When I’m blinded, Illusions simply fail to conjure. This had always been the case for me with at least Phantasmal Warden and Phantasmal Swordsman, which were the Phantasms I had used in PvE. In PvP I don’t use Phantasms often so I cannot comment.
The point Anet is trying to make is that Illusions are not pets, they are spells cast on the opponent’s mind: hexes if you will: that could be removed by destroying its physical manifestation.
If Illusion conditions are affected by +condition duration, for example Master of Misdirection’s +33% Confusion duration; then the iMage change is great.
As it is? 3 seconds quite often will result in no damage at all.
All Phantasms except Berserker (and maybe Disenchanter) were always negated by Blind and Invulnerability. It amuses me people cite this as a HUGE NERF when it has in fact been the case for most Phantasms already.
The Phantasm LOS and Blind/Invulnerability nerf actually only nerfed a few Phantasms, in particular Berserker; because most other Phantasms already require LOS and are already negated by Blind/Invulnerability even before this patch.
except berserker was the only option mesmers had to contributing to a seige.
you know something is kittened up with the class when a bug fix to a single skill completely destroys a mesmers abilities when attacking in wvw.
I know, although it actually isn’t impossible to conjure LOS requiring Phantasms on walls: I’ve managed to cast Warden up there many times, dealing AoE damage and watching fools shoot themselves. It does fail sometimes for no apparent reason (as sometimes you can’t tell if someone is in LOS of your character or not), but it is far from impossible.
you managed to summon warden up there because they were standing on the little lip at the edge, in which case anything could hit them.
And what’s wrong with that? Defensive fortifications are meant to protect whoever’s inside, I think it’s quite reasonable for defenders to be vulnerable if they try to get a better shot.
The Phantasm LOS and Blind/Invulnerability nerf actually only nerfed a few Phantasms, in particular Berserker; because most other Phantasms already require LOS and are already negated by Blind/Invulnerability even before this patch.
except berserker was the only option mesmers had to contributing to a seige.
you know something is kittened up with the class when a bug fix to a single skill completely destroys a mesmers abilities when attacking in wvw.
I know, although it actually isn’t impossible to conjure LOS requiring Phantasms on walls: I’ve managed to cast Warden up there many times, dealing AoE damage and watching fools shoot themselves. It does fail sometimes for no apparent reason (as sometimes you can’t tell if someone is in LOS of your character or not), but it is far from impossible.
The Phantasm LOS and Blind/Invulnerability nerf actually only nerfed a few Phantasms, in particular Berserker; because most other Phantasms already require LOS and are already negated by Blind/Invulnerability even before this patch.
Empowered Mantra builds are boring, as realistically you cannot/won’t use your Mantras. If you do, charging them all is a pain; and if you use some charges but not all (as would be the case) you then have to de-charge them and re-charge them again…
Isn’t there a Charr couple in Lion’s Arch talking about forming a fahrar for their cubs that includes children from all races, due to there not being enough Charr cubs in LA for a Charr-only fahrar?
IMO Mantra of Resolve (without traits) is perfectly fine, it’s an excellent frequently-available (and instant) condition cleanser: although its benefits are more evident in PvP where conditions are thrown left and right at you.
The number of people who cannot understand sarcasm (sarcasm not being translated well through text isn’t really an excuse here, it’s so obvious) is amusing.
Sword/focus is my best buddy in WvW. It’s quite a potent combination, even on bunker mesmers. But confusion is just meh. It’s only really good if you can maintain it for the majority of a fight (underwater trident clones anyone?), so I’ve avoided both torch and scepter. But hey, whatever floats your boat- if you’re having fun, then you have a good build.
In WvW, Confusion is absolutely devastating as it deals about 2x damage compared to sPvP, where it is already quite potent against low HP professions. 4000 damage per skill activation? Yes please.
The change in hispersonality from scholar to marshal is too fast and makes him seem conceited more than anything else, and his voice acting… oh God the voice acting. I swear every single passerby NPC had more emotion than he did.
In real life, the primary reason guns replaced bows was not power, in fact for a long time bows were better weapons than guns. The reason guns replaced bows is because using guns require minimal training, while a good bowman requires years and years of training.
When talking about Winds of Chaos you should always take into account that Clones use Winds of Chaos too (although it’s ground-hugging and its Bleeding is weaker). Also remember that Illusionary Elasticity, an essential trait for Staff builds, allows you to hit the same target twice.
I know all that but then again, illusianry elasticity don’t work on illusions and clones deal no damage by themselves… if you aren’t running a condition mez your clones spamming bleeding and burning (if they remove vuln) won’t be doing much and only on a condition build it’ll make a difference because right now a crit build outdamage condtion builds by a lot.
IE is 2x DPS from yourself which is powerful enough already, it doesn’t need to affect Clones. Staff Clones still deal the most damage out of all Clones, condition build or not; and I see no problem with them only out DPSing Phantasms if you’re specced for condition damage (it is a primarily condition-based weapon after all). DPS isn’t everything, Staff condition builds are much stronger defensively (Staff Clones themselves provide excellent cover for you, especially if you make good use of stealth) than Power-Crit builds; plus Confusion can drop unsuspecting Guardians/Thieves/Eles very quickly.
I would change Blinding Befuddlement to Illusionary Elasticity. It allows your Winds of Chaos to hit your target twice if there are no other enemies nearby. It will also allow Magic Bullet to bounce one more time inflicting Confusion, though that isn’t particularly significant.
I would also change Signet of Inspiration to something more reliable.
(Also, if you didn’t catch it, Condition mesmer is absolutely brutal underwater with trident clones. Being able to keep up 7-8 stacks of confusion on the opponent at all times is just broken)
That’s true, a condition mesmer under water with trident clones is a brutal force.
I wonder why the trident clones use a different version of trident autoattack. My own trident autoattacks don’t cause confusion, theirs does.
This is because in Beta, Siren’s Call used to inflict Confusion on enemies and heal allies.
For condition Staff builds there is no reason to conjure a Warlock other than Shatter fodder: it does pitiful damage compared to a Staff Clone and doesn’t give you any boons.
Depends on your power and also on the duration of the fight.
A bleed from a staff clone does about 500 damage in a condition build. A single shot from a (weak) iWarlock does about 1000 damage or 1500 on a crit. So the staff clone needs multiple crits/procs and more time to do the same amount of damage. In a longer fight the staff clone will be ahead of course.
In my condition damage build, Staff Clones deal ~700 damage from Burning and ~600 damage from Bleeding, and this is increased as they stack Might (and Fury) on you. My Warlock, on the other hand, deals ~600 damage and attacks once for every three Staff Clone attacks.
When I say condition builds I mean pure condition builds. If you have a significant Power investment then you’re a hybrid build. Unfortunately this cannot be completely avoided in WvW due to there being no Rabid jewelery.
Staff Clones attack much slower than you do, so it isn’t exactly 5x Winds of Chaos when you have three Clones and IE. Also take into account Sharper Images (5s Bleeding) and the fact that Staff Clone WoC Bleeding lasts 5s instead of 7s.
In practice I find that while the Staff can deal a respectable amount of condition damage, it is slightly sub-par to condition damage specs of other professions. On the other hand, it also supports the team with Might, Fury and Vulnerability; and Staff Clones can provide a nice bit of cover for you.
50% of the Mesmer’s damage is probably too much. I can’t recall how much damage Clones did before they removed it though… come to think of it it might have been about 50%, I remember Sword Clones used to deal a few hundred damage per hit.
I think the only buff the Staff needs is with regards to Staff Clones: increase the duration of their Bleeding to 7s (right now it’s 5s) like the player version, make it a real projectile instead of a ground-hugger, make conditions/boons inflicted by Illusions be affected by +condition/boon duration, etc.
The player version of bleed only has 7 sec. duration if you have increased bleed/condition duration from somewhere (usually that comes from spec points in the Domination line).
Nevertheless, I agree the conditions/boons inflicted by Illusions should be affected by +condition/boon duration. (which currently does not)
My WoC Bleeding lasts for 7s despite having no +condition duration. Note that there is a bug with Chaotic Dampening that makes WoC’s tooltip show the wrong duration for Bleeding (it will say 5s but it really still lasts 7s).
When talking about Winds of Chaos you should always take into account that Clones use Winds of Chaos too (although it’s ground-hugging and its Bleeding is weaker). Also remember that Illusionary Elasticity, an essential trait for Staff builds, allows you to hit the same target twice.
I think the only buff the Staff needs is with regards to Staff Clones: increase the duration of their Bleeding to 7s (right now it’s 5s) like the player version, make it a real projectile instead of a ground-hugger, make conditions/boons inflicted by Illusions be affected by +condition/boon duration, etc.
For condition Staff builds there is no reason to conjure a Warlock other than Shatter fodder: it does pitiful damage compared to a Staff Clone and doesn’t give you any boons.
Mender’s Purity hardly replaces a proper condition removal even with MoR, cleansing a single condition is risky (there’s a good chance the Cripple or Vulnerability will be cleansed instead of the 20 stacks of Bleeding, for example) and tying it to your heal is awkward (sometimes you want condition removal to break an immobilise).
