Personally, I see the solution being simple. Whenever someone strips a boon from their opponent, that boon can’t be reapplied for 8 seconds. If that boon is corrupted, it can’t be reapplied for 4 seconds. The numbers can be tuned up or down as needed. This would allow more diversity as those whom rely heavily on boons have a counter and people will make builds with the sole purpose of denying others. It would even work well in PVE against bosses that constantly gain boons no matter how much they are stripped. The karka vets and champs immediately come to mind.
I also have a concern about Signet of Inspiration. If you’re going to nerf the active effect, redesign the passive to be as desirable as the active. There’s no point in having random boons because there’s no way to guarantee you’ll have the boon you want when you want it. Perhaps it could simply pulse vigor and swiftness. Both would be very beneficial to mesmers.
I had no idea this was an old thread. I’m still going to add to it though
Uncatagorized Fractal:
The electricity things going down the stairs can be reflected. They won’t harm the generators but it can help get you up the stairs. Just be careful if you place one right in front of those generators. There’s a chance it will still hit you before its reflected.
Ascalon Catacombs:
Lieutenant Kholer’s wire attack can be reflected. I haven’t done it in ages but I know that, when bosses had defiance, one well-placed Feedback was enough to nuke it and knock him down every time. I’ll have to test and see if one Feedback will kill a full breakbar.
Personally, I love the laser attack. It’s what made me want to main a mesmer in the first place. I do feel that the weapon should cause more damage though so I suggest that they remove the piercing effect as that’s next to impossible to optimize and have it shoot up to 2 more lasers at enemies that are close to the target. That way it would have the same effect as piercing but be far more reliable.
Oh, and Mind Stab should be a blast finisher, because it would be nice for mesmers to have one on demand.
For perspective, before the change, I was stagnant on some scales for weeks and stayed in tier 2 for nearly a year. People either wanted swamp or whatever the daily was. If you were going for fractal skins like I was, you could be waiting so long in LFG that it kicks you out several times in a row. The longest I spent was a little over an hour with no one joining.
After the change, I’m pretty much doing things are my leisure. I’m now up to Tier 3 and the particular toon that I created for fractals is almost in full ascended. I just need one particular accessory that requires me to complete the Arah collection. I have 142 agony resist as well. It’s relatively easy for me to find groups to roll with for blacksheep scales.
If I were to change anything, I would add a non-RNG way for everyone to get a full set of ascended gear by doing fractals. It would only be one set but it would be a full set, including trinkets. I would also add a way to buy mists essence with fractal relics.
To all those that are mad about this, it’s clear that what you care about isn’t the skin itself but how rare the skin is. If that’s the case, there are plenty of items that are no longer available. Transmutation Stones, Found Heirlooms, Portal to the Heart of Maguuma, Fortune Scrap, Endless Common Clothing Tonics…
I’m amazed at how people keep calling this a precision nerf when it is a 40% reduction to a skill’s effectiveness with no buff to compensate. I personally feel the devs miss their mark.
The problem isn’t the Signet of Humility. It’s how Continuum Shift can be used in conjunction with the Signet of Humility. But because this was not addressed, it’s going to cause a problem that won’t be fixed for months and possibly years.
To show you how bad this skill is, here’s some perspective. When’s the last time you heard anyone take this signet for its passive?
I just looked this up and I can give you a few reasons why. For one, the RKO requires the opponent to be standing while Guild Wars 2 has downed characters… downed. Another reason is that the RKO may have a copyright or trademark registered to it, much like Captain America throwing and catching his shield, that prevents other forms of entertainment from using that specific move. That would make such finishers nearly impossible to implement, especially since they are all sold for profit.
However, it must be said that I am in your camp. While I’m not particularly fond of the RKO, there are many, many, MANY other wrestling moves I would prefer as finishers to what is available in the game. If the two above issues can be rectified, my wallet is ready!
The release of the Crystal Savant outfit inspired me to try creating an air elementalist again. From what I’ve read of the traits, Fresh Air is supposed to give 250 ferocity and recharge the air attunement on crit. I thought I could open up with Air Overload, use Arcane Blast/Arcane Wave to recharge the overload and then use it again. However, I’ve found that this does work. What’s worse, Fresh Air doesn’t grant a permanent ferocity bonus. It only seems to be a temporary one and you have to switch from another element to air to get it.
Is this right? If so, the wording for the trait needs to be changed. Personally I would rather it be replaced for something that is more suited to those that wish to remain in air attunement for longer than it takes to put all the skills on cooldown.
