I have to contradict. What you are describing is exactly what I did in the first few hours of the beta but by far not the most effective way. Now “illusionary Reversion” gives you a clone whenever you shatter at least two illusions, turning your rotation into
shatter – generate another illusion – shattter – generate another illusion – shatter
This way you have always a three clone shatter (counting in the auto illusionary persona). Now how you generate that other illusion is completely up to you. The chapest way is, to trait “Seize the moment” (quickness per shatttered illusion) and equip Scepter that generates the clone with a quick third auto attack.
But in PvP for example you have a pletora of possibilities and situational skills to fill that role. With chronomancer I now have a real incentive to shatter more often in comparison to before the specialization which is a good thing.
You’re right. From a PvE perspective, though (with or without IR), Chrono seems like it’s taking Mes from “spawn phantasms and never shatter” to “kitten phantasms, shatter constantly.” Maybe that’s not a bad thing, I don’t know; I wanted to be able to shatter outside of PvP/WvW. But I still wish we could have a middle ground of useful but shatterable phantasms.
To play condi Mesmer outside of sPvP is to play Mesmer wrong.
…..condi mesmer is not played in spvp lol. It’s strictly a WvW roaming spec. Frifox also used a condi build to kill the indestructible golem 4 times in 44.5 seconds, so…
Not a great PvE or sPvP condi class, but condi mesmer might get some scepter+torch+staff love in the future to make condi mesmer more universal than just a dueling build.
It’s useful if you want to solo-queue and don’t know if you can depend on your teammates. But yeah, it’s wildly overrated in sPvP, and only really shines in WvW roaming.
P.S. On the topic of slow, it’s the same for Reaper’s chill. Chill and slow don’t work at all, period, on mobs with the defiance bar. What they do is they slightly decrease the bar upon application. It’s bad.
I wonder why would someone get an idea to center two classes around conditions that won’t even work in a PvE format.
Basically this. If slow is given some useful application in PvE, and the phantasm is summoned at the start of the block instead of the end, I would be perfectly thrilled with the shield as a PvE offhand. Even with the somewhat-crappy “bounce” method of boon application.
Just some mesmer skills in general need tuning:
Domination:
Confounding suggestion – this trait still seems really strong even with 5sec ICDDueling:
Mistrust – increase amount of confusionChaos:
Mirror of anguish – reduce CD
Chaotic interruption – might need adjusting
PU – Make it 50% not 100%
None of those have anything to do with Chronomancer. There’s some real discussion/changes that are needed for Chrono, let’s not get bogged down in yet another (for example) PU thread debacle.
(edited by AtomsOrSystems.9420)
again, characters may be beta, but the sPvP is not beta.
PvP is about match-ups between two teams of 5 characters each. You are playing with a beta character. For you, yes, the sPvP is explicitly beta.
And we’ve been told repeatedly that we don’t get to keep beta progress/loot.
I would love the trait to be changed to “Gain .5 secs of alacrity after using an illusion summoning skill”.
I… really like this idea. I’m not entirely sure that the numbers would be balanced, though. (Particularly with DE, if that were to count as a summon.) And I worry that ANet is kind of invested in tying us to our “unique class mechanic” by attaching alacrity to shatters, instead of summons.
But I still like this idea.
I really want to love the shield. Animations are great, utility seems like it could be good. And I can entirely get behind it being a low-DPS high-Utility offhand. (Frankly, I think I’ve just accepted that as the wages of being a Mesmer main.) And I really want to like it in PvE, but…
I think the first issue that needs to be addressed is the one Pyro (Fay) initially brought up. We’re given a utility-heavy weapon, and one of those utilities is Slow. Slow doesn’t affect NPCs with breakbars. That makes it useless against bosses, which is bad; it also makes it useless against the numerous random open-world NPCs that have breakbars.
Basically, we’re given a utility weapon, and then are told that a good third of its utility will be almost-entirely useless in PvE. Open world, instanced content, all of it.
(edited by AtomsOrSystems.9420)
The proposed changes sound good to me. I enjoy playing as a turret engi on occasion, but there’s no denying that turrets are more than a bit too tanky.
This is good as a start, but one of the other worst parts about turrets is that they can be placed in unreachable locations that renders them immune to AOE damage or immune to projectiles due to obstruction. That absolutely needs to be resolved along with the changes listed here.
Here is an album of a number of the completely broken locations turrets can currently be placed.
I’ve always felt that this is an issue of upside vs. downside, and shouldn’t be changed.
Upside: Turrets can (should) be placed strategically, maybe in places an engineer is uniquely capable of reaching.
Downside: Turrets, unlike any other class AI, effectively locks the Engi in place.
Archers have a definite role in a few strategies, mainly for dealing with the guards after the first gate. That being said, there are a few changes that I think would be beneficial (really just one, taken a couple ways):
*Don’t have the archer’s aggro on Players or Player-spawned AI (like turrets, pets, minions, etc.)
Basically, give them the same AI as the hero. They’ll run forward until they encount a guard or a gate, which they’ll attack.
On a number of matches, I would have archers get stalemated because an engi dropped a thumper turret in the lane. They would stand out of range throwing arrows at it, and neither the turret nor the archers were doing any significant damage. Meanwhile, the doorbreakers run ahead to be slaughtered by guards.