Guild Wars 2

Personally, if they don’t plan on bringing back the ritualist, I want us at least to get some of their skills, but instead of spirits, make them phantasms… Like the rit’s Wanderlust = Phantasm of Wanderlust elite..

How about you? How do you envision the mesmer to be once horizontal progression is introduced?

Oh please less focus on the AI use and more on active play, like shatters. I can’t stand trying to play shatter mes while everyone else just stealths as much as they can and throws out staff clones/phantasms.

I want it to be more of an active trickster class. I want better clones with more health and more more believable acting, having my defence be that people cannot figure out who I actually am.

I want shatter to become a more important mechanic. It should be a centrepiece of our design, not a way to use excess clones before summoning new ones for their SI attacks.

To that end, I’d genuinely reduce or remove much of our offence and defence. In turn:

• Clones are “perfect”, and have relatively high health (~half of ours or even more). Our defence is that enemies have to figure out who the real Mesmer is while the clones are actively dodging attacks, using lots of different weapon and utility abilities and the only tell is that none of their moves have any effect.
• Phantasms provide steam DPS with a very low between-attack-cooldown. They are easy to tell, but dish out good damage if left to their own.
• Shatter becomes a powerhouse of offence, and in fact becomes the lion share of our burst or on-demand damage. All four moves rebalanced to follow this guideline (F4 simply has a defensive component). Shattering removes ~all our defence and ~all of our steady damage, so it has to hurt in return. Really badly.

And our weapon and utility skills become built around trick moves and control moves. Offence/Defence we’d already have. Summoning illusions, protecting them, tricking enemies by swapping with them, reflections, some boon/condition control, expand “Illusion”-type skills to be their entire type of short-term + downside after buffs.
And so on.

I realize this doesn’t address the vast scope of this topic, and I may post again later, but… I still want an elite phantasm skill.

• A high-attack rate, heavy-CC hammer phantasm…
• A lower-attack rate, high-damage dagger phantasm…
• A skill that summons two or three phantasms on use of your next phantasm skill.

I’ll even allow ArenaNet to take away Moa Morph AND Time Warp for these.
coughs

I would like to see a more consistent DPS model. We’re either doing great damage with 3x phantasms or low DPS with no phantasms or Shatter. I’d like even a single Phantasm ‘Pet’ that’s not reliant on a target to stay on the board. I’d also like to see Shatter at a competitive sustained DPS level.

Blood~

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I realize this doesn’t address the vast scope of this topic, and I may post again later, but… I still want an elite phantasm skill.

• A high-attack rate, heavy-CC hammer phantasm…
• A lower-attack rate, high-damage dagger phantasm…
• A skill that summons two or three phantasms on use of your next phantasm skill.

I’ll even allow ArenaNet to take away Moa Morph AND Time Warp for these.
coughs

I want an elite phantasm too.. One that’s ground targeted maybe? That’s why I want some sort of Wanderlust phantasm, but an AOE CC type. :/ I really think ritualist binding skills would translate well as phantasms in gw2.

• Scepter buff.

• Mainhand Pistol.

• Give either of the aforementioned weapons an auto-attack that generates confusion or torment to make condition builds more viable.

• Give either of the aforementioned weapons a high damaging auto-attack for a ranged alternative for power based builds than can still utilize the phantasms and utility of offhand weapons.

• Run Speed Signet. Mesmers have great mobility in combat but when it comes to chasing and opponent, trying to make a retreat, or general roaming and exploration we fall very short. The option of using this signet would increase the customization players have with runes instead of so many players feeling pushed into using Runes of the Centaur, Traveler, etc.

• Give the model for Phantasmal Warden a scepter and corresponding animation for more cohesiveness with what a focus is.

• Non-phantasm illusions mimicing your spell casts. Anyone who’s leveled a mesmer through Queensdale understands the basic mechanics of the class. Much of the illusion clones had is close to lost. A little work bringing back some of that mystery and survivability would be nice.

Fixes for:

• Clones created by Deceptive Evasion attacking critters and other mobs not in combat based on proximity as opposed to target.

• Phantasms getting feared/CCed and getting stuck, not attacking, and/or even worse attacking the closest mob to their proximity at the end of the CC.

More punishment.. Maybe cc conditions like chill. Or a more options on interrupt builds.

I agree with the AoE and range issues.

I dislike how we can’t do anything against people on top of walls in wvw. -_- And on the dredge fractal cannons that always show obstructed when using the GS. It’s also annoying that a little slope can kill our DPS by preventing summoning of phantasms/illusions.

Would like to see more emphasis on skills that have nothing to do with the illusion and shattering mechanic – manipulations for example, and more active play using tricks that do not rely on illusions in any form, be it through shattering, clone death, conditions or phantasms.

I know illusions are a core feature of the class, but I feel they are too much forced upon us. Similar to how some rangers would like the option of playing without pets.

