AXLIB.8425

the amount of people defending virtuoso's mechanic is honestly disheartening. as of right now, virtuoso is just soulbeast without merge. imagine soulbeast but instead of merging with a pet, they only get to choose a pet that don't participate in fights and only get to use the same skill the pet already have but with themselves. the only good thing about dagger replacement of clone is that it persist out of combat, not the worst but there is a problem if you are only selling a fix for the inconvenience you created and nothing else, instead of actually addressing the problem in any meaningful way

just a heads up on fractal, no one wants a alac mirage on the team because they can have alacgrade instead, in general mesmer just don't have a place in fratal, the only thing mesmer can do is dps and even then it is inferior to almost all other dps options in fractal because you don't have time to ramp up your damage, that being said, if you are just looking for casual t4 dailies then at least power chorno is still usable

I mean they have kind of done that with scourge, it is just the other way around, many trait that effect the transformation was linked to simple skills that are more similar to our shatters, and the difference between scourge f skills and their core or even reaper transformation skills are night and day

you know i kind of feel bad for you since you spend so much time to write this thing but entirely missed my point. my point is not that Bladesworn trait are so much better then virtuoso trait (it's better, but not by a large margin), but that the entire virtuoso mechanic can be fit into 2 mesmer grandmaster trait while Bladesworn mechanic have enough depth to actually be a e-spec

the entire mantra change is just to give fb some convenience, it just happens to gut most our mantra in the process. fb got their lost of last charge effect compensated with trait, and our charge up effect is just gone forever... and even when they say that they want both mantra to be similar but fb still have 3 mantra count while we have 2...

except you can't fit bladesworn into 2 grandmaster trait like you can with virtuoso, 1 trait that change maximum clone count to 5 and 1 trait that make you keep your clone count outside of combat.

Pve is more than just raid, chrono and mesmer in general just sucks in fractals, you offer almost nothing to the group except maybe portal for certain places but people have white mantel portal anyway that they don't even need to take up and utility skill for. you are just a power dps that is bad at doing dps in fractal

actually yeah, i think it would be great that if reflect does not reflect piercing projectile, but instead it just get rid of the piercing tag on those projectile, so a piercing projectile would only hit the first target it hits when in contact with reflect

I mean if they nerf the visual then the only redeeming quality of virtuoso is gone

lets face it, they probably will just ignore all the super long and actual constructive feedback and only look at the short one that says "i love the visuals, this is so much fun to play with all the new visuals" and think this spec is in a great place and in fact the damage is too high then precede to nerf it. otherwise we would not end up with the current mirage and chrono, and core.

Well, those are also the situations where projectile get reflected all the time so they turn around and kill you and your teammates

maybe they should just make a trait in maybe duelling to let you take this as the option, while upgrading this skill to justify it being a trait, so we can choose to keep the old one, or take the mobility that hopefully will also have new effect and not that buggy

Because mesmer have access to unblockable like signet of hunt, and is able to counter reflect when ever it is off cd

