[Illusions in WvW.]

Let me address a few points.

1) Traits:
You shouldn't have to trait so that the basic functionality of a weapon works, by that I mean phantasms hitting. You can literally run away from them with swiftness and they will never ever hit. Can you imagine if a ranger had to trait their arrows so they don't have a 50% chance to miss? Or you had to trait for faster projectile speed because otherwise people out run them?

2) In zergs:
The example I was choosing wasn't a zerg fight, there were only 2 players but the AoE damage from both instantly killed all clones and phantasms, in a 5v5 a grenade engineer does 2k damage with just spamming grenade autos, that will instantly kill all clones and most phantasms. There's a lot of damage around and you can very easily in this meta have 1-2 guys pumping a constant 4k damage AoE either PBAoE or at range with 2-3 people supporting them (that is increasingly becoming the roaming meta now) and I'm not even mentioning the condition AoE spam.

3) Class mechanic:
The basic functionality of the class does not work very well, you set up clones then shatter them to do damage, interrupt, apply conditions or be invulnerable. I'll accept the argument that because Illusionary Persona is baseline you do always get the PBAoE effect but you more or less get it at anywhere between just under half and a quarter of it's effectiveness because clones die so fast.

What this does is push the class into either boring tanky builds that don't rely on shatter scaling, see current zergling build or high APM instant shatter builds. There's very little in between because clones tend to die when spawned if they're melee to the enemy and if they live because they're ranged they never reach the target on shatter because everyone has swiftness.

[Illusions in WvW.]

I was fighting in WvW as usual and as usual my clones died to just random AoE from a spellbreaker and ranger using double barrage. When I think about all the times I'm playing now, it's really rare for an illusion and even some phantasms to live, let alone hit anything without 0 range shattering as they spawn. Sure if I spawn them at range or against single target attackers they live, but they still die in 1 hit usually as they run to explode butterflies all over the enemies face. Don't even get me started on "team fights".
Add to this the unbelievable mobility of a lot of classes now (perma superspeed, relic of speed, will bender, mobility skills added to weapons etc) it's also tiring to see phantasms never hit because someone has teleported or just outrun it, even in combat and not away from me. Can you imagine how much other classes would complain if their skills took 1s to cast and also might not hit at all?
Before someone says "mine hit most of the time, skill issue" etc, I'm not saying I don't know how to land them, I do and I make sure to not target enemies in a group (despite berserkers cleaving) I'm just pointing out that these were originally designed in context of a game that was significantly slower and had significantly less sustained damage. They've never really been looked at since the base game and, well, it's changed a lot. The power creep is real. Below is the health values in case people didn't know.

Illusion	PvE	PvP/WvW
Clone	4,171	2,433
Phantasm	5,821	3,396
Phantasmal Defender	12,476	7,278

So the questions are:
Do illusions need more health in WvW at least?
Do illusions need a certain amount of swiftness on spawn?

Any other thoughts are welcome.

[Chaotic Transferance - RIP - April 16, 2024 - Please revert]

On 4/17/2024 at 4:44 AM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam.

This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm).

Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.   

I agree that shared chaos aura is broken, however claiming that frost aura spam isn't broken is not accurate. You cause enemies to be perma chilled moving 66% slower AND having massive recharge penalties to skills while taking 6%-10% less damage (depends on modifiers). Frost aura is a very broken aura to be spammed.

As for distortion share, it was fine WHEN MESMER ONLY HAD F4 FOR DISTORTION, where it broke was the stupid distortion spamming enabled by blurred inscriptions and signet of illusions which no-one enjoys fighting in any incarnation. Add to that signet of illusions recharging distortion (while granting it itself) and continuum splitting it, and you can see why distortion share was broken. It wasn't because it's bad, it was because there was/is too much distortion in the game.

I agree keep chaos aura just for the mesmer and don't share but the trait really needs to do more than share regen, that boon is passively vomited out by many classes, especially support classes, maybe an idea is that chaos aura's detonate at the end giving you 1-3 of the boons it can give and inflicting 1-3 of the conditions on enemies. Allows more control over the application of the conditions and to limit it to a certain range.

[Power Roamers]

2 hours ago, urd.8306 said:

To be honest I can't tell. I never liked the mirage gameplay and so I ignored that spec and rather try Chrono stuff than Mirage.

But I'm pretty happy how Power Virtuosa works.

I've played both and I'd say it depends.
Power mirage has a lot more cleave with split surge and outside of shatters, also beams are not reflected. It's also a bit more mobile for running away.
Power virtuoso is very good if you're with a few people to spike someone out as the shatter is more reliable and ofc unblockable because you would never run without that trait.

