Guild Wars 2

Mesmers have to be one of the toughest professions to balance damage for.

Our reliance on phantasms for damage has a few negative effects on Mesmer PvE. For example, it shackles us to the Signet of the Ether healing skill, which is necessary to ensure we can get three phantasms out right away in a boss fight. It means we’re extremely hesitant to shatter, because we know our DPS will take a nosedive if we do. Similarly, if we’re up against an AoE-heavy fight, our DPS is useless—I think we all remember that fight from Living World Season 2, right?

In a version of Guild Wars 2 PvE where the Mesmer’s various tricks matter as much as damage, that wouldn’t be a problem. Trading off DPS for interrupts or distortion would be seen as a viable trade. But that’s not the balance we have now. If your DPS isn’t top notch, you’re just slowing your team down. Sure, the Mesmer makes up for it if you’re in one of the fractals where Portal is valuable, or if you need reflects and don’t have a Guardian.

So how can we make Mesmers easier to balance?

Here’s my idea: make phantasms no longer act as illusions. Instead, phantasms should be one-shot skills that are summoned, do their attack once, and then dissipate, without ever counting towards your three-clone limit. At the same time, buff the Mesmer’s personal DPS to account for the lack of continuous phantasm damage. On top of this, these new one-shot phantasm skills should either do more damage up front, or have their cooldowns reduced, because they’re no longer persistent; they should also leave a clone behind, like an afterimage, so Mesmers don’t effectively have less illusion generation.

This approach has pros and cons. I’ll list some of them here.

PROS
Mesmer DPS would be much easier to balance. Once you treat phantasms as just a single attack, they can be balanced the same way every other profession’s weapon skills are balanced. Plus, our DPS would no longer be reliant on hoping our phantasms survive enemy cleave and AoE.

Mesmer DPS would be more reliable. Really, this is the big one. Being able to do reliable DPS as a Mesmer that isn’t reliant on hoping our fragile phantasms survive would be an incredible quality-of-life improvement.

Non-damaging phantasms would see more use. Right now, if you’re in a boss fight in a dungeon and have a non-damaging phantasm up, you’re not using one of your illusion slots to add to your group’s DPS, and that’s slowing things down. Potentially useful abilities, like the upcoming Chronomancer shield phantasm, would see little use in PvE as a result. Reworking them as one-shot skills would make them much more likely to actually be useful.

Mesmers could shatter more often, because clones are cheap. Phantasms would no longer count as illusions, so you could shatter your easy-to-generate clones more often, adding Mind Wrack to your damage rotation and not needing to hesitate to use Distract or Distortion as needed.

Phantasms would no longer be necessarily tied to a single enemy. While this wouldn’t matter for single-target phantasms, like the Phantasmal Swordsman or Duelist, it would give us the possibility of being able to ground target Phantasmal Warden or Berserker—how cool would that be?

CONS
It would make it harder to do be a huge pain while stealthed in PvP. However, I would argue that summoning a phantasm still shouldn’t break stealth (like it doesn’t now). It might be worth going for a “reduce phantasm cooldown” approach instead of an “increase phantasm damage” approach in this case, because giving a profession too much burst damage without unstealthing them is dangerous.

It would make Mesmers less unique. That’s very true. I can’t argue with that. But our uniqueness has been our downfall in the balance category for the entire life of the game. Maybe it’s time to look at the underlying problems with Mesmer balance and address those instead of just tweaking numbers.

Some existing phantasm traits would no longer work. Also very true. That said, those could be replaced with new traits. Maybe a trait that makes phantasms automatically do a one-clone Mind Wrack when they complete their attack?

Some existing phantasms would no longer work, period. Yeah, this is a tough one. The Phantasmal Mage on the torch would have to be reworked, possibly into a single AoE that grants fury to allies and burns enemies. The same for the upcoming Chronomancer shield phantasm, only with slow on enemies and alacrity on allies.

Conclusion
So, what do you all think?

I fully expect this won’t be a popular idea, and I also have no expectation it would ever be implemented. But I wanted to kick around the idea that perhaps the real problem with Mesmer balance is that our very core design gets in the way. Doing something like making phantasms one-shot skills instead of summons would, I think, be one of the less disruptive ways to address that.

How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?

Iavra.8510:

How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?

Admittedly, that part is likely more applicable to PvE Mesmers, who rarely shatter in dungeons/fractals because it means killing off their main source of DPS for a one-time effect that is comparatively underwhelming.

