Vinny.7260

Bunker Down seems to be a PvP focused trait... I would like for it to definitely get QoL though. Could simply be an additional hit and healing(or barrier) in a decent PBAoE on critical hit. If it's barrier the ICD can get brought down for PvP and allow for Scrapper to dink around with it again.

My items on the wishlist are as followed (PvP focused): Give back AoE Bountiful Disillusionment. Just remove the stability if you think it's too strong... Make Restorative Illusions into the Adept Minor in Inspiration and scale its healing down... In PvP you can't pick the other options due to how awful/uneven the playing field is. When you play Inspiration in PvP you're playing it for Blurred Inscriptions and this trait. The replacement trait for it can just turn Restorative Illusions into an AoE around the Mesmer on shatter. (Opening up support potential). Give Chronomancer Regeneration access. You dangled the treat in front of us with Tides of Time giving AoE boons and gave it AoE Swiftness as a tease. Just change it to Regeneration... Put Deceptive Evasion in the Master tier in Dueling. Just remove Evasive Mirror. It wasn't healthy in PvP when it was good and doesn't see much play outside of that. Increase Vigor duration on Nomad's Endurance and split Critical Infusion between elite specs. You've shown it's possible between Firebrand and Scourge... Speed of Sand's movement speed increase should be baseline and make it so Mirage's Cloak grants Swiftness when it ends. Mirage could use the boost to mobility and hogging up minors with weak traits isn't fun. Remove Alacrity from Mirage. You heavily balanced Chronomancer's Cooldowns around CS and Alacrity, but Mirage gets away with it? Mirage doesn't need the boon anyway. Let Chronomancer specialize in boons. You could make it grant Quickness instead. Remove Dune Cloak or make it so ambushes steal boons. Make it function similarly to Rending Shade on Thief so it fairly competes with IH and Elusive Mind. Halve CS Duration and Reduce Cooldown. We don't typically use full duration of CS in PvP and use it to quickly double cast skills normally. Giving us such a high duration and high cool down kinda makes it feel wasted most of the time. All I could come up with right now.

Please for the love of all that is holy remove Alacrity from Mirage. Let Mirage be Mesmer's Power Herald like spec but Condi instead... Improve our Carrion Axe build as it was probably Mirage's most difficult build and provided the most reward for playing well. (Do not give us our second dodge, pretend it never happened... Just adjust us as if we never had the second one.) In PvP it encouraged an unhealthy idea where you use Desert Distortion + Blurred Inscriptions to perpetually ambush and give you and your allies Alacrity... Completely culling Chronomancer's original identity of being the boon-cetric specialization further. Chronomancer's CDs are all jacked up higher because of the fact it supplies itself Alacrity and Mirage doesn't get this punishment. (Honestly the concept I mentioned above with Mirage isn't as common anymore but it was mostly unfun and just upgraded original Core Signet Mesmer into giving Alacrity as well; small gripe but doesn't hurt the higher tier meta.)

They're probably referring to the fact Core Mesmer has no viable access to Swiftness outside of three options. Prismatic Understanding with RNG Swiftness, Signet of Inspiration being a 50% uptime, Focus offhand giving Swiftness for almost consistent uptime, and (Lesser) Chaos Storm giving RNG Swiftness. They're probably saying PvP Mesmer lacks reliable Swiftness options. If you take Focus on Mesmer you're missing out on a better option for niche Swiftness. Focus 4 is horrible to quickly react with and doesn't functionally work in the Ranked gamemode where you need to be able to quickly interrupt something as you could with Pistol 5 or even Sword 4 -> 4. (This isn't to say it isn't impossible, it's totally doable but Pistol 5 is much better to work with and Pistol's kit is typically better for most of Mesmer due to Stunned being easy to setup into rather than Pull.) Prismatic Understanding is probably the best option as it resides in Chaos where the other options are becoming less and less useful with each wheezy breath. Then there's Signet of Inspiration, where its occupying a space where you need Signet of Midnight, Blink, Mantra of Distraction, Signet of Illusions, or even Mirror Images. Those utilities listed are the more useful options and the most typical options. I suppose the exception is with Inspiration/Chaos/Illusions core Mesmer where it uses 4-5 signets with Blurred Inscriptions... You're better off going Rune of the Lynx for mobility right now due to the fact all our Swiftness sources are massive damage sacrifices or sacrifice going a better Elite Specialization.... Chronomancer is dead on anyone's screen unfortunately in PvP. Not sure how to give Mesmer as a whole a good Swiftness source.... Mirage I can see Swiftness get put on Mirage's Cloak as the grandmaster minor or something. (But keep the base +50% while under the effects of it.) It would free up options for Mirage. As for Core? ... Frankly hard to sell. I think of Core Guardian when it comes to mobility, they have to drop a utility to use 'Advance!' to free up their rune slot. Maybe they could bump the Swiftness duration up in PvP specifically on Signet of Inspiration to 10s or something since we have to occupy our sweet sweet utility slots for it.

