Guild Wars 2

Currently inspiration is far the least picked trait line, which has it’s reasons. You would expect to have a decent rework on it, but rather it currently still comes out as the lackluster specialization. Support roles in GW2 are often seen as garbage or at least less useful than any other spec (unless for guardian maybe). With the upcoming specialization you will be able to spec support and damage rather than only support as it is now, though the support side lacks quite a bit. This is mostly caused by too long cooldown’s and weak traits compared to other merged traits in other specializations.

To have a look at the full inspiration line, check out: http://i.imgur.com/LwCb3lm.jpg

Main Issue:
The issue currently and what I’m afraid of, is that they will just adjust the traits instead of looking at the roots of the problem. In my honest opinion this would be healing power scaling on mesmer. It’s absolutely horrible. You can give a mesmer as much healing power as you want, but it will never be of much use. So if the idea of support mesmer is still to have almost half of it’s support by healing allies, at least make it so the scaling goes well with the traits that give healing power, or make it so outgoing healing to allies is increased by a fixed percentage.
The most important scaling change would be the one for mantra healing, aka: Mender’s purity (New version).

Protected Phantasm
Most traits are based on support and phantasm. As for the phantasm part I have not much to add besides ‘’Protected Phantasm’‘. I don’t see why this trait would have an internal cooldown. It shouldn’t force a player to wait 10 seconds to recast his phantasm to actually hit in large aoe fights when he resetted his phantasm with the signet healing or when weapon swapping to another weapon set. Some phantasm just don’t need the distortion and just take away the distortion for the phantasm that actually needs it. This seems rather pointless to me and should be changed to have no internal cooldown.

Restorative Illusions:
Since Illusionary persona is baseline, tooltip should be reworked to a 4-illusion heal and the healing should be AoE. Again: Main problem -> healing power scaling must be increased. It just does too few for a master trait compared to other traits across all professions.

Compounding Cellerity:
Swiftness duration is far too short on shattering to make it master trait. A fair 3 seconds would make it far more in-line with other traits.

Illusionary Inspiration:
Argueably a problem on the cooldown of Signet of Inspiration. Mostly also a problem that has been going on since release since the cooldown of most signets is far too long. I’d suggest to just tone down the cooldown to 30 seconds, making both the signet and this trait far more viable.

Shattered Concentration:
Seems too weak for a grandmaster trait to me, especially when looking at the competition it got with other grandmaster traits. Should merge with Vigorous Revelation and add another trait for glamour or phantasm skills.

True, but wait and see when i try Harmonious mantras with mender’s purity. The true power of the inspiration line will show! But yeah inp grandmasters are the worst. MAYBE boonshare is decent, the other 2 traits are worthless.

BlackDevil.9268:

Protected Phantasm
…

Agreed. The cooldown is counterintuitive.

BlackDevil.9268:

Restorative Illusions:
…

Agreed, it should be an area effect.

BlackDevil.9268:

Compounding Cellerity:
…

No comment since those traits make me cringe.

BlackDevil.9268:

Illusionary Inspiration:
Argueably a problem on the cooldown of Signet of Inspiration. Mostly also a problem that has been going on since release since the cooldown of most signets is far too long. I’d suggest to just tone down the cooldown to 30 seconds, making both the signet and this trait far more viable.

A shorter cooldown probably wouldn’t hurt.

BlackDevil.9268:

Shattered Concentration:
Seems too weak for a grandmaster trait to me, especially when looking at the competition it got with other grandmaster traits. Should merge with Vigorous Revelation and add another trait for glamour or phantasm skills.

Disagree on this one. Vigorous Revelation is too strong to be merged. Also, Shattered Concentration actually is quite strong. It’s a potential whole groupe 4 condition cleanse every 10-15s depending on how fast you can pop out Illusions.

Don’t forget that shatter recharge has been reduced from 30% to 15% when having Illusions specced so both condi removal aswell as vigor on shatter is both a bit less frequent than what it is now.

Honestly, it’s a trait line I’d take just for Mender’s Purity.

Like before.

Now I get some okay-but-not-great other stuff on top. /shrug

I might warm up to Shattered Conditions, though.

Protected phants: Agree, it should have no cd. What about making all illusions have a 1 sec distortion on summon?

Resotrative illusions: Either make it aoe or merge it with shattered condis.

Compounding Celerity: Agree

Illusionary Inspiration: I asked a dev about this trait and they said they were not done with it. I would give them a little more time but yea, the cd is too long.

