Guild Wars 2

Roy Cronacher.1576:

skowcia.8257:

Donari.5237:

VentiGlondi.9830:

I expected each legend to have a bunch of utility abilities to choose from within the legend.

This is quite disappointing.
I hope I can at least change the order of utilities on the skillbar.

In the stress test beta where we first tried out Revenant, you could indeed swap the order of the 7-9 skills. I did so first thing. I assume this remained true for last week’s beta or people would have lit up the forums about the change.

In the last beta i played utilities been resetting its position every legend swap. Hopefully its olny a bug if not they better change it..

That was just a bug, it’s intended to save each bar’s skills independently so you can rearrange them how you like per legend. It’s already fixed internally.

Are you kidding me? This thread brings up a design question about Revenant that people have been asking and being ignored regarding since the details of Revenant were released. An Anet employee FINALLY responds to a thread regarding the subject and the response is off topic.

Simply put – your new profession seems inflexible with very few decision points for the player. The other professions with only a single weapon set have access to potentially a LOT of skills via their mechanics and utilities (kits) whereas the number of Revenant skill build combos are ridiculously low with zero room for nuance. There’s no true ‘utility’ in their utility skills. If you’re playing a ranged build and want to use Jalis then his spinning hammers utility is worthless. If you’re playing Ventari and in a situation without many projectiles then one of his utility skills is worthless to you without the ability to swap to something more useful.

The Revenant is a neat idea – but for crying out loud actually address players concerns.

This profession is like using a Smash Up deck to play against a Magic the Gathering deck.

Why couldn’t it make sense? And why must every Revenant player must have “gone back in time” to train? It’s much simpler than that:

Rytlock entered the Mists and found Razah (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Razah), who taught him the basics of being a Ritualist, which, with Rytlock’s more martial prowess became the Revenant. He returned to a time two years ago where he secretly taught others these abilities without revealing himself.

Fast forward to the present and suddenly one day having Revenants all over the place makes sense to us because Rytlock altered the past and thus, our memories.

Err Orpheal I think you’re reading into it a bit much. So far as I read – it’s just dialogue like what we’ve already seen in beta.

Elementalists have racial specific dialogue when they change attunements, Warriors inform you of their fury, Necromancers say something when they enter Deathshroud and comment on their minions.

It’s true I wish more classes had such dialogue. I remember being disappointed that my Mesmer didn’t do anything specific except Mantras. The first time I heard my Mesmer say, “I make a pretty good team” I assumed it was Mesmer specific and thought it was a hilarious and perfect voice over for a profession that makes clones of them self – then I found out it’s just a sylvari combo thing.

Belzebu.3912:

Charritable.8709:

It’s been two weeks that we are waiting for news. Real news.

And all we got was five skills and two screenshots.

Arena Net, you just don’t know how to do the hype.

We got to know 1 new weapon set for Revenant and 5 more skills … ummm … it is just like what we get with elite specialization, right?

With Elite specs we get a weapon, new skill type, and profession mechanic variants (Chronoshift/virtues/shroud knight) , we only got the first two with this.

Also the whole Ventari’s Tablet thing seems odd and cumbersome. It could be that it’s difficult to show off in a blog.

I agree that odds are Glint will be related to the Elite Spec. We’ve already seen that Rytlock seems to prefer using the Glint Legend and we have a precidence for the NPCs gaining specialities (ie Marjory – Reaper).

Glint’s Legacy is literally involved in this story anyhow. That leaves us with a the typical 4 spec paths seen before. One generic/mechanic related. Defensive (Jalis), Condition (Malyx), Support (Ventari), and Power (Shiro) legend.

How does having only 3 decision points (weapon set & 2 legends) make them adaptable? Most classes can choose two weapon sets and refined choices in their utilities (ie Mesmer Portal, Reflects, more or less condition removal, stability) whereas as far as we know the Revenant is stuck with whatever set of 5 skills is part of his legend.

Want to play a support Revenant and there aren’t many projectiles? Congrats – one of your utilities is useless and you’re stuck with it. At least, so far as ANet has told us.

Staff seems neat – I’m not sold on the Legend though.

And it keeps looking more and more like they are building the Revenant to have extremely restricted decision points in their builds. One weapon set, two legends, done. There isn’t any nuance to builds, instead you pick from a handful of prebuilt options.

Thematically the Revenant is cool, but until ANet finally takes the time to clarify whether or not the profession’s Legend skills are locked in I’m not really excited about it.

