Guild Wars 2

Dulfy`s Full notes: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/282wjy/balance_philosophy_developer_livestream_notes/

Mesmer: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/4456907 from 44.20

Mesmer: Misdirection, crowd control, utility. Brought in for utility all the way from GW1.

• Weakness: Conditions are hard to deal with. Lack of AoE – good single target damage but weak at AoE situation. (A bit weaker than where we want to be. We don’t want to make it too strong as we want you to bring Eles for ranged AoE damage). Mobility – not a ton of mobility due to lack of swiftness but they do have a lot of teleports such as portals. Mesmer can get there and back with portals but can’t go too far forward due to lack of swiftness. Low defense against high burst damage – maybe some small tweaks.
• Official design: Access to key utility skills. Gain defense through stealth, evasion, misdirection. Strong 1v1 ranged damage dealer but weaker in sustained AoE damage. Weakness – conditional removal, sustainability if illusions are countered, AoE damage make it hard to sustain illusions.

You might wanna give Dulfy some credit for the summary.

The thing that made me happy:

Them admitting that Mesmers lack area effects. While they said that they won’t lift it up to the level of Elementalists I feel this is a reasonable limitation. Maybe we will see some work on the GS (damage) and the Staff (support, CC) and more importantly Glamours (probably a mixture of damage, support and CC) in the future. Let’s hope it won’t take until December until we finally see meaningful class balance changes.

The thing that made me sad:

Ehem…Warrior segment. Not going into detail here since it is a Mesmer thread.

Xaylin.1860:

While they said that they won’t lift it up to the level of Elementalists I feel this is a reasonable limitation.

I think we should use this chance, and discuss this point further.

core problem ‘tagging’ people in a WvW Zerg fight / PvE Zergs
It’s not fun to run with a zerg, supporting the zerg with your utilities and not being able to gain enough loot.

vs Elementalist
in WvW you will never compete with the elementalist due to his water fields and his Static Field.
Ele is the whole package, large aoe damage, aoe support, aoe CC.
Mesmer has: aoe support, a bit of cc

tl.dr.
It’s not about damage number, we just want to also be able to ‘tag’ the enemies for loot, f.e. similar to the guardian staff.

Low defense against high burst damage

TPvP core problem: Dying too quick
The problem is NOT dying to backstab in WvW, the problem is dying to a good S/D thief in TPvP.

Teutos.8620:

tl.dr.
It’s not about damage number, we just want to also be able to ‘tag’ the enemies for loot, f.e. similar to the guardian staff.

It’s not rocket sience. I think they are just afraid of overdoing things.

(Traited) Glamours could apply 1-2 stacks of Confusion per second to 5 people within the Glamour instead to people who pass through. You will hit less people with Confusion but the damage will be higher and therefore more likely tag someone. Glamours are probably also the major contender for more area CC through traits. However, all of this requires a major rework of most Glamour-relevant traits because the current mechanics are so lackluster.

For Staff, Mesmers could highly benefit from a higher projectile speed on the AA. They can still increase the casttime to keep the damage in check. But right now, the projectile just isn’t fast enough. A faster AA would make it easier to tag opponents. Additionally, Chaos Storm could need a lower cooldown. Not related to area effects but so overdue: Please do something with Chaos Armor. It’s just sad as it is.

For GS, they quite obviously discussed increasing the damage and radius on Mind Blast. Mind Blast could actually become a good way to tag monsters or players. However, the radius and damage have to be beefed up quite significantly.

For Scepter, I always thought that the pierce effect of Sc#3 was a bit weird. It works for the GS because it is on the AA but Sc#3 is hindered by the long wind up time and the cooldown. Giving it a small splash area effect around the target (e.g. 120 radius) might be a more practical way to grant it some area capabilities. It might also fit the theme of a tricksy defender the devs communicated since a target centered area effect could peel off several opponents if they focus one of your allies.

Official design: Access to key utility skills. Gain defense through stealth, evasion, misdirection. Strong 1v1 ranged damage dealer but weaker in sustained AoE damage. Weakness – conditional removal, sustainability if illusions are countered, AoE damage make it hard to sustain illusions.

Let me break this down for you

Access to unique Utility Skills like Portal or Null Field or uhmm.. well i cant think of anything else very unique here

Gain defense through : A broken Mechanic that is easy to abuse. Or dodging Or Stealth oh wait sorry misdirection meant when people mistake your clones for you.. cause that happens a lot.. ya know.. only when you use stealth.. So yeah we’ll just call that Stealth x2 plus dodges.. So we’re a light armor Thief?

Strong 1v1 Ranged damage dealer.. Sure on GS and maybe a condition Staff. Sword is very close range, scepter is a mid ranged and last i checked Anet doesn’t like to Balance around 1v1 …. or do they?

Weaker in Sustained aoe – very true. We have 1 weapon with 2 cleave attacks, 1 with a tiny aoe and a cone push, and one with a larger aoe. then we can add 2 shatters thats 1 2… 7 AoE’s across the whole of the class. Thats not really weaker sustained.. that’s just a weakness at this point.

Weaknesses
Conditions – Hit the nail on the head. we dont have many ways that are good to get rid of these unless you run that one build that uses all that stealth stuff..

Sustainability if illusions are countered.. lets just lump these last to together and call it Your weakness is your Classes Core Mechanic and call it a day shall we?

I’m not amused with Anet anymore, I’m tired of the endless river of empty promises and Extremely poor management of assets and the inconsistent direction of the game as a whole.

Xaylin.1860:

(Traited) Glamours could apply 1-2 stacks of Confusion per second to 5 people within the Glamour instead to people who pass through.

.

So… you just tagged 5! people with a utility skill… That’s a single auto attack for a guardian. Glamour skills have a way too long cd, and should be used as a utility to support your group or weaken the enemy, but not to tag other players.

The problem is really where to implement more AOE, without too much negative impact on the rest of the game.

In the ideal case it is just something you either

• place somewhere to tag enough people (f.e. like ‘Lava Font’ or ‘Mark of Blood’) or
• that you can just spam your auto attack (every melee attack or ‘Wave of Wrath’)

I don’t think when they’re talking about bumping AoE damage they’re thinking of Glamour Confusion. It’s been over a year since the nerfs, no changes have been made, and for what I understood I don’t see it being powerful again.

If they want to buff Confusion Glamours, or they bump them a lot (which doesn’t go with the filosophy compared to eles) or it won’t be worth, cause nowadays Shatter S/T bring way morew DPS than Glamour confusion.
Even if you make it more powerful, but with a limit of 5 targets, it won’t be worth. Would need a completely revision of how all glamour skills and traits work. Cause having 32s of CD for putting 3-4 stacks of confusion to 5 enemies, is worthless.

About the rest, mesmer isn’t in such a bad place nowadays. If some skills are bumped, like Blurred Frenzy, Mind Stab, Portal or scepter autoattack; and well known bugs are fixed, like IE and staff clones, iWarden or iLeap; and shatters receive some adjusts to make them more reliable, we would be in a pretty good spot.

PD: If you desire to tag, bring a shatter build and play melee. Tagging is pretty good, although it’s not like eles, necros or guards.

Azo.5860:

Full notes:
Mesmer: Misdirection, crowd control, utility. Brought in for utility all the way from GW1.

gw2 Mesmer and overall game mechanic is totally different from gw1 mesmer/gamemechanic

however Jul/25 2012 still doesnt change much..
http://www.toptiertactics.com/14669/guild-wars-2-how-arenanet-ruined-the-mesmer/

copy/paste
Meanwhile, the Mesmer lost every single defining aspect of the profession. Here’s a list of stuff the Mesmer did in Guild Wars but conveniently forgot how to do in the sequel:

1. Precisely interrupting enemy actions
2. Punishing enemies for attacking
3. Punishing enemies for casting spells
4. Punishing enemies for doing nothing
5. Slowing enemies to a crawl
6. Stealing/draining resources from enemies
7. Disabling enemy skills
8. Casting spells and signets at increased speed
9. Slowing or delaying enemy spell casting
10. Dealing huge amounts of damage over time (DOT)
11. Gaining temporary buffs that later became debuffs
12. Wielding illusory weapons to deal enhanced damage
13. Copying enemy abilities, including elite abilities
14. Performing Riverdance
    Sure, the Mesmer in Guild Wars 2 can inflict debuffs (as conditions) and punish players for acting (as a generic, boring “Confusion” condition), but there’s no trickery. No guile. No Lyssa loving. The Mesmer’s entire box of tricks has been scrapped for an Illusion mechanic that is shallow, repetitive, and ineffective.

