Guild Wars 2

I’ll agree with the lightning surge one, but the rest are just fine. The reason is that the staff can self-combo like a beast. Eruption has a delay before it erupts, and it’s a blast finisher, so Eruption>Geyser>Arcane Wave is a double blast finisher in a water field- or about a 50% heal. In under 2 seconds. And there are powerful combos in the other elements too.

Did you guys seriously just take half a page of a suggestion thread running a flame war?

Diabolos.5493:

The problem with Elementalist is simple, the class requires a great deal of skill to play and enjoy properly. The Elementalist can be just as strong as any other class, you however are going to need to put in twice as much effort to be just as good as other classes.

This is the entire draw of the class for me. This, combined with the versatility of the class, gives a much higher “payoff” for perfecting your gameplay and mastering the class, at least in perception. I loves it. I don’t buy the underpowered complaints one bit- with my playstyle, my ele has the highest damage, longevity, and mobility of any class I’ve played so far. If I have to work 4x as hard as others to achieve that, that’s actually a plus. I love showing off.
_

Here’s my idea for the thread: Put a finisher of some kind in the Staff Air attunement. This may seem simple, but it would be a defining change for the staff as an Elementalist build and would make it a lot more attractive.

It doesn’t need to be a very powerful one, since we have several blasts already, but a utility finsher would be great. Currently, every single one of our weapon skill finishers is in Earth. I think this is because every other attunement has a combo field, and self-comboing should not be that easy or without cost (putting your attunements on cooldown). This is fine. As much as I love the Gust/Static Field combo when kiting, I would be willing to lose the combo field of #5 (static field) or even the entire skill to get a finisher in this attunement. This would make attunement hopping much more fluid and attractive for staff users. It’s really a pain that the entire weapon set is defined by it’s combos, but you can only combo in one element. It disrupts the flow while you wait for the earth attunement to recycle.

Specifically, I suggest a whirl finisher. Ele’s have plenty of blasts and projectiles already, and whirls are not very powerful offensively, so whirl would be ideal to use in water or light fields for group support. A ranged whirl, like summoning a tornado, would be even cooler, would be a unique ability to help define the Ele, and fit in the ranged support theme as well. Changing either Gust or Static field to a cyclone effect of some kind would be thematically consistent with the staff (ranged, aoe support) and shouldn’t be overpowered because air is already the weakest staff attunement (it’s support and offense are both poor. It’s only good for creating a gap, which can only be done once every 20 secs or so). Gust has aiming issues and is really just a weaker version of Shockwave, so it’s a good one to change. Static field is a candidate if you need to remove the combo field from the attunement in exchange for a finisher.

If that’s too powerful, a leap would be a good alternative to add some personal defense to the staff, which it lags behind in atm. As a third alternate, if that’s still too powerful (unlikely imo), build the finisher into Evasive Arcana, so it requires a 30-pt trait investment to get access to.

That’s a big wall of text for a simple change, but it has a lot of implications to staff gameplay and has the potential to singlehandedly address all the issues with the weapon. I play staff exclusively so I’m not qualified to comment on the other issues in this thread either, might as well focus on what I know

When you can self-combo in the field, it’s completely fair. With a little planning, and anticipating the need so I don’t burn the cooldowns early, I can heal from roughly 30% to 90% in about 2 seconds. Eruption, Geyser, Arcane wave. And it heals any allies nearby at the same time. Also, allies can combo off it for even more burst heals if you are coordinated.

It’s a little sad that this thread is basically a bunch of people reporting themselves. I think about 70% of the names given violate the naming policy.

That said, I really like puns that could be mistaken for a real name. A necro named Moira Bidley, for example (you guys can have that one, I named my necro something else)

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-naming-policy/
We do not permit names that:

Have offensive racial, ethnic, or national connotations.
Include hate speech or bigoted slurs
Reference sexual acts or real life violence.
Are pornographic.
Make inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions.
Reference illegal drugs or activities.
Reference religious or historical figures.
Reference real-life people.
Reference names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials, or products.
Use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules.

The blast finishers for water (aoe heal) air (swiftness), poison (weakness- lucky asura) and fire (aoe might 3-stack) are really good. I agree that the others are a little too weak- 2 secs of frost armor is indeed pathetic. The projectile finishers are also short, burning inflicted this way only lasts a single tick.

