Guild Wars 2

Daishi.6027:

I would presume he’s running domination

From the description, he was running chaos (stab), inspiration (heal on shatter), and chrono (shield). So he was a bunker build. End of the story.

Or maybe it’s another of those 666666 builds? You never know…

Tomiyou.3790:

Just today I fought a power shatter mesmer as d/d ele in WvW. He was using a variant of the current PvP meta build, without any condi damage. And holy kitten, I just couldn’t take him down. For real. He had sooo many clones from the chronomancer traitline, permanent condi removal and healing through inspiration. He was using sword/shield and staff, kiting ability was insane. Like wtf. How are you suppose to beat that? His shield block is still kinda op, why can chrono summon Echo of memory phantasm 2 times, both of which sometimes procced without me even hitting him (possibly evasive arcana air dodge?)
Mid fight I was trying to find a way to kill him, even tho I took him down to 20% a couple of times, he just pressed F1, F2, F3, F4 and used signet of illusions. Full health. He had near perma stab with his chaos treeline (stab on shatter), tons of boons from chaos storm and chaos armor, massive amounts of daze from chaos storm again. Sigh. Even tho we fought for 15mins straight, that had to be the most boring thing I have done in the history of my life, it legit made me want to quit Gw2 and go play Tetris.

So, how do you beat this build? Alt+F4?
Note: And no, I wasn’t using bunker ele: 2,5k armor, 2,1k power and 15k vit.

What you are describing looks like a bunker mesmer (chaos, insp, chrono). You can’t kill it, he can’t kill you… Lot of fun indeed. I don’t quite understand the point for him to run this build in WvW, this is a waste of both your time and his.

But I would say, what you are describing is not very much a mesmer/chronomancer problem. In the current state of the game, many professions can trait to be nearly unkillable 1v1, especially against an ele (eles don’t have the best burst damage). I’m pretty sure a druid, a scrapper or a rev would be as much trouble for you, especially if they decide to go for a tankier gear.

Fay.2357:

Quadox.7834:

See the problem is that a rework of the entire functionality will never ever happen, whereas Anet has proven that a change from Single Block > Continuous block can happen. The same goes for almost all your suggestions, they unrealistic at least if we look at the history of Anet’s balance. Something which i think is a problem with many “rework” threads on the mesmer forums sadly. =)

Finally somebody gets it. Every time “yet another massive and complex rework for half of our mechanics” thread gets posted, I just sigh and don’t even bother to read it usually. There’s no point in wasting your time and energy on comprehensive reworks because they will never happen. Instead work within the confines of the skills we have; modifying their functionality instead of rewriting it.

I don’t fully share the negativity. Granted, you’ve been around for longer than I have. But a-net does (rarely but still) rework unused skills. Ranger got a shout rework recently, and shouts are now used by many (some may be a little too much… but that’s another subject). Warriors also got decent changes for their riffle. During BWE, while chronomancer shield went from single block to channeled block, tempest elite was completely reworked. And often, those started from changes suggested in the forums.

So yes, my full suggested rework is not something I expect to see. But that does not mean some ideas can’t be used in a future for a limited rework of a weapon, some skills or some traits. And I don’t feel that the block fits the off-hand sword, while mobility and evade is something I would not mind seeing on the weapon.

I don’t think changing the sword block to a continuous block is a good idea. We simply need the sword to have a more clear role and I think a good role would be mobility and boon removal (see my suggestions in my signature).

I do feel that the current balance is in the hands of Karl alone. But maybe I’m wrong.

Regardless, it is pretty clear that the balance devs are focusing much more on the expansion than on current content. And that is a shame, because you can’t keep elite specs as the only way to fix bad design in the core specs. A-net recently said that they were trying to refocus, to stop creating new content and first try to improve currently existing one. But apparently, this does not apply to class balance.

Here shows the problem of global power creep: the scepter AA is not broken, everything is. Power creep chain:

1. everyone has insane amount of CC
2. to balance it, many have perma-stability
3. to balance it, reaper got constant corrupt boon

Same thing with damage:

1. everyone has insane damage
2. to balance it, many have perma-protection
3. to balance it, reaper got constant corrupt boon

So if you want to fix scepter AA (and I think it should be fixed), you should also remove the boon orgy. And if you do that, you should also significantly tone down damage and CC.

