Guild Wars 2

Fay.2357:

It was stated by Robert Gee that for some reason the range indication for portal would require backend changes to the code base and isn’t something that they could just do with scripting. The implied statement there was that it won’t ever happen…which is dumb, but yeah.

Yeah, it was during this sweet time where there was communication between devs and us. That is pretty much the only thing which makes me look forward to the next expansion :p

Allow me to shamelessly advertise my new rework thread.

It adresses the defenses of necromancer mostly with a rework of the spectral skills
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/My-Necromancer-rework/first

Tim.6450:

last gasp + spectral were lost as stun breaker. That’s two. Also you expect to compensate for that with forcing every necro to run double spectrals? Seems like a huge nerf.

As I said, since it is a 2s invuln, you don’t really need the stunbreak part from a defensive standpoint (the only advantage of a stunbreak would be the ability to attack/move immediately). And yes, you may end up with 2 spectral on your bars, the same way a guardian has to choose between running 1 meditation and 3 traps or 3 meditations and 1 trap.

Blood thirst: how well does lithany of wrath do for guardians? pretty bad. The quickness and stability (one stack every 6 sec lol) will help but you also lose life force.

Very valid concern. I would say that in the worst case since it is an additional heal, it does not overly matter even if it is not used. Because of the quickness, this is a nice PvE heal. PvE is a place where you typically do a lot of damage, so you will get a good return + the quickness means it is a free offensive boost. Will this heal be good in PvP? Maybe not. The advantage compare to guardian though is we have the death shroud. So we can heal, go to shroud and damage while healing. But even if this skill is used mostly in one game mode, that is already valid.

Epidemic: what about the debilitating conditions? Also radius reduction. The final thing is that with the old epidemic you reapplied those conditions so longer conditions stick longer which you certainly apply. In open world PvE this is very important because a target is most likely to die when it is in good epidemic range. For the final thing is you miss is that old epidemic triggers your own traits like deathly chill. On top of all this you lose life force.

So epidemic was a tough one. There are apparently concerns with its current form to the point that people fear a nerf. The version I suggested is probably such a nerf. My point was to make it more reasonable. Some features of the current version makes it OP (full copy of 25 stacks of everything is super OP!) and at the same time very UP (essentially unusable in PvP, not so great for bleeds in PvE, etc..). I tried to make a more balanceable version. Maybe it needs more tuning, but I believe this is mechanically a better start.

blood is power: 80% bleed loss and you lost the aoe damage increase from might which is kinda bad considering you are a condi necro aoe is your thing.

Now take blood is power and epidemic. What happens in a world boss event? Well the effects will not stack so that’s a waste.

You are not necessarily a condi necro. The problem with might is that it is already provided by others, and much better might (more and longer stacks). So necro is not “necessary” for its might. This 10% buff would be unique, and so you actually need a necro for it. For world boss, the effect won’t stack, but the might does not stack either passed 25, so… nothing new here.
Finally, you may be right that it needs to be AOE instead of single-target. After all, the other profession’s buffs apply to all of you regardless of the number of targets. So I have nothing against making blood is power affect 5 targets.

Demonic grasp: you litterally removed 20% life force from the skill to maybe hit multiple enemies. You can’t even targe itt so you can’t pull the unsespecting fool from a cliff/wall anymore.

Who said you cannot target it? And have you seen the significant cooldown reduction?

And in general how are you going to maintain the life force for these effects? You will drain yourself quite fast.

Well you can “easily” maintain blood is power for example in PvE, and potentially maintain both blood is power and epidemic if you build for life force generation. May I mention that currently in instanced PvE, life force is essentially not used? Also the trait will give you perma 250 ferocity if you maintain those 2. That is pretty strong. (PS: I realize that the life force cost reduction and ferocity gain on life force used play against each other which is bad… )

Overall, I understand your comments, they are fully justified. But you seem to only focus on what is lost and never what is gained. I built this as a compromise, so you lose and gain, but if you look only at half the picture, this will be a pretty grim picture!

