Guild Wars 2

I wanted to propose an elite spec that removed the crummy clone mechanic, and improved upon the areas of DPS and boonstrip, and stayed within the bounds of mesmer lore.

So here’s my idea: remove clones and phantasms as a mechanic, and add a permanent, powerful clone pet named The Mimic. Give it better AI than ranger pets and when you use shatter skills, it does not shatter, but the effect happens around both you and the mimic, and you switch places.

(Attacks like Phantasmal Berserker and Swordsman will still summon the phantasm for the attack, but it will just fizzle out afterwards). The mimic would be able to use the same weapon skills as the mesmer, and hopefully dramatically increase the mesmer’s overall damage. Utility skills could have the mimic do special things like more boonstrip.

I know pet classes are unpopular, but this one seemed to fit really well with the Lyssa lore of a split personality, and with the right AI, tag teaming for high DPS would be really fun imo. What do people think of this?

Very interesting concept indeed! I like it in theory.

From a design perspective, I wonder how hard this would be. Our class is centered around clone-summoning (skills, utilities, traits) so how do you compensate for this? This idea is not as simple as you’d like to probably believe.

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Honestly something like this is how I want our baseline Clone/Shatter/Phantasm setup to be reworked. Even better would be clone/phantasm generation on the F-bar and shatters moved off of it, but hey, this one would work fine.

Sounds like fun. Guess I could go for a mentally insane Sylvari… wait, that has been done before.

DeathReign.7821:

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Lyssa is a patron to all mesmers, whether or not they worship her :P

I think the only “Lyssa-ness” that would be involved with the spec would maybe be naming traits. Char players would just have to accept that.

Besides, it’s a human female meta

Alex Shatter.7956:

DeathReign.7821:

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Lyssa is a patron to all mesmers, whether or not they worship her :P

I think the only “Lyssa-ness” that would be involved with the spec would maybe be naming traits. Char players would just have to accept that.

Besides, it’s a human female meta

Let’s be honest, when charr mesmers appeared, the whole guild wars profession lore went to the drain.

As far as I’m concerned, my Norn mesmer has a deep connection with raven, but she does not deny the existence of the human gods and knows the magic she wields is linked to Lyssa.

As far as the concept goes, I agree with MailMail. You cannot do that without reworking all illusions, especially phantasms. In your idea, phantasms spawn, do 1 attack, then disappear. What about iDisenchanter? If he attacks only once, this means only 2 boons and conditions removed… iDefender? Only 5s of damage reduction? Maybe the phantasm skill could instead add a skill to the Mimic? So when casting iDefender, now the damage is instead taken by the Mimic. Casting pBerserker? The mimic now has the Whirlwind Attack in its skill rotation… something like that. Just an idea.

Before I went to suggest the full phantasm rework in my signature, I thought about the “phantasm attack only once” idea, but it wasn’t satisfying.

I think we all agree that if the whole phantasm concept is not reworked in the core class, it would be great to have an elite spec which does it and increase our sustained damage. But not sure what is the best way to achieve that.

DeathReign.7821:

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Who wouldn’t want to turn into a pair of bears?

It sounds fun to me, but “better AI” is pretty handwavey – it might work better to shortcut around AI entirely, for example you could make it teleport to the target on specific triggers etc.

Toeofdoom.6152:

DeathReign.7821:

Lore-wise, this is great for human mesmers but what about the other races? My Mesmer’s a proud Norn and follows Raven, not Lyssa.

I would love to see a Charr using a Human God’s elite spec, lol.

Who wouldn’t want to turn into a pair of bears?

It sounds fun to me, but “better AI” is pretty handwavey – it might work better to shortcut around AI entirely, for example you could make it teleport to the target on specific triggers etc.

I would love to see commands and triggers be a thing. “Go over there!” and “wait here!” would be mountains of fun in sPvP and WvW.

“Better AI” is vague but there is so much room for improvement, I thought it would be enough. For example, I would like to see the Mimic execute dodge rolls and move in zig-zagged, non-linear patterns in combat, instead of acting like a barely programmed bandit NPC that is neither realistic nor useful.

In addition, having access to mesmer skills would open up opportunities to program skill decision trees into the Mimic’s AI.

