Guild Wars 2

I think that mesmer, especially base mesmer, has a design problem in that so much of our personal damage is tied up in phantasms, yet we suffer from 2 large barriers on phantasms: it takes a while (compared to other classes power based builds) to get 3 phantasms out and start dealing our full damage potential (not to mention all of this setup being nullified as soon as we kill that 1 enemy), and our class mechanic actively destroys these phantasms, without giving us a significant enough boost for it.

I started another thread to address the first problem, where I originally suggested that phantasms should persist outside of combat, and after some discussion I agreed with others that it would be better for phantasms to be able to retarget if we are still in combat when their target dies. For the second problem, phantasm generation, I also have an idea that I think would solve it without being overpowered and still keep with the concept of mesmer as a class (AKA its not fundamentally changing the shatter mechanic).

I think that Chronophantasma should be made baseline to core mesmer, and in return all illusion generating traits are changed (and possibly PoM being changed or nerfed slightly to balance that chronophantasma would be baseline). This means IR, Desperate Decoy, Deceptive Evasion, and Mental Defense.

What this would do is enable us to use our class mechanic without immediately destroying our main sources of power damage. The removal of illusion generating traits should reduce illusion spam by a substantial amount, even for base mesmer (deceptive evasion makes generating clones trivial), so I think that it would be balanced from that perspective. Base mesmer gets an indirect damage boost, both core mesmer and chronomancers lose the ability to spam illusions via traits which would reduce shatter spam at the same time.

I think this is a fairly balanced request, we gain something and we lose something. I also think it fixes one of the problems outlined above and would improve the design of the class as a whole, but like always I welcome discussion over this to see what other people think.

Making illusions persist throughout combat via retargeting is still an absolute must… it was a must on day one, and it’s still a must today… and it will still be a must after another 4 years of ANet ignoring us on this…

making Chronophantasma baseline is a nice idea… it would definately help with the annoyance of losing phantasms for shatter…

I’m not so sure about the rest…

personally I think it’d be better if they did one of the following:

1) increase illusion cap from 3 to 5… but keep shatters at 3… if you have more than 3 illusions it shatters 3 at random… perhaps with a priority on the 3 closest to your target…

2) split Clones and Phantasms to 3 each… Shatter will prioritize shattering clones over phantasms… this plays to the fact that shatter spam builds often prioritize cheap and quick clone spam over phantasms since they will just be shattered anyways…

3) summon 3 illusions per target… shatter will only shatter the illusions on your current target… this option also doesn’t require illusions to persist throughout combat… as you’ll be able to spread illusions around to multiple targets now.

You’re suggestion is good for Power builds that rely on keeping Phantasms up and don’t shatter much… but for builds that utilize shatter more often it’s really nothing but a giant nerf…

to be completely honest… I really wish they would have made the mesmer more reflective of the GW1 mesmer… Phantasms and Clones are a nice addition… but the complete focus on them has been rather annoying… would be really nice to see the Mesmer get a bigger focus on Confuse, Retaliation, Mirror, Reflect, and Torment…

I have to start by saying that I agree with you on this not being the best solution. I think that specifically suggestions 2 and 3 would be substantially better, but both would require a rework of the shatter mechanic itself, along with the illusion mechanic. So even though I think they are much better solutions, I also think the chances of that happening are exponentially lower, which is why I went with this one.

Also, you bring up a good point about shatter builds. This would definitely be a nerf to shatter builds, and I hadn’t considered them. I’ll think some more about how to incorporate this change without nerfing shatter builds, but if anyone has some ideas I’d love to hear them.

I’ve thought about this a lot, too. I think the most easily implemented solution (while maybe not the most ideal) would be for clones to deal damage like they were originally intended to do. Make it exotic weapon level damage unaffected by our personal damage mods, similar to our phantasms.

- Damage would have less of a ramp up time bc clones are produced more easily
- Shattering becomes less of a DPS loss (and possibly even a DPS increase). Especially if timed well.
-It doesn’t suddenly make any traits OP*
-Has very little impact on competitive game modes. Illusions die too quickly (and pets are dumb)

*The extra pressure from have IR and CP in the Chrono line is an obvious exception, but I think that the shatter spam those two traits enables is already OP. One of them should be removed, or they should be moved into the same tier.

What about if chronophantasma was made baseline and IR was removed, but the clone generating traits from core mesmer would remain? It would still reduce shatter spam considerably, since IR will be gone, but it wouldn’t cripple shatter builds, since they would still be able to use Dueling to generate a pretty decent stream of clones, if they tried (instead of automatically like IR does).

Would be a buff to core mesmer’s ability to keep illusions up, but would be a nerf on the chronomancer shatter spam

While I think that making CP baseline would be perfectly justifiable for PvE I’m having a very hard time saying the same thing for any PvP context.

Regardless of the game mode, why shouldn’t there be a trade-off for shattering? Either DPS (keeping them alive) or triggering effects/burst. Sounds fine to me. Being able to retarget Illusions within a fight would already be a big step.

