Guild Wars 2

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Jumper is pro, you can’t argue with him. l2keybind.

On topic, kitten – won’t be able to forcebug the 14k mind wracks and blame the game while people scream for exploit. 1/4 of a second is really nothing, minor change that will affect only the bug.

Funny thing, Anet didn’t fix the bug, they just made it impossible to execute. Always better to add something new instead of fixing the old kitten.

Oh hai you met my mesmer quite a few time.

My problem is I am used to press Diversion using Illusionary Persona right after a shatter so I daze the target. Its easy to do it in less then .25 seconds even if you press F2 and F3 right after each other nearly together. This band-aid fix does not effect macro users but it effects legit players.

Like I said I have no idea how the bug works or how I do it, so I dont know if this fix will fix the bug.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

And the phantasm itself could be blinded, negating a hit WITHOUT a double-standard where a SUMMON could be stopped by blind.

Soon you gonna tell me you can dodge illusions. It’s the design, get over it.

Specious argument.

I’m calling a summon a summon:

characteristics of summons -
-the unit is independent and initiates its own attacks, which are considered independent of the summoning player
-the unit is persistent
-the unit has independent hp
-the unit can be independently targeted and damaged
-the unit is capable of initiating its own buffs

Phantasms have every one of those characteristics.

I’m calling a corvette a bus

- it has an engine
- it has 4 wheels
- it’s ridden by a driver
- etc, etc

Semantics, man.

Again, the bug that was causing 100% extra mind wrack damage was there since launch. It went unnoticed until an extra 25% damage was added via might stacks (which actually added another 50% damage to the resulting exploit – meaning mind wrack did not become “overpowered” until it had reached a full 250% of its rated damage!) . They didn’t wait to see if cutting this exploit which was causing mind wrack to hit for DOUBLE would fix the issue first before going after what was finally making pve bearable.

1 might doesn’t equal to 1% more damage. It’s a bit more than that. Again, 0.25s gcd is nothing, odds that you need another shatter in 0.25s are really low.

Yep, those of us who don’t play stockbroker on the TP need to actually loot things to survive.

I never played TP. You can get money by simple playing dungeons (and as you’ve said you speedclear them).

No, you’re calling a corvette a stone, while I’m calling it a vehicle. No semantics here. Your’e insisting all the characterstics I listed are not there, OR that all direct damage spells have them. Let me know when I can independently kill 100 blades with an auto attack, get two chances to dodge, blind, or block it, and can addle the attack itself with weakness in addition to the casting player. Until then, stop insulting the intelligence of people who read this tread.

And the issue is not so much the CD on the shatter skills, it’s the CD on the shatter skills PLUS the removal of the might.. and the removal of the might is the operative word here.

You conveniently ignored what I have been saying, AGAIN.

The 0.25 second CD was a band-aid to stop the bug that was causing an extra 100% damage on shatter which could only happen if you were in point blank range and were very twitchy (e.g. this did NOT work in or affect pve)..

Did they wait to see what removing this exploit (and thus 50% effective damage) from shatter would do before shafting PVE? No.. that would reflect consideration of the people who paid for the title and play mesmer in pve.

It represents utter contempt for the mesmer playerbase.

Mesmers once again cannot stack enough might to make bodies sparkle in cursed shore. This is bad enough in itself, but the lack of consideration for the people who play mesmer — the lack of patience to actually wait and see if reducing mind wrack damage by a full 50% works before taking away this might stacking.. this reflects upon the systematic way they look at mesmers, and how they consider the playerbase. (they don’t consider them at all).

I’m done.. i’m shelving it.. and I encourage others to do the same. They actually give consideration to elementalists, guardians, and even refuse to act against the ludicrous insta-gib that is backstab thief, but they apologize to the community for DARING to let mesmers get loot from what they help kill!

Rizla.1023:

oh so every class has an aoe on hand a every 3 seconds to shred the clones???? and no class from thief 1 shots me ever.

How about you play some PvP first, before you just repeat forum whine you picked up?
You sound a lot like you simply lack experience.

The only problem I have with the “more reliable swiftness” statement is that it’s entirely untrue. Sure, Temporal Curtain swiftness lasts longer, but it still doesn’t stack with preexisting swiftness boons. Lay down the curtain, but before you cross it, Signet of Inspiration gives you swiftness, making Temporal Curtain useless and wasting a recharge, instead of giving you a significant duration.

Traited 20 into inspiration, with the focus trait, (edit: and Signet of Midnight) I can get 15.5 seconds of swiftness from Temporal Curtain every 20 seconds, but if I have even a fraction of a second of swiftness remaining when I cross it, I miss out on it. Other classes’ ground-targeted swiftness boons don’t have this issue.

