I can’t think of anything wrong with this idea… It’s perfect. Actually improves counter-play againt mesmers in 1v1 (where we are our strongest) and dramatically improves how crappy we perform everywhere else. I support this.
That there are hit points isn’t the problem to be honest… it’s just the amount of hit points that is a problem…
Making them invunerable to damage would be lame, not even fun to play with (or against) them, 0 counterplay possiblities… Sad that alot of people don’t see that..
I agree. The problem is, do we really know what the gyro hit points is based on stats? I assume it scales with the players stats.
what we should do I think is check the stats on exotic armor for Celestial, Berserker, and, I don’t know, maybe Knight’s or Nomads or something.
Here is the reason why I think this is important. If their stats scale the way illusions do for mesmers, then it makes a big difference in their survivability based on what gear you use. For instance, a Bulwark Gyro may be far better for Sentinel gear than for Berserker.
I guess this all comes back to the zerker mentality. So many people look at zerker as the meta and then say “pDefender sucks!” Well, yes, when it adopts its own stats off yours, and its a fully defensive phantasm, and you GAVE it crappy vitality, don’t be surprised.
If you go beyond fully offensive gear and stats, then that might well change things.
Illusions have static HP… they dont scale off of the mesmer’s vitality. The only ways to increase illusion health are through the Signet passive and the trait in Inspiration. They do use the mesmer’s toughness though….
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I think the easiest solution would be a damage cap. Make is so pets cannot take more than about 1.5k damage from a single blow. That would solve most of problems in PvE where attacks are massive, single hit, AoE cleaves. Then they could go a step farther and add a time element to that like… Pets cannot take more than 1.5k dmg/sec. With that adjustment (most) Phantasms would be able to get at least one attack off in WvW before getting killed. Kitten! you’d even be able to throw out a zerker into a zerg and mindwrack it after its cleave if you were quick.
Edit: I was only thinking about Illusions when i wrote that… would probably have to adjust those numbers for other professions’ pets.
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Because the Mesmer motto is twice the work for half the results.
From a player enjoying engineer and mesmer class… engineer requires clearly more effort & coordination, sry.
Generally I would not worry about the gyros at all. From the POI vid & the turret balance (aka obliteration) I presume to expect they whole set of gyros will die from one Mirror Blade + Mind Stab.
Also running with many kits offers so much more flexibility and, if just hopping from kit n’s strongest damage ability to kit n+1’s, superior punch.
So don’t expect to be confronted with those gyros alot. I don’t think I will use them, beyond trying, on my main char. And when you do, oh joy, you met an opponent who forsake both flexibility & punch for cute steam-punk gizmos. ^^
Mesmer on the other hand, outside of reflects is what? I guess good for portals and that’s it. On trash it can’t summon phantasms as the mob dies before or just after summoning and you didn’t tag it so no loot. Your auto is a lot lower than other classes and so are your other attacks. 10s cool down on your damage shatter so not like you can use it on all trash which leaves you with mantra of pain spamming with sword auto for meaningful damage.
On bosses phantasms are cleaved out and even killed on spawning and that’s without being targeted either completely tanking damage. It can provide support but why bother when a guardian does this and more damage all in zerk without giving up anything and with little to no effort?
There is just no point playing a Mesmer in PvE outside of a record run as all other classes are better and I include ranger and necro in that.
^This. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve leveled, geared, and used most professions across the various game modes. Mesmer was my fist, and is still my favorite… but with every additional profession I’ve leveled its become more frustrating and more apparent how flawed mesmer’s mechanics are.
As far as Bulwark Gyro is concerned… I think its lame they’ve basically just repurposed two of our utilities and smashed them together instead of coming up with something a little more original. Over-all I dont really care. Super utilities are one of Engi’s ‘things’, let them have it.
Oh, and I just read this post from Colin in another thread-
“While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:
PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.
I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.
From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.
I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ”
Confirmed my suspicions about where their priorities lie.
Doesn’t bother me… they only times i use PU are when I play pacman in the silverwastes or the occasional dungeon skip.
