Are Mantras "dead"?

[Nyel.1843]

Can somebody tell me? Or do they still have a use for Mesmers after the recent balance patch?

[Pyroatheist.9031]

...no? They got buffed...

[Hibiskus.8294]

Yes, Mantras are "dead" i know some mesmer mains that are no mesmer mains anymore...they switched to other classes after the "buff".....

And i can understand this ( i mean, in the old forums were some posts how bad the healing mantra now is (the dmg manta is still good), looking at the "buff":

1: Reduced the heal when mantra is not fully charged....

2: Replaced the Trait for the 3rd mantra charge with another trait ( it is now called superiority complex and it is really good for the sword traitline, so i hope they dont change it), but instead of giving us the 3rd charge baseline we now have always just 2 charges (firebrand has 3 charges for his mantras)...

3: since there is a new ammo -system the mantra of recovery (healing mantra) has now a recharge time from 20 seconds.(i find the recharge from the dmg mantra better)

4: since we just have 2 charges we use mostly both charges (since the recharge is too long) and need to cast the mantra again...wich makes the new ammo -system some sort of useless.....

5: when we combine point 3 and point 1 we get the reason why we dont get a good heal ammount out of the healing mantra.

And: when you now say: you dont use the right armor to say that the (healing) mantra is dead: well i had crafted with hot 4 pieces ventari gear to get good healing numbers....before that patch that changed all i was happy with the healing numbers....after the patch....i was dead...or i hitted the enemie and then run, run, run..use mantra, hit the enemie and run, run....ehhh yeah to make it short i was testing this on 3 normal monsters in lake doric (i killed them before the patch without any problems my heal was good enough with ventari gear), after the patch i had no chance the monsters killed me faster than i could heal (and that more than one time) so i decided to give up my healing armor (wich i crafted for more close range combat, i know some would say: no one uses ventari but i had fun with it)...and changed the stats to dmg numbers...and then i changed my heal to mirror.....now i make dmg and have a good heal....but i loved the mantra and still hope they change the healing mantra to make it good again.

[Pyroatheist.9031]

Ok, I guess I need to be a bit more explicit.

Heal Mantra: Still an excellent heal. It's fantastic for proccing on-heal effects, gives a good heal when charged, and still has solid healing if you hold the charges appropriately.

Damage Mantra: Used in the PvE power build for added DPS. Still is effective for the 1-trick-pony burst builds, and now comes with added might.

Daze Mantra: Still excellent for interrupt builds, but now has the added bonus of recharging diversion for even more interrupts. Interrupt builds are fairly niche so this mantra doesn't see a ton of use, but it's extremely effective for that niche.

Cleanse Mantra: 6 AOE cleanses on demand with additional bonus resistance on charge. This is an incredibly powerful utility and is great in any situations with high condition pressure. This sees a lot of use in WvW groups to contribute to condition control.

Stability Mantra: AOE stability, stunbreak, and personal stab with aegis on charge. This is an extremely powerful utility and is a staple for any mesmer build that is used in WvW group compositions. It also sees use in some more specific situations like samarog challenge mode for the high output stability it provides.

Mantras are powerful utilities and remain used in all sorts of play. I don't recommend equipping more than 2 mantras at a time due to the clunkiness of charging them up, but that's how they've always been.

[viquing.8254]

the clunkiness of charging them upThat's the whole point.

One per one mantra where buffed but with the lost of the 3rd charge and +600 toughness while channeling, at the end, they were not buffed or nerfed, they were just "changed".(And with other changes like torch dispell, Mender's Purity and so one i didn't see more mantra than before.)

[bart.3687]

Imo, mantras are really nice utilities, and I am happy that they decided to give them some love (with exception of Mantra of Recovery and Restorative Mantras which got nerfed a little)

Cleanse Mantra rocks now, I dont even enter pvp without having it slotted.

Mantra of Pain is still kinda underwhelming. I rarely see anyone using it, maybe it's useful in high end pve or wvw, idk.

Mantra of Distraction's Diversion cd reduction is lovely.

Mantra of Concentration is basically 2x stunbreak + stability, preventing you from being cc locked. Quite useful, isn't it?

