Guild Wars 2

Don’t destroy the illusions. Make the active effects of shatters still scale off the amount of illusions present and keep the cd’s as they are, but make the shatter effects not actually destroy the illusions.

Hell, in PvP you could translate this functionality over to at least Distortion and Diversion.

People would actually start bothering to shatter in pve.

Shatter is shatter, you shatter>things die, they wont change it. Better option would be buff shatter dmg (like it does 3x dmg to creatures in pve/building great counter to Turrets/pets ) and make traits that give you things on shattering them more viable, like: Shattering now give blast finisher

Shatter’s fine for bursting into a group in PvE. The thing is that anything that is actually hard to fight in PvE takes a lot of damage to kill. So even a pretty big burst isn’t doing that much for you.

And the stuff you can burst down easy also dies pretty fast to cleaves and reflects.

Michal.4513:

Shatter is shatter, you shatter>things die, they wont change it. Better option would be buff shatter dmg (like it does 3x dmg to creatures in pve/building great counter to Turrets/pets ) and make traits that give you things on shattering them more viable, like: Shattering now give blast finisher

You could buff the damage by 300% it still would not be used. What part don’t you understand about nerfing your sustained DPS by losing your phantasms?

Shatters will NEVER work in PvE so long as they destroy phantasms and remove the 9% damage modifier from 3 illusions on Compounding Power.

This is why I dislike PvP people with a passion sometimes, they don’t even bother to understand why the burst isn’t sufficient.

This is the one class where if you want to use your mechanics to defend or burst or CC, you gut your damage in the process.

No other class mechanic says “use this mechanic but kitten your damage by x% for doing so”.

In fact, your idea is dumb, a blast finisher? On a skill that requires a 3 illusion ramp up? In PvE people blast BEFORE the encounter begins. Hell, if there’s a phalanx strength warrior nobody even needs to blast anything.

ASP.8093:

Shatter’s fine for bursting into a group in PvE. The thing is that anything that is actually hard to fight in PvE takes a lot of damage to kill. So even a pretty big burst isn’t doing that much for you.

And the stuff you can burst down easy also dies pretty fast to cleaves and reflects.

What burst? Maybe in PvE mind wrack’s numbers are considered burst but it certainly is no backstab level of burst or even 100b.

Mind Wrack is virtually only not worthless in spvp. In PvE people basically use it when the boss is a few autos away from dying anyways, as 3 phantasm attacks outdamage a mindwrack.

Zenith.7301:

What burst? Maybe in PvE mind wrack’s numbers are considered burst but it certainly is no backstab level of burst or even 100b.

That’s partly because all of your PvE builds are traiting into phantasms (and reflects) instead of shatters.

But the reason that’s happening is that every “real” PvE encounter is against a champion+ enemy (or, at least, a pile of veterans) with a boatload of hp, where sustained DPS is everything. And people, justifiably, don’t spec for easy fights.

This isn’t a problem you’re gonna be able to solve, really, besides creating more encounters that constantly blast phantasms to pieces. But as long as enemy hp is so bloaty they’re still gonna be super awkward for even a shatter mesmer anyway. :/

ASP.8093:

Zenith.7301:

What burst? Maybe in PvE mind wrack’s numbers are considered burst but it certainly is no backstab level of burst or even 100b.

That’s partly because all of your PvE builds are traiting into phantasms (and reflects) instead of shatters.

But the reason that’s happening is that every “real” PvE encounter is against a champion+ enemy (or, at least, a pile of veterans) with a boatload of hp, where sustained DPS is everything. And people, justifiably, don’t spec for easy fights.

This isn’t a problem you’re gonna be able to solve, really, besides creating more encounters that constantly blast phantasms to pieces. But as long as enemy hp is so bloaty they’re still gonna be super awkward for even a shatter mesmer anyway. :/

No, it’s a single boss, no extra enemies. And PvE already has plenty of encounters if not all of them that consistently kills phantasms with truckloads of AoE. Fractals are one of them. But aoe hurts shatter just as well, short of mirror image+deceptive evasion combo your clones are also going to instantly die as soon as they spawn before you can even do a 3 clone mondwrack with IP shatter in PvE.