“IF opponent has more than three conditions

AND my health is not low

THEN execute phantasmal warlock

ELSE execute chaos storm"

or even,

“IF I am being hit by ranged attacks

AND my opponents are stationary

THEN use feedback on enemy

ELSE IF my opponents are moving around

THEN use feedback on myself"

it sounds ambitious but if they can make bosses smart, they can at least try to make player summoned NPCs smart

If someone would make a link to it, I’m curious where it says that mesmer are inherently linked to Lyssa. I know thematically the connection is obvious, but it’s the same as necromancer to Grenth, or ranger to Melandru. For a human it makes sense, but for everyone else, it has a different flavor. to me at least.

She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lyssa

From what I understand, in guild wars 1, there was a clear link between professions and gods.

Also this discussion is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3d7dkp/do_you_think_profession_lore_needs_to_be_brought/

That discussion is very interesting. Had a similar conversation with a friend about WoW. Apparently before Wrath of the Lich King/Cataclysm, WoW had class-specific quests that really gave you a feel for what your class/profession was, what it was about, where it came from, etc. They took them out with one of those expansions, much to the dismay of some (the lorehounds) and the joy of others (typically pvp types who don’t care about the story/lore/etc).

Seems like something similar happened here, where GW1 had those kind of quests, and GW2 doesn’t. I would LOVE to have quests that were more centered around my profession and gave me a better feel for the class I’m playing and how it fits into the world. As it is now, it just seems to be this thing that some people can do, but has no relevance on the game, the story, or anything else.

This is probably more appropriate to some of the other non-profession forums, but yeah, I would love if they had those in this game…

Silverkey.2078:

She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lyssa

From what I understand, in guild wars 1, there was a clear link between professions and gods.

Also this discussion is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3d7dkp/do_you_think_profession_lore_needs_to_be_brought/

The full quote is:

Lyssa is the twin Goddess of Beauty and Illusion, individually known as Lyss and Ilya. She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers and Assassins, and is also associated with the Energy Storage techniques of Elementalists and the Mysticism of Dervishes. In the Elonian calendar, she is associated with the Season of the Zephyr.

So she would be a patron goddess to thieves (assassin equivalent) and associated with Elementalists as well.

The main thing is this made thematical sense in gw1 as you could ONLY play a human. Now with 5 playable races and with each race having different gods, these links between professions and gods become human specific.

DeathReign.7821:

Silverkey.2078:

She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lyssa

From what I understand, in guild wars 1, there was a clear link between professions and gods.

Also this discussion is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3d7dkp/do_you_think_profession_lore_needs_to_be_brought/

The full quote is:

Lyssa is the twin Goddess of Beauty and Illusion, individually known as Lyss and Ilya. She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers and Assassins, and is also associated with the Energy Storage techniques of Elementalists and the Mysticism of Dervishes. In the Elonian calendar, she is associated with the Season of the Zephyr.

So she would be a patron goddess to thieves (assassin equivalent) and associated with Elementalists as well.

The main thing is this made thematical sense in gw1 as you could ONLY play a human. Now with 5 playable races and with each race having different gods, these links between professions and gods become human specific.

Or no gods at all (looking at you charr and asura). I figure the Pale Tree and the Spirits of the Wild count as such for sylvari and norn respectively.

bearshaman.3421:

DeathReign.7821:

Silverkey.2078:

She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lyssa

From what I understand, in guild wars 1, there was a clear link between professions and gods.

Also this discussion is interesting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3d7dkp/do_you_think_profession_lore_needs_to_be_brought/

The full quote is:

Lyssa is the twin Goddess of Beauty and Illusion, individually known as Lyss and Ilya. She is the patron Goddess of Mesmers and Assassins, and is also associated with the Energy Storage techniques of Elementalists and the Mysticism of Dervishes. In the Elonian calendar, she is associated with the Season of the Zephyr.

So she would be a patron goddess to thieves (assassin equivalent) and associated with Elementalists as well.

The main thing is this made thematical sense in gw1 as you could ONLY play a human. Now with 5 playable races and with each race having different gods, these links between professions and gods become human specific.

Or no gods at all (looking at you charr and asura). I figure the Pale Tree and the Spirits of the Wild count as such for sylvari and norn respectively.

Agreed!