Zero.3871:

It seems your adjustments are for PvE. Most problems of Nec is his slow movement and not enough stability in pvp and wvw. i dont see here enough speed and stability in your changes.

I tried to take into account all game modes. Stability is technically not a requirement, what matters is having good stunbreaks and no extra long cast time (especially on the heals). And for PvP, I feel that what we really miss is ability to deal with being focused. Spectral walk allow to get out of trouble, not as good as a blink but still decent, and spectral armor is a 2s invulnerability (+ 2s worth of shroud filling if they continue damage). Spectral skills are meant as the bulk of the change to survivability in PvP.

Then speed as such is not a necromancer problem, it is more vertical mobility which we are missing (except Wurm), and I did not improve that indeed.

your spectral walk is nearly what i wish for it (much superspeed would terminate many problems of nec and would really good work with mechanics of nec), but for example spectral armor isnt really good. necro DONT need invulnerabilities in this way you designed it.

Why do you say that necro don’t need invulnerabilities? I really disagree with that. I think that is THE thing they need the most. Shroud is a great defense against 1 enemy, but terribly weak against 5. Invulnerabilities (or channelled blocks) are great defense against multiple enemies. This is what makes revenant such a potent class for damage in PvP: they can evade + block a lot despite a squishy amulet.

next is, your staff ist designed as an condi DMG weapon. staff atm is not a dmg weapon, it is a tactical weapon . you should try to let weapon mechanics how they are. the problem is, if you designed staff as dmg weapon you have to choose wether power or condi, some players like me would hate a condi staff ^^. because i would loose my max range weapon in my power build. than power nec only has maximum of 900 range attacks…thats not enough.

I designed staff as hybrid damage (like it currently is) and kept its tactical aspect. I just increased the (hybrid) damage output since we have otherwise no decent 1200 range damage, and certainly no other ranged AOE. So I don’t understand your complaint.

Tim.6450:

You made last gasp exclusive with life froce marks also i’m not sure you will get that much out of spectral armor because people will stop to attack. Also since marks aren’t preplaceable anymore you lose the life force of those popping.

Well this in still because considering necromancer is currently working, I don’t want to just buff it. So Since spectral skills have now active/scalable defense, you need to sacrifice passive non-scalable defenses. You seem to seriously underestimate the strength of spectral skills and in particular armor in its current form. Currently, when in a team fight, you can get CC-chained and die in a few seconds to focus fire. This is the moment where all other classes would survive by using their invulnerability/block/evade or blink out, but necro will just eat everything. Spectral walk has a stunbreak + resistance, so you get out of all forms of CC (hard and soft). Altneratively, spectral armor allows you to avoid all the incoming damage for 2s, and fill your life force with 2s worth of burst. Yes, good players will stop attacking, but you will still get a lot (would you say revenant heal does not work?) because it takes time to realize and stop attacking.

Also, marks are pre-placeable. You will just have 2 short CD giving more life force instead of 4 varying cooldowns giving less. The new Soul Marks is NOT a nerf, it is just a way to make staff less ubiquitous in PvP because now ALL weapons work with it.

That’s the idea. Mantra of Distraction works too. Unlikely to happen though.

The most reliable you can get is during a rez, assuming nobody has stability (lol).

Tim.6450:

-let’s see boon corrupt to rip.

-less life force.

-corruptions even less usefull, especially in mass events. Almost unusable see point above.

-death perception nerfed.

- less stun breaks.

- nerfed condition transfer.

-…

Is this some kind of hidden nerf necro wish list? especially condi necro which barely hangs on viability due to boon corrupt.

If you look at this and see a nerf, this is weird.

First some statements are simply not true:

• Less life-force how? I removed life force on spectral skills, except Spectral armor which has now more (and is the only one usually used), and you have less marks on Staff but more on other weapons and the trait gives more LF per mark.
• Less stun breaks: I believe only one less (spectral armor) though since it gives you damage immunity for 2s, that is not really a nerf is it? And there is significantly reduced cooldown on spectral walk. So stunbreaks were clearly buffed overall.
• nerfed condition transfer: as far as I can see, the only condition transfer I removed is the one on staff. The reason is that I wanted to not just defend yourself but also help allies and condi transfer from all allies to all enemies is weird (what if there are more or less enemies than allies?). And since I increased condition application on the staff, the condi pressure is clearly compensated.