#anetpleasefixpowercreep

Jace al Thor.6745:

Xyonon.3987:

Excuse me?! shield 4 was ridiculously op in pvp and terrible in pve, now it’s amazing – and shield 5 is one of our strongest skills aswell one of the strongest skills in the entire game. The shield is amazing, nothing else to say.

Luckily thats your opinion. I hate shield, it feels clucky. Shield 5 is nice but I dont like #4 on it plus the tracking on 5 doesnt allows come back to me which is annoying. It wasnt even OP in PvP before it was nerfed, more annoying because it carried bads. I’d rather take off hand Sword. Sure its one block but it can crit pretty dang hard, its also a daze, the phantasm hits like a truck. So yeah. To me shield is again, like so many of our off hands, situational.

The shield is definitely one of our strongest off-hand. It has a strong defensive skill (block), also providing a phantasm giving a powerful debuff to enemies and strong buff to allies (still decent after the alacrity nerf), and shield 5 has actually very decent damage and is possibly the strongest CC skill mesmer weapons provide.

Honestly, I don’t see what more we could ask for a SHIELD. If you want damage, yes, take sword off-hand, that’s pretty much the only thing the sword oh provides.

Jourdelune.7456:

This is another problem why GRINDING divisions is a bad implementation.

If Division should represent skill, they should not been GRIND.

Let me tell you, I win most of my matches in Season 2, but it’s boring and not competitive at all.

Please join me in the SKILL versus GRIND petition here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Skill-based-or-Grind-based-rank-system/first#post6020606

So Anet, can fix their RANKED based on SKILL and give REWARDS based on GRINDS.

I don’t get your point. S1 was grind, anyone could get to at least diamond as long as they played enough, since we were always matched with people of our level. S2 is actually skill based, and this is why we have so much complaints, like the OP: he cannot go pass his current division because he has reached his level. Regardless how many more games he will do, he is pretty much stuck there.

jarthur.3649:

your right my reasoning was flawed. although it looks like you missed that I thought that the cooldowns could come down quite a bit on off-hand weapons, ~60% was my original suggestion, taking main hand weapon into account the 20% that illusion summoning skill gave those skill seems more appropriate on some of them.

you may not have missed what my suggestion was, and i could be missing that because you mention damage coe-efficient going up, instead of cooldown going down

As I said, I’m not saying I disagree. The changes I suggest are obviously big, so it is hard to say how they would fare. I tried to use some maths for PvE since there, it is quite easy to just compute the DPS. It is more difficult in PvP, but one can more or less assume that phantasms hit only once, so that was my comparison point.

Currently iDuelist is 20s CD, 2.2 coef. I upped this to 2.4 with the same CD, while increasing the sword AA by quite a bit. So this is stronger, but the drawback is that unload now takes 1.5s, instead of 1s to cast the phantasm; we cannot CC while the phantasm attack to ensure all hits land, and we have no hope of an additional phantasm hit. I felt that this was reasonable. At the end, the only way to see is to put it in the game and see how it works in all game modes.

Note that the way I designed it, unload will not be affected by illusionist celerity because the phantasm is now on the #5 skill…

jarthur.3649:

I can’t say that I like it, but I will give you that the work is solid and impressive on how through you were in making sure there wasn’t a damage loss. one thing i would suggest is that the cooldowns on the skills could come down some if phantasms deal no damage. probably to around 5/12 of the current cooldown
i’ll use the pistol as an example. i’m making the assumption that the phantasm didn’t die for what ever reason.
assuming 1k power your pistol would deal 2.4k damage every 20 seconds, but a phantasm build using current pistol assuming 3 phantasm will deal 2.7k every 5 seconds and 11k in the same 20 second period.
assuming 3k power your pistol does 7.2k damage every 20s, phantasm build would do 8.1k every 5 and 32.4k over 20s.
if you take the time to build up those 3 phantasms into account(semi worst case still assuming traits), 32s+20s for the bit we did above, total time 52s
your pistol’s total damage at 1k power is 7.2k+2.1k from the second skill
current pistol’s total damage at 1k power is 18.9k
your pistol’s total damage at 3k power is 21.6k+6.3k from the second skill
current pistol’s total damage at 3k power is 56.7k

my personal opinion for how to fix phantasm is a trait that does something like this:
illusions take 50% reduced damage from all sources, illusions gain protection (6s) on creation.
this would more or less guarantee your phantasm attacks twice

