Guild Wars 2

The 10s ICD is really only a “nerf” to this trait when used with Mantra heal, which is probably fine. It’s not like our support builds really cared that much about heal-spamming anyway.

Sharkey.9805:

the extra 200% base heal won’t compensate the healing lost for mantra mesmers, or anyone who took the shatter heal trait.

Does the shatter heal actually trigger effects that proc on heal skills? I don’t think it does.

Fay.2357:

I really have no idea how this bit of misinformation gets propagated. Anyone who has ever actually pvped with their eyes open can tell you that dazes are broken by stunbreakers just like stuns.

ANet kind of brought this on themselves by having a control effect called “Stun” and an ability effect called “Breaks Stuns”. It does imply a connection between the two.

Cursory wiki reading will easily correct the confusion, though.

godz raiden.2631:

Wait, you just basically said that the mechanics of mesmer don’t fit your playstyle, but other professions’ mechanics do. Then why are you playing mesmer? I suppose you’ll argue that you like the mesmer more than other classes for other reasons other than class mechanics and playstyle, from a PvP/competitive stand point that argument doesn’t really hold water.

I mean, to be fair, we are the only class with pink butterflies.

Blanche Neige.7241:

Why don’t you save yourself a lot of trouble and go delete the mesmer class instead of nerfing us everytime you have the chance?

Yeah, just make an Elementalist elite spec with clones and be done with it.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Don’t all our trait “effects” actually cast our native skills now instead? Both inheriting applicable trait bonuses and cooldowns.

Yes, that’s correct.

DiogoSilva.7089:

However, keep in mind that League of Legends has a public beta server, where developers can quickly polish loose ends and refine balancing of upcomming changes. All those tweaks are done in a matter of days, not very different to what Anet is currently doing, with the exception that they’re less disruptive due to being released on a public test server first, before being available on the main client.

A public test server would do wonders for anet, and I believe they know that, but as they have nothing of the sort right now, it’s much better to keep realing quick changes for the most obvious problems than staying idle for a few months until the next patch in a critical period like this one.

In a way, you can say that the main client IS being treated like a public beta environment. Disruptive, yes, but necessary at the lack of a real PBE.

Actually, the PBE is not used for balancing. The LoL devs have talked about this before. Basically, PBE environments are not conducive to balance testing. There are a lot of reasons why, but it comes down to:

• PBE is not an accurate sample of the player population
• Players on PBE are usually more interested in trying new champions and items than playing “seriously”
• The PBE iterates too quickly to draw accurate balance conclusions

LoL does a small amount of preliminary balance on their PBE, but they make most of the big balance decisions by watching the live servers. Which is why their balance team is called “Live Balance”, actually.

LoL frequently launches a new or reworked champion or item to the live servers in an unbalanced state. But even when a reworked champ (and the GW2 patch that just dropped is closer to a rework than a new release) is out of balance on launch, they usually wait a week or two before fixing the numbers.

I’ll use Ekko as an example, because he’s a new champion who had a complicated kit with elements that were clearly overtuned on launch. Here’s his timeline:

• Launch: Patch 5.10, June 4
• First Nerf: Patch 5.11, June 16
• Second Nerf: Patch 5.12, June 23

The important thing about this pattern is that it builds confidence. They’re ok letting their new champion be a little bit OP for a while if it means that everyone agrees they did the right thing when they nerf him.

Nerfing things within 24 hours of release — even if you planned the nerfs beforehand but didn’t get them into the release build in time — is the exact opposite of that. It destroys trust and confidence. Especially when the same balance team is obviously content to let far worse balance problems go unaddressed for months or years.

Xenon.4537:

I really hate all the QQ over mesmer right now. It’s been 2 days and its already time to play whack-a-mole with balance. Did any of the other classes think to open their trait panel and maybe try to CHANGE their build to address mesmer instead of demanding sweeping nerfs?

What, you expect me to actually run condition clear? Why would I do such a thing?

ResJudicator.7916:

But mesmer damage feels very over the top right now.

It only feels that way because we’re used to having the short end of the stick. What actually happened is that we’re finally in line with everybody else.

ANet really needs to take a class from League of Legends. You never see balance adjustments within 24 hours of a patch over there. Because they understand that it takes time for changes to play out, especially in PvP.

