Guild Wars 2

Most anyone would agree that Mantra of Pain is a pretty weak ability, and it’s plain inconsistent and wrong that it’s the only offensive Mantra and only caters to Power-based builds.

With a seeming interest by Anet in giving Mesmers more Condition build options, I think this could use a small improvement to make it at least plausible to use in Condie builds.

Even a single stack of ~3s Confusion or Bleed would allow this ability to be at least somewhat useful in Condition builds, without causing any balance issues what so ever.

Granted, Torment or Poison would be even better! ;-)

Or to make it remain in line with power builds, it could stack 5x vulnerability per use. Maybe weakness too. I agree it needs something but I’d like to see it remain power oriented.

We lack poison application (and lol RNG Chaos Storm doesn’t count) so I’d suggest adding that. That way It could also be used in a tactical way in PvP like if you don’t have any interrupt skills left, atleast you can poison the enemy before his heal goes through.

Unfortunately it’s bad for power builds too, since it basically reduces your DPS by a ton if you’re spamming it. Its best use is AOE healing with the Restorative Mantras trait, but that’s only if you feel like doing absolutely nothing but pressing whatever key you assign it to. (P.S. No, I’ve never actually done that. I was already a Refresh/Regen/Haste ‘bot’ in Final Fantasy XI, and it wasn’t fun then, either.)

I believe someone suggested an improvement in the past: make it AoE and longer cd. Which is a great suggestion considering how little AoEs we have. The fact that power spike occupies a utility slot, takes a while to cast, single target only, and doesn’t deal any impressive damage really undermined its use.

It needs to be more on the order of Arcane Blast or (better yet) Arcane Wave

Seras.5702:

It needs to be more on the order of Arcane Blast or (better yet) Arcane Wave

Pretty much this. Any other change would make it too useful to have just a 1sec cd.

Back when Torment was first introduced I said that MoP should inflict Torment. I mean, the Mantra itself said “Agony, Torment, Pain”. :P

(But by that logic, it should also inflict Agony – but let’s not go there).

Dastion.3106:

Back when Torment was first introduced I said that MoP should inflict Torment. I mean, the Mantra itself said “Agony, Torment, Pain”. :P

(But by that logic, it should also inflict Agony – but let’s not go there).

Hehe… and Pain will make the mouse and keyboard of any opponent send out electoshocks :P

Although perhaps not ideal in many ways, I feel that MoP performs well enough in Power builds. I recently ran a Mantra Power/Zerker shatter build in sPvP and was very satisfied with PS performance. (2.5k crits on Thieves were pretty common, that on top of a big shatter adds quite a bang for your buck. Also it got me a lot of kills on runners, due to the instant ranged nature of it!)

Obviously it also performs decently in a support role due to it’s low RuT, and the only improvement there would be what all Mantras in general need; a means to reduce the focus time just a tad. (i.e. have Harmonious Mantras reduce the focus time by 10-20%!)

So MoP really just needs something small to make it more viable for Condie builds. Staying conservative for the sake of balance, I suggest a simple 3s Confusion or Bleed, but still perfectly reasonable would also be 2s Poison or Torment IMHO.

Doesn’t sound like much, but we can’t forget the utility aspects of MoP, and it would be enough to make it viable in a condie build.