I really love the idea of using Cards as a Weapon, just like Gambit.
So this is my suggestion for a new Mesmer-Specialization, using a 2-handed-weapon.
The skills, more or less, apply to Card-Tricks.
[F5] The System: The System Dan and Dave
Passive:
For each Illusion that is not summoned, your damage is increased by X% each.
Active:
Cooldown: 90 seconds
Summon 3 Phantasms, based on your selected weapon.
When you hit an enemy the cooldown of The System is reduced by 1 second.
When you critical hit an enemy the cooldown of The System is reduced by 3 seconds.
[Weapon-Skills:]
[Skill 1] Arcane-Cards: Arcane-Cards
The first ability should not be just simple Card-Throwing.
But what I wanted to achieve was the creation of a kind of Card-Manipulation you can see from different Magicians and Card-Manipulators, which seemingly produce randomly Cards and Card-Fans. Angela Funovits – Arcane Style The Evolution of Card Manipulation by Lee Ang Hsuan
Range: 1200
With his right hand the Mesmer produces a single card from thin air and throws it at his opponent.
In addition the Mesmer has a chance of 40% to produce a second card with his left hand.
The cards explode on impact, dealing damage to enemies within that area.
Critical hits cause Burning.
Moreover the Mesmer has a chance of 20% to produce a Card-Fan (with his left or right hand), instead of a Single-Card. The Card-Fans deal more damage than Single-Cards and cause Bleeding.
[Skill 2] S-Fan: How to Do a One-Handed Fan
Range: 1200
Cooldown: 10 seconds
The Mesmer produces a Split-Fan. Both Card Fans are thrown alsmost simultaneously at his opponent. The Card-Fans then will bounce several times between targets, dealing damage and causing Pain on hit.
Number of Bounces: 3
While doing so, you create a clone at your position.
[Skill 3] Shuriken-Cards: Shuriken Card by Eldo Shuriken Card by Eldo
Range: 1200
Cooldown: 15 seconds
The Illusionist shoots alternately with his right and left hand a total of 6 rotating cards at his opponents.
The spinning cards explode on impact, deal damage to nearby enemies and inflict Confusion each.
[Skill 4] Thunderbird – 1, 2, 3, 4 Aces: Lee Asher- Thunderbird Shuriken Card by Eldo Card Flourishes – Virtuoso: Thunderbird Ace Production
Range: 1200
Cooldown: 20 seconds
The 4 Aces appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for 2 seconds to reflect projectiles.
After the 2 seconds, the Aces will fly, one after another, at your target to deal damage and cause Confusion each.
When casting Thunderbird – 1, 2, 3, 4 Aces, you also summon a Phantasmal Joker from your Arcane-Deck.
[Skill 5] Waterfalls: Waterfall Card Flourish Tutorial Angel Beneath the waterfall tutorial
Range: 1200
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Cards / Waterfalls are falling down from the sky at the target position, dealing damage to affected enemies (Similar to Meteor Shower).
Critical hits apply random conditions to enemies: Poison, Bleeding, Burning.
Lasts 5 seconds.
I just found a video about Gambit (Marvel Heroes Online).
I personally think, that these purple glowing cards would perfectly fit to the Mesmer.
What do you think?
Chaos-Armor:
Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.
sPvP (Main problem is the condition metagame):
1. Mesmer (No place in it, lack of speed and bad condition cleansing)
WvW (Few OP roamer builds make most other possibilities unviable, AI.based classes are useless in zergs):
2. Mesmer (Utilitybot in zergs, AI useless in zergs, PU clone-death builds are overpowered when roaming, no ranged AoE damage while being a light armor class, retaliation problem with Feedback)
Overall (Podium and what to do):
2. Mesmer (Less AI dependence, lots of bug fixes, better build diversity)
1. Mesmer: Least played class for a reason. Bugs, bugs and bugs again. Not in the PvP meta, pretty much usless in zerg Wv3 outside being a bot. Build variety in PvE equals zero, weak PvE performance in general. Main class system (shatter) hardly utilized.
