Imagined Burden Rework
Current GM Trait: Imagined Burden only affects the GS and is lackluster compared to the other GM traits for basically every game mode.
Proposed rework: When you remove boons (not just with GS), you do bonus power damage. Make the might on all clone attacks (not just GS). Keep 20% GS CD.
I do like the trait you describe. That being said, it is a weapon trait. Period.
There might be (few) weapon traits which have a benefit when not using the weapon. But most don’t. So I don’t really see the need to make it universally appealing. Which doesn’t mean I’m happy with the current version of the trait. 
(edited by DuckDuckBOOM.4097)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Right-Hand_Strength
Not every weapon trait only affects 1 weapon. It may not be conventional nor common but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
I didn’t say otherwise. I just said that it’s uncommon.
I’m against changing a weapon trait if it as a result would not be picked to be used with the weapon but because of a major non-weapon related feature, though.
Plus, you really need to fact-check some of the stuff you just said …
I see the need to make it universal because our boon removal is across 2 weapons, 3 utilities, a trait and probably future elite specs. Unlike necro were all their boon removal are corrupts, Mesmers don’t have any “reward” for removal.
Yes, boon removal is weaker than corruption. But that doesn’t mean it is unrewarding. Boons just became too common. Meaning we need a better and more frequent access to removal or our removal needs to be more powerful.
On a different note: I think I read your suggestion wrong. I thought we were talking about a power boost. Not direkt damage on removal. This would be a very very bad idea because it is close to impossible to balance. Because our sources of boon removal are too different in effectiveness. Or it would need a cooldown which would make it pretty useless.
Since we are such a specialist class when it comes to traits, I think that having a trait that affects just boon removal and has a bonus GS CD built in is perfectly fine.
I would like to see more boon removal on Mesmers and traits which relate to it. But I just don’t think that Imagined Burden is the place where this should happen. I also don’t think that damage on removal is the right thing to do.
If you want F2 to be more useful for power shatter builds we probably should talk about removing F2 Cripple from Master of Fragmentation and moving it to Domination somehow. If you want more damage as power shatter Mesmer when picking Domination you should just go with Mental Anguish and Power Block, really. Whereas Power Block already turns F3 into a power option.
If you want more stuff related to boon removal we should talk about reworking, merging and reallocating all the crappy Vulnerability traits we got in Domination so we can create space for new traits. Which, for example, could grant you a damage boost when removing a boon. Or which could make your boon removal 100% more effective as long as your target got more than 3 boons.
I think this would be a more reasonable solution than reworking Imagined Burden to fix something mostly unrelated to Greatsword.
Ziggs Ironeye – Engineer | Madame Le Blanc – Mesmer | Mentor (PvE) | EU
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
Are you referring to the condition removal aspect of those skills? It functions in the exact same way as the boon removal aspect, so I fail to see why you’re treating it as some sort of big unknown modifier.
I don’t treat it as an unkown modifier. But it is a component you’re not taking into consideration. Some skills already got other effects. Others don’t.
It does matter. Especially if the trait has the potential to water down or change the original purpose of respective skills or might cause other effects to be nerfed or not buffed even though their untraited performance is underwhelming as hell.
Actually…they have pretty much identical implications. Steadily removing boons facilitates a more sustained fight that aims to keep an opponent in one spot while weakening them. Removing 3 boons at once (huge? …no) facilitates a more rapid attack that needs to instantly clear some defensive boons to facilitate burst.
Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb. May I remind you of the short period of time where Mesmers could very easily burst almost anything? Wasn’t that fun?
Removing a huge amount of boons at the same time does have a more powerful effect to it than removing them periodically. No argument there. But there is time to react and counterplay. However, more burst on power shatter builds could just be too much.
I did think about it. I said that 4 boons removed would deal about 2000 damage against a similarly glassy target, and about 1200 against a tank. A standard power shatter combo of mirror blade, mind stab, and a 4 clone mind wrack will remove 5 boons, dealing 1500 damage vs a tank or 2500 vs glass. The combo itself would deal around 6-8k vs a tank without that, meaning the trait would add about 18% damage to the combo. This is very reasonable considering how hard power block hits and the damage amp that mental anguishprovides.
So you’re not concerned, that you might as well just smash F2 and F3 as well because they’d now also deal damage? If we were only talking about F1 in a rotation I might have agreed. But that’s not what we’re talking about. In the scenario you described you might as well just pick Mental Anguish.
It would be precisely the same amount more powerful as every other skill we have is. Not sure what point you’re trying to make, that’s the reason everyone takes chrono these days…
Great argument for introducing more stuff which facilitates this issue…
Roughly zero? When’s the last time you chased somebody in circles autoattacking them in PvP? Ah that’s right, nobody does that because that gets you killed.
