Fixing Shatter mesmer

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Posted by: Zelulose.8695

Zelulose.8695

Since HoT mesmer has been very strong and received the saves it needed. However, expecting more aoe skills to come in future updates I would like to recommend a change to mesmer shatter.

Early on playing mesmer meant that players were punished by clone death conditions and retaliation for not attacking the mesmer and instead attacking clones. Currently, It has become more of a clone killing fest. Players don’t have to try to find the mesmer. There are no more mind games. They simply kill the clones in one hit or slap an aoe field down to eat the phantasms and clones.

Mesmer phantasms and Illusions are 75% of a mesmer damage and can still be killed before mind-wrack hits. This makes it hard for mesmer to be useful for anything other than a portal verses an aoe team. With all the DH running around it is hard to kill quickly enough. Mesmer’s have the damage to kill DH 1 vs 1 but it doesn’t feel like it because the traps are eating mindwrack eating phantasm mesmers phantasms. This forces mesmer to face a heavily blocking class without more damage than what is on weapon skills which are decent but not enough. This also applies to elementalist. While elementalist is weak, their aoe renders a mesmer useless damage wise for a time in team fights. The same goes to warriors. AoE conditions or just aoe damage can render mesmer useless. Mesmer is still a god of 1 vs 1 and I would not recommend any 1 vs 1 sustain/damage oriented buffs. But I would ask for some team oriented buffs.

The chief Idea behind this suggested fix is to make a winner takes all turnover on any given point and prevent point stalling by rotating aoe tanks one at a time into a point to keep it from being decapped. Especially if the team using this passive method is technically losing in kills. The suggested change would ensure mesmer can be useful in more than a 1 vs 1 decap.

For the players who didn’t take the time to read the background and theory behind mesmer “Start here.”

The suggestion is to give mesmer phantasms/illusions a brief 2 seconds of distortion upon being shattered. The aim is to prevent phantasms from dying when they run into the enemy which might already have an aoe field up that “Accidentally” does them a favor by killing the clones.

Lucky Leaf, Ángël, Clergyman, Side Kick -Lets make Gw2 a better game

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Posted by: Ithilwen.1529

Ithilwen.1529

I think that clone death traits should return to the game. That might slow down some of the mindless aoe and aoe interrupt spam.

Mesmer was always a punishment class, all the way back to GW1. Yes, a clone death Mesmer did kill a prominent dev. That doesn’t make it bad.

Mesmerising Girl

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Posted by: Haleydawn.3764

Haleydawn.3764

Clone death traits were the worst Ithilwen. Everyone complains about passives yet you want to bring back the number one culprit? No. Thank. You.

To the OP, I like this suggestion. Years ago my go to was power shatter and I really miss it. Mesmers should be more than just portals and moas.

Kitten.

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Posted by: Ithilwen.1529

Ithilwen.1529

Clone death isn’t a passive. It does no damage if the enemy avoids hitting it. It’s a punishment. Yes, I would like to see it back.

NECROMANCERS HAVE MINION DEATH TRAITS, WHY IS IT BAD FOR MESMER?

Think about it, it would force DH and other aoe spammers to think before simply dropping a killing burst.

In many matches, there are so many overlaying aoe and shouts that some of my ele shouts don’t even sound. It’s nearly impossible at times to tell which aoe is friendly or hostile or where that super condi damage is coming from, ( usually a corruption necro trading on the aoe boons.)

If people had to think about whether they wanted to kill clones, it would be similar to the current corruption necro. It would create a penalty for simply blasting button clicks everywhere.

And, yes, I had some success on Mesmer in pvp with clone death traits. (which, by the way, were a major component of shatter and phant builds) I’d like to see it back.

Mesmerising Girl

(edited by Ithilwen.1529)

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Posted by: Ithilwen.1529

Ithilwen.1529

The fact that clone death traits are no longer available is a major reason that Shatter and Phant builds don’t work well anymore. That cripple on death made it easier to hit a shatter. The vulnerability stacking on death was a big reason shatters had punch.

