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Jojo.6590

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Everything posted by Jojo.6590

  1. This! We need to take a step back and tone a lot of things down when it comes to access to boons, cc, healing, etc. What needs to happen is this, go back to the basics, go back to the core of each class. Each class's core provides 2-3 specific boons, 2 damaging conditions, and 2-3 debuffs (non-damaging conditions). Then you take the elite specs, which change the 2-3 boons, conditions, and debuffs your class provides. For example, let us say core Mesmer gave might, fury, and regeneration. Then you change to Chrono. Now instead of regeneration, all sources that would give regeneration now provide you with alacrity. You can do this for one boon, two, or all three. The same would be done for conditions and debuffs. Now not all of them have to change, but the idea is to allow for each class to have the ability to provide different boons/effects/conditions based on their elit spec. This then impacts their playstyle and role/functionality in different content areas without having the current issue the game has now; only a small few classes dominate in specific areas while others dominate across the board.
  2. They MUST equalize state values for each piece of gear. For example, a helm offers a total of 100 state points (using 100 because it is an easy number for most people to understand this concept). Next, depending on the type of equipment (zerks vs assassins) will then dictate which stat(s) is the priority/main stat while the others are minor stats. This will then give the priority stat(s) more points from the 100 total than the others. In this scenario, a zerk's helm would have 50 power, 25 precision, and 25 ferocity while the assassin's helm would have 50 precision, 25 power, and 25 ferocity. What changes is how the 100 value is distributed amongst the different stat values while being restricted by the 100 stat cap. This next part is not my idea originally it is one of my guild mates, but they're spot on. Simply just remove numbers from all skills (weapons, class skills, utilities, etc) leaving just the armor/stat coefficients. This would then make your damage, healing, boon-up time, etc 100% dependent on your gear and not the current mix of odd multipliers.
  3. Bingo, though be careful about name dropping on the forums. The real question that stands now is how much longer are the higher-ups going to keep turning a blind eye to this. (Cough* "I don't like fighting Mesmser" so I do not want it "optimal nor viable in any competitive game mode"). I know for myself I'm at a point where I'm just not investing any more money and limiting my time in the game due to this and the lack of accountability on the developers in charge of this. I'm curious to know how many more people (not just Mmeser mains) feel the same way. Maybe we need to get a poll going.
  4. I still stick with my first views of the rifle from the beta (full rework). It just misses the mark. You'd think Anet would have learned that single-target heals did not work great on Thief with EoD. For a weapon that is supposed to be for group support, it falls short. The portal concept still feels like a gimmick that is useless in Zergs/large-scale fights and does not last long enough for people to use in both large and small/havoc fights. Skill 4 is also useless in large-scale fights, though the increased cast time/ speed feels much better. We finally get more access to ethereal fields but lack much of anything (burst, leaps, spins, etc) to combo with it. It feels awful when so many classes got increases in their mobility with EoD and SoRTO and Mesmer did not (still running blink). The weapon just feels soulless and rushed as it is just very simplistic and boring to use. However, this seems to be the direction of GW2 since EoD (at least for the classes that "people" don't want "optimal and viable" because they "don't like fighting Memser"). This is just disappointing. Especially when so much feedback was given in the beta and so much of it was neglected while other classes got full reworks on their weapon skills/weapons.
  5. I still stick with my first views of the rifle from the beta (full rework). It just misses the mark. You'd think Anet would have learned that single-target heals did not work great on Thief with EoD. For a weapon that is supposed to be for group support, it falls short. The portal concept still feels like a gimmick that is useless in Zergs/large-scale fights and does not last long enough for people to use in both large and small/havoc fights. Skill 4 is also useless in large-scale fights, though the increased cast time/ speed feels much better. We finally get more access to ethereal fields but lack much of anything (burst, leaps, spins, etc) to combo with it. It feels awful when so many classes got increases in their mobility with EoD and SoRTO and Mesmer did not (still running blink). The weapon just feels soulless and rushed as it is just very simplistic and boring to use. However, this seems to be the direction of GW2 since EoD (at least for the classes that "people" don't want "optimal and viable" because they "don't like fighting Memser"). This is just disappointing. Especially when so much feedback was given in the beta and so much of it was neglected while other classes got full reworks on their weapon skills/weapons.
