Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Mesmer

[Triptaminas.4789]

2 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Honestly, is it that surprising? First they tried to nerf Staff damage (halving Clone condis), but it didn't work out so next they cut the Alac duration to enforce the 2x Staff build (a single staff Ambush used to give 10s Alac, now barely 5s), but people still found a way to use Staff/Axe. Then Anet got fed up and nuked the entire build with Mirage Mantle rework. Now Alac Mirage could barely upkeep Alac with 2x Staff while still having to deal with these random Staff Clone damage nerfs with no compensations in return lol. 

And I find it hilarious that the reason why the original Alac Mirage was gutted in the first place was because it was "doing too much damage for a support role with 0 boon duration investment". Then they went on and made quick Herald a thing, with the exact same "doing too much damage for a support role with 0 boon duration investment" while passively farting every boon in existence in a more braindead way than Alac Mirage. It begs the question was the original version of Alac Mirage ever even a problem?

 

Dune cloak rework completely removes last use case mirage had in wvw, to play it u need to be special kind of kitten. Some say alac, to wiggle a staff for a bit of alac...Just go chrono mesmer sisters.

 

[draxynnic.3719]

19 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Honestly, is it that surprising? First they tried to nerf Staff damage (halving Clone condis), but it didn't work out so next they cut the Alac duration to enforce the 2x Staff build (a single staff Ambush used to give 10s Alac, now barely 5s), but people still found a way to use Staff/Axe. Then Anet got fed up and nuked the entire build with Mirage Mantle rework. Now Alac Mirage could barely upkeep Alac with 2x Staff while still having to deal with these random Staff Clone damage nerfs with no compensations in return lol. 

And I find it hilarious that the reason why the original Alac Mirage was gutted in the first place was because it was "doing too much damage for a support role with 0 boon duration investment". Then they went on and made quick Herald a thing, with the exact same "doing too much damage for a support role with 0 boon duration investment" while passively farting every boon in existence in a more braindead way than Alac Mirage. It begs the question was the original version of Alac Mirage ever even a problem?

 

Quickherald is pretty hilarious, but I think what allows it to exist is that the quickness trait is directly competing with a strong power DPS trait. So if it's ever doing too much damage, they can scale down the base damage of Herald, and scale up the competing trait to compensate so power DPS herald remains a thing. Alacmirage at its strongest was capable of topping DPS meters while also providing a needed boon (which was also what made staxe so strong - even if it couldn't 100% alac uptime on its own, you weren't losing much by taking two.)

Alacmirage was a sh...atterstorm because it didn't have such a neat tradeoff. Even now, if you're not using axe, Mirage Mantle is still going to be your default master-tier trait. (Desert Distortion allows you to convert Distortion into more ambushes, but it doesn't add that many unless you're also running a signet build with Blurred Inscriptions, which is probably a DPS loss over the conventional build). Which is why I personally think it should have been a grandmaster, possibly an addition to Dune Cloak. That would 1) mean it doesn't have to be staff/staff and more importantly 2) mean that IH could be the competing DPS trait.

[draxynnic.3719]

Oh, hello again, forum bug.

Edited February 23 by draxynnic.3719

[draxynnic.3719]

17 hours ago, Triptaminas.4789 said:

Dune cloak rework completely removes last use case mirage had in wvw, to play it u need to be special kind of kitten. Some say alac, to wiggle a staff for a bit of alac...Just go chrono mesmer sisters.

 

That makes for interesting feedback. I'm sceptical that the proposed change will actually get powermirage to swap out of IH in PvE, so if Dune Cloak has a use case in keeping Mirage effective in situations where you can't realistically keep clones going, that's a strong argument for keeping current functionality.

[Curunen.8729]

More general feedback for ground targeting in options menu - it would be amazing if we could select snap ground target to current target for individual skills.

I don't know whether this is possible, or how it could even work, but the ability to have certain skills snap to target (Journey) while allowing others to be freely ground targeted (Blink/Jaunt) would be welcome quality of life.

