Are Mantras "dead"?

[Durzlla.6295]

@Nyel.1843 said:

@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. ..

This is because we have oncharge effects.

They way Anet balanced Mantras is that they want Mesmers to be more "combat casting" their Mantras, so we get a charge effect, and lower charge time, and WAY lower cooldowns compared to the guardians. And since we want to be throwing out the Mantras and then charging them it makes sense for us to want less charges so we can charge them up again, thus we only have 2 charges and no + charge trait. Cause if we had 3 charges and then an in charge effect baseline and on the trait we'd run into issues where we're trying to get the oncharge effect (IE I want diversion back) but would have to waste a charge so the Cd can start, which would just feel bad.

[Tseison.4659]

Lots of walls of text :astonished: but anyways, here’s hoping they give us 3 charges instead of 2 since the Firebrand gets 3 and for balancing reasons we should as well.

They can also have it where the last charge has increased effectiveness etc... :)

[Durzlla.6295]

@Tseison.4659 said:Lots of walls of text :astonished: but anyways, here’s hoping they give us 3 charges instead of 2 since the Firebrand gets 3 and for balancing reasons we should as well.

They can also have it where the last charge has increased effectiveness etc... :)

Keep in mind though, guardian Mantras have a 25s CD for the utilities, 30s Cd for the heal and 40s CD for the ult ON TOP OF having a nearly 3s cast time for the charge, making it so once you pop that 3rd charge you're never using that Mantra again in the same combat.

Mesmers on the other hand have just over a 2s cast time, and get the longest CD of our Mantras being a whopping 12s. And we get an effect on charging it instead of putting it on CD making it not only useable in combat, but rewarding to fully use and charge in combat.

I would take our Mantras over guardian Mantras any day.

[Panda.1967]

Personally I still use Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Pain in my build, but only because I don't like any of the other mesmer heals and the damage from Mantra of Pain is about the only thing that lets me actually progress through content at a reasonable rate...

However... The changes to mantras really did more harm than good.

1) Loss of 3rd charge - The removal of Harmonious Mantras made the clunkiness of their initial charge painfully apparent, before I could spam Mantra of Pain on enemies and never really notice the charge up, now I find myself wishing it'd charge faster all the time and running for my life as my damage suddenly stops. Additionally this change cut out 1/3 of my damage and healing efficiency.

2) Mantra of Recovery healing threshold - This has to be by far the STUPIDEST change ever. If it wasn't bad enough that I only get 2 charges instead of 3, now I have my healing cut in half if I'm above 50% HP. Yea, despite the wording in the patch notes, they did NOT increase healing below 50% HP, no the healing below 50% HP is EXACTLY what it healed before the change. This was a straight up NERF!

3) Mantra of Recovery Heal on charge - Ok, a decent size heal when initially charging the mantra. That's not bad... except that the charge time is still crazy, to even take advantage of this heal without dying in the process you have to either run around like a chicken with your head cut off and hope nothing hits you, gain invulnerability, or use Distortion before you start charging. It's really not worth it... maybe if the heal was bigger or gave you Regen...

4) Mender's Purity nerf - We went from cleansing 2 conditions on heal to 1... why? Literally every other class with a condi cleanse on heal trait got to keep their multiple condi cleanse, none of them were reduced down to 1. Hell even Guardians kept their 2 condi cleanse + deal damage AND gained their own healing mantra. Lesser Smite Conditions on Guardian is literally identical to Smite Condition, unlike our new Lesser Power Cleanse compared to Power Cleanse. If Guardians get to keep the full effect of Smite Condition on their Smiter's Boon trait, then we should get to keep the full benefit of Power Cleanse on our Mender's Purity trait, we don't even do damage with ours, it's just an AoE condi cleanse.

