Guild Wars 2

what you guys think of that potential change ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/55meve/signet_of_inspiration_changes/

Note : i just want to joke that someone in this subforum are alway saying mes support is so amazing and greatest etc etc while ignoring the ps war and druid doing more than a mes .
and now if anet nerfed SoI , all those so amazing support will be gone (someone is talking about 2 chronos for raids if this is true )., we will have to work harder to do quicknness sharing . and we have to change our entire raid sets(zerk with chrono rune) to commander sets (rip my concentration sigil on a zerk sword )

Even this change doesnt happen , we still have to consider this how much our so called amazing support is actually reliant on a single niche skill for pve .Its like ps war situation but war have banner and okish damage also they can play condi or power and still take ps trait unlike mes who have to use entire skill bar to build a specific support role. and its easier to mess up mes than its to war.

And it will look too stupid for me if anet nerf SoI due to wvw ,it will feel like the entire bomb factory is on fire( all those boon generator )but hey we have to remove that tiny oil spot on the floor. people will run more rev and do a bit less damage but still unstoppable in wvw anyway .

Yup you summed it up pretty well. SoI isn’t the problem, it just highlights it. And even with our amazing support, its much easier for a mesmer/chrono to screw up than say a warrior and the support levels are about equal.

People just love to hate mesmers though.

I said it a while ago, mesmer is 1 ill thought out SoI nerf away from being irrelevant in PvE.

I should hunt that post down so I can quote it if this happens.

I’d check around the time of the Alacrity nerf, that’s probably when you would have said that. Prior to then, our Alacrity generation was still valued over our Quickness sharing.

An organized front line group of 5 tends to always have these 3 things.
Herald = 50% boon duration
Rune of Durability = 20% Boon Duration
Mussel’s Gnashblade = 15% Boon duration (and 10% damage reduction).
Total boon duration before traits/gear = 85%. It’s not far fetched to have an EASY 100% boon duration on your entire front line.

Rune of Durability is a base of 3 seconds of protection/regen and 1 second of AOE to 5 allies on a 20 second CD. So a group of 5 people all proc rune of durability and 30 seconds or protection and regeneration and 10 seconds of resistance every 20 seconds. Of course people need to whine about mesmer using active skills to share resistance rather than a completely passive 50% uptime on it >_>

apharma July 21, 2016
“Just so you know, permanent alacrity reducing cool downs by 25% does not translate to a 25% dps boost. It has a lot to do with which classes you’re buffing, the skills they’re using and cast/aftercasts along with original cool down.
A good example is thief, it gains nothing from alacrity as its rotation is pretty much 11111 on staff with dodging mixed in. Quickeness however has a much more profound effect due to how it reduces cast/aftercasts of the auto attack which the chrono brings in buckets.
I think Nike made a raid guide on team comp and what he said was that warrior and Druid buffs were so good it was worth making sure everyone kept them up, Mesmer wasn’t except for the quickness which they can keep on a full raid squad with just 1.
Only takes an ill thought out nerf to say signet of inspiration and I dare say mesmer would be dead for raids most likely.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Are-we-going-to-get-damage-buffs-for-LS3/first#post6252878

Nicely done, Xstein.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

An organized front line group of 5 tends to always have these 3 things.
Herald = 50% boon duration
Rune of Durability = 20% Boon Duration
Mussel’s Gnashblade = 15% Boon duration (and 10% damage reduction).
Total boon duration before traits/gear = 85%. It’s not far fetched to have an EASY 100% boon duration on your entire front line.

Rune of Durability is a base of 3 seconds of protection/regen and 1 second of AOE to 5 allies on a 20 second CD. So a group of 5 people all proc rune of durability and 30 seconds or protection and regeneration and 10 seconds of resistance every 20 seconds. Of course people need to whine about mesmer using active skills to share resistance rather than a completely passive 50% uptime on it >_>

Exactly. But every balance issue is always somehow mesmers fault, logic isn’t needed. /s

All SoI did was highlight the absolutely kittening ridiculous amounts of boon duration and passive boon spam that was released in HoT. If ANet nerfs SoI to “fix” this boonshare meta then it will mean that their balance team is truly incompetent

OriOri.8724:

If ANet nerfs SoI to “fix” this boonshare meta then it will mean that their balance team is truly incompetent

and this is new to you….?

