Guild Wars 2

Time to upset everybody.
I think it was a good patch overall.
Please feel free to claim I’m a thief player without reading the rest of the post, preferably with capital letters. Its funnier that way.

Mind Spike: Reduced the base damage by 20%. This skill does an additional 50% damage to targets with no boons.
Its kind of an odd change really, it will make the MH Sword a little less potent against boon spamming, but hey, I guess its an almost pve buff.

Mind Stab: Reduced the aftercast by .4 seconds.
Neat. The skill is still bland and not great. but neat.

Illusionary Counter: This skill damage has been reduced to 50% of what it was. It now applies 5 stacks of torment for 8 seconds.
The leaked patch notes implied it was going to be 25%, so in comparison this isn’t to bad, but as a whole its not great. Overall the scepter is still in a not great place, from a condition standpoint, better, but worse overall.

Magic Bullet: Reduced the aftercast by .2 seconds.
Neat.

Into the Void: This skill now has a 1-second recharge before it can be used after placing Temporal Curtain.
When I first saw this, I was pretty upset. After testing its a PRETTY SHORT SECOND. So I’m perfectly fine with this change, it gives opponents a moment to react to the pull without detracting from the skills use. All in all, fine.

Signet of Illusions: Clones and phantasms will now gain the passive effect of this signet when they are created, rather than a few moments after creation.
What can I say, other than it should have always been like this.

Siren’s Call
Bleed duration for players: Reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second.
Bleed duration for clones: Reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second.
Condition Mesmers are HILLARIOUSLY STRONG underwater, this is a pretty big nerf, so I guess only time will tell if it brings the bleed spam in check, or hurts it too much, either way, a nerf WAS in order.

Feigned Surge: Increased the damage by 33%.
HehehehehheuehuehuehuehuehueuheAAHAAAAAHHAAAAHAAAAAAA- I mean, I like this change.

Ineptitude: Fixed an issue that allowed this skill to be cast at infinite range.
As hilarious as it was, its about time this got fixed.

Illusionary Leap: Fixed an exploit that allowed for more clone generation than intended.
Creating a clone was an exploit?
Is there some phantasmal dimension where this skill actually works?
Will it ever work?
Find out next week, same bat time, same bat channel.
Its never going to get fixed.

Signet of Midnight: Increased the blind duration to 5 seconds. Decreased the cooldown to 30 seconds.
I don’t entirely remember this being a stunbreaker, but then again I never really touched signets.

Illusion of Life: Fixed an issue so that Far-Reaching Manipulations no longer reduces the cast time of this skill.
Again, bugfixes that needed to happen.

Blurred Frenzy: This is now evasion instead of immunity. This means it will be affected by retaliation. Increased the cooldown to 12 seconds.
Now this is a good change, being immune to retal with any attack shouldnt be happening, and lets face it, the cooldown was a little short given how good the attack is.

Signet of Illusions: Decreased the bonus hit points to clones and phantasms to 50%.
200% was CUHRAZY, this became a clutch for METAGAAAAEEEM bandwagoners, and I’m glad its gone. Now that it actually applies properly this is still pretty useful, without being insanely powerful.

Split the hit point values of clones and phantasms by game type:
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 55% in PvP and WvW.
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 270% in PvE.
Decreased the clone base hit points by 25% in PvP and WvW.
Increased the clone base hit points by 28% in PvE.
Best changes in the patch.
By far.
The baseline for illusions was AWFUL in PVE. Overall, Signet of Illusions needed to be brought down, I knew this was going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting the baseline to be brought up, Phatasm health was a little to high in WvW and PvP, with a single skill slot you could run around with almost 6K spammable summons. It needs to be brought down and it was.
But it was brought down well in a well thought out way that improves them overall without breaking them, this is a fantastic change.

In fact, excuse me for a moment.
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 270% in PvE.
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 270% in PvE.
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 270% in PvE.
Increased the phantasm base hit points by 270% in PvE.
HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGTHEYCANSURVIVETHINGSNOWKFJGDLFGJHATDKLHOSIRTNLDSKFHJSDITONLDSKHGALGHSLDKHERITJSDRTLKDSFJHIOFDSHJFGLKHJNSFGDKLHFGNDH

Okay, annnnnd on we go.