Even with 100% uptime calculations on Temporal Curtain (Duration >= recharge) it’s still not more reliable, as we have to wait for the boon to expire before attempting to reapply.

As of now, illusions are bugged in tournaments. They might work for a few minutes, but they get bugged and after that you just summon naked clones/phantasms that only stand in place and do nothing else.

And yet a berserker shatter build will do what your gimmick confusion does, but consistently, with more damage, and it doesn’t rely on fast attacking opponents or gimping your other attacks by stacking condi damage and condi duration on a profession that does no good condition damage compared to actual condition classes.

Considering what other classes have damage-output wise I really don’t see this as a major problem considering how fast the stacks can drop off.

Who uses the phantasm utilities outside maybe defender? Who uses mimicry? Who uses Mantra of Pain (which, btw, does about a mainhand sword autoattack in terms of damage).

Phantasm utilities won’t be used, because their uptime isn’t that great when illusions are getting one or two shot by mobs in fractals with conal attacks. Illusion uptime in PvE and WvW is horrible, even with signet of Illusions. Mesmers rely heavily on shatters, so they won’t hold back on shattering just to keep the phantasm performing its function.

Mantras outside Mantra of Recovery and Resolve are horrible. Distraction should be a 2 sec daze. Pain needs to do significantly more damage, especially in PvE if you want it used at the opportunity cost of 3.5 sec cast times interrupting autoattacks. Concentration lasts too little.

The signets are truly horrible. Inspiration gives some random boon every 10 seconds when the proc should be every 5 seconds (it’s like nothing is learned from the undesirability of engineer random elixirs). Midnight gives passive boon duration to the class with arguably least access to boons. Signet of Illusion translates into maybe an illusion dying to 3 or two hits instead of two or one.

On my other classes, the utilities are DIFFERENT. On my mesmer, the utilities are a variant of condition removal, a stun breaker, or reflection with the exception of portal. Shadow Refuge keeps stacking stealth, heals, and has 30 seconds LESS cooldown than the crappy Veil of Invisibility, which doesn’t stack stealth anymore, provides a short stealth duration and no healing.

On Jonathan Sharp’s outline of class design, the mesmer design is puzzling. So we’re supposed to rely on illusions that just do damage for effects, yet those illusions have horrible health and susceptibility to AoE, of which there is an abundance on dungeons and WvW?

Cry of Frustration is still weak, the scepter is weak, the torch is weak, the warden is stationary and dies the moment mobs aggro on him (in some dungeons he doesn’t even last 2 seconds channeling his skill before a mob kills it with a swing or two).

They said this patch would seek to create more viable builds, but all I see is the duelist still doing the damage of greatsword warrior’s autoattack crit, the Berserker still missing his attacks, and buffs to an underwater combat most people don’t want to participate in (due to mobs underwater having too much HP and combat in general feeling slower, our useful utilities like null field not allowed underwater, and for some classes no elite options).

Mesmer was supposed to have crowd control and interrupts like in GW1, but now in GW2 classes like the hammer warrior and the engineer and the elementalist greatly overshadow him. All I’m to a group as a mesmer is a Time Warp and Portal bot. I don’t do the damage of a warrior, the aoe of an elementalists, the bunkering of a guardian or ele, or the CC of an engineer. My burst relies on the uptime of very fragile illusions who are swiped down the moment they come up in PvE, with a ramp up that athief achieves in 2 button presses of Steal and Backstab. (and it’s fine in PvE for thieves to deal that damage, I don’t care, but I have to jump through so many more hoops just to accomplish a lesser version of what other classes do).

I’d like for my mesmer to be good at something other than giving the group time warp and portals. Stealth rezzing is useless in PvE since bosses and mobs stack aoe on downed players anyway and the end result is you’ll die trying to rez even if stealthed.

I’m tired of this class being undertuned in PvE because of sPvP whining keeping changes to the class in the backburner.

Aazo.2841:

Well an eng needs to put 20 points into Inventions and 20 points into Tools to get those speed boosts. Which for any eng to spec that way (both) would limit them severly. So I would not consider those two as speed benifits for the most part. I even tried out the 25% in combat speed tonight on my eng, and it was only marginally usefull. Not enough for me to spec Inventions that high.They do have a med kit speed, and potion they can use. So they do have more options than a mesmer. But I still feel my mesmer is faster overall, even though I still wish we had a “more reliable swiftness”.

Engineer is easy. “Gain 5 sec of swiftness when you equip a kit” – practically perma swiftness when running around. Especially if that kit is Med Kit which has a swiftness skill.
So it costs 10 points in tools.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Alex.9268:

It is pretty clear at this point that mesmers by design are the slowest out of combat profession in the game.

