Guild Wars 2

Alrighty folks, this is gonna be a pretty long one, so buckle up.

What Would Change?

The biggest change is as follows:

Phantasms can only be damaged if either the phantasm itself or the Mesmer that owns it is targeted. Attacks used without a target will not deal damage to the phantasm.

That’s the core of the idea. In addition to that, phantasm hp would be reduced significantly, allowing for the phantasms to be destroyed much easier when actually targeted.

This would obviously be a pretty huge change, so I’m going to go through and try to analyze the effects it would have on every aspect of the game.

Why this mechanic?

I picked this mechanic because it already has an existing implementation in the game. One of the mistlock instabilities causes non-targeted mobs to take half damage. This means that implementing this idea wouldn’t be entirely new development, but could pull from an already existing mechanic.

Effect in a 1v1 (Self)

Not going to lie, phantasm builds and phantasms in general are going to take a hit here. Since either the Mesmer or their phantasms are generally targeted in a 1v1, this means that the damage reduction portion of the change will rarely activate, but phantasms will be easier to kill due to their lower health.

However, given the recent focus on incorporating shattering into most/all builds, I don’t see this as too huge of an issue. If a decent shatter cadence is maintained, phantasms should still last long enough to do their job and then shatter.

Effects in a 1v1 (others)

Folks fighting you won’t notice a huge difference here. Phantasms will squish easier, but they’ve always squished pretty quickly. The only time when this change might be noticed is if someone is attempting to simply spam aoe without bothering to choose a target cough d/d ele cough, in which case the phantasms will get a lot harder to kill.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (self)

This is where the change really starts to shine. Generally, team fights have enough aoe pressure that you’re lucky if a phantasm survives for more than one attack. With this change, the phantasms will be resilient unless directly targeted.

At this point, your personal positioning and playstyle starts to matter more as well. If you’re bunkering down on the point, you’ll be a main target and will be taking a lot of damage to your phantasms. If you’re more of a transient target playing a bursty role or more of a lockdown support, you’re going to be in a position to avoid that direct targeting most of the time, which lets your phantasms really do their job.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (others)

People are going to start noting that Mesmer phantasms actually do things if they’re left alone. Since the phantasms have low health, removing them will be as simple as a quick target and then autoattack, but it will be forcing a direct response to the attack rather than laying aoes as normal and letting that be sufficient defense from any phantasms.

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Effects in WvW Groups (self)

This is one of the areas where the most marked improvements will occur. Currently phantasms are guaranteed to die instantly upon their use (instantly minus one second with protected phantasms). With this change, the phantasms will remain as dangerous attacks until targeted and killed. Since targeting the Mesmer itself will be rare in this environment, it means that the phantasm will need to be the entity that gets targeted.

This will put mesmers on a much more even footing with most other classes in respect to area damage (yes, even with chrono wells). This will allow us to use aoe phantasms such as the zerker and the warden to actually act as a more persistent aoe similar to what other classes can do. It also allows for a boost to the strike team role as it lets single target phantasms perform their job, whereas they simply die before even getting an attack off right now.

Effects in WvW Groups (other)

People are going to start noticing phantasms now, and will need to react to them. If you put a lava font or meteor shower or combustive shot or any other strong aoe near a group, it forces a reaction of some sort, whether to move or block or otherwise mitigate it. Now, phantasms will cause that too, in the form of targeting and then killing. This will be a new aspect of response that hasn’t ever been needed before, and people will probably take a bit of time to adjust to it.

Effects in PvE

This one I’m most unsure about, primarily because I don’t know if monsters use a targeting schema that lines up with how players do. However, I’m going to assume that they do, and analyze it based on that.

Random aoes and cleaving attacks will no longer deal damage to phantasms, as they must be targeted. If the boss actually turns and munches on it it’ll die, but not other than that. Additionally, this actually makes it advantageous for the Mesmer to not have aggro from the boss, since that targeting would also allow the phantasms to die. This may be particularly helpful in raids, as aggro mechanics have been suggested as being an addition here.

Overall in PvE, this change provides a decisive mechanic that a Mesmer can use to sustain their phantasms much more effectively. It’s not perfect survivability and isn’t intended as such, but will drastically improve the damage capabilities of Mesmer in PvE.

Fringe Cases

This section is pretty much just about the pDefender. Unlike the other phantasms, this phantasm functions purely off of being an hp sponge for your group. This means that the hp reduction inherent to this change would not allow it to work.

I’m not entirely sure how it should be handled quite honestly. The change could simply not apply to it, or apply in some sort of limited aspect without the hp reduction, or its specific mitigation mechanic could be modified.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it. This suggestion, if implemented, would completely revamp the function and form of phantasm survivability in this game, pushing it from purely health-based, which scales poorly in PvE and WvW, but too strongly in PvP and 1v1, to a mechanic based system that scales appropriately throughout all game types. This change would not have a negative impact on the abilities of others to fight a focused battle with a Mesmer, but would enhance Mesmer offense in the areas that it is typically extremely weak in: large fights and PvE.

