Who uses the phantasm utilities outside maybe defender? Who uses mimicry? Who uses Mantra of Pain (which, btw, does about a mainhand sword autoattack in terms of damage).
Phantasm utilities won’t be used, because their uptime isn’t that great when illusions are getting one or two shot by mobs in fractals with conal attacks. Illusion uptime in PvE and WvW is horrible, even with signet of Illusions. Mesmers rely heavily on shatters, so they won’t hold back on shattering just to keep the phantasm performing its function.
Mantras outside Mantra of Recovery and Resolve are horrible. Distraction should be a 2 sec daze. Pain needs to do significantly more damage, especially in PvE if you want it used at the opportunity cost of 3.5 sec cast times interrupting autoattacks. Concentration lasts too little.
The signets are truly horrible. Inspiration gives some random boon every 10 seconds when the proc should be every 5 seconds (it’s like nothing is learned from the undesirability of engineer random elixirs). Midnight gives passive boon duration to the class with arguably least access to boons. Signet of Illusion translates into maybe an illusion dying to 3 or two hits instead of two or one.
On my other classes, the utilities are DIFFERENT. On my mesmer, the utilities are a variant of condition removal, a stun breaker, or reflection with the exception of portal. Shadow Refuge keeps stacking stealth, heals, and has 30 seconds LESS cooldown than the crappy Veil of Invisibility, which doesn’t stack stealth anymore, provides a short stealth duration and no healing.
On Jonathan Sharp’s outline of class design, the mesmer design is puzzling. So we’re supposed to rely on illusions that just do damage for effects, yet those illusions have horrible health and susceptibility to AoE, of which there is an abundance on dungeons and WvW?
Cry of Frustration is still weak, the scepter is weak, the torch is weak, the warden is stationary and dies the moment mobs aggro on him (in some dungeons he doesn’t even last 2 seconds channeling his skill before a mob kills it with a swing or two).
They said this patch would seek to create more viable builds, but all I see is the duelist still doing the damage of greatsword warrior’s autoattack crit, the Berserker still missing his attacks, and buffs to an underwater combat most people don’t want to participate in (due to mobs underwater having too much HP and combat in general feeling slower, our useful utilities like null field not allowed underwater, and for some classes no elite options).
Mesmer was supposed to have crowd control and interrupts like in GW1, but now in GW2 classes like the hammer warrior and the engineer and the elementalist greatly overshadow him. All I’m to a group as a mesmer is a Time Warp and Portal bot. I don’t do the damage of a warrior, the aoe of an elementalists, the bunkering of a guardian or ele, or the CC of an engineer. My burst relies on the uptime of very fragile illusions who are swiped down the moment they come up in PvE, with a ramp up that athief achieves in 2 button presses of Steal and Backstab. (and it’s fine in PvE for thieves to deal that damage, I don’t care, but I have to jump through so many more hoops just to accomplish a lesser version of what other classes do).
I’d like for my mesmer to be good at something other than giving the group time warp and portals. Stealth rezzing is useless in PvE since bosses and mobs stack aoe on downed players anyway and the end result is you’ll die trying to rez even if stealthed.
I’m tired of this class being undertuned in PvE because of sPvP whining keeping changes to the class in the backburner.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
That said yes there are a lot of utilities there that I would rarely choose to put on my bar because they are so incredibly situational. For example Mimic, Veil (why use veil if you have mass stealth and decoy).