Well, since that phantasm based f skill spec isn’t going to come anytime soon, how about we all try and get some phantasm love in shatters? (E.g. clones and phants shatter equally but as a phant lives longer it gains bonus effects/scaling to the shatter giving it a stronger shatter than the clone/you).
Remove the cast time of the aftercast of Sword4 and/or make it a second optional cast for both the damage and clone (in lieu of phantasm builds). This prevents you from eating more damage due to the root (it’s not a very good skill if you want to cancel it every chance you get).
And yes, in most scenarios, I will roll-cancel my block-damage to prevent myself from eating more. This means it is no longer a damaging ability and simply a delay before a roll (and since it doesn’t get the Warrior abusive sword-block ability, you can’t use it as a very good defensive ability).
I mean, suuuure you can block a killshot (but they can also make it unblockable lel), but does that really make up for it?
My butt! My butt! I’m alive, my butt!
Remember that time when we were only wanted for Veil?
You’re fine with what you have. If you do start doing Fractals, I would suggest building Assassin Ascended for now. If you have other light armor wearers, build Berserker ascended so you can swap between them.
I think it’s more along the lines of every field has gone through numerous changes to nerf their viability. Auras don’t stack duration and have very static effects. Healing, Stealth, Might, and to some degree Swiftness, are all stacking effects from fields that also have little to no downsides (Swiftness stacking is usually done near instantaneously, otherwise it’s better to just run and scream at each other #retreat).
Think about it this way: Since most fields provide auras with leaps (and some with blasts too, because that’s cool… not), what would the game be like with all Auras?
Let’s take a look at all the auras and see how strong they are:
Fire Shield: Burns foes (1s) and grants might (10s) when you are struck (1s ICD per person).
Frost Aura: Chill foes (1s) that strike you (1s ICD per person). Incoming Damage reduced by 10% – Stacks duration (only when blasted).
Magnetic Aura: Reflect projectiles.
Shocking Aura: Stun foes (1s) when struck (2s IC per person).
Light Aura: When struck gain 2s retal (1s ICD), apply 8 vuln.
Chaos Armor: When struck give yourself one of prot (5s), regen (3s), swiftness (3s) and apply one of three blind (3s), confusion (3s), crippled (3s).
Of these, I would rank them as:
Magnetic > Shocking > Frost > Light > Fire = Chaos
Of course, Magnetic and Shocking are both only obtained through the use of skills and not fields. Additionally all the auras last only 5s (bar Magnetic and Shocking with durations based on skill) and are not stacked with the exception of Frost aura.
If we were to instead flip the tables and not buff fields but nerf fields that are too strong, would it instead be fair if Fire and Lightning field provided their aura in AoE upon blast? Would it be fair for them to introduce new Auras that diminish the effects of blast stacking to nerf Water and Smoke Fields?
The second question did happen in regards to Light Aura in case you forgot.
Personally, I don’t think the Aura approach to fields (both in blasting and leaping) is very fun play, but at the same time, I believe that all fields should be on a level playing field (not necessary equal in effects but at least a level playing field).
One final thing to note: Blasting a water field has a 0.5 Healing Power Ratio, one of the higher ratios in the game relating to healing. If water fields were to get streamlined with the rest of the game, you’d apply either Regeneration or a Regen-like Aura.
You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that all the fields are viable, but when fields are only overlapped when you absolutely need the effect (e.g. reflect), then maybe they need to be reconsidered.
I thought the Shield was supposed to apply Stop and not Stun (the difference being Stop literally pauses the animation versus stun canceling it).
Although if that were the case, you’d have to be careful which stunbreaker to use or you might interrupt yourself after breaking the stop, lel.
Not sure where you heard that, but that’s never been the case as far as I understand. Stop is…not a thing. I’m pretty sure you made that up.
O I misinterpreted this part
I thought the Shield was supposed to apply Stop and not Stun (the difference being Stop literally pauses the animation versus stun canceling it).
