Guild Wars 2

I know the targeting in this game is clunky, but IMO you can’t play mainhand sword or greatsword properly without turning autotargeting off.

I turn it back on if going back to mesmer, as there’s nothing like swoop that requires detargeting on occasion (only phase retreat “advance”, if you use staff).

But coming back to the topic, it might be nice to have directional control on hornet sting, because sometimes it can throw you in an unintended direction, especially if there’s a bit of visual clutter in melee range (aoe fields, letting zoos, etc).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Necrotize.2974:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Necrotize.2974:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Necrotize.2974:

It is the main class mechanic associated with the F1 through F5 skills on each class.

So by that logic, steal would be the main thief mechanic, right? Not initiative?
Or toolbelt skills are the main engi mechanic, and kit is just subsidiary?
The mistake of everyone who insists that shatter is “the” class mechanic of mesmers is believing that there is only one main mechanic, or that only one mechanic is worthy of being the focus of a build.
The problem with shatters versus phantasms is that phantasms and shatters are in conflict by their nature. Chronophantasma brings those two closer together, but it doesn’t fix the problem completely.
I took exception to the claim that builds that don’t shatter much “shouldn’t” exist, when builds based largely on phantasms have in the past been pretty fun and useful. It’s only post-patch that it has become too hard to make such a build effective, and that’s a bad thing.

Necrotize.2974:

Anet has stated that many of the changes came about because they didn’t like that certain mesmer builds weren’t shattering clones/phantasms and just overwriting them haphazardly. I believe they even stated that all mesmer build should use shatters to some extent, which was part of their reasoning for Chronomancer’s phantasms and clone production traits( as well as the traits not being in conflicting tiers).

Anet is mostly wrong. Yes everyone should be willing to shatter when relevant, but it is wrong to eliminate a fun build type just because they made the same mistake you are making.

Steal is the mechanic, initiative could be considered it as well since it is in the same place. Steal has more traits applicable to it than the other mechanics for thief and initiative regen is also found quite frequently, sometimes even in conjunction with several stealth traits.

Toolbelt skills are the main mechanic in that every engineer has them, every engineer should use them, and more traits affect toolbelt skills than anything else. Kits just happen to be way better than most other utility options for engineer in most builds. Static discharge build run 1 kit usually and rely heavily on toolbelt skills. But even builds with 3 kits rely on their toolbelt skills.

I’m not saying mesmers have only one class mechanic, I’m simply saying shatter is the main one in that all builds can utilize it to at least some extent, and Anet wants it to be usable for all mesmers. You can say Anet is wrong, but if that’s how they see it, that’s how they’re gonna balance things. It isn’t even a close competition between how prevalent shatter traits are compared to illusions or manipulations or anything else really. Combining minor and major traits across all the lines, there are 18 shatter-centric traits, with most of them being major traits and 5 of them being Grandmaster traits.

It’s a long, long way from saying “that’s how it is” to “that’s how it should be”.
The latter is what I’m criticizing so harshly, but many people can’t seem to see the logical flaw in conflating the two.

I suppose, but to give all mechanics present a class equal representation, it would either remove a ton of traits for the current main mechanics or add so many for the under-represented ones that we’d need years to test and see them all balanced. I’m all for new traits, but trying to put smaller mechanics like utility types or weapon skill types on par with the trait support for F1-F5 skills seems really unlikely on Anet’s part.

I’d settle for letting phantasm builds actually function, since that’s a build that actually existed in the past, and many people (myself included) are fond of.

Personally I don’t believe such distinction exists anymore.

Illusions (both clones and phantasms), shatters, weapons and utility skills are all used in conjunction with one another for the purpose of dealing damage, supporting allies and controlling enemies. I believe every build should make use of all of these features in order to be most efficient – with each build emphasising different features, but not at the expense of ignoring the primary Mesmer class skill of shatters.

I believe Anet has done the right thing in encouraging everyone to use Shatter skills – with varying frequency and purpose, rather than being able to ignore them with past builds.

If shatters were not meant to be the primary class skills of mesmers, then all illusion generating skills (phantasms especially) should have been put on the F1 to F4 buttons, with shatters being tied to weapon sets or utilities. But they’re not.