5) New Ammo Mechanic - Recharge times on every mesmer mantra are for some stupid reason 2x (except Pain which is 10x) their normal cooldown. Contrast to Guardian Mantras which have significantly shorter recharge times than their cooldowns. We were told this was done to "encourage combat charging of mantras for mesmers" since they don't want mesmer mantras and guardian mantras to feel the same... however this does nothing but make the ammo mechanic on mesmer mantras useless 99% of the time. If they really wanted to encourage combat charging of mantras on mesmers, then our charge time needs to be significantly shorter. And recharge times ABSOLUTELY MUST be shorter than cooldowns or at the very least EQUAL TO THEM to even be useful. Mantra of Pain due to it's normal 1sec CD is the only exception to this, as a 1sec recharge would make it virtually unlimited in charges, however a 10sec recharge on a skill with a 1sec CD is still absurd... 5sec would have been fine maybe.

6) Boons on charge - It's nice and all to get some baseline benefits to charging... but they really arn't that impressive on their own... Especially when you take into consideration the fact that we lost our bonus toughness during charge that we used to have. It wasn't an equal trade off, honestly it was a nerf.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

Thanks to this thread, I plan on making a viable PoF mantra build for PvP or WvW with Mirage. I think it would be interesting.

[Levetty.1279]

I wonder how other classes would react if they had a 2 1/4 second cast time for 2 seconds of resistance.

[Nyel.1843]

I think one of the best ways to counter the cast time issues would be having effects during the cast not only when you finish it. This could look like this:

Mantra of Pain: Every second it pulses and inflicts Blind / damage around the MesmerMantra of Recovery: Every second you AoE heal around you and when you finish you cast Regeneration in a small radiusMantra of Resolve: Every second you reduce the damage of conditions by 33%...

[Nyel.1843]

So I just tried Mantras again and they've been changed pretty much since I last used them. Most of them have become pretty useful and another thing I noticed is that when you once chanted them you can keep them constantly activated when you only use one stack instead of both. So they're pretty nice, especially the damage Mantra which is a very strong AoE on a very short CD. The last time I used them Mantra of Pain was a ST skill that's been pretty week but they changed them a lot (and they've got nice animations now as well).

Another thing: when do our characters use the voice lines while chanting Mantras? It happens not often although I really like it when my character keeps chanting "Agony. Torment. Pain!" etc.

[musu.9205]

@Nyel.1843 said:I think one of the best ways to counter the cast time issues would be having effects during the cast not only when you finish it. This could look like this:

Mantra of Pain: Every second it pulses and inflicts Blind / damage around the MesmerMantra of Recovery: Every second you AoE heal around you and when you finish you cast Regeneration in a small radiusMantra of Resolve: Every second you reduce the damage of conditions by 33%...

well , nice thought , but that way the channeling itself is way stronger to be a side effect . for mantra of pain and resolve , the effect are strong enough you want to cancel the channel and spam them .

[musu.9205]

@Durzlla.6295 said:

@Tseison.4659 said:Lots of walls of text :astonished: but anyways, here’s hoping they give us 3 charges instead of 2 since the Firebrand gets 3 and for balancing reasons we should as well.

They can also have it where the last charge has increased effectiveness etc... :)

Keep in mind though, guardian Mantras have a 25s CD for the utilities, 30s Cd for the heal and 40s CD for the ult ON TOP OF having a nearly 3s cast time for the charge, making it so once you pop that 3rd charge you're never using that Mantra again in the same combat.

Mesmers on the other hand have just over a 2s cast time, and get the longest CD of our Mantras being a whopping 12s. And we get an effect on charging it instead of putting it on CD making it not only useable in combat, but rewarding to fully use and charge in combat.

I would take our Mantras over guardian Mantras any day.

firebrand mantra has long cd but shorter recharge time with its 3 charges its far more practical than mes mantra during combat / casting 2.25s spell for small benefit is not balanced . and tbh firebrand mantra has better effect for themselves but hard to apply to allies while mes mantra has okish aoe radius but the aoe effects are not really worthy to try hard in most cases

[OriOri.8724]

@Durzlla.6295 said:

@Tseison.4659 said:Lots of walls of text :astonished: but anyways, here’s hoping they give us 3 charges instead of 2 since the Firebrand gets 3 and for balancing reasons we should as well.

