the problem with CS is basic
1. short time to do anything vlauable and as such must have 3 clones up
2. when you do have 3 clones up which skill to use? do my group need time warp, do they need null field do they need well? if i just spamm tham all what will i gain. only the skill which was neededthus the utilities must be choose to fit all situation
like well heal, null, time warp = you could heal your team ,remove boon and condition and give speed attack and slow. but in the right time so oyu must be very aware to your group
to use CS on weapon skills is useless for your team and just to spamm skills again for 1 trick pony of 90 sec which leave you with nothing after this combo
Add to the fact that someday some one will figure out that they can destroy the rift and completely wreck you, CS requires careful usage to make the best out of.
This is the big thing that nobody seems to take into account.
The Rift is fragile. It can be easily destroyed. If you break it, you make the Chronomancer waste their Continuum Shift. Heck, it gets broken by AoE and cleave in team fights very easily, so placement is not easy to get the most out of it in a team fight.
Continuum Shift is awesome in that it is powerful but has a clear and decisive counter. It’s just odd that nobody seems to even try factoring that in when discussing how it should be nerfed so hard that Mesmers in pre-Searing Ascalon will feel it.
I don’t understand why some people think mesmers should have to negotiate with them at all. These suggestions are not only terrible, but they are extremely unfair.
That’s basically the PvP community. Nerf everything I can’t deal with. Even when in the most recent WTS mesmers didn’t make the impact an ele, guardian, or necro made.
Nah this is the same crap that rangers went through when they got buffs.
Prepare for the crusade
That’s just the thing. For most people who demand Mesmer nerfs, they’re talking specifically about hot-join PvP. And it’s true: in a game mode with a large number of unskilled players and a lack of coordinated teams, Mesmers are in the perfect spot to dominate. (Please note that I am not calling posters like Hammerguard and lavra unskilled players, not by a long-shot; I’m only saying that, by and large, they’re probably playing with an unskilled team more often than not, no matter how skilled they are individually.)
But when you’re talking about skilled players and coordinated teams, Mesmers fall back into line with most other professions. If anything, Continuum Shift trickery should help a lot in that part of the game (and in PvE), and its main impact actually won’t be burst damage. And when you have coordinated teams, it will be very easy to shove the big weakness of Continuum Shift right in a Mesmer’s face—break the rift and you’ve made them waste the skill for ~90 seconds (give or take some Alacrity).
It’s very dangerous to balance a game around unskilled and uncoordinated players.
What makes Continuum Shift so cool is that it’s very powerful but also has a very clear and decisive counter: break the Rift and the fun’s over. That’s really cool. There’s no trickery to it. And if the Chronomancer tries to hide the Rift out of the way, they have to give up a significant portion of the skill’s duration just to move back into the team fight.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
If the majority chronomancer are experiencing similar results, how should that not be taken serious? What is the point of being in a game beta if you can not give feedback of problems than?
Are they, though?
I think the majority of Chronomancers agree certain aspects need to be changed—Slow uptime is probably too good, for example, and most of the wells are underwhelming—but saying that the majority of Chronomancers are seeing that their profession is “disgustingly” OP isn’t reflective of what I’m seeing on this forum or elsewhere.
That last option would be completely crippling and nobody would ever use Chronomancer.
Hammerguard does have a point: if Distortion gets replaced by Continuum Split, Continuum Split needs a buff to make it a worthwhile trade-off. No Mesmer in their right mind would make that trade with both abilities in their current state—Distortion is simply too vital for survivability in all game modes, while Continuum Split offers very little survivability at all.
Here’s the thing with Continuum Split:
1. Someone breaks the rift? It ends early, and may end at a really inopportune time for you. If you use it in the middle of a team fight, this will almost certainly happen.
2. Get focused on while in Continuum Split and go down? It won’t save you.
3. Happen to use Continuum Split while on low health or while your healing skill is on cooldown? Have fun when you snap back, buddy.
What I’m trying to say is: Continuum Split is not free damage (in fact, using it for damage in a lot of cases wastes its potential for team support). It is not easy to use. Its duration, even with three illusions, is not long. (I bring up the short duration because it really limits its ability to be used as a juke—if you, say, use F5 in an out-of-the-way spot to keep the Rift safe and give yourself a safe place to return to, you have very little time to actually accomplish anything after moving from that spot.)
I really think people are overstating how powerful Continuum Split is. Don’t misunderstand me: it is very good and very worth using. But I think once more than a weekend passes and people get a better handle on both how to use it and the very real limitations it has, it’ll even itself out.
the problem with CS is basic
1. short time to do anything vlauable and as such must have 3 clones up
2. when you do have 3 clones up which skill to use? do my group need time warp, do they need null field do they need well? if i just spamm tham all what will i gain. only the skill which was neededthus the utilities must be choose to fit all situation
like well heal, null, time warp = you could heal your team ,remove boon and condition and give speed attack and slow. but in the right time so oyu must be very aware to your group
to use CS on weapon skills is useless for your team and just to spamm skills again for 1 trick pony of 90 sec which leave you with nothing after this combo
This is a good point: while in hotjoin, Continuum Split is really great for burst damage, when you’re working with a coordinated team, its damage potential is actually not where it really shines.
