Guild Wars 2

Mirage is too focused on clones/dodge mechanic with no boosts to phantasms.

Problem is, clones are and have always been worthless outside staff/scepter clones.

I’m not sure why they can’t separate phantasms from the clone counter and make mind wrack only use up clones so you can use phantasms for sustained damage and mindwrack for sustained damage in pve and burst in pvp.

Mirage virtually provides nothing of use to groups while being a mediocre selfish dps spec.

No alacrity, no quickness, no group distortion.

Not even solid CC upgrades over chrono/core mesmer.

And more importantly, it loses all the aoe from chrono’s wells.

They straight out made a gimmick spec and thought little beyond just the name.

Sad thing is we’ll be nerfed based on Golem testing…once again.

Just as that stream dude said, I managed some pretty ridiculous stuff on the Golem’s and NPCs. Just trying casually I had ~34 stacks of Confusion ticking for 2500+, and had the NPC Elementalist pop an >8k Confusion active hit. (Getting 20+ stacks on NPCs was easy, moe is hard cuz they die too fast.)

iWarden + Etheral + Axe2 + Axe3 + F2 (traited Blind->Confusion ofc with blind on shatter)

Also, the Rune of the Nightmare synergizes nicely with Jaunt, making it 5x Confusion + Blind, but on a 45s CD.)

Overall though I totally agree. The Mirage is pretty clunky and lackluster. There is potential, but I have many of the same gripes as in this thread. I had a really hard time figuring out at first what the deal was with the Mirrors, and Mirages. And honestly I still fair to see the point of Mirages. I expected a lot more Deception TBH, more swapping around with Clones and such.

The utilities are downright terrible. The only one I would even consider using is the one where you can shadow-step in and back out at will, that one is neat, but with the extremely lacking Condie Cleanse we suffer unless traiting Inspiration, I can’t even justify that. (Blink is still better, and that shadow step is too situational to give up other staples like Decoy or Portal.)

I get that this makes Mesmers a bit like Thieves, and at times I really enjoyed that. The Sword Ambush is some serious mobility, albeit as mentioned a bit slow and thus clunky…the last thing the Mirage needs more of. However, defense is seriously lacking in comparison to Thieves and quite frankly nothing is making up for that. (They’re still going to be higher DPS, more mobility, and more defense.)

In short, you have to give up WAY too much stuff just to be a mediocre Thief.

All of the Mirage attacks/abilities seem to have these really ridiculous delays, which is a large part of it feeling clunky and slapped together without proper testing. I guess this is done to prevent the deceptive nature of the de-target abilities combined with stealth and clones from getting out of hand, but does anyone believe this will work in the long run to actually confuse competent players?

Seriously, been there, done that. Humans will not be fooled by AI anytime soon, and people will adapt to this slightly more deceptive Mesmers in short order. At that point you’re left with a buncha slow/clunky and lackluster abilities that were balanced around the idea of complete newbies trying to figure out who the real Mesmer is.

Not being a drama-queen at all here, but I see nothing that is going to have me pre-purchasing this expansion at this time. I really had a lot of hope for Mirages as the concept is really cool, and as I said there is a lot of potential, but I feel the implementation is sadly kinda poor and quite frankly very disappointing after 2 years in the making.

Forgot to mention one more thing: As predicted, many of the QoL improvements that Chrono brought are now missing. Slow moving shattered Clones, no really good passive movement speed option or adequate Swiftness, same old crappy Phantasms and paper-tissue Clones, and long CDs on our primary damage output. You just give up SOOO much stuff, making SOOO many compromises, and then you get slow, clunky, unreliable, and underwhelming stuff in return. I hope they plan to drastically overhaul Mirage the way they did DH shortly before release after a similar fiasco IIRC.)

zealex.9410:

Levetty.1279:

zealex.9410:

Last thing chrono needs os a buff. Of any kind.

Lowest dps increase of the 3 support classes in Raids
Lowest dps of the 3 support classes in Raids.
Useless in Open/Stories/Achievement hunting.

Lowest dps increase he says LUL your are delusional. I solo everything in open world fine idk about u and what should you be usefull to in open world? There you can tw and make pressing 1 a better experience for 10 ppl…

Ranger with spotter, frost spirit, and gotl adds more DPS than quickness and alacrity.

Warrior with ea, banners, and 25 might production adds more DPS than quickness and alacrity.

Your absurd claim isn’t worth spending the time to dig up the old thread that we calculated this in, but levetty might have it bookmarked or something.

