Making shield useful in PvE.
Even if you don’t consider the phantasm, the chronomancer’s shield 5 skill alone has higher damage output than the shield skills of any other profession. In general shields aren’t intended to be high DPS weapons. If the utility of the skills is lacking, that’s an area that can be tuned, but we don’t have any plans to really increase the damage that much.
It being a shield is ultimately pointless, It could be a new item called a ‘Wet Noodle’ and it would matter just as much as it being a ‘shield’. Which is an accurate representation of our Mesmer damage in PvE.
Yes yes, I understand we’re more support, but so are guardians. Who have so much more personal damage than us, while maintaining the same, if not more support, in the exact same areas. (Placable Reflects, not reliant on enemies, etc.) Easier access to Aegis, blinds, Better pulls.
Then comparing the damage output of the other classes ‘shield’ to ours is also pointless. Other classes do not commonly use their shield in PvE for THAT VERY REASON. It does not offer much in the over all grand scheme of things. It does not even carry the same ‘flavor’ as other shield users. Which is an emphasis on personal defense. “Your greatsword is a ranged weapon! Other classes greatswords arn’t range” – It could literally be anything and not matter, Bad damage is bad damage. Regardless of it’s shape or form.
Alacrity is an overall, terrible mechanic, that isn’t even the opposite of chill until it has a movement speed increase tied to it. Someone has to maintain it for a long time to shave even 10% off the cooldown of abilities, and that’s alot of busy work for something LESS than a trait.
Most damage comes from auto attacks. Alacrity is more of an attrition based ‘buff’, more fitting to be given to Warriors or Necromancers. While changing it’s name to something fitting.
Fluff text, Chronomancers getting ‘Shields’ because they can look like clocks isn’t good design. Excuses because of ‘fluff’, ‘lore’, or ‘sybolism’ are only limiters to the unimaginative. Why not a ‘Hammer’? Who hasn’t ever thought of smashing their alarm clock with a hammer, in the morning, as if in hopes it would buy them time? Literally everyone who has ever used one, I imagine. Chronomancers arn’t maintaining the timeline, They are not respresenting it. They are utterly destroying it. Which is FAR, FAR more fitting than a shield. Give us a big heavy hitting, auto attacking Hammer.
Change the Alacrity benefit to stacking effect of improved cast/attack speed (On top of quickness), and we’ll be in an overall better shape for both providing more damage to our group, ourselves (which will still be massively lagging behind) and fufilling the ‘Quickness’ utility better than a Guardian.
Even if you don’t consider the phantasm, the chronomancer’s shield 5 skill alone has higher damage output than the shield skills of any other profession. In general shields aren’t intended to be high DPS weapons. If the utility of the skills is lacking, that’s an area that can be tuned, but we don’t have any plans to really increase the damage that much.
It being a shield is ultimately pointless, It could be a new item called a ‘Wet Noodle’ and it would matter just as much as it being a ‘shield’. Which is an accurate representation of our Mesmer damage in PvE.
Yes yes, I understand we’re more support, but so are guardians. Who have so much more personal damage than us, while maintaining the same, if not more support, in the exact same areas. (Placable Reflects, not reliant on enemies, etc.) Easier access to Aegis, blinds, Better pulls.
Then comparing the damage output of the other classes ‘shield’ to ours is also pointless. Other classes do not commonly use their shield in PvE for THAT VERY REASON. It does not offer much in the over all grand scheme of things. It does not even carry the same ‘flavor’ as other shield users. Which is an emphasis on personal defense. “Your greatsword is a ranged weapon! Other classes greatswords arn’t range” – It could literally be anything and not matter, Bad damage is bad damage. Regardless of it’s shape or form.
Alacrity is an overall, terrible mechanic, that isn’t even the opposite of chill until it has a movement speed increase tied to it. Someone has to maintain it for a long time to shave even 10% off the cooldown of abilities, and that’s alot of busy work for something LESS than a trait.
Most damage comes from auto attacks. Alacrity is more of an attrition based ‘buff’, more fitting to be given to Warriors or Necromancers. While changing it’s name to something fitting.
Fluff text, Chronomancers getting ‘Shields’ because they can look like clocks isn’t good design. Excuses because of ‘fluff’, ‘lore’, or ‘sybolism’ are only limiters to the unimaginative. Why not a ‘Hammer’? Who hasn’t ever thought of smashing their alarm clock with a hammer, in the morning, as if in hopes it would buy them time? Literally everyone who has ever used one, I imagine. Chronomancers arn’t maintaining the timeline, They are not respresenting it. They are utterly destroying it. Which is FAR, FAR more fitting than a shield. Give us a big heavy hitting, auto attacking Hammer.
Change the Alacrity benefit to stacking effect of improved cast/attack speed (On top of quickness), and we’ll be in an overall better shape for both providing more damage to our group, ourselves (which will still be massively lagging behind) and fufilling the ‘Quickness’ utility better than a Guardian.
This whole post is so wrong. Alacrity is a fantastic mechanic, you just have to use it properly.
@AtomsOrSystems:
The build DH is referring to is one that I tweaked for play from a concept alpha created. Basically, it puts 35 seconds of quickness and alacrity on the entire group, with a 45 second cooldown on that combo, while providing ~10 party-wide might, ~60-70% uptime on vigor, and doing ok damage (compared to mesmer anyway). It uses sword/shield + staff.
However, the fact that that particular build is very effective isn’t a testament to the shield, but is a testament to the overall interaction of mechanics. On top of that, the issue that people have with the shield (the phantasm) is still absolute garbage and not used for anything other than another illusion to shatter.
This whole post is so wrong. Alacrity is a fantastic mechanic, you just have to use it properly.
Awe give him some credit! I think the first 3 paragraphs were spot on! He just got Alacrity wrong, probably based on that “silly math” that was thrown out early on when Alacrity was first revealed.
