Guild Wars 2

________Patch Notes________
Official 30/04/13’ Mesmer related Patch Notes:

• Reduced mantra cast times from 3.25 seconds to 2.75 seconds.
• Confounding Suggestions trait: Now functions with the Chaos Storm and Counter Blade skills.
• Clones wielding a spear underwater now execute the full spear combo.
• Mirror Blade skill: Added an unblockable skill fact.
• Into the Void skill: Updated description to be more accurate (“Temporal Curtain”).
• Mind Stab skill (one-handed sword combo): Renamed to Mind Spike.
• Arcane Thievery skill: Now correctly transfers the boons removed from enemies and the conditions removed from the mesmer.
• Moa Morph skill: Can be used while moving.
• Moa transform flee: Reduced run distance and reduced cooldown from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Blinding Befuddlement trait:
  • Increased duration of applied confusion from 1 second to 4 seconds.
  • Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the mesmer.
• Signet of Domination skill: Passive power increase now scales from 20-180, up from 10-90.
• Illusion of Life skill: Players can no longer circumvent the vengeance properties. Increased cast time by 0.5 seconds.
• Distortion skill: No longer allows capture of control points in all formats or communing in PvP.
• WvW: Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP

(Think I’ve got everything, Let me know if I missed anything)

Fay.2735:

• Moa transform flee: Reduced run distance and reduced cooldown from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Can’t decide if it’s a buff or a nerf?

Fay.2735:

Arcane Thievery skill: Now correctly transfers the boons removed from enemies and the conditions removed from the mesmer.

Def gonna need a sauce on this one

The moa flee is both a nerf and a buff. It will help us mesmers by allowing us to catch up to moa’d people better but it’s a nerf in that it will make escaping while in moa form harder.

World vs. World

• Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP.

knackyknave.7469:

World vs. World

• Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP.

That’s already on the list Last one.

The confusion nerf is even worse than we thought.
Goodbye confusion specs.. now just as useless as spvp.

shimmerless.4560:

I suppose what I mean is that I can’t tell if the reduced run distance (a good thing for us) outweighs the reduced CD on the run skill (bad for us). I honestly haven’t used Moa in that long (because seeing someone rocket off at RtL speed was a bit of a kicker) that I’m completely ignorant about it.

I tend to use timewarp in sPvP myself, nice for stomping/reviving people when things get desperate

shimmerless.4560:

Fay.2735:

The moa flee is both a nerf and a buff. It will help us mesmers by allowing us to catch up to moa’d people better but it’s a nerf in that it will make escaping while in moa form harder.

I suppose what I mean is that I can’t tell if the reduced run distance (a good thing for us) outweighs the reduced CD on the run skill (bad for us). I honestly haven’t used Moa in that long (because seeing someone rocket off at RtL speed was a bit of a kicker) that I’m completely ignorant about it.

Moa form only last 10 seconds so why the hell does it matter?

zexion.5842:

shimmerless.4560:

Fay.2735:

The moa flee is both a nerf and a buff. It will help us mesmers by allowing us to catch up to moa’d people better but it’s a nerf in that it will make escaping while in moa form harder.

I suppose what I mean is that I can’t tell if the reduced run distance (a good thing for us) outweighs the reduced CD on the run skill (bad for us). I honestly haven’t used Moa in that long (because seeing someone rocket off at RtL speed was a bit of a kicker) that I’m completely ignorant about it.

Moa form only last 10 seconds so why the hell does it matter?

Shows you just how long it’s been since I used it

Spear clone update sounds good.

Distortion skill: No longer allows capture of control points in all formats or communing in PvP
VS.
Endure Pain skill: Players can now capture points while under its effects

They’ve been removing contesting points while invulnerable from most professions, but suddenly Warriors are specifically updated so they can.

They should have just scrapped mantra channeling, its a bad mechanic.
No one wants to channel a skill for 3 kittening seconds.
No one wants to be forced to run stealth utility skills just to not have a dead utility slot during a fight or pray they aren’t fighting someone with timely CC.
It doesn’t make gameplay more fun, just punishes/awards you for the enemies spec… whether or not it has timely CC.
There already is waaay too much of that with stability/CC breaks/conditions/direct dmg, its a terribly niche game where only a few specs actually have everything needed to actually work, it needs less of that sort of mentality, not more.