They can also have it where the last charge has increased effectiveness etc... :)

Keep in mind though, guardian Mantras have a 25s CD for the utilities, 30s Cd for the heal and 40s CD for the ult ON TOP OF having a nearly 3s cast time for the charge, making it so once you pop that 3rd charge you're never using that Mantra again in the same combat.

Mesmers on the other hand have just over a 2s cast time, and get the longest CD of our Mantras being a whopping 12s. And we get an effect on charging it instead of putting it on CD making it not only useable in combat, but rewarding to fully use and charge in combat.

I would take our Mantras over guardian Mantras any day.

Mesmer mantras are designed to be channeled in combat, FB mantras are designed to be channeled before hand, and just use the charges in combat. Despite having the same name, the focus of the 2 sets of mantras are entirely different, so your comparison is a bit silly.

[Panda.1967]

@Durzlla.6295 said:

@Tseison.4659 said:Lots of walls of text :astonished: but anyways, here’s hoping they give us 3 charges instead of 2 since the Firebrand gets 3 and for balancing reasons we should as well.

They can also have it where the last charge has increased effectiveness etc... :)

Keep in mind though, guardian Mantras have a 25s CD for the utilities, 30s Cd for the heal and 40s CD for the ult ON TOP OF having a nearly 3s cast time for the charge, making it so once you pop that 3rd charge you're never using that Mantra again in the same combat.

Mesmers on the other hand have just over a 2s cast time, and get the longest CD of our Mantras being a whopping 12s. And we get an effect on charging it instead of putting it on CD making it not only useable in combat, but rewarding to fully use and charge in combat.

I would take our Mantras over guardian Mantras any day.

Guardian Mantras are designed with short recharge times with long cooldowns to encourage saving the final charge. Their last charge is also a much stronger charge than their other 2. For them the idea is to only use the first 2 charges regularly, and let them recharge quickly, saving their final charge for when they need a bigger burst and can afford the longer cooldown. For them the ammunition mechanic is very rewarding as it actually lets them keep their mantras rolling.

Mesmer Mantras on the other hand are intended to be burst through and channeled in combat. Our CDs are very short, and our channeling has an effect. However, our recharge times are absurdly high, and the channel time is still too high to be practical for combat casting. The current state of Mesmer mantras is very confused.

• Mantras need a shorter channel time... about 1¾s should do... still long enough to be interrupted and to disrupt other actions, but short enough to be practical.
• Some Mantras need 3 charges.... specifically Pain and Recovery... Pain is spam cast as is, it requires the 3rd charge to offset the channeling time and make the skill not feel clunky to use. Recovery needs the 3rd charge because it is completely impractical to rely on the heal from channeling Recovery in combat. The other mantras rarely see multiple casts, so keeping to 2 charges on them is fine.
• Mantra of Recovery needs to be reverted... If we had been given 3 charges of Power Return instead of 2 then maybe the health threshold wouldn't have been as big of an issue... but either way, the heal is virtually useless above 50% health now.
• Mantra recharge times need to be shorter... not asking for them to be shorter than our CDs like the Guardian versions, just bring them down to reasonable times. Mantra of Pain should have a 5s recharge, Recovery down to 12s, Distraction & Resolve down to 15s, and Concentration down to 20s. This puts their recharge times a little longer than their CDs making it worthwhile to use the final charge, while also making the ammunition system actually a valuable addition to Mesmer Mantras.
• Reduce CD when using a mantra that was close to having regained a charge.... this could be tricky to implement, but I can see a few options for this, 1) if the mantra was 50% recharged or more, CD is halved... 2) every 2s recharge when on the final charge reduces the CD by 1s. (Mantra of Pain's CD remains unaffected by either option)

[Nyel.1843]

I really don't know why they removed all the traits for Mantras. I want the 3rd cast back it felt so much better. If you get used to charge your Mantras and just use one stack and wait until it recovers you don't need to recharge them. If you use both charges at once and charge in combat that works as well but feels very unrewarding. Two charges just isn't enough imho.

Nevertheless I really love Mantra of Pain now. Before the changes it was pretty bad but now it's a very strong AoE on a short CD (if you use it the way I said). I mean why is there no trait that reduces charging time or CD or recharge?

