Guild Wars 2

If you don’t like the mechanics of the mesmer too much, and think they could be improved, or redesigned to something else, this is your thread. You can focus on the aspects you want, and go wild.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the mesmer?

Few personal ideas to start the thread:

Idea 1 – Army of illusions

I don’t like how illusions work, as in, they get locked to specific targets. So, what if you just summoned them, and could control them as you pleased?

The mesmer would use pet controls, but instead of a pet they would be controlling a swarm of illusions. Replacing the health bar you’d have those initiative-like circles we already use to know how many active illusions we have.

You’d be able to command all illusions to attack a single target, and then switch to another. There could be separate “single attack” and “group attack” to split illusions between different targets if you wanted to. And then maybe a “random attack” so they spread and attack random targets.

The number of active illusions could change too, letting you control many more, in exchange of making them more simple, like having them copy your current weapons, instead of having different ones with different abilities. The illusions could be using the auto-attack only, but copy you whenever you performed other attacks.

Idea 2 – Permanent illusions

Instead of shatters, you’d have two permanent active illusions. You’d be able to command them more precisely, and also switch places with them whenever you wanted, making the whole “who is the real one” really matter. Also, they don’t die automatically, getting downed instead. If killed they take some time to respawn.

If you want to take this idea further, you could have 3 states: Joy, Grief, and Anger, and rotate between them, giving the mesmer different passive buffs with each one. You would be in one of those three states, and the two permanent illusions in the other two. Each state would provide a small passive buff, and to change state you’d have to switch position with the illusion of that state. This would encourage switching positions in order to be more efficient with what you’re currently doing.

Like in the previous idea, the two permanent illusions would mirror your weapons and attacks. Since they’re permanent, they could deal some considerable damage, almost like you do. This could be very interesting for projectiles, since they wouldn’t arrive at the same time because of different distances. Other summoned illusions would still exist, but be temporary and secondary.

You could take this even further, and make some advanced skills be a combination of movements of each illusion, each one performing a different attack, like a chain, and if it’s completed you get some good damage bonus.

Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours!

…

Full list of redesign threads:

Elementalist – Mesmer – Necromancer

Engineer – Ranger – Thief

Guardian – Revenant – Warrior

All I want is for the three dots to have two different colors, the lighter purple for clones and a darker one for phantoms. That way I can quickly judge if a phantom skill is on cooldown if it’s safe to use a clone summoning skill without having to take the time to see what is up and where it is on the play field. It’s life and death out there and sometimes I just want to glance at the dots and be able to get a general feel for what I have out.

3 colors for the illusion circles (colors used as examples, I don’t actually care what they are)

• Pink for clones

• Blue for phantasms that will die when shattered

• Orange for phantasms that will be resummoned under the effects of chronophantasma when shattered

Phantasms are proper summons that only go die when their health is depleted. If their target dies, they retarget to the most threatening enemy using the same logic the TAB key uses to retarget.

To go along with this, all utility phantasms skills should be given a second effect that you can use to kill them off with unique effects (eg destroying phantasmal disenchanter with his own skill could provide 1 sec of resistance and cleanse 1 condi from you and allies within 240 units of yourself. defender could give you 2 sec aegis and prot when you destroy it). It provides more active play with phantasms because instead of shattering you could choose to destroy a single phantasm at a time to help swing fights in your favor. It balances itself out by weakening your shatters, and since they aren’t being shattered they don’t get resummoned with chronophantasma, preventing you from doubling up on said effects.

All weapon phantasm skills should be given a secondary effect. Either an effect that always happens (eg the block from Sh4) or an effect that only happens when you already have 3 phantasms out.

Reduced CD on core mesmer elites

Chronomancer redesign idea, to make it much more complex and unique than it is now:

• Three time-related skills, with Continuum Split being the first. All of them put you in a “phase mode”, with the effect occurring once the pase is over.
• The second one would make a copy of yourself at your position. With a few seconds of delay, the copy would repeat everything you did the last 10 seconds, and then die. Can be killed. Being able to use it with allies could be interesting too.
• The third one would mark an enemy, and send him back to his position, a few seconds later. He won’t be sent back if he’s downed, and the effect can be removed by stun breakers. Works exactly like Continuum Split, but against enemies.
• Wells would now react to the timeline, respawning or staying longer.
• With Continuum Split, they would respawn back to their status when you activated the skill. If they were up when you activated CS, they will respawn.
• With the second one, their inner timer wouldn’t start running until your copy dies, meaning they would stay longer. While the copy is alive the wells are frozen in time.
• With the third one, the effect would be the same as with Continuum Split, failing if the enemy stun breaks.
• Shield skills increase your time on “phased mode”, meaning you can take longer to “revert time”.

