Guild Wars 2

So there’s been some discussion about giving every trait line an Illusion generation trait a la DE, IR and CP. I think the idea deserves its own thread, especially since one of the threads the discussion was on was deleted.

So here’s my ideas…

.

DOMINATION

Replace Furious Interruption with Hallucination: interrupting a foe conjures two clones against them, 5s CD. Furious Interruption never saw much play, partially because Quickness doesn’t affect Mesmer DPS as much as other professions; so I think it’s safe to axe it for something new.

.

CHAOS

Extra effect for Descent into Madness: Also create a Chaos Storm when you’re disabled. Chaos Storm conjures a clone against random enemies within 900 range every second. As this is a significant power-up, I think it should become a GM trait; bumping down Bountiful Disillusionment to Master and Mirror of Anguish to Adept.

.

INSPIRATION

Merge Protected Phantasms with Persisting Images, add a new Master Discharge Enchantment: conjure a Phantasmal Disenchanter when you hit a target with 2 or more unique boons. Inspiration already has Mental Defence but it isn’t reliable illusion generation, adding Disenchanter helps to remedy that and completes the set.

.

ILLUSIONS

Extra effect for Master of Fragmentation: Shatter effects from yourself are doubled in strength, 5s CD. Thought it would be fitting to give Master of Fragmentation, considered a weak GM, something that emphasises mastery over Shatters instead of just more illusions. Might be too strong but Illusions isn’t really used in Power Shatter currently so might as well change things up.

.

Keep the ideas coming folks.

I’ll just repost my suggestions from the other thread first.

Domination

• Replace Rending Shatter with Shattered Concentration
• Replace Shattered Concentration with Imagined Burden (nerfed slightly if necessary).
• Replace Imagined Burden with the trait: “Create a clone when you daze or interrupt an enemy” with a 2s icd.

Dueling

• Replace Mistrust with a modified version of Confusing Combatants: “You and your illusions inflict 1 stack of confusion for 3 seconds on critical hit (50% chance)”
• Change Harmonious Mantras buff to affect your phantasms’ damage.

Chaos

• Replace Mirror of Anguish with Prismatic Understanding. Lower PU’s stealth grant to 2s (or 1s), raise the base stealth of MI to 6s, and raise the base stealth of Veil to 3s.
• Replace Prismatic Understanding with a new trait: “Every time you use a skill, you have a 15% chance to generate a new clone”, or “Every time you gain new boon in combat, create a clone; 4s icd”

Illusions

• Replace Shattered Strength with Malicious Sorcery. Replace the attack speed on Malicious Sorcery with the effect of Shattered Strength.
• Replace Malicious Sorcery with a new trait: “when you use a skill to summon a clone, summon a second clone” or “when you use an illusion-summoning skill, you have a 50% chance to also summon a clone” (only do the second one if you stop clones from overwriting phantasms)

Inspiration

• Inspiration is fine as it is. Mental Defense is an illusion generator, it’s a very different kind of trait line from the others anyway (defensive vs offensive), and there’s nothing in Inspiration that I could see anyone willing to give up.

Chronomancer

• Replace Seize the Moment with Illusionary Reversion, unnerf Illusionary Reversion.
• Replace Illusionary Reversion with Seize the Moment.

Embolism.8106:

DOMINATION

Replace Furious Interruption with Hallucination: interrupting a foe conjures a clone against them, no CD. Furious Interruption never saw much play, partially because Quickness doesn’t affect Mesmer DPS as much as other professions; so I think it’s safe to axe it for something new.

I was never under the impression that Furious Interruption didn’t see much play.
Additionally, a clone trait competing with Blurred Inscriptions and Shattered Concentration might be a little imbalancing.
One of the premises of the idea to add illusion traits to other lines was that they would be competing with the stronger traits of those lines, making it more of a tradeoff to spec into illusion generation. I don’t think master tier of Dom is competitive enough for that, but I suppose I could be wrong.

Embolism.8106:

CHAOS

Extra effect for Descent into Madness: 33% chance to conjure a clone against enemies who hit you while you have Chaos Armour, 3s CD. Might be too strong for an Adept but I’m not sure what to swap it with… either Chaotic Transference or Mirror of Anguish, I guess. Might want to rename the trait too, maybe “Chaotic Instability” or something.