Polymorph Moa:
-snip-
As much as I would like to comment, lets be realistic here, people don’t actually USE these skills, they just throw their hands up in their air and scream about how Moa is bullmeow and die because they didn’t doge.

Polymorph Tuna:
-glub glub glub glub-
Same as above, only they will also scream about how underwater combat is awful as well.

Phantasmal Berserker: Fixed an issue that was causing the damage from this summoned phantasm to not display. Updated the berserker’s attack to make it more reliably hit a static target with all 4 of the attacks.
Only 7 months. Good job guys you did it.
The fact it took this long is appalling.

Chaos
Prismatic Understanding: This trait now pulses once every second while stealthed.
Bountiful Interruption: This trait has been moved to the Master tier. In addition to granting a random boon on interrupt, this trait will also grant 5 stacks of might.
Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been moved to the Grandmaster tier. This ability now immobilizes the player’s target and randomly applies blind, cripple, or chill.
Nice improvements overall, it opens up some interesting play and builds, maybe not viable in Tpvp, buts lets face it, nothing but shatter is.

Domination
Halting Strike: Damage dealt when interrupting enemies has been increased by 500%.
Another nice change, Im gonna have to play around with this one, it could get HILARIOUS with Chaos storm.

Dueling
Protected Mantras: This trait now grants up to 400 toughness while channelling (up from 250).
Id like to see this merged with Mantra Mastery, right now there are way to many Mantra traits spread around the tree. Not only is it impossible to get all of them, you have to give up allot to use the ones you have kitten to. Id like to see either MM or PM get merged with Restorative Mantras. It’d probably be OP as all meow, but it’d be funny to see people complaining Mantras are OP. Just like in beta.

Furious Interruption: This trait now grants 3 seconds of quickness when interrupting a foe. This effect can only occur once every 15 seconds.
This too is interesting, it could be obscene with a 30/30/0/0/10 nuke build. Kinda scary even.

Vengeful Images: This trait now only applies retaliation for 5 seconds when they are created and does not persist after that.
As much as I don’t like this change I understand it, Perma retal on Phantasms was to much. I feel it would benefit from being a little longer, like 8-10 seconds tops.

Illusions
Imbued Diversion: This trait now allows Diversion to daze 5 targets (up from 3). In addition, the daze radius has been increased to 360 (up from 240).
Another neat change I cant imagine many people would go 30 into Illusions and not take IP, but hopefully this sees some use, it looks like it could be fun to play with.

Illusionary Retribution: Moved to the Adept Minor trait.
Shattered Strength: Moved to the Master Minor trait.
Illusionists Celerity: Moved to the Grandmaster Minor trait.
This is probably the worst change in the patch, now before you even think anything, I don’t use IC in my build, so this isnt a WAAAAAAAAAHHH thing.
Ill be honest, Phase retreat, and a few other skills needed higher cooldowns, they were WAY to good. This does not solve the problem, it just makes not playing shatter harder than what it used to be for most players, it shows poor foresight and feels like it wasn’t thought out at all.

IC is WAY to powerful for its own good and double cooldown traiting has been bugging out skills for ages, it would be better for everyone if IC was removed and Illusion skills had their baselines altered.

As an example for a replacement, Id like to see something along the lines of “Gain boons of shattered illusions.” Grandmaster tier powerful, and opens up more options for self booning and advanced teamplay.

Inspiration
Malicious Sorcery: This trait grants up to 200 condition damage while wielding a scepter (based on level), up from 50.
ANOTHER NEAT CHANGE, if only the Scepter was in a better place, since 150 more condi damage doesn’t fix its lack of reliable condi damage.

Compounding Celerity: Movement speed per active illusion has been increased to 10%, allowing for 30% movement speed when three illusions are active.
Its nice yes, but useless outside of combat, which is where Mesmer mobility issues happen to be.

Shattered Conditions: This trait now removes one condition from all allies around the mesmer.
Another really neat support option for Mesmers.

Most of this patch was a step in the right direction, with some needed nerfs that aren’t gamebreaking. There’s still a bunch of mostly useless traits, the IC really needs to be removed and Illusionary Leakitten till pretty much the most bugged skill in the game but overall this a small step in the right direction.