And since when has GW2 only been about PvP? 
Uhm. You’re going to have to rethink that one a bit. Do you really think that 1500 damage (absolute maximum) is some sort of unfun and unfair mechanic? Thief mug does more than that AND it heals the thief.
Without context 1.5k isn’t too impressive. Keyword is unblockable. Rather than making AT even more gimmicky it should just get its cooldown reduced so it can finally be put to use.
There is so much boon spam/condition spam/boon removal spam/condition removal spam that if you’re not spamming with the best of them, you’re completely irrelevant.
Boon removal spam… really? I didn’t know that was a thing.
This is totally false. You’re completely ignoring the context of the trait. It would be a choice between a damage boost from removing boons (great against tanks with a lot of boons, awful against glass matchups without many boons), a damage boost plus utility of skill shutdown (great against slower classes that can be interrupted, not great with stability or fast attacks), and a raw damage boost against locked down targets (fantastic against lower hp classes for assassination, not so great vs bunkers). It would be an extremely interesting choice that would very much change how you approached fights on that build.
Got to disagree with you here. On paper they might cater different playstyles. But I highly doubt this would work out in practice. Because one of them – IB with a reasonable amount of damage on boon removal – would likely be the best for the majority of scenarios regardless of your playstyle.
Power Block is useless in PvE and close to useless in WvW aside from duelling or roaming. In the current PvP I’d say it is situational at best. It didn’t help that we got another class with few CD skills. The new Imagined Burden would be the more likely pick.
Mental Anguish only benefits bursty power shatter builds. The new Imagined Burden on the other hand would most likely work for any build. Which would be okay if it wasn’t yet another damage trait and so likely to outperform the other two traits.
Why would any shatter Mesmer pick Mental Anguish considering that Shattered Concentration is the most likely pick on the Master tier resulting in Imagined Burden being the way better choice? And what would non shatter Mesmers pick? Maaaaaybe Power Block if it wasn’t PvE. But Most certainly Mental Anguish.
First, let’s establish some raw numbers. If boon removal did ~500 damage in PvP from a glass cannon to a glass cannon, it would be competing with halting strike at ~2k (no buffs). Now let’s look at some PvE numbers. Vs a mordrem wolf with standard zerker gear (rune of chrono though) and no buffs. Sword auto does:
1.1: ~1.4k
1.2: ~1.4k
1.3 ~2k (with swiftness on the wolf) or ~2.6k (w/o)
Halting strike: ~2k
These are just super quick numbers I grabbed off NPCs but the range isn’t going to be that far off. Notice how halting strike does about the same in both modes without buffs. It should be slightly higher in PvE in general but mordrem wolves have different armor values so whatever. Also notice how even against an enemy with a single boon, with sword 1.3 removing that boon, it still does reduced damage. If it did 500 extra damage it would still be less than a 3rd auto attack vs an enemy with no boons.
Roughly zero? When’s the last time you chased somebody in circles autoattacking them in PvP? Ah that’s right, nobody does that because that gets you killed.
And since when has GW2 only been about PvP?
We are talking about the worst DPS PvE class in the game. Where half the damage comes from phantasms. The other half is split between sword1/2, shield 5, wells and the occasional shatter. That’s like 50% of 50% of 33% of the worst DPS in the game being buffed back to baseline. You seriously think a bonus 500 damage on sword 1.3, when it does about 600 damage less on a target with boons, is going to break balance?
Power Block is useless in PvE and close to useless in WvW aside from duelling or roaming. In the current PvP I’d say it is situational at best. It didn’t help that we got another class with few CD skills. The new Imagined Burden would be the more likely pick.
Oh no! It’s a more likely pick in certain game modes. Why is that a problem? All traits have game modes and niches that they work better in. Most enemies don’t even have boons and all of our GM traits in domination suck for PvE. Why are you so against a niche buff to it in PvE?
Without context 1.5k isn’t too impressive. Keyword is unblockable. Rather than making AT even more gimmicky it should just get its cooldown reduced so it can finally be put to use.
Do you know what else is unblockable? GS#2. When blink, portal, SoI or even null field or MoD are so important on a Mesmers bar, do you think any decent player is going to bring AT for the unblockable factor when GS2 exists? No.
Why would any shatter Mesmer pick Mental Anguish considering that Shattered Concentration is the most likely pick on the Master tier resulting in Imagined Burden being the way better choice? And what would non shatter Mesmers pick? Maaaaaybe Power Block if it wasn’t PvE. But Most certainly Mental Anguish.
