Guild Wars 2

Xaylin.1860:

I wouldn’t mind.

I still would prefer switching DD with Fencer’s Finesse, though. Quite obviously, Evasive Mirror isn’t as powerful as ANet thought. So why not finally enable us to benefit from it when running Sword?

I think I remember disagreeing ages ago on this, but now I completely 180 that train of thought and fully agree with you.

Thank you for the alacrity nerf and inconsequential other mesmer trait/skill. Gives me more free time.

I’m wondering whether it’s worth the time/effort.

Honestly cba to point out what should be immediately obvious to them. If this class lives, fine, if it dies, fine. I’m just going to troll hotjoin to get my fix of gameplay every now and then.

GLaDOS.5897:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Buff some of our useless utilities, like mirror images. Why is this on a 45 second cooldown, yet decoy (which is stronger) is on a 40 second cooldown?
Why does precog still have a cast time?
Why are the wells cooldowns untouched?
Why are our Chono Traits untouched?
Why is timewarp, despite being severely weakened in most game modes, still on a 180 second cooldown. Despite that Gravity Well, an easily argued stronger elite, is on a 90 second cooldown?
Hey, we just buffed the kitten out of boon corrupt Necro. Can arcane thievery get some mother kittening love?
Can we replace phantasmal defender with something actually useful?
Can we get rid of some of the weird kitten after cast delay on our skills? Seriously, has anyone else noticed that sword 2 has an after cast in which you can’t dodge or do anything initially, unless you cancel the attack slightly early?

Have I made my point yet, are we about done?

Next patch note :
- updated cooldown of decoy from 40 to 45 seconds, to match mirror images
- updated cooldown of Gravity Well from 90 to 180 seconds, to match Time Warp
- fixed a bug where Quickness given by mesmers was a Boon instead of an Effect. Still corruptible.
- inscreased delay between iDefender attacks by 50% to avoid excessive sustain
- added a skill fact on Blurred Frenzy to document the aftercast
- fixed a server crash

wow, that looks scarily real. :o

One day these may be real patch notes…

…wait, who am I kidding.

Yeah, a lot of the trait changes on minor things are inconsequential fluff (eg, Evasive Mirror 2s duration – big deal, as if anyone will take it over Blinding Dissipation anyway…).

It’s underwhelming, and at this rate of progression many things might never get seen to.

Alex Shatter.7956:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

2/10 Which is infinitely higher than I would rate the ArenaNet balance team atm.
- IGN

- Gordon Ramsey

Not enough kittens, kittening around in that kittening comment. xD

lol, so much for the scepter buff.

Levetty.1279:

Anybody want to give me a quick run down of the roles, gimmicks and mechanics are of the different classes in Blade and Soul?

Also what the PvE and PvP content is like and how the f2p model is?

I’ve just been watching some videos trying to decide – am I right in thinking Summoner is closest to mesmer?

Or is another class more in line?

Well it looks like the last 6 months were extraordinary.

Now for the slow decline until the next Expansion/new overpowered Specialisation.

Jace al Thor.6745:

Pepsi.8907:

So glad I have blade and soul to satisfy my pvp urges
See you when anet gets their fingers out of their kitten

I’m right there with you. Pyro will probably be along shortly after seeing the changes

I really need to try Blade and Soul.

I mean at least they could have boosted Flow of Time back to 1s per illusion…

All hail the Reaper.

Jace al Thor.6745:

That’s because we were the only one seriously screwed. Did some changes happen that will hurt other classes? Sure.
But kitten man, the buffs to thief alone are bad enough not to mention that the buffs to necro would eat a boon sharing Mesmer alive.
Meta for a couple months and people lose their kitten. I never played Chrono bunker as it’s not my style, but it was counter able and the buffs to those classes alone would have been enough to counter it

It seems every other build than chronobunker (which is also gone) is royally kittened right about now.

Standard nuke it from orbit.

The effect of 33% alacrity on shatter builds not running wells or shield, whether power or condition is awful.

Completely invalidates the build I was playing as cooldowns are all too long to justify the damage output.

Alacrity nerf seriously hurts.

And reapers are super scary. :o

Uh oh, looks like the patch is as bad as we expected (no surprises though).

I really like this.

Rata Sum for sure, depending on where it is enabled.

