As to that, I would always wait for a Guardian’s “Feel My Wrath!” to go off. Just watch for the quickness. You can double-copy it using both the trait and the real Signet of Illusions. Or if no Guardian in the group, primarily it was for helping keep Might up.
Before HoT, I used it in fractal 50s as part of a Blurred Inscriptions-Inspiring Distortion build. Properly timed, those party-wide one second distorts could really be powerful on some fractals. You can still do it now, and in fact Alacrity would make it even better, but I’ve mainly been running Dom/Illusions/Chrono now. (I still use Blurred Inscriptions for personal use though. Signet of Midnight is actually a great utility with that trait. Instant distort, condition cleanse, and stunbreak on a fairly short recharge.)
Now that Mesmers have gotten shields with the Chronomancer, we’ve come up against a serious obstacle as the most stylish and fashion-forward of all professions: shields hide your back item while stowed, resulting in a) not being able to see your glorious back item of choice while standing around (and don’t tell me to swap weapons, I don’t want to) and b) weirdness in the combat transition, as your back item appears out of nowhere when you’re in combat stance. Please either let toggled visible back items override the stowed shield, or put a toggle on the slotted shield itself, allowing us to choose whether or not to display it.
With Chrono, we actually have more active damage canceling than ever, wih faster recharges on all our distort-giving abilities, Well of Precognition, and blocking out the wazoo with Echo of Memory/Deja Vu. I personally feel we are even SAFER in full zerk than we ever have been before.
So much fun. Really happy with it. Shield feels great, the “battle system minigame” of illusion management is more interesting than ever, and optimizing alacrity uptime is its own little minigame on top of that.
Is the desired player experience that I have to repeatedly and futilely suicide into champion hero point challenges – which are actually classified by the game as [Group Events] for reasons I will never understand – because there is absolutely no one around? Who thought that making hero point challenges, which ideally the player should be able to find and complete organically, as they come across them, completely impossible to solo? This makes no sense whatsoever.
Because it’s a skill that creates an illusion, Echo of Memory is recharged by Signet of the Ether. Meaning back-to-back-to-back-to-back blocks/Avengers, not counting any shenanigans you might be able to pull off with Continuum Split.
Not really, to be honest. Auric Sword and Greatsword are okay, but Leystone armor is too organic and Bladed is too…bladed. Nothing elegant enough for Mesmer. The Guild armor headgear and pants are alright, but as someone who has given up on guilds due to too many bad experiences, who knows if I’ll ever have them.
As for focus, Eternal Sands already had that covered if you want a time-themed one. I will say that, although I wouldn’t shell out the money needed for it, the broken-window Improvised sword is amusingly thematic for a Mesmer, if a bit too low-brow for our stylishness. Reclaimed and Chak are of course, hideous and beneath our notice.
If phantasms persisted after target death then their recharges would have to be lengthened quite a bit to balance it out, and Mesmer already has enough problems with lengthy recharges – it’s been a continual problem with Mesmer balance since GW1. I prefer shorter recharge, more active skill use even if it does suck when you summon phantasms on a target that dies seconds later.
No, you’re just another non-Mesmer who played the profession for an insufficient length of time and decided, in a fit of green-grass-syndrome, that you needed to whine here about how much better it is than your inferiority complex/lack of skill tells you your main is.
As a person whose only level 80s are a Mesmer and a Ranger, I can’t thank you enough for this change. Will make a huge difference to my play experience.
Curious to know, because I haven’t been keeping up, if you’ve come to terms with the fact that you are significantly completely wrong right now to the point of being a laughingstock?
Worse? Because the majority says so? Like how everyone was saying scepter is not good and it needs rework?
I have no part to play in the trait disagreement between you two, but Scepter is inarguably garbage and no amount of “it’s all relative” can make adequate excuses for it.
Wait, people don’t use Blurred Inscriptions? I consider that one of the best Mesmer traits in the game right now, and the keystone of the Inspiration signet build that I use in fractal 50s.
This is probably as good a place as any to wonder aloud if BI actually procs Inspiring Distortion.
It does. Blurred Inscriptions+Inspiring Distortion+Illusionary Inspiration+Master of Fragmentation with Signet of the Ether, Midnight, and Inspiration means huge amounts of personal survivability without sacrificing damage plus the ability to distort+reflect the whole party every five seconds, along with loads of boon copy from the two SoIs. Incredibly useful. Signet of Midnight with it is just godlike. It’s a stunbreak AND a condition cleanse AND instant invulnerability to cover healing use AND on-demand party distortion if your timing is right.
It’s also an incredibly fun, active build because you’re always having to keep track of your ICD and attempting to time your distorts to telegraphed boss attacks, etc.
It was known that a change was coming, but short of something like “creations/minions ignore all damage if not directly targeted” – which would never happen because PvP balance – I’m skeptical that anything will actually help much.
If I had to make a prediction, it would be something like “creations/minions no longer take critical hits and/or are immune to damage conditions”. Which will still leave phantasms getting one-shot by huge AoE boss attacks.
Who knows, maybe it’s something outside the box. Maybe something like “creations/minions can only lose X% of their HP per incoming damage packet”. I guess that might be good if balanced properly. 5% maybe, 10% at most.
So, I wish I could be hopeful, but these sorts of promises have a way of not panning out.
At the moment, Chronomancer is incredibly fun and engaging – and I haven’t allowed myself to play more than an hour or so of it, because it’s clear from the amount of whining and crying here and elsewhere that it will be nerfed into ashes before long.
