Guild Wars 2

Xstein.2187:

apharma July 21, 2016
“Just so you know, permanent alacrity reducing cool downs by 25% does not translate to a 25% dps boost. It has a lot to do with which classes you’re buffing, the skills they’re using and cast/aftercasts along with original cool down.
A good example is thief, it gains nothing from alacrity as its rotation is pretty much 11111 on staff with dodging mixed in. Quickeness however has a much more profound effect due to how it reduces cast/aftercasts of the auto attack which the chrono brings in buckets.
I think Nike made a raid guide on team comp and what he said was that warrior and Druid buffs were so good it was worth making sure everyone kept them up, Mesmer wasn’t except for the quickness which they can keep on a full raid squad with just 1.
Only takes an ill thought out nerf to say signet of inspiration and I dare say mesmer would be dead for raids most likely.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Are-we-going-to-get-damage-buffs-for-LS3/first#post6252878

Link to thread claiming 25 might comes from warrior. If you are also going to quote a washed up elitist, let’s look at what Nike says about warrior might:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52esxt/condi_ps_burnzerker/d7jmhy6

It reliably makes an average of 10 to 15 might for its sub group, only slightly less than the power ps version. The source of might you’re missing is strength sigil and phalanx strength

Or we could go with some more current people like:
KING on a 5 person Matthias kill
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4u1zsa/king_vs_matthias_5man_956/
TLDR: Condi rev was better DPS and might stacks when fighting matthias

Side note: Condi herald, the worst of condi DPS classes was better DPS than condi PS against matthias because he moved a lot and attacks often. I wonder what other class does confusion and torment damage… vs matthias?

qT
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4zoswe/qt_gorseval_speed_kill_420_left/
TLDR: Might isn’t just from warriors and team comps determine how much DPS loss the warrior takes as they switch food around.

qT Mesmer Guide
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52qtw3/updated_raid_chronomancer_guide/

… we can take a Sigil of Strength which provides around 10 Might for you and your group when you share it with Signet of Inspiration.

It’s like you keep quoting a single thread that never actually got its facts right about how much might a Warrior gives to 5 people when a chrono usually buffs 10 with quickness and potentially depending on sigil choice/herald might.

I’m not saying a SoI nerf wouldn’t hurt. It would be painful to the class and break things more. Just stop quoting that misinformation though.

If they are going to nerf SoI and not nerf the passive aoe boons from rune of durability, they need to at least buff Rune of the Chronomancer #6. Make it 2 seconds base quickness AOE to 5 people. Then and only then will I expect nuking SoI because it will no longer be needed. It won’t break PvP because no mesmer would run around with 100% boon duration, those runes and spams wells instead of portal/blink.

An organized front line group of 5 tends to always have these 3 things.
Herald = 50% boon duration
Rune of Durability = 20% Boon Duration
Mussel’s Gnashblade = 15% Boon duration (and 10% damage reduction).
Total boon duration before traits/gear = 85%. It’s not far fetched to have an EASY 100% boon duration on your entire front line.

Rune of Durability is a base of 3 seconds of protection/regen and 1 second of AOE to 5 allies on a 20 second CD. So a group of 5 people all proc rune of durability and 30 seconds or protection and regeneration and 10 seconds of resistance every 20 seconds. Of course people need to whine about mesmer using active skills to share resistance rather than a completely passive 50% uptime on it >_>

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Stealth-buff-to-Sigil-of-Accuracy/first#post2374109
A long time ago I ended up testing fury on phantasms. p.Fury is the only source of fury that works on phantasms. To recreate this test. Get 60% base crit chance. Get p.Fury. Give fury to self and use SoI to share it. The phantasms won’t crit 100% of the time. Then try to get 80% base crit without p.Fury. Share Fury to the phantasms. Still won’t be 100% crit chance.

I can’t recall a source looking at phantasms and might but it’s easy to check in the testing arena. Add 25 might to self. That 25 might on the mesmer will buff the phantasms since it’s raw power to the mesmer. Summon 3 swordsman, cast SoI and see if the damage goes up. I just checked…. ~6.4k crits without using SoI. ~6.4k after using SoI to buff swordsman.

Quickness does seem to affect them although I didn’t pay too much attention. Alacrity for some reason does affect phantasms too. I didn’t post results on it but I recall summoning 3 shield phantasms to test PH and alacrity sped them up.

Quickness and alacrity make sense though when I think about it. The phantasms have skills with activation times and CDs. Quickness and alacrity affect them. They inherent raw stats from the Mesmer. Giving might to them doesn’t affect the raw stats of the Mesmer.

Phantasms are affected by ALL raw stats such as power, precision, ferocity, condition damage, condition duration, boon duration, healing power, vitality and toughness.

However they are not affected by modifiers we get, like from fury, runes, sigils, grace of the land, frost spirit, food (on movment), etc.

The issue here is that profession X gets 100% boosted by any of those modifiers. If we get fury, only parts of our attacks truly get affeced by fury. Superior Sigil of Force? +2.5% dmg. 5 stacks Grace of the Land? +7.5% dmg. Stuff like that hurts us since ages, and it’s not fair it works like this.

Phantasmal Fury shouldn’t be a triat – it should be baseline and make room for another trait we could use.

This is the problem. And the solution is the let modifiers affect phantasms.

Corruptions: They function like corruptions in that they inflict self-conditions or something bad on self. Meant to make yourself look weak and then turn the tides. The roll over skills have a limited window of activation before they auto activate.
Heal: Illusion of Weakness: Lose 3k health. Intervention: Roll over skill Heal 10k. (Will proc Mender’s Purity twice).
Utility: Illusion of Speed: Stun break. Leap Finisher. Remove immobilize, cripple and chill. ¾ second cast/evade frames. Roll backwards. Aura of Thorns: Roll over skill Inflict cripple and bleeding on self and nearby enemies.
Utility: Illusion of Frailty: Apply a buff to currently active phantasms, increasing phantasm damage by ~30% for 8 seconds. Inflict vulnerability and weakness on self.
Utility: Illusion of Pain: Inflict self bleeding each second for up to 10 seconds. Empathy: Roll over skill End the cutting. Copy 4 conditions on yourself onto enemies. (Not transfer but copy)
Utility: Illusion of Balance: Gain pulsing stability for up to 10 seconds. Fleeting Stability: Roll over skill Remove stability from self. BPAOE: Knockback enemies. Self-knockdown. Blast finisher.
Elite: Illusion of Silence: BPAOE: Remove 5 boons from yourself and enemies. Blackout: Roll over skill Stun both yourself and enemies for 3 seconds.

Adept Traits
Minor: You can now use axe main hand and corruptions. Shatters don’t destroy your illusions. Illusions do less damage (10% less in PvE. 30-50% less in WvW/PvP). Seems necessary for balance and a good place to split damage.
1 Waste Not, Want not: Interrupting a foe steals 15 endurance OR CCing a foe gives aoe 15 endurance to allies. Not sure if stealing endurance can be done with this game engine so I gave an alternative idea.
2 Disproportionate Power Surge: Auto-attacks and shatters do 30% more damage. Specifically auto-attacks and shatters. This is intentional as some skills combos such as GS2/3 would be too strong of a spike in PvP but auto attacks are weak in all game modes.
3 Feigned Smile: Gain 2 seconds of Resistance when using a corruption skill. Procs on both initial and roll over skill.

Master Traits
Minor: Gloat: Heal for ~400 when you interrupt/CC a foe.
1 Shared Victory: Gloat (minor trait) now heals in an aoe.
2 Twisted Speed: When you complete a leap finisher, gain swiftness and apply torment to enemies around the end of the combo.
3 Lyssa’s Balance: When you remove a boon from an enemy, clear one condition on yourself. Synergizes with the GM trait Hex eater vortex to add power damage to boon removal.

GM traits:
Minor: Wastrel’s Punishment: 15% more damage to foes that are stunned or dazed.
1 Calculated Risk: Daze and stuns inflicted by the Mesmer have their duration reduced by 50%. Give AOE might to allies and apply torment when you CC an enemy. Long dazes work well for lockdown builds but not for builds that try to chain interrupts together or want Mistrust/confusion to proc more. Furthermore, your team suffers when you nerf the CC duration in both PvE (breakbars) and PvP (not holding enemies down for as long). This elite spec is mostly selfish DPS and this trait is somewhat selfish so I added the AOE might to make it more like a PS build which shares might with allies when it CCs.
2 Infused Vortexes: Ethereal fields now pulse confusion and moderate damage each second. Light fields now pulse torment. This is about bringing glamour mesmer back. The old glamour traits were broken. Not OP but broken/impossible to balance since they had infinite targets. This new trait turns ethereal fields into more standard pulse and hit 5 enemies like back line wells but with glamours. Furthermore, it also buffs axe 3 and staff 5 which also produce ethereal fields. Veil, Focus 4 and the new F4 also receive a buff with torment. Veil is the reason I didn’t mention damage for light fields which would reveal the mesmer.
3 Hex Eater Vortex: Every time you remove a condition from an ally, do minor damage around you. About bringing back/buffing mantras, null field, inspiration, disenchanter and even arcane thievery but also works with the new corruption utilities that apply conditions on self that can be turned into damage.

I could probably spend hours over analyzing this and talking about all the synergy and build potential it has but thank you for reading up until here so I’ll stop for now unless people are interested in more.

Wastrel’s Reaver? I’m not the best with choosing elite specs name. Reaver because of the axe melee flare. Wastrel to invoke the kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t of the gw1 Wastrel skills. Bit of gw1 dervish tossed in there.

The mesmer is supposed to be deceptive but clones fall flat because they act nothing like the mesmer. Furthermore, shatters and phantasms just work against each other for mechanics. Mesmer damage sucks in PvE (this can be fixed by having modifiers affect phantasms but that’s another discussion). I wanted to solve these problems by having 1) Shatters no longer destroy illusions and 2) Shatters mimic other skills we or illusions use to add more deception. I picked 4 different skills from mesmer main-hand weapons to mimic but had their functions change so that when enemies see an animation, they don’t know if to dodge or when to dodge! I also gave this spec a main-hand axe that functions as an interrupt main-hand weapon since neither sword/scepter have any interrupts. However it loses the defense of a block or evade but with heal on interrupt as a trait, Axe has a different kind of sustain on it’s own. Furthermore, there is also defense and mobility built into the new F2-F4. Last general thing I tried to do is make as many of the old weapons and utilities viable with this elite spec by adding traits that can synergize with both old and new stuff.