Focus + blink spam = faster or equal as fast (at least) as perma swiftness. I know this because I play a lot of wvw where everyone has permaswiftness, and my mesmer can keep up the pace with others (swiftness on them). So in fact necro’s are on same lvl, if not worse.

What?

Necros are one of the faster classes in this game. 25% speed signet, Spectral Walk 30 Seconds of Swiftness, Horn 4 Skill and two speed traits:

Quickening Thirst (+10% with main-hand dagger or +5% with offhand dagger)
Speed of Shadows (while in Death Shroud)

Heck, they can even blink to their Flesh Worm minions at 1,200 if they really want to.

LOL, this balance skill Team, is the MOST incompetent person in the world.

3-4month and still SO many bug, and they are able to correctly fix many problem.
kittenty game who cant even provide a decent class gameplay.

I’m not sure what you are talking about. My greatsword has only four skills.

Nerf war and thief b4 nerfing mes (again) pl0x.
Actually, they should just get rid of the whole mesmer profession no?

Anyway, as was mentioned by one person, Mesmer has lower health, lowest armor, BF is required to go to melee range. The damage does no where near as much damage as HB or PW. Also I saw another guy post that you would have to be not wep swapping and staying in sword to do it everytime as soon as its cd has finished which in most cases is unlikely. Man if people can’t handle 2secs of invulnerability every 19 secs (10sec cd, 9 sec wep swap cd) then they’re just bad QQers and I hate to be one to say this but if they can’t handle it then they really do need to “learn 2 play”, simple as that. Lol I can’t believe the amount of people STILL crying for more mesmer nerfs.

I never thought that the GW2 “mesmer” ever deserved ONCE his name.

Kuruptz.4782:

though mesmer has the funniest ones

Fixed the typo.

The phantasms should be an elaborate spell effect like elementalist’s dragon’s tooth, and just as vulnerable once summoned to attack. (e.g. not at all)

They should also disappear after connecting their attack, and be de-coupled from our illusion counter.

This seems like the best solution to bring phantasms into line with the devs’ current ‘vision’ of phantasms while removing the triple-penalty of having the summon dodgable, the phantasm killable or its attack also dodgable, and the dodging of the summon also denying us our shatters.

It would also provide more reliable balance numbers.. we would no longer be nerfed based on the upper-bound of having 3 wardens, or 3 zerkers, or 3 duelists up at one time.

plasmacutter.2709:

Carighan.6758:

boroguy.5690:

Not to mention, first the mesmer must successfully land the attack. Then the phantasm must survive long enough to attack. Finally, the phantasm must land the attacks on a target that is in range and not blocking, dodging, or invulnerable. Other professions must only worry about landing the attack, and many of those skills are even more “powerful”.

Apples and Telephones.
Other classes’ attacks don’t cycle every 6 seconds on their own.

I disagree with the idea that phantasms should either. I think they should be decoupled from our illusion counter and vanish after the first attack.

Anyone who knows what they’re doing, any boss who sneezes kills it.

So apparently we’re being “balanced” around the idea that our opponents are too stupid to sneeze in the general direction of our phantasms until 3 of them are up, then leave them there for the duration of a fight.

Even big, stupid dragons who stand around waiting to be killed by the giant asura lasers do enough to kill phantasms.

I think I have to agree with this one. The majority of phantasms don’t make it passed their first swings, they shouldn’t be balanced around the fact that they can. Heck, I’d say to go one step further and rather than keeping them as “pets” just make them a graphical effect of an attack instead. Use greatsword 4 and it animates as an illusion spinning and cutting the enemy rather than spawning a pet that then spins through the enemy.

Carighan.6758:

boroguy.5690:

Not to mention, first the mesmer must successfully land the attack. Then the phantasm must survive long enough to attack. Finally, the phantasm must land the attacks on a target that is in range and not blocking, dodging, or invulnerable. Other professions must only worry about landing the attack, and many of those skills are even more “powerful”.

Apples and Telephones.
Other classes’ attacks don’t cycle every 6 seconds on their own.

I disagree with the idea that phantasms should either. I think they should be decoupled from our illusion counter and vanish after the first attack.

Anyone who knows what they’re doing, any boss who sneezes kills it.

So apparently we’re being “balanced” around the idea that our opponents are too stupid to sneeze in the general direction of our phantasms until 3 of them are up, then leave them there for the duration of a fight.

Even big, stupid dragons who stand around waiting to be killed by the giant asura lasers do enough to kill phantasms.

Jumper.9482:

ITT: Rank 10s thinking they know class balance.

