Guild Wars 2

Things I would fix on mantras to get them on par:

• bad sinergy of Harmonious Mantras with Restorative Mantras: having one more charge to spend means you get less healing per second from Restorative Mantras. Make Harmonious Mantras reduce the cooldown of each mantra so that the hps remains the same.
• from a WvW big-fights point of view, the lack of AoE effect on MoPain and MoDistraction makes them useless (altough MoPain is nice in combination with Restorative Mantras)
• MoConcentration and MoResolve AoE radius is too small: change it to 600 like shouts (or at least 360 like venom share!)
• Restorative Mantras radius is too small: change it to 600 like shouts
• get rid of the toughness on protected mantras, make it grant 3s aegis at the start of the the cast instead, with 3s internal cooldown
• damage from MoPain feels too low considering how long is the downtime
• the downtime for using multiple mantras makes it unpractical to use more than one of them: a 2.75s cast is already hard to pull off in combat. Maybe make it that a single cast recharges all mantras that are off cooldown? But it’s not an optimal solution…

Other things I would like to see fixed:

• make Shattered Conditions work with Illusionary Persona: if I get 2 grand master traits, I think I’m entitled to have them work with each other
• make the effects of Prismatic Understanding work for everyone affected by your veil/mass invisibility (or at least make it work on your party members)
• reduce the duration of Null Field, but make the effect progressive: first pulse strips 1 boon/condition, second pulse 2, third 3.

One idea for mimic: change it so that the effect of the skill that next hits you, will affect the attacker aswell – if you lose 4000 hp due to the attack, the attacker loses 4000 hp too (not affected by armor), if you get stunned for 3 seconds, the attacker will be disabled too. Countless possibilities with positioning and pushbacks!

Fozzik.1742:

My idea for mimic would be -
Have it summon a clone that mirrors the current target for a few seconds (looks just like the target, instead of like the mesmer). This clone of the target would do the same actions / attacks that the target does…including any damage. So…when mimic is cast against you, whatever you do for the duration will be mirrored back on you by a clone that looks just like you.

I’ve seen a lot of clone/phantasm based Mimic ideas. Here’s why I don’t like those ideas and think Mimic shouldn’t go in that direction.

Whatever the utility is, it needs to be as good as, if not better than the current leading utility picks. People aren’t picking Mimic now as it is, at least over other, better options. Whatever Mimic is, it needs to be on par with decoy. Phantasms and Clones are unreliable in WvW, large scale combat, and even small scale combat given wide sword arcs and general AoE are the bane of clones/phantasms. A manipulation like the above will not show up in a Zerg. How many people slot iDefender and Phantasmal disenchanted for a zerg? We have a ton of single target, passive, or below par utilities in the game already. We have a ton of damage dealing phantasms already. Whatever Mimic is, it needs to not die before it get’s a chance to do anything.

Also, ever consider the fact that A: the target could stop attacking (ala confusion counter), and B: if it summoned on an enemy clone, it’s attacks would be dealing 0 damage? Current Mimic suffers from that problem. Ever absorb an enemy clones projectile? Yeah…… what a waste of a seconds cast time clearing that off your Echo. You’re wanting an entire phantasm/clone that does that on repeat.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Also, ever consider the fact that A: the target could stop attacking (ala confusion counter), and B: if it summoned on an enemy clone, it’s attacks would be dealing 0 damage? Current Mimic suffers from that problem. Ever absorb an enemy clones projectile? Yeah…… what a waste of a seconds cast time clearing that off your Echo. You’re wanting an entire phantasm/clone that does that on repeat.

If an opponent just stops attacking for 5 seconds or whatever it lasted, I’d call that a really powerful ability. In my own experience, most people in WvW pay little or no attention to conditions beyond generic clears…people continue to chase me and cast skills regardless of how many stacks of confusion and torment I put on them.

The mimic I suggested could have a very short cast time… so it could be used as a carefully targeted counter to opponents bursts or chains of attacks. Sure, if you cast it on a mesmer clone it’s wasted…but that’s sort of your fault. If you cast it on a warrior starting 100 blades or a thief just before he does stealth/backstab or HS for the 100th time in a row… it would be highly effective. Most abilities in the game are at least somewhat situational, and work dramatically better if you use them at the right times.

If nothing else, I think it would freak out the opponent pretty well and knock them out of their comfort zone. Seeing a clone of yourself coming at you and mirroring your attacks… that would be scary.

JonPeters.5630:

This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line.

Illusionist’s Celerity reduces the cooldown of illusion-summoning skills by 20%. By default, all weapon sets have 2 abilities which are affected by this trait, and additionally it also reduces the cooldown of 4 different utilities. There is no doubt that Opportunist is the “stronger” ability, but with such a sweeping statement about trait balance I don’t consider Illusionist Celerity to be something that can be ignored.

This and Duelist’s Deception have continued to be traits that far-too-dramatically influence major Mesmer mechanics.

All, I have edited the OP to reflect balance changes Anet has made today based on suggestions and feedback from the GW2 forums. The Mesmer specific change is here (woo, let’s party! This is a NICE buff):

MESMER
Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

Whooo…. that’s quite nice.

Where did you get that from?

Xaylin.1860:

Whooo…. that’s quite nice.

Where did you get that from?

Full list of updated balance changes for all classes:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/29#post3156808

Ive been playing since second beta weekend, and play mesmer for over a year as my main. Ive been testing all the mesmer changes until now, so thats what I think, guys:

First of all:

Food boons on WvW and mesmers:
Most people know the right mesmer is the one with food boon, and that make no sense at all because that way any damage dealer thief can just hide and wait we show up. Wasnt mesmer supposed to confund their enemys? So please, Would be great to hide all food boons OR better, show that same boons on illusions.

Mantras on spvp and WvW:
Hide from our enemys what mantras we have up and how many of them, its really unfair to have my enemys knowing how many mantras of resolve I have up or not, its not a boon, its a utility skill!
They will know what Im using and they will know what kind of utility I have so they will know how to proceed on the battle giving them a unfair advantage way before the battle begins.