New F1: Mind Whirl (Looks like Axe 2/3): 360 spin and hit enemies twice before a final 3rd spin that does massive damage. Whirl finisher.
New F2: Cry of Pain (Looks like Sword 3 illusion leap): Leap at your target and do moderate damage and torment. If target is below 50% health, bonus 2x hit for double damage and torment. Leave a clone behind (doesn’t over ride phantasms). Leap finisher and evade.
New F3: Wastrel’s Diversion: (Looks like Scepter 2): Channeled block. When someone attacks you they take damage (like retaliation but actual damage to proc traits). After 1-2 seconds of channeled blocking, damage and daze your target.
New F4: Distorting Stab: (Looks like GS 3): 1200 range. Stab your GS into the ground and create a pulsing ethereal field that lasts 3 seconds. Pulses distortion to allies for 1 second per pulse and minor damage.
Explanation of new shatter mind games:
All of these shatters at a base will use the mist weapon skins. So for example, the base F1 will use an axe that looks like Reaver of the Mists Axe. However, if you have an axe equipped, it should use that skin instead. GS#3 is a damage spike that makes enemies want to dodge. New F4 with the GS animation is defensive. Enemies will have to guess which one is being used and if they should dodge or not. Functionally it’s distortion but it’s no longer instant cast. However, it’s now 1200 range and could be cast on allies far away or to your own phantasms. Master of fragmentation adds reflect to distortion as usual. Scepter 2 is a near instant counter and people know to dodge as soon as block is seen. With the new F3, they see scepter block, they waste a dodge, after the dodge they are dazed. Master of fragmentation makes this an aoe damage and daze. The F2 can play mind games with if an illusion or the real deal is leaping at you. Made to be a finishing move that prevents running. Master of fragmentation further compliments this by adding cripple. The new F1 is similar to the new main hand axe skill but has different timing and gets bonus crit with MoF. Shatter traits I’ve already covered Master of Fragmentation above. Shatter traits that don’t depend on illusions (such as BD or blind on shatter) remain the same. What remains are traits worded as such: “Shatter skills inflict torment on hit.” “Shatter skills also remove a boon on hit.” Nothing needs to change for these traits. F1 hits 3 times and removes a boon/applies torment on each hit. F2 hits once or twice if an enemy is above or below 50% and procs traits 1 or 2 times. F3 hits people each time they attack you while blocking. F4 hits 3 times. The only shatter trait that will scale with illusions will be heals on shatter. However, as none of the shatters are instant cast, this build cant spike healing as hard as the base class and chrono.

Axe: Basically, the new F1, Axe 2 and 3 all have the same initial animation. A whirl with an axe. Axe 2 is just 1 whirl. Axe 3 is 2 whirls. F1 is 3 whirls. The last whirl always has the majority of the damage/animation effect. It’s up to your opponent to guess when to dodge because they don’t know when the whirling ends.
Axe 1: Swing your Axe Swing that axe again. Then swing it some more for a 3rd auto attack chain.
Axe 2: Dazing Whirl Spin and cleave 3 targets and daze them.
Axe 3: Whirling Vortex: Spin and hit enemies with your axe then spin again to pull enemies to you. Leave a pulsing aoe ethereal field that does damage(<3 spear 5).

apharma.3741:

Actually during the fight you get a buff that makes you do 2-3 times more damage to the boss if not more. Anyone wanna check to see if phantasms get it or if mesmer does the same damage as every other class?

For reference I was getting 18k for rift slash and 12k for the other 2 of the auto.

P.S. Also did it on rev, hilariously easy to do.

Didn’t really notice it before but I’ll try to check it out when I get a chance. It’s still better than phantasms doing zero damage.

apharma.3741:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…

I took your build, grabbed a strength rune and the food, used my zerk armour with traveler runes for extra boon duration. Was the instance impossible? Nope not by a long shot but I then rushed my necro through it too. Both cases I knew what I was walking in to so neither class had an advantage and all I can say was my necro was super easy to do it on.

Epidemic the big dude to cleave out adds, lots of minions putting 10 bleeds on enemies almost as soon as I targeted them, lots of poison. I wouldn’t say it was face roll but I wouldn’t say it was difficult by any stretch of the imagination on necro. Mesmer was certainly “harder” but it wasn’t harder because the instance is hard just harder because mesmer in general sucks for solo. I also had plenty of might when it mattered due to blood is power.

Best bit? I didn’t have to change a dam thing.

As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, I know most classes don’t have to swap stuff. I didn’t really swap much myself on guard or engi when I did the story missions. I said it took more effort as a chrono compared to those.

If you go into the story with a raid chrono build, you are going to have a bad time. That’s like complaining that a staff healing druid or healing tempest isn’t viable in solo story missions. That doesn’t mean those classes aren’t viable to solo the instance. They just need to change their builds. It sucks but it’s not impossible.

Ok so how to make these work with other shatter traits:
F1: A big burst that is melee cleave
F2: A leap attack that applies torment
F3: Singlet target CC
F4: As another mentioned: AOE distortion to phantasms.

Bonus for the F2. Make it look like sword 3. Bring back the beta sword skill usage of not knowing if the mesmer or a clone is leaping at you.

Master of Frag: Bonus crit on F1. F2 Cripple on the leap to help chase people down. F3 becomes aoe. F4 becomes distortion+reflect on all illusions.

For the traits that apply more stacks/clear boons per illusion that hits, it becomes an all or nothing situation. If you hit with an F1 while you have 3 illusions, it removes 4 boons etc. So your enemies have a singular attack to dodge but it’s a much more powerful attack. The base skill doesn’t have to scale with how many illusions you have. The sustain would also be lower in that you can’t spike F1-F4 almost all at the same time to prop the inspiration trait. DPS doesn’t suffer in that you don’t need illusions to fuel your shatters which means shatters and phantasms don’t conflict with each other.

I also really like the trait idea that someone mentioned of bonus damage on the phantasm summon. Like 50% bonus damage on the first hit. Could split the % with PvE and PvP to balance it better. It gives a reason to keep re-summoning phantasms as part of a DPS rotation even if you already have 3 out.

To clarify what I was using:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAs6mcfC2oBEgiFVjq8DKhBoeZf2qlMAqgdC-TBSGABrv/wQKPgSJmUKBBU9HAeAAkpH4+TAgoACM-e
Would swap to shield or GS depending on the fight. I found myself mostly camping sword/pistol and prefered shield as my extra by the end of it. Focus could probably also work too.

Sigil of strength not rune of strength. If you’ve been paying attention, it’s meta in some comps so it’s not that much of a stretch for mesmers to have one. That build has 2484 power. Sigil of force is equivalent to (2484 * 1.05 – 2484 = 124 power) or 4 stacks of might only on the mesmer not the phantasms and only on power nor condi damage. In long solo fights, fights where you bring some conditions, or in long team fights with 7/2/1 setup, sigil of strength is better for the mesmer than sigil of force/air. In raids with a 100% boon duration, it’s easily 12-15 stacks of might that can be SoI. In solo situations with 20% boon duration, it’s still better than the 2-3% that sigil of force effectively brings.

Don’t take my word for it though, check qTs guide.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52qtw3/updated_raid_chronomancer_guide/

Sigil of draining takes TD tokens and having a pistol. It’s not necessary but the 1k lifesteal per interrupt with no ICD is really nice for that build.

TLDR: 1 new sigil on a pistol. A debatably meta sword. Same armor/trinkets as the raid build are fine although rune of strength doesn’t hurt at all.

I don’t think this would solve the problem of wind up time and the fact that shatters work against phantasms. Chrono could somewhat make shatters and phantasms work together because of CP but the new elite spec won’t have CP. This also wouldn’t help at the high and low end of PvP. Like too OP at the low end and still not worth it at the high end and overall just a lot of bloat on the screen.

A new elite spec with new F1-F4 could have shatters that don’t blow up your illusions. Basically make them like exactly what they did to DH virtues. All active effects that can’t be spammed at the same time because they aren’t instant cast but stronger than before in that they don’t blow up your illusions. So new F1 could be like a leap attack burst. A single telegraphed attack that doesn’t get stronger with more illusions up (traits could still amplify with more illusions but not the base damage).

Random tangent:
I think something that’s similar to what you are trying to do would be to change signet of illusions. The illusion health and shatter recharge never really made sense together. An active that increased phantasm damage by (30 pvp/wvw or 60% Pve split) for 20 seconds and give the signet a much shorter CD (30 seconds). DPS increase for PvE builds and just the idea of trying to keep your phantasms alive for a bit longer before enraging them makes sense thematically. I realize that the current Signet of Illusions is part of the PvP meta but it was crap before Chrono and is only used because chrono has soo much shatter fodder which means it’ll probably be crap for all new elite specs but it controls the balance of heal/condi clear on shatter. If Chrono had new F1-F4 that had shorter CDs and allowed Chronos to use all that fodder without SoI, I think the general balance of Mesmer would be better off with chrono being the shatter spam spec that is a bit tanky and supportive and other elite specs being less shatter spammy.

OriOri.8724:

Well yea, once you know about the fight you can spec your mesmer out to have a hell of a time to even have a chance at those achievements. But it still screwed over mesmers.
…
If only a single class has to alter their entire build to do this content without wanting to quit their char then there is something wrong with the class design.

Absolutely. I’m not trying to hide the fact that it took prior knowledge. It was a good kind of prior knowledge: a 1/3 of our traits that have never worked in most hard areas work in these missions. It’s refreshing being able to try an interrupt build for a change in PvE.

I have to somewhat disagree with the second point but maybe it’s also because I like playing games like dark souls. Failing and then changing tactics later are fine. Especially for achievements. Yes it’s a partial failure of mesmer design but I think it’s more of a failure that other classes have a single build or close to 1 build that is optimal enough in too many situations. Granted gw2 is an easy mode game but it’s also close to impossible to actually failing these story missions: They put you right back into the fight without resetting. Then you get to change builds on the second go through for achievements.

Levetty.1279:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

TLDR: No mechanic in the story screws over the Mesmer they way past mechanics have done so. It’s not easy but if you bring proper self buffs and interrupts it’s not so bad as people are claiming.

Swapping between multiple targets, having to clear adds and aoes all over the floor are the mechanics that screw over Mesmer.

As I said, not Glint’s lair bad but its not good. Signs also point to living world/expansion continuing this way and getting harder and more complex.

Agree with you on glint’s lair and somewhat on the first part. It’ also why I changed to focus a lot on interrupts and self buffs. Get that might, fury and quickness often enough to have auto-attacks comparable to an unbuffed thief auto. This avoids all the problems you mentioned above. Then I buffed my interrupts a ton to further add vulnerability, damage and sustain which also doesn’t require any illusions. Toss in MoP and wells too. Shatter illusions often. Don’t depend on the phantasms.

I’m not denying there is a problem with phantasms and PvE. I’m offering a solution that most PvE Mesmers seem to have forgotten since it’s a tactic that hasn’t worked in a while.

So I did the story on my DH first and then checked out engi. Not too hard/too easy on either of them. DH was fairly standard meta with scepter. Engi is the PvE easymode perma 25 might quickness hammer potion engi and I died once to carelessness. I got the don’t die at all on the DH relatively well but I did get downed a few times.

I fully expected mechanics that actually screw over Mesmer: Breakbars and buffs that prevent your phantasms from doing damage. Neither of these existed. As much as people are complaining about these encounters not being fair for Mesmer, I have to give Anet props for at least not screwing over those two aspects.

Because interrupts were a thing again, Domination, Dueling, Chrono with a pistol with Sigil of Draining and HM for MoD. Alternate between Pistol 5 and MoD to recharge p5 via DD. Interrupts were providing slow (and 30% crit on slow), quickness, vulnerability, damage and weakness, more damage and healing (sigil of draining is 1k lifesteal with no ICD) and just preventing damage. Sword with sigil of strength and golden dumplings meant decent might on crit. Dueling gave fury. I died once in the final mission but was more so because I got sloppy. I had to try harder than DH and engi but it wasn’t that much harder. I’ll try for the achievements later today.

I think people are so used to thinking that “warriors provide 25 might” that they don’t ever think to bring it themselves in solo situations. Basically, not as hard as people are saying if you are willing to adapt the build. Self buffs like might, fury, quickness and vuln on enemies helps with the damage a lot. Interrupts help a lot with preventing it. I’m not saying Mesmer has it easy, they don’t. It sucks that Mesmers have to change their builds so much compared to my other two tries which changed maybe 1 or 2 traits but I find it extremely unlikely that a Mesmer main that really wants this achieves won’t be able to get it on Mesmer if they actually try.