Coulter.2315:

Torch still wins if you’re playing burst.

Yeah but the iMage only provides shatter fodder on a ridiculously long cooldown. It has no other redeeming qualities.

lol, too good for words! xD

As much as I’d love a rework of core mechanics, I’d rather keep this topic to simple cooldown reductions on less used skills which may have a slight chance of being implemented.

Ok nevermind incoming alacrity nerfs, there are a few skills for which cooldowns should really be lower if the skills themselves remain the same:

1. Arcane Thievery – 45-seconds makes no sense. Could be brought down to 30s.

2. Cry of Frustration – 25s would be ok if it did 1 stack torment per illusion baseline, but as it currently stands it is too high for the effect, especially when compared with Mind Wrack…

3. iMage – nothing can justify that 30s base cooldown.

4. Signet of Domination – doesn’t encourage much use of the active stun. Could be slightly lower.

5. Chaos Armour – 35s for this soon to be almost negligable aura is ridiculous. Needs drastic reduction or a complete overhaul of staff #4

6. Mirror Images – should be brought down to 40s in line with Decoy.

7. Mantra of Concentration – could be 20s to match Resolve and Distraction, to encourage use.

Some others which I’m not sure about are Illusion of Life and Chaos Storm, but they seem fine as they are.

Anything else missing, or am I mistaken about some of these?

draxynnic.3719:

Just make it part of one of the Chronomancer minor traits: “Alacrity has double effect on you.” They’ve already demonstrated that they can make traits that increase the effect of a boon on you (regardless of the boon’s origin) with Hardy Conduit.

Even better.

Kusa.6438:

Maybe they should change our traits to where alacrity also gives us 66%, but 33% on the party. It sad they’re nerfing us because of other classes dps with alacrity.

I think only allowing mesmer to have the 66% should be warranted.

This.

66% for personal alacrity is fine, especially in all other pvp builds (excluding chronobunker which is nerfed anyway through loss of amulet, quickness res loss and precog nerf).

But shared alacrity should have a different effect – call it “residual alacrity” or something, and have it only do 33% reduction.

So Well of Recall and AWTEW could proc normal alacrity on the casting Mesmer only but reduced 33% alacrity on other allies within the wells.

The only buffs we know about so far seem to be minor buffs to scepter.

As I don’t use or care about Scepter in my condi builds, nothing will really change for me unless
- MtD gets a +50% damage to moving targets buff
- iMage gets a huge buff
- Prestige does more burning stacks
- Staff AA does more/longer burn
- iWarlock gets an additional condi effect(s) as well as the raw damage

But either way I believe Carrion or Mercenary will be the way to go if not taking Duelling (no Sharper Images).

Also when Mesmer uses shatters ro clear condis/heal, they aren’t using them to deal damage and then they have gone on cooldown for some time.

Which will come first, GW3 or Half Life 3…

:p

Well it’s impossible to say for sure because we still don’t know the full extent of the changes or whether they may reconsider some things they’ve revealed.

But as it stands I will be playing something along the lines of:
Inspiration – Persisting Images, RI, MD
Illusions – The Pledge, MtD, MoF
Chrono – TCU, IR, Cp
Sword/Torch (Bursting/Doom) + Staff (Bursting/Doom)
Ether Feast, Blink, Mirror Images, Decoy, Mass Invis.

Then either Carrion amulet + Scavenging runes OR Mercenary amulet + Berserker runes. Or perhaps Undead or Tormenting depending on how much I want to boost condi damage compared with power.

Currently I’m finding F5 -> Blink/Mirror Images/F3 insanely fun given it all resets. And MoF makes F3 AoE which is fantastic, plus Inpetitude is less useful with loss of blind from Chaos Armour. Mirror Images shatter is awesome under F5, but I can only do that while having the luxury of condi cleanse from Torch, Heal and Shatters. But incoming condi mitigation is mainly a matter of avoidance similar to power shatter using Sword/Torch, and then the extra vitality pool from Carrion helps absorb a lot of it.

Personally I wouldn’t use it because the idea of rng positioning sounds painful – what if you port into a DH trap or similar bad position?

I agree. All the other phantasm skills should be brought in line with shield 4.