-Mobility

The problem:
Mesmer are too slow, mobility wise I mean. We need to make a special build just to keep our speed boons on, none of our weapon skill let us go foward, like warrior, rangers, thieves or guardians for example. The only way to get speed (if we are not using focus) is from a random boon.
That issue make almost impossible to most mesmer builds, chase ANY enemy running from battle. Sometimes we get killed because they run away and come back after restore full HP and we have lot of high cooldowns going on.
I know we have compound celerity, but that just works if we got clones, and we cant clone without a target…

The solution:
Anything too keep our speed boon up thats not just a random chance. A passive speed movement signet would be good.

-Focus

The problem:
The focus itself is usefull but not for everyone.
Temporal curtain
give you a speed boon, cripple on enemy IF he pass by and pull up to five enemys, but we had a “cooldown” added that we cant even pull people right after cast, it can reflect IF you have warden feedback on traits… I dont think its good enough for a weapon skill. We cant even stack up speed!
Phantasmal Warden
Well he dont move… Some people use them as a safe spot to stay, some try them as damage dealer (wich he is great with enough precision). I wouldnt say that skill have a problem, I just think we could get something that make it works for different builds

The solution:
Temporal Curtain
Warden feedback should be OFF traits and be part of the focus skill itself. Give warden feedback on temporal curtain would save us trait points and make focus acceptable for lot of build, even as a support on dungeons and wvw.
Phantasmal Warden
Maybe a trait to choose if he moves or not would be great.

-Scepter

The problem:
I think scepter is awesome the way it is now, the only thing that NEED a change is the ether bolt (number 1 skill).
Its useless…
Our beam on confusin images is kinda messed, but works and its great! But I dont know how to explain, maybe because it have like a charge time after right after you cast

The solution:
Ether bolt, I dont have idea to make it good and not overpower. Scepter itself is a awesome weapon and I hope it dont change much. So maybe speed up the attack or make the attack higher and let it hit more enemys, maybe make clones apply chill or cripple or even a clone that give us boons… Im out of idea on this one.
Confusing images, well just let us use our beam right after we cast him. lol

-Downed state

The Problem:
We NEED to have a target to teleport ourselves, wich make impossible to use it if someone is stealthed.
Another problem is, why we have a TAG on ourselves after use the downed number 2 skill? If we disappear or not make it useless to survive cause people will still know who we are.

The Solution:
Just let us disappear and make the clone wait to attack the first target we hit after we appear again.
Also, dont tag us for people, just make clone more squish, so they will know after hit that they are going to the right one or not. It can give us time to use the number 3 skill, wich we hardly can use since we die right after appear again tagged up. lol

Veil
90 seconds cooldown.
Too much cooldown for only 2 seconds stealth, even if we can run back to reapply, it only works on certain situations. When u need to move foward its just almost uselless.

Maybe a 4 second stealth, OR a 60 seconds cooldown could work too.

Time warp and mass invisibility

It just dont look “elite” enough… Wait Ill explain
Problem:
Guardians give a 50% speed boon for allies too, he can use it 2 times before the elite skill goes off. With one difference, its only one of their set of five skills! 1 for atk, 2 for cripple, 3 for might, 4 for 50% speed and 5 for knockdown foes… wth. Thats what we call a elite!! If Im not mistaken time warp give the buff to a limited amount of people…
And mass invisibility with 5 sec stealth time is not something we could call a elite, I just dont get it as a elite, never got. I remember arenanet saying on betas that elites wold tunr the tide of the battle, the first one to use would probably be the first one the die.

Solution:
Mass invisibility should have have at least a 6 seconds stealth
For Time Warp I have 2 ideas: Make the duration from 10 to 12 seconds OR make it give random boons and conditions like a big chaos storm.

Staff

The problem:
Chaos storm and the random boons. It just dont last enough… in fact It never made the difference on a battle for me at least…

The solution: Chaos storm, make the boons it gives have a bit higher duration or make it give the boon on a shorter time for them to stack.

I think thats all, just want to say thats my point of view, Im not saying I have the best solutions or anything. Cya

Don’t know if JP’s still reading this, but there needs to be serious buffs to Imbued Diversion, or have it shifted down a tier. In it’s current state, I do not think it diserves to be a grandmaster tier’d trait.

It’d also synergise with shatter builds, since there’s nothing really in the master trait that’s a serious OMG MUST GET TO COMPLIMENT trait. Just a thought.

@Wraith: Totally agreed about Time Warp. It used to be super powerful when Quickness was double-speed instead of just 150%, but now it’s just a little bit lackluster. However, I think there’s one really easy fix that makes it wonderful again: make it a Glamour.

We could trait it then, for any or all of the following:

• CD reduction from 210s to 168s
• Duration increase from 10s to 12s
• Blind-on-cast
• Confusion on entry/exit

It’s already a ground-targeted shiny purple Ethereal field, there’s no reason for it not to be.

OMG that Confounding Suggestions change.. Look at that, we actually managed to have an impact on our future balance changes. Score one for the Mesmer forums! =P

JonathanSharp.7094:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

/grumble

Confounding Suggestions.. Ugh. I’d rather the stun. The daze duration synergizes beautifully with Runes of the Mesmer (which also needs a buff)

All of the changes are kind of awesome, but Confounding Suggestions barely merited Grandmaster as it is. What makes it so good is that the 50% stun chance makes it MUCH easier to chance down fleeing opponents as well as escape crappy situations. Increasing daze duration takes that away, but gives us the potential (w/Mesmer runes) for a near 2-second daze, making the DazeMantra -> OH SwordDaze -> DazeMantra combo into a beastly 6-second daze… assuming they don’t just run away from you.

I’d much rather them make the 25-point in Domination grant a 20% daze duration increase. The Confounding change is still barely grandmaster-worthy IMO, if its an addition to the stun chance, then it becomes freakin’ glorious and totally worth the 30 points.

Thanks for the feedback. We had the same discussion internally on that one. Back in alpha/beta, there were lockdown Mesmer builds that COULD keep someone down for 6-7 seconds…and it was brutal.

We’re afraid to go back to that, but as you can tell with these changes, we do want to augment the current Mesmer’s efficacy in regard to shutdown. It can just be scary if we go too high with it…..so we’ll think this one over some more.