P.S. of course this takes me so long to reply that more than a few new post show up

As I stated, I did not go full maths to balance things out, and maybe the pistol coef should be upped a bit.

But I’d still like to mention that your reasoning is still a bit flawed here. You consider the pistol damage, and say that my new version has a lower damage than the old one. And this is true. But the reason is because currently mesmer is relying on their phantasms for the bulk of their damage, and therefore, an off-hand pistol does a lot of damage since that’s where the phantasms are. In my suggestion, most of the damage is on the main-hand sword. The pistol skill is a DPS increase over the sword, and therefore would be included in a damage rotation, but it cannot on its own do the same amount of damage that pistol phantasms use to do since most of this damage has been put on the sword AA.

Xyonon.3987:

…

Thanks, it means a lot coming from you
And yes, I have little hope of it being implemented, but this may still give ideas… I’m an eternal optimist.

Necro is just very trendy at the moment. I played this game less than an hour ago.

I myself main mesmer but found that despite being clearly better at mesmer, I get better results as a necro…

PS: the team with the fewest necros won

Menaka.5092:

A lot of hard work and some very good ideas!

Thanks

Staff: what kind of field is it on Staff 5? Ethereal?

I didn’t put any, since we already have one on staff 3. But this is of course a possibility.

Sword: 900 seems way too much for a mesmer dash, 600 seems more in line with our playstyle.

Fair enough

Healing Prism: instead of healing power, gain outgoing healing % for each illusion (5%?).

Compounding Power: the condi damage gain should scale in % as the power does.

I’m perfectly fine with this suggestion. These traits are the ones mesmer currently has, I did not change them (except for their positioning).

Temporal Enchanter: I love how you changed it, but it should have a 2s ICD per target, else people would abuse it to stack Resistance

Yes, it was the plan. You should not be able to stack it. My change was mostly meant to ensure that the trait works also with portal or veil which are typically crossed and not “stand on it while cast” type.

I really don’t like having to pick between Shattered Concentration and Persistence of Memory in Illusions Master tier

To be fair, anything competing with Shattered Concentration will have hard time…

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I’m not sure I understand how this new rollover skills work for phantasms. Example: Focus #5. 25 second CD on the storm and this storm summons the phantasms. The roll over skill has a 14 second CD. Does this mean once the phantasm is summoned, I must reactivate #5 every 14 seconds to get the phantasm effect? What if I weapon swap, does the phantasm do nothing? What if I use SotE to recharge the skill and try to summon 2; do both phantasms activate at the same time?

Hi
It’s probably unclear from the way I presented it. It’s not a rollover skill. The phantasm is cast when you use the skill (the storm for focus) and the CD on the phantasm is actually meant to be the iCD of HIS attack. So the phantasm will attack every 14s. So everything works like it currently does.

epouvante.7392:

kitten there is a hard work here. The idea is really insteresting. Actually mesmer suffer a lot by this aoe spam so fantasm does nothing.
The proposal changes are really smart, all lines have a real indentity and role. I m not a fan of the chrono lines, it doesnt seem like an elite spe. Mayne the chrono line have to add some smart talent (with the time tematic).
Devs have to listen this thread!

Thanks for reading through this
It has indeed taken me some time, so I appreciate your patience. Yes, being able to do damage despite the AOE spam is a big part of the rework. You would now loose some utility, but at least your damage would be untouched.
For the chrono line, what turns you off? Why doesn’t it feel like an elite spec (and maybe more importantly, what should an elite spec feel like?)?

I just want to mention that I don’t think the problem is thieves. The problem is how f****g tanky scrapper, druid, elementalist and revenant are. Especially scrapper, let’s be honest, there is not so many class/builds that can kill a scrapper 1v1 (is there any actually?), and 2v1 is not that easy either.

