Guild Wars 2

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@fadeaway: You’re definitely right. The question is, would you have rathered this or a flat damage nerf?

The 1v1 masses have been roaring for a nerf to phantasms, so Anet had to do something. That 12 second difference is nuts though… but, on the brightside, Phantasms should be lasting longer with Signet of Illusions working properly.

I would have preferred a damage nerf due to target swapping and the increased hp per second the enemy would have to chew through if they decided to kill the phantasms (which in turn gave more retaliation damage back to them).

Don’t forget you also lose the cooldown buff to things like staff #2, greatsword #2 and sword #3. Not to mention decoy.

Phantasm spec almost requires signet of illusions now, but shatter spec is free to take something more useful.

Finally, anet said they do not balance around 1v1.

Shatter > phantasm by far for all modes of gameplay if this change goes through, and I’ve been a phantasm fan almost my whole lvl 80 life whether it be roaming, zerging, spvping or pveing, even through the confusion era.

It’s also a lot of extra time to be waiting for our second best stun-break to recharge

So they’re telling us to only roll shatter? I can’t see any other logic or reason to this.

Ele’s and mesmer now both get forced 30 deep into the class trait line. Good Job!

Now there is shatter build, shatter build and shatter build. Enjoy your diversity.

At least there’s a decent reason to go 30 in chaos rather than 20 if you were going more defensively than offensively since prismatic understanding got buffed.

Oh wait shatter spec without 20 in duelling is terrible, nevermind.

0/20/0/0/30. Enjoy your 20 points of spec freedom.

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with this is how it affects Illusionary Leap, especially, Phase Retreat..

Shatter Mesmers actually haven’t been getting many complaints anymore. The new reason to hate on Mesmers is phantasms and Focus (really.. where was all this focus hate months ago?). Anet doesn’t balance around 1v1, but they’ve been known to cave in to the flood of salty player tears that washes over them. My guess is that this was done in order to mitigate some of the “Mesmer = OP” rage.

Gawd.. everytime I look at that Celerity nerf my eye twitches. They better have a patch coming soon to fix ’Zerker and revamp the torch phantasm.

Lets see.. People have cried about Timewarp, cried about Confusion, cried about Phantasms, cried about Focus… What do we have left for people to complain on? Stealth? Boons?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with this is how it affects Illusionary Leap, especially, Phase Retreat..

Shatter Mesmers actually haven’t been getting many complaints anymore. The new reason to hate on Mesmers is phantasms and Focus (really.. where was all this focus hate months ago?). Anet doesn’t balance around 1v1, but they’ve been known to cave in to the flood of salty player tears that washes over them. My guess is that this was done in order to mitigate some of the “Mesmer = OP” rage.

Gawd.. everytime I look at that Celerity nerf my eye twitches. They better have a patch coming soon to fix ’Zerker and revamp the torch phantasm.

Lets see.. People have cried about Timewarp, cried about Confusion, cried about Phantasms, cried about Focus… What do we have left for people to complain on? Stealth? Boons?

Good question. What is there left to complain about with mesmers? Nothing I can think of now, stealth I guess?

In the mean time I’ll continue to get crit for 17.8k by killshot on warriors.

Blurred Frenzy is under QQers fire by few weeks already.

Blurred Frenzy. I bet you. Hug it close because one day…

“Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’wife cuz they nerfin err’body out here.”

Edit: We just posted that at the exact same time. I think we just jinxed Mesmer everywhere. =[

AndrewSX.3794:

Blurred Frenzy is under QQers fire by few weeks already.

Ah, this is true. I guess we can all expect that to get nerfed next month.

I only roll shatter specs anyways but I’m still bummed about this nerf. I may not use phantasm builds myself but I like haveing the option to change specs.

Now I see no other option but 30 into illusions.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@fadeaway: You’re definitely right. The question is, would you have rathered this or a flat damage nerf?

The 1v1 masses have been roaring for a nerf to phantasms, so Anet had to do something. That 12 second difference is nuts though… but, on the brightside, Phantasms should be lasting longer with Signet of Illusions working properly.

This is something that’s never popular to say here but I’d take the damage nerf.

A pure Phant build is a gimmicky dueling build with no place in other areas of the game, but honestly if Signet of Illusions is fixed and keeps the 200% health charge a pure Phant build probably isn’t going to feel a kitten thing from this anyway, and the masses will still be crying about getting wiped on the floor with it.

Phant builds that hybrid with actual support and utility are the ones that are going to be in a tight spot for this. Phantasms are a fragile mechanic—the rapid spawning is the one counter we have to that where we have the capability to trait ourselves and take utilities for things that are not related to Phantasms. Those few seconds can make all the difference.