TLDR: No mechanic in the story screws over the Mesmer they way past mechanics have done so. It’s not easy but if you bring proper self buffs and interrupts it’s not so bad as people are claiming.

Fay.2357:

Kusa.6438:

This used to be the case, but then they nerfed it.
It’s been over a year. I remember phantasms triggering sigil of fire over and over… It was nice.

I have no memory of that whatsoever, so I’m pretty sure that was never a thing.

The only similar thing that used to occur was a bug having to do with runes (and maybe sigils?) that came baked into armor pieces. If you had a full set of TA armor, people would get feared by attacking your illusions. This was due to a bug where illusions inherited the baked-in runes of TA armor (nightmare runes) for some reason.

Or they’re mis remembering combo fishers at 100% on duelists in the past

Please no more F5s for Mesmer. New F1-F4. F5 with no CD would be a nightmare to balance with heal on shatter. Also the F5 modifying all existing aoe skills would be a nightmare to balance in general with how many different skills it would affect.

You want to know what would actually make mantras viable? Basically a tempest elite spec. All of our Fns are now channeled abilities that pulse something over time. A new trait will give us stability whenever we use channeled abilities. Another trait could decrease cast time of channeled abilities by 20-30% (stacks with quickness). This would make sword 2, scepter 3, gs1 and mantras from base class stronger DPS. Would weaken channeled blocks and sword 2 defensively though. That’s why it’s a trait you could swap on and off with another trait that’s worth bringing.

Daniel Handler.4816:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I disagree with the initial logic. A DPS mesmer elite spec would only require us to do about as much DPS as a staff ele or DD. A little less than that would be fine. It may not be taken for record runs but wouldn’t be shunned too bad. Another way of looking at it is that you would still bring a chrono/druid/PS and then the extra DPS spots could be filled with other DPS mesmers if desired. Alternatively, the chrono and new elite spec could work together with SoI and timewarp on both builds.

However, chrono holds back a new mesmer DPS elite spec in a more insidious manner. A new mesmer elite spec will still have phantasms being a major source of damage. Maybe not 50-60% but it’ll still be a huge chunk unless drastic changes are made. Alacrity/quickness from the chrono wouldn’t affect that portion of the DPS mesmer but Chrono is extremely likely to stay in a raid comp even with the new round of elite specs.

Edit: Stuff like frost spirit and gotl will also not affect phantasms. Any new elite spec buffs that aren’t raw stats in general. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all of our damage modifiers need to affect phantasms.

Your second point is the source of the initial logic. We would have to do as much damage as a staff ele on buffs,

I didn’t get that impression from the first post but fair enough.

The base mesmer will still be able to bring TW, SoI, distortion share and reflects/portal if needed. So with all that support built into the base class, we won’t need to match the Ele which brings nothing but DPS (or healing if they tank their damage). I’d be ok being able to comfortably hit 25k with realistic buffs on a practical wind up time.

Xyonon.3987:

Joxer.6024:

DPS is so low that no one wants you for your buffs as its “better” to bring a different class.

I don’t want to be rude or disrespectful but I stopped reading after this sentence. :|

I’m guessing it’s those people that say 25 stacks of might is solo from a warrior and chrono isn’t worth it despite the fact that record runs still bring 1 or sometimes 2 chronos. Who to trust with that info… record setters or terrible grasp of team comps.

Joxer.6024:

Engi, nah, we want Reaper and Epi for life. Well guess what? I don’t run Epi enough to be good at it.

That’s exactly the issue. If you don’t run epi to be good enough with it. I don’t trust you to be good with any build on necro. On the other hand, if you tell me that you can run epi but there is a new uber strat that is even stronger than it and you can explain it to me well… I’ll give a new build on my team a shot. HOWEVER, the vast majority of players that claim they do “good dps” with their butterfly build have not done their due diligence to realize what good dps even is.

I’ve seen every class tank at one time or another in raids. Rev, mesmer (only heard Xyonon mention it), druid, tempest (water staff or fresh aura) can all heal although some are easier than others. Mesmer is unique in how terrible it’s selfish damage is but I’ve still seen a few condi chrono hybrid DPS/buffers before. In theory, other classes could also heal if they really wanted to. Even condi rev… the “worst” of the condi DPS classes has been used in a 5 man Matthias kill. It replaced the PS warrior! Crazy right?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4u1zsa/king_vs_matthias_5man_956/

TLDR: It doesn’t suck for any class is trying to raid (except condi engi since no one trusts a pug condi engi). The trinity you are claiming exists isn’t so set in stone.

I disagree with the initial logic. A DPS mesmer elite spec would only require us to do about as much DPS as a staff ele or DD. A little less than that would be fine. It may not be taken for record runs but wouldn’t be shunned too bad. Another way of looking at it is that you would still bring a chrono/druid/PS and then the extra DPS spots could be filled with other DPS mesmers if desired. Alternatively, the chrono and new elite spec could work together with SoI and timewarp on both builds.

However, chrono holds back a new mesmer DPS elite spec in a more insidious manner. A new mesmer elite spec will still have phantasms being a major source of damage. Maybe not 50-60% but it’ll still be a huge chunk unless drastic changes are made. Alacrity/quickness from the chrono wouldn’t affect that portion of the DPS mesmer but Chrono is extremely likely to stay in a raid comp even with the new round of elite specs.

Edit: Stuff like frost spirit and gotl will also not affect phantasms. Any new elite spec buffs that aren’t raw stats in general. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all of our damage modifiers need to affect phantasms.

OriOri.8724:

For me I don’t think alacrity will actually feel like manipulating time unless it is un-nerfed in PvE (at least back up to 50%). Slow isn’t unique to chronomancers, and we don’t even have all that much access to it outside of a few traits that no one uses because its just not powerful enough (if slow had been given the chill treatment for reapers where a chronomancer could trait it to apply a secondary effect to people we slow that would have been much better).

I love the class but I don’t get much of a sense of actually manipulating time from it

A return to the old one would be nice but would it really change flavor? No. I think the issue is actually that quickness and chill have existed long before chrono did. Slow and alacrity are basically anti-quickness and anti-chill. Sure, we’re changing the rate at which people move through time but classes before chrono were already doing that.

tobascodagama.2961:

About as much as is actually possible in an MMO where you can’t actually, literally change time?

Mimic, Chrono F5 and actually quickdraw trait from ranger have that feel of immediate time travel. Not changing the rate but actually teleporting through time in a sense.

Well of Recall: (Mimic/Quickdraw ish) If your allies cast a utility when standing in the well, when the well ends it recharges one utility (can be somewhere between a 50-100% recharge).

Well of stasis (instead of gravity): Lock enemies in time (create a continuum rift for each enemy hit) when well of stasis expires, send them back to their initial location and daze them on return. Doesn’t have to reset health and CDs, just location.

Old well of precog which made your allies attacks unblockable: “predict your enemies defense moves!”

Other video game mechanics that could work in an MMO:

Well of Deja Vu: The ability to have someone be hit again with the same attack or feel the pain of prior attacks again. Any damage you take while in a well is tallied up. When the well ends, a fraction of that damage is done to the target. This for example would especially be nice for Mesmer DPS in PvE. It turns your allies bursts in a burn phase into extra damage without buffing the Chronos personal dps much. The % of bonus damage could be different for PvE and PvP to keep it balanced or there could be an cap on how much it could do.

I don’t know if this could work in gw2. A stun break that sends you back in time to 3 seconds ago. Basically tracer recall from overwatch.

nomdeplums.5780:

Mesmers don’t need additional baseline functionality. That just makes the class more difficult to balance and creates builds with no trade-offs or opportunity costs. Shatter mesmer was always high-risk, high-reward, and it should stay that way.
…
As I already mentioned, mesmer is a very difficult class to balance properly. If we remember the perfect storm of a bunch of slightly overtuned skills culminating into the balance nightmare that was Chronobunker. There wasn’t a particular trait or skill that made Chronobunker inherently overpowered (except for maybe Well of Precognition). It was a bunch of spread out traits and abilities that were simply too effective when you combined them together.

Likewise, if you just give a blanket baseline buff to mesmer, there could be unintended consequences. Condition shatter is probably what I would worry about the most. It’s already fairly viable at high level play. If you give it a nudge with a baseline buff to shatter functionality it could become very overtuned. If you’re going to buff shatter mesmer you need to create mutual exclusivity. What am I going to give up to gain a more effective burst?

I think those last two points are more indicative of how badly chrono was designed as an elite spec and how they try to balance the class differently compared to other elite specs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016/first#post6122828
When reaper was considered OP, they could nerf RS#3, 4 and 5 while not touching DS #3, 4 and 5.

When chrono was considered OP, they couldn’t nerf chrono F1-F4. They wouldn’t nerf F5 because it’s the only new class mechanic added. They had to/chose to nerf base mesmer.

If a buff to base mesmer F1 functionality wasn’t a buff to Chrono F1, they could actually balance a high risk-high reward base shatter mesmer with a support and defensive shatter spam on chrono.

Xaylin.1860:

Carighan.6758:

…

You have posted something similar several times. I personally like it but let’s be honest: That’s a completely new class. There are way too many skills and traits which would have to be reworked. I highly doubt that they will ever do that.

I agree with Xaylin, a full rework of the base class isn’t happening. I also doubt a rework of Chrono F1-F4 is going to happen which means no buffs to Mesmer F1-F4. Going forward, new elite specs need new F1-F4s.

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Can ventari projectile block be used in these situations where Mesmer can’t set up projectile reflect?

Yup.

A few attacks have been changed to be no longer blockable/reflectable so that list is a bit out of date. However, with 95% damage reduction on minions, some attacks are better off body blocked or tanked especially when unblockable (which means unreflectable) . Example: putting a flesh wurm inside the mid point or final boss in the harpy fractal will block all their projectiles. p.Warden, although not reflecting the golems attack, can also body block. The ventari tablet doesn’t have this ability so keep that in mind.

pico.6402:

There should be an elit that summon 3 phantasm of the current weapon U’r using with 90s cooldown to it. This would be nice for pve.

And broken for PvP. Although I like this general concept.

Summon a phantasm equivalent to your current weapon’s phantasms… but it looks like a clone! 20-30 second CD.

Won’t feel so bad shattering your elite if it’s a short CD. Adds some deception of clone vs phantasms. SotE would also renew this which makes it a bit harder to balance if it was something as strong as 3 phantasms with a 90 second CD but actually a 28 second CD with SotE. Still helps a solo Mesmer if they want to get a few phantasms up and running quickly.

bearshaman.3421:

Ok, just trying to understand it better. The mathing of this stuff sometimes confuses me. Still can’t get it to stick in my head why the sigil of bursting is bad, for instance.

It’s bad since it only improves base condi damage but not other sources so it’s not as good as you initially think. So basically a 6% increase to gear stats but not from the bonuses from might and banners which makes it less than 6% in the end. Compare this to sigil of geomancy which can add 6 stacks of bleeds over time if you hit 100% bleed duration. If you can stack 50 bleed stacks, 6 more is a 12% increase. If you stack 100 bleed stacks, now you are finally at a 6% increase over base (This isn’t going to happen solo). If you haven’t capped duration yet, sigil of malice at 10% duration or 20% duration for bleeds are also just better in the end for increasing DPS. So that’s also why sigil of bursting is bad because more conditions and condi duration are just better options.

