Guild Wars 2

Earlier in the week I posed a question to the community here on the Mesmer forums, and the general sense is that you, those that responded, feel that Mesmer lack Control ability or have less than feels ample.

So I want to propose another task for you, defining Control but, more specifically, Control that carries weight within Gw2’s Core Mechanics.

Results from this will carry on to something later, but details on that are coming… when they’re ready. ;P

There are multiple types of Control (CC) in Gw2 and many other MMO’s.

1. Hard CC - These are Knock Downs, Knock Backs, Pulls, etc.. things that move or entirely prevent action when they take place.

2. Soft CC - These fall as things which hinder the opponent, Cripple, Chill, etc.. But do not enforce a “loss of will” if we may call it, where in the target cannot react for the duration of the CC.

3. Denial - Similar to Hard CC, however in this case, the target is Denied an option tho they can still act upon it if they so choose. Examples would be the Line of Warding (Denial of movement beyond a point), Feed Back (Denial of Projectile Destination), etc..

4. Punishment - This is less of its own Control subset and more so an over arching theme. It is what takes during a “forced choice” where in, for example, you can Attack/use a skill and Take the damage from Confusion (punishment) or choose not to attack/use a skill and hope the next attack does not make you regret it (Potential Punishment). There is probably a better term for this but my brain is fried from the Heat today..

Your Goals: kitten the above, and yell at me Let me know if it needs additions, revisions, subtractions etc..

After that, Look at what types of control are the most “controlling” in your preferred Game Mode, what works and what does not? why does/doesn’t it work?

Lastly, What control options do Mesmers currently have access to?

~Keep it Clean~

Mesmer possesses all of your listed Control methods. It’s merely a matter of certain mechanics needing a slight push upward to where they “should” reside.

For example; Mesmer currently has reasonable abilities in both:
* Hard CC (ItV; IWave, other Interrupt abilities), as well as …
* Soft CC (Chill/Cripple/Blind and Daze, from multiple sources)
Mesmers are downright brutal at the “Projectile” subset of Denial, as any of us know.

• Feedback
• Traited Focus
• Untraited Warden
• Medic’s Feedback
• Mirror
• Masterful Reflection

As for Punishment, it depends on the “method” of punishing opponents.

• Confusion
• Torment
• Retaliation
• Reflection
  (Retaliation and Confusion would be the ones that need a nudge back into spec. Both were much more punishing, before what I refer to the WvW Confusion Debacle…)

As for what I consider the most “controlling” in WvW? I’d vote for Hard CC. Hammer-train’s considered a Zerg’s frontline for a reason. That crap hits you, you’re not packing enough stunbreak/invuln/et cetera to shake off more than a few repetitions.
Once the 4th Hammer smacks you in the face, you’re pretty much shagged. And then, you’ve got Static Fields plopped down on top of the H-Train. But that’s just my opinion, as far as WvW is considered.

I’ll just drop this in down here as i figure it can’t hurt and I can’t find a great way to put it back in the OP.

There are also several boons that can fall under CC deffinitions.

Stability
Aegis
Protection

Most of them fall under Denial, but I feel its important to note there is such a thing as Positive (preventative/reactive) Support intended CC as well. While they are also Counters (Stability) to CC, this does not mean they should be overlooked here.

I don’t think boons really count as CC, as much as CC could count as support. I also feel like Mesmer have quite a bit of CC, but it’s spread across different weapons in a way that can make it difficult to build around.

Take warrior’s for example: Mace-Shield / Hammer warriors gain 6 different forms of hard CC just from their weapon/class skills while doing nutty damage in the process.
Mesmer on the other hand: Sword/Sword – Scepter/Focus offers 3 forms of hard CC, 2 soft CC and without the warrior’s insane damage.

I think that Mesmer need more interesting forms of CC that can tie into their damage. A hard CC phantasm such as something like: “*Phantasmal Thumper: uses Warrior’s Earthshaker every 8 seconds”* (totally random idea off the top of my head)

If I could add something to the class, it’d be more hard CC and denial; Temporal Curtain is a perfect example. Traited, it cripples, reflects, AND is a strong pull. When we someday get out mainhand pistol, I’m hoping it’ll be a ranged control weapon, offering interesting double-tap like curtain, maybe some form of channeled CC, and perhaps 1s cripple on the autoattack.