Builds
A small note to mention something about possible builds. It is interesting to note that in PvP the usual shatter build is still possible

• Dom 1 × 3
• Chaos 3 1 2
• Illusion 2 2 1

and as usual, you can remove chaos to get insp, dueling or chrono and still get something useful out of it.

Condi shatter can play dueling-chaos-illusion
power interrupt dom, chaos, ill/chrono
condi interrupt duel/chaos/ill

I have barely moved support traits, so all support builds are pretty much the same. But this time, we can actually make a decent healing support. The main point for me is that I believe this is a good basis for a higher build diversity, especially since we now have a decent sustained damage, so bruiser-y roles become available.

PvE build now have much higher sustained damage, and can benefit from the damage multipliers in domination and illusion (especially since now they can shatter). Reflects are still possible with the focus, but you do loose the DPS of shatters (but it makes sense, utilities should be at the price of damage). You can also play might/fury sharing more efficiently thanks to the might from domination, the fury from dueling + boon share, etc…

In GvG/WvW, we now have ways to get some damage and support in a big fight despite our phantasm dying instantly.

Overall, I think this is an improvement over current mesmer, but not OP, simply diversity and QoL.

So what do you think?

Traits

Weapons
The skills tooltips are shown in the images. All skill which cast phantasms have now also a main effect. The skill performed by the phantasm is shown below and the cooldown displayed corresponds to the attack frequency of the phantasm.

Hi all

I have decided like many to play the game of “how would you redesign mesmer”. My focus was mostly a full rework of the phantasm concept, but this naturally lead to a lot of changes in the skills and traits.

So below is a list of all weapons and traits reworked with this concept in mind. I have tried to modify (i.e. increase) the damage coefficients to reflect the loss of phantasm. I started to do some maths to see what would be balanced, but it took too much time so I gave up. So I have put damage that seemed reasonable with very very minimal maths, but a proper balance would require some more maths and of course a lot of testing.

One important note is that we probably need to reduce a bit the damage of mind wrack to ensure we can increase our sustained damage without creating too much trouble. I suggest 0.75 coef/illusion. I like that it scales linearly (favors full shatters instead of shatter spam) and for most cases is a small nerf (but a slight buff for a full 3 illusion+self shatter).

I haven’t touched much the utilities and therefore will only say a few general words about them.

I can tell you for having used this trait quite a bit: it works. When crusader amulet was still around, I saw some pretty nice shatter crits. But as people said, you won’t see it in your stats. One way to see it works would be estimating your crit rate against a golem under time warp. But as I said, I played crusader, with 11% base crit rate, so it was easy to see if DT worked or not.

1. create illusions (the more the longer F5 will work)
2. start casting one of the skill you want to double
3. cast F5 before the end of the cast of the above-mentioned skill
4. cast all the skills you want/can
5. F5 expires, your cooldowns are back

Let’s be clear, combo fields are not balanced. While in organized groups, you often see fire field or water field blasting, ethereal fields are pretty much only used by the mesmer who cast it to proc chaos armor, especially with chaotic dampening.

So here is a suggestion: what about blasting ethereal field give AOE quickness for a short duration (2s sound reasonable). It may sound strong at first, but if we compare to fire fields, quickness is stronger than might, however, 3 stacks for 20s for 1 blast is approximately a 4% damage increase (assuming 2200 power base) during the 20s, while quickness is at best a 50% damage increase during 2s only, so about 5% in the 20s. Remove to that the time lost in the blasting, and it is definitely not OP, but still useful.

Thoughts?

Build diversity is definitely not as good as pre-HoT. Pre-HoT we had

• 1 stronger build (D/D ele)
• 6 balanced classes, with (limited but a few) possible variations
• 1 weaker class (ranger)

No we have

• over OP: Rev, Scrapper, Reaper
• very OP: tempest, druid
• mildly OP: chrono, DD, DH
• balanced: warrior

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

crusader amulet was really fine.

i demand a replacement !

maybe

1050 power
1050 toughness
560 precision
560 ferocity

call it templar amulet perhaps. a variant of marauder and paladin

While I agree crusader was fine, your suggestion is certainly not in line with their plan (no toughness main in 4-stats amulets). The obvious replacement for crusader would be

1050 power
1050 ferocity
560 healing power
560 toughness

which is the same stat but putting the defensive ones as “minor”.