SO HYPE! Thanks for the suggestion of posting it in the original thread kubetz. I had typed that reply from my phone, so I wouldn’t have thought to do so if you didn’t suggest it.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Don’t know if JP’s still reading this, but there needs to be serious buffs to Imbued Diversion, or have it shifted down a tier. In it’s current state, I do not think it diserves to be a grandmaster tier’d trait.

It’d also synergise with shatter builds, since there’s nothing really in the master trait that’s a serious OMG MUST GET TO COMPLIMENT trait. Just a thought.

Yeah… IP combined with ID would be totally fine. Seriously… please no.

That update is great and I am happy to see that developers are really changing things based on the feedback.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

SO HYPE! Thanks for the suggestion of posting it in the original thread kubetz. I had typed that reply from my phone, so I wouldn’t have thought to do so if you didn’t suggest it.

Haha, my pleasure!

Xaylin.1860:

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Don’t know if JP’s still reading this, but there needs to be serious buffs to Imbued Diversion, or have it shifted down a tier. In it’s current state, I do not think it diserves to be a grandmaster tier’d trait.

It’d also synergise with shatter builds, since there’s nothing really in the master trait that’s a serious OMG MUST GET TO COMPLIMENT trait. Just a thought.

Yeah… IP combined with ID would be totally fine. Seriously… please no.

While I think this would be better than making F3 AoE by default, and I would dance up and down my street if it happened, honestly I think it’d be too OP. The reason it would be OP is because of the other interrupt traits you could take that would make our lockdown capabilities ridiculously strong. IF you didn’t take a single other interrupt proc’ing trait besides ID, it might be OK.

The projectile copying part of mimic is currently the worst part of the skill for me… you don’t often know what you got, how it will fire, or if it will hit. I use it for the reflection and blocking. So if you do change it, try and keep the reflecting/blocking/shield aspect.

I wrote a long summary of what I like/dislike about Mimic here, but that was before I read what the devs actually said about it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/MIMIC-mesmer-skill-redesign/3158788

Fozzik.1742:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Also, ever consider the fact that A: the target could stop attacking (ala confusion counter), and B: if it summoned on an enemy clone, it’s attacks would be dealing 0 damage? Current Mimic suffers from that problem. Ever absorb an enemy clones projectile? Yeah…… what a waste of a seconds cast time clearing that off your Echo. You’re wanting an entire phantasm/clone that does that on repeat.

If an opponent just stops attacking for 5 seconds or whatever it lasted, I’d call that a really powerful ability. In my own experience, most people in WvW pay little or no attention to conditions beyond generic clears…people continue to chase me and cast skills regardless of how many stacks of confusion and torment I put on them.

The mimic I suggested could have a very short cast time… so it could be used as a carefully targeted counter to opponents bursts or chains of attacks. Sure, if you cast it on a mesmer clone it’s wasted…but that’s sort of your fault. If you cast it on a warrior starting 100 blades or a thief just before he does stealth/backstab or HS for the 100th time in a row… it would be highly effective. Most abilities in the game are at least somewhat situational, and work dramatically better if you use them at the right times.

If nothing else, I think it would freak out the opponent pretty well and knock them out of their comfort zone. Seeing a clone of yourself coming at you and mirroring your attacks… that would be scary.

I can foresee other issues. A warrior runs up to you and drops a 100 blades, at the same time your newly created Mimic phantasm runs up to the warrior to drop its mimicked 100 blades. Both get two swings off, and while the warrior keeps going, the phantasm is suddenly dead after soaking up the warriors crazy damage.

Let’s not forget PvE. Cast Mimic on a Jotun. Mimic mimicks an attack every 10 seconds.

Hammer stun warrior launches a hammer stun, Mimic coppies, only AI has no awareness of targets Stability. Hammer stun is used to no effect. Mimic suddenly finds himself hammer stunning into the patch of a now wildly swinging hammer warrior.

Necro drops aoe condi plagues etc. Mimic does the same, only Mimic is standing in Necro’s aoe’s. Goodbye Mimic.

Or back to one of my major concerns not addressed. Large Zerg force approaches enemy Zerg force. You cast Mimic on random enemy in crowd. Mimic appears and charges forward to attack said enemy, only to be disintegrated by the enemy melee train being covered by the ranged AoE from the back line.

I’m happy you’ve thrown your idea into the pot, but please, no more phantasms.

What if Scepter 1 was no actual chain? It could be a short, channelled ability where your character deals ~5 shots in rapid succession, and then the #1 has a 2-3s CD (yeah!).

The clone would spawn at around the third shot, so it’d already join you for the fourth and fifth. The moment the clone spawns, you teleport ~1 step left (or right). The clone spawns mid-animation, 2 steps to the right (respectively left). In other words you “split” at the third shot.

Meh. I prefer it to do something like Guardian staff 1 (and clones also gets the atk cone) so I can tag in WvW without confusing enchantment.

“…maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working…”

• Confusing Images – deals AoE Damage to foes around the target. 3.5sec channel/4 second cooldown (no confusion)

…we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play…

• Ether Bolt – single-target, fast projectile (think Arcane Blast), and instant cast (like Lightning Strike and Blinding Flash).
• Ether Blast – PBAoE on target, non-projectile that applies vunerability. 3/4 cast.
• Ether Clone - Bouncing Projectile like Reaper’s Touch that confuses foes and applies retaliation to allies. 3/4sec cast

The idea is to have Confusing images channel and supplementary Ether Bolt instant casts as your ‘no brainer’ direct damage option…However this is unique in that it becomes about waiting for your 1skill chain to reset.

If you use the second ability Ether Blast during your Confusing Images channel, you interrupt the channel for a single burst of AoE + Vunerability. If you invest another 3/4 seconds to cast the 3rd ability of the 1 skill chain, you apply Confusion and retaliation to nearby foes/allies randomly.

The trade off here is higher AoE Damage + Single Target using only Ether Bolt during a Confusing images -OR- spending more time chaining the 1 skill to apply a less damage and more offensive support.

I’m just glad that we’re not getting nerfed into the ground like the thieves. Good thing I don’t play my thief anymore.