@apharma,
Replacing Distortion with CS could warrant buffs to CS and also allow CS to play a more vital role in Chronomancers gameplay. It would give Chronomancers a more unique feel from Mesmers. At least more so than now.
You’d need to give Continuum Split some more defensive capabilities, then, which it actually doesn’t have much of now.
As it stands, you have to be very careful when using Continuum Split. Don’t use it on low health or you’re probably going to be in trouble when you snap back; don’t count on it to save you from a dangerous situation, because you can still be killed while it’s active and it won’t pull you back from downed state; don’t count on it lasting anywhere close to its full duration in a team fight because the AoE and cleave will almost certainly break it early.
If you asked me to give up Distortion for Continuum Split in its current state, I don’t think I’d take you up on that offer. And any buffs I can think of right now (like making the Continuum Rift indestructible, so you can always count on having the full duration) would make it an actually overpowered ability.
I think you’re missing the elite part of elite specialization. Your suggestions (remove Continuum Split) would turn Chronomancer into just another specialization line
So, you are implying that elite specializations should be strictly better than core classes, giving player who own HoT a clear advantage over players who don’t?
No. I’m implying that they should give you something special, something new, and something big.
I want to clarify that when I reply to you I’m doing so assuming you’re still in favor of outright removing Continuum Split. If you do that, you are absolutely dropping Chronomancer to a level lower than any other currently-revealed elite spec, in that it would no longer interact with the Mesmer’s core mechanic in any way and, for the vast majority of players, wouldn’t offer anything new at all.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
Calling it now: the first nerf to CS will probably be giving it a 1/4s channel or something.
This wouldn’t be too bad—it’d really just let it be interrupted, and not very easily.
I imagine they might make the Continuum Rift that spawns be even more visually obvious—sort of a big “HIT THIS!” sign. You can screw the Chronomancer over pretty badly by ending Continuum Split before they expect you to, especially because if they’re mid-ability when it ends, that ability doesn’t get its cooldown reset.
Mental Anguish for most situations, Power Block if you’re on an interrupt-heavy build.
Imagined Burden is cool, but not as great as it sounds in its tooltip. You don’t get as much Might out of it as it sounds, though the cripple can be nice in WvW sometimes. I’d still prefer one of the other two, though.
While guard and necro get more choice…
…how do you intend to change that if you’re suggesting taking away distortion?
You are contradicting yourself. Guard/Necro get the choice to give up their old DS/Virtues for RS/new Virtues, while Chrono currently gets a new class mechanic for free without having to give up anything (taking a traitline is NOT an argument, since every class has to do this).
Also, number of new weaponskills is not an argument, either, since the new weapons aren’t stronger than older ones (actually, so far they seem to be worse and thus irrelevant) and elite specializations work perfectly fine with only using core weapons.
That’s just the point. The shield weapon skills aren’t very good, and they won’t be better just by changing numbers (which are the only changes I think will happen at this stage).
I think you’re missing the elite part of elite specialization. Your suggestions (remove Continuum Split) would turn Chronomancer into just another specialization line—don’t pretend wells and shield are all that relevant to this discussion. Mesmer would, as a result, functionally be the only profession not to have an elite spec. Sure, they’d have something called an elite spec, but it wouldn’t really be that.
Part of the problem with most of the suggestions I’ve seen so far is that they utterly cripple the Chronomancer. I’m willing to bet that most PvP Mesmers would be unwilling to give up Distortion for Continuum Split—the extra survivability is just too vital. The same is true in PvE and definitely true in WvW. Similarly, just getting rid of Continuum Split turns the Chronomancer into just another trait line—a decent one, but nothing too special, mostly good for phantasm builds in PvE who’d like to be able to shatter a bit more without nuking their own DPS.
(Hint: Chronophantasma doesn’t let you do very much shatter-wise that you couldn’t already do by just taking Deceptive Evasion and slotting Mirror Images. It’s a little faster, but you can still rapid-fire shatter without it.)
Chronomancer is fine. Some of the numbers on things like Alacrity and Slow could use reworking, maybe have a “you can’t shatter phantasms while they’re dazed from Chronophantasma” thing to prevent machine gun shatters.
Continuum Split is fine how it is. If it absolutely needs a nerf for some reason, perhaps adding some power to the counterplay would be appropriate. If you break the rift and send the Chronomancer back into the main timeline early, the Chronomancer is dazed for half a second or something. That way it’s more valuable to break the rift and cut Continuum Split short.
