Guild Wars 2

I’m not a mesmer main anymore but these are some ideas that I had brewing to fix up core mesmer and appease the league players.

Portal / Moa

1. Portal: Turn into an f5 skill for core mesmer

—> I think chronomancer has too much support in one go. This isn’t fun to play for the mesmer, and OP to play against. I’d like to make portal a strictly core mesmer skill. This would also give mesmers a reason not to take chronomancer.

2. Moa: Active effect: Reduce duration to 3 seconds. Reduce CD to 120 seconds. On interrupt, deals damage and inflicts torment. Instant cast, breaks stun Passive effect: Change from 20% reduction on CC to 20% increased damage against confused enemies

—> I want to take the cheese out of this skill and use it as a vehicle to buff power
mesmer. The duration nerfs it to a regular CC skill, but the power boost on confused enemies will hopefully allow for more power shatter builds. Good mesmers in PvE will be able to keep constant confusion on a target if they forgo being an alacrity bot, and have actual, meaning DPS if this is stacked with some other power buffs.

Chronomancer
1. Continuum Shift: No longer affects elite skills. Duration per illusion shattered is twice as long. On cast, also affects up to three allies in a 250 radius of the user.

—> League players want CS to not affect elites? Fine by me, I’d be happy to not play a timewarp slave anymore, or a double gravity well zerger. In exchange, the duration of the shift should be increased, since it is only used for utilities / weapon skills now. In addition, I’d like to see if affect allies. With the right planning, it can still be a game changer.

2. Well of Precognition: Keep the stability as is. Remove aegis. Causes allies to block 50% of incoming attacks. At the end, gives back stamina per usual.

—> I think by giving it aegis, anet wanted to make it so WoP blocked “a bunch of attacks, but not all”. Aegis is way under powered though. I think evading 50% wouldn’t make a solo mesmer overpowered, but would definitely help a team out when the AoE starts flying.

Inspiration and Glamours
1. Temporal enchanter: No longer applies resistance and superspeed. Instead, removes a condition from allies and a boon from foes. Applies 4 seconds of retaliation. Still increases duration of glamours

—> The superspeed was useless and the resistance was OP. Still, it should fit into the inspiration traitline by offering condition removal and team support. Retaliation is a powerful offensive support that fits the GW1 mesmer theme, and I’m sad isn’t in more mesmer traits/skills. This would be very fun in WvW.

2. New Glamour – Flip: Field with a higher radius than null field, but less than TW. Increases damage done from allies by 15%, and reduces damage taken from allies by 15%. Lasts 6 seconds. 40 second CD.

—> Removing portal from the utility bar leaves a space in the glamour line. I’d like one that flat out can increase party DPS in pvp, in theme with wanting to increase mesmer as a power spec.

Condition Mesmer Changes

1. Give Maim the Disillusioned an ICD. Like 2 or 3 seconds.

2. Make sceptor 3 hit four times instead of six. Six confusions stacks at once is ridiculous.

3. Increase damage on staff 1. Change vulnerability to a stack of confusion.

Power Shatter Changes

1. Increase DPS of greatsword AA. Add confusion to GS 2 for synergy with the new moa passive skill.

2. Increase blurred frenzy and sword AA damage.

Conclusion

What does everyone think? I know some numbers should be tweaked but I’d like to know the general consensus. I know phantasms need a rework but I wanted this to be more power mesmer focused.

No.

phokus.8934:

No.

Any reasons why besides “mesmer doesnt need nerfs l2p?”

Looks like too many unnecessary changes for me. People here don’t want others to recreate the profession they like in the current state. Your reasons are not garbage, but I wouldn’t agree with them fully either.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Portal / Moa

1. Portal: Turn into an f5 skill for core mesmer

So this change alone would instantly delete mesmers from competitive play. Vanilla Mesmer is not even remotely viable because it lacks the offense, defense, and utility that Chronomancer does, but Chronomancer wouldn’t be worth taking if it couldn’t portal.