As always, I’m open to suggestions on how to improve this idea.

While I certainly appreciate the idea, I think this:

Fay.2357:

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Is going to be difficult to do, and will prevent Anet from implementing anything of the sort. The fact that Phantasms are invulnerable unless targeted (or the Mesmer is targeted) has to be communicated in-game, but how?

It can’t just be a one-time announcement as that won’t help new players. *cough*Illusionary Persona*cough*

Oh my…

…that’s amazing. :o

I support this wholeheartedly – solves PvE and a number of other issues in one stroke.

I can’t think of anything wrong with this idea… It’s perfect. Actually improves counter-play againt mesmers in 1v1 (where we are our strongest) and dramatically improves how crappy we perform everywhere else. I support this.

I’d rather the person needs to target the phantasm directly to need to damage it.

Engineers can already target a mesmer and spam aoe, and teams will simply adjust in GvG to target call a mesmer and cleave off him, which makes little change. So melee mesmers not camping greatsword would not be served too well.

The whole point of phantasms is that they were supposed to be hexes, that you needed to attack directly instead of the mesmer to dispel.

Problem is in GW2 single target attacks are few and far in between, and people get so much aoe/cleave freebies to hit both the mesmer and phantasm with.

So just make pets/minions/illusions/spirit weapons/ranger spirits AOE IMMUNE unless directly targeted for attack.

One potential glaring issue I see is that if this is done for phantasms, how about minions, pets, spirits, on and on and on … I know there are innate differences depending on the comparison, but I think this would have to be addressed.

skcamow.3527:

One potential glaring issue I see is that if this is done for phantasms, how about minions, pets, spirits, on and on and on … I know there are innate differences depending on the comparison, but I think this would have to be addressed.

Minions/pets/spirits apply the same principle. AoE immunity.

AI is dumb and can’t dodge/block/invuln aoe or cleave, so it should be immune to it. If you wanna get rid of the pet/minion/spirit, target it directly.

@Zenith: I felt that aoe should still be a viable option when dealing with phantasms, but it shouldn’t be possible to simply spam aoe without actually paying attention. This change makes it so that the person using the aoe actually has to pay attention to you and your phantasms or risk losing target, and therefor damage.

@Embolism: I was thinking of several actions. First, phantasm tooltips should be updated to contain something along the lines of ‘phantasms can only be damaged by targeting themselves or the Mesmer’. Additionally, phantasms should have a permanent visible buff saying ‘this entity can be damaged while targeted directly or while the Mesmer is targeted’. You’d also include this stuff in patch notes of course.

@Skcamow: I think this solution would work effectively for necromancer minions without modification. Since ranger spirits can’t move anymore, I think this would work well for them too. Ranger pets are a little tougher since there’s such a wide range in their characteristics (defense/damage/mobility), and I’d shy away from recommending this system for them without modifications.

I think this idea is reasonable. It is not a straight “immune against AOE” which would be a bad idea, but still helps. However, I don’t think the HP needs to be reduced. I think they are already EXTREMELY low (3000HP???), so just this change would be enough.

Phantasms are already 1shot in most situations, so reduction of hp further doesn’t actually impact them…but it makes this change an easier pill to swallow for the folks who will go ‘Mesmers getting buffs?! Oh hell naw!’

I was thinking about something really similar just a few days ago, although I was reasoning more on a huge damage reduction (say, 99%) when the phantasm wasn’t targeted. Or the other way around, give them a huge health pool, but they take 10x damage when targeted.

If a similar change affected clones as well, it would fix my biggest grievance with Sword and the Shatter mechanic in large scale fights (and make me extremely happy).

I like the idea!

My only issue is that it could be confusing for new players or specific weapons. A flamethrower or grenade engi may not target foes directly so suddenly tossing everything it has under a phantasm and seeing no result could be super confusing.

Some alternate options I’d also be open to that follow the theme:
-Not immunity to damage, but a healthy damage reduction to AoE attacks in general. 30-50% damage reduction to area effect attacks, no impact on single target ones.
-Give illusions a stack or two of stability when commanded to shatter.
-Use some of the impressive new AI that’s coming with HoT to make minions avoid clustering up and give all illusions a priority to stay at range and avoid AoE attacks (I’m looking at you, shield phantasm)

I’m sure I mentioned the mistlock instability in another thread not too long ago about protecting phantasms from bosses.