It’s a shame it conflicts with PvE bullet sponge design at the moment, but I hope that’s something they can work out in the future, starting with HoT.

What, seriously? You can’t throw people off walls/cliffs anymore? :o

Well that settles it, Shield >>> Focus.

Yeah I totally agree here.

For example look at Inspiration – I thought thematically it is supposed to be about supporting others, however instead it is a selfish sustain line.

There is absolutely no reason why all that condi cleanse should be loaded into that line when it would also make sense in other lines. Especially when playing without it means you have barely any cleanse.

I believe lines should be thematic and offer different flavours to combat – ie they should lean to a certain strength (ie damage, control, support, etc…) however should also have minor option to shore up their weaknesses – but less than a dedicated line. For example Domination should “major” in control, secondary with damage and include minor options for sustain that is rewarded on successful application of the major mechanics (control) – for example transfer condition on interrupt or heal for each boon removed from an enemy (just throwing random ideas out).

Damage is easy to come by now which is why things like Domination hardly make a difference to your build, but condition removal and healing/sustain is gold dust and mandatory. Deviating from Inspiration/Chrono/x is shooting yourself in the foot, similar to the trait lines of other classes that are way more efficient than other trait lines.

Every class is going to have some crazy builds with whatever damage – power/condition /hybrid – that will be blowing up noobs left right and centre from tomorrow.

I seriously doubt maim the disillusioned is anywhere near the top of that list.

Oh wow, play this if you haven’t played it yet.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWlknhy0YhawRNwtGLPH1ZBEAHW9gmoLK6ilPHAA-TJRHwAm3fAZZAAnCABPBAA

The synergy between Chronophantasma, Persistence of Memory, Mental Defence, the new pDisenchanter, Improved Alacrity, Echo of Memory and Deja Vu is amazing.

The phantasm generation rate is insane. :o

apharma.3741:

<edited out to minimise viewing>

Woah woah woah – nothing to see here devs, NOTHING to see!

I only care that Illusionary Reversion is left exactly as it is – no ICDs, no moving it to grandmaster, no changing how it works.

For example I don’t want to be forced to pick StM if using mainhand sword and trying to maximise evade durations.

Also if not using Scepter when playing a condition build, you have to sequentially shatter – therefore any change to IR which prevents this, or movement if the trait which forces taking StM will automatically favour a single loadout for condition play – scepter/x and staff, because nothing else will be good enough.

This again reduces diversity in weapon and build choice.

Especially following the MtD hack job which almost killed the build I was playing pre patch (current in signature), Illusionary Reversion and Cp are the only silver lining to that miserable Nerf of MtD.

I do not want to be forced to use Scepter for condition shatter play. My current build is played very aggressively, timing sequential shatters to maximise Condi stack and requires keeping a good memory of opponent cleanses and defensive skills as well as using the good in combat mobility through ileap, blink and phase retreat to run circles around the enemy.

I thoroughly enjoy this playstyle, enough to have stuck with it through the MtD nerf… but it heavily relies on sequential shattering so gutting IR will be a huge kick in the face.

Fix Chronophantasma attack cycles and that should be enough. But for God’s sake leave IR alone.

Ragnarox.9601:

Sebrent.3625:

Ragnarox.9601:

As usual guardians get slap in the face….only class without passive speed trait. GG Anet.

Yeah, as usual, the class that has been in the meta for every aspect of the game is getting slapped in the face again … it must be so hard being part of every meta … obviously always part of the meta due to all of those slaps to the face … /eyeroll.

Dont forget you are too in the meta. Thats not the reason for it. I guess they want to destroy guardians from that every aspect of the game….

There’s a difference between being the rock solid backbone of every meta across all three game modes and being reluctantly allowed in to make use of one or two tricks we have access to.

ICD is a cheap/lazy/bandaid solution that would make those traits really clunky and so I firmly disagree to it. If a player wants to blow all their shatter cooldowns in sequence to spike damage or Condi application, they should be allowed to – because the shatter cooldowns themselves limit this burst.

The interaction which should be looked at is Shield 4/Persistence of Memory/Mental Defence/Chronohantasma.

Those four traits together allow for insane back to back phantasm generation and chain shatters as well as having an extremely low cooldown due to synergy.

