Guild Wars 2

This topic is to address the Nov 15th patch and this specific change:
Illusionary Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, Phantasmal Mage, Phantasmal Defender, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Rogue, Phantasmal Warlock, Illusionary Mariner, Illusionary Whaler, Phantasmal Berserker, and Phantasmal Warden: These skills must now be cast in line-of-sight of the target. These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target.

The two most significant weaknesses about the Mesmer are #1. Offensive AoE skills #2. Maneuverability. Before this patch was implemented, we already have a difficult time managing our few offensive AoE skills in dynamic events with other players. We had to be extremely precise and timed the rotation of our AoE skills such as using Greatsword’s Phantasmal Berserker, Staff’s Chaos storm, and F1+F2 shatters all together just to be two-thirds of the competitiveness of most other professions like Elementalist, Ranger, and Necromancers.

In some dynamic events, the monsters are spawned with Invulnerability. Many of our skills revolves around summoning Phantasms, and that requires an enemy target to do so. Any Phantasm summoning skills will now fail to cast on target due to Invulnerability. This change brings out a serious problem when we are forced to be playing with many other players of different professions in dynamic events.

We’re in an open world MMO, so dynamic events are shared with anyone in the world. No one can control how the other players want to play the game. Comparatively speaking, I cannot control other Elementalists, rangers, or necromancers not to spam stacks of ground targeting AoE at monsters spawn locations in each different phase/waves before they’re even spawned and rendered.

Before the patch, I was able to precisely time Phantasmal Berserker activation time (3/4s) just before the vulnerability status on the target is about to wear off so half of its attacks will at least landed on the target and other targets around it to make it possibly count for some tags. It had to be done this way to counter those different stacks of preemptive ground targeted spams, or else it will almost always be too late to make a tag due to split second to a second of skill activation time and attack delay by Phantasms.

The patch has forced us to change the way we summon our Phantasms in this specific case with spawn invulnerability. However, other players will not change their way to abuse the usage of preemptive ground targeting skills whereas our only ground targeting AoE Chaos storm is going to have a very difficult time to keep up with the pace of others on base cool down of 35s (28s traited). Even then, Chaos storm itself deals minimal direct damage and mostly relies on its conditional damage over time, 5 secs. Chaos storm is not meant to be used as an offensive measure for making “tags” count in dynamic events, but it is our only measure for ground targeting AoE.

Finally, most of the balanced changes to Mesmer in the past have more of a focus towards PvP aspects in general. While those changes in the past may have its balance addressed, it’s a fact that those changes have brought a negative impact to PvE in general. PvP and PvE balance changes cannot be addressed using the same manner and principles. The dynamics in PvP and PvE are vastly different. If players have raised a concern, we need to determine where the source of problem came from and make the appropriate decision based on PvP or PvE aspects of the game.

Argh i never thought about this.

With iZerker nerfed into the floor, and no way to place clones on immune mobs, we’re basiclly screwed in 90% of orrian DE’s

this mesmer nerf should be only for pvp…it’s ruining te mesmer in pve.

Even for PvP it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t block a Well or a Trap Placement, either.

Carighan.6758:

Even for PvP it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t block a Well or a Trap Placement, either.

Well, it does make sense, remember that wells and traps are aoe, while phantasm summoning is targeted.

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

Winds.3087:

Carighan.6758:

Even for PvP it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t block a Well or a Trap Placement, either.

Well, it does make sense, remember that wells and traps are aoe, while phantasm summoning is targeted.

Yes, the summon is targetted.
That’s the problem, because plenty of them are AE or defensive or utility.

In other words what we need now is Phantasms being actual summons, not targetted, so these mechanics-nerfs stop nerfing abilities which have nothing to do with what is being nerfed.

Or in short: Our 50% damage reduction defensive ability can be blocked.
I would love to see that happen to other professions, wonder how long they’d take it. :P

Ruufio.1496:

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

Depends, if you place a well under someone blocking, does the entire well not appear?

It’s incredibly irritating, nor is it a ‘L2P’ issue. Firstly, the fact that people are actually using terms such as ‘L2P’ leaves a sour taste in my mouth as it just reeks of the same attitude that makes other MMO’s so intolerable. Secondly, no other class is locked down so heavily in PvE or PvP. One of our core mechanics failing makes both major aspects of the game a much greater chore than it needs to be.

I’ve half a mind to just re-roll a warrior, though I find them incredibly boring. A mesmer is my favoured niche, yet I constantly feel punished due to odd changes and countless bugs emerging on a patch to patch basis. Dynamic events aren’t much better – I can’t even get a phantasm off before a zerg of players obliterates a group of enemies.

Carighan.6758:

Ruufio.1496:

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

Depends, if you place a well under someone blocking, does the entire well not appear?

