Guild Wars 2

Fay.2357:

Levetty.1279:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Indeed, Pyro’s build received an upgrade for BWE3, with iAvengers being able to actually provide some alacrity, and Well of Recall providing 2s more alacrity per cast than before, and on a lower cooldown (which more than compensates for the decrease in uptime from Well of Eternity, as the Recall gain is up-front, while the Eternity loss is in long-term uptime).

Would it even be worth getting the iAvengers out with the way the block works now?

Imo, depends on how impactful slow ends up being vs the breakbar. In current pve content where slow works normally on bosses, I’d definitely say yes.

When I was talking with Pyro a week or so (?) ago, it occurred to me that with permanent alacrity, Persistence of Memory, Chronophantasma and constant shatters, you can be getting iCap’s attack a lot, even without phantasms surviving long.
Breakbar as it stands makes the slow portion of this pretty weak, but the alacrity is decent now, basically acting like a well but with an instant proc, and all you need is that initial attack. It’s possible that you could get 100% alacrity uptime for the team with a smart combination of wells and iCaps. The main issues now are extremely long cast time on those phantasms, though permanent quickness will help with that, the initial survivability of the iCap, and making sure to wait the full 1.5s after shattering an iCap before you shatter again.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Have to go with Miku on this one mostly. Drop the staff. Also, drop the shield unless for some reason without it you can’t manage to keep up perma quickness. I believe something like this will be the new meta pve: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsc8dnsICtqh9fCmfCUrhlVjqcDGhAo+Yj2pFd6OjqA-TxRBABXt/o8oQ9Diq+DZKxy7kAAwTAwMlgBAOAGuwFuwBrv+6rv+6N8wDP8wDPGg8A-e

Lol.
1. That build provides 18s of alacrity, which isn’t enough for any fight that might go longer than 15s to be balanced out by the dps you’re gaining. And any fight (HoT raids?) that runs even longer or requires the team to be moving about will be additionally hampered.
2. The number 1 lament of mesmers in pve is how hard it is to get dps out of phantasms (due to cleave and setup time), but here you are insisting that said low and unreliable dps is superior to eking out greater performance from your allies. I don’t get it.
3. Without traiting focus for reflects, why do you care about focus?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Might is provided by the warrior, and fury by the ele.

See the above points already made by Pyro (before you even responded) about the dps gains for not requiring the warrior to foot the might bill. You haven’t given any reasoning to dispute the point, so why should we accept your assertion?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And herald will NOT get taken because rev isn’t going to get taken for dungeons.

Care to substantiate that claim? There have been reports that revenant dps is very competitive (BWE3 testing required), and the synergy between revenant and chronomancer in allowing warriors to go without PS (warriors themselves still being taken for banners), there is a lot of reason to suspect Revenant will have a place alongside chrono.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Ele, ele, warrior, chrono, thief/ele ( you might be able to get away with no thief depending on the dungeon and if the mesmer swaps to PU for skips then swaps back ). Obviously utilitys, traits, and weapons can get swapped around for the encounter but I think this will be the general build.

I think you’re right that the thief will not be needed for most dungeons. Thief stealth escorts already swap a bunch of traits when they do skips, it’s hardly going to be remarkable for mesmers to do the same. And with CS+Alacrity, Chronos will be even better at skips than they are now. Thieves are frankly out, unless something changes.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And idk what chaos is for at all.

You missed the part where he said it was for 15% boon duration, which is a key element of the build’s quickness sources.

Obviously we disagree on the might, as that’s the other part that brings in Chaos (12+ stacks of might from BD), and some other minor boons from BD (fury, regen, vigor).

I would concede that for record speed runs, any group will work to account for specific kill times, so the exact build of the chronomancer will be adjusted as needed to account for variations. 15s boss fights, for example, will be met with a shift to more dps as desired. Easy changes will be used liberally.

Fay.2357:

Staff is for several things. First, PR and warlock can be summoned at 1200 range while approaching a boss to give a very safe 2 illusions for CS. Secondly, chaos storm does quite good power damage, and you’ll be recharging it extremely quickly with the staff trait and alacrity together.

Next, boons translate to more boon duration through chaotic persistence. With chaos, I maintain 5-6 boons more or less permanently, and that means 15% boon duration. Take that away and you lose a drastic amount of uptime on quickness.

Additionally, between this build and herald, your party is pretty much set for might. That means your warrior doesn’t need to take PS and can instead go for a more offensive traitline.

Honestly, the damage difference between your variation and the original is going to be tiny. Mesmers don’t do good damage, especially not when focusing so heavily on this type of support. The difference in quickness uptime will more than compensate for the damage loss, and letting your warrior spec more offensively will only solidify that advantage.

^
To expand, with Herald being able to give 50% boon duration to the party, having a herald to pair up with on might generation means you’ll also be getting a significant boost to your quickness generation.

This advantage scales up in raids, because with Tides of Time having no target limit, Chronomancers are the only game in town for raid-wide quickness, so getting to the 100% boon duration cap means 6s of quickness raid-wide on about a 20s cooldown.

Indeed, Pyro’s build received an upgrade for BWE3, with iAvengers being able to actually provide some alacrity, and Well of Recall providing 2s more alacrity per cast than before, and on a lower cooldown (which more than compensates for the decrease in uptime from Well of Eternity, as the Recall gain is up-front, while the Eternity loss is in long-term uptime).

With a Herald and/or boon food, the build will be able to provide significantly more quickness (up to 100% quickness uptime, actually) to match an increase to 40s or more alacrity. Few bosses in dungeons now make it to 40s, but I expect raids will make more use of the longer alacrity (and uptime will likely matter more in fights that make stacking harder).

As far as the warrior, I’m curious what peoples thoughts are on the dps difference for a warrior being able to skip PS, and does berserker impact that at all?

Thanks for recording these!
It’s always good to be able to look back at a fight and as<sess it, and I’m terrible at recording my own.

And that second fight, I’m embarrassed that I totally missed that falcon wasn’t completely out, that probably lost us the match right there even if I’d been able to stand up to Biddle.

tobascodagama.2961:

Ok, let’s all speculate on what thing Druids will get that’s kind of like a better version one of our mechanics or utility skills or traits.

My guess: Spirit Pets will be take no damage from AoEs. Swapping Aspects will shatter the Spirit Pet for AoE damage and apply two stacks of Torment before immediately resummoning the Spirit Pet with full HP.

Poison. Otherwise, sounds about right.

