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Elite specializations, totally not an addition over core.


Shao.7236

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Cutting the chase, why is that Core have to be overshadowed by an extra skill/utility that just improves the already super new and reworked mechanics of encouraging "Active" gameplay and totally not spam of one very specific function that allows to be even more passive because there's not enough glamour on the screen already!

I am totally for having Mirage that can evade at anytime, but why does it deserve to be invulnerable on demand still exactly? Same for Chronomancer, why would you deserve to use anything that you just did twice when you already get to use a shield or go back in time? Where's the trade off in this? As Mirage I still get to evade anytime, spam clones with basically no effort AND be invulnerable still?! Why would I even bother to do anything else!

There is so much potential for more "skillful" plays but we have to keep things cheesy too I guess? It just goes beyond me, maybe I'm too stupid for not understanding that elites were supposed to be alternatives and not additions that made everything easier.

My take is, if Distortion was perhaps replaced to be more of a Core only thing rather than just being kept with all the already powerful alternatives the elites are, maybe people would complain less about the rework that basically made having 3 clones up super player friendly! Because I remember when I first started playing, I often heard it was actually a feat to have 3 clones up.

It would be really awesome to have someone to explain me why it was under Anets decision to take such a biased decision. Can't just be to appeal players to make more money, we all heard that one.

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Personally, I feel that Core Mesmer just needs to get a passive effect that is turned off when choosing an Elite specialization. Maybe a static reduction to Illusion creating skills, so many skills from a Core Mesmer would happen more frequently, but they hit less hard overall. Could be good for all the skills like Phase Retreat and Leap/Swap, even better with weapon traits to reduce cooldowns further.

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@"Curunen.8729" said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/81729/upcoming-balance-notes

See here for Chrono Shatter changes.

Hopefully Mirage gets some similar attention in the patch after this.

Mirage got its trade off too. 66% speed while on mc instead of superspeed, which means even walking forward your dodge covers less distance than a regular dodge.

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@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@"Curunen.8729" said:

See here for Chrono Shatter changes.

Hopefully Mirage gets some similar attention in the patch after this.

Mirage got its trade off too. 66% speed while on mc instead of superspeed, which means even walking forward your dodge covers less distance than a regular dodge.

Must admit I seriously didn't understand that change. It's so unnecessary and compared to the multitude of other issues on Mirage that need dealing with seems a waste of effort. :/

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@"Curunen.8729" said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/81729/upcoming-balance-notes

See here for Chrono Shatter changes.

Hopefully Mirage gets some similar attention in the patch after this.

Oh wow, thanks for the heads up, that's what I get for not looking earlier, these are actually great news in term of balance. I am definitely looking forward to that.

Mirage losing Distortion the same way would just make everything better really, they have very good kitting potential already. Being caught in action shouldn't be left unpunished.

There has been a lot of gaps filled/removed lately and it should be given to Anet that they are making steps in the right direction. (Notably Revenant Ancient Echo that was long due as even though the old facet of nature was bleh, those are making the level of playing field even again.)

It really should have been common practice that elites spec trades aspects and not just traits when swapping, the whole entire profession changes afterall.

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In a nutshell it means old Illusionary Persona is going to be Core and (for now) Mirage only. Chrono is going to be like playing without Illusionary Persona.

I'd imagine Mirage will also be changed like this in the future - and maybe the "Shatters" will become more like super ambushes or something, I don't know.

At least it's good to see they're finally willing to try something changing Shatters even if just a little - means that maybe a future elite spec can have completely new interesting F mechanic. It's a small step but on paper in the right direction. Mirage is almost totally ignored this patch, which for me as Mirage main is annoying but I can hope that things get properly dealt with in the future.

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@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@"Curunen.8729" said:In a nutshell it means old Illusionary Persona is going to be Core and (for now) Mirage only. Chrono is going to be like playing without Illusionary Persona.

Yeah, and playing without IP sucked. There's a reason they made it baseline. Not really looking forward to this change.