The new system is meant to have your division at the end of the season reflecting your skill level. So if you are ruby and you see a diamond, you know this guy is better than you. This was not the case last season. Top-tier players had as much difficulty leaving amber as a complete noob. This also created the concept of “MMR tanking”.

Now in this season, the first days, maybe the first week will be quite awful for many, and of course it can be frustrating. Maybe a-net should have a warning at the beginning of the game during the first week like “beware, this will be tough this week” to make sure people understand this is temporary and not loose hope.

But this frustration is the price to pay for a good final result. Is there any better way to do it which removes or reduces the initial frustration while still keeping the final division = skill goal? Probably, and if you have an idea, suggest it. But just complaining isn’t enough since it is currently working as intended.

I agree with OP’s point. I played a soloq game against a 1 scrapper, 2 herald, 2 tempest team, and it looked very much like a season 1 game: nothing died. But main problem are herald and scrapper, since at least ele does not do much damage.

They said no, some time ago. It will not break your streak. Basically it will do as if the game never happened.

We are one of the only 2 profession without any fix in this update. So clearly we must be perfectly balanced. Be happy all!

Honestly, I don’t see how class stacking is really a problem in soloq. More often than not, class stacking puts you at a disadvantage. For example I am on a mesmer guild, so we often play 5 mesmer. And it’s usually a disaster, but we like it.

At lower level, the skill of the player matters much more than the class. At higher levels, people tend to swap class more easily to adjust their composition in soloq. So I really don’t see the point.

Instead of making this, I’d rather the devs worked on actually balance, so that class stacking is never a problem.

I completely agree with OP. You used to CC to interrupt a specific skill, or a rez, or something. Now you just have random AOE CC.

A typical example is dragon hunter. You have the pull on F1. That’s fine, it’s a skill which you decide to use to achieve a specific effect. But then you have dazes on trap, which you mostly just spam, and a random pushback on longbow. “Random”. That means that except for the first one in the fight or on weapon change, you don’t quite know when it will proc, and even then, you don’t really choose it, it just pops. So any team fight ends up being a pure AOE fest.

Of course, no surprise that the best classes in the meta were the classes with near-perma stability (bunker mesmer and power or condi rev). So to counter AOE spam, you got stability spam.

I was still enjoying PvP after the specialization patch. But HoT killed it for me.

I do sword-shield, GS. Gives me both range and high survivability. Domination+Illusion+Chrono. Blink+decoy in open world to be able to avoid getting in combat when I just want to run pass mobs. Often mimic to use blink more often and cross the map faster.

If you don’t have chrono yet, sword+focus and dueling.

Playstyle is mixed shatter/phantasm. Shatters for short fights or to finish, phantasm for longer fights.

Burtnik.5218:

If you want to remove endurance gain on Shiro you have to compensate him with protection or smth, you know that right? But i bet you have never played core rev to understand how huge that change is nor you dont understand rev well enough to even be in position to suggest it.

Vamp signet has far more than 1,6k hp on initial and it also lets allies hp siphon off target. Do my allies gain daggers when i cast the heal? No. Do i can deal with poison? No. With condi? No. As for damage idc. With the amount of sustain some classes has 5k is nothing. It might as well dont deal any damage and you wont even notice it.

Rev is so weak… first pro league game: double rev on both sides…

Burtnik.5218:

Rev has better survival than thief bc unlike thief he cant use his mobility that well to gtfo at will. He need staying power for that reason. You also forgetting about that fact that right now rev basically has no access to stunbreaks except for unreliable one in legend swap (if trained in invo..) and glint on 20cd. That is.

Yes, that is why we all complained when they presented the legends and said that all legends should have a stunbreak if they are to be used, especially the defensive one (Jalis, since the elite really does not count). But a stunbreak on 20s CD is considered pretty good and as I said, I want to keep the stunbreak of Shiro, I just think the free dodge is too much seeing as this skill already evades.

