Guild Wars 2

Stealth allies while revealing foes.

Well if you are picking up HoT, going for alacrity sharing provides pretty amazing support for your party/raid and something that quite a few raid groups are looking for, plus with the right setup you can get permanent quickness for your group if you dedicate to it as well, which can get pretty bonkers.

That being said, mesmer dps isnt great, but thankfully you have these crazy support roles to play that justify your slot in a group.

On paper is seems pretty good, but in practice I just cant really seem to justify taking it over time catches up even in a purely interrupt based build.

Superspeed on shatter is useful in basically any build, its an amazing trait.

3 second of slow is a bit odd on interrupt because realistically, you are getting 2 seconds if not less 90% of the time since you threw a cc out at the target.

If slow spamming is what you want, between the Avenger and lost time, you really have all the application you could ever need.

Maybe if Chrono had a deathly chill equivalent for slow I could see it being handy, since you could justify stacking up condi duration but otherwise I just don’t really see a need for it.

Has anybody really seen any good use out of it?

Fay.2357:

Niekas.3854:

Idk if you are stupid or just can’t read, either way it’s fun. Good luck boys, gonna wait for the PMs as my winrate increases.

3 days later…

Guys, my winrate is 86% now.

Guys?

Guys…?

please love me

Wait, you mean you actually loose matches?

What a noob lmao

Niekas.3854:

Please close this topic, I want to be one of the few mesmers that have already theorycrafted the one of the most OP builds that mesmer has ever had. The moment someone posts it, all the burst/bunker builds will go into shadows due to reason how this certain semi-bunker condi one outperforms everything. You literally run around doing basically nothing while aoe applying 20 stacks of torment/confusion.

If you are talking about persistence of memory condi shatter, this is nothing new and not viable against anyone who’s MMR can be described as ‘not at the bottom of the Mariana Trench’.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Guys, you’re missing the underlying issue to all of this guys problems.

He’s Australian.

Signed
~ a Kiwi

Well thats just mean spirited.

Its hard to pull off, but not impossible.

Not something I’d recommend if you are starting to get into pvp though, with 300+ ping its more a game of prediction and reads, since you cant really rely on reactions as much.

When you get to higher skill levels you are going to be at a pretty severe disadvantage, but its going to be that way on any class unfortunately.

Third times the charm..

Take two, here we go..

One in normal size and one in largest.

Probably just a bug.

On the one hand, it should probably be fixed, on the other, rangers kinda need all the help they can get right now.

I don’t know what to tell you, if you guys are loosing 5v1 I don’t think there is a problem with the 1.

Did you forget to put an amulet on?
Not gonna lie, I’ve done it before.
It can happen.

Any sorts of class restriction in matchmaking like that is only going to create more problems than it could possibly solve.

Hot diggety where to begin.

Sword 3 does not evade, its the 2, Blurred Frenzy.

Mesmer does not have access to unblockable burn, nor do they stack it high.
They have exactly three sources of burn.

Chronomancy is actually kind of a bigger deal than what you think.
Good golly god man you have no idea what you are playing against do you?

I’m guessing you had a bad day.

Warriors typically don’t matchup against Mesmers well, its not unwinnable however.

I’d suggest you head over to the Mesmer subforum and look around for one of the how to fight a Mesmer threads floating around, or just make one and ask about specifics you are having trouble with, folkes are generally fairly helpful.

But as a td;dr:

Get more condi removal or you are going to have a bad time.

No animation changes for the skills, it just brightens up and flips a page over after using a weapon skill.

I’m not sorry

Those shield changes look excellent.
I can see it having problems, namely opponents stealthing to remove themselves as a target, potentially stopping the phantasm spawn.
That being said, that’s reasonably manageable outside of 1v1’s with no other targets nearby.

Echo of Memory
Now, summoning two shatterable phantasms every 30 seconds is pretty okay, but the iAvenger just isnt up to scratch.
The effect is not all that impactful, the damage is rather low and its attack speed is to low for what it does.
Furthermore, I don’t think I need to go too deep into why a bouncing projectile is the worst thing ever, since there is already a thread on that matter.

To top it all off, the block doesn’t really do anything other than summon the phantasm, who throws out a piddly little projectile.
Using the skill just kind of feels flaccid as a result.

BORING.

