Guild Wars 2

If it’s too much nonsense then kitten that – I’ll just continue saving gold, play what I like and buy it off the TP when I have enough gold.

Ok some feedback on a few things (not everything):

Well of Precognition – I believe this has serious potential to be a good alternative to Decoy in many builds as a stunbreak/damage avoidance. I think it is perfectly fine in terms of strength – when you compare it to things like blurred frenzy on a very low cooldown, other classes’ blocks/evades or even simple dodging… Yes I realise it’s AoE, but I still don’t consider it to be that powerful. The opponent can see you the entire time if you’re standing in the well and prepare burst to hit straight after.
The problem at the moment is many players just continued to unload damage when a mesmer was standing in the well which is a waste of cooldowns. I think once players learn to wait/kite when a mesmer is in the WoP and save their damage for when it ends, there will be no problem with this skill. In fact I think it’s cooldown should be reduced to 40s base to match that of Decoy. The cast time could also be instant given its function as a stunbreak. Please do not increase the cooldown of this skill or it will lose ground once again to Decoy!

Flow of Time – perfectly fine.

Improved Alacrity – perfectly fine.

AWTEW – I think it could do with a flavour change because of a new style of monotonous/one dimensional gameplay involving being an “alacrity bot”, as well as overshadowing the individual purpose of each well. Perhaps it could be a trait like Master of Fragmentation or Bountiful Disillusionment in that it gives unique bonuses to each well depending on their purpose/function.

Shield 4 – perfectly fine but the phantasm does need a survivability rework.

Shield 5 – needs to be fixed on impact with walls.

Csplit – I’d say give it a 2s base duration for self shatter and the +1s per extra illusion shattered. That totals 5 seconds max and also allows you to do a self or one illusion shatter for more clutch play.

Seize the Moment – I personally think it’s too weak at the moment and should function on self shatter.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I still want ANet to remove breathers as armor and just use them as skins — there’s never been any value to needing a 7th piece of armor and all sorts of downsides.

This so much.

It would be great if breather masks were simply skin changes of headgear that occurred automatically when entering and exiting water.

Jace al Thor.6745:

That’s because we were the only one seriously screwed. Did some changes happen that will hurt other classes? Sure.
But kitten man, the buffs to thief alone are bad enough not to mention that the buffs to necro would eat a boon sharing Mesmer alive.
Meta for a couple months and people lose their kitten. I never played Chrono bunker as it’s not my style, but it was counter able and the buffs to those classes alone would have been enough to counter it

It seems every other build than chronobunker (which is also gone) is royally kittened right about now.

Standard nuke it from orbit.

Nevermind animations – asura and charr animations are godkitten awesome. For everything. I love it.

Would simply prefer more #1-#5 skills for weapons.

At least 2 choices of auto attack per weapon and 2 choices for every other skill, with the ability to swap the order of skills on the bar.

Chaoz.7941:

I kind of wish they did something to Mesmer like they did to Necro. Remove shatter skills and replace it with a new mechanic. Or more like what they did with guardian last specialization. Change the effect to add 4 different skills that each clone attacks with instead of shattering. As for traits that affect shatters, just make them be replaced if mirage specialization is selected (if they have the tech for that).

This so much.

Mirage could have really worked if they had gone all out with replacing shatter skills with illusion control skills, making illusions persistent and more powerful to follow the theme and carefully making each of the shatter traits across all the core lines work with a new mechanic.

Chrono has already got the monopoly on shatter because the entire traitline synergises with shattering and makes shattering better. Mirage should have gone the other way and focused on illusion control and manipulation as well as deception.

Right now Mirage feels like it’s neither here nor there (pun not intended) – nowhere near as good for any kind of shatter play as chrono, and equally useless at making illusions useful given they’re still as fragile as toilet paper and ambush mechanics are in general pathetically weak.

“It’s nice to see you.”

To which I always mentally reply – “To see you, nice!”

Capricorn XI.4390:

Curunen.8729:

I don’t know whether I will enjoy it as much as some other builds – the biggest conundrum is weapon choice – because I love both staff and focus for crowd control and will have to lose one in order to use the shield… I would so love to have focus in one hand and shield in the other, with some staff/scepter type auto attack.

You’re not forced to use a shield. You just now have the option to have one. I may actually just use GS/Sw+P and forgo a shield altogether.

Oh I know – it’s not about that at all, it’s that I would like to have Tides of Time in addition to Temporal Curtain, iWarden, Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat.