And Shiro heal is not terrible? Please show me another healing ability in game that require you to trade hits with someone on a 0,5s interval for junk healing which also can be reflected and heal your enemy instead. It can also be blinded, blocked, deflected, dodged, outlasted (short timer). Amazing healing ability, indeed.

While I was not aware of the fact that it can be reflected to heal our enemy, the rest has nothing bad to it. A few heals need you to attack to get all the benefits. Even the signet of necro, which is actually used, works like this. It has a larger main heal, but the heal on attack is even harder to benefit from because it is ACTUALLY a short timer (6s with max 1 hit per second). 16s to land 6 attacks with 1/2s iCD is not that short. And you forget to mention the potential 5k damage it adds…

Now I don’t intend to argue for too long about this. You can just see that in the past AG, rev and scrapper are the two classes used the most. I suspect tonight’s pro league will be the same. Those are two classes which can play glassy (marauder) or super glassy (berserker/viper) and still sustain 1v2 for a decent time. So anyone pretending rev is in a bad spot is fairly delusional.

Burtnik.5218:

Silverkey.2078:

Some people act like if rev was in a bad spot. Yes, half of the legends are crap. But that does not change the fact that rev is currently top tier, used by nearly all competitive teams (in AG since that’s the only thing we get, but some pro league players also mentioned that rev was still very strong). And Shiro brings way too much survivability for a legend supposedly about damage and mobility. If nobody uses Jalis, it’s also because Shiro ends up doing a better job.

Nobody uses Jalis bc Jalis is crap. And Shiro mimic thief playstyle. Damage, mobile and evasive playstyle, just like daredevil. He doesnt have any kind of damage reductions, condition cleanse or stealth. By nerfing riposting shadow you might as well delete Shiro from rev. Its healing ability is already a crap with a teleport that doesnt work most of the time.

Yes, Jalis is crap, I did say “it’s also because […]”, the other reason is indeed that Jalis is crap.

As for thief playstyle, yes, it does mimic it… and does it better. Sure, you loose stealth, which is huge, but the survivability of revenant is way above thief.

Having a stunbreak with such a low CD is already powerful. There does not need to be an additional free dodge.

Finally, regardless of how Shiro heal “is crap” (which I don’t think it is), you do realize that rev has 2 heals and that each of them heals for nearly as much (in any case clearly more than half) as a normal heal of the same CD?

Finally, in case you haven’t noticed, I suggested a nerf to almost all elite specs. If this ever happens, a survivability nerf of revenant will barely change its relative survivability.

JayAction.9056:

Burtnik.5218:

Silverkey.2078:

• mild revenant shiro nerf (e.g. remove endurance gain on the stunbreak)

You want to kill rev?

Some people act like if rev was in a bad spot. Yes, half of the legends are crap. But that does not change the fact that rev is currently top tier, used by nearly all competitive teams (in AG since that’s the only thing we get, but some pro league players also mentioned that rev was still very strong). And Shiro brings way too much survivability for a legend supposedly about damage and mobility. If nobody uses Jalis, it’s also because Shiro ends up doing a better job.

I don’t mind the amulet change. However, this is still a “lazy fix” and not sufficient anyway. The problem is the insane amount of sustain some classes can get through their skill and traits. In particular, scrapper and herald can even play full offense amulet and be as tanky as a cleric guardian.

already a discussion on this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Minor-balance-tweaks-on-23th/first

Pretty happy with your list, though the scrapper/herald ranking is difficult since I feel a scrapper can mess with a fight more than a herald.

I hope:

• strong scrapper survivability nerf
• mild revenant shiro nerf (e.g. remove endurance gain on the stunbreak)
• druid pet nerf and search and rescue range nerf
• milld mesmer sustained damage buff (AA)
• partial revert of the thief AA buff and increase of survivability
• reaper condi damage nerf

I expect:

• more power creep

Sirendor.1394:

3) This is also good for ArenaNet itself, because a lot of people have quit the game because the meta is dumb and elite specs are overpowered… they wish a level playing field.