Totally agree with Rabid and Ori here. The illusions you have out atm should be clearly distinguishable with the dots. The dots show you nearly nothing. In a large scale meta event im often struggling to identify the illusions in the crowd, just to know if it needs to be resummoned or not. So I’d also like to throw in the idea of not only giving them special colors (or similar details) depending on chronophantasma or not, but also give them like a different symbol in the dot, depending on the phantasm that is out atm. Like a mini gs in the dot for a berserker for example.

I would not redesign the class at all. But I would give more visual feedback to the person playing the Mesmer to better control the phantas and illusions as mentioned.

Maybe instead of three bubbles you could give us a bubble for illusions and icons for phantas?

Warden: Shield
Warlock: Mask
Berserker: Greatsword
Swordsman: Sword
Duelist: Gun
Mage: I dunno… something magey

It’s not rocket science, just useful information.

Marking the types of active illusions you have isn’t really a redesign, just some quality of life. Shouldn’t be hard to implement, and it’s a really good idea, specially when using different icons for the phantasms.

I still think the whole shatter and illusion summoning mechanic is flawed though. It could be something much more better.

What about an idea like this:

• Phantasms can no longer be shattered, and you can summon as many as you want. They explode automatically after a few seconds. The idea is that you summon them, they do their job, and then they disappear.
• Clones are now the only ones that can be shattered manually.
• Clones are no longer locked to a target, and can be controlled almost like a pet, except they’re multiple pets.
• Clones copy all the attacks of the player, but they do minimum damage. They always stop moving when attacking, even if the skill can be used in movement.
• The player can switch positions with the clones easily, to help him deceive the enemy.
• Stealth-revealing skills give clones the appearance of phantasms, so the enemy can identify who is the real one easily

I think the key points of my rework would be this:

• Utter reliance on clones to protect yourself. In fact, you cannot be killed while they’re up.
• In turn, utter reliance on clones to do anything at all. Clones only get used up by the strongest abilities, but everything but your AA requires X amounts of clones present or won’t be usable.
• Shatters are a goner. The above is the class mechanic, including the UI for it.
• F1 is a low-CD ability to spawn a clone against your current target.
• Clones are 0 damage 0 effect, die in one hit, but it has to be a targeted attack used while targeting the clone. Also they use abilities, but only their target can see them – as in, to bystanders, the clone is blindingly obvious, while to the target it moves, dodges, uses skills, has boons, has conditions, etc.
• F2, F3 and F4 swap with clone 1, 2 or 3 respectively, shared CD.
• Skills no longer spawns clones/phantasms. Phantasm skills target a clone and temporarily empower it.

My main idea for redesign is in my signature and mostly imply no damage at all on phantasms. But for the things you specifically ask, I think illusions should be able to switch target with you and not die when their current target dies. It would also allow new types of phantasms, like ground targeted AOE phantasms for example (just an idea). However, they should probably not follow you out of combat.

Remove Chrono

Give them Rifle

All problems solved.

Give Mesmer dual pistols like I thought the class was going to have when the game first came out.

I’d remove phantasms as a mechanic and have mesmers only spawn clones. I would then change the way clones behave so they copy the mesmers actions but will randomise movement, so if you press to go forward it will roll to move forward or go backward, strafe left and some will go left, others right. When clones encounter an object if it can be jumped on it will be jumped onto if it can’t then it simply moves in the opposite direction.

Clones would also no longer have the properties of the weapons they wield, so staff clones won’t apply conditions (unless traited) but will still shoot winds of chaos, sword clones would remove boons etc. I would also want to allow more switching places with clones on weapons as clones should be the mesmers defence with less reliance on stealth.

With this I would also buff mesmers attacks to be on par with other classes as follows:

Sword:
auto coefficients 0.8, 0.8, 1.2 with boons/1.5 without boons.
Illusionary riposte: works same as warrior offhand sword but only 1.5s, summons clones each time you’re struck without interrupting the block. Possibly increase to 15s CD.
Phantasmal Swordsman: Becomes a 600 range dash that summons a clone at the start location deals damage to foes in the way (up to 5) and allows to teleport back for up to 5s 20s CD 1.2 coefficient, call it piercing the veil?
Blurred Frenzy and iLeap are fine as is imo, yes I appreciate iLeap is a weaker #5 in the rework but it’s a lower cool down.

Greatsword:
Spacial surge: 2 coefficients for ease of clarity 0-600 0.7, 601-1200 1.4.
Mind stab: removes 2 boons.
Mirror blade is fine for damage.
iBerserker becomes a 600 range teleport that leaves a clone where you were and does damage at the location you teleport to, same animation of raising the GS above head, allows you to switch places with clone for 5s after. 2.0 coefficient with 1/2s cast, cool down 18s.