Ryou.2398:

You are getting way way to over defensive sir, I have plenty of room to talk he stated this , maybe try playing Guardian instead. It’s a lot easier to play in my opinion, but also very enjoyable and rewarding. How does that not imply that I might have an easier time with guardian? Do you not know the true meaning behind imply? It is very clear in the structure of the entire sentence.

The “but” means that “easier” is a negative, which implies that he is advising guardian because it’s fun and rewarding, not because it’s easier. You have taken that as some kind of implication that your skills are not up to the task of a “harder” class like mesmer, when it in no way implies that. That’s the principal point, that you’re taking words of people about advising an “easier” class to be a statement about your abilities, when that isn’t true!

Ryou.2398:

And why does it matter so much? I did not insult him in any way, nor was I offended but clearly you are.

Given that you have multiple times misinterpreted and even taken things said by my fellow forum-goers as a personal insult, I am responding as a member of a community to inform you that your reaction to that community is inappropriate, insofar as you are incorrectly interpreting their words.

In more general terms, I regard it as the responsibility of any member of a community to help facilitate communication within that community, to defend fellow community members against unwarranted attacks, and to provide assistance to fellow community members as time allows and need warrants.
In short, I’m responding to you because I feel your behavior warrants it, and I have so far had the time to do so (whereas those you are responding to don’t necessarily).

Ryou.2398:

Actually he did clearly state the guardian was easier therefor is implying I found it easy, however I did not take offense many consider mesmer to be the advanced class and no one knows my mmorpg experience nor did or should I expect him to.

What? No, that makes absolutely no sense.
He said:
“It’s a lot easier to play in my opinion”, which implies absolutely nothing about how easy or not you find the guardian, since it’s his opinion.
“but also very enjoyable and rewarding”, which means that it’s enjoyable and rewarding even though it’s easy, so easy would not be a reason to not take guardian, which implies absolutely nothing about how easy or not you find the mesmer, because it is simply saying that he finds guardian fun and worthwhile even though it’s easier.

There is no assumption in the statement at all about your feelings on the mesmer, except that I think it’s likely he included the “good even though easy” part because you got all fired up about someone suggesting an easier class (guardian) earlier.

You’re getting after Oberon Vex for reading things into your posts that you say aren’t there, but your blatant misreadings are themselves so inappropriate that you have no room to talk!

Oberon Vex.1389:

Ryou.2398:

Man I do not understand why you guys misunderstand my post, it is not that I found it hard, which I do not at all I have been playing mmorpgs for ages and I usually play the top complex classes so that is not an issue plus I just play allot of rpgs as a whole. The issue was the feel and playstyle of the class itself. That is why I titled it I do not think mesmer is for me:)

I will admit I think part of the issue is I can never get into female characters and I thought it the powers looked odd on males for me, so I rolled a female. And no this is not an insecurity I just do not prefer purple in general, but it helped looking at a hot lady while doing it:)

1. No one can change how you FEEL about the playstyle, as such, this thread has little value for discussion.

2. Several players here have given you actual advice for improving your mesmer experience that you have ignored.

3. you are behaving very negatively so don’t imagine more people will continue to give you advice out of the goodness of their hearts

Also note that Velimere’s advice boils down to “it’s easier BUT it’s fun and worth it.” In which case, he’s not telling you to it because it’s easy, he’s telling you to do it in spite of that fact.

Traveler’s Runes.
Just don’t stick them in Karma gear T_T.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

…invariably forced to bail in front of pacts of mesmers and thieves. As if they weren’t already super advantaged alone. No, they also have to band together… very sad and annoying.

Now see, this complaint has no meaning.
How often do you not bail in front of packs of anything? Grouping up is kind of the name of the game, yah?

Also, mesmers by their very nature (worse for condi mes) are at a disadvantage in more than a 3v3. If anything, grouping up into multi-mesmer groups is making this less of a problem, as a group of 4+ ele/guard/warr would be more effective anyway.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I won’t enter into a possibly endless argument with you about that however can we agree then might have been a tad too far with the stealth boost? Couldn’t it have been something else they gave the mesmer instead of so much stealth? It was a very poor choice IMHO to amplify something already not too great in that game.

As long as they’re not willing to take away Thieves permastealth, increasing Mesmer stealth to not-perma is never going to unbalance anything more than it already is.

tobascodagama.2961:

Well, there’s strong and then there’s “less strong than intended”.

^
If they’re balancing around a false understanding of what alacrity does, that’s a problem.

Frankly, I’m not convinced that even they understand that it’s mathematically not giving 66% cooldown reduction, the way they talk about it.

Edit: realized that sounds uncharitable. I don’t mean to imply they are too dumb to realize it, I’m just referring to how it feels from the way they talk about alacrity.

If the Bulwark Gyro has significantly more hp than the iDefender I’ll raise a stink.

Samis.1750:

What you’re saying is “don’t try to balance an overpowered build, because roaming requires an overpowered build so don’t bother balancing it.”

No, I saying what I believe Anet would say: “if you run in groups like you’re supposed to, you won’t have a problem.
Meanwhile, we gave mesmers more stealth because we took away some of their other defensive options. It’s important in PvP, it’s not OP in pvp, and it doesn’t improve their ability to affect WvW outside tower capping, which we’re dealing with in another way. Maybe we’ll get to it someday, when all our important priorities are dealt with.”

Samis.1750:

Listen, we all have our favorite toys and don’t like them taken away regardless of the effect on others. But what are the other classes supposed to do. Roll a mesmer?

:rolleyes:
Or don’t try to roam WvW alone.

Samis.1750:

I joined 3 mesmers while on my trapper ranger and we just destroyed stuff. I felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards.

My experience roaming WvW with groups is that we destroy stuff whether I’m on a mesmer or not. Indeed, there’s plenty of evidence that PU mesmers scale up poorly enough with group size that I’d not be surprised if the group you just described would itself get wrecked by a more balanced group of the same size.

Samis.1750:

Guess what? You have no right to be able to win 1 v. 2 or 1 v. 3. unless they are in PVT gear on the way to the zerg unless you are far more skilled then the other like a really good glass thief (which is rare but there are some).

1. Right’s not nothing to do with it. PU is filling an important defensive role in sPvP, and nerfing it for an unsupported situation (running around WvW alone) is bad. If they nerf PU and replace the defensive functionality sufficiently, it won’t be a problem, but that’s a more involved solution than we can tend to expect.
2. Any class with enough stealth can win 1v2 or 1v3 because all it requires is separating your opponents, stringing them out, and killing them separately. That doesn’t mean you can walk into the face of any 2 people of reasonable skill and expect to take them out. Messing with noobs is fun, but once people catch on that decent cleanse is all you need, and power stealth mesmers are so glassy all you need to do is stick together, even the noobs will make life hard for roaming mesmers.

