Guild Wars 2

Ok, we’ve gone through the multitude of bug fixes that are needed, but what about straight buffs? Yes I know – to read the words “mesmer” and “buff” in the same sentence… don’t worry the world hasn’t ended yet!

But let’s be honest, there are skills and traits that would really benefit from a buff, in one way or another. One of the problems that sometimes happens with Anet’s balancing of mesmer is the heavy handed “err on the side of overnerfing” approach, compared to the cautious shaving approach. This is fine, except things are not rebuffed to find the balance point. I’m not going to go back through patch notes just to write a pointless wall of text to highlight this – I’m sure people can go and read stuff for themselves.

Anyway for me, the top 3 things I’d like to see buffed are:

1. Blurred Frenzy
- So much talk about this, and of course everyone is going to have a different opinion on what side of it they want buffed based on the game mode they play. I’ll list what can be looked at – cooldown, damage, retal issues (for players in wvw raids). Please say if I’ve missed out anything. I’ll just pick one of these things and simply ask for base cooldown of 10s again. The increase to 12s base was unnecessary.

2. Blinding Befuddlement
- Ok so the confusion duration was increased, but the ICD? Really… I’d be happy for the confusion duration to be decreased to 3s (or less if necessary) and remove the ICD completely. If chaos armour is a worry then that can be dealt with separately.

3. iMage
- I know this has been listed in the bug fix thread, but to be honest it just needs an out and out straight buff – either in damage, conditions, aoe or something.

There’s much more of course, but just picking 3 that would do some good for this class. Please respond with your own. Laugh, cry, joke about it, call me crazy, whatever.

Some of these may not be popular… but here goes!

1. Give us a more dedicated, ranged AoE option. My preference would be to alter Scepter auto to do increasing AoE damage (300-450-600 area) and no longer spawn a clone. I’d also make Scepter 2’s Counterspell an AoE on the target, boost the damage, and swap it to a Daze. A blind doesn’t feel very worthy of the name “counter spell” with so many spells being unaffected by the condition.

2. Remove Staff 4 and replace it with a medium-cooldown AoE. I get Chaos armor from teleporting or blasts, I don’t like wasting such a valuable slot on it. The class is about deception and avoiding damage, so things that require me to get hit, yet don’t prevent much damage, aren’t helping me much. Staff seems more about being slippery and buffed than being melee-mode.

3. Improve mantras… somehow. Having more than one on my bar makes the game feel so clunky and slow. I’d love to have the charging part actually do something. Make me pulse damage or healing while channeling, periodically cure conditions, hasten cooldowns on my other skills while I channel… something.

Kelthien.8593:

Some of these may not be popular… but here goes!
3. Improve mantras… somehow. Having more than one on my bar makes the game feel so clunky and slow. I’d love to have the charging part actually do something. Make me pulse damage or healing while channeling, periodically cure conditions, hasten cooldowns on my other skills while I channel… something.

I think this could be great as a trait but not standard. Seems a little too powerful to me.

On topic:

1. We need a ranged AoE option. I would love to see a MH pistol that has a bouncing auto attack, a disengage, and a ground targeted AoE with some kind of condi application.
2. Add some damage to Into the Void. Focus really offers almost 0 damage potential with how broken (or easily avoidable even when it does work) iWarden is. It would be nice to have some damage potential on #4.
3. Rework staff #4 to do more than just apply 5s of a buff we can generate through combo fields. I would be ok if it was just changed to apply Chaos Armor to up to 5 allies in a medium radius, similar to the Guardian Might channel on their staff. I just find it really lame 1/4th of Staff’s abilities is something we can easily do with combos.

Sure, here goes!

1. Give Blurred Frenzy its invuln back
Reason: Retaliation. There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs when I attempt to shatter burst a group of 3 or so people with a guard. I reverse-shatter myself. Retal. It’s simply not fun, nor is a random buff that instantly gibs you for trying to burst a group really something I’d consider to be legitimate counter play. Invuln on BF, however, would introduce counter play. For example, when dueling another Mesmer, you could BF through their phant summon—that is, a defensive use of BF.

