Guild Wars 2

Please let it be great, so I’ll have reason to go back to mesmer.

Levetty.1279:

What we really need more then a condi melee weapon is a 2hander melee with lots of mobility and cleave/aoe or a ranged aoe weapon (though GS would fill this with a few tweaks (giving an effect to the phantasm summon, general damage buffs to Mesmer, having the auto bounce off to nearby foes instead of having to target the ones at the back).

I think mesmers having a condi melee option would be worthwhile. Currently, the only melee option is sword which is power-based – so condi mesmers pretty much only have melee for defensive use. The threat of being OP would probably be reduced, as has been stated above, by the fact that any new melee weapon won’t be able to be combined with chronomancer shield.

(That said, part of me does think that a mace might have been a better option.)

(Necros arguably have the same problem, but they have reaper shroud as another option.)

Regarding greatsword: I’ve thought since Puncture Shot got introduced that its mechanic could also be used for Spatial Surge, with the same maximum of three targets struck. I think the mesmer’s AoE weapon might actually be supposed to be staff, but try taking it against a pack of pocket raptors and see how things go. It would be nice to see a true area-damage focused weapon come out for mesmer at some stage (including a phantasm that does area damage, or has an attack that bounces at the very least).

Oh please no more bouncing attacks, especially on Phantasms! ;-)

TBH I don’t want to see an AoE Phantasm, I want the one we have to be worthwhile in both PvP and PvE. I also hope that with Axe as MH, and no means to get Shield OH, that the other OH weapons will be brought up to remotely match the Shield. (Mainly talking about Focus, Torch, and most of all OH Sword.)

Whatever it ends up being, really doesn’t matter. In order to make a viable and popular (read: probably OPd at launch) Elite, it will need to provide:

1) perma speed, or a viable alternative
2) illusion generation, or a completely new gameplay not revolving around Shatters
3) Significant Sustain/defense – without that it’s essentially Dead on Arrival
4) Significant utility, OR significant boosts to sustained Power Damage output

I would instead prefer they fix up our supposed Power-based line that almost no one uses, or the other lines that are un/underused.

That won’t sell expansions though, so we’re more likely going to get a line that basically nullifies one of the existing core Mesmer lines. I’m betting on Power-based damage as Condie Mesmer is currently pretty balanced & viable.

Ithilwen.1529:

Exactly what Mesmer doesn’t need is more melee. I really would not like an axe as a weapon. If it must be, make it a boomerang type projectile weapon.. something like Chieftain Uhtahein’s throwing axe.

Mesmers have more ranged options than melee options, what we need is another, viable, melee weapon.

Fay.2357:

You’re totally misinformed here.

Well…not misinformed exactly. You’re just not comparing things appropriately when discussing blurred frenzy.

Blurred frenzy provides ~5% dps increase over simply autoattacking with sword. (Trimmed for length)

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Dagger auto on thief is 1.6 coeffs per second and gives endurance and poison.
Backstab is 2.4 coeffs in a single hit from stealth.

Sword auto for mesmer is about 0.9 coeffs per second.
Sure blurred frenzy is also 2.4 coeffs… over 2.5 seconds which puts it at .96 coeffs per second.

First off, how can you say sword 2 is a decent burst but sword auto is bad if they are basically the same thing when it comes to DPS?
Second thing, that’s just base coeffs. Comparing a Dom, Dueling, Chrono to a Deadly, Crit, DD:
The Chrono maybe has a 5-10% bonus from traits affecting blurred frenzy.
The Dare devil will be around 40-60% bonus from traits. Swapping Critical strikes to Trickery won’t change much here. Even the damage just from bound will do more DPS than blurred frenzy in the end.

How could you possibly argue that blurred frenzy isn’t weak offensively? It’s one thing to say it should be weak because of shatters or something but seriously? You really think blurred frenzy is a strong offensive skill? It’s not even a learn to dodge thing. People can just walk out of it easily.

I’ll respond since I’m not one to shy away from admitting being wrong.

I didn’t really estimate the DPS of the skill to be as low as it is relative to sword’s AA. I’m no expert on PvE for the mesmer – I’ve only ever played the class in PvP and WvW – and when I did, I always found myself cleaving people down fairly well with BF. Anecdotally, the cast time always seemed to feel shorter. However, I’m also aware that BF doesn’t carry an intrinsically-high coefficient for its cast duration. That said, traiting FF and other damage stacking sources like vuln will cause BF to gain roughly a 10-15%+ increase in damage over the AA alone, and that’s assuming no stacks of FF were built; the gains widen if a few stacks of FF are already built when being cast.