Xstein.2187:

apharma July 21, 2016
“Just so you know, permanent alacrity reducing cool downs by 25% does not translate to a 25% dps boost. It has a lot to do with which classes you’re buffing, the skills they’re using and cast/aftercasts along with original cool down.
A good example is thief, it gains nothing from alacrity as its rotation is pretty much 11111 on staff with dodging mixed in. Quickeness however has a much more profound effect due to how it reduces cast/aftercasts of the auto attack which the chrono brings in buckets.
I think Nike made a raid guide on team comp and what he said was that warrior and Druid buffs were so good it was worth making sure everyone kept them up, Mesmer wasn’t except for the quickness which they can keep on a full raid squad with just 1.
Only takes an ill thought out nerf to say signet of inspiration and I dare say mesmer would be dead for raids most likely.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Are-we-going-to-get-damage-buffs-for-LS3/first#post6252878

Link to thread claiming 25 might comes from warrior. If you are also going to quote a washed up elitist, let’s look at what Nike says about warrior might:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52esxt/condi_ps_burnzerker/d7jmhy6

It reliably makes an average of 10 to 15 might for its sub group, only slightly less than the power ps version. The source of might you’re missing is strength sigil and phalanx strength

Or we could go with some more current people like:
KING on a 5 person Matthias kill
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4u1zsa/king_vs_matthias_5man_956/
TLDR: Condi rev was better DPS and might stacks when fighting matthias

Side note: Condi herald, the worst of condi DPS classes was better DPS than condi PS against matthias because he moved a lot and attacks often. I wonder what other class does confusion and torment damage… vs matthias?

qT
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4zoswe/qt_gorseval_speed_kill_420_left/
TLDR: Might isn’t just from warriors and team comps determine how much DPS loss the warrior takes as they switch food around.

qT Mesmer Guide
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52qtw3/updated_raid_chronomancer_guide/

… we can take a Sigil of Strength which provides around 10 Might for you and your group when you share it with Signet of Inspiration.

It’s like you keep quoting a single thread that never actually got its facts right about how much might a Warrior gives to 5 people when a chrono usually buffs 10 with quickness and potentially depending on sigil choice/herald might.

I’m not saying a SoI nerf wouldn’t hurt. It would be painful to the class and break things more. Just stop quoting that misinformation though.

If they are going to nerf SoI and not nerf the passive aoe boons from rune of durability, they need to at least buff Rune of the Chronomancer #6. Make it 2 seconds base quickness AOE to 5 people. Then and only then will I expect nuking SoI because it will no longer be needed. It won’t break PvP because no mesmer would run around with 100% boon duration, those runes and spams wells instead of portal/blink.

I’ll be surprised if SoI will be the only thing up for the chop when it’s not even needed for crazy boon uptime in WvW. Herald and durability runes will likely also see some sort of change. I hope Anet make this a WvW change only though.

ANet balancing for WvW isn’t gonna happen.

Nor is the likelihood of them doing anything about runes of durability any good.

Continuing on with the idea of buff rune of chrono while accepting that SoI may need nerfing:
If Rune of the Chronomancer became 1 second base quickness in an AOE, with 100% boon duration, that’s 2 seconds AOE.
WoE: 2/22.5. WoA: 6+2/18.8. WoC: 2/15.WoR: 2/26
Basically… 70% uptime on quickness to 5 people with wells before factoring in CS.
Shield 5 and TW would still potentially be a part of the rotation although shield could be dropped for a pistol for an extra DPS phantasms and less alacrity if it’s not needed.

Now let’s look at a “nerf” to SoI. Instead of nerfing, let’s change the function so that it won’t be broken in WvW. When you cast SoI, your phantasms do 40% more damage for 9 seconds. This would apply to currently summoned phantasms, not newly generated ones. The exception would be SoI procced by Illusionary inspiration since it technically casts after you summon a phantasms. So 18 second CD on SoI (traited and alacrity). Drop WoC or WoR for the new SoI.

