The “average citizenry” is very different depending on what race you’re talking about. The asura in general seem very knowledgeable about the sciences. Yes it’s a different form of science from the real world, but the results are similar if not superior (computers, artificial intelligence/sentience, flight, teleportation, directed-energy weapons, etc.).
Eh, I play from Australia too and I really don’t feel that hindered by ping. The only time I really notice it is when I’m downed (which I guess is the point, hah), as there tends to be a slight delay between the final blow and actually downing.
Obviously I won’t be playing at tourney level with that latency, but it’s not as debilitating as it seems.
Staff has always been used in Power builds. As Skcamow said, it’s a defensive weapon that compensates for the GS’s purely offensive nature very well.
And it really isn’t much of a condi weapon. After the 23/06 nerf it doesn’t output the condi pressure it used to, Sceptre is far more of a condi weapon than Staff is and even Sceptre’s more of a hybrid weapon.
Quickness in general isn’t that useful on Mesmers unless it’s on-demand, which FI isn’t. Like people have said it should really swap places with Confounding Suggestions (or be axed altogether).
Blurred Inscriptions is another trait I’d add to the list, although I guess technically it’s not that “great”… but its main problem is it should also be an Adept trait. I would swap it with Empowered Illusions.
Evasive Mirror, IMO, should be Adept tier again. Personally I would make Sharper Images a Master major, Phantasmal Fury the Master minor and move Evasive Mirror to Adept.
Temporal Enchanter needs to be much stronger than it is. I’d suggest increasing its Glamour duration boost from 2s to 50%. Super Speed and Resistance should be pulsed (3s SS, 1s Resistance every 3s) or granted on crossing/use with Portal and Veil (5s SS, 3s Resistance, one time only).
Wait, so I have to take the Chaos line + PU + a torch and or Decoy and or mass invis so I can run MoD? I thought there was no cost/investment?
Yeah, but why wouldn’t you? The point is that in GW2, opportunity cost doesn’t really exist given the shallowness of combat. The choices to be made for any build are incredibly obvious, and if one dies in a rapid fashion, it was due to a strict hard counter or because of cooldowns. Tool-tips should not be a substitute for skill, but that’s the mantra in GW2.
Spoken like a true GW2 PvPer who knows nothing about Mesmers. Of course every Mesmer runs PU. Never mind if that Mesmer never stealthed the entire time, she’s definitely running PU!!!
… In fact builds that would run MoD are quite likely to run Inspiration instead of Chaos. Guess what that means? No PU. And between Blink, MoD and Portal, that’s all your utilities accounted for. Guess what that means? No Decoy. And there’s no Illusions in there, so guess what that means? No The Pledge.
Sieze the Moment is also pretty strong, if it counts the Mesmer as an Illusion (which I expect it will, eventually). On-demand Quickness is godly for stomping/ressing.
Seems like you’re coming from a PvE perspective. In PvP both traits are great.
It’s obvious the OP’s problem is with Confounding Suggestions, not Power Lock (though he doesn’t realise it), so I don’t think this warrants further discussion unless we want to talk about CS instead.
I wouldn’t really consider Chrono a “control” spec, given it doesn’t really compare to Domination when it comes to control. Tides of Time and Gravity Well are solid control skills but that’s about it, the rest is at most soft CC.
Overall the Chronomancer feels like it augments everything the Mesmer does, so while it does augment control it also augments everything else. Whether this is the nature of the spec (it is, but…) or more an artifact of how flawed the base Mesmer is is up for discussion.
Reason I want to dispute this is because I’d like to see a proper control elite spec in the future.
There are actually a few instant stuns in the game, Engineer Overcharged Shot, Turret destruction trait, Magnetic Inversion, Elementalist Updraft, Necromancer Doom, Fear of Death and Reaper’s protection traits, Thief Sleight of Hand trait, main hand sword stealth attack, Mesmer Mirror of Anguish trait, what you listed and anything from stealth practically.
OP has sunk down to his neck now. Let’s see if he’ll completely submerge.