OriOri.8724:

We can already use CS with mimic to get off 3 (or for the best players 4) shots of the same skill within a few seconds, being able to cast mimic 3 times in a row would be absolutely OP. Now if it was changed to be like how it was in GW1 where it just copied the skill, including the CD, that you were copying (from my understanding that is how it worked) then it could be better

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Echo
That was Echo and it would last for a short time (30 seconds). However, there were also energy costs in gw1 and you paid double energy to cast powerful abilities again. In gw2, it’s just CDs. So only short CD abilities could maybe make use of that function from an echo that lasts 30 seconds when most utilities have a longer CD than 30 seconds. It would get further wonky by weapon skills. Think of double casting blurred frenzy or Shield 4. Double cast it, swap to GS and then cast sword 2 again anyway. Or have GS2 copied. Doesn’t matter if you swapped to a defensive weapon, wreck someone with GS2. Without the energy component, echo doesn’t work in gw2.

Making Mimic a mantra wouldn’t be as OP as you might initially think. They could make the base 1 charge and HM +1 it to 2. It won’t stack with CS since CS doesn’t revert mantra stacks. As a Mantra it would also be convenient as an instant discharge which can be used mid cast of another ability. Would also of course be mutually exclusive with other elites and keep the current functionality of only working on utilities. Moa etc or an extra null field (2 if traiting mantras) every 45? seconds. If you can get a skill off 4 times with the current mimic, 3 charges of Mantra of mimic would be the same amount of skills, just a lot more convenient. Mantra discharges also have CDs too. So a CD of 5-10 seconds prevents 1 skill from being spammed 4 times within seconds like the current combo.

I don’t see a problem with it and would welcome the change. However, I’d rather see an elite mantra that recharges the stacks of other mantras. The more mantras you have, the weaker the mantra build gets with all the channeling time. Having a mantra elite that actually benefits mantras would be great.

I am going to have to heavily disagree with the above post. Yes knowledge is important. Here is a great resource for knowledge: http://gw2dungeons.net/

However, most of the builds used to solo dungeons are very close to the meta raid builds/gear although some exceptions. Important changes are sigils. Sigil of night, force, slaying for zerker builds but also weapon swap sigils of energy and paralyzation potentially for more dodges and soloing a breakbar.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew
That also helps a lot with more endurance recharge as you learn to dodge attacks.

Assassins/zerker gear since REFLECTS are based off of precision, ferocity and damage modifiers and huge chunk of knowing Mesmers in dungeons is knowing when to reflect.

With that in mind, chrono/mesmer has some of the biggest changes from the raid builds to what you want to use in dungeon solos. Phantasms aren’t affected by sigil and rune % modifiers but they are affected by raw stats and therefore might. Therefore, using a sigil of strength in a solo setting can be a 10-20% boost (depends on bonus might duration) for both you and your phantasms while a sigil of force is only a 5% for the Mesmer. However, might doesn’t affect your reflect damage. Dueling is the better DPS line for solo than Domination as it gives fury to both you and the phantasms and ferocity bonus and a shorter CD on blurred frenzy. This further boosts reflects from you and the warden. Inspiration with wardens is a given for the reflects (NOT for shatter healing sustain) and a bit longer feedback. If you really need sustain, summon 3 phantasms and spam MoP for heals (arah p1, 2nd bosses come to mind for the healing). Illusions for phantasmal haste for reflect uptime and potential scepter use.

If you really need to sustain/kite but no reflects are needed, Zerker Sc/Sw + Sword/Shield to block forever. Dueling, illusions and chrono reduces Sc and Sw CD like crazy (40% CD and then alacrity on top of that). With vigor and food for more endurance regeneration, nomads should never be needed. Cavalier or valkyrie if you need the defense with Fury and Danger Time to make up for the weak crit chance. Never go nomads. I won’t claim it’s not possible but just don’t do that to yourself. Condi is another viable option for DPS if you need some defense and reflects aren’t needed. A mix of rabid, sinister, viper and wanderer will get you any extra toughness you need. Shaman is a waste too Don’t skimp on precision for condi builds. Go Dueling, Chaos, Chrono. or Dueling, Chaos, Illusions.

For a bit of perspective on toughness and vitality in PvE:
Vitality is for not dying if you mess up 1 or 2 dodges/blocks in a row (or niche necro builds). In super long fights where you try to trade blows with bosses, and they will be super long fights in nomads, vitality is useless because what matters is sustain (damage reduction and repair). Going full toughness is damage reduction of about 40%. Protection is 33%, Food can be 10% and bonus toughness. Chaos traits give another 9%. And the phantasmal defender gives another 33%. Dungeon potions also give 10% damage reduction. Never max out toughness before looking at those options while wearing glassy gear. At minimum, lemongrass mussel pasta and a dungeon potion = 23% damage reduction to a full glass character. Just bring a phantasmal defender and you have more DR than a full toughness geared character. Spam MoP to heal yourself before shattering away your sustained DPS or grabbing healing gear.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Lemongrass_Mussel_Pasta

TLDR: Never go nomads or full tank. Zerker/assassins for reflects and learn to use your abilities. Condi builds are a decent option when you don’t need reflects. Multiple weapons with different sigils and the right consumables in a 20 slot invis bag are way more effective at changing the function of your build than crafting/swapping to a full set of tank gear. If you are concerned with some foods being too expensive, keep in mind how much it costs to craft a new set of gear. Is 20 slots of nomads or whatever gear worth it compared to 2 slots for food?

Collectively, we as a class, have been asking for all kinds of phantasms/illusion reworks to the class across the game. With the recent balance patch, Anet has finally “spoken” with how they are willing to alter phantasms with:

Both the Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender skills now have on-cast effects to gain a little more immediate effect and to differentiate the utility skill from the Mental Defense trait.
…
Phantasmal Defender: This utility skill now applies protection for 4 seconds in a radius around the mesmer. The damage reduction from this illusion has been reduced from 50% to 33%.

This has me intrigued for two reasons.
1) Immediate effect
2) Ability to balance a weaker version of a skill into a trait.

1) is great and especially appreciated for WvW where illusions die instantly in a lot of zerg settings. 2) is where things get interesting though. The class needs more illusion generation but inspiration was the only trait-line that was able to summon another phantasms with a GM trait. PoM+CP with 3 quickly spawned phantasm interaction got out of hand a bit and now Mesmer is in a weaker spot because of it. What if we just delete PoM but give every trait line a way to spawn phantasms? And/Or just rework phantasm summon skills to have more of that #1 effect.

Berserker: Reduce phantasm damage by 20-30%. Add an AOE effect around the target when cast. Hit 5 targets with 240 radius with a power coeff of ~1-1.5. Similar treatment to phantasmal defender.
Furious Interruption: Spawn a berserker on interrupt. ICD = berserker CD. So taking Imagined Burden for example would reduce the CD but prevent power block damage. Would also be mutually exclusive with shattered concentration. Did anyone use this trait before either?

Swordsman: The sword is a “melee” weapon but this summon is a 1200 range skill (while #4 is a 900 range). The sword is also pretty underused in most game modes. Add a 300 range melee swipe to the phantasm summon. Power coeff around 2.0. If you aren’t in 300 range of the target, you still summon the phantasm from range as normal. It just does double damage if you are in 300 range of the target. Dueling already has DE so I didn’t think a new illusion skill needed to be added here although I still like another idea I had of making the sword trait summon a phantasm on #4 instead of a clone so that the off-hand sword would have two phantasms when traited. This would probably need to have it bumped up to GM level.

Mage: Even with the new buffs it still kind of sucks. Similar to the sword, add a 240 radius flourish of burning around the Mesmer. 2 stacks for 4 seconds.
Ineptitude: I am a bit more skeptical to change this as although I don’t personally use it, I know others use this trait. However, if I’m advocating the deletion of PoM and the addition of more phantasms built into trait lines, this could also replace PoM and shuffle with another trait. When you blind a target, summon a mage. Trait interaction with the pledge would have this summon still clear conditions and the ICD would be reduced while in stealth. The mage/illusion trait line change would add better condi clear viability to the class in PvP while making a burning Mesmer just a bit stronger in PvE.

Other phantasms and chaos could also receive similar reworks. Mirror effect for 1 second on warden summon. Or a whirl finisher for example.

Thoughts?

Thank you for taking the time to test this

Step.1285:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So this is why I think the damage modifier changes would work well…

That works… assuming that the build won’t change with the DPS changes you’re proposing. It’s quite likely that if phantasms start being affected by damage modifiers, then Mesmer will swap to something like Illusions / Domination / Chronomancer. It’s a well-known fact that Mesmer doesn’t need Inspiration and all that boon duration just to share quickness to 4 others, so I’d wager that giving Chronomancer better DPS like that will encourage people to drop certain utility for those sweet damage modifiers and migrate to having two Mesmers in raids.

My point is, while your change will work if the build remains the same, we can’t discount the fact that the build may very well change to accommodate such a change. The surefire way of ensuring we’re forced to drop Chronomancer support for DPS is by dumping our damage to a new elite spec.

First a full rework would be great but I don’t think it’s happening.

I fully expect builds to change. Dom, insp, chrono is still set in stone for distortion share support. For mirror comps, dom ill chrono could work and they would do decent damage… Around the damage of warriors in mirror comps with equal buffing to 5 ppl. There is no problem with two warriors or druids. Why a problem with this? Mesmers still need to bring shields for 5 which means terrible wide up time on 3 dps phantasms and bringing a focus for pulls tanks it even more. There is inherent balance of dps and support

Step.1285:

That being said, as it stands, there really isn’t all that much ArenaNet can do to give us the option to deal comparative DPS in a way that forces us to drop our utility (especially utility of the offensive kind, such as alacrity and quickness). If they buff either of our offensive trait lines like Domination and Dueling, there’s nothing stopping us from taking those trait lines along with Chronomancer and having better DPS while still being awesome support gods of timey wimey stuff.

Point is, Chronomancer is like 80 – 90% of our group DPS buffing, so if we’re not forced to drop that trait line for better DPS

So this is why I think the damage modifier changes would work well: Runes, sigils and food also affect chrono buffs. Rune of chrono is a big part of group quickness but prevents scholar bonus. Sigil of concentration prevents use of force and accuracy(or night/slaying for dungeons) at the same time. 20% boon duration food is mutually exclusive with 10% salad or other DPS stat food.

Domination has 15% and then another 12.5% vs vuln.
Dueling has p.fury, 15% and 150 ferocity and requires spamming MoP.
Illusions has phantasmal haste and 9%

Chrono and inspiration are both used in the support build. It’s about the choice of picking all 3 DPS trait lines and DPS gear or only being able to pick one DPS traitline and support gear. If all those modifiers affected phantasms: (1.125*1.15*1.09*1.05*1.07*1.1*1.1=90% more phantasms DPS) and then also p.Fury and p.Haste and ferocity need to be factored in for around a ~150% more phantasm damage that wouldn’t be available in chrono support build. This isn’t including grace of the land and other team buffs that aren’t raw stats.

Summon 1 duelist and 2 swordsman with this build in the DPS testing with the most basic off buffs (vuln, might and banners)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAra88msICloBUrhFVDqsDlYAkBYE7EtLpJKA-TBBXgA9q/As/o8LU/wjSQSBMwYA-e
About 7.8k dps for just phantasms. 7.8k * 2.5 = 19.5k dps from just the phantasm. Add some auto attacks, sc 3 and MoP spam and it wouldn’t be half bad and you hit about 30k in the most selfish mesmer DPS build. Add party buffs like spotter and grace of the land affecting phantasms too and the Mesmer now has a good DPS build that is selfish. Could theoretically go higher with staff phantasms and enough conditions. No major rework to separate PvP, WvW and PvE. Mutually exclusive with the chrono support build.