However now try playing something like Sword/Pistol + Greatsword and then use iReversion, Persistence of Memory, Mental Defence and Chronophantasma… you should notice that those traits are NOT overpowered with any weapon combination other than Shield. In fact they are perfectly fine. iReversion requires two illusions as it is.

So I firmly believe neither Chronophantasma, iReversion, or Mental Defence need to be touched – they should be left alone unless a huge trait rework is done on mesmer and every single class (which I doubt will happen any time soon).

No instead what should be looked at is Shield 4 – it is the only "phantasm"skill with a fantastic active effect and the ability to spawn two phantasms (three including the idefender) benefitting from cooldown synergy from several traits, allowing it to cool down so fast that you can generate a rapid supply of phantasms. Which in turn also allows effortless proccing of iReversion.

Either Shield 4 needs to.be limited to one single phantasm (remove the spawn on Deja Vu) or something else needs to be done to balance that weapon.

Unless every single other phantasm skill on every other weapon gets a similar active effect, then those traits should not be touched.

Any nerfs to Chronophantasma, iReversion, Persistence of Memory or Mental Defence will only force more people to use Shield because other weapons will be made much weaker. I personally do not want to be forced to have to play Shield…

Edit – as a side not to the OPs comments about “passive play” – barely anything on mesmer is passive. I wish people would think before throwing out the word passive at anything they don’t like… even Shield has to actively block in order to gain access to Deja Vu.

Valento.9852:

Class A (Useful, Distinct, Fun)
1. Herald
2. Scrapper
3. Druid
4. Chronomancer
5. Reaper

Class B (Ok-ish…)
6. Dare Devil
7. Berserker

Class C (Fail, Uninteresting, Not on pair)
8. Dragonhunter
9. Tempest

Yeah I agree with this assessment.

I haven’t played the beta but watching streams I agree it is beautifully designed and so much nicer than all the desert wastelands we’ve had up till now.

Desert wastelands are my least favourite environment type and one of the reasons I’ve never liked Fallout games.

Hmm, I reduced the sound effects volume in the options menu so it’s a bit more bearable now, but I seriously think it’s a different sound effect than before.

Previously it was more a fast ticking, now there’s a low pitched hum with higher frequency ticking. It’s difficult to describe but I’m sure it has changed. Either that or I’m forgetting things! xD

MailMail.6534:

Before attempting to bargain with the devs, I’d first like an explanation of why the MtD nerf makes sense to them on both a micro (looking just at Mesmer) and macro (looking at MtD compared to other classes) balancing scale.

This literally makes no sense to me. It pushes things back to condition passive play, and even that is sub par at this point…

I’d like this too, but you’ve got a higher chance of receiving every precursor back to back in the MF than getting someone from Anet to explain the MtD nerf in a post in this forum. :p

Those mirror traits/skills are looking even more juicy now. :>

Fair point, although some of them make sense if for example you have an asymmetric weapon set/stance, with a priority of attacking using the MH – you might want one arm free, with defence on the vulnerable side.

Inspiration is looking to be a solid tree – I’m definitely going to be trying it out first.

But yes, Temporal Enchanter looks like it could do with something more (I think Blind on glamour should also be merged in here).

The effect of 33% alacrity on shatter builds not running wells or shield, whether power or condition is awful.

Completely invalidates the build I was playing as cooldowns are all too long to justify the damage output.

Trickeri.9871:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Trickeri.9871:

IndigoSundown.5419, if this interferes with the lore too much for you, explain WvW and Edge of The Mists lol.

The developers have “explained” WvW. WvW takes place in the Mists, not in the World. Invaders and Defenders are from different versions of Tyria — the old parallel worlds thing. Edge of the Mists is, similarly, in the Mists. Buy it or not, that is the “lore” reason for WvW PvP combat. If you want to lol about lore arguments, understand the lore first.

Besides, I said nothing about my reactions to lore. My objections to PvP in the PvE environment do not stem from lore reasons.

Why not call it mists versions of the maps? Ex. “The Mists of Frostgorge” and they became available from some alternate-universe-interdimensional portal that the Asura created.