I think he correctly pointed out the weakness of Robert’s argument on Shield DPS being low. As has been repeatedly pointed out, most other classes are also not using their Shields for the same poor trade off between offense and defense. (Not to mention we’re continually told that inter-profession comparisons are invalid anyway!)
Now I’m not saying I want to see Shield turned into a DPS power-house, even though it kinda fits the same strangeness of Mesmer GS, but at least the defense or utility must somewhat balance out the loss in damage output! Clearly it doesn’t do that, especially as far as #4 and the Phantasm go. (Poor summon mechanic. Poor damage with mediocre short-duration effects on a very disliked form of attack. Poor attack rate.)
It’s clear they balanced the iCapt with the absolute best case scenario in mind, a scenario that virtually never actually happens in game as it would pretty much require a single AFK opponent. (And even then I think it’s still pretty bad! lol!)
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
I think you are reading too much into the phrase he used. He said if the “utility of the weapon.” He did not say it was a utility weapon.
Shield 5 stuns and gives allies quickness. The only defensive value it provides is some buggy projectile blocking.
Shield 4 is a block, but the phantasm gives quickness and slow. The block is the only defensive value.
So Robert is either a kitten-awful designer who doesn’t understand his own design, or it’s a utility weapon first and a defensive weapon second. Which do you think it is, Daniel?
Slow is a defensive condition similar to weakness, you are reducing your enemies’ dps.
Engie shield stuns 5, knocks back, block physical x1, reflects projectiles 3 seconds
Warrior shield stuns 1, blocks physical 3 seconds, blocks/reflects projectiles 3 seconds
Guardian shield knocks back 5, heals, gives protection, doesn’t block physical, destroys projectiles 4 seconds
Revenant shield has no cc, heals, gives protection, blocks physical and projectiles 4 seconds
Mesmer shield stuns infinite, slows, blocks physical x2, blocks projectiles 3seconds+
I would say Robert Gee designed a perfectly good shield. Your concept of defensive value should be called into question.
I am confused about your comment about the mesmer shield being lackluster when in that other post Pyro’s alacrity sharing thing used the shield. It was heavily implied that mesmer would be the new meta.
1. It’s the Wells and Time Warp that do the bulk of the heavy lifting in that build. Further, the build is designed to take advantage of any source of quickness, including speccing a decent amount into boon duration. Shield5 gives quickness, and no other mesmer weapon does. Any build that does not spec into it get less value from it.
2. Furthermore, your point is an old and tired one, I’ve made the point multiple times that it’s not Shield5 that’s the problem, it’s shield4. Mesmers aren’t balanced around 30-second cd boosts, they are balanced around phantasms. That’s why our AAs suck, because phants are supposed to be making up the difference. Saying shield is okay in pve because of Shield 5 is saying that it’s okay that all our damage sucks, because boy howdy, every 30s we get a double-stun and some party quickness!
Mesmers aren’t balanced around speed runs. That other dude was right. You just want equivalent weapons. Create a topic for torch or for pistol; create a topic for staff or for greatsword. But I’ll bite.
What would you design the new shield to do?
It was also implied in the things they posted on raids that builds not entirely devoted to dps would be necessary.
You’re like a broken record. We’ve already covered this, and no one is actively arguing that the pAvenger needs extra damage, we’re simply saying that the loss of damage either needs to be compensated by increased support or it needs to be restored.
… What are you talking about. The only thing I definitely agree with from this is that no one is arguing the shield needs extra damage. How you extrapolated that from a comment meant to imply that in difficult pve content people regularly have to sacrifice dps I do not know.
Do you have any ideas on how to fix Mesmer dps?
See every thread ever made on the subject.
My personal favorites are apharma’s suggestions about nerfing phantasm dps by 30%, increasing AAs by 50%, and giving every phantasm a useful utility bonus.
50% us 50% phants becomes 75% us, 35% phants. So your personal favourite is a 10% damage buff overall and making us rely on our class mechanic less. Isn’t that exactly what the chronomancy spec does?
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
(edited by Embolism.8106)
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
You’re the one to talk about civility when you passive aggressively tell someone to “use your head”. Apparently implying someone is not using their head is a shining example of proper forum etiquette.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
Offhand sword provides essentially the same or more amount of blocking as offhand shield ovekittenriod of 30 seconds. That’s what I meant by personal defense. Reflection and personal defense are one and the same in PvE where some of your biggest threats are projectile attacks, it’s why I included focus in there.
I probably missed your “personal defense” part but I still want to say that offhand sword and focus offer personal defense options without completely gutting your damage.
2 crappy phantasms and persistence of memory is hardly an appeal, especially since persistence of memory competes with compounding power (9% increased damage) so it’s not included in any DPS centered PvE mesmer build, only on shatter PvE support builds such as the alacrity sharing wells chrono spec.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
You’re the one to talk about civility when you passive aggressively tell someone to “use your head”. Apparently implying someone is not using their head is a shining example of proper forum etiquette.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
Offhand sword provides essentially the same or more amount of blocking as offhand shield ovekittenriod of 30 seconds. That’s what I meant by personal defense. Reflection and personal defense are one and the same in PvE where some of your biggest threats are projectile attacks, it’s why I included focus in there.
I probably missed your “personal defense” part but I still want to say that offhand sword and focus offer personal defense options without completely gutting your damage.
2 crappy phantasms and persistence of memory is hardly an appeal, especially since persistence of memory competes with compounding power (9% increased damage) so it’s not included in any DPS centered PvE mesmer build, only on shatter PvE support builds such as the alacrity sharing wells chrono spec.
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
The last part of your post makes me curious.
Do you only care about changes that affect the max dps specs you listed? Let’s make it an offhand warhorn instead.
The four skill is something called tempo, channel for three seconds and blast the group once per second, completing the channel grants aoe super speed.