Then again, that would be awful in PvE, where that rift is almost definitely going to get cleaved or AoE’d down by dungeon mobs, which means using Continuum Split would just be saying “okay daze me now,” so maybe not.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
I will say that removing Distortion would be a nasty thing to do to a Mesmer in PvE and WvW and you’d do serious harm to Chronomancer’s usefulness in those game types. I don’t think it’s a good solution, but if I have to choose between that and outright losing Continuum Split (which seems to be what most of the PvP forum wants), I’ll take the bargain.
I just reported this thread as the OP already made a post in the PvP forums and is on a crusade to spread misinformation on something he clearly knows nothing about.
Just let him work out his grief. He’s been one of the most frequent “nerf Mesmer” posters for a while now, so it’s natural he’d be upset that Mesmers are getting something cool in Heart of Thorns.
Double Moa is a terrible use of Continuum Split, and is also not nearly as impactful as you seem to think.
In fact, in PvP, none of the elite skills are necessarily worth doubling. Maybe Time Warp, though there are still much better uses of Continuum Split.
I know they said it, but i don’t think it should be this way. F5 is something you get for free, no matter what build you are playing. They should instead make the new wells more powerful and give a reason to take them over Blink/Decoy.
You do have to give up something: an entire trait line. Do you think all Mesmers get Chronomancer as a free fourth trait line or something? There is opportunity cost to it.
You know that stealthy interrupt shatter build everyone hates? You have to give up some of that to be a Chronomancer. You either can’t take Prismatic Understanding (Chaos), or Confounding Suggetsions + Power Block (Domination), or Deceptive Evasion (Dueling). All of those are big losses. It’s not without its opportunity cost.
Removing Continuum Split would remove the entire reason to play a Chronomancer. Replacing Distortion with it actually makes some sense, but outright removing it is an insulting suggestion.
Person asks the mesmer community if mesmer’s chronomancer is op , did you really think you’re going to get non-biased answers? It’s insane right now and of course asking the mesmer community, you’re never going to get a true answer.
These days, after getting tired of constant nerf cries, Mesmers have been proactive in asking for deserved nerfs. Trust me: the things about Chronomancer that need toning down have already been asked for and discussed by Mesmers in the feedback thread.
The things that won’t get traction are the cries of “remove Continuum Split!” and “give Chronophantasma a long enough ICD that it’s actually useless!” Guess what the threads that get shouted down ask for?
Everyone mentally prepare yourselves for a massive Chronomancer nerf. I actually don’t think Chronomancer is significantly OP, but the amount of crying on the forums won’t be ignored, and that sucks.
BWE2 Chronomancer will be completely useless, mark my words. It might get buffed up to “vaguely disappointing” from there by launch, but enjoy good Chronomancer for the next few hours while you can.
MMOs are depressing.
Pls remove the F5 Shatter , its far over the top.
If you leave it like this mesmer will be even much more op like it is atm .I play a mesmer myself but i dont want to be a facroll class.
Get used to this, my fellow Mesmers. This is going to be most of the feedback over the weekend.
If I’m honest, I’ll be shocked if Continuum Split actually makes it into Heart of Thorns. I think it’s an awesome ability and won’t be OP once people learn how to counter it, but most players are like this player and their initial response is “just remove the whole skill.”
It’s weird to play Mesmer. I can never get excited about anything cool we get because I know everyone else is going to cry that we shouldn’t have it.
This class is OP! why would I play anything else? all the other characters cant even get me to 50% hp xD utter faceroll but I love it.
Basically if you dont play chrono ur gonna be weak and pathetic… same with PU… wow… A-Net needs to revisit how to balance classes…
Chronomancer will lose some steam when people learn to kill the rift that Continuum Split summons. It’ll still be really good, but it’s not nearly the “OMG INSANELY OP” thing people are shouting right now.
Aside from that, I don’t think Alacrity will be a decent ‘Buff’. Do we even know if it can be shared by inspiration? Will it count as a ‘Boon’ for purposes of Boon Removal, or "Increased Damage when under X amount of Boons’? We know Boon Duration doesn’t effect it, for -some- reason, and most abilities grant an insignificant duration of it.
Alacrity is not a boon, so it can’t be shared by Signet of Inspiration; it also can’t be stripped by boon-stripping, or converted into a condition by boon corruption, or anything else that happens to boons. It’s like Quickness was at launch—an effect separate from the boon mechanic.
I get the impression that Alacrity is for the Chronomancer, not for the Chronomancer’s allies. You’re very limited on how much Alacrity you can apply to other players. There are only two ways: Well of Recall, which grants three seconds of Alacrity to allies who stay in the well for the whole time (which equals about two seconds of cooldown reduction), and the shield phantasm. The shield phantasm will definitely not be used in PvE, barring a major overhaul of group PvE dynamics, because it doesn’t do damage. Even if it did, the Alacrity it grants is out of the Chronomancer’s control and comes in insignificant durations.
So, in practice, it’s just Well of Recall. You can reduce everyone’s cooldowns by two seconds every 45 seconds. Woo-hoo.
Chronomancers have a few other ways of applying Alacrity to themselves due to traits, but still in short bursts. It’s basically a neat little trick for the Chronomancer and an extremely minor consideration for the Chronomancer’s allies.
