Guild Wars 2

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM? Please don’t use general terms like “damage” without elaborating for what game mode and why you feel this way.
From a PvP standpoint I would say that it is lacking something you can rely on if you make a mistake. For example, small mistakes in positioning can = death as we’ve seen in GO4 cups when George was playing with 55HP. The second he got slightly out of position, everyone focused him and he went down a lot. Generally something to make mesmer more forgiving. I said more but I don’t mean turn it into an ele. I like the way it is – unforgiving but would like it toned down just a tiny little bit.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?
I’d make shattered conditions trait and move it down into Illusions trait line as a minor trait instead of Illusionary Retribution. It seems like too good of a trait to have as a minor on such a low position so I’d probably move it up to being a grandmaster minor.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?
Not really, if it gets seriously destroyed by something I’d still play it, just not as my main but I honestly think mesmer will get better and better with time.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”
I at the moment don’t dislike the devs as mesmer did get buffed the past two patches. The last one not so much but still a buff and the one before that was a set of really, really well deserved, beautiful buffs.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?
That we get a minor trait that will grant us 3-5s of protection if we take 25-30% of our HP in 1 hit, doesn’t have to be protection, can be n amount of attacks blocked, n seconds of distort ect.

Wanted to add some more …

What has damaged your faith in the devs?

Temportal Curtain not even stacking with Swiftness.
We used to be able to run through it multiple times to stack swiftness, but that was nerfed. Guardians used to not be able to just stand in their symbol to stack swiftness, but now they can. Why?

Veil not stacking stealth
Veil is now a measly 2s stealth that can’t be stacked by running through it multiple times. Other classes can stack stealth via blast finishers, refuge, etc. … much more stealth … and not just Thieves. Why?

Mantras have a horrible issue if you will be going in/out of water. Charge your mantra(s) then go in water. Now come back out of water. You will have no Mantra charges and your Mantra(s) will be on cooldown.

Illusionary Membrane was given a 15s ICD
With 3 trait points in Chaos and 3 points in Inspiration, we could keep regen on ourselves from our phantasms and thus also protection. For some reason Mesmers are not allowed to do this, but other classes (ex: Elementalist) are. We’ll ignore that this was providing build diversity as it gave a good reason to put almost half our trait points in the two least used trait lines.

Restorative Illusions is Weak
I get the same amount of healing for a 3 illusion shatter with Restorative Illusions as an Elementalist gets from using any 6 abilities with their healing Signet … including just auto-attacking nothing. It is more work (and cooldowns) to summon 3 illusions and shatter them (and they have to survive). It also requires a target to summon those illusions and shatter them. It’s also a Grandmaster trait. Why is it so lackluster?

Downed State
This still only tricks ignorant players. There is a Red icon above my head. There is not a red icon above my clone’s head. This is a simple fix. Either put a red icon above the clone’s head or don’t put one above my head. So why has it never been fixed? This has been around for a while. We’ll ignore that it can actually put you in a worse spot than you were before the random teleport. Why can’t that teleport be non-random?

Illusion of Life
The one rez utility that doesn’t actually rez people yet it still has a long cooldown like the other rez utilities.

Traited Temporal Curtain
Most people know that this wall is a bit “short” at times.
If you have an opponent attack from a higher elevation, their projectiles can often go over your Temporal Curtain and still hit you. Have a Guardian drop their wall of reflection and watch that same elevated opponent still have their projectiles reflected back at them.

Ultimately, most game developers will tell you that one way they look at balance/design is to see:

• What is seemingly always used
• What is seemingly never used
• What has a disproportionate % of success
• What has a disproportionate % of failure

It doesn’t feel like this is what is being done.
The inconsistencies don’t help with this (see above for some).

It used to be that most tournament teams featured at least one Mesmer. Now we a rarely seeing Mesmers on tournament teams. While we’re not the only class in this boat, it should be a strong sign to the developers where they should be paying attention.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?

Reliable blast finishers. The combo system is a key part of the player-to-player interaction that this game is advertised as having (I was at the Rezzed dev session, it’s still advertised as a feature of the game) but Mesmer has no way of reliably contributing to this group mechanic. Mind Stab is a perfect ranged blast finisher on a short cooldown. Mesmers would become immediately more relevant and desirable for group play. Everyone wins with this change.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

Mesmer does not excel in any game mode other than “jumping puzzles”. It’s a middle of the road class that is saved from complete obscurity by unique utilities. However, the class is at its worse in open world PvE, especially when it comes to levelling.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

Deceptive Evasion dropped to minor tier in dueling line; Mind Stab becomes blast finisher; Chaos Armour (staff skill) gives protection again on activation; Scepter Auto-attack reductions in cast time/after cast; Confusing Images cast time reduction; Illusionary Riposte causes PBAoE damage on target similarly to Mantra of Pain (or any other buff – will take anything); Counter Blade channel time reduction; Temporal Curtain re-imagined to accommodate swiftness stacking; Phantasmal Mage projectile tracking and speed improved; Mirror heals for a similar value as Withdraw; Portal cooldown reduction; Illusion of Life cooldown reduction (still too high); Timewarp becomes glamour (hmm well maybe not with the recent cooldown reduction); original Mimic functionality returned; Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter cast time reduced to 1 second; Power Block has relevance against Thieves; Furious Interruption ICD reduced to 9 seconds; Triumphant Distortion ICD reduced (removed possibly?); boons from Bountiful Disillusionment are AoE; Disruptor’s Sustainment changed to life steal on interrupt; Blinding Befuddlement ICD removed.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

Probably not as it’s the thematics of the class that maintains interest for me – although I am having quite a bit more fun on my Thief these days than Mesmer because it’s just better at most things in the game (dat contradiction). The upcoming specialisation will suffice at getting me interested in Mesmer again.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

Nothing. Talk of faith and trust is a tad overly dramatic for me. I don’t feel hard done by or down trodden and the class is still fantastic and fun to play despite its shortcomings. I’m appreciative of the game Anet have created and Mesmer is still the most fabulously stylish class in the game.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

I think it’s time to drop Deceptive Evasion down to minor tier Anet. We’ve tried builds without it and they really really suck in competitive environments. Maybe this isn’t the answer to all Mesmer build stagnation, but it would be a start.

