Guild Wars 2

Why would it be all that more powerful? It would still be somewhat painful to use what with the aoe circle. Furthermore, It would not be reason to nerf to Halting strike.

I guess my agenda is to simply add another short cooldown daze somewhere. I find it absurd that a class with so many interrupt traits has arguably the longest cooldowns on interrupts. I also have always missed the gw1 mesmer proactive mitigation of damage, whereas in contrast, in Gw2 we seem to be saving the interrupts for specific skill counters (ie heals) which changes the focus of the play style. Interrupting rather than being the core of the build and letting us reliably use our procs tends towards being a spice adding on top while we rely on a random concoction of other effects to actually do the damage for the build. Now, should we get a utility with kitten cast time which inflicts a 0.25 daze on a 5 second cooldown, then we would have the basis for a built that relies on HS for damage. That of course would never happen, hence why I think something needs to be added somewhere else.

On another note, I actually am fairly certain that if we had an increased frequency of interrupts we would actually see the lockdown build become a contender for high level pvp, as it would enable a refocusing of our use of interrupts as a form of sustainable pressure through HS and CI. This would have the potential to be absurdly strong against less skilled players, but it would not necessarily be over powered as it would still function as a build reliant on a skill level cap that most players could never achieve to turn it into such an unbalanced build.

To be honest fay, I am hoping that we see a change to our mechanic, along the lines of turning our clones into fields or something, that create passive effects that can be then be shattered. Essentially the mechanic is functionally the same, (an ai/construct based system) but as it becomes tied to a location rather than to physical ai, it enables a much more dueling/point holding focus to take place, something almost akin to turret engi…

Actually, giving that back would go a long way towards actually making mesmer lockdown a viable contender in the meta vs shatter. Consider the synergy of a 9 second aoe daze with halting strikes and the vulnerability stacking along side a 24 second cooldown knockback with iZerker and it’s cripple. I would wager such a setup would have me running 6/2/6 rather than the standard 4/4/6, and would also probably see me using Power Block inspite of it’s weaknesses. I mean let’s be honest, the major detracting factor to PB is the probability of doing nothing against a thief on a limited resource, namely interrupts, give us a reliable short cooldown interrupt and then that would change.

I would be honest, I would love to get Iswordsman’s dodge attack on sword.

Why not just change the recharge to be triggered from the moment we expend the first charge. This would indirectly buff all the mesmer traits.

I would love to see move towards opengl myself with a look towards enabling better cross platform performance.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I agree that charges should regenerate after combat. That would be a massive QoL change to me, and the main reason why I dislike mantras has to do with how many unneeded button presses I have to go through after each battle to make sure I start the next one with all of them fully charged.

However, this QoL change should only apply to mantras that are already charged, of course (AKA, mantras where you have at least 1 charge left). If you had used all charges, you would need to prepare them again, no matter what. Auto-regeneration would ONLY occur if you had at least 1 charge left, and out of combat. It’s purpose would be purely for a QoL change to take away unneeded button presses out of combat, and not as an unintentional buff.

This exactly. Alternatively, let the cooldown start when you use the first mantra charge. This would have much the same effect. Neither would exactly be all that overpowered, as the primary difference would be a shorter time spent between fights waiting for cooldowns to recharge.

How about building it into harmonious mantra’s, if you still have one charge left you gain a charge for mantras on your bar every 15s. In this way, it becomes a quality of life boost and enables us a chance to recover during a lul in the battle. It would also have good synergy with the trait that boosts our damage based on our mantra’s by letting us use our utility without stripping the damage…

Furthermore, I do not think MoD should be our go to interrupt. It should be our massively useful emergency interrupt, hence why it can be used at any time.