Shattered condis: I actually kind of disagree with you on this one. With IP being base, we can potentially remove 16 condis aoe in a 600 radius, which is plenty of condi removal lol. It is fine as it is.

I normally play phantasm build and I’m upset by the lack of buff in HoT. It’s a pretty bad tree when I think about it. I just realized Protected Phantasm is on a 10 sec cooldown. There’s nothing interesting for phantasm anymore if it stays like that.

I guess they took Triumphant Distortion and didn’t bother to change the cooldown/tooltip or didn’t understand (hope not) that the cooldown was applied to the distortion you received when you killed something.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Illusionary Inspiration: I asked a dev about this trait and they said they were not done with it. I would give them a little more time but yea, the cd is too long.

Same thing happens here, bad tooltip description. The cooldown is about Signet of Inspiration. I guess there’s no cooldown on the signet active boon sharing, which is not that bad I guess.

Also, there is no trait I want beside Mender’s Purity.

I guess you could theorycraft and make a Domination/Chaos/Inspiration support phantasm (and loosing Phantasmal Fury or you can always go Dom/Duel/Insp for full power phantasm), but as many posters said already, support/healing power in mesmer is bad. I can see a Chaos/Inspiration mix with Illusionnary Inspiration/Chaotic Persistence/PU.

I don’t know why Phantasmal Fury is still in Dueling when there’s nothing else for phantasm (except the bleeding and confusion on crit).

BlackDevil.9268:

Don’t forget that shatter recharge has been reduced from 30% to 15% when having Illusions specced so both condi removal aswell as vigor on shatter is both a bit less frequent than what it is now.

A free 15% reduction is still great. You also have to keep in mind that you can use all your shatters for benefiting from the trait. It’s definitely better than not using it at all because you lack the trait points to get it.

Quadox.7834:

MAYBE boonshare is decent, the other 2 traits are worthless.

Boonshare on Phantasm summon is “maybe” decent? O.o

I dunno, Insp honestly seems like a good line for Dungeons and Fractals now. I mean, going into Insp for Warden reflects was something Mesmers already did for that sometimes, so getting boonshare on top of that certainly doesn’t make the line worse.

Xaylin.1860:

A free 15% reduction is still great. You also have to keep in mind that you can use all your shatters for benefiting from the trait. It’s definitely better than not using it at all because you lack the trait points to get it.

Wouldn’t call it free if you have to invest 33% of your spec points in it.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Protected phants: Agree, it should have no cd. What about making all illusions have a 1 sec distortion on summon?

Resotrative illusions: Either make it aoe or merge it with shattered condis.

Compounding Celerity: Agree

Illusionary Inspiration: I asked a dev about this trait and they said they were not done with it. I would give them a little more time but yea, the cd is too long.

Shattered condis: I actually kind of disagree with you on this one. With IP being base, we can potentially remove 16 condis aoe in a 600 radius, which is plenty of condi removal lol. It is fine as it is.

All illusions would be really amazing to not rely on random clone dying on sword #3. Would also work very well now all clone death traits are gone and opens a bit more space to not be stuck with DE cause of clones dying so fast.

Well.. the clones will need to hit the target and I would never use my diversion or distortion to remove conditions unless it’s actually the conditions that’s killing me while escaping.
Though maybe with IP baseline it will work better than it does now. At least currently it just feels a bit clunky if you want to remove conditions with a delay.

BlackDevil.9268:

Xaylin.1860:

A free 15% reduction is still great. You also have to keep in mind that you can use all your shatters for benefiting from the trait. It’s definitely better than not using it at all because you lack the trait points to get it.

Wouldn’t call it free if you have to invest 33% of your spec points in it.

You get half of the shatter recharge for free. Free free. No trait points involved free.

Currently almost no mesmer specs x/x/x/6/6 due to shatter (heal or condi cleanse) being so tightly associated with DE. So I’ll say 15% recharge is free

I can see 6/6/0/6/0 being a more balanced set up, having sufficient condi cleanse with decoy/blink/mantra of distraction. Currently lockdown mes has to sacrifice condi cleanse for extra dazes (later being stuns!) or become clumsy by swapping ether feast/decoy/blink or for mantras. With shattered conditions you probably don’t even need mantra of healing.

And with DE being in Dueling GM main difference between mantra of healing and ether feast is just 2 extra condi cleanse and 2k heal, whether its worth the 2.75s easy-interrupt recharge and 1s CD between heals (somewhat lack burst heal) is debatable.