Then there is one I don’t understand:

• Corruption less useful: can you be more specific? What in your eyes makes them less useful? I tried to do exactly the opposite.

Finally:

• boon corrupt and death perception nerfed: yes. But this comes naturally because I otherwise increased defenses and damage. For example, currently boon corrupt is what is keeping the necromancer viable in many game modes. Basically, it is an absolutely OP feature (especially corrupt on scepter AA, cmon!) which makes up for the absolutely underpowered rest of the necromancer. So since I buffed (I believe) many things in the rest of necromancer, I need to nerf (as in, make it not OP) boon corrupt. This means the meta necromancer is neither stronger nor weaker, but non-meta builds are more viable.

Traits
I like to have a more clear focus in trait lines. Spite should be the damage line, curses the condi, Death Magic the defense, Blood Magic the support and Soul Reaping the life-force/shroud line. It is currently the case only to some extent, with many defensive traits in offensive lines, conditions in damage lines, etc… Many of the changes are just trait placement, though some traits are actually new/reworked.

Weapons

Most of the changes for the weapons are the staff, focus and some marks on every main-hand.

Shroud
While Reaper’s shroud works great, Death Shroud really does not. Here are a few suggestions:

• faster attack speed for “Life Blast”. Cast time should be 0.5s, on par with Reaper Shroud, to get maximum benefits from traits
• Dark Path: reduced cooldown and ground targeted with short evade. The animation would transform you in a “ghostly” figure, and all enemies crossed would be chilled (very thematically fitting)
• Life transfer reduced cooldown and slightly faster.

Utilities
The skill tooltips are sown in the images. I did not do any change for Minions skills.

Hi all

I spent some time trying to rework necromancer. While necromancer is currently viable/meta in all game mode, I feel like it suffers from low build diversity (admittedly all classes do) and I expect these changes would fix that as well as make the necromancer a more interesting and enjoyable class to play overall.

WARNING: wall of text incoming. However, I structured it the best I could, so you get most of the ideas by just reading « Motivation » and « Changes summary ».

I also invite the interested reader to my previously suggested elite specialization for necromancer: the warlock

No, it does not work on portal. But there is already an established UI for “out of range” for all skills, so why not use this one.

Or use the already existing “out of range” red bar below the skill.

The thing is a-net already said that this is difficult because of some spaghetti coding. I find it hard to believe considering that they can compute our distance to a point on the mini-map and that they can kitten if the portal is valid when cast… But well, at least they know we want it.

Yes, I think to be constructive, we need to know why no berserker. Is it because you want more survivability? Because berserker is expensive? Because you don’t like the “berserker meta”?

Inspiration adept trait suggestion: “bountiful aura” increase boon duration by 15% on nearby allies (similar to other traits which increase stats like “Strength in Numbers”, “Spotter”, “Assassin’s Presence”, etc…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Full-phantasm-rework/first#post6015955

High damage and mesmer don’t really go hand in hand….
Are you looking for solo/open-world or instanced content (dungeons/fractals/raids). For group content, you are expected to play a chronomancer and play support (alacrity/quickness). Any decently serious group is likely to refuse you if you play core mesmer and try to focus on damage instead of support.

For PvP, again as a core mesmer life is tough. But as a chronomancer, if by “control” you mean CC (aka interrupt build) you can do that. Most chronomancer do play condi though since this is the only way to do some sort of damage and reward shatter-spam which is also your source of sustain (using Inspiration).

Lahmia.2193:

The thing is with marks is that, unlike guardian, an entire specialization isn’t dedicated to them, so they do not need to be on every weapon like symbols are.
As for staff, it doesn’t need changing. If you think it does, you obviously don’t play WvW Also not every weapon needs to be amazing in every gamemode.

