Guild Wars 2

So, with all the negativity and people going around calling for nerfs, saying X, Y, Z is OP and all the other unfounded and factually wrong claims going around I thought we should have a different type of discussion.

So what do you think needs a buff and how?

I’ll start off:

Chaotic Dampening: Becomes a 3.5% recharge with chaos armour.
Rending Shatter: Needs a buff, perhaps 2 vulnerability but reduce the duration to 5s.
Mistrust perhaps: Add 2 torment to it or buff the confusion stacks to 4.
Bountiful Disillusionment: It’s good but the vigor and fury could last 10s.
Chaotic Interuption: Chill if applied 2s to 3s.
Persisting Images: 20% to 50% and affecting clones too.
Healing Prism: Remove the ICD, put a minimum threshold for self heal of 500.
Shattered Strength: 2 might.

Those are just a few things I think could do with a buff even if it is very small. What do you think should be buffed?

Also bring your flame kittenant clothes…

Maim the Disillusioned.

tobascodagama.2961:

Maim the Disillusioned.

Either that or buff Cry of Frustration to apply one stack of torment as standard.

Kitten, how did I miss that, also MtD, should be 2 stacks of torment for 5s.

Well, this is gonna be lost in the QQ lol

Rending Shatter Inflicts 2 stacks of Vulnerability.
Furious Interruption Strips 2 boons on interrupt.
Duelist’s Discipline Actually procs bleeds.
Mistrust Inflicts 3 stacks of confusion.
Chaotic Dampening Gives a recharge bonus of 3%.
Persisting Images gives phantasms and clones 20% more health.
Protected Phantasms Phantasm spawn with distortion and gain Aegis for 8s every 8s. (The secondary trait is too similar in concept to the Chronomancer trait that gives shattering clones super speed).
Healing Prism Has no internal CD and heals allies 15% of what you heal yourself. Hey Anet, how about you actually fix specific issues (i.e. Vampiric Aura) instead of slapping legit traits with a nerf bat??? obviously still bitter about this
Temporal Enchanter Grants 3s of superspeed

Mirror of Anguish
Really? 60s cooldown? Still wouldn’t make sense even if the cooldowns were independent between opponents.

• Illusion of Vulnerability, make it Master minor and buff to 12 stacks of vuln on interrupt.
• Rending Shatter, make it Adept minor and buff to 2 stacks per clone (this would leave a Major Adept slot open for a shatter-related trait since we already cover Lockdown and Phantasms in the other two Adept Majors)
• Desperate Decoy, always disliked it. It’s so easy to waste it with an ill-timed damage and end up with Revealed.
• Mistrust, buff to at least 4 stacks.
• Descent into Madness, who cares about fall damage, really? Change the condition on which the creation of Chaos Storm triggers. Create a Chaos Storm when you are damaged more than 20% of your HP in a single strike. Or on block. Something useful.
• Mirror of Anguish, make the cooldown per-target. Or scrap che cooldown at all and make it a 25% or 33% chance on every incoming CC.
• Chaotic Dampening, buff to at least 3%, possibly 4%.
• Chaotic Persistence, should really be at least 4%. 5% would be even nicer.
• Restorative Illusions, make the condition removal AoE with a small ICD (5s)
• Healing Prism, make it a small percentage (5-10%) of how much the mesmer healed himself. No ICD.
• Illusionary Inspiration, I understand that idea is that you are casting the Signet just after summoning the phantasm, but in game feels horribly clunky. Any way to solve this?
• Persistence of Memory, I didn’t do the math here, but I feel like 2s is a bit on the weak side compared to Compounding Power.
• The Pledge, I really dislike this and the kind of playstyle it forces you to use. What if the trait reduced the cooldown every time you or your phantasms inflicted burning with a torch skill? Hitting 5 targets with the come back from The Prestige would already be better than the old flat 20% cooldown, and the phantasm could possibly contribute more. And it wouldn’t be “sit in stealth more so you can sit in stealth more”.
• Maim the Disillusioned, bring it back to 2 stacks, reduce the duration to 3 seconds.
• Phantasmal Haste, phantasms attack more often and have quickness. This would make it interesting in pvp too (would possibly be counter-productive in PvE for reflects, tho?).
• Shattered Strength, clones grant one stack, phantasms grant 2 stacks

Menaka.5092:

• Mistrust, buff to at least 4 stacks.
• Mirror of Anguish, make the cooldown per-target. Or scrap che cooldown at all and make it a 25% or 33% chance on every incoming CC.
• Chaotic Dampening, buff to at least 3%, possibly 4%.
• Healing Prism, make it a small percentage (5-10%) of how much the mesmer healed himself. No ICD.
• Shattered Strength, clones grant one stack, phantasms grant 2 stacks

+1 to all these

Menaka.5092:

• Chaotic Persistence, should really be at least 4%. 5% would be even nicer.

Really, something needs to be done to bring it in line with equivalent traits from other classes with condi support. Engineer has a whopping 50% on pistol condition durations, and it is not limited by the duration cap, because it stacks multiplicatively!
I’d say at the very least, Chaotic Persistence should not count toward the cap in the same way. Going past that to an increased number like 4% would be good, too, though.