  6. A lot of good input is already stated here. I'll just quickly summarize. Skills are slow, EXTREMELY SLOW. From a pvp/wvw standpoint, it needs mobility (looking at the portal on skill 5). A healer needs to be able to break combat at least once in a fight. You're forcing us to take blink losing a spot that could be used for more utility. Skill 4 needs a rework, and we need way better clone generation. For the AA would like to see an action chain like many of our main hand weapons. This feels extremely lackluster. Currently, rifle provides a lot of healing while still being lackluster in boons and barrier. My concern is that the healing will get nerfed which would then not allow for this to compete with other healers such as Druid, Guardian, and Tempest. These classes provide decent to great healing, boons, and barrier while also still having decent damage. Animations: Not a fan of most of the animations. Push this portal gun concept! Why not make it so that each skill is fired through a portal that then appears around the target/area in a different way/shape/effect?! (This is going to get chaotic, but just trying to provide more fun ideas for a better concept and theming that fits Mesmer other than just purple affects.) For example, the Mesmer fires skill 3 you see a portal open about 50-100 units in front of the Mesmer. Then below the target a bigger portal opens where the pistol shot comes out of with the typical Mesmer purple chaotic flair. The "mini" portal can appear in different locations around the targets in different shapes and sizes, though I prefer the simple circle/oval shape. Skill 5 concept: Using the portal concept above. Make this skill gain charges when skills 2-4 are used. You can even have skills 2-4 leave their portals (portals disappear after a given amount of time and/or if the skill is used again.) The effects of skill 5 increase based on how many portal charges/residual portals you have. Keeping the flip skill concept, you can "activate" your portal(s) causing them to pulse healing and other effects such as barrier and boons (again more effects based on charges) in a radius around them to allies while also debuffing enemies. Once the portals have been "activated" the flip skill is an "unlock" (like a door) which opens your portals to allow for 1-3 allies to use the portals to teleport to you/your current location. You can also simply have the Mesmer drop an exit portal at their location on the use of the flip skill as this may be more easy to implement. A more simple version of the concept above is also having the "mini" portals merge rather than having 1-4 active portals. This merge would then cause the main portal (say the portal from skill 3) to increase in size (visual flavor. You can also have the Mesmer select/ground target location to have all the mini portals merge in that location). Based on the number of portals that merged would then give a usage count (3 mini portals merging means a max of 3 people can go through the big portal). When the portals are unlocked, they will pulse chill, slow, immobilize, OR fear on nearby enemies (protecting your allies by preventing/slowing enemies from chasing them to the portal(s)). After the portal(s) have been used they detonate providing a damage and/or debuff effect to surrounding enemies while also providing a support (healing, boons, barrier) effect to allies around the Mesmer. Like I said, I know I was very “chaotic” in this idea/concept and I know this is hard to implement. What I hope, is that this helps open a portal of ideas (pun intended) for the rest of the community and the developers to better theme and design the weapon.
  7. These comments speak volumes about how the current Mesmer community feels. We've given you so much input for balance and yet have been ignored and yet now we're asked for input?! Where is the proof that you're actually listening to us? Otherwise, just like all of the input many of us have given over balance, this is a waste of all of our time. Your game isn't hurting because of content it is hurting due to biases in class balance.