If you do not think any change is needed, this is your right!
The thing with marks was just a suggestion.

Also, I do play WvW and PvP and always bring a staff. I know staff is very useful, though I would argue that staff in big WvW group fights is not amazing, just the best we have and our pressure really comes from other skills (well, shroud etc…) and mostly our ability to strip/corrupt boons. But part of what makes staff so useful in my mind (in PvP mostly) is that it gives life force thanks to the trait (and the unblockable means unblockable CC), and if this could be spread out to other weapons, this may make other weapons more attractive and allow me to leave my staff from time to time.

Finally, not every weapon needs to be amazing in every game mode, but I feel like our off-hand are usually not that great overall.

… what would you do?

I am currently writing a long redesign of necro, and I would like to know what you would change in the weapons specifically if you were given full freedom (meaning it does not have to be any way similar to what the weapon currently does).

For example:

• Would you put back one mark on each weapon set (sort of how it was during betas) and create new staff skills? This would spread out the benefits from the mark traits (PvP and WvW especially)
• Would you add support elements to some skills?
• Would you redesign one of our off-hand to a more defensive weapon and how?
• would you change one off-hand to a more DPS/burst?

Let your imagination wander freely!

thunderfall.8095:

The Prophet Mesmer ES Idea

While I like the overall theme, by chaining blurred frenzy, F4, and your 2 (non-elite) meditation which grant distorsion, you would reach 50% distorsion/evade uptime. I did not include the cooldown reduction from Illusions, sword traits and meditation traits, and on top of that you can also dodge.

I think you have slightly overturned the distorsion here :p

Malediktus.3740:

Server merges instead of linkings are the solution.
Server communities can never establish if people get rotated in and out every 1 or 2 months.

+1
Server linking should be a temporary fix, to reduce the large population imbalances there were. Once the gap is reduced, we need to settle the linking (aka merge) and let the rest unfold on its own.

Being in one of the smallest servers, I need to be given time to fit in the new community, otherwise I count for nothing, you can just delete my server altogether.

Dralor.3701:

The elite specs are fine, the league system is just a complete failure.

Elite specs are fine? So does this mean core specs are not? Because no one can deny there is a huge gap.

Now, one could debate about which is better (improving core to match elite, or nerfing elite to match core). But while I think core suffers from many issues that should be fixed, effectively buffing it, I think there are mechanics on the elite spec that are just absurd and make the game less fun. To summarize: too much AOE, too much CC, too much full healing in 2s, boon farting, etc…

I keep seeing over and over people complaining about Helseth’s… let’s say unique style.

The thing is, he is the most popular gw2 streamer, and it is not “despite” his attitude but “thanks to” his attitude. I would think this is clear for most people, but apparently not: he is a showman. He stands out not only because he’s a good player but because he has a very distinct style. It serves him, and to some weird extent it also serves the gw2 community.

So just enjoy the humour and assume that he may not be as much of a jerk in reality.

all teleports do trigger them. And yes, this is frustrating. Teleport should be for example a good way to leave the trap area, but right now you do it at your own risks!

Ross Biddle.2367:

Given the power creep over the years, I’m just going to throw out what I presume the next Elite spec will look like, in terms of power/ability if not artistic design/aesthetic.

Please vote for me!

Ahhh… dear Ross… you always have your own spin on mesmer contests, don’t you?

for memory, here is “shatter me” from Ross… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySX3QzaIg1c&feature=youtu.be

Hey all

The next expansion is coming soon™, with it, there is a great chance that new elite specialization will be coming.

It is time for us to give our best suggestions on what the next mesmer elite spec should be. And why not make it a contest?!

So you all have up to the 23rd of October to suggest an elite specialization. It should have a name, a concept, a playstyle and a reason why it complements/fixes the issues of core mesmer. You should also give a list of possible skills/traits. Numbers don’t overly matter, but are useful to give an idea. As any elite specialization, it needs to work with core mesmer skills and traits and if possible have synergies with them!