Pepsi.8907:

Ah yeah seen like that! But I removed DE a long time ago so I feel like it will be easier to adjust on that part.
Have you tried with chrono line with Ireversion and CPhantasma
You really get more clones then you actually need if you manage well, but playing without energy sigil on at least one weapon will need adjustment, that’s for sure

I use IReversions and Cp pretty much all the time for condi shatter, although I also used this with DE and double Energy sigils for high illusion generation. I enjoyed playing this fast paced burst style – for example could summon say an iwarlock, blink dodge shatter for 2 illusion shatter, immediately have an IR clone back and another iWarlock so could phase retreat and forward dodge into full shatter, swap weapon to sword/torch and have that extra endurance which was just spent in generating the clones.

Without DE/Energy, it is much slower paced which is less fun for me, although I am thoroughly enjoying Mirror Images to replace that instant burst, and it works better with F5 setup too.

For me it is a simple motivation – wtf am I going to do without double Energy sigils (which also means DE isn’t as useful).

So I need to start testing now and getting used to not using Energy sigils.

Obindo.6802:

1200 condition damage
900 expertise
900 toughness

Awesome, no please this would be cancerous xD

If they place limitations on the choice then it can work.

For example, if the total points pool = 3200:

1. Pick your primary stat at a range between 1050 and 1200 points (have a slider so it can be anywhere in between.

2. Secondary stat choices are available depending on the primary choice and the remaining number of points, with number caps. The secondary stat has a maximum value of 1050, only if the primary stat has also been chosen at 1050. If the primary stat choice is above 1050, the secondary stat lies between 1050 and 900 points. So as one slider goes up, the other goes down.

3. The remaining 1100 points must be split between 2 further stats, but they can be chosen in any range between 550/550 and 900/200.

So the results would look like this:
Primary – 1200 -> 1050
Secondary – 900 -> 1050
Tertiary – 550/550 -> 900/200

All amulets would then be normalised to a fixed maximum number of points. It could be extended to 5 or more stat possibilities, but would make it more complicated.

Stat Exclusions:
Simple “greyed out” selection depending on stat choices and values. Would of course require testing to see which combinations would be overpowered (ie Dire).

For example, if the Primary stat is Condition Damage, the Secondary stat cannot be Expertise. If a Tertiary stat is Expertise, it is capped at 550 points.

If the Primary Stat is Condition Damage and the Secondary Stat is either Toughness or Vitality, the Tertiary stat cannot have Vitality/Toughness. If the tertiary stat is expertise, it is capped at 550 points.

And so on…

So you could do things like:
1150 Power
950 Toughness
800 Precision
300 Ferocity

Some interesting ideas – not sure I agree with some of them though.

I particularly like “Phantasmal Ruthlesness” and “Persisting Images”, although the Persisting Images change should push it to Grandmaster status and swap with one of the traits there.

Nice to see such feedback from other class players.

Extra Mirror Blade bounce would be a good start to have back.

@Azure

Energy sigil nerf will be tough on mesmers using Deceptive Evasion – which is any build taking Duelling – mainly shatter builds.

Then look that personal condition removal is almost zero if not taking Inspiration, given most would not use a utility slot for null field/mantra of resolve.

But also, power (shatter, interrupt…) lose a lot of damage and utility without Domination (including boon strip). And similarly Illusions is mandatory for every condi build (which are all weak anyway – may as well reroll another class if wanting to play condi better).

There are a few bruiser options such as Domination/Inspiration/Chrono and Chaos/Inspiration/Chrono with offensive amulets such as Marauder but the latter has very weak/mediocre damage.

Then there is the issue of making shatters hit, given they are a huge source of damage – not to mention keeping illusions alive among all the cleave in order to set up a burst while also waiting out enemy evades/defensive skills. It is quite easy to dodge shatters as any other (ok the only class I’ve never played is necro, but I assume in this case the same thing applies and they can tank it anyway) class if you have played mesmer a lot. I know this in practice because most mesmer burst setup is predictable, just requires similar anticipation to thief burst.

Shield 4 will be less effective with BV buff, not to mention other classes unblockable skills. Offhand Focus and sword currently suck making pistol and torch the only decent options – but torch has pretty much zero damage and pistol has zero defence. So the only other defence is on the mainhand. Blurred frenzy is on a 12s cooldown and roots you – I’ve bursted many times on enemy mesmers with timing the blur to finish, unless they chain immediately into a dodge or other defensive skill. Scepter 2 is currently bad in anything outside of 1v1, but they may change that in the patch.

