Zraiyya – Asuran Elementalist | EVOS
Akkodi – Asuran Engineer | EVOS
Mesmer should never have been made around clones and phantasms. This is a widely accepted view on many people here. Having a maximum of three AI pets attack at a targeted enemy once every 6-10 seconds with low health, moderate damage, insanely high cast times and having it count for the Mesmer’s total dps is unacceptable.
These AI pets have an increased factor of uselessness as they do absolutely nothing when the target goes in stealth, they self destruct when you or the target goes out of range, or even worse, just stand there, they don’t properly stealth, disappear completely when the target dies.
20% dps comes from each of your three phantasm and 40% comes from you, which makes PvE hell because your target is usually long dead before you finish casting your first damaging phantasm. New players usually won’t bother summoning phantasms at all because they usually do next to nothing. GW1’s Mesmer never had any clone trash at all, instead using something called “hexes” and dealing increased amounts of effects/damage for each hex.
Everyone has heard this argument before. But what they don’t realize is this clone mechanic that Mesmer is so reliant on is limiting design potential and limiting nerf potential to the point where Mesmer is so terrible at dealing damage in PvP and mediocre damage everywhere else, but Anet doesn’t know what to hammer and what to buff because everything is so tied together by this terrible mechanic. How do you make new future elite specializations without adding or subtracting from clone functionality?
Chronomancer elite tree barely scraped by as passable, and it had FIVE specific traits that deal with clones and how they act. In every trait tree that Mesmer has there are multiple traits that Mesmer could have had that specifically buff phantasms and not the Mesmer itself, unlike other classes, specifically ones with their own minions. This forces Mesmer to use the awful clones functionality that the developers could have avoided by scrapping the clone system altogether. The Clones should be an elite specialization instead or should have never existed. There is only so much you can do with three terrible AI.
I agree it’s super hard to balance mesmer due to it’s mechanics.
Many classes are being held back by their mechanics, and mesmer is certainly one of them.
I already made a full suggestion on how to remove damage from phantasms, see my signature. I believe this would really help the class without a full redesign.
But even clones are a problem in PvP, making low tier players confused and thinking our class (even barely viable builds like power shatter) is OP.
Mesmer should never have been made around clones and phantasms. This is a widely accepted view on many people here. Having a maximum of three AI pets attack at a targeted enemy once every 6-10 seconds with low health, moderate damage, insanely high cast times and having it count for the Mesmer’s total dps is unacceptable.
These AI pets have an increased factor of uselessness as they do absolutely nothing when the target goes in stealth, they self destruct when you or the target goes out of range, or even worse, just stand there, they don’t properly stealth, disappear completely when the target dies.20% dps comes from each of your three phantasm and 40% comes from you, which makes PvE hell because your target is usually long dead before you finish casting your first damaging phantasm. New players usually won’t bother summoning phantasms at all because they usually do next to nothing. GW1’s Mesmer never had any clone trash at all, instead using something called “hexes” and dealing increased amounts of effects/damage for each hex.
Everyone has heard this argument before. But what they don’t realize is this clone mechanic that Mesmer is so reliant on is limiting design potential and limiting nerf potential to the point where Mesmer is so terrible at dealing damage in PvP and mediocre damage everywhere else, but Anet doesn’t know what to hammer and what to buff because everything is so tied together by this terrible mechanic. How do you make new future elite specializations without adding or subtracting from clone functionality?
Chronomancer elite tree barely scraped by as passable, and it had FIVE specific traits that deal with clones and how they act. In every trait tree that Mesmer has there are multiple traits that Mesmer could have had that specifically buff phantasms and not the Mesmer itself, unlike other classes, specifically ones with their own minions. This forces Mesmer to use the awful clones functionality that the developers could have avoided by scrapping the clone system altogether. The Clones should be an elite specialization instead or should have never existed. There is only so much you can do with three terrible AI.
So what do you think they can do to improve it? Im thinking maybe a permenent clone of some kind with a specialization maybe?
Oh boy do I miss GW1 mesmer. It was all about hexes and interrupt. It was the anti hero.
Chronomancer wells and mantras are interesting for me, for this reason : they aren’t dependant on clone factoring.
GW2 mesmer is nothing like it and I agree, they shouldn’t have been given clones. It’s limitating.
At the beginning of gw2, interviews about the mesmer clearly explained that porting the class from gw1 to gw2 was difficult because energy does not exist in gw2. So it was difficult to create a new mesmer identity. Illusions is what they ended up with. Thematically I think it is ok, it just does not work well from a balance perspective.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/19/massively-talks-mesmer-our-exclusive-interview-with-guild-wars/
At the beginning of gw2, interviews about the mesmer clearly explained that porting the class from gw1 to gw2 was difficult because energy does not exist in gw2. So it was difficult to create a new mesmer identity. Illusions is what they ended up with. Thematically I think it is ok, it just does not work well from a balance perspective.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/19/massively-talks-mesmer-our-exclusive-interview-with-guild-wars/
There’s a great deal of similarity between warrior adrenaline and mesmer clones, or at least there was way back when.
