Guild Wars 2

Unrelenting Assault (Sword 3) causes confusion to tick 7 times, once for each “hit” of the ability.

I have no idea why people were/are so mad about that amulet being removed. The meta now is pretty much bunker everything, and it could be so much worse if it was still in the game.

Conquest will always tend towards bunker/CC specs if you let it because the objective of the game is to hold a point, not to fight the other team. Giving too much power to bunkers slows the game down to a crawl while teams slap and push each other off points to win.

Definitely-not-bumping-the-thread

Removing downstate entirely could make the meta revolve around 1-hit-kill-from-stealth gank comps, which wouldn’t be fun to play against either. Making the second down put you on respawn is reasonable though.

The idea of raids being unpuggable is silly. People thought Lupicus was incredibly hard on release, and now people easily solo him. With enough time, people will learn the mechanics.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Downed_penalty

Downed Penalty makes you start with less and less health in down state every time you go down, and exists in every game mode except for SPvP. The current meta in SPvP heavily revolves around building extremely tanky and reviving downed teammates so that you win a battle of attrition. It’s pretty universally accepted as being boring to watch and play, and Downed Penalty seems like a pretty good way to punish that style of play.

Personally, I think the penalty might need to be stronger in sPvP than it is in WvW, since getting downed in a 5v5 is typically much harder than in a 20v20. The first death should start you with 66% hp in down state, then 33% on the 2nd down, and instant defeated on the 3rd down.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The only reason raids don’t have a spot in the LFG is because raids are done by squads and not parties and there is no tech in the LFG to handle squads at this time. They are aware of the desire for it, and I am confident they’re working it, but it is not an easy solution that can be pushed in less than a month, especially considering so many developers are committed to addressing other things across the game.

OK, so just add a new slot under dungeons or something that uses the current party system. That’s all people do now anyway; one person leaves the squad and finds people through open world LFG. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s much better than what we have now, and I don’t see why you couldn’t have it up and running in an hour.

The expansion has been out for over a month and there’s still no good way to find a group to raid with unless you know people already. Isn’t a dedicated spot for raids on the LFG list something that should have been included on launch? Make a tab for the raid on LFG and let us sort by which boss we want to kill.

It’s honestly impressive how often Anets balance is off the mark. Mantra of Distraction was OP because Confounding Suggestions is OP, yet CS gets through the patch untouched. Mirror blade shatter combos were OP because CS + MoD makes setting it up comically easy, yet mirror blade gets nerfed. Mantra heal finally comes out of the trashcan after 2+ years because it recharges its cooldown after you channel it, and they nerf that.

CS should have had its ICD increased or have been moved to master tier. It’s so strong right now because it’s easily the best-in-slot trait at adept. Having to choose between it or Shattered Concentration would be an actual decision instead of being the only good trait among garbage.

I have no idea how PU hasn’t been nerfed. I also have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to make it double your stealth durations in the first place. Have you ever heard someone say “Man, stealth is pretty weak. It could use a buff.”? How is it OK to channel like 45+ seconds of stealth in a row? It’s things like that that make Anets “balance” team a joke.

The only logical nerf in this patch was making Blinding Dissipation blockable/dodgeable. No abilities should be undodgeable.

Well that’s my mini rant. There’s no point in trying to convince Anet to change anything back since their next patch will probably won’t be until the expansion launches, and they’re not well known for listening to their forums anyway. But it does feel good to complain.

The third use of Power Return (Mesmer mantra heal) when traited for Harmonious Mantras (Dueling grandmaster trait) will not activate Power Cleanse (Inspiration minor trait).

People have been asking for this for literally years now. They didn’t listen when GvG was at its peak popularity, and they’re probably not going to listen now. sPvP is the only game mode they want to support competitively.

Even if they had a massive change of heart and decided today that they were going to make 15v15 TDM a game mode, it’d probably be released in Q3 2018.

Teaching people bad habits isn’t good advice either. Why would you try to get proficient at a spec that’s only viable against bads? It’s not as if chaotic interruption is some god tier spec that only people with 5k+ hours can play. PU is a crutch, chaotic interruption has value.

The point was to show you that I’ve lost more games than you’ve played total. And maintaining top 50 means I must be somewhat successful at it.

Maintaining top 300 in a game with the number of competent teams you can count on your fingers isn’t something to brag about by the way.

Solo Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
41 Fox.3562 Potato Plant 533 345 60.71% Maguuma

Everybody else arguing here is either EU, or not ranked on the leaderboards on NA solo queue or team queue, except this guy:

Team Queue

Rank Name Character Wins Losses Win % World
24% Wyrden.4713 Lawyrda 49 39 55.68% Maguuma

Just for some perspective on everyone’s experience.

All I read was you saying “Mesmer X plays it so it must be good, and here’s why I think it should be good”. I’m telling you from experience that you’re wrong.

WOW there’s a lot of PU apologists in this thread. To be clear, NEVER use PU in solo queue or tPvP (nothing matters in hotjoin). You’re specing 6 points for a selfish defensive utility that has almost no use for your team.

PU brings nothing valuable to a team fight. The stealth helps you lose agro, which might be useful for the first 15 seconds of a match if the enemy decides to focus the mesmer, but once they realize you’re PU and offer zero counter pressure, they’ll just ignore you and kill all your friends instead. You can’t peel for your friends as PU condi mesmer because your burst damage is non-existent, so you’ll run around in circles spawning clones and auto attacking doing close to no damage while you lose the team fight. You also cannot chase people who are low because your mobility sucks.