And unlike the built-in profession abilities of the Engineer, Elementalist, or even the Thief, the Mesmer’s Illusions don’t give her lots of different options. They really give her just one:

Bore the player to tears.
———————————————————————————-
i decribe them as.. ``when u tried to make eyebrown, u removed the eye`` :P (from turkish translate)

example: more&less of gw1 mesmer http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Effective_mesmer_guide

example: GvG scene from semi-final match http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWvdyCk1Uo
———————————————————————————-

some of the reasons why they dont work, in wvw, zerg or gvg

1. interupt in will, willingly,
   example u see necro is healing, or ele starting to meteor shower etc..
   - it requires/should have,
   o clear visual effects.. (i mean there is a big challenge for understanding foe`s actions with not havin or not clear;
   o tooltips [example there is no which skill is using foe by the healthbar/name tag],
   o audio effects

challenge interupt with mesmer in wvw, lets say 2 style,

o Frontliner,
- i mean u run compact with your train, not skirmising in lines by melee train.. as which is required as keeps/walls fights in otherwords fights in small, limited areas..
how u can?

• staff 5? = random aoe interupt.. how can be efficient in spec of efficient with CC
  would u give domination GM trait on it?
• gs 5? = random `close burst(mean 600range 5cap) interupt.. most of this skill use in kind of scenerios for push [as on grouping]
• single targeted skills = ofc no
  with all above where can not have decent interupts, maybe focus pll can have slightly more
  however for decent int skill should have no/or minimum as 0.15sec casting time..
• focus 4 = random interupt.. main use of it is for pull,

so

o Periphery,
- i mean u are skirmisihing, without or with any focus team[2 to 5 players whose mission are spike/burst targets in sync]
however challenge of interupt precisely..
example new gm trait? power spike.. = risk/reward = not fair

and slot/skill restrictions.. in terms of nature requires of WvW as mesmers,
imbued diversion= ? with unbroken illusion mechanic?
Chaotic interupt= in this meta? first remove lemon grass maybe what was the logic with -%40 duration on conditions where has in large scaled grouping environment that with almost %100 chance mean no challenge to remove conditions with all aoe cleanses as ele and others..
confonding suggestions CS = maybe if not CS nerfed.. how many can #5staff can proc daze? 2 to 3? ussually and means 1 sec daze can turn in to stun however staff has not much more aoe support/tag than #5 and restriction to use gm dom trait..
ok u say mesmer is something as celestial item except having veil and portal.. but dont say it pls mesmer has CC slightly less than best, slightly different..

remind= Hammer STUn, Static, wall, warding and much more..

maybe problem is,
Anet`s description/meaning of ``SLIGHTLY``

1. Punishing enemies for attack

leave all them maybe better just Critize/judge official design..

Teutos.8620:

In the ideal case it is just something you either

• place somewhere to tag enough people (f.e. like ‘Lava Font’ or ‘Mark of Blood’) or
• that you can just spam your auto attack (every melee attack or ‘Wave of Wrath’)

As mentioned earlier:

• GS AA, Mind Blast, Staff AA, Chaos Storm, Sc#3. We can expand on that.
• Wave of Wrath is OP when it comes to tagging. Don’t expect to get sth. like that.

Ansau.7326:

Even if you make it more powerful, but with a limit of 5 targets, it won’t be worth. Would need a completely revision of how all glamour skills and traits work. Cause having 32s of CD for putting 3-4 stacks of confusion to 5 enemies, is worthless.

Agreed. That is why I believe that Glamour related traits need a total rework and probably also a reallocation among the traitlines. I wrote longer passages about it in the past so I’ll try to keep it short here.

Personally, I think that making the effects pulse like Wells or Symbols will help a lot. Confusing Enchantments should be the main Confusion trait for Glamours, not Blinding Befuddlement. Blinding Befuddlement needs to serve a different purpose or be replaced. Dazzling Glamours could pulse the Blinds or Daze on cast. Glamour Mastery could work like Master of Consecration. Temporal Enchanter could instead chill/cripple up to 5 enemies within the Glamours while rejuvinating (healing) your allies.

Changes like those could make Glamours worthwhile area CCs and group utility skills even if they got rather long cooldowns. Of course, we have to be careful not to take away domains of other classes (e.g. Necromancer Wells). However, the Confusion on Glamours alone will probably never be viable again because they won’t like to recreate the performance level which caused the Glamour/Confusion nerf initially. Adding soft CC to Glamours (e.g. Chill, Cripple, Dazes, Blinds) would be in line with the Mesmer strengths displayed in the Ready Up.

The problem is NOT dying to backstab in WvW, the problem is dying to a good S/D thief in TPvP.
Everygood thief at any spec would kitten u in couple seconds

Azo.5860:

Weakness […] sustainability if illusions are countered

Our kitten illusions are countered by our godkitten class mechanic, you know, those shatter skills on F1 to F4.

So by using our class mechanic, we are countering our illusions ourselves and lose sustainability.

Reading/listening to ANet Dev’s is just comedy. The strengths/weaknesses philosophy they pulled out of their back probably some days before the times of the manifesto (and we all know how that went) is just not working.

Tell me, what was the design philosophy for warriors? Reading the weaknesses of the profession is like:
“You are so strong that you do not need evades. Your weakness is that you can take those hits by just standing in the fire and dealing great amounts of damage and survive!” Wut?

What we got with this oh so great philosophy is:

- Mesmers in PvE no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in PvP no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in WvW, wait, no mesmers in WvW.

Could we replace F1 to F4 maybe for something that works with the professions design philosophy?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Azo.5860:

Weakness […] sustainability if illusions are countered

Our kitten illusions are countered by our godkitten class mechanic, you know, those shatter skills on F1 to F4.

So by using our class mechanic, we are countering our illusions ourselves and lose sustainability.

Reading/listening to ANet Dev’s is just comedy. The strengths/weaknesses philosophy they pulled out of their back probably some days before the times of the manifesto (and we all know how that went) is just not working.

Tell me, what was the design philosophy for warriors? Reading the weaknesses of the profession is like:
“You are so strong that you do not need evades. Your weakness is that you can take those hits by just standing in the fire and dealing great amounts of damage and survive!” Wut?

What we got with this oh so great philosophy is:

- Mesmers in PvE no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in PvP no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in WvW, wait, no mesmers in WvW.

Could we replace F1 to F4 maybe for something that works with the professions design philosophy?

yes they could ‘’weakest class in game , reroll if u dont like’’

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Azo.5860:

Weakness […] sustainability if illusions are countered

Our kitten illusions are countered by our godkitten class mechanic, you know, those shatter skills on F1 to F4.

So by using our class mechanic, we are countering our illusions ourselves and lose sustainability.

Reading/listening to ANet Dev’s is just comedy. The strengths/weaknesses philosophy they pulled out of their back probably some days before the times of the manifesto (and we all know how that went) is just not working.

Tell me, what was the design philosophy for warriors? Reading the weaknesses of the profession is like:
“You are so strong that you do not need evades. Your weakness is that you can take those hits by just standing in the fire and dealing great amounts of damage and survive!” Wut?

What we got with this oh so great philosophy is:

- Mesmers in PvE no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in PvP no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in WvW, wait, no mesmers in WvW.

