Shattering the Status Quo

[Zaidya.6138]

@Robert Gee.9246 said:

@Solori.6025 said:Wait...So instead of the system we have now where if you summon a phantasm while having 3 clones it replaces a clone..

If you summon a phantasm in the new system while you have max clones it'll just become a clone and not do any phantasm skill?!?!No, the phantasm will always attack. Then it will become a clone. If you have max clones at this point, it will replace an existing clone.

but the phantasm itself won't count as replacement? only if it is destroyed after attacking and becomes a clone, this clone replaces another?

[Daishi.6027]

I love to see these types of reworks coming.We've needing this for a long time, so thank you for all this effort in striving to make mes feel better.

That said, all I've wanted for a while now is for power to be raid viable...

My question is: Will any of these changes work towards power viability?

High power sustained damage has been very important since the introduction of raids, and this just seems to work against any hope power had to compete given that phantasms kept damage up, and they now default to clones which innately scale better with condi specs.Hybrid builds are okay and all, but being pigeon holed ONLY into pure condi or hybrid for PvE isn't exactly fun.

[InsaneQR.7412]

Anet finally changed phantasms so they are more active and everything mesmers could do is QQing. Makes me kinda sad to see this. But i am happy for the change.Wait for the traits before complaining maybe there is a retargeting build in and chrono could get phantasms that attack twice before getting into a clone or just chabge into two clones.I am genuinly curious.

[Nash.2681]

@sleepy.2147 said:

@flog.3485 said:

@"Jojo.6140" said:Can someone explain why active gameplay is considered better than passive gameplay? Some people might enjoy a more laid-back and chilled gaming-experience, why would that be bad?

Because it is boring to play a passive gameplay in a game that promotes active combat ?

One mans boring is another's fun. Some people like to go ice fishing after all.Good game design would allow for both play styles in letting passive play result in acceptable/ok DPS, yet making active play result in great/best possible DPS. Simple

effort vs reward.

That's the whole point. This game rewards everyone equally, no matter wether one is a 120+ apm keyboard virtouso or a 3-clicks-I'm-a-gonna-get-some-coffee-and-collect-my-loot-afterwards guy. The only difference would be the time needed for specific content, even though the time spans are rarely so big to make a significant difference. So I have much sympathie for any effort that erases too lazy playstyles.Also, everyone should consider his own perspective when commenting on such balance changes. If one (almost) only plays open world, there's simply no need to worry. Literally anything works there, playing might feel a bit different, but it won't hold you back from enjoying what you enjoy already.People that mostly do PvP/WvW/instanced PvE content and actually (have to) care about balance, party settings, roles, efficiency, etc. should by all means help the Dev's to get the big picture and point out potential flaws and risks in their plans they might have overlooked so far.

One final note: I know that I'm often very sceptical about the way Arena.Net acts and what they do and vocal my opinion in a sometimes quite sarcastic way. But this time I'd like to give a big "thumbs up!" for this weeks communication offense on future changes on the forums!

[rank eleven monk.9502]

There is so much negativity and ignorance in this thread, it's just laughable. The whole community was begging for phantasm / clone rework. Passive gameplay shouldn't be rewarding ,ever.

Let's wait and see the changes. I'm more interested in how it changes my power mirage in pvp.

Sounds like a cool change that will affect many things

[Nightmare.1234]

this change sounds like it was focused on raids and high level fractals mostly.this a pretty big redesign if only rev had had this kind of drastic redesign.

going to be a lot of trait changes like Chronophantasma, Phantasmal Haste, Phantasmal Force and Persistence of Memorythis shouldn't hopefully affect my play style to much, since I use phantasms for a 1 use effect and they will still become a clone after for my burst but the different delays between each phantasms skill duration might be hard get use to.

going have to wait and see how this plays out with the confusion change.