At this moment I don’t know whether I will prefer shield to focus or not, but my preference is Staff + Scepter/Focus at this moment.

It’s a poor trait tbh, too many possibilities of it being a hindrance rather than a benefit – I’d rather it be completely removed and replaced with something else.

Blimey I never thought I’d see the day – warriors and thieves epic QQ battle of who is weaker. xD

cheshirefox.7026:

great character, amazing voice actress

Yeah absolutely. Love the voice, love the character.

The only thing I am a little disturbed by is her face! It’s too cute – like some puppet about to murder someone! ;D

ViciousVyne.2935:

I’m gonna go against the stream and say that I wanted mesmers to get shields pretty much since launch.
Never thought we would ever get it, so fistbump to the dev who shares the same wet dream as me.

I think it’s a bit early to say you dont want something when we have 0 knowledge about skills and how they will interact with our new traitline. Atleast wait until we get some information about the general role of our specialisation before you want things changed.

The only thing I care about right now, is how goodlooking the new legendary shield will be, because I’ll be getting that one for sure :^)

It’s not the shield that bothers me – I like shields.

It’s the chance of having (assuming) 5 offhands and only 2 mainhands, with those split into one melee and one ranged. Whereas having 4 and 4 would give more scope for variety in loadouts.

I mean at least they could have boosted Flow of Time back to 1s per illusion…

Blimey – we’ll simply have to agree to disagree.

I personally have not used any personal attacks vs devs and complained solely about the (very) bad idea of nerfing mtd based on concrete proof in twitch. I don’t know how to emphasise this point any further – they mentioned it specifically and that they were thinking about changing it to one stack.

I don’t know how you keep missing or denying this point, but I am not going to answer to such ridiculous misguided judgement from one person thinking they’re better than everyone.

I strongly believe what I posted was right and could have added to the pivot of nerfing or keeping mtd as it is. I believe if we had not caused this uproar then we might very well be looking at 1 torment stack per shatter right now. Whether it is true or not, I don’t know – and neither do you.

Anyone who has been in these forums for the last few years knows that with Mesmer, always expect the worst. This patch is the first significant good Mesmer patch since launch so for the first time ever we are actually happy about the work. To even see mention if making an existing average build even weaker with an unnecessary Nerf immediately reinforces every bit of negativity we have learnt to develop over the last few years because of past balance decisions.

Please take the misguided morality lesson elsewhere.

I’m glad your build has been effective. If you think I’m complaining for no reason, please test with those weapons (without scepter or pistol) and you’ll see it has been severely neutered compared to before the patch. I wouldn’t complain about a balance patch unless something really got to me, and it was the build I was enjoying the most by far. To have that rendered mostly harmless is difficult to swallow – I’m actually thinking of going back to power shatter which hopefully I’ll find fun enough that I can forget about MtD in the meantime.

I would prefer condition application to be shifted in some way – for example reduce Scepter 2 to 4 stacks for 6 seconds because I find it a joke that one scepter block can deal more torment for more duration than a 4 illusion shatter.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

As someone who plays pretty much every class I can say with certainty that all MTD really needed was an internal CD.

It didn’t need to be changed so much, it just needed a slight adjustment to keep it in line.

I don’t think an internal cooldown would be a good idea given that it is already limited by shatter cooldowns and illusion generation. Even if you do hit several shatters in a row, the only difference would be an extra 2 torment stacks from IP if you’re in melee range.

Generally after baiting out cleanses (excluding shoutbows, eles and similar – thinking more of zerker thieves and suchlike here) and going in for the kill, it was the lingering duration that would have been a problem now – so opponents would have no choice but to watch their health bar drop away while not being able to do anything about it. 2 stacks would give high intensity burst ticks, but if it wore off after a shorter duration (say 4 seconds base instead of the 6 seconds we currently have and had) then it would give opponents a second chance if for whatever reason they are unable to cleanse.

If it brings back Mimic’s bubble shield as a skill, then yes please.

lol, I was just about to edit my post having figured out the truth but you lot are too fast! xD

Oh well, 6/6/6 is still interesting given both the current builds I play are locked in 3 trait lines anyway.

Mikkel.8427:

it does shock me so many people complain about condi shatter post specialization patch… I was capable of MUCH bigger condi shatter bursts pre patch and condi shatter was still not thing.

Absolutely.