As for technical implications, there are likely very few because all the work has been done by putting the megaserver in place. I’ve said this two other times in the thread but I’m sure that the only thing preventing us from bashing players of opposing color in any given PvE map right now is a simple boolean variable stored on our accounts called WvW Mode Enabled: True/False that just flips between the two states when we change from a PvE map and a WvW. None of the abilities change function or anything bizarre like that when we go to a WvW map. People saying that a complete overhaul of the events and questing system baffle me it should all just remain the same.

Nice idea!

So a “mist” version of every pve map (added one by one, like EotM, because I doubt it would be possible all at once), with altered/removed events and made pvp viable?

Would save some work instead of creating maps from scratch (like EotM), and could easily be explained through lore similar to the wvw maps (memories, parallel worlds, etc).

Anyway, I don’t understand why people keep complaining about ganking – I don’t think anyone in support of pvp on pve maps is wanting to force it on pveers, so that counter argument is completely pointless. Is it so hard to imagine two separate instances, so every player has the option of how they want to play?

The only counter argument with any substance is – how much workload will this realistically require, and will it cause other areas of development to be neglected – and this can only be answered by the devs. Anything else is just limiting your imagination.

What? :o

Mirror Images is awesome for instant shatter fodder now they reduced it’s base cooldown to 30s – especially when also traited in Illusions and with alacrity, it cools down very fast.

It is useful in power, condi and hybrid builds for either instant/unpredictable burst, cc via F3, or for example fodder to cover F4 into mass invis or similar.

It is especially useful when in combination with F5 as you can execute an F5/blink/Mirror Images/shatter combo extremely fast and surprise enemies.

Not to mention a handy stun break.

Tayna.2419:

Curunen.8729:

That new grieving stat looks insane – may be better than viper.

I’d wait tbh.

Could you share the details on this stat?

Well I exaggerated when I said insane as it simply replaces Viper’s +condi duration with ferocity (so Power, Condi Damage, precision, ferocity). It should be better if playing hybrid going for some direct damage mind wrack spikes and condi burst, so more spike damage which may be better in wvw.

In any case it looks like good gear.

Levetty.1279:

Firebrand is good, I threw together a Power build with some concentration and was keeping up perma quickness on myself without even trying, the damage without the quickness was more then anything Mirage or Chrono can do.

Spirit Weapons are vastly superior Phantasms.

I also really like Firebrand for some reason. Wasn’t expecting that at all but I prefer it over most elite specs.

Mirage is… well it feels like it’s not finished. :/

Iavra.8510:

Personally, i wouldn’t want that. Would make it way too hard to keep an overview in a fight. If they should ever do this, than it should be for the person using it only.

Or an option to toggle on/off as with team colours.

Tbh, I’m really tired of engineers – there’s an attitude with that class that just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I’ve just run into real kittens, but to me it seems that there is a higher proportion of arrogance in the engineer playerbase than any other class – ok I sincerely apologise to all the friendly engineers out there, but I’m just calling it as I see it.

Thieves at least most of them being glass, I always have a chance of winning as it only takes landing one solid burst. But then, that’s the difference between using sword(traited)/torch instead of staff – 9s BF, swap (using terrain) and prestige make life a lot easier vs a thief.

I thought it was only 2 × 1 second Blur ticks, and the third tick simply gives the 35 endurance?

Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong, but to me it seems the Blur was moved and split over the first two ticks.

Well of Precognition: Updated functionality. Now gives blur for 1 second per pulse during its active portion instead of on end. When it ends, allies within the well regain 35 endurance.

The “sniffing the air” animation is adorable (when dual wielding).

abc.5790:

“That was absolutely bloody amazing”

lol, i did crack up at that.

I think a simple solution that would benefit skyhammer is to make the cannon dodgeable like trebs on khylo – so any form of evade or dodge will avoid being hit by it.

Ok I’m going to stick my neck out here on the block…

As for being pulled/pushed off the edge – I don’t think all the different ways of doing this can be treated in the same way – neither can all the map pull/push locations be treated in the same way. Some do require skill to setup and a certain level of idiocy from your opponent, to force them into a bad position to knock off.

For example standing still on points A and C and getting pulled down the side glass panels is a little cheap. I think something could be done with the angles of the map here.