Your suggestions would totally wreck mesmer for pvp. We already do extreme burst without phantasms. You simply cannot increase that for the sake of pve.
Furthermore, the new chrono trait (forget the name) that allows you to shatter phantasms once before they die will go a long way in this regard.
But it doesn’t help with phantasms getting killed by melee cleave and AoEs in PvE. Yeah, that Chronophantasma trait is awesome and I’m excited for it, but it only solves one of the issues, and even then, only partially. If phantasms were immune to AoE/cleave damage in PvE (not PvP) then we’d be talking, but I don’t think they’d ever do that.
It also doesn’t address the issue with non-damage-dealing phantasms. At the moment, they see very little use in group PvE, because they take up a slot that would be more valuable if occupied by a damage-dealing phantasm. If Heart of Thorns brings PvE content where phantasms like the Phantasmal Defender or the new Chronomancer shield phantasm are as valuable as a damage-dealing phantasm (even just situationally), that’d be a big step forward. Otherwise, I’d rather see the very core of what a phantasm is be reworked.
Also, see my above post, because you’re right—this would increase our burst quite a bit, and I didn’t consider that in the original post. A lot of things would need tuning as a result.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
Another con to consider about this, that I hadn’t thought about in the initial post, is that it would functionally increase Mesmer burst damage.
Frankly, Mesmer doesn’t need that, and I say that as a Mesmer. Our burst is in great shape. It doesn’t need to be stronger (or weaker, let me just say). I’m not too sure what the solution for that would be, given the framework of what I suggested. Decreasing Mind Wrack damage (remember, we’re increasing Mesmer weapon damage as part of this change) might be necessary to prevent us from being even stronger with burst damage.
I don’t know, though. Someone probably has a better idea than I do there.
It’s an interesting idea, We’d need far more illusion generation to use our shatter mechanic. – I do believe if such a change would happen, Phantasms should be out long enough to deliver 2 attacks. – One initial, and one with a 50-100% damage boost if they’ve managed the great accomplishment of staying alive more than a couple seconds. It also places an emphasis on -killing- Phantasms in sPvP, before they launch their second attack.
That’s a cool idea. I worry that it might put us basically right back here, though, where PvE fights (or WvW zergs) where there’s a lot of AoE will nuke phantasms early, causing our actual DPS to drop sharply. Part of what I want to accomplish by suggesting this change would be to avoid that problem—where Mesmer DPS is less linked to whether or not our best attacks get killed before they can live up to their potential.
As for illusion generation, having a phantasm leave behind an “afterimage” clone after it does its attack would give us functionally the same amount of illusion generation as we have now.
signet of the ether a necessity.
you’re funny.
Maybe I’m overstating it, but it makes a huge difference in dungeons and fractals if you can get three damaging phantasms out right away. Signet of the Ether lets you refresh your phantasm cooldowns, so you can open a boss fight by immediately summoning a Warden and two Swordsmen to get your damage up and running. Without that, you’re stuck with two phantasms for at least 20 seconds, and that’s a long time to go without a big chunk of your potential damage.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
What I meant is that if phantasms were to change in this way, the base cooldowns on phantasm-summoning skills should be reduced, because each individual phantasm summon would be less impactful (or, at least, would no longer be able to hang around as a persistent element). I’m referring only to the base skill cooldowns, not to a trait like Illusionist’s Celerity (which wouldn’t have to change).
we’re mesmer!
nerf us every week ,please…like you’re doing
familiar nerf …lmao
I don’t see how this would be a nerf at all. In fact, I think it would be a buff, in that it would involve increasing our actual weapon attack damage (and decreasing the cooldown on phantasm skills, which, if the afterimage thing would also be implemented, would actually increase clone generation).
That’s true. Maybe ground-targeted phantasms could generate a clone on the Mesmer’s current target when the phantasm’s effect ends, but that might be awkward, so it might be best to just keep them as targeted effects like they are now.
And yeah, some of the phantasms currently only make sense as persistent skills. Perhaps the Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter could be reworked as glamours, for example. But it isn’t perfect, you’re right.
You could also resolve this by giving Phantasms a set duration. For Weapon Phantasms, this would be equal to their attack rate, so they fire off one attack and then disappear. For utility Phantasms, this would have to be balanced against their cooldowns. Phantasmal Haste could then be modified to increase Phantasm duration instead, though it’d have to be long enough that Weapon Phantasm can get in a second attack.
Oh yeah, that’s a fantastic idea. Giving phantasms a set duration instead of having them function as illusions (taking up illusion slots) would be awesome.
Whether weapon phantasms should be allowed to attack more than once is probably too big for a trait, I think—it’d be the equivalent of, say, letting an Elementalist take a trait that makes Fire Grab go off again on a delay, essentially letting it hit twice on one cooldown (okay, not quite that much damage, but still). Not saying it can’t be worked with, of course, but that’d be a kitten powerful trait.
