Guild Wars 2

Curunen.8729:

Maybe once we’ve been wiped all over the floor by holosmiths, scourges and so on then there’ll be some fixes/changes/buffs.

1) this just wasn’t my experience during the beta weekend
2) even if that was true, what’s to say holo/scourge/etc won’t be nerfed instead?
3) even if both 1 and 2 aren’t correct, it’s not the end of the world to be UP and brought up…much better than starting out OP and enduring a series of nerfs. Been there done that, and I would much prefer the former

The really good news is that, unlike HoT, it appears that Chrono remains a viable Elite option. So no matter how bad Mirage is, there is Chrono, which is quite strong right now and nothing I’ve seen points to the fact that this will change with PoF.

I am personally excited to see what is coming for Mirage, and I don’t buy any hearsay about what some unknown dev supposedly said, or how it was (mis)interpreted. I am quite sure there will be tweaks, and Mirage will end up as an even more solid Elite than it already was during the BWE.

It won’t be sweeping changes though…if you expect or demand that, you’ll be disappointed.

^ Bingo!

On 2 counts that is…yes it probably won’t be meta, which is why so many folks are so upset about it, but personally I think Anet should never make an Elite with the mindset of creating a new meta. Let’s face it, there will never be two meta builds, one will always be considered better than all of the other possible builds. That doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that other builds are not also viable and/or just plain old FUN!

It won’t even take a whole lot of tweaking to reach that goal for Mirage.

And yes, I too feel that we haven’t seen the whole potential of Mirage yet, even with the much hated Mirrors. One teeny little tweak here or there, and suddenly Mirrors will go from rags to riches. Chaining immunities like you said, and stealthing/teleporting in between, will make opponents pull their hair out when faced with a Mirage.

I know everyone loves to diss the GS Ambush too, but I’ll say it again, I believe the GS Ambush is actually Mirror Blade! Being able to stand there and MB someone in the face without worry about taking huge damage in return during it’s long animation, is simply a whole new ball of wax. It’s literally nothing like how a Power Mesmer plays right now, aside from the inevitable F1. (Remember that MB is unblockable, up to 3 hits at close range, lots of Might and Vulnerability, and it creates a Clone! It’s a really nasty attack, but it’s biggest drawback is hugely mitigated for a Mirage! Add DE in the mix and it’s a big damage spike with considerable defense built in. )

I also think it’s quite clear that Anet is not looking to replace the shatter mechanic for Mesmers, no matter how much some people would like to see that. There is a certain fundamental aspect of each class that they want to retain with even Elite specs, and for Mesmers that seems to be shatters. Like it or not, that appears to be the way things will be for at least another 2 years. ;-)

Just glanced over it. Why take Water Runes but Signet of Ether? Seems to lack synergy, and I don’t think the Phantasm/Shied4 reset is going to be worth it.

If I was going to be selfish about healing, I would go with traited Mirror as my heal, and take advantage of the Water Runes heal proc every 12 seconds. (That’s should amount to well over 6k healed every 12 seconds, plus 4 seconds of reflection. And ofc more AE condie cleanses as well.)

As mentioned in the build, Well of Eternity would be a better option as well IMO. More group friendly with the big AoE heal, more AoE condie cleanses, shorter CD, fast cast time and another 2 seconds of AoE Alacrity.

I disagree that the implementation was poor. I think even Mirrors will be fine if the mirrors last a little longer, and Jaunt gets an extra 100-200 distance. I believe Jaunt is a big enabler of Mirrors effectiveness, although I agree they could use a little more. (1x Condie cleanse or maybe 2s of Resistance, bigger radius on Weakness, and I really would like to see a trait that heals us for ~1k when we shatter a Mirror.)

I do think the Mirror shattering mechanic could be revised to use F5 to shatter them, or something else that doesn’t require running through them. (F5 teleports us to the mirror! ) Would be nice, but if they lasted at least 8 seconds or so, they would be much more tactical in use.

Same for Ambush, my main gripe is that the window for using them is so short as to make it plain obvious when the Ambush is coming. Kinda defeats the purpose of the word “ambush”. ;-)

All of those are pretty easy fixes/tweaks, as are tuning Jaunt, False Oasis, some of the Ambush attacks (GS, Staff, maybe Sword a tad), and Deceptions.

Simply tweaking the numbers a bit should take a single dev less than 10 minutes to do, and through the beta weekend they should have a pretty good idea what numbers need tweaking and about to which level.

Let’s be honest, the fine-grained tuning will come after the release anyway… ;-)

Daishi.6027:

… and a general history of how our development has gone down, it’s not unexpected to just get one or two underwhelming changes as the expansion drops.

For plain old balance patches I would totally agree with you, but not for X-pacs!

I remember Chrono was one of the cooler new elites in HoT, and was mostly well received from the start, but I remember especially DH triggering a huge kitten-storm of negativity.

Then in one patch Anet simply hugely over-tuned some of the numbers of the DH skills, traits, and utilities without changing anything about the base mechanics at all. Suddenly most people were happy, and it went on to become one of the most popular professions to this day. (And it received a continual stream of nerfs ever since…and sadly well deserved ones.)

Anet also caught a LOT of flak about HoT being too much of a power-creep, so I don’t blame them at all if they are more careful this time around. I’d rather end up with a balanced or even slightly underperforming Mirage that ends up getting buffed up, then getting a clearly OPd Mirage that ends up being nerfed over and over again.

We as players are often quite schizophrenic. We want an expansion to be cool, we gripe when our class doesn’t get clearly OPd stuff handed to it, and then when we do, we gripe about power creep! (Because naturally all the other classes had to get OPd stuff as well to be cool and enjoyable to play.)