Samis.1750:

I understand that they don’t balance for 1v1 roaming, but why encourage overpowered FOTM builds? There are so many more mesmers now both in WvW solo and small group stuff, and then there’s the mesmer/thief combo.

Because the trait wasn’t built for WvW roaming, an unsupported game mode they barely even register, but for sPvP, a game mode they are so focused on that they’ve given mesmers the shaft in 80% of game content (read: pve) in order to keep them balanced there!
It’s not about “encouraging overpowered FOTM builds”, it’s about ignoring gameplay that’s not supported (WvW roaming) until it starts to meaningfully impact game modes that are (large scale wvw, group WvW, sPvP, PvE)!

Samis.1750:

Stealth isn’t much use in PvE

Untrue, there’s a reason thieves are part of the meta, and it’s not because of their dps.

Samis.1750:

and you can’t cap a point with it in pvp, so I have no idea why they buffed PU?

Since you noticed my post, I’m surprised you didn’t notice the multiple times this has been answered here.
PU was buffed because they took away clone death traits, which were previously a key defensive option for mesmers. They removed those traits presumably because they intended to buff mesmers offensively (which they did), but intended killing illusions to become a relevant counterplay to mesmers (which clone death traits inhibited). So instead they amplified mesmer stealth, likely reasoning that it’s been okay for thieves so far, so including another class in that niche won’t be so bad.
And they were right, PU has become a key defensive option for mesmers in pvp. It’s OP in wvw roaming because of the ability to chain them together for very long stealth times, but such long stealth isn’t relevant in pvp because of the capping issues you mentioned. It is relevant, however, in the stealth it gives each individual skill. 3s on The Prestige and decoy are fine for many uses, but defensively PU makes a significant difference. Chaining The Prestige and Decoy in spvp is actually not terribly useful, as then you start to get into “I’ve been invisible too long” territory. But getting 6s now and 6s later when you need it does make a difference, defensively.

Samis.1750:

Pledge is going to get nerfed at some point.

Considering The Pledge is bugged, I certainly agree that it will.
And considering the whole effect of The Pledge is to encourage unhealthy stealth camping, I also agree that it should. I suspect that this would resolve most of the WvW issues without harming sPvP in the slightest, in fact.

Xstein.2187:

Thanks, I always just made that assumption. So, the best way to calculate the cooldown reduction is to just divide the cooldown by 1.66? If this is the case than shouldn’t you get around 39.759% cool down reductions for skills with full alacrity uptime? Its weird that he got 33%, perhaps something to look into. If pyro’s data is correct than we are only getting a “50% faster recharge” or every second under alacrity reduses skill recharge by 1.5 seconds.

You’ve got a rounding error in your math, it’s not 1.66, it’s 1.6666666_, or 1 and 2/3.
So it should work out to exactly 40%.
(I’ve found that when Anet says 66% or 33%, it’s actually representing a fractional value. I’ve seen it in a few places so far.)

And yes, if Pyro’s estimation turns out to be correct, that means alacrity is only giving 50% faster recharge rather than the stated 66% (2/3).

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

So I’m supposed to leave the mesmer alone inside smc or a keep?

No, I can’t. It mean I have to bring lots of ppl to flush him out and take quite some time to do it if the mesmer is even not half bad.

You completely ignored where I said that staying in keeps is gonna mark you on the minimap. That’s going to make it extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, for mesmers to stay in a keep long enough to retake it.
So this is going to be a non-issue, which means nerfing mesmer stealth for this reason is meaningless.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Lastly, I agree that not every build should be able to take on every other build…but that is pretty much what the problem of the mesmer in wvw is right now… they can do exactly what you say none should.

He wasn’t saying a “should”, you were. He was suggesting that it’s not important that any particular build be beatable in 1v1 WvW roaming.

For example, every MOBA has a few characters who are supreme duelists. Trying to fight a duelist alone in League of Legends is probably going to get you killed. This isn’t considered a bad thing, it’s considered a feature of that class over others. The principle that a dire or rabid condi mesmer can beat any other class 1v1 isn’t inherently bad, only if its effects are. But the effect of condi mes being unbeatable (if this were even actually true) is that you need to bring a friend when roaming WvW (which seems to have been Anet’s intention in the first place), and that your camps aren’t always safe when the zerg is far away. Since that’s extremely low-impact in terms of WvW objectives, it’s not important that Anet deal with it anytime soon.

Tealots.6095:

Stormbolt.7293:

Reaper and Herald. The Reaper can provide a strong frontline like you said, and we can keep the enemy locked down at mid-close range pretty thoroughly. The Herald can sit back and pulse boons and provide some additional CC with hammer, or maybe even some staff support.

What Stormbolt said! Reapers are fantastic front-liners. That goes for condition or power damage. Meanwhile, Chronomancers and Heralds can work at the mid-Range. I also think that a Glint/Ventari Herald can bring some interesting healing and CC options. One thing the trio may be lacking is really reliable condition cleanse.

If the chrono is at least semi-support, you can have condi cleanse from Inspiration.
For that matter, if the herald takes the line that gives 50% boon duration, the chrono can give booku amounts of quickness for relatively little investment.
Just a little compromise toward the support on the part of both the Herald and Chrono and the final synergy could be fantastic.

“tedious and annoying to play against” is not a valid criteria for balance changes.

You know what else is tedious and annoying to play against?
Full-tank rangers.
Cleric warriors.
d/d Eles.
Any full-tank build in the game.
Any player that kills you.

And those players who sit around using it, do you think they’d magically be more useful if they didn’t choose this dumb as kitten spec? No, they’d be just as useless, running something else stupid. The spec you’re complaining about isn’t a problem, as you admit, it’s not useful.
And it isn’t the problem, as stupid players are stupid no matter what builds they try, and troll players will troll no matter what tools you give them.

In short, your complaint is rather meaningless, as fixing it won’t fix your annoyance, and Anet should never base balance of a class on the comfort levels of the people who fight against that class.

Drogoning.1285:

AlphatheWhite.9351
“My personal favorite is the author of the “Pu mesmers in WvW need a change” thread, complaining about PU condi then describing how his berserker ranger doesn’t die to dire PU condi because of all the cleanse he brings.”

I read that forum and it was stated that on his ranger he had traited for full condi removal and was at a standstill, so that pretty much counterteaming and still cant do enough dmg. Maybe its not pu thats the problem, but the dire stat set combined with pu, theres a reason Dires not in pvp…

First, he was talking about a ranger build that he apparently runs regularly in WvW. Apparently that much condi removal works just fine for him. No surprises there, we’ve already been talking about all these people who refuse to accept that condi is now a threat.

