Guild Wars 2

GalloY.9640:

Not the pink minion bomber we currently have.

Hrm, but see, that’s not even the problem. If we were the pink butterfly version of DAoC’s Animist, I’d be perfectly fine with that. We’re a long long way off from it though.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my character, but the theme is nowhere to be seen tbh. Especially now with the mirage.

I will stick to an idea I posted years ago in regards to base Mesmer rebalance: First and foremost, swap illusion generation and shatter!

That is:

• F1 is a short-CD single target clone generator.
• F2 is a medium-CD 3-clone AE generator, 1 clone per target, so you need multiple enemies nearby.
• F3 is a medium~long CD 3-clone single target generator.
• All skills currently generating clones are phantasms are retooled.
• Phantasm-type skills, 1 per weapon + 2 utility, briefly empower a single of your clones: For the duration, that clone ignores shatter commands (they are saved up though!), and executes a strong attack against their current target.
• Skills such as Decoy or Ether Feast become shatter skills: They destroy a single of your clones to produce some effect.

As a further point, I’d make clones entirely invulnerable (they seemingly take damage but should they hit 0 HP their health resets!), but in turn cause absolutely no effect with their attacks, not even conditions. But that’s not the core of the idea tbh.

What this fixes is the tilted illusions vs shatter balance. Which is way off. It’s better to use the clones as a steady resource available to be used up slowly, not as an all-or-nothing deal!

Maybe like Scepter, Mirage needs a baseline effect that every third autoattack creates a clone?

EnRohbi.2187:

Pretty easy to be first when the only two defining ideas you have about a spec are the word ‘mirage’ and some abstract concept art about a mirror.

Even then, I would have expected something more working with the word “Mirage”:

• Ability to show the enemies negative or positive AE circles which are actually the opposite. As in, they see a healfield, walk in, it strips their boons instead. A “false oasis”, heh. Should have been the heal skill, I suppose :P
• Clones which are invulnerable but seemingly still take damage. As I said above. Wasting hits of AE skills and potentially making enemies waste a lot of damage.
• A skill which hexes a group of targets, making them see all their enemies as full health with random boons and no conditions. They hit normally, everything works as it should, they just cannot see it.
• Stealth an enemy’s friendly teammate. They can interact, but not see one another. Not the spell effects either.
• As an elite, a Delegator Clone. For X seconds, every bad thing hitting you will hit that clone instead. If it doesn’t die, the total damage taken is transferred to you at the end.

And so on. Things which actually play onto the word mirage, presenting fakes and illusions.

Levetty.1279:

Thats how the Phantasm skills should work on base Mesmer.

Exactly this. I still want the phantasms to appear, but it should automatically disappear in a cloud of pink butterflies (<3) after one attack, which in turn re-forms to become a clone.

I really thought that the deception skills would be our F1-F4 skills. Because frankly shatter makes 0 sense for a Mirage.

And that Phantasms would just do the ambushes like clones do. :<

Hlord.5940:

So since 2012 mesmer has been gutted and nothing was done? Is this the reason why mesmer has the lowest dps? The dev still believe mesmer has high dps since 2012?

Well, in a way.

Or in more detail, they designed a spec which intentionally has a lot of elements which frustrate enemies in PvP. Blink, stealth, fake targets, condition pressure with conditionals, lots of defensive elements, projectile reflect, CC.

Then ofc in turn, everyone complains about them, so they balance it by making them weaker. But since the spec was built around being frustrating in PvP, at the point where they are “tolerable”, they’re also underpowered. Which then shows in PvE.

To fix this, they gave us a support spec which has no alternative. Now everyone needs us, all of a sudden.

But when the time comes around to give us another spec, all of these inherent problems resurface. Nothing was ever “solved”.

Esplen.3940:

But it is nice having panic buttons.

Sure, but I’d prefer them to to actually do something meaningful then. Yeah sure F4 is nice, and F3 can sometimes predictively interrupt something, but frankly they just don’t work the way they were advertised.

And mostly because ANet seems scared of making anything Mesmer very powerful, no matter how much they buff other classes to do top DPS just with their AA.