The five skill is a phantasm that will mimic the birds from ranger warhorn each time it attacks except these are butterflies, they do next to no physical damage but they confuse, weaken, and quicken your enemies.
This warhorn could fix confusion and blasts for PvE. But does it fit into your vision of the game.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
Just to be clear. The reason why a permanent removal of privileges occurred has absolutely nothing to do with conduct between forum users and everything to do with an explicit violation of the forum terms of service with respect to interaction with developers themselves.
I think Persistence of Memory is potentially better than Compounding Power in a DPS PvE Mesmer. Compounding Power only affects your own (direct) damage AFAIK, while PoM with frequent Shattering (and Chronophantasma of course) means your Phantasm CDs are kept to a minimum: which means you can Shatter and reconjure them constantly for extra damage in Mind Wrack and Phantasm first strike.
Essentially, you’re cutting the down time between Phantasm attacks by Shattering them. I’ve said this before, but I believe Dom/Illu/Chrono may prove to be a stronger DPS build than Dom/Duel/Chrono.
…..
With regards to iAvenger, I suggest increasing the Alacrity given to 1.5s, reduce the down time between shots to 6s and increasing maximum number of bounces to 9. In fact all bounce attacks that cannot hit the same target more than once should have 9 bounces, if we must have this mechanic pushed on us it should affect comparable numbers of targets compared to conventional AoEs.
(edited by Embolism.8106)
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
Just to be clear. The reason why a permanent removal of privileges occurred has absolutely nothing to do with conduct between forum users and everything to do with an explicit violation of the forum terms of service with respect to interaction with developers themselves.
My post was on incivility. Not on which rule you were uncivil for. Also I don’t think you should be making this post anyway. As you are confirming to be in violation of the rule against second accounts and the rule of accounts posting for banned persons.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
You’re the one to talk about civility when you passive aggressively tell someone to “use your head”. Apparently implying someone is not using their head is a shining example of proper forum etiquette.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
Offhand sword provides essentially the same or more amount of blocking as offhand shield ovekittenriod of 30 seconds. That’s what I meant by personal defense. Reflection and personal defense are one and the same in PvE where some of your biggest threats are projectile attacks, it’s why I included focus in there.
I probably missed your “personal defense” part but I still want to say that offhand sword and focus offer personal defense options without completely gutting your damage.
2 crappy phantasms and persistence of memory is hardly an appeal, especially since persistence of memory competes with compounding power (9% increased damage) so it’s not included in any DPS centered PvE mesmer build, only on shatter PvE support builds such as the alacrity sharing wells chrono spec.
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
The last part of your post makes me curious.
Do you only care about changes that affect the max dps specs you listed? Let’s make it an offhand warhorn instead.
The four skill is something called tempo, channel for three seconds and blast the group once per second, completing the channel grants aoe super speed.
The five skill is a phantasm that will mimic the birds from ranger warhorn each time it attacks except these are butterflies, they do next to no physical damage but they confuse, weaken, and quicken your enemies.
This warhorn could fix confusion and blasts for PvE. But does it fit into your vision of the game.
I don’t think the warhorn would be particularly bad, because it provides blasts. I likely still won’t use it since it’s a condition weapons and condition mesmers just aren’t viable in PvE since the competitive condi builds in PvE feature heavy burning stacks and lots of frontloaded condi cleave, not slow single target condi ramp up. And due to the nature of mobs in PvE confusion will always be a weaker form of bleed, which is very weak compared to burning already.
My suggestion would be to nerf burning and move that damage back to bleeds. Bleeds at the beginning were designed to be the most damaging condition to ramp up, but burning was the higher baseline damage condition with limited access. Now classes have high to permanent uptime to burning, and it does more damage than bleeds/confusion/torment at all stack levels.
I do think your suggestion would make for a fine pve condi offhand, if condi ever became a thing in PvE. Because like the ranger warhorn, the multihit part means you can proc a lot of bleeds from all those crits on top of the confusion it inflicts. God knows condi mesmers don’t hav very god offhands either.
But as mesmers quite simply staff and scepter are rather ill suited for PvE, and the supporting traitlines of chaos and illusions, while nice in pvp, don’t offer uch benefit to the pve side of condi builds the way grenadesinister engineers or axe/torch rangers get.
We’re just stuck with power specs for PvE, until they revisit scepter/staff for PvE and make more traits in the Chaos/Illusion lines attractive for PvE, ot to mention the only condition phantasm we have, iMage, has a horrendous 30 sec cd and does a measly 1 stack of burning for 6 seconds.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
You’re the one to talk about civility when you passive aggressively tell someone to “use your head”. Apparently implying someone is not using their head is a shining example of proper forum etiquette.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
Offhand sword provides essentially the same or more amount of blocking as offhand shield ovekittenriod of 30 seconds. That’s what I meant by personal defense. Reflection and personal defense are one and the same in PvE where some of your biggest threats are projectile attacks, it’s why I included focus in there.
I probably missed your “personal defense” part but I still want to say that offhand sword and focus offer personal defense options without completely gutting your damage.
2 crappy phantasms and persistence of memory is hardly an appeal, especially since persistence of memory competes with compounding power (9% increased damage) so it’s not included in any DPS centered PvE mesmer build, only on shatter PvE support builds such as the alacrity sharing wells chrono spec.
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
The last part of your post makes me curious.
Do you only care about changes that affect the max dps specs you listed? Let’s make it an offhand warhorn instead.
The four skill is something called tempo, channel for three seconds and blast the group once per second, completing the channel grants aoe super speed.
The five skill is a phantasm that will mimic the birds from ranger warhorn each time it attacks except these are butterflies, they do next to no physical damage but they confuse, weaken, and quicken your enemies.
This warhorn could fix confusion and blasts for PvE. But does it fit into your vision of the game.