Could we replace F1 to F4 maybe for something that works with the professions design philosophy?

in pvp we use our class mechanics as in shatter/spike dmg

in wvw we r veilbots ye, but there is also smth called ‘roaming’ and mesmers r pretty good roamers.

So in Anets mind Mesmer mobility is a 90 sec cd portal? As many have said before, it really seems that nobody seriously plays this class enough to understand it.

What is “1v1 ranged damage dealer” in a game completely balanced around group combat? Did that phrase come off of some wikipedia page on rpg’s or something?

What are “key utility skills?” Don’t all classes have “key utility skills” that they bring to the table? “Mesmer have utility skills.” Cool guys, way to say nothing at all specific about the class. Necromancers can dodge! Also true, also pointless to say.

What is “misdirection”? Decoy? Hoping you are playing against someone who accidentally targets your clones?

Of all our problems, they think weak condition removal is one of them worth mentioning over others? Condi removal is easy: Take Mender’s and/or heal mantra and cleanse mantra. Go crazy and take harmonious mantras and you will laugh at conditions.

Our class mechanic is fine. As many have also said, here is the best way to “balance” our class: Fix all the bugs so the skills we have actually work. They need to do that and then they can take another stab at pretending to have a clue about what to do with the class.

Kai brings up a pretty good point.

If you consider that PvE is the “main” gamemode, it’s pretty silly that it actually does more harm than good to use your class mechanic.

Edit: Honestly… I think proper bugfixes and a mainhand pistol with 2 damaging AoEs would fix us right up. Of course that won’t fix everything, but combined with proper balancing to other classes it’d be a huge step in the right direction.

Odik.4587:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Azo.5860:

Weakness […] sustainability if illusions are countered

Our kitten illusions are countered by our godkitten class mechanic, you know, those shatter skills on F1 to F4.

So by using our class mechanic, we are countering our illusions ourselves and lose sustainability.

Reading/listening to ANet Dev’s is just comedy. The strengths/weaknesses philosophy they pulled out of their back probably some days before the times of the manifesto (and we all know how that went) is just not working.

Tell me, what was the design philosophy for warriors? Reading the weaknesses of the profession is like:
“You are so strong that you do not need evades. Your weakness is that you can take those hits by just standing in the fire and dealing great amounts of damage and survive!” Wut?

What we got with this oh so great philosophy is:

- Mesmers in PvE no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in PvP no longer using their class mechanic.
- Mesmers in WvW, wait, no mesmers in WvW.

Could we replace F1 to F4 maybe for something that works with the professions design philosophy?

yes they could ‘’weakest class in game , reroll if u dont like’’

@Odik.. is one of the scruby word i ve ever heard!!

give my money back.. what i give for this this game.. and more more over than… my precious time i ve already spent.. how much u would give for +3k hours spent.. bahh empty talks..

I’ve been trying out lightning rod + static field etc on my ele. It’s basically halting strike (+weakness) but used with an AOE with no 5 target limit . Sort of like how glamour builds worked with confusion on entering or exiting them. Granted, my ele can grab a lot more % modifiers so Ele “halting strike” hit’s a lot harder than a mesmers but that’s ok according to their design philosophy and I accept it.

We just need some form of glamour with aoe interrupt on it. Maybe even a weapon (and/or GS3 buffed) with an aoe interrupt on a shortish cooldown. Or imbued diversion could become baseline and the trait could further buff it. Or all of the above. Basically stuff that wouldn’t become OP in tPvP but scales well with zerg combat while not doing too much damage.

3 other ideas not related to halting strike:
1) Clone death traits that do some (just enough to tag) POWER damage. Not as good as the shatter in PvP but DE + this trait would be good enough zerg tagging. Maybe it could be phantasm death only so it cant be spammed too much.

2) Boon ripping! Necros have boon corruption but could we get a trait that adds power damage on boon removal. It would buff our sword auto attack, gs3, null field and possibly the disenchanter if the trait worked on it. Again, some decent POWER aoe to help tag stuff.

3) Bring back the old glamour builds. The thief trait lotus poison has a 15 second ICD BUT the ICD is per target. Blinding befuddlement has a 5 second ICD that is shared with all targets. Confusion damage was already halved a long time ago so it will never be back in full strength. Culling and lag were also fixed (at least somewhat) which also makes these builds weaker as they rely on confusion.This would also prevent chaos armor from becoming too OP. The 5 second non-shared ICD would promote not spamming glamours for rapid aoe confusion spikes. Condi removal is now much more common in zergs. I really don’t think this is too much to ask.

Thoughts? If people like any of them, maybe I’ll try doing a more official write up in the profession balance forum. Nothing too fancy since single traits that change how the mesmer plays/skills function seems to be a core of the class and is self balancing in that we need to specialize and cant grab too much.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

2) Boon ripping! Necros have boon corruption but could we get a trait that adds power damage on boon removal. It would buff our sword auto attack, gs3, null field and possibly the disenchanter if the trait worked on it. Again, some decent POWER aoe to help tag stuff.

I think Mesmers indeed lack traits which promote boon ripping and I’d like to see something like this introduced in the future. However, I don’t think adding damage when removing boons would be the right thing to do. It just affects too many skills and would therefore be impossible to balance properly. For example, many people forget that the Sword AA rips boons.

However, removing boons could grant other effects. Inspiration could provide a trait which heals when removing a boon. There could be a trait in Domination which applies Vulnerability when ripping a boon. There could also be a trait which applies non damaging conditions when removing a boon (e.g. Cripple, Chill).

Philosophy:
Mesmer are veil bot (what they call utility)
Ele have utility (better ones) but can dish much more damage
Warriors weakness :they rely on their class mechanics (seems that clicking on F1 is considered as a weakness for warriors) and can be killed when their defense are down and they take hudge damage (condition damage)

…I feel so sad for mesmer trying to remain.

Anet talks a lot about balance…..does very little (6 month interval on balancing skills/ traits). while its fun to read cdi’s and watch/listen to ready-ups, its meaningless as long as they refuse to iterate at a decent clip (every 2 months).

and this ignores the fact that they fix bugs even less frequently (unless they favor said class…then its within a week).

unless you absolutely hate playing any other class (in which case, i’m not sure why you’d still play this game), mesmer is crippled by bugs to the point its just frustrating to try and play. which is such a shame, as its such a unique and potentially fun class.

talk talk talk…….and still we wait.

The problem is that Mesmer has been nerfed practically every patch note in the last two years, in the meanwhile the other professions , in particular warriors, have been empowered to the Mesmer’s precedent level or even more. From quickness, to portal CD, vigor 5s instead of 10, blurred frenzy from invulnerability to evade, phantasms that need los (no aoe on walls),the indirect nerf to reflect damage, in to the void CD,the nerf to glamour build,etc.: we had in exchange few improvements like prismatic understanding (that I’m sure it will be nerfed soon although it’s practically a troll trait useless in PvP ) and some nice improvements to sceptre.

It’s simply not enough considering how many bugged skills we have and the profession is becoming more and more useless in every aspect of the game (in particularly wvw but we risk also in PvP in which we have a role only for the portal).

Teutos.8620:

tl.dr.
It’s not about damage number, we just want to also be able to ‘tag’ the enemies for loot, f.e. similar to the guardian staff.

That’s… not a problem I’d solve via adding damage AEs, really.

4.425 spvp games played as mesmer:

1) We could have more ways to punish enemies for killing our illusions. Offensively and defensively. Access by traits.

Examples:

Offensively: Distribution of damage for each illusion killed by opponent. For WvW, this will help to distribute damage in a zerg x zerg situation, where the illusions die fast.
Defensively: Clear a condition for each phantasm killed by opponent.

2) Weapons skills could give a little movement capability, like other classes have, for gap closer, or run away. If it is too laborious to create new skills, how about removing target restriction for illusionary leap? That way we could use this to run a little faster.