Continue using Dom, Inspiration, Chrono for distortion share with SoI and traited SoI on summon. Quickness uptime remains the same. Alacrity uptime remains the same. 40% bonus to phantasms also long as you chain together SoI well. Win win for raids? Potential room for a Dom, Inspiration, Illusion Staff+Sc/Sw DPS mesmer as pure DPS?

Is it broken when it comes to Wvw or PvP?
Some Mesmers may try phantasm builds. Take protected phantasms to give distortion on first summon. First summon of GS4 procs SoI which buffs itself. Then the berserker dies after it does some damage and is cleaved out. Sounds fine to me. Realistically, not enough phantasms would survive for long enough for SoI to buff them after they have already attacked. CP would create a new phantasm which removes the buff. PvP Shatter builds would have to give up Mental Defense. Furthermore, a split could be made so that SoI is a 20% buff in PvP/WvW and a 40-50% buff to phantasms in PvE. Power Necros could drop wells and lose their Scholar bonus for a bit of AoE quickness. Not OP and highly unlikely for necros to get boon duration. Overall doesn’t sound like it’ll break anything.

TLDR: Change SoI to buff phantasm damage to fix mesmer DPS problems but remove boon share. Change rune of Chrono so that SoI is no longer needed to share quickness. Win win for all game modes.

How is that a win? A large part of the reason for poor mesmer DPS in PvE is the fact that so much of our damage is dependent on phantasms. Why would you want to enforce that trend?

It should be pretty obvious this topic isn’t about fixing mesmer dps in its entirety for PvE.

When the alternative is WvW whining resulting in a nerf to SoI and chrono failing out of existence, I would prefer a change that doesn’t break WvW and PvP but also buffs the raid DPS and phantasm pure DPS builds.

i went to wvw forum to see the discussion but honestly do you guys feel wvw forum is bit too hypocritical regarding the boonsharing issue there . they are trying to direct the nerf to mes instead of those rune and importantly the rev which is of course the most op thing in all game modes .(they even made up some trait and skill usage lol when rev has plain 50% boon duration out there , come on )

it looks funny for me ,for like 3 years GWEN way was largely accepted ,now the actual comp is just slightly changed over time even with massive power creep introduced from hot . And they talk about the boonsharing meta forced wvw into one dimension.
it is a problem , but hey after the nerf to confusion bomb , the nerf to war sniper and so on .
they are totally entitled to get back to their so interesting melee train lol.

anet should just make wvw gear like spvp but you can still use food and oil . It will hurt many wvw players who grind their precious gears but it will do more good to game health. at least we dont hear such hypocritical hate towards mes(i laughed so hard many times wvw forum whining about pu mes after that 100% duration nerf) .

I’m not sure if they ever thought of one thing that when other modes have like 8/9 classes in meta but wvw is overall just same 4-5 classes dominating for 3 years(necro wasnt in meta before ele aoe capped at 5 but guess they forgot this too ) ,people would leave wvw too not for the so broken boonnshare so broken confusion bomb or ranged cc when stability changed .People may leave wvw right after they are told by wvw guilds they have to run GREN and gear char which is only useful in wvw or go home .

yes the cancer meta will drive the hardcore group leave soon or later but without more roles for other classes ,far less people will join in not to mention gw2 overall is a causal game .

So for a healthy game mode, nerfing one of the less used class for certain issue which is also caused by gear stats , other class and food without touching other things , is not helping at all .

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

It should be pretty obvious this topic isn’t about fixing mesmer dps in its entirety for PvE.

When the alternative is WvW whining resulting in a nerf to SoI and chrono failing out of existence, I would prefer a change that doesn’t break WvW and PvP but also buffs the raid DPS and phantasm pure DPS builds.

I think what he meant is your fix will shift more mes damage into phantasm which is what most mesmers hate also anet claimed they do not intend to create the playstyle of mes are camping phantasm without using shatter.