That depends entirely on your subjective view of the state that Mirage is in, and keeping expectations realistic.

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

If you are more in the camp of “I like the basics of Mirage, but it needs many adjustments and tuning to values of skills, traits, and utilities” then I am almost certain you will see a LOT of that before it is released.

I happen to be in the latter camp. I think Mirage was pretty cool already, but yeah lacking some synergies, a bit clunky in feel here and there, but nothing that can’t be fixed with tuning.

No offense, but many people can come up with some neat ideas, but they are all too time-intensive to code at this point. They also merely represent each person’s individual idea of Mirage, when we already have Devs idea of what Mirage is.

And quite frankly, it’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It just needs a few tweaks, so going by your 3 points:

Mirage Cloak
Not really much needed for this. The main gripe would be a little more access to Endurance, as we are now using our Dodges offensively, but will still need them defensively as well. (Especially the False Oasis heal should provide a significant amount of Endurance and not Vigor.)

Also make Super Speed last a tad longer.

Ambush
Increase activation Window significantly (~100% or more), and improve some of the Ambush attacks. (Faster projectiles for Staff, more damage for Sword & GS, faster activations, etc.)

Mirage Mirror
Last but probably the most in need of improvements of the 3. You already alluded to it, make it last at least 8 seconds to provide more tactical play. (Maybe even clear a condition for extra credit!)

Then make Jaunt 500-600 range, give False Oasis a Water Field and 25s CD, and fix Axe up a bit too.

All of that is nothing but minor tweaks to each of the existing abilities. Nothing fancy, and it’ll get the job done and make Mirage a great Elite.

Extra Credit: Tweak Deceptions as most of them will not see playtime in their current state.

When you cast the iMage you fire off an AE Burn on yourself, that is the “initial Burning” part. That one gets boosted by +1 stack by Pledge.

Then TP also gets +1 stacks of Burning from Pledge.

If you come out of TP casting iMage at melee range of your target, you will indeed place 7x Burning on your target. Your iMage will then cast another 2x Burning on your target.

I don’t know why everyone is talking about Mirage being a Condie spec, when clearly it is at least as strong for Power as it is for Condie. It also actually makes sense that Axe is condie focused, because anything besides a melee range condie weapon would have automatically invalidated another weapon option. So I think Anet did good there, trying to make Axe something useful but different for Mesmers without destroying existing weapons.

Yes, it needs some work, as do many aspects of Mirage. However, honestly, how would you make Axe a pure Power weapon and make it better than Sword? The Mirage Sword is extremely mobile, provides strong hard CC via Dom traits, and also creates a clone. All that with BF, which is still one of the best skills in the game.

Power Mirage is fine and at least as good as Condie Mirage, with the blatant difference that it provides a viable Power Mesmer build option, which clearly Chrono already provides for Condie-focused play.

Still Anet managed to make Mirage Condie very different from Chrono. It is much more single-target focused, and can deliver a more sustained barrage of Conditions. It is also much more mobile than Chrono, but also much more squishy and reliant on that mobility to stay alive.

I’m certainly not saying Mirage doesn’t still require some significant improvements, but clearly Anet has come up with an Elite that will provide two additional ways to play a Mesmer, both Power and Condition. Both will be played and both will be viable in their own ways. (That is not to say they will both be more optimal than Chrono, it would be sad if that were the case!)

As for core Mesmer…sorry, I don’t buy it. A Mirage will crap all over core Mesmer…even that is a bit unfortunate, but it’s not like Chrono doesn’t do the same.

No replies? I guess people don’t want to see this. ;-)

Very very nice, thanks for sharing!

I love how it stands in opposition to many of the core complaints about Mirage on this very board. Maybe a lot of it is justt a L2P/adapt issue? ;-)

1) It’s Power Mirage…whut!? I thought this was a 100% pure Condie spec and was “useless” to Power Mesmers?
2) It uses GS!? What! No way! Clearly Mirage is terrible for GS simply because the Ambush skill is weak!

I only tested GS briefly myself, and I too agree the Ambush skill is weak, but I do remember thinking that Mirage Cloak would be pretty nice to use in combination with a MB to set up a 2 clone MW with DE almost instantly and while taking almost no damage yourself. I tested it and it was very nice damage on Golems, and ofc Sword mobility is awesome —clearly proven in that video-- but I didn’t actually try it in a match. (Kinda sad now that I didn’t.)

Although I agree that Mirage still leaves much to be desired, especially the Deceptions, Ambush, and the Axe skills need some tweaks or even reworks…but Mirage is overall not nearly as terrible as some people want to make it out to be. (There is IMO plenty of time to make needed adjustments, which is not to say “everything we wish for it to be.”)

I know some people will say “bah! It was WvW not PvP!” but clearly the video speaks for itself. You can do very much the same thing in PvP. Now if that is desireable for team-play, or even if it ends up being more powerful/desireable than Chrono is NOT the issue here. It would have been flat out wrong if Anet set that as their goal!

I won’t mind if Mirage turns out to be simply a different —but effective-- way of playing a Mesmer, even if Chrono is clearly the better grouping Elite. As long as it has it’s own character, and excels in some significant aspects, it will be a welcome option for Mesmers.

Personally, I think it’s about 75% there, and the rest is fairly easy to do with a few tweaks to Deceptions, Axe, Mirrors, and maybe some of the Ambush skills.

Yeah ditto a little at least. What little I did use of Mirage, I did enjoy, and it also brought me back to a much more stealth-focused play, which I really enjoyed back in the PU Mesmer days.