I agree with you that this patch wasn’t that bad. Certainly, there were some nerfs, but this isn’t going to kill the class. We’re still going to be perfectly viable in every type of gameplay with a fair variety of builds. As many as most people would like? No, but this isn’t the apocalypse that 90% of the posts on this forum would lead people to believe.

clipnotdone.9634:

Siren’s Call
Bleed duration for players: Reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second.
Bleed duration for clones: Reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second.
Condition Mesmers are HILLARIOUSLY STRONG underwater, this is a pretty big nerf, so I guess only time will tell if it brings the bleed spam in check, or hurts it too much, either way, a nerf WAS in order.

As a condition mesmer with +50% condition duration (not that that really matters for 1s bleeds) I was still able to stack about 17 or 18 bleeds on a target with ease.

I agree, at +270% Phantasm base health in PvE this patch went to “Best patch in GW2 so far” for me, no matter the other changes.
That both my interrupt and my stealth traits also got substantial buffs (and I have a spec using both, interrupts in PvE and stealth in PvP, so I don’t have to constantly respec) is just icing on the cake.

Sure the nerfs sting. But they don’t sting enough to offset just how much meatier my illusions feel in the one game mode where they were fragile as hell before and often felt unusable.

to be honest: for my build and playstyle, this was a really great patch, lovin it.

thumbs up, anet!

They gutted us…
And then gave us weird stuff to try and make up for it.
Overall the patch was a Nerf.

clipnotdone.9634:

Illusionary Counter: This skill damage has been reduced to 50% of what it was. It now applies 5 stacks of torment for 8 seconds.
The leaked patch notes implied it was going to be 25%, so in comparison this isn’t to bad, but as a whole its not great. Overall the scepter is still in a not great place, from a condition standpoint, better, but worse overall.

Inspiration
Malicious Sorcery: This trait grants up to 200 condition damage while wielding a scepter (based on level), up from 50.
ANOTHER NEAT CHANGE, if only the Scepter was in a better place, since 150 more condi damage doesn’t fix its lack of reliable condi damage.

I have to disagree with you here. Even if scepter auto attack is reeeeaaally lame, this two thing are totally awesome in a scepter condi build. I tried a little for necromancer, thief and mesmer the new thing (torment) and i have to say that this condition synergize better with mesmer. Just confuse, block, swap staff and watch enemy die from a huge condition burst. Love it!

Overall, i think this patch is more a PvE buff than anything and i’m pretty please with it.

…wth was that?

So, back to topic:

Into the Void – that is rather strong nerf, cause this skill is really counted like 2 skills – 5th skill on focus is crap. And we took focus only for speed buff and pull.

Blurred Frenzy – atm retal is overpowered. I nearly kill myself if i cast AOE from staff on zerg. The same affect if i use GS – 3 targets, 3 hits, bb my HP. Plus skill lags in www, when u simply can’t use heal skills…

Decreased the clone base hit points by 25% in PvP and WvW – very bad =( This change make any shatter and any try of confusing an opponent with detecting “real mesmer” much more difficult. And if u play not a small asura – even harder.

Malicious Sorcery – nice, but not more. The only condition from scepter is confusion,
and it is overnerfed. And yes, that new torment… Atm looks like a little bit useless, cause of lack of the ways to deliver it to opponent.

So, basically – this patch nerf mesmer in www, and make PvE easier. All carebears sing and rejoice, WWW players – especially who read changes for other classes – a little bit disappointed.

I think the problem is that Retaliation should be what Confusion was before the nerf.
It needs to be really powerful (and it’s ok that it’s really really difficult to be immune to it), but in turn it needs to last extremely short and be difficult to apply reliably.

Right now it’s not difficult to hold perma-Retaliation on a group of people during combat, even through boon stripping.

But again, I actually like Retaliation being powerful. That’s good, Confusion should be, too! But it needs to be highly limited then, so that I can viably choose not to attack, wait it out, then attack again and that needs to be better than just attacking.

I like 80% of the patch. Most of the nerfs were justified, if a little heavy. IC hurts, BF was going to get nerfed eventually anyways. I don’t like the Vengeful Images nerf though. On the upside, GS is beastly now.