2. Increase Cry of Frustration’s direct dmg
Reason: Burst that Mesmers lost due to the ferocity patch. The reduction of crit dmg is something that all classes deal with, but I feel that it really did cripple Shatter Mesmers more than something like a d/d Thief, for example. Another reason would be that, in general, Shatter Mesmer is a kill-or-be-killed spec: if our burst is dodged/avoided, we deserve to lose; but if our full combo isn’t enough to drop even a semi-tanky opponent, we don’t have much else left in most cases. Therefore, increasing Cry’s dmg would cost two shatter skills but boost our shatter dmg back into a comfortable pre-patch range.

3. More Boon-Strip on Mind Stab (GS #3)
Reason: The skill does nothing; sorry to be blunt. I use it to burst a bit on rare occasions as well as for trying to strip stability/protection (with little success). It’s been discussed to death, but I think that changing the hard-to-land skill with little dmg into a boon-strip utility-like skill would be a very nice fit for the gs! It could remove swiftness/vigor/stability to allow for your kiting/chasing. I also feel that it’d be balanced since it’s hard to connect reliably and does little dmg. Therefore, removing 3—or even just 2—boons would be all the buff I need for it

I feel that all of these buffs would be balanced and would greatly improve our ability to counter play and punish.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Haha, some good ideas here already

Cry of Frustration is a kitten good suggestion – definitely the most “useless” shatter, mainly just supplementary damage to mind wrack, or simply to proc the shatter traits.
Maybe adding torment in addition to confusion for Cry of Frustration? Would certainly fit the theme of it.

Curunen.8729:

Cry of Frustration is a kitten good suggestion – definitely the most “useless” shatter, mainly just supplementary damage to mind wrack, or simply to proc the shatter traits.
Maybe adding torment in addition to confusion for Cry of Frustration? Would certainly fit the theme of it.

Yea!

I spoke mostly from a Power Shatter perspective, but I’ve also tried Condi Shatter a lot too. Condi Shatter’s great—aside from one glaring issue: no hard-hitting Shatter. Cry on a condi spec puts on a good bit of confusion for a few seconds, but it really isn’t even close to Mind Wrack on a power spec. Applying an additional condi like torment per clone would certainly be quite the generous fix! It might be a bit much; but then again, Cry is on a 30 cd untraited, 21 max-traited.

(Just wanted to say for those considering Condi Shatter: I had the most success with a hybrid full rampager’s might stacking build with iPersona.)

Curunen.8729:

Cry of Frustration is a kitten good suggestion – definitely the most “useless” shatter, mainly just supplementary damage to mind wrack, or simply to proc the shatter traits.
Maybe adding torment in addition to confusion for Cry of Frustration? Would certainly fit the theme of it.

Just a note – in power shatter builds cry of frustration is invaluable as one of the key boon stripping sources, with most players saving mind wrack, diversion and distortion for their actual uses.

skcamow.3527:

Curunen.8729:

Cry of Frustration is a kitten good suggestion – definitely the most “useless” shatter, mainly just supplementary damage to mind wrack, or simply to proc the shatter traits.
Maybe adding torment in addition to confusion for Cry of Frustration? Would certainly fit the theme of it.

Just a note – in power shatter builds cry of frustration is invaluable as one of the key boon stripping sources, with most players saving mind wrack, diversion and distortion for their actual uses.

That’s what I said – main use is to proc the trait.

Otherwise its damage is purely supplementary.

Edit: Ideally it is the condition themed shatter. So MW is pure damage, CoF is mainly condition, #3 is utility and #4 survival. At the moment CoF fails miserably in that department.

Edit 2: Just to clarify – CoF untraited (no boon strip, no condi removal, no torment, etc…) is absolutely mediocre.

I just want them to buff mesmer auto attacks. Most of them are pretty terrible.

Fix Temporal Curtain Swiftness
Fix ILeap
Give clones more health
Buff Mind Wrack or make all shatters AOE
Image/Iwarlock/Staff clone bolt speed laughably slow. make it move at magic bullet speed.
Nerf PU so that they get 1 boon every 1.5 seconds instead of every second. Give a boon if stealth ends in the middle of the 1.5 second icd.

Full zerker shatter mesmer should be able to kill a super tank regen warrior. Right now, for the most part we cannot without leaving up 3 phantasms, if you can keep them up which ruins the whole “shatter” part of the mechanic.

