Proposed Mesmer Rework

[dontlook.1823]

Several months ago, the Arena Net balance team reworked a lot of core classes, skills, and traits. It was a part of their new initiative and balanced perspective in the future. 

This was all happening during the rerelease of the first Living World. I was wondering if we could get back to that. 

I have just a couple of gripes with Core Mesmer, and it is mainly for power.  The dueling trait line could use a rework. Two skills come to mind. The fury on phantasm summon is good. But I would like a trait more geared toward empowering the Mesmer itself. However, it could be replaced with something more impactful for Mesmer builds in general. The trait could look like a flat 5% crit chance increase for the Mesmer and Fury for illusions/phantasms

Fencer's finesse is also a troublesome trait. With the current meta, Mesmers aren't using a sword in their main hand, so maintaining the ferocity bonus becomes tight around the rotation. I know weapon traits such as these were reworked during the extensive core rework.  The trait could be reworked into a flat % increase to ferocity equivalent to the 150 increase. This way, we aren't locked into having a sword in the main or off-hand for the ferocity bonus. The reworked trait could also add flavor to the dueling line, with something like successful critical strikes striking the target for an additional percentage of the damage just dealt (with a reasonable interval). That's just an idea.

I'm just saying I'd like the balance team to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of core classes/mechanics to strengthen the core/elite specifications further. 

On another note, Virtuoso could use some love for their power variant. Virtuoso, to me, is like Soulbeast. Our clones have merged with us, and we are there to deal damage. I see Virtuoso as Mesmer's premiere damage line, as it has no access to support. With that said, Blade Requiem and Infinite Forge could use a rework. The power coefficient could go up on the F5 for Virtuoso. Infinite Forge could be more impactful for power builds by adding a damage modifier or increasing the velocity or something of the blades. These are all ideas. 

Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions yourself.

 

Edited February 13 by dontlook.1823

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

It's always a bit weird to me that Mesmer is the only class that doesn't have an inherent bonus crit chance somewhere in their core traits. Revenant has it (Shiro trait), Guardian has it (Radiance), Ranger has it (Skirmishing), Necro has it (Soul Reaping), Warrior has it (Arms), Engi has it (Firearms), and I'm sure Ele and Thief have it somewhere too. 

It's really high time to give Mesmers some bonus crit chance too, ideally somewhere in Dueling, maybe one of the minor traits. 

And Infinite Forge needs to have its interval reduced to 2s or have other additional ways to generate blades, as it is it'll be inferior to Bloodsong even if it gets some damage bonus due to much slower generation. 

[Curunen.8729]

I'd like more changes such as sword 5 cast time halved to 0.5s.

[Gesbo.6420]

15 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

It's always a bit weird to me that Mesmer is the only class that doesn't have an inherent bonus crit chance somewhere in their core traits. Revenant has it (Shiro trait), Guardian has it (Radiance), Ranger has it (Skirmishing), Necro has it (Soul Reaping), Warrior has it (Arms), Engi has it (Firearms), and I'm sure Ele and Thief have it somewhere too. 

It's really high time to give Mesmers some bonus crit chance too, ideally somewhere in Dueling, maybe one of the minor traits. 

And Infinite Forge needs to have its interval reduced to 2s or have other additional ways to generate blades, as it is it'll be inferior to Bloodsong even if it gets some damage bonus due to much slower generation. 

I see your Infinate Forge being a tap out and I raise you Speed of Sand. There is literally no reason why the effect of this trait shouldn't be built into the cloak itself. 

Infinite forge should definitely an outlier and needs do something extra given the fact it is a grand master trait that you have to choose 

[Vinny.7260]

11 hours ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

I see your Infinate Forge being a tap out and I raise you Speed of Sand. There is literally no reason why the effect of this trait shouldn't be built into the cloak itself. 

Infinite forge should definitely an outlier and needs do something extra given the fact it is a grand master trait that you have to choose 

Speed of Sand should absolutely be baseline... And just make it so Mirage Cloak grants Swiftness when it ends. Easy peasy.

 

As for Infinite Forge. I'd love for it to reduce the cool down of the Bladesong used. Perhaps a percentage, perhaps a raw number. Maybe it even increases the max blade count to 7 or something. Who knows.