If we are talking Illusion generation I’d prefer having at least one thematically fitting trait per traitline which either reduces cooldowns on Illusion skills or procs an Illusion. Meaning, we’d need 2 new traits (Domination, Chaos).

The debate as to whether shatters need a tradeoff is definitely a good one to have. Personally, I believe that they should, but that currently the tradeoff is too large (losing all of our illusions baseline, including the damaging ones). In an effort to make the tradeoff more reasonable, I think making chronophantasma baseline would accomplish that.

As for PvP, I don’t personally see this as being an issue honestly. Yes, for core mesmer it would be a buff to their ability to keep phantasms out. But since IR would also be removed, it would be an overall nerf to the ability to keep illusions out, since we would only receive chronophantasma and the traits that require active play to generate clones. Removing IR would already go a long way towards reducing shatter spam from chronomancer, so I think that would be enough to balance chronophantasma going baseline.

Guys!!! . . . . . . No, No No!. I said it before, but ill say it again. Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma are NOT the problem with shatter spam. If this was the case, why don’t you see as much shatter spam in PvE like fractals and raids? In PvE, its not shatter spam. You see people use mind wrack for damage to finish off foes, distortion for protection, and diversion for breaker bars. You don’t spam your shatters because there is a certain time and place to use those shatters. Chronophantasma just lets you do this without sacrificing sooo much of your damage to use the effect.

The big problems are the traits “Illusionary Retribution” and “Maim the Disillusioned”. If your primary goal is to do damage and you have the potential to damage with all of your shatter skills, than you are going to spam them to get that damage. These traits are just incentivizing players to spam shatters, while all traits like illusionary reversion and chronophantasma are doing is covering up the mesmer’s designed flawed weakness. The only reason you didn’t see problems with these traits before HoT is because they changed how condis worked and because there was no fix to this mesmer flaw besides DE. You also don’t see shatter spam in power shatter PvP builds, even if they choose to use the skills IR and CP. However, if there was a trait that gave all your shatters power damage, than you most certainly would see shatter spam in those types of builds as well. Diversion and Distortion should stick to their intended purposes so that they are used at appropriate times and not spammed for “alternative” reasons. At MAX, Illusionary retribution and maim the disillusioned should only affect mind wrack and cry of frustration. If the chronomancer would need to be rebalanced by alternative means for PvP afterwords to be competitive, than so be it. Anet had no clue what the PvP meta build would be for chronomancer when they made HoT anyway. However, in the end, this would cut down on shatter spam afterwords. Right now in PvP, there is just too much synergy between (Illusionary Retribution + Maim), (CP and IR), and alacrity for shatters. It just makes for a big mess. It is also bad because to me it makes it seem like Anet only cares about the balance of the best “meta” builds in PvP and the above means any builds without Illusionary Retribution and Maim will not benefit from this synergy like a build that has those traits, hurting build diversity. To make things worse, not matter what Anet uses to try to patch over the mesmer’s flaws of giving up all illusions for shatters, builds with Illusionary retribution and Maim will always benefit more due to these trait’s inherent synergy with other traits like IR and CP.

But, back to the point. Based on the reasoning above, I don’t think you need to mess with IR and CP to fix shatter spam if you think this would be a problem with making CP baseline. You need to fix the other traits that make you “want” to shatter spam, the other traits that give you a benefit for shatter spamming.

Retargeting phantasms and clones is a great solution to the first problem. I also believe chronophantasm is a possible solution to the second problem. However, I don’t necessarily think it would be the best solution. First, other people would obviously greatly complain of making such a trait baseline. Mainly because I believe they share a somewhat flawed belief that CP is to blame for shatter spam. However, once again, I do believe it is a flawed belief. What I would do instead make something closer to this baseline:

Whenever a phantasm is shattered and destroyed, the phantasm skill that produced that phantasm would instantly come off cool down. Perhaps there would be an internal cool down with this baseline trait. However, testing would probably be needed to determine how long. So, if you shattered a illusionary swordsman and it was destroyed by this shatter, the trait phantasmal swordsman would automatically come off cooldown. This is what I think should happen. However, I think the odds of them implementing something like this or making CP baseline is near zero. Most likely, we will just continue to get a trait like CP, IR, or DE with every new elite specialization they come out with.

I kind of think power mesmer is in a good place balance wise from a WvW perspective.

The problem is there are some classes that are just over tuned like DD and Zerker, to a lesser extent, Druid. And of course the usual condi chrono.

If they kept rolling out balance patches shaving the over tuned classes/skills the power mesmer would see a lot more play. Without needing any major rework or restructuring of the class.

The full glass burst/shatter is viable as is, it’s just not optimal. And you have to be a player that doesnt mind constantly running back out from spawn. As you will die a lot in WvW with little to no condi clear.

@Xstein – Yes, its MtD and Illusionary Retribution that encourage shatter spamming for damage, and yes they probably should be updated to at the very least not affect Distortion since that’s a defensive skills. But the fact remains that they weren’t a problem before HoT, because we didn’t have chronophantasma and IR to spam illusions like crazy. MtD and Illusionary Retribution are so kitten powerful right now because chronophantasma and IR allow you to keep spawning illusions near endlessly, meaning that every shatter you do will be applying multiple stacks of confusion and torment, instead of just the first shatter doing so, and then subsequent shatters not having any illusions to apply more stacks.

