Guild Wars 2

Works fine with MH sword though. Its just the scepter messing it up.

The bounce mechanic would be fine if they increased the number of bounces… I’m really not sure what they’re afraid would happen. The bounces cant hit the same target more than once, so its already limited to the number of available players/npc in a given area and they all hit like wet toilet paper. They could easily increase the number of bounces to 9 so they scale better for larger engagements (aka PvP 5v5) and bounces would still get wasted regularly on clones/pets, or get stopped from someone blocking/dodging.

Edit- What I’d really like to see is the bounce limit removed entirely. Have the projectile last a specific amt of time instead (say 3~ seconds). So, if you’re tightly pacted together it could hit like 10~ targets, but if you’re spaced out it would only make it to like 4~.

I really wish they would change iLeap to function similar to our spear… We leap forward do some direct dmg and cripple the target, then we can use the secondary skill to teleport back to the location we leaped from and leave a clone behind. This way we can use sword for mobility out of combat, we can use it for direct dmg/cripple reliably and we can use the first half of the skill in phantasm builds.

Should we not be asking for the GS AA to be adjusted INSTEAD of balancing our traits around it? They could just change the beam to hit twice and then increase the dmg to compensate. I’ll bet the GS AA was one of the factors in confusing combatants being removed entirely.

IDK about the rest of you, but i like using a variety of weapons.

I had suggested something very similar a few months ago. Separating the functionality of our phantasms from our shatter mechanic would solve alot of our PvE issues. I couldn’t come up with anything to make up for the loss of shatter fodder though, your after-image idea is genius. I Love everything about your idea.

+1

He also left out Signet of inspiration’s cast time and then for the trait proc you need to add in the cast time for the phantasm summon, which eat into how much quickness you’re sharing. Also, will we be getting all of the quickness the moment we press the shatter, or do we need to wait for all our illusions to run into range to actually shatter to get the quickness? Which would basically mean -1 sec of shared quickness/ranged illusion. In practice, you’d be looking at closer to 1-3 secs of shared quickness w/o boon duration food/runes depending on your weapons and personal reaction speed.

Boon duration also seems to have no effect on Time warp. It just refreshes the quickness every pulse.

I just recently changed my Traveler’s Runes to Runes of the Pack. Just using the signet with them, its 6.5 secs of swiftness every 10 secs (21.45% movement speed)… then if you get the on-hit proc its an extra 13 secs which translates to about 40 secs of continuous switness with signet. The on-hit proc isnt very reliable, but they’re a really solid DPS increase over Traveler’s.

Gravity well is more of a defensive utility now. Long lasting pulsing stability definitely has its uses, but I want to see another cooldown reduction if I’m actually going to considering equipping it like this. 60 seconds is a lot more appropriate for what it does now.

I would love if they changed the Scepter block (and OH sword) to function the same as the new shield block so we can get a clone at the end of the channel regardless if we block something. With scepter having a reliable way to produce clones, they could then give it a real (cloneless) AA. We only have 2 MH weapons to use with our 5 OH weapons… they need to have flexible skills that we can use in a variety of builds. The current AA on the scepter really limits its functionality.

Has anyone been able to test if this trait can push you over the condition duration cap?

Oh, cool. I didnt know that information was available already. Thanks for pointing that out guys.

I really doubt the traits are still the same as what we were shown originally. It was the first specialization shown, they’ve had a very long time to refine/adjust/change things. So the only thing I’m looking forward to right now is seeing an iteration of traits that are closer to what we’ll actually be getting with HoT. I was most exited about the Chronophantasm trait, so that makes me very pessimistic that it still exists. I’ll bet they’ve done one of the following things to it by now-

Added an ICD to prevent 3 phantasm respawn

Combined it with illusionary reversion so now when you shatter a phantasm you get a clone

Went the confusing combatants route and removed it

As Robert Gee says “So Strong… So Strong…”

Esplen.3940:

Mikkel.8427:

Esplen.3940:

Wait wait wait. Why is it that people keep bringing up “Rampage can just be moa’ed” in threads arguing against PU? Does nobody see the irony?

Um… bc unlike all the other professions, Mesmer’s can 6/6/6/6/6 and use ALL utilities and elites all in one build… DUH!