Ithilwen.1529:

Mirage needs a clone death trait.

Wrong fix IMO. Make Clones flat out invulnerable for Mirages. They seemingly take damage, but their HP bar never drops (numbers show up). All damage dealt to them is 100% wasted.

Mikkel.8427:

To keep it balanced- Illusions cant move, they are now stationary objects.

Also 1 HP, and spawn next to the target at up to 6000 range.

ttyl.6021:

Clones should gain Ambush when the player does baseline, Infinite Horizon feels quintessential to Mirage.

In fact, same for Phantasms.

So… why don’t those people just use PvP then? I mean we even have custom PvP arenas in this game.

I don’t get it. Duelling is already part of the game? I’m confused. What is being asked for here. :<

Infusion.7149:

The utilities didn’t impress me either ; elusive mind is the only standout trait.

It’s the usual “But but… what is Mesmers become too stroooooong in PvP”-underbalancing we’ve seen for the past 5 years. Didn’t truly expect anything else, I’ll be honest.

Lepre.2519:

4.) The shatter traits confuse me. If I want a shatter build, I should play Chronomancer. So why not do something different? Let F1-F4 focus on buffing our clones and phantasms. Keeping our illusions up will help us blend in, reinforcing Mirage deception.

That mess is a mess because our main class mechanic – shatter – is still nothing but a delivery vehicle for trait effects. It’s so bad on its own that it might as well not exist.

Azukas.1426:

This very same thing happened with HoT betas.

Once again patience is the correct action at this time.

Yeah but my patience is limited and Final Fantasy 14 is downloading sooo slowly. :<

Hlord.5940:

Wait, what? clones used to be able to do damage? if so then did the dev increase our damage to compensate for the nerf of clones? If not then this explain a lot of things.

They didn’t, the whole point was that a Thief died in PvP, so they had to fix that.

I also had the idea that since Shatters really don’t work with Mirage, maybe F1-F4 should be four times the same “spawn Mirage Mirror”-skill, each with their own cooldown so you can household however you want.

Frankly Phantasms not doing ambushes is just silly. Why?

leozar.2649:

I was thinking of giving more damage and survivability to clone so they can compete with phantasm and adding one more for the synergy with shatter and ambush so phantasm will be unneeded on this spe.

Frankly it’s lame that the game is 5 years old now, and we never got a rework of how clones and phantasms work.

Because yeah, either, clones should do actual damage an in return phantasms are just removed without replacement, or as the quoted guy said, phantasm is a fourth type of illusion which is separate from the shatterable clones.

Honestly the clones don’t really do the ambushes, either. Yeah they do them, but it has all the power of a sword clone punching someone. Woooheeey.

glenndevis.8327:

I’d have preferred something that replaces shatters as well.
I like the whole idea of Mirage but it’s just a big mess right now.

Same. It felt as if the idea was to keep illusions around, since they do ambushes and all. And pile on the power that way.

But in the end, it’s just an inferior baseline mesmer. The weapon is weapon than our base weapons, the utility skills are weaker than core skills, the “mechanic” is frankly ignorable, just cast another auto-attack and you’re good.

The only thing I like, thematically, is the removed dodge-movement. Yes Mirage Cloak is a weaker dodge, but that’d be a quite interesting restriction to design a spec around. If, you know, said spec is actually very very strong. Not weaker than the core spec.

In detail, I would do these changes:

• Ambush skills: Substantially buff all but Scepter. Then, make ambush skills always replace all illusions with clones of the correct weapon type and make them all execute the same ambush skill, full power. Meaning Mirage is a powerful DPS spec where virtually all DPS is in the ambush bursts.
• Axe: Make it summon the clone in addition to two mirage mirrors, in a cross pattern (You move through the enemy, clone appears where you started, mirage mirrors appear to the left and right of the center point).
• False Oasis: Increase the radius to 450 (900 total diameter). Mirage Mirror spawns on the Mesmer’s location when it runs out, assuming she is still inside. Increase healing by ~20%.
• Jaunt: Increase range to 600. Charges are returned all at once, 20 seconds after the first charge was used.
• Crystal Sands: Increase to ~15 projectiles of which only 5 can hit a single enemy.
• Illusionary Ambush: Increase CD to 45 seconds, make it summon as many clones as necessary to fill up to 3 illusions.
• Mirage Advance: Make it apply Mirage Cloak upon cast-start, and once again when you arrive at the target location.
• Sand through glass: Reduce the CD to 20 seconds.
• Traits: Number buff across the board.