First impressions of what’s too strong or too weak are always wrong. Especially with an advanced class like the Mesmer that relies on careful setup to achieve good results. Because that setup can and will get disrupted once other players figure out what it looks like.

Carighan.6758:

Mind you, yes, the combination of “You and Illusions proc bleed on crit” and “You and illusions proc confusion on crit” felt really strong. But also really awesome. And honestly, I’d rather proc confusion than bleed, bleed is such a… a pleb condition! :P

And here we note that Sharper Images also got nerfed back to its original form that only allows illusions to proc it.

MailMail.6534:

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Mortar Shot took a damage hit. Everything else was bug fixes, basically.

Make sure the outliers stay OP and nerf everything else that starts to look viable. Super cool balance strategy, bros.

Thirty kittening seconds BEFORE a kittening cooldown trait. What the kittening kitten is going on in that kittening crazytown place?

Levetty.1279:

What is everybody going to call their Engineer?

“My Other Nerf Gun Is a Mesmer”

Get this chappie a spot on the ANet balance team, stat! He’s clearly in tune with their balance philosophy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ay15d/timewarp_slow_is_too_broken_for_pve/

Hexalot.8194:

tobascodagama.2961:

They get 5s of Quickness, we get 11s. They get Fury (which there are other sources of in coordinated groups), we get Slow. They get a larger radius, we get a combo field.

I dunno, it seems pretty balanced to me.

They get a 30 sec cool down, you get 180. That’s one heckuva advantage right there.

Oh, whoops.

Yeah, ok, silly me thinking anything on a kittening Guardian would be balanced sanely.

No, Xyonon makes a good point. It’s something nice that Mesmers got, so clearly it must be a bug that will be hotfixed out shortly.

Iavra.8510:

No, they gain protection while they are running to their targets.

/edit: The distortion won’t prevent them being shattered, either, if that was the question.

Which begs the question of why it’s even possible for shattering illusions to die while running to their target, considering there’s already plenty of counterplay inherent in the fact that they need to run to their target in the first place…

[/dead horse]

The sound of a thousand knees jerking in Bellevue…

They get 5s of Quickness, we get 11s. They get Fury (which there are other sources of in coordinated groups), we get Slow. They get a larger radius, we get a combo field.

I dunno, it seems pretty balanced to me.

And Eles can already maintain 100% uptime on 25 Might stacks… So this accomplishes what?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s cool that you theorycrafted this out. But, in practice, there’s not much call for Might stacking unless you can get it done prior to combat.

MSFone.3026:

Is this in the patch notes?

It’s an undocumented change.

Perhaps though they did this because another class is getting mantras for their elite specialization and Anet realized they had to make the functionality not garbage.

Cynicism FTW. I’m betting Thief gets the Mantras.

messiah.1908:

the AA feels the same i dont know why

The third AA in the chain has the same total duration, they just moved the clone generation effect earlier in the animation. Which I think might mean we can cancel out of it to cast another skill sooner?

The change was meant to make the Scepter AA feel better when used in conjunction with our other weapon skills, basically. It wasn’t intended to make the Scepter AA stronger or faster by itself.

Well, we do have the Rainbow Unicorn Finisher…

Curunen.8729:

Yes – you can hold on to them for longer than their cooldown time and you’re able to immediately recharge after burning the charges.

:o :o :o :o :o

Re: Fencer’s Finesse, the trait says that illusions that use sword attacks will also proc the buff. Are you guys sure that isn’t what’s happening? Sounds like a bug otherwise.

That’s a little unfortunate. I was looking forward to double Null Fields and double Wells.

Fay.2357:

It shouldn’t be on every phantasm cast; that trait has a substantial cooldown.

Right, the trait and skill are on independent 30s cooldowns. It’s a ton of Distortion, but let’s not throw around untrue things like “every phantasm cast”.

skcamow.3527:

Patch just hit – still 2 stacks per shatter. Good, hopefully it stays that way for the time being and they can evaluate. Also confusing combatants change to fury is real.

Oh, good. So they didn’t do the really stupid thing, but they still did the kind of disappointing thing.

fluxit.8247:

I dont disagree with anything besides the low blow in the first paragraph.

Low blow? If nerfing a trait before releasing it to the public because of the numbers you got against a kittening target dummy isn’t the definition of “knee jerk”, I don’t know what is.

cyyrix.6105:

Petition for Anet to ban Karl and Jon from touching mesmer, leaving the decisions up to Robert Gee.

Just ban Karl and Jon from balance decisions altogether. They’re clearly happy with having two classes be better at literally everything than the rest while everybody else gets pre-emptively nerfed despite having to work harder to hit their theoretical top performance in the first place.

Get some fresh blood in there and form an actual Balance team. Let the class devs establish the play patterns, but have someone else review the numbers before release.

SlimChance.6593:

He said that with the “Evasive Mirror” trait, your “Mirror” healing skill would end up with ~4 seconds of reflect.

Master of Manipulation, actually.

Mirror will give you 2s of reflect, as it currently does. Then, because it’s going to be tagged as a Manipulation after Tuesday’s patch, it will have an additional 2s of reflect if you trait Master of Manipulation.

velmeister.4187:

Mudflation .. here we come!

Cost of material will skyrocket like crazy alienating casual playerbase.

Seriously! Good luck to any new players trying to level Tailoring now.

Quadox.7834:

If it does i will definately not use mass invis when going chaos. Not that i used it anyways…

Er, PU is in Chaos, so there are definitely Chaos builds that would like to use Mass Invis.

Honestly, this isn’t tragic, though. I know the other Adepts aren’t super exciting, but is getting revealed if an enemy is fast/clever enough to tag you within 2s of cloaking with Mass Invis really a build-breaker? Worst case, you decide that the 20% cooldown reduction isn’t worth the possibility of getting revealed and take Illusionary Defense instead.

Teutos.8620:

Blind on dodge does not sound good to you?

Blind and Confusion, don’t forget!

It’s ok, it’s a new skill with a new kind of effect, so misunderstandings are, uh, understandable. Using two Portals back to back is still pretty strong, even if it’s not as strong as having them open simultaneously.

Also, imagine: Portal Entre -> Mimic -> Blink -> Blink -> Portal Exeunt.

Or: F5 (save) -> Portal Entre -> Mimic -> Blink -> Blink -> Portal Exeunt -> F5 (revert) -> Use Portal -> Portal Entre -> Mimic -> Blink -> Blink -> Portal Exeunt.

serenke.4806:

I agree with the first point. The 1s distortion is (can be) a game changer for that phantasm. AoE will kill the warden before it can start to spin.

Maybe the developers can consider this.

Does iDefender absorb damage for other Phantasms or just other players? Maybe we just need to chain Evade → Warden.

Agreed that it would make more sense to have the 1s Phantasm Distortion in combination with Warden’s Feedback, though.

Mikkel.8427:

Ether Feast- Didn’t become anything… could have at least made it a glamour. It doesn’t make any sense, but at least you could trait it to give super speed and short duration resistance.

What, being our best Heal isn’t enough on its own?

Kelthien.8593:

2 phantasms from the shield and Deja Vu, another Defender on-demand from the block, plus a 15% faster attack speed on the auto… all with heavy Alacrity up-time and reduced cooldowns from Illusions…

Only problem with using Shield 4 and the iDefender trait is that the Defender will overwrite one of your iCaptainAmericas.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Also not sure how it will interact with mantras. Would you just get a 1s cooldown after the mantra charges have expired, or could you set the recharge for a charge to 1s? It’s not clear.

Based on the wording, it seems like you’ll get a 1s cooldown on your Mantra if you consume the last charge during Mimic’s 10s duration. Most Mantras are too conditional to spam like that, apart from Mantra of Pain which already has a 1s cooldown. But! I guess there are circumstances where chain-casting Power Break could be handy.

I think Mimic is really going to shine when you pair it with Wells, though. Imagine dropping two Wells of Calamity on top of a Gravity Well…

Even buffier than before! Cool!

PolyMoa turning into a Signet is pretty unexpected, but I dig it. Strong passive on that, too. Time Warp is now a mini-Well. Mimic looks super cool combined with some of our other strong utility skills.

I’m particularly impressed that most of the lackluster-looking traits from the last preview picked up new effects. Cripple on the GS trait, Regeneration on Illusionary Inspiration (which was already looking good), Resistance on Temporal Enchanter, Blind on block/evade for Ineptitude.

Scepter buffs seem pretty legit, too. Zippier chain (you can cancel the after-cast by using another skill, right?), and its GM trait increases your attack speed. That’s on top of the buff it got from the condi changes.

And then there are all the traits that we get for free now!

I hate seeing Guards. Necros are also annoying for me personally, but I think that’s more of a “l2p noob” issue on my part than anything to do with the matchup.

Rampager or Sinister gear seems really tempting for a Reflect/Confusion build now, actually. X/Duel/Insp, take Evasive Mirror and the Focus trait.

Though this does ultimately depend on A) what the Condi Damage coefficient for Confusion actually is and B) what specific numbers tweaks they make to our other traits that generate Confusion, Bleeding, etc.

I was just on my way in to post about this. I think we all knew that there would be trait tweaks before the specialisation release, but it’s nice to have confirmation and a specific call-out about Inspiration.

A) Yes, ANet wants us to use Shatters more, even in Phantasm builds.

B) It has nothing to do with “skill”.

The updated traits encourage shattering because it’s less passive, plain and simple. A traditional Phantasm build can never use clone-generating skills, and there’s no point in using Phantasm skills once it has three out. So you’re basically removing half the weapon skills from your bar once you’ve ramped up.

So, ANet’s goal is clearly to make shattering something all Mesmers do — including Phantasm Mesmers — to reduce the amount of passivity behind some of our optimal builds.

Levetty.1279:

When I pointed this out when they were first revealed I got dogpilled and harrased so be careful for pointing out the turth OP.

this post so edgy i cut myself on it

Zumi.6384:

Plus, you don’t have to waste your dodges on generating clones

This is pretty huge, IMO. I mean, most DE builds have to invest in Vigour uptime to make sure they can generate enough clones while also having dodge up when they need it. By taking IR instead, they can spend those Vigour uptime resources on something else. Or else funnel that extra Vigour into actually dodging attacks.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

1) Any time a CC reduces the blue bar and the enemy is currently using a skill, this should count as an interrupt for traits.
2) Any time a CC is used while an enemy is using a skill (regardless of break bar status) this counts as an interrupt.

I’d be fine with either of these, personally.

Clownmug.8357:

PSA: Mesmers have lower overall damage than most other professions no matter which weapon you use. If you care about achieving maximum damage, then play a different profession.

If you follow this line of logic, it implies that we should use weapons which provide utility, and GS is not one of those. iBerzerker does ok damage, but iSwordsman does more and iWarden absorbs/reflects projectiles, while Blurred Frenzy lets you maintain DPS while evading damage. You’re attempting to argue for “use what you want” here, but actually this line of argument is exactly why S+S/F is the “meta” for dungeon Mesmers.

apharma.3741:

Being ranged (using GS) in a dungeon to me says one of a few things.
1. You don’t know the mechanics of the boss or instance and didn’t ask or
2. You play the way you want and everyone else can eff off, in which case you’re not a team player and can do one yourself or
3. You don’t understand the way melee works, group buffs and how generally melee weapons do more damage.

This this this this this.

I’m all for making a rational, informed choice to play suboptimally, provided that you’re aware of doing so and know what you’re giving up. GW2 is known for being a pretty casual MMO, so there’s nothing wrong with doing this in a group of like-minded fellows who understand that they’re not playing optimally and consent to taking things slow and easy.

But being asked to switch your weapon sets and refusing to do so is the mark of someone who puts their own personal enjoyment over that of their party. If your teammates are saying this, they’re clearly signalling that they’re trying to play the content optimally. If you’re not prepared to do that, you need to drop the party and free up the slot. Everyone will have a better time if you do.

Seems like a reasonable request. The only objection I can think of is that the mantra counters in the location you proposed could be confused with cooldown timers.

I don’t see how this is a “Moa is overpowered” problem. Sounds more like a “Necros are underpowered” problem to me.

I think there is a genuine clarity issue here. Our illusions are a resource that we expend via shatters. Our illusion counter serves two purposes:

1. Warn us when we’re about to overwrite an existing illusion
2. Let us know how many illusions will be consumed by our next shatter skill

Illusions which are currently shattering a) can’t be overwritten by using another illusion-summoning skill and b) don’t count toward the next shatter skill we use. In other words, shattering illusions are not a usable resource, so they shouldn’t appear in our resource counter.