I like your concept of skills applying affects by what the opponent is doing. I’m not sure that is balanced though. For instance, what happens if your opponent is moving and attacking? Which affect gets priority?
The hilarious thing is.
Despite the fact that I’ve never heard a single player in this game actually like fighting against condi builds (Or with them, outside of the sadism that is condi builds), ANet keeps buffing them.
I use to have a bleed build before the trait overall and I have had several people tell me they liked to fight me because I was using a build that wasn’t meta. Sure, I’ve had people insulting me too but I recall more positive than negative comments.
This has been my problem as well. I would have bought 2 outfits and a glider, possibly a few weapon skins too, if they were sold separately. Since they were bundled, I refused because most of the other stuff in the bundle I considered junk. I haven’t seen new bundles lately so I’m hoping they learned their lesson.
You guys are thinking about this all wrong. The more skills are split between game modes, the more focus has to be placed on balance and the less balance changes we’ll get. Having one set of skills and traits for all game modes is less to manage and easier to handle.
What you should be arguing for is for all game modes to need all skills available. Instead of just balancing around pvp, they should model more enemies in pve to fight like players do.
I’m not exactly sure what you want here. You spent 3 years creating a weapon and now you’re heartbroken because you don’t get the foot falls? Maybe it’s just the way I think but I can’t imagine selling something I worked 3 years for.
I don’t believe a word of what Nike is saying but I will agree that this isn’t about mounts. My belief is that even the devs have gone into central Tyria and jumped off of cliffs only to die horribly when they realized they can’t glide. What followed is a few meetings about feasibility, impact and balance for adding gliding everywhere. Personally I don’t see why they didn’t do it from the beginning. There is no better advertisement for buying the expansion than for the “haves” to literally soar over the “have nots.”
I’m with you on some points. I found out about the wiki command from other players. I learned about the puzzle piece effect on combo fields through third parties. I’m still learning what stats for mesmers will and won’t transfer to their illusions. However, if you choose not to read the patch notes, you deserve whatever fate such ignorance brings. It’s one thing to get on their case about things they don’t tell you. It’s another when you refuse to read the information they make available.
Envoy Armor 1: No will accept you in raids?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Crossplay.2067
You guys are off base here. Sure there are some balancing issues between classes but Anet isn’t the reason you’re not getting into raids. There is nothing in the game’s code that stops any particular class from joining a raid. What’s stopping you is other players. When people decide what works best, it’s hard to convince them otherwise, even when evidence is right in front of their faces.
Remember way back at launch, staff eles were considered too weak to run dungeons with? Hell, remember when people said dungeons were way too hard? I even remember my ignorant moments when I swore Blink was a useless skill because all it did was teleport you a short distance away and I considered full signet build on a mesmer to be awesome. I even ran around in carrion gear while mainly using a greatsword.
I’m embarrassed just thinking about it.
My advice to you is to get your own raid party and I’m not talking about starting your own pug. If you really want to do raids, find 9 other people just like you, get a voip program and become close enough to each of them that you know what kind of toilet tissue they prefer. Seriously. If you want to do well at raiding, you need teamwork that is so ingrained in each of you that you start coordinating without speaking.
First I want to say thank you so much for responding. It’s kind of hard to be a voice for the people when no one speaks.
As for what you want, I’m curious about how you use Ferocity without Precision. I know Elementalists have skills that have 100% crit rate and there are runes that provide 100% crit rates when certain conditions are met but is that enough to make a build off of or is there some other factor that I’m missing?
I’ve decided my next visionary episode will be on stat combinations and I’ll need more opinions than mine. What I want to know is what particular stat combos would you guys like to see and which do you feel are pointless.
Just to be clear, this isn’t about the present meta, per say, as I plan on devoting another episode about how to fix the problem with offensive stats dominating PvE. This is about realistic stat combos that you wish you could have for interesting and unique builds.
Some things need no explanation.
I’m probably not going to make any friends here with the subject matter of this video but I feel this has to be said.
I’m not quite sure where to put this so I hope it’s in the right place. I decided to do my own youtube videos about the Guild Wars franchise and have already uploaded the first one, which is an introduction to who I am. In my opinion, it’s rough around the edges but I’ve decided to keep it that was so, when I look back at it, I can see where I’ve come from. Plus my girlfriend insisted that I upload it as it is. Yeah, she likes it rough!
Racy double entendres aside, I would love some feedback.
Could you explain why you see things that way?
