Guild Wars 2

Apples & Oranges

- RF is single target, MW AoE
- Due to MWs instant nature it can be combod with other high-damage AE abilities. This results in combos that do as much or more damage then RF, but vs. up to 5 targets.
- RF is easily interrupted
- MW is usually traited to allow massive AE boon stripping

It’s just a silly comparison TBH. The two classes just play vastly different roles.

Yeah for sure Yaniam! For that you obviously also would have to give up DE, but with IP baseline you can make such a build work. You can either focus on getting boons from Interrupts, PU, or by shattering. Then with Insp you can share them every time you summon a Phantasm.

Personally, I think I would give up on Dueling though, and go with Domination Interrupt traits instead.

Upon interrupt you will gain 5x Might +1 random Boon per interrupted target, plus 3s Quickness, instant-pop MW & Staff #4 for 5s Vigor and Protection, and then summon a Phantasm to share all of that goodness. (Outgoing boons gaining at least 15% duration to boot!)

And every interrupted player would face being damaged, Power Blocked, Weakened, Immobilized (plus Blind/Chill/Cripple), and Vulnerable. lol!

Even if the CD on Illusionary Inspiration is correct, which I personally doubt, you could still take the Signet of Inspiration and copy boons twice every 45 seconds. (And copy some Swiftness and another random Boon every time to boot.)

You would also still have fairly reasonable damage output, and support like Menders Purity and the other standard stuff. Even without HM I think I’d go for Mantra of Resolve anyway, just to trigger MP more often, and compensate my own healing with Restorative Illusions. (You’ll be pretty tanky due to traited Staff alone!)

MSFone.3026:

Above you have a scenario where you blow a 60 sec cd (F5) and a ~40 sec cd utility (can’t remember exact cd on MI). One of the reasons power shatter works is that the longest cd it relies on for dmg is 12 sec (MW).

I did forget to mention Alacrity in this part of the discussions about CDs. Now it being fairly limited/short in nature, it won’t be all that effective against longer CD skills, but it will do wonders for short to medium duration CDs. Even as Chronomancer you get the automatic 15% CD reduction on MW, so it’s down to 12.75s CD. If you can maintain just 5s of Alacrity on yourself during that CD, you cut MWs CD down to 9.4s!

Sure you won’t be able to do those massive F5 + MI combos very often, but with persisting Clones & Phants you can still get some nice MWs in between. (Not to mention the increased Phantasm damage!

Summon iZerker => it attacks => Shatter it (F2 or F3) => Auto-summons iZerker => it attacks again => Profit!

In the mean time you’ve created at least one more illusion, and now you MW.

It’s not as easy and intuitive as DE, perhaps, but it will produce enough extra illusions alongside the other benefits of the line, to make it viable IMO.

Yeah sadly it seems to me that the Mesmers success is often based less on the Mesmers skill, but the skill level of the opponents he faces. We just have too many counter-play options in all of our illusion-based mechanics, for experienced enemies to take advantage of.

1) Shatter depends on slow moving, low HP, illusions that are easily killed. Once HoT stuff goes live, there won’t even be an option to trait for a penalty for killing our illusions!

2) Phantasms require a crutch 1s invuln to even be playable in WvW! That should tell us something about poor mechanic design! I shouldn’t have to trait for that, frankly. The Phants should come with ~2s of invuln baseline, and still have double the HPs afterwards, or at least summon with ~6s of Protection. Is it not enough that their attack, after a long summoning time, can simply be dodged, blocked, blinded, evaded, weakened, interrupted, etc. ?? (Not to mention you can interrupt/blind the summon itself!) Too many points of failure! At least allow them to have a chance to deliver that one attack! (iWardens self-rooting attack is much longer then 1s, so that Invuln doesn’t even allow them to get half of their attack off, especially since they still often waste time running into position to attack!)

It’s just sad that these major issues persist without being addressed in this overhaul. In fact, we’re being further pushed into Shattering and/or Phantasms, and both have significant issues because the required resource —Illusions-- are unreliable, slow, and easy to kill. (Or avoid as Sebrent points out.)

It’s great that lock-down builds are getting some nice boosts too, but interrupts are not common enough to base your damage-output around. So you will still largely depend on shatters or phants to do most of your damage, and thus again have this weakness that is easy for opponents to exploit w/o drawbacks of any kind.

See Mesmer? Kill illusions!

It’s that simple. No counter play for us there. The Mesmer himself simply can not specialize to do reasonable damage of his own, in order to punish the enemy for 1-shotting his illusions. (Even AE 1-shotting)

Just making Illusions immune (or 50% reduction) to splash damage would go a LONG way in improving our QoL.

Me Games Ma.8426:

No. You spec into chronomancy but take any weapon you like. It just “unlocks” that weapon.

Thank goodness too, cuz the shield looks like fluffy garbage unfortunately. I was excited about the proposition of a shield, but unless I’m missing some yet unknown aspect of Chronomancers traits or shields in general, I really think it looks extremely lack-luster. Bad Phantasm and highly situational #5 skill that looks underwhelming in smaller scale fights, but probably OPd in zerg fights.

Sorry to repeat myself, but just in case Anet reads these, I’m trying to voice my concern about the Shield. I think the rest of the stuff sounds great, but I don’t see me using the shield based on current information.

Again, if it works, people will do it simply because it’ll be a huge damage spike. I agree it has a big downside, which is why not everyone will take Chrono. If there were no downside to it, then there would only be this one choice and DE would be replaced. That won’t be the case, because as you said there will be counter play to the above, but still it will be used if it can deliver a double-MW+CoF combo in short succession.

It’s just front-loaded damage, which usually comes with the trade-off of being on a longer CD. The player with this build would then have to focus on Phantasm and AAs, or dropping fields like CS & wells, and use the other shatters with just 1 or no Illusions, just to get the Alacrity to lower his CDs.

