Guild Wars 2

Obviously all of the classes are getting “new shinies” with the new Specialization system … Mesmers included.

Regardless of how you feel about those, I’ve noticed a trend with them … every class is gaining considerably more access to boons

I see this is the first indirect buff to Mesmers as Mesmers are the kings/queens of removing boons. Sure, Necromancers can do it too, but not in nearly as many ways nor as often as many different Mesmer builds.

Additionally, all sorts of effects are becoming boons (like Quickness). Mesmers like to manipulate boons. Obviously, Mesmer can steal enemy quickness (or strip it) …

… but this means Mesmer can also share these effects … while the tooltip doesn’t include it yet (they just re-used the old tooltip), I imagine it will soon also include Quickness.

Yes, I do have Quickness … let me share it with everyone … casts a Phantasm.

Want some more of that Quickness? Let me weapon swap and share it some more.

Oh look, there is another Mesmer in the party … let’s keep sharing our Quickness by summoning phantasms as often as possible.

Looking at the complains, I guess the PvE folk hadn’t thought about this one since they keep saying they are “getting nothing for PvE” … oh well … some people always complain early and complain often

Let’s recap this …

• two Mesmers in a group.
• Both Mesmers drop Time Warp … it’s a boon now so it should stack in duration.
• Now each Mesmer is spec’d for Illusionary Inspiration so each time they summon a Phantasm, they share all their boons … likely including that Quickness … it is becoming a boon after all ;-)
• Constant Quickness anyone?

Illusionary Inspiration does have a 45 sec cooldown.

Sebrent.3625:

Obviously all of the classes are getting “new shinies” with the new Specialization system … Mesmers included.

Regardless of how you feel about those, I’ve noticed a trend with them … every class is gaining considerably more access to boons

I see this is the first indirect buff to Mesmers as Mesmers are the kings/queens of removing boons. Sure, Necromancers can do it too, but not in nearly as many ways nor as often as many different Mesmer builds.

Additionally, all sorts of effects are becoming boons (like Quickness). Mesmers like to manipulate boons. Obviously, Mesmer can steal enemy quickness (or strip it) …

… but this means Mesmer can also share these effects … while the tooltip doesn’t include it yet (they just re-used the old tooltip), I imagine it will soon also include Quickness.

Yes, I do have Quickness … let me share it with everyone … casts a Phantasm.

Want some more of that Quickness? Let me weapon swap and share it some more.

Oh look, there is another Mesmer in the party … let’s keep sharing our Quickness by summoning phantasms as often as possible.

Looking at the complains, I guess the PvE folk hadn’t thought about this one since they keep saying they are “getting nothing for PvE” … oh well … some people always complain early and complain often

Let’s recap this …

• two Mesmers in a group.
• Both Mesmers drop Time Warp … it’s a boon now so it should stack in duration.
• Now each Mesmer is spec’d for Illusionary Inspiration so each time they summon a Phantasm, they share all their boons … likely including that Quickness … it is becoming a boon after all ;-)
• Constant Quickness anyone?

time warp will probably be pulsing 1 second
also that trait has 45 second cool down

I see what makes you think that … they have listed the cooldown on the ability. You may be right, but you could also be wrong.

Take a look at Beastmaster’s Bond here:

• http://i.imgur.com/TVN0V2u.jpg
  And take a look at Evasive Mirror here:
• http://i.imgur.com/fIH0J9L.jpg

If the cooldown isn’t on the trait itself, then the trait might not have an ICD. That cooldown you see is a copy & paste of the tooltip from the signet itself. Until we see the official tooltip for that trait, we won’t know for sure though.

I mentioned 2 Mesmers with 2 Timewarps for a reason. Even if it is pulsing 1s every 1s, if you have two of them you will accumulate 10s of Quickness on both Mesmers. Each Mesmer can then share that …

• 10s of Quickness on everyone (10, 10, 10, 10, 10)
• Mesmer #1 shares 10s with everyone but himself (10, 20, 20, 20, 20)
• Mesmer #2 shares his 20s with everyone but himself (30, 20, 40, 40, 40)

So that’s 10s from the two Time Warps being up so overall you had each party member affected by 30 to 50s of Quickness (40, 30, 50, 50, 50)

So that’s 50s for 3 members, 40s for one Mesmer and 30s for another Mesmer. Pretty darn nice.

… and that is if you can only share it once every 45 seconds …

Also, a lesson from having taken the Keen Edge trait and Sharpening Stone utility in the same build on my Ranger (Warriors have done the same with their Stances…)

If you let the trait proc first and go on its ICD, you are still free to follow it up with the actual utility … so, at worst, you’d have 2 Signets of Inspiration per Mesmer. So let’s revisit this situation again with that.

• 10s of Quickness on everyone (10, 10, 10, 10, 10)
• Mesmer #1 shares via trait … +10s to everyone except Mesmer #1 (10, 20, 20, 20, 20)
• Mesmer #2 shares via trait … + 20s to everyone except Mesmer #2 (30, 20, 40, 40, 40)
• Mesmer #1 shares via utility … + 30s to everyone except Mesmer #1 (30, 50, 70, 70, 70)
• Mesmer #2 shares via utility … + 50s to everyone except Mesmer #2 (80, 50, 120, 120, 120)

And we can’t forget that they had their initial 10s of Quickness from two TimeWarps which allowed them to stack up those 10s … (90, 60, 130, 130, 130)

That is 90s of Quickness on Mesmer #1, 60s of Quickness on Mesmer #2, and 130s of Quickness on the rest of the group … more than enough time for the 45 second ICD (if it exists) on the trait … and kitten base cooldown on the signet.

