Guild Wars 2

Now while I do understand that needed is a subjective term and it will differ between whomever views it, keeping that in mind, let’s dive right in.

Dueling:

• Duelist’s Discipline: Bleeding stack duration is bugged. Perhaps a 2-3% recharge on daze since interrupts are all but useless on any boss or certain creatures thanks to the defiance bar.
• Evasive Mirror: Add it on block as well, maybe give 3 seconds of swiftness, lackluster compared to Blinding Dissipation
• Master Fencer: This was supposed to be Confusing Combatants or whatever the chance of confusion on hit was, I think we’d all like to see that restored.
• Mistrust: Add 2 stacks of confusion on Daze, same reason as Duelist’s Discipline. Change it to 2 stacks on interruption to keep it the same.
• Harmonious Mantras: Extend the % damage buff to phantasms.

Domination(Disclaimer: I don’t use this tree often, suggestions welcome):

• Rending Shatter: Increase stacks maybe to 2 or 3.
• Furious Interruption: I’m not really sure how to improve this one, maybe some swiftness on interrupt or superspeed, something to make it at least a little tempting
• Imagined Burden: I’ve seen it tossed around that this should deal damage on boon rip and all illusions should give might rather than just GS clones and I agree.
• Power Block: Add some minor damage and weakness duration on daze or something, same reason as before since interrupts are useless against any defiance bar foes.
• Illusionary Defense: Add 1 sec of protection per second if you have 3 illusions up.
• Master of Manipulation: Add 5 seconds of swiftness upon using a manipulation skill
• Chaotic Interruption: Lesser Boons and Conditions on Daze, interrupts useless against defiant foes, etc. etc.
• Prismatic Understanding: Remove a condition every 2 or 3 seconds.
  
  Inspiration:
• Add a heal on interrupt with a minor heal on daze somewhere here, maybe in Healing Prism or Mender’s Purity. Maybe have Mental Defense give 3 seconds of protection.

Illusions:

• Persistence of Memory: Change this back, you already fixed the shield cooldown.
• Shattered Strength: Change to 2 stacks, requires a blown shatter bar to even be remotely useful.
• Phantasmal Haste: Needs a better reason to be taken since you’re trying to encourage players to shatter more rather than just leave phantasms up.
• Malicious Sorcery: Add “Ether Clone hits 2 more targets around your primary target if you have the maximum number of illusions”

Chronomancer:

• Delayed Reactions: Add a small amount of slow on Daze, same reason as before.
• All’s Well That Ends Well: Increase Alacrity duration by 1 second to compensate for the 50% nerf
• Danger Time: You do 10% increased damage to slowed enemies
• Improved Alacrity: Add “Alacrity on you is spread to allies when you activate a shatter skill”, maybe the duration of spread alacrity could be halved or the trait could be given a small icd to compensate.
• Lost Time: Increase duration of slow slightly

Weapon Skills

• Across the board increases for sustained DPS, stop making mesmer the utility bots.

Staff:

• Winds of Chaos: Extend the duration of the burning or increase it to 2 or 3 stacks, it’s still not on par with how it was before the conditions were revamped. Increase the bounces by 1 or increase missile speed.
• Phantasmal Warlock: Better missile tracking, increased missile speed, make it extend condition durations by 1 or 2 seconds. Make it actually hybrid.
• Chaos Armor: Lower the cooldown, 35 seconds is overboard if Chaos Armor had an effect nearly as decent as Fire Aura or Shocking Aura (both of which have lower cooldowns), then maybe it’d be understandable.
• Chaos Storm: Increase the damage, lower the cooldown, switch some conditions to damaging, or something to make it actually impactful. For example, add 1 stack of confusion for 8 seconds on each hit, make it apply 2 conditions and boons per hit per target. Something to make it worth the cooldown.

Sword(Main and Offhand):

• Increase the AA damage, I don’t use power builds that often, but mesmers are so incredibly crippled in the DPS department, I think a lot of people would like to be more than just quickness/alacrity bots. And no, spike damage potential does not count as an offset to at least decent sustained DPS
• Blurred Frenzy: Great skill, up the damage a tad more
• Illusionary Leap: Give it some damage or something, other gap closers do some damage except this one. Don’t say, oh but you could use Mind Wrack to deal damage with it, it’s an entirely separate skill.
• Illusionary Riposte: Increase the speed of that wonky counterattack animation please.