SOOO!

Being bored I kinda thought since Mirage was mostly unfinished and kinda sucky as far as the Traits & Utilities went, I should be able to make a somewhat similar build with the recent improvements to base Mesmer.

What I came up with turned out to really great so far, and I’m having a blast with a 2017 PU Mesmer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAsfWlknhK0YRawMNwtGLvGU5E6dwNTxMGBaAy5zB-TJRHAB/v/AAPBAmPFAIVGAA

With dual Chaos Storm you can get a pretty good amount of Protection to make that 25k HPs fairly tanky, and of course 3xAE interrupts (along with AE Diversion). Although Clone generation is definitely not as good as I’d wish, you’re far less dependant on Clones than before thanks to Blinding Dissipation working along with Ineptitude. That and the Torch Burn burst gives you a pretty decent sustained condie damage output, and of course your MWs will generally have a 49% chance to crit with decent Power so it’s almost kinda hybrid.

I decided on the Midnight Sigil despite the lower Stealth duration and lack of Clone vs. Decoy, because the 360 radius AE Blind that applies 2x Confusion. (and ofc the 20% duration and -2s CD are nice bonuses as well)

Condie spikes are generally no issue with MoR now clearing 3x time two, but I added swap sigils anyway just to have one more option. (TP adds one more.)

I decided on Lynx over Travelers, as the added Power is not wasted in this build thanks to the high Fury uptime and the +25% Crit chance on MW.

It plays like the old PU builds, very Thief-like. You’re very mobile, very slippery, but deliver solid damage (very nasty spikes too). Obviously point holding is not optimal with Stealth, but I have not had many issues with being a point assaulter in 1v1 or 1v2, and also doing well in bigger brawls. (Lots of de-targeting & AE Confusion/Torment/Burn.)

It plays more fluid and faster-paced than Chrono as well. I don’t miss CS at all, but sure due to the higher illusion generation of Chrono it can put out more consistent AE condition damage, as well as stay on point better thanks to Shield.

RBMoose.1439:

Other utilities can be entertaining, but are generally gap closers for a lightly armored melee condition class, what could possibly go wrong…

lol! Nicely put! ;-)

I think one “take-away” message for Anet should be to realize that all the complaints about Mirage show that there was/is a great interest in the Elite!

Even if people’s (probably unrealistic) expectations weren’t met during their BETA weekend experience, and they’re voicing that concern in often overwhelmingly negative posts on a fairly anonymous forum, the fact is there is a ton of interest in Mirage and we’re all very excited!

We want to see this Elite succeed, and we see it’s potential, but we are all a bit mortified by the gaping deficiencies we encountered over the weekend. Truth be told, I think Anet purposely tuned many aspects of Mirage way down —possibly even knee jerk after that silly video proclaimed Mirage to be grossly over-tuned based on Golem testing-- to build it up post Beta.

Let’s be honest, this Elite has a loy of potential to be OPd, and many of the suggestions for “improvements” I’ve seen on this board the past couple of days are clearly OPd! Many many more, however, are spot on and I still have enough trust in Anet as a “for profit” company that wants to sell copies of the expansion, to believe there will be MUCH tuning coming up.

Remember DH in the last beta weekend before HoT? OMG! People were lighting up the Guardian boards proclaiming it’s uselessness, the theme not fitting Guardians, and that it was the worst of the Elite’s etc! Sounds familiar? It took ONE single patch to change that to screams and cries about OP! OP! OP! WAH! (25x Vulnerability trap? lol!) Trap DH went on to rule low-to-mid scale PvP for a large part of the past 2 years…so yeah I’m optimistic that Mirage will turn out to be a great Elite for an alternate play-style.

That is not to say it will be an Elite for everyone! I believe it’s pretty clearly a Thief-like spec and will simply not grant the utility we’re accustomed to from a Mesmer/Chrono.

I fully expect that a Mirage will turn out to be a high mobility, high survivability (from a combination of deception and stealth), and a strong sustained single-target condie burst class. (yeah that’s a bit of an oxy-moron…I mean a strong condie burst that can be repeated often enough to overwhelm single targets very quickly.)

Also I have to say, I feel that Power Mirage is in a lot better shape than people are making it out to be. You can do some pretty crazy CC->Bursts with Dom/Duel/Mirage and MH Sword. Lastly, as much as GS Ambush sucks, the ability to Mirage Cloak->Mirror Blade someone in the face without taking damage is not exactly bad either. (Generating 2 clones with DE, and shatter in the face.)

I’m also not downplaying the MANY deficiencies of Mirage, but I do believe there is time and will for Anet to tune this thing to be a pretty awesome elite!

I managed to have some fun with Mirage today…no really. Here was how:

1) No Axe (Sw+Tor / Scp+Pist)
2) No False Oasis
3) No Mirage Mirrors at all!
4) No Deceptions at all!
5) No Jaunt

So I ignored almost the entire concept of our “elite” aside from Mirage Cloak and the Elite that gives your Clones MC.

Jaunt is truly a sad joke of an elite. You spend more time trying to get a proper distance then actually Jaunting…because no matter how many times you’ve used it, in the heat of battle it never fails to surprise you how short the distance is. It’s very frustrating and mostly useless in it’s current state. (It would be better to have it teleport you randomly 400 units, saving me the slowness of ground targeting. That way you could at least just hit it 3 times in quick succession to clear 3 conditions, actually kinda deceive/annoy your opponents for a split sec, and maybe even catch some people in the pathetic AE of the Confusion.)