O yah, also they use Illusionary Elasticity to boost the bounce of WoC to 3 from 2… and they still have clone death traits on. And clones hit as hard as players. And you can have 9 clones up.

Exactly! now you’re getting it!

Esplen.3940:

Wait wait wait. Why is it that people keep bringing up “Rampage can just be moa’ed” in threads arguing against PU? Does nobody see the irony?

Um… bc unlike all the other professions, Mesmer’s can 6/6/6/6/6 and use ALL utilities and elites all in one build… DUH!

Thank you for taking the time to post this very imaginative and fun concept.

apharma.3741:

Guard has a wealth of blocks, invulns and blinds to help mitigate damage, especially on their high burst builds.

Warrior didn’t need rampage nerfing they should have only reduced the duration or increased the CD not both.

Elementalist needs an engy style rework, most elementalists would agree as we’re too pigeonholed into water/arcana.

Engy doesn’t need IP buffing. Turrets is a lazy and brain dead build it should be on par with MM necro as easy to pick up but outperformed after learning how the class works.

Mesmer has some of the worst DPS in the game if not the worst. What you mean is burst and that already got needed by mirror blade hitting only twice now.

Necro could do with starting matches with 20% life force. Life force gain is fine atm with decent builds.

Ranger, ok, but I don’t really see a problem tbh.

Thief wants to be more than a stealth trick pony. Make guarded initiative 80%, reduce some trick cool downs by 10s initially maybe more so it competes with bountiful theft.

As for stealth in general. Some bursts are easy to see and it’s a L2P issue. Others not so much. At the end of the day there just isn’t many ways to bring people out of stealth. Not saying there should be one for every class on a 10s cool down or anything however things like the dragon hunter trap is a great example of real counter play to stealth.

Add a few other things in like that (maybe ranger F2 applies AoE reveal 300 range on a trait) and you will see stealth become more balanced.

And off thieves would need adjusting to compensate a little.

^This.

Padra.1678:

In my opinion Mesmer defenses are way to strong. Take a glass LB Ranger and a glkittenter Mesmer both are super squishy and neither has much condi clear. Both have an invun (a mesmer can distort twice in a fight if it has to with shatter rechange at 50% health whereas a ranger can only get it once. Unless you give up two utility slots which would be stupid.) and both have stealth but the mesmers stealth is 10 times better. For a ranger in order to get 3 seconds of stealth you have to hit with hunters shot and if you dont your dead where as ALL of a mesmers 28 seconds of stealth are on command. Its not a projectile and it cant miss or fail. On top of all that mesmer has WAY more mobility with its teleports and it bursts harder. Its actually frustrating how much Anet gave Mesmer and then to see Mesmer plays still kittening that Mesmer arnt strong enough. My adivse to all you whining mesmers is try playing a class that is actually isent in a good spot and then see if you can still kitten.

I think the only person in this forum that needs to play another profession is you, sweetie. If you had a mesmer, you would have noticed that the “shatter recharge at 50%” trait was removed, so mesmers need to ‘waste’ a utility slot for the extra invul just like rangers. then in order to have all that ‘28 secs of stealth’ would mean having to use an offhand, 2 utility slots, our elite and the chaos trait line… which would leave no room for blink (our teleport) on our utility bar. No experienced mesmers outside of WvW would do that. I do like the idea of this mythical mesmer with 4+ utility slots though, sounds fun.

Odyssey.2613:

MailMail.6534:

Devs nerfing everything on Mesmer except what needs to be nerfed. Predictable.

I got news for you-it isn’t exclusive to Mesmers only.
_______________________________________________________
It’s nigh time we start holding the dev’s accountable, specifically by name.
By doing so it’s harder for them to hide behind generic terms like “team”, & “devs”.

Show them we know who’s responsible for what and we are not happy with their sub-standard work and flawed approach!

We see what’s going on. They are arbitrarily making large, drastic changes instead of small, specific tweaks in order to give them something to work on, naming it balance changes & fixes, and calling it a day for 6 months.

RIOT

Our ‘mantra’ will be-

Mantras have sunk
Now they’re totally bunk
Mirror Blade stinks
Retrieve it from the sink

Get your signs ready!

