Guild Wars 2

I’m not a fan of Mantras, as the extra frustration of having to manage their charges, resetting them on zone in/out grows with the more Mantras you slot.

1. Increase the recharge time of Mantras slightly
2. Recharging any Mantra refills the charges of all Mantras.

Now Mantra builds benefit greatly from slotting more mantras (currently they just… drive you nutty with extra casts).

Also, the stability mantra needs to provide at least 5 seconds of stability. Two is just… bad. You’re better off slotting signet of illusions to reset distortion and relying on that.

… just have the recharge happen passively instead of actively. Increase the passive recharge to include both the base cooldown and what would have previously been the cast time. Apply heal to “on use” rather than “on charge”, adjust the value accordingly to prevent it being ridiculously OP’d.

As an alternative, change the charge cast to 1.5 second MINUS to make it not feel like you’re “stoppin to charge yur lazer…….zzzz” and increase the cooldowns on each by the nominal amount removed from the cast time.

There should be no casting in this game, it goes against the dynamic / dodging concept. It is so bad that after 300 hours with my mesmer and 70% map completion I never trained a mantra, tried a couple of times in sPvP and said… “WTF this is garbage”. So the only way of improving it is to remove the casting entirely, maybe increase the CD between charges by 50% to compensate.

For the setup you need to cast mantras, the pay off is just not good enough.

In addition to the initial recharge cast, they should passively recharge mantras based on different critera. That would make them synergize well with other combat actions.

Mantra of pain recharge one charge after every 5 critical hit.
Mantra of healing recharge one charge after 5 rolls.
Mantra of concentration recharge one charge every 5 illusions shattered.
Mantra of resolve recharge one charge every 10 conditions you apply to an enemy
Mantra of distraction recharge one charge every 5 times your life falls below 20%

I remember seeing a skill challenge mesmer in Malchor’s Leap that had 25 stacks of Mantra of Pain when she used it.

Want.

NAO.

As for WvW i use Mantra of Pain (3 charges) and seem to do alright with it.
PvE i just cant go without Mantra of Resolve. I hate having conditions on me.

-Derako

To be honest, the X stacks is stupid. It might work ok for balance, but seriously, where is the immersion in that.
I want a properly frontloaded, but otherwise normal, skill for my Mantras. Huge cast time compared to other skills, but I take the time pre-emptively.

In other words, Mantra of Pain should be no worse (and have no more charges) than other direct damage skills. It simply has 3x the cast time, but it can be precast.

Now, I know that the next thing I’ll hear is “This was changed due to massive over-alphastriking!”, so here’s my solution to that:
You can only keep 1 Mantra charged at a given time. Trait makes it possible that Mantra of Recovery does not count against this (GM Trait in Inspiration).

Personally I’d love to see the whole Mantra thing scrapped. I have really no desire to have 5 whole skills (4utility and 1heal) be almost completely useless for 99% of all pvp content. They are so situational and the large cooldowns with the ridiculous 4.5s charge/cast time makes the skills almost impossible in to use plus the fact that for what you get from the 2 charges is really subpar. If you traited 30 points JUST to get the extra 1 charge it seems still pointless unless you’re running at least 3 mantras.

The ONLY good reason to take mantras is if you want to play team support and try to heal in pve. I laugh when I see people using them in pvp. Let’s take Derako’s comment about liking to have Mantra of Resolve charged up. Without spending 30 points to get the 3rd charge it’s already a complete waste and there are better options such as Null field which will strip ALL conditions off of you and boons from your opponents for 7 seconds. ADD the fact that null field put you into a combo field that has potential to give you and your teammates support and you have a superior option to Mantra of Resolve. If you went for the 3rd charge, you spend 30 points in domination JUST so that you can get 1 more charge on 1 skill that still has a 20s cooldown and an easily interupted and clunky 4.5s cast time just so you can remove 6 conditions 2 at a time.

Scenario:

Let’s say you’re fighting a Necro because as we all know they like condition specs. They constantly have 3-6 conditions on you at all times. You want to use your Mantra of Resolve to remove the poison effect on you so you use it once and hope you get lucky. Thank goodness you did get lucky and it removed it with your first cast, but now it’s back again only half a second later because the Necro is watching the conditions he’s putting on you and wants to make sure you’re not going to be able to heal through it. You use your skill again, but this time you weren’t so lucky. Now you have to wait 20 seconds which seems like it’s a very short time, but when the 20 seconds is up you have a 4.5 second charge time in which the necro just uses a fear to interupt and laughs at you for even trying.

I honestly doubt this would even work in pve arena’s such as the WvW maps unless you were a part of a larger group or a zerg where you could just sit safely in the middle and use your mantras for healing. In which case spending 30 points in domination just to get the 3rd charge seems really kind of a waste since there are much better trait choices for a healer.

