Mesmer elite skills redesign
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I wouldn’t mind CS not affecting elite skills anymore. Sure, it wouldn’t be self-explainatory to newsbies but it’s not like GW2 does a great job at stuff like this anyway. I do believe this would make balancing the elites a lot easier.
Looking at the elites, I personally have my biggest issues with the interaction of MI and Master of Manipulation and Portal and Mimic – which aren’t even elite skills. But I feel the class could benefit from some rearrangements.
For example…
Mimic
- Becomes new Manipulation elite skill
- New utility is introduced which either grants Blurr/Distortion or is a low cooldown (unblockable) pbae CC.
- Desperate Decoy is reworked into proccing this new skill
Mass Invisibility
- Removed / merged / reworked with Veil
- Veil will affect less targets but have a lower cooldown
- I do like the idea of Veil revealing targets when cast
Portal
- Becomes the new Glamour elite
- Portal Exit now works as a Stun break as long as the entry has already been placed
Time Warp
- Now a utility skill
- Cooldown and duration reduced but Boon duration slightly increased
- No longer affects 10 targets
I think Gravity Well and Signit of Humility – after extending the duration assuming that elites are no longer affected by CS – are perfectly fine in my book.
Slightly off topic, but I also feel that we do have some issues with the way our utility related traits are placed. Some traitlines are just oversaturated while others lack in this department. I’ve been theorycrafting a new rework based on my former thread and thought about something like this:
Duelling
- Master of Manipulation moved to Duelling
- MI reworked (s. above)
- Harmonious Mantras moved to Inspiration and reworked
Chaos
- Temporal Enchanter moved to Adept from Inspiration GM
- Temporal Enchanter no longer grants Superspeed
Inspiration
- Mantras got 3 charges by default. HM no longer increases the number of charges
- Restorative Mantras now heals on charge consumption
- Harmonious Mantras now grants a damage buff to nearby allies
I’m not trying to change traitlines here, or change which skills are elites. I’m just trying to make our elites better.
Our elite skills are already among the best out of all elite skills across all classes. All 4 skills you listed have a potential to swing a fight in your favor. With a skill for situations from 1v1 to 100v100.
And, in my opinion, that is exactly what an elite skill should be. They shouldn’t be utility+ skills, they should be fight defining skills. That’s why we have only 1 elite slot, and why the CDs are so incredibly long. They are supposed to swing a fight in your favor if you get it off.
And right now they don’t. They just don’t. Which, to me, makes them failures as an “elite” skill.
Veil is a kinda meh skill to begin with. It has weird interactions overall and due to the very short duration is limited in what it c an even do.
I’d be in favor of lat out ripping it out and replacing it with a different “wall invisibility”:
Veil – 60s CD
Creates a wall of ephemeral power for 8 seconds, preventing enemies on either side from seeing allies on the other side. This wall breaks line of sight if you cannot see the target any more.
Essentially, you’d (I hope the engine can do this!) see the empty landscape when looking through the wall. As if the players weren’t there.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
And, in my opinion, that is exactly what an elite skill should be. They shouldn’t be utility+ skills, they should be fight defining skills. That’s why we have only 1 elite slot, and why the CDs are so incredibly long. They are supposed to swing a fight in your favor if you get it off.
And right now they don’t. They just don’t. Which, to me, makes them failures as an “elite” skill.
Moa is almost a guaranteed kill in sPvP, it’s not even used in GvGs, becouse it is considered poor practice-
Gravity Well always results in corpses, when timed correctly(no stab on enemy…)
Time Warp makes up for soooo much more preasure from your entire group, that it forces enemy retreat from that area or a Time Warp of their own.
Mass Invis is a guaranteed full out of combat reset, or a devastating out of stealth attack.
All 4 are massive in their respective fields and i only listed WvW, PvP posibilities…
You are trying to make them better, why??!?!??!
I’m trying to make them better because they simply aren’t good enough to justify their long cooldowns.
Moa is a 3 minute long CD for a 6 second transformation that is hard as kitten to land if the other person is paying the least bit of attention. Not to mention, people thought it was fine as a 10 second transformation for years before CS allowed you to double up on it, so arguing that 10 seconds would be too powerful is just bullkitten. And we still have to deal with the more noticeable cast, making it easy for anyone paying attention to see you casting it, and prepare to block/evade/interrupt it.
TW is good yes, but pulsing quickness is outdated (and personally I feel like an elite could have a lot more flavor than just plain quickness). And ever since the change to quickness stacks capping at 5 instead of 9, TW can be clunky in PvE. Plus, the amount of boon strips in the game have gone up since it was released.
Add onto that resistance, which completely negates the slow effect (thus negating the impact on the enemy players) and its relative abundance in some builds now, and just pulsing slow is no longer good enough for such a long CD. Thus, decreasing the speed of enemy projectiles inside TW is a way to ensure that it always has a negative effect on enemy players inside of it.