I don’t think the warhorn would be particularly bad, because it provides blasts. I likely still won’t use it since it’s a condition weapons and condition mesmers just aren’t viable in PvE since the competitive condi builds in PvE feature heavy burning stacks and lots of frontloaded condi cleave, not slow single target condi ramp up. And due to the nature of mobs in PvE confusion will always be a weaker form of bleed, which is very weak compared to burning already.
My suggestion would be to nerf burning and move that damage back to bleeds. Bleeds at the beginning were designed to be the most damaging condition to ramp up, but burning was the higher baseline damage condition with limited access. Now classes have high to permanent uptime to burning, and it does more damage than bleeds/confusion/torment at all stack levels.
I do think your suggestion would make for a fine pve condi offhand, if condi ever became a thing in PvE. Because like the ranger warhorn, the multihit part means you can proc a lot of bleeds from all those crits on top of the confusion it inflicts. God knows condi mesmers don’t hav very god offhands either.
But as mesmers quite simply staff and scepter are rather ill suited for PvE, and the supporting taitlines of chaos and inspiration, while nice in pvp, don’t offer uch benefit to the pve side of condi builds the way grenadesinister engineers or axe/torch rangers get.
We’re just stuck with power specs for PvE, until they revisit scepter/staff for PvE and make more traits in the Chaos/Illusion lines attractive for PvE, ot to mention the only condition phantasm we have, iMage, has a horrendous 30 sec cd and does a measly 1 stack of burning for 6 seconds.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would wonder where you were getting this “info,” considering all of our raid information has been vague in the extreme.
I would wonder if you’re listening to what people are saying, about Mesmer condi in PvE. I would wonder if you’ve ever tried it, to realize that we simply don’t have access to the useful condis in a useful way.
Mostly, I would wonder what any of this has to do with the problems faced by Shields in PvE.
And not all mobs have breakbars? Come one. Many if not most mobs that require a sustained amount of damage in a party setting (aka, any that it’s actually useful to summon phantasms on) had a breakbar in the beta weekends. Just like similar mobs have Defiance in the game as it is now. Even random vets have breakbars in Verdant Brink.
Unless you think we should be summoning iAvenger on the trash mobs, for the 3 seconds before they get burned down?
EDIT:
PS. I don’t like that you make comments that from what you’ve seen in beta shield is borderline unusuable when you make comments in other threads like
You should try fractal 50 or the Verdant Brink beta mordrem. Casual AoE spam from mobs splashing everywhere for 6k+ hits a piece and unlike pvp these mobs don’t fold over/run away at the 15-20k hp damage line.
The Mordem snipers at Verdant Brink on a full reaper shroud necromancer take off the entire shroud and then some more HP in one charged shot.Things that are perfect for blocking with either 4 or 5 on shield.
I don’t know where you’re pulling that from, but I’ve literally never said that. I even went and checked my own comments, to make sure I wasn’t having some kind of stroke. That’s definitely not my quote.
Also, yes, blocks could be helpful there. So are evades, and Aegis, and other mechanics that don’t entail the major DPS and utility loss that Mesmer shield currently does.
He’s quoting me on a pvp thread. No, those attacks are not blocked by shield 4 easily. The sniper shot leaves a trail, its most damaging part, that is multi hit. It goes through the first block and still damages you.
He ignored points of that post as well that talked about multiple mobs and aoe attacking you at a time. So an AoE that is pulsing damage per second eats up your shield 4 charge, and the sniper/stalker blasts your face off. The Shadowscale’s Unrelenting Assault is a multihit highly damaging attack that also eats through shield 4 easily.
He didn’t play the beta much.
He also didn’t pay attention to where I have said to make the shield 4 a continuous block like the warrior offhand sword and shield/ranger greatsword until hit by a melee attack. Or to summon the phantasm after channeling the skill for 1 second to put it in line with all other phantasm casts.
Come on dude, try to use your head. Shield 4 has no aftercast so you can block 2 of any multihit. If you add in scepter you can block 4 of any 5 pulse aoe. You talk about multiple mobs and shield 5 has no target limit. You talk about something shooting a projectile that I assume can be destroyed by the shield 5. With alacrity and illusions distortion is now on a 30 second cooldown. You can distort for 4 seconds, 1 more than a warriors shield, and reflect missiles, like a warriors shield. We already had a warrior shield, now we have another one.
It’s hard to reply to something so stupid. The aoe’s pulse per second, the trail pulses per second. You are blocking 2 hits off a multi hit effect that is not a projectile. Distortion destroys your phantasms, so there goes all your DPS.
Shield 5 functions as a line reflect, unfortunately for you the snipers don’t line up all perfectly in a line in front of you for all projectiles to be blocked.
I mean, you just told me to use a scepter in PvE, I’m pretty sure you are trolling.
Your level of civility is about the same as when Pyro had to start posting as Fay. Perhaps you can realise we are both people, and this is a video game.
And if you want to stick to the meta weapons then blurred frenzy and block twice. Preventing the entire attack from harming you.
You’re the one to talk about civility when you passive aggressively tell someone to “use your head”. Apparently implying someone is not using their head is a shining example of proper forum etiquette.
But this is not even true.
We already use defensive offhands in PvE, they’re called focus and offhand sword. The focus is a purely defensive offhand, used for projectile defense and crowd control (iwarden really does mediocre damage and is stationary).
Offhand sword has the same block shield does, on a way lower cooldown, and that block can be turned into a line wide ranged interrupt.
The shield has the same block as offhand sword, and it’s bad because it only blocks one hit. The warrior offhand sword covers all projectiles, as does the ranger block. The mesmer shield block gets popped by a single projectile and then you eat all the damage.
And what do you get in exchange for that 30 second cd block, a garbage phantasm that does no damage and applies 1 second of alacrity and 2 seconds of slow EVERY 8 SECONDS?
So you have a 30 second cooldown (basically double the cd of usual phantasms) on a crappy phantasms, that is delayed on a 2 second cast of doing nothing (DPS loss)?