Reax.1806:

4.425 spvp games played as mesmer:

1) We could have more ways to punish enemies for killing our illusions. Offensively and defensively. Access by traits.

Examples:

Offensively: Distribution of damage for each illusion killed by opponent. For WvW, this will help to distribute damage in a zerg x zerg situation, where the illusions die fast.
Defensively: Clear a condition for each phantasm killed by opponent.

2) Weapons skills could give a little movement capability, like other classes have, for gap closer, or run away. If it is too laborious to create new skills, how about removing target restriction for illusionary leap? That way we could use this to run a little faster.

while i do like the more punishing, it would improve pu builds by a lot, and pu builds r rly strong.. dont get me wrong, i like the concept and the way u think

pu should be nerfed like op feline grace on thieves, thats all about this trait

Wyrden.4713:

Reax.1806:

4.425 spvp games played as mesmer:

1) We could have more ways to punish enemies for killing our illusions. Offensively and defensively. Access by traits.

Examples:

Offensively: Distribution of damage for each illusion killed by opponent. For WvW, this will help to distribute damage in a zerg x zerg situation, where the illusions die fast.
Defensively: Clear a condition for each phantasm killed by opponent.

2) Weapons skills could give a little movement capability, like other classes have, for gap closer, or run away. If it is too laborious to create new skills, how about removing target restriction for illusionary leap? That way we could use this to run a little faster.

while i do like the more punishing, it would improve pu builds by a lot, and pu builds r rly strong.. dont get me wrong, i like the concept and the way u think

But it’s a trait. PU + DE + this trait; make it so you can only pick 2 of these traits per build and then it will be fine. As I mentioned earlier with my ideas, the damage just needs to be less than shatters. The active play will still be stronger and should be. However, in large zergs where clones die too fast to shatter, this will help mesmers tag mobs or zerglings.

Xaylin.1860:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

2) Boon ripping! Necros have boon corruption but could we get a trait that adds power damage on boon removal. It would buff our sword auto attack, gs3, null field and possibly the disenchanter if the trait worked on it. Again, some decent POWER aoe to help tag stuff.

I think Mesmers indeed lack traits which promote boon ripping and I’d like to see something like this introduced in the future. However, I don’t think adding damage when removing boons would be the right thing to do. It just affects too many skills and would therefore be impossible to balance properly. For example, many people forget that the Sword AA rips boons.

I mentioned power for tagging potential. Other traits would be nice but not the focus of my ideas. I also don’t think it would be hard to balance.
Boon strippers:
GS3, Sword 1.3, Arcane Thievery, Null Field, Traited Shatters and pDisenchanter
Now lets start with a number like 600 dmg in full power gear non crits.

The devs mentioned a rework/buff to GS3 so I cant say much other than this trait could be an alternative way to buff it.

Sword1.3 does less damage to targets with boons. This trait would normalize the damage regardless of boon without buffing the max damage. Not as OP as you might initially think.

Arcane thievery. Long cooldown potentially 1800 non crit in a full/high power build. Requires timing for full effect and can be countered so I think this would also be fine.

Null field. It now pulses 600 damage aoe if there are boons. A huge buff for zerg tagging at choke points but long cooldown and it’s not really common in pvp which leads to…

Shatter’s remove boons on traits. With the standard tPvP shatter build, what trait would you give up for a potential 600 bonus to damage to shatters. If IP had to go, that decreases guaranteed damage of shatters for a chance of buffing other shatter damage. Would not want to give up DE for this trait. So placing the trait in 4 or 6 of dueling/domination or even 2 chaos/inspiration would make it a tough choice and open up potentially new builds. Furthermore, GS/staff seems fairly standard now so this would incentive the sword as well.

Disenchanter is the only potentially broken this about this trait. If the trait is only for personal non AI damage then it just wouldn’t work with this. However, it does do poor damage already and maybe the base could be lowered a bit.

So overall, the current pvp meta mesmer going gs/staff 4/4/0/0/6 couldn’t abuse it. Perhaps a new meta/diversity added to counter the might stacks/runes of strength. It wouldn’t be OP in WvW but help us tag stuff. PvE… we can use any buffs we can get and boons aren’t exactly common (I have hope for season 2)

Maybe 600 is a bit too high but just pick a new number. 400 in a full zerker build with crits at 800. I feel confident in that there is a good number out there that would promote build diversity in PvP while helping us tag more in WvW.

Other suggestions:
1. Make illusions invulnerable for the duration of the first attack chain
2. Make ‘shattered’ illusion invulnerable
or
- Killing illusion will tag the player for the killer for the purpose of looting (as opposed to increasing the damage)
or
- Scale the health of illusion with the number of enemies

Another question is whether this should be GM trait replacing one of the useless ones or whether this should be core mechanic

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I mentioned power for tagging potential. Other traits would be nice but not the focus of my ideas. I also don’t think it would be hard to balance.
Boon strippers:
GS3, Sword 1.3, Arcane Thievery, Null Field, Traited Shatters and pDisenchanter
Now lets start with a number like 600 dmg in full power gear non crits.

It is hard to balance because the affected skills are too different. For example, Nullfield (5 targets, 5 to 7 ticks) has the potential to deal 8 to 12 times the damage Arcane Thievery (1 target, 3 boons) would deal. You won’t be able to find a balanced damage value due to their different potentials.

Additionally, if we took your suggestion of 600 Sword 1.3 (against boons) would receive a damage increase of almost 100%. Even at 400 it would still be a significant damage boost. It might not sound that great considering that direct Mesmer damage is rather low because of phantasms but it still is a very significant buff when you look at the ratio. In case of the Sword AA or GS#3 it doesn’t come with any effort like it is the case with Halting Strike. It would simply be a flat damage boost. That’s not exactly what we need.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So overall, the current pvp meta mesmer going gs/staff 4/4/0/0/6 couldn’t abuse it. Perhaps a new meta/diversity added to counter the might stacks/runes of strength. It wouldn’t be OP in WvW but help us tag stuff. PvE… we can use any buffs we can get and boons aren’t exactly common (I have hope for season 2)

It’s impossible to argue about builds without discussing the trait placement.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

… what trait would you give up for a potential 600 bonus to damage to shatters. If IP had to go, that decreases guaranteed damage of shatters for a chance of buffing other shatter damage. Would not want to give up DE for this trait. So placing the trait in 4 or 6 of dueling/domination or even 2 chaos/inspiration would make it a tough choice and open up potentially new builds.

Xaylin.1860:

It’s impossible to argue about builds without discussing the trait placement.

>_>

Ignoring that…
So using sword auto attack numbers from PvP light golem, no buffs just zerker amy and 4/4/0/0/6. 630,630,1111 non crit numbers.
Maths…. It’s about a 30% increase IF the target has the boon and IF you can consistently hit the 3rd auto attack and if you never use blurred frenzy or get kited… Then factor in phantasms and shatters as major sources of dmg. Furthermore as I mentioned earlier, what trait would you give up for this? 20% more MW dmg. 15% more illusion dmg. Maybe even IP or DE. How much “effort” do those really take? Finally, when I mentioned 600 I was also thinking with PvE/WvW zerker numbers vs low defense so my 2nd recommendation of 400 (20% situational sword auto pvp buff) would be in line with a lot of our DPS traits. As I said, it’s not as OP as you think.

As for null field and arcane thievery and how there isn’t an easy number to find, I call BS. Arcane thievery is 3 boons instantly vs a single target. At 3600 crit with max boons stripped I would say it’s actually weak dmg for how valuable our utility slots can be BUT it has strong 1v1 utility so I think it’s fine. Also null field has the potential to strip 35 boons and conditions while thievery does 3 and 3. Based off of your logic, the skills are already broken as hell.