Comments about it being so easy to walk out of… well, warriors still run GS and kill people with HB. Guards do so with WW, warrior/berserker with Flurry (same exact potential and duration as BF), thief’s Pistol Whip is a much easier skill to avoid since it’s so much slower and has a longer precast, and there’s a lot in the mesmer’s kit to more reliably make the skill land such as the finish on iLeap, etc. Setting up for multi-hits and timing them to ensure your opponent has no resources to use to negate them is critical to make them work. Chrono does have some issues in this respect because setting up that CC becomes more difficult from having fewer trait options (like Confounding Suggestions to make S4 Active a better enabler) due to the dependency on the illusions line for mesmer in general, unless it can be casted within GWell, though the cooldown is very long and not worth building around.

I think our opinions differ because we perceive the terms of “offensive value”/“offensive strength” differently. From the perspective of raw damage, yea, BF isn’t very strong, particularly not when traited. That said, I still value BF as a very powerful offensive skill. Yes, it’s not much different in raw damage from running around AA’ing, but the same is said about the thief and casting backstab (actually, backstab outside of D/D is a strict net loss in damage, and as far as why Thief DPS > mesmer DPS, it’s been explained), but there’s very little offensive value in running around AA’ing. 1spam doesn’t work in PvP because it’s easy to shut down – people can be CC’ed or counter-bursted or any number of things. I value BF as a powerful offensive ability because it offers high damage on its cast – and I guess the point that I didn’t make clear enough – is that it offers high damage on a cast that lets me get that damage in on my own terms, because it has innate defenses. I don’t need to care about what offensive cooldown my opponent my have available during those 2.5s, or preserve my own defenses to negate counter-burst/damage; for 2.5s, that BF is happening and I’m effectively immune to any response of my opponent. If my opponent saved CC to interrupt my all-in after burning his defenses on a shatter performed previously, he’s now got no answers to my next engage, and if I saved resources to make that engage have value as to prevent the foe from simply walking away from it – like a warrior saving Bull’s Charge for Hundred Blades, knowing his foe doesn’t have a stunbreak – then I have at my disposal a source of substantial damage that carries no risk while performing the damage.

Xyonon.3987:

I also remember the days when ppl thought that each hit shows the number it actually just did. Love those warriors telling me they hit for 200k 100b back in those 4 war 1 mes cof runs.

off topic, but a surprising number of players still think cumulative damage skills do progressively higher dps.

@ deciever
I get what you’re saying. It’s just that vault and bound are also evades and both do more damage than blurred frenzy. So both have better dps. Better cd and better “offensive value”.
Overall point stands. New mesmer elite spec deserves more personal damage instead of illusion based damage.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Xyonon.3987:

I also remember the days when ppl thought that each hit shows the number it actually just did. Love those warriors telling me they hit for 200k 100b back in those 4 war 1 mes cof runs.

off topic, but a surprising number of players still think cumulative damage skills do progressively higher dps.

Sort of related but I always thought that it was weird that the damage shown was a cumulative value. I’ve always associated floating damage numbers with the amount of damage that one hit did, and here its backwards, but only for a select few cumulative damage skills. I kinda wish we had the option to turn that off and just see the raw damage from each hit on our screen

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@ deciever
I get what you’re saying. It’s just that vault and bound are also evades and both do more damage than blurred frenzy. So both have better dps. Better cd and better “offensive value”.
Overall point stands. New mesmer elite spec deserves more personal damage instead of illusion based damage.

Vault has extensive aftercast non-evasion frames during its animation, and Bound does strictly less damage than BF; it can only physically compete on a build running something like DA/CS/DrD signets versus a mesmer not traiting for damage on BF. I’ll be first to admit that I think vault is overtuned, too, since it’s got the highest single-hit damage coefficient available to the thief, over backstab (the wiki is wrong; coefficient is 2.52).

That said, I totally agree with what the mesmer should get next on the ideological level – a source of personal damage that isn’t dependent on killable AI. To make it work, they’d need to make the new elite replace shatters in a way that reduces the innate bursting and utility the mesmer has on its kit. High innate personal damage and the access to shatters as they are would in all seriousness be excessive in the PvP formats.

Ewww… Axes…

DeceiverX.8361:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@ deciever
I get what you’re saying. It’s just that vault and bound are also evades and both do more damage than blurred frenzy. So both have better dps. Better cd and better “offensive value”.
Overall point stands. New mesmer elite spec deserves more personal damage instead of illusion based damage.