To be honest, I believe that mesmer needs something akin to thieves headshot skill. At this point I lack faith in anet giving us a mainhand pistol which would be the perfect place for such a skill, hence why I would like to see some changes to the offhand sword. And yes Ross, a cleave on Iswordsman would be an awesome improvement…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Centurion.7296:

There is no such thing as an OP class or a OP profession, there are only good players, nothing less nothing more. Every profession has its weakness and strong points as well as every build has its weakness and strong points but dont ever say a build or a profession is OP because there is no such thing. As they say; seek the problem in yourself first before you go out and look for problems in others.

There is such a thing as an OP profession. I can point to quite a few in the past.

Now, I would argue we don’t have any OP professions right now, but they definitely were a thing.

We certainly have underpowered ones currently, namely the class this thread is primarily concerned with…

The issue with power block was that for about three magical days mesmer lockdown spec had something other than CI to build around. Power block was a trait that could cause mass confusion when it triggered, that ranger with that longbow spam, oh suddenly he needs to weapon swap to continue auto attacking, or you know kite for a bit. Then came the overhanded nerf.

Why does a trait, a grandmaster trait, not affect an entire profession? What the hell does this represent, an idea that the mesmer is not supposed to be able to force punishment on that class when built entirely around punishing… It seems counter intuitive… To be honest, what I found that killed this skill is the way it applied to channels and to auto attacks. As channels are not effected by the skill, and as auto attacks are not effected, then we have lost our major punishing points on other classes. Furthermore, with the trait doing nothing to thieves, the class that tends to tear mesmers to shreds you are left asking yourself why, why even bother. At least CS adds an extra half a second or so to most of our dazes, or indeed it turns them into a hard cc. This at least is useful. Power block, now what does this do again, is useless on about 2 of the five weaponskills on every class, and is useless against thieves entirely. And now we have revenant on the way with its lack of cooldowns on its elites, isn’t that going to be nice for the trait.

Now, for those of you who talk about adding a cooldown to DE, anet would do so at their peril, it would be a public relations nightmare which would likely see what remains of the mesmer players leave the game and do a very loud dummy spit that would cause a reputation hit. It would be akin to doing a NGE overhaul on one of the classes, due to how it would affect most mesmer build viability, and I am not sure you guys should agitate towards that, as you just know, that anet, in their panic would buff the mesmer massively to try and stop the bleeding that might just turn the disgruntled mesmers into rioting mesmers.

Now do not remind me of headshot, almost the only reason I want a mainhand pistol is to see aanet give us a version of a skill like that..

On another note, why the hell are you complaining about mesmer stealth! If you need to complain about stealth, than offhand dagger (IIRC) for thieves is what you need to be arguing against!

Zenith, the daze is a line daze, so it is aoe, it hits up to 5 targets, just an fyi. Further more, when you build around mainhand sword and blink the mobility issues become negligible within the small size of the arenas in pvp.

On another note Ross, I find it hard to justify building for aoe when the mesmer is just so bloody kitten at it…

looks at half empty wine bottle and grabs another What the flipping kitten! How the hell could I not remember that bloody nightmare of a suggestion. To the OP just learn to bloody play. I spend enough time as it is getting mauled by your bloody ranger pets and stupid 1 spam while trying to close the gap to a ranger to know that your class is in an excellent position versus mine. My only hope to kill you is not connected to burst at all, it is entirely connected to being able to Line of Sight you and hoping my phantasms can chew you to about 50% health and then that I am lucky enough to interrupt your heal skill while your running away to proc CI and be able to finish you off. Stealth does not really change anything, as mesmer still has limited access to it, namely a 30 second cooldown on torch. Now if it was a thief’s stealth then I would have time for your complaints, but at this point it is simply a case that you found yourself against a player who understood and could react better to the changing situation between the two of you in your engagement. As they say, your problem is Pebkac, or Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

Where to begin, I have taken to lately to running an interrupt build aiming for an almost total reliance on sword offhands daze. Now this in part has been done to help me retrain myself into being able to use it reliably to mess with rangers and the like but it has led me to some intriguing findings.