[expandas.7051]

Mantra of Recovery went from being one of the highest healing per second skills (when traited) in the entire game to bottom tier. This, along with the reworked Mender's Purity guts one of the few remaining potent core Mesmer roaming builds (Chaos/Domination, Dueling, Inspiration). Like Pyro mentioned, you should only be picking it up now to proc on-heal abilities. The instant cast nature of the Mantra charges is still a huge advantage for WvW boonshare builds, but if that's not necessary you'll want to review the other heals, especially Ether Feast.

[Esplen.3940]

Actually Mantra of Recovery is still the strongest heal, it just requires you to leave it uncharged if you want the burst healing, or charged if you want some spot healing.

Restorative Mantras got hit pretty heavily, though, so our AoE healing to sniped (most of the heal from that got moved onto the Recovery charging).

[MailMail.6534]

I think Mantras are great in some PvE content as well as a lot of WvW situations. I occasionally use Mantra Cleanse, because it is arguably our strongest condi removal utility. That is only IF I'm not using Inspiration and I don't value the boon rip on pDisenchanter.

Still, Mantras are in a decent place. Much better than glamours that is!

[Levetty.1279]

Instead of listening to people about how the charge mechanic is too clunky and stops them from being useful they removed the extra charge trait and didn't make it baseline in an attempt to get people to charge them in battle.

Yeah they are dead.

[Pyroatheist.9031]

@Levetty.1279 said:Instead of listening to people about how the charge mechanic is too clunky and stops them from being useful they removed the extra charge trait and didn't make it baseline in an attempt to get people to charge them in battle.

Yeah they are dead.

Not sure what game you're playing, but it doesn't seem to be the same one as me...

[Levetty.1279]

@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Instead of listening to people about how the charge mechanic is too clunky and stops them from being useful they removed the extra charge trait and didn't make it baseline in an attempt to get people to charge them in battle.

Yeah they are dead.

Not sure what game you're playing, but it doesn't seem to be the same one as me...

In the pre PoF balance pass, they removed the Mantra trait and and replaced it with a much better damage bonus to crits trait.

[Pyroatheist.9031]

@Levetty.1279 said:

@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Instead of listening to people about how the charge mechanic is too clunky and stops them from being useful they removed the extra charge trait and didn't make it baseline in an attempt to get people to charge them in battle.

Yeah they are dead.

Not sure what game you're playing, but it doesn't seem to be the same one as me...

In the pre PoF balance pass, they removed the Mantra trait and and replaced it with a much better damage bonus to crits trait.

Correct. But mantras are far from dead. I just detailed a variety of uses that they still see. They've always been utilities that you'll pick 1 or 2 of to add a bit of potent utility to a build, not something that you build around as a base concept. This is still the appropriate way to use them, and mantras are quite strong when applied appropriately.

[Durzlla.6295]

@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:

@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:Instead of listening to people about how the charge mechanic is too clunky and stops them from being useful they removed the extra charge trait and didn't make it baseline in an attempt to get people to charge them in battle.

Yeah they are dead.

Not sure what game you're playing, but it doesn't seem to be the same one as me...

In the pre PoF balance pass, they removed the Mantra trait and and replaced it with a much better damage bonus to crits trait.

Correct. But mantras are far from dead. I just detailed a variety of uses that they still see. They've always been utilities that you'll pick 1 or 2 of to add a bit of potent utility to a build, not something that you build around as a base concept. This is still the appropriate way to use them, and mantras are quite strong when applied appropriately.

So much of this, I've ran 2 mantras in PvP for the season pre PoF and was loving them with the on charge heal, the only complaint I have with mantras currently is that the charge effect on stab and condi cleanse one don't seem as potent as the other ones, but they're not bad by any means.

Also, am i the only one here who thinks a full on mantra build just seems ridiculous thematically? Why would anyone be walking around repeating 4 mantras over and over? that's just kinda weird..

[Esplen.3940]

@Durzlla.6295 said:Also, am i the only one here who thinks a full on mantra build just seems ridiculous thematically? Why would anyone be walking around repeating 4 mantras over and over? that's just kinda weird..

Just replace Temporal Enchanter with Temporal Chanter and make it so charging one Mantra will charge all your Mantras. 8D

[Carighan.6758]

@Hibiskus.8294 said:2: Replaced the Trait for the 3rd mantra charge with another trait ( it is now called superiority complex and it is really good for the sword traitline, so i hope they dont change it), but instead of giving us the 3rd charge baseline we now have always just 2 charges (firebrand has 3 charges for his mantras)...