  8. Virt: Change to Dagger 3 is great and highly welcomed. I'm curious about the damage of f5 given it is no longer a block. However, having an aoe melee damage shatter is nice and should round out Virt's kit more. However, Thousand Cuts needs to be changed so that it is a V/cone-shaped aoe. On the point of Virt's survivability, I'd also suggest taking away regen on duelist reversal and replacing it with 3 stacks of might rather than nerfing all of the chaos trait line. Other than this hopefully we can get better-designed/ reworked utilities for Virt one day. The change to the heal is a step in the right direction. Mirage: So many of us told the team not to release Mirage with its current dodge mechanic as dodging while CCed was/is way too strong. I'm glad to see this finally fixed. However, I do believe not being able to do this while immobilized is too much. I do hope this "rule" is also applied to other classes with unique dodges. There were a lot of trait reworks for many of the other classes and yet not much for Mesmer, odd. Infinite Horizon(IH) NEEDS TO BE A BASELINE TRAIT for Mirage. In anticipation of giving Mirage back two dodges two things were done. First, the ambush abilities were nerfed AGAIN for the 100th time. This again pigeon holds (FORCES) people using Mirage into taking IH. Seconded, again in anticipation the Chaos line was nerfed. If you are nerfing several aspects of a CORE TRAIT LINE to balance ONE elite spec then the issue is the ELITE SPEC, this applies to all classes. Because of this I rather hold off on the Mirage "buff" and wait to give it back its 2ed dodge. This was a massive issue for the past two balance teams before this one. They aggressively nerfed classes/issues in every way possible rather than doing one or two aspects at a time and focusing on the Elite spec causing the issue. Chrono: Still needs a full trait rework as does most of Mesmer. However, changes to quickness and Alac are a step in the right direction.
  9. Agreed and thank you! Signet of Illusions needs to be looked at. It reset all shatters minus continuum split. This has caused many of the issues people still complain about with Mirage ("endless distortion") as well as with Virtuoso. It currently rewards the Memser for wasting and not correctly timing their defensive shatters while punishing the other person for correctly baiting out these shatters. On top of this Virt needs to lose blade renewal if it is keeping distortion as a shatter. I prefer if we go this route because otherwise Virt will be forced to take blade renewal losing two utility slots (one for blink) and reducing build diversity.
  10. Want to track by 3-month windows. Not monthly as currently, it is still not consistent as you can see from the link. GW2 spiked at 8.2k in September 2022. However, it is now down to 5.5k (total not consistently active, this is sitting around 1-3k) as of Match 30th 2023. Given this changes when there are and are no content drops. However, a year out of an expansion with WvW and PVP as the two major game modes other than strikes, raids, and legendaries to keep people interested is rough. Don't get me wrong 5.5k is still good, but the drop for just a year is what is the red flag (about 3k). And again this is just the number of people who've downloaded/played through Steam, not people who are constantly staying which is why you need to look at the data in quarters. Which is steadily decreasing. The current 24-hour peak at 4.7k while the highest peak was 8.3k seven months ago is a massive loss from a business standpoint. A healthy system of balance is needed, a good way to see if balance is healthy is by looking at what classes are meta and how often the meta changes for each game mode. This has not been changing much in the way of WVW and PVP while with minor changes in PVE. Link: Steam Charts GW2
  11. Just here to remind people about the discord leaks of specific balance leads stating they do not want ANY variation of Memser viable nor optimal in "competitive" game modes. One of them was one who actually designed the Virtuoso Elite while the other failed to sell it in the beta streams. The game is struggling to retain and pick up new players even with Steam and lack of content is not the reason, but anyways back to Lost Ark for my competitive PVP fix.