[Panda.1967]

@Nyel.1843 said:I really don't know why they removed all the traits for Mantras. I want the 3rd cast back it felt so much better. If you get used to charge your Mantras and just use one stack and wait until it recovers you don't need to recharge them. If you use both charges at once and charge in combat that works as well but feels very unrewarding. Two charges just isn't enough imho.

Nevertheless I really love Mantra of Pain now. Before the changes it was pretty bad but now it's a very strong AoE on a short CD (if you use it the way I said). I mean why is there no trait that reduces charging time or CD or recharge?

Mantra of Pain has been AoE for quite some time... September 09, 2014 to be specific...

[zealex.9410]

I really like to play between the daze mantra and the shadowstep deception on mirage. I play interupt power mirage which is quite a nice but the fact that i can cover the charging and its daze which traited can also stun, on top of the 12487163731 interupts i have already in the build makes it hella useful.

[Nyel.1843]

@Panda.1967 said:

@Nyel.1843 said:I really don't know why they removed all the traits for Mantras. I want the 3rd cast back it felt so much better. If you get used to charge your Mantras and just use one stack and wait until it recovers you don't need to recharge them. If you use both charges at once and charge in combat that works as well but feels very unrewarding. Two charges just isn't enough imho.

Nevertheless I really love Mantra of Pain now. Before the changes it was pretty bad but now it's a very strong AoE on a short CD (if you use it the way I said). I mean why is there no trait that reduces charging time or CD or recharge?

Mantra of Pain has been AoE for quite some time...

September 09, 2014

to be specific...

Yeah as I said. That's how long I haven't played Mesmer or used them.

[Panda.1967]

@Nyel.1843 said:

@Panda.1967 said:

@Nyel.1843 said:I really don't know why they removed all the traits for Mantras. I want the 3rd cast back it felt so much better. If you get used to charge your Mantras and just use one stack and wait until it recovers you don't need to recharge them. If you use both charges at once and charge in combat that works as well but feels very unrewarding. Two charges just isn't enough imho.

Nevertheless I really love Mantra of Pain now. Before the changes it was pretty bad but now it's a very strong AoE on a short CD (if you use it the way I said). I mean why is there no trait that reduces charging time or CD or recharge?

Mantra of Pain has been AoE for quite some time...

September 09, 2014

to be specific...

Yeah as I said. That's how long I haven't played Mesmer or used them.

Just pointing out, the AoE has been there for a long time... It was a good change... but the more recent changes have honestly done more harm than good to Mantras... We all wanted them to make the ammunition change to mesmer mantras after we heard about how Firebrand mantras were going to work. However, none of us wanted to see the other changes that were made to mantras. For those of us who have actually been using Mantras for a long time, this change was terrible...

[Carighan.6758]

Maybe the charge/discharge mechanic is just a bad idea in light of the fast-paced action-y GW2 gameplay. But, the ammo mechanic has some interesting concept in there:

MantraA type of ability where the cooldown will not count down unless a specific condition is met. All mantras only have a single charge.

Examples:

Mantra of RecoveryCooldown: 5 secondsCooldown Trigger: You or your illusions took damage within the last second.

Mantra of PainCooldown: 2 secondsCooldown Trigger: You are affected by Weakness or Slow.Ignores Condition: Weakness

And so on. Basically super-short CDs, but they will be frozen unless something is true.

[Panda.1967]

@Carighan.6758 said:Maybe the charge/discharge mechanic is just a bad idea in light of the fast-paced action-y GW2 gameplay. But, the ammo mechanic has some interesting concept in there:

MantraA type of ability where the cooldown will not count down unless a specific condition is met. All mantras only have a single charge.

Examples:

Mantra of RecoveryCooldown: 5 secondsCooldown Trigger: You or your illusions took damage within the last second.

Mantra of PainCooldown: 2 secondsCooldown Trigger: You are affected by Weakness or Slow.Ignores Condition: Weakness

And so on. Basically super-short CDs, but they will be frozen unless something is true.

That would honestly make them massively overpowered...