I didn’t say this will kill the DE-based Power-Shatter, and I’m glad it doesn’t. I agree it has many advantages, more consistent damage output, AoE blind, etc. That’s how it should be, but just when you feel that you know the difference between a P-Shatter Mesmer and a Chronomancer, you’ll run into that occasional Chronomancer with P-Shatter who double-shatters your team into oblivion. ;-)

Of course then the nerf cries roll in, Anet knee-jerks as usual, and we’re back to DE being required to P-Shatter. ;-)

Niminion.1982:

You have to play a mesmer.

Thread ended.

Nice one!

Edit: Doh correction, I guess you’re right. It really doesn’t ever mention summoning on block, does it? Maybe the devs in the video got it wrong, or this does in fact summon 2 Phants…but I doubt that. ;-)

If it is the same on-block summon as our others, then I seriously just hate this sort of ridiculous fail-prone way of implementing something. It doesn’t have much to do with the Mesmers skill at all, but rather the skill of his opponents. It will be just like the other 2 fail blocks that people often avoid once they see us ducking, and then you’re stuck on a long channel time to summon a rather underwhelming Phantasm.

The other end is, if you’re eating a massive multi-damage attack then you’re forced to dodge, probably canceling the Phantasm and ability goes on full CD.

It’s just crap either way.

Just a plain Block (everything) while performing a plain 1.0s to 1.5s Phantasm summon, and leave the silly wave as is I guess.

My guess is the wave will seem OPd in the beginning and will probably get knee-jerk nerfed before people figure out it’s easy to avoid and thus a fairly lame ability on a long CD. It will have it’s uses in Zerg combat, but it’ll probably travel slow enough to give people ample of time to avoid it somehow. (Move away, dodge, block, etc.)

MSFone.3026:

Edit: Also, I really don’t think MI is a reasonable argument here. You shouldn’t have to take a utility to make your main class mechanic workable.

Oh come on now! No one is going to care about the principle behind how something “should” work, that being in and of itself highly subjective anyway, but they will only care about what works best.

How will Power Shatter with Chrono instead of Dueling work?

F5 → MB + MI → F1 + F2 → F5 → MB + MI → F1 + F2

That’s a double 3-Clone MW plus 3-Clone CoF combo, within a very very short duration thanks to Chronomancy. No need for DE, keeping you free to take Dom & Ill for max damage on those MWs. (If doing this in a 1v1, you’d also have 10 stacks of Might up for the second combo, 20 stacks after the second one…nice BF inc! ;-) )

Any further questions on Power-Shatter and Chrono? ;-)

tobascodagama.2961:

TBH, I think the “Deja Vu” mechanic is actually kind of cool… But, nonetheless, I think your suggestion would make for a much more usable skill.

OK maybe I don’t understand it fully. The wording is just so awkward. So I press #4 to start a blocking channel, which upon blocking 1 attack will end and make the Deja Vu skill available. Then I have to activate that again, once again channeling a block and I have to block yet another attack, and only then will I summon the Phantasm? (Or if either channel duration runs out, making it the slowest casting Phantasm we have…and by far not the best!)

Many of the most damaging abilities in this game are multi-attacks in a short duration. If I have to activate that block manually twice, I’m going to usually eat 75% of the damage of most of these attacks or more. Factoring in latency, you will often not even be able to activate Deja Vu fast enough to block two of the attacks (RF for example).

This same phenomenon is already bad enough with our Scepter and OH Sword blocks, that due to lag you end up eating more damage then you’re avoiding with the paltry 1-attack block. This exacerbates the issue by forcing you to manually activate it twice to get 2 blocks, and as Ross said will result in frequent summoning failures due to the need to dodge to avoid massive damage.

Why on earth do I even need to consider having to use a dodge during what is supposed to be a defensive ability on a long CD?

^ Absolutely. I just don’t get what they were thinking with Shield. I mean we already feel kinda jacked for getting an OH, and quite frankly this is anything but a stellar OH at that. These 2 abilities are situational, unreliable, and clunky. Both of them!

It pretty much cements the fears that our shield will be just as bad as most others in the game. They might as well have not bothered if all they were gonna do is make yet another bad shield. A shield is for defense and most of all blocking! This is by far the most disappointing aspect of the patch. I was very open minded to the idea of a shield, but unless there are some *AAA*mazing traits for it, it looks like largely crap to me.

The Phantasm summon looks downright tacked on as an afterthought, just because you have to have a Phantasm there somewhere, and to add insult to injury they equip it with the worst attack-form in the game. (AGAIN!) This thing will be racing the iMage for the bottom spot position…and probably winning! It’s clunky, unreliable, and underwhelming as a Phantasm from both a damage and utility PoV.

That whole wording of it gives me hives! If you block you get Deja Vue, which I guess has to be activated AGAIN so you can block again and summon a Phantasm??? Or you can just wait half an eternity and just summon a crappy Phantasm on your target! WOOHOO! Seriously bad…

Why not just have it summon a Phantasm, and block ALL attacks while summoning ? (At least that would make those god awful Phantasm summon times useful for once!) Much easier, much more powerful, much more like a shield is expected to work!

Toeofdoom.6152:

Plan:
F5 – phantasm, switch weapon, phantasm,ether, phantasm, shatter – phantasms respawn and attack.
f2 and end F5.
SoI and repeat.
then repeat again.

18 phantasm attacks and 6 shatters plus a free double time warp and some autos. This does assume f5 also switches weapons back but you can work without it.

How many stacks is that?

First off, in your plan you likely will need some clones to F5 shatter in the first place, if in fact this adds to the duration of CS. If you just use a no Clone shatter then I don’t think you’ll have nearly enough time to complete all the actions you were pondering, nor are you calculating in that any opponent worth a lick is going to rain on your parade…like literally rain fire and brimstone on it! ;-)

A little Mortal Kombat quote comes to mind…

“Get over here!!! Silly Mesmer!”

You are tethered to your rift! If you think you can play time-traveler for too long, you’re going to get an ugly surprise.