I really dislike the way iLeap works now… and I think they’ve already proven they’re incapable of making it functional AND ‘balanced’. I’d perfer it to be changed to a real leap, similar to our spear.
Skill part 1- Leap forward doing some dmg and immobilize your target.
Skill part 2- Teleport back to the location you leaped from leaving a clone behind.
I think that would have really fun strategic value thats comparable to our current leap. For instance, we could leap down from a ledge→ burst→ teleport back up. We’d have an out-of-combat mobility skill that doesnt require hitting our 180 spin button every 10 seconds, also. Speaking of staff, we’d still have phase retreat and blink for getting up ledges, so (personally) I wouldnt be bothered by the loss of the super unreliable/clunky functionality of the current sword leap.
The only downsides of this change for me-
1) I’d never be able to unequip my sword again.
2) I’d need to start crafting Bolt.
This topic isnt going to get much traffic, its been talked about to death. Its not just mesmers either, every profession that can use a scepter complains about their obvious design flaws. Robert has commented on the Necro forum about improving their scepter and axe skills at a later date… maybe he’ll have a look at our scepter (again) also.
I agree. This trait does feel pretty weak, especially considering it is a grandmaster. Speedy stomps are nice, but other than that it feels more like a QoL trait (gogo fast gathering!) more than a ‘build defining’ one.
For the scepter, I’d say a cloneless AA that applies a decent amt of condition pressure would be great and update the block so it summons a clone at the end of the channel regardless if you block something. That would make the increased speed meaningful, and make the scepter less of a niche weapon (kitten clones overwriting my phantasms in PvE!).
Then maybe tack some condition damage back onto the trait… Those changes would make me happy.
Forum bug? First time I’ve experienced it.
I’m interested to see what kind of zerg trolling I can do with Echoes of Memory+Deja Vu + Ineptitude.
I’m looking forward to running a condi-bunker with runes of the guardian… Block people to death with scepter+shield!
This trait is giving me the extra 50 toughness from the old version of the trait, did we know about this?
P.S. when are we getting our flat cooldown reductions back? I’m getting really tired of this “triple the effort/investment for the same reward” theme they have for mesmer.
I’d want Flow of Time changed to “Gain alacrity when you generate an illusion”.
Still rewards shattering because shattering your illusions is a lot more beneficial than overwriting them, but a meaningful amount of alacrity can still be gained in larger-scale fights where things are dying too fast to set up a shatter or there is too much AoE to get clones up.
Diessa Plateau 2:30-3:00 AM EST event
I disconnected and lost stacks. I logged back in and acquired about 7 stacks. No rewards.
Sigil of speed? It has no icd, so you can stack yourself 2+ mins of swiftness just by killing stuff. If you use it with SoI you never really need to think about swiftness again… and you can share it.
Also, you can go into your options and turn down your Dialog Volume.
The All’s Well change created an entirely new build: Alacrity/Quickness support.
The All’s Well change left a lot of people scrambling for more condi cleansing. It’s been suggested that Well of Eternity be modified to cleanse condis, and that suggestion has been met with general approval.
Illusionary Reversion killed rolling your face across the f-keys to win, but made every other build that used it even more reliant on Chronophantasma and/or DE.
The Chronophantasma change was met with a large “?”, and people still suggesting that they just change it so phantasms inherit their predecessor’s attack timer.
Despite weakening personal alacrity generation overall, the alacrity change combined with the IR nerf made Improved Alacrity arguably stronger than IR. Builds that take IR over IA tend to also take Chronophantasma, with some few exceptions (like taking Deceptive Evasion and Mirror Images).
The nerf to slow on iAvenger didn’t seem to change much, except to make people realize that iAvenger just kind of sucks in PvE.
People noticed that Tides of Time is kind of amazing, except for that crazy issue that makes it go poof if it hits anything (like the open air on the edge of the tree platforms in Verdant Brink). Not a bug, apparently???
Revenant made us realize once again that despite all the qq about condi mesmers, we still have less damage potential than pretty much every other condi class.
