TDLR ; PvE mesmers, just play, but don’t expect too much from this profession.
Before all :
- PvP or WvW players, sorry I have nothing for you here
- This not de dev-hater post
- English is not my native language, sorry
After 3 years and 2997 hours of fake hopes playing this profession I have to face there are so many problems that it almost does not really worth playing it in PvE. I’ll still try to be constructive and make a lot of suggestions (because I love throwing bottles in the sea).
F1 for direct damages, F2 for condition, F3 for control, F4 for survival. Despite the fact they are providing a lot of effects, they have 2 defects :
- They’re all shatters ! From F1 to F5, the only way to use illusions is to destroy them. Expansion doesn’t bring anything new : F5 is just another one. For 3 years, this mechanism is incompatible with phantasm-oriented mesmers whom damages and survival rely on the fact that illusions must be active. The future « chronophantasma » trait won’t save them : the phantasm will die after 2 shatters instead of 1, but in the long term, it’s still the same : shattering is shooting a bullet in one’s foot. Why can’t we see farther ? Why F1 can’t multiply the illusion’s next attack by 1.5 ? Why can’t F2 multiply conditions damages caused by illusions by 2 for the next 10 seconds ? Why can’t F3 call a hidden skill from an illusion ?
- They are incoherently connected. When one chooses it’s build, most of the time, we have to choose beetween direct damages and conditions, but infrequently both. Most of the mesmers play with direct damages, so F2 is never used. Same for F3 (1 sec daze for 3 phantasms : such a fair deal). F4 is OK, for every situation we have a pantie problem so we are ready to sacrifice every single illusion to stand still.
For 3 years, mantras have known many good changes : casting time reduction, effect sharing, damage increase… However, they’re still looking less attractive. Why ? Because of the way they work, other skills are more convenient.
- 2,75 secs casting time is awful. Playing exclusively with mantras consists in spending your days casting them without hitting a single target with your weapon. Anyone who would say the opposite hasn’t played this way for more than 1 week without being really frustrated. 2,75 secs, when anything can happen. Interrupted on healing-mantra casting ? Well, RIP.
- 4% damage increase benefits only to the mesmer, not illusions.
- Burning a mantra stack invites players to burn the last ones in order to recast the full mantra and be at their peak for the next encounter.
Mantras should work more conveniently. For example, they should passively accumulate stacks every 10-20 seconds as long as we stay in combat. Out of combat, in order to prevent abuse, stacks could fade away progressively at the same rhythm. (Sorry for the fake hope, but when I see the Revenant, I dream that everything is possible)
Mesmers have plenty of powerful traits triggering on interruptions. That’s a waste considering that most of the hardest encounters involve a champion or a legendary boss whom ignores 3/4 of them. Not to mention some like Lupicus, who is simply invulnerable to crowd control.
Changes to be brought on the defiance system do not guarantee that things will get better : will the interruption provide the effects even if the mesmer doesn’t have the final word on the break bar ?
I invite you to see the price of the runes ont he trading post to realize that rune system is completely unbalanced. Only a dozen seem interesting, and allow you not many choices to customize your character.
This is particularly true for mesmers. Illusions have a painful congenital disease which prevent most of the runes to provide their effects. Rune of the eagle ? Rune of the pack ? Rune of infiltration ? Examples won’t miss, because almost all of them are concerned. Same problem for sigils : generosity, purity, earth…
I understand that it could be too powerful to apply rune and sigil effects to illusions, but this have a drawback.
Finally, mesmer will always be incited to use a rune which provides « raw stats » (power, toughness…) because they’re the only things that apply to illusions. So orbs look sexy. Should they ?
Incongruity that has always been there. Why mesmer’s illusions’ health does not rely on mesmer’s vitality ? « So power, ferocity, precision are OK but get rekt illusions, no vitality for you dummies » ? Based on what ? Why can’t we create illusions whose life depends on a percentage of the mesmer’s health ?
Same for weapon strength… did you forget ? Phantasm’s weapon strength is base on an exotic weapon, not on the mesmer’s actual weapon. Ascended craft for your mesmer ? For what ?
With the mesmer, everything rely on the illusions. When illusions are out of order, the mesmer itself is out of order.