[HotDelirium.7984]

Journey has wonky effects since the portal is created in front of the muzzle but we rip it around so fast it looks really wierd. I don't know why the portal isn't created in front of us and stationary and not dependent on where the rifle is pointing. I wish we just shot into it.

[xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678]

Just delete riffle and let's move on. 

[ShadowKatt.6740]

40 minutes ago, xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678 said:

Just delete riffle and let's move on. 

I have a better idea: Let's delete the rifle and make a new one.

I REALLY REALLY want a rifle. I have wanted a rifle since Day 1 in GW2. I can't help but feel a little responsible for this mess. I wanted it too much...too much...that monkey's paw curled right into a fist and punched me square in the crotch.

[phokus.8934]

The only fun I'm having with rifle is trolling by throwing Singularity shot out and having people take my portal.

[draxynnic.3719]

8 hours ago, phokus.8934 said:

The only fun I'm having with rifle is trolling by throwing Singularity shot out and having people take my portal.

And this, for anyone wondering, is why they didn't make it so you can portal someone without having them press F to consent.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

7 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

And this, for anyone wondering, is why they didn't make it so you can portal someone without having them press F to consent.

*later in court*

Please show the court on the doll where the portal landed *beat* Nothing further, Your Honor. Prosecution rests.

[seraphain.1093]

GW : "Do you have a feedback on mesmer rifle ?"

Literally everyone : "The healing power is a bit low to compete with firebrand or ingeneer".

GW : "Ok so let's divide the healing power by 2".

...

Your work is so disapointing.

[Curunen.8729]

Ok I will give some positive feedback having had a bit more time to mess around - mirage only for the record.

+ Skill 4 phantasm sound effect on laser sight activation is very cool, I really love this.

+ Visuals with mirage ambush are less annoying than I expected. Though I would have preferred the DJ phantasm ability instead as the ambush - it's way cooler.

+ Skill 3 visual is nice.

+ More resistance (even with the tiny duration) is a nice additional middle finger to immobilise for mirage.

 

However:

- Journey being ground targeted is beyond awful. I utterly hate this skill and would swap it for anything else if we had multiple options for weapon skills. The only way I would use rifle is either I cast this at my feet all the time for healing only, or snap ground target to current target could be activated for individual skills, or it just becomes an enemy/ally targeted skill with aoe heal proc around the player.

For me this is more of a fighting game that should be against low health npcs (like class npcs in heart of the mists) and players, and giving them more unpredictable behaviour to challenge us. Not the bloody ground targeted RTS this has moved further into with instanced pve and large scale wvw, huddling against mega bosses with their own ground carpeting bullkitten, or large zergs with the same. It doesn't give the right satisfaction personally, though I grudgingly can accept it.

- Skill 5 apart from the resistance is really pathetic. Barrier isn't evade/block, and as most people have said the portal is useless. Give us the option to cast and use the portal at range. It's not a stunbreak. It's on a long cooldown. It won't break the game. I don't know where the misrepresentation of mesmer having a lot of mobility comes from. Mirage has sword ambush that is semi chainable, but apart from that the raw ground speed with skills isn't that high. What is high is in combat agility - this for sure we can port and leap around well enough making use of terrain, but in a flat one direction footrace unless you specifically mimic/blink and take alacrity with jaunt, phase retreat and sword ambush (or do tricks like melee weapon IA onto an ambient npc to get distance), you can be caught by a number of specs. Virtuoso and chrono certainly ain't getting away. Everyone has at least 25% movement speed now with runes, usually more with perma swiftness and beyond.

Furthering what @Gesbo.6420 said in another thread among other things - increase coefficients and lower base numbers. Fully agree with this - let the player use the stats in the game to choose how they want to build towards. More damage or more healing. Should apply to every weapon tbh, rather than forcing them - in this case into a single role for a single spec only.

[Levetty.1279]

I'll repost it here too in the 1% chance they are reading this thread

OK hear me out. If they are serious about Power Mirage then rifle works a lot better on it then it does Heal Chrono.

