Guild Wars 2

Very well put.
I hope we’ll see some minor changes in pve that could help mesmer gets in a better place.
With things like the Scrapper’s reveal I hope Anet is considering adding a huge chunk of HP to ALL minions in PVE.
It felt really sad seeing phantasms and illusions die istantly during the wyvern fight in the BWE, it just goes against the whole profession’s mechanics.

Also, if they really don’t want to split pve and pvp balance i’d just be happy with damage modifiers and weapon quality working on phantasms in pve, really.
Plus the aforementioned buff to HP.

Flow.2947:

@ Mordy
I do understand that you want to have a powerful phantsm build. but i think it would be extreme. putting this in the domination line. It would not only give you a huge dmg boost, it would also offer you the way to run super tanky(from the other 2 traids)

Yeah I can understand your point, however if you look at some of the rebalanced traits line you can see this kind of stuff has already been done in some cases.

For example, if you look at the revamped Strength line for warrior you have the following traits:
– Stick and move – 10% damage if endurance is not full (minor adept)
– Forceful Greatsword – 10% damage increase with gs – might on crit. flat 20% cd on gs (master)
-Berserk Power – Gain a damage boost when you use a burst skill (last 10s) (grandmaster)
– Adrenaline Stage 1: 10% damage
– Adrenaline Stage 2: 15% damage
– Adrenaline Stage 3: 20% damage

Considering that the cooldown of the GS burst skill is 10 seconds (same as the duration of the trait) you can see that, if warrior rely correctly on the sinergy of these traits, you can have up to 40% flat damage boost – Worst case scenario 20%.
Warrior base damages are higher than mesmer most of the times too.

Now, if you consider that:
– Keeping up 3 illusions can be kinda hard in pve – and if you rely on illusions to quickly fullfil the trait requirements you are giving up on phantasms damage: you have to set up it correctly.
- In the best case scenario is a 9% boost – summed up with the minor grandmaster we are looking at 19% – again, considering that mesmer personal damage is generally lower than most of the classes I find that you invest in offensive traits you should get this kind of boost.
- The % damage is applied only to the mesmer. Not to phantasms or illusions.
- With this trait setup a warrior has might from the GS trait PLUS permanent Fury. Mesmer has generally less access to Boons if not traited properly – and usually with worst uptimes.

I don’t really think it would be that overpowered if you would pair it to tanky lines.
I could see a really high spike of damage if you pair it with the new Empowered Mantras – but then again that requires cycling your mantras.

If it was the case I would totally understand if this would be toned down a bit, for sure.
Numbers might be not balanced, but I really like the idea.
And if they come up with a better GS trait… I don’t really know.
I find that tying grandmaster traits to weapons hinders a lot of possibilities, especially on mesmer.

TL;DR at the end

Let me start by saying that most of the changes on mesmer’s traits are good and I fully understand this is a work in progress.
Also, these are my thoughts as a (mostly) pve player.
I’ve tried to consider how mesmer’s traits work in pvp in the most popular builds so this wouldn’t cripple them in any way.

Watching the stream I noticed that grandmasters traits are now more build-defining than before (Mental Torment, Deceptive evasion etc.).
With the rebalancing of the Domination line we have 2 clear routes: Shatter and Interrupts.
We have, however, really good traits that benefit builds that rely on direct damage and phantasms damage, namely the old Empowered Illusions and the new Fragility minor which is an amazing trait to have.
*But..when we get to GM traits we are presented with 3 choices: *

• A shatter trait
• A interrupts trait
• Greatsword Cooldown & bonus Power

Greatsword training is currently in testing with the main mechanic being reducing cooldowns by 2% every GS Auto-Attack from the player and his clones.
Power from wielding a GS has also been buffed from 50 up to 100.
In this current state this is nowhere near an actual grandmaster trait.

Firstly, it forces a useless trait to a mesmer that wants the line and don’t care about shatter, interrupts or GS.
Secondly, we have other examples of the same kind of trait: Ranger has received the same trement regarding LB.
But… the new “Lead the wind” gives flat 20% recharge, 10% attack speed increase and piercing arrows.
Plus, with the new Remorseless trait, ranger has an option that doesn’t lock the grandmasters in a specific build.
Let’s not even bring up something like Forceful Greatsword – which is a master trait.

In my opinion Greatsword Training should be moved back to master tier – either leaving as it is in its new iteration or brought back to the original state.
Furious interruption could be merged with Power Block, or Shattered Concentration could be merged with Mental Torment (considering balancing numbers if necessary ofc).

Now we have one empty Grandmaster slot.
My solution would be to look at the Illusion traitline, which is mostly based on shatters and conditions.
Here we have 2 really good traits for pure damage/phantasms builds: Compounding Power and Phantasmal Haste.
Since most of the other traits in the new iteration are focused on conditions and shatters, my solution would be to merge these two traits in something like:

Phantasmal Master:
" Gain increased damage for each of your active illusions.
Reduces recharge on phantasm attack skills.

Damage Increase: 3%
Recharge on phantasm attack reduced: 20%"

This trait would become a Grandmaster in Domination, making the 3 choices really impactful on the gameplay.
As for the 2 trait slots in Illusion I think they could find more meaningful and better sinergizing traits easily.

TL;DR
Greatsword training as a grandmaster is lackluster – should be moved back to master tier.
Compounding Power and Phantasmal Haste from the Illusion line should be merged and turned into a Domination Grandmaster.
Filling the missing traits in Illusions with better sinergizing ones.

What do you guys think?