Guild Wars 2

The June 23 patch has had a profound impact on Mesmer. Changes in traits, abilities, and gameplay mechanics have strengthened our ability to deal direct damage. I’m happy to say that some of these changes have also made healing skills that were previously ignored more competitive. If you’re familiar with the changes feel free to skip down to the numbers. If not, let’s take a look!

Mirror: Mirror was a sort of niche heal skill that didn’t see a whole lot of use outside of duels against Rangers and against specific bosses, e.g., Stargazer, Raving Asura. It heals the player for 3915, requires 1.25s to cast, and reflects projectiles during the cast. Post-patch Mirror is now considered a Manipulation skill, and can be traited to have its CD reduced from the default 15s to a strong 12s.

Ether Feast: Arguably the most common heal skill used in PvP and WvW, Ether Feast heals the player for 5560. It has a one second cast time and 20s CD like before, and you gain an additional 640 health per illusion. For those of you putting together a full nomad’s snowfall rune build to troll people at east keep, Ether Feast scales the best with healing power out of every option out there.

Signet of the Ether: This skill was the de facto choice for PvE builds because of how it reset phantasm CDs. You get the same 5560 base healing as Ether Feast but the CD is a much longer 35s. With Blurred Inscriptions, this CD gets reduced down to 28s. The passive healing on this signet scales linearly with the number of illusions you have active, and so it saw some use in phantasm and condition builds in WvW.

Mantra of Recovery: Before the patch, our mantra heal was primarily used either in conjunction with Menders Purity for condition cleanse for roaming/dueling builds, mantra-oriented support builds for WvW zerging, or with Empowering Mantras for the extra burst damage with elementalist conjures and reflects. Post-patch, this heal has been buffed immensely by the revamped Harmonious Mantras, which gives a temporary stackable 4% (8% if you trait into Inspiration) damage buff upon mantra use, and the new mantra skill recharge mechanic that starts the CD after you charge the skill- not when you use it. Base heals for Power Return are 2620 with a 1s CD between applications. Charging the skill takes 2.75s and sits on a 10s CD. You can trait into this heal through Dueling and Inspiration provide three uses of Power Return (Harmonious Mantras) or provide AoE healing (Restorative Mantras).

Note on the Illusions trait line: Menders Purity has been turned into a minor trait and synergizes extremely well with short cool-down heals like MoR and Mirror. There is currently a bug associated with it not proccing off the last application of Power Return but should hopefully be fixed soon. Restorative Illusions is back and has had its bug with Illusionary Persona that provided extra healing fixed. It’s still worth some consideration due to its condition cleanse. Healing Prism is a new minor trait that heals your allies when you yourself heal. It also adds 100 healing power for every illusion you have active.

Whew! Let’s move on to the numbers. All calculations have been done with 0 base healing power. For brevity I’ve used “hps” to represent the amount of healing per second your heal skills if used continuously. “Burst healing” refers to how much raw health you regain when you commit to a heal.

Mirror:
241 hps untraited
295 hps traited
3915 burst healing (1.25s)

Mirror w/ Healing Prism:
241 – 252 hps untraited
295 – 309 hps traited
3915 – 4095 burst healing (1.25s)

Ether Feast:
265 hps w/ 0 illusions
295 hps w/ 1 illusion
326 hps w/ 2 illusions
356 hps w/ 3 illusions
5560 – 7480 burst healing depending on the number of illusions (1s)

Ether Feast w/ Healing Prism:
265 hps w/ 0 illusions
300 hps w/ 1 illusion
336 hps w/ 2 illusions
372 hps w/ 3 illusions
5560 – 7810 burst healing depending on the number of illusions (1s)

Signet of the Ether:
154 hps signet active, untraited
192 hps signet active, traited
113 hps signet passive, 1 illusion
220 hps signet passive, 2 illusions
327 hps signet passive, 3 illusions
5560 burst healing (1s)

Signet of the Ether w/ Healing Prism:
154 – 162 hps signet active, untraited
192 – 201 hps signet active, traited
115 hps signet passive, 1 illusion
226 hps signet passive, 2 illusions
339 hps signet passive, 3 illusions
5560 – 5815 burst healing (1s)

Mantra of Recovery:
411 hps untraited
616 hps harmonious mantras
615 hps restorative mantras
820 hps both traits
5240 burst healing (2s)
7860 burst healing harmonious mantras (3s)
10480 burst healing if recast (6.75s)
15720 burst healing if recast, harmonious mantras (8.75s)
13080 burst healing if recast, restorative mantras (6.75s)
18320 burst healing if recast, both traits (8.75s)