MI would actually be getting a nerf to its stealth uptime in almost all cases since I only want this change implemented if PU is nerfed, so that argument is also bullkitten. And the game needs more AoE reveals as long as Anet refuses to nerf stealth access more. So again, prudent change. If you feel the need to blow a 90 sec skill for a chance at revealing someone, be my guest. But then you also blew using your group stealth at an opportune time if you mess up and there is no one there to reveal. So it offers more opportunity for choices to be impactful.
And gravity well was just a small AoE for its CD. 90 second CD for a 240 radius AoE is pretty kitten long. But the skill itself was fine, so natural solution is to make the AoE slightly bigger, thus making the skill more impactful without actually buffing it.
Absolutely NOT! Why would you even mention the idea of making CS not affect Elites? If history is a guide, It will happen without compensation of any kind.
Mesmerising Girl
Because its a balancing nightmare, and led to SoH getting absolutely massive nerfs (seriously 40% reduction in duration is a huge nerf to the skill, on top of the changes made to when the animation pops up and not being able to target people behind us).
Fact is, ANet will never be able to balance mesmer elites as long as CS affects them. Because for them to be worth their CD on core mesmer, they will be extremely overpowered on chrono when they are allowed to reduce the CD to 72 seconds and double cast them with CS. If we want elite skills that are worth their CDs, then CS cannot be allowed to affect them. Its the only possible way to balance core mesmer elite skills in such a way that they are worth their CD, even when not running chrono.
Absolutely NOT! Why would you even mention the idea of making CS not affect Elites? If history is a guide, It will happen without compensation of any kind.
While I agree, at the same time that’s still not a good excuse for letting an imbalance be imbalanced.
This was something the player-facing dev lead (Ghostcrawler) frequently brought up back in WoW: Yes, it seems unfair, yes this leads to a situation in which the class is now knowingly under- or over-powered, but if we have resources spare to fix issue X before patch but not issue Y which would re-balance the class, we’ll still fix X. Because it’s an issue.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
I’m not trying to change traitlines here, or change which skills are elites. I’m just trying to make our elites better.
Well… I guess I disagree here. I personally would prefer a more extensive rework because I see a bigger issue with skill groups (e.g. Manipulations, Glamours etc.) including traits rather than elite skills on their own.
Absolutely NOT! Why would you even mention the idea of making CS not affect Elites? If history is a guide, It will happen without compensation of any kind.
While I agree, at the same time that’s still not a good excuse for letting an imbalance be imbalanced.
This was something the player-facing dev lead (Ghostcrawler) frequently brought up back in WoW: Yes, it seems unfair, yes this leads to a situation in which the class is now knowingly under- or over-powered, but if we have resources spare to fix issue X before patch but not issue Y which would re-balance the class, we’ll still fix X. Because it’s an issue.
Except that after the huge Glamour nerf, Mesmer was under powered for a couple of years.
Sure, OK, I can see dealing with being down for a little while to fix an issue. That isn’t the way it has worked though. I don’t see any reason to believe that if CS no longer affected elites… anything further would be done.
Asking for a nerf that major, in the hope that compensation would come with it, is not logical. I see it as a disservice to Mesmers, generally.
Mesmerising Girl
I’m not trying to change traitlines here, or change which skills are elites. I’m just trying to make our elites better.
Well… I guess I disagree here. I personally would prefer a more extensive rework because I see a bigger issue with skill groups (e.g. Manipulations, Glamours etc.) including traits rather than elite skills on their own.
I would like to see a bigger rework as well, and have been trying to work on one (though school has kept me so busy I haven’t made much progress with keeping it balanced).
When I finally get it done though, the elite skills I present here are what’s likely to be in my ideal rework of mesmer, with just a few minor tweaks to them to keep them balanced.
All I see here is a slight rework of elite skills at the cost of the elite specialisation. Yes, CS is a balacing nightmare, but I’d rather keep the status quo than have arenanet “rebalance” our elite and leave the class broken for 2 years.
Let’s face it, mesmer was for a very long time in a very bad shape as far as balance and patches goes (right behind necro). Our only gimick was portal and TW and towards the end of vanilla even those 2 skills became obsolete due to powercreep. Now we are a glorified buffbot in pve and literally the only class which has no damage spec.
Having elites not get affected by CS is a huge nerf which I doubt arenanet would compensate with enough buffs to elites which, as others have mentioned, are already powerful and useful enough compared to other classes.
IF arenanet decided to go this route and make CS not affect elites there is exactly 2 ways this would play out:
A. best case our elites keep a slight buff but overall the class suffers in power
B. the elites get nerfed after a slight buff because now they are to powerful but CS affecting elites stays turned off
Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather wait for the next expansion and have the coin toss then with potentially another elite specialisation keeping us viable.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
You’re right, having elites not be affected by CS is a huge nerf if it came by itself. If you had bothered reading past that line you would see that they’ve been buffed enough, and CDs shortened on TW and SoH, such that they would be suitably strong for the CD they have.
