Guild Wars 2

Would it be too much to ask for clones and phantasms to leap, or at the very least run really fast to your target when you use a shatter skill. They still need to do their death animation when they finally get in range.

Yeah, this bugs me all the time when fighting a Thief or Elementalist as both are quite mobile.

Yeah sadly it seems to me that the Mesmers success is often based less on the Mesmers skill, but the skill level of the opponents he faces. We just have too many counter-play options in all of our illusion-based mechanics, for experienced enemies to take advantage of.

1) Shatter depends on slow moving, low HP, illusions that are easily killed. Once HoT stuff goes live, there won’t even be an option to trait for a penalty for killing our illusions!

2) Phantasms require a crutch 1s invuln to even be playable in WvW! That should tell us something about poor mechanic design! I shouldn’t have to trait for that, frankly. The Phants should come with ~2s of invuln baseline, and still have double the HPs afterwards, or at least summon with ~6s of Protection. Is it not enough that their attack, after a long summoning time, can simply be dodged, blocked, blinded, evaded, weakened, interrupted, etc. ?? (Not to mention you can interrupt/blind the summon itself!) Too many points of failure! At least allow them to have a chance to deliver that one attack! (iWardens self-rooting attack is much longer then 1s, so that Invuln doesn’t even allow them to get half of their attack off, especially since they still often waste time running into position to attack!)

It’s just sad that these major issues persist without being addressed in this overhaul. In fact, we’re being further pushed into Shattering and/or Phantasms, and both have significant issues because the required resource —Illusions-- are unreliable, slow, and easy to kill. (Or avoid as Sebrent points out.)

It’s great that lock-down builds are getting some nice boosts too, but interrupts are not common enough to base your damage-output around. So you will still largely depend on shatters or phants to do most of your damage, and thus again have this weakness that is easy for opponents to exploit w/o drawbacks of any kind.

See Mesmer? Kill illusions!

It’s that simple. No counter play for us there. The Mesmer himself simply can not specialize to do reasonable damage of his own, in order to punish the enemy for 1-shotting his illusions. (Even AE 1-shotting)

Just making Illusions immune (or 50% reduction) to splash damage would go a LONG way in improving our QoL.

I like the idea of easy and accessible counterplay to phantasms, it just sucks that:
1. It happens all the time by accident.
2. Mesmer personal DPS is kinda trash without them.

Honestly, why not just fix #2? Up personal damage output SIGNIFICANTLY. Use phantasms as a bonus throw-in that punishes players who ignore easy-to-remove obvious threats. Seems to be a considerably easier redesign than finding endless gimmicks that try to prolong their lifespan just a tiny bit here and there. And if that means truly bad players just sorta melt against a mesmer? Who cares? Half the classes in the game can easily do massive damage to bad do-nothing players. (It wouldn’t even break PvE, since it looks like the pattern for content going forward is short “burn phases” and tons of AoE that clearly phants out constantly.)

This is why the “shatter mesmer” is looked upon as the only “viable” build right now.

IP and DE provide the most efficient means to land our shatters.

After the trait re-work & HoT, having IP as a default will help make other builds more efficient. WiIl it be enough? It looks like interrupt/lockdown builds will be stronger for sure. Not sure if phantasm builds will have enough, but the Chronomancer phantasm traits will certainly help.

We just have to wait and see.

Way back in beta, I made a post that Mind Wrack should not be one of our shatters. That the shatters should only be control/support. (More in the style of what the original Mesmer is.) Needless to say, my post was not well received.

Niminion.1982:

Would it be too much to ask for clones and phantasms to leap, or at the very least run really fast to your target when you use a shatter skill. They still need to do their death animation when they finally get in range.

On the one hand, yes, it’s very annoying when fighting a SD thief for example, because even if your clones are very close to you and you MW when the thief is completely surrounded, he can still port and mitigate the entire burst except for IP and an eventual dodge-shatter.

On the other hand, that’s part of the fun. One way to recognize a truly good mesmer is to watch how he disposes his clones to produce the effect he wants. This slow moving illusions are also really cool for a triple-daze Diversion shatter. I think the new confounding suggestion will REALLY help landing your shatters, if you play power shatter that is.

That would make more sense to me SlimChance.

I had a recent random thought while playing the other night …

Why does my Mesmer’s Mind Wrack do less damage then my Ranger’s Rapid Fire but have a longer cooldown and require illusions?

pick 2 of those, but all 3 … meh.