The only benefit now with IP is chain shatters which were previously not an option. However now Chronomancer will be mandatory in order to have condi shatter burst/application be better than it was pre patch.

Even then I’d rather have higher torment/other condition stacks on burst and less frequent application instead of spamming shatters at low cooldown to keep the condi pressure up…

Choppy.4183:

You’ll have to read more carefully. I said it won’t do anything to reduce the fun or viability of the class.

Dueling/Inspiration is superior for burst, which is why most shatter members run it and to great effect. Ergo, the cheesy stealth buff isn’t needed for the class to be powerful, and you continue to make my point. Thanks.

Apart from PU, inspiration is actually better for survival than chaos (assuming the other two trees are domination and duelling in a power build) in pvp thanks to amazing condition cleanse and other traits giving excellent sustain.

Chaos offers better damage utility in both power and condition to boon traits like CI and Chaotic Persistence/Transference as well as the solid master of manipulation, as well as I believe offering the best/easiest method of surviving 1vX in wvw (where X is a huge group chasing you) thanks to the existence of PU. So I’d say chaos is superior to supplement burst damage whereas inspiration is superior for survival in small scale fights (ie in pvp).

Anyway, for the record I agree with you that the stealth durations of PU is excessive (I would like to see it reverted to +1 second and remove aegis, but then buff base veil, MI and The Pledge) – I don’t like using it but if for example I take Bountiful Dissipation in wvw and run into a Mesmer using PU I find myself at a serious and huge disadvantage – so I feel forced into taking it if taking Chaos and not inspiration.

In pvp I stick with bountiful dissipation which together with CI I believe are far more useful in conquest.

maha.7902:

Aren’t we cheerful.

Nice exaggeration on “drooling worshippers who can’t be bothered to think for themselves”…

Hardly “hero worship” – more like “players whose style or forum/in game personality you enjoy and who you feel you’ve learnt something from/respect”.

well let’s see….

Yesterday I saw the thread title “Offhand Sword is Better Than Ever” and I was like: Blabla dude, keep talking. I am not interested."

Today I saw the thread again and realized that Chaos Angel wrote it… so I went to check it out^^

I am sorry Mesmer community, but no matter what you say, in my mind Chaos Angel has the final say^^

oh look, since a specific guy wrote something it must be right. you know, the same guy who once said on a podcast that support isn’t very good in dungeons, which is about as misinformed as people who said CC wasn’t despite it being completely broken and busted to hell.

or like how “warrior axe dps is better than gs because strife said so”.

or “everything I say is right since I’m in an elite dungeon guild” – uhhh, yeah, no.

Ok fair enough, there are some die hards.

I think (well, hope…) most of us are little more grounded!

I expect there to be a lot of MtD/Chronomancer condition shatter variants.

Possibly a few condirupt builds (eg mistrust, CI, slow on interrupt and crit…), a few power shatter variants, possibly some power interrupt/lockdown builds if they want access to Tides of Time and Gravity Well, and then a few other weird things here and there that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

iSwordsman will be broken.

As said – max height asura with smallest head size and they are then large enough to be noticed while well proportioned by our human standards.

I’ve had a number of comments/whispers on cuteness and even with max fov and maximum zoom out of camera I can still see the key skins that define ny character’s look.

The whole thing about mass killing isn’t really a choice here or in many games given many have competitive aspects – and combat prowess is one of those competitive aspects built into the basic human nature.

GW2 at heart is a fighting game dressed up with a whole lot of fluff. There are no alternate choices beyond fighting – your entire character build revolves around combat and every game mode revolves around combat. I personally think it is ridiculous to try role playing in GW2 because there are no roles to play – you fight, that’s it. It’s a very one dimensional game, made up for by the combat mechanics being really good and fun.

So taking that as standard, I find the most I can do is to want to relate a character with my personality – I don’t care about gender and as I said in a previous post I will avoid playing human unless there is no other option – will always play a beast race, whether a male argonian in TES or female asura in GW2 and so on. I relate to asura humour, quirkiness, science/metaphysics and also love rabbits/hares – asura remind me of hyperintelligent rabbits, and there’s even a norn npc child in one of the pve maps who has really funny dialogue thinking you love bunnies because you have big ears. (see attached images) This kind of dialogue is what I love to see and why I play asura in GW2.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lietta

Yes I’d love to play a game where there are other options than combat – for example when Star Citizen eventually reaches alpha 3.0 and beyond, I intend to immerse myself through role playing as there will be many ways to enjoy the game that don’t go looking for combat (although you’d still have to defend yourself)..