Although if that were the case, you’d have to be careful which stunbreaker to use or you might interrupt yourself after breaking the stop, lel.
The way I perceive downed state is the player is in a state where they’re on the verge of giving up due to pain and low morale.
That’s why the skills are kind of a half-kitten skill from their profession. They’re in too much pain and have low morale so they aren’t doing the skills.
When someone comes to revive them, that person is rubbing their belly (no jk, they’re tending the wounds) and whispering sweet nothings into their ears (raising their morale, telling them they can do it!).
And when they actually die, they’re not dead but in a lower state of morale where they’ve kind of given up on life and hope and all that jazz. They’re just kind of mentally dead and they need a lot of belly rubs and sweet whispers to get back up.
Of course, then people start belly rubbing the ground or the foot, or lower than the belly and it doesn’t really make sense. Nor does tossing magecks onto them.
ZoomZoom, Jet Lag, Warped Time…
Pick a name already or we’ll call this build Naming Time.
Just as long as you don’t pinch your nipples when you do this, I see no problems with this.
What if they changed it so Slow vs Defiance Bar changed it so that Slow decreased the regeneration rate of the bar and gave you a larger window when the DefBar was broken without actually Slowing the boss? (Or maybe that and then slow the boss when Defbar is broked)
I mean, in non burst scenarios, if you have 3 Phants out and can maintain them, the healing from SotE is really nice (although if you need that extra oomph, you either have to be running MoP or you’re going to blow your HP/S).
My main beef with it is the long intervals. Illusions are squishy things and you don’t replace a Phant/Clone as soon as it’s dead (maybe a clone) and if you miss the interval, your “regen” just got shafted.
If it was changed to be a “counter”, where it counted up your Illusions over set intervals (not counting Illusions over 3, which is very possible), and then healed at the end based on the counter and a multiplier or just simply had a smaller interval, I would be happy with it.
As for now, I’m sticking to the MoR swap since RM makes it a better heal, IMO.
Cheetah Charr Set gives you a Strap and is 50s on the TP. [src]=
Keep in mind you need to buy a SET and not a COVER. The set comes with a cover and straps (and you can either resell the cover or unlock the skin and/or use it).
Its false. You only activate combo finisher on yourself when you use 2nd instance of the skill, the swap.
Im not saying its a terrible skill, im saying it is a terrible combo finisher leap.As the clone-summon part does not indicate a leap finisher, I thought it can’t be misunderstood.. seems like I was mistaken.
I may be wrong, but I believe the clone itself still has a leap finisher as part of old functionality. Maybe I’m just thinking about Swordsman.
Either way, if you Leap-Swap immediately, it’s still a Leap finisher and the clone is typically not dead within that timeframe (if you queue it up).
More leaps isn’t really interesting. Look at thief, the only thing that the leap-spam is known for is stealth because the rest are somewhat lackluster (I mean, Dazing strike is nice but Lightning Field is about as abundant as Dark Fields).
While I’m not advocating more blasts, I don’t think more leaps is necessary (especially since we have pretty good leaps in our weapons with Sword3 and Staff2).
Can we just get smaller intervals, please? Heck, even if it was every 1/10, 1/4, or even 1/2 second, it would make it a lot more reliable…
It’s still nice for that extra charge… sometimes… (since that extra charge actually increases your overall Mantra cooldown now without background recharge).
It can still be a waste with projectiles being on the way.
Maybe they should tweak the trait activation to not interrupt.
So please, do tell what mechanics mesmer has from other classes.
Wells?
15butterflycharrs
Eeeeeeeeyup…
Wells?
The problem I find with that is that it leaves them open to be cleaved and also doesn’t assist them in surviving.
“eww we have all these ethereal fields. I know that almost no other class has them and none with our number, but I want a FIRE field.”
eww, we have this Mercedes without the engine but with this nice unique pink color, but I want a WORKING car!