(I.e. Does Jalis ALWAYS have the road, the taunt, and the spinning hammers or are there other Jalis themed utilities that be swapped in?)

Cyninja.2954:

Worst case:

- 1 weapon set
- 2 legends to switch back and forth with fixed healing, utility and elite
- elite specialisation that will give 1 extra weapon

Better case:

- 1 weapon set (don’t see this changing)
- 2 legends to switch between. seletable heal, utility and elite per legend (likely only heal and utilities)
- new weapon and/or legends with elite spec

One thing to remember, the revenant has unlike any other class no direct cooldown on his utility and elite skill. Giving this class to much room an flexibility would make it near impossible to balance. Expect more rigid builds but more flexible combat. When 9/10 of your skills have almost no cooldowns, you rarely have nothing to press.

Right. The very fact that Revs get access to TWO Heal skills is pretty powerful. I think this makes up for them not getting the normal extra F# skills other professions get. However, I’m seriously hoping for the second scenario otherwise this profession will be terribly predictable. Sometimes switching out that one utility skill is very key to adjusting a build or making it your own.

However – one positive note is that unless they intend to completely remove/redesign how the racial skills, never mind the neutral skills (Spirit Wolf and the Heal) work then they basically have to allow Revenants the ability to swap out some of their skills for those – so having more options than just the set 5 per legend seems likely.

Even so – the way the profession has been presented in the demo leaves very few decision points for your skills. Three decision points (one weapon set, two legends) is extremely inflexible.

My hope is that this inflexibility is just for demo purposes and they fully intend to have a variety of 6-0 skill choices for each Legend. Not as many as normal – of course – but 4-5 utilities per Legend and perhaps a set of skills that are available to every Legend would go a long way towards addressing my issues with the profession.

It’s definitely an odd-duck of a ranged weapon. Though so was Mesmer Greatsword. You’ve covered the cons pretty well, but I think you missed some of the perks.

1) Three finishers, two of which are Blast finishers and a Darkness field with really good uptime. This means that in addition to blocking projectiles your main attack life steals and you can do some AoE blinds. ANet seems to be making up for the single weapon set on Revs by giving them pretty good combo potential.
2) Phase Smash physically moves you during the animation. For example, if you have your the spinning hammers skill going while you use it then foes in the area of your Phase attack will be struck by it. This has a lot of potential as an impromptu dodge skill. Use it just before an enemy’s big AoE attack goes off and it will move you to safety then put you back where you were. However – besides these quirks it does seem an odd mechanic. Shorten the range a bit, make it a cone attack from where you leap to, and add in the option to activate again it during the jump to actually move there. It gives the weapon some mobility it’s lacking. Something it especially needs if the rev is going to be limited to a single weapon set.

They aren’t going to force you to use a certain sub-set of heavy armor skins on your character any more than they force necros to use the face paint or Mesmers to use the masks they get at character creation. It’s just a thematic aspect to the profession.

As it stands now – I’m not a huge fan of the Revenant and ANet hasn’t stepped in to clarify some of the most obvious flaws in their design.

My primary issue is their lack of flexibility. When it comes to your skills you currently have 3-4 decision points. Two Legends then either a a single 2h weapon or a MH & OH. That makes them extremely restricted. Most professions get more flexibility in just their weapons – never mind being able to customize their utilities fully.

Having each Legend linked to a set 5 skills is a flaw I hope they address. All they have to do is give each legend about 5 utilities so that there is a greater degree of customization in that regard and they’ll probably be fine.

WoW is a terrible example to compare expansions to because their model has always been to basically abandon all previous content and invalidate old equipment with each expansion.

ANet had enough of an uproar when they added ascended equipment (which is barely an upgrade and account bound rather than character bound), they aren’t going to go the WoW path. No, ANet’s challenge is to take their game model and put in actual challenging PvE content that can’t all be done in berserker gear while invigorating sPvP and WvW options.

People really need to learn what “pay to win” actually means. Most game expansions add better gear and more levels creating a very real power gap between players who do and do not have the expansion to the point where they cannot even play together – yet you consider just being given more options pay to win? There will still be plenty of builds that eschew the elite specs in favor of a different 3rd spec.

Raif.9507:

Mikkel.8427:

It’s memorial day. I think we can all safely assume that most (if not all) of the staff had the day off.