1v1 is your absolute best case scenario as a PU mesmer, and your stealth is counter-productive in conquest. You’re certainly not going to be decapping any points as a condi PU mesmer since you have no way of knocking a person off point and you will only lose ticks on the point cap as you hide in stealth. Even assuming you will actually win the 1v1, it’s going to be a slow battle of attrition while you hide and stealth and let condis rack up. So 1+ minutes later you might decap the point and have contributed to your team, but then of course you’ll quickly lose control of it again once the enemy shows back up since one decoy worth of stealth is enough time for you to lose control. The game doesn’t need more cancerous decap engis, and mesmer does a bad job at it anyway.

I have played a ton of sPvP, and I have never been thankful to have a PU mesmer on my team.

To answer OP’s original question, thieves hate both hard and soft CC, and staff. Use chaotic interruption + halting strike with a staff and whatever other traits you want. Phase retreat + dodging can avoid most larcenous strikes a thief wants to go for. They would be stupid to stand in a chaos storm unless they want to get imob spammed and die to halting strikes, and if you imob them enough, they’ll eventually run out of escapes and either die or run away. It’s still hard to kill a thief that doesn’t want to die, but since it’s conquest we’re talking about, you can still “win” by capping the point while they run off. Chaotic interruption is also useful in a team fight when paired with mantra of distraction since you can imob people almost at will if your timing is good enough, and your team can beat down the target while you lock them down.

TL;DR: PU is garbage in sPvP and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about, period. Use chaotic interruption instead. It’s useful in a team fight and is strong against thieves.

I think asking for BF to be reduced to 4 hits is your best bet. It’s reasonable, (I assume) an easy fix in terms of coding, and doesn’t make ANet backtrack on a previous nerf, which they don’t like to do.

Adding back the invuln would actually be a pretty decent nerf to mesmers in sPvP anyway since you can’t cap a point while you have invuln.

Now you just have to find a dev to listen AND act on it…Good luck with that part ^^

I don’t think power mesmers gonna be “viable” in raid until we get a new weapon with some respectable AoE. Anything else would require a pretty major rework, and that’s not realistically gonna happen anytime soon.

Glamour’s the closest thing you’re gonna get to a raid spec (insert for censor dodge) until then. The damage is kinda weak-sauce, but the utility of feedback and null field is…something, and the confusion has no AoE cap, so that’s something too. It also scales really well with more mesmers; you’re not gonna reach 25 confusion stacks with just 1 or 2. If you’re just there to be a veilbot anyway, glamour lets you trait for CD reduction.

As evidence, here’s a clip. Audios muted cause the driver’s camera shy.

You can skip to 4:30 to get to the main fight, but the whole things pretty fun to watch.

Reflecting burns with feedback + virtue of justice from guardians gives you some decent burn damage. You still take a ton of retal damage sometimes, but that’s damage you’re protecting your team from.

You could always blow distortion while you blurred frenzy since you’re playing shatter. Invuln the retal damage.

Good luck getting Anet to revert BF anytime soon though. Can’t even get them to fix build-breaking bugs like iLeap and iWarden, much less nuanced tweaks like giving BF invuln.

Opened ~400 and got 1 Favor of the Pavillion. The stupidly low drop rate would be fine if you could farm it like last year, but now you want me to farm tokens so I can farm gaunlet chances so I have a CHANCE to farm gold? No thanks.

If they’re going to buff anything about mesmers, I would rather that this not be it. A 900 range teleport that’s also a stun break on a 30 second cooldown is already good. The extra 300 range really isn’t necessary. Changing anything just invites ANET to mess something up. Maybe blink will teleport you backwards or something and it will get fixed Soon™ after that.

Ok last things I’m going to say on this thread because talking to people who don’t know what they’re saying is always annoying.

1. The raw stats on Pack runes are better than Strength.

2. 65% swiftness uptime is VERY valuable to classes like mesmers.

3. Fury on specs with no access to fury is VERY valuable because not only does it make your EP go up, but it makes your hits more consistent as well. Not critting on crucial attacks like mind wrack can cost you a fight.

4. It gives both of these boons, plus a stack of might, to both yourself AND up to 4 allies around you. Two people can maintain permanent fury/swiftness on an entire party.

5. The 7% damage multiplier does not apply to phantasms, which is a very high percentage of mesmers damage, so it’s almost useless to me.

6. +45% might duration is not valuable to me when most of my might comes from mirror blade which is 10s base. Am I really using the extra 4.5 seconds of might? And no, battle sigils are essentially not an option for mesmers. Shatter mesmer has extremely strong burst damage but poor sustain. By the time you get to 9 stacks of might from weapon swapping, the fight will already be over, and probably not in your favor. Air sigils are a much better option because their DPS cannot be stripped and greatsword has a perfect auto attack for using them.

7. Why would I pay 90 gold for a glorified Scholar rune with slightly higher DPS? Pack costs 1/10 that and offers comparable DPS to specs with no fury, and significantly more group and solo utility even to specs with fury.

8. I don’t know how you can hilariously claim that Pack runes are miles behind Strength while Hoelbrak is comparable. Because it gives 30% might duration? I assume we can expect a DnT video about how Pirate and Fire runes are respectable alternatives then? I mean, they both give 10% might duartion! Hey, maybe even Noble runes can get in on it; they’re +45% might duration!

It makes sense now why you defend Strength so heavily since you admitted to stocking up on them before hyping the price up. I don’t know why though, since they are still an excellent rune for PvE and some PvP builds (I.E. D/D ele/Hambow). Trying to ride the train to 20g/rune or something?

And as far as bugs go, if you think PvP was some pure sanctuary with no bugs before ToL, then I think you should step out of Cursed Shore more. I can’t mention recent examples since ANET will delete my post, but do you think the now-patched bug where thieves could place a Black Powder, Whirling Axe in it, then leave the field but still have blinding bolts was some secret? No. Using that glitch was standard procedure.