Mantra of Recovery w/ Healing Prism:
411 – 420 hps untraited
616 – 631 hps harmonious mantras
615 – 638 hps restorative mantras
820 – 853 hps both traits
5240 – 5480 burst healing (2s)
7860 – 8220 burst healing harmonious mantras (3s)
10480 – 10960 burst healing if recast (6.75s)
15720 – 16440 burst healing if recast, harmonious mantras (8.75s)
13080 – 13620 burst healing if recast, restorative mantras (6.75s)
18320 – 19100 burst healing if recast, both traits (8.75s)

Restorative Illusions w/ Healing Prism:
872 burst healing w/ 0 illusions
1084 burst healing w/ 1 illusion
1296 burst healing w/ 2 illusions
1508 burst healing w/ 3 illusions

The buff to Mirror Images by making it a Manipulation skill has given it healing potential on par or better than casting Ether Feast with one clone. This is huge for builds that don’t have deceptive evasion, such as the recent PU power burst setup. The extra long reflection duration will be handy against pistol thieves, rangers, and engineers, and even power necros. Don’t bring this heal in a fight against a greatsword Mesmer- Mirror Blade cannot be reflected.

Ether Feast is still a strong burst heal for phantasm builds and traditional Deceptive Evasion shatter builds. You only need active illusions when you decide to heal, so there’s a lot of versatility with different play styles.

While it is a mainstay of most PvE builds, Signet of Ether didn’t really benefit much from the patch. It’s severely lacking in heal potential, having terrible passive stats. Traiting for blurred inscriptions does give you a distortion and an extra clear, but the 1s cast time on the heal means you either have to know what’s coming before hand or have insane reflexes. Still, the extra phantasm can be nice and there could be some nice synergy with Inspiring Distortion.

Mantra of Recovery had some of the strongest gains with the patch. With traits, this skill has better sustained healing than Consume Conditions w/ 10 condis & MoC. Burst healing is absolutely ridiculous with the proper traits and this heal synergizes the best with the Inspiration minors. The 8% (2×4%) damage modifier you currently receive from Harmonious Mantras and Inspiration frees up another utility slot in PvE that would otherwise be used for mantra duty. Mimic anyone?

Let me know what you guys think.

Yeah, that sounds about right. A few comments:

1. Pretty much all pve mesmers are going to be in dueling (conditions are amazing in pvp right now; crap in pve due to confusion scaling and some other things) and since deceptive evasion doesn’t do much in dungeons/fractals, harmonious mantras will likely be pretty popular. This means mantra of recovery now actively contributes to dps, which is necessary for any viable alternative to signet of the ether. +12% mesmer damage is pretty reasonable, especially taking into account the signet cast time and potential dps boost of other mantras.

2. Throughput of traited mirror and mantra of recovery got huge gains with the patch, but scaling with healing power is still absolutely wretched for all the Inspiration traits. Restorative mantras, restorative illusions, and healing prism are all great traits with 0 HP and pretty bad ones to actually get HP for. Basically, invest in traits and not gear if you want to try your hand at support.

3. The direct heal of healing prism only affects allies exclusively (eg, not yourself), which I suspect is a bug. There’s a handful of traits that only affect outgoing healing, but they only change the healing modifier and additionally explicitly state this. Offhand I don’t believe there are any other direct heal skills or traits that exclude the caster and, indeed, the wording of healing prism is identical to traits (such as selfless daring) that heal everybody.

Regardless, with the recent nerf of healing prism to have a 10s ICD there’s no reason for it to be ally-only.

4. Inspiration is actually in a good place right now and is a solid line for both pve and pvp. I’m not sure if there will still be room for it once HoT hits and the chrono line essentially becomes mandatory, but for the moment it’s perfectly viable in plenty of builds.

alexei.9364:

2. Throughput of traited mirror and mantra of recovery got huge gains with the patch, but scaling with healing power is still absolutely wretched for all the Inspiration traits. Restorative mantras, restorative illusions, and healing prism are all great traits with 0 HP and pretty bad ones to actually get HP for. Basically, invest in traits and not gear if you want to try your hand at support.

True for pretty much everything. Healing Power sucks, and has no reason to even exist in a trinity-free game.

Rather eye-opening to see the full extent of mantra heals though. MoR had the best hps before the patch, gained a 2s cooldown reduction baseline (recharge change) and synergises extremely well with the traits. Cycling MoP already gave ridiculous survivability for PuG ranged Lupi/Volcanic Fractal runs.

So for PvE anyone below the “organised speedrun” level can stick to Inspiration for massive self-sustain, group healing and anti-projectile support without sacrificing 600 stat points, nice.

People will not take mantra of recovery over signet heal for PvE. Mantra of Pain is what you’ll use to gain your mantra charges. Phantasms are too important a part of mesmer dps to forego a signet that allows you to bring a phantasm back in a game that loves to aoe bomb them to death immediately.