My proposed solution—admittedly, I didn’t think of this problem—would be this: make phantasms leave a clone behind once they do their attack. Now you don’t actually have fewer illusions—your phantasm skills are just also clone-generation skills. That’d mean you’d have exactly as many skills that generate illusions as you do now.

Iavra.8510:

How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?

He means that right now people don’t shatter because they don’t want to lose their phantasms, which are the main source of damage for phant builds. If only clones are out however, you wouldn’t feel bad about shattering.

It makes sense, though of course changing phants to a direct damage skill just throws out the whole concept of the mesmer itself…

bhagwad.4281:

Iavra.8510:

How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?

He means that right now people don’t shatter because they don’t want to lose their phantasms, which are the main source of damage for phant builds. If only clones are out however, you wouldn’t feel bad about shattering.

It makes sense, though of course changing phants to a direct damage skill just throws out the whole concept of the mesmer itself…

I don’t agree. Clones, shatters, and manipulations are still there, and are still very Mesmer-y. Phantasms are one of the core aspects of the Mesmer, yes, but they’re not the only thing that makes us Mesmers, and I think they’ve been getting in our way when it comes to achieving damage balance. In fact, shatter-heavy PvP builds are just one step away from using phantasms this way already. You summon them, let them do an attack or two, but you’re probably going to shatter them pretty quickly.

Like in my above post: if phantasms do their one attack and then leave a clone behind, you have exactly as many illusion-generating skills as you do now, so that playstyle remains intact.

It’s an intriguing idea, to be sure. I think it could work, though it’d need a lot of rebalancing around cooldowns and effects.

Quibble about this “pro”, though:

Right now, if you’re in a boss fight in a dungeon and have a non-damaging phantasm up, you’re not using one of your illusion slots to add to your group’s DPS, and that’s slowing things down.

I understand the point you’re trying to make, but if Phantasms turn into single-attack summons, then none of our illusion slots will be adding to group DPS any more. Clones do essentially zero damage.

Currently, as far as providing damage, we have good burst and moderate sustain over a long period of time. Your change would completely knock out the moderate sustain over time portion unless it were accompanied by a rebalancing of our AA damage. Which I’d be fine with, I just don’t trust ANet to actually do it.

I also have concerns about the effectiveness of our utility Phantasms. pDefender, pDisenchanter, and iCaptainAmerica are only worth using if they stick around for a while. This is perhaps even more true of iWarden — yes, it has good DPS, but it’s mainly used for absorbing/reflecting projectiles. And then there’s the problem you pointed out with pMage.

tobascodagama.2961:

It’s an intriguing idea, to be sure. I think it could work, though it’d need a lot of rebalancing around cooldowns and effects.

Quibble about this “pro”, though:

Right now, if you’re in a boss fight in a dungeon and have a non-damaging phantasm up, you’re not using one of your illusion slots to add to your group’s DPS, and that’s slowing things down.

I understand the point you’re trying to make, but if Phantasms turn into single-attack summons, then none of our illusion slots will be adding to group DPS any more. Clones do essentially zero damage.

Currently, as far as providing damage, we have good burst and moderate sustain over a long period of time. Your change would completely knock out the moderate sustain over time portion unless it were accompanied by a rebalancing of our AA damage. Which I’d be fine with, I just don’t trust ANet to actually do it.

I also have concerns about the effectiveness of our utility Phantasms. pDefender, pDisenchanter, and iCaptainAmerica are only worth using if they stick around for a while. This is perhaps even more true of iWarden — yes, it has good DPS, but it’s mainly used for absorbing/reflecting projectiles. And then there’s the problem you pointed out with pMage.

Yeah, I largely agree with your points. We’d definitely need our weapon skill damage to be increased to compensate for never having phantasms as persistent sources of damage, but I think that removing the persistence of phantasms would open the door to allow that to be possible.

And yeah, some of the phantasms currently only make sense as persistent skills. Perhaps the Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter could be reworked as glamours, for example. But it isn’t perfect, you’re right.

Why not simply scale out our DPS by the number of phantasms we have deployed?

I’m not sure how this would work out, but it’s at least an interesting proposal. I especially like the idea of your one-shot phantasm skills leaving behind an afterimage. This could maintain the unique feeling a mesmer has now.

Though as mentioned, there are a number of concerns with this playstyle as well. Tobasco da gama makes a good point on group fights where phantasms are sustainable right now.

One difficulty of this approach would be whether to increase the damage the phantasm does with their one attack, or decrease the cooldown of phantasm skills so they can be used more often.