The moving of Illusionist’s Celerity to the Master line is fantastic. I can use my 0/20/20/10/20 build again. Recently I’ve had to use 0/20/20/5/25, and losing Mender’s Purity REALLY hurt. I was forced to either leave myself really vulnerable to conditions (which sucks hardcore if you’re solo roaming in Orr) or take Mantra of Resolve/Null Field/Arcane Thievery and sacrifice one of my preferred utilities. And I’m not a particular fan of those for PvE.

And IMO Mantras are still too hard for 90% of players to actually use effectively. If they increased their support range to 600 (maybe that could be put into the mantra traits) then it would be a bit more viable, thus partly offsetting their difficulty to use. And they shouldn’t bother with the toughness for Protected Mantras. It really doesn’t help all that much. Instead they should make it give Retaliation while channeling or something to discourage people from trying to interrupt. I would also be fine with it giving perma-stability. You can use mantras while channeling, but honestly they don’t really do that much damage on their own.

It’s also not like you even see any Mantra users. Anywhere. I have never once seen anyone using more than one mantra for utility in PvE or PvP. It’s just too hard to use effectively, and the minor buffs here and there have done nothing to address the incredibly high skill ceiling needed. I’m probably twice as effective spamming Staff 1 with my clones than playing full-rotation as a mantra-user.

JonPeters.5630:

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

So… Who’s exactly gonna trait 30 points in domination to get this?…
Idk how many ‘’daze lock builds’’ are actually worth playing, but the changes for mesmer wont change anything in the meta. Still think it’s a worthless trait. If you pick this trait you must be using a lot dazes to even gain profit from it, meaning you’re almost forced to get the mantra. And well, Imo, I would rather still pick the 3 mantra charges and build around interrupt.

I really would like to see a total rebuild of:

• Confounding suggestions
• Imbued Diversion
• Restorative Illusions (Move it or make it viable by making it aoe and work in combination with illusionary persona.
• Mantra aoe radius, 240 is not gonna help raids you know. Something like 600 would be a lot more logic.
• Wastrel’s punishment, this 25points minor trait is absolutely useless

JonPeters.5630:

Overall I think this a good small step for a profession that has a lot of roles it can fill fairly uniquely. I think this might give us 3 strong mesmer build archetypes.

1) Shatter
2) Phantasm
3) Mantra

This has got to be a joke. Mantra as a build archetype? How do you figure. Best case scenario with these changes = people use Mantra of Recovery to remove conditions. This makes it a build?

There is NOTHING about Mantras that equates to it being a build archetype. You can throw support at me all you want, just no. A pathetic heal for 5 targets, minor AoE buffs/condi removal that other classes give 100x better, and no damage.

I see nothing changing with Mantras. Recovery may make its way into some builds as a supplement, but that’s it. The rest will continue to see EXTREMELY limited/situational use, if you’re lucky.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

- We need some sort of out of combat boost. A movement signet for example. Having to equip focus – which is situational at best, for swiftness is not cool. We may have good in combat mobility but out side of it, it’s just so painful.

At ten gold a pop now, stacking 6 runes of the traveler is disproportionately expensive to achieve what other classes (aside from guardian) get for free. Factor in multiple armor sets and the cost gets stupid.

Regarding mantras: they are currently too weak to compete with our bread-and-butter utilities. (And no, the solution is not continuing to nerf those.) If you want us to support, then give us strong, reliable support options that are on-par with the support that support classes bring.

I know that there is some investment in making mantras work, but folks need to step back and look at how they work compared to everything else.

Have you thought about redoing Scepter completely as a support-style weapon instead? :/

skcamow.3527:

While I think this would be better than making F3 AoE by default, and I would dance up and down my street if it happened, honestly I think it’d be too OP. The reason it would be OP is because of the other interrupt traits you could take that would make our lockdown capabilities ridiculously strong. IF you didn’t take a single other interrupt proc’ing trait besides ID, it might be OK.

It’s on like a 36 second cooldown… :? Warriors can hammer burst like every 9 seconds for a much longer duration, and harder hitting stun… I dunno. I dont think there’s really a problem with the change, and if you’re going to go heavily into stun proc’ing trait lines, you’re losing out on a bit. Then this’d mean you’re traiting into a stuncentric build, which we’re trying to make viable in group play S:

I got pretty excited that the Devs obviously considered our Feedback to make this quick change to Confounding Suggestions. A big “Thank You!” for making the effort to listen which is not always easy considering the quantity of posts they have to go through. However, after thinking it through, I have been less enthusiastic about the change. BlackDevil already mentioned some issues.

The change to Confounding Suggestions is a quite nice buff to the trait. Nothing to complain about. The question is, does this change actually have an impact? I do see two issues I want to elaborate.

Confounding Suggestions vs. Chaotic Interruption

As already said, the change to Confounding Suggestions is nice without any context. It does make this trait more appealing to Mesmers using many dazes which are most likely running an interrupt build. However, if you were an interrupt Mesmer, would you pick Confounding Suggestion or Chaotic Interruption? I personally feel that those two traits, although not having the same mechanic, provide an almost identical benefit for a big amount of playable interrupt builds around.

Confounding Suggestion

Pros

• Easy because the Stun does not have any requirements (interrupt)
• Increases the Daze duration
• Domination provides traits which aid an offensive interrupt playstyle

Cons

• Only works with dazes (No GS5, no Focus4, no Signet of Domination)
• Competes with Harmonious Mantras (I’ll talk about this later.)

Chaotic Interruption

Pros

• Works with EVERY interrupt a Mesmer has
• Daze + Immobilize basically equals a Stun (This is important!)
• Provides additional conditions
• Chaos provides at least one more trait which aids boon heavy interrupt builds

Cons

• Requires an interrupt (higher player skill required)
• Does not do anything if the interrupt is unsuccessful

I do think that Confounding Suggestions offers some build diversity. You could either go 30 Domination or 30 Chaos and gain similar results when running an interrupt build. That’s a good thing. Also, 30 Domination is a lot more appealing for shatter builds.

The thing which bothers me: Is it enough to add build diversity by giving you the choice to either go for CS or CI? I personally feel that Grandmaster Traits should be unique. They should make me want to invest 30 points into a trait line. Right now CS feels a bit more like “Oh, hell yeah, okay. I invested 20 points into Domination anyway, so I’ll get it.” CS feels redundant because 50% stun on daze is astouningly similar to daze + immobilize on interrupt from CI.

