Guild Wars 2

Since the stealth is channeled during this ability, it’s cancelled by things that wouldn’t normally take you out of stealth, like dodge rolling. It isn’t exactly a DPS increase waiting the entire 3 second duration either (if you don’t wait, or cancel mid-channel, the burn doesn’t go off. Now incurring a 30 second cooldown.)

Why not change the ability a little and make it not feel so odd?

A solution could probably be found by looking at some of the channeled block abilities that exist. The scepter 2 skill channels a block, but you can “cancel” it early to perform a daze instead.

Would it be possible to make the prestige kind of similar? The initial button press would do that short ranged AoE blind and turn the mesmer invisible. Cancelling the invisibility with another cast, a roll, or simply pressing the button again would take you out of stealth and perform the AoE burn.

This would serve a couple purposes: justifying the 30 second cooldown for cancelled uses of the skill, and transforming the skill into something with a twofold use; a trend followed by many mesmer abilities. You could use the prestige and continue attacking, creating a short duration burn and rendering the skill offensive, or you could allow the stealth to run it’s 3-second course as a defensive measure.

It doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense right now. Defensively, you use it to blind the enemy and run away, reappearing in a burst of flames – hitting nothing – if you escaped successfully. Offensively, you sit there for 3 seconds waiting for it to end, doing nothing, otherwise wasting your burn and incurring a 30 second cooldown for what basically amounts to calling “time out” for a few seconds.

I like this.

Another solution would be to switch the burn and blind. You vanish in a ball of flames and emerge in a burst of light. Since you are entering stealth anyway, the blind loses some usefulness. As pointed out, most people use invisible to escape, not to engage mobs, which limits the usefulness of burns.

Yeah this ability was terrible minus the interrupting it to be able to stealth every 3 seconds. Now that it is fixed it really is pointless. The stealth needs to be made instant just like decoy. As far as the effect it causes is another problem..

i just have one question about this stupid offhand. why are people still targeting me, and pounding on me while im invisible? shouldnt the use of this ability drop all targets?

nerva.7940:

i just have one question about this stupid offhand. why are people still targeting me, and pounding on me while im invisible? shouldnt the use of this ability drop all targets?

I doubt you’re being targeted, people are most likely just trying to predict your movements and swinging wildly in that direction.

Waltz.3618:

nerva.7940:

i just have one question about this stupid offhand. why are people still targeting me, and pounding on me while im invisible? shouldnt the use of this ability drop all targets?

I doubt you’re being targeted, people are most likely just trying to predict your movements and swinging wildly in that direction.

All stealth in the game suffers from lock on from ranged attacks. You can use ranged attacks to track targets that have stealthed. You can use your illusionary duelists for this, Rangers do it all the time etc.

I like the OPs suggestion. Comming out of stealth should release the effect.

Channeled abilities do not cancel when you stealth, so they will continue to hit you. Not only that, but the projectiles will visually go towards wherever you’re stealthed. So, don’t stealth when the enemy [typically a rifle Warr or longbow Ranger] is streaming at you.

Use Feedback instead! Huehuehue.

Do not overlook the fact that The Prestige is also an aoe combo finisher…pretty sweet if used in that fashion.

Blast finishers by class.

Mesmers, thieves, and rangers are the only classes with only 1 blast finisher. Rangers seem to have it worse than mesmers due to it being a pet skill, but the thief one is spammable and moderately low initiative cost. Elementalists, warriors, and engineers all seem to have around 10 different ways to create a blast finisher.

The idea behind The Prestige is amazing. I just think it needs some tuning.

Bombul.2506:

Do not overlook the fact that The Prestige is also an aoe combo finisher…pretty sweet if used in that fashion.

I wish this blast finisher was a little more accessible. I works well if you are in vent and set up the combo, but if you see a field have to run into it and then wait 3 seconds you’ll miss it more often than not.

Agreed about making it so you can come out of The Prestige when you want with a chain skill use. The channeling and waiting is counterproductive. I can’t even think of a valid reason for it being this way.

They could make it like Temporal Curtain on the focus where you can hit the key again to activate the burn (or more preferably, the blind)

Not sure if you guys knew this, but if you timed it correctly before they fixed it, you could actually incur the 4 second cooldown and get the flame burst, and the full length of stealth every time by swinging a 1 hand sword right as the fire came out.

But now that it is fixed to always incur the 30 second cooldown, the ability is just useless. I’m not saying that a 4 second cooldown was fair, but I have to say that I enjoyed the reward for using precise timing to do something.

Anyway.. 30 second cooldown is absurdly too much. The torch is completely not viable as a weapon at this point, and as such… a mesmer is mostly useless with the 1 handed sword as well, because now a mesmer has no method which allows survival in melee range.