I think I’d probably want to fall somewhere in the middle, but closer to the decrease cooldown side of the spectrum, if only because I think phantasm skills should still allow the Mesmer to maintain stealth. If phantasms did substantially more up-front damage and still didn’t break stealth, it would constitute a buff to the damage Mesmers can do while maintaining stealth, which is not a good thing.

They should still probably do somewhat more damage, but the main focus of the damage increase should be on the Mesmer’s other weapon skills, to bring them more in line with other professions.

Agent Noun.7350:

And yeah, some of the phantasms currently only make sense as persistent skills. Perhaps the Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter could be reworked as glamours, for example. But it isn’t perfect, you’re right.

You could also resolve this by giving Phantasms a set duration. For Weapon Phantasms, this would be equal to their attack rate, so they fire off one attack and then disappear. For utility Phantasms, this would have to be balanced against their cooldowns. Phantasmal Haste could then be modified to increase Phantasm duration instead, though it’d have to be long enough that Weapon Phantasm can get in a second attack.

tobascodagama.2961:

Agent Noun.7350:

And yeah, some of the phantasms currently only make sense as persistent skills. Perhaps the Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter could be reworked as glamours, for example. But it isn’t perfect, you’re right.

You could also resolve this by giving Phantasms a set duration. For Weapon Phantasms, this would be equal to their attack rate, so they fire off one attack and then disappear. For utility Phantasms, this would have to be balanced against their cooldowns. Phantasmal Haste could then be modified to increase Phantasm duration instead, though it’d have to be long enough that Weapon Phantasm can get in a second attack.

Oh yeah, that’s a fantastic idea. Giving phantasms a set duration instead of having them function as illusions (taking up illusion slots) would be awesome.

Whether weapon phantasms should be allowed to attack more than once is probably too big for a trait, I think—it’d be the equivalent of, say, letting an Elementalist take a trait that makes Fire Grab go off again on a delay, essentially letting it hit twice on one cooldown (okay, not quite that much damage, but still). Not saying it can’t be worked with, of course, but that’d be a kitten powerful trait.

For the utility and non-attacking weapon phantasms, though, having them work on a duration would be a great solution.

This is a great idea. I had been thinking about something similar myself, although I did not think of having them leave behind a clone, which is a great way to preserve clone generation frequency. I’m not sure about letting some of them be untargeted, though, because the clone they generate afterwards would still need to be tied to a single enemy.

That’s true. Maybe ground-targeted phantasms could generate a clone on the Mesmer’s current target when the phantasm’s effect ends, but that might be awkward, so it might be best to just keep them as targeted effects like they are now.

I’d prefer that illusions stayed until out of combat or shattered. This whole blowing up once a squishy standard mob dies is really annoying. It makes the shatter mechanic more difficult to use because the numbers of illusions is constantly going up and down. Which wouldn’t be too bad, except that a lot of the time you don’t have eyes on them, So you don’t know what’s going on with them until your punk for disappears, which often happens right as you were about to shatter or heal.

So just keep them the same, but let them live longer. Until we come out of battle. That way Illusions can be used strategically and not just reactively.

I disagree. In my opinion they should rather fix the rune and sigil affection for phantasms and their casttime. The shatter problem could easily be solves by giving all the F? skills a 2nd actiavtion. First only shatters clones, 2nd also shatters phantasms.

we’re mesmer!

nerf us every week ,please…like you’re doing

familiar nerf …lmao

BuungBuung.2168:

we’re mesmer!

nerf us every week ,please…like you’re doing

familiar nerf …lmao

I don’t see how this would be a nerf at all. In fact, I think it would be a buff, in that it would involve increasing our actual weapon attack damage (and decreasing the cooldown on phantasm skills, which, if the afterimage thing would also be implemented, would actually increase clone generation).

Though history shows that they would change Phantasms accordingly and completely forget to buff weapon dmg etc in return.

Also your last sentence doesn’t make sense, since iCelerity already decreases the CD of every phantasm skill, so it would have to be applied twice.

What I meant is that if phantasms were to change in this way, the base cooldowns on phantasm-summoning skills should be reduced, because each individual phantasm summon would be less impactful (or, at least, would no longer be able to hang around as a persistent element). I’m referring only to the base skill cooldowns, not to a trait like Illusionist’s Celerity (which wouldn’t have to change).

It’s an interesting idea, We’d need far more illusion generation to use our shatter mechanic. – I do believe if such a change would happen, Phantasms should be out long enough to deliver 2 attacks. – One initial, and one with a 50-100% damage boost if they’ve managed the great accomplishment of staying alive more than a couple seconds. It also places an emphasis on -killing- Phantasms in sPvP, before they launch their second attack.

signet of the ether a necessity.
you’re funny.