I think the animations are neat, and many of the ideas behind skills and traits are amazing and sound wicked.

Increase ~all numbers by 50-75%, and we’re good. Damage durations, clone health, everything.

musu.9205:

that heal skill lol requires mes stand still 3s in same spot basically suicide .

I thought you get the heal over time either way? The spot is just where the mirror is created at the end.

Don’t worry, they’ll probably retool it into a raid buffer spec instead :P

(edit)
Serious suggestions for a moment:

These are elite specs. They are supposed to have a clear, defining, element. As such I’d focus 95% of the buffs on the ambush skills. Rather leave the rest super weak, if the dodge→ambush feed mechanic slaughters enemies and tops the DPS meters, all is well and the spec feels highly unique on top of it.

As such, really rethink the way these work. At the very least I’d make them significantly stronger and remove the attack from clones (that is, they do the animation but it does nothing, not even apply conditions). Also means we’re less reliant on clones in WvW, where they last all of a single frame at the best of times.

As an example, the GS ambush should probably hit squishy targets for ~25% of their health, and hit the side targets for the exact same damage.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Essentially, while this feature might benefit the player who is cynical about loot in GW2, it kittens the player who likes loot.

Completely honest here: I hope that no one likes the loot system in GW2. It’s so annoying to the player, it really shouldn’t get any praise. Basically any other MMORPG has handled loot-to-inventory better than this.

That’s not to say that it is unusable. Clearly we play the game. But it’s the low point of MMORPGs, and it really is difficult to make it worse.

Removing a good 75% (or so, felt like 75%) of trash loot drops in favor of a currency I can “trade in” for either crafting mats or a gamble on skins would… be pretty cool?

RedZebra.2345:

No Xarallei he didn’t misunderstand as BGDM and arcdp are the mostly used and Anet made their stance about the semi compliant BGDM, no direct memory compliant dps meter is available atm. So everyone using such one now is in direct violation with TOS.

Eh, did you bother to read the dev’s posts about this? I mean you clearly didn’t, but just asking you, wouldn’t it be better to do that first?

Blaeys.3102:

When someone like the developer of BGDM continues to push the boundaries, even after multiple warnings, then they put all future add ons in jeopardy.

Good. The sooner mass-banwaves happen over this and people play MMORPGs which actually care about UI customization and decent UI capabilities instead, the sooner the vote-with-your-wallet voice might carry on to ANet’s account balance and hence their design teams.

Because really, this game’s UI is as terrible as the game itself is amazing. It’s not just unmoddable, what is there is screaming more for mods than moddable UIs in other MMORPGs are. Lack of features, yet still visually cluttered and confusing. It’s a marvel of (mis-)design, in a way.

kurfu.5623:

Despite the mental gymnastics by some people trying to justify this system, having to pay to get loot you have earned is a terrible idea.

Having to invest 15000000 clicks to empty your inventory, hurting your tendons in the process, is an even worse idea.

And it’s kitten good they’re finally doing something about it. Sorry, but I’d rather get my salvage mats directly.

Harvestr.6052:

I think it just adds an unnecessary step. How does this improve the game?

Saving myself lots of steps to process my inventory is a big improvement, wouldn’t you agree. The majority of the loot is now done via a simple mass-salvage → deposit.

Sepheiron.4918:

This would need a re-design for every helmet skin adapted to each and every hair style.

Such is the price of incurring technical debt in software projects. Should have fixed it early.

xarallei.4279:

It would be nice if they could balance the two to be equal. But yeah, power specs are feeling what it was like for condi specs for years. It was zerk or go home.

