Please re-revert Restorative Mantras

[Lethion.8745]

Mesmer Mantras were finally somewhat useful. Please bring heal on ammo usage to Restorative Mantras. It's completely useless right now.

[Mell.4873]

Yes definitely and then have the 50% heal reduction reverted just for a opening channel.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gesbo.6420]

Yes yes yes double dip into it!!! would make the skill actually a good choice. Given that restorative mantras was an undocumented change I assumed it would actually work this way.

[viquing.8254]

Bring back the 10cd to synergize with runes too.

[ascii.1369]

Not that I'm not happy people are speaking up now, but where was the outrage during the feedback periode. Feels like I was one of maybe a handfull of people comlaining about the Mantra revert before february 14th. Of course this is how it works now, the charges have never been Mantras in the original design.

 

That being said, I do very much agree. Either re-revert the entire Mantra changes or at least make the charges also count as Mantras, so they trigger talents and stuff.

Edited February 22, 2023 by ascii.1369

[Lethion.8745]

1 hour ago, ascii.1369 said:

Not that I'm not happy people are speaking up now, but where was the outrage during the feedback periode. Feels like I was one of maybe a handfull of people comlaining about the Mantra revert before february 14th. Of course this is how it works now, the charges have never been Mantras in the original design.

 

That being said, I do very much agree. Either re-revert the entire Mantra changes or at least make the charges also count as Mantras, so they trigger talents and stuff.

I thought it would keep working like it did before the update.

[Gesbo.6420]

10 hours ago, ascii.1369 said:

Not that I'm not happy people are speaking up now, but where was the outrage during the feedback periode. Feels like I was one of maybe a handfull of people comlaining about the Mantra revert before february 14th. Of course this is how it works now, the charges have never been Mantras in the original design.

 

That being said, I do very much agree. Either re-revert the entire Mantra changes or at least make the charges also count as Mantras, so they trigger talents and stuff.

The change was undocumented and the explanations of the skills were vague. There was no way we could have seen this. The skill currently in game is reverted in folunctionality but it still keeps the tool tip that had to be hotfixed when they were changed initially... 

[Salt Mode.3780]

They did this for Firebrand not so much for Mesmer, we are just collateral damage a by-product of Firebrands. When Mantras were first changed it was mostly due to firebrands due to that many of our Mantras got nerfed in the process, now that Mantras returned to the way it was, they only care to fix Firebrands side of things while Mesmer still got the nerfs attached with nothing given back to us.

[Forbiben.3842]

u can spam mantra of pain for heals now though

[ascii.1369]

16 hours ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

The change was undocumented and the explanations of the skills were vague. There was no way we could have seen this. The skill currently in game is reverted in folunctionality but it still keeps the tool tip that had to be hotfixed when they were changed initially... 

Look, we're all on the same side here, the state of Mantras as they are now is not great. But I do have to disagree, reverting Mantras to their old design meant that charges go back to not being mantras. That shouldn't have been a surprise.

[Gesbo.6420]

2 hours ago, ascii.1369 said:

Look, we're all on the same side here, the state of Mantras as they are now is not great. But I do have to disagree, reverting Mantras to their old design meant that charges go back to not being mantras. That shouldn't have been a surprise.

I understand what you are saying however when the change was initially made they specifically informed players that Restoritive Mantras is changed as well. Ther was no reason for people to belive that with this patch there is a change to the trait.

 

I am happy to agree to dissagree.

[setless.6039]

Whether mantras become worse or not, anet won't be going back to ammunition approach because it will just confirm that they didn't have a solid vision for them and it was just a random idea. There is this saying, that you cannot step in to the same river twice.

For me it's kinda sad, that they wasted all this time 'balancing' stuff with the lowest effort possible - cus how else would one name basically reverting skills to their previous form. 

Mesmer has issues but mantras weren't really one of them. 

Instead of playing back and forth with mantras they should have looked at why virtuoso is such a good spec compared to two others. For example virtuoso's easy and elegant way of accessing his shatters compared to clunky way of core mesmer (/mirage/chrono) where you need to pray that the target  won't die before you can shatter or your clones not spawning/dying before you can shatter. Or, why chrono needs to spam all his utilities (+elite) of cooldown to maintain alac.