Second, he was in berserker gear. If a tanky character deals equivalent (or close to equivalent) damage to a squishy character, the squishy character shouldn’t stand a chance in a match-up.
If you run into a warrior in full Soldiers, are you going to be surprised when you can’t kill him? Dire is the same way, it’s a very tanky set, so don’t be surprised when you can’t kill them easily. The real issue comes if you can’t kill them because they’re too tanky, but they can easily kill you.
In the case of this ranger, he found that with a decent amount of cleanse, a dire condi mesmer couldn’t kill him. The fact that he couldn’t kill the dire mesmer is implied by the “dire” part and the “ranger” part.

Thirdly, expecting glass (berserkers) to be able to kill tank (dire) is expecting the entire game to be biased towards glass. In traditional pvp, tanks (or tanky dps) are the answer to glass cannons. If glass can kill tank but tank can’t kill glass, then there’s no point to tank, and everyone will just go glass.

TyPin.9860:

Xstein.2187:

Additionally, on game changing, have you ever tried to pvp stomp in an enemy time warp? Imagine this all the time, its a game changer. Alacrity is also a game changer as it reduces all cool downs by 66%. This means instead of casting ice bow 4 every 20 seconds, you can cast it every 6.8 seconds if under alacrity for the full duration, which as I have mentioned, is possible.

I believe Alacrity works differently. It speeds up the recharge “speed” by 66%. Meaning in 1 second you recharge 1.66s of a skills cool down. This would reduce a 20s cool down to aprox. 12s, if alacrity is 100% of the time active.

This. Mathematically, the maximum cooldown reduction you can get is 40%.

Intuitively, think of you and a friend traveling to meet each other. For every step you take, your friend takes 2/3 of a step. Because he’s moving less than you, and he won’t move if you don’t, you will always meet closer to his starting point than yours.

However, Pyro timed it and says that he was only able to detect 33% cooldown reduction, so something wonky is going on anyway.

MailMail.6534:

Thank you Alpha for Kormir blessing you with the gift of math and truth! This helps to put this theory of using Mistrust in better context when discussing its viability.

I’m looking forward to testing this out. I’ve always liked the idea of confusion as a pvper, but I’ve had to recognize its severe limitations on Mesmer for quite some time now. It’s worth saying that when comparing IR and CoF to Mistrust that there will be no absence of shattering in a Mistrust build.

Considering that I’m a pvp purist, I hope someone tests the idea in WvW and reports back. Confusion can be potentially pernicious in that game mode I’ve heard. I’m imagining Tides of Time literally stacking so much confusion on an entire zerg with one skill. Add MoD to that and… yikes!

Biggest problem I can see with tackling the zerg is that with Duel/Illu/Chrono, this build is gonna be soo frail…
Maybe csplit → drop off the wall → Tides the snot out of them → cshift back?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I agree with both of you, however, mesmer is right now not only ubber strong but comes with the added problem of portals that all other professions don’t have… It’s huge and extraordinarily annoying and time and resource consuming to fight and you don’t really have the option to just not care. It’s the mix of several key things that in that context makes a genuine problem.

I don’t understand how portals makes it more annoying and resource consuming to fight. You mean because of recapping towers? You do know that they’re gonna change that so that being in a tower in the 5 minutes after it’s capped marks you on the minimap, right?

Mirmil.5074:

Oh well, wonderful proof countering the “PU condi is OP”

My personal favorite is the author of the “Pu mesmers in WvW need a change” thread, complaining about PU condi then describing how his berserker ranger doesn’t die to dire PU condi because of all the cleanse he brings.

Time for some math!

It is true that Mistrust seems lackluster in its confusion application. I’d like to do some math to show you the real comparison between Mistrust and Deceptive Evasion.

Deceptive Evasion gives you 1 clone per dodge. At base rate, you can dodge once per 10s. At max rate, you can dodge twice per 10s.
Every clone gives you a specific benefit when shattered, depending on the shatter you use and the traits you have.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that you are a condi build with max endurance regen, and no shatter traits besides the Illusion tree minor (confusion on shatter). Let us also assume, contrary to fact, that you can manage to use every clone generated with DE as part of Cry of Frustration.
Let us also assume for simplicity that the only condition duration you have is the 33% on confusion duration from Illusions.

That means every clone from DE is worth 2 confusion at 4 seconds, or 8 confusion-seconds.
2 per 10s means 16 confusion-seconds every 10s, or 1.6 confusion stacks per second. CoF is aoe, so that’s 1.6 stacks per second on up to 5 targets.
This is the maximum potential contribution of confusion from Deceptive Evasion, assuming we have no other ways to gain endurance (such as sigil of energy).

Now Mistrust gives 2 stacks of confusion at 8 seconds per interrupt, or 16 confusion-seconds.
In order to hit 1.6 stacks per second, you need to interrupt one target once at least every 20s. This is also on up to 5 targets, so they’re technically even in aoe at this point.
This is not the maximum confusion potential of Mistrust. Interrupting more often, or interrupting more than one target, can increase the confusion applied dramatically

So to keep up with Deceptive Evasion in sustained confusions, at least, Mistrust only has to interrupt at most once every 20s.

What about cleanse?
Okay, let’s suppose that they had the same duration (if they always get cleansed at 4s, for example). That means we can ignore duration, and just focus on stack applications per second.

If you can drop both your clones in a single Cry of Frustration, you’ll get 8 stacks of confusion. At full alacrity, you can get that CoF once every 15s,
or 8/15 = .5333 stacks per second. Since that leaves us with 5s without a CoF, and we get a clone every 5s, we can use that extra clone on a Mind Wrack. So that’s another 2 confusion every 10s, or .2 stacks per second, for a total of .7333 stacks per second.

In order to get the same rate with interrupts, you have to interrupt on average once every 2.72 seconds. Or to put it another way, you have to get 3.7 interrupts every 10s (since we can get multiple interrupts, in theory).
That’s where shatters start to gain ground, as they allow more stacks at a shorter duration, while Mistrust relies more heavily on longer durations.

Additionally, there is the burst factor to consider.
Dodging for 2 illusions and hitting CoF gets you an immediate 4 confusion stacks.
In order to match that burst with Mistrust, you have to interrupt 2 people at once. That’s certainly possible, but it’s trickier and less reliable. Furthermore, CoF will always work the same way every time, each of our interrupts works slightly differently (Magic Bullet can proc 2 unpredictably, MoD can proc up to 5, Tides of Time can proc any number, but has a big tell and a positioning requirement, Diversion without MoF only gets one at a time, etc.).