The main drawback with mirage, chrono and core is that against anything that vomits AoE damage the clones can often die as they spawn or die before exploding on the enemy. Make no mistake, damage is crazy high now and these things only have 2.4k health and the same toughness as you.

As for what I play, I tend to play a variety, Power mirage, virtuoso, marauder scrapper, the obscenely broken WB and on occaison DE when I just want to be (more of) an a**hole. I play other classes but not always power and not really longer than to get a feel for them.

[What have you done Anet]

Honestly I feel like the OP shot at the target and somehow hit his foot.
Condi is a problem in GW2 but imo not because X is OP or condition builds are stronger than power (they objectively aren't), the biggest problem I have with condi is how much is loaded onto skills for no reason. Many fights you suddenly get 5 to 6 conditions on you just for being in the fight. They're not damaging but when 1 of them is immobilise you're basically dead unless you're a class that can largely ignore or specifically cleans immb at will. Unless you have a super strong cleanse skill.

But hey, who cares, at this point I think ANet is actively trying to sink this ship given the state of WvW.

[WvW Changes April 16th 2024]

Choo choo

All aboard the karma train.

Just use this build from metabattle and this macro to spam all skills and you're good to go!
CHOO CHOOOOOOOOOOO!

[WvW World Restructuring Beta Feedback and Future]

1 hour ago, Ignavia.7420 said:

How about having Edge of the Mists give the normal WvW rewards once the regular maps fill up (plus some buffer)?

I'd like to second this, let people who want rewards karma train around edge of the mists like they once did. Also let event rewards be earned there too otherwise you get the same queue problem during these half kittened events that only serve to draw in people who care about rewards over gameplay.

[Some feedback on the Rifle updates]

19 minutes ago, Alva.4590 said:

Correction: this is NOT a quote from me. I haven't said that. 
And I do play PvP and Wvw occassionally but why would you even run a support weapon if you are a) not playing a support class and b) not running in a zerg? 
Again sounds like an issue of not knowing the class and which weapon choice goes well with which build. 

hmmm must be a different Alva.4590 recruiting for a guild.

The point is that the weapon cannot be used for anything BUT a healing build, you look at other support weapons (mostly staff) on other classes and you see that while they are healing focused they also provide plenty of options and self defence.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Staff
The only 2 classes where the "healing" weapon doesn't have any defence is scepter on thief and torch on necro, this is because the support and defence is put into the class mechanic, traits and or utility skills as part of a co-ordinated elite spec focused on support.

 

[Some feedback on the Rifle updates]

2 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

For my own two cents, when I think "Mobile", swiftness and superspeed are generally not it.

Don't get me wrong. I suppose if you're in, like, WvW and dueling, and they try to run then swiftness while chasing them down is exactly what you need. But when I think mobility I think of Leaps, Retreats, Teleports, Dodges, etc. For example, I describe the mesmer Staff as being HIGHLY mobile. The reason is Phase Retreat. It is an instant teleport away from whatever you're targetting with the added benefit of spawning a clone AND retargetting your enemy. But just the retreat is great for dodging charge attacks, escaping AOEs, all that stuff. MIrage THrust is also a great mobility skill. Once you kill your current target, double tap > 1 to leap to the next one dealing damage and interupting their actions. And we have more. I think that's what most people think of when they think mobility, and some have more or less. Mirages on the whole have less mobility since Mirage Cloak doesn't actually move anywhere, which has gotten me into trouble on many occasions. But the rifle? The rifle has ZERO mobility. The only mobility option it brings is a single use, one way portal that brings someone else to you, and if you want thoughts on that they're not hard to find.

So in the end, you're not wrong. We're highly mobile, and we still can be with the rifle. But it's NOT HELPING. It should have some kind of mobility on it but it doesn't, because it was poorly designed, poorly implemented, and fails at generally every task besides sustained healing.

Personally I think you can break mobility down to the amount of distance travelled over time and has 2 components with the 2nd having 2 distinct categories.

Movement speed, as defined here which is mostly passive: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_Speed . This determines how fast you are at moving compared to others, this is where mesmer is slowest for investment.

Movement skills, these are skills that travel X distance during their cast and have 2 distinct categories, those that travel on X/Y and those that travel on X/Y/Z, the latter is almost always a teleport (needs path except portal and shadow portal) and is much more valuable. This is also where over time against meta builds mesmer has been losing out, mirage thrust helps a lot but the other mesmer elite specs have seen an erosion of mobility through blink CD increase and other CD increases over the years while other classes had more skills added.

