Guild Wars 2

Clip.6845:

Welcome to the way other players feel, I have had this obstructed problem for way too long on other professions than mesmer. Maybe now it will be looked at…

Yes but you also have AE attacks which aren’t blocked as a whole by a single target block.

Syn.3459:

they function as a targeted aoe but they aren’t though and they’re a single target skill which means they’re prone to blind/block

Exactly.
Hence they need to be exempt from blocking / blinding in the first place. Because while the connecting invisible bullet is single target single hit, their actual shown and important effect isn’t.

How do you “block” a deflection-bubble?
How do you “block” a Whirlwind attack in all it’s hits for all target?
How do you “block” all bullets of an Unload in one block?

You don’t.

The Phantasm-change would only make sense if Phantasms were no longer killable by damage at all (or controllable), but in turn get a limited lifetime, say, 20s. You have to connect the attack, but then it’s completely unstoppable for it’s duration, done.

I do have to say, I’m slowly getting annoyed, too.
Not by my raw power (or lack thereof), I couldn’t care less about that.

But the trait-design for us is completely bogus. They don’t line up, half of them don’t work as advertised, are way too weak, misplaced, there’s no cohesion between the traits in a single line, neither is there much interweaving between lines.
Many traits don’t work with the stats presented in their trait line, either.

And then there’s the Phantasm / Clone traits. The few which do work as shown are mutually exclusive with each other (looking at you, Vengeful Images vs Phantasmal Healing), or make no sense (the clone damage traits come to mind).

This merges further downstream with an unfinished Clone concept (some have powerful secondary effects without their weapon being slow to generate them, others have nothing in return for… well… nothing) and a reliance on Phantasms for damage (I thought they were supposed to be living Hexes?).

What we need is once more to take the Mesmer and go back to the drawing board.
Yes, seriously.
I know this has been done twice in beta, and sorry, it has to happen a third time. I want the ability to say, specialize in group support, and have my group support Inspirations line actually be about group support. Not have some traits loosely related to it but providing no difference to how my character feels except I’m doing damage (remember, support line!) with Phantasms now.
I want Chaos to actually be chaotic, the idea is awesome! Some traits show the pattern, but they’re so weak / limited that they can’t give the traitline any real structure, neither are there enough of them.

I’d gladly swallow another 3 years of rampant bugs if at least the trait-concept gets re-done.

Syn.3459:

just like every class, of course it goes on cd… if a melee class uses there skill and you aren’t in range it goes on cd(i assume) so how is mesmer any different? if you miss the skill you don’t do damage

Oh, Necro pet summons and Ranger pet calls, the closest comparable thing, go on CD when they don’t connect or the Ranger/Necro is blinded?

alanis.6094:

The casting while blinded was also a bug, at least in my eyes (and apparently the devs). I’m not sure why you think these abilities should not be affected while blinded, like all other attacks.

Oh, Necromancer summons and Ranger pet call are also affected by blind?

Fair enough, then.

Wait, you mean they aren’t?
Heh, who would have thought.
Yes, I know, permanent pet vs temporary one, notice how ours are already weaker for being per-target and temporary.

Oh, idea!
Since apparently Phantasms are now attacks, not summons, how about we take their HP bar. Other attacks can only be blocked / dodged / blinded, but not physically attacked! Seems only fair to go the full distance and make Phantasms the same, right?

Phantasms with infinite health!

Exactly that.
Playing a Mesmer, I find it extremely easy to single out the realm Mesmer and focus them down. It’s just obvious who the real one is.

Yet I see plenty people constantly waste their stuff on my Clones. Clones which are so obvious not the real me, since well, 3 of me are standing still attacking at a veeeery slow interval. One is right now doing a dodge roll while spamming different skills.
Extreeeeeemely difficult, yes.

:(

This was exactly my criticism in the call-for-Zerker-nerf thread, too:

Broken LoS be as it may be, we only have one other attack which can hit onto a wall. Now we have only that attack, so a Staff has just become a mandatory equipment when attacking a keep, since we lack any other option to deny area on top of a wall.

