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I still don't understand, why would they remove distortion AND illusionary persona? Why 2 tradeoffs?


Daniel Handler.4816

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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

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@Levetty.1279 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:It's not mirage nerf, it's balance.

Had you read me right, you'd understand that what I suggest is that the tradeoffIts a nerf. The tradeoff for Mirage is that its dodge doesn't move. They have already nerfed duration and removed superspeed on top of that.Stop pretending you care about balance, you just want mirage nerfed.

Ok, you don't have a clue...

For your culture, a standard dodge prevent you from using any non instant skill and interrupt the skill you where using for the full 3/4s evade window. With mirage cloack you are free from those drawbacks. Thus, the tradeoff for the loss of movement while dodging is the ability to continue to use your skills while dodging and it's well worth it.

However, there is load of evade/defense packed into the mirage utility skills and the extra offense packed into the ambushs skills. And you still have an untouched core worth of strength backing the mirage on top of that. So where is the tradeoff for this powercreep of defense and offense?

I certainly do care a lot more about balance than someone that just want more "power" and can't see the powercreep where it is.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:Ok, you don't have a clue...

Please refrain from insulting people just because you don't have an argument.

a standard dodge prevent you from using any non instant skill and interrupt the skill you where using for the full 3/4s evade window. With mirage cloack you are free from those drawbacks. Thus, the tradeoff for the loss of movement while dodging is the ability to continue to use your skills while dodging and it's well worth it.

Yes exactly, mirage's gimmick is being able to preform actions while dodging. the drawback is that its dodge is worse then every other professions. Glad we agree.

However, there is load of evade/defense packed into the mirage utility skills and the extra offense packed into the ambush skills.

That has literally nothing to do with trade offs compared to core.Or should Ranger lose its pets due to sword/dagger, Greatsword auto, attack signet of stone and lightning reflexes?Should Daredevil get less initiative because it has 3 dodges and lots of ways to get endurance back?Should Hundred blades do less damage because whirlwind attack evades?Guardian has a lot of blinds and blocks maybe we should remove one of its virtues?

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Let's look at meta. Staff ambush 1sec cast time, scepter 1,5 sec cast time. MC 3/4, time to flip skill and reflexes so you can cast ambush 1/4.Staff ambush - half of the skill is done outside MC.Scepter ambush - 1sec of the skill is done outside MC.

So where the heck is the attack while evading BS everyone is spewing?

MC is trash period, the only thing good about it is the evade while stunned bit.

The only good trait mirage has access to is IH.Mirage has to burn dodges to keep the pressure going on, which means less defensive dodging.Mirage has one of the less amount of vigor uptime on game.

Will mirage get tradeoffs? Absolutely.Should mirage get tradeoffs? No, a trash dodge and traits are enough of tradeoffs.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

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@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:Let's look at meta. Staff ambush 1sec cast time, scepter 1,5 sec cast time. MC 3/4, time to flip skill and reflexes so you can cast ambush 1/4.Staff ambush - half of the skill is done outside MC.Scepter ambush - 1sec of the skill is done outside MC.

So where the heck is the attack while evading BS everyone is spewing?

MC is trash period, the only thing good about it is the evade while stunned bit.

The only good trait mirage has access to is IH.Mirage has to burn dodges to keep the pressure going on, which means less defensive dodging.Mirage has one of the less amount of vigor uptime on game.

Will mirage get tradeoffs? Absolutely.Should mirage get tradeoffs? No, a trash dodge and traits are enough of tradeoffs.Alrdy have it tradeoff:Mirage alrdy suffer from garbage dodge that gives you 66% movespeed for 0.75s instead of normal evade but you are sitting duck under cripple/chill. Unabe to cover your own new "mechanic" and have to burn two to cover ONE ambush.All traits are real garbage (minor grandmaster that exact gives 66% movespeed is just here a filler/bandaid trait to fix mirage cloak inability to move at all instead of having real trait, like look at spellbreaker grandmaster minor, huge stat boost and FC reset bursts skills to spam them 24/7) except IH which is backbone of entire MIRAGE elite spec. Anet making fun of mirage "EM being defensive option", throw at us "Dune cloak" being worse version of MINOR warrior trait that casually crit 6k unblockable damage and give might (and more evades and sustain with MMR trait lul) and we have to trait it as grandmaster trait, still making fun of mesmer players even with dune cloak :DBut its probably intended for mesmer to have double tradeoff for nothing in return

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

I disagree, why nerf elite specs? Core specs should be made competitive.

Look how "balanced" guardian is. With how ridiculous that is, can we honestly say that their aim is to make people buy expacs? Clearly it's possible to bring core specs up to near elite spec level. They've done it with their baby. Let's be honest here, balance is not a priority, Anet is clearly showing that.

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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

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@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

Financial gains or losses have nothing to do with Core Mesmer being viable or balanced or not. It being powered up does not lose them anything except time to do the changes, a tiny bit of labor in comparison to that which is spent on even making a single skin for a mount.

The reason they could not make changes to core was because they built the elite specializations on top of the base profession. This is essentially true for all the professions, but on many of them they changed the core extra ability bar completely or gave an entirely separate bar of skills that replaced a weapon bar. They did not do that with Mesmer elite specializations and this is the issue. By not separating out the ability skill set at least partially, the elites for Mesmer make it such that any changes to core would be affected by the elites.

In short, they did not take the development of the elite specializations far enough for Mesmer. Now that they are trying to, people complain, but we are an extreme minority, less than 10% of the population, of which only 10% of us actually are complaining at all. So likely 1% if the entire population cares about whether Chrono wad screwed over or not, but by doing so they can go about actually balancing Core and Mirage without Chrono possibly breaking the entire profession again (hopefully... because the new shatters have their own name and thus may not inherent all the effects of the existing shatters in the future).

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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

Financial gains or losses have nothing to do with Core Mesmer being viable or balanced or not. It being powered up does not lose them anything except time to do the changes, a tiny bit of labor in comparison to that which is spent on even making a single skin for a mount.

The reason they could not make changes to core was because they built the elite specializations on top of the base profession. This is essentially true for all the professions, but on many of them they changed the core extra ability bar completely or gave an entirely separate bar of skills that replaced a weapon bar. They did not do that with Mesmer elite specializations and this is the issue. By not separating out the ability skill set at least partially, the elites for Mesmer make it such that any changes to core would be affected by the elites.

In short, they did not take the development of the elite specializations far enough for Mesmer. Now that they are trying to, people complain, but we are an extreme minority, less than 10% of the population, of which only 10% of us actually are complaining at all. So likely 1% if the entire population cares about whether Chrono was screwed over or not, but by doing so they can go about actually balancing Core and Mirage without Chrono possibly breaking the entire profession again (hopefully... because the new shatters have their own name and thus may not inherent all the effects of the existing shatters in the future).
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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

Financial gains or losses have nothing to do with Core Mesmer being viable or balanced or not. It being powered up does not lose them anything except time to do the changes, a tiny bit of labor in comparison to that which is spent on even making a single skin for a mount.

The reason they could not make changes to core was because they built the elite specializations on top of the base profession. This is essentially true for all the professions, but on many of them they changed the core extra ability bar completely or gave an entirely separate bar of skills that replaced a weapon bar. They did not do that with Mesmer elite specializations and this is the issue. By not separating out the ability skill set at least partially, the elites for Mesmer make it such that any changes to core would be affected by the elites.

In short, they did not take the development of the elite specializations far enough for Mesmer. Now that they are trying to, people complain, but we are an extreme minority, less than 10% of the population, of which only 10% of us actually are complaining at all. So likely 1% if the entire population cares about whether Chrono wad screwed over or not, but by doing so they can go about actually balancing Core and Mirage without Chrono possibly breaking the entire profession again (hopefully... because the new shatters have their own name and thus may not inherent all the effects of the existing shatters in the future).

This I do agree with - chrono first being created as a band aid fix to all the core problems, and mirage feeling like it's half done.

It does seem now a gradual picking apart of things to make each more unique as they should have been from the start, however the method and pace tends to leave a lot of damage in its wake (traits, skills etc), in addition to not knowing when or even if a satisfactory end goal will be reached based on the current and historical evidence from patches.

I'm always hopeful, though I highly doubt the next patch will come close to reaching this goal and will rather be another few bits and pieces of the huge task for reworking many things on mesmer as a whole - the disappointing part being it could be a number of years before all aspects of this class come close to that point.

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@Curunen.8729 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

Financial gains or losses have nothing to do with Core Mesmer being viable or balanced or not. It being powered up does not lose them anything except time to do the changes, a tiny bit of labor in comparison to that which is spent on even making a single skin for a mount.

The reason they could not make changes to core was because they built the elite specializations on top of the base profession. This is essentially true for all the professions, but on many of them they changed the core extra ability bar completely or gave an entirely separate bar of skills that replaced a weapon bar. They did not do that with Mesmer elite specializations and this is the issue. By not separating out the ability skill set at least partially, the elites for Mesmer make it such that any changes to core would be affected by the elites.

In short, they did not take the development of the elite specializations far enough for Mesmer. Now that they are trying to, people complain, but we are an extreme minority, less than 10% of the population, of which only 10% of us actually are complaining at all. So likely 1% if the entire population cares about whether Chrono wad screwed over or not, but by doing so they can go about actually balancing Core and Mirage without Chrono possibly breaking the entire profession again (hopefully... because the new shatters have their own name and thus may not inherent all the effects of the existing shatters in the future).

This I do agree with - chrono first being created as a band aid fix to all the core problems, and mirage feeling like it's half done.

It does seem now a gradual picking apart of things to make each more unique as they should have been from the start, however the method and pace tends to leave a lot of damage in its wake (traits, skills etc), in addition to not knowing when or even if a satisfactory end goal will be reached based on the current and historical evidence from patches.

I'm always hopeful, though I highly doubt the next patch will come close to reaching this goal and will rather be another few bits and pieces of the huge task for reworking many things on mesmer as a whole - the disappointing part being it could be a number of years before all aspects of this class come close to that point.

A point worth noting is that until recently all the design for Mesmer and it’s Elites have been designed and balanced as a whole, this past patch has been the first steps to undo the damages done to the profession because of it’s Elites. So in short, these have been huge changes overall, but necessary to create space for further changes and individualizations of the different specializations.

Many of us have even stated that Chrono vs Mirage vs Core was just the same thing with slightly different flavors. This is sadly a truth that needs breaking so we can actually have some variety in our builds. Not every single Mesmer needs to be chain shattering and running deceptive evasion, it is nice to create some build variety.

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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Ambush replace a normal attack, so it's only slightly stronger than a regular attack. Mirage Cloak allows it during a time where others might have actually had a dodge animation, but sacrifices being able to dodge as far or for as long. Your idea of a tradeoff is more of a nerf in most game modes, where as a major part of the issue with current design is that Core is simply too weak to compare numbers wise. For increasing damage for Core across the board, it would be better to give it a static aura buff for not specializing in Chrono or Mirage, rather than weaken the other two down to Core levels.

Excuse me but this way to put things is wrong.

Let's be clear, whatever increase in damage, defense or utility you give to the core, the e-specs will automatically benefit from it and go a step further from the core profession. Core in itself don't need any extra to put it to the level of the e-specs, the e-specs need some tune down. This is the case for mesmer like it is for many other professions.

Mirage is not overperforming in any game mode, but the complaints remain in PvP environments because of a lack of counterplay opportunities, damage source being outside the player and thus not easily responded to, animations being masked a number of skills or having no animation at all. Ultimately, the profession relies on a damage source that is unreliable, and perhaps a bit too strong when it can all be lined up very well, but very inconsistent. This variance leads to inherently broken design issues, game modes in which a Mesmer is weaker always (WvW), or in builds that massively underperform (Mirage in PvE raids and group situations), or massively overperform (in 1v1 and duel situations, where long duration invulnerability and no animation damage sources and CC end up very strong, sPvP). To attempt to balance this weakness and power the devs have tried keeping the profession very squishy, and results in a very binary position, where a small tweak could end up making the profession too strong or far too weak.

You don't get it, mirage is overperforming because it reach a higher defense and offense than core without any sacrifice. To put it simply it's as unhealthy as having life stealing with a heal based on a %age of damage done. The survivability gained will be bad if you build tanky but will shot throught the roof if you build glassy. Making it meaningless to build tanky. Mirage achieve the same thing: high survivability with glassy build and absolutely no reason to seek a tanky build for survivability.

Contrary to what Levetti think, mirage cloack's loss of movement have a big counter part: you can attack/cast skills while you avoid damage. And this make a huge difference. The Ambushs just add powercreeped damage on top of that. There is a need to tune down this powercreep and reducing the number of clone which use as well the ambushs (another layer of powercreep) is amongst the "better" idea.

One last point, the profession isn't "very squishy", in fact the mesmer have high amount of survivability in-built into it's weapon kits and special mechanism. Mesmers just play extremly glassy builds and glassy build with high survivability are bad design.

What is sneaky about this is that almost all of these issues root back to the very design of clones, they assumed implementing IP baseline for Mesmer would make everything work, since the profession would no longer be as reliant on clones, but what it actually does is just make them as reliant as ever and need to be balanced around having one clone at all times. This in turn makes their abilities almost too strong when at 3 clones, and all of this because the clones have to travel to their target to do damage (irrelevant at melee range, and thus the uses of stealths and teleports to get around that weakness). Thus we end up in a situation where Mesmer remains unbalanced, too weak when clones are not up (a great deal of WvW, some PvE, and even in group situations in PvP), and maybe slightly too strong when they are up and able to remain so until they manage to hit the target.

So here, you admit that the number of clones is to high but still you don't think reducing it for e-specs is a good idea and you'd rather have a static aura on core? This is madness.

My proposed solution has been posted in many threads and should be viewed as it goes straight to the heart of the Mesmer issues (regardless of elite specialization).

I'll repeat myself, you can't buff core to push it to the e-specs level, you have to bring down the e-spec level to the level of core. Only when that's the case you'll be able to buff core. Trying to push core to the e-specs level without drawbacks on the e-specs is an impossible task due to the fact that e-specs draw on core while core don't draw on the e-specs. Any suggestion that propose to buff core before having all e-specs brought down to the core level is an unreasonable suggestion.

What you are really saying is that you feel elite specializations are doing too much damage in general and want to see that toned back. I disagree, I think their damage is not the issue, it is that they get to do that damage while being increasingly strong defensively as well. Now balance means to make things roughly equally strong, and the way you propose is to nerf everything down to where you think it should be damage wise (and perhaps ssurvivability wise), but another way is to buff the underperforming Core professions. At this point, there are less Core professions with noticeably less damage and defense than elite specializations, it makes more sense to target bolster those as I have suggested (simply aura buff to core that is lost on choosing an elite). That keeps the change simple and doesn’t require changing profession skills, as Mesmer core survivability is not really the issue here, Chrono before last patch was basically the same survivability, while only Mirage actually has had a much stronger defensive load out. I can easily make a Core build that lives long enough, but it lacks the damage to threaten opponents so dies in battles of attrition, or in PvE it just lacks the damage to not actually be a burden to the team.

The issues seem to stem from the Clone mechanisms in my opinion, where their damage is inconsistent due to their design of running at an enemy to do damage and being a destroyable resource. Unfortunately, changing that means reworking the entirety of Core, and the best temporary fix is giving Core a flat damage and defense aura. It would be better for them to fix the systemic issue at the source however, and honestly that is my hope, but I would settle for merely an aura toggle (e.g. Supreme Illusionist - baseline Compounding traits and reduced Illusion recharge times, toggles off when choosing an elite specialization).

If you choose to call everyone else flatly wrong though, it points to being unreasonable yourself. From my experience, most of the issues with powercreep as you see it is really just a matter that they wanted the game to be a bit easier in PvE since HoT was actually difficult for a large number of players, so they reduced difficulty and kept the same power of the professions. Problem is Core has always just been flat worse because elite specializations were just tacked onto their power rather than having drawbacks. Powering down every elite to core levels is simply not going to happen.

Edit: Also, before HoT, there existed builds that were strong offensively and defensively, but in the context of the game being less powered overall, that was basically the same as now, excluding Core builds which just became flat worse than elite specs. There still exist solid defensive and offensive builds, just that Core of most professions simply cannot compete with their elite brethren, making them equal does not necessarily mean nerfing the existing stuff at all.

Powering up core doesn't seem like something they financially prefer.

Financial gains or losses have nothing to do with Core Mesmer being viable or balanced or not. It being powered up does not lose them anything except time to do the changes, a tiny bit of labor in comparison to that which is spent on even making a single skin for a mount.

The reason they could not make changes to core was because they built the elite specializations on top of the base profession. This is essentially true for all the professions, but on many of them they changed the core extra ability bar completely or gave an entirely separate bar of skills that replaced a weapon bar. They did not do that with Mesmer elite specializations and this is the issue. By not separating out the ability skill set at least partially, the elites for Mesmer make it such that any changes to core would be affected by the elites.

In short, they did not take the development of the elite specializations far enough for Mesmer. Now that they are trying to, people complain, but we are an extreme minority, less than 10% of the population, of which only 10% of us actually are complaining at all. So likely 1% if the entire population cares about whether Chrono wad screwed over or not, but by doing so they can go about actually balancing Core and Mirage without Chrono possibly breaking the entire profession again (hopefully... because the new shatters have their own name and thus may not inherent all the effects of the existing shatters in the future).

Core is f2p. Elite specs are not.

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well here is the thing, im not sure why people complain about mirage, however mirage has a good trait for clone preserving (defending) which would affect chronomancer much better than mirage atm. But wait guys did you notice something.. are... are we in a never ending while loop?Anet buff class and nerf another , stays like this for 3 months, then the nerfed class get buffed, also the buffed class get nerfed. when this is going to End ?it feels like we are in a while loop in a program that cannot get the satisfied condition.Also this is for ANET devs, just play chrono in PvP or WvW, look how u get killed many times , by some other classes, especially with condi classes and tell us how it feels, just don't listen to people complaining , how about you try play your own game?...=====My thoughts====also fix the wells and rework it to another type of skill, cuz if u ask me , controlling time would be a fantastic trait in a game and wells are not for that. You should put it as a "Gates" (Gates look more suitable for controlling time than wells) or something, idk you come up with this whats more. I think chrono should have access to another utility portal skill, or swap places with a foe, and since YOU made chrono a Clone based, then every skills (the reworked skills) should have benefits from having active clones

Chrono feels lonely/unhappy/unwanted in every competitive mode, in fact some people got kicked off the squad just to fill it with another FB/Scrapper/herald. Why ?

Anyway people i've waited enough for this to get fixed, but ANET devs seems to not care about the broken system they just made, and not willing to fix it soon enough . with that been said, im leaving this time for good. Good bye all.

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@"Daniel Handler.4816" said:Every other spec has one drawback. Or two but one is mitigated like Impact Savant and Fatal Frenzy coming with bonuses and stat decreases. This is just two tradeoffs for no discernible reason.

Edit: please restore illusionary persona.

not you, no one...the only possible reasson is a "dark hidden plan" of anet to "setup" specs for an incoming expansion... you know, an x-file...

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@Obtena.7952 said:Just going to throw this out there .... we are the test and live server ... Willing to bet they are 'testing' something to reintroduce it in a different way later. Unfortunately, later is like ... months and months away.

Or perhaps this is just their version of a tradeoff to the shatter uptime from alacrity+ CS and there will be no recourse. Chrono is stuck this way forever. Doesn't matter that the most harmed by the change were already struggling to be useful.

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