I’m from another family and I don’t want you having a working car. Reasons.
i agree that the random spawn sux – i want to spawn him next to me to place him safe.
I think this could/should be brought to the next level for all phantasms.
Duelist spawns to your left, Mage spawns to your right, Warlock spawns behind you, Warden spawns closest to you but in range of your target, Swordsman spawns in front of you, Berserker spawns furthest from you but in range of your target.
Disenchanter and Shield spawn to your back left and back right. Defender spawns to your front left not in range of your target (to ensure buff application on spawn).
Of course, I’d actually prefer to just have a Phantasm trait (like Phantasmal Haste) also provide ground targeting so you could just spawn it where you prefer.
I just don’t see why wells aren’t made in to glamour fields (preferably not just ethereal ones). This would add more utility to them, considering most people didn’t seem that happy with the way they functioned. A lot of good suggestions for wells were made after the first BWE but no notable changes were made.
All Wells are fields. The Healing one is a Light Field, the Elite one is a Dark Field, and the rest are Ethereal.
Now we have 3 Light Fields, [still] too many Ethereal Fields, and 1 Dark Field.
Guess it’s time to give up danger time then!
I never saw the use of Danger Time for PvE purposes. Most min/maxing for PvE involves getting to 100% crit which is easy enough without the use of that trait. Probably ‘cause I’m still running around in Assassins with Accuracy Sigils, though.
The problem with Riposte (bar the line projectile on cancel, ‘cause that’s a whole other can of worms) is for me that you can interrupt the damage portion by dodging after the block. If the damage was instant and the clone was after a cast, I’d be happy because then I could intentionally cancel the clone when I have 3 phants out but keep the block (and damage).
Heck, if it was like Deja Vu where you could recast it for the second part that would be nice, too. (Not recast the block, but cast the Clone + Damage portion instantly at will for a few seconds.)
And then we’re in the realm of: “Mesmers should be weak because Veil provides an infinite amount of people stealth.”
You have null field or feedback, but the mesmer himself doesn’t have any fields/finishers on any of his weapons besides the staff. And since no changes have been made that will improve the viability of staff or scepter specs in PvE, mesmers will continue to use mainhand sword and greatsword in most content.
Sword has a Leap, Staff has a Leap, Spear has a Leap, Torch has a Blast, Pistol has a Projectile, GS has a Projectile.
If we count Phantasms (which isn’t a very good representation of finishers, bar Pistol and Focus), there’s also another…
1 Projectile, 1 Leap, and 3 Whirls.
Arguably, we can only actually use up to 2 finishers depending on our weapon setups (more with water and phantasm finishers).
The reason I don’t really count Phantasm finishers is that they are unreliable (bar Pistol and Focus) due to Phantasms moving around and/or dying (although Pistol and Focus phants can die, usually a Focus phant will be dropped against an enemy that will not or can not kill it within it’s first attack cycle, which yields a significant amount of whirls. The Pistol is typically in a safe position to attack, although it has a probability based projectile finisher).
Aaaaannnnd all of these finishers mainly affect condition damage builds unless used in conjunction with a party member (projectile or whirl blind finishes are crazy).
Of course, in my opinion, if you want to count Phantasms as finishers, you must also include that a Banner is a multi-finisher (if you pick it up and press 5 you will blast with a 1s cast time and a 10s cooldown. An entire party can blast 5 times every 10 seconds and a group can blast it roughly 8-9 times every 10 seconds (pick up animations and latency)). Since a Phantasm theoretically has a large amount of finishes, so, too, does a Banner. A Banner theoretically has 121 blasts. Hue.
don’t forget trash skipping!11
Isn’t that only 4 times…?
THIEVES CAN USE LINES RELIABLY!
Don’t forget Veil for that out of place Light field.