For the utility and non-attacking weapon phantasms, though, having them work on a duration would be a great solution.
One difficulty of this approach would be whether to increase the damage the phantasm does with their one attack, or decrease the cooldown of phantasm skills so they can be used more often.
I think I’d probably want to fall somewhere in the middle, but closer to the decrease cooldown side of the spectrum, if only because I think phantasm skills should still allow the Mesmer to maintain stealth. If phantasms did substantially more up-front damage and still didn’t break stealth, it would constitute a buff to the damage Mesmers can do while maintaining stealth, which is not a good thing.
They should still probably do somewhat more damage, but the main focus of the damage increase should be on the Mesmer’s other weapon skills, to bring them more in line with other professions.
It’s an intriguing idea, to be sure. I think it could work, though it’d need a lot of rebalancing around cooldowns and effects.
Quibble about this “pro”, though:
Right now, if you’re in a boss fight in a dungeon and have a non-damaging phantasm up, you’re not using one of your illusion slots to add to your group’s DPS, and that’s slowing things down.
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but if Phantasms turn into single-attack summons, then none of our illusion slots will be adding to group DPS any more. Clones do essentially zero damage.
Currently, as far as providing damage, we have good burst and moderate sustain over a long period of time. Your change would completely knock out the moderate sustain over time portion unless it were accompanied by a rebalancing of our AA damage. Which I’d be fine with, I just don’t trust ANet to actually do it.
I also have concerns about the effectiveness of our utility Phantasms. pDefender, pDisenchanter, and iCaptainAmerica are only worth using if they stick around for a while. This is perhaps even more true of iWarden — yes, it has good DPS, but it’s mainly used for absorbing/reflecting projectiles. And then there’s the problem you pointed out with pMage.
Yeah, I largely agree with your points. We’d definitely need our weapon skill damage to be increased to compensate for never having phantasms as persistent sources of damage, but I think that removing the persistence of phantasms would open the door to allow that to be possible.
And yeah, some of the phantasms currently only make sense as persistent skills. Perhaps the Phantasmal Defender and Disenchanter could be reworked as glamours, for example. But it isn’t perfect, you’re right.
How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?
He means that right now people don’t shatter because they don’t want to lose their phantasms, which are the main source of damage for phant builds. If only clones are out however, you wouldn’t feel bad about shattering.
It makes sense, though of course changing phants to a direct damage skill just throws out the whole concept of the mesmer itself…
I don’t agree. Clones, shatters, and manipulations are still there, and are still very Mesmer-y. Phantasms are one of the core aspects of the Mesmer, yes, but they’re not the only thing that makes us Mesmers, and I think they’ve been getting in our way when it comes to achieving damage balance. In fact, shatter-heavy PvP builds are just one step away from using phantasms this way already. You summon them, let them do an attack or two, but you’re probably going to shatter them pretty quickly.
Like in my above post: if phantasms do their one attack and then leave a clone behind, you have exactly as many illusion-generating skills as you do now, so that playstyle remains intact.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
How would i be able to shatter more often if i effectively have less illusions?
Admittedly, that part is likely more applicable to PvE Mesmers, who rarely shatter in dungeons/fractals because it means killing off their main source of DPS for a one-time effect that is comparatively underwhelming.
My proposed solution—admittedly, I didn’t think of this problem—would be this: make phantasms leave a clone behind once they do their attack. Now you don’t actually have fewer illusions—your phantasm skills are just also clone-generation skills. That’d mean you’d have exactly as many skills that generate illusions as you do now.
Mesmers have to be one of the toughest professions to balance damage for.
Our reliance on phantasms for damage has a few negative effects on Mesmer PvE. For example, it shackles us to the Signet of the Ether healing skill, which is necessary to ensure we can get three phantasms out right away in a boss fight. It means we’re extremely hesitant to shatter, because we know our DPS will take a nosedive if we do. Similarly, if we’re up against an AoE-heavy fight, our DPS is useless—I think we all remember that fight from Living World Season 2, right?
In a version of Guild Wars 2 PvE where the Mesmer’s various tricks matter as much as damage, that wouldn’t be a problem. Trading off DPS for interrupts or distortion would be seen as a viable trade. But that’s not the balance we have now. If your DPS isn’t top notch, you’re just slowing your team down. Sure, the Mesmer makes up for it if you’re in one of the fractals where Portal is valuable, or if you need reflects and don’t have a Guardian.
So how can we make Mesmers easier to balance?
Here’s my idea: make phantasms no longer act as illusions. Instead, phantasms should be one-shot skills that are summoned, do their attack once, and then dissipate, without ever counting towards your three-clone limit. At the same time, buff the Mesmer’s personal DPS to account for the lack of continuous phantasm damage. On top of this, these new one-shot phantasm skills should either do more damage up front, or have their cooldowns reduced, because they’re no longer persistent; they should also leave a clone behind, like an afterimage, so Mesmers don’t effectively have less illusion generation.