Basically what we’d no need is a ground target-able Berserker.

Yes they are valid points, from the perspective of someone who didn’t like the class or game in the first place.

They are wildly exaggerated.
We receive these nerfs because we’re stronger than the other classes. Yes we got a long list of issues, but if you check the other classforums, so do they (in other words, the balancing happens independent of the fixing, not unreasonable for a large dev team).

Everyone loudly laments how they kill too slow. I think even Thieves do.
Everyone claims they’re the most bugged class, with maybe Necros having the one honest claim to that crown, given that Moa even makes their pets disappear (heh).
Everyone says their class isn’t important to the devs.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Plasmon, surely you didn’t think it fair to be able to attack someone through solid walls? Perhaps you did, in which case I’m afraid that this game probably isn’t for you, as Arena Net seem pretty dedicated to balancing content and fixing bugs… Unless it’s the personal story of course, but they’ll probably get the story in the expansion right!

I think the problem is more that lacking the Zerker, we are optionless – compared to other classes – when it comes to attacking players on walls.

The problem is less simple than you – or us as a whole – make it appear, though. If they were to fix all my traits, I’d have such a huge surge in power I’d need at least twice as many nerfs again as I’m getting fixes.

So I can understand it’s really not a simply thing for them to do. Annoying as it is – Vengeful Images <-> Phantasmal Healing is still bugged. -.-

To be fair unless you never let your clones/phantasms attack you should have 1 stat-stacking sigil, since that one actually affects your illusions.

If you PvE a fair bit, AE fire proc is also a must-have, especially on GS with it’s triple-attacks since that normalizes the proc cycles a bit.

Parthis.2091:

It’s not you. The problem isn’t one Mesmer. The problem is WvW groups with several, that can nuke siege without LoS, kill defenders without effort. Anyone who thinks this isn’t a problem is missing the point.

Oh it’s not that it isn’t a problem, it’s just that we’d then need another way to fight up on walls. Plenty classes have plenty abilities to hit defenders on walls with, while iBerserker might be ignoring LoS to do so, the general idea of having him able to get up onto the wall isn’t bad (i.e.: ground-targetted iBerserker, attacks current target but spawns where you lick – I can target him at the edge of the wall, he spawns there, then whirls inwards towards my target, but it still has to be in range of the whirl).

Personally I could agree with the “damage only” idea in a way, but only if I had more free reign.

1. Remove the secondary effect of Clones (this step + it’s rebalancing would help Scepter and Spear quite a bit, since they currently falter due to lacking Clone utility).
2. Ramp up Staff #1 damage by 75%-100%.
3. Change conditions to:

• Burning
• 3 stacks of Bleeding
• 3 stacks of Confusion

ChaosStar.3162:

For me it’s not about a balance issue, it’s about the simple fact your auto attack has its damage cut by ~80% on an RNG. That is bad design. It doesn’t matter whether the attack usually deals 15,000 damage. Your auto attack is supposed to be a consistent form of damage, not one which completely randomly decides it’s going to be a support tool today.

Your autoattack is supposed to be a consistent form of damage?
This is news to me.
Any weapon which has a #1 chain usually doesn’t feature this, especially once you factor in weapon switching.
Sword #1? Cleave, Cleave, Single, two with Vulnerability, one with Boon Shear?
Ranger Shortbow #1 hits with a Bleed if the enemy is positioned right, and you don’t know how fast they’re spinning while jumping in place, either. WLOG, this is a RNG-mechanism.
Or Guardian Greatsword #1. The third hit gives Might depending on # of closeby target, how is that reliable damage output? You can’t control the positioning of enemy targets the moment you want to do the third hit.

