Guild Wars 2

The problem with this game is that it severely lack emphasize on skill/trait balancing. The classes are the core of the game. Yet they spend so little resource on balancing it and preventing the metagame become stale.

For the new set of elite specs, it is pretty obvious they are very cautious with their power level as the HoT ones have been too good during launch and went through quite a bit nerfs afterwards.

However, the better way to do things is actually to overtune things at the start and then nerf them down to balance things. But Anet’s balance patches are always so small and so infrequent. It takes forever for them to actually change something meaningful. So they do not dare to overtune things as it will take forever to balance them.

So now we have quite a few underwhelming elite specs. God knows how long it will take for Anet to bring them to a reasonable power level. IMHO, this situation will be even worse than those OP HoT specs at launch. At least, the OP specs kept players interested. Now most players will just go back to the same old specs for another half a year.

Really disappointing…

There are 9 new elite specs. At least some of them gonna be good. I will just play a good one if mirage stays like this.

I think the trait is working as intended and it only clears the movement impeding conditions listed on the tooltip.

It is definitely not a great GM level trait.

I think most of us realize many of the core mirage mechanics are too clunky to use in PvP scenrio. So I tried by best to pick the most useful things out of mirage spec to make a somewhat workable build.

Traits

Mirage: renewing oasis, mirage mantle, elusive mind

For mirage line, I simply picked all the defensive traits. Other traits that interact with either ambush or mirrors look good on paper but are just not working out in real combat due to clunky mechanics

Dueling: phantasmal fury, blinding dissapation, ineptitude

Since we gain nothing offensive from mirage line. I have to pick the most offensive traits from other lines to maximize our damage potential. Dueling also has synergy with mirage due to good vigor access.

Illusion: the Pledge, Maim, master of fragmentation

Just the typical condition mesmer setup. Again, we are maximizing the damage output here.

Weapons
Sword/Torch Staff
Sword has the best ambush skill as it provides a leap, a daze and a clone! This really helps as I don’t have deceptive evasion and will need the extra clone to do shatter damage. Torch is just our best off-hand weapon. Nothing more to say here.

I really want to use scepter instead of staff but unfortunately we simply don’t have another semi-decent off-hand out there to go together with it. I really miss our beloved shield here.

Utility
Heal: Ether feast
Renewing oasis is just a poor heal. It provides a mirror but it is rather useless with its current implementation.

Utility: Portal, blink, illusionary ambush.
I like illusionary ambush as it gets us an evade and and a teleport. It is a good skill to setup a burst.

Elite: Jaunt
The range really sucks but the condition cleanse is really good given that we don’t have much of that outside of inspiration line. All other elites are just bad. Moa and timewarp desperately needs CD reductioin. Their current version are balanced with chrono F5 in mind. But now we lose it with mirage.

The playstyle is still the same as condition shatter mesmer. You generate clones and shatter to do damage. You do want to go in melee range a lot more to proc the blind for confusion. The mirage line provides pretty decent defensive tools for you to get in and out of most situations.

Unfortunately, the core mirage mechanics(clone ambush, mirage mirror) are just too poorly implemented at the moment to make good use of. So you are essentially playing a regular condition mesmer with a bit more flexibility. Nothing amazing but can still do reasonable. However, I will never pick this over chrono.

Let me guess.

You probably do an ambush burst followed by a shatter combo? So that is good damage right? But let’s be honest, how realistic is that with all the slow as hell ambush skill animation and squishy clones for follow-up shattering.

Unless you elaborate details, I will not believe you. Your post is vague and meaningless.

‘Look awesome’, hahaha
Yup, the mirage mirror looks awesome but is close to useless.

I can only see
Scourge(might be a bit too strong), holosmith and spellbreaker be immediately meta worthy.

Other specs seem don’t have competitive enough build yet. This is hardly power creep.

Sodeni.6041:

I completely agree with you! I was so hyped for the mirage but this elite spec is just a mess.

• The mirage lacks synergy with core mesmer trait-lines. Core trait-lines are heavily focused around shattering illusions and buffing phantasms, which are counterproductive for the mirage.