[Aenaos.8160]

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@Aenaos.8160 said:This change will make Mesmers even more powerful in PvP and WvW,where the main source oftheir power is the ability to chain shatters form stealth or while evading.Now they won't even have to manage their illusions,and no downside for using a phantasm.Phantasms were never an issue for any half decent player.They are easy to avoid,easy to kill,and theymake the player stand out from the illusions.Continuing the already set trend.Less input,more automation,more power.

I'm sorry but why does there have to be a downside to using a core skill? Warriors don't have a downside to burst skills, Thieves don't have a downside to using their dual-wield skills, Rangers don't have a downside to pet skills (aside from the time it takes for the pet to actually do the skill), Necromancers don't have a downside to shroud, Elementalists don't have a downside to switching attunements. Do I really need to go on? The issue wasn't whether or not they were difficult to use, the issue with phantasms is that using them means you flat out ignore your class mechanic or vice versa. And your last statement is flat out wrong. Phantasms as they are now are not more input less automation, they are literally automation, you use the phantasm and you forget about it, it does everything on its own. Now it's basically the mesmer performing the actual attack instead of hoping you can distract someone long enough for the phantasm to do anything.

Phantasms as they are now,they are of no concern in PvP and WvW.My post is referring to shatter Mesmer builds that are already reeking havoc in PvP and WvW,are now going to be even easier to play.It's one less mechanic to worry about.

[zealex.9410]

Pls handle it well and by well i mean make existing power build more interesting to play without having their dmg drop by 10k while making sure mirage wont go over 40k again.

Also these changes kinda seem to hurt chrono alot more compraired to mirage.

[Cynn.1659]

@Faffin.6741 said:

@Lishtenbird.2814 said:I don't like this. I'm tired of more APM required everywhere the further the game goes, it doesn't excite me, it drives me away more and more.

Me too.

APM is the worst, let's just all play some runescape

[Toolbox.9375]

Clones on their own are absolutely useless to core Mesmer and Chronomancer... And the Shatters are hardly enough to pick up the slack, given their cooldowns relative to their effects. This change seems to me like it will essentially force Mesmers into using Mirage to have any sort of perpetual damage output. Not to mention, Chronophantasma changing to trigger two attacks instead of "reviving" the phantasms cuts out a lot of their potential tricks.

I'm sorry, but I REALLY do not have high expectations for this change. It sounds like a major loss of choice rather than expansion of choice. I don't think it's a good idea unless more changes occur than just what's listed, namely increasing the effectiveness of both Phantasms AND Clones.

[Rainiris.1975]

However we've discovered as the game has developed and evolved that providing this tension usually ends up removing the incentive to use the profession's core mechanic and leads to more passive gameplay. This can be seen in a lot of "optimized" builds for mesmers involving summoning three phantasms and then auto-attacking for extended periods of time in order to avoid destroying the phantasms by using another illusion skill.

So you want to.... fix.... something that was.... workign as intended?

[Sahfur.5612]

Please, whatever you do, do not allow this to be a buff in wvw. It is already the most carry, braindead thing a person can play and that is taking spellbreaker into account.If I see even more mirages dominating the landscape (I wonder why certain classes are way more popular to see in wvw: I'll give you a hint, powercreep).. then you aren't doing the balancing correctly.They have the most get out of jail free cards of any class, the strongest duelist by far, they have ranged, stealth, evades, clones (you fight the user interface), teleports, reflects, and enough cheese to harvest if one were to actually wish to endeavor to make it so that the moon was made out of cheese. Usually, when you get one cheese mechanic, you give something up for it. Kinda the definition of balancing and specialization.They have damage and survivability. Mobility and function. CC and condi clear. Stealth and evasion. There is comparative lack of engage commit to thief, which actually gives certain things up in order to do its job.In other words, balance involves giving something up to be proficient in another thing, a large portion of the time. Mirage gives almost nothing up and that is why there are SO many players using mirage. People will always take the easiest path. If I swap to mirage I become like a kid in a candy shop easily able to accomplish tasks that take much more effort on other classes. 1v3? Oh no, I might have to press a few more buttons and keep my distance during parts of the battle where I run out of cheese mechanics.The only reason you don't see even more mirage... some people just don't like using the astounding levels of cheese.It is ok to have cheese in the game as a gimmick but I am not going to sugar coat it... no special candy! Stop buffing already braindead duelists.I shouldn't have to spend so much time killing these people even though they allow me to land every single burst and cc. Don't give out this many panic buttons then be surprised when people run it.