For null field… my ele does 3k auto attacks with staff in zergs and then lava fonts as well for similar numbers. Those are low crits too. then of course the meteor showers… I’m sure you’ve seen videos of those 20k hits and more realistically 10k vs tankies. Doing 600-1200 dmg per second to enemies passing through a purple circle is crap compared to that. It’s enough to tag for bags though.

the devs should really look closely at the gw1 mes. let gw2 mes be more punishing. get just a touch of gw1 mes glory back. less 1v1 please. gw1 was not a 1v1 duelist pet class at all. i mean yes we got utility, but these shouldnt be the only thing we can do. veilbot is very boring gameplay atm mes only brings stealth a little bit of boonstrip and some ports and reflects…..on extreem cooldowns and deal no dmg whatsoever……so why on earth would i bring a mes in wvw, where i can deal no dmg, no tags, no rewards, no kills, just a stupid veil?illlusions?lol!misdirections? 1v1 ranged dmg dealer?lol we have to go close to even deal dmg or do u thing spamming 111111 on gs is fun? so yeah idk but look at how many weaknesses they pointed out:

condi cleanse
lightarmor class
problems with illusions in groupfights
lack of aoe
may i add noooo stability!!!!

yes we can stealth, but only if we use those utilities which we will need the slots for other utilities…if they really really looked at the gw1 mes then they would see that gw2 mes is not even close to what mes was there. not even 10%. if u want gw2 mes to improve, make us the punishing class like mes used to be. not a 1v1 duelist pet class that cant deal any aoe dmg in a group.

selan.8354:

the devs should really look closely at the gw1 mes. let gw2 mes be more punishing. get just a touch of gw1 mes glory back. less 1v1 please. gw1 was not a 1v1 duelist pet class at all. i mean yes we got utility, but these shouldnt be the only thing we can do. veilbot is very boring gameplay atm mes only brings stealth a little bit of boonstrip and some ports and reflects…..on extreem cooldowns and deal no dmg whatsoever……so why on earth would i bring a mes in wvw, where i can deal no dmg, no tags, no rewards, no kills, just a stupid veil?illlusions?lol!misdirections? 1v1 ranged dmg dealer?lol we have to go close to even deal dmg or do u thing spamming 111111 on gs is fun? so yeah idk but look at how many weaknesses they pointed out:

condi cleanse
lightarmor class
problems with illusions in groupfights
lack of aoe
may i add noooo stability!!!!

yes we can stealth, but only if we use those utilities which we will need the slots for other utilities…if they really really looked at the gw1 mes then they would see that gw2 mes is not even close to what mes was there. not even 10%. if u want gw2 mes to improve, make us the punishing class like mes used to be. not a 1v1 duelist pet class that cant deal any aoe dmg in a group.

^ this , also autoattack channeling 1.5 seconds and hit 3 times which hardly punished by retaliation
if u dont stand at 900+ range ur damage would be very very low >.>

“Strong 1v1 damage dealer” is redundant. Reason being because there’s no 1v1 in this game. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, that there’s not solo roamers, or the occurrence of 1v1’s over a cap point. But if you review it, solo roaming is redundant serving very little purpose, and in both instances “1v1’s” last as long as it takes for them to be interrupted by incoming adds.

Worst still is that, if we are a 1v1 damage dealing class our design has some serious flaws. We have high mobility (portal achieves this apparently), but bad landspeed. What good is a 1v1 damage dealer who can’t keep up with a warrior to apply said damage? Engies and thieves are the same.

Warriors may not have portal, or even a blink. Thieves with a sword however have portal on a very short cd, and yet get to retain all their “go to” mobility (aka landspeed). Portal takes up a utility slot and has a huge cooldown, and because of that mesmer misses out on landspeed?

Anet you’re blind to your own design. If you want to hang us up on portal then make it user only and spammable like Infiltrator’s Strike, then unlock the perma swiftness and gap openers galore.

for the “Strong 1v1 damage dealer” i want to point out for phantom style which is our current strong 1v1 damage builds…opponents have not only 1 but 2 chances to evade any damage done…they can dodge our casting of phantoms, a 1 sec casting time…if not then they can dodge the attack of the phantom once it spawns which usually has a 1 sec delay before attacking our targets

Anet’s official design sounds like: “you’re some kind of thief/ranger hybrid with disposable pets, but you can use veil and portal once in awhile so you aren’t completely useless.”

I just read that article and it was surprisingly accurate, even if it was extremely old.

My favorite part was…
“Sure, the Mesmer in Guild Wars 2 can inflict debuffs (as conditions) and punish players for acting (as a generic, boring “Confusion” condition), but there’s no trickery. No guile. No Lyssa loving. The Mesmer’s entire box of tricks has been scrapped for an Illusion mechanic that is shallow, repetitive, and ineffective.”

Which I definitely agree to. lol

There’s nothing wrong with pet-bomber classes. Theurgist and Animist in DAoC were a lot of fun to play, and very varied. And I’d argue the current Mesmer design already out-does them (but then, classes had 5-6 abilities back then).

Anyhow, the point is, the GW1 Mesmer was fun (in vanilla, expansions ruined most classes due to adding just too many skills IMO), but I’m not sure it’d work in GW2.

• For one, it’d completely make 1v1 impossible. If you have an actual debuffer role, that role will need to work in a team at all times. Either their punishment is powerful enough to stand solo (then they’re mandatory in teams) or it isn’t, then it’s balanced for teams but useless 1v1. Ofc, 1v1 is already useless, but the distinction would become more important. There’d need to be like a notice every time you zone into sPvP or WvW “This game does not support 1v1 – give it up, will you?”.
• We couldn’t be the only class having complex enemy-triggered effects. That’d be kinda problematic for balance, so which other classes get what? Game-wide change, fairly unlikely. I mean look at Wildstar, they had to further simplify it, I doubt more complex class design is on the table in any game soon. Even PoE is incredibly shallow despite it’s huge sphere grid.
• People who currently enjoy a pet-bomber setup might be kittened. Unavoidable really, but needs to be taken into account. There’s not really another spec for another class, unless spirit weapons for Guardians get changed.
• The unified conditions/boons system of GW2 has a lot of merit. It’s a really good idea to handle complexity of buff/debuff overload in PvP. It’s … well… first implementation, I’d say. But give it some time and it has potential, though whether we’ll see GW2 be the one to simmer this to perfection or GW3, no clue. In any case, I wouldn’t give up on the system yet, rather, refine/change it.

Ross Biddle.2367:

“Strong 1v1 damage dealer” is redundant. Reason being because there’s no 1v1 in this game. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, that there’s not solo roamers, or the occurrence of 1v1’s over a cap point. But if you review it, solo roaming is redundant serving very little purpose, and in both instances “1v1’s” last as long as it takes for them to be interrupted by incoming adds.

Worst still is that, if we are a 1v1 damage dealing class our design has some serious flaws. We have high mobility (portal achieves this apparently), but bad landspeed. What good is a 1v1 damage dealer who can’t keep up with a warrior to apply said damage? Engies and thieves are the same.

Warriors may not have portal, or even a blink. Thieves with a sword however have portal on a very short cd, and yet get to retain all their “go to” mobility (aka landspeed). Portal takes up a utility slot and has a huge cooldown, and because of that mesmer misses out on landspeed?

Anet you’re blind to your own design. If you want to hang us up on portal then make it user only and spammable like Infiltrator’s Strike, then unlock the perma swiftness and gap openers galore.

couldnt agree more with this.
1. claiming portal helps movement speed is just wrong.its an escape sorta mechanism for pvp more than for any other game mode. in pve…u wouldnt use it unless u are portaling someone to a vista. and in wvw its not like u always know when u tun into a blob that u had the portal already put down somewhere in range. portal is very situational and is mainly used for golems in wvw. portalbombs arent realy effective anymore cause 1 there is a massie lagspike for a few seconds if it happens and 2 most of u spot that portal coming from a mile away and actually can destroy u the moment u take that portal.