Probably just not enough people playing a mesmer though, so it won’t be high on the list anyways…
1) Mesmer. This is my main profession in GW2, so of course I have a slight bit of bias, but I also have every other profession on my account as well. From my experience in leveling the others after, there are three things that the Mesmer is lacking in: One is the ability to stack swiftness on allies with their ONLY guaranteed swiftness skill (Chaos Storm and Signet of Inspiration do not count as they only happen at chance), along with the lack of swiftness overall. I feel that there should be a signet that gives a movement speed increase just like almost every other profession has. Mesmer is so slow and if you try to get out of anything, you pray that either Temporal Curtain or Blink are off cooldown. Two is only ONE blast skill (IF you use torch). I feel that for the great sword skill Mind Stab, that could easily have a blast combo finisher. I don’t feel this would be OP, but if so, then I will gladly direct someone to an engineer I saw in PvP today who used about 3-4 blast finishers in the span of 5-6 seconds. Lastly, IMHO, the Domination line is terrible at 30 points in. Confounding Suggestions is nice, but still feels underwhelming compared to some of the other 30 point major traits.
Mimic:
3 Chaos-Orbs appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for up to 5 seconds.
When hit, each Orb will absorb the incomming damage, and reflecting it back to the attacker.
Each Orb can reflects back the damage only once, and will be destroyed afterwards.
As long as at least 1 Orb is active, the Mesmer receives Regeneration.
Chaos-Armor:
Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.
Signet of Speed:
Passive: Grants 25% increase in movement speed.
Active: Teleports you in the direction you are moving. When standing still, you teleport backwards. Also breaks Stun.
35 sec CD. Range 900.
I wish they’d at least talk to us about movement speed. I mean, our only on demand swiftness puts us in combat if anything happens to stumble through the curtain. The continued silence is really frustrating. Open a dialogue and let us know their side of things, at least.
I would love to have a signet like this:
Signet of Speed:
Passive: Grants 25% increase in movement speed.
Active: Teleports you in the direction you are moving. When standing still, you teleport backwards. Also breaks Stun.
35 sec CD. Range 900.
We absolutely will do new weapons.
New weapons are going to be things that are very high on the list of stuff we consider; along with taking weapons that already exist and expanding them out to other professions as well.
We like to do both of those things.
Chaos-Armor:
Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.
Mimic:
3 Chaos-Orbs appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for up to 5 seconds.
When hit, each Orb will absorb the incomming damage, and reflecting it back to the attacker.
Each Orb can reflects back the damage only once, and will be destroyed afterwards.
As long as at least 1 Orb is active, the Mesmer receives Regeneration.
Confusing Images -> Chained-Junction:
A Chaos-Chain links the Mesmer to an opponent for 6 seconds. During this time the opponent suffers x damage per second.
In addition to that the opponent‘s speed is reduced by 60%, and the Mesmers speed is improved by 30%.
Every enemy touching the Chaos-Chain also receives damage and gets their speed reduced by 60% for 3 seconds.
Chained-Junction can not be removed.
I also would love to see some skills like this:
Teleportation:
Manipulation
Teleports you in the direction you are moving (range 900).
When standing still you teleport backwards.
Also removes all crowed controll effects.
Mass-Sleep:
Manipulation
Nearby Enemies fall into deep-sleep for 5 seconds.
The effect also breakes after the enemy suffers damage, equal to 7,5% of his maximum health.
Chaos-Orb:
Manipulation
Summon a Choas-Orb, that shoots up to 10 Chaos-Beams onto enemies within a range of 900. There can be up to 3 Chaos-Orbs at the same time.
Lasts up to 12 seconds.
Chaos-Shackle:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Shackle for 10 seconds.
Causes movement to deal damage to the affected enemy and to all nearby enemies.This effect can be triggered up to 4 times. Chaos-Shackle can not be removed.
Chaos-Touch:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Touch for 10 seconds to an enemy, suffering x damage over 10 seconds.