Vault has extensive aftercast non-evasion frames during its animation, and Bound does strictly less damage than BF; it can only physically compete on a build running something like DA/CS/DrD signets versus a mesmer not traiting for damage on BF. I’ll be first to admit that I think vault is overtuned, too, since it’s got the highest single-hit damage coefficient available to the thief, over backstab (the wiki is wrong; coefficient is 2.52).

That said, I totally agree with what the mesmer should get next on the ideological level – a source of personal damage that isn’t dependent on killable AI. To make it work, they’d need to make the new elite replace shatters in a way that reduces the innate bursting and utility the mesmer has on its kit. High innate personal damage and the access to shatters as they are would in all seriousness be excessive in the PvP formats.

That’s easy enough to balance though. You can either simply lower the coefficients on the shatters/phantasms in PvP only, or you could even make it a trait option where either your illusions or your shatters are souped up.

All in all the argument that mesmers with actual personal damage would be OP in PvP is bullkitten and lazy. It would be trivial to balance us in PvP if we were given a real PvE damage build. Mesmers are honestly only so good because of their utility anyway, the damage would not make them OP.

PvE as it stands now mostly just cares about trash clearing and sustained damage. Sustained damage for mesmer is either Conditions or Phantasms. If Mesmer had an easier time setting up Phantasms, or having them persist for a bit after a target dies (so phantasms would also be useful in high killrate scenarios) would pay dividends towards a damage spec existing.

Burst is more effective in PvP and is already pretty good.

DeceiverX.8361:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@ deciever
I get what you’re saying. It’s just that vault and bound are also evades and both do more damage than blurred frenzy. So both have better dps. Better cd and better “offensive value”.
Overall point stands. New mesmer elite spec deserves more personal damage instead of illusion based damage.

Vault has extensive aftercast non-evasion frames during its animation, and Bound does strictly less damage than BF; it can only physically compete on a build running something like DA/CS/DrD signets versus a mesmer not traiting for damage on BF. I’ll be first to admit that I think vault is overtuned, too, since it’s got the highest single-hit damage coefficient available to the thief, over backstab (the wiki is wrong; coefficient is 2.52).

That said, I totally agree with what the mesmer should get next on the ideological level – a source of personal damage that isn’t dependent on killable AI. To make it work, they’d need to make the new elite replace shatters in a way that reduces the innate bursting and utility the mesmer has on its kit. High innate personal damage and the access to shatters as they are would in all seriousness be excessive in the PvP formats.

The problem is that damage on the base class is delegated to phantasms which means no matter which way you try you can’t really increase the personal damage much. That or it wouldn’t interact very well with the base class at all.

Take empowered illusions, that’s a 15% damage increase to phantasms, about a 8% dps gain, how do you make that work? You could make phantasm trait affect the mesmer but then you get phantasmal fury which becomes redundant due to master fencer minor in the same line and persisting images would be laughably OP at a straight up 3k health boost to mesmer.

If you make the damage boost based on shattering like you said before it interacts poorly with a lot of existing damage traits as outlined above as you derive little to no benefit from them.

I think it’s high time Arena Net came to grips with what mechanics do and don’t work:
Phantasms don’t work.
Stealth stacking is broken AF.
Pets don’t scale well.
Pets should be treated as extensions of the player, receiving the same boons etc.
Death Shroud is very strong at full, hopelessly weak to begin with when not full.

Then came round to changing these and compensating the classes in general.

Ghotistyx.6942:

PvE as it stands now mostly just cares about trash clearing and sustained damage. Sustained damage for mesmer is either Conditions or Phantasms. If Mesmer had an easier time setting up Phantasms, or having them persist for a bit after a target dies (so phantasms would also be useful in high killrate scenarios) would pay dividends towards a damage spec existing.

Burst is more effective in PvP and is already pretty good.

You still end up in the situation where more than half your damage is AI controlled and for the most part single target. You also end up at odds with the class mechanic of shatters as you don’t want to kill them, that’s just straight up bad design.

OriOri.8724:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Xyonon.3987:

I also remember the days when ppl thought that each hit shows the number it actually just did. Love those warriors telling me they hit for 200k 100b back in those 4 war 1 mes cof runs.

off topic, but a surprising number of players still think cumulative damage skills do progressively higher dps.