Phants worked in tandem with sacrificial clones.

Spend some time reviewing Osicat or some of the other prominent video posters.

Supcutie (ESL Pro Mesmer ) recommended clone death traits in his shatter mesmer guide and videos.

The removal of clone death killed the synergy that powered shatter and phantasm builds

Mesmerising Girl

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Posted by: NeXeD.3042

NeXeD.3042

Clone death traits were the worst Ithilwen. Everyone complains about passives yet you want to bring back the number one culprit? No. Thank. You.

To the OP, I like this suggestion. Years ago my go to was power shatter and I really miss it. Mesmers should be more than just portals and moas.

Someone likes passives, tis all it is.

Attention Moderators I am not
S P E E D Starr #0 Necro NA or
I Am NeXeD awful d/D ele NA

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Posted by: Cynz.9437

Cynz.9437

An army of clones charging at you at 300% speed and ignoring dodges is not enough? Let’s give them invuls as well? Anything else? Maybe some bazookas while we are it?

You can’t base your suggestion on class XY (hello DHs) being stupidly overtuned. This is not how balance should work.

The less passive bs we have, the better.

AoE is soft counter to AI. Deal with it.

All is Vain~
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Posted by: Faux Play.6104

Faux Play.6104

Mesmers are strong enough ty. I’d support stronger clones if there were less of them.

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Posted by: Simonoly.4352

Simonoly.4352

Clone death isn’t a passive. It does no damage if the enemy avoids hitting it. It’s a punishment. Yes, I would like to see it back.

Unfortunately it is was considered passive to many because they had the mentality of “well I was going to cleave there anyway regardless of the existence of a traited clone, so it is passive because I never intended to adjust my actions, so the Mesmer was always going to apply conditions to me”.

I miss clone death too because it allowed Mesmers to interact with their class mechanics in a different fashion and it was a well needed punishment mechanic for a game that lacked complexity of design. I liked fighting it too because instead of having to dodge shatters you had to adjust your cleave and AoE usage – was nice to have to do different things to counter the same class. Now everything is shatter, build diversity is non-existent. and if you dodge a shatter you’ve countered Mesmer.

Gandara

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Posted by: apharma.3741

apharma.3741

An army of clones charging at you at 300% speed and ignoring dodges is not enough? Let’s give them invuls as well? Anything else? Maybe some bazookas while we are it?

You can’t base your suggestion on class XY (hello DHs) being stupidly overtuned. This is not how balance should work.

The less passive bs we have, the better.

AoE is soft counter to AI. Deal with it.

You know, I played base mesmer a fair bit after HoT and quite frankly without superspeed on shatters you pretty much can’t hit anything without the clone/phantasm being directly on the enemy.

I literally watched a guardian with traveler runes run from a fight with half a dozen clones trying desperately to give him a hug but they just slowly fell behind before their hearts were shattered from rejection.

Those were the lucky clones too that weren’t instantly killed by the guardians attacks, we’re not even talking well thought out heavy hitting attacks either, just normal autos is enough to kill clones.

It’s not just guardians either, most classes will cleave out clones and phantasms with little thought.

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Posted by: nomdeplums.5780

nomdeplums.5780

Mesmers don’t need additional baseline functionality. That just makes the class more difficult to balance and creates builds with no trade-offs or opportunity costs. Shatter mesmer was always high-risk, high-reward, and it should stay that way.

The biggest reason shatter mesmer became unviable is because HoT introduced a lot of builds that are just really effective at mitigating or avoiding burst, or make it much more difficult for mesmers to setup their burst. Scrapper is probably the most egregious example. It’s a very tanky spec to begin with, and the hammer makes it extremely easy to avoid bursts while simultaneously cleaving through clones and pressuring a mesmer. It also has a silly amount of passive stability uptime. Mesmers rely on well-timed interrupts to burst or change the outcome of a fight. There is just so much passive or pulsing stab in HoT that it makes bread and butter shatter traits like Power Block useless half the time.