However using utilities/weapon skills to gain positional advantage for a successful knockback off the edge is not trivial and requires your opponent to move to the wrong position as well. It could involve extra steps – for example first I must strip stability, force them to move in a bad position, maybe burn a couple of utilities to put myself in the right position at the moment they’re in the wrong position, etc.

The cannon is the real problem on this map IMO – not the falling off. Being unable to dodge together with the necessity for maintaining good position on this map makes for a very ugly combo.

tl;dr – Nerf the cannon (ie evadeable), fix/move/remove diagonal glass panels at points A and C. Map is not as bad as made out to be.

Vengeful Images? **** I didn’t see that!

I will still be playing however – still more fun than other classes.

I’m wondering whether it’s worth the time/effort.

Honestly cba to point out what should be immediately obvious to them. If this class lives, fine, if it dies, fine. I’m just going to troll hotjoin to get my fix of gameplay every now and then.

cheese.4739:

Xstein: you’re kind of ignoring the point.

Mesmer has been a stealth class since launch, it’s just not had *this much stealth available in this many builds. *

Nobody’s saying “make Mesmer unable to stealth”. The point being made is "Mesmers can currently stealth too much and are too strong due to the trait that does this.

Right now Mesmers can do high damage, with CC, from far away, with relatively little counterplay. Stealth contributes to this significantly.

Not to mention that Mesmers’ stealth access literally just got buffed significantly – as chibbi says, the relevant trait got a buff as well as got made accessible to more builds.

What?

Prestige, Decoy, Mass Invis and Veil are exactly the same – apart from minor changes that have happened over the years – for example Prestige being changed to and from a channeled skill, Decoy being changed to be affected by Revealed after the 09/2014 patch, and now the ability to trait MI for 72 second cooldown – but with the danger of revealing yourself due to the reflect.

Otherwise these skills are exactly the same and perfectly fine. The complaints about Prestige and Decoy are utterly ridiculous seeing as they have worked in this way for years (apart from the time when Prestige was channeled) and not been any problem.

Now suddenly due to higher damage across the board as well as buffs to mesmer stunlock, it is possible to annihilate people from stealth bursts – so in that case fix the damage and stunlock instead of breaking/ruining Prestige and Decoy through misguided nerfs.

The ONLY things affecting stealth access are:
- PU
- The Pledge

Now I think most players (mesmers included) agree PU needs a significant nerf.

And The Pledge is actually a bad trait if not using PU so many people are in favour of changing it back to a flat 20% cooldown reduction to torch – which would solve the problem of encouraging stealth camping and extreme synergy with PU as well as allowing it to be useful in builds not using PU.

Hey, I’m not crying! :o

I can’t wait to try out some of these traits – due to the significant changes I’ve gone back to the drawing board in my mind to find out what I truly enjoy and want to get out of the class.

Other than loads of aoe chaos armour, I have no idea.

Would be nice to have one or two blast finishers other than the prestige.

Xaylin.1860:

Curunen.8729:

<snip> (post too long)

So you’re not even slightly bothered that the current set up of Duelling denies you any possible synergy between the Adept and Master tier?

Let’s look at some scenarios. Of course, this is slightly exaggereted. But it shows where I’m comming from and why I’m not very statisfied with the previewed trait distribution.

---

A: Random build running Sword MH

Master trait

• Blade Training: Likely.
• Blinding Dissipation: If shatter focussed, maybe. Otherwise BF > occasional Blind.
• Evasive Mirror: Generic trait. Maybe.

Adept trait

• Duelists Discpline: Only for Pistol OH.
• Desperate Decoy: If you’re crazy? It will remain underused for good reasons.
• Phantasmal Fury. Last option. Extremly small synergy with Sword.

Currently, anyone going Duelling with Sword MH without Pistol OH gets shafted on the Adept level. Personally, I do feel that this is a rather significant issue.

---

B: Random build running Pistol OH

Master trait

• Blade Training: Maybe. If using MH Sword. Which condi builds might not.
• Blinding Disspation: Maybe. If not using MH Sword and utilizing shatters.
• Evasive Mirror: Maybe. If neither MH Sword or shatter focus or just for more reflects.

Adept trait

• Duelists Discpline: Yes, please!
• Desperate Decoy: If you’re crazy.
• Phantasmal Fury: Why would you? You get Bleeds for free from DD!