Blurred Frenzy: This is now evasion instead of immunity. This means it will be affected by retaliation. Increased the cooldown to 12 seconds.
Now this is a good change, being immune to retal with any attack shouldnt be happening, and lets face it, the cooldown was a little short given how good the attack is.

You’re right, go blurred frenzy a guardian for me please.

Garr.1823:

Into the Void – that is rather strong nerf, cause this skill is really counted like 2 skills – 5th skill on focus is crap. And we took focus only for speed buff and pull.

iWarden, while flawed is amazing when you use it well, time it don’t just spam it out.
Also the cooldown is really like 1/3 of a second, its much smaller than you think.

Garr.1823:

Blurred Frenzy – atm retal is overpowered. I nearly kill myself if i cast AOE from staff on zerg. The same affect if i use GS – 3 targets, 3 hits, bb my HP. Plus skill lags in www, when u simply can’t use heal skills…

You are playing the class with the second best boon removal in the game.
Stop wearing zerkers.

Garr.1823:

Decreased the clone base hit points by 25% in PvP and WvW – very bad =( This change make any shatter and any try of confusing an opponent with detecting “real mesmer” much more difficult. And if u play not a small asura – even harder.

Clone generation is easy with the proper traits, clone on dodge and perma vigour, which is easy to obtain as a Mes, if anything they were a little to easy to maintain given how easy it is to produce them.

Also no player worth their salt gets confused by clones. Ever.

Garr.1823:

Malicious Sorcery – nice, but not more. The only condition from scepter is confusion,
and it is overnerfed. And yes, that new torment… Atm looks like a little bit useless, cause of lack of the ways to deliver it to opponent.

The scepter still needs work, its much better in condi builds now though, a step back for power users, but its still usable, just not optimal.

Dadnir.5038:

I have to disagree with you here. Even if scepter auto attack is reeeeaaally lame, this two thing are totally awesome in a scepter condi build. I tried a little for necromancer, thief and mesmer the new thing (torment) and i have to say that this condition synergize better with mesmer. Just confuse, block, swap staff and watch enemy die from a huge condition burst. Love it!
.

Scepter was always okay in Condi builds, confusion bombing is the FUNNEST WAY TO INSTAGIB IN PVP and Torment makes it even funnier, the problem is that is pretty much all the scepter has going for it now, overall its lost a a bit of its versatility, which is something it really really needs.

Archer.1658:

You’re right, go blurred frenzy a guardian for me please.

What is boon removal.
Also stop wearing zerkers.

Fellow Mesmers (wvw/pve) rejoice. There is a new hidden build that is OP. The build has been made possible by new dynamics in the patch. Just today I dropped 5k damage on 15+ enemies wvw zerg in under 3 seconds . Look for the build and don’t talk about it with anyone. Keep it a secret.

clipnotdone.9634:

iWarden, while flawed is amazing when you use it well, time it don’t just spam it out.
Also the cooldown is really like 1/3 of a second, its much smaller than you think.

Emmm…. lol? iWarden is totally almost useless. It was never effective vs me, and the only thing he is good at – additional dmg on gates. Who care about it’s dps, if it never move?

2289717

You are playing the class with the second best boon removal in the game.
Stop wearing zerkers.

And there lot’s of classes that can keep and refresh boons on them for eternity. Ther are always tons of guardians in zerg, and it is not a problem at all to refresh retal for them.
And i’m in PTW armor.

2289717

Also no player worth their salt gets confused by clones. Ever.

And that is the most common mistake.
Size of the playing character and behavior – really matters.
My gf play charr necro, and i often look into her PC screen, and she is much more target, then asura necro near her. It’s people psychology, u can do nothing with it – “who is bigger – must be more dangerous”. I can ignore it, u can ignore it, but when it is a mass fight – statistic will prove that i said.
And u can check almost every mesmer video in this topic – enemies sometimes are confused – who is who, and the smaller player model – the more confused they are.
(but yes – this is not this patch mechanic =)

Next thing about players confusion with clones. It’s not a problem for me when i fight 1 vs 1. But when in SPvP we was fighting with two same looking asura mesmers, and lost – i saw that that was mesmer + mesmer + thief (both asura) and it was really hard to understand – who is who, cause all in SPvP are colored in red/blue and asura kitten small =)

clipnotdone.9634:

Archer.1658:

You’re right, go blurred frenzy a guardian for me please.