So what we’ve got is… (pre Chrono)
5 Ethereal Fields and 2 Light Fields.
The fields are as listed:
Ethereal: Chaos Storm (Staff), Vortex (Spear), Feedback (Utility), Null Field (Utility), Time Warp (Elite)
Light: Temporal Curtain (Focus), Veil (Utility).
Post-Chrono, we gain access to (with a traitline) 7 more fields, 5 Ethereal, 1 Light, and 1 Dark.
Tides of Time (Ethereal, Weapon), Well of Eternity (Light, Healing), Well of Action, Calamity, Precognition, Recall (Ethereal, Utility), Gravity Well (Dark, Elite).
This means that pre-Chrono, we can slot 1-3 Weapon Fields, 2 Ethereal, 1 Light (requiring both water and land to gain all 3). Typically a player will not use both land fields. For Utilities, we can slot any combination of 3 Ethereal and 2 Light (with use of Mimic). For Elites, we can slot Ethereal.
This means that if we spec entirely for Fields (because THAT’s what the glamour trait is for… right?), we can have 7 Fields on our bar with very little actual viability (you’re better off running a boonshare build at this point).
Now, running 4 Fields can be pretty standard in Mesmer play (Feedback Mimic TW, slot in NF if necessary or vice versa). But wearing a Staff and Focus is… awkward. Not to mention being near water for that off-land Vortex to combo with.
With Chronomancer, we actually only gain access to one more Field, although we do get more accessibility to Light fields and we gain our first Dark field. The reason why this change is not as significant (in a vacuum where all the skills are simply Fields and nothing more or less), is because you can still only slot 3 Fields in your Utilities, 1 in your Elite, and 2 in your Weapons (or 3 with water). The only “gain” here is via Healing Skills.
Of course, you can argue that you can actually bring in 8-9 more fields with Chrono due to Continuum Shift, but stacking Fields like that defeats the purpose of Field combos.
I don’t really see the whole execution being done very well, although I can personally see the concept. It just seems to me to be one of those things lost in translation (and while we do have lots of access to Ethereal, is it really a sought after Field? Are they truly worthy of us not having access to many finishers?) and not actually relevant (anymore).
Yeah I’ve got my eye on this but we’ll see how it goes in the reveals and stuff. Just as mesmers wouldn’t/didn’t like people crying about chrono being OP before release and everything I don’t think we should cry either.
I don’t think it seems OP, but I’m a little miffed at them giving power block mechanics to another class, particularly the one that’s immune to it.
And it’s not even a trait, just a skill! Hue.
Better than Mesmers
(Other elites completely change there special abilities or simply how they will act. This isn’t the case with Chrono as they are straight up vertical upgrade not an alternative like others they add F5 without changing or even swapping out any of the F1-F4 skills. It would make perfect sense to swap F4 with F5 but that’s not the case. The argument of whether or not to switch to chrono doesn’t exist for Mesmers as this is an upgrade and not even remotely balanced compared to the other elites. They need to nerf Chrono by doing what they did for the other classes and balance out the special abilities F1-F5)
Tempest adds overload. If you don’t use overload, you’re just another elementalist with some different traits.
Chronomancer adds f5. If you don’t use f5, you’re just another mesmer with some different traits.As 2/5 (40%) of the specializations we have enough info about, specs that add without changing seem common enough so far.
Make that 3/6 (50%), since Thieves get extra endurance (and dodges) with no change to their Initiative/Steal mechanics.
Are you guys sure there’s no cast time? Not even a tiny one? So once I block, if I immediately follow with a roll, I won’t cancel the Phant?
Since I didn’t play in the Beta Weekend, I was wond’r’in…
Does the Phantasm get tied to your target, or the source you blocked?
What happens when you block with no target?
Is there a cast time associated to the Phant summoning once a block occurs (similar to Scepter/Sword blocks)?
Honestly, I think Danger Time shines the most in WvW and PvP. In PvE, running full Berserker puts you at 60% crit chance (58% with Eagle Runes, no buffs), roughly, which means that you’re roughly at 80% with fury, making DT waste 10%. You could slot less Berserker for Valkyrie, but then you’re losing out on early fight DPS (and slotting Valk or defensive really shines in WvW, so you could focus on min-maxing the critical effectiveness of DT there).
Personally, I’m at 80% with Assassins + Ranger (too cheap to swap to Eagle) + 7% Crit Sigils (yes this doesn’t affect Phants, but shush). Actually it’s 78% crit chance, but then I get the remaining with Omnom Ghosts/Dragon Rolls (they provide ~3% crit chance). Once you add in the new Fury we get from Master Fencer, I’m at 100% crit chance when the enemy is below 75% HP.
If you want to min-max the crit from Danger Time in PvE, slot out your Chest + 2 of (Shoulders, Gloves, Boots) to get to 50.05% crit chance. If you don’t want to slot Eagle Runes and instead opt for Scholar, you can run full Berserker leaving you at 49.76% crit chance. This means, once Slow is applied and the enemy is less than 75% HP you have 99.76% crit chance (and a higher damage output than the Assassin variant).
Of course, this doesn’t account for the Assassin variant being able to run IR and CP, which very well might improve the damage output on a given rotation. (Start with an F2 (or F3), summon 2 phants, F1, wait a bit and then F1, summon 2 phants, F1, wait a bit rinse repeat.) This does of course rely on your phants surviving in between MW’s, but it gives you something else to do in between Phant summoning and BF-AA spamming.
At 7:57 you pressed F3. RIP Chaos, forgetting he pressed buttons while pressing buttons.
Wonder what weapon the Shield phant uses (also Defender and Disenchanter).
As I see it, there is just very little reason for a player not to take Chronomancer.
Except that, you know, you’re not taking a different traitline and we’re already hardpressed with our trait choices.
Instead of a taunt, make it tanky like da bear in bearbow.
I think a better application of the Phants with bounce would instead be:
This Phantasm attacks by creating a line towards the enemy and then exploding outwards. The line and explosion created both (meaning you can get it twice) apply X boon to allies and Y condition to enemies. The attack deals damage (bar conditions) to only the main target and only once. Both the line and explosion do not linger.
This also gives the possibility of having a Phantasm that creates fields.
Weird thought: What happens if you get downed while in Chronosplit, then another Mesmer casts Illusion of Life on you before the Rift expires? I suspect that getting down is supposed to destroy the Rift without triggering the Revert effect, but I’m curious.
Well if you can die and come back from Rift (similar to Vengeance redeath), then I think you’ll get reverted but maintain IoL since it’s a buff and those don’t get affected from what I’ve read.
Ah, interesting. Too bad the only AoE stunbreak is Tempest and that’s going to prioritize non-dazed players.
I don’t think that’s how it works. They still have to wait for their normal attack time. The daze just prevents them from attacking immediately.
Does the Phantasm re-summoned by Chronophantasma have reset attack timers?
Could use Shatter to reset the attack timers on Phantasm faster then they could attack normally. On Duelists this would be massive once Duelist Discipline is fixed. But all damage Phantasms would benefit from it.
Plus you could get 13 Shatters in (abusing F5 and Signet of Illusions/Ether). Abuse the baseline Illusionary Persona, Chronophantasma and Illusionary Reversion to make each Shatter a 3 man shatter. That would be 39 stacks of Torment (prenerf Maim would be 78 stacks lol) plus 48 stacks of Confusion from Shatters alone.
Strictly PvE only but it does counter the biggest issues of Mesmers in PvE by not needing Phantasms to stay alive.
They’re dazed for 1s after CP, so… unless you or a Tempest brings an AoE stunbreak, they’re not gonna attack.
So it’s similar to the vengeance bug?
But it puts you in combat, slowing you down and having your group speed up ahead of you to leave you with all the trash they aggro. Just slot in PU and stealth the group.