Pistol:

• Magic Bullet: Give it some damage, not some massive amount but not a pittance.

Torch:

• The Prestige: Increase the burning duration and stacks to 3, it’s not even remotely impactful.
• Phantasmal Mage: Increase stacks to 2, lower the cooldown. Better missile tracking and speed. A ton of people have asked that this be converted to an AOE because of the inherent unreliability of bounce mechanics.

I personally believe Scepter, Focus, and Shield are in a good place, I am unsure about Greatsword, like Domination suggestions are welcome.

Utility Skills

• Arcane Thievery: Lower the cooldown, make the tracking better. Tried it in PvP for a short time, if it actually hits, it’s pretty nice. Having it hit is the problem
• Utility Phantasms: Lower the cast time, otherwise in a good place
• Well of Precognition: Ungut this, split it between PvE or PvP. I don’t know of anyone that takes this skill, maybe for extra alacrity if traited, but not for it’s intended purpose.

Suggestions are welcome, these are just what I think a decent baseline would be.

I agree on reverting the nerf to Well of Precognition. I’ve tried putting it on my bar but even in PvE I can’t justify taking it anymore. It just really isn’t helpful.

About the Chrono trait Alls well that ends well it doesn’t need to grant more alacrity. Its already pretty easy to have 100% alacrity uptime for your group in fractals and raids, and in WvW depending on what build you took. If you want your Alacrity from this trait to have a bigger impact them petition ANet to buff it a little bit. I agree that 66% was much too much, but I do think that it could be buffed up from 33% a bit without being gamebreaking. But if they buff alacrity at all it just makes it all that less likely that we will ever be anything other than an alacrity bot so on the other hand I kinda don’t want it buffed at all.

I’d suggest adding some effects to skills that produce clones over existing illusions (a bit like scepter AA when capped on illusions). Here are few ideas:

1. Scepter 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, instead of creating a clone on block, blind the enemy that you have blocked.
2. Sword 3 – if you have 3 illusions up, do an immobilize for 1 sec instead of initial cripple (animation of a clone leaping at enemy has to stay tho)
3. Sword 4 – if you have 3 illusions up, daze an enemy that you have blocked in addition to riposte damage. Also it would be nice to daze enemy even if its not in melee range (this one is open for discussion).
4. GS 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, each bounce does 25% more damage.
5. Staff 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, slow enemies around your phase retreat starting point for 1 second.

What do you think?

I would like to see Focus get a buff for pvp given it is totally supplanted by Shield since HoT.

Something like making the iWarden pulse Aegis to allies within it’s attack bubble while it attacks, and make Temporal Curtain give Quickness to allies/Slow on enemies that walk through it.

Slow would definitely be more useful than cripple imo as it would slow down their CDs . But I actually think that the focus is fine right now, would rather have some of the other secondary weapons buffed so that we have more viable options.

Arret Vice.5872:

I’d suggest adding some effects to skills that produce clones over existing illusions (a bit like scepter AA when capped on illusions). Here are few ideas:

1. Scepter 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, instead of creating a clone on block, blind the enemy that you have blocked.
2. Sword 3 – if you have 3 illusions up, do an immobilize for 1 sec instead of initial cripple (animation of a clone leaping at enemy has to stay tho)
3. Sword 4 – if you have 3 illusions up, daze an enemy that you have blocked in addition to riposte damage. Also it would be nice to daze enemy even if its not in melee range (this one is open for discussion).
4. GS 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, each bounce does 25% more damage.
5. Staff 2 – if you have 3 illusions up, slow enemies around your phase retreat starting point for 1 second.

What do you think?

That’s actually an excellent idea, far more useful than just blowing up a phantasm (and sustained DPS) for one skill. I think for Phase Retreat should add some stacks of bleeding or burning and give a random boon to the mesmer to fit the chaos theme of the weapon.

Nice idea! It’s really interesting to have new effect if we have 3 illusions for clones spells!
For a power damage fantsme build, gs #2 is useless because of this clone!!
I hope they will read this thread!