Neither Focus nor OH Sword are used for personal defense in PvE. Focus is a group reflect tool, if it provided only personal reflects I can guarantee it won’t see any use in PvE; not to mention reflects have a potent offensive component. OH Sword is used for iSwordsman, the highest DPS Phantasm; not for iRiposte. It’s like saying we use OH Pistol as a CC weapon in PvE.
Truely personal defense weapons that are strong in PvP (Staff, Torch) go completely unused in PvE except in specific circumstances.
Shield 4 is actually really potent if built correctly. Assuming you can proc the Blocks easily (which, as I’ve stated, is not the case in PvE) it conjures two Phantasms, which means with Chronophantasma benefits 4x from Persistence of Memory from itself alone (remember it also benefits from PoM from any other Shattered Phantasm). This makes it an excellent Illusion generation tool and greatly reduces its CD. If the Block component had significant meaning in PvE, it would be good.
Even so Shield 4 is potent because of potential low CD blocking and Shatter fodder, not because of the power of the Phantasm. It definitely needs something given we’re sacrificing half of our offensive Phantasms for it.
Offhand sword provides essentially the same or more amount of blocking as offhand shield ovekittenriod of 30 seconds. That’s what I meant by personal defense. Reflection and personal defense are one and the same in PvE where some of your biggest threats are projectile attacks, it’s why I included focus in there.
I probably missed your “personal defense” part but I still want to say that offhand sword and focus offer personal defense options without completely gutting your damage.
2 crappy phantasms and persistence of memory is hardly an appeal, especially since persistence of memory competes with compounding power (9% increased damage) so it’s not included in any DPS centered PvE mesmer build, only on shatter PvE support builds such as the alacrity sharing wells chrono spec.
Asking someone to use their head is not the same as saying what is in that head is stupid. I will repeat. There is a reason Pyro posts as Fay now.
The last part of your post makes me curious.
Do you only care about changes that affect the max dps specs you listed? Let’s make it an offhand warhorn instead.
The four skill is something called tempo, channel for three seconds and blast the group once per second, completing the channel grants aoe super speed.
The five skill is a phantasm that will mimic the birds from ranger warhorn each time it attacks except these are butterflies, they do next to no physical damage but they confuse, weaken, and quicken your enemies.
This warhorn could fix confusion and blasts for PvE. But does it fit into your vision of the game.
I don’t think the warhorn would be particularly bad, because it provides blasts. I likely still won’t use it since it’s a condition weapons and condition mesmers just aren’t viable in PvE since the competitive condi builds in PvE feature heavy burning stacks and lots of frontloaded condi cleave, not slow single target condi ramp up. And due to the nature of mobs in PvE confusion will always be a weaker form of bleed, which is very weak compared to burning already.
My suggestion would be to nerf burning and move that damage back to bleeds. Bleeds at the beginning were designed to be the most damaging condition to ramp up, but burning was the higher baseline damage condition with limited access. Now classes have high to permanent uptime to burning, and it does more damage than bleeds/confusion/torment at all stack levels.
I do think your suggestion would make for a fine pve condi offhand, if condi ever became a thing in PvE. Because like the ranger warhorn, the multihit part means you can proc a lot of bleeds from all those crits on top of the confusion it inflicts. God knows condi mesmers don’t hav very god offhands either.
But as mesmers quite simply staff and scepter are rather ill suited for PvE, and the supporting taitlines of chaos and inspiration, while nice in pvp, don’t offer uch benefit to the pve side of condi builds the way grenadesinister engineers or axe/torch rangers get.
We’re just stuck with power specs for PvE, until they revisit scepter/staff for PvE and make more traits in the Chaos/Illusion lines attractive for PvE, ot to mention the only condition phantasm we have, iMage, has a horrendous 30 sec cd and does a measly 1 stack of burning for 6 seconds.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
They’d bring sinister engineers. I’m serious. Since this game’s release, despite necromancer being titled the master of conditions, it is the engineer who has completely eclipsed every other class in all game formats as a condition class.
It is heads and shoulders better. So much so, it’s actually right at the heels of a staff ele in DPS output TODAY, and everyone’s asking for ele nerfs.
And if they nerf engineers, people would take condi ranger/guard over mesmer. As I said, the strong condi specs right now are those with heavy burning stacks access, that can cleave conditions well, and that doesn’t have too much ramp up.
Mesmer doesn’t cleave condis well, has limited/inferior access to burning, and has a large ramp up time.
Most importantly, the PvE mesmer condi spec is about using staff and staff clones in melee range for bouncing condi stack. Unfortunately clones are made of wet tissue paper and this game’s PvE loves to spam aoe/cleave, destroying illusions immediately and gimping a large source of our staff condi application.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would wonder where you were getting this “info,” considering all of our raid information has been vague in the extreme.
I would wonder if you’re listening to what people are saying, about Mesmer condi in PvE. I would wonder if you’ve ever tried it, to realize that we simply don’t have access to the useful condis in a useful way.
Mostly, I would wonder what any of this has to do with the problems faced by Shields in PvE.
And not all mobs have breakbars? Come one. Many if not most mobs that require a sustained amount of damage in a party setting (aka, any that it’s actually useful to summon phantasms on) had a breakbar in the beta weekends. Just like similar mobs have Defiance in the game as it is now. Even random vets have breakbars in Verdant Brink.
Unless you think we should be summoning iAvenger on the trash mobs, for the 3 seconds before they get burned down?
dulfy http://dulfy.net/2015/09/02/gw2-designing-challenging-content/
Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight. Some encounters are going to push you to try different weapons you rarely use, some are going to challenge you to select traits you haven’t considered equipping before, and some encounters may even require a member of your group to dust off that toughness gear to bulk up and tank some heavy hits to protect the condition-build players in the back. This is just a tiny sample of the types of build roles we want to push as a core part of Guild Wars 2 dynamic combat.