EDIT: Although I should point out a lot of what you mentioned aren’t stuns, but they’re still hard CCs and many are without projectiles; so the point stands.
On a more related note, the problem you’re looking for is Confounding Suggestions, not Power Lock. Power Lock by itself is a Daze.
That’s essentially what I was getting at about you having a habit of not reading. Note that the thread was about Scrapper, not Ele. I see you deleted your post but unfortunately it was quoted by multiple people, so everyone can still see it.
Can we do something about confusion. It’s an absolutely dreadful condition for PvE as is torment.
I’d like to see Mesmers get an inverse-Confusion condition, i.e. take more damage if you’re not activating a skill. Would be great for both PvE and PvP, and fits the GW1 Mesmer theme of control and hard choices (Wastrel’s Worry/Demise).
Call it… I dunno, Anxiety. No, doesn’t sound urgent enough. Panic? Hmmm, sounds too Fear-y. You could call it Wastrel as Angel de Lyssa once suggested, but that doesn’t realllly fit…
Ideally I’d like it to replace Torment, I don’t feel Torment fits the Mesmer very well. It was originally intended to be a Necromancer specialty, but somehow it became a Mesmer one instead.
…..
But this thread is about the Chronomancer, not the base Mesmer or future Elites. Unfortunately, as Chronomancer seems to be all Anet cares about for now.
You need Domination for control/damage and Dueling for illusion generation, so yes. Chaos is the only line you can give up without sacrificing a lot of your offensive capability.
Interestingly enough, Signet of Humility is the least used Elite amongst Mesmers even in sPvP.
When I get Moa’d I just immediately Moa-charge away. I think its 4 or 5? One of those. Rarely do I get downed while Moa’d… it’s essentially an Elite that forces you to disengage for 10s.
… You sound like one of those SJW types who require boxes to be ticked on a list of social angst before any fictional work/world/character can be considered “good”.
I got quite a few “nice Mesmer bunker” comments when I played Condi Chrono, which is funny as IMO it’s much stronger than the typical Mesmer Condi that garners accusations of “condi cancer”.
You would think the constant blocking and blurring while slapping everyone with Confusion and Torment would be more frustrating to fight against, but people seem to appreciate that I’m standing there and taking it rather than teleporting away? I don’t know.
Nothing had changed in three years to my knowledge.
Did Fury used to give precision? Because that’s what that post seems to be relying on. As Embolism says, “any boons that change your stats directly…will indirectly boost your Illusions too.”
But Fury doesn’t change your stats directly, it changes your crit chance. Just like Sigil of Accuracy, Fury as it is right now shouldn’t have any impact on your phantasm’s crit chance.
In practice, I’ve found this to be true: my iDuelist stacks up the average bleeds that it’s expected to not counting my personal Fury.
No it didn’t, I just didn’t test it by getting 80% crit chance then seeing if Illusions can still fail to crit while I have Fury. I did that later and it turns out they could, so I was wrong.
You only need two sets of ascended armor.
One set of zerker light for your mesmer
One set of zerker heavy for your killshot warriormesmer
and you’re done
Power PU works because Dom and Duel gave us most of our burst. Your third spec isn’t going to add much burst so using it for defence isn’t a big tradeoff.
If you’re going to use two non-offensive specs then that starts to break down. You’d be better off going Condi PU then as Condi only needs one spec, Illusions, for most of its offensive power.
Percentage increases on us do not affect our phantasms… Fury, sigil of force, sigil of accuracy, the trait fragility, etc all have no affect on our illusions.
Something I hope will get “fixed” eventually. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Mesmer balancing was done under the assumption that they do work with our illusions. See also: Danger Time.
It also causes your quality of life to plummet. For some cancer patients, particularly those with metastatic disease, you might not recommend chemo because what time it can buy them is absolutely not worth the horrible suffering they’d go through. In those situations palliative treatment > chemo.
It’s not uncommon either. Chemo is primarily for killing undetectable metastasis. If you already have (multiple) detectable metastasis the risk of chemo may well outweigh the benefits.
But I’m rambling. You still haven’t responded to the (quite common) scenario I poisted before.