Furthermore, Choas-Flashes, like the ones from a Tesla inductor, jump onto opponents within a range of 450, causing damage as well.
Chaos-Touch can not be removed.
Traits:
Phantasmal Healing:
When using GS for example, you will not receive Regeneration, as your Phantasms mostly are to far away from you. So why not change it to this:
You and your allies are healed by x% of the damage done by your Phantasms.
Critical hits of your Phantasms grants you and your allies Regeneration for 5 seconds.
Range 1200
Some very basic ideas for Card-Skills:
This could be weapon-skills; but also utilty-skills.
After these are just some basic ideas I left out the Illusions.
This is just to illustrate some different skills, based on Cards, Card-Techniques and Card-Flourishes!
idk about the lots of roles. yes in spvp u got shatterer and phantasm builds, but mantra is not really viable due to the speed. u simply dont have thetime to recharge a mantra.
interrupt shutdown is very limited and i have never seen a signet mesmer ever…..
now yes in pve and spvp some of these builds work quite well i agree, but in wvw not at all.
shatterer barely works as the clones die before they actuall shatter, phantasms maybe get 1 attack off, but most of the time the heavy aoe in a zerg kills phantasms without them being able to deal dmg.
mantra…. i sometime use it for stability, but if i do so, i will give up most of my tagging tools. so far my only way to deal dmg are utilities.
wvw mesmers are lacking group dps. i would like to have a build again that deals enough dmg like glamour, that doesent require clones or phantasms.
i only play wvw and only vs zerg. if im on yaks escort duty then yes i could use my spvp build, but if there is a 40man zerg at the keep and the commander decides to push out, all a mesmer does is putting a veil down infront of the gate and then noeone need us anymore. and no i hate playing support builds. in none of the games ive played i ever played a healer or support, so thats not an option at all.
our roles have been taken away in wvw when confusion and immortal mesmer got nerfed to the round.
i would like to move away from the 1v1 stuff. no class in the game should have 1v1 skills only. especially a light armor should have access to viable aoe. and i think the problem is ai. our class sould be less depending on how any clones are alive and phantasms being the main source of our dps…..
AI is terrible in wvw.
A little clarity on the issues with the scepter auto attack:
1) It’s too slow. The third part of the chain is slower than the other stages. The projectile is slow. The chain doesn’t progress until it the projectile hits. It’s just too slow.
2) The clones are useless. They do nothing but stand there and use a useless attack.
3) By using the auto attack, said clones then overwrite actually useful clones (staff/sword) and worse, phantasms. This means, in a phantasm or staff condi build using the auto attack can often reduce your sustained dps.
I 100% agree with you!
This is one of the reasons I do not use the Scepter.
I’ll use Chaos Armor for example, it’s an almost Mesmer-exclusive aura that has the potential to be a fantastic control/support ability and yet it’s (the Ethereal + Leap/Blast Combo) always been relatively lackluster…. and then it got nerfed. The bright colors and pulsing orb are great for impressing noobs, but the truth is that Chaos Armor doesn’t offer any kind of safety or damage mitigation on cast; it only offers the chance of getting protection after taking a hit or two. (And even then the odds are stacked against you. Regeneration and to a lesser extent Swiftness offer VERY little possible damage mitigation. 1 stack of confusion is pointless, …
Mimic:
3 Chaos-Orbs appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for up to 5 seconds.
When hit, each Orb will absorb the incomming damage, and reflecting it back to the attacker.
Each Orb can reflects back the damage only once, and will be destroyed afterwards.
As long as at least 1 Orb is active, the Mesmer receives Regeneration.
Chaos-Armor:
Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.
Upward-Spring: Virtuoso: The Spring
The Mesmer springs all 52 cards upwards into the air where they fly in a high arc to rush down to the target, dealing damage to the target and nearby enemies.
Back-Flip / Forward-Spring: Virtuoso: The Spring
The Mesmer springs all 52 cards forward in a straight line onto his target which sufffers damage.