Menaka.5092:

• Persistence of Memory, I didn’t do the math here, but I feel like 2s is a bit on the weak side compared to Compounding Power.

Wait until Chronophantasma is available, then check again. I’m still working on rotations, but being able to shatter phantasms twice before they die really messes with the math on PoM. I’d rather wait and see than have them buff it now, realize it’s too powerful, then nerf Chronophantasma or overnerf PoM later.
I’ve almost got a phantasm rotation that keeps at least 2 iDuelists up at all times, with an iMage and iDefender sharing the last spot, while still shattering Mind Wrack every time it’s off cooldown. I think with some work, you could maybe keep CoF on cooldown too, without losing much by way of phantasm uptime.
So yeah, just wait and see.

Menaka.5092:

• The Pledge, I really dislike this and the kind of playstyle it forces you to use. What if the trait reduced the cooldown every time you or your phantasms inflicted burning with a torch skill? Hitting 5 targets with the come back from The Prestige would already be better than the old flat 20% cooldown, and the phantasm could possibly contribute more. And it wouldn’t be “sit in stealth more so you can sit in stealth more”.

Couldn’t agree more. Too many people complaining that PU didn’t get nerfed, when we can’t even really say for sure it needs one until we fix this stupid broken trait.
Also, “sit in stealth more so you can sit in stealth more” is the best description I’ve seen yet why The Pledge is a bad trait, bugged or not.

Menaka.5092:

• Maim the Disillusioned, bring it back to 2 stacks, reduce the duration to 3 seconds

It’s 6 seconds now, right? So 2 stacks at 3s is roughly equivalent to 1 stack at 6s?
I’d say 3s is too short, then. Make it 5s, and you’ll have still cut down MtD’s potential, without chopping it off at the knees like they did before.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Menaka.5092:

• Maim the Disillusioned, bring it back to 2 stacks, reduce the duration to 3 seconds

It’s 6 seconds now, right? So 2 stacks at 3s is roughly equivalent to 1 stack at 6s?
I’d say 3s is too short, then. Make it 5s, and you’ll have still cut down MtD’s potential, without chopping it off at the knees like they did before.

Roughly equivalent in theory, more burst and less chance to cleanse it, since shatter is intended to be our burst, not our sustained damage…

Anyone had any thoughts on utilities that could do with a buff?

I’d personally like Phantasmal defender and disenchanter to be looked at again. Those guys die far too easily.

Also mantras need to be a bit less clunky to use. Perhaps not go back to recharging in the background (while it was marvellous it felt a bit too good) but I also don’t want increased charge time, almost 3s is long enough.

Menaka.5092:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Menaka.5092:

• Maim the Disillusioned, bring it back to 2 stacks, reduce the duration to 3 seconds

It’s 6 seconds now, right? So 2 stacks at 3s is roughly equivalent to 1 stack at 6s?
I’d say 3s is too short, then. Make it 5s, and you’ll have still cut down MtD’s potential, without chopping it off at the knees like they did before.

Roughly equivalent in theory, more burst and less chance to cleanse it, since shatter is intended to be our burst, not our sustained damage…

If they exhibited any intention of supporting our sustained damage, I’d think it more an issue.

apharma.3741:

Anyone had any thoughts on utilities that could do with a buff?

Mantras should go back to the “bugged” CD recharges they previously had. Add an increased CD on all the mantras to compensate for them simply being automatically charged in more cases than not.
Feedback Make it ground targeted.
Veil Increase stealth duration to 6s (this is in conjunction with nerfing PU’s bonus duration).
Mass Invisibility Increase stealth duration to 7s (this is in conjunction with nerfing PU’s bonus duration).
Portal Add a timer for both Entre and Exenut.
Illusion of Life Grant revived allies Resistance. Or… totally revamp it to just give allies illusion of vengeance for 30s+. Killing enemies doesn’t fully revive them. Now that’s a true illusion of life.

I think most of our utilities are in a good place. They’ve always been decent in theory, but in practice, the issue of survivability has always made us have to choose Blink/Decoy or simply gtfo.

apharma.3741:

Anyone had any thoughts on utilities that could do with a buff?

I’d personally like Phantasmal defender and disenchanter to be looked at again. Those guys die far too easily.

Also mantras need to be a bit less clunky to use. Perhaps not go back to recharging in the background (while it was marvellous it felt a bit too good) but I also don’t want increased charge time, almost 3s is long enough.

I agree with both: utility phantasms should be tougher than the DPS counterparts and mantras need a solution to their many problems and general clumsyness. I understand that the “recharge in background” change created some incredibly strong synergies (for example MoR), but it was also a lot easier to play with mantras then…

apharma.3741:

Anyone had any thoughts on utilities that could do with a buff?

Mantras
Removed, replaced with something not clunky and actually Mesmery. See my post about Illusion-type-skills.

Portal
Range indicator added to minimap, skill doesn’t actually cancel when you leave range but duration is left on it.

Illusion of Life
Instant cast.

Fix Temporal Curtain to reliably reflect projectiles when traited. (Just copy the code from the Guards