All that said I had decent fun playing selfishly in Pugs. I managed to win a lot of 1v1s and felt like I was a strong +1er, similar to a Thief. Not nearly as bursty, but pretty nasty nonetheless.

I do feel that Mirage has hope to make us something like a Thief. Just fix the duration of Mirrors and the Ambush window, and you add a LOT more tactical game play. Then adjust a LOT of the values behind the above mentioned list of almost totally uncompetitive traits/skills/etc, and we might actually end up with something decent. lol!

It’s not a lot of work really, it just a lot of tweaks mainly. I do not think they need to scrap the concept, and I do like the gist of Mirage in it’s current state! It does need a lot of boosts to Axe, Jaunt, False Oasis, Mirrors in general, all Ambush attacks aside from Scepter and Sword, Deceptions, etc.

Suggestion for Mirage Mirror, and maybe someone has said something similar before:
1) Obviously a duration increase, that much is clear
2) Do not tie it to “touching” anymore, but rather to our F5 skill. So when you create a Mirror, your F5 becomes usable for ~10 seconds to fire it off at will. With the rarity of Mirrors, I don’t see this being an issue.

That’s my 2 cents after 3 nights of playing Mirage.

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.)

Interesting! I’ve been playing what turns out to be a bit more offensive/selfish variant of this for a while. I only solo and personally I feel that in pugs Portal is rarely very effective. You just never know what kinda team you’re going to get, and the long CD makes the trade off painful. Certainly, in any organized duo/team I would replace Calamity with Portal. (I like Calamity though for this build! Short CD Etheral field that provides both offense and defense.)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAscWnsnB1fitfCmpBEgiFij6cDugOzMASgFquS/0QF-TJhIABfv/AAnCg4LD4/TAAA

The gist of it is to be relatively tanky while maintaining near perma Protection and high Might stacks. So while you’re running Paladin’s Amulet, you still end up doing solid damage especially in 1v1 thanks to high Might stacking and strong Phantasm damage.

Gives you half a chance against scrub to medium skill Thieves too, and you can draw out most 1v1s (and some 2v1s) almost indefinitely. (I love that ~4.2k Mirror heal on 12s CD.)

I don’t really miss the Shield either! It’s never seemed like a Mesmerish thing to have anyway, and if it’s more than 2v1 then it’s time to skidaddle anyway…that’s the Mesmer way! ;-) Sure the defense of the Shield is amazing no doubt, but it comes entirely at the cost of offense, a poor Phantasm, overly long CD on ToT now, etc.

The OH Sword is really pretty nice now. It synergizes very well with Etheral fields and the Chaotic Dampening trait for lots of CA/Protection, the new 8x Might synergizes with the core concept of this build, and in 1v1 it’s got both a nice spike damage and sustained DPS if ignored. (And IR is also very nice in 1v1.)

Certainly this is a good bit less defensive than OP, but also a good bit more damage output. You could easily make it a boon share build too by swapping WoC with SoI and/or the Illusionary Inspiration trait.

And I have to agree with OP on another thing…it’s —so far at least-- loads more fun than the meta Condie! It just feels more interactive and skillful…more Mesmerish if you will!
Or maybe it’s just a breath of fresh air. ;-)

I think the only time Mantras have ever seen serious play was for the short time that a “bug” made Mantras recharge passively in the background. It was a bit OPd for sure, but sadly Anet didn’t take notes to come up with a more balanced version of that to get Mantras some long long overdue improvements to mechanics/QoL.

Yes, Chrono does indeed make it hard to run Dueling at all, and with that Mantras. The only way to enjoy Mantras is with HM, and then HM has great synergies with Inspiration…but a Dueling/Insp/Chrono build just doesn’t really work. However, any build w/o Chrono also tends to have major drawbacks to meta builds with it.

Side Note: What I’m talking about is when you use HM with Ispiration and the Mantra heal, then every time you discharge that Heal Mantra, you get 2 stacks of HM. So it’s easy to get the max 15% damage boost.

Unfortunately, the age old 2.75 second channeling time that wasn’t even viable 5 years ago, is today so ludicrously outdated with the pace of PvP, that neither even free “+600 Toughness” during channeling nor the 2600 point heal from Inspiration at the end of the channel, makes up for it! That is the sad truth about Mantras. The traits are fine and even the Mantras themselves are “OK”, but the core mechanic has always been broken.

Simple Fix:
- 3x charges becomes baseline (no HM needed, at 2 charges they’re simply not worth it!)
- HM instead reduces channeling time of Mantras by ~33%

This would IMO bring Mantras back into play without making them OPd, and should give us some viable Dueling/Mantra build(s).

P.S. Oh and a Mantra Elite would be nice too. :P

Haven’t been keeping up, but did I miss the profession balance patch before the new season starts?

Wow just wow. Haven’t played in weeks and I can’t say I see any reason to return.

Might on Phantasms and more burst… ehl oh ehl!

Someone’s asleep at the wheel…

I am guessing it’ll provide a pretty drastic play-style change for Mesmers in order to avoid the issues with missing out on all that great Chrono stuff.

IMO will either provide a very offensive non-shatter based playstyle, that is only slightly augmented by shatters, or perhaps a very trickster oriented control-focused playstyle like the GW1 Mesmer, or maybe as someone said above a very Phantasm oriented playstyle.

I think the latter would be problematic as it would be perceived as being passive and “PvE in PvP” that most people loathe, so unless they come up with some really nifty stuff on that front my bet is on a strong Power-based offensive playstyle, or a very strong/annoying trickster/debuffer/interrupter.