Alex Shatter.7956:

2. Moa: Active effect: Reduce duration to 3 seconds. Reduce CD to 120 seconds. On interrupt, deals damage and inflicts torment. Instant cast, breaks stun Passive effect: Change from 20% reduction on CC to 20% increased damage against confused enemies

This makes the skill absolute garbage. 120 second cooldown for an interrupt? Please tell me this is a joke. The passive effect also isn’t even remotely good enough to be valuable for a PvE dps boost. Maybe if it were 150%…

Alex Shatter.7956:

Chronomancer
1. Continuum Shift: No longer affects elite skills. Duration per illusion shattered is twice as long. On cast, also affects up to three allies in a 250 radius of the user.

This is one of the only ideas from your post that isn’t garbage. That being said, I’m still not a huge fan. This would make CS extremely difficult to use in a way that was positive instead of just disruptive. It would basically make CS unusable without active voice comms…even in PvE.

Alex Shatter.7956:

2. Well of Precognition: Keep the stability as is. Remove aegis. Causes allies to block 50% of incoming attacks. At the end, gives back stamina per usual.

Why even bother mentioning the stability? It has stability because it’s a stunbreak with a cast time.

Anyway, this would be just weird. Blocks 50% of incoming attacks? Does that mean every other attack or are we getting an RNG roll each time? It makes far more sense just to revert it back to distortion.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Inspiration and Glamours
1. Temporal enchanter: No longer applies resistance and superspeed. Instead, removes a condition from allies and a boon from foes. Applies 4 seconds of retaliation. Still increases duration of glamours

This is just ridiculous. First of all, nobody with a working head on their shoulders thinks the resistance is overpowered. Secondly, retaliation is literally the single most worthless boon in the game you could choose to add to this. “Powerful offensive support”? Don’t make me laugh.

Alex Shatter.7956:

2. New Glamour – Flip: Field with a higher radius than null field, but less than TW. Increases damage done from allies by 15%, and reduces damage taken from allies by 15%. Lasts 6 seconds. 40 second CD.

This is the only other idea in this post that isn’t garbage, but it’s made somewhat irrelevant by the fact that the portal change allowing it to be proposed is garbage.

Alex Shatter.7956:

1. Give Maim the Disillusioned an ICD. Like 2 or 3 seconds.

It’s difficult for me to describe in a sensible fashion how awful of an idea this is. Internal cooldowns are bad design by themselves, but putting them on a trait that’s explicitly supposed to add consistent condition pressure to our shatters because we have literally zero condition pressure without it is…special.

Alex Shatter.7956:

2. Make sceptor 3 hit four times instead of six. Six confusions stacks at once is ridiculous.

How about no. This is an obvious and telegraphed attack that has plenty of options for counterplay.

Alex Shatter.7956:

3. Increase damage on staff 1. Change vulnerability to a stack of confusion.

Staff 1 is condition, not power. Why add more to power creep when you don’t need to?

Alex Shatter.7956:

1. Increase DPS of greatsword AA. Add confusion to GS 2 for synergy with the new moa passive skill.

2. Increase blurred frenzy and sword AA damage.

Shatter Mesmer is a burst build. These changes are attempting to give a burst build high sustained dps as well. Doing this is how you get broken garbage like shiro revenant or S/D thief during the spam 3 to win era.

So in conclusion…

No.

Portal only on core Mesmer kills Mesmer utility and you just transition play to core Mesmer. It doesn’t solve anything and I’m not sure a change to utility needs to happen. As it stands today, well placed portals make for big plays – or they could fall short.

Moa – it’s an elite. It’s supposed to be strong. There’s risk vs reward there as it has counters, easy counters. And with the amount of CC you want to completely take out the 20% reduction?

CShift – this I could get behind.

WoP – it’s fine as it is now but probably could used a few more seconds shaved off its CD.

Temp Enchanter – I’d argue that it needs a buff of resistance – make null field an acceptable option.

Flip – that just sounds crazy OP.