BlackDevil.9268:

Protected Phantasm
Most traits are based on support and phantasm. As for the phantasm part I have not much to add besides ‘’Protected Phantasm’‘. I don’t see why this trait would have an internal cooldown. It shouldn’t force a player to wait 10 seconds to recast his phantasm to actually hit in large aoe fights when he resetted his phantasm with the signet healing or when weapon swapping to another weapon set. Some phantasm just don’t need the distortion and just take away the distortion for the phantasm that actually needs it. This seems rather pointless to me and should be changed to have no internal cooldown.

I’d be willing to bet this is a tool tip typo. Currently the ICD only applies to the invuln application to the mesmer on kill; there isn’t an ICD to summing the phantasms and them getting distortion.

Frost

BlackDevil.9268:

Wouldn’t call it free if you have to invest 33% of your spec points in it.

For all of the trait lines that used to reduce cooldowns or something for a profession mechanic, they’ve made half of that baseline and put the other half in a minor trait for that line.

BlackDevil.9268:

Restorative Illusions:

Ya it’ll likely still be a junk trait. The double heal bug has been fixed and you now get two separate packets of healing: a full 1 illusion shatter heal (no diminishing returns/downscaling) for IP and one packet for the illusion (w/ diminishing returns/scaling depending on number of illusions shattered). I don’t think an AoE heal is the right way to go. When it comes to AoE healing you need to ask who else has access to aoe heals and what happens if a team were to start stacking healing in team fights. Also keep in mind a second reason, on top of the poor healing scaling, this trait is complete garbage is that you cannot take it DE and IP in the current trait system. In the new one you will be able to collect all three of those and perhaps Anet is a bit nervous on how much healing you can generate if you can crank out the shatter fodder with DE, perma vigor (Vigorous Revelation in the same line, Critical Infusion in the Dueling line with DE), and energy sigils – it could be trolly/dumb and even more so if it was an AoE heal.

BlackDevil.9268:

Compounding Cellerity:

The trait gives you +10% movement speed per illusion up which could/should help phantasm mesmers to kite. The swiftness bonus is miniscule on shatter sure, but if you could stack up swiftness from the trait (consider 3s of swift per shatter vs your shatter cooldowns and w/ DE) it would make the +10% movement speed per illusion up redundant. This is still a junk trait though imo, but that’s because phantasms (i.e. a pure phantasm build) aren’t very effective in pvp and overall its kind of a passive and uninteresting trait.

BlackDevil.9268:

Illusionary Inspiration:

Signets on mesmer are awful for pvp. Personally I think our signets need an overhaul now that the game has matured more since launch. That said, this trait may end up be stronger than we realize by combining this with the PU trait or Bountiful Disillusionment (boon + 1 stack of stab) or even our staff skills like chaos armor and chaos storm (new Chaotic Transference gives protection on chaos armor castand reduces staff skill cds). Also keep in mind that they also said traits that lower cds in general are going to be base to classes so imagine all of your phantasms traited for minimum cooldown and then on top of that the new Illusions line Persistence of Memory that further reduces phant recharge rate by 2% per shatter. One issue right now, IMO, is that the boon spam far far outpaces the boon removal. You put a phantasm/boonbot mesmer on point with a bunker guard or d/d ele and the sustain may end up in the realm of extreme. Fun or skillful to play as a phantasm boonbot? probably not, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

BlackDevil.9268:

Shattered Concentration:

You mean Shattered conditions I think? Ya, not an interesting trait but again could be combined with the above setup for moar bunker support.

I guess we’ll have to see how it goes.

Frost

Shattered concentration is instantly a grand master trait worthy of taking with IP being baseline now. I think the biggest drawback is that shatters need to hit before clearing conditions right? But besides that, I think it’s pretty decent now. It would be more impressive if they combined it with Restorative Illusions like I suggested. Sometimes they read our forums, and other times they don’t…

On the plus side, Mistrust is a DIRECT nod to them reading out suggestions as I distinctly remember discussion of a confusion on interrupt trait being needed.

Back on topic, the tree is still somewhat underwhelming, but definitely better than before. There’s still some work that could be done to make Mesmer more supportive in an effective way. I’ll go over some suggestions for improvements in my next post.

MINOR
Protected Phantasms : increase distortion to 1.5s and get rid of the ridiculous ICD.
Phantasmal Healing : make the healing increase AOE for allies.