If you are under any other impression other than that this class is overtuned, you are likely delusional and simply afraid that you won't do as well with a balanced class.Frankly? If you git gud, you can still win. I still win most of the time against this class but it is primarily because they make a huge mistake and allow it to happen, just like fighting a thief. Fight a good enough thief and they will know when to disengage. Thief actually has to do this since it doesn't have the engage potential of mirage. That is the only outcome, actually.. because with the sheer number of get out of jail free cards, this class controls whether it loses or just gets away with a draw. Training on something that isn't brainded is healthy for the game. That is part of the game and trust me, it is more fun to earn it and take that journey.

Balance this... unless you want all of wvw to just be mesmers thieves and firebrand with the occasional spellbreaker. Nvm it already is, and since mirage is looking to be god tier soon, already having been a tier above the others.. We might as well rename the game mode "mesmers v mesmers v mesmers v mesmers v mesmers v mesmers."I understand people bought legendary armour etc blah blah blah. So did warriors, so did other classes that have been ludicrously op at various points in development. Noone should get special candy. Stop apologizing to them for taking their pve toy. It is far more damaging to the game to overtune them in other modes as some kind of carebear get well soon package.

Make it require more commit to a fight, tone down some of the cheese, or make it require more skill/effort. Full counter deserved its nerf, scourge needed to be toned down, and many other things have historically been toned down when they gave a disproportionate level of power for very little effort. Do it again, and remind them that it happened to other classes before it happened to theirs.

$0.02

[AEFA.9035]

Hey ANet, can you guys do some changes to Ranger spirits and Revenant legends? I mean I think its best if we don't have passive game plays and seems like it can be done.

[otto.5684]

This is great.

[Unknown.3976]

The problem doesn't lie with phantasms but with the shatter mechanics, the payoff just isn't there. Shatter builds are not prevalent in PvE becuz the dmg output was too low, alot of effort for subpar dmg and now Anet is insisting that we play along with shatter builds ?? Phantasms might be passive but they have their quirks and they are what make Mesmer unique to play. Mesmer do need some sort of rework but wiping phantasm builds? Isn't quite what we expected. We shall see how this all turns out.

[PluizeWin.2139]

Will it make use of the ammunition mechanic? That would be cool (at least, that's what I think)

[Mez.4216]

@Hitman.5829 said:Ok, ok, but what are you going to do to address the perma evade, perma dodge mesmer? Is the break stun on dodge going to be nerfed or is the mesmer going to continue to face roll everyone?

Mesmer has to much mobility, too much evade, to much stealth, to much stun break. Tell us what are you going to do to fix mesmer?Changing how phantasms work will not nerf mirrage at all!

We ain't getting nerfed! Haaaaaaaaaaaaah! ??

[JotGeh.8047]

Question from a PvE player focused on fractals and raids (might overlooked the answeres in previous posts and the announcements, sorry if I did):

• What determines the sort of clone that spawns after a phantasm will vanish? Does "current weapon set" mean main-hand weapon (like for e.g. Illusionary Riposte)?

I'm asking with fractals with "no pain, no gain" in mind. Mesmers uses P.Disenchater to strip Boons frequently enough to counter perma protection etc. from bosses. After the rework, I am wondering if and how we can keep the frequence:

• relying on sword clones (related to my second question) - Sounds intriguing, because we can take back Well of Recall or even go with W.o.Precognition for more party wide defensives
• Off-Hand Sigil of Nullification
• Null Field over Disenchanter
• Rotation with no pain no gain procs in mind to time disenchanter well
• Sharing the job with Revenants/Necros/Spellbreaker
• Idea Rework for F2 or F3 in sort of Confuses/Stuns and strips boons (I don't expect it, would be broken for competitive game modes)

I'm curious, how this will turn out, but think I will like the changes. I welcome more uses for f1-2 than just using them between phases in raids or fractals to get a bit alacrity.