While doing so, the Mesmer teleports / rushes backwards.
Card-Trap:
The Mesmer summons a card on the ground at the selected area.
When enemies come close, the cards will straighten up and shoot Chaos-Beams (up to 10 times each) at the targets, dealing damage.
There can be up to 3 Card-Traps active simultaneously.
Lasts 15 seconds.
Anaconda: Anaconda by Bone Ho bone-Anaconda
The Mesmer summons a Card-Anaconda at the selected area that spits Chaos-Orbs, which explode on impact, causing damage to enemies near the explosion.
Lasts 15 seconds.
Cobra-Cut: De’vo’s cobra cut preview Cobra Bone Ho – King Cobra Cut
The Mesmer summons a deck of cards, which is open on one of the long sides, just like an opened snake mouth, flying from enemy to enemy, dealing damage.
Afterwards, the Cobra-Deck will fly back to the Mesmer, healing him for 50% of the total damage done.
Tornado-Cut:
52 Cards revolve around the Mesmer in a wide radius.
Enemies within the the card-circle suffer damage each 0,5 seconds and are chilled for 3 seconds.
Enemies directly hit by the cards suffer more damage each 0,5 seconds and are immobilized for 1 second.
Some very basic ideas for Card-Skills:
This could be weapon-skills; but also utilty-skills.
After these are just some basic ideas I left out the Illusions.
This is just to illustrate some different skills, based on Cards, Card-Techniques and Card-Flourishes!
Arcane-Cards: Arcane Deck
With his right hand the Mesmer produces one Single-Card from his Arcane-Cards-Deck and throws it at his opponent. The target as well as nearby enemies suffer x damage.
In addition to that the Memser has a chance of 40% to produce a second Card with his left hand, dealing additional 25% of the basic-damage.
Birdy-Fan: Cradle to Grave Demo video – Birdy-Fan at 1:40
The Mesmer produces a Fan that bounces between enemies and dealing damage.
Afterwards the Fan flies back to the Mesmer granding one stack of Might for each enemy hit.
Reflecting Split-Fans: How to do card flourishes – S Fan
Up to 5 seconds the Mesmer holds a S-Fan in his hands to block the next attack. 50% of the incomming damage will be reflect back to the attacker. -> Flying-Fans:
Even iff no attack was blocked, the Mesmer throws both Fans almost simultaneously onto his target. Each Fan deals x damage.
Shuriken-Blades: Shuriken Card by Eldo – Trick Shuriken Card by Eldo
The Mesmer throws, alternately with his right and left hand, rotating cards that bounces between enemies and dealing damage.
Critical hits causes Bleeding.
Orbit-Fan: Orbit Spread – Bill Perkins
The Mesmer throws an Orbit-Fan onto his target, causing damage to his target and all enemies, it passes through.
Split-Spades:
The Split-Spades-Symbol appears in the air, rushing down to the target and dealing damage to the target an nearby enemies.
Enemies hit, will loose one boon.
Tornado-Cut: Tornado-Cut
A card appears in front of the Mesmer.
One corner of the card touches the ground; the opposite corner points into the air so that the card diagonal right angles to the ground. While the card is spinning arround their diagonal a Tornado arises and moves from enemy to enemy, dealing damage.
Shuriken-Cards: Shuriken Card by Eldo – Trick Shuriken Card by Eldo
Each 0,4 seconds the Mesmer throws, alternately with his right and left hand, a total of 5 rotating cards at his opponent. Each card deals damage to the target and neararby enemies and pushes them back.
Fan-Lift:
The Mesmer lets a Card-Fan rotate in his hands, so that enemies in front of him are spun into the air. Affected enemies have to endure in air for 3 seconds. -> Gravity:
As long as the enemies levitates in air, they can be forced back to ground by Gravity, suffering damage and are crippled for 3 seconds.
Chaos-Armor:
Chaos-Armor grants you swiftness.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts, 50% of the incoming damage is reflected back to the attacker.