Not everyone is American, nor aware of memorial day.

Which would be why he informed you :P

Sneakier.9460:

as a Norn Ranger, plz no anet…

i have already a couple of nearly useless racial elites…
the only shapeshift that deserves to be called a shapeshift is Polymorph Moa because shapeshifts the target

That’s because it’s a racial. They aren’t meant to outshine normal ranger skills, most of them are fairly niche.

Thank you Darkpsyde for posting constructive criticism.

And he’s right – the current PvE meta doesn’t encourage tanky builds. The added survival isn’t worth the damage loss. You end up doing pitiful damage on an already low damage profession but you’ll still go down quickly if you don’t know the encounters, when to dodge, or where to stand, etc.

I wish it was otherwise. I had a Mesmer friend when the game was released who always insisted on such builds and we mostly just played and had fun without pressing the point that he was virtually useless, but PUGs aren’t known for their tactfulness in this regard.

I’d like to see a variant Ranger specialization where you still select animal companions but instead of having a pet that fights along side you, you can transform into the two chosen forms – gaining a 5th skill based on the pet family.

Or something more vague like “Onward!”

MasterJediSoda.5926:

In this example, I see it as more a learn to play issue as well. The necromancer even stopped after his stomp, looked back and forth between the mesmer clone and downed ele a few times, where it’s clearly visible (and with no hectic fighting to distract) that the clone has a differently colored name and is autoattacking. The change that was suggested was merely a change in the name color, and I don’t think that would have made a difference in this example.

Now, I could see making the change anyway – if nothing else, people with colorblindness might have an easier time with it. I’d actually love to have full control over the colors in options too – for that and chat. But, again, in this example, I’d agree it’s merely learn to play, with little, if any, impact from the change.

I agree. My point is just that there is a difference in saying “in your example, they just played badly” and saying “There is no issue unless you’re new or a bad player. L2P”. You at least admit the OP has a valid concern – even if the example given isn’t helping his case.

I’ve always thought Mantras should just gain charges at set intervals of time. The manual charging mechanic is clunky and makes running multiple Mantras cumbersome. In general, the time I spend essentially dazing myself to charge them isn’t worth their pay-off and that dreaded charge-up is going to prevent me from wanting to burn charges to maintain the new trait bonus.

Instead of thinking of Mantras as a brief Chant that Mesmers use to store power, they should think of them as a constant – dare I say “Mantra”, the Mesmer focuses on to gradually accumulate power.

A good example is Corki’s missiles from League of Legends (or numerous other skills. The Monk’s Roll ability in WoW). The gist being that you can store up several uses and gradually gain them back at a slower rate than you can use them. Though I would definitely suggest a reasonable CD between many of the Mantra uses (ie Daze).

Yea I’d forgotten they changed the range increase from Master of Manipulation. I actually prefer the new effect. In that case Ether Feast will have to be an Illusion Skill or a Glamour and the former is the most obvious given the effect.

Mass Invis as a manipulation seems unlikely, as the resulting reflect would be of more limited use while Invis (though I won’t say there haven’t been plenty of times a Longbow ranger had locked on to me as I hit Decoy). I think odds are one will become a Mantra or Signet, and given the effects Mantra seems more likely which would best apply to Mass Invis as an area of effect. Though the dynamics of the skill would probably change so that we end up with less total Invis up time.

No idea. They will get categorized though and in order to do so changes will have to be made. Logically an “illusion” skill should summon an illusion, but I don’t think any traits really require it so they might simply categorize Ether Feast as such.

However, that means Mirror needs to become a Glamour (necessitating an area of effect/field) or a Manipulation (necessitating a target since a trait effects the range). Signet and Mantra are already covered.

I would be surprised if we were completely “done”. The fact that they mention various things made ‘core’ (rather large changes) tells me that there is likely more going on. For example, Mark Jacobs offhandedly mentioned in the twitch stream that they were getting rid of Tome skills and changing them to existing types. (A signet and a shout I think). He followed up with a post on the forums about it.

If you look at Mesmers many of our untyped skills don’t easily fit into a variety of the existing categories (unless we generically call them Manipilations). Odds are we’ll see some changes to our Heals and Elites to make them fit into different categories.

For example, we have Time Warp – which is obviously a Glamour. But Polymorph: Moa and Mass Invisibility don’t easily fit into separate categories. Both could be a manipulation, but they should be different. So we might end up with “Mantra of Invisibility” for all we know. That would actually be kinda awesome – brief spurts of AoE invisibility. Reminds me of Kha’Zix in LoL.

