Guild Wars 2

Currently, Mantras are not only clunky to use, but are almost completely worthless without traits. I also personally hate the multiple charges system as, IMO, Mantras should be powerful spells even if you only cast them once; not weak spells that are spammed between channels.

Here are my ideas of how Mantras should be polished (or rather, overhauled). Please share your ideas as well.

All Mantras

• Reduce channel time from 4s to 3s
• Reduce number of casts per channel from 2 to 1

Should make Mantras less clunky to use and address my pet gripe of multiple charges.

Mantra of Recovery

• Increase base healing from 2620 to 6520

This returns Mantra of Recovery to its original (total) healing, before they steath-nerfed it for no reason.

Mantra of Pain

• Increase base damage from 324 to 650
• Increase cool down from 1s to 5s

There is no reason for Mantra of Pain to have almost no cool down, all it serves to do is to make it incompatible with Mantra Mastery and break Restorative Mantras, which many believe is the reason Mantra channel time was nerfed from 3s to 4s.

Mantra of Distraction

• Increase Daze duration from 1s to 3s
• Decrease cool down from 30s to 15s

This turns Mantra of Distraction into a silence as well as an interrupt.

Mantra of Resolve

• Increase number of conditions cleansed from 2 to all
• Additional effect: immune to conditions for 5s
• Decrease cool down from 20s to 15s

This returns Mantra of Resolve to its original power, with an added effect to make it competitive with other condition cleansers.

Mantra of Concentration

• Increase Stability duration from 2s to 5s
• Decrease cool down from 25s to 15s

Again returns Mantra of Concentration to its original power. Seriously, this was a never-used Mantra to begin with, then they changed it and made it totally worthless.

Harmonious Mantras

• Overhauled effect: reduce Mantra channel time from 3s to 2s (instead of “Health! Vigour! Recovery!” you’d chant “Health! Recovery!”)

I hate multiple charges, and I think this is a good effect worthy of Grandmaster. I know I’d want it if I play a Mantra build, but it’s not essential like the previous versions of this horrid trait.

Protected Mantras

• Overhauled effect: gives you Protection for 1s for every second you’re channelling a Mantra (including when you start channelling); Gives you Protection for 2s when you finish channelling a Mantra, or 3s if you have Harmonious Mantras

The original effect was +250 Toughness while channelling, which really made little difference. The idea of this is to provide 5s Protection, but in a round-about way so it cannot be abused by channel-cancellers.

Empowering Mantras

• Increase damage bonus from channelled Mantras from 4% to 5%

Since Mantras won’t have multiple charges, this deserves a small buff (or rather, reversal of a nerf).

Restorative Mantras

• Healing is triggered by casting instead of finish channelling a Mantra

To make it more intuitive and easier to use.

I agree with your ideas 100%, however, the numbers might be a little off, might need a little testing.

Pak.2416:

I agree with your ideas 100%, however, the numbers might be a little off, might need a little testing.

I’m sure they are, especially with MoR as while I suggested returning it to its previous healing, I also suggested reducing channel time by 1s; which may be too much together.

Most of the changes I proposed however are reversals of what Anet has done to Mantras during the Beta.

Well.. if they did the changes once.. why you want them back? if they did the changes be4 it was probably because they were way too OP as they used to be.. lol
specially..
Mantra of Resolve
Increase number of conditions cleansed from 2 to all
Additional effect: immune to conditions for 5s
Decrease cool down from 20s to 15s
This returns Mantra of Resolve to its original power, with an added effect to make it competitive with other condition cleansers.

Well.. if they did the changes once.. why you want them back? if they did the changes be4 it was probably because they were way too OP as they used to be.. lol
specially..
Mantra of Resolve
Increase number of conditions cleansed from 2 to all
Additional effect: immune to conditions for 5s
Decrease cool down from 20s to 15s
This returns Mantra of Resolve to its original power, with an added effect to make it competitive with other condition cleansers.Lol immune to conds for 5s.. with a 15s cd.. srsly? not counting the fact that you can cast it while moving..
waaayy too stronk..

ConterK.3972:

Well.. if they did the changes once.. why you want them back? if they did the changes be4 it was probably because they were way too OP as they used to be.. lol
specially..
Mantra of Resolve
Increase number of conditions cleansed from 2 to all
Additional effect: immune to conditions for 5s
Decrease cool down from 20s to 15s
This returns Mantra of Resolve to its original power, with an added effect to make it competitive with other condition cleansers.

