(edited by Miocast.2657)
Showing Posts For Miocast.2657:
So to add to discussion about how conditions affect thiefs, revenants etc.
I would rather cover another topic – Slow.
I assume that Slow must be more accessible if not for base Mesmer, but for Chrono for sure.
Certain adjastments could be made to Delayed Reaction – to add slow for dazing an enemy instead of interrupting it, and Lost time to make it 5th stack to slow an enemy, 1 stack for basic attack and 2 for critical strike, 33% chance to recieve a charge from Illusion critical attack.
Thouse Danger Time with +30% critical chance will be more reliable, right now upper deck in chronomancer is way too underpowered for power variants that do not rely on phantasms.
And i still don’t understand usability of such skills as Mimic, Time Warp, Illusion of Life. outside of few encounters or very specific builds – you rarely even touch them.
Sorry, but I have to correct you on this. Time Warp and Mimic have their uses. Time Warp is used mostly on quickness builds on Chronos that have a hard time on maintaining their quickness uptime. It’s also used on Boonshare Chrono in WvW. Mimic also has its use to double some skills (mostly Well of Action), and is used on Inspiration-less builds in PvE to apply permanent quickness to parties.
As i said – both Time Warp and Mimic are very specific encounter or build dependant skills, one of which give, remind you 10s of quickness (without boon duration) on 180s coold down, another one give you reduced to 1 second recharge of next skill on 90s cooldown.
Both of thouse skills have it usability, but profit of double blink for 2 utility slots for example is quite questionable at least for me, since i always assume that in both pve and pvp positioning comes first, and if i would have to use mimic for example in PVE – that means i did some bad positioning.
Out of 14 Mesmer builds on metabattle in all game modes only 2 use Time Warp as go to elite, and only few of them even list mimic as a skill, and i will quote one of build maker’s text regarding this utility skill: “Mimic – because it’s fun.”
Overall this two skills do not bring something that particularry important or crucial on the table when we talk about wvw or pvp.
And i will assume, since im not all that pve person myself, instance where you would use Time Warp and|or Mimic tied to specific encounters, and as you stated Time Warp is used in “…quickness builds on Chronos that have a hard time on maintaining their quickness uptime.” and Mimic “used on Inspiration-less builds in PvE to apply permanent quickness to parties”.
So once again i suppose we came to agreement that Mimic and Time Warp are usable but still too tied to specific builds and encounters, but outside of it – it would be never go to skills like Well of Gravity or SoH are and variety of more game changing utilities such as Disenchanter or Decoy, Veil and others.
PS: I will quote you an article from July 25, 2012 by WiNGSPATT –
“While this may still sound cool in theory, the Guild Wars 2 beta weekends quickly proved the Mesmer’s gameplay mechanic was more underwhelming than a Sea Monkeys unboxing. Yes, it was that bad. Within hours of booting up the beta, hundreds of players shared similar complaints:
Illusions don’t attract or hold aggro, even when directly replacing the player
When they are hit by AOE/melee/sneezing, Illusions dissipate instantly
Illusions do almost no damage (and in fact Clones do zero damage)
Illusions are so short-lived, Shattering them is rarely an option
When Shattering does happen, the effects are basically unnoticeable
The Illusions/Shatter mechanic is shallow compared to other professions’ specializations"
and
“Meanwhile, the Mesmer lost every single defining aspect of the profession. Here’s a list of stuff the Mesmer did in Guild Wars but conveniently forgot how to do in the sequel:
Precisely interrupting enemy actions
Punishing enemies for attacking
Punishing enemies for casting spells
Punishing enemies for doing nothing
Slowing enemies to a crawl
Stealing/draining resources from enemies
Disabling enemy skills
Casting spells and signets at increased speed
Slowing or delaying enemy spell casting
Dealing huge amounts of damage over time (DOT)
Gaining temporary buffs that later became debuffs
Wielding illusory weapons to deal enhanced damage
Copying enemy abilities, including elite abilities
Performing Riverdance
Sure, the Mesmer in Guild Wars 2 can inflict debuffs (as conditions) and punish players for acting (as a generic, boring “Confusion” condition), but there’s no trickery. No guile. No Lyssa loving. The Mesmer’s entire box of tricks has been scrapped for an Illusion mechanic that is shallow, repetitive, and ineffective."