Anyway nice write up, it certainly solves problems with bosses and scaling up in WvW and team fights. “Only takes damage when targeted” is a nice and simple explanation of it however it doesn’t include the part about targeting the mesmer too. I don’t think it would be too strong to require people to target phantasms (but not the Mesmer) to kill them, especially if they had clone levels of HP and could essentially be killed by a single crit.

There may need to be a reduction in burst damage if phantasms were to stay alive a lot longer. I guess I could manage with MoP on trash mobs if something like this was added.

As for PDefender, make it a flat 50% damage reduction but not taken out of PDefenders health pool. The counter play is there as you can destroy it easily. Would also make it a ranged phantasm so it doesn’t face rub an enemy (as you say) going “kill me kill me”.

apharma.3741:

I’m sure I mentioned the mistlock instability in another thread not too long ago about protecting phantasms from bosses.

Yeah, you did. I’ve had this writeup ready to go for about a week and a half now, but couldn’t post it for…uh…reasons.

I am going to say that this is a terrible idea because it will make fighting phantasm annoying and unfun.

A better solution is to buff Protected phantasm to 2-3 seconds. It’ll be enough for a phantasm to make one attack, then you use a clone production skill/dodge and then shatter. This will work in large group situation.

Phantasm doesn’t need to immortal.

Embolism.8106:

While I certainly appreciate the idea, I think this:

Fay.2357:

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Is going to be difficult to do, and will prevent Anet from implementing anything of the sort. The fact that Phantasms are invulnerable unless targeted (or the Mesmer is targeted) has to be communicated in-game, but how?

It can’t just be a one-time announcement as that won’t help new players. *cough*Illusionary Persona*cough*

Meh, not hardly enough reason not to do it. People learn by doing, and targeting and applying damage via attacks compared to not-targeting and failing to get an effect is the most basic science it’s not even fair to call it that.

We’re talking on the level of “If I hold my breath my body starts screaming for air” sort of knowledge. “If I draw breath consistantly, my body is happy.” COME ON.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Embolism.8106:

While I certainly appreciate the idea, I think this:

Fay.2357:

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Is going to be difficult to do, and will prevent Anet from implementing anything of the sort. The fact that Phantasms are invulnerable unless targeted (or the Mesmer is targeted) has to be communicated in-game, but how?

It can’t just be a one-time announcement as that won’t help new players. *cough*Illusionary Persona*cough*

Meh, not hardly enough reason not to do it. People learn by doing, and targeting and applying damage via attacks compared to not-targeting and failing to get an effect is the most basic science it’s not even fair to call it that.

We’re talking on the level of “If I hold my breath my body starts screaming for air” sort of knowledge. “If I draw breath consistantly, my body is happy.” COME ON.

Bear in mind that Anet doesn’t want Gravity Well to pulse both positive and negative effects or iAvenger to apply Slow and Alacrity through two different methods because it would be “confusing”.

I think having your AoEs sometimes kill Phantasms and sometimes cause lots of “Immune” to pop up (because you’re targeting/not targeting the Mesmer) during the chaos of team fights would be worse. Certainly no barrier for intelligent players, but we all know how intelligent the average player is.

And a buff icon on Phantasms isn’t going to help in these situations, few people have time to mouse over buff icons during a team fight and again, most players just ignore those. It will have to be something obvious like combat floating text, but I can’t think of anything concise enough to describe “immune unless targeted or if owner is targeted”.

I know this all sounds like catering to the lowest common denominator, but that’s how Anet rolls.

Just make the phantasms immune to aoe. Make them vulnerable when directly targeted. It’s that simple.

It’s a hex you need to directly beat on to dispel. That was the whole point of illusions, to force to to choose attacking the mesmer or the illusions.

Unfortunately in this game you can attack both rather casually and profit.

Sorry Pyro, only damageable if targetted probably won’t happen because its too gimmicky for new/casual players. Can’t speak for developmental implementation though.

Love the idea though, thematically makes sense as well. Phantasm and clones are meant to be illusions in someone else’s mind and it makes no sense for victim’s ally to see and break illusions with random AoE. It explains why our illusions will always die if our target dies, but as it stands now we’re more like a semi-summoner than mind trickster.

The first post is a really good suggestion. Illusions should take less damage if they’re not targeted, especially phantasms. Such a mechanism already exists in fractals and in Twilight Arbor (fwd : archers behave differenly of they’re targeted or not).

There is just one thing I don’t agree with : AoE damage reduction.
AoE are AoE, and a lava font (and all other ground-targeted skills) hitting multiple foes should keep doing this.
However I don’t consider cleaving skills as proper AoE, so in that case, illusions should take reduced damages from cleaving if not targeted.

I think this change would certainly be extremely powerful, and since my mouse is kitten, it would disproportianately effect me! You should see how long it takes for me to retarget the ranger after a taunt proc. Other than that though, I’d be all for this as its sound and skillful on paper, but it would get tons of hate from people that can’t adapt very well.

