Guild Wars 2

No, not going to ask for fire fields for the Mesmer or chronomancer, I enjoy playing one of the three classes that doesn’t have these..

However, after the announced changes for next BWE and the Warrior Spec emerging from the mists, I have some concerns and would like to leave this as more of an open discussion.

The Mesmer and by proxy, Chronomancer, were intended to be a class that is weak against condition heavy builds and enemies. This has been stated before.

As of late, this has been less of an issue thanks to the trait rework, but Chrono seems to be reapplying this old standard.

Is this a bad thing? In some ways it would seem yes. The condition reworking has turned some conditions into nightmares for those that have no way to clear them, one in particular is Burning. Hence we get back to the Title of this thread.

It seems that most of the new things coming in HoT will be applying Lots and Lots of burning, we have the Revenant and by association, The Herald, the Brezerker, The Tempest, I would hazard to guess that whatever Thief and ranger are getting will also come with some burning and fire fields.

So here is my question: With so much Burning and Condition options opening up on other classes, Should the Chronomancer Line and Skills have a reliable way, via either a Well or a Trait, to clear conditions? Or, should Conditions remain just a Hazard of playing the class?

It’d be nice if Phantasmal Disenchanter didn’t suck balls, for one thing.

Anyway, our true condi clear options are Mender’s Purity, Null Field, and Mantra of Resolve. Of those, Null Field is the strongest, but it’s on a non-trivial cooldown. Mender’s Purity and Mantra of Resolve are unfortunately mutually exclusive due to a bug, but both are pretty decent sources of condition clear as well.

The real problem we have is that we have to give up either a third trait line selection or a utility slot to run condi clear. A standard Dom/Dueling shatter build that trades Illusions or Chaos for Inspiration sacrifices either damage or defences/boon generation. The same build that chooses to sacrifice a utility slot instead will sacrifice either lockdown via MoD or the stunbreak/clone/stealth from Decoy. Hard choices all around. (I’m assuming, obviously, that Blink is non-negotiable.)

Now, builds other than Power Shatter have an easier time of this, Condition builds in particular. They still need Blink, but it’s easier to trade out the other two utilities for Null Field or Mantra of Resolve, which should provide all the condition clearance you need.

Forgot to add: Well of Eternity with iWarden, iZerker, or iDuelist is actually a pretty decent source of bonus condi clear as well, but not as reliable as I’d like. Our only non-Phantasm finishers are Mirror Blade, Mind Bullet, and The Prestige (which can’t proc condition clear).

Don’t forget native 25% movement speed bonus with already -25% on cc conditions.

Then you can take Melandru/Hoelbrak runes and even poultry soup in wvw to have pretty good passive condition immunity.

Maybe we will see shatter mesmer taking Inspiration if burn stays the same. Mender’s Purity, Restoratives Illusions and Temporal Enchanter. Cele Chaos or Illusion/Insp/Chrono anyone (lol) ?

Well, the problem with a lot of meta builds is that some of them (fire D/D ele, and matnra mesmer pre-nerf) are god mode builds. All builds should have some weakness that should be exploitable, not by everything but by some of the things it goes up against.

And overall I think its fine that mesmer in general is weak to conditions (unless it goes inspiration) because there are so many other things that it does well, and the condition weakness can be covered by teammates with AoE cleansing.

In pvp people get concerned about being able to win every 1v1 matchup 100% of the time. A true meta build should both competent and capable 1v1 and in teamfights. Some of the builds that are more OP in 1v1 (trap ranger, MM necro) tend to be extremely weak in teamfights since they take so many utilities for their 1v1 ability that they can be focus fired out of existence in teamfights.

Also as a general note, I haven’t seen much in the way of condi removal in any of the current elite specs, just by looking at the traits by themselves. I think this could be potentially a problematic result of having so many things packed into specializations. For most classes, the healing/sustain line gives condition removal, while the offensive lines are devoid of it. I think its a bit problematic that most classes can’t get condi removal through non sustain/defensive lines (necromancer curses and the cleansing fire proc in fire are examples that come to mind, and those traits are part of the reason that those classes use those offensive lines so effectively).

The elite specializations should ideally be designed to have 3 playstyles (1 in each tier) in each of the 3 traitlines, but not all of them have really captured 3 unique feels to a build that uphold the overarching theme for the elite spec.

For example, Reaper has three lines, the brawler/brusier line (augury, blighter’s boon), the chill debuff line (chill traits) and the untoppable monster movie line (decimate defenses/reaper’s onslaught).

Chronomancer’s lines seem focused on improving clone generation/superspeed, debuffing through slow, and buffing through alacrity-quickness. There are 3 unique approaches.

Other elite specs like tempest have completely failed at this approach. The Tempest traitline is an untterly unfocused mess with no unique playstyles at all, with no meaningful traits.