Well.. if they did the changes once.. why you want them back? if they did the changes be4 it was probably because they were way too OP as they used to be.. lol
specially..
Mantra of Resolve
Increase number of conditions cleansed from 2 to all
Additional effect: immune to conditions for 5s
Decrease cool down from 20s to 15s
This returns Mantra of Resolve to its original power, with an added effect to make it competitive with other condition cleansers.Lol immune to conds for 5s.. with a 15s cd.. srsly? not counting the fact that you can cast it while moving..
waaayy too stronk..

If you were not in the Beta you would not understand how Mantras were and why changes occurred.

Long story short, Mantras used to be weak because Mantra traits were OP. Anet then changed Mantra traits (specifically Harmonious Mantras) so that they’re less OP, with the idea that untraited Mantras could be buffed. The problem is, they way they went about it they actually made untraited Mantras even weaker than before, and now they don’t even have OP traits to help them out.

The reason I want to reverse the changes is because I feel Anet went about the wrong way to balance Mantras and their traits, and I want to propose another way to balance them: specifically one that does not involve multiple charges.

Also, I can tell you have never used Mantras yourself because you do not understand how debilitating the long channelling of a Mantra is. It is essentially a self-Daze and makes channelling Mantras during combat near-impossible without wasting a defensive skill to cover for it.

I’m not sure how I feel about these suggestions because I didn’t play enough Mesmer during beta, but I do know that right now the mantras can’t compete with most of the other utility skills, at least for me, so I’d be in favor of them getting looked at.

Personally, when I first heard of them, I immediately thought of the old DAOC Warlock mechanic. I know this isn’t quite the same thing—but it wouldn’t take much to get there, and the philosophy is the same (pay an up front casting time cost for a later instant spell with devastating—and customizable—results). I’ll gladly concede, however, that the game climate is very different now, so Mantras may be as close an iteration as this generation of games will tolerate. And, after all, Mesmers already inherited the Theurgist mechanic. I can dream though.

I agree that they need a bit of a buff, but I don’t agree that it should be in the direction of less casts and more powerful. The actual mechanic is fine as it is – if you’re mantra-ing, again, as with the rest of the Mesmer playstyle, you’re a busy bee, channelling and casting as you go, and thinking ahead. Channelling time just needs taken down a sec, and Pain needs just a tad more damage.

I agree with you as with the mantras need fixing. I mean look at they’re tooltips as we all saw from Mr. Promethius’s video ANet didn’t have time to put in the right names and tooltips for the mantra boons? The numbers need adjusting but I feel ANet will resolve this problem as fast as they can, hopefully.

Please do not change the charges of my mantras. It’s so useful to have 2 charges (and 3 if you spec for it). If you think they need to act like our normal heal then you aren’t utilizing it properly. It took me a while to figure out how to use it well and after I did (and after I stopped being afraid to take a time out of combat in long fights to recharge my mantra) it became significantly more powerful.

Ceribis.8104:

Please do not change the charges of my mantras. It’s so useful to have 2 charges (and 3 if you spec for it). If you think they need to act like our normal heal then you aren’t utilizing it properly. It took me a while to figure out how to use it well and after I did (and after I stopped being afraid to take a time out of combat in long fights to recharge my mantra) it became significantly more powerful.

Mantra of Recovery was my favourite heal throughout Beta, I only stopped using it when they nerfed its healing from 3260 per charge to 2620 per charge for no reason. I know how to use MoR and how to channel it in combat (stealth skills, CC and just LoSing helps a lot), the reason I don’t use it anymore is simple: it’s no longer worth using without traits. Its HPS isn’t much better than Ether Feast now and doesn’t justify its 4s self-Daze.

Embolism.8106:

Ceribis.8104:

Please do not change the charges of my mantras. It’s so useful to have 2 charges (and 3 if you spec for it). If you think they need to act like our normal heal then you aren’t utilizing it properly. It took me a while to figure out how to use it well and after I did (and after I stopped being afraid to take a time out of combat in long fights to recharge my mantra) it became significantly more powerful.

Mantra of Recovery was my favourite heal throughout Beta, I only stopped using it when they nerfed its healing from 3260 per charge to 2620 per charge for no reason. I know how to use MoR and how to channel it in combat (stealth skills, CC and just LoSing helps a lot), the reason I don’t use it anymore is simple: it’s no longer worth using without traits. Its HPS isn’t much better than Ether Feast now and doesn’t justify its 4s self-Daze.

Yea, I see what you mean. My spec right now specs for the third charge so it’s more useful for me. However, even with the reduction I don’t think it validates the changes proposed.