Shatter mesmer also just crumbles under sustained pressure without a very supportive team comp. If a mesmer doesn’t decide a fight within a short window of time, it’s going to be outsustained and outdamaged because there’s just such an absurd disparity with the sustained DPS of mesmers compared to other classes. In an ideal world, we’d just look at this as an inherent weakness of mesmer and a normal part of balance: a bursty class shouldn’t be able to throw out high sustained DPS at the same time. But the reality is there are other classes who can dish out similar or better bursts, have high sustained DPS to confirm a kill, AND have better survivability (i.e. thief, revenant).

As I already mentioned, mesmer is a very difficult class to balance properly. If we remember the perfect storm of a bunch of slightly overtuned skills culminating into the balance nightmare that was Chronobunker. There wasn’t a particular trait or skill that made Chronobunker inherently overpowered (except for maybe Well of Precognition). It was a bunch of spread out traits and abilities that were simply too effective when you combined them together.

Likewise, if you just give a blanket baseline buff to mesmer, there could be unintended consequences. Condition shatter is probably what I would worry about the most. It’s already fairly viable at high level play. If you give it a nudge with a baseline buff to shatter functionality it could become very overtuned. If you’re going to buff shatter mesmer you need to create mutual exclusivity. What am I going to give up to gain a more effective burst?

The best starting point for this is probably the most neglected traitline that mesmers have: Illusions. It’s supposed to revolve around shatters but a lot of the choices and traits are very underwhelming. The GM traits in particular are pretty bad. Master of Fragmentation is basically a hodgepodge of a bunch of different pre-specialization era traits combined together. It sounds ok on paper, but doesn’t amount to much. Malicious Sorcery is useless because even with the attack speed buff to scepter, your sustained dps will still be garbage. Try trading autos with any other class and see how that goes for you. Ineptitude gets picked up for condi shatter builds but only because the other traits are just so useless. If you’re going to introduce buffs, you could do it here. A trait that gives clones temporary distortion or a trait that makes shatters unblockable. There are plenty of possibilities.

(Edit: the only baseline buff that I am pretty supportive of would be buffing the HP of phantasms and clones based on weapons. Melee based clones/phantasms could do with higher HP. This has the added bonus of not affecting condi shatter or having to deal with the possibility of an infinite supply of unkillable staff clones.)

(edited by nomdeplums.5780)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

Honestly there is one big thing needed to even attempt to “fix” shatter as a mechanic:
Remove the shatter-skills from the F-skill bar!

They make too little sense there.
For starters, they’re not generic. Something like Cry of Frustration has inherently little value to a power mesmer before talents (you can add cripple which gives it value). But likewise Mind Wrack is only useful to a condi mesmer because their shatters all add Torment and Confusion (don’t even get me started on how badly designed that is…).
But there’s another, bigger, problem in how the class bar has no value on its own. We cannot magically generate clones without using other skills, so our shatter skills are completely useless. The closest other classes get to this is the Warrior with their Adrenaline Skill, but even then all their moves generate adrenaline. So whatever they do, their F-bar works.

In conclusion: Shatter as a class-bar (not mechanic, bar) is just not sensible design.

What would I do?

  1. Move Shatter-skills off the class-bar, and onto weapon and (some) utility skills. These skills use up one illusion for a specific effect, like direct damage, stealth, conditions, etc. Lots of balance options, can have some of these skills require multiple illusions and use them up, but most should be a single one and low CD. Bread&butter skills.
  2. In turn, make the f-bar generate said illusions.
  3. F1 generates a single Clone, against a specific target. Low CD.
  4. F2 fills up with clones, on a longer CD.
  5. F3 generates a single Phantasm of the currently equipped mainhand weapon.
  6. F4 generates a single Phantasm using your current offhand weapon. If you have a 2H weapon equipped, it generates a modified Phantasmal Defender.
  7. Phantasms would need some rebalancing. For one, Disenchanter is gone, but as there are now utility shatters it’d be easy to keep the effect around.
  8. Further rebalancing needs: Shatter is now a skill type, but clone/illusion isn’t.
  9. Possible elite skill: For X seconds, generate 3 clones per second and reduce shatter skill CDs enough to be pseudo-spammable, effectively turning the Mesmer into a shatter-machine, but with the constantly spawning and breaking (from overflow) clones it’d be rather obvious to see.