So Mistrust in the hands of a smart mesmer always provides more sustained confusion than Deceptive Evasion, can provide more confusion application per second if you can interrupt 4 times every 11 seconds, and can only provide the same or better confusion burst if you interrupt 2 people at a time, or at least two separate interrupts within the amount of time it takes your illusions to run to the target (at super-speed).

What other issues are there?
1. Torment. With Maim the Disillusioned, every DE clone shattered applies 1 torment at 6s, so we get 12 stack seconds of torment every 10s, or 1.2 stacks per second of torment. It also ramps up the burst a bit more, putting even more pressure on Mistrust in the burst department.
2. You won’t always have double endurance regeneration. Any falloff in endurance regeneration drops DE relative to Mistrust.
3. You can sometimes gain a bunch of endurance at once. Sigil of Energy can get you an extra clone every 10s, which is a 50% increase in DE’s potency.
4. You won’t always use DE on CoF. Every time you use DE for MW, Diversion or Distortion, DE loses ground to Mistrust.
5. Condi duration. Extra condition duration gains ground for Mistrust in low-cleanse environments, and gains ground for DE in high-cleanse environments.
6. Clone death. Clones die, get cleaved, etc. Super-speed on shatters helps, but if you lose a clone after you dodge for it, you lose ground.
7. Dodging to create clones means you didn’t save your dodge for defense. This is a subtle point, but if you ever need to use a dodge for a defensive use, you’ve compromised the value of DE dps-wise, while interrupts are always used offensively by definition.
8. IR+CP might be enough. If you can get full illusions on every shatter without DE, DE is unnecessary. If you can at least get full illusions on every CoF, DE loses ground against Mistrust.
9. I realize they aren’t available in PvP, but…Runes of Perplexity do exist. And an interrupt build is definitely gonna be able to get more use out of them than a shatter build…

In summary of the above, I think the math supports this as a potentially viable concept. The greatest difficulty you face is cleanse, as Mistrust put more of its balance into condition duration than Cry of Frustration and Illusionary Retribution did.

Also, I love the idea of dropping Tides of Time onto a zerg with Mistrust active, and watching the confusion spread.

@Chaos Archangel
I realize Mental Defense has good defensive value (the virtues of which I just extolled in the BWE3 thread), but with alacrity you’ve still got Signet of Inspiration procs on at least a 20s cooldown via Illusionary Inspiration. Since you’re running BD anyway, wouldn’t that still be a lot of boonsharing?
I mean, classic boonshare is only doing a share once every 15s on average anyway…

Oddly, I actually disagree with the recommendation of Time Catches Up.

With how hard you’re focusing on interrupts, and how necessary they are to the dps potential of Mistrust itself, I feel the synergistic effect of Delayed Reactions will serve you better, opening up more windows for interrupts to occur.

Plus, as you attempt to land more aoe interrupts, Delayed Reactions will spread slow aoe as well, which is pretty boss.

Lastly, the slow from delayed reactions serves as a much-needed cover condition, given you aren’t getting the condis from Chaotic Interruption or Winds of Chaos/Chaos Storm to help.

gannondorf.7628:

Hey guys! I have a question. How is going to work mental defense with the new echo of memory now? If mental defense pop at first block the phantasm have the time to be killed before you finish echo of memory block and so it serve to nothing. Or is mental defense going to activate after echo of memory block time? Coz he could be a really great combo for survivability, block and after that 50% less dammages.

• With Chronophantasma, you can shatter the defender during the block to get a little more out of him. If you’re running illusions, that’ll actually give you a reduction on the next time you can get a defender back up, which is good. The 1.5s daze can actually work in your favor then, as if you shatter 1.5s before your block ends, you’ll get the iDefender’s buff right as you end the block.
• Allies (and other illusions) still benefit from the iDefender’s buff.
• While you’re blocking, the iDefender doesn’t take any damage via the buff, so enemies have to attack it directly (or be cleaving heavily) to take it down (or attack allies, which is fine).
• Traiting Protected Phantasms can preserve the iDefender for a bit, if you don’t mind losing Restorative Illusions. As I understand it, shattering phantasms gives them another proc of the distortion, so you can get up to 2 seconds of distortion to help you keep an iDefender out when you finish your block.
• Traiting Persistent Illusions improves iDefender’s survivability during block-time, improves its survivability when you shatter it, and does the cool retaliation thing that some builds are built around.
• Unblockable attacks still deal damage to you, and iDefender definitely helps with those.

I think it’ll be just fine in any situation where it would have been fine before (high cleave environments neuter iDefender anyway).

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

2. Protection ( better than mesmer unless I’m missing something )

Chaotic Dampening = Chaos Armor grants protection (5s), and cooldown reduction on staff for every second of chaos armor.
There are already mesmer builds with extremely high chaos armor uptime. Chronomancer just improves on that by providing more ethereal fields (to use with iLeap and Phase Retreat) and lower cooldowns on all those abilities, it’s been shown to be relatively easy to keep up 100% chaos armor with a chronomancer, which means an easy 100% protection uptime on yourself, and more than enough duration to give near-perma protection to your allies via boonshare.
The fact that protection is one of Chaos Armor’s 3 boons is gravy.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

5. Quickness ( guardian )

Bullkitten. Discounting boon duration,
Guardian gets 5s every 24s, which is a 21% uptime.
Time Warp gives mesmer 11s on a 60s cooldown (CS), which is 18%,
Well of Action gives 3s on a 20s cooldown, which is 15%
Tides of Time gives 3s on a 20s cooldown, which is 15%
Choose any two, and you’re already at more quickness than a guardian gives.
Choose all three, and you blow guardians out of the water.
Land Well of Action and/or Tides of Time inside your CS alongside Time Warp, and your uptime continues to rise.
It is, in fact, possible to keep 100% quickness uptime on allies with a more full support mesmer, an extravagance that is hardly necessary, as the 50%+ that a bunker mesmer could dish out is surely plenty.
The only advantage guardian quickness has is that it’s easier to use, which is hardly a great criteria for superiority at upper levels of play. I can’t imagine how you came to the conclusion that guardian has better quickness support.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

6. Additional boons ( guardian way better, shouts convert 1 condition into a boon in addition to soldier runes, you can check the conversions at the bottom of my post, simply said tho, they are good conversions )

1. What boons, at what uptime, are you expecting? Mesmers provide a lot of boons, in fact it’s commonly one of the selling points made in support mesmer’s favor. How are you jumping from that to insisting that guardian boon generation is better? Mesmers with BD can keep up 10 stacks of might on allies before boonshare, for Pete’s sake! And Chaos armor may be random, but with 100% uptime you’ll be getting a fair share of all three in a fight.