[Gesbo.6420]

30 minutes ago, setless.6039 said:

Whether mantras become worse or not, anet won't be going back to ammunition approach because it will just confirm that they didn't have a solid vision for them and it was just a random idea. There is this saying, that you cannot step in to the same river twice.

For me it's kinda sad, that they wasted all this time 'balancing' stuff with the lowest effort possible - cus how else would one name basically reverting skills to their previous form. 

Mesmer has issues but mantras weren't really one of them. 

Instead of playing back and forth with mantras they should have looked at why virtuoso is such a good spec compared to two others. For example virtuoso's easy and elegant way of accessing his shatters compared to clunky way of core mesmer (/mirage/chrono) where you need to pray that the target  won't die before you can shatter or your clones not spawning/dying before you can shatter. Or, why chrono needs to spam all his utilities (+elite) of cooldown to maintain alac.

Clones and phantasms are one of the most original idea i have ever seen in any game and using them as ammunition is such a great concept in my honest opinion. 

Chronomancer never had an issue getting clones up. It is all about timing and waiting for your phantasms to turn into clones. That being said, however, they did toy with the idea of having more base clone generation in competetive game modes - Phantasmal Warlock casted 2 phantasms and so did Illusinary Counter respectively with clones. I thought that was a wonderful idea but it was nerfed not even year later... 

 

In the curent state of the mantras I belive we either need a bit of a boost in numbers or half the charge time.

[viquing.8254]

Yet IMO we lack old gameplay who buffed illusions life thanks to traits and signets which gave a less "spammy" illusions playstyle as they weren't destroyed in 2 sec which give you more time to calibrate the good moment to shatter.

It would be good to have the choice between a fast shatter playstyle and a more timed shatter playstyle like it was.

Another example is at the beginning many builds were played by positionning the phantasms you summon to make them shatter one after another (in opposition to all in melee to instant burst.). Skillfull mesmers could pop 2 consecutive waves of 3, 1 sec intervals explosions to be sure they pressure and/or hit beetween tempo while today this way to play is almost lost.

Now I know it's not possible because of all the changes we get but looking on above post make me think about this.

[apharma.3741]

Honestly restorative mantras activating on charge and then a lesser amount each cast would probably help out a lot. They don't even need to nerf the healing because it's not much better than an tempest spitting out an aura to someone.

For those that might not play tempest in WvW, when I give an ally an aura it heals for 2k, they also get an aura which can be really good but it also cleanses a condition and I can detonate it to cleanse 2 condition on nearby allies and do another thing. If those are also eles then they can detonate for effects. The following can be done every ~20s

• Fire attunement to get fire aura - 2k heal, 1 cleanse
• Detonate fire aura - 2 cleanse, 5 might to allies
• Weapon fire aura - 2k heal, 1 cleanse
• Detonate fire aura - 2 cleanse, 5 might to allies
• Overload fire - might for allies, stab, fire aura, 2k heal, 1 cleanse
• Detonate fire aura - 2 cleanse, 5 might to allies

This is the competition, a tempest going into fire attunement, water heals and cleanses more and you can do other things in air to give 3 sets of shocking aura making you and 5 others immune to non stab melee for 12s if done right. The healing on restorative mantras is not great and adding a 500 (0.5 scaling) to on activation would make it a viable mantra support build. Not as good as tempest but you have heals, stab and cleanses.
Also what's with mantra of resolves cool down? 20s is a bit much, 15s maybe?

Edited February 24, 2023 by apharma.3741
Expanded competitive support ability.

[setless.6039]

14 hours ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

Clones and phantasms are one of the most original idea i have ever seen in any game and using them as ammunition is such a great concept in my honest opinion. 

Chronomancer never had an issue getting clones up. It is all about timing and waiting for your phantasms to turn into clones. That being said, however, they did toy with the idea of having more base clone generation in competetive game modes - Phantasmal Warlock casted 2 phantasms and so did Illusinary Counter respectively with clones. I thought that was a wonderful idea but it was nerfed not even year later... 

 

In the curent state of the mantras I belive we either need a bit of a boost in numbers or half the charge time.