ADEPT
Vigorous Revelation: Needs to be merged into Bountiful Disillusionment to make it more competitive with its interrupt/stealth counterparts. In it’s place, create a clone death trait. Either one that gives AOE vigor/swiftness or one that fills X% of clone health. Refer to Sticker, mine and others’ posts here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Clone-Death-Overhaul/first#post5010404

MASTER
Compounding Celerity: Scrap. Replace with Illusionary Inspiration and make its CD 30s instead of 45.
Restorative Illusions: Merge with SC. In place of it would be Glamorous Recovery which would pulse conditions into boons each second an ally is inside of a glamour.

GRANDMASTER
Illusive Illusions: Phantasms are given Aegies/Resistance every x amount of seconds. Balance the recharge as needed. This would be absolutely huge for phantasm builds.
Temporal Enchantment: Add pulsing healing.

These changes would definitely make Inspiration the trait line for phantasm builds as it would immensely boost their sustain. In fact, it would be a GREAT supportive tree line for shatter builds as your clones would survive longer and have a higher chance of not being AOEed to death.

And besides buffing phantasms, you could go the route of really supporting your team using heals, condition clears or boon gifting. Significant buff to glamours as support. Come on Anet, take my ideas. You don’t have to pay me. Consider it a freebie on me!

Agreed MailMail, it’s pretty clear they read/lurked a lot of this forum the past 6 or so months and have taken up a lot of suggestions we’ve made.

Which is kind of an interesting aspect to consider. In lurking and reading, rather then posting, they do on the one hand appear distant/removed/ivory-tower like towards customers, but also save themselves the endless threads, bashing, kitten-kissing, etc. that happens whenever they do post something…anything.

I think it’s quite encouraging to see that they definitely do read these forums, or at least somehow have a means of getting some/many of the best ideas players presented here in the past few months.

I don’t think anyone can claim to understand where we will stand after this huge update, but I for one am greatly excited and feel that overall it is probably going to be a huge improvement to lack-luster traits, build diversity, etc.

There still is the Problems, that good Phantasm traits are spreaded over 4 tiers and not 3.
This problem needs to be solved to.

Some good suggestions can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/PVE-Mesmer-Domination-Line-suggestions/first#post5010555

I would like to see Temporal Enchanter giving stability instead of super speed! So mesmer would be an option beside guardians for group stability.

Actually we have a huge option for group Stability:

- Bountiful Disillusionment
- Illusionary Inspiration

In fact, this combo will likely prove to be a bit much group Stability. ;-) Depends on how many stacks I guess, and what the actual CD (if any) on Ill. Insp. will be.

Sure! But another one withound needing to go in Chaos wouldn’t hurt?

Windwalker.7421:

Actually we have a huge option for group Stability:

- Bountiful Disillusionment
- Illusionary Inspiration

In fact, this combo will likely prove to be a bit much group Stability. ;-) Depends on how many stacks I guess, and what the actual CD (if any) on Ill. Insp. will be.

- Bountiful Disillusionment will only grant stability to the user, it isn’t AoE.
- Illusionary Inspiration only copies, it doesn’t grant. That means you will pass very short stability.

Also to do it you’ll have to waste 2 GM traits when those 2 lines have other GM traits much more valuable.

MailMail.6534:

GRANDMASTER

Temporal Enchantment: Add pulsing healing.

It can be abused by using Portal Entre but not activating Portal Exeunt, if there is no limit on number of pulses.

Fanolian.8415:

MailMail.6534:

GRANDMASTER

Temporal Enchantment: Add pulsing healing.

It can be abused by using Portal Entre but not activating Portal Exeunt, if there is no limit on number of pulses.

Nope. Glamour traits won’t activate unless you place the exit.

MailMail.6534:

Restorative Illusions: Merge with SC. In place of it would be Glamorous Recovery which would pulse conditions into boons each second an ally is inside of a glamour.

Big no no to Glamorous Recovery.

• Makes Nullfield irrelevant because Feedback will be better in most situations.
• Takes a big dump on Wells.

Xaylin.1860:

MailMail.6534:

Restorative Illusions: Merge with SC. In place of it would be Glamorous Recovery which would pulse conditions into boons each second an ally is inside of a glamour.

Big no no to Glamorous Recovery.

• Makes Nullfield irrelevant because Feedback will be better in most situations.
• Takes a big dump on Wells.