And for me, the double cooldown is important for Phase Retreat, iLeap, and iRiposte so that I can maneuver outnumbered battles (which is most of what you fight in PvE). The rapid Phant cooldown means I don’t have to take SoI (which I hate) and have all three utility spots open for things more beneficial to group play or survival/mobility, because Phants don’t have the self-utility that shattering does.

There has actually been a lot of potential in Phant builds doing more than just dueling but this has the potential to wreck that.

God, normally I’m of the “it’s not as bad as you think guys really” crowd, but no this could be really bad.

I’m significantly less worried about the effect this change has on phantasms than the effect it has on everything else. Phantasms are already very strong, and if the SoI does indeed get fixed, phantasms will still be strong.

The issue is everything else. Phase retreat, illusionary leap, mirror blade, decoy, mirror images. All of these highly important skills are getting nerfed because of this.

My read of this is:

“We moved the trait every Mesmer included into every build to 25 points in the tree, but that’s ok because you need 30 points to get IP and make your profession mechanic semi-reliable”.

Mesmer can work fine withouth IC…. it’s an awesome trait and i really should be a grandmanster trait instead of the diversion one, that is how good it is, if you can’t make a build withouth IC this probably means you haven’t thought outside the box yet.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@fadeaway: You’re definitely right. The question is, would you have rathered this or a flat damage nerf?

The 1v1 masses have been roaring for a nerf to phantasms, so Anet had to do something. That 12 second difference is nuts though… but, on the brightside, Phantasms should be lasting longer with Signet of Illusions working properly.

I disagree. ANet didn’t HAVE to do anything. And if they want to do something, they could have not change the trait to 25 pts., if could have been 15 pts.

Of course, confusion didn’t need a 50% nerf either.

TooBz.3065:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@fadeaway: You’re definitely right. The question is, would you have rathered this or a flat damage nerf?

The 1v1 masses have been roaring for a nerf to phantasms, so Anet had to do something. That 12 second difference is nuts though… but, on the brightside, Phantasms should be lasting longer with Signet of Illusions working properly.

I disagree. ANet didn’t HAVE to do anything. And if they want to do something, they could have not change the trait to 25 pts., if could have been 15 pts.

Of course, confusion didn’t need a 50% nerf either.

That’s accurate. Don’t blame these nerfs on the whiners. Whiners will whine, and that’s more or less an axiom of online games. The responsibility for changes is 100% with the developers.

You people really don’t get it. ANet don’t even know what they want the Mesmer to be anymore and are doing their kitten best to cram us into a shatter role.

Every single buff so far has been in favor of shatter builds and to the detriment of condition dmg and other builds.

Shatter is their pet. They want to revolve the class around it and to that end, they are murdering every other build.

In the end, they will probably see the error of their ways and actually make something half decent. Until then, we suffer.

Oh and I would like to see Temportal Curtain finally fixed god kitten it. You can nerfed it but you can’t fix the swiftness stacking? At least tell us you don’t want to and be done with it.

I knew they’d do something about Phantasm builds – now they have. 20% longer CDs

The TC nerf really annoys me. It was literally made as a direct result of high end pvp play. It will still be very useful as a weapon, but it will be exponentially harder to catch people in WvW now with it.

Don’t engies have a pull similar to TC in their Toolbelt? As far as I understand it the reason for the nerf is you couldn’t see the pull coming, and it seems the engie one works the same way.

Well I’m not necessarily blaming anyone but a lousy design philosophy, but the pattern has been consistent throughout the months…

People whine = appeasing nerf incoming.

My main problem is that these changes almost always stem from a PvP/WvW perspective… and wasn’t it last month Anet said that they’re going to be splitting the balance more often?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Well I’m not necessarily blaming anyone but a lousy design philosophy, but the pattern has been consistent throughout the months…

People whine = appeasing nerf incoming.

My main problem is that these changes almost always stem from a PvP/WvW perspective… and wasn’t it last month Anet said that they’re going to be splitting the balance more often?

I agree, except that it seems much more like the sPvP group whines and things get changed. People have been complaining about Warriors in PvE forever and Anet doesn’t give a kitten.

If they want to balance around organized groups competing 5 on 5 then that’s the game they should have made.

IMO the only thing a huge nerf does is show that they either don’t know what they are doing now or didn’t know what they were doing in the first place.

Welp, guess it’s time to try that x-x-x-x-25 phant build with phantasmal haste… >.>

Well, on the other hand with Signet of Illusions working properly, we won’t be losing phantasms as fast as previously.