And there is a way to fix it….my suggestion that I made this thread for. There will never be an encounter where some anemic burst from mind wrack is going to be more desirable, if there is such a boss that dies under 1 minute, it’s pretty crappy PvE design to begin with.

An IP shatter build still does less damage with a 3 clone shatter than 3 phantasm attacks do, and that’s just the first volley. If those phantasms without phantasm traits (which empowering mantra builds do) get a second 3 phantasm volley against a mob, it blows mindwrack out of the water.

That means that even in something like a 10-20 sec encounter phantasms still beat out IP Mindwrack. Unknown to some PvP people in PvE you have the luxury with signet of the ether to start combat with 3 phantasms without cd ramp up.

At this point, since we’re so far away from “all specs viable in every game mode”, I’d rather see Shatters PvP-focused and the corresponding traits and utilities kept in line with that.
In return focus Phantasms and “PvE standard” utilities on PvE, no more nerfs based on abusive 1v1 builds! Glamours could use a little love as the WvW/mass group support option too.

I’m perfectly fine with half of each class being useless in a specific game mode as long as the other half does its job. Big, sweeping changes will only wreck the things that already do work unless Anet gets enough time to look at everything as a whole.

For PvE…

Phantasms and Illusions need to be immune to aoe damage.

-and-

Shatter needs a damage boost or a DOT effect or resetting Illusion skills on detonation. I believe they could make it viable.

I’d love to see shatter as an option in PvE.

Shatter should only kill clones, but still be based off how many illusions you have active.

Unless you have 3 then one should run (leap!) in and detonate.

Wouldn’t it be great to play with the entire class for once!

Zenith.7301:

No, it’s a single boss, no extra enemies. And PvE already has plenty of encounters if not all of them that consistently kills phantasms with truckloads of AoE. Fractals are one of them. But aoe hurts shatter just as well, short of mirror image+deceptive evasion combo your clones are also going to instantly die as soon as they spawn before you can even do a 3 clone mondwrack with IP shatter in PvE.

Then it sounds like the problem isn’t clone / phantasm longevity, but that you can’t create clones quickly or easily enough.

For shatters to be effective in PvE, you’d need to be able to shatter enough and do enough damage per shatter to equal the damage of maintaining 3 high-damage phantasms.

This is made more difficult by the facts that:

• I can trait for both +15% Phantasm damage and +15% Illusion Damage
• I can trait for phantasms to have Fury and BLeed on crits
• I can trait to reduce phantasm attack cooldowns by 20%.
• Illusions have to survive running into a target’s face in order to shatter.
• Shatters have cooldowns
• Illusion summoning is capped by weapon cooldowns, utilities, and endurance (dodge rolls). You eventually run out.
• Illusion summoning takes time away from casting other skills that could be doing damage.

New trait, Phantasmal Rage “when a shatter skill is activated with a phantasm, they will activate their attack again before shattering”. /shrug

@Jerus:
I don’t think that would be sufficient sustain … but it would make Mesmer’s burst insane … likely OP.

Here’s a thought. If you’re really interested in going in this direction…
Add some options to bestow serious group buffs via shatters or clone death.
If you’re worried about PvP power, make some of those buffs fairly short-range, which naturally favors stacking.

Softspoken.2410:

Zenith.7301:

No, it’s a single boss, no extra enemies. And PvE already has plenty of encounters if not all of them that consistently kills phantasms with truckloads of AoE. Fractals are one of them. But aoe hurts shatter just as well, short of mirror image+deceptive evasion combo your clones are also going to instantly die as soon as they spawn before you can even do a 3 clone mondwrack with IP shatter in PvE.

Then it sounds like the problem isn’t clone / phantasm longevity, but that you can’t create clones quickly or easily enough.