GLaDOS.5897:

Well, it has uses in solo plays, as you struggle with might stacks. Although you don’t get the stacks if you cast your iSwordman while running to the mob.
Meh.

The issue isn’t the mechanic of getting the might. The issue is that the fact that Anet coded this skill to give might to phantasms means that whoever made this change (presumably a balance dev) simply does not understand basic mechanics in their game.

It’s a troubling but extremely unambiguous confirmation of a fact that most people have suspected for a long time: the balance team simply is not qualified to make changes to this game.

Not home for the next couple of days so all I get to do is enjoy how arenanet decides to implement changes wgich potentially increase mesmer burst which never was an issue.

Meanwhile we can expect some nerfs in the next few weeks once people decide that our burst is to high.

Sustained damage problems of mesmers fixed = none.

Also lol at might on phantasms.

Phantasmal Swordsman: This skill now performs a sword strike in front of the player when summoning the phantasm. If the sword strike hits, you and all Swordsmen currently summoned, gain 8 might for 10 seconds.

This patch note literally (no joking) made me hit my forehead on my desk (yes it still hurts a bit), because every single decent Mesmer knows this! Phantasms inherit the Mesmer’s main stats, wich includes Power. Therefore all Phantasms are completly unaffected by Might!

If you wanna check, visit the Test Kitty Golem, add all buffs and you’ll see they will crit between 9-9.5k regardless of the Might they have. You can even stack 25 stacks Might with CS and SoE – still 9-9.5k.

You can also do the same with 0 stacks Might on yourself and your phantasms, then let someone stack Might on the phantasms but not you. Regardless of the Phantasms Might, they will always deal the same amount of damage.

(Don’t get confused as you recieve the 8 stacks Might aswell if you do it on your own, so it looks like they get stronger by theirs but actually they don’t.)

Dear ANet, please change the skill effect from Might to a unique buff that increases outgoing damage for you and your swordsmen by ~10% instead. In case you didn’t knew – phantasms do get affected by modifiers placed on themselves. °3°

Greez
- Xyonon

I would prefer some level of clipping.

In general I favor not having things float off of my character. It’s very jarring, whereas clipping on this order only bothers me if I’m zoomed in really close. This not only includes backpacks, but also includes shield attachment points with the legendary armor.

While we’re on the subject, can we please have Asura ears and Charr horns clip through the medium hood and heavy helmet? I’d vastly prefer this to having them get chopped off, making those characters’ heads look all misshapen.

Thanks!

Levetty.1279:

The worst part is that removing Mercenary Amulet was more then enough and didn’t effect PvE at all.

Silly Levetty, it wouldn’t be a true Anet nerf if they didn’t overnerf the same thing multiple different ways in the same patch.

If you’re asking for conservative balance ideas, why not start with something they just did for thief sword being done for mesmer sword: Increasing the autoattack speed by reducing aftercasts (without asking for self nerfs elsewhere).

Mesmer sword rides at 0.9-1.0 mult/sec depending on boons or no boons. Why not reduce the aftercasts without increasing the damage coefficients. That’s 2 birds with 1 stone in the form of an increase in sustained mesmer DPS and more boon removal. This is from a PvP perspective.

If they got the sword auto chain down to 1.85 seconds the chain would ride at 1.2-1.35 mult/sec and would be something like a 33% increase to (potential) boon removal.

I’ll just go back to lurking now.

Om a related note, if alacrity stays as it is, then at the very least Flow of Time must be reverted to 1 second per illusion.

I’m not pleased with it remaining at 0.75s…

My first suggestion is to answer your forum, not just those favorable post. One of the biggest things that made me join GW2 was the staff commitment with the comunity, and now is gone. Maybe come to say “We are aware of the balance problems with Necros, Eles, Mesmers and we are thinking to make this…”

And my second suggestion is you to include some pro teams to help you in the balance patchs and ask their opinion with some changes, they clearly know what impact would have a change in the game.

Probably Anet will not answer this neither so ~all is vain.
(sorry for my english)

Seriously, I am disappointed with the balance changes. Maybe I expected too much…

I was hoping they would fix the power creep. But they just went further into it.

From the changes, it looks like a-net considered the only problem in the meta was tanky amulets and chronobunker. Well that is not true.

Do you know why condi rev and bunker mesmer were so strong? Because they both have:

• resistance to negate conditions
• passive stability to negate CC
• a huge amount of block/evades to negate all damage
• on-demand quickness to rez in case someone still end up going down

Apparently, this fooled the developers into thinking that damage, CC and conditions were fine and sustain was the only problem. But it isn’t. Anyone trying to play without near-perma stability must have felt like they spent half of their time stunned or dazed for insane durations. Anyone without much condi cleanse must have seen in a few seconds all possible condis stacked on them, and in particular chill delaying all their skills (including their condi cleanse).