Not meaning to rub salt into a wound, but as a semi-casual yet 100% committed old-school PvPer I am not sad to finally be rid of ESL in this game. I have said it many times before, but I never felt like ESL was improving the game, and most of all the fun-factor of PvP in this game.

I agree with many above that I hope we can look forward to more frequent balance updates, improving build diversity by actually fixing the many many broken aspects of all professions.

Probably a pipe dream, but if you take the grind out of PvP again and simply focus on fun —and not competition-- then I think you will win back a few hearts down the road. The PvP in this game is very solid at the core, and thus still has a lot of potential IMO…if Anet decides to focus more on fun and diversity, rather than focusing entirely on competition and with that homogeny in an attempt to make balancing easier.

suffish.4150:

…, DH is possibly the weakest class in the game right now even though it is still viable.

Sorry, but I seriously almost spilled coffee all over my keyboard reading that.

Yes, and Earth is flat, barely 5000 years old, and is the center of the universe!

Ahh nothing like the GW2 PvP board…comedy at it’s finest!

BTW I lamented about the Stun Break not being instant a while back and Fay corrected me in that. I believe I went and tested it too, but it’s been a while.

Anyway, the Stun Break portion of the WoP is indeed instant.

Yes, I agree that both the ticks and especially the final tick need a pretty significant boost to make this Well worthwhile. What OriOri proposes above is not the only way, but sounds like a decent enough suggestion that provides a meaningful 3rd tick while slightly boosting the initial ticks. (Though would prefer the 1 stack of Stab per tick for 1 second.)

I actually kinda like it…if nothing else then just the fact that it’s not meta and plays very differently.

I changed it a bit towards my play style, but kept the basic premise with Menders…at times it’s almost kinda tanky, definitely against the non OPd classes that just can’t dish out huge spikes over and over again. Guessing it’s pretty frustrating for them to face.

The damage is of course pretty bad, but that’s not the point of the build. It’s pretty effective in team fights for sure, and good at holding points 1v1 and 2v1 if not facing two high-burst classes.

I second OP virtually on all points. I am almost in the exact same boat; a semi-casual player since beta, heavily favor PvP over all other game modes. I already played last season only casually at best, and grinded through it with maybe 1 good game every 10 or so matches. Many bad streaks of losses or wins regardless of profession, and most of all my skill at playing said profession. (Near 0 experience on DH and I generally did better than with 6k games on my Mesmer.)

After the ridiculously sparse post-season balance patch that clearly aimed to keep a miserable status-quo of S5, while completely ignoring broken and unused traits, utilities, builds, etc. I had not really planned to play S6 at all. Now I played my placement matches, and as expected it was the same junk as in the past seasons. Half the games you’re on a team with people whom are obviously beginners, yet facing a team of competent players…a predictable blowout ensues. Fun-factor zero. Then next game, the same in reverse. Yay us!

The whole focus on Esports has been a disaster from my PoV. I wanted to like it, but quickly realized it was not living up to its promises.

The matchmaking is atrocious and has been every single season. In fact I would bet money on the fact that a detailed analysis of the matchmaking data and outcomes would prove that purely random match-ups would lead to more balanced games with less streaking then the elaborate system they’ve created that no one can possibly fully comprehend.

All that MMR and all this other fancy crap does is introduce biases into a chaotic system that would otherwise be both self-balancing —over time-- and much harder to “game” then the current system(s). Streaking is a common side-effect when you try to algorithmically alter an otherwise random data-set to introduce biases to suit your needs.

Anyway…great post OP! I couldn’t agree more and am patiently awaiting the day that PvP is once again primarily about having fun, and not grinding and gaming an inevitably poor system as much as possible to boost your street credz!

Also this well breaks the entire concept of backloading that the other Wells have, because it’s final tick is quite frankly a bad joke someone played on Mesmers.

I wouldn’t even mind the Aegis staying the way it is, but when this Well finishes it should apply something like 5 seconds of Protection to allies and 10-20 stacks of Vulnerability to enemies caught in the well.

Right now the final tick does basically nothing noticeable at all. (Which was relatively OK when the Well was handing out 3x one second pulses of Evade. As you said, this Well was just very poorly tuned in typical Anet knee-jerk fashion.)

It’s sickening and totally unacceptable that another post-season “balance” patch just passed, and none of these glaring issues get touched. I have not found any reason to participate this season, with literally no meaningful changes to the sickeningly stupid DH/Warrior meta.

I guess I might wait what silliness the next expansion brings in hope of Anet making both this games PvP and this profession fun again. I just can’t get motivated to play another season of bad match-making, FoTY profession stacking, and being pigeonholed to play a single semi-viable but boring build.

Hmm OK I guess I got it mixed up, I thought the old Mirror before the trait didn’t apply Reflect until after casting the heal.

None the less it means you get the full 4 seconds of Reflect when traited.

OriOri, technically you already get an effect when channeling Mantras; +600 Toughness…not all that bad actually.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

SlimChance.6593:

NEW: Sigil of Ruthlessness: Gain 5 might (3 seconds) when interrupting a foe.

Although, I’d be the first to add the “on interrupt” sigil to my build. This screams for an ICD!!

Agreed.

Yeah OK, but then please also consider balancing the duration of the Might stacks in relation to that CD! Three seconds is very short and even a 1-2 second ICD means most AE interrupts will only be able to fire this sigil once even when interrupting multiple foes.