Leather also has a new sink since the change to crafting made them a part of crafting insignias. My guess is the bulk of it is going to ascended crafting as those doing raids want to min-max their builds. I was hoping Arenanet would ease up on fabrics so linen and silk would drop in price but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I’ve actually soloed some of the new hero points on Revenant. Unrelenting Assault (Sword 3) is an attack that makes you immune while attacking. It’s awesome when you need to dodge while keeping your dps up. Duelist’s Preparation (Sword 4) is another good skill as it’s a channeled block that doesn’t automatically activate the next linked skill from a melee attack. With just those two skills and the dodges, I soloed the Egg Clutch hero point in Auric Basin.
On top of that, I don’t like Revenants. They lack the amount of utility skills that all other professions have and I feel they don’t have enough condition clears and stun breaks. The ones they do have are traited into things that I rather they weren’t. For example, I don’t want to legend swap to stun break because that temporarily locks me into skills that may be bad for my current situation.
My girlfriend, her sister and I already have mesmers that look exactly alike. It’s so confusing that we can’t even tell where each other is most of the time.
Am I the only one that loves ranger traps? I’ve taken out entire enemy teams in pvp with them. Granted, it was unranked but it was still glorious!
As for how I did it, I waited until a teammate was downed and then set up all my traps under her while the enemy team was going for the spike. They were knocked down, bleeding, burning, crippled, poisoned and cursing my existence!
Am I the only one around here who always does her best at events and never tried to “tag” it just for the reward? : /
I jump from event to event both because it’s more effective and because I find it more fun to be where the action is. There will be times when I’m the only one holding down Blue. Sometimes I like to run out of the way to take out an event vet before coming back to the dolyak I was guarding. If there are enough people guarding Red and someone at Amber needs help, I run off towards Amber, helping the dolyak along the way if I see it. If I die in a lane, I would prefer to run back instead of risking the lives of those kind enough to res me.
Should I not be rewarded for these things or would you rather label me a leecher?
I don’t regret the purchase but I’ve yet to see enough content to warrant the $50 price tag. In my opinion, it stands at $30. Nerfing dungeon rewards without compensating them otherwise, messing up fractal rewards and needing experience to unlock masteries when mastery points are an adequate gate are the 3 major issues I see. On the other hand, I love the new maps, digging specializations and questing for precursors is interesting, even for how simple it really is.
There is a famous quote from Sir William Blackstone. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” I would rather have the old system that allowed many to tag a few mobs and run to the next event than the new system that punishes those few willing to run halfway across the map to go where they are needed.
The problem with making Deception targetable is it then becomes too good compared to the Thief, which has one teleport and one stealth while Mesmer has both in one package on top of conjuring a Clone.
Considering that they’ve nerfed Confusion so our downed attack sucks, I’m all for letting us pick where we teleport to.
Tried focus pull on the bombs at the Tarir City meta event. The distance is so laughably small that it’s more effective to use Phantasmal Wave then build alacrity to do it again.
With all the nerfs to focus’ pull, Into the Void is now completely useless. I seriously can’t think of any reason to use it.
I swear, every time I’ve been downed by a boss, I press two and my character finds the MOST dangerous place to teleport to! It’s like she has a death wish! I’ve probably used the skill over 20 times and only once has she teleported away from danger. Considering the ridiculous amounts of aoes that every enemy in Magus Falls is using, will you please change this skill so we can decide where we teleport to? At this point, it’s a quality of life issue!
Though it’s an absolutely wonderful write-up Chaos, I never thought I’d see the day when I correct you on a fact. It’s a minor one though. You forgot about Phase Retreat, which can also be considered a teleport. It has a 10 second cooldown.
I also feel there’s an issue that you should address. Mesmers are designed from the ground up to go against the conventional wisdoms of fighting . Many skills have duel natures and building on one aspect of a skill can greatly vary the way we use it. There’s also the interrupt traits that encourage us to look for patterns in our opponents’ attacks and disrupt them while many other classes rely on skill rotations for maximum effects. Confusion punishes those that button mash blindly. Torment punishes those that run around aimlessly. Swapping places with clones can be hell to deal with when trying to find the real mesmer.
All of these abilities can be countered but they require thinking outside of the norm. I feel most players that have problems with mesmers are too ingrained in traditional ways of fighting to try such tactics. Seriously, tell someone whom is hit with 12 stacks of confusion that they should simply stop attacking until the stacks go away and they’ll swear you’re crazy but it does work. Simple fact is, any mesmer that stacks confusion that high is specced for condi damage. Their power isn’t likely to be high and confusion isn’t designed for sustained damage. Yet people will swear it’s OP because they prefer to actively use their skills whenever possible.
