Guild Wars 2

I love “the prestiege”… but the phantasm ability on the torch seems mostly useless. I would much rather it burned my opponents rather than confused them.. Confusion is on sooo many mesmer abilities, I really don’t feel that I benefit from a phantasm casting it on things, and the damage from the phantasm alone isn’t worth it either.

There are so many other things that could be done with this…
and I feel like a torch should kinda stick to fire/burning things.. especially since there is only 1 other ability in the mesmer’s arsenal that can guarantee burning.

your thoughts?

The first problem with the torch phantasm is that confusion benifits from condition damage and retaliation from power. The second problem is that one stack of confusion that does not even refresh your own stacks is not worth it.

Everyone frowns on iMage.

Prestige burn/blind should be swapped though.

I think the cooldown on prestige could be lowered like 5-10 seconds.. but its ok as is. really.

edit- I just actually want to run a sword/torch mesmer, and I had a ton of fun with it when prestiege allowed for invis every 4 seconds, but now that it is gone… I find myself in a difficult situation whenever I try to use the torch. I think the solution would be to make the 5th slot ability more… worth it, then i could see a reason to get that torch trait and everything.

Having the blind come at the start when the player is invisible, then forcing them to wait the full duration (By which point the blind has almost ended) before applying the burn is totally counter intuitive.

Also if interrupted prematurely the second effect really MUST be applied. It’s a very long cooldown for what it does, and a very long psuedo-cast-time if you want to get your money’s worth and add the burn

I think they should put the burn part of prestige as a chain skill, which you can use only when you’re stealthed with prestige and is instant when chose to be used. Maybe give 1s cast time to the stealth for this change.

But of course no will listen until about fifteen more patches as this changes could seriously damage the balance!

Completely agree that they should switch the burn and blind, it even makes more sense! A mesmer disappears in a flash of fire and upon reappearing the dazzling lights/effects blind anyone in range. As for the phantoms torch provides I think it would be nice if it were and AoE fire from in melee range. Just like Prestige without the stealth and blind. It would be balanced due to the already short lived life most phantoms have, would allow us to tag easier in group events, and already be in range in a shatter build.

The way I see it, the torch is mostly meant as a support weapon for group play, it’s not really designed, or good for solo use. The Prestige blinds first so you can use it to protect your group, you could, for example, use it right before you know your foe is going to use a powerful attack. The stealth and fire damage are little extras(though IMO, the best part of it is the blast finisher).

iMage also is better in a group. The confusion isn’t really that great, but the retaliation is, and the more allies you have, the more likely it’s going to buff multiple of them. As when a foe is taking confusion and retaliation damage, that can add up.

Couldn’t agree more, torch is weak all around. The blind from the prestige is about all I can see being useful and even then there are classes bringing better blind to the table while still using a weapon that isn’t trash.

100% Agree on “Prestige burn/blind should be swapped”.

No need to blind your foe if you are stealthing. Would appreciate to have the explosion combo finisher not after a 4 seconds delay and also to be able to dodge during the stealth duration without breaking everything : that would help a bit to place the AoE.

I disagree, prestige in it current state is near perfect for pve stealth runs, but swap burn with blind and we’ll have serious problems.
Mirroring it mechanics with illusionary counter however…

Swapping Blind and Burn would more or less remove the reason the skill is called The Prestige, however. :s

Recharge on both torch skills should be 25 sec.
Prestige is trash. The need to channel it completely ruins the skill.

1. You can’t heal, you can’t set up longer casts (phantasmal disenchanter, phantasmal defender, signet of illusions, heals, mantras could be partially casted while invisible), you can’t stomp.
2. Then if you break the channel before 3 sec are up (let’s say an opportunity presents itself to stomp someone), not only you lose invis but you also don’t inflict burning.
3. If you use prestige then while you channel someone CCs you (like launch from engineer’s big bomb) it will interrupt the channel and you will be fully visible for the whole duration of the CC (e.g. while flying off the point and lying on the floor you’ll be fully visibly even though you only used up 0.5 sec of invis). This is much worse than a skill like Clone, which will maintain invis even if you get CCed, for it’s full duration.

iMage is simply trash, it’s effectively the same as direct damage phantasms (that is, doesn’t offer any utility), but the damage is trash.

Torch is horrible.

Yeah I’d simply remove the channel as far as The Prestige is concerned.
The rest of the skill is completely fine.

Mage is more problematic. Mostly because I’d rather rework all Phantasms to no longer be about damage but about utility and hexing.