First, we need some way to prevent the block from triggering.
I cannot shout this loud enough, to often I am trying to interrupt a rangers longbow spam and when I go to hit the sword 4 skill I find no daze fires, why because the block triggered and a useless clone was spawned and killed within the same instant. I will be honest, I would prefer to see the clone removed entirely from the skill and replaced with a daze. In this way we gain some defensive interrupting, and it would not be so frustrating to have the wrong effect trigger when you are itching for a halting strike.

Secondly, the speed is not as much of an issue as you would think. While I would love to see the projectile become faster, at this point, I find that as I am usually relying on sword sword, I am usually close enough to the enemy that the speed is irrelevant.

Cooldown. The cooldown is low enough that this skill has become our most frequently viable interrupt. For me this is important, I like the idea of always having an interrupt skill on hand, (To the point I used to run IP just so I could use a solo diversion if I ran out of interrupts) This said, I cannot help but feel that this skill could use a a 2s or so shortening of the cooldown. If we are going to keep it as a double function skill that can be buggered by incoming damage it would be nice to be able to use it more frequently. Perhaps on a similar cooldown to the block on the scepter.

Finally, why the hell are there no guides singing the praises of this single skill. While yes it does take time to adjust to, I am readily finding myself relying on it to interrupt stomps and heals in place of the daze mantra. Perhaps in time I will feel comfortable enough to run without mantra of distraction at all while still aiming to be a interrupt base build.

PS, Dreams for the future.

I would like to see a tightening up on this skill. It does sometimes feel a little clunky, and I feel it could benefit from a halving of the cast time. This would make it more responsive and could lead to it being a true replacement for MoD. Indeed I would not mind a trait somewhere that removed the block from the skill entirely if it came as granting the skill a much more reliable cast time and reducing the cooldown a bit. That said, I have been a mesmer long enough to know that Anet never answers our dreams or prayers.

jportell.2197:

Fay.2357:

Sorel.4870:

jportell.2197:

Wow. Someone calling mesmers OP cuz they cant find the real one. Are we in beta weekend 1 again? O.o

That’s a good sign actually! It means we have some fresh blood in pvp.

That’s actually an interesting way to look at it.

@OP….nm, not even gonna.

An interestijg way to look at it. I just hope no more of these posts show up or anet will do something like put a 10s icd on deceptive evasion lol.

Don’t even joke about that, I am almost at the point of treating mesmer nerf jokes like Actors treat Hamlet.

What we have not heard is how this will effect Mesmer interrupt traits? Atm mesmers are entirely relegated to reflect bots in pve, as almost any other build does not work to well.. Will this break bar then let us proc interrupt trait effects of bosses now? And how will this effect our ability to prevent a cleave from knocking everyone down? At the moment, a skilled Mesmer using s/s is capable of more or less managing a bosses big aoe skills solo by spamming sword daze to remove defiant then hitting them with a mantra to prevent the big power skill. Will this kinda play still be viable?

I believe there is a thread by chaos somewhere, about the tips lockdown should know.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/6-Essential-Tips-Lockdown-Mesmers-Must-Know

Sebrent.3625:

Honestly, I’m not sure I want my scepter clone to be spawned next to me.

There are multiple times where I want him parked right next to my target.

I would be of the opposite mind, mainly because with scepter clones I want them as far from the target as possible, to either allow me to get more up for a shatter or to keep them spamming torment.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Advent.6193:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

AnniMira.2506:

Hehe, when the shield is stoved, it stops thief’s backstabs!

Ha! That would be interesting.

Take 50% less damage from attacks to the back when shield is stowed

Put some work on that stow-weapon button!

Unfortunately, with (many of-) this game’s shield skins …

Lose 90% fashion sense while shield is equipped.
Gain +100% clipping while shield is stowed

The room was quiet. I lol’d.

Now I wither under all the staring.

Edit: Uh Zara.. Didn’t we have an entire conversation on the first page? O.o did some mod ninja-delete it?

I believe we have had similar conversations in a number of threads, it does not read as if there were any deletions in this one currently.