All interrupt traits need to be fixed to work with breakbars. Even if they weren’t though, I actually would still pick Mental Anguish or Power block in PvE unless I knew I would be fighting a ton of enemies with boons.
For PvP, halting strike is amazing and would be equal to 4 boons removed. You can proc halting strike multiple times with F3, weapon skills, gravity well and MoD. Damage aside, it’s affects are super strong with weakness and the CD increase. There would still be a very good reason to pick halting strike over this buff depending on the match up. If you think 500 damage on boon removal in PvP is so strong that halting strike would never be worth it, you aren’t using halting strike correctly. Mental anguish vs halting strike has always been about diversifying where the damage comes from. If a new elite spec had more power damage across F1-F4, Mental anguish would be back into the game.
Duckduckboom already touched on most of the points here, but I’ll address a few of the more ridiculous ones again.
It would be precisely the same amount more powerful as every other skill we have is. Not sure what point you’re trying to make, that’s the reason everyone takes chrono these days…
Great argument for introducing more stuff which facilitates this issue…
So your argument is that we should never introduce anything to mesmer ever because chrono exists and can double it? Do you realize how absurd that sounds? You’re saying that no buff or new mechanic should ever be given to mesmer because it would be ‘more stuff which facilitates this issue’.
k.
Roughly zero? When’s the last time you chased somebody in circles autoattacking them in PvP? Ah that’s right, nobody does that because that gets you killed.
And since when has GW2 only been about PvP?
And in this installment of ridiculous arguments, I encounter something that appears to be implying that adding a small amount of conditional damage to a weak autoattack that is already weaker on that same condition on the weakest dps class in PvE would somehow break the game.
k.
Uhm. You’re going to have to rethink that one a bit. Do you really think that 1500 damage (absolute maximum) is some sort of unfun and unfair mechanic? Thief mug does more than that AND it heals the thief.
Without context 1.5k isn’t too impressive. Keyword is unblockable. Rather than making AT even more gimmicky it should just get its cooldown reduced so it can finally be put to use.
Ok, lets add unblockable and see how it sounds!
Unblockable 1.5k damage on a kitten cooldown.
Nope, still sounds pretty unimpressive. Even if this change to IB became a thing, I would never equip that garbage utility without massive changes to it. If I want a bit of extra unblockable damage, I’ll chuck mirror blade at them. If I want a bit more actually usable damage, I’d take the mantra.
This is totally false. You’re completely ignoring the context of the trait. It would be a choice between a damage boost from removing boons (great against tanks with a lot of boons, awful against glass matchups without many boons), a damage boost plus utility of skill shutdown (great against slower classes that can be interrupted, not great with stability or fast attacks), and a raw damage boost against locked down targets (fantastic against lower hp classes for assassination, not so great vs bunkers). It would be an extremely interesting choice that would very much change how you approached fights on that build.
Got to disagree with you here. On paper they might cater different playstyles. But I highly doubt this would work out in practice. Because one of them – IB with a reasonable amount of damage on boon removal – would likely be the best for the majority of scenarios regardless of your playstyle.
Did I not literally just explain exactly how each of those traits would be better in particular circumstances? Let me try again:
Power block is the best and only good choice in interrupt builds. Obviously, if you’re not going for an interrupt build then you don’t use power block.
Mental anguish is the best choice for an assassination build. It provides a large and reliable damage amp that doesn’t have conditionals outside your control on it. If you want the best burst, you take mental anguish.
The new IB would be the best choice for a tankier build that goes for a sustained or attrition fight. It’s not as powerful as the other two for raw lockdown or damage burst, but it provides by far the best total damage over the course of a longer fight with a constant output of boon stripping. Against a low-boon class it’s useless, but this sort of build is designed to take apart tankier builds on point, not assassinate.
Regarding PvE, all 3 grandmasters would still be garbage. Nothing you say regarding how these traits perform in PvE is relevant to the discussion.
… but I’ll address a few of the more ridiculous ones again
[…]K.
[…]
K.
Dear Fay,
disagreeing with you might be a dare and slightly masochistic. But it doesn’t make me innately wrong and certainly doesn’t make me mentally challenged. Maybe we could have a more constructive and less condescending discussion.
First, let’s establish some raw numbers. … If it did 500 extra damage it would still be less than a 3rd auto attack vs an enemy with no boons.
The issues I see…
- Power Block doesn’t really compete because it’s way too niche.
- Being less than another auto attack still equals a potential 15-25% buff to the AA.
Now…
We are talking about the worst DPS PvE class in the game. Where half the damage comes from phantasms.