Fay.2357:

You’re assuming that the situation in the video was caused by someone thinking the clone was a mesmer, and that’s definitely not necessarily true. The necro interrupted a stomp unnecessarily, and all 3 people decided to leave the point, thinking the others would stay and cap it. Really all that this video showed was how bad standard zerg-mode PvP players really are.

And if I was making an assumption about what happened how exactly does that change my point? Even if the whole thing was staged it doesn’t change anything. I was merely trying to explain what I thought occurred in order to illustrate why I didn’t think this was a situation that would frequently occur – thereby making such a feature low priority.

1) The suggested change would add value.
2) Despite that it’s probably not likely we’ll see it.
3) No need to be rude about it.

It’s pretty simple. Suggestions like this should be encouraged while realistically considered. “L2P” responses should be avoided when someone is genuinely putting their idea out into the world.

“It’s fine L2P” should be a very rare response and this isn’t one of those situations, at least not as pyro put it. It’s more a “it probably won’t change so we have to deal with it” which is similar – but comes across a bit nicer.

This would undoubtedly be useful and there’s nothing bad about such a feature… it’s likely very low on ANet’s priority list. So in the mean time you just have to “learn to play” around it.

In this situation the necromancer and Mesmer enemies worked against each other, they’re both so used to seeing so much on the screen they assumed the other had it.

I’m genuinely curious what kind of bug could have caused that. Probably some sort of match-making logic.

Toxsa.2701:

In the future, resistance quickness, and alacrity become boons too.
There are your 12 boons.

Alacrity is a buff, not a boon.

Carighan.6758:

I’ve always felt Mimic would make for an absolutely amazing elite:

Mimic
Cast: 2 or 3 seconds, see below
Range: 2000 units
Duration: 12 seconds
Cooldown: 180 seconds
Effect: Copy target friendly or enemy character. You cannot use the target’s elite ability, and will inherit all current cooldowns and limitations, including all negative status effects and conditions. You will lose all such gained effects when Mimic ends, however you will keep the lower of your original health and your mimic health when the effect ends. Casts slower when used on allied characters.

It should also have a rather obvious animation of glass shards flying off the target and forming upon the Mesmer during the cast.

Interesting concept – except ANet intentionally designed skills to not require ally targeting. Even reviving doesn’t require it.

However, it would be an interesting Phantasm skill. Activate once to copy the target and again (Echo) to summon.

Gnat.9405:

Eggs.3142:

Wait untill you see what all of the other shouts do before jumping to conclusions. Yes they said that the Necro shouts do damage, and that one of them summons things per enemey hit, but the others might be more supportive.

“Reaper shouts differ from warrior and guardian shouts in that they focus more on harming foes than they do on bolstering allies.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-reaper-necromancers-elite-specialization/

Where does it say that none of the Shouts have support aspects? For example one of the shouts could very well be:

“Cower!”
-Enemies take damage and gain weakness. You and each nearby ally gain a stack of Might for each enemy affected".

Or

“Death take you!”
-Rupture the vital organs of up to 5 nearby enemies, inflicting bleeding and dealing damage around them. Each explosion is a blast finisher.

Hey look – we have enemy focused shouts that are supportive to allies and even work for condition builds (another common assumption). Stop assuming and wait for the stream.

Guys – you know little beyond the base concept of the profession. Give it a day (literally) to find out the details before making declarations about the direction of the profession.

Keep in mind that last Thursday Dragonhunter was a huge let down, but when more details were released a lot of people had their minds changed (well – besides the name).

The greatsword is optional.

The only aspects of the elite spec that are inescapable are the traits (which includes the mechanic changes). So long as you have trait support for the various build types then you’re fine. We don’t know all of the variants of the death shroud skills (except that any existing trait that affects Deathshroud will still do so) nor anything but the minor traits.

If what we’ve seen for other elite specs is any guide, they’ve tried to accommodate a variety of build choices.

Chronomancer is fine.

Dragonhunters Hunt Dragons.

Chronomancers Mance Chronos.

Juba.8406:

ASP.8093:

Juba.8406:

Warrior warrior warrior warrior

Warriors also get a minor trait that makes weapon swapping faster.
In HoT, warriors are getting Unsuspecting Foe as a minor.
Conclusion: Sometimes, minor traits are actually good.