The entirely of my comments on shield was under the assumption that this was common knowledge.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)
Unless HoT includes a lot of mobs that run around for no reason and spam skills like machine guns, Condi Mesmers won’t be used over any other Condi spec.
I’m sure they’ll include Husk-like mobs that are weak to Condi dmg, but it won’t be up to Mesmers to fill that role.
Yeah, just on the note of condies…
Lets assume that raids absolutely require some condie specced characters. If they do, mesmers will be literally the last choice of every single class in the game to be that condie character. We have the absolute worst PvE condie application, hands down, no contest.
Mesmers will not be condie in raids.
Yeah, just on the note of condies…
Lets assume that raids absolutely require some condie specced characters. If they do, mesmers will be literally the last choice of every single class in the game to be that condie character. We have the absolute worst PvE condie application, hands down, no contest.
Mesmers will not be condie in raids.
I was under the impression that since condi mesmer can stack torment and confusion equally well it adds up to or exceeds solo stacking bleed.
The point of mentioning raids as well as condi is that the meta is very uncertain at this point. And it seems that in raids you cannot ignore survivability.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
What if I told you raids needed a character to be coloured pink to damage the boss or that they needed an “M” in the class name to not get one shot. What if I said can only be hurt by Mesmer shields?
It doesn’t change that for everything else the shield lacks utility and that you will suffer in damage for using it.
Also, if you want to be listened to and responded to I would suggest not making threatening posts to other forum users. No you weren’t being insulting nor aggressive but you were certainly behaving in a threatening manner a few posts back. I would suggest a rethink and edit might do everyone a bit of good and I don’t just mean Daniel.
(edited by apharma.3741)
Yeah, just on the note of condies…
Lets assume that raids absolutely require some condie specced characters. If they do, mesmers will be literally the last choice of every single class in the game to be that condie character. We have the absolute worst PvE condie application, hands down, no contest.
Mesmers will not be condie in raids.
I was under the impression that since condi mesmer can stack torment and confusion equally well it adds up to or exceeds solo stacking bleed.
The point of mentioning raids as well as condi is that the meta is very uncertain at this point. And it seems that in raids you cannot ignore survivability.
Burns man, burns.
Bleeds are so 2014 and bosses still have to move/activate skills to get the most out of torment/confusion.
Yeah, just on the note of condies…
Lets assume that raids absolutely require some condie specced characters. If they do, mesmers will be literally the last choice of every single class in the game to be that condie character. We have the absolute worst PvE condie application, hands down, no contest.
Mesmers will not be condie in raids.
I was under the impression that since condi mesmer can stack torment and confusion equally well it adds up to or exceeds solo stacking bleed.
The point of mentioning raids as well as condi is that the meta is very uncertain at this point. And it seems that in raids you cannot ignore survivability.
Unfortunately, you are not correct. Confusion damage is tiny unless the mob actually uses skills. Torment damage is tiny unless the mob is continually walking around. Additionally, even moving torment is far less than burning, and confusion procs just don’t happen often enough to do good damage except in fringe cases like subject alpha.
In fact, our torment/confusion stacking is far inferior to what we can produce from bleed/burn stacking just with 3 staff clones and autoattacking in staff, and that’s not particularly high either. If you compare it to what a good condie stacking class can do (trap ranger/condie engineer, even necro) it’s absolutely worthless.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would wonder where you were getting this “info,” considering all of our raid information has been vague in the extreme.
I would wonder if you’re listening to what people are saying, about Mesmer condi in PvE. I would wonder if you’ve ever tried it, to realize that we simply don’t have access to the useful condis in a useful way.
Mostly, I would wonder what any of this has to do with the problems faced by Shields in PvE.
And not all mobs have breakbars? Come one. Many if not most mobs that require a sustained amount of damage in a party setting (aka, any that it’s actually useful to summon phantasms on) had a breakbar in the beta weekends. Just like similar mobs have Defiance in the game as it is now. Even random vets have breakbars in Verdant Brink.
Unless you think we should be summoning iAvenger on the trash mobs, for the 3 seconds before they get burned down?
dulfy http://dulfy.net/2015/09/02/gw2-designing-challenging-content/
Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight. Some encounters are going to push you to try different weapons you rarely use, some are going to challenge you to select traits you haven’t considered equipping before, and some encounters may even require a member of your group to dust off that toughness gear to bulk up and tank some heavy hits to protect the condition-build players in the back. This is just a tiny sample of the types of build roles we want to push as a core part of Guild Wars 2 dynamic combat.
The entirely of my comments on shield was under the assumption that this was common knowledge.
Other people have responded to your apparent belief that we could cover a need for condis in PvE. They did it better than I could have.
As for tanky builds, if you really think the two single-blocks on Mesmer shield will somehow make us a “tanky” class, I don’t really have a ton of ways to respond to that. They won’t.
On the plus side, well support builds can go condi just as well as they can power.
On the plus side, well support builds can go condi just as well as they can power.
Not really though. I’m dropping well of calamity every 12 seconds or so, along with chaos storm on a quite low cooldown as well. Both of those scale quite well with power and practically not at all with condie. You’d lose a pretty significant chunk of dps going condie, even considering the amount you’re shattering. Remember that most of the shatters are 1 illusion, with some being just IP and a couple being more than 1. Since BD doesn’t care about illusions shattered, you’re not trying to maximize that, but confusion/torment do care.
On the plus side, well support builds can go condi just as well as they can power.
Not really though. I’m dropping well of calamity every 12 seconds or so, along with chaos storm on a quite low cooldown as well. Both of those scale quite well with power and practically not at all with condie. You’d lose a pretty significant chunk of dps going condie, even considering the amount you’re shattering. Remember that most of the shatters are 1 illusion, with some being just IP and a couple being more than 1. Since BD doesn’t care about illusions shattered, you’re not trying to maximize that, but confusion/torment do care.