Thats a pretty good summary /clap
If i were to complain about something on staff it’d be the chaos armor on #4. 35 second recast for some lolChaos armor? It really should be more like 20 secs… which would also help balance out the recharge Chaotic Dampening provides after its massive nerf.
How about- At the end of the Shield 4’s channel or successful block you grant 1.5 secs of alacrity in an AoE. Then change the bounce on the phantasm to enemy-only.
Edit: Then Torch 5 could become- Channel an ability that immediately Blasts the area blinding foes and granting fury to allies, then summons a phantasmal mage. Then remove the blind from torch 4, and the image can have an enemy-only bounce also. Would make the 30 recast on image justified too…
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Well it once again boils down to the way 3 phantasms make up about 50% of our dps and thus our mesmer attacks are about half (it’s more like they hit 33% harder) that of other professions.
Wow déjà vu, I thought HoT beta had ended.
Essentially if phantasms and by extension our off hands only offered very small amounts of damage but we’re more utility focused we could see an increase in the damage of our skills. We would also see much more shatter play in PvE, however it would mean the death of phantasm damage duelling builds and would hurt iDuelist interrupt mesmers.
I dunno just in two minds about such a change, is the death of a certain play style what we want if it were to make mesmers on par with other classes in PvE?
Yes! 100x yes! That is exactly what we want!
The Devs have already made it abundantly clear shattering is our primary mechanic, they now need to finish converting us over. Do it, devs!
I thought the removal of clone death traits was a positive thing, honestly. It only became an issue when it got packaged with all of the other changes to our condition builds.
-Revamped confusing combatants ninja removed
-Phantasmal mage getting changed to a single stack of burning
-MtD getting nerfed
-Staff AA burn duration/stack amt not adjusted
-Bleed scaling nerf
etc… I’m sure there is more I’m just not remembering right now
All of that has left my mesmer’s condition builds feeling rather weak, especially in PvE.
Ultimately, bouncing attacks are okish offensively, but really problematic with friendly effects. You can get decent use out of things like mirror blade and winds of chaos only because you can personally position yourself to take advantage of it. Phantasms are dumb, and won’t do that at all. Additionally, as was mentioned elsewhere, it’s a really odd mechanic.
Me: ‘This phantasm gives you guys good stuff’
Party: ‘So to get the good stuff, should we stand next to the phantasm?’
Me: ‘Nope, to get the good stuff you have to stand next to the mob the phantasm is attacking’It’s really counterintuitive, and links being able to provide helpful support to having your party in a potentially really odd position, on top being limited to only hitting one or two people as opposed to a full 5 target aoe.
Anet needs to just split phantasm attacks so that the offensive portion retains the bounce, and the support portion is a pbaoe pulsed buff centered on the phantasm. That makes the support from phantasms actually usable while still limiting their offensive aoe capabilities.
Considering this is how Illusionary Inspiration’s regen and the phantasmal defender’s damage absorb already work, your suggestion would probable be the easiest to implement. The only problem is iMage and iCap being ranged phantasms. They would need to be changed to Melee/mid range (600~) phantasms or have their buff pulse have a very large radius.
Sorry to sound ignorant, but isn’t mesmer standerd BS of spamming and hiding 90% with post-trait-changes? Sorry in advance, those builds just have no value in 1v1 or XvX fights.
What happened? I thought you were quitting for a year?
“Came back to pvp after nearly 1 year+,
nothing changes d/ds still win games,
2x d/d insta win.
9/10 games minimum 1x d/d ele
it’s just boring to fight them, where are GuildWars1 skill nerf rotations for builds?
I’m off for 1 more year, i hope they will do something about this disgusting unbalanced ele class, Cya in 2016
EDIT: Also msg for anet, never understood logic behind tanky-super-sustain LIGHT armor class."
In case you forgot… or do you just cry on the forum every time (insert X class) beats you?
I’m going to mention it again here…
I’d really like to see Flow of Time changed to “Gain .75 secs of alacrity when using an illusion summoning skill”
I hate being forced to spam my shatters to maintain the effect, i want to ‘feel’ like im shattering tactfully. I also really dont like having the effect neutered in large scale combat where illusions dont survive very long.