The other solution is to buff the phatasm distortion trait that gets rarely used.. but I like pyro’s idea better.

Something which has been suggested several times already and I’m in full support for. However, I don’t think that pets should not take any damage at all when not targeted. A harsh damage reduction is okay. But not immunity.

Of course, this should apply to all AIs. However, Ranger Pets and Illusions might need a special treatment. There is a huge difference between a Beastmaster or Phantasm-Mesmer and, for example, a Minion Master who just clutter the screens with pets.

I think we can all agree that phantasms needs to be reworked but for a change to go through (from a devs perspective), we have to consider and eliminate any risks for abuse that the change might introduce.

The first thing I considered was how your proposed change would stand up in all mesmer parties. Is there a possibility that an all mesmer party can be considered OP in a dungeon or sPVP game? Or how about a 20 mesmer WvW group?

In a dungeon, I think a 5 man mesmer party would probably face too little risk; considering how slow mobs attack, relative to how fast 5 mesmers would be able to generate clones/phantasms. I’m not sure if this is necessarily a problem though since 5 rangers with beefy tank pets could probably pull off the same thing.

I certainly agree with the basic premise of improving Phantasm survivability vs. AE/cleave, but I think this is overly complex and unintuitive for both the Mesmer and the enemy. It also carries a major downside to Phantasm survivability vs. direct attacks, which IMO is already weak and doesn’t need to get any worse.

You mentioned this part:

“One of the mistlock instabilities causes non-targeted mobs to take half damage. "

So why all the other complex rules, when you already found a much easier solution? Simply make Phantasms take half damage from indirect AE/cleave. Done!

I realize this won’t solve all problems entirely, especially from a WvW PoV, but it’s a big step in the right direction with much less risk of breaking things.

Also, I personally don’t think it’s reasonable to ask for any sort of complete immunity to AE, even with added trade-offs elsewhere. I think the goal should simply be to give Phantasms a bit more of a fighting chance in low-to-medium AE/cleave environments.

I also think the Distortion on summon trait should be baseline, with the trait adding an additional 1s Distortion. Between 2s of Distortion on summon, and 50% immunity to cleave, I personally think Phantasm survivability would be fine.

I’m not against this change but given all the NPE stuff, as easy as it might seem to be for us on the mesmer forum to understand, I don’t think anet would do this because it would be too big of a change.

runeblade.7514:

I am going to say that this is a terrible idea because it will make fighting phantasm annoying and unfun.

A better solution is to buff Protected phantasm to 2-3 seconds. It’ll be enough for a phantasm to make one attack, then you use a clone production skill/dodge and then shatter. This will work in large group situation.

Phantasm doesn’t need to immortal.

I think going this route is a lot better than aoe resistance/immunity.

However, I think it would be better for phantasms to just gain distortion when the mesmer dodges. Similar to Companion’s defense for rangers that gives protection to pets when they dodge. Alternatively, looking at ranger traits, barkskin is kind of the aoe resistance people could ask for but I think it would have to be something that is traited.

The reason I like distortion on dodge is that it’s perfect for PvE problems. Mesmers dodge the aoe while phantasms evade as well. Distortion can be given to illusions as already shown by Protected phantasms. It’s easy to understand what’s happening on the PvP side of things and seems fair. I think it should be specifically for phantasms as DE and this might be a bit too much for shatter spikes…. speaking of DE

Mistrust: When you dodge, your illusions gain distortion. When illusions evade attacks, they cause 2 stacks of AOE confusion.

This would be a contender for DE while sort of bringing back a clone death/immortal mesmer style of build but more active. It would make people question dropping AOEs on a mesmer with a ton of illusions up. Defender might be able to “double evade” an attack but that’s iffy.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I’m not against this change but given all the NPE stuff, as easy as it might seem to be for us on the mesmer forum to understand, I don’t think anet would do this because it would be too big of a change.

runeblade.7514:

I am going to say that this is a terrible idea because it will make fighting phantasm annoying and unfun.

A better solution is to buff Protected phantasm to 2-3 seconds. It’ll be enough for a phantasm to make one attack, then you use a clone production skill/dodge and then shatter. This will work in large group situation.

Phantasm doesn’t need to immortal.

I think going this route is a lot better than aoe resistance/immunity.

However, I think it would be better for phantasms to just gain distortion when the mesmer dodges. Similar to Companion’s defense for rangers that gives protection to pets when they dodge. Alternatively, looking at ranger traits, barkskin is kind of the aoe resistance people could ask for but I think it would have to be something that is traited.