Cry of Frustration really needs Master of Misdirection to work without impeccable timing/luck, I do think it should be buffed to 4s. Also, Confusing Combatants needs to be affected by Master of Misdirection, in fact all Illusion-inflicted conditions need to be modified by +condition duration.
I use Scepter-Torch, but only as a secondary set to my Staff. I switch to it when I really need another stealth (The Prestige is our shortest CD stealth) or see a good opportunity to use Confusing Images.
Add Confusion to Ether Clone, allow Sceptre Clones to use the entire Ether Bolt chain except its Ether Clone doesn’t conjure another Clone, change Illusionary Counter to inflict Confusion on Block instead of Power-based damage.
There, now the Scepter fills the niche of 1H condition damage weapon.
According to Anet, Confusion is meant to be applied in bursts instead of a continuous condition like Bleeding; hence why they removed it from Scepter 1 and Trident 1.
Confusion damage should supplement Staff condition damage. It will never be strong enough to be your primary damage source.
^ The benefits you mentioned apply mainly to PvP. This is PvE we’re talking about. Monsters are stupid and usually attack Illusions anyway, there’s very little benefit in target breaking or confusing enemies or reviving friendlies (if you need to revive friendlies it’s probably a boss event that’s spamming loads of AoE which will hit you anyway).
To clarify, the only Mesmer Illusion that requires no LoS is the Phantasmal Berserker, which I’m quite sure is a bug. Every other Phantasm will fail if there is no direct LoS when they’re conjured (which I can tell you is very aggravating as it is often difficult to tell if something on a wall is in LoS of your character or not).
Also remember that Mesmer Illusions are not so much pets as they are hexes given physical form: they require a target and are bound to that target. Think of them as DoTs cast on you, except you can end the DoT by killing it. Also remember that Mesmers rely on their Illusions to use their Shatter mechanic, if they cannot use Illusions then they cannot use Shatters.
Cry of Frustration can be more powerful than Mind Wrack with the right build, but you can’t rely on it in a condition build like you can Mind Wrack with a power build; mainly because of the 2x CD.
Diversion as said can be great at removing 3 – 4 stacks of Defiant, other than that it isn’t really worth using if you could use MW or CoF.
We were promised a trait overhaul during the ending days of Beta. I have yet to see it occur: the only things that have happened were the addition of Mirror of Anguish (replacing a useless on-downed trait I think) and making a few useless traits GM (Furious Interruption being a particularly laughable one). Oh and slapping on -20% CD to all our weapon traits that give useless bonuses and de-nerfing Illusionist’s Celerity back to 20% making it mandatory, I guess.
Mesmer does have quite a few interrupts. The problem is you can’t use most of those interrupts in the same build: you can get one interrupt per weapon set, one interrupt from SoD and a generally unreliable interrupt from Diversion. Mantra of Distraction is the holy grail of interrupts since you can get up to three interrupts from it, but it is no good for anything else (most other interrupts have some other component that makes them useful even if they don’t interrupt anything).
Most Mesmers only pack one stealth skill: Decoy, a 3s stealth on a 32s CD. The other stealth skills require you to sacrifice something: The Prestige sacrifices a Phantasm slot (iMage is pure Shatter fodder), Veil is just plain bad (no one ever uses this), and Mass Invisibility… well. If they’re using that they’re not using Moa Morph or Time Warp, so you should be happy.
There’s also the trait Desperate Decoy, but that only activates at low health and is frequently cancelled immediately from a skill activation. Which brings me to another point, Mesmers cannot attack through stealth; doing so breaks stealth: unless you’re talking about culling issues, which is not a Mesmer problem.
As people have said, it is very easy to differentiate Mesmers from Clones once you know what to look for. I rarely am unable to identify the real Mesmer if they aren’t cloaked (although targeting the real Mesmer can be a hassle).
As for Mind Wrack’s damage, the most I’ve been able to get out of it with a Glass Cannon build is 4x 2k = 8k damage. This is with 4x Empowered Mantras (locking down your healing and utility slots), Illusionary Persona (requiring you to be in melee range), and having all four Wracks crit.
Or they could say they’re increasing the drop rate without actually doing so, that could drive prices down just as well: after all, it is very difficult for players to check if there’s a change in the RNG, and it is what people believe that affects the market…
You’d be hard-pressed to find a condition build that does not include Sharper Images, if for no other reason than Deceptive Evasion being so important for spamming Staff Clones. Any condition build that does not take Sharper Images (and Deceptive Evasion) would be much weaker offensively than a build that does.
the polar bear people are also nice.