Confounding Suggestions vs. Harmonious Mantras

Those traits obivously are different. If you are not using Mantras you are most likely to pick CS. HM is very appealing for Mantra heavy builds since it makes them less vulnerable to interrupts (more charges = less recharging). When playing an interrupt build you might face a dilemma.

Mesmers have different sources of interrupts while the most prominent ones are dazes. Sword4 works quite well. Staff5 is nice (but random). To an lesser extend Pistol5 (2nd hit). However, the most reliable interrupt Mesmers have is the Mantra of Distraction. It provides at least 2 dazes and they are instant. But which trait to choose as interrupt Mesmer when using MoD? CS provides random stuns and increases my daze duration. However, I might actually not have any more dazes besides F3. HM will add a third interrupt to the Mantra which is extremly powerful.

The thing which bothers me: Shouldn’t an interrupt Mesmer instantly pick CS over HM even when using MoD? I see many people not pick CS because of MoD and thats pretty disapponting when considering that CS is tailored to be used with dazes.

Food for thought

I would like to hear your opinion on two things.

• How do you feel about the suggestion I made for CS? Do you like it? Would you want this trait? What would you like CS look like?

Confounding Suggestions
Although not a Glamour skill I had an idea which might make this trait more useful.

• Blinds gain a 25-50% chance to daze for 1s.
• Dazes last 25-50% longer.

The longer daze duration should be kept so Mesmers can hopefully in some way reach longer than 1s dazes. However, the daze on blind effect is the one which might make this trait stand out. It fits the theme of domination and synergizes with the Torch very well. It also improves other skills like Chaos Armor. Furthermore, it can turn your Glamours into a form of crowd control similar to Chaos Storm when using Dazzling Glamours. This would highly benefit Glamours because you will actually be able to keep your enemies inside them even though the chance for daze is rather random.

• How do you feel about Imbued Diversion replacing Confounding Suggestions? Would you like it? Would it be too strong/weak? Thematically, it would fit rather well (dazes and shatters).

Wouldn’t the more important question be, is a net open to having a new build around CS to be added to the meta, given the large number of destabilizing changes in the other classes?

It’s rather obvious that the CS change is just fiddling for the sake of a longer patch note. The meta most definitely will shift after the patch, and everyone will have to readapt. There at quite a few moving parts already and if it means the mesmer have to sit this one out-

At least we should know.

Anet,
Is it possible to exchange positions of “shattered conditions” and “phantasmal haste”? I do think that both traits are in wrong trees.
Also, I’m very happy with IC partial unnerf, but I still think that it makes more sense as an adept trait, so it can be used by both shatters and phantasms builds (hence it gives more build diversity not the contrary).

Finally, I have a question. The fact that iswordsman is not affected by phantasmal haste… is it intended or is it a bug?

Thank you very much.

From a pure PVE mesmer, please, can we look again conditions and more specially confusion?

Either give us a trait (grandmaster?) that turns all confusion into something else (like torment)
Or rework Confusion… I can understand that getting killed by your own spam is unnerving. Why don’t we change confusion into a permanent stackable condition that disappears on consuption? If we put 4 stacks of confusion on someone they remain until : he uses one skill and they are consummed/he gets a condition cleansing.

This way no more autokill unless you let yourself be drowned in stacks, and no more PVE crying when the mobs run from you to your clones loosing all those nice confusion stacks because they are so slow…

This actually gave me an idea on one thing that could be done with confusions, you can use them to power up your shatters depending on the stack amount.

Depending on the amount of confusion stacks you have on someone you could get more damage out our mind wrack, longer lasting dazes, or longer lasting distortion. Of course frustration wouldn’t really work though would it lol, but something along those lines. It would be like the mesmer is using the mind tricks against his opponent to better fuel his illusions.

Another thing is clones could do damage against someone with stacks of confusion on them and phantasms could get a damage buff or turn those confusion stacks into random conditions. This would make for some interesting builds around clone generation and confusion stacking.

Yet another idea since we lack aoe, possibly shattering on someone with confusion stacks could cause a large radius AOE direct damage. You’d be burning the confusion stacks to cause burst in a large area possible at a cost like half damage than if you let it tick or something.

Just a few ideas to spark some discussion and brainstorming.

Ryn.6459:

Anet,
Is it possible to exchange positions of “shattered conditions” and “phantasmal haste”? I do think that both traits are in wrong trees.

Shattered Conditions would be way too overpowered in master tier. And I think it fits Inspiration -tree more.

Hey Jon,

I’d like to remember you that there is yet another mesmer archtype, one that I’ve been playing since beta weekend one:

The tank Mesmer.

(Yes, I’m serious.)

My gear is full Soldier’s with Cleric’s jewelry. 70% of my time I spend in WvW, the rest is PvE. Never mind that sprinkle of sPvP I do, though my playstyle is quite effective there, too.

If I could decide anything I want, it’d be to revert 1h sword skill #2, Blurred Frenzy, from Evade back to Distortion, keep the bigger cooldown on the sword skills and nerf Mind Wrack by somewhat around 25%. Mostly because DPS Mesmers are simply too strong (a.k.a. OP) in duels. Too much short range mobility, stealth and invulvs for a four-hit glkittenter crit wich’s going to hit like a nuke full of trucks and is on a 10 second cooldown.
Condition Engineers are bordering on that problem, too, as did Thieves.
With the difference that the Thief burst got toned down a bit. The Mesmer nerfs missed that goal. Instead of toning down that one skill that one-shot alot of people, alot of different small-scale nerfs were implemented, not all of them bad, but none of them hitting the actual culprit.

While the conversion to Evade didn’t affect the defense of a dueling glkittenter Mesmer too much, us tank Mesmers had a much bigger problem now at our hands.
As a WvW player, my #2 invuls was a two-second breathing window while pushing into the enemy zerg. Glass Mesmer don’t go there. Tank Mesmers do. Now neither of us has that breathing window, if needed or not. Mesmers don’t have Ignore Pain or whatever that shrinking elixier of Engineers is called, or Mistform or a bajillion health bars or whatever every single class seems to have, all I had was F4 if my clones weren’t insta-gibbed by all the AoE, or, more reliable, Blurred Frenzy, wich rooted me in place.
Now all these bleeding stacks are still ticking, I can’t prevent to hit minimum two guys with Retaliation on them and while I could stop my healthbar from dropping fast at least for two seconds, all I can do now is to make it drop a bit slower.