[mirage.8046]

Rework dueling's traits like the decoy trait that activates when you're at 50% of your health: these kinds of traits were being axed to promote proactivity. Instead, it should trigger every time you break stuns. More swiftness would be nice, especially if it were on evading attacks or by swapping weapons.

Quote

As for Infinite Forge. I'd love for it to reduce the cool down of the Bladesong used. Perhaps a percentage, perhaps a raw number. Maybe it even increases the max blade count to 7 or something. Who knows.

Omg yes 7 blades would be sick! That could mean a lot of extra survivability or damage depending on what bladesong you use.

[Infinity.2876]

Mesmer rework, stop nerfing mirage.

There all problems fixed

[ShadowKatt.6740]

24 minutes ago, Infinity.2876 said:

Mesmer rework, stop nerfing mirage.

There all problems fixed

If you turn your steering wheel 45 degrees to the right and then 45 degrees to the left, you haven't brought yourself straight again. Your car still heading in a different direction.

They have a lot more to do than just "Stop Kneecapping Mesmer" before any problem can be called fixed.

[dontlook.1823]

I was thinking about this the other day. The cast time is too long. They should decrease the cast time or buff the damage.

[dontlook.1823]

On 2/13/2024 at 3:37 PM, Curunen.8729 said:

I'd like more changes such as sword 5 cast time halved to 0.5s.

Insert quote in my previous post. >.<

[Curunen.8729]

If we're extending beyond core issues, I'd like to also add 2 things with mirage:

- alacrity tied to staff

- sources of direct endurance refund (currently energy sigils, adventurer relic, sigil of stamina)

-------------

The first point is the absurd difference between playing cele staff and any other weapon combo in wvw. On one hand you have reduced cooldowns across the board - blink, IA, jaunt, distortion, heal, etc etc... leading to vastly improved survivability, mobility, and just overall dynamics. On the other hand unless you are playing one-shot full zerker (with short time to kill such that you can gtfo quickly), any other build suffers in comparison. Especially with how immobilise is now almost a death sentence, and mirage in general benefits greatly from maxing boons ie regen/vigour for the modifiers.

I know others have suggested this many times before, but if mirage is to keep alacrity, the way it is applied needs to be reconsidered. Whether this opens up all weapons for use in alacrity builds for pve, or something else I don't know. As far as I'm aware the only thing necessary is to make the "dps" and alacrity traits compete with each other. And again here, the axe trait could be an all encompassing general dps trait for weapons.

---------------

The second point is the "reload" mechanic of weapon swap. This would be ok if there was another way to get endurance back directly (not only vigour and food). But as it is, you are heavily disincentivised from staying in one weapon for an extended time in order to benefit from the extra dodge, which causes problems if trying to build around a particular mechanic.

Take Dagger/x - going for all the various disable/interrupt synergies. Maybe it's a case that dagger sucks outside of the ambush, but to benefit from the synergies you have to run either dagger/x or sword/x on the second set, given that you will be forced to swap, and running any other weapon loses out on the disable etc synergy. On the other hand running cele/staff on the off set to stack might and alacrity is laughable how much better it is than anything else.

Ideally it would be nice to stay in one weapon set with good cadence of endurance refund to ambush without having to swap.

I wouldn't mind if energy sigils were maybe changed to their pvp counterparts (25 endurance on swap), but give mirage something like a trait that refunds 10 endurance on striking a target with an ambush, among many other options. That way you could stay in one weapon to make use of whatever synergies there, then swap to the second weapon to use what that weapon is intended for - kiting/burst/etc, rather than only swapping to it because you want to get another dodge/ambush. It is monotonous otherwise.

---------------

Of course there's a whole load of other issues that we've all discussed before, but I hope these two can be looked at in the near future.

[dontlook.1823]

2 hours ago, Curunen.8729 said:

If we're extending beyond core issues, I'd like to also add 2 things with mirage:

- alacrity tied to staff

- sources of direct endurance refund (currently energy sigils, adventurer relic, sigil of stamina)

-------------

The first point is the absurd difference between playing cele staff and any other weapon combo in wvw. On one hand you have reduced cooldowns across the board - blink, IA, jaunt, distortion, heal, etc etc... leading to vastly improved survivability, mobility, and just overall dynamics. On the other hand unless you are playing one-shot full zerker (with short time to kill such that you can gtfo quickly), any other build suffers in comparison. Especially with how immobilise is now almost a death sentence, and mirage in general benefits greatly from maxing boons ie regen/vigour for the modifiers.