MtD – no Icd is needed. I believe it was nerfed and then shortly buffed as of last patch prior to this one.

Scepter 3 – I’m guessing you’re referring to this use in WvW because it’s complete garbage in pvp.

Staff 1 – keep vuln as I believe warlock still gets benefit from it as well as the condition. And it seems counterintuitive that you negate confusion elsewhere but want to add it another place.

GS – no to confusion on GS even with SoH change – you just pigeonholed into a must have.

Sword – sure but won’t happen.

I think there’s more but I’m on my phone, out and wrote this in the bathroom.

In theory I like the portal change, but only with a more general rebalance so both mesmer and Chrono still have a viable PvP role. It addresses a few longer-standing, more difficult to fix issues – mandatory utilities, moa/portal bot role etc. And we have previously seen chrono in use without portal. However, getting balance to that point would be difficult especially without reintroducing issues like lack of movement speed options.

It would also easily be enough to make the core of an entire mesmer patch, without completely changing moa and cs.

Well, I chose to brave the mesmer comminity in their home base, and I can admit I failed. Is there no sentiment among mesmers that their class needs nerfs and reworks though? Clearly I’m too ignorant to make a lasting balance but I really, really want someone who can to step forward.

Fay.2357 made a great and clear response. Pretty much sums up all my own toughts. Thanks for that.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Well, I chose to brave the mesmer comminity in their home base, and I can admit I failed. Is there no sentiment among mesmers that their class needs nerfs and reworks though? Clearly I’m too ignorant to make a lasting balance but I really, really want someone who can to step forward.

Mesmer does a lot to achieve a lot, and at a decent amount of risk to being punished (more so than Thief, more so than Ele, more so than even DH.) it is the duty of the player base to counter and outplay a mesmer in terms of 1v1. The counter play is clearly there, and large group refuse to either learn how to combat it, or are legitimately being outplay and are salty and cannot comprehend their failure is their own.

In terms of teams there may be some argument for it being powerful on how it dictates the game and meta. But the fact remains throughout season 2 the ONLY reasons why mesmer was a pick was:
1. Portal
2. Double moa every 3 min or 90 (give or take based on alacrity)
3. No class stacking for top tier.

Does this open up the discussion of nerf? No. The only thing you could possibly do to nerf chorno and not completely destroy it’s viability might be to make elites not work with CS. However mesmer would need to be compensated for such a situation. Either safe front loaded burst, phantasms ignore blind/Los, getting it’s alacrity back, more active defenses that give as much sustained “pressure” as a thief in stealth, or illusions being immune to cleave/aoe in pvp WvW. Because as history has shown portal alone is not enough to bring it to the table. Nor should it be, having your entire class only be viable based on one utility or gimmick is not fun.

To often do I hear people complain about mesmer burst, when it takes much more to set up than thief or guard.

To often do I hear people complain about stealth, when even engie does it better and majoirty of mesmers only roll like one 3 second duration.

To often do I hear people complain about distortion/blocks/evades when Every medium armor has more cooldowns and can chain a lot of it together on shorter cooldowns.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Well, I chose to brave the mesmer comminity in their home base, and I can admit I failed. Is there no sentiment among mesmers that their class needs nerfs and reworks though? Clearly I’m too ignorant to make a lasting balance but I really, really want someone who can to step forward.

I don’t think you understand Mesmer well enough, or know it’s history. Your pursuit of nerfs, and your view of a ‘need’ says as much.

The PvP community sees Mesmer having a viable build and a relevant roll as an affront to nature. Anet, in comparison, seems to be attempting to design them to be squarely in the middle of the spectrum, and revolving a ton of the game (conquest) and the classes around it.

The prejudice is that “Mesmer” a problem to begin with.

Portal is legit

Moa is legit

Even CS is legit

Real question is, how are the other classes and team comps to deal with it. Appropriate shaves are one means of tightening things up. However, if the meta classes being run last season couldn’t deal, a counter class/spec/strat should have been sought after.