The difficulty with clones has always come down to the Mesmers reliance on them, and their fragile lives.
In the past clones have been to hard to produce, and to weak to survive in a heavy cleave and aoe environment. Now clones are easy to generate, and due to various changes are far more survivable. We’ve seen the outcome of both of these frameworks.
The solution to better balance this dilemma has always been suggested, and is more pertinent now than ever before. Make clones (not phantasms) immune to damage. Then you can remove the over overproduction-lines, remove the need for clones to get super speed on shatter, and have a far easier time balancing the entire act.
It’s not rocket science!
OP’s almost there. It’s not clones that are the problem. It’s shatters. Innate huge burst as a class mechanic requires costs elsewhere. That’s the problem with why the mesmer’s build diversity is bad from a balance/design perspective.
They could alleviate this by enabling the class to build like the thief in that all of its burst damage/damage potential comes from scaling on offensive traits/trait lines rather than just having huge front-loaded damage on its class mechanic. I.E., pick buffing shatter burst, sustained DPS, or defensive sustain. As it is, mesmers run defensive traits because the offensive specs are next to worthless when they don’t see big damage gains and can’t pump out sustained damage numbers to make building more durable or a more durable style of play really worthwhile outside of condi PU, and even then, it’s more about point control.
This kind of split enables base DPS buffs/clone durability up as to make the class still balanced in PvP formats while not having it 100-0 people on defensive trait specs, and give it the bonus PvE damage it needs solo or as a DPS while not having crazy utility potential as well, enabling more of a “pick a role” style in terms of traits, which ideally is what everyone wants.
Further, the mesmer as an entire concept seems to feature a lot of crazy strong support skills that simply overshadow the rest. AOE haste/alacrity is too good to pass up in PvE, and portal/moa is too good to pass up in PvP, and glamours are too good to pass up in WvW. It’s not as bad as the thief where utility skill picks are limited to four options in all formats, but still, the diversity within builds could see boosts. This much I’m not sure how to fix without simply nerfing and blurring the effects of their utilities, but that’s a slippery slope for balance…
The whole alacrity/quickness thing is chrono, not base Mesmer.
You also don’t seem to grasp exactly where the problem is Deciever, it’s that our sustained damage is tied to phantasms not that mind wrack is so strong. Trying to land more than a 2 (1+self) clone shatter on anyone without chrono super speed is about as rare as seeing a thief in pro league. It just doesn’t happen on capable or intelligent players.
Try looking at all the phantasm damage increasing traits, one for fury, one to boost it by 15%, one to make them attack faster, several to reduce recharge on them across many trait lines. Phantasms are the sustained damage its just the suck at
1. Staying alive in a PvP/WvW environment
2. Don’t benefit from certain Mesmer self buffs (scholar runes, food etc)
3. Die when the target dies as well as having long cast times making them painful to use in PvE.
4. To have that sustained damage you rarely want to shatter, no other class has ever had to fight their own class mechanic like this.
Edit: For reference these are the coefficients for MW
1 Clone, per clone: 1.15, 1.15 with just clone and 2.3 with mesmer hit.
2 Clone, per clone: 0.89, 1.78 with just clones and 2.67 with Mesmer hit.
3 Clone, per clone: 0.77. 2.31 with just clones and 3.08 with Mesmer hit.
Soon as 1-2 clones stop hitting this “huge burst” becomes less than some classes do with the final hit of this auto attack. Essentially if you have a clone on the field somewhere and go in for a MW burst a lot of the time you kitten yourself because that other clone will likely not hit but you have the lower coefficient.
(edited by apharma.3741)
The whole alacrity/quickness thing is chrono, not base Mesmer.
You also don’t seem to grasp exactly where the problem is Deciever, it’s that our sustained damage is tied to phantasms not that mind wrack is so strong. Trying to land more than a 2 (1+self) clone shatter on anyone without chrono super speed is about as rare as seeing a thief in pro league. It just doesn’t happen on capable or intelligent players.
The problem is that balance cannot take into account only intelligent players. Mesmer is terribly efficient in lower tiers of PvP because people do not know how to handle their clones nor dodge their shatters. So I do agree overall that shatter damage might need a little decrease (but very small) to make it less deadly in lower tiers, while our sustained damage is increased significantly to improve in PvE and high tier PvP, as well as increase our build diversity.
But as you said, having our damage on unreliable and fragile phantasms is a problem in itself and needs fixing.
I would also like to add that all clones are being used now is just for homing missiles. There is not a single shred of mystique or “who is the real slim shady?” with clones, they’re homing stinger missiles.
I would also like to add that all clones are being used now is just for homing missiles. There is not a single shred of mystique or “who is the real slim shady?” with clones, they’re homing stinger missiles.
There never was any slim shady or mystique. There WAS a time when you might have used them as body blockers, or as a bit of annoying sustained presence/pressure. Now you shatter them or they’re dead. Simple as that. Mesmer has no other option.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.