This is one of those times. Move along.

Unsuspecting Foe is trash in Arms trait line, i don’t think any warrior will pick it over Strength.

For Fast Hands it’s a minor since the beginning of the game, it should be a Baseline trait, btw did you see what traits Mesmer is getting as Baseline ?

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Traits that are now baseline:

• Reduced glamour recharge rate
• Phantasmal damage boost
• Manipulation range.
• Illusionary Persona: Shattering illusions creates the shatter effect on you as well.
• Illusionary Elasticity: Bouncing attacks have one additional bounce.
• Protective Mantras: Gain extra armor when you cast a mantra.

Warrior got 0 Baseline traits.

Mesmers are getting things made baseline because we were severely lacking in build diversity due to the outright necessity of many of those traits (or lackluster state of mechanics/skills without those traits). You can’t compare one to the other directly like that and expect some sort of equality without having significant metrics regarding the overall state of the professions. Something I’d point out ANet has.

Either way – this kind of conjecture is pointless. It doesn’t prove anything.

Hey – great line up! Here’s a bit of feedback. (Ps I love the puns).

Minors:
-Time Splitter: This trait probably needs notes added to it indicating it allows access to Well skills and the Shield weapon. This should probably be standard for all elite specs. It just helps clarify what all the elite spec does for non-forum roamers.

-Flow of Time: Clarify if it’s per illusion shattered or per shatter skill. The former is obviously preferred. Does this buff stack? I’m seeing some potentially interesting combos to shatter spam (with the illusion and phantasm return traits) to build up alacrity during a chronoshift so that when you exit the shift you have a nice stack of alacrity going – and all your shatters back to boot.

Adept
-All’s Well That Ends Well: Great pun. But consider changing this to granting the new resistance boon. Condition removal/conversion is very Mesmery – but we’re Chronomancers in this spec. Resistance is evocative of stepping outside of time to make conditions not affect your allies briefly.

Master
-Improved Alacrity: Consider changing this to “Alacrity you apply”, it makes the Mesmer himself more supportive to his allies.

Grandmaster
-Chronophantasma: I love this trait – but I worry it will end up being the go-to Shatter Mesmer trait rather than the Phantasm Mesmer trait as designed. I’d almost rather the trait said “Phantasms you shatter reduce the cool down of one of your Phantasm skills by 5s” (prioritizing the current highest or lowest CD) then perhaps give the trait an additional effect (ie Phantasms gain Quickness). As it’s written right now, a Shatter Mesmer would be hard pressed not to get it for the ability to, combined with the Master trait, rapid fire off multiple shatters.

Keep in mind that any trait would need to work for sword MH and OH. For example:

“Sword clones negate the first attack against them and then dodge towards their target”.

This seems very Duelist to me. Less about clone spam/shatter and more about Deception. Note I’m not talking about a true dodge here since clones can’t really preemptively dodge. Mechanically, sword clones would gain a non-channeling skill similar to our other block skills that blocks an attack and triggers a dodge. It adds some reliability to sword clones and a way to mess with enemies in PvP

Necromancer won’t becoming a Ritualist. Thematically it’s not a big leap from undead minions to spirits – especially with the whole ghost sword thing Marjory has going on. However, the Ritualists power originated from the mists – before the Gods even granted magic to the rest of humanity.

Odds are that we’ll see a Ritualist option (Scepter) for the Revenant, their lore is definitely more fitting. Hell, they even have the blindfolds that were signature to Ritualists in GW1.

I’d rather they made this change to the Wings of Resolve trait. Rather than making it deal damage, make it taunt enemies as you leap in.

I like the idea of the DH literally swooping into combat to peel off his allies. Though, the DH theme is a bit less altruistic.

I like this.

However – I definitely do want to see Tomes return as part of an elite specialization. This round Guardians are getting a more martial specialization, so this gives an opportunity for a more mystical version which utilizes Tome skills in a future update.

I was given the impression that the function of attributes would be altered to have effects specific to trait lines.

I looked up the bit that gave me that impression and found that it was in part 1 of the new specialization system reveal – but that the wording was a bit ambiguous:

Each profession’s attributes will be updated to have half of their functionality be part of a specialization and half of their functionality will be a baseline for that profession. For example, elementalists now have a base attunement recharge of 10 seconds, which is reduced to 8.7 seconds when the arcane specialization is equipped.

