the change to Triumphant Distortion (temporarily invulnerable phantasms) should in no way be in a Grandmaster trait (especially in a skill line that isn’t really the most zerg-skill friendly).

But anyway, I was just wondering what their thinking was. Have any other classes undergone a trait-line swap such as this?

As said, I could think of several reasons. To name a few:

• Like Yam mentioned, Empowering Mantras fits Domination since it is the main damage traitline. Pretty perfect match. But I’d prefer it being a Signet trait.
• Harmonious Mantras being in Domination lead to a choice dilemma for lockdown and interrupt Mesmers because it was directly competing with Confounding Suggestions. Even worse, it was quite often picked over Confounding Suggestions even though Domination could not be considered a Mantra friendly traitline. Maybe partly so for the offensive Mantras. In no way for the defensive Mantras, though.
• Duelling has many traits which encourage melee or on-hands combat where the extra Mantra charge is very helpful. More damage from Empowering Mantras is nice but doesn’t necessarily make a meaningful difference.
• Empowering Mantras basically has no synergy with Mantra Mastery and Protective Mantras because it encourages players to not use their Mantras at all. This is different with Harmonious Mantras which promotes constant use of Mantras. The
  new placement is a lot more cohesive from this perspective. Personally, I feel that this might be the most important argument.

I think it had to do with an attempt to “consolidate” the mantra traits. With HM in Domination, Mantra Mastery/Protected Mantras in Dueling, Restorative Mantra’s in Inspiration was too scattered.

By putting HM in Dueling, a player could get all the mantra traits in Dueling. ANet’s thinking that it would make mantra’s more attractive/viable. Doesn’t matter that some of those traits are questionable. Protected Mantras is useless, and HM although nice really isn’t enough to be worthy of a GM trait.

Just look at our Mantra options:

Mantra Support would grab Restorative Mantras and Mantra Mastery. You want to cast mantra’s as often as possible. Make sense, MM is adept level. Easy to grab and works well with Mender’s Purity.

Taking Empowered Mantra’s means your full on Mantras. If your full on Mantra’s, your spend a lot of your time recharging mantras and NOT doing the extra damage that EM gives you.

If you grab both EM and HM you have extra charges, so you’ll benefit from the EM more. But you are glassy glass.

Protected Mantra is just useless. You get additional armor during the cast. With all the CC in this game, that extra armor isn’t going to do much for you. Then on top of it, its in the Master Dueling line. So its up against DE and Duelist Discipline and the other Dueling traits that are 10x better. (Blade Training, Far-Reaching Manipulations, Phantasmal Fury…) Why would you grab Protect Mantras?

ANet should ditch Protected Mantras and move HM down to master level.

OR add the reduced recharge of MM onto HM, just have it not stack with MM. Make it worthy of a GM trait.

Speaking of mantras, has anyone given any thought to the new AoE mantra capabilities for WvW zerg potential?

Taking staff, and MoD and confounding suggestions that is a whole lot of insta-cast 1200 range AoE daze/stun.

Along with halting strike for extra damage and MoP spam with the right traits in Dom and Duel, it sounds good on paper, and doesn’t rely on clones which never survive these encounters…

I don’t think it will be as powerful as you think.

A. MoD radius is 180 very small.
B. Confounding Suggestions is a 50% chance of a stun.

Most likely you still get more stuns by throwing down Chaos Storm on a zerg, and you can do that now. The new change will add to that, but I don’t think it will be all that dramatic.

Without derail the topic too much, 6/6/0/2/0 or 4/6/0/4/0 mantra builds or 2/0/6/0/6 chillruption build can have more significant role in zerg now. Mesmer still isn’t the best dps class but having a cc role can be interesting. Just need to aim at enemy cmdr I suppose to best utilize that 180 radius skill.

This is the mantra build I came up with couple of weeks ago, more useful when stacking with pug commander (when you’re not running with guild and lack the role to gank backlines).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQJAWRl0npYtloxGNcrNiphcqqkOwhBle0lFA-TVCBwA5UX4sSQsKDAcJA8q0DnKNeeCAO3fQvuASBExwI-w
As you can see I balance zerker/soldier/cavalier to achieve 2432 power (plus 250 from npc kills), 2438 armor, 18222hp (plus 2500 from npc kills), 50% crit chance and 209% crit damage, so damage wise isn’t too bad. With protective mantra I can achieve 3k total armor when channeling mantra (equivalent of support guard in knight armor), which channeling MoP will probably take up most of my time when my weapon skills are in CD. The channeling in this mantra build can make it awfully boring in zerg, but 2.7k power, 3k armor, 20k hp, 50% crit chance and 209% crit damage is really really high in mesmer standard, almost the same as what you see in warrior.

Even though it affects dungeon meta, I like the harmonious mantra change to WvW/PvP. It’s basically 2 more traits to get extra condition removal (Mantra of Resolve or mantra of recovery + mender’s purity if already traited in inspiration), since most mesmer builds must have 4 in dueling.

EDIT: Btw MoP will be roughly 1k damage (2k-2.5k crit damage) when you have guard killers and 3+ might. So ideally 3 charge attacks give 6k damage in just 3 seconds. Not bad in tagging or damage imo.

Yeah, even with the new changes, an interrupt version won’t be that good. AoE is small, and an erratic 1s of stun does not so much (Earthquake and Static Field apply 2s of stun, and knockback, pull… last for 1,5s).
Note that CC is not given to interrupt cast skills, but to avoid mobility, so damage spikes are much more difficult to avoid. Daze doesn’t really matter in zergs…

I’m towards more a DPS/support mantra role:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8dl0npMtFrxENUrNiqBd6mMkkQqAU6MsteC-TlCEABaq+TUKpcSZwWKBN4IAwkSlc2foDdDA8AAe4iAEAABgG9oH9oHtUAPMMC-w

Easily you can heal for +5000 when reagrouping, but still be able to tag and do some damage with phantasms and power spike.

I’ll probably go for either 2/6/6 with CI and HM or 4/6/0/4 for more support. Regardless, I won’t pick CS as long as the potential stun duration won’t equal the daze duration. It’s just wasted investment.

On a different note: I personally don’t like builds with more than two Mantras. I just feel to busy recharging than actually doing anything.

Xaylin.1860:

On a different note: I personally don’t like builds with more than two Mantras. I just feel to busy recharging than actually doing anything.

i feel the same, whenver i charge my mantra, i give the enemies too much of a chance to apply pressure on me and if they land an interrupt, its good game