(edited by Crossplay.2067)
I’ll throw my two cents in with many others. The reason Chonomancer seems better than base mesmer is because so many things we’ve been asking for as base mesmers were given to chronomancers. In my opinion, Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma should be in the Illusions trait line as they make shatters more bearable. Mesmers shouldn’t have to pay for using their class skills. Time Marches On should be in Inspiration so every mesmer, elite spec or not, will has access to it. If they make those changes, I don’t think Chronomancer would be seen as an upgrade anymore.
As for me, of my 6 mesmers, possibly 2 of them will become chronomancers. My main will because the shield and wells provide a lot of aoe. I might rework my bleed condi one into a slow/interrupt build, should we get runes that prolong slow. My confusion condi and bunker will stay base as their builds work better with the default traitlines.
Here’s a funny story to add. In pvp, I’ve killed a PU mesmer with a trap ranger and this was before PU was nerfed. To make it worse, I absolutely suck as a ranger. Not only do I forget to press F2, I often forget I even have a pet.
As for condi mesmer, it’s a joke these days. I use to play a bleed one that only had Mass Invis for stealth but not prismatic understanding. I could easily win 1v1s and I was getting skilled enough to win 1v2s. I even took down bunker d/d eles and turret engis with it (God, that was SO much fun to bounce Winds of Chaos off their turrets and kill them even faster!). Then the balance patch that changed traitlines hit and that build became so bad that I couldn’t beat anyone with it. In fact, I started playing a trap ranger because I still can’t build it back to what it use to be.
I imagine there are only a handful that want a condi mesmer to work more than I but the fact of the matter is, it sucks.
I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t posted many of the ideas I’ve had because I feel the devs just don’t listen. For example, I can’t even recall how many times I’ve told them that if they just put weapon skins in the gemstore instead of black lion’s chests, they would have hundreds of dollars from me. I would gladly drop $20 for 5 skins of one set for almost every weapon set released. Chaos, Scientific, Balthazar, Torment… I would have bought so many of them. But instead, they nerf keyfarming, again, and claim to improve the droprates of keys. To this day, there are people that have gotten more precursor drops than keys. So here I am, farming gold and buying them with virtual money instead of real money.
I can’t take any company that would willingly give up guaranteed profit seriously.
Yes, you will get a new skin if the stats you switch to provide a new skin.
I take it you haven’t done a single fractal 50 boss, or face tanked lupicus’s autoattack projectile for that matter.
Lupi I can’t say anything about as, yes, I’ve never done Arah dungeons yet. I’m doing the dungeon collections in order. Level 50 fractals, on the other hand, are all kinds of broken. In fact, I’d argue that they are the reason that multiple smaller hits would be better than scarce one-shots.
Well actually yes thiefs do have a lot of stealth, but they have to set it up such as leaping thorugh a blind field, shadow refuge, gotta get close and CnD etc, and their spike is not from lets say 900 and then whatever staff is im not sure. (like a mesmer) Also i did not say that mesmers have perma stealth, as i stated i play mesmer and ive played a lot of (shatter) mesmer and i know how much stealth they have. And as for the guy who mentioned using conditions, no just no. Having a dire or even a rabids set i dont find fun, i like builds that do dmg (such as beserker etc) Idk how people find it fun to be a tanky lil guy and being able to make 100 mistakes and still win just because their dire condi or whatever, its not enjoyable.
-Whenever i see a mesmer i think kittens more dire trash, and when i see a shatter mesmer i am legitimately surprised because non condi mesmers are so rare.
Where do I even begin…
- Thieves can do spike damage from 900.
- Mesmers don’t use staff for damage. While it can be turned into a condi weapon with the right traits, out of the box, it’s a utility/survival weapon.
- Yes, you did claim that mesmers had perma stealth. In fact, you said, “Its not just the perma invis thats so bad…”
- If you prefer direct damage over conditions, fine. That’s really a personal choice. However, you had better be prepared to fight people that prefer condi.
- Berzerker stats make you a glass cannon. That is a high risk/high reward playstayle. You either accept that fact or change your build to accommodate for situations when things go south. I suggest getting condi clears and stun breakers and learning when to use them.
- Condi builds are about attrition. The goal is to survive long enough to overwhelm their opponents with lots of small attacks. It is VERY effective against glass cannons, especially when their initial burst is mitigated. If you’re going to roam, you had better learn to deal with this type of opponent.