Core problems for a most part persist.
(edited by Miocast.2657)
In my opinion GW1 mesmer is much more superior to GW2 counterpart, i really miss, for example, such skills as Arcane Thievery, Confusing Images, Panic, and other.
And i still don’t understand usability of such skills as Mimic, Time Warp, Illusion of Life. outside of few encounters or very specific builds – you rarely even touch them.
Then i look at talents and see a tone of traits that rely on interrupt and by so -counterplay, but they are scatterred and do not produce much of effect combined.
At best you have 1 interruption from Diversion, one from weapon set (GS 5, off hand SW 4, off hand focus 4, off hand pistol 5, shield 5), 2 from mantras which you need to recharge if you use all of charges and which is super easy interruptable by enemy, and elite (SoH, Gravity well) for a total of 5 instances of daze.
Also, in pvp and wvw, specifically, you rarely find a good way to use mantras, thouse long 2.25 casts are just killing them. And only actually usefull mantra to have is Mantra of Resolve and even then its fail to be usefull if you run Inspiration.
So in my view of a problem is that Mesmer need so additional buffs to mantras cast speed, mantras cast to be insta projectiles, trait that allow your iterrupts to surpass stability, interrupt to be more beneficial to you with boons and Mimic should act like Arcane Thievery did in GW1, allowing you to steal last casted spell to your benifit.
I would rather have some uplift to core mesmer and especially power mesmer then having another spec that do not contribute to one of core, including grandmaster, traits that rely on interruption.
I suppose i wasnt clear enough.
Toughness contribute to armor – thouse reducing any direct damage.
I propose to toughness be a counterweight to ferocity, so if player with 200% critical damage multiplyer attack you with, let’s assume 3000 toughness, – you will recieve a crit with not a 2 time more damage then non crit, but with 1.7 multiplyer for example.
The actualy point of topic – toughness is badly scaling and do not affect pvp in anyway like vitality do, but should.
TL;DR – Toughness should be coughterweight to ferocity.
For last year i’ve been playing wvw in different classes, roles and in different gear.
And so far i was questioning myself – do toughness actually affect your survivability?
Actually not so far in my opinion, every class can dish out increadibly high damage in mere of a second, and toughness as defence atribute does not affect incoming damage in much of a way.
When its come to conditions – you can cleanse – automaticly or by use of abilities, you can use traits or food that reduce incoming condition duration. It’s help a little when you are not overburden with every possible condition in zergs or by thiefs/necroes.
When it comes to direct damage by aoe, cleave, or direct single target damage – you choices are more limited – aegis and\or protection, purgable boon so it would be converted to conditions or stealed in 1v1 or in zerg, block or dodge.
For both damage types – there is a variety of immunities scattered among classes – from evades and distortions to compleate damage mitigation.
But it’s not much of help when TTK (time to kill) comes to a point of seconds, which with latency in WvW may result in few frames if sudden lag happens.
In my honest opinion we need to adjust toughness meaning and how it would interact with damage.
I propose following concept – make toughness counter ferocity, in current meta where nearly 100% of critical chance achievable, and fury boon could be permanent, an ease with which costant crits for over 1|3 of HP bar or nearly one shots of and enemy player are common as house fly.
There is already precedents in game which make crits useless against certain classes – Stone Heart of from Earth trait line for example – it was a certanly a good choise of a trait versus power builds like Diamond Skin versus condition builds, and making it so that other classes could access to such a defense by stacking toughness will make this attribute good for bunker, anti-power, defensive builds.
TL;DR – Toughness should be coughterweight to ferocity.
A problem with power mesmer is more core then about elite spec.
In my opinion to give a power mesmer more viability there is should some tweaks to interruption mechanics, some traits, minor utility.
Power mesmers does not have good survivability like current meta require to be viable, they does not have immunity (apart from distortion which quite problematic to upkeep), like their power counterparts of other classes have which mostly make Inspiration trait line mandatory, which does not contribute to damage in any way.
Power mesmer does not have good and viable disengation utility – at best it stealth, which could be broken by quite a lot of mechanics that mesmer have, and teleportation have long cooldown. In current time with build that have permaswiftness, easy superspeed and moving abilities on their weapon skills – mesmer is easly kited or catched up.
In my opinion there is following tweaks needed to make powermesmer viable in current meta.
F – utility must switch your position with targeted illusion, but with reasonable cooldown. Thouse mesmer will have higher mobility on battlefield.
Grandmaster trait Power Block in Domination should ignore CC immunity and stability, in current meta a lot of ways to ignore interruption by which such way of delievering damage quite unreliable. Though a lot of traits across all traitlines rely on interruption:
1) Domination which have Confounding Suggestions, Furious interurption, Power Block
2) Chaos with Chaotic Iterruption
3) Chronomancer with Delayed reaction
None of them making Interruption a reliable way of delievering damage.
Chronomancer’s Lost in Time trait should apply 3 second slow, therefore taking Delayed Reaction and Danger Time be much more efficent choice for power mesmer that do not rely on clone generation, but on interruption.
Offensive mantras should have 3 charges or faster recast and grant buffs for using charges, but not for charging mantras itself.
Projectile speed of pistol 4, GS 2 and 4 should be increased by little margin.
Additionally sword autoattack end chain should transfer 1 condition and steal 1 boon.
Mirror image should create 2 clones of chosen target, but not mesmer.
TL;DR, problem with powermesmer lies not in field of new spec, but at core mesmer itself.
Well i see that engi need a more complex approach to its current state, not only in rifle field, but overall. Here what i see as a problem and what i can propose to fix it.
Rifle proposal.
Problem: While itself rifle was designed as burst weapon, prior and especially after HoT it skill set and damage is subpar to any other weapon of any other class (may be on the samel evel as dagger mainhand of necro).
It’s overall burst in WvW not even noticable, and lasck of other direct damage burst alternatives in form of weapon kits or utility kits making it somewhat a single and only variant for not-scrapper power builds.
Way to resolve a problem:
In my opinion rifle’s 3 and 5 should use ammo system, with 2 charges each with 10 seconds of refreshment for charges. Thouse we will increase burst potential of rifle, actually what it need.
Rifle 2, in my opinion should be an aoe, ground target based skill.
Rifle 4, one of not so many skills that actually means more harm to engi himself then opponent, because in HoT majority of classes have access to stability or other ways to ignore CC. My proposal for “fixing” this skill is that it will no longer knockback you, but instead you will roll backwards, recieveing 3/4 seconds of evade.
Tool Kit proposal.
Give engineer a mace, mace’s 1-2-3 inherit 1-2-3 of tool box, shield’s 4-5 get tool box’s 4-5. Thouse Engi will get CQ weapon kit, with already known and loved skill set.
Replace tool box with with rocket launcher kit – copy or mimic skills from charzooka with the same rule set of 15 skill uses, but with 25 second cooldown however without time limit of 15 seconds.
Elite proposal
Engis tool belt skill for elites that come not from profession but from races are empty if you actually use race based elites. While elites themself for me (charr) are mostly unusable, some toolbelt skills for race elites would be at least nice, because while engineer recieve toolbelt skills for race utility skills, (hidden pistol for example), a fact that elites skills leave elite toolbelt slot empty is somewhat strange and weird.
Trait lines:
In my opinion trait line with most issues is firearms:
Skilled Marksman from Firearms Trait line – while it give 10% increase in attack speed and 20% reduced cooldowns – it only affect one land weapon, and this effect is not enough to make this weapon nor powerful nor viable. I propose to add to that trait the following effects: "every consecuitive basic weapon attack with rifle on the same target increase attack speed by 7.5%, for up to 30%, and every 4th consecutivesame target pistol basic attack apply 0.5s daze on opponent.
Juggernaut from same tree – in my opinion its somewhat dubious trait, personally i will replaced it with another trait that affect conjured weapons and tool kits:
FT for example may grant might and stability to you and up to 5 allies, elixir gun may grant regeneration and clean one condition every X seconds from you and your allies, Bomb kit give you and your allies X% chance to blind opponent with basic attack, Grenade kit give you and your allies a X% chance to deal additional damage with basic attack, Med kit give you and your allies small chance to avoid incoming direct damage. The main reason for that, is that engineer somewhat lack of things that he can propose and give to a group, raid or zerg. But with some deeper look into synergy of kits and group may grant an engineer an opportunity to actually benefit a group, indirectly.