Channeling mantras is simply, a bad mechanic.
Anet, seriously you can scrap things, you should scrap bad ideas in the game.
GW2 was released kittenING waaaay too early and has pretty much no playerbase left.
There is nothing to lose from a trial period as you get all the kitten worked out of the game, only opportunity.

Just scrap it for something like a passive recharge… something like ‘you take 15~% more dmg and can’t regen endurance (possibly instead just ‘can not evade’) for 4~ seconds’.

A change from a flaming long kitten cast time could add a ton more depth to the skill.
No numeric change, Anet seriously I’m not joking, I can’t see any numeric tweak making mantra channeling a good mechanic…

kschmidt.5901:

Distortion skill: No longer allows capture of control points in all formats or communing in PvP
VS.
Endure Pain skill: Players can now capture points while under its effects

They’ve been removing contesting points while invulnerable from most professions, but suddenly Warriors are specifically updated so they can.

Endure Pain isn’t an invulnerability, it simply reduces direct damage to zero. You can still apply conditions on them, knock them off the point, etc.

One thing I like…Illusionist elasticity actually works 100% of the time for me now rather than whenever it chooses to. So now staff 1 is reliably epic.

garethh.3518:

They should have just scrapped mantra channeling, its a bad mechanic.
No one wants to channel a skill for 3 kittening seconds.
No one wants to be forced to run stealth utility skills or pray they aren’t fighting someone with timely CC.
It doesn’t make gameplay more fun, just punishes/awards you for the enemies spec having or not timely CC.

That’s just a bad mechanic.
Anet, seriosly you can scrap skills, you should scrap bad ideas in the game.
GW2 was released kittenINg waaaay too early and has pretty much no playerbase left.
There is nothing to lose from a trial period as you get all the kitten worked out of the game, only opportunity.

Just scrap it for something like a passive recharge… something like ‘you take 15~% more dmg and can’t regen endurance (possibly instead just ‘can not evade’) for 4~ seconds’.

A change from a flaming long kitten cast time could add a ton more depth to the skill.
No numeric change, Anet seriously I’m not joking, I can’t see any numeric tweak making mantra channeling a good mechanic…

Yeah mantras need some serious re-working. Perhaps make the mantra charges themselves last for a set duration, long enough to keep the original intent of pre-loading it before an engagement, then reduce the cast time to something manageable like 1.5s, and re-balance the activated effect around that.

Benjamin.8237:

One thing I like…Illusionist elasticity actually works 100% of the time for me now rather than whenever it chooses to. So now staff 1 is reliably epic.

Does it work on staff clones now?

Anyone in game yet to test GS Phantasm? I’m going to make a bunch of threads if this was just swept under the rug. :|

Skyro.3108:

kschmidt.5901:

Distortion skill: No longer allows capture of control points in all formats or communing in PvP
VS.
Endure Pain skill: Players can now capture points while under its effects

They’ve been removing contesting points while invulnerable from most professions, but suddenly Warriors are specifically updated so they can.

Endure Pain isn’t an invulnerability, it simply reduces direct damage to zero. You can still apply conditions on them, knock them off the point, etc.

Ahh good to know the difference. That at least makes sense then.

Mantras are not useless at all. Just because you guys like to play mainstream it doesnt mean the play styles which require more brains are useless. There is a way around everything.

I am not disappointed by any of this really.

Though I’m not perticularally “Yay!!!” For anything either.

Soo +1 Anet for nothing to bad.

This is all The balance we get till June. Lets hope May’s bug fixes are a good b-day present ;p

Is it just me or is signet of domination gone?

bubblyball.7591:

Mantras are not useless at all. Just because you guys like to play mainstream it doesnt mean the play styles which require more brains are useless. There is a way around everything.

Naw, mantras will always be useless until its active effects get a lot of buffs (2 second Stability? lulz). It’s extremely easy to see when a Mesmer is channeling and equally too easy to interrupt them. Even with this channeling time decrease I think it’s still going to be more or less as useless as it was, except maybe in sPvP where people might initially try it a bit more until they come to the same conclusion as before.

Signet of Illusion’s tooltip changed to reflect a 200% health increase, rather than the original 50%. Does anyone know if it’s still pulsing, then, or if it’s an automatic increase?