Greatsword has no defence and Staff only has rng aegis on chaos storm.

Given players not taking Duelling will also have pretty much no vigour, endurance regen will be slow..

Where I’m going with this is that mesmer defence is not as impregnable as many players think it is – there are in fact huge holes and trade-offs at every corner. Combine that with mediocre damage unless running all out Zerker (and condi mesmer sucks anyway) and you can see the shortcomings.

DD is pretty tough vs shatter mesmer currently anyway, so I don’t know how it may end up next week.

Edit: For the record, power shatter could kill thief in a duel situation before June 23rd (extra mirror blade bounce was nice) although it was a very tough fight and as pyro has said wasted the mesmers role in a match because they’d have to use 100% of defensive skills just to survive/kite, so no teamfight presence unless a teammate relieved the pressure. Shatter bursts are easy to land vs players unfamiliar with mesmer, but very difficult to land vs good/competent players who will cleave illusions and evade/block the burst.

Burtnik.5218:

Balance should occur every month+hotfixes to really broken stuff

Yeah, monthly would be great if possible.

Seems this is still broken – the 5% condition damage bonus doesn’t work.

I hope it gets fixed.

EDIT: it seems on testing with golems it might actually be working however the conditon damage stat on the pvp build panel doesn’t show the number increased by 5%.

^That’s great to know thanks. I was wondering whether micromanaging Intelligence sigils would be worth it, but knowing you’ve had some success gives me confidence to try it out.

The upcoming Mercenary amulet has motivated me to test the following:/

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8flknhy0YnawRNwtGLvGFaAkTNR9wesL7ZREEHHA-TJRHABAcRAQqMgZ7PU7TAAA

Not sure on runes – might go for Berskerker/Adventurer for the condi/power buff, although the life steal on Scavenging is currently nice to have.

Torch because given BV and other unblockables I’d rather have prestige and deal with the odd reveal instead of shield 4 saying “please hit me now”. Also more condi removal – testing to see if condi removal with traited torch, shatters and heal is sufficient – which allows the use of Mirror Images. I hope they buff the burning on torch 4, 5 and staff AA.

Mirror Images makes up for lack of DE allowing instant burst where necessary when Chronophantasma and IR illusions are down. The extra stunbreak is nice too, given how much cc flies around nowadays.

Might take Master of Fragmentation once the Chaos armour blind nerf hits – not sure if Ineptitude will be worth it over AoE Diversion among other things.

Only big downside is no precision or ferocity to enhance direct damage. Do get the odd fury from iMage and staff clones, but it’s not something possible to build around I think.

Another good thing is as usual – I save more dodges without DE rather than wasting them to generate illusions. Will be necessary once Energy sigil is killed off.

Trialling this in preparation for Jan 26 nerfs:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW8flknhy0YnawRNwtGLvGV9wesL7ZREEHHaAkTNBA-TJRHABAcRAQqMQtPBAz2fAA

Amulet will likely be swapped for Mercenary and Runes can be swapped for something else – not sure yet. Currently Scavenging gives the best bonus with Carrion.

Torch > Shield providing they buff the burns, and also because Shield 4 will be saying “come and hit me” to thieves. Sword because again Blurred Frenzy will be too important to survival.

Only downside is lack of precision for crit chance, but power damage is still decent in supplement to condi. Good tankiness too thanks to iDefender and RI (will be better with Mercenary).

Mirror Images allows fast max illusion burst and already have enough condi removal on torch, shatters and heal. Also the extra stunbreak is very nice with all the cc around.

Temporal Curtain should have its ICD removed given how much other BS crowd control is floating around.

@DeceiverX, Excellent post, very level headed.

Whatever the case, Scepter will be mandatory.

I’ve got away using Sword/Torch and Staff up till now relying heavily on shatters for applying the condis, but things like the energy sigil change, alacrity nerf and chaos armour blind loss as well as scepter/MS buffs will force me to go Scepter.

Probably going to go Inspiration/Illusions/Chrono with the Mercenary Amulet, Scepter/something and Staff. Inspiration to have a chance at fending off the necros instead of melting when seeing one.