And you never will, because the clones literally die to a single autoattack from any high end pve mob. A single autoattack, now figure a pack of 4-5 mobs, or a boss who not only autoattacks but peppers aoe. You get to an interval of more than one clone death per second.

And even then the sustained damage of a shatter spec is garbage.

ASP.8093:

Here’s a thought. If you’re really interested in going in this direction…
Add some options to bestow serious group buffs via shatters or clone death.
If you’re worried about PvP power, make some of those buffs fairly short-range, which naturally favors stacking.

I don’t think you understand how massive they’d have to make these buffs from shatter in order to ever make shattering a 3 phantasm setup ever an option. We are talking thousands worth of DPS.

No, no, I’m thinking like big stacks of might here. Ridiculous stacks.

ASP.8093:

No, no, I’m thinking like big stacks of might here. Ridiculous stacks.

5 stacks, 10s base duration(maybe 15 or 20s if it casts on the illusion and isn’t able to use boon duration). Traited with something gives fury as well. Could be interesting esp with a small melee radius, it’d likely help but not be OP in PVP also.

With that I’d honestly think that it could become meta, it’d allow Ele/War to go full dps, and mesmer’s even stacked full dps are rarely more than maybe 75% of their potential anyways due to the impractical mechanics of illusions all together. Your mesmer would stack the might, then run off and do their normal portal tricks.

(and to add when I say 5 stacks I’m thinking 5 stacks per illusion, so quick burst of 3 illusions = 15 stacks, pop 5 with 2 different shatters = full stacks).

lol, ele with their standard DPS build can give 12 might stacks through a normal rotation, and a warrior who will be in party not even doing Phalanx Strength can provide 5+ stacks.

Why in hell would you bring a mesmer for a measly 10-15 with 2 ramp ups worth of shatters (and kitten damage in the process) might stacks when even a PS warrior can keep an easy 25 might stacks and vulnerability stacks+ banners for the group, and an ele with a fier field from lava font can pretty much give any group with blasts permanet full might stacks and fury.

A PS warrior even does more damage than a mesmer, so it’s a moot issue.

What a useless buff to shatters in PvE, do people even PvE? The last thing we need is to be an obsolete buff bot in addition to a portal bot.

If you want mes to party might stack in PvE, give us a 2 point inspiration (competitor to glamour cd reduction) trait that will give your party 10 might stacks on every interrupt. Call it Mighty Interrupts (quite creative I know).

How that will affect PvP I don’t know, but I don’t really care for PvP so yeah…

There’s plenty ways to make shatter more useful, but at its core there’s a simple question to be answered:
What part of our power should our illusions constitute? 10%? 20%? 50%?

This immediately affects how builds and shatter are supposed to work. If our clones are supposed to be 20% of our total power and our Phantasms another 20%, then the following two things need to happen:

• Their power needs to be independent of spec (the reason clone-shatter is baseline weak is because when specced for DE and IP, it becomes strong).
• Shatter needs to be independent of spec and strong enough to offset the temporary loss of 40% of our total potential.

This has to be true independent of what percent of our power they’re supposed to be. The key to making shatter truly the class mechanic is to make it context-free. That requires not relying on “must have”-talents to fuel shatter, and an overall benefit to shattering (independent of spec), even if it is not done on cooldown.

Plus a hefty cut to phantasm cooldowns in PvE. Nerfing their cooldowns upward due to the pathetic PvP whine that went on lands us where we are today.

Hell, instead of balancing on ever present phantasms, they should just cut the cd of a phantasm to 6.5 seconds and have the phantasm despawn after its strike, so you can’t have 3 AI spiking people down, and phantasms are not something that gets shattered,

In exchange, the coefficients and base damage need to come back up for autoattacks and blurred frenzy. Reduce the cast time of phantasms to 1/2 instead of 1. Basically make our phantasms our version of Backstab/100b/Pistol Whip.

The clone generation cd’s also need to be tweaked so 3 clone shatters can be a more practical affair.