The best design will be chosen by popular vote between the 23rd and 6th of november and will be awarded with 20 gold + potential donations (given to me) .

glhf

edit: current donation: 30 gold, so total prize is 50 gold
thanks Pyro

edit: The contest is CLOSED, but the voting is on!
Here are the different contestants:

1. Zintrothen’s Siren
2. SaltAndLight’s Enchanter
3. thunderfall’s Prophet
4. Ghotistyx’s Magician
5. Keitaro Dragonheart’s Trickster
6. Menaka’s Nightmare
7. DuckDuckBOOM’s Wastrel’s Reaver
8. messiah’s deceptive mind
9. Xstein’s Dementalist
10. IonoI’s Twins
11. OriOri’s Mirage
12. Silverkey’s Enchanter
13. Arkanthor’s Virtuoso

Here is the poll
http://www.strawpoll.me/11519530

For those of you who submitted an elite spec, please do not vote for your own idea.

edit: The voting is, CLOSED and the winner is Zintrothen’s Siren

You can play a condi chrono with more punch using dueling instead of inspiration. But your sustain will greatly decreased. In particular, inspiration is our most reliable source of condi cleanse.

Xstein.2187:

Well that is . . . . somewhat depressing. However, I of course agree with you. The problem is most of our core traits deal with illusions or shatters. The other problem is that because of phantasms, our main hand weapon can only be buffed so much. On the other hand, you don’t think this would be viable at all in pvp over shatters? phantasmal swordsman, phantasmal axeman, signet of the ether—> axeman (or perhaps the new axe breaks away from tradition and has two different phantasm summoning skills instead on a clone and phantasms one), elite spec mechanic, then boom, you have six high damage phantasms up. Even though they are AI, that has to be pretty hard to avoid if they are attacking at different times. Of course, based on your remarks in mesmer rework, I could see why Anet would avoid doing this. I could only imagine PU problems

Sorry if I sounded harsh, it was not meant to be. In PvP, it would at best become a new burst, but keeping phantasms too long will be difficult, so it does not give sustained damage which is what I would want in PvP.
In large WvW fights/GvG, phantasms are just a no go.

Since they will be up to 5-6 phantasms, we go pass the 5-target limits of most AOE, so in a sense they will probably survive better. But will also generate a lot of complaints of passive gameplay, like old PU as you mentioned.

Currently, the next elite spec I would design would be a “mobile support” with shouts/chants. This would also fix a current weakness of mesmer (we only have local AOE support with wells and glamours, we need more mobility) and the minstrel/bard idea many suggested could be a good theme.

In PvP, playing shatter mesmer + burst thief is a very fun combo to play together. You can set up synchronized burst for deadly effects.

On the other hand, you may have more success playing on the contrary a team-fight oriented spec (rev/guardian/ele/necro etc…) because having 2 roamers in the current meta means you will get assassinated in team fights.

A good compromise is probably a power rev since it can both be a great roamer and a great team fighter.

For open-world PvE, anything works just fine really. If your fiancé goes for chronomancer, he/she can bring alacrity/quickness support (since chronomancer/mesmer is really a bad PvE choice if not for the support) so any good DPSer would have good synergy (DPS ele for example).

Finally if you want to go for group PvE content, especially raid, it will mostly depend on what the other team mates bring.

Hope it helps… somewhat

The problem is that what you suggest does not fix all of our DPS problem. We lack DPS in every aspect of the game, but your suggestion only fixes PvE.

And on top of that, it means you will now go from half of our DPS coming from phantasms to 2/3 of our DPS coming from phantasms. Essentially, we can put our phantasm and then just afk.

Putting more DPS on AI is sadly the wrong way to go.

I have myself been thinking a lot about a way for elite spec to allow us to have more sustained damage. And I never found a satisfactory answer which works with core mesmer traits and skills.

I really think there is absolutely no GOOD way to fix that without fixing it at the core mesmer level (for example removing damage from phantasms altogether). The only ways will be band-aid fix which will at best improve one specific area (PvE in your case).