But this patch does not fix this. The only real nerfs in this patch are elementalist and chronomancer. So congratulations a-net, chronomancers are most likely dead. But scrapper? Do you think sneak gyro was the only OP thing about this build? Druid? No single nerf? And do you think reaper needed more condis? And thief more damage? And seriously “a hard look at revenant […] defensive capabilities” means only a slight nerf to “Crystal Hibernation” healing and a iCD on stability? They were running “berserker” or “viper” and still taking on 1v2 without problems!!!

So yes, the new meta will be different. Removing tanky amulets and quickness rez will change the pace of the game. But it won’t fix the power creep that made the game unfun for me after HoT, even before the tanky meta settled.

Because you do not necessarily counter more sustain with more damage. You do not counter insane block durations with more unblockable CC. Contrary to what I sometimes read, “if everything it OP nothing is OP” isn’t true. Power creep can make the game less fun. In particular, CC creep does, because I play this game because… I want to play. I don’t want to wait for 10s while CC locked hoping my stunbreak will be back on CD, which it isn’t because of chill to end up dead. But apparently, I’m not anymore playing the right game for that…

In theory its a good idea, in practice it will be useless.

First as I mentioned in another thread people see the tiny buffs we did get and refuse to believe that these buffs do nothing.

Second, even though the reddit board is mostly PvE focused, if you make any complaints about Mesmer you get bombarded with down votes and responses telling you that Mesmer is OP in pvp and you need to l2p. Even if you make sure to emphesise that you are only talking about pve and don’t care about pvp. Even if you say you don’t care about being effective and just want a fun build the response will be the same.

Third, related to the second. Theres this patheticness with the vocal pvp minority that if they think a class is op in pvp (which they always think Mesmer is) they think it deserves to be underpowered in pve.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

zinkz.7045:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

…Mesmers complain when they try to beat Thieves at the only role they are capable of while Mesmer can fill multiple roles and provide group utility…

That’s a nice little fantasy you got going on there, here is the reality – for the vast majority of this game, thief was perma meta, taken on every single team and best solo carry in the game, whilst mesmer on the other hand was much of the time one of the least represented classes in teams (read non-meta), required a thief to babysit them, had mesmer mains rerolling thief as even as a mediocre thief they were more use, and only ever had one role for the majority of the game’s life.

I never was questioning that Mesmer was crap, but Thieves have had only one role, and provide no group utility, while Mesmers have had the option to group utility, the biggest issue they faced was trying to replicate the Thief role, which they should fail at since they can provide so much, Thieves have been relegated to decap because even if they +1 they hardly had an impact unless their team was winning to begin with, now with the Chrono Trait line Mesmer still have multiple roles they can fill but are strongest at group support, yes their group support took a hit but still lowering every teammates CD is still pretty big.

What are you smoking?
Group support?

Mesmer has been terrible at that for a very long time.

The reason we play shatter is because it’s the only build that has ever worked outside of Chrono Bunker.

And now you’re saying “Just play support”.

Okay, how?

Timewarp is basically useless in PvP with the res changes. (Still useful in WvW)
Feedback is crap. Even in PvE. ANet has actually been making many dungeons mobs and etc have attacks that can’t be reflected. As well, a lot of the newer content can’t be reflected either.
Veil is crap in PvP. (Prefer smoke + blasts in WvW)
Alacrity’s 50% hit reduces the amount of alacrity we can pump out significantly, weakening it even further (If our cooldowns take longer to come back, then it takes longer to re-apply alacrity).
Mantras are kitten .
Boon sharing is actually more likely to kill your teammate than help them, considering all of the boon corrupt incoming.

The kitten is our support?
Portal?

Have you actually used portal in PvP? It’s not exactly easy to use it effectively.

Oh, and look what forces a mesmer to use portal just to survive.

Yeah, thief…

P.S. Not trolling the thief forums, just saw a post and had to respond.

“We don’t even know all of the changes yet”
~best quote in mesmer forum 2016

Curunen.8729:

Standard nuke it from orbit.

At least they reduced visual noise on that one.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Scepter: Lazy slap-on of conditions on the AA and +5% on MS, the weapon’s cadence is still monstrously slow and clunky, skill 2 still useless. THIS is your big scepter rework, really?