• The mirage is clearly not meant to shatter illusions because without clones you can’t perform ambush attacks, yet we still have the same F-skills! There should absolutely be different ones that synergise with the mirage’s design.

• Phantasms don’t do ambush attacks and are therefore worse than clones so you dont usually use one of your 5 weapon skills.

• Even clone’s ambush attacks are very lackluster, weak and clunky.

• Mirages are required to keep up clones, yet clones die like flies in pvp and wvw. There is simply not enough clone generation available.

• As already mentioned, mirage cloak is a weaker dodge because of it’s reduced mobility.

• Mirage mirrors are a clunky design. They require you to walk to them (which is very risky in pvp and wvw) to gain mirage cloak (0.75 sec) which is not worth the risk and effort.

These are my main cons I come up with.
Anet still has one month time to fix the mirage. Hopefully we will se some readjustments!

This is pretty much the best summary of current mirage problems.

Just want to quote it to get attention.

I think the reason that this heal has a high CD is that it brings a utility. i.e. the mirage mirror.

However, mirage mirror is close to being useless with its current implementation.

The heal is not the only skill that hurts from it. We have other utilities and traits that are underwhelming due to this mechanics not being as strong as Anet devs imagined.

Daharahj.1325:

musu.9205:

Daharahj.1325:

You’re not supposed to use False Oasis the same way you use Ether Feast, it’s an overtime heal with a combat buff; you use it at the beginning of the fight, essentially shoving off 5~ seconds off its cooldown.

I feel like they could make it more useful if they either removed the mirror spawn outright and buffed it elsewhere, or fixed mirrors to be more consistent (like making mirrors grant a longer cloak).

are u serious ?

use your healing skill before fight lol on a elite spec without sustain dmg and sustain heal or defense .
by your logic they could reduce a lot of heal to half coz they can cast before fight .

so you have to purposely lose 8k hp just to make heal skill use before right then for 25s u cant heal from beginning of fight ?

i thought people defend deadeye 107k dmg from one skill is ridiculous enough,guess im wrong

No, the heal is ticking while you take damage. It’s not being wasted.

I said at the beginning of the fight, not before. I chose that word carefully.

Your suggestion is not valid.

Majority of professions either have poison application or take sigil of doom. So in middle of a fight, you are more than likely to get poisoned. That severely cripples the amount of healing you can gain.

I would like them to
1. Still maintain that 4 sec duration.

2. However, when they naturally expire, they still grant the cloak effect to the mirage.

Holosmith is glass cannon

Scourge is not so glassy cannon.

Daishi.6027:

One thing I also don’t get is the hate on False Oasis. It only heals slightly less than Troll Urgent (8496 vs 8100), While oasis is faster to hit it’s cap, gives vigor, and the opportunity to doge+ambush. With the amount of doges and mobility we have I’ve found it to be pretty good even if it could use some tweaks. (I’d prefer flat endurance than vigor) Also btw you don’t need to be near the oasis to get the healing.

@Esplen No I agree it should be stronger. However I think we might be falling into some trap believing that all of them need to be powerful in terms of damage. I mostly care if they are useful. Greatsword Ambush for example is anything but. All it offers is damage, and the damage is negligible.

You are comparing it with a bad heal skill.

Which meta ranger build uses troll unguent? The skill hasn’t been on their utility bar since HoT came. The only reason they ever take the skill before was to trait it to 20 sec CD. 8k heal every 20 sec is not too bad I guess. But pulsing heal is just not as good as burst heal.

My suggestion

1. Mirror should give the mirage cloak effect to mesmer when it naturally expires. You will still be able to gain cloak earlier if you touch it yourself.

2. All ambush skills need buff. It can be either cast time reduction or damage increase.
GS ambush skill needs major buff considering clone damage don’t scale well with power.

Mirage, as underwhelming as it is, is actually not THAT far away from being competitive. If mirror and ambush mechanics are actually useful, the spec can somewhat work well.

After playing for half of this afternoon, I think here are the reasons why mirage feels so underwhelming.

1. Reliance on clones but they die super fast.

2. Mirror mechanics is extremely hard to utilize as you have to walk looong distance to activate them to get minimum benefit.

3. Ambush skills are weak and telegraphed. They are only good against golems.

Only good thing about mirage is the dodge. It is cool mechanics that opens door for interesting plays.

All other things are meh gimmicks .

Curunen.8729:

Law.1704:

dchsknight.3042:

yes cause raids are the end all be all of dps. /sarcasmoff…

No you are right they are not but nobody if going to take a Mirage over a chrono for anything PvE related except open world where people can play whatever they want. The spec looks great for the PvP players, you only have to look at the utility skills to see which area of the game this was designed for.

The downside to only creating an elite spec for PvP players is its a dead spec for the rest of the playerbase.

It might not even be that good for pvp. So far I’m feeling Chrono is better – more sustain, more reliability and still good enough damage.

Chrono is clearly better.

Mirage’s power level is roughly equal to chrono w/o F5.

Ambush skills are too easy to tell and avoid. They are not that strong to begin with. You trade this for chrono’s alacrity. Definitely not worth it.

Axe is a meh weapon. Can’t see it replacing sword or scepter in any meaningful means. And now we don’t have shield. All of a sudden, we realize we only have one useable off-hand for PvP.

I should have expected this. Considering how they butchered the base mesmer to balance the OP chronomancer, now we are paying the price.

I am just gonna link this leveling guide for you. It is up-to-date enough for leveling purpose in today’s game

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Leveling-Open-World-Compendium-1/first#post5342268

I think Anet is intentionally killing trait synergy between different specializations to make future balancing a lot easier.

ukuni.8745:

It would be nice if condi builds were also damage over time builds so you could have a decent amount of time befor you died from lack of condi clear…………..

The condition thief is one example of moving condition damage into burst damage rather than pressure over time.

IMHO, this is just terrible game design.

Sly.9518:

Exciton.8942:

Wisdom.4712:

Then why isn’t it preferred in higher tiers? Regardless, if you are constantly losing to a condi thief, you’re simply below average.

Because every meta build left in the game spec into max condition clear.

God forbids builds that have limited condition clear to ever enter the game again to facilitate the existence of one lame build in terms of gameplay.

Aka you think Condi builds shouldn’t do any damage or you should be able to cleanse without taking cleanses

Absolutely not.

I have been playing fresh air ele. I am taking cleansing water for condition removal. I can fight condition mesmer. I can fight condition reaper. I can also fight condition guardian. They are hard to play against but they won’t one shot me leaving me no chance to disengage.

But against condition thief, there is literally no chance due to the nature of burst condition application and many gap closer.

I hope they make the right decision and stick to 250.

There is absolutely nothing wrong for some characters to have enough skill points for the entire elite spec line.

Many players including me enjoy playing with the new spec but not the process of unlocking it. And that is also why we love GW2 which doesn’t gate content behind grinding. You only need to grind the content if you want.

People need to get their head straight.

Stating that the build is not high-end doesn’t justify it is balanced. It is simply not good for the gameplay or for build diversity.

Wisdom.4712:

Then why isn’t it preferred in higher tiers? Regardless, if you are constantly losing to a condi thief, you’re simply below average.

Because every meta build left in the game spec into max condition clear.

God forbids builds that have limited condition clear to ever enter the game again to facilitate the existence of one lame build in terms of gameplay.

The build hard counters many builds that are slightly below meta.

I have been playing power shatter mesmer and fresh air ele these days. You literally get one shot by condition thief. If you don’t spec into max condition removal, you are kittened.

Never have such problem with other condition spec. Can still do reasonable against condition reaper/mesmer/guardian/warrior etc. Some are hard matchups but not impossible ones.

Condition thief just hard counters you with 1 button click. Such lame game design.

Why necro?
Nothing measures up to scrapper and druid in terms of being able to sustain forever.

I don’t think so.

Ambush is for mesmer autoattacks. None of our phantasms do autoattacks.

Let alone we have phantasms like warlock, mage, defender, disenchanter who don’t even share weapon types as mesmer.

I have to confess this is a kittened matchup.

The result largely depends on whether you can evade thief’s steal burst. However, we all know steal has no tell. So it is completely a mind game and statistically you lose, as I said steal has no animation and thief can cover it further with stealth etc.

So you either guess correct the steal or you kite to location they can’t teleport. You do want to play very aggressive if they mess up their initial burst. Thief’s initiative mechanics makes sure you lose if you exhaust your defensive CD. So make sure you either go super aggressive or plan an escape route ahead of time. Don’t get caught in a fight where you are not exactly sure what you want.

From PvP perspective, although axe is bringing something interesting but I think sword will still be meta for both power and condition build because the super awesome ambush skill.

It gives you a gap closer + an on-demand interrupt + a clone. This solidifies sword as our best utility weapon.

Axe has more damage potential. But it has lame ambush attack + unreliable clone generation so I won’t take it.

Curunen.8729:

Personally, Gold Fractal Sword is the best looking sword skin in the game and the trail is cool.

I like old fractal sword better. White/purple trail just looks so natural to me.

But now there is shining blade which looks cool on mesmer as well.

Little condition cleanse.
Lacking clone generation.

These are the two major flaws in your build. It won’t work well.

Sword ambush seems really good utility for many builds

GS ambush is just damage, probably good damage as well. Could have good synergy with our big GS burst combo.

dude.2950:

Compared to other shield blocks, it’s not that powerful. The current cd is too long for players who don’t want to use illusion traitline, 35s for a skill that can be avoided from summoning phantasm by blinding or by stowing your weapon away is not that useful in PvP. Almost all blocks have 3s compared to the 1.5s of echo of memory. As for the matter of insane damage that for Anet to decide.

I agree that the block part is not that powerful. A total of 3sec block for 35sec CD is just average.

However, it can still potentially summons 2 phantasms which means better synergy with chronophantasm compared any of our other off-hand weapon. That is probably the main reason for it having other drawbacks(including dodge can negate phantasm generation).

We will see how it plays like this weekend.

From the video I see, there is a clear tell of illusion porting and then attacking. I think they will not shatter instantly until the finish the porting animation.

I don’t think it will truly be like thief steal with no tell at all.

Curunen.8729:

Exciton.8942:

Curunen.8729:

I guess they really want us to use Elusive Mind, given that neither of those are stunbreaks when they ought to be.

But then Elusive Mind will be nerfed and we’ll be back to running Blink/Decoy and whatever to have stunbreaks. :/

Our meta build runs portal+signet of illusion+blink. So we only have 1 stun break anyway.

Movement skills like phase retreat and illusionary leap actually help when you are CC’ed even though they don’t stun break.

These 2 deception skills seem similar. You will probably be able to cast them when CC’ed.

If they can be cast while cc then that’s acceptable, although I would still like to see Mirage Advance be a stunbreak so there might be some variety choosing between it and blink, if not able to take both.

Edit – see above post, just realised Mirage Advance isn’t ground targeted like Shadowstep and so is not going to be a possible blink alternative. Oh well… :/

Mirage advance is pretty lackluster. Unless sword has some amazing short range burst amubush attack, I don’t see us needing a gap closer like that.

Illusionary ambush looks amazing on many mesmer build. Getting all illusions on target means a full shatter burst. And you are evading at the same time.

Curunen.8729:

I guess they really want us to use Elusive Mind, given that neither of those are stunbreaks when they ought to be.

But then Elusive Mind will be nerfed and we’ll be back to running Blink/Decoy and whatever to have stunbreaks. :/

Our meta build runs portal+signet of illusion+blink. So we only have 1 stun break anyway.

Movement skills like phase retreat and illusionary leap actually help when you are CC’ed even though they don’t stun break.

These 2 deception skills seem similar. You will probably be able to cast them when CC’ed.

Jakal.9582:

I hate the idea of removing more build diversity simply because you don’t know how to deal with it. If you are having a difficult time with a particular build, then learn to fight it, create a new build to counter act it, do something. Don’t come onto the forums and complain, saying that a build needs to be taken out completely. All that does is destroy build diversity, which lessens the game experience for everyone. I can’t believe that someone would advocate the removal of an entire build.

I have no problem destroying builds who just face tank everything and spam skills while still remaining alive. I don’t know what the point is for such build.

For solo and duo, thief will always reign supreme. Deadeye will just make them stronger.

For group roaming, it is hard to tell. All professions can have something to shine with.

9 new elite specializations and tons of cry for them being OP.

Condition thief is the kind of build that forces every one to spec into maximum condition clear.

For most meta builds that bring plenty condition cleanse, condition thief is not that big of problem. But a lot of players like to play off-meta builds that just can’t handle a condition burst from thief.

Fay.2357:

Exciton.8942:

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But Axe3 only make your Axe clones retarget, not phantasms, not clones using other weapons.

How useful is that in raid?

Read the skill please.

Okay. If it retargets all illusions, then It will be very useful indeed.

Yup, it is OP but I have to admit I really enjoy playing with this thing.

Fay.2357:

Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.

But Axe3 only make your Axe clones retarget, not phantasms, not clones using other weapons.

How useful is that in raid?

Obviously a lot of players already know this guy. He is known to troll games and chat before. Hopefully his IP gets banned soon enough.

The same guy keeps trolling even in PvP lobby

A certain some one demanding gold for an unranked(!) game or he afks.

Then he keeps trolling the entire game.

I think it is to both player and Anet’s advantage to get such players banned.

Acheron.4576:

I agree with the previous comment. Hybrid builds shouldn’t be better than a focused build. The way it seems to be now, it completely invalidates any build that wants to focus in the area they are going for. This really limits the options when it comes to how people want to build their characters, which is something I thought Anet wanted to avoid.

But you have 10 skills + 3 specializations to trait from. With so many options, you can easily do more than one thing very well.

Unless they heavily nerf everything, player will always be able to do more than one focused role.

After they heavily nerfed illusionary reversion, persistence of memory also got essentially removed from the game.

I think our current meta chronophantasm build really lacks damage in a solo queue scenerio. It is very hard to secure an individual moa kill now. In larger fights, your damage is simply not there any more due to clone being cleaved out and it is impossible to keep up 3 illusions. The build should still be good with a good thief teammate but most of us don’t have that luxury.

So I think it is time for a change. Here are the few options I have been playing with recently

1. Power build with daze mantra. You can still take inspiration line and have decent sustain. You should have enough damage to kill any one. Daze mantra also helps greatly against our biggest counter i.e. thief.

The down side is that the build is not the best at sustaining 1v1. But we have high burst+portal so it is not a big problem.

2 Condition build with Staff and Sword/Torch
Shield is not as good any more due to IR and PoM nerf. Shield 5 stun is still strong but doesn’t offer enough damage. Torch trait got buffed and torch phantasm is our best condition damage phantasm right now. You can do quite impressive condition burst with torch.

3 Condition build with Scepter/torch Sword/shield
This should give us the best condition damage output. However, w/o staff we lose a lot of flexibility and illusion generation rate is also not as good. You might have to take phantasm disenchanter for this option.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

tobascodagama.2961:

Don’t worry. As soon as people start using Power Mesmer in PvP again, we’ll get nerfed back into the ground.

I’ve been using power mesmer for pvp. Not a big fan of condi mesmer. Condi is so simple to apply, only a looser would choose it. That’s what I think.

Yup, absolutely. All the mesmers who play condition variant in tournaments are losers to win their games….

Wait, what am I talking about

Mantras got improved. They are pretty good now. But given that they still encourage you charge up by giving a special effect. I don’t see myself taking multiple mantras at a time.

All other changes are kinda bad though.

Ineptitude and mistrust are nerfed and combined into one okayish trait. The 2 new GM traits are boring as hell and I don’t see how they are useful in any situation.

Persistence of memory gets nerfed into oblivion. But I guess it is fair as the old one is too strong for an adept level trait