Feedback is a lot less reliable as it is not ground targeted, making it more difficult to use effectively. Also, you’re forgetting that Null Field is a valuable boon rip.

Ansau.7326:

- Bountiful Disillusionment will only grant stability to the user, it isn’t AoE.
- Illusionary Inspiration only copies, it doesn’t grant. That means you will pass very short stability.

Also to do it you’ll have to waste 2 GM traits when those 2 lines have other GM traits much more valuable.

You’re not wasting anything. That’s just being obtuse. You’re shattering because that’s what you do in a shatter build with at least 1 shatter oriented GM trait, and as you shatter you will end up stacking quite significant amounts of Stability, especially with some boon duration bonuses factored in.

Let’s say you start out with just a quick 3-Clone F1 plus a fast follow-up F2 Combo Shatter, you end up having easily 8+ seconds of Stab that you can share via Ill. Insp. by summoning your iBezerker. That will not only put out some damage, but also throw out 8-12s of AoE Stab, plus 3 Stacks of Might, plus AoE Retaliation. Not to mention that in such a build you’d probably also opt for Vig. Revelation and thus add Vigor to the mix, and could also use traited Staff to add some Protection in there as well!

So you shatter and summon Phantasms, which is basically what any Shatter build does anyway, only in this “support shatter” you trade spike-damage for boon spreading.

I don’t know how you figure that this is “a waste” in any conceivable scenario.

In fact, that is the very purpose of both of those GMs, so I kinda fail to see any point in your statement. BD is for generating Boons on yourself, and Ill. Insp. is for sharing those Boons that are on you.

There is nothing short about 8-12s of Stability every 25s, excluding F3 & F4 Shatters. Now we don’t know if Ill. Insp. has a CD, and if it does how high that is. Even then, you could still take the now boosted (perma-speed) SoI as well, and have 2 copies every 45 sseconds. (That is the worse case scenario, basically, but I doubt there really is a 45 sec CD on a GM trait.)

I’m just disappointed that the title isn’t “Inspiration – a lack of” or something like that.

MailMail.6534:

Feedback is a lot less reliable as it is not ground targeted, making it more difficult to use effectively. Also, you’re forgetting that Null Field is a valuable boon rip.

I wouldn’t say less reliable. It just works differently.

Regarding Null Field, you are still handing out 50% of its mechanic to other Glamours.

Windwalker, I was talking about the lost of more valuable and useful traits.
To be able to give 1 stack of stability in AoE you lose the ability to cleanse up to 8 condition in AoE and all the boons you will gain with PU or CI; plus the buff to stealth duration or immobilize and other condi when interruping.

Giving up so many things for doing less useful than the Mantra of Concentration is not worth (the rest of the boons won’t have such an impact, there’s a reason why Signet of Inspiration is not taken anywhere).

Xaylin.1860:

MailMail.6534:

Feedback is a lot less reliable as it is not ground targeted, making it more difficult to use effectively. Also, you’re forgetting that Null Field is a valuable boon rip.

I wouldn’t say less reliable. It just works differently.

Regarding Null Field, you are still handing out 50% of its mechanic to other Glamours.

NullField would still have a place over other glamours in certain builds. I don’t know why this is a horrible thing outside of it being based on just principal. There’s many times where I would take Null Field over Feedback. Obviously, the same goes for Veil.

apharma.3741:

I’m just disappointed that the title isn’t “Inspiration – a lack of” or something like that.

+1 Change title or gtfo

MailMail.6534:

MINOR
Protected Phantasms : increase distortion to 1.5s and get rid of the ridiculous ICD.
Phantasmal Healing : make the healing increase AOE for allies.

GRANDMASTER
Illusive Illusions: Phantasms are given Aegies/Resistance every x amount of seconds. Balance the recharge as needed. This would be absolutely huge for phantasm builds.

ALSO, someone in another thread just gave an awesome suggestion of a phantasm trait that would cause your shatters to not shatter phantasms. This would fit perfectly with the “Illusive” part of the GM trait I suggested. It obviously makes your shatters weaker, but that’s a fair price for depending on AI for dmg.

I think that alone would give phantasms a better place in all game formats but wouldn’t make them OP in PvP/WvW.

Ansau.7326:

Windwalker, I was talking about the lost of more valuable and useful traits.
…

The main reason people don’t use SoI is because it’s passive is lackluster, and that is being fixed it seems. Secondly, the 45 sec CD on the active is just too long between boon shares, and thus kinda kills the concept of a boon share Mesmer build.