Staff:
Winds of chaos projectile speed increased by 50%, burn duration increased to 2.5s increase vulnerability duration to 7s, bleed to 10s. Fury increased to 4s, might duration 10s. Reduce cast to 1/2s.
Phantasmal Warlock becomes Summon Chaos: Create a rift causing random conditions on (5) enemies nearby (240 radius) then a clone appears from the rift, can switch places for up to 5s after summoning. Lasts 5s, applies one of the following each second 2 bleeds (8s), 2 poison (5s), 2 torment (6s) or 2 confusion (5s).
Chaos Armour reduced to 20s CD.

Scepter: Leave as is, it’s already a powerful coniditon weapon for PvP/WvW.

Focus:
Temporal curtain 20s CD.
Phantasmal Warden becomes Chaotic Winds 180 radius AoE for 6s that summons a clone when done, may swap up to 5s later. Blocks projectiles and has a 3.6 coefficient hits 12 times during the 6s duration, 3/4s cast, whirl finisher 25s CD.

Pistol:
Magic Bullet reduce CD to 20s
I honestly don’t know about duelist, you could make it like unload but with a 15s CD or something would need a clone summon aspect.

Torch:
Prestige increase burn duration to 4s, blast finisher on use first use and when appearing.
Phantasmal Mage becomes Mage Strike: 15s CD Throws a 900 range ball of fire in a straight line applying burning to enemies and fury to allies (2 stacks for 5s, 5s fury to allies and mesmer) 0.7 coefficient. Summons a clone where the fireball ends.

Shield:
Echo of memory: Gain 1s alacrity per attack blocked however summons a normal clone.
Deja vu same as above but slows nearby enemies for 2s when done.
ToT stays the same.

Underwater: Change you do the mariners attack, 10s CD and whalers attack 12s CD.

Shatters:
MW damage reduced to the following coefficients for 0, 1, 2, 3 – 1, 1, 0.79, 0.7
Cry of Frustration flat 0.4 coefficient
Diversion and Distortion stay the same.

Trait changes:
Empowered Illusions becomes a 7% damage mod.
Rending shatter becomes 2 stacks for 15s
Imagine Burden becomes you gain might per foe hit with a GS.
Phantasmal Fury becomes gain 5s Fury per clone you summon
Duelists Discipline becomes all attacks inflict bleed when wielding a pistol, 20% CD reduction for pistol skills.
Fencers Finesse duration increased to 8s.
Persisting images becomes a flat 50% health increase to clones and they spawn with retaliation.
Protected illusions, you and clones gain 3s protection when using a shatter.
Mental Defence when hit clones gain aegis (5s CD), gain aegis when you shatter. Duration of Aegis 5s.
Illusionary Inspiration clones apply 3s regen upon summon in AoE, use SoI when you heal 30s CD
Persistence of memory 20% CD reduction to clone utility skills only.
Illusionist celerity 20% CD reduction to clone weapon skills.
The Pledge 20% CD reduction instead of stealth camping.
Maim the Disillusioned does burning, torment, poison, chill or fear to F1-5 respectively.
Phantasmal haste replaced with Illusionary dispair inflict 1s fear when using a clone utility skill.
Chronophantasma will change to what persistence of memory is currently but affects all clone skills instead of just phantasms.

Utility changes:
Signet of either refreshes clones skills for weapons only.
Phantasmal disenchanter becomes Disenchant same as current disenchanter on activation but 10s CD and only summons a normal clone 1/2s cast.
Phantasmal defender becomes Illusionary bulwark, grant aegis to allies in the area and summon a clone 25s CD 3/4s cast.

That’s a rough idea of what I would do and what would have to be changed.

Interesting list. I like most of the proposed changes. Here are my major thoughts on them

Imagined burden – No one uses GS to stack might. I would rather keep the cripple on skills 2-4 with this trait

Duelists Discipline – All attacks inflicting bleed is a bit strong. What about all pistol attacks inflict bleed, all other attacks while wielding pistol have 33% chance to bleed?

Protected Illusions – I would give clones protection and aegis, otherwise a strong attack would just down them instantly whereas right now it at least ensures phantasms survive a few seconds thanks to distortion

Illusionist Celerity/Persistence of Memory – I would keep Illusionists celerity as it is now, where it reduces the CD of all clone summoning skills. Persistence of Memory could be changed to anything else really. Perhaps the return of a clone death trait, something like apply 2 stacks of Confusion when someone kills a clone. The ICD should be long enough in PvP to not be too powerful, but short enough in PvE to be fun to use.

I’d just like some kind of elite that would temporarily turn enemies into alies so I can WOLOLO people in WvW

Myself I wouldn’t. I never have used the flavor the month build in WvW. I built mine around my play style, and what works best for me. In the end, Anet will always nerf this, buff that to the point that people will simply have to rebuild there mesmer.