currently it the spec feels better the I expected, but there are still quite a few problems. This is mostly from pve perspective First, something I think is good: dagger skills are all really great, dagger 3 feels a bit slow with how much blade it shot out, but it is not that major and over all dagger skills are good. The spec can still be benefited with having an off hand dagger, since mesmer still suffer from not having good off hand cleave weapon, especially with dagger having great aoe, off hand skill have a great disconnect from the rest of the spec when it comes to aoe. Giving mesmer a off hand dagger would also solve the problem with mesmer being the only class not getting more then 3 weapon skills from weapon in any expansion, and letting a master of blades to use two dagger just make since aesthetically wise as well. blade renewal is great for replacing the distortion we lost, A+ design. cooldown can be lowered, or better yet, see the trait suggest below. quiet intensity, yes, finally a good crit chance modifier on memer that is not tied to a scarce condition. the vitality to ferocity is a bit weird for pve, would be nice if it is power to ferocity, but currently vitality to ferocity is good. the new sword 3 is soo good, and i think that should just be put on core mesmer instead only on virtuoso Things I think bad and should be changed: Rain of swords and Swords of Decimations feels too similar, I thing it would be great if rain of swords can become one of the off hand dagger skill, and you have a utility freed up, maybe you can make a movement skill, or a skill that buff you next few attack and give unblockable(if there is no other source of unblockable). Psychic force doesn't feels good to use, the cooldown feels too long and you don't gain that much from it. Thousand cuts damage is low for it being an elite and 75 sec cooldown, and really hard to hit moving targets quite a few trait that doesn't do anything on virtuoso or get overlapped with virtuoso: Deadly blade alone give you 25 stack of vun, making half of domination trait that you take useless. Deadly blade need to be replaced by something else, like blade grant you one stack of might for maybe 2 or 3 seconds, as mesmer have low access to might, or gain precision based on power Illusionary inspiration currently does not work with blade, so that trait just does nothing. I hope this is just a sign that you guys will be reworking inspiration trait line to make it better for supporting and buffing others Empowered Illusion seems like it is only buffing phantasm, but then again, 15 percent increase on clones wasn't that much to begin with anyway All the master traits are wasted on the fury part, since you will almost always have perma fury with master fencer. the condi line of virtuoso and confusion of f2 feels really out of placed. I do not agree making a specialisation not focus on one thing, and this spec could very much be focused on the shatter and power dmg aspect of mesmer. The top line with block and evading adds the much needed survivability, however Duelist's reversal and Psychic Riposte are very much not useful in pve, and since I have not tried pvp on this spec, I will not address this two trait. The lack of trait to buff dagger and psionic like the rest of the class is really not a good look. I think a trait to buff dagger and psionic in place of the current line would do a lot of good to this spec. Like make jagged mind to reduced psionic skill for 20 percent, and maybe give unblockable for next 1 second to address the lack of unblockable for a spec full of projectile. and a dagger trait that give increase precision and additional precision when wielding dagger (or power). The current Phantasmal blades is not great, but it is also the only trait option to take for power build for that additional 500 damage. It would be better or at least more fun to play with if it auto shot the current phantasmal blade (400 damage at a target) when you have 5 blades. The all the blade generation trait expect bloodsong are very bad at generate blades in pve, and that one has the problem of being the condi option for a spec that perform poorly with condi. Infinite forge is just deeply flawed, it is the current signet of illusion but caped at 3 blades, so if you want to burst with power, you will be wasting time and dps to wait for infinite forge to generate 3 blades, and if not you are just wasting a grandmaster trait. the Psychic Riposte works feels underwhelming even in open world, but it is probably still the option to go for as power build just because everything else doesn't work for you. Mental focus is just... weird, and feels bad to even take this trait. you have a kit of 1200 range, but you need to stay within half of your range to do get benefit. I think if you want to force us to stay close, at least increase the range to 900 or 1000. More weapon need to have blade tag instead of just greatsword, MH sword definitely should have it, would also be nice if some phantasm have blade tag like Phantasmal disenchanter and warden are two that should have it, swordsman is a good candidate as well. All in all, I glad that virtuoso feels better then I expected, but I still hope that you guys can rework most of the trait line, since the current one is just uninspired and feels kind of lazy. I think having option to improve certain bladesong like scourge's Herald of Sorrow that make desert shroud into sandstorm shroud or holo's crystal configuration: storm that make auto during forge ranged would be good for the trait. And please consider Tseison.4659 's suggestion with the empowered bladesong, it will solve a lot of complain with bladesong being just the reskinned version of shatter

if you look at pve, our medic feed back has a cooldown of 32 seconds, and it revive 5 percent, while both necro's and ele's revival trait is 7 percent, and necro has a 30s cooldown while ele's has a 20s cooldown. guardian does 15 percent, but it a one time thing. so it doesn't even measure up to other traits in pve

especially on core mesmer, you don't really have a single utility that is not signet that help with condi, and most damage on core memer is kind of shatter, which will actually cause you to loose dps on condi if you are not great with clone management.