R O C.6574:

You really can’t compare classes this way. It’s a trade off. Necro has some of the highest ranged damage. If you want to compare, you need to take all mechanics into account to get a comprehensive view. Classes have different strengths and weaknesses and if your play style needs more healing maybe you should consider using a different class…

My point was not “necro is weak compared to those classes”. I understand that necro still has a place thanks to the pretty insane condi pressure. I would argue PvP currently is quite well balanced.

I am just saying, some mechanics, while balanced with other things, need revising because they reduce the quality of the game.

For example, a necro has low sustain and no active defenses. In the grand scheme of things, this is “balanced” by its high damage and very high HP pool (inc. shroud). In the same way, ranger has a great sustain, but becomes less effective in bigger fights because its main damage burst is mostly single target and he has little stability and gets more easily bursted down in a larger fight.

But all of this forces classes in specific roles. Druid is now a 1v1 or skirmish class, and cannot really take other roles. Necro has so much condi pressure it removes on its own half or more of the otherwise viable builds simply because they lack condi cleanse.

I think to fix build diversity, some of the mechanics need to be fixed even if they currently appear “balanced” in the 1-build-per-class-meta.

While to a large extent, we are not in a bunker meta anymore, I think there is still a problem with sustain in this game, especially for a few classes.

And I believe one of the main factor is the fact that many classes have too much reset potential: they can heal themselves from 0 to 100% HP very fast. This means that if you can’t damage them enough before their CD come back, you will have to restart from scratch. On top of that, many of those large heals have very short cast time which makes them very hard to interrupt.

A few noteworthy examples:

• Druid: celestial avatar is a full heal on a 10s CD. Yes, it actually takes a bit longer to generate the astral force, but in practice this is still very much OP.
• Dragonhunter: Purification trap is stupidly OP. 30s CD and 1/2s cast time for a 8600 heal (without healing power) and 1960 extra from Monk’s focus/Smiter’s boon. This is more than 10k heal on a class which has 11k HP base… Oh and I forgot it brings extra regen.
• Herald: while this has (in principle) counterplay Facet of Light allow for a 100% heal on a 30s CD… and this is only one of 2 heals.
• Tempest: for the elementalist, it is just the insane number of (AOE) heals available which make the reset insane, not one specific.

One non-offender for comparison:

• Necromancer/Reaper: Signet of vampirism = 6k heal at best (need hitting target) on 35s CD and 1.25s cast time. This is only 30% of the base HP of the class. No wonder they need babysitting. A better heal sustain-wise is consume condition. If the necro is loaded with all conditions in the game (highly unlikely or he would already be dead) this gives 15k heal, which is still “only” 80% of the base health pool. In general you should expect about half of this.

So yes, druid is too tanky because it has a lot of reset potential, and he is not the only one…

Now it is pinned… but people still mostly select coliseum. Result: I have finished more coliseum achievements than capricorn ones…

I agree with many here: I find the design of the map to be very bland. I love capricorn, this is by far my favorite map in terms of design. Coliseum might be my least favorite. It is straight daylight, and mostly wooden props. Very little variety and contrast.

Then, the secondary mechanics feels useful but plain too. I had a game where we consistently won the team fights without the buffs, and consistently lost them when they had the buffs. However, it feels just like one more conquest map with secondary summons.

I think the future maps should aim at having a secondary mechanics which feels like a totally different phase of the game. For example, I would have changed spirit orb so that when the orb spawns, the capture point deactivate and everyone has to move towards the orb. Conquest is a very linear game mode, the secondary mechanics need to mess things up.

So overall, this map feels to me like “yet another standard conquest, but with below average visuals”.

Probably the same bug as this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Keep-crashing-in-Coliseum

Evan Lesh.3295:

Is this a custom arena or unranked game?
Was the game over?
What language are you using?

• Unranked
• not necessarily
• english

I think it may have to do with the size of windows. For example, at the end of the game, the result window is completely oversized (which I guess is also a bug).