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Azukas.1426:

Mesmer damage is fine considering everything else we get

Shoot our power burst is prolly top 3 in the game.

You are in the wrong part of the thread if you’re talking about burst

And MidoriMarch.8067 is also a suspect since he complained about defensive options in PvE lol.

With the best support in the game our DPS is perfectly fine. If you jack up DPS so the support build can do viable DPS compared to DPS builds what do you think will happen to PvP/WvW?

Yeah OP as kitten no thank you.

The sense of self entitlement on this subject forum is starting to rival that of the ele forum. Not good.

What part of ‘PvE damage split’ do you have difficulty understanding?

PVE = WvW

Try again

Except WvW doesn’t equal PvE. Retaliation for example has the same math in WvW and PvP (1/3 the PvE damage). If they can split this, they can split damage.

Step.1285:

Mesmer has always been a support/utility class since its conception. It’s what we signed up for. The fact that one Chronomancer alone can keep the whole raid party topped up with quickness, on top of alacrity, distortion-sharing, reflects, and great active defences, is the reason why our DPS is crap. You can argue that Druid, Warrior, and so on, i.e. the other support classes, bring better DPS than us while providing the same utility as us, but that’s not true. They can only effectively buff 5 – 7 players, which is why you often need to take two of them in raids, and that’s not even mentioning all the other more niche utility that Mesmer provides, such as boon strip, portals, and so on.

You are right, most people just look at DPS buffs and DPS and not the other stuff. Alacrity/quickness are about the same scale as other class specific buffs and the Mesmer affects more people. I agree with you here. DPS is way off though because of utility…. but let’s look at this for a bit:
1) Guardian has pulls and reflects in roughly equal numbers to Mesmer.
2) Equal amounts of CC.
3) Both can tank.
4) Both reduce damage to the team. This is where things start to diverge. Guardian has hammer which heals and gives protection making everyone tanky. Aegis can block a single attach. Mesmers have distortion share. Granted distortion share is strictly better against specific mechanics but overall, I would actually put these at equal assuming you aren’t doing a specific raid speed run/low person run.

So with guardian and mesmer utility being about equal, but guardians doing 5x damage while chronos buff other people plenty, against popular opinion, I agree with you. And here is the thing too, top DPS raid guilds agree with us because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t bring chronos to raids.

Here is where we differ though and where I think most of the issue stems from for other people. If I want to go selfish DPS, I should be able to on Mesmer. This is why I really want damage modifiers to affect phantasms. PvP and WvW and PvE support builds don’t stack % modifiers but a PvE DPS build would. It doesn’t require a balance split, just a change in phantasm function.

If I want to go domination, dueling, illusion and spam Mantras for a 15% buff while providing no DPS buffs for my allies and no distortion share, I should do MORE theoretical dps than a staff ele. Staff eles are aoe and can spike hard while Mesmer phantasms are single target and have wind up time so in practice it would be less than an ele. If I want to go Domination, Dueling and Inspiration for reflects and distortion share but no alacrity/quickness, I should do as much as a guardian that brings equal amounts of utility.

TLDR: Yes the utility makes Chrono worth it despite abysmal damage. Otherwise, you wouldn’t see a chrono in 4 man VG kills or other raid speed runs. HOWEVER, if Mesmers want to forgo that utility, Mesmers should be able to do much better DPS than they currently do.

A few things that affect the Mesmer but not in the Mesmer section:

Superior Rune of Perplexity: Changed the sixth bonus. This rune now applies 3 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds in a radius of 240 around the player upon using a healing skill. The internal cooldown remains at 15 seconds.
Rune of the Nightmare: The random activation of fear in the sixth bonus has been replaced. The sixth bonus will now apply blind and transfer one condition on up to 5 enemies in a radius of 240 when players use an elite skill. This skill will now have a 45-second cooldown.

Adrenal Health: The amount of healing generated per stack has been reduced by 10% in PvP only.
Stealth Attacks: All stealth attack skills will now have a 1-second recharge between uses. AKA: They can’t just spam 1 in stealth now for backstabs.

Any 50% damage reduction skill reduced to 33% on ranger, mesmer, necro, scrapper and also just general nerfs to scrapper and tempest sustain make power Mes more viable especially with GS2 bounces.

Especially with no nerfs to Mesmer, on the PvP side of things, we’re coming out of this pretty great. Still need to wait and see how other classes like Necro and DH fair with their buffs/changes. Rune of nightmare change along with buffs to torch could potentially make an Illusion, Chrono, no inspiration condi Mes “viable” with some condi clear from 2 other sources and maybe a 3rd with pdisenchanter. Blind on shatter with a slightly better ineptitude could also be some added defensive offense that could replace inspiration.

For PvE, still no nerfs if nothing else and it’s doable. I just really hope there are no encounters that have enemies immune to phantasm damage.

Overall, most curious about the new signet and will have to try that out.

Don’t knock the patch until you have at least absorbed most of the info and processed how it interacts.

What we really need is for % modifiers to affect phantasm DPS. Sure there could be some tweaks afterwards, but that would be the one big change that would make DPS mesmer viable. However, this is about living story and people are forgetting previous mechanics of living story. It’s not just that we have weak damage but sometimes phantasms literally do zero damage based off of fight mechanics. Coupled with poor base damage and you get problems. This isn’t specific to Mesmer although it affects us the most and shouldn’t be used in future updates.

FJSAMA.2867:

testing/math

It is pretty deceptive to call 25 might stacks warrior buffs and to assume that the warrior and mesmer buff an equal number of people.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4mszig/dnt_raid_team_composition_guide/
The only time there are equal number of chronos and warriors in raid comps is 1) Mirror comp: Distortion share is a huge factor here and 2) 7/2/1 which is considered not ideal. Otherwise and more commonly, there is 1 Chrono keeping quickness up on 10 people while 2 warriors buff their respective 4-5 people.

Furthermore, just repeat your warrior buff test but with a Staff tempest and make sure to stand in your overload. F1 in fire alone will give 10 stacks of might for 18 seconds every ~18 seconds. Since there is usually 2 DPS staff tempest per subgroup, that’s 20 stacks of might from Eles. Sigil of Strength alone would be 20 seconds of might per proc on a chrono for a ~2% loss in DPS. Fried golden dumplings are 10 seconds of might per proc. With a bit of bonus might from a herald, the Chrono can share 25 stacks of might with SoI. Does that mean Might is a chrono buff now? Another way to look at this is a what if: What if Empower allies was moved to arms but PS stayed in tactics. Warriors would still be brought but might can easily come from other people because it’s the ~25% buff from EP and banners to 5 people that makes warriors part of the meta.

You also talk about 5x Gotl and alacrity uptime not being 100% but you make no mention of banners lasting 90 seconds on a 120 CD. Banners are stationary and a lot of raid bosses having you moving out of that 600 range too. Hardly realistic to have those buffs up all the time.

Yes, Mesmers need buffs in the DPS department in non-raid settings. In a raid setting though, it’s a lot more fair than you realize, especially when chronos make great tanks and have distortion share. Having % modifiers affect phantasms is the best solution since most of those are mutually exclusive with the raid Chrono tank setup although it would give the raid chrono about a 18% buff to phantasms.

Xaylin.1860:

If you want more (power) DPS: This should be baseline.
Really not much to explain here. We need more baseline DPS. Not more trait gated damage which potentially favours few specific builds.

Here is the issue with giving more baseline power. Yes PvE needs buffs but Domination, Dueling Chrono is still a strong build in PvP and buffs would make it OP. Probably not the most popular opinion but hear me out. Dueling gives blind on shatter, more damage and vigor. When you are a +1 build, you don’t show up and block twice with shield 4 before shattering. DE, GS2 and IR synergize well for this in that you GS2, dodge and get an ok double shatter. Maybe work GS4 and CP in there but it does give away the burst. The bonus 30% dmg on F1 is decent at assassinating in +1s. When fighting other glass cannons, power block is much better than damage on boon strip. So it’s strong, and those traits are viable, it’s just not optimal and borderline not-viable in this meta. I am actually ok with this. Balance in a game like this is “impossible” and it’s more important to not have a stagnant meta. An option for boon hate in a boon heavy/bruiser meta should exist though. Are there ways around buffing PvE mesmer without breaking PvP mesmer? Yes, having rune of scholar, sigil of force/night, and trait modifiers affecting phantasm damage can help a lot because these traits aren’t picked/stacked in PvP the way they are in PvE. The trait I’m proposing is not the solution to all PvE mesmer DPS problems nor does PvP mesmer need a buff across the board. It’s adding build diversity to PvE against specific enemies while creating an alternative viable build in PvP. Both types of changes should happen but this is a discussion about build diversity not overall power of the class.

“My Agenda!” I have two reasons for wanting this trait to exist.

If you want to improve boon removal: Probably not the appropriate added effect.
You started with the comparison to Corruptions. Understandable. But the reason you picked damage on boon removal seems to be motivated by your intention of improving power shatter Mesmers (not Mesmers in general) which – in your opinion – need more damage. Not because it fits the class thematically. The comparison also doesn’t consider the different class set ups but apparently you guys don’t mind our boon removales being so much more versatile than boon corrupts on, for example Necromancers. I do believe it matters.

Reason 1
I disagree because thematically, while they are different games and balance is different in gw1 and 2, the class has always been about punishing your enemies. For example, confusion, although weaker, is basically empathy, backfire, vision of regret etc. It tells your enemy, “sure you can keep doing what you are doing… it’s just going to hurt a lot.” Interrupts and reflects are also translated across the games. Boon hate was and still is mainly a necromancer and mesmer thing although boons were called enchantments back then. (Also 3 active and 2 passive signets +scepter auto is versatile on necro)
Necro causing degen/conditions after boon removal in gw1:
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Corrupt_Enchantment
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Envenom_Enchantments
Mesmer causing burst damage with removing boons in gw1:
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shatter_Enchantment
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hex_Eater_Vortex

Hex Eater Vortex and Shatter Enchantment were also domination spells. So thematically, boon removing shatters and power damage with domination has always been a Mesmer thing. The GS removes boons. As we have been discussing, other skills also remove boons besides traited shatters. So stop saying there will be two GM shatter traits. It’s not a shatter trait. It would be best to be balanced around shatters but again, not a shatter trait. It is a weapon/boon hate trait and that weapon goes hand in hand with boon removal and it thematically feels right for the class.

Reason 2
Above, I discussed why I don’t think the Dom, Duel, Chrono inherently needs a buff. I also don’t think this is something as simple as just swapping one GM trait and keeping the overall trait lines and bam, the build is viable. Just think about it. A +1 burst would have at most 5 boons quickly removed. That would be equivalent to a PB proc. If that was good enough to get in the meta, then why do people not run the dom, duel, chrono with PB right now?

Because, in a boon heavy, bruiser meta, you go bruiser. Blinds on shatter matter less over long term fights and condi clear is needed because fights do last longer. Inspiration, chrono and domination would be the meta power build in this current meta. (Similar to how warrior has a meta power and condi build) Sure, some people could live on the edge and go dom, duel, chrono but it wouldn’t be the “meta” build nor would it be inherently OP. While inspiration has 1 phantasms, this build lacks DE, IC and PoM but this build needs to constantly shatter for both damage and defense (just like the current condi Chrono). So it needs more illusions and those illusions would come from a shorter CD with GS2/4.