Rambing aside, berserker seems to follow that theme as well (all hail Robert Gee)

Krispera.5087:

Maybe we will see shatter mesmer taking Inspiration if burn stays the same. Mender’s Purity, Restoratives Illusions and Temporal Enchanter. Cele Chaos or Illusion/Insp/Chrono anyone (lol) ?

Chrono/Insp/Chaos was pretty legit in the last BWE. The change to All’s Well definitely hurts its ability to hold out against conditions, though.

I wrote a bunch of crap about how hard it is to fit condi clear into a Bunker Chrono build, but then I remembered that Restorative Illusions is a thing. Bunker Chrono can and should maintain a pretty regular shatter cadence for the benefits from Bountiful Disillusionment (Chronoshift gives Resistance, even!) and of course the shatter effects themselves, so actually grabbing RI is kind of a no-brainer even if Protected Phantasms has a better synergy with Chronophantasma.

Rambing aside, berserker seems to follow that theme as well (all hail Robert Gee)

Seriously, the guy’s three for three in delivering really cool, thematic, and cohesive elite specs. Shame that the other class devs tend to overcompensate for lack of creativity with raw power.

Honestly, RI isn’t enough. As I wrote in the bunker discussion, RI is possibly the only trait in “inspiration” which does not provide any team support. Also, with shatter + mender’s purity, we clean a total of 6 conditions, some on fairly high CD. Compare to the 11 of the guardian on a 20-30s CD for most. So we are forced to go to a dedicated cleanse.

So yes, I think the condition cleanse was very good on wells and helped create a space for wells in the crowded utility bar of mesmers. The shared alacrity should have been on the “improved alacrity” since I still believe this trait is lackluster.

Well, as usual, it’s a case of one class having a totally legitimate weakness that they can optionally patch over with slight build adjustments while another just cheerfully blows everybody else away without trading anything.

Mesmer is in a really strong place currently, so a weakness to conditions can be considered a good thing. You are supposed to counter most stuff by not getting hit in the first place, anyway.

The problem that I see is that there is zero access whatsoever to condition removal for Chronomancer. This breaks the pattern of everything else.

Every single other group of utility skills has the ability to remove conditions. Glamours have null field, mantras mantra of resolve, clone has pDisenchanter, manipulations have arcane thievery, and signets can be traited for condition removal.

There is no well with baseline removal, and you cannot trait them to remove conditions. This is the issue. Either a trait needs to exist adding removals to wells, or condition removal needs to be baked into one of them.

Well of Eternity loses the Vigor application (which nobody was noticing anyway) and instead cleanses X conditions per pulse. Bam, done.

Fay.2357:

There is no well with baseline removal, and you cannot trait them to remove conditions. This is the issue. Either a trait needs to exist adding removals to wells, or condition removal needs to be baked into one of them.

This might be an issue for pure Well-o-Mesmcers but that aside it’s not. You can always mix in other utilities or run Inspiration. I personally preferred adding Resistance before they put it on Temporal Enchanter. At the point where you incorporate classic condition removal into Wells you might as well just ditch Nullfield, really.

tobascodagama.2961:

Well of Eternity loses the Vigor application (which nobody was noticing anyway) and instead cleanses X conditions per pulse. Bam, done.

Nullfield disapproves.

Null Field also strips boons and can benefit from Temporal Enchanter, so it’s fine. The bigger problem it has is that Mesmer has so little flexibility in terms of utilities that it’s super hard to fit Null Field into a build. It’s an amazing utility, but how can we give up Blink, Decoy, Portal, or Mantra of Distraction?

The Chronomancer line is fine. As others have mentioned everything should have a weakness of sort thus requiring us as players to make a choice. Had Chrono had superior condi cleanse (to the extent of Inspirations) everyone would be jumping on board the Chrono Spec since it would be considered a ‘mandatory trait line’. In the classes current state it’s about decisions. What do we want our Mesmer to be capable of, and how much are we willing to give up for it?

Jack of All Trades vs Master of All Trades.

tobascodagama.2961:

Null Field also strips boons and can benefit from Temporal Enchanter, so it’s fine. The bigger problem it has is that Mesmer has so little flexibility in terms of utilities that it’s super hard to fit Null Field into a build. It’s an amazing utility, but how can we give up Blink, Decoy, Portal, or Mantra of Distraction?

It’s not fine just because it can be traited or has an additional effect. If the additional effect mattered that much we’d see way more play of it but we don’t.

In PvP and WvW it doesn’t matter much because it’s too slow and stationary. In PvE it doesn’t matter much because it is too slow and boon removal hardly is a game changer (at least until now).

