Thoughts on Mesmer changes?

These are the mesmer changes

Mesmer:Today's mesmer update is focused around the Mirage's Axe. We've cleaned up several bugs and animation hang-ups that could cause the weapon to feel less smooth than intended. Additionally, we are adding camera refocusing to skills that shadowstep you to points around your target. These skills will attempt to face your camera behind your character after the shadowstep occurs so that it's easier to keep focus on your target.

Mirage: Added new UI effects to indicate when Mirage Cloak is active.

Skills

Axe Autoattack: Fixed a bug that could cause skills used in the middle of the attack sequence to have a noticeable delay before activating.

Lingering Thoughts: Lowered aftercast by 0.1 second. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to show an incorrect casting time. Added a 0.25-second recharge between uses of this skill to prevent accidental double use.

Axes of Symmetry: This skill will now rotate the camera to face your target after the shadowstep. This skill now performs a range check before casting. Shortened maximum distance to target after shadowstep by 20%.

Illusionary Ambush: Increased Mirage Cloak duration to 1 second to be consistent with other skills. This skill now takes into account your currently wielded weapon when determining maximum shadowstep distance from the target. Updated minimum and maximum distances from target for random shadowstep calculations. This skill will now rotate the camera to face your target after the shadowstep.

Imaginary Axes: Increased seek distance for the follow-up attack by 20%. Increased stacks of confusion for the player version of this skill from 1 to 2 (clones still apply 1 stack). Increased damage by 20%. This skill no longer requires you to face your target.

Phantasmal Berserker: Reduced casting time from 1 second to 0.75 seconds.

Chaos Vortex: Increased projectile speed by 25%. Increased projectile damage by 20%. Removed confusion and torment conditions. This skill now inflicts bleeding (2 stacks for 6 seconds), burning (1 stack for 3 seconds), and vulnerability (3 stacks for 5 seconds).

Jaunt: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from being recognized as an elite skill for the purposes of some rune effects.

Traits

Mirrored Axes: Fixed a bug that prevented clones from generating the bonus axe.

Phantasmal Seeking Axe: Increased seek distance for the follow-up attack by 20%. Increased damage by 33%. Reduced angle variance.

Phantasmal Spinning Axe: Increased torment duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Increased damage by 33%.

Sand Shards: Fixed the incorrect skill facts to show the actual value of 3 stacks of bleeding for 4 seconds.

Desert Distortion: Fixed a bug that prevented mirrors from spawning if Distortion was activated while jumping.

Overall I'm happy with the changes. Addressed the issues I had with Axe, along with actual buffs and making chaos vortex a skill that has a chance at hitting enemies

Overall pretty happy. Axe buffs/bug fixes are nice. Honestly this balance patch turned out a lot different then I thought.

1,5 sec protection is still a thing. Otherwise I'm pretty happy, gotta see it in real first tough.

Thanks Anet for fixes and not nerfing us :) but then again everything kind of got more buffs than nerfs loll

With the changes to Axe 1, do ambush attacks and other skills reset the chain, or just delay it now?

Happy as a clam. No nerfs, QoL changes (that pBerserker's cast time is simply scrumptious), and general attempt on making the class feel smoother as a whole. Lord knows we're used to a lot less.

@FaboBabo.3581 said:1,5 sec protection is still a thing. Otherwise I'm pretty happy, gotta see it in real first tough.

True, there is a lot more than I was hoping for. But at least we weren't nerfed, and improving axe was really big for me, because I enjoy using it in PvE.

@Draksis.2648 said:Happy as a clam. No nerfs, QoL changes (that pBerserker's cast time is simply scrumptious), and general attempt on making the class feel smoother as a whole. Lord knows we're used to a lot less.

Just FYI, the zerker change is undoing a ninja-nerf from when they added the utterly useless projectile attack on it.

Way to early to say, wait a few hours so ppl can test it out. But on paper it does look good.

Well, nothing too spectacular (like we've all expected), but at least no nerfs and many QoL improvements. Hoped for a little more, but I'm overall happy with the changes.

Tested it for a few minutes right now, illusionary ambush + axe changes are great. U can even do a stuff ambush after Illusionary ambush now ! Staff Ambush changes are a way in the right direction ; should have been those 3 conditions all along. I'd really enjoy seein the 3 seconds burn on the usual staff auto too instead of 1 sec.

That's pretty much it for the patch ; bug fixes and some improvements to Staff Ambush. Nothing serious about our traitlines though, but i think you could say Mirage is playable now. Especially in PvE the IH - Build got big buffs with the whole axe package.

I think this Patch should be enough at first to play happy the next few months until we see some more in depth changes for our class. The future of Mirage is about balance now instead of Bugs. A-NET has to see now how strong the bugfixed version is, and i'm very willing to give them the time for this.

Edit : Btw prepare for "NerfMirage" - Posts cause we can stack TONS of Burns now. ^^

@FaboBabo.3581 said:Tested it for a few minutes right now, illusionary ambush + axe changes are great. U can even do a stuff ambush after Illusionary ambush now ! Staff Ambush changes are a way in the right direction ; should have been those 3 conditions all along. I'd really enjoy seein the 3 seconds burn on the usual staff auto too instead of 1 sec.

That's pretty much it for the patch ; bug fixes and some improvements to Staff Ambush. Nothing serious about our traitlines though, but i think you could say Mirage is playable now. Especially in PvE the IH - Build got big buffs with the whole axe package.

I think this Patch should be enough at first to play happy the next few months until we see some more in depth changes for our class. The future of Mirage is about balance now instead of Bugs. A-NET has to see now how strong the bugfixed version is, and i'm very willing to give them the time for this.

Edit : Btw prepare for "NerfMirage" - Posts cause we can stack TONS of Burns now. ^^

noooo we are just you know perma evading instantly burn + confusion + torment from stealth and 80k burst shatter .

Axe is better then it was. Much improved. But... still far less better then sword ambush build. Plz test it!

@Vieux P.1238 said:Axe is better then it was. Much improved. But... still far less better then sword ambush build. Plz test it!

thats the problem i currently have for wvw. Sword ambush too good.

Ok, so yes we did have some great improvements. I did the cast reduction on the Phant.Berzerker. Feels more fluid. Axe got improved. Lots of bleeds. Overall mesmer feels better. Here's the bad news. **We are at the bottom from All other classes** . All other classes got tweaked up & basically are next to impossible to kill. I tried different builds vs most classes & gawd damn they can hold there own vs mesmer mirage. Mind that i've been testing power build. Has anyone tested condi yet?

i'm running hybrid mirage still and i had a lot of fun with axe in the last hour in wvw roaming and small scale fights. First time i can enjoy the weapon in Pvp truly. Soooo hard to decide between weapons now. Staff is my favorite in WvW as range weapon, while i had sword in the other Set for the last weeks. Now the decision between axe/torch-Staff or sword/torch-Staff is really hard. Maybe even sword/pistol axe/torch, but i still love Staff... Hard decision. If axe would have any kind of daze, I'd be sure to take it over sword, cause i could proc chaotic interruption with it granting imob etc. , while i could love without sword ambush and sword 2 ....maybe?

I'm super mega ultra extremely over-the-top happy as all Quaggan hell right now.Mesmer literally went from "I hate this class" to "I can live with it a bit to just level it as a port slave" to "I'm amazed at how awesome Mirage is to core Mesmer. Not bad, and slightly not liking my squishiness" to "Mirage working even better before?! I used to fight with it slightly... especially the phantom axes but now it's even better?! /dance"

I'm also glad they looked into the whole problems with that slight delay that I've noticed happen when I did certain attacks. That was a really good job there.

THANK YOU ARENANET!

I adore the Mirage changes! Also, the UI animations as well as the Mirage Cloak UI animation are beautiful! Chaos vortex now stacks burning!? ANET thank you for making my main so much more enjoyable! I love the Mesmer (Mirage) so much more now!

Axe 2 feels more clunky than ever to me.Axe 3 still bugs on uneven terrain.Staff ambush and illusionary ambush are good now.

Also good to know ANet actually reads mesmers forums, since they introduce the exhaustion mechanic someone suggested, even if they don't give anything for mesmers themselves...

No nerfs to chrono. So I'm happy since my favorite pve raid class gets to live on (and I literally just started tanking Xera which means I can tank every boss ingame atm).

Everything else is gravy.

It seems like they do want to make mirage feel smoother. The changes go some way. Going to have to wait and see where the other classes come in. Most have seen some tweaks and improvements.

Absolutely no changes to power mesmer except.. Phantasmal Berserker? This 0.25 activation reduction seems totally random to me. Anyone care to explain?

...what changes? It's nothing but bug fixes, tooltip rewrites, and camera stuff. This is what we waited for, THIS?

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:Absolutely no changes to power mesmer except.. Phantasmal Berserker? This 0.25 activation reduction seems totally random to me. Anyone care to explain?

See my comment in this thread.

@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:Absolutely no changes to power mesmer except.. Phantasmal Berserker? This 0.25 activation reduction seems totally random to me. Anyone care to explain?

Kinda notice that. ppl are so quick to jump the bandwagon on how awsome it is with out trying it out. Like my previous statement. Some quality improvement but we are definitely last on the character classes ( Pvp wise i mean). FYI: Just finished testing all phatasmal builds & i can confirm with certainty not only the old traits but the new reworked phantasmal traits is trash in pvp. It's definitely a pve & raid thing.