Guild Wars 2

Cool. You can actually see what’s going on during a battle.

I don’t mind having them or not. It seems like most of the anti-mount people have an instinctive aversion to mounts because of their association with WoW or other typical MMOs.

For the setup you need to cast mantras, the pay off is just not good enough.

In addition to the initial recharge cast, they should passively recharge mantras based on different critera. That would make them synergize well with other combat actions.

Mantra of pain recharge one charge after every 5 critical hit.
Mantra of healing recharge one charge after 5 rolls.
Mantra of concentration recharge one charge every 5 illusions shattered.
Mantra of resolve recharge one charge every 10 conditions you apply to an enemy
Mantra of distraction recharge one charge every 5 times your life falls below 20%

I leveled in this game not because I get more stats. You get de-leveled depending on where you are anyways.

I leveled in this game because it opened up more traits/skills and allowed me to play around with different builds.

Better stats on equipment just let’s you kill stuff faster and leads to a monster hp treadmill. There is no point. You are just proportionally changing the combat. Instead of dealing 10 damage for 10 seconds on a boss with 100 hp, you are dealing 100 damage for 10 seconds on a boss with 1000 hp. The only thing that changed is the number.

If equipment were made to introduce a new mechanic instead of stats, then that would actually change up the gameplay.

We already kind of have that with upgrades, but I feel it can be extended even further. For example: a weapon that gives you healing on roll at a penalty of less damage, an armor that gives you new utility skills that you can only access when you wear it…etc.

They should buff the phantasms attacks if they expect the summon to be so conditional on physical defenses of the opponent.

I would also bind certain variants to equipment instead of purchasing by skill points. That would encourage the loot gathering aspect of the game without vertical progression.

There seem to be really just 2 types of skill targeting in this game. Lock-target skills where you select a specific opponent or a ground target skill where you select the area to cast the spell. Lock-target skills are subject to blinds/dodges/etc..

Mesmer illusions/phantasms pre-patch seem to exist in a lock-target, but always cast state. Which makes sense because lore-wise they are supposed to be mental attacks, not subject to physical defenses.

The problem is with targeting, not with casting. We shouldn’t be able to target enemies without a LOS. I agree it’s stupid to be able to cast phantasms on enemies behind fortress walls. But it’s even more stupid to be able to target them in the first place.

ANet needs to fix two things about targeting. First they need to fix LOS. An enemy a few steps above me on stairs is not out of LOS. A huge Char hiding behind a tiny tree is not out of LOS. Second, they should make people lose target when an opponent leaves LOS for an amount of time (maybe 1-2 seconds).

Perhaps a solution is to put a 3 second summoning “buffer”. Anytime a mesmer has LOS on a target, the mesmer has 2 seconds timer to cast a clone regardless of LOS/blind/invulnerable/dodge.

Lore-wise you can explain it as the mesmer needs to ‘remember’ the target to cast the spell. And you have 2 seconds to recollect the target.