Both are just ways of dealing damage. Their entire difference (other than minute details of how you set up your char) is how the numbers above the enemies’ heads look.

What matters is how much DPS you do, not how you do it. Hence balance would be nice to have, but not important. If your classes’ top DPS spec deals 80% with power, so be it. If it’s 70% conditions, so be it. It’s just a different setup, you deal maximum DPS as your role either way, and your gameplay is maximum DPS rotations.

Pifil.5193:

No matter what you’re going to be spending 1s 68c per item you identify. That’s a cost of just over 50s to identify 30 items.
For that you probably get a blue, green or crafting materials but may get a Rare or better. We don’t really know what the drop rate will be like. From what I’ve seen on these forums some of us were lucky and got quite a few Rares but others identified a lot and didn’t get a single one.
All blues (and most greens) are worth less than the cost of identifying the gear.
The crafting materials you get out of salvaging a blue or green will typically be worth less than the cost of identifying the gear.
Unless you get a rare or exotic then you’re looking at losing money or – at best -
breaking even on every item.
Either way you’re losing 1s 68c of your potential profit per item so the money made from a rare or exotic will have to cover your losses when identifying everything else.

The point being then, that yes, you can just salvage the unID’d gear directly!

Yeah, throwing the Tides of Time through an enemy incoming zerg could have seriously funny effects with Chaotic Interruption + Mistrust.

sorudo.9054:

it’s a useless thing to exist as long as we get fine gear drops from it that are worth less then the ID it self, that’s the whole reason why i said that.

But then you can just salvage the unId’d gear directly instead?

Haishao.6851:

Remove the tool and people will kick you because you don’t have 25k+ AP

Or 100 LI. Or the wrong runes on your pinged armor.

Which is exactly what happened before, come to think of it. Almost as if the problem were the players, not the damage meter. kitten . Who would have thought…

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Theory crafting is fine but using it as a tool to shut people out is flat wrong.

Umm, you did notice people kicked others over elitist reasons well before damage meters in GW2, right? Since day 1 and all?

Tumult.2578:

This casual, should reach my long term goal of 5 legendary weapons sometime next month and that will likely do it for me. I’ve spend about 130 mastery points in HoT and feel I have given it a fair try.

“Casual”.

Uh huh. 5 legendaries casual.

That’s the biggest problem I have with a lot of comments in this thread, I bet they’re from the ultra diehard players with lots of of legendaries and tons of achievements farmed. Because they’re so “casual”.

sorudo.9054:

gear that needs to be ID’ed must be of great quality otherwise it can just as much drop directly

No no no. The whole point is to spam us less with loot. You can salvage the unID’d gear directly! Don’t drop normal loot instead, that’d remove the whole reason for the thing to exist!

marelooke.9708:

They need to remove the cost to ID and get rid of the requirement to go anywhere to do it. We didn’t need to identify before and I don’t see any reason to bring back that crappy GW1 system.

I barely ever have issues with bag space and since you also have to unlock a heart vendor (effectively bringing one of the worst misfeatures of WoW into GW2: mandatory dailies) this ends up being worse than it was before as far as I’m concerned: more busywork, more clicking and at a higher cost.

No, because you can just salvage the unidentified gear directly for mats. So actually way less busywork.

Substatic.6958:

I find it very odd that WoW is considerably more casual friendly than GW2 at the time being. Odd because this was the exact opposite before HoT and Legion/WOD.

Yeah this is really surprising, but tbh GW2 wasn’t that “casual” at release either. The sheer dedication you need to get ~anything in GW2, plus all the hoops you have to jump through for entirely normal things like clearing your inventory… ugh.

It’s this skill: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Meld

OriOri.8724:

Jesus christ is that really deadeye’s elite? That’s so kittening cancerous. Revealed is the one counter to stealth, allowing them to just flat out remove revealed, and then also re-apply stealth in the same skill, is just broken.

The skill designers really need to stop with this constant one-upmanship. Stop introducing mechanics that circumvent balancing mechanics in the game. Removing revealed needs to go. 100% damage reduction from spellbreakers full counter needs to go. Anything else that is designed in a similar manner needs to be thrown out and re-designed

Welcome to Guild Wars 2, where by now no skill should have less than 4 total effects. Also the more spammable the better. Instead of any purity of design, we get barraged with effects and skills at all times.