Just a couple notes about that:
- While in theory they provide the same alacrity, in practice alacrity on shatter is reduced by illusion death. If every single illusion creation granted .75s alacrity, you would end up with more alacrity straight up.
- Specifically calling out “illusion summoning skill” means DE, IR and Chronophantasma would not provide any alacrity, meaning any build that used one of those (every chronomancer that cares much about alacrity?) would be neutered. This is bad, and flow of time would become dramatically less valuable than it is right now.
Right now, if you produce 3 illusions then shatter them you get 3 secs of alacrity. With my proposed change you would be getting 2.25 secs in that same time. So, in optimal situations you’d be getting less than you get now, but in non-optimal shatter environments you’d be getting a hell of a lot more.
DE and IR would definately count as illusion summoning skills… Chronophantasma idk about.
Numbers also could be adjusted, its just an idea.
I’m going to mention it again here…
I’d really like to see Flow of Time changed to “Gain .75 secs of alacrity when using an illusion summoning skill”
I hate being forced to spam my shatters to maintain the effect, i want to ‘feel’ like im shattering tactfully. I also really dont like having the effect neutered in large scale combat where illusions dont survive very long.
I would love the scepter AA to be improved for every profession that can use a scepter. IDK what the concept behind scepters is supposed to be that anet feels the AA has to be ridiculously lame… Mesmer’s AA bothers me the most out of all of them though, and the trait update didnt do anything to change this. I abuse malicious sorcery for the increased speed on everything else (fast stomps weeeee!), but its impact on the actual weapon is unnoticeable to me.
Well to be COMPLETLY honest – I think they should change it like this: …
LOVE IT! yes, please.
I’ve only found the shield useful for two things so far.
1) PvP bunker builds- Not my usual style of play, but its a really nice addition for those mesmers that always wanted to pretend they’re cele eles (minus the burning)
2) Trolling Zergs in WvW- Stealth up → run headlong into the front of a zerg → pop shield 5 → blink through to the back→ rofl → stealth away!
I would love the trait to be changed to “Gain .75 secs of alacrity after using an illusion summoning skill”.
-Rewards us for setting up and using shatters tactically, not just for spamming them.
-iReversion could probably be changed back to its original form now that you wouldnt be able to hit F5-> then piano f1-4 for 10+ secs of alacrity.
-Works in every build for ever game mode. (like WvW ZvZ or high AoE PvE instances where your illusions are smashed instantly)
Edit: changed to .75 secs… right now a 3 illusion shatter gets you 3 secs of alacrity If changed you would get 2.25 secs worth in that same time. Less, but way more reliable.
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I think it might actually be time to start a new forum topic…
This thread is just identifying a symptom of a disease. The real problem is our reliance on phantasms to provide meaningful DPS. Swapping to a ‘utility’ offhand or phantasm shouldn’t completely gut our ability to do damage if that is what we’re geared to do.
I propose a reduction in phantasm dmg across the board…. something like 50%. Then they could move that DPS potential back on to the mesmer in the form of improved AAs and better skill coefficiants on our other skills (not including shatters, we dont need more burst). I believe that would promote better balance for the class across several game modes and builds.
1) More reliable DPS in high AoE situations (PvE boss fights… WvW ZvZ)
2) Lowers our passive phantasm pressure while in stealth… a component of what makes PU so strong.
3) Shatters are more rewarding to use.
4) Chronophantasma isnt as ‘scary’ to balance
etc… I’ll finish this post later, making dinner! I’m sure you guys can think of more, also.
Bit late to the party. It would be nice to have another dps weapon but having seen what has been put here I can see the other side.
Perhaps for iCaptain, pulse 1s alacrity to up to 5 players upon attack and it fires a bouncing projectile at enemies slowing them. That way we get the party benefits without having to deal with a clunky bounce type mechanic but we keep the awesome captain not America bouncing shield in the attacks.