In addition to that, every second you regain 5% of your total health.
As long as Chaos Armor lasts near enemies will be pushed back.
Mimic:
3 Chaos-Orbs appear and clockwise rotate around the Mesmer for up to 5 seconds.
When hit, each Orb will absorb the incomming damage, and reflecting it back to the attacker.
Each Orb can reflects back the damage only once, and will be destroyed afterwards.
As long as at least 1 Orb is active, the Mesmer receives Regeneration.
Confusing Images -> Chained-Junction:
A Chaos-Chain links the Mesmer to an opponent for 6 seconds. During this time the opponent suffers x damage per second.
In addition to that the opponent‘s speed is reduced by 60%, and the Mesmers speed is improved by 30%.
Every enemy touching the Chaos-Chain also receives damage and gets their speed reduced by 60% for 3 seconds.
Chained-Junction can not be removed.
I also would love to see some skills like this:
Teleportation:
Manipulation
Teleports you in the direction you are moving (range 900).
When standing still you teleport backwards.
Also removes all crowed controll effects.
Mass-Sleep:
Manipulation
Nearby Enemies fall into deep-sleep for 5 seconds.
The effect also breakes after the enemy suffers damage, equal to 7,5% of his maximum health.
Chaos-Orb:
Manipulation
Summon a Choas-Orb, that shoots up to 10 Chaos-Beams onto enemies within a range of 900. There can be up to 3 Chaos-Orbs at the same time.
Lasts up to 12 seconds.
Chaos-Shackle:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Shackle for 10 seconds.
Causes movement to deal damage to the affected enemy and to all nearby enemies.This effect can be triggered up to 4 times. Chaos-Shackle can not be removed.
Chaos-Touch:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Touch for 10 seconds to an enemy, suffering x damage over 10 seconds.
Furthermore, Choas-Flashes, like the ones from a Tesla inductor, jump onto opponents within a range of 450, causing damage as well.
Chaos-Touch can not be removed.
Traits:
Phantasmal Healing:
When using GS for example, you will not receive Regeneration, as your Phantasms mostly are to far away from you. So why not change it to this:
You and your allies are healed by x% of the damage done by your Phantasms.
Critical hits of your Phantasms grants you and your allies Regeneration for 5 seconds.
Range 1200
idk about the lots of roles. yes in spvp u got shatterer and phantasm builds, but mantra is not really viable due to the speed. u simply dont have thetime to recharge a mantra.
interrupt shutdown is very limited and i have never seen a signet mesmer ever…..
now yes in pve and spvp some of these builds work quite well i agree, but in wvw not at all.
shatterer barely works as the clones die before they actuall shatter, phantasms maybe get 1 attack off, but most of the time the heavy aoe in a zerg kills phantasms without them being able to deal dmg.
mantra…. i sometime use it for stability, but if i do so, i will give up most of my tagging tools. so far my only way to deal dmg are utilities.
wvw mesmers are lacking group dps. i would like to have a build again that deals enough dmg like glamour, that doesent require clones or phantasms.
i only play wvw and only vs zerg. if im on yaks escort duty then yes i could use my spvp build, but if there is a 40man zerg at the keep and the commander decides to push out, all a mesmer does is putting a veil down infront of the gate and then noeone need us anymore. and no i hate playing support builds. in none of the games ive played i ever played a healer or support, so thats not an option at all.
our roles have been taken away in wvw when confusion and immortal mesmer got nerfed to the round.
i would like to move away from the 1v1 stuff. no class in the game should have 1v1 skills only. especially a light armor should have access to viable aoe. and i think the problem is ai. our class sould be less depending on how any clones are alive and phantasms being the main source of our dps…..
AI is terrible in wvw.
A little clarity on the issues with the scepter auto attack:
1) It’s too slow. The third part of the chain is slower than the other stages. The projectile is slow. The chain doesn’t progress until it the projectile hits. It’s just too slow.
2) The clones are useless. They do nothing but stand there and use a useless attack.