Sorry, but the idea of a “reliable” baseline attack isn’t one the #1 skills reflect in GW2. Some do, yes. But they have other quirks added to them, like Ranger Longbow / Mesmer Greatsword ranged scaling, Guardian Scepter projectile speed or well, Mesmer Staff random condition.
Plus the staff is the chaos weapon. It’d be thematically unfitting for it to be so stable.

Well then how about we fix the already existent Scepter to be more universally useful?

Foosnark.1784:

I probably just need more practice with sword/focus to make the most of them, but honestly I like Staff so much more that I rarely want to switch out of it. Staff 2 is a leap finisher with a shorter cooldown than Sword 3 for instance.

One thing to keep in mind, Sword #3 is bugged in regards to the -20% CD trait.

supergica.8652:

It’s not ok to justify using a bug to compensate for lack of other skills/abilities. They should fix it, and give something useful in return, that can be used to similar effect (aoe of some sort).

And i think the overall power of this ability is exaggerated a bit, it’s more of an annoyance then anything else. You shouldn’t die to it.

Biggest problem really is that yes I can hit someone one a wall. In WvW. Which is toooootally going to bring that keep down to it’s knees. :P

Wasselin.1235:

Level 50 difficulty level? I hope there aren’t that many. These dungeons better be super fun if we’re doing them 50×.

How is 50 times a lot?
If you want to do that in a week, yes, that’s a lot.

Realistically you do that 1-2x a week when a few friends or guildies ask about it, or just to do something while chatting. Tuhdah, half a year to a year and you are difficulty lvl50. That went faster than expected, right?

MrLee.6892:

QFT!! I am actually WANTING a gear grind again because level 80 is so kitten boring! So what is this new armor has a few stats better than exotic! Then we all have something to do again!

Wouldn’t it be great if we as players would play stuff we find enjoyable, ignoring whether the game awards us an achievement, and whether that achievement comes in the form of a shoulderpiece?

How does this give you something to do if you – apparently – find the game boring? Why do you play a boring game, independent of whether it gives you better gear or not? If you don’t like PvE, don’t play PvE, whether you wear green gear, yellow gear or pink gear. If you don’t like PvP, don’t play PvP. If that means you don’t like GW2, don’t play GW2.

I see the same feedback with Nintendo’s no-global-achievements stance, and it makes me wonder how Skinner-Box-trained most are, by now. It seems getting that digital carrot is much more important than whether the gameplay is actually fun or not.

While I think the new gear is ok-ish, I do prefer not having additional gear tiers added to the game.

Let the game stand on the gameplay, not on the gear on the horizon \o/
Add more designs, more colours, add weapon dye boss drops, such stuff.

I do actually hope this gets changed.
I want some meaningful changes and improvements, and for that it seems you first need to get all the LoL players out of the forum. So the sooner they shut up and move to another classes’ forum, the better.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Because if i’m running a condition build, staff is my main. Condition builds rely on condition damage and that is what i want my illusions to give, DAMAGE (bleed/burning). Vulnerability does nothing to condition mez and since staff is so slow i feel like 1% of damage increase (not even condition damage) is a waste, complete waste when you could be stacking bleeding/burning with your clones.

So, have you considered that there might be non-condition builds running a staff? Specifically builds retaining high Domination (and hence the +X% on Vulnerability duration)?

How would they benefit if you cut out one more condition fully supported by their spec for one not supported by it?

Weapons should not be strictly tied to specific trait lines!
They already are to a degree, and it’s causing issues (it’d be far better to have a Ranger-like setup where we get mixed weapon bonuses). Do we really want this? Do we really want the trait-lines to be renamed “Weapon spec lines”?

I still don’t get why exactly. Sure, more skills, but the current ones aren’t even balanced. Adding more is throwing fuel onto the fire.

Not really. Portal allows extremely high player counts to “magically” appear next to the player in basically a singular moment. Independent of how well your engine works, this will cause loading issues, unless you make it work well at 500+ players (highly unlikely :P ).

In other words, it might not be all that unreasonable to prevent entire zergs from taking a portal. AEs are limited to 5 targets, even Mass Invisibility is.

