Guild Wars 2

A brief look at a few under-used or clumsy skills as well as some ideas on how to broaden the use and utility of a few other skills.

UTILITY SKILLS
Signet of Domination

• Cast-time reduced from ¼ to 0.
• Stun duration reduced from 2 to 1 second.
• Recharge decreased from 45 to 30 seconds.

Null Field

• Cast-time reduced from ¼ to 0.
• Now breaks stun.
• Now grants 1 second of stability.

Arcane Thievery

• Recharge reduced from 45 to 35 seconds.
• Now inflicts ½ second of daze (directly after the boon steal).
• If you interrupted a skill, you also inflict 5 seconds of weakness to your target and gain both 15 seconds of swiftness and 5 seconds of vigor.

Mimic

• Recharge reduced from 25 to 20 seconds.
• Cast-time reduced from 4½ to 2½ seconds.
• Duration reduced from 4 to 2 seconds.
• Now grants 2 seconds of protection upon activation.

Echo

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ to 0.
• Now inflicts ½ second of daze to foes adjacent to caster (180 range) upon activation.

WEAPON SKILLS
Counter Blade (skill re-work)

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Slash with your sword, sending out a shockwave of energy that damages and dazes up to five foes.
• Damage: 175
• Daze: ¾ second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the animation and effect of the Guardian staff skill [Wave of Wrath] except that it inflicts daze and activates twice as quickly.

Counter Spell (skill re-work)

• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Channel a beam of energy that damages and blinds foes.
• Damage (3x): 150
• Blind: 2 seconds
  • Uses the same animation and piercing effect of the Mesmer greatsword skill [Spatial Surge].

TRAITS
Halting Strike

• Damage increased by 15%.
• Successful interruptions now also remove up to 5 stacks of Defiant.
• If you successfully interrupt an Unshakable enemy that currently has no Defiant stacks, you render that enemy confounded for 3 seconds.

Confounded

• Cannot gain stacks of Defiant.

Don’t touch my blocks man.

Deathcon.5903:

Don’t touch my blocks man.

Time its usage, then use its remaining duration to close the gap and interrupt your target. Furthermore, you’re a Mesmer; you already have enough “Get out of jail free” cards.

shimmerless.4560:

are these PvE related? (the stuff about defiant implies so).

i like the arcane thievery idea, maybe lose the vigor though

protection on mimic is good

They’re meant to be general changes. I’m just upset that Interruption Mesmer will never be a thing in general PvE because ANet is bad at designing high-level PvE encounters/didn’t anticipate their player-base playing their game as it was meant to be played: hence the existence of Unshakable and Defiant. A PvE-focused (but overall general) change to one of the Interruption Mesmer’s core traits would maybe help bring control back into the limelight in PvE.

The blocks are fine where they are because the blocks themselves are so good. As it stands now, the block chain skills are pretty garbage compared to just using the block. Changing the functionality of “lazily wave your wand and send a slow-moving puff towards your enemy” to something faster and with more combat impact would give Mesmers using scepter or off-hand sword more openers and mid-combat transitions.

I think the proposed Arcane Thievery change is probably too strong. Arcane Thievery already works very well. Stealing Signet of Rage, or huge might stacks/protection from other classes can be extremely influential in a battle. I do think that having a slightly lower cooldown would be better though, to make condition removal via Arcane Thievery more reliable.

Also, consider what adding a daze would mean; anyone with 15 points in Domination would be able to almost instantly stack large amounts of vulnerability with this utility. Having an interrupt that can provide vulnerability that simultaneously steals boons an gives conditions seems like overkill to me. I’d just be happy with a slightly lower cooldown and a bug fix to the bug where it will remove conditions but won’t properly transfer them to the target.

Swagg.9236:

Deathcon.5903:

Don’t touch my blocks man.

Time its usage, then use its remaining duration to close the gap and interrupt your target. Furthermore, you’re a Mesmer; you already have enough “Get out of jail free” cards.

shimmerless.4560:

are these PvE related? (the stuff about defiant implies so).

i like the arcane thievery idea, maybe lose the vigor though

protection on mimic is good

They’re meant to be general changes. I’m just upset that Interruption Mesmer will never be a thing in general PvE because ANet is bad at designing high-level PvE encounters/didn’t anticipate their player-base playing their game as it was meant to be played: hence the existence of Unshakable and Defiant. A PvE-focused (but overall general) change to one of the Interruption Mesmer’s core traits would maybe help bring control back into the limelight in PvE.

The blocks are fine where they are because the blocks themselves are so good. As it stands now, the block chain skills are pretty garbage compared to just using the block. Changing the functionality of “lazily wave your wand and send a slow-moving puff towards your enemy” to something faster and with more combat impact would give Mesmers using scepter or off-hand sword more openers and mid-combat transitions.

but wouldnt the solution be pve content that allows each build to shine, rather than just blanket buffs to skills that are already pretty solid? Personally, I’m really not feeling a lack of power on my mesmer in any setting. I think it’s really in a nice spot balance-wise, and I’m biased, since I play it.

- Signet of domination. I like the changes, except the time cast. Even 1/4 s is pretty short and only mantras should have no cast time.

- Null Field. How a aoe ground-targeted support skill has to be stun breaker? Don’t you realize that blink, decoy, Mirror Images, Signet of Midnight and Mantra of Concentration, grants us tons of Stun Break?.

- Arcane Thievery, all those changes weren’t enough to make it OP. Sarcasm OFF (in case people needed).

- Mimic. The purpose of this skill is to make you tanky. And why do you want to be able to block half just for 2 miserable seconds of protection?

- Echo, which skill is that?

- Counter blade. I suppose it’s Mirror blade. Yeah, make a 5 target daze skill with a 8 s cooldown. Seems legit to me…

- Counter spell. It’s a skill after a block, so it cannot be a long casting skill. And it’s ok as it is now.

- Halting strike. The damage is fine, even more in PvE, where some people managed to deal +5000 with it.

So in general, you want to make some skills OP just cause they’re more focused on PvP and you want to make it OK for what you play.

SoD casttime from .25 to 0s ? why ? so you can stun while being stunned? There are stunbreakers …

NullField stunbreaking? lol … no

Mimic … you want to half the reflection duration ? why ? I understand that Echo (Mimic-2) should be instant, but not be used while you’re stunned. And not deal daze while creating a projectile, which might stun as well …

Also, do not mess with defiant. The system is the way it is. If you want to remove multiple stacks, other classes want as well.

Generally, I understand that you want to improve interrupt builds, but that’s the wrong way … Instead of using the skills which do the things (stunbreak, daze, …) you want your preferred skills to additionally have those effects.

No changes whatsoever. All skills are fine and don’t need to be messed with.

edit

- Counter blade. I suppose it’s Mirror blade. Yeah, make a 5 target daze skill with a 8 s cooldown. Seems legit to me…

No it’s sword offhand #4