Heres a hint- If you’re having trouble targeting the real mesmer then cleave the clones. A mesmer without his/her illusions is a dramatically weaker opponent… Its kinda like being assaulted by butterfly kisses.

Fay.2357:

Mikkel.8427:

Carrion Amulet

Why would you do that?

Mikkel.8427:

Scavenging Rune

Meh. If you’re going that route, undead is better anyway.

Mikkel.8427:

Intelligence Sigils

Why on earth would you do that?

The way hes traited would work better as a hybrid dmg build (hence the Carrion ammy Condi,Vit,Pow). I would also ditch the staff and do sword/torch + scepter/sword or pistol. If you time your swaps (for the intelligence buff) with your shatters you can can do some fairly impressive power bursts along side your condi pressure. Scavenging converts vit into more condition dmg so he’ll have about as much as using rabid + undead.

Carighan.6758:

There used to be a time and age when Mantras were trying to be an interesting mechanical concept, they only had a single charge but a comparatively strong effect.

The idea was that you had a ~100% longer cast time, but in exchange your cast time came sort-of after the use, and when convenient. Sure, the cast time back then was too long and HM had such an overpowered interaction with them that they had to be changed, but conceptually the old Mantras actually felt like a specific ability type.

Whereas the current ones… I dunno… clunky is the best I can think of, but that fails to fully encompass just how bad they feel.

At this point I’d honestly just rip them out. Entirely. There’s plenty ideas for better skills, and Mantras as a skill type had their try, they failed, now get it over with.

I’d be completely ok with them being removed entirely. I went 8 months b4 the trait rework without touching a mantra bc of how poorly they function/feel. The ‘bug’ after the patch finally made them worthwhile to use, so they were incorporated into a few of my builds. It genuinely felt like we got a brand new line of utility skills for me.

Suggestions-
Carrion Amulet
Scavenging Rune
Intelligence Sigils

Mistrust- Whenever you interrupt a foe, inflict Confusion in an area around them. You have a 33% chance on critical to inflict Confusion (just you, not illusions).

That would make the trait an actual option for me.

Photoloss.4817:

Actually, what about staff autoattack? I rarely see any mention of it, but the burning took a major nerf. In particular, if the mesmer AA were buffed while the clone AA remained weaker it could be a substantial boost to PvE staff/condi play without breaking PvP nearly as badly as, say, entirely un-nerfing MtD+CD.

I think the staff auto is fine… popping 3 staff clones out and AFKing while you wait for Chaos storm to come off cooldown is already our best condition setup (a little hyperbolic, but thats how it feels). I’d perfer they improve our access to conditions across all weapons with some adjustments to our traits and shatters.

May as well respond to everything else while im at it…

Confounding Suggestions- Remove the stun. ALL of your CCs last 25% longer. Remove an addition stack of stability.

Rending shatter/Maim the disillusioned- Make them work like blinding dissapation. AoE 5 stacks centered on you when you shatter. Maybe do something similar with shattered strength also, flat 5 might on shatter.

Mental anguish- leave it alone.

Blinding Dissipation- An ICD would ruin this trait, may as well replace it at that point… It should be dodge-able though.

PU- returned to +1 sec. Then change Mass invis base duration to 7 secs and veil base to 5 secs.

Bountiful disillusionment- Doesnt feel ‘bountiful’ should inc the number of boons.

Mender’s purity- fix the bugs, then leave it alone.

Persisting Images/protect phantasms- does anyone even use these? Maybe combine them?

Illusionary inspiration/temporal enchanter- Fine the way they are… but disappointed about there not being a DPS-oriented GM in inspiration (wish Harmonious Mantras was in this tree).

Master of frag- seems kinda weak… and I really think that Diversion should be AoE baseline. IDK what to do with it.

Malicious Sorcery- IF it works the way that the discription suggests and increases the attack speed of ALL of our skills with a scepter equiped, then i think its pretty solid. I want to use a working version.

Master of Misdirection- I hate that this trait counts toward the condition duration cap. Should make it work like the necro’s scepter trait so its not wasted in a condition build that caps flat +duration.

Illusionary Leap- definately should be 900 range.

Scepter AA- OMG please fix it already… would a small splash radius on this really be game breaking?