True I agree it was always stupid to not be able to use the class F mechanic without clones when they are so easily got rid of.

But on the other hand I like that in principle Core is to be the classic "Shatter" style, with the elites not being able to play in that style.

Perhaps if Illusionary Reversion was completely unnerfed back to always returning 1 clone on shatter, and made a minor trait for Chrono - so it would add some consistency with using the chrono shatters. If these notes stay as they are then Chrono really should have better access to clone maintenance.

In addition CSplit cooldown could be moderately unnerfed, and things like Shield cooldowns. But we'll have to see how it ends up in practice come tuesday - probably going to be some glaring weaknesses as you say from past experience playing without "IP" and all the problems that entailed.

Would be more comforting if we knew Anet would follow this up quickly with more tweaks, but of course it's likely to be another 3 months before anything significant happens... which is and has always been the most annoying problem with their approach. :/

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@Curunen.8729 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:In a nutshell it means old Illusionary Persona is going to be Core and (for now) Mirage only. Chrono is going to be like playing without Illusionary Persona.

Yeah, and playing without IP sucked. There's a reason they made it baseline. Not really looking forward to this change.

True I agree it was always stupid to not be able to use the class F mechanic without clones when they are so easily got rid of.

But on the other hand I like that in principle Core is to be the classic "Shatter" style, with the elites not being able to play in that style.

Perhaps if Illusionary Reversion was completely unnerfed back to always returning 1 clone on shatter, and made a minor trait for Chrono - so it would add some consistency with using the chrono shatters. If these notes stay as they are then Chrono really should have better access to clone maintenance.

In addition CSplit cooldown could be moderately unnerfed, and things like Shield cooldowns. But we'll have to see how it ends up in practice come tuesday - probably going to be some glaring weaknesses as you say from past experience playing without "IP" and all the problems that entailed.

Would be more comforting if we knew Anet would follow this up quickly with more tweaks, but of course it's likely to be another 3 months before anything significant happens... which is and has always been the most annoying problem with their approach. :/

All those changes you mention would be interesting as compensation for losing distortion.

Nothing can possibly make up for losing illusionary persona.

It was a long time ago now, but I do remember build-crafting and playing mesmer back then. You basically had 2 major archetypes of mesmers: Mesmers that pretended shatters didn't exist, and mesmers that used them. The difference between these 2 archetypes was illusionary persona. Shatters were completely unusable without that trait in an extremely broad set of situations, and that has not changed since the beginning of the game.

At this point, I've pretty much given up on the mesmer class as a whole. It's been unusable in WvW group content for a long time, I already use firebrigade in raids for most fights, and I'm actively trying to figure out how to use firebrigade for the fights we still use chronos on because I just don't want to play the class any more when it feels so bad to play.

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@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:In a nutshell it means old Illusionary Persona is going to be Core and (for now) Mirage only. Chrono is going to be like playing without Illusionary Persona.

Yeah, and playing without IP sucked. There's a reason they made it baseline. Not really looking forward to this change.

True I agree it was always stupid to not be able to use the class F mechanic without clones when they are so easily got rid of.

But on the other hand I like that in principle Core is to be the classic "Shatter" style, with the elites not being able to play in that style.

Perhaps if Illusionary Reversion was completely unnerfed back to always returning 1 clone on shatter, and made a minor trait for Chrono - so it would add some consistency with using the chrono shatters. If these notes stay as they are then Chrono really should have better access to clone maintenance.

In addition CSplit cooldown could be moderately unnerfed, and things like Shield cooldowns. But we'll have to see how it ends up in practice come tuesday - probably going to be some glaring weaknesses as you say from past experience playing without "IP" and all the problems that entailed.

Would be more comforting if we knew Anet would follow this up quickly with more tweaks, but of course it's likely to be another 3 months before anything significant happens... which is and has always been the most annoying problem with their approach. :/

All those changes you mention would be interesting as compensation for losing distortion.

Nothing can possibly make up for losing illusionary persona.