Like it or not, its impossible to balance elite skills on core mesmer while they are affected by CS. Flat out impossible. And for that reason alone CS shouldn’t affect elite skills.
At the cost of being trash tier again for, potentially, years? No, absolutely not. That’s self destructive thinking in my opinion.
Mesmerising Girl
Except that after the huge Glamour nerf, Mesmer was under powered for a couple of years.
Sure, OK, I can see dealing with being down for a little while to fix an issue. That isn’t the way it has worked though. I don’t see any reason to believe that if CS no longer affected elites… anything further would be done.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ve played 98% or so of my time on the Mesmer, I readily agree.
Though I do think:
- First, that doesn’t change anything. CS affecting elites is really bad design, it ought to go.
- Second, the devs are rather slow. Especially when it comes to class/skill design. I’m honestly of the opinion that most classes need to go all the way back to the very first drawing board, working on the underlying class theme and from there getting a cohesive design. Still, that’s a separate issue, they patch 1-3x a year what ought to be patched every 2-3 weeks. Balance patches of the size we’re getting, that is. They’re tiny. But again, doesn’t affect the fact that CS on elites is pretty bad.
I mean, I don’t know why they are so slow, either. The balance patchnotes always read as if, given the raw amount of months since the last one, a single dev plus 2-3 QA people should have been responsible for this.
I doubt that’s the case, so there’s got to be another reason. Just wish I knew what, supposedly their total dev team is rather big, so having 5-10 people do nothing but balance and crank out numerical rebalances to a dozen or two dozen skills every week should be easy, plus bigger reworks once a month or every 6 weeks, removing and replacing skills or even entire traitlines.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
Time Warp – No longer pulses quickness to allies, instead doubles attack speed of up to 10 allies while they are inside TW. Pulse slow to all enemies inside TW, 1 sec slow applied every second. Also slows down enemy projectiles by 15%. Radius 380 units (20 units larger radius). Base duration 10 seconds. CD 120 seconds
Projectile speed modification is not a mechanic that currently exists in the game. This change would require new tech, so you can go ahead and rethink this one. It also would be weaker in PvE than it is currently, though stronger in PvP since the effect would be more potent but much more limited in duration.
Signet of Humility – Transform duration restored to 10 seconds. If you successfully transform someone, transfer 1 boon from them to you every 2 seconds until the transformation ends or they are killed. Can again target enemies behind the mesmer. CD 120 seconds.
Sure I guess. I feel like targeting enemies behind the mesmer is unnecessary, but whatever. The boon transfer is technically a buff, but in reality it wouldn’t have much of an effect. A moad target is no longer producing boons, and a shatter burst is generally going to strip whatever they have left, so I think you should rethink that aspect of this change.
Mass Invisibility – 5 seconds of invisibility to up to 10 allies. Causes AoE reveal centered around you when the cast finishes, 300 unit radius. If you reveal at least 1 person, add another second to the base stealth duration granted to allies. 90 sec CD (note that ideally for me, if this change were to go through that PU would also be nerfed to only providing 33% longer stealth uptime instead of 50%. So best case scenario is 8 second stealth if you revealed someone, only .5 seconds more than you can currently get with MI and PU, but harder to achieve. Realistically you would only achieve 6.5-6.75 sec stealth with MI and PU most of the time).
This really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Adding reveal to it is a reasonable thing, but why would you be scaling stealth duration off of revealing someone? The two effects are pretty binary, you’re either going to want long stealth (no attacking) or reveal someone to attack them (breaking stealth to attack). A more sensible implementation would be reducing the cooldown by a percentage for each target revealed.
Gravity Well – This one is fine, just increase radius to 280 units (40 unit increase in radius).
Sure.
To start off with, CS would no longer affect elite skills. Only way to truly balance them between core mesmer and chrono.
Yeah, see, I’m gonna have to agree with Ithilwen on this one. The dev team is not to be trusted with implementing things properly. The proper order of changes here would be elite skill buffs → removal of CS interaction, not the other way around. The current interaction between CS and elites is a large part of what is keeping mesmer relevant in PvP currently, and the devs simply no longer have the benefit of the doubt to implement changes in a reasonable way.
That being said, PvP as a whole in this game is on life support that just had the power cable yanked, so it’s not like any of these are relevant insofar as actual game-time goes. I’d just as soon see a balance pass making elites more relevant for WvW group play/WvW roaming/PvE.
You’re right, having elites not be affected by CS is a huge nerf if it came by itself. If you had bothered reading past that line you would see that they’ve been buffed enough, and CDs shortened on TW and SoH, such that they would be suitably strong for the CD they have.
Like it or not, its impossible to balance elite skills on core mesmer while they are affected by CS. Flat out impossible. And for that reason alone CS shouldn’t affect elite skills.