Want to see more skills like mirror heal, mimic, blurred frenzy, iWave/mind stab, blocks, stuns/dazes… of course all with a huge active component, but without the reliance on illusions or shattering.
Ok not too many reflects as we have plenty of those as it is – but maybe being able to evolve skills/traits to sacrifice illusion generation (or even the ability to have 3 active illusions) in exchange for “personal” tricks – essentially a more sophisticated thief.

Leo Paul.1659:

I dislike how we can’t do anything against people on top of walls in wvw.

Got to agree with this one. It is seriously annoying to try attack anything that is on top of a wall these days, as most professions to be honest. Back in the early days this was no problem, but I guess people complained enough, e.g., about our Phantasms spawning on them. On the flipside, it is also somewhat difficult to attack down from a wall as well. You can still hit people on the walls, as long as they jump up on them, which they in most cases needs to do in order to attack down. I usually look for someone about to get up on the wall, and then spawn iZerker and a clone from Mirror Blade on them up there before a Mind Wrack.

I would like to see the illusion mechanic restructured to allow more flexibility.

It’s rather absurd that phantasms and shatters are considered two different playstyles (so sayeth Jon Peters), but every single mesmer is required to take both skill types (especially since we only have enough traits to make one style competitive at a time). It would be much better to find a way to allow shatter mesmers to only take shatter skills, phantasm mesmers to only bring phantasms and manipulate them with more skill, and deception/punishment mesmers to get their own skills that cater to effect-on-clone-death styles. Likewise, it would allow broader illusions such as AoE mirages.

Shattering is a good concept, but it deserves better. Shatter mesmers should be able to customize which shatter skills they take, allowing skills like Crippling Anguish, Panic, Arcane Languor, and Mirage Cloak (torment+crippling, fear, weakness+direct damage, and stealth respectively).

Phantasms are great, but they could use more manipulation after firing to allow long term mesmer offense to be more skill based. Likewise, with so many weapon skills devoted to “create fragile NPC who deals damage”, consolidating damage dealing phantasms into fewer skills would allow more “living hex” types. Examples include a phantom that maintains crippling on the target, one that keeps confusion on the enemy with 100% uptime, or a slow moving phantasm that inflicts massive spike damage (ala Liadri the Concealing Darkness).

Finally, it would be nice for other playstyles to get their time to shine with illusion mechanics that cater directly to their methods. Clone-effect-on-death is currently based 100% on traits and no tangible skill support, but they could get illusions with real AI that actually act like human beings. Likewise, broader illusions like mirages and disguises could allow more flexibility, such as AoE attacks or skill transformations.

The way the mesmer is structured causes it to fight against itself. We could be so much more if we weren’t squandering resources trying to force everyone to bring two contradictory playstyle skills and keeping us from deciding which abilities we want to use.

well said…. the only shatter i ever use is distortion to protect me while stomping.. beyond that i never touch the shatters since i mostly use phantasms.

To be honest I want more skills that INTERACT with my clones/phantasms. Why not add skills that allow me to teleport to my clone, or cause my phantasm to perform some kind of action? For example a skill that causes a clone to use a powerful attack against a target as a means of making better use of them like causing it to deal damage and knockback to a target, or a skill that causes all my phantasms to be teleported to my current position? Granted, these descriptions don’t really explain the merits of doing these things; but I imagined more interaction with my creations. How about a skill that grants 5 seconds of invulnerability to all my illusions, in exchange for a longish cooldown? Might be nice to throw out a phantasm or two knowing I could forcibly prolong their existence thus defeating one of the primary complaints revolving around them, that of them getting one-shot all too quickly in battle. Perhaps the skill could function similar to evasion, so the phantasm/clone can’t attack during the window, but say an aoe drop is noticed against your phantasms, you could activate a utility skill granting them evasion for X time to get them longer presence on the field(thus allowing the mesmer to make use of traits that work while X number of illusions are out). I have always wanted to have more interaction with my clones and phantasms, and having skills that do this allow people to take an element of passive play and make it feel active and powerful, at the cost of it being difficult to time effectively(a fair trade-off I would think).

Oooh, interesting idea; how about a skill with a less-longish cooldown(something like 20 second recharge perhaps) that functions like this, it shatters the oldest illusion and creates a portal that functions only for the mesmer and allows him to jump between his current spot and the spot of his target. After all, Portal was intended according to the sneak preview video from Anet to be a combat skill(as it shows the mesmer killing a Bladed Aatxe by bouncing back and forth while attacking). This was nerfed into infinity by giving portal a stupid-long recharge due to its use in jumping puzzles and portaling players around in WvW. With a function like this, you could create a quasi-portal using your clone as the end point and revive a decent utility out of a great concept that was never allowed to work as intended. Alternatively, we could just make it explode the oldest clone and teleport the mesmer to its spot and give it an appropriately short cooldown so the mesmer can occassionally teleport to each of his clones/phantasms during a fight (would like idea’s for what an acceptable cooldown for that would be). I like this because I think its important to the core concept of the mesmer, either offense or defense that being mobility on the field.