So they not only reduced confusion damage by 50% but also made the Blinding Befuddlement trait entirely useless…

But thieves can go on doing 10k backstabs without using any cd’s and still won’t unstealth when it got blocked…time to backstab some pugs!

You gotta be kidding me.

I was silently hoping for scepter or torch buffs to offset the confusion nerf on already UP weapons. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but what a missed opportunity for badly needed attention.

athuria.2751:

Signet of Illusion’s tooltip changed to reflect a 200% health increase, rather than the original 50%. Does anyone know if it’s still pulsing, then, or if it’s an automatic increase?

It is still pulsing, merely changed the tooltip pretty sad

Well since Confouding Suggestion is working with Chaos Storm now, so is Halting Strike. Yay…

I really hoped for scepter and torch love since the confusion nerf though.

Ahh, snap. Gotta finish leveling the Thief or Guardian now as I’m completely useless in WvW unless I want to run glass cannon. Thanks A-net.

Blinding Befuddlement trait:
Increased duration of applied confusion from 1 second to 4 seconds.
Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the mesmer.

WvW: Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP

I saw the damage nerf coming which is way too huge according to most people. But the change of blinding befuddlement is just …. wooow.

ANET this is not a nerf, this is genocide :>

Sobiech.9613:

Ahh, snap. Gotta finish leveling the Thief or Guardian now as I’m completely useless in WvW unless I want to run glass cannon. Thanks A-net.

Oh, I started that a month ago. Leveled a warrior AND a thief because I expected we’d get a nerf. And after the indirect nerf to Time Warp, I just decided to play around with other professions for PvE and WvW rather than brace myself for disappointment. Oh well, after reading the Elementalists’ forums, I don’t feel quite as angry. They got the kitten nerfed out of them. I suppose rolling on of the three most played professions (guardian, warrior, thief) can always be a good back up plan. Still…they should have buffed some of the weaker things to compensate for the nerfs. Scepter, for example, become really weak if you use it for a condition build (not that it was strong to begin with). And they nerfed eles mobility while failing to keep their promise of buffing their burst damage.

gorma.3725:

Blinding Befuddlement trait:
Increased duration of applied confusion from 1 second to 4 seconds.
Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the mesmer.

WvW: Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP

I saw the damage nerf coming which is way too huge according to most people. But the change of blinding befuddlement is just …. wooow.

ANET this is not a nerf, this is genocide :>

Yeah people thought the glamor builds might still be somewhat viable, after today…well, good luck killing pigeons and rabbits with that.

Mere Image.8376:

snip

One can only hope they notice the free fall in the number of Mesmers in WvW and feel its a bad thing. The cries of people having to face an enemy where you’re punished for attacking (one of the core ideas behind the Mesmer profession) have been heard. Now it’s our turn.

Also I’m wondering if, now that most (if not all) our interrupt traits work with all our weapons something could actually be done with a control-based build for us that would be viable. :|a Anyone tried something like that yet?

Nah, people will now start playing our really powerful phantasm and shatter builds leading to those also getting nerfed.

But hey, at least we can still drop a portal once in a lifetime to transport some golems (hint: portal 50% range nerf incoming).

Ahhahaha. It’s pretty evident that Anet never wanted glamour confusion bombing to be used the way it was, nor any of those related traits to be used ever again.

hahaha what a joke update, was waiting for THAT all month to see and hope useless traits change and scepter/torch changes rofl last time im hyping an update for sure, gg on dat confusion nerf….

Thank you ANet for killing condition mesmer. I need almost 20 confusion stacks to do less than 2000 damage. With MORE THAN 1600 condition damage.

Thank to you and your kittening logic you have killed a way of the mesmer.

Meanwhile, a thief appeared and hit me for 7k, great, all ok.

Wow. Just wow. Can’t believe they added that blinding befuddlement nerf on top of everything. That’s like kicking dirt in our face after we’re already on the ground. R.I.P. glam.

Confounding Suggestions trait: Now functions with the Chaos Storm and Counter Blade skills.

Anyone tested this one yet? I can think of a couple builds that if you got lucky could chain stun the kitten out of someone. And with interrupt traits could be lol.

ExZee.8109:

bubblyball.7591:

Mantras are not useless at all. Just because you guys like to play mainstream it doesnt mean the play styles which require more brains are useless. There is a way around everything.