[dontlook.1823]

I am mostly apprehensive. There is some excitement there. But mostly apprehension just cause its almost a complete overhaul to the Mesmer.

To be fair the only source of my apprehension is the possible DPS loss through this new re-work. As they've stated they want us to engage more with the core mechanic which is awesome, IMHO. ANet further stated they wanted more expenditure/usage of the core mechanic to be rewarding. If this stands true then I am not too worried as it should be an overall DPS increase.

[LadyKitty.6120]

Oh rite. The disappearance of phantasms means that...shatterchrono will most likely become THE thing. This far distort share and alacrity phantasms were the main reasons why shatterchronos were frowned upon. But distort share got nurfed and now the phantasms also don't need to stay alive. This also means that power support chronos can go more offensive gearwise, thanks to Chaos' boon/condi duration trait.

[eldenbri.1059]

Thanks very much for sharing the goals and the basics of the mechanics. It already gives me something to think about in terms of possible new ideas.

Also thanks for being willing to take on a big change like this. It's really hard to get everything to work out with a change this major, and I'm thinking that you'll most likely need one or two more tweaks to tune things after this round of changes. Thanks for being willing to put in that kind of effort!

[ZDragon.3046]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:A message from Robert Gee, Guild Wars 2 Systems Team:

Today I wanted to give you all a heads up on some important changes coming to the mesmer profession in the coming update. These changes affect phantasms, which are a core part of the mesmer profession mechanic (illusions) and as a result, will have a large effect on how the mesmer profession plays after the update.

In one sentence, these changes can be summed up as, "Phantasms become clones after their initial attack."

Here are the specific details of how it works:

• Phantasms no longer will persist indefinitely. Instead, a phantasm will attack once and then automatically be destroyed. If interrupted during its attack the phantasm also will be destroyed.
• Phantasms still can be targeted by skills and take damage while alive. Phantasms can be destroyed by damaging skills before they finish their attack.
• A destroyed phantasm will be replaced with a clone based on your current weapon set. This clone will spawn regardless of how the phantasm was destroyed. The clone is spawned at the location of the phantasm at the time it was destroyed.
• Shatter skills no longer destroy phantasms, and phantasms no longer count towards the maximum illusion limit.

This is a pretty large gameplay shift so I wanted to talk a little bit about why we are doing this and what it means for your mesmer gameplay.

The Illusion of Choice

Mesmers always have had a tension between clones and phantasms; this tension was designed into the profession when the game launched. The idea was that shattering clones would be good for burst damage while leaving phantasms active would be an option for sustained damage. Choosing whether or not to shatter was intended to be one of the core decision points for those playing mesmer.

However we've discovered as the game has developed and evolved that providing this tension usually ends up removing the incentive to use the profession's core mechanic and leads to more passive gameplay. This can be seen in a lot of "optimized" builds for mesmers involving summoning three phantasms and then auto-attacking for extended periods of time in order to avoid destroying the phantasms by using another illusion skill.

Mirrored Gameplay

In the past, we've made some corrections to professions with this type gameplay as seen with the changes to the warrior's Adrenal Health and Berserker's Power traits, which previously rewarded saving adrenaline over spending it. Phantasms are a mechanic entirely based on discouraging the use of shatter skills and as a result, correcting this has touched a larger number of skills and traits than it did for warrior. However our primary goal with these changes is the same: to create a more active profession gameplay loop that rewards spending profession resources over saving them. For mesmer this means play patterns which revolve around generating and shattering clones while phantasms can be summoned for utility, bursts of damage, or some combination of the two.