It was a long time ago now, but I do remember build-crafting and playing mesmer back then. You basically had 2 major archetypes of mesmers: Mesmers that pretended shatters didn't exist, and mesmers that used them. The difference between these 2 archetypes was illusionary persona. Shatters were completely unusable without that trait in an extremely broad set of situations, and that has not changed since the beginning of the game.

At this point, I've pretty much given up on the mesmer class as a whole. It's been unusable in WvW group content for a long time, I already use firebrigade in raids for most fights, and I'm actively trying to figure out how to use firebrigade for the fights we still use chronos on because I just don't want to play the class any more when it feels so bad to play.

Tbh I'm not sure how the new F1-F3 function in practice - whether it still involves clones running up and doing the same animation or maybe something else. Likely of course it will just be the same.

But I agree, not wanting to encourage the insanely boring "never use your Shatter skills" gameplay again, which was their whole reason for making IP baseline.

A possibility is giving Chrono some kind of almost-permanent single clone - which is why I'm thinking it could be through making IR a minor trait and changing slightly how it functions. That would allow Chrono to always be able to use their F1-4 but not actually proc the "Shatter" effect on self.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled even forward by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.

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@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD
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@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@"Levetty.1279" said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.

According to wiki, both regular dodge and mirage cloak have the same duration, therefor being able to do it at "anytime" and often due to high endurance regeneration is not even up for argument even if the distance is different, evade frames are evade frames. You also have Blink and Jaunt to make up for it, it is way more than enough to disengage which is something that people often if not always have when playing as Mirage regardless.

To stop complaining about the clone spam from Phantasm rework, Anet will have to start compensating for the that buff and nerf in other places.

I'm already seeing people playing core mesmer again with a lot of innovative ways as it should be, I hope that Anet smashes the hammer really hard on Mirage just like they did with the most of the elites, soon to be Soulbeast and Holosmith being another significant difference so that people have to start putting effort playing the game again.

I'm personally tired of fighting "pro" players that all use the same Mirage build where they can just sit back and play passively because any forth engagement can be used in their favor to punish anyone, ironically the clones after phantasms was supposed to encourage active gameplay and people just became even more lazy abused that opportunity badly.

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@praqtos.9035 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD

F4 and F5 are merged together and for good purpose. Core F4 is already a very strong skill that didn't need to be accessible twice, especially with how clones are easily spawned now.

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IP obsession is what lead to it being core anyhow, it was not the only viable build, just by far the most common because it was easy to play (dodge, press an illusion button, press a shatter, repeat).

Distance travelled is only relevant in the question of AoEs, where we will now take potentially one tick if we time our dodge well in nearly any AoE, in ALL directions except backward. This seems like a significant buff in a lot of ways, if we consider alternative methods for acquiring superspeed, and couple that with the fact that both can be active, resulting in more forward movespeed AND more strafing and backward movement speeds. We need to stop just viewing everything as a nerf, often it is a lateral shift, meaning a change in function with the same, or nearly so, end result.

I hate that my favorite builds no longer exist, that year after year I have to give up playing what I have found to be strong in favor of what is popular and thus have to spend months figuring out a new build. Currently, the build I play, or a very slight variation of it, has seen strength in sPvP, which means it is likely to either stay for awhile and be adopted in other game modes, or be deleted completely through serious nerfs (though it is not particularly overpowered because it relies on some condi focused traits).

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@Shao.7236 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD

F4 and F5 are merged together and for good purpose. Core F4 is already a very strong skill that didn't need to be accessible twice, especially with how clones are easily spawned now.

F4 and F5 have different goals, F5 is commonly used offensively whereas F4 is purely defensive. Furthermore at F5's end everything gets reset, so it makes 0 sense to merge F4 and F5.

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@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD

F4 and F5 are merged together and for good purpose. Core F4 is already a very strong skill that didn't need to be accessible twice, especially with how clones are easily spawned now.