I might be a Glamour fanboy, but how much more do people want to strip off Glamours after they already lost all of their prior offensive capabilities? You basically said it yourself: It would be more convenient if Wells had condition removal built-in because Mesmers have a hard time freeing up space on their utility bar. But that doesn’t justify watering down other skills nor buffing Wells. Make a choice. Deal with the outcome.

No utilities other than Blink, Decoy, Portal, and Mantra of Distraction will ever be “meta” in PvP without being insanely overpowered. Just kittening deal with it.

Let me remind you that Null Field currently removes ALL boons from enemies and ALL conditions from allies and lasts five seconds. Holy kittening kitten is that good. Amazingly good.

Nobody uses it. Why? Not because it’s not strong, because it’s REALLY kittenING STRONG. Nobody uses it because we have to use Blink, Decoy, and Portal or Mantra of Distraction or we’re useless.

Allowing Well of Eternity to cleanse one condition per pulse for three pulses does not invalidate Null Field. Everything else about Mesmer invalidates Null Field by locking us into picking three out of four viable utilities.

tobascodagama.2961:

Let me remind you that Null Field currently removes ALL boons from enemies and ALL conditions from allies and lasts five seconds. Holy kittening kitten is that good. Amazingly good.

Errr… you wish. That is what it used to be.

[Edit]: As I already said: Adding Resistance to Wells would have been a way out of the dilemma before they added it to Temporal Enchanter. But adding pulsing condition removal to WoE is just another nail in Null Fields coffing. If you can’t see that, you are living in serious denial.

To make Nullfield relevant the effect needs to stay on each respective target and pulse its aoe effect.

Even then – Blink, Decoy, MoD/Portal, or mantra cleanse depending.

Bleh, missed that nerf.

Doesn’t change the rest of the argument, though. Even if Null Field got un-nerfed, it still wouldn’t fit into our meta builds. And, either way, not stepping on the toes a skill nobody takes is not an argument against giving condition cleanse to Wells.

“mesmer is strong and need a weakness”
yes, the current burst shatter and to some extent condi shatter are strong and do not need help. But they would not take the wells for the condi cleanse anyway. The 2 alternative traits are too strong and they would need to stand on point for 3s which is not very much the playstyle.

But this trait allowed build diversity. In particular, more defensive playstyles, where staying on point to get the burst of the well made sense, need condi cleanse. This is really the playstyle which feels the most natural with wells. Inspiration is good enough for a roamer mesmer, not for a defensive/bunker mesmer except if running mantras.

So by removing the condi cleanse, you don’t help nor punish the power/condi shatter builds, but you punish a build which could have been viable.

So I maintain my suggestion: keep the condi cleanse on wells and make “improved alacrity” all about party-wide alacrity.

I am more worried how our damage is going to be affected by all our clones and phantasms dying to the AoE burns all around.

Actually i would really miss the Vigor, Mesmer vigor has been nerfed a lot over the past two years, first with the recharge reduction and then the ICD placed on the Dueling trait.

Cleansing at the end of wells felt very risky and minimal as far as condition removal goes, as far as i could tell anyway. yet adding a cleanse per pulse as default on the heal feels far too strong.

Most replys seem to be ok with maintaining a weakness but I’m personally with Pyro that having 0 access at all in the sub classes traits or skills seems wrong.

Here is why:
Manipulations – Arcane Thievery
Glamours – Null Field
Mantra – Concentration
Illusions – iEnchanter
Wells – ?

It feels inconsistent when each other set of utility lines does contain a condition removal of some kind.

I would argue for a change to the Well of Precognition. While Unblockable and Blur looks lovely on paper its just.. well its bad.

What if this well applied Resistance for three pulses and then cleansed 2 conditions? This leaves us the option of not being reliant on a Trait and gives it some ompf for bunkering and party support that requires much less coordination.

i dont know about you all

warrior now can stack nice fire fields and stacking burns- hybrid build can so some nice dmg
guard with carrion already doing good dmg with burning around him
engi – common 15 stacks of burning
ele – the same too much burning

with 10 burning stacks which does 3.5k dps our condi dmg is really low
with 8 torment and 10 confusion out tick is less than 2k unless the target smashing skill and proc confusion dmg of +1k

every class got burning stacks skill buff while we didnt
staff AA with random remain 1 stacks so we got nerfed compared
torch the same
we must some burning love

now every class must take condi cleanse or you will be handicap

I’d like to see Well of Recall reworked to suit a condi-clense roll (something like an AoE Arcane Mimicry where condis are transferred to people inside the well when it expires?)

Tbh I think we should wait until we can play all the classes before making drastic changes. Though the tempest and berserker have a lot of burning, but I don’t see them being meta-defining like D/D ele. The tempest feels really susceptible to burst, and the berserker looks quite weak in non-melee situations.

All’s Well That Ends Well should cleanse 2 conditions per well use on top of its 2 seconds of alacrity.