Exactly. That’s why I love Phantasmal Warden, it offers utility.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well in spvp, not only because the warden doesn’t move, but also because it requires a main-hand. And in spvp it doesn’t work well with scepter (mainly because scepter sucks in spvp and that one block with it’s long recharge will not prevent you from getting killed) or with sword (better defense as scepter, but no ability to engage the opponent at range and low damage as a melee weapon, bad clone generation and gap closer). How much I wish I could have greatsword skills 1-3 as mainhand and focus as offhand.

Well that’s beside the point, but I think in general phantasms are bad, because they are just straight up damage.

Yeah phantasms are straight up damage even though iWarden reflects with trait or blocks without it, and iBerserker has a cripple, and iDuelist has broken combo finishers with the trait (assuming that is true; haven’t tested it myself), and iSwordsman is pure beatdown, and they can all be shattered for damage/confusion/daze/invuln/moreconfusion/vulnerability/conditionremoval/heals/vigor/might depending on traits.

Also, the channel on Prestige is working as intended. It would be overpowered to have a debuff, stealth, and high damage component without the channel.

The channel is fine but there should be a way of triggering the flame early by hitting the ability again.

Yeah, what Easy said.

The blind lasts as long as the stealth so it’s fairly pointless.
iMage is only good for the long confusion time, but is WAY too slow.

Change torch as aoe weapon.
At first, prestiege cooldown is too long due to stealth.
imo, we have lot of stealth tool, so remove it and reduce cooldown.
it would be a good tools as combo finisher & decent aoe tool.

And image needs to rework.
How about minor version of meteor shower?

I found the sword/torch setup quite useful oddly as of late. I didn’t like it initially and was using pistol all the time but that was because I didn’t understand when or why to use it.

I use it mainly in dungeons (granted I mostly do dungeons). The torch is a great intro to a fight.

You sneak in get close to a pack of mobs (Yes even explorable) making them all burn, I use blurred frenzy to evade their initial attacks. Use my other skills and if the damage gets too much I blink out, Clone on dodge to distract them and swap to greatsword.

It’s also a great outro you can disappear confusing your enemies as you retreat. I think this was it’s general intention.

It’s a lot of fun coming up with little things like the above to keep you on your toes. I’m not one of those mesmers who stands in the distance with their phantasms and just press some buttons. I like the mesmer for its ability to challenge you if you choose to play with it and get into the heat of things.

The only suggestion I have is to change the confusion maybe into a daze?

I currently use a 30/20/10/10/0 build

EasymodeX.4062:

and high damage component without the channel.

Yes, 3 sec burning every 33 seconds, everyone is kitten their pants when they see mesmer lay out that mega damage. It’s not like fire ele deals 3 sec of burning every time he farts.

Fay.2735:

I currently use a 30/20/10/10/0 build

Why would you use 30 domination for?
Why don’t you have 10 (or 5) in illusion?

The iMage is amongst our most underwhelming phantasms. It attacks incredibly slow, and the single stack of confusion or the 3 seconds of retaliation it makes is barely noticeable. A few things they could do with it to make it better would be to allow it to cast multiple stacks of confusion and longer duration retaliation, allow it to attack much faster, or allow it to cast its confusion and retaliation simultaneously in a large AoE around it. I find option three to be the most interesting personally.

One thing about iMage is that:
Confusion scales off Condition Damage
Retaliation scales off Power

Yes, 3 sec burning every 33 seconds, everyone is kitten their pants when they see mesmer lay out that mega damage. It’s not like fire ele deals 3 sec of burning every time he farts.

Last time I ran a condition build with Torch, the burn tooltipped for 5,000 damage.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the highest tooltip of any ability in the Mesmer arsenal, and definitely the most damaging single condition a Mesmer has available across the entire class by a huge margin.

One thing about iMage is that:
Confusion scales off Condition Damage
Retaliation scales off Power

iDuelist scales off power, condition damage, and precision.

But you don’t see people kittening.

Well with like 700 condition damage its around 1500 damage so i wouldnt think so.

Im trying out the torch in wvw atm
The torch is there for me to get away, that simple, damage is neglible.
I even have the trait for 1 sec extra duration on stealth.

My problem with mesmer is that the traits dont do what they say.
Torch traited has never removed any conditions for me..

@Khadorian
I didn’t try the trait, but I would assume that the condition removal is at the sametime as the burn for The Prestige. As for iMage, I was thinking that it would remove a condition as well as retaliation when his bouncing attack hits an ally.