Let’s not get too carried away here, as currently we don’t even have a viable interrupt focused build in the game. Let’s not kill the idea before even testing things. (Like it seems you have done to the Reveal already. Sad. It was actually a refreshing new aspect to this Sigil rework, and not just a series of heavy handed nerfs to existing sigils as we’re pretty much back to now. )

Yes the Reflect on Mirror is doubled when traited. Untraited you don’t get the Reflect effect until after the heal goes off, but traited it will instantly apply Reflect first so you have it up the entire time you’re casting, and then you refresh the Reflect when you actually cast the heal. (So it’s at least 3.25 seconds long, I can’t say for sure if it’s 4 seconds or if that .75 seconds is wasted due to overlap.)

I don’t quite understand where you get that 4.3k heals from? It’s generally more on the order of 2600 without any HP and the scaling of HP was always very poor. So with Menders and adding 20% to that I don’t see how you’re getting more than about 3.3k healed.

The main problem that has always existed with this kind of build is the 2.75 seconds channeling time for Mantras, in which you can do nothing useful and which is of course very easy to interrupt. It’s just an eternity in PvP to channel that long and do essentially nothing useful, and then at the end apply a mediocre AE heal in a 360 radius. Other classes can do much better team healing, while doing other useful things aside from hoping and praying that you’re not interrupted during a ridiculously long channeling time.

Yeah I would agree on the self sustain issue, especially since you’re calling this a Bunker build. I would go with Paladin amulet over Menders for a Bunker build, because we just don’t get a lot out of Healing Power aside from personal healing from RI and of course the WoR is not too bad but it’s 30s CD just makes it kinda poor IMO. (With Paladin WoR heals allies for ~3900, and with Menders it’s under 5200. Difference of about 1400 over 30 seconds is not exactly highly impactful. ;-) )

MoR for more cleansing is definitely not a terrible choice, but then you lack a burst heal. Since you have MoM though, you should not discount Mirror as a heal. A 12 sec CD on a decent burst heal with 4s of Reflection tied into it is not a terrible choice either. (When traited Mirror actually beats Ether Feast in HP healed per second up to a 2 illusion heal, and only barely loses to an EF with 3 illusions. That plus 4s of Reflect makes it a seriously nice heal on a short CD…when traited!)

Similarly I don’t feel that Runes of Leadership are really worth it as compared to something like Scrappers or Pack.

This would leave you with significantly more offense on top of more defense, with the only downside being slightly shorter boons and slightly smaller heals.

I wouldn’t go with MD for a build looking to share out boons. In that case I would much rather drop SoI and pick up the iDefender utility instead, it’s on a shorter CD and gives 4s of AoE Protection. (And the AoE Protection is given before the Phantasm is summoned, so your Illusionary Inspiration can fire and spread ~8s Protection!)

GL with your build!

I don’t think PU Condition is worthless at all. It’s not quite as strong as meta maybe, but mainly it’s just that it’s less effective in team play. If you drop Inspiration for Chaos, you end up with a bit less sustain and certainly less Condi cleanses, but in exchange you get more Protection and Stealth.

In the end though, PU with Chaos just doesn’t synergize as well as the meta build does with Inspiration, especially for team play where Stealth is not nearly as strong as it is in 1v1s.

Torch actually brings a lot of AoE Burning now, but you can use it just as well with the meta build and not give up Inspiration.

The inherent weakness to Conditions for all builds without Inspiration has gotten somewhat better with the last patch: Null Field down to 25 second CD and Arcane Thievery down to 20 second CD (traited) and both have good synergy with Chaos.

You simply can not delude yourself into thinking that you can play a PU Condie build the same way that you play the meta Condie build. You just don’t have the on-point staying power and you’re much more reliant on Stealth for defense.

Wow I am speechless! Nice going! Listening to player input…wow! :-)

Excellent! I really like the changes overall, and do not feel nearly as pigeonholed as the first iteration.

Very nice! I am looking forward to seeing this. Some of the CDs are harsh and will take some time to get used to, but overall it’s leaps and bounds better than the first proposal!

Again, thank you very much for taking player feedback seriously and trying to find a decent compromise!

Evan Lesh.3295:

Right now we have the illusion of diversity. There are plenty of sigils that nobody uses.

I kinda beg to differ, a lot of the ones you are seemingly removing are used. Some of them are certainly less used than others, which in and of itself points to them being balanced, so I don’t understand how removing them accomplishes anything positive. (Most of the passives for example.)

Sure it’s easier to balance a game with less options, but that road ultimately leads to everyone playing the exact same profession and build right down to the sigils they use on their weapons!

Sorry, with all due respect, I can not consider this direction an improvement to the game. Less build diversity is the last thing this game needs IMHO.

I feel more alienated with every single patch since HoT…

I’m probably misunderstanding something, but I’m having a hard time making out any “goal” from these changes, aside from drastically reducing the available options…and thus continuing down a road of less build diversity.

Shaking my head in disbelief here…

O Captain! My Captain!

Don’t forget 20% Confusion Duration again!

Actually since last patch the iDefender is a pretty decent Phantasm to use with your “AoE Burn-burst” from stealth. You come out of Stealth with Protection up and 2 Phantasms out to F1 + F2 Combo on top of 6+ stacks of AoE Burning. That’s a boatload of AoE Burn, Confusion, and Torment.

With iDefender on 16 second CD now, and giving 4 seconds of AoE Protection on top of the usual effect, it’s actually pretty nice now. (and it’s solid shatter bait to boot of course!) I am loving it against Thieves, because the CD is now low enough to fit well into the rotation of defenses against an annoying Thief that keeps resetting the fight.

Yeah a .75 second cast time would make them both even better and still balanced, but overall they’re actually kinda OK now. (Not the top choice mind you, but a viable choice that brings something.) Although the initial spell on the iDisenchanter should be centered around us and not the Phantasm, that way it would be more useful as a self cleanse…which we badly need for non Inspiration build options.