Every stealth class with high mobility, may it be long or short range, and high burst suffers the same fate: creating alot of frustration in those who get two-shot without being able to fight back. Glkittenter Mesmers as well as berserker Thieves.

Like Backstab, Mind Wrack is such a skill.

All in all I would be happy to see Mesmer tankibility to grow. I love the Mesmer, and I love playing it defensive. My weapons of choice are Scepter / Focus for utility, range and conditions, and Sword / Pistole for damage and control if I’m more dueling and fighting, or Sword / Torch if I need more survivability. I.e. commandeering, trolling zergs, etc.
Focus is absolutely awesome. The 1s cooldown on Into the Void killed my only on-command CC I have, saving a friend in the last second is literally impossible now. Pistol has cast time and I need to click exactly the right guy, F3 daze has a slow-kitten clone waddling over there, there’s nothing I can do if I don’t react at least 1,1s before the stomp. But even so Temporal Curtain is one of the most versatile skills ingame. It’s a snare. It’s a speed buff. It’s a pull. It’s a reflect (and it’s always a reflect for me). I can use it offensivly, defensivly, I can use it to place mobs or players, it may even cure cancer and spawn kittens. As do these forums.
That’s something alot of Mesmer skills have in common. One skill, a dozen applications. Sword #3, Illusionary Leap, is another example. I can root, if my half-kittened, crippled monkey clone is actually able to leap to its frigging target for a change, but instead I can use that short range teleport defensively and send the clone AWAY cluster of enemies that surround me. Or I can keep the clone and let it happily cripple away. Or I can shatter it. I can even place myself strategically near it and let it intercept projectiles.
Phantasmal Warden? Damage! Reflect! Target out of the Warden? I run into it – more reflect! Want damage instead or reflect? Why not both?! Pull the target back into the Warden via Into The Void! Even easier with NPCs instead of players. I just wish it would move more once it’s finished its animation.
Phantasmal Mage debuffs Confusion and buffs Retaliation. As a tank, Retaliation is my best friend. As a Mesmer, my ways of getting Retaliation can be numbered on one hand, and all of them suck dromedary balls. Wanna make Scepter awesome for me? Make it buff Retaliation. Make its clones do the same. 1/2s Retaliation from every Scepter clone, 2 seconds from Scepter #1. Wanna keep that 50% Retaliation uptime? Keep spamming #1. Wanna bask in the awesomenes of what all your other skills offer? Well, gotta let go of Retaliation now, do you. Buff Phantasmal Mage, its attack is awesome, but it attacks like once every ten years, does abysmal damage and has friggin’ 30 seconds cooldown. Even so I love Torch.

Long story short, I use pretty much every weapon noone else uses in a build that’s so rare I’m not sure that me and my roamer buddy aren’t the only two people in the world who play the Mesmer in that way. But it works. It’s awesome, and we could need some love.

Staff and Greatsword don’t need more fans, and neither Torch nor Scepter are bad. They’re underrated, but they DO have some problems. Scepter projectile speed is terrible, as is its attack speed, and Torch Phantasm needs to lay off the valium. That holds for its cooldown, too.
Our survivability could use a small boost in form of Sword #2 Distortion. We don’t need 10 seconds of invul like Warriors do, as Mesmers we can utilize Blink, Illusionary Leap, F4, stealth and alot more stuff I don’t wanna reveal here. But as tanks wich don’t kill stuff fast, we sometime have so stay there and simply take it, so we DO need a piece of these 10 seconds of invul. Two would be fine. Because, at the end of the day, we ARE wearing cloth and our health is only medium. Sword is meele, as is Torch, Scepter is only medium ranged. DPS traited, shattering long-range Mesmer are already a major part of design decisions and the player base. Please remember the minorities. Tank Mesmer damage is laughable, our kills come by a thousand pinpricks. Some Confusion here, a healthy dose of Tormet there, an Phantasmal Duelist’s salve on top of it and round it off with a Blurred Frenzy. BAM! 20% health off! Every build would have killed someone with such a combo, not so the tank Mesmer.
Glass builds can’t utilize Retaliation, but tank Mesmers could. DPS builds kill too fast to get much of a difference between Sword #2 Evasion and Evade, however, it is a tank Mesmers bread and butter. Glass builds don’t take the brunt of an enemy zerg, the tank Mesmer does. DPS Mesmer don’t revive downed players under Superior Arrow Cart fire or while the boss whirls in their faces, tank Mesmer do.

Mesmer has a very unique potentiality to be a cloth wearing trickster tank and I’d like…, nah, love with all my heart and soul, to invite you to keep that fraction of your players in mind when making design decisions, because that Archetype has never ever been seen before and I’m pretty sure it’d infringe against the Geneva Convention to let them die out.

Wall of text over.

Thanks for reading. <3

JonPeters.5630:

I think this might give us 3 strong mesmer build archetypes.

1) Shatter
2) Phantasm
3) Mantra

I think right behind those are the interrupt shutdown mesmer and the signet mesmer, so future suggestions towards those are appreciated as well.

I would really like to see Phantasmal Beserker given an invulnerability window for at least the duration of its initial attack so it functions more reliably as an AoE phantasm during large battles. Seeing your phantasm destroyed in PvE or WvW before it has even started to attack is really quite frustrating.

The new merged Confounding Suggestions probably still wont see any play, mainly for the reason stated above (thanks Xaylin) that a dazelocking mesmer would probably rather have 3 mantra charges, or interrupt focused traits like Chaotic Interruption.

The new effect now is quite bland, still subject to a terrible RNG factor (why not 100% with an ICD?), and definitely not build defining like many other grandmaster traits.