Naw, mantras will always be useless until its active effects get a lot of buffs (2 second Stability? lulz). It’s extremely easy to see when a Mesmer is channeling and equally too easy to interrupt them. Even with this channeling time decrease I think it’s still going to be more or less as useless as it was, except maybe in sPvP where people might initially try it a bit more until they come to the same conclusion as before.

“Mantras are useless.” Pfft. Mantras are just difficult and take skill and practice. Probably moreso than any other Mesmer ability.

• 2 sec stability that can be popped consecutively for up to 6(traited) secs of stability. Great for rezzing, charging other mantras, and getting out of danger.
• Traited MoPain lets Mesmers heal as decently as Guardians and eles
• MoResolve is one of our best condition cleansers.

Creative thinking is your friend. Its not too hard to charge them, even in combat, especially with a staff. Fay’s excellent website proves the power of Mantras.

…

On topic, all I see here are 2 buffs, some bug fixes, and a massive nerf. If Anet is gonna make such obviously obnoxious and frustrating changes, they should plan some appealing buffs to go along with them. This was such a missed opportunity for Scepter, Torch, and plenty of unappealing traits. And hell, the big thing here was custom arenas.. and they’re not even ready yet.

Confusion is now terrible across all game modes. Consistency!

Mere Image.8376:

gorma.3725:

Blinding Befuddlement trait:
Increased duration of applied confusion from 1 second to 4 seconds.
Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the mesmer.

WvW: Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP

I saw the damage nerf coming which is way too huge according to most people. But the change of blinding befuddlement is just …. wooow.

ANET this is not a nerf, this is genocide :>

Yeah people thought the glamor builds might still be somewhat viable, after today…well, good luck killing pigeons and rabbits with that.

Hm well, Glamours only blind someone once anyway, or not? Didn’t the most confusion of glamour builds come from people entering and leaving your fields? This means, glamour builds actually got a buff there (aside from confusion damage being halfed, of course). What’s really affected by this change is samski’s build… you won’t be able to increase the confusion-stacks as much by using the trait with chaos armor. Though; since the inflicted confusion lacks longer… hmm… someone needs to calculate that (or just test it), I guess.

garethh.3518:

Just scrap it for something like a passive recharge… something like ‘you take 15~% more dmg and can’t regen endurance (possibly instead just ‘can not evade’) for 4~ seconds’.

To be fair, the basic idea behind Mantras is actually quite solid.
You trade general throughput and flexibility for frontloaded power. In other words, in any 1-v-1-engagement it should be a solid gain so long as you end the fight quickly.

For example, assuming that both my enemy and me have a 1,5s casting 2s Daze on a 30s CD. Now let’s say mine is a Mantra, with a 2,75s charge. Assuming the fight ends in under 30s (either side the winner), I just “won” 1,5s of free time.
Yet, as soon as the fight lasts longer than 30s, I just lost 1,25s of time.

And this is the basic premise of the Mantras.

Two things went wrong, IMO:

• Skills in GW2 in general are fast. Most skills finish in 0,5-1,5s seconds. This makes the lost cast time not worth that much, especially given how difficult it is to reliably interrupt.
• Mantras never saw a useful power/opportunity balance, and ended up being reduced to weak effects with multiple charges as a result of an unbalanced trait which should instead have been scrapped entirely.

The theory is sound. You get a lot of extra frontloaded power and most importantly extra attacks (since you got free time) in short engagements, and you are weaker than without the Mantras in prolonged fights.
The current implementation seems to want Mantras to more be an “allrounder” skill type, and that’s just not going to work.

If we do that, then I’d prefer a set of Illusions instead:

• Illusion of Freedom: For 8 seconds, ignore any movement impairing effects and any forced character movement including wall-type abilities. After the effect ends, become crippled for 7 seconds, which cannot be cleansed or mitigated.
• Illusion of Power: For 8 seconds, gain 20 stacks of Might which cannot be interacted with (Necro effects / SoI). After the effect ends, you are weakened for 8 seconds, which cannot be cleansed or mitigated.
• Illusion of Invincibility: You take no damage for 10 seconds. After the effect ends, all mitigated damage is taken in one blow which cannot be mitigated in any way. This ability can be used while not in control of your character.
• Illusion of Life: We already have this one.