To be honest, I am very apprehensive of just how our class mechanics are going to be affected by the specialization. I am currently desperate for the Beta to start so we can begin to get some more information from our fellow mesmers as to how our current weaponsets will interact with the changes to the mechanic if there is indeed any changes to the mechanic. Furthermore, I am also anxious as to whether the devs might be able to be convinced to adding a mainhand pistol to the base class, because all things considered, it is something that should have been there from the beginning.

I guess for me, so long as my trolling interrupt builds remain possible and indeed if the chronomancer adds to my toolset more frequent interrupt skills I will be willing to swallow all the harsh words I have spewed at anet over the years. I guess we shall see what happens.

To be honest, I would like to see an overall reduction in mesmer cooldowns. I feel that the issue with clone production could be handled by giving the class a general 20% cooldown reduction across the board. From there with he stacking of other skills, it would become considerably easier to generate clones. Combine this with an alteration to scepter so that it spawns its clone directly beside you, and speed up the chain by 20% and we would be in a position where we should be able to without D E create a single clone every 3s. This when combined with something like Mirror Images now having a 27s cooldown rather than 36 with IC would make the entire class considerably more dynamic, and enable us to ignore entirely DE.

I have manually set it a couple of times from the audio panel. I just wish I could work why this is causing me so much drama…

So I have a laptop with 7.1 surround sound capable sound card, but I use a razer kraken 7.1 whenever I am in a shared space. However, Guild Wars 2 sound will not work through my headset. I have tried disabling my onboard sound card, setting the sound output directly to the headset, and changing the headset to be the default device. Can anyone help me work out how to make the games sounds go through the headset ?

To be fair, all I have wanted since launch is a mesmer mainhand pistol, to open the build diversity up for power ranged builds.

spoj.9672:

They said classes would be compensated.

Anyway you can look at it another way. A necro is only getting one new weapon set. Whereas a mesmer is getting two. Sword shield and Scepter shield.

Actually you are wrong, mesmers are getting 1 new skill +1 phantasm added to scepter or sword rotations… Hardly new weaponsets..

It was an effect which seemed to make my character move back about 10 steps and took about a second or two to stop. It was something connected to the animations, which has seemingly been fixed in the recent blink changes. I know it has made blink a permanent feature of my utility bar, as before it was just annoying to use.

I would like to see some kind of regain charge over time thing for mantras. Roll it into the third charge grand master trait, where if you do not use all three mantras inside of the nominal cooldown cycle, so 30 seconds for MoD you regain a charge. In this way it lets us recover for the next pvp fight over time without having to blow the charges and recast. (alternatively make it something like portal, so that after using one charge if you do not use all remaining charges the mantra has are removed and you can recast without waiting for the cooldown. )

I know I usually am screaming kitten at anet, but on the last patch cycle I noticed something which has bugged me since beta, it used to be that if you used blink while running it would rubberband you for a second or two after the blink finished. However, now it would seem that the rubbery effects are gone and blink is infinitely more fluid. On this I have to give kudos.

Out of curiosity, did anyone else experience a similar rubber banding on blink?

Mesmer shield does not open up any new build diversity. As it is, we are locked into going sword/ something and a two hander, or going double sword as mainhand. Scepter only has a few viable uses outside of condition builds and so we are viciously pigeon holed. Bring on the mesmer pistol mainhand to open up our build potential!

The mesmer forums have been arguing about this for much of the last couple of weeks. In broad terms, most mesmers are hoping that something good will come in the expansion, but the shield offhand has left a lot of us feeling very much doubting that the class will have anything decent happening in the expansion. While some (Chaos) keeps trying to ignite the flames of hope, others(Fay) are firmly convinced that a shield for mesmers is just a way for them to blow us off and not worry about doing anything good for this expansion.