Considering one of the worst things they ever did to Mantras, and what started the whole balance mess, was giving them multiple charges (instead of just removing HM as they should have), I fail to see how making the effects even weaker for a third charge would have been helpful.

[Zenith.7301]

@bart.3687 said:Imo, mantras are really nice utilities, and I am happy that they decided to give them some love (with exception of Mantra of Recovery and Restorative Mantras which got nerfed a little)

Cleanse Mantra rocks now, I dont even enter pvp without having it slotted.

Mantra of Pain is still kinda underwhelming. I rarely see anyone using it, maybe it's useful in high end pve or wvw, idk.

Mantra of Distraction's Diversion cd reduction is lovely.

Mantra of Concentration is basically 2x stunbreak + stability, preventing you from being cc locked. Quite useful, isn't it?

Mantra of pain isn't useful in high end PvE. It's simply used because power mesmer doesn't have a single relevant utility outside it. So one autoattack worth of damage is better than nothing, but still awful.

I would never use heal mantra since it interrupts DPS rotation with the channel and waiting to be 50% health for it to heal anything worth a damn is useless in PvE because either the druid heals you before you hit 50%, or you get one shot by anything that hits you in PvE at 50% health.

The other mantras are no different. Blink is a way better stunbreak if you need one, for condi cleanse you never need one in PvE since druids exist (and if they didn't, ventari rev or water ele would take care of those without paying for a utility slot).

And Mantra of Distraction is straight up garbage in PvE. Try it on a breakbar, and notice how it does virtually nothing. 1 second of daze barely scratches a breakbar, and it has roughly the same cd as revenant staff 5 which does breakbar damage approximate to moa signet but on 1/4 the cooldown.

I'll never understand why mesmer, who's supposed to be the master of shutdown and interrupts, has such huge opportunity costs to interrupting/CC'ing and has straight up inferior CC to warrior, guardian, and engineer, and has inferior interrupt to thief's pulmonary impact.

[Mithos.9023]

There currently is a discussion about mantras in the guardian forum that might be interesting for you too.

They mostly talked about the charge up being way too clunky as there are many situations that reset your mantras and you have to charge them up again like instance entering, map change, death etc. The idea is that mantras would be charged up baseline as you never not want them to be prepared when entering combat. Even so the mesmer's mantras work different it is the same as there is no reason to enter combat with an uncharged mantra, the effects for charging up are not worth it and at best it gets you killed as you don’t have access to the main effect.I posted a suggestion in the guardian forum on how to solve the issue of mantras being to clunky. You can skip the first paragraph as it is mostly my rant on why the mantras are bad designed.

_ “I always disliked mantras for the annoyance of charging them up. You have to recharge them so often it feels they do nothing than wasting your time, every map change you need a recharge, death you need a recharge, just logged in first recharge your mantras. I hoped with the ammunition system this would change but no. Now every ammo skill feels like what mantras were supposed to be and mantras feel like an inferior version.

My idea would be to change mantras to the following: You always have them loaded up by default. If you are in combat and used your last charge the mantra flips over to the loading skill. You now would have the options to either wait for the charges to regenerate or to use the recharge to load them up to the maximum. With that you would have the risk reward situation, using the charge up skill with the risk of being interrupted but gain immediate access to your mantra skills again.

There is one thing I am not sure. Should the mantra slowly charge like an ammunition skill when emptied and the recharge skill only be there until the first charge is recovered? The recharge skill would still distinguish the two skill types, but they would be quite close.The other option I thought up was when a mantra is emptied the automatic recharge would need the combined time of all charges to restore the mantra. For example if a mantra had two charges with 10 seconds recharge once emptied, you wouldn’t get a charge after 10 seconds and it would need to charge up both charged so 20 seconds.”_

[Carighan.6758]

@Zenith.7301 said:I'll never understand why mesmer, who's supposed to be the master of shutdown and interrupts, has such huge opportunity costs to interrupting/CC'ing and has straight up inferior CC to warrior, guardian, and engineer, and has inferior interrupt to thief's pulmonary impact.

Because (like a lot of class mechanics on a lot of classes) GW2 has too many skills for its own good.