Here’s a couple of suggestions for skill replacements

Healing Flux – for the next 10 seconds if your target uses a heal it fails and dazes them for 1 second

Illusion of Retribution – for the next 5 seconds any attack used by your target damages their nearby allies

I could go on and on and on… but it’s late.

TL;DR? Mantra’s are clunky and poorly implemented in their current state. They need a serious overhaul, or better – completely removed.

True, Mantras are way clunky.
We would have a replacement at the ready, btw:

Illusions
We already have Illusion of Life. It works like we’d expect it, it revives you, but 15s later you topple down again unless you scored a “proper” Rally in those 15s.

Now, let’s expand this!
(Casting an illusion ends any other illusion instantly)

Illusion of Health – 15s CD
For 5 seconds, block all attacks. The damage is applied to your health regardless, if your health drops to 0 youa re downed, if not, you are healed to full at the end.

Illusion of Pain – 35s CD
Apply Confusion to the target every second, for 10 seconds. When this effect ends, you suffer as many Confusion stacks as the target did (so if they cleanse it, you don’t get any, either).

Illusion of Vigor – 15s CD
For 8 seconds you have infinite endurance. When this effect ends, all endurance is drained, all vigor removed and you cannot regenerate endurance for 7 seconds.

Illusion of Speed – 45s CD
Grants you Swiftness for 5 seconds. Every second you spend moving increases the duration of this effect. When the effect ends, you are Crippled for 5 seconds. Every second you spend moving increases the duration of this effect.

Illusion of Grandeur – 75s CD
You can use all your shatter skills as if you had 3 illusions available, these illusions are generated as they are required by shatters. After 5 Shatters or 45 seconds this effect ends, and you cannot generate Clones in any way for 15 seconds.

Only way I can see mantras being ok is if they passivly regenerated. E.g. every 5 seconds you gain a charge of mantra of pain. you could then either spam 1 it every 5 seconds or at the begining of a fight you would be able to spam out 2 (or 3). During a fight you might wait 15 seconds (traits) and spam off 3 charges for a quick bit of burst. It gives us some options. Beign able to nonstop spam (without 4 second breaks) mantra of pain in pve would be great, expecially for mantra heal builds.

Obiovusly the rate of recharge for each will be different. I think if it worked liek that I would defiantely start using some mantras. A shatter/mantra nuke build would be awesome.

Explain to me why warrior aoe heals are so much better than Mesmer mantra aoe heals?

Mantra solutions:
1) Allow multiple mantra setup casts in parallel (consecutive makes them suck big time on dungeon runs)
2) Extend the range of AOE heal to be 900 (why is it so short for a range dps’er makes no sense)

Nanoha.3892:

Only way I can see mantras being ok is if they passivly regenerated.

But then they’d no longer be Mantras at all.
I’d already argue that the current multi-charge implementation isn’t a Mantra.

Mantra is a simple idea:

1. Take cast time of skill.
2. Double it.
3. Put a “holding” time between the cast time and the actual skill use.

=> Maaaantraaaaaa.

Problem is, the single-charge ones had everyone in tears on the ground, so they had to be nerfed, and the concept went down the drain with that. Yes, the current ones are more balanced, but they just feel wrong.

mantras are just so bad.

They even have a bloody delay between casts. I mean christ on a crutch.

Mantras are only useful for healing specs or if you want to try and stack 23 percent more damage

I’d like to know exactly why we think mantras are so bad?

Mantra of Distraction is one of the only skills in the game that is an instant activating interrupt, and you get a second shot just 5 seconds later.

Mantra of Resolve removes 4 conditions untraited, which gives it 4 times the power of Smite Condition. Look down the list of condition removals and you’ll quickly see many of them are loaded with secondary effects and high cooldowns. MoR drops the secondary effect in exchange for instant cast and the removal of more conditions. Comparisons to Null Field are thrown around without apparently realising it only strips one condition per second allowing it to strip 5 in total on a 45s CD, and Arcane Thievery is capped at 3.

Mantra of Concentration is two stun breakers in one skill, and it has a 2 second cooldown. Two stun breakers, one utility skill, two second cooldown. And if that isn’t enough, you’re actually immune to new CCs for that 2second cooldown anyway. It’s just somewhat overshadowed by our other stun breakers such as Decoy. The only change I’d make is buffing the stability to 3 seconds so that, you know, it’s actually long enough to do something as simple as Finish Him…

Mantra of Pain and Mantra of Recovery are the only ones which really need a functionality adjustment. The former doesn’t actually bring any utility despite being labelled a utility skill, and the latter needs a significant buff to its heal or a secondary effect. The problem with buffing the heal is the issue caused by Harmonious Mantras.