I did read through your suggestions, hence why I gave 2 scenarios as to why I think they are trash. Had you bothered to read through my entire reply you could have deducted this.
First off, the changes do not make up for the nerf in pve. Giving some new fancy mechanics which are not even ingame yet to skills and reducing some of the elites cooldowns does not balance make especially the way you changed them. They end up on longer cooldowns then they are now (efectively 90s) while honestly believeing arenanet would keep something as SoH give a 10 second transform. Please get real.
Second I specifically addressed the issue of IF you were to increase the intended buff even more. In this case I’m absoultely sure that we would see a rebalance to the rebalance leaving us off in a worse state than right now.
Again all this does is buff base Mesmer at the expence of Chronomancer while adding a very high probability that we get screwed by arenanet.
Mesmers have the worst elites of the bunch
First of there is zero elite that ties into condition damage
Time Warp and Mass Invis are group skills that are outclassed by other classes (Guardian/Thief)and don’t bring anything of value to solo pve where your task is to kill mobs. Time Warp was so bad it even got bumped up to target ten people but even then not everyone wants an etheral field under them.
Gravity Well does DPS but its primary is CC and gathering your mobs it provides 3 seconds of CC that’s 3 seconds of no attacking or moving so Gravity Well shouldn’t even be used with a condition or Torment build its counterproductive.
Moa creates a lopsided PVP situation all those Mesmer nerfs early on were based around this skill being basically a insta KO in PvP. Its only purpose in PVE is in regards to breakbar and not every mob has a breakbar and its effects vary widly on the top of mob your against.
These elites are the reason you see countless Mesmers and other classes such as Necro and Ranger falling back on racial elites because they do direct damage. They’ll clear the camp in WvW, kill the vets in PVE, and assist in quickly removing trash mobs.
@Fay – thanks for your input, and I apologize for not responding sooner. I’ve been thinking over your feedback.
First, I’ll say that your feedback makes a lot of sense. I was trying to simultaneously add more flavor to elites, make them powerful enough to be an actual elite skill instead of a utility+ skill, and also provide more choice in gameplay (specifically through MI). And apparently I was so fixated on those aspects that my proposed designs did have some problems.
TW – This is where I was trying to add more flavor, instead of just being a source of quickness and slow. I still think that having the ability to slow enemy projectiles would be an extremely cool feature, but I understand if it isn’t implemented. As to the change nerfing it in PvE, yes it does I agree. I was hopeful that reducing the CD by an entire minute would be enough to keep the skill at a reasonable strength for its CD. When traited, you could maintain 10% uptime on the doubled attack speed, which I consider quite good, but I would be fine just having the reduced CD and keeping the effects of the skill the same as they currently are.
SoH – That makes sense. What about reduce the transformation duration to 8 seconds, but if you kill them while they are transformed you gain the passive effects of the signet back? Either that or just leave it as a 10 second transform, no other effects.
MI – Again, what you say here makes sense. Originally I was thinking about providing a choice to the players, to create more active play on their part, but hearing (err I guess seeing) you write out the lack of internal synergy in this I agree it doesn’t make much sense. Keep the 5 second reveal, and for each enemy revealed reduce the CD of MI by 5%, maximum of 15% cooldown reduction.
And in regards to your last point, where you agree with Ithilwen. If any of these changes go through, I wouldn’t want the change to CS, making it no longer affect elites, to go through unless it was implemented at the same time that these (or similar) changes to our elite skills were made. I would certainly not be ok with Anet just nerfing CS but not even lowering the CD on our elite skills to compensate.
@Doam – What changes would you make, or what elite would you want, to give us what you consider a good condi build elite skill?
My only comment on this thread is that Mesmer has easily among the best elite skills in the game right now, where all of them are very strong for different applications, and all of them see regular use. None of them need to be revamped, in my opinion.
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To be honest I don’t think mesmer needs anything major doing with its elites and certainly not the level that you have come up with Ori, nice effort though.
Mass Invis: Fine as is, great with PU, still good for 5s stealth without.
Gravity Well: Fine as is, lots of CC and groups people up without stab/stunbreaks.
SoH: Duration was reduced 40% and I think the devs missed a trick reducing its base cool down to match, that’s the only thing needing doing to bring core mesmer in line with elite.
Time warp: Personally I’d prefer to see the duration of this halved while reducing its cool down by half giving it a bit more of a punch more often. At the moment it feels like overkill in most areas but the cool down is so very long, in PvP and WvW walking out of it is incredibly easy rendering what should be a game changing skill a bit of a let down. It also doesn’t compare to SoH for that game changer.
@Rising Dusk – I’m not trying to argue that our elites aren’t some of the best, because I think they are among the best. But that doesn’t mean that I think they are “elite”. To me, all of them except SoH and gravity well are just utility+, yet SoH is on such a long CD that its not worth it unless you run chrono and use it during CS. I’d like to see elite skills on all classes buffed, some more significantly than others.
