Showing Posts For thetarot.8246:
1 2
Math on paper, and target dummies, are not ideal circumstances to check potency of abilities in regards to anything, More so, on Mesmer, than any other profession.
I’m not asking for ‘screenshots’ or ‘videos’ . Just for durations mentioned not to be an exaggeration in a situation that isn’t an actual game mode. A perfect situation to test rotations is one thing, Keeping it up in an actual fight, be in in a boss fight, sPvP or any aspect of actual play is another.
Alacrity is utterly pathetic
The maximum potential on alacrity is reducing the cooldown of skills by 33%. That’s far from pathetic.
A meaningless statement of the obvious. It’s like saying. “Did you know that 3 Phantasm always up on a boss, that never dies, does a lot of damage?”
with it’s short duration,
So short that I can keep it up on an entire party for 35 solid seconds on a 45 second cooldown, and easily permanent on myself in a variety of builds.
This is relevant, and I thank you for it, If in fact, the information was not done on ‘Paper’ and in a real, relevent, situation, Such as sPvP, PvE, or WvW, and not during target dummy test where all your stars are aligned.
Edit: I know engrish.
Alacrity: Instead of cooldown reduction, Applies a stacking (with quickness) attack speed increase to allies and self.
Not gonna lie, this is the worst idea in the while thread, though Cynz’s usual mesmer-gutting suggestion comes close.
Would you kindly provide an intelligent reason as to WHY that is? Over the usual, simpleton response, more fitting for someone playing thief, saying to a mesmer ‘PU is OP’ without any context.
Alacrity is utterly pathetic , with it’s short duration, and adds nothing to any game mode, other than the almost ‘random’ element of skewing your predictions on when abilities will be refreshed.
Alacrity: Instead of cooldown reduction, Applies a stacking (with quickness) attack speed increase to allies and self.
Even if you don’t consider the phantasm, the chronomancer’s shield 5 skill alone has higher damage output than the shield skills of any other profession. In general shields aren’t intended to be high DPS weapons. If the utility of the skills is lacking, that’s an area that can be tuned, but we don’t have any plans to really increase the damage that much.
It being a shield is ultimately pointless, It could be a new item called a ‘Wet Noodle’ and it would matter just as much as it being a ‘shield’. Which is an accurate representation of our Mesmer damage in PvE.
Yes yes, I understand we’re more support, but so are guardians. Who have so much more personal damage than us, while maintaining the same, if not more support, in the exact same areas. (Placable Reflects, not reliant on enemies, etc.) Easier access to Aegis, blinds, Better pulls.
Then comparing the damage output of the other classes ‘shield’ to ours is also pointless. Other classes do not commonly use their shield in PvE for THAT VERY REASON. It does not offer much in the over all grand scheme of things. It does not even carry the same ‘flavor’ as other shield users. Which is an emphasis on personal defense. “Your greatsword is a ranged weapon! Other classes greatswords arn’t range” – It could literally be anything and not matter, Bad damage is bad damage. Regardless of it’s shape or form.
Alacrity is an overall, terrible mechanic, that isn’t even the opposite of chill until it has a movement speed increase tied to it. Someone has to maintain it for a long time to shave even 10% off the cooldown of abilities, and that’s alot of busy work for something LESS than a trait.
Most damage comes from auto attacks. Alacrity is more of an attrition based ‘buff’, more fitting to be given to Warriors or Necromancers. While changing it’s name to something fitting.
Fluff text, Chronomancers getting ‘Shields’ because they can look like clocks isn’t good design. Excuses because of ‘fluff’, ‘lore’, or ‘sybolism’ are only limiters to the unimaginative. Why not a ‘Hammer’? Who hasn’t ever thought of smashing their alarm clock with a hammer, in the morning, as if in hopes it would buy them time? Literally everyone who has ever used one, I imagine. Chronomancers arn’t maintaining the timeline, They are not respresenting it. They are utterly destroying it. Which is FAR, FAR more fitting than a shield. Give us a big heavy hitting, auto attacking Hammer.
Change the Alacrity benefit to stacking effect of improved cast/attack speed (On top of quickness), and we’ll be in an overall better shape for both providing more damage to our group, ourselves (which will still be massively lagging behind) and fufilling the ‘Quickness’ utility better than a Guardian.
There must be some competition for game developers to dish out the worst content imaginable, EA is bad, Ubisoft is bad, but ArenaNet, guys, you certainly racked up the points with this one.
First you push the new gem store boosters on your players. “Check out or new Magic Find and Exp Boosters!” Then continue to produce content that neither gives exp or loot from mob kills. You make it, 30 minutes long, and only reward players who slogged through to the end. Counterproductive for players who go LD in massive overpopulated areas, have lousy internet connections. The list goes on.
The reward doesn’t even cover the cost of all the WP usage the players do. The fights are gimmicks, unfun, and simply zerging from event to event. If this is the kind of content design we’re looking foward to in HoT. Quite frankly, I’m worried.
All I’m getting from this is it’s supposed to be a money sink for players to shill out gold for token bought rewards (+gold cost) for old content stuff, and spend lots of silver which adds up between WPing around. Sure, if you simply MUST HAVE the scarlet gloves or something, it may be worth it, but probably not even then, as you could literally do anything else in the game and make more ten times the reward, and probably have more fun doing it.