2. You rip on the idea of “random” boons, but isn’t that effectively what boon conversion is, given you can’t control what conditions will be on your allies and which of those get converted?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

I’m saying portal is so valuable it would be hard to compete with on a roamer mesmer ( which I do believe will still be the meta if you look above ).

Since guardians don’t have portal, can we agree this is at least a non-issue in bunker mesmer viability vs guardian?
Losing a bunker utility because “portal is too good” would be a tick in mesmer’s favor, since that’s something they can take that guardians can’t, right? After all, the mesmer can just choose not to take portal, and be at the same place the guardian is.

Other points:

• You’ve also, again, totally discounted the value of alacrity to teammates. Alacrity is not useless by any means, it is in fact a very strong bonus to teammates. The biggest difficulty with Alacrity will be players learning to adjust their playstyle to take advantage of alacrity when it’s available (making sure to grab it from nearby wells, use the right abilities when you know you’re gonna get it, etc.).

• You argue strongly, effectively, in favor of using Bountiful Disillusionment on bunker mes, then insist that bunker mes just doesn’t stand a chance, when BD itself resolves two of your biggest points in guardian’s favor (stability, other boon stacking). Does that seem right to you?

• Pretty sure Absconditus was talking about lockdown mes, not bunker mes.

Shala.8352:

So uh… many saying PU mesmer wont be nerfed cuz in pvp if you are so much time invisible you wont cap (i can just /laugh to this statement but ye, its like saying a ranger is useless in pvp cuz he cant easy kite while staying in the point and keeping it contested).

But aniway the main fact is, that if PU doesnt affect that much in pvp, why just not nerf it for wvw since is making roaming (wich is one of the best funny part of this game) not enjoyable??

PU performs a solid role in PvP, which is to provide a decent defensive option, an option that was previously served by traits that inflicted conditions when your clones died.
Since stealth does prevent capping, excess stealth in sPvP does not cause the problems that it does in WvW roaming. The same is true of rangers in fact, a ranger that kites too much is in fact a burden to his team, as he’s not helping the cap. It’s not stealth that’s the problem, it’s excess stealth, which is too costly in sPvP to be a major issue.
Again, by excess I don’t mean The Prestige giving 6s, or decoy giving 6s, or even MI giving 10s. I mean the 6+6+10+6=28s+ of continuous stealth that makes people whine about never seeing the mesmer coming in WvW, and the extremely high stealth uptime that you get from combining The Pledge with The Prestige.

Nerfing PU for the sake of WvW roaming, though, does nerf the defensive value of it in sPvP, as it’s not the combined durations of the three main stealth abilities that matters defensively, but their durations separately.

So yes, unless you replace PU with an equivalently strong defensive option, nerfing PU for the sake of WvW roaming will harm mesmers in sPvP.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I’m a rather bad mesmer myself and every time I play mine, even full glass, with a minimum of stealth and blink I’m next to unkillable (never mind using PU) even when the opponent has 20+ The only time I die is when I get kitteny which, to be fair, usually happen to anybody who feel so untouchable… but still… something is definitely wrong.

Mmm, and what do you generally accomplish with that build, running away from 20+ people in WvW?

I’ve also got a foolproof way to never die in WvW: never go into WvW. Free will OP?

nakirush.7531:

So sad. I’ve never enjoyed Phantasm builds. Guess I gotta just tough it out until HoT (hopefully).

I run a clone condi build, staff/scepter+pistol. Chaos/Dueling/Illusions, rabid gear (sinister would probably work just fine, with more dps).

The focus for long-term dps is bleeds from iDuelist, clones and my own staff AA, but I often turn to shattering to hasten the fight (or to not waste clones/phants that are about to die).

Shattering isn’t very useful in boss or champion fights, but in open-world content I shatter enough that you might be happy.

I also don’t worry much about phantasms. Even though iDuelist applies more bleeds/dps than a clone does, clone dps is high enough that I don’t stress the phantasms at all.

I know it doesn’t do everything you’d want, but it’s a halfway point, PvE-wise.

Hero.3527:

9.) Not that i feel like they should be better, its just that a dire build should not have near the same dmg with condis as with burst or straight up dmg since as you say you are “glass”. Whats that? there are lots of posts where people are saying that pu mesmers need a bit of a nerf (in WvW!) and im not the only one suggesting it? Well then. What do you know. Look down the forums page and just see.

Your ranger build is a shining example of why this isn’t true, though.
As you said, you’re running a dps build (zerker), and yet you fight dire condi mesmers to a standstill.
If the mesmer had “near the same dmg with condis as with burst or straight up dmg”, you should get wrecked by that in anything less than dire/soldiers/cele.

The truth is that the damage from condi builds is high when unmitigated, but mitigation against condi dps is a lot more effective (and readily available, tbh) than mitigation against power burst. The result is a build type that punishes uninformed players but rewards informed ones.

Hero.3527:

Make the blind traits have an internal Cooldown (not super long just enough), or change the pledge a bit, or change pu a lil bit and thats pretty much it.

Well The Pledge is bugged to be adding 3x as much cdr as it should be, so fixing the bug would at least accomplish something. By the math, in fact, The Pledge is adding more stealth uptime to PU mesmers than PU itself is.

Hero.3527:

AtomsofSystems your just not getting my point. Its not a complaint about zerk should be able to beat all, For instance i have a knights/zerk ranger GS/LB with full condi removal, so against pu condi memsers i remove all their condis, but i cant to enough dmg to them even though i am full dmg. So the fights last foreverrrrrrrrrr until i get bored and just leave. (or a friend of theres comes or a friend of mine shows up) This post is not abt thiefs opness whatsoever.

I’m sorry, I must be missing something. You’re complaining about pu condi mesmers, but then you just posted that you run a (ranger!) build that has so little difficulty against PU condi mesmers that it’s a boring fight and you just move on.

I don’t get it, are PU condi mesmers OP and hard to deal with, or aren’t they???

Crossplay.2067:

Surely you know that there are already enemies in the game that attack faster than once per second and are considered balanced, right?

For something to be competitive or viable, there has to be more than “some enemies” it’s effective against, it has to be most.
Some enemies attack fast enough to make confusion effective. Most enemies do not, so it’s not effective. Any similar mechanic will suffer the same downfall without a total rebalance of how NPCs work, which is a vastly bigger project that simply not implementing a new mechanic that would require it.

Crossplay.2067:

For that matter, what mob hits for 10k on an autoattack?

Bosses, champions. You know, the fights that matter the most.