  12. I'll jump to what you can do when Moaed since a lot of threads are popping up complaining about it. Use this link for a reference to the skills you have when Moaed. Just a reminder that stab and aegis block moa as well as dodging, blocks, blind, LOS, and any immune-to-damage skills. Moa Skills and info I see so many players of all levels go right for skills 2 kick and 5 flee when Moaed. Do Not do this. Dodge first then use skills 2 and 5 to LOS. When we go to moa we are going to hard CC you right after to interrupt the flee and then hard burst and CC again. Nothing throws a Mesmer off more than attacking/running at them after you've been Moaed. Using the information above you can skill 2 at the Mesmer which will apply cripple for a based duration of 3 seconds. This will help slow the Mesmer down a little allowing you to create distance and LOS while waiting for Moa to end. You can also use skill 4 Screech too which will apply weakness for a based duration of 3 seconds. This will reduce the Mesmers damage and endurance regeneration allowing you to more easily survive and LOS using skill 5. Remember that moa is affected by your stats, traits, ruins, and sigils. Look over the skills to see what synergizes with your setup. This can allow you to catch the Mesmer off guard and do decent damage to them and or even down them (yes, this does happen and it is funny as ***** when it does). At the end of the day, it is about buying time for 6 seconds which is not that long and you're provided with 5 skills to do this.
  13. This... This has been the go-to for balance and the way both the forums and reddit have been going since POF. If class/skill type A cant do xyz then neither should any other class/skill of similar type (ie range skill vs melee vs cc vs mobility, etc). It is beyond hypocritical and will only continue to get worse.
  14. Once again copying my old post from the last two balance patches for a 3rd time as it requires repeating. However, the changes to Mesmer are nice but simply do not affect many of the issues currently affecting the class from the damage that was done from the past two balance teams (this current team is the 3rd set/time a change was made since POF to the balance team, at least out of the changes we know of) as well as the "knowledgeable community" on the forums/reddit. Please add a system or something to the forums that will show and identify the numbers of hours each of us have on a class! For example, it can be a simple star under our avatar icon that colored with the main color of each class. Mesmer would be purple, Necro green, etc. You can then put a number 1-5+ to represent the amount of hours invested in the class in units of a thousand. This way when a player suggesting ideas to "balance" a class has no hours but someone who plays the class has a purple badge with a 5 in it (5,000 hours) disagrees and/or corrects them people and developers can easily and quickly identify who should have a better understanding of the class and the ramifications these suggestions will have. For wvw and pvp there is way too much mobility. Mesmer and Thief used to have the most mobility. Mesmer now has some of the lowest while Thief has to "pay" a tax to use some of it's. Specific things such as this need to be looked into! There needs to be a set of standards that if a class can do A and B then it cant do C. For example, if a class has high range damage, high sustain (including boons), then it should have little to no mobility so that it can be countered. This includes access and uptime to boons such as might and stability. These two boons and the ability of a class to easily maintain them is what is bringing back the bunker meta that cost GW2 (along with poor balancing) its Esports spot (lmao... Esports). Stat distribution on gear is beyond out of hand not just with Celestials. Currently a light armor Marauder's helm gives 54 power, 54 precision, 30 vitality, and 30 ferocity. This gives a total of 168 state points. While a Celestial light armor helm gives +30 to 9 different stats giving a total of 270 stat points. This is 102 more stats than the Marauder's helm. Stats need to be equalized based on the gear piece slot they're on with no difference between the total number of stats that specific piece of gear has when compared to another, mind you this stat total only varies with armor class (though armor class really does not matter all too much). The heavier an armor type gets the less or more stats (normally less) that armor pieces' total state pool is. For example, a light armor helm gives a total of 100 stat points while a medium armor helm has a total of 95. This is then affected by the stat type, ie Marauders or Celestials of the gear. This decides how the 100 or 95 total stat points are divided up. Marauders would invest more of the 100 total stats into power and precision while celestials would have equally divide the total 100 stats by the 9 different stats it gives. This would remove the disparity between stats types. This means all light armor helms give a total of 100 stat points but depending on the stat type will dictate how the stat total is again divided up. (I hope I explained this concept well). Trait disparity amongst classes is another massive issue though harder to manage and balance. I'll try to keep this one short. There needs to be a guide line that identifies if a trait is a adapt, master, or a grandmaster trait as well is as if it should be a minor trait (minors, cant be changed) . It is highly evident there currently is not. For example, Willbender has a set major adept traits (this is the lowest level/rank of a trait and thus should be the weakest of the traits to pick from) that give it an extra 120 condition damage, +120 healing power, or +120 power plus 100% damage increase. THIS IS RIDCULOUS and insanely over powered for a set of adept traits. Most other classes do not get these types of traits until master or grandmaster. Why is this still happening?! WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN BROUGHT UP MORE AND STILL NOT ADRESSED?! It is things like this that make us, the player base, your consumer feel like balance greatly favors specific classes. This feeling worsens when its left unchecked! These adept traits are better than most classes minor traits LET ALONE grandmaster traits. Mesmer's core traits got hit hard to bring Mirage down as well as a handful of weapon skills and utilities. This included removing damage, lowering condi application (the wrong way), increasing cooldowns and reworking traits and utilities. Phantasmas still die to cleave in pvp/wvw and in some pve areas yet there was a need to nerf disenchanter first before addressing this issue and the issue of disenchanter as well as several other phantasmas not landing their attacks most of the time. Chrono: The alacrity and quickness changes are awful. Chrono has to now pick a grandmaster trait to get either minimal access quickness or alacrity?! On top of this the constitution coefficients are extremely low in both pvp/wvw and pve. Other classes have better access to both and can use and maintain both much better than Chrono currently can. Virtuoso is a mess now with distortion, it did not need this when it has a utility that gives it distortion plus five blades. Virtuoso needs a rework on dagger as well as its utilities and elite (see old notes). I always have more to say tough this is enough for now. Below is my old input for reference and to make it more easy for people to find and refence. Enjoy and thank you for taking the time to read my massive wall of text. Old input: Virtuoso still struggles massively in wvw/pvp especially the dagger weapon. Change/add to deadly blades: After a successful critical hit your next shatter (ALL 5 BLADES) is unblockable and cant be reflected. Once the shatter is used this affect then has goes on cooldown with a CD of 10-15 sec. Rest of my thoughts sadly still apply to Virtuoso. Repeating: Mesmer input: Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this! Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole. Virtuoso Input: We desperately need a way to counter projectile denial skills as these skills completely shut this specialization down. Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses. Making it into a port of some kind would be great. An example would be skill 3 on p/d thief (shadow strike/repeater) or a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill. This would be great as it would pair well with the block/evade traits. The utilities could use a full rework. The heal is horrendous, Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower. Meteor Shower is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit and utilities. Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills F3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades. As others have mentioned removing the cast time OR removing the requirement to face the target would be a good fix to this. The elite is also awful. Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets. I'd start here and then after see where the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed. Mirage: The issue here is once again distortion and signet of illusions as well as a handful of runes, sigils, and food that increase endurance regeneration. Infinite Horizon needs to be made baseline so that the ambush skills can be balanced more appropriately. The ambush skills keep getting nerfed because of this trait. This forces players to pick up this trait due to the lack of damage from the ambush skills with out it. An idea for Mirage would be to change distortion to a shatter that consumes clones and for each clone consumed gain x amount of endurance back. This works really well given IH is made baseline in that you'll now need to chose between destroying your clones for survivability causing you to lose damage or keep them risking losing the fight but gain more damage protentional through IH. Overall balance input: Stab either needs to be reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and in competitive game modes (PVP/WVW). Mobility needs to be toned down massively. Both Memser and Thief have been nerfed a plethora of times due to their mobility. Now we have other classes that have more mobility (and range in some cases) than Mesmer while others are on par with Thief while also having stealth and high/er damage and range too. WVW: A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're using full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at.
  15. New input: Virtuoso still struggles massively in wvw/pvp especially the dagger weapon. Change/add to deadly blades: After a successful critical hit your next shatter (ALL 5 BLADES) is unblockable and cant be reflected. Once the shatter is used this affect then has goes on cooldown with a CD of 10-15 sec. Rest of my thoughts sadly still apply to Virtuoso. Repeating: Mesmer input: Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this! Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole. Virtuoso Input: We desperately need a way to counter projectile denial skills as these skills completely shut this specialization down. Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses. Making it into a port of some kind would be great. An example would be skill 3 on p/d thief (shadow strike/repeater) or a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill. This would be great as it would pair well with the block/evade traits. The utilities could use a full rework. The heal is horrendous, Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower. Meteor Shower is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit and utilities. Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills F3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades. As others have mentioned removing the cast time OR removing the requirement to face the target would be a good fix to this. The elite is also awful. Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets. I'd start here and then after see where the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed. Mirage: The issue here is once again distortion and signet of illusions as well as a handful of runes, sigils, and food that increase endurance regeneration. Infinite Horizon needs to be made baseline so that the ambush skills can be balanced more appropriately. The ambush skills keep getting nerfed because of this trait. This forces players to pick up this trait due to the lack of damage from the ambush skills with out it. An idea for Mirage would be to change distortion to a shatter that consumes clones and for each clone consumed gain x amount of endurance back. This works really well given IH is made baseline in that you'll now need to chose between destroying your clones for survivability causing you to lose damage or keep them risking losing the fight but gain more damage protentional through IH. Overall balance input: Stab either needs to be reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and in competitive game modes (PVP/WVW). Mobility needs to be toned down massively. Both Memser and Thief have been nerfed a plethora of times due to their mobility. Now we have other classes that have more mobility (and range in some cases) than Mesmer while others are on par with Thief while also having stealth and high/er damage and range too. WVW: A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're using full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at.
  16. This, which is silly since you can change classes before and during a match. Making this useless as the primary focus/priority of placement.
  17. Mesmer input: Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this! Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole. Virtuoso Input: We desperately need a way to counter projectile denial skills as these skills completely shut this specialization down. Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses. Making it into a port of some kind would be great. An example would be skill 3 on p/d thief (shadow strike/repeater) or a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill. This would be great as it would pair well with the block/evade traits. The utilities could use a full rework. The heal is horrendous, Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower. Meteor Shower is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit and utilities. Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills F3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades. As others have mentioned removing the cast time OR removing the requirement to face the target would be a good fix to this. The elite is also awful. Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets. I'd start here and then after see where the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed. Distortion input: I'm mixed about adding distortion. Yes, it will increase survivability however the issue is with blade renewal and signet of illusions. This could end up giving way too much up time on distortion creating an issue we've seen before and to an extent currently still see with Mirage. As someone else has stated one of the biggest issues Mesmer has is recovering from damage already taken not avoiding it. On top of this EOD brought a lot of mobility to a lot of classes and once again Mesmer is left with blink. Ironically enough EOD also gave a lot classes some type of projectile denial when these classes did not have this before. "We gave Mesmer a projectile based specialization while also making sure every class has some way to shut it down." Mirage: The issue here is once again distortion and signet of illusions as well as a handful of runes, sigils, and food that increase endurance regeneration. Infinite Horizon needs to be made baseline so that the ambush skills can be balanced more appropriately. The ambush skills keep getting nerfed because of this trait. This forces players to pick up this trait due to the lack of damage from the ambush skills with out it. An idea for Mirage would be to change distortion to a shatter that consumes clones and for each clone consumed gain x amount of endurance back. This works really well given IH is made baseline in that you'll now need to chose between destroying your clones for survivability causing you to lose damage or keep them risking losing the fight but gain more damage protentional through IH. Overall balance input: Stab either needs to be reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and in competitive game modes (PVP/WVW). Mobility needs to be toned down massively. Both Memser and Thief have been nerfed a plethora of times due to their mobility. Now we have other classes that have more mobility (and range in some cases) than Mesmer while others are on par with Thief while also having stealth and high/er damage and range too. WVW: A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're using full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at.
  18. Mesmer input: Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this! Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole. Virtuoso Input: Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework, make it a port of some kind like skill 3 on p/d thief (a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill would be great and would pair well with the block/evade traits) and/or make it unlockable/reflectable so we have something around this. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP environments as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses. The utilities could use a full rework, the heal is horrendous, Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower, Meteor is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit. Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills f3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades. The elite is also awful. Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets. I'd start here and then after see where it the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed. Overall balance input: Stab either needs to be reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and competitive game modes (PVP/WVW). WVW: A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at.
