Response to the incoming changes to Phantasms

Original posting from Robert Gee here:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26687/shattering-the-status-quo/p1

EDIT: I just want to say that I do appreciate keeping us aware of what changes to expect instead of just dropping the patch. This kind of communication - in particular, hearing the reasoning behind the changes - is a breath of fresh air. Even if we as players may not fully see eye to eye on the changes or logic behind them, at least knowing what problems ANet is attempting to solve and their responses and reasoning behind what they've changed in attempts to solve them is quite refreshing and very good to see, and gives better direction for us as players as to what the games' creators are trying to convey in their professions' concepts overall.

I figure this kind of breakdown will get lost in the responses to the thread, and want to make it stand out a bit more as more of an analysis of the thought process behind these changes, rather than simply direct "yay/nay" feedback flooding the thread.

While my playtime on mesmer is fairly limited such that I am far from amazing at the class itself, I think I have a solid foundation on the class' mechanics and identity problems because I do these kinds of analyses for fun on every profession.

It's quite a curious change. I can't give any real feedback until all the details are revealed.

That said, I am quite skeptical based on the reasoning presented here:

Mesmers always have had a tension between clones and phantasms; this tension was designed into the profession when the game launched. The idea was that shattering clones would be good for burst damage while leaving phantasms active would be an option for sustained damage. Choosing whether or not to shatter was intended to be one of the core decision points for those playing mesmer.

Generally, this is a good thing to see. One of the staples of what makes games interesting and engaging is the underlying need to make contextual decisions

However we've discovered as the game has developed and evolved that providing this tension usually ends up removing the incentive to use the profession's core mechanic and leads to more passive gameplay. This can be seen in a lot of "optimized" builds for mesmers involving summoning three phantasms and then auto-attacking for extended periods of time in order to avoid destroying the phantasms by using another illusion skill.

And yet... while this change addresses an issue of the design encouraging passivity by just leaving the phantasms there, it begs a question: What is now the optimized approach to damage? Simply, the answer seems to be something along the lines of spamming phantasms as quickly as possible, and then using shatter after their initial attacks, since clones on their own are often pretty worthless, especially for power builds. Rinse and repeat. And if phantasms can't be spammed, you're SOL on damage, or the numbers need bumping, which is generally not very good and quite a passive approach to resolving the problem. This design change doesn't so much remove the illusion of choice but rather, it appears as though it removes the very nature of choice itself by removing the decision-making process altogether. That makes gameplay even less interesting as a whole, because now you're laying a framework designating exactly how to play optimally for virtually every mesmer, regardless of build or desire of how to play. There is largely no longer a reason to keep clones/phantasms alive at all in any context based on this reasoning.

To better-solve this problem, I think it could have been approached with a much more selfish elite spec (instead of the mirage) focused on dealing sustained damage rather than a shatterbot like the mirage or support utility player like chronomancer. Changing the shatter skills on such a concept to focus on maintaining the persistence of phantasms instead of just providing utility to the mesmer itself at the expense of clones and phantasms would have been a means to provide a DPS-but-not-burst approach to gameplay patterns which gives real meaningful choice to how you approach play, while bolstering viability of leaving phantasms up and acting as your strength in the PvP formats, which is currently something that just doesn't really exist outside of the (broken) WvW condi build. Imagine the prospect of replacing Mind Wrack with a skill which promotes all clones to phantasms of and make an attack at the target. Or to turn them all to defenders and negate an incoming strike. You're now more a master of illusions than just pooping them out and using them as a resource. Optimizations are guaranteed to happen for PvE, but this approach instead enables big decisions to be made based on how you want to play, rather than simply removing the option for decision from the players themselves by forcing a rotation on everyone.

I've been stating the sentiment for a while that so long as there is so much innate burst as part of a class (the mesmer), it'll be nigh impossible to make it balanced for PvE and DPS when accounting for the full in-the-moment choice, as doing so either becomes optimized one way or the other, and then possibly makes the mesmer very overpowered in PvP (imagine shatter burst + massive sustained damage). The best that can be done is change what those choices are/do in how they work mechanically and provide tangential choices as far as how the player wants to approach a given combat encounter. With phantasm abilities being made stronger as well across the board, I'm also generally worried of the repercussions of these changes in PvP and WvW. Taunt on phantasm is an extremely strong capability, and fundamentally removes the illusion of choice of which target to prioritize when dealing with mesmers and clones from your enemy. With questionably-oppressive burst from shatters as it is, I'm afraid these types of change may result in changes to the profession elsewhere, such as reduced shatter damage on a lower cooldown, but this may in turn result in rewarding players for doing something that really needs to be toned down in the current game-state: spam.

Overall, I'm curious, but a bit afraid of what the consequences may be. I hope both the developers and players can take a bit to think about the effects on gameplay health of both playing as and against the mesmer from this change. Of all things in need of reworking, this was on the lower-end of what I had ranked on the priority list.

Can we at least wait and find out before worrying about potential repurcussions of "overpowered burst" in pvp/wvw...

From a quality of life and functionality perspective this new design makes sense. Yes it means there is less scope for a ranger "pet" style elite spec in the future, although there is still potential to have a unique elite spec that plays like that. Otherwise given that all of chrono/mirage/core have the same F skills, I don't see why you're worrying about homogenising the gameplay - it was already homogenised since they made IP baseline encouraging everyone to shatter (apart from pve, but then I don't play raids... and at least now I might enjoy instanced pve more if the boring playstyle of summon 3 phantasms no longer exists). Pure phantasm gameplay hasn't existed outside of instanced pve in years, so there's nothing lost here - rather more gained by all phantasm skills essentially becoming clone summoning skills in addition to their phantasm "effect", as well as phantasms no longer being counting towards the illusion limit.

And in terms of priorities, I'd say the phantasm/clone/shatter issue is easily one of the top 3 issues that needed dealing with for mesmer so this is a very long overdue and welcome change.

Again, I'm withholding a call as to whether or not the change will be a net positive or negative over what we have right now; we don't yet know the details of everything. However, I am simply airing the possibility that this may not be the change we want or need in the end, and laying out my reasoning behind why I'm not so sure whether this change is aligning with what ANet is trying to achieve without invoking more problems.

Generally, I see approaches to homogenize gameplay as being a bit concerning in the end. While consistency is always a plus, I'm not sure if I'm 100% sold on having the approach to encounters be held to such a... rigid structure on how to play. It's more a criticism about the lack of decisions which is what defines interesting gameplay overall rather than simply making things play similarly.

As far as my "priority list" goes - that remark is simply referencing what I'd do for all the professions. Mesmer clone rework in comparison to say... some very necessary design changes for the reaper, a rework on the forsaken offhand dagger on the thief, the entirety of stealth in the game as a whole, and many more which affect overall playability of weapons/classes/traitlines/approaches for a number of professions feels a little bit lacking precedence in the grand scheme of things. In the mesmer itself, I guess it depends on how you play and what content you participate in, but I'd still rank stealth bursting as a bigger and more important priority. I think this play style decision could have and should have been made as a basis for an elite spec, as mentioned above.

Maybe I'm biased as a mesmer main but I can't think of many more pressing issues that needed to be solved than this one.

There are myraid unused weapons/traits/skills across all the classes - I could pick several things on mesmer too if you're pointing out things as minor as an offhand weapon on thief.

I agree on Stealth - this is also in my top 3 issues that could do with some kind of overhaul in the future.

I mean there is potential for reworks on things like the whole ranger pet mechanic, or revenant legend flexibility (and underwater), or even on that note making all skills useable underwater, but they have to start somewhere so I'm glad this is happening for mesmer now.

Yes there are unknown implications on gameplay that may be positive or negative - we just don't know right now - at least on paper it looks good.

Depends on how they're gnna change the phantasm related traits.

Its a bold change to make at this point but i've been waiting for a phantasm change for a long time. It's not really what i was hoping for but we'll see.This could be really good or really bad for mesmers but I like the part where phantasms become clones after they finish attacking.

However I feel like Anet is doing this to make Mesmers shatter more important while shatters are my least favorite mechanic about mesmers. I prefer clones & phantasms a lot more.

I admit this might be a bit optimistic, but the way I see it is, there may very well be less interesting choices in the new system, and it may give us a less engaging experience upon the initial implementation. But the old system wasn't exactly between good choices. I'm not the best to articulate it, but a lot of discussion has happened over the years about the all or nothing trade-off between having Phantasms or Clone Shattering. I think this new system will lay a much better foundation in order to introduce healthy choices in the future, even if we don't get them right away.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Imagine the prospect of replacing Mind Wrack with a skill which promotes all clones to phantasms of and make an attack at the target. Or to turn them all to defenders and negate an incoming strike. You're now more a master of illusions than just pooping them out and using them as a resource.

I like that concept. I really like it. That would feel like you're the master of your own little squad who are capable of more than just being suicide bombers.

This is really big change.

As long as the skill balance team can keep up the tunning of tons of affected skill, I would be really happy. The game needs large changes like this to give players a refreshed feeling.

This is far better than leaving it as is was. It doesn't get much more passive than, "leave 3 phantasms up and AA". And as far as your whole removing the choice argument, how it is now didn't involve any choice until Mirage arrived and for a short period afterwards as well. There wasn't much choice to using just your AA and leaving 3 phantasms up. It's the same argument you used before, what is the most optimized way to deal the most damage, before it was a boring 30 second ramp up and auto attacking and completely ignoring your class mechanic. I don't know about you but to me that's a really stupid design. Even after Mirage arrived it's still better to ignore shattering for the most part, if this ends up making shatters regularly used then I'll gladly welcome it, and I honestly doubt it'll discourage using them in any way since they removed the most limiting element to shattering.

Tbh I'm happy for this change. One of the biggest issues to Mesmer has been the phantasm vs personal damage. a change like this gives us more potent utility from phantasm, plus our skills and cooldowns aren't balanced around having phantasms out.

i like the changes .but from what i have seen , mesmer sustain dmg will still be bad (they still lock dmg to those summons instead of mesmer itself .and confusion damage likely will see a huge nerf

What makes gameplay bad for most folks is being 1 hit smashed by a bronze on a op toon, not making it so that he or she must first learn to use the toon before becoming an op player.

I like the changes. I think it's all going in a very good direction. I think the chrono should get 50% cd on reduction with alacrity tho. Everyone else should get 25%. I'm excited to see what may happen to power builds. I expect some buffs to power mes to make up for the 35% to 40% damage phantasms used to do. It's all very exciting. I've been advocating for more synergy between clones and phantasms for a while so I feel like I had a part in this decision lol.

I like phantasm change , but can t escape from negative thoughts, is this means mirage will be mandatory in pve open and other places .In augustus 8 we got phantasmal force, persistence of memory, i wonder what will happen with them .May be we yust see the surface of the iceberg, and more and more good changes will come .

Here's my response: