Guild Wars 2

The mesmer class mechanics is a bit weird as it is only used to sacrifice our illusions. This means that many builds (PvE) never use it, which makes the dev unhappy because “you should use your class mechanics”. But as someone mentioned some time ago (he didn’t want to shatter), most classes benefit from their mechanics without any being detrimental effect. Sure, I get the idea of high-risk high reward, but actually the reward of shatter is fairly low compared to the reward of keeping your phantasms up. If the phantasms were not dying so easily in PvP, they would be better than shatters. So in a sense, shattering is the low-risk low-reward.

Anyway, I am not sure my suggestion fixes this in any way, but I thought it was interesting: what about having a passive effect on the F1-F4 skills. They would work a bit like a signet (or like guardians meditations): their passive would help the player, while the active give a burst but removing the passive until the cool down resets.

Example:
F1: active:mind wrack. passive: your illusions damage is increased
F2: active: cry of frustration. passive: your illusion inflict confusion on critical hits (confusing combatants :p )
F3: active: diversion. Passive: your illusions have chaos armor? (not sure about this one)
F4: active: distorstion. Passive: your phantasms have increased health or protection

Pros:

• conceptually, everyone is now benefitting from their class mechanics
• it makes it easier to balance phantasm build vs shatter builds since now someone who shatters will make his phantasms weaker and reciprocally. Maybe phantasms build will become a more viable low-tier PvP build.

Cons:

• it does favor phantasms build, which is obviously a more passive play style.

What do you think?

I am “sort of ok” with our class mechanic… enough that it works. I’d honestly hoped for a more robust revision/alternative with the Chronomancer though.

I like your ideas… changing “shatters” from a destroy-your-illusions mechanic to a buff-your-illusions one.

Overall, I don’t think keeping phantasms up for long periods should be a goal. It stops people from using 2/5 of their weapon skills out of fear of destroying a phantasm. I like to distinguish them from normal pet classes by encouraging people to think of the phantasms as temporary.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the damage dealt by a phantasm decrease over time, eventually going to nill to encourage players to replace them or shatter them when possible. In exchange, it could be nice to have the supportive abilities (cripple on iZerker, reflect on the Axe man) continue, even after the damage stops. A phantasm should never be useless, but a skillful cast of a fresh phantasm should always be preferred over passively ignoring one that’s been out for a while.

An additional concern I’ve always had is the disparity in playstyles depending on the environment. Interrupt builds are all but useless against bosses and shatter builds are often laughable in AoE heavy encounters. Frequently, I find myself needing to respec and regear when going between a mob-heavy phase of an encounter and the boss, which results in a clunky experience.

I’m not sure what the solution to that is. Give illusions stability and distortion when shattering? Allow interrupt to give some effect on bosses? Make some shatters GTAoE?

Now that IP is baseline I use shatters more often in PVE to interrupt or to become immune when I have no illusions up

The problem is that we are quite far from having shatters viable in PvE. Sure, they can be temporarily useful for very short fights, in particular in the cases Vizardlorde mention. But for a more sustained DPS (more than 5s), phantasms are clearly over. Currently, in PvE, I believe MW with 3 clones hits less than 1 swordsman every 3s. So if you have 2 clones and 1 swordsman, shattering is a DPS loss (since it takes very much effort to recast the illusions).

The problem is that you cannot make shatters more damaging… because PvP. You can’t either make the phantasms less damaging… because PvE. So you’re stuck in a PvP=shatter PvE=phantasm which is sad. The DPS rotation in PvE is really as boring as “cast 3 phantasms and then AA all the way”, I would love to jump around and shatter, but my DPS input would be insignificant.

As I said, my suggestion may not fix anything, but I thought it was interesting. I’ve always seen illusions as being our class mechanics more than just shatters.

And I believe PvP with a phantasm build can be very interesting and absolutely not passive. Since they can die very easily, you need to keep a close look and shatter whenever you think you will loose your phantasms. Or spec into a more supportive player, letting phantasms in charge of the main DPS while you try to buff them through active support to keep them alive. Or spec into lockdown which also allows your phantasm to outlive your opponent.

I actually use Shatters now in PvE but just for the F3 interrupt and F4 distort.
F1 to finish off short fights against trash.

But still. I’d love our class mechanic to give benifits to phantasm builds as well.
Our class mechanic isn’t ONLY shattering. It’s also being able to have clones & phantasms that deal damage.
Shatters are only a half of our mechanic but right now it feels Anet wants to push us into shattering too much.

I like a passive but skillfull playstyle. In a way i like the passive playstyle of condi mesmer builds but its not really skillful.