Oh and I got an error message:
MathInRangeFirstLast(pos.y, -SIZE_LIMIT, SIZE_LIMIT)

Hi

I keep crashing in coliseum whenever I open the PvP menu (keybind “b” in my case). In case it matters, I have a mac client.

Someone else has similar problems?

Actually this is sort of a strategy. For example VM vs AA, there were a few occasions where all of VM was fighting all of AA but Toker had no place in this fight and everything else was uncapped. So he had to go away and full cap. But during this time, his team was destroyed because of 4v5.
This was a great strategy to take care of the thief: force a total team fight.

But I agree, the meta was very weird and almost reminded me of season 1. Huge team fight AOE kitten, instant rez, rince and repeat. The only difference (which made it very much more enjoyable): people died very very fast once outnumbered instead of a continued stalemate until the enemy respawned like in season 1.

Then we had nice regroups, portal bombs, etc etc. A lot of strategies, just no significant focus on capping.

Ithilwen.1529:

Phantasms aren’t used because they are excessively slow and unreliable. They are, more or less, just expensive clones.

As to 3 Berserkers being re-summoned instantly. First, I’m not sure 3 berserkers being summoned in the first place is realistic. Second, I think the issue was 2 successive 3 clone/phant shatters. That’s not a valid argument.

( Actually I think Robert Gee was referring to duelists being re-summoned using continuum split + signet of the Ether. This could reasonably produce 3 duelists )

Hardest hitting skills? In theory, perhaps. In practice, not true.

Removing phantasm damage would remove the last usefulness from them, clones are easier to produce and use.

The best path would be to add damage and durability and a reasonable attack speed, making Phantasms useful in practical situations.

Phantasms currently have about 60% of our sustained damage. Impressive isn’kitten And that is why we do not have any sustained damage in any game mode where they can die easily (PvP and WvW). Actually even in PvE our sustained damage is ridiculous, and that is in great part because our phantasms don’t benefit from the damage multipliers we get.

So it makes no sense to add even more damage to our phantasms. Having most of our DPS relying on AI is a bad idea period. Remove the damage from them (or at least most of it) and give them another role (for example support).

Then you can change so that they receive less damage when not targeted explicitly (like in PvE, but less reduction). This is something they will not do currently because that would promote a very passive gameplay. If the phantasms do not provide damage, then this is not passive anymore because you are in charge of doing the job.

Of course, to compensate, give all the lost DPS to our weapon skills, and we finally have sustained damage.

We can then have useful phantasms AND still do damage even if they die. That is the absolute only solution.

Some time ago I made a full suggestion on how to remove damage from phantasms and that also involved a on-cast skill so here is my list:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Full-phantasm-rework/first

• GS: cast rotating swords around target that damage all enemies near your target (but not the target itself: punishes stacking and allows to single out enemies)
• Staff: cast a ring which inflicts confusion to enemies crossing it
• sword: dash forward
• pistol: unload (+ slow which synergies well with interrupt playstyle of the weapon)
• focus: AOE damaging storm
• torch: an daze+ burn on interrupt

Congratz to Denial for their 2nd tournament in a row. Really dominating!

Ithilwen.1529:

They tried it. Courtyard really didn’t work.

To be fair the main problem with courtyard is that it requires a different set up.You cannot play the same builds as in the other maps. For example, with the meta of the time, it was an awful map for thief or mesmers. In general, all 1v1 and roamer builds won’t do that well.

If we had the choice (like currently conquest/stronghold) and build templates, the map would have worked much better.

Finally, I didn’t really enjoy the design of courtyard while I liked the game mode.

Conquest map.
Secondary mechanics: 2 Artefacts:

• Offensive: offensive stat boost + free stomp
• Defensive: defensive stat boost + free rez

Presentation video and test game displayed in gw2 twitch channel.
Discuss

I think if you look at competitive games, it is clear that rezzing is too strong, the main offender being scrapper, but traited SnR from ranger also. It is basically quickness rez 2.0 except that only 2 classes can provide it. To a large extent, this is even the main reason for the meta status of scrapper in competitive PvP.