Yeah but no matter how good you are, while you’re swapping to Focus sooner or later someone will catch you with your pants down. Sure, you can minimize the instances that it happens by skillful swapping, but you can not completely eliminate the problem unless you never swap to Focus outside of a safe zone.

Not to mention it’s annoying and conducive to carpal tunnel syndrome. ;-)

I do it for some classic builds in WvW, but it’s a pita for sure.

I don’t think we even disagree on most points MailMail, it’s just that I don’t like someone peeing on my head and telling me it’s raining. These attacks are deliberately targeting a cheesy mechanic that I agree with Azukas should probably have been changed years ago.

What will be interesting to see is if they can come up with anything lamer than a slow arcing projectile Cripple for the iZerker, which is probably the most powerful Phantasm to use while stealthed. ;-)

I simply don’t like the dishonesty in being sold what is quite a significant mechanic change, even if somewhat reasonable, as if it’s some awesome buff we’re getting to Phantasms that are still largely greatly underperforming. (Although in the case of Torch I have to agree it is a nice enough buff to warrant the downside. The can definitely not be said for the other two. I too hope we see some more meaningful changes to the severely underused Phantasms like Focus or OH Sword. )

^ That is clearly because this was intended as a nerf first, and not the stated goal of “in order to provide a bit more constant pressure on your targets” which is simply put a bunch of baloney. The only attack on a Phantasm that does meet that goal is the Torch one, but the other two are plain and simple nerfs to stealth with absolutely no benefit to the Mesmer for using them.

And the real slap in the face is the ridiculous nature of the Pistol Phantasm attack, being a slow arcing projectile that lands for ridiculously low damage and then applies one of the most meaningless soft CCs/Conditions in the game. (On a weapon set that almost instantly fires one of the best hard CCs in the game for 2s?! Why do I need to Cripple something that I’ve likely already stunned?)

They were trying to make doubly sure that it was going to be worthless. We wouldn’t want to accidentally change the existing meta, where maybe suddenly someone dared to use an OH Pistol! Can’t have that! sigh

Have the guts to call it what it is…it’s a nerf to stealth/phantasm builds, that were (sarcasm mode ON) clearly dominating the current meta (sarcasm mode OFF).

Plain and simple.

The Torch Phantasm spell is actually buff, and is quite decent one actually, but sadly still not enough to get Torch into the meta build. The Staff one, on the other hand, is another bad joke of an attack. (Yes! Just what we asked for! More slow projectile attacks on the Mesmer for Thieves to dance around and ignore! lol!)

^ lol

true true dat perma stealth power shatter phantasm FoTM stuff is getting old…

Terrile patch!

Basically the Phantasm stuff is a nerf in disguise, but ppl are lapping it up like it’s actually useful. Utter crap! I can’t think of anything less impactful they could have added to both Pistol and Staff Phants! lol! Truly unbelievable to call that “added pressure!” Someone is pulling our leg with these changes. It’s a nerf people, a nerf to casting Phants from stealth! Nothing else!

The only one remotely useful is the Torch Phantasm, but again it’ll break your stealth. In that case it doesn’t matter though, because it can actually be used very well offensively in a standard condie shatter build. This will almost certainly be nerfed when Anet figures out that one of the changes to Phants actually was somewhat more useful than just the intended nerf.

As someone else said, the .5 second Evade on the blocks is great, but about 4 years overdue. Still nice, but not highly noticeable.

WoA is like, really? lol!

What a waste of resources, it’s so obvious that their main motivation behind this patch was to basically not change anything. The obvious problem classes didn’t get any nerfs what so ever, and build diversity wasn’t touched even one bit for us, and I venture to say most others as well.

This was a zero-sum fluff patch to pretend they did something, and it even failed at that.

Pretty sure I’m going to take a hiatus, this lack of passion to improve the game on the part of the company running it, is really disheartening.

ToF is definitely OPd in the damage it does. There is nothing remotely comparable in the game. DH in general is ruining everything up to Gold tier, and is allowing very low skilled individuals to ride to Gold much much easier then they would on any other class aside from maybe Warrior. (Which any sane person seems to agree is also OPd.)

I don’t mind DHs getting boosts in horizontal ways that promote a healthier and more skill-based play-style, but the current Medi-Trapper is pure EZ mode. And yes I’ve joined the bandwagon many times myself to experience this first hand. It’s pure and simple EZ mode…just button mashing gets you through at least Silver, with absolutely no real clue as to how to play the build. I’m sorry that the skill ceiling is also low, this should be improved as well, but the skill floor MUST be raised!

In the history of this game, many many profession/build combinations have been mutilated that were far less problematic than the Medi-Trapper build is ATM. When you continually see the same profession/build getting both top stats on damage and healing, you know something isn’t right. Those should be two diametrically opposed stats that should almost never go to the same player. DH has way too much healing and group utility for the damage output they do, which of course is also why Medi-Trapper is the meta build that the vast majority of Guardians flock to.

That is not coincidence, that’s called FoTM. (Or season in this case!) And it needs to be toned down.

Talk about salt all you want, we’ll see who is salty tomorrow.

DH does need nerfs, but possibly some boosts as well to raise both the skill floor and skill cap. The traps shouldn’t be instant cast, ToF shouldn’t do the damage it does, and the CD mechanic needs to change.

Warrior needs a few nerfs as well, especially to Resistance uptime AND cleansing…and maybe a smidgen less passive healing.