Anyhow to sum it up, I really don’t feel comfortable trying to balance shatter while the underlying problem of how ill-fit the effects are for the class-bar isn’t resolved. I’d much prefer getting that done, first.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Xaylin.1860

Xaylin.1860

You have posted something similar several times. I personally like it but let’s be honest: That’s a completely new class. There are way too many skills and traits which would have to be reworked. I highly doubt that they will ever do that.

Low hanging fruits: Illusion survivability. Generation has been spread out more evenly since the pre HoT patch plus HoT. But Illusion survivability and to some extent the riability of landing shatters still need to be improved. I think nobody here is asking for Mesmers to become too easy but our class mechanic being such a liability is just plain silly.

Related but different thought. How would you guys feel if ANet removed F2 and made Mesmers choose between Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration (of course, there would be CD adjustments etc.)? Would this make it easier to balance power and condi shatter? Or would it just lock us out of hybrid shatter?

Generally, I feel that there are way too many traits which affect all shatters rather than one or two specific ones which results in those ridicilous button smashing orgies. I find this less problematic for traits like Bountiful Disillusionment or Master of Fragmentation. But Restorative Illusions, Illusionary Retribution, Maim the Desillusioned and Flow of Time most certainly encourage this kind of gameplay plus force us to bring as much Illusion generation as possible.

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Posted by: Artaz.3819

Artaz.3819

I think that clone death traits should return to the game. That might slow down some of the mindless aoe and aoe interrupt spam.

Mesmer was always a punishment class, all the way back to GW1. Yes, a clone death Mesmer did kill a prominent dev. That doesn’t make it bad.

Clone death traits were a good counter to mindless spam similar to how Death Nova works for Necro.

It does need to be a trimmed though to not be damage-related conditions (only gives blinds/vulnerability/chill/cripple/immobilize – related to clone type destroyed?). Otherwise you’ll have the huge burst that comes from summoning clones without using shatter and nearly all instant abilities (Continuum S/Mimic/Mirror Images x2x2/Decoy x2/Weapon clonex2 craziness).

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

@Xaylin, well agreed, but I don’t think smaller changes are going to help the class all that much.

But that being said, the idea of more single-shatter traits is cool. Especially if they’re not “boring”. That is to say, don’t just make my Mind Wrack more power-burst, my Cry of Frustration more condi, etc. Give me interesting options, say my Cry of Frustration leaves a debuff which interrupts the next interruptable skill the target uses (given the name). Etc.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Tseison.4659

Tseison.4659

I would prefer to have clones and illusions have on death effects; but I guess for balance when we choose to shatter them manually, they don’t shatter twice? So then if I use mind wrack, it won’t go off twice; once upon their death and the other when I choose for them to shatter…

Aside from that, I would like the on death effects to just be damage and confusion if this were to come true

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Posted by: Frostball.9108

Frostball.9108

Guys, Endure pain proc isnt passive cuz i need to hit the warrior to activate it.

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Posted by: DuckDuckBOOM.4097

DuckDuckBOOM.4097

Mesmers don’t need additional baseline functionality. That just makes the class more difficult to balance and creates builds with no trade-offs or opportunity costs. Shatter mesmer was always high-risk, high-reward, and it should stay that way.

As I already mentioned, mesmer is a very difficult class to balance properly. If we remember the perfect storm of a bunch of slightly overtuned skills culminating into the balance nightmare that was Chronobunker. There wasn’t a particular trait or skill that made Chronobunker inherently overpowered (except for maybe Well of Precognition). It was a bunch of spread out traits and abilities that were simply too effective when you combined them together.