I can attest that. Many long time players in my guild bought the expansion, and got so disappointed with the balance. Some left very early, others left after the end of the first season and the balance patch. And I myself really don’t enjoy PvP post-Hot nearly as much as before.

Exactly, only the eternal optimists (like me) are still playing :p

Jourdelune.7456:

Now people say this meta is the best one

Who said that???

Jourdelune.7456:

I think Mistrust buff is bad because when you are disabled, you can’t attack… so confusions is a wasted on it (or raised the confusions duration by x2).

I have been suggesting for some time now something to fix that. Mistrust: “Reduce daze and stun duration to 0.25s, dazed and stunned foes are blinded, interrupted foes are inflicted 4 stacks confusion for 5s”. This way, the foe can still attack and move (to proc confusion and torment) but you still have a bit of defense from the blind. Plus, this synergies well with ineptitude for potentially some extra confusion. It’s the archetype of increased risk for increased rewards.

A-net did add the 4 stacks, but not the rest…

messiah.1908:

i dont know if you saw Helseth last stream going condi standrd build illu/due/chro sw/p+staff
with NO condi cleanse OMFG and handling necros 1v1 and 1v2
now i saw his condi burst wasnt so hight but still he manage to pressure them fast and again with no condi cleanse
didnt catch his amulet .

i just wish condimes would be a thing …..

He had a Mercenary Amulet when I saw him.

I remember seeing him playing his condi build and seeing a necro and saying “that should be an easy kill” and indeed killing him in no time. Helseth can just play against most classes with being barely hit. But it is unranked soloq, he would not do that so easily against a player near his level.

Crinn.7864:

Silverkey.2078:

Yes, but the class mechanics change is part of the trait line. This is the first minor trait you are getting. So this is part of the traitline and the line should be balanced around that.

You can’t “balance” new class mechanics. Either the elite mechanic or the core mechanic will be better. At best you might have the lesser one being usable in niche situations.
If the elite mechanic turns out to be lesser than the core one then taking the elite because downright harmful, and only the classes that can ignore the extra mechanic would ever take them.

Honestly there is no solution to balancing core vs elite as long as elite specs have the new class mechanics and skills attached to them.

Here again, it works if the new class mechanics has a clear focus. Reaper shroud is melee while death shroud is ranged. The only reason RS is much better than DS is that it is also better to use and less clunky:

• much faster AA (about twice as fast) means better use of traits like Dhuumfire, Unyielding Blast and Reaper’s Might
• reliable teleport
• stability
• strong CC
• combo finishers

For guardians, virtues are supposed to be self-passive and ally active. Dragonhunter is meant as a more selfish spec, so the virtues should be stronger for self but not have any ally support. The active should thus give something else. For F1, it is CC and indeed has no ally support, but it also burns more on its own so it makes up for it currently (I think the burning needs to go out of the active: the trade of is passive burning vs active CC). F2 has mobility and self heal but should not have ally heal. F3 also blocks for allies which should go, but in this case one of the main problem is how underwhelming guardian F3 is. If there was no ally support in the new virtues, it would clearly put a focus on DH and mean that support specs would often prefer the core guardian while medi guards would usually prefer DH.

Finally, there are classes which gain a class mechanics and don’t loose anything. It is still possible to balance because this comes from a minor trait (so you do “loose a trait” for it) and by balancing the rest of the traits accordingly.

Yashuoa.9527:

Xstein.2187:

Yashuoa.9527:

What is false about the statements?

1. I specifically asked about ALL Mesmer builds.
I disliked bunkerchrono too (both playing vs it as playing it).
But there are other Mesmer builds besides that build and those werent considered good enough with 66% alacrity.
So aparently it may not have been to strong for all Mesmer builds.
Also it was a question so it cant be false.

2. I specifically said with chrono slotted.
Meaning the cooldowns when using chrono, that were used to 66% alacrity when it was up, now have 33% when it is up.
Meaning you reduce them less=cooldowns are higher now.
Its simple fact or evidence if you will.

Maybe you misunderstood/misread yourself.