Phantasmal mage/Disenchanter- should have an extra bounce. Mage should inflict 2 stacks of burning for 4 secs.

All i can think of right now…

Mistrust should be combined with the revised Confusing Combatants that got scrapped at the last minute… Its a super weak grandmaster, especially compared with the other two options. It doesn’t even work underwater atm on top of it.

PS- don’t bother linking a vid to someone using this trait vs Menders in silverwaste…. We all know Interrupt traits are disproportionately effective against them.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t changed the swiftness to 4 seconds superspeed… You’ll cover about the same distance as 12 secs of swiftness and it can remain non-stacking.

I’m going to make the same suggestion i made in another thread…

Confounding suggestions- Your control effects (Stun, daze, fear, float, knockdown, etc) last 25% longer. Your control effects remove addition stability.

Get rid of the stun locking entirely, while making it useful for a larger variety of builds.

My opinion is the same as it was when they first introduced this revised trait- give us back the flat cooldown reduction.
I like being able to use the torch in a variety of builds, some of which do not include:
A) other sources of stealth
B) the PU trait (or the chaos line, at all)

The trait goes from 2 extremes as it is now. Its powerful in a stealth-heavy PU troll build, but then borders on useless if your build doesn’t go all-in to focus on those things.

I was running a very similar build after the update.
Two exceptions-
Scavenging Rune- better sustain and higher condi dmg
weapons- Sword/torch + scepter/pistol (which i changed to OH sword once i realized the pistol trait was broken)

It was fun… but our Condi shatter is so weak after the MtD nerf I started running with a Rampager’s amulet + traveler’s rune for extra power burst potential and mobility for solo queuing. Pistol is great with rampager’s also. Our sustain is so good being invested in the inspiration line I barely noticed the vit loss.

All dmg needs to be toned down on all professions (looking at you PvP amulets!)… the only thing i think is out of control on mesmer is Confounding suggestions. I’d love to see it changed to-

Confounding Suggestions- Your Control effects (stun, daze, fear, taunt, sink, knockdown, etc) last 25% longer. Increases the amt of defiance your control effects remove.

Done. No more stun locking, and this makes the trait more appealing in a larger variety of builds.

Mesmer and Thief bugs weren’t addressed in the 7/7/15 patch, so it would be nice if a Dev popped in just to let us know they recognize this thread/these bugs.

We really can’t judge Malicious Sorcery until we get a working version of it. Base on the wording of the trait, the attack speed increase could apply to ALL of our abilities while wielding a scepter… which is pretty strong (looking at you mantras!).

“Increases attack speed while wielding a scepter. Reduces recharge on scepter skills”

Doesn’t stipulate that it only applies to scepter attacks, so its a good possibility. They’ve been pretty good about wording things like that too. If we take a look at the Necromancer scepter trait as an example-

“While wielding a scepter, your condition damage is increased. Conditions inflicted by scepter skills have increased durations.”

The condition damage is a flat bonus just for having the scepter equiped (and is worded similar to our attack speed bonus) and then they specify that only scepter skills get the extra condition duration.

Mongster.4580:

since we are also into bugs, can anyone confirm if scepter3, confusing images, is working as intended?

is this skill supposed to be an aoe that hits 5 targets?

Yes, it is working as intended. If you position yourself properly you should be able to hit up to 5 targets.

Photoloss.4817:

I find the new “system” is alright, but ultimately wasn’t needed. They could’ve made stuff baseline and introduced new (near-worthless) traits instead.
Decoupling of the stats is nice in principle, but loss of boon/condi duration without equip to compensate heavily reduces “support” options.
The main problem is the traits filling the new slots. Basically they eliminated the option of slotting “lesser” traits instead of GMs, without fixing the reason said GMs weren’t taken in the first place.
Domination only provides +%dmg in PvE, and doesn’t have a “meta” GM option because shatters still do horrible dps.
Dueling has no condi GM for PvE, instead 2 Adept traits conflict for the same role (PF vs. DD)
Chaos is utter trash for PvE, and PU will bring further nerfs upon us due to whiners.
Inspiration really profited in every way, no complaints here (well, the Healing Prism nerf was stupid, just switch to % of healing received)
Illusions again lacks a dps/phantasm/power/group play option among its GMs.