Trait choice on the Adept level is painfully obvious. On the Master level it is more like ‘Meh, whatever.’ The only reason why it isn’t as annoying as scenario A is because two out of three traits are generally useful.

---

The addition of Bleeds to DD makes it painfully obvious that Phantasmal Fury, Sharper Images and DD were supposed to synergize. The current trait placement makes this impossible which probably eventually lead to them to adding the Bleeds to DD. At this point I really got to ask myself why this was even considered? Sword will lack any efficient synergies with the Adept line while Pistol gets a bandaid. The only set up which benefits from the previewed change would be Sword/Focus.

Personally, I feel that a traitline within itself should have synergies among its traits. Of course, we should have to make decisions but if balancing the available options on a certain tier results in the removal of any relevant synergy among the traits within the traitline I really got to question if the right design decisions were made.

Where did I ever say anything about Adept or even Grandmaster tiers?

“Master tier in duelling is probably the best balanced choice of traits out of all of the lines and tiers because each one is a solid choice and none of them should be able to be taken together.”

I never said anything about synergy across the whole line – I spoke only about the Master tier, and those three choices of Blade Training, Blinding Dissipation and Evasive Mirror being excellent that you can only take one at a time.

Duelling Adept traits are not good in terms of choice, I agree – Desperate Decoy is kitten no matter how you look at it, Phantasmal Fury depends on which phantasms you’re using, and Pistol trait is only useful if you’re using offhand pistol.

The choice between Phantasmal Fury and Duelist’s Discipline is akin to the choice between Sum of All Fears and Malicious Sorcery, and I believe this is a good choice – if you’re using Pistol or Scepter you can take those traits, if not you’ve got a decent alternative. The problem is the third trait being pretty bad – Desperate Decoy in the case of duelling adept and Phantasmal Haste (illusions master) in a line strongly geared towards frequent shatters such that you likely won’t keep phantasms alive long enough to get more than two attacks off anyway. And secondly both Sum of all Fears and Phantasmal Fury could do with sometihng to make them more appealing – for the former reduce the number of confusion stacks per torment to 3 (to make it more attractive for a condition build not using the scepter), for the latter I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

Edit: kitten it, I keep trying to edit something in here – having typed 3 times now and the forum keeps swallowing it up. I’ll try typing again hopefully it saves this time.

I believe there should be sacrifices at each tier such that there is no “best” route through any traitline, but only different flavours – and all hopefully similarly effective just in different ways. Regarding phantasmal fury – perhaps it could include something like “inflict bleeding when you interrupt a foe” to make it more of a direct alternative to DD similar to how SoaF is to MS in illusions.

AnniMira.2506:

I have played mesmer as main for 6 months and have not yet used F1-F4. Please explain them and what they do to enemy. I used F1 first time two days ago with enemy, and was surprised that my clones/phantasms started to run toward the enemy before exploding. So far F1 has been to me a delete-idle-standing-clone button.

Woah, seriously?! :O

Even F3 and F4?

Not trying to be a kitten, but I’m honestly surprised how you managed to play for 6 months without using any shatters at all.

Anyway, so as to make this a constructive post, as standard:
F1 is direct damage
F2 is confusion with a bit of direct damage
F3 is control (daze)
F4 is survival/panic button

1, 2 and 3 will send your illusions running to the target to trigger the effects. 4 will just destroy them where they stand.

How you use them depends entirely on your traits – and there are a lot of varied traits affecting shatters – you can look these up in the trait trees to learn more.

Swap Restorative Illusions (GM major) with Temporal Enchanter (master major). RI should be the grandmaster trait here.

Swap Protected Phantasms (master major) with Healing Prism (GM minor).

So overall that would mean choosing between traited focus, traited glamours or buffed aoe healing. Then having Protected Phantasms an automatic minor choice, and the choice between RI, II and iDefender on evade for grandmaster.

I’m sorry I can’t think properly at the moment but I’m sure there are many other ways to juggle around the Inspiration traits to make it a more coherent line.

Silverkey.2078:

People don’t like conditions. If they take a 10k backstab from stealth it’s fine, but confusion ticking during 6s for 1.5k damage is OP.