Just another example of why PvE and PvP skill balance needs to be split, just another example of Anet stubbornly ignoring this lesson that they learned already from hard experience being stubborn about it in GW1.
We knew the moment it was announced that the Avenger would be useless if its attack were changed to melee. Please, please revert it to a ranged attack OR give it some way to positionally mitigate damage like the other melee phantasms (Swordsman, Berserker) have.
Scepter is difficult to balance because of the clone generation on AA. As a mesmer player I’d like it if the last attack wasn’t so slow too, but increasing the speed of the final attack risks imbalancing mesmer DPS by increasing clone generation speed.
Then please remove that mechanic as I’ve advocated, and replace it with non-trivial condition application of Torment and Confusion. The clone generation on AA is, by your own admission, nothing but a hinderance to proper balancing of the weapon, as well as an interference with phantasm use.
Pretty satisfied, for the most part. PU nerf was sad, but probably inevitable. Duelist’s Discipline also still useless. Chaotic Dampening is still weak, but I know they’re very scared of how it might stack with Alacrity. Other than that though, some nice targeted buffs and quality of life changes. Still waiting for a complete Scepter overhaul.
As I said in another thread, scepter needs a complete rework. It should hit instantly like Necro scepter, the AA needs to be much faster, and personally, I think the clone generation mechanic should be dropped completely in favor of actually being able to inflict appreciable torment and confusion. This will also reward clones being generated in other ways, as their AAs will also inflict conditions.
Not quite. I think they mean that it’ll always set your Swiftness to exactly 12s?
It means that Temporal Curtain will always apply it’s full swiftness duration (12s) the first time you pass through it. Previously if you had swiftness from another source it would not apply. There are a few other details but I’ll leave those until Tuesday.
Sad that it took three years to make this happen, but at least it finally is.
Now can Scepter please get a complete rework? Even with Malicious Sorcery it is atrociously slow and clunky. The AA should not be a projectile, it should just hit, like Necro’s Scepter AA, and it needs to be much faster. Personally, I’d prefer if the clone generation on the AA was dropped completely, and instead it inflicted significant torment and confusion instead. Skill 2 also needs to become something more useful.
They didn’t give a complete list of changes, they were rushing through to name a couple for every profession. It’s possible there were some Scepter changes we didn’t hear about.
…although given their perennial neglect of that weapon, I doubt it.
I think what they meant with Temporal Curtain is, when you use the skill, it just straight up gives you Swiftness immediately. This means it should also stack with any existing Swiftness you already had on you.
What’s REALLY interesting is whether you can still cross the curtain yourself after that to get extra Swiftness. Probably not, but.
This is indeed the worst “event” this game has ever seen. Not even worth the money it costs to continuously waypoint around trying to do events. It’s even more proportionally unrewarding for new players, because it gives no karma, no money, no mats. New players do not even have the 10 gold to spare that they would need to get the high-tier rewards. I have never seen such mindless, soulless, naked grind.
Pssh. As someone who would prefer to have options for the ability to have her female mesmer wear snappy suits, I’m constantly envious of a lot of the male light armor mixes and outfits that I see. This is about as close as I’m allowed to get. How I would love to be able to wear the male Noble Count or Wedding version. The male light Heritage and Illustrious armors are also way better and more detailed than the female. So remember how lucky you are.
Hey everybody, sorry about this bug. The team has disabled the self style hair kits and permanent hair style contracts until a fix can be pushed to the live game. Additionally, sales of the hair kits on the gem store have been disabled until the fix is in.
Rest assured, the kit functionality will be returned to normal once the fix for this bug is live.
I don’t suppose we can get a statement on what exactly those new styles were, and a technical explanation of how the bug happened? Are they new styles in development? Chinese version exclusives? Seems strange there were only new ones for human and norn females, and a disproportionate number at that.
A) Choosing a style from the opposite gender does not actually change your gender, and
B) you can work around this completely by clicking the circular “Hair Styles & Color” icon. This will allow you to use the kit as normal.
You may want to mess around with the opposite-gender options, though. For human females, selecting “male” hairstyles from columns 2 through 4 will allow you to see some new, formerly unknown styles.
It feels one hundred times better and more versatile than before. You swap haters were wrong before it was added and you’re still wrong now that it sensibly has been.
Recharges on everything are way too long. F5, shield skills, wells. As usual, Mesmer is being balanced around PvP and leaving PvE with impractically long recharges. Robert, both you and I know this has been a long-term problem with Mesmer balance, from all the way back in GW1. Please don’t let history repeat itself again.
Mantras are once again worthless, actually more worthless than ever before thanks to no recharge reduction. Congrats on effectively re-deleting an entire line of skills from the game after a mere few weeks of viability.
I know that historically people have complained a lot about the sounds the SAB minis make, but since I never had any interest in using one myself it wasn’t really a problem for me, although I certainly agree that a “mute miniatures” checkbox was long overdue even before now.
Now though, we have the Mystical Dragon, which is a gorgeous mini and finally one of a decent size. However, it is constantly making a very low-frequency growling noise like a creaking ship, and I just can’t deal with it anymore. As much as I love the mini, I had to switch back to something silent. Of course, since it was a free mini they are now everywhere , so getting away from the noise completely is very difficult.
Please, please give us the option to mute the sounds miniatures make.