The reason I like distortion on dodge is that it’s perfect for PvE problems. Mesmers dodge the aoe while phantasms evade as well. Distortion can be given to illusions as already shown by Protected phantasms. It’s easy to understand what’s happening on the PvP side of things and seems fair. I think it should be specifically for phantasms as DE and this might be a bit too much for shatter spikes…. speaking of DE

Mistrust: When you dodge, your illusions gain distortion. When illusions evade attacks, they cause 2 stacks of AOE confusion.

This would be a contender for DE while sort of bringing back a clone death/immortal mesmer style of build but more active. It would make people question dropping AOEs on a mesmer with a ton of illusions up. Defender might be able to “double evade” an attack but that’s iffy.

That’s a very interesting proposition, and I’m going to spend time thinking about it.

Unfortunately, it’s not generally the dodge alone that keeps players alive, but the dodge out of harm’s way. Even gaining evade, the illusions will still be standing in the aoe, free for the killing afterward. That’s one reason the ranger traits aren’t actually enough for rangers: because the pets are still standing in danger when the protection ends.

Lastly, I’ve always felt the idea that “you have to trait it” to make up for a fundamental flaw of a class is bullkitten. Like insisting that not having enough clone generation is okay because we can take Deceptive Evasion, putting a specific trait in a specific tree that is required to resolve a fundamental flaw with every build in the class is terrible design.

If it’s a long lasting aoe that kills illusions, I’m kind of ok with that. I would say the problem for ranger pets is more that protection doesn’t keep a glass pet alive vs a 1 hit ko. Distortion would be fine for Mesmers that time their dodes wells and although not perfect would be a major improvement for pve.

Thinking about the mistrust remake I recommended, zerker and swordsman do have built in evades that can further proc it. Would master of fragmentation cause reflect on illusion distortion? It wouldn’t have to be confusion for the aoe dmg.

I’m ok with traiting in for stuff. DE problem is more so that there are no good alternatives but chronomancer is somewhat fixing that. I think illusion aoe resistance in that sense should be traited for because most pvp builds are viable without it already.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

If it’s a long lasting aoe that kills illusions, I’m kind of ok with that. I would say the problem for ranger pets is more that protection doesn’t keep a glass pet alive vs a 1 hit ko. Distortion would be fine for Mesmers that time their dodes wells and although not perfect would be a major improvement for pve.

Thinking about the mistrust remake I recommended, zerker and swordsman do have built in evades that can further proc it. Would master of fragmentation cause reflect on illusion distortion? It wouldn’t have to be confusion for the aoe dmg.

I’m ok with traiting in for stuff. DE problem is more so that there are no good alternatives but chronomancer is somewhat fixing that. I think illusion aoe resistance in that sense should be traited for because most pvp builds are viable without it already.

Why are you OK with that?

Virtually every single dynamic event in Verdant brink has persistent lethal AoE, as do several fractal bosses.

How is it ok for our mechanic to be unfairly punished because of encounter design that doesn’t specifically penalize classes that don’t rely on AI?

I always find it funny that PVE is lumped as one giant category while PVP is broken down. As someone who likes to be able to solo on his mesmer, simply no thanks. I mean for PVP it sounds fantastic, no more getting your illusions cleaved down or pierced through unless they’re attacking you specifically… yeah nice. But, when I’m so often on the top of the agro list in PVE content, yeah, no thanks, I don’t like the idea of even weaker illusions.

@Zenith, I don’t really care for open world zergy combat and when I do it, I’ll just spam MoP/shatters if I’m on my mesmer.

Furthermore, persistent lethal AoE doesn’t only punish mesmers. It’s a mechanism of zone control that punishes most melee builds to move away from a stack or force ranged characters to stop channeling powerful spells. So it doesn’t bother me that a phantasm would die to that because it doesn’t only punish the dps of AI builds.

Also, if it really is pulsing aoe then they are going to die no matter what even with 50% or whatever resistance. Permanent immunity is just… no. I play all parts of the game and I agree with Anet on parity between them, especially on something like this.

See, the thing is, this won’t really increase illusion survivability. It would probably just make the already thin as paper illusions die faster because all that needs to happen is you get hit with some tiny damage and they are done for. That being said it would be nice to have illusions not die quite so fast somehow.

Jerus.4350:

I always find it funny that PVE is lumped as one giant category while PVP is broken down. As someone who likes to be able to solo on his mesmer, simply no thanks. I mean for PVP it sounds fantastic, no more getting your illusions cleaved down or pierced through unless they’re attacking you specifically… yeah nice. But, when I’m so often on the top of the agro list in PVE content, yeah, no thanks, I don’t like the idea of even weaker illusions.

What PvE content do you do on a regular basis that doesn’t 1shot the phantasms already? If you’re just talking about roaming in the open world…that’s hardly challenging enough content to bother worrying about.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@Zenith, I don’t really care for open world zergy combat and when I do it, I’ll just spam MoP/shatters if I’m on my mesmer.