- While condi builds are more forgiving than zerker, they are NOT easy. You have to constantly gauge when to lay in the pressure and when to back off while also keeping up your defenses. In fact, what makes scrub PU mesmers easy to kill is that they think they’re safe when they’re in stealth.
- PU mesmers have weaknesses, such as the aforementioned condition clears. They are particularly vulnerable to aoes because clones die easily and phantasms have cooldowns and cast times too long to make them decent shatter fodder. Learn to abuse these weaknesses.
- Your impatience is a weakness. Because you expect to end engagements fast, you’re likely to make more mistakes in prolonged battles. Any opponent that realizes this can bait you for an easy kill.
- You also need to learn when to use your burst. Instead of going for the face right off the bat, sometimes it’s better whittle your opponent down with a few hits and then use your burst to finish them off.
- Your arrogance is also a weakness. Because you feel zerker play styles should be better than condi, you get frustrated when proven otherwise. Respect your opponents and their playstyle. Learn how they view things. Look for flaws in their builds and exploit them. The ONLY time you should ask for a nerf is when a build is highly effective and doesn’t have a weakness. PU is definitely not that build.
Yeah, let’s make PvE mobs autoattack for 7-10k damage more often, that’s bound to produce great results just to accommodate an unnecessary idea.
I’m actually amazed how you can jump to such an extreme conclusion from a simple statement. Surely you know that there are already enemies in the game that attack faster than once per second and are considered balanced, right? For that matter, what mob hits for 10k on an autoattack?
To add to all that is stated above, mesmers cannot perma-stealth. We can get close at the cost of a lot of damage, but it has been proven to be impossible.
Now, if you want to beat a PU mesmer, try a condi trap ranger. Lay your traps randomly around the area you’re fighting and bring a torch. Rabid gear laughs at bursts, mesmers have a weakness to conditions that some common builds don’t cover and clones die almost instantly when they pop traps. With the right runes, you can stealth too and gain super speed. With enough practice, PU mesmers will fear you.
Becomes trash in an instant in PvE for the same reason confusion is trash tier in PvE as well, mob attack intervals are not that great.
While that is true, I see that more as a problem with pve mobs than my idea.
I have a different idea for iAvenger that would be more fitting for its name and make it more useful in WvW. How about, when it is summoned, it runs into melee range of its target and blocks for 5 seconds. While it is blocking, it is completely invulnerable and whomever hits it gets 1 second of slow for every hit while the mesmer that summoned it pulses 1 seconds of alacrity to 4 people around them for every hit. In this way, it steals time from its enemies. After the block ends, the iAvenger’s “attack” goes on cooldown and it is completely vulnerable.
The pros to this is it causes anyone fighting a chronomancer to stop and consider which phantasm they are attacking as swinging blindly will put them at a great disadvantage. This goes well with the theme of mesmers playing mindgames with their opponents as they can’t just fire and forget like normal. Another plus is that any trait or rune that causes an effect on block would be triggered by the phantasm, giving it an offensive potential as well.
The counterplay is that the iAvenger actually doesn’t attack at all. Any opponent smart enough to recognize what it is can simply wait until it stops blocking to take it down. Better yet, they could use single target skills on the mesmer and ignore them completely. The only thing they would have to worry about is shatters and that wouldn’t be any different than how things are now.
What do you guys think?
I’m holding onto mine to see what the new merchants have to offer and just in case new legendaries require them.
It’s actually a really bad healing utility with 154 hps, not counting active illusions.
Illusions in pvp are not alive long enough to make the hps worthwhile as the interval is every three seconds on the passive heal. With the amount of cleave and how often we shatter or should be shattering, the three second interval is just way too long.
You’re still better off with Ether Feast due to its 20 second cool down and if you manage to get three illusions out, your hps goes from 264 (5500 health) to 356 (7480 health).
Using napkin math, cutting the interval down to one second, adding a passive heal with zero illusions, and adjusting the heal/illusion passive, it’s not Warriors Healing Signet 2.0.
Base heal would be dropped slightly and I’d decrease its 35 second cool down to 30 seconds – with Blurred Inscriptions that’s down to 24 second recharge.
The only argument I can see against this is that Mesmers have the best hps healing abilities in the game currently. But being the selfish person I am when it comes to the Mesmer class, there’s room for improvement and updating Signet of Ether is a no brainer for me.