This approach has pros and cons. I’ll list some of them here.
PROS
Mesmer DPS would be much easier to balance. Once you treat phantasms as just a single attack, they can be balanced the same way every other profession’s weapon skills are balanced. Plus, our DPS would no longer be reliant on hoping our phantasms survive enemy cleave and AoE.
Mesmer DPS would be more reliable. Really, this is the big one. Being able to do reliable DPS as a Mesmer that isn’t reliant on hoping our fragile phantasms survive would be an incredible quality-of-life improvement.
Non-damaging phantasms would see more use. Right now, if you’re in a boss fight in a dungeon and have a non-damaging phantasm up, you’re not using one of your illusion slots to add to your group’s DPS, and that’s slowing things down. Potentially useful abilities, like the upcoming Chronomancer shield phantasm, would see little use in PvE as a result. Reworking them as one-shot skills would make them much more likely to actually be useful.
Mesmers could shatter more often, because clones are cheap. Phantasms would no longer count as illusions, so you could shatter your easy-to-generate clones more often, adding Mind Wrack to your damage rotation and not needing to hesitate to use Distract or Distortion as needed.
Phantasms would no longer be necessarily tied to a single enemy. While this wouldn’t matter for single-target phantasms, like the Phantasmal Swordsman or Duelist, it would give us the possibility of being able to ground target Phantasmal Warden or Berserker—how cool would that be?
CONS
It would make it harder to do be a huge pain while stealthed in PvP. However, I would argue that summoning a phantasm still shouldn’t break stealth (like it doesn’t now). It might be worth going for a “reduce phantasm cooldown” approach instead of an “increase phantasm damage” approach in this case, because giving a profession too much burst damage without unstealthing them is dangerous.
It would make Mesmers less unique. That’s very true. I can’t argue with that. But our uniqueness has been our downfall in the balance category for the entire life of the game. Maybe it’s time to look at the underlying problems with Mesmer balance and address those instead of just tweaking numbers.
Some existing phantasm traits would no longer work. Also very true. That said, those could be replaced with new traits. Maybe a trait that makes phantasms automatically do a one-clone Mind Wrack when they complete their attack?
Some existing phantasms would no longer work, period. Yeah, this is a tough one. The Phantasmal Mage on the torch would have to be reworked, possibly into a single AoE that grants fury to allies and burns enemies. The same for the upcoming Chronomancer shield phantasm, only with slow on enemies and alacrity on allies.
Conclusion
So, what do you all think?
I fully expect this won’t be a popular idea, and I also have no expectation it would ever be implemented. But I wanted to kick around the idea that perhaps the real problem with Mesmer balance is that our very core design gets in the way. Doing something like making phantasms one-shot skills instead of summons would, I think, be one of the less disruptive ways to address that.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
With chronomancer you’ll be able to give the new buff that’ll decrease everyone cooldown,
And now you can take the place of the thief with invisibility and portals for skip. And enough CC to be ale (with team work) to perma freeeze boss. You can also stack vulnerability if your group lack of vulnerability and you got blind for mobs fight.
Alacrity is not nearly good enough to justify bringing a Chronomancer. There are two skills that apply Alacrity to allies: the shield phantasm (which you can’t control and which takes the place of a valuable damaging phantasm) and Well of Recall. Well of Recall has a 45 second cooldown and applies, at most, three seconds of Alacrity, if everyone stays in the well for the full duration. Given the Alacrity math, that takes away a grand total of two seconds of cooldown.
Knocking two seconds of cooldown off of people’s skills every 45 seconds is not very impactful. The only real PvE value Chronomancer brings to the Mesmer is that it lets you shatter once without blowing up all your phantasms—that part’s nice and I’m pretty thankful for that, don’t get me wrong.
Auto invis and portal, make you better than thief for skipping (since there is less chance that people don’t follow fast enough)
Portal is valuable in only a handful of instances, and Thief is far better at applying group stealth than Mesmer (while also doing more DPS).
I love how you all pretend you’re entering some sort of fractals esports tournament that’s going to be live streamed on twitch with 200,000 viewers. “My class isn’t meta without its reflects. How am I going to win the $0 prize money, Anet?”
Okay, I’m going to alt-tab back to GW1 now where a player had to actually think. You kids stay mindless ya-hear.
The problem with Mesmers is that we’re not just “not meta” without reflects—we simply don’t offer anything valuable without reflects that another profession can’t do better.
Luckily, I only ever run PvE stuff with my guild, and we’re not nearly “elite” enough to actually care about what’s optimal. But elitism does exist, and not everyone has a good guild to run things with.
Don’t forget the nerf to Harmonious Mantras, which is a substantial hit to PvE Mesmer DPS, which is already… not great.
If it helps, it’s worth noting that it lowers the cooldown on allies’ skills as well. If you can coordinate with your group, it’s extremely powerful, even moreso than a Chronomancer trying his hardest to stack Alacrity.