Sephelutis.3480:

well it is pretty, pretty clear now: time to reroll a warrior and join in the press 2 button = win style

Curious how that is supposedly a problem on the Mesmer side.
Am I really the only one who’d rather see changes to classes who can /snooze through PvE content? It should be a bit more engaging than killing everything in one button press. Or we need a buff but the whole of PvE also needs a substantial buff.

I’m not sure whether Confusion itself couldn’t use some rethinking.
What if it were much more difficult to apply (even for us, and we already get it in spades), but in turn it had a medium~long duration, and “charges”. Basically, make it work like the CC-immunity on bosses, every time the subject takes damage from it, the stack reduces by one (and hence the intensity of the feedback damage).

Do all racial forms heal you back up to full when engaging them? Can they be used as an emergency way out, especially Bear?

Scepter/Torch is actually not bad, but yes it suffers from Torch’s problems, specifically Prestige not producing the burn if anything except duration ends the stealth, and the iMage.

Confusion as a whole needs a rethink. Right now it deals substantially more damage in WvW/PvE than in sPvP, but I’m not sure that is a smart solution.

I’d say that in PvE (not in WvW!), duration of Confusion should be doubled on all abilities.
Further, CoF should be 4s baseline.
Further, Signet of Midnight should be +10% condition duration, not boon duration.

Yeah, amount of changes is really the wrong metric to talk about.
It could be that we only get 1 change, which is that Phantasms are a persistent, fourth, pet.

I don’t see the problem, really. There’s multiple pull skills in the game.

We could ofc argue that maybe pull as a concept has issues, and fair enough, but Into the Void (Vortex is an underwater Spear ability, #5) I don’t see an issue with.

If they were powerful, how would racials like the Human self-heal for heal-weak classes like the Mesmer ever be balanced?

Mesmer Clone uniqueness

Issue: Our clones are somewhat imbalanced in that some clones have very direct and very powerful secondary effects (e.g.: Staff clones and their conditions, or even better Trident clones which apply a Condition we don’t have on the weapon at all), while others completely lack any secondary effect (Greatsword, Scepter). Even among the latter there is a difference because the GS clones attack thrice, making them more powerful when using the Sharper Images trait compared to the rather sluggish Scepter clones.

Why is this a real problem: It causes the Clones to be devaluated as a basic mechanic. What’s more important is the secondary effect they provide, not that they “exist”. Since not all secondary effects are similarly useful, this causes inherent imbalance in a supposed “throwaway” mechanic.

Proposed solution(s)

• One way is to simply normalize Clones 100%. The only difference left would be that melee clones get the same benefit all melee gets (lack of range -> cleaves 3 targets). This is a very direct solution, but would ofc cause a lot of lost diversity and power which would have to be caught elsewhere.
• The other way is to “simply” give Greatsword and Scepter their own secondary function (Spear clones are invulnerable ~40% of the time, so they have a secondary function). I prefer this conceptually, although admitted it’s a major headache down the line, due to how different the clones are.

Detailed idea for new secondary uses

Greatsword
Greatsword clones copy (to a degree) Spatial Surge. When attacking from range (notice how the #2 one spawns in melee, so this isn’t completely trivial right away), they can cause actual damage, more the further away they are. At minimum range they still cause the same negligible damage all other clones do. In return their 3-hit should probably get it’s proc-chance reduced to 33% so they are no longer superior Sharper Images clones.

Scepter
Considering how Ether Clone works, I’d make these able to summon clones with their attacks. Each Clone can summon up to 3 “second stage” Clones. These cause no procs like Sharper Images or on-death effects, cannot be used for shatter (They simply fall apart when the host clone dies in any way), and cannot be utilized in any way except for confusion of PvP enemies and taking hits in PvE.

alanis.6094:

Its absolutely viable in W3. At its worst, its causing a small group of enemies to completely stop what they are doing and run for 5+ seconds. In reality, most players will at least get caught with 1-2 activations, and with 6-8 stacks, it hurts quite a bit.