As for not standing in AEs, that’s such an ignorant statement that it is not worth going into in a game centered on point control. lol! (Not to mention that 1200 range, .25 second cast time, piercing, unblockable pull virtue! lol!)

I voted YES, but I also agree that hiding enemy team comp would probably better solve the problem they’re attempting to solve. (KISS principle!)

I do think you should make up your mind about what profession to play ahead of time, but I agree that the matchmaking system, as we know it at least, has a quite terrible track record of creating decently competitive comp match-ups.

Going with class locking basically requires a no stacking rule, or you’re only left off worse then it is now. So yes, hiding enemy comp is the much simpler and more effective solution.

Yeah my expectations are also very subdued as for both the size of the patch, and the impact it will have.

I think Anet is all in on the expansion at this point, and it probably would be somewhat futile to make any major adjustments when they know full and well that they will need to drastically rebalance everything once the new Elites are released.

I hope I’m wrong though, because totally unlike Azukas I’m not at all happy with the current state of the Mesmer in PvP. That would probably change a bit if a couple of “problem professions/builds” got some badly needed nerfs, but with a mile-long laundry list of completely unused traits, skills, and utilities I sure do hope they at least try to tweak a few things to improve our absolutely lacking build diversity.

Surely they will realize we need some Condie cleanse options for Power Shatter builds baked into some of the other trait-lines besides Inspiration.

That is IMHO a major issue for power builds, but by far not the only issue. For example, making Blurred Inscriptions cleanse 2 Conditions instead of just one, would make Signet builds a lot more viable as an alternative providing both extra sustain and condie cleanse. In exchange for missing out on boon strips, which is a big sacrifice to be sure! (Lowering the CD on Midnight to 20-25 seconds -or boosting it in other ways- would also be absolutely reasonable and synergize well with BI.)

Mantra Builds could be made more viable if HM was changed to lower channeling time by 20-33% and making the 3x charges a baseline feature. The channel time of Mantras is simply outdated.

Pistol needs some love as a viable OH. You simply give up way too much defense, which a Mesmer simply can not afford…certainly not for what you get in return with Pistol.

List goes on an on… (Dueling, Dom, Chaos are all underused. Focus, Pistol, OH Sword are also all mostly unused in PvP. Glamours unused, AT, Mimic & IoL underused, most Wells under/unused…)

Check the other thread please, it’s the exact same question with the correct anwers. ;-)

Oh I agree with both of you, and no offense taken.

I’m merely saying that in the absence of bigger bolder changes, which I agree would be great and could potentially breathe new life into the game, the fact that they said they can now make sPvP-only tweaks should at the very least be used frequently to make some attempt to bring some of the really poor/underperforming traits, utilities, elites, etc. up a bit.

You don’t have to make them all equal, and you don’t have to take huge risks in upsetting the meta, but look the at bottom 25% of abilities of any class, and surely you can find lots of small numbers to tweak up a bit. You will almost certainly improve build diversity a bit, as there are plenty of crazies like myself who love playing different builds if we were thrown a bone once in awhile here and there to try out new stuff.

They used to do that pretty well too IMO, but then they clearly went into maintenance mode, and that whole E-sports crap gave them an excuse to ratchet down the patch cycles even further.

Especially now that they have the “tech” to tweak numbers on abilities where it only affects sPvP, they should be putting out patches at least once a month…even during the season. (You’re only tweaking, not hatcheting!) With the sheer amount of underused/useless traits, abilities, weapons, utilities, etc. they have no excuse not to tweak numbers in an attempt to make some of them a little more competitive in sPvP at least.

Uhm sorry I don’t remember the days where this trait was ever OPd, and I was there for it. As far as I remember the ICD per target was always there for the Blind off block/evade, and that I fully agree with was balanced and needed. However, we don’t have nearly enough access to Blind for the Confusion part of this GM to matter; not with a single stack per target on a 10 second ICD. That’s just ridiculous. That’s not a GM, that’s a kitten bad joke is what it is.

I don’t ever remember it being OPd either. Maybe in WvW, but in sPvP there were no popular builds using it that I remember, and I do remember that this nerf was a bit puzzling for that fact. However, the wording of it was so vague that I’m not sure that most people realized (or cared) that they actually meant that all Confusion application was now on a per-target CD.

I know I only noticed that a while later when theorycrafting a new build out of sheer boredom with the meta, and I was totally dumbfounded how this trait was performing. A GM that applies 1 stack of Confusion every 10 seconds when you Blind, Block, or Evade a foe, are you kidding me?

That’s barely worth an Adept trait…but par for the course sadly. When Anet has it in for you, they always tend to “balance” with a hatchet rather than a scalpel.

With that ICD it needs to be at least 3 stacks of Confusion to be a remotely worthwhile GM trait.

Wow someone has rose colored glasses on! The grass really is greener on our side, come on in and find out for yourself!

lol!

I can do the same kind of write up about any Elite spec, simply naming off the list of changes that sound great on paper. However, that doesn’t say anything about their relative performance/competitiveness, certainly not their feel (which is what this thread was about), and lastly it says nothing about whether the changes were good or bad for the profession as a whole.

With fixing so many core Mesmer issues in Chrono, Anet has done nothing but make Chrono mandatory, and kicked the can down the road. Now new Elites are coming and you can only choose one…now what? lolz! Very brilliant design decisions. Now you either have to copy some of this stuff into the new Elite, or finally fix the core Mesmer…or you will almost certainly render the new Elite DOA. (unless of course you make it absurdly OPd…—cough like HoT—…and then end up spending a year nerfing stuff and alienating your player-base in the process…—cough like HoT cough!—)