yeah with duelling trait you can make every single attack on pistol cause bleed, the chance is 100 percent, and due to how bad torch phantasm is, traited pistol is actually more condi damage then torch

axe is only on mirage, but yes, axe+pistol with duelling or axe + torch is good, staff is great on mirage. basically if you want to play condi, you kind of have to go mirage. with condi Mesmer, 50 percent of your condi comes from your clone auto attacking, and that is also where most of the staff damage is, auto attack. although before 80 you don't have to worry that much with performance, just choose which weapon you like, especially since everything die really fast in core. Here is a build I would use for mesmer levelling if i am doing condi, this absolutely is not optimal damage, but this makes you basically unkillable. swap inspiration with duelling and take 3 1 2 for damage, and change torch to pistol. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiwAs+ZlVwQYJsD2Ie6S7LfA-zRIUb09DA-e once again, don't worry about gearing until 80, just take everything with condition damage during levelling and you would be fine

Mesmer elite, turn all party member and enemy into choyas forever, or not

reaper and harbinger gets new skills with different effect, like reaper with the aoe spin and charge instead of a shawdow step and a aoe life leech, harbinger with our grav well one one third of a cooldown instead simple fear, as well as the two mobility skills they have. Or another example, DH virtues and core guardian virtues, Dh virtues 1 tether and pulse burn and vun indead of next attack burn, virtues 2 is a leap and heal on landing instead of press to heal. Those are new mechanic and new skills, not the virtuoso's F1 scalable power damage, F2 scalable confusion, and F3 scalable? daze, because core mesmer is also scalable power damage, confusion and daze, F4 is the only one that can be count as a different skill, just because virtuoso's f skill have cast time and is now projectile means they are different enough to be new skill. the only two meaningful new mechanics the virtuoso has are that our ammo now longer disappear on target death, and we can't get more condi with clone auto attack. the first one is just a qol that should've been on core mesmer, but instead they made a new elite out of it and want us to pay for a problem they created. The second one is a straight nerf to condi build, but virtuoso is a power spec to begin with (the condi trait line does not belong). you mentions that blades don't have hit point while clones does, I personally will put that with the qol thing i mentioned earlier, because clones these days have no reason to have hit points, enemies rarely attack them, and you also won't be fooling anyone with a brain in pvp with clones either, I actually think making clones to have determined buff in pvp will actually help mesmer player in the long run despite making clones even more obvious, it will make clones useful in wvw and also reduced the amount people screaming that they can't figure out which one is the real one, so it should only open more rooms to buff mesmer in pvp. also maybe put more condi damage from clones to base mesmer, especially on mirage (or just make mirage clones a special case) if clones become invulnerable.

Judging by the current state of viruoso with blades and traits, i feel like they saw this things we wanted on forums around March and April, and made the class then, no way this has been worked on for long

assuming you are asking which one is better, they do different things. Heal scrapper can give quickness, perma super speed, and giving the entire party stealth better than anyone else (still above me how a recycle engineer is better at doing that then thief who is reliant of stealth for their daily life or mesmer who is master of illusion). scrapper is also one of if not the best condi removal source in the game and is able to convert then into boons. Heal scrapper can actually replace HB in fractal if people allow them and you have a few other source of might. Heal scourge basically means your teammate do not have permission to die.

forgot to mention, you are probably see more then usual amount of people being upset due to the new elite we are getting is... rather lazy and uninspired to say the best, even worse when comparing to what necro and guardian are getting.

you forgot the part where those white knight then go on saying that "oh, it's okay for mesmer to get a simple dps class" or "oh but I actually like a simple class", or my favourite "ooooo, shining!" (with them saying in skrit voice) That said, it okay if you prefer something simple, but if you decide to completely ignore all the flaw of the trait line and continuing using the line of new elite don't need to be mechanically complex then there is a problem

if you want to maximise your damage, you do want to shatter with f2 if you can get 3 clones up right after, which is about the only reason illusion warlock exist that i can think of, other than anet trolling us. But that is mostly because mirage has core shatter, it would be really nice if mirage get new "shatter" that don't get rid of your clones, but instead so something else.