Even though CP and IR aren’t the reason why we are encouraged to shatter spam, they are definitely the problem with shatter spam right now, especially for condi chrono. I really do think that this proposed change would be a small buff to power mesmers (allowing them to shatter without losing their phantasms), overall mostly neutral to shatter builds since active clone generation traits in core mesmer traitlines would be left alone, and would nerf condi chrono by reducing its ability to spam stacks of confusion and torment. But the nerf wouldn’t be enough to destroy the build.

I do think this would be a substantially stronger design for the class as a whole to have CP be moved baseline and to get rid of IR from the chronomancer line.

Illusion generation and new patch = Illusionary Reversion: Increased required illusions shattered to 3.

Yea I saw that. I’m happy that illusion spam is being nerfed, but overall I’d be happier if CP went baseline and IR was removed entirely. It would help out core mesmer and future elites in phantasm retention, as well as go even further to reduce illusion and shatter spam from chronomancer.

What if when a phantasm is destroyed or their target dies they explode or trigger an effect.

Ya know like the clone death we used to have before they removed it and created all these problems. I mean phantasms persisting and chrono being baseline plus a number of other issues would instantly be addressed by reverting the changes they made in the past. They’d just have to put a simple timer on how often it triggers so all this clone spam we have can’t be abused.

Xstein.2187:

The big problems are the traits “Illusionary Retribution” and “Maim the Disillusioned”.

This is only true for condi Mesmer. Every Mesmer can spam Shatters to gain additional effects like Boons, heals, cleanses and Alacrity, though. It still remains an issue.

Regarding condi Shatter Mesmers I still think tying those traits to F2 and making it more bursty and more frequent like F1 would help balancing the class overall. However, this would, of course, alter the playstyle quite significantly.

Doam.8305:

Ya know like the clone death we used to have before they removed it and created all these problems.

Did Ithilwen put a spell on you?

‘On death’ traits are very debatable. I personally don’t like them. However, I’d argue removing them certainly didn’t cause any issues the class didn’t have to begin with.

Xaylin.1860:

Xstein.2187:

The big problems are the traits “Illusionary Retribution” and “Maim the Disillusioned”.

This is only true for condi Mesmer. Every Mesmer can spam Shatters to gain additional effects like Boons, heals, cleanses and Alacrity, though. It still remains an issue.

Regarding condi Shatter Mesmers I still think tying those traits to F2 and making it more bursty and more frequent like F1 would help balancing the class overall. However, this would, of course, alter the playstyle quite significantly.

Doam.8305:

Ya know like the clone death we used to have before they removed it and created all these problems.

Did Ithilwen put a spell on you?

‘On death’ traits are very debatable. I personally don’t like them. However, I’d argue removing them certainly didn’t cause any issues the class didn’t have to begin with.

Ya, I have to agree with you. I am also very glad that they nerfed shatter spam through IR while at the same time, nerfing all the pulsating boons and sustain of all the other classes in the game. Not sure how things will turn out though. There is a lot of talk about more condi becoming meta after this patch, but only time will tell.

Obviously CP won’t become base line anymore. However, most of us probably didn’t think it ever would. I mean, if the devs didn’t CP baseline instead of a trait when HoT originally came out, then they wouldn’t do it now, since the community would give the idea even more hate. The best solution now is just for there to add more traits like CP in future elite specs, but not as much illusion uptime as there was before this patch.

I don’t think this patch means there is 0 chance of CP going baseline. Remember that in this patch they directly targeted our ability to spam illusions for shatters. CP becoming baseline and then removing IR completely would still be a nerf to our ability to spam shatters over what we can currently do, and it would also free up 2 traits in the chronomancer line to give it a stronger theme (hopefully 1 that enhances phantasms and another one that enhances either slow or quickness. Something like When you slow an enemy, share 1sec quickness in 240 unit radius around you, 10sec ICD)

I don’t how I feel about Chronophantasma being core.

Just a thought. What if Phantasm cool downs reset if their target dies?

It would still mean you have to re-summon it, but if it was late or only got off one hit you’d be able to cast it again. Also probably wouldn’t break PvP since you have to stomp.

Presuming they get all phantasm summon attacks to be as handy as focus, would that be sufficient?

That could have problems actually. In PvP, if you join a teamfight and then take the upper hand, you could be using iberserker 3 or 4 times in the span of a few seconds due to enemy players being killed.

In open world PvE, phantasm skills would almost never be on cooldown at all under this approach.

In raids/soloing champions/world bosses, this wouldn’t do anything for our sustained damage taking a hit when we shatter, since that wouldn’t kill the target but we would still be without our phantasms.

Alternatively, phantasm damage could be lowered by 10-15%, phantasm summoning weapon skills could have their cooldowns cut by 10%, and they could have their damage upped considerably. This would still mean that a lot of our damage would come from phantasms, but with stronger weapons skill damage coming from us directly and on shorter CDs, we would still be able to keep up fairly good sustained damage by ourselves.