1v1? there is no real dueling mode in this game and that is true. in spvp maps are small and lots of teams will actually rather zerg or 2v1 than 1v1 a mes.also in pretty much every game i played every mesmer kind of class that has clones or anything like it is either medium armor class or is lightarmor and does have a good aoe dmg. we are not asking for meteorshowers we need aoe dmg in general as almost every weapon hits only 1 target where as almost every other class has an aoe option..

now thief on the other hand is like a stronger burstier spammier version of the mesmer. in wvw i play now mainly a necro cause mes is just not viable for me anymore. i meet 3 ganker types that chase me around in the backline and its mes,engi and thief. mes ill just ds and fear them away while i simply just go closer to my frontline so the mes ai will die in 2 hits in our aoe. thief is a tougher one, cause they can burst me in seconds so i gotta have my fears on ds off cd and be quick. engi can destroy me very quickly too with their condi and cc spam.

fact is u cant balance around 1v1 ina any game. every class can be good at 1v1, but every class should have an option to spec for a massive battle. i should have my non ai aoe builds cause every single trait and skill that revolves around ai is not there in a wvw zerg fight. remeber when mes lost all clones the moment target went into stealth bug? yeah thats what wvw is…no illusions. so now we do need multi target options and anet stated we are ranged…lol we are not really.

om my mes in wvw zergfight i mean imagine u cast berserker phantasm…great range right? well u cast it it hits 2 targets boom its dead…now what? well start 111111,2,11111,2,11111, yay phantasm up 4, phantasm failed due to cc and aoe, 111111,2….so then u got youre weaponswap…hmm we got staff hmm maybe not the best but heyyy got chaos storm which deal rng condis but im power based so it deal very very bad aoe dmg. so what else u got?image….oh wel hits 1 target once in a while but also fails often cause its a small projectile and targets do move around u know. then there is mh sword…great u can defend yourself vs gankers but useless vs zerg cause u would have to go close..ileap fails 90% of th time, mh aa is slow and pretty bad in wvw so all u got is bf or maybe if u are lucky ileap bf combo yay….and then what? u cant sustain dmg at all. whatu wanna utility feedback warrior? well ugot your offhand…ok torch phantasm bad dmg and to slow so target already recovered from your combo, your clones all died in aoe u got no ip trait and all u can do is stealth. meanwhile the target healed…gg? start over?my problem in wvw is i can hit something hard but then im on cooldown and target recovers. i cant keep pressure up.
with my necro ill use wells,ds, axe, marks…etc and have consitent damg output on my mes its a whoooole setting up for 1 big spike and then looong nothing.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…

Wow. That was quite a harsh post. No need to call anything BS. That’s just impolite.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So placing the trait in 4 or 6 of dueling/domination or even 2 chaos/inspiration would make it a tough choice and open up potentially new builds.

I indeed missed that one. Sorry for that. I was pretty sleep deprivated.

Domination probably feels the most natural for a boon removal trait. I don’t think that 4 is the right place. It would suggest that it is not supposed to be used with Shattered Concentration which would partly defy its purpose. 2 or 6 feel more appropriate.

Duelling or Inspiration do not feel right when looking at what the trait lines provide at the moment. Chaos could indeed be an alternative to Domination. Personally, that would be my favourit choice.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Ignoring that…
So using sword auto attack numbers from PvP light golem, no buffs just zerker amy and 4/4/0/0/6. 630,630,1111 non crit numbers.
Maths…. It’s about a 30%…

First of all, you didn’t specify the 600 damage for your suggestion. I assumed that it is a base value with a power coefficient. Taking Halting Strike as reference, hitting for 1000 wouldn’t be that rare.

That aside, I was referring to the Sword AA 1.3 when facing a boon. I was pretty clear about that. Your math is right. But so is mine. No matter how you turn it, buffing an AA chain by 30% is a lot. Aside from 1vs1 against almost boonless classes or trash mobs there will most likely always be some kind of boon on your opponent. The scenario isn’t that conditional.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Furthermore as I mentioned earlier, what trait would you give up for this? 20% more MW dmg. 15% more illusion dmg. Maybe even IP or DE. How much “effort” do those really take?

While 20% MW is a lot it could easily be compensated when taking Shattered Concentration. The boon trait would probably provide an overall higher damage as soon as you use Sword, GS or Nullfield. That might be slightly different for 15% Illusion damage if you can keep your Phantasm alive. Regardless, boosting the AA would probably grant more sustained damage than boosting MW. Therefore, I don’t think you can compare the numbers that easily.

When it comes to effort, landing a shatter or keeping a Phantasm alive always is more effort than using AA or hitting GS#3. I didn’t say it was difficult. But the effort still is different.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

As for null field and arcane thievery and how there isn’t an easy number to find, I call BS. Arcane thievery is 3 boons instantly vs a single target. At 3600 crit with max boons stripped I would say it’s actually weak dmg for how valuable our utility slots can be BUT it has strong 1v1 utility so I think it’s fine. Also null field has the potential to strip 35 boons and conditions while thievery does 3 and 3. Based off of your logic, the skills are already broken as hell.

If you want to compare both baseline skills you got to do it right. Leaving their other features aside (area over time vs. single target burst) Nullfield is a pure nullification spell (what a suprise…) while Arcane Thievery is a transfer skill whose mechanic is far superior to Nullfield. While I personally think that Nullfield is indeed already superior to Arcane Thievery (mainly due to CD and being unreliable… make it unblockable already, ANet…) the gap isn’t that significant because of their different mechanics.

A trait which damages on boon removal does not recognize those differences. NF and AT are at least partly balanced around their different mechanics. Such a trait would significantly shift the balance in favour of skills which succeed in removing the most boons per minute making NF (and potentially Shattered Concentration) even more superior to AT or the Phantasmal Disenchanter.

I wouldn’t say that they are broken right now. I also wouldn’t say they would be broken with such a trait. But I think there would be a pretty obivous imbalance among those utilities.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

… my ele does …

Sorry to be blunt, but it simply doesn’t matter how much damage you can do on your Elementalist. ANet stated that this is supposed to be a strength of them. While they obivously see the issue with Mesmer AoE they also said they don’t want them to be particularly good at it. Even if it was balanced it probably isn’t what they are looking for.

Personally, I just don’t think that your trait suggestion is the way to go. It would result in a trait which feels mandatory to a majority of Mesmers because it improves the overall damage of too many skills. We certainly already got enough of those.

It’s funny when I worked on a write up for a CDI for weeks and none of you so much as made a post, but this is enough for you all to start throwing ideas around like Anet will listen..

You wanna fix mesmer for Gw2? You go back to the drawing board at this point. Anet has a terrible design Idea behind them that’s not only extremely vague but goes face first into the wall of “Things we don’t want to have in our game or balance around in our game” .

Illusions, its a neat idea. it would be fun to have 1 per weapon and maybe the rest be tied to utilities and then Have our shatters removed and replaced with something else.

It would be neat if we didn’t have neutered damage because there is a Possibility that we might maybe sometimes have 1 or 2 phantasms out.

It would be nice if most of our traits worked and didn’t take 5 patches to “fix” the same bug..

It would be nice to Play a completely different Mesmer in this game.

But I’ve given up hope of Anet ever looking this direction and Reassessing the kitten ups they’ve made. This is the game we get, this is the class we get, these are the problems we must deal with and work around EVERY DAY just to play it…

But onward with Scarlet’s Legacy (which is the neglect of EVERY other part of the game) Cause that’s what Anet says is best for the game.

Swish.2463:

It’s funny when I worked on a write up for a CDI for weeks and none of you so much as made a post, but this is enough for you all to start throwing ideas around like Anet will listen.

Don’t take it personally. The effort certainly was appretiated. It is hard to artificially force a lively discussion into one specific thread, though. Several class related issues have been talked to death in seperate threads in the class forum and we also got our bug thread. There might be a slight lethargy when it comes to such topics. More importantly we lacked any insight on ANet’s vision for the Mesmer so discussing changes might appear a bit moot. The recent Ready Up finally gave us a small update on where the devs want Mesmers to be.