That said, I agree it’s kind of boring and straightforward. It doesn’t seem very “Elementalist” to me, whereas all the other shouts feel right at home.
I agree completely. Time Warp is completely outclassed by “Feel My Wrath!” in every way, and in a group that can coordinate, “Rebound!” makes Alacrity useless.
I’d hoped that Chronomancer might bring enough useful utility that Mesmers will be a desired profession in PvE despite our low-ish damage, but as with the existing situation, that’s just not going to happen.
Mesmers are great at 1-on-1 fights but don’t make a huge impact over the course of entire PvP matches (or WvW fights). It feels really frustrating to get beaten by one, but no different than getting bursted down by a Thief popping out of stealth in the middle of a teamfight.
Mesmers are good at winning short-term victories but not very good at winning games, basically.
The energy cost on weapon skills needs to be removed. The utility skills already cost a lot of energy which killed a lot of potential combos with weapon skills. Now with weapon swap it’s just going to get worse. It’s just a restriction that should not be there.
But it also might be necessary to balance things like Shiro’s Impossible Odds, which gives constant quickness and superspeed so long as you can maintain it with your Energy. That skill is already really powerful—you’d be increasing its duration and making it even easier to use if you also made it so the Revenant could easily spam all of their weapon skills while using Impossible Odds.
Revenant went from “looks underwhelming” to “holy crap I want to play this right now” real, real fast.
The legends don’t affect your weapon skills, so the only thing that’s necessary is for the utility skills to work underwater.
ArenaNet definitely seems to be de-emphasizing underwater combat. They’re probably not doing a big announcement for the Revenant’s underwater weapon(s) because it’s not really all that exciting and it doesn’t matter 95% (or more) of the time. Their weapons are all melee, though, so I’d guess spear is a shoe-in, unless they give them melee trident to go with the melee staff.
(Similarly, if the elite specialization’s weapon isn’t ranged, I’ll be really surprised.)
It’s the forum warriors one.
Generally, the instinctive response to being beaten by a class that recently received buffs is to run to the forums and scream for those buffs to be removed (and extra nerfs to be applied on top of it).
As Mesmers, I think we’re also instinctively defensive about it, because we spent so long being repeatedly nerfed, not to mention being told we’re useless for anything but Portals in PvE. We’re finally in a good place and now the prevailing community opinion seems to be that we should be nerfed back into uselessness. Could a few things be adjusted regarding stealth? Yes. Absolutely. But I hope whatever nerfs come are even-handed and don’t completely cripple the class again.
Yeah, true.
I really want to know what this promised “challenging group content” will be. There’s a lot of potential in this game’s PvE if they just apply the lessons they’ve learned. I mean, hell, look how well people responded to some of the Living World season 1 dungeons, like the Molten Facility. They can make fun, enjoyable PvE and I think they even know how.
Here’s all we know:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Very-disappointing-news-for-you-guys
So no. Dungeons and fractals are a ‘possible but not likely’ area for ArenaNet to develop. They don’t want to put developer time towards making new ones (“Aetherpath was too much work”), and they’ll only step in to change something when there’s a game-breaking exploit.
Not only do they say “no big changes to current dungeons”, but also “no plans to make more at this point.” Granted, this was a while ago, but they certainly don’t seem to even be concerned with maintaining or supporting the content or the community when it comes to current dungeon issues either.
Once they announce what the “Challenging Group Content” for HoT is, we’ll have a stronger idea of where they intend to go with this. But looking at the last 2+ years of neglect and stagnation for instanced PvE in this game, those of us who have been paying attention don’t have a lot of hope, so I wouldn’t expect much.
It might be worth noting that that quote is from before the September 2014 Feature Pack, if I remember correctly. They really were focusing on smaller quality-of-life changes (and China) at that time.
By the time HoT releases, it will have been over a year since then, so hopefully things have started to shift a bit.
I’ve looked around for information and haven’t found much, so I’m curious: do we have any information on what ArenaNet’s plans are for dungeons and fractals going forward? I know there won’t be new dungeons when Heart of Thorns releases, which is disappointing, but will there ever be new dungeons? Are there plans to release new fractals at any point?
I think there’s a lot of potential in GW2 PvE, especially with the changes to Defiant and some of the abilities coming in HoT’s elite specs, but we’ll need new group PvE content to really realize that potential.
I agree. I hope this only affects level 79 and lower items.
Otherwise, jeez, look at the loot selection Mesmers get. Greatswords, swords, staves, cloth armor… that’s some profitable stuff. I play Mesmer, so, I mean, that’s nice and all, but I’d hate to have a system where everyone who wants to grind for loot switches to the professions that have the best selection.
As fantastically cool as these are, this would give Mesmers a ton more options than any other profession, including Elementalists. Given Guild Wars 2’s design philosophies, the amount of illusions and corresponding shatters would have to be stripped down quite a bit. That said, I like the idea of combining illusions and shatters into a two-step skill, rather than having them take up weapon skill slots.