With HoT, my bet it on ascended power gear. Your condi gear can be left exotic simply because power benefits from ascended better than condi would – asc weapon strength (5% more dmg) applies only to direct dmg and has no effect on condi dmg. By leaving your condi gear exotic, you now can easily craft both Rabid and Sinister and keep them in your inv and use depending on your mood.
That’s some good advice right there, if you’re not rich enough to craft multiple ascended sets for every character.
Agreed – the thing with Blurred Inscriptions is that you always have to take the cast time of the signet into consideration. I’d suggest that the distortion should be applied when you start to cast a signet, not when you finished casting one. It would let you time the distortion to react properly to an attack.
This. As it is only Signet of Midnight works well with Blurred Inscriptions. Given that Mesmer signets don’t synergise well together their trait better be really good (especially since it’s competing with Shattered Concentration).
TBH I like the Distortion share duration as it is, because I really dislike causing my entire team to decap when I’m just Distorting for myself.
But yes it should be changed to Blur and last longer + longer ICD (and buff up Blurred Inscriptions while we’re at it). Distortion itself however doesn’t need and should not receive any buffs.
Ether Feast can easily become a Clone heal, just make it conjure an Clone at the beginning/end.
Of course that also means its CD has to be increased to compensate for Illusionist’s Celerity, which no doubt is why Anet didn’t do It. it’s in a good place already, no need to rock the boat.
Any future elite spec would always start at a disadvantage since they again start on a flawed core.
Which is my biggest gripe with Elite specs. A lot of fixes that should’ve went into the core professions went into these instead. Does this mean future Elites will need to incorporate the same fixes? Why not start with a solid foundation? Would be easier to develop and mitigate accusations of P2W. (or Pay for Fixes as it were).
Precognition is my favourite for obvious reasons. Eternity because we finally have a good condi cleansing option that doesn’t require us to go into Inspiration or use a utility slot (plus it’s great group support and works with Continuum Shift). Gravity for obvious reasons. I like Action but for the purposes of stomping/ressing I tend to go with Tides of Time.
For example, I really think the restriction on weapons/utilities will be removed (ok maybe it’s more of a hope) and that elite specs will just be trait lines that also change the class mechanics.
Given that some weapons incorporate Elite mechanics (e.g. Alacrity on Mesmer Shield), I think that’s highly unlikely unless the weapons themselves receive changes (to remove said Elite mechanics).
No, otherwise I would’ve gotten the stomp off and turned a 2v1 into a duel, instead I don’t and the guy gets ressed.
Unless you’re suggesting I always Distort when I stomp or run around until I get below 50% and proc Decoy… well, either way I’d consider it a hindrance rather than a benefit. And personally it works against me more often than it helps.
And this is just one example. There are lots of other situations where Decoy means you either have to do something to prevent it proccing, or wait for it to proc first; either of which is 100% a con rather than a pro that no amount of skill can turn around.
Remember when iDuelist was a 100% projectile finisher with Duelist’s Discipline?
Good times, good times.
… Actually, that sounds like a really fun idea for a new (old?) Duelist’s Discipline to replace our neutered one. Maybe not 100%, something like 50% maybe.
Desperate Decoy can interrupt anything from res/stomp attempts to Mantra channelling. It’s terrible.
You should be aware of the threshold and the last time it procced. It has always been used to prevent instant deaths. The caveat to your interrupted stomp/res/mantra is that otherwise you would probably be dead. Its a pvp thing. I don’t know what mode you are referring to.
No, otherwise I would’ve gotten the stomp off and turned a 2v1 into a duel, instead I don’t and the guy gets ressed.
Unless you’re suggesting I always Distort when I stomp or run around until I get below 50% and proc Decoy… well, either way I’d consider it a hindrance rather than a benefit. And personally it works against me more often than it helps.
Well the meta is the meta for a reason. It’s not an arbitrary “this is what everyone should run”, it’s a lot of theorycrafters spending time with different builds until they eventually all arrive at the same few “optimal” builds.
For the Mesmer it’s all about the best burst possible, and there’s not too many ways you can go about achieving that.