Korusef.3714:

Other suggestions:
1. Make illusions invulnerable for the duration of the first attack chain
2. Make ‘shattered’ illusion invulnerable
or
- Killing illusion will tag the player for the killer for the purpose of looting (as opposed to increasing the damage)
or
- Scale the health of illusion with the number of enemies

Another question is whether this should be GM trait replacing one of the useless ones or whether this should be core mechanic

+1

Xaylin.1860:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…

Wow. That was quite a harsh post. No need to call anything BS. That’s just impolite.

I didn’t mean to be harsh with that; it’s part of my “friendly banter/discussion” language.

Mind spike didn’t always do reduced damage to targets with boons. That was introduced in June 2013. Back then the base damage was reduced by 20%. So on some level I’m really asking for a trait to buff that sword 1.3 like it used to in “boon-rich” environments. How often do you really hit with the backloaded attack of sword 1.3 in PvP? Everything on a mesmers bar besides shatters will reset the chain so that is also why I consider it conditional. Gs/staff is seeing a rise in shatter builds because we don’t exactly have the sustain to just sword auto attack on point.

It DOES matter how much damage I can do on my ele. The Devs themselves compared our aoe to ele aoe and ours should be worst BUT it needs a buff. (Live stream @ 46:25) So when talking about aoe numbers, we need to keep in mind the kind of aoe that an ele can pump out and propose buffs to our aoe but make sure it doesn’t exceed an ele’s aoe potential.

I still think we’re seeing the null fiend vs thievery on a different perspective as well. If it’s impossible to balance those with this trait, then what about Confusing Enchantments (Also a master domination trait)? Glamours function in very different ways but the confusion on enter/exit is identical for all of them. What about halting strike? We have a variety of interrupts that are single target, aoe lines, waves, pulls, random… yet I would say that halting strike is balanced. Even sharper images acts differently because of different weapon patterns. So I firmly believe that a trait like this could be balanced with all of our boon strips despite those boon strips acting in very different ways.

If traits like this aren’t the way to go then what else can we propose? The only weapons that might get any sort of real change is scepter1 and gs3. Those won’t be enough. I would love new weapons/skills but then those new aoe weapons/skills would become just as “mandatory” as this trait. I think those are out of our league as far as Anet taking our ideas. “Simple” trait changes seem like the best way to ask for changes to playstyle, especially with the mesmer and how all of our traits already function.

Random idea, GS trait turns the GS auto into a MELEE attack! Heck, the focus trait changes that weapons function so much, why not? (I’m not super serious but I would be really happy if this happened.)

Swish.2463:

It’s funny when I worked on a write up for a CDI for weeks and none of you so much as made a post, but this is enough for you all to start throwing ideas around like Anet will listen..

You wanna fix mesmer for Gw2? You go back to the drawing board at this point. Anet has a terrible design Idea behind them that’s not only extremely vague but goes face first into the wall of “Things we don’t want to have in our game or balance around in our game” .

Illusions, its a neat idea. it would be fun to have 1 per weapon and maybe the rest be tied to utilities and then Have our shatters removed and replaced with something else.

It would be neat if we didn’t have neutered damage because there is a Possibility that we might maybe sometimes have 1 or 2 phantasms out.

It would be nice if most of our traits worked and didn’t take 5 patches to “fix” the same bug..

It would be nice to Play a completely different Mesmer in this game.

But I’ve given up hope of Anet ever looking this direction and Reassessing the kitten ups they’ve made. This is the game we get, this is the class we get, these are the problems we must deal with and work around EVERY DAY just to play it…

But onward with Scarlet’s Legacy (which is the neglect of EVERY other part of the game) Cause that’s what Anet says is best for the game.

i actually do agree with a lot you mentioned here.eventhough anet mentioned what their vision is is still kinda vague. what on earth is a ranged 1v1 class? and when they atarted listing the things we are weak at at least 1 guy added that illusions are actually an issue in wvw… we got too many weaknesses and aoe should definitely not be one of them as a lightarmor class. i mean in gw1 the role was clear. mesmer punishes u for pretty much every thing u do. if u dont attack or if u attack,if u move if u cast all of that. mesmer was the perfect lockdown and this is what mes lacks. even out lockdown builds arent even 10% of what a war can do or a thief with immobilize and stunlock and perma interrupts. chaos storm is pretty much our only untraited aoe sorta skill and its a complete joke imo! no dmg, rng condis…..
yes, mes need redesign because the whole illusions and all that is simply limiting this class. i dont mind having a whole traitline for illusions like the necro has a minion trait line and minion skills, but we are so bound to our illusions that its limiting our build diversity. id rather have a little less illusion traits and shatter traits and maybe something non ai we can spec into like a necro can spec into power or condi without minions.
but yes if at least all our bugs where fixed(which btw are mostly ai related), at least combat wouldnt be soo much of a pain…

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

How often do you really hit with the backloaded attack of sword 1.3 in PvP?

…

If traits like this aren’t the way to go then what else can we propose?

This is indeed is a very important point. In PvP, at least in higher tiers, I most certainly agree with you. In PvE it is pretty easy, though. Still, I’m not saying that such a change would be imbalanced. I believe that the overall damage of Mesmers is low compared to other classes since Illusions. But I’m very sceptical if such a direct damage trait is the right thing to do. Just look at all the Phantasm damage modifiers and Empowered Mantras. They are boring as hell but still became mandatory in PvE. It could destroy a lot of build diversity without fixing the underlying issues.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

It DOES matter how much damage I can do on my ele.

It is pointless to throw around high numbers as a benchmark to justify your suggestion as balanced just because it is lower than from an Elementalist. We only know it should be lower. But we don’t know what level they want us to be on.

My main concerns are class internal balance and the class design/vision. The gap between the efficiency of NF and AT would just be way too big. I didn’t say NF would become OP with that trait. I said that it wouldn’t be balanced among the available skills although I’m aware you disagree . Additionally, I believe ANet will favour a more support/CC focussed buff to our AoE capabilities rather than pure area damage one.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…then what about Confusing Enchantments (Also a master domination trait)? Glamours function in very different ways but the confusion on enter/exit is identical for all of them.

The difference in the functionality of Glamours is exactly what lead to Confusing Enchantments working on enter/exit. Because it ultimatively works the same with Veil (line) and Feedback (circle). The only situation this is not true is if some kitten runs into a circle and then leaves it again.

Sadly, this also resulted in Confusing Enchantments being so inefficient.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

What about halting strike? We have a variety of interrupts that are single target, aoe lines, waves, pulls, random… yet I would say that halting strike is balanced.

The only thing you have to differentiate here is single and multi-target CC. It doesn’t matter if it is a pull or a push. That just means the skill plays differently. Of course, some forms of CC are better than others. But the trait itself always performs the same.

When it comes to single vs. multi-target skills those usually are already balanced among themselves through cooldowns. Note, that this is different when looking at NF and AT because they do not use the same mechanic (nullification vs. transfer). You also might want to keep in mind that Mesmers basically only have one pure single target CC (Signet).

Long story short. There might be differences when it comes to CC and Halting Strike. But they will never be as big as a damage on boon strip trait when comparing NF and AT.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Even sharper images acts differently because of different weapon patterns.

Sharper Image is another great example why such a boon stripping trait has its flaws. Nobody with a sane mind would pick Sharper Images when not using GS Clones, iDuelist or iWarden and to some extent Staff Clones. It simply sucks with OH Sword and Scepter.

Of course, you can’t really pick Sharper Images since it is a minor. But I’m sure people would switch it out in many other scenarios if they actually could. Your trait is even more restrictive than Sharper Images. And this is an issue if we are talking about a trait which potentially affects the maximum sustained damage of a class.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

“Simple” trait changes seem like the best way to ask for changes to playstyle, especially with the mesmer and how all of our traits already function.

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I would love new weapons/skills but then those new aoe weapons/skills would become just as “mandatory” as this trait.