You and a couple other people had one specific bug pointed out to them and now you can’t let it go as if it was something out of the norm. Arena Nets response time to bugs is atrocious, so at what point does a well known bug become acceptable to use?

But I’m sure DnT would never use Frost Spirits in dungeon speed runs.

EDIT:

“In PvE you can use scholar runes or mesmer runes”.

Let’s not go down this slippery slope.

Excellent strawman. PvE hero runes revolve around damage multipliers since it is already assumed that the party will have 100% critical chance and 25 stacks of might. I would hope you knew that, being in DnT and all, and wouldn’t make such a ridiculous example. I guess recruitment standards are slipping.

Not gonna bother quoting your book to save space. The benefit you get from Strength runes is the 45% might duration and 7% damage modifier. The damage multiplier doesn’t apply to my phantasms so it is effectively worthless for any build that isn’t shatter. Therefore the only benefit you get from Strength runes is the +45% might duration. My only sources of might in a non shatter build is mirror blade and winds of chaos. That means I’m getting 4.5 extra seconds of might from mirror blade and 2.25 seconds of might from winds of chaos. That’s borderline worthless. I would rather have 16% crit chance and 65% swiftness uptime over that any day.

I don’t get why people have this weird fascination with might stacking in pvp. This isn’t CoF P1 speed runs, there is a lot of counter-play to might stacking. a S/D thief will ruin you if stack too much might. Not to mention mesmers can very easily strip or steal it, and necros can corrupt it.

maha.7902:

How about you go back to exploiting signet bugs and losing tournaments. Because you see, we can actually perform well in our game mode without underhanded tactics.

Oh interesting. I’ll just leave this link here: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/12502927-exploit-discussion-what-to-know

Not even close, Halting Strike is better. Unless you’re really mashing shatters, you’re probably not gonna get more than 6 stacks of vuln on someone at a time, and even then it will probably just get wiped.

Even if you had 13 stacks of vuln on a target, you’d have to do ~23k damage to them to do the same damage as one 3k halting strike; not likely.

I heard some PvE’ers are talking kitten about Pack Runes?

maha.7902:

I saw the reddit thread and the guy made completely stupid assumptions for both rune sets to give a weak justification for pack runes. Then you all unloaded at the inflated price and made a nice profit.

You see, people recognise your guild name and get taken for suckers, but players with a few more brain cells realised that pack runes are still nothing special.

Pack Runes give extremely good raw stats, and give Mesmers 50%+ uptime of two boons they don’t easily get otherwise, and you think that’s weak justification? I won’t bother going into detail as to why being able to give up traits on other classes that were mainstays for swiftness/fury for other options is good, since I’m sure you’re coming from the viewpoint that everyone in PvP has Spotter/Banner of discipline/perma fury and swiftness is useless since it doesn’t increase DPS.

Just go back to 100 Bladesing NPCS and leave PvP to people who know what they’re talking about.

It’s ok everyone, I’m here.

Neurophen.9738:

Really interesting, perhaps you just discovered why phantasms were occasionally doing crazy damage. (I know the devs hot fixed some scaling issues but I was never able to reproduce some of the crazy hits people claimed)

I don’t think it had anything to do with might. I was hitting 11.5k warlocks on glass thieves in sPvP, and keep lords were hitting 6k auto attacks without any might.

frifox.5283:

99% sure phantasms do use the mesmer might stacks. Will test later tonight to be sure.

edit: yes, stacked might on myself phantasms started hitting much harder as expected.
edit: tested both in PvE and HotM, didn’t test in WvW/PvP.

You’re right. I just retested it and the might stacks are increasing the phantasms damage. When I tested it before, it was when AI damage in sPvP was bugged, so maybe that had something to do with it. I still don’t think I would pick Strength runes over Pack though. Unless you have bountiful interruption, mesmers don’t might stack particularly well. Sigils of Battle could work, but I don’t think I can ever give up sigils of Energy since the vigor nerf, and sigils of air would probably still be higher DPS.

keenlam.4753:

Fox.3562:

Pack Runes are definitely my favorite rune post-patch. I’ve tried Strength, but since your phantasms don’t benefit from your might stacks, it really doesn’t increase your DPS much IMO.

Pack runes give you fury, which you can’t easily get otherwise, better raw stats (same power and 6% more crit chance than strength runes) and really high swiftness uptime with staff from chaos armor and chaos storm. Running around with a friend who has the runes too is a big threat since you can easily maintain perma fury and swiftness as long as you’re bulky enough to sponge 4 hits every 20 seconds.

EDIT: and Citadel runes are basically just a worse version of pack runes. No swiftness, no might, and 6% less critical chance from the raw stats. The bomb can hit like 1.5k on a crit, but it tends to reveal you while you’re stealthed more than it does useful damage. And trust me, I wanted runes of the Citadel to be good, I had 1.3k of them before the patch came out.

Just want to point out a few things
Might boon increases your main stats (power & condition damage) and since illusions borrow mesmer main stats —> your phantasms do benefit from your might stacks.
Fury boon, on the other hand, doesn’t affect phantasms crit chance.

Maybe it’s supposed to (I do remember reading that in patch notes a lonnnnng time ago) but I’m 95% sure it does not. I tried it in sPvP with 18 stacks of might on just me, and it didn’t increase my duellist’s damage at all. Then I put 18 stacks of might on just my duellist and he hit significantly harder (as he should).

Blast finisher on mind stab please

As someone who used to use arcane thievery as my condi clear/boon removal of choice for over a year, I can pretty safely tell you that nobody really knows how it works. The boon removal has some type of order (tests I’ve done with enemies using lyssa runes pre-patch show that it prioritizes aegis>retal>stability[I think]), but in practice, it will almost never strip stability if the enemy has 4+ boons.