The only reason mantras are so unpopular is because their recharge time is effectively directly proportionate to the length of fight, and thus their power diminishes for each second you spend in combat. Outside of running a glass cannon “Kill or be killed” build, mantras become problematic. By giving them a secondary method of recharging which does not involve a 4 second channel, their usage would fly through the roof because they actually ARE good skills. They certainly do not need a complete redesign which involves scrapping their concept all together.

I would just like to see all mantras have the same recharge as mantra of pain. You just are not casting these things in combat so the expunging of mantras during combat, and having to wait until the end of the encouter (basically) before recharging them is a sufficient “recharge timer” in my mind.

Also gaining 200 armor while casting a mantra is not going to save your kitten in the middle of a scrap so that trait should be reworked on the basis its almost completely worthless. If Anet is married to the concept then give the mesmer distortion for half of the mantra cast (the back half so that it can’t be abused).

Mantra of pain does quite a bit of damage and absolutely needs no buff in that respect. You get a free 2 – 4K damage during a big damage spike (because you can press it twice).

Of all of them I find mantra of healing the most difficult to manage. This is because it is the most reactionary of the 5 and you’re usually pressing other buttons when you need to fire it off.

I like the mantras.

for instance I can pop my healing mantra or the mantra of resolve even when I’m doing something else like rezzing someone.

And mantra of distraction is absolutely stellar for interrupting big hits during boss fights in dungeons and taking on champs.

Once they are charged they are instant cast… that means you can pop any mantra you want while doing other things, even if that other thing is recharging another mantra.

The channel times are not that bad either… play elementalist sometime if you want to know what a long cast time is. Churning earth takes a ridiculously long time to fire off and requires you to root yourself while you do so. A lot of the ele spells that channel require you to stand still. With the mesmer you can continue moving during the relatively short channel time.

edit: I forgot to say that I do agree they need a passive recharge option, possibly a trait that adds the ability to add charges for each mantra by fulfilling certain requirements, and prevent it from being OP by having it only add charges when the mantra is already prepared.

bluewanders.5297:

edit: I forgot to say that I do agree they need a passive recharge option, possibly a trait that adds the ability to add charges for each mantra by fulfilling certain requirements, and prevent it from being OP by having it only add charges when the mantra is already prepared.

I really like this idea and could see some viable implementation of it.

Thinking about where to put the trait, as I said above mantras are already fine in do-or-die glass builds, so if you want passively recharging mantras it’s because you intend to have long fights.; I’d immediately narrow our choices down to Chaos and Inspiration. IMO the Chaos line is quite lacking at the moment. My suggestion would thus be to replace Prismatic Understanding (T3 major) with this new trait. The name, Prismatic Understanding, is actually quite fitting as we’re effectively always “meditating”. The functionality could be something like:

Each of your mantras has a 20% chance to gain one charge whenever you gain a new boon. A mantra can only gain a charge in this way once every 20 seconds.

• Each mantra has its own independent chance, so if you have two mantras one may proc and the other may not
• Each mantra has its own independent cooldown, so only the procced mantra becomes exempt for 20 seconds
• “New boon” does not include the reapplication of a boon you already had

Some other things to note off the top of my head:

You wouldn’t be able to get free charges out of Power Lock with Bountiful Interruption as BI is also a T3 Chaos trait.

There would be synergy in the minor traits of Chaos, but one of them is on a 30 second cooldown so I don’t see it being too problematic in terms of balance.

There is excellent synergy with the staff/trident, although the whole line really works well with the staff (indeed the staff CDR trait is found here). I’m not really able to judge whether it would be too good without seeing it in practice…

Critical Infusion (Duelling T1 Minor) is my biggest concern atm. Edit: MoC’s stability and synergy with Furious Interruption/MoD also causes issues. I would perhaps just limit the trait to being unable to proc if the Power X skill is currently recharging.

At least for me, one of the bigger problems with mantras is that they’re boring, not that they’re ineffective.

In a class with so many utility skills that are both useful and have interesting effects (Blink, Decoy, Portal, Feedback, Arcane Thievery, and so on), I have a hard time dedicating slots to skills that all follow the same basic model of, “Press button to get effect X,” where effect X can be summed up in two words at most. Even among non-Mesmer classes, it’s fairly rare for utility skills to be so straightforward; most of them have some sort of secondary ability, trigger criteria to do something else, or lingering effect. Simple skills are probably easier to balance, since they always do the same thing in any situation, but it seems like mantras have been balanced into homogeneity—and, especially for a class like Mesmer, that’s really disappointing to see.

I would love to see something more along the lines of the Illusion skills someone above posted, or at least giving the existing mantras some conditional effects; maybe MoD could give stealth for a few seconds if used to interrupt a skill that was specifically targeted at you, or MoP could add a few stacks of confusion if used on an enemy in the middle of casting a heal skill. Really, it would just be nice to give them some additional flavor, not necessarily much/any more raw power.