Madisonlee.9641:

Is anyone else bummed out about not having access to mender’s purity anymore? Is anyone gonna pick inspiration for any build? :x Before we just needed two points for it ;-;

Oh I think we’ll be seeing some support shatter and/or tank/shatter builds coming out of that line. I could see it jiving well with Chronomancer too, bringing wells, lots of AoE condie clears, or pretty intense boon-sharing to your team. It’s not my cup of tea, but if it turns out half as effective as it looks, such builds will become not only viable but probably popular.

There are so many possibilities for new builds here, it’s mind boggling.

It’s hardly “being stuck” in a traitline, when you consider what the line offers. As stated above, you used to put 4 points into it to get 2 minors, 1 adept, and 1 major (DE). Now you get a far more useful minor on top (Confusion on crit for both you and illusions), and you get and extra major. How about AE Blind on shatter…oh yeah, that’s not really useful, is it? ;-)

That might as well have been a GM right there. That is a boat-load of blinds! Not to mention that you likely had “Far Reaching Manips” as an adept before, which you also now get for free. (Not to mention IP!)

What changes? Nothing! lol! These boards are always great for a laugh.

If you still feel stuck with Dueling, you also can choose Chronomancer and live quite well without DE! At worst you pick up MI and combo it with F5 and the Clone + Phantams traits, you’ll have plenty of Clone/Illusion generation. Of course you’ll give up on that AE Blind, easy Vigor, and the lesser items you get from Dueling.

I get your point, but IMO it’s focusing too much on the current game, and forgetting about the other changes. DE is still a fine GM trait, specialization defining in fact, but it is no longer a must-have as before. There are alternatives, and with IP being baseline, a lot of pressure to be forced into Illusions is off the table. That alone opens up a variety of shatter builds that weren’t possible before. Making DE baseline on top, would have possibly been too much. (For example, allowing you to build a very tanky P-Shatter build with Dom/Chaos/Ill. without any trade-offs. Do massive AoE damage, but have near 100% Chaos Armor uptime, lots of added Chaos Storms, and of course PU.)

At least now we have 2 unique lines for Clone-intensive builds.

You forfeit one of the standard specialization lines.

Now go look at those, look at any build you might want to run, and tell me you don’t see major trade-offs for each and every one of them.

As an example, go with a classic Power-Shatter build and significant trade-offs you will make:
1) Dueling: Clone generation on dodge, AoE Blind on Shatter, Vigor
2) Domination: Mental Torment, Fragility, AE Boon-stripping
3) Illusions: Shattered Strength (15% CD redux on all shatters & Might on shatter), Compounding Power, and Master of Fragmentation (pretty big deal from what people are saying it’s now 20% to Crit chance, the usual AoE on F3 & Reflect on F4, and possibly another damage bonus?)

Every line has significant and unique traits that you won’t get if you go with Chronomancer. Also we have not experienced how Chronomancer plays, so anyone who thinks it will be automagically superior to other lines, is simply talking out their tail end.

The whole F5 thing frankly sounds like a pretty big trade-off, one that a competent player whom is playing against a competent team may quickly grow to hate. You can be pulled out of your rift at the enemies discretion, basically, depending mostly on how many “HPs” a rift has. I’m guessing it’s not going to be a whole lot. This alone should be a huge red warning sign to competent players who like being in control of their own destiny. ;-) (Being pulled into a coordinated AoE burst will not be a whole lot of fun.)

A powerful ability on paper, indeed, but until we see how it actually plays we just can’t judge how powerful it really is.

Edit:

Taiyetos.3260:

I don’t believe there ever was any official mention of losing anything when using an elite spec. Certainly none of the official posts mentioned anything.

Actually I believe they stated in the video that the F5 shatter specifically, and choosing Chronomancer in general too IIRC, will disable some existing abilities for balancing reasons.

Noha.3749:

Lets see how well it does compared to the not yet revealed specializations of the other professions. Hopefully its good enough in comparison!

By no means am i trying to spank the hype on the funny parts, but im a realist and i cant celebrate yet due to the fog of mystery ahead of us.

Who knows if thieves gets Death Shroud and Rangers longbow range.. Joke aside.

True enough, but I try not to fall prey to the “grass is greener” mentality whenever I see what goodies other professions are getting. The changes we’re seeing are so substantial, with so many new and exciting traits & abilities, that no matter what others are getting, there is no reason to be negative about anything at this point.

Until it’s played of course, and if then we find out we’re worse off then others, then I’ll whine right along with the rest of Mesmers! I just don’t think it’s possible to judge balance on paper with such a huge patch.

So far the glass is half full!

I’m thinking this trait could jive really well with the iDefender too.

Consider an MtD shatter build with Chrono, Dueling, and Illusions:

- Summon iDefender
- Mirror Image some Staff clones
- Drop Chaos Storm & PR for CA
- Let Clones & AA soften enemy, and if iDefender is getting low, shatter to get another one and more Clones
- Use Staff #4 if needed

You will be one hard sob to take down. By the time the second iDef goes down, the CD is probably almost ready to be up again. None of this factors in the F5 shatter.

I think people who think Thieves will eat our lunch are thinking way too one dimensional. We’re getting a LOT of new goodies all around, condie builds will be much stronger, as will interrupt, support, bunker, and even phantasm builds.

Blind on shatter, alternative Clone generation, longer duration stealth through PU, harder-hitting Confusion & Torment, not to mention IP as baseline and the crazy stuff that Chronomancer brings that basically completely changes how Mesmers are played.

It’s going to be an interesting, but bumpy ride. I expect a lot of nerfs down the road.

Agreed, the last thing we need is another buggy & unreliable off-block summon. In fact, the 2 shield skills both look incredibly underwhelming and situational. The #5 is quite possibly OPd in larger group fights, and weak/unreliable in smaller ones or 1v1.

The Phantasms attack is yet another bouncing attack! sighs BAD! WE HATE BOUNCES! GET IT!? They kitten unless the projectile is super fast, which probably it won’t be and thus you have a really unreliable Phantasm on a long CD.