So 1) I want a boon hate build in this meta and it thematically fits the class. 2) A boon hate build is going to be for a specific kind of meta and has to be balanced around that. Part of balance is that the trait is in competition with other DPS traits (MA and PB) but also gives this build a bit more sustain (by fueling inspiration traits) because one GM trait swap alone won’t suddenly make power Mesmer work in this meta.

Let’s reword something here…

I said it would be difficult to balance in the context of other boon removals in the context of insert new bold topic
I said it would be gimmicky.
I said it wouldn’t serve the core functionality of the skill.
I said it would encourage a build similar to pre June patch builds which was aweful.

I didn’t say it was innately overpowered.
I didn’t say it would be first pick.

Sharper images: All illusion crits bleed. Illusions have very different attack rates, this can’t be balanced for all of them. Some are power and some are condi too. It clearly doesn’t serve the core functionality of each phantasms. If a player said this trait wasn’t balanced and needed buffs because his triple sword clone bleed build wasn’t doing enough damage would you agree with that player?

Master of Manipulation: There is a teleport and stunbreak, an oh so scary unblockable AT, a heal that reflects on a short CD, an 120 second CD res, mimic and mass invis. Yet they all have the same 2 seconds of reflecting and 20% CDR. Does reflect on mass invis serve a purpose?

Any interrupt trait Exact same situation as the trait I’m proposing. Some weapons have more or less CC and single target vs aoe. F3 has a different CD depending on traits and alacrity while SoI can refresh it. Gravity well… pulses in an AOE. Signet of domination single target… sounds kind of like null field vs AT…

The current Imagined Burden Cripple on GS2-4. GS2 is unblockable. How do we balance unblockable cripple with blockable GS3-5? All of them do such different things! Does cripple on GS3 serve the core functionality of the skill? It is a boon strip/dps spike after all.

Temporal Enchanter How do you balance resistance and super speed with TW vs null field vs veil. Does super speed somehow “serve the core functionality of the null field?” What does resistances have to do with warping time? Do either of these make sense with portal?

Torment or Confusion on shatter Do either of these serve the core function of F1, F3, F4 or F5? No! Is it gimmicky? Yes.

Now take anything else I bolded and put it back into your original paragraph. Is it sinking in yet? Your argument makes zero sense within the context of the Mesmer class or any class in the entire game. Everything I listed here is gimmicky. Everything doesn’t serve the core functionality of at least 1 of the skills it modifies if not every single one of them. I didn’t cherry pick anything either. You can literally do this for like every trait the mesmer has.

If it’s not inherently a first pick and you aren’t saying it’s OP…. what is your problem with this trait? Not every trait needs to be the best thing possible for every skill it affects. It just needs to not be brokenly OP at the high end of optimization and the high end is power shatter builds. Maybe not relevant right now in PvE but with enough boons on enemies, it could be.

First, let’s establish some raw numbers. If boon removal did ~500 damage in PvP from a glass cannon to a glass cannon, it would be competing with halting strike at ~2k (no buffs). Now let’s look at some PvE numbers. Vs a mordrem wolf with standard zerker gear (rune of chrono though) and no buffs. Sword auto does:
1.1: ~1.4k
1.2: ~1.4k
1.3 ~2k (with swiftness on the wolf) or ~2.6k (w/o)
Halting strike: ~2k

These are just super quick numbers I grabbed off NPCs but the range isn’t going to be that far off. Notice how halting strike does about the same in both modes without buffs. It should be slightly higher in PvE in general but mordrem wolves have different armor values so whatever. Also notice how even against an enemy with a single boon, with sword 1.3 removing that boon, it still does reduced damage. If it did 500 extra damage it would still be less than a 3rd auto attack vs an enemy with no boons.

Fay.2357:

Fay.2357:

Roughly zero? When’s the last time you chased somebody in circles autoattacking them in PvP? Ah that’s right, nobody does that because that gets you killed.

And since when has GW2 only been about PvP?

We are talking about the worst DPS PvE class in the game. Where half the damage comes from phantasms. The other half is split between sword1/2, shield 5, wells and the occasional shatter. That’s like 50% of 50% of 33% of the worst DPS in the game being buffed back to baseline. You seriously think a bonus 500 damage on sword 1.3, when it does about 600 damage less on a target with boons, is going to break balance?

Xaylin.1860:

Power Block is useless in PvE and close to useless in WvW aside from duelling or roaming. In the current PvP I’d say it is situational at best. It didn’t help that we got another class with few CD skills. The new Imagined Burden would be the more likely pick.

Oh no! It’s a more likely pick in certain game modes. Why is that a problem? All traits have game modes and niches that they work better in. Most enemies don’t even have boons and all of our GM traits in domination suck for PvE. Why are you so against a niche buff to it in PvE?

Xaylin.1860:

Without context 1.5k isn’t too impressive. Keyword is unblockable. Rather than making AT even more gimmicky it should just get its cooldown reduced so it can finally be put to use.

Do you know what else is unblockable? GS#2. When blink, portal, SoI or even null field or MoD are so important on a Mesmers bar, do you think any decent player is going to bring AT for the unblockable factor when GS2 exists? No.

Xaylin.1860:

Why would any shatter Mesmer pick Mental Anguish considering that Shattered Concentration is the most likely pick on the Master tier resulting in Imagined Burden being the way better choice? And what would non shatter Mesmers pick? Maaaaaybe Power Block if it wasn’t PvE. But Most certainly Mental Anguish.

All interrupt traits need to be fixed to work with breakbars. Even if they weren’t though, I actually would still pick Mental Anguish or Power block in PvE unless I knew I would be fighting a ton of enemies with boons.

For PvP, halting strike is amazing and would be equal to 4 boons removed. You can proc halting strike multiple times with F3, weapon skills, gravity well and MoD. Damage aside, it’s affects are super strong with weakness and the CD increase. There would still be a very good reason to pick halting strike over this buff depending on the match up. If you think 500 damage on boon removal in PvP is so strong that halting strike would never be worth it, you aren’t using halting strike correctly. Mental anguish vs halting strike has always been about diversifying where the damage comes from. If a new elite spec had more power damage across F1-F4, Mental anguish would be back into the game.

Mich.1793:

Some ideas are cool, but is too much pvp-oriented IMO.
In a PvE contest why would you ever take this spec? Not for supporting team, neither for doing more damage…
I mean, tier2 and tier3 traits are absolutely usefull in PvE

I’m assuming that usefull was a typo for useless since it sounds like you don’t like this spec for PvE? I would have to disagree though.

A Sc/P condi mesmer does ok condi DPS once 3 phantasms are up but wind up time for phantasms is a huge problem for Mesmers in PvE. Similar issue for power mesmer dps.

Tier 3: First act giving all current phantasms a 2 for 1 deal is huge in that regard. A Pistol 4/SotE/4 combo would be a huge damage boost for Mesmers allowing for a burst of 4 vollies and having 3 phantasms up quickly.

Duelists Discipline: 50% chance to bleed with pistol attacks. This would now apply to pistol 1/2 as well now.

Tier 2: The heavy hitter here for PvE: Order in Chaos: Torment to enemies when you gain might. PS warriors and heralds are a thing in PvE and they give Mesmers a ton of might per second. Sigil of strength would become stronger than sigil of earth here.

Those 3 combined with make this elite spec a cornerstone of a very strong condi Mesmer in PvE. Dueling, Virtuoso and illusions. More bleeds than the current condi build and a TON of torment too. P/P and SotE for heal. Maybe the elite depending on the CD for even more damage. Two signets are obvious choices for condi builds.

Most of the utilities/stances don’t have CDs and numbers in general so it’s hard to judge but those are pretty PvP focused and potentially way too strong in their effect. Like too strong to the point that they would have to be nerfed hard or have ICDs that would make them terrible. Also not a fan of new F5s. Really want new F1-F4s for future elite specs.

Xaylin.1860:

Yes, I do. Otherwise, show me how you’d balance this kind of trait for:
Nullfield (pulsing area effect) vs. AT (single target one hit) vs. Sword (AA cleave)

So here is how this logic sounds to me. Some illusions attack super fast. Some slow. Warden is 12 aoe attacks vs 5 people and the duelist is 8 vs a single target. The warlock and swordsman attack 1 single target but attack at different speeds. Therefore, sharper images cannot be balanced. Why? Because you keep looking at warlock and swordsman attack speed and claiming those can’t be balanced.

A chrono that goes domination will be able to rapidly spike 9 boons removed with a double 3 illusion shatter +GS3 spike. Furthermore, GS#3 and other shatters are on a much shorter CD compared to null field and AT. This is where balance matters and why the numbers have to be a bit low for individual boons removed. 5 pulses over 5 seconds every 32 seconds or a single spike of 3 every 45 seconds means nothing in comparison to that shatter combo. They will still be better off with a buff but in no way OP because of it.

Xaylin.1860:

If you feel that power shatter builds lack damage – which might be true for DPS but not for burst – discuss ways to fix this specific issue. Boon removal isn’t exclusively linked to power shatter and shouldn’t be balanced or changed around one specific playstyle.

While technically other builds can bring boon removal, this is just like the problem above. GS and Sword are purely power weapons. Domination is purely a power line. This is where balance matters because this is where the vast majority of boon removal comes from. No condi build is going to pick domination just so that their null field can do some minor power damage.

What I’m proposing won’t increase the burst but the sustained damage. If the build can’t bring halting strike, that’s a huge nerf to burst. Furthermore, a lot of classes/builds don’t run around with 9 boons ready to be stripped. It’s a bunker buster trait that makes you worse at fighting other glass cannons because you don’t have halting strike anymore.

Xyonon.3987:

When you remove boons? How do you mean that? Each time I remove a boon I get a stacking or unique modifier that grants +X% damage?

I’d prefer a version like Mind Spike: Damage against foes without boons is increased by X%. Much smoother, less complicated.

With the rest I agree, this would definitly help us, mainly looking from a PvE perspective here, where the other two options are also very horrible picks. We have no grandmaster trait in Domination in PvE, our grandmaster basicly is “Fragility”, the minor trait :|

+1

Can’t be like mind spike because there will always be boons in PvP (even if it’s just a vigor trait every 5-10 seconds or the passive boons from teammates) and I’m hoping to have something useful in all game modes. I initially thought raw damage but the % increase for X second per boon removed sounds nice but wouldn’t help mesmers in PvE without being OP in PvP. There aren’t many boons in PvE (I hope this changes with more expansions/patches) and the % increase wouldn’t (but should) affect phantasms. So 50% increase to sword auto would still have us at weak damage but would make shatter spikes in PvP super strong because it would affect autos and shatters and GS2/3. The hypothetical 600 damage I recommended for PvP would be closer to 2k with PvE stats and % modifiers. Each disenchanter attack doing 4k while bouncing on top of it’s base damage. Sword autos and even potentially shatters in PvE could be used. We would still be a “utility” class but wouldn’t feel like we need to tank our DPS to strip boons. (Side note about GM PvE traits: I can also dream about interrupt traits working on break bars QQ.)

OriOri.8724:

Again, this is just describing someone who isn’t that great with the class. Apparently you have missed all the posts in this subforum recently with people making it to legendary this season with a power shatter, support or lockdown builds. Its entirely possible to play nearly any build you want and still be a huge help to the team if you are good at it.