What I’d like to see for a baseline mesmer fix?

1. Phantasms made immune to aoe damage.
2. All illusions given distortion upon activation of a shatter.

• What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM?
  1. Speed, not just walking speed but combat speed. The biggest cause is the activation time of illusion skill, all illusion skills SHOULD NOT have any activation time, they already have the delay time when the clone/phantasm going to attack the target, while you are casting a phantasm from your off hand you are already got burst down to a third of your health.
  2. Useless and under power trait, such as:
  Wastrel’s Punishment, 5% really? make it at least 10%
  Furious Interruption, 3 sec of quickness and 15 of internal cool down, should have been buff during the quickness change but it did not
  Triumphant Distortion, really? a buff and it is still useless
  Disruptor’s Sustainment, dev think that this is good?
  Imbued Diversion, diversion should be aoe by default, you should not have to pick a grandmaster trait for this, if you think this is op try play hammer warrior, that class can interrupt more ppl than a mesmer could

• What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?
  Most: going to say WvW but illusions die to fast and activation time take too long, so non
  Least: all of them

• Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?
  Remove the activation time of all the illusion skills, remove the after effect of blocking skill, other block from other class doesn’t have it but mesmer have it, why?

• Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?
  I’ve already try (finish the story, level them to 80) guardian, elementalist and ranger, currently playing necro. The best thing now is to do something about mesmer combat speed

• What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”
  I took critical damage on the new grandmaster traits, so no

• What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?
  Remove all the illusion activation time, sure necro have activation time for minion skills but they can do it off combat, their minions are tougher and they don’t have to repeatedly cast them every time, standing still for 1 second in close combat is not a good idea.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM? Please don’t use general terms like “damage” without elaborating for what game mode and why you feel this way.

Mesmer isn’t all that mesmerizing. When I started I liked that the clones added some confusion, the confusion got people to accidentally knock themselves out and I had a few risk/reward plays with good timing could turn a battle 1v1 or Zerg v Zerg. Most of that got nerfed. I like how Mesmer is more active in GW2 but I like the risk/reward play of GW1. I want people to lose because they weren’t paying attention to the current trick I am playing, not because I’m overly strong. I want people to face a Mesmer and have to change their mindset to “Ok, what do I have to avoid and how can I attack them”. Maybe more punishment for taking out a clone(like the exploding turrets engineer can get, not just a condition they can easily remove).

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

Most? Dungeons with skippable content, lol. Though Mantra Healing is useful too.

Least? Everything else. PvP you can hardly win a 1v1, little sustain, can’t hold a point, portal and a tiny bit of mobility your only advantage (downed enemy flag still goes on you and not downed clone). WvW, pigeonholed to mass utilities or GTFO, no razzle, very little dazzle. PvE, I watch my friends take things out while Irun mantra to do interrupts and vuln and mantra healing so while I don’t kill we get downed less? I’m cool with this, but not really our strength.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

Mimic – Revert to old… I had finally made a new viable reflect build for my WvW team.
Masterful Reflection – Seriously make this work with all distortions, like Triumphant Distortion.
Scepter – Bleed NPC’s they don’t tend to move
Maim the Disillusioned – Bleed NPC’s they don’t tend to move
Halting Strike – More Damage
Disruptor’s Sustainment – 7+ seconds, I should be able to recharge 2 Mantra to be useful.
I’d really love for Sword 2 to work with Master of Reflection since they probably want to avoid you already this won’t effect much.
Give Moa stability stacks and a long charge super damage AoE melee attack but remove other moves then Flee. Lower the cooldown.
Deceptive Evasion – change to Adept or make it a Minor trait, too many builds depend on this.
Unnerf confusion damage since they were shortened to maybe one PvE hit or only really going to hurt a PvP/WvW’er that doesn’t watch their bar.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

Breaking my last good crazy build, mantras, would kill mesmer and maybe GW2 for me. (Also thanks for the Mantra buffs)

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

Lazy dev’ing. Mimic was one of the really good oddball utilities with a risk/reward that made me feel like I was really Mesmerizing. Confusion damage nerfs(length is ok, it’s now a timing reward, I understand). Changing 1hSword distort to blur because I guess you were too lazy to proc Master of Reflections on it? My small hat tip to fixing sword clone mostly, torch phant mostly, Master of Reflection working with Blurred Inscriptions though so not all bad.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?
More Risk/Reward abilities like Old Mimic, Scepter 2, Offhand Sword 4, Illusion of Life, Illusion of Vulnerability, Halting Strike, Confusing Enchantments, Power Block like the GW1 Mesmer. Or you could also give us more standard mobility stuff to make up for lack of quickness, other then learning how to port forward with Staff.