Basically when you look at those games, it feels like 3 people rezzing (+gyro) is stronger than 4 persons cleaving which I think should not be the case. You should also take into account that a lot of CD (bursts and CC) has probably been invested to get the kill in the first place, limiting the amount that can be provided to finish the downed.

Windwalker.7421:

Just my 2 cents…

Clone Death was not working, however Phantasms definitely should have on-death traits to punish an enemy for attacking/killing and negating one of our primary forms of damage.

I mean look at Gyros for Engies, they have a pretty significant on-death trait built right in! (AoE daze and damage, and it happens even if the Engie purposely kills it himself!? How this is different from Clone Death for Mesmers? Why are we making the same “mistake” twice, and thus creating a double standard? Very odd decision, especially since Gyros are in no way as important to Engies as Phantasms are to Mesmers!)

We have have a trait to “tickle” an enemy as punishment for attacking a paper-tiger Phantasm, Retaliation! lol! Be still my beating heart! “That’ll learn’em!” HAHA!

Seriously, that trait should apply AE damage and Daze too, or at least something meaningful enough to make it worthwhile speccing into. (Or at least it should give Phantasms 100% more HPs, then at least you might apply 2-4 Retaliations before it dies, instead of 1-2.)

In my opinion, phantasms should just not have damage to begin with. They are currently easily more than half of our sustained damage, which is ridiculous considering their life expectancy. Also in general, we do not want a playstyle where we let the AI do most of the work. Phantasms should be bringing support, not damage (see suggestions in my signature).

Now since we all know this is unlikely to happen, I think a trick similar to the one done in PvE where phantasms take less damage (say only 20%) if they are not targeted directly and/or a mild HP increase could do wonders.

One of the main reasons clone death traits were removed is because they don’t make sense:

• don’t kill clones = eat the condi (staff clones AA or shatters)
• kill clones = eat the condi (on-death traits)

it was too easy to just put clones and vanish/kite while they do the job in one way or another. In a sense, clone-death traits are counterplay to counterplay, it does not make sense.

On the other hand, a boost of clone HP and a significant boost of phantasm HP only make sense.

You see that they have a lot of damage multipliers in traits or runes, while they have very few condition damage multipliers. They usually have additive condition damage boost. I would guess they simply didn’t implement this from the beginning, so the bursting multiplier is somewhat hardcoded in a clumsy way.

The stat conversion traits or gear are usually targeted to correspond to about 5-10% increase. That is similar to the amount you get from most other multipliers. Since you are comparing stats that are otherwise similar on the condi, it makes sense that you get very little differences. Actually, your conversion often only makes up for the fact that you are using 4-stats amulets which have a bit less of the main stat (1050 vs 1200).

At the end, you have about 5-10% differences in condi damage between your different setups and that translates to a bit less percentage difference (since there is a non-zero base tick) on the condition tick. Nothing surprising here.

While mistrust is only the icing, the 30 stacks of confusion the necro got from the interrupted minions (around 2 min in the vid) was… priceless.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Pro tip:
Your opinion of how boring of a trait happens to be does not actually make those skills harder to use.

Thanks for the tip but I think that my initial post was a little more constructive than just “I find this boring”. A more proper formulation would have been “I feel that master of consecrations would be more interesting to use if it had an additional effect instead of a simple number (CD/duration) improvement of each skill”.

Aeolus.3615:

Concecrations are ment to be used on allies or on front of you, not on yourself most of the cases, it is a support utility line, where u stay back and try to control the fight helping your group.

While this is an interesting tip, it does not quite address the point I was trying to make. I precisely want to use those skills as support, but I just find that they don’t bring enough (e.g. Hallowed Ground vs Stand your Ground) to make up for the fact that they require you/your group/your zerg to stand still to benefit fully from it. An improvement of the trait would partly fix that if the added benefit was interesting.

For example, I sometimes use glamour as a mesmer to benefit from the resistance and superspeed of the glamour trait, while without those benefits, I would not have gone for glamours in the first place.