I’m not eager to tie yet another trait to Chaos Armor, to be honest. Unreliable, periodic clone generation is almost as bad as no clone generation. If it’s unpredictable, it’s gotta have a chance of coming up at any point. If it’s only active while you have a specific buff, it’s gotta be more predictable.
And frankly, I think it’d be better that the clone generation traits not be weapon-specific, for the most part. People go chaos without taking staff, but try getting much Chaos Armor uptime without staff.

Embolism.8106:

INSPIRATION

Merge Protected Phantasms with Persisting Images, add a new Master Discharge Enchantment: conjure a Phantasmal Disenchanter when you hit a target with 3 or more unique boons. Inspiration already has Mental Defence but it isn’t reliable illusion generation, adding Disenchanter helps to remedy that and completes the set.

I like it. If only iDisenchanter could survive more than .001s.

Embolism.8106:

ILLUSIONS

Extra effect for Master of Fragmentation: Shatter effects from yourself are doubled in strength, 5s CD. Thought it would be fitting to give Master of Fragmentation, considered a weak GM, something that emphasises mastery over Shatters instead of just more illusions. Might be too strong but Illusions isn’t really used in Power Shatter currently so might as well change things up.

It doesn’t seem odd to you that the Illusions tree doesn’t get one of these new illusion-generation traits?
Really though, this change has little to do with the clone-generating-trait concept, and is just an idea of how to make MoF competitive with Ineptitude.

@Alpha: Your take on the domination traits is highly flawed.

FI basically is never used. Now and then somebody takes it just to see how it goes, then ditches it for shattered concentration.

As far as trait competition goes, master tier of domination is perfect. Shattered concentration is arguably the strongest shatter trait Mesmer has. Aoe 5 target boon strip in multiple hit is insanely powerful, and works well in shatter builds…which are the types of builds that would also like to take an illusion generation trait.

EDIT: Going to keep editing this as new ideas form.

Hmm so this is becoming a thing now.

The one thing to note is it most likely will require an extensive amount of little tweaks here and there to Mesmer as a whole to take into account the possibility for extra illusion generation (so tweaking clones/phantasms/shatters etc).

Anyway here’s my revised structure (obviously still with a lot of things to work out).

Domination:
Induced Nightmare – summon a phantasm based on your current weapon set when you daze or interrupt an enemy (variable ICD depending on summoned phantasm skill cooldown) – replaces Imagined Burden.
Tree overview:
Adept – BI / Empowered Illusions / Rending Shatter
Master – Imagined Burden / CS / Shattered Concentration
Grandmaster – Induced Nightmare / PB+FI (merged) / MA

Duelling:
Deceptive Evasion – as normal.
Just needs buffs to Mistrust and HM

Chaos:
Banish Enchantment – whenever you hit an enemy who has at least three unique boons OR whenever you are hit by at least three unique conditions, summon an iDisenchanter (same ICD as the skill) – replaces Mirror of Anguish. Fall Damage trait move to PvE/WvW Mastery system (for every class).
Tree Overview:
Adept – MoM / ID / Mirror of Anguish
Master – CD / CT / Banish Enchantment
Grandmaster – CI / PU / BD

Inspiration
Mental Defence – reduce ICD and cooldown of the utility skill to 20s. Move to Master tier and swap with Restorative Illusions (which should be buffed to AoE cleanse and possibly AoE heal).
Tree Overview
Adept – MF / RM / PI
Master – WF / MD / PP
Grandmaster – Restorative Illusions / Illusionary Inspiration / TE

Illusions
Duplicity – whenever you use a skill that summons a clone, summon an additional clone (must be a native skill and not traited, suitable ICD) – replaces Malicious Sorcery.
Tree Overview:
Adept – Shattered Strength / PoM+PH (merged) / The Pledge
Master – MtD / Compounding Power / Malicious Sorcery
Grandmaster – Duplicity / MoF / Ineptitude

Chronomancer
Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma – the latter strictly speaking is also illusion generation on shatter. I agree that they should be both be grandmaster traits with Seize the Moment moving down to master tier, and then maintaining the original version of IR.

NOTES/QUESTIONS
- Potentially, Illusionary Defence and Compounding Power could be merged into one trait, leaving room for Descent into Madness to still exist in Chaos, I’d the Mastery system thing is not an option.
- Not sure about merging Furious Interruption with Power Block, but not sure where else it can go.
- Is Blurred Inscriptions in the right place?
- Rending Shatter should actually be ok with the increases shatter fodder and baseline IP.
- I strongly believe PU, CI and Bountiful Disillusionment should be mutually exclusive boon generators. Taking any two together would be way too powerful.
- Mirror of Anguish still needs a buff.
- The Illusion tree is very difficult to arrange because there’s so many possibilities even with the minor traits (ie free 20% cooldown on illusion skills and 33% confusion duration…).
- Inspiration phantasm traits (PI and PP) are meh… they don’t deserve two whole spots but not sure what to do right now.