Remove the projectile, instead the phantasm should leap and strike the ground at its target, creating a blast finisher, dealing its damage in AoE, slowing enemies and giving alacrity to allies.

It would also be pretty neat if said blast effect emminated from the Chronomancer upon a successful block, to further reward using the skill properly.

Tides of Time
Its a fun skill in all sorts of ways, all in all I like it.
Terrain bugs like being unusable in in a few WvW camps due to stuff on the ground.
The only change I could really say is that it should simply stop instead of depawning when it cannot move forward (either through terrain or physical objects) and return to the Chronomancer as it normally would.

As for traits, IR really needs a 1-2 second ICD as opposed to the 2 clone requirement.

Also the lack of a shield trait is kind of unfortunate, it would be nice if something befitting the shield got tacked onto delayed reactions or improved alacrity.

It sort of has it’s niche and could probably go with a bit of a boost but if any of the Mesmer condi removals are in need of a buff its Arcane Thievery.

Well that’s the thing, the ranger sword is pretty gnarly to use, but it IS strong and you can work around it by just having auto attack turned off.

With the sceptre, if you complete the chain you get to sit through the uncancelable aftercast. Its not strong power wise and the pressure from condi’s really isn’t there.

I still maintain the sceptre has the single worst 1 skill in the game, by a significant margin.

That after cast is horrendous, its basically a self daze.

I really don’t see why you would ever take Gravity Well over other elites in this state.

What role does it fill exactly? I really don’t see how you would ever take a smigin of damage and a single CC on a 90 second cooldown assuming your opponents like standing in the red.
Are mesmers expected to drop another cc to cover for it?
In that case you could just use your other cc and not waste time casting a well that’s going to do negligable damage and just do your burst rotation.

I’d be down for a pulsing daze.
At least then it would have some kind of function that you would bother slotting it for.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Lockdown right now is fantastic. Fun, effective, and easy to play… A little too easy, actually. You no longer need to rely on interrupts thanks to the 1s stun from Confounding Suggestions.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the change to confounding.

But the burst you can enact from the 1s stun has next to no counterplay, and saying “oh just use dodges, blocks, ect.” in a hectic teamfight isn’t enough of a counterargument when often you’ll rarely even see the Mesmer coming, much less have your skills off cooldown.

Confounding is a pretty fun trait, but it really shouldn’t be sitting in adept.
I did a pretty elongated write up on it last week when I was totally sober, but looking back I’d still stand by it.

Mantras can be midigated with things like blind, block and evade.

The big drawback to them is having to go through 2 second cast to recharge them, which is hilariously punishable.

That being said, they are instacasts once they are charged, and the easiest way to counter play them is to pay attention to the Mesmers bar, the will be a buff showing the readied mantras and how many charges they have remaining.

While you see power block on their par, you know they have an interrupt ready to go, so try and bait out uses, and keep a stunbreak handy knowing full well what could be coming.

When that icon is gone, you know they don’t have access to it anymore and you can become much more aggressive, save some CC to prevent them from recharging it and keep up the pressure.

Toeofdoom.6152:

Not sure about the fragility/dazzling/shattered concentration buffs being needed – why not just add the vuln duration or on-clone-attack thing to rending shatter?

As far as CC goes, you basically have one skill on each weapon set, diversion and MoD, Dazzling going from daze only to general cc wouldn’t really do much, its really more of a QoL buff to things like the focus and underwater weapons, still, out of all the changes it would be the first I would concede.

The problem I see with throwing duration on to vanilla rending shatter is that it still gives very little to a non shatter build, whilst its good that much of the trait pool encourages the use of the class mechanic, there still ought to be non shatter options.

Even then, taking it would mean you have 2 minor traits and a major adept to have situational methods of stacking which are still inferior to what engies can get with a single minor which is why I think duration should be thrown into one of the minors at the very least.

Which brings us back to the problem of what to do with Rending Shatter.
The effect itself is rather weak, which for the reasons above, honestly feels like it needs to be merged into something else since on its own its pretty worthless and it makes since enough thematically for shattered concentration to be the lucky winner.

ASP.8093:

Pretty sure Confounding Suggestions does, in fact, proc the daze stacks. Both it and Dazzling pop their effect on daze at the same time.

I just double checked it, and sure enough you are right.
Thanks for the heads up.

