Guild Wars 2

EasymodeX.4062:

Good thing it comes with a stealth and blind, too! With a the optional conditional removal if you trait for it. And the damage is AOE and combos as a blast finisher!

Also, it’s not a specific build; it’s simply stacking condition damage.

So exciting, let’s keep talking about the tooltip of the same ability over again!

The problem isn’t the potential use of the skill; The prestige is an amazing idea for an ability. The problem is the awkward execution. If we had more control of the ability, the cooldown would definitely be justified.

Blast finishers by class.

Mesmers, thieves, and rangers are the only classes with only 1 blast finisher. Rangers seem to have it worse than mesmers due to it being a pet skill, but the thief one is spammable and moderately low initiative cost. Elementalists, warriors, and engineers all seem to have around 10 different ways to create a blast finisher.

The idea behind The Prestige is amazing. I just think it needs some tuning.

The greatsword is really built around ranged; a melee auto attack wouldn’t make a ton of sense. I am, however, completely in favor of making it a combo attack like most weapons. Light beams are great and all, but why can’t that be a finisher to a 3 step combo? Swing and release some sort of arced energy, swing again from the other side, finish with the 3-hit beam. Beautiful and everyone gets what they want.

nerva.7940:

i just have one question about this stupid offhand. why are people still targeting me, and pounding on me while im invisible? shouldnt the use of this ability drop all targets?

I doubt you’re being targeted, people are most likely just trying to predict your movements and swinging wildly in that direction.

Since the stealth is channeled during this ability, it’s cancelled by things that wouldn’t normally take you out of stealth, like dodge rolling. It isn’t exactly a DPS increase waiting the entire 3 second duration either (if you don’t wait, or cancel mid-channel, the burn doesn’t go off. Now incurring a 30 second cooldown.)

Why not change the ability a little and make it not feel so odd?

A solution could probably be found by looking at some of the channeled block abilities that exist. The scepter 2 skill channels a block, but you can “cancel” it early to perform a daze instead.

Would it be possible to make the prestige kind of similar? The initial button press would do that short ranged AoE blind and turn the mesmer invisible. Cancelling the invisibility with another cast, a roll, or simply pressing the button again would take you out of stealth and perform the AoE burn.

This would serve a couple purposes: justifying the 30 second cooldown for cancelled uses of the skill, and transforming the skill into something with a twofold use; a trend followed by many mesmer abilities. You could use the prestige and continue attacking, creating a short duration burn and rendering the skill offensive, or you could allow the stealth to run it’s 3-second course as a defensive measure.

It doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense right now. Defensively, you use it to blind the enemy and run away, reappearing in a burst of flames – hitting nothing – if you escaped successfully. Offensively, you sit there for 3 seconds waiting for it to end, doing nothing, otherwise wasting your burn and incurring a 30 second cooldown for what basically amounts to calling “time out” for a few seconds.