I’d say it’s not a big deal, especially since on top of Signet of Illusions fix every Phantasm Mesmer will now pack Restorative Mantras, so hurr… probably Phantasm Mesmers will become even stronger 1v1 now.

Really, the only reason I ever need to spam phantasms to begin with is because they get killed fast – this patch will fix that.

shimmerless.4560:

Zumi.6384:

The TC nerf really annoys me. It was literally made as a direct result of high end pvp play. It will still be very useful as a weapon, but it will be exponentially harder to catch people in WvW now with it.

Don’t engies have a pull similar to TC in their Toolbelt? As far as I understand it the reason for the nerf is you couldn’t see the pull coming, and it seems the engie one works the same way.

It works the exact same way, there’s no telegraph and it has a 30% longer range to boot. Only diff is that it’s single target.

Are you talking about magnet?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magnet
You can def see this coming. There are sorta clear “magnet” lines between the engineer and it’s target, it takes 1.25 seconds to cast with a pretty obvious animation and it only can happen after they swap to the tool kit since its not a tool belt skill.

I really think everyone needs to stop complaining and wait. The two recent patch notes have not been official and also contradict each other. Also this new patch note doesn’t mention any changes to weapons when the previous did. What if decoy received a base 20% cooldown?

Iavra.8510:

And i like how warriors get their passive permanent +25% movement speed without even having to use up a utility skill while we aren’t even getting Compounding Celerity (which only works in combat anyway) buffed.

Though the early “leaked” notes has this in it, the more recent ones do not. I don’t think warriors are getting that boost. Of course this doesn’t change the fact that mesmers still could desperately use more speed.

The Minor Adept trait “Illusionists Celerity” has been made the Minor Grandmaster trait and the other Minor traits have been pushed down.

…

…

Sorry, my jaw just hit the floor.

…

Ah well, something had to be done about that trait, it was very powerful.

A silver lining is now we don’t have to sink 5 points into illusions on builds focused on other trait lines.

Curunen.8729:

The Minor Adept trait “Illusionists Celerity” has been made the Minor Grandmaster trait and the other Minor traits have been pushed down.

…

…

Sorry, my jaw just hit the floor.

…

Ah well, something had to be done about that trait, it was very powerful.

A silver lining is now we don’t have to sink 5 points into illusions on builds focused on other trait lines.

Hooray, we don’t have to sink 5 points into illusions for all of our builds. I’m really going to enjoy tossing around these extra 5 points to try and compensate for the 20% cooldown nerf it caused.

Esplen.3940:

Welp, guess it’s time to try that x-x-x-x-25 phant build with phantasmal haste… >.>

Phantasmal haste is broken I’m afraid.

Yeah, as long as SoI gets fixed, I’m really not worried at all about my phant specc.

fadeaway.2807:

Esplen.3940:

Welp, guess it’s time to try that x-x-x-x-25 phant build with phantasmal haste… >.>

Phantasmal haste is broken I’m afraid.

It’s partly broken. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Haste

Pyroatheist.9031:

Curunen.8729:

The Minor Adept trait “Illusionists Celerity” has been made the Minor Grandmaster trait and the other Minor traits have been pushed down.

…

…

Sorry, my jaw just hit the floor.

…

Ah well, something had to be done about that trait, it was very powerful.

A silver lining is now we don’t have to sink 5 points into illusions on builds focused on other trait lines.

Hooray, we don’t have to sink 5 points into illusions for all of our builds. I’m really going to enjoy tossing around these extra 5 points to try and compensate for the 20% cooldown nerf it caused.

I’m trying to stay positive!

All Phantasms damage is based on power, why in the world would ANET bury [Illusionists Celerity] at the top of the condition line? That makes absolutely no sense! I thought the whole purpose of the reworking of the trees is so they would make more sense, not less! Might as well just remove that trait completely, I’d never spend 25 points in condition damage for a mesmer with our nerfed confusion.

How about just swap [Illusionists Celerity] for [Confusing Enchantments] since it has no place in the power tree?

Has it been that overpowered in pve??? o.O
:(

Drakh.3128:

All Phantasms damage is based on power, why in the world would ANET bury [Illusionists Celerity] at the top of the condition line? That makes absolutely no sense! I thought the whole purpose of the reworking of the trees is so they would make more sense, not less! Might as well just remove that trait completely, I’d never spend 25 points in condition damage for a mesmer with our nerfed confusion.

How about just swap [Illusionists Celerity] for [Confusing Enchantments] since it has no place in the power tree?