@apharma – I can see where you are coming from. Regarding SoH. If its CD was reduced by 40% to match the nerf in the transform duration, it would be alright. A 6 sec transform is still pretty strong. As long as its breakbar damage was kept the same. This would take it down to an 86second CD if traited though. Regarding TW, well yes what you said would certainly make it a better fit for a lot of situations. However, to me that puts it firmly in the camp of utility+ skill instead of an actual elite skill. 5 seconds (6 traited) of pulsing quickness and slow just isn’t elite to me. Especially considering that WoA can generate 4 seconds of quickness every 25 seconds. At that point, WoA would actually be significantly stronger than TW for generating quickness as long as you weren’t being hit with boon strips. So to me, I can’t agree with that change just because I wouldn’t be able to call TW an elite skill at that point.
@Rising Dusk – I’m not trying to argue that our elites aren’t some of the best, because I think they are among the best. But that doesn’t mean that I think they are “elite”. To me, all of them except SoH and gravity well are just utility+, yet SoH is on such a long CD that its not worth it unless you run chrono and use it during CS. I’d like to see elite skills on all classes buffed, some more significantly than others.
If your goal is to suggest changes to the fundamental design of what elite skills are, then that’s different than what I thought and I don’t really have any feedback for you. I, personally, like the state of elite skills and Mesmer elite skills in particular. There are definitely some elite skills on other classes that I dislike a great deal, most of them being underwhelming transformations that don’t effectively synergize with the rest of the class’s kit.
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Honestly as with many class balance issues (not just with Mesmer), much comes down to a lack of class design.
That is to say, there’s no consistent theme, and even if there were, it’s not translated into skills / traits / weapons.
Nothing “fits”. It feels as if during development the developers back then (probably different ones than the current team) just threw hundreds upon hundreds of skills and traits at each class and then waited to see which “stuck”. If there’s a bug, remove the skill. If there’s a big balance issue, remove the skill. And so on.
So what remained was a hodgepodge of abilities which don’t really create a consistent class theme. Mesmers are purple and have pink butterflies, yes, but they’re not trickster, they’re not illusionists and they’re not debuffers nor disablers. Any of which could easily become the Mesmer’s overarching purpose, if the class were designed around a consistent theme.
However, 4,5 years in, it’s difficult to say “Just go back to the drawing board with the class”. I mean that’s what should happen, but you’d kitten thousands of people off, as 75%+ of skills, traits and so on would probably no longer exist.
For a smaller fix, I would exchange skill groups slowly. Start with Clone/Phantasm utility skills, they become “Illusions”, and this also adds an elite:
- Illusion of Health, heal-skill which heals to full and causes massive regeneration, healing another 200% of health over the next 6 seconds. At the end, suffer an uncurable DoT which deals 95% of health in damage over 6 seconds and also prevents healing over its duration.
- Illusion of Life, as now but rebalanced to be actually useful (but this is a global issue with all rezz skills).
- Illusion of Power, grants 25 Might and Swiftness which cannot be cleared to yourself or a friendly target, but at the end incurs Weakness and Cripple which cannot be cured.
- Illusion of Futility, PvE-only Elite skill. If equipped and you get downed, you are instantly rallied and the enemy which downed you is dealt massive damage. After rallying, any further attack suffered within the next 4 seconds will down you immediately.
- Illusion of Betrayal, PvP-only elite skill. Target enemy loses the ability to tell friend from foe and will seemingly be able to attack their own allies. However from their allies’ perspective while they are attacked, no effect is produces (all damage and debuffs are ignored). As part of this, target enemy cannot be helped by their allies (they see them as hostile, too – with the same limitations as above).
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
In Star Trek Online, one can use [Scramble Sensors] causing enemies to briefly target there allies thinking they are you.
This would be a highly Mesmer appropriate skill. Misdirecting attacks feels like it could even be the basis for an elite spec.
Mesmerising Girl
@apharma – I can see where you are coming from. Regarding SoH. If its CD was reduced by 40% to match the nerf in the transform duration, it would be alright. A 6 sec transform is still pretty strong. As long as its breakbar damage was kept the same. This would take it down to an 86second CD if traited though.
Regarding TW, well yes what you said would certainly make it a better fit for a lot of situations. However, to me that puts it firmly in the camp of utility+ skill instead of an actual elite skill. 5 seconds (6 traited) of pulsing quickness and slow just isn’t elite to me. Especially considering that WoA can generate 4 seconds of quickness every 25 seconds. At that point, WoA would actually be significantly stronger than TW for generating quickness as long as you weren’t being hit with boon strips. So to me, I can’t agree with that change just because I wouldn’t be able to call TW an elite skill at that point.