Here is another suggestion: Just scrap Confounding Suggestions and make a cool new Grandmaster. Move Imbuded Diversion up to Domination, and make a new trait in Illusions to compete with Illusionary Persona:

Afflicting Shatters: Shatters apply conditions
1st clone: 4 seconds chill
2nd clone: 4 seconds torment
3rd clone: 4 seconds poison

This would open up a new condition focused play style for shatters and be actually worthy of taking over Illusionary Persona.

I’m becoming increasingly nervous that a Confusion / condition mesmer is no longer being considered as one of the key niches for our class, especially in PvE. Almost as a challenge to the common thought that Confusion isn’t viable in PvE, I built my mesmer completely around applying confusion and conditions (I call it my ‘mesmermancer’ build).

I love the playstyle and with the miraculous addition of the Perplexity runes have been able to sustain between 10-25 stacks of confusion on a single or even multiple targets most of the time, in addition to bleeds burning and others. So far so good.

The build itself has finally come together to maximize condition (specifically confusion) application as 0/25/15/0/30 with one glaring problem that has baffled me from the start.

Suggestion #1:

Cleansing Conflagration needs to be moved out of the domination line.

I sincerely believe this has been an oversight since I can’t imagine the logic behind that trait placement. To me the solution is simple. Since Duelist’s Discipline is in the Dueling line (which I’ll admit makes sense if just for the name) especially pre ‘100% combo finisher fix’ the iDuelist was mainly used as a confusion/bleed stacker, thus turning it into a condition weapon with interrupts. Where are interrupt traits? The domination line. It being hard to interrupt with a torch I don’t see many interrupt builds using it. So please…please….pretty purple butterfly please….

Swap Cleansing Conflagration with Duelist’s Discipline.

For clarity call Duelist’s Discipline something else; Pistol Perception or Mind Sniper or whatever but Cleansing Conflagration needs to be moved back home with her condition related trait friends so we can use it.

Suggestion #2:

Swap condition duration from Domination with critical damage from Dueling.

This would have the same synergy as the necromancer’s Curses trait line, seems counter-intuitive at first until you start putting a condition build together and then…PRESTO! all the pieces elegantly fall into place: 0/30/10/0/30.

No builds were harmed in the making of this build.

@Xaylin: The thing is, interrupts are only one form of shutdown; you don’t have to take any of the interrupt traits at all to shut down condition damage builds, just Null Field and iDisenchanter.

What makes the Confounding Suggestion’s change so good is that it makes any lockdown build that takes offhand Sword with weapon CD(ex: 30/10/0/0/30) really kitten dangerous, and if you grab Mantra of Distraction? Even more dangerous. The daze duration increase synergizes really well with Runes of the Mesmer (+33% daze duration) for an over 50% daze duration, meaning that it’ll be easier to stunlock people out of a fight for over 5 seconds with just offhand sword and clever use of Diversion.

Chaotic Interruption is a bit different. IMO to make an interrupt build work you NEED to have Mantra of Distraction, there’s just no better skill in the game for interrupting opponents. Since that takes up one skill slot right there, and Blink/Decoy will likely take another, it leaves you with only 1 flexible utility to work with. The Interrupt traits themselves are also in awkward places, forcing you to go 10/30/30/0/0 if you want to grab them all, and even then there’s always the chance, that you won’t pull off enough interrupts to make the trait investment worth it. Interrupt builds are a bit of a gamble; when they work, the interrupt traits -especially Chaotic and Bountiful Interruption- work very well. But when they don’t work, you have nearly no presence on the battlefield.

Sidenote: I once rolled with Chaotic Interruption AND Confounding Suggestions.. that was awesome.

Just a friendly reminder to those of you dedicating walls of text to Jon Peters…

He’s not reading them. He doesn’t have the time to waste listening to the story of your guild wars 2 life. If you want devs to listen and read your feedback, you need to keep it concise.

• Bullet points
• Are good

1. Also helpful
2. Are numbered lists

By giving feedback with thoughts clearly organized into easy to read bullets and lists, then your feedback will be heard.

Note that you can’t just break your wall of text into bullets and call it a day. You actually have to stop spewing walls of text and figuring out how to phrase it in a concise manner.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The scepter autoattack SHOULD have a unique aspect that the clones can inherit.

The scepter autoattack SHOULD NOT have a condition.

Conditions on autoattacks are bad. They produce spammy gameplay that is only countered by spammy condition cleanses. It’s not fun, it’s not skillful, and it shouldn’t exist. There are already more than enough autoattacks (including Mesmer staff) that have conditions. Scepter doesn’t need to join the already too long list.

Not to mention that clones apply them as they spam auto attack, and bleed on crit if you have it.

Yep.

Clones apply FULL conditions.

They saw fit to reduce clone damage to nil, but for some reason clones applying conditions just like a player would is okay.

Looking forward to the changes, especially change to Confounding Suggestions will benefit Lockdown builds although it’s stille somewhat "meh"for a Grandmaster trait. One more request from me:

- Please fix iLeap so it works when the terrain is uneven as current pathing is highly unreliable on anything uneven

Thank you.

MY personal opinion on mesmers…
1. Phantasms have way too high of dmg, duelist has a high base dmg + the stack on bleed. There are some phantasms that do need a fixing and that is the mage, and i would say the warden fact that it only stays in one spot…
2. Mantras…you have 2 stacks on a 20 sec CD…only upside to it is curing the conditions bad side is well 2 stacks on a 20 sec cd…the mantra that dmgs does little to nothing and 2 second of stability really?
3. Prismatic understanding is a VERY strong trait and it is actually very op should be toned down a bit…i mean comon you get either protection, regen, and aegis buff in stealth? Not to mention if your traited every 10 sec if you get a regen buff you get protection…I once had 1 min of protection buff…
4. Now that confusion is nerfed I would expect that Cry of Frustration dmg would be buffed…
5. Scepter 1 and staff 1 has a VERY SLOW auto attack… Staff I would completely understand for being slow but Scepter I do not…
6. I know this has nothing to do with mesmers or it kinda does is Perplex runes…really…like really have you tested them out before you released it?
Its like oh yea we are nerfing confusion but in compensation we are giving confusion to classes that makes confusion even more disgusting…
Conclusion of this dec 10 update IC good buff, rest are just crap…

I’d also like to second, third the idea’s of how our secondaries are being shown as boons (food, mantras ect) but they do not show up on clones making us more easily identified to players in PvP. It’s currently the PRIMARY reason i wont use mantras in a pvp environment. It’s like a big neon sign saying “attack me here!”