This new GM trait would, in the worst case, allow a doubling of that although I would agree that a 45 sec CD would be pretty ridiculous. I’m betting that it will not have a CD, or if at all it’ll be a much shorter one.

As for BD, maybe you’re forgetting that it applies it’s boons (aside from Stab) as an AoE too, so you can actually grant 6 stacks of Might (15s base), or ~10s of Fury, on top of a stack or two of Stab. All that comes passively during normal play. You drop a shatter combo, maybe pop Staff #4 first, and then summon your Phantasm and boom you just handed out 6 stacks of Might, a good amount of Fury, a bit of Stab, oh and ~5s of Protection. TYVM!

While the other GMs are certainly powerful, they do require a different play style. No doubt an interrupt/boon-share build sounds very possible as well, but you’ll have to get those interrupts first and anything aside from Might will be random. Of course adding the very nicely buffed Furious Interruption trait on top, could make a powerful interrupt/boon sharing build.

Getting boons off PU to share is a little less likely due to their short durations and the way in which you have to get them, which is relatively unfriendly to group play.

I agree though that the boons for F1 and F4 shatters could be improved. I think the F4 one should maybe give a 4 – 5s Resistance, as nothing so far gives us this new boon in our traditional lines and I’m seeing others getting it in theirs. Considering the CD on Distortion, this would not be OPd. (Any way you slice it, Regen is a terrible boon to place on a shatter with that long of a CD. It needs to be a powerful boon!)

MW has a much shorter CD, so maybe Retal is “OK” but they just stated themselves that it doesn’t really fit Mesmers, but then they leave it on a shatter trait for a power based shatter? Doesn’t make much sense and certainly doesn’t add a whole lot of value.

I think the chronomancer line will work wonderfully with Inspiration and Chaos!! Support Shatter Mesmers will be a real thing. Boons on boons and ton of alacrity & condition clears!

I’ll definitely be trying it out as one of my first builds!

MailMail.6534:

I think the chronomancer line will work wonderfully with Inspiration and Chaos!! Support Shatter Mesmers will be a real thing. Boons on boons and ton of alacrity & condition clears!

I’ll definitely be trying it out as one of my first builds!

Yep. As usual people have their eyes on the shiny big damage numbers that some of the traits will provide them with, and overlook what might turn out to be a lot more overpowering in the end.

Handing your team the games most powerful boons like it’s candy-corn on Halloween, might just start to get peoples attention after they face it a couple of times.

I agree that inspiration could use some work. Part of the problem for me is the missed opportunities regarding the minor traits. Three phantasm buffing ones, two of which only benefit the phantasm itself and not in any exciting way.

I really like the flavor of the third minor trait- phantasms granting regen. I’d love to see that bumped up to the first or second tier and stronger boons or condition removal being associated with phantasms/clones for the GM minor.

Yeah the Regen Phantasm minor with the +100 healing really needs to be made +200 per illusion. Having 300 Healing or not is moot on a Mesmer, it won’t even be noticed.

MailMail.6534:

I think the chronomancer line will work wonderfully with Inspiration and Chaos!! Support Shatter Mesmers will be a real thing. Boons on boons and ton of alacrity & condition clears!

I’ll definitely be trying it out as one of my first builds!

But is that because chronomancer sounds so incredible strong (and chaos of course) or because you actually think inspiration has a good synergy along with it making it as powerful as other specializations? Because going full support isn’t exactly what’s needed lately due the easy access to healings and boons while still dealing average/good damage (aka celestial).

The only really good synergy I see is the amount of quickness you get from the shield, making it more likely to get your mantra’s off increasing your aoe healing by a lot. The only problem I’m seeing here now is still the problem I have stated in the OP: healing power scaling.
I also hope they don’t screw up the well with bad scaling, because that would mean a support/heal mesmer is never gonna be worth running, but rather a mix of dps and support.

@BlackDevil
I definitely dig the quickness in combination with Mantras and Scepter #3. You’re right to point it out. Even a small burst of quickness can have a huge impact on the usability of those skills.

When it comes to support, GW2 excels at giving that term a broad range. There’s direct healing, passive healing, combos, deflection, and boons: they all come under the banner of ‘support’.