We should also not ignore a classes ability to chill and cripple you or the opportunity cost of it, example being necro sword provided perma chill almost on auto and two 700 unit movement skills on a 10s CD, phase retreat eat your heart out.

[Some feedback on the Rifle updates]

47 minutes ago, Alva.4590 said:

Even on competitive mode mesmer has a kitten lot of mobility. Are we even talking about the same class? 

You clearly do not play competitive game modes across enough classes. Mesmer isn't particularly fast when you compare it to Thief (all), Ranger (Slb, Drd, Unt), Guardian (DH,WB), Revenant (Shiro, Vindi), Warrior (all), Elementalist (air + x/d or s/x), Engineer (rocket boots, Scr, Holo) and even that notoriously "slow" class Necro (s/x, reaper, harbinger). To reach the same level of mobility you have to run mirage and sword with blink but even that's not enough against WB, Slb, Drd, DrD, Harb, warrior and they have the better sustain to fight you with. On Chrono, Virtuoso and core mesmer you are slow.

We are talking about the same class, the difference is Lincolnbeard and I actually play it in said modes 90% of our time while you only dip your feet in to get dailies/achievements, going off your responses. "So we decided to restructure and focus it more on PvE content" - this is a quote from you. It's fine, it's a good PvE weapon and I agree with that but it's an awful PvP and WvW roaming weapon. It's better for zergs than staff, at least till it gets nerfed because ANet only thinks about zergs and removes chaos armour.

[Pistol failure]

I was talking to a friend about it and I stand by what I said in the beta, they should have made it a rifle.
This would have given them more skills to add AoE or ground targetted skills, they could have fleshed out the bullet mechanic to 2 generators and 2 consumers (or 3:1 with #5 being the consumer) and generally would be easier to adjust numbers.

[Some feedback on the Rifle updates]

1 hour ago, Alva.4590 said:

Rifle Heal Chrono is a very viable build in fractals, raids and strikes. You can even easily tank on it in raids including CM's. It's not at all technically playable in a niche setting and it is properly fleshed out. Studying and understanding the skills is all there is to it. 

Giving only 1 example in 1 specific area where it is good is niche. If you're trying to disprove what he said you're doing as good a job as ANet in regard to balancing. Not agreeing or disagreeing, just showing that you've only proven their point.

At topic.
One of the biggest issues I have with rifle is it doesn't fit in with mesmer's play style very well and it feels like a shoe horned approach to providing support, especially in the context of the changes they made a few months ago to inspiration and chaos trait lines. It has no mobility on it for the mesmer, no defence for the mesmer, and the self healing is focused on 2 skills which are not big enough to get allies too. Heal on auto while nice, the damage side isn't too good as mesmer doesn't have huge damage modifiers to stack like other classes.

I'd like to see the damage on auto increase a little, about 10% should do it.
I'd like to see you able to swap places with your singularity from singularity shot, it's not often I find the need to portal and ally out as opposed to teleport away from thieves.
Journey needs a lower CD in WvW, play around with the healing/damage modifiers if needed but constant clone generation would be useful.
I'd like to see boon removal added to the phantasm but we all know how much some people on the balance team seem to hate boon removal. This wouldn't do anything to the PvE performance but would help PvP and WvW.

Evaluate after the changes.

[Ultimate Dominator - Ultimate Savior?]

Gotta make sure players don't get silly ideas like venturing off on their own or even "roaming". Get your titles guys!

[Boon Ball Meta is Stale]

This is what happens when you keep adding and adding and don't take away.
The sheer amount of boons, the cool down on them and their durations is nuts, I'll link a core video below but also the amount of heals, cleanses and then the nerfing of corrupts and strips (entirely justified if you were reducing boon availability) has left us in the boon ball meta of HoT and that helped kill the game with desert borderlands.

We also see skills that are already pretty overloaded getting buffed doing multiple more things on top of the multiple things they already did, take protectors strike, Aegis wass added in 2016 which it didn't need, then later the radius was increased for absolutely not reason, this was a great skill without these 2 buffs. Strong boons also have been given out like candy, quickness, alacrity, stability and protection at the same time condition application has had the same thing done to it where poison, immobilise, weakness and chill are mainstays on your bar for looking at someone.

What I'd like to see is a scaling back in HOW much traits and skills do, it's OK for something to do 1 thing. Also ANet seems to have a really creepy bias for guardian atm in WvW, kinda nuts how strong this class is across the board.

 

[March 19 Balance Update Preview]

12 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

BRING BACK BOONRIP IN WVW

MAKE SPELLBREAKER GREAT AGAIN

STOP NERFING BOON REMOVAL ENTIRELY!