Mantra of Recovery however will be quite useful in select encounters like Mai Trin with restorative mantras and maybe even the Fire Shaman boss to counter sustained damage.

Everything in the mantra section was calculated wrong.
Mantras now begin cooling down the second they are charged.

The base continuous charge is
2.75 plus 1 plus 10
(2620*2)/(11.75) =446 hps

I’m not following. Why are you dividing by 11.75? All of the sustained hps numbers for mantras are assuming 12.75s intervals.

In PVP Dueling/Ispiration+chaos or Illusionis solid way and can be played as support with Cele in TF with mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Distr, Decoy and/or blink/nullfield and Staff as core + weapon of choice works with strategy. Badly think is that… Anet Overnerf Prism… it WAs only broken with Necromancer Aura.. but yeah, its seems easier to nerf a Solid trait in Mesmer, than just change Aura to not working with Prism. They actualy blocked their core idea to give more options to play the game.

Quick update with the 7/28/2015 patch. Due to the way Mantra cooldowns have been reverted, the time it takes to execute a MoR heal chain back-to-back has been increased from 12.75s to 14.75s. These numbers don’t include healing prism.

411 hps untraited —> 355 hps untraited
616 hps harmonious mantras --> 532 hps harmonious mantras
615 hps restorative mantras —> 532 hps restorative mantras
820 hps both traits --> 709 hps both traits

Because immediate recasts of MoR are no longer possible, burst healing has been reduced by 10.5k health, a reduction of 57% heal throughput.

To summarize, MoR is still the most effective sustained heal for our class, but if you don’t trait for it other options like Ether Feast are on the table.

From a PvE perspective you’ll still want MoR for the multiplier and extra Mender’s Purity, but these changes crippled MoR synergy with Restorative Mantras. Signet of the Ether and Mantra of Pain are more competitive as a result, but that’s a moot point since they’re already the standard for solely DPS builds.

If you’re an sPvPer, taking MoR for most builds is suicide. The liability of the cast time and the limited burst healing makes Signet of the Ether better for dueling/bunker play, Mirror better for consistency, and Ether Feast dominant with DE builds.

For WvW (my main game mode), Mantra use among roamers will likely be relegated to specific interrupt builds. Small group roaming builds will probably revert back to vanilla shatter specs, and the effectiveness of Mantra-based zerging builds will go down the tube in favor of glamour bots.

I might redo the numbers to account for the healing prism changes, but will probably wait until after the dust has settled.

expandas.7051:

Quick update with the 7/28/2015 patch. Due to the way Mantra cooldowns have been reverted, the time it takes to execute a MoR heal chain back-to-back has been increased from 12.75s to 14.75s. These numbers don’t include healing prism.

411 hps untraited —> 355 hps untraited
616 hps harmonious mantras --> 532 hps harmonious mantras
615 hps restorative mantras —> 532 hps restorative mantras
820 hps both traits --> 709 hps both traits

Because immediate recasts of MoR are no longer possible, burst healing has been reduced by 10.5k health, a reduction of 57% heal throughput.

To summarize, MoR is still the most effective sustained heal for our class, but if you don’t trait for it other options like Ether Feast are on the table.

From a PvE perspective you’ll still want MoR for the multiplier and extra Mender’s Purity, but these changes crippled MoR synergy with Restorative Mantras. Signet of the Ether and Mantra of Pain are more competitive as a result, but that’s a moot point since they’re already the standard for solely DPS builds.

If you’re an sPvPer, taking MoR for most builds is suicide. The liability of the cast time and the limited burst healing makes Signet of the Ether better for dueling/bunker play, Mirror better for consistency, and Ether Feast dominant with DE builds.

For WvW (my main game mode), Mantra use among roamers will likely be relegated to specific interrupt builds. Small group roaming builds will probably revert back to vanilla shatter specs, and the effectiveness of Mantra-based zerging builds will go down the tube in favor of glamour bots.

I might redo the numbers to account for the healing prism changes, but will probably wait until after the dust has settled.

K my correction was wrong the last time however this time I think this correction is right.
2.75 seconds to charge + 1 internal cooldown as you spend the first charge. As spend the last charge is instantaneous and starts the cooldown, how are you getting 14.75 and not 13.75?

Nice catch. I think it’s because I assumed there would kittenarges for all scenarios. How about this:

411 hps untraited —> 381 hps untraited (13.75s)
616 hps harmonious mantras —> 533 hps harmonious mantras (14.75s)
615 hps restorative mantras —> 570 hps restorative mantras (13.75s)
820 hps both traits —> 709 hps both traits (14.75s)