Guild Wars 2

Fixing Thread…. Fixing….

Add cleanse to weapons. Staff. maybe give scepter some transfers. Improved focus, there’s many options here.

I repeat: Mesmer doesn’t need any new condition cleansing utilities/skills. One of the following things must happen instead:

• Conditions must be balanced overall across professions who spam them the most.
  If this happens, there wouldn’t be a need to take Inspiration in highly competitive builds. You need less condition clearing in a condition meta, so you have the luxury of choosing whether you’d like to go Inspiration, Mantra Cleanse, Generosity Sigils, etc.
• Current Mesmer cleanses must be balanced to compensate for condition spam.
  Right now, it’s obvious that Inspiration gives awesome condition clearing, especially in combination with WoE. Skills/Utilities such as The Pledge removing 2 conditions, Arcane Thievery receiving a massive CD reduction and others being buffed would definitely help to make them more appealing as alternatives.

Ideally, I’d like to see some a combination of both with an emphasis on the latter.

Tangentially, Mesmer balance has always been plagued with the issue of being restricted to few utilities (Blink/Portal/Decoy). How do we gain more flexibility with utility choice? My gut tells me it’s by reinforcing different supportive roles…

MailMail.6534:

I repeat: Mesmer doesn’t need any new condition cleansing utilities/skills. One of the following things must happen instead:

• Conditions must be balanced overall across professions who spam them the most.
  If this happens, there wouldn’t be a need to take Inspiration in highly competitive builds. You need less condition clearing in a condition meta, so you have the luxury of choosing whether you’d like to go Inspiration, Mantra Cleanse, Generosity Sigils, etc.

Could you elaborate please? Conditions should be balanced – how?

MailMail.6534:

• Current Mesmer cleanses must be balanced to compensate for condition spam.
  Right now, it’s obvious that Inspiration gives awesome condition clearing, especially in combination with WoE. Skills/Utilities such as The Pledge removing 2 conditions, Arcane Thievery receiving a massive CD reduction and others being buffed would definitely help to make them more appealing as alternatives.

Ideally, I’d like to see some a combination of both with an emphasis on the latter.

Tangentially, Mesmer balance has always been plagued with the issue of being restricted to few utilities (Blink/Portal/Decoy). How do we gain more flexibility with utility choice? My gut tells me it’s by reinforcing different supportive roles…

The problem is, as you’ve recognised, that Mesmers are pretty much utility locked. Portal Blink Decoy. No other class has to take a utility skill purely for condition cleansing, so why us?

The prestige requires the torch trait and the use of the infamous torch to remove 2 conditions on a 30 second cooldown. Granted this is reduced if you stay in stealth, but then you’re not contributing to your team. So you’re taking a potentially useless weapon, with a potentially useless trait line (for your build), for 2 condition clears every 30 seconds. If the trait line doesn’t fit your build, you might as well take Inspiration instead.

Also could you elaborate on “reinforcing different support roles” please? It sounds interesting but so ambiguous.

Could you elaborate please? Conditions should be balanced – how?

I thought I was specific enough. You balance the condition meta by balancing (or nerfing if you’d like to use that word) those classes who have the highest potency and velocity of conditions.

Also could you elaborate on “reinforcing different support roles” please? It sounds interesting but so ambiguous.

The last league was a glorious time for Mesmer. You know why? Because we had build/role diversity that translated clearly across all levels of play, not just top tier. Yes, bunker was easily the most viable, but you certainly were not locked into this role or 3 utility slots in order to do well.

All of the wells received ample play. Signet of Inspiration saw use. Null Field was a popular support utility taken. Bursty mantra builds saw some play. This is because you were able to play bursty roles (Condirupt, mantra, shatter), supportive roles (boons, rezzing, condition clearing), mid defender, home point guard etc etc etc.

Lastly, those specific suggestions on improving our condition cleanses were tongue in cheek. Obviously, it requires a bit more than simply tacking on an additional condition removed from The Pledge, but the point is to provide alternatives that have pros and cons worth being considered in the first place. Of course taking the pledge would mean slotting yourself into another trait line. This is a small example of how diversity works, because you’d have two lines where you should have decent condition removing options. Let’s not get into the minutia of this specific trait though.

MailMail.6534

Lastly, those specific suggestions on improving our condition cleanses were tongue in cheek. Obviously, it requires a bit more than simply tacking on an additional condition removed from The Pledge, but the point is to provide alternatives that have pros and cons worth being considered in the first place. Of course taking the pledge would mean slotting yourself into another trait line. This is a small example of how diversity works, because you’d have two lines where you should have decent condition removing options. Let’s not get into the minutia of this specific trait though.

See I don’t understand why you would be so opposed to weapons gaining condition clears when that would ultimately give you more build diversity than having to be tunnelled into 1 or 2 trait lines.

DeathReign.7821:

MailMail.6534

Lastly, those specific suggestions on improving our condition cleanses were tongue in cheek. Obviously, it requires a bit more than simply tacking on an additional condition removed from The Pledge, but the point is to provide alternatives that have pros and cons worth being considered in the first place. Of course taking the pledge would mean slotting yourself into another trait line. This is a small example of how diversity works, because you’d have two lines where you should have decent condition removing options. Let’s not get into the minutia of this specific trait though.

See I don’t understand why you would be so opposed to weapons gaining condition clears when that would ultimately give you more build diversity than having to be tunnelled into 1 or 2 trait lines.

Really curious too.

StickerHappy.8052:

DeathReign.7821:

MailMail.6534

Lastly, those specific suggestions on improving our condition cleanses were tongue in cheek. Obviously, it requires a bit more than simply tacking on an additional condition removed from The Pledge, but the point is to provide alternatives that have pros and cons worth being considered in the first place. Of course taking the pledge would mean slotting yourself into another trait line. This is a small example of how diversity works, because you’d have two lines where you should have decent condition removing options. Let’s not get into the minutia of this specific trait though.

See I don’t understand why you would be so opposed to weapons gaining condition clears when that would ultimately give you more build diversity than having to be tunnelled into 1 or 2 trait lines.

Really curious too.

It’s not that I’m vehemently against it. It’s more so that it ignores the problem with our current [subpar] options. It doesn’t solve the issue of Arcane Thievery, Mantra of Resolve, Null Field etc. And it definitely doesn’t solve Mesmer’s issue of being locked into 3 utilities. If you solve those 2 issues, specifically the latter, you have no need of bloating the game with even more new skills to be balanced.

It does open up an interesting discussion though. Which weapons would even make sense to tack condition removal onto? I could definitely see torch’s trait being baseline. Maybe Mind Stab removes a condition for every boon removed from enemies? Does that make thematic sense for a purely offensive weapon? Hmm, very interesting!