When I read it, my thought was something like “Healing power now increases clone health” or “Precision decreases attunement cool downs” etc. So now I’m not as sure. But I guess it’s still possible and would make traits like these make more sense.

You guys do realize they’re doing the same thing for everyone? Mesmers are getting Wells – which used to be Necromancers. Guardians are getting Traps. Mesmer wells are thematically different from Necromancer wells, so expect the same.

I personally would have went with Warden. Traps can then be themed as a cousin to Wards (an established Guardian skill type).

Essentially you then have a specialization who has become extremely good at using Light constructs. Converting their Virtues into constructs (Spear, Wings, and Shield), shooting constructs from a bow, and creating more complex wards (traps). And providing traits that affect your staff/hammer/sanctuary/wall of reflection wards.

The OP makes a lot of assumptions. Like assuming that Wings of Resolve will be interruptible then concluding that it’s worse than other skills because it’s interruptible. You’re coming to conclusions based on your own conjecture. Similarly you assumed Shield of Courage would only work on projectiles and thus compared it to the wall.

Wait for the Twitch Stream. So far all I can see for people to legitimately complain about is the name :P

The Guardian Elite profession creates constructs of light which trigger when an enemy approaches. So basically a “Trap” but because of their mystical nature will likely behave on different ways than we’ve come to expect.

I’m not a fan of the name – but I’m holding off too much judgement until I see the twitch stream tomorrow.

I’m actually in love with the new concept. Yes, I would have loved a new mainhand weapon – it’s what the class really needed. But I still really like how the Shield is turning out. A Phantasm summoning weapon that does more than just simply summon the Phantasm? Yes please. Never mind being able to do it twice quickly. I remember suggesting long ago that they make Phantasm skills do something other than just summon the phantasm, like iBerserker causing you to do a spin attack. I like the concept of an attack which creates a Phantom image that repeats itself.

As to Continuum Shift – it’s really good. Yes, it’s got a built in counter but it’s a counter you can control. They said they wanted to bring back some skill to Mesmer play and this is one aspect of it. By knowing the potential counter to your skill you can use it to your advantage. Drop your CF and then lay into whomever tries to attack it with reckless abandon – or hell, just gravity well them twice. It’ll take a lot of their CDs to ignore two of those. Don’t treat having your CF destroyed as a lose condition – treat it as an opportunity to position your enemies.

phys.7689:

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

This is silly logic. You basically said “yea it sounds good but it’s not” or “it’s good but it can be dodged/countered” to everything. You can apply that same ‘logic’ to just about anything in the game. Something having a counter doesn’t immediately define it as bad.

Shield #4 skill is a block that summons a Phantasm on the enemy who strikes you or on your target if no one strikes you. The Phantasm throws his shield at enemies which bounces between enemies and allies granting/inflicting Alacrity/Chill.

If your block is triggered then the skill switches to Deja-Vu briefly which lets you block again (and summon another phantasm), the original skill CD ticks down during this.

One Note Chord.5031:

It’s all about the face! (The face that people think is a mask.) But I think there’s room for at least two awesome dark purple sylvari mesmers.

He was obviously referring to my dapper-self. ;-)

Here’s some of my Mes through out the years. I mainly stick to armor that doesn’t look like light armor/robes, though I did like the eagle armor – I just hated the sleeves, so I might try the new outfit they’re releasing that looks skimpy on males.

It’s not really comparable. Always on mechanics versus an optional new weapon I’m probably going to always choose the former.

Though I really would have liked another main-hand to help mix things up a bit.

To me, these traits are up there with the “downed” traits as something that really should be combined. Based on the AMA, it seems that ArenaNet has decided to combine the downed traits with other effects.

Why not combine the two? That would give the trait a good deal of versatility with two underused but useful effects. You might even consider mixing in a third effect – perhaps the anti-CC traits that have long CDs.

Anyhow, just a suggestion. I liked a lot of what I saw in the video but there is definitely room for some more combining of under-utilized or narrow focus traits.

I tend to agree with clone death mattering. To me, the core of the Mesmer is that they are the class that sets up win/win situations. You attack? My confusion damages you. You don’t attack? Okay – I’ve taken you out of the fight briefly.

Clone death epitomizes this. Don’t kill my illusions? Good – I’ll use them for shatters or to hide behind. You kill my illusions? They do an effect on you.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a full build however – maybe make it part of traits.