• I feel Mesmer is lacking in PvE sustainable damage.
  1. I’d like to see a single Phantasm ‘pet’ that is much harder to kill n doesn’t pop when your target dies, while still being able to summon 2 more ‘fragile’ phantasm/clones.
  2. I’d love to see a shatter build that gives higher sustained damage.

• I’d like to see Shatter damage (in PvE) increased.

• I would stop playing Mesmer if phantasms got harder to keep alive. I want good PvE DPS. Also, if reflects or ports get serious nerfs It’d be hard to stick with the class.

*General reasons I’ve lost some faith in devs;
1. Most all PvE is a Zerker stack fest. Needs more diversity.
2. Conditions really really suck in PvE they need to be viable.

• One wish; a 0 skill that gives us a sturdy Phantasm pet that doesn’t pop when your target dies.

So here is my take on the current situation after loging over 1,800 hours on my Mesmer and taking a 1 year break from gw2 in general comming back and redicovering the game. A lot of very constructive posts but I feel the main point is being missed.

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM? Please don’t use general terms like “damage” without elaborating for what game mode and why you feel this way.

Direction. Simply put, I have the feeling no one at Anet has an idea of what they want the Mesmer to be. Interestingly this was the case 1 year back and still remains up to this point. Now with nerfs across the board on some of our gimmick and utility skills it becomes even more apperent.

Example 1: Illusions
Our illusions are a big part of our damage/utility/function/mechanic. Yet they are paper thin. Even with sacrificing traits and u-slots survivability is more than lacking for anything above 1-2 player content. Not going to go into how buggy some of our phantasms are, that’s almost a given.
Problems caused: huge reliability in PvE/WvW on illusion suvival leads to strong value focus on illusion creating traits (see problem with DE, illusion recharge reuction skills). Basically the solution is to just compensate for poor survival by more spamming of illusions. sPvP is a tad less affected but here the actual wind-up-time until something happens works as a limiting factor.

Example 2: Mantras
Mantras even after extensive buffing (4 second cast time any one?) remain unfun (personal preferance). This is not only subjective but goes along with how our class currently works. Between managing our illusions, using our utility skills (veil, TW, etc.), maybe using our controll skills (mostly only Feedback and traited Focus remaining)(you know the ones Mesmer was suposedly all about) AND managing castable stack based skills is a lot of micro is required and the payoff is non existant. I feel like our illusion and mantra design is contradicting.

I’m a realist, I’m not expecting our class getting a huge overhaul even though the introduction of specializations would be perfect for that. But I would like for the devs to sit down and decide what they want the Mesmer to be.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

Going along the lines of what I stated in part 1 and considering that a class rework won’t happen here are some solutions to the Mesmer “as is”:
- reduce damage taken for Illusion from aoe in PvE. Something a long the lines of 40-60%. I would love to seggest this for WvW aswell but that would unbalance small scale fights to much, but for pve should be a non issue. God forbid we actually ended up doing damage.
- make Mantras instant and rebalnce as needed. For example make the cast instant but the now available mantra starts on a 4 second cd as to not be used immediately. This would allow for mantras to be rebalanced and more viable for reuse in prolonged fights.
- fix phantasm bugs. Not going to give details, the culprit phantasms are easily identified
- reduce phantasm charge up times. Between identifiying the weapon the Mesmer is using, seeing his atttack animation, seeing the Phantasm appear, do we really need this long of a “wind-up”? Would also help in PvE/WvW to at least get the initial damage in. Other classes have way shorter tells on effectiv skills an are not penalized by their class mechanic.
- rework some of the utility skills (Mimic for example). Easiest to find out witch, check which u-skills are underused in builds accross all Mesmer population and either remove them from the game or improve them. Since some other professions are even worse off than us in this regard(necros) I don’t expect this to happen soon.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

I’ve stuck with the Mesmer since release. The basic Idea behind the class intrigues me and is ejoyable, though I feel there is a general lack of direction. A clear message a long the lines of “THIS is what we want our mesmers to do, feel and be like” would help the community as a whole I think. Ideally followed by some changes going a long those lines.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

Back in GW1 skills got eventually split between PvP and PvE because it became near impossible to keep things balanced for PvE viability and PvP. Mesmers are in a similar boat with their strong synergies and dependancies with their class mechanic. Most other classes have a class mechanic that works off itsself. Necros have their shroud, Warriors their adrenalin, Elementalists their atunements, etc. Only Mesmer and Engineer are dependant on pet like inputs to their mechanic, and of both the mesmer heavily so in almost all regards. This has in general been ignored in recent balance and world design aspects.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

A more coherent approach to our class design. From all 8 classes I feel Mesmers design wise (not balance) are all over the place.

I keep seeing people agitate for Sceptor to cause bleed instead of Torment… doesn’t that hurt us at large events since we’re more likely to lose damage to the bleed cap than torment cap? Seems it would be a downgrade to me.

@Sezneg: More often than not, yes.

Their reasoning though is this:
Bleed = (0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80
Torment = (0.0375 * Condition Damage) + 31.875 per stack per second at level 80

In solo PVE, creatures move enough that the Torment damage is probably higher.

In group PVE, it’s useful for avoiding the bleed cap.

In pvp, torment has been fun.

I’ve recently come back from before it was added to scepter, and I’m loving the change so far, it’s still not a perfect weapon but that’s mainly down to attack speed/animation issues IMO.