Skritt tonic like this would be awesome.

Yeah OP, you’re right and it is a shame.

The “meta” builds are high at the top of the food chain and any other build is a long way down below that such that it is a huge handicap to deviate from the norm.

Build diversity is very low at the moment.

lol, I was just messing around in some hotjoin with the grenth rune setup and I get called “pu mes” by a thief.

Have been called “pu mes” by others as well…

Just goes to show how people still whining about mesmers have no clue what our traits actually do.

It won’t dissuade any of the whining though.

Do you like the theme (pink, butterflies, mind/time/space bending mischief)? Yes => roll it.

If you don’t love the theme, you’ll probably be better off rolling something else.

Necrotize.2974:

Everytime someone dies to fall damage, it’s really a perma-stealth PU mesmer oneshotting you from stealth then immediately hiding again.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they were really in stealth – or one-shotting you from 9000 range with their unreflectable, unblockable greatsword burst combo.

Chrono enables the class mechanic of shattering better than any other line (apart from maybe Illusions) which is why it works so well, in addition to other quality of life utilities. Chrono happens to work well with condi because condi shatter traits and gameplay is more flexible, reliable and versatile than power, although Chrono still works pretty kitten well with power anyway.

I don’t think it’s condi or power that is the issue with Mirage, more like Mirage is back to fighting with the class mechanic just like core mesmer does.

Mirage could simply be a damage elite spec that enables both power and condi (and anywhere in between), although in the current state certain mechanics don’t work well together and contradict each other.

Uh oh, looks like the patch is as bad as we expected (no surprises though).

Yeah agreed.

The trait setup is also much more glassy than other lines (ie chaos) so it’s pretty easy to die if you kitten up.

Faaris.8013:

“How do you get to 80 without getting bored?”

Use the level 80 boost or Tomes of Knowledge.

This.

Beyond levelling my main to 80, I have never attempted to level a single alt to 80 because of remembering how tedious it was. In the future if I want to level an alt to 80 I can easily do so with my large stockpile of ToK or using the level 80 boost from this expansion preorder.

I’ve stopped using debilitating dissipation on my condirupt build.

Yes it’s harder/less efficient without all the new incoming traits – but I’ll play even better by having it hard now.

Can’t be kittened to play shatter anymore until the patch tbh. Think I’m going to have a lot more fun with MtD shatter post HoT instead of power shatter – because there’s a lot of interesting traitline synergies for MtD and other shatter traits. Main reason I never liked MtD in the past was because of lack of IP – but now it might be pretty nice. Of course it’s still fun to 100-0 tactical nuke someone with power – but the yolo nature of power shatter builds can get boring/tiresome.

I don’t know whether I will enjoy it as much as some other builds – the biggest conundrum is weapon choice – because I love both staff and focus for crowd control and will have to lose one in order to use the shield… I would so love to have focus in one hand and shield in the other, with some staff/scepter type auto attack.

Second thing is I’m not a huge fan of having loads of ground targeted skills – so for that reason I may not want to go fully into the new spec.

Third thing is it’s hard to choose what traitline to drop to pick up the elite spec trait line – until we see the details of the traits there’s no way to know.

I would like to make a potent condition/control build, and the new effects certainly look to be useful for that – however choosing exactly what to use based on both fun and effectiveness won’t be easy.

skcamow.3527:

Looking forward to more SEVEN MIRROR vids inc!

Welcome back, whenever that is …

What, when, where?!? :o

EDIT:

Wow guys, really old bump but I’m glad I left my mark and thank you for your kind words! The return is nigh! , and yes andromada taught me a lot, and defiantly showed me the benefits to phantasm builds!

-seven (incognito friends account)

OH, I see now. Welcome back! Will you finally be picking up a greatsword in a future vid, taking into account all the sigil and other changes?

And wait, GH? So EU now?

I don’t care what people comment about the quality of his opponents, those videos are still some of my favourite gw2 videos ever, and major inspiration in my mesmer journey.

Torch style probably up there in my top 5 favourite mesmer videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS8iV_Coi2c

I agree with manveruppd.7601 regarding skill/trait unlocking during a match.

I would HATE such a system – classes/builds would not be equally handicapped and some would be pretty much unplayable with anything less than their full skill/trait set.

+1 YES.

