Guild Wars 2

DISCLAIMER: These rankings strictly apply to 5 man sPvP, Conquest mode in particular. May contain OPINIONS.

S: These utilities are above the focal point of balance. They are exceedingly effective for their given CD, and can be used well with nearly any given build.

None

A: These utilities are at the focal point of balance. They have balanced CDs and effects, and include your various quintessential “first pick” utilities that you can expect to see on a wide variety of builds.

Ether Feast
Well of Eternity
Decoy
Portal
Blink
Well of Precognition
Mass Invisibility
Signet of Humility
Gravity Well

B: These utilities are still strong, but may require particular builds and trait setups to maximize their effects, or may have a slightly overlong CD for the given effect.

Mantra of Recovery
Mantra of Pain
Mantra of Distraction
Mantra of Resolve
Null Field
Well of Calamity
Time Warp

C: These utilities are below the point of balance. They can be effective in niche scenarios to counter the enemy team or with very niche builds, but they often have much stronger alternatives within a team composition and are rarely utilized.

Feedback
Signet of the Ether
Mirror
Mantra of Concentration
Signet of Domination
Signet of Illusions
Well of Action
Well of Recall
Illusion of Life
Mirror Images

D: These utilities are well below the point of balance. They have laughable effects and CDs, and are widely considered useless. Should only be used for trolling hotjoins.

Arcane Thievery
Veil
Mimic
Phantasmal Defender
Phantasmal Disenchanter
Signet of Midnight
Signet of Inspiration

Mirror should be A or B. It easily competes with Ether Fest now. In fact, Ether Fest is my third pick for heal these days, and 4th if I were to run a Well Chrono.

The healing per second is the glaring issue for me with Mirror. Projectiles aren’t really a huge deal even with Dragonhunter coming in (especially given that LB ranger looks dead in the water and every engie and their mothers are using hammer), and you have other tools to deal with them.

Mirror should be like the Mesmer version of thief Withdraw, but the healing just sucks in comparison and instead of evading everything it just reflects for two seconds.

Signet of inspiration is actually very good on the right type of build.

At best, would move Signet of Inspiration up to C. It’s a big trade-off compared to other utilities for what you get.

Boon sharing mesmer is completely outclassed by other classes that give out more boons more consistently. At the same time, I wouldn’t put it past anyone to come up with some crazy support Chronomancer build that would change my mind.

Yeah, so I’m already disagreeing with the nuances of your justifications. It’s the basic case of ‘in your experience’, i.e. ignorance blinds.

That’s not to be pejorative, but the lists become skewed as quickly as you consider the authors bias, or lack there’of.

At best we can take from this the extremes of A’s vs D’s. From that we can highlight those areas in need of dramatic buffs.

I said it was my opinion. You’re welcome to offer your own list, or your own justification for why you think Mirror is viable.

As it stands, Mirror heals 261 per second. Ether Feast heals 271 per second base, and heals 374 per second with 3 illusions.

nomdeplums.5780:

I said it was my opinion. You’re welcome to offer your own list, or your own justification for why you think Mirror is viable.

As it stands, Mirror heals 261 per second. Ether Feast heals 271 per second base, and heals 374 per second with 3 illusions.

Fair enough. I really can’t be bothered getting into it. Someone else might if you’re lucky. Though I will say that simply looking at numbers is a fools mistake when obviously there’s so much more going on in the game. Dismissing build variance and additional synergy is also an obvious misstep.

Anyway, good luck with your list.

nomdeplums.5780:

The healing per second is the glaring issue for me with Mirror.

Ether feast: 5560-7480/20s => 278-374/s
Mirror: 3915/15s, 3915/12s traited => 261-326/s

Traited mirror heals almost as much as ether feast with 2 illusions. It’s far from bad. I agree reflects are situational, but whenever I take the manipulation trait (for blink) I usually take mirror too.

My list:

A:

• Ether Feast
• Well of Eternity
• Decoy
• Portal
• Blink
• Well of Precognition
• Signet of Humility
• Gravity Well
• Mantra of Distraction
• Well of Action (the mini time warp I ask for below :p)

B:

• Mass Invisibility (I still think it is a long CD for 5s of stealth)
• Mantra of Recovery (amazing heal if you take 2 traits, but still long cast)
• Mantra of Resolve (maybe our best condi cleanse… still bad if not treated)
• Null Field (It just takes too long to remove the condis. Best if traited in a support build.)
• Well of Calamity (would be good if there was a better damage balance between first and last pulses)
• Time Warp (I would clearly prefer it if it had half CD and half duration, though F5 makes it better…)
• Mirror (reflects are situational, but traited gives as much as ether feast)
• Well of Recall (great in principle, but the trait makes the other wells almost as good for alacrity)
• Signet of Midnight (actually not too bad: good stunbreak for condi build. However, the signet trait should not be in domination!)
• Signet of Inspiration (really great for boonshare. It would be a good utility if support mesmer was a thing, so it’s not its fault)

C:

• Mantra of Pain (nice but not very “utility” except if traited for heal)
• Feedback (very situational, would be much better if it was ground targeted)
• Signet of the Ether (mostly good for PvE, the passive healing is too low even with 3 illusions up)
• Mantra of Concentration (2s stability…. )
• Signet of Domination (it feels that this should be a good skill, but the passive and the active don’t fit well together: you don’t want to confuse and torment an enemy and then stun him…)
• Mimic (has its uses, but mostly for open world, jumping puzzles and stuff. I’m glad we have it, but not so great for PvP. Maybe if you could use it after a skill to recharge and if it took the same cooldown?)
• Phantasmal Disenchanter (actually not awful with its faster attack speed, but dies too fast like all illusions…)
• Mirror images (slightly long CD just for a few clones, but can be useful + stunbreak)
• Illusion of life (too situational, if your whole team is down and one enemy is low/down, great, else not so much… it would be better if the revived people just go back to down state after 15s if they didn’t kill anyone).

D:

• Signet of Illusions (nope… too long cast time, too situational, pointless passive…)
• Arcane Thievery (great skill in principle, but it never works and too long CD)
• Veil (too long CD!!! I would love more stealth sharing, but this one is not great)
• Phantasmal Defender (dies too fast)

That’s a great point about the CD reduction for manipulations and Mirror. But as you said, apart from that it can be pretty situational. I still think it belongs in C. Probably on the higher end of C to the lower end of B. Like the tier description says, it can be effective at countering particular teams. It’s definitely not useless.

Also thanks for your list. Made me realize that I forgot to rank a couple of utilities.

I find mirror is weak if untraited but very strong if traited.

I pretty much never use it if not taking Chaos, and pretty much always use it if taking Chaos (I always trait master of manipulation in Chaos).