Cyninja.2954:

- make Mantras instant and rebalnce as needed. For example make the cast instant but the now available mantra starts on a 4 second cd as to not be used immediately. This would allow for mantras to be rebalanced and more viable for reuse in prolonged fights.

I’d be strongly opposed to any mantra change that increases overall cooldowns or modifiers the insta-cast multi-stack mechanic.

Which is what we’re likely to see if they modify the basic one-charge-up/multi-cast-on-demand system that mantras have right now.

ASP.8093:

Cyninja.2954:

- make Mantras instant and rebalnce as needed. For example make the cast instant but the now available mantra starts on a 4 second cd as to not be used immediately. This would allow for mantras to be rebalanced and more viable for reuse in prolonged fights.

I’d be strongly opposed to any mantra change that increases overall cooldowns or modifiers the insta-cast multi-stack mechanic.

Which is what we’re likely to see if they modify the basic one-charge-up/multi-cast-on-demand system that mantras have right now.

Understandable, no one likes having a mechanic changed they enjoy. Problem is the way mantras work right now they dont “fit” in. Question is, how much do mantras actually get used at the moment compared to our other heal/utility skills. A question only Anet can answer through their data.

If I’m off and the majority of Mesmer players use mantras in their current form, ofcrose they should stay unchanged and get expanded on. I have a feeling that is’t the case.

@Cyninja
This is exactly it. The mesmer class had no direction from the start and patch after patch is making the class overlap more with the thief while definitely being inferior to the thief. I still don’t get why anet decided to pull away from the idea of the gw1 mesmer. Just taking a look over the gw1 mesmer skills you can see the overall idea.

- punishing enemies for actions or inaction
- augmenting conditions with hexes
- resource management and drain

and what do you get in place? Some cheesy boon removal options, confusion, and the worst of all are our illusions.Every time I fight against another mesmer I can easily pick them out due to the boons, movements and bad acting. I don’t know who the devs thought these illusions were going to fool. We have far too many traits to try and make up for a mechanic that has weak damage and more easily tear-able than toilet paper.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul will make mesmer anything other than a design failure.

Cyninja.2954:

Question is, how much do mantras actually get used at the moment compared to our other heal/utility skills. A question only Anet can answer through their data.

Well, anecdotally speaking…

Mantra of Resolve sees real play in a number of builds, both PvE and PvP. There seems to be a real non-trivial choice between this skill, Null Field, and Arcane Thievery, with tradeoffs between each that different players weigh differently — a sign of decent balance between these skills (even if you’re one of the folks who think overall mesmer condition cleansing is anemic — which, tbh, I disagree with). It’s far more popular than Phantasmal Disenchanter, as well.

Mantra of Distraction sees a fair amount of play. It’s a big part of one of the better mesmer builds, and sometimes finds its way into others.

Mantra of Recovery has a particular niche (Mender’s Purity) and it’s very strong in that niche. It’s not our most popular heal by a mile, but I think most classes have a definite “best of breed” heal skill (ours is Ether Feast), so I’m not too worried about this. It’s way more popular than Mirror.

Mantra of Concentration doesn’t seem very popular. I don’t think the thing holding Mantra of Concentration back is the recharge cycle, though. It’s just not as multifunctional as Blink and Decoy, which are our go-to stun breaks. (I used to use it when I ran PU, and I found it was pretty handy for getting out of all sorts of nonsense.)

Mantra of Pain is a mostly used for gimmick things and I think there’s room to rework it. That’s one mantra. (Maybe make it more like Arcane Blast or Arcane Power rather than this sorta-spammable minor effect that mostly gets used in oddball kinda-do-nothing-y healing builds?)

If anything, I think signets are in a way worse place than mantras. And there’s other mesmer skills that, AFAIK, are straight-up less popular than any of the mantras (Phantasmal Defender and Illusion of Life, for example).

What do you feel the Mesmer is currently lacking ATM? Please don’t use general terms like “damage” without elaborating for what game mode and why you feel this way.

PvE: Damage and an understandable profession mechanic; we are too trait dependent making play before level cap feel like a Mesmer is fighting with a feather duster. Correspondingly, our core profession mechanic is fundamentally flawed and nigh impossible for a newcomer to understand. On the technical end, pathing is unreliable making shatters undependable, and on a visual end there is too subtle cue shatters have had an effect telling the player they are accomplishing something.

WvW: Dependable damage, sustainability, accessibility; For the same reasons above, our damage is too unreliable. Our defenses are too meager to make us effective where the developers believe we should be (mid range to melee). Worse of all, I would argue a Mesmer has a higher skill cap than an Elementalist to use effectively. For proof of this simply turn to youtube. If Mesmer videos have to be slowed down to demonstrate a proper shatter, the developers are doing something very wrong. I don’t want an easy button, but with no room for error the profession is not even remotely graspable for anyone who doesn’t have the time and patience to learn what they could be doing wrong or better.

What game mode (PvP, WvW, PvE Open World/Dungeons) do you feel Mesmer currently excels in the most? Least?

Most: Once capped, Mesmer does decently in PvE, but play doesn’t fit the fluff theme of the profession. A Mesmer is a disposable pet spammer and little more. Our conditions are too weak to amount to the fluff behind Chaos and Glamour.

Least: WvW; we’re simply veilbots and golem taxis. We have no sustainability, unreliable damage mechanics and steep learning caps to play effectively. We offer little to a zerg as illusions are easily cleaved. About the only spot we fill well is a small roaming team as damage support.