Can always just use a steam controller and a steam link, if you don’t want to mess with the technical details.

Odin the exiled.5764:

I’ve never been a fan of ppl using dps meters. Mainly due to so many players that are very negative with them and then start excluding players cuz of it.

But the thing is, the very same people did this before DPS meters in GW2, too. Only they used different things by which to exclude you, such as your LIs, APs, achievements, class, weapon, etc.

Nothing changed in that regard, if anything there’s a slight improvement because now they kick you by something vaguely related to actual contribution to the party.

Dominik.5162:

beta login screen

Now you reminded me of the old login screen. Thanks.

/cry

FogLeg.9354:

I have hard time trying to even imagine system which requires less clicks to clean up whole inventory.

Yeah but you left out a few steps, didn’t you? Cheeky.

1. Open bags.
2. Mass-salvage greens/blues.
3. Mass-salvage rares.
4. Deposit.
5. Sell all Junk.
6. Manually go through the list and manually sell a bunch of other items which aren’t sold as junk despite clearly being junk (such as runes/sigils in non-superior quality).
7. Repeat Steps 1-6 because there’s too many bags to open all at once.
8. Bonus with PoF, though luckily optional: Before doing all this, move the stack of unidentified items to an invisible bag. Afterwards complete a heart, identify it, and go through the steps again, possible including the iteration because you had too many things to identify on one inventory.

The big problem is how 8 doesn’t solve anything, rather it optionally adds another few steps of complexity. The inventory system could use significant simplification, like, you know, just dropping junk to give us cash and crafting materials we can deposit (and nothing else, make it crafted/bought!), with the odd actual exotic/precursor rarely tossed in.

You have a hard time imagining a simpler loot system? Play other games then, sorry. As nice as GW2 is in many many many regards, it’s loot/inventory system isn’t just sub-par, it sets the lower rating boundary for all other games, it’s one end of the rating scale.

Hanakocz.5697:

This is not the console game and hopefully will never be. That would be damaging.

It works fine in FF14 tbh. But then, that game was built from day 1 with controller support in mind, including the UI and all. Changing it retroactively would be a massive undertaking and feels like a colossal waste of time considering how tiny the target audience probably is.

I would suggest something, like removing Phantasms and just giving us more skills instead. It’d fix a lot more.

Not really. Just messes with the way Mantras are used.

Zenith.7301:

Honestly retargeting illusions/phantasms should not be locked behind an elite spec and should be a function of the third step of the autoattack chain for all weapons.

Um… why? I mean at that point, I’d prefer to get rid of the needless complexity, just remove Phantasms, and give us extra attack skills instead.

Albadaran.1283:

But on highest level you know so much that items identify automatically.

So you have to mastery-up that you get gear exactly the same way as before?

It’s a really bad thing which makes an already really annoying gear process worse.

What we currently have is bad. We have to spend a ridiculous amount of clicks and steps to sort our inventories. It shouldn’t be like this. Other MMORPGs laugh at us over this.

The unidentified gear could have been a solution. It still can be, with minimal changes. However in the current implementation it is flat out worse, because these things drop on top of all the existent loot (and bags), and then take even more steps to process.

What I propose:

• Only unidentified gear drops. No more bags containing items (other bags are ok), no more raw item drops other than precursors/exotics.
• One type of unidentified gear for each quality tier. White / Blue / Green / Yellow.
• All of these salvage exactly the same way as if I were to salvage items of that quality tier, meaning all it does is stack them neatly in my inventory.
• There is one concession: You don’t get any runes/sigils from these.
• If you want those, or if you want the gear, you go and salvage them. The money cost here offsets the extra income from the sigils/runes.
• Otherwise, you salvage them. And you’ll still get Luck or Ectos and so on, from the respective stack.

That would be a serious improvement over the current spam of things. But the system as it is in the demo is the polar opposite, and adds insult to injury, making for even more RSI-inducing clicks.