atlashugged.7642

I prefer the current implementation of Mantras. You charge before the fight, or between fights. And you get a nice benefit. I particularly prefer this for Mantra of Distraction.

I would like to see interrupt builds become a thing again. Secondary to that, I want the old behavior of Mantra of Distraction restored, where you could charge it if you were out of ammo, and when you completed the charge, you would reduce the cooldown of Diversion by 15 or so seconds. Interrupt builds were fun, and felt really good to pull off, particularly with the obnoxious amount of stability and aegis in the meta. Coming back to GW2, I was disappointed to see that a lot of the talents, traits, and skills that made mesmer interrupt possible have been changed for the worse. They weren't even meta builds when I started my extended break, so I'm not sure why such drastic changes would have been undertaken to nerf them. I'd like to see mesmers get a real stealth or a real clone build. I mean, sure we have clones, which are essentially just vehicles for shatters. I'd like to see mesmers get tools that enable them to trick opponents into attacking clones, and then punish opponents for doing so. Something to make the class feel as tricky as the lore makes it out to be. As for stealth, we have tools for it, and they're great. I would like to see us get more. Mesmers are pretty fun still. Though I will admit to being disheartened upon first reading about the Virtuoso not having clones. It felt like anet was giving up on trying to make the core concept of the class work. It would be like releasing a thief without initiative, a ranger without pets, etc.

The last balance change Mesmers received was on the 7tth day of July 2020. Since then, they have received one bug fix, and one tooltip update, and nothing else. The balance update was the return of self shatters to Chronomancer, which was a good thing. Do you think it made mesmers balanced enough that they could survive ten months with no changes while everyone else is tweaked around them? On a side note, it has now been almost fourteen months since Mirage lost a dodge in competitive modes. I have usually thought this forum was over dramatic with the anet hate (before the one dodge days). But I haven't had the urge to play GW2 for almost ten months now. Every couple of months, I check the patch notes, to see if anything has changed to make mesmers fun again. And every month, nothing has, because it seems that Anet has abandoned all attempts at balancing this class. I understand to some degree that the world wide pandemic has affected their ability to push out content for the game. But anet is still pushing content out in the form of regular balance patches for every other profession. So that excuse does not hold water. Anet has the resources and the ability to push profession based balance patches out. In the instance of Mesmer, they choose not to. They have abandoned the Mesmer as a class.

These have always been the most fun builds for me. What would be the best way to do it lately? I've been having fun with chronointerrupt in 2v2s today. Something like this. Part of it is obviously how good double moa is in the 2v2 format, but also a lot of it is the synergy between chaotic interruption and duelists discipline. I think chrono could be dropped though, to be honest. Thoughts?

1 dodge in pvp is pretty painful too. I usually defend anet, but recently, it's just not fun playing mesmer anymore. It feels extremely challenging for very little reward. Every mechanic but clones is something thief does better. Thief has more access to interrupts than mesmer, with both Distracting Daggers and Headshot offering almost instant interrupts on none, or extremely low cooldowns (compare distracting daggers to Mantra of Distraction for instance, and it seems better in almost every way). Thief has more access to stealth than mesmer, both group and individual. Daredevil now has three times as much access to dodging as Mirage, when both are ostensibly dodge specialized classes. The Mirage Dodge offers unique gameplay, but so do Daredevil GM traits. Portal, once a unique, and amazing feature mesmers could bring to the table is now emulated by thieves with shadow portal. About the only thing that I can think of going for Mesmer in the thief comparison is turning people into chickens (but the cooldown on that is three minutes, and for that reason I can't think of it as a class defining feature. It will be something you do once every three minutes, or once every roughly 90 seconds if you're a Chrono, so a small percentage of your overall competitive experience). Clones are something Mesmers can do that Thieves cannot, but they seem to be in a bad place. They get destroyed almost too rapidly to be a core part of the gameplay. Phantasms used to be a more durable form of clones (which caused its own problems), but now they're just effectively direct damage spells that summon a clone at the end. I'm optimistic that Anet can fix these issues still. They've shown the ability to correct mistakes (such as the recent chrono changes giving them back self shatters). And we have an expansion coming up. But until they are fixed, I will probably find myself playing more and more of the thief, and less and less of my favorite class. Because it just isn't fun anymore. It's just annoying.

Is that a lore thing or an opinion?