I'd love to see the original identity of Weaver where it was intended to be a speedster with a Sword. Although, instead, it can just be F1-F4 (Attunements) and F5 being a Holosmith like setup where it builds up Arcane Energy while in it, more you build up, the more powerful the exit effect is... From there, the CD gets increased the higher the threshold.. blah blah those Arcane Shroud skills change based on traits and thresholds get changed based on traits. I just want an FA Ele that isn't a fairy waving a stick saying 'ZAP!'

If a 5 minute trait can successfully compete with its other traits... Maybe look at the other traits as well... The entirety of Defense on Warrior...

It's definitely a matter of practice and experience. Having played Mesmer off and on for 9-almost-10 years... It takes a lot of practice. Look up guides on how to improve your movement, know their skills, all that. Some match-ups are doomed from the start. If you don't have Inspiration or don't use Elusive Mind on Mirage against a condition damage setup you're going to struggle for example. As other people recommend, try using builds intended to 1v1/side node. Untamed (Lots of buttons and lots of fun), Catalyst (Less buttons and lots of fun), Harbinger (Even less buttons and kinda sleepy), and Specter (More than Harbinger, less than Catalyst but more fun).

Definitely true... Shame on them.

I personally used the June 28th patch as my gauge for whether or not I play the game. Frankly the fact there wasn't mention of PvP/WvW-centric balance was the biggest sign things were on the way out for those two.

Maaaybe... Just maybe... We keep Scourge where it is. It's a good resbot/barrier bot. It's the (former) Chronomancer between ressing (Scrapper) and barrier (Mechanist).

Only way Fervent Force would be OP is if it were a core trait... Like in Skirmishing or something.

So quick to call me out. LOL. You're telling this to the guy that has actually had issues with original Flashbang. Current Flashbang is a joke in comparison. Especially since they've gone and hurt things like Explosives Holosmith while trying to cull off Bunker Mechanist. (Shield 4 and Shield 5 CD.) I'm the guy who has been latched onto Power (Core) Mesmer/Power (Core) Elementalist when the meta most definitely disproportionately punishes the two setups. Power Mesmer lacks cleanse to handle all the Weakness that has been in the meta off and on. Power Elementalist less-so had issues in the meta due to Fire providing cleanse on aura and providing its own Weakness in addition to Protection from CCing while in Earth and swapping to Earth but has such a squishy health pool and lack of reliable skills. Assuming my lack of empathy isn't valid when I know all too well what the issues are in the meta. You're attacking someone who is trying to beat the drum that Anet needs to fix their game.

The fact they had Fresh Air Tempest in mind for Alacrity is kind of odd to me. I guess they were trying to pay a homage to DPS Tempest when it first came out. (It used Staff with FA/Fire to constantly overload for the 5% damage increase when it was in Harmonized Conduit.) I really like the idea of Shouts providing Alacrity rather than Might. Elementalist as a Profession has plenty of avenues to provide Might... Even if some of them are horribly scuffed for the Elementalist itself. Plus it being a Grandmaster would make Support Tempest decide between Regeneration/Vigor or Alacrity. I think that's an okay tradeoff compared to losing Elemental Bastion.