Add power/crit chance to Nomad's Endurance, up the power damage of Mirages utilities and give that new Grandmaster you are adding some extra oomph.

Make Rifle ambush give might and fury and traited alacrity, up the damage of various skills and ambushes and fix the Phantasm so it isn't terrible. Then you will have a fairly solid base for an Alacrity DPS mirage there.

Edited March 1 by Levetty.1279

[Levetty.1279]

And on the topic of staff, remove confusion and re add burning. Out of all the bad decisions you make 99% of them include removing a condition on a Mesmer skill to replace it with confusion.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

2 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

And on the topic of staff, remove confusion and re add burning. Out of all the bad decisions you make 99% of them include removing a condition on a Mesmer skill to replace it with confusion.

I hate to do this but I gotta. We have a grand total of ONE(1) trait that makes Burning better, and a whole bunch of traits that make Confusion better. And the only skills we have that really inflict Burning is the Torch, which basically no one uses. While I'm sure they did this accidentally we benefit far more by having more confusion application than we do burning, and we would be far more effective if they would QUIT NERFING CONFUSION AS WELL 😠 but the point is that we don't currently have the kit to really support burning damage. All mesmers are great with confusion and torment, Virt is good with bleeding, and we have good support for those. Let's focus on what we're good at...while we're still good at it...

[Mevelios.4809]

1 hour ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

And the only skills we have that really inflict Burning is the Torch, which basically no one uses.

Hey, now. There are still dinosaurs like me who run the condi mirage axe/pistol & axe/torch! To hell with that boring staff! ☹️

1 hour ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

but the point is that we don't currently have the kit to really support burning damage.

That much we agree on, which is a shame considering the most handy condi relic is the one of the Fractal. The issue IMO simply is how efficient dueling (through viper gear) & chaos specs (through its many raw stats bonuses) are over illusions, only the Cvirt really has more interest in illusions. And that's still despite the buff they gave to the torch by making The pledge's CD reduction baseline, for a weapon capable of making use of dueling's Ineptitude!

Even if the recent buff did reduce the gap in performance between each spec, illusions still comes as the least interesting of the three.

1 hour ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

Let's focus on what we're good at...while we're still good at it...

JP portals? Oh wait, we made that joke before already. 😆

[ShadowKatt.6740]

21 minutes ago, Mevelios.4809 said:

Hey, now. There are still dinosaurs like me who run the condi mirage axe/pistol & axe/torch! To hell with that boring staff! ☹️

You know I love that you made that point, because it's a point I've tried to hammer so hard across these forums with the rifle being pigeon-holed as a support weapon and Anet trying to force down our throats that we needed to have a more solid support option. I've already explained that we had plenty of support options. Our inspiration line is basically all healing and cleansing, and combined with the Illusion line and a Shatter Storm build, along with a scepter and good clone generation, we're actually super good healers, and even if you JUST bring Inspiration in your kit we can provide a little healing in a pinch. Now are we the best? Of course not. Nor should we be. Guardians should be the best healers in the game. It's literally in their name! They guard! And expecting mesmers to heal on par with guardians is like expecting torch to perform on par with everything else. It doesn't. It's not going to. It's never going to.

BUT DOES THAT MEAN IT DOES NOT WORK? The answer is of course NO! You run Condi Mirage Axe/Torch. I have an invisibility build that uses MH Sword/Scepter/Torch. They work. It's never going to do fire damage like a Fire Elementalist or a Guardian....which is weird that they do so much fire damage but regardless...but that doesn't invalidate it EXCEPT to the most hardcore, DPS chasing, Meta enforcing number counters out there.

I'm actually tired of the devs trying to make us good at everything instead of just making us the BEST at something. I want to be the BEST at something. Professions exist for a reason. I picked Mesmer for a reason. And if I want to play something that's not necessarily in line with my best skills I'm prepared to just be good at it, and that's where skill comes in.

[Levetty.1279]

4 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

We have a grand total of ONE(1) trait that makes Burning better, and a whole bunch of traits that make Confusion better.