Yes, condi mesmer suffers from a lot of QQing in other parts of the forum (mostly from WvW roamers). You could expect that with the stealth nerf, this will change, but when people start to hate a build, it takes long to undo it (people still complain about mesmer power bursts even after the mirror blade nerf, while it is infinitely more counterable than a backstab)

Also, DD would not have been OP in any real situation. In theory, against a dummy, 3 iDuelist + mesmer sword AA was a higher DPS in sinister/rampager than 3 swordsman+mesmer AA on a berserker build (not by much). When is the last time you managed to keep 3 duelists alive in PvP???

Yeah this.

It’s weird – people qq about mesmer condi damage/application when it is pretty much worse than every other class’ condi builds and weaker than power.

It’s an irrational hatred of DoT (of which the big damage attacks have to still be actively applied/cast) and mesmer illusion mechanics.

glenndevis.8327:

I think it would be nice if there was a way of consistently getting our clones back up really fast after a shatter so we still have a lot of use for the Mirage mechanics while integrating shatters in our gameplay.

Just thinking about deceptive evasion & sword ambush.
Dodge with sword -> spawns sword clone -> ambush with sword -> both you & the clone leap & daze & spawn clones -> 3 clones.

Too bad that Sand through Glass doesn’t trigger Mirage Cloak, probably won’t trigger deceptive evasion either.

I do like the look of the synergy between DE, dodge and sword ambush.

Though yeah I don’t think anything other than dodge will trigger DE – which is good because otherwise you know what they’ll do – they’ll nerf DE to only trigger on evade! And I really don’t want to see that happen! :o

ASP.8093:

Things that are also OP:
.
.
.
Not logging into the game.

The art of fighting, without fighting.

:p

Levetty.1279:

Are they really adding more Stealth skills to Mesmer? Really? God kitten it.

They said camouflage – could be for example invisible while motionless or something, who knows. We’ll see soon enough.

In any case I’m not looking forward to fighting against a Spellbreaker – that could be more annoying than old lockdown/interrupt.

^Yeah I love that – have dreamed about the ability to temporarily toggle friendly fire and deception for ages, similar to things like Harmony/Mayhem/Mass Hysteria and other illusion skills in Skyrim.

Would be amazing if for example an ele does meteor shower and you enable friendly fire om them (or an aoe skill that enables it in a radius).

Or similarly you make yourself appear as an ally temporarily (ok I know Taunt already indirectly provides this, though its not the same).

Smart idea OP, I’d take it over the current situation.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Jeez.. Even the tempest runes suck!

Those Herald Runes look promising though.

… What the eff are concentration and expertise?

Boon duration and Condition duration.

Truth be told, nothing works against anyone half decent.

At best you can use stealth and teleport/mobility skills (blink, phase retreat, ileap) to confuse people with positioning, but other than that players will not be fooled longer than the <1second it takes to retarget you after stealth.

If you don’t stealth to break target then once they’ve targeted you there is no deception anyway other than movement/positioning.

Me Games Ma.8426:

<snip>

iRabbit

• will be pulled out of the iMages hat

I want this.
:D

But regarding the rest – some big changes. I like that the iwarlock is power based, and I’m not sure that having idefender and iwarden castable without a target is a good idea.

Having said that, I’m mostly indifferent to any of the changes, so wouldn’t mind either way.

Dastion.3106:

I think it’ll be fine. The guy playing it wasn’t even using a Scepter at the time.

I’d rather not have scepter be mandatory for condition shatter play, so if they do nerf MtD I might invest more in confusion seeing as we have many more sources of that now.

I’m preparing myself for a huge time gated grind for the precursor… :/

Already got 3 gifts ready for bifrost but I’m not going to buy the legend right now.

It should be a blast finisher.

Dunno but I’m really looking forward to the pvp “capture the gift” minigame.

It’s one of the most fun things in this game, such a shame it’s only available for a short time every year. I love the mechanics of each class and it’s really light hearted.

I do hope they add some new songs to Bell Choir – it’s fun but really repetitive at this point.

The tablet sounds… weird. Not sure if I’m going to like that.

Good for players who want to enjoy a healing/support spec.

I like the sound of the staff, but I would probably be more interested in other Legends instead of this one.