F4 and F5 have different goals, F5 is commonly used offensively whereas F4 is purely defensive. Furthermore at F5's end everything gets reset, so it makes 0 sense to merge F4 and F5.

That's where you're missing the point, you want every good things with no trade off. That's not how you balance a game.

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@Shao.7236 said:

@"Levetty.1279" said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD

F4 and F5 are merged together and for good purpose. Core F4 is already a very strong skill that didn't need to be accessible twice, especially with how clones are easily spawned now.

F4 and F5 have different goals, F5 is commonly used offensively whereas F4 is purely defensive. Furthermore at F5's end everything gets reset, so it makes 0 sense to merge F4 and F5.

That's where you're missing the point, you want every good things with no trade off. That's not how you balance a game.Thats how you balance the game: give IP baseline because otherwise mesmer is utter garbage and everyone could kill your clones with 1 autoattack so you never can use your class mechanic, ever. Damn, at least we could boost clone and phantasm HP by 80%(?) back then so they wont be a thin paper.It doesnt matter that they merged F4 into F5 or not, they literally take it away and if we want to use good old at least 1s distort we have to waste CS on huge cd? Which class also have 105 seconds cd to his "different way of playing" feature?If anything I want to destroy necro shroud,warrior adrenaline, revenant energy,thief initiative and kill soulbeast simultaniously with a pet(or no merge when pet is dead at least) etc. BEFORE THEY CAN USE THEIR STUFF so this could be fair.
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@Shao.7236 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Reminded that Mirage already has its trade off, its dodge is much worse then the other classes for actually dodging stuff.

:thinking:

Let me help you with your thinking. The distance traveled
even forward
by mc with the new nerf is less than a normal dodge and it will be even more awful if you have cripple or chill on you.The attack while evading bit doesn't exist anymore, only half in case of 3/4 casts or less of the attack is covered by mc.The only thing mc has that's actually good is that you can do it while stunned.Double trade off on mesmer apparently?IP and F4 deleted from the chrono, they want to give another trade off on the mirage too? XD

F4 and F5 are merged together and for good purpose. Core F4 is already a very strong skill that didn't need to be accessible twice, especially with how clones are easily spawned now.

F4 and F5 have different goals, F5 is commonly used offensively whereas F4 is purely defensive. Furthermore at F5's end everything gets reset, so it makes 0 sense to merge F4 and F5.

That's where you're missing the point, you want every good things with no trade off. That's not how you balance a game.

If no F4 is a trade-off, why the heck did they removed IP from chrono, or asking the other way why didn't the other professions get a double trade-off too?

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@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@Shao.7236 said:That's where you're missing the point, you want every good things with no trade off. That's not how you balance a game.

If no F4 is a trade-off, why the heck did they removed IP from chrono, or asking the other way why didn't the other professions get a double trade-off too?

Well, some people believe this is the case.

Some Thieves believe that Swipe is a double trade-off. Most of them conviniently forget about the additional dodge Daredevils gain.Some Druids believe that the stat-debuff on the pets are a double trade-off because they forgo other traitlines. Even though CA clearly is an obvious add on.

I don't mean to judge. Just pointing out that many people still don't get the trade-off thing properly or just don't like it. ;)

Losing F5 and it being merged with F4 for Chronomancers makes sense. Chronomancers get a new set of Shatter skills which work a bit different, plus, they even ensured we will still be able to trigger Distortion related traits on Chronomancers. I personally agree with this change. It is a trade-off if F-skills are not simple upgrades from baseline Shatters. However, that's probably the reason why they got rid of IP. Instead of balancing numbers they wanted to make sure of them not being an upgrade this way. Here I disagree. It is lazy and breaks things an e-spec should not break.

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Unpopular(?) opinion: Core specs are boring, and established mechanics/abilities (like Distort) shouldn't be removed from classes.

Pure core specs are a relic of the past; if you want to make them more viable, feel free to buff them in some way that the elite specializations don't get (though I find that unnecessary, why not just design new elite specs?), but don't nerf elite specs for no reason just to force some kind of "tradeoff".

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