Long story short, the specialisation update has been out for awhile now and there was a special on my beer of choice today, so I’m just drunk enough to try and be constructive on the forums.
Which is quite drunk mind you, the title of this thread is a dirty lie.

So to get into the actual meat of this trainwreck, I’m gonna lay out some proposed changes to the Domination line, namely everything that isn’t Grandmaster tier, then explain my reasoning afterwards.

Minors

• Illusion of Vulnerability
  Inflict vulnerability when you interrupt a foe (Unchanged)
• Dazzling
  Disabling a foe also applies vulnerability (Changed from dazes only)
• Fragility
  Use harsher words while discussing things with vulnerable foes, vulnerability you inflict lasts 33% longer (Unchanged damage modifier, with a duration buff thrown in)

The reasoning behind Dazzling is pretty simple, Domination is a line practically dedicated to vulnerability and despite being able to spike it, Mesmers aren’t particularly great at maintaining stacks of vulnerability which really devalues the line when you compare this to Steel-Packed Powder, a single minor trait that allows engies to stack far better than a mesmer could ever hope to, in aoe, and maintain it quite easily.

To top this off, you have Confounding Suggestions directly devaluing Dazzling if you take it.
As far as I know, that’s basically the only case of a trait devaluing something in its own line, which is all kinds of silly.
EDIT: Don’t drink and drive kids.

So basically, this and the duration buff thrown into Fragility aim to boost Mesmers ability to lay on vulnerability and to re-enforce the overall theme of the line via its minors.

Adept

• Furious Interruption
  Gain quickness when you interrupt a foe (Moved from Master)
• Empowered Illusions
  Illusions deal mo DEEPS (Unchanged)
• Expeditious Façade (Or whatever speed+illusion combo you find on a thesorous that tickles your fancy)
  Clones attack faster and stack vulnerability. (New Trait, attacking faster refers to either removing, or reducing the delay between attacks clones perform)

Furious interruption is moved here for a few reasons, partially due to movement of Confounding suggestions, but also due to the traits general weakness.
3 seconds of quickness with a 5 second icd on paper seems quite powerful, but in practical application, its really not as strong as it lets on.
That’s not to say the trait is not good under the right circumstances, the problem however is that being entirely interrupt based, this isn’t a trait that’s going to proc all that often, I’m even tempted to say the icd should be removed entirely, but at the very least, its not powerful enough a trait to be competing for a spot with shattered concentration and moving down to adept makes the most sense, given the other changes.

Now the new trait basically exists because of the changes to master creating a spot here.
The aim of this trait is basically to give a vulnerability stacking option to non shatter centric builds, and to offer a little something for more condition oriented setups.

Master

• Rending Shatter
  Shatter skills cause vulnerability and remove a boon on hit. (Merged with Shattered Concentration)
• Blurred Inscriptions
  Signets remove 99.99% of germs (Actually unchanged)
• Confounding Suggestions
  Stuns and dazes last for literal days, every -5 seconds, dazing a foe outright kills them instead. (Moved over from adept, but otherwise unchanged.)

Rending Shatter and Shattered Concentration being merged is a thing for the reasons I cited in the Minor section, and due to the fact that the current incarnation of Rending Shatter is just a little underused. (May or may not be an understatement)
As far as directly improving Rending Shatter, merging Shattered Concentration with it was really the only thing that seemed natural to me.

Now, there is allot of hallo about Confounding Suggestions being too strong floating around, and its movement here is basically a nerf without nerfing.
Namely, by making it compete with the primary method that mesmers have of dealing with stability.

Hopefully, moving it up with other more powerful traits will make choosing it slightly more meaningful to your build without devaluing it to much.

As far as the Gradmasters go, Id say they are, for the most part fairly well rounded and work well enough. (but more realistically, I cant really think of something to do with imagined burden right now)

Annnnd that’s about all I’ve got.

Feel free to let me know Im a lousy drunk who shouldn’t be up at unmeowly times in the morning writing walls of text like this.