What is boon removal.
Also stop wearing zerkers.

I don’t wear zerkers (not that it matters). Please boon removal my guardian which has 90% uptime on retal while you kill yourself. In the end, your personal opinion on the patch doesn’t mean jack.

My thoughts? i was hoping for a trait revolution that allowed me to create some new builds, instead most of the changes are skills related and the only line i see more appealing is chaos but mostly for PU which was already strong and part of my builds.
I really need to test the new feigned surge damage tho, it should be outstanding!

It’s still difficult as hell to create the right situation for it, but Feigned Surge on someone pushed against a wall really hurts now. And it was already more powerful than what most other classes could do. Sadly it’s a one-in-a-million setup, and this buff definitely improves it for “normal” use.

Agree with OP on almost everything. Great patch overall. Only 2 things :

Vengeful Images :
It was necessary. It’s not a nerf, it’s a tweak for balancing reasons since phantasm HP have been buffed. Otherwise, it would be OP, especially for 5 points.

Illusionist’s Celerity :
This change definitely sucks imo. I mean, I could understand it PvP/WvW wise, I guess it’s justified.
Just leave PvE alone, was not necessary. Would love to see base CD for PvE reduced to compensate, even if it only concerns CD of skills that summon clones (and not phantasms) since those bring utility/survival/CC above all.

Overall I like this patch, but then again I am heavily biased towards Condition Mesmers and we got a few powerful buffs. Apart from the IC nerf though I feel everything that was changed was reasonable, and even with IC something needed to be done. At least Illusions 5 isn’t a no-brainer anymore.

Hrrrmn…

I’ve got a few comments on the patch, now we know it’s the real thing and not a hoax:

On Mind Spike: This one I actually kinda like. It’s got that mesmer duality mentality – if you put boons up I’ll take’em down, if you don’t boon yourself I’ll do more damage. If they did something similar for Mind Stab, it may actually be worth using in PvE.

Illusionary Leap: This skill really needs to have a 900 range. Yes, that makes it a longer range than most charge-type skills, but in the time it takes to use Illusionary Leap and swap with the illusion, you can already be in sword range of your opponent.

Signet of Illusions and accompanying changes to illusion health: This is a really big deal, I think. The signet was pretty much a must-take due to the fragility of illusions without it. Now, it’s viable not to take it, but you get a decent benefit from doing so.

On the Illusionist’s Celerity move… I can see why ArenaNet felt that such an important trait shouldn’t have been a 5-pt cherrypick, but if they want to promote build diversity, I think they’ve underestimated how important it is. It seemed generally accepted before that you needed to have a good reason not to have at least 20pts in Illusion in your build and many builds had 30 – now, it’s become needing to have a really good reason not to spend that extra 5, and I suspect a lot of players are going to figure that if they’ve gone that far anyway, they might as well go all the way.

Putting it at 15 points might have been better or, as the OP suggested, killing it entirely and rebalancing without it.

Carighan.6758:

It’s still difficult as hell to create the right situation for it, but Feigned Surge on someone pushed against a wall really hurts now. And it was already more powerful than what most other classes could do. Sadly it’s a one-in-a-million setup, and this buff definitely improves it for “normal” use.

Uhm i dont know if you are speaking about mobs or players but with the first one is quite easy. Also some players are worst than mobs and deserve 10k+ damage from feigned surge.

draxynnic.3719:

if you put boons up I’ll take’em down, if you don’t boon yourself I’ll do more damage. If they did something similar for Mind Stab, it may actually be worth using in PvE.

Id really like a similar change for mind stab.

Anyone want to spend some words on COMPOUNDING celerity?

Archer.1658:

I don’t wear zerkers (not that it matters). Please boon removal my guardian which has 90% uptime on retal while you kill yourself. In the end, your personal opinion on the patch doesn’t mean jack.

If you cant deal with retal doesn’t mean other people cant, Mesmers have great boon removal, take advantage of it.