Null Field: Reduced the field duration from 5 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only. Reduced the number of pulses from 6 to 3 in WvW only.

Then again this plays into someone's agenda of 2 big blobs smashing into each other like meat sacks as they dance around pretending to have skill.

[30th January Balance Preview]

On 1/30/2024 at 9:03 PM, Drag You Down.2615 said:

Are you talking about "Elemental Bastion" trait? I am sorry, there is no such a trait in PvE, because every Tempest will be forced to take "Lucid Singularity" which I HATE IT. Tempest is one of my most hateful healer, because you have several seconds that you cannot access the water attunement. That period is even longer than Druid's Celestial Form CD, This means that Tempest has very weak ability of heal through some extreme damage in long period WHILE providing 100% alacrity. Even you take some heals in your elite and utility skill, still way too little. You either have high heal or you have alacrity, but you just cannot have both.

When Chrono has the new Rifle and Berserker has the new Staff, Tempest will be the healer which has the lowest healing ability in PvE.

Was very clear I was talking about WvW if you'd bothered to read and contextualise, thank you for the completely irrelevant reply.

[30th January Balance Preview]

4 hours ago, Micah.3789 said:

Snowcrows' benchmarks are a very useful tool, but they don't tell anywhere close to the whole story of how a dps is actually performing. In fact, as much as they try to keep things fair, not all classes perform equally well in golem test conditions. Take a look at some raid and strike bosses on wingman. You'll get a much better idea of how these builds actually perform. Mirage is on top by a small margin on a couple bosses, but it's mostly in the bottom middle of the pack. On heavy phasing or target swapping encounters it can be awful, like less than core builds. That said, a10% damage difference is nothing when you're comparing a hard to replicate, slow to ramp, mostly melee dps rotation to something so easy to execute that the damage is basically guaranteed, ranged, and bursty. It's also important to consider what else the build can bring to an encounter, as balance should be based on the bigger picture of contribution, not just dps.

On another note, y'all do realize that you get two charges for each mantra cast right? That's why the potency is halved. Healing value is effectively exactly the same if you're casting on CD, but now you can prepare mantras when it's most convenient/safe and utilize the healing on demand. This is overall a QoL change, but there could be some niche cases where this isn't as desirable.

Your math is off. One use at 1640(1.0) is exactly the same as two uses at 820(0.5). Let's say you have 1k healing power: one heal for 2640 is the same as two for 1320. 

It's still not competitive with other healers.
My tempest has 1296 healing power and giving an aura heals for 1815 in game with two "healing to others" increases, with the mantras that will be about 1910 about 100 more healing.. You can cycle the mantras a little more but I can also transmute that frost aura to heal for another ~2.6K and I cleansed a condition on providing the aura and 2 on transmute and I can do this to the point I'm cycling an aura every couple of seconds. I also get other benefits to this like frost aura on allies (-10% damage and perma chill to enemies) overloading water for it's healing and cleansing that will dwarf any mantra. The heal mantra can be cycled a little faster (~20s) than wash away the pain for the same total effects and probably about the same healing depending on range. We are also not factoring in the general utility of shocking and magnetic aura that tempest does provide plenty of, despite mantras on paper healing a little more in reality a build with mantras and rifle will still heal less I believe, even with restorative illusions as you're not going to be doing full shatters as often as overload water comes off CD.

For reference, you get frost auras on the following CDs and all are transmutable.
20s - weapon skill
24s - Overload water
30s - Flash Freeze shout (also cleanses an additional condi if running trooper)
40s - elemental bastion passive
60s - Soothing ice passive
75s - "Rebound"

The reason people took mesmer support was the perma chaos aura and perma alacrity or quickness, both of the latter boons are getting nerfed to the point where it affects EVERY chrono build in WvW. Looking at the mantra change and saying it's better on paper, sure it is but it's not comparable to already good healers (putting aside how awful it feels to use mantras) and it's unique aspects that made it worth bringing along despite the poor heals are also getting nerfed. The mantra change doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Edit: Btw healing to allies is multiplicative if you're wanting to math it out.

[30th January Balance Preview]

WvW changes are clearly designed only for GvG and Zerg v Zerg and the 2 guys doing it should really stop balancing exclusively for this.
Mantras nerfing the healing power by 50% on top of splitting it to each mantra use is a bit excessive. All 50% nerfs are excessive.

Nerfing alacrity is just dumb because they made it dumb in the first place. If you want to provide group alacrity DO NOT HAVE IT ALTER THE TRAIT GIVING PERSONAL ALACRITY. All it does is make the class outside of a minstrels boon ball have no alacrity even if investing the traits. That once again we see a DOUBLE nerf to it only shows how much the balance devs dislike mesmer.