With this, it’s important to note that Robert’s point cuts both ways. Making a shield phantasm more damaging may not be appropriate, but that means that the phantasm should be very good at what it does do. 1s of alacrity on a bouncing attack is much, much weaker than the extra damage you’d get from, say, iBerserker in terms of long-run effect.
Mesmer has exceptionally weak AAs which makes our DPS heavily reliant on our phantasms. We’re sacrificing quite a bit for this “utility”.
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icap only has 3 bounces… all the calculations i’ve seen so far look like they’re assuming its hitting x5 party members. There is no way to control where those bounces are going (mobs.. illusions.. pets..). So we’ll actually be relying on wells for reliable AoE alacrity, BUT wells are going to interfere with blasting fire and water fields… I feel like we’re all going to find this whole mechanic to be lackluster in Dungeons/Raids.
We all already have experience with the bouncing mechanic on Phantasms…
How effective is the iDisenchanter at clearing a dungeon party’s conditions?
How effective is the iMage at stacking fury on a party?
Norn mesmer with the Howler and Frostfang would be so sexy if mesmers could use warhorn and axe…
Next elite spec is definitely going to be warhorn… you know, because we dont have enough offhand options yet.
I’m not sure why people are finding this suggestion so outrageous… Warrior’s healing sig passive heals for more than ours and its effect is not even conditional on anything. I really dont think asking for the signet to be more reliable is so terrible..
Should be something like this-
No illusions- 176 hp/sec
1 illusion- 226hp/sec
2- 276hp/sec
3- 326hp/sec
then lower the recast to 25 secs and drop the active heal to about 4k
1) Might stacking- should be half as effective in PvP (15 power/condi dmg per stack)
2) Burning- Dmg needs to be trimmed a little bit, preferably by cutting its base dmg value. With 0 condition dmg burning does 131.5 dmg/sec/stack. Compare that to Bleeding which starts at 22 dmg/sec/stack. It does too much dmg for little investment. Drop the base dmg to around 66~ and leave the scaling alone.
I really don’t see a problem with teefs gaining PB-like-effects from this new utility. What bothers me is its basically a mantra BUT with 1/3 the cast time, no trait investment for getting a 3rd charge, and appears to have background recharge. If it works the way it appears to work… its vastly superior mechanically.
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I still don’t like mantras because you have to leave yourself wide open to charge them and don’t get any immediate benefit from charging them unless you pick particular traits. On top of that, they still have cooldowns between charge usage so I don’t see the positive that offsets being so ridiculously vulnerable when charging. I honestly feel they would be better off as shouts.
Did anybody else see the new datamined Throwing Daggers utility for the Dare Devil and immediately think that Mantras should work that way instead? It’s almost the same functionality, but it’s much easier to balance without nerfing the skill into the ground.
(For reference: https://i.imgur.com/NWy34jF.png)
Because the charges have an expiration time, the skill can be allowed to recharge in the background like our Mantras did for that one glorious month without the degenerate case of having six AoE Dazes in a row or whatever.
Of course other classes get a better Mantra mechanic then us…
omg… I’m going to throw a BF! I wanna see the supervisor… better yet, i’m going to write a letter!
Dear Mr. Arenanet,
I am a WHITE FEMALE SYLVARI in TYRIA!
Seriously though… i’m going to be kittened if they give teef mantras +1 and do nothing to fix ours. I really hate how mantras function.
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Just logged in to report this. I didnt notice any new hairstyles though… I’m going to go play with my hair kit again.
You should add “Master of Misdirection” counting toward the condition duration cap…
1) Its a minor so we have no choice but to take it
2) its in our primary condition specialization… and if your running a condition build in PvE/WvW you want to cap duration for ALL damaging conditions, so its just a complete waste.
3) We have pretty pathetic access to confusion considering we’re intended to be the “masters of misdirection”
4) You cant get anywhere even close to capped duration in PvP anyways, so its not like it would affect ‘balance’ to have it break the cap…
OR they could just change it… " The base duration of Confusion you apply lasts 1 sec longer" or “Opponents Take an addition 20% damage from confusion when they activate a skill”
Edit- Changed #2 to include “In PvE/WvW”. I thought it was obvious that was what i was talking about…
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Waste of Time (pun intended)
While we have condi rev’s putting on 15-20 stacks of burst torment.