• Less damage but same/less cooldown and require illusions
• Same damage but longer cooldown and require illusions

Those would make more sense to me … and I’m not even touching on the much longer range of my Rapid Fire nor how a viable counter to it is “whoops, your illusions were accidentally cleaved/AOE’d before they shattered”.

Sebrent.3625:

Why does my Mesmer’s Mind Wrack do less damage then my Ranger’s Rapid Fire but have a longer cooldown and require illusions?

Because it’s instant, and you can cast it while stunned, while dodging, or while casting something else (Blurred Frenzy or Mind Stab, in the two most common shatter combos). I love the shatter play style, because it’s so violent: you don’t have to immob or stun your opponents to kill them with MW. Unlike RF where the second part of the skill is more often than not reflected or evaded. It’s still a strong skill, but so is MW.

Good points Sorel. But if we’re going to bring up the instant cast even while CC’d … let’s factor in everything.

Rapid Fire

• Pro: Drastically longer range (1,500)
• Pro: More damage
• Pro: Lower cooldown
• Con: Projectile (anti-projectiles, reflects, etc.)
• Con: Non-instant

Mind Wrack

• Pro: Instant
• Con: Less Damage
• Con: Longer Cooldown
• Con: Drastically Less Range
• Con: Requires Illusions

The only thing I can think “balance-wise” is that they are factoring in our other damage … but shatters (pre-Chrono) kill a chunk of that damage (Phantasms) until you can resummon it.

I, too, love the shatter playstyle because it feels more “active” to me than alternatives (except interrupt) and because of the crazy shenanigans it allows which often lead to a friend saying in TS “how the … did you do ….”.

I’m a long-time 4/4/0/0/6 Mesmer from back when it was 20/20/0/0/30 … I just can’t help but compare the two classes I play the most.

Apples & Oranges

- RF is single target, MW AoE
- Due to MWs instant nature it can be combod with other high-damage AE abilities. This results in combos that do as much or more damage then RF, but vs. up to 5 targets.
- RF is easily interrupted
- MW is usually traited to allow massive AE boon stripping

It’s just a silly comparison TBH. The two classes just play vastly different roles.

Mind Wrack’s AOE is small.
Ranger can combo Rapid Fire with Barrage and Pet … lead with Barrage cast, go into Rapid Fire.

Mesmers aren’t the only ones that can combo things.

I do agree that it is somewhat apples to oranges, but when you break it down, it doesn’t look great.

Back to what I originally said though … I’d be perfectly happy if Mind Wrack just had the same cooldown as my Rapid Fire. Even with 6 in Illusions my Mind Wrack has a longer cooldown than Rapid Fire … and Mind Wrack has a setup (Illusions).

Rapid Fire isnt supposed to be used for damage anyway.
Rapid Fire
*Tracks Stealth
*Applies vulnerability
*Mitigates Longbow’s awful close range AA damage.

Ideally, it would be above the min range AA damage, perhaps “decent” dps at best. However the real use would be to set up for melee attacks, to use the Vuln. Or perhaps as an opener to do more max range AA damage.

I feel Rapid Fire is in a strange place where its simultaneously broken and underpowered. Ever try fighting a Mediguard as a Ranger? When a Thief is on you in melee range it only pressures a dodgeroll. Bad examples as they are the two “anti zerk” classes.

What MW has over RF is unpredictability. Mindgames are Memser’s strongest point (and rightfully so.)

I feel like MW shouldn’t even have a cooldown; it already uses illusions as a resource. I should be able to shatter my own illusions whenever I want to!

A cooldown just pushes us towards triple (or quad with IP) shatter MW burst combos which is a repetitive (and predictable) playstyle. The decision making process essentially reduces to:

1. If MW cooldown <= 2, spam clone skills then MW.
2. Else, kite for 1s, then see #1.

Shatters with extra effects (i.e. F2-F5) can have a cooldown, sure. But for a basic straightforward shatter, give the decision back to the player!

^ In principle I agree, but it would require re-balancing that would likely result in nerfing the burst damage potential of MW.

With Chrono you’ll be able to get that CD down a good bit more, but of course with trade-offs involved.

I think you make a great point though. Now that we can not punish players for destroying our illusions en-masse with AE attacks that 1 shot them, I think your idea wouldn’t be bad at all. Of course with DE and Chronomancy traits, on top of the improved MW GM trait, it would be a bit much…machine-gunning MWs. ;-)

Sad, but that probably should have been the design all along, with some other mechanics changes for sure, then there would never have been a need for crutches like DE to even make the shatter play-mechanic work!