It’d be a second balance, as you’d also want to try harder to get illusions out, but I don’t think it’d be too bad.
I’ll work on it some more, hopefully have something before next BWE
(edited by AlphatheWhite.9351)
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
What if I told you raids needed a character to be coloured pink to damage the boss or that they needed an “M” in the class name to not get one shot. What if I said can only be hurt by Mesmer shields?
It doesn’t change that for everything else the shield lacks utility and that you will suffer in damage for using it.
Also, if you want to be listened to and responded to I would suggest not making threatening posts to other forum users. No you weren’t being insulting nor aggressive but you were certainly behaving in a threatening manner a few posts back. I would suggest a rethink and edit might do everyone a bit of good and I don’t just mean Daniel.
Threats imply that I can carry out the malevolent aspect of the supposed promise. In situations when one does not hold the power, your version of threat is simply a rhetorical appeal.
Back on topic here is my upgrade then. When you use shield 4 it makes a bubble. Why not make it so that when that bubble ends it is a blast finisher. It makes a reliable blast, and the synergy with phantasma and persistence and mental defense gives you the potential of near constant blast finshers while under fire. Would that be enough?
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
What if I told you raids needed a character to be coloured pink to damage the boss or that they needed an “M” in the class name to not get one shot. What if I said can only be hurt by Mesmer shields?
It doesn’t change that for everything else the shield lacks utility and that you will suffer in damage for using it.
Also, if you want to be listened to and responded to I would suggest not making threatening posts to other forum users. No you weren’t being insulting nor aggressive but you were certainly behaving in a threatening manner a few posts back. I would suggest a rethink and edit might do everyone a bit of good and I don’t just mean Daniel.
Threats imply that I can carry out the malevolent aspect of the supposed promise. In situations when one does not hold the power, your version of threat is simply a rhetorical appeal.
Back on topic here is my upgrade then. When you use shield 4 it makes a bubble. Why not make it so that when that bubble ends it is a blast finisher. It makes a reliable blast, and the synergy with phantasma and persistence and mental defense gives you the potential of near constant blast finshers while under fire. Would that be enough?
Blast on end is exactly the kind of unreliability that makes The Prestige a terrible blast finisher. Make it blast on start and I’ll agree it’s a good solution.
*On the other hand, not sure why adding a blast is your solution to the fact that iAvenger is an awful phantasm.
(edited by AlphatheWhite.9351)
I’d rather the terrible phantasm be fixed, not “well, the phantasm is so terrible that I’ll make a solution to shatter him more often since that’s the real use you’ll get out of him”.
Now what if I told you raids require condi specced characters. What if I told you condi dps is not reliant on the offhand for sustain. What if I told you that not all mobs have break bars.
What if I told you raids needed a character to be coloured pink to damage the boss or that they needed an “M” in the class name to not get one shot. What if I said can only be hurt by Mesmer shields?
It doesn’t change that for everything else the shield lacks utility and that you will suffer in damage for using it.
Also, if you want to be listened to and responded to I would suggest not making threatening posts to other forum users. No you weren’t being insulting nor aggressive but you were certainly behaving in a threatening manner a few posts back. I would suggest a rethink and edit might do everyone a bit of good and I don’t just mean Daniel.
Threats imply that I can carry out the malevolent aspect of the supposed promise. In situations when one does not hold the power, your version of threat is simply a rhetorical appeal.
Back on topic here is my upgrade then. When you use shield 4 it makes a bubble. Why not make it so that when that bubble ends it is a blast finisher. It makes a reliable blast, and the synergy with phantasma and persistence and mental defense gives you the potential of near constant blast finshers while under fire. Would that be enough?
Blast on end is exactly the kind of unreliability that makes The Prestige a terrible blast finisher. Make it blast on start and I’ll agree it’s a good solution.
*On the other hand, not sure why adding a blast is your solution to the fact that iAvenger is an awful phantasm.
Even the shortest of combo fields is at least 3 seconds long. The benefit is that you have the potential to blast the field 1-6 times. Your quickness uptime means the blast comes 1.15ish seconds later.
As for the phantasm, make it throw the shield like engineer shield, but cause 3 stacks of confusion to things it hits.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)
I think people have told you several times why confusion is bad, and making the shield from a power weapon into a crappy hybrid one does not fix this.
I think people have told you several times why confusion is bad, and making the shield from a power weapon into a crappy hybrid one does not fix this.
Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.
Design a shield phantasm for us.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Increase alacrity to 2 seconds and give quickness for 2 seconds, phantasm base attack rate is 5 seconds and when it attacks it pulses the alacrity in an aoe aura instead of the awful bounce mechanic. In addition to the slow the shield also applies weakness and bounces to 5 targets. Weakness and slow duration is 3 seconds.
Shield 4 before summoning a phantasm grants allies aegis when a block is triggered. If a block doesn’t trigger, it gives allies protection instead for 4 seconds after the end of the channel.
Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.
Design a shield phantasm for us.
Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.
As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.
(edited by AtomsOrSystems.9420)
Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.
Design a shield phantasm for us.
Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.
As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.
I agree with confusion being misplaced, so as you can see I switched the suggestion to weakness.
Your second comment makes no sense. I actually did read Zeniths comments on the shield. And the only one that redesigns shield is the initial post, which only adjusts the spawn duration by a second. I personally thought he might want to elaborate. You seem to think he is restating a point, I think he is sharing a new opinion, especially since the information contained within his reply is not found in any of his other posts in this thread.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.
Design a shield phantasm for us.
Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.
As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.
I agree with confusion being misplaced, so as you can see I switched the suggestion to weakness.