Power Return

Because the power level of phantasm skills and traits usually assume that the phantasm will not be destroyed immediately, we have done an extensive balance pass on all skills and traits related to phantasms as well as several related traits and skills. We've also taken this opportunity to re-evaluate some of the under-performing phantasms to rework them into more impactful skills. For example, the Phantasmal Defender skill now taunts foes instead of buffing allies and the Phantasmal Warlock skill summons two phantasms, each with a new attack.

Phantasmal Feedback

While we're committed to making this change to phantasms as we feel it will improve the gameplay health of the mesmer profession, we also recognize that there will be an adjustment period where players will need to adapt to these changes. This is one of the largest changes we've undertaken for a single profession short of creating new specializations, and we realize that it may be jarring to some players. We'll be watching the feedback on our official forums after these changes go live and make adjustments where necessary.

P.S. I'm sure that at least a few of you are wondering what this phantasm change means for Chronomancers in raids because the phantasmal avenger is a key component of keeping up alacrity for the party. For more information, please read today's forum post about alacity.

I have an honest question.

Could this Mesmer update be a start of a broad rework for all professions? For example next would Necromancer receive a bit baseline change or Rev? Will other professions be visited in this amount of detail over the next year possibly? Or are their now plans and only this big rework for Mesmer.

I would hate to point out that it would be slightly unfair possibly even bias to other professions that actually do have bigger problems than Mesmers "tension between clones and phantasms"

RevenantIs a total mess between trait lines, far to dependent on glint and situation with other traitlines.NecroIs lost and confused at base with its mechanic torn between it being a defensive tool with no defensive options in or out of its shroud, or an offensive tool with sub par offensive damage. Its remained slow for thematic purposes yet its hardest hitting skills fall far below every other profession. Hitting harder and faster in todays meta.EngiOutside of Holosmith and bunker scrapper is lost and confused also a very boon dependent profession.

These are just a few basic examples in my opinion .I think it would be cool to finally have kind of a gw2 2.0revamp where all professions base mechanics are revisited and reworked like you guys are doing for mesmer in some ways or another if they really need it. Most games go through this kind of thing after several years but i cant recall gw2 doing this yet.

Im just looking for hints though I would understand if you couldn't give out that kind of information at this time. :) Thanks

[storm.3120]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:-snif-

"Phantasms become clones after their initial attack."IIRC mesmer dps always been tied to phantasms and on its own mesmer have the most pathetic damage in game before that nerf alrdy ... Any plants to completely rework mesmer skills ? Completely remove them and actually add skills that does damage? Or now mesmer becomes 1k dps clone that unable to do anything on its own ? Quickness FB doin ~25k dmg on golem , just because we have nerfed alacrity its fine to make our damage close to zero ? Sounds like in PVP phantasm recharge trait was completely destroyed and replaced with pathetic useless trait that does NOTHING(for sake of PoF sales) need REWORK because this trait is most useless in game.So main question is... Would be useless traits reworked like that persistence of memory ? Would mesmer get sustained damage buff because you destroy its main source of damage ?

[Nikal.4921]

@Unknown.3976 said:

The problem doesn't lie with phantasms but with the shatter mechanics, the payoff just isn't there. Shatter builds are not prevalent in PvE becuz the dmg output was too low, alot of effort for subpar dmg and now Anet is insisting that we play along with shatter builds ?? Phantasms might be passive but they have their quirks and they are what make Mesmer unique to play. Mesmer do need some sort of rework but wiping phantasm builds? Isn't quite what we expected. We shall see how this all turns out.

Call me less than pleased with these changes. I resent being told how to play, and that's what this feels like. They could have made Shatter builds more appealing and left Phantasm builds alone. I won't be playing Mes anymore.

[Bugabuga.9721]

Can "restore alacrity's effectiveness" be rolled into base or minir trait? Because unless alternative is "you get 10x DPS" or "your phantasms don't expode at all" it'll be "you have to take it".