+1 to a very interesting conceptual change.

Great job on this thread.

How about something like reduced cooldown on weapon phantasms(not utilities) and shatters per shattered phantasm so you can create a sort of rotation that relies on summoning 3 phantasms letting them all hit once or twice mindwrack and start again.

thetarot.8246:

It’s an interesting idea, We’d need far more illusion generation to use our shatter mechanic. – I do believe if such a change would happen, Phantasms should be out long enough to deliver 2 attacks. – One initial, and one with a 50-100% damage boost if they’ve managed the great accomplishment of staying alive more than a couple seconds. It also places an emphasis on -killing- Phantasms in sPvP, before they launch their second attack.

That’s a cool idea. I worry that it might put us basically right back here, though, where PvE fights (or WvW zergs) where there’s a lot of AoE will nuke phantasms early, causing our actual DPS to drop sharply. Part of what I want to accomplish by suggesting this change would be to avoid that problem—where Mesmer DPS is less linked to whether or not our best attacks get killed before they can live up to their potential.

As for illusion generation, having a phantasm leave behind an “afterimage” clone after it does its attack would give us functionally the same amount of illusion generation as we have now.

Lightsbane.9012:

signet of the ether a necessity.
you’re funny.

Maybe I’m overstating it, but it makes a huge difference in dungeons and fractals if you can get three damaging phantasms out right away. Signet of the Ether lets you refresh your phantasm cooldowns, so you can open a boss fight by immediately summoning a Warden and two Swordsmen to get your damage up and running. Without that, you’re stuck with two phantasms for at least 20 seconds, and that’s a long time to go without a big chunk of your potential damage.

I had suggested something very similar a few months ago. Separating the functionality of our phantasms from our shatter mechanic would solve alot of our PvE issues. I couldn’t come up with anything to make up for the loss of shatter fodder though, your after-image idea is genius. I Love everything about your idea.

+1

Another con to consider about this, that I hadn’t thought about in the initial post, is that it would functionally increase Mesmer burst damage.

Frankly, Mesmer doesn’t need that, and I say that as a Mesmer. Our burst is in great shape. It doesn’t need to be stronger (or weaker, let me just say). I’m not too sure what the solution for that would be, given the framework of what I suggested. Decreasing Mind Wrack damage (remember, we’re increasing Mesmer weapon damage as part of this change) might be necessary to prevent us from being even stronger with burst damage.

I don’t know, though. Someone probably has a better idea than I do there.

Your suggestions would totally wreck mesmer for pvp. We already do extreme burst without phantasms. You simply cannot increase that for the sake of pve.

Furthermore, the new chrono trait (forget the name) that allows you to shatter phantasms once before they die will go a long way in this regard.

PainbowBrite.3785:

Your suggestions would totally wreck mesmer for pvp. We already do extreme burst without phantasms. You simply cannot increase that for the sake of pve.

Furthermore, the new chrono trait (forget the name) that allows you to shatter phantasms once before they die will go a long way in this regard.

But it doesn’t help with phantasms getting killed by melee cleave and AoEs in PvE. Yeah, that Chronophantasma trait is awesome and I’m excited for it, but it only solves one of the issues, and even then, only partially. If phantasms were immune to AoE/cleave damage in PvE (not PvP) then we’d be talking, but I don’t think they’d ever do that.

It also doesn’t address the issue with non-damage-dealing phantasms. At the moment, they see very little use in group PvE, because they take up a slot that would be more valuable if occupied by a damage-dealing phantasm. If Heart of Thorns brings PvE content where phantasms like the Phantasmal Defender or the new Chronomancer shield phantasm are as valuable as a damage-dealing phantasm (even just situationally), that’d be a big step forward. Otherwise, I’d rather see the very core of what a phantasm is be reworked.

Also, see my above post, because you’re right—this would increase our burst quite a bit, and I didn’t consider that in the original post. A lot of things would need tuning as a result.

Rather than change the base class, what about a new Elite spec that changes phantasm functionalities.
“Summoning” a phantasm now gives a buff for a set time. Every auto attack procs this buff. Visually would look like illusions or shadows that hover over your character and act when you act.
Auto attack with p.duelist buff and a magic bullet shoots out. Torch phantasm =burning in auto. Gs could add a cleave while sword phantasm would be single target. Not sure on focus. Defender could give prot.

Shield would not matter because only 1 elite spec at a time.

Only clones for shattering because it wouldnt get rid of of the new shadow buffs.