Furthermore, persistent lethal AoE doesn’t only punish mesmers. It’s a mechanism of zone control that punishes most melee builds to move away from a stack or force ranged characters to stop channeling powerful spells. So it doesn’t bother me that a phantasm would die to that because it doesn’t only punish the dps of AI builds.

Also, if it really is pulsing aoe then they are going to die no matter what even with 50% or whatever resistance. Permanent immunity is just… no. I play all parts of the game and I agree with Anet on parity between them, especially on something like this.

That’s just false. For one, leveling your masteries demands grinding DE open world. It;s not like you’re gonna avoid it. And I’m not gonna go and be dead weight by just using MoP spam; I hate these kind of people as much as the leeching staff guardians and the rangers and necromancer who fear/knock back everything from melee.

On the front of persistent AoE punishing melee, not even close. My reaper and guardian were both able to stay for prolonged amounts of time, and unlike mesmer their DPS was not immediately kitten.

I mean, you’re gonna be meleeing anyways on your mesmer, so if you’re gonna argue that it punishes melee, it punishes mesmer doubly so as the mesmer loses DPS effectiveness far earlier than the other melee.

But if you want parity, and by parity meaning be a totally worthless DPS class in PvE and just an alacrity/quickness buffbot, knock yourself out.

If phantasms could be damaged if not targeted, that means bounce attacks are not effective on phantasms as long as they are not the primary target of the player characters. This change would have impact on not only mesmers’ skills rely on bounce attacks, but also bounce attack skills from other profession such as guardian focus healing skills. If ANet accept this suggested change, does it also means phantasms should be healed or received boons through bounce attacks?

To keep phantasms alive through aoe, it might be easier for us to ask ANet to enable phantasms actively walk away from aoe circles. I read that in the early design bosses can walk away from aoe. But this behavior is disable because of the complained from beta testers. So the technology for AI to walk away from aoe is existed in the engine. Given that all pets AI have improved since june feature pack while not benefiting Mesmer’s illusions, asking ANet to enable phantasms’ ability to actively avoid aoe damage should be to much work for them to do.

Doug Whisper.2465:

If phantasms could be damaged if not targeted, that means bounce attacks are not effective on phantasms as long as they are not the primary target of the player characters. This change would have impact on not only mesmers’ skills rely on bounce attacks, but also bounce attack skills from other profession such as guardian focus healing skills. If ANet accept this suggested change, does it also means phantasms should be healed or received boons through bounce attacks?

To keep phantasms alive through aoe, it might be easier for us to ask ANet to enable phantasms actively walk away from aoe circles. I read that in the early design bosses can walk away from aoe. But this behavior is disable because of the complained from beta testers. So the technology for AI to walk away from aoe is existed in the engine. Given that all pets AI have improved since june feature pack while not benefiting Mesmer’s illusions, asking ANet to enable phantasms’ ability to actively avoid aoe damage should be to much work for them to do.

lol pets will die immediately, walking out of aoe that ticks for 10k+ damage a tick is not in the realm of possibility, plus it actively crowd controls your phantasm and keeps him from attacking while it runs away from the aoe.

And no, I don’t want bouncing attacks wasted on phantasms, especially since your phantasms scale from YOUR stats, and players benefit far more from the boons.

If phantasms take no damage but can still be hit and thus have the projectile bounce on them (and crit for 0 damage) it’s not exactly bad. Remember this is the type of AoE phantasms need protecting from too.

A good way of thinking about it is the grawl shaman before he jumps in the lava. With his bubble up a PS warrior can still crit him for 0 damage and get all on crit traits including might for himself and allies. So people would still benefit from on crit and on hit, bounces can still go around it’s just they won’t take any damage from them unless targeted. It would be all kinds of bullkitten if the projectiles hit and just disappeared though…

Fay.2357:

I’ve had this writeup ready to go for about a week and a half now, but couldn’t post it for…uh…reasons.

Hmmm interesting, might we be in for a pleasant surprise in BW3 or HoT?

Honestly Fay, I’d go one step further. Phantasms should just die in a single hit.

But it has to be a targeted, active, hit, with the Phantasm as the target. No random cleave, no bounces, no AE, pet is ok if set to attack this target, that’s it. In return, the effort would be immediately rewarded with a destroyed Phantasm.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly Fay, I’d go one step further. Phantasms should just die in a single hit.

But it has to be a targeted, active, hit, with the Phantasm as the target. No random cleave, no bounces, no AE, pet is ok if set to attack this target, that’s it. In return, the effort would be immediately rewarded with a destroyed Phantasm.

In which case the cooldowns would need to be reduced.