Plus, plenty of W3 is contested over ‘capture points’.

True, Confusion-based setups are really powerful in WvW. Even if you end up not killing anyone directly, you soften up the enemy group a whole lot with the confusion damage + feedback.

That being said, Scepter and Torch still struggle individually. The build as a whole works, perfectly fine, too. It’s just that the individual components don’t work in isolation, leading to specific narrow builds able to utilize them.

The thing I don’t get is why we start so “high level” as DEs in Orr.
Yes we “work” in other areas of the game, but let’s be honest here: We have more underlying issues.

Our trait setup is a huuuuuge mess.

That alone already makes any other balance discussion for us redundant IMO, because changes here will affect our balance in all areas of the game.

Yet it is quite important that we get some changes here:

• Our traitlines don’t seem to “focus” properly. There’s some faint signs of a future (or long past) focus, like Domination on overpowering and binary debuffs or Inspiration on Healing and Phantasms, but there’s so many traits which are placed in a weird way, don’t fit the class at all, don’t project the idea of the trait line or it’s enhanced weapons, misplaced weapon traits, etc.
• Speaking of our weapon traits, why are they all +50 stat, -20% CD? Why so boring?
• Speaking of weird trait lines, shouldn’t each trait line not only focus on a handful of things, but also promote it’s “style” to as many different skills as possible, promoting diversity in gameplay (i.e.: if I spec Domination, I’m not forced to use a GS or a Torch). Stuff like Domination having a minor which makes any binary debuff caused (including Vulnerability) also apply 1 stack of Vulnerability, Dueling making debuffs able to crit, Inspiration causing Clones to do real damage, bla bla bla.

Basically, I think our trait system needs very extensive reworks. Our GM traits are more or less all worthy of being trashed entirely (even HM, since it just causes power-scaling issues for Mantras).

What do you mean, it doesn’t stack? CD-reduction on clone/phantasm skills from 5-Illusions and the weapon traits?

Lucubration.8361:

Well… you reflect a projectile that creates a clone. In some ways, I would actually expect the reflected projectile to create a clone.

I was thinking the same. Though I’ve never tested it, reading the Scepter tooltip I expected this behaviour.

Ofc, this only makes the already meh Scepter more meh.
But it’s problem is not whether you can reflect a clone or not, really. It’s problem is that the #1 chain doesn’t advance until impact, that it offers no actual benefit (due to how slow the scepter attacks, it’s clone-generation isn’t strong enough), my char yells every time the third hit of the #1 chain goes off, #3 is prone to failing due to how the animation works, and the thing just lacks a proper identity.

Olba.5376:

The thing is, there minors and majors are mixed up on purpose. There’s so many utterly imbalanced minor and major trait combinations that it’s not even funny. Similarly, the traits are spread all over the place to make sure that you cannot just pick everything that mixes perfectly.

Spot on.

DFAnton.5304:

The tree is Power, and yet it provides Condition Duration as a secondary stat. Why? Power and conditions do not interact.

Actually this fits quite well, tbh.
A lot of Domination is about applying Vulnerability or Cripple, too. Both are affected by Condition Duration.

The inconsistency is still prevailing everywhere in our trait system (reading other classes’ I think we show too much how far we’ve been retooled in beta/alpha), but this specific aspect makes sense.

In other words, I’d focus the lines like this:

• Domination: raw damage, binary conditions
• Dueling: overpowering, both in burst damage and in deactivation
• Chaos: random boons/conditions, personal defences (but of a randomized nature)
• Inspiration: healing support, more support to phantasms (instead of powering them up directly!)
• Illusions: shattering, damaging conditions

In parts we already have this. In parts. It clearly shows as the idea behind a lot of our traits and traitlines, but due to the constant shuffling the traits no longer line up (nor our GM traits particularly useful).

wads.5730:

kittentering

That’s the worst word censor I’ve seen on a forum.