Alacrity Nerfed. Quickness nerfed. Chaos Armor and Chaotic Dampening nerfed (because staff was such a useful weapon before, right guys?),
Duelist’s Discipline still useless because we have too many other offhands.
Restorative Mantras still useless because mantras are still useless. FI still useless outside builds you’re already destroying in many other ways, Evasive Mirror still useless. Seriously in contention for Mesmer’s most useless trait.
Mistrust useless.
Malicious Sorcery already covered, absolutely pointless change that does NOTHING to address the problems with scepter.
Resistance nerf.

Thanks so much guys. Thanks for this. You outdid yourselves in proving you hate Mesmers and that them being strong and useful is considered an unacceptable problem.

Oh but it’s ok. Feedback is ground targeted to make up for it all.

Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll keep telling myself

AtomsOrSystems.9420:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

There aren’t 2 groups. Not everyone who will stop playing mesmer is FOTM, and not everyone who will keep playing mesmer is a diehard.

I’ve played mesmer a long time. I doggedly played my condi mesmer before June 23, even though I knew it was suboptimal. But you know, I could only play it in certain modes, even then.

But now, I’ve got a wonderful condi reaper, a daredevil, herald, druid, condi tempest, condizerker, power reaper, sinister engi, and cele guard in my stable of alternatives. And you know what?
This nerf seems guaranteed to make most of those more palatable to play than my mesmer, fun as the mechanics on mes are.

+1

I mean, I enjoy Mesmer enough that I’ll keep playing it when I’m screwing around. What this nerf does, assuming it goes through, is guarantee I won’t be playing mesmer for anything even halfway serious or competitive. Not raids. Maybe not fractals. Certainly not PvP.

And for my part, I don’t enjoy playing any class other than mesmer. If mesmer is non-viable, then I stop playing the game. When they buff it again, I come back. It’s a pretty simple cycle.

Nah, its “hi, pls nerf op blocks evasion damage shatter phantasms btw im mesmer main” kind of mesmers.
Not like its gonna matter. Now that mesmer wont exist in pvp whining will stop.

I’m in my fourth year in this game. For the vast majority of that time, Mesmer has been underpowered and an easy victim to most classes. It’s the class I want to play and I am sick of being second rate.

The word is “insight.” To repeat myself, I was trying to explore the reasons people reflexively whine for Mesmer nerfs when being beaten by another class doesn’t provoke the same response.

Thief is strong. Only a handful people can use it well though.

Ideas updates and clearer

Recalling that increase of a rebound more and the projectile attack would move faster towards the enemy goal, completing itself, the number of rebounds with wide radius. (Because it, sometimes might not even get to complete the number of rebounds).

Also increase the of blind effect (The Prestige) a radius of 120 to of 240.

If Rev and Thief has their unique dodge animation (mist, shadow), there is nothing much for mesmer to has their own, maybe the same animation of clones fading away ?

Depending on what skills/ traits get reworked in core Mesmer does not inherently mean Chrono will get buffed, it all depends on interactions between all available trait lines and what is reworked, yes it can buff Chrono but it will buff the other Trait lines allowing for the possibility of better core Mesmer synergies based on what is actually reworked. I would have to sit down and actually think on what would be a good rework of some of the traits to offer any suggestions.

But just gutting the Chrono line and redistributing traits between the trait lines would harm Mesmer more than it would help.

It’s a great change the mobs won’t get pulled over the center anymore. Sure it’s a nerf for eotm or wvw in general since you can’t throw ppl off cliffs anymore, but for pve I think it’s a great change.

Yet now the mobs won’t get pulled into the center anymore, they get pulled towards the wall itself wich makes stacking impossible. The probably best pull in the game became the worst now…

Is this really working as intended or just a bad bug?! :/ Please tell us ANet! It’s extremly annoying …

Any PvE: Chronomancer always. Why? Because base Mesmer sucks.

WvW Groups: Chronomancer always. Why? Because base Mesmer sucks.

PvP: Chronomancer usually. Why? Because base Mesmer is pidgeonholed into a niche shared with multiple other classes and Chronomancer allows you do expand your capabilities.

WvW roaming: Split. Why? Because this is the one aspect of the game that base Mesmer is actually good at.

It’s not that Chronomancer is overwhelmingly better than base Mesmer, it’s that base Mesmer just sucks.

Really like the new shield block. Reverting it back to a single block skill would be kinda boring, since Mesmers already have that on sword offhand. And on Scepter mainhand. Use those weapons if you want “skilled” single blocks, nobody’s preventing you from doing so.