And phantasm in itself has many problems : AI passive play is hard to balance , single target issue , phantasm hp ,competing with our shatter etc etc.

hence why he said we dont really wish anet push that trend further . its like hey lets buff condi ele for sake of someone enjoys that playstyle .

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

It’s like you keep quoting a single thread that never actually got its facts right about how much might a Warrior gives to 5 people when a chrono usually buffs 10 with quickness and potentially depending on sigil choice/herald might.

I’m not saying a SoI nerf wouldn’t hurt. It would be painful to the class and break things more. Just stop quoting that misinformation though.

If they are going to nerf SoI and not nerf the passive aoe boons from rune of durability, they need to at least buff Rune of the Chronomancer #6. Make it 2 seconds base quickness AOE to 5 people. Then and only then will I expect nuking SoI because it will no longer be needed. It won’t break PvP because no mesmer would run around with 100% boon duration, those runes and spams wells instead of portal/blink.

I think you’re also under estimating what a warrior brings too. Putting aside Nike’s comments which were wrong about condi PS (I personally thought it was a silly thing) a warrior does bring a lot of unique buffs to the table, all which boost DPS.

+320 Power
+150 Condition damage
+170 Precision
+170 Ferocity

As well as bringing a ton of on demand, low cool down heavy CC and providing extremely easy might generation that doesn’t interfere too much with it’s DPS rotation at 18-20k dps it’s extremely hard to pass up.

Can you get to 25 might without a warrior? Sure but it requires more co-ordination than stand 600 range of the meat shield and it may or may not have gaps in coverage.

I mean just the raw stats alone are something like an 25%+ damage buff to my ele, and they are up 75-100% of the time. Our warriors we raid with can usually give might to more than 5 other players and empower allies pulses every 3s for a 9s buff, perfectly feasible to get nearly an entire raid squad and banners pulse 6s of the buff every 3s.

Regardless we do agree that a SoI nerf would hurt a lot. To me it would depend on how they do it, if it’s capped at 6s but affected by boon duration then I think keeping it up on 10 players would not be easy. I also don’t think it would solve any issue in WvW as 12s all boons or rather 12s resistance every 24s will just shift it to a jump in and smack each other then jump out and boon up then jump in style. Players will still be high on every other boon regardless of the mesmer too.

I think it would be a case of 2 chronos if you want permanent quickness+alacrity on all 10. The real question will be whether or not replacing the low damage chrono with a class that can give some quickness but do significantly higher dps is better. However 2 chronos doesn’t leave a lot of room for DPS classes if they both have a rev and going commanders will further reduce DPS of the mesmer.

Also ANet will not put a damage buff in inspiration, If you remember they removed a phantasm damage buff from inspiration because it didn’t fit the theme and they wanted to consolidate damage buffs into fewer lines.

musu.9205:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

It should be pretty obvious this topic isn’t about fixing mesmer dps in its entirety for PvE.

When the alternative is WvW whining resulting in a nerf to SoI and chrono failing out of existence, I would prefer a change that doesn’t break WvW and PvP but also buffs the raid DPS and phantasm pure DPS builds.

I think what he meant is your fix will shift more mes damage into phantasm which is what most mesmers hate also anet claimed they do not intend to create the playstyle of mes are camping phantasm without using shatter.

And phantasm in itself has many problems : AI passive play is hard to balance , single target issue , phantasm hp ,competing with our shatter etc etc.

hence why he said we dont really wish anet push that trend further . its like hey lets buff condi ele for sake of someone enjoys that playstyle .

or lets buff shatterstone…again

Hmmm that wasn’t good enough, lets make the fire auto leave a really tiny AoE circle that tickles people and relies on them dying of laughter.

apharma.3741:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

….

…stat buffs…

As well as bringing a ton of on demand, low cool down heavy CC and providing extremely easy might generation that doesn’t interfere too much with it’s DPS rotation at 18-20k dps it’s extremely hard to pass up.

Also ANet will not put a damage buff in inspiration, If you remember they removed a phantasm damage buff from inspiration because it didn’t fit the theme and they wanted to consolidate damage buffs into fewer lines.