The simplest way would be altering existing weapon skills and Glamour traits.

Your trait would add a new functionality even though the mechanic already is in place. It is exactly the same as if they added a new area damage weapon. It probably is even more mandatory since it doesn’t only affect one weapon but a variety of skills which can be combined.

PU should be nerfed. Shatter needs to be buffed.

Swish.2463:

Official design: Access to key utility skills. Gain defense through stealth, evasion, misdirection. Strong 1v1 ranged damage dealer but weaker in sustained AoE damage. Weakness – conditional removal, sustainability if illusions are countered, AoE damage make it hard to sustain illusions.

Let me break this down for you

Access to unique Utility Skills like Portal or Null Field or uhmm.. well i cant think of anything else very unique here

Gain defense through : A broken Mechanic that is easy to abuse. Or dodging Or Stealth oh wait sorry misdirection meant when people mistake your clones for you.. cause that happens a lot.. ya know.. only when you use stealth.. So yeah we’ll just call that Stealth x2 plus dodges.. So we’re a light armor Thief?

Strong 1v1 Ranged damage dealer.. Sure on GS and maybe a condition Staff. Sword is very close range, scepter is a mid ranged and last i checked Anet doesn’t like to Balance around 1v1 …. or do they?

Weaker in Sustained aoe – very true. We have 1 weapon with 2 cleave attacks, 1 with a tiny aoe and a cone push, and one with a larger aoe. then we can add 2 shatters thats 1 2… 7 AoE’s across the whole of the class. Thats not really weaker sustained.. that’s just a weakness at this point.

Weaknesses
Conditions – Hit the nail on the head. we dont have many ways that are good to get rid of these unless you run that one build that uses all that stealth stuff..

Sustainability if illusions are countered.. lets just lump these last to together and call it Your weakness is your Classes Core Mechanic and call it a day shall we?

I’m not amused with Anet anymore, I’m tired of the endless river of empty promises and Extremely poor management of assets and the inconsistent direction of the game as a whole.

“Conditions – Hit the nail on the head. we dont have many ways that are good to get rid of these unless you run that one build that uses all that stealth stuff..”

What? No… Mantras with mender’s purity and restorative mantras. There’s your condi removal, and it’s more than alot of classes get when coupled with the avoidance OF constantly being able to go invis and trick people with clones.. I don’t know how you’re even pairing condition removal with going stealth anyway, mesmers aren’t thieves. Alot of misinformation in alot of these mesmer posts.

I think the mobility section was better an interpretation than i would have expected. It is 100% true in my mind that our weakness in mobility is not the actual mobility itself but a way to progress forward faster, like keeping up with your team. You can’t throw your portal ahead of you. You’ve only got blink and you need to use a specific weapon to gain a tiny bit of swiftness, for the most part. I feel like both Mesmer and Guardian has this problem.

Speed to better keep up with your team should be a possibility to attain, without radically altering the theme of a class.

As for Aoe, I really think we need some tinkers there… Sword is okay, but it shouldn’t just be sword. GS would be a bit better at it if they widened the beam. What about if the GS auto damage was the same at all ranges, but instead the range determines how the beam is shaped?

At close range: The beam is a cone, naturally piercing up to 5 targets.
At mid range: The beam is a trident shape, piercing.
At long range: Same as now, a piercing single beam.

Not only would it make sure Mesmer doesn’t Aoe quite as well at Ele range, it would also make it feel like you are bending reality. :P You could also drop the mid range if it gets too complicated. Either way there is many ways you can add aoe to mesmer, such as the Glamour stuff some have suggested, kind of like how the Necro aoes.

Ele in it’s nature is an AOE class, particulary the d/d set. That’s it’s niche. Even the heals from water are aoe and the heal buff from water is an aoe buff. It’s the d/d ele’s niche literally – an aoe support class offensively and defensively. I don’t know how mesmers, or any class can complain about not being a full aoe class given the tools they have in a given fight – yeh , they’re only useful for veil and portal or picking off the side kittenter in large fight situations , but then look at engineer and ranger – they don’t mesh well in large fights either but dominate small man fights like mesmer does.

Also look at where these classes have to be to achieve the aoe capability, right in the frontline or in the fight. Warriors – in the fight, Ele – in the fight.. I think the only class that doesn’t have to necessarily be in the fight and aoe is the engineer and that’s only with grenades (and you would need to trait 30 deep to fully functionally have that work).

You guys are asking to have as much aoe as a d/d ele but be able to do it from 900+ range and safe from distance. As a mesmer I don’t know if that’s balanced or not, but it wouldn’t seem like it.

Xaylin.1860:

…. But I’m very sceptical if such a direct damage trait is the right thing to do. Just look at all the Phantasm damage modifiers and Empowered Mantras. They are boring as hell but still became mandatory in PvE. It could destroy a lot of build diversity without fixing the underlying issues.
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Your trait would add a new functionality even though the mechanic already is in place. It is exactly the same as if they added a new area damage weapon. It probably is even more mandatory since it doesn’t only affect one weapon but a variety of skills which can be combined

(I’m going to bring my ele up in this again because it’s become my 2nd main) The ele has a lot of DPS modifiers everywhere. It doesn’t matter what tree I go into, if I want a specific play-style altering trait, there are a variety of DPS traits along the way. This actually makes ele have more build diversity not less. There are of course going to be optimal builds but if you look into the meta those optimal builds can change wildly with changes in group comps and weapon choice. Slightly less optimal “for fun” builds can compare in DPS and not feel like a drag on the group.

As mesmers, we have low DPS and so few modifiers that in PvE we feel forced to grab the few we can. Furthermore, we don’t have enough traits like wardens feedback that can be so game changing (at least for PvE; IP/DE/PU are great but elsewhere). While mantras can be extremely useful in their own right, without another option for DPS, it’s actually killing build diversity because of how mandatory mantras are right now.

I know you feel that a trait like the one I proposed will become mandatory but it also goes back to what trait would you give up for this? Let’s think 6 domination builds in PvE. Shatters are currently not worth it for groups but with this new trait+maybe more enemy boons in season 2 living world, it could become an optimal~viable option. It would be strong aoe spikes and a sacrifice in sustain but importantly, it wouldn’t be as much of a loss to sustain like it currently is. This might even make some ppl be ok with GS in PvE group content. More aoe dmg loaded onto GS 2-4 (shatter fodder/boon removal) will tilt the balance so that the terrible auto attack can be carried harder by more active play. Or what about a build that takes the 15% phantasm, new trait and 4% mantra for a hybrid of the 2. Even a choice like do I take null field/thievery/pDisenchanter or do I have 4-8-12% more DPS on my sword auto/reflects comes into play. It’s even self balancing; do I do 4% more dmg and have lots of boon strips or 12% more dmg on 1 strong boon strip utility? Does the pDisenchanter do 15% +new trait combo or do I grab a different trait? With more challenging content being promised, I also hope that interrupts and halting strike become a more viable option which would exclude 1 of the traits listed above.

TLDR: More mutually exclusive & rewarding ways of dealing comparable DPS will lead to build diversity not mandatory DPS traits. Other DPS options besides mantras would help in general.

Xaylin.1860:

My main concerns are class internal balance and the class design/vision. The gap between the efficiency of NF and AT would just be way too big. I didn’t say NF would become OP with that trait. I said that it wouldn’t be balanced among the available skills although I’m aware you disagree . Additionally, I believe ANet will favour a more support/CC focussed buff to our AoE capabilities rather than pure area damage one.
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The simplest way would be altering existing weapon skills and Glamour traits.
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Support/cc focused buffs would be great but it still doesn’t help us tag for bags. If anything that would make decisions more conflicted. Do I do mediocre DPS or do I bring amazing utility for the team while getting nothing for my effort. It’s a general complaint that rewards don’t match up with effort in gw2. If you don’t want that built into the mesmer class, we need more DPS traits that trigger on that support/cc. Halting strike is a good start but we need more stuff like it!