Garr.1823:

Emmm…. lol? iWarden is totally almost useless. It was never effective vs me, and the only thing he is good at – additional dmg on gates. Who care about it’s dps, if it never move?

Warden has the worst dps out of all the phantasms, what it has it the highest burst, reflection, AoE damage and bleeds. You actually need take work to use its full potential.

Garr.1823:

And there lot’s of classes that can keep and refresh boons on them for eternity. Ther are always tons of guardians in zerg, and it is not a problem at all to refresh retal for them.
And i’m in PTW armor.

I’m Assuming you mean PTV, and if that were the case you wouldn’t be doing enough damage to spike yourself down with retal.

Garr.1823:

And that is the most common mistake.
Size of the playing character and behavior – really matters.
My gf play charr necro, and i often look into her PC screen, and she is much more target, then asura necro near her. It’s people psychology, u can do nothing with it – “who is bigger – must be more dangerous”. I can ignore it, u can ignore it, but when it is a mass fight – statistic will prove that i said.
And u can check almost every mesmer video in this topic – enemies sometimes are confused – who is who, and the smaller player model – the more confused they are.
(but yes – this is not this patch mechanic =)

Next thing about players confusion with clones. It’s not a problem for me when i fight 1 vs 1. But when in SPvP we was fighting with two same looking asura mesmers, and lost – i saw that that was mesmer + mesmer + thief (both asura) and it was really hard to understand – who is who, cause all in SPvP are colored in red/blue and asura kitten small =)

Clones dont have offhands, carry players buffs, strafe, roll or move anywhere but towards their target, the real Mes is easy to spot.

clipnotdone.9634:

Warden has the worst dps out of all the phantasms, what it has it the highest burst, reflection, AoE damage and bleeds. You actually need take work to use its full potential.

No, it’s burst still sux. iBerserker is much better, and iDuelist, and even iSwordsman.

clipnotdone.9634:

I’m Assuming you mean PTV, and if that were the case you wouldn’t be doing enough damage to spike yourself down with retal.

Yap, PTV =) And still try to use AoE combo (field from staff + iBerserker + Mirror Blade + 1more clone and shatter), continue to hit – ooops, u lost 1/3 to 2/3 of hp.

clipnotdone.9634:

Clones dont have offhands, carry players buffs, strafe, roll or move anywhere but towards their target, the real Mes is easy to spot.

Yes, dude. And now go and look some video in this mesmer section, and u will see – people HAVE problem with it. And the smaller player model – the more problem people have.
It’s a simple fact.

Garr.1823:

No, it’s burst still sux. iBerserker is much better, and iDuelist, and even iSwordsman.

Like I said before, you cant just drop a Warden like a zerker or a duelist and expect the same results, it needs to be timed well to see its full effect. Dropping one on downed players shuts down several downed states entirely for perfectly safe stomps. Also Warriors using killshot.

Poor warriors using killshot.

Garr.1823:

Yap, PTV =) And still try to use AoE combo (field from staff + iBerserker + Mirror Blade + 1more clone and shatter), continue to hit – ooops, u lost 1/3 to 2/3 of hp.

You don’t take retal damage from phantasms, if you are wearing PVT gear and hitting the AoE cap with every hit, you are gonna take somewhere about 5K ish tops.

Garr.1823:

Yes, dude. And now go and look some video in this mesmer section, and u will see – people HAVE problem with it. And the smaller player model – the more problem people have.
It’s a simple fact.

Players not knowing what to look for, or flat out being unobservant or dare I even say, bad doesn’t mean its hard to spot a real mes.
Take a clonespam build into tpvp and see how little clones do against good players.
For a new player, yes they are going to have trouble, but its not remotely hard to figure out with experience.

Agree with the OP on all points. Would like to see IC removed from the game and the skills adjusted accordingly. We have 20% wep c/d’s already (and the tooltips don’t update correctly with IC and wep c/d traits together).

On some of the other posts: Fighting two mesmers at the same time makes identification of the real mesmers very difficult. The battlefield becomes too noisy and different player models make it a “where’s waldo” exercise instead of a sesame street “one of these things is not like the others”.

I’d also remove the 20% from the weapons and instead do something weapon-specific for those traits.
I like those traits some other classes have, like “Pistol shots pierce”.