Make Glamour skills viable.:
Null field: Corrupts boons, not just strip them. Even without adding damage this would level the playing field with the necromancer Well of Corruption. Doesn’t need to convert conditions to boons. let’s not get out of hand.

Feedback: Reflect Projectiles, Boons applied within the feedback field turn into conditions

Reduce cooldown on Arcane Thievery.

Make Illusion Trait line buff BOON DURATION instead of Condition Damage

Edit: I’m sorry, that wasn’t three, that was 11. So many broken things….

Hamster.4861:

Fix Temporal Curtain Swiftness: Yes
Fix ILeap: ambivilant
Give clones more health: Yes
Buff Mind Wrack or make all shatters AOE: Yes
Image/Iwarlock/Staff clone bolt speed laughably slow. make it move at magic bullet speed. Yes
Nerf PU so that they get 1 boon every 1.5 seconds instead of every second. Give a boon if stealth ends in the middle of the 1.5 second icd. Yes

Full zerker shatter mesmer should be able to kill a super tank regen warrior. Right now, for the most part we cannot without leaving up 3 phantasms, if you can keep them up which ruins the whole “shatter” part of the mechanic. Yes. Please. Candy. My pet cat would dance about this.

Make Glamour skills viable.:
Null field: Corrupts boons, not just strip them. Even without adding damage this would level the playing field with the necromancer Well of Corruption. Doesn’t need to convert conditions to boons. let’s not get out of hand. Yes. Really would like to see this in action.

Feedback: Reflect Projectiles, Boons applied within the feedback field turn into conditions Yes

Reduce cooldown on Arcane Thievery. ambivilant

Make Illusion Trait line buff BOON DURATION instead of Condition Damage Yes. Please. Candy.

Fix sword, revert sword, rework sword…. Do something with sword.
Change DE into an adept or minor trait in illusions trait line.
Give us a couple of kitten blast finishers (chaos armor, mind spike etc).
Remove blinding befuddlement’s ICD.
Remove/lower triumphant distortions ICD (under 5 seconds, ICD starts from when the distortion starts).
Iwarlock projectile velocity increased by 20-25%.
Revert changes to chaos armor for no ICD.
Tone down the rate of which boons apply themselves in PU. (Maybe every 2 seconds so the Mesmer ticks boons twice on a typical 4 second stealth).

Hamster.4861:

Fix Temporal Curtain Swiftness
Make Glamour skills viable.:
Null field: Corrupts boons, not just strip them. Even without adding damage this would level the playing field with the necromancer Well of Corruption. Doesn’t need to convert conditions to boons. let’s not get out of hand.

I am all for making glamours viable as something more than niche utilities, but I think giving us what would just be an ethereal field Well of Corruption doesn’t fit. I think the whole condition/boon conversion game fits perfectly with necromancers and should remain their schtick.

Just spitballing ideas here, but what if null field actually turned off say 3-4 boons/conditions on 5 targets in the area while they remained in the area? Durations would still tick down even when they are nulled out. It could create an interesting combo of null field —> immobilize to force some boons to tick down while the opponent doesn’t gain their benefits.

Give Sword #3 iLeap clone a zaxis element to the leap (similar to the Warrior Sword leap).

Make Mind Stab a Blast Finisher.

Something instead of Chaos Armour from Staff (or return the Prot it used to give).

1.aoe
2aoe
3 fix the kitten bugs

Guys, can we keep it to 3 specific buffs only – so any skills or traits that work as currently intended, but are simply not good enough in the current state of the game and could do with being buffed.

By all means, mention more things if you like, but please highlight the three main buffs in your opinion – things that could conceivably be implemented in a future patch. For this reason please be as specific as possible – ie, skill “X” needs to be buffed in damage, and so on.

There’s the other thread for bug fixes and things that don’t work as intended (for example ileap and iwarden).

:)

1) Move deceptive evasion to illusions line, where it kittening should be. This single change would open up so many great builds. You could do just this one and it would be the best thing for the class without changing anything else. “But then everyone would go 6 in illusions it would be too OP!” No, it would just mean mesmers could actually use their primary mechanic without bending over backwards and making lame sacrifices other classes don’t have to. A mesmer able to have some survivability AND use the class mechanics to their full potential?! GASP, UNTHINKABLE!