About TW, traited it becomes 7s granting 10 allies 7s quickness, 5 allies 2s of superspeed and resistance as well as slowing 10 enemies for 7s if they stay in. That’s a big game changer and can flip a situation or completely negate an enemy advantage, it’s not about the quickness supply it’s about making it more useful in general across the board and opening up more of a glamour support aspect. It also makes it so core mesmer has another really strong choice of elite without making it too much stronger.
Currently time warp in my opinion is too much, it’s too much of a big AoE and too easy to counter in PvP/WvW to warrant a 3 minute cool down.
TW requires a GM trait in Inspiration to work like that and trades away the Phantasmal Defender trait.Taking Inspiration also cuts down on your damage.
It feels like there is a faction in the game that thinks Mesmer should be weaker than other classes. I do not agree. Skilled play is one thing, playing with a handicap is another.
Mesmerising Girl
TW requires a GM trait in Inspiration to work like that and trades away the Phantasmal Defender trait.Taking Inspiration also cuts down on your damage.
It feels like there is a faction in the game that thinks Mesmer should be weaker than other classes. I do not agree. Skilled play is one thing, playing with a handicap is another.
I don’t know anyone that does not take inspiration anymore except all in glass cannon builds as conditions are far too prevalent at the moment to run without a decent amount of cleanses. Even base time warp on a 90s cool down but lasting 5s would be a game changer in PvP/WvW though it would have to go back to the 1s pulses.
More importantly it gives core mesmer something else to use in PvE other than Moa for the breakbars which I may add needs traiting to be good at all either by going chrono for CS or blurred inscription for the CD reduction.
Don’t touch my moa, I still want people calling me a pve nub when I moa’d them to death.
I mean, I didn’t suggest to remove the transformation anywhere….
@Doam – What changes would you make, or what elite would you want, to give us what you consider a good condi build elite skill?
Sorry for the long reply but do remember how glamours worked prior to the elite specs?
Glamours could be trained back then to apply random conditions to any enemy within for the duration. That was fine for me these days glamours are traited for super speed and resistance which doesn’t make sense for me. You want to target your enemy with a glamour in order to strip boons or reflect like targeting the fingers during teq, VW in Silverwastes, or the eyes in Arah. So people are usually to far from my targets to get any sort of buff.
But more or less an elite that takes advantage of the condition damage/condition points on your toon that’s mindful of how or primary conditions torment and confusion work better with an able and moving target.
For instance what if we had an elite that that used that old school Final Fantasy condition “Beserk.” The target would glow red, taunted, and all their skills aside the auto attack would be blacked out while the auto attack skill itself would hit harder, have a higher chance of missing, and be able to be used more often by increasing speed and reducing cd. This would send any stacks of confusion on the target into overdrive since they’d be constantly swinging and since auto attack is usually a Melee skill they’d have to close the gap meaning torment would tic harder with all that extra movement too. The Beserk condition would stack with our condi duration and increase the effectiveness of our other conditions. It’s just one idea I have for a condi elite but there are easier things they could do.
(edited by Doam.8305)
Ori, you have suggested major nerfs to Mesmer both here and on the PvP forum. In particular, making CS not affect elites.
I wish you’d consider more carefully. In my opinion, Mesmer is on the low end of acceptable for pvp as it is. Asking for nerfs , especially major ones, at this point is really counter productive.
Mesmerising Girl
Ori, you have suggested major nerfs to Mesmer both here and on the PvP forum. In particular, making CS not affect elites.
I wish you’d consider more carefully. In my opinion, Mesmer is on the low end of acceptable for pvp as it is. Asking for nerfs , especially major ones, at this point is really counter productive.
That you feel underpowered in XYZ isn’t really a sensible reason to not want to improve a bad design situation.
In other words, CS on elites is flat out terrible, and should have never made it into the game to begin with. Now that it is, it should be removed as soon as humanly possible. Yes, we are already rather weak in many aspects, but that’s hardly a good reason to support a house of cards made from bad design. Fix bad designs even if they cause a further loss of power.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
Ori, you have suggested major nerfs to Mesmer both here and on the PvP forum. In particular, making CS not affect elites.
I wish you’d consider more carefully. In my opinion, Mesmer is on the low end of acceptable for pvp as it is. Asking for nerfs , especially major ones, at this point is really counter productive.
That you feel underpowered in XYZ isn’t really a sensible reason to not want to improve a bad design situation.
In other words, CS on elites is flat out terrible, and should have never made it into the game to begin with. Now that it is, it should be removed as soon as humanly possible. Yes, we are already rather weak in many aspects, but that’s hardly a good reason to support a house of cards made from bad design. Fix bad designs even if they cause a further loss of power.
I agree, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. CS makes balancing extremely hard as you have to balance utilities and the core around double use.
I’d also extend this to phantasms but we have all already discussed this before and topic isn’t about that.