Also, it inflicts Slow. Big whoop, as any MtD Shatterer can tell you, this will get condie cleared before it has any actual effect on the outcome of the battle. Worse in group battles it won’t survive long, and in 1v1s it will also get cleared. It would at best be useful as a cover condition, but I doubt anyone playing a Condie build will use the Shield.

Especially if it’s based on the same relatively broken mechanic for it’s #4 skill.

Can’t we just get a block like every other block in the game? Why do ours only block 1 attack?

Make it a ~2s channeled block that causes 1s of Weakness on every blocked attack.

Is that so hard? It’s reliable, not dependent on the stars aligning just right, and it maintains Chronomancer qualities of slowing enemies down. Then put the silly Phantasm on the Wave-thingie, make it summon as the wave summons or something.

I suspect this was a deliberate balance decision due to the Chronomancer F5 skill. The Ill. invig. trait was very popular and there would be little reason to remove it, except if they feared it would throw balance off significantly in the new game.

You can already see folks talking about tripple Moas by using both F5 and the SoI, but frankly I’m betting that the shatter re-charge on SoI will probably also be changed or maybe (better yet) simply not usable for Chronomancers.

Considering what all shatter builds are gaining in survivability and DPS output, from even just the standard traitlines, I don’t think the removal of ill. invig. is unreasonable as it’s very hard to balance such a skill unless, basically, the underlying system is weak w/o it. (Or OPd with it. A trait that potentially doubles the DPS a class can put out is just not good. Either OPd, or the skills it boosts are underpowered w/o it.)

You can achieve the same effect with Chrono F5, even more on-demand, but then you are also locked into Chrono and will have to give up something else. (Be it damage, clone production on dodge, or advanced shatters & improved CDs.)

I do agree with you that the Illusions Master traits really don’t offer anything reasonable to Power Shatter builds. I guess that’s made up for with both the Minors and the GM, which are a significant trade-off if you choose to forego the line.

If by “losing out on the Staff trait” you’re referring to IE ( +1 bounce) trait, that is being turned into baseline so you will always bounce one more then currently on all bounce skills.

With Confusion improved and it looks like Burns also being made stackable, I think the Staff will be an excellent close-quarters Condie weapon as it applies bleeds, burns, and Confusion & Bleed on crits.

It could be that GS Clones will outshine that though by pure speed & range of stacking bleeds & confusion on crits. I guess that also depends on build a little bit. If you get that crit chance up high along with decent Condie damage, I could see GS simply being more practical and reliable.

Oh and Poisons are also turning into stacks, so you might get more DoT damage from that too. (Although we don’t have a lot of that.) I could see Condie damage in PvE becoming more competitive for sure with all these different stackable DoTs and stack limits doubled.

I agree that especially Confusion will come primarily from Mesmers, so I could see that being significantly more viable in PvE then it is now. (Probably won’t surpass Power based builds though.)

kylwilson.9137:

Actually it words inversely when it comes to something like blurred frenzy. A faster activation means less defense from BF because you cycle through the blur effect faster meaning using it under quickness in most circumstances is in fact worse.

Yes, good thing then that I never said anything different. I clearly related Quickness to the Sword AA, and Alacrity to BF.

That said, it’s obtuse to sell this trade-off as a negative to using BF while quickened. Being under the effects of Quickness is the same as a 33% DPS increase, so due to the duality-design of BF, you’re not only getting the good elements of Quickness but also the bad. That’s 100% intended design, and makes sense.

Also, OP, look into a new Minor trait called Fragility. It’s a 10% flat damage increase on… (drumroll) any target that’s Vulnerable! Hmm? Now where would you get Vulnerable from? ;-)

There is your flat damage increase and you can get Quickness & Alacrity on top!

Hmm I think with quickness the 1h Sword AA will be pretty strong, especially on boonless targets, and alacrity will reduce CD on BF, which means both more defense and offense in melee. (Which in turn synergizes with the post-evade trait, getting you 1.5s of reflection.)

I don’t think it fits the Mesmer to have brute-force traits that make us hit like Hulk, but rather we’re manipulators/controllers.

The combination of slowing your enemy and boosting your own attack speed, as well as CD reductions, fits Mesmers perfectly and can do just as well -if not better- then simple DPS increases.

Just my 2 cents. This is not the profession for 1-button victories. cough Heart Seeker cough

Pondering…

1) Continuum Shift (MI or otherwise get shatter-fodder up if need be)
2) iZerker + SoE + iZerker (~2.5s totalcast time)
3) MW (Phantasms are re-summoned by Chono GM)
4) CS expires iZerker, MW, and SoE are all refreshed

In the worst case, say that the newly summon Phants don’t attack immediately, you can just MW them again. Then summon 2 more iZerkers yourself.

That’s a ton of AE damage from 1200 range and in very fast succession.

More pondering…

Cover your F5 rift with that damage well? Should be about the same duration, and anyone who wants to melee your rift has to probably take the final-blow well damage, and of course the well CD is recharged. (Well or maybe not, no pun intended. Sounded like perhaps wells are not affected by F5?)

Lots of cool stuff, but also sounds like there will be some major adjustments needed as well. /cry

As MailMail said, I think it’s too early to really speculate about this, and I’m pretty sure we’re giving into our pre-conceived notions about current builds, but I do think that once you take Mirror Images into account, and the Chronomancer line, you really can’t say where we will end up.

Way too much of this depends on variables that we simply don’t know yet, and don’t know how they play. I could see even a “classic” Power Shatter setup foregoing DE for Chrono, and with MI being able to use F5 to double-shatter 3 clones almost instantly. (Again depending on a bunch of things we simply don’t know yet.)

Only MI is really certain to be fast enough to get 3 illusions on a target almost instantly, then rewinding time and doing it again. You may not be able to do this with DE at all, or fast enough.

For MtD it’s almost certain that you would take Chrono in order to be able to double or tripple up on F2 shatter, keeping your illusions with Chrono for a followup F1, and then reqind time and do it all over again. You’d maybe even take DE to boot in order to get as many illusions as you possibly can, because you will have plenty of shatters up at any time to get more Torment & Confusion out there.