I can see the projectile effects being balanced as they are around groups. The utility effects (armors, etc) should be buffed to 3 secs per blast. Blast finishers just aren’t common enough, even in groups, for this to end up with ridiculous stacking, plus they aren’t terribly powerful to begin with, chaos armor excepted. That one can stay at 2 because it’s more powerful.

Honestly though, whirls need a look at first. They are pretty weak, except for removing conditions.

Staff has some really incredible kiting ability. Earth has an immobilize and a cripple; Air has a stun, swiftness, and lighting combo field; Fire has a backwards evade and fire combo field (combine with Earth 5 for good damage to go with your kite); and water has an ice combo field and aoe chill. Combine with Arcane skills for finishers and you can become one really slippery target.

I love my staff ele- I can combo all day long to effectively double the amount of effects I have access to. However, it’s a real cramp when Earth is on CD. Considering staff’s already low survivability, I think that it’s justified to have another finisher in another attunement to help the playstyle work more smoothly. I hate setting up an epic combo with consummate skill (Yay for the most complicated class! woo! I loves it) and then have to wait autoattacking for another 10 seconds. Just one more finisher would do the job.

Possibilities:
Burning Retreat becomes a leap.
Gust becomes a whirl (and pbaoe knockback, instead of shockwave lite)
Ice Spike becomes a blast (OP, with it’s short CD and 3 fields in water; not my choice)

Gust becoming a whirl is my favorite… since fire, earth and water are already heavily used in our combos, putting a finisher in Air would be ideal. Whirl finisher’s arent that powerful offensively either, so it would be most useful for support by removing conditions with an allies light field. Fits in with the staff theme perfectly.

Re: Eruption, the delay is required to combo off of it. It could stand to be slightly faster (.5 second or so), but too much and it won’t be able to self-combo anymore.

The blur is because of the type of AA used- FXAA is a post-process effect applied to the entire screen at once. This makes it much less hardware-intensive, but gives the blur effect.

Disable your in-game AA, then open your video driver. For ATI it’ll be called Catalyst Control Center. I dunno what Nvidia’s is called. Then you want to go down to 3D Application Setttings, uncheck the “use application settings” box, and set to your hearts delight. I recommend Multi-Sample, Edge-detect for most systems (your mileage may vary). Before closing the CCC, make sure you save an application profile so it automatically uses those settings every time you start Guild Wars.

A2

WASD, E,F,R utilies, G elite, V healing. Shift+E,F,R,G attunements. Same setup I use for all classes.

I have not problem changing attunements quickly to make combos out of multiple elements. Since the combos are where the classes power is at, I use staff since it has the most combo options. Earth 2/Fire 2 is a favorite, while Earth 2/Water3/Arcane Wave drops a huge amount of aoe burst healing.

Downed is weak, and I really wish there was a staff finisher other then Earth, but otherwise the class own pretty hard.

As for how it would work, that’s easy: as late as BWE 2 or 3 (I forget now) the fast-casting AOE option would cast your AOE centered on the current target, instead of at the mouse cursor like it does now. It’s already coded, they just have to assign it to grenades 1.

The question is whether that would be a good design or not. IMO it would, since grenades are used as a primary attack.

It’s a tooltip fail. Rapid-strike abilities that show 300 dmg (8x) or something, mean that it’s 300 divided over 8 strikes. It’s very confusing until you realise that the tooltips are bunk.

Reading through the thread it seems there’s two basic categories of ideas. First, from those who think the class needs an overhaul. These people seem to be either GW1 mesmer players, or people that have looked at the class and don’t like it’s self-contradicting class mechanic.

The second is people who think it’s fine, and want minor tweaks to various skills. To this second group I say: the Mesmer is not supposed to be a pet class. Most of the suggestions reveal that this is, in fact, a pet class- make shatter affect clones only, fix phantasm AI, make them last until killed, etc. These ideas are just variations of pet management, meant to make mesmer pets more reliable and stay around longer. Yes, the current phantasm/pet reliant class works well enough. If you’re fine with that and enjoy pets, marvelous. There’s already the ranger and necro for you. But the mesmer has been (in GW1) and was intended to be (in GW2. Look up the old reveal info) something unique. Currently it’s not. This is the reason for the schizophrenic class mechanic in the first place- it was not designed around being a pet class. This is why illusions vanish when the target dies; it’s why shatter seems pointless when your phatasms are doing all the work; it’s why clones don’t do damage, it’s why the mesmer struggle to keep phantasms (and thus DPS) up in long fights. It’s all because they were never intended to function that way. You’re not supposed to miss your illusions after they shatter; they should be tools to be sacrificed. That there’s even a question of whether to shatter or not shows how far from the design the current class is.