- One does not simply play as a mesmer without sighing when seeing an illusion going straight in an AoE, and simply die. But what can we do ? Shatter it ? Well… or may we have a little F-smthg to make it roll backward. Too complicated ? OK. So why can’t we just reduce damage inflicted by foes who weren’t targeting the illusion ? Same mechanism exists in fractals.
Most of high level difficult encounters involve large AoE spells. Mesmer have a really bad time in there.
I’m surely asking to much, but why clones can’t imitate the mesmer ? Blurred Frenzy, or Illusionary Counter at the same moment ? As clones do little damages, it shouldn’t be unbalancing. We can order them to shatter, so what about using the same skill as the mesmer ? - The second solution I want to put forward is for the case where we can’t apply one of the first solutions, and consists in bypassing the problem. If we can’t have better control on our illusions, and if illusions can’t have better baseline/passive survivability, what about transfering damages dealt by illusions to the mesmer itself ? As I said, “if illusions are out of order, the mesmer itself is out of order”, and when a single mob sweeps the entire place with an AoE and kills all illusions, this is very frustrating… Not because all illusions died ! But because there was nothing we could do ! Transfering damages dealing from illusions to the mesmer would allow us to be more responsible for our actions, and doing things that depend more on personal gameplay than battlefield’s weather.
As the site describes the mesmer, you should quickly find the « good » one is you don’t want to pay the high fee.
In fact, it works exactly the opposite. Since June 23 th, killing illusions doesn’t inflict any condition or any damage to the one who did the wrong choice. Remember the topic on this forum ? A true riot. Changes ? Nope.
For the record, mesmer’s damages and survival rely on illusions.
- Foe affected by slow prepares to hit, you anticipe. Slow fades away, you’re struck sooner than you expected, didn’t have time to dodge.
- Foe unaffected by slow prepares to hit, you anticipate. Slow procs, and you dodge to early, so you’re hit.
This condition, very impressive on paper, actually is a great pain for the caster. Furthermore, it is incompatible with confusion oriented-builds.
The condition shouldn’t appear/disappear in the middle of the foe’s move, because it messes up anticipations. It should work like the blind condition : on the next skill. Too powerful ? Nerfbat ! Limits !
On June 23 th, stealth duration has doubled. I think it’s like hunting mosquitos with a catapult. Only the Invisibility Veil (actually a Shadow Refuge in the mesmer presentation on this site, yeah like we would never notice!!) had a 2-seconds-stealth-versus-90-seconds-cooldown’s problem. Was it very usefull to improve Mass Invisibility or Decoy ?
Now we have daily riots of thieves screaming at our faces that we’ve stolen their job.
Duel specialization allows you to improve sword skills. However, mesmer’s sword hits 3 targets. Am I the only one bothered ?
As a duel weapon, shouldn’t it hit just 1 or 2 targets, and have a 0.9 ratio (like the guardian) to compensated instead of this ridiculous 0.6 ?
Since april 2012, before game release, I started to think about making a mesmer as my first character, and reading the wiki, you quickly realize that you’re strongly incited to choose one kind of gameplay :
- clones-oriented builds
- phantasms-oriented builds
However, I found odd that there was one phantasm skill on every weapon set.
As we consider there are conditions-oriented weapons and direct-damages-oriented weapons, why can’t we consider there are clones-oriented and phantasms-oriented weapons ?
For now, I feel like we have weapons which are able to do a bit of both, but none dedicated to do efficiently one in particular. So whatever build you choose, you always find yourself with at least one skill which doesn’t match to your build. Such a waste !
Many think illusions are the core of the mesmer, and they are perfectly right. With illusions, mesmer is nothing. So mesmer is more an illusionist.
So, we can mesmer foes with illusions. Thanks to the chronomancer, now we can mesmer allies with wells (“Illusion of Life” ? Never heard anything about it), and specializations brought distorsion too !
Personally, I would throw all my illusions and shatter skills to the trash if I could get a F1-blade-endowing boon, which confuses/life-steal foes on each swing.
As a conclusion : the table is huge
I know developers are doing the best they can to improve the game and provide us the best gaming experience and fun. I’m grateful. I also used to know that deeps changes in this game are really, really slow. Now there are too many problems and inconsistencies on the mesmer to deal with, that will probably never be fixed. That’s why I stopped playing this profession.
(edited by Rennac.4957)