Power Shatter can’t really make use of all the clones you can now produce, because the only really strong offensive shatter is MW. Although I could see it being useful to both F1 shatter and then immediately after F4 shatter the Chrono-generated illusions for immunity.

Although I clearly see that Chronomancer will not be a requirement to play P-Shatter, Condie Shatter, or whatever, but I do think there will be viable shatter builds of all kinds that will not take DE or Dueling at all.

As Ross will gladly tell you, there almost kinda is life without DE, it’s not as gravy as with DE, but it can work out OK. Chrono will now substancially increase the amount of illusions you can have up for shattering, without DE, and thus logic tells me it almost certainly will be possible to do without it. (Though DE and Dueling as a whole remain a powerful alternative to Chrono for sure!)

If MtD Shatter applies 8x Torment on a 3-Clone shatter now, then with the Chrono Clone respawn trait you could basically put 16x Torment and 12x Confusion in a very quick F1 + F2 combo shatter.

And if you did this during an F5 time-rift-thingie, using MI to quickly get clones up, you could theoretically do this twice in a row in relatively fast succession?

I think the CD is fine, but it should apply 2x Confusion in an AoE around the target it procs off with a 5 target limit and at least 240 radius, preferably more.

I don’t think even this would make me take it over MtD, which will now apply 8x Torment on a 3 Clone shatter, but at least it would have the benefit of being usable at range.

Unfortunately a CD of some sort is necessary now that we have the AE blind on shatter.

This one definitely needs work to compete with MtD and MoF though!

Oh please, keep the tinfoil in the drawer! /rolls eyes

What possible purpose does a for-profit company have in keeping one of only 8 professions from being viable on purpose? To lose frustrated customers? Not logical.

If they didn’t want Mesmers in their game, they wouldn’t have added them. It’s just the nature of the beast that makes it harder to balance, as the profession is not as straight forward as the others. (By design! They always said they wanted it to be a difficult profession to learn to master.)

Good point. We could kill 2 birds with one stone here:

1) Make Clones unable to be affected by indirect AoE/cleave damage (or even take 50-75% less damage from it, would help a ton!)
2) Give a trait that gives a significant drawback to directly targeting and killing a Clone at melee range. (Even single-target would be fine, doesn’t have to be AE!)

This would solve a ton of issues for shatter builds, while allowing a punishment for poor play that can not possibly be construed as being cheesy or passive.

When you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense that a player should be punished for deliberately targeting and killing a Clone. It’s our resource! Killing it should not always be an ideal way to play against us, but sadly it really kinda is now, and in many cases will be even more so now.

At least before, Clone Death kept people on their toes and wondering if a Mesmer had DD, knowing that this would mean a bit of trouble if they just played Whack-A-Mole with our Clones. I really never had an issue with Clone Death builds, they seemed sensible in that it discouraged the poor play most people were engaging in because it was so effective against just about all other Mesmer builds.

The problem with CD builds was that cleave damage so easily kills Clones that even if you weren’t trying to kill them, you did. This needs to change and would fix two bad designs in one fell swoop!

Ansau.7326:

Windwalker, I was talking about the lost of more valuable and useful traits.
…

The main reason people don’t use SoI is because it’s passive is lackluster, and that is being fixed it seems. Secondly, the 45 sec CD on the active is just too long between boon shares, and thus kinda kills the concept of a boon share Mesmer build.

This new GM trait would, in the worst case, allow a doubling of that although I would agree that a 45 sec CD would be pretty ridiculous. I’m betting that it will not have a CD, or if at all it’ll be a much shorter one.

As for BD, maybe you’re forgetting that it applies it’s boons (aside from Stab) as an AoE too, so you can actually grant 6 stacks of Might (15s base), or ~10s of Fury, on top of a stack or two of Stab. All that comes passively during normal play. You drop a shatter combo, maybe pop Staff #4 first, and then summon your Phantasm and boom you just handed out 6 stacks of Might, a good amount of Fury, a bit of Stab, oh and ~5s of Protection. TYVM!

While the other GMs are certainly powerful, they do require a different play style. No doubt an interrupt/boon-share build sounds very possible as well, but you’ll have to get those interrupts first and anything aside from Might will be random. Of course adding the very nicely buffed Furious Interruption trait on top, could make a powerful interrupt/boon sharing build.

Getting boons off PU to share is a little less likely due to their short durations and the way in which you have to get them, which is relatively unfriendly to group play.

I agree though that the boons for F1 and F4 shatters could be improved. I think the F4 one should maybe give a 4 – 5s Resistance, as nothing so far gives us this new boon in our traditional lines and I’m seeing others getting it in theirs. Considering the CD on Distortion, this would not be OPd. (Any way you slice it, Regen is a terrible boon to place on a shatter with that long of a CD. It needs to be a powerful boon!)

MW has a much shorter CD, so maybe Retal is “OK” but they just stated themselves that it doesn’t really fit Mesmers, but then they leave it on a shatter trait for a power based shatter? Doesn’t make much sense and certainly doesn’t add a whole lot of value.

lol, I think you need to watch some of the crazy things other professions are getting if this 10% has your kittens in a wad. Watch the Ranger one, or of course Thief…

After watching them all it became apparent that it truly is impossible for anyone, including Anet I might add, to understand the actual balance changes this will bring to the game. It’s just too many variables and we’re just going to have to wait and see.. Anything else is giving into hype, be it negative or positive, and has far more to do with people giving into their emotions then making rational objective statements based on facts.

The good part is, we’re all going to be news again for a while! It’s going to take quite some time to re-learn the intricacies of the game after HoT, and I’m betting there will be FoTM builds that will seem totally OPd first, probably sadly get knee-jerk nerfed, and then people will find a new FoTM that actually was even more powerful then the one that got nerfed shortly after the initial patches. ;-)

Fun times ahead and my hat goes off to Anet for simply having the guts to do such a massive overhaul. (Of which we haven’t even heard about several parts yet.)

^ No doubt that is a lot, but of course MI can be interrupted easily, and Veil kinda requires your enemy to be stupid to get 8s without getting mauled in the process. ;-)

I think Anet mentioned though that the percentage on PU is definitely not set in stone and is subject to more testing.

In fact a lot of stuff is, and I’m sure we’ll all be seeing a lot of drama on this board for all the CD changes and the like that we’re obviously going to see before all of these changes go live. ;-)

Very simple really:

Either you go with a standard 4/4/0/0/6 Power-Shatter, but change Zerker gear to include more Toughness. In hot join PvP you can go with the Knights Amulet for example. (Pow/Prec/Tough)

This will allow you noticeably more time to react to Thieves, Rangers, or other burst specs/builds. Naturally, this comes at a pretty significant cost to damage output, so you’ll have to weigh that for yourself. In WvW though you can definitely find ways to get a good mix of damage & survivability even into a P-Shatter build.

Secondly, you can try a MtD Shatter build. It will allow you to learn a lot of the essential skills of Shatter-oriented play, but with far less skill required as far as survivability is concerned. You will still have considerable AE damage output, but of course in the form of Torment, so condition cleanses in group warfare will frustrate you at times. (The way to overcome this is to use all of your shatters. Shatter often, shatter hard, clones, clones, and more clones! Then MtD again. This works pretty well actually, but is generally speaking not comparable to the spike P-Shatter can give you.)

Basically, a Zerker P-Shatter build survives almost entirely on player reaction time, ping, and skill in using the escape tools you have, and then landing your bursts to kill before you die basically. ;-) Between Decoy, Blink, maybe Torch invis or Chaos Storm & Phase Retreat, Blurred Frenzy, and Ether Feast you have some sustain if you keep your opponent wondering where the real Mesmer is.

You have to play very aggressive, don’t hesitate, never stop moving, use your Dodges wisely, use terrain to your advantage (blink), and just keep practicing. If you have great reflexes and a great connection, you can do amazing things on P-Shatter, but if you do not have both of those you will get frustrated really fast on how glassy you are. (Things will look up a bit after next patch with AoE Blind and other things buying you some valuable reaction time.)

GL!

Definitely MtD! With built-in IP and the buffed MS trait, it will vastly outperform Blinding Befuddlement and the underwhelming 33% Confusion duration. (+33% of poor duration is still “pretty poor” duration. Problem is most of our Confuses have too short a base duration to make this 33% duration aspect worthwhile.)

Naturally, I would choose Blinding Dissipation once I go with MtD. It’s an added cover condition in the worst case, or a beautiful means to sustain in Xv1 fights or vs. Thieves.

I do think it would be more interesting to consider GS instead of Staff. Having played Staff quite a bit with IE, for lack of any real alternative, I have to say it’s more “theoretically” powerful" then “actually” so. The slow projectiles and random nature of bounces makes it hard to rely on as a DPS weapon in PvP. The ramp up to 15+ bleed stacks and burning is there, it is powerful, but in practice it just takes too long. I’m just over it, it’s a frustrating weapon with no real CC, unreliable damage, and a VERY poor Phantasm considering it’s main strength is Conditions.

With the on-crit Confusion boost, I really think GS Clones will be really effective and naturally the iZerker is far more useful then the iWarlock for both damage and utility. Since PU and Chaos in general already give quite a bit of survivability, I think you won’t need the Staff as much. (Of course it’ll be awesome survivability, no doubt, but personally I’d prefer a better balance if it means I have more active DPS output and some CC options.) Even MB will bounce a lot and spread Vuln while providing Might, and of course proccing more Confusions.

Lastly, I do have to defend Decoy a bit here. They lowered the CD on it to 40s, and the stealth duration will obviously benefit from the improved PU. Then to top all that off, you will lower it’s CD even more via the Illusionist’s Celerity trait! That means a (current numbers) 6s stealth when you hit 50% health, on a 32s CD! In fact this trait might allow you to pull off a Torchless PU build.

I had considered the GS as a condie weapon with this patch as well, especially since anyone who has played with IE and Staff knows it’s both really strong in testing, but usually really pretty lackluster in actual play. This is largely due to the slow traveling speed of the Staff projectiles, and GS doesn’t have that issue.

However, I don’t really see the GS GM trait playing a big role here. I was thinking about this in terms of using this aspect in either a Condi/Interrupt type build, or maybe even a Condie/MtD Shatter build.

I could see your idea making a lot of sense for a hybrid build though, so you get a little more out of that extra 100 Pow the GM trait now provides, but also the other parts of the Domination line like that yummy 10% damage bonus to vulnerable foes.

Just pondering, but yes I think GS Clones will be pretty nasty. (And notice that the new Dueling minor also applies to your own attacks, making GS AA even stronger too.)

serenke.4806:

And every non-zerker mesmer is a joke. I’ve had a nice 1v1 with some yesterday (several different mesmers in different matches) where i could just spam /shrug while they were trying to MtD me or danced around producing clones that did put “copious amounts of conditions” on me that i could cleanse away. Each time i just capped the point while they were pulling off their awesome combos…. Pretty impressive.

They could have killed a thief though. I’ll give them that.

I have a strong feeling that you will eat these words, and that he who laughs last, laughs the loudest. (Until the nerf of course! WAH! <— Preemptive post-nerf crying! )

What you face with MtD today will be but a bleak shadow of what you will be facing with it after HoT goes live. First of all, all shatter builds will be significantly more survivable (especially MtD though), secondly MtD’s DPS is vastly boosted (IP & MS), and lastly I don’t think there is enough cleansing on any class to so easily counter MtD anymore. (Say hello to Confusion on crit along with bleed on crit, not to mention the improved iDuelist.)

I agree that currently we lack enough cover conditions, and to some degree also lack reapplication of damaging conditions to overcome the cleansing of some of the meta classes. After this update though, you will see AoE Blind added to every shatter, much more Confusion (and much more effective Confusion) in general, and much broader set of weapons choice for Condi Mesmers. (GS Clones for bleed & confusion, and/or hugely improved iDuelist.)