Burning doesn't need a trait to be good, no amount of traits in the world will make confusion good.

[Varis.5467]

Anet get this:

If all classes are good at everything, they are good at nothing. 

Stop trying to homogenising the classes!

[draxynnic.3719]

18 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

I'll repost it here too in the 1% chance they are reading this thread

OK hear me out. If they are serious about Power Mirage then rifle works a lot better on it then it does Heal Chrono.

Add power/crit chance to Nomad's Endurance, up the power damage of Mirages utilities and give that new Grandmaster you are adding some extra oomph.

Make Rifle ambush give might and fury and traited alacrity, up the damage of various skills and ambushes and fix the Phantasm so it isn't terrible. Then you will have a fairly solid base for an Alacrity DPS mirage there.

Putting alacrity on the rifle ambush would also enable heal alacrity mirage. From what I've heard it's a build that's already so close to existing that alacrity on rifle ambush would probably be enough to tip it over the line.

[RasSativa.5109]

After playing heal chrono before and after the release of rifle, i would say rifle is a bit better then shield/scepter. It does have some small issues. From the beta it seems that the healing is a bit lower then what i tested then. It doesn't compare to Scepter on revenant with a 2k barrier at all times next to the easy healing output of herald. It also doesn't compare to staff warrior with gigantic healing output of some skills.
 

i just would buff healing on rifle 2 and 3. Rifle 4 seems ok to mee.

Rifle 5: journey is a waste of a skill. You gain barrier and Resolution wich is good. But then your cooldown is longer if you activate the portal. WIch in raids/strikes/fractals isn't taken by anyone so there is no point in reactivating that skill.
My sugestions: make the portal 5 man (in PVE) and give either extra barrior or resolution on reactivation so you actually would reactivate it.
Riffle 5 feels like a gimic and it should have never been a thing. Change that skill up it makes the riffle feel clunky.

Also give ambush on mirage alacrity.

 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, RasSativa.5109 said:

After playing heal chrono before and after the release of rifle, i would say rifle is a bit better then shield/scepter. It does have some small issues. From the beta it seems that the healing is a bit lower then what i tested then. It doesn't compare to Scepter on revenant with a 2k barrier at all times next to the easy healing output of herald. It also doesn't compare to staff warrior with gigantic healing output of some skills.
 

i just would buff healing on rifle 2 and 3. Rifle 4 seems ok to mee.

Rifle 5: journey is a waste of a skill. You gain barrier and Resolution wich is good. But then your cooldown is longer if you activate the portal. WIch in raids/strikes/fractals isn't taken by anyone so there is no point in reactivating that skill.
My sugestions: make the portal 5 man (in PVE) and give either extra barrior or resolution on reactivation so you actually would reactivate it.
Riffle 5 feels like a gimic and it should have never been a thing. Change that skill up it makes the riffle feel clunky.

Also give ambush on mirage alacrity.

 

 

I think the intent is that rifle 5 is primarily used for the barrier, and the portal is a cute thing that groups with good communication can make use of. Granting extra barrier/resolution if the portal is used to compensate for the extra cooldown might not be a bad idea, though. Alternatively, just put the portal on a separate cooldown - wouldn't be the first time a flipover skill has a longer cooldown than the original skill.

[Teknomancer.4895]

13 hours ago, RasSativa.5109 said:

Riffle 5 feels like a gimic and it should have never been a thing. Change that skill up it makes the riffle feel clunky.

It's absolutely a gimmick. Problem is, they really want the portal to be a thing.

I'm hoping that they monitor just how often the skill actually gets used for that purpose.

Pretty sure only that will make them realize just how far off the mark they were on that one.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

It's absolutely a gimmick. Problem is, they really want the portal to be a thing.

I'm hoping that they monitor just how often the skill actually gets used for that purpose.

Pretty sure only that will make them realize just how far off the mark they were on that one.

I have a suspicion that it's not actually supposed to be a main point in favour of the weapon, it's just something they thought was cool and unique even if it doesn't actually get used for that very often.