1. One sentiment I’ve read is that mesmer has gotten a LOT easier to play. Are you enjoying this?

Previously, mesmers were very weak more or less everywhere in the game, countering them on a base mechanical level was something a competent player could do on several classes with a special mention to the thief hardcounter.
On top of this you had the generally poor baseline for most skills and the crippling reliance on traits to bring them up to par.
The old trait system required you to overspecialise and would usually leave pretty big holes elsewhere in your abilities.
A result of this meant that Mesmer players had to jump though a bunch hoops to achieve something less efferently than other classes could with half the effort.

TL;DR: I don’t think its so much a matter of Mesmer ‘getting easier’ its more that they can finally stand toe to toe with other classes in a fight.

1. For me, the grandmaster mesmer traits have been an absolute candy store. Which GM traits have been your favorite?

I’m biased because I like interrupt builds, so instead Im going to give a special mention Illusionary Inspiration, since it really opens up some interesting playstyle options.

1. Prismatic Understanding (PU) has proven to be a really strong trait for shatter builds (PU shatter). Do you think this needs adjustments?

I think the biggest problem is the implementation of stealth in general and the ability to attack without consequence while in it, and save for a single engie trait, doesn’t have any real direct ways to counter it.
All that aside, the trait is a bit over the top with its duration right now.

1. Another build I’ve seen around is a power block/Chaotic Interruption build. Have you tried this out?

High skill requirement with a high reward. Its fantastic and offers a nice amount of flexibility in playstyle.

1. Normally, mesmers really only took Dom, Dueling, Illusions in PvP. Are you taking Chaos and Inspiration at all?

I always liked to experiment with new stuff and now that new stuff is actually viable.

1. Mesmer got a lot of conditional recharge abilities (reduced recharge on staff when you have chaos shield for example). Are you liking these?

They limit you in a few ways, forcing you into specific uses of the weapons, but with the right level of reward for doing so, they can be great.

Right now the staff trait is not.

1. Mimic got a huge change. Are you using this at all?

Meow yeah.

1. Time Warp gained slow and now can be traited for resistance and super speed! Are you using this at all? Would you take this over the other elites?

The change does give it a nice boost, as does the ability to stack TW with quickness being a boon, I still use mas invis most of the time though.

1. How have your fights against other mesmers been? Do they feel skillful?

Mesmer mirror matches have always been really interesting and fun, and I think they are even moreso since the changes.

Robert Gee.9246:

While I was driving most of the mesmer changes and pushed some of the more… shall we say “extreme” examples coughmimiccough

I just want to throw it out there that the new mimic might be impractical most of the time, but Ive been having a bunch of fun with it.

I want to live in a world where chronomancy is a thing and quadruple blinks exist.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

You can stun your target, plus immob him (from CI). To land your spike no matter what. And Mantra of Distraction is quite part of this faceroll because it can be used without thinking, on targets just walking by.

So.. Mantra of Distraction shouldn’t daze into stun into immob into death, while your target isn’t using any skills. Exactely

With the change im suggesting, MoD will have counterplay, and CI would be a lot less faceroll.

But in that instance, the result would be the same.

Stunned+Immobilized is more or less the same mechanically as Dazed+Immobilized.
You are CC’d, and cannot move due to the stun or a condition.

In the first instance, you must break a stun in order to move, but you are still unable to due to the immobilize.
In the second instance, you cannot use your condition removal due to being CC’d and as a result must first stunbreak.

Barring some instacast/dual-purpose exceptions, you have to use both a stun break and a condition removal to deal with the situation, or some teleport skill, which would work the same in both instances.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

So yeah, it dazes when your target is doing nothing. Thats what I meant. Only daze when your target is using a skill.

I think you missed the joke friend.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Combined with Chaotic Interruption, this is just a free spike setup for even the most incompetent player on earth. Which will most likely one shot most players.

I’m not entirely sure I understand your angle here, you want it to only trigger as an interrupt, but at the same time are citing CI as a reason that its to strong, if this changed as you wanted it to, how would this interaction be any different?

It already does though.

:P

But seriously, using it pre-emptively to prevent skill use for a wopping 1 second is hardly what would constitute as faceroll.

Josh Davis.6015:

For staff cd trait – conditional recharge is something new we’re trying out. The high cd reduction uptime that we were seeing right out of the gate wasn’t something we felt comfortable with. If it feels really weak after this we’ll come back to it and look at it again.

The change to 2% was absurd.
The trait is literally worse then a flat 20% now.

I really don’t understand why it shipped at 5% anyhow, people on the forums had done the maths weeks ago, we all knew it would be silly.

The best thing Mesmer could have gotten with specialisation would have been a control oriented mainhand, it would have rounded off a Mesmer’s weapon options quite nicely, since the offhands they currently have can multirole between direct damage, condi and control very well.

I do like the look of the shield skills, it looks like a fun weapon and Id rather not bash it, but its so entirely unnecessary and unneeded in the Mesmer’s repertoire.

Clearly making Moa a Mantra is the only logical solution to this problem.

I’m sure it will be perfectly balanced.

Charr.

Accept no substitutes.

I logged in for the time in 7 months to post this.

Crit damage is higher in spvp now, so that probably contributes a bit.

Phantasmal Warlock does extra damage per condition type on you.
So getting hit by one with a LOAD of condis on you is gonna hurt quite allot.

If anything, phantasm damage has gotten lower since the patch.

These people exist in pretty much every game, on the upside you can always come up with creative solutions to the problem.

As an example, there was a fellow yesterday in HotM who was insisting that he had rather non jovial relations with everybodies mothers and sisters, so I decided follow him around with a full purple Christmas outfit, throwing flowers at him where ever possible and professing my love to him.

tl,dr: deal with these people by upsetting them until they go offline, but do it in style.

clint.5681:

The dude was probably raging because you and others were doing dumb stuff and they are probably tired of it

I would like to formally congratulate you on your inability to read.

Huraaay!

Syde.5961:

So many…“PvP is so toxic” threads….plz sir, stahp! Dx

The hotjoin community is a complete cesspool.
Folkes who think they are gods gift to video games and that everybody else is OP and or a scrub are anything but in short supply.

Clones have almost no HP, when you are downed and see a clone on you, plink it with your 1 and then res.

Phantasms have a little more, but the same thing applies, if the mes is going to summon stuff and turn their attention elsewhere, just kill them and start to res.

As for the second thing, Clones will only use their auto, with pauses between them, so if a Mesmer is just standing in a pile of clones autoing, then the real one is attacking the fastest.
Also, they are AI, they will only ever move directly towards their target to get in range and attack, making their movements generally rather obvious.
On top of this, they don’t display any passive buffs the Mesmer has, so signets and the like can be an easy way to spot from afar.

As for Phantasms, they are etheral looking and have nameplates.
It generally couldn’t be more obvious.

Unless you find a Mesmer who actually named themselves after a Phantasm.

In which case, laugh at their tiny Asura for trying to hard.

It happened, kitten shame really.

Welp, we tried.

RIP

You’ve got multiple character slots, so why not both?

If you make one you can take them into the mists and mess about with all the traits and and weapon skills to see how you like their playstyle.

Mesmers are very trait reliant, plus a few skills are “Not entirely working correctly”, so low level play with them can be nothing short of painful at times.
A good thing to do would be to jump into the heart of the mists and mess about with some of the traits and see how you like the class plays.
If not, make another character and do the same.
It all comes down to you having fun with the class or not.

Shockwave.1230:

Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.

When QA and the Mesmer meet th-
Actually no, I’m fairly sure they haven’t yet.
I would point your direction to this thread.
Because that is a thing that actually happened.

You might wanna make a thread over in the balance subforum, because I somehow doubt this is going to get read otherwise.

Ansau.7326:

I’ll try a condi shatter when I have time, to see if it’s still worth to run some “active” builds..

I gave that a go, it has potential with Maim the Disillusioned with confusion and torment bombing.

However, its very burst heavy without allot of cover conditions, so its very easy to cleanse.
The Vigor nerf really hurts your illusion upkeep, so keeping pressure is much harder than it needs to be.

All in all, it seems sub par at best and the only time I really saw the condis work was to bomb them follow up with Moa so they cant actually cleanse.

Personally, I’m trying out a 4/6/4/0/0 Interrupt/Mantra build, seems okay at best, but the changes borked my old build and I dislike stealth as a mechanic so I really want to not run some cheesy PU variant.

Though the way these patches are going, it may very well come down to running PU or switching mains.

They do, it just isn’t represented in the tooltips.

A little bug that has more or less been around since forever that will never get fixed.

Zenguy.6421:

Surely they would be doing this already?

You would think so, but today’s patch happened.

So probably not.