This is the first channeled block we get, why are people argueing against it? It’s fine, and brings a new feel to Chronomancer. Which is the whole point of elite specs.

Seyiwaji.4082:

ODB.6891:

Seyiwaji.4082:

.Echo of Memory:
Again, please remove the continious block before it is too late.
I saw it coming…. Some people now complain that it is too strong in Combo with déjà-vu; And yes, they are right.
Now they are talking about reducing the time of the block(sensless). Please, before you change the Name of the skill and/or change something about déjà-vu, just revert it to single block. To have 1,25 sec block or block 1 Attack, won’t make the real difference.

As said in my Previous post. Déjà-vu is there to make up for the weak block.
Chronomancer just don’t need a continious block.

People won’t understand or hate me. But it is a matter of being skilled, to be able to deal with 1 attack block. You don’t need to block everything randomly.
Plus, somewhere i don’t want the Chronomancer to be so easy to play.

Every skill in the entire game can’t be there specifically for PvP and only PvP…especially when raids are a thing now. There is nothing wrong with a couple seconds of continuous block at a time now. There are multiple classes that have continuous blocks…I don’t see all this forum crying about those.

Chronomancer is not a real bunker, won’t be and will never be. Continious Block for which Mode?
You could Block 2 attacks in a row. It was enough.
I didn’t get any problem in WvW nor in PvE
If you plan to rush in middle of the crowd and to shine, you failed as Mesmer and as Chronomancer.
It has Not his place there.

It is more a question of being skilled or having some cheesy block.
You people forget that Tides of time is the real block and that Echo of Memory is the phantasm summon.

I just have to throw an opinion on this because people seem to be utterly ignorant on so many things.

Echo of memory needs to stay as a continuous block for the shield to have any use outside of the “new weapon yay hype”.

Why? To understand that you need to think about the mesmer as a whole. First of all pve, its lack of a damage phantasm makes this one obvious. It will NOT be used in pve outside of its defense capabilities, which right now is the block. Even right now I have a hard time seeing anyone justifying taking the shield in 2-3 months for pve content, our main source of damage being phantasm should make it obvious.

Okay now that pve is out of the way lets get back to pvp/wvw which is why I wanted to post this to begin with.

Once again, what does shield provide right now? An slow moving aoe stun, and on demand quickness. Okay those are pretty useful, if only tides of time wasn’t on such a high cooldown.

And once people realize tides of time stuns you. And that they can literally walk 2 feet sideways to dodge the skill.

That leaves us with a atm useless phantasm, ( which I hope gets some love BTW), and the continious block. That people seem to say is " op".

So overall due to its lack of damage phantasm (once again). Shield is a defensive weapon. Allrighty, what’s our other defensive weapon? That’s right torch. Unlike stealth the block has a huge tell and dosnt provide the mesmer with a disengage and a reposition, and unlike the torch shield block actually has some counterplay in it, for example not actually attacking the block prevents the mesmer from using it again, sure in team fights its easy to run into a aoes but that’s why deja vu is there right?

Unlike the torch once a mesmer activates the block he’s in straight out defense mode, unable to quickly revert into offense which is the usual “qq” on these forums anyways.

So unless you all want to hype over, a useless 2x single block and tides of time for a month, only to realize that in the end torch is still once again the “go to offhand” and we have yet another offhand weapon that barely anyone uses outside of messing around with “look at me I’m not running aa popular build”, I suggest we let echo of memory stay as it is for now and see how things turn out for a while first.

Also to the person I quoted, it honestly only looks like the continuous block is attacking your “image” of mesmer as a class and nothing else. You seem so confident on knowing what mesmer is “supposed to be doing” or else they are a “bad mesmer”, can we stop this shoehorning into a specific role that you alone seem to think mesmer is supposed to be doing. Variety anyone?

I’ve played with and against the shield on all betas, and there is no “skillfully using” a dual single block, against people who actually know how to play. Unlike the sword block (not many people use offhand sword for the block anyways, go figure?) It can’t be effectively cancelled for a secondary effect, that would from example, oh yeah prevent you from getting hit by a multiple hit skills that will melt through mesmer durability in seconds, I ended up not pressing echo of memory almost ever when it was a single block.

Because it left me open for bursts more then anything else.

Overall unless icaptain gets a major overhaul, this skill absolutely needs to stay as a continuous block, for the weapon to find any use.

Atm, its providing us with a “different way to play mesmer” which is exactly what this class needs more then anything.

Typed this on my phone probably filled with typos, sorry for that.