Your second comment makes no sense. I actually did read Zeniths comments on the shield. And the only one that redesigns shield is the initial post, which only adjusts the spawn duration by a second. I personally thought he might want to elaborate. You seem to think he is restating a point, I think he is sharing a new opinion, especially since the information contained within his reply is not found in any of his other posts in this thread.
Zenith (and anyone else) should of course feel free to add any new ideas they might have. But they didn’t volunteer them in a vacuum; they restated some original points, with some changes, after you did what you’ve done several times in this thread: trying to shut other people’s ideas down, then challenging them in an oddly combative manner.
Frankly, that kind of behavior is disingenuous at best. You’ve presumably seen the initial suggestions, and I know you’ve seen an overview of them all, because I posted it for you. Yet you continue to act as though you’re talking in a vacuum, instead of a multi-page thread, and there have been no ideas put forth. There have. Many of them. And you know it. If I didn’t know better, I could think you were trying to put some kind of “burden of proof” on the other person, in an effort to shut them up.
I assume that you, like everyone, just wants the best for the game and for the Mesmer profession. So, as I asked before, please stop. Stop asking questions you know have already been answered. Stop speculating on new content we know little or nothing about, and then speculating that shield must be fine because it will fill some role there. Stop bringing up other posters’ forum history. Stop with random digressions into theorycrafting for… warhorn? Mostly, stop acting like the concerns of everyone in this thread are meaningless because they don’t match up with your concerns, either because you’re focused on PvP, and this is a PvE thread, or whatever else. I assume it’s unintentional, but it comes across as very combative, and can (has) served to derail the conversation more than once.
Except Robert specifcally said the damage was incidental not the focus of the weapon. So shield is not a power weapon. You could easily replace the confusion with weakness or some other defensive condition that goes through breakbars.
Design a shield phantasm for us.
Adding Confusion is entirely toothless, for all the reasons everyone was telling you above. Also, it goes against the “focus” that you keep referring back to, that it’s not supposed to be a damage weapon.
As for designing a shield phantasm, stop. Please. There are four pages here with suggestions on how to improve the shield phantasm. Don’t make someone restate them, again, because you don’t like them.
I agree with confusion being misplaced, so as you can see I switched the suggestion to weakness.
Your second comment makes no sense. I actually did read Zeniths comments on the shield. And the only one that redesigns shield is the initial post, which only adjusts the spawn duration by a second. I personally thought he might want to elaborate. You seem to think he is restating a point, I think he is sharing a new opinion, especially since the information contained within his reply is not found in any of his other posts in this thread.
Zenith (and anyone else) should of course feel free to add any new ideas they might have. But they didn’t volunteer them in a vacuum; they restated some original points, with some changes, after you did what you’ve done several times in this thread: trying to shut other people’s ideas down, then challenging them in an oddly combative manner.
Frankly, that kind of behavior is disingenuous at best. You’ve presumably seen the initial suggestions, and I know you’ve seen an overview of them all, because I posted it for you. Yet you continue to act as though you’re talking in a vacuum, instead of a multi-page thread, and there have been no ideas put forth. There have. Many of them. And you know it. If I didn’t know better, I could think you were trying to put some kind of “burden of proof” on the other person, in an effort to shut them up.
I assume that you, like everyone, just wants the best for the game and for the Mesmer profession. So, as I asked before, please stop. Stop asking questions you know have already been answered. Stop speculating on new content we know little or nothing about, and then speculating that shield must be fine because it will fill some role there. Stop bringing up other posters’ forum history. Stop with random digressions into theorycrafting for… warhorn? Mostly, stop acting like the concerns of everyone in this thread are meaningless because they don’t match up with your concerns, either because you’re focused on PvP, and this is a PvE thread, or whatever else. I assume it’s unintentional, but it comes across as very combative, and can (has) served to derail the conversation more than once.
Your concerns as a I see them.
- With mesmer dps linked to their phantasm, any offhand that does not have acceptable damage, or acceptable levels of support to make up that damage, is inadequate. Therefore torch, and shield are inadequate
- With mesmer dps linked to their autoattacks, any mainhand/two handed weapon that does not have acceptable damage, or acceptable levels of support to make of up that damage, is inadequate. Therefore staff, greatsword, scepter are inadequate.
- The shield specifically suffers because blocks are not useful in pve. Bounces are too random for any consistent benefit. And the shield itself takes too long to summon a phantasm.
- The usefulness of the shield phantasm currently borders on whether or not perma alacrity can create higher levels of group dps.
All of these concerns are meaningful. The issue for me is that they speak to a min-max style of playing. The word "bring"a mesmer is brought up, as if people play classes based on damage alone. People constantly refer to getting kicked from parties, implying that they are not playing with friends, or casually. You create a concept like competitive pve, which may exist I do not know. If that desire is to balance the classes so that damage is within 10% of each other, there will still be 5 classes per party and 10 classes per raid. And since unifying damage and application at the same time is impossible without destroying class versatility, certain classes will still take meta preference in that system. Without complete equality, some classes will still not be allowed into parties, or at least look down upon.
This is not a pvp or pve or wvw thing, as I have used all weapons in all modes. You treat me as if I am catering to a single game mode, yet you are catering to a single build. If you were to remove all damage from the phantasms and give it to the mesmer, binding the phantasms to utility. The mesmer would still rank lower in that system since the utility would be bound to a thing that can be destroyed and dies upon killing its target. It is hard for the developers to balance a trait or weapon to work against a computer simulated monster and a player with actual intelligence.
I apologize if any of this came off as combative. My initial equating of frustrations was probably a bad idea. However the general concept remains the same. As in gw1, mesmer is outperforming baseline in areas where the enemy has intelligence, and underperforming in areas where the enemy isn’t smart.
But please do not say that you want whats best for the Mesmer profession. Not in a thread where people discount some of the most unique aspects of the profession simply because it is not useful to them.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.
Allow cancelling shield #4 to summon the phantasm immediately and put the skill on full cooldown (skipping deja vu).