I know others have suggested this many times before, but if mirage is to keep alacrity, the way it is applied needs to be reconsidered. Whether this opens up all weapons for use in alacrity builds for pve, or something else I don't know. As far as I'm aware the only thing necessary is to make the "dps" and alacrity traits compete with each other. And again here, the axe trait could be an all encompassing general dps trait for weapons.

---------------

The second point is the "reload" mechanic of weapon swap. This would be ok if there was another way to get endurance back directly (not only vigour and food). But as it is, you are heavily disincentivised from staying in one weapon for an extended time in order to benefit from the extra dodge, which causes problems if trying to build around a particular mechanic.

Take Dagger/x - going for all the various disable/interrupt synergies. Maybe it's a case that dagger sucks outside of the ambush, but to benefit from the synergies you have to run either dagger/x or sword/x on the second set, given that you will be forced to swap, and running any other weapon loses out on the disable etc synergy. On the other hand running cele/staff on the off set to stack might and alacrity is laughable how much better it is than anything else.

Ideally it would be nice to stay in one weapon set with good cadence of endurance refund to ambush without having to swap.

I wouldn't mind if energy sigils were maybe changed to their pvp counterparts (25 endurance on swap), but give mirage something like a trait that refunds 10 endurance on striking a target with an ambush, among many other options. That way you could stay in one weapon to make use of whatever synergies there, then swap to the second weapon to use what that weapon is intended for - kiting/burst/etc, rather than only swapping to it because you want to get another dodge/ambush. It is monotonous otherwise.

---------------

Of course there's a whole load of other issues that we've all discussed before, but I hope these two can be looked at in the near future.

I like the idea of refunding endurance on ambush. The rest is muddled for me since I rarely play mirage. 

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

3 hours ago, Curunen.8729 said:

If we're extending beyond core issues, I'd like to also add 2 things with mirage:

- alacrity tied to staff

- sources of direct endurance refund (currently energy sigils, adventurer relic, sigil of stamina)

-------------

The first point is the absurd difference between playing cele staff and any other weapon combo in wvw. On one hand you have reduced cooldowns across the board - blink, IA, jaunt, distortion, heal, etc etc... leading to vastly improved survivability, mobility, and just overall dynamics. On the other hand unless you are playing one-shot full zerker (with short time to kill such that you can gtfo quickly), any other build suffers in comparison. Especially with how immobilise is now almost a death sentence, and mirage in general benefits greatly from maxing boons ie regen/vigour for the modifiers.

I know others have suggested this many times before, but if mirage is to keep alacrity, the way it is applied needs to be reconsidered. Whether this opens up all weapons for use in alacrity builds for pve, or something else I don't know. As far as I'm aware the only thing necessary is to make the "dps" and alacrity traits compete with each other. And again here, the axe trait could be an all encompassing general dps trait for weapons.

---------------

The second point is the "reload" mechanic of weapon swap. This would be ok if there was another way to get endurance back directly (not only vigour and food). But as it is, you are heavily disincentivised from staying in one weapon for an extended time in order to benefit from the extra dodge, which causes problems if trying to build around a particular mechanic.

Take Dagger/x - going for all the various disable/interrupt synergies. Maybe it's a case that dagger sucks outside of the ambush, but to benefit from the synergies you have to run either dagger/x or sword/x on the second set, given that you will be forced to swap, and running any other weapon loses out on the disable etc synergy. On the other hand running cele/staff on the off set to stack might and alacrity is laughable how much better it is than anything else.

Ideally it would be nice to stay in one weapon set with good cadence of endurance refund to ambush without having to swap.

I wouldn't mind if energy sigils were maybe changed to their pvp counterparts (25 endurance on swap), but give mirage something like a trait that refunds 10 endurance on striking a target with an ambush, among many other options. That way you could stay in one weapon to make use of whatever synergies there, then swap to the second weapon to use what that weapon is intended for - kiting/burst/etc, rather than only swapping to it because you want to get another dodge/ambush. It is monotonous otherwise.

---------------

Of course there's a whole load of other issues that we've all discussed before, but I hope these two can be looked at in the near future.