Tell me when i am out of range for using my portals and i am happy

Compared to other classes the Mesmer is way to invested in it’s F skills

Shatter is neat and all but part of the reason the chrono is so much better is because it has another shatter. Bring back the clone death mechanic and tone down the F skills to match the other classes in their importance.

Mesmers shatter but elite specs like chrono should be doing something else entirely

Reduce the damage of phantasms by a LOT. Like put them all at clone levels of damage BUT make them more utility. Sword phantasm has a 1/4 second daze per attack (also is a leap finisher still). Focus phantasm is good as is for reflects (and still does whirls). Torch phantasm should remove conditions at a baseline. GS phantasm could remove boons on enemies that it hits. Staff 3 would need a rework to what it would do. Shield phantasm does the alacrity/slow as usual. Pistol phantasm keeps the rapid projectile finisher combo and bleed traits.

Buff the damage of mesmer (mostly auto attack buffs and power only). I’m ok with most of the traits as is. Chrono gets new set F1-F4 (like reaper or DH) instead of an additional F5. New elite spec gives a condi based cleave weapon or an interrupt main hand. Fix break bars to work with interrupt traits.

If those changes went through I’m ok keeping illusions functioning as is. Don’t need to have them survive or swap targets. Use them kittenter fodder with higher utility than clones. Condi has a higher DPS but longer ramp up time with getting 3 phantasms up. New elite spec gives some mistrust/condi cleave weapon. Power has better sustain while spike potential shatters remain mostly the same. Having new F1-F4 for Chrono makes it possible to balance with base mesmer. Interrupt traits can be used in PvP and PvE.

Are we talking a realistic design, or a pie-in-the-sky reboot?

Realistically, I would go with a slight variant of apharma’s excellent suggestion. Removing phantasms will help bring damage back to the player character and remove the flawed design of two contradictory mechanics (long term illusions versus short term shatter).

The one change I would make to the suggestion above would be to not add clone creation to the new weapon skills. Instead, the first minor trait of every core trait line should be a clone generator. “Create clone on dodge”, “create clone on block/evade”, “create clone on interrupt”, “generate two clones from weapon skills instead of one”, and “create a clone every third auto attack” should be spread across the core lines. Balance accordingly, and the mesmer will generate enough clones to fuel their shatters appropriately.

With clone creation on the minor traits, weapons can focus more on creating powerful and interesting effects for the mesmer herself. The shield is so much more interesting than the standard offhands specifically because it actually provides the mesmer with two skills. The less summoning on our weapon bar, the better.

Pie in the Sky redesign?

Shriketalon.1937:

The one change I would make to the suggestion above would be to not add clone creation to the new weapon skills. Instead, the first minor trait of every core trait line should be a clone generator. “Create clone on dodge”, “create clone on block/evade”, “create clone on interrupt”, “generate two clones from weapon skills instead of one”, and “create a clone every third auto attack” should be spread across the core lines. Balance accordingly, and the mesmer will generate enough clones to fuel their shatters appropriately.

Interesting. Assuming this also applies to elite specs, that’s a really neat idea for character customization. Which three things should generate your clones.

I mean I would just remove shatters from the f-skills and make generation the skill bar, but your idea is far more realistic.

Not as much of a redesign but more of an elite spec idea.
Elite spec based entirely on clones & phantasms.

-New weapon: Dual daggers.
-Additional utility skills: more phantasms (all utility phantasms stay alive & follow you around, but they have a time limit & have a large healthpool.
-Replace F1-F4 shatters with skills that give our phantasms additional effects (like stun or give our phantasms quickness.
-New F5: summons a clone at a location of your choice with medium healthpool. 2nd press will make you swap positions with the clone (stunbreak.)
-Elite phantasm: (?)
-Clones & Phantasms stay out of combat until destroyed or replaced. (or give them a reasonable duration timer)
-Buff phantasm damage & increase their health to resemble the original mesmers health but nerf the mesmers personal health & damage to a low amount & give the mesmer a new survivability tool (F5). So the mesmer can’t just be careless & passive, but actually needs to think and pay attention to what the enemy is doing and use their offensive phantasm skills & defensive skills at the right time.

The mesmer would have to pay attention to how he uses his clones & phantasms & actually control them offensively (making the playstyle more active & not jus spam clones & be defensive.) And with such low health the mesmer would have to play very carefully and not waste their stealth/escapes/defensive skills.

Would be nice if mesmer became like a “ranged” bursty assassin who’s very squishy but who makes his phantasms do the damage & maybe cc for him. And using clones as a defensive/escape mechanic.