And none of that even factors in what might be possible with Chronomancer abilities, or mixing in more interrupts with MtD to prevent/delay cleanses while also applying more Conditions.

I’m definitely among the least qualified to speak on PvE, but just by reading the complaints regarding PvE, it seems to me that people are simply resistant to the fact that Anet is deliberately moving away from passive play for the Mesmer and that this naturally affects Phantasm builds. (PvE and PvP!)

It seems that Anet feels that Phantasms should be only supplementary in nature rather then a fundamental play-style.

That aside, it may not be much for PvE, but the 1s invuln at least should do something and is almost free as long as you’re going for Wardens Feedback anyway. Yes, Temporal Enchanter will hopefully see some further improvements, but all of this would seem to jive well with PvE builds.

I also think other alternatives will emerge for PvE as well. Perhaps Anet felt it would require a focus away from Phantasms, to make people even want to try more active builds in PvE. They are improving Conditions in PvE, Confusion will get boosted as well, and you will be able to do some serious boon sharing in a Boon/Support Shatter build for example. I can’t judge if that’s useful in PvE, but it would seem so? (Mucho AoE Stab, Vigor, Fury and Might…or even Quickness!)

We will also have a ton more reflect options. Just on dodge roll alone or using BF, and/or using a Manipulation which will apparently include Mirror.

Much tankier builds will also be possible thanks to baseline IP making IR a viable choice for self-healing on shatter, and traited staff now providing on-demand Protection and more Chaos Armor in general.

As for Sword being the only melee option for PvE, isn’t Staff with IE and the Dueling line going to do pretty well too? Lots of bouncing Burn, bleed, and Confusion & Bleed on crits? (Not to mention Fury & Might) Trait that sucker and this could make a seriously tanky melee-range build with BD and RI for boons/heals on shatter.

I’m simply trying to point out possible new options that all favor much more active play then focusing a build entirely around summoning Phantasms.

Just my 2 cents for what it’s worth…which admittedly ain’t much! Good luck though, I hope that PvE will not be worse off with this overhaul.

Absolutely yes.

I feel that almost every straight up boost to an existing ability came from some suggestions I’ve seen on this board. Even how it appears that Confusion will be changed to first apply initial damage, and then add more damage per use as punishment/control. This will put Confusion in a really unique position as a Condition, providing a bit of both burst damage, and then DoT-like damage.

This alone will hugely improve Confusion overall, and especially Confusion on Mesmers…more specifically F2. From the looks of it, CoF will now do respectable direct damage even in a Condie build. This is long overdue for both CoF and of course Confusion in general.

Furious Interruption 5s CD. This is possibly more then we asked for even, but with the caveat (and benefit!) of it being a boon now, thus being both strippable and sharable. I know people feel this will be OPd, but these people seem to forget there is now a new counter-condition to this! This adds more counter play options and makes Quickness more viable again overall. (I’m pretty sure that all other professions will naturally also have their Quickness changed to a boon, and remove/reduce the negative effects.)

The whole Inspiration line is a big example of what Chaos Angel is saying. Many people in the past have pointed out that IP makes Restorative Illusions even semi-viable, and that it should be moved to Master tier as it’s not worthy of a GM trait. Same goes for Protected Phantasms, which many people have called for being a built-in feature of Phantasms. This is the next best thing to that, and entirely acceptable. (Provided that CD is a tooltip error of course!)

Signet traits all being combined. I know I’ve heard people suggest this.

Power Block needing something that affects Thieves (and more in general) to be worthy of a GM trait. Damage, Weakness…lovely!

The list just goes on…

Clearly they listened and for this I have to give credit where credit is due!

Good job so far Anet!

That’s not to say we won’t whine, cry, and moan about all of this when it’s live and we find out that the Mesmer world is not all gravy! ;-) With such a massive overhaul of the entire game, we will surely see huge imbalances, big nerfs, and lots and lots of forum-crying because of it!

BRING IT!!!

Yes good write-up, summation, and observations/opinions. I agree with pretty much everything you say.

Although it’s far too early to speculate how things will actually pan out, it looks like we’ll have far more viable build options then before. Sometimes “less” really is “more”. ;-)

Aside from the usual Power Shatter and Lockdown builds, I think we’ll see a more viable Condition Shatter, “tanky” Power Shatter, and Support Shatter (boon share looks borderline OPd). Each of these will also have slight variations, and of course Phantasm builds will also be possible, although perhaps more hybridized as you’ll add either more shattering, condies, or rupts to it.

Contrary to those who would like to redefine the Mesmer without shatters, I think it’s great that Anet is holding onto this theme and finding ways to improve it rather then to ditch it altogether.

We’ll see what our Elite Spec brings later today, which I’m guessing will also fundamentally change how we can choose to play our Mesmer, and of course with that add even more viable build options.

Disclaimer: My definition of viable has never, and will never, be a narrow-minded focus on only top-tier paid PvP tournaments. I hope we will see more viability there as well, but since I’m not personally interested (or qualified :P) for this level, it’s not really an important aspect to me as a customer.

Ansau.7326:

- Bountiful Disillusionment will only grant stability to the user, it isn’t AoE.
- Illusionary Inspiration only copies, it doesn’t grant. That means you will pass very short stability.

Also to do it you’ll have to waste 2 GM traits when those 2 lines have other GM traits much more valuable.

You’re not wasting anything. That’s just being obtuse. You’re shattering because that’s what you do in a shatter build with at least 1 shatter oriented GM trait, and as you shatter you will end up stacking quite significant amounts of Stability, especially with some boon duration bonuses factored in.

Let’s say you start out with just a quick 3-Clone F1 plus a fast follow-up F2 Combo Shatter, you end up having easily 8+ seconds of Stab that you can share via Ill. Insp. by summoning your iBezerker. That will not only put out some damage, but also throw out 8-12s of AoE Stab, plus 3 Stacks of Might, plus AoE Retaliation. Not to mention that in such a build you’d probably also opt for Vig. Revelation and thus add Vigor to the mix, and could also use traited Staff to add some Protection in there as well!