It follows naturally that a giant portion of those skills are going to be suboptimal for any given situation, and many even for all situations. And it doens't take many class + skills + traits + weapons before the first types of skills become suboptimal in all situations.

If anything, GW2 could now benefit from a massive culling campaign. Skills, traits, item stat combinations, sigils, runes, maybe even entire weapons. The game has too much cruft.

[Nyel.1843]

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:I'll never understand why mesmer, who's supposed to be the master of shutdown and interrupts, has such huge opportunity costs to interrupting/CC'ing and has straight up inferior CC to warrior, guardian, and engineer, and has inferior interrupt to thief's pulmonary impact.

Because (like a lot of class mechanics on a lot of classes) GW2 has

too many skills

for its own good.

Well, I never played a class in GW2 that has more "useless" utility skills than Mesmer (and it didn't really change over the years).

[Nyel.1843]

Oh and another thing: why do Firebrand Mantras get better with their second cast? Why don't Mesmer have a similar effect?

[Carighan.6758]

@Nyel.1843 said:Oh and another thing: why do Firebrand Mantras get better with their second cast? Why don't Mesmer have a similar effect?

They'll turn this around and tell you it is because they don't get an on-charge effect.

[bart.3687]

@Zenith.7301 said:

@bart.3687 said:Imo, mantras are really nice utilities, and I am happy that they decided to give them some love (with exception of Mantra of Recovery and Restorative Mantras which got nerfed a little)

Cleanse Mantra rocks now, I dont even enter pvp without having it slotted.

Mantra of Pain is still kinda underwhelming. I rarely see anyone using it, maybe it's useful in high end pve or wvw, idk.

Mantra of Distraction's Diversion cd reduction is lovely.

Mantra of Concentration is basically 2x stunbreak + stability, preventing you from being cc locked. Quite useful, isn't it?

Mantra of pain isn't useful in high end PvE. It's simply used because power mesmer doesn't have a single relevant utility outside it. So one autoattack worth of damage is better than nothing, but still awful.

I would never use heal mantra since it interrupts DPS rotation with the channel and waiting to be 50% health for it to heal anything worth a kitten is useless in PvE because either the druid heals you before you hit 50%, or you get one shot by anything that hits you in PvE at 50% health.

The other mantras are no different. Blink is a way better stunbreak if you need one, for condi cleanse you never need one in PvE since druids exist (and if they didn't, ventari rev or water ele would take care of those without paying for a utility slot).

And Mantra of Distraction is straight up garbage in PvE. Try it on a breakbar, and notice how it does virtually nothing. 1 second of daze barely scratches a breakbar, and it has roughly the same cd as revenant staff 5 which does breakbar damage approximate to moa signet but on 1/4 the cooldown.

I'll never understand why mesmer, who's supposed to be the master of shutdown and interrupts, has such huge opportunity costs to interrupting/CC'ing and has straight up inferior CC to warrior, guardian, and engineer, and has inferior interrupt to thief's pulmonary impact.

Well yeah, I should've mentioned that I was talking mostly from PvP / WvW perspective.

I do agree that Mantras in pve are kind of useless due to their long casts and overall clunkiness. And yeah, it's true Mantra of Distraction is total trash in pve (almost no dmg to break bars, cant trigger interrupt traits because of them).

[Nyel.1843]

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Nyel.1843 said:Oh and another thing: why do Firebrand Mantras get better with their second cast? Why don't Mesmer have a similar effect?

They'll turn this around and tell you it is because they don't get an on-charge effect.

Okay I could live with that but then... Firebrand Mantras have 3 charges where Mesmer Mantras have only 2. ..

[Carighan.6758]

@Nyel.1843 said:Okay I could live with that but then... Firebrand Mantras have 3 charges where Mesmer Mantras have only 2. ..

Yeah, well... I guess ANet's opinion is actually this:

• Both types of Mantra have 3 "effects". We have Cast -> Charge #1 -> Charge #2, while Guardians just have 3 charges.
• Our on-cast effect is generally different or stronger (heal mantra!), while Guardians have a stronger final charge.

Is it balanced? Well, I don't know. Mantras are so badly designed, I don't even think about their balance, they just ought to be scrapped. On Mesmers, on Guardians, as a concept, on paper, in the source files, everywhere.