I know that all of these ideas would or might be overpowered, but it’s just an idea for an elite spec design.
I’d love a balanced active/passive playstyle based on trickery with clones and dealing damage with phantasms.

keep everything as it is, but bring back clone death and make it baseline.

Beautilation.7915:

keep everything as it is, but bring back clone death and make it baseline.

Also bring back scepter spawning two clones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR5iFRRH5SI

As others have pointed out in another thread, make phantasms work as they do in PvE. If they’re not targeted, they take 10% damage.

Carighan.6758:

I think the key points of my rework would be this:

• Utter reliance on clones to protect yourself. In fact, you cannot be killed while they’re up.
• In turn, utter reliance on clones to do anything at all. Clones only get used up by the strongest abilities, but everything but your AA requires X amounts of clones present or won’t be usable.
• Shatters are a goner. The above is the class mechanic, including the UI for it.
• F1 is a low-CD ability to spawn a clone against your current target.
• Clones are 0 damage 0 effect, die in one hit, but it has to be a targeted attack used while targeting the clone. Also they use abilities, but only their target can see them – as in, to bystanders, the clone is blindingly obvious, while to the target it moves, dodges, uses skills, has boons, has conditions, etc.
• F2, F3 and F4 swap with clone 1, 2 or 3 respectively, shared CD.
• Skills no longer spawns clones/phantasms. Phantasm skills target a clone and temporarily empower it.

Those are some pretty interesting ideas. I would remove illusions being locked to targets though, unless you can spawn endless illusions now.

Only problem I see with these ideas is that they could lead to too chaotic mechanics, but still, they’re worth a shot.

deadlyharper.4197:

Give Mesmer dual pistols like I thought the class was going to have when the game first came out.

Yeah,main-hand pistol should be an addition to the core profession. I hope future profession updates add more than just new elite specializations :/.

Uvirith.9573:

I’d just like some kind of elite that would temporarily turn enemies into alies so I can WOLOLO people in WvW

Copies of the enemies, which either chase and attack them or reflect damage and/or have a ton of retaliation could be kinda interesting.

I’m biased because the Mesmer playstyle has never really seemed to work well for me… but I keep getting drawn to it in GW1 and GW2 regardless.

I like both of Lonami’s ideas. I assume the idea for targeted illusions is that they’re supposed to be in that person’s head, and it vanishes when they’re defeated, but it makes for a frustrating mechanic that requires more planning than other classes without any extra benefit.

I’d much rather Illusions just be a thing you summon, help you in a fight, and are tied to you. I don’t know how much control you should have over them, because that could get ridiculously chaotic fast, but there could at least be some sort of smart targeting.

The idea of being able to switch between Illusions as the Mesmer’s main defense, is an idea I really like. Honestly, I feel like that should be the true mechanic for Illusions. They don’t feel powerful or intimidating enough to fulfill the imagined nightmares that I think they were supposed to represent from GW1. As a “which one is the real one” mechanic, though, they could be a lot more interesting.

I also like Shriketalon’s idea of making clone creation more of a passive thing based on the Trait lines you’ve picked, rather than something that takes up weapon skills. This would also put the planning on more active combat than on Illusion management, which I don’t enjoy and is a stretch from the GW1 version of the class.

Jokubas.4265:

I’m biased because the Mesmer playstyle has never really seemed to work well for me… but I keep getting drawn to it in GW1 and GW2 regardless.

I like both of Lonami’s ideas. I assume the idea for targeted illusions is that they’re supposed to be in that person’s head, and it vanishes when they’re defeated, but it makes for a frustrating mechanic that requires more planning than other classes without any extra benefit.

I’d much rather Illusions just be a thing you summon, help you in a fight, and are tied to you. I don’t know how much control you should have over them, because that could get ridiculously chaotic fast, but there could at least be some sort of smart targeting.

The idea of being able to switch between Illusions as the Mesmer’s main defense, is an idea I really like. Honestly, I feel like that should be the true mechanic for Illusions. They don’t feel powerful or intimidating enough to fulfill the imagined nightmares that I think they were supposed to represent from GW1. As a “which one is the real one” mechanic, though, they could be a lot more interesting.

I also like Shriketalon’s idea of making clone creation more of a passive thing based on the Trait lines you’ve picked, rather than something that takes up weapon skills. This would also put the planning on more active combat than on Illusion management, which I don’t enjoy and is a stretch from the GW1 version of the class.

So this might be the idea behind the implementation, but as long as everyone can see the illusions this isn’t how it works. Illusions could be made to work like this however, but it would require a significant change to mesmer.

It would need to be changed so that illusions are only visible to their target, furthermore they can only be damage by their target (even though this is mostly a moot point due to how fast they are killed regardless……), possibly only being able ot be hurt through direct attacks. Then, we would need a 3 illusion limit per target, up to say 5 targets maximum. Activating a shatter would only shatter the illusions that are tied to the target we select. So we could then selectively shatter without ever destroying an illusion if we wanted to, simply by untargetting everyone first.