Here are some of my brainstorms for the living hex idea-yes they were in the other thread but buried in a huge wall of text so here they are by themselves. These are mostly based on Gw1 mesmer gameplay, and trying to adapt it to Gw2 mechanics. Take them as examples of how the living hex idea could work, they’re not intended to match up to any particular skill on live. Also, I think phantasms would need a duration or some of these would be OP.

1: The phantasm follows in melee range of the target, doing small but noticeable amounts of damage. If the target stops moving, the phantasm does a knockdown and shatters.
1a: Reverse of #1
2: The phantasm follows the target, doing nothing but generating a moving combo field, probably ethereal. Blast-finisher in own field when killed by an enemy.
3: The phantasm follows the target at range, dealing small amounts of damage. If the target applies a boon, cures a condition or heal to an ally, the phantasm hits it with a strong damage burst.
4: Like #3, but burst when the target damages a foe.
4a: Instead of damage, applies vulnerability stacks until triggered, killed or shattered, forcing the target deal with the phantasm quickly.
5. The phantasmal warden is actually pretty good already. Can be dealt with by melee, strong deterrent to ranged. Good balance.
6. The phantasm stays near the Mesmer, dealing damage to any attackers in melee range. Applies Distortion to the mesmer when killed by an enemy.
7. The phantasm stays in the target area, granting boons and removing conditions from allies. Creates an AOE heal and/or light combo field when killed by an enemy.

These are all designed to force the enemy to make a choice- deal with the phantasm, and eat one kind of pain, or ignore it and eat another kind. This is what the mesmer should be about. The amount of team synergy, both for the mesmer and for it’s target defensively (get a ranged to peel and kill the phantasm so you don’t take the heavier hit, for ex) would be impressive.

Shatter may have it’s issues, but the core issue is that phantasms are primary damage dealers when they need to be hexes. The class can’t be balanced properly unless that’s fixed, or it will remain a schizophrenic pet class.

Narmix.4862:

I agree 100%. Maybe I’ll start playing necromancer to get that feeling of GW1 mesmer the closest way I can.

Thanks. It doesn’t have the punishment mechanic, but spreading conditions (weakness, chill, plus the DPS ones) and corrupting boons at the right moment makes a decent parallel to an illusion mes, at least as far as Gw2 allows currently.

The problem is the core game mechanics changed so much that the way the original mesmer functioned can’t work. In it’s place they came up with the “living hex” idea; good in theory, but I think they just ran out of time to develop. All illusions are is short-term pets now. That’s why shatter and phantasms are contradictory; phantasms were changed from the design intent. Which I guess makes the OP right in a way.

I feel your pain. Gw1 mesmer here, and I’m playing a conditionmancer because it’s closer to the original mes.

Gw2 mes is just a minion bombing DPS class. It feels to me like Anet got down to the wire, and shipped the class to release in the most functional form they could get in time. What they ended up with is not mesmer-ey, and not what was promised at the class reveal either. I made a longer post on the “IDEAS” thread a couple posts down, but here’s the basic problems imo:

#1, there is no true control in Gw2. They streamlined everything into basic conditions as part of their design intent, and specificity has been the cost for it. Think about it; the only punishment type ability (mesmer’s trademark, to force the hard decisions OP mentioned) is confusion, and it affects every action equally. There’s no control, or forcing hard decisions there, it’s just another DPS condition.

Here’s the bottom line: control should be something that compels the target to act. Disruption (daze, knockdown, confuse somewhat also) is reactive; control should be active. Force the bad guy to make a choice. Your ability to predict that choice is what makes it controlling.

#2: Far too many things are schlepped off to the illusions, phantasms in particular. Mesmer is just a wonky pet class now, the Gw1 uniqueness and brilliance is gone. Clones need to be brief distractions that are sacrificed for momentary gain, and phantasms need to apply very specific effects to the target. They need to be the “living hex” that they were originally designed to be. As an AI entity, this could actually be impressive, since they could be made to respond to certain types of actions by the target, taking the idea of punishment mechanics to a new level.