Not sure how easy it would be, but it would be nice if clones at least spawned with whatever current “boons” the mesmer has that way as players target and see a clone they become just as likely to attack it as they are the player which is their whole purpose.

In pve this makes no difference, but it is a lot more then a quality of life improvement when it comes to pvp, it’s just fairness.

I fourth the hiding food & mantras etc. and further I think it would make a lot of sense to hide signets, food, mantras or anything else that aren’t boons or conditions from all other players.

I don’t want to make a new post so just wanted to say I think Esquire’s finisher idea below this is a really great one. The new ‘effect’ of the scepter would depend entirely on the combo field around the target, making it nicely chaotic but still supportive and interesting. Has chances to cause heals, blind, confusion, weakness, might etc. without being just another spammed condition.

EDIT: Sorry, Esquire’s idea really got me thinking. What about also making the iMage’s bouncing attack a 100% projectile finisher too? I think that would fix the whole scepter/torch set.

Really like the idea below, devs please consider this very interesting solution.

A suggestion for scepter auto-attack:

1. Make Ether Bolt a projectile finisher.
2. Make Ether Blast a blast finisher.
3. The Ether Bolt cast by clones would also be a projectile finisher.

• Scepter is the only mesmer weapon without a finisher. Even our underwater weapons have finishers.
• Creates interesting possibilities with glamors, which synergizes well with the Inspiration trait line.
• Adds potential for both AoE and support capabilities in groups.
• Enhances conditions builds without creating a spammy quality to it.
• Gives an alternative (or compliment) to staff as a defensive weapon in holding points in PvP
• The projectile speed needs to be increased or the pre-cast animation reduced, or both.

I’d love to see improvements for WvW archetypes working in PvE.

• Conditions: confusion damage is already split to be higher in PvE, but it’s probably not high enough.

• Interrupt: on-interrupt traits have a lot of potential in PvE, if the rewards for interrupting are worth it, even if shutdown isn’t a part of PvE.

Esquire.2809:

A suggestion for scepter auto-attack:

1. Make Ether Bolt a projectile finisher.
2. Make Ether Blast a blast finisher.
3. The Ether Bolt cast by clones would also be a projectile finisher.

• Scepter is the only mesmer weapon without a finisher. Even our underwater weapons have finishers.
• Creates interesting possibilities with glamors, which synergizes well with the Inspiration trait line.
• Adds potential for both AoE and support capabilities in groups.
• Enhances conditions builds without creating a spammy quality to it.
• Gives an alternative (or compliment) to staff as a defensive weapon in holding points in PvP
• The projectile speed needs to be increased or the pre-cast animation reduced, or both.

First, I love the idea of making all ether bolts (from you or clone) projectile finishers. The name of the attack fits perfect with ethereal fields anyway – they should have some kind of reaction.

Second, I absolutely love the blast finisher idea, but would it be too OP being able to spam them so quickly?

If they kept the clone on 3rd attack, I think having both of the above is probably too much, but maybe add one (dat blast finisher!) It would really go along with what Jon Peters was saying about making scepter more supportive. Lots of AoE Chaos Armor would do just that.

Gingelyr.3648:

I’d love to see improvements for WvW archetypes working in PvE.

• Conditions: confusion damage is already split to be higher in PvE, but it’s probably not high enough.

• Interrupt: on-interrupt traits have a lot of potential in PvE, if the rewards for interrupting are worth it, even if shutdown isn’t a part of PvE.

I agree. A really great thing would be to change Furious Interruption

Furious Interruption – AoE daze (0.25s) on interrupt (5 targets) ICD 10s

skcamow.3527:

Esquire.2809:

A suggestion for scepter auto-attack:

1. Make Ether Bolt a projectile finisher.
2. Make Ether Blast a blast finisher.
3. The Ether Bolt cast by clones would also be a projectile finisher.

• Scepter is the only mesmer weapon without a finisher. Even our underwater weapons have finishers.
• Creates interesting possibilities with glamors, which synergizes well with the Inspiration trait line.
• Adds potential for both AoE and support capabilities in groups.
• Enhances conditions builds without creating a spammy quality to it.
• Gives an alternative (or compliment) to staff as a defensive weapon in holding points in PvP
• The projectile speed needs to be increased or the pre-cast animation reduced, or both.

First, I love the idea of making all ether bolts (from you or clone) projectile finishers. The name of the attack fits perfect with ethereal fields anyway – they should have some kind of reaction.

Second, I absolutely love the blast finisher idea, but would it be too OP being able to spam them so quickly?

If they kept the clone on 3rd attack, I think having both of the above is probably too much, but maybe add one (dat blast finisher!) It would really go along with what Jon Peters was saying about making scepter more supportive. Lots of AoE Chaos Armor would do just that.

I was also a little concerned about how OP the blast finisher would be as it would encourage spamming 1 in group fights and with scepter/torch we already have 1 blast finisher. Part of the elegance of this idea though is how simple it would be for the devs to dial in exactly the right strength via percentages. Even replacing the blast finisher on second attack with another projectile finisher at whatever percentage would still be amazing.

Thanks Esquire for this suggestion, hope it gets seen.

Conditions that are too powerful to put on scepter could be put on only at a particular range. For example, either:

1s blind at short range. Get a stack of clones at your position and then attacking you head-on becomes hard, with a good chance any given attack will be blinded unless you deal with the clones.

1s blind at max of scepter range. Now, ignoring the mesmer is the dumb move—you have to charge the mesmer or eat some blinds. Spread your clones out carefully and there are fewer spots safe from the blind.

Replace 1s and blind as needed.

Scepter:
-If you look at the actual effect for the auto attack it kind of looks like a glob of mesmery magic, so why not just have it so when the glob hits the target it explodes and applies aoe random conditions. This would also help to tag enemies while zerging.
-the block doesnt really work for me because I’m usually not getting hit.
-The confusion beam is actually working pretty well for me

Focus:
-Temporal curtain-just make it so the swiftness stacks and so we can pull people quicker
-warden- lock on to target and follow.

Just some thoughts