I wouldn’t mind a boon strip or two on interrupt ._. IMO we need more punishment for people we interrupt.

We have good cc, but it’s not on long durations because of how bursty our class can be. My only complaint is that we have less aoe control options than single target. Shutting one person down is all well and good, but that won’t always win you a team fight. Also I think CI should only apply chilled. You could debate blind should stay, but chilled has a more noticeable effect. Also we need traits to make interrupting a little more punishing/rewarding. It’s just a hard thing to balance.

Overall I would say lockdown specs are close to being very formidable, but the near immunity thieves have against it hold us back.

I have to say I really do like where they went with Mesmers in GW2, however we seem a lot more physical and less mental-style then the GW1 Mesmers. So while I love Temporal Curtian and jumping in with one-handed swords I think we need a bit more love in the ‘Counter-Tactics’ category.

First and foremost, the condition that was supposed to our main punishment, confusion, was a nice idea on paper and I think is still quite viable since condition stripping has become a lot more common and easier to get but has been nerfed so much it’s not much a real punishment now. Maybe we need more of a directed punishments like ‘if player uses their heal in the next 5 seconds it’s CD is doubled’ or maybe one that they take damage for each signet not on CD or even better, damage for every buff they have.

There are two conditions that are great punishment ones that for some reason we have little access to, poison and chill. I understand when confusion was stronger these together might have been overpowering but now that you’ve really broken confusion’s spine we should move past that. Along with the ‘new’ condition torment I think we need more access to these. Even our access to cripple is somewhat limited(especially in length).

I love our scepter, one hand sword(the blocks make me feel like I’m some psychic ninja), focus(well once Warden logic is a little better), torch(once Mage moves to 900 range and shoots it’s 1200 range shot) these feel right to me. Even the chaos stuff like with Staff is good because it’s stuff they can’t plan for further forcing them to think harder in a battle with a Mesmer(though I think Torment NEEDS to be added somewhere in this, I have the sigil on it but it should be there standard maybe in Chaos Armor).

As for counter-buffs, as much as I’d love more sources of Aegis, I honestly don’t think it’s our theme, it’s silly enough some people are using Mimic and running Guardian runes. I think we do need more sources of Stability, Mantra of Concentration is a lot better now but I can’t run it in every build and how much CC is favored right now I’d just say we could use a new shatter skill that gives stability(or maybe just add it to the stun shatter), I juggle utilities enough as it is a new utility for it would be meh.

Protection gets it’s own paragraph. As low armor and medium health I can’t get enough protection, when someone expects you to go down in a zerker backstab spike combo and your still barely standing for some reason and they have to backoff and recoup that is Mesmer.

Lastly, targeting, I know clones can be confusing but to good players they really aren’t. Any skill that is a reactive/switching clone making should targetting follow the new clone, this is for blocks(Scepter/offhand sword), the clone dodge trait, One hand sword leap(after swap), Spear’s Feigned Surge(if you swap) and even Mirrored Images. This should also escape called targetting or it’s not much a deception is it? I’d be ok with weaker clone health(not phantasm) if it actually tricked them into taking a few hits into the wrong thing rather then hope their new enough to accidentally lose targeting. We have to depend on stealth too much, because of this.

Edit: Oops forgot a big one, Blind, we need more and better of it and we should have some trait that punishes opponents when they miss.

I, too, would like to see Mesmers become more of an annoyance and a little less physical. I understand that ANet are trying to eliminate the idea of class roles in GW2, but I like the idea that Mesmers could completely shut down other players in GW1 (at the expense of being able to deal much direct damage). We forced players to think about their next move, often giving them very little time to make a decision.

I find myself missing skills like Wastrel’s Worry, which would force players to use a skill within 3 seconds or take significant damage. This could be reapplied over and again thanks to the 1 second cooldown. Or Complicate…it would interrupt your target’s skill and disable it for up to 12 seconds not only for them, but ALL other players in the area. Something like that could easily throw a spanner into the works for large zergs.

At the end of the day I would love it if we had more of an ability to make other players think., punishing them for making the wrong decisions.

Leaving this topic up but beginning {Phase 2} over in the Profession balance sub forum.
~thank you for all the replies thus far~ <3