I just wish that all the combos weren’t so dependent on the bomb kit. I prefer to stay in the backline.

Engineer is a winner for asura, especially with the golem racial elites. Necro is another choice, it really gives a sense of rampant genius-megalomaniac to command an army of minions that are each twice your size.

It definately needs tweaked. My engineer wields pistols that are smaller then her hands.

The cultural Heavy and Light are pretty aweseome (although I’d feel a little funning running around looking like Zojja), but I’m dissapointed in the medium. The first tier is almost the best, with it’s really awesome zigzag pattern, but the color zones are terrible to show it well. My engineer is a sad yoda

IMO the entire class needs a basic rework. What we have is not what was promised (would appeal to GW1 Mesmer players, phantasms as Living Hexes, etc). Honestly, the GW2 Mesmer feels more like a minion-bomber Necro then the GW1 Mes. Since it’s already released, and thousands of people are vested in the class as it stands, I don’t think we’ll ever see this. I’ll go ahead and list why it doesn’t click for this old mesmer player though:

1. GW2’s “Control” mechanics are, universally, not so much controlling as they are disrupting. There’s lots of ways to prevent your opponent from acting- daze, knockdown, etc. There’s no way to compel your opponent to act. Backfire, the classic GW1 example, forced a player to stop casting spells, eat the damage, act to remove the hex, or rely on teammates to remove the hex, or use non-spell abilities until it wore off. Because it had a narrow focus of effect, it had a narrow response. Predicting and exploiting that response is what made the Mesmer class.

Confusion, by comparison, is not only very short (so there’s little incentive to act against it rather then waiting it out), but affects all actions. Period. Even the autoattack. Ultimately, this makes it little more then another DPS condition.

2. The Mesmer relies far to much on NPC entities for it’s damage. Shatter or phantasms aside, they both require shifting much of your gameplay off to an NPC. One in order to sacrifice like a living combo point, the other as a traditional DPS pet. This makes the Mesmer a pet class, although admittedly a unique one. This is where the living hex idea fits in- as promised, our play would not have centered on our pets, but on using their effects to manipulate or foe while we set up for the killing combo. That’s not what they are now.

Both of these issues can be addressed by revisiting phantasms. A return to the at-reveal concept of phant’s as living hexes could return the mesmer to a manipulative gameplay style with minimal fuss. Damage needs to be shifted back to the PC; Phantasms need to be more varied and given a narrowly targeted effected (some random examples: a phantasm with a mobile ethereal combo field; A phantasm that strikes the target only when they damage a foe; another that punishes healing; a phantasm that knocks down immobile foes; hopefully you get the idea).

Lastly, shatter needs to be more precise. Right now it’s dependent on clone positioning, which depends on NPC AI. Again, feels like a pet class here. I admit I have no good ideas on this one. Perhaps make shattering specific to clones only so it doesn’t interfere with phantasms, perhaps have clones apply a stacking condition that is consumed for effect; neither of those sounds like a solution to me but it’s an idea I guess.

tl;dr
RIP, Gw1 Mesmer. We miss you. Anet, please bring them back.

Same.

Started right after the most recent patch, 9/14 I think? Happens in all PS missions, all races, all NPCs, and exactly once with the PC. Also saw it in Caduceus Manor story mode scenes. The gaps will not be in the same places even if you run the same mission again.

Also, have sometimes seen the voices say the wrong thing, or be the wrong character. This was happening before the patch, and seemed to only affect Charr Ash Legion and Tybalt that I noticed so far.

It’s bad enough they included fear in the game at all. Get them to nerf the other classes, cause it sure as heck doesn’t need to be buffed. I’d rather it was removed and replaced with another condition entirely imo.

It’s very short, but keep in mind it’s in the same tree as +duration. With 30 in the tree, and the right gear, it adds up to about 2 extra bleed stacks overall. Not bad for a 5 pt talent imo.

It’s not the only DD weapon; it is the only one with any range.

I think a good fix is to have life force on the 3rd chain hit like the dagger does. Combined with #2, and the might-life blast trait, this would make it a great synergy weapon with Death Shroud, giving a good power based necro spec. Then the low damage would be offset by the increased DS uptime, and you wouldn’t be losing DPS in DS because you’re not relying on conditions.