I’d perhaps argue that Moa is in some ways could do with being removed and change the signet to something else or put portal in its place as an elite but that would require a lot of switching. I personally have never been killed in moa form but with the amount of complaints in PvP and how it turns a fight when used right I feel it would be better if it didn’t have to be balanced around.
Ori, you have suggested major nerfs to Mesmer both here and on the PvP forum. In particular, making CS not affect elites.
I wish you’d consider more carefully. In my opinion, Mesmer is on the low end of acceptable for pvp as it is. Asking for nerfs , especially major ones, at this point is really counter productive.
Asking to fix broken designs is not the same as just asking for a nerf, and I would hope you could tell the difference. Frankly, its quite broken that CS affects elites at all, and most people realize and acknowledge this. On top of that, as long as that interaction exists, our elites are left deliberately underpowered, because they would be much too good back to back if we ran chrono. So when the next expac drops, you’re gonna realize I was right, and that the interaction of CS with elites is fundamentally bad for mesmer elite skills. It just needs to be removed.
And as it stands, I asked for buffs and rebalancing to our elites at the same time as making CS not affect them, but its quite convenient how you always ignore that fact when you feel the need to complain.
History tells me that ANET would simply cripple CS and not give anything in return. I’ve already dealt with years of being bottom tier after the huge glamour nerf.
No, I don’t want to see that again.
Mesmerising Girl
History tells me that ANET would simply cripple CS and not give anything in return. I’ve already dealt with years of being bottom tier after the huge glamour nerf.
No, I don’t want to see that again.
Let me ask you then: At what point does the ineptitude of the developer team you seem to be certain about tell you that you really ought to play something else?
Because it sounds to me like you really don’t see how this could ever improve, and then why invest time into a conceptually dead game?
Or in other words: Either I believe the devs are invested into fixing the game, in which case CS affecting elites is one of the worst balance design decisions among all classes, or I believe there’s no hope for balance improvements anyhow, in which case I’d just stop playing flat out because why bother.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
Well put @Carighan.
And truthfully, regardless of whether you believe in the devs team to balance our elites while making CS not affect them, its still broken that CS resets our elites. Its just broken. And being able to double cast our elite skills, while a really fun trick, has directly led to 1 of them being nerfed extremely hard and 1 of them being left deliberately underpowered for the duration of the CD. While you don’t notice this now as you are running around as a chronomancer, it will become painfully obvious when the next expansion drops, and we can no longer have our elites on a 76 second CD. Then you will see just how sad of a state they are in for their lengthy cooldowns.
Well put @Carighan.
And truthfully, regardless of whether you believe in the devs team to balance our elites while making CS not affect them, its still broken that CS resets our elites. Its just broken. And being able to double cast our elite skills, while a really fun trick, has directly led to 1 of them being nerfed extremely hard and 1 of them being left deliberately underpowered for the duration of the CD. While you don’t notice this now as you are running around as a chronomancer, it will become painfully obvious when the next expansion drops, and we can no longer have our elites on a 76 second CD. Then you will see just how sad of a state they are in for their lengthy cooldowns.
One can argue it extends to any skill that is good not just elites which makes CS a hard thing to balance around as any core skill cannot be so good that casting it twice ends up being too strong.
@Carighan
In point of fact, I’m spending a lot of my gaming time in GW1 of late. I’m playing a [Panic] Mesmer and having a great time. The story is absorbing and the gameplay is fun.
To your comments, I’ve spent nearly 5 years playing GW2 a kittening lot. I have significantly more than a year.. actually online and playing. Obsession?
I care about this game and about Mesmer in particular. Since I don’t see signs of major fixes for Mesmer on the horizon, I feel we should hold on to what we have and hope that the future is brighter.
Some of the suggestions in this thread call for a major nerf.. one that in and of itself would pretty much cripple Mesmer. I’m aware that replacements and fixes are proposed in exchange.
The problem is that ANET’s track record does not lead me to believe that the replacements and fixes would come. Rather, I believe Mesmer would get the nerf and not the other half.
Mesmerising Girl
@Carighan
In point of fact, I’m spending a lot of my gaming time in GW1 of late. I’m playing a [Panic] Mesmer and having a great time. The story is absorbing and the gameplay is fun.
To your comments, I’ve spent nearly 5 years playing GW2 a kittening lot. I have significantly more than a year.. actually online and playing. Obsession?
I care about this game and about Mesmer in particular. Since I don’t see signs of major fixes for Mesmer on the horizon, I feel we should hold on to what we have and hope that the future is brighter.
Some of the suggestions in this thread call for a major nerf.. one that in and of itself would pretty much cripple Mesmer. I’m aware that replacements and fixes are proposed in exchange.
The problem is that ANET’s track record does not lead me to believe that the replacements and fixes would come. Rather, I believe Mesmer would get the nerf and not the other half.
The thing is you can’t use the fear of it getting a lot worse as justification for the class having 3 abilities that pretty much define how useful it is while making the rest of the class abysmal.