The lower cd phantasm would make it less bloodboiling when some kitten decides to turn/walk the ettin or abomination over my 3 phantasms that took a 28 sec heal signet use to ramp up…only to get 1 shot bya cleave autoattack from a mob.

I think Carighan.6758 is on a good line of thinking.

When I think about it, I don’t say “I’m not going to use my class mechanic because of my build” on any class except maybe Warrior in open world because +15% damage is awesome.

I say that all the time on my Mesmer. I’m going to shatter rarely, if ever, because I’m a phantasm build or a clone-on-death build at the time. I think there may be a real issue with that.

It’s made worse by the fact that if I decide I want to truly leverage our class mechanic (shatters) that I often feel the need to trait for it to make it worth using most of the time.

Zenith.7301:

lol, ele with their standard DPS build can give 12 might stacks through a normal rotation, and a warrior who will be in party not even doing Phalanx Strength can provide 5+ stacks.

Why in hell would you bring a mesmer for a measly 10-15 with 2 ramp ups worth of shatters (and kitten damage in the process) might stacks when even a PS warrior can keep an easy 25 might stacks and vulnerability stacks+ banners for the group, and an ele with a fier field from lava font can pretty much give any group with blasts permanet full might stacks and fury.

A PS warrior even does more damage than a mesmer, so it’s a moot issue.

What a useless buff to shatters in PvE, do people even PvE? The last thing we need is to be an obsolete buff bot in addition to a portal bot.

Do you even PVE?
12 stacks? Curious where you’re getting this? Staff is going to be an initial 6-9 and able to maintain 3-6, you want to space out your arcane usage to keep your extra ferocity so likely going to start with only 6. If you’re D/F you’re sacrificing a few thousand DPS potentially but you can do 15 stacks of might pretty easily, and S+LH again sacrificing damage to get 18-21 stacks. The point of bringing a PS warrior, or the suggested option for mesmer is so Ele can go staff and put out thousands more in damage without the group losing out on the might potential.

This however means that the Warrior loses a few thousand DPS when going PS war. You’re right though, he’s still going to blow the mesmer out of the water in damage most likely because while the potential for mesmer is higher than a PS warrior, we almost never see that actually happen in the game because of the issues we all know about with mesmers impractical class mechanic.

So the idea is that you could have both the warrior and ele(s) maximizing their damage and the Mesmer buffing them up, a triple shatter would pop in 15 stacks, easily filling up with a little extra from the Ele’s or maybe FGJ from the Warrior.

Now, maybe this isn’t the best idea, but it seems pretty sound to me and the best Idea I’ve seen.

And, btw, a warrior can’t maintain 25 stacks of vuln, they can get close if they bring On My Mark, but you only have 1 utility slot available typically, the other two being banners. And, curious, I must be forgetting something, but where are you getting 5+ stacks for a DPS warrior? it’s 3 from FGJ, but where’s the 2+ from?

Um, fire field, frozen burst, arcane wave, arcane brilliance, magnetic wave. 12 stacks. Lay down a lightning hammer for people to blast fire fields afterwards. You always bring the lightning hammer regardless of what weapon you use btw, because it significantly boosts the mesmer you’re having in your meta group. Even thief with bundles bonus.

Staff will get 9 stacks with self combo.

Warrior gets Battle Standard (with a proper might stacking group you don’t need signet of rage to frontload might).

The DPS a mesmer loses from using shatters is far more than the DPS a warrior loses for going PS. It will NEVER be a thing to bring a mesmer for might stacking with shatters.

P.S. Spacing out ferocity is pointless when most bosses will die after the intial rounds of ice bow 4. There are very few bosses ingame who don’t die within said time frame. Moreover, arcane lightning is nto run in every staff build, blasting staff and aquamancer’s alacrity and earth splinters is a thing.

How about we not hyper-focus on something that isn’t even a viable solution (might stacking) ?

The issue is that shatters remove our illusions, including phantasms. If you are able to just have 3 phantasms stay alive and attack, your DPS will be drastically higher than if you are constantly churning out illusions to shatter … ignoring that shatters also have a cooldown.

So you need to be compensated for those illusions being lost (primarily any phantasms) or not lose them.

Zenith.7301:

Um, fire field, frozen burst, arcane wave, arcane brilliance, magnetic wave. 12 stacks. Lay down a lightning hammer for people to blast fire fields afterwards. You always bring the lightning hammer regardless of what weapon you use btw, because it significantly boosts the mesmer you’re having in your meta group. Even thief with bundles bonus.

Staff will get 9 stacks with self combo.

Warrior gets Battle Standard (with a proper might stacking group you don’t need signet of rage to frontload might).

The DPS a mesmer loses from using shatters is far more than the DPS a warrior loses for going PS. It will NEVER be a thing to bring a mesmer for might stacking with shatters.

P.S. Spacing out ferocity is pointless when most bosses will die after the intial rounds of ice bow 4. There are very few bosses ingame who don’t die within said time frame. Moreover, arcane lightning is nto run in every staff build, blasting staff and aquamancer’s alacrity and earth splinters is a thing.

While the potential damage mesmers would lose is high, when you have bosses slaughtering them before they can finish their attacks… well you really aren’t losing all that much. Summon Swordsman let it leap, shatter it along with 2 clones, swap pistol pop phantasm, let it do its’ thing, clone it up, shatter before they die.

And what’s the point of a lightning hammer or even letting phantasms go if “most bosses will die after the intial rounds of ice bow 4”

P.S. aquamancer’s Alacrity? Ok, I have to ask, huh?

Vital Striking, I get those mixed up all the time.

The point is the people do the ice bow 4 channel drop it and pick up the hammer and strike while the barrage goes through. For many classes the lightning hammer is an actual DPS increase over their own rotation.

You’re also presummoning phantasms before entering combat so you open the fight with 3 in any case, with signet of the ether.

If your bosses are slaughtering phantasms before they can even do their strikes, you should have used iduelists instead. The problem with phantasms on bosses is sustained damage not their first and second barrage of skills. And trash packs perhaps, nothing more aggravating than blowing a 20 sec cd skill only to have it despawn immediately.

I hope we get the kasmeer treatment where our illusions stay around after targets die and they are bound to us instead of targets.

Ahh that makes more sense. Yeah standard staff build is 64XXX though, with the last 4 points either be blasting staff, vital striking, Stone Splinters, or Renewing Stamina. A 62222 build is decent but typically it’s meant more for objects where you can’t crit on them anyways. The extra prec and fero in the 64xxx build is good, esp when you rarely take Fire Signet anymore.

Either way that’s off topic, but I do think the might idea would be viable due to the practical limitations of phantasms in many scenarios. I think it’s far more reasonable than simply not having shatters shatter. I mean I’d love your suggestion, but I don’t see it ever happening. In either case, I love mesmer but their mechanics are so frustrating.

Try bouncing between mesmer, necro, and ranger. It’s a festival of pain and frustration why can’t I just be happy on my D/F ele I’ll never know.

Engi is love, engi is life!
I hear ya though, my mesmer is my favorite character, I just can’t play him in most stuff because the mechanics are so frustrating. Losing phantasms and doing half the dps is just… ugh… I mean sure, plenty of tools to use, portaling, reflecting, still a valuable teammate a lot of the time, but it’s just not as satisfying when you’re hamstringed like they are.

My necro is strickly WvW for a reason, and my ranger… well I’ve never liked their sword attack, simply can’t get to the point that I enjoy that jumping around so I again have to sit back and be non optimal with my GS and long cooldown on bursts, so… ugh…

I hear ya man.

Good lord, Zenith. You should get some sort of cake to help you eat your feelings :-p

Jerus, I’d recommend getting away from the meta mentality for Ranger … it pigeonholes it into mediocrity. I was running a Beastmaster build in fractals last night (4/4/0/0/6) with Longbow/Axe+Horn and two cat pets. Our Warrior PUG who has now run 36+ diff fractals with us twice now told me in chat last night that I was one of the best Rangers he’d seen.