There’s plenty of times where it will not remove conditions or strip boons if you are facing the “wrong” direction, even if you’re looking right at the target. Can’t explain why, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.

Use null field instead. It gives you more access to chaos armor, strips conditions and boons AoE, and works 100% of the time. A lot of people on these forums really like the mantra condi clear, which is decent, but if you’re not stripping boons as a mesmer, you’re probably not doing your job.

Pack Runes are definitely my favorite rune post-patch. I’ve tried Strength, but since your phantasms don’t benefit from your might stacks, it really doesn’t increase your DPS much IMO.

Pack runes give you fury, which you can’t easily get otherwise, better raw stats (same power and 6% more crit chance than strength runes) and really high swiftness uptime with staff from chaos armor and chaos storm. Running around with a friend who has the runes too is a big threat since you can easily maintain perma fury and swiftness as long as you’re bulky enough to sponge 4 hits every 20 seconds.

EDIT: and Citadel runes are basically just a worse version of pack runes. No swiftness, no might, and 6% less critical chance from the raw stats. The bomb can hit like 1.5k on a crit, but it tends to reveal you while you’re stealthed more than it does useful damage. And trust me, I wanted runes of the Citadel to be good, I had 1.3k of them before the patch came out.

I tested it in the Obsidian Sanctum on a level 80 where the Borderlands Bloodlust buffs do not apply. The “Robust” world bonus from WvW applies to your Health, not Vitality, so it does not affect calculations.

Below I’ve linked a screenshot of my in game stats and the EXACT gear I’m wearing, down to the infusions, in a build editor. At first I thought that the calculator was wrong, but if you do the math you can see that the games calculation for Master Maintenance Oil is wrong.

http://i.imgur.com/EFT88pZ.jpg

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8alknpGtNqxMNcrNipxY6biJHSGwBlskxB-TlCCABXp8jhLAwYKBB4gAIpaFloRIo9HqTXQlqqcxTAIAACwNvZ2MgCtQL0CduzSB80wI-w

Master Maintenance Oils (and potent) is giving the wrong amount of precision.

My build has 1837 Toughness and 1076 Vitality. I should be getting 6% of Toughness and 4% of Vitality, or:

1837 * .06 = 110.22
1076 * .04 = 43.04

Total: 153.26

In game I’m only getting 138 though. I’m not sure how else to show it, but you can try it for yourself. Not a huge amount, but annoying if you’re trying to min-max.

The clones getting RNG fear procs was obviously a bug. Power Block was a great GM trait though. I can live with auto attacks being immune to it, but shutting down thief pistol whip/disabling shot/heartseeker/etc spam made it such a viable trait choice.

Now the only thing worth interrupting is heals, and 6/8 classes are basically immune to it anyway.

Make capture points bigger so engis can’t knock you out of it with just one skill.

Mesmers getting some nice stuff? =O

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/About-mesmer/first#post3683422

Patch notes are not looking so hot for mesmers.

I think a phantasm with a blast finisher would be just as useless as The Prestige. There’s too much randomness involved with relying on AI to put the finisher where you want it.

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Mesmer

Hey thanks =)

I don’t use focus anymore since iWarden is bugged. Before, he was a nice reliable “safe zone” I could hide from projectiles near, but he’s not that useful anymore since he doesn’t always spin when he’s summoned, and he chases targets. Until they make him stay put and not chase targets, I don’t see myself switching back to focus.

If you did want to try using sword/focus, I’d run 20/20/0/30/0. Remove condition on shatter is an excellent trait considering how common conditions are today.

Carighan.6758:

What I don’t get is what people mind about the current Mind Stab. Am I the only one who thinks that a GTAE boon remover with non-trivial damage is not bad at all? I mean sure it’s bad in 1v1, but then no game mode supports 1v1, neither does the combat system or the balance as a whole. So why would that be an issue.

And in group fights, stripping a boon each of 2-5 targets and causing some damage is plenty fine for me.

Maybe increase the damage coefficient ooooor if need be the radius. But Blast finisher? We’d lose either the projectile or worse the whirl finisher. But losses would be significantly worse than gaining the blast finisher, something to use during the buff phase and which other people already do for us (as in, this isn’t a real gain).

I’m not saying Mind Stab is a bad skill, it’s simply the most logical mesmer skill to add a blast finisher to in my opinion. It’s a targetable, ranged skill on a reasonable cooldown.

If we had to give up the whirl finisher on iBerserker to get a blast finisher on Mind Stab, I would immediately take that trade. I’ve never found the whirl finisher extremely useful or reliable.

The point of the change would be to make mesmer less of a leech in the “buff phase”.

Xaylin.1860:

Again, requirements which aid your personal suggestion.

For example, 3. is something you came up with personally and it ignores the fact that 50% of the blast finishers have a 25s cooldown or higher. Remember, that Median you calculated? Heck, even 60% have a higher cooldown than 20s. So how is this a justifiable criteria for introducing new Blast Finishers?

There is a difference between a skill having a blast finisher and having a useful blast finisher. I listed the criteria for what I believe makes a blast finisher useful.

Xaylin.1860:

Again, it conveniently justifies your suggestion of adding another Finisher to Greatsword since you exclude the Berserker. I would even argue that the Berserker meets those requirements if you are not exclusively talking about a zergfest where it might die too early.

Using berserker as a reliable combo finisher is nearly impossible as he is both dependent on an enemy standing in a combo field, and berserker’s AI taking an appropriate path through the combo field to trigger effects. Warden was usable once upon a time since he was stationary, making placing fields below him a viable option. Now that he chases targets, I feel he is less useful.

Xaylin.1860:

So single target weapons are bad for groups and don’t deserve Blast Finishers?

They are inefficient. Bringing a hypothetical off-hand sword with a blast finisher would be viable in sPvP, but useless in an even moderately sized WvW type scenario. The block is selfish and doesn’t aid the group, and iSwordsman would be lucky to land a single hit before dying.

Xaylin.1860:

And condition weapons don’t deserve any because they are condition weapons and because condition weapons might be part of a group with a Glamour Mesmer? Dare I ask: Why would a GS get a Blast Finisher since it could also be part of a group on a Glamour Mesmer?

Again, as I wrote in the OP, adding a blast finisher to greatsword would give power mesmers a use outside of veil/portal. If you are using greatsword in a condition build, you are using a sub-optimal weapon. If a hypothetical glamour mesmer decided that taking a greatsword for the blast finisher at the cost of significantly less damage from, say, staff, I don’t see a problem with that.

Xaylin.1860:

Congratulations! You designed yourself a totally biased ‘study’ which leads to the result you were looking for because you made sure it would end there.

The OP was a result of the study, not vise-versa.

Xaylin.1860:

I don’t agree with you arguments.

The feeling is mutual. My arguements, however, are backed up with math and reason, and yours are backed up with feelings. Bring some hard evidence if you want to claim that greatsword is unfit for a blast finisher.

Xaylin.1860:

It still is scewed because of several outliers like Mighty Blow. You included Cluster Bomb which doesn’t even have a cooldown. You used the skill cooldown of Dragon Tooth which actually has a higher practical cooldown because of attunements.

What constitutes an outlier? Any skill shorter/longer than 1 standard deviation from the mean? If so, any cooldown shoter than 8.7 seconds is an outlier (4 skills) and any cooldown greater than 34.8 seconds (3 skills). No skill falls outside 2 standard deviations, but skills with 45 second cooldowns come the closest (-4.36-47.88 seconds). You may feel that blast finisher cooldowns should be longer, but the math says otherwise. Feel free to prove me wrong with hard numbers instead of feelings.

Cluster bomb has a 3 second effective recharge because that’s how long it takes to regain the initiative spent.

Of course 12 seconds is above average, but it is well within the normal range of skill cooldowns.

Xaylin.1860:

Yet again you refer to weapons which benefit your argument (e.g. Longbow)…

Why is Ranger warhorn a support hybrid and not a DPS hybrid? 50% of it’s skills offer nothing but damage. What about Necro staff makes it a support weapon? Putrid Mark? While 2/5 skills offer nothing but DPS, 2 offer CC, and only 1 offers any kind of “support”, it is classified as a support weapon? I’m not going to bother to try to argue against your feelings. Come up with some objective evidence as to what makes a weapon DPS/CC/Support.

Xaylin.1860:

However, you can’t deny that there isn’t a real reason for it besides ‘just because’ since Greatsword doesn’t need it.

As I wrote in the OP, power mesmers don’t contribute much to large groups outside of portal/veil. Adding a blast finisher would at least give them the ability to help stack might/regroup.

Greatsword is nearly objectively a power-based weapon. Power mesmers have no real access to AoE and therefore don’t have much of a place in large battles. Condition mesmers can play in large groups as a glamour mesmer. Adding a blast finisher to greatsword would aid that disparity.

Xaylin.1860:

There is a difference between saying that most Blast Finishers are on less offensive weapons and saying that all supportive weapons have Blast Finishers…But there certainly is a pattern. Of course, this unfortunately doesn’t aid your cause.

Baseless claim with no evidence to back it up.

As far as changing scepter auto attack goes, I really have no idea what to do to it. I don’t think adding a blast finisher to the 3rd attack would make it any more desirable, and same goes for projectile finisher. The combos would be too unreliable, since they are dependent on the enemys location, and they could easily walk out of whatever field you are trying to combo.

I don’t do dungeons/PvE seriously, so I can’t speak for it there, but I don’t think the added blast finisher would make using such a low DPS weapon attractive there either.

Making scepter clones spawn more scepter clones after completing the auto attack chain would be strong since it would greatly increase the rate of “on clone death” traits activating. I don’t know if buffing “on clone death” traits is something the world needs though.

And it doesn’t surprise me that Cry of Frustration’s condition duration is bugged, since I don’t think anyone uses it seriously anyway. Same goes for “give 5 seconds of retalition on down” and “gain chaos armor on rally”. Both of those traits could be bugged and cause your next 10 attacks to do 10x damage, but I don’t think anyone would know that since nobody has ever used them.

Math time!

Below I’ve listed every land-weapon skill that is a blast finisher. I’ve included Earth Shaker since Burst skills on warriors are essentially a 6th weapon skill. I did not include utility skills, since I am advocating a weapon skill being given a blast finisher, not a utility skill, so it is only appropriate to compare apples to apples.

Skill / Cooldown (seconds)
Cluster Bomb / 3
Mighty Blow / 5
Dragon’s Tooth / 6
Eruption / 6
Arcing Arrow / 10
Earth Shaker / 10
Call to Arms / 20
Phoenix / 20
Comet / 25
Magnetic Wave / 25
Putrid Mark / 25
Magnetic Inversion / 30
Churning Earth / 30
The Prestige / 30
Call of the Wild / 35
Shield of Wrath / 45
Earthquake / 45

Mean Cooldown: 21.76 seconds
Median Cooldown: 25 seconds
Standard Deviation: 13.06 seconds

Mind Stab as a 12 second cooldown would fall well within one standard deviation of the mean (8.7-34.8 seconds). Any argument relating to the cooldown being too short is invalid.

Does it fit “thematically”?

This is highly subjective. Are entire weapons based around a single theme, such as DPS/Support/CC? Let’s compare a few weapons.

Guardian Hammer

Hammer Swing – 3rd hit grants protection
Mighty Blow – DPS – Blast Finisher
Zealot’s Embrace – Immobalizes – Soft CC
Banish – Blowout – Hard CC
Ring of Warding – Hard CC

Warrior Longbow

Dual Shot – DPS with no other effects
Fan of Fire – DPS – Applies burning
Arcing Arrow – DPS – Blast Finisher
Smoldering Arrow – Blinds – Soft CC
Pin Down – Immobilizes – Soft CC

Mesmer Greatsword

Spatial Surge – DPS with no other effects
Mirror Blade – Grants might, grants vulnerability
Mind Stab – DPS – Removes Boons
Phantasmal Berserker – Applies cripple – Soft CC
Illusionary Wave – Knockback – Hard CC

DPS/Support/CC Count

Guardian Hammer
DPS – 1
Support – 1
CC – 3

Warrior Longbow
DPS – 3
Support – 0
CC – 2

Mesmer Greatsword
DPS – 2
Support – 1
CC – 2

If a skill grants boons, I consider that a support skill. If it applies hard or soft CC, I consider it a CC skill, if it has no added effects, I consider it DPS. I counted Mind Stab as DPS, but counting boon removal as support or CC would be debatable.

The warrior and guardian both have access to blast finishers of 10 and 5 second cooldowns, respectively. What is the threshold for a weapon being deemed “support” and earning a blast finisher? Warrior’s longbow has access to zero supporting skills, and Guardian’s hammer has access to only one through the third attack in their auto attack chain. If weapons are indeed classified as “support” weapons, why doesn’t mace on Guardians, which has 2 skills which grant boons and the auto attack chain grants AoE healing, have a blast finisher?

I would conclude that there is no hard evidence supporting the theory that only “support” weapons are given blast finishers.

Possible Substitutions

The qualifications for a blast finisher to be useful to me are:

1) It can be activated on demand
2) The position of the blast finisher is controllable.
2) The cooldown must be conducive to being able to use the skill to pre-stack might by blasting a fire field and having the skill be ready to use in battle with a minimal delay. I personally would consider any skill longer than the median cooldown on blast finishers, 25 seconds, too long.

Here is a list of every weapon skill, excluding auto attacks, Mesmer has that is not already a combo field/finisher, and is not a Phantasm summon. Excluding Phantasms because they fail requirements 1 and 2.

Greatsword: Mind Stab, Illusionary Wave
Staff: Chaos Armor
Scepter: Illusionary Counter, Counterspell, Confusing Images
Sword: Blurred Frenzy, Illusionary Riposte, Counter Blade

Illusionary Wave and Chaos Armor have cooldowns longer than 25 seconds and fail requirement 3. Illusionary Counter and Illusionary Riposte fail requirement 1 as they require being attacked by an enemy. I will also exclude Blurred Frenzy, as it is already a very strong skill.

Mind Stab (12s recharge), Counterspell (12s), Confusing Images (15s), and Counter Blade (15s) are all possible candidates for adding a blast finisher.

Blast finishers are best used in groups, so I would not advocate for giving Counter Blade a blast finisher, as offhand sword is mostly a single target weapon. Counterspell and Confusing Images are both strongly biased towards being condition weapons, so I would not give them blast finishers either, as condition mesmers can be part of a group already as a glamour mesmer.

This leaves Mind Stab as the most logical choice for adding a blast finisher.

Xaylin.1860:

SNIP

The average cooldown across every land weapon skill that is a blast finisher is 22 seconds. Filter out the useless ones (Shield of Wrath, The Prestige, Putrid Mark) and you’re down to 20s average. Mind Stab would be #6/16 out of weapon skills with the fastest cooldowns (Cluster Bomb > Mighty Blow > Dragons Tooth > Eruption > Arcing Arrow > Mind Stab). Of the 16 weapon skills that are blast finishers, 7 of them can be used at range (cluster bomb, arcing arrow, comet, dragon’s tooth, eruption, phoenix, putrid mark). The average cooldown of the blast finishers that can be used at range is 13.5 seconds.

A 12s cooldown blast finisher that can be used at range is in no way out of the norm.

If you’re not using Chaos Armor on your staff, perhaps it doesn’t fit into your rotation, or perhaps you’re mismanaging your cooldowns. Either way, using a skill as a blast finisher “because it’s worthless otherwise” should not be an option.

As I’ve posted previously, glamour was previously nerfed because of the limitless AoE cap combined with the pre-nerf confusion damage. While 25 stacks of confusion pre-nerf could easily tick for 11,250 damage (25 * 450), today that would only tick for 5,625. 11,250 damage was enough to kill a thief/elementalist/guardian with no vitality investment even if the first skill they used was a condition clear. As 25 stacks of confusion is an extreme example, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for 10.8k base HP class to die if their first skill used is not a condition clear.

The extreme damage of 25 stacks of confusion is also countered by situational awareness. Feedback and Null Field are both easily visible skills, and the confusion is not applied until the player enters/exits the fields. If a player is the target the mesmer casted the glamour skills on, they are forced to exit, but not reenter, the glamour fields. This means it would take 6 mesmers to guarantee 24 stacks of confusion on a single target. This means its unreasonable for any less than 6 enemies to beat a group of 6 glamour mesmers (the group with larger numbers should, assuming equal skill and coordination, always win). If a single member of the 6 person party is running AoE condition removal (EX: traited warrior warhorn), the party doesn’t need to take more than 5,400 damage worth of confusion damage from the glamour mesmers since there are no inherent cover conditions from glamour fields.

A party of glamour mesmers would have potential to do a large amount of AoE damage, but could easily be countered by situational awareness and AoE condition clears.

And I certainly think that applying confusion on entry/exit is appropriate. It punishes the enemy for staying in the field, and punishes them for leaving. With Null Field, for example, the enemy has to choose whether they want to lose their boons, or if they want 1 (or my proposed 2) stacks of confusion.

The 8 seconds of confusion comes from 100% confusion duration of a 4s base duration, easily obtainable in WvW (40% from Koi Cakes, 10% from Toxic Tuning Crystals, 20% from traits, 33% from traits or 30% from Perplexity runes [if they ever get fixed]). Since the base duration is so short, investing heavily in condition duration is important.

I’m writing this from the perspective that glamour is only an appropriate spec for large (15+) WvW groups. While glamour was a strong spec for dueling/sPvP(maybe? I didn’t sPvP back then) pre-nerf, it had more to do with Chaos Armor and Blinding Befuddlement having no ICD and confusion doing twice as much damage. I could see glamour being strong with a pulsing effect for fighting on point in sPvP, but like I said, I’m not trying to rewrite skills.

Xaylin.1860:

Fox.3562:

Mind Stab Blast Finisher

Quite frequently asked for. I personally say no to this. GS is no support weapon. Why should it offer additional support? Also, the cooldown would be too low. First, Prestige needs to be fixed because its totaly unusable when it comes to the Blast Finisher. If another Blast Finisher was added it should be on Staff#4 to give it more purpose again and it would also fit the theme of the weapon. If there was a change to Mind Stab I could see a larger radius though.

Saying that a weapon shouldn’t have a blast finisher because it’s not a “support weapon” is just silly. Is hammer on guardians and warriors a support weapon? Both of those have blast finishers on cooldowns shorter than Mind Stab. How about shortbow on thieves? That has the shortest cooldown of any blast finisher, is that a support weapon?

Giving Chaos Armor a blast finisher would have almost the same problem The Prestige has. I’m not going to waste a 35s cooldown skill which should be used in combat to blast a (for example) fire field to stack might while I’m 5 seconds away from combat.

Xaylin.1860:

Fox.3562:

Confusing Enchantments Buff
Solution: Increase the number of confusion stacks from Confusing Enchantments [Domination VIII] from 1 to 2.

This will probably change nothing. Glamour traits need a bigger rework. E.g., make Confusion pulse when enemies are inside the Glamour but implement a target limit. Dazzling Glamours should work the same way. Confusing Enchantments and Blinding Befuddlement got to work together. Temporal Enchanter should be fused with Glamour Mastery (see Master of Consecration). Glamour traits should also work with Portal.

A Glamour GM in Inspiration would also be appreatiated. Having two Shatter focussed GM traits in a trait line is a very bad design (e.g. Inspiration and Illusion).

I completely disagree that increasing the confusion to 2 stacks on entry/exit wouldn’t change Glamour mesmers viability. Dropping Null Field and Feedback on the same spot means 4 stacks of confusion on everyone in the area is almost guaranteed (unless they decide to stand still for 8 seconds), and 8 stacks is very very possible. Thats 900 or 1800 damage of confusion on skill use, respsectively from a single mesmer with no AoE cap. That makes running 2-3 glamour mesmers in a group of 20 an extremely attractive option in my opinion.

The potential for very high confusion damage is balanced by the fact that a mesmer has no inherent cover conditions and glamour fields are on a 32s (traited) cooldown.

I think your idea is perfectly reasonable, but like I mentioned earlier, I’m only trying to work within the way skills work now, not really rewrite entire skills. And glamour traits do work with Portal, it just has to be activated (both entry and exit portals need to be dropped).

Deniara Devious.3948:

Offtopic:
“warhorn #5 of warrior gives vigor to allies, weakness to enemies, is a blast finisher and converts conditions into boons when traited +20% short cd. That’s on a 20s base cooldown. I don’t see how mind stab is op compared to that.”

I am not the only person who thinks that warrior has too much mobility and almost every single warrior in WvWvW is using the sword/warhorn + hammer/greatsword. The biggest problem is that GS#5 gives 1200 mobility skill with 16/20 s cooldown and GS#3 is another 600 mobility skill. And warhorn with the quick breathing trait is way overpowered in any large scale combat. Warhorn #4 has just 12/15 s cooldown, converting conditions into boons and cures immobilized, crippled and chilled from yourself and up to 9 allies. This basically makes those conditions almost irrelevant against a controlled zerg (Not to mention the condition removal from all those shout warriors and guardians). Melee trains have way too much power and I am against any game balance changes which further deviate the balance in their favor.

I have no problem with greatsword on Warriors giving them high mobility. A greatsword is a very weak weapon against an experienced player, since all of the attacks are highly telegraphed and easy to dodge unless they are setup with a stun/immobilize. That basically means a Warrior has to run mace/shield greatsword, and their entire build is based around setting up greatsword attacks, or they’re using greatsword almost exclusively to run away. In either case, I’m assuming a 1v1 situation, as greatsword is borderline worthless in groups, and the game isn’t balanced around 1v1s.

As far as warhorn on warriors, it is very strong in groups, but why shouldn’t it be? Sure melee trains are strong, but is there something wrong with that? Having a bunch of bulky melee classes protect a backline of DPS’y casters seems like a perfectly decent design choice to me. I think warhorn is pefectly fine as it is. If you don’t think imob/chill/cripple is an issue in an organized group, you’ve never been with an organized group. There are many, many sources of “soft CC”, and until you’re running 20 warriors deep, they’re going to effect you.

You don’t like melee trains, but there is always going to be a meta team composition, what would you rather have it be instead?

Deniara Devious.3948:

Overall I think mesmer isn’t in such bad state as most people complain. Despite warrior is brokenly good at the moment, I would say a decent mesmer should win 1 vs 1 against a warrior. Mesmer lacks AoE and the thief (which is a bit overpowered) performs the roaming role better. But if thieves get toned down a bit, I think mesmers would be back in top game.

It depends on what you mean by in a bad state. If we’re talking about 1v1s, there are very few mesmer specs that should lose to an even smaller amount of warrior specs considering equal skill level. I would say mesmer is the strongest class in a 1v1 situation, and if not they’re very shortly behind thief. But again, ArenaNet has said that the game isn’t balanced around 1v1s.

If we’re talking about WvW, there is little reason to bring a mesmer in a zerg (15+ vs X) outside of Veil and Portal. Mesmer AoE damage is very weak, and highly dependent on phantasms which quickly die in a large fight, usually before even landing a single attack. A necro or ele fills the backline AoE damage role much better.

If we’re talking about sPvP, Thief at the highest level of sPvP is almost objectively better than mesmer at playing a roaming role. The burst damage of thieves is comparable or better to that of a shatter mesmer, and they offer blind fields, better AoE stealth (Shadow Refuge: .25s cast, 60s recharge, 15s of stealth, utility skill, all untraited; vs Mass Invisibility: 1.75s cast, 90s recharge, 5s of stealth, elite skill, untraitable cooldown), better on-demand dazes for interrupting stomps/rezzes/heals (Headshot: .25s cast, 4s effective recharge, weapon skill, traited; Steal: instant-cast, 22s recharge, guaranteed daze as it strips stability, built-in profession skill; vs Mantra of Distraction: instant-cast, 15s effective recharge, utility skill; Magic Bullet: .5s cast, 25s recharge, stuns, weapon skill), and better mobility (high swiftness uptime and access to blinks through Infiltrators Arrow, Shadowstep, Steal, Infiltrators Signet, and Infiltrators strike.

As long as the “Roaming” role in Conquest sPvP is desired, thief will always be better than mesmer at it unless they are nerfed to the point of being worthless.

Sorry I had to split my response up so much; character limit!

Deniara Devious.3948:

My idea isn’t fully fleshed out:

Mantra of Recovery
1 second cast, 18 s cooldown
The next 2 skills you activate heal you for 2620 points (+0.4*healing power).

Mantra of Pain
1 second cast, 20 s cooldown
The next 2 attacking weapon skills you activate deal 407 (1.250x multiplier) damage, 240 radius.

Mantra of Concentration
1 second cast, 25 s cooldown
Next two skills become stun breaks and give 2 s stability to nearby allies in 240 radius.

and so on…

But I think you get the idea. The damage multipliers or heals cannot be very strong as this would allow extreme bursts with the right skill combos. With my idea mesmer could add AoE to any skill she desires using mantra of pain. Just preload it 1 second and then unleash any two attacking skills and they have 240 radius AoE.

The healing by Mantra of recovery sounds small, but you have to take into consideration that with mantra mastery the cooldown becomes mere 14.4 s. Over the time it would heal more than ether feast. Combined with harmonius mantras GM trait it would heal much more than any other mesmer skill, but the heal would come in small doses and would allow more active counter play (each skill can still be interrupted and thus heal wasted), making it a bit more like engineer’s medkit, which allows has tons of total healing power, but the healing comes in small doses.

Some mantra related traits would probably need to be reworked as well.

Agreed that mantras aren’t used very often, and the reason is probably mostly because of the large cast time. The point of my post wasn’t to rewrite entire skills though, it was to tweak the way skills/traits work now. Redesigning skills like mantras is tricky, because I really liked the idea of having Furious Interruption change to recharging mantras on interrupt, but then what about if a mesmer is running Mantra of Distraction? It’s extremely easy to secure an interrupt with an instant-cast daze, so you could cycle dazes/Mantra of Pain almost indefinitely. Reworking things has implications you might not think about right away.

For example, if you change Mantra of Recovery to a 1s cast time, it is in direct competition with Ether Feast, since they both have identical cast times. If you get 2620 HP on your next two skills, that’s the equivalent of 291.1 HP/second. Ether Feast with 2 active clones is 342 HP/s. Traiting for cooldowns as you said would increase the mantra to 363.8 HP/s. Traiting for cooldowns and mantras have an extra charge increases it to 545.8 HP/s. Compare that to Healing Signet with 392 HP/s. The mantra heal is now objectively worse than Ether Feast with no traits, comparable with the cooldown trait, and is objectively better with both mantra traits. There is no “situational usefulness” which every other heal in the game has. There is nothing to distinguish the two heals besides HP/s because they both have identical cast times, and no secondary effects outside of healing.

I know you said that a skill has to be activated for the heal to take effect, but that is almost trivial. Unless you meant that a skill has to actually land for the mantra to proc, in which case that’s basically Venoms for mesmers, which is kind of interesting, but I don’t know if it’s something ArenaNet would go for.

The Mantra of Pain change would make the already strong burst damage of shatter mesmers much, much stronger. I assume you meant 1.25 is the skill coefficent, [Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)], which would mean a shatter mesmer with 2100 power would gain two more attacks to their burst each hitting for ~1,000 non-crit or ~2300 crit on a 2600 armor target. That’s basically two extra Mind Wracks. Assuming everything crits (very possible in WvW), that’s 13,800 damage from Mind Wrack x4 and Mantra of Pain x2 in a 240 radius around a target. Is that too much spike damage? I don’t know, that’s why I don’t like to rewrite entire skills.