Can't wait to play a "support" mesmer which can't output anywhere near the healing a tempest does by rolling their face over the keyboard or cleanse anywhere near as much, or provide as the important boons. Hey, you heal on auto attack with rifle (🤭) and you got a personal portal! So stronk. Absolute bunch of biased double standard clowns.

[I was there 10 years ago]

I was there when balance wasn't only about GvG and Zerg v Zerg.

[Boonball meta is bad]

I hate this boon spam meta, you honestly get the dumbest players in a blob now that essentially macro their skills to be spammed and it's all good because everyone has too much healing, protection, aegis and everything else while siege does nothing to them. Then they just pull people in and flatten, no skill just choo choo and keep up with the commander who will 100% turn around to stop you getting attacked for not having the cognitive ability to realize the commander moved 5s ago. The only thing that's remotely a threat to them is another equally sized boonball or a slightly smaller one with players who are more compact and able to move out of the way of the train better.

How do I know they're dumb players? I catch some of them running around and you see stuff like a scourge back peddling and using PBAoE skills when you're auto attacking at range. They start a fight by dodging, back peddle for a second and dodge again and I haven't even drawn my weapon and attacked them!

Increase cool downs by 5-10s, reduce boon durations, remove minstrels or change it so it's not perfect all defence stats.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

On 12/27/2023 at 11:03 PM, Nanoir.2315 said:

Gotta love how nerf x class always ends up with people trying to make reaper look op or too good.

Not even going to bother trying to figure what point you're trying to make here.

This pretty much sums it up. Unless your opponent is constantly running away and you somehow keep lifeforce up, compared to everything else you won't keep up.

I think we've all realized reading isn't your forte.
I'm not making out that reaper is too good, pointing out it's as mobile as everything that isn't completely busted like thief, willbender, soulbeast/druid and a few other niche builds. Do not undervalue Z axis teleportation.
TrollingDemiGod argues everything is a slug compared to those, putting aside the hyperbole, I do not exclusively see the hypermobile builds and often do see engineers, ele's, other necro's (where mobility is almost 1:1, exception harbinger) revenants and very commonly non WB guardians which reaper competes with very well mobility wise.

Is Willbender broken in WvW? Yes, it has burst and sustained damage, good regen and is probably the highest X/Y movement speed there is while having great defences and boon access.I doubt it will be nerfed though as it's a class favoured by the best and the best are devs tend to win.

[Reworking SA traitline or adding improved reveal to all classes]

Problem: Perma or prolonged stealth.
Cause: Stealth stacks duration, no forced "no stealth" period after exiting.
Solution: Stealth no longer stacks, forced reveal for 3-5s upon exiting stealth for any reason, not just attacking. Readjust stealth durations accordingly. Adjust traits to be stronger for entering, exiting and staying in stealth etc.

Additional changes: Remove reveal effect from marked, there are too many areas where it removes stealth as a defence and it's not needed if the issue of stealth stacking is addressed properly. Imagine if a tower or sentry reduced the duration of your protection to 3s then removed it and prevented you getting protection again or instantly reduced your block duration to 1s.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

16 hours ago, Nanoir.2315 said:

Forgive me, barely see one last long enough to try anything majority of the times.

But hey point still stands and that doesn't change a thing.

You also forgot Death's Charge which gives reaper mobility that is not on core or scourge and will give it much more mobility that something like core mesmer, chrono, non dagger off-hand ele, non-rocket boots engineer and non shiro revs. This is also without mentioning the amount of chill and cripple reaper vomits out. Your argument is disingenuous, it may not be super mobile but most reapers are very mobile these days, just not as mobile as the top mobile builds out there.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Death's_Charge

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

1 hour ago, Nanoir.2315 said:

So gs 5 that can be easily dodged or sidestepped, spectral grasp, flesh wurm and spectral walk. 

That's 3 utilities gone but includes 1 stunbreak ig.

I've kited them for days. This straight up seems like a l2p issue.

My man doesn't know it's 2 stunbreaks, wouldn't trust this guy's advice.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Walk
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Traversal

[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Elementalist]

My thoughts on this is as follows:
The bullet mechanic is clunky and dumb.
If this was rifle and skills 2, 3, and 4 gave bullets which are consumed on skill 4 use then this starts to work better.
Of course, this would require the skills team to make 26 skills instead of 18.
Range on rifle should be 1200 and have less ground targeted AoE to make it distinct from staff but have some AOE damage around the target with some PBAoE skills and defences.