[Suggestion] Mesmer rework

Ever since Guild Wars 2 was in beta, there have been some serious design problems with the Mesmer. Most notably the functionality of their illusions. I've come up with a few ideas on how the class can be reworked and made more functional in all aspects of the game.

Illusions

• Clones are changed to inherit a percentage of health and armor from the mesmer. This will make them more durable in combat as their main function is more defensive than offensive.
• Clones will mimic attack animations and visual effects from the mesmer, however their attacks will still deal damage as auto-attack. They will also need an AI improvement to imitate player movement. This will improve the deceptive nature of Clones in PvP, since it will prevent people from just looking for the mesmer using different animations, or "the only one that moves a lot"
• Clones will swap weapons when the mesmer does, damage from clones changes with weapon. Again, this improves the deceptive nature of clones in PvP, but it also improves their versatility in PvE.
• Clones will no longer shatter on target death, they will instead automatically retarget to your current target. Clones may persist for 5 seconds out of combat. This fixes a lot of problems with clones. The general lack of ability to retarget (outside of Mirage) as well as allowing for Distortion to be used at full strength in non-combat situations to safely pass through traps and environmental hazards.
• Phantasms are no longer counted towards the 3 illusion cap. Instead they now have short durations, most offensive phantasms lasting long enough to use their attack Two or three times. This effectively makes Phantasms into normal attacks and makes it so that shatters only affect clones, thus removing the massive DPS penalty of actually using our class mechanic.

Class Mechanic - Shatters

• Core Mesmer's gain a new F5 ability that retargets existing illusions and provides some extra benefit (to keep balanced with elite spec changes). This should have been a core feature from the start.
• Chronamancer's gain new shatters that replace the original shatters. These new shatters should be centered around the concept of a chronomancer, inflicting conditions such as Slow, Chilled, and Cripple and providing boons such as Quickness, Swiftness, and Regeneration. Continuum Split would remain as F5 for Chronomancers, trading the ability to retarget illusions for the ability to effectively turn back time.
• Mirage should also have it's shatters changed to reflect the elite spec. It's F5 ability becomes Illusionary Ambush. A new Utility skill will be added to replace Illusionary Ambush.

Mantras

• Mantras gain a 3rd charge baseline. Contrary to what ArenaNet said in the patch notes, it was not counter productive to have harmonious mantras and restorative mantras together. The third charge also made mantras less clunky, especially Mantra of Pain, as 3 charges combined with the 1sec CD between uses actually counter balanced the 3second charge time and made the skill use feel fluid and natural.
• Mantra of Recovery returned to normal. The health threshold on it was a terrible change that served only to nerf the skill into the ground.
• Menders Purity should be returned to removing 2 conditions on heal, however the AoE radius will be halved to 120 or made personal range only. Additionally, it should trigger from the initial charge of Mantra of Recovery as well instead of only on charge use.
• Charge benefits, returning more in line with how Mantras functioned in GW1, while a mantra is charged we should gain a passive benefit for as long as we have a charge. However, I would say this benefit should scale with the number of charges. This should also be applied to Guardian Mantras. For example, Mantra of Recovery might remove 1 condition periodically depending on number of charges, every 30 seconds for 1 charge, 20sec for 2 charge, and 10sec for 3 charge. Mantra of Concentration might periodically pulse Aegis to you and nearby allies.
• Return of damage resistance during charge up. This was stupid to be removed, it makes combat charging mantras lethal (especially Mantra of Recovery) unless you combo the use of Distortion or invulnerability.

Miscellaneous Skill changes

• Mass Invisibility needs a serious buff, it is by far our worst Elite skill. There is zero reason to take this skill in it's current state, if you want to provide stealth to allies as a mesmer, you're far better off taking Veil, not only does it last longer, it also provides a Light Combo Field that can provide additional support functionality and it befits from Temporal Enchanter to give super speed and resistance. The only thing that Mass Invisibility has over Veil is an extra 300 range... that nowhere near counter balances it's inferiority let alone make it elite worthy... Increase it's stealth duration to 8 seconds and apply Blind to enemies. This will make it comparable to Veil in functionality as the base durations would be the same, and the added Blind will make it the superior choice worthy of it's elite status. When traited Veil has a maximum duration of 11 seconds and an 8second Mass Invisibility would reach 12 seconds.
• Add Alacrity to Time Warp. Seriously, it's a time manipulation ability, it should apply Alacrity.
• Signet of Inspiration needs a major rework of it's active effect. It's rather uninspired to be honest. I understand that the old active of copying all of your boons to allies was overpowered as it could be abused by multiple mesmers sharing boons to quickly cap out boon durations and reach 25 stacks of might. However, I think it would have been better to simply change the active to grant 1 stack of all of all boons to you and allies. If that's too strong, then apply maybe 5 random boons instead. The Lesser Signet of Inspiration from Inspired Illusions trait could be changed to grant 2 or 3 random boons. NOTE: this is only a change to the ACTIVE portion of the signet, the passive should remain unaltered. This change will make activating the signet a worthwhile choice in solo, along with improving it's value in group content as you won't have to wait until you have enough different boons on you to be worth sharing, you can instead pop it any time your group actually needs the extra boons.
• Phase Retreat should break enemy targeting. This is a defensive skill meant to escape enemies and leaves behind a clone in your place to fool them. That functionality is currently rendered useless by the simple fact that your enemy is still targeted on the real you. Additionally, skills that break enemy targeting should NOT break enemy targeting unless they are actually targeting you, it's rather annoying to see enemies stop attacking a clone and pick a new target just because you used a skill that breaks targeting, especially when their new target happens to be the real you.
• The Chaos Armor skill from staff should apply all three of its conditions with its initial activation rather than just 1 of the 3 conditions at random. It should also grant Chaos Armor to allies. Makes the skill itself actually have a purpose.

Im confused as to what goal you have, this doesn't sound very cohesive. I do like the sound of passive effects for having a charged mantra, but one could also argue that being able to instantly cast fairly powerful skills is enough of a benefit as is.

@Panda.1967 said:

• Core Mesmer's gain a new F5 ability that retargets existing illusions and provides some extra benefit (to keep balanced with elite spec changes). This should have been a core feature from the start.

Independent of what I think of the rework idea, I wanted to say this here after seeing F5-suggestions in two threads now:If your idea for a fix is to add further complexity to it, then you're adding more problems, not solutions.

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Panda.1967 said:

• Core Mesmer's gain a new F5 ability that retargets existing illusions and provides some extra benefit (to keep balanced with elite spec changes). This should have been a core feature from the start.

I'd really want illusions to always change their target to your target. No additional mechanics for retargeting them. Just simple as that: you change your target and so do your illusions.

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Panda.1967 said:

• Core Mesmer's gain a new F5 ability that retargets existing illusions and provides some extra benefit (to keep balanced with elite spec changes). This should have been a core feature from the start.

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Panda.1967 said:

• Core Mesmer's gain a new F5 ability that retargets existing illusions and provides some extra benefit (to keep balanced with elite spec changes). This should have been a core feature from the start.

The reason I suggest adding it as an F5 is because there are times and reasons to NOT want your illusions on the same target as you. While it's nice to have it completely automated, it's honestly better to have it controllable. However, if your illusions target dies, it should retarget to your target automatically.