So a class in beta is unbalanced compared to a class that’s been out there for years? I’m shocked…
Regarding Cry of Frustration, keep in mind that a condi shatter can burst with every shatter when compared to Power, not just F1. I’m all for making F2 better, but there would need to be a downside to iRetribution/MtD in exchange, especially considering that F5 will give 2 extra applications of both.
iRetribution is part of the problem imo. Shatters are intended to be bursts… but for condi builds its more like sustained shatter pressure.
I’d perfer if they removed iRetribution then lowered the cooldown on CoF to match mindwrack and increased its confusion per illusion to 3~4. No more spam, we’d have a dedicated condition shatter that would need to be timed and executed the same as mindwrack for power builds.
Maybe replace iRetribution with shattered strength, which would be nice for both power and condi builds… then move malicious sorcery down and think of a new GM.
Edit: Maybe lower/remove the base dmg on CoF after those changes also.
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Before the update they showed the new formulas for condition damage (i think it was on POI, ill try to find the show later tonight and add a link). They wanted conditions to do less dmg at lower condition dmg and more dmg with a higher investment in the stat. The ‘breaking point’ was around 750 condition dmg. So, when you compared dmg between the new and old formulas, at around 750 condition dmg you’d be doing the same dmg (More if you had higher, less if you had less).
When the update rolled in they ninja adjusted bleed dmg so the new breaking point was 2050 condition dmg (I believe thats right, I need to do the math again). So, basically… if you have less than 2050 condi dmg you’re doing less dmg per bleed than you were before the specialization update.
I’m sure they considered this ‘balanced’ bc of most professions’ high access, vuln affecting condi dmg and there being no stack limit now… but still.
Edited: Wall-o-text
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This answer to the Rev thread indirectly answers this question I think-
“There are no plans to add skills or traits which affect energy gain, upkeep gain, or energy cost of skills for the Revenant. These traits very quickly become mandatory choices as it means you can use your skills more often and in the case of energy, it would apply to all your skills since they all use energy. This is a dramatic increase in power across the board.
These kind of traits makes for less interesting choices and cause many problems with balance, often forcing skills to be weaker to compensate for the possibility of a player having all these traits equipped meaning they can use skills much more often then a player without them. But of course there will be balance on on energy costs and recharges of skills to make sure everything feels good and balanced for what it does in the toolkit of the revenant.”
I wanna know where our ‘Slow you apply also deals condition dmg’ trait is.
What has really bothered me about all these changes is the bleeding dmg nerf on top of the removal of confusing combatants… which really has nothing to do with Chronomancer.
Seriously… Stop feeding the trolls. This topic needs to be closed.
Whats really funny is that iMoa is better than some of our actual phantasms (looking at YOU image).
It sort of has it’s niche and could probably go with a bit of a boost but if any of the Mesmer condi removals are in need of a buff its Arcane Thievery.
Arcane Thievery’s cooldown is just way too long for what it does.
I think nullfield is still great… the only problem i have with it (and the rest of the glamours) is the baseline -recast… they couldnt just round them down to the nearest factor of 5? would that extra -2 seconds on the recasts have suddenly made them OP?
You already put a ton of work into the thread, may as well keep it updated.
Good job, btw.
I use ascended Rampagers armor and weapons on my mes. I swap in Sinister accessories for PvE, Rabid for WvW. I used travelers for a very long time, but recently changed to Runes of the pack. I’m very happy with them, I have high swiftness uptime (+30% duration and the occasional bonus 13 secs from the on-hit proc) and a nice chunk of offensive stats. I know your going for ‘pure condi’ build, but +175 power and +125 prec is still nice.
When the expansion hits I’ll probably change my runes… I normally run little to no condi cleanse in many of my builds so I’m thinking Antitoxin might be nice in combo with Time Marches On , but I’m really not sure yet.