3) By using the auto attack, said clones then overwrite actually useful clones (staff/sword) and worse, phantasms. This means, in a phantasm or staff condi build using the auto attack can often reduce your sustained dps.
I 100% agree with you!
This is one of the reasons I do not use the Scepter.
I’ll use Chaos Armor for example, it’s an almost Mesmer-exclusive aura that has the potential to be a fantastic control/support ability and yet it’s (the Ethereal + Leap/Blast Combo) always been relatively lackluster…. and then it got nerfed. The bright colors and pulsing orb are great for impressing noobs, but the truth is that Chaos Armor doesn’t offer any kind of safety or damage mitigation on cast; it only offers the chance of getting protection after taking a hit or two. (And even then the odds are stacked against you. Regeneration and to a lesser extent Swiftness offer VERY little possible damage mitigation. 1 stack of confusion is pointless, …
We absolutely will do new weapons.
New weapons are going to be things that are very high on the list of stuff we consider; along with taking weapons that already exist and expanding them out to other professions as well.
We like to do both of those things.
more aoe. 100% more aoe. in Zerg fights in wvw I’m able to use chaos storm and then feedback if on my bar and that’s pretty much all the aoe I’ll be able to do
“Misdirection” – Glamour skill: For X seconds, a dome appears around the Mesmer, any projectiles fired at the Mesmer are re-directed to the Mesmer’s Target.
-Spirit Shackles (Grand master Illusion) You transfer 30% of dmg you take to nearby clones or Phantoms
Manipulating:
-Blackout(45s cd) Daze you foe for 5s and apply torment< just cant ressist
-Backfire(30s Cd) for next 5s you redirect 50% of dmg to attacker<just wish
Signets:
Signet of Lyssa(30S CD)
Out of Combat: move speed increased by 25%
In combat: Reduce Crowd Control effects by 25%
On use: Gain quickness(3s), remove all conditions and boons form yourself. (some kind out of combat ms, and usable effect in combat, and decent active)
Teleportation:
Manipulation
Teleports you in the direction you are moving (range 900).
When standing still you teleport backwards.
Also removes all crowed controll effects.
Mass-Sleep:
Manipulation
Nearby Enemies fall into deep-sleep for 5 seconds.
The effect also breakes after the enemy suffers damage, equal to 7,5% of his maximum health.
Chaos-Orb:
Manipulation
Summon a Choas-Orb, that shoots up to 10 Chaos-Beams onto enemies within a range of 900.
There can be up to 3 Chaos-Orbs at the same time.
Lasts up to 12 seconds.
Chaos-Feedback:
Glamour
Create a dome arround your foes, dealing x damage to all enemies, using any skill.
Lasts 6 seconds.
Chaos-Shackle:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Shackle for 10 seconds.
Causes movement to deal damage to the affected enemy and to all nearby enemies.
This effect can be triggered up to 4 times.
Chaos-Shackle can not be removed.
Chaos-Touch:
Manipulation
Applies Chaos-Touch for 10 seconds to an enemy, suffering x damage over 10 seconds.
Furthermore, Choas-Flashes, like the ones from a Tesla inductor, jump onto opponents within a range of 450, causing damage as well.
Chaos-Touch can not be removed.
Chained-Junction:
Manipulation
A Chaos-Chain links the Mesmer to an opponent for 6 seconds.
During this time, the opponent suffers x damage.
In addition to that the opponent‘s speed is reduced by 60%, and the Mesmers speed is improved by 30%.
Every enemy touching the Chaos-Chain also receives damage and gets their speed reduced by 60% for 3 seconds.
Chained-Junction can not be removed.
Traits:
Phantasmal Healing:
Range 1200
You and allies are healed by x% of the damage done by your Phantasms.
Critical hits of your Phantasms grants you and allies Regeneration for 5 seconds.
Chaos-Port:
Summon a Clone, when using Blink or Teleportation.
Improved Chained-Junction:
Chained-Junction heals the Mesmer by x% of the damge, done by Chained-Junction.
?