All illusion generating skills would then have to be redone to either have significantly shorter CDs, or to generate their illusions for up to X targets in range. Finally, F3 and F4 could potentially be changed into more powerful shatters that always destroy all of our illusions, but their scaling would need to be redone from scratch. Current scaling would make them ridiculous if you had illusions out for 5 enemies at a time. Scaling them up so that at 15 illusions they would be as powerful as they are now though would mean that a “regular” shatter with only 3 or 4 illusions would be worthless, something like 1/4 sec Distortion/ stun from those shatters.

I’d get rid of the whole shatter mechanic. Looking at GW1 Mesmer they honestly look a lot more interesting. I’d like instead of the shatter mechanic for the F keys to have stances for Mantras(never actually played GW1 so I’m assuming they’re like stances in other mmos) that build charges while you’re in a stance which can then be activated again for an additional effect which could be different or similar to the current mantras(sort of like ele’s overcharge, but not exactly like it). With this though mantra’s would be removed as skills, and could be replaced with other skills that could enhance the entire illusion/mind control spell theme of mesmers even more. For me personally the shatter mechanic and mantras have always felt kinda clunky, and I just don’t really like them.

Illussions should die outside fight. But they should also retarget to a new enemy and dont just die if they killed someone. As soon as you leave combat they die as long as you are in combat they fight until they die.
PvE mesmer would me a TON better.

“It’s only in your mind” type change to illusions:

• Illusions cannot be affected by damage nor heals, or pickup conditions or boons.
• Illusions cannot be targeted.
• Illusions expire over time.
• Illusions teleport to the target location on F1, F2 and F3 shatters.

Implications:

• Mesmers could rely on illusions in heavy AoE fights.
• Less lag in WvW due less target and pathing calculations.
• New players would not be in disadvantage trying to figure out where the real mesmer is.
• Retargeting unstealthing mesmer would require less effort.
• Target cannot avoid shatters by walking away nor moving to a non-path location.
• Players can get out of combat when the illusions expire if the mesmer nerver uses a shatter.
• No exceeding the 3 illusions limit due travel time to target on shatters.

Implied additional changes:

• Time Catches Up
• Protected Phantasms
• Persisting Images
• Phantasmal Fury
• Signet of Illusions’ passive
• The 3 dots UI display remaining time

Prob something along the lines of making key utilities a class mechanic (like portal), remove phantasms as a whole, buff sword attack speed, then redesigning clones into a small damage source akin to destructible bleed procs DPS wise. (but power scaling) Along with applying soft control, or other utilites within the traits. After that review the coefficients to see if an increase is needed.

Along with this reduce the over all frequency of clones summoned, on core that would look like more than phantasms rate, but less than current access to clones. Then buff their durability significantly give them staying power enough so target would have to commit to killing it.

As well increase AI, or functionality (like attack speed) to make them more resemble a player.

Redesign shatters for their max effect, but only consume one clone per shatter.

Modify weapons in relation to the above, and buff functionality or utility. like illusionary leap functioning similar to Infiltrator’s Strike without making a clone, but still maintaining an option similar to swap. (like furthest clone)

Despite our shortcoming on paper and by numbers, Mes is still the most fun thing to play (to me) in this game, and I’d like a lot of it preserved without chaning to much but the system does need an overhaul and lots of QoL changes. It shouldn’t take this much effort to do that little damage.

I would like to see a return to the GW1 roots of the mesmer class. There were lots of interesting debuffs you could put on your enemies, and it was quite fun. I would like there to be more interesting interrupt abilities, that can be used more often.

For some less crazy ideas: I’d like to see the Pledge reworked so your torch skills don’t recharge faster for being stealthy, but for blinding people and burning them.

I’d also like to see the movespeed buff from the Chrono trait line rolled into the base mesmer.

I’d rather have the Pledge be a flat CD reduction on torch skills of 15%. I am not a fan of these conditional recharge faster traits. Either way, it would be nice to not have it encourage stealth camping.

OriOri.8724:

I’d rather have the Pledge be a flat CD reduction on torch skills of 15%. I am not a fan of these conditional recharge faster traits. Either way, it would be nice to not have it encourage stealth camping.

I think you misunderstood me, but I wasn’t clear, so not your fault. You can keep burn stacks up on targets with far more uptime than you can stealth buffs on yourself as the Mesmer. Probably the same with blind, with the right traits. You could probably achieve 100% pledge cooldown reduction uptime. It would open up condi builds, but it would also really open up stealth builds, and probably make a stealth build viable without having to take PU.