Embolism.8106:

Mantra of Recovery was my favourite heal throughout Beta, I only stopped using it when they nerfed its healing from 3260 per charge to 2620 per charge for no reason.

Your post would be stronger without the hyperbole. I agree with you that Mantras need work, but saying things like “they did it for no reason” weakens your argument. Instead of being analytical it comes across as class whining (at least to me). I also wasn’t a big fan of how Mantras were changed at the end of beta, but they surely changed numbers for a reason – obviously they thought it would be too powerful.

I like the concept of a Mantra, but they’re definitely… off. Take Mantra of Pain, I really don’t see why I’d slot it in a utility slot when A] The damage is low and provides no utility and B] Can only be used 2(3) times before it’s unavailable without a long channel.

With Mantras having diverse effects such as damage, heal, daze, etc I’m thinking they need to move away from the idea of all mantras having an equal number of charges. Something like a Daze with multiple charges is far more powerful than Mantra of Pain with multiple charges. Perhaps Harmonious Mantras should be reworked to increase the power or add new effects to mantras rather than giving additional charges because, again, I think getting one more use from Mantra of Pain is less useful than another on-demand Daze or Heal. Just to pull things out of the air, I’m thinking something along the lines of adding a condition or two to Mantra of Distraction, or distortion to Mantra of Recovery, etc (those are just hypotheticals to provide examples, I’m not necessarily advocating for those specific benefits). I think something like that would be easier to balance than trying to make mantras have the same charges globally and receive the same universal increase from Harmonious Mantras.

Again, I think the concept of Mantras is potentially cool but the current implementation is quite boring. If I have an ability that only has limited uses during a fight (especially a Heal) then it better have some kick to it. Right now Distraction is the only one I really consider, for the interrupt.

Some of the changes you propose are awesome! Some seem pretty overpowered.

I agree that mantras are a bit clunky. The easiest change to make me happy with them is to have charges accumulate during the channel rather than only tick up at the end.

So if I channel for half the duration, I get 1 charge. If I channel for the full duration, I get 2 charges. This would make it a bit more forgiving to plan how many charges I might need for the next battle rather than spending 12s charging mantras when I choose to use 3 of them.

Also if the Mantra trait that reduces recharge time reduced casting time as well rather than cooldown.

uhm, sweeping buffs to every mantra is going to throw balance out of whack.

I agree with the idea of unlocking Mantra charges from the mechanic at large and setting them on a case by case basis, though I’m not sure which numbers would be most fair for each skill. I suspect, however, that this was already considered during development, and they went another direction for unknown reasons.

I feel like the best thing we could see first would be some input from development about where Mantras are based on their data, to wit, what portion of Mesmer builds use Mantras, how many are seeing use and in what environments/contexts, how frequently they’re actually being fired during combat and succeeding or being interrupted, etc. That would at least give us a better picture of how Mesmer players are actually playing, regardless of their presence or absence in this discussion.

I would rather see Mantras as proper utility, plus it should do what the Mantra idea is about, frontloading utility with a slow overall cadence (due to recharge time).

My proposal would be:

• Base charge time is 3,5 seconds. There is a trait to shorten this to 3,0 seconds.
• All Mantras have 1 charge (but read below).
• Mantras never have a CD, only their recharge.
• Hamonious Mantras no longer increases the number of charges, instead if recasting a Mantra within 5 seconds of using up the charge, the charge time is lowered by 1,5 seconds.
• Restorative Mantras would apply Regeneration to all allies in a fairly large area (~600) while you’re charging. This removes the issue that only the end of the cast is relevant right now.
• Mantra Mastery shortens the base charge time to 3,0s.
• Empowering Mantras can stay maybe. I just don’t see it as a Grandmaster trait. :s

Mantra of Pain
Meditate, charging a spell that will inflict various status ailments onto your target.
It applies 5 Confusion, 5 Vulnerability, Cripple and Weakness. For 5 seconds.

Mantra of Distraction
Meditate, charging a spell that will allow you to confuse enemies with an onslaught of Clones.
Upon activation you get Distracting Army for 10 seconds, causing clones to rapidly phase in and out of existence around you and the target. Every second 4 clones appear, 2 at each spot, each lasting 2 seconds.

Mantra of Resolve
Meditate, charging a spell that will clear all conditions and give you Protection for 5 seconds.

Mantra of Concentration
Meditate, charging a spell that will allow you to break out of crowd control effects.
Can only be activated while under the effect of a CC. Breaks it, then gives you 5 seconds of Stability.