… I’m not arguing wether we need a damage buff or not. We do. I’m saying that the suggestion for Imagined Burden shouldn’t be the solution for this issue. It would limit build diversity because our baseline damage would remain aweful.
One of the reasons you initially mentioned was to bring back up power shatter compared to condition shatter. However, boon removal isn’t shatter exclusive. Just because certain skills seem fine with specific numbers doesn’t justify such a change to benefit one build. Why aren’t we talking about Mental Anguish instead?
Oh no! It’s a more likely pick in certain game modes. Why is that a problem? All traits have game modes and niches that they work better in. Most enemies don’t even have boons and all of our GM traits in domination suck for PvE. Why are you so against a niche buff to it in PvE?
You are taking this out of context. The problem is that your change could easily make it the most attractive choice in most situations. PvE (AA) is just an example I brought up to show how difficult it would be to find a damage number which would neither be overpowered nor underpowered on all skills it would affect.
Additionally, aside from Sword AA your suggestion benefits shatters most which doesn’t even cater PvE. So I’ll ask again: Why not discuss a change to Mental Anguish instead of adding another shatter trait which benefits almost the same audience.
And no Fay… that distinction between assassination and attrition… not buying it. If you wanted attrition, you’d go with increased boon removal effectiveness instead of damage.
Do you know what else is unblockable? GS#2. When blink, portal, SoI or even null field or MoD are so important on a Mesmers bar, do you think any decent player is going to bring AT for the unblockable factor when GS2 exists? No.
Unblockable 1.5k damage on a kitten cooldown.
Nope, still sounds pretty unimpressive.
I said it would be difficult to balance in the context of other boon removals
I said it would be gimmicky.
I said it wouldn’t serve the core functionality of the skill.
I said it would encourage a build similar to pre June patch builds which was aweful.
I didn’t say it was innately overpowered.
I didn’t say it would be first pick.
All interrupt traits need to be fixed to work with breakbars. Even if they weren’t though, I actually would still pick Mental Anguish or Power block in PvE unless I knew I would be fighting a ton of enemies with boons. […] PvP […]
Yes, they indeed need to be fixed.
However, I don’t agree with your assessment on which trait to pick in PvE. As long as Power Block doesn’t work against/with breakbars Mental Anguish and Imagined Burden (assuming a reasonable damage number) will always be more attractive unless fighting trash mobs.
It’s also not like mobs nowadays didn’t have a bunch of boons…
In PvP, I love(d) Power Block. But since the introduction of HoT it is way too difficult to interrupt meaningful skills (or interrupt anything at all) which makes the added cooldown way less attractive. If you wanted damage you could take the easier route and pick Mental Anguish or the new Imagined Burden.
So your argument is that we should never introduce anything to mesmer ever because chrono exists and can double it? Do you realize how absurd that sounds? You’re saying that no buff or new mechanic should ever be given to mesmer because it would be ‘more stuff which facilitates this issue’.
k.
I’m saying not to be childish and ask for damage for damage sake.
There are ways to add damage and utility without introducing a damage spiral for certain trait set ups while leaving others behind in the dust.
And in this installment of ridiculous arguments, I encounter something that appears to be implying that adding a small amount of conditional damage to a weak autoattack that is already weaker on that same condition on the weakest dps class in PvE would somehow break the game.
k.
Balance issues with a mechanic across several skills on a class =|= game breaking.
Did I not literally just explain exactly how each of those traits would be better in particular circumstances? Let me try again:
Power block is the best and only good choice in interrupt builds. Obviously, if you’re not going for an interrupt build then you don’t use power block.
No argument there. Never was.
Mental anguish is the best choice for an assassination build. It provides a large and reliable damage amp that doesn’t have conditionals outside your control on it. If you want the best burst, you take mental anguish.
Maybe you’d like to elaborate on my question about the rotation you described in the context of Mental Anguish and probably pressing more than F1.
IB and MA would literally do the same thing for an assassination build as long as your opponent has boons. The only opponent you’ll usually want MA over IB would have to Thieves and that’s it.
Yes, IB would be better for attrition. But it would be almost as good in assassination as MA as well. How would this not be a problem when looking at build diversity?
Regarding PvE, all 3 grandmasters would still be garbage. Nothing you say regarding how these traits perform in PvE is relevant to the discussion.
If that’s your stance you should be even more so against the suggestion because we deserve a GM in Domination which is useful in PvE. That aside, the suggestion would affect PvE. Period. Just because you don’t care or something about Mesmers would remain garbage doesn’t make it irrelevant.