For myself, I still have faith that anet may realize that ignoring an entire community is unwise and they will revisit the decision…

Lol, Hyperbole is the essence of the internet, and frankly, It is either get really angry, or fall into depression and uninstall at this stage…

Lol, wrong attitude Cae, we need to rise up my mesmer brothers and sisters, rise up and overthrow our warrior-kitten oppressors, all in the name of our survival! WAR is needed, War for the changes that our class is in need of.

We are mesmers, we are always last in the minds of the devs…

I want hard cc Give my chronomancer the ability to teleport my enemies away from me like the Rev downed state as a class ability on the F bar and maybe anet we can talk… Otherwise, mesmers it is time to man the picket lines!

’We shall over come.
We shall over come.
We shall over come, some day!"

Because of those things, how many of them should have been in the first instance. GS for example should have been aoe to begin with, and scepter is a bandaid fix to get past the sad fact that we only have 2 main hand weapons…

Something does need to happen with the trait. I personally would love to be able to dake it with Illusionary persona to use as an aoe interrupt, but that could just be me

If we need to have a civil war just to ensure anet know there is an issue, then I am all for it. At the moment, I am not sure as to if I should bothering buying the expansion. It is unlikely to contribute anything decent to the class I main, and frankly, the only class that keeps me coming back…

Levetty.1279:

Whats kind of sad is that even the most outlandish possibilities people are putting forward still don’t make up for our main hand deficiency.

At this point, it is mainhand pistol or please just don’t touch me…..

Yes, just go point out the heart of my entire current build chaos, you kitten ed kitten…

Levetty.1279:

What people are forgetting is that even if the shield skills are good (which is highly doubtful) then we are still stuck with what weapon to use it with. Scepter will still be bad outside of its little niche leaving us with just sword. So what happens if we want to use another one of our off hands as well? Go S/Sh S/x? The diversity of the class!

This a thousand times this!

Trust them when they deliver, but what have they delivered since the beta that has actually been any good ?

Power Block was like the answer to a million mesmer prayers, when it was ripped away, I know completely flipped out… Perhaps it shows how passive I was to them, but my response to that nerf was the cause of my till date only infraction

Power block is entirely useless vs thieves, also, generally in a mesmer build you are going to want to have 4 points in dueling for deceptive evasion. (I have been experimenting with not going that far into dueling with random levels of success, usually depending on the team matchups) I usually run somewhere like 4/4/6/0/0 running with rupt traits and the gs trait. I have also been known to run a bunker build of 0/4/6/4/0 which when combined with reflects and glamour fields I found to be obscenely effective if you forget to retreat.

Anyway, with the current high numbers of thieves in the ques you will find powerblock to be a subpar GM trait, and confounding suggestions is in those cases always better. An extra 2-3s of dazing can mean the difference between a dead thief or a dead mesmer, especially when combined with mesmer runes.

By mechanics I was talking about the clone/phantasm/shatter system and its mutual byplay. Yes any one part can be brilliant if we build for it, but most of these systems directly make the other worse. To have clones we sacrifice phants, to use phants we have to reduce clone gen, to use shatter we give up everything else.

You know, nothing really is worth as much as three main hand skills. Utilities always have 20-30s cooldowns, profession mechanics always have long cooldowns, and our mechanics have always been lackluster. So what could really make up for a new auto-attack doing power ranged damage without locking us into a GS?

No, that during a big tornament event, there is one mesmer who decides they are better off as a thief. What does that tell you about the state of the class?

Oh what I wouldn’t give for interrupt based conditions that trigger if they do anything within 4 seconds…

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I remember one year ago when I asked people if imbued should be standard and the only answer I got was “No, it would be OP”. Its interesting to see how that opinion has changed over one year. It seems everyone wants diversion to be aoe now (I would love it personally).

We could collectively be getting passed the “we better not have a new dress or he might beat me stage” and into the, “he better start shaping up or I will shoot him in the head with this shotgun stage” of our abusive marriage with anet…I mean surely something has just gotta give, and I want a pretty new dress kitten! :P