Really, what the game needs is a return to every class having good, annoying, cheese. This is an important part of multiplayer game design: mastering the cheese feels good. overcoming the cheese feels good. Without cheese to master and overcome, gw2 sometimes feels like I’m playing a watered down version of a real game.

Reworked weapon skills and shatters; just MW and CoF with F3 as a summon a clone, F4 to make active clones distort. Shatter efficacy/damage nerfed (see below).

Remove most superfluous phantasm abilities/abilities which have damage-dealing phantasms and rework them into actual self-casted weapon skills or abilities which interact with active clones (such as a substitution between the closest clone and the player).

Clones and phantasms no longer deal damage in any form, but mirror all player movements and actions unless a shatter is activated. Upped base coefficients on mesmer weapon skills and complementary weapon-skill abilities to provide damage and utility instead of an over-emphasis/dependency on shatters.

Then rework base weapon damage coefficients to make the mesmer more well-rounded as a damage dealer.

This enables higher personal DPS with no clone dependency, reduces the innate burst/balance concern on the profession in general by decoupling its damage from shatters, makes playing an illusionist/mind games tactics much more viable since clones /clone control become totally player-determined (and allows for very crafty players to really exploit this feature), and provides a much better means to keep up clones via the blur rather than using it as a self-invuln, since it could thus face a reduced cooldown since clones deal no damage.

Basically, the profession turns into an actual illusionist instead of something which just poops out predictable AI used to combo off of.

I’d then nerf stealth access (game-wide, including thief, scrapper, and druid), and change PU to provide a fixed boon order instead of random boons to both enable more skilled play and more counterplay.

atlashugged.7642:

I would like to see a return to the GW1 roots of the mesmer class. There were lots of interesting debuffs you could put on your enemies, and it was quite fun. I would like there to be more interesting interrupt abilities, that can be used more often.

Yeah, basically this. But it sadly has two preconditions which I think are highly unlikely to happen:

• Classes cannot be “created equal”. You’d not have an answer to some attacks. That’s fine, someone else has. Group up. But it’s not how the devs designed GW2, and while the current devs do sort of “get it” (from recent changes), the whole “equality at any cost” is baked too deeply into the system at this point, IMO.
• Currently, abilities are weak individually and strong in concert. Look how single abilities have to provide 5-10 stacks of Might, or 5-15 stacks of a condition. Everything is weak by itself. For something like the old “pure Debuffer” Mesmer to work, they’re need to make individual abilities strong again. Don’t see that happening, we’re moving the opposite direction if anything.

Carighan.6758:

• Classes cannot be “created equal”. You’d not have an answer to some attacks. That’s fine, someone else has. Group up. But it’s not how the devs designed GW2, and while the current devs do sort of “get it” (from recent changes), the whole “equality at any cost” is baked too deeply into the system at this point, IMO.
• Currently, abilities are weak individually and strong in concert. Look how single abilities have to provide 5-10 stacks of Might, or 5-15 stacks of a condition. Everything is weak by itself. For something like the old “pure Debuffer” Mesmer to work, they’re need to make individual abilities strong again. Don’t see that happening, we’re moving the opposite direction if anything.

We’ll have to see how they treat the perma stealth trap thief build. Hopefully they allow it to remain, as something unique the thief can do. But given past history, I believe they will nerf it to the ground, rather than buff everything up to its level.

Perma stealth is definitely a unique mechanic. But ghost thief needs to be nerfed yesterday as it breaks fundamental game mechanics. It should not be allowed to damage you without breaking stealth. Applying damaging conditions should cause revealed, plain and simple.

That aside, its also fairly broken for the class with the highest access to stealth to also have the highest access to mobility, and for it to be allowed to combine both into the same build. Thieves should have to choose between either extremely high stealth uptime, or extremely high mobility. But having unparalleled mobility while also being invisible most of the time is broken in WvW. Its just too easy for them to travel around a map compared to other professions. Again, they should keep both, but have to build for either or, so they can’t take both at the same time.

Similarly, high access to stealth is broken when a thief can deal 10k+ backstabs from stealth. If they want to have high access to stealth in a build, then their stealth attacks should be nerfed accordingly. If they want huge damage from stealth attacks, then they should have to limit their stealth access to do so.

Unfortunately all of that would require a complete rework of the thief class, so it will never happen.

OriOri.8724:

Perma stealth is definitely a unique mechanic. But ghost thief needs to be nerfed yesterday as it breaks fundamental game mechanics. It should not be allowed to damage you without breaking stealth.

Yeah this is one unfortunate side effect of the devs never planning ahead for stealth stacking. They only have mechanics in place to deal with momentary but rarely applied stealth.

Other MMORPGs and many non-multiplayer RPGs allow permanent stealth but once caught in a fight you cannot restealth, or only in very limited circumstances which don’t allow free escape. This fixes the issue outright and codifies “true” stealth into a game, instead of having it happen as a byproduct of other mechanics and then not being able to cope with it.

To be fair, “happened as a byproduct” seems to be the MO of the Dev Team as far as gameplay elements go. I mean our whole perma-Alacrity/-Quickness seems to not be a purposeful design, it came up as a byproduct of various individual elements initially. Then they noticed “Ha! Omg! We did it! Can’t believe it! A non-DPS role!”, and quickly went with it. But you can notice how the game wasn’t built around the idea of a “buffer”, so we run into a host of quirky designs all the time.

In short, if anyone from the dev team is reading this: I know you’re probably criminally understaffed (if I had to guess >.<), but try to take some time to go back to the drawing board with each class, doesn’t have to be all at the same time. Design a full theme for the class, a role, a purpose, and then one-by-one, retool the class around that. If need be, rip out entire skill types and traitlines.

i would like to have clones that do damage, clones that switch targets, clear icon instead of dots and clones and phantasms be the same thing, i don’t understand why i should get a clone out when i can get a phantasm that do actual damage and other things.
shattering should be more spike damage, if i really have to give up my resources i want them to be impactful.
also i want retaliation, they want us to tank? than give us some retaliation.

Two new ideas, based on the complete removal of the current shatter mechanic:

Idea 3 – Role-based illusions

Phantasms now work as homing missiles, sort of. When you summon one, it has a goal depending on the skill. This goal can be running after an enemy and knocking him down, healing a downed ally, harassing an enemy for 10 seconds, or any other active action. Once the goal is completed, they disappear. They can be destroyed by the enemy, and there’s no limit to how many of them you can summon. Ideally, you want to destroy them before they reach you, because they can be really dangerous. In the end, phantasms are just projectiles you can destroy before they reach you, with the illusion part adding to the confusion. Phantasms are spawned using weapon and slot skills.

Clones work similarly to phantasms, but instead of having an active role, they react to certain actions. They follow the mesmer around, and wait for said action to trigger. For example, one clone might have a “reflect projectiles” role, and each time the enemy fires, it would reflect projectiles. Another might wait for you to attack, and copy your attacks. They don’t disappear until destroyed or resummoned. Clones are created using the new mechanic bar.

The mesmer now has a new resource, that automatically increases in combat, even if you aren’t attacking. This resource is used to spawn clones. The shatter skills are now replaced by various clone-spawning skills, each of them spawning a clone with a different role.

This idea focuses (specially the clone rework) on action-reaction, and forcing the enemy to analyze what’s going on before rushing in blindly. Each clone would have precise tells to let the enemy know what it’s waiting for. In some way, clones would be like walking traps, waiting to be triggered by those who don’t pay attention. Those who do pay attention can trigger them the right way so their effect is wasted, or focus on destroying the clones instead

Idea 4 – Relics

The mesmer would get a new companion, similar to the ranger’s pet, except that it’s an inanimate object. The mesmer chooses which relic to summon, and then he can move it easily across the battlefield. Once he grows bored of it, he can shatter it, and summon another.

Each relic would have complex mechanics, and positioning them correctly would be the key to success. They would function similarly to Ventari’s Tablet, but without spending slot skills. You can teleport your relic easily around the battlefield, positioning it where its needed, but they won’t do anything until you use one of their three skills. Some slot skills could be used to boost relics.

Some relic ideas:

• Mirror: Skills reflect enemy projectiles, create clones of allies, or create phantasms of enemies.
• Black Hole: Pulls enemies close to it, repels enemies close to it, or absorbs the boons of nearby enemies and the conditions of nearby allies.
• Portal: Creates portal entry, creates portal exit, or activates portal. Portal entry and portal exit don’t despawn until the relic is destroyed or swapped away.
• Hourglass: Chronomancer exclusive. Saves point in time and lets you teleport back to that point, slows time for enemies, or fastens time for allies.

Illusions would still be around, but they wouldn’t be as important as they are now.

Just some alternatives to the current shatter system.

how would I redesign Mesmers? I’d completely overhaul them and make them more reminiscent of the GW1 mesmers… a larger focus on manipulating your opponent’s actions less focus on clones and phantasms… I’d still leave them in, but the class mechanic would no longer revolve around them…

Mantra’s would provide passive benefits that scales with remaining charges… if you have no charges there is no passive effect. Passive effects would be based off the GW1 mantra’s…

Our F1-F4 would remain the same abilities… however they would nolonger shatter illusions. Clones and Phantasms are now just another power type, not a central mechanic.

Phantasms do not die when your target dies, instead they last for a set amount of time.

Clones and Phantasms have unique effects tied to them that trigger when destroyed. Each type does something different on death.