It fits because the power tree is also the condition duration tree. (But I have no explanation why power and condition duration go together.)

Drakh.3128:

All Phantasms damage is based on power, why in the world would ANET bury [Illusionists Celerity] at the top of the condition line? That makes absolutely no sense! I thought the whole purpose of the reworking of the trees is so they would make more sense, not less! Might as well just remove that trait completely, I’d never spend 25 points in condition damage for a mesmer with our nerfed confusion.

How about just swap [Illusionists Celerity] for [Confusing Enchantments] since it has no place in the power tree?

…Because IC is a illusion benefiting trait, and not a power trait? Builds that use CND Damage or support also use IC. It belongs in the illusions tree, in my opinion. Also this nerf is justified, as much as I don’t like it. I run a Phantasm Build, & we did have it a bit too good. However, I think a 10% shave off of non IC cooldowns is in order to balance it out. Then, IC could give the other 10, thus giving illusion tree specced mesmers the old cooldown times that they were used to anyways, while easing things a bit for non IC mesmer builds.

Arale.4207:

<snip>However, I think a 10% shave off of non IC cooldowns is in order to balance it out. Then, IC could give the other 10, thus giving illusion tree specced mesmers the old cooldown times that they were used to anyways, while easing things a bit for non IC mesmer builds.

This is a good compromise. Lower base illusion cooldowns by 10% across the board. Reduce IC to 10% and leave it somewhere in the illusions tree – whether a minor or a major trait.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with this is how it affects Illusionary Leap, especially, Phase Retreat..

Shatter Mesmers actually haven’t been getting many complaints anymore. The new reason to hate on Mesmers is phantasms and Focus (really.. where was all this focus hate months ago?). Anet doesn’t balance around 1v1, but they’ve been known to cave in to the flood of salty player tears that washes over them. My guess is that this was done in order to mitigate some of the “Mesmer = OP” rage.

Gawd.. everytime I look at that Celerity nerf my eye twitches. They better have a patch coming soon to fix ’Zerker and revamp the torch phantasm.

Lets see.. People have cried about Timewarp, cried about Confusion, cried about Phantasms, cried about Focus… What do we have left for people to complain on? Stealth? Boons?

I know other professions might give you flack or say you’re biased, but you have a strong argument there.

It seems very peculiar that it seems these changes has been reactive rather than proactive. In every change that was made, it was done from recent complaints.

Curunen.8729:

Arale.4207:

<snip>However, I think a 10% shave off of non IC cooldowns is in order to balance it out. Then, IC could give the other 10, thus giving illusion tree specced mesmers the old cooldown times that they were used to anyways, while easing things a bit for non IC mesmer builds.

This is a good compromise. Lower base illusion cooldowns by 10% across the board. Reduce IC to 10% and leave it somewhere in the illusions tree – whether a minor or a major trait.

I wish I could believe Anet was gonna do something like this, but even I have to admit they’re not good at compromise in their actual balancing. I’m not expecting a lot of compensation in this patch if this goes through, and probably not for months afterward.

Ramiel.4931:

Oh and I would like to see Temportal Curtain finally fixed god kitten it. You can nerfed it but you can’t fix the swiftness stacking? At least tell us you don’t want to and be done with it.

If I remember it correctly, swiftness from curtain was stacking with itself in betas, and was nerfed so mesmers don’t abuse it for permanent swiftness. Overnerfed, as it turned out later.

I would have understood if they moved it to adept minor. It’d make sense, but grandmaster? kittened. moronic. every other word in that area. Totally destroys the purpose of playing a phantasm mesmer by forcing everyone to go shatter.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

It may be fake, but lets be honest…

Who here hasn’t looked at Illusionists Celerity and said, “Wow. Thats… really beastly for 5 points.”

We got spoiled by it, but in a sense we shoulda saw this coming… but Grandmaster!? Not even Master!? wtf.

If these changes are accurate…….i feel the same as this.
The trait should have been a 15 point investment from the beginning, so that it was seen more as a shatter trait to get clones up quicker, and so that non-shatter builds wouldn’t have gotten used to it (without making the necessary sacrifices to get the trait).
Putting it at 25 after this many months is simply too much from a “build-altering” standpoint. It decimates utility on non-shatter builds, or increases the cooldowns on more than 1/2 their skills. So shatter builds become even more popular……..

Thus, their next step is to nerf shatter mechanic (either through damage or cooldowns).
so ultimately we end up in the same spot as before this next patch, but with every mesmer significantly weaker.

Bravo Anet.
the whiners win again.