Why can’t the time wells blast on their last hit?
Or Maybe the field can disappear just before the blast procs.I main Mesmer and I’m really fine with not having that much finishers (especially blasts), but in my opinion, Mesmers have way to many etherial fields.
I believe the reason why that would be a bad idea is from the same logic that Torch is a terrible blast finisher, Delayed reaction blasts require far too much set up, in a class that already requires alot of set up. – You see a Water Field, dropped by the Engie, you can’t do anything about it, as your blast occurs 3+ seconds, too late, longer if traited for PU.
Planning ahead has it’s place, but we have a lot of that already. More than any other class. Probably more than all of the others combined. “Oh I have to make a daze chain… set up, set up, set up. Pray things don’t get cleaved.”
Making Ethereal Field a desirable effect in both PvE, PvP and WvW would go a long way to make the premise of ‘We supply the fields, you blast them’ an understanding, respectable premise, but as it stands, it’s not.
Changing the ‘Blast’ of Ethereal Field to provide random boons to allies, and strip/corrupt random boons on Enemies would go a LONG way to making Ethereal Fields powerful.
This would serve multiple purposes.
I don’t even care for some particular playstyles, but this benefits mesmer in all of them.
WvW: A common tactic is to cluster up, spam stability, might, and zerg. Providing the zerg, a counter to all the stability and might in the form of feedbacks and null fields, and utilizing those, would improve things for the mesmer, and cooperation as a whole.
GvG, not even fully supported style of play: Helps Mesmer have a place for the above reason.
sPvP: It would make for a tempting target to blast by your ally thief, on point, fufilling both the role of ‘Boon Stripping’ and providing the ability to do the same to allies with blast finishers, by virtue of cooperating with the Mesmer to achieve a better result on one of his purposes, and at the same time, making Robert’s ‘response’ of ‘Mesmer supply the fields, others finish through them’ accurate, and useful.
PvE: There are many applications, mostly, I’m willing to bet money that enemies in HoT will have more boons to strip/corrupt, – and there is already plenty of practical application of such if you simply say the word dredge. (You know, the fight where you’re probably already dropping feedback for reflects, and null fields to boon strip)
That being said, I wouldn’t be opposed to having an on demand, reactionary Blast finisher, such as through a traited Mind Wrack, or simply on Greatsword 3. Mind Stab.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
Group utility is not the pinnacle of skills. But go on calling people disingenuous. I’ll continue watching pvp games where the whole game occurs without a single water field being blast.
Water fields are somewhat less commonly used in PvP. On the other hand, the self-blasting of fire fields is the primary method by which celestial elementalists produce their extraordinary might upkeep. Attempting to argue that blasting fire fields doesn’t have a profound impact on PvP is…foolish.
If you are going to balance around a single build on a single class then that would be your unwise decision. Boon conversion was added to the meta and the build itself is going to be nerfed soon anyway.
There are plenty of examples of professions which someone who ‘watches PVP videos’ should already know. Particularly if one watches the top tier PvP.
Less relevant now, but still doable, Shoutbow Warrior used Longbow to provide long lasting fire fields which it could, and still can blast.
and to this day, please find me a single PvP match, Which has an Engineer in it. (You know, they’re part of the meta, last meta too.) Who doesn’t go through the usual rotation with Healing Turrent + Blasting it.
I’ll continue to duel thieves and neither of us blast might or water fields.
Quite so. However, thieves rely on leap combos through smoke fields for the majority of stealth upkeep in many builds, which, you might have noticed, was one of the other fields I mentioned as quite useful.
A response that I could easily retort by changing the example to Mesmer and Necro. Or any class that is not an Ele, an Engie, or a Thief.
If you changed the retort to Necromancer, They have a poison field + blast, convienantly on their staff, and I rate poison fields much higher than Pyro, Providing AoE weakness on a point , utterly cripples the opposition’s damage.
If you changed the retort to Guardian, it depends on the build. The burn guardian faceroll build often utilizes a fire field + whirl.
If you changed the retort to Ranger, a popular ‘dueling’ builds include being tanky as hell and using healing spring + tons of leaps, and aside from their lack of meta relevence in sPvP. They still can provide plenty of fields that people enjoy using. Fire, Water. Whether they can blast it or not isn’t the issue. They can provide desirable effects if they wished. – Where as, we cannot.
If you changed it to Mesmer. – You’re right, Unless you count Chaos Armor from Ethereal Fields, mattering -at all- in any situation. The only reason it’s even ‘decent to do’ at all is to trigger the protection if you have the right trait.
Chaos Armor is almost worthless, and is the only aura that has effects that can potentially defeat itself. If the enemy gets blinded from one attack. The next attack will miss, thus not give you a boon or trigger another condition. Random effects are for the most part, bad design. – and ever since the Blinding Befuddlement change, and the ICD was added, I’ve never been punished for attacking into Chaos Armor, on any profession.
- Recall Engineer’s Elite Skill? It used to have ‘3 Random Effects’.
Abilities you cannot count on, when you may need it, are terrible abilities..
The only time I was ever asked to lay down a Light Field, wasn’t in combat. It was so people could leap through it and get a ‘pretty princess’ aura as they faffed about. – Funnily enough, I was on my Engie at the time. Who can provide a better shaped light field and longer lasting field than Mesmer.