(edited by Xaylin.1860)
Here is the issue with giving more baseline power. Yes PvE needs buffs but Domination, Dueling Chrono is still a strong build in PvP and buffs would make it OP. […] When fighting other glass cannons, power block is much better than damage on boon strip. So it’s strong, and those traits are viable, it’s just not optimal and borderline not-viable in this meta. I am actually ok with this.
There are ways to increase baseline power without making it OP. One obvious example is our main power AA on Sword. Just increase the damage. As Fay said, in a PvP context, being it WvW or actual PvP, it wouldn’t matter. It would be a PvE thing. Another way is to increase the lower end of the baseline power damage for shatters. This could be done in several ways. This obviously is more of a PvP thing.
We are talking about rudimentary class mechanics who happen to underperform. We shouldn’t be talking about traits here rather than overall buffs.
Regarding PB and glass cannons, that’s just not true. While PB is less effective against tankier builds it isn’t necessarily more powerful against glass cannons. As soon as there are boons involved, damage on boon removal is plain easier to land, potentially deals comparable damage and therefore is more efficient.
Reason 1
I disagree because thematically, while they are different games and balance is different in gw1 and 2, the class has always been about punishing your enemies.
I agree on this. That’s why I said I would love to see the devs extent on Mesmers capabilities regarding boon removal. However, damage on boon removal is very very close to Corruptions which – in GW2 – happen to be associated with Necromancers and nowadays Mallyx.
Classes changed. But even back then Necromancers were more so associated with this kind of mechanic with them having Pain of Disenchantment + Strip Enchantment plus Hex Eater Vortex basically representing F1+Shattered Concentration, not damage on boon removal. Of course, this is my personal opinion.
Then again, I also feel that Mesmer skills aren’t balanced appriopriately to attach damage on boon removal. But we already figured out that we disagree on this point, as well. No point in running in circles. No hard feelings.
So stop saying there will be two GM shatter traits. It’s not a shatter trait. It would be best to be balanced around shatters but again, not a shatter trait. It is a weapon/boon hate trait and that weapon goes hand in hand with boon removal and it thematically feels right for the class.
I’m sorry if you feel this is wrong or my point of view is annoying. But in the current iteration the trait would mostly be associated with shatters. Because Shattered Concentration is by far our most potent boon removal. It isn’t a shatter trait per se. But the interaction with SC will virtually make it one. You basically said it yourself.
I also disagree on the weapon part. Sword is as much associated with boon removal as GS although it’s true that Duelling isn’t as much linked to it as Domination is.
Regardless, I stand by the point that a weapon trait shouldn’t be a trait which alters a class mechanic or skills to a point where the weapon component of the trait becomes the secondary effect or where the added effect mostly benefits non-weapon skills.
I’m not against another boon removal related trait in Domination. But I’m against turning the GS trait into one. And I happen not to like the idea of damage on boon removal.
A +1 burst would have at most 5 boons quickly removed. That would be equivalent to a PB proc. If that was good enough to get in the meta, then why do people not run the dom, duel, chrono with PB right now?
People don’t run PB not because of it’s effect. It’s great even after it was nerfed. They don’t run it because it is too difficult to apply successfully on a reliable basis. Now, setting up one 1+ shatter isn’t easy either. But my concern doesn’t lie with one F1 burst.
I’m concerned about the damage on a consecutive F2 or F3 (not even considering Chrono here…) which currently don’t deal any notable amount of power damage. At this point, it wouldn’t matter that 1 PB would equal 5 removed boons in most scenarios because PB is way too unreliable. In groupfights there will be boons. Even if solo, your opponents might have passive traits which procc more boons although their build doesn’t pack too many boons. Even Thieves will have plenty of boons against Mesmers. Always. Consume Plasma.
Basically, PB and MA would be more powerful at bursting. But not even that much because the hypothetical value of 5 boons removed equaling 1 PB isn’t that hard to reach after all. And in longer fights, well, you guys said it yourself. Damage on boon removal would be more attractive.
Of course, we could lower the damage on boon removal. But then we’d reach a point where the trait would be utterly useless on anything but shatters with Shattered Concentration.
So 1) I want a boon hate build in this meta and it thematically fits the class. 2) A boon hate build is going to be for a specific kind of meta and has to be balanced around that. Part of balance is that the trait is in competition with other DPS traits (MA and PB) but also gives this build a bit more sustain (by fueling inspiration traits) because one GM trait swap alone won’t suddenly make power Mesmer work in this meta.
So basically you want…
- boon hate (… which you prefer to be damage…)
- hence (with CS) a power versions of MtD and Illusionary Retribution
- plus a power substitute for Illusionists Celerity / PoM (hence IB)…
… so you can run a power version of the condi build without dropping Inspiration?