Without reworking anything, what minor adjustments would you make to any of our weapons/utilities/traits to make them more viable?

“This may take some time. Will supply answers when I can.”

I think that statement is self evident of just how many problems the Mesmer has. Minor adjustments will not balance the class at this point.

Is there anything that would make you stop playing Mesmer? If you’ve stopped what would draw you back?

At this point I often jump to one of my other toons if I want to substantially contribute to WvW. Our nerfs have just been ill advised and too heavy handed. I also patently ignore being a veilbot or golem taxi. We should be a full fledged profession, not an extra utility bar for everyone else.

I come back to the Mesmer as it’s my main toon and I want to love it, ANet just makes it so difficult.

What has damaged your faith in the devs? Is there any faith remaining? What would have to happen to earn back your trust? Again, please no general statements like “a lot of nerfs.”

I have yet to see a developer openly demonstrate an understanding of the profession and/or acknowledgement of its challenges outside the PvP environment. There needs to be a demonstration of this in PvE (including dungeons and fractals) as well as WvW.

I would like to see an honest profession analysis by the developers based on how the Mesmer actually plays over the fluff of a marketing slick. Every profession could use this treatment and I believe it may go some way into the developers understanding their own game. Understanding how the professions interact with one another will help identify imbalances. It may never be perfect, and that’s OK, but it should not be so bad that someone needs to create a thread such as this one.

What is your one (reasonable) Mesmer wish?

Remove DE as a t2 trait, it should be a core profession or a t1 sub mechanic. Too many Mesmer builds rely on DE and hamstrings build diversity.

N.B. making clone-on-dodge standard does hurt phantasm builds. Though arguably there’s an easy fix: don’t allow new clones to blow up phantasms if you’re full up on phants.

I kinda like fragile clones because I like the way they POP! almost the second someone attacks them, so I’d definitely rather see more consistent access to clone spam than more durable clones. Doing something to make phantasms a bit more durable might be fine.

ASP.8093:

Cyninja.2954:

Question is, how much do mantras actually get used at the moment compared to our other heal/utility skills. A question only Anet can answer through their data.

Well, anecdotally speaking…

Mantra of Resolve sees real play in a number of builds, both PvE and PvP. There seems to be a real non-trivial choice between this skill, Null Field, and Arcane Thievery, with tradeoffs between each that different players weigh differently — a sign of decent balance between these skills (even if you’re one of the folks who think overall mesmer condition cleansing is anemic — which, tbh, I disagree with). It’s far more popular than Phantasmal Disenchanter, as well.

Mantra of Distraction sees a fair amount of play. It’s a big part of one of the better mesmer builds, and sometimes finds its way into others.

Mantra of Recovery has a particular niche (Mender’s Purity) and it’s very strong in that niche. It’s not our most popular heal by a mile, but I think most classes have a definite “best of breed” heal skill (ours is Ether Feast), so I’m not too worried about this. It’s way more popular than Mirror.

Mantra of Concentration doesn’t seem very popular. I don’t think the thing holding Mantra of Concentration back is the recharge cycle, though. It’s just not as multifunctional as Blink and Decoy, which are our go-to stun breaks. (I used to use it when I ran PU, and I found it was pretty handy for getting out of all sorts of nonsense.)

Mantra of Pain is a mostly used for gimmick things and I think there’s room to rework it. That’s one mantra. (Maybe make it more like Arcane Blast or Arcane Power rather than this sorta-spammable minor effect that mostly gets used in oddball kinda-do-nothing-y healing builds?)

If anything, I think signets are in a way worse place than mantras. And there’s other mesmer skills that, AFAIK, are straight-up less popular than any of the mantras (Phantasmal Defender and Illusion of Life, for example).

First off, I like your break down. What I’m lacking is your understanding or at least mentioning of why those skills get picked making it seem the skills are fine (or at least some of them) in their current state.

Mantra of Resolve is our only accessible semi low cooldown skill for condition removal. Considering Mesmer as a whole is lacking or requires special attention for condition removal that doesn’t say a lot. The alternatives are very underwhelming aswell:
Nullfield – situational and imo the most useful of the remaining condition removal skills. Cooldown to long for PvP, etherial field combo effect less desired in PvE/WvW.
Arcane Thievery – very situational very high cooldown skill mostly if at all useful for PvP and small skirmish WvW.
P.Disenchanter – underperforming condition removal skill in part due to weak ai and general pet performance problems.

To sum it up, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Doesn’t make MoR fit any more in with other skills or our mechanic. The competition is just way worse.

Mantra of Distraction might have it’s uses in preassure/controll builds. I don’t see any use for it in PvE. Granted it’s one of the few on button press disorient skills in game making it somewhat unique.

Mantra of Recovery – so basically our one class mechanic heal skill gets outperformed by our other class machanic heal skills. Looking at our heal skills (while subjective) the general usfulness can be sumed up as follows:
1 – Ether Feast – usualy best in slot
2 – Mirror – second best in slot thanks to the reflect
3 – MoR – let’s put this here. It synergizes well once some traits are used to buff it up. untraited it’s near useless
4 – SotE – interesting Idea, falls flat due to horrible illusion survival.
Basically MoR outperforms our one healing skill that is broken due to our weak class mechanic.

Mantra of Concentration – again our mantra skill is outperformed by other skills that accomplish the desired effect better. Granted this might not get fixed with an instant cast time.

I just don’t see how our mantra skills are bringing any value to our class. In general they are either underperforming compared to alternatives or they are paired with mediocre competition skills. For a unique class mechanic that is more than underwhelming.

Alright, let’s get super-detailed about mantras.

Mantra of Resolve is our only accessible semi low cooldown skill for condition removal. Considering Mesmer as a whole is lacking or requires special attention for condition removal that doesn’t say a lot. The alternatives are very underwhelming aswell:
Nullfield – situational and imo the most useful of the remaining condition removal skills. Cooldown to long for PvP, etherial field combo effect less desired in PvE/WvW.
Arcane Thievery – very situational very high cooldown skill mostly if at all useful for PvP and small skirmish WvW.
P.Disenchanter – underperforming condition removal skill in part due to weak ai and general pet performance problems.

To sum it up, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Doesn’t make MoR fit any more in with other skills or our mechanic. The competition is just way worse.

In PvP, insta-cast condi drop is awesome because it helps you get out of Immobilize, which is the “YOU’RE ABOUT TO GET REKT” condition a lot of enemies use to set up their burst.

In PvE, Mantra of Resolve is nice because you can slot it in and get bonus damage from Empowering Mantras. Also the recast isn’t much of a problem. Lots and lots of opportunities to recast it while your phantasms do work.

So, it’s actually just straight-up a pretty good skill that slots easily into a lot of builds.

Cyninja.2954:

Mantra of Distraction might have it’s uses in preassure/controll builds. I don’t see any use for it in PvE. Granted it’s one of the few on button press disorient skills in game making it somewhat unique.

Look at any class. Tons of skills across all classes are almost never used in PvE, especially when you get down to “meta” builds.

Though, actually, I’m super-lazy and I half-kitten PvE, so I just play my WvW build in PvE, with MoD on the bar. And, enh, about once a week it’s actually really useful against some boss with an oddball mechanic and a bit of Defiance I need to strip to interrupt with. (See also: wyvern in the previews.)

Cyninja.2954:

Mantra of Recovery – so basically our one class mechanic heal skill gets outperformed by our other class machanic heal skills. Looking at our heal skills (while subjective) the general usfulness can be sumed up as follows:
1 – Ether Feast – usualy best in slot
2 – Mirror – second best in slot thanks to the reflect
3 – MoR – let’s put this here. It synergizes well once some traits are used to buff it up. untraited it’s near useless
4 – SotE – interesting Idea, falls flat due to horrible illusion survival.
Basically MoR outperforms our one healing skill that is broken due to our weak class mechanic.

Mirror’s a small heal and the reflect time is only, like, 2 seconds.

So, if you were to ask me… PvP:
1. Ether Feast — easy to use, big heal, standard for meta builds that focus their traits on offense.
2. Mantra of Recovery — requires a trait investment but it can remove GOBS of conditions with ease (reasonable healing output, too), plus amazing at proccing on-heal runes.
3. Mirror — fun gimmick but the heal is low and reflect time is quite short.
4. SotE — slow and kind of a death sentence.
Honestly, I see more people using SotE than Mirror in unranked arena, though!

PvE:
1. Ether Feast — dumb and easy.
2. SotE — sees real use in PvE builds that are willing to trade their heal for faster phantasm setup.
3. Mantra of Recovery — Empowered Mantras lets you trade your heal slot for damage; you can still use it as a nice condi clear with Mender’s Purity (which is easy to slot in when you’re grabbing Warden’s Feedback anyway) as well.
4. Mirror — who uses this?

As far as I’m concerned, arguing that MoR is bad because it’s not meta is like arguing that Withdraw is bad because most people prefer Hide in Shadows.

(cont’d)

(cont’d from above)

Mantra of Concentration – again our mantra skill is outperformed by other skills that accomplish the desired effect better. Granted this might not get fixed with an instant cast time.

Actually, in PvE, where there’s a lot of annoying pulls and knockbacks you can see coming, it’s better than Decoy. I absolutely adore this skill against random environmental nonsense like those breath trap things.

(You know why we don’t take it more often? Because stability won’t save you from being just being killed by damage like invulns, teleports, and (sometimes) stealth do. And mesmers generally don’t do well when they try to just take a lot of hits instead of avoiding them.)

Cyninja.2954:

I just don’t see how our mantra skills are bringing any value to our class. In general they are either underperforming compared to alternatives or they are paired with mediocre competition skills. For a unique class mechanic that is more than underwhelming.

Look again.

MoD is the most precise interrupt in the game. That you can use while stunned or while executing your own burst. You need high skill to get high impact out of it, but the potential is there, and it’s a solid callback to the mesmer’s GW1 identity.

Traited Mantra of Recovery requires playing every differently from Ether Feast, but it makes you wonderfully “slippery” and gives you great tools against condition builds.

Mantra of Resolve does its job and does it pretty well.

This really isn’t bad, overall!

ASP.8093:

(cont’d from above)

Mantra of Concentration – again our mantra skill is outperformed by other skills that accomplish the desired effect better. Granted this might not get fixed with an instant cast time.

Actually, in PvE, where there’s a lot of annoying pulls and knockbacks you can see coming, it’s better than Decoy. I absolutely adore this skill against random environmental nonsense like those breath trap things.

(You know why we don’t take it more often? Because stability won’t save you from being just being killed by damage like invulns, teleports, and (sometimes) stealth do. And mesmers generally don’t do well when they try to just take a lot of hits instead of avoiding them.)