Okay, a bulk of the complaints stem from the fact that shatter builds and interrupt/lockdown simply don’t work in PvE. Forcing upon us 2-3 junk traits which marginally improve shatters won’t make a difference there.

^ This basically sums up my opinion also and I think it should be its own topic.

Do I like the new system better than the old? yes
Do I think mesmers profited from the change? yes
Did they address the core mechanical problems mesmers suffer? (opinion) No.

Anet “Mesmers arent using their class mechanic? why not?”
Mesmers “umm… blowing up a large portion of our DPS and support doesnt seem like a good idea.”
Anet "Hmmm. What if we just give you no other option? Shatter and interrupt traits galore!!! "

Those shatter and interrupt traits are (very) strong in PvP, but practically worthless in WvW and PvE unless all you do is solo roam and clear trash mobs.

Then the super nerf to our condi builds is a whole topic all its own. I’m just patiently sitting on my ascended rampagers armor waiting to see what they’re going to do.

Staff had the extra bounce the last time i used it also… but I haven’t used staff since they nerfed the cooldown trait.

I was fooling around in the cursed shore where i discovered that Mistrust doesn’t work underwater. Tested with mantra, spear 5 and trident 5.

Mirror blade has always been able to hit the same target more than once… so this isn’t a bug. It has 4 bounces, which means it can only hit the same target up to 3×. So, if you had checked your log, you would have seen it hit you 3x and your pet x2 if it was standing ‘right next to you’ like you say. If your pet didnt take any dmg then that means it probably bounced back to the mesmer x2 providing them with might.

Four ‘bounces’ = Five hits total. The first hit doesn’t count as a bounce.

When i applied CI my targets always showed 13s (which was actually 14) because of the fraction of a second it’d take me to move my cursor over the icon to see the time remaining. I should have been able to easily catch 15s if it was additive, because the duration at 123% would have been 15.6s~. I encourage someone to double check though.

I had some time to test this myself… seems like its just a tooltip error. At 90% condition duration and MoM traited confusing images shows it should last 15.5 secs, but its only lasting 14.

Has anyone tested this? According to my skills’ tooltips, this minor doesn’t count toward the 100% condition duration cap. Can anyone confirm that its actually functioning that way, or if its just a tooltip error?

+1
Thank you, Robert!

(Get us confusing combatants back please!)

They just need to program the reflect on mass invis to proc when the stealth is intended to end, just like the blast finisher on the prestige.

Bumping this because it covers everything i was coming here to report. Thank you for creating a consolidated thread, Fay.

I’ll be ok with them replacing confusing combatants with this new fury minor IF they do one of the following-

A) remove phantasmal Fury and make fury on us affect our illusions’ crit rate.
or
B) Combine phantasmal fury into this new minor

I can’t even find notes about today’s stream.

Allarius.5670:

I logged in to post exactly that, Me Games Ma! The cooldown was 5 sec … so you should be able to maintain permanent Fury up time if you can get your opponent below 75% health.

As interesting as I though the previous trait was, I like this change as it benefits both condition and power builds.

How does that help a condition build? Fury on us has no affect on our illusions… and w/o confusing combatants we’re not producing conditions on crit either.

I’m sorry, did i miss something? was there another live stream today? If there was, is it posted somewhere or are there notes up?

I was starting to think i was the only one…

The max cooldown reduction is actually about 30% btw. After 21~ secs of continuous stealth, The prestige will be back up.

Torch by itself without PU 4.5% reduction (-1.35 secs)
Torch by itself with PU 9% reduction (-2.70 secs)
and so on…

I really don’t like how this trait pigeon holes torch into one specific build

Daniel Handler.4816:

Mikkel.8427:

What i would love to see it changed to is-

The Pledge: Torch skills remove 1 condition from you when activated. Burning duration +20%.

Then reduce the base cooldowns to 25 secs.

Going to repeat what I just said. If the condi removal stays in the trait, and the torch can still give stealth. The cooldowns will not be reduced.

I wasn’t arguing with you… just sharing what I believe to be a more flexible change. By removing the cooldown from the trait entirely, torch becomes useful for other builds. Torch right now can be traited down to 24 seconds, do you consider the current iteration of the trait OP?