The amount of times random trash mobs decide to directly attack my phantasm would completely kitten phantasms in PvE.

Or we could simply have a hit counter. Each hit reduces the phantasm HP by a percentage, make it 33-50% (so dispel in 2-3 direct hits).

Or that. Numbers up to balance ofc. But I think I’d decouple it from the damage amount, since that also fits better “lorewise” with how it’d work in PvP. Yes they’re an illusion but the target has to make an actual effort to “disbelief” them, kinda.

Zenith.7301:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@Zenith, I don’t really care for open world zergy combat and when I do it, I’ll just spam MoP/shatters if I’m on my mesmer.
…

That’s just false. For one, leveling your masteries demands grinding DE open world. It;s not like you’re gonna avoid it. And I’m not gonna go and be dead weight by just using MoP spam; I hate these kind of people as much as the leeching staff guardians and the rangers and necromancer who fear/knock back everything from melee.

If you really want to talk about open world stuff, fine. I plan to load up on all the exp boosters possible and grind that stuff out as fast as possible. As for MoP being useless, I feel bad for sheep like you that so blindly follow the dungeon meta (I did help push this for mesmers so I’m sorry) that you forget you aren’t in dungeons anymore when doing dynamic events.

Sword has a 130 frontal cone cleave and can hit max 3 targets.
MoP has a 240 RADIUS and can hit 5 targets.

First, sword requires the 3rd chain hit to be competitive and when so many enemies die before you get near them, it won’t happen all the time in open world. 2nd, there isn’t corner stacking in dynamic events and pulls are a lot less effective when so many enemies have break bars. So the chance of that tiny cleave hitting 3 targets is small while MoP is capable of hitting a lot more targets with ease.
Minor math on them:
Sword: (0.6+0.6+1.1)/2.48 = 0.93 coeffs/sec. Then multiply by 3
MoP: (1+1+1)/2.75 = 1.09 coeffs/sec. Then multiply by 5

While there is a “3 second CD,” use two fingers at the same time to discharge MoP while also using other skills like GS#2/3/4, or even scepter #3/phantasms. Wells and shatters work as well. Even fill the gap with sword auto. Furthermore, if you have a sword equipped, MoP will proc both HM and FF bonuses. In fact each MoP discharge can proc 5 stacks of FF.

So best case scenario for the sword vs MoP, sword does “only” ~10% less than MoP+sword attacks. Worst case for sword which can happen a lot in open world dynamic events, it can easy do 20-80% worst than a build that uses MoP. It may have come across as shallow to say I spam MoP but it’s really not.

Personally, I think buffing Phantasm survivability is not the right way to fix Mesmer DPS. It might work, but it also:
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• Reinforces the idea that the Mesmer is a pet class.

• Widens the gap between Phantasms and Shatters.
  .

IMO, what Phantasms need are:
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• An on-conjure effect so most of their power is frontloaded, making keeping them alive not as important.

• An on-Shatter effect for obvious reasons, and again making it less attractive to keep them alive if doing so means losing DPS from on-Shatter (and further on-conjure) effects.
  .

This way Phantasm play becomes much more active, and the transient nature of Phantasms becomes a non-issue.

Of course Phantasms still need to be able to survive for at least a few seconds… as suggested a few times, Protected Phantasms should be baseline (and probably improved too, 1s Distortion isn’t quite enough).

Zenith.7301:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Also, if it really is pulsing aoe then they are going to die no matter what even with 50% or whatever resistance. Permanent immunity is just… no. I play all parts of the game and I agree with Anet on parity between them, especially on something like this.

On the front of persistent AoE punishing melee, not even close. My reaper and guardian were both able to stay for prolonged amounts of time, and unlike mesmer their DPS was not immediately kitten.

Zenith.7301:

lol pets will die immediately, walking out of aoe that ticks for 10k+ damage a tick is not in the realm of possibility, plus it actively crowd controls your phantasm and keeps him from attacking while it runs away from the aoe.

Explain to me how a meta zerker guardian with 12k health survives for prolonged amounts of time while inside those 10k+ damage a tick aoes?

Before you say active defense though:

Mistrust: When you dodge, your illusions gain distortion. When illusions evade attacks, they cause 2 stacks of AOE confusion.

I am recommending active defense for them. When someone like asham drops a meteor shower on a group stacked in melee because someone in your group doesn’t understand tells and aggros, how does that not punish melee only builds? If anything mesmers have it better because they can “range” even with those pure melee builds by summoning phantasms from 1200 range and spamming something like… MoP from 1200 range.