Condi Vindicator isn't exactly much better compared to the other Elite Specializations. If I were to guess with Vindicator you would definitely take boon dodge for AoE Chilled. This is probably what it would look like... It isn't as good as Herald or Renegade at doing Condition Damage unfortunately. This is Renegade's version that I mess with occasionally. It's Renegade so don't expect the same result as you'd get with Power Herald or Power Vindicator. (Concept is basically abuse Resolution access on dodge/Jalis Heal/Mallyx stun break for a 10% damage increase flat, 5 Kalla stacks gives an additional 15% across the board.) This is Herald's version that was originally meta once upon a time. (Except it used Resistance when it was able to constantly provide condition immunity.) The buff to Facets granting Quickness probably helps a tiny bit right now. Not as good as Power Herald or Power Vindicator though.

Vindi dodge animation is legitimately a more dramatic version of Vault except you can use it to dodge-jump over higher ledges than any other dodge. I hope they consider doing something to make Vindicator's dodge more interactive and actually fun to use. When you dodge you basically hold WASD to either land or get somewhere safe. Shroud 5 is so weirdly buggy- as with Mechanist Barrier Signet bubble... Then there's the fact Elixirs are hella dangerous and you don't get any tell except for a small projectile in a mass of other things to pay attention to. ... There's also the fact you can't reflect Shroud 1 projectiles without it being a ground-targeted projectile reflect.

I stopped reading when they mentioned Flashbang. I'm shocked PvP is still in this game. 😉

Or all the complaining about OG Diamond Skin...

Exactly. I do like the trait concept. Being able to get immunity to critical hits is a fair counter into power damage. Especially for a profession that is using Light Armor and a low HP pool. The issue becomes when it's encouraging players to do a less interactive play and just camp Earth Attunement. I've heard all the arguments about "But you're locking yourself out of your attunements." Do you have fun doing that? My suggestion above is honestly adding QoL to Tempest, adding a counter to a very passive trait, and buffing other avenues of using Earth. This. This is the problem. Similar case with Powerful Auras. These traits are traits that are niche to the specific elite specialization, only work in a remotely useful way with this profession. Making Stone Heart improve Protection to grant immunity to critical hits (but also reducing incoming duration) would open up so many other doors while also giving it a viable counter to boon rip/converts.

I'd personally just want Shield 4 to extend boon duration while healing/granting Protection. Would be a healing version of what Sand Squall does on Tempest.

Yeah. They didn't mention any duration difference between PvE and PvP/WvW. However, it's almost always the case that there will be a duration split if it's Quickness. Herald has plenty of Quickness access anyway. The focus was to give it AoE Quickness. The Quickness currently granted speeds up all the abilities and allows for synergy with Brutality.

Evasive Empowerment was initially used in PvP when people were still figuring out Catalyst. It serves as an alternative to Invigorating Precision on the Arcane Line. (Albeit the other two options aren't as good right now.)

Correct.

I'd honestly want Banners to work off of Warrior bursts or something. Then we can see Axe Berserker just stack up those boons. 😏

Stone Heart needs changed. At least to prevent camping of the attunement. Maybe something like Protection provides critical hit immunity but Protection to self is reduced. (Similar to how Improved Alacrity on Chronomancer improves Alacrity but reduces duration.) That way it is still possible to get benefit, somewhat buff, and also provides unique effects to the boon. The trait encourages an unhealthy playstyle, doesn't matter whichever way you slice it. Change how it functions, but don't kill the idea. Kills off attunement camping.

Definitely Harbinger is the most 'required' spec in a team right now to win. If you don't have a Harb and they do? You lose. Specter is also up there for a required spec in a team. Issue is that Specter tends to be harder to play compared to Harbinger so you don't see as many of them. Willbender is also up there but less so since the F2 nerf. It's the highest burst damage spec right now. Harb/Specter/WillB/Support/X Tempest support tends to be more common right now since most of the condition damage is on the sidenodes rather than teamfights. Supp Guardian has fallen out of favor slowly but surely due to the rise of high pressure and Willbender providing identical things. (They both provide AoE cleanse, AoE stability- which are the main benefits of the support.) Tempest provides Projectile Hate, and constant Protection. Vindicator is good for the extra spot with its roamer boon dodge build or sidenoder bruiser build. Catalyst can also fill a spot with D/D Fire being pretty high sustain once gotten down. D/F Air can fill the spot for team fights with less cleanse but more damage. Hammer Catalyst is more meme material but can have some plays as a sidenoder or Bell fights in RotC.