One single head gear for stats, auto skin change on entering/exiting water. So much simpler.

maha.7902:

gw2 pvp is superior to its competition, despite the shortcomings.

LOL

Care to elaborate – I’ve highlighted the reasons I find it more fun than “similar” games.

Also, if mesmer didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be playing this game anyway – and I certainly wouldn’t play any other mmo – but I enjoy the mechanics and visual effects of mesmer too much.

If a game has boring mechanics (like LoL and similar games), I don’t care how well balanced it is, I’m not interested, period. Therefore, in my eyes gw2 pvp combat playing as a mesmer is superior. It is more fluid, fast paced, action based and more satisfying mechanically, visually and aurally. There are many problems in this game, but the core pvp combat mechanics is not one of them.

MailMail.6534:

maha.7902:

actually get out and play a game besides GW2 and you’ll see that there are games with gameplay on par or superior to it, and LoL is one of them.

I’d rather watch paint dry than play LoL. The acronym for their game is appropriate.

Agreed.

Jedge.3619:

discosoc.6510:

-snip- Are mesmer players just masochists?

Pretty much

lol, but the butterflies are worth it. :p

Congratulations, maybe in a few years you might have a little time to play again once things settle down for you.

MSI and gigabyte do some nice portable machines that could easily handle gw2 and I’m sure second hand prices would be reasonable once you had more time to play.

May as well just /thread this.

Easier to bash one’s head against a brick wall repeatedly.

Short feedback:

Feels much weaker than chrono, much less survivability. Loss of other chrono mechanics and synergies (ie with things like restorative illusions) again impacts this and also reliability – chrono is less punishing if you make a mistake but with mirage it feels like one has to play very carefully.

On the other hand potential burst can be good (pvp perspective) if chaining infinite horizon scepter ambush into shatter, or axe2 x2 dodge ax3 into shatter with DE, but it’s far less reliable.

Some things are nowhere near as good as expected – elusive mind is much worse than infinite horizon, heal is pathetic tbh and deception utilities not good enough to replace things like Blink, condi cleanse mantra (which is necessary now) and other utilities like Decoy or Portal.

However the worst thing funnily enough is the sound effect for Phantasmal axe – I don’t know about anyone else but I find it even worse than Alacrity and really offputting to use Axe. It’s like an egg shaker or similar rattle instrument gone mad, and the fact that using traited axe spits these things out all the time leaves that constant rattling/ticking sound in your head. I really hate this sound and sadly might not use axe if the sound effect remains as it is.

The single BEST thing about this is Jaunt. Jaunt is by far the most amazing skill I’ve seen.
The fact you can teleport stomp with it is a bonus, and the low cooldown on charges is great. I agree it ought to have the range increased to 600, but otherwise I love this skill.

Xaylin.1860:

Ineptitude looks super fun for large scale fights. What a pitty we won’t be able to combine it with Evasive Mirror plus traited Sword.

With alacrity I think it should be ok with untraited sword, and I can’t wait to try out ineptitude.

Going to be a tough choice between that and MoF.

On another note, I can’t believe we can take MtD and MoF at the same time! Amazing.

Autohotkey solves the problem.

Niminion.1982:

Maybe if there were actually torment/confusion runes and sigils?

I can buff burning and bleeding durations and damage but of course there is jack for torment and confusion.

Nothing in pvp other than Nightmare, but we have Tormenting and Perplexity for wvw.

Sebrent.3625:

skcamow.3527:

Patch just hit – still 2 stacks per shatter. Good, hopefully it stays that way for the time being and they can evaluate. Also confusing combatants change to fury is real (EDIT: now called Master Fencer).

So, basically … it was what I said earlier …

There was no proof and people got out their torches and pitchforks for nothing.

Funny how that worked out, eh? :-p

Let’s not all now go “oh, good, they decided to not …”.

Let’s be honest … many people had knee-jerk reactions to word-of-mouth … with no hard evidence.

This thread has been an excellent example of the sort of thing the forums don’t need and probably why we see less interaction from the devs in the forums than we did when the game first launched.

What?

For all we know they changed their minds because of this thread. There’s no proof against that either.

Two scenarios:

we say nothing, it gets nerfed – bad outcome.
we say nothing, it stays the same – lucky.

we complain, it gets nerfed – worst outcome
we complain, it stays the same – best outcome.

I am very happy thank you – I am 100% happy I complained and 100% happy it stayed the same, so I don’t see what the need to belittle nearly everone in this thread is.