It won’t be a thing until HoT at the earliest.

Power Shatters do their damage on too long a cooldown. The lowest you can get Mind Wrack is 10.5s cooldown, and even assuming you get 3 illusions up every time, and including Mental Anguish, you get dramatically outpaced by the Auto Attacks on any other clkitten
ters make great burst, and that’s what they’re balanced around: doing a lot of damage all at once. But since they happen so relatively infrequently, the dps is terrible.

Chronomancer promises to change that somewhat, as alacrity allows shattering more often (and using other skills more often), as well as providing more shatter fodder and even letting phantasms get some damage into the mix. That said, the numbers a full power shatter chronomancer build are still actually fairly low for pve. We’ll have to see how that goes to be sure.

That brings us to condi shatter. Condi shatter now does not provide the dps needed for success in pve outside of killing random hyenas and devourers in the silverwastes. The problem is that confusion and torment are the weakest conditions in PvE at large, so doing damage with them requires stacking them really kitten high, but especially with the nerf to Maim the Disillusioned, you can only get those levels of stacks very briefly (enough to burn down low-health mobs or husks in SW, but not enough for longer fights). The culprit is, once again, those long cooldowns, as you just can’t shatter fast enough to keep up the high stacks you’d need for competitive dps.

Chronomancer again promises some change, but this time with promise. In BWE1 before the Illusionary Reversion nerf, I was able to slaughter an entire line of husk slingers in seconds. The combination of condis on every shatter, alacrity on every shatter, quickness on every shatter (I didn’t use Chronophantasma), and extra clones on shatters gave me a really rapid application rate, which made it competitive.
The nerf to IR slowed down the pace and requires Chronophantasma to keep up a cadence, so it’s not as good, but it still promises to be useful, and we’ll have to see if the build survives to HoT.

As it stands, the only shatter build that is competitive in pve is a Chronomancer condition shatter build assuming it remains unchanged, but which will only be available when Heart of Thorns is released.

Nausicca.6038:

Ansau.7326:

You can melt people in seconds and they allow to face outnumbered fights, which requires tons of skill and are more stressful than duels with a power burst build.

PU + the pledge + passive dmg + high toughness ( and vitaly when using dire) must be so stressful to play.
As stressfull as condi trap thief.

He’s talking about outnumbered fights specifically.
Give it a try, it doesn’t matter how long your stealth period is, when you’re outnumbered and you’ve only got 3 stealth skills on your bar, you will run out.
Maybe it’s not fair that pu condi can win a 2v1 in WvW roaming, but it’s been said before: WvW solo roaming pretty much requires being able to win 2v1 by definition.
The moment they try to balance it is the moment solo roaming stops being a thing entirely.
You’ll still get wrecked when you try to wander the Borderlands alone, it just won’t be a solo mesmer/thief/ele that kills you.

adelaide.6213:

Fay.2357:

I’m not entirely sure what you mean. Did you mean to say converts slow to quickness? Your suggestion isn’t quite making sense, can you elaborate?

I’m sorry, I should have made my suggestion a bit clearer. (I’ll edit the OP)

Now that Echo of Memory blocks for the full duration, I feel that having quickness on you while using it is a bit awkward given our availability of quickness when we choose Seize the Moment as our GM. If you have quickness, you will block for less time.

My suggestion is to convert quickness on you to slow, resulting in more block time than normal, and then turn it back to quickness when you summon your phantasm. This would only happen if you have Seize the Moment traited.

Unfortunately, the situation is much too complicated for this to be clearly valuable.
If you want more block, then yes your suggestion makes theoretical sense (there are practical design reasons they might not want to do this)
But the other objective of the skill (especially now) is to get a phantasm out. If I’m using Seize the Moment to get more iAvengers quicker, the last thing I want is to take 4 seconds to get a phantasm up.
Seize the Moment’s usage is to increase action speeds, your suggestion mixes in a little bit of “decrease action speed” in there, albeit with a sometimes-legit purpose. But the result would be a schizophrenic trait that would be extremely difficult to balance or justify.

I agree with you though, that there’s still room for designing around how quickness interacts with skills that you want to last longer.

To that point, Blurred Frenzy gives the same amount of evade whether you have quickness or not. Do we actually know that a quickened block gives less blocking time?

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m in my fourth year now of playing Mesmer. The fact that I’m still here is mostly hardheadedness. You, Ross Biddle, and a couple of others have been kind enough to help now and then over the years. Thank you.

Nevertheless, I stand by my statements. There are players who deliberately call for nerfs and who to all appearances want the class to be underpowered. I suspect this contributes to a feeling of being elite.

Help is hard to come by. No one will tell you the combos.. the skill sequences.. Such as I know I learned mainly through careful analysis of gameplay videos and trial and error.

That is why I suggested YouTube. I might have also included Reddit and a couple of other sites.

We, Mesmers in general, are hurt by this.

My experience has been that forumgoers wait until you come to them with a starting point, and they give recommendations based on that.
If you ask “where do I start?” they take the lazy way out and point at metabattle or youtube or guides.
Only a handful of people will post more right out of the gate

If you come with a build and say “how’s this?” though, they’ll pop out of the woodwork and make a whole bunch of recommendations.

If you suggest a skill rotation, they’ll suggest how you can improve it (and one or two will insult you for coming up with such a terrible rotation, but c’est la vie).

In short: do some homework, come up with your own starting point, and come back here, then you’ll get the guidance that Ithilwen is lamenting.

sPvP
Rabid condi, still. Sometimes I grab PU, sometimes not. Same general build as WvW otherwise, but swapping Signet of Domination for Blink and MI for Moa signet.

I’m really inexperienced in many ways, but it amazes me how much more aware I am of the game than most people I play with, even now. I get really tired of losing battles because my entire team decided it was more important to fight in the middle of nowhere instead of fighting on the points. I can 1v1 just fine, and sometimes even 1v2, but usually if my team doesn’t help take points, I find myself winning the point until my opponent gets an ally to +1 me, and I either die or run off.

If my team is aware, and does fight on points, I take the usual roaming role, throwing +1 onto important fights and backcapping when the enemy is committing where they shouldn’t.
I’m getting better at it, but I still suck in general terms.

PvE build
I run mainly bleed condi: Chaos/Dueling/Illusion.
Key traits are Bountiful Dissipation, Chaotic Transference, Deceptive Evasion and Maim the Disillusioned.
Rabid gear with carrion jewels on my exotic trinkets.
Scepter+Pistol offset, Staff mainset, Sigils of Earth on both (did the math, you get more dps out of Earth than Bursting, but more burst damage out of Bursting than Earth), corruption on scepter, Agony on staff (transitioning to Malice at some point, except it’s Bifrost, so I’m not sure I want to stick such an expensive sigil on it without knowing I can get it back out if I want to move the weapon to another character).
Undead/Traveler runes until I can get Nightmare.

