I simply don’t understand most of these changes. Moa Morph being changed to work underwater isn’t even an improvement, except in PvP, as nearly every mesmer in PvE will use Time Warp or Mass Invis anyway. And what does “less frustrating” even mean for a skill that’s by design meant to be frustrating?
The line of sight issue raises even more questions: If we’re specialized at mental and physical manipulation, making people see and feel things that aren’t really there, and so on, why do we need to be able to see our target in the first place? Shouldn’t just being aware of the target’s presence (actually having a target) be enough for us to lock on and create an illusion? For that matter, why are illusions unable to walk through walls? They’re not really there, little more than a figment of someone’s imagination.
The Portal recharge is just…odd. I really can’t think of any reason for this one. The only things an additional 30 seconds does is make it less frequent (not that it gets used THAT often), or make it more inconvenient to swap out the skill for something actually useful. Even more odd is that the skill itself wasn’t fixed to fit with the tooltip, or vice versa. It still lasts at most 12 seconds, but says 20 on the tooltip.
Illusion conjuring has been reduced to basic attack status (Dodge, Block, Evade, Blind, Obstructed, or Invulnerability counter them) with a full recharge if the skill fails, and no indicator if the target is obstructed 90% of the time. Area attacks are virtually non-existent for the class as a whole. Berserkers, Wardens, Chaos Storm, Blurred Frenzy and shatters are all we get, and out of those, only Chaos Storm is even remotely reliable, but absurdly weak as an offensive area attack.
I have to question what ANet’s vision of the mesmer profession really is, because at this point it seems they don’t really know. We’re clearly not the best at any particular role, but getting progressively weaker with each “balance fix.” What are mesmers supposed to do?