[OriOri.8724]

I wonder if the ammunition mechanic can be changed for mantras. I don't know quite how it would look yet, but something along the lines of:

• No longer required to charge mantras. The ammunition mechanic always reloads, even if you blow the last charge
• If you blow the last charge, you can choose to risk the 2.25s channel to get the charges back immediately, or wait for each charge to come off its individual cooldown

I think this would provide a lot more play with mantras overall, especially when you account for our on charged effects that mesmer mantras get. Do you blow the charges and wait, blow the charges and re-channel, or only use 1 charge at a time like you do now?

[Nyel.1843]

I think even increasing the count to 3 instead of 2 would help a lot. The thing with "get buffs while you channel them" is nice but in many cases a massive hindrance. Or give us a Signet that instantly charges all of our Mantras when we activate it or something like that. It's mind-boggling that we just have 1 trait for Mantras. and that's just for support and nothing else.

Firebrand has only one trait for them as well but even "Weighty Terms — The final charge of your Mantra skills inflict immobilize. Mantras gain reduced recharge." is better than what we've got.

[Talonblaze.3175]

I used to LOVE mantras, was a full mantra mesmer for the longest time. I enjoyed being a healing mesmer especially, sure; it wasn't even close to druid but I liked I could be offensive, defensive and supportive all at the same time. But with a nice balance and nothing over the top. It was the sole reason I stayed core mesmer rather than going the meta chrono route.

Now? It feels clunkier than ever and the change feels like a nerf. The "after charge" effects? Feel rather pointless.

The ammo mechanic might as well have never been implemented with how useful it is. The mechanic works better when there's multiple charges and any skill that's had ammo, has felt alot better when it had at least 3 charges.2 charges? You sneeze and its on full cooldown.

The heal was the biggest hit, both from the trait and Recovery itself. It was so pitiful and really counter productive having to choose to charge it or not to charge it. Even worse when they added the terrible 50% HP clause to just get a NORMAL heal. Joy.

Mantra of Pain, whilst it sucks having one less damage charge, it proccing sooner for healing was a bit welcomed.BUT, it's offset by its practically non-existent cooldown and ammo charge time might as well be gone (why is it even there....?).

If Anet wanted "combat mantras", especially after stripping our old mechanic and giving it to Firebands (who also get a fair bit of quickness on demand too); they should have followed Mantra of Pain's structure. The cast time is your punishment along with the low charges. However, on the plus side, you have the ability to fire it back up again immediately.This means we can continue applying pressure, our heal on charge is alot more useful, our utilities aren't AS clunky without feeling useless after they are spent as well.

This "half and half" kitten stuff is nonsense. Especially when half is uselessness and justified for the nerf/changes.

[draxynnic.3719]

Yeah, the ammo recharge mechanic might as well not exist as things currently stand. In most circumstances, you're better off just blowing the remaining charge and recharging manually than waiting for the painfully slow charge refresh.

They obviously felt that when they took away the trait for the third charge that they needed to buff it, hence why you get the on-charge effects - however, half of the on-charge effects are things that you want to use reactively, not something that you want to have in two second's time. Mantra of Pain, and possibly Mantra of Distraction, are the only ones I feel are actually useful as charge effects - I guess one could find circumstances where the charge effects of Concentration and Resolve are worthwhile, but they're pretty specific. Overall, they'd probably have been better off leaving them with their old functionality and three charges per refresh baseline.

They're still kinda useful now, but mostly in the "I don't have anything that does this job better" sense.

[OriOri.8724]

The problem with the on charge effects is that they were put in specifically because mesmer mantras "are designed to be charged while in combat", yet we still have a 2.25 second charge time on them, which is asinine if you want to do it in combat.

If Anet would reduce the charge time another 0.5 seconds, down to 1.75 second charge time, it would be significantly better while still providing a very long cast time when in combat.

[Nero.7369]

I still like some of the mantras, like date, heal and conditions remove. Sadly we don't have 3 charges anymore. But specially in a support spec with inspiration aoe healing they are nice. Also with mirage you can Dodge while recharging them so you don't get interrupted more that easily. And we can still do that while we are invisible :tongue: