I rather see a Bow&Arrows for mainhand than a pistol mainhand. It suits the class better (shooting magical arrows) rather than a pistol. Also I cant wait for AN to finally fix the scepter and turn i into a condition weapon.
It is such a disappointment to see this adjustment (nerf) ruining some ppls experiences. I wouldn’t call it a nerf if they actually increase the Duration of Protection to 6’s at least or if the CD added was only 6’s, giving you 3’s of Protection and 3’s sec. without protection but, 15 seconds CD!!!!!! just for a 3’s sec of Protection…. is this a Joke!!!! How useless is this forced trait. Has no strategy or build now.
Before doing anything to staff THEY MUST REMOVE THE STUPID VULNERABILITY ON WINDS OF CHAOS. Then it will be half decent for dps and they can do whatever with it.
I believe the staff was meant to be balanced with the vulnerability on auto attack but only under the assumption that the trait illusionary elasticity would be working for our illusions. If they ever took the vulnerability off and fixed this bugged trait the staff auto attack from the mesmer and clones would be putting out at least 6 stacks of bleeding in the first barrage. All that needs to be done is a fix to make the bounce trait work and the staff would be more than just fine.
I agree with everything you said. If they were to take off the invulnerability of Wind of Chaos then its understandable for llusionary elasticity not to apply to your staff clones anyone would understand how unbalance is that. But the way that is working now is so underwhelming compare to other classes. On top of needing the trait to work for your clones we also need to speed up the animation is very very slow compare to other ranged weapons and this adjustment will sill not be OP. Now in the other hand the way it was in beta where clones and yourself had bounce 3 well… that was OP.
Good trick is to get 3 staff clones up vs 2+ targets, then get time warp and a iwalock. Let lock hit then sahtter. Do a insance amount of dmg for offence of a defensive wall of dmg if you need to escape.
Its a solid tactic and I use it often vs classes with low condition resitance but high burst as it shield me from enemy.
See the folowing vid from the “Shatter cat” build and notice the 1st fight vs 2 thiefs.
As far as I know its really not that smart to waste a Time Warp for your clones or phantasms because they still have to wait for their cool down between attacks before they can fire their next attack. And TW only speeds up the attack animation not the cool down between attacks.
Phantasm being dodged is totally unacceptable, there was no need for that. I can understand MOA Morph being dodged but c’mon Phantasms there was no need for that. It was enough with no being able o summon them due to LOS. At least give us Phantasm haste 50% instead of 20% CD between attacks. Phantasms die too easy theres only like 3 that does decent good damage, they are restricted to one target only, their traits are all bugged, an their attacks are to slow. C’mon they are our only ways of DPS.
all they need to do to compensate all the nerfs the staff has taken every time they touch the staff in their revisions is…. speed up the auto attack, it is too slow in comparison to most if not all the weapons in the game. Also for iWarlock since he was nerfed in the last patch then give his attack the “projectile” property so he can combo since mesner is the only class that lacks in combos finishers since the few are only applied by his illusions wich means you can always time then how you want in compare to other classes. Vulnerability is fine butif they are going to change then change it to cripple or chill since the staff attack is so slow that other ptofessions literally can out run you and your WoC.
I already know how ArenaNet is going to address the balance of the scepter when it comes to comparing it with the much more useful in every single way “sword”. Clearly we all know how to fix the scepter or at least most of us Mesmer users that play every format and know the disadvantages and advantages do in every format do. And here’s ArenaNet solution to the sword vs scepter to at least make the scepter a visible opion in the game for mesmer users …. Ready!!? …. Lets nerf the sword!!! remove one invulnerability from the chain attack, and the remove a boon on hit also lets make blurry frenzy a single target just like the scepters #3 skill that confuses which is also single target and there!! we have officially balanced both of the off hand weapons.
I think you have answered your own question. Signet of Domination improves condition damage. Vulnerability is a condition that doesn’t do damage but it allows you to deal more “damage” not “condition damage”. However the condition “vulnerability” is affected by “condition duration” improvements, increasing the duration of it.
I actually dont like confusion because honestly is useless for now in PvE (your lucky if you get 1 hit of conf. on mob) and even in PvP where is still hard to stack confusion or even apply it and yet is so easy to cleanse yourself from it. I dont recommend making the scepter a confusion based weapon. That would really limit the use of the scepter to be played only if your running a confusion build, thats not the purpose of a fix. Make it a condition based not necessarily confusion or make it a support based weapon applying pure boons instead of conditions a la Trident sort of, and of course make it as fast too like the guardians auto skill #1 or the tridents.
Yeah they need to stop adjusting the Mesmer based only on PvP I’m also getting tired of this. I don’t even use Portal just because is more of an PvP skill and and overall is very situational in PvE almost to the point where I don’t use it unless I’m in a dungeon. Give staff clones the ability to use Illusionary Elasticity and fix the scepter and its clones, make it apply conditions or boons just make them do something other than look pretty. Fix the Phantasms skills (Vengeful Images, Phantasmal Healing, Phantasmal Fury) really buggy right there.
Moa is only OP against idiots who stand there and eat up attacks like Pringles. Maybe I’m a super noob, but I like the group invisibility the most. I love having an extra stealth ability, and the cooldown on it isn’t that bad.
Yup only noobs get killed by Moa. Im a Mesmer user and the last 4 battles against Moa mesmer users I won even though they used Moa on me. On top of that I have successfully dodge Moa just by rolling, what a joke… Moa is a wasted slot for an elite I actually rather Mass Invis. too. Moa fits in utility slot.
I couldn’t agree more with the above posts. Moa morph is one of the worst Elites. I rather have something more functional. Is way to easy to doge it, is just to plain to be an elite.
If they cant make their minds with making scepter a condition weapon then make it a support weapon (applying boons) and remove the boons from staff. I can see a support build using scepter his way. Also change the counter animation to look more like the small barrier of the skill Mimic.
They need to make the scepter a condition based weapon. The scepter clones need to apply confusion or burn/poison/weakened/cripple. The staff already has bleed,vulnerability and burn. Another alternative can be… making the scepter and the clones apply boons
The sylvari’s Healing Seed skill its not showing the area of effect ring… just putting it out there since I use it and I would like to be able to see it to see how far I’m from it.
The quick and logic fix to this problem is remove the ground target (which is a very small one anyways) and make it an auto target skill and everyone knows that even the non-common gamers. And it should actually apply conditions instead of removing a boon, like 5 stacks of bleed or 3s of weakened or 2s of immobilize. Or how about making it transfer one of your conditions to foes and steal a boon from them.
That’s hilarious, here i was thinking to myself what can they do to re-balance the staff after all the constant and unnecessary nerfs they keep doing to it, first they took 2 bounces away from WOC (one was enough), increased the Chaos Storm CD. I was thinking at least they can decrease Phantasm Warlock CD between attacks.
All you have to do to completely counter your opponents “Time Warp” keep your distance and run away…. the thing last for 10s and has an AOE limit and it only applies the buff while the valid users are inside of the AOE not outside of it so the users cannot chase you down under the effects of Time Warp. It is very easy to avoid it and make your opponents Time Warp a complete waste of effort if you know how to play… its not that hard to escape it so stop the useless wining and learn how to get around small obstacles. Its an Elite skill and the users have to set it up right and think their strategies good while using it on PvP sessions compare to other Elite skills. And on PvE or WvW the Time Warp only affects a limit of 5 allies only. And as I said… its completely avoidable 95% of the cases. The other 5% is based on the Mesmer players strategies and an average player.
The way the auto-attack (clones applying confusion) was fine before. It was only for WvW and PvP specifically that was broken OP so that’s what they should have addressed by then not make it completely useless for PvE…. other classes have way much more things going on for then on PvE than the mesmer scepter wielding clones stacking confusion on some AI MOBS that attacks you every 3 to for seconds and by the time they attack you for a second time your effort to apply 9+ stacks of confusions are gone in 5s completely non OP for PvE yet remaining a fun and enjoyable build. All they need it to do was make the clones confuse opponents for 2s only or make the clones do half of your auto-attack damage so the scepter clones can have something unique to them just like the rest of the other clones wielding different types of weapons. Remember you don’t balance a profession based only from a PvP view not everyone plays PvP that’s a total different structure and yet they could have made confusion last 50% less on PvP to fix the problem instead of making scepter useless…. when it was a very nice confusion-friendly weapon build option and non OP in PvE it was very normal, some mobs would not even get hit by a 9+ stack of confusion even lasting 7s on them and you know how hard its to apply a high stack of confusion without the help of other players.
Here’s this….. if the developers knew how to balance the mesmer’s staff, instead of just hitting them with a “critical hit nerfing bat” so hard and leave it like that. They should have compensate it with giving the staff higher attack speed in exchange of removing 2 bounces and leaving it from 3 bounces to 1 or they can fix the trait “Illusionary Elasticity” so it applies to your clones as well now that you and your clones are currently relying in 1 bounce and a super SLOW attack compare to other options. Illusionary Elasticity works with underwater clones and those clones already do 2 bounces naturally without the trait so i don’t see why they made Winds of Chaos 1 bounce only when the attack is currently one of the slowest attacks in the game…. That’s whats not fair!!! make WoC faster attack faster or give 1 bounce back or like mesmer players are saying “remove the vulnerability”, any of those IS what’s call balancing NOT nerfing. If the trait is working with the clones then leave it as i is… but it is not working and maybe it wont so fix the staff don’t leave it as a waste. And by the way I still use the staff as my main weapon so I know what I’m saying.
The scepter clones also spawn in melee range, instead of on you. I don’t think the chain is the first thing that needs to be fixed with them…
I agree, the Mesmer’s scepter weapon (chain skill slot 1) needs to be fixed all the way around. It takes for ever to spawn a useless clone. And what I mean by useless… Im referring to a scepter wielding clone that spams only the first attack of the chain for no damage or confusion (or any other condition or boon), it has a range attack and yet spawns in front of the enemy. So not only the scepter clone does absolutely nothing but your 3 attacks it takes to spawn a clone are super slow as well. There are other better options (Deceptive Evasion) to create clones that actually do something other than using them for shatter. The Mesmer’s scepter needs some serious attention by the developers.
I have the same question… Can someone please explain how these abilities are applied. For example on “Rune of the Grove” 5% chance to gain protection for 10s when hit (cooldown 30s). Does it apply when you get hit, when you hit or when a “hit” is taken in effect, meaning a hit from either side?
I agree 100% with you Bulblax.3809 Identically looking would be the purpose of clones but dodging or other human like behavior (using healing skills or other skills even if the effect is not applied) could be unbalanced. There’s other stuff to be improved for the class than that, ex. Phantasms traits not working (Phantasmal Haste, Phantasmal Fury, Vengeful Images, Phantasmal Healing), Illusionary Elasticity not giving the extra bounce to your staff wielding clones.
i just can’t believe it also. How can AN allows that the scepter’s clones main attack be plainly useless (no damage, no multihits for critical chances to help stack bleed, no boons or any other conditions) totally p useless. Give them a 1 second confusion or burn or at least make them the only clone to apply normal damage like the original mesmer just like the clone created by the counter and make thecounter be a clne that applies a 5sec. confusion instead of dealing damage. Please make those scepter clones do something other than looking pretty grrrrr. The scepter needs to be improved.
The problem with Scepter is that the main attack of the scepter clones do no inflict anything. In the other hand you have staff clone attacking with WOC for boons and Conditions, MH Sword inflicting Vulnerability but the Scepter is not doing nothing not even a 1sec. confusion.