And quite frankly, just because you are playing the meta build does not mean you are bringing anything to your team. By far most of the people i have met running the meta battle builds for mesmer suck kitten , doesn’t matter if it is a ranked game or an unranked game. They play a build someone else gave them because they are not good enough with the class to design a build that fits their playstyle.

The whole climb to legendary with power shatter is not common nor an indication that the build is in a good spot. Just the player is good, lucky and at the right place at the right time with MMR.

In season 2, I started with a full glass staff tempest (fire/air/tempest+zerker amy) and went 16/1 in solo Q and hit ruby in like 3 days of season start. The reason I hit a wall at ruby with that build was because my enemies were actually smart enough to realize 3k air overload ticks = kill that glassy ele. I swapped to condi necro (another class I was experienced with but it was also on roids back then) and went another 11/1 streak to diamond. Why is this important? Because this season was the exact opposite for me. Starting with other people that had reached diamond+ and a more refined MMR (I hadn’t PvPd in a long time), the glass ele flopped and my condi necro was ~60% win rate at the start but it was nowhere near the rapid ascent of the first season I participated in. The true test of it’s the build/skill or if it’s the MMR being out of wack + skill + moderately decent build is if these players that went power shatter to legendary can repeat their spree next seasons. Spoiler alert: Extremely unlikely it’ll happen.

I’m not saying they aren’t skilled but more so the MMR was way below what their actual abilities were at (practiced a lot in WvW for example). Furthermore, those power shatter Mesmers/chronos were using meta builds: just from the wrong time. So to think that those players reached legendary making up their own unique butterfly build is a stretch.

It wouldn’t make Chrono OP in PvP because if you get 3 phantasms on an enemy and they can’t kill them quickly before alacrity makes a difference, your enemy deserves to die 1 second faster than they otherwise would have. Furthermore, main source of alacrity in PvP is shatters which is kind of mutually exclusive with phantasms as CP would create a new phantasms and the alacrity wouldn’t be on the new one. Only situation that this becomes “problematic” is for the shield phantasms but they already give themselves alacrity when the number of allies is low so… it wouldn’t be a problem.

However, because people would still complain, perhaps try to make this a bit more PvE specific by making it mutually exclusive with current PvP builds/exclusive with shatter builds. If it was attached to improved alacrity, then there would be a choice of IR for shatter builds or IA for phantasm builds.

As for the actual effect of this trait change for PvE: If PH was fixed for the avenger, it would have a ~6 second CD. ~4.5 seconds since they would give the Mesmer and therefore themselves alacrity with your trait. Having 3 avengers up means… well not actually much different from what Mesmers can already do with AWTEW but regardless of PH or not, team alacrity would be easier with just 1 Mesmer. Furthermore, dropping a Well for other utilities would be a lot easier to do from an alacrity perspective but you still wouldn’t want to drop wells from your bar because of Rune of Chrono for quickness. So the main benefit really comes through when you have 1 avenger/2dps phantasms. Sounds good.

Overall, I like the concept and as I’ve said before, all damage modifiers should also affect phantasms. Not just runes/sigils but all of our % modifier traits.

musu.9205:

as someone who played eotn , from my experience . powerful consumable tasted fun at beginning but it will worsen everything .til game was ruined.

Poweful consumable… This is just one of them:
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Essence_of_Celerity
Gw1 consumables were roids cranked up to 11. Literally perma alacrity, quickness, swiftness, protection, regen and energy regen. That’s like perma Chrono buffs and more on an entire party with 3 clicks for 30 minutes. Are you seriously comparing this to a single utility of the Mesmer on a 30 minute CD?

If anything, you should appreciate this item as a gw1 player. We used to be able to multiclass. Just think about this item as a secondary Mesmer class. Mesmer still has “fast casting” and shorter CD on it.

I’ve mained mesmer since gw1 and I have no problem giving this item a 5 minute CD. The item can’t even be used in combat. It’ll only be used in open world and occasionally a casual dungeon or fotm setting when someone can’t jump. Why is that a bad thing?

Stability stripping, when it isn’t covered by other boons, often only opens up a 1 second (reaper shroud #3) to 3 second (balanced stance/strength of the pack) window for interrupts. That’s not even including stability from just dodging on Rev and Scrapper. Revs and Tempests also crap boons out like no other. How is it rewarding to remove a boon if they’re back almost instantly with meta builds? I think we actually agree with this paragraph. Where we differ is what to do from here.

More boon removal isn’t needed nor will it do anything good. Domination, inspiration, chrono power shatter has “enough” of it with GS#3 and shatter concentration. If we had more than that, people would scream for nerfs to Mesmer since their entire class mechanics would be negated while low boon classes would never have any. This is also the reason I don’t think nerfs to boon application will happen either. So what else can we do?

Each clone shattered in the condi build, regardless of what shatter, has the potential to do about 1-1.5k damage because of Maim and IR or ~6k with 3 illusions. F4 and F5 do zero base power damage. F3 requires a GM trait that would compete with the trait I’m pushing for. F2 does minimal power damage. Cripple isn’t going to fix/help power Mesmer here. Do you really think there is no number that could be balanced with damage on boon removal? Keep in mind that the power build won’t be able to shatter as much compared to condi shatter since it won’t have PoM, MoM nor IC.

If each boon removal did ~300-600 damage would that really be OP? UP? It wouldn’t punish glass builds like other Mesmers or Thieves which tend to not have many boons. In fact, that Mesmer would be worst off since fighting other glass builds since they wouldn’t have halting strike. However, it would excel at giving power mesmers the ability to punish people for spamming boons too much in extended fights. If you manage a 3 illusion shatter on someone with 4 boons, that’s a bonus 1200-2400 dmg. If this starts to sound OP, keep in mind that the more you try to spam all your shatters at once, the less damage it can do because there won’t be any boons left to remove. It will just give more sustained damage when using the other shatters. Let’s look at the other niche “unbalanceable situations.”

Oh no!? Null field only does 600 dmg per pulse. So weak! So what? it does zero right now and people still bring it. Sword auto: it’s 3rd hit removes a boon but does 2/3rd of already terrible damage if a boon is on an enemy. This will just make it equal to baseline. pDisenchanter: Swordsman does about 5k per hit with a zerker amy. Disenchanter does about 700 on crit. Oh no! 1900 on disenchanter hit that bounces 4 times and removes 2 conditions. So… not OP nor terrible. In the end, this trait can be balanced just fine because the GS#3/shattered concentration is what really matters for PvP balance and boon removal and can be tweaked accordingly. The rest is icing if you decide to use them in PvP and a nice bonus to niche PvE scenarios where Mental Anguish and Power block suck for the most part to begin with. If anything this could replace Mental Anguish if you feel so strongly about a GS trait.

Offensive main hand weapon with a low cd interrupt. Either pistol, focus(fan) or an axe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Right-Hand_Strength
Not every weapon trait only affects 1 weapon. It may not be conventional nor common but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

I see the need to make it universal because our boon removal is across 2 weapons, 3 utilities, a trait and probably future elite specs. Unlike necro were all their boon removal are corrupts, Mesmers don’t have any “reward” for removal. I also consider the gs cd as a bonus with the proposed idea. Id rather dtop the Gs specificity all together if it’s too much of a problem.

Edit: Was theorycrafting burn guard when I thought of that trait but let’s just focus on mesmer traits. Focus and GS are the only current “pure weapon traits” we have.

Sword, mantra and Scepter traits all give buffs of some sort that affect everything we do while those buffs are active. Torch is buffed by any other stealth we have. Most importantly though, the “staff trait” has the staff CD as an afterthought. It’s primary function, which is universal, is protection on chaos aura. This is exactly the way I think most weapon traits, especially the GM ones, should be for Mesmer. (Apparently even the swordsman gives you the chaos armor if you summon it in an ethereal field.)

In general mesmer is so weird in its traits. We have traits that affect just shatters or just phantasms or just illusion CD or just interrupts or just stealth or just evades even. How many other classes have one trait that by itself can affect a weapon skill, utility, elite and class mechanic all at the same time but only in a niche way? Since we are such a specialist class when it comes to traits, I think that having a trait that affects just boon removal and has a bonus GS CD built in is perfectly fine.

Current GM Trait: Imagined Burden only affects the GS and is lackluster compared to the other GM traits for basically every game mode.

Proposed rework: When you remove boons (not just with GS), you do bonus power damage. Make the might on all clone attacks (not just GS). Keep 20% GS CD.

Reason for this rework:
Condi shatter in PvP works because Illusions gives sustained condi damage (IR and MoD) on ALL shatters. Furthermore, Illusions helps with clone generation to fuel all of these shatters. Power however only has F1 and F3 when traited for damage and Imagined Burden is the only trait that “helps” with illusion generation in Domination. Having all boon removals do damage and Shattered Concentration working with all shatters will give power Mesmers sustained power damage through shatters (and other boon removal). Gives up power block for this so Mesmers can choose between harder spikes/disable vs sustained shatter damage. This also helps PvE and WvW mesmer DPS. Null field although not amazing can at least help tag enemies. Sword auto and disenchanter can help vs boon stealing FOTM mobs, dredge and potential future content. Arcane Thievery needs a major CD reduction, like recent changes to corrupt boon on necro, which would make it viable in different game modes with this trait. (Could also just be made aoe with an aiming reticle). Overall this would give more viability to a domination, inspiration, chrono power Mesmer in PvP.

Side idea: The sword trait should make sword #4 block spawn another phantasmal swordsman instead of a clone. There is no reason for all of our off-hands to only have 1 phantasm besides the shield and chrono builds have made it abundantly clear that base mesmer doesn’t have enough illusion generation for the power creep in this meta. This gives a chance for Dueling/OH sword to be an alternative/synergy with Chrono. More offense than shield but less CC, slow and block uptime while roughly equal amounts of phantasm generation.

DeathReign.7821:

It really depends on what aspect of the Mesmer you want to focus on.

Symmetra – Portal
Zarya – Gravity Well
Tracer – Continuum Split
Winston – Feedback (sort of)

I don’t think any particular Overwatch hero really embodies the Mesmer, though.

Individual skills vs flair of the whole class.

I would say genji not because of the reason someone else listed above but because of reflects. Killing your enemies with their own skills embodies mesmer to me. Wall climbing and being a ninja is a bonus

Sigil of generosity instead of doom? Been my favorite sigil on at least 1 weapon swap (purity+generosity on my DD short bow for example) regardless of what class I play in this meta. Especially with a condi build, you can transfer some bleeds or whatever back at people.

Zenith.7301:

Doubt it will matter since we’ll always be forced to take chronomancer if they don’t give the other specs alacrity.

Alacrity is too important for a group to not have.

Same case for rangers. Grace of the Land and Alacrity royally screwed rangers and mesmers having the possibility to adopt other specs/builds.

What if we end up getting an elite spec with something similar to grace of the land? GM Trait: every time a phantasm attacks, your phantasm also give an AOE 4% bonus in damage around that phantasm (stacks 5 times). Is alacrity really going to be that mandatory that the new elite spec is unwanted?

What if the group already has sufficient alacrity? I want an elite spec that will at least be OK to take as a DPS substitute if I too want to bring another Mesmer to the group. What if the new Mesmer elite spec does more DPS than an ele in some circumstances? Those 10 necro raid groups are doing fine without alacrity and grace of the land. So no, you won’t be forced to take Chrono if a new elite spec is efficient enough in doing damage or healing/buffing the team in other ways.