Sort of related but I always thought that it was weird that the damage shown was a cumulative value. I’ve always associated floating damage numbers with the amount of damage that one hit did, and here its backwards, but only for a select few cumulative damage skills. I kinda wish we had the option to turn that off and just see the raw damage from each hit on our screen

yup. No cumulative damage numbers at all would be fine. Standardisation is always going to be simpler for people to understand..

apharma.3741:

Ghotistyx.6942:

PvE as it stands now mostly just cares about trash clearing and sustained damage. Sustained damage for mesmer is either Conditions or Phantasms. If Mesmer had an easier time setting up Phantasms, or having them persist for a bit after a target dies (so phantasms would also be useful in high killrate scenarios) would pay dividends towards a damage spec existing.

Burst is more effective in PvP and is already pretty good.

You still end up in the situation where more than half your damage is AI controlled and for the most part single target. You also end up at odds with the class mechanic of shatters as you don’t want to kill them, that’s just straight up bad design.

The above quote always comes to mind regarding Mesmer. Regardless of what the weapon is, if the new elite spec revolves around phantasm and shatter it will suffer from the same issues Mesmer as a class suffer from.

You’ll want Mirage/Projectile hate with Thief Rifle spam.

Artaz.3819:

You’ll want Mirage/Projectile hate with Thief Rifle spam.

well unless anet gives mesmer an electro-whirl equivalent on this supposed axe with a low cooldown, won’t really matter will it?

I don’t believe these elite spec leaks for a second. My money is still on mainhand pistol for mesmer.

Edit May 2, 2017:

Looks like at least some of these were legit…

i wanted mirage to be a dagger throwing mesmer

I hope they add new weapons. It really needs to happen.

Dagger throwing or MH pistol sound a lot better than axe to me.

I think mesmer will get axe simply because there is only one melee wep. It needs another melee wep. Adding another ranged wep on top of all the other ranged weps seems redundant at this point.

But I would really only want axe if I can dual wield axes. I don’t think mix matching an axe and a different offhand looks good.

I’m glad for another melee wep. I would have preferred dual daggers though to be honest. But I’m okay with this if it is indeed a melee wep. I already have the materials to craft Astralaria, I’ll hold off though until things are set in stone.

What if we get both main and offhand axe?

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

phokus.8934:

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

Only because some dual focus weapon skins would look extremely cool (ie dual Anomalies).

phokus.8934:

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

When people say main hand focus all they’re talking about is dual wielding their “The Anomaly” skins which they never use that they made with their 150 gold. If that skin never existed nobody would even think of mh focus.

Ananeos.4587:

phokus.8934:

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

When people say main hand focus all they’re talking about is dual wielding their “The Anomaly” skins which they never use that they made with their 150 gold. If that skin never existed nobody would even think of mh focus.

Wow so much salt.

I personally don’t understand arguments against MH focus given that the profession as a whole uses it’s “mind” rather than the weapons to do anything.

Curunen.8729:

Ananeos.4587:

phokus.8934:

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

When people say main hand focus all they’re talking about is dual wielding their “The Anomaly” skins which they never use that they made with their 150 gold. If that skin never existed nobody would even think of mh focus.

Wow so much salt.

I personally don’t understand arguments against MH focus given that the profession as a whole uses it’s “mind” rather than the weapons to do anything.

They’re classified as an off-hand with no indication of them reclassifying that. So it’s a bit silly to even bring it up as an option.

It’s not impossible, but far less likely than using what’s already been established.

Ghotistyx.6942:

It’s not impossible, but far less likely than using what’s already been established.

I thought that too but then warrior is dagger/dagger if the leak is true?

Daggers were “light” main hand weapons. The general convention was that no class could wield a light weapon in the main hand with a heavy in the off-hand but warriors have all of the heavy off hands. Dagger/sword. Dagger/axe. Dagger/Mace. They are already breaking convention. Focus might be much more likely than you think.

I’m happy with the idea of axe though. Aesthetically, I think it goes better with the sword, focus, torch and pistol mesmers have as off-hands.

Ananeos.4587:

phokus.8934:

OriOri.8724:

I still think MH focus could make for an amazing kittening class

I’m not sure why people are obsessed with the idea on wanting an offhand as a main hand. It is really irrelevant what weapon they give Mesmer because they don’t necessarily follow conventional mechanics.

When people say main hand focus all they’re talking about is dual wielding their “The Anomaly” skins which they never use that they made with their 150 gold. If that skin never existed nobody would even think of mh focus.

I don’t even have the anomaly skin and don’t plan on getting it until I start going for a full wardrobe. Don’t try to talk for me about why I want MH focus, thank you very much.