I focus largely on providing heavy condi artillery, with occasional bursts from confusion/torment bombs. I’ve found that even without Chronomancer, and with confusion/torment being weaker against NPCs, shatter bombs can shorten a quick fight if you have a good sense of timing.
In the silverwastes, I find that on any mob more difficult than trash, I have faster killtimes than my zerker d/d thief. I assume that’s largely the ramp-up time getting in the way, but it still surprises me that my upper dps outpaces my thief on non-husk targets. Some of that is time on target, it’s a lot easier to keep up my dps on male teragriffs, easier to survive female teragriffs, easier to kite wolves, a LOT easier to stay on target on vile thrashers, and just straight up easier to kill husks (for obvious reasons).
I also find that even without ferocity, my reflects are in a strong enough place to be valuable in fights like Mangler (VW) and Lupi, though most groups I run dungeons with don’t have the coordination to do things like exploit Lupi’s reflect weakness. So I’m a reflect bot sometimes.

WvW
Classic PU condi mes, rabid gear. Same build as above generally, but swap the pistol for a torch, pick up PU and abuse The Pledge for maximum cheese.
It’s a roamer. I spend most of my time flipping camps, killing dolyaks and guards, and generally being a kitten.
When I come to a tower siege, I spend more time outside than inside, trying to mess with the edges of the enemy zerg and get them to split off and weaken the whole. I’ve occasionally manage to lead up to 8 people off on a wild goose chase away from the big fight, which is probably actually more valuable than flipping a camp :P
I get a kill on the edges sometimes, but it’s really hard to get stomps with a zerg around.
I realize roaming is low-impact, and I do wish I could be more useful to the zerg, but I have a good time roaming.
I sometimes pop my tag and try to get a little posse going. If we can get up to 5, we can take towers while the enemy zerg is occupied, and it gets a bit more effective. It’s also fun to ambush other small groups trying to do the same thing (especially trebuchet crews), which I think is a lot more in the spirit of WvW than 1v1 roaming.

tobascodagama.2961:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

I’m interested to see what kind of zerg trolling I can do with Echoes of Memory+Deja Vu + Ineptitude.

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=012710

The fact that I’ve seen this before changed nothing.
I laughed for like, 2 minutes straight.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Xyonon.3987:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Or just a % of healing.

without cd ofc, yes.

as simple as that.

There is no percentage that is fair at both low and high healing power.

As someone, I can’t recall who, recently demanded, “show me the math”.

Some quick math on the BWE3 changes says it’ll actually be very possible to put up 100% team alacrity uptime even without iAvengers.

With Eternity, Recall, Action and Calamity, using a 54 second period (instead of triggering CS the moment it comes off cd), you can put up 98% alacrity uptime.

Swapping Calamity for Mimic, you can get 111% uptime (giving wiggle room for error).

Since 100% quickness was already achievable, and nothing has changed, you can now keep your group at 100% quickness and 100% alacrity, if you want. To Pyro’s point, that’s not as valuable as it appears, but it’s still cool anyway.

Adding in iAvengers just opens up more of that room, though iAvenger survivability concerns are valid there.

A third upshot of this development (both the boost to Recall and iAvengers), is that it may be feasible to forgo some wells in favor of other utilities without losing group support value. As Pyro says, the 35s continuous alacrity/quickness you got before was plenty. If you can get the same, but have Feedback or Null Field at the same time, all the better.

It seems clear that Jet Lag and other Well support builds are just getting stronger.

tobascodagama.2961:

Zenith.7301:

As I said, what you people are complaining about IS A CLASS MECHANICAL ISSUE WITH MESMERS/RANGERS/NECROMANCERS/ GUARDIAN SPIRIT WEAPONS THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED INSTEAD OF SWEPT UNDER THE RUG.

My big hope for Engineer’s Elite spec is that their Drones will operate like other pets and then finally this stupid kittening problem will be too widespread to keep ignoring.

You mean turrets?

Azathoth.2098:

:Complains about the one drawback to the change, then suggests that instead they buff the iAvenger to god-pet status.:

Seriously? You suggest that they replace a drawback that is clearly meant to balance out the buffs with another set of enormous buffs?

tobascodagama.2961:

Coulter.2315:

I’ll expect some push back from people with “Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, Block! Mesmers spend 50% of the time immune to attacks”

And I’ll just be hiding out in my Chronobunker. :P

Between Blurred Frenzy, Echoes of Memory, Deja Vu, Distortion and Well of Precognition, with 100% alacrity and sword/illusion/shatter cdr traits, you can theoretically keep up 100% immunity to most attacks.
That would let you become an invulnerable capping brick on the point, except that the distortion part of the rotation would lose ground. And you’d be dealing 0 damage that whole time. It’s a hilarious thought experiment, though.

I’m interested to see what kind of zerg trolling I can do with Echoes of Memory+Deja Vu + Ineptitude.

Korusef.3714:

That Guy.5704:

One thing I am seeing though, is that alacrity is even better for elementalist in pve(if there was any question about its power before anyway). a chronomancer that can get 9 seconds of alacrity up (illusionary avenger + well of recall traited with “all’s well…”) puts icebow 4 on an 8.33 second cooldown. Maybe thats too long and it will still get dropped after going icebow 4 -> 3, but it still has the potential to even further increase its power.

But at least they will need Mesmer for that (and perfecting the alacrity rotation takes some skill)

^
It gives the mesmer a place in support…which is good.
If alacrity happens to be too powerful specifically because icebow is powerful, doesn’t that say more about icebow than alacrity?
Also, having a mesmer means having 1 less icebow.

Falkor.7932:

The Gravity Well change seems cool, but pullx3 > Blowout also sounded pretty cool.
Shield changes seem great, mesmer has too many single blocks already. Continuum Rift – This shatter still feels pretty weak in application, I feel like the rift’s existence is enough as a marker for where that mesmer will revert to, rather than being a source to force them out of it. I have a feeling it will significantly reduce it’s usability in PvP.

To be fair, that’s kind of the idea.
CS at a minimum is a use of an elite skill on a much shorter cooldown, it’s like a super-mimic that costs your illusions to use (and gets some shatter side-benefits). Being able to do more than one skill on top of that is gravy, and gets pretty powerful. The counterplay from destroying the rift is essential.

CS without any reduction in usability via counterplay would be extremely powerful no matter how you slice it.