… anything else we’d like to say about the 45 second cooldown?

… I don’t see it as a problem

… heck, after kitten … even make that 50s to account for them clicking abilities and being super slow at it … that would have everyone in the group at: (40, 10, 80, 80, 80) … and we get to start sharing again from there …

• Mesmer #1 shares 40 via trait … (40, 50, 120, 120, 120)
• Mesmer #2 shares 50 via trait … (90, 50, 190, 190, 190)
• Mesmer #1 shares 90 via utility … (90, 140, 280, 280, 280)
• Mesmer #2 shares 140 via utility … (230, 140, 420, 420, 420)

Yeah … that just got even better.

… just don’t let a Necromancer corrupt that Quickness … that’s a long amount of Slow :-p

Hate to rain your parade but…this won’t work.

So back when Lyssa runes gave all the boons for a couple seconds, I did a bit of a test. I got 5 mesmers together, got everyone to pop their elite, and then instantly pop SoI. This gave 5s to each person. In theory, one mesmer would end up with 5 → 10 → 20 → 40 → 80 seconds of boons, and this could be maintained indefinitely by using SoI off of cooldown.

In practice…this doesn’t work. There is a duration stacking cap for boons. Once you have a certain number of applications of that boon, it will stop stacking entirely until it is gone from you.

So, how will this interact with quickness? Well…that depends on exactly how they implement it of course, but it doesn’t look promising. That initial 10 seconds of quickness is made of 20 different 1 second pulses each overlapping by one second. This alone might make it completely resistant to stacking longer. If you do pop SoI after this, you’ll be doubling all of those stacks on everyone, and then doubling again for each additional SoI. Some point along the line of doubling it’s just going to not work.

What about dropping 5 timewarps? Would that stack 5s quickness per pulse?

Fay.2357:

Hate to rain your parade but…this won’t work.

So back when Lyssa runes gave all the boons for a couple seconds, I did a bit of a test. I got 5 mesmers together, got everyone to pop their elite, and then instantly pop SoI. This gave 5s to each person. In theory, one mesmer would end up with 5 -> 10 -> 20 -> 40 -> 80 seconds of boons, and this could be maintained indefinitely by using SoI off of cooldown.

In practice…this doesn’t work. There is a duration stacking cap for boons. Once you have a certain number of applications of that boon, it will stop stacking entirely until it is gone from you.

So, how will this interact with quickness? Well…that depends on exactly how they implement it of course, but it doesn’t look promising. That initial 10 seconds of quickness is made of 20 different 1 second pulses each overlapping by one second. This alone might make it completely resistant to stacking longer. If you do pop SoI after this, you’ll be doubling all of those stacks on everyone, and then doubling again for each additional SoI. Some point along the line of doubling it’s just going to not work.

Just curious:
Did your testing indicate that SoI generated boons that stack in duration as one stack with a long duration, or copy the source boon’s stack wholesale?

adelaide.6213:

Fay.2357:

Hate to rain your parade but…this won’t work.

So back when Lyssa runes gave all the boons for a couple seconds, I did a bit of a test. I got 5 mesmers together, got everyone to pop their elite, and then instantly pop SoI. This gave 5s to each person. In theory, one mesmer would end up with 5 -> 10 -> 20 -> 40 -> 80 seconds of boons, and this could be maintained indefinitely by using SoI off of cooldown.

In practice…this doesn’t work. There is a duration stacking cap for boons. Once you have a certain number of applications of that boon, it will stop stacking entirely until it is gone from you.

So, how will this interact with quickness? Well…that depends on exactly how they implement it of course, but it doesn’t look promising. That initial 10 seconds of quickness is made of 20 different 1 second pulses each overlapping by one second. This alone might make it completely resistant to stacking longer. If you do pop SoI after this, you’ll be doubling all of those stacks on everyone, and then doubling again for each additional SoI. Some point along the line of doubling it’s just going to not work.

Just curious:
Did your testing indicate that SoI generated boons that stack in duration as one stack with a long duration, or copy the source boon’s stack wholesale?

It indicated that it carried over the number of stacks that the original boon was made of. If it was the former, you could theoretically stack it up as high as you could, then pass it to another set of mesmers to stack it even higher. This did not work (tested it).

I guess we’ll still have to wait and see, eh?

They could rain on this parade in another way … SoI simply not sharing Quickness.

That being said, the other part of what I was saying still stands and is much less of a “wait and see”:
Classes are getting far more access to boons … Mesmers are top of the food-chain at removing boons.

Boons have a stack cap at 9, except retal which is 3 or 5, can’t remember. Likewise, condition duration stacks cap at 9, but that’s no longer an issue for damage. Immobilize caps at 3 or 5 similar to retal.

Assuming I’ve remembered this all correctly mind y’all. 9 stacks of duration is certainly the norm though