Or they can take a page from Vindicator and add a trait that amplifies Vigor's effectiveness. And give Mirage better access to Vigor instead of Shattering, to solidify it as the no-Shatter Mesmer espec.

[dontlook.1823]

On 2/13/2024 at 3:37 PM, Curunen.8729 said:

I'd like more changes such as sword 5 cast time halved to 0.5s.

 

14 minutes ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Or they can take a page from Vindicator and add a trait that amplifies Vigor's effectiveness. And give Mirage better access to Vigor instead of Shattering, to solidify it as the no-Shatter Mesmer espec.

I like the idea of getting increased effectiveness from vigor!

[Curunen.8729]

40 minutes ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Or they can take a page from Vindicator and add a trait that amplifies Vigor's effectiveness. And give Mirage better access to Vigor instead of Shattering, to solidify it as the no-Shatter Mesmer espec.

Better vigour would be cool - maybe if they merge speed of sand/nomad's endurance and then have room for it either as a minor or shuffling some major traits around. Though I still take issue with how energy sigils constrain all mirage builds and it would be nice to have some kind of combo follow ups with direct refill outside of weapon swap.

[Teknomancer.4895]

I'd just like to stop having multi-stage skills shoved down our throats which require multiple actions to complete. Mantras are especially bad, but also weapon skills that do the same.

Quote

Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

And yes I know that the "manifesto" was a dead letter within 5 minutes of its release, but still. At this point "preparing to have fun rather than just having fun" appears to be the Mesmer's core mechanic.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

3 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

At this point "preparing to have fun rather than just having fun" appears to be the Mesmer's core mechanic.

Obviously you're not the target player. If you would just play Mesmer like they want you to play Mesmer you could have fun too.

It's not all about you, you know.

[dead.7638]

4 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

If you would just play Mesmer like they want you to play Mesmer you could have fun too.

And what exactly is the right way to play Mesmer?   If I’m not a target audience my opinion is invalid?   Seems like some double standards.   You should work for anet.

[Gesbo.6420]

6 hours ago, dead.7638 said:

And what exactly is the right way to play Mesmer?   If I’m not a target audience my opinion is invalid?   Seems like some double standards.   You should work for anet.

I think he meant that you don't care about support capabilities of mesmer. 

 

The game is trying to allow every profession to have the freedom of playing whatever archiatype the player wants.  I personally am excited for the new tools allowing heal mesmers to exist!

[Teknomancer.4895]

2 hours ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

I personally am excited for the new tools allowing heal mesmers to exist!

That already exists.

[dontlook.1823]

On another unrelated note, I wish that Phantasm 4 on a rifle would be a daze instead of a stun. That way, it could damage in competitive modes. I also would like for them to rework the rifle ambush. Having all your clones line up for a concussive sniper shot that applies confusion and vulnerability would be cool. 

Edited February 16 by dontlook.1823

[dead.7638]

My big hang up on the rifle is they don’t want to include dmg on it what so ever.   So it’s used for only one build.   Specter on the other hand can do both its support and use it for condi dmg, on scepter and well.   Just seems like they don’t feel like doing the extra work imo.

Edited February 16 by dead.7638

[Geronmy.3298]

7 minutes ago, dead.7638 said:

My big hang up on the rifle is they don’t want to include dmg on it what so ever.   So it’s used for only one build.   Specter on the other hand can do both its support and use it for condi dmg, on scepter and well.   Just seems like they don’t feel like doing the extra work imo.

And mine is that plus they're not allowing the other possible support spec to use it because they feel like putting fury on the mechanic instead of alacrity.

[mirage.8046]

On 2/14/2024 at 12:19 AM, Gesbo.6420 said:

I see your Infinate Forge being a tap out and I raise you Speed of Sand. There is literally no reason why the effect of this trait shouldn't be built into the cloak itself. 

Infinite forge should definitely an outlier and needs do something extra given the fact it is a grand master trait that you have to choose 

looks like you got your wish.  the stream mentioned that infinite forge will refund 2 blades after you use any bladesong.

[Gesbo.6420]

1 hour ago, mirage.8046 said:

looks like you got your wish.  the stream mentioned that infinite forge will refund 2 blades after you use any bladesong.

Haha I saw that too, it still feels a little undewhelming for a grand master...  Dune cloak reworks is just as wild