Guild Wars 2

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Oh, and to answer Fay’s question, I think something like a .4 reduction of Mantra cast time would be perfect.

Someone also had the idea that Mantras begin their cooldown immediately after being charged, the way Mimic/Echo does. I like that idea a lot too.

I’m with you on a further reduction on the cast time. I feel like 2-2.5 seconds is the money charge time… Anet needs to give the mesmer some good buffs for these mantras to actually be viable in pvp next month.

“Empowering Mantras punishes you for using your mantras because you will want to keep them up.”

I wanted to comment on this post. I agree absolutely with this. Empowering mantra’s makes little sense when you consider the ways in which mantra’s are used and the type of build play people focus on with mantras. People use mantra’s for their defensive and support uses, not for their offensive power; utility skills are not good weapons. And I would never sacrifice utility slots for a small increase in damage, I need those too much for other things.

That was why in the thread started by developer Jonathon Sharp I suggested replacing the effect of Empowering Mantra’s with Mantra Mastery, and giving mantra mastery the ability instead to grant mantra’s aoe when you activate their effects. This way instead of one skill doing aoe stability, we get aoe effects for each mantra, either allies for defensive skills, or group damage from skills like mantra of pain. The long charge times, ease of interruption, and long recharges would still easily balance the use of these skills while giving us the needed utility these skills have desperately craved. For those who argue its too powerful, making mantra mastery a grandmaster trait should limit abusive specs for mantra skills, although master level I feel is good enough already.

Final Word: I get they are throwing mesmer’s a bone with this upcoming update, but compared to what they are giving the other classes, it lacks the most.

Something i m wonder, correct me if i m in a wrong way.

As mesmer alone ( mantra no trait), when charged i have 2 * 2.5 scd of stab for moc. Something i ll use in pvp against a stun warrior for example.

According that i m a wvwvw player in zerg ( bad guy, alone moc is underpowered 2*2.5 scd of stab is not enough to be offensive. But it s an aoe boon sharing, so i find 4 other nice mesmer : we stack 5*2.5=12.50 scd stab, 2 scd later 5*2.5=12.50 = perma stab?
It should be too OP, i think that it ll be as Line of focus for speed, you share stab but it s not stacking with the other stab. So in that case 5 mesmer, if boon give in prior group u can maintain perma stab but it s far too boring. I think you can t play 2 hours like that.

@ Fay : What i wish fot theese change

i let Mor with aoe cleanse, i give a finisher combo on charging ( use when your raid raid repack in order to rebuff ).
I change Moc completely : charging moc give you stab for 5 scd if no trait ( almost guard stab it s big up), traited charging moc give you 7.5 scd stab ( almost war stab ), u can even have better with boon duration. use your charge of moc apply random boon on you and your allies.

Use Mor, Moc and nul field should be interresting in raid, zerg as your role is to boon strip and give boons.

It s just ideas of medium random player. I assume that make a balance skill is hard but perhaps we can discuss.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Mantras shouldn’t lose their charge when downed.

Not only when downed: transitioning between water and ground, or changing area (zoning, leaving an instance…), shouldn’t discharge mantra either.
I don’t know of the feasibility, but it really is a pain when you lose your condition cleanse for going into water, or can’t heal when you spawn in the middle of a DE after leaving a personal story instance.

chat.4062:

Something i m wonder, correct me if i m in a wrong way.

As mesmer alone ( mantra no trait), when charged i have 2 * 2.5 scd of stab for moc. Something i ll use in pvp against a stun warrior for example.

According that i m a wvwvw player in zerg ( bad guy, alone moc is underpowered 2*2.5 scd of stab is not enough to be offensive. But it s an aoe boon sharing, so i find 4 other nice mesmer : we stack 5*2.5=12.50 scd stab, 2 scd later 5*2.5=12.50 = perma stab?
It should be too OP, i think that it ll be as Line of focus for speed, you share stab but it s not stacking with the other stab. So in that case 5 mesmer, if boon give in prior group u can maintain perma stab but it s far too boring. I think you can t play 2 hours like that.

@ Fay : What i wish fot theese change

i let Mor with aoe cleanse, i give a finisher combo on charging ( use when your raid raid repack in order to rebuff ).
I change Moc completely : charging moc give you stab for 5 scd if no trait ( almost guard stab it s big up), traited charging moc give you 7.5 scd stab ( almost war stab ), u can even have better with boon duration. use your charge of moc apply random boon on you and your allies.

Use Mor, Moc and nul field should be interresting in raid, zerg as your role is to boon strip and give boons.

It s just ideas of medium random player. I assume that make a balance skill is hard but perhaps we can discuss.

I must disagree with you I think chat. Firstly, if its so boring to run perma stability, then no one is going to bother to run it. Which means its not OP. Secondly, How about we just get a group of 5 guardians together and share around stability that way if we are all so nice to share it. Or maybe spec for 3 mantra activations on a mesmer instead of two, and use signet to share stability after stacking it with everyone since 5 mesmers showed up. We can already do this, so I disagree its OP. Its not. You think sharing an effect on cast of mantra is overpowered? I am not going to bother diffusing your math, as having 5 people together with the same build is too unlikely. Even if it was common, we could limit it to say the effect only hits up to 3 people instead of 5. Either way, the argument is a very poor one; its useless in 1v1, sPvP since you aren’t likely to be going with large group aoe and in WvW enemy zergs can carry boon removal, or just bring their own to even the playing field. Saying a whole team is all the same class running duplicate builds for stacking just doesn’t fly. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, something I had to learn the hard way myself: boons have hard caps on them already. Certain boons won’t extend past x duration time, and further some boons don’t stack beyond a set amount, like oh stability maybe? That’s right, you can only have 3 stacks of stability and then you can’t stack no more. So the boons already are prevented from being OP by their own built in limits anyways.

The October 15 patch may make mantras viable in pve but in pvp it will still not be suboptimal.

@Freedan,

Empowering Mantras, I think, would benefit to mantras that are not used often – Mantra of Resolve, Concentration, and Distraction. It is definitely the opposite of the rest of the mantra traits.

Fay.2735:

First a question to all of you: What would you do to improve mantras and their traits to make them viable in PvP if you could?

I would add new trait: when you recharge one mantra all mantras that are off cooldown are recharged (40 sec cooldown).

How would you guys feel if the mantra procced half of the effect when charging up, and then you could use them as normal?

For example: I just ran out of charges of MoRes, then, when charging it up again, 1 condition is removed (upon succesful charge up), without using up charges.

Although it doesn’t address the main charge-up problem, I feel that if I’m charging up MoResolve, it’s because I need to cleanse conditions, not an aoe heal (thoguh I guess this trait should stay, since it would be a nerf to the supportive side of the mantras, being able to only heal with MoRec).

Of course this could also proc a different effect, like each mantra granting a different specific boon upon charge up, or something like that. Would it be more rewarding/worth the pain it is charging them up?

Honestly I just think that the charge time on mantras needed to be lowered. It just took too long and has a very obvious tell with the hand waving and the symbol over head. This is from a pvp/wvw standpoint though.

Tutankhamun, I agree with the visibility being way too obvious with lots of time to perform interrupts of some kind. The charge time is a problem, but I am concerned that lowering it will fail to resolve the issue that these are suboptimal skills that provide modest utility at a cost of you being out of commission for several seconds to perform these skills. Other skills are either really fast or at least fast and don’t take you away from the important job of killing your target; mantra’s do. The power of the skills themselves needs to be stronger, or as Gizuko pointed out there needs to be additional effects that occur on startup of the skill, i.e. when using concentration to give yourself stability, maybe it procs aegis when you first start casting. They need more power to the skills, so they can maintain their current mechanics without taking too much away from the active battle as its happening. Remember, these are chargeup skills; in every game I have ever played a charged up skill was powerful. These are not. That’s why I think its a matter of amplitude, rather than just recharge. If you pay alot up front, you should get something really good, thats my philosophy and thats how these skills should run.