Guild Wars 2

So we all know that Warriors use a 3 parts meter that they have to fill to use burst skills, I’m pretty sure the mechanic would work well for mesmers if it was tweaked a bit.

Basically what would happen is that every time a part of the meter is filled (by dealing damage, or other means) a clone would spawn, the ones that do little to no damage and are only useful as shatter ammo. F1-F4 would be the usual shatter skills. I think having the mechanic work like that would allow much more freedom for builds since no matter how you trait your character clones and shatters would be useful since they’d just spawn as you fight so you can shatter them. Obviously it wouldn’t be balanced at all if we still allowed a 3 Phantasms limit, it’d need to be balanced somehow to work well with the new mechanic, one thing would be that they’re not shattered the usual way, but you would be able to re-use the phantasm skill to shatter them if they’re on the field, each phantasm having a different shatter.

More importantly though it would make creating clones a much more consistent affair, since at the moment they’re created with utility skills and weapon skills, which when are on cooldown don’t do much to create more clones, which frankly isn’t that great because mesmers are all about illusions and clones, we should be able to have them readily available at all time.

Thoughts?

I think there are a lot of different ways to build a Mesmer (duh!) and the way that you’re focusing on is clone intensive. If you are trying to go a clone intensive route, you would probably have a lot of utility/traits that help you summon/re-summon illusions. I am running a somewhat illusion based build, and I can honestly say that I don’t have any problems maintaining 3 illusions at almost all times, and even after changing targets mid crazy combat, I can quickly get 3 more within ~5 seconds or so.

I appreciate the fact that all the class mechanics are new and unique, and I don’t think I would like to see them change our mechanic to be more like warrior, simply because I don’t want to see duplicates of class mechanics (or similarities, rather).

I will say, however, that I think the shatter and illusion system overall needs a revamp. People have said that Mantras are horrible if not traited, and wonderful if traited. I feel the same way about shattering and illusions. If you trait for shatters they grant vigor, rip boons, grant boons to you, heal, apply confusion, apply might… If you don’t trait into them fully… they do a pretty weak burst? (granted there are other shatters I think are way sexier, like Distortion. <3)

I think one of the biggest problems with Mesmer currently is that a huge majority of our strength (not power, just general awesomeness) comes from our traits. That means that almost all of our things (abilities, clones, shatters) are meh if left untouched or WOW if traited.

Maybe I’m not addressing your point, but you asked for my thoughts. xD

Don’t see the purpose and would require additional work / re-balancing.

I also think your idea is a bit (a LOT) unbalanced, as it would allow you to save your precious phantasms and shatter the clones. I think the uniform shattering of all illusions is potentially much more balanced.

I, however, would like to see phantasms contribute more to the shatter than a clone.

Who fights as a mesmer when you can have ur phantasms do the killing for you anyways?