So you shatter and summon Phantasms, which is basically what any Shatter build does anyway, only in this “support shatter” you trade spike-damage for boon spreading.

I don’t know how you figure that this is “a waste” in any conceivable scenario.

In fact, that is the very purpose of both of those GMs, so I kinda fail to see any point in your statement. BD is for generating Boons on yourself, and Ill. Insp. is for sharing those Boons that are on you.

There is nothing short about 8-12s of Stability every 25s, excluding F3 & F4 Shatters. Now we don’t know if Ill. Insp. has a CD, and if it does how high that is. Even then, you could still take the now boosted (perma-speed) SoI as well, and have 2 copies every 45 sseconds. (That is the worse case scenario, basically, but I doubt there really is a 45 sec CD on a GM trait.)

Actually we have a huge option for group Stability:

- Bountiful Disillusionment
- Illusionary Inspiration

In fact, this combo will likely prove to be a bit much group Stability. ;-) Depends on how many stacks I guess, and what the actual CD (if any) on Ill. Insp. will be.

phys.7689:

interestingly enough, clone death factories would have required way more activity.

Ironically enough, you’re kinda right! ;-)

Great points and a good suggestion!

Didn’t read everything, but on the point of attrition builds using Condies, we already have it and will more so with the improved PU and various improvements to Condition builds in general.

Having your Clones apply both Bleed & Confusion on crits, while you’re off in Stealth gaining boons, is pretty much the definition of attrition. ;-)

Staff Clones will add Burning and Vuln to that mix, Scepter Clones add Torment… Basically you stay in stealth and just keep generating clones and gaining buffs so that whenever you’re not in stealth, you’ll probably have Aegis & Protection up 75% of the time. (Not to mention the improved traited Staff Chaos Armor.)

OK that is your opinion, but that doesn’t address the question whether it wouldn’t make sense to make it proc on KB or at least Launch? Would that make this trait OPd?

Agreed MailMail, it’s pretty clear they read/lurked a lot of this forum the past 6 or so months and have taken up a lot of suggestions we’ve made.

Which is kind of an interesting aspect to consider. In lurking and reading, rather then posting, they do on the one hand appear distant/removed/ivory-tower like towards customers, but also save themselves the endless threads, bashing, kitten-kissing, etc. that happens whenever they do post something…anything.

I think it’s quite encouraging to see that they definitely do read these forums, or at least somehow have a means of getting some/many of the best ideas players presented here in the past few months.

I don’t think anyone can claim to understand where we will stand after this huge update, but I for one am greatly excited and feel that overall it is probably going to be a huge improvement to lack-luster traits, build diversity, etc.

I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering why these absolutely unused traits managed to survive this massive overhaul, so as I pondered this oddity I thought it would be neat to make these traits a little more useful.

In general PvP you almost never get falling damage, and if you do, chances are it’s not in order to proc this highly situational trait. What if KDs and Launches applied a small amount of falling damage, thereby activating these traits?

What do you think? I’m sure we’d make out “OK” in that deal, although some other classes probably have it even better. Still it’s sad to see this trait still there as 1 of only 3 options in a traitline, and it be so highly situational that basically it amounts to having only 2 traits to choose from for that line. QQ

Yeah, not to mention the Staff gets the old insta-Protection for CA if you get Chaotic Dampening. This will make Staff even more defensive, and with free IE and the Clone crits causing Bleed & Confusion things could get ugly pretty fast.

There isn’t much you can do against good D/P thieves perma-stealthing off your illusions. Any Mesmer spec has enough illusions to grant them that possibility, but to say that you can’t even beat bad ones is just plain silly.

With PU Power you can take on most equally skilled Thieves and have a fair shot at winning, which is more then you can say for most other Zerker Mesmer builds. The bad ones are actually quite easy to kill, and that’s at least half of the Thieves I run into. The other half gives me a good run for sure, and it’s definitely an uphill battle to win, but you certainly can beat them or make a getaway if you realize that you can’t.

This build has a lot of stealth uptime, and that alone lets you drag fights out to the point where most Thieves are simply not comfortable engaging you in 1v1.

This has been my experience in PUG unranked arena at least.

I have played PU Condie extensively and primarily for many months even before it had it’s FoTM status, and until shortly after. Grew tired of it and have moved on to many other builds since then, but lately I’ve come back to PU Zerker build with GS + Sw/To and having a blast with it.

Just to throw that in the mix as a much more active way to play PU. It’s also a bit more team-oriented build then PU-Condie (IMO) in that you’re able to deliver strong AE bursts with both your GS skills, and the occasional MW+BF. I mix them up and am able to put out really solid damage, but thanks to PU/Stealth, and the Chaos line in general, I have a ton more survivability then Zerker builds usually do.

I went with the standard 4/4/6/0/0, buffing up Phantasm damage and Torch in Domination. (And Master of Manips in Dom since I have both Blink and AT.)

I chose AT as a utility due to the stealth boosts that no longer require you to be facing your target to pop it, and am satisfied with it for the first time ever. I really like it’s flexibility as either a boon-strip or a Condie-clear, which makes a nice combination with the traited Torch. This gives enough Condie clear when you really need it, but in most fights I simply don’t need much Condie Clears and it’s great fun to be able to steal boons off the “Cele meta” folks. Sure, with MoRes you can cure Condies better, but in the frequent case where you’re not facing a lot of Conditions it’s kinda a wasted utility slot.

It’s also a good spec to try if you’re frustrated with P-Shatters squishieness. It really is a lot tankier! In this build I can still 1v1 most anything and win a lot more then I lose, including vs. Thieves, but the really good Thieves either have to get lucky or you can at most hold them off for a bit and then escape or die.

Most of all though, you’re still able to do a good job as a DPSer in your team, especially adding on fights to quickly down tanky opponents, or dealing harshly with enemy squishies like Thieves/Mesmers. In fact, you’re a great Mesmer killer in this build. ;-)

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