Anyway.. 30 second cooldown is absurdly too much. The torch is completely not viable as a weapon at this point, and as such… a mesmer is mostly useless with the 1 handed sword as well, because now a mesmer has no method which allows survival in melee range.——-EDIT: Also, the illusionary mage is pretty terrible too.. can you just make the mage do some burning damage instead?? and make the torch strictly for invisibility, and give it a 10 or 15 second cooldown for a 3 seconds stealth?

Havn’t read all the responses, so don’t want to make repetitive suggestions, but I do agree that it needs serious work.

Channeling stealth is just bad lol.

+1 for really cool concept needing a bit of work to compete with other offhands!

I sometimes wonder what the developers were thinking when they made the torch skills.(I’m talking about PvE btw)

The Prestige – So it stealths you, provides an AOE Blind+Burn and acts as a blast finisher. Sounds cool right? Personally I think that the stealth was the only thing going for it, and now that’s been nerfed the skill is next to useless.

AOE Blind sounds cool, but while you are in stealth you can not attack, which means that it turns this part of the skill into full support, making this only useful when playing in groups.
AOE Burn sounds cool as well, but the fact is that only one stack of burning does negligible damage, totally not worth channeling it for 3 seconds. My DPS and survival tends to be way higher when I use other skills.

Phantasmal Mage – This is without a doubt the worst PvE phantasm skill. So it grants confusion for enemies, retaliation for allies. Sounds good on paper, but both effects are ways to indirectly cause damage to the enemy.
At most one phantasmal mage can shortly uphold 2 stacks of confusion. Then there’s the idea that the attack bounces off to several allies causing retaliation. But the fact is that either you’re fighting a single enemy, which most of the time attacks only a single ally or you’re fighting versus a group, where the effects of retaliation just aren’t really noticable. Either way, the skill never really manages to impress at all. I tend to use it as cannon fodder more often than anything else.

Proposed fix :
The Prestige – The OP’s idea

The Phantasmal Mage – Remove Retaliation, Cast a small AOE confusion field that can upkeep 2 stacks of confusion on the enemy. It acts as an ethereal combo field. In order to succesfully work together with the prestige.

OP has the most elegant solution. I assume the blind on stealth is so any attacks right after you stealth miss and you can escape. OP’s solution just makes it so you have a skill which is good for both escape and damage.

I understand the concept, wait a while then POOF the payoff, but it’s too limited in the current form. Also the mage sucks. Others have suggested all sorts of things. Maybe buff his attack rate, maybe make him only attack, and then look at damage numbers (obviously account for confusion)

If mages are buffed a bit and/or re worked and prestige is worth using then we might have a really nice off hand weapon for condition damage mesmers there.

you guys realize that you can still take damage while stealthed right?

Just saying, the blind has a purpose… Still I say even if OP’s changes are made, (which I think they should) then a 30 second cooldown is still too much. Maybe 20 would be good. The damage isn’t high enough, and the stealth isn’t long enough to justify that cooldown… noway.

The burn is around 3-4k, AOE, with a full condition build. The damage is pretty high all things considered.

3-4k on a very specific build is pretty bad for a 30 second cooldown, all things considered.

Good thing it comes with a stealth and blind, too! With a the optional conditional removal if you trait for it. And the damage is AOE and combos as a blast finisher!

Also, it’s not a specific build; it’s simply stacking condition damage.

So exciting, let’s keep talking about the tooltip of the same ability over again!

EasymodeX.4062:

Good thing it comes with a stealth and blind, too! With a the optional conditional removal if you trait for it. And the damage is AOE and combos as a blast finisher!

Also, it’s not a specific build; it’s simply stacking condition damage.

So exciting, let’s keep talking about the tooltip of the same ability over again!

The problem isn’t the potential use of the skill; The prestige is an amazing idea for an ability. The problem is the awkward execution. If we had more control of the ability, the cooldown would definitely be justified.

If you’ve read my earlier post in this topic, you would have seen my objections about those other features. I would be curious to see a response directly addressing that EasymodeX.

Condition removal is indeed nice, but that brings us to another issue that I won’t bring up here. Which is of course the heavy dependance on traits to make the profession effective in PvE.

Yeah basically. Swapping the burn and blind and allowing the finishing effect to trigger when the channel breaks are definitely needed improvements.

The channel is there for a reason though: so you can’t use other spells while stealthed.

Couldn’t you activate instant casts while the channel is taking place?

Should be able to but not 100% positive. However, during normal stealth (e.g. Decoy) you can cast basically any non-offensive ability without breaking stealth.