I am not denying the banner buffs being strong. They are. Look at the common team comps though. 5/4/1, 5/5 and 4/4/2 all have 2 warriors. Even if warriors could buff more than 5 targets, they don’t in those comps. 7/2/1 is the only comp with a warrior buffing more than 5 people and it’s considered the weakest comp because 3 people don’t get buffed and in practice the warrior can barely buff those 7 people.

Every comp besides the 5/5 brings 1 chrono and that chrono buffs 10 people. It’s not 100% coverage on everything but it’s still strong. 5/5 is the only one with 2 chrono and that’s for distortion share. That comp basically says Chrono utility is so good, we will bring a second one even if it does poor DPS. Sure warriors have CC. The chronos also CC, tank, share distortion and have focus pull and reflects. I’m not saying warrior CC isn’t important but there is no way that a warrior brings better defensive/utility/CC support than a chrono. And then on top of that the Chrono also can bring easy might sharing if they swap 1 sigil (granted this may change with an SoI nerf).

Every other change people talk about to change mesmer DPS in PvE is a full rework and that isn’t going to happen. The major trait overhaul was our first chance at one and it didn’t happen. Making a major change before Chrono was the last chance we got at a full overhaul and it didn’t happen. As elite specs come out, the less and less likely a rework to base Mesmer function will ever happen because they will have to redesign all old elite specs and base class again. Example: How does persistent phantasms work with CP? It doesn’t. The closest we get to a “rework” is a new elite spec. Would it be nice to have an elite spec where phantasms don’t conflict with shatters? Yup and I would love a DPS focused elite mesmer spec. Check out my idea in the design an elite spec topic if you don’t believe me.

For the SoI buff specifically, there is a difference between 15% permanent trait bonus (the other trait bonus was made baseline during the rework) and a temporary buff that is part of a rotation. It doesn’t fix everything but it makes the Chrono DPS in a raid situation not completely crap. It also just makes the pure phantasm DPS rotation more interesting than summon 3 then auto attack until the end of time.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I am not denying the banner buffs being strong. They are. Look at the common team comps though. 5/4/1, 5/5 and 4/4/2 all have 2 warriors. Even if warriors could buff more than 5 targets, they don’t in those comps. 7/2/1 is the only comp with a warrior buffing more than 5 people and it’s considered the weakest comp because 3 people don’t get buffed and in practice the warrior can barely buff those 7 people.

Every comp besides the 5/5 brings 1 chrono and that chrono buffs 10 people. It’s not 100% coverage on everything but it’s still strong. 5/5 is the only one with 2 chrono and that’s for distortion share. That comp basically says Chrono utility is so good, we will bring a second one even if it does poor DPS. Sure warriors have CC. The chronos also CC, tank, share distortion and have focus pull and reflects. I’m not saying warrior CC isn’t important but there is no way that a warrior brings better defensive/utility/CC support than a chrono. And then on top of that the Chrono also can bring easy might sharing if they swap 1 sigil (granted this may change with an SoI nerf).

Every other change people talk about to change mesmer DPS in PvE is a full rework and that isn’t going to happen. The major trait overhaul was our first chance at one and it didn’t happen. Making a major change before Chrono was the last chance we got at a full overhaul and it didn’t happen. As elite specs come out, the less and less likely a rework to base Mesmer function will ever happen because they will have to redesign all old elite specs and base class again. Example: How does persistent phantasms work with CP? It doesn’t. The closest we get to a “rework” is a new elite spec. Would it be nice to have an elite spec where phantasms don’t conflict with shatters? Yup and I would love a DPS focused elite mesmer spec. Check out my idea in the design an elite spec topic if you don’t believe me.

For the SoI buff specifically, there is a difference between 15% permanent trait bonus (the other trait bonus was made baseline during the rework) and a temporary buff that is part of a rotation. It doesn’t fix everything but it makes the Chrono DPS in a raid situation not completely crap. It also just makes the pure phantasm DPS rotation more interesting than summon 3 then auto attack until the end of time.