Well, you said it youserlf: in the end clones are amunition, and there is really nothing worse than unreliable munition. So for example you have a solid metal pipe and a bazooka (or handgun) with iffy ammo that can either work or completely backfire. Which one is more optimal choice for a self defense?

In case of GW2, let's say your're in a pinch and you want to use your shatter 4.  If you're not a virtuoso this will be tricky - first you have to have a target that already has clones attached to it, otherwise you will get 1 second payoff of your 50s cd skill. Virtuoso on the otherhand will almost always get a full value of distortion - better yet, he can use it to its full capacity without using his other skills just to generate clones for it. I'm not trying to say that we should get rid of clones - no. I'm just saying that clone lifespan is an issue that should be looked into - even more so because they keep adding stuff as additional effects to shatters (e.g. quickness on chrono) - but you cannot capitalize on those effectivley. Right now getting a value from quickness chrono when not fighting bosses is almost impossible - cus mobs die faster than your phanthasms transform to clones. You will get more quickness (albeit self only) from illusions tree than from grandmaster trait of elite spec.

But I digress. My intention was only to highlight that there are bigger issues than mantras ever were. And as we can see over the past year the only changes we got are low effort bumping of GS and Sword auto attack damage or the plain revert for mantras. 

[Gesbo.6420]

2 hours ago, setless.6039 said:

Well, you said it youserlf: in the end clones are amunition, and there is really nothing worse than unreliable munition. So for example you have a solid metal pipe and a bazooka (or handgun) with iffy ammo that can either work or completely backfire. Which one is more optimal choice for a self defense?

In case of GW2, let's say your're in a pinch and you want to use your shatter 4.  If you're not a virtuoso this will be tricky - first you have to have a target that already has clones attached to it, otherwise you will get 1 second payoff of your 50s cd skill. Virtuoso on the otherhand will almost always get a full value of distortion - better yet, he can use it to its full capacity without using his other skills just to generate clones for it. I'm not trying to say that we should get rid of clones - no. I'm just saying that clone lifespan is an issue that should be looked into - even more so because they keep adding stuff as additional effects to shatters (e.g. quickness on chrono) - but you cannot capitalize on those effectivley. Right now getting a value from quickness chrono when not fighting bosses is almost impossible - cus mobs die faster than your phanthasms transform to clones. You will get more quickness (albeit self only) from illusions tree than from grandmaster trait of elite spec.

But I digress. My intention was only to highlight that there are bigger issues than mantras ever were. And as we can see over the past year the only changes we got are low effort bumping of GS and Sword auto attack damage or the plain revert for mantras. 

I fully agree with you, despite the fact that your quickness example is a bit misguided. You would get the benefit of the shatter despite of the fact who has the the agro of the clones, you wont get the damaging effect. If we are going to expand on theory and what could have, Kroof has this interesting theory video about a desired rework of chronomancer shatters. I am not a huge fan of their other videos but some of their ideas were actually pretty good. To summerize they suggest allowing clones to retarget on shatter which I believe is an interesting idea. 

 

About Distortion, however, you have great way to quickly generate clones. with Miror Images or Decoy (if you are also running Escape Artist) to get a better utilisation of the skill, 1 second is more tha nenough to negate a heavy hitter most of the time. Chronomancer in competetive is usually built as a glass cannon. Giving them the ability to aslo negate all damage at any given point would be unhealthy.

 

It is hard to balance the game properly though. Guild Wars 2 as a whole has this issue where it balances for different game modes. This is obviosuly with the virtuoso elite speec where anything other than 1 1 1 is useless in competetive, where if you are not running 3 2 3 (2 2 3 if you are doing power) in PvE you are losing on damage and optimisation. 

That being said, there are quite a few traits that feel out of place and useless in most game modes:
- Desperate Decoy and Escape Artist should be merged in the same trait.

- Recently changed Temporal Enchanter

- Mental Defence is hardly ever used in any game mode especially with 90 second cooldown in competetive for a single second of taunt.

- Chaotic Transference has a rediculous coodwont and can not compete with the traits in the same line.

- Danger Time can not even compete with Improved Alacrity in no game mode

- I am yet to see anyone use Dune Cloak

- Infinate Forge provides nothing over the other two traits and is never ever used.