Don’t really care. This seems only applicable to WvW.
Water field blasting is primarily limited to WvW. This is mostly because you don’t actually need that kind of healing in any other game mode. However, I find it curious that you’re completely discounting the existence of an entire game mode. Do you care to explain why you feel that WvW isn’t important in GW2?
Because the game isn’t balanced around an individual game mode. Placing importance on one mode leads to shortages in the other.
Only your… above statement is in regards or rather, seems to be – to how little you see certain objectively powerful Combo Fields being utilized in a ‘Dueling’ situation. Even though most classes do use such. Disregarding two game modes, both PvE and WvW, in favor of a nonexistant one, seems at best, hypocritical.
As for the game not being balanced around an individual game mode. – Please look take a long look at the patch notes regarding Mesmers since the big changes to the trait system. Most of them were nerfed because of PvP, This also effected them in PvE (Where we are weak) and WvW (Where we don’t matter.)
Mesmer, Providing almost completely worthless combo fields since April 28, 2012.
I’ve yet to see a group that asks for an Ethereal Field, Chaos Armor without Chaotic Dampening is worthless. Confusion is worthless in PvE, and the effects do not last long enough to matter in PvP from projectile/whirl finishers.
Light Field is decent, Only when there is heavy conditions, and a whirl starts removing things, Light Aura is worse than simply getting ‘7 seconds’ (Forgot the actual duration) of retalition from leaping through it, that the effect had before ‘Light Aura’ was a thing.
Yet both are detrimental in comparison to Fire, Water, Smoke, Dark, and covering those up with a crappy Ethereal Field and to a lesser degree, light field in ANY aspect of the game is a sure way to kitten people off.
@thetarot
Most of the time is not really spent fighting trash but running from trash to trash. Chronomancer is now plain faster than guardian.Also, on some bosses, slow is powerful like the example DnT gave where it prevented Lupicus to go in its second phase or something like this I believe.
Faster, How? The 25% run speed? 33% Run speed from swiftness + Leaps are ‘faster’. Who has easier access to swiftness, and can easily maintain it 100% by itself, emphasized further by if it goes into Boon Duration and Swiftness from other players, and preparing blink and portal will cut into your quickness sharing when you do reach that boss.
Portaling a group is all well and good, but then you’re just a glorified taxi, Show me a group that wants to wait 80 seconds while portal gets off cooldown so you can swap it out to something useful for a boss fight. If you do wait, well then, You’re pretty much better off running without portal, and without the mesmer.
I fail to see how it’s powerful on a very specific case where the Mesmer’s reflects (Namely Feedback) are vastly superior to the Guardians. Phase 2 is where Mesmer’s shine the most. They always have, slow adds nothing. This does not emphasize the power of slow. People have already murderhoboed the guy down in 10-14 seconds because of feedback, before slow was even a thing.
and if people truly just want to break speed run records. At the cost of gold, Simply replace Mesmer with a faster class. Perhaps on a thief, for skips, with a Watchwork Portal Device.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
I like how people fail to point out, or acknowledge, every single one of mesmer quickness. Aside from Shield (Which won’t be great in a group stacking situation, because that’s usually against a wall) Requires set up. Multiple clones, which means combat has already started. Set up and cast time, MATTER. Wells trigger after 3 seconds. Again, F5 will too, require set up, and include leaving behind a portal like killable structure to end it early. Which we again we do not know it’s HP.
If the current meta is any indication, Sword+Focus/Shield/Sword/Pistol will still be the PvE meta. – In which case you can ‘quickly’ produce 2 clones. Three if you double dodge. You won’t be wanting to use your phantasm if you plan to boon share. As even any stray boon will cause the Phantasm inspiration signet to share boons thus waste the duration before you actually want to share.
Mesmer is the hardest class to gauge ‘on paper’ as it has been for almost three years now. Guardians too, can stack boon duration Guardians can also reduce the recharge of their Elite by 6 seconds. How’s that ratio looking on quickness up time now? With one button press, Not 4-6 and enemy actions can lower the duration.
Ratios of Quickness are great and everything, On Paper, a real situation involves waiting for wells to trigger, producing clones, enemies cleaving down clones before a 3 clone shatter. Inspiration through phantasm being wasted because you have other boons.
Yes, Mesmer’s quickness on bosses that last more than 10 seconds will be vastly superior. Most fights are not boss fights, and they are trash mob fights. – It doesn’t matter if you’re giving 10 seconds of quickness after a 3 second setup. If 5 seconds of that duration happened after the fight ended, and the other half was 3 seconds late.
Slow is a terrible condition, it is almost completely useless in all forms of PvE of the current content, whether or not it will be useful in HoT remains to be seen. In a PvP situation, Yeah, it’s great. No argument here.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
I disagree with you thetarot. It seems that with wells + time-warp-F5, we can have an amazing quickness uptime! If you want more, you can shatter and boonshare. Then you can boost somewhat damage with alacrity (more hundred blades?). Even if we reduce our DPS to 0 (which we won’t, we are “only” half the DPS of the best professions), the DPS increase from the 4 others will be higher (less than 50% higher). Technically, assuming we are half the DPS of one other toon, by maintaining quickness on both of you, you would already mostly compensate for the DPS loss. So with 4 other people in the party…
Time Warp has a terrible cooldown. F5 like Time Warp, has a long cooldown.