As mesmers, we have a few ways to ‘support’. Inspiration is the natural choice, but the focus on healing with such low coefficients is, as you suggested, not worth dedicating a build around. We’re just not a class like the ele with reliable base-skills which heal, nor do we have a bunch of blast finishers. It’s such a weird stat to give us.

I’m much happier with the Signet of Inspiration on phantasm trait- that seems to fit our style a bit more.

I’d really love to see them re-work a few traits in our inspiration line. If they want us to use healing power- give us more skills that heal our allies. If not, then drop that and give us more boon sharing on interrupt or deflection or something.

BlackDevil.9268:

MailMail.6534:

I think the chronomancer line will work wonderfully with Inspiration and Chaos!! Support Shatter Mesmers will be a real thing. Boons on boons and ton of alacrity & condition clears!

I’ll definitely be trying it out as one of my first builds!

But is that because chronomancer sounds so incredible strong (and chaos of course) or because you actually think inspiration has a good synergy along with it making it as powerful as other specializations? Because going full support isn’t exactly what’s needed lately due the easy access to healings and boons while still dealing average/good damage (aka celestial).

The only really good synergy I see is the amount of quickness you get from the shield, making it more likely to get your mantra’s off increasing your aoe healing by a lot. The only problem I’m seeing here now is still the problem I have stated in the OP: healing power scaling.
I also hope they don’t screw up the well with bad scaling, because that would mean a support/heal mesmer is never gonna be worth running, but rather a mix of dps and support.

Maybe I’ve put more thought into it than you have, as my focus isn’t on healing. You’ve already stated the obvious weaknesses Mesmers have with healing. My idea was slotting Mesmers in the role of having high sustain while being able to support teammates, similar to the celestial varieties. One with ample condition clears and boon sharing. Here are some of the combinations I’ve thought of based on those 3 trait lines:

• Bountiful Disillusionment + Shattered Conditions + Restorative Illusions = fantastic self-sustain along with team support via boons/condition clear.
• Shatter traits + Chronophantasm = higher up-time of pCaptainAmerica giving allies alacrity and enemies slow while you’re simultaneously supporting yourself and team with shatters. Note, you don’t get quickness: you get alacrity from pCaptain.
• Continuum Shift + X = obviously you can get crazy here with glamours/wells/shatters etc depending on your set up.
• Tides of Time/Gravity Well(plus other slow-causing capabilities from Chrono) + Chaotic Interruption + Illusionary Inspiration = giving away boons like Oprah gives away cars. Aoe healing from MoD charge is just icing on an already sweetened cake.
• Master of Manipulation (Mirror) + Mender’s Purity = might just make Mirror a highly competitive heal in the pvp scene considering it’s extremely low CD, the plethora of on-heal runes you can use with it and the ability to have 4 seconds of reflect every 12 seconds… Also remember Mender’s is AOE now, which means more condition clear for teammates.

These are just a few synergies that I’ve thought of. Just because there’s classes that do similar things doesn’t make it meaningless for Mesmer to do it too. It just means that more classes can fit more roles depending on their preferred play style.

MailMail.6534:

• Master of Manipulation (Mirror) + Mender’s Purity = might just make Mirror a highly competitive heal in the pvp scene considering it’s extremely low CD, the plethora of on-heal runes you can use with it and the ability to have 4 seconds of reflect every 12 seconds… Also remember Mender’s is AOE now, which means more condition clear for teammates.

Intriguing idea. But since Reflection does not stack with itself, I don’t think this combo actually does anything special. Unless the trait is coded to proc at the end of the Manipulation skill or something rather than on-cast.

The Chrono trait to summon a Clone whenever you shatter will also go beautifully with RI. If you shatter 1 clone with RI, you get 2 heals; one from IP for 900ish, and another one from the Clone (but counting you as well) for 1100ish. With that trait, provided you have one clone up to start with, you can cast your 4 shatters in quick succession and heal yourself for 2000*4…do it before a Continuum Split, and you double that.

Sustain out the yin-yang!

tobascodagama.2961:

MailMail.6534:

• Master of Manipulation (Mirror) + Mender’s Purity = might just make Mirror a highly competitive heal in the pvp scene considering it’s extremely low CD, the plethora of on-heal runes you can use with it and the ability to have 4 seconds of reflect every 12 seconds… Also remember Mender’s is AOE now, which means more condition clear for teammates.

Intriguing idea. But since Reflection does not stack with itself, I don’t think this combo actually does anything special.

#NoobRemarks It’s less powerful than I thought then. I still think it will be better than it was before with a 12 second CD.