If you’re not counting active illusions, you’re doing it wrong. With a bleed build, I can expect to keep at least 2 clones up at all times. That more than makes it worth it. Of maybe it just works for me because I rarely shatter. And for my bunker, which has phantasms giving regen to me as well as each other, if it’s not shut down early, it can take on nearly the entire opposing team at once. Sure, I can’t kill them but it takes them a very long time to kill me. That delay has won the game on more than one occasion.
My main PvP mesmer is named Psydistic. That’s all that needs to be said.
Personally I feel our healing signet is one of the best heals in the game. While it does suck for glassy builds, it excels with tanky builds that heavily rely on illusions which my bunker and condi builkd do. The best thing about it is the passive heal can’t be interrupted. I have won almost all my duels and a few 1v2s because of this.
Here’s how the offhand skills measure up in my eyes.
Focus is ridiculously good! First let’s get the negatives out of the way. Temporal Curtain has a stupid nerf on it that prevents any ally with swiftness to gain more swiftness while running over it. It also has a very low hitbox so it can’t deal with projectiles as well as it should. It also has a 1-second nerf before Into the Void can be used which makes it clunky at times. Even with all that, it’s still an awesome skill! When traited to reflect, it has made so many people kill themselves, they might as well have been on my side. We just need to keep nagging the devs to remove that 3-year old band-aid fix so it’ll be a great skill instead of just good.
I don’t understand why people don’t like the Phantasmal Warden. Yes, it is stationary when it attacks but that can be a boon. Many times I’ve been saved from zerk necros Liching on me by standing within that whirling bubble. Trait it with reflect and you have the makings of a comedy reel.
For the pistol, Phantasmal Duelist does great burst damage and Magic Bullet is an on-demand stun that doesn’t require charging a mantra. This weapon just needs a trait fix to bring up its condi game.
I do have a problem with sword’s Illusionary Riposte. I feel that mesmers should be invulnerable between the time an enemy triggers the counter and the time it takes to summon an illusion. Counter blade should daze foes in the area around the target it hits instead of in a line. I have no problems with Phantasmal Swordsman as it is fast, hits hard and jumps backwards after attacking so it has a good chance of staying alive.
The torch is the only one I feel is bad. While the Prestige is highly valued for its stealth ability, I prefer for my enemies to see me coming. It would also be better if the blast happened while turning invisible as well as revealing yourself. As for Phantasmal Mage, it doesn’t feel unique enough. I suggest it uses the Guardian’s auto attack to place burning and blind on up to 5 enemies while allies near it get a short burst of fury. That would be more thematic and could be worked with traits to turn the torch into a devastating condi weapon.
The problem there is that Mesmers already have plenty of options for area wide condition clear and much better ones at that. We have Null Field, Phantasmal Disenchanter, The Mantra, and on top of that we can make our Glamours Grant resistance.
It was just too similar to what we already had and quite niche. The change to applying alacrity on all wells is much better as it greatly increases our ability to provide alacrity to allies.
I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.
Glamours are another sore point. Beforehand, when I was able to blind and cause confusion from them, I had a WvW mesmer that could 2v1 in small battles and support in large zergs. Now she is shelved because all she can do is support and that support isn’t up to my expectations. Oh, and there’s the cost of gearing her up with Perplexity runes. Now that’s only worthwhile if I use shatters, which I feel are more counter-productive than mantras.
I find superspeed to be laughable. I’d rather have something sustainable than a burst that only last a few seconds, which I could easily do with Blink. And don’t even get me started on needing a target to use Feedback now. No, let me show you how screwed up their logic is! Glamours are supposed to be support skills now but Feedback is a Glamour. What sense does it make that you need an enemy target to cast a “support” skill? I can’t be the only one face-palming about that.
So that leaves Resistance, which I’m not a fan of because it only last a few seconds and it’s counter-productive. Mesmers don’t get any benefit from having conditions on them like Revenants so it’s like slapping a band-aid on a gunshot wound. If I could keep it up about 75% of the time, I would consider it useful but as it is now, it would be better to cleanse conditions.
The problem with Alacrity is that it didn’t make much of a difference. Having skills recharge 3 or 4 seconds faster doesn’t matter much. Focusing on Alacrity made my dps drop too much so that’s not good either.
So yeah, I’m bitter. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m hoping one of you guys can figure out a way to make Alacrity work and preferably WITHOUT shatters. Don’t try to convince me that the new glamours are better though. I prefer the “good for me, bad for you” vibe that the old traits reinforced but the devs seemed to have forgotten that was the overall theme for mesmers.
In the meantime, I have to figure out what to do with more mesmers than I have builds for.