(Moebius Strike is an amazingly cool idea for a sword skill, but man does it sound overpowered.)
What’s the problem? At the moment, for technical reasons involving server bandwidth, any condition that stacks in intensity is limited to 25 stacks per target, no matter how many players are applying that condition. This is great in PvP and WvW, because condition damage can be outright withering. In PvE, however, it means that condition damage is extremely suboptimal in any group content (dungeons and fractals) and entirely useless in large events (like world bosses). To add to this, many skills used by Power/Precision/Ferocity builds apply conditions, so stacks can be taken up by weaker conditions applied by players with low Condition Damage.
Let’s get a couple things out of the way right off the bat:
First, please note that I am not suggesting any buffs to condition damage for PvP or WvW. Conditions are already plenty powerful there.
Second, we already know that giving each player a “personal” stack won’t work. Remember, the stated reason for the condition stack cap in the first place is that each condition requires server bandwidth, so having a potentially dozens of separate stacks of each condition on a world boss would be a huge problem there.
Third, this change probably doesn’t need to apply to Vulnerability. You’ll see why it shouldn’t later on, but at the same time, it isn’t like people’s builds rely solely on Vulnerability to do damage. I think 25 stacks of Vulnerability is plenty.
So, how do we solve this?
Second-tier conditions. I can’t take credit for the idea—I’ve seen it around before—but I think it’s an elegant solution and I’d like to have an active thread about it if at all possible. Most importantly, and I’m going to include this in this post multiple times: second-tier conditions should only work on NPC enemies. Players should be completely immune.
In short, it works like this. Let’s say you’re applying Bleeding to a target. Right now, when it reaches 25 stacks, you can’t apply any more Bleeding until some of the stacks fall off. This change would implement a new condition, called Hemorrhaging (or something like that), that replaces Bleeding once it reaches 25 stacks. The new Hemorrhaging condition would do equal damage to those 25 stacks of Bleeding over the exact same duration that those stacks had left and removes that Bleeding, allowing players to apply more. Second-tier conditions like Hemorrhaging also stack by intensity, so in situations with a bunch of players applying Bleeding, you could potentially reach multiple stacks of Hemorrhaging as well.
(Just because I enjoy it, here are some hypothetical names. Bleeding could convert to Hemorrhaging; Confusion could convert to Turmoil; and Torment could convert to Anguish.)
Let me see if I can address some possible concerns you might have:
1. Won’t this make conditions even more powerful in WvW and PvP? No! Hemorrhaging, Turmoil, and Anguish would only work on NPC enemies, never players. (See, I told you I’d put this in here more than once.)
2. Wouldn’t having potentially hundreds of stacks of Bleeding applied to a boss potentially do way too much condition damage? That depends. Do you think letting dozens of players do direct damage (via Berserker builds) at the same time is way too much damage? This change would allow Condition Damage-heavy builds to coexist as well as Power/Precision/Ferocity builds do.
3. Doesn’t this potentially increase the amount of damage a single condition-applier can do if they can reach 25 stacks of Bleeding multiple times? Maybe. But how likely is it that, say, a single Necromancer is going to apply another 25 stacks of Bleeding before the first Hemorrhaging condition wears off? How likely is it that he or she will apply 25 stacks of Bleeding reliably and regularly in the first place?
4. This doesn’t help with damaging conditions that stack by duration, like Poison and Burning. No, it doesn’t, and frankly I’m not too sure what to do about those. They’re not limited by the server bandwidth-saving condition cap, but rather by the very fact that they stack by duration. But helping with conditions that stack by intensity would still be a huge help for players who want to play Condition Damage builds in group PvE.
5. We’ve talked about fixing the condition cap before. ArenaNet isn’t going to do anything about it! Maybe, maybe not. I still think it’s worth keeping on everyone’s radar.
So: any thoughts, comments, questions, or suggestions? Personally, I think this can serve as a really elegant solution to the condition cap issue that wouldn’t add hundreds of stacks of conditions (and thus hugely increase server bandwidth issues). Therefore, I think it’s worth a try.
(edited by Agent Noun.7350)
I’m not sure I like the idea of essentially converting conditions into “delayed direct damage,” but converting full stacks of a condition into a different condition (like Bleeding into Hemorrhaging, like someone suggested) would be a pretty elegant solution.
In regards to PvE and WvW balance being the same: ArenaNet already has several items that work differently in PvE and WvW, or don’t work at all in WvW, like the Revive Orb. It wouldn’t be out of the question, I don’t think, for these “second tier” conditions like a hypothetical Hemorrhage condition to be PvE-only, or only work on NPC enemies. That’d completely sidestep any chance that it would affect WvW balance.
Make Deceptive Evasion a 5 point minor in illusions,
Please no.
Keeping Deceptive Evasion a Major trait is necessary, no matter where it is, so that Mesmers who rely on phantasms don’t overwrite one of their phantasms when they dodge.
Thanks for the guide, Sanderinoa. You’ve got me excited about my Mesmer again, which is always a good thing.