nerfing Echo of Memory is a bad move
Oh, didn’t realize that. It’s been a while since I’ve last played, my mistake.
In terms of fixing the damage problem, I’m a big fan of a trait that gives us a fairly large damage buff when we shatter. Probably something like 25% per Illusion for a 100% buff for a full shatter. Replace Furious interruption with our GS trait and put the new trait in the GM slot, replacing our Mantra trait with it would be even better though.
That and throwing in some more damage buffs to our weapon skills and make all our phantasm skills work like Shield/utilities.
Honestly I would love that but it would be so incredibly OP. What happens when we are running chrono line and have 3 phantasms out? We shatter, get them all back, but now have 100% damage boost, to use on a second MW at double strength, on top of any other damage we can deal. Now, if MW was excluded from this damage bonus, it could possibly, possibly be balanced (though not at that number for sure), but then we have to ask a question. Would this also apply to phantasm attacks? Should this apply to phantasm attacks even?
I would love this but I honestly don’t think it could ever be made balanced with other professions without some serious nerfs to compensate for it.
Delete PvP and the balance problem is negated.
Chronomancer have too much damage negation. This is not healthy.
On top of that, we have decent sustain, partly thanks to RI. On the other hand, we have very little reset potential compare to most classes (what I mean by that is that we cannot heal 80% of our total HP pool in a few seconds like DH, druid, scrappers, etc…).Mesmer does not shine by its damage pressure (abysmal in power, decent but comparatively not insane in condi). It is really our survivability which is the problem. So nerfing condis like some suggest is a bad idea (though I think the application need to be less spammy, maybe apply condi only on F1 and/or F2, not all 4/5). Nerfing our survivability and boosting our sustained power damage (over all game modes) would have been the best I believe. On top of that, better condi cleanse not-inspiration dependent would have gone a long way. Instead we have a patch which does not significantly improves build diversity, though chronomancer and inspiration became a bit less mandatory which is a (baby) step in the right direction.
I agree with you that survivability should be toned down some. I don’t run inspiration trait line, but I think people will continue to use it. The heal was really the secondary reason for using it. Even without a heal, just being able to remove a condition for each shatter is a very nice trait to have in pvp. So I really don’t think these changes are a step in the right direction. But I do agree that Anet considering survivability and not just damage is a good thing for balancing condi mesmer.