….and if you don’t think 1/2 the “fixes” that come in this patch will be broken/bugged…or that multiple skills/traits will be newly bugged, you are blind to the history of this game.

which is why a “balance patch” is hilarious with so many broken traits/skills in all classes.

It seems they are thinking the pve mesmer deserves more nerfs…
Anyway creating new nerfs/ changes has one very good thing indeed. It distracts the people from the current problems the mesmer already has. GG.

Yeah, the Illusionists Celerity change just makes 25 points in Illusion mandatory and when you are that far down you might as well give the extra 5 points and go full shatter.

Build Diversity the Anet way.

The only positive thing i can say about this is the fact that IC is still in Illusion and not Inspiration, if this was moved to inspiration—————————-

looks like 4 people can keep whining and anet changes it right away, because those 4 are thieves and thieves should never have a reason to cry. but what bugs me more is that most of those qq’ers cry because of spvp and anet fails to separate the 2 spvp and wvw. most of the builds that are very strong in spvp don’t work in wvw ans clones, phantasms die way to quickly in a zerg with tons of aoe and arrowcarts, and mortars and cannons and trebs.if they would separate these 2 things would be diferent and they should be separated!

Hrmmm…. Not sure about how reliable the source is (same with the reddit leak) however while this will be a nerf to my clone (decoy) I also think it will help the survivability of my perma protection build… 5more pts into insp for restorative mantras. I was hard to kill before and now I really say “Come at me Bro!” May even grab the scepter to try that torment business out.

I think it is about time Illusionist’s Celerity got nerfed. It was ridiculous that such a powerful trait costs only five points to take. As long as it is untouched no Mesmer build will ever not include it.

Having said that, I would’ve preferred if they removed the trait entirely and reduced Illusion skill CDs by about 10% across the board. Illusions is already the Mesmer’s most “compulsory” trait line, it really doesn’t need another powerful GM trait to reinforce that.

The main thing I’m sad about is the PU change in the previous leak has disappeared. And I’m still hoping for further polish regarding Empowered Illusions, our Signet traits and more generally useful Manipulation traits. Oh and Glamour traits… beh. It seems like the only traits they improved are the Interrupt traits, and even those changes are questionable (I don’t see Furious Interruption seeing any use for instance).

@Interrupt builds
well, the previous leaked notes seemed more favorable. Right now I still think that it’s not worth for a build.

@Protective mantras
the only one which might make it in my build … lol … sry … seriously … give us 400 toughness on any cast or give us aegis/ distorsion. Or allow us to dodge while casting mantras.

@AoE condi removal on shatter
I’d really like to try it. But I have to keep restorative mantras, and then I lack usefulness in the adept master slot. I mean … Get +20% phan HP for reflecting focus ? no.

@Shatters in general
As I see the current trend in mesmers, more than 50% don’t like to shatter at all. Either keep phants for damage, illusions for diversion or other things. Shattering is barely worth the costs. And I’m not different here. It basically makes the F-Keys useless on my mesmers, except for making my illusions go away (in jade maw or CoE abdomination).
Then ANet thought … instead of making shatters more attractive, let’s better nerf any non-shatter build, maybe this will make them more attractive.

@Illusion Celerity
Yes, I always thought it was misplaced there. No other class (?) had one of their main traits in a 5 point position. But well, most of them had it in a 10 point position. Thanks for making mesmers an exception and putting it 20 points further away. I guess I’ll go for 10 in power then. Since … most don’t like shatters.

I’d really like to see an “attractiveness graph” showing which classes’ trait lines is the least used. For mesmer it should be like … 80% of the mesmers don’t go beyond 5pts in illusions and 90% not beyond 0 pts in chaos. Better nerf those 5 pts … oh, already done; then better nerf the remaining 3 lines.

Iavra.8510:

So basically a flat 20% nerf to every phantasm build out there. We are used to getting nerfed every month anywhere…

Oh that’s good. I’m glad mesmer are taking this patch in such a cheerful manner! Rangers everywhere could really learn a few thing or two from mesmers… Ranger forum is like a funeral march atm.

So what do you think we should nerf next now that Phantasm is done with?

I’d suggest that shatter skills do 2x dmg on wannabe trolls

XRay.1920:

I’d suggest that shatter skills do 2x dmg on wannabe trolls

Yes because everyone who has a sense of humor and is trying to make light of the situation is a troll. You honestly treat this game too seriously, buddy. I play a Bm ranger and I laughed heartily when i saw the patch note.

Ps. It’s only trolling if I actually sound like I’m serious.