  19. Mesmer input: Core traits on Mesmer as a whole are a mess and will need a massive look into/rework, I whish you luck with this! Change phantasms so that they can NOT be targeted and killed. Make it what it simply is, a delayed burst with a fancy animation/affect. Outside of PVE and even in some PVE areas phantasms die too fast to complete their affect/attack. On top of this several of these skills are still very buggy and won't complete their attack too. This change would reduce a massive amount of visual clutter that many people complain about when fighting Mesmers as they won't have to worry about tab targeting through a set of clones and another set of phantasms. This would also then help promote the use of phantasms in large scale play such as zergs and would allow for better balancing of these skills and Mesmer as a whole. Virtuoso Input: Skill 3 on dagger needs a full rework, make it a port of some kind like skill 3 on p/d thief (a block skill that teleports and changes into a flip damage skill would be great and would pair well with the block/evade traits) and/or make it unlockable/reflectable so we have something around this. The skill is slow, in both PVE (only a handful of raid bosses get hit by this) and PVP environments as it is only effective if the target is stationary. This is the highest damaging weapon skill on dagger and its unable to hit much of anything. For those unaware, the storm itself does not do damage it is the 3 projectiles that are shot off of it that apply damage hence why it only hits a handful of raid bosses. The utilities could use a full rework, the heal is horrendous, Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords have too long of a cast time on top of a long animation wind up. RS should be on par with Meteor Shower, Meteor is a weapon skill with a much larger radius, higher target cap, and much higher damage and damage coefficient. Sword of Decimation would actually replace weapon skill 3 on the dagger very well as this class wants to kite and greatly lacks the tools to do it on its weapon kit. Shatters need a faster cast time as currently it suffers from two cast times. The fist is the actual cast time while the second is the delay due to the long animation. Skills f3 and F4 are very lack luster due to not having as much of a difference/impact when using them with 3 or more blades. The elite is also awful. Make it a V/cone attack. This way the counter for it is closing the gap with the Mesmer rather then side stepping out of it. In its current state it does not force a dodge, block, or invulnerability and just like weapon skill 3 is only effective on stationary targets. I'd start here and then after see where it the specialization falls before messing with the traits. As its hard to say what exactly to do with the traits until the issues with the weapon and utilities are fixed. Overall balance input: Stab either needs to reduced in the amount of access classes have to it or it needs to be changed like Aegis. Where applying more stab only increases the duration of of the boon. This will prevent many classes that are currently very problematic from face tanking CCs in both PVE and competitive game modes (PVP/WVW). WVW: A red flag for balance needs to be classes running builds in full celestial gear (It was removed from PVP for a reason). Currently a handful of classes can run full Celestial gear and both damage as if they're full berserkers/assassins gear while sustaining as if they are in full Minstrels gear. These classes traits, boon access and generation, and both damage and healing/support coefficients need to be looked at.
  20. I'm happy to see more people calling this out and picking up on it instead of the same handful of us. The state of Mesmer is greatly due to the class nerfed based on suggestions on these forums from players that have little to no understanding of how what they're requesting will impact the class as a whole. Mesmer lost a lot of its survivability to "balance" Mirage. Another point to mention give the massive up-roar that came from the discord leaks is that in the private discord the person appointed to represent Mesmer asked when will they make the class competitive again? The lead Devs stated they do NOT like fighting Mesmers and do want want to see it competitive in the PVP/competitive game modes. This information has been bouncing around on the Mesmer discords for awhile now too. This then adds a lot of light to the way the profession has been getting "balanced". Most of us can easily argue that the core traits lines as well as the elite traits need full reworks. The state of Chrono is a great example of this. A lot of other professions are able to get both damage and support from one trait line while Mesmer has to choose (trade offs?).
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