Now, I think he’s probably not seen that many or others are dropping the ball, but it did highlight to me that you can do very well in dungeon/fractals without following “the meta”. We were flying through those fractals too (not literally … that’d be an exploit … you know what I mean)

Ohh I hear ya, tried for a while to get into a groove on him, but just could never find something I enjoyed the way I enjoy most other professions. Seen many great rangers and have plenty of friends that love them, just never really clicked for me. Every thing I’ve tried has something I don’t like about it that just turns me off except maybe GS, love that weapon but it simply bugs me that I’m not capable of handling the sword as well as people I know so basically I’m always a bit annoyed when I play it.

Though that’s off topic, it’s kinda the same thing with mesmer, I love so many things about it, but I don’t play it as often because the mechanics are so FUBAR.

You may have just not found the class that truly fits you yet.

Despite all my aggravations with Mesmer and Ranger … when I play them, they fit like a glove.

If ArenaNet ever shows them the love the deserve so that their skill ceiling isn’t hindering their players … man I’ll be a happy camper :-)

I just want to feel unhindered by my class the way Elementalists, Thieves, etc. feel. Right now, that’s not the case. There’s “try harder” and “try harder, but it’s not going to do anything beyond this point”. I’m not a fan of the latter :-(

Ohh I have, Love Engi/Ele/Guard/Thief, Warrior is ok, Necro ain’t bad, just ranger and Mesmer that annoy me… well actually I love my mesmer but again, the mechanics are frustrating.

And yeah… I completely agree, the ceiling for mesmer in PVE is just…ugh. At least you can have fun doing solo skips and portaling people around, but when it comes to combat without reflects to worry about.. zzzzz

You are thinking about this backwards. You don’t buff shatter so more people use it in PvE, thereby breaking shatter mechanics forever in PvP. You design PvE content so shatter mechanics actually have a useful purpose.

Damage over time is king in PvE. This is because champs/bosses usually have a tonne of health, tend to just stand in your AoE for days and don’t actively avoid or mitigate any damage dealt to them.

Burst is actually good in PvP because players usually try to avoid taking damage, so you need to burst them down at opportune moments when they don’t have the dodges or the right cooldowns to avoid it.

Currently all PvE can be utterly trivialized by a combination of aoe blinds, blocks, reflects and dodging/evading telegraphed attacks. This means that once your group learns the tells, all of you will take almost no damage even though you are all running builds with zero defensive stats, traits, runes or sigils. You can have your cake and eat it, so why would you suicide half your DPS by shattering your phantasms? There is no requirement to do so.

If you want shatters to be used in PvE, there has to be PvE content that requires you to sacrifice rate of damage for invulnerability. Which requires you to interrupt boss attacks with your dazes. Which has monsters that use active defensive abilities and dont just stand in your AoEs until they die.

The solution is not to buff Mind Wrack until it does so much damage it actually out DPSes a phantasm build specifically designed for maximum damage over time and reflects at the expense of everything else.

Burst damage is still an important thing in PVE, thing is in those situations there’s not enough time to get illusions up. You don’t chase people around and try to get a burst in, you just slaughter immediately.

I have to respectfully disagree with the OP. Shattering without the clones actually shattering makes no logical sense from a conceptual standpoint.

Unfortunately, shattering in PvE is simply unviable as phantasms do more damage over time. I’m not a PvEr, so it’s hard for me to suggest something of a rework/buff. Shattering (Classic IP) is already decently strong in PvP so it would be hard to buff them in PvE without it being OP in other formats.

Even though it’s our class mechanic, I don’t see it as such a horrible thing that we are forced down the Mantra or Phantasm route. I can see why this is frustrating to some though.

eta – maybe shatters could be changed to only shatter clones and NOT phantasms? It’d be more difficult to get a consistent 3 clone shatter, but idk. That’s a thought.