Fair enough, just sounded like you were downplaying the offensive buffs that warrior brings. The reality of the way you were describing might generation in a non warrior comp though doesn’t match what you will see. Most fights ele is using fresh air and wants to spend as little time in fire as possible so no fire overloads most of the time. The rev can definitely top the mesmer up with might and the mesmer can probably solo generate about 15 might but when shared people might get 25 but it will rapidly decay. Sadly I think we’re more or less stuck with warriors for might generation in high man content due to the inability to really blast or reliably keep 25 on all players especially if there is a nerf to SoI the way it’s rumoured.

They are definitely never going to put a damage buff in inspiration whether it’s active or damage. I think there’s more chance of a rework of phantasms than that happening as it would be at complete conflict with the trait line.

I’ve been thinking about if SoI is nerfed and how comps will look, I guess mirror might be what becomes common but it will suck completely for everyone. Class diversity will go out of the window and you’re pretty much only going to see ele and thief in DPS, most likely ele. At the moment with only quickness being a guarantee classes are not too far apart for DPS depending on how many hams you have for fingers, in mirror we have alacrity close to 100% which will really change things and not for the better.

The 5-5 mirror comp in raids is already very good. Not as good as 4-4-2 or the 5-4-1 variant but still a close follower (and def better than 7-2-1). It’s indeed true that you would take that comp to get permanent quickness, it’s just too good of a boon not to take 2 chronos for. However tbf I doubt you’ll have to be full commander or even have 100% boon duration to keep up that quickness since it’s a lot easier keeping it up for 5 ppl instead of 10. Honestly some of that boon duration might even be wasted with the rumoured 6sec hard cap on soi.

Other classes actually get screwed with much harder by this change. Rev will lose its role entirely and have no place anymore. Daredevil will be outclassed by ele again because there will be a lot more alacrity available and druids will generally have to provide fury so the condi build is going to be less wanted. On top of that it’s doubtful the 7-2-1 comp will still be decent to use.

5-5 is mainly for more Alacrity, not Quickness. It’s most useful if you have a lot of staff Eles in a fight without many phases, f.ex. Sloth, where you constantly deal damage. Necros, Druids and Condi Engis also benefit greatly from Alacrity. Warriors themselves do not, but the Banners gain a 100% uptime wich is a indirect high damage buff for the party.

To make this work properly in reality too, both of the Chronos have to focus on more offensive builds, dropping Inspiration for Domination for example, so they can scratch the 14-15k dps. It’s also better to use either 2 iAvengers + 1 iSwordy or 3 iAvengers and Well of Calamity instead of Recall aswell in some fights Gravity Well instead of Time Warp in that setup.

Xyonon.3987:

5-5 is mainly for more Alacrity, not Quickness. It’s most useful if you have a lot of staff Eles in a fight without many phases, f.ex. Sloth, where you constantly deal damage. Necros, Druids and Condi Engis also benefit greatly from Alacrity. Warriors themselves do not, but the Banners gain a 100% uptime wich is a indirect high damage buff for the party.

To make this work properly in reality too, both of the Chronos have to focus on more offensive builds, dropping Inspiration for Domination for example, so they can scratch the 14-15k dps. It’s also better to use either 2 iAvengers + 1 iSwordy or 3 iAvengers and Well of Calamity instead of Recall aswell in some fights Gravity Well instead of Time Warp in that setup.

Right now yes. If they go through with the rumoured nerf it’ll be pretty much a necessity for perma quickness as well.

Oh then I misunderstood your power – I’m sorry. Yea I guess so, and would overall harm the game a lot imo :/

Xyonon.3987:

Oh then I misunderstood your power – I’m sorry. Yea I guess so, and would overall harm the game a lot imo :/

Agreed, it’d be exactly like it was before last balance patch, stacking eles again. Only this time there would be even less diversity since rev will lose its spot as well.

At this point I’d say the real problem isn’t massive boon spam or SoI, it’s just the fact that resistance exists at all.

Also lines getting a target cap would’ve been fair if stability stayed with no cd on stack removal, but not doing both just makes it rather difficult to do any more than inconvenience enemy melee with range.