Likewise, if you just give a blanket baseline buff to mesmer, there could be unintended consequences. Condition shatter is probably what I would worry about the most. It’s already fairly viable at high level play. If you give it a nudge with a baseline buff to shatter functionality it could become very overtuned. If you’re going to buff shatter mesmer you need to create mutual exclusivity. What am I going to give up to gain a more effective burst?

I think those last two points are more indicative of how badly chrono was designed as an elite spec and how they try to balance the class differently compared to other elite specs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016/first#post6122828
When reaper was considered OP, they could nerf RS#3, 4 and 5 while not touching DS #3, 4 and 5.

When chrono was considered OP, they couldn’t nerf chrono F1-F4. They wouldn’t nerf F5 because it’s the only new class mechanic added. They had to/chose to nerf base mesmer.

If a buff to base mesmer F1 functionality wasn’t a buff to Chrono F1, they could actually balance a high risk-high reward base shatter mesmer with a support and defensive shatter spam on chrono.

You have posted something similar several times. I personally like it but let’s be honest: That’s a completely new class. There are way too many skills and traits which would have to be reworked. I highly doubt that they will ever do that.

I agree with Xaylin, a full rework of the base class isn’t happening. I also doubt a rework of Chrono F1-F4 is going to happen which means no buffs to Mesmer F1-F4. Going forward, new elite specs need new F1-F4s.

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Posted by: nomdeplums.5780

nomdeplums.5780

Mesmers don’t need additional baseline functionality. That just makes the class more difficult to balance and creates builds with no trade-offs or opportunity costs. Shatter mesmer was always high-risk, high-reward, and it should stay that way.

As I already mentioned, mesmer is a very difficult class to balance properly. If we remember the perfect storm of a bunch of slightly overtuned skills culminating into the balance nightmare that was Chronobunker. There wasn’t a particular trait or skill that made Chronobunker inherently overpowered (except for maybe Well of Precognition). It was a bunch of spread out traits and abilities that were simply too effective when you combined them together.

Likewise, if you just give a blanket baseline buff to mesmer, there could be unintended consequences. Condition shatter is probably what I would worry about the most. It’s already fairly viable at high level play. If you give it a nudge with a baseline buff to shatter functionality it could become very overtuned. If you’re going to buff shatter mesmer you need to create mutual exclusivity. What am I going to give up to gain a more effective burst?

I think those last two points are more indicative of how badly chrono was designed as an elite spec and how they try to balance the class differently compared to other elite specs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016/first#post6122828
When reaper was considered OP, they could nerf RS#3, 4 and 5 while not touching DS #3, 4 and 5.

When chrono was considered OP, they couldn’t nerf chrono F1-F4. They wouldn’t nerf F5 because it’s the only new class mechanic added. They had to/chose to nerf base mesmer.

If a buff to base mesmer F1 functionality wasn’t a buff to Chrono F1, they could actually balance a high risk-high reward base shatter mesmer with a support and defensive shatter spam on chrono.

I’ll half agree with that. There are two parts to the problem. One is that Chronomancer as an elite spec has to be balanced around the mechanics which affect CDs: Alacrity and Continuum Split. I don’t know if I would call this inherently bad design, but I’ll acknowledge that it can be problematic or at best require additional caution when it comes to balance decisions.

So far though, it’s only really been a problem in one game mode. If you combine a bunch of really strong defensive traits and skills together and add in an elite spec that can either reset CDs or make them dramatically faster, AND you play it on a gamemode that revolves entirely around capturing and holding nodes, then you have a problem. Chronomancer only really has a problematic design when it comes to defensive mechanics. There was never a gamebreaking burst or DPS Chronomancer build that needed to be nerfed; only a really stupid bunker build. That doesn’t mean that an OP damage chrono build couldn’t somehow appear if buffs were introduced, but I don’t think that means that Chronomancer is a design failure. You can introduce and balance shatter buffs with Chronomancer, you just need to focus on traits so you create choices and trade-offs.

A lot of the things we don’t like about balance are simply because of Conquest. There are builds and specs which are viable for holding and fighting on node, but would make a lot less sense in a different context.

(edited by nomdeplums.5780)