What the elite spec really needs to do is give us diverse play styles. Reaper shroud is perfect in that sense. It’s same but different. F5 just gave us more of the same. More so than any new weapon we choose, we need new shatters so that regardless of what weapon given, the class will get a new play style.

skcamow.3527:

Really surprised I haven’t seen anything specific for MH pistol, used to be the big thing it seemed most mesmers wanted most.

EDIT: I see apharma’s there, gunslinger could be cool.

MH Pistol! Took me a while to finally finish the write up but final thoughts on what a new Mesmer elite spec should look like that’s DPS and interrupt focused (although it does have some bunkering/condi clear support tossed in their).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Elite-Spec-Idea-MH-pistol-Interrupt-DPS/first#post6178068

Bonus GM Trait idea: Shatter Enchantment: Every time you remove a boon, you do X damage to your target.
Shatter enchantment is another idea I was trying to work into this elite spec. Although it seems to be PvP specific, the new expansion might give boons to more enemies in PvE. However, I think this belongs in Domination. Specifically, Imagined Burden should be modified. Keep the GS CD on IB. Instead of cripple, all boon removal also does damage. This will synergize with GS#3, Shattered Concentration, null field, Disenchanter and sword auto attacks.

Builds (Diversity):
I don’t think all of these will be meta at any given time but I hope it provides some build diversity that can be used well enough.
Bunker/Decap
3/3/3. Cleric or paladin amulet. GS + (Sword or Pistol)/Focus. Knockback and pull from weapons and Illusion of Balance. F4 to keep people out. F4 no longer decaps. Sustain your team through interrupts and Inspiration. Hex Eater Vortex with copious amounts of condition clear for allies to grow stronger in team fights. Blackout to reset enemy team’s boons. Bring Rune of Leadership for more Condi clear on allies or Lyssa to be selfish. Rune of the Tempest which AOE heals for 1.1k (+heal coefficient of 1) each time you break a stun. Having 2-3 self CCs to stun break out of with this rune set can add some strong AOE heals. As Pistol #3 is a bouncing projectile and focus 4, F3 and F4 are light fields, this can chain clear conditions across a team fight. Immortal Mesmer sort of a subset of a bunker build but with a few key differences. PVT amulet. The access to two new light fields and two blast finishers (torch and Illusion of Balance) also lets the Mesmer blast light aura with some consistency and therefore gives relation to phantasms. Inspiration for a bit of retaliation on phantasms and to summon pDefender. Something I need to test but maybe blasting chaos armor + chaotic dampening to give allies protection too. Illusion of Speed is also a leap finisher for more light aura. While not as strong as the old one Immortal Mesmer, it can bring bursts of retal to your phantasms.
P/P Interrupt Burst
1/1 (or 2)/1 Can go either power or condition or hybrid. Calculated risk for harder hitting interrupts and easier confusion (Mistrust) procs on enemies. Dueling for DD and the choice of GM. If you bring DE, swap Master 1 to 2. HM may be used for more Mantra procs of MoD and a harder hitting spike. Domination for vulnerability, quickness and halting strike on interrupt. Quickness will turbo charge the channels on Pistol 2 and 3.Chaos for might/immobilize on interrupt and bonus mirror of anguish interrupt. Interrupts, blinds on shatter and dodging are mandatory to survive.
Shatter Zone Control
(1-3)/2/2. While the above build gains most of the damage from interrupt traits, this build doesn’t even need pistols. In fact, scepter main-hand to spawn clones on top of enemies would probably be better for shatters. Domination for boon strips on pulsing shatters. Illusions for the pulsing torment and confusion.
PvE DPS
Power: Domination, Illusions + elite spec. The GMs are a bit up in the air but Sum of All Fears is the obvious master major choice with DPS would be the major choice. Pistol or Scepter (for sum of all fears) main-hand + pistol, sword or staff phantasms. Get phantasms rolling then cast Illusion of Weakness to buff phantasms. 30% bonus from IoW and the 21% more with Sum of all fears is a potential ~60% increase in phantasm damage although not permanent (8/15 seconds) which leaves room for shattering. Potentially bring Mimic for IoW for medium length fights. Mental anguish would also synergize with Wastrel’s Punishment for (1.3*1.15) a 50% boost vs stunned bosses (This does not include the 50% boost to stunned bosses that are usually built into the breakbar). The new F1 has a base of 9.6 coeffs in 4 seconds so F1 would do some serious damage spikes against a breakbar/when IoW is down. Illusions and MoF for AoE quickness on F3 won’t replace a chrono but can help with quickness uptime. So something like Domination 2,2,2 Illusions 1,2,2 Gunslinger 2,2,2. SotE, IoW, IoB for blasting stealth and 1 more utility + TW.
Condition: Scepter/Pistol or P/P. Illusions for pulsing shatters that inflict confusion and torment. Dueling for the bleeds. Scepter isn’t needed for Sum of all fears although it would still quickly spawn clones if shattering constantly.

Final comments:

Balance is obviously not perfect but I think I managed to create some semblance of a new elite spec that wouldn’t break the game or Mesmer. Importantly, the GM traits bring back viability in underused utilities and traits. I also didn’t want the main-hand weapon to completely outclass the current two we have and tried to give it a unique role in how it functions along with a trait like DPS which would buff all of their damage.

Utilities: Corruptions
A lot of these are a call back to gw1 Mesmer skills that functioned similar to corruptions from gw2 necromancers, hence the utility category. They will apply a condition or CC on the Mesmer. I didn’t want to step too much on Necro’s toes and so this elite spec won’t be transferring the self-inflicted conditions to enemies. Instead this elite spec has Hex Eater Vortex (GM trait) that can convert condition cleansing into raw damage. Rune of the tempest can also convert self-inflicted CC into AoE healing.
Heal: Illusion of Death: I was thinking of some other form of self daze here that “stoned” you but made you resistant to damage (Like the Revenant Jalis elite) but I’ve run out of steam/ideas.
Utility: Illusion of Speed: Stun break. Leap Finisher. Remove immobilize, cripple and chill. ¾ second cast/evade frames. Roll backwards 600 units. Inflict 10 seconds of self-cripple at the end. 15 second CD.
Utility: Illusion of Weakness: 1 second cast time. 15 second CD. Apply a buff to currently active phantasms, increasing phantasm damage by 30% for 8 seconds. Inflict 10 stacks of vulnerability and weakness for 10 seconds on self.
Utility: Illusion of Balance: Instant cast time. Knockback enemies. Self-knockdown for ½ a second. Radius 240, range 400. Blast finisher. Power coefficient 0.7. 20 second CD.
Elite: Illusion of Blackout: ½ second cast time. 5 target 300 radius PBAOE. 45 second CD. Remove 5 boons (Self and enemies) then a 4 second stun (self and enemies).

Grandmaster
1 Calculated Risk: Daze and stuns inflicted by the Mesmer have their duration reduced by 80%. Bonus damage on CC (regardless of interrupt). 0.3 power coefficients per CC. This helps with interrupt and confusion interaction and adds more kick to CCs. Also reduces the self-inflicted stun/daze duration of #6 & blackout.
2 Recurring Nightmares: F1 ,F2 and F3 also proc shatter traits on their 2 final pulses. Reduce CD of shatters by 20% (stacks with illusion trait).
3 Hex Eater Vortex: Every time you remove or convert a condition on yourself or an ally, hit a single nearby enemy for damage for each condition removed. Power coefficient 0.4. 300 range.
Minor: Wastrel’s Punishment: You and your illusions do 15% more damage to foes that are stunned or dazed.
Master
1 Spontaneous Illusion: Interrupting a foe summons a clone on that foe. 1 second ICD.
2 Sum of All Fears: For each condition (Torment, Confusion, Slow) on each enemy, you and your phantasms do 7% more power and condition damage to that enemy.
3 Shared Victory: Gloat now heals in an AOE. 240 Radius.
Minor: Gloat: Heal for 400 (Healing coefficient 0.3) when you interrupt a foe. 1 second ICD.
Adept
1 Waste Not, Want not: Interrupting a foe gives you/steals 25 endurance. 5 second ICD.
2 Disproportionate Power Surge: Auto-attacks do 30% more damage.
3 Feigned Smile: Gain 2 seconds of Resistance when using a corruption skill.
Minor: Gunslinger: You can now use pistol main hand and corruptions.

GMs are meant to change play styles and make underused utilities viable. I have tried to make all of these with a unique offensive mindset. Calculated risk helps with Mistrust interrupt and confusion interaction. It also gives some damage to CC skills vs opponents with breakbars or stability. Recurring Nightmares is more of a condition trait for PvE as most of the shatter traits add condition effects or boon removal. It can function for all builds in PvP with either pulsing boon removal or conditions. While conditions are not hexes, I gave Hex Eater Vortex similar functionality of its GW1 namesake. Power Mesmers are normally considered weak to conditions as it’s not easy to fit condition clear on their bar. This GM trait turns any condition clear, into a weapon. While I initially wanted to make it any condition cleared on any ally would pulse AOE damage, I don’t think it could be balanced with all game modes in mind. I decided on more of a sliver armor effect: hit a single person nearest to you. For PvE, any boss with conditions (Main Trin/Slothy) make bringing a Disenchanter worth it for DPS. For WvW and PvP, you will need to constantly position to be nearest to an enemy to keep whittling them down when you cast null field on your team (or illusions) and or MoR procs. Even traited Signets could see some use with HEV but they still need a rework. An alternative to the secondary effect of Calculated Risk would be to reduce CD of skills that daze/stun by 20% instead of bonus damage on CC.

Shatters
#F1: Ether Nightmare Shatter all illusions. Illusions will explode at their location and create an AOE that pulses 4 times [(4 × 0.6 = 2.4 per illusion) x4 illusions = 9.6 coeffs]. CD 15 seconds.
#F2: Visions of Regret Shatter all illusions. Illusions will explode at their location and create an AOE that pulses 4 times [(4 × 0.2 = 0.8 per illusion) x4 illusions = 3.2 coeffs]. CD 20 seconds. Each pulse also applies 1 stack of confusion (8 seconds) for a total of 16 stacks if all of them connect.
#F3: Stolen Time/Bullet Time: Shatter all illusions. Illusions will explode at their location and create an AOE that pulses 4 times (1 second slow). Gain 1.5 seconds of quickness for each illusion shattered. Master of fragmentation: will now give AoE quickness to allies. CD: 30 seconds. Light Field.
#F4: Illusionary cover: Shatter all illusions creating illusionary cover around the Mesmer that blocks movement and projectiles for 2 seconds. For each illusion destroyed, the barrier lasts 1 seconds longer. CD: 40 seconds. Master of fragmentation: F4 bubble now reflects. Looks like engineer bubble. Light field.
The base Mesmer has a lot of shatter traits. To prevent these traits from becoming OP because they pulse 4x, the traits only work on the first hit. Furthermore, F1, 2 and 3 illusions explode on the spot instead of converging on their target. The GM trait, Recurring Nightmares, will cause base Mesmer shatter traits to proc on the 3rd and 4th hit. So for any enemy to get hit by various shatter traits 12 times, they have to stand in 4 pulsing pools and not move for 3 seconds. While damage is delayed, the overall DPS goes up for PvE shatters. PvP pulsing shatters work as zone control without bursting too hard. F4 functions as ring of warding (Guardian hammer #5 with projectile negation bubble) so this can interrupt as well.