Sad because I liked the acrobatic stunts of both ileap, phase retreat, energy sigil and DE together, but that’s all in the bin now.

Mercenary amulet, lol.

Thank you, exactly what I need.

Kusa.6438:

Fay.2357:

Kusa.6438:

Honestly I see a resurgence of condi mesmers. That’s the hard counter to all melee. Theif might cause problems for everything else, but at least we can face roll them with our condi build.

I would agree…except they buffed necros through the roof. It’s already dangerous to run condie vs a necro, with those buffs it’ll be suicide.

This is true, but every class has a hard counter. It’s just we are used to not having one (PU was faceroll before HoT). I’m fine with being powerful with 1 maybe 2 hard counters.

I sincerely hope they buff staff as and torch burning otherwise even condi isn’t going to cut it.

Or they do something radical and make scepter 2 block multiple attacks and inflict aoe torment. Or reinsert Confusing Combatants so MH Sword will be useable in condi builds.

I want to run the moat cancerous build possible after this – I don’t feel guilty/embarrassed anymore, even if it might be boring to play.

I’d hope flow of time is increased back to 1s per illusion to compensate for personal alacrity.

And sigil of Energy?!?

Well that lot might kill my (non meta, already below par) condi shatter build.

No idea what to change to but looks like it will be slower, weaker, more boring and have even less choice in variety.

Aomine.5012:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Curunen.8729:

A problem is Chrono offers such basic quality of life features that it pretty much “fixes” what is wrong with core Mesmer – for example Chronophantasma, Time Catches Up, Time Marches On, Illusionary Reversion…

I mean, look how tied we were to Duelling for DE before HoT. Now it’s Inspiration because it offers so much in terms of survival and Chrono because DE isn’t mandatory anymore.

What I don’t like is how trait lines are such All or Nothing choices – it forces builds into any given line depending on the state of the game.
Want passable condi cleanse? Must take Inspiration. Want to play conditions? Must take Illusions. What decent clone/phantasm generation? Must take Duelling and/or Chronomancer. Want to play dps? Must take Domination.

I just don’t agree with the “high level” theory behind what trait lines should be as it creates forced choices and restrictions, and mesmer is especially subject to this problem.

Just a question. How do you suggest they set up the trait system? Be able to take any trait and any utility and have it work with any weapon on any class with any amulet in any situation? What would be the point of builds? Each trait line, as you’ve stated, serves a purpose. You have options for everything. Take what you want but know that you’ll be lacking in certain areas, unless you want to have everything which would, again, make builds pointless.

Exactly this.

EVERYTHING SINGLE PROFESSION IS WORKING LIKE THIS.
Mesmer is not the exception here.
Mesmer’s traitlines are better than most of the classes post June patch actually.
Stop lying about core Mesmer doesn’t work. It worked way back in June after the overtuned.

It’s late so I don’t feel like typing a huge reply, but let’s just say I don’t agree with the build system in this game. It offers a lot of false choices and too many restrictions. But that’s ok because I barely play anymore.

Mesmer’s reliance on traits is I believe still more than others, even since the last 7 months. A player is pigeonholed far too much in order for their build to function.

@SlayerSixx
I believe that traitlines should offer themes but not be so defining on gameplay. Lets take one thing – I believe every single Mesmer traitline should have an optional illusion generation trait (would obviously require a lot of work to balance tradeoffs but ultimately would open up far more build variety). Every traitline should have thematic optional condition removal, with tradeoffs. Ie, Domination you’d have “remove condition on interrupt” or something, Duelling “on crit” Inspiration “on heal” Chaos “on boon application”, etc… This is just flavour text to give you an idea of what I mean, and of course it would require gutting/reforming a huge part of the current system – which is why I don’t particularly care anymore because I will never happen.

Also things like Domination “apply certain conditions on interrupt”, Duelling “on crit (ie the confusion on crit trait which never made it)”, and so on.

Extend this to every element of gameplay – conditions, boons, class resource, direct damage, control, support and so on.

This way players could have dps/support/control options in every line, where each line affects how that plays out in practice – the theme of how the player wants to “express themselves”.

I hope that is clear, I would type a lot more but I’m on a phone.