Quickness on Shatter requires set up for clones for decent duration Quickness, F5 requires set up of clones for decent duration Continuum, and who knows how much HP that portal will have. My bet is it’ll be cleaved the second it drops. – and if it’s not on a group stack, your group will be upset for screwing up the stacking once it ends.
Compare it to Feel My Wrath which is half the duration, and potentially less than 6 times the cooldown. (30/24 when traited)
Guardian’s can already maintain the Quickness for Trash fights. Improving the damage of 4 viable damage dealers by almost 50% is good, Improving the damage of 5 viable damage dealers is better. Particularly one that can group things up even in an open field.
Trash fights in which that can be freely used, Where as Time Warp cannot, and Well’s quickness trigger after 3 seconds. That fight, with a guardian, who does better damage than us, is probably over.
There is the case of Shattering grants Quickness, followed up by Inspiration Signet or the Inspiration Signet on Phantasm use Trait, However Mesmer’s quickness only truly shines during boss fights that will last more than 10 seconds. Most time spent in a Fractal group, or dungeon for that matter, is running or killing unskippable trash, that’s in the way.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
It’s an interesting idea, We’d need far more illusion generation to use our shatter mechanic. – I do believe if such a change would happen, Phantasms should be out long enough to deliver 2 attacks. – One initial, and one with a 50-100% damage boost if they’ve managed the great accomplishment of staying alive more than a couple seconds. It also places an emphasis on -killing- Phantasms in sPvP, before they launch their second attack.
Unless they seriously overhaul the sources of Mesmer damage, it will never make it in the PvE meta over Guardian, as the current state, which is the only slot we ‘compete’ for, the reflect/quickness slot. I seriously doubt they’ll give us enough group Quickness to make up for the loss of damage of bringing a Mesmer over a Guardian.
Slow is a troubling condition, You don’t want it going off in a reflect fight, as you slow down your damage caused by reflects. You don’t want it against creatures and mobs that have channeled defensive skills as it lengthens the time blocked. It’s one of the only conditions that can be a straight up determent for your allies. Right along side of Fear screwing with stacking, and cripple for Dredge Fractal Booss, It also can screw up people who already know the telegraphed attacks of bosses, and dodge ‘early’ because the enemy is slowed, and if conditions EVER become good to use in PvE, the last thing I’d want is to slow my Confusion ticks down 50%.
Aside from that, I don’t think Alacrity will be a decent ‘Buff’. Do we even know if it can be shared by inspiration? Will it count as a ‘Boon’ for purposes of Boon Removal, or "Increased Damage when under X amount of Boons’? We know Boon Duration doesn’t effect it, for -some- reason, and most abilities grant an insignificant duration of it.
It won’t amount to much in the ‘meta’ which fights last 10 seconds, and bosses rarely last 30 seconds.
(Ascalon Fractal Boss for example, Or go to Spvp and get slowed and do a blurred frenzy, and who knows what channeled defensive mechanics they’ll have in HoT.)
(edited by thetarot.8246)
I agree Ice Shard Stab needs a different item, better than what is currently stolen. Perhaps a frost aura for 3-4 seconds. In line with what they can actually do, without being BETTER than the skills they can do.
Unlike, things like AoE Fear from Necro. That fear is longer duration than what they can produce, and hits much wider area.
The axes stolen from Warrior is better than their own offhand axe ability. Reflects projectiles and does more damage.
Consume Ectoplasm from Mesmers, is literally better than all of their buffing abilities combined. Funny how they can’t use their own ectoplasm to produce that same effect.
Ranger Healing Spring item is balanced, nice duration waterfield. Spam dat Shortbow 2.
Engineer stolen gunk is… interesting, I have a love/hate relationship with it.
Guardian mace isn’t poorly balanced. Useful.
In light of the constant knee jerk nerfs to Mesmers, across the board, and the buffs and proper bugfixes to the other classes, and their, seemingly constant state in the meta in every aspect of the game. I’m looking at you anything that isn’t a Ranger, Mesmer or Necromancer.
I’d like Arcane Trickery to treat being a ‘Mesmer’ as a condition, and say, Elementalists, a boon. So we can swap classes and force others to play this garbage. Enjoy being pure taxi in speed runs in pve or wvw. Enjoy PvP nerfs that reduce your effectiveness in PvE, and bugfixes that break more things than they fix, or target the -wrong- skills.
Menders Purity – bugging Mantra of Resolve, and simply not functioning at all at random intervals. Atleast the previous bug wasn’t random.
Imagined Burden – Why even bother changing this? Was there some sort of sub par boon share tactic with this? It shares the same Grandmaster as Mental Anguish and Power Lock for PvP. For PvE, It’s a Greatsword. You’re not using a greatsword except in very specific fights.
Blinding Disappation – Fair. Most unevadable blind spam fixed across the board, I approve. The one good change in this patch. Now fix Beastmaster Ranger’s unevadable taunt CC.
Malicious Sorcerery – Introduced a cool new bug, that’ll be fixed soon enough, and break something else.
Mantras – You make it great. For one month, You make it feel good to use, then take away our candy. Thanks.