1. The first one wasn’t false, I was just pointing out that alacrity was nerfed for reasons pertaining both to pve and pvp. I was answering your question. I also realize that the alacrity nerf hurt other builds as well. However, there are other ways to improve those builds besides buffing alacrity all the way up to 66% again. In fact, I do think self alacrity should perhaps be buffed, just not all the way up to 66%. That is way to high. It didn’t work for multiple reasons.

2. Ya, of course your cool downs get lower cool downs relative to the 66% alacrity. However, I did not say this statement was wrong.

“your abilities were based on having 66%”

This is the statement I am saying is false. Most, and perhaps all, of your abilities were Not balanced around the assumption that you have so much of 66% alacrity on yourself.

It looked as if you only quoted the things you considered false, as you said
‘’The rest of your statements sound legit. I am just concerned with the stuff that appears to be false.’’

How are at least some abilities as chrono, not balanced around having 66% alacrity from time to time on yourself?

They designed the chrono spec.
They introduce alacrity.
They choose the 66% number.
They even add stuff like a trait that increases the duration of it on yourself by 50%.
They add alacrity duration numbers to wells and other spells.

I would hope that they balance the chrono build and its abilities around having some alacrity uptime on yourself.
If its not balanced on having alacrity (not constantly, but here and there from spells),
than it means the alacrity numbers and traits are just picked without any balance in mind, which I hope is false.

Why do you think they choose the alacrity number of 66%, and alacrity duration on spells and traits? According to you, not with keeping balance of the spells in the build in mind. So for what reason are those numbers chosen?

They put alacrity with 66% but we could only get it from shatter, shield and one well. And they said “we’ll be watching this, since manipulating cooldowns is dangerous”. Then they add alacrity on all wells.

So no, this number was a choice just to see if it worked. And it gave too strong results, so they brought it down. If you look at the cooldown of our new skills, you realize they seem very legit without alacrity. The block/cooldown ratio of shield 4 is similar to other block skills but also produces a phantasm. The heal gives fairly high healing, with the price that you have to remain in it for full benefits. Everything is well balanced on its own. Alacrity was really what made the balance tip.

The only thing I could potentially agree with is the alacrity on shatter back to 1s, but I am not sure it is a good idea.

And in general, alacrity should not fix all of our problems:

• There are other things in the chronomancer line than alacrity. If those are too underwhelming, then let’s try to improve them instead of buffing the alacrity.
• if our PvE DPS is too low, let’s try to improve it instead of buffing alacrity.
• if shatter mesmer is unviable, let’s try to improve it instead of buffing alacrity
  etc….

I just don’t see the need to change alacrity because I think mesmer is great right now (it’s the other classes which are too strong). The one thing I would change is increasing our sustained damage because:

• we don’t have enough in PvP shatter builds to follow up on our burst
• we don’t have enough to have decent bruiser builds
• we don’t have enough in PvE to make sure that we can do something else than buffbot (and in particular to make sure that having 2 mesmers in a party is not a huge DPS loss)

The stronger alacrity is, the less likely it is for this problem to be fixed. Also, alacrity as it stands is balanced because this way, chronomancer is not always the best choice in PvP (and still, it kind of is). Now we can get good results with alacrity if we build around it.

Now there are many ways to fix the sustained DPS problem, but I think the best way is to change the phantasm concept. I have a post coming soon to give my suggestions on the subject, but many have already given good ideas.

Crinn.7864:

Silverkey.2078:

1. in most cases, elite specs are still stronger than core specs, some by a lot

Are they?
Or do people simply take elites for the class mechanic change or new abilities?

Example: Necros. Out of the entire reaper traitline the only exciting trait is Chill damage, the rest is pretty regrettable. Heck just looking at the traits themselves, Soul Reaping is far more important trait wise to necros than Reaper is.

The reason necros all take Reaper is for Reaper’s shroud (and occasionally for one of the shouts.) And it’s like that for most classes. Guardians don’t all run DH because DH is a better traitline, but because of the improved virtues. Warriors run Beserker for the F2.

Yes, but the class mechanics change is part of the trait line. This is the first minor trait you are getting. So this is part of the traitline and the line should be balanced around that.