Cyninja.2954:

I just don’t see how our mantra skills are bringing any value to our class. In general they are either underperforming compared to alternatives or they are paired with mediocre competition skills. For a unique class mechanic that is more than underwhelming.

Look again.

MoD is the most precise interrupt in the game. That you can use while stunned or while executing your own burst. You need high skill to get high impact out of it, but the potential is there, and it’s a solid callback to the mesmer’s GW1 identity.

Traited Mantra of Recovery requires playing every differently from Ether Feast, but it makes you wonderfully “slippery” and gives you great tools against condition builds.

Mantra of Resolve does its job and does it pretty well.

This really isn’t bad, overall!

I agree to some of your arguments but it’s noticible that we come from a different ends approach to mantras. Mine seems more pve focused while yours is more of a WvW/spvp approach.

Again I didn’t say all our mantras are useless, just that similar effects could be accomplished while not sticking to an overcomplicated mechanic that, again in my opinion, does not fit in with our class or makes it unneccesarily convoluted.

MoD is indeed one of the few skills that mimic or at least come close to GW1 mesmer. Unfortunately it’s use is almost non existant in the pve parts of the game. Hence me calling it unique and useful in pressure/controll builds.

Agreed on why MoC does not see much use in pve. Mesmer as a whole has enough options to straight up ignore or avoide damage here and MoC does not contribute enough to justify a slot. Does not invalidate that a simpler mechanic might fix this or at least increase use.

I’ll give MoR with traits a higher tier spot. The synergy with condition removal through traits does push it in competativ environments. Again, not needed in pve and outperformed by other skill+trait combos.

I stand by my assessment that mantras as a whole considering all game modes are underperforming for a unique class mechanic and in general. Maybe my solution is not the ideal one, but I based it on an “easy to implement” and “most effect possible” scenario.

The key about mantras, that all of this discussion has been entirely missing, is what happens when you put multiple mantras together in a build. I always like to refer to mantras as the “spice” of mesmer builds; you don’t want to overwhelm a dish with spices, but appropriate application will enhance the flavor and overall enjoyment.

This is how mantras are normally used. You put MoD in a build for a strong extra interrupt. You put MoR in a build for strong condition removal. You put MoC on when you just need that high output stability. The problem is that you don’t ever put more than maybe 2 mantras into a build (excepting PvE nukers, that doesn’t count) because of how badly they function together.

Most utilities, when heavily traited for, synergize well together. Even signets, as faulty as they are, once traited will gain in power the more you have. Mantras work in the completely opposite way. Even after heavy traiting for mantras, as your build gains mantras it becomes slower and clunkier. You spend more time standing around chanting, more time being vulnerable, more time doing essentially nothing. At the maximum of 4 mantras in a build, when you’ve expended them all in a big fight you then have to stand around for 11 seconds to charge them all back up.

This is why mantras are a singularly awful design. A change or some sort of trait adjustment needs to be made so that adding more mantras into a build doesn’t cripple it. Potentially something like when expending the third cast of a mantra, gain quickness, allowing you to rapidly charge up another one.

Fay.2357:

The key about mantras, that all of this discussion has been entirely missing, is what happens when you put multiple mantras together in a build. I always like to refer to mantras as the “spice” of mesmer builds; you don’t want to overwhelm a dish with spices, but appropriate application will enhance the flavor and overall enjoyment.

This is how mantras are normally used. You put MoD in a build for a strong extra interrupt. You put MoR in a build for strong condition removal. You put MoC on when you just need that high output stability. The problem is that you don’t ever put more than maybe 2 mantras into a build (excepting PvE nukers, that doesn’t count) because of how badly they function together.

Most utilities, when heavily traited for, synergize well together. Even signets, as faulty as they are, once traited will gain in power the more you have. Mantras work in the completely opposite way. Even after heavy traiting for mantras, as your build gains mantras it becomes slower and clunkier. You spend more time standing around chanting, more time being vulnerable, more time doing essentially nothing. At the maximum of 4 mantras in a build, when you’ve expended them all in a big fight you then have to stand around for 11 seconds to charge them all back up.

This is why mantras are a singularly awful design. A change or some sort of trait adjustment needs to be made so that adding more mantras into a build doesn’t cripple it. Potentially something like when expending the third cast of a mantra, gain quickness, allowing you to rapidly charge up another one.

Interesting analyss and I fully agree. Had never thought of mantras that way but you are right. In a way they are our signet 2.0 skills. Adding on top that running 1-2 mantras (since more make the build clunky) devalues the current mantra traits (again adding even more on top of the clunkyness). This on top of our already heavy dependance on specific traits for our illusion class mechanic (yes, builds without DE or IC work, but those are near core traits mechanic wise. That’s 4-7 trait points fixed in very powerful traits needed to partly compensate for weak ai/illusion mechanic).

My only gripe with mantras is having to recharge them on zoning… It’s an interesting mechanic.

You also have to recharge mantras if you go in water and come back out.

I also believe being Moa’d resets them … but not sure if I’m remembering that one correctly.

Fay.2357:

The key about mantras, that all of this discussion has been entirely missing, is what happens when you put multiple mantras together in a build. I always like to refer to mantras as the “spice” of mesmer builds; you don’t want to overwhelm a dish with spices, but appropriate application will enhance the flavor and overall enjoyment.

This is how mantras are normally used. You put MoD in a build for a strong extra interrupt. You put MoR in a build for strong condition removal. You put MoC on when you just need that high output stability. The problem is that you don’t ever put more than maybe 2 mantras into a build (excepting PvE nukers, that doesn’t count) because of how badly they function together.