Mirror Blade – . Yes, the burst needed to be toned down, but making our Mirror Blade worse than prepatch , Where you had the OPTION of making it 4 bounces. Is just right on the predicted path of nerfing us to prepatch days. How about look at Thieves 9-13k backstabs followed up with quickness auto attacks for 4k? Less telepgraph than Mirror Blade. Elementalist’s pheonix arcane spam nonsense? Oh, right, those are apart of the meta classes.
The grass IS greener on the other side.
Hardly any nerfs beside Mirror Blade. Other nerfs are fine and expected.
If you think mesmer is still not a strong class, then the traits and bugs carried you before this patch.
We’re still ‘strong’. However I wouldn’t call Mirror Blade a ‘minor’ nerf when it effectively reduces it’s damage output by 33%. Let’s see other classes complain when their hardest hitting non-auto attack gets reduced by that much? Ranger Longbow? Thousand Blades? Heartseeker?
My prediction will be Mantras no longer cooldown in the background while they have charges remaining.
Called it a month ago.
They started ‘fixing’ the unevadable blind stuff from various classes. Good. How about fix the UNEVADABLE CC taunt from Ranger pets? Which is a far, far worse offender.
The reduction in damage on Mesmer Mantra usage is quite frankly bullkitten. It nerfs us in PvE where we need it the most. We’re not apart of the meta, We’re easily replaced by guardians, do less damage than guardians, and provide less haste than guardians on a per fight basis.
If there is enough counterplay to Chaotic Dampening already, then there was no reason to nerf the trait in the first place.
This is essentially the new mesmer motto, but apply it to most skills that get nerfed and it’s perfect.
They simply did not give Chaotic Dampening or Maim a chance for the playerbase to realize how much counter-play there is to those two abilities, and in Maim’s case. – Incredibly easy stacking of burning (no changes since patch) is all good, but torment? Big no go.
A guardian presses a button, boom, teleports to you from behind a wall, instant stacks of burning. Add more multi hit skills, Effortless.
1-3 Illusions + Mesmer charging you to Shatter. I wonder which has the bigger tell that theres incoming damage.
Albeit some things needed to be tweaked. Like Healing Prism, They just over-do things when it comes to our profession.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
Just tag a internal cooldown of 1 or 2 seconds on it, and it’s fine. Then it’ll be ‘on par’ with Soothing Mist and Virtue of Resolve’s healing.
While still keeping the Mesmer motto of ‘Doing 3 times the effort for the same result.’
The radius of the effect is MUCH SMALLER than the above mentioned skills too.
As it stands with it’s ICD it makes it a useless, forgotten, random proc trait that’s essentially ‘Sigil of Water’ on our attacks. Only I think that actually has a larger area, and a shorter cooldown, and probably scales better with healing power.
Would those interrupt traits be severely hindered by a 1-5s ICD? Or give Chaos Storm a longer cast animation, or bias the random procs towards being more potent towards the end of the duration? Cap it to 1 daze pulse per cast?
Basically, tone down the maximum benefit from specific synergies, or add counterplay which would be relevant for PvP formats without completely ruining an entire weapon and potential playstyle for PvE (and dumb WvW zergs)
ICD for Power Block and Interrupts would basically ruin it completely. Nothing is more satisfying than greatsword 5 on a group, and getting 3 different interrupts. An extremely rare occurance but it happens. Chaos Storm has already been nerfed from launch with a longer cooldown, at least twice, and it’s already something that may not even triggered the desired effect. Capping any of it would ruin the skill.
Chaotic Dampening has plenty of counter-play, You’re committing yourself to do a set of different skills to trigger Chaos Armor. Even for the simple double Chaos Armor of Chaos Storm + Phase Retreat + Staff 4, and a ton more if you follow it up with another utility or weapon swapping/sword leap, torch burst. Ever get CC’d without Phase Retreat up? Because that’s what it sets you up for. There is a huge risk to it against even moderately experienced players. Use a utility to get out of trouble, now that’s on cooldown, Or die. – and those are pretty big risks.
Committing just those 2 skills for faster recharge for x2 Chaos Armor for a 20% Reduction on Chaos Storm, Phase Retreat and a 10% Reduction, is just needless busywork with no real benefit over just giving us a flat 20% pre patch.
3 times more effort, for ‘almost’ the same result. Which was essentially our class motto pre-patch, and it’s on the fast track to that again.
Where as other professions just enjoy their 20% coupled with whatever other benefit the traits often give. (Protection in our case.)
Do we know why Chaotic Dampening got nerfed? I know the theoretical cdr was through the roof, but what could you actually achieve with the skillcasts thus generated?
From what I’ve seen , going balls to the walls Chaos Armor back to back, You could achieve around a 13 second cooldown Chaos Storm, Which I admit, IS a bit too powerful when coupled with things like Power Block and Chaotic Interruption. However, the trait just needed a slight nerf. Not butchered to less than 20% on some skills after two chaos armors. While every other profession is enjoying their 20% reduction by virtue of simply selecting the trait, and not becoming predictable in your actions.
“Oh the Mesmer used Chaos Storm, I wonder if he’s going to Phase Retreat through it. Followed by using Staff 4. – Guess I’ll just time my burst and CC after he wastes his escape.”
(edited by thetarot.8246)
Three out of four of our changes so far have been overnerfs. Two changes were ‘warranted’ in my opinion, but not to the extent they were nerfed. I propose a middle ground be struck in effort to preserve these skills usefulness.
Power Block is fine, and can remain as is.
Chaotic Dampening, was overnerfed to the point it is worse than a flat 20% reduction, and it forces the mesmer into a predictable skill usage rotation to achieve that less than stellar result, For a slightly better result ‘another’ Ethereal Field would have to be used, or potentially prematurely forcing a weapon swap, and it gets even more predictable for even higher diminishing returns (Congrats you used a utility skill to shave a few seconds off some abilities) I suggest the skill be increased to 3.5% per second.
Maim the Disillusioned is worse than it was prepatch, It isn’t worth shattering a duelist phantasm or a staff clone for. There is no ‘burst’ now. Up the Torment per Shatter to 2 stacks for 4 seconds, Instead of the 1 stack for 6 seconds. (Orginal being 2 stacks for 6 seconds) The total damage would be closer to what we would achieved prepatch without IP baseline, but also allows the skill to be deadly if it lands and isn’t ignored.
Healing Prism. The change was very much warranted in regards to being healed while downed or Vampiric Aura from necros. – But a 10 Second ICD makes it worse than ‘non regen’ ‘regeneration’ buffs from other classes, as those tend to have a fairly large range around the profession (Soothing Mist from Elly, Resolve, Guardian). Simply add a 1 or 2 second ICD to the old version. – Or make the entire skill percentile based. That way the trait can be tracked, counted on, and utilized instead of being some random, short range by product. It also still would allow for class synergy with Necromancer. Which quite frankly THEY need.
Edit: Healing Prism, not Crystal.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
Exactly. Like honestly, the Chaotic Dampening trait, we have to DO SOMETHING to enable the trait, and now from what I’ve gathered it’s worse than the flat 20% CD we had before? So now we have to put effort in using something that was less effective than before?
This is exactly why it was such a good trait, pre-nerf. It’s a Risk vs Reward game. Are you willing to use your Phase Retreat in a fight in your Chaos Storm, to get that Chaos Armor and potentially get baited by a Guardian using Ring of Warding? There was counterplay to this. Tactics. – A good player would know that the Mesmer might use a Phase Retreat to accomplish faster reduction. – A good player would prepare for that, bait that out even to make the player waste ANOTHER escape. Or die. It died before it’s time.
But we can’t be a class that promotes skilled players, and take 4x the effort to play for half the result, in the land of Passive Wars 2.
I don’t know how no one saw this coming. It’s almost too easy having around 5-10s of chaos armor if you combo properly. You’ve got the 5seconds from Staff 4 and the ethereal field from Chaos Storm or the 2 Glamour skills which you can always blast or leap to get another 5 or 3 seconds of chaos armor. Pretty reasonable to me. Thats around 40-50% of recharge reduction right there.
Because it’s Risk versus Reward? Given time, the Mesmer’s behavior of leaping through their Ethereal Fields, using their Phase Retreat/Sword Leap/Whatever would have been a known potential tactic of a Mesmer, and good players would have developed a counter for it.
Guardian: "Okay, this mesmer is going to Phase Retreat in his Chaos Storm to get Chaos Armor second time, He’s already used the Staff 4, One of his escapes will be on cooldown. " Ring of Warding after Phase Retreat, Potentially trapped Mesmer, or forced to use Blink.
However, instead all I seem to see are threads with a lot of whining about the BUFFS?!!
I don’t understand this, could someone clear this up as to why these buffs are bad?
You are given candy, It looks delicious, but it turns out to be Harry Potter’s Anyflavored Jelly Bean. That chocolate you just ate? Really poo flavored. That’s what is happening to Mesmers right now.
Everyone was having a grand ol’ time experimenting with builds, learning the new potential metas. Searching for it. Specing, respecing, and then BAM, one after another key trait abilities get utterly butchered.
That time you spent playing around with that trait? That you built around? Wasted. It’s worthless now.
They shouldn’t be making balance changes this soon. They should be fixing bugs with trait interaction for all the classes, but right now, they’re focused on obliterating us. It’s what they do, it’s what they’re good at.
I think Anet should not be nerfing anything for atleast a week(preferably more) that way people have had a chance to get familiar with the new traitlines/find ways to counter them. Then have a look at what to nerf.
I agree completely, I said in another post. “Let a meta form, Let people experiment.” ArenaNet clearly has no idea what they’re doing.
On the bright side, at least they’re not waiting 6 months to roll out balance changes anymore.
They will, Atleast regarding Mesmer bugfixes. Hard to break out of a habit, someone should start a pot to see how long it takes for the Duelist Trait to start working with Sharper Images, Or how long it takes for them to fix Illusionary Leap after dodge rolling.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
My prediction will be Mantras no longer cooldown in the background while they have charges remaining.
For my amusement, I’m compiling a list of the Mesmer nerfs that will be butchering our profession over the next few days. As such as the Balance Team’s way. I wonder how many 50%+ reductions we’ll see. When we get nerfed, We get obliterated.
Maim the Disillusioned. 50% reduction.
Meanwhile, Engineers, Guardians, Elementalists enjoy their easy access to burning stacks that tick for 6k+ – 3k torment stacks against target golems were too much.
Chaotic Dampening. 60% Reduction.
So you butcher a mechanic that you promised would be cool – and it was, really , truly was cool. But 60%? Are you kidding me? Have you not heard of moderation?
Power Block: 17%
I’m just honestly shocked it wasn’t nerfed harder. Just had to undo the benefit of the Vulnerability bonus damage I suppose.
Im sure theyre basing their decision on what to nerf and what to buff in the live game environment. That was the purpose of releasing the patch before the expansion.
Clearly less than 24 hours is enough time to get a judgement of what needs to be nerfed and what doesn’t. Particularly when ‘the live game enviroment’ is once again filled with newbies using new unfamiliar mechanics and counters.
This needs to stop. ArenaNet. This a completely stupid idea. You nerf our Maim the Disillusioned into a state worse than prepatch. Where it was when NO ONE USED IT, because it was bad, based on the power of the skill against Training Golems?
Prepatch: 6 stacks, 3 illusion shattered, assuming they all land.
Post patch. 8 stacks, 3 illusion shattered, mesmer in MELEE range.
This is personally reasonable for a number of reasons. Melee range, as you said, Mesmers do not want to get hit, thus the removal of our Retaliation traits occurred. Getting a 4 illusion shatter on someone has risk, and risk should be rewarded if done successfully.
Post patch hotfix: 3 stacks, 3 illusions shattered, assuming they all land.
Post patch hotfix: 4 stacks, 3 illusions, Mesmer in melee range.
Utterly pathetic.
Training Golems do not dodge, Training Golems do not cleanse, Training Golems do not apply pressure. Where were the SEVERE nerfs to Elementalists for their ability to kill a Training Golem in half a second with a scepter fresh air build prepatch? No where? Huh.
Yes, one could argue that Condition Mesmers are in a better state than they were previously. – But so is every condition build, from every profession (I’m looking at you 6k burning tics), and we, of course, are the only ones nerfed in a major way, in a hotfix. Like we always are, after every major patch. This isn’t a persecution complex. There is actual, Factual data to support this, and I’ll freely admit one or two were justified, Most however, were not. Like this.
Revert it, and give it a bloody chance for the player base to learn how to dodge the shatters. It’s not as if they are difficult to see when 2+ clones are running at you, OR pay attention to torment and cleanse it. Literally everyone is learning how to play their profession again, and gutting the need to learn to dodge shatters hurts the playerbase overall.
Let a meta form, Let people experiment.
Consider it a ‘hunger strike’ so to speak then. Make myself suffer, and maybe things will happen.
“Look what you’re making me do Arenanet!” Shatter!
I’d still shatter them so hard, but every time. I’d say ’I’ll stop making my clones suffer if you buff our auto-attacks, arenanet." Using the clones as ransom.
I’d be pleased if they simply made clones and phantasms take 80% less damage if they are not specifically targeted. The script for this already exists – I believe I saw enemies/structures (I forget which – I believe they were in the Living Story) with such a ‘defensive’ mechanic. This would not only make Mesmers more viable in PvP – Open up more builds, It would also allow us to contribute more to a group in PvE – without worrying about stupid instantgib mechanics. Such won’t happen though. Mesmers were and still are, an afterthought.
I suspect something is up with it as well, I’m getting Power Cleanse removing 1 stack of vulnerability over burning. poisons, bleeds. etc. Time and time again.
This was my favorite hotfix patch notes. Update – April 16, 2014
Bug Fixes
The Witch’s Broom item now properly grants protection only in costume brawl.
Hurray, Costume brawl bugs have higher priority than addressing Mesmer bugs.
Sure, Anet may be getting thousands of complaints by every class, from the patch but I don’t think anyone else got lied to, three times (IE, Warden, Distortion trait) Horrible hidden trait swaps (The intentional empowering mantra swap)
As horribly entitled and ungrateful I’m going to sound, Please revert it back to the way it was. Preferably in a kitten hotfix. You’ve nerfed us back in January in a hotfix, The only class, ever, to be nerfed in a hotfix. (Admittedly Shattered Strength needed a nerf)
How about fixing us in one as well?
Most of the time, when the Phantasmal Warden is summoned, it does absolutely nothing, until the next ‘cooldown’ of it’s attack is up. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that, the Warden’s new movement conflicts with the ‘attack after 0.25 seconds on being summoned script’ so it interrupts itself.
Sometimes it appears to think it’s summoned in a bad spot. Has to move itself half a pixel, and thus, doesn’t attack.
Other times, it’s because the mob moved, half a pixel, and the phantasm has to move accordingly.
Delaying the initial attack of this specific warden to 0.5 seconds, So it has ‘time’ to make it’s awkward adjustment. May fix the problem, and actually make the Phantasm reliable again.
Please fix this as soon as possible, and not take upwards of 6 months like the Phantasmal Berserker.
While this could likely go into the old archived pavilion section of the forum, It is a suggestion as well, so hopefully it has a place here.
I feel that this achievement, didn’t give a proper reward. Many people defeated Liadri and got the mini pet, but very few successfully beat her using eight orbs, which is substantially more difficult.
Being the only two actual ‘achievements’ in the game that are difficult to get, and can’t simply be bought or carried through by others. They need something special.
Please consider adding a special title, or perhaps an achievement chest for those who defeated her with Eight Orbs. (How about a battle potion like the watchwork knight transform, that lets us have a shadowy form like Liadri?)
We deserve bragging rights!
I’ve even got the eight orb, Light up the Darkness achievement, so take my advice how you wish.
Killing her is amazingly easy if you use atleast 15 points in Dueling for Sharper Images, and 20 Points in Inspiration for a traited focus reflects. The fight starts off the same, every time. The order and placement of her ‘shadow falls’.
For whatever reason, Her whip ability is considered a projectile. You can reflect it, but YOU don’t want to, as it animation locks you into a whipping motion. You want your phantasm to do so. If it reflects it, not only do phantasms reflect for more damage than you do, Each whip causes bleeding and cripple, each whip crit is another bleed.
In a short span of time she’ll be permacrippled with 25 stacks of bleed, and winds up at half-health from one phantasm.
General tips:
Traited Focus: Reflect and negate phase 1’s damage while you’re getting her to 3 orbs to actually damage her.
Sword 3, Illusionary Leap can kill Chaos Rifts. The clone does 1 point of melee damage and is sufficient to kill the rifts.
(edited by thetarot.8246)
Both have their places. From a WvW perspective.
Greatsword has lost many of it’s perks, Spatial Surge not obliterating all the siege. and Iberserker hitting for around 25-50% of what it used to has lost a lot of it’s appeal. It’s still generally a better ranged pressure weapon against certain classes. (Engi, Ranger, Other Mesmers) and is more forgiving when you plan to utilize Decoy/Mass Invis alot.
Not having to worry about a turtle slow Winds of Chaos finally hitting something and breaking stealth is a plus.
(Power/crit Shatter perspective)
However, Staff is absurdly good, take far less retal damage with it’s attacks, hits just as hard (assuming you have the bouncing trait.) Granting fury, lots of vulnerability with chaos storm’s Daze (Traited) . Aegis. Retal… – It generally has a higher skill ceiling than the greatsword, and it’s skills have plenty of neat tricks.
Last time I tested it 200% was the cap on all conditions across the board with exception to Necromancer scepter conditions with their trait that adds +33% after the fact.
If that’s changed, or my testing was flawed. Giver’s weapons are also bugged in the fact that if you get downed or defeated, you would have to unequip and re-equip them to get their effects again. (Some magic find is bugged this way as well.)
Yeah, not really a viable build, but it’s a cool thought on experimenting with what Condi duration on clones can now provide. – I still think they need to add the bouncing trait to staff clones before we see anything other than gimmicks for conditions.
I’m getting the same in both WvW and PvE.
I particularly like the Blinding Befuddlement nerf. (Sarcasm)
“Increase duration of applied confusion from 1 second to 4 seconds”
Considering Blinding Befuddlement used to last 5 seconds, Not 1. It’s another nerf covered by a sugarcoated lie.
I see a 2219 damage crit the exact moment Mass Invis is cast. If you’re using Runes of Air that would be the problem.
They should have done the exact opposite and put Confusion in sPvP to match PvE/WvW to give Mesmers more viable builds other than Bunker (Diversion nerf will hit them kinda hard) and 20 20 0 0 30
Or atleast make it 75% of what it does now, as well as bumping up the damage in sPvP to match.
No team I’ve seen has a condition mesmer for obvious reasons. If you’ve seen a successful structured tournie PvP condition Mesmer, Please feel free to drop me a link to a video.
With unreliable bleed/burning application, little access to poisons, and confusion lasts 40% Less duration (No veggie pizza) I doubt there is one.
The base duration on confusion should be increased immensely to make up for the loss in damage.
New players may get a clue about cleansing the new small, minor damage nuisance of confusion if it lasts long enough. Rather than simply being able to ignore it like they can currently in structured.
I can confirm it uses your own stats. Catching a killshot (and living) in berserker and returning the favor will hit hard, Catching a killshot and being a bunker spec’d mesmer will do much less damage on Echo.
Most secondary effects will transfer (except from other class specific traits), Some dual effect weapon skills such as Black Powder won’t create the blindness field as well.
Note that you’ll need to have Stability to make Mimic into Echo for some abilities. Crowd Control projectile attacks will interrupt you, and it won’t be considered ’caught". (Using Mimic on ice worms that throw knockdown boulders can only be achieved through stability for example)
You will only be able to catch friendly projectiles while invulnerable.
Make it give a Fractal Skin Token. As it currently is, It’s not even a status symbol for the incredibly unlucky like me.
ArenaNet has not responded to any thread created about Fractal Skins since they were debuted.
After tirelessly running Fractals 28 38 and 40s over and over. Bought 6 rings with pristines, have 10-20 more in the bank, 20ish Ascended Rings in the bank. Many of which are duplicates, Fractal Frequenter almost completed (With most of it from repeatedly going for skins)
What do I have to show for it? Not a thing. I’ve received ONE skin. The trident. Which I found out has no confirmation window for salvaging, and probably still doesn’t.
The best thing to do regarding Fractals is stop doing them altogether. Maybe they’ll get the idea going against their own manifesto with the RNG system is flawed, and finally change the reward system.
Don’t get your hopes up.
1 2