MH focus would be awesome because the weapon concept fits the mesmer class concept so perfectly. The weapon is designed around focusing your mind to yield some effect in the real world, and mesmers are masters of illusion magic (and if the name “mirage” is what the next spec will truly be called then it just adds onto that even more). Thematically it makes sense, skills that we could get from a MH focus would also be really kittening cool.

Go sow your salt somewhere else.

Would dagger suit the name mirage more?

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I thought that too but then warrior is dagger/dagger if the leak is true?

Daggers were “light” main hand weapons. The general convention was that no class could wield a light weapon in the main hand with a heavy in the off-hand but warriors have all of the heavy off hands. Dagger/sword. Dagger/axe. Dagger/Mace. They are already breaking convention. Focus might be much more likely than you think.

I’m happy with the idea of axe though. Aesthetically, I think it goes better with the sword, focus, torch and pistol mesmers have as off-hands.

That’s not the conventions I meant. There do exist Warrior concepts that would use a dagger, but within Guild Wars 2 Foci are classified as off-hand only. Making a Focus main-hand would be the same as making Spear usable on land. Dagger is already used as both a main-hand and off-hand. “Light” and “Heavy” aren’t actual distinctions in GW2. Now, I could see Focus being used in the main-hand as there are also plenty of concepts that allow for that, but its on a different level of possibility than using an existing main-hand weapon.

Again, I wouldn’t believe the “leak”. I’ve seen the Guardian and Necro espec ideas on these forums, the Stormbow was specifically said to not be the legendary longbow. The only thing they have is Eureka and maybe the newest pvp map (they rely on you making the association).

Wasn’t this the same source that leaked the April patch notes? Those were extremely accurate, accurate enough to have been leaked by someone who actually works for ANet. So if it is indeed the same source then I wouldn’t rule it out completely yet.

Take these notes with a grain of salt. There were leaked notes that Eles were getting sword and looked how that turned out.

phokus.8934:

Take these notes with a grain of salt. There were leaked notes that Eles were getting sword and looked how that turned out.

The ele had more than leaked notes, in fact: there were datamined skills. Mostly placeholders, but still. Anything not officially announced is subject to change, and even what is officially announced may be.

When it comes to the warrior dagger/dagger: I do have to wonder if it’s just /dagger, and someone got their wires crossed (assuming the leak is legitimate in the first place). Apart from aesthetic considerations of combining a dagger with a ‘heavy’ offhand, it’d be surprising if warrior, which already has a lot of weapons, gets two in one go: that’d be a lot of possible new combinations to balance for.

OriOri.8724:

Wasn’t this the same source that leaked the April patch notes? Those were extremely accurate, accurate enough to have been leaked by someone who actually works for ANet. So if it is indeed the same source then I wouldn’t rule it out completely yet.

The very same. They were accurate down to the skill names.

about Ele not getting a sword, it seems possible to me that it was legit, because I remember you could actually link the sword skills with chat codes. they just changed it to warhorn for whatever reason. Probably will save sword for some kind of battle mage specialization.

What would be very cool IMO, (me being a mesmer main since release) would be that the new elite specialization ultimately increases the clone cap that you could have out. The shatter system is based upon 3 clones, but imagine if you could have the possibility of more.

Fay.2357:

If it’s going to be a ranged power weapon, I sure hope they make it better than the abject failure that is necro axe…

It applies three stacks of Vulnerability!

Well looks like PvE Mesmers hopes now rest entirely on Mirage. A condi focused defensive based spec with a 1h weapon with no changes to phantasms or even a new phantasm skill…

kitten

Levetty.1279:

Well looks like PvE Mesmers hopes now rest entirely on Mirage. A condi focused defensive based spec with a 1h weapon with no changes to phantasms or even a new phantasm skill…

kitten

PvE mesmer is still fine. Actually probably better since

• you can still share perma quickness
• you have more personal DPS.

point

your head

Just bumping this kitten up.

A mirage themed melee Mesmer with a condi axe and blurr evasions sounds friken’ amazing, c’mon guys!

Where’s my MH pistol tho?

^You have a single melee weapon yet you want a fourth ranged weapon? How come? Rhetorical questions by the way, you don’t have to answer them.( ^0^)

Probably because it could be the first one that isn’t up? :/ #feelsbadman

A main-hand pistol where the number 1 skill is a Pistol Whip, 2 is a PBAoE ability (blind/slow/cripple – pick one), and 3 is a fan ability that fires 6 shots but damage is modified based on range. The closer you are, the higher the damage, up until 600 range.

I just want to create a cowboy theme for my Mesmer.