It’d only block the first tick of the well.

Ruufio.1496:

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

1. No, it’s not a L2P issue, but you may have L2R issue. Please reread my entire post to understand the problems we’re dealing here.

2. “Try waiting until they’re not invincible…” Please reread paragraph 3 and 4 to know that is almost always not going to be the case.

3. Carighan has made a good answer in response to your reply. Many ground targeting AoE skills across all professions can still be placed under the target and activating ground targeting AoE skills will NOT fail in case of targeting or placing the ring on an invulnerable target. Block, blind, dodge does not make the usage of ground targeting AoE skills to fail. The topic we’re addressing here is the fact that #1. Mesmer lacks decent ground targeting AoE that deals comparable direct damage with other professions #2. We have only a few choices in dealing AoE damage to a group of enemies – Phantasmal Berserker, Phantasmal Warden, and Chaos Storm.

First, I’d like to address Phantasmal Warden. It’s just not viable in dynamic events with other players you cannot control. It’s stationary and groups of enemies are not going to remain still for Warden to take its full effect. This boils down to just Berserker and Chaos storm. I’ve explained about Chaos storm in my original post. Phantasmal Berserker is practically the only other option for a Mesmer to be more effective in dealing AoE damage with other players in DE. However, Berseker is a summoned Phantasm thus the skill is completely penalized by invulnerability, blind, and dodge. The state before the patch was any summoned Phantasms attack or attacks will fail to deal any damage for the duration of invulnerability. It should not penalize Mesmer to have the ability to summon the phantasm on invulnerability target. I summoned the phantasm, and the enemy has invulnerability, the enemy target took no damage from the summoned Phantasm. If Phantasms are to be treated as attacks, the skill activation should not be failed to initiate on invulnerable target entirely. Take warrior’s 100B and Whirling Axe for example, both are channeled attacks similar to Phantasmal Berserker but the skill activation will not fail to initiate on invulnerability enemy target. The warrior will deal no damage for the duration of invulnerability and any subsequent attacks from the channeled attacks will start to deal damage as soon as the invulnerability status is expired. You can still see warriors be able to do their whirling channeled attack at the heart of an invulnerable enemy group but it’s NOT the case with any summoned Phantasms in the current state. Mesmers were already at a disadvantage in dealing AoE with other profession during DE, it’s now going to be even more difficult to make any tag count.

This is a double penalty, indeed. The state before the changes were already in perfectly balanced because all attacks by summoned Phantasm on the target will fail, miss, and evaded by blind, invulnerability, and dodge. Now when those conditions are met, the enemy target not only can make the initial attack or attacks by a Phantasm to be failed, miss, or evaded, those defensive counters will ALSO make any phantasm summoning skill to simply fail to initiate completely as double mitigation. Many of our skills revolves around summoning phantasms and synergies with clones and phantasms, these changes are going to penalize the core mechanics of a Mesmer.

Ryuujin.8236:

Argh i never thought about this.

With iZerker nerfed into the floor, and no way to place clones on immune mobs, we’re basiclly screwed in 90% of orrian DE’s

iZerker wasn’t nerfed into the floor. Damage reduction is probably connected to the “fix” of few broken skills that could deal tons of damage (bladetrail for example). iZerker was “fixed” along with those skills and devs are aware of that issue. If you referenced nerf to the necessity of having LoS, well, most skills require LoS.

i’ve only just started playing a mesmer- engi’s my main – but you talk of fixing/changing the skill,
THATS NOT THE PROBLEM
sorry for shouting . .. .Anet NEED to fix the invulnerablity bug and NOT find work arounds for it

if everyone filled out a bug report EVERY time the bug happened (instead of accepting it) then MAYBE it would get fixed quicker. we as players shouldn’t have to use workarounds to deal with such fundemental bugs, but we do, and because we do it doesn’t get the fix thats needed

I also thought of doing that, but submitting tons of bug reports will do more harm than good because there’s just two people working on the skills for all classes.

haviz.1340:

If you referenced nerf to the necessity of having LoS, well, most skills require LoS.

I wouldn’t mind it requiring LoS if LoS wasn’t heavily bugged and we had a decent ground target AoE.

YEP and its a bug that affects all classes so it should be fixed . . no excuses

Thanks Mystiq for taking the time to explain the concerns.

I believe this goes to show how sudden patch changes without consulting with the community is a major issue for ArenaNet. If we would’ve been notified of such changes we would have given valuable insight as to the problems we would face in the future.

I’m noticing phantasms having significant range issues upon summoning now that is a direct problem from the patch. The reason I’m demoralized by the entire situation is the fact that this patch created more bugs and issues that was trickled down by poor decisions and onto live.