Most utilities, when heavily traited for, synergize well together. Even signets, as faulty as they are, once traited will gain in power the more you have. Mantras work in the completely opposite way. Even after heavy traiting for mantras, as your build gains mantras it becomes slower and clunkier. You spend more time standing around chanting, more time being vulnerable, more time doing essentially nothing. At the maximum of 4 mantras in a build, when you’ve expended them all in a big fight you then have to stand around for 11 seconds to charge them all back up.

This is why mantras are a singularly awful design. A change or some sort of trait adjustment needs to be made so that adding more mantras into a build doesn’t cripple it. Potentially something like when expending the third cast of a mantra, gain quickness, allowing you to rapidly charge up another one.

great analysis, +1.

Fay.2357:

This is why mantras are a singularly awful design. A change or some sort of trait adjustment needs to be made so that adding more mantras into a build doesn’t cripple it. Potentially something like when expending the third cast of a mantra, gain quickness, allowing you to rapidly charge up another one.

I don’t really have a problem with mantras being “the spice.” Two mantras on a bar is still plenty.

But most of the traits for them DO suck.

The good mantra traits are:
Harmonious Mantras.
Mender’s Purity.
Halting Strike.
Note how two out of three of these aren’t specific to mantras. >.>

(Empowering is a pretty good trait also, but at the moment it’s really a “trade utility slots on your bar for a fixed damage bonus” trait.)

The other mantra traits are pretty weird and useless:
Mantra Mastery — Your mantras either already have great cooldowns, or they’re skills that you don’t necessarily burn super-fast anyway, so the cooldown improvement just isn’t a worthwhile investment.
Protected Mantras — The whole idea here is backwards. You don’t want to charge while you’re taking fire. And if someone’s bursting you while you’re charging, the extra toughness is not going to help you.
Restorative Mantras — Builds that utilize this are basically standing around spamming Mantra of Pain to do a poor imitation of another class’ healing build. :/

To bring these up to par, you need to:
1. Reduce mantra CAST TIME for super-invested builds (the ones that would take a boatload of these traits).
2. Make the abilities actually match what you should be doing when you charge or activate mantras, which is anything but standing around trying to facetank. (Protected and Restorative both fail this, hard.)

Here’s an example of a rework:
Harmonious Mantras — good as-is.
Mantra Mastery — reduces cooldown AND CAST TIME by 20%.
Protected Mantras — charging a mantra gives you [small-to-moderate duration] protection; OR activating a mantra gives you a 1s pulse of protection.
Restorative Mantras — it’s a GM trait so, screw it, add a further cast time reduction of 20% to this, so people who want to go super-deep into weird mantra builds can get -40% off.

Sezneg.8630:

My only gripe with mantras is having to recharge them on zoning… It’s an interesting mechanic.

If you have Harmonious Mantras, you also seem to get your charges reset back down to 2 any time you pass a “level scaling boundary.”

(I haven’t complained about this because it’s minor and I’m worried someone will break something bigger if they try to poke at it with a fix.)

Honestly, I get a little annoyed when I think about our 20% reduction to signets (or any trait that is just -20% reduction) and how our cooldowns were nerfed because I’m well aware of the Thief traits that give 20% reduction that also give them Initiative (akin to reducing cooldowns on weapon skills).

I think Pyro Fay’s analogy for Mantras is fairly accurate. I got to try out that very Mantra heavy build I posted in another thread and it was just too many to juggle unless the other team just left you alone … which I don’t believe you should bank on. You need too many opportunities where you’re fine just recasting a spell that is off cooldown in order to be able to actually cast it for effect.

One thing I’d love to see is some way to deal with having 1/2 or 1/3, or 2/3 charges on a Mantra. It’s aggravating when you have to either:
(1) Sit at a sub-optimal number of charges
(2) Use it up real quick and hope you don’t get jumped while you wait for it to finish its cooldown and you recast it.
(3) Swap the utility out and back in and hope it doesn’t go on cooldown

None of those are great options and we’re the only class I’m aware of that deals with this sort of thing.

Personally, I’ve always wished that Mantras would just become multi-charge abilities that you didn’t have to precast and just regained 1 of their charges after their cooldown … though that might be “too powerful” … ./shrug

Sebrent.3625:

Personally, I’ve always wished that Mantras would just become multi-charge abilities that you didn’t have to precast and just regained 1 of their charges after their cooldown … though that might be “too powerful” … ./shrug

A bit of front-loading to compensate for the way mesmers are otherwise “backloaded.” I like it.

I would like to see some kind of regain charge over time thing for mantras. Roll it into the third charge grand master trait, where if you do not use all three mantras inside of the nominal cooldown cycle, so 30 seconds for MoD you regain a charge. In this way it lets us recover for the next pvp fight over time without having to blow the charges and recast. (alternatively make it something like portal, so that after using one charge if you do not use all remaining charges the mantra has are removed and you can recast without waiting for the cooldown. )

I really hope the new specialization allows mesmers to be less phantasm reliant for damage, mabye going back to the old mesmer gw1 system without clones but with powerful lockdown abilities and a more interrupted base combat system.. not sure how they would implement this though because most skills in pvp are shrouded by the unecessary spam of particles and the lack of a casting bar on foes which requires the player to have a high lvl of game knowledge to interrupt anything useful reliably. that mantra trait mentioned would be great for mantra mesmers btw.