Mesmer was designed as the manipulator class, and it’s ended up as just another (slightly harder to use) burst class. If you want long range pressure and manipulation of your foe, Necro is the best bet atm. I’ve got one going now and I’m stunned at how similar a conditionmancer is to the old domination mesmer of GW1.

A good write-up, and similar to my own thoughts after first trying the mesmer in BWE 2. As a GW1 mesmer player, the GW2 version is more like a death nova MM necro was. There’s no sense of manipulation, punishment style skills are gone (except for confusion, which is incredibly short and affects all actions equally- closer to the old Blackout then Backfire, for example), and resource denial is gone. It’s just not my class anymore.

Shatter is definately broken, and it’s desperate hobbling to stop it from being OP is making it into a mechanical nightmare. Sure it can still work, but in spite of all the skills and traits, there’s really only two core builds: phantasm and shatter.

Here’s some brain farts to, uh, chew on:
1. Separate the shatters. Instead of destroying all 3 illusions every time for a predictable effect, allow the player to shatter different illusion slots at will. Create a different effect depending on what illusion was shattered. A Clone does DD, Melee phantasm does Daze, or something like that.
2. Remove confusion, or at least remove it as a primary mesmer ability. Place it’s job onto the phantasms, as a “living hex” as originally planned. Have the various utility Phantasms create fields that punish spellcasts, or melee attacks, or reflect, or cause targets to take damage when they strike a foe, or cause targets to take damage when they heal an ally, etc. This is what a mesmer has always been about.
2a. While doing that, move most of the damage from phantasms back to the player. Mesmers should not be minion masters. That’s what the Necro is for.
3. Evaluate all clone generating abilities. Clones should be going up, and dying/shattering left and right. We’re supposed to rely on misdirection and confusion (the real kind, not the condition) to control our foe. Clones should go up quick, go down fast, and repeat often. Having so many of the clone skills on 15-45 second cooldowns makes this impossible.
4. Create clone synergy abilities, like the Necro has for it’s minions. When a clone is up, click the skill again for an effect. Swap from the sword MH #3 skill is a good example. We need more of those. If these are done right, clones really will be mind-bending.

So basically… redesign 80% of the class’s abilities. Yeah, not gonna happen. I miss my GW1 Mesmer. May she rest in piece.

Here’s what I’ve picked up from my experience, soloing, events, etc.

Game-mechanics wise, bleed doesn’t behave as a stack. Each stack is actually a single, individual bleed effect.
-Each bleed effect (1 stack) runs on it’s own timer. A 2s bleed will wear off after 2s, no matter when it was applied or what was stacked on top of it.
-Each has it’s own owner, meaning damage credit is given to whoever applied. If a mob has 25 stacks, and only 3 of them are yours, you will see 3 ticks of bleeding damage on the mob. The rest of the stacks go to whoever put them there. This really sucks in events.
-If the target is bleed-capped, it seems to be simply first-come-first-served as to who’s bleed goes on once one wears off. It’s very disheartening to be fighting a boss, and seeing only 1 tick per second because only one of my bleeds is sticking through the cap.

Essentially, if you see a stack of 25 bleeds, your are seeing 25 different bleed effects, not one giant effect. The moral is, don’t go pure condition damage for dungeons/events.

If you’re condition specced, the trident 1-spam kills everything pretty quick. Since it’s AOE, combine with epidemic to double-stack bleeds on the rest of the group and they drop in a hurry.

Sad that only one spec is any good though.

Not sure of the answer, but I had an idea to test this using falling damage. When you fall in DS it eats through your life force, then HP. It seems to roughly double the distance I can jump. If you find a good spot to test in, you could tell exactly how much HP DS is giving you. I’m too lazy to have done it though.

For balance reasons, all the PC races have identical hit-box sizes. That’s why you can squeeze under things that are only as tall as your shoulders. The problem is the camera perspective, and when you do that kind of squeezing the camera things it’s backed into a wall. ANET needs to move the camera focus to about the waste level to mitigate it imo.

The physiques went through a lot of iteration, why I can’t say. The “large” body type that some NPCs have was available for PC’s in BWE 2 (and the lower-left “skinny” option was nonexistant), and in BWE 3 the top right physique (very slightly buffer then the default) was the beefiest option period. Personally I don’t like the skinny option, makes me look like nothing more then a really tall human, but overall I think they’ve found a decent middle ground between the various things they had been trying.