To be fair, many runes are completely amazing in their own right. If you use MI in PvP, 6-Lyssa is absolutely crazy powerful. Especially if you also use Mirror as your heal, which can often be much stronger in WvW than the other heals due to the sheer amount of random projectiles flying around.

Hrm, fair point really. I’ll give 20/10/15/20/5 a spin for a couple of days, see how it compared.

The one thing I’d disagree with is the requirement of 5 Illusions.
In most sPvP and PvE cases this is universally true, OTOH in a WvW Sword-build you are locking into 20 Dom and 10 Dueling already (weapon skills are stronger than 5 Illusions + flexibility), 10 Chaos and 10 Insp is a requirement since you want Chaos Storm and Feedback on rezzing, and, thinking about is, actually 20 Insp is a requirement, for reduced CD on Feedback (since you’re already using one slot for the other trait).

This leaves 10 points. And between -20% Illusion CD + Sharper Images and Clones on Dodge, it’s not an easy call to make. The former gives you slightly better keep attack potential (due to the iZerker), the second gives you slightly better versatility due to PvE usage (all traits used can easily be swapped for PvE traits, but Clone-on-Dodge is extra lives in PvE, whereas -20% Illusion CD is not).

I don’t in general disagree with that it should be in 99% of builds, though. It’s more an issue of how strong Chaos II and Inspiration I are, locking up too many points for WvW purposes.

As for Moa, I’d prefer removal. It just doesn’t extend from a class ability, we don’t do polymorphs. :P

As a replacement idea, keeping the disabling aspect in mind:

House of Glass
150s CD, 10s duration, instant (and without any animation or effect!)
The target’s reality becomes an illusion. After 10s, any damage, healing or other effect caused by the target will be retroactively erased. However, if you or the target are killed during these 10 seconds, the illusion merges with reality, and nothing will be undone.

This would be a bit of a quirky thing. It never stops the target from doing damage or healing someone. And as long as they finish the job in those 10s, all dandy. Ofc, if they get you onto the ground and are 95% through their finisher, 10s are up, you’re back on your feet with full health because, well, nothing of it happened. :P
Likewise, though all healing caused is undone after 10s, maybe by then the enemy is in a better position to mitigate the incoming burst of damage. Or maybe they aren’t, and the “shock” of rerolling 10s causes them to fumble up.

Arngrim.3786:

Beeing a duelist id love to see “rapier” as a weapon choice. Or at least a one handed sword that had that style.

Yes, I’ve been wondering this before. There’s Cutlasses, but no Rapiers or Sabers, are there?

Ideally I’d be able to send me and a single enemy into a separate pocket reality for a limited amount of time, where only we can do battle.

Surrounded by walls of slowly rotating pink sword fences.

I think this happened in Bleach before, IIRC.

Because it looks awesome, and it makes for more varied weapon setups among classes. We are one of the GS using ones, as a cloth caster. How awesome is that?

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

It boggles my mind this has not been addressed or explained. Why is the coding for the GS Phantasm SO different than the others. Was it an oversight? Or intended?

It is probably due to how the Phantasm attacks.
It doesn’t actually spawn at the target, but a bit away (in a random direction) and then whirls through the target.

As a result of this, the Mesmer should not be required to have LoS to the Phantasm’s spawnspot, since then it’d be impossible to use in many many situations.

Ofc the flipside is that this allows to spawn it on enemies not in actual LoS, since there is no skill which needs to connect.

Yeah the thing seems quite inconsistent. For the land-based Scepter they removed confusion from Clones, effectively rendering them very weak (compared to Clones from any other weapon), as they attack too slow for Sharper Illusions and don’t cause any secondary effects.

OTOH, the underwater Trident Clones still cause Confusion, making them actually pretty powerful (I’d genuinely rate them better than Staff, since underwater damage is generally low for all classes, only we can make them pay for having to use so many skills to cause X damage).