You keep championing for increased mesmer damage but in the wrong way. Recommend a new elite spec that nerfs phantasm damage and buffs the mesmer’s base damage like I did here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Speculations-on-future-Mesmer-Specializations/first#post5485828

One of the biggest issues I actually have with this target/no target immunity stuff is how strong and broken body blocking would be. Glass mesmers wouldn’t even need wardens to negate projectiles like they did in the past. Put any phantasm down. Put party behind it. LoL at pathetic encounter design.

I don’t know what crappy guardians you run with, but mace+focus and communal defenses is so brokenly OP. I feel sorry you haven’t played with a half competent one.

Meteor Shower on Ashrym is not even an issue if you’re familiar with the tick damage intervals, and for some reason you seem to equate HP with sustainability despite the fact that the two most durable classes in the game that also make the best bunkers happen to be the two lowest health professions.

Meanwhile necromancer sits at high health like the warrior yet it has the worst sustainability of all the classes because being a sponge does not equate to recovery options and active mitigation.

P.S. if you put the party behind the illusions, the mob is already inclined to prioritize aggro by proximity, dispelling the illusion… not to mention the deadliest attacks from most bosses are not the projectiles but the melee cleaves.

In the case of Mai Trin or Archdiviner, and especially mossman, their projectiles actually pierce sometimes, and in the case of mossman the projectile bounces and hurts more people the more people stacked up.

I mean, clones can already body block, but it’s so unreliable to begin with and a total waste of time when you can just reflect or let the guardian bodyblock with mace 3 and give everyone aegis in the process thanks to that use of bodyblocking that also protects against melee cleave.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know what crappy guardians you run with, but mace+focus and communal defenses is so brokenly OP. I feel sorry you haven’t played with a half competent one.

Meteor Shower on Ashrym is not even an issue if you’re familiar with the tick damage intervals, and for some reason you seem to equate HP with sustainability despite the fact that the two most durable classes in the game that also make the best bunkers happen to be the two lowest health professions.

Meanwhile necromancer sits at high health like the warrior yet it has the worst sustainability of all the classes because being a sponge does not equate to recovery options and active mitigation.

P.S. if you put the party behind the illusions, the mob is already inclined to prioritize aggro by proximity, dispelling the illusion… not to mention the deadliest attacks from most bosses are not the projectiles but the melee cleaves.

In the case of Mai Trin or Archdiviner, and especially mossman, their projectiles actually pierce sometimes, and in the case of mossman the projectile bounces and hurts more people the more people stacked up.

I specifically did not equate HP to defense. I was stressing the importance of active defense and how HP doesn’t mean much. 50% resistance to aoe is effectively a 100% increase to vitality. It won’t do kitten for illusions staying alive. That’s why I was recommending distortion for illusions when the mesmer dodges to give active defense to illusions.

Piercing projectiles don’t pierce when they hit a wall. An immune to damage target would effectively be a wall that could even block unblockable projectiles. You can stand right behind the illusion and due high damage and be in close proximity to maintain aggro. I’m not saying it would break every boss but bosses like the legendary grawl shaman would be stupid easy. You can stand inside illusions while maintaining aggro. Aims for you, hits illusions but they’re immune since they aren’t the target. None of the illusions die to his dive bombs because they are all untargeted aoe. Bosses like Old Tom “require” tanks like earth eles but this would allow for a single clone to tank the whole attack. This game has too many wonky mechanics for immunity to aoe to not break so much stuff.

And yet immune does not mean it becomes a wall. Look at the grawl shaman, bounce attacks still work off him despite being immune, as do trait procs (which is why phalanx warriors attack the bubble still, it shows immune but the crits still register for the trait so they keep stacking might).

I mean you keep bringing bosses for which the bodyblock already works. Against the grawl shaman all you need is a clone per arrow cast, which has large enough intervals to be trivial to begin with as anyone even without vigor can dodge all arrows 100% of the time, so not even bodyblocking is needed.

Against Old Tom having a clone tank the projectiles is no different than laying down a sanctuary or parking an earth ele. It’s the same end result. And the problem is not with using the clone/ele to bodyblock, but with an encounter design that places the bulk of the danger on a blockable projectile.

I don’t even understand why you think that the grawl shaman using a divebomb on immune clones is a problem, in fact it’s one of the most frustrating things as a mesmer when a dumb guardian triggers the proximity dive bomb and guts all your illusion damage.

In fact your gimmicky solution for dodging solves nothing since you can’t permanently keep dodging boss melee autoattacks so after 2 dodges your illusions will still die to the next autoattack.

It’s the same reason why the ranger suggestion of “the pet dodges with you” is terrible, since pets have different positioning that may require them to dodge when you don’t need to, forcing you to waste a dodge/distortion when you yourself don’t need it.

Same principle applies to ranger heals, the pet not having his won heal and forcing the ranger to waste his own heal to heal a pet. It’s a disadvantage for no reason whatsoever.