ITT: Rank 50 lifetime thief Jumper with superiority complex trying to invalidate valid balance concerns from others.

Every other class that gets an offensive AoE ability on a dodge roll has an internal cooldown. Explain why this one shouldn’t have an internal cooldown of 10 seconds like the others.

I’m not surprised that this happened. Devs seem to only test warrior anyway. Do you have anyone that actually plays mesmer?

BillFreist.1527:

I can assure we are looking into it.

The issue regarding the regeneration trait being spotty is that Phantasms don’t apply it to themselves, but in an AoE around them (ignoring themselves). So if you have more than 1 Phantasm close to each other, they’ll apply it to each other (plus you and other nearby allies).

Speaking as a loyal CUSTOMER (I have been here since GW 1 launch) with 1,200 hours invested in GW2 … Have any of you paused to think about the impact these sweeping changes you keep making have on your playerbase? Do you care?

You broke GS Mesmer on 11/15 and didn’t revert or patch it. Your follow up on 12/03 was to kill it? REALLY? Just issue a press release telling everyone to re-roll warrior. There is no way you can call this balance in any way shape or form. If the Warrior is the pinnacle of balance (must be since they are never nerfed) then you bring the other classes UP to the Warrior which creates BALANCE. This can be called balance when EVERY class in the game has a 2 second delay before anything happens.

I personally am on the last step of my Legendary weapon it happens to be Twilight that I am making. You people have effectively made those 1,200 hours I have invested POINTLESS. For the love of God stop nerfing the Mesmer or revert back to common sense and unlink weapon type from the skills like in GW1. What is the point of a Legendary weapon you can no longer use because someone went insane with the “balance” stick?

Am I livid? Yes, I am … you would be too.

Honestly, I would go even a step further. Have the attacks take place as you suggest, but at the end, spawn a clone. Adjust the damage and cooldowns of the attacks to balance, and do away with us having a split resource. Clones, by in large, work just fine. Almost everything that is broken, or weird, or buggy with us has to do with phantasms. The traits that currently apply to phantasms could still work the same way, and just apply to the specific attack. I think the only 3 traits that would actually need to change are Vengeful images, Persisting Images, and Phantasmal Healing. Vengeful images and Phantasmal healing could just do an aoe burst that gave allies 3-5 seconds of Retaliation/Regeneration when cast, and Persisting images could apply to clones instead.

Many of us have noticed the effects blind/obstructed/invulnerability have on mesmer phantasm skills, especially being able to blind/evade a phantasm’s first attack twice (once on skill use and another to evade the phantasm’s attack). I am not aware of any other mechanic that suffers from this limitation.

The delay on phantasm attacks compounds the issue. Jon Peters stated recently that the low/no delay seemed to be balanced and reduced the delay, but stated that it caused problems when reducing the delay to 0. We seem to have many bugs introduced the way phantasms are summoned.

So why not solve both issues by making phantasm skills like regular attacks that summon the phantasm at the end of the attack animation? This may have been brought up before, but I have not seen it. So would this work? It seems to me it would, because we would no longer be doubled tapped by blind, and even if the first hit on multi-hit attacks fail, the rest of the attack (including the summon) could still happen. It would just miss the target and then spawn the summon. This would also help out those mesmers that feel summons do too much damage and want to deal more directly.

Of course all phantasms would need to spawn with their skills on CD for balance. Here’s a loadout of how I could see each skill working:

Zerker: You spin around and swipe your blade as an ethereal image of your sword whirls over the AOE damaging and crippling foes in its wake. Where it stops, a Zerker is spawned and will use its skill after its internal recharge.

Mage: You throw an image of your torch (similar to Mirror Blade) at foes that bounces and grants confusion to foes and retaliation to allies. After the last target is hit, the image bounces a final time to the spawn point where the mage is created.

Duelist: You fire a barrage at your target. The last hit ricochets off the target to the spawn point where the duelist appears.

Warden: You create a whirling tempest with the skill’s effects, and the warden fades in at the end of the animation.

Swordsman: You thrust your sword out and hurl an ethereal blade at your foe. After the hit the sword leaps back to the spawn point and the phantasm spawns.

Warlock: You blast your foe with an energy beam that explodes and then converges on the spawn point where the warlock appears.

Disenchanter: Would work like the Mage except you wouldn’t throw a torch image.

Defender: Not sure we need a special attack for him. He’s fine.

These kind of suggestions are meaningless because the Devs either think the classes are fine aside from very minor things, or they don’t have the ability to make them work the way they want.
Your suggestions are good, and I'd approve of them. But we'll be stuck with the kitten mechanics for a long, long time.