I don’t even need to add others, but just in case:

2)Buff Scepter AA: Get rid of clone on third hit and make it add 1 stack of confusion per hit instead. Maybe too OP, so could have it add 1-3 stacks on third hit, in which case speed up AA chain.

3) I’d say buff mantras, like make harmonious mantras baseline or lower down, reduce charge time or something else. Mantras are a class specific mechanic and a large fraction of the players of the class don’t use them, when every mesmer should, or rather, they should synergize well enough and be good enough so every mesmer wants to.

1. Arcane Thievery: We got a nerf on this, but no compensation. If anything, I’d like a reduced CD given how the effects were reduced, but the cool down stayed the same.

2. Confusion: Any kind of real buff to confusion, even in the form of a trait. In fact, please, put it in the form of a trait. Increase damage by 20-30-50%? I’d also like confusing enchantments to work on an inactive portal.

3. Mind Stab needs a buff, but any kind of boon-stripping in general can be buffed. Perhaps a trait with “Strip an extra boon when boon stripping” or “damage on removing boon”, which could also buff our sword skills and shatter.

GS #2 applying the might stacks to you more reliably.
I hate when my GS bounces off someone who is a tank\heal or just a random friendly NPC that isn’t going to benefit much off it.

Faster attack/stronger hits on Staff auto. Possibly a faster projectile also.
I really don’t think Greatsword is good enough as a Ranged weapon. I love the utility and animations on staff, but I feel the auto-attack is really lack-luster.

Can’t think of a #3 at the moment.

I don’t want buffs, I want to be able to rely on my traits and skills.

• a working phantasm on torch and focus
• a working gap closer on sword
• some aoe with low cooldown on staff and/or gs
• rework scepter as a proper condition main hand
• be able to use into the void to interrupt skills without the requirement to predict the future (lower the cd)
• do something with mimic (there was a threads months ago with a long list of suggestions)
• make mantra of pain and mantra of distraction aoe
• bring the radius of power break and power cleanse on par with other classes similar abilities (shouts, etc)
• rework our signets
• Wastrel’s Punishment – it’s a horrible grandmaster, get rid of it or bring it to 10%
• Rending Shatter – we have better ways to apply vulnerability, get rid of it and
• Confusing Enchantments – (why is this in a power traitline?) feels underpowered since the nerf to confusion
• Confusing Combatants – why is this in a crit/critdmg traitline?
• Protected Mantras – as I said elsewhere, give us aegis on cast (3s with 3s ICD) instead of toughness to help us avoid being interrupted
• Harmonious Mantras – doesn’t sinergyze with restorative mantras (lowers the hp/s since you have one more charge + one more CD to wait before re-casting)
• Triumphant Distortion – the ICD is a deal breaker
• Retaliatory Demise – probably the worst “on down” trait in game
• Bountiful Disillusionment – really underwhelming
• Phantasmal Strength – why is this in a vitality/healing traitline?
• Temporal Enchanter – I would rather have something that increases the glamours efficiency: more boon stripping from null field, increase damage of the reflected spells on feedback, increase the number of charges on portal (or the range), and the lenght of stealth on veil
• Shattered Conditions – (why is this in a vitality/healing/phantasms traitline!?) make it work with IP
• Restorative Illusions – (why is this in a vitality/healing/phantasms traitline!?) significantly increase the healing
• Disruptor’s Sustainment – this is a bad idea and terrible implementation. Get rid of it and give us something else.
• Illusionary Elasticity – make it work with staff
• Blinding Befuddlement – remove the ICD, it’s not like we have an infinite amount of blinds and confusion damage is horrible anyway
• Phantasmal Haste – why is this in the shatter traitline?
• Imbued Diversion – only affects one skill with 30-kitten CD. It’s powerful, but I don’t think deserves grandmaster
• Maim the Disillusioned – increase either the number of stacks or the duration

I like most of the ideas put here so far.. but here is an interesting idea for ether just staff chaos armor or all chaos armor in general that would make Mesmer more appreciated and in some cases.. hated in WvW….

Chance for chaos armor to proc immobilize… sounds evil… but it could be good.

-Blurred frenzy nerf reverts
-Ileap total revert
-iwarden “fix” revert

I have some problems with anet Patches…..i find myself hoping for reverts on most stuff they change.