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

Note that he moved Malicious Sorcery down to Master tier. So did I.
In fact, I don’t think anyone has suggested flat out removing Malicious Sorcery.

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

When I say replace it means a trait is moved elsewhere (see the Tree Overviews).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

Note that he moved Malicious Sorcery down to Master tier. So did I.
In fact, I don’t think anyone has suggested flat out removing Malicious Sorcery.

Correct, you kept malicious sorcery in title, but removed what makes it cool unless I’m missing something (attack speed increase). Again, I’m not convinced it’s GM worthy in it’s current state but decent enough to be kept.

Curunen’s Illusions suggestions – my bad and I think those would be good.

skcamow.3527:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

Note that he moved Malicious Sorcery down to Master tier. So did I.
In fact, I don’t think anyone has suggested flat out removing Malicious Sorcery.

Correct, you kept malicious sorcery in title, but removed what makes it cool unless I’m missing something (attack speed increase). Again, I’m not convinced it’s GM worthy in it’s current state but decent enough to be kept.

Curunen’s Illusions suggestions – my bad and I think those would be good.

Oh, yeah, I did do that.
To be fair, I believe that the 15% attack speed should just be baseline for scepter attacks. Scepter AA is just tooo sloooow.
I’d not be adverse to tossing Shattered Strength entirely, I just figured SS is weak enough to make a good MS side-effect, and it fits scepter’s role as a clone-generating weapon.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

Note that he moved Malicious Sorcery down to Master tier. So did I.
In fact, I don’t think anyone has suggested flat out removing Malicious Sorcery.

Correct, you kept malicious sorcery in title, but removed what makes it cool unless I’m missing something (attack speed increase). Again, I’m not convinced it’s GM worthy in it’s current state but decent enough to be kept.

Curunen’s Illusions suggestions – my bad and I think those would be good.

Oh, yeah, I did do that.
To be fair, I believe that the 15% attack speed should just be baseline for scepter attacks. Scepter AA is just tooo sloooow.
I’d not be adverse to tossing Shattered Strength entirely, I just figured SS is weak enough to make a good MS side-effect, and it fits scepter’s role as a clone-generating weapon.

Yeah – malicious sorcery baseline would be pretty strong, a great buff to the weapon. Not sure that’d ever happen but we can hope.

About shattered strength – I don’t think it’s weak at all; it’s one of three traits now (IB, BD, SS) which can provide reliable might generation and I’d never want to remove it. Pre-patch we just had shattered strength (GM minor) and bountiful interruption (non-guaranteed), so we have some great options now. What I especially like about it is even in a build without DE, you can still maintain a decent shatter cadence and maintain up to 10 stacks, assuming strength/hoelbrak runes and maybe a strength/battle sigil.

Whether it goes in master as current or swapped with compounding power as Curunen suggested is a wash to me. Both are strong traits.

Mental Defender is on a 25sec CD. Pretending this is a clone generation trait and saying Inspiration is fine makes me smile.
It is arguabily not even a good GM trait because of the very long CD. It should go down to 5 sec if you want it to be a valid DE alternative

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

skcamow.3527:

So much talk of replacing Malicious Sorcery. I like the concept; maybe not worth a GM but it’s a decent trait. I’d rather not flat out remove decent traits unless we can somehow get the malicious sorcery functionality added to scepter permanently.

Note that he moved Malicious Sorcery down to Master tier. So did I.
In fact, I don’t think anyone has suggested flat out removing Malicious Sorcery.

Correct, you kept malicious sorcery in title, but removed what makes it cool unless I’m missing something (attack speed increase). Again, I’m not convinced it’s GM worthy in it’s current state but decent enough to be kept.

Curunen’s Illusions suggestions – my bad and I think those would be good.

Oh, yeah, I did do that.
To be fair, I believe that the 15% attack speed should just be baseline for scepter attacks. Scepter AA is just tooo sloooow.
I’d not be adverse to tossing Shattered Strength entirely, I just figured SS is weak enough to make a good MS side-effect, and it fits scepter’s role as a clone-generating weapon.