That’s without mentioning the brutal point that many of my friends left this game because of the elite spec power creep. You could remove F5 and chronophantasma and chrono would still be superior to most trait lines in most builds. Many people want the elite specs across the board toning down closer to the levels we had before HoT, of all elite specs got this treatment then even the above would keep mesmer competitive.
That may well be the case. You’re still missing two important points;
All classes are in a similar position. So, the downgrade being discussed would make Mesmer trash tier. Hoping for a major across-the-board rework of elite specs seems unrealistic at this point. Discussing nerfing Mesmer in the hope that all classes would get similar treatment is not consistent with what we’ve seen from ANET.
There is no guarantee.. not even an intimation or an affirmative flicker of a hand fan.. that ANET would compensate Mesmer for such a huge downgrade with anything.
All-in-all.. I perceive this as asking for a nerf. I don’t thinks that’s a appropriate or a service to the Mesmer class.
Mesmerising Girl
Again you are using fear as an excuse to not do or suggest the right thing. As I said all elite specs need reducing in power, I don’t agree any of our elites need a nerf (except possible redesign of moa and half cool down but half duration of TW) and haven’t really suggested so either.
Almost everything sounds like a mesmer nerf to you Ithilwen and you go hysterical when someone even suggests something is too strong without looking at it objectively.
Well put @Carighan.
And truthfully, regardless of whether you believe in the devs team to balance our elites while making CS not affect them, its still broken that CS resets our elites. Its just broken. And being able to double cast our elite skills, while a really fun trick, has directly led to 1 of them being nerfed extremely hard and 1 of them being left deliberately underpowered for the duration of the CD. While you don’t notice this now as you are running around as a chronomancer, it will become painfully obvious when the next expansion drops, and we can no longer have our elites on a 76 second CD. Then you will see just how sad of a state they are in for their lengthy cooldowns.
One can argue it extends to any skill that is good not just elites which makes CS a hard thing to balance around as any core skill cannot be so good that casting it twice ends up being too strong.
One could definitely argue that. I’d say though that first, in my opinion, no utility skill should be so powerful that being able to cast it twice in a row is overpowered. And indeed I believe that to be the case with mesmer, considering we have had mimic for years and it has never been an issue (though double casting mimic to triple cast a utility is definitely a huge upgrade. I’d also argue that blowing the longest CD elite spec mechanic, on top of devoting 2 of our 3 utility slots just to triple cast a skill would end up balancing that out over the course of an entire match).
So that leaves us with our shatters being cast twice. Personally I think this could be balanced if SoIllusions active effect was changed to not be a full recharge of all shatter’s cooldowns, so I don’t see it as a problem. But I do think that being able to double cast our elites, or more usually being able to cut the CD of them down to 76 seconds, does make balancing them impossible. Because either they will be balanced around that CD/ability to cast them twice and will be absolute trash on a 180 second CD, or they will be balanced around their actual CD and be absolute trash whenever we aren’t running chronomancer.
@Apharma
I don’t see it that way. If “do or suggest the right thing” means a suggestion to unilaterally downgrade Mesmer, then no I don’t wish to do it.
The suggestion being made is to have a major nerf in the “faith” of getting reworks on other skills. Further, the “hope” is that all the other classes would receive similar downgrades and reworks.
Such faith and hope might be appropriate in a religious milieu. In the context of GW2, history suggests that those outcomes won’t happen. If they don’t, Mesmer gets crippled.
Sure, I can sympathize with the desire to help shape Mesmer and to improve the game. I don’t think this is a good path though.
Mesmerising Girl
@Apharma
I don’t see it that way. If “do or suggest the right thing” means a suggestion to unilaterally downgrade Mesmer, then no I don’t wish to do it.
The suggestion being made is to have a major nerf in the “faith” of getting reworks on other skills. Further, the “hope” is that all the other classes would receive similar downgrades and reworks.
Such faith and hope might be appropriate in a religious milieu. In the context of GW2, history suggests that those outcomes won’t happen. If they don’t, Mesmer gets crippled.
Sure, I can sympathize with the desire to help shape Mesmer and to improve the game. I don’t think this is a good path though.
No, it is not. Stop spreading lies about what my suggestion is, its really starting to get on my nerves.
I stated that CS not affecting elites should go into effect with these changes. I never proposed just nerfing CS interaction with elites and leaving the elites alone. Yet that is all you keep arguing against.
Whether or not you believe ANet is capable of balancing the elites around not being affected by CS is completely irrelevant, because you keep parroting that instead of debating the actual changes proposed.
Do you like the collective idea of what these elites should be? Or do you not? Because that is the only relevant part to this suggestion. Whether or not you believe in Anet to properly implement this is not at all relevant to whether you believe this would be a better design or not.
So stop trying to derail this thread with your nonsense.
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