Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I just want to point out why Master of Manipulation is basically unplayable in PvP:
The cdr on manipulation skills is awesome.

However, the additional effect of reflecting projectiles is the issue:
If the enemy fires a projectile and you stealth (with a manipulation skill, e.g. mass invisibility), the projectile is reflected and reveals you!

Nerf the mesmer as much as you want, but this trait needs to be changed =)
Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you agree.

You’re completely right. I wouldn’t say it’s unplayable, but it’s a serious, unintended drawback. In WvW, where I play MI, it’s even worse: why would you add a reflect to a skill which only purpose is to stealth?

Fix asap, please.

decoy is NOT a manipulation…

As I say to everyone who comes here asking for nerfs, crying something is OP etc I say to you. Learn to adapt. Heaven forbid you must think about when you use skills.

Well let’s look at our manipulations..

• Blink
• Mirror
• Arcane Thievery
• Illusion of Life
• Mass Invisibility

Only one of those is a stealth skill, and causes the Mirror effect. When is this a problem? When you’re trying to use Mass Invis to disengage/escape.. Not including the times it works to..

- Give yourself & team an advantage at the start of a fight
- Help secure a Rez/stomp
- Allow another teammate to escape.

Yeah, traited mass Invis has a trade off, and you have to be more thoughtful for when you use it, but it not being ideal in one scenario (escaping) hardly makes the entire trait unusable.

Me Games Ma.8426:

decoy is NOT a manipulation…

Edited that, thanks.

As I say to everyone who comes here asking for nerfs, crying something is OP etc I say to you. Learn to adapt. Heaven forbid you must think about when you use skills.

The point is that traits should give you something. And simply reduced cooldowns on manipulations would be great. But if I for example use mass invisibility, an enemy can simply shoot a projectile and target lock will reveal me immediately (Same applies to any combo involving any manipulation skill + stealth). And therefore, the trait is a bigger benefit for my enemy than for me. In my opinion, this isn’t right.

Yeah, traited mass Invis has a trade off, and you have to be more thoughtful for when you use it, but it not being ideal in one scenario (escaping) hardly makes the entire trait unusable.

You have a point. But is it worth a trait point then? I can’t think of any other traits that involve trade-offs. Usually they just give something, at no cost.

And tell you what.. when I blink and that kitten ranger can not rapid fire my kitten , I am sure happy.. As others said, only matter with MI and not that big a deal OP….

Huddi.8297:

You have a point. But is it worth a trait point then? I can’t think of any other traits that involve trade-offs. Usually they just give something, at no cost.

The classic example here would be Deceptive Evasion. Golden in a build that wants to generate clones on dodges, garbage in a build that wants to maintain three phantasms.

Desperate Decoy has the exact same problem, actually.

To be fair, it means you can’t effectively trait for reduced cooldown on MI because doing so makes MI vulnerable to reflect reveal. That’s kind of a lame situation.

Huddi.8297:

You have a point. But is it worth a trait point then? I can’t think of any other traits that involve trade-offs. Usually they just give something, at no cost.

Well if its worth it depends on what you’re using it for, like any trait.

The heal Mirror gets dropped to a 12s heal with a 4s reflect. Blink gets turned into a 24 second 1200r port immune to most projectiles. You don’t have to use Mass Invis to take master of manipulation, and even when you do its still useful, you just have to use it more intelligently.

I see this as part of the balance? For an adept trait, the talent would be very strong. But this somewhat balances it, it makes the skills slightly more restrictive to use.

I had problems with use of this trait at outnumbered situations, but now I started kind of like it. At pvp it wasn’t big problem, but at wvw when zerg jump on me I used to decoy -> blink away. Now I’m trying to adapt my reflexes with some success to decoy -> distortion (it gives me 2s to think) -> 0-2s later blink to nearest los or behind zerg to prevent reveal. It still more complex then combo I used too, but pluses of reflect overweigh minuses for me.

Carighan.6758:

I see this as part of the balance? For an adept trait, the talent would be very strong. But this somewhat balances it, it makes the skills slightly more restrictive to use.