As someone who’s trying to go power scepter I can’t stop wishing it wasn’t so slow. Baseline would be living the dream. >.<

trooper.2650:

Mental Defender is on a 25sec CD. Pretending this is a clone generation trait and saying Inspiration is fine makes me smile.
It is arguabily not even a good GM trait because of the very long CD. It should go down to 5 sec if you want it to be a valid DE alternative

Personally it’s not about direct alternatives for me, but thematically relevant traits that fit with the trait line. Duelling is about pumping out clones fast, Chaos about boon/condition management (hence the iDisenchanter), Inspiration about defence (hence the iDefender), Domination about… well… Dominating (hence the interrupt/daze proccing a phantasm), etc.

They don’t a have to generate the same frequency of illusions, but rather take into account the whole trait line and synergy so it makes sense.

I will agree that Mental Defence could be swapped with Restorative Illusions and also have the cooldown of the defender (and utility skill) lowered to 20s base. Thanks for the idea.

Curunen.8729:

I will agree that Mental Defence could be swapped with Restorative Illusions and also have the cooldown of the defender (and utility skill) lowered to 20s base. Thanks for the idea.

That sounds decent, then with the move to GM for restorative illusions it also gets the AoE cleansing back and maybe even add an AoE heal.

skcamow.3527:

Curunen.8729:

I will agree that Mental Defence could be swapped with Restorative Illusions and also have the cooldown of the defender (and utility skill) lowered to 20s base. Thanks for the idea.

That sounds decent, then with the move to GM for restorative illusions it also gets the AoE cleansing back and maybe even add an AoE heal.

Agreed – restoring Restorative Illusions (lol) to do AoE cleansing again would be super if moved back up to Grandmaster.

I think DE alone is enough, chrono’s clone on shatter is just icing on the cake. Frankly every class in game has a line they have to take for the sake of viability. Even if you don’t take DE dueling is mandatory in majority of builds.

Another thing to note is, if they already had to nerf Illusionary Reversion I think it would be a good example of where we’d go if we had strong clone generation in ALL spec lines.

However I do agree we could use more clone generation in some lines. For example I like the suggestion of clone on interrupt in domination tree. More ammo adds to your momentum and I think that is fitting with the domination line. I don’t however think it’s strong enough to compete with shattered concentration, or any of the GM options. So IMO it should swap with rending shatter if any.

Made a few changes to my ideas.

Hallucination now conjures two clones but has kitten ICD. Since interrupting depends on a lot on your opponent, just one clone seems really unreliable for illusion generation.

Overhauled my idea for Descent into Madness. I definitely understand not wanting to tie more things to Chaos Armour, in fact I originally wanted to tie it to Chaos Storm (which I’ve now gone back to). Reason I went with Chaos Armour was because we have a lot more access to it through Ethereal fields.

Reduced the number of boons required to trigger Discharge Enchantment to two. People primarily like Disenchanter for condition cleansing rather than boon stripping, so I figure it should be easier to conjure Disenchanter especially since it’s competing with Restorative Illusions.

The idea of boosting Shatter power with Master of Fragmentation is that you could get “full strength” Shatters with less illusions out. Obviously you can go beyond “full strength” by having three illusions, but a bit of versatility never hurts.

Man i hope they do this. Great ideas here

Just my 2c.

What if Rending Shatter (Domination line) is merged into Maim the Disillusioned (Illusions line). Apparently, we will not get the old MtD back (2 torment stacks per clone), so maybe it can use a differnt kind of buff like apply 1 stack of torment and vulnerability per clone at same time?

Rending Shatter on its own is VERY VERY WEAK, comparing to Confounding Suggestions… what a joke!!!

This ofc will free up 1 adept slot in Domination line and here we can put in a some sort of defensive clone generation trait if we stick with the general rule when picking a trait occupying same tier (dmg, control, or defensive).

How about when you get cc’d, automatically use Mirror Images to stunbreak and get 2 clones out. ICD is same as the utility skill itself?

I definitely like the idea of giving a viable alternative to DE in another trait line.

The biggest I see with giving every trait line access to huge clone generation like that is that then every mesmer build would have access to three illusion generation traits in every build.
While, obviously, they’d still have to actually take the trait, it would be way over the top for builds to be running DE in Dueling, Hallucination in Domination and Descent Into Madness in Chaos (To use the examples from the OP).
The illusion generation if someone took all three would be outrageous. Not to mention the huge amount of redundancy by having the same function preformed by every line.

What I would suggest is they add /one/ new Illusion Generation trait that is as viable as DE, but maybe in Inspiration or Chaos, two lines that aren’t designed to synergize quite as well with Dueling as Domination and Illusions are.