MailMail.6534:

#NoobRemarks It’s less powerful than I thought then. I still think it will be better than it was before with a 12 second CD.

Not to mention Alacrity. We’ll see how the Mirror thing works out, until we see it we can’t really know how it’ll work. Maybe the traits Mirror activates after the Manip has been used, which would add maybe another 1s or so to the Reflect. We’ll see soon enough I guess.

Either way, I think Mirror will be used more then before, as you said -if nothing else- because with the Reflect and MP, the lower CD becomes a bigger advantage which each second you shave off it’s CD.

Windwalker.7421:

Not to mention Alacrity. We’ll see how the Mirror thing works out, until we see it we can’t really know how it’ll work. Maybe the traits Mirror activates after the Manip has been used, which would add maybe another 1s or so to the Reflect. We’ll see soon enough I guess.

Yeah, it’s entirely possible that ANet will special-case the interaction between Mirror and Master of Manipulation. I kind of hope they do, actually!

Windwalker.7421:

MailMail.6534:

#NoobRemarks It’s less powerful than I thought then. I still think it will be better than it was before with a 12 second CD.

Not to mention Alacrity. We’ll see how the Mirror thing works out, until we see it we can’t really know how it’ll work. Maybe the traits Mirror activates after the Manip has been used, which would add maybe another 1s or so to the Reflect. We’ll see soon enough I guess.

Either way, I think Mirror will be used more then before, as you said -if nothing else- because with the Reflect and MP, the lower CD becomes a bigger advantage which each second you shave off it’s CD.

I thought they mentioned this on the PoI thing… If I remember correctly, Mirror’s reflection happens during the channel and Master of Manipulation happens after the channel completes, giving you a nice 2.5 or so seconds of reflection.

Kelthien.8593:

Windwalker.7421:

MailMail.6534:

#NoobRemarks It’s less powerful than I thought then. I still think it will be better than it was before with a 12 second CD.

Not to mention Alacrity. We’ll see how the Mirror thing works out, until we see it we can’t really know how it’ll work. Maybe the traits Mirror activates after the Manip has been used, which would add maybe another 1s or so to the Reflect. We’ll see soon enough I guess.

Either way, I think Mirror will be used more then before, as you said -if nothing else- because with the Reflect and MP, the lower CD becomes a bigger advantage which each second you shave off it’s CD.

I thought they mentioned this on the PoI thing… If I remember correctly, Mirror’s reflection happens during the channel and Master of Manipulation happens after the channel completes, giving you a nice 2.5 or so seconds of reflection.

It works out to be 4 seconds since the trait just tacks on another identical Mirror skill following the heal.

well if I was initially right about Mirror with Manipulation reflecting 4s, I’ll definitely be running that heal every time I trait into Chaos. It’s a no brainer.

All this talk about mirror is making me drool.

Mirror + Evasive mirror + master of manipulation (+blink & MI) + traited focus…

I will forgive Anet for removing the old mimic bubble shield if all of the above is possible with no hidden catches/ICD on any traits…

Meh I’m not that hyped up for Illusionary inspiration since it will most likely be 45 sec icd and it activates pretty unexpected that way besides for the first time. This would mean you need to build up a good amount of boons before being able to cast a phantasm, unless you will have to wait 45 seconds to benifit from it. That means you will need to wait for your i-shield till you have good amount of boons. I also think that the phantasm will die 50% of the time with re-spawning on shatter due.. well.. aoe in a team fight.

Kinda the reasons I heavily dislike how they treated inspiration… again. A supportive class needs to be very good at it, at literally every part of it, to be as good as kinda any other class. This is because getting support is already so easy to gain as in boon stacking. So if boon stacking is already quite easy, healing is a big part of the support role. And once healing is being left out because of scaling you just remain with a decent support role, which is not effective enough.

I think inspiration has some pretty nice traits, though I hope protected phantasms cooldown is just a leftover from triumphant distortion (Hey it fits). The main one which really seems underwhelming is compounding celerity – in combat speed just isn’t that enticing especially when illusions tend to die all the time.

My planned pvp build is centred around heavy damage mantra use and the inspiration line for excellent sustain. Mender’s purity, shattered conditions and restorative illusions can keep you (and your allies) alive for an extremely long time with mantras of recovery & pain. MoD, greatsword, power block, duelist’s discipline and quickness on interrupt will hurt a great deal too.