Being adept tier doesn’t mean anything in the current system, though.

I’m always raging when the trait reveals me, too, but most of the time i’m happy to have the reduced cd and reflect on blink to help me get away from those pew pew rangers.

who take mass invis in pvp (not wvw i mean)?

mirror is so great with heal and blink for 6 second i can drop 6k dmg if the enemy is range me

in wvw dont take this trait if you pu as you can disengage freely from every situation

AlphatheWhite.9351:

To be fair, it means you can’t effectively trait for reduced cooldown on MI because doing so makes MI vulnerable to reflect reveal. That’s kind of a lame situation.

This. If you are using a stealth build it is quite irritating to get revealed because all you wanted was the the lowered cd for manipulations. When you are rotating through skills and stealth you will inevitably get into a situation when stealthed that you will have reflect on you. Being revealed by your own trait obviously messes up a rotation.

I agree with the OP in that this should be changed. Reflecting projectiles should not break stealth. It is not an attack.

Your clones attacking do not break stealth. Winds of Chaos (staff 1) does not break stealth when it bounces off you to an enemy. Projectiles being reflected shouldn’t break stealth either.

To those of you saying people should adapt, that isn’t the point. From a game design perspective, this is called a negative play experience. It isn’t fun for the player to use their training points to select options that penalize them for playing the build they want.

Reflected projectiles actually are your attacks. You get retaliation damage from them, they use your crit chance/damage and the combat log shows them as yours.

Also, reflecting scepter 1-3 creates a clone from you, not from the mesmer it originated from.

Iavra.8510:

Reflected projectiles actually are your attacks. You get retaliation damage from them, they use your crit chance/damage and the combat log shows them as yours.

Also, reflecting scepter 1-3 creates a clone from you, not from the mesmer it originated from.

That doesn’t make them your attacks. That simply means they are modified by your stats. In any case, they certainly aren’t more yours than your Winds of Chaos bounce, or your illusions’ attacks.

Honestly, I’d normally say just make MI something other than a Manipulation.
Traits are the only reason to define a skill by category, and only one trait calls out Manipulations, and that trait contradicts the purpose of Mass Invisibility. It makes little sense for a stealth skill to be traited in a way that weakens its purpose, and it has very little use.
So just change MI’s category.

Except, the only other valid category is Glamours, which doesn’t really work.

Come to think of it, Time Warp manipulates a lot more than MI. And MI is more of a glamour than TW. Well done! :P

So Temporal Enchanter would give superspeed to everyone affected by MI? :P

No, TE actually just pulses a GTAE effect with the buff. Watch closely when you cast e.g. Null Field.

It’d probably be centered on you.

I assume someone has already schooled the OP on his obvious exaggeration.

The trait is only seen as counter-intuitive with MI. I actually think it’s good for this reason:

• If you were to pop Mass Invisibility for a get away, this would actually help to protect you from further damage assuming you’re low in health. Being revealed again is an issue, but not as bad as getting downed seconds later anyway. If I can, I always try to have a blink ready for when I MI anyway.

Outside of this, the trait works fantastically well with Blink/Mirror and actually makes Arcane Thievery arguably playable when it never really was before.

If I’m being rapid fired while casting MI, I’d personally be pretty thankful for the reflect. Could turn things around where MI couldn’t.

That said, I think if you’re casting MI in the middle of a fight things are already going south anyway. When used as an initiator there’s no issues with reflection.

Overall not a big issue IMO.

Master of Manipulation is amazing, what you are talking about..
reflect upon blink is godly.

I’m surprised to see so many people defending such an obvious broken interaction.

This is a trait. It’s supposed to boost the effects of our manipulations in a positive way. It’s not supposed to have a hidden trade-off of ‘oh, since you take this trait, if someone shoots at you when you use mass invis, you get revealed’. That’s not a ‘trade-off’, that’s just a broken and unintentional interaction.

In 4 out of 5 cases, it succeeds in being a helpful trait. In 1 out of 5 cases it is, without doubt, a massive downside. Yes, there are plenty of ways you can still use it. No, you shouldn’t be forced to waste other cooldowns or make sure you LoS before using your elite otherwise it will get wasted because of people shooting at you. The absurdity of that idea is off the charts.

It’s not as if MI has no counterplay, it’s a long and obvious cast that can easily be interrupted. You already have to take that into consideration when using it. Why on earth should we have to consider whether or not there’s a ranger 2000 range away that feels like autoattacking us?

Fay.2357:

This is a trait. It’s supposed to boost the effects of our manipulations in a positive way. It’s not supposed to have a hidden trade-off of ‘oh, since you take this trait, if someone shoots at you when you use mass invis, you get revealed’. That’s not a ‘trade-off’, that’s just a broken and unintentional interaction.

But see, that’s the point of discussion.
I feel that neither is the draw-back hidden (after all, a reflect causing damage to the original attacker is hardly something unique to this trait), nor does it feel like MoM was intended to be drawback-less.

If anything, I would want more traits to be transformative (i.e.: take some, gain some) instead of purely additive.

Fay.2357:

I’m surprised to see so many people defending such an obvious broken interaction.

This is a trait. It’s supposed to boost the effects of our manipulations in a positive way. It’s not supposed to have a hidden trade-off of ‘oh, since you take this trait, if someone shoots at you when you use mass invis, you get revealed’. That’s not a ‘trade-off’, that’s just a broken and unintentional interaction.

In 4 out of 5 cases, it succeeds in being a helpful trait. In 1 out of 5 cases it is, without doubt, a massive downside. Yes, there are plenty of ways you can still use it. No, you shouldn’t be forced to waste other cooldowns or make sure you LoS before using your elite otherwise it will get wasted because of people shooting at you. The absurdity of that idea is off the charts.

It’s not as if MI has no counterplay, it’s a long and obvious cast that can easily be interrupted. You already have to take that into consideration when using it. Why on earth should we have to consider whether or not there’s a ranger 2000 range away that feels like autoattacking us?

I’m not averse to it changing but then most of the time I use MI it’s not to help me but to help my allies and generally I don’t fall foul of this effect. Then again I also make sure no-one is pew pewing me when I use it. I accept it as is and play around it, you know like our staff auto revealing us if we don’t wait 3 weeks for it to finish bouncing before stealthing.

Carighan.6758:

Fay.2357:

This is a trait. It’s supposed to boost the effects of our manipulations in a positive way. It’s not supposed to have a hidden trade-off of ‘oh, since you take this trait, if someone shoots at you when you use mass invis, you get revealed’. That’s not a ‘trade-off’, that’s just a broken and unintentional interaction.

But see, that’s the point of discussion.
I feel that neither is the draw-back hidden (after all, a reflect causing damage to the original attacker is hardly something unique to this trait), nor does it feel like MoM was intended to be drawback-less.

If anything, I would want more traits to be transformative (i.e.: take some, gain some) instead of purely additive.

It doesn’t feel intended to be without drawbacks?

It’s a purely beneficial trait with no drawback for 4/5 manipulations. What makes MI so special that it alone acquires a significant drawback.

Additionally, find me other traits in this game that negatively impact the usage of their affected abilities. You may want more traits to be that way, but the fact is that Anet doesn’t, and this is obviously seen by the simple fact that no traits function in that fashion. Only master of manipulations, and only on this one skill.

It’s a broken interaction that nobody thought about when coding it. That’s all.

Make MI a Glamour skill and TW a Manipulation, giving Mirror in AoE every pulse! xD
Okay, maybe just at the beginning.. ^^
Resistance and Superspeed would be really nice on MI, don’t ya think?

Edit: Found who said it..

Come to think of it, Time Warp manipulates a lot more than MI. And MI is more of a glamour than TW. Well done! :P

tobascodagama.2961:

The classic example here would be Deceptive Evasion. Golden in a build that wants to generate clones on dodges, garbage in a build that wants to maintain three phantasms.

Desperate Decoy has the exact same problem, actually.

And many people have been asking for some time for clones to stop overwriting Phantasms in any case. That is also a bad interaction, and should be changed.

I’m obviously on Pyro’s side on this. I don’t agree with the OP that the trait is garbage as a result, or that there’s no way to deal, but then, we clearly have ways to deal with the clones-overwrite-phantasms problem too.

The point is that we shouldn’t have to. It’s an interaction that runs contrary to the point of the ability, and a change should be made to remove the interaction with minimal other balance changes.
That could be changing reflects to not reveal, it could be removing mirror on MI specifically, it could be changing MI to be a glamour instead of a manip, or it could be something else entirely.
It doesn’t matter, what matters is that an elite skill is being harmed by the very trait meant to improve it.

Bubi.5237:

Make MI a Glamour skill and TW a Manipulation, giving Mirror in AoE every pulse! xD
Okay, maybe just at the beginning.. ^^
Resistance and Superspeed would be really nice on MI, don’t ya think?

Edit: Found who said it..

Come to think of it, Time Warp manipulates a lot more than MI. And MI is more of a glamour than TW. Well done! :P

I first suggested making MI not a manipulation, but I disagree with the poster you quoted suggesting that TW be made a manipulation in return. TW makes a lot more sense as a glamour mechanically.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I first suggested making MI not a manipulation, but I disagree with the poster you quoted suggesting that TW be made a manipulation in return. TW makes a lot more sense as a glamour.

It Manipulates Time!
I can understand that the trait for glamours are for AoE Application like TW, but what makes TW more sense as glamour if not counting the traits?
If you think about it, TW as a Glamour is not making more sense than Manip, as the only difference between the two is which trait will effect it.
Mirror or SS+Resistance, that’s all, isn’t?
I mean they could rename Glamours as “Big Pink Bubble” and Manips as “Big Violet Bubble” and would not make any difference in the game.

Bubi.5237:

It Manipulates Time!
I can understand that the trait for glamours are for AoE Application like TW, but what makes TW more sense as glamour if not counting the traits?
If you think about it, TW as a Glamour is not making more sense than Manip, as the only difference between the two is which trait will effect it.
Mirror or SS+Resistance, that’s all, isn’t?
I mean they could rename Glamours as “Big Pink Bubble” and Manips as “Big Violet Bubble” and would not make any difference in the game.

Yes, traits are the only thing that makes skill categories make sense. “Glamour”, “Manipulation”, “Well” as words are just flavor. You could call all the wells glamours and probably be just as accurate.

In this case though, they’ve already doubled down on the identity of Time Warp as a very-long-cooldown, game-changing bubble by refusing to apply the baselined glamour cd reduction to the elite skill. Temporal enchanter extends the duration of it by 2s, and adds 2 relatively rare buffs to the zone, reinforcing its identity as a periodic game-changer.
MoM, meanwhile, reduces the cooldown (something they already verified they don’t want to happen) and yes adds reflect, which you could argue is a wash with resistance and super speed. And of course, doing mirror the way you suggest (refreshing with each pulse) is basically adding group-targeted feedback to Time Warp, which they’ll never approve.

Since they don’t want the cooldown to change, and they won’t implement more than a little reflect at the start of Time Warp if they did change it, I’ll be happy to keep the 2s duration increase. It fits better.

Changing MI to glamour, though, makes loads of sense with the flavor of the trait.

Trading the cooldown reduction for duration increase actually reinforces MI’s role: strong group defense via stealth on a longer cooldown. Total stealth uptime even with PU is lower than with MoM, so it doesn’t noticeably worsen the stealth problem.
Brief resistance after stealthing makes as much sense as mirror, and makes even more sense from the perspective of MI as a group-support ability: MoM only gives you Mirror, Temporal Enchanter would provide team support. 2s of super-speed also reinforces that group support role, and synergizes very thematically with MI as a get-out-of-dodge tool for your team.

Lastly, Temporal Enchanter being an Inspiration GM, traiting MI, which is clearly meant to be a group support skill as much as anything, means going into the primary mesmer support line.