Numbers are subject to someone with actual knowledge of balance balancing them, ofc.

Personally my issue with mantras is that they’re competing with the three slots where there are other skills I can take that’ll keep me alive in 1v(x) engagements (plus many of our strongest utils are also stun breaks).

I actually find them quite useful all the same, and I’d use them more often (especially MoC and MoR) if the mantra CDR trait didn’t have extremely unfortunate tree placement.

Mesmers are magical duelists who wield deception as a weapon. Using powerful illusions, clones, and phantasmal magic to confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is balanced in their favor and their opponents can’t believe their eyes.

Should change to something like that.
Mesmers are pink portal/veil bots who wield magic wands as a weapon. Using 1shot illusions,clones and phantasmal magic COULD confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is garbage in their favor and their opponents can’t stop laughing on them

I might dust off my old mantra/signet build now, see if it works. I had it close to working when all the skills were garbage before, so high hopes for it now.

stelol.6237:

Mesmers are magical duelists who wield deception as a weapon. Using powerful illusions, clones, and phantasmal magic to confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is balanced in their favor and their opponents can’t believe their eyes.

Should change to something like that.
Mesmers are pink portal/veil bots who wield magic wands as a weapon. Using 1shot illusions,clones and phantasmal magic COULD confuse and distract their foes, mesmers make sure every fight is garbage in their favor and their opponents can’t stop laughing on them

Hahahahahahaha

I’ll keep with others:

Thief
Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.

It should be
Experts at killing people with just spamming skills, thiefs can move being invisible through all the combat area doing insane damage. Thiefs practise kungkittenstyle while attacking and can run off if their life is compromised, making them nearly impossible to hit if they’re masters.

Elementalist
Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

It should be
Elementalists are the kings of spellcasters, that channels everything you can imagine to laugh at you. Despite having the lowest toughness and vitality, they can be more tanky than warriors or guardians, thanks to they can heal and have all the boons as much as they like.

Necromancer
Practitioners of the dark arts, necromancers summon the dead, wield the power of lost souls, and literally suck the life force from the enemy. Necromancers feed on life force, which they can use to bring allies back from the brink or cheat death itself.

It should be
Practitioners of the dark arts, necromancers summon all the conditions on you, so you are obligated to suck their d*cks while they suck you life. Necros ignore your toughness, so they can take down an entire zerg, laughing at the death itself because they are better killing people than gods.

Do I need to continue?? Please, stop this ridiculouslness…

Oh come on… Pretty much all that got nerfed is just confusion and a couple of highly specialized confusion heavy builds.

Phantasm and Shatter are pretty much untouched and those are basically the main builds we use anyway.

The only annoying thing about this update is that iZerker bug is still here.

Honestly, I actually think that we got relatively stronger now, Thieves, Eles and Engineers all got quite a few painful nerfbats in their face, so we will have easier time with those too.

just confusion

Well, “just confusion” is basically the only damaging condition we can apply at a regular basis. If i’m lucky i manage about 8 stacks of bleeding with 3 staff clones + sharper images + Sigil of Earth on my staff. A necro does this with simple “1” spamming…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

“Mantras are useless.” Pfft. Mantras are just difficult and take skill and practice. Probably moreso than any other Mesmer ability.

• 2 sec stability that can be popped consecutively for up to 6(traited) secs of stability. Great for rezzing, charging other mantras, and getting out of danger.
• Traited MoPain lets Mesmers heal as decently as Guardians and eles
• MoResolve is one of our best condition cleansers.

Creative thinking is your friend. Its not too hard to charge them, even in combat, especially with a staff. Fay’s excellent website proves the power of Mantras.

…

On topic, all I see here are 2 buffs, some bug fixes, and a massive nerf. If Anet is gonna make such obviously obnoxious and frustrating changes, they should plan some appealing buffs to go along with them. This was such a missed opportunity for Scepter, Torch, and plenty of unappealing traits. And hell, the big thing here was custom arenas.. and they’re not even ready yet.

What a uselessly long post. Here, let me simplify for you.

Every time I see a mantra Mesmer, I /LOL IRL then ROFLSTOMP him and forget I ever fought one because he got owned too fast to make any kind of lasting impression.

Doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you’re not going to out-play me with inferior utility skills. This is why mantras need buffs.